Mangled Thoughts

Posted by D
The reports of atrocities committed by U.S. and U.K. soldiers are appalling. Both armies and govts are treating the matter severely. But not all is what it seems to be as the account in the Telegraph makes plain:

Doubts cast on Army torture pictures
By George Jones and Tom Leonard
(Filed: 03/05/2004)

The Government was under mounting pressure last night to carry out a swift inquiry to establish whether photographs appearing to show British soldiers torturing an Iraqi captive were genuine.

Ministers and MPs fear that the photographs could have been faked to discredit the Army and undermine support for the coalition in Iraq.

Saturday’s Daily Mirror

Army sources cast doubt on the photographs, which purport to show a captive being kicked, assaulted with a rifle and urinated on.

The Daily Mirror, which first published them, said it was satisfied with their authenticity and would be making further allegations of brutality by British soldiers towards prisoners.

Piers Morgan, the editor, said two serving members of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment who provided the photographs stood by their “complete veracity” and “stand fully behind every word of their story, rebutting every question raised”.

Piers Morgan: total support

The newspaper’s claims were challenged by John Downham, the regimental secretary of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment. He said that an initial internal investigation had shown up a number of inconsistencies.

Mr Downham, a retired lieutenant colonel, said the Bedford lorry shown was not the type used by the regiment in Iraq.

The soldiers were shown holding SA80 rifles without attachments, such as a sling or a personal radio switch used by soldiers in action. The weapons looked as if they had just come out of an armoury.

Mr Downham said the regiment’s soldiers serving in Iraq either wore helmets or berets, with the regimental badge bearing the red rose of Lancashire - not the kind of floppy hat shown in the photographs. There were no regimental flashes on the uniforms, which seemed too clean and tidy for troops in action.

The victim was alleged to have been subjected to an eight-hour ordeal but there was little sign of any bruising, dirt or blood.

Other questions raised include the lack of movement in the photographs, suggesting that they had been posed.

The victim is shown wearing a pristine T-shirt with the flag of the Ba’athist Syrian regime. But the photographs were said to have been taken in Basra, a Shia stronghold where there had always been strong opposition to Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime.

A detailed analysis of the photographs by Simon Treselyan, a former Army interrogation expert, published in The Telegraph today raises 13 serious questions about the pictures.

For example, he said the soldiers appeared to be armed with a SA80 Mk 1 rifle which was not issued to troops in Iraq.

“That weapon is no longer issued by the Army and was certainly not issued to troops in Iraq. They were given the SA80 A2.”

Nicholas Soames, the Tory defence spokesman, also questioned the photographs.

He called for the speeding up of an inquiry already begun by the Royal Military Police special investigation branch: “We need to get to the bottom of this immediately.

“These pictures will have made the life of British forces in Basra even more difficult than it is already. We need to be a little more cautious before rushing to judgment.”

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said the accusations of brutality were being taken very seriously.

The Ministry of Defence said it did not want to prejudge the military police inquiry. But officials said there was “a lot of speculation” about the authenticity of the photographs.

Sources at the Mirror admitted that there had been a “wobble” among senior staff when doubts about the pictures’ authenticity emerged shortly after they were published on Saturday. But after spending the week end going back to its sources the paper said it was confident the pictures were genuine. It refused to say whether it had paid for them, which will be taken by many as a tacit admission that it did.

Mr Morgan said the “outrageous and unlawful behaviour” the newspaper had exposed “has been common knowledge among disgusted British servicemen in Basra for many months”.

He added: “These two soldiers felt compelled to expose what went on because they believed it was fundamentally wrong and that it would inevitably be reported.”

The Mirror has been a vociferous critic of the decision to go to war in Iraq, but Mr Morgan denied that the report was part of the newspaper’s stance on the war in general.

“Whether you are in favour of the war or against it, there is unanimity that this behaviour is unacceptable,” he said.

Although the Mirror says it obtained the pictures a week before it published them, it did not email them to the Ministry of Defence until 4pm on Friday.

The paper is understood to have been encouraged by the ministry’s failure to question the pictures’ authenticity and its provision of quotes condemning the “torture”.

The question is not whether the photograph is `authentic, Piers Morgan is correct. That the phot is genuine is not the same as whether what is depicted is genuine, and also by whom it was depicted. Now, Lateline found the scandals another opporuntiy to run the Iraq is a quagmire line, fusing quite different considerations as the Lateline transcripts show.

Prior to the above article, one pondered if at least one incident had been fabricated by the Islamo-fascists-terrorists in Iraq to achieve what has been achieved. The ABC has jumped rather quickly on this, they may enjoy eating more of their own mud yet.