Political Discourse

[woofer]

To continue (I had to go outside and never got to finish my last post)........and thinking about it, this should be enough.

Lawmakers disagreed over whether the additional photos were worse than those already released, with Senator Ron Wyden saying the new pictures were "significantly worse than anything that I had anticipated [...] Take the worst case and multiply it several times over." while Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher said the pictures were "not dramatically different". It was speculated that they depict dogs snarling at cowering prisoners, women forced to expose their breasts at gunpoint, hooded prisoners being forced to masturbate, and of forced homosexual acts.[12]

The New York Times, in a report on January 12, 2005,[14] reported testimony suggesting that the following events had taken place at Abu Ghraib:

Urinating on detainees
Jumping on detainee's leg (a limb already wounded by gunfire) with such force that it could not thereafter heal properly
Continuing by pounding detainee's wounded leg with collapsible metal baton
Pouring phosphoric acid on detainees
Sodomization of detainees with a baton
Tying ropes to the detainees' legs or penises and dragging them across the floor.
Sergeant Samuel Provance from Alpha Company 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion, in interviews with several news agencies, reported the sexual abuse of a 16-year-old girl by two interrogators [15], as well as a 16-year-old son of an Iraqi general, who was driven through the cold night air on the open back of a truck after he had been showered and besmeared with mud in order to get his father to talk.[16] He also pointed out several techniques used by interrogators that have been identified as being in violation of the Geneva Convention. He spoke to the media, even against direct orders, about what he knew about at the prison (largely from conversations and interactions with the interrogators). He explained that he did so because there was "definitely a cover-up" underway by the Army. He was administratively flagged and had his top secret clearance suspended in retaliation by the Army. A detailed statement by Sgt. Provance concerning these and numerous other abuses at Abu Ghraib and his treatment by the army is available.[17]

In her video diary, a prison guard said that prisoners were shot for minor misbehavior, and claimed to have had venomous snakes bite prisoners, sometimes resulting in their deaths. By her own admission, that guard was "in trouble" for having thrown rocks at the detainees.[18] Hashem Muhsen, one of the naked men in the human pyramid photo, said they were also made to crawl around the floor naked and that U.S. soldiers rode them like donkeys. After being released in January 2004, Muhsen became an Iraqi police officer.[19]

It was discovered that one prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, died as a result of abuse, a death that was ruled a homicide by the military.[20]

One detainee claimed he was sodomized. The Taguba Report found the claim ("Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick") to be credible.[21]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse