US holds Iraqi women hostage

January 30th, 2006 at 17:54 Björn Hallberg

This week’s “revelation” of a creative touch by the US military involves hostage taking. Probably with some sexual assault on the side. New and shiny word for this: “leveraging.” In the dustbin: “war crimes of collective punishment and hostage taking.”
This was first reported two years ago and indeed admitted to by a US commander back in 2003 and it is no surprise then that the so called insurgents have taken counter-actions like hostage taking and specifically demanded to have illegal detainees freed. Without knowing what the US military has been up to these last couple of years, one may come to hold a rather lopsided view of the resistance movement and the apparent conflict.

Americans once again prove that the sort of freedom and ideals they’re out to spread are nothing short of the abuse of human rights. So far they have been able to match and in some cases trump whatever Saddam had going, except of course they get away with it and operate the same racket not only in a single nation but across the entire world. Aside from the damage here and now to innocent people, and the would-be strengthening of America’s geo-political stranglehold, it sets a really bad precedent for the rest of the world.
And if it isn’t enough to learn by imitation, one can be sure that this technique is only one of many included in the commissioned global training of terrorists and death squads by US instructors.

Sploid - Newly released documents show that the U.S. Army has been detaining the wives and daughters of suspected Iraqi insurgents as “leverage” to gain information and demand surrender.

The Pentagon released e-mails and a memo on Friday in response to a suit by the American Civil Liberties Union. The documents focus on two women who were held and questioned by Army authorities seeking information about their husbands.

One of the women, who was nursing an infant, was held for two days until an intelligence officer complained and she was released.

See also, for starters, regarding rape and sexual assault by US servicemen: Iraqi Women Under US Occupation; Army Condones Rape by US Soldiers in Iraq; U.S. Soldiers Accused Of Raping Iraqi Women Escape Prosecution; One Hundred Twelve Women Assaulted in Iraq, Afghanistan; Iraqi Woman Recalls Abu Ghraib Rape Ordeal etc etc. None of these reports have been takens seriously and rather dismissed out of hand. The depravity seems rather endemic, if not encouraged even, and befalls servicemen and women as well as civilians alike. For those that have sat through the racking interview with Kay Griggs, or kept themselves apprised of US rape scandals across the world and in their own ranks, it should come as no surprise. Those that talk the most about moral character are often those that have sunken deepest into an abuse of power and into perversion.

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