... And Even More Torture at Abu Ghraib

It is with great sadness that we have to report even more cases of torture at Abu Ghraib prison - and this time the atrocities topped everything we've heard so far.

Surprisingly, though, Germany's media are loath to report on the topic...

Want a Different Abu Ghraib Story? Try This One. Saddam had their hands cut off. America gave them new ones.

Quite obviously it has been decided, as the handling of the Abu Ghraib story makes plain, that when America stumbles, we are going to have our faces rubbed in it. And rubbed in it and rubbed in it. As far as I can make out, the purpose of this two weeks of media humiliation is that we--the president, all of us--are being asked to morally prostrate ourselves before the rest of the world. Some may choose to do so, but this story should make a few Americans want to simply stand up straight again.

As perfect justice, the story in fact begins in Abu Ghraib prison, in 1995. With Iraq's economy in a tailspin, Saddam arrested nine Iraqi businessmen to scapegoat them as dollar traders. They got a 30-minute "trial," and were sentenced, after a year's imprisonment, to have their right hands surgically cut off at Abu Ghraib prison.

The amputations were performed, over two days, by a Baghdad anesthesiologist, a surgeon and medical

staff. We know this because Saddam had a videotape made of each procedure. He had the hands brought to him in formalin and then returned to Abu Ghraib. Oh, one more thing: The surgeon carved an X of shame into the forehead of each man. And the authorities charged the men $50. ...

Last year, after we liberated Iraq, a veteran TV news producer named Don North--who has worked for major U.S. broadcasters--was in Baghdad with the U.S. to restore TV service. Iraqi contacts there brought him a tape of the men's amputations. Mr. North says dismemberment was common in Saddam's Iraq and that if one walks down a crowded Baghdad street one may see a half-dozen people missing an ear, eye, limb or tongue. He decided to seek out the men whose stubbed arms represented the civilized world's lowest act--the perversion of medicine.
He found seven. Mr. North determined to make a documentary of their story and get medical help for them. How he found that help, if one may still use this phrase, is an all-American story. ...

But flying seven Iraqi men out of Baghdad is easier said than done. In this case, prodded by Don North and government friends, the famous U.S. bureaucracy gave itself a day off. Paul Bremer wrote a memo authorizing their departure. Paul Wolfowitz told the Air Force it could fly them to Frankfurt. Homeland Security waived visa requirements. ...

Continental Airlines donated passage to Houston. There, Dr. Agris enlisted a fellow surgeon, Fred Kestler, to assist. The Methodist Hospital donated facilities, and the men arrived in Houston in early April.

Dr. Agris saw that the Abu Ghraib "surgeries" were a botch. They'd cut through the joining of the wrist's carpal bones, "like carving a Turkey leg." Saddam's doctors did nothing to repair the nerve endings, which left the men with constant real and "phantom" pain. Drs. Agris and Kestler had two preliminary tasks: Repair the nerves, and, alas, take another inch off the men's lower arms, to leave a smooth surface for attaching their new prosthetic "hands." They worked for two days operating on the seven men, who then took a week to recover before receiving their new hands.

Those devices were donated by the German-American prosthetic company Otto Bock, at a cost of $50,000 each. They are state-of-the-art electronic hands, with fingers, which respond to trained muscular movements. The rehabilitation and training is being donated by two other Houston companies, TIRR and Dynamic Orthotics. The Iraqi men are in Houston now, spending five hours a day learning to use their new right hands. And oh yes, the brands on their heads were removed.

On May 23, the American Foreign Policy Council will bring the restored men to Washington. They will visit maimed GIs at Walter Reed Army Hospital. It wouldn't be surprising if they said something positive about the U.S. soldiers who have not been on television the past two weeks.

Then Don North and Joe Agris will fly with the men back to Iraq, to survey the rest of Saddam's dismembered population. "The practice of prosthetics is very archaic," Mr. North says,"for a country where this is such an affliction." Dr. Agris hopes to survey the hospitals and bring in some modern equipment and supplies. "If they let me, I'll do some of the kids," he says. "Let's show the good side of what we can do."

Reporting on the "good side" of Americans in Iraq? Are you kidding?

Comments

[Karl B.]

Did anyone see Sabine Christiansen last night? Condi Rice did a good job handling the catty questions thrown her way, questions that made it clear that Germany (i.e. Christiansen) believes that America has no moral authority left. Rice's apologies and condemnations of the Abu Ghraib abuses came across as sincere and credible.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit was second-rate. He called Rice's interview "verlogen" and lambasted America at every chance. His normal willingness to think his way into his opponent's position was missing.

In spite of all this, the whole issue of Guantanamo will not go away. Rice is on national TV defending the slowness of the Abu Ghraib investigations based on the need to protect the rights of the accused, Americans of course. What about the rights of the accused in Guantanamo? America is silent. Even the America-friendly Wolfgang Schäuble had to concede that on his visits to the US, officials with whom he spoke never were able to offer him an explanation for the legal status in Guantanamo. The hypocrisy is simply overwhelming.

How can we march into a country claiming that we are spreading universal rights and then parse and twist phrases to justify second and third class treatment for some prisoners. Enemy prisoners theoretically can rot indefinitely in prison for the rest of their lives without a trial. Our prisoners, on the other hand, will be accorded their full rights, even if this means delaying the torture investigations.

You say you don't care about Guantanamo? Maybe you ought to. Until we fine tune how we are handling accused in the war on terror we will not have adequate credibility in large parts of the world. I know, even if we correct our excesses, it won't stop the anti-american blather in Europe's press, but it will help us to prosecute the WOT with a clean conscience and with the wind at our backs.

Nevertheless, I'm glad Bush sent Condi over here. With her well-spoken, feminine way, I think she allows the Germans to lower their resistance to America enough for her to get America's message across. With Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz & Co., the resistance is just too great.

[WhatDoIKnow]

Christiansen's questions showed quite well where she, as an "open minded" journalist, stands. By the way, this "open mindedness" seems like a one-way street. Assume only the worse of the US, don't acknowledge anything good coming from the US nowadays and you have an "open minded" German jornalist.

Cohn was quite pathetic. At times, he looked like he travelled in time, back in his youth years when he was on the barricades, preaching against the evil coming from the US. The self-righteouss TV crowd was pleased with the bread and circus generously offered. (Wow, I realize now that evil things have been coming from the US for decades now. US must be really evil. Brrrrr, how can people live there ??)

Schäuble just can't do much. I guess that any German politician who would come close to even trying to defend some of the US's policies would be brandmarked for life by the "open minded" media.

Rice was good, not too hard, not too overcooked, just soft enough for a healthy person to digest. Assuming there are some healthy people left.

The Guantamo issue remains an open question mark, which only a change of policies will answer.

All in all, nothing special, except for the Rice interview. Just more of the same, they showed Germany that they deeply care about the future of Iraq.

[Karl B.]

@ Que sais je:

Yeah, maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part, but the audience applause at the end of the Rice interview seemed to also be an acknowledgment that Rice had scored some points. She ended her interview on a very upbeat note, followed immiediately by the picture of Cohn-Bendit knowingly shaking his head over the "verlogene" Rice. I have some grudging respect for Cohn-Bendit, who is capable of very clear-headed thinking, but he's much better off on domestic or internal European issues.

[WhatDoIKnow]

the audience applause at the end of the Rice interview seemed to also be an acknowledgment that Rice had scored some points

I agree. I should have mentioned that.

The audience didn't boo her, it looked like some of them maybe even agreed with some of her points. That was another highlight of the evening. (How modest we have become. We can be satisfied with very little.)

[Samir al-Iraqi]

Strange enough that German or French journalists never meat Iraqis with an experience of being tortured or amputated people without hands etc.

they always meet the "victims" of US-occupation

[WhatDoIKnow]

Samir

You still don't get it, do you ? Victims of dictators are relevant only as long as they can be used against the Big Satan, the US. If those victims could even remotely help the image of the US... well... they don't matter anymore.

We noble Europeans are not interested in Saddam's victims. He was a dictator, so it's OK for him to torture and murder. It comes with the job description. It's expected from him to do that, so what's the big deal ...? In fact, he would have been a bad dictator if he hadn't done it.

We start salivating when some US soldiers break the law. Then, the "world community" suddenly sees our caring, loving nature.

[Samir al-Iraqi]

@ Whatyouknow

Don´t bite me.

I know. But provoking makes people think.

[Klink]

@Karl B.
In spite of all this, the whole issue of Guantanamo will not go away. Rice is on national TV defending the slowness of the Abu Ghraib investigations based on the need to protect the rights of the accused, Americans of course. What about the rights of the accused in Guantanamo? America is silent.

You talk almost like an Anti-American if you say "America is silent". If you'd be a German saying this to me, I'd verbally counter you for it. Plenty of Americans don't feel comfortable over this as well.

Interesting how rules last week were softened for Iraqi prisoners, but not for those outside, like at Guantanamo, Baghram, Diego Garcia, etc. etc. (Guantanamo is only one of many prisons with such "gloves off"-status, as once someone said shortly after 9/11)

"Gloves off" should mean fighting determined against terrorism, but not throwing away Western legal principles or presenting bogus evidence on WMDs.

And of course Bush is a trillion lightyears better than Saddam - I always find these prison-comparisons recently on here bizarre: The standard to compare Bush with should not be Saddam, but be our Western principles (especially when Bush claims the moral high-road to even override the United Nations) and the fact that the US State Department itself releases each year a Human Rights Report on other countries, thus claiming higher moral credibility for itself than other nations.

[Karl B.]

Klink, I find your need to score a debating point irritating. I've been posting here for almost a year, and not once has one of the conservative Americans here accused me of being anti-american, even though I criticize Bush. But you dear German sir take my comment out of context to then wrap yourself in my flag and (jokingly I hope) make me look unpatriotic. That's perverse!

In the context of my sentences about Condi Rice, I was referring to official America. To the Administration if you will. The mere fact that these issues are before the Supreme Court is evidence enough that there are others who share my opinion. Deine Besserwisserei geht mir langsam auf die Nerven.

[Joe]

@Karl B

Comrade Klink attempts to recurit where he can. It seems to be a favorite technique to discredit others while he himself misleads the rest with his half truths.

Of course when you have this sense of perspective it is little wonder.

Remember

Bush is Evil

[Klink]

@Karl B.
I've been posting here for almost a year, and not once has one of the conservative Americans here accused me of being anti-american, even though I criticize Bush. But you dear German sir take my comment out of context to then wrap yourself in my flag and (jokingly I hope) make me look unpatriotic. That's perverse!

I wanted to point out with this what I find annoying about some Germans: That they equate the actions of the Bush-administration with "America" as a whole.

And considering how even this Blog here devotes an whole section (see right-hand side) to downplay/justify Gitmo or other similar questionable installations, I just wanted to point out that nothing could be further from the truth than to equate "America" in its entirety with this.

And my "almost Anti-American" remark was indeed tongue-in-cheek, since everybody here knows you are an American and critizised it.

[Joe]

Comrade Klink

Americans tend to do that. We have only one President at a time. In the heartland you will find that to be true.

Your attempts to make this war Bush's will not play here.

Just as on the international level you cannot seperate the dearly beloved leader from Germany you cannot seperate Americans from the war.

As I pointed out before you should read history. World War 2 was not Roosvelt's war. It was not America against the Nazi's. It was America against Germany. It was America against your grandfather.

So now Comrade......please kept telling yourself this... I want you to believe it.

Remember

Bush is Evil

[Joe]

Comrade Klink

A noble undertaking you are attempting to cleanse your own history.

If you can seperate President Bush from America and Americans, then you can seperate Hitler from Germany and make your soul feel pure.

This must be part of the new "German Way". It would seem logical as your dearly beloved leader is doing the same thing.

Remember his father died protecting the government of Hitler.

[Joe]

@ Samir

There were no victims of Saddam.

Just there were no Nazi's in the fatherland. They were all Austrian.

This is the new "German Way". It is the teachings of the dearly beloved leader.

Remember ......

Bush is Evil

Don't believe me ask Comrade Klink

[Sandy P]

The same way Spain can, Karl.

How's Spain handling its' bombers?

Klink

LIES
but not throwing away Western legal principles or presenting bogus evidence on WMDs

[Klink]

LIES
but not throwing away Western legal principles or presenting bogus evidence on WMDs

Not using a nick, bad formatting and only shouting LIES (the caps) won't make your argument any more interesting.

See also your other "contribution".

Klink

Anti-American