in 2004, Seymour Hersh said torture tapes show RAPE and MURDER

[nashville_brook]

When the news about the destruction of the torture videos broke, my first thought was "could these tapes be the ones that Seymour Hersh referred to as showing RAPE and MURDER?" Hersh gave a number of speeches right before his New Yorker article came out that suggested he had actually seen the videos with his own eyes.

I wonder if he'll weigh-in on this. Here's a boingboing post about the Hersh remarks:

Hersh: children raped at Abu Ghraib, Pentagon has videos
Posted by Xeni Jardin, July 15, 2004

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/15/hersh-children-rap...

"Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

(snip)

Update: Geraldine Sealey at Salon on Hersh's remarks:

After Donald Rumsfeld testified on the Hill about Abu Ghraib in May, there was talk of more photos and video in the Pentagon's custody more horrific than anything made public so far. "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse," Rumsfeld said. Since then, the Washington Post has disclosed some new details and images of abuse at the prison. But if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse. (...)

Notes from a similar speech Hersh gave in Chicago in June were posted on Brad DeLong's blog. Rick Pearlstein, who watched the speech, wrote: " said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, 'You haven't begun to see evil...' then trailed off. He said, 'horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.' He looked frightened."

There are several questions here: Has Hersh actually seen the video he described to the ACLU, and why hasn't he written about it yet? Will he be forced to elaborate in more public venues now that these two speeches are getting so much attention, at least in the blogosphere? And who else has seen the video, if it exists -- will journalists see and report on it? did senators see these images when they had their closed-door sessions with the Abu Ghraib evidence? -- and what is being done about it?

Update 2: BB guestbar alum Russ Kick of Memory Hole reminds us of a post he made in May about the type of as-yet-unreleased evidence Hersh is presumably discussing. Here, Russ quotes Republican Senator Lindsay Graham: "The American public needs to understand, we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges."

[rurallib]

1. Hersh really, really deserves some kind of medal

the biggest damn medal we can find. He has bulldogged this administrations plans and I believe been the one who headed up the stoppage of further ruinous wars.

[Sugar Smack]

2. I totally agree with you there.

He really does.

[Richard Steele]

3. K&R

[w8liftinglady]

4. K&R...where are the copies of THOSE tapes?

I am researching it as we speak.

[nashville_brook]

6. i am wondering if Hersh will be on KO this week to talk about this...

[Sugar Smack]

7. I remember him writing about the sounds of children screaming.

That those sounds tore him in half.

I remember reading about Hersh's family getting death threats.

[nashville_brook]

11. perhaps that's why he's not chimed into the debate yet... i found a link to a recent

speech he gave at New University where his language about what is contained in the tapes is toned-down (at least, as it's reported by the student journo):

http://www.newuniversity.org/checkDB.php?id=6277

[Sugar Smack]

26. The link isn't working for me, but thank you.

He said, 'You haven't begun to see evil...' then trailed off. He said, 'horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.' He looked frightened."

This sentence really popped out at me from the OP's article.

[Aviation Pro]

5. If these atrocities did occur...

...who did them? Blackwater steroid studs? Members of a tribe aligned with the U.S? CIA interrogators? It's a moot point really because, if true,

THEY WERE DONE IN OUR NAME!!!!!!!

Before they shuck this mortal coil to begin their eternal damnations, may Motherfucker George Bush and Shitstain Shoots-Guy-In-Face be cast into the worst hell-hole of a Texas prison.

[EFerrari]

9. Hersh was talking about Abu Graib. And the images were

of American soldiers.

Abu Graib is about 20 km from Faluja. Faluja didn't explode until this story was made known to that community. See where this is going? The Iraqi people gave us a year before they really mounted an insurgency. A year. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that we are in Iraq right now because of the torture, rape and murder of prisoners.

[nashville_brook]

14. i believe torture is aimed at the culture at-large. it's terrorism by the elites...

used to form a compliant populace that will then allow for economic and cultural restructuring. the torture at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo isn't about getting intel -- it's about social engineering.

and, what is MURDER if not torture taken to the next step? or gone awry, as KO has said.

[EFerrari]

17. Yes, it's a display of power and we are the audience

just as much as the Iraqi people are. I wrote a few weeks ago that when you know your leader is a torturer, it affects your political engagement.

[mmonk]

20. That's correct. And instead of working, it produced

the insurgency.

[L. Coyote]

15. We are in Iraq for the oil. The occupation is resisted for the reasons you cite, et.al.

Military occupations have a way of creating their own resistance by the very nature of the force employed.

[EFerrari]

18. Yes, we are the for the oil and occupations do create resistance

because they are brutal. But the government torture policy spurred the insurgency that keeps our forces fighting today instead of say, peacekeeping. Remember the horror of the Blackwater contractors' death? That was the tipping point, imo, and that was retaliation for Abu Graib.

[nashville_brook]

21. creating a culture of insurgency is job security for Blackwater and the US military n/t

[EFerrari]

23. Yes, it is. And don't forget, Buzzy Krongard was #3 at CIA before

he went to Blackwater. He got them their first contract. It's incestuous as hell.

[EFerrari]

27. Omg, and Jeremy Scahill just said that J. Coffer Black is working

with Romney's campaign. I guess they don't intend to go away.

[nashville_brook]

29. i just saw that too!

[EFerrari]

30. I wonder how many campaigns have a Blackwater consultant.

/oops

[EFerrari]

33. And the pay off -- Blackwater has been recruiting Jose Rodriguez

for the last year, reported on Amy Goodman's show this morning.

[w8liftinglady]

10. actually,I think they should face Iraq and Afghanistan courts...and justice.

[countryjake]

34. Exactly, let them hang in the same spot Saddam died...

or rot in one of the hellhole prisons they've used to carry out the torture of Iraqis and Afghanis...on the same soil it all happened on!

[fascisthunter]

40. Kaboom... That Would Go a Long Way to Healing Tensions in the Middle East

It would tell the World that we Americans do stand for truth above all else, even though it took us so long.

[blm]

8. And when Kerry, Dean, Clark and Gore were calling for Rumsfeld's job, many of

the big name Dems like Bill and Hillary refused to back up that call during their many appearances and interviews at that time.

[MNDemNY]

12. NOTHING Hersh has reported EVER pans out.

(did I really have to use this?)

[rwork]

13. Could you get this

to KO. I am sure he knows about it, but refresh his memory.

[nashville_brook]

16. there used to be an email address for KO, but i've noticed that it's gone now --

anyone have a recent contact?

[hisownpetard]

24. I think it's '[e-mail]', unless it's changed recently

[nashville_brook]

32. thanks.

[nashville_brook]

19. here's a link to the original New Yorker article -->>

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/10/040510fa_fa...

Torture at Abu Ghraib
American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?

by Seymour M. Hersh May 10, 2004




In the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. As many as fifty thousand men and women—no accurate count is possible—were jammed into Abu Ghraib at one time, in twelve-by-twelve-foot cells that were little more than human holding pits.

In the looting that followed the regime’s collapse, last April, the huge prison complex, by then deserted, was stripped of everything that could be removed, including doors, windows, and bricks. The coalition authorities had the floors tiled, cells cleaned and repaired, and toilets, showers, and a new medical center added. Abu Ghraib was now a U.S. military prison. Most of the prisoners, however—by the fall there were several thousand, including women and teen-agers—were civilians, many of whom had been picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints. They fell into three loosely defined categories: common criminals; security detainees suspected of “crimes against the coalition”; and a small number of suspected “high-value” leaders of the insurgency against the coalition forces.

(snip)

The photographs—several of which were broadcast on CBS’s “60 Minutes 2” last week—show leering G.I.s taunting naked Iraqi prisoners who are forced to assume humiliating poses. Six suspects—Staff Sergeant Ivan L. Frederick II, known as Chip, who was the senior enlisted man; Specialist Charles A. Graner; Sergeant Javal Davis; Specialist Megan Ambuhl; Specialist Sabrina Harman; and Private Jeremy Sivits—are now facing prosecution in Iraq, on charges that include conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty toward prisoners, maltreatment, assault, and indecent acts. A seventh suspect, Private Lynndie England, was reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, after becoming pregnant.

The photographs tell it all. In one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates. Three other hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their genitals. A fifth prisoner has his hands at his sides. In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid. There is another photograph of a cluster of naked prisoners, again piled in a pyramid. Near them stands Graner, smiling, his arms crossed; a woman soldier stands in front of him, bending over, and she, too, is smiling. Then, there is another cluster of hooded bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs. Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded.

Such dehumanization is unacceptable in any culture, but it is especially so in the Arab world. Homosexual acts are against Islamic law and it is humiliating for men to be naked in front of other men, Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University, explained. “Being put on top of each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in front of each other—it’s all a form of torture,” Haykel said.

[Igel]

22. Almost certainly not the same.

Hundreds of hours of tape versus a few tapes.

CIA operations versus Pentagon.

Stored in situ in Thailand and Afghanistan (Pakistan?) vs kept in the US.

Interrogation of two currently living people vs rape and, most importantly, murder.

[EFerrari]

25. It makes you wonder how much of this type of material BushCo has.

We know they've been torturing people all over the world in black sites. We know about Gitmo and Afghanistan and Iraq.

[nashville_brook]

28. i totally agree -- there's prolly heaps of video -- i'm very interested in Larisa Alexandrovna's

pursuit of this which seems to point to incriminating content pertaining to 911 of the destroyed tapes in question:


http://www.atlargely.com/2007/12/the-cia-tapes-c.html#m...

Gerald Posner writes at Huffington Post that the destruction of the tapes destroyed the content of the interrogations. Indeed, anyone who has read Craig Unger's excellent book House of Bush, House of Saud will likely already know where Posner is going with this:

"Instead, when confronted by his "Saudi" interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. "He will tell you what to do," Zubaydah assured them

That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, one of King Fahd's nephews, and the chairman of the largest Saudi publishing empire. Later, American investigators would determine that Prince Ahmed had been in the U.S. on 9/11.

American interrogators used painkillers to induce Zubaydah to talk -- they gave him the meds when he cooperated, and withdrew them when he was quiet. They also utilized a thiopental sodium drip (a so-called truth serum). Several hours after he first fingered Prince Ahmed, his captors challenged the information, and said that since he had disparaged the Saudi royal family, he would be executed. It was at that point that some of the secrets of 9/11 came pouring out. In a short monologue, that one investigator told me was the "Rosetta Stone" of 9/11, Zubaydah laid out details of how he and the al Qaeda hierarchy had been supported at high levels inside the Saudi and Pakistan governments.

He named two other Saudi princes, and also the chief of Pakistan's air force, as his major contacts. Moreover, he stunned his interrogators, by charging that two of the men, the King's nephew, and the Pakistani Air Force chief, knew a major terror operation was planned for America on 9/11."

[SpiralHawk]

31. republicon homelanders = Evil Doers

following the lead of Commander George AWOL Bush, of the occult Skull & Boner Chickenhawk brigade...

Shame on the republicons and the EVIL they do and the evil they willingly enable...

[Imagevision]

35. Amazing! and the Bush machine manages to keep this 'intel' under wraps and

no MSM coverage...!

[TheWraith]

36. That's a completely different thing you're talking about.

That article is talking about Abu Ghraib photos and tapes, NOT the tapes that were made of the CIA interrogations.

[nashville_brook]

38. yes, i know -- sorry if it muddies the issue -- my point is that these aren't the only tapes

and likely not the only tapes destroyed.

see this incredible post for more on the CIA tapes:

WHAT THE CIA DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT ABU ZUBAYDAH -- Re: the CIA torture tape erasure.

by leveymg

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[tekisui]

37. I've been waiting since this article was printed for these tapes to get their

proper scrutiny.

Let's Have Them.

[quiet.american]

39. I've never forgotten this - and always wonder how....

....senators and representatives could have sat through these tapes... and emerged visibly shaken and sickened (as was reported at the time) -- and then still find Bush "charming," still give him the benefit of the doubt... still not even be able to gather enough votes from the DEMOCRATIC side at least! -- to even just censure him.... still fund this "war" -- (war crime is more like it).... and still have the temerity to go out on the stump like they've really done something about it all....

[southerncrone]

41. I wondered, too.

Are we being led by an entire pack of sick, evil perverts?
Are our Dems just as depraved?
It begs the question.
And is horrifying to contemplate.

[defendandprotect]

45. A corporate Congress . . .????

[Roland99]

42. I saw Hersh here in town back in 2005. Wrote about it here >>>>

An Audience with Seymour Hersh
http://www.conjur.com/blog/2005/03/04/an-audience-with-... /


a snippet:

The Iraqi resistance has the government wired. They have people in various key areas of the government. Hersh made a point of emphasizing that. In the meantime, American intelligence about the resistance remains at about the same level as it did eighteen months ago, scattered and incomplete. This lack of intelligence is what led to wholesale roundups of suspected members of the resistance (for a prime example of how house-to-house searches were conducted, see the Extra Features on the Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD. Specifically, the interview with the Swedish journalist who went along with American troops on house-to-house searches in Samarra.) Most of the detainees were kept in Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib has a notorious reputation amongst Iraqis. It is the site of the most heinous acts against prisoners by Saddam Hussein and his supporters during his reign. The Americans at Abu Ghraib, however, took things even further. Aside from the heinous actions involving beatings, using dogs trained to bite the groin areas, and even outright murder, one aspect that has raised the ire amongst Iraqis, Muslims, and others around the world, is the sexual abuse levied against the prisoners. Hersh prefaced this segment of his speech by stating that those involved in the actual application of abuse and torture in Abu Ghraib were not just acting out of ignorance or out of being victims of circumstance (understaffing an over-crowded prison.) On the contrary, the specific actions taken had to only be at the behest of people in charge of the intelligence gathering in Iraq. This goes all the way to the White House.

Hersh went into a bit of detail in the drafting of the so-called Torture Memo by Jay Bybee approved by now-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and consulted by now-Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff. This Torture Memo was written with one goal in mind, creating a narrowly defined term of torture that would allow the Bush administration a great amount of latitude in its techniques for obtaining information. This all began with abuse and torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Some of the detainees at Guantanamo were elderly men, as old as being in their 80s, who were in no way a part of Al Qaeda or the Taliban in Afghanistan. When these innocent people were finally released, some released more than two years after being captured, Hersh opined, if they were not enemies of America before, they were now. U.S. techniques were creating more enemies and were resulting in useless information as detainees were confessing to anything in order to stop the torture and abuse.

At Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration orchestrated policies that were focused on humiliating detainees through sexual means. In the Muslim world, sex is an incredibly taboo subject. Men are not allowed to touch women in certain situations, being seen naked or forced to perform certain sexual acts brings shame upon a family that, in Muslim society, is a sentence worse than death. This was surely known by members of the Bush administration that recruited people to setup and train officers and interrogators at the prisons. We now know that five key men all had severe human rights abuses in their past careers in running prisons here in America. This was surely known by Ashcroft, despite the statements otherwise by the DOJ Inspector General. Hersh was also made aware of first-hand stories from former detainees of Abu Ghraib. He found that some woman at Abu Ghraib were so ashamed of the sexual abuse to which they were submitted that they sent messages to their family and friends to kill them when they came to visit them in the prison or when they were released. They were so ashamed of what was done to them or what they saw that they preferred to be killed than to live with the shame. Other prisoners were intimidated by the taking of photos of them in various sexual positions. These photos were used as carrots to get the prisoners to join the resistance report back to the officers with intelligence on the resistance. Failure to do so meant that the photos would be disseminated around their village and they would forever be shamed. The actual group in charge of Abu Ghraib was previously involved in traffic control and could not have known of the extreme taboo surrounding Muslims and sexual abuses. These orders had to have come from above.

The abuses at Abu Ghraib are also leaving an indelible mark in the psyche of the “worker-bee” soldiers ordered to take the photos and carry out some of the abuses. An example is the case of a female soldier who returned to the States, Indiana, specifically, from Iraq. Her mother noticed a marked change in her daughter’s attitude. The soldier’s condition worsened and wouldn’t even talk or meet with her mother. The mother, however, did come across a CD during a visit to her daughter’s home. On that CD was a folder named “Iraq” and it contained many photos of the abuses that occurred in Abu Ghraib. As a reaction to the stress, this female soldier had been consistently going to a tattoo parlor and had been having her body covered in black tattoos.

[defendandprotect]

43. In reading this again --- and let's make clear this is rape of CHILDREN, as well ---

you have to wonder if we're looking for perverts to enlist --- ??

How do you just suddenly come upon a handy pervert to sodomize a child for you --- ????

[FreedomRain]

46. don't need a perv for that ;

rape is about power.

[defendandprotect]

60. You mean you think that any ordinary male soldier would do this --- ????

Well, Sy Hersh has stressed that we have raised the most brutal and violent army ever --- !!!

[wiggs]

44. Several congressmembers saw this as well....nothing more said about it. nt

[nashville_brook]

51. ding ding ding!!

we have a winner!

[antiimperialist]

47. I remember a judge ruled that these tapes with children being raped must be released

and they never where.
i think there was a cover-up.

[nashville_brook]

54. i remember that too -- it's why i posted this.

[whistle]

48. Those are the tapes which Donald Rumsfeld has kept for his private collection

[smoogatz]

49. Not the same.

Hersh was reporting on videos he'd seen of U.S. and Iraqi guards abusing prisoners (some of them children) at Abu Ghraib. The videos currently in the news are of CIA-led interrogations of suspected al Qaeda operatives at "black" sites in Egypt, Saudi Arabia or elsewhere.

[nashville_brook]

50. yes, i know -- sorry if it muddies the issue -- my point is that these aren't the only tapes

[EFerrari]

52. Do you remember that they found HUNDREDS of tapes of

the poor people they rounded up after 9/11 in New York?

When this administration is over, there will be enough to fill the Bush Library.

[nashville_brook]

53. NO! i totally missed this. holy crap -- i just watched a crappy movie called The Black Book

about the holocaust -- a major theme was that the obsessive record-keeping of the Germans became the means by which (some) Germans were brought to justice.

this is a theme emerging with all the "tapes" controversy we are discussing. my question is, what is the "obsession" or "sickness" that led to the making of the tapes in the first place. it seems quite similar to the german theme -- record keeping, efficiency. But there's also a perverse quality -- as if there were people who couldn't get their hands dirty with torture, but liked "to watch."

[EFerrari]

55. It's consistent with people like Cheney (and Rudy) who micromanage.

I heard about the tapes found at Rikers Island, iirc, on Amy's show about a year ago. The lawyer for the victim kept pressing for about 2 years, and they finally found out there were hundreds of tapes.

[defendandprotect]

61. If you're fanatical enough to order torture . . . you want to be sure that the dummies are

doing what you told them --- and you need pics to be sure that they are doing it right!!!

PLUS, without doubt, Bush/Cheney are getting off on all this violence --- !!!

They're not human ---

[Oilwellian]

56. I did a video on torture & used a lot of clips of Seymour Hersh

I did a piss-poor job of balancing the music in this video and it's hard to hear Andrew Sullivan in particular (sorry) but the last 2 1/2 minutes is of Hersh speaking about torture and those responsible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmBjL9jhDn8

[burythehatchet]

57. I'll tell you where the copies are

They're under Cheney's bed, next to the box of Kleenex.

[OneGrassRoot]

58. or the "man-size" safe in his office. n/t

[burythehatchet]

59. That's where he keeps the live children to harvest their organs n/t

[Solly Mack]

62. I've often joked - well, half-joked - that when Cheney disappears, he is off

visting secret prisons and joining the torture.