MSNBC: New photos show Abu Gahraib tactics (more)

Rummy and Miller signed off on torture!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5032107/

WASHINGTON - A series of photographs obtained exclusively by NBC News depicts what sources said was the aggressive interrogation of three naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the detention facility outside Baghdad that is at the center of the scandal over U.S. mistreatment of Iraqi detainees.

*snip*

Members of Congress from both parties complained Wednesday that while an expanded report by Taguba was delivered as promised, as many as 2,000 pages considered vital to the investigation were missing.

Congressional sources told NBC News that the missing documents included a written report from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller that apparently lays out aggressive interrogation tactics for Abu Ghraib. Miller was recently reassigned to Iraq after spending 17 months as commander of operations at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Also missing was key testimony from Col. Thomas Pappas, the commander of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib, the sources said.

Lawrence Di Rita, a spokesman for the Defense Department, characterized the missing documents Wednesday as insignificant, saying the information was “available otherwise.”

You gotta read this...

Now that the evidence is getting to the top of the chain, the only recourse they will have will be to claim it was done for a greater good, i.e. the protection of U.S. troops. It goes without saying that this is against the Geneva Convention.

I believe they will try to excuse this behaviour as it gets closer to Bush, Cheney, Rummy, et al, and claim it is not actually against any U.S. law. I don't know enough about the law to know if it will work. Remember, they will probably have no problems with getting the cooperation of the Supreme Court.

As long as the media keeps "leaking" these sorts of rather innocent pictures, in the scheme of things, people will start to think of it as "justified interrogation". Not torture.

Rape, sodomy, murder. Where are those pictures?

Wait until the videotapes of the raping of women and boys gets leaked.

It's not going to be pretty.

That's my concern. That these pictures aren't being leaked to hurt Bush, but rather to help him. Replace the horrors of the previous pictures with these, not so bad, "interrogation" pictures. People who don't want to deal with the torture in the first place will pretty quickly rationalize the entire incident as "interrogations".

Raping women and boys can be spun as "interrogations"? No way.

that's how it is being spun.

When the VRWC was going after Pres. Clinton, how long did it take to post the intimate details of the investigation, including answers to Starr's questioning, on the internet? 24 hours tops?

Then we have this: very revealing photos and videos very damaging to Bush and the United States being scooped up by mainstream media, only to have selected ones "leaked."

Why not post them all???

If we can be treated to the lurid events of consensual sex, then why can't we see these photos and videos? It CERTAINLY can't be a matter of taste...?

This isn't a blowjob.

This is the next 20 years of American international credibility.

I would be extremely cautious in leaking this shit, too.

In case you haven't notice, Iraq is a fucking powderkeg, like the rest of the Middle East.

It's real dicey.

It's all the fault of those "icky" pictures - and THE PICTURES make us look bad!

After all, fuck what we are DOING at this very moment to these poor souls, right?

Imagine what the world will "think" of us if we allow any evidence to show JUST HOW MUCK LIKE THE NAZI'S this gang of criminals occupying OUR government is!

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Octafish posted this last night about Hoover.

(snip)
The Gangster Era

EXCERPT..

The real excitement began in 1933 when a wave of crime swept over the mid west. Names like John Dillinger,"Machine Gun" Kelly, "Pretty Boy" Floyd," Baby Face" Nelson and " Ma" Barker captured the imagination of millions of Americans. The media had turned these criminals into romantic figures and popular Robin Hood characters. When some of these criminals robbed banks they also destroyed the mortgage and loan records, thereby rationalizing their crimes by helping out the "little guys" who faced the loss of everything they had during the Depression.

J. Edgar Hoover was not amused by the glorification of these murderers and thieves. He saw it as a "challenge to law and order and civilization itself."

On June 17, 1933, four of the Bureau's special agents and three cops were escorting bank robber Frank "Jelly" Nash to Leavenworth when three men with machines guns ambushed them at Union Station in Kansas City. Four of the lawmen were killed, including one special agent, and two were wounded. Nash was also killed in the attempt to free him.

Hoover was quick to seek justice. Congress was with him and passed nine major crime bills that gave Hoover much more authority and money. No longer were the special agents just investigators with law and accounting degrees. Hoover started to add men with who were comfortable making arrests and chasing after criminals, pistol in hand.

A major opportunity arose when George "Machine Gun" Kelly and his wife kidnapped oilman Charles Urschel on July 23, 1933. Kelly got his $200,000 ransom demand and let Urschel go, but Urschel was able to help the Bureau agents figure out that he had been held on a farm near an airport. These and other clues helped the Bureau's investigators find the farm. The agents picked up one of the kidnappers and got a lead on where the Kellys were. Finally in September, agents surrounded Kelly on a farm and he surrendered without firing a shot.

CONTINUED...

http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/cops_others/hoover/7.htm...
(snip)

Reading this story kind of helps into the segway of this B.S lie about protecting the US image. The rest of the world knows about us. We just don't know about our own country. They have been trying feed us lies forever. Some of us are not listening to them anymore

The rest of Octafish's thread is here. The DU archives is stocked to rim with reason why its not a good idea to keep the lies hidden and going. I am glad some people are awake

What is the BFEE?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1689174&mesg_id=1690025

truth will work....we have an ugly face

"I said I wanted ALL the pictures released. I've paid for this, whether I wanted it to happen or not. Let me see what I got for my money. Because I want some people to pay for doing this in my name."- DUer gratuitous, 5/21/04

This was done in our name, paid for by our tax dollars - that I, for one, would MUCH rather NOT have funding this war to begin with! And that they DARE to try and hide this from me after I paid for it - sorry! I, too, want to see what I got for my money.

The truth can never be hidden forever. You can bet your next 10 paychecks these photos will eventually be leaked.

Dont like it? Want some damage control?

Well here is the recipe. PUNISH THOSE WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE AND IT GOES ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP.

Deal with that, patriot.

That video recorded by one of Lynndies Pals, shows a 15 YEAR OLD CHILD being ANALLY RAPED by a civilian interrogator while GI's stood by filming and watching.

The Child's pitiful Screams were recorded on the tape as his RECTUM WAS REPEATEDLY SAVAGED

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I'm outraged at the outrage!

Read the Taguba Report---Its all there

We just haven't seen the VIDEO YET !!!!!!!!

And I doubt the Chimpanzee's Handlers will release it.


Maybe only to a mature audience of Clerical Leaders

this from NBC

Rumsfeld did not describe the photos, but U.S. military officials told NBC News that the unreleased images showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi female prisoner and “acting inappropriately with a dead body.” The officials said there was also a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.

http://www.itic.ca/DIC/News/2004/05/Torture_Abu_Ghraib.html

After software, games, music, movies, child pornography and terrorism, the worldwide P2P community now puts its hands on the darkest human activity: ``Torture".

Yesterday, US officials said the leaking files (pictures and movies) were seen propagating onto P2P at a rate of 24M downloads a day. For Europe, during our 1 hour observation phase, we identified 387 explicit files and spotted 11,423 users.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x583613

Go tell it to your repuke friends.

I'm proud to say I have NO repuke friends!

Wouldn't want any.

If that's what happened, the American people need to know it. Sorry if it's sickening to read about. Torture's like that.

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If Saddam had done this to USA POWs the DEATH PENALTY would be in play

But Pray tell, How could Saddam top this ???

When the POW had a PLASTIC FLASHLIGHT RAMMED UP HIS RECTUM ???

When a GERMAN SHEPHERD DOG BIT HIM IN THE TESTICLES ???

When the POW had a 220 Volt wire attached with a clip to the TIP OF HIS PENIS ???

When Lynndie England was encouraged to help the POWs obtain erections so they could perform
ORAL SEX ACTS ON EACH OTHER and the PERKY PRINCESS OF ABU GHRAIB
PRISON COULD SHOUT "HE'S GETTING HARD"???

When a POW was beaten to death, HIS BODY PACKED IN ICE and TAKEN OUT IN THE
DESERT AND DUMPED Or the Photos of Graner and Lynndie’s sidekick the Lovely Sabrina
Harman smiling over the dead corpse.

When Lynndie apparently on Orders collected a number of Dirty Used KOTEX MAXI-PADS to
be worn and tied to the Heads of POWs, Or when Graner made POW’s eat food thrown in
Toilets and then commented that the Prison Guard part of him said he loved to see them “PISS
THEMSELVES”

When Four U.S. soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team will be reprimanded for forcing
two Iraqi detainees to jump off a bridge into the Tigris River killing one of them.

How about interrogators torturing children and the presenting them to the parents to get them to
reveal WHATEVER?

When soldiers themselves admit dogs were used and when Spec. Sabrina D. Harman, recalled for
Army investigators an episode "when two dogs were brought into 1A to scare an
inmate. He was naked against the wall, when they let the dogs corner him. They pulled them back
enough, and the prisoner ran . . . straight across the floor. . . . The prisoner was cornered and the
dog bit his leg. A couple seconds later, he started to move again, and the dog bit his other leg."





When photos show a Naked man covered in Feces beaten in the head by a THUG holding a police
Baton?



When a Civilian Interrogator ANALLY RAPED A 15 YEAR OLD BOY IN FRONT OF GI
WITNESSES ( who apparently used a camcorder to memorialize the child’s screams as his
ANUS was savagely attacked) and the RAPIST is going to get a free pass because he was under
NO ONES JURISDICTION ???

Got a LTE in my local rag this week. I wasn't as graphic, but I didn't take any prisoners either...

http://www.townonline.com/lynnfield/news/opinion/nss_letnschristinam05212004.htm

You sure said a mouthfull. My diatribe is meant mainly for the pukes who show up here from time to time and defend the Chimpanzee and his war on terra---

Keep the posts coming.

Just doin my job...

hopefully, many others will follow your example and STAND UP to write letters to their local papers too....and their congressional reps, and call in on TV and radio...and STAND UP in protests....

this torture can only be stopped if all Americans STAND UP...nobody yet knows what is happening in bush*'s prisons today...nobody has provided medical and mental health counseling to the victims...many victims have simply been dumped in the desert, hundreds of miles from their homes...

BIG nationwide protests are on June 5th....come join us....

http://www.Internationalanswer.org

Thanks for writing that up - second time I've read it, and it's just as awesome the second time.

LTTE. Hope a lot of people will think it over, and maybe a few minds will be pried open a bit.

Glad to have read it.

Wow. I'm printing this out. Great job. :toast:

Well done. I'm glad it was published.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4937309-103677,00.html
An exquisite danger

John Negroponte's record in Honduras does not inspire confidence about his appointment as US ambassador to Iraq
Duncan Campbell
Wednesday June 2, 2004

The Guardian
Suspicious deaths in custody. Allegations of torture. Claims of a military out of control. These are some of the key issues that will face John Negroponte, US ambassador to the United Nations, when he takes over this month as US ambassador to Iraq.

Suspicious deaths in custody. Allegations of torture. Claims of a military out of control. Those were some of the key issues that faced John Negroponte 20 years ago when he was US ambassador to Honduras. So it is worth examining how he reacted then when faced with evidence of extra-judicial killings, torture and human rights abuses.

Central America in the early 80s was, for a few years, the centre of the world in much the way that the Middle East now is. There had been a revolution in Nicaragua in which a dictator had been removed by the Sandinistas, who had then embarked on a political path that was anathema to the US.

The country became a magnet for the international left, who saw hopeful signs in the revolution. El Salvador and Guatemala were in turmoil as leftwing guerrillas battled with the military in their efforts to overturn years of military oppression and corruption. In those days the enemy, as far as the US was concerned, was international communism rather than al-Qaida, but the rhetoric of "good" versus "evil" took a similar pattern to today's
(snip)

...if you were an Iraqi? I would be attempting to kill every American I could. I'm not saying that is the correct thing to do I'm saying that is the NATURAL thing to do.

How could we forget something so simple as; Do unto others......

Because of the Bush Administration we are ALL war criminals because we as Americans let this happen. I don't care who you voted for, when Bush was selected by the supreme court and we stood by and let it happen. We didn't take to the streets we hardly protested at all. Yes I'm guilty and ashamed to admit I'm part of the problem. A comfortable middle class life style has purchased my soul as the "devil" never could. The question now is, what can be done about it, What am I, can I, do? That is always the question.

I have to thank you for putting this up.

This makes me sick and its worse to know that we are shrugging off the blame as it being nobodys responsibility. Once they plant the Ray-Gun, maybe we can get back to trying to get the media to focus on whats been happening.

For our Freeper visitors:

Every time an IED goes off and kills a few of our men, a sniper takes out one of our soldiers etc. Think of these pictures and and the horror coming out of that prison and ask yourself if the Iraqis are justified. We asked for it, we got it.

He tells the truth just the truth.

Some people will choose to close their eyes or look away.
Get that out of here!
How dare you show the ugly truth
We just want to see the nice torture

That's not gonna change anything


Thanks saigon68

Saigon is sickened to the CORE as are most of us about the vile Bush-sanctioned, Bush-supporter-accepted torture.

Shhhh, don't talk about it; shhhh, don't leak the photos; shhhhh, shhhh, shhhhh. The people who need this cooled are those who supported the war and that's a favor we simply cannot do for them. We can't & I won't help Bush cover up his crimes and lower the tone from "torture" to "abuse" which seems to so easily confused with a garden party in the mind of the war apologists and simple-minded uninformed people in this country who aren't quite as fixated with the news as we are. I want them to know that rectums were savaged over there with broom-sticks, lightbulbs, night-sticks and human appendages.

Bush is going down and his supporters are going to be branded as the most evil, knowing apologists- even worse than the Germans who could at least claim that they didn't know because they didn't have pictures and graphic depictions plastered all over the place. I won't allow America to have that 'excuse'; I want every church-going hypocrite (emphasis on hypocrite not on church-going) to graphically understand the depth of the evil they supported and are still apologizing for. I want every young person in this country to understand what hatred is burning in the heart of abused Iraqis so that they won't sit around wailing like the Israelis when the suicide bombers show up.

There's nothing to cool when people are OUTRAGED & ANGRY about it; no detail is too graphic to wake people up as to what was done in their good name.

==

Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word - tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say.

These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. <snip>

<snip>

... what we do now, in reaction to Abu Ghraib will determine a great deal about who we are at the beginning of the 21st century.

<snip>

http://www.moveon.org/pac/gore-rumsfeld-transcript.html

The reason these war criminals get away with their lying, murderous treason is twofold: the criminally-insane supporters who worship b*sh as the false idol he is, and the wishy-washy "oh, it's too terrible to think about, I don't want to hear about it, let's watch Survivor instead" fools who fail to realize that they are helping to sign their own death warrant.

Do they not realize that the men and women who did these things at the behest of their fascist leaders will eventually return to America, where they will help install and run the police state so salivated over by the right-wing neonazis and their Talibornagain Religious Reich comrades?

Can they really expect to ride the waves, unnoticed and unharmed, until it "all blows over"?

Are they truly that willfully blind?

Sadly, I think yes.

I can understand that this makes you uncomfortable - it makes ANYONE with a functioning conscience uncomfortable - but it's out there, and it's not going to be any better if you ignore it.

We need to know, and see, what has been done in our name. It seems pictures and video are all that really impact Americans as a whole these days, with functional illiteracy being as high as it is in this country.

I'm concerned that these are being leaked in a progressively worse pattern on purpose, to inoculate the public as more and more atrocities come out.

It's the same tactic the Nazis employed when they couldn't cover up their atrocities. It's called a limited hangout, and it usually works like a charm. This is why everything must be released at once, and the criminals responsible, all the way up and down the chain, held accountable.

Again, I know it's a disturbing topic, but ignoring or denying the torture only makes it easier for it to keep happening and get even worse.

we could well lose our momentum. Clearly, the general public doesn't wabnt this issue in its face.

The general public isn't being given a choice in the matter and you know it. You want to see whether the public wants to see it anymore? Put the whole mess on a website, to be viewed or downloaded and let them decide. Can you say server crash? Sure you can.

It will help me tailor my answer ;)

. . . so, would you want *our* soldiers treated that way in Iraqi prisons?

Watch the military moms rise up on that one.

Better than getting their head chopped off.

I really don't like the way these pictures are coming out.

After all, posing naked and touching other men - why, it'll turn 'em GAY, and there's nothing worse than that!

After all it was their idea to arrest Berg and their idea to break into Chalabi's office. I'm sure it was their idea to torture inmates at Abu Gahriab as well.

RC

Outsourcing War Crimes

This photo depicts an interrogation in process. The wrongdoer in the
white chair is a translator and I think the spherical object on the floor
near the top was thrown at the detainees. There is another photo not
shown that shows the object suspended in the air after it was thrown.

It was sick. It showed a guy being strapped down on a board and held upside down with a cloth over his face. Then a bucket of water is poured on his face to "simulate drowning."

He said the military never really used this in Cuba, they just had a memo from Rummy saying it was okay if they wanted to.

:nuke:

Rummy's a sadist. Clinically speaking.

That piece on CBS was disgusting

I think they are leaking these photos as they are to help acclimate us to the torture.

My greatest, most horrible fear is that Americans will eventually see the pictures/videos of rape and/or murder - and shrug.

"Nothing new there. What do you expect? It's war."

That way lies genocide.

Lawrence Di Rita, a spokesman for the Defense Department, characterized the missing documents Wednesday as insignificant, saying the information was “available otherwise.”

see this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x584788

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5265848

By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Wednesday opened the door to withdrawing protection of the Geneva Conventions from foreign fighters captured in Iraq despite a scandal over abuse of Iraqi prisoners by the U.S. military.

There is no intention to change the U.S. policy of treating all captives in Iraq under the conventions, Defense Department spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told reporters, but U.S. government lawyers are studying the issue.

...more...

am having a hard time determining just what his position is - is he part and parcel of this torture thing in that he has been writing supporting papers?

on the NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski video on MSNBC.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

Liars!

The probe is nearing an end at the same time that the Pentagon is being asked to clarify what role Boykin may have played in creating U.S. military interrogation policy. This comes amid a scandal over the abuse of prisoners in Iraq (news - web sites) and criticism by human rights groups of operations at a prison for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.


Di Rita said that "I think we've exhaustively concluded" that the interrogation procedures used in Iraq "were done in theater and approved in theater," not by officials at the Pentagon like Boykin.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040526/us_nm/iraq_usa_boykin_dc&cid=1896&ncid=1480

Main Entry: 1or·gan·ic
Pronunciation: or-'ga-nik
Function: adjective
1 archaic : INSTRUMENTAL
2 a : of, relating to, or arising in a bodily organ b : affecting the structure of the organism
3 a (1) : of, relating to, or derived from living organisms (2) : of, relating to, yielding, or involving the use of food produced with the use of feed or fertilizer of plant or animal origin without employment of chemically formulated fertilizers, growth stimulants, antibiotics, or pesticides <organic farming> <organic produce> b (1) : of, relating to, or containing carbon compounds (2) : relating to, being, or dealt with by a branch of chemistry concerned with the carbon compounds of living beings and most other carbon compounds
4 a : forming an integral element of a whole : FUNDAMENTAL <incidental music rather than organic parts of the action -- Francis Fergusson> b : having systematic coordination of parts : ORGANIZED <an organic whole> c : having the characteristics of an organism : developing in the manner of a living plant or animal <society is organic>
5 : of, relating to, or constituting the law by which a government or organization exists


The only one that makes ANY fucking sense is: "forming an integral element of a whole"

In other words, it was critically important or necessary for an understanding of the report

These guys are simply beyond belief.

Lawrence Di Rita is Acting Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. In addition, he serves as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense. He joined the Department after serving as Legislative Director, then Chief of Staff, for Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) from 1996-2001.

A former Naval officer, Mr. Di Rita served in several ships and shore assignments before leaving the service in 1994. His final tour was on the Joint Staff.

After leaving the Navy, Mr. Di Rita joined the Washington-based Heritage Foundation in 1994 as Deputy Director of Foreign Policy and Defense Studies.

Originally from Detroit, Michigan, Mr. Di Rita is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and Johns Hopkins University.

http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/asdpa_bio.html

One that sort-of-normal people step into and come out robotic neocons with nearly identical brains?

You know that jerk-off Smirk will soon start running as an "outsider" again. I'm really a Texan, I'm not an insider. Yet every single person in this administration went through HF or AEI. All insiders.

YOU UGLY SON OF A PRESIDENT...YOU ARE THE ULTIMATE INSIDER!!

http://www.heritage.org/

and here's their intership program

http://www.heritage.org/About/Internships/index.cfm

The Heritage Foundation Internship Program
Established 1979

Heritage takes great interest in young conservative minds, and we are pleased to consider you a member of this important group. The Heritage Foundation seeks interns year-round, though more opportunities are available during the summer.

Students can apply to intern in the following departments: Accounting, Asian Studies, Center for American Studies, Center for Data Analysis, Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, Coalition Relations, Communications and Marketing, Development, Domestic Policy, the Executive Offices, External Relations, Foreign Policy, Government Relations, Information Systems, Lectures and Seminars, Online Communications, Personnel, Publishing Services, Special Events, and Townhall.com.

They are fascists, through and through!!! And, they keep getting away with the stonewalling and bullshitting and ultra vires actions and cover-ups.

This is just totally insane!!!

I'm not afraid of "terrorists". I'm afraid of these freakin dictators clothed in the garments of an executive branch gone crazy.

I'm not afraid of "terrorists". I'm afraid of these freakin dictators clothed in the garments of an executive branch gone crazy.

When more than half the population actively fears its government, no Republic can long stand.

And I'm one member of that half. I fear "al Qaeda" less than my own government. And I initially rallied behind these fucking traitors after 9/11!

That's how far gone this country is. That's how truly dangerous this situation has become.

That's why I feel America is dying.

We can`t hide behind the excuse that airing these photos and videos will endanger our troops. They`re already in danger because of Bush`s morally bankrupt first-strike policy and his band of dangerous evildoers.

Find the speech Gore gave today and listen to it. Either we really stand for something or we don`t.

- That's not for the defense department to determine. What the hell? Is this some sort of military dictatorship that can arbitrarily withhold documents from our representatives?

The Bush administration reminds me of the limbless trunk from Monty Pythobn, threatening us from the ground.

and the EXCUSE that it will endanger our troops or our standing in the world is moot now.

The witnzesses have left the building (Abu Ghraib) and they are now waitiing to see if our Open Society makes those who ordered these horrors pay for them.

Paging the whole neo con brigade and the enablers

.. the letters to the editor this week were dominated by people saying that the abuse was nothing compared to the murdering ways of the Islamic people (they actually wrote that!), and one writer compared it to the horrors of WWI and WWII, making it insignificant in the writer's eyes. Another wrote that the left-wing, "Bush haters" in the media are blowing it out of proportion because they hate Bush so much and want him out. Lots of really, really bright people out there with pencils and paper, I guess. Oh, one brought up the mercenaries that were killed in Fallujah, as brave, American heroes, and wrote that the abuse was nothing compared to that. Another said it was nothing more than standard interrogation methods, (i.e. sleep and food deprivation), so big deal! ALmost all the letters called those that speak out against the abuse "America haters". It was as if these letters were solicited, or coordinated. It was despicable to read these stupid, stupid letters...

human beings are failiing to STAND UP...while reTHUGlicans are all standing up together to condone the torture....

this is exactly what happened in nazi Germany....

nobody spoke up.....and then, the authorities were greatly empowered to do MORE...and if we continue our silence, then it will get much worse, for those in other countries and FOR US !!!




I'll be writing a letter this week to my local paper....and I live in a real reTHUGlican area in Virginia...also, I'll be marching PRO-Peace on June 5th in DC

here's info on the Pro-Peace rallies...DC, SF and Los Angeles are the main cities...but many other cities and towns are setting up their own local marches...June 5

http://www.InternationalANSWER.org

THEY CAME

In Germany, the Nazis first came for the Communists, and I did not speak up because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, but I did not speak up because I was not a Jew.
And then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak up
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, but I was a Protestant, so I did not speak up.
And then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for anyone.

To make sure this does not happen again, the injustice to anyone anywhere must be the concern of everyone everywhere.

Quoted by Martin Niemoller

Lie, Steal, Murder, rape, torture, sodomize. :)

Although "lie" should always be in first position...
;)

I want to read "The Road Less Traveled" someday. I think that's the book that talks about "The people of the lie". Another name for the GOP.

These people are doing what they're told by their leaders, as usual.

Again, the leadership goes right to the top.

Our brave chickenhawks are instructing Rush, et al to get the word out, send out the e-mails, saying exactly this.

It's probably the most disgusting thing I've ever seen my countrymen do in my 42 years of life as an American.

If I'm not mistaken, posters here are missing the main point of the story, which is not the brutality of the interrogation (which of course is bad enough), but that *MP's are involved*:

"Sources told NBC News that some of the men in the photos were U.S. military intelligence officers who appeared to be directing the interrogation. One of the men identified as a military intelligence officer appears to have thrown an unidentified object at the prisoners."

This appears to be a smoking gun, so much so that the Whitehouse has alredy thought of an excuse:

"NBC News’ Robert Windrem reported from New York that the prisoners were being interrogated in connection with the shooting of a military police sergeant by a detainee, not as part of an intelligence interview.

"That could suggest that the interrogation session was not representative of normal tactics used at the prison, where hundreds of photographs and video clips have depicted U.S. guards abusing and sexually humiliating Iraqi"

In other words, the Pentagon is not even denying that MP's are involved!

In addition, the missing pages from the Taguba report indicate another possible huge scandal. According to the article, the missing pages indicate that Miller, the former head of Guntanamo, gave directions for the torture.

If this is the case, the Bush administration should find itself in a huge scandal. The pentagon directed torture, and now it tried to cover it up.

http://inteldump.powerblogs.com/files/wolfowitz.bmp
Who is that we see in the picture?
How are they going to spin it that the Pentagon aren't involved?
More info here:
http://www.intel-dump.com/

Seems that photos are being chosen to keep the most horrid ones 'till last. By that time most people are desensatized, so the most horrible won't seem "so bad". Bushco, The Pentagon, Congress and the Media are in complicity to keep a lid on this because it could topple Bushco before the election. These are War Crimes, not merely "abuse" and they were sanctioned from the top down not merely a "few bad apples" and isolated events. It is system wide and scantioned. That is the Cover Up!

The other part of this is the Muslim world view of the US, which was already negative. Now it will be rabidly negative.

Fascism doesn't work as well in the Information Age.

the Germans were able to say that they didn’t know what had been happening. Maybe they did know; they knew enough to keep quite. But they could say that they didn’t know, and we had to give them the benefit of the doubt.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04148/322501.stm

The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and the existence of photographs of them being maltreated were known to many others beyond the seven members of the 372nd Military Police Company charged so far in the scandal, documents obtained by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette indicate.

Many of the documents, which come from a probe by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, also appear to support the contention of the six MPs currently facing charges that military intelligence officers directed the company to "soften up" detainees prior to interrogations. The seventh MP, Spc. Jeremy Sivits of Hyndman, Bedford County, pleaded guilty last week.

And some documents also raise the possibility that others, military and contracted civilian personnel alike, were involved with or witnessed abuse.

<snip>

A civilian screener at Abu Ghraib said he was told of physical abuse by coalition forces who weren't American soldiers. Another civilian linguist also said "many of the Iraqi detainees are claiming they are being hit, touched, beaten up" by Iraqi police in the presence of coalition forces.

<snip>

Spc. Sabrina Harman, who like England has yet to have her Article 32 hearing, which is akin to a civilian preliminary hearing, told investigators she took two compact disks of digital photos from Abu Ghraib home for a visit and did not believe what happened there was wrong.

So that means friends of hers have presumably seen this pictures, why else would she take them home?

And these people said nothing?

GUY: "Oh man, Sabrina is gonna have another one of her slideshows tonight. Man, what a bore."

SLOB: "Yeah, not nearly enough rape for my taste."

GUY: "What do you mean, not enough rape? There was all kinds of rape. Men, women, children. Animals, even!"

SLOB: "Guess I missed those, I fell asleep during that boring set with the shit-covered guy. God, I hate looking at people's vacation photos."

Hey JOURNALISTS! Find her friends/family. Betcha there are copies. FIND THE COPIES.

Totally nauseating!!!!!!!!

Rumsfeld needs to be fired.

...this regime in the White House has painted our collective face with those photographs.

If the current terror threats aren't just a fear tactic to boost Dubya's ratings and keep people in fear, then I'm not surprised that al Queda - and the rest of the world for that matter - are out for US blood.

George bu$h in his 'war on terra', has naught but handed Islamic extremeists and other world terrorists (those BESIDES us, that is) the best recruiting tools they could have *ever* hoped for in these photographs - not to mention our collective US heads on a silver platter.

To say bu$h is a FAILURE hardly touches on the damage he's done to this country and this country's image worldwide. He's put us in MORE danger than ever. He's elicted the hatred of more people in the world against us than ever - EVEN people who were previously enemies (the Sunnis and Shiites) have united against us.

We can't STOP TERRORISM WHEN *WE* ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM...how many dogdamned braincells does it TAKE to know that or to figure it out? More than the collective bu$hit cabal has, apparently.

The Photographs ARE US...like it or not - that is how George the W and his Iraq debacle has painted us in the eyes of the world.

It doesn't matter how much bu$hit manages to pin - in typical Republican scapegoat fashion - these abuses on a few privates who were only following their superior's orders (approval for which came ultimately from the bu$h White House).

The World sees those photos - they think "US". That's all that matters. That's it. George and Dickhead can try to pin the blame and point fingers all they want, but bottom line:

The Photographs Are US...and that, in the end, is all there is.

I can't even describe how disgusted and embarassing this is to me, as an American. It almost makes me PUKE.

Let the world know that the country is divided. The left and the right. One good (Dem) one evil (Gop) who HATE each other. Them we can get the world to help us get at the real problem (corporate USA) Can you imagine an organized global boycott of anything American. Wall Street would shit their pants. All you'd have to do is shave off 15% of their profits and the GOP is history. Target the big names Wal Mart, Coke, McDonalds, and anything with the word American in it. People all over the world could pull their money out of American owned banks. Sell dollars buy Euros. Send big business a message. Vote GOP= go bankrupt. Brand the conservative with the torture photos. Make them about right-wing values. We all know the only thing a Republican cares about is profit. Make them pay. (literally)

The RATs might get jumpy but we know where to get RAT traps.

They are very jumpy now, that's why need a war of Terra and all the rest of their hyped up bull.

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/conspiracytheories/saudi.html

CONSPIRACY OR COINCIDENCE?
Is it a conspiracy or a coincidence? There is a long and tangled history between the Bush family and the elite of Saudi Arabia.


There are many business and connections between the Bush family and the elite of Saudi Arabia.

It begins in the 1970's in Houston, Texas, when George W. Bush was just starting out in his family's two businesses of politics and oil. The powerful - and very rich - Bin Laden family helped fund his first venture into oil.

The cozy friendship continued for decades. After a terrorist attack at a barracks in Saudi Arabia which killed 19 Americans, the bin Laden family received a multi-billion dollar contract to re-build. And incredibly, George Bush Sr. was in a business meeting at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington on the morning of September 11th with one of Osama Bin Laden's brothers.

Below is a timeline that details the relationship between the Bin Laden and Bush families that culminates in the tragic events of September 11th.

1968
George W. Bush joins the Texas Air National Guard, a coveted position that ensures he doesn’t have to serve in Vietnam. While a member of the Guard, Bush meets and befriends Jim Bath, a former Air Force pilot and budding entrepreneur.
(snip)

Congressional sources told NBC News that the missing documents included a written report from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller that apparently lays out aggressive interrogation tactics for Abu Ghraib. Miller was recently reassigned to Iraq after spending 17 months as commander of operations at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Also missing was key testimony from Col. Thomas Pappas, the commander of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib, the sources said.

Lawrence Di Rita, a spokesman for the Defense Department, characterized the missing documents Wednesday as insignificant, saying the information was “available otherwise.”

INSIGNIFICANT!?!?!?! 'AVAILABLE OTHERWISE'!?!!?!?!?!?

THEY DO AND SAY THIS RIGHT IN OUR FACE

THEY STEAL$$$$$$$$FROM US RIGHT IN OUR FACE

move along

http://www.afsc.org/human-face/corres_journal/entries/20040509.htm
The Black Hole of War

As we pass the anniversary of President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” declaration, the people of the United States are beginning to recognize our commonality with the Iraqi people as casualties and victims of war.

Administration officials, downplaying the absence of weapons of mass destruction, suggest that the preemptive war was waged to rid Iraq of tyranny and restore democracy and human rights. In the meantime, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) has set up headquarters in the palaces of the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein and has taken control of Iraq’s precious oil resources and finances. Coalition forces have taken over the administration of Iraq’s prisons, including the infamous torture chambers of Abu Ghraib.

Revelations of systemic torture, persecution, and humiliation in coalition-run prisons have shaken the world.

In public testimony, t he U.S. Army has admitted to the Senate that there was evidence of extensive abuse of prisoners in military-run jails in Iraq. The U.S. public and the Congress were seemingly kept in the dark. According to the Associated Press, t here have been twenty-five recorded deaths of prisoners under military custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. Army personnel, in contravention of humanitarian international law, have routinely held persons without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even giving the reason for their detention.
Broken beyond repair

"The system works," insists Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Ask most Iraqis and they’ll assure you that the system is broken and can’t be fixed. Rumsfeld said the buck stops with him. Iraqis may well prefer that the buck stop at the International Court of Justice, and might suggest that Rumsfeld seek God’s mercy rather than offering feeble apologies to Iraq’s families long after the facts were known.
(snip)

Now Hiring: Park rangers, interrogators
Commentary: The wacky world of government contracts

By Michael Collins, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 1:07 PM ET May 28, 2004

ARLINGTON, VA (CBS.MW) -- We learned this week that civilian interrogators used by the Army at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad were hired under a Department of the Interior contract for information technology.

Yes, the Interior Department, best known for running the national parks, apparently has a side business administering contracts for other government agencies. And under what is known as a "blanket purchase agreement" for the government to buy technology services from CACI International of Arlington (CAI: news, chart, profile), the Army was able to order up prison interrogators.

Welcome to the wild, wacky world of government contracting.

It's strange enough that Iraq intelligence gathering is contracted out to the private sector, and even stranger that Baghdad prison interrogators are working under an Interior Department technology contract. But what really bothers me is this type of thing is not that uncommon, and it's seen as "efficiency" in the federal government.

It's hard for an outsider to see what's efficient about the complex web of government contracting. I'm sure it made sense, to someone, for the Army to ask a technology company to hire interrogators -- but to me it seems like going to a lumber yard to buy a computer.

Now that the deal is public, the government has ordered investigations.

Interior Department spokesman Frank Quimby said Tuesday the department's inspector general wants to find out if it was proper to hire interrogators under an information technology contract. He was speaking on a conference call, so we don't know if he was able to keep a straight face.

http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7BF8607265-F5F6-4E14-BFBB-4C9039DE6CE1%7D&siteid=google&dist=google



Telltale Signs of Torture Lead Family to Demand Answers

Wife, Daughters Tell of Iraqi Man Discharged from U.S. Custody in Coma
by Dahr Jamail (bio)
Brian Dominick (bio) contributed to this item.

Editor's Note: Part of the following feature story was first reported by Baghdad correspondent Dahr Jamail back in January, when almost no one was paying attention to stories of the horrifying treatment dealt to Iraqi prisoners by their Western captors. Now that the world has deemed the topic newsworthy, Jamail has returned to the story for more thorough coverage. As part of our mission to The NewStandard will continue to pursue this and other stories like it in the near future. As any Iraq correspondent who speaks with Iraqis can attest, there is no shortage of them.


Baghdad , May 4 - Not all evidence of military personnel mistreating Iraqis held in US custody come from leaks within the American- and British-run detention facilities. In many cases, such as that of Sadiq Zoman, 57, who last year entered US custody healthy but left in a vegetative state, the story originates with family members desperate to share their loved one’s story with anyone willing to listen.

American soldiers detained Zoman at his residence in Kirkuk on July 21, 2003 when they raided the Zoman family home in search of weapons and, apparently, to arrest Zoman himself.

More than a month later, on August 23, US soldiers dropped Zoman off, already comatose, at a hospital in Tikrit. Although he was unable to recount his story, his body bore telltale signs of torture: what appear to be point burns on his skin, bludgeon marks on the back of his head, a badly broken thumb, electrical burns on the soles of his feet. Additionally, family members say they found whip marks across his back and more electrical burns on his genitalia.







Daughter Rheem stated, "My father is a good man who helped so many people in our community. Why have they done this to him? Can you tell me? Everyone who knows him can say that he did so many good things to help people."

With tears in her eyes, Hashima Zoman added, "Is it fair for any man's family to be made to suffer like this? Is it right that his daughters must see him like this? Our lives will never be the same again, no matter what happens."


http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=275 .







Follow Torture Trail at Abu Ghraib

The actual interrogators accused of encouraging U.S. troops to abuse Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail were working for at least one company with extensive military and commercial contacts with Israel. The head of an American company whose personnel are implicated in the Iraqi tortures, it now turns out, attended an "anti-terror" training camp in Israel and, earlier this year, was presented with an award by Shaul Mofaz, the right-wing Israeli defense minister.

According to J.P. London's company, CACI International, the visit of London -- sponsored by an Israeli lobby group and including U.S. congressmen and other defense contractors -- was "to promote opportunities for strategic partnerships and joint ventures between U.S. and Israeli defense and homeland security agencies."

The Pentagon and the occupation powers in Iraq insist that only U.S. citizens have been allowed to question prisoners in Abu Ghraib but this takes no account of Americans who may also hold double citizenship. The once secret torture report by U.S. Gen. Antonio Taguba refers to "third country nationals" involved in the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq.

Taguba mentions Steven Staphanovic and John Israel as involved in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Staphanovic, who worked for CACI -- known to the U.S. military as "Khaki" -- was said by Taguba to have "allowed and/or instructed MPs (military police), who were not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by 'setting conditions' ... he clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse." One of Staphanovic's co-workers, Joe Ryan -- who was not named in the Taguba report -- now says he underwent an "Israeli interrogation course" before going to Iraq.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0526-05.htm

"John Israel" from earlier posts

finecraft

Abu Ghraib civilian interrogator's diary online


From Billmon (http://billmon.org ) - "Bernhard, a Whiskey Bar reader in Germany, has made a spectacular catch - or cache, I should say, since it comes from the bowels of the Google data base.

What he stumbled across is the diary of one Joe Ryan, a frequent caller and on-air personality at station KSTP, a conservative talk radio station in Minneapolis. More recently, Joe has been serving as a military interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and KSTP has been posting his diary on their web site."

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:XYYOCOWnu_8J:www.am1500.com/perso ...

orthogonal

Here's a bit of that diary that gives me pause

From that diary link: "CW3 Dan Adkins said to the television, 'kill 1,000 for every hostage killed. No need to discriminate either.'"

Much as I wholeheartedly support our troops, I have to be honest and say that this idea of mass reprisals -- and without discrimination, which apparently means just rounding up insurgents or civilians -- for the deaths of American troops reminded me of this:

In some occupied areas in which the Nazis had to contend with well organized and active guerrilla units, they applied a simple rule: they would massacre one hundred nearby civilians for every German soldier killed; fifty for every one wounded. Often this was a minimum that might be doubled or tripled. They thus killed vast numbers of innocent peasants and townsfolk, possibly as many as 8,000 in Kraguyevats, 1,755 in Kraljevo, and overall 80,000 in Jajinci, to name just in a few places in Yugoslavia alone. Most executions were small in number, but day by day they added up. From an official German war diary: 16 December 1942, "In Belgrade, 8 arrests, 60 Mihailovich supporters shot;" 27 December, "In Belgrade, 11 arrests, 250 Mihailovich supporters shot as retaliation." A German placard from Belgrade announced that the Nazis shot fifty hostages in retaliation for the dynamiting of a bridge. On 25 May 1943 the Nazis shot 150 hostages in Kraljevo; in October they shot 150 hostages in Belgrade; fifty hostages in Belgrade in August 1943; 150 Serbs at Cacak in October; and so on. In Greece, as another example, the Nazis may have burned and destroyed as many as 1,600 villages each with populations of 500 to 1,000 people, no doubt massacring many of the inhabitants beforehand. Overall, the Nazis thus slaughtered hundreds of thousands in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Greece, and France; and millions overall in Poland and the Soviet Union.

(from: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NAZIS.CHAP1.HTM )

NewYorkerfromMass

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=888

from: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&ie=ascii&q=torture+Iraq+p ...

Nordic65

Civilian interrogator at your service...

Wow, talk about spilling their beans...

#1 - Evidence from the horses mouth. No mention of any military involvement thou.

"I worked the guy from the Ar Ramadi area again tonight. I got home about 3:00am after writing reports and putting together the associations with the others in his group. It was great because my guy knows where the forged citizenship papers are made and by who and the real names and origins of the other detainees captured with him. It is hard for the other guys to lie when I already know all about their backgrounds, but they sure are trying."

#2 - Anyone associated with this prisoner can just log on the net and take the necessary precautions - very unprofessional and bordering on giving information to enemy. Of course he's a civilian and probably cannot be charged with treason.

"My smuggler friend just keeps on talking. I have nick-named him Han Solo since he is a smuggler extraordinaire. I have received information regarding the entire network from start to finish on how foreign fighters are coming into Iraq; who is paying for it; how they communicate; how they get their weapons once here; and how they move to their target locations. This will never make the papers, but it sure is exciting to know the information."


THIS IS BAD!

Tinoire

About these 3rd party nationals

<snip>

Speculation that "John Israel" may be an intelligence cover name has fueled speculation whether this individual could have been one of a number of Israeli interrogators hired under a classified contract. Because U.S. citizenship and documentation thereof are requirements for a U.S. security clearance, Israeli citizens would not be permitted to hold a Top Secret clearance. However, dual U.S.-Israeli citizens could have satisfied Pentagon requirements that interrogators hold U.S. citizenship and a Top Secret clearance. Although the Taguba report refers twice to Israel as an employee of Titan, the company claims he is one of their sub-contractors. CACI stated that one of the men listed in the report "is not and never has been a CACI employee" without providing more detail. A U.S. intelligence source revealed that in the world of intelligence "carve out" subcontracts such confusion is often the case with "plausible deniability" being a foremost concern.

In fact, the Taguba report does reference the presence of non-U.S. and non-Iraqi interrogators at Abu Ghraib. The report states, "In general, US civilian contract personnel (Titan Corporation, CACI, etc), third country nationals, and local contractors do not appear to be properly supervised within the detention facility at Abu Ghraib."

The Pentagon is clearly concerned about the outing of the Taguba report and its references to CACI, Titan, and third country nationals, which could permanently damage U.S. relations with Arab and Islamic nations. The Pentagon's angst may explain why the Taguba report is classified Secret No Foreign Dissemination.

<snip>

During his testimony before the Senate Armed Service Committee, Rumsfeld was pressed upon by Senator John McCain about the role of the private contractors in the interrogations and abuse. McCain asked Rumsfeld four pertinent questions, ". . . who was in charge? What agency or private contractor was in charge of the interrogations? Did they have authority over the guards? And what were the instructions that they gave to the guards?" When Rumsfeld had problems answering McCain's question, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the Deputy Commander of the U.S. Central Command, said there were 37 contract interrogators used in Abu Ghraib. The two named contractors, CACI and Titan, have close ties to the Israeli military and technology communities. Last January 14, after Provost Marshal General of the Army, Major General Donald Ryder, had already uncovered abuse at Abu Ghraib, CACI's President and CEO, Dr. J.P. (Jack) London was receiving the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah's Albert Einstein Technology award at the Jerusalem City Hall, with right-wing Likud politician Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski in attendance. Oddly, CACI waited until February 2 to publicly announce the award in a press release. CACI has also received grants from U.S.-Israeli bi-national foundations.

Titan also has had close connections to Israeli interests. After his stint as CIA Director, James Woolsey served as a Titan director. Woolsey is an architect of America's Iraq policy and the chief proponent of and lobbyist for Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. An adviser to the neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, Project for the New American Century, Center for Security Policy, Freedom House, and Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Woolsey is close to Stephen Cambone, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, a key person in the chain of command who would have not only known about the torture tactics used by U.S. and Israeli interrogators in Iraq but who would have also approved them. Cambone was associated with the Project for the New American Century and is viewed as a member of Rumsfeld's neo-conservative "cabal" within the Pentagon.

<snip>

http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen05102004.html

Steven Staphanovic we were talking about him before but his name was spelled differently and some did not know if it was the same person. Would you happen to know another spelling or the thread from awhile back? There was some good stuff there.


PaDUer

Steven Stefanowicz


http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11776879&BRD=2185&PAG=461&de ...

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11776865&BRD=2185&PAG=461&de ...

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11776867&BRD=2185&PAG=461&de ...

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11776869&BRD=2185&PAG=461&de ...

seemslikeadream

Diary of an interrogator: After a tough day's questioning, a relaxing evening of jail-roof golf

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
09 May 2004

Among the golfers is a civilian accused by a US Army report of being "directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse" at the prison. The diary also reveals the pressure on interrogators and the extremely right-wing views of some.

Joe Ryan, a former Green Beret working in Abu Ghraib for CACI International, a defence IT contractor, had been keeping the diary for a conservative talk-show radio station in Minneapolis, KSTP 1500. The diary was posted on the station's website until, Mr Ryan said, military authorities requested its removal. On 25 April, Mr Ryan wrote: "We have foreign fighters from Morocco, Syria, Jordan, and other countries detained here. They are not sponsored by their respective countries to come here, but it is due to their individual choices, be it religious or stupidity ... I got to take the rest of the day off after our long booth time. This gave us a nice evening after dinner to head to the roof and play a round of golf.

"Scott Norman, Jeff Mouton, Steve Hattabaugh, Steve Stefanowicz, and I all took turns trying to hit balls over the back wall and on to the highway. Since the club is a left-handed 3 iron, I had an unfair advantage and missed a dump truck by only about 10 feet ... We do what we can to make it fun here."

Mr Stefanowicz, 35, a former naval reserve officer also employed by Arlington-based CACI International as an interrogator, became a reservist in the aftermath of the terror attacks of September 2001. A CACI official said last week that Mr Stefanowicz was "by all accounts doing a damn fine job". But Major General Antonio Taguba, who carried out an investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib, believed Mr Stefanowicz was one of the people "either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib".
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=519434


seemslikeadream

Joe in his own words

Anyway, here's Joe in his own words:

For those of you who do not know my military and civilian background, let me give a little bio to maybe clarify how I look at things while I am here.
I was in Air Force Junior ROTC in high school and went to University of Colorado for two years on Air Force ROTC scholarship. I decided that Aerospace Engineering was not for me and left college.

I enlisted into the Army as a PFC for an interrogator position with an airborne slot. My language wish list consisted of Russian, German, or Spanish. In the army's omnipotence, they chose to send me to the Foreign Service Institute in Washington, DC to learn Swahili. My first assignment was with 3rd Special Forces Group where I was in-processed a whole 13 days prior to going on my first deployment with a team to Uganda. I have spent time in 10 African countries with the teams and earned my "S" identifier after completion of selection and qualifying course for weapons specialist (18B), but was never released by MI branch since I was one of two Swahili linguists in the army, so carried the 18B as a secondary specialty. I went through the DOD Strategic Debriefer Course, Israeli Interrogation Course, and the SCAN Course. In 1994, I went into Haiti with two SF teams into La Cayes on the southern peninsula. After securing our objective, we were informed the invasion was canceled. This meant no further reinforcements for 28 days and forever resentful to the philandering president. In Haiti I performed more than 80 interrogations and conducted the force protection assessments.

Since MI Branch would not release me, I reclassified to 98C (Signals Intelligence Analyst) so I could advance my career. So a Swahili linguist was sent to Korea for a year upon completion of the school. The blessing is that I met my wonderful wife in 98C school and spent the year in Korea with her. I was in charge of the two Trojan Spirit systems for the 2nd Infantry Division.

Needing a desk to try on for size, I went to work for the National Security Agency for the last 17 month of my active duty. As the only military person in the department and the only one to have spent time in Eastern Africa, I had four civilians making MUCH more money than I working for me during the height of the Sudanese civil war.
more
http://billmon.org/archives/001450.html

".....In order to avoid going back to active duty, I signed on with a defense contractor and am now over here as an interrogator."

LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/services/site/premium/access-registered.interce ...

Octafish

Right wing ideologue. Tortures for a living. Plays reckless golf.

The entire man's life is devoted to killing.

Plus, as a civilian contractor, he gives his boss "plausible deniability."

From the article:

Elsewhere he says: "'Wild' Bill Armstrong is one of our interrogators. Bill is married with five kids and a devout Christian, father, and husband ... Politically, Bill makes (the right wing radio host) Rush Limbaugh look like a flaming liberal."

Thanks for finding this article, seemslikeadream! It wasn't in my Sunday paper today.

These fellows are the same as the NAZIs.

"The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were." — John Fitzgerald Kennedy

seemslikeadream

text from the memory hole - JCMach1

JCMach1

Here is the text from the memory hole

http://www.thesyndrome.com/archives/00000856.htm

Octafish
The boy's a right-wing NUTJOB...

... raised on Reagan. The guy makes clear his hatreds, even when they're superior officers. He also blames the media for distorting the picture -- just like Ollie and 'Nam. "We'd a won if it weren't for the pictures in the living rooms." This stuff needs be archived. From the link -- one entry of MANY:

"Meanwhile, While We Were Torturing: Joe Ryan's Iraq Diary (from Abu Ghraib)"

EXCERPT...

I ask that everyone say a prayer or two over the next 48 hours for PFC Keith Maupin, KBR employee Thomas Hamill, and for the Marines in our area. God willing, all three will make the media and give a good story to report for a change. Enough said about that.

Work is fast and furious, but we are more productive right now than we have been since I have been here. Some intelligence things are really coming together and could shift a few things to our advantage, at least west and north of Baghdad. The Al Fallujah situation is being guided by results from the intelligence gleaned from here as well as at their division cage. We are making progress on rooting out foreign fighters as well as those individuals that are helping/hiding them.

Christine Chaney is another of our three CACI females here. She left the army last fall and was actually in the 202nd MI BN that we are working with here. Christine is tall like my sister-in-law, so my posture always improves like when I am around my sister-in-law. She also was in Afghanistan last year with the 202nd and is a fluent Farsi and Pashto linguist in addition to being an experienced interrogator. It is impressive because the three women we have here are all former army and hard chargers. They are more professional and tougher than most of the female soldiers here.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thesyndrome.com/archives/00000856.htm

nolabels

No need for stories we have some real ones

YOU GET EXCATLY WHAT IT SAYS IN THE BROCHURE !

INFACT YOU’LL LIKE IT SO MUCH

YOU WON’T WANT TO GO HOME

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=myspace.chez.tiscali.fr/Large_C ...

Nordic65

Here is the diary...

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:XYYOCOWnu_8J:www.am1500.com/perso ...


seemslikeadream

A few revealing entries from his diary - daleo

daleo A few revealing entries from his diary - hard to read this stuff

Here he is advocating genocide and murdering journalists:

"We watched the Al Jazeera footage of the two American soldiers that are being held hostage. CW3 Dan Adkins said to the television, "kill 1,000 for every hostage killed. No need to discriminate either." We know they were captured right down the road from our location. We also know they are still in the general area. The first thing that needs to happen is to stake every Al Jazeera reporter in the middle of the desert and let the buzzards have them. "

Here he describes a "contractor" who forgets she is not in charge of the soldiers she works with:

"Berryl Jackson is one of the three females we have here. She is a retired Chief Warrant Officer 3. To show you what a small world it is, she was my interrogation instructor when I went through the school 13 years ago. BJ is from Costa Rica originally and is a real character. She sometimes forgets that she is no longer in the military and is not in charge of the soldiers that she works with, but she is a wealth of knowledge and one heck of an interrogator."

Here he is, keeping the Iraqi Governing Council in the dark:

Today was a short day. There were six of us that had to come in early and conduct long interrogations to ensure that certain detainees were only able to be seen, but not talked to. The Iraqi Governing Council came and looked through our mirrors into the booths to see some of the foreign fighters we have detained. They wanted to talk to them and film to show the international media, but we refused, due to not being able to interrupt interrogations. They were much more patient than we thought they would be so they tried to wait us out. Five and a half hours in the booth was a long time, but we finally outlasted them. The IGC left with only the satisfaction that we have foreign fighters from Morocco, Syria, Jordan, and other countries detained here.

Here is a pretty chilling comment given what we now know:

"Christine Chaney is another of our three CACI females here. She left the army last fall and was actually in the 202nd MI BN that we are working with here. Christine is tall like my sister-in-law, so my posture always improves like when I am around my sister-in-law. She also was in Afghanistan last year with the 202nd and is a fluent Farsi and Pashto linguist in addition to being an experienced interrogator. It is impressive because the three women we have here are all former army and hard chargers. They are more professional and tougher than most of the female soldiers here."

http://www.thesyndrome.com/archives/00000856.htm

starroute

More on Steven Stefanowicz

He comes from the next town down the road from me, and the local papers have been full of the story. Here are a couple of links:

http://www.pottstownmercury.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11614603&BRD=1674 ...

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-a1_2abusemay08,0,2804243.story?col ...

seemslikeadream

Telford abuzz about man ID'd in abuse report

By Pervaiz Shallwani
Of The Morning Call
May 9, 2004


Steven Stefanowicz played volleyball and basketball and belonged to student government groups at Souderton Area High School in the late 1980s. Four years ago he joined the Naval Reserve, and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he volunteered for active duty and served in the Middle East.

Now, the 34-year-old from Franconia Township, near Telford, has been named as one of four men who might be responsible for the humiliation and attempted murder of Iraqi prisoners inside the


Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

The allegations are outlined in an Army report that details soldier abuse at the prison between October and December. It lists near-death beatings, electric torture and threats to rape male Iraqi detainees, and mentions a photo of a woman soldier holding a dog chain or strap that's tied around a naked detainee's neck.
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-a1_2abusemay08,0,2804243.story?col

seemslikeadream

Lt. Col. Jerry Phillabaum Steven Stephanowicz

Under suspicion

BETH COHEN , Staff Writer 05/08/2004

Lt. Col. Jerry Phillabaum of Snyder Road in Towamencin was suspended from his duties as commander of the 320th Military Battalion on Jan. 17‚ 2004‚ according to a U.S. Army report on the investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba.
Also named is civilian intelligence contractor Steven Stefanowicz‚ who has been cited in various published reports although there is a discrepancy in the spelling of his last name‚ with it also listed as Stephanowicz.


The U.S. Navy’s Chief of Naval Information Office at the Pentagon in Arlington‚ Va.‚ on Thursday said they had no record of a Steven Stephanowicz‚ but did have records showing that a Steven Anthony Stefanowicz enlisted in the U.S. Navy on Feb. 20‚ 1998.

He became an Intelligence Specialist 3rd Class‚ U.S. Naval Reserve‚ on Feb. 8‚ 2002‚ according to information supplied by Lt. Mike Kafka‚ Navy spokesman. Stefanowicz also received numerous awards‚ ribbons and medals during his service.


Page 29 of Taguba’s 34-page report‚ available at on the Internet at www.politrix.org/foia/iraq/taguba/html ‚ states that Steven Stephanowicz‚ contract U.S. civilian interrogator‚ CACI‚ 205th Military Intelligence Brigade‚ should be officially reprimanded‚ terminated from his Army job‚ and that his his security clearance be revoked based on the following allegations:

“Made a false statement to the investigating team regarding the locations of his interrogations‚ the activities during his interrogations‚ and his knowledge of abuses.”

“Allowed/and or instructed MPs‚ who were not trained in interrogation techniques‚ to facilitate interrogations by ‘setting conditions’ which were neither authorized and in accordance with applicable regulations/policy. He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse.”

http://www.thereporteronline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11615058&BRD=227 ...


saltara

propaganda and/or...

PR literature touting the money to be made "playing golf" and working as an interrogator for the likes of CACI?

"I got to take the rest of the day off after our long booth time. This gave us a nice evening after dinner to head to the roof and play golf." (quote from Whiskey Bar blog - link below)

"Like his military masters, Ryan is also obsessed with the idea that 'foreign fighters' are responsible for the insurgency in Iraq.... In Joe's world, Fallujah is a city held hostage by foreign terrorists - even though the aftermath of the Marines' withdrawal brought jubilant victory celebrations in the streets.... All this raises the unsettling idea that the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were abused and tortured simply so the idiots at the top of this lunatic enterprise could have their own pet theories falsely confirmed."

http://billmon.org/archives/001457.html

Also, here's an interesting quote to ponder from a right-wing source whose name came up in an article written by Justin Raimondo ("The S&M War" on his site antiwar.com). In an article from October 24, 2003, David Leo Gutmann, a professor of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences at "North-Western university Medical School, in Chicago" writes:

"If we are to defeat terror, a kind of regime change is required: on our campuses, in our press, and in Hollywood. And responses to that need, previously silenced voices are being heard. Organizations like Students for Academic Freedom, FIRE, Campus Watch, ACTA and the National Association of Scholars are fighting the good fight for free speech on our thought-policed campuses; and networks like Fox News are providing pulpits for informed conservative opinion on TV. Perhaps most hopeful of all, a lively and uninhibited blogger's Samizdat offers new internet outlets, unmonitored by the Thought Police, for a new generation of gifted commentators who gleefully and intelligently refute the pious orthodoxies of the pro-jihad Left."

"Shame, Honor and Terror in the Middle East"
by David Leo Gutmann
http://frontpagemag.com/articles/Printable.asp?ID=10489

Would Joe's blog do the trick? When did Joe's blog first appear and how widely was it read, quoted, anyone know?

(For more on Gutmann's pet theories and their appearance in a study published by the military, see "The S&M War" on antiwar.com)


seemslikeadream

Steve Stefanowicz

I got to take the rest of the day off after our long booth time. This gave us a nice evening after dinner to head to the roof and play a round of golf. Scott Norman, Jeff Mouton, Steve Hattabaugh, Steve Stefanowicz, and I all took turns trying to hit balls over the back wall and onto the highway. Since the club is a left handed 3 iron, I had an unfair advantage and missed a dump truck by only about ten feet. Not bad since the highway is about 220 yards. We do what we can to make it fun here.

http://www.thesyndrome.com/archives/00000856.htm

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=275 .


seemslikeadream

CHAIN OF COMMAND (Sy Hersh New Yorker 5/17)

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
How the Department of Defense mishandled the disaster at Abu Ghraib.
Issue of 2004-05-17
Posted 2004-05-09
In his devastating report on conditions at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq, Major General Antonio M. Taguba singled out only three military men for praise. One of them, Master-at-Arms William J. Kimbro, a Navy dog handler, should be commended, Taguba wrote, because he “knew his duties and refused to participate in improper interrogations despite significant pressure from the MI”—military intelligence—“personnel at Abu Ghraib.” Elsewhere in the report it became clear what Kimbro would not do: American soldiers, Taguba said, used “military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.”

Taguba’s report was triggered by a soldier’s decision to give Army investigators photographs of the sexual humiliation and abuse of prisoners. These images were first broadcast on “60 Minutes II” on April 28th. Seven enlisted members of the 372nd Military Police Company of the 320th Military Police Battalion, an Army reserve unit, are now facing prosecution, and six officers have been reprimanded. Last week, I was given another set of digital photographs, which had been in the possession of a member of the 320th. According to a time sequence embedded in the digital files, the photographs were taken by two different cameras over a twelve-minute period on the evening of December 12, 2003, two months after the military-police unit was assigned to Abu Ghraib.

more at
http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?040517fa_fact2

http://newyorker.com/online/slideshows/pop/?040510onslpo_prison_02?fal ...


seemslikeadream

Joe Ryan is likely a witness to

maybe an accomplice to multiple felonies. He should be arrested and taken into custody as soon as he enters the U.S

JCMach1
Link to the almost complete WEBLOG

http://www.thesyndrome.com/archives/00000856.htm

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic ...

Barrett808

CACI in the Dark On Reports of Abuse (Employee Still Working in Iraq)

CACI in the Dark On Reports of Abuse
Employee Named in Army Report Still Working in Iraq, Company Says
By Anitha Reddy and Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 6, 2004; Page E01

Officials at CACI International Inc. fought back against allegations that one of its employees was involved in abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, saying that it has not been notified of any problems, that the man is still at work and that he has been doing "a damn fine job."

Clearly exasperated, J.P. "Jack" London, the Arlington-based company's chief executive, said during a conference call Wednesday with investment analysts that he still had not received any information from the government about a report that said a CACI interrogator, an interpreter and two military intelligence officials were probably "either directly or indirectly responsible" for problems at the prison.

"The information we've been getting comes from the news media and there's been plenty of it, as you all know," London said.

For the past few days, CACI has been in the awkward position of defending itself against accusations in a report it has not been given by the Defense Department but which has been widely circulated. To get a copy, CACI downloaded it from the Internet.

(more)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5677-2004May5.html

daleo

Check the invoices, Jack

There must be some "per torture" charges you can look up, to see what your boys were up to. Of course, head office never knows what the field workers are doing. You just sit back and collect the checks.

He and Bush must have taken the same classes at MBA school, the ones about avoiding responsibility and pretending you don't know what your employees actually do.

PaDUer

page 2 of the article...

CACI is among an elite group of Washington area companies that do classified work for the federal government. The company, formed in the 1960s, first caught the government's eye with a computer language it developed that could be used to build battlefield simulation programs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5677-2004May5_2.html

seemslikeadream

Richard Armitage, the current deputy US secretary of state, sat on CACI’s

Edited on Thu May-06-04 10:57 AM by seemslikeadream
But these soldiers aren’t simply mavericks. Some accused claim they acted on the orders of military intelligence and the CIA, and that some of the torture sessions were under the control of mercenaries hired by the US to conduct interrogations. Two “civilian contract” organisations taking part in interrogations at Abu Ghraib are linked to the Bush administration.
California-based Titan Corporation says it is “a leading provider of solutions and services for national security”. Between 2003-04, it gave nearly $40,000 to George W Bush’s Republican Party. Titan supplied translators to the military.
CACI International Inc. describes its aim as helping “America’s intelligence community in the war on terrorism”. Richard Armitage, the current deputy US secretary of state, sat on CACI’s board.
No civilians, however, are facing charges as military law does not apply to them. Colonel Jill Morgenthaler, from CentCom, said that one civilian contractor was accused along with six soldiers of mistreating prisoners. However, it was left to the contractor to “deal with him”. One civilian interrogator told army investigators that he had “unintentionally” broken several tables during interrogations as he was trying to “fear-up” detainees.
Lawyers for some accused say their clients are scapegoats for a rogue prison system, which allowed mercenaries to give orders to serving soldiers. A military report said private contractors were at times supervising the interrogations.
Kimmitt said: “I hope the investigation is including not only the people who committed the crimes, but some of the people who might have encouraged the crimes as well because they certainly share some responsibility.”
Last night, CACI vice-president Jody Brown said: “The company supports the Army’s investigation and acknowledges that CACI personnel in Iraq volunteered to be interviewed by army officials in connection with the investigation. The company has received no indication that any CACI employee was involved in any alleged improper conduct with Iraqi prisoners. Nonetheless, CACI has initiated an independent investigation.”
However, military investigators said: “A CACI investigator’s contract was terminated because he allowed and/or instructed military police officers who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations which were neither authorised nor in accordance with regulations.”

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:LGgQIc6IKxoJ:southafrica.indymedi ...


PaDUer

I found this interesting...in bold...

The company, formed in the 1960s, first caught the government's eye with a computer language it developed that could be used to build battlefield simulation programs.

Interesting...wonder if THIS is the one they used that day?


seemslikeadream

I knew EDS sounded familiar - Interesting

Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State is president and partner of Armitage Assoc. LLP, was a Boeing consultant, a Raytheon consultant and an advisory board member. Armitage was also President Bush's special emissary to Jordan's King Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War. Armitage has also worked in the past for Halliburton.
http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=45246&group=webcast

From March 1992 until 1993, Armitage as ambassador, funneled U.S. dollars into the new independent states of the former Soviet Union. In January 1992, the Bush Administration's desire to cozy up to the NIS (and their oil) resulted in Armitage's appointment as Coordinator for Emergency Humanitarian Assistance.

During this time Armitage took on the other international patronage projects that normally follow war, accommodating the assuagement of the European Community, Japan and other donor countries.

Armitage owns Electronic Data Systems stock worth $250,001 to $500,000 (EDS is the 49th largest defense contractor, and lobbies the Defense Dept. over various appropriations issues), General Electric stock worth $500,001 to $1 million, Merck & Co. stock worth $100,001 to $250,000 (Merck lobbied the Defense Dept. over the Biological Weapons Convention implementation protocol), and Verizon Communications stock worth $250,001 to $500,000.

Armitage also worked as a consultant to Halliburton. Armitage is a former co-chairman of the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. He was instrumental in the reconstruction of the emerging economies of the former Soviet republics, after the fall of the Communist empire; along with Condi Rice, who rode herd on the Bush cabal's bid for U.S. control of the Caspian oil.
http://www.ifpafletcherconference.com/army2000/bios/armitage_rt.htm
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/outside/commentary/2002/0204oil_b ...

AccuPoll has teamed with Electronic Data Systems to jointly bid on voting system opportunities. EDS is a leading global information technology services company for over 40 years, and one of the leading systems integration companies in the world, with over 140,000 employees and annual revenues in excess of $21 Billion. EDS will provide deployment, training, and customer support services to state and local governments. Management believes that EDS currently has relationships with, or does business with, more than seventy percent of every federal, state and local government in the United States.

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:wH5Q2g-CjDAJ:www.accupoll.com/New

Intelligence Agents Encouraged Abuse

By MATT KELLEY
Associated Press Writer
May 29, 2004, 9:45 PM EDT

WASHINGTON -- Several U.S. guards allege they witnessed military intelligence operatives encouraging the abuse of Iraqi prison inmates at four prisons other than Abu Ghraib, investigative documents show.

Court transcripts and Army investigator interviews provide the broadest view of evidence that abuses, from forcing inmates to stand in hoods in 120-degree heat to punching them, occurred at a Marine detention camp and three Army prison sites in Iraq besides Abu Ghraib.

That is the prison outside Baghdad that was the site of widely published and televised photographs of abuse of Iraqi detainees by Army troops.

Testimony about tactics used at a Marine prisoner of war camp near Nasiriyah also raises the question whether coercive techniques were standard procedure for military intelligence units in different service branches and throughout Iraq.
At the Marines' Camp Whitehorse, the guards were told to keep enemy prisoners of war -- EPWs, in military jargon -- standing for 50 minutes each hour for up to 10 hours. They would then be interrogated by "human exploitation teams," or HETs, comprising intelligence specialists.

CONTINUED...

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/ats-ap_politics10may29,0,2617122....
Breslin says people call them for what they are: NAZIs!


Higher-ups beware the lowly stool pigeon

By Jimmy Breslin

May 27, 2004

I am told that there are over 30 homicides in the prison run by Americans in Baghdad. If the averages hold up, and there is no reason they should not, there should be 30 stool pigeons who can identify people in lineups, make statements against them and appear in court as witnesses to bury the accused.

SNIP...

That George Bush made a speech to his country the other night and did not utter a word about the prison torture in Baghdad was an omission of the greatest magnitude. Bush and the people who tell him what to say, somebody named Karl Rove is the main influence, didn't have the slightest conception of what the 30 murders are.

They think it's something you can leave out of a major speech and nobody will notice.

And the people associate it immediately with Nazis.

CONTINUED...

http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-nybres273820692may27,0,60742...

"The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were." — John Fitzgerald Kennedy

seemslikeadream

Apartheid Enforcers Guard Iraq For the U.S.



Erinys is an international Security Services and Risk consultancy. We provide clients with a range of services and capabilities to reduce the impact of operating in volatile, uncertain or complex environments such as sub-saharan Africa and the Middle East.

Formed in 2001 by senior managers and executives of the security & risk management industry our combination of skills and experience has enabled Erinys to rapidly establish a pre-eminent reputation in its field. A reputation exemplified by a client list representative of some of the world's largest and most important corporations.


Apartheid Enforcers Guard Iraq For the U.S.

By Marc Perelman

02/21/04: (The Forward) In its effort to relieve overstretched U.S. troops in Iraq, the Bush administration has hired a private security company staffed with former henchmen of South Africa’s apartheid regime.

The reliance on apartheid enforcers was highlighted by an attack in Iraq last month that killed one South African security officer and wounded another who worked for the subsidiary of a firm called Erinys International. Both men once served in South African paramilitary units dedicated to the violent repression of apartheid opponents.

François Strydom, who was killed in the January 28 bombing of a hotel in Baghdad, was a former member of the Koevoet, a notoriously brutal counterinsurgency arm of the South African military that operated in Namibia during the neighboring state’s fight for independence in the 1980s. His colleague Deon Gouws, who was injured in the attack, is a former officer of the Vlakplaas, a secret police unit in South Africa.

“It is just a horrible thought that such people are working for the Americans in Iraq,” said Richard Goldstone, a recently retired justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and the Pentagon did not return requests for comment.
In Iraq, the U.S. government has tapped into the ever-growing pool of private security companies to provide a variety of defense services, including protecting oil sites and training Iraqi forces. Observers worry that a reliance on these companies and the resulting lack of accountability is a recipe for further problems in a volatile region.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5723.htm

Guarding a Vital Asset
Are Iraqis ready to protect their valuable, vulnerable oil?By Joe Cochrane
Newsweek InternationalFeb. 16 issue - It might be a stretch to call Ali and Muhammad the guardians of Iraq's future. Pulling guard duty recently in the rain-soaked northern town of Kirkuk, home of one of the world's largest oilfields, the two men sport mismatched uniforms and clutch rusty AK-47s. But looks are deceiving. Faced with continuing attacks by anti-U.S. insurgents and, according to some, insufficient ground troops to stop them, the U.S. military is counting on Ali and Muhammad (not their real names) and thousands of other private guards to protect Iraq's vast oil infrastructure. The task is daunting: dozens of oilfields, refineries and pumping stations, along with thousands of kilometers of pipeline that crisscross Iraq, are prime targets for insurgents bent on denying the U.S.-led occupying force money for long-term reconstruction. They also hope to exacerbate ongoing fuel shortages in hopes of further enraging a population already angered by long queues for petrol and kerosene. "Production at the refineries is already down 40 to 50 percent," says Asim Jihad, a spokesman for Iraq's Oil Ministry, "so any attacks seriously affect the flow of oil for export and our ability to provide things for the people."


The vast majority of the attacks around the country each day are directed at U.S. troops and the Iraqis who support them, including the Feb. 1 bombing in Arbil that killed 100 Kurds and wounded 247 more. Similar strikes at targets like the Kirkuk fields or Daura oil refinery in Baghdad could seriously disrupt production and oil exports, and have major implications for Iraq's recovery. "One attack could be catastrophic to the oil industry," says Col. Tom O'Donnell, commander of Task Force Shield, which oversees the security of Iraq's oil infrastructure. Anti-U.S. fighters have launched at least 100 attacks against the oil infrastructure since Baghdad fell, including two last fall on a northern pipeline route that halted crude-oil exports to Turkey. The Coalition has been forced to buy oil products from neighboring countries to meet domestic needs.

U.S. war planners gave high priority to seizing Iraq's northern and southern oilfields before Saddam Hussein could sabotage them. But after major combat operations ended, manpower was shifted elsewhere, leaving the oil industry dangerously exposed. To protect its infrastructure, last September the Pentagon awarded a $40 million contract to Erinys International, a private, Britain-based security firm. In only four months Erinys has trained, armed and deployed more than 9,000 Iraqi guards across the country, and plans to expand its force to nearly 15,000 in the coming months. The U.S. military also struck deals with tribal leaders to provide an additional 5,000 guards in their areas.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4208603 /


South African mercenary question in Iraq

Is Iraq a zone of conflict? A war zone? Or is it a peace-building situation? On the answer to these questions rests the fate of more than 1,500 South Africans now working in Iraq.
Among them are some of the known assassins and torturers from the apartheid era. Most have been recruited as bodyguards, security consultants or security guards at salaries ranging up to $10,000 a month.
The issue came to a head after the bombing of the Shaheen hotel in Baghdad earlier this month, which South African Frans Strydom died and another South African, Deon Gouws, was seriously injured.
Gouws, a former policeman, was linked to the notorious South African Vlakplaas death squad.
The murderous activities of Vlakplaas were exposed when its commander, Colonel
Eugene de Kock, gave full details of the unit. Gouws and others associated with it were exposed and applied for amnesty to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
The TRC granted amnesty to Gouws for at least 15 murders and the petrol bombings of the homes of between 40 and 60 anti-apartheid activists. He was discharged from the police force in 1996 as medically unfit and apparently had difficulty finding or settling down to another job.
Strydom was a former warrant officer in the Koevoet (‘Crowbar’) counterinsurgency unit that achieved notoriety for being paid bounties for the bodies of ‘terrorists’ in Namibia. They conducted a reign of terror in the northern parts of that country in the years before independence.
The backgrounds of these men are not yet widely known in Iraq, let alone the wider region. But those officials who have become aware expressed shock and anger that such ‘mercenaries’ could have been recruited.
As this information spreads and undoubtedly becomes embellished, there is likely to be a backlash against private security companies operating in Iraq.

http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/paper/index.php?article=1497


Johannesburg - Francois Strydom learnt about killing in the Koevoet, the apartheid-era paramilitary police unit, notorious for violence, torture and murder.

In Iraq, Strydom found his skills were in demand.

Employed by US-based firm SAS International, Strydom was one of a number of South Africans in Iraq working as private "security experts" before a January 28 bomb outside the Shaheen Hotel prematurely terminated his contract.

The aftermath of the blast sent shockwaves through the media, as Strydom"s death revealed an embarrassing situation. It was estimated that 1 500 former soldiers and policemen were operating in Iraq, in defiance of stringent legislation forbidding the practice.

It emerged that the men make up along with US and British personnel the largest contingent of commercial "military service providers" on the ground in Iraq.

Most are said to be members of former elite units, disbanded following the end of apartheid, their members suddenly finding themselves unemployed, their skills no longer required.

http://www.africancrisis.org/ZZZ/ZZZ_News_2085.ASP


Hired Guns with War Crimes Past

By Louis Nevaer, Pacific News Service
May 4, 2004

When a suicide bomber parked a van disguised as an ambulance in front of the Shaheen Hotel in the Karadah neighborhood of Baghdad on Jan. 28 and blew himself up, he killed four people and wounded scores of others.


He also blew the lid off a dirty little secret of the Coalition Provisional Authority: due to its "outsourcing" of privatized security services, the CPA has put terrorists, mercenaries and war criminals on the payrolls of companies contracted by the Pentagon.


After the Shaheen Hotel blast, departmental spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa at South Africa's Foreign Ministry confirmed that one of the Westerners killed was South African Frans Strydom. Four of the wounded were also South African nationals, including Deon Gouws, who sustained serious injuries.


News that Strydom and Gouws were in Iraq sent shockwaves throughout South Africa: In front of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, both men were granted amnesty after confessing to killing blacks and terrorizing anti-apartheid activists, acts that can only be called crimes against humanity.


In Iraq, Strydom and Gouws were employed by Erinys International, a security firm based in the United Kingdom. Erinys Iraq, the subsidiary of Erinys International, was awarded a two-year, $80 million contract in August 2003 to protect 140 Iraqi oil installations. Erinys has been awarded subcontracts to protect American construction contractors, including San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp. and Halliburton's subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root

more
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18588


When we're the evildoers in Iraq
With immoral U.S. leadership, is it so shocking to find torturers in the ranks?


President Bush is again refusing to take responsibility for any of the horrors happening on his watch. This time it is the abuse of Iraqi prisoners carried out by low-ranking military police working under the direct guidance of military intelligence officers and shadowy civilian mercenaries. Our president launched this war with the promise to the Iraqi people of "no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone." What went wrong?
The president has called the now-exposed pattern of violence an isolated crime performed by "a few people." Yet the Pentagon's own investigation of the incident shows that not only was the entire Abu Ghraib prison out of control, it was the MPs' immediate military superiors who "directly or indirectly" authorized "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" of the prisoners as a way to break them in advance of formal interrogations.

"Military intelligence interrogators and other U.S. government agency interrogators actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses," says the report. The report, completed in March and kept secret until it was revealed on the New Yorker website Friday, also stated that a civilian contractor employed by a Virginia company called CACI "clearly knew his instructions" to the MPs called for physical abuse.

Furthermore, in a statement released Friday, Amnesty International reported that in its extensive investigations into human rights in post-invasion Iraq, it "has received frequent reports of torture or other ill treatment by coalition forces during the past year," including during interrogations, and that "virtually none of the allegations of torture or ill treatment has been adequately investigated by the authorities."

Octafish

Rove's White House 'Murder, Inc.'

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Download a .pdf file for printing.
Adobe Acrobat Reader required.
Click here to download a free copy.

May 21, 2004—On September 15, 2001, just four days after the 9-11 attacks, CIA Director George Tenet provided President Bush with a Top Secret "Worldwide Attack Matrix"—a virtual license to kill targets deemed to be a threat to the United States in some 80 countries around the world. The Tenet plan, which was subsequently approved by Bush, essentially reversed the executive orders of four previous U.S. administrations that expressly prohibited political assassinations.

According to high level European intelligence officials, Bush's counselor, Karl Rove, used the new presidential authority to silence a popular Lebanese Christian politician who was planning to offer irrefutable evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon authorized the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian men, women, and children in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla in 1982. In addition, Sharon provided the Lebanese forces who carried out the grisly task. At the time of the massacres, Elie Hobeika was intelligence chief of Lebanese Christian forces in Lebanon who were battling Palestinians and other Muslim groups in a bloody civil war. He was also the chief liaison to Israeli Defense Force (IDF) personnel in Lebanon. An official Israeli inquiry into the massacre at the camps, the Kahan Commission, merely found Sharon "indirectly" responsible for the slaughter and fingered Hobeika as the chief instigator.

The Kahan Commission never called on Hobeika to offer testimony in his defense. However, in response to charges brought against Sharon before a special war crimes court in Belgium, Hobeika was urged to testify against Sharon, according to well-informed Lebanese sources. Hobeika was prepared to offer a different version of events than what was contained in the Kahan report. A 1993 Belgian law permitting human rights prosecutions was unusual in that non-Belgians could be tried for violations against other non-Belgians in a Belgian court. Under pressure from the Bush administration, the law was severely amended and the extraterritoriality provisions were curtailed.

Hobeika headed the Lebanese forces intelligence agency since the mid- 1970s and he soon developed close ties to the CIA. He was a frequent visitor to the CIA's headquarters at Langley, Virginia. After the Syrian invasion of Lebanon in 1990, Hobeika held a number of cabinet positions in the Lebanese government, a proxy for the Syrian occupation authorities. He also served in the parliament. In July 2001, Hobeika called a press conference and announced he was prepared to testify against Sharon in Belgium and revealed that he had evidence of what actually occurred in Sabra and Shatilla. Hobeika also indicated that Israel had flown members of the South Lebanon Army (SLA) into Beirut International Airport in an Israeli Air Force C130 transport plane. In full view of dozens of witnesses, including members of the Lebanese army and others, SLA troops under the command of Major Saad Haddad were slipped into the camps to commit the massacres. The SLA troops were under the direct command of Ariel Sharon and an Israeli Mossad agent provocateur named Rafi Eitan. Hobeika offered evidence that a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon was aware of the Israeli plot. In addition, the IDF had placed a camera in a strategic position to film the Sabra and Shatilla massacres. Hobeika was going to ask that the footage be released as part of the investigation of Sharon.

CONTINUED...

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/052104Madsen/052104madsen...

seemslikeadream
What Might Sharon Know About CACI?

Two former Mobile police officers working in Iraq

New York Times reports that one, Kenneth Powell, screened prisoners for private company at Abu Ghraib prison
Thursday, May 27, 2004
By RON COLQUITT
Staff Reporter
Former Mobile police Lt. Kenneth Powell is one of the civilian contractors who has worked screening prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, the facility that is the subject of an international prisoner abuse scandal, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The Times report focused on the experience and security clearance status of civilian contractors working at the prison on the western outskirts of Baghdad. It cites Powell's name as having been mentioned in military documents obtained by the Times.

Powell, the Times reported, "recently retired after 24 years with the Mobile, Ala., police force, where presumably he picked up the skills, and the security clearance, to screen Iraqi prisoners."

There is no mention that Powell had any knowledge of, or participation in, any of the abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib, outraging many in the Arab and Western worlds.

more
http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/news/10856494505 ...

What Might Sharon Know About CACI?

Right now, Americans are so mesmerized by those photos, which daily increase in number and luridness, that the facts of who did what and who knew what, and just what the “hey” and worse went on in those prisons, are just dribbling out, like water from a leaky faucet.

What might Sharon know? He might know whether the four “contract” interrogators identified as the foremost abusers — John Israel, Steven Stephanowicz, Torin Nelson, and Adel Nakha — were trained in their “craft” in Israel, or by Israelis.

Initial news reports indicate that two companies, Titan of San Diego, California, and California Analysis Center Incorporated (CACI, pronounced “khaki”) of Arlington, Virginia, employed these now-notorious “contractors.” But Titan and CACI themselves reportedly deny being their “direct” employers. And Titan and CACI refuse to identify who is.

What might Sharon know? Well, surely he knows that CACI was founded in the 1960s by Herbert Kerr and Harry Markowitz, a Chicago Jew, who worked together at The Rand Corporation in the 1950s. Markowitz, a mathematics genius with a Ph.d. from the University of Chicago, received the 1990 Nobel prize in economics (shared) for his theory of “portfolio choice,” which allows market investors to analyze risk as well as their expected return. But Markowtiz and Kerr’s work at Rand was in computer matrix codes with industrial and defense applications. This is the work that CACI still does now. With creative innovations, apparently.

What might Sharon know?

Sharon certainly knows that in February 2004, the Jerusalem Fund of Aish Ha Torah, a Zionist “worldwide foundation” specializing in “educational outreach,” according to CACI’s own press release, gave CACI its Albert Einstein award “for promoting peace in the Middle East.” CACI’s CEO, Jack London, was presented the award by Israel’s Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski in a glittering, elaborate ceremony at the Jerusalem City Hall. The ceremony was billed as part of the “First Annual Defense Aerospace Homeland Security Mission of Peace to Israel and Jordan.”

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7 §ion=0&article=44927&d=14&m=5&y=200...

Hawaii Man Named In Iraq Prisoner Abuse Probe


We got us another one of those mercenaries today cowboy!



Honolulu Attorney Hired To Represent Interrogator


HONOLULU -- One of the people being investigated in the Iraq prisoner abuse case is a man from Hawaii, KITV 4 News has learned.
Daniel E. Johnson is an employee of the Virginia-based company, CACI Premier Technology. He was one of the civilian interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison.

The scandal over prisoner abuse there erupted after photos showing abuse of detainees were made public.

Johnson is not accused of the kind of abuse shown in the photos. He was named in an article in The New York Times Thursday.

The Times said Army investigators say Johnson acknowledged that "he is aggressive in an interview. He generally yells in their face, and throws the tabl

HOW FAR HAVE WE COME? AT LEAST THE IRAQIS DIDN'T MAKE POSTCARDS!



WITHOUT SANCTUARY


Lynchers often paraded their victim down the main street, through black neighborhoods, and in front of "colored schools" that were in session.

Jesse Washington, seventeen years old, was the chief suspect in the May 8, 1916, murder of Lucy Fryer of Robinson, Texas, on whose farm he worked as a laborer. After the lynching, Washington's corpse was placed in a burlap bag and dragged around City Hall Plaza, through the main streets of Waco, and seven miles to Robinson, where a large black population resided.

His charred corpse was hung for public display in front of a blacksmith shop. The sender of this card, Joe Meyers, an oiler at the Bellmead car department and a Waco resident, marked his photo with a cross (now an ink smudge to left of victim).


This card bears the advertising stamp, "katy electric studio temple texas. h. lippe prop." inscribed in brown ink: "This is the Barbecue we had last night my picture is to the left with a cross over it your son Joe."

Repeated references to eating are found in lynching-related correspondence, such as "coon cooking," "barbecue," and "main fare."
http://www.musarium.com/withoutsanctuary/main.html




If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the color of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument


That nothing comes from violence
and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are
How fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are
How fragile we are

Sting

Have the Iraqis finally caught up?







WHILE I SIT HERE TRYING TO THINK OF THINGS TO SAY

SOMEONE LIES BLEEDING IN A FIELD SOMEWHERE

SO IT WOULD SEEM WE'VE STILL GOT A LONG LONG WAY TO GO

I'VE SEEN ALL I WANNA SEE TODAY

WHILE I SIT HERE TRYING TO MOVE YOU ANYWAY I CAN

SOMEONE'S SON LIES DEAD IN A GUTTER SOMEWHERE

AND IT WOULD SEEM THAT WE'VE GOT A LONG LONG WAY TO GO

BUT I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE

SWITCH IT OFF IT WILL GO AWAY

TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO

SWITCH IT OFF OR LOOK AWAY

WHILE I SIT AND WE TALK AND TALK AND WE TALK SOME MORE

SOMEONE'S LOVED ONE'S HEART STOPS BEATING IN A STREET SOMEWHERE

SO IT WOULD SEEM WE'VE STILL GOT A LONG LONG WAY TO GO, I KNOW

I'VE HEARD ALL I WANNA HEAR TODAY

TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO (TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO)

SWITCH IT OFF IT WILL GO AWAY (SWITCH IT OFF IT WILL GO AWAY)

TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO (TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO)

SWITCH IT OFF OR LOOK AWAY (SWITCH IT OFF OR LOOK AWAY)

SWITCH IT OFF

SWITCH IT OFF

SWITCH IT OFF

SWITCH IT OFF

SWITCH IT OFF

TURN IT OFF



thanks phil collins

As soon as he makes amends with the U.N., watch the U.N. grow a spine and indict everyone in the Bush administration with war crimes and watch that criminal clique squirm in a Nuremburg-style war-crimes trial at the Hague. The we'll see *all* the photos and videos. It's the only hope for truth and justice to prevail. You can't count on the Repuke-controlled Congress and Supreme Court to do their Consititutional duty. So it has to be an international effort. Maybe Kofi Annan and Jacques Chirac will lead the way.

If anyone deserves to be locked up incommunicado at Gitmo (and frankly, I don't think *anyone* does), it's the neocons in this administration who stole, raped, and pillaged our beloved country on its way to stealing, raping, and pillaging Iraq (and who knows what other countries they might get their hands on if given another 4 years).

A war crimes tribunal at the Hague is definitely in order--
Please clarify something for me though...
I am just wondering --could we expect Kerry to do anything different than the Bush Crime family?
I haven''t heard much out of him. He should be standing up like Al Gore is.
If you have a link I'd love to see it ...but as fas as I know,
Kerry's not calling for a withdrawal of our troops like Kucinich, Gore, and other prominent dems are doing.

Isn't Kerry sort of 'ok" with the idea of occupying Iraq indefinitely?
Please prove me wrong

I hate the idea of choosing between Bush and Bush's Skull and Bones Frat brother.--

If the Iraqis have 'full sovereignty' by June 30,
I don't think they will endorse 40,000 more armed
foreigners in their country. I think the Americans people
and the military establishment might have some objections too.

Bring the troops home NOW!

June 5 Demos:
http://www.InternationalAnswer.org

smell the palpable, ghastly odor of burning human flesh


WOULD YOU HAVE HELPED?


Any of us who've read about that horrific era are terrified by the thought of it, the photographs, even by meeting people who lived through it. Our hearts break. We cannot possibly comprehend. How can we say, "We're sorry"? It is not enough.

But of what are we most afraid? I personally think what torments us most about that piece of charred history is our not really knowing how we'd have reacted had we been non-Jewish Germans living in Deutschland at that time. Oh, many of us loudly insist we'd have taken a stand, protested, put a stop to the slaughter of millions. In fact many did try, some were successful, but many ended paying the ultimate price for their heroism.

We are left wondering if we really would have had the courage to stand up to the black, brutal violence of Nazism, if we would have had the bravery to save even one life; Jewish, Gypsy, homosexual, mentally or physically handicapped, or any marked for extermination in order that the so-called Aryan race be kept pure. Would we? Would you? Would I?

I've pondered on this problem a great deal over the years. I was alive, happy and thriving back in the 1930s and 40s while millions were dying in ways so horrible most of us cannot touch our minds to the thought of it for fear it will burn into the very core of our psyches. Children like me were being ripped to pieces. Who knew? Did you? Did we? Did I?

I wonder if I'd been a parent in Germany with a family I loved and knew what was happening, and yet because a horrible war was exploding all around me, would I have had the courage to scream "Stop!!"? Would I have taken the terrible chance that my family would be piled amongst the slaughtered because of my heroics? If I lived near a crematorium and could smell the palpable, ghastly odor of burning human flesh, would I have called a meeting of my neighbors, demanding to know what that was? Would I, like so many did, have spent my life protesting, "But we just didn't know!" Would I have put my beloved family at risk to save complete strangers?

more
http://www.vansavage.com/columns/holocaust.shtml



ARE YOU JUST WATCHING THE TRAINS ROLL BY?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5092776/site/newsweek/

The Abu Ghraib Scandal Cover-Up?
Bush insists that 'a few American troops' dishonored the country. But prisoner abuse was more widespread, and some insiders believe that much remains hidden
John Moore / AP
Is Rumsfeld's Defense Department obstructing investigations into abuses at Abu Ghraib (pictured earlier this month)?

By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
Newsweek

June 7 issue - The meeting was small and unpublicized. In a room on the third floor of the Old Executive Office Building last week, Condoleezza Rice grittily endured an hour's worth of pleading from leading human-rights activists who want to see a 9/11-style commission created to investigate the abuse of detainees in the war on terror. According to participants, the president's national-security adviser didn't repeat the line that George W. Bush had delivered to the American people in a speech two days before: that the scandal was the work of "a few American troops who dishonored our country." Nor did Rice try to make the case that by razing Iraq's Abu Ghraib Prison—a Bush proposal that took even his Defense secretary by surprise—administration officials would put the scandal behind them. "I recognize we have a very grave problem," Rice said, according to Scott Horton, a New York lawyer at the meeting whose account was corroborated by another participant. "There are major investigations going on right now to fully understand the scope and nature of it."
(snip)

Maybe Vidal could recycle the title?

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/03/52/features-cooper.php
Uncensored Gore
The take-no-prisoners social critic skewers Bush, Ashcroft and the whole damn lot of us for letting despots rule.
by Marc Cooper


(Photo by Debra DiPaolo)

It's lucky for George W. Bush that he wasn’t born in an earlier time and somehow stumbled into America’s Constitutional Convention. A man with his views, so depreciative of democratic rule, would have certainly been quickly exiled from the freshly liberated United States by the gaggle of incensed Founders. So muses one of our most controversial social critics and prolific writers, Gore Vidal.

When we last interviewed Vidal just over a year ago, he set off a mighty chain reaction as he positioned himself as one of the last standing defenders of the ideal of the American Republic. His acerbic comments to L.A. Weekly about the Bushies were widely reprinted in publications around the world and flashed repeatedly over the World Wide Web. Now Vidal is at it again, giving the Weekly another dose of his dissent, and, with the constant trickle of casualties mounting in Iraq, his comments are no less explosive than they were last year.

This time, however, Vidal is speaking to us as a full-time American. After splitting his time between Los Angeles and Italy for the past several decades, Vidal has decided to roost in his colonial home in the Hollywood Hills. Now 77 years old, suffering from a bad knee and still recovering from the loss earlier this year of his longtime companion, Howard Austen, Vidal is feistier and more productive than ever.

Vidal undoubtedly had current pols like Bush and Ashcroft in mind when he wrote his latest book, his third in two years. Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson takes us deep into the psyches of the patriotic trio. And even with all of their human foibles on display — vanity, ambition, hubris, envy and insecurity — their shared and profoundly rooted commitment to building the first democratic nation on Earth comes straight to the fore.
(snip)

HIGHWAY OF DEATH



Octafish

Even if he worked for Saddam, there was no reason to do that to that poor man. Going by the size of the dent to the skull, the force of the hit to the back of the head probably separated the man's brain from the brain stem. That is not barbarian. These operatives of the BFEE are NAZIs.

In the US, most people have a quality of life pretty far removed from the level of violence experienced by the people of Iraq. It's not just today or this year or this administration. Iraq has been under a state of siege and economic sanction for more than 14 years. The human misery caused to the people of Iraq -- from Kurds to Chaldeans to Shia to Sunni -- is unbelievable. The human toll is in the tens of thousands per year from lack of food and medicine.

The only reason I knew this is while working on an unrelated matter, I had the good fortune of meeting a woman who was organizing relief workers to help stop the craziness. Her story has not been covered by the local papers for 13 years.

Here's another forgotten story. Poppy Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft and Barry McCafferty don't wnat people to think too much about:


(Photo Credit: © 1991 Kenneth Jarecke / Contact Press Images)


WAR CRIMES
A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal

by Ramsey Clark and Others



Incinerated body of an Iraqi soldier on the "Highway of Death," a name the press has given to the road from Mutlaa, Kuwait, to Basra, Iraq. U.S. planes immobilized the convoy by disabling vehicles at its front and rear, then bombing and straffing the resulting traffic jam for hours. More than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of charred and dismembered bodies littered the sixty miles of highway. The clear rapid incineration of the human being suggests the use of napalm, phosphorus, or other incindiary bombs. These are anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols. This massive attack occurred after Saddam Hussein announced a complete troop withdrawl from Kuwait in compliance with UN Resolution 660. Such a massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Convention of 1949, common article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who "are out of combat." There are, in addition, strong indications that many of those killed were Palestinian and Kuwaiti civilians trying to escape the impending seige of Kuwait City and the return of Kuwaiti armed forces. No attempt was made by U.S. military command to distinguish between military personnel and civilians on the "highway of death." The whole intent of international law with regard to war is to prevent just this sort of indescriminate and excessive use of force.

"It has never happened in history that a nation that has won a war has been held accountable for atrocities committed in preparing for and waging that war. We intend to make this one different. What took place was the use of technological material to destroy a defenseless country. From 125,000 to 300,000 people were killed... We recognize our role in history is to bring the transgressors to justice." Ramsey Clark

Next » Preface

SOURCE:

http://deoxy.org/wc/warcrime.htm

That is why we also see stories like this

http://www.breakingnews.ie/2004/05/29/story149961.html
Driver and guard of editor Iraqi killed
29/05/2004 - 17:01:17

The former Iraqi editor of an American-funded newspaper said today his driver and bodyguard were abducted and murdered, hours after police warned him of a possible kidnapping plot.

Ismael Zayer was the editor-in-chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority-backed newspaper Al-Sabah until May 3, when he quit to set up his own publication.

After the police warning this morning, Zayer said he stayed in his home for about 20 minutes and then left his home “to find that my car, the driver, my bodyguard and the other four cars had disappeared.”

Iraqi police later found their bodies in Baghdad’s Raghiba Khatoon area, he said.
(snip)

ON edit: this could be a plant, but also could be legit, the guy quit the provisional rag after finding it hard to work under its yoke. He said he wanted to print the truth the rest of the story reads

(snip)
More information on the holding of hostages can be found at Newsday:

In a little-noticed development amid Iraq's prison abuse scandal, the U.S. military is holding dozens of Iraqis as bargaining chips to put pressure on their wanted relatives to surrender, according to human rights groups. These detainees are not accused of any crimes, and experts say their detention violates the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. The practice also risks associating the United States with the tactics of countries it has long criticized for arbitrary arrests.

I have seen some American opinion - even here at JournalSpace - that the Iraqis in the torture photgraphs deserved it because they were arrested for terrorism and so on. This is pathetic nonsense. Many (the Red Cross estimates up to 90%) of the Iraqis in detention are innocent - and will never have charges brought against them , though they will be held indefinitely without charge.

Many of the Iraqis - particularly the women - are hostages.

The taking of hostages constitutes a war crime.

But of course, US military are "exempt" from war crimes charges in the International Criminal Court.

For now.

So they continue their torture, murder, rape, abuse.
(snip)
http://caratacus.journalspace.com/?m=5&y=2004

Does anyone believe it possible that the Pentagon or ? uploaded the Berg tape to the net because it was one of the videos of abuse that they obtained with the rest from AG and it was so damning that they decided to run it on the net for 90 minutes as a red herring because they feared it would eventually come out in the media?
I won't get into all the theories here about Nick Berg's identity and why he may have died under questioning by either the US MI or by contractors but...

And it very sad they have chosen to use the mans life and death as a political football. Just don't make the mistake this was the work of people here of making it a politcal football.

Probably most here are not expert criminal pathologist, but you will find if you spend some time here motive is the key, but not always the end all.

The Nick Berg story is all over the Internet,they planned it that way for some reason ( looking at the many posters above this post:eyes:)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1221515,00.html
George Bush never looked into Nick's eyes

Even more than the murderers who took my son's life, I condemn those who make policies to end lives

Michael Berg
Friday May 21, 2004
The Guardian

My son, Nick, was my teacher and my hero. He was the kindest, gentlest man I know; no, the kindest, gentlest human being I have ever known. He quit the Boy Scouts of America because they wanted to teach him to fire a handgun. Nick, too, poured into me the strength I needed, and still need, to tell the world about him.

People ask me why I focus on putting the blame for my son's tragic and atrocious end on the Bush administration. They ask: "Don't you blame the five men who killed him?" I have answered that I blame them no more or less than the Bush administration, but I am wrong: I am sure, knowing my son, that somewhere during their association with him these men became aware of what an extraordinary man my son was. I take comfort that when they did the awful thing they did, they weren't quite as in to it as they might have been. I am sure that they came to admire him.

I am sure that the one who wielded the knife felt Nick's breath on his hand and knew that he had a real human being there. I am sure that the others looked into my son's eyes and got at least a glimmer of what the rest of the world sees. And I am sure that these murderers, for just a brief moment, did not like what they were doing.

George Bush never looked into my son's eyes. George Bush doesn't know my son, and he is the worse for it. George Bush, though a father himself, cannot feel my pain, or that of my family, or of the world that grieves for Nick, because he is a policymaker, and he doesn't have to bear the consequences of his acts. George Bush can see neither the heart of Nick nor that of the American people, let alone that of the Iraqi people his policies are killing daily.
(snip)

:kick:

Administration lawyers: Bush has right to order torture

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General John Ashcroft said Tuesday he was not aware of any order by President Bush that would violate U.S. laws or treaties banning torture of military prisoners captured in Iraq or elsewhere in the war on terrorism.

"This administration rejects torture," Ashcroft declared under tense questioning by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But he steadfastly refused to comment directly about a policy paper on this issue, or say whether Bush ever responded to it.

But, Ashcroft did say, "The Department of Justice will both investigate and prosecute individual who violate the law. The Torture Act is a law that we include in that violation."

The lawyers who wrote the policy paper were not identified by name and were part of a working group writing a policy governing interrogation techniques to be used at the prison for terrorist suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
(snip)
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2004/06/08/490842-ap.html

in depth. Since the US had many times more the soldiers than the other nations, it took charge and directed the abuse among the other countries. Poland wants US bases ($tax dollars$ and other freebies), so its leaders will lie their butts off not to upend the deal.

Good thing Germany kept out of this mess. The last thing it needs is another holocaust. Meanwhile, that weighted sceptor can now be passed to the US.

We've seen the shot with the naked guy triangulated by three dogs and their handlers while others watch, but we haven't seen the following pictures that have been described, including the ones with the bite wounds on his legs.

We need to see this. Boykin needs to be brought into the harsh light of mortal scrutiny, and we need to be serious about this. These are hateful, ugly people, and if we don't shout them into ignominy, people in other countries will. We owe it to the human race to atone for this, and step one is full disclosure.