US Holding Children in Prison Camps as POW's

US Holding Children in Prison Camps as POW's
by tonyahky
Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 05:55:58 AM PDT

"Today, I started reading former President Jimmy Carter's new
book, "Our Endangered Values". In it, he revealed something that is
absolutely horrifying--the US is holding children as young as 8
years of age who have been captured in Afghanistan and Iraq in
prison camps--namely, the one in Guantanamo, Cuba. Worse yet, Donald
Rumsfeld knew about it. Read a short excerpt below:

tonyahky's diary :: ::
"After visiting six of the twenty-five or so U.S. prisons, the
International Committee of the Red Cross reported registering 107
detainess under eighteen, some as young as eight years old. The
Journalist Seymour Hersh reported in May 2005 that Defense
Secretaary Donald Rumsfeld had recieve a report that there were "800-
900 Pakistani boys age 13-15 in custody." The International Red
Cross, Amnesty International, and thePentagon have gathered
substantial testimony of torture of children ( emphasis mine),
confirmed by soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse. In
addition to personal testimony from children about physical and
mental mistreatment, a report from Brigadier General Janis
Karpinski, formerly in charge of Abu Ghraib, described a visit to an
eleven year old detainee in the cell block that housed high risk
prisoners. The general recalled that the child was weeping, and "he
told me he was almost twelve," and that "he really wanted to see his
mother, could he please call his mother." Children like this eleven
year old have been denied the right to see their parents, a lawyer,
or anyone else, and were not told why they were detained. A Pentagon
spokesman told Mr. Hersh that "age is not a determining factor in
detention."

This is an absolute outrage. How could any normal, sane person ever,
ever in their lives even think about torturing a child? That our own
military could engage in such acts of evil, sadistic brutality--
AGAINST CHILDREN--is almost too horrible to even think about.

Every single sick SOB who had a part in this needs to be sent to
prison for the rest of their lives, including Rumsfeld.

Reports like this help to illustrate why torture is wrong--the kind
of people who will actually do it are the lowest, sickest breed of
human beings--the kind who have no moral qualms about inflicting
abuse on anyone--regardless of age, or any other factor.

I also published the above report on my little blog, Rebellious
Peasant. I think the general public needs to find out about this,
and I hope people reading this will spread the word. We cannot
tolerate behavior like this from the people who are supposed to be
protecting our country."

Tags: torture, children, Rumsfeld, Abu Ghraib, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Carter, Seymour Hersh (all tags)

http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/17/75558/359