Hell On Earth

[DemonFighterLives]

Article on Abu Ghairb by Edward Pound describes the place as hell on earth.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/040719/usnews/19prison.htm

Snip...
In October last year, Army Capt. Donald Reese visited the Abu Ghraib prison complex near Baghdad for the first time. He had plenty of reason to be there. He had just been installed as the warden of part of the prison, and as he toured cellblock 1, he was stunned to see a bunch of naked prisoners. He would later tell Army investigators: "My first reaction was, 'Wow, there a lot of nude people here.' " Army intelligence officers assured him, he testified, that "nothing was illegal or wrong about it"--that, in fact, stripping the prisoners was a tried-and-true intelligence tactic used to make the prisoners uncomfortable. By his own account, Reese, a reservist and window-blinds salesman in civilian life, was ill-prepared for the job. He had never before set foot in a prison, even as a visitor, and he knew nothing of the Geneva Conventions, which specify conditions for humane treatment of enemy prisoners of war and others. "I, myself, have never been in a prison," Reese told Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who was assigned to investigate the issue of abuses at Abu Ghraib. "So I had no experience at all as far as a warden or that type of thing."


As things turned out, of course, there was plenty wrong with the treatment that some of Reese's soldiers inflicted on Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib. The Army admonished Reese for failing to supervise his subordinates, but he is not alone: Criminal charges have been brought against seven soldiers in Reese's 372nd Military Police Company, while other military police and intelligence officers have been reprimanded. Several Defense Department investigations are underway, and the Senate is planning a close look

[DemonFighterLives]

1. Very sick descriptions

The abuses took place, the files show, in a chaotic and dangerous environment made even more so by the constant pressure from Washington to squeeze intelligence from detainees. Riots, prisoner escapes, shootings, corrupt Iraqi guards, unsanitary conditions, rampant sexual misbehavior, bug-infested food, prisoner beatings and humiliations, and almost-daily mortar shellings from Iraqi insurgents--according to the annex to General Taguba's report, that pretty much sums up life at Abu Ghraib.


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