Rumsfeld on Monday, May 10, for "doing a superb job" in the war on terrorism despite fresh allegations of "widespread" torture and abuse in U.S. run detention centers, which the Vatican described as "an offensive against God himself."
Speaking after a meeting at the Pentagon with Rumsfeld at his side, Bush said his Cabinet officer was "courageously leading our nation in our war" against terror…"You are a strong secretary of defense and our nation owes you a debt of gratitude," the president said at a media event, where he refused to answer questions.
Bush also made clear in his weekly radio address Saturday, May 8, that although it had been "a difficult few weeks" the American forces "will stay on the offensive, finding and confronting the killers and terrorists who are trying to undermine the progress of democracy in Iraq."
However the U.S. based Christian Peacemakers Team (CPT), which has investigated the situation if Iraqi detainees, questioned the methods used by the American military saying "there are systematic abuses taking place in the American prisons."
Stewart Vriesinga of CPT was quoted by the Reuters news agency in Baghdad as saying that "Iraqis are treated in a dehumanized" way. "We are here to tell the world that the cases of torture of Iraqi prisoners are not isolated incidents and they are not limited to Abu Ghraib prison, nor to the six U.S. MPs," a spokeswoman for the Iraqi Human Rights Organization (IHRO) reportedly told a news conference in Baghdad late Sunday, May 9.
SEVEN POLICE CHARGED
Seven U.S. Military Police (MPs) have been charged with abusing Iraqi prisoners after global outrage erupted with the publication of photographs of naked detainees being humiliated at Abu Ghraib prison just outside Baghdad. The latest photo to surface is included in a New Yorker magazine article by Seymour Hersh this week. The photo shows American guards holding back leashed dogs near a naked prisoner.
Hersh, who has compared these methods to those used by Nazis against Jews during World War Two , said the photo is part of at least 20 pictures taken by a soldier in one of the MP units at the prison.
"[The prisoner’s] 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," Hersh reported in his article. "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," the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author wrote.
People who said they had been victims of torture and relatives of detainees described during Sunday’s news conference in Baghdad what they said was their degrading treatment in the U.S. prisons. Issam al-Hammad said Americans came to his village near al-Qaim on the Syrian border looking for his father, Abid Hammad al-Mahoosh, a major general in the disbanded Iraqi army.
ELECTRICAL SHOCKS
He wasn’t there, so they took Issam and his three brothers, the youngest of them age 16. "We spent five and a half months in four detention centers," Issam al-Hammad said, according to Reuters. Al-Hammad, who is in his late 20s, reportedly said they were beaten and given electrical shocks. "I was naked apart from my underpants and they poured water on my back and then electrified me with an electrical stick," he said.
Several times American officers pointed a pistol at one of the brothers to force the others to talk, he said. "They told me if you don’t talk we will bring your mothers and sisters here," al-Hammad said. None of the accounts could be verified independently, however U.S. officials have promised an investigation.
Reuters added the al-Hammad brothers showed a photograph of a body marked extensively with bruises and burns, which they claimed was their father, who surrendered to U.S. forces after his sons were detained. "Our father handed himself to the Americans three days after we were arrested. For two months he was tortured, and when he died because of the torture they dropped his body at the front gate of a hospital and left him there," Issam al-Hammad stressed.
The brothers spoke of a hospital autopsy report stating their father died of a heart attack caused by extensive torture. "We are not looking for compensation," offered by Rumsfeld for those who suffered. "We want to expose what happened to our father to the rest of the world and make sure other detainees won’t suffer like us," al-Hammad said.
BEATING AND HUMILIATION
Najim Abdul-Majid, 45, a Baghdad shop owner detained with his 17-year-old son last August, claimed that during interrogation his captors would chain him to the ceiling for three hours. "Beating and humiliation was the norm," he said, according to a Reuters reporter. "Once they took me to watch my son being tortured with electricity. He was tied to a pole while two wires were dangled on his back," he reportedly explained.
Accused of storing explosive material, Abdul-Majid said he spent six months in Abu Ghraib prison before being released with an apology. His son was still in detention, he said. Rumsfeld has made clear it would "not be a bad idea" to destroy the complex and start a new era, although officials in Iraq have said the facility will continue to operate for some time to come.
There is concern in Iraq that the abuse pictures could fuel Islamic extremism against the many American troops not involved in the scandal as well as Iraq’s embattled Christian minority.
In an effort to calm tensions, President Bush told evangelical Christians at the White House last week that "God is not on the side of any nation, yet we know He is on the side of justice." He underscored that "God’s will is greater than any man, or any nation built by men," according to reported transcripts. "He finds His children within every culture and every tribe. Our part, our calling, is to align the hearts and action with God’s plan, in so far as we can know it…" President Bush added.
