Amerikan torture of Iraqis exposed

Amerikans killed the above Iraqi in prison.

Amerikans set up an electrocution apparatus on this Iraqi man.

In the run up to the Amerikan invasion, in February 2003, President Bush declared: "The first to benefit from a free Iraq would be the Iraqi people themselves. Today they live in scarcity and fear under a dictator who has brought them nothing but war and misery and torture."(1) Today, they live in scarcity and fear under a FOREIGN dictator who has brought them nothing but war and misery, and---we can now confirm---torture.

Despite valiant efforts by quick-acting politicians and media apologists, it has not been possible to make the torture practiced by the Amerikan military in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq out to be the work of a few lone, "sick" individuals. The story broke when the CBS news program 60 Minutes released photos of U$ soldiers gloating over naked and hooded Iraqi prisoners. However, the most detailed description (to date) of torture, abuse and humiliation at the hands of Amerikan soldiers, contractors and intelligence agents comes from a U$ army report on Abu Ghraib, which was leaked to the New Yorker magazine.(2)

A photo included in the report shows an Amerikan womyn "giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates." One soldier testifies, "I saw two naked detainees, one masturbating to another kneeling with its [sic] mouth open." Although this soldier claims he refused to participate in the abuse--"I just didn't want to be part of anything that looked criminal"--he repeatedly refers to Iraqis as "it" and did little to stop what he saw (he told his superiors, then assumed "the issue was taken care of").(2)

The army report makes it clear that the Amerikan torturers were acting at the direction of the CIA and military intelligence agents who ran part of the prison. The abuse was intended to "loosen up" the prisoners for interrogation. Although perhaps the most graphic case to come to light so far, this report should be seen in the context of widespread civil rights violations since the so-called "war on terror" began. Already in October 2001 we reported, "the FBI has been hinting it wants legal authority to use torture tactics on 'recalcitrant' suspects."(7)

Not that there aren't sick individuals involved, including Staff Sergeant Ivan L. Frederick II, known as "Chip," who previously worked for six years as a prison guard at the Buckingham Correctional Center in Dillwyn, Virginia.(3) In the photos, Frederick is shown leering at naked Iraqi prisoners who are set in humiliating sexual poses.

Witnesses at an Army hearing also testified that Frederick repeatedly beat prisoners under his command. Taking a page from the playbook of Nazi concentration camp officers during their war-crimes trials, Frederick's uncle William Lawson told the Associate Press, "They're trying to portray him as a monster ... He's just the guy they put in charge of the prison."(3)

For Frederick's defense, his lawyers have released letters he previously sent to his family, telling them that military intelligence and the CIA were behind the torture acts he was performing.(2) The letters are arguably a self-serving attempt to create a paper trail that could be used to pass blame up the chain of command. While we find his tale credible, that does not exonerate him. Others who joined the Amerikan military (perhaps for naïve reasons like tuition money or "for a challenge") have refused to serve once they come to realize their role as oppressors.(8)

Frederick supposedly wrote: "I questioned some of the things that I saw ... such things as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell--and the answer I got was, 'This is how military intelligence (MI) wants it done.' ... . MI has also instructed us to place a prisoner in an isolation cell with little or no clothes, no toilet or running water, no ventilation or window, for as much as three days. ... [The military-intelligence officers] encouraged and told us, 'Great job,' they were now getting positive results and information."(2)

In his letters, home, he also described a man beaten to death and smuggled out of the prison without ever being registered in the prison's records: "They [CIA or its contractors] stressed him out so bad that the man passed away. They put his body in a body bag and packed him in ice for approximately twenty-four hours in the shower. ... The next day the medics came and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake IV in his arm and took him away."(2)

The Abu Ghraib prison was a notorious site of torture under the formerly-U$-backed dictator Saddam Hussein. The Amerikans put the prison back into operation, detaining thousands of Iraqis with no due-process rights. In some cases prisoners were not even registered in official logs.(2)

The prison was ostensibly run by Brigadier Gen. Janis Karpinski, the highest-ranking Amerikan womyn Iraq. She's now claiming that military intelligence officers were in charge, and she didn't even know what was happening in the prison.(4) She had no trouble claiming credit for the prison, though, in an interview she gave to the St. Petersburg Times last December, when she said that her prisoners found that "living conditions now [in Abu Ghraib] are better in prison than at home. At one point we were concerned that they wouldn't want to leave."(2)

That interview was right around the time Karpinski was interviewed on 60 Minutes, in which she insisted prison conditions were better at Abu Ghraib now than they were under the Iraqis. She claimed that no one was held in the prison without charges and that prisoners were allowed visits from family members and their lawyers. When given contradictory details on an individual case, however, she admitted that some prisoners were denied all visitors and there were not formal charges against everyone, but, she said, "there's nobody being held for no reason," referring to suspects who may have committed "crimes against the coalition," whatever that means.(5)

Some Amerikan politicians and the media were up in arms about the torture reports -- because they hurt the Amerikan image, and the battle for the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqis. Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, expressing this outrage, "This is the single most significant undermining act that's occurred in a decade in that region of the world in terms of our standing."(6) Boo hoo -- poor Amerikan image. Before this, it was going so well!

MIM is quite willing to pass blame up the chain of command, from Frederick and Karpinski up to the CIA and beyond. We'll pass it all the way up to the imperialist system, which is ultimately the driving force behind Amerika's latest grab in the Middle East. We didn't need proof of Amerikans reopening the "torture chambers" that Bush and so many others decried in the build-up to the invasion to know that this is another war of aggression waged by U$ imperialists in their continued quest to bring the labor, land and resources of the world under their control. That doesn't exonerate the people with blood literally on their hands in this case (or others, like in the Virginia prisons), but it's what we need to understand if we are to successfully combat this system.

Notes:
1. NYTimes 27 Feb. 2003, p. A 10.
2. New Yorker 10 May 2004; posted 5 May 2004 on newyorker.com.
3. Associated Press 29 April 2004.
4. NYTimes 2 May 2004, p. A1.
5. 60 Minutes, 4 Dec. 2003 (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/04/60minutes/main586841.shtml).
6. Associate Press 2 May 2004.
7. MIM Notes 246. See also:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1022-01.htm.
8. E.g. "AWOL youth challenges Amerikan military" in MIM Notes 280 and " Iraq war conscientious objector sentenced to prison" in MIM Notes 288.