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Australian Report Reveals More Abu Ghraib Torture Photos,
Drawing Public Outrage
Salon.com Runs Abu Ghraib Torture Photos Leaked from Internal
Army Source
Professor McCoy Exposes the History of CIA Interrogation,
From the Cold War to the War on Terror
Australian Report Reveals More Abu Ghraib Torture
Photos, Drawing Public Outrage
The Australian news program Dateline aired a report on SBS
public broadcasting earlier this week that broke the story
of more photographs and videos of Iraqi detainees being tortured
inside Abu Ghraib. We air an excerpt of the original Australian
report and speak with reporter Olivia Rousset of SBS in Sydney.
[includes rush
transcript]
The release of more photographs of atrocities by American
soldiers against Iraqi detainees in the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib
prison have spread outrage across Iraq. An official in Prime
Minister Ibrahim Jaafari’s office said, "This serious
affair totally contradicts human rights and should not be
repeated."
The Australian news program Dateline aired a report earlier
this week that showed new photographs of Iraqi detainees being
tortured inside Abu Ghraib. The photographs were graphic,
showing among other images, a dead man lying in the dirt with
blood coming out of his head, another prisoner covered in
feces and others in sexually humiliating positions. The U.S
government quickly condemned the release of the new photographs.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said that the photos will
only inflame and incite unnecessary violence and would endanger
the U.S military. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said
yesterday that the photos are nothing new and that the perpetrators
have already been punished.
So far, no high-ranking officer or official has been charged
in the abuse scandal. Meanwhile, State Department legal adviser
John Bellinger criticized the release of the photos. In Australia,
Dateline’s Executive Producer, Mike Carey, spoke out
yesterday defending his program’s decision to air the
photos. We go now to an excerpt of the report that aired on
the Australian news program Dateline. For the T.V. viewers,
please be warned that the images are extremely violent and
graphic in nature.
- Olivia Roussert, reporter for SBS
Dateline. She joins us on the phone from Sydney.
The Dateline report will air in its entirety for the first
time on American television on Link
TV tonight at 7:00 pm Eastern, 4 Pacific. Link’s
program, "Abu
Ghraib - The Sequel", will also include Middle Eastern
reaction the horrific photos and video.
Link TV will also air, “Lifting the Hood”- 5
hours of special programming examining the US use of torture,
rendition and extralegal methods to fight the so-called “war
on terror." That program airs on February 23rd at 7 pm
Eastern, 4 pm Pacific.
Salon.com Runs Abu Ghraib Torture Photos Leaked from
Internal Army Source
Salon.com published even more torture photographs from Abu
Ghraib a day after the Australian report aired on SBS public
broadcasting. The online publication obtained photos, video
and other electronic documents from an internal Army investigation.
We speak with salon.com reporter Mark Benjamin, who obtained
the files and other electronic documents. [includes rush
transcript]
The article accompanying the photos stated that the source
who gave the material to Salon is "someone who has spent
time at Abu Ghraib, is a uniformed member of the military
and is familiar with the investigation.” The article
goes on to say that the material includes "a total of
1,325 images of suspected detainee abuse, 93 video files of
suspected detainee abuse, 660 images of adult pornography,
546 images of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, 29 images of
soldiers in simulated sexual acts, 20 images of a solider
with a Swastika drawn between his eyes, 37 images of military
working dogs being used in abuse of detainees and 125 images
of questionable acts.”
- Mark Benjamin, National Correspondent for online magazine
Salon.com. He obtained
files and other electronic documents from an internal Army
investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal.
The material includes more than 1,000 photographs, videos
and supporting documents from the Army’s probe.
Professor McCoy Exposes the History of CIA Interrogation,
From the Cold War to the War on Terror
We now take a look at what lies behind the shocking images
of torture at Abu Ghraib prison by turning to the history
of the CIA and torture techniques. Professor Alfred McCoy
talks about his book “A Question of Torture”,
a startling expose of the CIA development of psychological
torture from the Cold War to Abu Ghraib. CIA mercenaries attempted
to assassinate McCoy more than 30 years ago.
We now take a look at what lies behind the shocking images
of torture at Abu Ghraib by turning to the history of the
CIA and torture techniques. The International Committee of
the Red Cross, Amnesty International and other human rights
groups say the recently released images of abuse of Iraqi
prisoners at Abu Ghraib show a clear violation of international
humanitarian law. The U.S. made a pledge against torture when
Congress ratified the UN Convention Against Torture in 1994
- but it was ratified with reservations that exempted the
CIA’s psychological torture method. So what were the
results?
A new expose gives an account of the CIA’s secret efforts
to develop new forms of torture spanning fifty years. It reveals
how the CIA perfected its methods, distributing them across
the world from Vietnam to Iran to Central America, uncovering
the roots of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture scandals.
The book is titled "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation,
From the Cold War to the War on Terror."
- Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison. Author of “A Question of Torture:
CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror”
and also “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in
the Global Drug Trade.”
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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