Living White Phosphorus, Caged Lions, Peeling Skin
by James Ridgeway
WASHINGTON, D.C.–Increasingly, the U.S. is facing charges
of war crimes in Iraq. In the most recent horrifying
accusations of prisoner torture, the U.S. is accused of
standing by while the Iraqi occupation government
permitted the excruciating torture of prisoners in a
secret jail. These charges have been known since
April. Neither the Iraqis nor the Americans did
anything about them.
All this took place during a period where President Bush was
insisting the war was going well, and when Vice President Cheney was
lobbying behind the scenes to keep the CIA free to carry out
torture in secret prisons abroad.
Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni politician, is quoted by
the Boston Globe as saying the Interior Ministry
detention center has been infiltrated by Shiite
militia. “Some Iraqis are having their heads opened
with drills, then their bodies are thrown in the
streets,” he claimed. “This shows that the United
States should stop these acts since it is the force
that occupies Iraq.’’
In addition to the ongoing controversy over torture
of detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prison, the
newest instances include:
body, of 173 mostly Sunni prisoners held in a secret
prison by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government’s Interior
Ministry jail, led to a formal investigation by the
Iraqi government, and the prisoners rescue by U.S. soldiers. Charges of these tortures have been made known since April, but neither the U.S. nor its Iraqi-backed regime,
have done anything about them.
the form of white phosphorusagainst
civilians in Falluja last year. An Italian documentary
features eyewitnesses, including American military
personnel who participated in them, to back up the
charges. The Pentagon has admitted use of the weapons. The U.S. is not a signatory to a treaty banning their
use.
U.S. forces put prisoners into cages with lions in
2003. Charges have been brought by the American Civil
Liberties Union and Human Rights First. Two Iraqi businessmen say they were taken to lion cages on the
grounds of the presidential palace, forced to enter
the cages, and were pulled back only as the lions
approached. Rumsfeld called these accusations
“far-fetched.”
Meanwhile Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reiterated the
administration’s support for the Iraqi security
forces—the same forces responsible for the cruel
treatment of prisoners. “We must be careful not to
give terrorists the false hope that if they can simply
hold on long enough, that they can outlast us,’’ he said. And Rumsfeld
went after Democrats and Republicans who are now
criticizing the administration for misleading the
country into war, claiming these same politicians
stood behind Bush and the government on charging
Saddam had weapons of mass destruction before the war
began.
“People who are willing to risk their lives [in the
military] need to know the truth,” Rumsfeld said. “They
need to understand that they are there based on
decisions that were made in good faith by responsible
people.”
The AP reported that Manfred Nowak, a special United Nations investigator on torture, renewed calls for an independent probe into the allegations:
“That torture is still practiced in Iraq after Saddam Hussein, that is no secret,” Nowak said a telephone interview from Vienna, Austria. “It is shocking, but on the other hand, we have received allegations of these secret places in Iraq already for quite a long time.
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This article from the Village Voice Archive was posted on November 15, 2005