Marc Perkel Rantz

The electrodes weren't only used to threaten prisoners, but to electrically shock prisoners.

News reports have misleadingly said that Iraqi prisoners were forced to simulate sex acts. For example, the passage below from Time Magazine, uses the term “simulating” (“The Scandal's Growing Stain,” May 17, 2004, bold added).

Haider Sabbar Abed al-Abbadi kept his shame to himself until the world saw him stripped naked, his head in a hood, a nude fellow prisoner kneeling before him simulating oral sex. " That is me," he claims to a Time reporter, as one of the lurid photographs of detained Iraqis suffering sexual humiliation at the hands of U.S. soldiers scrolls down a computer screen. "I felt a mouth close around my penis. It was only when they took the bag off my head that I saw it was my friend." In the nine months he spent in detention, al-Abbadi says he was never charged and never interrogated

The 1600 photos which Senators and Congresspersons were allowed to view, but not the public, provide further evidence that prisoners were forced to have sex with each other ("Seattle Post Intelligencer," "New images 'disgust' Congress," May 13, 2004):

But the private images showed objects and behavior that were more graphic and diverse, including corpses, military dogs snarling at cowering prisoners, women commanded to expose their breasts, and sex acts, including forced homosexual sex.

Additionally, "the International Occupation Watch Centre, an NGO which gathers information on human rights abuses under coalition rule, said one former detainee has told of the alleged rape of her cellmate."

The forced sex between prisoners and rapes by guards, were real, not simulated.

The electrodes weren't just for show, either. They were used to electrically shock prisoners.

Amnesty International uses the term "war crimes" to describe the US treatment of Iraqi prisoners, writing:

Last July, the organization raised allegations of torture and ill-treatment of Iraqi detainees by US and Coalition forces in a memorandum to the US Government and Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq. The allegations included beatings, electric shocks, sleep deprivation, hooding, and prolonged forced standing and kneeling. It received no response nor any indication from the administration or the CPA that an investigation took place.

Saleh was an opponent of Saddam Hussein who was tortured over a decade ago at Abu Ghraib under Saddam's rule, left Iraq and became a Swedish citizen, returned during the US occupation, and was randomly arrested by the US and again tortured at Abu Ghraib, this time by the US.

Saleh refers to being electrically shocked by the US while a prisoner at Abu Ghraib at the 2:42 mark of this mp3:

NPR report of May 20, 2004 in which Saleh describes being tortured by Americans at Abu Ghraib