Confirmed: Abu Ghraib abuse included rape

(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

You read it right.  This “conspiracy theory” is now confirmed thanks to the Telegraph, a UK based newspaper.

Reading further is pretty graphic, if short…

The Telegraph newspaper reports:

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

By the way, that “phosphorescent tube” would have been a chem-lite, a “break and shake” illumination tube that is about 6″ long and 5/8″ wide.  So, who blew this whistle?  

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

General Taguba goes on to state:

Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.

“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.

“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

It’s not that I don’t believe Gen. Taguba, I am sure that the photographs are horrific.  But, not holding those interrogators who performed these acts accountable is even more horrific, much less those such as Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, etc, for their role in these war crimes.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

 

Well, it was never revealed officially, until now.  It was reported, however, and, covered up by our government.

To recap the war crimes that we have overwhelming evidence of; invasion of a sovereign nation based on false premise, the torture and rape of detainees.

In the wake of this revelation, we get this statement from our military leaders:

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon is prepared to leave fighting forces in Iraq for as long as a decade despite an agreement between the United States and Iraq that would bring all American troops home by 2012, the top U.S. Army officer said Tuesday.

Who cares about agreements, torture and rape of detainees, when we are prepared to stay in Iraq?  

41 comments

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  1. Cheney knew, Rumsfeld knew…

    Bush was given a paddleball he claimed was “defective”:

    • Inky99 on May 28, 2009 at 06:46

    But you beat me to it and saved me the trouble.

    Yes, General Taguba himself confirms this.  

    Think this will see the light of day in the media here?

    I don’t think so.

  2. I would think that anyone in a position of power who has seen this evidence, would be bound to report/pursue it.

    Aren’t they now culpable?

  3. nonnazi germans, by that reasoning.  Pictures of lynchings endanger non racists white southerners. This is very bad reasoning.  I hope there is a lawsuit against the Obama administration over this stuff.  

    I think the real reason they are suppressing them is because they want public amnesia to kick in, so they can do this shit again in another 2 or 3 years.

  4. move along nothing’ to see here.

    With every lie, he makes this his own.

  5. I know Sheldon Whitehouse had some significant remarks about these photo’s a few weeks? back. I cant find it now of course. Found this, though which I had missed:

    FDL Welcomes Sen S. Whitehouse on May 22, live chat interview style…

    • Casey on May 28, 2009 at 19:11

    don’t prosecute.

    Anything less is wholly uncivilized and morally repugnant.

  6. America would sanction.  At least the America I was programmed about.  

  7. My response is the following, written by Phil Rockstroh

    And that is why we must release the photographs of torture. Moreover, we must bring public ignominy upon the respectable psychopaths in high places who mandated these policies, plus bring a leveling of shame upon the high-flying, highchair tyrants of high finance who exploded the global economy. Our ugliness must be public like a frog. The nasty secrets must be revealed; the mortifying pictures gazed upon. Our stomachs should seize up in revulsion. The ordeal must exact such a degree of revulsion within us that we will never again allow these despicable practices to transpire on our watch. (Author’s emphasis) . . . .

    But this time, the rot is too deep, the pathology too systemic. Obama’s placebo presidency will not stem the hypertrophic decay. Granted, it was good to evict the previous, psychotic tenants from the property (Although Dick Cheney seems to be stalking the place with his obsessive, media drive-bys.) but that does nothing to repair the collapsing foundation of the structure, its core eaten away by an infestation of anti-democratic termites. Rather than addressing the core issue, the deterioration of the rights and liberties granted by the U.S. Constitution, President Obama is wallpapering over the rot wrought by the national security state’s termite hive mind of authoritarian appetites, that has been, silently, and hidden by darkness, gnawing the house of state to sawdust.

    Again our choice: Either open up the decay within the system to the light of day and start the process of rebuilding and renewal, or allow the republic-ravening pestilence to continue unchallenged, hence unabated, and let the nation go bughouse crazy as the house comes down around us to the strains of the insect-brain stridulations of Beck, Hannity, and Limbaugh.

    “http://www.philrockstroh.com/

    Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at:

    [email protected]

     

     

    • Inky99 on May 28, 2009 at 19:51

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/200

    Gotta love this.  The headline says nothing about the FACT that it was one of the Pentagon’s own fucking GENERALS who reported this FACT.

    And the first two paragraphs of the story fail to mention that FACT:


    WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon on Thursday denied a British newspaper report that photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse, whose release U.S. President Barack Obama wants to block, include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse.

    Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Daily Telegraph newspaper had shown “an inability to get the facts right”.

    Fucking media.  Complicit motherfuckers.  

    They mention it further down, but they do their damn BEST to avoid it as long as they possibly can.  

    And where are the headlines announcing Taguba’s statements of these FACTS?

  8. off the phone with Senator Kennedy’s office. I told the staffer that the people who are responsible for these heinous acts require prosecution. I was told in no uncertain terms that “that WILL be the end result of all of this.” That’s what I was told. Word for word.

      I was also told ‘the soldiers commiting these crimes would be prosecuted and that if the higher-ups gave any orders along these lines that would most likely be the end result there, as well. The staffer said no one knows if such an order was given-if it was those people will be prosecuted, as well.

  9. going on here is that this administration, is tied together with the last, good cop to their bad. The Democrats are as thick as thieves with the thugs who pushed the country over the edge. The financial crisis, for instance, is blamed on the bushies, but the remedies like regulation, restoration of the laws that kept the Visigoths in check or in prison where they belong are nowhere in site. We are told that they will fix it so that it never happens again but continue to implement the same philosophy and policy as the bushies.

    Aggressive preemptive war, torture and war crimes, state secreats, all of this is continuing because of security national interest or because the terrorists are going to get us, and huge corporations will fall on us. The GOP is handy because they can play off the current obvious, and vocal insanity of the remaining Republicans, who give them the illusion of change and a handy political reason for not restoring or implementing the law.

    See where not as crazy as them. This administration is more insidious as Obama and crew appear and appeal to the shell shocked citizenry, as an antidote to the nightmare we all witnessed. They use the Republican’s as a foil politically, keeping the same agenda in place. They dangle carrots of healthcare, green jobs, and reform, but make believe that these are not possible unless we deal with the very entities that wrecked the place and own the place.  

    The money and power are already geared up for more war, more consolidation of the corporations, and with it will come more useless death, torture, misery, poverty. Obama like the other rat bastard, pal of bush, Democrat, Clinton, will feel our pain. He has assumed the mantle and nothing will happen because it would endanger our ‘missions’, of making the world unfit for humans but profitable for the corporations and gangsters who rule it.

    Sorry for the negativity here but I’m weary of the game.            

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