The Detention and Subsequent Abuse of Female Iraqis

[Ant]

Excerpts taken from The American Prospect: http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=9044

That afternoon, the American officer lit a mixture of human feces and urine in a metal container and gave Selwa a heavy club to stir it. She recalls, “The fire from the pot felt very strong on my face.” She leans forward and sweeps her hands through the air to show how she stirred the excrement. “I became very tired,” she says. “I told the sergeant I couldn’t do it.”

“There was another man close to us. The sergeant came up to me and whispered in my ear, ‘If you don’t, I will tell one of the soldiers to fuck you.’”

____

“Whenever I remember, it’s like a fire goes out,” she says. “Once I saw the guards hit a woman, probably 30 years old. They put her in an open area and said, ‘Come out so you can see her.’ They pulled her by the hair and poured ice water on her. She was screaming and shouting and crying as they poured water into her mouth. They left her there all night. There was another girl; the soldiers said she wasn’t honest with them. They said she gave them wrong information. When I saw her, she had electric burns all over her body.”

____

Another woman held in Abu Ghraib was Mithal, a 55-year-old supervisor at an electrical company. Arrested on February 26, 2004, she was taken to Al-Sijood Palace, in Baghdad’s “Green Zone,” and asked about her neighbor, a retired government worker. “I think they were confusing him with some big, important person,” she says.

“When they didn’t get the answer they wanted, they would put the hood on my head and yank it and make me run across a yard,” she says. “I was barefoot, and the yard was filled with sharp stones. The American soldier said if I didn’t cooperate, they’d put me in prison for 30 years. He said if I were his mother, he would kill me. This lasted for eight hours. Then they put me in a wooden room and sat me on a chair. They said bad words -- hurtful words. They covered me in blankets, one after another until I couldn’t breathe. Eight blankets. I pounded my feet against the floor because I was suffocating.

“After that, they took me to [a detention center near Baghdad International Airport]. There, I heard a young woman crying out from her cell, telling an American soldier to leave her alone. She said, ‘I am a Muslim woman.’ Her voice was high-pitched and shaky. Her husband, who was in a cell down the hall, called out, ‘She is my wife. She has nothing to do with this.’ He hit the bars of his cell with his fists until he fainted. The Americans poured water over his face and made him wake up. When her screams became louder, the soldiers played music over the speakers. Finally, they took her to another room. I couldn’t hear anything more.”

Afterward, Mithal says, she was taken to Abu Ghraib. “They stripped me and searched me,” she remembers. “Then they gave me blankets and put me in solitary confinement in a room 2 meters by 1 and a half meters. There was no light in the room. I was there for three months.”

____

Were Iraqi women raped or sexually assaulted by Americans at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities? None of the women I interviewed would talk about it. “You’re asking this question in a culture that kills you for being raped,” explains Khoshaba, referring to so-called honor killings, in which women are slain for behaving “dishonorably,” which can mean they’ve had the bad luck to be sexually assaulted.

There are no reliable statistics on honor killings in Iraq. But Yanar Mohamed, 43, president of the Baghdad-based group Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, has opened shelters in Baghdad and Tikrit for women who are afraid of family members. About 10 women, including a 24-year-old former soldier, Liqwa, who claims an American soldier raped her, have stayed in the shelters.

____

Nabil is a 37-year-old human-rights lawyer married to Selwa’s oldest daughter. He is a tall man with a high forehead, and he is dressed in a white shirt, cufflinks, a wool vest, and wire-rimmed glasses. (He asked me not to use his real name “so I can sleep soundly at night.”) He was arrested on September 28, 2003, and held at various detention facilities, including Abu Ghraib, until May 28, 2004. A military official confirms that Nabil was released from Abu Ghraib on that date.

“In November or December, I really can’t remember, I was in a room and could hear sounds coming from outside,” he says, drinking tea in an Amman hotel room. “The windows were broken, and they were covered with wooden panels. Sometimes I could hear screams and shouts. Women were calling for mercy. There were also children between the ages of 10 and 12. The children became hysterical. I was told the women were tortured in front of their children. One day, a sheik came back from a medical clinic where he’d been treated. He was in tears. ‘What happened?’ we asked. He told us he had seen a young girl, 15 years old, with internal bleeding. She had been raped over and over again by the soldiers, and she could no longer talk. He is a deeply religious man. But that night, he shouted at Allah. ‘How is it possible that you are there and these things are happening?!’ he said.”

____

This is the stuff pussies like woodrow and trauma support.

[Woodrow]

This is the stuff pussies like woodrow and trauma support.

And most clearly, you attempt to replace intelligence with some pathetic form of online aggression in just about every post you write, as if, the nastier your post is the more credibility it will garner.  I should have added insecure to the list, but I didn't bother at the time.

That's funny. I never remember supporting abuse of any kind!

[*Jamal*]

This is the stuff pussies like woodrow and trauma support.

And most clearly, you attempt to replace intelligence with some pathetic form of online aggression in just about every post you write, as if, the nastier your post is the more credibility it will garner.  I should have added insecure to the list, but I didn't bother at the time.

That's funny. I never remember supporting abuse of any kind!

I disagree with Engel on a lot of things, but I don't remember him ever supporting abuse... Trauma the faggot does though.

[Ant]

This is the stuff pussies like woodrow and trauma support.

And most clearly, you attempt to replace intelligence with some pathetic form of online aggression in just about every post you write, as if, the nastier your post is the more credibility it will garner.  I should have added insecure to the list, but I didn't bother at the time.

That's funny. I never remember supporting abuse of any kind!

You imply your support by supporting GWB, his administration, and Alberto Gonzales.  You've also displayed your admiration for Rush Limbaugh who has on record condoned the Abu Graib abuses.  Don't try to play politician.  You saying you don't support toture and abuse is akin to a southern who has never on record said anything racist supporting the KKK but claiming not to condone racism.  If you support the people who are responsible for this scandal, then you condone these  acts. You should be embarassed at yourself and your party.  But feel free to give you own opinion on this scandal and who is accountable.  Maybe I am wrong.


Trauma has condoned these activities. 

[Woodrow]

You imply your support by supporting GWB, his administration, and Alberto Gonzales.  You've also displayed your admiration for Rush Limbaugh who has on record condoned the Abu Graib abuses.  Don't try to play politician.  You should be embarassed at yourself and your party.  But feel free to give you own opinion on this scandal and who is accountable.  Maybe I am wrong.


Trauma has condoned these activities. 

Oh I get it. Since I supported the war, that means I support Abuse?!!

Please show me where I've shown my "admiration for Rush Limbaugh"

Keep making shit up. It's funny to me!

[Ant]

You imply your support by supporting GWB, his administration, and Alberto Gonzales.  You've also displayed your admiration for Rush Limbaugh who has on record condoned the Abu Graib abuses.  Don't try to play politician.  You should be embarassed at yourself and your party.  But feel free to give you own opinion on this scandal and who is accountable.  Maybe I am wrong.


Trauma has condoned these activities. 

Oh I get it. Since I supported the war, that means I support Abuse?!!

Please show me where I've shown my "admiration for Rush Limbaugh"

Keep making shit up. It's funny to me!

you quote him.  i'm not going to go diggin through threads... you posted a whole article by Rush Limbaugh once.  if you support something you are responsible for its consequences, of course republicans no longer understand the concept of responsibility. 

[Thirteen]

This is the stuff pussies like woodrow and trauma support.

And most clearly, you attempt to replace intelligence with some pathetic form of online aggression in just about every post you write, as if, the nastier your post is the more credibility it will garner.  I should have added insecure to the list, but I didn't bother at the time.

That's funny. I never remember supporting abuse of any kind!

I disagree with Engel on a lot of things, but I don't remember him ever supporting abuse... Trauma the faggot does though.

that's what i loved about his support and defense for that retarded boy in that picture. rape, torture and murder OK! name calling bad!

[Thirteen]

You imply your support by supporting GWB, his administration, and Alberto Gonzales.  You've also displayed your admiration for Rush Limbaugh who has on record condoned the Abu Graib abuses.  Don't try to play politician.  You should be embarassed at yourself and your party.  But feel free to give you own opinion on this scandal and who is accountable.  Maybe I am wrong.


Trauma has condoned these activities. 

Oh I get it. Since I supported the war, that means I support Abuse?!!

Please show me where I've shown my "admiration for Rush Limbaugh"

Keep making shit up. It's funny to me!

you quote him.  i'm not going to go diggin through threads... you posted a whole article by Rush Limbaugh once.  if you support something you are responsible for its consequences, of course republicans no longer understand the concept of responsibility. 

i think it was me that quoted Rush that got you all bent out of shape.

but honestly, if engel did quote Rush once, how would that effect his posistion on abuse? just because he identified with one thing a man says, doesn't mean he idolizes the guy

i'm in the same boat...i quoted one article from Rush and i'm also against torture

[Ant]

You imply your support by supporting GWB, his administration, and Alberto Gonzales.  You've also displayed your admiration for Rush Limbaugh who has on record condoned the Abu Graib abuses.  Don't try to play politician.  You should be embarassed at yourself and your party.  But feel free to give you own opinion on this scandal and who is accountable.  Maybe I am wrong.


Trauma has condoned these activities. 

Oh I get it. Since I supported the war, that means I support Abuse?!!

Please show me where I've shown my "admiration for Rush Limbaugh"

Keep making shit up. It's funny to me!

you quote him.  i'm not going to go diggin through threads... you posted a whole article by Rush Limbaugh once.  if you support something you are responsible for its consequences, of course republicans no longer understand the concept of responsibility. 

i think it was me that quoted Rush that got you all bent out of shape.

but honestly, if engel did quote Rush once, how would that effect his posistion on abuse? just because he identified with one thing a man says, doesn't mean he idolizes the guy

i'm in the same boat...i quoted one article from Rush and i'm also against torture

no he quoted rush too, and again... if you vote for people who allow and condone racism you condone racism.  Just like if you support an administration that condones torture, and if torture was a consequence of a war you support, you are implicit in your support of torture. 

you may not want to support abuse, but its part of personal responsiblity, which republicans claim to adamantly believe in, to take responsiblity for your actions or the actions of those you support.... its unfortunate that the war you support resulted in the torture of thousands of iraqis, but the truth is it did, and if you want to say your decision have positive results you also have to take responsibility when the decisions you choose to make have negative consequences.  you support GWB,  you support a war for WMD that never existed, you are also accountable for these scandals.

[Thirteen]

Bush didn't have anything to do with the tortures going on in these prisons and the people that have done these acts will see prison time...agains, it shouldn't have happened....but since it did the best we can do is try to resolve it and make sure the guilty people pay the price...

i know someone's argument is going to be "it's easy for you to say, you weren't raped....blah blah blah"...well until someone can go back in time and fix this situation, it happened and nothing is going to change it

also ALL of the US military now has to go through 38 hours of prisoner handling training because of these fuck ups, i support the war because it's my job. morale is a key factor in every form of military and dissention causes lives to be lost

[*Jamal*]

Ant, you can't say that a person who voted for Bush is automatically supporting everything that happens while he's in power.

[*Jamal*]

That would be like saying "Everyone who voted for Clinton supports adultery and cheating on their wives."

[Woodrow]

Crazy!

First I support abuse,

Then I worship Rush Limbuaguh

Now I'm a racist!

[Thirteen]

now there's the intelligent Jamal up there, those are perfect points

[*Jamal*]

now there's the intelligent Jamal up there, those are perfect points

There only exists one kind of Jamal, which is the intelligent one.... the same one who sonned you in that other thread.