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Friday, April 29, 2005

Watch What We Do

JB

From the Boston Globe:
With his job on the line over the shocking revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib prison last year, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the world to ''watch how democracy deals with wrongdoing and scandal and the pain of acknowledging and correcting our own mistakes and, indeed, our own weaknesses."

Now, exactly one year after the photographs from Abu Ghraib became public, the Defense Department has placed seven low-ranking guards under court-martial. No general -- or colonel, or CIA intelligence officer, or political appointee -- has faced any charges.

Human rights groups yesterday seized on the anniversary to reiterate their dismay over the lack of command responsibility, saying Abu Ghraib will be remembered as much for who wasn't held accountable as who was.

But while investigations into the Iraqi prison case have come to a close, the scandal has led to broader revelations about the mistreatment of prisoners in US military custody around the world.

Disclosures at other military detention centers, from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan, have revealed use of sleep deprivation, shackling in painful positions, exposure to temperature extremes, and beatings that have resulted in at least 28 deaths -- suggesting that the detainee abuse scandal that started with Abu Ghraib will haunt the war on terrorism for years to come.

''The abuses aren't as sexy, so to speak, as some of the genuinely perverted images that came from Abu Ghraib," said Ken Hurwitz of Human Rights First. ''But the real interrogations have been, by all accounts, quite brutal. As more and more detainees are released from places like Guantanamo, the idea that Guantanamo was doing it right and Abu Ghraib was doing it wrong is just not holding up."


The entire article is worth reading.


Comments:

Over 100 Killed under US Custody in Iraq and Afghanistan

Washington, Mar 17 (Prensa Latina) Some 108 people have died, most of them violently as a result of abuse, under US military custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a government report provided to the Associated Press.

Iraq: Images of Tortures and War Crimes
Latest News on Iraq


Roughly a quarter of those deaths have been investigated as possible abuse by U.S. personnel, the CBS reports quoting the AP.



The Executive Director of the American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU), Anthony Romero asserted that "no one at the highest levels of our government has yet been held accountable for the torture and abuse, and that is unacceptable."



"Despite the military´s own reports of deaths and abuses of detainees in U.S. custody, it is astonishing that our government can still pretend that what is happening is the work of a few rogue soldiers," the ACLU Executive insisted.



The figure of 108 dead in US military prisons, far higher than any previously disclosed, includes cases investigated by the Army, Navy, CIA and Justice Department, the sources indicate.



Some 65,000 prisoners have been taken during the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, although most have been freed.



The CBS and the AP underline that the Pentagon has never provided comprehensive information on how many prisoners taken during the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have died, and the 108 figure is based on information supplied by Army, Navy and other government officials.
 

My best photo will be the last one, that I want to be taken.
Agen Judi Online Terpercaya
 

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