"The case shocked many Iraqi and US officials, harkening back to images of the abuses of Iraqis by US guards at the Abu Ghraib prison that inflamed insurgents and tarnished America’s image worldwide."
We have never regained that image, and probably never will unlesss we do a 180 and repent.
What is offensive there is the AmeriKan MSM's implication that because Abu Ghraib was outed the torture stopped.
Ah, another day in the life....
"Iraqi says US troops abused him in prison; Other witnesses dispute account at trial of sailor" by Lara Jakes, Associated Press | April 22, 2010
BAGHDAD — An Iraqi prisoner suspected of planning an attack that killed four American contractors testified yesterday at a court-martial of a Navy SEAL that he was beaten by US troops while hooded and tied to a chair.
He got off easy.
But (sigh) on the trial’s opening day, defense witnesses for Petty Officer First Class Julio Huertas cast strong doubt on the testimony by the terror suspect and that of a fellow sailor who said he saw the assault.
Oh, so it never happened.
The trial stems from an attack on four Blackwater security contractors who were driving through the city of Fallujah west of Baghdad in early 2004.
Remember it was reported at the time that they were cooks, not assassins.
The men were killed and then crowds dragged two of the burnt bodies through the streets and hanged them from a bridge over the Euphrates River — pictures that became iconic of the US-led war in Iraq.
Actually, it is this one, MSM:
I must admit, that one sticks with me the most.
The images drove home to many the rising power of the insurgency and helped spark a bloody US invasion of the city to root out the insurgents.
Yeah, we dumped WMD on them like Israel did Gaza -- because they deserved it.
I guess that's why the U.S. vetoes the war crimes charges at the U.N. -- especially since AmeriKa gave 'em the stuff!
Related: Deformed babies in Fallujah
Yeah, the depleted uranium you never read about didn't help, either.
Two of the Blackwater guards were former SEALs, the Navy’s elite special forces team.
War is good bidness!
Ahmed Hashim Abed was arrested on multiple terrorism charges Sept. 1 during a raid on his home by US and Iraqi security forces. He was the subject of a years’ long US search for the killers of the contractors. He testified yesterday....
The courts-martial of three Navy SEALS accused in the Iraqi prisoner’s abuse case have outraged many Americans who see it as a sign that their government is going soft on terrorists.
Who?
Who is the MSM citing with no evidence?
Sorry, gang, but WE ARE NOT FOOLED ANYMORE by the GOVERNMENT CREATED, FUNDED, and DIRECTED "terrorists," and are APPALLED at the WAR CRIMINAL TORTURE based on LIES as well as the MASS MURDER!!!
Members of Congress have urged the US defense secretary to drop the charges.
Oh, the ISRAELI-CONTROLLED CONGRESS is the source of the outrage!
Ha-ha-ha-ha, pfffffft!
Ooops!
POOPED my PANTS because I couldn't make it to the Al Qaeda!!
Huertas, 28, of Blue Island, Ill., is the first of three SEALs to go on trial for the alleged assault. He is not accused of actually abusing the prisoner but of failing to safeguard him and attempting to influence the testimony of another service member.
A verdict in Huertas’s case is expected as early as today.
Huertas’s attorneys yesterday showed jurors photographs of Abed after the alleged beating that pictured a visible cut inside his lip but no obvious signs of bruising or injuries anywhere else.
Later, an Army dentist, Captain Curtis Schmidt, testified that the cut inside Abed’s lip could have been caused by a cold sore or a bite. At worst, Schmidt said, only an indirect blow — such as Abed’s head hitting the floor without force — would have inflicted what he described as a minor injury. Schmidt testified as an expert for the defense and never examined Abed.
Two other military medics who saw Abed in the hours after the alleged incident cast doubt that he had been beaten while in US custody.
In earlier testimony....
Our torturers always get acquitted if charged, world; it's called AmeriKan Justice.
"2d Navy SEAL cleared in abuse case" by Associated Press | April 24, 2010
BAGHDAD — A US military judge yesterday cleared a Navy SEAL of any wrongdoing in the alleged beating of an Iraqi prisoner suspected of masterminding the grisly 2004 killings of four American contractors.
The Blackwater contractors’ burned bodies were dragged through the streets and two were hanged from a bridge over the Euphrates River in the former insurgent hotbed of Fallujah, in what became a major turning point in the Iraq war.
And we had and heard about a million of those over the last seven years.
After a daylong trial and fewer than two hours of mulling the evidence, Navy Judge Commander Tierny Carlos found Petty Officer Second Class Jonathan Keefe of Yorktown, Va., not guilty of dereliction of duty, a spokesman said.
It was the second verdict in as many days to throw out charges against three SEALs, the Navy’s elite special forces unit, accused in the abuse case. The trials have drawn fire from at least 20 members of Congress and other Americans who it see it as coddling terrorists to overcompensate for the notorious Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
How do you compensate for torturing innocent people?
Keefe was not charged with assaulting terror suspect Ahmed Hashim Abed, but of failing to protect him in the hours after he was captured and brought to a US military base on Sept. 1 last year....
The evidence largely pitted the testimony of Abed and a junior Navy whistleblower against that of several SEALs and other Navy sailors who denied that Abed had been abused.
--more--"So the other guy got off, too, huh, Globe.
Thanks for following up.
Turns out if it ain't us torturing people it is our puppet of an ally:
"Rights group says torture common at secret Iraq jail; Prime minister closes prison, moves detainees" by Lara Jakes, Associated Press | April 29, 2010
BAGHDAD — Iraqi men held for months at a secret prison outside Baghdad were systematically tortured and forced to sign confession statements that in at least some cases they were forbidden to read, according to a new report by a human rights group released yesterday.
Some of the detainees, mostly Sunnis from the northern city of Mosul, were beaten by Iraqi guards so badly they lost teeth and urinated blood for days afterward, said the report by New York-based Human Rights Watch. Others were raped, given electric shocks, and deprived of air, the report also said.
So NOTHING HAS CHANGED even thought the evil dictator was hung.
The Iraqi government quickly shut down the prison after the abuse was revealed last week, and released or transferred its 431 detainees. The government also vowed to investigate the abuses, and so far, three army officers have been arrested.
One wonders why I am only reading about it now.
The reports of horrific beatings and abuse at the Defense Ministry-run secret facility at the old Muthanna airport in west Baghdad has angered the country’s Sunni population, who sees it as another example of persecution at the hands of Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government.
Dalshad Zebari, a Sunni-Kurdish lawmaker from Nineveh Province, where most of the detainees were from, said a government investigation was not enough and there should be international involvement.
“We will ask the UN and the International Red Cross for an urgent investigation of these human rights violations and to force the Iraqi government to make public the names of those involved in these cruel crimes and ensure they face justice.’’
The case also shocked many Iraqi and US officials, harkening back to images of the abuses of Iraqis by US guards at the Abu Ghraib prison that inflamed insurgents and tarnished America’s image worldwide.
No Americans were involved in the secret prison, part of a row of barracks on an Iraqi Army base at the Al-Muthanna airport. Officials said the US Embassy in Baghdad first learned of it within the last month and leaned on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to shut it down.
Yeah, paragons of virtue, we.
“What happened at Muthanna is an example of the horrendous abuse Iraqi leaders say they want to leave behind,’’ Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at the Human Rights Watch, said late Tuesday. “Everyone responsible, from the top on down, needs to be held accountable.’’
But no one will be.
See: Tortuous Immunity
The prisoners were arrested last fall and accused of aiding and abetting terrorism.
Human Rights Watch interviewed 42 of the detainees after they were transferred to Al-Rusafa Detention Center in eastern Baghdad. The group said many of them bore fresh scars and injuries, and called their accounts of being tortured “credible and consistent.’’
Among the stories related by HRW was one of a detainee interrogated while hanging upside down and being beaten. He was then smothered until he passed out, only to be awakened by an electric shock.
Related: Occupation Iraq: Abu Ghraib Wasn't the Beginning
Yeah, AmeriKa had the torture regime all ready to roll.
A 24-year-old detainee with severe leg injuries lost several front teeth in beatings, the report said.
The detainees’ relatives alerted Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry to the abuses. The abuses were first reported last week by the Los Angeles Times.
--more--"
Or it is buried in the back of something else:
"Iraq vote recount halted after protest; Dispute stalls formation of new government" by Rebecca Santana, Associated Press | May 4, 2010
BAGHDAD — In Washington yesterday, a judge on the US military’s highest court asked whether a “Catch-22’’ prevented the alleged ringleader of detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq from getting a fair trial in 2005. Judge James E. Baker raised the question during oral arguments on Army Specialist Charles A. Graner’s request that the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces set aside his conviction and order a new trial.
WTF?
Another trial after they failed to follow up on the others?
--more--"
Related: Globe Editorial Still mired in Hussein’s legacy
And the Globe is still mired in you-know-what.
