2RHPZ
07-05-2004, 06:24 PM
Posted Sep., 2002 but still has too much to say:
Prisoners of terror: Americans held captive in Tripoli, Tehran and Baghdad: on three major occasions—1803, 1979 and 1991—uniformed Americans were taken hostage by Muslim regimes. How does their captivity compare to that of al Qaeda terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002?
Just how bad are America's radical Islamic enemies treated when captured and interred during the war on terrorism? History shows that the nearly 600 al Qaeda and Taliban detainees held at Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base on Cuba could have it much worse, especially in their own countries of origin.
Not only do they receive a mattress and personal hygiene items, they also get a Koran (the sacred book of Islam), a prayer cap and three meals a day prepared in accordance with their beliefs. Signs inside the camp and arrows painted in their cells point to Mecca so they know which way to face during their five-times-a-day prayers.
Detainees also can talk with a Muslim chaplain, speak with Red Cross workers, exercise, receive and send mail and talk with other inmates. In short, they aren't exactly suffering.
But critics can't resist carping. The New York Times stated in an April 23 editorial that the Bush Administration is "weakening" the Geneva Convention in its handling of detainees. It stated that the Administration's actions are endangering "the rights of American soldiers captured in battle."
What an oddly misinformed contention. Did the Times overlook the treatment of Navy SEAL Petty Officer 1st Class Neil Roberts, the only uniformed American captured so far by al Qaeda in the war on terrorism? His captivity lasted only a matter of minutes, and it's highly doubtful that he received religious considerations or was allowed to write a letter home.
Roberts was summarily executed on March 4, about a half hour after falling out of a helicopter on a snowy Afghanistan mountaintop. His fate was recorded by a camera aboard an unmanned recon plane.
"The image was fuzzy, but we believe it showed three al Qaeda had captured Roberts and were taking him away around to the south side of [the mountaintop] and disappearing into a tree line," said Army Maj. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck. "That was 15 to 20 minutes before the first rescue team arrived."
After an autopsy, the Special Operations Command determined Roberts was shot at close range.
`Worse Than Anything in the United States'
So in the latest clash between Islamic militants and the United States, the lone American POW was murdered while nearly 600 detained Muslims reside on a Caribbean island at U.S. taxpayers' expense. Historically, however, how have Americans captured by Muslim regimes been treated by their captors?
Between 1785 and 1815, 700 Americans captured from 35 U.S. ships were held captive by the four piratical states of North Africa's Barbary Coast. So-called "Christian dogs" were used as slaves who suffered severe punishments for minor infractions.
"A slave who spoke disrespectfully to a Muslim could be roasted alive, crucified or impaled (a stake driven through the anus until it came out at the back of the neck)," Max Boot wrote in The Savage Wars of Peace.
On Oct. 31, 1803, during the Barbary wars (1801-05 and 1815), the 307-man crew of the U.S. Navy frigate Philadelphia was captured by Tripoli (today the capital of Libya) after the ship became grounded on a reef in the Mediterranean Sea off the North African country's coast.
"The Americans marched in a torchlit procession through jeering crowds that spat at them along the way," A.B.C. Whipple wrote in To the Shores of Tripoli: The Birth of the U.S. Navy and Marines.
During their 20-month imprisonment, the crew's enlisted men became virtual slaves of the nation's Ottoman (Turkish)-backed ruler, Bashaw Yusuf Karamanli. They were forced to lug water, work in shipyards, build fortifications, cook for their captors and haul provisions.
"Each morning [the enlisted men] were led to work by foremen who seemed to enjoy beating them," Whipple wrote. "The prisoners worked without food from dawn to noon, when they were given a few minutes in which to eat a piece of black bread dipped in olive oil."
After work, they were herded back to a 50-foot by 20-foot warehouse that served as their prison, which "was worse than anything in the United States," according to Whipple. The room was hardly large enough for the prisoners to lie down on the dirt floor at night.
"We had nothing to keep us from the cold, damp earth, but a thin, tattered sailcloth," one prisoner recalled. "The floor of the prison was very uneven and planted with hard pebbles. We had nothing but a shirt to soften our beds and nothing but the ground for a pillow."
One sailor called the dungeon "black and dreary," which was "more fit to be the abode of demons than of mortals."
When the prisoners were released in June 1805--after the United States paid a $60,000 ransom--11 were missing. Six had died in captivity, while five others had "turned Turk," according to Boot.
They had professed to be Islamic converts to get supposedly better treatment by the Tripolitans. When Karamanli gave the five the chance to renounce their new religion and join their shipmates, only one chose to remain in Tripoli. Karamanli, insulted by the other four men's phony conversion, had them marched away.
"We had a glimpse of them as they passed our prison," remembered a Marine private, "and could see horror and despair depicted in their countenances."
The Americans did not protest, and the four were never heard from again.
As Robert J. Allison wrote in The Crescent Obscured, "Captivity in the Muslim world was thus a test for the character of the Americans who endured it."
Battling `the Shah's Revenge'
Nearly 175 years later, Muslim radicals once again held Americans against their will. On Nov. 4, 1979, Islamic militants attacked the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, and took 66 Americans hostage (13 were released later in the month and one was released on July 11, 1980, because of serious illness). Among those held were 13 Marine security guards and at least 12 military attaches. Confinement for 52 hostages lasted 444 days.
Their Iranian captors (mostly male and in their 20s and early 30s) had little experience with prisoners.
"These students were typical Persian males," said former Army attache Col. Leland Holland. "From the time they were babies, they had been waited on hand and foot. They couldn't boil water without screwing it up."
Obtaining edible food was a constant struggle, with many hostages battling dysentery--"the Shah's Revenge."
"I remember sometimes there would be worms in our food," said then-Air Force Capt. Paul Needham. "There were these little white things crawling around in it. We'd just brush them off and go ahead and eat."
Those suspected of being CIA agents fared even worse. Threatened with torture and execution, physical abuse often accompanied interrogation.
"I'd been knocked off my stool and kicked so many times that I was pretty sure I had some serious internal injuries," said ex-Army attache Col. Charles Scott. "They got out their rubber hose and beat on me with that, and they continued to knock me off the stool and kick me around until I thought I had a hernia."
The hostages were separated into small groups and not allowed to communicate. They received no news or contact from the outside world. Letters to and from home were rarely delivered. After the failed rescue mission Operation Eagle Claw in April 1980, the hostages were dispersed widely around the country and moved often.
"We were tied up for the next two months," said onetime Marine security guard Cpl. Steve Kirtley. "Our shoes were taken away and we were forbidden to speak to one another. After a time, I and two others were taken in a bus to Isfahan where we were held for months. The two others got sick and were moved. I got sick, too, but I recovered and was kept there."
CIA agent William J. Daugherty, who spent 425 days of his captivity in solitary confinement, remembers his main interrogator, Hossein Sheik-ol-Eslam, as "a mid-thirties, bearded Khomeini loyalist who had previously studied at the University of California-Berkeley, which was appropriate, I thought, given that institution's reputation." (Berkeley is well-known for its radical left-wing politics.)
In his book In the Shadow of the Ayatollah, Daugherty noted that Hossein served as Iran's deputy foreign minister in the mid-'80s and "caused the deaths of Americans" by playing a major role in Iranian-sponsored terrorism. By 2001, Hossein was Iran's ambassador to Syria.
U.S. POWs are `Fair Game'
During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, U.S. POWs were treated even worse by their Iraqi captors. According to their spokesman, "The POWs suffered not only unspeakable and prolonged physical pain, but also intense and prolonged mental anguish and harm."
It was so bad that in April 2002, 17 of the 22 POWs took the unprecedented step of suing Saddam Hussein. George C. Wilson in an article for the National Journal wrote that the POWs were "fair game" in captivity:
"Bedouins, villagers and Iraqi soldiers--at least once to the tune of the music on their truck radio--all beat on the captives, with none of the restraint displayed by the professional torturers in North Vietnam."
Navy Cmdr. Lawrence Slade, shot down Jan. 22, 1991, was beaten so viciously that "his body was completely blue, as if he had been dipped in indigo dye." His weight dropped from 180 pounds to 135 pounds while in captivity.
Marine Capt. Russell Sanborn, shot down Feb. 9, 1991, was beaten so hard with a rubber hose that his teeth were loosened and his eardrums ruptured.
Marine Lt. Col. Clifford Acree, shot down over Kuwait on Jan. 18, 1991, described the food he was given as "a starvation diet of one bowl of broth per day, sometimes with a piece of small, thin bread." He said he was forced to eat scabs off his body to reduce his intense hunger.
Air Force Col. Jeffrey Tice recalled a sadistic device he dubbed "the Talk-man." Iraqi guards tied one end of a wire to his ear and the other end to a car battery. They "shocked him to the point that every muscle in his body contracted at once," according to the lawsuit.
Compare this treatment with that of al Qaeda and Taliban detainees at Guantanamo, where respect for their human rights exceeds anything offered U.S. POWs held by militant Muslims.
The Times of London wrote that interrogations there have become "a politically correct farce" with prisoners mocking and threatening guards and throwing water at them.
Judging from America's historical experience, it's frightening to imagine what a U.S. POW's punishment would be for similar behavior under a hostile Muslim regime.
Prisoners of terror: Americans held captive in Tripoli, Tehran and Baghdad: on three major occasions—1803, 1979 and 1991—uniformed Americans were taken hostage by Muslim regimes. How does their captivity compare to that of al Qaeda terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002?
Just how bad are America's radical Islamic enemies treated when captured and interred during the war on terrorism? History shows that the nearly 600 al Qaeda and Taliban detainees held at Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base on Cuba could have it much worse, especially in their own countries of origin.
Not only do they receive a mattress and personal hygiene items, they also get a Koran (the sacred book of Islam), a prayer cap and three meals a day prepared in accordance with their beliefs. Signs inside the camp and arrows painted in their cells point to Mecca so they know which way to face during their five-times-a-day prayers.
Detainees also can talk with a Muslim chaplain, speak with Red Cross workers, exercise, receive and send mail and talk with other inmates. In short, they aren't exactly suffering.
But critics can't resist carping. The New York Times stated in an April 23 editorial that the Bush Administration is "weakening" the Geneva Convention in its handling of detainees. It stated that the Administration's actions are endangering "the rights of American soldiers captured in battle."
What an oddly misinformed contention. Did the Times overlook the treatment of Navy SEAL Petty Officer 1st Class Neil Roberts, the only uniformed American captured so far by al Qaeda in the war on terrorism? His captivity lasted only a matter of minutes, and it's highly doubtful that he received religious considerations or was allowed to write a letter home.
Roberts was summarily executed on March 4, about a half hour after falling out of a helicopter on a snowy Afghanistan mountaintop. His fate was recorded by a camera aboard an unmanned recon plane.
"The image was fuzzy, but we believe it showed three al Qaeda had captured Roberts and were taking him away around to the south side of [the mountaintop] and disappearing into a tree line," said Army Maj. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck. "That was 15 to 20 minutes before the first rescue team arrived."
After an autopsy, the Special Operations Command determined Roberts was shot at close range.
`Worse Than Anything in the United States'
So in the latest clash between Islamic militants and the United States, the lone American POW was murdered while nearly 600 detained Muslims reside on a Caribbean island at U.S. taxpayers' expense. Historically, however, how have Americans captured by Muslim regimes been treated by their captors?
Between 1785 and 1815, 700 Americans captured from 35 U.S. ships were held captive by the four piratical states of North Africa's Barbary Coast. So-called "Christian dogs" were used as slaves who suffered severe punishments for minor infractions.
"A slave who spoke disrespectfully to a Muslim could be roasted alive, crucified or impaled (a stake driven through the anus until it came out at the back of the neck)," Max Boot wrote in The Savage Wars of Peace.
On Oct. 31, 1803, during the Barbary wars (1801-05 and 1815), the 307-man crew of the U.S. Navy frigate Philadelphia was captured by Tripoli (today the capital of Libya) after the ship became grounded on a reef in the Mediterranean Sea off the North African country's coast.
"The Americans marched in a torchlit procession through jeering crowds that spat at them along the way," A.B.C. Whipple wrote in To the Shores of Tripoli: The Birth of the U.S. Navy and Marines.
During their 20-month imprisonment, the crew's enlisted men became virtual slaves of the nation's Ottoman (Turkish)-backed ruler, Bashaw Yusuf Karamanli. They were forced to lug water, work in shipyards, build fortifications, cook for their captors and haul provisions.
"Each morning [the enlisted men] were led to work by foremen who seemed to enjoy beating them," Whipple wrote. "The prisoners worked without food from dawn to noon, when they were given a few minutes in which to eat a piece of black bread dipped in olive oil."
After work, they were herded back to a 50-foot by 20-foot warehouse that served as their prison, which "was worse than anything in the United States," according to Whipple. The room was hardly large enough for the prisoners to lie down on the dirt floor at night.
"We had nothing to keep us from the cold, damp earth, but a thin, tattered sailcloth," one prisoner recalled. "The floor of the prison was very uneven and planted with hard pebbles. We had nothing but a shirt to soften our beds and nothing but the ground for a pillow."
One sailor called the dungeon "black and dreary," which was "more fit to be the abode of demons than of mortals."
When the prisoners were released in June 1805--after the United States paid a $60,000 ransom--11 were missing. Six had died in captivity, while five others had "turned Turk," according to Boot.
They had professed to be Islamic converts to get supposedly better treatment by the Tripolitans. When Karamanli gave the five the chance to renounce their new religion and join their shipmates, only one chose to remain in Tripoli. Karamanli, insulted by the other four men's phony conversion, had them marched away.
"We had a glimpse of them as they passed our prison," remembered a Marine private, "and could see horror and despair depicted in their countenances."
The Americans did not protest, and the four were never heard from again.
As Robert J. Allison wrote in The Crescent Obscured, "Captivity in the Muslim world was thus a test for the character of the Americans who endured it."
Battling `the Shah's Revenge'
Nearly 175 years later, Muslim radicals once again held Americans against their will. On Nov. 4, 1979, Islamic militants attacked the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, and took 66 Americans hostage (13 were released later in the month and one was released on July 11, 1980, because of serious illness). Among those held were 13 Marine security guards and at least 12 military attaches. Confinement for 52 hostages lasted 444 days.
Their Iranian captors (mostly male and in their 20s and early 30s) had little experience with prisoners.
"These students were typical Persian males," said former Army attache Col. Leland Holland. "From the time they were babies, they had been waited on hand and foot. They couldn't boil water without screwing it up."
Obtaining edible food was a constant struggle, with many hostages battling dysentery--"the Shah's Revenge."
"I remember sometimes there would be worms in our food," said then-Air Force Capt. Paul Needham. "There were these little white things crawling around in it. We'd just brush them off and go ahead and eat."
Those suspected of being CIA agents fared even worse. Threatened with torture and execution, physical abuse often accompanied interrogation.
"I'd been knocked off my stool and kicked so many times that I was pretty sure I had some serious internal injuries," said ex-Army attache Col. Charles Scott. "They got out their rubber hose and beat on me with that, and they continued to knock me off the stool and kick me around until I thought I had a hernia."
The hostages were separated into small groups and not allowed to communicate. They received no news or contact from the outside world. Letters to and from home were rarely delivered. After the failed rescue mission Operation Eagle Claw in April 1980, the hostages were dispersed widely around the country and moved often.
"We were tied up for the next two months," said onetime Marine security guard Cpl. Steve Kirtley. "Our shoes were taken away and we were forbidden to speak to one another. After a time, I and two others were taken in a bus to Isfahan where we were held for months. The two others got sick and were moved. I got sick, too, but I recovered and was kept there."
CIA agent William J. Daugherty, who spent 425 days of his captivity in solitary confinement, remembers his main interrogator, Hossein Sheik-ol-Eslam, as "a mid-thirties, bearded Khomeini loyalist who had previously studied at the University of California-Berkeley, which was appropriate, I thought, given that institution's reputation." (Berkeley is well-known for its radical left-wing politics.)
In his book In the Shadow of the Ayatollah, Daugherty noted that Hossein served as Iran's deputy foreign minister in the mid-'80s and "caused the deaths of Americans" by playing a major role in Iranian-sponsored terrorism. By 2001, Hossein was Iran's ambassador to Syria.
U.S. POWs are `Fair Game'
During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, U.S. POWs were treated even worse by their Iraqi captors. According to their spokesman, "The POWs suffered not only unspeakable and prolonged physical pain, but also intense and prolonged mental anguish and harm."
It was so bad that in April 2002, 17 of the 22 POWs took the unprecedented step of suing Saddam Hussein. George C. Wilson in an article for the National Journal wrote that the POWs were "fair game" in captivity:
"Bedouins, villagers and Iraqi soldiers--at least once to the tune of the music on their truck radio--all beat on the captives, with none of the restraint displayed by the professional torturers in North Vietnam."
Navy Cmdr. Lawrence Slade, shot down Jan. 22, 1991, was beaten so viciously that "his body was completely blue, as if he had been dipped in indigo dye." His weight dropped from 180 pounds to 135 pounds while in captivity.
Marine Capt. Russell Sanborn, shot down Feb. 9, 1991, was beaten so hard with a rubber hose that his teeth were loosened and his eardrums ruptured.
Marine Lt. Col. Clifford Acree, shot down over Kuwait on Jan. 18, 1991, described the food he was given as "a starvation diet of one bowl of broth per day, sometimes with a piece of small, thin bread." He said he was forced to eat scabs off his body to reduce his intense hunger.
Air Force Col. Jeffrey Tice recalled a sadistic device he dubbed "the Talk-man." Iraqi guards tied one end of a wire to his ear and the other end to a car battery. They "shocked him to the point that every muscle in his body contracted at once," according to the lawsuit.
Compare this treatment with that of al Qaeda and Taliban detainees at Guantanamo, where respect for their human rights exceeds anything offered U.S. POWs held by militant Muslims.
The Times of London wrote that interrogations there have become "a politically correct farce" with prisoners mocking and threatening guards and throwing water at them.
Judging from America's historical experience, it's frightening to imagine what a U.S. POW's punishment would be for similar behavior under a hostile Muslim regime.