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'''Abu Ghraib''' ([[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]] /ʔabuː ɣrajb/, [[Arabic language|Arabic]] ''أبو غريب'') is a notorious [[prison]] located in the city of [[Abu Ghraib (city)|Abu Ghraib]] on the outskirts of [[Baghdad]]. It was known as '''Abu Ghraib Prison''' under the [[Ba'ath]]ist regime in Iraq but is now officially the '''Baghdad Correctional Facility''' though it remains better known under its old name.
[[pl:Warren Harding]] [[sv:Warren G. Harding]]


==Under [[Saddam Hussein]]==
<table border="0" align="right" style="margin-left:1em"><tr><td>
<table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">
<caption><font size="+1">'''Warren G. Harding'''</font></caption>
<tr><td style="background:#efefef;" align="center" colspan=2>[[Image:wharding.jpg]]</td></tr>
<tr><td>'''Order:'''</td><td>29th President</td></tr>
<tr><td>'''Term of Office:'''</td><td>[[March 4]], [[1921]] - [[August 2]], [[1923]]</td></tr>
<tr><td>'''Followed:'''</td><td>[[Woodrow Wilson]]</td></tr>
<tr><td>'''Succeeded by:'''</td><td>[[Calvin Coolidge]]</td></tr>
<tr><td>'''Date of Birth'''</td><td>[[November 2]], [[1865]]</td></tr>
<tr><td>'''Place of Birth:'''</td><td>[[Blooming Grove, Ohio]]</td></tr>
<tr><td>'''Date of Death:'''</td><td>[[August 2]], [[1923]]</td></tr>
<tr><td>'''Place of Death:'''</td><td>[[San Francisco, California]]</td></tr>
<tr><td>'''[[First Lady of the United States|First Lady]]:'''</td><td>[[Florence Harding|Florence Kling De Wolfe]]</td></tr>
<tr><td>'''Profession:'''</td><td>[[publisher]]</td></tr>
<tr><td>'''[[List of political parties in the United States|Political Party]]:'''</td><td>[[United States Republican Party|Republican]]</td></tr>
<tr><td>'''[[Vice President of the United States|Vice President]]:'''</td><td>[[Calvin Coolidge]]</td></tr></table>
</table>


Under the regime of [[Saddam Hussein]] the facility was under the control of the Directorate of General Security, or [[Amn al-Amm]], and was the site of the torture and execution of thousands of political prisoners&mdash;up to 4000 prisoners are thought to have been executed there in [[1984]] alone.
'''Warren Gamaliel Harding''' ([[November 2]], [[1865]] - [[August 2]], [[1923]]) was the 29th ([[1921]]-[[1923]]) [[President of the United States|President]] of the [[United States]] and the sixth President to die in office.


The prison complex covers 280 acres (115 ha) with a total of 24 guard towers. There are five walled compounds within the facility. Cells in the facility are approximately four metres by four metres and hold an average 40 prisoners each.
Historians routinely categorize Harding as the worst President in US History, due to the incredibly corrupt nature of his Administration.


The political section of Abu Ghraib was divided into "open" and "closed" wings. The closed wing housed only [[Shi'ite]]s who were not allowed visitors or any outside contact.
==Political rise==


In [[2001]] the prison is thought to have held as many as 15,000 inmates. Hundreds of Shi'a [[Kurd]]s and other Iraqi citizens of Iranian ethnicity had reportedly been held there incommunicado and without charges since the beginning of the [[Iran-Iraq War]]. It has been alleged that some of these detainees were subjected to experiments as part of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons program.
Harding was born in Blooming Grove, [[Morrow County, Ohio|Morrow County]], [[Ohio]], [[November 2]], [[1865]] and graduated from [[Ohio Central College]] at Iberia. He was the first sitting [[United States Senate|Senator]] to be elected [[President]]. Before becoming a Senator, he was a [[newspaper publisher]] and [[Lieutenant Governor of Ohio]].


An expansion of the prison was underway prior to the [[2003 invasion of Iraq]].
Harding was the oldest of six children; his boyhood heroes were [[Alexander Hamilton]] and [[Napoleon]]. His mother was a doctor.


See the website: [http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/iraq/abu-ghurayb-prison.htm Abu Ghurayb Prison - Iraq Security]
Prior to being President of the United States, Harding served as Ohio State Senator (1899-1903), Lieutenant Governor of Ohio (1903-1905), and U.S. Senator (1915-1921). As U.S. Senator, he had a terrible attendance record, missing over 2/3s of the roll-call votes, including the vote to send the [[Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|19th Amendment]] ([[Women's Suffrage]]) to the States for ratification.


==Under the US-led Coalition==
In [[1889]] (when he was 24) Harding suffered a [[nervous breakdown]] and spent several weeks in a sanitarium. Two years later he married Florence "Flossie" Mabel Kling DeWolfe, age 30, a divorcee with one son. Flossie was described as stubborn and old-fashioned. Five years older than he, she had pursued him persistently, until he reluctantly gave in. Her father opposed the marriage, warning her not to marry into "the black-blooded Harding family."


Since the fall of the [[Ba'ath]]ist regime the prison has been used as a detention facility by the [[U.S.-led occupation of Iraq|U.S.-led coalition occupying Iraq]], officially known as the '''Baghdad Correctional Facility'''. Allegations of serious mistreatment of prisoners by US and British soldiers were made.
Theirs was an unhappy marriage. Harding neglected her and focused his attention on his poker buddies and other women. Still, Flossie's managerial skills helped them build his newspaper into a financial success. She was circulation manager, and ran the show.


The prison gained further international notoriety when, during the [[U.S.-led occupation of Iraq]], in April 2004, U.S. television network [[CBS]] broadcast an edition of its ''[[60 Minutes]] II'' news-magazine that reported abuse and humiliation of inmates by a small group of U.S. soldiers. The report was delayed by two weeks at the request of the [[Department of Defense]] and [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]] Gen. [[Richard Myers]], because of heavy fighting in Iraq. The prison commander has been replaced with Major-General [[Geoffrey Miller]], who previously supervised the controversial [[Guantanamo Bay]] detention facility.
Early in 1920, before being nominated by the Republican party, Flossie visited Madame Marcia, an expensive and well-known psychic in Washington. Madame Marcia predicted that Harding would become President, but that he would also die in office.


The pictures are believed to have been taken in [[November 2003|November]] or [[December 2003]], and were the subject of a [[United States]] army investigation of the incident. The report was completed in [[February 2004]]. Joint Chief Myers claimed on [[May 2]] during a [[Face the Nation]] interview that he had not yet seen the report.
A relative unknown outside his own state, Harding was a compromise candidate, who won the [[United States Republican Party|Republican]] nomination due to the political machinations of his friends. Before receiving the nomination, he was asked whether there were any embarrassing episodes in his past that might be used against him. He had a very limited formal education, suffered from depression, had spent several years in a sanitarium, had a rocky relationship with his wife (whom he referred to as "the Duchess"), had a longstanding affair with the wife of an old friend, and was a drinker despite [[Prohibition]]. Though he answered no, each of these issues was raised by his opponents during his presidency.


Some of the soldiers in the photographs have been identified as Army Reserve members Lynndie England and her fiance Charles Graner. Both have been detained and demoted. The pictures show the prisoners naked, being forced to engage in [[oral sex]] and other [[sex act]]s (possibly simulated), and being threatened with [[electrocution]] (which the [[United Nations Convention Against Torture]] defines as torture). Particularly humiliating in the [[Islam|Muslim]] world, a culture in which male nudity is considered shaming, the pictures include images of a female soldier, grinning and pointing at the [[genital]]s of a hooded naked prisoner. There is also a photo of a prisoner who appears to be dead. Aside from the published photographs, according to CBS, the Army has many more of these photos, including one that shows a [[dog]] attacking a prisoner. One detainee has also made charges of [[rape]] under supervision of the soldiers. All of the alleged acts clearly violate the [[Third Geneva Convention]] regarding treatment of [[POW]]s.
In the 1920 election, Harding ran against [[United States Democratic Party|Democrat]] [[Governor of Ohio|Ohio Governor]] [[James M. Cox]], whose vice presidential candidate was [[United States Assistant Secretary of the Navy|Assistant Secretary of the Navy]] [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt]]. The election was a referendum on whether to continue with the [[progressive]] work of the [[Woodrow Wilson]] administration or to go back to the [[laissez-faire]] approach of the [[William McKinley]] administration.


[[President of the United States|U.S. President]] [[George W. Bush]] decried the acts and contended that they were in no way indicative of normal or acceptable practices in the [[United States Army]]. Seventeen soldiers in Iraq, including [[Brigadier General]] [[Janis Karpinski]], were removed from duty after charges of mistreating prisoners. Six soldiers face [[courts-martial]] and possible prison time as a result of their roles in the events. [[Amnesty International]] said it has uncovered a "pattern of torture" of Iraqi prisoners by coalition troops, and called for an independent investigation into the claims of abuse.
Harding ran on a promise to "return to normalcy," which reflected three trends of his time: a renewed isolationism, a resurgence of nativism, and a turning away from the government activism of the progressive era.


Brigadier General [[Mark Kimmitt]], deputy director of coalition operations in Iraq, said: "I'd like to sit here and say that these are the only prisoner abuse cases that we're aware of, but we know that there have been some other ones since we've been here in Iraq."
During the campaign, rumors were printed that Harding's great-great-grandfather was a West Indian black and that other blacks lurked in his family tree. In response, Harding's campaign manager said "No family in the state [of Ohio] has a clearer, a more honorable record than the Hardings, a blue-eyed stock from New England and Pennsylvania, the finest pioneer blood."


The story and the photographs were carried as front-page news in many newspapers across the world and featured as the lead story on the broadcast media globally, causing outrage and dismay from many international observers. [[Abdel-Bari Atwan]], editor of the influential [[London]] based [[Arabic]] newspaper ''[[Al Quds Al Arabi]]'', said, "The liberators are worse than the dictators. This is the straw that broke the camel's back for America."
Several celebrities, including singer [[Al Jolson]] campaigned for Harding.


=== Photos of US abuses at Abu Ghraib prison ===
Harding received 61% of the national vote and 404 electoral votes. Cox received 35% of the national vote and 127 electoral votes. [[Eugene V. Debs]], campaigning from Federal prison, received 3% of the national vote.


Due to the disturbing nature the photos are on a separate page '''[[Abu Ghraib (prison)/Photos of US abuses]]'''. Viewer discretion is advised.
<div style="float:left;margin:10px">[[Image:Harding.jpg]]</div>


===Presidency===
== See also ==
* [[Auschwitz concentration camp]]
* [[Stanford Prison Experiment]]
* [[Human rights situation in post-Saddam Iraq]]
* [[Alleged human rights abuses by UK troops in Iraq, 2004]]


== External links ==
As President, Harding played [[golf]] twice a week, and [[poker]] twice a week. Although as Senator of Ohio, he had voted for [[Prohibition]], Harding kept the White House well stocked with bootleg liquor. He attended [[baseball]] games regularly.


* [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/27/60II/main614063.shtml Abuse of Iraqi POWs by GIs probed]. CBS, ''60 Minutes'' report, April 29, 2004.
Upon winning the election, he placed many of his old allies in prominent political positions. Known as the "[[Ohio Gang]]," few of them showed any real talent and some actually used their new powers to rob the government. Corruption was rampant throughout Harding's administration, though it is uncertain how much Harding actually knew about his friends' activities. One of the most famous scandals of the time was the [[Teapot Dome]] scandal, which shook the nation for many years after Harding's death. The scandal involved [[United States Secretary of the Interior|Secretary of the Interior]] [[Albert B. Fall]], who was eventually convicted of renting public oil fields to private concerns in exchange for personal loans. In [[1931]] Fall became the first member of Cabinet to be sent to prison.
* [http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/03/prison/ Guantanamo on steroids]. Report by [[Jen Banbury]], [[Salon.com]], [[March 3]], [[2004]]. Describes the situation at Abu Ghraib under US control before the abuse became publicly known.
* [http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/ Sources for images at The Memory Hole]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3675215.stm UK troops in Iraqi torture probe]
* [http://www.everything2.com/?node_id=1534854 Abu Ghraib Prison abuse scandal] - Article that summarizes the situation and known facts at [[Everything2]]
* [http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact Torture at Abu Ghraib] (''New Yorker'')


[[de:Abu-Ghuraib-Gefängnis]]
Thomas Miller, head of the Office of Alien Property, was convicted of accepting bribes. Jess Smith, personal aide to the Attorney General destroyed papers and then committed [[suicide]]. Charles Forbes, Director of the [[Veterans Bureau]], skimmed profits, earned fat kickbacks, and ran alcohol and drugs. He was convicted of [[fraud]] and [[bribery]], and drew a two-year sentence. Charles Cramer, an aide to Charles Forbes committed suicide.
[[nl:Abu Ghraib]]

No evidence to date suggests that Harding personally profited from these crimes.
"My God, this is a hell of a job!" Harding said. "I have no trouble with my enemies, but my damn friends, they're the ones that keep me walking the floor nights."

Throughout his administration, Harding favored Big Business and did his utmost to undo the legacy of his predecessor Woodrow Wilson. The only prominent legacy of Harding's administration was a plan by [[Secretary of State]] [[Charles Evans Hughes]] in the wake of [[World War I]] to reach an international agreement limiting the size of navies.

In June of [[1923]], Harding set out on a cross-country Voyage of Understanding. His plan was to meet regular people and explain to them his policies. During this trip, he became the first President to visit [[Alaska]]. At the end of July, while traveling south from Alaska, Harding developed a bad case of food poisoning. Arriving at the Palace Hotel in [[San Francisco]], he developed pneumonia. He died early in the morning on [[August 2]], [[1923]]. Doctors surmised that he had suffered a [[heart attack]]. But Mrs. Harding refused permission for an [[autopsy]]. Harding was succeeded by his Vice President, [[Calvin Coolidge]].

During the White House funeral, alone by the casket, Mrs. Harding spoke for more than an hour into the face of her dead husband. 16 months later, Mrs. Harding died of kidney disease (which killed Wilson's first wife).

Interment was in Marion Cemetery, [[Marion, Ohio]]. He was reintered in the Harding Memorial Tomb.

A book from [[1930]] called The Strange Deaths of President Harding suggests that there were many with motives to murder the President, including his wife.

Not until [[1963]], when dozens of love letters were discovered by biographers, was it known that Harding had a 15-year relationship with [[Carrie Fulton Phillips]], wife of his longtime friend James Phillips. She was 10 years younger than Harding. By 1915, she began trying to sway Harding to leave his wife. When he refused, she left her husband and moved to Berlin with her daughter. However, World War I soon broke out, and Carrie moved back to the U.S. and the affair reignited. Harding was now a Senator of Ohio, and a vote was coming up regarding a declaration of war against Germany. Carrie threatened to go public with their affair if he voted for the declaration. Harding voted for the declaration of war, but Carrie did not reveal the scandal to the world.

When Harding won the Republican presidential nomination in [[1920]], the affair was still going on. In order to remove the potential for the scandal breaking, the Republican National Committee sent Carrie and her family on a trip to Japan, paid them over $20,000, and promised monthly payments thereafter.

Even while seeing Carrie Phillips, Harding was also having an affair with [[Nan Britton]], a [[flapper]] who was 30 years younger than he. In January 1919 in his Senate office, they conceived Harding's only child, Elizabeth Ann Christian. Harding never met his daughter, but he paid large amounts of [[child support]]. Harding and Britton continued their affair while he was President, utilizing a closet adjacent to the [[Oval Office]] for privacy.

After Harding's death, Britton tried unsuccessfully to win money from Harding's estate to pay for his daughter's future. In 1927, Nan Britton published a book The President's Daughter, which told all.

== [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] appointments ==
* [[William Howard Taft]] - Chief Justice - 1921
* [[George Sutherland]] - 1922
* [[Pierce Butler]] - 1923
* [[Edward Terry Sanford]] - 1923

== Related articles ==
*[[U.S. presidential election, 1920]]

== External links ==


* http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1856&u=/cpress/iraq_prisoner_abuse&printer=1 "Amnesty International has evidence of 'pattern of torture' by coalition"
*[http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/harding.htm Inaugural Address]
<center>
<table border="1">
<tr>
<td width="30%" align="center">'''Preceded by''':<br>
[[Woodrow Wilson]]</td>
<td width="40%" align="center">[[President of the United States|Presidents of the United States]]</td>
<td width="30%" align="center">'''Succeeded by''':<br>
[[Calvin Coolidge]]</td>
</tr>
</table>
</center>

Revision as of 10:14, 3 May 2004

Abu Ghraib (IPA /ʔabuː ɣrajb/, Arabic أبو غريب) is a notorious prison located in the city of Abu Ghraib on the outskirts of Baghdad. It was known as Abu Ghraib Prison under the Ba'athist regime in Iraq but is now officially the Baghdad Correctional Facility though it remains better known under its old name.

Under Saddam Hussein

Under the regime of Saddam Hussein the facility was under the control of the Directorate of General Security, or Amn al-Amm, and was the site of the torture and execution of thousands of political prisoners—up to 4000 prisoners are thought to have been executed there in 1984 alone.

The prison complex covers 280 acres (115 ha) with a total of 24 guard towers. There are five walled compounds within the facility. Cells in the facility are approximately four metres by four metres and hold an average 40 prisoners each.

The political section of Abu Ghraib was divided into "open" and "closed" wings. The closed wing housed only Shi'ites who were not allowed visitors or any outside contact.

In 2001 the prison is thought to have held as many as 15,000 inmates. Hundreds of Shi'a Kurds and other Iraqi citizens of Iranian ethnicity had reportedly been held there incommunicado and without charges since the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War. It has been alleged that some of these detainees were subjected to experiments as part of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons program.

An expansion of the prison was underway prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

See the website: Abu Ghurayb Prison - Iraq Security

Under the US-led Coalition

Since the fall of the Ba'athist regime the prison has been used as a detention facility by the U.S.-led coalition occupying Iraq, officially known as the Baghdad Correctional Facility. Allegations of serious mistreatment of prisoners by US and British soldiers were made.

The prison gained further international notoriety when, during the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, in April 2004, U.S. television network CBS broadcast an edition of its 60 Minutes II news-magazine that reported abuse and humiliation of inmates by a small group of U.S. soldiers. The report was delayed by two weeks at the request of the Department of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers, because of heavy fighting in Iraq. The prison commander has been replaced with Major-General Geoffrey Miller, who previously supervised the controversial Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

The pictures are believed to have been taken in November or December 2003, and were the subject of a United States army investigation of the incident. The report was completed in February 2004. Joint Chief Myers claimed on May 2 during a Face the Nation interview that he had not yet seen the report.

Some of the soldiers in the photographs have been identified as Army Reserve members Lynndie England and her fiance Charles Graner. Both have been detained and demoted. The pictures show the prisoners naked, being forced to engage in oral sex and other sex acts (possibly simulated), and being threatened with electrocution (which the United Nations Convention Against Torture defines as torture). Particularly humiliating in the Muslim world, a culture in which male nudity is considered shaming, the pictures include images of a female soldier, grinning and pointing at the genitals of a hooded naked prisoner. There is also a photo of a prisoner who appears to be dead. Aside from the published photographs, according to CBS, the Army has many more of these photos, including one that shows a dog attacking a prisoner. One detainee has also made charges of rape under supervision of the soldiers. All of the alleged acts clearly violate the Third Geneva Convention regarding treatment of POWs.

U.S. President George W. Bush decried the acts and contended that they were in no way indicative of normal or acceptable practices in the United States Army. Seventeen soldiers in Iraq, including Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, were removed from duty after charges of mistreating prisoners. Six soldiers face courts-martial and possible prison time as a result of their roles in the events. Amnesty International said it has uncovered a "pattern of torture" of Iraqi prisoners by coalition troops, and called for an independent investigation into the claims of abuse.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of coalition operations in Iraq, said: "I'd like to sit here and say that these are the only prisoner abuse cases that we're aware of, but we know that there have been some other ones since we've been here in Iraq."

The story and the photographs were carried as front-page news in many newspapers across the world and featured as the lead story on the broadcast media globally, causing outrage and dismay from many international observers. Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the influential London based Arabic newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi, said, "The liberators are worse than the dictators. This is the straw that broke the camel's back for America."

Photos of US abuses at Abu Ghraib prison

Due to the disturbing nature the photos are on a separate page Abu Ghraib (prison)/Photos of US abuses. Viewer discretion is advised.

See also

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Warren_G._Harding&oldid=3429646"