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A very nasty picture

Every time I have a chance to read the news these days, which is not often as business gets in the way, I come across more pictures of American troops abusing, humiliating and otherwise subjecting Iraqi prisoners to appalling acts. As I have even less time to read what the blogosphere has to say about that, these are mainly thoughts based on the news and conversations with those who have been closer to action that I ever will be.

What the Abu Ghraib prison guards did is despicable, inhumane and immoral. No explanations and no amount of blame-shifting can change that. They should not even try – their posing in the photos shows how they enjoyed what they did. They disgraced the US army uniform and diminished the sacrifices of all those soldiers who were fighting, patroling and reconstructing Iraq, in the eyes of the world and the very people they were trying to help.

Abu Ghraib was a notorious prison in times of Saddam’s terror, where people were routinely tortured and disappeared. It probably still bears witness to the horrors that took place there. Perhaps some of the current inmates of the prisons were former guards or people who put others in it.

The prisoners were either ex-Bathists or Saddam’s soldiers i.e. PoWs and/or convicted or suspected criminals. In the first case, intelligence military or other was essential for protection of both the ordinary Iraqis and the troops. In the second case, generally, Iraqi prisoners were taken to the tribal leader or a local judge who would let them off. There was (is) no deterrent for those who wished to commit crimes in post-Saddam Iraq. The power vacuum was real for everyone. Iraqis did not know how to understand the new authority, they pretty much expected the new ‘masters’ to hang or shoot a few people to establish order and were surprised and frustrated when this did not happen.

A common ‘excuse’ by the perpetrators of the vile behaviour captured in the pictures is that they were obeying orders or that interrogators ‘turned the blind eye’ and let them make the rules for ‘softening up the prisoners to be interrogated’ as they went along. I find this very hard to believe, first of all, the ‘I was only obeying orders’ has not worked since WWII. Secondly, any interrogator worth his salt would certainly not want a bunch of sadistic prison guards demented with drugs to do with the Abu Ghraib prisoners the things we saw in the pictures. Humiliation can be counter-productive and even if it were to be used, it would need to be done by the interrogator himself to reap the ‘benefits’ of such treatment in the immediate questioning. ‘Shock of capture’ is far more effective as confusion, disorientation and uncertainly generate the kind of fear that is more likely to make people talk than subjecting them to all kinds of humiliation. That is more likely to bread resistance and negate the effects of the capture. This obviously varies according to circumstaces but the overall objective is always to control the experiences of the captured.

As for what made those reservists commit such atrocities, there is no mystery there. Anyone who has been bullied at school or any other institution knows just how easy it is for one or two sadistic sociopaths to pull an entire group in and then ‘socialise’ them and the rest of the environment to their abusive behaviour. This surely is far easier to do within a very strict hierarchy such as the military where the main instigator is in the position of power. This in no way exonerates those ‘pulled in’ from their individual responsibility just explains how something so unacceptable can become the social norm in an enclosed environment such as a prison. The real scandal here where was the hierarchy above the power-crazed prison guards?

41 comments to A very nasty picture

  • Yes it’s bad. Yes it’s wrong. Yes it hurts our efforts.

    But let’s not beat ourselves up over the actions of maybe 20, maybe 50 soldiers in 200,000!

    Every single call for an investigation of such crimes should be accompanied with a short statement, “but, yah know…this is common throughout the world, against people who are simply not dangerous, by corrupt governments who have no intention of correcting their problems.”
    This has been another perfect opportunity for the backward peoples of the Middle East and their apologists in the kick-backed EU & Russia to say to us, “Look! Look! They are bad too! That is why our economies are horrible and why our governments don’t care for their people! Because we are fighting the pig-dog infidel Jews & Americans, we don’t have time for reform of the same and worse crimes!”

    We should be actively calling this was it really is, an attack on a just criminal justice system by those that barely have one.

    one … hundred … percent … BULLSHIT!

    http://www.while-true.blogspot.com/

  • Just to place a little perspective on the whole thing:

    From 1984 until 2002, over 3,000 Iraqis were tortured and executed in Abu Ghraib prison, and not by Americans.

    I’m not excusing the Americans’ behaviour, incidentally, but I should also point out that the reason you’re seeing so much of this is because the U.S. economy is starting its takeoff run (unemployment down to 5.6%, new jobs in March over 300,000 — about 50,000 more than forecast).

    What’s the point? Well, media darling John Kerry was basing his entire presidential campaign on how the economy was sucking under GWB, and how well he’d be able to fix it (10 million new jobs in four years, etc).

    Problem is, the jobs situation under GWB may make his wild-ass guesstimate look silly.

    And everyone knows that no Democrat president of recent memory can manage the military, and the Clinton idiots appeased the terrorists right up to the very end.

    Economy cooking, no recent attacks on Americans by terrorists… what’s left to give hope to the Democrats (and their lackeys in the Press)? A scandal in a prison.

    Pardon me while I yawn.

  • Mashiki

    Kim, good point on that.

    Something I do find oddly interesting about all of this, some of the comments by the Iraqi prisoners and how they were humilitated and whanot. Especially how they were made to ‘feel like women’ well, now that’s just interesting…have we just found ourselfs a new way to break them?

    I expect I can get a chorus of ‘how can you say such a thing’, look at it…especially with the calls of Sadr and his buddies saying that it’s okay to keep female soldiers as slaves, especially how they ‘felt less then human’ when it was the women doing it to them. They didn’t mind it when it was the men, but they did when it was the women? Very interesting seeing as how many consider women to be less then human anyway, very interesting.

    If it works, use it.

  • Cobden Bright

    According to the Red Cross, there was an insitutionalised system of doling out humiliating and degrading treatment for the purposes of extracting information. This is specifically forbidden under the Geneva Convention. And the abuse is clearly not the work of a few “bad eggs”, as Bush and co tried to claim initially, and as may be the case with the brutality by UK soldiers. Rather, it is the result of a deliberate US policy on interrogation across the whole Iraqi prison system.

    Furthermore, by no means all the detainees are insurgents or ex-Baathists. How can the young boys who were raped be “insurgents”, let alone agents of Saddam? There are huge numbers of eye-witness testimonies of normal Iraqis being imprisoned for petty “offences” like not having ID papers, and then going on to suffer torture, humiliation, and brutality.

    The fact is, the US army as an institution has behaved with unacceptable brutality. Not just in the prison abuse, described by Rumsfeld as “inhuman”, but in the military action in Fallujah, with air strikes and tank shells being used in close proximity to civilians and inhabited residential buildings, and in the invasion itself, where urban areas where bombed heavily with the inevitable civilian casualties. To the Americans, an Iraqi life simply isn’t worth enough to refrain from this sort of behaviour.

    Finally, saying that this sort of thing can happen easily as a result of socialisation is complete nonsense. At this late day it is very well known that lack of discipline and controls allow sociopathy and abuse to flourish. Given that knowledge, any half-competent military should have strict procedures and practises in place to prevent abuse occuring. No, this abuse was simply the natural extension of a deliberate institutional policy of degradation – Guantanamo Bay taken to its logical conclusion. Please do not try to rationalise away unpleasant facts by deluding yourself.

  • Aral Simbon

    Ivan:

    But let’s not beat ourselves up over the actions of maybe 20, maybe 50 soldiers in 200,000!

    And how do you know that? Is it beyond your imagining that the use of abuse – and, yes, torture – is actually condoned, either explicitly or implicitly, by sections of the military establishment as a useful weapon in the fight against terrorism.

    Kim:

    I’m not excusing the Americans’ behaviour, incidentally, but I should also point out that the reason you’re seeing so much of this is because the U.S. economy is starting its takeoff run (unemployment down to 5.6%, new jobs in March over 300,000 — about 50,000 more than forecast).

    Yes, let’s blame Kerry for all the exposure, but let’s not say a word in anger towards Bush or Rumsfeld. Could it be, Kim, that we’re seeing so much of it because it’s news?

    Pardon me while I yawn.

    Well Kim yawn. Yawn at the photos showing a naked prisoner being savaged by German Shepards. Yawn at the photos and videos that Donald Rumsfeld indicates show the rape and murder of prisoners. Yawn at the abuse of young boys. Yes, Kim, yawn. And then don’t be surprised when you are next.

  • Hawkeye

    Aral Simbon

    You need to look up the word ‘savage’ in a dictionary, or get your eyes tested, as that picture clearly shows that neither dog is making physical contact with the prisoner. Or perhaps your hysterical exaggeration is deliberate?

  • Aral Simbon

    Hawkeye –

    Nothing wrong with my eyes. Why don’t you try reading what is written underneath:

    One of the new photographs shows a young soldier, wearing a dark jacket over his uniform and smiling into the camera, in the corridor of the jail. In the background are two Army dog handlers, in full camouflage combat gear, restraining two German shepherds… Another image shows that the man, an Iraqi prisoner, is naked. His hands are clasped behind his neck and he is leaning against the door to a cell, contorted with terror, as the dogs bark a few feet away. Other photographs show the dogs straining at their leashes and snarling at the prisoner. In another, taken a few minutes later, the Iraqi is lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a soldier sitting on top of him, knee pressed to his back. Blood is streaming from the inmate’s leg. Another photograph is a closeup of the naked prisoner, from his waist to his ankles, lying on the floor. On his right thigh is what appears to be a bite or a deep scratch. There is another, larger wound on his left leg, covered in blood.

  • Hawkeye

    I did read it, but there are no pictures of dogs savaging prisoners on that page. Evidence of such events may exist, but it isn’t on that web page.

  • Sandy P.

    –Well Kim yawn. Yawn at the photos showing a naked prisoner being savaged by German Shepards. Yawn at the photos and videos that Donald Rumsfeld indicates show the rape and murder of prisoners. Yawn at the abuse of young boys. Yes, Kim, yawn. And then don’t be surprised when you are next.–

    Why shouldn’t we yawn at the abuse of “young boys?” Their girls are far worse off than they are.

    Unless their very, very young, I don’t put anything past them.

    Funny thing is, tho, western people pay to see people having sex w/animals and to be led around by leashes.

    BTW, of course we’re next. We got that message loud and clear on 9/11.

  • felixrayman

    I did read it, but there are no pictures of dogs savaging prisoners on that page. Evidence of such events may exist, but it isn’t on that web page.

    Sounds like you need to change your alias. May I suggest “ostrich”?

  • Guy Herbert

    “The prisoners were either ex-Bathists or Saddam’s soldiers i.e. PoWs and/or convicted or suspected criminals.”

    All of them? Evidence? All we know is that they were prisoners.

    In any case, this claim appears to mitigate their ill-treatment on the grounds of who they (presumptively) are. Please don’t join this nasty trend.

    The occupation has now lost its grand-strategic justification and it is unclear that it can be regained at all. The point was supposed to be to implant Western values in an Arab country; what appears to have happened is that Western institutions have adopted and reinforced the Arab political culture of terror and reprisal.

    I begin to fear that, just as during and after the Second World War National Socialism was spread throughout the world, making the very conception of the state a nationalist-socialist one even in formally liberal or monarchist places, the “War on Terrorism” is becoming a war on modernity, and that the strategy is to win by becoming the nominal enemy.

  • ic

    “In 1971 researchers at Stanford University created a simulated prison in the basement of the campus psychology building. They randomly assigned 24 students to be either prison guards or prisoners for two weeks.

    Within days the “guards” had become swaggering and sadistic, to the point of placing bags over the prisoners’ heads, forcing them to strip naked and encouraging them to perform sexual acts.

    The landmark Stanford experiment and studies like it give insight into how ordinary people can, under the right circumstances, do horrible things — including the mistreatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

    What is the distance between “normal” and “monster”? Can anyone become a torturer?…

    Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo, a leader of the Stanford prison study, said that while the rest of the world was shocked by the images from Iraq, “I was not surprised that it happened.”

    “I have exact, parallel pictures of prisoners with bags over their heads,” from the 1971 study, he said.

    At one point, he said, the guards in the fake prison ordered their prisoners to strip and used a rudimentary sex joke to humiliate them.

    Professor Zimbardo ended the experiment the next day, more than a week earlier than planned.”

    from http://www.rogerlsimon.com/

  • zmollusc

    No one has mentioned that getting a dog to bite someone’s ass looks brutal, inexcusable and barbaric to those of us in trendy islington restaurants drinking whatever overpriced wine is being hyped this week, whereas it might look less important to soldiers who are under fire from bullets, rpg’s and car bombs 24/7. The possibility of you being abducted, killed and your body dragged through the streets by cheering crowds must give you a different perspective.

  • Cobden said:

    but in the military action in Fallujah, with air strikes and tank shells being used in close proximity to civilians and inhabited residential buildings, and in the invasion itself, where urban areas where bombed heavily with the inevitable civilian casualties.

    Your views are always well argued but not this one. If you are going to fight a war, the fact the enemy chooses to defend an area filled with civilians changes nothing if they are going to use that area as their base of operations for their attacks. One either fights a war or one does not and allowing the other side to use ‘human shields’ is not an option of victory is actually an objective… and if it is not, one has no business fighting in the first place.

  • Aral Simbon

    Two examples of moral relativity here:

    From Guy:

    The occupation has now lost its grand-strategic justification and it is unclear that it can be regained at all.

    If the decision to invade Iraq was morally correct, then nothing that happened in Abu Ghraib can change that.

    From Cobden:

    No one has mentioned that getting a dog to bite someone’s ass looks brutal, inexcusable and barbaric to those of us in trendy islington restaurants drinking whatever overpriced wine is being hyped this week, whereas it might look less important to soldiers who are under fire from bullets, rpg’s and car bombs 24/7.

    It might look less important to soldiers that lack a moral compass. Those that do have one can clearly distinguish torture from self-defence. And thank goodness for the soldiers at Abu Ghraib who had the moral courage to report the abuse. Your implied sideswipe at capitalism indicates where you are coming from.

    I won’t even try replying to Sandy P.

  • Aral Simbon

    Sorry Cobden, it was zmollusc that I should have attributed the quote above to.

  • DSpears

    This was hardly the NVA prison camp scene in “The Deer Hunter”. It doesn’t look like they were injured, and certainly no prisoners were killed. A few peopel crossed the line. There is real danger here of over-reacting.

    The most disturbing thing about this incident has been other wise serious people equating this with the real torture carried out by Saddam. Torture that involved lots of physical pain and most often ended in a merciful death. I’m humiliation was the least of the problems of the victems of Saddam.

    What a joke.

  • Guy Herbert

    I had two points, neither of them morally relativistic.

    1. The point about grand strategy that I was making was that the underlying objective (not the causus belli) behind the invasion of Iraq was to displace a regime of arbitrary brutality with the rule of law, thereby to create a powerful friend of Western values and put moral pressure on the whole region. That isn’t really a moral point at all, it is about coherent strategy.

    It is easy to be critical about the mistakes of both invasion and the occupation (messing around with the UN and making it the international political situation impossible instead of difficult, the Turkish screw-up, seemingly much less planning for the victory than the war, not dealing with looting appropriately, US tactical doctrines unsuitable to low intensity warfare in the aftermath, usw) but I don’t think any of them invalidated the enterprise. Things do go wrong.

    What’s different here is that the abuse hasn’t been a handful of hot-headed micreants swiftly and openly dealt with. The Pentagon seems to have been complacent about this approach to “interrogation” until it became public. It’s been a turn towards normality for Abu Ghraib, shocking us, but undermining the authority and purpose of the invasion by confirming the way of the world as Iraqis have experienced it: the authorities are torturers in secret.

    2. Even if power can genuinely be gained by adopting the methods of the enemy (which seems to be coming unstuck, at least for the moment, in Iraq), I don’t think it should be. That’s hardly a relativistic position.

  • Scott Cattanach

    Even the Republicans in Congress are making references to “rape and murder” of prisoners.

    “The prisoners were either ex-Bathists or Saddam’s soldiers i.e. PoWs and/or convicted or suspected criminals.”

    If the govt arrested them, they must be guilty. Everyone must stop being so anti-govt and soft on crime – nobody accused of a crime by the govt has rights, because we believe in limited govt. Right?

    Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in U.S.
    Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates.

    In Pennsylvania and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison. In Arizona, male inmates at the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear women’s pink underwear as a form of humiliation.

    At Virginia’s Wallens Ridge maximum security prison, new inmates have reported being forced to wear black hoods, in theory to keep them from spitting on guards, and said they were often beaten and cursed at by guards and made to crawl.

    The corrections experts say that some of the worst abuses have occurred in Texas, whose prisons were under a federal consent decree during much of the time President Bush was governor because of crowding and violence by guards against inmates. Judge William Wayne Justice of Federal District Court imposed the decree after finding that guards were allowing inmate gang leaders to buy and sell other inmates as slaves for sex….

  • I was beginning to wonder if Samizdata was getting a little Pravdaish – this is the biggest news story of the moment and Iraq is a frequent topic on this blog – yet until now I had seen no posting about prisoner abuse.

    To all the commentators who tried to brush this off, shame on you, how we treat prisoners reflects the values of our civilisation. Even the Nazis treated captured POWs by and large with some respect.

    There is no excuse for mis-treating prisoners. It is counter-productive and will likely encourage the insurgents to treat capured prisoners accordingly.

    Yawning Kim’s pathetic party political posting completely misses the point and belies a certain blindness to the real issue – mistreatment of prisoners.

    I’m afraid Cobden is right, this is not going to turn out to be the acts of a few bad eggs, this will be seen to be a matter of policy, a very ill conceived policy, from a complacent Pentagon.

    The war of liberation is turning into an occupation against the wishes of most ordinary Iraqis, even the usually pliant US appointed governing council is starting to bristle.

    Realistically the liberate Iraq, set-up an instant democracy, with a free market economy plan seems a little flawed. Unlike Japan and Germany, this country has a post-war insurgency growing, supported by a non-rational religious ideology which borders on being a death-cult. To add to the problem its in a region seething with neighbours antipathetic to the whole Iraqi Democracy Project. This is not fertile territory for the establishment of a liberal democracy.

    The sooner we bring the boys home and give them a victory parade the better.

  • The self-rationalization some use – few rotten apples, the investigation was brought by the Army etc – are besides the point. We have military personnel not only abusing prisoners but taking smiling pictures of themselves doing it. It is one thing to prepare prisoners for interrogation under orders. It is another entirely to enjoy the work so much you take pictures of yourself in the process and circulate it to your buddies on CD-ROMs.

    But some of the comments and conclusions drawn from this are every bit as despicable. Like the grand rhetorical accusations of “savagery”, “absence of moral compass”, “widespread American brutality” and the rest of the predictable litany which mostly attempts to establish moral equivalence throught the continuity of “torture” at this infamous prison; American abuse is the same as Baathist torture by mere virtue of occuring at the same place.

    Never mind that none of the pictures out of Abu Ghraib are anywhere near as disgusting as those of those four bodies being burned, mutilated, trampled on and hung by a cheering crowd in Fallujah, pictures which so many in the so-called “Arab Street” loved and approved of.

    When Jews or Americans are killed in large numbers, Palestinians and others across the Middle East cheer and chant in the streets. Their religious leaders proclaim it a religious duty to kill westerners. But when some of us evil white people are caught stripping prisoners naked, we court-martial, name and shame them in front of the world.

    I don’t expect the average moral relativist to see a difference. The rest of us will appreciate the obvious gap, and whose moral compass is more reliable.

    When the regimes of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and all the others come forward with their own cases of systematic torture and abuse, and expose those who commit them, they’ll have a word to say about this. And when the “Arab Street” escapes its own medieval prejudice and racism long enough to stop accepting vastly worst abuse at the hands of its own, while “rising up” against being stripped naked and roughly handled by white people, maybe I’ll listen to what they have to say too.

    The military must be held accountable. And the victims compensated. Beyond that, it’s pretty obvious that if this is not yet a military Vietnam, it’s already become a major political quagmire.

  • Scott Cattanach

    Never mind that none of the pictures out of Abu Ghraib are anywhere near as disgusting as those of those four bodies being burned, mutilated, trampled on and hung by a cheering crowd in Fallujah, pictures which so many in the so-called “Arab Street” loved and approved of.

    The abuses in Abu Ghraib pre-date Fallujah – don’t assume the abuses came afterward just because news about them came out afterward. BTW, has anyone ever told us who those contractors killed in Fallujah were?

  • Perry,

    I stand corrected.

    Apologies.

  • Scott Cattanach

    Don’t back down so soon, Paul. During the invasion, LS was all war, all the time. Now that things look bad, we get two posts (according to Perry’s links above). If Iraq truly goes to hell, LS will become an all cricket blog.

    But let’s not beat ourselves up over the actions of maybe 20, maybe 50 soldiers in 200,000!

    Typical govt speak. Anything good done by govt agents is something “we” did, anything bad is the work of a few bad individual apples, because govt is good and individuals are bad.

  • toolkien

    Whether this adds up to a dismissal and ‘you have to break a few eggs’ so be it. But I see this as an unfortunate consequence of war. War is unleashes a martial form of association that is much closer to anarchy than a ‘civil’ society. International associations and treaties try and inject some level of form and regulation to a process that is ultimately about destroying people and property. If war is felt to be necessary, one had better have a good reason to do it, and expect that when humans are allowed outside civil decorum, they will act brutally, which is the obvious intent, and it can’t be turned on and off like a spigot.

    The pictures I’ve seen anger me as it seems to be unnecessary for the most part. It seems to be more about the puerile enjoyment of guards than anything else. If they were being softened up for questioning, I’d thing that other, more brutal methods would be used if they knew of anything too important. But, again, it comes with war. Those of us who wish to use war need to be in tune with the fact that innocents die and brutality is common, and weigh it against what we think the objectives are.

  • Scott: All paul d.s is doing is discoursing in a reasonable fashion. That you should find Paul’s reasonable behaviour worthy of critisism just conforms you have become a troll rather than a reasoned critic like, say, Cobden Bright or others. How many articles do we have to write for us to be not accused of ignoring the issue by you then?

    It should be clear that neither Gabriel’s nor my views have changed regarding the overthrow of Saddam itself, so just repeating ourselves endlessly like a broken record (i.e. doing what Scott does) seems pointless unless we have reason to think something has been falsified and therefore cause us to reapprase our positions. We remark when we think something needs remarking on, such as on the scandal with the Iraqi prisoners.

    In the over all scheme of things, the situation in Iraq is neither as momentous nor as singularly captivating as it was during the actual invasion and that is just stating the obvious. We have set out our views often and appropriatly as things develop, it is just that there is a whole world out there, and not just Iraq, to write about.

  • Scott, where did I make this assumption and why is the relative timing of those events relevant to the comment you quote ? I don’t see what this has to do with anything. Unless you are saying the gruesome killing of these four people was retaliation for prison treatment. Based on what evidence ? Did the perpetrators in Fallujah make that claim ?

    What is being said, and will be repeated right now, is that while the ghastly treatment of four Americans was judged appropriate or at least well-deserved by some in Iraq and around the Arab world, the same profess to be appalled at the sight of people being stripped naked and humiliated in jail; a sad and despicable treatment that nevertheless compares quite favorably with what was done to those four American contractors.

    Obviously, in the Middle East, being stripped naked and humiliated by a white man is a far graver offense than being tortured, raped and killed by the thousands by some of your very own people.

    Now, it’s one thing for the people there to behave and react this way. But when westerners imply or assert moral equivalence between the pictures we have seen so far and the kind of Baathist ghastliness that preceded America within the same walls, it does make me wonder about their IQ.

  • Scott Cattanach

    In the over all scheme of things, the situation in Iraq is neither as momentous nor as singularly captivating as it was during the actual invasion and that is just stating the obvious.

    Even the Republicans in the Senate are talking about rape and murder of prisoners, in a war justified by its supporters (after WMD turned out to be a lie) for humanitarian reasons. No, Perry, its not ‘obvious’ that this isn’t momentous. We had more Iraq news here when the news was just X number of schools being repainted or a momentary dip in the number of people killed there that month. Face it, the wheels are coming off your favorite Big Government Program – ignoring it won’t make it go away.

    If EU beaucrats were torturing people LS wouldn’t have postings about anything else, even if they didn’t torture nearly as many as Saddam did.

  • David Stanton

    Face it, the wheels are coming off your favorite Big Government Program – ignoring it won’t make it go away.

    Clearly Cattanach is having a conversation without reference to what anyone else here is saying. Not only have the proprietors here not been ignoring the issue, he gets a reasonable reply to his purile comment and his response is just a devoid of merit as the previous comment. He is indeed nothing more than a childish troll. And for the record, I too opposed the removal of Saddam on the grounds I should not be required to bear the cost, I just don’t think going nah nah to opposing views is worthy behaviour or in any way helpful

  • Sandy P

    –The abuses in Abu Ghraib pre-date Fallujah – don’t assume the abuses came afterward just because news about them came out afterward. BTW, has anyone ever told us who those contractors killed in Fallujah were?–

    The company was Black-something-or-other. They broke protocol. Weren’t supposed to be there.

    As to treating hostages worse – worse than slitting throats (Pearl) or putting bags over heads then killing them? A lot of those people would rather be shot than be treated like a woman. Our prisons are very hard places. And we ignore it.

    Interesting post over at Roger Simon’s (?) place from a dr. who works/ed at the prison. Via one of the Iraqi bloggers.

    Also read Zeyad, IIRC, he wrote we were too soft when we arrived. An Iraqi wedding night tradition was/is putting a cat into the bedchamber and the huband killing it to set the tone of the marriage.

    Do I like what went on, depends on which action. Dogbites and death, no. Were some pics for psychouts? Possibly.

    Heads will roll.

  • snide

    Scott, what is LS? Can’t you read the title of this blog?Must be hard through all the spittle on your screen…

  • Scott Cattanach

    Heads will roll.

    The heads of a few low ranking scapegoats will roll.

  • Scott Cattanach

    Most Iraqi detainees ‘arrested by mistake’
    Coalition military intelligence officers believed 70-90 per cent of Iraqi detainees were “arrested by mistake”, according to a leaked Red Cross report on prisoner abuse, further details of which were disclosed on Monday.

    The confidential report, given to the US and British governments in February but covering events in March to November last year, describes a pattern of indiscriminate arrests involving destruction of property and brutal behaviour towards suspects and their families.

    Ill-treatment during capture was frequent and “appeared to go beyond the reasonable, legitimate and proportional use of force”, the report said. Such behaviour “seemed to reflect a usual modus operandi by certain CF [coalition forces] battle groups”….

  • Scott C. has a predictable, partial and limited point; the flaw in his analysis is common to most wrt this issue; namely, it only deals with the half – the bad one – that is convenient to the author’s argument.

    Of all the governments in charge in the Arab countries of the regions, the U.S. is still, by far, the fairest. That is how backwards, messed up and downright oppressive the Middle East is. Like it or not, Iraq is the only Arab country where victims of prison abuse have a hope of seeing justice for what they suffered. And watch their abusers named and shamed in front of the world. And, for all the nasty abuse we have seen on those photos, it is – at least so far – very mild material compared to anything you will read in Amnesty International’s reports about what goes on in Syrian or Saudi jails.

    So the wheel has not come off. In fact, the US military is proving itself more open and accountable on this issue than any government in the Middle East – not that it’s difficult – including Turkey’s. The fact that people in the region do not see it that way changes nothing to this. It is convenient for some to ignore the disturbing fact that many, both Arabs and Westerners, tolerated and still tolerate far worse abuse from Arab regimes against their fellow countrymen than they can stomach from a few Americans.

    But beyond the understandable short-term emotional outrage, the “Arab Street”, if it was at all relevant and rational, would ask itself why it accepts worse treatment from its own than it will ever tolerate from white foreigners. And direct at least some of its outrage towards those who have been oppressing them for decades and their orwellian “Big Government Programs”, the ones Cattanach would talk about if he really cared beyond the satisfaction of his little self-centered online vendetta against the oh-so-evil and malevolent Perry de Havilland Empire….

    (And a final note on the four Americans killed in Fallujah, since our friend does not seem to read much : they were private security guards for Blackwater Security Consulting. Three of them former Navy SEALs.)

  • Scott Cattanach

    Of all the governments in charge in the Arab countries of the regions, the U.S. is still, by far, the fairest. That is how backwards, messed up and downright oppressive the Middle East is. Like it or not, Iraq is the only Arab country where victims of prison abuse have a hope of seeing justice for what they suffered. And watch their abusers named and shamed in front of the world. And, for all the nasty abuse we have seen on those photos, it is – at least so far – very mild material compared to anything you will read in Amnesty International’s reports about what goes on in Syrian or Saudi jails.

    Was this war ever sold on the argument that it will just reduce the number of people being tortured in Iraqi prisons, or give the tortured “a hope” of seeing justice? Is “named and shamed” enough punishment for those responsible for this?

    I’ll believe that everyone responsible for this will be punished when I see it. You can’t deny that the govt (US or UK – that’s just what govts do) have a history of trying to cover up their crimes, even if those crimes are smaller than Saddam’s.

  • Was this war ever sold on the argument that it will just reduce the number of people being tortured in Iraqi prisons, or give the tortured “a hope” of seeing justice? Yes it was, although it never was the primary argument. But why is its “sale argument” the most important criteria anyway ? It seems the criteria used by Bush, Blair and co. to invade Iraq are routinely judged by you to be irrelevant, unreliable or even downright dumb, unless, of course, their alleged irrelevance to the case at hand fits your prejudice and your argument; in which case they become the yardstick of choice. Very convenient.

    And what if the war hadn’t been sold on this at all ? My goodness, could some positive improvement have occurred that wasn’t neither planned nor intended ? HOW AWFUL !! I demand my tax dollars back at once…

    Is “named and shamed” enough punishment for those responsible for this?As opposed to what ? The rewards they got under Saddam, and the power and privilege they still get in every other country in the region ? In a part of the world where no one ever got named, shamed, court-martialed or judged for abusing and torturing others, it is huge, yes. Especially if it gave even a few the idea of demanding the same from their own government. No wonder they feel “humiliated” : even this, the most basic and minimal justice, they cannot manage nor demand for themselves from their own rulers.

    You can’t deny that the govt (US or UK – that’s just what govts do) have a history of trying to cover up their crimes, even if those crimes are smaller than Saddam’s.And why is that relevant to my argument ? Which Middle East military command appointed a general to investigate abuse claims, published its classified report and leaked information and photos that exposed the torturers and protect the abused ? Egypt’s ? Saudi Arabia’s ? Iran’s ? Syria’s ?

    Or could it be America’s ? If the latter is covering up, what do we call what is happening in the rest of the region, and has been happening unchallenged for decades ? Why is the American abuse we know of more of a scandal than the constant, abysmal torture that has been common practice across this part of the world for decades ? What, exactly, makes it relatively or absolutely worse ? Why is it that flouting the Geneva Conventions is shameful if you are American, but ignoring human rights in entire nations is OK if you are an unelected Arab dictator ? Why should the UN take action – I mean, talk and pretend – when children are used in African warfare, yet nobody complains when children of the same age are pushed forward and repeatedly wasted in Palestine and Fallujah ? Why the double standard ? What fact and rationale support its existence ?

    Of course, you can argue ad nauseam that better is the enemy of the best and that justice requires that senior officials be given a taste of Abu Ghraib medicine to satisfy your very original and so unpredictable thirst for “popular” “justice”. That’s fine. Knock yourself out.

    Just for giggles, short of dismissing the entire US Administration and half the Army, what exactly would make you believe that “everyone” responsible has been punished ?

  • Guy Herbert

    Why is the American abuse we know of more of a scandal than the constant, abysmal torture that has been common practice across this part of the world for decades ?

    The abuse itself is not morally worse. It is politically damaging precisely because it was done by Americans in their capacity as representatives of America. Because it throws away any claim to moral and political advantage in our terms, and serves to confirm regional expectations of what the war, and what governance in general, is all about.

    Yes; the US has tolerated and aided poisonous local regimes for years. (Quite possibly to grand-strategic disadvantage.) Yes; in the last few years it has wrongly (if covertly) used some of those regimes as proxy torturers, if unguarded statements from the military/security apparatus are to be believed. But this is direct action by the US in an area where it is purportedly in charge. It provides substance to butress the wild propaganda that infests most of the Arab media, and undermines the Western claim to value individuals.

    What is a moral disaster and scandal is be an attempt to excuse the abuse by reference to regional standards. There are two double standards here. That of the Arab media: that torture is implicitly OK, except when it is done by Americans and in a way that offends Arab honour. And that of the mitigators who say: our cause is just, the policy was practical and in any case we’re better than the Arabs. (What would your reaction be to a mugger who pleaded in mitigation that he hadn’t shot his victim like some others?)

    There is a disturbing subtext in the latter argument of US particularism: that the US is always in the right by definition, and the definitions will be twisted accordingly. I happen to think the US is both quite often in the right, and quite often in the wrong, but less often wrong than most other countries. I try to apply consistent standards, but I have higher expectations of those who purport to do the same and operate in the same sort of moral space. Hence I’m more disappointed when that turns out not to be so.

    The US can satisfy me morally by facing up to its violations and evasions of its own standards. Some others–including the Bush-haters, Americophobes, and simple punishment freaks–may wish for lots of resignations and punishments for their own sake. I don’t have an opinion on that. But if this scandal reigns back the sprawl of the lawless, and arbitrary national security state, then I’ll be encouraged by the result.

    The political damage and strategic flaws are more frustrating, and thus more infuriating, because it makes the attractive policy of seducing the Middle East to Western ways so suddenly empty. I have the intuition that by mistaken expediency, the Pentagon has ensured the region will remain a sadists paradise for far longer than otherwise.

  • Gabriel Syme

    Sylvain Galineau: Amen to that!

  • Zevilyn

    The media’s attitude to Americans killed or tortured is one of dehumanising contempt. There is a kind of sick glee in the deaths of Pearl and Berg, and in the mutilation of Americans in Falujah.
    I believe that we should see all the footage of the above incidents, so as to prevent the media from spinning it. The same applies to Abu Ghraib…let’s see all of it. Al Jazeera did not show what the Italian said before he was executed, for propaganda reasons.

    Why was some of the footage of Japanese hostages “not shown because it is too distressing”…says who, Auntie Beeb? Because us mere non-media people cannot handle reality? We need to be spoon fed like babies?

    When Jessica Lynch (who has no political agenda) did what US PoWs before her have not had the courage to do, and (against the Pentagon’s wishes) courageously revealed that she had been raped, the Left and their Feminist allies went into overdrive, spinning her words, outrageously distorting her comments. Indeed, the feminists activated their cloaking devices pretty damn quick, performing the fastest disappearing act in political history.
    The NOW said what happened to Miss Lynch “doesn’t matter”. Now imagine if Bush had said “Abu Ghraib does not matter”, he would have been rightly scorned, yet the feminists got off scott free.
    The media were furious at Jessica for not toeing the line, for upsetting the “babies” (that’s how they view the public).

    The media, it is well known, suppresses stories and images that might “anger” the public in the “wrong way”. Kris Donald springs to mind (remember him?)

    At least 473,000 people have read Jessica Lynch’s book. About 4 people in the media have read it.

  • Guy, I disagree. References to regional standards are totally relevant. I don’t care if some want to use them to mitigate this or excuse that. Regardless of intent, these significant differences are factually right.

    Besides, why should some be able to point out to the torture that occurred under Hussein’s regime in Abu Ghraib, as if there was any sort of moral equivalence between the two, while others should be unable to do similar comparisons ? Why should the analogies go only one way ? How many times did Hussein investigate abuse and put those responsible on trial ?

    As to your mugger analogy, the answer is simple : if he didn’t kill his victim, why would I accuse him of murder ? Because all the other muggers before him committed one ? That makes no sense. Yet this is precisely what is going on here.

    I am only pointing out the other, wider moral scandal. One that should be obvious to anyone who read both Taguba’s report and the last decade of Amnesty International’s work on the region. Namely,
    that this frightening treatment could be not only better, but maybe even the best around is incredibly revolting; to me at least.

    But hey, we can’t make that point since it would ruffle Arab sensibilities and could be interpreted as mitigation. Never mind that it could be true. We can’t possibly let the awful truth get in the way of our well-deserved western self-loathing, our considerable guilt and the necessary public self-flogging and expiation of our sins.

    Politically, you’re right. It is just plain disaster. This conflict has become a massive political quagmire. Between this and the election, the US Administration has lost the initiative for quite a while.