US Marines rescue tortured Iraqis

And all the MSM can do is wail about the dead soldiers (who volunteered to go, you know-we have a volunteer military, you idiots!) and the supposed “torture” at Gitmo which is so ridiculous I could spit. When you compare someone who gets goosebumps because his air conditioning was turned down too far, or the air conditioning was shut off and their cell went up to 100 degrees, let’s get real. The temperature in Iraq can get up to 140. These guys are used to it.

Iraqi Torture Victims Tell of Insurgent Brutality

When you take into consideration all the whining and crying the libs have been doing over Gitmo, here you have an example of what REAL torture is, and how the terrorists fight. They fight by tying up victims, beating them, (can you imagine being beaten for 22 days?) hanging them from the ceiling head down, dipping their heads in water and electrocuting them.

Four Iraqis found by U.S. Marines in a torture house in the city of Karabila have described the brutality they endured at the hands of Iraqi insurgents.

The victims, including one who said he had been held and tortured there for 22 days, told journalists they were beaten with a strip of rubber and received electric shocks for more than two weeks. The torture victims said the insurgents killed someone each day and threatened to kill them as well.

U.S. Marines discovered the men shackled in the torture center while conducting an anti-insurgent operation that began Friday near the Syrian border. In addition to the four captives, Marines found a weapons stockpile, electric wires to administer shocks, handcuffs, a noose and a thick jihad manual describing, among others things, how to choose the best hostage. The insurgents had apparently fled.

This article doesn’t go into detail, and doesn’t show pictures of the lash marks on their backs, or the redness from the electric shocks, but…

KARABILA, Iraq, Sunday, June 19 – Marines on an operation to eliminate insurgents that began Friday broke through the outside wall of a building in this small rural village to find a torture center equipped with electric wires, a noose, handcuffs, a 574-page jihad manual – and four beaten and shackled Iraqis. The manual is the 2005 First Edition of “The Principles of Jihadist Philosophy,” by Abdel Rahman al-Ali. Its chapters included “How to Select the Best Hostage,” and “The Legitimacy of Cutting the Infidels’ Heads.”

Well of course, these guys need instruction to do their dirty work–it’s so sickening that people don’t come up with this stuff on their own. How to select a hostage is one of the tips in there. Of the four hostages the marines rescued-

One of them, Ahmed Isa Fathil, 19, a former member of the new Iraqi Army, said he had been held and tortured there for 22 days. All the while, he said, his face was almost entirely taped over and his hands were cuffed.

In an interview with an embedded reporter just hours after he was freed, he said he had never seen the faces of his captors, who occasionally whispered at him, “We will kill you.” He said they did not question him, and he did not know what they wanted. Nor did he ever expect to be released.

“They kill somebody every day,” said Mr. Fathil, whose hands were so swollen he could not open a can of Coke offered to him by a marine. “They’ve killed a lot of people.”

This is Mr. Fathil’s account of his ordeal.

He was having a lunch of lettuce and cucumbers in the kitchen of his home in the small desert village of Rabot with his mother and brother. An Opel sedan pulled up. Two men in masks carrying machine guns got out, seized him, and, leaving his mother sobbing, put him in the trunk of their car.

They drove to the house here. They taped his face, put cotton in his ears, and began to beat him.

The only possible explanation for the seizure he could think of was his time in the new Iraqi Army. Unemployed and illiterate, Mr. Fathil signed up after the American occupation began.

But nine months ago, when continuing working meant risking the wrath of the Jihadists, he quit. In all, 10 friends from his unit have been killed, he said. So have his uncle and his uncle’s son, though neither ever worked as soldiers.

The men tended to talk in whispers, he said, telling him five times a day, in low voices in his ear, to pray, and offering him sand, instead of water, to wash himself. Just once, he asked if he could see his mother, and one of them said to him, “You won’t leave until you are dead.”

Mr. Fathil did not know there were other hostages. He found out only after the captors left and he was able to remove the tape from his eyes.

The routine in the house was regular. Because of the windows, it was always dark inside. Mr. Fathil said he was fed once a day, and allowed to use a bathroom as necessary in the back of the house.

When marines burst in, one of the captives was lying under a stairwell, badly beaten. At first, they thought he was dead.

The others were emaciated and battered. Mr. Fathil had fared the best. The other three were taken by medical helicopter to Balad, a base near Baghdad with a hospital.

But he still had been hurt badly. Marks from beatings criss-crossed his back, and 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.

Mr. Fathil has been at the Marine base south of Qaim since his release, on Saturday around noon. His mother still does not know he is alive.

When she was mentioned, he bowed and lowered his head, and began to cry softly, wiping his face with the jumpsuit given him by the marines.

He asked a reporter for help to move to another town, because it was too dangerous for his family to remain in their house. He begged not to have a photograph taken, even of the scars on his back. The captors took pictures of that, he said.

His town has always been a good place, he said, but the militants have made it hell.

“These few are destroying it,” he said, his face streaked with tears. “Everybody they take, they kill. It’s on a daily basis pretty much.”

Interesting how these kinds of stories actually have been reported this time in the media, by the Washington Post and Castro’s CNN. Is it because their newspapers sell better when they show some evidence of the good work we’re doing over there? It still doesn’t compare to the numerous stories that have been reported of American imperialist brutality.

Well I guess guys like this have no right to be rescued by the Americans, after all, they’re being tortured and killed by their own people. We should just leave them to die.

Thanks to Mudville and Outside the Beltway