Welcome to the Conspiracy Cafe

As we embark on yet another month of gut wrenching war images, televised readings of the dead, increasing debates on our role in Iraq and yet another American hostage taken off the streets; let us remember we are at war. No historical account of any war has been something we enjoy. It is that which shapes our world today.

Ask a soldier laying underneath the dead and bleeding bodies of his unit; “did you enjoy it”? Ask a soldier staring at the empty bunks of his battle buddies; “was it worth it”? Ask any POW; “did they treat you well”? Most often you’ll be met with a faraway gaze and a remark that “it was war”. War is not fair, war is not pretty, war is not something we like. People will be injured, be treated unfairly, and die like dogs in the street.

It is only our arrogance as a Superpower that would allow us American citizens to look at war images and be disgusted or enraged. We lead sheltered and insulated lives that only filter in through television, internet or radio what the media wants us to know. War atrocities committed by the United States or by other countries against us; is not something that’s new. With increasing technology we finally have a true face on war. War reporting by the second, without the censoring or filtering of some media giant. Reality television at it’s best; and what; you do not like it?

Is it okay to be at war as long as we don’t have to ‘see’ the dead? Is it okay to be at war as long as we don’t have to ‘know’ about prisoner interrogations? Is it okay to be at war as long as we don’t have to ‘feel’ anything about it?

Let’s take a little reality check.

Jessica Lynch

What do you really know about her time as a POW?

Washington Times reported; “Helicopter-borne commando units from four services slipped behind Iraqi lines and seized Pfc. Lynch from the Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah under cover of darkness...nine days after she had been listed as missing. An MSNBC reporter traveling with U.S. Troops said the raid received considerable help from Iraqi citizens. They found a bloodied U.S. uniform, of a kind used by female soldiers, when they seized another hospital, used by Iraqi forces in Nasiriyah last week; Mr. Sanders said. They also learned that the soldier had been shot in the leg, he said.” The Times also reported that; “they also found a room with a bed and large battery next to it, indicating that it had been used as a torture chamber.”

Just a day later, both The Washington Post and USA TODAY reported; “Inside the room with her was an imposing Iraqi man, clad in all black. Mohammed watched as the man slapped the American woman with his open palm and again with the back of his hand.”

The Washington Post also reported that; “doctors were planning to repair fractures in her right arm and in both legs, they said.”

A few days later the Washington Post reported that; “Lynch is receiving medical care at the U.S. military’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Doctors have found fractures in her right arm, both legs and her right ankle and foot, as well as injuries to her head and spine. She has undergone a back operation and surgery to repair borken bones.”

The New York Times offered a detailed account from the two Iraqi doctors who treated Pvt. Lynch. “Suffering from broken bones and gunshot wounds, she was handed over to physicians at Nasiriyah General Hospital by the military doctors who treated her in the field. ‘We recieved her in the casualty unit,’ siad Dr. Houssona. ‘She had a fractured leg, a gunshot wound and a pulmonary edema.”

The Post reports that "When Lynch arrived at Saddam Hussein hospital in a military ambulance that afternoon, the nurses and doctors who admitted her said they were surprised to find an American woman, almost naked, her limbs in plaster casts, beneath a sheet."

Meanwhile NEWSWEEK Magazine reported that “...amid the joy of Lynch’s rescue there were unsettling questions about Lynch’s conditions and her treatment in captivity. Her injuries included factures to both legs, her right arm, spine and after undergoing several operations last week she developed a fever that reached 104 (degrees). Exactly how she was injured, though remained a mystery: the commander of the hospital in Landstuhl, Germany told reporters...that ‘she was stabbed; she was not shot.’ Later that day though, surgeons discovered that she had been shot - and, according to a spokesman in West Virginia, Dan Little, her wounds were ‘consistent with low velocity firearms.’ The unpleasant implication that she might have been shot after she had been captured. The mystery grew when CNN reported that Marines searching the office of a Baath Party official in Nasiriyah had discovered Lynch’s dog tag.”

Later in USA TODAY; “Rick Bragg author of her book writes that scars on Lynch’s body and medical records indicate she was sodomized, but that Lynch recalls nothing”.

Many reports indicate she had exit wounds on both sides of her spine and attempts to electronically stimulate her failing kidneys and bowels failed. Please note the terminology used and the terminology not used. Exit wounds with no visible entry wounds. Other reports also state that her torture was video taped and that our forces bombed the Arab television network that was going to air the video; destroying that evidence.

Iraqi Torture Methods

Al Jazeera TV, showed video of five captured members of the 507th and bodies of several others. The New York Times reported; "Some of the Army mechanics captured on Sunday after they took a wrong turn in the Iraqi town of Nasiriyah were apparently executed by their captors, probably in front of townspeople, American officials charged tonight...It is unclear how many of the seven soldiers were executed, rather than killed in fighting, as the Iraqis contend...[The Al Jazeera] video...showed images of at least four bodies; some appeared to have bullet wounds to the head. 'When the full story comes out, people will be outraged,' said one senior military official."

Bush administration officials said...'What has surprised me most, quite honestly, is that in nearly six days of ground fighting that the forces that are loyal to Saddam Hussein have already committed so many war crimes,' said Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace CNN. 'They have executed prisoners of war.' Prime minister Tony Blair said in Washington this week that Fedayeen paramilitary troops around Basra had executed two captured British soldiers."

Iraq has a history of mistreating POWs. It took 23 American captives during the Desert Storm campaign in 1991 and mistreated all of them. Former prisoners recounted how they were beaten repeatedly, then were forced to read statements broadcast on Arab television." There is also a historical record on Islamic doctrine on the treatment of prisoners of war. Developed over centuries of conflict, it is brutal. It is savage. It is uncompromising. It is final.

Dr. Andrew G. Bostom is an associate professor of medicine at Brown University. He has written on the subject of Islam's attitude toward captives. He quotes from the Arabic document, 'Abu Yusuf Ya'qub Le Livre de l'impot foncier,' translated from Arabic and annotated by Edmond Fagnan, Paris, Paul Geuthner, 1991, pages 301-302. As introduction, he quotes Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri Ahmad al-Hadithi as saying that the already brutalized U.S. POWs captured in southern Iraq"...would be treated according to the principles of Islam."

"The classical Baghdadian jurists Abu Yusuf (from the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, d.798) and al-Mawardi (a Shafi'ite jurist, d.1058) were prolific, respected scholars who lived during the so-called Islamic 'Golden Age' of the Baghdadian-Abbasid Caliphate. They wrote the following, based on their interpretations of the Koran and Sunna (i.e., the recorded words and deeds of Muhammad):

'...that one can even...finish off the wounded, or kill prisoners

who might prove dangerous to the Muslims...As for the prisoners

who are led before the imam, the latter has the choice, as he pleases,

of executing them, or making them pay a ransom, for the most advantageous

choice for the Muslims and the wisest of Islam. The ransom imposed upon

them is not to consist either of gold, silver, or wares, but is only in exchange

for Muslim captives...'

'As for the captives, the amir [ruler] has the choice of taking the most beneficial

action of four possibilities: the first to put them to death by cutting their necks;

the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale and

manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners;

and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them.'

Bostom continues. "Indeed, such odious 'rules' were iterated by all four classical schools of Islamic jurisprudence across the vast Muslim empire. Specifically, Ibn Abi Zayd Al_Qayrawani (d.996), head of the North African Maliki school at Qairuan, and the famous Syrian jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d.1328) of the Hanbali school under the Mameluks, wrote the following:

'There is no inconvenience to kill white non-Arabs who have been taken prisoner.'

[Another Arab scholar] wrote:

'If a male unbeliever is taken captive during warfare or otherwise, i.e. as a result of a

shipwreck, or because he has lost his way, or as a result of a ruse, then the imam may

do whatever he deems appropriate: killing him, enslaving him, releasing him, or setting

him free for a ransom consisting of either property or people. This is the view of most

jurists and it is supported by the Koran and the Sunna.'

Bostom observes that "The grisly video aired by Al-Jazeera and many other Arab media outlets suggests that, indeed, the 'primary option,' i.e. execution, may very well have been exercised with regard to those U.S. POWs [from the 507th] captured in southern Iraq.

The images of the dead and captured American soldiers were apparently taken by Iraqi state television, "...a yellow Iraq TV microphone could be seen in footage. An opening clip showed a tan U.S. military supply truck towing a tan potable water tank that an announcer said was stopped on a road near Nasiriyah. The body of a U.S. serviceman lay on the road behind the truck. The victim, who appeared to be a black male, wore a tan battle uniform and helmet. The footage did not show his injuries. Bloodstains were visible on the truck. A second clip showed four dead male soldiers laying on the floor of a room identified by the announcer as a makeshift morgue. The camera panned over the bodies, showing close-up shots of their wounds..."

The al-Jazeera broadcast of the Iraqi video produced a deluge of response by the American media on the possibility of our POWs being mistreated by the Iraqis. Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN, confessed that they had knowledge of Iraqi brutality toward one of their employees in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf Storm War. "...in the mid-1990s one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's...suspicion that [Eason] was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief...The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways."

Jordan also said that a 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for 'crimes,' one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing he body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home."

Other reports describe in detail Iraqi torture methods. One report describes torture by cutting off one or both ears. Placing electrodes on a person's naval to administer electric shocks. Dislocating shoulders and wrapping an electric wire, attached to a hand-cranked machine, around a male's genitals. Another report detailed the torture of a female Iraqi. It quoted her as saying, "The first time they slapped me'...the secret police also burned her back with a metal rod and beat the soles of her feet. 'They tortured her in every way,' she said.

Another report described the torture of several Iraqis who had been imprisoned by Hussein's secret police. They took reporters to the prison where they had been tortured. They told their stories. "One man put his hands behind his back and lifted them upward - hung from the ceiling, he suggested, in an especially painful way. Another man took his fingers, meant to stand for electrical wires, and placed them on his genitals...Other men returning here said the interrogators had gone even further demanding sex with female relatives...In most cases, the prisoners said, bribes were paid, women were offered, but the prisoner remained in jail."

Another report detailed unspeakable torture on Iraqi prisoners. "He put his hands behind his back to simulate being bound, then leaned his head back and closed his eyes as if blindfolded. A friend stepped behind him to hold his head, taking on the role of one of the enforcers. Then another would force open the victim's mouth, Ali said, and a third would yank the tongue out with pliers and slice it off with a surgical knife or an army blade...[The Iraqi doctor who performed such surgical torture] described delivering the decapitated heads of victims to their families as matter-of-factly as he explained his educational background...[The doctor, Ali] said that by 1996, he was chosen to join an elite 18-member squad within the Fedayeen called the Staff, which effectively served as special forces."

This same Washington Post report provided some insight as to the kind of torture that may have been meted out to Pvt. Jessica Lynch by the Fedayeen in Nasiriyah after her capture. "Punishments short of death were meted out according to a clear hierarchy, [Ali] said. Those who stole had their fingers or hands cut off. Those who lied had 18-pound concrete blocks dropped on their backs. Informers who gave inaccurate information had hot irons put in their mouths, he said, and army deserters had their ears sliced off."

Recall that Iraqi doctors who treated Pvt. Lynch in the hospital in Nasiriyah did not mention that she had a fractured disc in her back. The U.S. doctors who treated her in the U.S. military hospital in Germany before transferring her to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C carried out surgery on her back as the very first medical procedure. Recall that U.S. military doctors who performed the operation said that "they repaired a fracture that was pinching a nerve and causing her to lose feeling in her feet."

NEWSWEEK Magazine published an extensive and detailed account of the torture methods the Saddam Hussein's regime carried out on Iraqi citizens. One former Iraqi prisoner told of suffering electric shocks - using wires from a hand-cranked generator - to various body parts including his genitals. "The fate of thousands...are buried in Saddam's numerous prisons. One of the most notorious was the IIS prison at Haakimiya, near a bustling commercial area in downtown Baghdad. A nondescript five-story building notable only by the extra barbed wire on the roof, the Haakimiya Prison is actually 10 stories. Belowground are interrogation cells where unspeakable horrors are committed. [An account of a former Iraqi inmate], searching for documents [after the fall of Baghdad] about his cousin...[said] he had been arrested with 19 others; the lucky ones were executed right away. The rest were tortured with electric cattle prods and forced to watch the prison guards gang-rape their wives and sisters. Some were fed into a machine that looked like a giant meat cutter. 'Peoples bodies were cut into tiny pieces and thrown into the Tigris River,' said Ulga."

The Washington Post reported that"The most vicious of [the Baath Party] enforcers are the roughly 25,000 members of Saddam's Fedayeen, who report to Hussein through his eldest son, Uday. They are 'absolute dregs of Iraqi society,' said one intelligence official - failed students, victims of broken homes, young men with a history of violence. 'They are picked because they will be viewed [by other Iraqis] as killers,' the official explained."

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld told the Washington Times that "Up to 30,000 members of Iraq's black-hooded Fedayeen Saddam militia are using terrorist tactics to fight coalition forces in southern Iraq...We have intelligence information that the Fedayeen Saddam [meaning 'those willing to sacrifice themselves for Saddam] - I'm not going to call them troops, because they're traveling in civilian clothes and they're essentially terrorists..." They were known to be operating in Nasiriya, where Pvt. Lynch was taken prisoner of war.

Was Pvt. Jessica Lynch Tortured by the Iraqis?

It is clear that the Iraqis have carried out torture on their own citizens as well as U.S. prisoners of war during the 1991 Gulf Storm War. It is also clear that such brutal treatment is consistent with Islamic law practiced by the Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan. For example, Johnny Michael Spann, the CIA operative who was caught in an uprising by hundreds of Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners in the Qala-i-Jangi fortress-prison near Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan during the early stages of the war there was tortured. Johnny Spann and his partner were questioning an al Qaeda prisoner [later determined to be the American, John Walker Lindh], when they were overwhelmed in the courtyard of the prison.

According to Robin Moore, when American Special Forces recovered Johnny Spann's body, they found that "Spann's body would bear out the worst of the rumors - he had been captured alive and tortured by the AQ. Both of his legs had been broken below the knees in a typical al Qaida torture method. What was not reported was that he had been alive for quite some time after. Two bullets had been placed in the small of his back, on either side of his spine. A final bullet, which killed him, had been inflicted some time later, in the back of the neck, probably as he knelt down with his hands tied behind his back."

This method of torture produced wounds on Spann's body that are quite similar to those found on Pvt. Jessica Lynch. The on-again, off-again official reports by U.S. medical doctors as to whether or not Jessica had suffered bullet wounds in unspecified areas of her anatomy are suspect. Recall [above] that Jessica Lynch's "most serious injury involves a vertebra in her lower back. She also has fractures in four places: her upper right arm, upper left leg, lower left leg, and right ankle and foot. The hospital said it wasn't clear how Lynch suffered the injuries. Gunshots from a low-velocity, small-caliber weapon may have caused one or more of them, but no bullets or metal fragments have been found."

It is of note as well [as documented above] that one of the favorite torture methods of the Saddam Fedayeen, under whose control Pvt. Jessica Lynch was hospitalized, was to drop an 18-pound cinder block on the victims back. In the absence of information to the contrary, it is possible that Jessica Lynch was tortured by her captors by breaking her back either with a cinder block or 'small caliber' gunshot wounds as was carried out by the terrorist fellow Islamists on Johnny Spann in Afghanistan.

It is also of note that Jessica Lynch's legs were broken in four places, any one or all of which could have been inflicted during a torture session or sessions by black-garbed Saddam Fedayeen while in the hospital for 'lying.' That, as documented above, is a customary method of torture by the Fedayeen. Indeed, Marines found a 'torture chamber' in the basement of the first hospital in which Jessica Lynch was held captive.

It is not clear how or for what purpose the two bullet wounds on Johnny Spann's body, one on each side of his spine, were inflicted. The CIA did not report the details. In fact, according to Robin Moore, "CIA case officers arrived at the Army's morgue to see Spann's body. The military mortuary team had cut off Spann's combat boots and removed his blue jeans and shirt. It was obvious that Spann's death had been long and painful. The Agency men ordered all existing medical records and autopsy reports destroyed and cautioned the Army staff not to make any new records or take photographs of Spann. His body would be placed in a sealed metal casket and sent back to the United States for a hero's burial. Although the intricate details of his death would be concealed, the CIA would break, for the first time in history, its long-standing rule of not acknowledging the identity or background of a covert-action agent killed in the line of duty."

Moore reveals that President Bush decided that Americans needed to know who [Spann] really was, and that he had died in the service of his country. "Apparently we did not need to know the brutality of his death - maybe because CIA officials worried that Americans would react the way they had when tortured American soldiers were dragged through the streets of [Mogadishu] in Somalia. That imagery caused an immediate U.S. withdrawal.

We have also seen our withdrawal from Fallujah, our subsequent turning over of power back to the Republican Guard. Are we going to lose our foothold in this war because of the public’s outcry against the reality of war?

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