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US Senate Backs Human Rights; President Promises Veto

It was just last month that Human Rights Watch issued a new report charging that US soldiers in Iraq used torture against prisoners

(New York, September 24, 2005) -- U.S. Army troops subjected Iraqi detainees to severe beatings and other torture at a base in central Iraq from 2003 through 2004, often under orders or with the approval of superior officers, according to accounts from soldiers released by Human Rights Watch today.

The new report, “Leadership Failure: Firsthand Accounts of Torture of Iraqi Detainees by the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division,” provides soldiers’ accounts of abuses against detainees committed by troops of the 82nd Airborne stationed at Forward Operating Base Mercury (FOB Mercury), near Fallujah.

Three U.S. army personnel—two sergeants and a captain—describe routine, severe beatings of prisoners and other cruel and inhumane treatment. In one incident, a soldier is alleged to have broken a detainee’s leg with a baseball bat. Detainees were also forced to hold five-gallon jugs of water with their arms outstretched and perform other acts until they passed out. Soldiers also applied chemical substances to detainees’ skin and eyes, and subjected detainees to forced stress positions, sleep deprivation, and extremes of hot and cold. Detainees were also stacked into human pyramids and denied food and water. The soldiers also described abuses they witnessed or participated in at another base in Iraq and during earlier deployments in Afghanistan.

In a rare moment of bi-partisanship the US Senate this week passed legislation by a lopsided margin – legislation opposed by President Bush – setting “new limits on interrogating detainees in Iraq and elsewhere, underscoring Congress's growing concerns about reports of abuse of suspected terrorists and others in military custody,” according to the Washington Post.

The legislation was championed by Republican senators John McCain (a man who endured years of torture as a POW), Lindsey O. Graham, and John W. Warner. Click here to read McCain's statement on the bill.

The president has promised to veto the bill.

The world’s leading Christian organizations – both Protestant and Roman Catholic – have issued many statements over the years opposing torture. The National Council of Churches USA, referring to the situation at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, said last year:

Our concern is based on the fundamental Christian belief in the dignity of the human person created in the image of God, and on the rights accorded all persons by virtue of their humanity. As affirmed in a NCCCUSA policy statement on human rights, dated December 6, 1963, “Christians believe that man is made in the image of God, that every person is of intrinsic worth before God, and that every individual has a right to the fullest possible opportunity for the development of life abundant and eternal. Denials of rights and freedoms that inhere in man’s worth before God are not simply a crime against humanity; they are a sin against God.”

89 members of the United States Senate made clear this week that they share that sentiment. It is sad that the president of the United States does not.

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