Pentagon investigating link between US military and torture centres in Iraq

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

The Pentagon is investigating allegations linking the US military to human rights abuses in Iraq by police commando units who operated a network of detention and torture centres.

A 15-month investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic, published on Wednesday, disclosed that the US sent a veteran of the "dirty wars" in Central America to oversee Iraqi commando units involved in some of the worst acts of torture during the American-led occupation.

The allegations, made by US and Iraqi witnesses, implicate US advisers for the first time in these human rights abuses. It is also the first time that the then US commander in Iraq, David Petraeus, has been linked through an adviser to the abuses.

Colonel Jack Wesley, a Pentagon spokesman, told the Guardian on Thursday: "Obviously we have seen the reports and we are currently looking into the situation."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/07/pentagon-investigating-link-military-torture

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

Yeah.

[valerief]

2. Is this like the banksters investigating mortgage fraud? nt

[JohnyCanuck]

3. Or the foxes......

investigating the unexplained disappearance of chickens from the hen house?

[TwilightGardener]

4. I don't think anything will come of this, unless Obama changes his stance

on "looking ahead and not back". This could open a serious can of worms, and I don't know that anyone in the WH, the Pentagon, or the CIA has the stomach for that.

[Catherina]

5. Rec'd just for the laughs n/t

[countryjake]

6. Did you watch the full-length documentary?

It's just under an hour long, but I can't even imagine how those people of Iraq felt after seeing that film (or the people of El Salvador and Nicaragua, if they ever get to see it). Ravaged by the same skilled killing-machine.

Watch this video:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/mar/06/james-steele-america-iraq-video

"Somehow, their hearts have died."

[Catherina]

9. No I haven't yet

Thanks for putting this on my radar. I'll watch it tonight and hope it doesn't send me into a weeks-long depression.

[countryjake]

10. Well, if ya wanna get really mad, here's another article...

It's more in depth than the one from the OP:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/06/el-salvador-iraq-police-squads-washington

Of his El Salvador experience in 1986, Steele told Dr Max Manwaring, the author of El Salvador at War: An Oral History: "When I arrived here there was a tendency to focus on technical indicators … but in an insurgency the focus has to be on human aspects. That means getting people to talk to you."

But the arming of one side of the conflict by the US hastened the country's descent into a civil war in which 75,000 people died and 1 million out of a population of 6 million became refugees.

Celerino Castillo, a Senior Drug Enforcement Administration special agent who worked alongside Steele in El Salvador, says: "I first heard about Colonel James Steele going to Iraq and I said they're going to implement what is known as the Salvadoran Option in Iraq and that's exactly what happened. And I was devastated because I knew the atrocities that were going to occur in Iraq which we knew had occurred in El Salvador."

[Catherina]

12. I watched it last night before going to bed

and was depressed within the first minute of the documentary. It only got worse of course as the information rolled in.

Someone tell me wtf this world criminal is doing roaming around freely and living comfortably in Texas? Him and everyone who collaborated/collaborates in these atrocities, regardless of political affiliation, needs to be hogtied, dragged through the streets and delivered to a court composed of his/her victims.

I'm going to a service for Chavez and will read that article tonight. Thanks for both links.

[L0oniX]

8. LMFAO Hey Pentacrap ...you are a bad joke and a sorry excuse for anything resembling humanity. n/t

[magellan]

11. As if this is some kind of surprise to them.

Pathetic.