Since the U.S. Government stands by the decision that torture is wrong and more importantly leads to bad information, they have broadened the scope of interrogation. Go figure. Sick Video about Waterboarding, torture and interrogation techniques.

well I’m glad they have this letter, this really explains it all. Those “wacky” Iraqis just can’t get enough of American culture and American “Freedom”.

Interview with a woman from Iraq that was tortured at Abu Graib.
In the middle of the night, American soldiers broke into the home of Mithal al Hassan and arrested both her and her soon. The soldiers later ransacked the apartment. Denounced as part of a vendetta, Mithal was condemned without trial to eighty days of horror in the company of other women prisoners who, like her, were subjected to abuse and torture. She has since spotted her tormentors on the internet.

Giuliana Sgrena, our correspondent in Baghdad
Mithal got divorced eight years ago now. Her husband remarried and moved to Lybia. She has had to bring up their seven children single-handed, working first in a bakery and then as a taxi-driver. ‘All Saddam taught us was how to work hard’, she says. Her strength and her pride both emerge clearly when we come to speak of Abu Graib and the painful events that have been tormenting her these last few months. It’s a long story and the details are harrowing. For Mithal, it was eighty days of hell.

At dead of night they broke down the door

‘It was 2.30 a.m. on the night of 28 February 2004, when the American soldiers broke down our door. When Saddam was in power, every now and then the local mukhtar [formally a ‘people’s representative’] would turn up with his men to check on what we were doing, but at least they would ring the bell. Once the Americans were in the apartment, they began to ransack the place, and then they arrested me. They also took all our papers and keys, and the seven million dinars [about four thousand US dollars], that I had scraped together by selling our two cars. I had been going to use the money to pay off my debts.’ At this point Mithal showed us the report of the police raid that appeared in the newspaper Zaman. ‘They asked me,’ Mithal resumed, ‘if I knew Hassib. It so happens that our neighbour’s name is Hassib, though everyone calls him Abu Aya. Anyway, the Americans were searching for a certain Hassib, an arms dealer. I eventually discovered that the man they were looking for was a Syrian official, nothing to do with my neighbour.’It turned out that what had triggered the raid was a vendetta. It’s quite a complex story. The ‘information’ that had led the Americans to Mithal al Hassan’s door had been supplied by the occupants of premises that had once been home to the Ministry of Information. The said occupants had stolen some generators and the people living nearby, including Mithal, had denounced them for the theft. As a result, Mithal and her thirty-eight year old son were arrested. ‘They dragged me down five flights of stairs, still in my nightdress. I only just managed to grab hold of my baya on my way out the door,’ Mithal related. ‘They took me to Sujud Palace, which had been named after Saddam’s wife, Sajida. On the way there they pointed out to me a man in a jellaba with a bag over his head, tied to a tree. It was my son. I recognised him by his trousers. They dragged him over to where I was and took the bag off his head. He had been horribly tortured, with deep cuts to his head. Then they said to him, ‘Say goodbye to your mother.’ After that, they put the bag back on his head and tied to him to a post again. Then a soldier dragged me off again.

He was in a real hurry. My head was covered and my hands were bound behind my back. My baya wasn’t properly buttoned up so it trailed around my feet and kept tripping me up. I couldn’t run properly, it was cold and I was shivering. Then the soldier threw me to the ground. My feet were bare and I tried to warm them up by pushing them into the sand. Eventually they took me to a room and wrapped me up in a blanket. I felt I was suffocating and kept hammering my feet on the ground to make some noise. Then they turned up with the photos of my children. When I saw them, I began to weep, but they just yelled at me, “where’s all that strength that Saddam gave you?” Then, throwing the photos on the ground, they shouted, “Say goodbye to your children. You’ll not be seeing them for thirty years.” I didn’t believe it. I’ve read about this and I know that such methods are used to scare people. Later they brought my son back and left us alone together. My son asked me if it was true that I was one of Saddam’s agents. How was it possible for my son to ask me such a question after all the sacrifices I had made to bring them up? I’m just a poor woman from Najaf, a Shiite, and Saddam certainly never loved us Shiites. How could I have been an agent of his? The soldiers had even told my son to confess that he knew Hassib and that if he did they would release him. Then they took him away again. That was the last I heard of him until I was able to return home. He had been set free the following day.’

The kind woman-soldier

Mithal rubs her hands together, recalling how they had turned black from being bound too tightly, so tightly that she had been unable to move them. But then a kind woman-soldier had untied them so Mithal could go to the toilet. ‘She was the first kind person I met. She even helped me tie my hair up. And afterwards when she bound my hands again, she left them fairly loose. So I gave her my earrings. Then they loaded me into a van, spread me out on the floor so nobody would see me, and drove me to the airport. There I was led into a big room where there was a doctor who wanted me to undress. I refused, saying that I was a Muslim and therefore couldn’t do what he asked. Then he threatened to cut the clothes off me. I asked him if I could at least keep my underwear on and he agreed to that. In the end, however, he only checked my wrists. Then they moved me to another room, a huge place, for questioning. The interrogator was a woman in civilian clothes, but there were two men sitting in a corner. They had taken all my ID papers from my apartment but the first thing they questioned me about was the number of papers I had: apart from my ID card, my food ration card and the residence certificate that had been compiled by the police and signed by a lieutenant. My interrogator insisted that I was that lieutenant. I replied that if I had worked for the police by my age I would be a colonel, at the very least. Then there was the word mutallaka [’divorced’] on my ID card. According to the interpreter, who was of Iraki origin but had been living abroad for the last forty-five years, the word was really mutlak, which means ‘absolute’. This, they maintained, signified some kind of recognition by Saddam. They were all shouting at once. Eventually they took me to a cell: one metre by a metre and a half and nothing but a bottle of water. They left me there for six nights. One day they made me lean up against the wall with my hands in the air, but I wasn’t strong enough to remain in that position. Then the black woman-soldier arrived and kept yelling in my face, but since I wasn’t getting scared she eventually apologised and said, ‘you’re brave.’

This was just the beginning of Mithal’s ordeal. ‘Sometimes they’d turn the heating right up and to get to sleep I’d have to splash myself with the little water they gave me. There were times when they didn’t give me any water or food at all. Then, from the neighbouring cells I could hear the screams of the men who were being tortured, sounds of weeping and screaming that were recorded and played back all night long full-blast, along with other sounds like approaching footsteps on gravel, but the ground there was nothing but sand. There was no way you could sleep. I hated their food. I couldn’t stand things any more. In the end I asked if I could write a note for my children, because I wanted to commit suicide.”They led me to a huge, freezing room, My teeth were chattering from the cold. There on display was an entire set of torture instruments. They blindfolded me with sticky tape and then, along with thirteen men, they put me on a helicopter. The flight didn’t take long, less than an hour.’ Mithal and the others were taken to Abu Graib. ‘On arrival, they first of all examined our bodies, hair, and teeth, recording everything on a computer. I felt ill. I was suffering from an allergy and couldn’t eat anything any longer so Um Iraq, one of the interpreters, an Iraki woman from abroad, gave me some bananas to eat. I needed medicines but they said they didn’t have any.’

I asked her if she was held on her own all the time. ‘No. It was then that they put me in a cell with other women, two women per cell. There were thirteen women, mainly wives of men belonging to the previous regime, and seven children. There was even the wife of Sabah Merza, one of Saddam’s guards in the 1970s, who kept her hands plunged in ice to soothe the pain caused by the torture that had been inflicted on her. Another woman was in really bad shape: they’d kept hurling her against the wall. Another had been locked in a tiny cage for six days and couldn’t even move. One of the prisoners had been forced to walk on all fours and her knees and elbows were in a terrible state. Another woman had been forced to separate faeces from urine, using her own hands. The soldiers frequently forced us to drink water from the toilet bowl. A woman of sixty, who had said she was a virgin, was continually threatened with rape.’

Did you know of cases of rape? ‘Yes, but I’m not going to go into that. In our society, it’s something you don’t talk about.’ How old were the women prisoners? ‘Between forty and sixty years of age.’ And what about children, how were they treated? ‘We heard them screaming. They were tortured too. Mostly dogs were set on them.’ So how did your release come about? ‘In the end, in part I think because of the pressure maintained by the resistance, they decided to release me. They even gave me back my earrings. They wanted to drive me to my apartment but I refused. After everything I had been through, I didn’t want to be mistaken for a collaborator. And because I refused to leave on the 21 May, I was held until the 23dx, two more days under a filthy tent, where I collapsed.’ Have you seen the pictures of the torture at Abu Graib? Did you recognise anyone? ‘Yes, I saw them on the internet. I recognised several detainees, for example Abdul Mudud, the brother-in-law of Al Duri, who had had his jaws broken and an eye put out. I also recognised some of the soldiers. Sometimes they made a hundred or more prisoners lie on the ground and then trampled them underfoot.’ What do you think of the resistance? ‘The United States have occupied our country, we have the right to defend ourselves. Resistance is self-defence. But killing Irakis is not resistance.’ Aren’t you afraid of speaking about what you saw? ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. Why should I be afraid?’

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Well, since we never get tired of hearing about the goings on in the middle east…. here is a lovely photo gallery of al-qaeda artwork.

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How the tides had turned… here is a quote about the infamous Abu Ghraib facility…. from the Saddam time

“We visited the notorious Abu Gehb (sic) Prison outside Baghdad and found written records of prisoners being executed by being put through mincing machines.” “Saddam Hussein never cut corners when it came to punishment. Abu Ghraib once held tens of thousands of human souls — criminals, political enemies, and those who just happened to get in the way. A 12-year-old Iranian boy visiting his grandmother near Basra in 1985 was swept up in an Iraqi invasion. He was still here 15 years later.”

“I saw three guards beat a man to death with sticks and cables,” one prisoner remembered. “When they got tired, the guards would switch with other guards. I could only watch for a minute without getting caught, but I heard the screams, and it went on for an hour.”

“Our hands were tied like this. First the left hand and then the foot. Then a black hood on my head, then they applied electricity.”

I guess there is something about Abu Ghraib and that black hood… because we now all know, it happened again… after the US took control.

It seems like no matter which side holds that prison… they all seem to act the same way… and that is the same twisted bullshit, coming full circle.

According to U.S. State Department propaganda released in April 2003 to justify the march toward war, Saddam killed 4,000 prisoners at the institution in 1984, and executed about 50 political prisoners there between 2000 and 2001. You’d think that this represented progress, but to the U.S. it was a reason to invade… and we all can’t forget the “weapons of mass destruction” that US intelligence KNEW he was hiding.

Anyway, Saddams brutality at Abu Ghraib was unimaginable to the US… that torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners just can no longer go on… So the US marched on, and into Abu Ghraib.

When the U.S. came storming into the country in spring of 2003, Abu Ghraib was left a smoldering ruin, looted by the local populace as the Saddam regime disintegrated. The Americans came in and thought to themselves, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if we used this ghoulish house of horrors for our own prison?”

WOW how things changed at Abu Ghraib! the totally sick and twisted Abu Ghraib prison got the US reform! yes… the US policy for the humane treatment of prisoners came to shine like the North star… or maybe that light at the end of some tunnel somewhere.

One of the US generals, Gen. Janis Karpinski came right out and said it. “Living conditions (for the prisoners) now are better in prison than at home. At one point we were concerned that they wouldn’t want to leave,”

Hell, who wants to leave? Its just like home… I always get chased around the yard by my dog at home, I always get forced into homosexual acts at home, I always walk around in the black hood at home…. and wait…. myself and all the neighbors love to do that nude dogpile act at home! I lways get the broom stick shoved up my ass at home… don’t you?

anyway, here is the list of what they did admit to… what they did not admit to we shall never know.

a. (S) Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet; b. (S) Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;

c. (S) Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;

d. (S) Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;

e. (S) Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear;

f. (S) Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;

g. (S) Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;

h. (S) Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;

i. (S) Writing “I am a Rapest” (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;

j. (S) Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;

k. (S) A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;

l. (S) Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;

m. (S) Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.

a. (U) Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;

b. (U) Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;

c. (U) Pouring cold water on naked detainees;

d. (U) Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;

e. (U) Threatening male detainees with rape;

f. (U) Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;

g. (U) Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.

h. (U) Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

The… when word came out to the press about these new reforms at the Abu Ghraib prison facility… what did the press do?  60 Minutes  held off running the story at the request of General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

I thought the press was to report on such matters… this is a country of “freedom of speech” and disclosure of government officials wrong doings ….hmmm?

then…

May 7, 2004, Rumsfeld told a Senate panel that there may be video of the abuse at Abu Ghraib. According to the New Yorker’s Sy Hersh, the tapes include footage of male minor prisoners being raped.

so lets add rape of a minor to the above list of why the prisoners just LOVE the stay at Abu Ghraib, since the US took over… and may never wanna go home again! Hell, who ever wants to go home from the Neverland Ranch.

this is a photo gallery of the Abu Ghraib prison, most are pictures while under US care… a few may be under Saddam… you figure out which is which… cuz I sure can’t

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