Christian Atrocities in Iraq

DID MARINES COMMIT CRIME IN IRAQ CIVILIAN DEATHS? - TOPJONATHAN KARL, ABC News, 3/20/06http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/IraqCoverage/story?id=1743981&page=1WASHINGTON, March 19, 2006 - A bloody videotape shot by a local Iraqi journalism student has prompted the Pentagon to launch a criminal investigation into an incident that left at least 15 Iraqi civilians dead in the city of Haditha.The details of what happened four months ago in Haditha are just now coming to light with the release of the videotape by an Iraqi organization called Hammurabi Human Rights.The tape shows the bloodied and bullet-marked homes that had been allegedly stormed by the Marines, and includes comments by local residents."This is my father," a boy says on the tape. "He didn't do anything wrong. Why did they kill him?"The video shows the bodies of some of the dead, including one of three children killed."These are children," one man on the tape says. "Are you telling me these are terrorists?". . ."We launched an investigation of our own with the help of a human rights group," said Aparisim Ghosh, a writer for Time. "We spoke to some eyewitnesses. And it turns out all the people killed were killed by the Marines in small arms fire and, in a few instances, by an explosive that was tossed into the home by the Marines themselves."

(MORE)SEE ALSO:BLOODY VIDEO PROMPTS MASSACRE PROBE - TOPhttp://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=1745817-----

IN SECRET UNIT'S 'BLACK ROOM,' A GRIM PORTRAIT OF U.S. ABUSE - TOPERIC SCHMITT and CAROLYN MARSHALLhttp://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/international/middleeast/19abuse.htmlAs the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26. Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away.Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.The story of detainee abuse in Iraq is a familiar one. But the following account of Task Force 6-26, based on documents and interviews with more than a dozen people, offers the first detailed description of how the military's most highly trained counterterrorism unit committed serious abuses.It adds to the picture of harsh interrogation practices at American military prisons in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as at secret Central Intelligence Agency detention centers around the world.The new account reveals the extent to which the unit members mistreated prisoners months before and after the photographs of abuse from Abu Ghraib were made public in April 2004, and it helps belie the original Pentagon assertions that abuse was confined to a small number of rogue reservists at Abu Ghraib. (MORE)