RE: [microsound] OT - Draft by 2005

[Karri Ojanen <karrio@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Up until this point I was going the ignore this conversation on the
list, but now feel like I have to say something...

-----Original Message-----
From: Rudolph A. Carrera [mailto:fgrecs@xxxxxxxxxxxx] 
>You give non-American residents a ridiculous picture of what life is
like in the States.  >Abu Ghraib is a blip on the screen to most
Americans.  And, I'm willing to bet, to most >Iraqis.  The only ones
really jumping up and down for this are Saddam Loyalists, >Communists
and their sympathizers, and the kooky fringes of Arab society.  That's a
shame.  >Those who will be punished will be punished for dereliction.
What they did, however, >does not even come close to qualifying as
"torture."

Man, you and your comments, the one above in particular, have made me
utterly, utterly disgusted on this otherwise sunny Sunday morning.

Does not even come close to qualifying as torture?????

"In the Washington Post's accounts, several Iraqi prisoners are quoted
giving graphic details of abuse by US soldiers. One detainee, named in
the report as Ameen Saeed al-Sheik, said he was asked by a soldier
whether he believed in anything. "I said to him, 'I believe in Allah.'
So he said, 'But I believe in torture and I will torture you.'" He said
one soldier struck his broken leg and ordered him to curse Islam.
"Because they started to hit my broken leg, I curse my religion," the
paper quoted him as saying. "They ordered me to thank Jesus I'm alive.""
- Washington Post / BBC News,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3734531.stm

"The Washington Post report also describes a video clip in which a
shackled inmate repeatedly slams his bloody head against a metal door,
before collapsing."
- BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3734531.stm 

"In other abuses depicted in the latest pictures: A naked prisoner who
appears to be covered in excrement is paraded down a corridor, a hooded
detainee is pictured in a state of collapse, a US soldier appears to be
raining blows on detainees sprawled on the floor."
- BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3734531.stm 

" [the new pictures] show US soldiers apparently beating, sexually
humiliating or terrorising Iraqi prisoners and include for the first
time video footage."
- BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3737837.stm

"Thirty-two of the deaths under investigation took place in Iraq and
five in Afghanistan. Some of the deaths date back to August 2002 ...
Most of the detainees died inside detention facilities ... causes of
death given include: multiple gunshot wounds with complications, blunt
force injuries and asphyxia, blunt force injuries complicated by
compromised respiration, strangulation, pulmonary embolism due to blunt
force injury to the legs"
- Pentagon / BBC News,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3737787.stm

And there are so many more quotes, reports, comments and articles to be
found online. Just try searching for them yourself on Google. The list
of abuses doesn't end here - I could've quoted numerous reports of rape
and abuse of female detainees by American soldiers in Iraqi prisons. But
if I would've quoted all of those reports here, this e-mail would've
been a thousand times longer. I have to provide one more, recent link,
though. This was published in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/magazine/23PRISONS.html?ex=1086240089&;
ei=1&en=7719c62be87e7ae6
(Notes on what has been done - and why - to prisoners, by Americans by
Susan Sontag)

Sure, you can say that some of these reports have come from the
detainees themselves - and you'll say that they're lieing, because
they're "Saddam Loyalists, >Communists and their sympathizers, and the
kooky fringes of Arab society."

But about the pictures? What, do you think they're staged? Why would've
the soldiers staged themselves doing this? How (and why would've)
could've they staged it so well? And what about the reports that come
from the US Army and Pentagon themselves? And you have the nerve to call
this "dereliction."

How about you be stripped naked, forced to wear women's underwear,
bitten by dogs, beaten, forced to eat your meals from the toilet, kept
awake for days on end, gangraped (yes, there are reports of actual rape,
not just threats, too), covered in shit and then paraded through the
prison hallway, then beaten again, forced to masturbate in front of a
dozen people, and then beaten again? YOU LOOK ME IN THE EYES AFTER THAT
AND TELL ME THAT IT WAS NOT TORTURE.

Dude, you'll be crying for Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, anyone to come
to your help at that point.

You go look the Iraqi detainees who got TORTURED and their families in
the eyes and tell them what you told on this list. Tell them that they
were not tortured. Tell them that what they have experienced doesn't
even come close to torture. It's just "dereliction." You go tell them
that.

I can't believe you and your comments. Or - better to say - I don't want
to. I just don't want to. You have made me feel almost sicker than the
pictures themselves. 

Rudy:
> PS - Why don't people sign their names to their responses anymore?"

Karri Ojanen


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: microsound-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: microsound-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
website: http://www.microsound.org