7 US Tortured People to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq

Last week we learned that the Pentagon was seeking exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act. This week we learn why. You know how we said we don’t torture? Well not only do we torture, but it has led to deaths. Look, America stands for more than the Bush Administration understands. When we give up who we are because of fear the terrorists have already won. I remember when I met Richard Gere. He was talking about his interactions with Tibetan political prisoners being held and beaten in China. He passed on a message that still touches me today: “When you torture someone it doesn’t just destroy the life of the person you torture, but it also destroys the soul of the person doing the torturing.” The Bush Administration isn’t just sacrificing our reputation for human rights, attacking the very essence of what it means to be an American, but also putting our young men and women in impossible situations of attacking a captured unarmed man. Think about that. Unarmed, unable to attack us, captured prisoners attacked slowly and methodically until they are dead. # 7 US Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released documents of forty-four autopsies held in Afghanistan and Iraq October 25, 2005. Twenty-one of those deaths were listed as homicides. The documents show that detainees died during and after interrogations by Navy SEALs, Military Intelligence, and Other Government Agency (OGA). “These documents present irrefutable evidence that U.S. operatives tortured detainees to death during interrogation,” said Amrit Singh, an attorney with the ACLU. “The public has a right to know who authorized the use of torture techniques and why these deaths have been covered up.” The Department of Defense released the autopsy reports in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense, and Veterans for Peace. One of forty-four U.S. military autopsy reports reads as follows: “Final Autopsy Report: DOD 003164, (Detainee) Died as a result of asphyxia (lack of oxygen to the brain) due to strangulation as evidenced by the recently fractured hyoid bone in the neck and soft tissue hemorrhage extending downward to the level of the right thyroid cartilage. …The Associated Press carried the story of the ACLU charges on their wire service. However, a thorough check of LexisNexis and ProQuest electronic data bases, using the keywords ACLU and autopsy, showed that at least 95 percent of the daily papers in the U.S. did not bother to pick up the story. The Los Angeles Times covered the story on page A4 with a 635-word report headlined “Autopsies Support Abuse Allegations.” Janis Karpinski, U.S. Brigadier General Commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, was in charge of seventeen prison facilities in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2003. Karpinski testified January 21, 2006 in New York City at the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush administration. Karpinski stated: “General [Ricardo] Sanchez [commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq] signed the eight-page memorandum authorizing a laundry list of harsh techniques in interrogations to include specific use of dogs and muzzled dogs with his specific permission.” Karpinski went on to claim that Major General Geoffrey Miller, who had been “specifically selected by the Secretary of Defense to go to Guantanamo Bay and run the interrogations operations,” was dispatched to Iraq by the Bush administration to “work with the military intelligence personnel to teach them new and improved interrogation techniques.” When asked how far up the chain of command responsibility for the torture orders for Abu Ghraib went, Karpinski said, “The Secretary of Defense would not have authorized without the approval of the Vice President.” Our Representatives are war criminals. It’s as simple as that. If the world held a Nuremburg trial for our current executive branch leadership, there would be no doubt of the result. Luckily for them, there is no International law to hold them accountable. RSS Feed