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 Babylon Babylon

THIS hooded Iraqi prisoner shown wired up in Abu Ghraib jail claimed yesterday he was tortured with electric shocks.

Haj Ali, who also said he was hung naked from his handcuffs while soldiers hurled ice cold water over him, said: "I could feel the pulses going even into my eyeballs."

The picture of Ali, 46, standing on a box with wires attached to his fingers is one of the most haunting images of the humiliation heaped on prisoners in Baghdad by US troops.

At the time it was believed that Ali was being tormented with sleep deprivation, fearing he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box.

But now for the first time he has told US magazine Vanity Fair: "They'd give me electric shocks." Whenever he collapsed or fainted, guards would kick him or beat him with sticks yelling: "Get up! Get up!"

Ali also said he was subjected to deafening music torture with guards repeatedly playing at full volume a loop of the refrain from David Gray's song Babylon.

He said: "Babylon...Babylon...Babylon...over and over again. It was so loud I thought my head would burst. It went on for a day and a night."

Ali said his main tormentor was Specialist Charles Graner - the alleged ringleader of torture at Abu Ghraib who is now facing trial.

Recalling his abuse at Graner's hands, he said that on one occasion he was handcuffed on his cell floor despite being in agony from a severely injured arm.

Ali said: "Graner told me to stick out my arms through the bars as far as I could. Then he put his foot on my hand and went back and forth, pressing and grinding it. I was in so much pain I passed out."

In the picture of electric shock torture Ali is seen wearing a poncho-style woollen blanket which he sewed together to keep warm in the freezing Iraqi winter.

He revealed that the use of hoods for detainees was introduced by US forces and was not even resorted to by Saddam Hussein's regime.

Ali said: "This is something the Americans brought. The idea of bagging someone on the head is completely associated with the US occupation."

Prisoners, he added, were known by nicknames such as Dracula and Wolfman. Extraordinarily, the worst treatment was reserved for one inmate nicknamed Colin Powell, the name of the US Secretary of State.

Ali said: "I think they really hated this guy because they treated him really bad."

Other detainees alleged terrible abuse was still taking place at the hellhole jail three months after pictures of gloating US troops abusing prisoners first shocked the world in April.

Despite US claims to have stamped out abuse, one 15-year-old prisoner claimed that he was forced into a bathroom and sexually assaulted by a soldier.

The US army did not deny the latest accounts of ill treatment.

But spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson was suspicious of other claims of captives held in wooden boxes, illegal detentions, round the clock handcuffing and sexual abuse.

He said: "I call it flaky. I just don't see what purpose there is in keeping people blindfolded in boxes.

"I'd like to think that these claims aren't true...but I don't know. If someone is doing this to detainees, they deserve to be taken down."

A lawsuit on behalf of more than 1,000 Iraqi detainees is pending against Titan Corporation, the supplier of Arabic-English translators to coalition forces in Iraq.

British troops are being investigated over 76 cases of alleged abuse.





 2005/1/21 22:45
crsschk
Member



Joined: 2003/6/11
Posts: 9192
Santa Clara, CA

 Re: Babylon Babylon

Truly evil lurks in the hearts of men.

Under Saddam's regime ...

(Note: After some hesitancy and thought, decided against including a part of this that was overtly graphic. Not that there is any shying away from the reality of brutality in [i][b]all[/i][/b] these cases, just unnecessary for the purposes of what is discussed on this site. If you care to, you can read it directly from the link below.

Also, knowing the possibilities of misconstruing the reason for this inclusion here of what follows... the only intent is that often the forgotten part is the current superseding the past. Not one buttressing over the other. More thoughts on this at the end.)

[b]IRAQ[/b]
[b]Systematic torture of political prisoners[/b]

[b]2 METHODS OF TORTURE[/b]

Torture victims in Iraq have been blindfolded, stripped of their clothes and suspended from their wrists for long hours. Electric shocks have been used on various parts of their bodies, including the genitals, ears, the tongue and fingers. Victims have described to Amnesty International how they have been beaten with canes, whips, hosepipe or metal rods and how they have been suspended for hours from either a rotating fan in the ceiling or from a horizontal pole often in contorted positions as electric shocks were applied repeatedly on their bodies. Some victims had been forced to watch others, including their own relatives or family members, being tortured in front of them.

Other methods of physical torture described by former victims include the use of Falaqa (beating on the soles of the feet), extinguishing of cigarettes on various parts of the body, extraction of finger nails and toenails and piercing of the hands with an electric drill. Some have been sexually abused and others have had ,_______________. In addition to physical torture, detainees have been threatened with rape and subjected to mock execution. They have been placed in cells where they could hear the screams of others being tortured and have been deprived of sleep. Some have stayed in solitary confinement for long periods of time. Detainees have also been threatened with bringing in a female relative, especially the wife or the mother, and raping her in front of the detainee. Some of these threats have been carried out.

[b]3.2 Other suspected political opponents[/b]

[b]B[/b] (name withheld), a Kurdish businessman from Baghdad, married with children, was arrested in December 1996 outside his house by plainclothes security men. Initially his family did not know his whereabouts and went from one police station to another enquiring about him. Then through friends they found out that he was being held in the headquarters of the General Security Directorate in Baghdad. The family was not allowed to visit him. Eleven months later in November 1997 the family was told by the authorities that he had been executed and that they should go and collect his body. His body reportedly bore evident signs of torture. His eyes were gouged out and the empty eye sockets were filled with paper. His right wrist and left leg were broken. The family was not given any reason for his arrest and subsequent execution. However, they suspected that he was executed because of his friendship with a retired army general who had links with the Iraqi opposition outside the country and who was arrested just before B.'s arrest and was also executed.

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engMDE140082001?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIES%5CIRAQ
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From,

[i]Jer 7:31 And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.[/i]

To the atrocities of Hitler, the Khmer Rouge regime and Pol Pot and a thousand other unimaginable happenings even right this moment.

Better stated here:

[i]We live in a time of unparalleled instances of democide, genocide and ethnocide. The Holocaust, the genocides in Turkey, Cambodia, Tibet, & Bosnia, the disappearances in Argentina & Chile, the death squad killings in El Salvador, Stalin's purges, the killing of the Tutsi in Rwanda . . . . and the list goes on.

Mass violence, torture, violations of fundamental human rights, and the mistreatment of human beings is not a new aspect of humanity; documentation of such events spans the historical record. However, technology has taken these cruelties to new levels.

It is imperative that a greater understanding of the psychological, cultural, political, and societal roots of human cruelty, mass violence, and genocide be developed. We need to continue to examine [b]the factors which enable[/b] individuals collectively and individually to perpetrate evil/genocide and the impact of apathetic bystanders as fuel for human violence. While an exact predictive model for mass violence/human cruelty is beyond the scope of human capability, we have an obligation to develop a model that highlights the warning signs and predisposing factors for human violence and genocide.[b]With such information, we can develop policies,strategies, and programs designed to counteract these atrocities.[/b][/i]

http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/holocaust.html

The factor is sin in the human heart and the best that will ever be attained is a counteraction. The only eradication is Jesus Christ.

[i]Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.[/i] Rom 8:21-23


_________________
Mike Balog

 2005/1/22 10:48Profile









 Much prayer and thought

Mike, and any other saint reading or praying over this thread;
have you ever heard the old adage, 'you are what you eat'?

what struck me about the Abu Ghraib piece is that our boys were playing a song that repeated the words "Babylon, Babylon" over and over.

It was chilling, as those are OUR boys.

You are what you eat....you eat Babylon, you become Babylon...

Mikey, my brother, why did you put "under Saddams regime"?

You know whats really sad, in the build-up to war, there was a LOT of talk from Godly teachers and preachers defining "just war", and it always felt as if those teachers were there to give Scriptural buttressing and cover to a war that is UNJUST. I don't speak of the war on terror....no....I speak on the war in Iraq.

the two wars are TOTALLY different.

They had said the "coming" war in Iraq would be 'just' because it was a war of national survival as Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and Iraq was in league with the radical islamists of al-quaida.

A war of national survival is a just war.

Didja ever notice that this nation since the end of WW2 and 1947, has become a nation always mobilized for some war? whether it be the war in Vietnam or the war on poverty , or the war in Panama, or the war on drugs, or the war in the Gulf, or the war on terrorism, or the war in Iraq.

Its always a war, and thats sin, because not once, since the end of WW2, has our nations survival ever really been at peril, (excepting the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was solved by cooler heads and diplomacy)

the nation was imperiled on 9/11, and our boys took Afganistan in a matter of weeks.

theres been yellow alerts and orange alerts, and fear and fear and war and fear, yet everything just rolls on, the malls are more crowded than ever, the cars get more bigger than ever, the hypocrisy of the national rubric gets more twisted than ever, where those who lift up the rights of the unborn give covering to the warmonger's and those who give covering to the babykillers protest the war profiteers. Its sickening.

A pox on this land, our beautiful nation has become a foul stained rag, whose leaders wrap our beloved Saviour Jesus in their flag.

a pox on this land, where our brave boys are infected with the same demonic spirit that has haunted Auchwitz and Cambodia, and given the soul of a concentration camp guard....and the church says NOTHING!

the church says nothing. This war is that bad. This war is the beginning of the desolation. Not since 1939 has this happened, where a powerful nation attacks another smaller nation that did not attack it...not since hitler and his demonic legions.

do not think there will be no price.

I was sitting in a panda express the other day and I was reading, by myself and the Spirit came over me. An Asian mother and her 11 year old boy, ameriasian were in the line. He was handsome boy, straight back, clear eyes, respectful of his mother, and I watched the both of them, praying in the Spirit and God showed me him dead, on a battlefield of the future. God showed me a whole generation of American boys dead. I'm not speaking of a thousand, he showed me a million dead, and not in the classic torn up bodies in the trenches, he showed me cinder, vaporized, the hopes and dreams of a million parents, beautiful lads, noble and with hope, glorious hope wasted on the nuclear battlefield of the future. A future war with China that we will lose.

we will lose.

I'm a daddy, I began to pray for my highly gifted blue belt who likes to eat Hamburger helper and gummi worms, and laughs when I tickle him. I prayed the Lord Jesus always protect this boy.

Saints, there are many children in Iraq who laugh when there daddy tickles them under the arm, many children who will not make it to 2006, and many daddys who will never return home, many American daddy's and sons who will never see 2006.....and it's WE , as a nation , who are fueling this evil awful unjust UNGODLY UNCHRISTLIKE war.

don't you see the sin?

 2005/1/22 20:20
crsschk
Member



Joined: 2003/6/11
Posts: 9192
Santa Clara, CA

 Re: Much prayer and thought

Hi Neil,

Was reluctant to 'go there'... in regards to this whole thing again.

Quote:
Mikey, my brother, why did you put "under Saddams regime"?



Well, because what followed was under his regime. And for how many years? Thought the explanation that followed it was sufficient. It just seems odd that the idiocy of a few grants more attention than years of terror and abuse. Of course 'we' ought to have more sense than to lower 'ourselves' to that level and it should be brought out into the open as it has. I know the usual is to make this an either/or argument..'Oh, so you are 'for' the war then....'

We have been down this path before brother. Was only attempting to bring back to recollection the atrocities that were committed, not to make an argument one way or the other. And as well to steer it to the root of the problem, that's all.


_________________
Mike Balog

 2005/1/23 0:01Profile





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