http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/05/06/world/icrc_prisoners040506
Red Cross knew of abuses: report
Last Updated Thu, 06 May 2004 10:45:16
GENEVA - The Red Cross was aware of alleged prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison months before the U.S. military made it public, according to a news report.
A spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told The Associated Press it had repeatedly asked American authorities to take action about reports of abuse at the prison.
Nada Doumani told AP the ICRC has been visiting prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison every five or six weeks since 2003, with the last visit on March 20, 2004.
The Geneva Conventions on warfare designates the ICRC to visit prisoners of war. The committee usually discusses the situation of prisoners only with the occupying authority, but has been under pressure following the abuse allegations.
RELATED STORY: Bush offers no apology for abuse of Iraqi prisoners
U.S. news network CBS first released photos of the alleged abuse on its television program 60 Minutes II.
U.S. President George W. Bush appeared on two Arab television networks on Wednesday in response to international outrage.
>Wretched New Picture Of America
>
>Photos From Iraq Prison Show We Are Our Own Worst Enemy
>
>By Philip Kennicott
>
>Washington Post Staff Writer
>
>Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page C01
>
>Among the corrosive lies a nation at war tells itself is that the glory
>-- the lofty goals announced beforehand, the victories, the liberation
>
>of the oppressed -- belongs to the country as a whole; but the failure
>-- the accidents, the uncounted civilian dead, the crimes and atrocities
>
>
>-- is always exceptional. Noble goals flow naturally from a noble
>people; the occasional act of barbarity is always the work of
>individuals, unaccountable, confusing and indigestible to the national
>conscience.
>
>This kind of thinking was widely in evidence among military and
>political leaders after the emergence of pictures documenting American
>abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. These photographs do not
>capture the soul of America, they argued. They are aberrant.
>
>This belief, that the photographs are distortions, despite their
>authenticity, is indistinguishable from propaganda. Tyrants censor;
>democracies self-censor. Tyrants concoct propaganda in ministries of
>information; democracies produce it through habits of thought so
>ingrained that a basic lie of war -- only the good is our doing --
>becomes self-propagating.
>
>But now we have photos that have gone to the ends of the Earth, and
>painted brilliantly and indelibly, an image of America that could remain
>with us for years, perhaps decades. An Army investigative report reveals
>that we have stripped young men (whom we purported to liberate) of their
>clothing and their dignity; we have forced them to make pyramids of
>flesh, as if they were children; we have made them masturbate in front
>of their captors and cameras; forced them to simulate sexual acts;
>threatened prisoners with rape and sodomized at least one; beaten them;
>and turned dogs upon them.
>
>There are now images of men in the Muslim world looking at these images.
>On the streets of Cairo, men pore over a newspaper. An icon appears on
>the front page: a hooded man, in a rug-like poncho, standing with his
>arms out like Christ, wires attached to the hands. He is faceless. This
>is now the image of the war. In this country, perhaps it will have some
>competition from the statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled. Everywhere
>else, everywhere America is hated (and that's a very large part of this
>globe), the hooded, wired, faceless man of Abu Ghraib is this war's new
>mascot.
>
>The American leaders' response is a mixture of public disgust, and a
>good deal of resentment that they have, through these images, lost
>control of the ultimate image of the war. All the right people have
>pronounced themselves, sickened, outraged, speechless. But listen more
>closely. "And it's really a shame that just a handful can besmirch maybe
>the reputations of hundreds of thousands of our soldiers and sailors,
>airmen and Marines. . . . " said Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the
>Joint Chiefs of Staff on Sunday.
>
>Reputation, image, perception. The problem, it seems, isn't so much the
>abuse of the prisoners, because we will get to the bottom of that and,
>of course, we're not really like that. The problem is our reputation.
>Our soldiers' reputations. Our national self-image. These photos, we
>insist, are not us ...
>
>HYPERLINK
>"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2040-2004May4.html?nav=m
>ost_emailed"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2040-2004May4
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>
>---------------
>
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