Jailed 2 Years, Iraqi Tells of Abuse by Americans
This is unbelievable. When releasing prisoners from a jail at Baghdad airport American soldiers, who frequently return prisoners to their cells at the last minute, offer them a form containing a multiple choice question asking the prisoner how they feel they have been treated whilst in detention. They make this choice whilst surrounded by guards carrying electric stun guns.
They can choose from two statements that best describe how they think they were treated:
“I didn’t go through any abuse during detention,” reads the first option, in Arabic.I wonder how many people who choose the second option get to walk out the front door?“I have gone through abuse during detention,” reads the second.
Laith al-Ani, who was held for two years in the American-run jail, Camp Bucca, obviously signed the first statement in order to ensure he was released. During the two years he was held there he was interviewed only once and he was never charged with any crime.
He does, however, give a chilling account of the way prisoners are being routinely mistreated in the jail.
Mr. Ani said the electric prods were first used on him on the way to Camp Bucca. “I was talking to someone next to me and they used it,” he said, describing the device as black plastic with a yellow tip and two iron prongs. He said the prods were commonly used on him and other detainees as punishment.
“The whole body starts to shake and hurt,” he said. “And you lose consciousness for a couple of seconds. One time they used it on my tongue. One guard held me from the left and another on my back and another used it against my tongue and for four or five days I couldn’t eat.”
One has to wonder what hope Bush thinks he has of ever achieving victory in Iraq when this kind of treatment is meted out to people.
Leaving aside the moral void of using such methodology, tactically it is beyond dumb. Every person subjected to this kind of treatment who eventually rejoins the civilian population will tell the tale and increase hatred towards the occupying army.
And the stories of this kind of casual abuse are becoming far too numerous to be dismissed.
This is what makes the Bush/Cheney torture argument so obscene. It's not only the immorality of what they are doing, but the fact that it is so unbelievably counter productive and dumb.
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