War Without End

Alpha

Israeli link possible in US torture techniques
By Ali Abunimah
Special to The Daily Star
Tuesday, May 11, 2004

In exchange for interrogation training, did Washington award security
contracts?

CHICAGO, Illinois: The head of the American defense contracting firm
implicated in the torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison has close ties to
Israel and visited an Israeli "anti-terror" training camp in the occupied
West Bank earlier this year.
Jack London, chairman, president and CEO of CACI International Incorporated,
traveled to Israel in January this year as part of a high-level delegation
of US Congressmen, defense contractors and pro-Israel lobbyists, sponsored
and paid for in part by the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah, a pro-Israel
lobbying and fundraising group, and Greenberg Traurig, LLP, a prominent
Washington law and lobby firm.

The purpose of the visit, according to a CACI press release, was "to promote
opportunities for strategic partnerships and joint ventures between US and
Israeli defense and homeland security companies."

As one of the highlights of the visit, London was presented with the Albert
Einstein Technology Award by Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz at a gala
dinner at Jerusalem city hall, for "achievements in the field of defense and
national security."

Delegates also spent several hours in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights with
Housing and Construction Minister Effie Eitam, a former Israeli general, who
is notorious for his view that Israel should "transfer" - that is, expel -
all the Palestinians.

According to the official itinerary for the Jan. 11-17 Defense Aerospace
Homeland Security Mission, obtained from the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah,
London's trip included a visit to Beit Horon, "the central training camp for
the anti-terrorist forces of the Israeli police and the border police," in
the occupied West Bank. The visitors were also "briefed by top experts," and
were able to "witness exercises related to anti-terror warfare."

Two CACI employees, Steven Stephanowicz and John Israel, were named in the
leaked report by US Major General Antonio M. Taguba on the abuses at Abu
Ghraib prison. Taguba wrote that Stephanowicz, a "contract US civilian
interrogator," "allowed and/or instructed MPs (military police), who were
not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by
'setting conditions' which were neither authorized or in accordance with
applicable regulations/policy. He clearly knew his instructions equated to
physical abuse."

John Israel, an interpreter, did not have the appropriate security
clearance, according to Taguba.

Although Taguba recommended that Stephanowicz be terminated and his security
clearance revoked, a May 5 statement from CACI confirmed, "at present, all
CACI employees continue to work on site providing the contracted for
services to our clients in that location." It added: "We have not received
any information to stop any of our work, to terminate or suspend any of our
employees."

Although no evidence has emerged directly linking CACI's involvement in the
Abu Ghraib atrocities to Israel, it has long been known that the US military
has been interested in "learning" from Israel's experience attempting to
suppress the Palestinian uprising. In March 2003, for example, the AP
reported that the "the (US) military has been listening closely to Israeli
experts and picking up tips from years of Israeli Army operations in
Palestinian areas and Lebanese towns."

This cooperation has included briefings of US personnel by Israeli officers,
and, according to AP, "In January and February (2003), Israeli and American
troops trained together in southern Israel's Negev Desert ... Israel has
also hosted senior law enforcement officials from the United States for a
seminar on counterterrorism."

Meanwhile, more evidence has emerged undermining the US thesis that the
abuses at Abu Ghraib was the work of a "few bad apples." The Guardian
reported that the "sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib
prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of
ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now
being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors."

This system, known to insiders as "R2I," short for resistance to
interrogation, also includes such methods as "hooding, sleep deprivation,
time disorientation and depriving prisoners not only of dignity, but of
fundamental human needs, such as warmth, water and food." These are all
techniques long employed by Israel.

The visit of the US delegation that included the CACI head exposes a
rarefied web of influence sharing in which US government officials and
congressmen, defense contractors and lobbyists parcel out huge contracts,
and siphon significant portions off to Israel.

As Batya Feldman of Israel's Globes financial news service put it, the visit
provided Israeli companies with "an excellent opportunity to encounter big
bucks in homeland security."

To help Israeli companies pry some of these "big bucks" loose, the visit
included seminars for Israeli companies given by US pro-Israel lobbyists
called "How to Approach the Homeland Security Department," and "How to Sell
to the US Defense Department."

Israeli participants would have had a chance to test the helpful tips, since
present on the trip were Assistant Secretary for Homeland SecurityRobert
Liscouski and many leading US legislators, including top members of the US
House and Senate Armed Services Committees, which jointly oversee tens of
billions of dollars in military spending.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=
3446

dangerousdna · Posted: Tue May 11, 2004 5:08 am Post subject:

http://www.theage.com.aCACIu/articles/2004/05/05/1083635200888.html

Civilian contractors raise doubts on accountability
By Gail Gibson
Baltimore
May 6, 2004

Page Tools
Email to a friend Printer format
The US military's use of private contractors for wartime interrogation marks a sharp shift from traditional practices. And it is raising difficult issues of accountability as authorities investigate the alleged role of civilian workers in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

Defence Department officials said that in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks they turned to private sources to meet the burgeoning need for linguists, translators and people to question prisoners for intelligence.

One of the companies under investigation in Iraq said it had supplied interrogators to the military since the mid-1990s.

But critics say that reliance on non-military staff undermined a key safeguard: the threat of punishment.

While US soldiers allegedly involved in the acts face a court-martial or other sanctions, the legal status and possible penalties for private workers are far less certain.

"The whole status of private contractors is murky," said law professor Scott Silliman, executive director of Duke University's Centre on Law, Ethics and National Security.

The growth in the use of private contractors to fill even the most sensitive military roles had in some ways outpaced US law. "It is an area of great concern," he said.

As many as 20,000 civilians were working under military contract in Iraq, said Peter Singer, a scholar with the Brookings Institute and the author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatised Military Industry.

In the past decade, contractors' work had increasingly turned from mundane tasks such as meal preparation to high-profile security details.

"We've pushed the envelope of military outsourcing past the point of what anyone contemplated," Professor Singer said.

J. P. "Jack" London, the chairman and chief executive officer of CACI International, the US company implicated in an army investigation of abuses in Iraq, said his company had done Government interrogation work since the mid to late 1990s.

Civilians as interrogators
- Two private military contractors accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners worked for CACI International, of US.
- CACI, with $US1 billion turnover, was founded in 1962 as a small IT consultancy. It now has 7600 employees worldwide, and is the sixth-largest Federal Government contractor.
- About 90 per cent of its business comes from the Pentagon and other agencies.
- CACI says it has provided civilian interrogators since the mid to late 1990s.
Source: Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, www.caci.com"We do have interrogation work," Mr London said. "We do have people involved in collection projects in various parts of the world. We've been in the general business of intelligence collection and analysis, with interrogation one part of it."

Even before the abuses at the Iraqi prison became public, several US Democrat lawmakers had raised concerns about the accountability of private security companies operating in Iraq.

At a Senate hearing in October, a Pentagon official said staff shortages, particularly of Arabic linguists, had forced the Defence Department to hire contractors as interpreters and for interrogation work.

- Baltimore Sun

dangerousdna · Posted: Tue May 11, 2004 5:21 am Post subject:

dangerousdna · Posted: Tue May 11, 2004 5:36 am Post subject:

dangerousdna · Posted: Tue May 11, 2004 5:55 am Post subject:

Alpha

THE WISE COURSE: WITHDRAW FROM IRAQ
By Paul Findley / May 6, 2004

Misguided by the arrogance of military power and a dangerous vision of
imperial destiny, President George W. Bush and a compliant Congress have
led America into a bloody abyss that gets deeper and bloodier with each
passing day.

Their dreams of a flower-strewn path of Iraqi liberation have become a
nightmare. U.S. forces are mired in a lethal struggle against powerful,
resourceful insurgents. It is war, not liberation. Casualties blight
many thousands of families on both sides, with no end in sight. Iraqi
hostility to the U.S. occupation soars and so does anti-American fury
worldwide. Photographs of barbaric U.S. torture and abuse of
incarcerated Iraqis will long burn in the memories of many millions.
Never before has America been viewed in such wretched ugliness.

President Bush’s response to this plight is more troops, preferably from
other countries. It will only deepen the misery. We learned in Vietnam
that more foreign military firepower will increase insurgency, not quell
it. Bush misreads the militancy as the work of remnants of the Saddam
regime and newly arrived troublemakers from Al Queda. It fact, it is
motivated mainly by broad Iraqi fear that the United States plans to
control Iraq far into the future. Here are questions that trouble Iraqis:

-- Why has Washington established a super-embassy in Iraq with a staff
of 3,000, the largest diplomatic mission in world history? Is it
designed to influence future Iraqi governmental activity?

-- How long will U.S. troops remain in Iraq? Will U.S. military bases
there ever be dismantled?

-- When will reconstruction work be turned over to Iraqi contractors and
employees?

-- How can Iraqis believe Bush’s promise of independence and freedom
while he helps Israel deny these same rights in neighboring Palestine?

Israel has long manipulated U.S. policy in the Middle East and already
advises U.S. forces on how to organize the occupation. Consequently,
Iraqis fear Israel will be the real power in fashioning U.S. policy in
Iraq during the interim period that starts July l and will remain
dominant even after Iraqi citizens directly elect a government. A recent
major survey by CNN-USA Today reports that Iraqis fear becoming “another
Palestine.”

The remedy to this dreadful mess is a clear U.S. decision, announced
immediately, to exit Iraq. President Bush must face down Israeli
opposition and announce that, within weeks after the inauguration of the
new directly-elected government, probably in early January, a full U.S.
withdrawal will occur.

His announcement must state that all U.S. military forces and any
abnormal U.S. diplomatic bureaucracy will depart, except for those the
new Iraqi government may ask to remain. Beyond any such exceptions, all
U.S. military bases will be dismantled, all U.S. construction and
maintenance contracts will be terminated, and all future U.S. aid to
Iraq will handled through the U.S. Agency for International Development.

If Bush acts, his announcement will be applauded except by the Israeli
government. In America, all citizens will know that the costly mess in
Iraq will soon end. In Iraq, with the U.S. exit assured, insurgency will
surely diminish and casualties may even end. Attention will shift to
approving a constitution and electing a truly independent Iraqi government.

Worldwide anti-American passion will subside, because the announcement
will be read as a significant departure, not just from Iraq, but from
the war-making doctrines announced by the Bush administration after the
9/11 catastrophe. It will also signal the end of Bush’s dreams of empire
in the Middle East and be a significant expression of America’s.
confidence is the ability of the Iraqis to manage their own affairs.

When the U.S. exit is completed, Americans and Iraqis alike will be able
to give full attention to mending the awful wounds of an awful war.

-----------

Paul Findley, a Republican Member of Congress 1961-83, is the author of
three books and hundreds of articles on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He
founded the Washington-based Council for the National Interest, and
resides in Jacksonville, Illinois.

[See also Findley's essay, "Liberating America from Israel":
http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/liberatingamerica.shtml]

Alpha

Alpha

PSCM USCGR · Posted: Tue May 11, 2004 11:54 am Post subject:

Top-It wasn't directed at you. We have our differences of opinion at times, but I have no qualms with anything you post.

Alpha · Posted: Wed May 12, 2004 7:45 am Post subject: TOP is an America Firster as well

War Without End

The global war against terror, news about the illegal invasion of Iraq, the corporate puppet presidents, the war criminal Tony Blair, September 11th 2001, the USS Liberty and New World Order crimes against humanity.

Is Israel behind the orders for the tortures in Iraq? - page 3