Pentagon Ran Torture Centers in Iraq, Atrocities Revealed

“The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the ‘dirty wars’ in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq that set up secret detention and torture centres to get information from insurgents,” The Guardian reports. “These units conducted some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and accelerated the country’s descent into full-scale civil war.”

After a 15-month investigation, The Guardian and the BBC Arabic has published its findings about the torture and atrocities organized and committed by US officials reporting directly to the highest echelons of the US government, including General David Petraeus.

“I remember a 14-year-old who was tied to one of the library’s columns,” said General Muntadher al-Samari, one of the Bush administration’s Iraqi proxies who helped run the torture centers. “And he was tied up, with his legs above his head. Tied up. His whole body was blue because of the impact of the cables with which he had been beaten.”

The report was “sparked by the release of classified US military logs on WikiLeaks that detailed hundreds of incidents where US soldiers came across tortured detainees in a network of detention centers run by the police commandos across Iraq.”

Antiwar.com reported on some of those leaks at the time: On May 30, 2006, the WikiLeaks releases revealed, “a joint US-Iraqi inspection” of an Iraqi detention facility “discovered more than 1,400 detainees in squalid, cramped conditions,” many of whom were illegally detained. Prisoners “displayed bruising, broken bones, and lash-marks, many claimed to have been hung by handcuffs from a hook in the ceiling and beaten on the soles of their feet and their buttocks.”

The inspectors found a torture contraption where ”a hook…on the ceiling of an empty room at the facility” was “attached [to] a chain-and-pulley system ordinarily used for lifting vehicles” and that “apparent bloodspots stained the floor underneath.” All 41 prisoners interviewed by US inspectors had reported being tortured and 37 juveniles were held illegally.

Rape and sexual abuse, primarily of young teenagers, was also widespread. “A number of juvenile detainees,” reads the cable, “alleged…that interrogators had used threats and acts of anal rape to induce confessions and had forced juveniles to fellate them during interrogations.”

Other instances of close cooperation between the US and abusive Iraqi forces in the MOI have been previously uncovered and the Iraq War Logs published by WikiLeaks revealed a secret US military order to ignore cases of torture and abuse by Iraqi interrogators.

The Guardian has compiled their findings into a 50-minute documentary which can be viewed here.

6 thoughts on “Pentagon Ran Torture Centers in Iraq, Atrocities Revealed”

  1. Was kind of obvious when John "Salvador Option" Negroponte was appointed US- Ambassador to Iraq in 2004.

  2. The perpetrators of these actions deserve a place in the last circle of hell. Torturing children, killing innocents, what in the name of all that is holy did they think they were doing? Now we know who
    authorized the actions of the Appalachian soldiers at Abu Graib.

  3. Jobs for sadists, sociopaths and bullies have not been so plentiful since the Inquisition. We are entering a new dark age of ignorance and superstition, in a way I'm glad my time is almost up. I've given up on my species.

    1. dont give up on ur species, most are good and caring…

      the forces of evil are just too strong because people are too busy with their ordinary lives…it will get a lot worse, but then it will get better…perhaps it will take a hundred years, but it will get better…

  4. This is not a pure and simple insurgency within the country as some 'journalists' would have us believe. An external force(s), by some accounts numbering as many as 70,000 are involved too and they are well armed and equipped by the Western proxies such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Libya. The desired for victory however did not materialise in the short period as envisaged, and it seems that some of the jihadists are packing up their bags. Hague's decision to increase material support to the terrorists is therefore only to be expected.

  5. Look: iraq war was illegal.., therefore…, The people in charge from George W. Bush to Adolf the prince, the hitler who started the blackwater mercenaries company to Dick Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz to that British prime minister Tony Blair needs to be put on trial for justice to be a justice for all once and for all.

    What happened to the report from that British group which were going to give us their understanding from their finding looking into Tony Blair roll invading Iraq….? Are we going to see that report or that these people are as lire as their government was and is.

  6. Ohhh, I forget this man.., John Negroponte the right hand of Madeline Albright.., who planed and orchestrated the Balkan war.., the man who were watching every moves of those who were in charge and lied at UN about Iraq WMD…, but who he was reporting to…, George W. Bush.., I doubt that…

  7. Obama insists we are through a dark chapter in our history, and laying blame for the past will not help us. …Unless we lay blame on people who expose the dark things we do, like Brad Manning. That will help us. Change we can believe in! Woo!

  8. Please everyone, show your support for Brad Manning. While he is in prison we should be certain to write to him regularly and begin penpal friendships. When in prison letters from the outside matter immensely. They can be read over many times. If you live nearby please ask to be put on his visitor's list. Additionally, it would also be very kind to sometimes send him some money so that he can buy items at the commissary.
    These are the least of what we can do to support this brave young man.

  9. The perpetrators of these actions deserve a place in the last circle of hell. Torturing children, killing innocents, what in the name of all that is holy did they think they were doing? Now we know who
    authorized the actions of the Appalachian soldiers at Abu Graib.

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