And take that

[whatever]

Not that anyone's actually reading, but...
T r u t h o u t

Justice Redacted Memo on Detainees
By R. Jeffrey Smith
The Washington Post

Tuesday 22 March 2005

FBI criticism of interrogations was deleted.

U.S. law enforcement agents working at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, concluded that controversial interrogation practices used there by the Defense Department produced intelligence information that was "suspect at best," an FBI agent told a superior in a memo in May last year.

But the Justice Department, which reviewed the memo for national security secrets before releasing it to a civil liberties group in December, redacted the FBI agent's conclusion.

The department, acting after the Defense Department expressed its own views on which portions of the letter should be redacted, also blacked out a separate assertion in the memo that military interrogation practices could undermine future military trials for terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay.

It also withheld a statement by the memo's author that Justice Department criminal division officials were so concerned about the military interrogation practices that they took their complaints to the office of the Pentagon's chief attorney, William J. Haynes II, whom President Bush has nominated to become a federal appellate judge.

The revelations in the memo, released yesterday by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), generally amplify previously disclosed FBI concerns that military interrogators at the island prison were using coercive interrogation methods that could compromise any evidence of terrorist activities they obtained.

FBI agents and officials had complained about the shackling of detainees to the floor for periods exceeding 24 hours, without food and water; the draping of a detainee in an Israeli flag; and the use of growling dogs to scare detainees.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who as White House counsel participated in detailed discussions about the legality of aggressive military interrogation techniques, has twice publicly expressed skepticism about the reliability of these FBI accounts.

But the May 10, 2004, memo, written by an official whose name has not been disclosed, contains a highly detailed account of the efforts that FBI agents made to convince the Defense Department that its interrogation practices were wrongheaded.

Of course there's more

Please click the link above; url format removes line breaks. Thanks

[whatever]

But if you read anything, all you freedom lovers...read this part

Levin, who had pushed the Justice Department to release a version of the memo that included the new disclosures, yesterday sharply criticized the department's initial handling of it. "As I suspected, the previously withheld information had nothing to do with protecting intelligence sources and methods, and everything to do with protecting the DOD from embarrassment," Levin said.

www.truthout.org/docs_2005/032205B.shtml

[whatever]

Afghan Detainee's Leg Was 'Pulpified,' Witness Says
By Lianne Hart
The Los Angeles Times

Wednesday 23 March 2005

The testimony comes at a hearing for an MP who delivered beatings. The inmate later died.

Ft. Bliss, Texas - An Afghan detainee in U.S. custody was so brutalized before his death that his thigh tissue was "pulpified," a forensic pathologist testified Tuesday at a preliminary hearing for a military police officer charged in the 2002 assault.

"It was similar to injuries of a person run over by a bus," said Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, who performed an autopsy on the detainee, identified only as Dilawar.

more...

by our people. Three years ago now. How many more?

[whatever]

Army Probe Finds Abuse at Jail Near Mosul
The Associated Press

Saturday 26 March 2005

Washington -- Newly released government documents say the abuse of prisoners in Iraq by US forces was more widespread than previously reported.

An officer found that detainees "were being systematically and intentionally mistreated" at a holding facility near Mosul in December 2003. The 311th Military Intelligence Battalion of the Army's 101st Airborne Division ran the lockup. More...

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More on Mosul. So much for a "few isolated cases" GOD DAMN the monsters that caused this. Damn to them to hell eternal. And damned too are the fools that discounted this from the beginning. Fools. Everything decent and human is secondary to "national security" in their view. Happy dictators all. Damned fools.

'One soldier said troops "always harassed the hell out of detainees"; another said that at times "the detainees would get so scared they would piss themselves".'


Fresh Details Emerge of Iraqis' Abuse by American Soldiers
By David Randall and Andrew Buncombe
The Independent UK

Sunday 27 March 2005

Damning evidence of American soldiers abusing detainees at another prison in Iraq was made public yesterday. It details how prisoners were "systematically and intentionally mistreated" at a military base in Mosul, culminating in the death of one. Nobody was court-martialled over the abuse.

An investigation by a US officer after a prisoner's jaw was broken found that inmates were hit with water bottles, made to do exhausting physical exercises until they collapsed, deprived of sleep, subjected to deafening heavy metal music and had cigarette smoke blown into sandbags they were forced to wear as hoods. One soldier said troops "always harassed the hell out of detainees"; another said that at times "the detainees would get so scared they would piss themselves".

In December 2003 a prisoner died after four days of continuous punishment. According to the documents, which were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, mistreatmentwas not confined to Abu Ghraib jail, where abuse and sexual humiliation of inmates caused worldwide outrage last year.

more...

I have to wonder what's going to happen to all the jailors when they come back home. What do you think? Police officers? Jailors? Ordinary guys walking around? Think they'll be sterling examples of civilization, after being used as sadistic monsters? Learning the pleasure of hurting others, feeling the thrill of causing others pain? Think they'll be good to have in the neighborhood? Have to wonder. I wonder.

We've made thousands of them now, apart and aside from the shell-shocked. In addition to the many amputees and brain damaged casualties. Aside from all the deaths, and aside from those for whom the horror that will affect them forever. They'll never be the same, and not in a good way. No one benefits personally from seeing people killed, mutilated, children crying with blood all over them. No one is "stronger" from seeing death and pain.

Now we have these "soldiers" And it's now thousands of our soldiers having been turned into sadists. Home grown monsters, ours now and forever. In our name.

And who will join our side, whose hearts and minds? What democracy will they seek?

Bastards.

[whatever]

Seventy to ninety percent were "seized by mistake". I can't stress how horrible this is.


The lawsuit against Mr. Rumsfeld was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First, a New York-based group, on behalf of Mr. Ali and seven other former detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan who claim to have been tortured by U.S. personnel.


The suit charges that Mr. Rumsfeld personally authorized unlawful interrogation techniques and abdicated his responsibility to stop the torture and other abuses of prisoners in U.S. custody. It contends that the abuse of detainees was widespread and that Mr. Rumsfeld and other top administration officials were well aware of it.


According to the suit, it is unreasonable to believe that Mr. Rumsfeld could have remained in the dark about the rampant mistreatment of prisoners in U.S. custody. It cites a wealth of evidence readily available to the secretary, including the scandalous eruptions at Abu Ghraib prison, the reports of detainee abuse at Guantánamo Bay, myriad newspaper and magazine articles, internal U.S. government reports, and concerns expressed by such reputable groups as the International Committee of the Red Cross.


(The committee has noted, among other things, that military intelligence estimates suggest that 70 percent to 90 percent of the people detained in Iraq had been seized by mistake.) more...

[whatever]

www.truthout.org/docs_2005/040405F.shtml

Editor's Note: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has written to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, asking him to open a perjury investigation of Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former US Military commander in Iraq.

According to an official memo dated September 14, 2003, and signed by Gen. Sanchez, he personally authorized the use of coercive interrogation techniques outlawed by the Geneva Conventions. In sworn testimony before the Senate Armed Services committee, he denied ever approving such techniques in Iraq.

The ACLU obtained a physical copy of the memo by suing the Defense Department under the Freedom of Information Act. Below, you will find a copy from the ACLU along with a typed transcript prepared by t r u t h o u t. - sw

September Sanchez Memo
Department of Defense

Sunday 14 September 2005

UNCLASSIFIED

Page 1

Department of the Army
Headquarters, Combined Joint Task Force Seven
Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq
APO AE 09335

CJTF-CG
14 SEP 2003

MEMORANDUM FOR Commander, U.S. Central Command, 7115 South Boundary Boulevard, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida 33621-5101

SUBJECT: CJTF-7 Interrogation and Counter-Resistance Policy
Enclosed is the CJTF-7 Interrogation and Counter-Resistance Policy, modeled on the one implemented for interrogations conducted at Guantánamo Bay, but modified for applicability to a theater of war in which the Geneva Conventions apply. Unless otherwise directed, my intent is to implement this policy immediately.

Ricardo S. Sanchez
Lieutenant General, U.S. Army
Commanding

Encl
BS

UNCLASSIFIED


more...

"just a few individual cases" ?
I guess that's that.

[whatever]

Okay, this looks really sinister to me. This is ugly. Notice it was Reuters that made the phone call that was answered by an American soldier.


US Probes Whether Troops Hold Iraq Women "Hostage"
By Michael Georgy
Reuters

Wednesday 06 April 2005

Baghdad - The US military in Baghdad confirmed on Wednesday it was holding two Iraqi women and was investigating accusations that they were being held hostage to pressure their fugitive male relatives to surrender.

A spokesman said the women were detained as insurgent suspects, not hostages. The latter would be a breach of international law, human rights experts say; it could, however, be legitimate to hold relatives as suspects in their own right.

"The US army and Iraqi police did detain two females suspected of collaboration with anti-Iraqi forces," Major Donn Latimer of the 3rd Infantry Division told Reuters, using a term employed by US troops to describe guerrilla insurgents.

"Evidence was found at the residence that indicates clear knowledge of an intent to harm coalition forces," Latimer said.

"Currently their disposition is under review."

The women's names were not available but details of their detention indicated they were relatives of Arkan Mukhlif al-Batawi, who has accused US troops of taking his mother and sister hostage after raiding the family home on Saturday.

Batawi, who farms at Taji just north of Baghdad, told Reuters on Tuesday that the women had been arrested to try to pressure him and his brothers Muhammad and Saddam to surrender themselves to US troops who suspect them of insurgent attacks.

A handwritten note in Arabic at the house read: "Be a man Muhammad Mukhlif and give yourself up and then we will release your sisters. Otherwise they will spend a long time in detention." It was signed "Bandit 6", apparently US army code, possibly designating a company commander.

Several neighbours corroborated Batawi's account of events.

When Reuters called a mobile phone number left on the note, an American who said he was a soldier appeared to be aware of Batawi's accusation but declined further comment.

more...

I'd like to add I've read other stories of Iraqi women being held in our jails. Also stories of them being brutalized. And raped. And that one or more was made pregnant by the rapes, and that they were then kiilled. To remove the evidence of what was done to them. This is what I remember reading last year.

So, please don't think those muslim sisters are safely in our hands. It's all too likely they aren't.

Can you imagine being a woman prisoner in a prison of men, where violence is commonplace and even used as a tool? Imagine being a muslim woman in that environment? And how awful our men could be to them? I hang my head in shame because it is all I can do. It's just too much.

[whatever]

www.truthout.org/docs_2005/042605I.shtml

Europe Invites the United States to Observe the Law
Reuters
Tuesday 26 April 2005

Tuesday, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe "adamantly" asked the American government to "observe the principles of the preeminence of law and human rights" with respect to the detainees at Guant�namo.

In a resolution adopted in Strasbourg by 83 votes, none against, and five abstentions, the Assembly invites the United States to "stop all mistreatment of the Guant�namo detainees" and to authorize "a suit for the examination of the legality of their detention by a properly constituted tribunal."

The Assembly deems that Washington must "immediately free all detainees for whom there does not exist sufficient proof to justify their criminal incarceration" and that in those cases where such proof does exist, the detainees should be charged and tried "with no further delay." The United States is furthermore invited to "exclude any declaration obtained by torture or by punishments or treatment of a cruel, inhuman, or degrading character," in conformity with "international law and the Constitution of the United States."

[whatever]

I have to admit, I probably won't watch this, but I wanted to share www.truthout.org/docs_2005/042805O.shtml
Prisoner from Abu Ghraib
NOW
t r u t h o u t | Programming Note

PBS Airdate: Friday, April 29, 2005, at 9 p.m.

(Check local listings at www.pbs.org/now/sched.html.)

NOW broadcasts the first in-depth American television interview with Haj Ali, a former prisoner who says he was the man under the black hood in the infamous photo from Abu Ghraib.

On Friday, April 29, 2005 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), in "A Few Bad Men?" NOW broadcasts the first in-depth American television interview with Haj Ali, a former prisoner who says he was the man under the black hood in the infamous photo from Abu Ghraib. The program, hosted by David Brancaccio from the U.S. detention center at Guant�namo Bay, Cuba, examines the legal and human rights issues surrounding America's policy on holding and interrogating suspected terrorists and asks: has America done enough to investigate and bring people to justice? "Abu Ghraib is a breeding ground for insurgents," says Ali, who describes his experience in detail. "99% of the people brought in are innocent, but with all the insults and torture, it makes them ready to do just about anything."

[whatever]

Quote from truthout of
Seymour Hersh: Iraq "Moving Towards Open Civil War"
Interviewer: Amy Goodman
Democracy Now!

" So, I'm doing this stuff. I get a call in the middle of these stories, and does everybody know? Of course, everybody knows what's going on. Are you kidding? The timeline, the chronology, I told you, what does president not do? He doesn't do anything. He doesn't take any steps at all, confronted with Abu Ghraib, not one step to change anything. They just hope they can get away with a couple of low-level court-martials as they did with Calley. They did, but they could have. Anyway, it was a rational chance, rational gamble.

So, in the middle of this stuff, I get a call from a mother. She wants to see me somewhere in northeastern America. I go see her. There's a kid that was in the unit, the 372nd. They had all come home early. If you remember the timeline, they did their stuff in late 2003, reported in 2004. This mother is telling me - I'm writing in the spring of 2004 - March of 2004, the kid had come home in the same unit totally changed. Young, pretty woman, vibrant. Depressed, disconsolate, inconsolable, isolated. Had been newly married. Left her husband, left the family, moved to a nearby town, working a night job or whatever. And nobody could figure out what's going on.

She sees the stories about Abu Ghraib. She goes, knocks on the door, shows the young woman the newspaper, and door slams, bam! And at that point, as she tells me, later - as she tells me in real time - this is May, early May - she goes back, the kid had been given a computer, a portable computer like. It turns out all the G.I.s in Iraq and all over the world now, they - portable computers are great, because you have CD drives, and you put a movie in there, and then you're in business. And so you can watch movies and play games on your dead time. I had not thought about it, but that's what happens. That's why all the CD, these digital pictures are being passed around in the unit, because everybody has a computer.

So she claims - this not a woman familiar with Freud or the unconscious - she claims at that point she just decided to look at the computer after hearing about Abu Ghraib. She said she had - she just hadn't looked at it. She just was going to clean it up and take it to her office as a second computer. No thoughts. And she is deleting files. She sees a file marked "Iraq." And she hits it, and out comes 60 or 80 digital photographs of the one that The New Yorker ran of the naked guy standing against a cell in terror, hands behind his back so he can't protect his private parts, which is the instinct. And two snarling German dogs - shepherds. Somebody said they're Belgian shepherds, perhaps, but two snarling shepherds, you know, on each side of him. And the sequence - in the sequence, the dogs attack the man, blood all over. I was later told anecdotally, I could never prove it. I am telling you stuff that is not provable - I mean, at least - that there was an understanding at least in the prison corps population that the dogs were specially trained to hit the groin area, which is one of the reasons there was so much fear of the dogs. This is - I will tell you right now why they believe among many senior officers that I know in the military, I can - but again, it's not - it's not demonstrable. There's no way of codifying that. In any case, the fear was palpable in the picture.

So she looks at this stuff and eventually calls me. And we do it all, and we get permission. We run the photographs, just one - how much - and the thought there of the editors was how much do you humiliate the Arab world and the Arab man. One is enough. You know, we can describe what else is on the picture. We just don't need more than one. And then, later the mother calls me back, and we became friends. This happens a lot to people in my business. You get to like people. And she says, you know, one thing I didn't tell you that you have to know about the young woman, when she came back, every weekend, she would go and get herself tattooed, and eventually, she said, she was filling her body with large, black tattoos, and eventually, they filled up every portion of her skin, was tattooed, at least all the portions you could see, and there was no reason to make assumptions about the other portions. She was tattooed completely. It was as if, the mother said, she wanted to change her skin.

And so, they sent me a boy, and I sent him back a murderer, changing her skin. This war is going to reverberate in ways that we can't even begin to see."

Also truthout

www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051205O.shtml
Combat Stress
NOW
t r u t h o u t | Programming Note

PBS Airdate: Friday 13 May 2005 at 9:00 p.m. on PBS
(check local listings at www.pbs.org/now/sched.html)

NOW reports that thousands of Iraq veterans are battling mental illness back home.

With hundreds of thousands of soldiers having served in Iraq, conservative estimates indicate that 1 in 6 are returning from combat suffering from major depression, generalized anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can be as crippling as any physical wound. Is the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) equipped to treat these soldiers who have risked their lives for their nation? On Friday, May 13, 2005 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), NOW investigates how the VA is planning to deal with this influx of new cases while meeting the needs of current veterans. The report profiles one Iraq veteran who says he's waiting months for treatment and that without it his future hangs in the balance. Also on the program, photographer Nina Berman shares the unseen images and the untold stories of America's wounded.
bolded text is mine

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This has to be the best news I've heard all day.

www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051305X.shtml
Navy Judge Finds War Protest Reasonable
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Report

Friday 13 May 2005

"I think that the government has successfully proved that any service member has reasonable cause to believe that the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal."
-- Lt. Cmdr. Robert Klant, presiding at Pablo Paredes' court-martial

In a stunning blow to the Bush administration, a Navy judge gave Petty Officer 3rd Class Pablo Paredes no jail time for refusing orders to board the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard before it left San Diego with 3,000 sailors and Marines bound for the Persian Gulf on December 6th. Lt. Cmdr. Robert Klant found Pablo guilty of missing his ship's movement by design, but dismissed the charge of unauthorized absence. Although Pablo faced one year in the brig, the judge sentenced him to two months' restriction and three months of hard labor, and reduced his rank to seaman recruit.

"This is a huge victory," said Jeremy Warren, Pablo's lawyer. "A sailor can show up on a Navy base, refuse in good conscience to board a ship bound for Iraq, and receive no time in jail," Warren added. Although Pablo is delighted he will not to go jail, he still regrets that he was convicted of a crime. He told the judge at sentencing: "I am guilty of believing this war is illegal. I am guilty of believing war in all forms is immoral and useless, and I am guilty of believing that as a service member I have a duty to refuse to participate in this War because it is illegal."

Pablo maintained that transporting Marines to fight in an illegal war, and possibly to commit war crimes, would make him complicit in those crimes. He told the judge, "I believe as a member of the armed forces, beyond having a duty to my chain of command and my President, I have a higher duty to my conscience and to the supreme law of the land. Both of these higher duties dictate that I must not participate in any way, hands-on or indirect, in the current aggression that has been unleashed on Iraq."

Pablo said he formed his views about the illegality of the war by reading truthout.org, listening to Democracy Now!, and reading articles by Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Naomi Klein, Stephen Zunes, and Marjorie Cohn, as well as Kofi Annan's statements that the war is illegal under the UN Charter, and material on the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals.

the entire article

Truthout Rocks!

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truthout story www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051605E.shtml

Guantanamo Controversies: The Bible and the Koran
By Juan Cole
Informed Comment
Monday 16 May 2005

"
A reader with military experience in this area wrote me his own experience, with the Bible being trashed in a similar way. I was able to google this reader in such a way as to compare autobiographical statements and dates (stripped from the below) to the Web record, and they all check out. Even the history of attitudes, as revealed in letters to the editor, are confirmatory. So I'm sure of the authenticity of these comments.

"I'm a former US [military officer], and had the 'pleasure' of attending SERE school--Search, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape.

The course I attended . . . [had] a mock POW camp, where we had a chance to be prisoners for 2-3 days. The camp is also used as a training tool for CI [counter-intelligence], interrogators, etc for those running the camp.

snipped

The bible trashing was done by one of the top-ranked leaders of the camp, who was always giving us speeches--sort of 'making it real' so to speak, because it is a pretty contrived environment. But by the end it almost seemed real. Guards spoke English with a Russian accent, wore Russian-looking uniforms. So the bible trashing happened when this guy had us all in the courtyard sitting for one of his speeches. They were tempting us with a big pot of soup that was boiling--we were all starving from a few days of chow deprivation. He brought out the bible and started going off on it verbally--how it was worthless, we were forsaken by this God, etc. Then he threw it on the ground and kicked it around. It was definitely the climax of his speech. Then he kicked over the soup pot, and threw us back in the cells. Big climax. And psychologically it was crushing and heartbreaking, and then we were left isolated to contemplate this.

And all of these moods and thoughts were created in this fake camp--just imagine how it is for these guys at Gitmo.

So many have tried to commit suicide....by now they all must have some serious psychological problems. This is without a doubt torture. Premeditated, planned....a fine lot of criminals we have in charge of the USA these days. Gitmo is so Orwellian--so Room 101. They are playing on the deepest feelings and fears."

[RS Davis]

Hi Whatever! How's it going? Do you lurk at STL much? If you do, click this link:

forums.stltoday.com/viewtopic.php?p=2446664#2446664

I'm having a discussion with Homer Jay about whether or not going to Iraq was a good idea.

- Rick

[whatever]

RS said:

Hi Whatever! How's it going? Do you lurk at STL much? If you do, click this link:

forums.stltoday.com/viewtopic.php?p=2446664#2446664

I'm having a discussion with Homer Jay about whether or not going to Iraq was a good idea.

- Rick

Hey Rick, nice to see you!! I'm hanging in there. Politically it's been a terrible 6 or 8 or however any months you've been gone, and I've really missed you input on the issues. STL CA? I guess you missed my many rants about it; no, I haven't been back and won't. Good luck with Homer; arguing whether it was a good idea or not? I can't imagine why. Not to be completely onesided, but, I'm sorry, anyone that still thinks it was a good idea would have to be a blood-thristy neo-con. I can't see any way around it. It was an illegal war with no real exit strategy, and further, we were lied to about virtually every aspect of it. On top of it, journalists have been targeted by our own troops, and what we've done to prisoners will change attitudes toward our nation for generations...if we last that long.

Unless one believes we were right (by law, any law) in invading purely for our own political purposes, how can it be defended? It can only be defended by the neo-con philosophy, and what's the point in arguing with that? It's fucked and I give up on those who can't see it. People that can't seem care enough about the slaugher of thousands (and other atrocities) for no good reason, there's no point in disussing the merits of war with them. Any war.

But have a good time with it, I'm sure it's lively.