US treatment of Iraqi prisoners

recent 60 minutes report

Published on April 30, 2004 By Solitair In Current Events

Like many other I am totally shocked and horrified by the recent 60 minutes program on the abuses by the US military in the Abu Ghraib prison.

Links to CBS are

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/27/60II/main614063.shtml

and to a BBC report

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3672901.stm

The US government is responsible for it's military and their actions. Saying this is just a tiny minority of the 150,000 troops present is not enough. The damage these pictures do to the US military's reputation in Iraq is enormous. How can Iraqi's have any confidence in a regime where this occurs? Sure the US is prosecuting the soldiers involved, but how did it let such a situation happen in the first place. Not to ensure that Iraqi prisoners were well looked after is one of the US's biggest blunders in this war.

It turns out that they didn't even give the soldiers working in the prison a copy of the Geneva convention on the treatment of prisoners, failed to provide any details of how prisoners were to be treated, failed to provide a framework for the poor treatment of prisoners to be reported and failed to provide any training for the soldiers on how to run a prison. These are failures by the administration and yet again show that the US failed to plan properly for the running or Iraq after the war.

The US now is in the sad position of having to await a fresh wave of Iraqi anger and hatred generated by it's own failures. I just hope no more US soldiers or hostages end up dying in the expected revenge attacks which will follow this administration screw up.

Paul.

Comments

WiseFawn

on Apr 30, 2004

Thank you putting up this link and an insightful and needed article!

Draginol

on Apr 30, 2004

I don't recall you expressing similar concern over the outright routine torture of American soldiers that fell into Iraqi hands.

Statistically, some prisoners will always be mistreated. It's nothing new. It happens in every war.

Since American soldiers are tortured and worse in every war as standard procedure, I am not sure what the effect will be in terms of "reputation".

I agree that it's bad that a handful of soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners, but I'm not surprised. The soldiers who did this will be punished.

Solitair

on May 04, 2004

Let me now express outrage then at mistreatment of American soldiers who have been captured.

As for the statement

Statistically, some prisoners will always be mistreated. It's nothing new. It happens in every war.

This is not a statistical case. This is a systematic failure. When the US has to reprimand 6 senior military personel it's because the system failed, not because a few soldiers are at fault.

I watched a program on the D-Day invasion last night and among the items given to every soldier was a booklet describing how to treat French people and a booklet on how to treat prisoners of war. Why did the US government fail to inform any of the soldiers how to treat prisoners? Why were the senior officers unaware of what was happening. Why were 2 separate sections of the military involved?

I do agree that these are the actions of individual soldiers who should and will be punished. But it is the responsibility of the US government to minimise the chance of such things happening. Sure they can reprimand generals for failing to supervise the soldiers correctly, but who is going to reprimand the government for it's failures?

Paul.

messybuu

on May 04, 2004

So corruption among individuals inside an organization is a valid reason for criticizing that organization?

imajinit

on May 04, 2004

i'm not trying to steal anyone's thunder, but I felt the need to post my own article on this subject... it's here in the current events category too

Link <--- this is a link to an interesting 'prison experiment' conducted at Stanford University

just a thought

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