Here are some of the snippets from the story about which I'm diaring that I toyed with using as headlines:
U.S. had imprisoned "women and children"
"... it’d be cool to get a photo next to a dead person"
"... one of those Hitler things, like a concentration camp, almost"
"Whatever the worst thing that comes to your mind, that was it --- the place you would never ever, ever, ever send your worst enemy."
"The stench was unbearable: urine, feces, body rot."
Gross and systematic violations of the Geneva Conventions
The legacy of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld ... and, sadly, America itself.
Apparently there's a new story coming out in the New Yorker about the truly deranged, grotesque, and officially condoned practices in Abu Ghraib.
The article from which I quote is NEW REPORT: ABU GHRAIB PRISONERS PACKED IN ICE WATER-FILLED GARBAGE CANS AND SENT INTO SHOCK, MILITARY POLICE SAY over at Afterdowningstreet.org.
It's a harrowing and stomach-churning account, from the Americans who were there:
Another soldier that had been stationed at Abu Ghraib, M.P. Sabrina Harman---who gained dubious fame for making a thumbs-up sign posing over the body of a prisoner she believed tortured to death---said the U.S. had imprisoned "women and children" on Tier 1B, including one child was as young as ten.
(snip)
Harman said the corpse she posed with likely was murdered during interrogation although a platoon commander said he had died of a heart attack. Harman and another soldier, Corporal Charles Graner unzipped his body bag and took photos of him and "kind of realized right away that there was no way he died of a heart attack because of all the cuts and blood coming out of his nose." Harman added, "His knees were bruised, his thighs were bruised by his genitals. He had restraint marks on his wrists. "
In case you can't remember, here's the photo:
Asked why she posed making a "thumbs up" gesture over the corpse, Harman said she thought, "Hey, it’s a dead guy, it’d be cool to get a photo next to a dead person. I know it looks bad. I mean, even when I look at them (the photos) I go, ‘Oh Jesus, that does look pretty bad.’"
The corpse, said to have died under interrogation by a CIA agent, was identified as that of Manadel al-Jamadi. An autopsy found he had succumbed to "blunt force injuries" and "compromised respiration" and his death was classified as a homicide, The New Yorker article said.
That's plenty sick. But here's the part that is so disgusting that it's almost humorously absurd:
The dead man was removed from the tier disguised as a sick prisoner, his arm taped to an IV, and rolled away on a gurney, apparently as authorities "didn’t want any of the prisoners thinking we were in there killing folks," Sergeant Hydrue Joyner, Harman’s team leader, told the magazine.
Unbelievable. It's like "Weekend at Bernie's" goes to, well, hell.
Read the entire article. It's almost more than you can believe. But according to Seymour Hersch's accounts back when the story first broke, it's even worse.
Right now, online, The New Yorker has a blurb about this story, and clips from Errol Morris' new film, "Standard Operating Procedure" on which presumably this article is based.
Furthermore, this new article asserts that the torture and debasement "were the direct expression of the hostility toward international law and military doctrine that was found in the White House, the Vice-President’s office, and at the highest levels of the Justice and Defense Departments."
McCain will simply take the reins from Bush/Cheney. He is eager to be their boy. McCain's party has made torture as American as WalMart and cheap Chinese labor. As American as corporate piracy and country-club crooks.
God Bless America and the Republican Party.