U.S. Army troops subjected Iraqi detainees to severe beatings and other torture at a base in central Iraq from 2003 through 2004, often under orders or with the approval of superior officers, according to accounts from soldiers released by Human Rights Watch today. The new report, “Leadership Failure: Firsthand Accounts of Torture of Iraqi Detainees by the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division,” provides soldiers’ accounts of abuses against detainees committed by troops of the 82nd Airborne stationed at Forward Operating Base Mercury (FOB Mercury), near Fallujah.
Three U.S. army personnel-two sergeants and a captain-describe routine, severe beatings of prisoners and other cruel and inhumane treatment. In one incident, a soldier is alleged to have broken a detainee’s leg with a baseball bat. Detainees were also forced to hold five-gallon jugs of water with their arms outstretched and perform other acts until they passed out. Soldiers also applied chemical substances to detainees’ skin and eyes, and subjected detainees to forced stress positions, sleep deprivation, and extremes of hot and cold. Detainees were also stacked into human pyramids and denied food and water. The soldiers also described abuses they witnessed or participated in at another base in Iraq and during earlier deployments in Afghanistan.
According to the soldiers’ accounts, U.S. personnel abused detainees as part of the military interrogation process or merely to “relieve stress.” In numerous cases, they said that abuse was specifically ordered by Military Intelligence personnel before interrogations…more
If there is any way at all you can do it, please march. And take someone with you. If you can, take several people with you.
Dear god. How cruel and depraved … just when we think we’ve heard it all …
I wish I could not believe this-but of course it’s not at all unbelievable, it’s to be expected at this point. Not excusable but certainly in line with what has been done up to now.
I have the flu and every few hours I wake up, drag out of bed and news like this seems like an extension of that sick, fever nightmare.
And then I find something just as bad, but I don’t have the energy to check further-or the stomach at the moment-but if anyone does-http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/
about half way down-War Pornography-the article links to Eastbay Express article that is not for the easily nauseated, or even the not so easily nauseated.
Why are people so evil?
Abu Ghraib was just the one we heard about.
It is good to finally have the actual report.
Recommended.
I am an old retired guy now. When I was just starting my career, a WWII vet who had about 18 years experience at the time, took me under his wing. He was a remarkable guy. A vet of the European theater of WWII. He had lost most of an elbow during a fight in Belgium in 1944. (I believe he was a member of the 82nd Airborne. It was that unit, or the 101st)
After the war, through the education benefits of the original GI Bill, he became a very educated scientist. One of his professors had worked directly with Einstein.
This wonderful, gentle, caring man would simply not believe the article I just read. That members of the U.S. military (from his old unit even) would enthusiastically commit such acts would be totally abhorrent to him. He spent his youth trying to insure that this form of inhumanity would never happen again.
One of the major differences separating the Allied powers from the Axis, I was told, was that we followed the Geneva Convention. Has the U.S. military forgotten its heritage? What have we become??
82nd airborne — aren’t those the guys they sent to New Orleans??
Holy shit.
I’m reading this and thinking back to the Gonzales memo. Sickening.
Whatever is done in a U.S. uniform, we must all own.
A new convention for headlines:
— If the source is troops, then “troops report”: information shared by comrades.
— If not: then either the service, or its commanders, or the nation, or no actors named.
We need to replace the convention that was bundled with our new machine:
a. Nation fears or mourns.
b. Troops kill or suffer.
c. Bigshots announce or conquer.
anything not pliable enough to fit above:
d. Critics question.
There is a none-of-your-business adventurism that has privatized conscience in the scenes you bring to our attention. The question of personal fault displaces the question of policy and control.
Every single one of us must feel honor-bound to make amends. It sure beats being alienated and appalled.