Is this any way to spread freedom?

Someone should ask Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzalez, the man who says America doesn't condone torture, how he feels about the fact that Iraqi prisoners are still being abused:

Prisoners have been beaten with cables and hosepipes, and suffered electric shocks to their earlobes and genitals, the U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch said. Some have been starved of food and water and crammed into standing-room only cells.

"The people of Iraq were promised something better than this after the government of Saddam Hussein fell," said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the group's Middle East and North Africa division.

"The Iraqi interim government is not keeping its promises to honor and respect basic human rights. Sadly, the Iraqi people continue to suffer from a government that acts with impunity in its treatment of detainees."

Human Rights Watch said it interviewed 90 Iraqi prisoners between July and October last year, just after the government of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi assumed power from the U.S.-led forces which toppled Saddam.

Seventy-two said they had been tortured or mistreated.

"Detainees report kicking, slapping and punching, prolonged suspension from the wrists with the hands tied behind the back, electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body ... and being kept blindfolded and/or handcuffed continuously for several days," the group said in a report.

"In several cases, the detainees suffered what may be permanent physical disability."

The report also said Iraq's intelligence service had violated the rights of political opponents.

It highlighted the systematic use of arbitrary arrest, pre-trial detention of up to four months, improper treatment of child detainees and abysmal conditions in pre-trial facilities.

(snip)

While the Human Rights Watch report looked solely at Iraqi institutions and did not address torture of prisoners by U.S. soldiers, it said international police advisors, mostly Americans, had turned a blind eye to Iraqi abuse.

* UPDATE * Don't believe Human Rights Watch? How about the U.S. government?

The Army launched dozens of investigations into detainee abuses across Iraq in the past two years - probing claims of beatings and torture that rivaled the Abu Ghraib prison scandal - but case after case was closed with U.S. troops facing no charges or only minimal punishment, military records released yesterday show.

The documents, internal reports from more than 50 criminal investigations, further refute government claims last year that photographs from Abu Ghraib showed isolated pranks of a few low-ranking soldiers.

The new records describe alleged misdeeds at U.S. facilities across Iraq that are, in some instances, strikingly similar to the publicized abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

The records include new allegations of forced sodomy, the use of dogs to frighten detainees and severe beatings of hooded and handcuffed prisoners. In one case, investigators determined that a commander and three members of an Army Special Forces unit - none of whom was publicly identified - had committed murder by luring an Afghan civilian to a roadblock before detaining him and shooting him.

No court-martial was convened in the case, according to the records released yesterday. Only one soldier was punished, receiving a written reprimand.

The disturbing details:

-A 73-year-old Iraqi woman told Army investigators she was subjected to sexual abuses and that a dog was let loose in a room where she and three other women were being held. Records indicate the investigation was closed.

-An October 2003 investigation found the soldiers who routinely stole money from detainees at a downtown Baghdad facility - what they called a "Robin Hood Tax" that went to buy sodas, ice and liquor - also were accused of beating hooded and handcuffed prisoners. One soldier reported seeing two others hold a detainee while a third "boot stomped" him in the gut, and also seeing a second detainee held against the wall while a soldier hit him in the stomach with a "chunk of wood."

When he reported the treatment, the soldier said he was told by a staff sergeant: "After you been at the hard site awhile you'll be doing it too." Two soldiers were found guilty at courts-martial, according to the investigation file. One received a reprimand and fine; the other was reduced in rank and confined for 60 days.


-After a soldier's wife last summer turned over to investigators a photo showing him pointing a gun at the head of a bound and hooded detainee, the soldier claimed he was acting at the direction of CIA and special forces operatives.

"I'm a private in the Army and I don't ask too many questions as to what's going on or what's being done," the soldier told investigators. He said he worked with special forces personnel at a safe house, where guard duty included playing loud music to keep prisoners from sleeping, dousing them with water, and poking, prodding or slapping prisoners.

Army investigators concluded the soldier had committed aggravated assault when he pointed his pistol at the detainee, but the investigative records do not indicate whether charges were filed.


-A detainee held by members of a Navy SEAL team at a facility in Mosul, Iraq, said he was stripped, subjected to loud music, doused with cold water and threatened that if he did not confess, "they would bring my wife and my mother and that they would rape them."

When interviewed by investigators, the SEAL team members denied abusing the detainee, "stating that he threw himself on rocks and rubbed himself against walls, and faked illness." The report concluded that the "investigation did not develop sufficient evidence to prove or disprove the allegations."

I hope when they raped the 73 year old woman she gave them information vital to the war on terror. Freedom is on the march, indeed.