Frist: Latest torture images are "appalling"

[scottxyz]

The latest round of photos and videos of Iraqi prisoner abuse included torture, humiliation and forced sex beyond what has been seen in public, members of Congress said Wednesday after viewing them.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said there also were some "gruesome scenes" that showed dead bodies, but without any explanation of how the victims had been killed or why.

Lawmakers said the disturbing images included military dogs snarling at cowering prisoners, Iraqi women commanded to expose their breasts and photos of sex acts, including forced homosexual sex.

"What we saw is appalling," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.


http://www.freep.com/news/nw/abuse13_20040513.htm

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Members of Congress were given special access yesterday to pictures of Iraqi prisoner abuse that they said included "heartbreaking" and "sickening" images of torture, sexual abuse, and humiliation.

"I was obviously shocked and horrified to discover that the new photos are even more gruesome than those we have seen in the media," said Representative Martin T. Meehan, Democrat of Lowell. "There's no doubt in my mind that the abuses at Abu Ghraib constitute torture."

Some described images of Iraqi women exposing their breasts. Others remembered photos of a shackled prisoner repeatedly banging his head against a wall. There were images of three US soldiers beating an Iraqi prisoner. And there were many sexual images, some of simulated acts and others including actual intercourse between male and female soldiers.

"It's heartbreaking," said Representative Barney Frank...

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/05/13/lawmakers_view_images_of_abuse_express_shock/

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They gathered in a secure room on Capitol Hill, as many as 150 at one time, but the pictures and slides they viewed so silenced U.S. lawmakers that one said later, he could have been in the room by himself.

Afterward, they emerged on their own or in small groups, some spitting out disgust to the waiting microphones, others appearing ashen, unsure of how to describe what their eyes had just seen.

They saw Iraqi women forced to bare their breasts, forced homosexual sex, sex between U.S. troops, hooded Iraqi prisoners forced to masturbate in front of their captors, another forced to sodomize himself.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1084399811783&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724

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Members of the US Congress saw new images of violence and sexual humiliation from a US-run Iraqi prison last night in a closed viewing and one likened them to a descent into "the wings of hell".

They said images showed inmates apparently being forced to commit sodomy, wounds possibly from dog bites, a number of dead bodies, and examples of "sadistic torture" and "sexual humiliation".

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/16008.html

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Thanks George and Rummy for bringing American Democracy to Iraq!!
Thanks for getting the people responsible for 9/11!!
Thanks for violating the Geneva Convention and endangering our troops!
Thanks for uniting 1.3 billion Muslims and the rest of the world agains the US!
Thanks for finally getting Bill Frist and Barney Frank to agree on something!
Thanks for restoring honor and dignity to the White House!

[Dr Fate]

1. George Fucking Bush.

n/t

[truthisfreedom]

2. i guess in a culture that has begun to believe that reality can only be

delivered on a video screen, the thought of seeing such things could be pretty intense. unfortunately, the victims will be forgotten in the swirl of spin delivered by karl rove and company.

[scottxyz]

3. I don't think even Rove can spin this

Remember the problem we always have where the media are always focusing on sex and violence instead of covering Republican crimes.

Now the Republican crimes INVOLVE sex and violence.

So the public's gonna keep lapping this story up, and the media's gonna keep feeding it to them.

It's a living.

[not systems]

4. Damnable crimes against humanity.

The administrating has brought shame and disgrace on the nation.

This Legacy of Brutality will stains the world and our future.

[Hekate]

5. These Neocon *holes want a Crusade, they want the Inquisition...

...and all of a sudden they are shocked, shocked I say, at what it looks like once it's begun. They should get their noses rubbed in this dirt until they truly get their culpability.

Instead we have Ted Koppel on Nightline discussing the reasonableness of degrees of coercion and torture. I know Ted was only trying to perform a public service here, but for both my husband and me it was almost as if he was illustrating the "banality of evil" and we just couldn't take it any more.

This is the Neocons' fiasco all the way to the top, but my bet is that only the people on the bottom two layers are going to be court martialed, and that the mercenaries and Rummy will get off scot-free. :puke:

Hekate

[scottxyz]

6. I don't think Rummy will get out of this one

Bush stood up for him and said "we owe him a debt of gratitude."

But Bush ALWAYS does that - stands up for his people - and then throws them overboard if things heat up.

Things are heating up - on BOTH sides of the aisle in Congress, AND all around the world - among allies and enemies.

I don't think there's any way they can weather this. Sacrificing a few privates and sergeants (when there are regulations on the books detailing how to buy the dogs, how to perform the torture, how to get around existing laws) won't do the trick.

They're going to need to sacrifice someone bigger - otherwise the world's going to see America as a bunch of sick, twisted torturers.

I think Rummy and Wolfowitz will be thrown overboard. (Really Bush is the one who should go, but they won't go that far.)

You've got several high-ranking Congresspeople including Frist and Hastert expressing outrage now, and using the word "torture".

You've got Tom Friedman, George F. Will, Tucker Carlson all saying now that they don't support Bush any more - and lots of other conservative media whores teetering on the brink.

You've got a sex and violence scandal that's just the kind of stuff Americans love to watch on TV. (Who needs Kobe and Michael and Janet now?)

This is NOT going to go away. The ONE thing nice respectable people always supported Bush for - despite his miserable failures - was his supposed "morality".

Everyone knows now that Rummy approved the tortures, and Bush knew what was going on too (although he tried to keep his distance).

This is kinky, sick, perverted stuff that gets social conservatives in an uproar.

Conseratives believe in being strong on defense, cutting spending, and being prim and proper. Bush screwed up on 9/11, he didn't find Bin Laden, he's plunging the government into bankruptcy, and now he authorized kinky sexual torture.

There's nothing left for a conservative to like about Bush now. This is a guy who is always so careful to send coded references about Jesus and the Bible to his supporters, who are desperate to see him as a really moral person - and now he's involved in what is probably the kinkiest, most twisted sex scandal most people have ever heard of. There's no way he can get over this.

And they're going to have to throw more than a few privates overboard. There's probably proof scattered all over the place that at least Rummy knew about the new torture guidelines. They're gonna have to get rid of SOMEONE big - if only to just make a statement that we DO support the Geneva Conventions (so that OUR troops won't be sodomized, raped, tortured etc when they get captured).

For the good of the troops, Rummy has to go. The Army Times newspaper is even saying it.

[mediaman007]

10. but does it compare to "oral sex" in the White House?

No doubt, the Kool-Aid drinkers will find a way to rationalize this behavior, but you are right, in our culture, sex sells and right now, the Neocons are neck deep in it.

Its the perfect payback to the "fUndies".

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Goya: Inquisition - San Benitos and Corozas

Looks familiar?

A high scaffold was erected in the main square, and victims of both sexes were dealt with there in a continuous procession lasting all day. The victims were led out with a rope around their necks and holding a yellow wax candle. They wore a “san benito,” a penitential tunic of yellow cloth down to the knees pained with a picture of the victim being burnt, with devils cavorting around fanning the flames. This victim was to be burnt at the stake. When someone intended for the stake confessed at the last minute, the picture was inverted to become a “fuego resuelto.” The victim was then not burnt alive but was first strangled, then burnt.

Those who were to be punished otherwise wore the same garment decorated with a cross. Garments like these were kept on display in churches as warnings. The victims also wore a “coroza,” a pasteboard hat three feet high ending in a point—the sinister hat still seen in Spanish ceremonies, and used by the KKK. It too was painted with crosses, flames and devils. If anyone tried to curse the tribunal or the Church, or praise some heretical sect, they instantly had a gag stuffed in their mouth, the soldiers being ready with them.

http://www.askwhy.co.uk/christianity/0816Inquisition.html

[Blue Gardener]

8. Did you see Delay's response?

He seemed much more concerned about the pictures and videos of sex between soldiers being pornographic than he was about the horror of the abuse pictures.

[mediaman007]

11. They don't get it.

They're World is so narrow. Delay would want to censor National Geographic.

[dudeness]

9. when will Iraq have finally paid its price?

10 years of sanctions leading to a million dead..10 years of constant bombing by US/UK forces..an invasion leading to the deaths of many more innocents..how do these people keep going?
this will rank in history as one of the most ferocious oppressions and destructions of a country and all under the guise of freedom and democracy..I think I am going to be ill..

[leftchick]

12. wow, they are actually using the "T" word....

The first set of photos were torture and they could not say it. This is so fucking disgusting. george* is the "Torture pResident*".

[Moderator]

13. duplicate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=550446