Torture Manual Found in Iraq [Updated]

Sep 26, 2006 - Two hostages released in a mosque raid by Iraqi National Police. Note the hostage, (with face partially blacked out), has a trickle of blood down his head from a beating he received at the hands of insurgents. He was later treated by one of our medics. The very next day, one of the police was killed by a sniper, likely in retaliation for this raid

US forces in Anbar province uncovered a Sunni torture house, and freed 17 prisoners, including a 13 year old boy who had been beaten and tortured with electrocution. A torture manual was also found, pictures and video here (images are disturbing).

When searching for more information on this report, I did a Yahoo! search on "torture manual found in iraq", I came up with over 525,000 hits. Incredibly, over 90% of these links were to web sites listing the abuses of prisoners at Abu Gharayb or criticising alleged CIA torture techniques. Very little of it had to do with insurgent torture, or by anyone else other than the United States.

From CNN:

[This manual] shows how to use drills to torture people, sever hands, drag people behind vehicles, use a blowtorch or clothes iron on skin, remove eyes and electrocute people, among other tactics

The manual is made up of very graphic illustrations of men under torture. No Arabic writing; presumably it was meant for distribution to people who may not speak Arabic or are illiterate (as about 59% of Iraqis cannot read). I have a question: Where in Guantanamo Bay, the CIA "Secret Prisons" or in Abu Gharayb, did the US ever sever hands, drag people behind vehicles, use a blowtorch or clothes iron on skin, remove eyes or and electrocute people?

From an earlier account of insurgent torture:

[On the former prisoner there were] deep pocks, apparently from electric shock burns, were gouged in his skin. The shocks, he said, felt "like my soul is being ripped out of my body." But when he would start to scream, and his body would pull up from the shock, they would begin to beat him, he said.

There is a giant, quantum leap between using dogs to threaten prisoners or waterboarding them (which hasn't even been proven) to severing limbs or gouging out their eyes. I am not excusing any crimes done to prisoners at the hands of US forces, but the fact that so much attention was made to abuses done by a handful of idiot soldiers at Abu Gharayb, while the real torture going on in Iraq gets so scant attention, proves beyond a doubt how far this issue has been politicized.

You might think that columnist Andrew Sullivan, who has made torture a signature issue for him, might have something to say on this. Don't hold your breath. Only US initiated torture is of any concern to him.

I also can't help wondering about the mindset of the person who made these illustrations. Certainly he knew what they were for, and he likely had participated in tortures himself. Does he believe that this kind of torture, particularly of fellow Muslims, is acceptable in Islam?

Update 05/28/2007 18:48: Andrew Sullivan has finally been shamed into mentioned the torture manual, albeit rather reluctantly:

I see I'm getting razzed a little for not linking to the Pentagon's strange and sudden decision to release graphic drawings of al Qaeda torture techniques.

In other words, soldiers find a torture manual and the Pentagon's decision to release it is "strange", and it's not even referred to as a manual. It's "graphic drawings of al Qaeda torture techniques", as if they could have been drawn by anyone. Ok, maybe US soldiers illustrated this thing...
Incidentally, he leads this article with a photo of blood on the floor at Abu Gharayb (a photo he has shown countless times), and goes on and on (once again) about tortures under Bush and Rumsfeld. Hey Andrew, if Al-Qaeda are really "monsters" as you put it, then why can't you ever just talk about them without dragging the US into it?