Panelists warn of the revival of eugenics under Obama’s modern healthcare through the denial of care to millions who would be judged ‘not fit to live’, just as in Nazi Germany.
Historian Anton Chaitkin also alleges that Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm Emanuel, in working with Obama, has also called for the Hippocratic oath to be ‘junked.’
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A British man spoke publicly for the first time yesterday to accuse MI5 officers of forcing him to confess to masterminding the July 7 bombings.
Jamil Rahman claims UK security officers were behind his arrest in 2005 in Bangladesh.
He says he was beaten repeatedly by local officials who also threatened to rape him and his wife.
Mr Rahman, who is suing the Home Office, said a pair of MI5 officers who attended his torture and interrogation would leave the room while he was beaten.
He claims when he told the pair he had been tortured they merely answered: ‘They haven’t done a very good job on you.’
Mr Rahman told the BBC: ‘They were questioning me on the July 7 bombings, showing me pictures of the bombers.
‘They showed me maps, terrains … they asked me to draw things out and write names next to pictures.
‘They threatened my family. They go to me, “In the UK, gas leaks happen, if your family house had a gas leak and everyone got burnt, there’s no problems, we can do that easily”.’
He says he eventually made a false confession of involvement in the July 7 bomb plots.
The extraordinary allegations will add to pressure on UK ministers to come clean over the way Britain’s intelligence agencies have been allowed to gather evidence around the world in the eight years since the September 11 attacks.
Jamil Rahman, a former civil servant from south Wales, is a British citizen who moved to Bangladesh in 2005 and married a woman he met there. He returned to the UK last year.
He said: ‘It was all to do with the British. Even the Bengali intelligence officer told me that they didn’t know anything about me, that they were only doing this for the British.’
Mr Rahman, 31, says he was released after three weeks but re-arrested and mistreated repeatedly over the next two years.
He described how two men he believes were British agents would leave the room for ‘a break’ while he was beaten.
They often asked: ‘We’re not torturing you, are we?’ and recorded his confirmations that they were not, he alleges.
‘The first time they tried to be friendly, they came in trying to show they were my friends, calm and relaxed, nothing wrong.
‘I tried to demonstrate my innocence. I thought this is wrong, because they were British I might get some justice.’
He added: ‘They showed me hundreds of pictures. Black, white, Chinese, bearded non-bearded, woman, man, young and old. Every time, they came for a new session, same pictures with new ones.
‘The main thing they wanted me to be is a witness against another British man in Bangladesh. They pressured me so much to be a witness against this guy in court.
Mr Rahman denies being a terrorist, although he admits attending meetings in Britain of the radical Islamist group al-Muhajiroun – claiming he later rejected their extremist ideology.
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We firmly reject any suggestion that we torture people or ask others to do so on our behalf.
‘Mr Rahman has made a lot of unsubstantiated allegations. They have not been evidenced in any court of law.’
Jamil Rahman is one of a number of former detainees who accuse the British Government colluded in their torture abroad.
His account echoes that of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed, who said he was tortured in Pakistan and Morocco with MI5’s knowledge.
The 30-year-old Ethiopian says he was beaten and deprived of sleep to try to make him confess to an Al Qaeda ‘dirty bomb’ plot, and his treatment is now the subject of an unprecedented police investigation into MI5’s conduct.
Source: Daily Mail
Arizona school officials violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old girl when they strip-searched her on the suspicion she might be hiding ibuprofen in her underwear, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The decision put school districts on notice that such searches are “categorically distinct” from other efforts to combat illegal drugs.
In a case that had drawn attention from educators, parents and civil libertarians across the country, the court ruled 8 to 1 that such an intrusive search without the threat of a clear danger to other students violated the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable search or seizure.
Justice David H. Souter, writing perhaps his final opinion for the court, said that in the search of Savana Redding, now a 19-year-old college student, school officials overreacted to vague accusations that Redding was violating school policy by possessing the ibuprofen, equivalent to two tablets of Advil.
What was missing, Souter wrote, “was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear.”
It was reasonable to search the girl’s backpack and outer clothes, but Safford Middle School administrators made a “quantum leap” in taking the next step, the opinion said. “The meaning of such a search, and the degradation its subject may reasonably feel, place a search that intrusive in a category of its own demanding its own specific suspicions,” Souter wrote.
Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter. “Judges are not qualified to second-guess the best manner for maintaining quiet and order in the school environment,” he wrote.
He said administrators were only being logical in searching the girl. “Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments,” he wrote. “Nor will she be the last after today’s decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school.”
The court’s virtual unanimity was in contrast to the intense oral argument that seemed to exasperate the court’s only female member, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She later said her male colleagues seemed not to appreciate the trauma such a search would have on a developing adolescent.
“They have never been a 13-year-old girl,” she told USA Today when asked about her colleagues’ comments during the arguments. “It’s a very sensitive age for a girl. I didn’t think that my colleagues, some of them, quite understood.”
But yesterday’s opinion recognized just that. “Changing for gym is getting ready for play,” Souter wrote. “Exposing for a search is responding to an accusation reserved for suspected wrongdoers” and is so degrading that a number of states and school districts have banned strip searches. The Washington region’s two largest school districts are among them.
Redding said the decision “feels fantastic.” She described herself as shy and “not a good public speaker,” but said the long legal battle “was to make sure it didn’t happen to anyone else.”
The case, Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding, began when another student was found with prescription-strength ibuprofen and said she received it from Redding.
Safford Middle School assistant principal Kerry Wilson pulled the quiet honors student out of class, and she consented in his office to a search of her backpack and outer clothes. When that turned up no pills, he had a school nurse take Redding to her office, where she was told to remove her clothes, shake out her bra and pull her underwear away from her body, exposing her breasts and pelvic area.
No drugs were found, and Redding said she was so humiliated by the incident that she never returned to the school. Her mother filed suit against the school district, as well as Wilson.
After years of legal proceedings, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit eventually ruled in her favor.
Justices based their view on the court’s warning in a 1985 case that, although school officials have leeway in deciding when searches of students are reasonable, the officials may not employ searches “excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.”
Lower courts have had trouble deciding when that standard applies, Souter wrote, so Wilson should not be held personally liable for the incident. The court ruled, though, that Redding’s suit could proceed against the school district.
Ginsburg and Justice John Paul Stevens criticized the decision to remove Wilson from the suit, saying he should have known the search violated Redding’s rights.
“Abuse of authority of that order should not be shielded by official immunity,” Ginsburg wrote.
Redding’s attorney, Adam Wolf of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the court made clear that strip searches would be used only in “extraordinary circumstances” and that “the justices saw what the general public saw: that these school officials overreacted and traumatized a young girl.”
Francisco M. Negrón Jr., general counsel for the National School Boards Association, said he was glad the court recognized that the school officials had acted “in good faith.” But he said the decision did not provide clear guidelines about how specific the accusation must be, or how dangerous the alleged drugs, before school officials employ such an intrusive search.
“I think there will be more litigation,” he said.
But many states and school boards, including some in the Washington area, are simply not allowing strip searches.
The policy in Fairfax County, for instance, specifies that “personal searches may extend to pockets; and to the removal and search of outer garments such as jackets, coats, sweaters, or shoes; and to items such as pocketbooks or backpacks.” In Montgomery County, officials with the Department of School Safety and Security said searches are limited to outer clothing and pockets. The “preferred method is self-search,” where a student is told what to remove, said school system spokeswoman Kate Harrison. A third person is always present for any search, she said.
Source: Washington Post
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The CIA has delayed the release of a promised 150-page report on secret prisons and interrogation techniques, according to a letter sent to the American Civil Liberties Union on Friday.
The report, originally expected Friday, was still being examined by government censors for sensitive material, the intelligence agency said Thursday.
“We are disappointed by the delay in the disclosure of this report which contains critical information about the illegality and ineffectiveness of the CIA’s interrogation program,” said ACLU attorney Amrit Singh in a media advisory. “We can only hope that this delay is a sign that the forces of transparency within the Obama administration are winning over the forces of secrecy and that the report will ultimately be released with minimal redactions.”
The report sought by the ACLU was originally released, albeit heavily redacted, in May 2008. The document, now expected on Friday, June 26, will likely be only slightly less-redacted.
The report on the CIA’s torture program, as released by the Office of the Inspector General last year, is available on the Internet (PDF link).
Source: Raw Story
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A new report by Andy Worthington reviewing Pentagon documents released in 2007 reveals:
Throughout Guantánamo’s history, one in ten of the total population — 80 prisoners in total — weighed, at some point, less than 112 pounds (eight stone, or 50 kg), and 20 of these prisoners weighed less than 98 pounds (seven stone, or 44 kg).
Note: At least some of these weights may reflect prisoners on hunger strikes.
Source: Washington’s Blog
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The US administration asks an appeals court to stop the release of prisoner abuse images, showing that Obama has fully backtracked on his promise of transparency.
In a motion filed Thursday in a New York federal appeals court, the Obama administration said that it did not want the photos to be available to the public, arguing that they could lead to violence against US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and even Pakistan.
“[Distributing the photos poses] a clear and grave risk of inciting violence and riots against American and coalition forces, as well as civilian personnel, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the motion said.
The court filing also included two semi-classified statements by the top US commander in Iraq, General Raymond Odierno, and the head of US Central Command General David Petraeus, who leads US military activities in the Middle East and Central Asia.
“[The release of the images] would… further endanger the lives of US soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors, civilians and contractors,” said Petraeus.
Odierno also claimed that Iraqi officials had told him the release of the photos, which are believed to number in the thousands, could disrupt democratic progress in Iraq before the national elections.
Last month, Obama’s administration said that it would comply with a court order, which was issued following a lengthy Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The order said the pictures must be released by May 28.
Earlier in May, however, Barack Obama reversed his position, saying that he did not feel comfortable with his previous decision.
The new US administration’s U-turn on the issue drew a heavy backlash from the ACLU, which expressed outrage and said the decision “makes a mockery” of Obama’s campaign promise of transparency.
While Amnesty International said that it was disappointed, other US human rights groups also accused Obama of following in the footsteps of former president George W. Bush.
News of the US government’s official stance came as Press TV released some images of the maltreatment of prisoners by US soldiers, confirming an earlier Daily Telegraph report, which revealed the photos of abuse at Iraqi jails include images of rape and sexual assault.
Washington-based investigative journalist Wayne Madsen emailed the horrific images to Press TV, rejecting allegations by neoconservative media that they were fake.
Madsen said when some of the disputed photos were randomly published by the Boston Globe in 2004, neoconservatives made the same accusations against the paper.
The Daily Telegraph report focused on information provided by Major General Antonio Taguba, a former army officer who published a report in 2004 into the abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Contradicting an Obama administration claim that photos did not include pictures of sexual abuse, Taguba said the images showed mistreatment, torture, and rape.
Source: PressTV
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This is probably exactly what the photos show, because it happened. The same-sex crimes against detainees have been documented.
The Telegraph of London broke the news — because the U.S. press is in a drugged stupor – — that the photos President Barack Obama is refusing to release of detainee abuse depict, among other sexual tortures, an American soldier raping a female detainee and a male translator raping a male prisoner.
The paper claims the photos also show anal rape of prisoners with foreign objects such as wires and lightsticks. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba calls the images “horrific” and “indecent” (but absurdly agrees that Obama should not release them — proving once again that the definition of hypocrisy is the assertion that the truth is in poor taste).
Predictably, a few hours later, the Pentagon issues a formal denial.
It is very likely that the Pentagon lying. This is probably exactly what the photos show, because it happened. Precisely these exact sex crimes — these exact images and these very objects – — are familiar and well-documented to those of us who follow closely rights organizations reports of what has already been confirmed.
As I wrote last year in my piece on sex crimes against detainees, “Sex Crimes in the White House,” highly perverse, systematic sexual torture and sexual humiliation was, original documents reveal, directed from the top:
The image of the female prisoner, probably Iraqi, being sexually assaulted? That image, or a similar one, has been widely seen in the Muslim world. Reports of the rape scenes described have also appeared in rights organizations summaries since 2004.
And scores of detainees who have told their stories to rights organizations have told independently confirming accounts of a highly consistent practice of sexual torture at U.S.-held prisons, including having their genitals slashed with razors, electrodes placed on genitals, and being told the U.S. military would find and rape their mothers.
Is systemic sex crimes practiced by the U.S. in a consequence of the lawlessness of “the war on terror” surprising to those of us who work on issues of sexual abuse and war? It is totally predictable: When you give soldiers anywhere in the world the power, let alone the mandate, to hold women or men helpless, without recourse to law, kidnap them as a matter of policy — as the U.S. military kidnapped the wives of “insurgents” in order to compel them to turn themselves in — strip them naked, and threaten them, you have a completely predictable recipe for mass sexual assault. The magisterial study of rape in war, Susan Brownmiller’s Men, Women and Rape, proves that.
But what is far scarier about these images Obama refuses to release and that the Pentagon is likely to be lying about now, is that it is not the evidence of lower-level soldiers being corrupted by power — it is proof of the fact that the most senior leadership — Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney, with Rice’s collusion — were running a global sex-crime trafficking ring with Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Baghram Air Base as the holding sites.
The sexual nature of the torture also gives the lie to Cheney’s and others’ defense of torture as somehow functional: The sexual perversity mandated from the top reveals that it was just plain old sick sadism gratified by a very sick form of pleasure. I also pointed out in “Sex Crimes in the White House” that the escalation of the sexual abuse showed the same classic pattern shown by sex criminals everywhere — you start with stripping the victim, keeping him or her completely in your power, and then you engage in greater and more violent excesses with more and more self-justification.
The lightsticks, for instance? We in the human rights world know about the lightsticks. Probably dozens of prisoners were sodomized with lightsticks. In the highly credible and very fully documented Physicians for Human Rights report, “Broken Bodies, Broken Lives,” doctors investigated the wounds and scars of former prisoners, did analysis of the injuries, assessed the independent verification of their stories, and reported that indeed many detainees had in fact been savagely raped with lightsticks and by other objects inserted into their rectums, many sustaining internal injuries.
This same report confirms that female military or other unidentified U.S.-affiliated personnel were used to sexually abuse detainees by smearing menstrual blood on their faces, seizing their genitals violently, or rubbing them in a sexual manner against their will. In other credible accounts collected by human rights organizations, many former prisoners in U.S.-held prisons report that they had been tortured or humiliated by female agents who appeared to be dressed like prostitutes.
Indeed, early on, intelligence spokespeople boasted in the New York Times of the use of female agents to sexually abuse and humiliate prisoners: it was called in their own material “invasion of space by a female.”
Today at lunch, I happen to have sat next to the lovely and brave Dale Haddon, the “face of L’Oreal,” who is also a tireless advocate for women and children through UNICEF. She is heading for Congo, to help hold accountable rape and sex crimes institutionalized as acts of war. Those criminals will face trials and convictions.
In Sierra Leone, the soldiers and generals who used rape as an instrument of war have been tried and many convicted. In Bosnia, likewise. But at another lunch party, Haddon, who travels in many circles, may well be seated next to our own former leaders, violent and systemic sex criminals who are still at large.
When will we convict our very own global rapists, the ones who gave the U.S. the hellish distinction of turning us into the superpower of sex crime? Convictions must come, but first we must see the evidence.
And women especially, who understand how sexual abuse and rape can break the spirit in a uniquely anguishing way, should be raising their voices loudly.
Whom are we protecting by not releasing the photos? The victims? Hardly. It’s, as feminists have been saying for decades, not their shame. The perpetrators? Their crimes are archived; if not this administration, another may well obey the law and release the images, which are evidentiary (again: that rape and sodomy were directed form the top; prosecute those at the top).
These photos go to exactly why Obama is burning what is left of the shreds of the Constitution by calling for pre-emptive detention for about 100 detainees. It ain’t because they are “too dangerous,” his pathetic justification. It is because their bodies are crime scenes. It is because the torture, including possibly the sexual assault, they experienced is likely to be so horrific that if they were ever to have their day in court it is others whom Obama needs who would be incriminated.
In the 19th century, when a woman had been raped, or had experienced sexual abuse in the family, the paterfamilias would say she was crazy, get her declared “too dangerous” to be free, and lock her up forever so her story would be interred with her.
That is what Obama is trying to do with pre-emptive detention for these detainees.
Well, America? Do you want to live with this?
Remember: History shows categorically that once the state can lock “them” up without a fair trial, torture, rape them or sodomize them — well; sooner or later it will be able to do the same to your children or mine; or to you and me.
Source: AlterNet
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Media Ignores Real Controversy Behind Torture Photos; They Show Prison Guards Raping Children
Photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse which U.S. President Barack Obama does not want released include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Thursday.
The images are among photographs included in a 2004 report into prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison conducted by U.S. Major General Antonio Taguba.
Taguba included allegations of rape and sexual abuse in his report, and on Wednesday he confirmed to the Daily Telegraph that images supporting those allegations were also in the file.
“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba, who retired in January 2007, was quoted as saying in the paper.
He said he supported Obama’s decision not to release them, even though Obama had previously pledged to disclose all images relating to abuses at Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.
“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one,” Taguba said. “The sequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.
“The mere depiction of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”
The newspaper said at least one picture showed an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Others are said to depict sexual assaults with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
The photographs relate to 400 alleged cases of abuse carried out at Abu Ghraib and six other prisons between 2001 and 2005.
Source: LONDON (Reuters)
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This May 13, 2009 file photo shows Colleen, left, and 13-year-old Daniel Hauser at their farm in Sleepy Eye, Minn. Daniel Hauser is stricken with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer. Mother and son have fled from treatment. Billy Best, a Norwell, Massachusetts man who ran away from home at age 16 to avoid chemo and radiation therapy for his lymphoma, supports the Hausers. (AP Photo/ABC News) A court sided with Best in 1994 and he returned home to pursue alternative therapies.
San Dimas, CA (May 25, 2009) – The image of an American child being strapped down and forced to take harsh cancer therapy against the will of his parents or even his own will is not a welcome thought.
All agencies of U.S. law enforcement are on a manhunt, not for suspected terrorists or even convicts escaped from prison, but rather a mother and her 13-year-old cancer-stricken son.
In a certain clash of cultures, doctors fear the boy will die if he doesn’t receive further treatment. Most patients undergo a combination of chemotherapy and low-dose radiation treatment, which has a reported 90%-plus 5-year survival rate for children of this age. But the rural family lives in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota and embraces traditional folk medicine.
It’s not like local authorities are out with search warrants. The entire armamentarium of US law enforcement agencies is out after this kid including the US Attorney’s Office, the FBI and US Marshals.
Manhunt spreads
The manhunt has spread to California. Daniel Hauser, the cancer-stricken teen, was flown to California with his mother and law enforcement officers believe she is trying to cross into Mexico to obtain alternative cancer treatment and to hide him from the law.
Daniel Hauser has Hodgkin’s lymphoma. While modern cancer treatment generally offers no cures and harsh treatments, chemotherapy with low-dose radiation is effective for children. While chemotherapy contributes to the 5-year survival of adults only about 2–3% of the time, children are an exception to the rule. Chemotherapy in childhood lymphoma is associated with prolonged survival.
However, even with such a high reported success rate, and though long-term survival data is generally good with maintenance chemotherapy, more advanced cases don’t fare so well and recurrence rates are high, which is maybe why Colleen Hauser may have refused treatment and fled from care after she viewed some x-ray films that were shown to her and radiation treatment was recommended. She was due to appear in court as she flew to California with her son and then vanished.
Replay of 1994 saga
A Boston television station aired a report about Billy Best, a Norwell, Massachusetts man who in 1994 ran away from his parents at age 16 and only returned home when his parents consented to his own choice of alternative therapies. Talking about freedom to choose treatment, Best says “I thought we were past all that.”
Apparently Best was in communication with the Hauser’s and news reporters errantly claimed he was with Colleen and Daniel Hauser. Best says he would still resist treatment. A court ruled in his favor in 1994.
Is radiation treatment effective?
Ironically, the Hauser case comes just when radiation oncologists are questioning reports on the effectiveness of radiation treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. A review of 61 trial reports that were published between 1998 and 2007, published in the February 1, 2009 issue of the Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics, the official journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology, shows major deficiencies in reports which substantiate this type of treatment. The question is, can cancer doctors assure with certainty that the treatment is science-based, something the new administration in Washington DC is pushing.
Drawbacks of conventional cancer treatment
Conventional cancer treatment consists of harsh drugs and radiation to kill cancer cells in the lymph fluid. But this treatment never addresses the cause of the cancer, which is probably why recurrence rates are high. Childhood Hodgkin’s lymphoma is associated with Epstein-Barr infection, a type of Herpes virus.
Modern cancer therapy ignores any attempt to boost the immune system. Crude studies conducted in the 1930s led to abandonment of therapies to boost the activity of white blood cells. Today, immunotherapy is coming back into vogue and many of the molecules being considered are natural rather than man-made.
Vitamin D, resveratrol commonly found in red wine, quercetin found in red apple peel, omega-3 fatty acids in fish and flaxseed oil, and allicin from garlic are among many natural molecules being tested for use in cancer therapy.
One lab-dish study showed that intravenous vitamin C has a profound effect in quelling non-solid tumors like lymphoma. Resveratrol has been shown to inhibit cancer at all three stages of development – initiation, growth and spread – something no modern cancer drug does.
Mischaracterization of cancer patients who refuse care
Cancer patients, and in this case parents of a child with cancer, should not be grossly characterized as mindless or irresponsible. Modern cancer therapy is fraught with serious drawbacks and lack of scientific substantiation. Patients hear horror stories of other people’s ordeal with cancer.
A report published in 2008 said “most patients with Hodgkin’s lymphoma (HL) can be cured with chemotherapy, radiotherapy or combined modality treatment. However, current treatment is associated with severe side effects and late toxicities such as infertility, cardiovascular damage and secondary malignancies. Moreover, a fraction of patients suffers from treatment resistant disease and cannot be cured with current approaches including high dose chemotherapy and stem cell transplant.” [Hematology Meeting Reports 2008; 2(5):154–158] This report calls for re-examination of immunotherapy for lymphoma.
Numerous studies demonstrate that the status of the immune system dictates survival for cancer patients. A recently reported study showed that surgery or radiation treatment alone will inhibit T-cells in lymph fluid, which are a key regulator of tumor growth and dictate survival. The combination of chemotherapy plus radiation elevated T-cell counts, but so did experimental immunotherapy. [Anticancer Research 2009 May; 29(5):1847–52]
Whether the court will ever hear about the downsides of modern cancer therapy, should Colleen and Daniel Hauser return to Minnesota, is unknown. Health freedom organizations have yet to comment on this saga which is now widely reported by the news media.
Source: LewRockwell
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Former Governor Jesse Ventura: Let Me Judge Torture Photos On Behalf Of The American People
The real reason behind Obama’s reversal of a decision to release the torture photos has been almost completely ignored by the corporate media – the fact that the photos show both US and Iraqi soldiers raping teenage boys in front of their mothers.
The Obama administration originally intended to release photos depicting torture and abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq by the end of May, following a court order arising out of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit first filed by the ACLU in 2004.
However, a reversal of Obama’s decision was announced this week, after he “changed his mind after viewing some of the images and hearing warnings from his generals in Iraq and in Afghanistan that such a move would endanger US troops deployed there,” according to a Washington Post report.
In response, the ACLU charged that Obama “has essentially become complicit with the torture that was rampant during the Bush years by being complicit in its coverup.” The Obama administration has also sought to protect intelligence officials involved in torture from prosecution at every turn.
The primary reason why Obama is now blocking the release of the photos is that some of the pictures, as well as video recordings, show prison guards sodomizing young boys in front of their mothers, both with objects as well as physical rape.
This horrific detail has been almost completely ignored by the establishment media in their coverage of the story this week, despite the fact that it’s been in the public domain for nearly five years, after it was first revealed by investigative Seymour Hersh during an ACLU conference in July 2004.
“Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay?” said Hersh. “Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”
Hersh’s contention that minors were raped by prison guards while others filmed the vulgar spectacle is backed up by a leaked Abu Ghraib memorandum highlighted in a 2004 London Guardian report, in which detainees Kasim Hilas describes “the rape of an Iraqi boy by a man in uniform”. The testimony was also part of the military’s official Taguba Report into the torture at Abu Ghraib.
“I saw [name blacked out] fucking a kid, his age would be about 15-18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [blacked out], who was wearing the military uniform putting his dick in the little kid’s ass,” Mr Hilas told military investigators. “I couldn’t see the face of the kid because his face wasn’t in front of the door. And the female soldier was taking pictures.”
Another inmate, Thaar Dawod, described more abuse of teenage boys.
“They came with two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and Grainer [Corporal Charles Graner, one of the military policemen facing court martial] was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures from top and bottom and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners,” he said.
A 2004 London Telegraph report also described photos which showed “US soldiers beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death and having sex with a female PoW,” as well as a videotape, apparently made by US personnel, which shows “Iraqi guards raping young boys”.
Former Governor Jesse Ventura today offered a solution to the controversy surrounding President Obama’s decision to reverse an earlier promise to release the torture photos – let Ventura see the photos on behalf of the American people and then decide if they should be released.
Ventura told the Alex Jones Show today, “How about if I step forward on behalf of the taxpayers and the citizens of the great United States of America – and I wanna go public with this – I will represent us, let me go where these photos are, let me go inside and see them and let me come out and report back as to what these photos are.”
“I think I have the right to do that, I think they have no right to keep me from doing that, you know why? I pay their salaries and I’m a governor, I’m a mayor, I’m a former Navy SEAL, I had a top secret security clearance – I think I’m fully qualified to walk in and view these photos,” said Ventura, adding, “I’ll report to the public, what it is why we shouldn’t be able to see them because I understand it could infuriate the enemy, but I’m not the enemy and therefore I think I have every right to see these photos in private.”
Source: Prison Planet