Prisoner abuse linked to US desire to rule: Analyst

Recent revelations of prisoner abuse by US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan implicate the US military and civilian leadership that has “a desire to rule” and wage wars, says an American counter-terrorism analyst.

American soldiers were “told the lie” and led to believe that Muslim countries had targeted the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Scot Bennett told Press TV on Saturday.

“That of course has proven to be a complete false-flag lie that was engineered and orchestrated with coordination by the US CIA and certainly the Mossad [of Israel] and other elements, which was designed to trigger this ongoing hegemony war to destabilize the Middle East,” he continued.

The US Defense Department has released a series of photographs, showing injuries inflicted on detainees by American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many of the 198 carefully-vetted images that were released on Friday, are close-ups showing cuts, bruises, swollen joints and relatively small wounds, without providing the men's identity.

The photos were released as part of an ongoing legal fight between the Pentagon and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which filed a freedom of information lawsuit in 2004 seeking access to some 2,000 photographs, purporting to show detainee mistreatment.

“Soldiers were told that their family and their country were attacked, so it initiated a lot of anger and resentment … so in capturing certain prisoners and enduring certain combat situations, of course a lot of them expressed a cruelty and vindictive vengeance and revenge,” Bennett said.

He said that the new revelations will hopefully lead to “a real close examination” of the political and military leaders involved with the US prisoner interrogation.

“We in the United States of course are undergoing our own abuse by the FBI, abuse by our own intelligence agencies,” he added.

“It is a sign of the times that need to be rectified by throwing off totalitarian powers by stopping the Middle East wars, and stopping this blood lust and desire to rule, which the neoconservative-Zionist elements in the American Congress have been pushing for 15 years,” Bennett concluded.

The administration of President Barack Obama first pledged to release the images in 2009, but Congress passed an exemption to the Freedom of Information Act, allowing the photos to be kept secret in case they were deemed by the defense secretary as a threat to national security.

The ACLU vowed to continue seeking the remaining 1,800 images, saying the release was long overdue and its “selective” nature might mislead the public.

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