… Where is the free American media and their kind hearted patrons when their G.I. Joes are pumping up Iraq with depleted uranium, napalm bombs, cluster munitions and poisonous gases even as these lines are being written? Is death less camera-friendly in Iraq or is it less worthy of the Americans' attention? Are Iraqis children of a lesser god? Go talk of Schiavo's right to live or die.
… When they were shedding tears on Schiavo like events, not very long back
an Iraqi girl Fatima was being repeatedly raped by the beasts that guarded Abu Ghareeb prison. Here is an excerpt from her heart rending letter to Iraqi resistance fighters;
"…I say to you: our wombs have been filled with the children of fornication by those sons of apes and pigs who raped us. Or I could tell you that they have defaced our bodies, spit in our faces, and tore up the little copies of the Qur’an that hung around our necks? ….By God, we have not passed one night since we have been in prison without one of the apes and pigs jumping down upon us to rip our bodies apart with his overweening lust. Kill us along with them! Destroy us along with them! Don’t leave us here to let them get pleasure from raping us….Leave their tanks and aircraft outside. Come at us here in the prison of Abu Ghurayb."The United Vegetative States of America by Anwaar Huusain, April 6, 2005
A truly fitting title for a poignant article. Did you ask: 'Why do they hate us?'.===
"Please provide the date, location, and names of persons involved in the abuse and we will attempt to conduct a search"Last year, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he had viewed the contents of three compact disks containing "blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman" acts of torture and abuse committed by some U.S. personnel at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. After Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) viewed some of them in a classified briefing, he testified that his "stomach gave out." NBC News reported that they show "American soldiers beating one prisoner almost to death, apparently raping a female prisoner, acting inappropriately with a dead body, and taping Iraqi guards raping young boys." Everyone who saw the photographs and videos seemed to shudder openly when contemplating what the reaction would be when they eventually were made public.
But they never were. Almost none of those images have been released into the public domain, and they may never be if the government has its way.
The Pentagon's successful efforts to deflect Freedom of Information Act requests for disclosure of the images – with identifying features obscured if necessary. Most recently, the Army has said that it has no idea what images are being requested, and that requesters must supply more details. "Please provide the date, location, and names of persons involved in the abuse and we will attempt to conduct a search," wrote Phillip J. McGuire, Director of the Army Crimes Records Center on March 7, 2005.
…"We've seen virtually no criminal investigations or criminal prosecutions," says ACLU staff attorney Jameel Jaffer, who plans to challenge the nondisclosure in court. "The vast majority of those photographs and videotapes don't relate to ongoing criminal investigations; on the contrary they depict things that the government approved of at the time and maybe approves of now."
Legalities are one thing, but the real motivation for choking off access is obvious:
Torture photos undermine support for the Iraq war. In the words of Donald Rumsfeld, “If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse.” (added emphasis)
"The Pentagon's Secret Stash: Why we'll never see the second round of Abu Ghraib photos," April 2005.
Erring