| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 9:56 pm Post subject: THE NEOCON HAWKS ON IRAQ TURN ON EACH OTHER |
| Note how many Zionist extremist (racist) Jews are mentioned below (some of whom are shown at www.nowarforisrael.com ):
Letter From Washington:
THE HAWKS ON IRAQ TURN ON EACH OTHER
By David D. Kirkpatrick
The International Herald Tribune - August 24, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/535483.htm
In the 18 months since President George W. Bush went to war against
Iraq, the hawkish intellectuals who built the case for the invasion
have
largely stood their ground.
This close-knit community, often called neoconservative - which
includes
Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary; Richard Perle, former
chairman of the Defense Policy Board; and William Kristol of the
magazine The Weekly Standard - has often emphasized what it said were
the invasion's underappreciated successes. Occasionally, some have
faulted the U.S. military for mistakes in execution, like using too
little force.
Lately, however, there has been emerging discord within their ranks
over
the lessons from the war. Earlier this month, Francis Fukuyama, author
of "The End of History" and one of the most influential thinkers
associated with the movement, surprised many by delivering a lengthy
attack on the neoconservatives' longstanding arguments in support of
the
war in Iraq, including their confidence in building a democracy there
and their assessment of the threat from Islamic radicalism.
In the clubby world of neoconservative intellectuals, many of whom are
longtime friends and allies, Fukuyama's repudiation of the case for
war,
which appeared in The National Interest, was all the more startling
because he presented it as an attack on a recent
speech by his friend, the columnist Charles Krauthammer of The
Washington Post.
Fukuyama faces stiff resistance. In an interview on Friday, Krauthammer
says he is publishing a rebuttal in the next issue of The National
Interest portraying Fukuyama's critique as "breathtakingly incoherent."
Others are redoubling their arguments for the invasion of Iraq,
contending that it should be the first step in a campaign to transform
the region. In the next issue of Commentary magazine, Norman Podhoretz,
who helped found the neoconservative movement in the 1970s, has written
a 37-page defense of the Bush administration's foreign policy.
In "World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to
Win," he argues that the United States should now help seek the
liberation of other Middle Eastern countries to help drain the swamp
where Islamic radicalism breeds, just as the cold war helped liberate
the Soviet Union.
"Like anybody else in the world who is sane, I am very much worried
about Iran gaining nuclear capacity," Podhoretz said in an interview
Friday. "I am not advocating the invasion of Iran at this moment,
although I wouldn't be heartbroken if it happened."
Certainly, many plain old conservatives - or paleoconservatives -
opposed the war from the beginning or changed their minds as the war
progressed. But neoconservatives laid the intellectual foundation for
the war, and they attained influence within the Bush administration.
Many are also bound together by friendships with influential members of
the administration's foreign policy team, including Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the undersecretary of defense, Douglas
Feith. Fukuyama, for example, said he was a student at Cornell decades
ago when he first became friends with Wolfowitz.
Although few in the movement have criticized the neoconservative
argument for the war as comprehensively as Fukuyama did, several others
said his argument with Krauthammer had captured widespread attention as
a new stage in the debate over the lessons of Iraq.
"These are two of the intellectual heavyweights among neoconservatives,
and their dispute is real," said Gary Rosen, managing editor of
Commentary. "People are looking for guidance on this, and these are two
strong proponents of opposing views within the movement."
In an interview last week, Fukuyama said that he had harbored private
doubts about the war at the time, although he kept quiet about them
then. "I figured it was going to happen anyway, and there wasn't
anything I could do about it," he said. "I believed it was a big roll
of
the dice, and I didn't believe it was a wise bet. But on the other
hand,
it was a roll of the dice, and for all I knew, it might have worked."
He added, "It turned out to be even worse than I anticipated."
But as he was listening to his friend Krauthammer deliver a recent
speech on the theme of the United States as a unipolar power, Fukuyama
said, he grew increasingly agitated.
Krauthammer's speech "is strangely disconnected from reality," Fukuyama
said in his article.
"One gets the impression that the Iraq war," Fukuyama continued, "has
been an unqualified success, with all of the assumptions and
expectations on which the war had been based vindicated."
Like many other critics of the war, he argued that Krauthammer and
other
neoconservatives were overconfident about turning Iraq into a
democracy,
too quick to dismiss arguments of longtime allies, and too willing to
give up the practical advantages of partnership with other nations.
Most of all, though, he argued that Krauthammer and other
supporters of the war mischaracterized Iraq and Islamic radicals as an
immediate threat to the existence of the United States, a claim that
justified immediate intervention. The Soviet Union arguably threatened
the existence of the United States, Fukuyama argues, but Iraq never
did.
But, Fukuyama said, he retained his neoconservative principles - a
belief in the universal aspiration for democracy and the use of
American
power to spread democracy in the world. He said he was acknowledging
the
mistakes to preserve the credibility of the neoconservative movement.
Krauthammer, for his part, argued that Fukuyama's essay did not amount
to much of a critique at all. "His recalibrations are astonishingly
empty," he said, arguing that Fukuyama's criticisms were undercut by
his
ultimate endorsement of the same neoconservative views.
"I have never read a piece which is ostensibly meant to attack a
person's position and then ends up explicitly endorsing it," he said.
But he said that there was one substantive disagreement. "To think
that the threat to the United States from Islamic radicalism is not
existential is absurd," he said, comparing Al Qaeda today to
Hitler in 1936, when he occupied the Rhineland. Hitler did not have the
means then to overrun Europe, but, Krauthammer said, "he soon acquired
the means."
Podhoretz, another old friend of Fukuyama's, said, he, too,
disagreed. "Some things went wrong, but things always go wrong in every
war," he said. "It is always a question of compared to what?"
Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, and another founder of the neoconservative movement, said she,
too, had doubts about the invasion. But she didn't think the debate
over
the Iraq war was about neoconservatism.
"I think there's almost an epidemic of the use of the term," she said.
For now, Fukuyama said, he was awaiting the full response from
Krauthammer and his other neoconservative friends.
"I have gotten a lot of e-mails from non-neoconservatives who liked
it,"
he said. "I have yet to hear from almost any of my friends about it." | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 10:27 pm Post subject: Neocon Treason |
| Neocon Treason
by Paul Craig Roberts
Having experienced the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, do Americans wish they had elected Patrick J. Buchanan president? Was Buchanan America's last chance to put a true patriot in the Oval Office?
America was meant to cultivate its own garden, to steer clear of foreign entanglements and permanent alliances, and to serve as an example to others. Instead, the U.S. has become a "democratic imperialist."
In a new book dedicated to Ronald Reagan, Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency, Buchanan rues the rise of Jacobin America. A neoconservative cabal allied with Israel's right-wing Likud Party has captured our government and initiated a new crusade against Islam.
In a chapter that is must reading for every American who thinks President Bush should be reelected, Buchanan asks: "Who are they, the neoconservatives?"
When you find out, you will want nothing further to do with the president who sponsored them and gave them unbridled power to launch America into permanent war in the Middle East.
The neocons have declared America at war with 1 billion Muslims who have done us no harm. Simultaneously, the neocons destroyed our traditional alliances. Instead of isolating a terrorist enemy, neocons have isolated America.
Al-Qaeda is not a state or a country. It is a non-governmental organization that rejects America's decadent culture and opposes the U.S.-Israeli alliance that brutally oppresses Palestinians to the shame of all Muslims.
It is impossible to fight al-Qaeda by invading and occupying Muslim countries. Bush's invasion of Iraq has achieved nothing for the U.S. but death and expense. For al-Qaeda it has radicalized the Muslim world and created recruits.
"The neoconservatives," writes Buchanan, "are marinated in conceit, and their hubris may yet prove their undoing. And ours as well."
The failure of the U.S. occupation in Iraq has certainly demonstrated the limits to U.S. hegemony. Despite limited armed opposition, U.S. military forces do not seem able to control a single Iraqi city. If rebellion were to become general or if Iraqis had effective weapons against tanks and air power, the U.S. would have to withdraw its army.
Buchanan explains how the neocons used the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center to put into operation their preconceived plan, drafted years prior to Sept. 11, to invade Iraq.
In 1996, neoconservatives currently serving in the Bush administration wrote a policy paper for Israeli right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the policy paper, Douglas Feith (currently undersecretary of defense), David Wurmser (VP Cheney's staff) and Richard Perle (Defense Review Board) called for "removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right."
Today the entire world, with the exception of the propagandized American public, knows that Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. But for "Washington's Likudniks," that was beside the point. It was Israel's interests that they had in mind, not America's. Osama bin Laden got away while the U.S. was diverted into invading Iraq.
In 1997 Feith wrote in his "Strategy for Israel" that the U.S. and Israel should conquer Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Moreover, Israel should reoccupy "the areas under Palestinian Authority control," though "the price in blood would be high."
We are now watching this neocon strategy unfold. Iraq has been invaded. Israel's Likud Party, with U.S. complicity, is grabbing more of the Palestinian West Bank. Last week, neocon Undersecretary of State John Bolton began beating the war drums against Iran for allegedly possessing weapons of mass destruction that "pose grave threats to international society."
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, neocon Max Boot defined support for Israel as a "key tenet of neoconservatism." What, asks Buchanan, about support for America? America's interest should be the focus of the Bush administration. When did America's interests become subsumed in the interests of Israel's right-wing Likud Party?
If Americans don't want a generation of sons dying in Middle Eastern deserts, they had best take Buchanan's question to heart.
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=3436 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 11:45 pm Post subject: Re: THE NEOCON HAWKS ON IRAQ TURN ON EACH OTHER |
| Take a look at the following URL for the 'National Interest' magazine which appears to be a neoconservative rag (notice how Schlesinger's name is there as well as some of the neoconservatives who had him appointed to the Defense Policy Board, so that 'independent' commission that Schlesinger headed to investigate Abu Ghraib was hardly independent - from the neocon agenda that it was out to protect!):
http://nationalinterest.org/ME2/dirsect.asp?sid=DA27CB1341E141A18B2AB2A90A528FA5&nm=Staff+Directory
Take a look at how two of the neocons mentions at the above URL are feuding as conveyed in the article (from the 'National Interest') at the following URL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/08/25/the-neocon-hawks-on-iraq-turn-on-each-other.php
The Kern/Fay press conference and the Kern/Fay report are linked at www.c-span.org
| Alpha wrote: | Note how many Zionist extremist (racist) Jews are mentioned below (some of whom are shown at www.nowarforisrael.com ):
Letter From Washington:
THE HAWKS ON IRAQ TURN ON EACH OTHER
By David D. Kirkpatrick
The International Herald Tribune - August 24, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/535483.htm
In the 18 months since President George W. Bush went to war against
Iraq, the hawkish intellectuals who built the case for the invasion
have
largely stood their ground.
This close-knit community, often called neoconservative - which
includes
Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary; Richard Perle, former
chairman of the Defense Policy Board; and William Kristol of the
magazine The Weekly Standard - has often emphasized what it said were
the invasion's underappreciated successes. Occasionally, some have
faulted the U.S. military for mistakes in execution, like using too
little force.
Lately, however, there has been emerging discord within their ranks
over
the lessons from the war. Earlier this month, Francis Fukuyama, author
of "The End of History" and one of the most influential thinkers
associated with the movement, surprised many by delivering a lengthy
attack on the neoconservatives' longstanding arguments in support of
the
war in Iraq, including their confidence in building a democracy there
and their assessment of the threat from Islamic radicalism.
In the clubby world of neoconservative intellectuals, many of whom are
longtime friends and allies, Fukuyama's repudiation of the case for
war,
which appeared in The National Interest, was all the more startling
because he presented it as an attack on a recent
speech by his friend, the columnist Charles Krauthammer of The
Washington Post.
Fukuyama faces stiff resistance. In an interview on Friday, Krauthammer
says he is publishing a rebuttal in the next issue of The National
Interest portraying Fukuyama's critique as "breathtakingly incoherent."
Others are redoubling their arguments for the invasion of Iraq,
contending that it should be the first step in a campaign to transform
the region. In the next issue of Commentary magazine, Norman Podhoretz,
who helped found the neoconservative movement in the 1970s, has written
a 37-page defense of the Bush administration's foreign policy.
In "World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to
Win," he argues that the United States should now help seek the
liberation of other Middle Eastern countries to help drain the swamp
where Islamic radicalism breeds, just as the cold war helped liberate
the Soviet Union.
"Like anybody else in the world who is sane, I am very much worried
about Iran gaining nuclear capacity," Podhoretz said in an interview
Friday. "I am not advocating the invasion of Iran at this moment,
although I wouldn't be heartbroken if it happened."
Certainly, many plain old conservatives - or paleoconservatives -
opposed the war from the beginning or changed their minds as the war
progressed. But neoconservatives laid the intellectual foundation for
the war, and they attained influence within the Bush administration.
Many are also bound together by friendships with influential members of
the administration's foreign policy team, including Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the undersecretary of defense, Douglas
Feith. Fukuyama, for example, said he was a student at Cornell decades
ago when he first became friends with Wolfowitz.
Although few in the movement have criticized the neoconservative
argument for the war as comprehensively as Fukuyama did, several others
said his argument with Krauthammer had captured widespread attention as
a new stage in the debate over the lessons of Iraq.
"These are two of the intellectual heavyweights among neoconservatives,
and their dispute is real," said Gary Rosen, managing editor of
Commentary. "People are looking for guidance on this, and these are two
strong proponents of opposing views within the movement."
In an interview last week, Fukuyama said that he had harbored private
doubts about the war at the time, although he kept quiet about them
then. "I figured it was going to happen anyway, and there wasn't
anything I could do about it," he said. "I believed it was a big roll
of
the dice, and I didn't believe it was a wise bet. But on the other
hand,
it was a roll of the dice, and for all I knew, it might have worked."
He added, "It turned out to be even worse than I anticipated."
But as he was listening to his friend Krauthammer deliver a recent
speech on the theme of the United States as a unipolar power, Fukuyama
said, he grew increasingly agitated.
Krauthammer's speech "is strangely disconnected from reality," Fukuyama
said in his article.
"One gets the impression that the Iraq war," Fukuyama continued, "has
been an unqualified success, with all of the assumptions and
expectations on which the war had been based vindicated."
Like many other critics of the war, he argued that Krauthammer and
other
neoconservatives were overconfident about turning Iraq into a
democracy,
too quick to dismiss arguments of longtime allies, and too willing to
give up the practical advantages of partnership with other nations.
Most of all, though, he argued that Krauthammer and other
supporters of the war mischaracterized Iraq and Islamic radicals as an
immediate threat to the existence of the United States, a claim that
justified immediate intervention. The Soviet Union arguably threatened
the existence of the United States, Fukuyama argues, but Iraq never
did.
But, Fukuyama said, he retained his neoconservative principles - a
belief in the universal aspiration for democracy and the use of
American
power to spread democracy in the world. He said he was acknowledging
the
mistakes to preserve the credibility of the neoconservative movement.
Krauthammer, for his part, argued that Fukuyama's essay did not amount
to much of a critique at all. "His recalibrations are astonishingly
empty," he said, arguing that Fukuyama's criticisms were undercut by
his
ultimate endorsement of the same neoconservative views.
"I have never read a piece which is ostensibly meant to attack a
person's position and then ends up explicitly endorsing it," he said.
But he said that there was one substantive disagreement. "To think
that the threat to the United States from Islamic radicalism is not
existential is absurd," he said, comparing Al Qaeda today to
Hitler in 1936, when he occupied the Rhineland. Hitler did not have the
means then to overrun Europe, but, Krauthammer said, "he soon acquired
the means."
Podhoretz, another old friend of Fukuyama's, said, he, too,
disagreed. "Some things went wrong, but things always go wrong in every
war," he said. "It is always a question of compared to what?"
Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, and another founder of the neoconservative movement, said she,
too, had doubts about the invasion. But she didn't think the debate
over
the Iraq war was about neoconservatism.
"I think there's almost an epidemic of the use of the term," she said.
For now, Fukuyama said, he was awaiting the full response from
Krauthammer and his other neoconservative friends.
"I have gotten a lot of e-mails from non-neoconservatives who liked
it,"
he said. "I have yet to hear from almost any of my friends about it." | | | | | PSCM USCGR | | Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 12:06 am Post subject: |
|  | | | | Top | | Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 4:58 am Post subject: Marines slash final combat training in half |
| Marines slash final combat training in half
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
BY DAVID WOOD
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
Under growing pressure to ship Marines to Iraq, the Marine Corps is cutting in half the rigorous field combat training it gives units preparing to deploy, senior officers say.
The Marines hope to make up the time by intensifying this final, pre-deployment training and focusing it on skills needed to survive and prevail in Iraq's brutal combat conditions. This means practicing more nighttime operations, ambushes, city fighting and guarding of convoys.
The exercise, called a CAX in Marine lingo, has been shortened from 23 to 11 days, Col. Blake Crowe, operations officer for the Marine Corps Training Command at Quantico, Va., said in an interview.
This was done, Crowe said, to "get more battalions through" in a shorter period of time. Until now, the Marine Corps trained 10 battalions in CAX every six months. Under the accelerated schedule, it will train eight battalions in two months.
The intense course, to begin this fall at the Marine desert training base at Twentynine Palms, Calif., will for the first time include thousands of Marines who hold traditionally noncombat jobs such as truck driver, intelligence analyst and jet aircraft technician.
Increasingly, these "noninfantry" Marines are deploying into combat zones where they find themselves suddenly under fire and unprepared. Commanders in Iraq report that some Marines, pressed into the fight from their truck cabs and computer consoles, have not had combat training in a decade.
"This is a high priority, identified in after-action reports" from commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq, Crowe said.
All Marines get some entry-level combat training. New infantrymen get 50 days of hard schooling in weapons handling and combat tactics. In contrast, those headed into noninfantry jobs get just 16 days in the muddy, mosquito-swarmed woods of Camp Lejeune in coastal North Carolina. Then they depart for schools in technical specialties ranging from food management to logistics planning and helicopter flight crews.
Once units are alerted for duty in Iraq, they will be cycled through the training at Twentynine Palms -- infantrymen and clerks, cooks and truck drivers alike.
Approximately 31,000 Marines are in Iraq -- almost 20 percent of the active-duty force that also deploys to Afghanistan, Okinawa and the major anti-terrorist base in Djibouti, on the Red Sea.
Across the Marine Corps, the unanticipated and unbudgeted requirements of rotating fresh, well-trained troops through Iraq have forced dramatic and sometimes painful adjustments and compromises.
The new, noninfantry Marines who show up for their crash course in combat at Camp Lejeune each year are well aware of the building pressure. They literally run from one event to the next, and in their final field exercise they work around the clock, snatching 20 or 30 minutes of sleep when they can.
"I wish we did have more time," said Capt. Dan Snyder, who oversees the teaching of 54 specific combat skills. "It's difficult to do in the time we have."
That's incentive for Camp Lejeune's instructors -- many of them veterans of combat in Iraq -- to bear down hard during the 16 days in the field.
"You have a 70 percent chance of going into combat, a 5 percent chance of getting killed or wounded -- pay attention!" Staff Sgt. Charles Kilgore, a combat instructor, barked at a formation of exhausted Marines in sodden, sweat-stained fatigues and muddy boots.
"I've definitely seen a ramp-up in intensity here," said Capt. Mark Reid, who oversees combat instructors. "This is not, 'Let us entertain you on your way to jet mechanics school.' What they're learning here they will be doing in Iraq or Afghanistan."
"It's demanding," admitted Pvt. Daniel Sanabria-Morales, 22, of North Plainfield, N.J. "In boot camp they tell you how to do everything. Here you gotta be thinking. And we're constantly on the move."
The Marines are tested on each of the 54 specific skills they must master, answering questions on written tests and demonstrating proficiency in front of an instructor. Those who fail are retaught until they can pass.
But money is short, and so is time.
Staff Sgt. Don Allen, a combat instructor, said his trainees watch demonstrations of the M203 grenade launcher, the Squad Automatic Weapon and the .50-caliber machine gun, but not everyone gets to actually fire the weapons.
"It's financial," said Allen, a combat engineer who fought in Iraq last year with the 8th Marines. "I wish I had the money for them to shoot actual rounds. When I went through this training in 1995, we all shot every weapon."
The final 36 hours of Camp Lejeune's 16-day course begins at 5 a.m. and ends with a 15-kilometer march with full combat loads. In between are back-to-back classes and field exercises.
"It's not that stressful; it's more fun," said Pvt. Rosalind Sanchez of Menifee, Calif. "This is why I joined."
"They give you too much information, class after class," said Pfc. Christopher Schneider, a 20-year-old from Longwood, Fla., who will train as an aircraft airframe mechanic. "But if I went to Iraq, I'd definitely feel confident." | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 5:52 am Post subject: NO MORE WAR FOR ISRAEL |
| Of course a Zionist Jew traitor to America like 'PSCM" would consider the truth as such as they don't have any problem at all with American soldiers/marines dying for Israel in Iraq (and beyond in the Middle East when the attacks on Iran and Syria come as well if the Zionist neocon Israel firsters are allowed to carry on with their 'war for Israel' agenda):
http://www.nowarforisrael.com
| PSCM USCGR wrote: | | | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 6:10 am Post subject: Iraq Prison Probe Faults Intelligence Unit |
| Iraq Prison Probe Faults Intelligence Unit
2 hours, 48 minutes ago
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - More than two dozen soldiers and contractors attached to a military intelligence unit at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (news - web sites) approved or took part in abuses of Iraqi detainees, an Army investigation has found in one of the most comprehensive looks to date at the scandal that damaged America's image around the world.
AP Photo
Reuters
Slideshow: Iraq Prisoner Abuse Investigation
Latest headlines:
· Blasts in Town Near Najaf, Many Casualties-Cleric
Reuters - 9 minutes ago
· Army implicates 27 in Abu Ghraib abuses
AFP - 10 minutes ago
· Mortar Shell Hits Kufa Mosque in Iraq
AP - 11 minutes ago
Special Coverage
A few of the abuses amounted to torture, Maj. Gen. George Fay, one of the chief investigators, said Wednesday.
"This is clearly a deviation from everything we've taught people on how to behave," said Gen. Paul Kern, who oversaw the investigation. "There were failures of leadership, of people seeing these things and not correcting them. There were failures of discipline."
Officers in charge of the prison were negligent in the training and management of their troops, and some may face criminal charges, Army officials said. Until now, just seven lower-ranking military police soldiers have been charged.
In Philadelphia, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) repeated his call for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to resign and for President Bush (news - web sites) to appoint an independent commission.
"Harry Truman had that sign on the desk and it said, 'The buck stops here,'" Kerry said. "The buck doesn't stop at the Pentagon (news - web sites)."
The White House has blamed the scandal on a group of rogue soldiers who it said were acting on their own.
The new report identifies 27 people attached to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, which oversaw interrogations at Abu Ghraib, who are accused of complicity in the abuses. Of those, 23 are soldiers and four were civilian contractors working for the unit.
The investigation report says the violent and sexual abuses — particularly those captured in the now-famous pictures of naked and frightened prisoners — were mostly the work of a group of guards and military intelligence personnel who were not conducting interrogations but instead amusing themselves.
The report distinguishes this group of abuses from mistreatment committed during actual interrogations, which also occurred.
Some 15 of 23 soldiers from the 205th who are accused of abuse were interrogating prisoners and wrongly believed they were using approved techniques to question them, Army officials said. One such unapproved technique was interrogating a detainee naked, the report said.
The Army's findings appear to widen to more than 50 the number of people who may face charges or disciplinary action for the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Criminal allegations against civilian contractors will be referred to the Justice Department (news - web sites) for possible prosecution.
Investigators recommended that five officers with command responsibilities, including Col. Thomas Pappas, commander of the 205th, and Lt. Col. Stephen Jordan, director of the Abu Ghraib interrogation center, face possible disciplinary action, Army officials said.
While these individuals did not directly take part in abuses, their poor leadership contributed to the conditions that allowed them to occur, officials said.
The seven members of the 800th Military Police Brigade, which supplied the guards at the prison, have been charged in connection with the abuses seen in the photos. In addition, six soldiers in the 205th, the intelligence unit, and two other contractors witnessed the abuse but failed to report it, which also violates regulations, Kern said.
The report said investigators discovered three more MPs who took part in abuses, and one more who knew of the mistreatment and did not report it. It also noted that two medics knew of the abuses but did not report them.
Most of the people are not identified in the investigation report. All of them may face charges or disciplinary action for abuses that occurred between late July 2003 and early February 2004.
"We discovered serious misconduct and a loss of moral values," Kern said.
The report blames the abuses on several factors: "misconduct (ranging from inhumane to sadistic) by a small group of morally corrupt soldiers and civilians, a lack of discipline on the part of leaders and soldiers," and a "failure or lack of leadership" by higher command in Iraq.
Kern said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the senior U.S. officer in Iraq when the abuses occurred, was responsible for "the things that did or did not happen" but not directly culpable for the abuse.
The lead investigators were Fay and Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones.
The Army's investigation recorded 44 separate incidents of abuse, including one that led to the death of a prisoner, officials said.
Kern said the most horrific case involved military canine handlers using their dogs to try to frighten two Iraqi adolescents into involuntarily fouling themselves.
The report attributes some problems to the influence of officials with "other government agencies" — a term frequently used by the Pentagon for the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites). CIA (news - web sites) interrogators and contractors were also at Abu Ghraib.
"It is clear that the interrogation practices of other government agencies led to a loss of accountability at Abu Ghraib," the report says, but it provides little detail.
The other agencies also kept at least eight "ghost detainees" — prisoners concealed from the International Committee of the Red Cross, Army officials said. It was one of those eight who died during interrogation.
Army officials credited the military with fixing many problems outlined in the report, and said the vast majority of military personnel in Iraq are doing their jobs honorably.
Their findings came a day after an independent panel released a report blaming senior leaders, including Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers, for lax oversight of military-run prisons in Iraq. This contributed to the chaos at Abu Ghraib, said members of that panel, led by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger.
That report said about one-third of the substantiated cases of prisoner abuse throughout the military-run prison system took place during interrogations.
It found no policy of abuse and concluded that the problems were directly the fault of the soldiers who committed violence against the prisoners, and their immediate supervisors.
___
On the Net:
The Army's report is available at:
http://wid.ap.org/documents/iraq/040825fay.pdf | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
