Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse - Same as in any American jail or prison?

[seemslikeadream]

Opinions please


I can't believe someone just said this to me, am I really out of touch cause I don't believe it for one moment.

[LeighAnn]

1. Maybe not ALL but likely some.

Wasn't Charles Graner a prison guard before he went off to serve his country? I would be surprised if many of our prisons weren't full of sadistic guards, sadistic prisoners, and guards that look the other way at the sadistic prisoners.

[hack89]

2. Here you go...

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/14/usdom8583.htm

[seemslikeadream]

3. And this is not EVIL?

ALL FUN AND GAMES HUH?

[hack89]

6. I think you you need to take a deep breath. nt

[seemslikeadream]

8. For you to say this is not evil no matter where it happens is unreal

[hack89]

11. Where have I said it was not evil?

I simply said that by your logic there are millions of "evil" men and I feel that that particular label should be reserved for the worst of the worst. Don't you believe in degrees of evil or is everything back and white for you? To characterize my point of view as condoning torture and violence simply because I refuse to hate Bush as much as you do is childish.

[seemslikeadream]

20. Don't call me childish

This was never about me hating bush. I never said that so quit making shit up. It was about the fact that he is an evil man. Millions of people have not started illegal wars, allowed torture, let the overthrow of an elected leader, Aristide, when there was a tready bush should have enfored, allowed the people of New Orleans to be tortured, etc..........Yes there are degrees of evil and he is right up at the top

[hack89]

22. Then we will just have to disagree - bye nt

[seemslikeadream]

24. Calling people names is childish

[hack89]

25. Getting the last word is important to you, isn't it? nt

[seemslikeadream]

26. Seems extremely important to you

[hack89]

27. Here's another opportunity nt

[seemslikeadream]

9. Don't patronize me

EVIL IS EVIL NO MATTER WHERE IT HAPPENS

TORTURE IS EVIL

[hack89]

12. I agree about torture ..

but we were talking about Bush.

[seemslikeadream]

13. BUSH ALLOWED TORTURE

[hack89]

16. OK, so Bush is one of millions of evil men.

are you happy now?

[seemslikeadream]

4. These are not evil human beings?

[TahitiNut]

10. 1999. "Texas prisons were pervaded by a 'culture of sadistic and malicious violence.'"

Remind me ... who was the Governor of Texas then? :eyes: :eyes:

[hack89]

14. So you accept that US prisons served as the model

for Abu Ghraib? That's my only point.

[TahitiNut]

17. Correlation does not mean causation.

:shrug:

[hack89]

18. I just thought that the US Judaical system

was another tool for corporate capitalism to control the sheeple. Why wouldn't the BFEE learn from that and apply it to Iraq?

[VP505]

23. Maybe not US

prisons but military jails and prisons might have been.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

5. I don't think it's true of ANY American jail

But occasionally it happens that the police beat and murder people behind bars, most often in the South, I think. This is a recent story at RawStory:

"...Video shows Ghraib-like torture by sheriffs lead to man's death, say groups, family

Jennifer Van Bergen
Published: Tuesday July 25, 2006

On Feb. 6, 2006, Jessie Lee Williams, Jr., a 40-year-old black man in a Southern Mississippi jail, was allegedly hooded and hog-tied by police, beaten about the head and testicles and ultimately died from blunt injuries to the head.

The coroner determined the death was a homicide. The local sheriff indicated law enforcement agencies were investigating and that the individual targeted by the investigation is “no longer employed by the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department.”

Despite the fact that the beating was videotaped, no arrests have been made.

Williams’ family has filed a $250 million civil suit for damages. Last Friday, the sheriff’s attorney in the Williams case asked the court to halt the civil proceedings until the criminal investigation is complete in order to avoid self-incrimination.

The complaint documents numerous previous incidents of abuse in the Harrison County jail booking room where Williams died, including beatings, hooding, use of a restraint chair – called “the torture chair” or “the devil’s chair” by inmates – and a technique similar to water-boarding where a sheet was wrapped tightly around the head of a man in the restraint chair and water was poured into the breathing hole. ..."

And just a few days ago, I saw a more recent story about a black man beaten to death in a Mississippi jail (I think it was on CNN this past week). I believe the police said the man died of a heart attack, but a second private autopsy revealed that he had been strangled to death in his jail cell. I wish I could recall the man's name. It recalls for me the more frequent events of this kind in the 1950s and 1960s. I recall the story of Charles Oatman, a 16 year old mentally impaired kid who was picked up by the police and sent to jail, where he died of blunt force trauma. His body was COVERED with cigarette burns and other signs of torture. The police denied killing him, saying he died from having fallen from his bunk. The incident sparked nation-wide protests (I marched for Charles Oatman in Oakland along with thousands of others) and in Georgia where the incident took place, 6 black men were killed by the police when they fired on a crowd of demonstrators. I believe it took place shortly after the Kent State shootings.

[mmonk]

7. No. Direct them to the Center for Constitutional Rights.

[hack89]

15. What about Human Right Watch?

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/14/usdom8583.htm

[mmonk]

19. I haven't checked them out, but I will.

The Center for Constitutional Rights provided the lawyers who took up the detainee cases. While many people were disappeared by the government and put in domestic jails where they were beaten and denied all their rights right after 9/11, I have DVD's of CCR's Barbara Olshansky's recall of what she encountered and it isn't like American jails by any means. Her anger and despair is palatable and of course there was the issue of Camp Iguana where children as young as 7 were taken.

[BlooInBloo]

21. Are you high? Not.

[warren pease]

28. And then there's this...

(06-07) 00:00 EDT FRESNO, Calif. (AP) -- Eight guards at one of
California's toughest prisons abused their authority by staging
gladiator-style fights among rival inmates ``for entertainment purposes,''
a prosecutor said Tuesday.

``To these defendants, inmate safety was a game,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney
Daniel Velez said in his closing argument to the federal trial of the
Corcoran State Prison guards. ``Rather than protect the inmates, they used
them for entertainment purposes.''


This is a story about Corcoran State Prison guards cultivating an atmosphere of extreme racial hatred, then using that atmosphere to encourage black, white and hispanic inmates to fight among themselves, sometimes to the death -- and the fucking guards would bet on the outcome.

Story about the trial here:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2000/06/07/national0000EDT0400.DTL

Note this was back in 2000, when the DoJ was actually interested in prosecuting brutality instead of causing it.


But of course they got off on all charges, jurors apparently believing that the gambling tastes of guards trump the lives of the victims. As one observer writes:

"In Corcoran in the mid-90s, guards routinely organized "gladiatorial" combats between rival gang members in the small triangular exercise yards. The guards would then proceed to shoot the antagonists apart. First round, wooden bullets. Second round, for those who didn't stop fast enough, high-impact explosive bullets. seven inmates were killed and numerous others injured over the years before the practice was eventually exposed, and the prison's administration was overhauled. Yet, despite grainy black-and-white videotapes of the incidents that were captured by the security cameras, juries in California refused to find any of the officers responsible for the deaths of these inmates."

Rest of the article here:

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/abramsky.html


I know we're talking about some truly bad, bad guys. But we're also talking about a lot of non-violent drug offenders -- many first-timer offenders -- who have been criminalized by the fascist war on (some) drugs and mixed in with the general population, right next to the truly bad, bad guys. And since I suspect the average dope grower is somewhat less systemically violent than, say, the average guy serving time for attempted murder, it's a bit of a mis-match.

But as long as the guards can yuk it up over the mutilation or death of a con, as long as the prison-industrial complex offers an unending supply of drones to perform slave labor for the bottom-feeding corporate scum-suckers, as long as average people don't get too upset about the whole thing because, well gee, they're criminals aren't they? ...

So everybody's happy except the people who come to claim the bodies and bury them in paupers' graves.


wp