Saddam’s Attorneys Use Abu Ghraib To Rebut Torture Victim
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in The War On Terrorism, WarDoes any of this sound familiar?
BAGHDAD — An unnamed woman, her face shielded behind a curtain and her voice masked, gave a harrowing account today of torture and sexual abuse at the hands of Saddam Hussein’s security forces during the trial of the former Iraqi leader.“They forced me to take off my clothes,” said the woman, referred to only as Witness A by the court. “They kept my legs up. They handcuffed me and started beating me with cables. It wasn’t just one guard, it was many guards.”
And here’s what Saddam’s attorneys said to respond to the victim’s story:
Defense attorneys also attempted to score political points against the U.S., the trial’s principle international backer.“I agree that things in Abu Ghraib were, until recently, bad, but did they use dogs on you? Did they take photographs?” asked one defense attorney, attempting to raise the issue of U.S. prisoner abuse at the prison.
“No,” she replied.
So yes, now we have Saddam’s defense team using what we did to compare us to Saddam. “Well, sure they may have done this, but did they do this other thing that the US has already done inside your own country?”
Consider me embarassed.
And by the way, Andrew Sullivan points out that what this woman is describing doesn’t even fall under the definition of torture.
Huh?
According to the Wall Street Journal’s definition of torture, this woman wasn’t subjected to “anything close” to torture. Repeated beatings are specifically not torture, as argued by AEI legal scholar, John Yoo, who helped craft Bush administration policies. The woman was not water-boarded, she was not shackled in stress positions, she was not subjected to hypothermia, she was not sexually abused and she was not threatened by dogs. She did not, in other words, come even close to being tortured, according to the Wall Street Journal. Do they still abide by their position? Does vice-president Cheney agree that she was merely subjected to “coercive interrogation techniques”?
Yeah, getting whipped by cables isn’t torture…
Jeez…
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 and is filed under The War On Terrorism, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 7th, 2005 at 11:57 am
[...] Via Donklephant, this gem- [...]
December 7th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
Let’s see, they have official rapist as a job description and we have Lyndie Englund. No, I can’t see the moral difference at all.
December 7th, 2005 at 4:50 pm
Lutas – your blind then.
The definition of torture by the Bush administration is the Lack of a Definition of Torture. If you don’t define it, then they do not break the law, and can make statements like “The United States does not torture.” and “The United States does not move detainees internationally for the purpose of torture.” Well of course we don’t, because they refuse to let it be defined or restricted. If you were apalled at what Sadam did to this woman, you have no choice but to be apalled at this administration’s policy on torture. If you can not see the comparison, then you’re blinded by your own idealism that America can do nothing wrong so long as we’re Americans (and fighting evil).
December 9th, 2005 at 4:55 pm
The only difference between the two cases is that the “terrorists” were supposedly being abused to get information out of them, and the woman was probably being abused for purposes of entertainment.
I only rarely buy the old “end justifies the means” argument. In addition, attempting to elicit information via torture tends to yield very spotty and inaccurate information – those who do not have any to give will give false intel, and those who do have useful information will likely do almost anything to prevent you from getting it, and likely have been trained in methods of resisting torture and inserting false information in such a way that it sounds real (and costs a lot of money to check into).
December 9th, 2005 at 7:55 pm
No, She was being tortured to get information out of her as well. As in the names of the people that were in on the assassination attempt. There really is no difference between the two cases at all. And I believe the Republican supporters of Abu Ghraib said that the people involved in that case were only doing it for their own sick entertainment purposes. They likened it to a fraternity hazing.