Paul Martin 02-May-2004 Comparing American-British with Ukrainian war crimes

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Paul Martin Letter 08 02-May-2004 Comparing American-British with Ukrainian war crimes

"Private England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates." � Seymour M. Hersh

02 May 2004

The Right Honourable Paul Martin
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2

Mr Prime Minister:

American War Crimes

A hooded and wired Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib prison who reportedly was told that he would be electrocuted if he fell off a box.

The photographs tell it all. In one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates. Three other hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their genitals. A fifth prisoner has his hands at his sides.

In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid.

There is another photograph of a cluster of naked prisoners, again piled in a pyramid. Near them stands Graner, smiling, his arms crossed; a woman soldier stands in front of him, bending over, and she, too, is smiling.

Then, there is another cluster of hooded bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs.

Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded.
The caption in the uppermost photograph is the caption provided by the New Yorker; the remaining captions, however, are excerpts from the article by Seymour M. Hersh, Torture at Abu Ghraib: American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?, The New Yorker Online, Issue of 10-May-2004, Posted 30-Apr-2004. Discrepancies between photograph and caption may result from Hersh having had a different photograph in mind, or from error in his description. Of course photograph details have been blurred.

To the left are six of the ten photographs posted by the New Yorker Online showing American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison 20 miles west of Baghdad. Seymour M. Hersh quotes from an internal US-army report by Major General Antonio M. Taguba that the misconduct at Abu Ghraib prison included:

Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
Seymour M. Hersh, Torture at Abu Ghraib: American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?, The New Yorker Online, Issue of 10-May-2004, Posted 30-Apr-2004

Although to some degree these abuses may result from American perverts realizing their sexual fantasies, of greater importance is the deliberate intention of senior military and intelligence officials to bring about a psychological collapse of prisoners by subjecting them to humiliations that they experience as particularly degrading:

Such dehumanization is unacceptable in any culture, but it is especially so in the Arab world. Homosexual acts are against Islamic law and it is humiliating for men to be naked in front of other men, Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University, explained. "Being put on top of each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in front of each other � it�s all a form of torture," Haykel said.
Seymour M. Hersh, Torture at Abu Ghraib: American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?, The New Yorker Online, Issue of 10-May-2004, Posted 30-Apr-2004

Of interest will be future disclosure of any personal or ulterior motivation that may have influenced the four individuals identified by General Taguba as being chiefly responsible for the Abu Ghraib war crimes � Thomas Pappas, Steven Jordan, Steven Stephanowicz, and John Israel:

General Taguba saved his harshest words for the military-intelligence officers and private contractors. He recommended that Colonel Thomas Pappas, the commander of one of the M.I. brigades, be reprimanded and receive non-judicial punishment, and that Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan, the former director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, be relieved of duty and reprimanded. He further urged that a civilian contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI International, be fired from his Army job, reprimanded, and denied his security clearances for lying to the investigating team and allowing or ordering military policemen "who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations by 'setting conditions' which were neither authorized" nor in accordance with Army regulations. "He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse," Taguba wrote. He also recommended disciplinary action against a second CACI employee, John Israel. (A spokeswoman for CACI said that the company had "received no formal communication" from the Army about the matter.)

"I suspect," Taguba concluded, that Pappas, Jordan, Stephanowicz, and Israel "were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse at Abu Ghraib," and strongly recommended immediate disciplinary action.
Seymour M. Hersh, Torture at Abu Ghraib: American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?, The New Yorker Online, Issue of 10-May-2004, Posted 30-Apr-2004

Also of interest will be a fuller disclosure of what coercion needed to be applied to bring about prisoner compliance with demands for participation in the activities shown.

Sadiq Zoman Abrahim, 55 years old, was detained in good health in August 2003 in Kirkuk by US Soldiers during a home raid which found no weapons. He passed successively through the police office in Kirkuk, the Kirkuk Airport Detention Center, the Tikrit Airport Detention Center, and was finally transported by US soldiers to the hospital in Tikrit, and left there under a false name � in a permanent coma. Injuries to his head suggested that he had been severely beaten, and burns to the soles of his feet suggested that he had been subjected to electric shock.

Sadiq Zoman Abrahim, 55 years old, lies in a coma in Tikrit hospital.

The back of Sadiq Abrahim's head, showing wounds from a beating.

Sadiq Abrahim's feet, showing burns from electrocution well known to those who lived under the Ba'athist regime.
Photographs and captions are from Dahr Jamail, Is the US military torturing Iraqis with electricity? Electronic Iraq, 08-Jan-2004

British War Crimes

British boot on Iraqi neck

GUN TO HEAD: The terrified suspect cowers as a gun is placed at his head � then the rifle barrel was forced into his mouth

BLEEDING: Blood seeps through the mask of battered suspect

BUTT IN GROIN: A rifle is cruelly jabbed in the young man's groin as his eight-hour nightmare goes on

URINATED ON: A British soldier urinates on an Iraqi prisoner in a vile display of abuse. The captive was beaten and hurled from a moving truck. Army chiefs are investigating.
Uppermost photograph is from Tom Newton Dunn, Shame of abuse by Brit troops: 'They're not fit to wear Queen's uniform', Daily Mirror 01-May-2004; caption supplied by UKAR. Remaining photographs and captions are from Paul Byrne, Shame of abuse by Brit troops: Rogue British troops batter Iraqis in mockery of bid to win over people, Daily Mirror 01-May-2004

British Private Gary Bartlam on leave in Britain in 2003 was arrested upon submitting film to a photo lab for development which showed "an Iraqi detainee bundled up in netting and suspended from a fork-lift truck" and "troops performing sex acts near captured Iraqis" (British soldier accused of abuses in Iraq, USA Today 30-May-2003). "Another picture seems to show an Iraqi man being forced to perform oral sex on a (white) man. A third picture shows two Iraqis apparently being forced to perform anal sex. A fourth picture shows two naked Iraqis cowering on the ground" (Paul Mitchell, Photos indicate torture and sexual abuse by British troops in Iraq, World Socialist Web Site 04-Jun-2003).

Note added 16-May-2004. Blue-font material is currently recognized as being fraudulent or innaccurate, as is discussed in the Lubomyr Prytulak 16-May-2004 letter to Canadian Jewish Congress (Ontario) Chair, Ed Morgan, titled A recent war-atrocity story debunked. The instant letter's conclusions and recommendations would be quite unchanged by the removal of the discredited material.

In a separate case, the following excerpts from a Daily Mirror report indicate that the Iraqi teen-ager in the five photographs opposite was tortured for eight hours, probably solely for the sadistic pleasure of British soldiers, as there is no indication that information was being sought from him during his torture, or in fact that he had any information that anybody might want. Chances are that the teen-ager died from a combination of his torture and being thrown off the back of a moving truck. Photographs showing a seemingly clean shirt, and limited blood seeping through the head bag, might have been taken during early stages of the eight-hour ordeal.

A HOODED Iraqi captive is beaten by British soldiers before being thrown from a moving truck and left to die.

The prisoner, aged 18-20, begged for mercy as he was battered with rifle butts and batons in the head and groin, was kicked, stamped and urinated on, and had a gun barrel forced into his mouth.

After an EIGHT-HOUR ordeal, he was left barely conscious and close to death. Bleeding and vomiting and with a broken jaw and missing teeth, he was driven from a Basra camp and hurled off the truck. No one knows if he lived or died. [...]

One of the soldiers said: "Basically this guy was dying as he couldn't take any more. An officer came down. It was 'Get rid of him � I haven't seen him'. The paperwork gets ripped. So they threw him out, still with a bag on his head."

Weeks after the pictures were taken, a captive was allegedly beaten to death in custody by men from the same Queen's Lancashire Regiment. It is also alleged a video was found of prisoners being thrown off a bridge.

Soldier A told how the young victim was hauled in suspected of stealing from the docks.

He said: "You pick on a man and go for him. Straightaway he gets a beating, a couple of punches and kicks to put him down. Then he was dragged to the back of the vehicle."

Immediately a sandbag was placed over the man's head and his hands tied behind his back.

Soldier A said:

As we took him back he was getting a beating. He was hit with batons on the knees, fingers, toes, elbows, and head.

You normally try to leave off the face until you're in camp. If you pull up with black eyes and bleeding faces you could be in s**t.

"So it's body shots � scaring him, saying 'We're going to kill you'. A lot of them cry and p*** themselves.

Because it was so hot we put him in the back of a four-tonner truck which has a canopy over it. That's where the photos were taken. Lads were taking turns giving him a right going over, smashing him in the face with weapons and stamping on him. We had him for about eight hours.

You could see blood coming out early from the first 'digs'. He was p****d on and there was spew.

"We took his mask off to give him some water and let him have a rest for 10 minutes. He could only speak a few words, pleading 'No, mister'. No, mister'.

I did less than the others. But I joined in. Me and my mate calmed down. Then two lads come on and it starts again.

"He was missing teeth. All his mouth was bleeding and his nose was all over the place. He couldn't talk, his jaw was out. He's had a good few hours of a kicking. He was on his way to being killed. There's only so much you can take.

After the officer allegedly told the attackers to get rid of the suspect he was driven off.

Soldier A said: "The lads said they took him back to the dock and threw him off the back of a moving vehicle. They'd have freed his hands, but he'd still be hooded. He'd done nothing, really. I felt sorry for him. I'm not emotional about it, but I knew it was wrong."

Referring to the second alleged beating in custody � said to have taken place in September � Soldier B said: "It was only a matter of time.

"We had one who fought back. I thought 'Don't do that', it's the worst thing you can do. He got such a kicking. You could hear your mate's boots hitting this lad's spine.

"One of the lads broke his wrist on a prisoner's head. Another nearly broke his foot, kicking him. We're not helping ourselves out here. We're never going to get the Iraqis on our side. We're fighting a losing war."

Soldier B claimed after the alleged September beating troops were told to destroy incriminating evidence.

He said: "We got a warning, saying the Military Police had found a video of people throwing prisoners off a bridge. It wasn't 'Don't do it' or 'Stop it'. It was 'Get rid of it.' " [...]

Both men fear the situation is worsening, with UK troops now seen as the enemy, rather than liberators.

One said: "I can't believe it has taken the Iraqis so long to fight back. If it had been me or my family, I'd have retaliated straightaway.

"They've just got f****d around so much. You can't go in now, and say 'Right, let's forget about what has happened and start again'.

"We're struggling now. There are too many people against us."
Paul Byrne, Shame of abuse by Brit troops: Rogue British troops batter Iraqis in mockery of bid to win over people, Daily Mirror, 01-May-2004

Ukrainian War Crimes

The above are not the really serious American-British war crimes � the really serious ones are those involving the unlawful killing of tens of thousands of individuals. The war crimes documented above merely happen to be ones that are currently in the news, and that bring the advantage of being acknowledged as war crimes by the governments of the perpetrators.

Currently in the news also are Ukrainian war crimes � at least that's what the headlines say, but reading the text reveals that the two Ukrainians your war crimes unit has recently begun prosecuting (Jura Skomatchuk, 83, of St. Catherines and Josef Furman, 85, of Edmonton) are not accused of any war crimes, but only of having maybe denied serving in German units some of whose members may have committed war crimes. In other words, when it comes to Ukrainians, your war crimes unit occupies itself with prosecuting half-century-old conjectured immigration infractions.

Your prosecution of Ukrainians, then, would be analogous to the Canadian prosecution fifty years from now of Americans living in Canada who had served in the US 800th Military Police Brigade that is in charge of military prisons in Iraq, a prosecution not for any war crimes that these particular American veterans living in Canada had personally committed, but for having maybe denied their US military service upon immigrating to Canada fifty years earlier. Canadian prosecutors would not prove that such a denial had ever been made, but would infer it from the reasoning that as Canada had a policy of excluding war criminals, it would have asked all American applicants about their military service, and would have denied entry to former members of the US 800th Military Police Brigade, and so that if such members had succeeded in gaining entry into Canada, it can only have been because they lied. That's the conjectured immigration infraction which would be sufficient to get every veteran of the US 800th Military Police Brigade, and of a lot of other units too, kicked out of Canada half a century from now by Canadian prosecutors who imagined that their work consisted of cleansing Canada of war criminals. The defense that only an infinitesimal proportion of 800th Brigade members had ever been convicted of crimes would hold no water with Canada's zero-tolerance prosecutors � the criterion that applied in the year 2004 would continue to be applied in the year 2054: having maybe lied about having worn the uniform of any unit any of whose members had committed war crimes would justify denaturalization and deportation, infinitesimal proportions notwithstanding.

The above comparison of the prosecution of Ukrainians in 2004 and of Americans-Britons in 2054 is defective in one important respect � which is that the American-British war crimes are solidly documented (not only the Iraqi ones touched on above, but also many others, such as those committed by Americans in Vietnam), in demonstration of which solid documentation I have supplied above more than the minimal number of incidents and photographs that would have sufficed to make my point. In contrast, the prosecution of Ukrainians Skomatchuk and Furman, as already pointed out above, comes with no evidence of their personal involvement in war crimes. Going further, one may say that no evidence, photographic or otherwise, exists of Ukrainian war crimes which is of equivalent weight to the Iraqi photographs in any of the cases presented above. When war crimes have been alleged against Ukrainians over the years, the evidence has consisted of the testimony of individuals drawn from a pool whose credibility has been repeatedly impugned, as for example during the trials of Feodor Fedorenko, Frank Walus, and John Demjanjuk. In the Walus case, for example, a dozen Jews claiming to be holocaust survivors gave unhesitating testimony along the following lines:

[T]he Justice Department had 12 eyewitnesses to his Nazi brutality. "I will never forget that face," one such witness said. "This is the face who killed an innocent man whose only crime was the fact that he was a Jew." "Here," said another witness, standing before Walus in the Chicago District courtroom, "sits the murderer."

Another witness testified that after a woman, accompanied by her two daughters, refused to disrobe upon Walus' order, Walus shot the woman in the back of her head and just as quickly killed the two girls. Testimony of similar character was related by all the other Holocaust survivor eyewitnesses.
UABA III Ukrainian Weekly 01-Jul-1990 The five Treblinka survivors

However, it was subsequently proven that Frank Walus had passed WW II as a farm laborer in Germany, such that the testimony of all twelve prosecution witnesses, however confident and vivid, had been false. In short, Skomatchuk and Furman are not accused of war crimes, and when Ukrainians are accused of war crimes, it is on the basis of such disreputable evidence as had been used against Frank Walus.

But to return to the question of treating all groups equally � of course it is understood that Canada will never antagonize close allies and major trading partners like the United States or Britain by prosecuting their nationals in such frivolous actions as are imagined above, or even by encumbering their admission into Canada with questions concerning their military service, just as it is understood also that the comparative insignificance of Ukraine to Canada, not to mention Ukraine's unreadiness to defend its diaspora, permits the Canadian government to declare open season on Ukrainians, at least Ukrainians within the competence of your war crimes unit to harass, namely blue-collar octogenarians with a shaky command of English. Acknowledgement of this obvious rationale for current Canadian policy, however, is a confession that political considerations determine which ethnic groups are targetted for prosecution, which is in violation of the Canadian Charter § 15(1) guarantee of equality before the law.

To bring your government into compliance with Canadian Charter § 15(1), you must either start treating Ukrainians the way you presently treat Americans and Britons � which is to say, you must stop prosecuting Jura Skomatchuk and Josef Furman; or in the alternative you must start treating Americans and Britons the way you presently treat Ukrainians � which is to say, you must denaturalize and deport all Americans and Britons who have ever served, no matter how long ago, in military or police or intelligence units some of whose members have participated in war crimes. To the defense that Canadian immigration authorities had never enquired about the American-British applicants' military service, the American-British defendants must be told, as some Ukrainian defendants have been told, that they had an obligation to volunteer the information; and to prevent the defense of "I wasn't asked" from being attempted in the future, today's American-British applicants for immigration must be required to sign a declaration that they have never been members of any military or police or intelligence unit some of whose members may have been guilty of war crimes. If your government is so intent on keeping Canada war-criminal free as to attempt to banish the blameless Jura Skomatchuk and Josef Furman, it should all the harder labor to keep out of Canada the blameworthy, grinning, thumbs-up duo, Private Lynndie England and Specialist Charles A. Graner.

At the moment, it is still possible to view your government's prosecution of Jura Skomatchuk and Josef Furman as an unwelcome legacy of the Jean Chretien administration. If you allow these prosecutions to continue, however, the responsibility will become yours, of which you can count on being from time to time reminded. Although there may seem to be no great danger in maltreating minorities that are weak, you must beware of the latent danger that the weak will in the end find support from those able to expose tormentors as lawless and corrupt. On the other hand, your terminating the current discriminatory prosecution, and your disbanding the government organs that have grown habituated to practicing discriminatory prosecution, and your purging your cabinet and your party of those who defend discriminatory prosecution, will endear you not only to the oppressed groups � among whom number not only Ukrainians, but also Germans, Lithuanians, and many others � but will endear you also to the many Canadians of no matter what extraction who take alarm at the corruption of Canadian justice and at the flouting of fundamental guarantees.

Lubomyr Prytulak

Note added 05-May-2004:

A copy of the above-mentioned Taguba Report was acquired by UKAR from www.kimsoft.com/2004/IraqPowReport.doc (is also at www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/reports/2004/800-mp-bde.htm) on 05-May-2004 (after the hard copy of the above letter to Paul Martin had been mailed), and reveals that the American mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners was worse than the descriptions and photographs circulated by the media had been indicating, as is illustrated by the following excerpts:

6. (S) I find that the intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts:

a. (S) Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;

b. (S) Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;

c. (S) Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;

d. (S) Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;

e. (S) Forcing naked male detainees to wear women�s underwear;

f. �(S) Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;

g. (S) Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;

h. (S) Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;

i. �(S) Writing �I am a Rapest� (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;

j. �(S) Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee�s neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;

k. (S) A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;

l. (S) Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;

m. (S) Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.

Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, ARTICLE 15-6 INVESTIGATION OF THE 800th MILITARY POLICE BRIGADE, undated.

8. In addition, several detainees also described the following acts of abuse, which under the circumstances, I find credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses (ANNEX 26):

a. Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;

b. Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;

c. Pouring cold water on naked detainees;

d. Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;

e. Threatening male detainees with rape;

f. (U) Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;

g. Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.

h. Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, ARTICLE 15-6 INVESTIGATION OF THE 800th MILITARY POLICE BRIGADE, undated. Bold is in the original.

The following is a statement made by suspect Adel Nakhla, Civilian Translator, Titan Corp., Assigned to the 205th MI Brigade:

Mr. Adel L. Nakhla, a US civilian contract translator was questioned about several detainees accused of rape. He observed (sic): �They (detainees) were all naked, a bunch of people from MI, the MP were there that night and the inmates were ordered by SGT Granier and SGT Frederick ordered the guys while questioning them to admit what they did. They made them do strange exercises by sliding on their stomach, jump up and down, throw water on them and made them some wet, called them all kinds of names such as �gays� do they like to make love to guys, then they handcuffed their hands together and their legs with shackles and started to stack them on top of each other by insuring that the bottom guys penis will touch the guy on tops butt.�

Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, ARTICLE 15-6 INVESTIGATION OF THE 800th MILITARY POLICE BRIGADE, undated. Bold is in the original.

Note added 06-May-2004:

A trickle of photographs, from the large number in possession of authorities, continues to be released, though so far those which from verbal descriptions appear to be most inflammatory are being withheld. Four of the recently-released are as follows:

A naked detainee at the Abu Ghraib prison is tethered by a leash to prison guard Army Pvt Lynndie England in these undated photos. Relatives positively identified England from this photo. These photos were cropped from the waist down for publication purposes.

Photo from Information Clearing House Caption from Washington Post

A group of men lie naked and bound to one another on the walkway in front of the cells at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

Photo from Information Clearing House Caption from Washington Post

Cropped photo of standing Iraqi prisoner handcuffed to prison bars.

Photo from Information Clearing House Caption supplied by UKAR

Cropped photo of Iraqi prisoner handcuffed in painful position to bed frame, woman's underpants over head.

Photo from Information Clearing House Caption supplied by UKAR

The profound contempt in which the United States administration is now held is reflected in the following satirical drawing of Brigadier General Janis Karpinski who had been in charge of Iraq's prisons at the time of the abuse:

Note added 09-May-2004:

The opening paragraph of an Independent article outlines the latest developments concerning American war crimes in Iraq:

US military confirms existence of horrific pictures and video

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

09 May 2004

The Bush administration was bracing itself last night for the release of new pictures and video footage from Abu Ghraib which show US soldiers having sex with an Iraqi woman prisoner, troops almost beating a prisoner to death, and the rape of young boys by Iraqi guards at the jail.

news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=519448

And the following excerpt from the Independent outlines the latest developments concerning British war crimes:

When did British ministers know of prison torture?

By Andy McSmith and Severin Carrell

09 May 2004

[...]

The Ministry of Defence, meanwhile, is facing fresh claims about the conduct of British troops in Basra over eight new cases of Iraqi civilians allegedly being shot dead in cold blood, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

The eight cases � detailed for the first time in the IoS today � will be added to a dossier of more than a dozen cases of unarmed Iraqis allegedly killed by British soldiers that is being presented to the High Court in London this Tuesday.

Meanwhile, soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers face prosecution after an investigation into photographs apparently showing Iraqi prisoners in British custody being force to engage in homosexual acts, The Sunday Times reported

news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=519447

Also, Seymour M. Hersh publishes his second story in the New Yorker. The one photograph accompanying that story illustrates again that the photographs being published are not the most inflammatory that are available, as if calculated to keep from the eyes of the world the full extent of American evil.

An Iraqi prisoner and American military dog handlers. Other photographs show the Iraqi on the ground, bleeding.

Another image shows that the man, an Iraqi prisoner, is naked. His hands are clasped behind his neck and he is leaning against the door to a cell, contorted with terror, as the dogs bark a few feet away. Other photographs show the dogs straining at their leashes and snarling at the prisoner. In another, taken a few minutes later, the Iraqi is lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a soldier sitting on top of him, knee pressed to his back. Blood is streaming from the inmate�s leg. Another photograph is a closeup of the naked prisoner, from his waist to his ankles, lying on the floor. On his right thigh is what appears to be a bite or a deep scratch. There is another, larger wound on his left leg, covered in blood.

Image, caption, and excerpt are from Seymour M. Hersh, Chain of Command: How the Department of Defense mishandled the disaster at Abu Ghraib, New Yorker, Issue of 2004-05-17, Posted 2004-05-09 www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040517fa_fact2

* * *

But to return to the reason for the above material concerning American-British war crimes in Iraq being on UKAR � can Canada's Justice Minister, Irwin Cotler, think of no better use to put Canada's war crimes unit to than prosecuting 83-year-old Jura Skomatchuk and 85-year-old Josef Furman for half-century-old conjectured immigration infractions?

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