mcjoan posted on DKos a link to a horrifying article, "Unusual Suspects", published in next month's American Prospect. Here are some snippets about how Iraqi women have been treated by American soldiers:

That afternoon, the American of�cer lit a mixture of human feces and urine in a metal container and gave Selwa a heavy club to stir it. She recalls, “The �re from the pot felt very strong on my face.� She leans forward and sweeps her hands through the air to show how she stirred the excrement. “I became very tired,� she says. “I told the sergeant I couldn’t do it.�

“There was another man close to us. The sergeant came up to me and whispered in my ear, ‘If you don’t, I will tell one of the soldiers to fuck you.’�

...

Some women and children are picked up because they’re a “security threat,� Johnson says. And some women are detained because they’re the sisters, wives, or girlfriends of suspected insurgents -- that is, because the military thinks these women might provide information on the insurgency. But this practice, like the instances of torture exposed last year, violates the Geneva Conventions, which stipulate that no one can “be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.� In one such incident, a 28-year-old mother of three, including the 6-month-old baby she was nursing, was captured on May 9, 2004.

...

When Selwa talks about Abu Ghraib and the detention facilities, her voice is soft.

“Whenever I remember, it’s like a �re goes out,� she says. “Once I saw the guards hit a woman, probably 30 years old. They put her in an open area and said, ‘Come out so you can see her.’ They pulled her by the hair and poured ice water on her. She was screaming and shouting and crying as they poured water into her mouth. They left her there all night. There was another girl; the soldiers said she wasn’t honest with them. They said she gave them wrong information. When I saw her, she had electric burns all over her body.�

...

I ask her if she was sexually assaulted.

“No,� she says. “They respected me.� She pushes her chair away from the table.

Asked if she was ever forced to take her clothes off, she leans back and pulls her jacket over her chest and covers part of her face with her hand. She looks downward and bites her thumb. Her eyes are half-closed, and her shoulders are slumped.

“I don’t remember,� she says. She folds her arms across her chest and her eyes �ll with tears. She stares at the ground. A few minutes later, she excuses herself and leaves the room.

...

“After that, they took me to [a detention center near Baghdad International Airport]. There, I heard a young woman crying out from her cell, telling an American soldier to leave her alone. She said, ‘I am a Muslim woman.’ Her voice was high-pitched and shaky. Her husband, who was in a cell down the hall, called out, ‘She is my wife. She has nothing to do with this.’ He hit the bars of his cell with his �sts until he fainted. The Americans poured water over his face and made him wake up. When her screams became louder, the soldiers played music over the speakers. Finally, they took her to another room. I couldn’t hear anything more.�

Afterward, Mithal says, she was taken to Abu Ghraib. “They stripped me and searched me,� she remembers. “Then they gave me blankets and put me in solitary con�nement in a room 2 meters by 1 and a half meters. There was no light in the room. I was there for three months.�

...

"...I was taken to another place for the interrogation. They asked me about my brother. I said, ‘I don’t know where he is.’ They said, ‘You have seen the dog. Now tell us the truth.’�

I ask her if they touched her during the interrogation.

“I won’t answer this question,� she says. “I promised them I would not say anything about this.�

...

I ask if there’s anything else she wants to tell me. “I am an Iraqi woman, and I refuse to allow an American or anyone else to occupy my land,� she says. “They told us they are going to give us liberty, and we have found something totally different.�

The whole article is online now.

Related:

Slate (5 May '04): "Rape Rooms: A Chronology -- What Bush said as the Iraq prison sccandal unfolded"

The Guardian (12 May '04): "Focus shifts to jail abuse of women"

albasrah.net (May '04): "Iraqi Women in the Occupation Prisons as Material and Means of Violations"

Oh, what a lovely war! And Congress is about to confirm Gonzales?

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