Torture photos: US soldiers raped, sodomized Iraqi prisoners

[The Leveller]

Torture photos: US soldiers raped, sodomized Iraqi prisoners
By Tom Eley
29 May 2009

In an interview with the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph published Wednesday, former US General Antonio Taguba said that photographs the Obama administration is seeking to suppress show images of US soldiers raping and sodomizing Iraqi prisoners. Taguba, who conducted the military inquiry of prisoner abuse at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 after some photos of US soldiers torturing prisoners became public, said that among the photos are images of soldiers raping a female prisoner, raping a male detainee, and committing “sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and phosphorescent tube,” according to the Telegraph.

Gen. Taguba said even the description of the photos is explosive. “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba said. “The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

Taguba’s revelations expose the deceit of President Barack Obama’s claim, used to justify the photos’ suppression, that they “are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.” In all, it is believed that there are some 2,000 photographs depicting about 400 cases of US military personnel torturing Iraqis and Afghans at seven military prisons. The Bush administration, and now Obama, have sought to block publication of the images.

Obama also claimed that “the most direct consequence of releasing them...would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.” While this may likely be true, the criminal nature of the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is already well known by the nations’ populations, who have died and been made refugees in the hundreds of thousands since being invaded in 2003 and 2001, respectively. Indeed, this claim only exposes the true nature of the US occupations: they have never been about establishing democracy, but aimed at stamping out resistance to US control of the strategically important nations through mass bloodletting and terror, the historical modus operandi of every imperialist occupying power.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/may2009/tort-m29.shtml

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

1. Could this be Mr.Obamas reason

for not wanting to release the pics?

[peace13]

3. I wonder why Obama said the opposite. n/t

[KansDem]

2. I'm curious about how the US military "recruits" soldiers who would do this kind of thing...

I mean, is there a psychological profile worked up on each recruit so that those with a penchant for this kind of activity can be recruited to perform acts of sodomy and rape when Uncle Sam needs it? Are they somehow trained in special classes on rape and sodomy? Or are they just given orders to report for duty with the expectation that they will be raping and sodomizing. Perhaps they were told while the brass looked the other way to "do what it takes" (wink, wink) to glean information that tied Saddam with al Qaeda in order to justify Bush's invasion.

Soldier, you will rape and sodomize in order to KEEP US SAFE FROM TERRORISTS!!!
Sir, yes sir...!!!

Too bad the CorpMedia isn't pursuing this with the same ferocity as they did with the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal...

[tjwash]

4. It's inside every human being to commit those kinds of attrocities.

The Soviets used to rape afghan women and bayonet the pregnant ones when they were in their filthy little occupation. The Germans tortured people and shoveled 6 million Jews into ovens.

The commanders just need to find the right buttons to push so that they can bring it out. It probably wasn't that hard to get U.S. soldiers to do that. I'm sure in their minds, that they were incessantly drilled with "these were the people that destroyed the towers in New York" and in some sick fucking fit of cognitive dissonance and justification, they probably just thought they were taking their rightful revenge against the people that attacked the U.S. on 9-11.

That's why we need to release those photo's and put the entire fucking bush / cheney gang in prison. They know what soldiers are capable of doing, and they knew how to draw it out of them. If those photos get released, there's no way that these mother fuckers can continue to get away with saying that this was not torture.

[KansDem]

5. !

:thumbsup:

[Libertyfirst]

6. They've been accepting convicted felons. This has also led to

the military having a problem with gangs like those in prisons.