Abu Ghraib: “Most of the women in the prison were raped — some of them left prison pregnant.”
September 12th, 2010Via: Independent:
Yet nothing comes closer to Titus Andronicus than the insistent, terrible stories of gang rape by United States personnel in Abu Ghraib. You hear this repeatedly in Amman, and a very accurate source of mine in Washington – a man who deals with military personnel – tells me they are true. This, he says, is why Barack Obama changed his mind about releasing the photographs which George W Bush refused to make public. The pictures we saw – of the humiliation of men – were outrageous enough. But the ones we haven’t seen show Americans raping Iraqi women.
Lima Nabil, a journalist who now runs a home for on-the-run girls, sips coffee as the boiling Jordanian sun frowns through the window at us. “In Abu Ghraib,” she says, “women were tortured by the Americans much more than the men. One woman said she witnessed five girls being raped. Most of the women in the prison were raped – some of them left prison pregnant. Families killed some of these women – because of the shame.”
There have been thousands of rapes of Iraqi and Afghan women and young girls by American servicemen since our misadventures began in those countries. Many of the problems returning servicemen have had with their marriages started when they admitted to their spouses that they have been involved in rapes of women and children in the war zone. What do you expect when our troops are trained and indoctrinated to think of Iraqi and Afghan people as less than human?