WHO ARE THE REAL TORTURERS?

I

t was a mind-blowing discovery that U.S. soldiers had made, that day in Iraq. Almost as mind-blowing -- that day was several weeks ago, and most people, even those who may call themselves "news junkies," have not even heard about it.

The discovery, made during a raid on an al Qaeda "safe house," involved the seizure of terrorist training materials including an illustrated torture manual. The how-to handbook, with hand drawn pictures to teach al Qaeda's version of "enhanced interrogation methods" (also doubles as a guide to simply satisfying jihadi bloodlust, in case the captive has no knowledge to extract), was released by the DoD and immediately published at The Smoking Gun.

I have heard that CNN and FOX both mentioned this, but I'm unable to verify. I don't get FOX over here, and despite having watched CNN during this period of time, I must have missed it. I feel pretty confident to say that the story was not on the heavy rotation list, like, say, Abu Ghraib was three years ago for months and months on end. It may be a simple case that naked people with a dog snarling at them, or a hooded man standing on a box (mistreatment for which a few unprofessional soldiers were reported and punished) are more photogenic than child-like drawings of hands drilled, eyes gouged or skin blowtorched.

For the rest of the legacy media, the discovery was apparently uninteresting. The vast majority of the self-touted "media of record" -- New York Times, WashingPost, CBS/ABC/NBC/PBS/NPR etc. have yet to even mention this evidence of al Qaeda's depravity, the extreme brutality which is taught to jihad recruits. On the other hand, the illegal (and prosecuted as such) unauthorised employment of fear and ridicule by a few Americans (epitomized by panties-on-the-head and pointing-at-the-peepee-while-laughing, as well as reckless proximity of a female or touching with fake female by-products) represents the end of civilisation as we know it. Quite a pathetic performance by our information gate-keepers.

Go ahead and view the image series at Smoking Gun -- it contains a few photos as well as the awkward drawings as seen in the sample above. The smiling, moustachioed torturer seen there dispensing Excedrin headache #23 is a recurring player and is always portrayed as enjoying himself immensely. It's always good to know just how depraved your depraved enemies really are, even if your "journalists" feel you don't need to.

Earlier the same week as this find, Coalition forces freed five Iraqis held in a padlocked room in Karmah, where they had been beaten with assorted impliments. The victims included a child. The following weekend, a large group of 41 Iraqi Sunni Muslims (also including children) were freed from a torture centre discovered south of Baqubah in Diayala province. It's rather difficult to hope that the public will learn much about this one either, when the AP reports it like this (this claims 42 but the official report says 41):

American forces freed 42 kidnapped Iraqis - some of whom had been hung from ceilings and tortured for months - in a raid Sunday on an al-Qaida hideout north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

Military officials said the operation, launched on tips from residents, showed that Iraqis in the turbulent Diyala province were turning against Sunni insurgents and beginning to trust U.S. troops.

"The people in Diyala are speaking up against al-Qaida," said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq.

That's the opening of a report headlined on this incident, ostensibly dedicated to information on this particular major act of liberating captives. But that's all there is -- three short paragraphs, followed by the 'elsewhere in the horrendous Iraq quagmire' rubric and another 18 paragraphs of non-related tales of woe from every corner of the country, not including two more short lines regarding the largest number of freed al Qaeda captives, stuffed far down the story. There we learn that some men suffered broken bones, had been held as long as four months, and the youngest was fourteen years old.

To get an actual report on this actually important story, the public must evidently rely on Armed Forces Press Service -- whose reports are naturally not to be seen on any media outlet whatsoever. Officers Describe al Qaeda Prison Rescue Mission:

U.S. and Iraqi soldiers were conducting operations in a town south of Baqubah when a local man approached them with information about the prison, Army Lt. Col. Morris Goins, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division’s 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry, told reporters in a teleconference from Iraq’s Diyala province.

There is more and more of this happening every day. In Anbar Province, just a few short months ago famous as the most violent and hopeless part of the country, going to hell much faster than anywhere else, the people and tribal leaders are turning against al Qaeda en masse -- a phenomenon which began about half a year ago. Nearly all the tribal sheiks in this vast Sunni majority region have joined their areas into an "Anbar Awakening Movement" dedicated to cooperating with the Iraqi government, the Iraqi Army and Police, and Coalition  forces to destroy the al Qaeda brutes (who have recently taken to using chemical weapons against their people). They are fed up with this foreign garbage, and the tips from the people against the jihadi secret places and caches and bomb factories are increasing by the day. Recently, a similar inter-tribal popular movement got started in Diyala Province, where this particular tip resulted in this particular liberation of 41 innocent people.

Goins said he assigned D Company of the unit, commanded by Army Capt. Paul Carlock, to check out the report. As the unit approached, the soldiers encountered 41 Iraqis who had been held by al Qaeda in Iraq, Goins said. “They showed some signs of torture,” the colonel said. “We brought them back to an attack position, where we were able to give them some water, some food.”

The unit then took the men to a combat outpost, where they received medical attention. The American and Iraqi units killed seven al Qaeda fighters in the operation and detained another 30, Goins said.

Carlock said some of the men, mostly Sunnis, had lash marks on their backs and rope burns on their wrists and ankles. Some had been held as long as four months. He said their main diet was figs and water.

One of the freed prisoners was a 13-year-old boy, Goins said, but most were provincial government workers and local merchants. Some Shiia hostages had been held at the prison, but al Qaeda had killed them all, the colonel added.

Quite a bit there seems like it should have been newsworthy, yet is only found on the Pentagon website. Especially the part about all these torture victims being the very Sunni Arabs that al Qaeda had relied on for support. The Wahhabist fanatics have often been reported to hate the Shias (and the corollary, that they'd never accept help from Iran - except they certainly have, and do) while loving and defending the Sunnis. So the Shia civilian captives are killed while Sunni civilian captives are merely horribly tortured. No wonder these bozos can't keep their friends.

It was about this time last night that the JFK bomb plot revelations were breaking, and I see already today the usual lefty suspects are downplaying it as another gang that couldn't shoot straight. One of these days -- and it's only a matter of time and probabilities -- the element of luck will fall on the wrong side instead of the right one (and there was a "lucky break" that led to this bust, as with the Fort Dix case, as with the Atlantic airliner bomb plot, as with most of the interrupted plots in the past five and a half years). The ideology and teachings of Global Jihad are trying to infect societies everywhere, and Thailand is a prime example.

It took two days for the young Muslim assassin to calm his nerves before the slaying.

Then, Mohama Waekaji says, he walked one cool morning to a rice mill, carrying a knife and following orders from a guerrilla commander to behead the 72-year-old Buddhist owner.

He asked the elderly man, Juan Kaewtongprakam, for some rice husks. As he turned to collect them, Waekaji says, he slashed the blade through the man's neck.

"I didn't dare to disobey," the 23-year-old Waekaji said in an interview with The Associated Press — the first time a Thai militant accused of a beheading has spoken to the Western media. "I knew they would come after me if I did not do what I was told."

Oh, so now AP is all about reporting details and stuff. Well thanks, but I'd sure like to see some consistency with that. The jihadis down south are just getting more demented all the time (a roadside bomb / ambush on soldiers last week killed something like 12 of them, I'm sure it's the biggest loss in a single event in the past 3 years). Beheading and torture has become quite a fad for this particular movement.

Twenty-five beheadings — including 10 already this year — have been reported in southern Thailand since an Islamic-inspired insurgency erupted in 2004, claiming more than 2,200 lives.

There was also the case last year of several young members of the security forces who were kidnapped and held for days in a house by Islamist fighters, where they were tortured unspeakably before dying. Their tormenters included women.

Thai authorities say jihad videos from the Middle East, captured from rebel training camps, may be inspiring young men like Waekaji. One clip said to have come from
Iraq shows a woman lying on her side on a patch of grass as a man slowly cuts her throat with a long knife. Blood spurts from the wound, the screaming finally stops and her head is completely severed.

Teaching materials from the Arab lands. I wonder if they also have copies of the above torture manual.

He was attending a private Islamic school in Pattani province when a school buddy persuaded him to join a religious event at a mosque. There "ustad," or teachers, told him about an organization to liberate southern Thailand, asking him to take an oath to become a servant of Allah, obey the teachers and take the secrets of the organization to his grave.

The boy knew nothing of politics, and felt confused by what was going on. He thought he was coming to a religious event. But he took the oath and began his training.

"They recruit responsible, tightlipped and trouble-free teenagers ... people who can carry out orders and who don't attract attention to themselves," said Thai army Col. Shinawat Mandej. "They train their minds before training their bodies. They get them at the most vulnerable age when they need something to believe in and turn them into cold-blooded killers."

There seems to be a lot of that going around. Get their minds while they're young, the knuckle pushups can come later.

When the order came to slay the mill owner — a person he had seen but didn't know — Waekaji said he was frightened, both by the orders and what his leaders would do to him if he failed.

"It was too late to want out," he said, his eyes closed and his head downcast. "It was either me or him."

Police found the man's headless body at the rice mill and his head in a nearby field that separates Muslim and Buddhist villages. Waekaji was arrested and charged with the killing about two months later.

Leaflets left in mailboxes and motorcycle baskets in Pattani the day of the beheading warned: "We will give Thai Buddhists three days to leave our land. Otherwise, we will kill you and burn your houses. ... Thai Buddhists will never live peacefully. You will be killed cruelly."

Leaflets like this are distributed every day of the week down there. I will say that the Thais are much better informed about the activities, ideology and atrocities carried forth by the violent Islamists in the southern provinces, than Americans (and Canadians, Europeans and etc.) are about the nature of the enemy on the frontlines in Iraq. Not to mention those who downplay the infection within their own societies, such as the joking dismissers on the lefty blogs, many "opinion makers" in the mainstream, and of course even presidential candidates like the Breck Girl (who dismisses the war on terror as a "bumper sticker"). And I don't mean Hillary.

There's a lot of political contention in Thailand right now, far more than even the extreme polarization seen in the US these days. But the kind of wilful ignorance and joking dismissals, the wilful keeping of masses ignorant, and the outright war against those who recognize that a war is under way -- none of that is evident here. And for those violent Islamist chauvinist pigs making threats against Buddhists -- an unfriendly word of warning. Buddhism does not mean pacifism. The Thais will take restraint quite a long way, but when it's let go, when the end of patience is reached... well, you really won't want to be around for that. It will be sudden and it will be frightening, and it may even qualify for "shock and awe" without the fireworks.
- posted by Agam @ 10:47 PM 0 comments

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