Iraqi woman claims to be raped

[Equipoise]

@Ryan_Liam

Shouldn’t the world know this scandal too? But then if it was true, people, quite literally would be up in arms at this.

Patience, patience. It will.

@Gorsnak

The truth of this story is irrelevant to the question of how much violence the local population is directing at the occupying troops. The relevant issue is whether the local population believes that stuff like this is happening. Whether it actually is happening isn’t at all germane.

Since it seems likely that, whether or not this story is true, Iraqis are willing to believe most any stories concerning atrocities they hear, I submit that your conclusion here is completely unfounded.

Yeah, they’ll hate us either way.

I found a short but good article about this perception problem in the Christian Science Monitor:

For Iraqi women, Abu Ghraib's taint

The pictures in the paper are fakes, bad copies lifted from a porn website and now ricocheting around the Internet. But in Iraq, where the photos circulate on floppy discs and CDs and splash across newspapers and TV screens, most people believe them.

“I know they’re not real, but people won’t believe it,” says Azzawi, a pretty 20-year-old, holding up the paper with a shaking hand. “Who’s going to marry their daughters after they see a thing like that?”

It’s not just the shame that makes Azzawi’s hands shake with rage. What makes the counterfeit photos so searing, for her, is the fear that they might hold some truth. Among the 1,800 or so pictures taken by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib, there are others, viewed by Congress but not released to the public, of at least one Iraqi woman forced to bare her breasts. And a US military investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, cited at least one case of a military police guard “having sex with” a female prisoner.

But in Iraq, where rumors alone can destroy a woman’s reputation, the consequences of US detention are much more severe for women than for men. In a way, it scarcely matters if Azzawi’s mother was raped or not: If she denies being raped, nobody will believe her, because Iraqi women rarely admit to being raped, a charge that can ruin a woman’s life.

Now that there are real pictures of US troops sexually humiliating Iraqi women, reality and rumors have tangled inseparably. “With the pictures and the CDs, it becomes almost irrelevant if they’re raped or not,” says Manal Omar, the Iraq coordinator of Women for Women, which helps women in former war zones. “Even before the torture, the rumor was out that they were raping women in the prison. With or without the pictures from the porn site, the real pictures made people believe that. It made that rumor fact.”

Rumors of prison rape have been eddying for months. They started with a letter, allegedly smuggled out of Abu Ghraib by a female prisoner. Passed from one person to another, the letter and the photos are being used by anti-US clerics and militants to stir up outrage against the occupation.

“Please, bomb us with bombs, and even with nuclear weapons, because we are all pregnant by American soldiers,” reads one version of the letter. “Every day they walk us naked in front of soldiers and other prisoners. We want you to know that if you have a daughter in here, or a mother, or a sister, that she has been raped and is pregnant by these American soldiers.”

The letter might be fabricated - different versions of it crop up, and no one has been able to find the girl who wrote it. But to most Iraqis, it doesn’t really matter: the real photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib gave all rumors, both true and false, instant credibility.

Even before the scandal at Abu Ghraib, many Iraqis viewed imprisonment of women as tantamount to rape. “In our culture, if a woman has been to prison, it’s as though she has been violated,” says Yanar Mohammed, a woman’s rights activist and editor of the newspaper Equality. “It is assumed that men have put their hands on her, that she has been touched in improper ways.”

In Iraq, even a whisper of rape is enough to dishonor a woman - and her family. Sometimes families will even kill women who have been raped to “wash” the stain from the family name.

That may be what happened to one girl, rumored to have been pregnant when she was released. “Her father and brother wanted to kill her,” says Huda al-Nuaimi, a professor at Baghdad University who is interviewing female prisoners as a volunteer for Amnesty International. “The sheikh of the mosque and the neighbors stopped them, because she was raped, and it wasn’t her fault.”

But when Dr. Nuaimi went to visit the girl, her family had moved away. The neighbors told her they didn’t know where they went - unusual in Aadhimiyah, the girl’s tight-knit Baghdad neighborhood. “I wonder whether this girl is still alive,” says Ms. Nuaimi, a professor who wears a tiny silver outline of Iraq around her neck. “I think, given this local custom, it would be very difficult for her to stay alive.”

Does anyone remember when we were the good guys? Me neither.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

Ryan_Liam, do not post entire articles on the SDMB. That’s a copyright violation, and we take that sort of thing very seriously. I have cut most of your post.

Lynn
For the Straight Dope

[Eva_Luna]

@rjung

To steal from elucidator, I hope this isn’t true. Because it sounds stupid as sin.

Or even as stupid as having your buddies take photos of you smiling while you’re in uniform and abusing prisoners.

[Cervaise]

@Ryan_Liam

No of course not (on the women issue) but I believe that more plausable because I’ve seen pictures (although blurred, but nonetheless convincing) and the Western Media go nuts about it, and hey, if the women raped were true, why would not of this had been shown as well, why do they get preferential treatment from men, they were abused as well? Shouldn’t the world know this scandal too? But then if it was true, people, quite literally would be up in arms at this.

You’re not really very smart, are you?

[MaxTheVool]

There are two reasons I tend to doubt this story:
(a) as others have mentioned the details are just a pit too pat. She took a drink of water and fell into a deep trance?

(b) horrifying as the released photos were, I think that there’s a big difference in the mindset of most American men between the way you treat men and the way you treat women. Men are (the theory goes) tough. They can take it. If you beat a man a bit, or humiliate him in what Rush Limbaugh described as a “frat” kind of way, well, he’s a man, he’s supposed to be able to deal with it. Women are another category entirely. Beating or abusing a woman is NOT COOL.

Which is not to say that nothing untowards ever happened towards female detainees. But I don’t think you can look at the way men were treated and assume that women were treated equally badly.

[wring]

@MaxTheVool

There are two reasons I tend to doubt this story:
(b) horrifying as the released photos were, I think that there’s a big difference in the mindset of most American men between the way you treat men and the way you treat women. Men are (the theory goes) tough. They can take it. If you beat a man a bit, or humiliate him in what Rush Limbaugh described as a “frat” kind of way, well, he’s a man, he’s supposed to be able to deal with it. Women are another category entirely. Beating or abusing a woman is NOT COOL.

Which is not to say that nothing untowards ever happened towards female detainees. But I don’t think you can look at the way men were treated and assume that women were treated equally badly.

Really? You understand, of course, that rape does actually occur. And that service personnel (US and others) have been convicted of rape in other cases? and that there’s investigations of US service personnel raping other US service personnel? (examples that come to mind include the various cases in the military schools, the Talihook scandal, there were 3 service men in Japan who raped a female child some years back)

I have no opinion of the veracity of the story of the IRaqi woman from the OP, but if you have some sense that “gosh, our guys would never do that”, you’re sadly mistaken.

[Ryan_Liam]

@Cervaise

You’re not really very smart, are you?

Urgh, just think about it would you, do you not think that the commanders have considered what a shit bomb it would be if troops would start abusing female prisoners? I know, by what I read now, its possible Coalition members are a bunch of bastards, which is a shame. Why is it always our forces on the short end of the stick?

[Larry_Mudd]

@Ryan_Liam

Why is it always our forces on the short end of the stick?

You might want to rethink that metaphor, under the circumstances.

They made us stand naked and then a soldier would come beat us with a stick and sometimes sodomize us with the stick…

(Sorry.)

[MaxTheVool]

@wring

Really? You understand, of course, that rape does actually occur. And that service personnel (US and others) have been convicted of rape in other cases? and that there’s investigations of US service personnel raping other US service personnel? (examples that come to mind include the various cases in the military schools, the Talihook scandal, there were 3 service men in Japan who raped a female child some years back)

I have no opinion of the veracity of the story of the IRaqi woman from the OP, but if you have some sense that “gosh, our guys would never do that”, you’re sadly mistaken.

Yeah, I probably should have added some more disclaimers after my post.

It seems depressingly likely that more than one rape has occurred in this war, as has almost certainly been the case with every war in history. Anyone found to have committed such a crime, US soldier or not, should be punished. This is not an issue to gloss over.

That said, I don’t find this particular story particularly plausible.

And there’s a difference between US soldiers committing rape during wartime, and US soldiers committing rape during wartime, in US-run military institutions, over and over again, under quasi-official auspices. That’s what I hope I’m not hopelessly naive in finding implausible.