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Teddy_Salad Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-04 10:44 PM
Original message
The Pictures That Lost The War
Grim images of American and British soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners, some in what was Saddam Hussein’s own torture centre, Abu Ghraib, have not only caused disgust and revulsion in the West, but could have forever lost Bush and Blair the moral high ground that they claimed to justify the invasion of Iraq

< >

Some accused claim they acted on the orders of military intelligence and the CIA, and that some of the torture sessions were under the control of mercenaries hired by the US to conduct interrogations. Two “civilian contract” organisations taking part in interrogations at Abu Ghraib are linked to the Bush administration.

Full article.....
http://www.sundayherald.com/41693
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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-04 10:51 PM
Response to Original message
1. Deleted message
Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.
 
madmax Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-04 10:56 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Oh God
Are those Iraqi women they're abusing?
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Teddy_Salad Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-04 10:59 PM
Response to Reply #1
3. Holy shit!

And they said Abu Ghraib was an "isolated incident"?

Jesus Christ!


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greenman3610 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-04 11:05 PM
Response to Reply #1
4. I am somewhat suspicious of these
newer images.
I work with photoshop daily, and I am just
having some bells go off with some of these
newer images. I'm convinced the original 60 minute
s ones are genuine. Can't put my finger on the
issue, but let's be careful what we spread around.
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loathesomeshrub Donating Member (669 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-04 11:44 PM
Response to Reply #4
7. I don't see anything suspicious about these photos - they seem to be the
same quality as the 60 minutes ones - and quite believable - They don't look altered to me.
The women seem terrified for their life and the faces are blackened on the soldiers. The only possibility to me might be that they are not real soldiers but others wearing the uniform. With everything we hear, its highly possible that they really are soldiers. Were ther not rapes in Vietnam? Were there not rapes of American women cadets by male cadets here at the air force academy?
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truth2power Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:49 AM
Response to Reply #4
9. there was another thread here somewhere
and several posters seemed to think those pics were NOT genuine.
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CJCRANE Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 06:17 AM
Response to Reply #9
13. there are reports that the British pics that might be hoaxes n/t
...
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truth2power Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 10:04 AM
Response to Reply #13
15. Yes, the newer ones. n/t
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pa28 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-04 11:08 PM
Response to Reply #1
5. I know it's disturbing.
Edited on Sat May-01-04 11:08 PM by pa28
I'd hate to generalize though. There are plenty of idealistic and patriotic members of the military who have had their best intentions abused by an incompetent c-in-c. There are also plenty of scared kids out there who won't be coming back and never knew what they were getting into.

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umtalal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-04 11:41 PM
Response to Reply #1
6. An Arab Editorial
The democratic Iraq of America
2004/05/01

Abd Albari Atoan
After we watched the shameful forms, and the savage attacks on the honors of the Iraqi prisoners in the prisons of the American occupation, that the station of television Si . Bi . Is transmitted American, became understanding the reasons of this fierce campaign that an administration launches president Bush Ali the media coverages Arab and foreign to the events events in Iraq . Then the view of the Iraqi detainees in Ghareb 's father prison and they are naked, and stackers over the each other in a hierarchical way, while the American jailer smiles a joy and a happiness, and the happiness shares with it in its colleague and he takes a souvenir photo therefore the shameful doing, embodies the form of new Iraq that promised us it president Bush 's administration, and we boded it an army from its agents in the Arab media .
This is the democratic Iraq that the freedoms and the respect of the human rights dominate, and this is the true embodiment of the new constitution that the rule councilors celebrated, and its clearest subjects stated the respect of the dignity of the Iraqi citizen and the preservation of its personal rights, and cancellation of all torturing kinds .
The television tape the document that Si . Bi . Is station transmitted he speaks by the sound and the picture about the operations of sexual rape she touches to it imprisoned teenagers, as he speaks about sexual attacks from before the detainees on the each other amid the enjoyment of the American soldiers of this barbaric kind from the psychological and physical torturing .
The American forces came to Iraq under the pretext of the prevention of the human rights violations, and stop of all torturing forms, and the liberation of the Iraqi citizen from all the forms of suppression and killing and the dictatorship, and there she does the thing himself, but what is he more than this, and the one that represents the civilization and the free world .
It is a moral scandal, in addition to a being a political, and she is as a result to the culture of hatred and contempt to all what he is Arab and Muslim the one that the current American administration adopts, and she implants it in the souls of its soldiers . And therefore from the naivety the saying it is the responsibility of a small handful of the American soldiers that the punishment of some of them took place, and the dismissal of the another some from the service .
The seriousness of this scandal comes from a being that came after few weeks of the massacre that the American forces committed in Al-Faloga, where the random raids killed more than seven hundred child and a woman revenging for the killing of four American contractors . The picture has become complete, and all its ends clarify it : a mass grave in Al-Faloga, and the violation of the detainees honors in Ghareb 's father prison .
What she did and does it, the American forces in Iraq, confirms for us, not were bewaring of it always, from that this invasion, and this occupation, he with the target of the humiliation of Arabs and Muslims mainly, and was not at all for the sake of the change of a dictatorial system or the establishment of a model to the democracy and the justice and the human rights .
The American television station that exposed this the shameful and contemptible practices she deserves the appreciation and the respect, because it stuck to the profession manners, and she confirmed that the press is the fourth estate a doing, and she did not yield at all to all of the pressures that were practiced on it from the American administration for the sake of the non the transmission of this tape .
And the hoped that she takes the Arab channels, and specially AlJazeera and the Arabic the moral situation himself, and not to they yield to the American blackmail that wants their return time the ugly Arab media, channels time a long over was received and said goodbye .
This tape revealed falling and single in Ghareb 's father prison, but we do not know what happens from violations of dignity of the detainees in the Iraqi other prisons, and between these evacuation scientists, and respectable political personalities, then there who a presence appreciates more than ten thousands detainee of GI now, their ages range between sixteenth and the seventy year .
The American administration with such practices, whether the violation of the prisoners honors or the innocent killing in Al-Faloga and Baghdad and Al-Najaf Al-Ashraf, blows up all its talks about the reform and the democracy in our Arab nation, and loses all the billions that observed it for the sake of the gain of the Iraqis minds and their hearts, supported them from this and this, that it presented the better public relations campaign to the extremist Islamic groups .
We are on the confidence that the sheikh Osama Ben Ladin and its deputy are the doctor Al-Zawaheri and Ansar by the Al-Qaeda is happier the people on the creation face, and they watch these shameful shots that because it was presented to them prefer an ammunition for the recruitment of more of a youth frustrated and jealous for its religion and its dogma and its dignity .
We do not know how the rule council's reactions were on these violations scandalous for symptoms and the dignity of the Iraqi detainees, but what we know well is that the curses of all Iraqis and the Arabs and the Muslims have been focused on each Iraqi that facilitated the occupation of Iraq and cooperation with the occupation authorities .
We wish that we read a single word from these and from the many the one who drew a rosy form for the occupation, a single word she condemns these American violations, by amount himself and the power herself that condemned in it the violations of the previous Iraqi systems .
America friends in Iraq and in the Islamic world, shrink a shyness of the continuous slaps that directs it to them the American administration, once in Palestine with the adoption of the terrorist the racial Sharon presentations a complete and once you delay in Iraq, where the chaos and the destruction and the mass graves and the violations of the international sharia and the human rights .
America lost the war in Iraq, and added new reasons to the increase of the hatred for it in the souls of Arabs and Muslims by such crimes, and what is its withdrawal from Al-Faloga, and its retreat from all its conditions except the countdown beginning is for its departure a defeated totally as she educated a defeated from Vietnam .

Al Quds Al Arabi

this has been translated by the alajeeb website, so if it rough you will get the jest.


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RoyGBiv Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:39 AM
Response to Original message
8. I don't fully buy the rape pics...
Edited on Sun May-02-04 12:45 AM by RoyGBiv
Just from a casual look:

Green fatigues: At the very least, this means the men in the pictures aren't US soldiers.

The positions the women are in: The women are in "inviting" positions. Women being raped will not usually get up on their knees without being held up. The "spooning" pic is a textbook porn shot, but not conducive to penetration when the woman isn't a willing participant. Some of the other pics have similar problems with "posing," but hopefully you get the idea and won't force me to get graphic.

Settings: The settings in the rape pics appear semi-professionally staged. Additionally, the lighting is too even for "amateur" shots unless the person taking the pics just happened to be a rather good photographer.

Censoring: Why are the pictures "smudged"? It's not the fact they were censored, but the way they were. Casual smudging is not typical of a news organization.

I'd give odds the pics depicting the women being raped are from a degradation porn flic.

Also, the lighting in the other pics is odd at the least. Shadows are bing cast from unseen objects. In the last pic, the soldiers are in full shadow, but the "prisoners" are in bright sunshine. In the previous pic, the light source appears somewhat different from what's hitting most of the objects compared to what's hitting the prisoners.

The torture of these prisoners is horrendous and should cause us to ask many questions and demand full answers and accountability. But, we also need to be careful about taking every new story of abuse for granted. If just one of these things gets into the mainstream and then is shown to be a fraud, it undermines the entire effort to expose the depth of the abuse.

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salin Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:49 AM
Response to Reply #8
10. Oh I hope that you are correct
I can not even go back to the pictures to look for the indicators you suggest and look for them, I find them so disturbing.

As per "posing" - it is mindboggling what people will do when their life is threatened. Posing, included. Of all the things that you state, that is one that I would not use as definitive "evidence."
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RoyGBiv Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 01:08 AM
Response to Reply #10
11. Yes...
I understand that I, personally, cannot relate to what I might "willingly" do if I'd seen my family killed in front of me, felt total helplessness, had a gun stuck in my mouth, etc. I know enough about American slavery to know that slave women, out of fear for their lives and the lives of their families, submitted to some atrocious things in such a way that the men doing them actually thought those women were willing.

And I don't want to minimize that or in any way appear disprespectful. Also, as a man, I probably have little basis for saying anything about what goes through a woman's mind when she's being raped.

But, I do know far too many women who have been violently raped, and the things I see in these pictures don't fit with the things they've told me about the experience.

I'm certainly not discounting the possibility I'm wrong. I, too, hope I'm not.

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IndianaGreen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 01:49 AM
Response to Original message
12. dogs are “used for intimidation factors”.
Other pictures, which the world has not seen, but which are in the hands of the US military, include shots of a dog attacking a prisoner. An accused soldier says dogs are “used for intimidation factors”.

Remember the scene in Schindler's List when the women arrive at Auschwitz? Remember the sounds of the dogs barking?

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rebellious woman Donating Member (165 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 07:20 AM
Response to Original message
14. Inhumanity tho not surprised
I believe it wasn't so very long ago the "current
resident" was asked what he and his father discussed
when together. As I recall his answer was "pussy" so
you must understand I am not at all surprised in the
mentality and actions of all concerned. Any respect
for this country is GONE and was beginning the year
2000!!!!!
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