This thread speaks for itself

BAGHDAD -- For three days, American tanks have been shelling a military intelligence building in the posh Al-Khathamia area in west Baghdad.

The dozen or so tanks are not here to pound intransigent fighters but to break down concrete beams and steel, to reach bunkers deep underground at the Al-Istikhbarat Al-'Askariya facility.

The Marines found 123 prisoners, including five women, barely alive in an underground warren of cells and torture chambers.

Being trapped underground probably kept them safe from the bombing of Baghdad by the coalition.

Severely emaciated, some had survived by eating the scabs off their sores. All the men had beards down to their waists, said onlookers.

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/topstories/story/0,4386,183437,00.html

 

KIRKUK, Iraq (CNN) -- Shallow graves found on the edge of a military base southwest of Kirkuk could provide answers to the whereabouts of Iraqis who disappeared under the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The site could be a military burial ground, but suspicions were raised because the rows of mounds indicate the bodies were buried in a hurry.

Iraqi citizens have been scouring documents from looted government buildings across Iraq in an effort to find some clue to the fates of their missing relatives.

Many Iraqi soldiers never returned from the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the first Gulf War in 1991, and the latest conflict. The number of people missing is as high as 1 million, according to some estimates.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/18/sprj.irq.graves/

 

Among the scraps are receipts for enforcing Saddam’s reign of terror: payments to party members for catching Army deserters, to policemen for arresting political dissidents, to informants for betraying their neighbors. The victims were well aware of the system. “If they took a person to jail, the informer got 25,000 dinars [about $10],” says Rassin al Issa, 35, from the town of Abu Khassib near Basra. Issa was picked up during the 1999 Shiite uprising, when Baath Party members hunting for traitors were ordered to fill quotas. Issa was one of 300 rounded up from his town. “They just took me because I refused to join the Baath Party,” he told NEWSWEEK.
As part of the prison routine, Issa was tortured daily, sometimes twice a day. Battery acid was spilled on his feet, which are now deformed. With his hands bound behind his back, he was hanged by his wrists from the ceiling until his shoulders dislocated; he still cannot lift his hands above his head. The interrogators’ goal: “They just wanted me to say I was plotting against the Baath Party, so they could take me and execute me. If they got a confession, they would get 100,000 dinars [roughly $40].”
It didn’t take much to wind up in a torture chamber. Policeman Majid al Halaf, 33, says he was arrested for firing his gun into the air at a wedding celebration. For three months, the local Baathists tried to make him confess he was an enemy of the party. They applied electric shocks—using wires from a hand-cranked generator—to various body parts including his genitals. Unable to break him, the Baathists finally let him go. “Afterward, they just said, ‘Sorry’,” says Halaf, who went back to police work.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/902240.asp

 

US detains children at Guantanamo Bay


Wednesday April 23, 2003

The US military has admitted that children aged 16 years and younger are among the detainees being interrogated at its prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, a US military spokesman, yesterday said all the teenagers being held were "captured as active combatants against US forces", and described them as "enemy combatants".

The children, some of whom have been held at Guantanamo for over a year, are imprisoned in separate cells from the adult detainees, Lt Col Johnson said. He would say only that the teenagers are "very few, a very small number" and would not say how old the youngest prisoner is.

The US military confirmed their presence yesterday after Australia's ABC television reported that children were being held at Guantanamo, the controversial detention centre where prisoners from the war in Afghanistan have been held by the US, in breach of the Geneva conventions, for over a year.

The news sparked outrage from human rights groups already campaigning against the indefinite detention of the roughly 660 males from 42 countries, held on suspicion of having links to al-Qaida or Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime. They have not been charged or allowed access to lawyers.

"That the US sees nothing wrong with holding children at Guantanamo and interrogating them is a shocking indicator of how cavalier the Bush administration has become about respecting human rights," said an Amnesty International spokesman, Alistair Hodgett.

Human Rights Watch said the US was exacerbating a contentious situation. "[The detention of youths] reflects our broader concerns that the US never properly determined the legal status of those held in the conflict," said James Ross, legal adviser for Human Rights Watch in New York.

Lt Col Johnson said the juveniles were being held because "they have potential to provide important information in the ongoing war on terrorism".

"Their release is contingent on the determination that they are not a threat to the [US] nation and have no further intelligence value."

Lt Col Johnson said officials determined that some detainees were younger than 16 during medical and other screenings after their arrival in Cuba. He added that all the prisoners aged under 16 years were brought to Guantanamo after January 1 2002 - suggesting that some were 15 or younger when they were first imprisoned.

In September 2002, Canadian officials reported that a 15-year-old Canadian had been captured on July 27 after being badly wounded in a firefight in eastern Afghanistan. Canada's prime minister, Jean Chrétien said he was seeking consular access to the boy.

Last week, Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper reported that the youth, now 16, is being held in Guantanamo and that US officials have refused access to Canadian officials.

The newspaper quoted unidentified sources as saying that the youth allegedly threw a grenade that killed Sergeant 1st Class Christopher James Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The Globe and Mail said US officials would want to interrogate the Canadian because his father has been identified as a senior financial leader of al-Qaida.

Lawyers have blamed the indefinite detentions for increasing depression and suicide attempts at the camp, which received the first detainees in January 2001.

According to the US military, there have been 25 suicide attempts by 17 prisoners at Camp X-Ray, with 15 attempts made this year.

Just this Monday the US military announced that one prisoner, who it said was under supervision in the acute care unit of a new mental health ward, made a repeated suicide attempt.

 

I feel like integrity is a serious problem here...

why didn't GW bush, reagan, cheney, or rumsfeld care about saddam's behavior in the 80's??

and W is a guy who has allowed minors and mentally retarded capital offenders to be executed in his home state...regardless of whether or not you are for capital punishment, doesn't that make you uncomfortable??

 

Because they were more worried about Iran's Islamic Revolution. They chose what they viewed as the lesser of two evils....but seriously bung, are you really going to equate them with Saddam?

If you post the details on the capital punishment thread, I'll be more than happy to let you know.

 

Boy, Saddam's atrocities pale in comparison. Nice going msfe.

 

An iron maiden torture device found in the I.O.C. compound, Baghdad



"The one found in Baghdad was clearly worn from use, its nails having lost some of their sharpness."

More excerpts:

"No profile of Uday Hussein, the psychotic elder son of Iraq's deposed dictator, is complete without a mention of his sadistic reign as Iraq's sports czar. In his capacity as head of Iraq's Olympic committee and also of its soccer federation, he is known to have ordered the torture of athletes who performed below his expectations.

A bad day on the field for a player on the national soccer squad could result in savage retribution: Players had their feet scalded and toenails ripped off for failing to win tournaments. Allegations of torture had even resulted in investigations by international sports governing bodies, most notably soccer's FIFA, but these had failed to produce conclusive evidence — hardly surprising, since no player would dare admit to suffering such abuse, for fear of even worse."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,444889,00.html

 

No

 

Not a good idea to be an active member of an organization that hi-jacks U.S. civilian airliners (loaded with civilians-men women and CHILDREN) and uses them as bombs against the World Trade Centers, the Pentagon and whatever the target of flight 93 would have been, had it not been for some brave passengers bringing it down in a Pennsylvannia field.

You disturb a sleeping giant, you get what you get.
"teenagers being held were "captured as active combatants against US forces"

If they are willing to take up arms against the U.S. military, then they can sit in jail, no matter how young they are. Personally I would have blown them away on the spot - they never would have made it to Cuba.