There Was Torture At Abu Ghraib

In a story largely ignored by the mainstream media, sordid details of widespread torture at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison have emerged. Evidence proves that the president not only knew about, and condoned the torture, but had videotapes made so that he could review the results at his leisure.

The torture went far beyond simple “hazing” to include beatings, broken bones, amputations, cattle prods applied to genitalia and inserted into the body, nitric acid drips, murder and widespread rape.

All of these took place by the express command of the president!

Alright, lest you fear that I have gone over to the dark side, the president in question was Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq. In the ongoing and seemingly never-ending furor over the US treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the inhuman torture of the Hussein regime has been largely buried and ignored by the MSM.

Most reports start with the obligatory “In the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world's most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions.” (thank you Sy Hersch) Then they launch into scathing attacks on “American abuses” at the prison.

But what is nearly ALWAYS missing from reports, is what actually constituted torture under the Saddam Hussein regime. In the MSM frenzy to BlameAmericaFirst™ reporting of real torture would only detract from the story line.

But, let us now examine what Abu Ghraib was really like, when the bad guys were in charge. In this NRO article a four minute tape distilled down from nearly two hours of footage details horrific acts of barbarism, common during the Saddam Hussein years. The transcript is graphic, the video unimaginable. And that is part of the problem, in this country it is impossible for us to imagine the cruelty that was commonplace in Iraq.

The first film clip opens with the camera showing a man standing in a bland, mostly empty room. The camera pans down to show his right hand. Folded rugs are visible in the background. The clip jumps to footage of scrub-clad "surgeons" with rubber surgical gloves severing the man's hand at the wrist. First the skin is peeled away with surgical knives and tweezers; ligaments, tendons, muscle, and bone underneath are exposed. Then the gloved hands wielding the knives begin to slice, shredding through the sinews, slashing muscle, breaking bone, until the hand is ultimately detached and plopped onto a green cloth, as yellow, pulpy tissue spills forth.

"You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it."
The next clip opens amid Saddam Fedayeen — Fedayeen means "those willing to die for Saddam" — chanting loudly: "With blood and spirit we will redeem you Saddam." The Fedayeen stand barking and clapping in a courtyard. A blindfolded prisoner, forced to his knees and held in position has his arm outstretched before him along a low concrete wall. A masked member of the Fedayeen raises high a three-foot-long blade and ferociously slams down on the man's hand, slicing through his fingertips. The victim is wailing, howling, screaming in agony. The swordsman-torturer, not sufficiently satisfied with his first effort, raises the sword again and drives down once more on the man's immobile hand. This time he severs the fingers closer to the knuckles as blood spurts cartoonishly from his hand spilling over and down the concrete slab. The victim emits a wail I have never heard — could never imagine hearing — from a grown man, this time louder, harder than the first.
The camera then turns to the assembled Fedayeen as they continue rhythmically chanting.

"You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it."
In the third clip, a prisoner sits on the ground, his arm tied with white cloth, strips to a wooden board resting on a gray concrete slab. A man stands before him with a sword, this blade is wider than the last. He, too, strikes down on the man's hand, severing it from his right arm as the prisoner recoils in pain. The camera then quickly darts to the man's hand resting on the dusty ground several feet away as it was launched a considerable distance from the prisoner due to the force of the torturer's chop.

"You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it."
When Mel Gibson's movie The Passion was released, several critics harped on the scenes where Jesus is flogged mercilessly by Roman soldiers. The brutality was so extreme, critics charged, the depiction bordered on parody — it was not a credible rendering of what could have happened to Jesus. In the fourth clip in the Saddam torture film, it's clear Gibson's cinematic vision of just how depraved men can be was not divorced from reality. A tall prisoner, stripped to the waist and blindfolded has his arms tied before him to a white pole, his bare back exposed. Black-clad Saddam Fedayeen surround him, jackal-like, as one begins to pound on his back with a black
rubber whip. With the man screaming, his scourged back arching backward, shoulders and arms frantically struggling to block the blows, one of the Fedayeen torturers is heard to say "no situation more honorable than truth over falsehood." Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! The prisoner's knees buckle as he crumbles into a hump on the ground from the blows, crying out in pain. Another Fedayeen grabs his hands and pulls him up the pole to receive further lashes.

"You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it."
"In the name of Allah the merciful," intones the beret-topped loyalist to Saddam's "secular" regime in the next segment. He introduces to the viewer and the assembled butcher squad to another prisoner. The loyalist-narrator reads from Koran, Sura 2:179: "And there is a saving of life for you in the Law of Equality in punishment. O men of understanding, that you may become the pious." "The
Fedayeen, Saddin Ezzedin al-Arousi," he goes on, "was charged with a special mission in which he betrayed his duty in the mission. The head of the Fedayeen has ordered the following: He is expelled from Fedayeen work and his arms are to be broken in front of his unit. Tarik Juman will personally undertake the breaking of his arms. Thank you." The camera jumps to al-Arousi sitting with one arm tied behind him as his right arm is extended out to his side. His right elbow rests on acinderblock and his right fist is supported by another cinderblock. Nothing supports his forearm in between. While a Fedayeen holds the prisoner's elbow in place, Tarik Juman crashes a three-inch-thick pipe down on his old compatriot's forearm, bending the forearm in a 'V' shape and shattering the bones within. This procedure is repeated for his left arm as well.

"You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it."
In another clip a hooded and blindfolded prisoner is led to a room where he is forced to kneel, hands tied behind his back. Another man sits before the prisoner with thick metal tweezers and a scalpel. With his left hand he grabs the tip of the prisoner's tongue with the tweezers and pulls it forward from his head. With the scalpel in his other hand he slices through the prisoner's tongue, cutting it out of his mouth and then dropping it on the floor. This ritual is repeated for more prisoners who are lined up, squatting in a row like parts on an assembly line waiting for processing, sitting ducks surrounded by dozens of men bearing witness to a Baathist tongue lashing.

"You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it."
In the final clip we see a blindfolded prisoner being led to his fate as the assembled men around him sing "Happy Birthday, long live the leader, eternal gift to the people." Again with arms tied behind his back he is shoved to the ground, bent over stuffed burlap sacks. A black-clad Fedayeen loosens the prisoner's shirt exposing his back and neck, while another stands two feet from him holding a long silver blade at its curved handle. He raises his arms and strikes, hacking the prisoner's head from his body, tumbling it to the ground. He picks up the severed head by the hair and places it ceremoniously on the dead man's back as the camera pans in closer and closer and you can make out the victim's now lifeless and bloodied face.

As terrible as these accounts are, photos tell an even more horrific tale. In this link to The Jawa Report are graphic photos showing prisoners being tortured and implements of torture. They are NOT for the faint of heart, or those with a weak stomach.

One photo depicts a naked prisoner being tortured in a slow nitric acid shower. Another image portrays an Iraqi athlete tortured for failure to win. Still another photo shows a man’s amputation while another shows a severed head. Other photos display implements used to torture.

I defy any rational human being to equate Abu Ghraib under Saddam Hussein with the prison scandal of today.

Finally we have the Iraqi businessmen, right hands removed, for breaking Saddam’s laws regarding trading in foreign currencies.

As one Iraqi familiar with the case described the chaotic nature of regulation under Saddam, "a law would be passed one day, then another would amend it the next." As a result of unclear law and the open operation of other currency exchanges, the nine men believed they were conducting a legal business.

These men have come to the US and been fitted with prosthetic hands. At the time there was small fanfare, and even smaller interest from the MSM.

It would seem that American “abuses” are of much more import than the widespread terror inflicted by a tyrant upon the people of Iraq.

Yes, I know, the United States should be held to a higher standard than the despots of the world. That is the precise reason that American soldiers faced charges and are now serving sentences for their crimes. But let us not lose sight of the fact that a murderous thug, who DID pose a serious threat to his neighbors in the region, and to the world, is no longer torturing his own people.

Some indications are that the new Iraqi government has returned to many of the practices learned through more than three decades of tyranny. Whether Iraq returns to barbarism is now in the hands of the Iraqi people. We hope they choose wisely.