Abu Ghraib Quotes

I was ordered not to go out to Abu Ghraib after dark early on, because Abu Ghraib was extremely dangerous. ~ Janis Karpinski

The eyes of all people are upon us. And all they see is a mash-up of naked prisoners and an American girl in fatigues standing there giving a thumbs-up. As I write this, the United States of America is still a city on a hill; and it's still shining - because we never turn off the lights in our torture prisons. That's how we carry out the sleep deprivation. ~ Sarah Vowell

I'm sorry, those pictures from the Abu Ghraib. At first, they, like infuriated me, I was sad. Then like, a couple days later, after they cut the guy's head off, they didn't seem like much. And now, I like to trade them with my friends. ~ Dennis Miller

Whether we consider Nazi Germany or Abu Ghraib prison, there were many people who observed what was happening and said nothing. At Abu Ghraib, one photo shows two soldiers smiling before a pyramid of naked prisoners while a dozen other soldiers stand around watching passively. If you observe such abuses and don't say, "This is wrong! Stop it!" you give tacit approval to continue. You are part of the silent majority that makes evil deeds more acceptable. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Sadism dominates the culture. It runs like an electric current through reality television and trash-talk programs, is at the core of pornography, and fuels the compliant, corporate collective. Corporatism is about crushing the capacity for moral choice and diminishing the individual to force him or her into an ostensibly harmonious collective. This hypermasculinity has its logical fruition in Abu Ghraib, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our lack of compassion for our homeless, our poor, the mentally ill, the unemployed, and the sick ... We accept the system handed to us and seek to find a comfortable place within it. We retreat into the narrow, confined ghettos created for us and shut our eyes to the deadly superstructure of the corporate state. ~ Chris Hedges

The vast majority of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, even after interrogation, had no further intel value whatsoever. ~ Janis Karpinski

It smelled like a slaughterhouse. I was standing in the interrogation room of Saddam Hussein's Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad. A stench of blood and death permeated my senses, my clothes, my being. ~ Bernard B. Kerik

Denial helps the bystander. We don't want to know what the boys we send to Iraq have done to others out of terror, or what others have done to them. We would rather not know about terror or be confronted with evil. This is as true about Abu Ghraib as it is about person assaults and more private crimes, the crimes that occur inside families.

But the victim, too, cannot bear to believe. She may bury or dissociate from or disown her pain...to be raped or abused or threatened with violent death; to be treated as an object in a perpetrator's dream, rather than the subject of your own - these are bad enough. But when observers become complicit in the victim's desire to forget, they become perpetrators, too.

When authorities disbelieve the victim, when bystanders refute what they cannot bear to know, they rob the victim of normal existence on the earth. Bystander and victim collude in denial or forgetting, and in so doing, repeat the abuse. Life for the victim now begins anew. In this new world, the victim can no longer trust the evidence of her senses. Something seems to have happened, but what? The ground disappears. This is the alchemy of denial: terror, rage, and pain are replaced with free-floating shame. The victim will being to wonder: What did I do? She will being to believe: I must have done something bad. But the sensation of shame is shameful itself, so we dissociate that, too. In the end, a victim who has suffered the denial of others will come to ~ Jessica Stern

Even if you are a liberal in the Muslim world, when you see Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and you see all the other reports of abuses by American forces, it's very hard to get up and say, "We should simulate the American ways," because this is the face of America now in the Muslim world, for many Muslims. ~ Yaroslav Trofimov

American journalists and politicians made a perfect spectacle of themselves in discussing the Abu Ghraib prison controversy. ~ Tony Snow

Not even the foulest atrocities of Adolf Hitler ever shocked me so badly as these Abu Ghraib photographs did. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

What makes Bush different from Hitler? He commits crimes in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons. With all these crimes, they still behave like bullying claimants. They get angry once they see an independant nation. ~ Ali Khamenei

The day after the prison was transferred to the military intelligence command, they had an entire battalion - 1,200, 1,500 soldiers - arrive at Abu Ghraib just for force protection alone. ~ Janis Karpinski

The effort to blur the lines between Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib reflects a deep misunderstanding about the different legal regimes that apply to Iraq and the war against al Qaeda. ~ John Yoo

Since 2001, the U.S. government has abandoned its role as a champion of human rights and has perpetrated terrible and illegal abuses in prisons in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, sent prisoners secretly to other nations to be tortured, denied the applicability of the Geneva Convention restraints, and severely restricted time-honored civil liberties within our own country. Certain political leaders of other nations, who are inclined to perpetrate human rights abuses to quiet dissenting voices and were previously restrained by positive influence from Washington, now feel free to emulate or exceed the abuses approved by American leaders. ~ Jimmy Carter

Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs. ~ Arundhati Roy

Whether or not Americans supported George W. Bush, they could not avoid learning about Abu Ghraib. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

What's happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is one of the grossest violations of human rights under the Geneva Conventions that we have record of. It is simply monstrous. ~ Carlos Fuentes

In light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, critics are arguing that abuses of Iraqi prisoners are being produced by a climate of disregard for the laws of war. ~ John Yoo

It is important to recognize the differences between the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. The treatment of those detained at Abu Ghraib is governed by the Geneva Conventions, which have been signed by both the U.S. and Iraq. ~ John Yoo

But in Afghanistan, the general rule was that since you were fighting the Taliban, which was not a lawful government force, the Geneva Conventions did not apply. And that led to a lot of excesses in Afghanistan, excesses like Abu Ghraib that were already well-publicized. ~ Yaroslav Trofimov

It is the photographs that gives one the vivid realization of what actually took place. (On photographs from Abu Ghraib prison.) ~ Donald Rumsfeld

In the last week of April 2004, a handful of the Abu Ghraib photographs were broadcast on 60 minutes and published in The New Yorker, and within a couple of days they had been rebroadcast and republished pretty much everywhere on earth. Overnight, the human pyramid, the hooded man on the box, the young woman soldier with a prisoner on a leash, and the corpse packed in ice had become the defining images of the Iraq war...Never before had such primal dungeon scenes been so baldly captured on camera...But above all, it was the posing soldiers, mugging for their buddies' cameras while dominating the prisoners in trophy stances, that gave the photographs the sense of unruly and unmediated reality. The staging was part of the reality they documented. And the grins, the thumbs-up, the arms crossed over puffed-out chests - all this unseemly swagger and self-regard was the height of amateurism. These soldier-photographers stood, at once, inside and outside the events they recorded, watching themselves take part in the spectacle, and their decision not to conceal but to reveal what they were doing indicated that they were not just amateur photographers, but amateur torturers.
So the amateurism was not merely a formal dimension of the Abu Ghraib pictures. It was part of their content, part of what we saw in them, and it corresponded to an aspect of the Iraq War that troubled and baffled nearly everyone: the reckless and slapdash ineptitude with which it had been prosecuted. It was ~ Philip Gourevitch

Humanity has survived because the strong among us have, in the past, been obliged to help the weak. Without this, we would not survive. ~ Hany Abu-Assad

Verily, the weight of half of disbelief in the world is carried by religious people who made God detestable to His servants. ~ Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali

Consider the difference between the first and third person in poetry [ ... ] It's like the difference between looking at a person and looking through their eyes. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

If you silence yourself, if you try to be good, if you try to be polite, or toe a party line, you end up paying for that in the long run. You pay for it ... with your homeland, or with your soul, or with your artistic vision. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Generosity is to help a deserving person without his request, and if you help him after his
request, then it is either out of self-respect or to avoid rebuke. ~ Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib

Muslims should live like brothers. ~ Abu Bakr

Phantasm, a pink-palmed jinn, a ghost from one of the drowned cities. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Thanks to a deal finalized in 2008, Chicago's parking meters will be operated for the next 75 years by a group of investors put together by Morgan Stanley, including the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi. ~ Thomas Frank

When a hadeeth is found to be saheeh, then that is my madhhab. ~ Abu Hanifa

It is a matter of shame that in the morning the birds should be awake earlier than you. ~ Abu Bakr

Our enemies are not the Jews or the Christians, our enemy is our own ignorance. ~ Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib A.S

Satan puts three knots at the back of the head of any of you if he is asleep. On every knot he reads and exhales the following words, 'The night is long, so stay asleep.' When one wakes up and remembers Allah, one knot is undone; and when one performs ablution, the second knot is undone, and when one prays the third knot is undone and one gets up energetic with a good heart in the morning; otherwise one gets up lazy and with a mischievous heart. ~ Abu Huraira

Knowledge is the life of the mind. ~ Abu Bakr

A fast tongue is a sign of a slow brain ~ Abu Fennek

He who aspires to paradise should learn to deal with people with kindness. ~ Abu Bakr

When you advise any person you should be guided by the fear of God. ~ Abu Bakr

Beauty is merely defined by the very core of one's soul, which then and only then outlines one's outside features, reflecting beyond the body. With every line representing who you are.
The wrinkles around the eyes from laughing so hard, the callus on ones hands from giving, the scars on one body from "living", the curve of ones mouth from the words their speaking, the lines on one's for curiosity their building.
Truth is we all hold our own definition of beauty, it's that simple. ~ Lisa Abu-Bakr

Too, some of my teachers helped me to navigate those books, showed me the maps and paths and secret decoder rings - people like Linda Kintz and Forest Pyle and Mary Wood and Diana Abu Jaber. They didn't treat me like a messy writer girl in combat boots who had infiltrated the smart people room. They treated me like I deserved to be there, potty mouth and all, they helped make a space for me to rage and ride my own intellect. That's why I'm saying their names out loud. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

A movie should entertain you in a way that will also open your mind. I think movies are tools to enrich your experience. ~ Hany Abu-Assad

The light is in my heart between my ribs, so why would I fear walking in the darkness ~ Abu Al-Kasem Ash-shabi

O Allah, You know me better than I know myself, and I know myself better than these people who praise me. Make me better than what they think of me, and forgive those sins of mine of which they have no knowledge, and do not hold me responsible for what they say. ~ Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq

O man you are busy working for the world, and the world is busy trying to turn you out. ~ Abu Bakr

The people who abandon Jihad fall a victim to humility and degradation. ~ Abu Bakr

You, mad to expect repentance,Tear your robe all you want;I will never repent! ~ Abu Nuwas

He believes that this man has looped a bit of the thread-leash through a corner of his soul. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

A Machine to Make a Future is an insightful and creative contribution to the literature
both scholarly and journalistic
on contemporary genomics. By 'experimenting' with narrative genre, the authors hope to generate different insights into the world of genomics and biotechnology than ones generally presented in existing accounts. They succeed at that goal, providing an account that is ethnographically rich and analytically open to a world whose structure, implications, and outcomes are very much in the making. ~ Nadia Abu El Haj

If you want to change the world,learn to change yourself first. ~ Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib R.A

He who acquires knowledge and acts up to it and teaches it to the people is noble to the angels of heaven and earth. He is like the sun which illumines itself and gives light to other things. Such a man is like a pot of musk which is full of fragrance and gives fragrance to others. He who teaches knowledge to others but does not himself act up to it is like a notebook which does not benefit itself but benefits others or like an instrument which gives edge to iron but itself has got no edge, or like a needle which remains naked but sews clothing for others, or like a lamp which gives light to other things but itself burns. ~ Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali

Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful" - Abu Bak's warfare rules, to his army ~ Firas Alkhateeb

The streets of Aqaba are shell spirals and, on summer nights, crowded and complicated as a woman's heart. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

The casting is very simple actually, but it is very important. You choose the best actor for the role, and you test them and you test them, and you bring them back, and you have to make sure the actors fit the roles. ~ Hany Abu-Assad

By He in whose Hand is my soul, I have lived amongst people who never ordered food to be prepared for themselves If [food] was presented to one of them, he would eat, otherwise, he would be silent; and he would not care if it was hot or cold. ~ Abu Nu`aym

O self of mine, keep travelling forever
and do not fall in love with anyone
except the Majestic Lord, the Everlasting ~ Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali

There are five dark matters and five lamps. Love of this world is darkness, and the fear of Allaah is its lamp. Sin is darkness, and its lamp is repentance. The grave is darkness, and its lamp is 'none has the right to be worshipped but Allaah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allaah.' The hereafter is darkness, and its lamp is the good deed. The Siraat is darkness, and its lamp is certainty of faith. ~ Abu Bakr