| Author | Message | | hateliars | | Posted: Thu May 06, 2004 4:44 am Post subject: MOSSAD AGENTS INVOLVED IN IRAQ PRISON ABUSE |
| http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/05/287679.shtml
MOSSAD AGENTS INVOLVED IN IRAQ PRISON ABUSE
author: Mauricio Dolce
Mossad agents are behind the Iraq prison scandale
General Taguba's report about the Iraq prison abuse, strongly implicate John Israel, Steven Stephanowicz and Adel L. Nakhla; describes them as interrogators contract employees for Titan and CACI corporation.
Both Corporation has indicated that these individuals work for a sub contractor that they refused to name, the truth is that John Israel, Steven Stephanowicz and Adel L. Nakhla works for the Mossad, Arabic speakers and has been sent to train CIA, DIA and MI in interrogation techniques already used in Palestinians.
What has not been reported yet is that women and minors has been sodomized, pictures and video tapes has been withheld by the media to avoid further emparrasing the Army. | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu May 06, 2004 8:29 pm Post subject: This torture started at the very top |
| Forwarded message from nytr@tania.blythe-systems.com
[ Subject: [NYTr] This torture started at the very top
[ From: nytr@tania.blythe-systems.com
[ Date: 6 May 2004 12:16:05 -0500
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
sent by Tim Murphy (activ-l)
May 5, 2004
The Guardian (UK)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1209555,00.html
This torture started at the very top
By Ahdaf Soueif
The media in this country is politely shocked at photos of Iraqis being
tortured and humiliated by US and British soldiers. A BBC1 news presenter
says the pictures seem to have been "merely mementos". That's all right,
then. The folks at home will have a good laugh and paste them into the
family album.
In the first half of the last century, the French in Algeria and Morocco
used to send home postcards of prostitutes posing sullenly, with breasts
bared and skirts pulled up to their thighs, over captions like "Le harem
Arabe" or "Fille Mauresque". The Americans have pushed it further: their
pornography of occupation is at once more childish, playful, crude and
sinister than that of "old Europe". Also, we assume the prostitutes were
paid.
BBC commentators and British politicians have been reminding us that the
soldiers' activities "do not compare with Saddam Hussein's systematic
tortures and executions". Hussein is now the moral compass of the west.
The media are fearful that these images will go down badly in the Arab world
because "they show Muslim men being humiliated by American women". Again the
not-so-subtle reduction of the Arab world to an entity that reacts only to
religious prodding. Actually the photographs have confirmed people's belief
that the US and Britain are not in Iraq as an act of goodwill. They have
strengthened the feeling that there is a deep racism underlying the
occupiers' attitudes to Arabs, Muslims and the third world generally.
It was only a matter of time. In the past year the world has seen photos of
many Iraqis stripped with their wrists tied behind their backs with plastic
cord. At first we could look into their eyes and bear witness to what was
happening. Then they were bagged. At no point was there an outcry.
We have grown used to seeing Arab men bound and hooded, in the occupied
territories and Gaza. Israel advises the US on how to control civilians and
interrogate them. Ariel Sharon has made the Israeli army's "rules of
engagement" available to the US military. The world notes the similarity
between the practices of the US army in Iraq and those of the Israeli army
in Palestine. There is evidence that scenes like the ones now shocking the
world have been common in "Facility 1391" (Israel's secret prison), and some
say in other jails. We just haven't seen the photos.
It is no use for US spokesmen to talk about "rogue elements", how
"contractors" are not answerable to the military and how Staff Sergeant Chip
Frederick had not read the Geneva conventions before taking charge of
prisoners at Abu Ghraib. This abuse is going to turn out to be widespread.
Amnesty International has already said it is systematic.
The acts in the photos being flashed across the networks would not have
taken place but for the profound racism that infects the American and
British establishments. At squaddie level, Sarah Oliver reports in the Mail
on Sunday that "the British soldiers loathe the dirtiness of Iraq and the
native population's slothfulness, kleptomania and determination to do as
little as possible for themselves".
There have been reports of US troops outside Falluja talking of the fun of
being a sniper, of the different ways to kill people, of the "rat's nest"
that needs cleaning out. Some will say soldiers will be soldiers. But that
language has been used by neocons at the heart of the US administration;
both Kenneth Adelman and Paul Wolfowitz have spoken of "snakes" and
"draining the swamps" in the "uncivilised parts of the world". It is
implicit in the US administration's position that anyone who does not agree
that all of history has been moving towards a glorious pinnacle expressed in
the US political, ideological and economic system has "rejected modernity";
that it is America's mission to civilise and to punish.
I've seen a photo of a young American soldier with two Iraqi boys. There is
no nakedness or torture, but it is no less nasty for that. The boys are
holding a cardboard sign. They and the soldier are smiling and doing a
thumbs up. He is pointing at the cardboard sign, on which he's written:
"Lcpl Boudreaux killed my Dad. then he knocked up my sister!" Imagine the
scene: Lance Corporal Boudreaux, a soldier on a liberating, civilising
mission, asks the natives to pose for a "memento". He gives them the sign to
hold. What lie did he tell them about its message? "Iraq is liberated", or
"Mission accomplished"? And who, in this scene, is the more civilised?
The one good thing in all of this is that there are soldiers in the US and
British armies who could not live with what was happening and who blew the
whistle. The world needs to see the photos coming out of Iraq not as
"deviant" but as an authentic message from the heart of the thought system
that is seeking to control our planet.
Ahdaf Soueif's collected essays will be published by Bloomsbury in the
autumn
*
To subscribe or unsubscribe or change your settings via the web, visit:
http://tania.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu May 06, 2004 9:27 pm Post subject: TORTURE (ISRAELI MOSSAD INVOLVED) AT ABU GHRAIB |
| May 6, 2004 | home
TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?
Issue of 2004-05-10
Posted 2004-04-30
In the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. As many as fifty thousand men and women—no accurate count is possible—were jammed into Abu Ghraib at one time, in twelve-by-twelve-foot cells that were little more than human holding pits.
In the looting that followed the regime’s collapse, last April, the huge prison complex, by then deserted, was stripped of everything that could be removed, including doors, windows, and bricks. The coalition authorities had the floors tiled, cells cleaned and repaired, and toilets, showers, and a new medical center added. Abu Ghraib was now a U.S. military prison. Most of the prisoners, however—by the fall there were several thousand, including women and teen-agers—were civilians, many of whom had been picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints. They fell into three loosely defined categories: common criminals; security detainees suspected of “crimes against the coalition”; and a small number of suspected “high-value” leaders of the insurgency against the coalition forces.
Last June, Janis Karpinski, an Army reserve brigadier general, was named commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade and put in charge of military prisons in Iraq. General Karpinski, the only female commander in the war zone, was an experienced operations and intelligence officer who had served with the Special Forces and in the 1991 Gulf War, but she had never run a prison system. Now she was in charge of three large jails, eight battalions, and thirty-four hundred Army reservists, most of whom, like her, had no training in handling prisoners.
General Karpinski, who had wanted to be a soldier since she was five, is a business consultant in civilian life, and was enthusiastic about her new job. In an interview last December with the St. Petersburg Times, she said that, for many of the Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib, “living conditions now are better in prison than at home. At one point we were concerned that they wouldn’t want to leave.”
A month later, General Karpinski was formally admonished and quietly suspended, and a major investigation into the Army’s prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, was under way. A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which reported to Karpinski’s brigade headquarters.) Taguba’s report listed some of the wrongdoing:
Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
There was stunning evidence to support the allegations, Taguba added—“detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence.” Photographs and videos taken by the soldiers as the abuses were happening were not included in his report, Taguba said, because of their “extremely sensitive nature.”
The photographs—several of which were broadcast on CBS’s “60 Minutes 2” last week—show leering G.I.s taunting naked Iraqi prisoners who are forced to assume humiliating poses. Six suspects—Staff Sergeant Ivan L. Frederick II, known as Chip, who was the senior enlisted man; Specialist Charles A. Graner; Sergeant Javal Davis; Specialist Megan Ambuhl; Specialist Sabrina Harman; and Private Jeremy Sivits—are now facing prosecution in Iraq, on charges that include conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty toward prisoners, maltreatment, assault, and indecent acts. A seventh suspect, Private Lynndie England, was reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, after becoming pregnant.
The photographs tell it all. In one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates. Three other hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their genitals. A fifth prisoner has his hands at his sides. In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid. There is another photograph of a cluster of naked prisoners, again piled in a pyramid. Near them stands Graner, smiling, his arms crossed; a woman soldier stands in front of him, bending over, and she, too, is smiling. Then, there is another cluster of hooded bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs. Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded.
Such dehumanization is unacceptable in any culture, but it is especially so in the Arab world. Homosexual acts are against Islamic law and it is humiliating for men to be naked in front of other men, Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University, explained. “Being put on top of each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in front of each other—it’s all a form of torture,” Haykel said.
Two Iraqi faces that do appear in the photographs are those of dead men. There is the battered face of prisoner No. 153399, and the bloodied body of another prisoner, wrapped in cellophane and packed in ice. There is a photograph of an empty room, splattered with blood.
The 372nd’s abuse of prisoners seemed almost routine—a fact of Army life that the soldiers felt no need to hide. On April 9th, at an Article 32 hearing (the military equivalent of a grand jury) in the case against Sergeant Frederick, at Camp Victory, near Baghdad, one of the witnesses, Specialist Matthew Wisdom, an M.P., told the courtroom what happened when he and other soldiers delivered seven prisoners, hooded and bound, to the so-called “hard site” at Abu Ghraib—seven tiers of cells where the inmates who were considered the most dangerous were housed. The men had been accused of starting a riot in another section of the prison. Wisdom said:
SFC Snider grabbed my prisoner and threw him into a pile. . . . I do not think it was right to put them in a pile. I saw SSG Frederic, SGT Davis and CPL Graner walking around the pile hitting the prisoners. I remember SSG Frederick hitting one prisoner in the side of its [sic] ribcage. The prisoner was no danger to SSG Frederick. . . . I left after that.
When he returned later, Wisdom testified:
I saw two naked detainees, one masturbating to another kneeling with its mouth open. I thought I should just get out of there. I didn’t think it was right . . . I saw SSG Frederick walking towards me, and he said, “Look what these animals do when you leave them alone for two seconds.” I heard PFC England shout out, “He’s getting hard.”
Wisdom testified that he told his superiors what had happened, and assumed that “the issue was taken care of.” He said, “I just didn’t want to be part of anything that looked criminal.”
The abuses became public because of the outrage of Specialist Joseph M. Darby, an M.P. whose role emerged during the Article 32 hearing against Chip Frederick. A government witness, Special Agent Scott Bobeck, who is a member of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, or C.I.D., told the court, according to an abridged transcript made available to me, “The investigation started after SPC Darby . . . got a CD from CPL Graner. . . . He came across pictures of naked detainees.” Bobeck said that Darby had “initially put an anonymous letter under our door, then he later came forward and gave a sworn statement. He felt very bad about it and thought it was very wrong.”
Questioned further, the Army investigator said that Frederick and his colleagues had not been given any “training guidelines” that he was aware of. The M.P.s in the 372nd had been assigned to routine traffic and police duties upon their arrival in Iraq, in the spring of 2003. In October of 2003, the 372nd was ordered to prison-guard duty at Abu Ghraib. Frederick, at thirty-seven, was far older than his colleagues, and was a natural leader; he had also worked for six years as a guard for the Virginia Department of Corrections. Bobeck explained:
What I got is that SSG Frederick and CPL Graner were road M.P.s and were put in charge because they were civilian prison guards and had knowledge of how things were supposed to be run.
Bobeck also testified that witnesses had said that Frederick, on one occasion, “had punched a detainee in the chest so hard that the detainee almost went into cardiac arrest.”
At the Article 32 hearing, the Army informed Frederick and his attorneys, Captain Robert Shuck, an Army lawyer, and Gary Myers, a civilian, that two dozen witnesses they had sought, including General Karpinski and all of Frederick’s co-defendants, would not appear. Some had been excused after exercising their Fifth Amendment right; others were deemed to be too far away from the courtroom. “The purpose of an Article 32 hearing is for us to engage witnesses and discover facts,” Gary Myers told me. “We ended up with a c.i.d. agent and no alleged victims to examine.” After the hearing, the presiding investigative officer ruled that there was sufficient evidence to convene a court-martial against Frederick.
Myers, who was one of the military defense attorneys in the My Lai prosecutions of the nineteen-seventies, told me that his client’s defense will be that he was carrying out the orders of his superiors and, in particular, the directions of military intelligence. He said, “Do you really think a group of kids from rural Virginia decided to do this on their own? Decided that the best way to embarrass Arabs and make them talk was to have them walk around nude?”
In letters and e-mails to family members, Frederick repeatedly noted that the military-intelligence teams, which included C.I.A. officers and linguists and interrogation specialists from private defense contractors, were the dominant force inside Abu Ghraib. In a letter written in January, he said:
I questioned some of the things that I saw . . . such things as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell—and the answer I got was, “This is how military intelligence (MI) wants it done.” . . . . MI has also instructed us to place a prisoner in an isolation cell with little or no clothes, no toilet or running water, no ventilation or window, for as much as three days.
The military-intelligence officers have “encouraged and told us, ‘Great job,’ they were now getting positive results and information,” Frederick wrote. “CID has been present when the military working dogs were used to intimidate prisoners at MI’s request.” At one point, Frederick told his family, he pulled aside his superior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Phillabaum, the commander of the 320th M.P. Battalion, and asked about the mistreatment of prisoners. “His reply was ‘Don’t worry about it.’”
In November, Frederick wrote, an Iraqi prisoner under the control of what the Abu Ghraib guards called “O.G.A.,” or other government agencies—that is, the C.I.A. and its paramilitary employees—was brought to his unit for questioning. “They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away. They put his body in a body bag and packed him in ice for approximately twenty-four hours in the shower. . . . The next day the medics came and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake IV in his arm and took him away.” The dead Iraqi was never entered into the prison’s inmate-control system, Frederick recounted, “and therefore never had a number.”
Frederick’s defense is, of course, highly self-serving. But the complaints in his letters and e-mails home were reinforced by two internal Army reports—Taguba’s and one by the Army’s chief law-enforcement officer, Provost Marshal Donald Ryder, a major general.
Last fall, General Sanchez ordered Ryder to review the prison system in Iraq and recommend ways to improve it. Ryder’s report, filed on November 5th, concluded that there were potential human-rights, training, and manpower issues, system-wide, that needed immediate attention. It also discussed serious concerns about the tension between the missions of the military police assigned to guard the prisoners and the intelligence teams who wanted to interrogate them. Army regulations limit intelligence activity by the M.P.s to passive collection. But something had gone wrong at Abu Ghraib.
There was evidence dating back to the Afghanistan war, the Ryder report said, that M.P.s had worked with intelligence operatives to “set favorable conditions for subsequent interviews”—a euphemism for breaking the will of prisoners. “Such actions generally run counter to the smooth operation of a detention facility, attempting to maintain its population in a compliant and docile state.” General Karpinski’s brigade, Ryder reported, “has not been directed to change its facility procedures to set the conditions for MI interrogations, nor participate in those interrogations.” Ryder called for the establishment of procedures to “define the role of military police soldiers . . .clearly separating the actions of the guards from those of the military intelligence personnel.” The officers running the war in Iraq were put on notice.
Ryder undercut his warning, however, by concluding that the situation had not yet reached a crisis point. Though some procedures were flawed, he said, he found “no military police units purposely applying inappropriate confinement practices.” His investigation was at best a failure and at worst a coverup.
Taguba, in his report, was polite but direct in refuting his fellow-general. “Unfortunately, many of the systemic problems that surfaced during [Ryder’s] assessment are the very same issues that are the subject of this investigation,” he wrote. “In fact, many of the abuses suffered by detainees occurred during, or near to, the time of that assessment.” The report continued, “Contrary to the findings of MG Ryder’s report, I find that personnel assigned to the 372nd MP Company, 800th MP Brigade were directed to change facility procedures to ‘set the conditions’ for MI interrogations.” Army intelligence officers, C.I.A. agents, and private contractors “actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses.”
Taguba backed up his assertion by citing evidence from sworn statements to Army C.I.D. investigators. Specialist Sabrina Harman, one of the accused M.P.s, testified that it was her job to keep detainees awake, including one hooded prisoner who was placed on a box with wires attached to his fingers, toes, and penis. She stated, “MI wanted to get them to talk. It is Graner and Frederick’s job to do things for MI and OGA to get these people to talk.”
Another witness, Sergeant Javal Davis, who is also one of the accused, told C.I.D. investigators, “I witnessed prisoners in the MI hold section . . . being made to do various things that I would question morally. . . . We were told that they had different rules.” Taguba wrote, “Davis also stated that he had heard MI insinuate to the guards to abuse the inmates. When asked what MI said he stated: ‘Loosen this guy up for us.’‘Make sure he has a bad night.’‘Make sure he gets the treatment.’” Military intelligence made these comments to Graner and Frederick, Davis said. “The MI staffs to my understanding have been giving Graner compliments . . . statements like, ‘Good job, they’re breaking down real fast. They answer every question. They’re giving out good information.’”
When asked why he did not inform his chain of command about the abuse, Sergeant Davis answered, “Because I assumed that if they were doing things out of the ordinary or outside the guidelines, someone would have said something. Also the wing”—where the abuse took place—“belongs to MI and it appeared MI personnel approved of the abuse.”
Another witness, Specialist Jason Kennel, who was not accused of wrongdoing, said, “I saw them nude, but MI would tell us to take away their mattresses, sheets, and clothes.” (It was his view, he added, that if M.I. wanted him to do this “they needed to give me paperwork.”) Taguba also cited an interview with Adel L. Nakhla, a translator who was an employee of Titan, a civilian contractor. He told of one night when a “bunch of people from MI” watched as a group of handcuffed and shackled inmates were subjected to abuse by Graner and Frederick.
General Taguba saved his harshest words for the military-intelligence officers and private contractors. He recommended that Colonel Thomas Pappas, the commander of one of the M.I. brigades, be reprimanded and receive non-judicial punishment, and that Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan, the former director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, be relieved of duty and reprimanded. He further urged that a civilian contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI International, be fired from his Army job, reprimanded, and denied his security clearances for lying to the investigating team and allowing or ordering military policemen “who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations by ‘setting conditions’ which were neither authorized” nor in accordance with Army regulations. “He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse,” Taguba wrote. He also recommended disciplinary action against a second CACI employee, John Israel. (A spokeswoman for CACI said that the company had “received no formal communication” from the Army about the matter.)
“I suspect,” Taguba concluded, that Pappas, Jordan, Stephanowicz, and Israel “were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse at Abu Ghraib,” and strongly recommended immediate disciplinary action.
The problems inside the Army prison system in Iraq were not hidden from senior commanders. During Karpinski’s seven-month tour of duty, Taguba noted, there were at least a dozen officially reported incidents involving escapes, attempted escapes, and other serious security issues that were investigated by officers of the 800th M.P. Brigade. Some of the incidents had led to the killing or wounding of inmates and M.P.s, and resulted in a series of “lessons learned” inquiries within the brigade. Karpinski invariably approved the reports and signed orders calling for changes in day-to-day procedures. But Taguba found that she did not follow up, doing nothing to insure that the orders were carried out. Had she done so, he added, “cases of abuse may have been prevented.”
General Taguba further found that Abu Ghraib was filled beyond capacity, and that the M.P. guard force was significantly undermanned and short of resources. “This imbalance has contributed to the poor living conditions, escapes, and accountability lapses,” he wrote. There were gross differences, Taguba said, between the actual number of prisoners on hand and the number officially recorded. A lack of proper screening also meant that many innocent Iraqis were wrongly being detained—indefinitely, it seemed, in some cases. The Taguba study noted that more than sixty per cent of the civilian inmates at Abu Ghraib were deemed not to be a threat to society, which should have enabled them to be released. Karpinski’s defense, Taguba said, was that her superior officers “routinely” rejected her recommendations regarding the release of such prisoners.
Karpinski was rarely seen at the prisons she was supposed to be running, Taguba wrote. He also found a wide range of administrative problems, including some that he considered “without precedent in my military career.” The soldiers, he added, were “poorly prepared and untrained . . . prior to deployment, at the mobilization site, upon arrival in theater, and throughout the mission.”
General Taguba spent more than four hours interviewing Karpinski, whom he described as extremely emotional: “What I found particularly disturbing in her testimony was her complete unwillingness to either understand or accept that many of the problems inherent in the 800th MP Brigade were caused or exacerbated by poor leadership and the refusal of her command to both establish and enforce basic standards and principles among its soldiers.”
Taguba recommended that Karpinski and seven brigade military-police officers and enlisted men be relieved of command and formally reprimanded. No criminal proceedings were suggested for Karpinski; apparently, the loss of promotion and the indignity of a public rebuke were seen as enough punishment.
After the story broke on CBS last week, the Pentagon announced that Major General Geoffrey Miller, the new head of the Iraqi prison system, had arrived in Baghdad and was on the job. He had been the commander of the Guantánamo Bay detention center. General Sanchez also authorized an investigation into possible wrongdoing by military and civilian interrogators.
As the international furor grew, senior military officers, and President Bush, insisted that the actions of a few did not reflect the conduct of the military as a whole. Taguba’s report, however, amounts to an unsparing study of collective wrongdoing and the failure of Army leadership at the highest levels. The picture he draws of Abu Ghraib is one in which Army regulations and the Geneva conventions were routinely violated, and in which much of the day-to-day management of the prisoners was abdicated to Army military-intelligence units and civilian contract employees. Interrogating prisoners and getting intelligence, including by intimidation and torture, was the priority.
The mistreatment at Abu Ghraib may have done little to further American intelligence, however. Willie J. Rowell, who served for thirty-six years as a C.I.D. agent, told me that the use of force or humiliation with prisoners is invariably counterproductive. “They’ll tell you what you want to hear, truth or no truth,” Rowell said. “‘You can flog me until I tell you what I know you want me to say.’ You don’t get righteous information.”
Under the fourth Geneva convention, an occupying power can jail civilians who pose an “imperative” security threat, but it must establish a regular procedure for insuring that only civilians who remain a genuine security threat be kept imprisoned. Prisoners have the right to appeal any internment decision and have their cases reviewed. Human Rights Watch complained to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that civilians in Iraq remained in custody month after month with no charges brought against them. Abu Ghraib had become, in effect, another Guantánamo.
As the photographs from Abu Ghraib make clear, these detentions have had enormous consequences: for the imprisoned civilian Iraqis, many of whom had nothing to do with the growing insurgency; for the integrity of the Army; and for the United States’ reputation in the world.
Captain Robert Shuck, Frederick’s military attorney, closed his defense at the Article 32 hearing last month by saying that the Army was “attempting to have these six soldiers atone for its sins.” Similarly, Gary Myers, Frederick’s civilian attorney, told me that he would argue at the court-martial that culpability in the case extended far beyond his client. “I’m going to drag every involved intelligence officer and civilian contractor I can find into court,” he said. “Do you really believe the Army relieved a general officer because of six soldiers? Not a chance.” | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu May 06, 2004 10:27 pm Post subject: TORTURE INTERCONNECTIONS - The U.S. and Israel |
| TORTUREGATE
TORTURE INTERCONNECTIONS - The U.S. and Israel
ISRAELI TORTURE and U.S. COMPLICITY THEN AND NOW
Mid-East Realities - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - 6 May 2004:
The U.S. and Israel have been torture interconnected in the Middle East for quite a long time. Those now infamous hoods -- finally infamous because of the dramatic pictures from a U.S.-run prison in Iraq -- have long been used by the Israelis in prisons where Palestinians are treated far worse but the world has looked the other way for decades now. Indeed Israeli 'training' of Americans to 'deal with the Arabs' may well be the secret so-far untold aspect of today's 'torture scandal' now dominating today's headlines. TortureGate now dominates Washington and has the potential to threaten the Bush Presidency as the Monica scandal affected Clinton's.
The top Pentagon civilian officials -- Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith -- both Jewish and both known for their extremely close relationships with top officials in Israel and the Zionist movement, are believed to have personally authorized clandestine Mossad officials to be in Iraq working closely with U.S. military intelligence. Something similar is believed to have been secretly authorized by the head of the CIA, George Tenet. Many in Washington find it hard to believe that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfled did not know and approve; even if the information was not provided to the President who many believe at the time would not have cared or understood the implications anyway.
As of today TortureGate is at the least further erupting into a profound earthquake-like public relations catastrophy for the U.S. American credibility has been shredded to pieces. The President himself is unusually personally involved in attempting damage-control. Talk of Donald Rumseld being forced to take the fall this time is beginning to be heard above whispers.
As for the U.S. and Israeli torture connection it has grown considerable in recent years and certainly needs to be investigated -- but just as certainly not by the American Congress which is itself quite complicitous despite all the loud protestations otherwise.
Even as far back as a decade before the first Palestinian Intifada began in 1987, the U.S. government was already very much aware and complicitous in, the 'systematic torture' of Palestinians by Israel.
In 1979 U.S. Foreign Service officers serving in the Jerusalem Consulate -- an unofficial Embassy responsible for dealing with the Palestinians in the 'Occupied Territories' -- did their job and provided the political leaders in Washington detailed and conclusive information about the ongoing torture of Palestinians. When top officials in Washington did nothing and in fact ordered everything covered up classified State Department cables were leaked from persons inside the State Department and published by Mark Bruzonsky who at the time was Forum Editor of The Middle East Magazine in London. Bruzonsky is now the Publisher of Mid-East Realities (MiddleEast.Org). In a major censorship story never publicly told the classified torture documents were first made available by Bruzonsky for exclusive publication in a New York newspaper. But severe pressure from the U.S. government and persons associated with the Israeli-Jewish lobby forced the story to be spiked at the last minute even after the front-page banner-headline had been set in type and personally approved by the editor and publisher. This is the story of the once secret "Torture Cables" as published in the April 1979 issue of The Middle East Magazine. | | | | Alpha | | | | hateliars | | Posted: Thu May 06, 2004 11:41 pm Post subject: |
| Bin Laden is a made to order boogie man. He didn't bring down the WTC nor did Al Qaida which is probably just another group of 'revolutionaires' funded by the bankers like the Bolsheviks were. The Sept 11 attack was coordinated by the PNAC group with the help of Israel. Some of the work may have been contracted out to private parties, but PNAC was in charge. However they're nothing but dupes.
As to Bin Laden, he's merely a cheerleader as he pits the West against the Muslims. Notice how he shows up every so often to remind us what this is all about? He's the narrator of the story. He makes sure we we don't forget that this is a war between the West and the Arabs. Even the torture pictures are a deliberate effort to inflame sentiments and prevent any kind of peaceful resolution in Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East. We are being driven to a war of exhaustion against the Arabs.
Who benefits? Take a guess. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri May 07, 2004 7:56 am Post subject: More on Israeli Torture |
| Forwarded:
Note the methods of torture during the First Intifada (as cited by
the Public Committee Against Torture), and the methods that contrinue
today despite the "ban" on torture by Israel's High Court in 1999.
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/factsheet/factsheet_on_torture.htm
Most, if not all of the methods in the First Intifada have been
utilized in the Abu Ghraib prison.
Consider this info with the fact that Israelis trained US troops with
regard to insurgents.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1102940,00.html
There is more info available on the Net, but these are a couple items
that should grab the attention of national media outlets, given that
they are always looking for interesting angles to stories.
Sherri
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may
live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise
above its own ashes. ~Khalil Gibran
--- End forwarded message --- | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri May 07, 2004 8:14 am Post subject: US Military Intelligence Behind Iraq Torture |
| Subj: US Military Intelligence Behind Iraq Torture
Date: 5/2/04 3:45:33 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: hectorpv@comcast.net
To: hectorpv@comcast.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Friends,
US Military Intelligence Behind Iraq Torture
It appears that the torture of the Iraqis was actually a policy pushed by military intelligence, not simply the actions of a few perversely sadistic individuals. In this message I have included the New Yorker article by the intrepid Seymour Hersh and a summary of the article from the New York Times. As the Times writes: "The suggestion by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski that the reservists acted at the behest of military intelligence officers appears largely supported in a still-classified Army report on prison conditions in Iraq that documented many of the worst abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, including the sexual humiliation of prisoners." But the question is: who in command of military intelligence ordered such an approach? Is that simply the usual way of treating prisoners? Or did some higher-up order "special treatment" [my words] for these particular Iraqi prisoners? How far up does the responsibility go? Is someone actually intentionally trying to inflame the entire Islamic world in order to set off the neocons' World War IV?
Moreover, it is questionable as to whether these sadistic approaches actually provide beneficial information. As Hersh writes: "The mistreatment at Abu Ghraib may have done little to further American intelligence, however. Willie J. Rowell, who served for thirty-six years as a C.I.D. agent, told me that the use of force or humiliation with prisoners is invariably counterproductive. ‘They’ll tell you what you want to hear, truth or no truth,’ Rowell said. "‘You can flog me until I tell you what I know you want me to say.’ You don’t get righteous information."
Much of the actual imprisonment itself is a violation of international law.
"Under the fourth Geneva convention, an occupying power can jail civilians who pose an ‘imperative’ security threat, but it must establish a regular procedure for insuring that only civilians who remain a genuine security threat be kept imprisoned. Prisoners have the right to appeal any internment decision and have their cases reviewed. Human Rights Watch complained to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that civilians in Iraq remained in custody month after month with no charges brought against them. Abu Ghraib had become, in effect, another Guantánamo."
__________________________
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/02/international/middleeast/02ABUS.html?position=&ei=1&en=d0a8290ad8addad7&ex=1084474268&pagewanted=print&position=
May 2, 2004
Officer Suggests Iraq Jail Abuse Was Encouraged
By PHILIP SHENON
ASHINGTON, May 1 — An Army Reserve general whose soldiers were photographed as they abused Iraqi prisoners said Saturday that she knew nothing about the abuse until weeks after it occurred and that she was "sickened" by the pictures. She said the prison cellblock where the abuse occurred was under the tight control of Army military intelligence officers who may have encouraged the abuse.
The suggestion by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski that the reservists acted at the behest of military intelligence officers appears largely supported in a still-classified Army report on prison conditions in Iraq that documented many of the worst abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, including the sexual humiliation of prisoners.
The New Yorker magazine said in its new edition that the report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba found that reservist military police at the prison were urged by Army military officers and C.I.A. agents to "set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses."
According to the New Yorker article, the Army report offered accounts of rampant and gruesome abuse from October to December of 2003 that included the sexual assault of an Iraqi detainee with a chemical light stick or broomstick.
While reports of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American and British soldiers have come to light in the last several days, the report cited by The New Yorker indicates a far more wide-ranging and systematic pattern of cruelties than previously reported.
General Karpinski was formally admonished in January and "quietly suspended" from commanding the 800th Military Police Brigade, the New Yorker article reports. while under investigation.
In a phone interview from her home in South Carolina in which she offered her first public comments about the growing international furor over the abuse of the Iraq detainees, General Karpinski said the special high-security cellblock at Abu Ghraib had been under the direct control of Army intelligence officers, not the reservists under her command.
She said that while the reservists involved in the abuses were "bad people" who deserved punishment, she suspected that they were acting with the encouragement, if not at the direction, of military intelligence units that ran the special cellblock used for interrogation. She said that C.I.A. employees often joined in the interrogations at the prison, although she said she did not know if they had unrestricted access to the cellblock.
According to the New Yorker article, by the investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh, one of the soldiers under investigation, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II, an Army reservist who is a prison guard in civilian life, may have reinforced General Karpinski's contention in e-mails to family and friends while serving at the prison.
In a letter earlier this year, Sergeant Frederick wrote, "I questioned some of the things that I saw." He described "such things as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell." He added, "The answer I got was, `This is how military intelligence wants it done.' "
Prisoners were beaten and threatened with rape, electrocution and dog attacks, witnesses told Army investigators, according to the report obtained by The New Yorker. Much of the abuse was sexual, with prisoners often kept naked and forced to perform simulated and real sex acts, witnesses testified. Mr. Hersh notes that such degradations, while deeply offensive in any culture, are particularly humiliating to Arabs because Islamic law and culture so strongly condemn nudity and homosexuality.
General Karpinski said she was speaking out because she believed that military commanders were trying to shift the blame exclusively to her and other reservists and away from intelligence officers still at work in Iraq.
"We're disposable," she said of the military's attitude toward reservists. "Why would they want the active-duty people to take the blame? They want to put this on the M.P.'s and hope that this thing goes away. Well, it's not going to go away."
The Army's public affairs office at the Pentagon referred calls about her comments to military commanders in Iraq.
General Karpinski said in the interview that the special cellblock, known as 1A, was one of about two dozen cellblocks in the large prison complex and was essentially off limits to soldiers who were not part of the interrogations, including virtually all of the military police under her command at Abu Ghraib.
She said repeatedly in the interview that she was not defending the actions of the reservists who took part in the brutality, who were part of her command. She said that when she was first presented with the photographs of the abuse in January, they "sickened me."
"I put my head down because I really thought I was going to throw up," she said. "It was awful. My immediate reaction was: these are bad people, because their faces revealed how much pleasure they felt at this."
But she said the context of the brutality had been lost, noting that the six Army reservists charged in the case represented were only a tiny fraction of the nearly 3,400 reservists under her command in Iraq, and that Abu Ghraib was one of 16 prisons and other incarceration centers around Iraq that she oversaw.
"The suggestion that this was done with my knowledge and continued with my knowledge is so far from the truth," she said of the abuse." I wasn't aware of any of this. I'm horrified by this."
She said she was also alarmed that little attention has been paid to the Army military intelligence unit that controlled Cellblock 1A, where her soldiers guarded the Iraqi detainees between interrogations.
She estimated that the floor space of the two-story cellblock was only about 60 feet by 20 feet, and that military intelligence officers were in and out of the cellblock "24 hours a day," often to escort prisoners to and from an interrogation center away from the prison cells.
"They were in there at 2 in the morning, they were there at 4 in the afternoon," said General Karpinski, who arrived in Iraq last June and was the only woman to hold a command in the war zone. "This was no 9-to-5 job."
She said that C.I.A. employees often participated in the interrogations at Abu Ghraib, one of Iraq's most notorious prisons during the rule of Saddam Hussein.
General Karpinski noted that one of the photographs of abused prisoners also showed the legs of 16 American soldiers — the photograph was cropped so that their upper bodies could not be seen — "and that tells you that clearly other people were participating, because I didn't have 16 people assigned to that cellblock."
The photographs of American soldiers smiling, laughing and signaling "thumbs up" as Iraqi detainees were forced into sexually humiliating positions provoked outrage just as the American military was trying to pacify a rising insurgency and gain the trust of more Iraqis before turning over sovereignty to a new government on June 30.
General Karpinski, who has returned home to South Carolina and her civilian life as a business consultant, said she visited Abu Ghraib as often as twice a week last fall and had repeatedly instructed military police officers under her command to treat prisoners humanely and in accord with international human rights agreements.
"I can speak some Arabic," said General Karpinski, a New Jersey native who spent almost a decade as an active duty soldier before joining the Army Reserve in 1987. "I'm not fluent, but when I went to any of my prison facilities, I would make it a point to try to talk to the detainees."
But she said she did not visit Cellblock 1A, in keeping with the wishes of military intelligence officers who, she said, worried that unnecessary visits might interfere with their interrogations of Iraqis.
She acknowledged that she "probably should have been more aggressive" about visiting the interrogation cellblock, especially after military intelligence officers at the prison went "to great lengths to try to exclude the I.C.R.C. from access to that interrogation wing."
She was referring to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has been given access over time to Iraqi detainees at the prison.
General Karpinski's lawyer, Neal A. Puckett, a former military trial judge, said he believed that she was being made a scapegoat for others in the military, especially for military intelligence officers who knew what was going on in Cellblock 1A.
He said General Karpinski had repeatedly insisted that troops under her command in Iraq receive instruction in proper treatment of detainees, but that despite her best efforts, some reservists joined in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. "All you can do is give training, give guidance and assume that your soldiers are going to follow orders and are not going to become sick bastards," he said.
After the first allegations of abuse circulated earlier this year, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior American commander in Iraq, ordered sweeping inquiries into whether any commanders — including General Karpinski — should be held responsible. He also ordered a review of policies and procedures at all of the prisons controlled by occupation forces in Iraq.
_____________________________________
May 2, 2004 | home
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040510fa_fact
TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?
Issue of 2004-05-10
Posted 2004-04-30
In the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. As many as fifty thousand men and women—no accurate count is possible—were jammed into Abu Ghraib at one time, in twelve-by-twelve-foot cells that were little more than human holding pits.
In the looting that followed the regime’s collapse, last April, the huge prison complex, by then deserted, was stripped of everything that could be removed, including doors, windows, and bricks. The coalition authorities had the floors tiled, cells cleaned and repaired, and toilets, showers, and a new medical center added. Abu Ghraib was now a U.S. military prison. Most of the prisoners, however—by the fall there were several thousand, including women and teen-agers—were civilians, many of whom had been picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints. They fell into three loosely defined categories: common criminals; security detainees suspected of "crimes against the coalition"; and a small number of suspected "high-value" leaders of the insurgency against the coalition forces.
Last June, Janis Karpinski, an Army reserve brigadier general, was named commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade and put in charge of military prisons in Iraq. General Karpinski, the only female commander in the war zone, was an experienced operations and intelligence officer who had served with the Special Forces and in the 1991 Gulf War, but she had never run a prison system. Now she was in charge of three large jails, eight battalions, and thirty-four hundred Army reservists, most of whom, like her, had no training in handling prisoners.
General Karpinski, who had wanted to be a soldier since she was five, is a business consultant in civilian life, and was enthusiastic about her new job. In an interview last December with the St. Petersburg Times, she said that, for many of the Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib, "living conditions now are better in prison than at home. At one point we were concerned that they wouldn’t want to leave."
A month later, General Karpinski was formally admonished and quietly suspended, and a major investigation into the Army’s prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, was under way. A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which reported to Karpinski’s brigade headquarters.) Taguba’s report listed some of the wrongdoing:
Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
There was stunning evidence to support the allegations, Taguba added—"detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence." Photographs and videos taken by the soldiers as the abuses were happening were not included in his report, Taguba said, because of their "extremely sensitive nature."
The photographs—several of which were broadcast on CBS’s "60 Minutes 2" last week—show leering G.I.s taunting naked Iraqi prisoners who are forced to assume humiliating poses. Six suspects—Staff Sergeant Ivan L. Frederick II, known as Chip, who was the senior enlisted man; Specialist Charles A. Graner; Sergeant Javal Davis; Specialist Megan Ambuhl; Specialist Sabrina Harman; and Private Jeremy Sivits—are now facing prosecution in Iraq, on charges that include conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty toward prisoners, maltreatment, assault, and indecent acts. A seventh suspect, Private Lynndie England, was reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, after becoming pregnant.
The photographs tell it all. In one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates. Three other hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their genitals. A fifth prisoner has his hands at his sides. In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid. There is another photograph of a cluster of naked prisoners, again piled in a pyramid. Near them stands Graner, smiling, his arms crossed; a woman soldier stands in front of him, bending over, and she, too, is smiling. Then, there is another cluster of hooded bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs. Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded.
Such dehumanization is unacceptable in any culture, but it is especially so in the Arab world. Homosexual acts are against Islamic law and it is humiliating for men to be naked in front of other men, Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University, explained. "Being put on top of each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in front of each other—it’s all a form of torture," Haykel said.
Two Iraqi faces that do appear in the photographs are those of dead men. There is the battered face of prisoner No. 153399, and the bloodied body of another prisoner, wrapped in cellophane and packed in ice. There is a photograph of an empty room, splattered with blood.
The 372nd’s abuse of prisoners seemed almost routine—a fact of Army life that the soldiers felt no need to hide. On April 9th, at an Article 32 hearing (the military equivalent of a grand jury) in the case against Sergeant Frederick, at Camp Victory, near Baghdad, one of the witnesses, Specialist Matthew Wisdom, an M.P., told the courtroom what happened when he and other soldiers delivered seven prisoners, hooded and bound, to the so-called "hard site" at Abu Ghraib—seven tiers of cells where the inmates who were considered the most dangerous were housed. The men had been accused of starting a riot in another section of the prison. Wisdom said:
SFC Snider grabbed my prisoner and threw him into a pile. . . . I do not think it was right to put them in a pile. I saw SSG Frederic, SGT Davis and CPL Graner walking around the pile hitting the prisoners. I remember SSG Frederick hitting one prisoner in the side of its [sic] ribcage. The prisoner was no danger to SSG Frederick. . . . I left after that.
When he returned later, Wisdom testified:
I saw two naked detainees, one masturbating to another kneeling with its mouth open. I thought I should just get out of there. I didn’t think it was right . . . I saw SSG Frederick walking towards me, and he said, "Look what these animals do when you leave them alone for two seconds." I heard PFC England shout out, "He’s getting hard."
Wisdom testified that he told his superiors what had happened, and assumed that "the issue was taken care of." He said, "I just didn’t want to be part of anything that looked criminal."
The abuses became public because of the outrage of Specialist Joseph M. Darby, an M.P. whose role emerged during the Article 32 hearing against Chip Frederick. A government witness, Special Agent Scott Bobeck, who is a member of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, or C.I.D., told the court, according to an abridged transcript made available to me, "The investigation started after SPC Darby . . . got a CD from CPL Graner. . . . He came across pictures of naked detainees." Bobeck said that Darby had "initially put an anonymous letter under our door, then he later came forward and gave a sworn statement. He felt very bad about it and thought it was very wrong."
Questioned further, the Army investigator said that Frederick and his colleagues had not been given any "training guidelines" that he was aware of. The M.P.s in the 372nd had been assigned to routine traffic and police duties upon their arrival in Iraq, in the spring of 2003. In October of 2003, the 372nd was ordered to prison-guard duty at Abu Ghraib. Frederick, at thirty-seven, was far older than his colleagues, and was a natural leader; he had also worked for six years as a guard for the Virginia Department of Corrections. Bobeck explained:
What I got is that SSG Frederick and CPL Graner were road M.P.s and were put in charge because they were civilian prison guards and had knowledge of how things were supposed to be run.
Bobeck also testified that witnesses had said that Frederick, on one occasion, "had punched a detainee in the chest so hard that the detainee almost went into cardiac arrest."
At the Article 32 hearing, the Army informed Frederick and his attorneys, Captain Robert Shuck, an Army lawyer, and Gary Myers, a civilian, that two dozen witnesses they had sought, including General Karpinski and all of Frederick’s co-defendants, would not appear. Some had been excused after exercising their Fifth Amendment right; others were deemed to be too far away from the courtroom. "The purpose of an Article 32 hearing is for us to engage witnesses and discover facts," Gary Myers told me. "We ended up with a c.i.d. agent and no alleged victims to examine." After the hearing, the presiding investigative officer ruled that there was sufficient evidence to convene a court-martial against Frederick.
Myers, who was one of the military defense attorneys in the My Lai prosecutions of the nineteen-seventies, told me that his client’s defense will be that he was carrying out the orders of his superiors and, in particular, the directions of military intelligence. He said, "Do you really think a group of kids from rural Virginia decided to do this on their own? Decided that the best way to embarrass Arabs and make them talk was to have them walk around nude?"
In letters and e-mails to family members, Frederick repeatedly noted that the military-intelligence teams, which included C.I.A. officers and linguists and interrogation specialists from private defense contractors, were the dominant force inside Abu Ghraib. In a letter written in January, he said:
I questioned some of the things that I saw . . . such things as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell—and the answer I got was, "This is how military intelligence (MI) wants it done." . . . . MI has also instructed us to place a prisoner in an isolation cell with little or no clothes, no toilet or running water, no ventilation or window, for as much as three days.
The military-intelligence officers have "encouraged and told us, ‘Great job,’ they were now getting positive results and information," Frederick wrote. "CID has been present when the military working dogs were used to intimidate prisoners at MI’s request." At one point, Frederick told his family, he pulled aside his superior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Phillabaum, the commander of the 320th M.P. Battalion, and asked about the mistreatment of prisoners. "His reply was ‘Don’t worry about it.’"
In November, Frederick wrote, an Iraqi prisoner under the control of what the Abu Ghraib guards called "O.G.A.," or other government agencies—that is, the C.I.A. and its paramilitary employees—was brought to his unit for questioning. "They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away. They put his body in a body bag and packed him in ice for approximately twenty-four hours in the shower. . . . The next day the medics came and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake IV in his arm and took him away." The dead Iraqi was never entered into the prison’s inmate-control system, Frederick recounted, "and therefore never had a number."
Frederick’s defense is, of course, highly self-serving. But the complaints in his letters and e-mails home were reinforced by two internal Army reports—Taguba’s and one by the Army’s chief law-enforcement officer, Provost Marshal Donald Ryder, a major general.
Last fall, General Sanchez ordered Ryder to review the prison system in Iraq and recommend ways to improve it. Ryder’s report, filed on November 5th, concluded that there were potential human-rights, training, and manpower issues, system-wide, that needed immediate attention. It also discussed serious concerns about the tension between the missions of the military police assigned to guard the prisoners and the intelligence teams who wanted to interrogate them. Army regulations limit intelligence activity by the M.P.s to passive collection. But something had gone wrong at Abu Ghraib.
There was evidence dating back to the Afghanistan war, the Ryder report said, that M.P.s had worked with intelligence operatives to "set favorable conditions for subsequent interviews"—a euphemism for breaking the will of prisoners. "Such actions generally run counter to the smooth operation of a detention facility, attempting to maintain its population in a compliant and docile state." General Karpinski’s brigade, Ryder reported, "has not been directed to change its facility procedures to set the conditions for MI interrogations, nor participate in those interrogations." Ryder called for the establishment of procedures to "define the role of military police soldiers . . .clearly separating the actions of the guards from those of the military intelligence personnel." The officers running the war in Iraq were put on notice.
Ryder undercut his warning, however, by concluding that the situation had not yet reached a crisis point. Though some procedures were flawed, he said, he found "no military police units purposely applying inappropriate confinement practices." His investigation was at best a failure and at worst a coverup.
Taguba, in his report, was polite but direct in refuting his fellow-general. "Unfortunately, many of the systemic problems that surfaced during [Ryder’s] assessment are the very same issues that are the subject of this investigation," he wrote. "In fact, many of the abuses suffered by detainees occurred during, or near to, the time of that assessment." The report continued, "Contrary to the findings of MG Ryder’s report, I find that personnel assigned to the 372nd MP Company, 800th MP Brigade were directed to change facility procedures to ‘set the conditions’ for MI interrogations." Army intelligence officers, C.I.A. agents, and private contractors "actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses."
Taguba backed up his assertion by citing evidence from sworn statements to Army C.I.D. investigators. Specialist Sabrina Harman, one of the accused M.P.s, testified that it was her job to keep detainees awake, including one hooded prisoner who was placed on a box with wires attached to his fingers, toes, and penis. She stated, "MI wanted to get them to talk. It is Graner and Frederick’s job to do things for MI and OGA to get these people to talk."
Another witness, Sergeant Javal Davis, who is also one of the accused, told C.I.D. investigators, "I witnessed prisoners in the MI hold section . . . being made to do various things that I would question morally. . . . We were told that they had different rules." Taguba wrote, "Davis also stated that he had heard MI insinuate to the guards to abuse the inmates. When asked what MI said he stated: ‘Loosen this guy up for us.’‘Make sure he has a bad night.’‘Make sure he gets the treatment.’" Military intelligence made these comments to Graner and Frederick, Davis said. "The MI staffs to my understanding have been giving Graner compliments . . . statements like, ‘Good job, they’re breaking down real fast. They answer every question. They’re giving out good information.’"
When asked why he did not inform his chain of command about the abuse, Sergeant Davis answered, "Because I assumed that if they were doing things out of the ordinary or outside the guidelines, someone would have said something. Also the wing"—where the abuse took place—"belongs to MI and it appeared MI personnel approved of the abuse."
Another witness, Specialist Jason Kennel, who was not accused of wrongdoing, said, "I saw them nude, but MI would tell us to take away their mattresses, sheets, and clothes." (It was his view, he added, that if M.I. wanted him to do this "they needed to give me paperwork.") Taguba also cited an interview with Adel L. Nakhla, a translator who was an employee of Titan, a civilian contractor. He told of one night when a "bunch of people from MI" watched as a group of handcuffed and shackled inmates were subjected to abuse by Graner and Frederick.
General Taguba saved his harshest words for the military-intelligence officers and private contractors. He recommended that Colonel Thomas Pappas, the commander of one of the M.I. brigades, be reprimanded and receive non-judicial punishment, and that Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan, the former director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, be relieved of duty and reprimanded. He further urged that a civilian contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI International, be fired from his Army job, reprimanded, and denied his security clearances for lying to the investigating team and allowing or ordering military policemen "who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations by ‘setting conditions’ which were neither authorized" nor in accordance with Army regulations. "He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse," Taguba wrote. He also recommended disciplinary action against a second CACI employee, John Israel. (A spokeswoman for CACI said that the company had "received no formal communication" from the Army about the matter.)
"I suspect," Taguba concluded, that Pappas, Jordan, Stephanowicz, and Israel "were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse at Abu Ghraib," and strongly recommended immediate disciplinary action.
The problems inside the Army prison system in Iraq were not hidden from senior commanders. During Karpinski’s seven-month tour of duty, Taguba noted, there were at least a dozen officially reported incidents involving escapes, attempted escapes, and other serious security issues that were investigated by officers of the 800th M.P. Brigade. Some of the incidents had led to the killing or wounding of inmates and M.P.s, and resulted in a series of "lessons learned" inquiries within the brigade. Karpinski invariably approved the reports and signed orders calling for changes in day-to-day procedures. But Taguba found that she did not follow up, doing nothing to insure that the orders were carried out. Had she done so, he added, "cases of abuse may have been prevented."
General Taguba further found that Abu Ghraib was filled beyond capacity, and that the M.P. guard force was significantly undermanned and short of resources. "This imbalance has contributed to the poor living conditions, escapes, and accountability lapses," he wrote. There were gross differences, Taguba said, between the actual number of prisoners on hand and the number officially recorded. A lack of proper screening also meant that many innocent Iraqis were wrongly being detained—indefinitely, it seemed, in some cases. The Taguba study noted that more than sixty per cent of the civilian inmates at Abu Ghraib were deemed not to be a threat to society, which should have enabled them to be released. Karpinski’s defense, Taguba said, was that her superior officers "routinely" rejected her recommendations regarding the release of such prisoners.
Karpinski was rarely seen at the prisons she was supposed to be running, Taguba wrote. He also found a wide range of administrative problems, including some that he considered "without precedent in my military career." The soldiers, he added, were "poorly prepared and untrained . . . prior to deployment, at the mobilization site, upon arrival in theater, and throughout the mission."
General Taguba spent more than four hours interviewing Karpinski, whom he described as extremely emotional: "What I found particularly disturbing in her testimony was her complete unwillingness to either understand or accept that many of the problems inherent in the 800th MP Brigade were caused or exacerbated by poor leadership and the refusal of her command to both establish and enforce basic standards and principles among its soldiers."
Taguba recommended that Karpinski and seven brigade military-police officers and enlisted men be relieved of command and formally reprimanded. No criminal proceedings were suggested for Karpinski; apparently, the loss of promotion and the indignity of a public rebuke were seen as enough punishment.
After the story broke on CBS last week, the Pentagon announced that Major General Geoffrey Miller, the new head of the Iraqi prison system, had arrived in Baghdad and was on the job. He had been the commander of the Guantánamo Bay detention center. General Sanchez also authorized an investigation into possible wrongdoing by military and civilian interrogators.
As the international furor grew, senior military officers, and President Bush, insisted that the actions of a few did not reflect the conduct of the military as a whole. Taguba’s report, however, amounts to an unsparing study of collective wrongdoing and the failure of Army leadership at the highest levels. The picture he draws of Abu Ghraib is one in which Army regulations and the Geneva conventions were routinely violated, and in which much of the day-to-day management of the prisoners was abdicated to Army military-intelligence units and civilian contract employees. Interrogating prisoners and getting intelligence, including by intimidation and torture, was the priority.
The mistreatment at Abu Ghraib may have done little to further American intelligence, however. Willie J. Rowell, who served for thirty-six years as a C.I.D. agent, told me that the use of force or humiliation with prisoners is invariably counterproductive. "They’ll tell you what you want to hear, truth or no truth," Rowell said. "‘You can flog me until I tell you what I know you want me to say.’ You don’t get righteous information."
Under the fourth Geneva convention, an occupying power can jail civilians who pose an "imperative" security threat, but it must establish a regular procedure for insuring that only civilians who remain a genuine security threat be kept imprisoned. Prisoners have the right to appeal any internment decision and have their cases reviewed. Human Rights Watch complained to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that civilians in Iraq remained in custody month after month with no charges brought against them. Abu Ghraib had become, in effect, another Guantánamo.
As the photographs from Abu Ghraib make clear, these detentions have had enormous consequences: for the imprisoned civilian Iraqis, many of whom had nothing to do with the growing insurgency; for the integrity of the Army; and for the United States’ reputation in the world.
Captain Robert Shuck, Frederick’s military attorney, closed his defense at the Article 32 hearing last month by saying that the Army was "attempting to have these six soldiers atone for its sins." Similarly, Gary Myers, Frederick’s civilian attorney, told me that he would argue at the court-martial that culpability in the case extended far beyond his client. "I’m going to drag every involved intelligence officer and civilian contractor I can find into court," he said. "Do you really believe the Army relieved a general officer because of six soldiers? Not a chance." | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri May 07, 2004 10:36 am Post subject: TORTURE As Made in US/UK/Israel, et. al. |
| (202) 362-5266 2 May 2004 MER@MiddleEast.Org
News, Views, & Analysis Governments, Lobbies, & the
Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know
The most honest, most comprehensive, and most mobilizing news and analysis on the Middle East always comes from MER. It is indispensable!"
Robert Silverman - Salamanca, Spain
MER is free
If you don't get MER you just don't get it!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TORTURE
As Made in US/UK/Israel, et. al.
Mid-East Realities - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - 2 May 2004:
Now why should we be so surprised really? The Israelis have been using all kinds of torture techniques for a very long time on the subjugated Palestinians. And key American allies including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and of course Iraq of yesteryear when considered an important up-and-coming U.S. 'client regime', have been using torture on their own. But there's something about pictures rather than words...of course that is it. And so the American President, et. al., all tell us now -- post public pictures of course -- how 'disgusted' they are. Yet the reality is that the CIA, the 'School of the Americas', and various arms of the Pentagon, have been notorious over the years for teaching various kinds of torture techniques to others. And the reality is that many of the secret police trained by the U.S. over the years -- especially in the Middle East and Latin America -- have been routinely using torture techniques learned from and with the Americans and then further enhanced on their own. Indeed, as far back as 1979 the publisher of MER, then one of the Editors of The Middle East Magazine in London, published actual 'top secret' State Department documents prepared for top officials in the Clinton Administration detailing the torture of Palestinians by the Israelis. The story had to be published in London because at the last minute even as the presses were about to roll intense pressures caused a U.S. newspaper to spike the story even after it had been set in type as a cover story. Indeed as well the U.S. government has been covering up matters relating to torture for a very long time now, just as they attempted to do with the pictures that finally got released to world view a few days ago now. Indeed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon personally phoned the President of CBS News 'urging' him not to go with the story. Then, after holding it for weeks, CBS finally went with it; but only after it got word other news organizations were preparing to do so. The pictures of American troops torturing and grossly humiliating Iraqi prisoners have now been spread far and wide and will be one of the lasting visual images of the American invasion/occupation of Iraq. And then yesterday, maybe as a result of the American stories this time, pictures of British troops doing much the same finally came out as well. Despite all the claims of 'shock' and 'disgust', until the US, British, and Israeli prisons are opened to serious and ongoing international inspection the assumption will now be that these practices by the occupiers are not so uncommon...only that the clear revelation of them is.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SHAME OF ABUSE BY BRIT TROOPS
By Paul Byrne
[The Daily Mirror - UK - 1 May 2004] A HOODED Iraqi captive is beaten by British soldiers before being thrown from a moving truck and left to die.
The prisoner, aged 18-20, begged for mercy as he was battered with rifle butts and batons in the head and groin, was kicked, stamped and urinated on, and had a gun barrel forced into his mouth.
After an EIGHT-HOUR ordeal, he was left barely conscious and close to death. Bleeding and vomiting and with a broken jaw and missing teeth, he was driven from a Basra camp and hurled off the truck. No one knows if he lived or died.
URINATED ON: A British soldier urinates on an Iraqi prisoner in a vile display of abuse. The captive was beaten and hurled from a moving truck. Army chiefs are investigating.
The shocking pictures on this page were handed to us by one of the attackers and a colleague. We have agreed to protect their identities as they fear reprisals.
Last night, their damning testimony was in the hands of appalled ministers and Army chiefs who pledged an urgent investigation.
Chief of the General Staff General Sir Michael Jackson said: "If this is proven, the perpetrators are not fit to wear the Queen's uniform. They have besmirched the good name of the Army and its honour."
No 10 said: "The Prime Minister fully endorses the general's statement."
The outrage, which emerged the day after US troops were pictured torturing Iraqi prisoners of war, makes a mockery of the Army's attempts to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.
GUN TO HEAD: The terrified suspect cowers as a gun is placed at his head - then the rifle barrel was forced into his mouth
Army chiefs believe it was an isolated incident involving a few rogue troops. But, it is claimed, officers turned a blind eye. One of the soldiers said: "Basically this guy was dying as he couldn't take any more. An officer came down. It was 'Get rid of him - I haven't seen him'. The paperwork gets ripped. So they threw him out, still with a bag on his head."
Weeks after the pictures were taken, a captive was allegedly beaten to death in custody by men from the same Queen's Lancashire Regiment. It is also alleged a video was found of prisoners being thrown off a bridge.
Soldier A told how the young victim was hauled in suspected of stealing from the docks.
He said: "You pick on a man and go for him. Straightaway he gets a beating, a couple of punches and kicks to put him down. Then he was dragged to the back of the vehicle."
Immediately a sandbag was placed over the man's head and his hands tied behind his back.
Soldier A said:
As we took him back he was getting a beating. He was hit with batons on the knees, fingers, toes, elbows, and head.
You normally try to leave off the face until you're in camp. If you pull up with black eyes and bleeding faces you could be in s**t.
"So it's body shots - scaring him, saying 'We're going to kill you'. A lot of them cry and p*** themselves.
Because it was so hot we put him in the back of a four- tonner truck which has a canopy over it. That's where the photos were taken. Lads were taking turns giving him a right going over, smashing him in the face with weapons and stamping on him. We had him for about eight hours.
BLEEDING: Blood seeps through the mask of battered suspect
You could see blood coming out early from the first 'digs'. He was p****d on and there was spew.
"We took his mask off to give him some water and let him have a rest for 10 minutes. He could only speak a few words, pleading 'No, mister' . No, mister'.
I did less than the others. But I joined in. Me and my mate calmed down. Then two lads come on and it starts again.
"He was missing teeth. All his mouth was bleeding and his nose was all over the place. He couldn't talk, his jaw was out. He's had a good few hours of a kicking. He was on his way to being killed. There's only so much you can take.
After the officer allegedly told the attackers to get rid of the suspect he was driven off.
Soldier A said: "The lads said they took him back to the dock and threw him off the back of a moving vehicle. They'd have freed his hands, but he'd still be hooded. He'd done nothing, really. I felt sorry for him. I'm not emotional about it, but I knew it was wrong."
Referring to the second alleged beating in custody - said to have taken place in September - Soldier B said: "It was only a matter of time.
BUTT IN GROIN: A rifle is cruelly jabbed in the young man's groin as his eight-hour nightmare goes on
"We had one who fought back. I thought 'Don't do that', it's the worst thing you can do. He got such a kicking. You could hear your mate's boots hitting this lad's spine.
"One of the lads broke his wrist on a prisoner's head. Another nearly broke his foot, kicking him. We're not helping ourselves out here. We're never going to get the Iraqis on our side. We're fighting a losing war."
Soldier B claimed after the alleged September beating troops were told to destroy incriminating evidence.
He said: "We got a warning, saying the Military Police had found a video of people throwing prisoners off a bridge. It wasn't 'Don't do it' or 'Stop it'. It was 'Get rid of it.' "
The death is being probed. At least one soldier is expected to be charged with manslaughter.
The two infantrymen claim abuse has started because Iraqi police are powerless to process suspects.
Soldier B said: "There's no point taking them to the police station because they're released within 20 minutes. The coppers don't want any comeback and let them go. All we do is teach them a lesson our way.
"You're knackered and you don't want to be going to a police station and doing statements, just for them to be released. Give them a kicking, then it's done and dusted.
"A lot of the younger ones are worse. It's as though they've something to prove. You've got a gun and you're the law. You can make people do whatever you want."
Both men fear the situation is worsening , with UK troops now seen as the enemy, rather than liberators.
One said: "I can't believe it has taken the Iraqis so long to fight back. If it had been me or my family, I'd have retaliated straightaway.
"They've just got f****d around so much. You can't go in now, and say 'Right, let's forget about what has happened and start again'.
"We're struggling now. There are too many people against us."
The MoD confirmed eight cases of alleged mistreatment of Iraqis by British personnel are being investigated by the army's Special Investigations Branch. A spokesman said: "All allegations will be investigated - and
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: MOSSAD AGENTS INVOLVED IN IRAQ PRISON ABUSE
From: "George Leroy Tyrebiter, Jr." tyrebiter@commiemartyrs.edu
Date: 5/6/04 3:23 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id: <rhel90l6cts3d4mtai648aa300rqgthf08@4ax.com>
On 06 May 2004 20:13:26 GMT, morris434@aol.com (MORRIS434) wrote:
>MOSSAD AGENTS INVOLVED IN IRAQ PRISON ABUSE:
>
>http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=15069
I did find googling that the head of CACI, Dr London, got some big
award in Israel not long ago.
And I noticed one of the employess had on a resume that he had
completed, as I recall, "The Israel Course"
Our soldiers did not understand the concept of "shame" which is so
powerful with muslims, and it is entirely possible that more
knowledgeable Israelis, directly or indirectly, pushed us in the
direction of this humiliation tactic.
>
>Iraq: "Severest Form of Injuries I've Seen in My Career":
>
>http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/05/06/iraq-severest-form-of-injuries-i-ve-seen-in-my-career.php
>
>OUR 'FRIEND' ISRAEL:
>
>http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/05/06/our-friend-israel.php
>
>
>Brahimi versus Chalabi: The daggers are drawn:
>
>http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/05/05/brahimi-versus-chalabi-the-daggers-are-drawn.php | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
