Rape as a Weapon of War

(Author’s Note: Don’t read this article if you have a weak stomach and if you’re not above 18). This is a very sensitive topic but I decided to push through and write about it. I was reading the Asian Tribune when I came across this article showing how several members of the US Armed Forces brutally raped, tortured, and abused prisoners during their stay in Iraq. Usually people will just dismiss this as rumors and speculation, but several pictures were leaked into the interwebs of the actual abuse. There are around 2,000 more pictures but they’ve been kept hidden by the US government for obvious reasons.

Rape as an interrogation technique?
According to the general who was in charge of the camp, the rapes and abuses happened only after a team composed of “successful” interrogators from the CIA, Military Intelligence, and private consultants, flew in to brief their team on new and effective interrogation techniques. These new techniques would make sure that the US soldiers would get all the information they needed from the detainees.

Here’s an excerpt from the Asian Tribune article:

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.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He later confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph in May 2009.

The London newspaper further noted “graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President Obama’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.”

Maj. Gen. Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.

“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

In April, Mr. Obama’s administration said the photographs would be released and it would be “pointless to appeal” against a court judgment in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr. Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.

In May, he said: “The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”

In April 2004, new photographs were sent to La Voz de Aztlan from confidential sources depicting the shocking rapes of two Iraqi women by what are purported to be US Military Intelligence personnel and private US mercenaries in military fatigues. It is now known, Cienfuegos wrote in May 2004, that hundreds of these photographs had been in circulation among the troops in Iraq. The graphic photos were being swapped between the soldiers like baseball cards.

War really brings out the worst in humanity. The US Armed Forces went to Iraq to “liberate” them and to restore democracy but these pictures show otherwise. The sad part is that I’m sure that there are a lot of good men and women in the US Armed Forces who mean well. However there will always be rotten apples in the basket, and what they do can easily overshadow the over-all good done by the group. Abuses like this will always happen during war and that’s why we should all do our best in making sure that war never happens because it opens up Pandora’s box.

I can’t imagine how the Iraqi prisoners might have felt… or feel up to today. The angels of democracy that they hailed and waited for turned on them with pitch forks and literally dragged them to hell and back. The lives of the prisoners who were abused in the detainee camps will never be the same again.

The consequence of the US war against Iraq is crystal clear. They’ve just inspired a new generation of Anti-US youth because of the abuse. If the goal of the war was to protect the US and to make it a safer place, I think they failed miserably.

Writing this article even feels a bit weird especially since the US President just won the Nobel Peace Prize

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts