According to Salon:
Congress has demanded that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hand over a raft of documents to Congress that could substantiate allegations that U.S. forces have tried to break terror suspects by kidnapping and mistreating their family members. Rumsfeld has until 5 p.m. Friday to comply.
Rape, murder, now kidnapping. And not just an isolated kidnapping here or there (as if that wouldn't be bad enough), but a technique that has been "systematically employed".
The article states that the House Government Reform subcommittee led by Connecticut Republican Representative Christopher Shays subpoenaed Rumsfeld last month for the documents, but received no answer.
It's a Salon article, so you have to register or watch an ad to read the story, but it is well worth it IMHO. More quotes below...
The subpoena demands that the Pentagon turn over documents about apparent retribution by the military against Army Spc. Samuel Provance, a whistle-blower, who sought to expose abuse at the infamous prison by talking to military investigators and the press. Following his revelations, the Army demoted Provance from sergeant and revoked his security clearance.
The subpoena also includes a separate demand, at the behest of Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., for any documents that might show that U.S. forces were systematically detaining family members of suspects at Abu Ghraib, and mistreating them to force suspects to talk.
In a hearing before Shays' Government Reform subcommittee last February, Provance testified that the Army had retaliated against him. Provance also made the disturbing allegation that interrogators broke an Iraqi general, Hamid Zabar, by imprisoning and abusing his frail 16-year-old son. Waxman was shocked. "Do you think this practice was repeated with other children?" he asked Provance. "I don't see why it would not have been, sir," Provance replied.
Zabar's son had been apprehended with his father and held at Abu Ghraib, though the boy hadn't done anything wrong. "He was useless," Provance said about the boy in a phone interview with Salon from Heidelberg, Germany, where he is still in the Army. "He was of no intelligence value."
But, Provance said, interrogators grew frustrated when the boy's father, Zabar, wouldn't talk, despite a 14-hour interrogation. So they stripped Zabar's son naked and doused him with mud and water. They put him in the open back of a truck and drove around in the frigid January night air until the boy began to freeze. Zabar was then made to look at his suffering son.
And of course there is more:
Similar allegations have shown that kidnapping may have been a systematic practice. Special Operations troops, working with an elite unit called Task Force 6-26, allegedly abducted the 28-year-old wife of a suspected Iraqi terrorist during a raid on a house in Tarmiya, Iraq, in May 2004, the month after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke...
In 2003, Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush died in U.S. custody in northern Iraq after suffering beatings and interrogations. He died when he was stuffed into a sleeping bag and straddled by Chief Warrant Officer Lewis E. Welshofer Jr. In January 2006, Welshofer was reprimanded for Mowhoush's death. His son, Mohammed, told the Washington Post that month that U.S. forces first kidnapped him and his three brothers from their home. Mohammed was 15 at that time and claimed he was not an insurgent. "They said if my father does not come [turn himself in] you will never see your family back," Mohammad told the Post. The article stated that classified documents show the general "later surrendered in an attempt to free his sons."
What the hell?? That's about all I can say at the moment. I feel like everytime I turn around there's some worse news about how this "war" is being conducted. How much more moral authority has the U.S. got to lose, at this point? Damnit, and I know I'll probably take heat for this comment, but at least the Palestinians and Hezbollah kidnap SOLDIERS.