Abu Ghraib Abuse Photos ‘Show Rape’ + Was Rape an Enhanced Interrogation Technique?

Dandelion Salad

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent and Paul Cruickshank
ICH
May 28, 2009 “The Telegraph”

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

[…]

via Abu Ghraib Abuse Photos ‘Show Rape’

Was Rape an Enhanced Interrogation Technique?

By Jacob G. Hornberger
ICH
May 28, 2009 “fff”

There are those who argue that U.S. officials who authorized waterboarding and who performed waterboarding should not be held criminally accountable, notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. government prosecuted Japanese military personnel who waterboarded U.S. POWs during World War II. Their reasoning goes as follows: Since the president’s attorneys redefined torture to mean only those actions that threaten death or serious injury to bodily organs, waterboarding did not meet that redefinition.

What about rape? It would seem that rape, like waterboarding, would not meet the Bush administration’s redefinition of torture. Rape doesn’t threaten death or serious injury to bodily organs. Should U.S. officials who authorized enhanced interrogation techniques be let off the hook for rapes committed by U.S. officials as part of enhanced interrogations of detainees?

That of course begs the question: Were people raped as part of the U.S. government’s enhanced interrogation techniques?

[…]

via Was Rape an Enhanced Interrogation Technique?

From the archives:

Torture? What Torture? We Need More Torture! By Gary Corseri

Former Interrogator Rebukes Cheney for Torture Speech

Tortured Logic, Why ‘It Doesn’t Work’ Doesn’t Work by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

Guantánamo And The Many Failures Of US Politicians by Andy Worthington

Fmr. V.P. Cheney discusses terrorism + Cheney: Support for Israel Feeds Terrorism (updated)

Torture? It probably killed more Americans than 9/11

‘Prisoner abuse’ photographs surface as Barack Obama prepares to block publication

Abu Ghraib

Abu Ghraib: The Outsourcing of Torture by Tom Burghardt

Rape as a Tool of War by Jennifer Fenton