Sunday, November 20, 2005

The Dirty War: Torture and mutilation used on Iraqi 'insurgents'

(Independend Online) Behind the daily reports of suicide bombings and attacks on coalition forces is a far more shadowy struggle, one that involves tortured prisoners huddled in dungeons, death-squad victims with their hands tied behind their backs, often mutilated with knives and electric drills, and distraught families searching for relations who have been "disappeared".

Last week the Pentagon admitted using white phosporus as an offensive weapon in last year's assault on Fallujah. Its official use is to create smokescreens to shield troop movements, but if fired into trenches or foxholes it can burn victims to the bone. The legality of this use is debatable. Last year the US also admitted, after previous denials, that it had used napalm - which Britain has banned - against Iraqi forces during the invasion. There is also controversy over the deployment of cluster munitions, which Britain has said should not be used in or near civilian areas.

Also, British-trained police operating in Basra have tortured at least two civilians to death with electric drills, The Independent on Sunday reveals today. I feel sad :-(

3 comments:

lindsaylobe said...

Hi DA
Washington observed by Tony Walker, reporting in the Australian Financial Review of the 11th November has as its headline “For Bush, it must be Torture". Bush and his Vice President , Dick Chaney , want , indeed demand that the CIA retain the right to use means to extract information that would clearly not fall within the Geneva Convention ban on cruel and inhuman treatment.

I think the central “theme’ on this phoney "War on terror" is that those involved are “justified” in any means.

Senator John McCain was defeated, a lone voice of dissent, in his attempts to remove the weapons of torture from secret CIA prisons.

LesleyinNM said...

I have no clue what the real goal of this war is. Will they stop at nothing just to get more oil, or is it something else they are hoping to gain from their war crimes? There is no excuse for it whatever the answer is. It makes me very sad to see my country involved in such horrible things. I know that most people don't want this and yet the government gets away with all. Nobody stands up to them, our new media practically ignores thier crimes, it is all very strange and sad.

Azeem Tubotheryu said...

Hi Dimitri,
First of all, Lindsay and others, Senator John McCain is N O T a lone voice of disent. There is a growing grass roots movement in the States of those of us who are more than appalled by the very fact that the issue of torture is even considered a contraversy, not to mention the fact that many of the DETAINEES are not necessarily insurgents, but instead happen to have found themselves in this very UN-American debacle! The Republicans are on their way out and what I ask of our brethren abroad is to take notice when we engage in a righteous police action such as containing Serb Nationalism in 1999 and ending the wanton murder of unarmed civilians in the former Yogoslovia.

Thank You