Tuesday 20 July 2004

    The biggest story of the Iraq war is not about missing weapons of mass destruction, or about deep-cover CIA officers getting their covers blown by vengeful White House agents, or even about 896 dead American soldiers. These have been covered to one degree or another, and then summarily dismissed by the American mainstream news media. The biggest story of the Iraq war has not enjoyed any coverage in America, though it has been exploding across the international news media for several weeks now.

    The biggest story of the Iraq war is about the torture of Iraqi children.

    A German TV magazine called 'Report Mainz' recently aired accusations from the International Red Cross, to the effect that over 100 children are imprisoned in U.S.- controlled detention centers, including Abu Ghraib. "Between January and May of this year, we've registered 107 children, during 19 visits in 6 different detention locations," said Red Cross representative Florian Westphal in the report.

    The report also outlined eyewitness testimony of the abuse of these children. Staff Sergeant Samuel Provance, who was stationed at Abu Ghraib, said that interrogating officers had gotten their hands on a 15 or 16 year old girl. Military police only stopped the interrogation when the girl was half undressed. A separate incident described a 16 year old being soaked with water, driven through the cold, smeared with mud, and then presented before his weeping father, who was also a prisoner.

    Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker reporter who first broke the story of torture at Abu Ghraib, recently spoke at an ACLU convention. He has seen the pictures and the videotapes the American media has not yet shown. "The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking," said Hersh. "And this is your government at war."

    Hersh described the prison scene as, "a series of massive crimes, criminal activity by the president and the vice president, by this administration," and that there has been, "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."

    Reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib and other American prisons have been public knowledge since the release of the Taguba Report. Recently, however, some 106 annexes to the report, previously classified, have also been released. U.S. News and World Report detailed the sum of what is contained in these annexes in an article titled 'Hell on Earth.'

    In it, U.S. News says, "The abuses took place, the files show, in a chaotic and dangerous environment made even more so by the constant pressure from Washington to squeeze intelligence from detainees. Riots, prisoner escapes, shootings, corrupt Iraqi guards, unsanitary conditions, rampant sexual misbehavior, bug-infested food, prisoner beatings and humiliations, and almost-daily mortar shellings from Iraqi insurgents--according to the annex to General Taguba's report, that pretty much sums up life at Abu Ghraib." According to coalition intelligence officers cited in a Red Cross report from last May, between 70% to 90% of Iraqi detainees held in these prisons were arrested "by mistake." That means they were innocent.

    The orders to treat prisoners in this fashion were not manufactured by the few "bad apples" we have heard about, but came from up on high. Brig. Gen Janis Karpinski, former commander of Abu Ghraib and now scapegoat for the abuses, says the truth about where the orders came from would be revealed in the trials of the accused soldiers. Memos ordering the abuse of prisoners were signed by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. The Justice Department and Mr. Bush's senior legal advisor went out of their way to craft arguments justifying this, claiming that torture isn't really torture and that the President is basically above the law.* see below

    Mr. Hersh will revisit this issue within the next several weeks. In the meantime, the American news media has an obligation to report on this situation. Photographic and videotape evidence of this torture is currently in the hands of the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the U.S. Congress and the White House. It must be released.

    We invaded a country based upon the false claim that Iraq was allied with al Qaeda. We invaded a country based on the false claim that there were weapons of mass destruction which needed to be destroyed. We promised freedom and democracy, and instead installed a CIA-trained strongman named Allawi who has all but created a dictatorship in Iraq, and who has been accused of killing Iraqi prisoners by his own hand. 896 American soldiers have died so we could do this.

    We took thousands of innocent civilians off the streets in Iraq and threw them into hellhole prisons, where they were beaten, raped, and killed. This story has faded from public view because no new pictures of the abuses have come out in the last several weeks. Those pictures are out there, and they show the rape and torture of children. The international media is reporting on it. Coalition ally Norway may be preparing to flee Iraq because of the allegations regarding these children.

    Where is the American news media? Where are the pictures? Who is responsible for this abomination? Torturing children in the name of freedom? Is this what we have become?

Commentary Bush and the torturing of Iraq's children By: Jack Dalton Online Journal Contributing Writer Download a .pdf file for printing. Adobe Acrobat Reader required. Click here to download a free copy. " . . . some men in order to present the supposed intentions of their adversaries have committed the most enormous cruelties . . ."—Clearchus, a Spartan General 500B.C. July 23, 2004—It appears that the torturing of Iraq's children is now a part of the Bush cabal's "policy" of "bringing democracy, liberation and freedom" to the Iraqi people. This goes way past just simply outrageous. Of the 535 members of Congress, only one member has a child in Iraq, or in uniform for that matter. Not one within the executive branch can make any such claim, as not one of their children is in uniform, let alone in Iraq. These are the people sending your sons and daughters off to kill and be killed in this Bush murderous misadventure in Iraq. Perpetual war for perpetual peace. In the meantime the dead grow in numbers like some kind of obscene monument basking in the self-righteousness of Bush and his group of Mayberry Machiavellis. Now come the reports of the torturing of children. The horrific reports of torture, rape and murder at Abu Gharib, as well as the other prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, are disappearing from the U.S. media, while not one word has been "reported" by them on the torture of children at the hands of U.S. personnel. So much for keeping the public informed. For over a week I've been reading reports from multiple sources, the International Red Cross, UNICEF, Amnesty International, about the young kids being held by the U.S. and the torture of them that has been caught on tape; but still no word in the U.S. media. The reports are in the hands of our Congress, but still not one word in the corporate media, nor from Congress. What ever happened to the right of the public to be kept informed? Seymore Hersh, a reporter for the New Yorker magazine, has yet to release the videos in his possession of the torturing of these children, but as he said, he is not done reporting on this. He said the worst was the screams of young boys being sodomized by U.S. personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison. What has happened to the soul of this nation that it can and will allow this kind of thing to happen and at the same time still support those that created the situation that sanctions the rape and torture of children? Is this a part of the American "values" we keep being told about by Bush and those that support him? So much for "Christian American values." It's our actions that are hated with such passion not our "freedoms." It behooves me to understand how the torturing of children is making America safer from those we are told "hate our freedoms." Good grief people, the lunatics are in charge of the asylum! How can anyone continue to support this? You cannot separate support for Bush from events like this. Doesn't anyone understand this? Continued support for him is continued support for what is being done, including the rape and torture of children. I do not know what country I now reside in, as it is not the country I served in uniform and war, nor is it the country I grew up learning about and believing in during the '40s and '50s. This country pontificates and pats itself on the back about being a nation of law, compassion, truth, justice and that believes in God. It does this while being eyeball deep in the commission of war crimes. If the torturing of children does not fit the definition of war crimes, nothing does. There is no justification for the torturing of children for any reason, under any circumstances by anyone, anytime, ever . . . period, end of story. Due to and because of this, I accuse George W. Bush and his entire administration of:crimes against humanity, Abuse of power and office, and war crimes. Each and every one of them, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al, should be tried for what they are . . . war criminals. While children are being tortured in Iraq, the headline story on CNN is about the torturing of chickens by KFC suppliers. What has happened to this country's priorities? Where is its conscience and soul? Jack Dalton publishes the Oregon Medical Marijuana Project.

The views expressed herein are the writers' own and do not necessarily reflect those of Online Journal.   Email editor@onlinejournal.com   Copyright © 1998-2004 Online Journal™. All rights reserved.    You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.  We believe, Bush, Jr. needs to clean up his father's messes (partner with Sadam Hussain, One World Order MKUltra Mind Control pervert, corrupt business dealings, drugs, etc.) and get rid of Cheney (henchman with Bush, Sr. in all of the above, guilty of bribery with Haliburton, etc.) and all other masonic, One World Order controllers.  Omission is worse than commission.  Clean up the mess or confess that you are a puppet!~  Kerry, from our research is part of the masonic, secret combinations as well.