Under The Same Sun

April 06, 2007

What? No Waterboarding?

So the British sailors were blindfolded near men with guns, and that is accepted as prima facie evidence that everything they said in captivity was coerced.

And we are somehow supposed to take admissions of guilt by waterboarded, sleep-deprived, locked-up for life people seriously.

Posted by zeynep at 08:46 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2006

Pinochet Escapes the Trial We Deserved

... but he did not escape disgrace and shame. (I did like the AP story's headline: "Pinochet dies after decade evading trial.)

Milton Friedman (whose ideas Pinochet's coup mercilessly imposed), Jeane Kirkpatrick, PW Botha... Based on the emerging pattern, I'd have my pacemaker checked if I were Henry Kissinger. (I wish Kissinger a long, healthy life. It's always sad to see criminals of the highest order die without a trial).

Posted by zeynep at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)

December 03, 2006

Spot the Error

So, this is how CNN was describing Pinochet's reign:

Leftists have accused him of ordering the torture and death of thousands of leftists during his regime. But he had also been praised for having attracted foreign investment to the country.

For one thing, the allegations against Pinochet are far more than accusations from one part of the political spectrum. But what got me was this ... In what universe does torturing and murdering thousands is "on the one hand" to "on the other hand" of attracting foreign investment. How about this, then::

"Jews have accused Hitler of killing millions during his regime. But he had also been praised for ramping up German industrialists' profit."

Posted by zeynep at 04:22 PM | Comments (1)

October 08, 2006

Dishonor on the Discharger

Lt. Cmdr Charles Swift, who exemplified some of the best traditions of this country, has been all but pushed out of the Navy:

The Navy lawyer whose successful defense of Osama bin Laden's driver led to the Supreme Court's landmark Hamdan decision has been passed over for promotion.

Under the Navy's "up or out" promotion system, the decision forces Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift into early retirement. He learned of the decision about two weeks after this summer's ruling in Hamdan, which was a historic rebuke to the Bush Administration, and not long after the National Law Journal named Swift one of the top 100 lawyers in America.

Military promotion practices are notoriously byzantine and take into account many factors, but I think it's safe to say that this is a disgrace and a black-eye for the Navy.

If only he had tortured people instead of actually defending the constitution, along with Salim Ahmed Hamdan. He might have gotten a handsome promotion.

Posted by zeynep at 07:54 PM | Comments (1)

September 29, 2006

It's Official.

The torture bill has passed. The only compromise seems to have been that they compromised and agreed to pretend there was a compromise.

Posted by zeynep at 05:13 AM | Comments (1)

June 11, 2006

Asymmetric Warfare

Suicide by three men in Guantanamo, who have never seen a day in court, is warfare against us. Everything is warfare against us. We do nothing. We are victims of everything.

"This was clearly a planned event, not a spontaneous event," said Rear Adm. Harry Harris, commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo.

He described the men, whose names were not released, as committed jihadists captured on the battlefield. "I believe this was not an act of desperation, rather an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us," Harris said.

"Asymmetrical warfare" is defined as "a conflict in which a much weaker opponent uses unorthodox or surprise tactics to attack the weak points of the much stronger opponent."

Harris added that there is a "mythical belief" that the Guantanamo detention center would be shut down if three detainees die.

...

Harris said Saturday that every prisoner at Guantanamo is considered "dangerous."

"They are smart. They are creative. They are committed. They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own," Harris said. "I believe this was not an act of desperation, but rather an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."

What's next, the Marines who killed shivering, cowering children at point-blank range in Haditha are going to claim that the children were engaged in warfare against us? I mean, can you imagine that they might say something like the "shootings were an unfortunate result of a sweep for enemies in a firefight"?

Posted by zeynep at 09:33 AM | Comments (2)

April 18, 2006

Innocent. We Know. Tough Luck.

Even the U.S. government admitting that you were mistakenly swept up doesn't get you out of Guantanamo:

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday from two Chinese Muslims who were mistakenly captured as enemy combatants more than four years ago and are still being held at the U.S. prison in Cuba.

So, what's supposed to happen to these people? I guess they don't count, so it doesn't matter.

Posted by zeynep at 10:26 PM | Comments (1)

March 22, 2006

Six Months

Six Months. That's it.

Remember that we know from Sy Hersh's account that the dogs did bite and bleed the prisoners.

Sgt. Michael J. Smith says that he was ordered to do what he did. Probably true -- however, that doesn't let him off the hook, morally or legally. (According to reports, Sgt. Smith was unrepentant during the trial). The so-called Nuremberg defense, "I was Just Following Orders" is specifically banned by the Uniform Code of Military Justice of the United States.

Posted by zeynep at 07:30 PM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2006

We Hold Our Breath (Not) for Sentencing

So, Sgt. Michael J. Smith has been found guilty of his handling of the dogs vis-a-vis the detainees. What do you think are the chances of him getting a sentence that would deter anyone?

While jurors agreed with prosecutors that Smith improperly allowed his dog, Marco, to get close to detainees while barking and growling, they found Smith not guilty of seven of the original 13 charges against him; the judge also threw out one of the 13 charges. The panel rejected the government's argument that Smith conspired with other military police soldiers who have previously been convicted of abuse at the prison. Jurors also found him not guilty of using his dog to abuse two other detainees -- one of whom was shown naked and cowering from military working dogs in one of the most recognizable photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib.

We should hear about the sentence pretty soon. I'll post an update.

Posted by zeynep at 09:38 PM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2006

The Gulags Multiply

Let's say you skip over the cruel, immoral, and illegal aspects of these prisons.

But, please tell me which brainiac thinks this is an effective strategy against the possibility of terrorist attacks against homeland U.S.A?

But some of the detainees have already been held at Bagram for as long as two or three years. And unlike those at Guantánamo, they have no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as "enemy combatants," military officials said.

Privately, some administration officials acknowledge that the situation at Bagram has increasingly come to resemble the legal void that led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June 2004 affirming the right of prisoners at Guantánamo to challenge their detention in United States courts.

While Guantánamo offers carefully scripted tours for members of Congress and journalists, Bagram has operated in rigorous secrecy since it opened in 2002. It bars outside visitors except for the International Red Cross and refuses to make public the names of those held there. The prison may not be photographed, even from a distance.

Posted by zeynep at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2005

Torture, the TV Version

Many people would be okay, it seems, with torture under "rare circumstances." And this is not just here:

The polling, in the United States and eight of its closest allies, found that in Canada, Mexico and Germany people are divided on whether torture is ever justified. Most people opposed torture under any circumstances in Spain and Italy.

In America, 61 percent of those surveyed agreed torture is justified at least on rare occasions. Almost nine in 10 in South Korea and just over half in France and Britain felt that way.

...

In the poll, about two-thirds of the people living in Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Spain said they would oppose allowing U.S. officials to secretly interrogate terror suspects in their countries. Almost that many in Britain, France, Germany and Italy said they felt the same way. Almost two-thirds in the United States support such interrogations in the U.S. by their own government.

This is because many people have no idea how torture is actually used in practice. Torture is a tool of mass terror, and rarely a means to get specific information out of a subject. Most people, however, have learned of torture from tortured T.V. scenarios where the good white guy or the token-black-guy-standing-in-for-the-good-white-guy is shown as pondering the morality of torturing the olive-skinned man who knows the code to stop the nuclear bomb that is about to explode under Manhattan. It seems to be a relatively easy call under such conditions.

Of course, that scenario is as likely as the scenarios in which the bad guy ties up the hero in an elaborate set-up, proceeds to explain the plot and then leaves him alone to wrestle with the ropes and the weights. (While I would hate the give away the ending to 95 percent of action/suspense movies, suffice it to say that it's not a good idea to unravel *all* your plans to your nemesis and turn your back.)

If it were ever the case that someone got the codes to stop the bomb by torturing someone, that someone was likely a Klingon.

In fact, look at all historical applications of state torture. Torture is not an act against individuals, even though it is an act on individuals. Torture aims to terrorize populations, break the will of groups. Unless that is understood and brought into the debate, I doubt that we will get the "people" on our side because we are not having the same discussion.

Posted by zeynep at 07:12 PM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2005

“had never seen anyone’s arms positioned like that, and he was surprised they didn’t just pop out of their sockets.”

So, We Do Not Torture. Except when we do.

The house belongs to Mark Swanner, a forty-six-year-old C.I.A. officer who has performed interrogations and polygraph tests for the agency, which has employed him at least since the nineteen-nineties. (He is not a covert operative.) Two years ago, at Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad, an Iraqi prisoner in Swanner’s custody, Manadel al-Jamadi, died during an interrogation. His head had been covered with a plastic bag, and he was shackled in a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited his ability to breathe; according to forensic pathologists who have examined the case, he asphyxiated. In a subsequent internal investigation, United States government authorities classified Jamadi’s death as a “homicide,” meaning that it resulted from unnatural causes. Swanner has not been charged with a crime and continues to work for the agency.

Posted by zeynep at 09:25 PM | Comments (0)

November 05, 2005

Ethics Refresher Course at the White House

The White House is to provide "refresher" courses in ethics.

Bush Orders Staff to Attend Ethics Briefings White House Counsel to Give 'Refresher' Course

President Bush has ordered White House staff to attend mandatory briefings beginning next week on ethical behavior and the handling of classified material after the indictment last week of a senior administration official in the CIA leak probe.

According to a memo sent to aides yesterday, Bush expects all White House staff to adhere to the "spirit as well as the letter" of all ethics laws and rules. As a result, "the White House counsel's office will conduct a series of presentations next week that will provide refresher lectures on general ethics rules, including the rules of governing the protection of classified information," according to the memo, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post by a senior White House aide.

Hmm, okay. How does it go?

1- Don't get caught
2- Torture doesn't count
3- Don't take digital pictures, unless it's pictures of torture since it doesn't count
4- Make sure to destroy your notes and memos, but don't worry if it's about torture (see point 2).
5- Don't get caught.

Posted by zeynep at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)

November 03, 2005

Our Gulags

Our sprawling Gulags.

The International Committee of the Red Cross expressed strong interest in the claims, first reported Wednesday in the Washington Post, that the CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaida captives at Soviet-era compounds.

Red Cross chief spokeswoman Antonella Notari said the agency asked Washington about the allegations and requested access to the prisons if they exist. The Red Cross, which has exclusive rights to visit terror suspects detained at a U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, long has been concerned about reports U.S. officials were hiding detainees from ICRC delegates.

Europe's top human rights organization, the Council of Europe, said it, too, would investigate.

Notari said the Red Cross, which also monitors conditions at U.S. detention centers in Afghanistan and
Iraq, has been unable to find some people who reportedly were detained. She said the Red Cross was "concerned about the fate of an unknown number of persons detained as part of what is called the 'global war on terror' and held in undisclosed places of detention."

In implicating Poland and Romania, Human Rights Watch examined flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004, said Mark Garlasco, a senior military analyst with the New York-based organization. He said the group matched the flight patterns with testimony from some of the hundreds of detainees in the war on terrorism who have been released by the United States.

"The indications are that prisoners in Afghanistan are being (taken) to facilities in Europe and other countries in the world," Garlasco, a former civilian intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency, told The Associated Press.

He would not say how the organization obtained the flight logs, but said two destinations of the flights stood out as likely sites of any secret CIA detention centers: Szymany Airport in Poland, which is near the headquarters of Poland's intelligence service; and Mihail Kogalniceanu military airfield in Romania.

Human Rights Watch also obtained the tail numbers of dozens of CIA aircraft to match them with the flight logs, Garlasco said.

He said that in September 2003, a Boeing 737 flew from Washington to Kabul, Afghanistan, making stops along the way in the Czech Republic and Uzbekistan. On Sept. 22, the plane flew on to Szymany Airport, then to Mihail Kogalniceanu, proceeded to Sale, Morocco, and finally landed at Guantanamo, Garlasco said.

As far as he knew, Human Rights Watch has not found and interviewed detainees who were held in any alleged facilities in Poland and Romania.

I've been staring at this story, wondering what to write. What is there to say?

Posted by zeynep at 08:59 PM | Comments (1)

October 23, 2005

Lady Boys and Burnt Corpses on Video

More from Afghanistan:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 - The Pentagon announced Wednesday night that the Army had started a criminal investigation into allegations that American soldiers in Afghanistan had burned the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters and then used the charred and smoking corpses in a propaganda campaign against the insurgents.

The events were shown on an Australian television program, broadcast there on Wednesday night, depicting what is described as an American psychological operations team broadcasting taunts over a loudspeaker toward a village thought to be harboring Taliban fighters and sympathizers, according to a transcript of the program. It was posted on the Web site of the Special Broadcasting Service, http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/. An American soldier, an Afghan soldier, and two Taliban had just been killed in fighting there, the transcript of the program said.

According to the program's translation of the taunts, which were delivered in the local language by American forces on the scene, a soldier identified as Sgt. Jim Baker, said: "You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to come down and retrieve the bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be."

From what I understand, there is video of this:

The program's video was taken by Stephen Dupont, a freelance Australian photojournalist who was embedded in the American unit to document its operations. Mr. Dupont's photographs from the region have been widely published.

In a separate interview posted on the network's Web site on Wednesday, Mr. Dupont said soldiers from an unidentified airborne unit appeared to believe they were doing the right thing in laying the corpses of the two dead Taliban toward Mecca, and then setting them on fire.

The video shows flames swirling around two charred corpses, their legs and arms outstretched, and a group of five American soldiers watching from a rocky ledge.

Posted by zeynep at 12:17 AM | Comments (1)

October 05, 2005

90 to 9

I haven't read the text of the amendment, but in some sense that's not important. At this point in history, what's important is that the Senate voted 90-9, prohibiting "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of detainees:

The Senate's 90 to 9 vote suggested a new boldness among Republicans to challenge the White House on war policy. The amendment by McCain, one of Bush's most significant backers at the outset of the Iraq war, would establish uniform standards for the interrogation of people detained by U.S. military personnel, prohibiting "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment while they are in U.S. custody. ...

In its statement on the veto threat, the White House said the measure would "restrict the president's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bringing terrorists to justice."

Posted by zeynep at 10:51 PM | Comments (3)

October 04, 2005

“I have an uneasy suspicion that it relates to the nationality of the victim.”

Surprise, surprise. When and if U.S. soldiers are tried for crimes against people of Iraq, the sentences are unusually lenient, if not outright dismissed, according to analysis by Dayton Daily News:

n analysis by the Dayton Daily News of previously undisclosed records from the Army Court-Martial Management Information System database found that 226 U.S. soldiers were charged with offenses between the first deployments in March 2003 and Jan. 1, 2005.

Of the 1,038 separate charges, fewer than one in 10 involved crimes against Iraqis. Virtually all of the rest involved crimes against other soldiers, property drug or alcohol offenses, and violations of military rules, the Daily News said.

Charges involving Iraqi victims were three times more likely to be dismissed or withdrawn by the Army than cases in which the victims were fellow soldiers or civilian military employees — 44 percent compared with 15 percent, the newspaper said.

The Daily News also said that despite evidence and convictions in some cases in which the victims were Iraqis, only a small percentage resulted in punishments approaching those routinely imposed for such crimes by civilian justice systems.

The newspaper cited one case in which two U.S. soldiers were convicted of robbing an Iraqi shopkeeper. One soldier was sentenced to five months' confinement and the other to one month.

The median sentence imposed for all types of robbery in the United States, with or without the use of firearms, is five years.

“I've been surprised at some of the lenient sentences,” said Gary Solis, a former military judge and prosecutor who teaches military law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. “I have an uneasy suspicion that it relates to the nationality of the victim.”

Meanwhile, Lynndie England reveals that she knew much worse was going on in Abu Ghraib:

But [Lynndie] England, appearing on NBC's "Dateline" program, said the pictures did not convey the full extent of the abuse that took place in the cell block.

"I know worse things were happening over there," admitted the 22-year-old convict.

She said one night she heard blood-curdling screams coming from the block's shower room, where non-military interrogators had taken an Arab detainee.

"They had the shower on to muffle it, but it wasn't helping," she recalled. "They never screamed like that when we were humiliating. But this guy was like screaming bloody murder. I mean it still haunts me I can still hear it just like it happened yesterday."

Really, where is the outrage? What more needs to happen?

Posted by zeynep at 07:18 PM | Comments (1)

August 03, 2005

Tortured to Death? Yawn.

Story after story of brutal killings of detainees has surfaced and been published in major newspapers, much like this one.

Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.

It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.

...

The sleeping-bag interrogation and beatings were taking place in Qaim about the same time that soldiers at Abu Ghraib, outside Baghdad, were using dogs to intimidate detainees, putting women's underwear on their heads, forcing them to strip in front of female soldiers and attaching at least one to a leash. It was a time when U.S. interrogators were coming up with their own tactics to get detainees to talk, many of which they considered logical interpretations of broad-brush categories in the Army Field Manual, with labels such as "fear up" or "pride and ego down" or "futility."

Other tactics, such as some of those seen at Abu Ghraib, had been approved for one detainee at Guantanamo Bay and found their way to Iraq. Still others have been linked to official Pentagon guidance on specific techniques, such as the use of dogs.

...

Two Army soldiers with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Fort Carson, Colo., are charged with killing Mowhoush with the sleeping-bag technique, and his death has been the subject of partially open court proceedings at the base in Colorado Springs. Two other soldiers alleged to have participated face potential nonjudicial punishment.

It seems that we have almost made peace with being a nation that systematically tortures, and doesn't even bother with serious slap on the wrist for those that kill prisoners while torturing them.

It's hard to find an original comment to make, something new to say. Yes, we are torturing them to death. Yes, nobody is getting punished. Yes, it is happening again and again. Yawn.

Posted by zeynep at 11:47 PM | Comments (2)

July 28, 2005

Extortion! Torture! Videotapes! The Reality Show We Are Not Watching

I was leafing, well clicking, through some of the latest news coming out of Iraq when I noticed this story. In some ways, there isn't much remarkable about it, but, it just seems emblematic of how messed up things are there. It involves a California Army National Guard company, implicated in one portion of the torture scandal, an extortion scheme, an Iraqi police unit most famous for its brutality and televised "confessions" almost-certainly obtained under torture:

Members of a California Army National Guard company that was placed on restrictive duty in Iraq after being implicated in the latest detainee abuse scandal have trained and conducted joint operations with Iraqi police forces, including an elite unit accused of brutality.

The Wolf Brigade of the Iraqi police is famous in Iraq for staging daring raids in Mosul and Baghdad and for its commander, known as Maj. Gen. Abu Walid, who became a national celebrity after he hosted televised "confessions" of alleged insurgents captured by the group. Critics of the forces say they use torture to coerce confessions from suspected insurgents.

...

The most egregious case of detainee abuse reported so far occurred after a June insurgent attack, when soldiers allegedly tortured Iraqi detainees with an electric stun gun. At least one instance of abuse was recorded on video, military sources said.

...

He downplayed allegations of an extortion scheme reported in Wednesday's edition of The Times. In that story, two military sources alleged that at least six soldiers were involved in a scheme that extorted $30,000 from Iraqi shopkeepers in exchange for protection from insurgents.

Kent called those allegations unfounded, though he said one soldier was disciplined in connection with that portion of the investigation.

Markert said the financial investigation concluded weeks ago and found only a "$4,000 discrepancy."

...

"1st Platoon has been integrated with the Iraqi Police in sector, and have trained them to do raids … and patrol," Haviland wrote. He said that he assigned one officer to lead the training of "the Iraqi Army's Special Forces Wolf Brigade."

"These soldiers have taken nearly 300 detainees in our area since they arrived in early May," Haviland said.

The brigade is both loved and feared in Iraq for its attacks on alleged insurgent hide-outs and the dramatic televised confessions those offensives produced.

But Sunni human rights advocates charged that the brigade elicited the confessions by beating their captives. A woman interviewed by The Times this year said brigade officers whipped her sister with telephone wires to force her to confess to terrorist acts and to accuse her male associates of raping her and of having homosexual relations.

The detainee, Khalida Mashhandani, was later released after it was determined that her confessions had been coerced.

Despite its controversial reputation, the Wolf Brigade is regarded by U.S. military officials as the gold standard for Iraqi security forces.

Unsurprisingly, a new study finds that thirty percent of U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq display mental health problems:

Thirty percent of U.S. troops surveyed have developed stress-related mental health problems three to four months after coming home from the Iraq war, the Army's surgeon general said Thursday.

The survey of 1,000 troops found problems including anxiety, depression, nightmares, anger and an inability to concentrate, said Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley and other military medical officials.

Sometimes it gets hard to keep track of the latest rationales about what it is exactly we are supposed to be pretending to be doing in Iraq. I do, wonder, however, if the official policy simply became, "It's the Oil, Stupid," as Bob Herbert recently put it. Would we then stop, or would we shrug and say, oh well. Way of Life, you know.

Posted by zeynep at 11:33 AM | Comments (1)

July 13, 2005

Container Deaths

Remember our outrage over container deaths in Afghanistan perpetrated by the Taliban? I suppose these won't be getting anywhere near the same coverage; after all, these are "our boys" doing it now.

Iraq's leading Sunni Muslim groups reacted angrily yesterday to reports that 10 Sunni Arab men suffocated to death in the back of a police lorry in Baghdad's sweltering summer heat. The men are alleged to have died after being arrested by Iraqi anti-terrorist special forces on Sunday as they visited relatives at a hospital in the mainly Shia neighbourhood of Shula in north-western Baghdad.

A spokesman for the conservative Association of Muslim Clerics said yesterday that 11 men had been rounded up after an incident in which US troops fired at a group of construction workers.

The men, aged between 20 and 30, were taken to a detention centre where they were tortured, he alleged.

They were then herded into a police truck for up to 14 hours, where they lost consciousness and and all but one died. The temperature outside was above 40C (104F).

When will we stop with all this democracy spreading? And how long before the current Iraqi security apparatus --set up with our help, encouragement and weapons-- make people wish for Saddam's?

That's quite an idea, even to imagine, but that's where we seem to be headed.

Posted by zeynep at 04:15 PM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2005

This is How Dilawar Died

All the media, including the New York Times which published this harrowing account sourced to Army's own criminal investigation into the case, still refers to this as "abuse." I urge you to read it all:

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.

"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"

At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.

In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.

There remain thousands and thousands of pages reports from internal investigations and reports that have yet to see the light of day.

Today I have one demand, and one demand only.

Declassify it all, now.

I believe, and they obviously fear, all that the antiwar movement has been saying about ending the occupation, about bringing the troops home, about being accountable, about providing reparations and restitution, all of it, would just follow.

Bring it out. Let us know. Let us hear the testimonies. Let us see the cells, the shackles, the x-rays, the autopsy reports, the survivors, the graves, every last bit.

Declassify it all.

Posted by zeynep at 04:47 PM | Comments (1)

May 17, 2005

Constitution Desecrated, Does Anyone Care?

Ok, so, let me get this straight. Their defense is that they had a memo about how to protect the Quran, all the while they were also writing memos obliterating the Geneva conventions, authorizing torture, encouraging abuse, setting up procedures for “rendition,” voiding the constitution, right to habeas corpus and due process...

The three-page memorandum, dated Jan. 19, 2003, says that only Muslim chaplains and Muslim interpreters can handle the holy book, and only after putting on clean gloves in full view of detainees.

The detailed rules require U.S. Muslim personnel to use both hands when touching the Koran to signal "respect and reverence," and specify that the right hand be the primary one used to manipulate any part of the book "due to cultural associations with the left hand." The Koran should be treated like a "fragile piece of delicate art," it says.

I can almost see the memo. To all. This is the inform you that the constitution shall be treated as a “fragile piece of delicate art.” Not to be opened, read or otherwise damaged. Never take it out of its lockbox. Only talk about in in hushed tones. Never mind, don’t ever talk about it. And don’t even think about the Bill of Rights.

Posted by zeynep at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)

May 04, 2005

Judge Halts England Sentencing; Private Graner Not Playing Ball

This just in:

Pohl abruptly stopped England's sentencing hearing after Graner testified for the defense that three pictures he took of England holding a naked prisoner on a leash were meant to be used as a legitimate training aid for other guards.

...

On Monday, when England pleaded guilty, she told the judge she knew at the time that the pictures were taken purely for the amusement of the guards at the Baghdad prison.

Before the judge stopped the proceeding, Graner had not been asked if England knew the photos were to be used as training aids.

"If you don't want to plead guilty, don't," Pohl admonished the defendant while Graner sat on the witness stand. "But you can't plead guilty and say you're not guilty. ... You can't have it both ways."

...

Graner maintains that he and the other Abu Ghraib guards were following orders from higher-ranking interrogators when they abused the detainees.

Remember that yesterday Lynndie England first testified said she assumed what she was doing was okay, at which point the lawyers for both the prosecution and the defense jointly requested a one-hour recess.

After the recess, the presumably-better-coached England duly testified that, no, unlike what she had just said, she knew what she had done was wrong -- a requirement for her guilty plea, and the subsequent plea bargain. She also absolved all superiors, and the speculation has been that this is what the real bargaining was about -- a lighter sentence in return for a ""No Sir" to the question "Do you believe any of this conduct was in any way encouraged by a chain of command."

P.S. Maybe this is the reason for the concern her lawyers have with Lynndie England's "learning disabilities." She's slow to learn what she is supposed to say on the stand to clear the chain of command.

Posted by zeynep at 01:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Did Lynndie England Agree to Cover Up for the Chain of Command in Return for a Lighter Sentence?

Empire Notes speculates fairly convincingly that Lynndie England cut a deal where she would plead guilty, receive a lighter sentence, and, crucially, not accuse any higher-ups for wrongdoing.

It makes perfect sense, and explains some of the bizarre back and forth in and around the trial. And her surprising "No Sir" to the question ""Do you believe any of this conduct was in any way encouraged by a chain of command?"

Here's more support for that explanation. Pvt. Charles Graner seems to imply the same thing:

In a handwritten note given to reporters Tuesday, Pvt. Charles Graner said he wanted England to fight the charges.

"Knowing what happened in Iraq, it was very upsetting to see Lynn plead guilty to her charges," wrote Graner, who was scheduled to testify Wednesday at England's sentencing hearing. "I would hope that by doing so she will have a better chance at a good sentence."

Graner continues to argue that he and the other Abu Ghraib guards were following orders from higher-ranking interrogators when they abused the detainees.

Some solid investigative reporting is called for here.

Posted by zeynep at 08:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 02, 2005

Lynndie England Pleads Guilty; Her Lawyers Conflate Learning Disabilities with Moral Disabilities

Pfc. Lynndie England pled guilty to mistreating prisoners today:

"I had a choice, but I chose to do what my friends wanted me to," she said, entering her pleas a day before the start of her trial.

At least she acknowledged she had a choice. She will get less than two years, but that's still a lot more than anyone with higher rank is getting these days. Which is to say, anything is bigger than zero. Most everyone who was stupid enough to take pictures that became public is getting some sort of sentence, which is a small set:

She is the seventh enlisted soldier to face criminal penalties in the Abu Ghraib case. No commissioned officers at the prison, and no senior officer in the chain of command, has been charged. Six enlisted soldiers have entered guilty pleas in the case.

So, here are some thoughts on bizarre aspects of the trial. First, the judge dragged his feet in accepting the plea.

England responded that the man was refusing to cooperate with the guards and that her supervisor, Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., told her to go get the strap and put it around the prisoner as a leash. He also instructed her to hold the prisoner because Graner said it would be more degrading to the man.

Then Pohl asked England what training she had for prison work. England, who was a records clerk in the military before being assigned to Abu Ghraib, said she had none and told the judge she was unaware of the Geneva Conventions. But she said that Graner had worked as a civilian as a prison guard and she trusted his analysis of the situation.

Pohl then said, "I don't see how it would be illegal to pose for a photograph if you considered it legal." But after a recess, he accepted the plea deal.

In other words, the Judge wanted England to plead not-guilty because if it was a lawful order in her mind, then it is not illegal. I guess Lynndie England's lawyers were smarter than that, because they knew that their highly-visible client would be convicted if for no other reason than being the "poster-woman", so they had to plead guilty in order to bargain for a reduced sentence.

But, pray tell, do you really need to know of the Geneva Conventions in order to know what was done was wrong? I'm really sick of this "lack of training" argument. Is the argument that our military is composed of people who are so devoid of a sense of right and wrong that they can't tell that dragging a hapless naked man around by a leash is wrong?

And here's where it gets more weird. Her defense is going to argue that she suffers from "learning disabilities."

Rick Hernandez [England's civilian lawyer] said it has not been decided whether England will take the stand. He said the defense will present evidence that England has severe learning disabilities and mental health problems.

That is so insulting to people with learning disabilities that I don't know where to begin. Learning disabilities do not mean that one is devoid of moral judgement or capacity. Difficulties with reading material, spelling mistakes, bad handwriting, yes. Torturing and degrading people under your control, no.

Posted by zeynep at 08:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 01, 2005

Sending People to Be Boiled to Death to "Combat Terrorism": Meet the 21st Century State, and the 21st Century Propaganda System

It is so hard to come up with "commentary" on these stories. Ummm, yeah, we send people to places where they boil them to death. Ummm, no, no trial or evidence before or after "the rendition."

Seven months before Sept. 11, 2001, the State Department issued a human rights report on Uzbekistan. It was a litany of horrors.

The police repeatedly tortured prisoners, State Department officials wrote, noting that the most common techniques were "beating, often with blunt weapons, and asphyxiation with a gas mask." Separately, international human rights groups had reported that torture in Uzbek jails included boiling of body parts, using electroshock on genitals and plucking off fingernails and toenails with pliers. Two prisoners were boiled to death, the groups reported. ...

Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, however, the Bush administration turned to Uzbekistan as a partner in fighting global terrorism. ...

Now there is growing evidence that the United States has sent terror suspects to Uzbekistan for detention and interrogation...

...

Uzbekistan's role as a surrogate jailer for the United States was confirmed by a half-dozen current and former intelligence officials working in Europe, the Middle East and the United States.

...

There is other evidence of the United States' reliance on Uzbekistan in the program. On Sept. 21, 2003, two American-registered airplanes - a Gulfstream jet and a Boeing 737 - landed at the international airport in Tashkent, according to flight logs obtained by The New York Times. ... Over a span of about three years, from late 2001 until early this year, the C.I.A. used those two planes to ferry terror suspects in American custody to countries around the world ...

But here's what really annoys me. Here's the picture of Bush and Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan:

Here's the NYT caption under this photo:

President Bush welcomed President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan to the White House in 2002 to form a partnership to combat terrorism.

See, immediately, it's all explained away. The partnership was formed "to combat terrorism."

Although the article is damning in its evidence, it means but a whiff. If you so easily surrender the context that this is all done to "combat terrorism", who will really object? What's a few people boiled, few fingernails pulled, in this glorious partnership "to combat terrorism"?

This is how our current propaganda system works. The strongest, the most insidious lies are not about the who, what, where or when, but about why.

Posted by zeynep at 01:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 28, 2005

A year goes by

One year has passed since we first saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib. Since then we have learned that at least hundreds have died in custody, and that thousands were maimed, raped, injured, tortured and otherwise abused.

But I have just learned that I was wrong about the name I chose for this picture, which I had saved as "ghraib-mock-electrocution.jpg"

It was not a mock electrocution; this man was actually shocked with electricity. [Corrected sentence, thanks to reader Dick Fitzgerald]

Here is just a bit from his harrowing story [From February 2005 Vanity Fair via Empire Notes]:

Haj Ali claims he was given electrical shocks near the end of his stay on Cellblock 1A at Abu Ghraib. By this time, his old, customized blanket had been returned to him by Joyner; he wore it like a hospital gown for modesty, tying it in the back with its fringed edges. One night as he was praying, Haj Ali was taken hooded by Graner and led to another room. "I felt there were 8 or 10 people standing around," he says. He was then made to stand on a food box and lift his hands, as electrical wires were clipped between his fingers. "They would give me electric shocks. I could feel the pulses going even into my eyeballs. I would collapse and faint." Upon each collapse, the guards would kick and hit Haj Ali with boots and sticks, saying, "Get up! Get up!" He believes he was shocked five times.

As he tells me this, Haj Ali begins crying. Army investigators have not spoken to Haj Ali, but a report on alleged prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib released last spring noted one instance of a detainee's being hooked up to wires to "simulate" electric torture.

Following his release, after more than two months, Haj Ali quickly co-founded an Iraq-based non-governmental organization, Victims of American Occupation Prison Association, which currently has thousands of members and is growing daily.

And yet, Army investigators have not even bothered to speak with this man. The whole story is worth reading.

And yet, the same government remains in power. Neither the direct perpetrators, many of whom were cruel so much above and beyond duty that it is not possible to chalk it all off to stress and following orders, nor the higher-ups who initiated, ordered, oversaw and encouraed these practices have been held accountable. (Only one or two of the smallest, most visible torturers like Graner got anything resembling a punishment. Most of the rest got docked pay, a few months in jail, meaningless reprimands, promotions and applause).

(I have categorized my blog entries about the torture scandal here) It makes for very sad reading.)

Are we really expecting all this to go away if we just ignore it, as we have been doing?

Posted by zeynep at 08:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 23, 2005

Why Do They Hate Us; I Lost Count...

Breaking news:

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, faulted by some for leadership failures in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, has been cleared by the Army of all allegations of wrongdoing and will not be punished, officials said.

(What a coincidence that this news is released on a Friday afternoon).

I don't know what to say except that we should remember this moment the next time why we wonder why they think we are hypocrites. I don't know what else we could do to communicate to people of Iraq that we see them as less than human. If a tenth of what had been done to the torture victims in Iraq and Afghanistan had been done to American soldiers, many people would be calling for nukes. (And remember, not that you'd know by following the story from the media, that the torture scandal is far beyond the few pictures of sexual humiliation that have surfaces. Hundreds have been killed in detention, and many more mutilated, raped and subjected to extreme pain and torture.)

And Lt. Gen. Sanchez is one of the few top-brass soldiers for whom we have direct proof of his involvement in the decision-making process that encouraged, allowed and enabled the torture. Let me quote from a previous blog entry here:

And the most eggregious example in the uniformed military was Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez because cables and other materials had been unearthed which showed that he had directly authorized and ordered the use of some of the torture methods and helped run the place in a manner that allowed and encouraged the whole gamut of despicable practices.

Pentagon did not make these cables public, but some appropriately disgusted government employee turned them over to the Washington Post. Let me recap the key part (I wrote more about it here):

The cable signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez listed several dozen strategies for extracting information, drawn partly from what officials now say was an outdated and improperly permissive Army field manual. But it added one not previously approved for use in Iraq, under the heading of Presence of Military Working Dogs: "Exploit Arab fear of dogs while maintaining security during interrogations."

And:

Unnamed officials at the Florida headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, which has overall military responsibility for Iraq, objected to some of the 32 interrogation tactics approved by Sanchez in September, including the more severe methods that he had said could be used at any time in Abu Ghraib with the consent of the interrogation officer in charge.

...

The high-pressure options that remained included taking someone to a less hospitable location for interrogation; manipulating his or her diet; imposing isolation for more than 30 days; using military dogs to provoke fear; and requiring someone to maintain a "stress position" for as long as 45 minutes. These were not dropped by Sanchez until a scandal erupted in May over photographs depicting abuse at the prison.

Someone should remind these people that just because we here seem so resolute in not noticing this massive cover-up, it doesn't mean the rest of the world is also not noticing it.

Posted by zeynep at 10:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 06, 2005

Mercy Killing

I saw this over at Left I on the News:

A lot of words have been written about the suffering of the Schiavo family. Just a few days ago, a lot fewer words were devoted to the fact that an American soldier found guilty of killing an unarmed, wounded Iraqi in a "mercy killing" was allowed to walk free, dismissed from the Army but with no other penalty. And not a single word, as far as I saw, noted that the dead man actually had a family (as, of course, do every one of the other 100,000+ Iraqis who have died as a result of the U.S. invasion, not to mention the million who died from the decade of sanctions). Via Raed in the Middle comes this photo of the dead man's son, holding up a picture of his father and himself to remind the world of the victim of the American Army's "mercy". Yes, Iraqis have families too:


An Iraqi boy holds a picture of his slain father, Karim Abed Ali. US Army Captain Rogelio Maynulet, 29, was dismissed from the military, but a court martial panel did not impose a prison sentence for shooting Abed Ali, a military spokesman said.

No jail time. No punishment, except being dismissed from the military, despite of being convicted of " assault with intent to commit voluntary manslaughter."

Captain Rogelio Maynulet should at least have to explain to that kid why he killed his father.

Posted by zeynep at 10:07 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 31, 2005

If I Pretend Not to See You, You Will Not Exist

The worse it gets, the less we hear of it from the media:

In Iraq, the United States is now detaining a record 10,200 people, more than double the number held five months ago. The number of detainees held in Afghanistan also appears to be on the rise. Individuals detained in Afghanistan by U.S. forces rose from 350 in June of 2004 to 500 in January of 2005. No numbers on Afghanistan are available since January 2005 since the Department of Defense has introduced a policy of classifying information related to U.S. detentions in Afghanistan, including the number of detainees held and the specific legal basis for their detentions.

"One of the concerning developments we're seeing as U.S. detention operations in these places mature is a trend toward greater secrecy, not less," Pearlstein said. Behind the Wire updates a report Human Rights First issued in June 2004 on the scope and nature of U.S. global detention operations in the "war on terrorism."

That's 10,000 people held under conditions the State Department would condemn, especially if the deed was committed by a nation we did not like. The scope of the torture story is increasing; there are more and more confirmations of people who died under custody. Corroborating evidence is emerging on the "renditions."

In other words, the situation is the exact opposite of the impression one would get by watching news or reading newspapers.

Posted by zeynep at 09:29 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 22, 2005

None So Blind

I kid you not:

After two years and more than 1,500 U.S. casualties in a war that has been perhaps the best documented in history, no single photograph from the hostilities in Iraq has emerged as iconic.

This was from a by a Washington Post staff writer, Philip Kennicott. Normally, I would have moved on from that piece after hopefully remembering to close my precipitously dropped jaw, but Kennicott has been a strikingly incisive voice at times, so I kept reading. No, he isn't blind as one might first be tempted to conclude. Nor is he unaware of what is surely the iconic image of this occupation for the rest of the world:

What Kennicott means is that we have not accepted, have not come to a national consensus, about the war:

Despite heroic efforts of photojournalists to document the challenges and successes of the long grind of occupation, no one has captured a picture that has anything like the power of Nick Ut's photograph of a naked girl fleeing a napalm strike in Vietnam (could it be published in a "family" newspaper today?) or Joe Rosenthal's image of the flag raised on Iwo Jima. Those images captured -- or helped crystallize -- a consensus about the wars they represented, a consensus that has yet to emerge about the war in Iraq.

In other words, we remain in denial.

Posted by zeynep at 11:05 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

March 17, 2005

Us? Torture?

CIA Director Porter Goss defends U.S. interrogation practices in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing:

CIA Director Porter Goss defended U.S. interrogation practices and rejected any notion that the intelligence community engages in torture. ... “I can assure you that I know of no instances where the intelligence community is outside the law on this,” Goss said. “And I know for a fact that torture is not productive. That’s not professional interrogation. We don’t do torture.”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Associated Press is compiling lists of the known cases of "Prisoner deaths investigated as involving criminal homicide or abuse by U.S. personnel." (Note how it's merely abuse, not torture, even if the victim ends up dead):

_Mohammed Sayari, Afghanistan, April 28, 2002. Army Special Forces captain reprimanded.

_Mullah Habibullah, about 28, Bagram, Afghanistan, Dec. 3, 2002. Sgt. James P. Boland, 377th Military Police Company, charged with dereliction of duty; more charges possible against others.

_Dilawar, 22, Bagram, Dec. 10, 2002. Pfc. Willie V. Brand, 377th Military Police Company, charged with involuntary manslaughter, according to documents obtained by Human Rights Watch. Boland charged with dereliction, assault and maltreatment, more charges possible against others.

_Unidentified person, Wazi Village, Afghanistan, January 2003. Under investigation.

_Jamal Naseer, 18, Gardez, Afghanistan, March 2003. Under investigation.

_Unidentified person, Camp Bucca, Iraq, May 12, 2003. Soldier reprimanded for not using warning shots before killing someone trying to enter the camp.

_Abdul Wali, 28, Asadabad, Afghanistan, June 2, 2003. CIA (news - web sites) contractor David Passaro charged with assault.

_Dilar Dababa, Baghdad, June 13, 2003. Died of head injury. USA Today reported he died during interrogation.

_Obeed Hethere Radad, Tikrit, Iraq, Sept. 11, 2003. Soldier discharged for voluntary manslaughter for not warning escaping prisoner before shooting him.

_Manadel al-Jamadi, Abu Ghraib, Iraq, Nov. 4, 2003. Died during interrogation. Several Navy SEALs charged; and two CIA personnel under investigation.

_Abdul Wahid, Helmand province, Afghanistan, Nov. 6, 2003. Badly wounded man dies in U.S. custody. No U.S. charges The Denver Post reported he died at interrogation facility while shackled and gagged.

_Muhamad Husain Kadir, Taal Al Jal, Iraq, Feb. 28, 2004. Pfc. Edward Richmond, 25th Infantry Division, received three years in prison for voluntary manslaughter.

_Karim Hassan, 36, Kufa, Iraq, May 21, 2004. Capt. Rogelio Maynulet, 1st Armored Division, facing court-martial over what he described as mercy killing of wounded Iraq militiaman.

_Unidentified person, 16, Sadr City, Iraq, Aug. 18, 2004. Staff Sgt. Johnny M. Horne Jr., Fort Riley, Kan., sentenced to three years in prison in another purported mercy killing. Staff Sgt. Cardenas J. Alban, also from Fort Riley, convicted and sentenced to one year confinement.

_Three unidentified people, Sadr City, August 2004. Sgt. Michael P. Williams and Spc. Brent May, from Fort Riley, facing murder charges.

_At least 6 more investigated by U.S. Army.

Note that these don't include dozens that are ruled "justifiable homicide" under very untransparent conditions. And again, these are only the publicly known cases.

Where's the outrage?

Posted by zeynep at 06:51 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

March 16, 2005

He would have preferred 'non-judicial' punishment

That's what Army 1st Lt. Jack Saville's lawyer said after his client was sentenced to 45 days after he pled guilty to "having two Iraqis thrown at gunpoint into the Tigris in Samarra." One of the young Iraqi man died, although the U.S. soldiers claimed his death was faked. The family of the young Iraqi gave permission to the U.S. government to exhume the remains of their son to confirm the death but somehow that just couldn't be done.

That's right. 45 days for having killed a man. Oh, yes, also $12,000 in docked pay. Such a shining example of our culture of life.

Saville's lawyer, Frank Spinner, told reporters afterward he would have preferred "non-judicial" punishment, but admitted, "I can't really complain about the sentence."

Let's even assume that the 19 year-old Zaidoun Hassoun had survived, even though the preponderance of the evidence indicates that he did not. Forty-five days for attempting to kill a person is justice? A nineteen year-old who had violated a curfew imposed by an occupying army gets a death sentence, whereas the man who laughed and ordered two young man to jump into a dangerous river at gunpoint gets 45 days?

Marwan Fadil, who survived the incident, testified in Perkins' trial that he and cousin Zaidoun Hassoun, 19, begged for mercy and soldiers laughed as Hassoun drowned.

They had been detained for violating curfew.

Saville asn't even discharged from the Army, in spite of testimony from another American soldier who said it was just part of a bet:

Earlier Tuesday, former soldier Terry Bowman testified that before the Balad incident, Saville laughed and said it was part of a bet with another platoon over who would do such a thing first.

The prosecution simply did not push the actual manslaughter charge. The jury did not believe or care that the death had occurred:

The most serious charge originally brought against Saville, a single manslaughter count, wasn't pushed by prosecutors. He was found not guilty of that offense.

In the first instance, on Dec. 5, 2003, a Balad man was arrested for unspecified reasons and driven to the Tigris, where he was tossed into the river. A soldier testified that Saville said his platoon had a bet with another unit to see which would be the first to use the river-dunking method to punish defiant Iraqis.

The second incident, on Jan. 3, 2004, came hours after a mortar attack killed a friend of Saville's commander, who had issued what prosecutors called an "illegal order" to round up several identified suspects and kill them. Two suspected curfew violators, neither suspects in the mortar attack, were nabbed, taken to the Tigris and forced off a ledge into the river.

One of those Iraqis testified at the trial of a Saville subordinate, Staff Sgt. Tracy Perkins, that he swam to safety but his companion drowned.

A body was retrieved from the river about two weeks later and a videotape of the wake was produced, but jurors weren't convinced that a death occurred.

Lt. Saville did apologize to the victims. He further expressed remorse "for putting fellow troops in increased danger by inciting insurgent Iraqis, who portrayed the incidents as war crimes."

Imagine that.

Posted by zeynep at 12:02 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 13, 2005

It was not us, really. We say so.

So, Pentagon exonerates Pentagon:

The Pentagon said its policies and top officials did not cause the mistreatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, but in a report released on Thursday cited a series of missed opportunities to correct lapses that led to the abuses.

The latest and most wide-ranging abuse report, by Navy inspector general Vice Adm. Albert Church, largely tracks the Pentagon's previous contention that its leaders were not directly responsible for sexual and physical mistreatment of prisoners.

Plus, not only is it not our fault, it's their fault:

The report said U.S. servicemembers "may have at times permitted the enemy's treacherous tactics and disregard for the laws of war ... to erode their own standards of conduct."

Meanwhile, even more evidence is emerging to the systematic nature of the torture:

Unreleased U.S. Army reports detailing the deaths of two Afghan men who were beaten to death by American soldiers show that military prison abuses began in Afghanistan in 2002, and were part of a systematic pattern of mistreatment, a human rights representative said Saturday. More than two dozen American soldiers face possible criminal prosecution — and one already is charged with manslaughter — in the deaths at the main U.S. detention facility in Bagram, just north of the Afghan capital of Kabul.

As documented by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, the men died a year before the photographed horrors at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to John Sifton, the Afghanistan researcher for the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Cover up? What cover up? The Pentagon says it is not a cover up, and that's that.

Posted by zeynep at 04:24 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 09, 2005

Rendered by Mistake

Isn´t this great? Sending people off to be tortured is now reported as "one of the most important secret weapons in the war on terror." The only problem? A few people have been "rendered" by mistake. If only we could get that under control:

You may not have heard the term "rendition," at least not the way the Central Intelligence Agency uses it. But renditions have become one of the most important secret weapons in the war on terror.

In recent years, well over 100 people have disappeared or been "rendered" all around the world. Witnesses tell the same story: masked men in an unmarked jet seize their target, cut off his clothes, put him in a blindfold and jumpsuit, tranquilize him and fly him away.

They're describing U.S. agents collaring terrorism suspects. Some notorious terrorists such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the mastermind of 9/11, were rendered this way.

But as Correspondent Scott Pelley reports, it's happening to many others. Some are taken to prisons infamous for torture. And a few may have been rendered by mistake.

Is anyone interested in actually asking why they hate us? That people whose family members and friends and neighbors have been tortured, bombed, killed "by mistake" may be a lot more likely to believe the only language the West speaks is the language of violence...

Posted by zeynep at 03:51 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 07, 2005

Mistreatment of Detainees? You must be Insane! It's just Ramadi Madness.

A soldier who tried to report the torture of detainees was found to be insane" at the insistence of his commanding offier and evacuated from Iraq in restraints on a stretcher when he refused to back down:

An Army intelligence sergeant who accused fellow soldiers in Samarra, Iraq, of abusing detainees in 2003 was in turn accused by his commander of being delusional and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation in Germany, despite a military psychiatrist's initial judgment that the man was stable, according to internal Army records released yesterday.

...

Although his name is not listed in the documents, the episode precisely matches events described publicly last year by California National Guard Sgt. Greg Ford, a former state prison guard and Navy SEAL team medic whose complaints were dismissed by the Army in October 2004 as lacking sufficient evidence. Ford said last night, after hearing what the documents stated, that he is the sergeant described.

The soldier complained that he had had to resuscitate abused detainees and urged the unit's withdrawal. He told investigators that the unit's commander, an Army captain, responded by giving him "30 seconds to withdraw my request or he was going to send me forcibly to go see a psychiatrist." The soldier added: "I told him I was not going to withdraw my request and at that time he confiscated my weapon and informed me he was withdrawing my security clearance and was placing me under 24-hour surveillance."

A witness in his unit told investigators that the captain later pressured a military doctor -- who had found the soldier stable -- into doing another emergency evaluation, saying: "I don't care what you saw or heard, he is imbalanced, and I want him out of here."

The next day, after the doctor did another evaluation, the soldier was evacuated from Iraq in restraints on a stretcher to a military hospital in Germany, despite having been given no official diagnosis, according to the documents. A military doctor in Germany ruled he was in stable mental health, according to the documents, but sent him back to the United States for what the soldier recalls the doctor describing as his "safety."

Well, many of us have been referring to the worldwide detention system the U.S. has set up with no oversight as "the Gulag." I guess this completes the circle: now, just as in the Soviet Union, people of conscience are being declared insane.

There was another part of the story where a soldier "compiled a 20-minute video" titled "Ramadi Madness" documenting the torture and the maltreatment. When the video was found, the unit's commander immediately knew what the urgent task at hand was:

The unit's commander told Army investigators he was concerned about the images becoming public and promised to take steps to "minimize the risk of this and other videos that may end up in the media."

...

In the "Ramadi Madness" case, investigators determined the video "contained footage of inappropriate rather than criminal behavior" and determined that the detainee who was kicked was not abused.

The "inappropriate" behavior included "a soldier kicking a wounded detainee in the face and chest in the presence of 10 colleagues and soldiers positioning a dead insurgent to appear to wave hello."

Imagine if we had found photos of dead American soldier posed as if giving a thumbs up to the camera. And some Islamic cleric or official had said it was "inappropriate" but not enough to warrant any punishment. Imagine our horror.

Posted by zeynep at 11:37 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 02, 2005

Man Tortured to Death; CIA Officer in Charge Promoted; Move Along

Are we just supposed to get used to this pattern?

In November 2002, a newly minted CIA case officer in charge of a secret prison just north of Kabul allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young Afghan detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets, according to four U.S. government officials aware of the case.

The Afghan guards -- paid by the CIA and working under CIA supervision in an abandoned warehouse code-named the Salt Pit -- dragged their captive around on the concrete floor, bruising and scraping his skin, before putting him in his cell, two of the officials said.

As night fell, so, predictably, did the temperature.

By morning, the Afghan man had frozen to death.

After a quick autopsy by a CIA medic -- "hypothermia" was listed as the cause of death -- the guards buried the Afghan, who was in his twenties, in an unmarked, unacknowledged cemetery used by Afghan forces, officials said. The captive's family has never been notified; his remains have never been returned for burial. He is on no one's registry of captives, not even as a "ghost detainee," the term for CIA captives held in military prisons but not registered on the books, they said.

"He just disappeared from the face of the earth," said one U.S. government official with knowledge of the case.

The CIA case officer, meanwhile, has been promoted, two of the officials said, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk about the matter. The case is under investigation by the CIA inspector general.

And it's not like there is much going on to hold top people accountable. I'll watch this lawsuit if for no other reason to see the words like Rumsfeld ... responsible ... for ... torture, in print.

Posted by zeynep at 11:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 01, 2005

All Those Horrible Things Other People Do

How timely. Just as the State Department issues its annual Human Rights report, I received a copy of "America's Disappeared." This year, the hypocricy has exceeded tolerable limits for even historicaly cautious organizations:

In an unprecedented move, the US Human Rights Network, a network of more than 160 US-based human rights organizations, today issued a memorandum to President George Bush decrying the current state of human rights in the US, as the US State Department released its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

“It is the height of hypocrisy for the US government to issue a report condemning human rights abuses in other countries at a time when it is violating these very same standards at home and abroad,” said Ajamu Baraka, Executive Director of the US Human Rights Network (USHRN).

That's right. There's no U.S. chapter in the report:

The United States is not monitored by the State Department, but Michael Kozak, assistant secretary for human rights, said, ``The events at Abu Ghraib were a stain on the honor of the U.S. There's no two ways about it.''

Things have gotten so bad that not only do we outsource torture from time to time, we criticize the recipient countries for ... torture:

The State Department's annual human rights report released yesterday criticized countries for a range of interrogation practices it labeled as torture, including sleep deprivation for detainees, confining prisoners in contorted positions, stripping and blindfolding them and threatening them with dogs -- methods similar to those approved at times by the Bush administration for use on detainees in U.S. custody.

...

The State Department report also harshly attacked the treatment of prisoners in such countries as Syria and Egypt, where the United States has shipped terrorism suspects under a practice known as "rendition." An Australian citizen has alleged that under Egyptian detention he was hung by his arms from hooks, repeatedly shocked, nearly drowned and brutally beaten. Most of his fingernails were missing when he later arrived at Guantanamo Bay.

Nonetheless, the prize for the best-absurdity-pronounced-with-astraight-face goes to the State Department press release itself:

The State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor issued the annual reports for 196 countries February 28.

The reports identified serious problems in several Middle East countries, including: arbitrary arrests, torture of detainees, incommunicado detention, trials without due process, lack of access to legal counsel, poor prison conditions, long pretrial detentions, and the death of prisoners in police custody.

All those horrible things other people do.

Posted by zeynep at 10:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 23, 2005

What's the Question, Again?

Do you remember Manadel al-Jamadi, whose corpse was used as a picture prop?

Or his orphan and widow?

Remember the claim he was "shackled to the wall" and just collapsed -- one of those unfortunate incidents, you know.

It turns out he was shackled in the "palestinian hanging" position, an internationally-recognized form of torture which can and does lead to death in a manner similar to crucifixion -- collapse of the lung, inability to breathe, crushing of the chests... This man was "one of CIA's 'ghost' detainees at Abu Ghraib — prisoners being held secretly by the agency." So now we know what CIA does to its ghost detainees.

Here are more of the details:

One Army guard, Sgt. Jeffery Frost, said the prisoner's arms were stretched behind him in a way he had never before seen. Frost told investigators he was surprised al-Jamadi's arms "didn't pop out of their sockets," according to a summary of his interview.

...

The military pathologist who ruled the case a homicide found several broken ribs and concluded al-Jamadi died from pressure to the chest and difficulty breathing.

Dr. Michael Baden, a distinguished civilian pathologist who reviewed the autopsy for a defense attorney in the case, agreed in an interview that the position in which al-Jamadi was suspended could have contributed to his death.

Dr. Vincent Iacopino, director of research for Physicians for Human Rights, called the hyper-extension of the arms behind the back "clear and simple torture." The European Court of Human Rights found Turkey guilty of torture in 1996 in a case of Palestinian hanging — a technique Iacopino said is used worldwide but named for its alleged use by Israel in the Palestinian territories.

The Washington Post reported last year that after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, the CIA suspended the use of its "enhanced interrogation techniques," including stress positions, because of fears that the agency could be accused of unsanctioned and illegal activity. The newspaper said the White House had approved the tactics.

...

Navy prosecutors in San Diego have charged nine SEALs and one sailor with abusing al-Jamadi and others. All but two lieutenants have received nonjudicial punishment; one lieutenant is scheduled for court-martial in March, the other is awaiting a hearing before the Navy's top SEAL.

So, it looks like most of the people involved in this killing will get a slap on the wrist. But here's the part that best summarizes the situation, i.e. the summary posted by the Los Angeles Times:

WHO DIED: Manadel al-Jamadi, a suspect in a bombing in Iraq, died in 2003 during CIA interrogation in the Abu Ghraib prison shower room. A military pathologist ruled it a homicide.

HOW IT HAPPENED: Army guards found him suspended by his wrists, which were cuffed behind his back. The position, known as "Palestinian hanging," is condemned by human rights groups as torture.

WHAT IT MEANS: The death raises new questions about CIA interrogation practices.

Okay. The CIA is disappearing people and torturing them to death. This is an acknowledged, widely reported upon fact. And all that does is "raise new questions." What needs to happen before we can move beyond perpetually "raising new questions?"

Posted by zeynep at 07:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 11, 2005

Torturing Kids

At first, you might be outraged but not surprised by the treatement Omar Khadr received at the Guantánamo Gulag. Unfortunately, this has become business as usual in many U.S.-run detention centers around the world:

The memo, containing the latest accusations of humiliating treatment of a detainee in Guantánamo Bay, included a description of an interrogation that started sometime after midnight in March 2003.

Khadr claims that military police officers handcuffed his hands and feet behind him in an interrogation booth at Camp Delta, then turned him into a ''human mop'' after he urinated on himself.

''Military police poured pine oil on the floor and [Khadr] and then, with petitioner lying on his stomach . . . dragged petitioner back and forth through the mixture of urine and pine oil on the floor,'' Washington attorneys Muneer Ahmad and Richard Wilson said in their memo, dated Dec. 30, 2004.

``Later, petitioner was put back in his cell, without being allowed a shower or change of clothes. He was not given a change of clothes for two days.''

And the non-denial denials are routine enough too:

''We have an ongoing investigation into abuse allegations at Guantánamo,'' said Southern Command spokesman Raul Duany. ``It will be premature to comment on specific incidents without having the results and recommendations of the ongoing investigation.''

But here's the kicker. Omer Khadr, a Canadian, was just 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan. Fifteen. He's now eighteen. He's still there. We've locked up a fifteen year old, thrown away the key, and we're torturing him in the meantime.

Omar Khadr, 18, a Canadian who was captured by U.S. troops in Afghanistan at age 15, outlined the abuse complaints through a memo that his civilian U.S. lawyers were allowed to make public for the first time Wednesday.

Omar's family does have Al Qaeda links, most notoriously his father Ahmed Said Khadr who was was killed in Pakistan. Omar was picked up in a battlefield in Afghanistan. There are some allegations that he tossed a grenade that killed a U.S. medic but no charges have been brought. In fact, his lawyers are demanding that he be tried. Let's just assume it's all true. That he was a child-soldier from an Al-Qaeda family. That just makes him a victim under any understanding of international law, common sense or compassion. A fifteen year old is not a fully competent adult. That's why they can't enter into legally binding contracts. You can't sue them in court if they promise to do some work for you but don't. That's why if an adult has sex with a fifteen year old, it's called statutory rape. Minors do have responsibilities and can be held accountable for their actions, but it always has to be done in a manner that provides their age.

Not that it's okay to hold adults indefinitely without due process, a trial, access to lawyers... But what could possibly be the idea behind holding a kid so young? And torturing him to boot? (By the way, if his family indeed sent him to Afghanistan to fight at that age, I wouldn't mind it if they were tried for child abuse.)

Posted by zeynep at 08:43 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 17, 2005

No Regrets

Specialist Graner said he had no regrets, even as he was led in shackles from the courtroom after being sentenced to 10 years over his actions in Abu Ghraib.

He certainly takes his cue from his commander-in-chief. Last week, even as the administration publicly gave up pretending to search for those "missing" weapons of mass destruction, White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan remained unfazed ""Based on what we know today, the president would have taken the same action because this is about protecting the American people." Bush probably won't even stop arguing the weapons were somehow smuggled, hidden, dismantled. It's not like he will be held accountable for statements like this from September, 2003:

"I think he dispersed them. I think he is so adapted at deceiving the civilized world for a long period of time that it's going to take a while for the troops to unravel. But I firmly believe he had weapons of mass destruction. I know he used them at one time."

You see, according to Bush, "accountability moment" has come and gone with the election. He won and that's it. In some sense, can you blame him for thinking this day? Recent polls show that six in ten people feel hopeful about Bush's second term:

Nearly two-thirds of those polled described Bush as likable, strong and intelligent. A majority said he is dependable and honest.

A majority said he's honest -- this, after so many lies with such deadly consequences have been exposed time after time. On the one hand, it's clear that the media have been failing miserably. On the other hand, the lies are so blatant, so in-your-face, it's hard to argue this is just the propaganda system at work. Somehow, people seem to not want to come to terms with what their country is doing. The stratgey seems to be, I guess, ok, let's continue hiding our heads in the sand and pretend the rest of the world does not exist.

Graner, being small fish, will pay some price for his actions, regrets or none. His lawyer has correctly pointed out the different treatment he received compared to all the other soldiers who've been tried in connection with Abu Ghraib:

Womack said look no further than the final glimpses of Graner to see what he calls the attitude of the Government. Graner was in shackles and cuffs as he was led past the unblinking eye of the media. The other four soldiers sentenced were slipped out the back of the building.

Bush, on the other hand, will now go on and attend $40-$50 million "inaugration festivities;" express no regrets; make plans to attack Iran, continue the occupation of Iraq with terrible consequences for people of Iraq as well as for soldiers deployed there as part of an unwanted, unpopular occupation; appoint as Attorney General the man who devised ways torturers can legally defend themselves; and appoint as Secretary of State the woman who has loyally repeated whatever lie she needed to repeat in order to push the warmongering agenda... Why shouldn't specialist Graner not correctly perceive all that has happened is that he's being punished because he was too eager with his digital camera. Why should he feel like he's done anything wrong?

Posted by zeynep at 01:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 14, 2005

Graner is to the Torture Scandal What Martha Stewart Was to the Corporate Accounting Scandals

So, Specialist Graner, who appeared in many of the Abu Ghraib photos, is found guilty -- and he faces serious jail time. I had thought that he too would be given a slap on the wrist, just a bit more than the other because he was so obviously enjoying his sadism, but I was wrong. It seems that he is too irresistable a scapegoat. During his closing arguments, the prosecutor argued that the final word on the "abuses" at Abu Ghraib would come with this trial:

"Fortunately," he said, "the accused does not have the final word on the abuses at Abu Ghraib." That, he said, would come from the jury's verdict.

Find him guilty, in other words, and close the Abu Ghraib chapter. Hard to resist.

The defense argued that all of Graner's actions were done under orders, that all this "abuse" was necessary for Iraqi freedom, and even that all those naked human pyramids were done with care so that the detainees did not suffocate:

Interrogators and military intelligence, he repeatedly reminded the jury, had given orders to and consistently praised Specialist Graner and other military police soldiers. Their actions, he said, were done in the name of Iraqi freedom, and ultimately allowing the elections that will happen at the end of this month.

"Sometimes, when you make an omelet, you have to break some eggs," Mr. Womack told the jury, adding, "You had to use approaches that we would not want to do with our own children."

Mr. Womack did not deny most of the harsh treatment seen in the photographs, or the even the idea that it might seem abusive, calling it the "day to day events" at Abu Ghraib. He cited an explanation from an expert witness he called earlier in the week, who said that the pyramid of naked and hooded detainees was done safely, to make sure they would not suffocate.

"It was an ingenious move," Mr. Womack said. The military police soldiers put the detainees in sexually humiliating positions, he said, because they knew the detainees would be embarrassed, and had been told by military intelligence that this was an effective psychological tool to draw out information.

You gotta admit, his lawyers have a point but it's not a point defense of Specialist Graner, but rather an indictment of the whole system: the evidence is overwhelming that torture has become systematic in most American-run detention centers around the world, and it's very also clear that this "make an omelet, break a few eggs, what's the big deal" approach is official explanation of whatever eggregious practice becomes uncovered.

I'm afraid many people will see this as case closed: the guilty were charged, tried and found guilty. That's likely be the official spin.

So, this is all turning out to be like the Martha Stewart epsidoe in which she was revealed to have dabbled in the insider-"networking" that is part-and-parcel of how corporate America operates. In the middle of all the corporate scandals and corporate crimes that have netted billions of dollars for the corporate barons, she ended up with the jail sentence -- and the quite vicious media coverage. Why? I guess because she was already visible and disliked by many for being annoying, female and rich. She was thus the easiest scapegoat that the public could be fed -- even though the things she was accused of, even if they were all true, were obviously quite minor compared to the rest of the field. So, Martha Stewart's in jail and perhaps Ken Lay will do a few months because he too is so visible, but we hardly hear of the corporate scandals nowadays.

So, it seems, it will be with Graner. He will do time and he will be reviled. At least for a while. In our culture where fame is a valuable commodity, no matter what the origins, Graner just has to hope he gets a short enough sentence that he is still notorious when he gets out. He can always look to Martha Stewart as an example: I hear she is signed up to do a reality show after she gets out.

Posted by zeynep at 10:24 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 10, 2005

Give me a T! Give me an O! Give me an R! Give me a T! Give me a U! Give me an R! Give me an E!

That's what cheerleaders do, those naked human pyramids. And what's a leash? That's what parents use to control their todders in shopping malls. What's the big deal? It was all harmless. Anyway, he was ordered to do so.

Yes, those are the arguments Specialist Graner's lawyer made today.

"Don't cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?" Guy Womack, Graner's attorney, said in opening arguments.

...

Womack said using a tether was a valid method of controlling detainees, especially those who might be soiled with feces.

"You're keeping control of them. A tether is a valid control to be used in corrections," he said. "In Texas we'd lasso them and drag them out of there." He compared the leash to parents who place tethers on their toddlers while walking in shopping malls.

And here's another bit of harmless cheerleading that Graner engaged in:

Explaining a new video that shows a detainee writhing as Private Sivits tries to cut off a pair of handcuffs, he said Specialist Graner had attached them so tightly, the detainee's hands were turning purple. "I personally thought he was going to lose his hands," he said.

Another new photograph taken by Specialist Graner showed a 19-year-old Iraqi woman exposing her breasts. Private Sivits said that Specialist Graner said he had tried to photograph her pubic area but that she would not let him.

Asked to explain photos of detainees masturbating, Private Frederick said Specialist Graner "said it was a present for our birthday." Soldiers also said commanders explicitly told them not to take photographs.

Mr. Womack, Specialist Graner's lawyer, said that the photos were part of a plan to force information from detainees and that government officials blamed his client only after the pictures set off outrage around the world.

The only part true their is that "his client" is in court today only because there were pictures. Otherwise, all the people who pointed out that torture was possibly going on in American-run detention centers around the world just be painted as some lefty-loonly-America-haters who were moved to make these crazy allegations because they were overcome by their love of Saddam Hussein.

Posted by zeynep at 10:59 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 09, 2005

Why Do They Hate Us, Continued...

Remember the case where two Iraqis were forcibly thrown into the Tigris river by U.S. soldiers -- resulting in one of them drowning? Well, it's sentencing time, time to send a message about what we think of Iraqi life.

Six months in jail, one rank demotion. No discharge.

That's it.

An Army platoon sergeant who ordered his soldiers to throw Iraqis into the Tigris River was sentenced Saturday to six months in military prison, but will not be discharged.

...

He did not testify during his trial, but before he was sentenced Saturday told the jury of Army officers and enlisted members that his actions were wrong — although he did not apologize to the Iraqis.

...

Perkins did not discuss specifics of the incident on the stand Saturday, but admitted he had ordered his soldiers to throw an Iraqi man into the river in December 2003.

The six-man military jury had the option for dishonorable discharge, rank reduction and 11 1/2 years in prison -- which it chose not to exercise. Which brings me to another point: it's bad enough that crimes committed against Iraqis, in Iraq, are not tried in Iraq. (Imagine the uproar if that were the case here). But at least serious crimes, such as murder and torture, should be tried in civilian courts where the jury wouldn't be all enlisted men and women. It's the same thing in the trial of Charles Graner's trial -- the most notorious torturer in the Abu Ghraib photos. It's, of course, an all-military jury but, further, all members of the jury have been deployed overseas, either in Iraq or Afghanistan. In other words, they are people like to feel kinship with Graner and feel defensive about their own role in this war.

Unsurprisingly, the defense was pretty happy with the jury:

"This case involves terrorists and insurgents and the war on terrorism," defense attorney Guy Womack said. "We could not pick a truer jury of peers than to have a combat veteran tried by combat veterans."

...

Graner, shown in some of the notorious photographs taken inside the Baghdad prison, was upbeat after the jury was picked Friday.

"The sun is shining, the sky is blue and this is America," he said. "Whatever happens is going to happen, but I still feel it's going to be on the positive side."

How about a jury of torture victims? How about a jury composed of parents of torture victims? How about including just a single parent of a torture victim? If this jury too is going to condone torture with some slap-on-the-wrist sentence, let them at least have to look in the eye a single person whose life has been damaged by the peculiar evil that is torture.

Posted by zeynep at 12:15 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 05, 2005

I hereby swear I'll do whatever it takes to rise through the ranks! Trust me!

So, is this supposed to make us feel better?

Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales plans to promise senators on Thursday that he would abide by treaties prohibiting torture of prisoners, despite deriding the restraints as outdated relics two years ago.

If you want to torture, Mr. President, go ahead. I'll issue a memo that says the Geneva Conventions aren't binding, torture isn't torture and the President is King. You want me to promise to oppose torture in order to get confirmed, Mr. Senator? Sure, I promise that we will abide by the Geneva Conventions, torture is against American values, and the President is King.

I'm sorry that I have to keep repeating stuff I blogged before but it's hard to know what else to do in the face of such constant lies and propaganda. You want a sense of how unprincipled, callous and slave to power Mr. Gonzales is, go back to his Texas days:

Gonzales had opined in 1997 that the State of Texas was not bound by international treaties signed by the United States -- when Texas executed a Mexican-national who was interrogated and tried without letting him contact his embassy and made to sign a confession in English, which he thought was an immigration document --clearly a violation of international treaties in this matter. Here's part of what I wrote about it then:

The current White House chief legal counsel Alberto Gonzales, who had been widely rumored to be the next Supreme Court Nominee before authoring the latest memos arguing the president was not bound by international or domestic law, had opined in the past that the State of Texas was not bound by international treaties signed by the United States.

There goes a few hundred years of precedent along with the United States constitution, but, hey, we got to execute a Mexican national who did not speak English and who signed a murder confession thinking it was an immigration document, without a translator or lawyer present

...

I wonder if [Gonzales] found it odd that nobody asked for his passport when he left Texas for D.C.

Oh, the multiple political uses of that execution -- similar to Bill Clinton's execution of a mentally retarded black man to prove he was tough and "electable." In one swift stroke, Gonzales demonstrated that he was willing to put aside all considerations of law, principle and minimal logic and make the most absurd declarations if necessary. Plus, by helping execute a Mexican national he showed that he has no loyalty to anything beside power and his career. In that act, he reassured the establishment that his own brown skin, or his experience as children of poor migrant farmworkers, would not cause any outbreak of undue empathy, compassion or sense of justice. (Always a danger with humans, much research underway to solve that last pesky glitch so that the imperial-consumptionfest can proceed smoothly; that is until that day the earth just gives up and spits us all out or swallows us all in.)

Posted by zeynep at 06:12 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 28, 2004

"Don't Reopen the Wounds", Recommend the Wound-Inflicters

Chile acknowledges torture was official policy used to crush left-wing dissidents, and moves to compensate victims:

Chilean President Ricardo Lagos has announced compensation payments to thousands of victims, saying illegal imprisonment and torture were a state policy during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. ...

"How can we explain such horror?" Lagos asked. "I do not have an answer."

Pinochet's right-wing dictatorship fiercely suppressed leftists, dissidents and others perceived as opponents, imprisoning, exiling, torturing and killing thousands. Many of them simply disappeared.

It's the least that should be done but the damage to Chile is done. No compensation, acknowledgement or apology can make that whole.

I do have two questions. Will any newspaper reporting on this topic even mention the central role played by the U.S. government and U.S. corporations in instigating and supporting Pinochet's coup and the subsequent regime of torture and terror? And will anyone refer to torture by Pinochet's regime as "abuse"-- as they do when the same acts are committed by U.S. troops?

And here's the comical quote. Pinochet's spokesman objected to the report because it would "reopen wounds in our society."

... retired Gen. Guillermo Garin, the former dictator's spokesman, said the report would "reopen wounds in our society."

Ok, first you shoot the victim. Then you torture them for a while. Then you dump the body from a helicopter. If anyone asks you what happened, you answer "don't reopen the wounds"? Such concern. Such sensitivity.

Posted by zeynep at 10:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 13, 2004

Six-Year-Old Wielding a Piece of Glass? 50,000 Volts It Is. Handcuffed Nine-Year-Old? Same.

What do you do when an agitated six year old is wielding a piece of broken glass? A first-grader? A little kid?

Shock him 50,000 volts, of course. What else?

MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- Police used a stun gun on a 6-year-old boy in his principal's office because he was wielding a piece of glass and threatening to hurt himself, officials said Thursday.

The boy, who was not identified, was shocked with 50,000 volts on October 20 at Kelsey Pharr Elementary School.

Principal Maria Mason called 911 after the child broke a picture frame in her office and waved a piece of glass, holding a security guard back.

When two Miami-Dade County police officers and a school officer arrived, the boy had already cut himself under his eye and on his hand.

The officers talked to the boy without success. When the boy cut his own leg, one officer shocked him with a Taser and another grabbed him to prevent him from falling, police said.

I've written about Tasers before -- these are the supposedly-safe "stun guns" that have killed 50-odd people, and are banned in many other countries. Tasers are rapidy spreading among police departments around the country. This is not the first time they've been used on children. In fact, there are many instances of these potentially lethal devices being used on children, including a handcuffed 9-year-old girl:

A handcuffed 9-year-old girl subdued with a Taser by South Tucson police is among a growing group of toddlers and youngsters the device has been used on nationally. Still, few local agencies or national oversight groups have age-specific guidelines for the use of the stun-gun device, though they advise officers to use caution with it and avoid firing at pregnant women and compliant suspects. A spokesman for the Scottsdale-based manufacturer of the device said Tasers do no more harm to children than adults and often results in less-serious injuries. ... There have been other kids hit by Tasers, though. Records kept by Taser International of Scottsdale show that as of six months ago, two 1-year-olds, one 2-year-old, two 3-year-olds, two 4-year-olds, one 5-year-old, one 6-year-old and one 7-year-old had been hit with Tasers, though most of the toddlers were hit inadvertently. Slightly older children also have been hit, including a 13-year-old Wisconsin girl wielding a samurai sword, another 13-year-old girl in Washington who fought with officers, and another 13-year-old girl in Chandler who also fought.

The manufacturer assures us it's safe, even on children. You trust them on that, don't you? Even with your child's life:

Phoenix-based Taser International, which supplies Miami-Dade police with stun guns, released a statement to The Herald in response to questions about the use of their guns on children.

Testing has shown a significant safety margin when using Tasers on ''subjects with body weight as low as 60 pounds,'' said Steve Tuttle, director of communications, in an e-mail.

There, feel better? Just ignore those pesky pediatric cardiologists:

Zapping a 6-year-old with 50,000 volts of electricity could cause permanent damage to the heart depending on the size of the child and other genetic factors, an expert in pediatric cardiology said.

''It is clear that certain electrical shocks in a susceptible child at the right dose can certainly cause the death and damage of heart muscle cells,'' said Dr. Steven Lipshultz, chairman of pediatrics at the University of Miami School of Medicine. ``But it really varies from child to child and dose to dose of electricity.''

He said he didn't have enough information to comment on police use of Tasers on children. He was not aware of any case of a Taser doing permanent harm to a child.

But, he said, the destruction of heart muscle cells from electrical current can have long-term implications for some children.

''If you destroy a heart muscle cell, it doesn't grow back,'' Lipshultz said. ``If a child lost enough heart muscle . . . when they grow up, it could put them at risk.''

Lipshultz added that if a 50,000-volt shock hits a child's heart in the wrong spot, it could cause an abnormal rhythm and kill the child.

And, of course, given that reassurance, what's the problem with shocking a 12 year old girl, unarmed and running away, for the crime of playing hooky from school?

A Miami-Dade police officer used a Taser to stop an unarmed, 12-year-old girl who was running away from him after she was caught skipping school, police acknowledged Friday night.

...

Officer William Nelson responded to an anonymous complaint that some kids were swimming in a West Kendall pool, drinking alcohol and smoking cigars about 11 a.m.

Nelson said he noticed the girl was intoxicated and told her to get dressed so he could take her back to school.

''While walking [the girl] to the police car, [she] took off running through the parking lot,'' Nelson wrote in his report.

Nelson, 38, a 15-year veteran, said he chased her and yelled several times for her to stop. Nelson said he pulled out the Taser and fired when the girl began to run into traffic.

The electric probes hit the girl in the neck and lower back, immobilizing her with 50,000 volts.

Nelson said he fired ''for my safety along with [the girl's] safety.'' He could not be reached for comment.

As you can guess, there are many reports of stun guns being used with impunity in prisons -- not so surprising given the sorry state of concern for prisoner's rights. But this isn't confined to prisons, other institutions are picking up the habit of shocking their residents, especially if they house vulnerable groups like the elderly or the mentally-ill. Earlier, a Los Angeles hospital was finally forced to ban using Tasers on patients with mental illnesses after federal health officials threatened to pull the plug on funding after many patients were shocked with the devices. Some of the children who were shocked with these weapons also suffered from mental illnesses, which often means that these are kids who were abused, neglected and traumatized -- in other words, the very children who have already been gravely betrayed by the adult world, and need the most compassion, patience and love we can muster.

So we're using these weapons on the ill, the young, the imprisoned -- the most vulnerable among us. Hmm, that rings a bell... Let me think... Values, moral values. Somebody whose name gets invoked a lot by politicans.

Wait, I know!

'For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.' "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' [Matthew 25:35]

Okay, no need to worry, then. This administration and the conservative establishment will surely jump on this issue.

Posted by zeynep at 06:02 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

November 11, 2004

Business As Usual

A few days ago, I wrote of a soldier who had ordered an ill Iraqi detainee, Nagem Hatab, dragged by his neck out of his cell -- the detainee, who was also beaten up, died when his neck broke. (Medical evidence, however, was not introduced in the trial because we lost parts of this man's body. Yes, we lost parts of his body after killing him by breaking his neck by dragging him by the neck when he was too ill to stand up. Let me write that again: we lost parts of this man's body after killing him by breaking his neck by dragging him by the neck when he was too ill to stand up:

On Monday, Paulus testified that he ordered a lance corporal to drag Hatab by the neck because it was the only area that wasn't covered with feces. But under questioning from the military judge, Col. Robert Chester, Paulus acknowledged that Hatab's arms were clean. He said he didn't think to order his men to drag the inmate by his arms.

Here's what happened to Nagem Hatab's body parts:

The Army pathologist who autopsied the Iraqi, Nagem Hatab, found his larynx in her freezer at an Army base in Germany. An unmarked rib cage that may be Hatab’s was found at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C.

...

Hatab’s organs, which were removed during the autopsy, were destroyed when they were left for hours in the blazing heat on an Iraqi airstrip. A summary of an interrogation the Marines conducted with Hatab shortly before his death at the camp also is missing, as is a photo of Hatab taken during questioning.

Then, we acquitted the man who ordered this of the most serious charge so his punishment is ... nothing. He will be dismissed from the service. That's all. That's it:

Paulus, 36, of the Philadelphia suburb of Buckingham, Pa., commanded the Marine detention facility at Camp Whitehorse in southern Iraq. He was accused of ordering a subordinate to drag Nagem Sadoon Hatab by the neck out of a cell in June 2003 after the man suffered a bout of diarrhea.

Hatab was stripped naked and left outside for seven hours before he was found dead.

The jury deliberated for about six hours before finding Paulus guilty Wednesday.

...

Paulus was acquitted of the most serious charge of assault and battery.

...

A jury of Marine Corps officers on Wednesday found a major guilty of maltreatment and dereliction of duty in connection with the death of an Iraqi prisoner and sentenced him to be dismissed from the service.

And the men who did the beating and the dragging? He was sentenced to 60 days of hard labor and demoted to private. Yes, that's it.

This isn't even news, of course. You'd be hard-pressed to find it in your paper; perhaps it will be a paragraph somewhere down in page seventeen. It will probably not even be mentioned on television.

But this man has a family. He has a country. People will know, even if we don't.

Now, I don't know about Nagem Hatab. Maybe he was one of the 70 to 90 percent of the detainees estimated by the Red Cross to have been simply swept up in raids. I know he was a member of the Baath party -- but I don't know if he was one of the large numbers of people who joined the party because you pretty much had to? All we know is that he was accused of having sold a rifle that was believed come from a convoy of American soldiers that were ambushed.

Roy testified Wednesday that Pittman struck Hatab in the chest a day after the inmate arrived at Camp Whitehorse. Hatab fell to the ground, asked in English ``Why? Why? Why?'' and told the guards he had 11 children.

Roy said he replied: ``What about those people who were in the ambush you got this rifle from? What about their children?''

In the end, we don't know much about Hatab and we probaby won't know. What we do know is that we have joined the ranks of countries where this is "business as usual." The "accused" that come from among the ranks of the untermenschen get tortured and killed without much thought or punishment. Guilt is presumed. The right to kill them is assumed. And just as it says in the song about the murder of South African freedom fighter Steve Biko, the eyes of the word are watching now, even as we collectively close ours and pretend none of this is happenning:

"Biko" September '77 Port Elizabeth weather fine It was business as usual In police room 619 Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja -The man is dead ... And the eyes of the world are watching now watching now

Posted by zeynep at 10:41 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 08, 2004

Dragged a Man to Death? You're Grounded, I mean Demoted, to Private

While Fallujah burns, here's some more news about torture, ahem, unfortunate abuse that some unlucky Iraqis have suffered at the hands of well-meaning American soldiers.

In this case, Nagem Hatab, was dragged by the neck till his neck broke. Somehow, we lost some of his bodyparts so no medical evidence could be introduced. The previous person tried in the case got demoted to private and 60 -sixty- days of hard labor. Major Clarke Paulus, who's being tried now, has just had his charges reduced from aggravated assault to assault and battery:

Maj. Clarke Paulus is accused of ordering a subordinate to drag Nagem Hatab, 52, by the neck from a holding cell at a Marine detention facility in Iraq on June 6, 2003. Hatab died shortly afterward; a military forensics examiner found he broke a bone in his neck and suffocated.

Military judge Col. Robert Chester barred all medical evidence from the trial because some of Hatab's body parts have been lost.

After the prosecution rested its case Friday, the judge reduced the most serious charge against Paulus from aggravated assault to assault and battery. Paulus had faced up to four and a half years in prison; he now faces a maximum of 18 months.

Paulus, of New Hope, Pa., testified Monday that Hatab had to be moved from a cell he shared with other prisoners because he had diarrhea. When guards tried to get the Iraqi to stand, he fell into barbed wire. Paulus said he then ordered a lance corporal to drag Hatab by the neck.

"It was the only area that didn't have feces on it," Paulus testified.

Paulus said he watched as Hatab was dragged about 20 feet and saw no signs of choking. He said if he had, he would have stopped it. He said a medic determined Hatab's vital signs were normal.

Paulus said Hatab showed no signs of distress — even when he grabbed onto barbed wire as he fell. He said he still believed Hatab was faking.

"How many people in your life do you know that can fake diarrhea?" prosecuting lawyer Maj. Leon Francis asked during cross-examination. "None that I know," Paulus replied.

Asked about the hold used to drag Hatab, Paulus also said: "Did I think it could cause an injury? ... In some cases, yes; in this case, no."

In September, a Marine sergeant, Gary Pittman, was acquitted of abusing Hatab but convicted of assaulting prisoners. He was sentenced to 60 days of hard labor and demoted to private. Charges against six others have been dismissed.

That's why they hate us, our culture of life.

Posted by zeynep at 09:56 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 04, 2004

Losing Half a Month's Pay Should Teach You Some "Moral Values"

I'm looking at an AP article titled "Moral Values Propel Bush to Re-Election" and a Bloomberg piece called "U.S. Voters Citing `Moral Values' Propel Bush to Re-Election."

So, tell me this, what does it say about our moral values that Army Spec. Megan Ambuhl pleads guilty in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and forfeits a crushing "half a month's pay" as punishment? Her attorney claims that she's innocent of anything but being there, in which case, why did she strike a deal and plead guilty? It's in fact that she's getting railroaded because the military needs a few P.R. convictions, which also doesn't say much about or moral values: punish and scapegoat the small fish to deflect real questions of responsibility and culpability.

But then, what do we expect in a country where the general who ordered and oversaw the torture is on his way to receiving another shiny star?

Posted by zeynep at 06:47 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

November 02, 2004

Blunt Force Trauma Complicated by Hampered Breathing

Granting of immunity results in more detailed testimony about how we kill in our prisoners:

SAN DIEGO (AP) The CIA interrogated and roughed up Iraqi prisoners in a ``romper room'' where a handcuffed and hooded terror suspect was kicked, slapped and punched shortly before he died last year at the Abu Ghraib prison, a Navy SEAL testified Monday.

Blood was visible on the hood worn by the prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, as he was led into the interrogation room at Baghdad International Airport in November 2003, the Navy commando said at a military pretrial hearing for another SEAL accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners.

Testifying under a grant of immunity, the witness, identified only by his rank as a hospital corpsman, said he kicked al-Jamadi several times, slapped him in the back of the head and punched him. Five or six other CIA personnel in the room laid their hands on the prisoner, he said, but he did not provide details.

Sometime later, Al-Jamadi was found dead in a shower room less than an hour after two CIA personnel brought him into Abu Ghraib as a so-called ``ghost detainee,'' according to Army Maj. Gen. George R. Fay's report on the notorious prison. Such detainees were not listed in the normal roster of military prisoners.

Fay's report said al-Jamadi died of a blot clot in the head likely due to injuries suffered after being detained. The military pathologist's report listed the cause of death as blunt force trauma complicated by hampered breathing.

...

The testimony about the CIA's role came during a hearing for an aviation boatswain's mate who is accused of punching al-Jamadi and posing in humiliating photos with the prisoner. The boatswain's mate, a 14-year Navy veteran, allegedly twisted other prisoners' testicles and struck a prisoner in the buttocks with a wooden board.

...
The hospital corpsman was a surprise witness during the two-day proceeding, taking the witness stand only hours after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors that would spare him prison time.

What do you say?

And what does it say about us as a nation that the Abu Ghraib torture story now garners less attention than the Scott Peterson trial? I have to search for the stories in order to blog about them; they are often not front-page news in general news websites so you won't see them unless you look for them.

And then there are the efforts to award more stars to the generals who directed and oversaw the torture.

Posted by zeynep at 10:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 24, 2004

Thank God Our Leaders Are Completely Different From Saddam Hussein

"The thing that separates us from the enemy is our respect for human rights" -- that's Sen. John McCain talking about the latest reports that CIA has removed 'unidentified prisoners' out of Iraq -- contrary to international law, Geneva Conventions and who knows how many other treaties.

Yeah.

Posted by zeynep at 02:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 21, 2004

"Chip" Gets Eight Years, Pending Appeal

Considering everyone else sentenced so far received a year or less, this is a bit of departure:

"Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick, 38, an Army reservist from Buckingham, Va., was also given a reduction in rank, forfeiture of pay and a dishonorable discharge."

In the meantime, the Army -mirabile dictu- discovered that lack of training wasn't the issue here and, by implication, individual soldiers can and should make moral judgements:

Army Prosecutor Major Michael Holley told the court it was a simple case of right and wrong.

"He's an adult and capable of telling, as we learned, the difference between right and wrong. How much training do you need to learn that it's wrong to force a man to masturbate?" he said.

Now if we could only bring in those gazillion memos, orders, encouragements, assignments from the White House down into the picture, we could -almost- start thinking through the full implications of what we have become. Because even that would be a start. Maybe that's why everyone's running away from this issue; because it has something to do with this culture of cruelty of ours.

Posted by zeynep at 12:13 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 20, 2004

Let me Count the Ways

Soldier Pleads Guilty in Iraq Abuse Case

The highest-ranking soldier charged with abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison pleaded guilty Wednesday, telling a military court that prisoners were forced to submit to public nudity and degrading treatment "for military intelligence purposes."

...

But the Army staff sergeant also blamed his chain of command, saying he was given no training or support in supervising detainees and only learned of regulations against mistreatment after the abuses occurred between October and December last year.

First, here they go with the "abuse" again.

Second, let me recount some of the things Mr. Ivan Frederick claims to have done because of his ignorance of regulations:

During an incident last Nov. 4 captured on photos transmitted around the world, Frederick said he helped hook wires on a detainee's hands and told him he would be electrocuted if he fell off a box. An Army investigator encouraged him to abuse the detainee, saying he didn't care what was done to the prisoner "as long as you don't kill him," Frederick said.

In a Nov. 8 incident, Frederick admitted, he joined another soldier in jumping on a pile of seven detainees accused of rioting. He also admitted to stomping on their hands and feet.

"I should have stopped it right there," he said.

But the detainees then were strip-searched and remained naked, even after female soldiers arrived on the scene — which is against military rules, he said. Frederick said he punched the ringleader in the chest so hard that the prisoner needed medical attention.

Finally, Frederick said, soldiers lined the detainees naked against a wall with bags on their heads and then forced three of them to masturbate.

Really, that's such a tough call. Is it wrong to mock-electrocute people or not, hmm. Let's see. Where's that damn rule book again? Do you look it up under "M" or under "E"? It's not my fault the index isn't organized in an intuitive fashion.

Third, does anyone think it's a coincidence that both Ivan Frederick and Charles Graner are former "corrections officers"?

And, last, but by no means least, why is US army reservist Sgt Ivan Frederick the highest-ranking soldier charged ?

Posted by zeynep at 11:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 17, 2004

Guantanamo Detainees "Abused" too

Shocked, we're all shocked.

In one common procedure, uncooperative prisoners were stripped down to their underwear, made to sit in a chair with their hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor, and forced to listen to blaring rock and rap music in a room with flashing strobe lights, a military official told the Times.

At the same time, the room was cooled down with the air-conditioning turned to maximum levels, since the detainees were used to high temperatures from their native countries and their prison cells in the Caribbean island, said the official who witnessed the procedure.

"It fried them," the official told the Times, adding that the sessions could last up to 14 hours with breaks.

It's now shamefully standard pratice among all major papers and wire services that all torture by us is always called abuse, no matter how severe -- or even fatal. This particular piece even has a law professor plainly pointing out that what has occured is torture, not abuse. Still, it's referred to as abuse in the headline and all the "objective" descriptions:

"I don't think there's any question that treatment of that character satisfies the severe pain and suffering requirement, be it physical or mental, that is provided for in the Convention Against Torture," said the former official, David Sheffer, who now teaches law at George Washington University.

News stories also have been very poor at explaining how painful these so-called "stress positions" --being shackled at an uncomfortable position for many hours-- actually are. Meanwhile, the detainees are still denied access to a legitimate court as the Supreme Court ordered last summer.

In one sense, this is a small crime compared to everything else we're doing like pounding cities with 500 pound bombs. On the other hand, the idea that everyone gets their day in court has always been hailed as one of those things that are central to the self-definition of this country. To see even that let go so easily by the mainstream, with a murmur of protest here and a hint of unease there, is quite scary.

Posted by zeynep at 11:34 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 15, 2004

Responsible for Abu Ghraib? Here, Have Another Star!

A while back, I complained all that the higher-ups who ordered, allowed and set up and environment where torture was routine practice were going get was a slap-in-the-wrist early retirement -- with full benefits, and not even a hint of accountability.

And the most eggregious example in the uniformed military was Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez because cables and other materials had been unearthed which showed that he had directly authorized and ordered the use of some of the torture methods and helped run the place in a manner that allowed and encouraged the whole gamut of despicable practices.

Pentagon did not make these cables public, but some appropriately disgusted government employee turned them over to the Washington Post. Let me recap the key part (I wrote more about it here):

The cable signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez listed several dozen strategies for extracting information, drawn partly from what officials now say was an outdated and improperly permissive Army field manual. But it added one not previously approved for use in Iraq, under the heading of Presence of Military Working Dogs: "Exploit Arab fear of dogs while maintaining security during interrogations."

And:

Unnamed officials at the Florida headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, which has overall military responsibility for Iraq, objected to some of the 32 interrogation tactics approved by Sanchez in September, including the more severe methods that he had said could be used at any time in Abu Ghraib with the consent of the interrogation officer in charge.

...

The high-pressure options that remained included taking someone to a less hospitable location for interrogation; manipulating his or her diet; imposing isolation for more than 30 days; using military dogs to provoke fear; and requiring someone to maintain a "stress position" for as long as 45 minutes. These were not dropped by Sanchez until a scandal erupted in May over photographs depicting abuse at the prison.

It turns out that not only Sanchez not even getting a slap on the wrist, Rumsfeld et al. are determined to put a fourth star on him to reward him:

Senior Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have privately told colleagues they are determined to pin a fourth star on Sanchez, two senior defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said this week.

Rumsfeld and others recognize that Sanchez remains politically "radioactive," in the words of a third senior defense official, and would wait until after the Nov. 2 presidential election and investigations of the Abu Ghraib scandal have faded before putting his name forward.

Yeah, really, why do they hate us?

Posted by zeynep at 09:37 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 06, 2004

It's the Fiercely Independent Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, Not Us!

So, the Bush administration is now claiming that it's not supporting the provision allowing for outsourcing torture, attached to a bill about the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Report:

President Bush today distanced himself from his administration’s quiet effort to push through a law that would make it easier to send captured terror suspects to countries where torture is used. The proposed law, recently tacked onto a much larger bill despite the fallout from last spring’s interrogation scandal, is seen as an attempt to counter a recent Supreme Court decision that would free some terror detainees being held without trial.

In a letter published in The Washington Post, White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales said the president “did not propose and does not support” a provision to the House bill that removes legal protections from suspects preventing their “rendering” to foreign governments known to torture prisoners. Gonzales said Bush “has made clear that the United States stands against and will not tolerate torture.”

But John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who introduced the bill last Friday, said the provision had actually been requested by the Department of Homeland Security. “For whatever reason,” Feehery said, “the White House has decided they don’t want to take this on because they’re afraid of the political implications.”

So, in one of the most tightly and vindictively run administrations in a long time, what would actually happen if the administration were actually opposed to the provision? Hastert would immediately back down, of course. One guess as to whether he did or not:

[Spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, John] Feehery said Hastert still supported the provision in spite of Gonzales’s letter.

Such independent spirit. Such backbone.

Posted by zeynep at 01:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 30, 2004

Abu Ghraib?

Abu Ghraib? What? Who? Where?

Posted by zeynep at 11:04 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Scandal: Torturing Outsourced Without Competitive Bidding

Obsidian Wings draws our attention to a very important bill in Congress attempting to override, oh, The UN Convention on Torture, lots of U.S. Federal Laws and general standards of decency in order to legalize outsourcing of torture:

The Republican leadership of Congress is attempting to legalize extraordinary rendition. "Extraordinary rendition" is the euphemism we use for sending terrorism suspects to countries that practice torture for interrogation. As one intelligence official described it in the Washington Post, "We don't kick the sh*t out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the sh*t out of them.”

The best known example of this is the case of Maher Arar. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was deported to Syria from JFK airport. In Syria he was beaten with electrical cables for two weeks, and then imprisoned in an underground cell for the better part of a year. Arar is probably innocent of any connection to terrorism.

Massachusetts Congressman Edward Markey has introduced a bill that would outlaw this practice of sending people to be tortured in places other than Abu Ghraib. He has very few co-sponsors and it would be very important for everyone to call, visit and write their representatives in the next few days urging them to support Markey's bill and urging them to work against the Republican leadership's shameful attempt to legalize torture as a part of H.R. 10, the "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act of 2004." That's right, the Republicans have snuck in legalizing outsourcing of torture in a bill about about the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Report.

Even if Hastert & Co withdrew their legalization attempt, it still would be very important to suppork Markey's bill because as things stand, sending people to be tortured is okay as long as the recipient country "assures" us the person won't be tortured. Well, maybe, they'll also claim that they were "merely abusing," not torturing the victim.

On that note, here's an amusing sidestory. Yesterday night, the Washington Post head a story on its website that read "Plan Would Let U.S. Deport Suspects To Nations That Might Abuse Them" -- not sure if this was the exact wording but the term used definitely was abuse. I thought it was funny that abuse now meant torture done by us and and nations doing our bidding. This morning, I find the headline now reads "Plan Would Let U.S. Deport Suspects To Nations That Might Torture Them" So we get to keep our monopoly on abusing while everyone else tortures.

I also want to know if torturing countries will be forced to go through a competitive bidding process, or will no-bid contracts be awarded? We can't waste taxpayer money now. So, call your rep: 1-800-839-5276 or 202-224-3121. Visit their office. Write them a letter. This is just too shameful.

Posted by zeynep at 10:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 01, 2004

It's Torture in Saddam's Abu Ghraib, Chile, Equatorial Guinea but "Abuse" in Our Abu Ghraib

A New York Times article about Dr. Hussain Shahristani's efforts to establish an Iraqi National Academy of Sciences:

In Iraq, a Quest to Rebuild One More Broken Edifice: Science

August 31, 2004

He came within a hair's breadth of being named prime minister of Iraq last spring. He was tortured by Saddam Hussein's government for refusing to work on an atomic bomb and spent 12 years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement, before escaping during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

Another New York Times article about Kissinger's lack of concern about rampant torture under Argentina's military dictators:

Papers Show No Protest by Kissinger on Argentina

August 27, 2004

Also at the meeting were William Rogers, then under secretary for economic affairs, and Luigi Einaudi, the current assistant secretary general of the Organization of American States, who took notes at the meeting. Both men have previously denied that Mr. Kissinger privately gave any "green light" to political repression and torture in Latin America, as has Mr. Kissinger himself.

John McCain's convention speech criticizing opponents of the war for ignoring the reality of Iraq's horror's under Saddam:

Text of Sen. John McCain's RNC Speech

August 31, 2004

And certainly not a disingenuous film maker who would have us believe that Saddam's Iraq was an oasis of peace when in fact it was a place of indescribable cruelty, torture chambers, mass graves and prisons that destroyed the lives of the small children held inside their walls.

Reuters sourced NY Times article about Chile's Supreme Court's blessed decision to finally strip Pinochet of immunity for his crimes:

Chile's Top Court Strips Pinochet of Immunity

August 27, 2004

The ruling is the latest in six years of back-and-forth court decisions in hundreds of human rights cases in which General Pinochet has been accused of ordering the secret police to kidnap, torture and kill leftists.

An Associated Press sourced NY Times story about Mark Thatcher's involvement in a coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea:

Coup Charges Cap Mark Thatcher's Career

August 31, 2004

Equatorial Guinea wants Thatcher and his alleged co-conspirators extradited for allegedly plotting to overthrow Teodoro Obiang, the president for a quarter century of the tiny but oil-rich nation. Media reports have accused Obiang of cannibalism and torture, in addition to the theft of his nation's oil wealth.

Now, let's move a little closer home. A NY Times story about Rumsfeld's claim, plainly contradicted by the reports published by the Army itself and later retracted by Rumsfeld, that the "abuses" had not occurred during interrogations:

Rumsfeld Denies Abuses Occurred at Interrogations

August 27, 2004

In his first comments on the two major investigative reports issued this week at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday mischaracterized one of their central findings about the American military's treatment of Iraqi prisoners by saying there was no evidence that prisoners had been abused during interrogations.

...

While the abuses that first came to light - depicted in photographs taken in Abu Ghraib prison - were not the ones involving interrogations, the subsequent investigations have shown that, among other abuses, prisoners were kept in harsh isolation, beaten, kept naked and threatened by dogs as part of the interrogation process there. Mr. Rumsfeld has condemned the prisoner abuses, and did so again in his public appearances on Thursday in Arizona. But he has also hewed to the line that a small band of rogue military police were largely responsible for the beatings, sexual humiliating poses and other abuses, especially those depicted in a notorious set of photographs that became public in April.

An AP sourced NY Times article about how some generals may pay the awesome price of cushy retirement with full pay and benefits for their role in "abuse":

Generals May Pay a Price for Iraq Abuse

August 31, 2004

The Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal could effectively end the careers of four Army generals who are linked indirectly to the misconduct but face no criminal charges.

The four are singled out for varying degrees of criticism -- mixed with instances of praise -- in two comprehensive investigative reports released last week. The investigators conclude that the generals are partly responsible, but not legally culpable, for the abuse last fall.

A New York Times article about how the "alleged abuses" in Iraq may be traced to practices first developed in Afghanistan:

Some Abu Ghraib Abuses Are Traced to Afghanistan

August 26, 2004

Intelligence officials said the C.I.A.'s inspector general was already carrying out a series of investigations of the agency's involvement in alleged abuses in Iraq, including the handling of the "ghost detainees."

You get my drift... They torture, we merely abuse. Remember, what has happened is far beyond a few sexually humiliating pictures. People were beaten to death, shackled in extremely painful positions for extended periods of time, sleep-deprived for many days, threatened with murder of their families, attacked and bitten by dogs, and worst, children were raped and taken hostage to make their parents break.

Posted by zeynep at 12:11 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

August 31, 2004

Knock it off, will ya?

Pfc. Lynndie England's military hearings continued yesterday, with relatively predictable testimony. Here's a question. You are caught stomping on the fingers and toes of people under your total control -- and the total sum of the reaction you get is being told to "knock it off." What's the predictable reaction: do you decide it's no big deal and continue as you were or do you pull back in realization of what you're doing is wrong? So did Pfc. England.

"They were stomping on the fingers and toes of the detainees," Sivits said, referring to England and Graner. England, wearing a maternity camouflage uniform, listened to the testimony in the Fort Bragg courtroom.

...

Last week, a panel headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger issued a report accusing the U.S. military chain of command from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on down of leadership failures that created conditions for the abuse.

According to Sivits, a noncommissioned officer who was present told the MPs to "knock it off," but after the NCO left, abuse continued.

It now looks like a few generals will also pay the grand price of cozy retirement with full benefits at a time of their choosing for their central role in expanding the use of torture in detention centers around the world. Sanchez looks to be the highest figure who will be assigned some blame --but not any real punishment-- since there are now leaked documents that show he directly authorized some of the torture, including the use of dogs:

The cable signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez listed several dozen strategies for extracting information, drawn partly from what officials now say was an outdated and improperly permissive Army field manual. But it added one not previously approved for use in Iraq, under the heading of Presence of Military Working Dogs: "Exploit Arab fear of dogs while maintaining security during interrogations."

The Post story is rather interesting, although it's written in a very convoluted way. It basically says that the Army investigation is portraying clear acts of commission as if they were acts of omission -- even though they have evidence that Sanchez ordered the use of dogs, they attribute the use of dogs to unclear policy and "confusion."

The text of the Sanchez cable was not included in public copies of the Army's report, but was obtained by The Washington Post from a government official upset by what Sanchez approved.

The authors of the Army report did not accuse Sanchez of directly instigating abuse, and they did not cite the contents of his memo in the unclassified version. But Army Gen. Paul J. Kern -- who oversaw the drafting of the report -- said in an interview last week that Sanchez "wrote a policy which was not clear," and that by doing so, he allowed junior officers to conclude mistakenly that they were following an official policy as they stepped over a legal line.

This interpretation of the role senior officials played -- that they committed sins of omission, rather than commission by writing ambiguous instructions and then failing to police the errant ways of subordinates -- is likely to be challenged in court, according to lawyers for some of the soldiers on trial in connection with the prison abuse.

In other words, the Army deliberately hid documents in its possession showing direct orders by its own generals for use of dogs in order to create the infrastructure for the theory that the top brass is only responsible for not being clear enough in discouraging those few bad apples from actions they took totally and completely on their own:

The Army report quoted Sanchez as saying he "never approved use of dogs." Fay also said in the report that "no documentation was found" showing approval by the Combined Joint Task Force 7, headed by Sanchez, "to use dogs in interrogations."

Asked to explain the apparent conflict between language in the report and the text of Sanchez's cable, Kern said that what Sanchez meant is that he never specifically approved an interrogation plan submitted to him for review that involved the use of dogs, while Fay said that Sanchez believes he only endorsed the general presence of muzzled dogs at the time interrogations were being conducted, rather than inside prison interrogation booths -- a practice that was clearly misunderstood.

Posted by zeynep at 01:23 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 30, 2004

Shortage of Men's Underwear, the Real Culprit

We have now moved beyond the few bad apples theory, and have stepped into the realm of the surreal:

Members of England's unit testified about critical supply shortages that forced them to keep prisoners naked for long stretches and to give male detainees female underwear.

Excuse me?

Can we refresh our memory here about what we're talking about:

Posted by zeynep at 12:22 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 26, 2004

Rampant Hostage-Taking in Iraq

Phil Carter highlights a very important fact coming out of the newly-released Abu Ghraib reports. It's something we knew from sporadic, if widespread, reports. Women and children were taken hostage by the U.S. military:

These two reports will get all the publicity, but it's two lesser-known studies that should trouble Americans even more. The first report, authored by the Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth in May 2004, indicates that several American units in Iraq detained wives and children of insurgents in an attempt to make the insurgents turn themselves in or talk while in custody. According to a study by U.S. Army Maj. Christopher Varhola (one of the report's authors), it was also common practice for Americans to "collectively detain ... all males in a given area or village for up to several weeks or months." The collective and family detentions served to "alienate much of the population," Varhola concluded. Such collective detentions played a major role in inflating the Abu Ghraib prison population, to the point where the Red Cross reported that 70 percent to 90 percent of detainees were "arrested by mistake." (Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, an Army spokesman in Baghdad, said there is currently no policy endorsing such detentions, and such past detentions fell outside the bounds of standard operating procedure. But Johnson said such detentions could still occur where family members were personally connected to insurgency activities, and commanders decided it was necessary to detain them.)

And, of course, all this constitutes a war crime under pretty much any existing international legal structure you pick governing rules of warfare:

Where international law speaks to these issues, it is generally quite clear. The 4th Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War flatly prohibits the practice of detaining insurgent family members to get intelligence. Article 31 of that treaty prohibits "physical or moral coercion" to obtain information from citizens of an occupied state; taking someone's wife and children hostage certainly qualifies as moral coercion. Likewise, Article 33 proscribes the use of collective punishment, and Article 34 states plainly that "[t]he taking of hostages is prohibited." Similarly, international law and U.S. law clearly prohibit torture, whether for intelligence purposes or not. The U.N. Convention Against Torture makes such acts an international crime, and Section 2340A of the federal criminal code outlaws the practice as well.

I don't know if one needs to explain how incredibly wrong-headed this policy is even on pragmatic grounds -- let alone the blatant immorality and the illegality of the practice. Let's just say people don't like their children being imprisoned in a place like Abu Ghraib and might hold a grudge for a long, long time. Is that too hard to comprehend?

Posted by zeynep at 12:16 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

"Go Nuts on the Kids"

Incidents Grew in Severity, Report Says

One Iraqi, identified in the report only as "Detainee 7," described how in October of last year, he was made to bark like a dog and crawl on his stomach while U.S. soldiers spat and urinated on him. He also was beaten into unconsciousness. On another occasion, he was forced to lie on the ground while MPs jumped on his back and legs. He also was sodomized with a police stick, the report said.

"It is highly probable Detainee 7's allegations are true," the report noted.

In November, the soldiers of Abu Ghraib found more perverse forms of brutality. Some detainees were forced to masturbate. Others were "ridden like animals."

In late November, police dogs were brought in by top commanders to help control prisoner demonstrations and riots. Instead, their presence created the conditions for what Gen. Paul J. Kern, who oversaw Maj. Gen. George R. Fay's investigation, described as the worst of the 44 incidents.

"I think the most horrific one that we found from my perspective is the case of where MP dog handlers were subjecting two adolescents to terror from the dogs for the purposes of playing a game," Kern said. Dog handlers competed, he said, "specifically to see if they could get [the juvenile detainees'] bowel movements and their urination to work."

"Soldier 27 allowed the dog to enter the cell and 'go nuts on the kids,' barking and scaring them," the Fay report states.

But this is all nobody's fault. The soldiers were not properly trained --in, what, not letting dogs attack kids? --, the prison was understaffed --which it might not have been had they not cumulatively detained fifty thousand people most of whom had nothing to do with any crime, as the Red Cross report documented--, Rumsfeld didn't order this stuff, the Commander at Abu Ghraib didn't even know it was going on because it all took place during the night, blah, blah, blah.

Posted by zeynep at 12:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 24, 2004

Iraqi Teens Tortured in "Sadistic Game" in Abu Ghraib

I can't decide which is worse. If we are to take military top brass' defense at face value --that no high-level direction was involved in Abu Ghraib tortures-- are we then to conclude that our military harbors wanna-be sadists along with conformists who will turn a blind eye to the sadists? I think I'd be slightly less horrified by a scenario where the torture was ordered from the top and practiced by soldiers reared on obedience. In any case, it's getting worse however you want to interpret the chain of events. Washington Post has obtained an advance copy of a report that narrates how detainees were deliberately hidden from international humanitarian organizations, raped by their captors and subjected to sadistic "games," even if they were just kids:

But the new report, according to Pentagon sources, will show that MPs were using their animals to make juveniles -- as young as 15 years old -- urinate on themselves as part of a competition.

"There were two MP dog handlers who did use dogs to threaten kids detained at Abu Ghraib," said one Army officer familiar with the report, one of two investigations on detainee abuse scheduled to be released this week. "It has nothing to do with interrogation. It was just them on their own being weird."

Just them on their own being weird. You know, blowing off some steam. On children.

The Pentagon, predictably, sticks by the few bad apples theory:

"The report will show that these actions were bad, illegal, unauthorized, and some of it was sadistic," said one Defense Department official. "But it will show that they were the actions of a few, actions that went unnoticed because of leadership failures."

What's the message here? Take comfort America, our soldiers torture children of their own iniative? The leadership just happenned to not take notice and that's the only problem we'll own up to?

Meanwhile, the infamous Spc. Charles Graner takes a cue from his leadership and tries to wiggle out of responsibility based on the kind of technicalities that constitute the worst plots on T.V. law dramas. Graner's lawyers want the evidence found on his laptop -- presumably those famous pics and more-- to be thrown out because Graner was too sleepy when he consented to a search of his laptop:

Graner said he had been in Iraq for months under dangerous conditions when he was awakened after no more than 1 1/2 hours of sleep and told by the Army investigating agent, Manora Iem, that he could not return to his quarters until it had been searched. He said he finally signed the search order because he thought it was a "done deal" anyway.

Not the kind of "I can't sleep at night" one would have wished to have heard from him. I don't know how to remark on the irony of a man who tortured detainees under his control claiming his constitutional search and seizure protections weren't fully respected because his consent was obtained when he was too sleepy. The irony is even deeper when considering prolonged sleep deprivation is systematically practiced in U.S. detention facilities around the world. But, I digress.

The judge refused to grant that motion, keeping the laptop in evidence for now but to be reconsidered later if necessary. Graner did indicate he'd plead guilty to some of the charges but it's unclear at the moment which ones, and what that might mean for the investigation.

Meanwhile, the judge also chastised the U.S. military prosecution for moving at an unacceptable pace -- apparently, Army criminal investigators had assigned only one person to go through "hundreds of thousands" of documents on the Abu Ghraib classified computer server. Referring to the reviewing process, the judge angrily asked: "And in what millennium will that be finished?"

Does it matter? We've all moved on. We're all bored of that story already. We'd rather discuss how the U.S. military did not commit any atrocities in Vietnam and anyone who dared suggest otherwise is a traitor.

Posted by zeynep at 12:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Abu Ghraib Whistle-Blower in "Protective Military Custody"

Speaking of traitors who dare claim that atrocities were committed during the Vietnam war:

AGERSTOWN, Md., Aug. 17 - The Army reservist who tipped off investigators to abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison by his fellow soldiers is in protective military custody because of death threats, family members said on Tuesday.

The reservist, Specialist Joseph M. Darby, 24, received the threats after his role in the scandal was publicly revealed in May, his sister-in-law, Maxine Carroll, said.

...

Specialist Darby's mother, Margaret T. Blank, of Corriganville, Md., said soldiers moved his and his wife's belongings out of their apartment weeks ago.

Posted by zeynep at 12:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack