Saturday, July 23, 2005

Rape, Necrophilia, Sodomy ...

Wanna know why the Bush administration is defying a court order to release additional pictures and videos shot at Abu Ghraib? The May 8, 2004 Boston Herald gives us a clue:
Signaling the worst revelations are yet to come, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the additional photos show "acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman." [...]

The unreleased images 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, according to NBC News.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said the scandal is "going to get worse" and warned that the most "disturbing" revelations haven't yet been made public.

"The American public needs to understand, we're talking about rape and murder here," he said. "We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience; we're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges."
Seymour Hersh added:
The women were passing messages saying "Please come and kill me, because of what's happened". ... The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking.
More at Kos.

I thought the Bush Regime is proud of how its spreading democracy. The non-US world has known about these pictures and videos for more than a year. Shouldn't we see what our tax dollars are paying for?

6 comments:

allan said...

Jeff at Rigorous Intuition (one of my favorite blogs) notes that the Bush administration argued that "releasing the photographs would violate the Geneva Conventions because prisoners might be identified and 'further humiliated,'" and says:

"You see, it's quite simple really: it's the evidence of torture, not the torture itself - including, reportedly, child rape - that violates the prisoners' rights. It's their images which are protected by the Geneva Conventions. They themselves are not. ...

"America has already processed the softer scenes of prisoners set upon by dogs, stacked naked in pyramids, forced to perform sex acts on one-another, smeared in excrement and posed for electrocution. And the usual Americans have made peace with them, in their 'freedom isn't free' subterfuge of every decent thing. Are they ready for the harder stuff?"

Crabbi said...

I'm speechless. It's not the torture, it's the pictures of the torture? WTF?

laura k said...

Yeah. All us blabbermouths are speechless. It's so beyond the beyond. I feel like I've fallen down the rabbit hole.

Anonymous said...

I just love these guys... first they say these people are illegal combatants and therefore have no rights under the Geneva convention... and then they say that they can't release photos because of the rights they have under the Geneva convention! You can't have it both ways "dubya". What is even more incredulous is that the media is not screaming over this.

Pete4r

Anonymous said...

Sounds more like an episode of OZ than the politics of our time. Yet somehow, this is our reality ...

Kyle_From_Ottawa said...

Except our house it right beside the tracks....I'd rather they wouldn't drive their train off the rails. Maybe President Jeb Bush will do a better job (I'm resigned to a wholy dynasty of Bushes reigning for the rest of my life).