The Next BIG Story?

Given what we now know about Abu Ghraib, it would be very surprising if this were NOT true:

Iraqi female detainees say that they have been illegally detained, raped and sexually humiliated by U.S. occupation forces.

One female detainee, who identified herself as “Noor”, said that U.S. soldiers at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib raped women and, in many occasions, forced them to strip naked in public. She also said that many female detainees got pregnant.

The classified investigation launched by the U.S. army, led by Major General Antonio Taguba, confirmed Noor’s account and said that U.S. guards sexually abused female detainees at Abu Ghraib.

According to Taguba’s report, the 1,800 abuse photographs shot by U.S. guards inside Abu Ghraib included images of naked male and female prisoners, a male Military Police guard “having sex” with a female detainee, and naked male and female detainees forcibly arranged in various sexually explicit positions for photographing.

The Bush administration, which insists that these were the acts of a few soldiers, blocked the release of photographs of Iraqi women detainees at Abu Ghraib, including those of women forced to bare their breasts, although these have been shown to Congress.

However, Taguba’s fifty-three-page report, found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib”.

Also, a British MP, Ann Clwyd, confirmed a report that an Iraqi woman in her 70s had been harnessed and ridden like a donkey at Abu Ghraib after being captured last July...