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August 03, 2005
Tortured to Death? Yawn.
Story after story of brutal killings of detainees has surfaced and been published in major newspapers, much like this one.
Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.
...
The sleeping-bag interrogation and beatings were taking place in Qaim about the same time that soldiers at Abu Ghraib, outside Baghdad, were using dogs to intimidate detainees, putting women's underwear on their heads, forcing them to strip in front of female soldiers and attaching at least one to a leash. It was a time when U.S. interrogators were coming up with their own tactics to get detainees to talk, many of which they considered logical interpretations of broad-brush categories in the Army Field Manual, with labels such as "fear up" or "pride and ego down" or "futility."
Other tactics, such as some of those seen at Abu Ghraib, had been approved for one detainee at Guantanamo Bay and found their way to Iraq. Still others have been linked to official Pentagon guidance on specific techniques, such as the use of dogs.
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Two Army soldiers with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Fort Carson, Colo., are charged with killing Mowhoush with the sleeping-bag technique, and his death has been the subject of partially open court proceedings at the base in Colorado Springs. Two other soldiers alleged to have participated face potential nonjudicial punishment.
It seems that we have almost made peace with being a nation that systematically tortures, and doesn't even bother with serious slap on the wrist for those that kill prisoners while torturing them.
It's hard to find an original comment to make, something new to say. Yes, we are torturing them to death. Yes, nobody is getting punished. Yes, it is happening again and again. Yawn.
Posted by zeynep at August 3, 2005 11:47 PM
Comments
General Mowhoush had gone to the Americans seeking information about his sons - he was not 'captured'. A number of high ranking individuals, including scientists, went willingly to the Americans and later had 'heart attacks' in custody...Did their low ranking torturers think they could beat information on the non-existant WMDs or on the whereabout of Saddam's children out of them and earn big monetary rewards. Since when can mere enlisted men torture a detained general or chief scientist to death?
Posted by: robin at August 4, 2005 02:47 PM
in unrelated news, there is going to be a coup in bolivia.http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=20&ItemID=8436
please bring attention to this
Posted by: attention at August 4, 2005 11:53 PM