Seymour Hersh has been peddling this alleged “story” for a few weeks based on his word alone.
Baghdad, Iraq, Jul. 17 (UPI) — American journalist Seymour Hersh has said there are videotapes of American soldiers sodomizing young Iraqi boys at Abu Ghraib prison.
The investigative journalist, one of the first to break the story of prisoner abuses, said the Bush administration is holding the tapes of these acts, Aljazeera.net reported Saturday.
“The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking. And this is your government at war,” he said.Others have called for Hersh to show his hand or STFU – a position which I stand firmly in support of. If there is evidence, show it or provide a evidence trail for it.
Hersh’s evidentiary problems are exacerbated by the fact that more of the facts are now known – he’s not in an exclusive position. U.S. News & World Report has obtained and analyzed ALL of the classified annexes to the Taguba report:
Over the past two months, many of the classified documents supporting Taguba’s findings have emerged in various news accounts, including in U.S. News. But the magazine now has obtained all 106 classified annexes to the report, and the several thousand pages of material provide the most comprehensive view yet of what went wrong at Abu Ghraib and in the Army’s management of the teeming prison system in Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s government was toppled.
There is no mention of sodomizing young Iraqi boys. You would suspect they might have noticed that in the report, the annexes, or in other supporting material…
Does Seymour sit down to pee?
Does Seymour sit down to pee?
Since he’s not a member of the California Legislature, that’s actually not a moot question.
But I do think Seymour may be confusing the Abu Ghraib videos with something else he found on the web. Wouldn’t be a first WRT that scandal…
In the first days that the Abu Ghraib story broke, there were stories, coming out of the Pentagon, that there was much, much worse that had not been shown by ABC. It was said then to include said sodomy by US troops on Iraqi males as well as cold-blooded murder.
Rumsfeld is on record saying to Congress that much worse than the ABC material existed.
I wouldn’t get my knickers in a twist over Hersh on this one. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Sorry.
In the first days that the Abu Ghraib story broke, there were stories, coming out of the Pentagon, that there was much, much worse that had not been shown by ABC. It was said then to include said sodomy by US troops on Iraqi males as well as cold-blooded murder.
My recollection is different, that there were reports coming from the Pentagon of worse than originally released — but that this did not include the stories of sodomy and murder.
I also recall that some highly lurid stories came out in the Brit press about the same time as Abu Ghraib hit the fan, but those stories had to be retracted because they weren’t true.
I could be wrong. But if I am I’ll need to be shown.
Since Hersh didn’t have the guts to publish his claim we shouldn’t make much of it. He may have tried to get it passed the New Yorker’s famed fact checkers but got rebuffed.
Rumsfeld himself said “much worse”, and was described as ashen-faced. I think a member of Congress mentioned sodomy, rape and murder on videos.
“Washington — Embattled Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress on Friday that he wouldn’t rule out resigning and warned that yet-undisclosed images of Iraqi prisoner abuse containing what one lawmaker described as “rape and murder” might touch off a new furor.”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=
/c/a/2004/05/08/RUMSFELD.TMP&type=printable
There ya go.
Thanks, Scorpio! I was just about to start the search.
So … which member of Congress?
Be careful what you wish for. The evidence is out there. Hersh knows about the tapes. He was never in possession of them- they are in the hands of the Pentagon. No one wants to leak these tapes because it’s going to be Mogadishu meets the Khmer Rouge, and we have a lot of personnel on the ground there that will have to fight their way out of there.
Hersh is probably telling the truth. He is not the only one to come forward with this info. Pray to whatever god you believe in that this stays a rumor.
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/20/evidence_for_hershs_.html