Thursday, July 15, 2004
More still on Hersh’s emerging account of Abu Ghraib crimes
The following is a transcription made by Salon.com of a segment of Hersh’s recent ACLU speech.
As Salon’s Geraldine Sealey observes, “You can see how Hersh was struggling over what he should say.”
Hersh:
posted by Dawkins : 7/15/2004 02:00:00 PM
As Salon’s Geraldine Sealey observes, “You can see how Hersh was struggling over what he should say.”
Hersh:
"Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."
"It's impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people that sent us there? When I did My Lai I was very troubled like anybody in his right mind would be about what happened. I ended up in something I wrote saying in the end I said that the people who did the killing were as much victims as the people they killed because of the scars they had, I can tell you some of the personal stories by some of the people who were in these units witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers and so we're dealing with a enormous massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it and we will. We will. You know there's enough out there, they can't (Applause). .... So it's going to be an interesting election year."
posted by Dawkins : 7/15/2004 02:00:00 PM
