|
Torture Worse in "Democratic" Iraq than Under Saddam Hussein
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Renegade |
| quote: | U.N. expert says torture in Iraq may be worse now than under Saddam
Updated 9/21/2006 5:38 PM ET
GENEVA (AP) — Torture in Iraq may be worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein, with militias, terrorist groups and government forces disregarding rules on the humane treatment of prisoners, the U.N. anti-torture chief said Thursday.
Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, made the remarks as he was presenting a report on detainee conditions at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay as well as to brief the U.N. Human Rights Council, the global body's top rights watchdog, on torture worldwide.
Reports from Iraq indicate that torture "is totally out of hand," he said. "The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein."
Nowak added, "That means something, because the torture methods applied under Saddam Hussein were the worst you could imagine."
Some allegations of torture were undoubtedly credible, with government forces among the perpetrators, he said, citing "very serious allegations of torture within the official Iraqi detention centers."
"You have terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these militias. There are so many people who are actually abducted, seriously tortured and finally killed," Nowak told reporters at the U.N.'s European headquarters.
"It's not just torture by the government. There are much more brutal methods of torture you'll find by private militias," he said.
A report by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq's Human Rights office cited worrying evidence of torture, unlawful detentions, growth of sectarian militias and death squads, and a rise in "honor killings" of women.
Iraq's government, set up in 2006, is "currently facing a generalized breakdown of law and order which presents a serious challenge to the institutions of Iraq" such as police and security forces and the legal system, the U.N. report said, noting that torture was a major concern.
Nowak has yet to make an official visit to Iraq and said such a mission would be unfeasible as long as the security situation there remains perilous. He based his comments on interviews with people during a visit to Amman, Jordan, and other sources.
"You find these bodies with very heavy and very serious torture marks," he said. "Many of these allegations, I have no doubt that they are credible."
According to the U.N. report, the number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August hit 6,599, a record-high that is far greater than initial estimates suggested, the U.N. report said Wednesday.
It attributed many of the deaths to rising sectarian tensions that have pushed Iraq toward civil war. |
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/...htm?POE=NEWISVA
I think it's now official in every possible away: Iraq would have been better off had Saddam Hussein remained in power. |
|
|
| Fir3start3r |
Because of one guy's opinion from the U.N. of all places??
Are we forgetting the forth word in this 'assumption'?
The word, "May" doesn't sound very confident or concrete... |
|
|
| Renegade |
| quote: | Originally posted by Fir3start3r
Because of one guy's opinion from the U.N. of all places??
Are we forgetting the forth word in this 'assumption'?
The word, "May" doesn't sound very confident or concrete... |
Confident or concrete? How can one make a confident or concrete qualitative judgement about something like the severity of torture?
The fact that torture is still common in Iraq and that it may even rival the severity of torture from Saddam's days, should tell us that - by virtually every measure - the war on Iraq was a failure. Even if we could say with "concrete confidence" that the severity of torture has been reduced by 50% since the fall of Baghdad in March 2003, we're still not in an altogether ideal situation are we? In virtually no respect is the world, or Iraq itself, better off for the removal of Saddam Hussein. Given what a brutal, bastard sort of a he was to begin with, I think that's saying something.
(I'm ed atm, so I reserve the right to come back tomorrow and edit this message so it makes more sense.) |
|
|
| Purple |
| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
I think it's now official in every possible away: Iraq would have been better off had Saddam Hussein remained in power. |
I thought this have been true since like past two years and not just now! |
|
|
| venomX |
| quote: |
Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat
Published: September 24, 2006
WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the
The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.
The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.
An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.
The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.
More than a dozen United States government officials and outside experts were interviewed for this article, and all spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified intelligence document. The officials included employees of several government agencies, and both supporters and critics of the Bush administration. All of those interviewed had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts. These officials discussed some of the document’s general conclusions but not details, which remain highly classified.
Officials with knowledge of the intelligence estimate said it avoided specific judgments about the likelihood that terrorists would once again strike on United States soil. The relationship between the Iraq war and terrorism, and the question of whether the United States is safer, have been subjects of persistent debate since the war began in 2003.
National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on analysis of raw intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies.
Analysts began working on the estimate in 2004, but it was not finalized until this year. Part of the reason was that some government officials were unhappy with the structure and focus of earlier versions of the document, according to officials involved in the discussion.
Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and some policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more focused on specific steps to mitigate the terror threat. It is unclear whether the final draft of the intelligence estimate criticizes individual policies of the United States, but intelligence officials involved in preparing the document said its conclusions were not softened or massaged for political purposes.
Frederick Jones, a White House spokesman, said the White House “played no role in drafting or reviewing the judgments expressed in the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism.” The estimate’s judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. That report stated that the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives.
Documents released by the White House timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks emphasized the successes that the United States had made in dismantling the top tier of Al Qaeda.
“Since the Sept. 11 attacks, America and its allies are safer, but we are not yet safe,” concludes one, a report titled “9/11 Five Years Later: Success and Challenges.” “We have done much to degrade Al Qaeda and its affiliates and to undercut the perceived legitimacy of terrorism.”
That document makes only passing mention of the impact the Iraq war has had on the global jihad movement. “The ongoing fight for freedom in Iraq has been twisted by terrorist propaganda as a rallying cry,” it states.
The report mentions the possibility that Islamic militants who fought in Iraq could return to their home countries, “exacerbating domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies.”
On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee released a more ominous report about the terrorist threat. That assessment, based entirely on unclassified documents, details a growing jihad movement and says, “Al Qaeda leaders wait patiently for the right opportunity to attack.”
The new National Intelligence Estimate was overseen by David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, who commissioned it in 2004 after he took up his post at the National Intelligence Council. Mr. Low declined to be interviewed for this article.
The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of “self-generating” cells inspired by Al Qaeda’s leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.
It also examines how the Internet has helped spread jihadist ideology, and how cyberspace has become a haven for terrorist operatives who no longer have geographical refuges in countries like Afghanistan.
In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists, and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake Al Qaeda’s current leadership in the constellation of the global jihad leadership.
But the new intelligence estimate is the first report since the war began to present a comprehensive picture about the trends in global terrorism.
In recent months, some senior American intelligence officials have offered glimpses into the estimate’s conclusions in public speeches.
“New jihadist networks and cells, sometimes united by little more than their anti-Western agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge,” said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, during a speech in San Antonio in April, the month that the new estimate was completed. “If this trend continues, threats to the U.S. at home and abroad will become more diverse and that could lead to increasing attacks worldwide,” said the general, who was then Mr. Negroponte’s top deputy and is now director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
For more than two years, there has been tension between the Bush administration and American spy agencies over the violence in Iraq and the prospects for a stable democracy in the country. Some intelligence officials have said the White House has consistently presented a more optimistic picture of the situation in Iraq than justified by intelligence reports from the field.
Spy agencies usually produce several national intelligence estimates each year on a variety of subjects. The most controversial of these in recent years was an October 2002 document assessing Iraq’s illicit weapons programs. Several government investigations have discredited that report, and the intelligence community is overhauling how it analyzes data, largely as a result of those investigations.
The broad judgments of the new intelligence estimate are consistent with assessments of global terrorist threats by American allies and independent terrorism experts.
The panel investigating the London terrorist bombings of July 2005 reported in May that the leaders of Britain’s domestic and international intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, “emphasized to the committee the growing scale of the Islamist terrorist threat.”
More recently, the Council on Global Terrorism, an independent research group of respected terrorism experts, assigned a grade of “D+” to United States efforts over the past five years to combat Islamic extremism. The council concluded that “there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking.” |
Who would of thunk :eek:. Lack of foresight in my opinion, any two cent shrink could of told them this. Just adding to the original line of this thread, "Iraq would have been better off with saddam" ;)
Link |
|
|
| Swamper |
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...2801996_pf.html
| quote: |
At Checkpoints in Baghdad, Disguise Is a Lifesaving Ritual
By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 29, 2006;
BAGHDAD -- Every time he drove, he feared this moment. Now, it was too late.
As Omar Ahmed neared the checkpoint, he recalled, he saw armed men dressed in black ordering passengers out of a minivan and checking their identity cards. Some were told to get back into the van. Others were taken to a Shiite mosque across the street. The gunmen clutched Glock pistols, normally used by the Iraqi police.
Ahmed, 30, was a Sunni Muslim. And he was in Shaab, a volatile, Shiite Muslim-dominated neighborhood. Questions raced through his mind: Was the mosque a base for a Shiite militia? Were the men members of a Shiite death squad?
So Ahmed set in motion a ritual that many Sunnis across a divided Baghdad now practice. He pushed in a cassette tape with Shiite religious songs and turned up the volume. He wrapped a piece of green cloth that he brought from the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, one of Shiite Islam's holiest sites, around his gearshift.
And he hung a small picture of Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad and the most revered Shiite saint, from his rearview mirror.
To the world outside, he was now a Shiite.
In a city riven by religion, violence and politics, fearful Sunnis and Shiites are hiding their identities to survive. Their differences -- some obvious, most subtle -- have become matters of life or death in ways never before seen in modern Iraq.
As he reached the checkpoint, Ahmed recalled, he was petrified. His wife, his mother and two small daughters were with him in their gray Honda. He pulled out his fake identity card, on which his Sunni tribal name, al-Obeidi, was changed to al-Hussein, a Shiite tribe.
"Deep inside, I was frightened," he said.
'What Is Your Sect?'
For centuries, from the Ottoman Empire to the British-installed monarchy to the republic eventually ruled by Saddam Hussein, Sunnis were the elite who got the bulk of government jobs. Shiites, in Hussein's time, were badly persecuted.
Yet in daily life hardly anyone cared about telling Sunnis and Shiites apart. It was considered rude to ask a person's sect, and it is practically impossible to discern from their looks, speech or dress. For generations, the two sects intermarried, making it difficult to differentiate them by surnames. They attended the same schools and lived in mixed neighborhoods.
Now, in the fourth year after a U.S.-led invasion toppled Hussein, a struggle for power is unfolding between Sunnis and Shiites in the political arena and in the streets of Baghdad. Since the bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra in February, sectarian strife and lawlessness have escalated.
At checkpoints set up by police or by sectarian militias, Iraqis said in interviews, it is common to hear questions such as "What is your sect?" or "What is your tribal name?" A wrong response could prove deadly.
On July 9, in Baghdad's al-Jihad neighborhood, Shiite militiamen allegedly killed 40 Sunnis after erecting checkpoints and checking identity cards. Three days later, unknown gunmen attacked a bus station in the northeastern town of Muqdadiyah and separated Sunni men from Shiites. They blindfolded and handcuffed the Shiites, then shot them in the head.
"People are basically killed or taken away simply because of their name, their identity or specific affiliations," said Gianni Magazzeni, head of the U.N. human rights office for Iraq.
In Baghdad, it is difficult to tell a real checkpoint from a fake one. Police uniforms and badges are easily available on the black market. Shiite militiamen have infiltrated the Iraqi security forces, while Sunnis have largely remained outside them. Sunni insurgents have set up checkpoints and targeted Shiites.
A Fake ID and 12 Tips
"It is like Russian roulette," said Omar al-Azzawi, 33, a tall, broad-shouldered Sunni computer technician, who curled his fingers into the shape of a gun and pressed it against his temple. "I like my country, I like my people. But these days things are really different. To be in Iraq is to tempt fate."
Azzawi said Shiite militiamen abducted his aunt at a checkpoint in July in Baghdad's Shula neighborhood. Three days later, police found her body dumped on a street. Since then, Azzawi has taken measures to protect himself.
From his brown wallet, he pulled out a fake press credential from an Arabic-language newspaper. It cost him $35. On the red and white badge, Omar, a common Sunni name, became Amar, a common Shiite name.
Whenever he enters a Shiite neighborhood, Azzawi slips on a large silver ring worn by many Shiites, especially those considered to be descendants of Muhammad. He also carries a torba , a round piece of clay Shiites use to place their foreheads upon when they bow in prayer.
At work, Azzawi said, he often surfs Web sites to learn more about Shiites and their practices. For instance, he's been learning to recite the 12 imams of the Shiites, in perfect succession. He's heard that Shiite militiamen at checkpoints often use this as a test.
"I don't like to learn something that happened more than a thousand years ago," said Azzawi, who wore black jeans, a black shirt and a thin beard. "But I have to."
One Web site, http://www.iraqirabita.org , offers a 12-point plan for Sunnis to disguise themselves as Shiites. The No. 1 tip: "Get a forged ID card, especially if your name is Omar or Othman."
Other tips include keeping a poster of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Muhammad, and a copy of a Shiite prayer book inside your house; keeping a set of black clothes, like those Shiites wear to commemorate special religious occasions; and learning the dates of the births and deaths of the 12 imams.
Tip No. 8: Learn how to curse Yazid, the Sunni caliph whose army killed Imam Hussein in the 7th century.
And if all else fails, tip No. 11 reads: "It is okay to claim that you were a Sunni but you were later 'enlightened' and became a Shiite." And tip No. 12 reminds Sunnis to practice all 11 tips well -- and to pray in a husseiniya, or Shiite mosque.
Azzawi's cousin keeps a latmiya -- sad Shiite chants about the 12 imams -- in his collection of ring tones in his cellphone. He activates it in majority-Shiite neighborhoods. Other Sunnis have images of Imam Ali or Imam Hussein on their cellphone screens.
Haki Ismael is a Shiite guard at a government ministry. He lives in Amiriyah, a mostly Sunni neighborhood. Every time he left, he said, he used his fake Sunni identity card. But one recent morning, he was kidnapped by members of the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia aligned with firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. They thought he was a Sunni, he recalled.
So Ismael spoke with an accent typical of Shiites from the south. The militiamen began to relax. They released him.
Judging by Appearance
Ghassan Khalaf, a Sunni shopkeeper, was saved by his short hair. In June, Shiite policemen stopped his black BMW at a checkpoint in the mostly Shiite neighborhood of Bayaa. They saw the picture of Sadr near the speedometer and Imam Ali on the windshield. But their eyes zeroed in on Khalaf's cousin, Ahmad Jabbir. He had a long, bushy beard and a white tribal head scarf, worn by many religious Sunnis.
The policemen asked him for his ID. He did not have a fake one. Worse, his tribal name was al-Douri, the same as Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who was a top deputy to Saddam Hussein. The policemen pushed Jabbir into their vehicle and ordered Khalaf to leave.
A few days later, Jabbir's corpse turned up in the morgue, Khalaf said. It had 24 holes from an electric drill; the head and beard were shaved.
Two weeks ago, a Shiite friend visited Khalaf's home, where photos of Sadr and Imam Ali are prominently displayed. Like most neighbors, he thought Khalaf was Shiite. He pulled out his cellphone and asked Khalaf:
"Did you see the last operation the heroes did?"
Then, Khalaf recalled, the friend played a grainy one-minute, 40-second video of armed men in black dragging a corpse by its shirt and dumping it in a sandy lot. "God help us get rid of the Salafis and Wahhabis," Khalaf told him afterward, referring to two Sunni branches.
"They think I am one of them," Khalaf explained later. "If you make a mistake, they'll find out you have some sympathy for Sunnis. They will kill me."
The friend asked Khalaf to pull out his blue cellphone with its latmiya ring tone. Then, he beamed over the video with a Bluetooth device.
"When my friend left, I cried because I remembered my cousin," Khalaf said.
"I thought, 'This is what happened to him.' "
Khalaf kept the video in his cellphone. It had become another piece of his disguise.
A Song and a Blessing
At the checkpoint, one of the armed men in black ordered Ahmed to get out of his Honda. His family sat in silence, veiled in fear. The man looked inside the car and spotted the green cloth and the picture of Imam Ali. A Shiite religious song flowed through the speakers.
"Where are you coming from?" he asked Ahmed.
"From a ziyara ," he replied in a southern Shiite accent, using the word for a visit to a shrine.
"God bless you. Go fast," the armed man replied.
Ahmed stepped back into his Honda and drove away.
"I felt like life came back to me," Ahmed recalled. |
Unreal. |
|
|
| Moongoose |
| This reads like some action/spy novel until you remember it really happened. Its really terrible that stuff like this countinoues to happen. So can anyone explain to me how this is better than Saddams Iraq? |
|
|
| shaolin_Z |
Holy crap! I had no idea how bad things had gotton there, mostly because I find it too depressing to keep up with the Iraq war these days. Although I haven't researched this, I'm pretty sure what sparked this full out Shiia-Sunni onslaught was the bombing of holy Shiia site and desicration of the graves of Imam Hussein (Prophet Muhammad's grandson), his relatives, and companions (in Iraq). And I can't help but think "false flag operation" (those of you familiar with that term know exactly who would be behind it). There's been plenty of sectarian violence and clashes in the past, but, that's mostly between the completely uneducated, ignorant, anbd backwards parts of the Muslim world (such as South Asia, Pakistan in particular). This is just too convenient for the powers that be to keep the troops there and ensure more control over Iraq and shaping it's future. Absolute mayhem and civil war, especially considering this aspect of it, is an effective way to ensure division. And a divided nation is far easier to subdue and reconsruct (and when I say reconstruct, certainly not in a benevolent way).
@ ogvh5150: "Ordo Ab Chao." This is such an obvious demonstration of their twisted philosophy.
EDIT: It just makes absolutely no sense for al-Q (who're Sunni) to instigate a full on war with the Shiias, esepcially condering what their stated goal is.
EDIT2: For those of you not familiar with Islamic history and the origins of the Shiia/Sunni sectarian division, it basically occured when the then "Caliph" Yazid (who the Sunnis still recognize as being legitimate Caliph and gloss over his tyrannical rule) killed Imam Hussein's (Prophet Muhammad's grandson), family, and relatives in cold blood. The Muslims who recognized this attrocity for what it was and refused to acknowledge Yazid as a legitimate Caliph, and for obvious reason were completey against him after that, came to be know as Shiias. Sunni, on the other hand (who make up majority of the world's Muslim population, especially in the Arab nations, Saudi Arabia being a Wahabi strong hold, one of the most extreme and violent splinter sects to come from the original Sunnis), were the rest of the Muslims who didn't have the balls to stand up to Yazid/recoznize the event for what it was. Ofcourse, the terms Shiia and Sunni didn't exist back then as there were no "sects" of Islam back then. But the two major sects come from those two groups. If memory serves me correctly, the "Shiia" of had an alliegance to "ahil-ul-bait," or "friend of the House (family of Muhammad)." Now the reason why I mentioned this is because it was al-Quaeda/Wahabis who dececrated the burrial site and killed tons of Shiia in the course of this War. And this new wave of extreme sectarian violence makes absolutely no sense given the fact that "Muslim lands" are under foreign invasion and occupation. The last thing they would want to do is focus their energy on killing Shiia (and vice versa).
(Note: I'm not Shiia or Sunni since I don't believe in sectarianism) |
|
|
| shaolin_Z |
| So this is pretty depressing :( (and infuriating). We, and by we I mean people on "the left," ing told you so. The Iraq war specifically and "War on Terrorism" in general will only result in a further radicalization of that Middle East and dramatically increase the threat of terrorism. Thanks for supporing and buying into the Neo-con propaganda and lies (which still some choose to refer to as "bad intelligence," "incompetence," or "intelligence failure") that got alot of you to think there was need to go in to Iraq in the first place. And now you ing idiots are falling for the propaganda to sell/justify the war with Iran. YOU STUPID ING SHEEP! By the time you fully realize what's going on and regret your ignorance/apathy, it'll be TOO ING LATE! :mad: |
|
|
| hardcore trancer |
| quote: | Originally posted by shaolin_Z
So this is pretty depressing :( (and infuriating). We, and by we I mean people on "the left," ing told you so. The Iraq war specifically and "War on Terrorism" in general will only result in a further radicalization of that Middle East and dramatically increase the threat of terrorism. Thanks for supporing and buying into the Neo-con propaganda and lies (which still some choose to refer to as "bad intelligence," "incompetence," or "intelligence failure") that got alot of you to think there was need to go in to Iraq in the first place. And now you ing idiots are falling for the propaganda to sell/justify the war with Iran. YOU STUPID ING SHEEP! By the time you fully realize what's going on and regret your ignorance/apathy, it'll be TOO ING LATE! :mad: |
couldnt agree anymore.I dont know for how much longer the American people will let their filthy government do what they are doing(ruining the world). |
|
|
| hardcore trancer |
| quote: | Originally posted by Moongoose
So can anyone explain to me how this is better than Saddams Iraq? |
oh come on man look at it in a positive way,THE PEOPLE CAN VOTE NOW:rolleyes: :rolleyes:
everytime I hear that from the Administration I just want to smash their heads against a brick wall.:whip: |
|
|
| Moongoose |
| Rejoice people of Iraq we have brought you democracy! You are free to vote now, pay no attention to the noumerous security checkpoints you need to pass by on the way from your home to wherever you go to vote, pay no atention to the fact that any of them can be fake and that people with whom you might have had tea 5 years ago are waiting there to kill you for something that you have no control of. You are free now, worship us as your saviors and give us your natural resources as compensation for our selfles act! |
|
|
|
|
