One Foreign Ministry officer told me of [an Iraqi] colleague who, finding out his
brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of
loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam
Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth:
henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear
dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting
his boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us.
For years, we were treated to the terrible tales of torture of the Bush administration, but as
Eason Jordan reminded us 9 years ago — indirectly (thanks to
Instapundit) — the pain of alleged American "torture", such as water boarding or even piling naked prisoners in a human pyramid, was entirely temporary, left no physical sequels, and involved real bad guys, thus never holding a candle to the torture of such régimes as that of Saddam Hussein…
A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret
police occupying her country in 1990 for "crimes," one of which
included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two
months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the
American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart
limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the
doorstep of her family's home.
