Rape at Abu Ghraib

These murderous criminal pigs should be in the brig - or under it!

Embarrassed, my ass!

Further proof of their crimes, you mean (the article, not the poster)

How much more of this are we going to endure?

Hell, how much more are the Iraqis going to be forced to endure?

This is sickening beyond belief!

above all things, are these people that believe W and company are doing a good job with Iraq and will vote for him again. And they further add that the news media is wrong for showing the pictures from the prison.

Hell... just today, the mini-editorial in my newspaper, was shame on the major networks for not airing W's speech and how they had to find a radio to listen to their president.

Please .... wake me up from this nightmare.

political coffin. But let's call it as it is. These sons of bitches who raped these helpless, imprisoned women are complete and total scum. I don't care where they are from, I don't care whose fuckin' soldiers they are, they are animals who should be thrown under the jail for the rest of their lives. No excuses, no appologies, no passing the buck - these bastards make me sick and deserve no mercy, none!

1 - rape is an abhorrent crime that can NEVER be excused. Those guilty of it should be tried and (if found guilty) punished as harshly as possible.

2 - I can't believe that anyone actually wants photos of sexual abuse published. Yes, it would harm Bush but more importantly it would further the sickening degradation that the victims have already suffered. It will be difficult enough for victims to move on from this ordeal, but impossible if their ordeals are flashed around the world. Moreover, the additional backlash against Western troops and non-military personnel in Iraq (including a close female friend of mine) would be horrendous.

Why do people need to see the PICTURES of these terrible crimes before they react? It's absurd. Nobody with a heart or brain pleads for pictures of American rape victims to be published, so what could be gained in this instance?

If the Bush admin leaked these pics they would be perpetuating the abuse.

P.

No one really want to see a car accident but, when people see one they tend to slow down and look at the scene as they ride pass, no matter what side of the road the accident is on.

to have circulated from the victims point of view - and am not advocating that they should be.

See post #6 - the question is simply put - why call it "sex" when it is "rape"?

Why worry about "embarrassing" the *Co - why not punish the crime itself?

Why the stonewalling and the hiding from the facts?

The ones injured by the policies that are systemic in the abuse and torture of those imprisoned (whether justly or not) are not made whole by the lies and continuing shift of blame.

That's what not releasing the pictures is - a cover up. If the victim's faces need to be obscured, fine. The EVIDENCE must be released so America can make decisions in a democratic way having all of the facts.

let any pictures be used in court to prosecute the perpetrators to the fullest extent of the law.

But come on - nobody needs pictures of children being molested in order to feel revulsion at a paedophile's crimes, so how come we need it here?

P.

You say you are worried about the backlash to western troops from this. That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life. Do you honestly think the Iraqis and the rest of the Arab world don't already know what is going on over there? I got bad news for you pal. They already know. The only people who don't know that this is happening are people in the west who are more concerned about the latest news of Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant. And these people are the same fucking idiots who will be saying stupid shit like "they hate us for our freedoms" next time some western country has some buildings knocked down in retaliation for these criminal acts. Get it?

Don

"the Bush administration has refused to release photos of Iraqi women forced at gunpoint to bare their breasts—no doubt to spare Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld further embarrassment."

The clear implication is that the only reason that the Bush Administration would have for not releasing the abuse pics is to protect themselves from embarrassment. I extrapolated on to include the rape allegations which form the made body of the quote.

I merely pointed out that there are other, excellent, humanitarian reasons (not least of all the Geneva convention) for refusing to release the pics. You can claim Bush isn't acting out of these reasons, but you can't suggest that he should act to release the pics, because that would be wrong for other reasons.

"Do you honestly think the Iraqis and the rest of the Arab world don't already know what is going on over there? I got bad news for you pal. They already know."

Well d'uh...of course they already know. And they've had suspicions and rumours and witness accounts for months I suspect. However, did you fail to spot how violence against Western forces increased dramatically overnight when those photos of US Troops abusing prisoners surfaced? Did you notice how no Palestinians had desecrated Allied war graves until the (faked) pics of Brit soldiers appeared?

It strikes me as a bizarre point to claim that worrying about a "backlash against Western troops" caused by the release of these pics is "is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life", given that this is exactly what happened the last time pictures were released - the shitty situation got worse.

Please try to remain polite and calm when replying to a reasonable and thoughtful response - I take your implied point that only hideous abuse pictures splashed across the news can awake a sleeping public, but you're going to have to do some better arguing to convince me that it's the right thing to do.

Does anyone know if this has more to do with Britain's laws on slander and libel, etc? Greg Palast explains in his book that they essentially don't have freedom of speech like we define it and anytime the papers offend anyone (who matters) they basically have to issue a retraction. The photos are so similar to the ones American soldiers took that this doesn't make sense.

I believe there is another motive to this, as well, that of avoiding libel because an image can't prove intention, and maybe the editors are trying not to get sued (and bootlicking the admin., too, I understand). Only the victim can allege rape, or a witness, but a photo can't say "this is rape" or "this is consensual sex".

These victims, if they want justice, and if they aren't in an honor killing situation within their family, will have to come forward and sue for justice.

I was reading yesterday an account of how Spanish explorers encountering a SA tribe were only allowed to leave when they left a "slave-girl" with the tribe, whom the tribe apparently immediately gang-raped. This is a human dynamic that I can't quite understand, it's a male one, that "other 'tribe's' women are fair game under any circumstances. It kills me that we humans think we are so evolved and enlightened when our basic behaviors mimic "the lower animals" to the point of being indistinguishable.

Re: the pictures.

The newspaper has admitted that they weren't photos of Brit soldiers abusing an Iraqi, they were in fact staged. It didn't know that when they ran them, but that's hardly the point.

Regardless of whether they were a staged reconstruction of an actual event, the paper had put them forward as genuine abuse pics. It was because they claimed they were real that they got into trouble.

You can offend people all you like in the British press, but you're not allowed to lie about them - if you do, then you can get hung out to dry.

As far as I know, nobody has actually denied that British soldiers have ever abused any Iraqis - essentially, if the newspaper had just reported the story (as it was originally presented) then they would have been OK. Investigations into abuse are indeed continuing. The problem is that pictures were presented as something they weren't.

As for American freedom of speech.....I'll leave that to one of your marvellous rappers....

"Freedom of Speech - that's the motherf*ckin' bullsh!t,
You say the wrong thing they'll lock your ass up quick."

Ain't that the truth.

P.

I admit I have not been following this story as closely as some of the others. I, like many, am so cynical because of media consolidation here that when I heard the British pictures were fake, I was like "yeah, right, sure they are." I have re-read Palast's summation about the differences in American and British journalistic rules and I still don't quite understand it. It's actually shameful that this is getting so much play here, because wasn't that paper a tabloid anyway, and don't they fake pics all the time? That this is even reported here is all political manuevering to confuse the public.

In no way was I saying that American journalism is superior, God knows I trust the Guardian over any U.S. paper, and seems like most of the important stories here are linked from foreign papers.

Anyway, I didn't mean to come off as superior at all. Sorry if that is the impression I gave.

To be honest, the tabloids are very low-standard but they don't generall fake pictures and present them as real - only The Sport and the Sunday Sport do that, and they have stories about buses being found on the moon and are generally full of pics of nude women.

The tabloid in question (The Mirror I believe) didn't fake the pictures itself - essentially, some soldiers tried to sell them a story about Brit troops abusing Iraqis and the Mirror said, "Wow, that would be worth loads more if you'd got some pictures." Mysteriously, the soldiers produced some pictures a while later and the Mirror printed them as genuine.

Allegedly, although I think that the pics were good fakes, the Mirror should and could have detected problems with them before putting them on its front page. It now accepts that they were fake and has apologised and the editor got sacked.

Of course, the fact that the Mirror was one of the most anti-war papers and has some very pro-war American shareholders has made many believe that the editor was set up so that a more war-friendly stance would be taken by the new ed.

Of course, this has distracted attention away from whether Brit troops are actually abusing prisoners or not....

Your original post was discussing whether photos of rapes should be released or not. Now you are speaking about photos of bare breasts. That comparison is invalid.

But for us to put our heads in the sand and have American politicians running around comparing what happened in Iraq to frat pranks will only cause more westerners to die in the long term. And not only western soldiers will die over this either. I do not want my family members or other civilians in our countries to be killed for crimes that US and UK soldiers have perpetrated in Iraq. And that is what is why a cover up of these crimes is unacceptable to me. Let those responsible take the fall for their actions in a very public way. No cover ups. If they are found guilty in a public trial with all of the facts known to the entire world we just might save some innocent lives in the future. Let the bastards who did this pay for their own crimes.

I hope that was calm enough for you. But if one of my family members here in the USA dies over this due to retaliation for these crimes and cover ups you can forget about me being calm in the future.

Don

They are both types of sexual abuse of prisoners.

Nobody on here is advocating any sort of cover-up of these crimes, I merely indicated that there were perfectly good reasons for not releasing pictures of the victims.

It strikes me that we have a very difficult decision here:

1 - we release the photos in order to wake-up mentally dozy citizens to the reality of what's happening in Iraq, but we risk further traumatising victims and retaliation against our troops and civilians around the world.

2 - we don't release the photos and hope that people just take an interest in the stories themselves, which protects the victims and lessens the chances of reprisals, but which gives Bush & Co. the chance to minimise negative impact and brush the whole thing under the carpet.

To pretend that there aren't at least 2 options worth considering is very odd. Do you think that your anger towards Bush and desire to bring him down for all his crimes may just have clouded your mind on this one? I agree that bringing perpetrators to trial is the only way forward, but can't you concede that in making these events as public as possible you might INCREASE attacks on the US?

Why are you arguing with me for Christ's sake? Why on earth do you think I'd want you to be calm if your family had been killed in reprisals against this? Nobody is telling you to "Be calm whatever happens", I'm asking you to be polite on a democratic discussion board to people on the same side as you.

Peace.

One (disclosure) is bad. The other (cover up) is even worse. Because disclosure just might stop more soldiers from doing this again. A cover up will not accomplish stopping other soldiers from doing this again. It will only encourage more of them to do the same.

Peace.

Don

No, now is NOT the time to "tone it down." Correct, don't be disrespectful. However, release these horrendous pictures because something this atrocious may be the ONLY thing that will wake up the American sheeple to the impending totalitarian government that will fully emerge if BushCo once again steals the Presidential election. Show all the photos and let the American People see the horrors that too often accompany *real* warfare.

I'm torn on this one. I know it took images for me to really appreciate what the victims of the third reich went through, I can still see the cold, naked women lined up waiting to die while the guards stood by smirking. I can still see the woman being unstrapped from the table and sitting up to clutch her right leg which was solid black from toes to knee, burned by the nazis in a medical experiment. There is a difference in the psychic reaction between seeing something and reading about it; maybe most of us operate under the adage 'believe nothing of what you hear (read) and only half of what you see'.

I guess the truth is that the images won't go away, they will be published in a book someday, and shown in history classes, and all that. But what I deleted from my first post is that the repukes are using delay tactics, pushing back the inevitable firestorm as far as they can and as long as they can, hopefully 'til after the election. Having this regime re-elected would be tragic to the world.

Thank God we live in the age of DNA testing. I don't know in what setting the soldiers could be tried, but the victims I hope will be given access to means to try these soldiers for rape and also hold them accountable for support of the child.

parts blurred or "pixelated" or whatever they call it. Rove has been using imagery over text during this whole presidency and kicking our butts with it, because he understands that the public by and large (or at least the Bush base) doesn't read. And the only thing that will make them read a story like this are images like this. Otherwise they won't believe it. That is the sad truth. I have been amazed that so many men have come forward to identify themselves in the previous pictures.

It's western culture tripping over itself because it can't fully see women in sexual scenarios as victims, there always seems to be culpability and obscenity when a woman's naked body is exposed.

One or two of the photos in question would be all it would take to sear the truth in to the minds of the public and make them read the articles. I hope to high heaven the children these women bear are DNA tested and the soldiers who fathered them are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in very public trials.

I sincerely hope this controversy will open the muslim psyche enough to re-think their whole justification of honor killings and stoning of women suspected of adultery,etc, because they certainly can't hold these women to blame for these rapes. I know Iraq was a secular gov't before the war, but I'm sure there are fundamentalists there; a woman's access to freedom probably depends on how strict a family she is born into.

Hard to disagree with, although I'm not sure how I'd feel if I saw a picture of myself being abused splashed across world media.

OK, nobody would know it was me in the picture, but I'D know, and I think I'd feel violated by it.

P.

as many rape survivors will attest. Incidences of secondary wounding are often more painful than the assault itself because the brain tends to numb the victim during the inital violation.

It's a question of which course of action serves the greater good. I'd hate to have to make that call.

I don't understand secondary wounding, what that terminology means.

I wonder if they gave these women the option of having their faces and "sex" organs ( I don't consider breasts a sex organ, but...) pixelated would they agree to the release of the photos. Riverbend says that for Iraqis this is worse than death, they would rather die than be sexually abused.

I guess the reason they didn't blot out the faces of those in the nazi films is because they were all deceased, or maybe they did not have the technology.

As a victim of sexual abuse, I can say for myself that secondary wounding for me has been living within a family that refuses to acknowledge the harm done to my psyche by actions of those whose care I was left in, and the denial and minimization that they to this day practice with regards to my abuse. When I sought therapy and began talking about the abuse, I was told that I should stop "bragging about it." How sick is that?

I want these soldiers to be tried publicly for rape. How much of a stretch is it for a soldier who is being commanded to put prisoners in explicitly sexual positions to surmise that he can get away with rape (and murder) in these situations too.

People who have post traumatic stress disorder from sexual assault are vulnerable to secondary wounding when something occurs that reminds them of the initial trauma.

THis can occur as a visual stimulus, it can be cyclical (anniversary of the assault) or it can occur if someone discounts or disbelieves that they were terribly victimized or that they should just be glad it wasn't worse.

I'm sorry for the treatment you received and this is exactly the type of behavior that makes being a survivor even more difficult than it has to be.

The BFEE and their press cronies can manipulate the descriptions of the photos to soften the effect (case in point - the picture that is described as an American soldier "having sex" with an Iraqi woman), but photos speak for themselves. People in denial, and BFEE apologists have a much harder time explaining away photographic evidence.

It is a terrible dilemma that the BFEE has put decent people in, advocating the publishing of photos of sexual abuse as the lesser of two evils, but I don't see how we can get around it. The faces of the assault victim should be blurred out, of course.

"There is one photo of an American soldier having sex with an Iraqi woman."

No...there was one photo of an american soldier RAPING an Iraqi woman.


The POW's weren't "sodomized" with broom handles and chemical lights..They were RAPED anally.

Why is it almost impossible for the media to use the word RAPE in connection with American soldiers?

I remember there were U.S. military members about a dozen years ago who were found to have raped women in Japan. If I recall correctly, they were pretty much skinned and tacked up on the wall for it (or, as my first husbands buddies in the Air Force used to say, "sent to Leavenworth to make little rocks out of big rocks"). I realize it was during a time of relative peace, and there was nothing going on in Asia at the time, but I thought the right were the ones who didn't like what they call the "moral relativity" of the left. Like everything else, they're hypocrites about that, too, I guess. Big shocker there.

(which is what they're describing no matter how delicately they phrase it) they'd have to acknowledge what a huge scandal this is and examine the whole premise of this illegal war and basically stop acting as apologists. It's not like that's going to happen.

And welcome to DU! :hi:

And for the same reason that the Nazi death camps were referred to as "work camps" in the late 30's and early 40's by the US media. It is because the media in the USA does what they are told to do.

Don

http://www.juancole.com/2004_05_01_juancole_archive.html#108557724965023992

It is clear, however, that Iraqi women were also made to strip naked, were photographed in that compromising position, and it is alleged that some were raped by US military personnel.

. . .

A scandal that has not yet broken in the press is the story of how many women ended up in US prisons. The fact is, few were suspected of having themselves committed a crime or an act of insurgency. Rather, they were taken as hostages or potential informants because their husbands or sons were wanted by the US military. This kind of arrest, however, is a form of collective punishment and not permitted under the Fourth Geneva Convention governing military occupations of civilian populations. The sexual abuse of these women is therefore a double crime.

. . .

Eventually these photographs of abused or tortured Muslim women are likely to leak, and the reaction in the Muslim world will be explosive.

our last president and the woman who came on to him

you raise the ugly and obvious fact that hypocrisy thy name is Bush is the reality we live in today.

It is entitled: The other prisoners (The Women of Abu Ghraib)

Here is the thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=570508

lose momentum. The public clearly wants to put this entire matter out of its mind and retreat to the world of pabulum cliches. We can't let this happen.

I was getting my oil changed the other day when the story about the "fake" British photos surfaced.

The woman next to me nearly jumped out of her chair and looked all around the room smiling; it seems she didn't hear the word "British" or that the paper was the Daily Mirror.

Now I am sure she thinks all the pics are faked, which is why the American press is covering the story so heavily. As liberals we haven't quite got a grip on the cynical approach to mind control of their base that the right employs. They know they are not readers, and that once they are confused the least little bit, they will quit investigating and rely on what their preacher or repuke senator or father or husband tells them is the truth. So the right aims to keep the public as confused as possible, and knows the best way to do this is to keep two conflicting sides of the issue in the press at all times. Which is why they say they are supporting programs when they are gutting them. It's that "bigger the lie" technique. The only thing that can combat this IS an image, period.

And we must push for the prosecution of the guilty.
Rape should not be viewed as 'business as usual.'
Let the prosecution be vigorous, the punishments harsh,
and let the whole world watch.

Call me a bleeding heart liberal, but I think forcing somebody at gunpoint to perform oral sex qualifies as rape.

Some of the rape photos that are being circulated on the internet have been traced back to a Hungarian porno site that staged them.

I'm talking about the photos aired on 60 minutes II, of Abu Ghraib prisoners.

SOTU speech. He was trying to soft pedal this so if/when it hit the public he would be on record as condemning it, remember we all thought what the hell is he talking about that in the speech. You wonder how many of these men is somebody's husband back here. Could a wife knowing her husband did this excuse it to these things happen in war? When I read the part below where the attorney went in to meet with her clients and was raped I just felt sick.

"She told us she had been raped. Several American soldiers had raped her. She had tried to fight them off, and they had hurt her arm. She showed us the stitches. She told us, 'We have daughters and husbands. For God's sake don't tell anyone about this.' "


This should be a blight on the US just like the Holocaust "Never let it die, lest we forget" For those who don't want to trouble their beautiful minds I say sit them in the front for daily viewing.

They will end up in the hands of clerics implementing Sharia law and be used to justify killing the women involved.

It's all about protecting the victim.

:eyes:

This prosecution must move forward swiftly lest we forget.

Honor killings are still common. There was a tragic story in NYT last year about a little girl, 9 years old I think, who had been abducted and raped during the unrest following the invasion. Her family was filled with disgust toward her, and both of her parents beat her. They can't release those photos to the public with any identifying characteristics of the victims--it will be a death sentence.