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mburbank mburbank is offline
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Old Oct 3rd, 2005, 01:44 PM        US soldiers begin to come forward on Routine torture.
Torture of Iraqis Was for 'Stress Relief,' Say US Soldiers
By Neil Mackay
The Sunday Herald

Sunday 02 October 2005

For the first time, American soldiers who personally tortured Iraqi prisoners have come forward to give testimony to human rights organisations about crimes they committed.

Three soldiers - a captain and two sergeants - from the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Mercury near Fallujah in Iraq have told Human Rights Watch how prisoners were tortured both as a form of stress relief and as a way of breaking them for interrogation sessions.

These latest revelations about the torture of Iraqi detainees come at a time when the Bush administration thought it could draw a line under the scandal of Abu Ghraib following last week's imprisonment of Private Lynndie England for her now infamous role in the abuse of prisoners and the photographing of torture.

The 82nd Airborne soldiers at FOB Mercury earned the nickname "The Murderous Maniacs" from local Iraqis and took the moniker as a badge of honour.

The soldiers referred to their Iraqi captives as PUCs - persons under control - and used the expressions "f***ing a PUC" and "smoking a PUC" to refer respectively to torture and forced physical exertion.

One sergeant provided graphic descriptions to Human Rights Watch investigators about acts of abuse carried out both by himself and others. He now says he regrets his actions. His regiment arrived at FOB Mercury in August 2003. He said: " The first interrogation that I observed was the first time I saw a PUC pushed to the brink of a stroke or a heart attack. At first I was surprised, like, 'This is what we are allowed to do?'"

The troops would put sand-bags on prisoners' heads and cuff them with plastic zip-ties. The sergeant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said if he was told that prisoners had been found with homemade bombs, "we would f*** them up, put them in stress positions and put them in a tent and withhold water. It was like a game. You know, how far could you make this guy go before he passes out or just collapses on you?"

He explained: "To 'f*** a PUC' means to beat him up. We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs and stomach, pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day. To 'smoke' someone is to put them in stress positions until they get muscle fatigue and pass out. That happened every day.

"Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. We did that for amusement."

Iraqis were "smoked" for up to 12 hours. That would entail being made to hold five-gallon water cans in both hands with out-stretched arms, made to do press-ups and star jumps. At no time, during these sessions, would they get water or food apart from dry biscuits. Sleep deprivation was also "a really big thing", the sergeant added.

To prepare a prisoner for interrogation, military intelligence officers ordered that the Iraqis be deprived of sleep. The sergeant said he and other soldiers did this by "banging on their cages, crashing them into the cages, kicking them, kicking dirt, yelling".

They'd also pour cold water over prisoners and then cover them in sand and mud. On some occasions, prisoners were tortured for revenge. "If we were on patrol and caught a guy that killed our captain or my buddy last week Ö man, it is human nature," said the sergeant - but on other occasions, he confessed, it was for "sport".

Many prisoners were completely innocent and had no part in the insurgency, he said - but intelligence officers had told soldiers to exhaust the prisoners to make them co-operate. He said he now knew their behaviour was "wrong", but added "this was the norm". "Trends were accepted. Leadership failed to provide clear guidance so we just developed it. They wanted intel [intelligence]. As long as no PUC came up dead, it happened. "

According to Captain Ian Fishback of the 82nd Airborne Division, army doctrine had been broken by allowing Iraqis who were captured by them to remain in their custody, instead of being sent "behind the lines" to trained military police.

Pictures of abuse at FOB Mercury were destroyed by soldiers after the scandal of Abu Ghraib broke.

However, Fishback told his company commander about the abuse and was told "remember the honour of the unit is at stake" and "don't expect me to go to bat for you on this issue if you take this up". Fishback then told his battalion commander who advised him to speak to the Judge Advocate General's (JAG) office, which deals with issues of military law.

The JAG told Fishback that the Geneva Conventions "are a grey area". When Fishback described some of the abuses he had witnessed the JAG said it was "within" Geneva Conventions.

Fishback added: " If I go to JAG and JAG cannot give me clear guidance about what I should stop and what I should allow to happen, how is an NCO or a private expected to act appropriately?"

Fishback, a West Point graduate who has served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, spent 17 months trying to raise the matter with his superiors. When he attempted to approach representatives of US Senators John McCain and John Warner about the abuse, he was told that he would not be granted a pass to meet them on his day off.

Fishback says that army investigators were currently more interested in finding out the identity of the other soldiers who spoke to Human Rights Watch than dealing with the systemic abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

Colonel Joseph Curtin, a senior army spokesman at the Pentagon, said: "We do take the captain seriously and are following up on this."
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kellychaos kellychaos is offline
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Old Oct 5th, 2005, 04:38 PM       
We got almost as bad in boot camp.

Max, I can appreciate your stance on human rights, I really can in most cases. What I'm at odds with sometimes is your black-and-white conspiracy theories that paint the intelligence community and military as commiters of attrocities against human rights, are always wrong and are with whom never never dealt. Sure this is hyperbole on my part but it's just the way you come across most of the time and it is just not so. Sure, there are a few bad apples and, for the most part, there cases are dealt with in a civilized and suitable manner. You can try your best in the military to do the right thing but, in the end, you still come up with friendly casualties or casualties on the enemy side that were not meant or people acting out that were not anticipated. Some of these may or may not be able to be helped but, I can assure you that most in the intelligence community and military have true conviction in their job and try to do their best even though it's in a situation they may not truly desire . The fact is that we need people that, although somewhat tunnel-visioned and overly patriotic are, at the same time, resolute in their values and belief in their convictions. I need them to stand in the way (as I once did) between THEM and me. Who else is going to do it? You?! You may not believe that some (or most?) of those at GITMO and other places have done harm and would have done future harm but I believe that those that are being detained wrongfully equate to the percentage of sharks caught in tuna nets ... unfortunate but a realistic and necessarily evil percentage in the cost of doing business.
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GAsux GAsux is offline
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Old Oct 5th, 2005, 07:19 PM       


YOU NEED ME ON THAT WALL!

Kin of ironic that it all goes down at Gitmo.
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mburbank mburbank is offline
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Old Oct 6th, 2005, 10:03 AM       
Kelly; Sure, but how many bad apples? Just two? And how far up the chain does it go? Just enlisted men? Sounds to me like there re a lot of unreleased photos. Do only Lyndi and her boyfriend appear in them? They must have been busy.

I don't think it's always been like this. I think bad things havce always happened, this being war which is in inherently crazy behavior. I think this time we have quite deliberately instituted a top down policy designed to be deliberately vague on standards of treatment and turn a blind eye unless their is incontravertable evidence. This is bad leadership, and I don't just mean incompetant, I mean evil.

This is an administration which deep down beieves torture works and dreams of movie like scenarios where only they can bludgeon some last minute info out of a truly evil person and save a city. It's a sick fantasy.

Plus, you need to keep in mind that even we admit this shit is routinely happening to completely innocent people. When we eventually let them go and they limp back into the community, what do yiou think that does for us.

I'm not saying thuis shit doesn't happen. I'm saying getting on top of it has to be a top priority, and if that means frying people above the rank of sargeant, lets get to it.
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Old Oct 6th, 2005, 11:30 AM       
Washington - An Army captain who has reported new allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq met Tuesday with Senator John McCain and staff aides on the House Armed Services Committee and gave them additional accounts of abuse in Iraq that other soldiers had sent him in recent days, Congressional aides said.

The officer, Capt. Ian Fishback, in a brief interview after his half-hour meeting with Mr. McCain declined to describe the new information he gave the senator or, in a separate meeting, to the House aides. But Captain Fishback said that since he and two other former members of the 82nd Airborne Division last month accused soldiers in their battalion in Iraq of routinely beating and abusing prisoners in 2003 and 2004, several other soldiers had contacted him and asked him to relay to lawmakers their own experiences.
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Old Oct 6th, 2005, 04:20 PM       
Quote:
Originally Posted by mburbank
I think this time we have quite deliberately instituted a top down policy designed to be deliberately vague on standards of treatment and turn a blind eye unless their is incontravertable evidence. This is bad leadership, and I don't just mean incompetant, I mean evil.
This part does worry me a bit in relation to Abu Grab (sp?) where I did, indeed here scuttle about some of the interrogation directives and techniques coming from quite high sources.

What I'm saying, in addition, is that there have been all kinds of covert operations with bad men doing bad things for any administration of which you can think. I've read books, watched PBS, listened to NPR, watched the History Channel and have been appalled at secret things that had been archived during that administration but have since come to light and have been appalled at administrations that I had thought represented my beliefs and values in just about every way. That was pure naiviety and, in a sense, hypocrisy. I know that throughout history, to be a major power in the world, you have to sometimes do evil things. It's inevitable. The trick is in presentation, in other words, PR. The truth is in that I knew that these types of things happened in all administrations to a point. It's human nature and simply has to happen to oil the gears of the machine. The hypocrisy is in feeling guilty in that, while I knew these covert operations (perhaps evil, perhaps not) took place in all administrations, I was taking swipes at those in whom I didn't share partisanship.

I've never had a problem with the "war on terror" even to the extent of comprimising a few liberties towards the cause. My real problem is embarking on question missions under vague circumstances and executing them poorly. I shouldn't have really been suprised by the Katrina debacle as, clearly, the high ranking officers of government agencies have been chosen due to cronyism, nepotism, ect without any thought as to substance or qualification. I should have taken that lesson from the way the war was run.
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