| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2004 10:02 pm Post subject: The Day the Constitution Died |
| The Day the Constitution Died
By Molly Ivins
June 10, 2004 AUSTIN, Texas – When, in the future, you find yourself wondering, "Whatever happened to the Constitution?" you will want to go back and look at June 8, 2004. That was the day the attorney general of the United States – a.k.a. "the nation's top law enforcement officer" – refused to provide the Senate Judiciary Committee with his department's memos concerning torture.
In order to justify torture, these memos declare that the president is bound by neither U.S. law nor international treaties. We have put ourselves on the same moral level as Saddam Hussein, the only difference being quantity. Quite literally, the president may as well wear a crown – forget that "no man is above the law" jazz. We used to talk about "the imperial presidency" under Nixon, but this is the real thing.
The Pentagon's legal staff concurred in this incredible conclusion. In a report printed by The Wall Street Journal, "Bush administration lawyers contended last year that the president wasn't bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn't be prosecuted by the Justice Department. ...
"The report outlined U.S. laws and international treaties forbidding torture, and why those restrictions might be overcome by national security considerations or legal technicalities."
The report was complied by a group appointed by Department of Defense General Counsel William J. Haynes II, who has since been nominated by Bush for the federal appellate bench. "Air Force General Counsel Mary Walker headed the group, which comprised top civilian and uniformed lawyers from each military branch and consulted with the Justice Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies. It isn't known if President Bush has ever seen the report."
When members of the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Ashcroft about his department's input, he simply refused to provide the memos, without offering any legal rationale. He said President Bush had "made no order that would require or direct the violation" of laws or treaties. His explanation was that the United States is at war. "You know I condemn torture," he told Sen. Joe Biden. "I don't think it's productive, let alone justified."
But another memo written by former Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge in California, establishes a basis for the use of torture for senior Al Qaeda operatives in custody of the CIA. I am not one to leap to conclusions, but it seems quite clear how whatever perverted standards allowed at Guantanamo Bay jumped across the water to Abu Ghraib prison. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, commander at Gitmo, was dispatched last August to Abu Ghraib to give advice about how to get information out of prisoners. "Miller's recommendations prompted a shift in the interrogation and detention procedures there. Military intelligence officers were given greater authority in the prison, and military police guards were asked to help gather information about the detainees," according to The New York Times.
Among the legal memos that circulated within the administration in 2002, one is by White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez, famously declaring the Geneva Convention "quaint," and another from the CIA asked for an explicit understanding that the administration's public pledge to abide by the spirit of the Geneva Convention did not apply to its operatives. The only department consistently opposing these legal "arguments" was State. In April 2002, Secretary Rumsfeld sent a memo to Gen. James T. Hill outlining 24 permitted interrogation techniques, four of which were considered so stressful as to require Rumsfeld's explicit approval before they were used.
It has been apparent for some time that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were not isolated instances – torture from Afghanistan to Gitmo to Iraq has so far resulted in 25 deaths now under investigation. As the late Jacabo Timmermann, the Argentine journalist who was tortured during "the dirty war," said, "When you are being tortured, it doesn't really matter to you if your torturers are authoritarian or totalitarian." I doubt it helps any if they're supposed to be bringing democracy, either. And as Ashcroft said, it isn't productive.
The damage is incalculable. When America puts out its annual report on human rights abuses, we will be a laughingstock. I suggest a special commission headed by Sen. John McCain to dig out everyone responsible, root and branch. If the lawyers don't cooperate, perhaps we should try stripping them, anally raping them and dunking their heads under water until they think they're drowning, and see if that helps.
And I think it is time for citizens to take some responsibility, as well. Is this what we have come to? Is this what we want our government to do for us? Oh and by way, to my fellow political reporters who keep repeating that Bush is having a wonderful week: Why don't you think about what you stand for?
Molly Ivins writes for Texas Observer. | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 8:54 am Post subject: The 3rd member of Team Titan -- Alion -- SAIC, connexion |
| Subj: --qstn The 3rd member of Team Titan -- Alion -- SAIC, connexion Alion's $ source
Date: 6/10/04 9:17:17 AM Pacific Daylight Time
EXCLUSIVE REPORTS
From the April 2, 2004 print edition
Atefi turned a nonprofit research lab into a successful company
Now he's on the hunt for $500M in annual revenue
Ben Hammer
Staff Reporter
In some sense, Bahman Atefi, a rising star in the local federal contracting industry, did it backwards.
After leaving a comfortable job at Science Applications International Corp. to run the nonprofit Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute (from an office overlooking SAIC's Tysons Corner complex), Atefi took the research lab private, sold it to its employees, changed its name to Alion Science and Technology and relocated its headquarters to Tysons.
In the process, he struck a deal with the Illinois Institute of Technology -- former parent of the research institute -- that will deliver the university a payout of $200 million by 2007 and more than doubled Alion's annual revenue, increasing shareholder value by nearly 50 percent in the year it became a for-profit entity. These days, most of Alion's business is with the Department of Defense.
Only a handful of non-profit research and development organizations have made the switch to for-profit -- and fewer in such a challenging environment as Alion. To do so requires turning the cultural and financial mind-set of the nonprofit 180 degrees.
"It's a large exercise in leadership," says Gary Nelson, former vice chair of SRA International (www.sra.com) and a consultant to Alion with Tysons Corner-based H&K Strategic Business Solutions (www.hksbs.com). "It's kind of like turning an ocean liner around in New York harbor."
Alion's shift provides important lessons about how nonprofits with expensive research labs can use financial discipline to tap their full potential. Atefi says the key is strong leadership from the private sector and respect for the nonprofit orientation.
"It has to come from the top," he says. "It has to come from someone who has for-profit experience, but it has to be done in a way that it doesn't lose the characteristics of a nonprofit."
After deciding IITRI should go private, Atefi brought university President (and former institute CEO) Lew Collens into his corner and set about convincing trustees to back the plan. Atefi was uniquely suited for the job. Colleagues say he's quite persuasive and that his near-constant enthusiasm is contagious.
"He has a very special talent, I think, in terms of negotiation, where he's able to push without offending," Collens says. "He knows when to push forward, when to retreat. He always has an open mind with a sense of where he's going."
Bob Pritzker, who chaired the institute's board of trustees, was a tough sell. The Chicago tycoon (worth $7.6 billion) saw IITRI as a "feather in the cap" of the university and wasn't eager to let it go. In the end, though, Atefi sold even Pritzker. Now he says he'd like to hire Atefi as a CEO of one of his companies.
"There were a number of instances where there was serious tension about the path going forward," Collens says. "It took a lot of tact and a lot of skill to get there."
High-level commanders
Alion was born in December 2002, delivered by Los Angeles investment bank Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin (www.hlhz.com), which set the company's valuation and Boston financial services firm State Street (www.statestreet.com) which became its trustee owner. Alion employees are beneficial shareholders of the company. Twice a year, Houlihan advises State Street on what new stock price to set for the shares. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 9:36 am Post subject: Newsweek on Torture |
| Subj: Newsweek on Torture
Date: 6/8/04 7:33:04 PM Pacific Daylight Time
New Torture Furor
A Defense Dept. memo provides a legal roadmap for prisoner interrogation
Dennis Cook / AP
Attorney General John Ashcroft testifies during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on June 8
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek
Updated: 6:31 p.m. ET June 08, 2004
June 8 - A memo classified by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2003 explores ways of conducting interrogations in the war on terror that would allow guards to evade future prosecutions for torture. In a series of minutely argued points that appear designed to evade restrictions on abusive interrogation techniques, the memo concludes that “excessive force” is illegal only when it is “malicious and sadistic.” It also argues that treatment of prisoners should be defined as torture only when "the infliction of pain" is an interrogator's "precise objective."
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The March 6, 2003 draft memo from the Defense Department, which was obtained in part by NEWSWEEK, is titled a “WORKING GROUP REPORT ON DETAINEE INTERROGATIONS IN THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM” and explores numerous legal defenses for acts that might be construed as torture. (Click here to read the memo). It was first disclosed by The Wall Street Journal on Monday. Along with several other memos to come out of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel—two them previously disclosed by NEWSWEEK—the 56-page DoD memo is believed to form the main basis for legal arguments justifying intense interrogation methods used at Guantanamo Bay. Some of those methods were later believed to be adopted for use at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
More War Crimes Memos
Click the Links Below to Read Portions of the Defense Dept. Memo
• Read the complete Defense Dept. memo:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
It is not clear to what extent the memo’s arguments eventually became administration policy. But a number of these arguments appear to provide a clear basis for many of the detention and interrogation practices that the Red Cross and witnesses allege were used against the Taliban and Al Qaeda as well as Iraqis. Among these practices were the selective removal of clothes and food, limiting a prisoner’s access to light, and forcing a prisoner into “stress” positions for long periods of time.
Perhaps the most striking part of the memo is its argument that the president, as commander-in-chief, is not bound to observe international laws against torture, or even a 1996 U.S. law enacted to comply with the U.N.-sponsored Convention Against Torture. “In order to respect the President’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign, [the U.S. law prohibiting torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority,” the memo says. “In light of the President’s complete authority over the conduct of war, without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the President’s ultimate authority in these areas.”
Some legal scholars contacted by Newsweek were appalled by what they called the unsoundness of such arguments. “There is little jurisprudential basis for this,” said Scott Horton, a well-known human-rights lawyer based in New York. “It is arguing the president’s unilateral right to interpret the law, unrestricted by the views of Congress." Philip Heymann of Harvard Law School added: “The country has a right to expect far better from the [government] lawyers who are responsible for keeping the president’s actions legal.” Attorney General John Ashcroft, grilled at a congressional hearing on Tuesday over this and other memos, said, "This administration rejects torture."
The memo also dwells heavily on the legal standard a potential future prosecutor would have to meet in order to prove that guards were engaged in torture. The memo concludes, for example, that because Section 2340 of the U.S. anti-torture law “requires that a defendant act with the specific intent to inflict severe pain, the infliction of such pain must be the defendant’s precise objective,” as opposed to “general intent.”
The memo also spends much time exploring legal arguments that the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on “cruel and unusual punishment,” and the “due process” provisions in the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments, are limited in their applications to interrogations. Citing the stricture against cruel and unusual punishment, for example, the memo argues that guards must show “deliberate indifference” to a prisoner’s fate. It also cites approvingly a court case from 2002 that finds “a prisoner alleging excessive force must demonstrate that the defendant acted ‘maliciously and sadistically to cause harm.’’’
“It is not enough for a prisoner to show that he has been subjected to conditions that are merely ‘restrictive and even harsh,” the memo concludes. It notes that the Supreme Court has established that an Eighth Amendment violation means ‘only those deprivations denying “the minimal civilized measures of life’s necessities.”
Only in a last section called “Considerations Affecting Policy” does the memo note that the Army Field Manual 30-15, setting out basic doctrine on intelligence questioning, states that interrogation techniques are to conform to international law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 10:05 am Post subject: US FAILS TO BLOCK UN ANTI- TORTURE VOTE |
| http://www.rense.com/general52/anati.htm
Flashback - US Fails
To Block UN
Anti-Torture Vote
Japan Today
7-25-2
UNITED NATIONS -- The United States failed to block a U.N. vote Wednesday on a plan to strengthen a treaty on torture, and was widely criticized by allies for trying to do so. The United States argued that the measure, known as a protocol, could pave the way for international and independent visits to U.S. prisons and to terror suspects being held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. The objective of the protocol is "to establish a system of regular visits undertaken by independent and national bodies to places where people are deprived of their liberty, in order to prevent torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment." The protocol to the treaty passed late Wednesday by a vote of 35-8 with 10 abstentions in the U.N. Economic and Social Council. The United States abstained. A U.S. proposal to reopen 10 years of negotiations on the document was voted down 29-15 with the rest abstaining. The protocol now moves to the General Assembly where it would need to be approved by a majority of the 190 member states. Then, it will require 20 ratifications before it can go into force. However, if the United States chooses not to sign the document it will not be bound by it. Denmark, which read a statement on behalf of the European Union, accused the United States of intentionally stalling in order to kill the proposal. Costa Rica, which sponsored the plan, "urged all delegations to vote against," the American request to reopen negotiations. Human rights advocates and diplomats argued that the protocol was essential to enforce the international convention on torture passed 13 years ago and since ratified by about 130 countries, including the United States. Countries are supposed to enforce the convention on their own, but rights groups argue that that isn't working everywhere. People were tortured or ill-treated by authorities in 111 countries last year, according to an Amnesty International report. Technically, the protocol seeks visits to prisons as a way to help enforce the anti-torture convention, which the United States has ratified. But the United States said elements of the plan were incompatible with the U.S. constitution. Privately, U.S. diplomats said allowing outside observers into state prisons would infringe on states' rights. "The United States greatly regrets being put in the position of abstaining," U.S. Ambassador Sichan Siv said after the debate. The protocol was widely supported among Western European and Latin American countries. The United States was supported by some countries accused by Amnesty International of torture, including Nigeria and Iran. Other U.S. support came from Japan, China, Cuba, Cyprus, India, Pakistan and Egypt. The text was accepted in an April vote by the Human Rights Commission in Geneva. The United States didn't participate in that vote because it lost its seat on the commission last year. Activists had feared that if the United States succeeded in reopening the negotiations, it would mean a "death sentence" for the protocol. Joanna Weschler of Human Rights Watch, said: "This is actually a great vote because the U.S. tried and failed." Decisions by the Bush administration to back out of a protocol on climate control and talks on biological weapons have greatly frustrated its relationships at the United Nations. On Monday, the administration cut support for the U.N. Population Fund, accusing the agency of sending money to Chinese agencies that carry out coercive programs involving abortion. The agency denies the accusation and a U.S. government fact-finding mission found no evidence that agency money was being used in such a way. (Compiled from news reports) All rights reserved. Copyright © 2000, 2004 http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&id=224232 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 10:35 am Post subject: General is Said To Have Urged Use of Dogs |
| Subj: General is Said To Have Urged Use of Dogs
Date: 6/10/04 8:54:46 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: Messiah4913
To: MORRIS434
http://uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=5040
General Is Said To Have Urged Use of Dogs
by R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Staff Writer, Washington Post
May 26th, 2004
General Is Said To Have Urged Use of Dogs
By R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A01 <
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55703-2004May25.html
A U.S. Army general dispatched by senior Pentagon
officials to bolster the collection of intelligence
from prisoners in Iraq last fall inspired and promoted
the use of guard dogs there to frighten the Iraqis,
according to sworn testimony by the top U.S.
intelligence officer at the Abu Ghraib prison.
According to the officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, the idea
came from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who at the time
commanded the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, and was implemented under a policy approved by
Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top U.S. military
official in Iraq.
"It was a technique I had personally discussed with
General Miller, when he was here" visiting the prison,
testified Pappas, head of the 205th Military
Intelligence Brigade and the officer placed in charge
of the cellblocks at Abu Ghraib prison where abuses
occurred in the wake of Miller's visit to Baghdad
between Aug. 30 and Sept. 9, 2003.
"He said that they used military working dogs at Gitmo
[the nickname for Guantanamo Bay], and that they were
effective in setting the atmosphere for which, you
know, you could get information" from the prisoners,
Pappas told the Army investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio M.
Taguba, said a transcript provided to The Washington
Post.
Pappas, who was under pressure from Taguba to justify
the legality and appropriateness of using guard dogs to
frighten detainees, said at two separate points in the
Feb. 9 interview that Miller gave him the idea. He also
said Miller had indicated the use of the dogs "with or
without a muzzle" was "okay" in booths where prisoners
were taken for interrogation.
But Miller, whom the Bush administration appointed as
the new head of Abu Ghraib this month, denied through a
spokesman that the conversation took place.
"Miller never had a conversation with Colonel Pappas
regarding the use of military dogs for interrogation
purposes in Iraq. Further, military dogs were never
used in interrogations at Guantanamo," said Brig. Gen.
Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq.
Pappas's statements nonetheless provide the fullest
public account to date of how he viewed the
interrogation mission at Abu Ghraib and Miller's impact
on operations there. Pappas said, among other things,
that interrogation plans involving the use of dogs,
shackling, "making detainees strip down," or similar
aggressive measures followed Sanchez's policy, but were
often approved by Sanchez's deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter
Wodjakowski, or by himself.
The claims and counterclaims between Pappas and Miller
concern one of the most notorious aspects of U.S.
actions at Abu Ghraib, as revealed by Taguba's March 9
report and by pictures taken by military personnel that
became public late last month. The pictures show
unmuzzled dogs being used to intimidate Abu Ghraib
detainees, sometimes while the prisoners are cowering,
naked, against a wall.
Taguba, in a rare classified passage within his
generally unclassified report, listed "using military
working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and
frighten detainees" as one of 13 examples of "sadistic,
blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" inflicted by U.S.
military personnel at Abu Ghraib.
Experts on the laws of war have charged that using dogs
to coerce prisoners into providing information, as was
done at Abu Ghraib, constitutes a violation of the
Geneva Conventions that protect civilians under the
control of an occupying power, such as the Iraqi
detainees.
"Threatening a prisoner with a ferocious guard dog is
no different as a matter of law from pointing a gun at
a prisoner's head and ordering him to talk," said James
Ross, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch.
"That's a violation of the Geneva Conventions."
Article 31 of the Fourth Geneva Convention bars use of
coercion against protected persons, and Common Article
Three bars any "humiliating and degrading treatment,"
Ross said. Experts do not consider the presence in a
prison of threatening dogs, by itself, to constitute
torture, but a 1999 United Nations-approved manual
lists the "arranging of conditions for attacks by
animals such as dogs" as a "torture method."
But Pappas, who was charged with overseeing
interrogations at Abu Ghraib involving those suspected
of posing or knowing about threats to U.S. forces in
Iraq, told Taguba that "I did not personally look at
that [use of dogs] with regard to the Geneva
Convention," according to the transcript.
Pappas also said he did not have "a program" to inform
his civilian employees, including a translator and an
interrogator, of what the Geneva Conventions stated,
and said he was unaware if anyone else did. He said he
did not believe using force to coerce, intimidate or
cause fear violated the conventions.
Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, who commanded the prison
guards at Abu Ghraib's cellblocks 1A and 1B until Nov.
19, when Pappas assumed control, said in an interview
that Navy, Army and Air Force dog teams were used there
for security purposes. But she said military
intelligence officers "were responsible for assigning
those dogs and where they would go."
Using dogs to intimidate or attack detainees was very
much against regulations, Karpinski said. "You cannot
use the dogs in that fashion, to attack or be
aggressive with a detainee. . . . Why were there guys
so willing to take these orders? And who was giving the
orders? The military intelligence people were in charge
of them."
Taguba never interviewed Miller or any officer above
Karpinski's rank for his report. Nor did he conduct a
detailed probe of the actions of military intelligence
officials. But he said he suspected that Pappas and
several of his colleagues were "either directly or
indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib."
In a Feb. 11 written statement accompanying the
transcript, Pappas shifted the responsibility
elsewhere. He said "policies and procedures established
by the [Abu Ghraib] Joint Interrogation and Debriefing
Center relative to detainee operations were enacted as
a specific result of a visit" by Miller, who in turn
has acknowledged being dispatched to Baghdad by
Undersecretary of Defense Stephen A. Cambone, after a
conversation with Secretary of Defense Donald H.
Rumsfeld.
Cambone told lawmakers recently that he wanted Miller
to go because he had done a good job organizing the
detention center at Guantanamo Bay and wanted him to
help improve intelligence-gathering in Iraq.
Some senators, however, have noted that the Bush
administration considers Guantanamo detainees exempt
from the protections of the Geneva Conventions, and
wondered if Miller brought the same aggressive
interrogation ideas with him to Iraq, where the
conventions apply.
When asked at a May 19 Senate hearing if he and his
colleagues had "briefed" military officers in Iraq
about specific Guantanamo interrogation techniques that
did not comply with the Geneva Conventions, Miller said
no.
He said he brought "our SOPs [standard operating
procedures] that we had developed for humane detention,
interrogation, and intelligence fusion" to Iraq for use
as a "starting point." He added that it was up to the
officers in Iraq to decide which were applicable and
what modifications to make.
But Pappas said the result of Miller's visit was that
"the interrogators and analysts developed a set of
rules to guide interrogations" and assigned specific
military police soldiers to help interrogators -- an
approach Miller had honed in Guantanamo.
After calling the use of dogs Miller's idea, Pappas
explained that "in the execution of interrogation, and
the interrogation business in general, we are trying to
get info from these people. We have to act in an
environment not to permanently damage them, or
psychologically abuse them, but we have to assert
control and get detainees into a position where they're
willing to talk to us."
Pappas added that it "would never be my intent that the
dog be allowed to bite or in any way touch a detainee
or anybody else." He said he recalled speaking to one
dog handler and telling him "they could be used in
interrogations" anytime according to terms spelled out
in a Sept. 14, 2003, memo signed by Sanchez.
That memo included the use of dogs among techniques
that did not require special approval. The policy was
changed on Oct. 12 to require Sanchez's approval on a
case-by- case basis for certain techniques, including
having "military working dogs" present during
interrogations.
That memo also demanded -- in what Taguba referred to
during the interview as its "fine print" -- that
detainees be treated humanely and in accordance with
the Geneva Conventions.
But Pappas told Taguba that "there would be no way for
us to actually monitor whether that happened. We had no
formal system in place to do that -- no formal
procedure" to check how interrogations were conducted.
Moreover, he expressed frustration with a rule that the
dogs be muzzled. "It's not very intimidating if they
are muzzled," Pappas said. He added that he requested
an exemption from the rule at one point, and was turned
down.
In the interview transcript, Taguba's disdain for using
dogs is clear. He asked Pappas if he knew that after a
prison riot on Nov. 24, 2003, five dogs were "called in
to either intimidate or cause fear or stress" on a
detainee. Pappas said no, and acknowledged under
questioning that such an action was inappropriate.
Taguba also asked if he believed the use of dogs is
consistent with the Army's field manual. Pappas replied
that he could not recall, but reiterated that Miller
instigated the idea. The Army field manual bars the
"exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any
kind."
At least four photographs obtained by The Washington
Post -- each apparently taken in late October or
November -- show fearful prisoners near unmuzzled dogs.
One MP charged with abuses, Spec. Sabrina D. Harman,
recalled for Army investigators an episode "when two
dogs were brought into [cellblock] 1A to scare an
inmate. He was naked against the wall, when they let
the dogs corner him. They pulled them back enough, and
the prisoner ran . . . straight across the floor. . . .
The prisoner was cornered and the dog bit his leg. A
couple seconds later, he started to move again, and the
dog bit his other leg."
Staff writer Josh White contributed to this report | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 10:45 am Post subject: Bush Seeks Israeli Advice on 'Targeted Killings' |
| http://www.rense.com/general34/seeks.htm
Bush Seeks Israeli Advice
On 'Targeted Killings'
By Ori Nir
Staff Writer - Forward.com
2-7-3
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has been seeking Israel's counsel on creating a legal justification for the assassination of terrorism suspects, the Forward has learned. Legal experts from the United States and Israel have met in recent months to discuss the issue, and are considering widening the consultation circle to include representatives of America's closest allies in the war against terrorism. Israeli sources who are intimately familiar with the talks said that American representatives were anxious to learn details of the legal work that Israeli government jurists have done during the last two years to tackle possible challenges ÷ both domestic and international ÷ to its policy of "targeted killings" of terrorist suspects. On Monday, Israel's attorney general's office submitted a document to Israel's Supreme Court in defense of the "targeted killing" policy. The document, submitted in response to an appeal by human rights groups, for the first time provides a comprehensive set of legal arguments justifying the assassination of terrorism suspects. Last year, Israeli media reported that the American military and Central Intelligence Agency sought operation expertise from Israel's military on how to carry out such operations. Unlike Israel, which went public in November 2000 with its assassinations policy, the Bush administration, like previous administrations, officially is opposed to such assassinations and does not acknowledge that it engages in such actions. The administration repeatedly has condemned Israel's policy of assassinating suspects in the West Bank and Gaza. According to credible press reports quoting American officials, however, the Bush administration has resorted to such methods in pursuing terrorism suspects. Last November, a missile reportedly launched from an unmanned drone over Yemen killed six suspected members of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, including Ali Qaed Senyan al-Harthi, whom the United States has linked to the attack on the warship USS Cole off Aden in October 2000. Unnamed American officials confirmed to the press at the time that the CIA carried out the attack. Last week, in his State of the Union address, President Bush came close to confirming the administration's involvement in such operations, saying that terrorism suspects who were not caught and brought to trial have been "otherwise dealt with." All told, the president said, "more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries, and many others have met a different fate." It is not clear how many terrorism suspects the United States has killed in such targeted operations. Israel, in the past two years, has assassinated more than 80 suspects, according to Western human rights organizations. Michael Sfard, a Tel Aviv lawyer who submitted an appeal to Israel's Supreme Court against the policy on behalf of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, said that according to his data, the number is higher than 100. "That number, of course, does not include the dozens of innocent bystanders who are regarded 'collateral damage' by the authorities," Sfard said. In the document submitted Monday to Israel's Supreme Court in response to the appeal by Sfard and human rights groups and obtained by the Israeli daily Ma'ariv, the attorney general's office says that "targeting identified terrorists, who are directly involved in severe terrorism attacks, as carried out by Israel's security forces, is utterly legal and legitimate." Since September 2000, according to the document, Israel is conducting "an armed conflict" in the West Bank and Gaza, which merits actions under "warfare laws" and not in accordance with "self-defense laws." Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, told the Forward that although he has not read the Israeli government document, he disagrees with its premise. War powers, which merit such actions, are not to be used where law enforcement is possible, Roth said. In the case of Israel, which rules over the West Bank and Gaza, law-enforcement actions are possible, and suspects can be caught and brought to justice, Roth said. According to official Israeli data, in more than two years of armed conflict with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli forces arrested more than 200 terrorism suspects, which shows that "you can do it if you want to," Sfard said. Roth said that in this sense there is a fundamental difference between Israel's and America's pursuit of terrorists. "The core of the issue is when it is appropriate to treat somebody as an enemy-combatant rather than as a criminal suspect," Roth said. "If you're an enemy combatant, you can be shot. That's what war is about. So the real question is when it is appropriate to characterize someone as such." Based on that yardstick, Roth explained, Human Rights Watch did not object to the killing of al-Harthi in Yemen in November, because of two main reasons: his alleged association with al-Qaeda made him an enemy-combatant, and neither the United States nor the Yemeni government had any effective control in the area where he was found, which did not allow for a reasonable law-enforcement alternative. Indeed, 18 Yemeni soldiers were reportedly killed when they previously tried to arrest al-Harthi. http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.02.07/news5.html | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2004 9:47 am Post subject: Interrogation Abuses were 'Approved at Highest Levels' |
| Forwarded:
Pretty sickening. John Ashcroft REFUSED to give Congress the memos.
How do you like that? We can REFUSE the people now.
Religious GESTAPO is what we have at the Justice Dept.
Interrogation abuses were 'approved at highest levels'
By Julian Coman in Washington
(Filed: 13/06/2004)
New evidence that the physical abuse of detainees in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay was authorised at the top of the Bush administration will emerge in Washington this week, adding further to pressure on the White House.
The Telegraph understands that four confidential Red Cross documents implicating senior Pentagon civilians in the Abu Ghraib scandal have been passed to an American television network, which is preparing to make them public shortly.
According to lawyers familiar with the Red Cross reports, they will contradict previous testimony by senior Pentagon officials who have claimed that the abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison was an isolated incident.
"There are some extremely damaging documents around, which link senior figures to the abuses," said Scott Horton, the former chairman of the New York Bar Association, who has been advising Pentagon lawyers unhappy at the administration's approach. "The biggest bombs in this case have yet to be dropped."
A string of leaked government memos over the past few days has revealed that President George W Bush was advised by Justice Department officials and the White House lawyer, Alberto Gonzalez, that Geneva Conventions on torture did not apply to "unlawful combatants", captured during the war on terror.
Members of Congress are now demanding access to all White House memos on interrogation techniques, a request so far refused by the United States attorney-general, John Ashcroft.
As the growing scandal threatens to undermine President Bush's re-election campaign, senior aides have acknowledged for the first time that the abuse of detainees can no longer be presented as the isolated acts of a handful of soldiers at the Abu Ghraib.
"It's now clear to everyone that there was a debate in the administration about how far interrogators could go," said a legal adviser to the Pentagon. "And the answer they came up with was 'pretty far'. Now that it's in the open, the administration is having to change that answer somewhat."
In the latest revelation, yesterday's Washington Post published leaked documents revealing that Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the senior US officer in Iraq, approved the use of dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns and sensory deprivation for prisoners whenever senior officials at the Abu Ghraib jail wished. A memo dated October 9, 2003 on "Interrogation Rules of Engagement", which each military intelligence officer was obliged to sign, set out in detail the wide range of pressure tactics they could use - including stress positions and solitary confinement for more than 30 days.
The White House has ordered a damage-limitation exercise to try to prevent the abuse row undermining President Bush's re-election campaign. Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence, has ordered that all deaths of detainees held in US military custody are to be reported immediately to criminal investigators. Deaths in custody will also be reported to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, and to Mr Rumsfeld himself.
The Pentagon has also announced an investigation into the condition of inmates at Guantanamo Bay, where more than 600 prisoners suspected of links with al-Qaeda are being held. The inquiry will be led by Vice-Adml Albert Church, who has been ordered to investigate reports that extreme interrogation techniques "migrated" from Guantanamo to Iraq. "This is not going to be a whitewash," said the Pentagon adviser. "The administration is finally realising how damaging this scandal could become."
A new investigator has also been appointed to lead the inquiry into abuse at Abu Ghraib. Gen George Fay, a two-star general, will be replaced by a more senior officer. Gen Fay, according to US military convention, did not have the authority to question his superiors. His replacement indicates that the Abu Ghraib inquiry will now go far beyond the activities of the seven military police personnel accused of mistreating Iraqi detainees.
Legal and constitutional experts have expressed astonishment at the judgments made by administration lawyers on interrogation techniques. In one memo, written in January 2002, Mr Gonzalez told President Bush that the nature of the war on terror "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions".
Scott Silliman, a former US air force lawyer and the director of the Centre for Law Ethics and National Security at Duke University, said: "What you have is a culture of avoidance of law rather than compliance with it."
A separate memo, written by Pentagon lawyers in March 2003, stated that "the infliction of pain or suffering per se, whether it is physical or mental is insufficient to amount to torture. [The pain] must be of such a high level of intensity that it is difficult for the subject to endure".
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Intel Firm Responds to Signal Coverage:
http://www.scvhistory.com/scvhistory/signal/iraq/
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More apparent setting up Sanchez to take the fall for the neocons at the Pentagon (and perhaps for President Bush as well based on at least one memo involved White House Counsel Al Gonzales).
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biz/e_friend.php3?goto=%2Fusnews%2Fissue%2F040621%2Fusnews%2F21abughraib.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55703-2004May25?language=printer
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Secret documents show that US interrogators are above the law
Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday June 12, 2004
The Guardian
On the stage of a London theater on Thursday night, a lawyer held up an official US document, classified by Donald Rumsfeld as "secret" and "not for foreign eyes". Considering its contents, the document has attracted remarkably little attention here since it was leaked this week to the US media. Its significance was raised by Clive Stafford-Smith, director of the US-based group Justice in Exile, at the end of a performance of Guantanamo, the Tricycle Theater's moving indictment of how the US rounded up detainees -- or "unlawful combatants", as it calls them -- and sent them to the US base in Cuba.
Stafford-Smith is acting for some of the Guantanamo prisoners, challenging the conditions in which they are being held. The US Supreme Court is expected to give its ruling before the end of this month. Rumsfeld's classified document, drawn up by US government lawyers, bears directly on the case. It argues that American interrogators can ignore US domestic law banning torture, because it would restrict the president's powers in his "war on terror".
The document, drawn up last year, says that "criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the president's ultimate authority" over "the conduct of war". It adds: "In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign, [the prohibition of torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogators undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority".
Constitutionally, America's founding fathers entrusted the president with the primary responsibility, and therefore the power, to ensure the security of the US in situations of "grave and unforeseen emergencies". It goes on: "Numerous presidents have ordered the capture, detention, and questioning of enemy combatants during virtually every major conflict in the nation's history, including recent conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf". And it continues: "Congress can no more interfere with the president's conduct of the interrogation of enemy combatants than it can dictate strategy or tactical decisions on the battlefield."
The lengths to which Rumsfeld's lawyers are prepared to go to protect the freedom of the president's agents and place them above the law are reflected in other passages.
The document states that US interrogators can use harsh measures as long as they were not "specifically intended" to inflict "severe mental pain or suffering". In another passage, it says that even if an interrogator "knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent."
Interrogators can appeal to the defense of "necessity" -- in other words, they can argue that torturing individuals is needed to prevent greater harm or evil such as threats to the safety of the nation. And the concept of "self-defense" is given the widest possible interpretation, referring to the nation rather than any individual.
The document, on the face of it, is a charter allowing the US president to abuse human rights and ignore domestic as well as international law.
Stafford-Smith yesterday pointed to what he called its most outrageous argument -- namely, that domestic law does not apply to actions inside the US. Torture can be committed inside the US.
The Pentagon's lawyers describe Guantanamo Bay as "included within the definition of the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the US and accordingly is within the US". They add: "Thus, the torture statute does not apply to the conduct of US personnel" at Guantanamo Bay.
The apparent non sequitur is based on the argument that the statute is confined to actions outside the US - in other words, that torture is not banned within the US. Yet this directly contradicts claims made by other US government lawyers who insist Guantanamo Bay detainees have no rights under US law. The naval base, they insist, is not US sovereign territory so the detainees do not have such basic rights as access to a fair trial.
The issue is now before the US Supreme Court. If the detainees win this argument, it could lead the way to at least some kind of judicial process, including the testing of evidence. But whatever Guantanamo Bay's territorial status, according to the Rumsfeld document, detainees there and anywhere else can be tortured at will in Bush's global "war" on terrorism.
"The authorization I issued was that anything we did would conform to US laws and would be consistent with international treaty obligations," Bush said this week. Little comfort there.
T Richard Norton-Taylor is the Guardian's security affairs editor
richard.norton-taylor@guardian.co.uk
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General Granted Latitude At Prison
Abu Ghraib Used Aggressive Tactics
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, June 12, 2004; Page A01
Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq,
borrowed heavily from a list of high-pressure interrogation tactics used
at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and approved
letting senior officials at a Baghdad jail use military dogs, temperature
extremes, reversed sleep patterns, sensory deprivation, and diets of
bread and water on detainees whenever they wished, according to newly
obtained documents.
The U.S. policy, details of which have not been previously disclosed, was
approved in early September, shortly after an Army general sent from
Washington completed his inspection of the Abu Ghraib jail and then
returned to brief Pentagon officials on his ideas for using military
police there to help implement the new high-pressure methods.
The documents obtained by The Washington Post spell out in greater detail
than previously known the interrogation tactics Sanchez authorized, and
make clear for the first time that, before last October, they could be
imposed without first seeking the approval of anyone outside the prison.
That gave officers at Abu Ghraib wide latitude in handling detainees.
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.
As a result, Sanchez decided on Oct. 12 to remove several items on the
list and to require that prison officials obtain his direct approval for
the remaining high-pressure methods. Among the tactics apparently dropped
were those that would take away prisoners' religious items; control their
exposure to light; inflict "pride and ego down," which means attacking
detainees' sense of pride or worth; and allow interrogators to pretend
falsely to be from a country that deals severely with detainees,
according to the documents.
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.
The Army has never said whether any of the particularly tough tactics
that were authorized were used on detainees at Abu Ghraib or the other
U.S.-run detention camps in Iraq before October, in the five-month period
after the end of major combat operations in May 2003.
Officials have said that Sanchez approved the use of only one of the more
severe techniques -- long-term isolation -- on 25 occasions after Oct. 12
and before the third set of rules was issued this May. The officials have
described the abusive acts committed by Army personnel at Abu Ghraib
before and during this time as aberrant activities conducted outside the
rules.
One of the documents, an Oct. 9 memorandum on "Interrogation Rules of
Engagement," which each military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib was
asked to sign, sets out in detail the wide range of pressure tactics
approved in September and available before the rules were changed on Oct.
12. They included methods that were close to some of the behavior
criticized this March by the Army's own investigator, who said he found
evidence of "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuse" at the prison.
The document states that the list of tactics in the memorandum is derived
from a Sept. 10, 2003, "Interrogation and Counter-Resistance Policy"
approved by Combined Joint Task Force-7, which Sanchez directs. While the
document states that "at no time will detainees be treated inhumanely nor
maliciously humiliated," it permits the use of yelling, loud music, a
reduction of heat in winter and air conditioning in summer, and "stress
positions" for as long as 45 minutes every four hours -- all without
first gaining the permission of anyone more senior than the
"interrogation officer in charge" at Abu Ghraib.
Although the October document calls attention to the strictures of the
Uniform Code of Military Justice, it neither quotes from that statute nor
makes any reference to the Geneva Conventions' rules against cruelty and
torture involving detainees.
Wendy Patten, a lawyer and U.S. advocacy director for Human Rights Watch,
said two provisions in the Oct. 9 document are particularly troubling.
First, she noted its reference to "dietary manipulation -- minimum bread
and water, monitored by medics" as a technique permitted with the
approval of the interrogation officer in charge. "This seems a clear
violation of the Geneva Conventions, which require daily food rations to
have enough quantity, quality and variety to maintain good health,
prevent weight loss and prevent nutritional deficiencies," Patten said.
She also expressed concern about the policy's blanket approval of
"incentive item removal -- regarding religious items" as a tactic that
may be used on civilian detainees, which she said appears to conflict
with a Geneva Conventions requirement that detainees enjoy "complete
latitude in the exercise of their religious duties."
Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman did not defend these tactics.
He said "there are a number of investigations that are looking not only
into interrogation procedures and processes, but how they were
implemented. The baseline standard for all interrogation as well as the
security procedures for holding detainees has always been humane treatment."
The list of interrogation options in the document closely matches a menu
of options developed for use on detainees held by the U.S. military at
Guantanamo Bay and approved in a series of memos signed by top Pentagon
officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. In January
2002, for example, Rumsfeld approved the use of dogs to intimidate
prisoners there; although officials have said dogs were never used at
Guantanamo, they were used at Abu Ghraib.
Then, in April 2003, Rumsfeld approved the use in Guantanamo of at least
five other high-pressure techniques also listed on the Oct. 9 Abu Ghraib
memo, none of which was among the Army's standard interrogation methods.
This overlap existed even though detainees in Iraq were covered,
according to the administration's policy, by Geneva Convention
protections that did not apply to the detainees in Cuba.
The documents obtained by The Post, which include memos from Abu Ghraib
and statements made by prison officials for the Army's investigation,
make clear that this overlap was no accident. No formalized rules for
interrogation existed in Iraq before the policy imposed on Sept. 10, one
day after Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller -- who was then in charge of the
Guantanamo site -- departed from Iraq. He was accompanied on the Iraq
visit by at least 11 senior aides from Guantanamo, including officials
from the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency.
While that list of options was subsequently truncated on Oct. 12, some
military personnel at the jail told Army investigators that they lacked
awareness or understanding of the changes.
For example, Spec. Luciana Spencer, a member of the 66th Military
Intelligence Group who was removed from interrogations because she had
ordered a detainee to walk naked to his cell after an interview, told
investigators that the military police did not know their boundaries.
"When I began working the night shift I discussed with the MPs what their
SOP [standard operating procedure] was for detainee treatment," Spencer
said in a statement. "They informed me they had no SOP. I informed them
of my IROE [interrogation rules of engagement] and made clear to them
what I was and wasn't allowed to do or see."
A civilian contractor, Adel Nakhla, an interpreter for military
intelligence, told investigators he was briefed on interrogation rules
only after being implicated in an abusive event.
Yelling at detainees, a technique approved in September that appears to
have been dropped in October, was nonetheless used throughout the last
quarter of 2003, Army investigators were told. "It's not common but it
happens sometimes," Roman Krol, a military intelligence interrogator,
told investigators on Jan. 31. "We asked them [military police] if they
could come in and randomly yell at the detainee."
Moreover, when intelligence officers arranged for military police to help
impose some of the more severe tactics, they often failed to specify how
to do so, leaving wide latitude for potentially abusive behavior. Steven
Anthony Stefanowicz, a civilian interrogator at Abu Ghraib, said, for
example, that "the MPs are allowed to do what is necessary to keep the
detainee awake in the allotted period of time. . . . I've referred to the
MPs to give the detainee his special treatment . . . hence the MPs are
not directed when and how this is to be administered."
Capt. Donald J. Reese, a member of the 372nd Military Police Company who
assigned MPs to work in the isolation tiers, told investigators "it
appeared that the MI [military intelligence] tactics were very aggressive
and then appeared to taper in intensity as time went along."
But the atmosphere at Abu Ghraib was hardly one of strict adherence to
the rules, other officials said. A photograph of the pyramid of naked
Iraqi detainees -- one of the most notorious portraits of abuse -- was
used as a screen saver on a computer in the isolation area where
intelligence officers worked, according to Spencer's statement.
Some of the rules for U.S. military personnel at the prison made it easy
for people to duck responsibility for their actions, a factor that may
also have opened the door to abuse.
The acronym MI "will not be used in the area," according to an undated
prison memo titled "Operational Guidelines," which covered the
high-security cellblock. "Additionally, it is recommended that all
military personnel in the segregation area reduce knowledge of their true
identities to these specialized detainees. The use of sterilized uniforms
is highly suggested and personnel should NOT address each other by true
name and rank in the segregation area."
Other articles appear at the following URLs:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/05/26/fisk-israeli-mossad-shin-bet-associated-with-prison-torture.php
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/06/11/torture-neocons.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2004 9:55 pm Post subject: Subj: Gen. Sanchez OKed torture |
| Subj: Gen. Sanchez OKed torture
Date: 6/13/04 2:15:47 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: LAdams
Subj: N&V Lt. Gen. Sanchez Granted ordered permission to torture
Date: 6/13/04 1:21:41 PM Central Daylight Time
From: dick_mcmanus@msn.com (Dick McManus)
News and Views you don't have to lose:
Lt. Gen. Sanchez Granted ordered permission to torture
The documents obtained by The Washington Post spell out in greater detail interrogation tactics Sanchez authorized, and make clear for the first time that, that interrogators (or MPs) could be imposed (torture EPOWs) without first seeking the approval of anyone outside the prison. That gave officers at Abu Ghraib wide latitude in handling detainees. Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, is the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq.
These interrogation tactics, listed as Interrogation Rules of Engagement, were the use military dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns, sensory deprivation, and diets of bread and water on detainees whenever they wished, according to newly obtained documents.
The list of interrogation options in the document closely matches a menu of options developed for use on detainees held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay and approved in a series of memos signed by top Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
In January 2002, for example, Rumsfeld approved the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners at Guantanamo; although officials have said dogs were never used. Dogs were used at Abu Ghraib.
Then, in April 2003, Rumsfeld approved the use in Guantanamo of at least five other high-pressure techniques also listed on the Oct. 9 Abu Ghraib memo, none of which was among the Army's standard interrogation methods. This overlap existed even though detainees in Iraq were covered, according to the administration's policy, by Geneva Convention protections that did not apply to the detainees in Cuba.
No formalized rules for interrogation existed in Iraq before the policy imposed on Sept. 10, one day after Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller - who was then in charge of the Guantanamo site - departed from Iraq. He was accompanied on the Iraq visit by at least 11 senior aides from Guantanamo, including officials from the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency
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 (2003), 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.
As a result, Sanchez decided on Oct. 12 to remove several items on the list and to require that prison officials obtain his direct approval for the remaining high-pressure methods. Among the tactics apparently dropped were those that would take away prisoners' religious items; and control their exposure to light according to the documents.
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 (2004) over photographs depicting abuse at the prison.
Geneva Conventions requirement that detainees enjoy "complete latitude in the exercise of their religious duties."
The Oct. 9 document are particularly troubling. First, she noted its reference to "dietary manipulation - minimum bread and water, monitored by medics" as a technique permitted with the approval of the interrogation officer in charge. "This seems a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions, which require daily food rations to have enough quantity, quality and variety to maintain good health, prevent weight loss and prevent nutritional deficiencies,"
Comment: I bet these documents noted above were leaked by Major Gen. Fay. Maj. Gen. George Fay, the No. 2 in Army Military Intelligence, is in charge of the probe into whether his own intel officers directed the MPs to abuse prisoners. Because Fay was appointed by Iraq commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, he is also effectively limited from taking his probe beyond Sanchez's command, says Scott Silliman, a former Air Force lawyer who is now a law professor at Duke. "It would be difficult for Fay even to question Sanchez," says Silliman. (A two star can not interview a three star).
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/061304A.shtml
U.S. Wrongly Reported Drop in World Terrorism
By The Associated Press
Friday 11 June 2004 Washington - The State Department acknowledged Thursday that it was wrong in reporting that terrorism declined worldwide last year, a finding the Bush administration had pointed to as evidence of its success in countering terror. Instead, the number of incidents and the toll in victims increased sharply, the department said.
Comments: More lies from Bush and the boys. What else is new?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/061304I.shtml
Book review:
Big Bush Lies edited by Jerry "Politex" Barrett is a compilation of 20
essays identifying the lies (fib is too mild a term) told directly by
George Bush about current issues that impact our nation and the world.
This book is now at Barnes & Noble stores.
Source: Sara DeHart dehart.ss@verizon.net | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2004 6:23 am Post subject: Prison Tactics Long a Dilemna for Israel |
| Prison Tactics Long a Dilemma for Israel
By Glenn Frankel
NABLUS, West Bank -- The accounts of physical abuse of Iraqis by American guards at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad sounded achingly familiar to Anan Labadeh. The casual beatings, the humiliations, the trophy photos taken by both male and female guards were experiences he said he underwent as a Palestinian security detainee at an Israeli military camp in March of last year.
There was, he added, a significant difference: The Israelis have rules, he said, and their techniques for breaking down prisoners are far more sophisticated. "What the Israelis do is much more effective than beatings," he said. "Three days without food and without sleep and you're eager to tell them anything. It just shows us the Americans are amateurs. They should have taken lessons from the Israelis."
Many of the questions raised by the Abu Ghraib scandal, and by the United States's self-declared war on terrorism, are the kinds that Israel has been wrestling with for decades. Where is the line in a democracy between coercion and torture? What kinds of interrogation techniques are morally acceptable when dealing with a suspect who may have knowledge of a "ticking bomb" -- an imminent attack? And what about the damage those techniques inflict on relations between an occupying power and its subjects?
"Unfortunately, when you're fighting a war against terror there are many difficult issues you face every day," said a senior Israeli government lawyer who defended Israel's policy on interrogating suspects. "Maybe the United States is beginning to discover what Israel has had to deal with for a long time."
Although its officials never use the word "torture," Israel is perhaps the only Western-style democracy that has acknowledged sanctioning mistreatment of prisoners in interrogation. In 1987, following a long debate in legal and security circles, a state commission established a set of secret guidelines for interrogators using what the panel called "moderate physical and psychological pressure" against detainees. In 1999, Israel's Supreme Court struck down those guidelines, ruling that torture was illegal under any circumstances.
But after the second Palestinian uprising broke out a year later, and especially after a devastating series of suicide bombings of passenger buses, cafes and other civilian targets, Israel's internal security service, known as the Shin Bet or the Shabak, returned to physical coercion as a standard practice, according to human rights lawyers and detainees. What's more, the techniques it has used command widespread support from the Israeli public, which has few qualms about the mistreatment of Palestinians in the fight against terrorism. A long parade of Israeli prime ministers and justice ministers with a variety of political views have defended the security service and either denied that torture is used or defended it as a last resort in preventing terrorist attacks.
While the issue surfaces periodically, with a small but vocal minority of Israelis advocating an end to all physical coercion, fears of a new outbreak of terror inevitably take precedence.
"We are not Holland, and we do not live in the environment of Benelux," Ehud Barak told the parliament four years ago, when he was prime minister, referring to the economic grouping of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. "We are a state that is faced with a constant threat of terror. Yet on the other hand, we are a democratic state that is part of the international community. There must be sensitivity to both needs."
Broad Public Support
When she first saw cases of alleged torture cross her desk at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel in the late 1980s, staff worker Hannah Friedman said it was very difficult to get human rights advocates to deal with them. Eventually, she and Hebrew University law professor Stanley Cohen, who immigrated to Israel from South Africa, set up their own organization, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, to deal exclusively with the allegations.
Shabak interrogators in those days were bound by the 1987 guidelines. While never made public, the procedures were well known to virtually every Palestinian security detainee. Prisoners were forced to stand for days at a time or were shackled in tightly contorted positions on low stools, in a procedure known as shabah. They were violently shaken, deprived of sleep, bombarded with loud, continuous music, exposed to extremes of cold and heat and forced to relieve themselves in their clothing. Their heads were often covered with canvas hoods that reeked of urine or vomit.
These techniques had widespread public support. A 1996 poll commissioned by the human rights group Btselem found that 73 percent of Israelis condoned the use of force.
Sometimes interrogators went beyond the guidelines. In October 1994, after militants abducted a 19-year-old Israeli army corporal, Nachshon Waxman, Yitzhak Rabin, then the prime minister, acknowledged that the suspected driver of the kidnap car had been tortured.
"If we'd been so careful to follow the Landau Commission, we would never have found out where Waxman was being held," Rabin said, referring to the 1987 guidelines. (Waxman was killed by his captors during an Israeli commando raid.)
Over time, interrogation techniques became less brutal and more refined. Ziad Arafeh, 40, a political activist who lives in the Balata refugee camp outside the West Bank city of Nablus, estimated he had been arrested 14 times over the past two decades. Each time, he said, his interrogators seemed to have mastered a new technique.
In the early days, he said, crude physical and sexual abuse was commonplace. When he was first arrested, in 1983, an interrogator put on rubber gloves and squeezed his testicles until he cried out in pain. On another occasion Arafeh, who was suspected of involvement in the killings of alleged Palestinian collaborators, said he was kept in his underwear in a small, cold cell and splashed with water every few hours. Now the emphasis is on psychological pressure. During his arrest a year ago, Arafeh said, he was deprived of sleep for several days but not beaten.
There is a big difference between soldiers who make arrests and Shabak interrogators, Arafeh said. The soldiers are often casually cruel, he said, kicking and humiliating detainees in ways similar to the behavior reported at Abu Ghraib. But once the interrogators take over, treatment is far more calculated and professional.
"Their strategy is much improved," he said. "They give you food without salt that makes you weak, and they prevent you from sleeping. They're more clever and more experienced."
New Techniques
A turning point in Israel's treatment of detainees came in September 1999 when the Israeli Supreme Court, after a year and a half of deliberations, banned all forms of physical abuse. "Violence directed at a suspect's body or spirit does not constitute a reasonable investigation practice," the court declared.
The justices left open several loopholes. Interrogators who used force preemptively to prevent a terrorist attack could invoke the "defense of necessity" if faced with prosecution. The court also made allowances for "prolonged" interrogation, even if it involved sleep deprivation, and shackling, "but only for the purpose of preserving the investigator's safety."
Nonetheless, the ruling was a landmark. Shabak officials complained that the decision stripped them of the tools they needed to combat terrorism. An opposition lawmaker introduced a bill allowing interrogators to use force in "ticking bomb" cases. Barak supported the idea at first but later reached a compromise that gave the agency a bigger budget, a larger staff and more tools to help it solve cases without cracking heads.
Most of the specific methods used before the 1999 decision all but vanished after the ruling. Yet slowly but surely, human rights lawyers said, new techniques took their place.
The latest report by the committee against torture, covering the period from September 2001 to April 2003, alleged that detainees faced a new regime of sleep deprivation, shackling, slapping, hitting and kicking; exposure to extreme cold and heat; threats, curses and insults; and prolonged detention in subhuman conditions.
"Torture in Israel has once more become routine, carried out in an orderly and institutional fashion," concluded the report, which was based on 80 affidavits and court cases.
The committee accused the Israeli legal system of effectively sanctioning torture by routinely rejecting petitions seeking to grant detainees access to lawyers. Not one Shabak interrogator has been prosecuted despite hundreds of allegations, the report said.
In retrospect, said Habib Labib, an Israeli Arab lawyer who has handled dozens of security cases, the Supreme Court decision was a brief, shining moment that quickly faded. "It's like many things in this country," he said. "The theory is one thing, but on the ground things are done differently."
The case of Anan Labadeh, 31, became a cause célèbre because he is a paraplegic who has used a wheelchair since he fell from a third-story balcony while being chased by Israeli soldiers during a stone-throwing incident in the late 1980s. Labadeh was arrested in February of last year in his home town of Nablus on suspicion of helping militants who had set up a network of suicide bomb factories in the city. He was held for a month and released without being charged.
Labadeh said he was routinely punched and kicked by the soldiers who escorted him to a military detention center at nearby Hawara and then by other soldiers at the center itself over three days. He said he was blindfolded, denied food and water, left outside in the rain and cold, deprived of sleep and forced to urinate and defecate in his clothing.
"I was exhausted," he recalled. "Time became irrelevant. In the second day, it continued to rain and I couldn't tell if it was morning or afternoon."
Each night, a group of soldiers, men and women alike, held social gatherings in the courtyard where he was being held. On the second night, they took turns posing with him while he sat blindfolded and handcuffed to his wheelchair, he said.
"For a person like me to be surrounded by a group of soldiers, punched, insulted, peeing on myself, my dignity was insulted," he recalled. "Here I was, a handicapped person, and not one soldier came to say stop this, not even one."
The experience increased Labadeh's contempt for Israelis. But for all his complaints about the way he was treated, Labadeh believes the Israelis have higher standards than their American counterparts. He recalls a case when an Israeli military officer was accused of sexually abusing young Palestinians. Another officer turned him in, and the accused man was arrested immediately.
A government lawyer designated to discuss the questions raised by this article insisted that internal safeguards protect Palestinian detainees from random abuse, and he characterized Israel's treatment of suspected terrorists as a matter of self-defense. "The first priority of the government is keeping people safe," said the lawyer, who insisted on anonymity. "That's the basic social contract between a government and its people."
A key moment, he said, was the spate of suicide bombings in March 2002 that killed 135 Israelis and injured hundreds more. "It became a question of a ticking bomb -- how do you balance the need to find that bomb before it goes off at a restaurant or a pizza shop or a checkpoint with the need to respect human rights?" Israelis understood, he said, "there has to be a balance -- you can't just do whatever you want."
What is most striking, the lawyer added, is how united the Israeli public is on the subject. "For most people it's not the central story here," he said. "It's not even one of the top ten questions I get asked about the Supreme Court."
But for many Palestinians, torture is the heart of the matter. Labadeh said abuses like those that took place in Abu Ghraib or in Hawara were inevitable when people were subjected to military occupation. That is why the photos from Abu Ghraib did not shock or surprise him.
"In the end, when you put a person in jail because of political reasons and you give someone power over him, you can expect to see such films," he said. "The camera is always rolling."
New articles posted at the following URL:
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Additional articles are at the following URL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/06/13/interrogation-abuses-were-approved-at-highest-levels.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2004 11:00 am Post subject: Rumsfeld Issued an Order to Hide Detainee in Iraq |
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Rumsfeld Issued an Order to Hide Detainee in Iraq
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER, The New York Times
WASHINGTON, June 16 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, acting at the request of George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, ordered military officials in Iraq last November to hold a man suspected of being a senior Iraqi terrorist at a high-level detention center there but not list him on the prison's rolls, senior Pentagon and intelligence officials said Wednesday.This prisoner and other "ghost detainees" were hidden largely to prevent the International Committee of the Red Cross from monitoring their treatment, and to avoid disclosing their location to an enemy, officials said.Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, the Army officer who in February investigated abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, criticized the practice of allowing ghost detainees there and at other detention centers as "deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law."
This prisoner, who has not been named, is believed to be the first to have been kept off the books at the orders of Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Tenet. He was not held at Abu Ghraib, but at another prison, Camp Cropper, on the outskirts of Baghdad International Airport, officials said.Pentagon and intelligence officials said the decision to hold the detainee without registering him - at least initially - was in keeping with the administration's legal opinion about the status of those viewed as an active threat in wartime.Seven months later, however, the detainee - a reputed senior officer of Ansar al-Islam, a group the United States has linked to Al Qaeda and blames for some attacks in Iraq - is still languishing at the prison but has only been questioned once while in detention, in what government officials acknowledged was an extraordinary lapse."Once he was placed in military custody, people lost track of him," a senior intelligence official conceded Wednesday night. "The normal review processes that would keep track of him didn't."The detainee was described by the official as someone "who was actively planning operations specifically targeting U.S. forces and interests both inside and outside of Iraq."But once he was placed into custody at Camp Cropper, where about 100 detainees deemed to have the highest intelligence value are held, he received only one cursory arrival interrogation from military officers and was never again questioned by any other military or intelligence officers, according to Pentagon and intelligence officials.The Pentagon's chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said Wednesday that officials at Camp Cropper questioned their superiors several times in recent months about what to do with the suspect.But only in the last two weeks has Mr. Rumsfeld's top aide for intelligence policy, Stephen A. Cambone, called C.I.A. senior officials to request that the agency deal with the suspect or else have him go into the prison's regular reporting system.Mr. Di Rita referred questions about the prisoner's fate to the C.I.A.A senior intelligence official said late Wednesday that "the matter is currently under discussion."In July 2003, the man suspected of being an Ansar al-Islam official was captured in Iraq and turned over to C.I.A. officials, who took him to an undisclosed location outside of Iraq for interrogation. By that fall, however, a C.I.A. legal analysis determined that because the detainee was deemed to be an Iraqi unlawful combatant - outside the protections of the Geneva Conventions - he should be transferred back to Iraq.Mr. Tenet made his request to Mr. Rumsfeld - that the suspect be held but not listed - in October. The request was passed down the chain of command: to Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then to Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander of American forces in the Middle East, and finally to Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the ground commander in Iraq. At each stage, lawyers reviewed the request and their bosses approved it.A senior intelligence official said late Wednesday that the C.I.A. inquired about the detainee's status in January, but was told that American jailers in Iraq could not find him, perhaps as a result of the chaos and confusion of the November and December spike in insurgent violence.The detention was first reported in this week's U.S. News & World Report. But the role played by senior officials in deciding the detainee's status was not known publicly before Wednesday. Pentagon and intelligence officials gave new details on Wednesday about the prisoner and the circumstances that brought him to Camp Cropper, including the fact that his status was decided by Mr. Tenet and Mr. Rumsfeld, and approved by senior officers.While acknowledging mistakes in the prisoner's detention, the senior intelligence official said the detainee posed a significant threat to American forces in Iraq and elsewhere. "He also possessed significant information about Ansar al Islam's leadership structure, training and locations," the official said.At Camp Cropper, some prisoners had been held since June 2003 for nearly 23 hours a day in solitary confinement in small cells without sunlight, according to a report by the international Red Cross.The suspected Ansar official was segregated from the other detainees and was not listed on the rolls. Under the order that had filtered down to General Sanchez, military police were not to disclose the detainee's whereabouts to the Red Cross pending further directives.The prisoner fell into legal limbo as the military police pressed their superiors for guidance, which has still not formally come."Over the course of the next several weeks, the custodians at the prison asked for additional guidance, but there were no interrogations," Mr. Di Rita said.Before this case surfaced, the C.I.A. has said it had discontinued the ghost detainee practice, but said that the Geneva Conventions allowed a delay in the identification of prisoners to avoid disclosing their whereabouts to an enemy.In Washington, the Army announced that Gen. Paul J. Kern, the head of the Army Mat?el Command, would oversee an Army inquiry into the role military intelligence soldiers played in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. General Kern replaces General Sanchez as the senior officer reviewing the findings. General Sanchez removed himself from that role so he could be interviewed by investigators.Copyright © 2004 The New York Times Company.
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Updated: 05:52 AM EDT
U.S. Admits Holding Prisoner in Secret
By MATT KELLEY, AP
WASHINGTON (June 17) - In a rare admission of violating the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war, the Pentagon has acknowledged it improperly held an Iraqi prisoner in secret for more than seven months.
The military has held the man in Iraq since October without assigning him a prisoner number or notifying the International Committee of the Red Cross that he is a prisoner, Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Wednesday night.
Both assigning a prisoner number and notifying the Red Cross are required under the Geneva Conventions, which the Bush administration acknowledges apply to the conflict in Iraq.
The prisoner will be given a number and the Red Cross will be formally notified soon, Whitman said.
"The ICRC should have been notified about the detainee earlier," Whitman said. "We should have taken steps, and we have taken the necessary steps to rectify the situation."
The Iraqi prisoner is so far the only individual Defense Department officials have acknowledged shielding from the Red Cross. Before Wednesday's admission, Pentagon spokesmen would not confirm or deny if anyone was being held in secret.
"We've not talked about the location of specific detainees other than Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba simply because it gets into the classified realm," Air Force Maj. Michael Shavers said in an e-mail response to questions from The Associated Press on Wednesday, before the Iraq admission.
President Bush and members of his administration have said repeatedly that all detainees are treated humanely. Pentagon officials have argued that announcing the numbers or locations of all detainees would indicate the scope of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts to terrorist groups and give them ideas of sites to attack.
The military says detainees at the prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are not mistreated, despite the Bush administration's argument that Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war do not apply to them.
Maj. David Kolarik, a spokesman for the military's Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, said all prisoners are treated "in accordance with the principles" of the Geneva Conventions "to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity."
The secret prisoner in Iraq is believed to be a high-ranking member of Ansar al-Islam, a radical group which had been based in northern Iraq before the U.S. invasion last year. U.S. officials believe the man was involved in attacks on coalition troops, Whitman said.
The CIA asked the military to take custody of the man in October and asked that he not be given a prisoner number or disclosed to the Red Cross while officials determined his status, Whitman said.
The Bush administration contends that terrorist suspects are "enemy combatants" who do not have any protection under the Geneva Conventions. Military officials questioned the arrangement but those objections did not reach the highest levels in the Pentagon until last month, Whitman said.
"Certainly the people that had responsibility for maintaining him in custody knew that they had him, knew their instructions, knew that a disposition hadn't been determined for him and raised concern about it on a couple of occasions," Whitman said.
06/17/04 02:49 EDT
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. The
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040614-646366,00.html
Monday, Jun. 14, 2004
One Expert's Verdict: The CIA Caved Under Pressure
By MICHAEL DUFFY/WASHINGTON
The CIA that George Tenet leaves behind next month is a shadow of its imaginary self, a butt of jokes rather than the envy of the world. It is an agency that has become self-protective and bureaucratic; it is too reliant on gadgets rather than spies to steal secrets. Sometimes the CIA has simply been too blind to see what is hiding in plain sight. Tenet restored the agency's morale, but he leaves behind a string of spectacular intelligence failures. And that may not be the worst of it. In his new book A Pretext for War, intelligence expert James Bamford alleges that the CIA not only failed to detect and deter the secret army of Muslim extremists gathering over the horizon in the late 1990s but also failed to take action when a group of Administration hard-liners, backed by the Pentagon chief and Vice President Dick Cheney, began to advance the case for war with Iraq in secret using data the CIA widely believed weren't supportable or were just plain false. Instead of fighting back, Bamford argues, the CIA for the most part rolled over and went along. The result was a war sold largely on a fiction, confected from unchecked rumor and biased informants.A Pretext for War is probably the best one-volume companion to the harrowing events in the war on terrorism since 1996, chiefly because it focuses on the most difficult to pierce subject: the hidden machinery of U.S. intelligence. Bamford is a veteran chronicler of the spy world whose The Puzzle Palace, published in 1982, is still considered the classic account of the mysterious National Security Agency (NSA), which electronically snoops on friends and enemies overseas. His account of 9/11 and its aftermath is studded with new details, including some about the undisclosed location known as Site R, an underground bunker on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border where the Vice President spent much of his time in 2001. Deep under Raven Rock Mountain, Site R "is a secret world of five buildings, each three stories tall, computer filled caverns and a subterranean water reservoir." It is just 7 miles from Camp David. Bamford maintains that before 9/11, the U.S.'s entire spook network was pretty much out to lunch. It was a community that had done its job well in the cold war and was looking for a reason to exist. By the late 1990s the NSA was becoming obsolete, unable to keep up with the pace of technological change. The NSA netted millions more conversations at its worldwide listening posts than it could translate or interpret. The agency spent billions to eavesdrop on chatter overseas that moved by satellite — only to see the world move to harder-to-steal digitized cellular, e-mail and instant-messaging communications. Meanwhile, at the NSA's sprawling Fort Meade, Md., campus, the agency's director could not send an email to all the NSA's 38,000 employees. Why? The NSA had 68 separate e-mail systems. Things were not much better at the CIA. In a devastating chronology, Bamford reports that even as late as 2000, the agency was stuck in an old cold war way of doing things — training its agents, recruiting spies overseas and keeping headquarters happy. One agent explains that CIA recruiting overseas was about as rigorous as going to an opening-night mixer at a Las Vegas convention: American agents overseas sometimes competed with one another to see who could collect the most business cards at official receptions in foreign capitals. Then they would return to their embassy to determine the night's winner. Each card, the agents told themselves, represented a potential spy for the U.S. In fact, the agent said, "none of these people had anything useful ... It was just numbers. It's all quantity."With tradecraft like that, it is little wonder the CIA "never once even tried to infiltrate" al-Qaeda, according to Bamford. He says agents working at the CIA's vaunted Alec station, the shop inside the agency responsible for tracking and killing Osama bin Laden, seemed more interested in flying to Afghanistan and Paris to meet with various Afghan warlords who promised to provide details of bin Laden's whereabouts in exchange for bags full of cash. Bamford asserts that the CIA's Afghan assets never came through with very much on the Saudi terrorist, but the CIA kept them on the dole anyway. About the only thing going well was the 50-year war between the CIA and the FBI. Alec station's chiefs were so turf conscious about which agency had "the lead" in the hunt for bin Laden that they routinely left their FBI counterparts in the dark about what they were learning from overseas — a habit that turned out to be a fatal error. Sloppy surveillance permitted two of the hijackers to elude the CIA as early as January 2000, but then the agency repeatedly failed to inform the FBI or half a dozen other government officers who could have assisted in the hunt. Indeed, at the CIA, keister covering was in full swing long before the attacks of 9/11. In January 2000 the head of Alec station told his bosses he still had the two men under surveillance when in fact he had lost them in Bangkok. That bureaucratic chore completed, Alec station then dropped its chase altogether. It would be more than a year before a conscientious FBI agent assigned to the CIA re-examined the evidence and realized how badly the agency had blundered. The two names were finally given to the State Department on Aug. 23, 2001.But the intelligence community's shaky performance also made the agency vulnerable to another kind of attack: the one mounted by a group of hard-line neoconservatives who took over at the Pentagon and in the Vice President's office when Bush became President. Long suspicious of the CIA if not openly hostile to it, the neocons came into power asserting internally that the agency couldn't shoot straight and therefore its judgments couldn't be trusted. The Bush hard-liners had long believed that stability could come to the Middle Eastand Israel — only if Saddam Hussein was overthrown and Iraq converted into a stable democracy. Led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, they were installed at various national-security choke points in the government, and nothing moved without their O.K. Bamford comes very close to stating that the hard-liners were wittingly or unwittingly acting as agents of Israel's hard-line Likud Party, which believed Israel should operate with impunity in the region and dictate terms to its neighbors. Such a world view, Bamford argues, was simply repotted by the hard-liners into U.S. foreign policy in the early Bush years, with the war in Iraq as its ultimate goal. Bamford asserts that the backgrounds, political philosophies and experiences of many of the hard-liners helped to hardwire the pro-Israel mind-set in the Bush inner circle and suggests that Washington mistook Israel's interests for its own when it pre-emptively invaded Iraq last year. The result was a war built on sand — and a CIA that lacked the will to take on its masters. Douglas Feith, a senior Pentagon official, set up several secret offices in the Pentagon that received data from Israel's own intelligence teams and coordinated its findings with them, partly as a way to get around CIA caution in the region. Bamford reveals that the original source of the spurious allegation that Saddam harbored "mobile biological-weapons labs" did not come from the brother of a top aide to Ahmad Chalabi whose code name was Curveball, but from an Israeli tip going back to 1994. Bamford quotes anonymous CIA agents who say that they suspected that much of the hard-liners' intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was bogus but there was pressure from within and without to shut up about it. Bamford implies that Tenet, the ultimate staff guy, is partly to blame for this failure of nerve. When Secretary of State Colin Powell was putting together his now discredited speech to the U.N. last year about Saddam's WMD program, he stood virtually alone against the hard-liners, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley, all of whom seemed keen to pump up the Secretary's talking points. Cheney's staff handed Powell a 50-page draft of allegations; the Secretary rejected most of them as unsupportable, with the hard-liners, Rice and even Tenet fighting him every step of the way during run-through sessions at CIA headquarters. And as it turned out, Powell didn't fight hard enough. Could Tenet have stopped the rush to war? Bamford suggests he could have. "Off on the sidelines, George Tenet was one of the few who knew the truth," he writes, adding that Tenet preferred to work behind the scenes on minor disagreements about the data "instead of speaking out" against the grand scheme. That's a harsh indictment of the man who kept America's secrets under two Presidents. But one of Tenet's colleagues was even less generous, saying simply, "We caved."
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/06/14/iraq-war-for-israel-according-to-james-bamford-s-new-book.php
Abu Ghraib Prison Torture Scandal Goes to the Highest Level:
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