Hanna's Tale

[Nbadan]

UNRAVELLING: A woman lied about being tortured during Saddam Hussein's reign and a US newspaper is having to backtrack on a story it wrote about her

NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE , NEW YORK
Saturday, Jan 22, 2005,Page 6

Testifying before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July 2003 about the rebuilding of Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the story of Jumana Michael Hanna, an Iraqi woman who had recently come to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad with a tale of her horrific torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.


Hanna's tale -- more than two years of imprisonment that included being subjected to electric shocks, repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted -- was unusual in that she was willing to name the Iraqi police officials who participated in her torture, "information that is helping us to root out Baathist policemen who routinely tortured and killed prisoners," Wolfowitz said.

But Hanna's story, which 10 days before Wolfowitz's testimony had been the subject of a front-page article in the Washington Post, appears to have unraveled. Esquire magazine, in this month's issue, published a lengthy article, by a writer who was hired to help Hanna produce a memoir, saying that her account had all but fallen apart.

And on Thursday, the Post itself published a follow-up article saying that Hanna, who was granted refugee status by US officials on the basis of her claims of imprisonment, torture and sexual abuse, "appears to have made false claims about her past, according to a fresh examination of her statements."

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Taipei Times

So what's next for Jumana Michael Hanna? Maybe we should give her a Presidential Medal of Freedom?

I know...a Bronze Star.

[Ocotillo]

Perhaps a position at the State Department.

[Ed Helicopter Jones]

My guess is that all of the claims of torture and injustice coming out of Iraq were false. Sadaam was running the equivalent of Disney World - Middle East when all of a sudden America needed to gas up their Hummers and decided to invade.