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34 homicides, 8-12 tortured to death
February 23rd, 2006 at 19:00 Björn Hallberg
Truth and Consequences reports that the first reckoning of “war on terror” deaths among detainees is in. According to the Human Rights First report, the total number of deaths stands at least at 98 (with 34 homicides, 8-12 tortured to death and 11 more suspected cases).
According to the background death rate in Iraq, which is 5.49 deaths/1,000 population (2005 est.) and if we suppose that these detainees would be randomly selected from the total population, 98 deaths (86 in Iraq alone) is a staggeringly high number considering that they were watched by trained professionals (albeit trained at torture) and in fact allegedly all males basically in their prime. A rough estimate places the total number of detainees at 16.000 randomly selected people, held for an entire year without replacements or intermissions, if this modest figure (86 total) is to make sense in terms of “natural causes.” But playing with numbers isn’t going to solve anything. One should note that even these figures, which stand in stark contrast to official U.S. statistics, are most likely lowballed.
Fact Sheet: Deaths in Custody By the Numbers (PDF -35KB)
Entry 460 filed under: Middle East. This entry was posted 2 years, 9 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.
I am a us soldier and just stumbled upon this website. I have never been trained to torture individuals. You are making statements based upon your personal bias. You generalize all the soldiers in the us armed forces are murderers. It is similar to saying all Arabs are terrorists. Blast the administration all you want but dont say all US soldiers are sadistic murderers because of the actions of the few.
Sadism is part, whether one sees it or not, of all military training. In the U.S. as well as Sweden and elsewhere. Perhaps you have been spared the really rotten apples, but the basics of any military is to blindly follow orders, to kill, to maim, to disregard human life and value, to break down the human being, to form a fraternity, and to revere the fatherland as it were. Any one of these occurrences is a problem … combined they represent a unforgivable blight on civil society.
As for internal abuses in the armed forces, there is no shortage. I’ll mention two. I recall a British regiment stripping nude and beating each other senseless. And I recall the shocking interview with Kay Griggs, former wife of a US officer and both the victim of abuse and privy to details about some of the most egregious sorts of maltreatment. Of course, this is where it begins. Mostly men, and mentally immature / much too young at that, being subjected to a mind numbing and jading experience to make them lose themselves and take on a new persona. So, of course, by that definition all soldiers have crossed the line. All “Arabs” haven’t been trained as soldiers / “terrorists” … but every U.S. soldier obviously has.
As for heckling U.S. soldiers, I honestly wish I didn’t have to. I really do. In a way it is akin to blowing up seemingly innocent people just because they happen to share a certain nationality with the murderous villains at the top. But that is just the way it is going to be. At least until I can walk up to the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and send them to whatever afterlife they believe in. It is contradictory, advocating violence while preaching peace, but this Russellian philosophical quandary is one that the U.S. trampled all over without thinking twice, so why should anyone offer America respite? Nor its soldiers. Especially when they show up with little remorse and a cocky attitude.