What happened to the women held at Abu Ghraib?

[G_j]

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=9044

Unusual Suspects

What happened to the women held at Abu Ghraib? The government isn’t talking. But some of the women are.

By Tara McKelvey
Issue Date: 02.04.05


On the morning of September 24, 2003 -- five weeks after the suicide bombing of a United Nations compound in Baghdad killed 23 people, including top envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, signaling an intensified phase of Iraqi insurgency -- a group of American soldiers burst into Selwa’s villa near the banks of the Tigris River in Samarra, Iraq. Samarra, at the time, was under siege; after the team burst in, one of the soldiers pointed his rifle at Selwa (she asked me to use a pseudonym), a 55-year-old wife and mother, and her daughters and grandchildren began screaming. She, and everyone in the villa, was terrified -- and with good reason. The soldiers had raided their house exactly four months earlier, and she remembered vividly what had happened that night.

On May 24, 2003, three weeks after George W. Bush had declared that major combat operations in Iraq were over, the soldiers stormed across the villa’s marble floors, rifled through family photographs, and searched inside a French cabinet. They confiscated the family’s life savings -- $315,000 in U.S. dollars and $12,000 in Iraqi dinar -- and then seized Selwa’s husband, Saddan, who had been trained as a mechanic and, under Saddam Hussein, had risen through the Ministry of Commerce ranks until he became a director. Ever since his arrest, Selwa had lived in fear that the soldiers would come back to interrogate her or search the house again. But she never suspected they’d take her away, too. “My daughter started shouting and screaming, ‘Why are you taking my mother? You took my father!’” Selwa remembers.

..more..

"Republicanization of testosterone"

[atommom]

1. Very sad, but totally believable.

Is it any wonder they hate us?

[G_j]

2. kick