From Seattle writer and consultant Matt Rosenberg...: Pointing The Finger at AP Hand-Hacking Story

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Pointing The Finger at AP Hand-Hacking Story

May 20, 2004

Here's what's unaccountably missing from the AP story on the seven Iraqi men who got new prosthetic hands in Houston the other day, years after Saddam's thugs hacked them off. 1) It happened at Abu Ghraib - gosh, that wouldn't have any relevance to current events now, would it? 2) It was videotaped and used to intimidate other Iraqis - ditto! 3) There were nine men mutilated in that instance, not just seven, (and countless thousands more on other occasions).

Their alleged crime was dealing in foreign currency.

If you missed the tepid - or should I say "amputated" - AP piece; here it is.

Now the real scoop, naturally from a 'tabloid' paper many respectable journalists sneeringly dismiss, and then quietly read anyway to see if they've been skunked. Former journalist, and documentary filmaker Don North, who does rate a passing mention in the AP sketch, lays it out in this NY Post op-ed.

North's pursuit of the story began after seeing a video of the same seven men recently fitted for prosthetic hands in Houston - and two others - each undergoing surgical removal of a hand at Abu Ghraib.

It wasn't hard to track the men shown in the video. The incident was well known in Baghdad and the tape had been widely circulated to terrorize other merchants who might dare to deal in foreign currency...I went looking for the men in the video. Of the nine who lost their hands in 1995, six were still in Baghdad, one had died, one escaped to Germany and one to Holland. I tracked them down and proposed I make a documentary incorporating the brutal amputation scenes, while telling their story to the world. They agreed.
They were not unique in Saddam's Iraq. During his 35-year reign of terror, Saddam and his Baathist cohorts punished citizens by cutting off hands, feet, ears, tongues or simply executing them. Thousands more were mutilated and lost limbs in Saddam's senseless wars with Iran and Kuwait. As many as 3 million Iraqis may have been eliminated during the Saddam years, with many now turning up in mass graves throughout the country.

Saddam and his sons, Uday and Qussay, often documented the punishment of those they accused of not supporting the regime, using videotape. One Iraqi general who fled to Jordan, received a videotape showing the rape and torture of his wife and daughters. Uday is reported to have taped his pet lions killing and eating two young men who he considered his rivals for the affection of a beautiful woman. Such tapes are scarce now and were probably destroyed as Baghdad fell a year ago.

As I began production of the documentary 'Remembering Saddam' I also started a search for doctors, hospitals or anyone willing to help undo Saddam's brutal surgery. Luck struck...

Read the rest of North's remarkable inside story, which has been all but ignored in recent media accounts.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at May 20, 2004 08:37 AM

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Comments:

The liberal media dives into grotesque and often untrue details of supposed torture the Iraqi prisoners went through at the hands of the US troops. What they fail to mention is that some of the stories they are reporting on are 1. not true 2. gross exaggerations 3. why the Iraqis in the prison were there in the first place�.they are criminals, terrorists and have information that we need to extract in order to save the innocent in Iraq! The AP in this story barely mentions the cruel and inhumane torture this poor Iraqi who claims he is innocent, went through when he had his arm removed by Saddam. The article itself makes these poor Iraqis sound as if they are missing arms because of the war and not Saddam's torture.
It sickens me to see how the media glossed over the beheading of Nick Berg by Islamic terrorists for being a Jew and an American and the 4 American contractors who were burned alive, ripped apart and strung up on a bridge for days by a mob of Islamic terrorists in Iraq. They also gloss over the torture that Iraqis went thru under Saddam. Why? Because it proves that indeed Saddam was a WMD (as the Iraqi in the NYP said) and a terrorist and our fight in Iraq is justified.

Posted by: Naarski at May 20, 2004 04:23 PM

Well said Naarski.

Posted by: Gary B at May 20, 2004 04:34 PM

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