"US Uses Rape As An Instrument Of War"

WARNING: Images contained in this articule, although censored, are still very disturbing and might offend some.

Source:
http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2009/10/03/rape-iraqi-women-us-forces-weapon-war-photos-and-data-emerge


Article:
Washington, D.C. 03 October (Asiantribune.com):

In March 2006 four US soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division gang raped a 14 year old Iraqi girl and murdered her and her family —including a 5 year old child. An additional soldier was involved in the cover-up.

One of the killers, Steven Green, was found guilty on May 07, 2009 in the US District Court of Paducah and is now awaiting sentencing.

The leaked Public Affairs Guidance put the 101st media team into a "passive posture" — withholding information where possible. It conceals presence of both child victims, and describes the rape victim, who had just turned 14, as "a young woman".

The US Army's Criminal Investigation Division did not begin its investigation until three and a half months after the crime, news reports at that time commented.

This is not the only grim picture coming out of Iraq U.S. forces being accused of using rape as a war weapon.

The release, by CBS News, of the photographs showing the heinous sexual abuse and torture of Iraqi POW's at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison opened a Pandora's Box for the Bush regime wrote Ernesto Cienfuegos in La Voz de Aztlan on May 2, 2004.

Journalist Cienfuegos further states “Apparently, the suspended US commander of the prison where the worst abuses took place, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, has refused to take the fall by herself and has implicated the CIA, Military Intelligence and private US government contractors in the torturing of POW's and in the raping of Iraqi women detainees as well.”


Brigadier General Karpinski, who commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade, described a high-pressure Military Intelligence and CIA command that prized successful interrogations. A month before the alleged abuses and rapes occurred, she said, a team of CIA, Military Intelligence officers and private consultants under the employ of the US government came to Abu Ghraib. "Their main and specific mission was to give the interrogators new techniques to get more information from detainees," she said.

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He later confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph in May 2009.

The London newspaper further noted “graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President Obama’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.”

Maj. Gen. Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.

“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

In April, Mr. Obama’s administration said the photographs would be released and it would be “pointless to appeal” against a court judgment in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr. Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.

In May, he said: “The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”

In April 2004, new photographs were sent to La Voz de Aztlan from confidential sources depicting the shocking rapes of two Iraqi women by what are purported to be US Military Intelligence personnel and private US mercenaries in military fatigues. It is now known, Cienfuegos wrote in May 2004, that hundreds of these photographs had been in circulation among the troops in Iraq. The graphic photos were being swapped between the soldiers like baseball cards.


Asian Tribune carries here three of the ‘Rape’ photographs which have brought criticism that the U.S. forces in Iraq have used rape as a weapon of war.

- Asian Tribune -

It's always nauseating and disgusting when people in a power position abuse that power by harming the folks they are supposed to be protecting. Inexcusable, reprehensible, and evil-- I hope these men get the absolute maximum punishment. I hope that punishment is death. They acted like monsters and animals, just get rid of them like monsters and animals. (But then again if I was in charge, any time anyone got raped, the rapist's (or rapists') head (or heads) would be rolling. So it's pretty lucky I'm not in charge and I'm 100% unqualified to dish out punishments.)

But please keep in mind that not all soldiers do things like this. Not even most soldiers do things like this. Not everyone who is put into a high-stress situation for months on end reacts by becoming a monster. Not all of them are even capable of something like this.

So please, please throw the book at these men, they deserve any punishment that comes their way and then some, and no matter what punishment they get it won't be enough and it won't make up for what happened and it never could. But please, please do not lump all soldiers together into the same category as them. Please don't let this become "Look what they did, all soldiers are bad!"

Be right back, puking. :-( My god, those pictures.

Look what they did, all soldiers are bad!

War is f'd up, training people to kill people is always going to have nasty side effects. This behaviour is inexcusable but I am not surprised by it. If you train people into killing machines they have no regard or respect for 'the enemy' as they see it. It is how they are programmed to think. I don't know whether or not these men would have been rapists on US soil, it is impossible to say but they do deserve the severest of punishments that can be given.

I personally think the most interesting part of the story is the fact that Obama was set on declassifying the photographs and making them available to the public and press....that is until he saw them and was convinced they were so bad they would do irreversible damage to America's image across the world.

That pretty much means that no matter how bad the pics in this article are, they are nothing compared to the classified ones. And these are pretty much the most f'ed up pics I've ever seen.

It only serves to prove that the U.S. President isn't U.S.A. in person.

There's a lot of politics going on behind his back. And certainly he has no idea of what's going on with most of it.

It's like Ol' good Rome of 2000 years ago is alive again. And really I see how all this crap is putting a toll on the man.

Look his hairs are now half-gray. O_O

It's unfortunate that we've let anyone in the United States think that torture and abuse of anyone is acceptable. To allow even the idea that the US believes these practices are acceptable means that we've lowered our nations standing and moral fiber.

To have actually used these practices? Criminal in the highest fashion. Anyone who allowed this to happen should be held accountable. Anyone who ordered this to happen should be tried and sentenced and anyone who did this needs to be punished. Just having done this sends more people into the war against us.

People who justify torture in saying that it prevents terrorist attacks fail to see that if we become a nation that does this, we give justification to the enemy. They can point to our torture and abuse and rally people who would otherwise be on the sidelines against us. In preventing one attack you create a thousand soldiers. Indeed, I'm afraid President Obama is correct; distributing these photos will endanger our soldiers. However, the photos only represent the unfortunate truth of what happened.

What got me is the fact that they were trading the pictures "like baseball cards". Seriously? What the *** man?

This part is pretty good.


This part isn't so much. Killing machines? Right. The US military is compassionate and considerate to the point that it hinders their objectives. If we were training killing machines, there wouldn't be any rape: we would kill everyone. But the reality of the situation is that (whether we succeed in it or not) we're not conquerors, but trying to give a country to the people we think will take care of it best. That's where we get our super-restrained rules of engagement. That's how we wind up with soldiers having no food intended for themselves, but plenty of humanitarian rations.

Tied into that is respect for the enemy. Surely, I'd be an idiot if I said that every individual member respects their enemy. But institutionally, absolutely. That is the kind of training that actually takes place. Both tactically respecting the enemy to prevent being caught off guard, but also respecting them as humans. Mercy, compassion, empathy.

"train people into killing machines they have no regard or respect for 'the enemy'" is pretty offensively ignorant.

All that being said, yeah, war is a hugely complicated, stressful, and imperfect situation for almost any person, and things get messed up. That's not an excuse for that kind of behavior - provided that the very best effort has been made to provide the correct training and support - the military ought to hold its members to a higher standard. (And very often do, despite the tragic and terrible exceptions like this situation.)

This story came out 4 years ago. Pretty sure the trials are over.

tl;dr

I assume this is just something about how soldiers rape people? Nothing new there. Welcome to the past several thousand years of human history.

Simply because something has occurred before doesn't make it unremarkable.

Furthermore, I'm pretty sure the last "thousand years of human history" doesn't boast a plethora of photographic evidence to be shared over a high speed network.

Moron.

This.

I don't get why you bother to bring this up other than to try to make it an "Obama made the right choice" kind of story? There's a huge thing going down with the NSA right now and you choose to bring this up in politics?

While I think you went overboard with calling him moron, I agree with all you said ... >.>

How they can find pleasure doing that by force?.....

Rape is rarely about sexual gratification.

It seems like people make this association a lot for some reason. . .

4 of the soldiers got life, the other got 2 years because he was just an accessory apparently. In 2009.

Further proof why the rest of the world hates america and their constant arse dribble of "freedom".


I guess this is what happens when you recruit uneducated morons into the military as the americas have a reputation for.


Great job, as long as it happens outside the US who cares right?

War rape happens everywhere, not just at the hands of the U.S. military.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_rape

Careful, your bias is showing. :P

For those 4,it's likely the last orgasm they'll ever have.....of their own

Woah wait! for real? Wow thanks for showing me the error of my ways with such a simple 8th grade search on the subject and ignoring that the fact that the worlds last remaining super power who constantly spews rubbish about being fair and just covers up rape by its own.

***

lol

The best you got is "lol"?


Enough said

Cause the US is the only country EVER to cover-up war crimes. Yup.

Well that makes it ok then, sorry for being silly.

Never said it was, but I also don't think you should project on all the citizens of a country because of what a select few do when there's been tons of other cases of the same things happening

Yeah but you are passively aggressively defending them as a whole?


Or did I misconstrue your attempts to divert blame?

Hm, I didn't mean to come across that way. I do apologize for that. I simply wanted to articulate that I feel it's not fair to call all Americans dumb because of the actions of the military. There's just as many idiots across the world as there are in the U.S., and there are just as many cases of war rape / atrocities and cover-ups across the world as there are in the U.S... So why's it okay to say "All Americans are evil pigs" or "Americans are all morons" then while ignoring the whole other side of the coin where war crimes against citizens are a huge problem across the world?

I think Moowalkerv was trying to make the point that the USA constantly tells other countries that they have human rights violations, or interferes in other countries state of affairs, all while proclaiming the high moral ground.

And this points to the US not having that high moral ground.

There are other facets to this story (CIA destroying two enhanced interrogation instruction videos before the ACLU gets the FOIA to release them, Abu Ghraib torture, etc) that illustrates that the US doesn't really have that high moral ground.

But maybe I'm reading his statements wrong.