The use of unmuzzled dogs to terrify prisoners was approved military practice in Abu Ghraib:
Smith said military intelligence personnel asked him to instill fear in detainees. He said that he would bring his dog, a black Belgian shepherd named Marco, to the tier specifically to scare prisoners after they were pulled out of their cells. At the behest of interrogators, he said, in some cases he would bring the barking dog to within six inches of the prisoners. “Is using the dog in this manner an allowable tool by the MI interrogators?” an investigator asked Smith. “Yes,” he replied. The dog handlers arrived at Abu Ghraib in late November, sometime after the abuse of detainees had been captured in photographs, including the images of the naked human pyramid and forced masturbation.
It seems to me to be getting clearer and clearer that Abu Ghraib was not the work of a few rogue soldiers. The dogs are among the least troubling tactics, of course. But when you also consider that up to 80 percent of the inmates at Abu Ghraib were guilty of nothing, you have to wonder who thought this was a good way to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis. Some soldiers are saying that Colonel Pppas, the Military Intelligence officer in charge of Abu Ghraib, directly approved the inhumane treatment. How inhumane?
On Jan. 13, Spec. John Harold Ketzer, a military intelligence interrogator, saw a dog team corner two male prisoners against a wall, one prisoner hiding behind the other and screaming, he later told investigators. “When I asked what was going on in the cell, the handler stated that he was just scaring them, and that he and another of the handlers was having a contest to see how many detainees they could get to urinate on themselves,” Ketzer said.
That’s what some parts of the U.S. military have been reduced to. I have a sense we’re only at the beginning of this story. Check out the Houston Chronicle earlier this week.
AIDS IN CHINA: We can be retrospectively critical of Reagan, but no one in America ever sent AIDS activists to forcible psychiatric treatment. But that’s what just happened in Communist China:
When a fellow activist attempted to deliver some AIDS materials to Hu Jia on the evening of June 1, police refused to allow them to meet, and gave Hu Jia a brutal thrashing that resulted in injuries to his head and left arm. On June 3, four police officers forced their way into Hu Jia’s home and said they would be staying there to monitor his activities. When Hu Jia objected, they struck him in the presence of his father and mother, then took him away and detained him in a cold, damp basement for three days and three nights. Since releasing Hu Jia on June 6, police have continued their surveillance on his home, cutting off all of the family’s telephone access and refusing to allow Hu Jia to leave the house.
The more recent order for psychiatric evaluation is causing considerable distress to Hu Jia and his parents. Hu Jia’s parents see absolutely no sign of mental abnormality in Hu Jia, and are well aware that “psychiatric treatment” has been forced upon a number of dissidents and religious practitioners, sometimes resulting in them actually becoming mentally unstable. A source passed HRIC a message from Hu Jia’s family and friends calling on the international community to take note of Hu Jia’s desperate situation. The message states, “If the police forcibly commit Hu Jia to a mental hospital against the wishes of himself and his family, this constitutes using psychiatric treatment as a form of torture and political persecution.”
Yes, a form of torture. But how can the U.S. now take a stand against this, when the president has memos drawn up explaining why torture is sometimes okay?
The Dish 