Iraqi prisoners let go after strange journey

[swag]

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/special_packages/iraq/8593876.htm?1c

Posted on Wed, May. 05, 2004
By Robert Moran

Knight Ridder News Service


TIKRIT, Iraq - Scores of prisoners released from the controversial Abu Ghraib prison Tuesday were taken on a winding, nearly five-hour journey through central Iraq on three hot, rickety buses escorted by U.S. military Humvees before being deposited without explanation in the middle of a gravel quarry near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.

It was unclear why the detainees, at least a hundred, were dropped off at the remote location 120 miles north of Baghdad. Some got rides home from relatives who had frantically followed the buses in nearly two dozen vehicles. Others climbed into the back of a dump truck or returned to their buses and got a ride back to Baghdad. A few were still milling about on the dirt road where they were released when journalists left the scene.

The detainees were freed as the U.S. military continues to reel from the prisoner-abuse scandal that erupted last week. Photographs showed Iraqis at Abu Ghraib being subjected to various humiliations, including being stripped naked and forced to simulate sex acts.

U.S. military officials didn't respond to several requests to comment about the way detainees were released Tuesday. Soldiers who escorted the convoy said briefly that there was some kind of mix-up, then they quickly drove away.


. . .

[bobbieinok]

1. is anyone THINKING?????????????????

"Others climbed into the back of a dump truck or returned to their buses and got a ride back to Baghdad."

Are all US personnel there totally insane?????????

[54anickel]

2. WTF?!? Soldiers say some kind of mix-up and drive away?

[swag]

3. It has all just gotten so insane and incomprehensible

Now Matty Drudge (don't go there) is reporting that the WashPost is publishing more lurid abuse/torture photos and tales tomorrow.

Is God telling Bush to bring on Armageddon? Please tell me. You have to speak very simply to me: I'm an atheist.

[54anickel]

4. Nah, God ain't tellin' Chimpy jack shit! Chimpy don't read the bible

either, or anything else for that matter. He only remembers that bible story with the verse "Give unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's" and he figures he's Ceasar!

He's a puppet for the PNACers. They let him have his little fantasy, going after all the wealth for himself and his "prophet" buddies.

[WLKjr]

10. God's not speaking to bush

I don't believe he would be such a vengeful spirit, according to the book he's not that way......could be the other way around. Bush is being presented images to tell him how bad he has phucked up and that he needs to changes his devious ways.

[Demonaut]

5. treating them like a bothersome animal, release them far away

and hopefully they wont come back....what other explanation could it be?

[AbbeyRoad]

6. That's exactly what it sounds like. [n/t]

[ConcernedCanuk]

7. Makes me sick to think there were "other" buses

.
.
.

that noone noticed . . .

One of the final scenes from "The Great Escape" revisited . .

[IndianaGreen]

8. We lost this war! We also lost the entire Middle East!

The only decent thing left to do is to order the troops home the moment we turn the keys over to the UN on June 30.

Forget your dreams of empire, PNAC and PPI!

[The_Casual_Observer]

13. The middle east was never ours to lose

This war was lost before it began. The hubris of the leadership in the US has been all time world class to think that they could pull off a scam like this.

[IndianaGreen]

15. Drop the Perverse Wilsonianism and Get Out Now

I read this interesting piece by John MacArthur that was re-published in CommonDreams on Tuesday. It speaks to the very issue you raised:

Published on Tuesday, May 4, 2004 by the Providence Journal (Rhode Island)
Drop the Perverse Wilsonianism and Get Out Now
by John R. MacArthur

NEW YORK -- NOT LONG before U.S. soldiers made news with their sadistic photo shoot of Iraqi prisoners, I dined with a small group of pedigreed New York liberals -- the ones known as "Bush haters" -- and a ghost.

The conversation followed a predictable course for the first hour or so -- contempt for the president pouring forth as freely as the wine -- so I didn't think twice about proposing a unilateral withdrawal of American troops: the very opposite of face-saving and a strategy labeled "cut and run" by Karl Rove.

Everyone at the table was old enough to remember the crazy rhetoric of Vietnam troop escalation, as well as the cruelly absurd policies of "de-escalation," "Vietnamization" and "peace with honor." So why the awkward silence when I had finished?

Suddenly the ghost spoke -- through the medium of a law-school professor, who informed me that America had a "moral obligation" to remain in Iraq. Before the medium could go on, his socially astute wife aborted the seance and we moved on to safer topics.

The ghost, I realized, was Woodrow Wilson, and, sadly, his notion of "moral obligation" dominates every debate on Iraq -- not Bush's lies about atomic-bomb threats; not the mounting corpses; not the foolish distraction from tracking al-Qaida; not the war profiteering by Bush's friends and patrons; not the violation of our Constitution and the Geneva Convention; not the waste of money that could rebuild our degraded public-school system; not even the lessons of Vietnam.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0504-15.htm

[SodoffBush]

9. "strange journey"--the watchword for this entire administration

Many of us are wondering when the journey is going to end and what our world will look like by the time we get there.

[burrowowl]

11. Surrealism

DaDaism .....!
Sanity .... Insanity!
The whole damn maladministration should be put in straitjackets and padded cells.

[daleo]

12. Meant to terrorize them one last time?

We are just taking you to an abandoned quarry to to shoot you ... I mean drop you off.

"A few were still milling about on the dirt road where they were released when journalists left the scene."

Police in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan did something similar to natives, but in winter when it was 40 below, driving them out of the city and dropping them off. At least one died of exposure. I imagine you could die abandoned in the desert in May pretty easily too. It was very irresponsible behavior, especially given recent developments.

[burrowowl]

17. Ooooh!

"We are just taking you to an abandoned quarry to to shoot you ... I mean drop you off."

Does this ring a bell, like SS executions of peasants and villagers?

[cliss]

14. I agree. The prison-keepers were probably

sweating the thought about just letting them walk out of the prison. They were probably afraid of some riot once they were free. So they drive these poor people, and just dump them in another town.

Of all the nuttiness....

Well, all I can say is that if I were held in that prison, I'd be glad to be out of there, even if it was in Tikrit.

Stupid incompetents.

[readmylips]

18. Maybe they were afraid of reporters and media...

taking photos. It was a way to hide what was going on.

[0rganism]

16. Yeeeeaaaarrrrgh!

Just when you think the party can't get any nuttier, the transvestite clown pops out of the cake juggling pigmy marmosets.

"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving."

Fuckin' A. "Apocalypse Now" doesn't have jack diddly shit on this bungled operation.

[truthisfreedom]

19. oh, this will help bushco cover their cumulative asses.

NOT.