War Without End

Alpha · Last edited by Alpha on Fri Apr 25, 2008 10:15 am; edited 19 times in total

Zionists and Torture (from GITMO TO ABU GHRAIB):

http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/August/17%20o/Seymour%20Hersh%20and%20the%20Missing%20ZionistIsraeli%20Connection%20By%20James%20Petras.htm

Seymour Hersh and the Missing Zionist-Israeli Connection

By James Petras

Al-Jazeerah, August 17, 2004

An Exposé ¯f an Exposéº

As I read Hersh s highly publicized and influential reports in the New Yorker Magazine on torture in US occupied Iraq (1), it became increasingly apparent that this was not a thoroughly researched exposé ¯f the higher ups responsible for the policy of torture. Hersh s reportage was a selective account guided by selected question about selected officials. As one reads through Hersh s version of events with increasing incredulity it is clear that Hersh hangs his whole argument and exposé ¯f US officials involved in the use of torture on one person Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - (important to be sure) and not on the other top Defense officials who were extremely influential and responsible for war policy, establishing intelligence agencies and co-coordinating strategy and tactics during the occupation. Rumsfeld was part of an elite, which sanctioned and promoted torture. Throughout his exposé ˆersh deliberately omits the role of the Zionists (Wolfowitz, Feith numbers 2 and 3 in the Pentagon) who supported and promoted the war, torture-interrogation and particularly Israeli experts who led seminars teaching the US Military Intelligence their torture-interrogation techniques of Arab prisoners based on their half-century of practice.

In looking for documentary sources of torture interrogation Hersh relies on academic texts and 20 year old CIA manuals, not Israeli practice widely disseminated by the Mossad and Shin Bet advisers presently involved in torture in neighboring Palestine and Iraq today.

Hersh is presented in the mass media as an iconoclastic, investigative journalist, a role which gives his reportages and exposé³ a great deal of credibility. Yet it was Seymour Hersh who publicly defended torture of suspects and their family members as a method of interrogation, citing the Israeli examples in the wake of September 11, justifying torture in the same way as the Pentagon now justifies the torture of Iraqi suspects. Instead of citing an obscure professor at the University of Chicago, Hersh should have cited the influential tract defending torture by Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz (a fellow Zionist) widely read by the civilian militarists who run the Pentagon, and direct the chain of command leading to interrogation through torture.

Hersch s account fails to provide a political context in the Pentagon and in the Middle East for the systematic use of torture. To understand the issue of the US practice of torture and violent abuse of Iraqi prisoners and civilians requires an examination of the ideological demonization of the Iraqi population the Arabs and the US unconditional political and military support for the state of Israel, the principal long-term large-scale practitioner of torture against Arabs. The most vitriolic systematic denigration of Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East is found in the writings an speeches of influential US-based Zionist ideologues, like the Pipes (father and son), the Kristols (senior and junior), the Kagans, Cohens, Goldhagens and others. The first step toward justifying torture is to dehumanize the victim, to label them as untermensch (congenitally violent savages). The Zionists in the US were merely following the pronouncements of their ideological mentors in Israel who not infrequently proclaimed that the only thing the Arab understands is force (Sharon, Golda Meier, Dayan, Rabin etc&). The Zionist ideologues in the Pentagon were influential in arousing hatred of Arabs in several ways. First in their defense of Israel they deliberately distorted the nature of Israel s colonial war, blaming the Palestinian victims for the systematic violence which Israel inflicted on them. The ideologues defended every Israeli violent action: the massacre in Jenin, new Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the murderous assault on Rafah, the killing of UN aid workers and peace activists, the monstrous wall ghettoizing a whole people, the mass murder of hundreds of Palestinians and destructions of thousands of homes in Gaza. Israeli violence against Palestinians made a deep impression on US Zionists who generalized and deepened their animus to Arab Muslims throughout the Middle East, but particularly in Iraq where they were in a position to implement their policies.

The Zionists and Torture in Iraq

The Pentagon s main source of intelligence and propaganda for the invasion and occupation of Iraq was in part derived from the Office of Specials Plans (OSP) and Counter-terrorism Evaluation Group established by ultra-Zionist Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defense (third in the Pentagon hierarchy) with strong support from Wolfowitz, Abrams and Rumsfeld. Feith put fellow Zionist, Abram Shulsky in charge of OSP. The Special Group bypassed normal CIA and military intelligence agencies and secured its own intelligence prior to the war and was involved in securing intelligence during the first stages of the occupation (before it was dismantled). As the Iraqi resistance increased its effectiveness and the US justification for the war (weapons of mass destruction) was proven to be a total fabrication of the Special Group, the top echelon of the Pentagon, Rumsfeld and the Zionists grew desperate they collectively passed the orders to intensify and extend torture to all Iraqi suspects in all the prisons. It is a gross simplification to say that the line of command was limited to Rumsfeld, when Wolfowitz, Feith and Abrams were also intimately involved in everyday policies prosecuting the war, defending the occupation and controlling intelligence.

Even more than Rumsfeld, the Zionist zealots in the Pentagon were the most ardent promoters of introducing Israeli methods of torturing and humiliating Arab suspects, lauding Israeli successes in dealing with the Arabs . They, not military intelligence, promoted the use of Israeli experts in interrogation; they encouraged Israeli led seminars in urban warfare and interrogation techniques for the US military intelligence officers and private contractors.

Nothing about the responsibility of the Pentagon Zionists in the torture of Iraqis appears in Hersh s expose . The glaring omissions are deliberate as they are obvious form a systematic pattern and serve the purpose of exonerating the Pentagon Zionists and Israel and hanging the entire responsibility for war crimes on Rumsfeld.

A Close Look at Hersh s Method

A close reading of Hersh s series of articles in the New Yorker reveals his premises and political perspectives, none of which have anything to do with democratic values or concern with human rights.

Hersh s principal concern is that Rumsfeld s blanket order to use torture disrupted the operations of an elite group made up of professional commandos involved in a secret special access program designed to murder, kidnap, torture terror suspects throughout the world. In other words by involving thousands of everyday US soldiers (referred to by one of Hersh s sources as hillbillies ) as torturers in Iraq Rumsfeld was endangering the operation of professional killers throughout the world. Hersh s second major concern was that the discovery of the torture would hurt America s (sic) prospects in the war on terror in other words a tactic he attributed (solely and wrongfully) to Rumsfeld was endangering the US empire-building capacity. Hersh s empire-centric view refuses to recognize the elementary rights of self-determination and international law. Hersh s third apparent concern is with Rumsfeld s bypassing the CIA and other intelligence agencies and attempt to monopolize intelligence. This is a bit ingenuous. Wolfowitz and Feith set up the special intelluigence agency that fed Rumsfeld the fabricated intelligence, they promoted Chalabi (known throughout Washington intelligence circles as totally unreliable) as an impeccable source of inside information , in Saddams non-existent weapons of mass destruction knowing in advance that they were passing phony data . As Wolfowitz latter cynically admitted the decision to launch the US invasion over banned weapons was because it was the only issue they could agree upon.

Hersh is not stupid, he knows what everyone else in Washington and out of government knows: the Zionists in the Pentagon were pushing for war with Iraq before 9/11 (even before they took office in Washington and were working with the Israeli state) and were intent on having the US destroy Iraq, at any price including the loss of American lives, budget busting deficits, imperiling oil interests and jeopardizing US global imperial interests.

They launched the invasion bypassing the military central command by deliberately falsifying the response of the conquered Iraqi people ( they will welcome us as liberators Wolfowitz and Perle) and intent on destroying civil and state structures (the so-called de-Baathification purges) in order to forever undermine Iraq s capacity to challenge Israel s domination of the Middle East.

None of Hersh s questions explore these well known facts about who is responsible for the atrocities against Iraqis. He didn t have to cite unnamed intelligence or Pentagon sources General Anthony Zinni and many non-Zionists insiders, as well as the CIA and Central Command knew about the Zionist promoters, plans and moreover knew the role Feith played in pushing for harsher interrogation techniques. But Hersh ignored these questions, those Zionists and their ideological supporters and advisers who did everything possible to undermine any Iraqi economic recovery and capacity to run their own education, health and electoral systems. De-Baathification was meant to turn Iraq into a backward tribal, divided desert country run by their proté§© Chalabi, the only candidate who would recognize Israel, supply it with oil and support Mid-East integration under Israeli hegemony. The Zionist Pentagonistas succeeded in securing the war, they succeeded in destroying basic Iraqi social services, they destroyed the state (courts, military, civil services). However in their blind subservience to Israel they overlooked the fact that the disbanded professional soldiers and purged civil leaders and professionals would become part of an experienced armed resistance, that Iraq would become ungovernable, that US rule would crumble, that the US would become bogged down in a politically lost war, that its puppet regime would have neither legitimacy nor popular support. The Zionist did what they thought was best for Israel, even if it provoked greater opposition world-wide, including in the US, where a majority have turned against the occupation by May 2004. Only the Israeli transmission belt, AIPAC would cheer Bush and his continuation of the occupation and pledge allegiance to the Israeli war against Palestinians. When their self-serving prediction of an Iraqi welcoming committee turned into a valiant popular anti-colonial war, Feith and his underlings called for greater use of more forceful interrogation methods Rumsfeld and Feith encouraged Israeli type torture to humiliate the Arabs . Meanwhile Kagan s call to bomb the Arab street was tried and failed to intimidate the Iraqi resistance.

Hersh s exposé ¯f Rumsfeld as the only top culprit turns up at a convenient moment: when US policy has failed and most knowledgeable officials are moving closer to identifying the role of the Pentagon Zionists. It was clever by half: Rumsfeld was universally despised in Congress, among the professional military and a host of others for his policies and arrogant public face. Even in exposing Rumsfeld however Hersh is careful to do so in a fashion that allows his Zionist colleagues to continue in office unscathed.

Hersh justifies some of Rumsfeld s acts of illegal terror by describing legalistic obstacles to eliminating terrorists. Hersh s support for Rumsfeld s resort to unaccountable commandos engaging in assassination, kidnapping and torture of suspects around the world is in effect a way to condone those tactics after Rumsfeld leaves office. If Rumsfeld resigns, torture will continue under colleagues Feith and Wolfowitz. Hersh drags in a fifth level functionary working under Feith, Stephan Cambone, who he tells us was deeply involved in the torture of prisoners more involved than his Zionist superiors? We might ask the peerless investigatory journalist: How is it that Hersh blames those above above (Rumsfeld) and those below (Cambone) but never focuses on Feith and Wolfowitz who designed and directed policy?

In setting up Cambone for the exposé¬ Hersh profiles Cambome in terms that fit with greater pertinence the Zionists: He advocated war with Iraq (following Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle and Abrams); he disdained the CIA who the Pentagon Zionists viewed as too cautious ; he attacked the CIA for not finding WMD. Since Cambone functioned under Wolfowitz and Feith he was simply repeating what his bosses wanted to hear and perhaps that s why they entrusted him with the relevant dirty tasks of extracting intelligence via torture.

Hersh tries to link Cambone with the extension of the torture practiced selectively by the Special Agency Program. SAP was already operative before Cambone took office and its operations were under the direction of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith and Abrams. Hersh s dating of the torture in August 2003 with Cambone and Major General Miller (from Guantanamo) assignment is false. It started earlier under the SAP and with Israeli trained interrogators. Moreover the Pentagon headed by the same three (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith) ordered Miller s use of torture on suspects at Guantanamo who moved him to Iraq as a reward for exemplary work. Hersh does not explore Miller s links with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith before going to Iraq. He simply aborts the analysis looks at the middle and lower levels of power: Cambone, Miller, interrogators, and enlisted soldiers. Out of this framework Hersh comes up with a detailed piece of selective investigatory journalism. Hersh exposes some but covers up for those most actively involved in invoking the war and directing it in a way that served Israeli interests. The cost in US lives and the degradation of young US servicemen forced to assume the role of torturers is of little concern to the Pentagon Zionists. Even after all the exposé³ of torture, killings and rapes, major Zionist ideologues like Kristol, Krauthammer, Rubin, Perle, Kagan and Frum have launched attacks on Bush for backing off from the war.

The Pentagon s Zionists are under attack. In the face of the US debacle in Iraq, the anti-Zionist coalition found in the State Department, the Military, the CIA and elsewhere have launched a counter-offensive. Marine General Anthony Zinni, Senator Fritz Hollings and other prominent political, diplomatic and military leaders have openly identified the role of the Pentagon Zionists in launching and directing the war to favor Israel. The most recent and visible move was the marginalization of the pro-Israel Chalabi the proté§© of Wolfowitz, Feith and Abrams. The raid on his house and the carting off of his records, ostensibly to investigate financial irregularities is a symbolic setback. So is the US abstention in the Security Council on Israel s rape of Rafah much to the chagrin of the Israel First crowd at the AIPAC convention. In response all the major Jewish organizations and publications from the Forward, Anti-Defamation League, AJC and others have denounced the critics of the Pentagon Zionists.

Hersh attempts to head off the anti-Zionist headhunting coalition by focusing on the two Goyim Rumsfeld and Cambone has been to no avail. The knives are drawn. Because of Zionist power in and out of the government, the anti-Zionist coalition and their supporters use code words, the most common of which is neo-conservative , which everyone now knows means Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams and other Zionists in and out of the government. AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League and other Israel Firsters sensing the danger to their co-thinkers have turned to labeling critics of the neo-conservative militarists anti-Semites and arousing Congress members, the media and their propaganda machine into silencing the coalition into submission..

But the Coalition is gaining influence Bush is insisting on handing over symbolic power to Iraqi Shias in a subtle game of cooption promoted by the State Department. Already the Zionists led by Kagan and Kristol have all but called Bush a traitor and coward for retreating.

The photos of torture, which have discredited the war policy, threaten to isolate the Zionist zealots. Faced with the indignation of the whole civilized world at the war crimes, the progressive Zionist apologists, like Hersh, take to isolating blame on Cambone and Rumsfeld and minimizing the responsibility to a few soldiers in a cell block , as did Senator Lieberman while the AIPAC elite cheer Bush on with the war ignoring the muck and blood of torture.

Rumsfeld has shrewdly tied his future to his Zionist partners in the Pentagon and outside, counting on riding on their coat tails and reaping the support of the powerful Jewish lobby and their leaders in the Israeli state, who stand behind them. He has few other influential allies.

Conclusion

In the final analysis even if Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, Rubin, Libby and the current crop of Zionist Pentagonistas are forced to resign it will only be a temporary setback. The Zionist political organizations remain intact, their influence over Congress remains overwhelming and they have pledges from both major presidential candidates that Israel s cause is America s cause (Bush and Kerry). The Zionist juggernaut grinds on, securing sanctions against Syria and calling for the bombing of Iran s supposed nuclear facilities. If you can t find a real threat to the US maybe the next crop of Zionists in power will cook up another consensual pretext . Holbrooke and Sandy Berger can tutor the US on multi-lateral wars of aggression.

Meantime among those who still deny Zionist power in US foreign policy, one only has to read the accounts of the AIPAC conference in Washington in May 2004. At a time when Israel was killing children in the streets of Rafah and destroying hundreds of homes under the horrified eyes of the entire civilized world, when an indignant UN Security Council finally rose to its feet and unanimously condemned Israel, US Congressional leaders and the two major Presidential candidates pledged unconditional support to Israel, evoking the bloodthirsty cheers of investment brokers, dentists, doctors, lawyers the cream of the cream of American Jewish society. The cause of Israel is the cause of America rings out from the mouth of every candidate as the Israelis bulldoze homes and snipers shoot small girls on their way to buy candy. Its almost as if Sharon wanted to demonstrate the power of the Zionists in the US, timing the vile destruction of Rafah to coincide with the AIPAC convention and the disgusting appearance of the spineless American politicians supporting ongoing crimes against humanity. Not one voice was raised in even meek protest. To those who claim that the Zionist are just one of a number of influential lobbies try explaining the unconditional support for Israel s genocide of the Palestinian people by the most powerful politicians in the US.

It is almost a perverse pleasure to watch Sharon smear the muck and gore of Rafah on the groveling faces of US politicians they deserve each other. But for those of us who support a democratic anti-imperialist foreign policy this is one of the most humiliating moments in US history. Something we won t read in the exposé³ of Hersh or the erudite Zionist treatises in defense of endless wars.

(1) Seymour Hersh, Torture at Abu Ghraib: American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far does responsibility go?, New Yorker, May 10, 2004; The Gray Zone: How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib, New Yorker, May 25, 2004, and Mixed Messages: Why the government didn t know what it knew, New Yorker, June 3, 2004.

Additional material at the following URL:

The Zionists and Torture in Iraq:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2004/08/19/the-zionists-and-torture-in-iraq.php

'Gitmo' Prisoners Wrapped in Israeli Flags:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/03/17/gitmo-prisoners-wrapped-in-israeli-flags.php

Israeli Interrogators in Iraq:

http://gorillaintheroom.blogspot.com/2006/02/were-israelis-involved-in-abu-ghriab.html

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/07/03/breaking-news-bbc-airs-israeli-torture-connection-to-iraq.php

Janis Karpinski of Abu Ghraib sticking it to Rumsfeld in Germany:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/11/14/janis-karpinski-helps-to-go-after-rumsfeld-in-germany.php

Anti-American Protests Spread through Islamic World

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/05/14/anti-american-protests-spread-through-islamic-world.php

Pentagon Defies Order to Release Abu Ghraib Material

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/07/26/pentagon-blocks-release-of-abu-ghraib-images-here-s-why.php

US Support for Israel PRIMARY MOTIVATION for US terror problem:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/01/14/more-war-for-israel-coming-with-bombing-of-iran.php

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Abu Ghraib and American Moral Authority

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-edward-m-kennedy-/abu-ghraib-and-american-m_b_41700.html

READ MORE: Edward M. Kennedy, Iraq, United States
We in the Kennedy family are immensely proud of Rory and all her accomplishments. Her compelling and important films expose injustice and challenge us to end it. Her latest documentary, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, describes in vivid terms how America has lost its way in Iraq and demonstrates that responsibility for the abuses at Abu Ghraib reaches to the top of the Bush Administration.

The film's debut this month will add to the growing public demand for a thorough investigation of abusive interrogation and detention practices that violate America's fundamental ideals. Reforms are obviously needed to hold those responsible accountable and ensure that such abuses are not repeated.

The images of cruelty and perversion are still difficult to look at. An Iraqi prisoner in a dark hood and cape, standing on a cardboard box with electrodes attached to his body. Naked men forced to simulate sex acts on each other. The corpse of a man who had been beaten to death, lying in ice, next to soldiers smiling and giving a "thumbs up" sign. A pool of blood from the wounds of a naked, prisoner attacked by a military dog.

These images are seared into our national conscience. The reports of
widespread abuse by U.S. personnel were initially met with disbelief, then incomprehension. They stand in sharp contrast to the ideals America has always stood for: our belief in the dignity and worth of all people, our unequivocal rejection of torture and abuse, our commitment to the rule of law. The images horrified us, and severely damaged America's reputation in the Middle East and around the world, and made the war on terrorism harder to win.

It may well be the steepest and deepest fall from grace in our history. Yet at every opportunity, the Administration has tried to minimize the problem and avoid responsibility for it.

They call it the work of "a few bad apples"--all conveniently lower-rank soldiers--in a desperate effort to emphasize the role of senior military officials in exposing the scandal and insulate the civilian leadership from responsibility.

The lower-rank soldiers have been held responsible. But what about their superiors, who encouraged their conduct? No action -- criminal, administrative, or otherwise -- has been taken against the high civilian officials responsible for approving and encouraging torture and mistreatment by U.S. officials in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. We know about the actions against Charles Graner, Lynndie England, and others. But what about William Haynes, Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee, John Yoo, David Addington, Douglas Feith? Bybee, who signed the notorious Justice Department memorandum redefining torture, was confirmed to a lifetime position as a federal appellate judge. Haynes, the Navy General Counsel who made the Bybee Memorandum official policy for the military, was nominated for an appellate judgeship. Gonzales is now the nation's Attorney General.

It is clear that further investigation of the abuses is needed. The American people deserve a thorough review of all detention and interrogation policies used by military and intelligence personnel abroad, and a full accounting of all officials responsible for policies that allowed the abuses to take place.

What we got instead were nine incomplete and self-serving internal
investigations by the Pentagon. None of the investigators were given the authority to challenge the conduct of the civilian command. The report of the Schlesinger Panel found that abuses were "widespread" and that there was "both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels." But Secretary Rumsfeld refused to let the panel to consider personal accountability for the abuses.

The Republican rubber-stamp Congress was complicit in the Administration's efforts to evade responsibility. The Military Commissions Act, enacted last summer, was intended to reinforce the protections of the Geneva Conventions which have guided our men and women in uniform so well for decades. But the new law still leaves much uncertainty. It emphasizes that murder and rape are clearly out of bounds, but it is far less clear about other atrocities such as placing detainees in stress positions for hours, or throwing cold water on their naked bodies, or subjecting them to water boarding.

Inexplicably, the Administration and the Republicans in Congress refused to state unequivocally in the Act that such practices are be prohibited. The Army Field Manual prohibits these practices, but the Administration refuses to limit its other interrogators. That leaves open the possibility of further abuses, and it puts our men and women serving overseas at greater risk.

What is urgently needed is the enactment of specific legislation prohibiting such abusive interrogation techniques and restoring the right of detainees to challenge their detention through habeas corpus petitions.

The nation's standing as a leader on human rights and respect for the rule of law has been severely undermined by these atrocities. Some claim that the behavior is acceptable, because terrorists do worse. But by lowering our standards, we also reduce our moral authority in the world. The torture scandal has clearly set back our effort in the war on terrorism. The widespread perception that the U.S. condones torture strengthens the ability of Al Qaeda and others to create a backlash of hatred against America around the world.

An essential part of winning the war on terrorism and protecting our country for the future is safeguarding the ideals and principles that America stands for at home and around the world.

That includes the belief that torture is beyond the pale. The vast majority of Americans strongly reject the cruel interrogation tactics used in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. The American people hold fast to our fundamental values.

The challenges we face in the post-9/11 world are obvious, and the stakes are very high. Working together, we have met such challenges before, and I'm confident we can do so again. Nothing less than the rule of law, and America's respect in the world are at stake.

Alpha

From: "Ronald"

Subject: MER: Seymour Hersh protects Israel
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:49:10 -0400

Mark Bruzonsky's (MER) analysis below is right on target. Hersh turns out to be a unique mixture of someone who at one at the same time points to Israeli responsibility and disguises it. Here we see him pointing ludicrously to Iran instead of Israel as being behind the Iraq war as if people like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Cheney et al , people who are evidently working in Israel's interest, didn't exist. It's too weird. Hersh's book on Israel's nuclear arsenal, The Sampson Option at one and the same time exposes Israel and justifies their nuclear policies, as if he's aware of the heat that he will take from the usual suspects. --RB

----- Original Message -----
From: cbrad4334@aol.com
To: net
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 6:22 PM
Subject: [eFreePalestine] Seymour Hersh

Sy Hersh - Used for Israeli Disinformation and Cover-Up?

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MER Washington Scene:

Watch with MERTV Journalist Seymour Hersh speaking Sunday in Washington about what to expect from a Bush/Cheney/Neocon II Administration -- it's today the Feature Video at MIDDLEEAST.ORG.

Much Worse Yet To Come
Warns Journalist Sy Hersh

Iraq Torture Scandal - On Target but incomplete
Iran - Crafty Planted Disinformation?
Israel - Self-Censorship, Appologist, Cover-Up?

MIDDLEEAST.ORG - MER - Washington - 21 Sept: Last weekend at All Soul's Church in the heart of Washington the well-known journalist Seymour Hersh gave a chilling warning about what's yet to come if the Bush/Cheney/Neocons retain power in an election now looming just weeks away. Hersh is the author of the new book, Chain of Command : The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, an expansion of his New Yorker Magazine articles published earlier this year that single-handedly exposed the U.S. torture scandals in Iraq.

In addition to watching Hersh's Sunday talk this interview with Hersh also was published last weekend in Salon.com. Note the surprising lead about Iran about which there is very little in the interview, and quite literally nothing of substance. Indeed one does have to wonder if Hersh hasn't been set up by some of his long-time big-time Israeli spook friends when it comes to pushing the confounding thesis that it was "Iran not Israel" that pushed the U.S. into invading/occupying Iraq. And maybe even something more than set up, for Hersh simply refuses to really get into the Israeli angle of things in so many cases. He doesn't focus on how the Israelis have been using horrendous torture, bombing, infiltration, and assassination techniques for years now, with ever-growing CIA and Pentagon involvment. He doesn't focus on the powerful Israeli-Jewish lobby in Washington -- in fact he seems to avoid it like the plague. He dosn't focus on the interconnections in the Middle East between the mis-nomered 'peace process', Iraq, and events throughout the region from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon to Turkey to Pakistan. And he doesn't highlight the clear connections between the Washington Neocons whom he does criticize -- though rarely ever mentioning that most of them are Jewish and hard-line Zionists -- and the intimate practically conspiratorial connections they have had for years with the Israelis.

In fact, the more one thinks about this, the more one reaches the possible conclusion that while Hersh is on target (though incomplete) when it comes to the torture scandal, when it comes to the geostrategic, especially when it comes to matters relating to Israel, Hersh may well be being used for disinformation and continually engages in a kind of self-censorship and cover-up.

Bottom Line: Take Hersh very seriously when he is writing about massacres and torture -- his long-time specialties since Vietnam and his New York Times days. But when it comes to matters relating to Israel and geopolitics and now Iran -- which he admits in this interview to be "too cosmic" for him -- be extra skeptical. Hersh, liberal Jewish Democrat himself, has a long history in Washington of not being willing to seriously report about the crucially-important realities involving the Israeli-Jewish lobby. And after the trouble he had years ago with his limited book The Sampson Complex Hersh seems to have made extra efforts to stay on the good side of his 'liberal' Jewish and Israeli friends who not only make up a considerable segment of the book-buying public and New Yorker subscribers but whose influence in the American media is so tremendously powerful...and thus dangerous. MER

Seymour Hersh's Alternative History of Bush's War

By Mary Jacoby

Salon.com - 18 September 2004: The crack investigative reporter tells Salon about a disastrous battle the U.S. brass hushed up, the frightening True Believers in the White House, and how Iran, not Israel, may have manipulated us into war.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Seymour Hersh has written more than two dozen stories for the New Yorker magazine on the secret machinations of the Bush administration in what the White House calls the "war on terrorism." His revelations, including an investigation of a group of neoconservatives at the Pentagon who set up their own special intelligence unit to press the case for invading Iraq, have consistently broken news.

Arguably his most important scoop came last spring, when the legendary investigative reporter received the now infamous photos of prisoner abuse by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, Iraq, as well as the explosive report on the abuse by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. The story Hersh published in the New Yorker, followed by a report by CBS's "60 Minutes," created an international scandal for the Bush administration and led to congressional hearings.

In a new book, "Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib," Hersh expands upon his work in the New Yorker to contribute new insights and revelations. He discloses how a CIA analyst's report on abuses against captured Taliban prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, made its way to the White House in 2002, putting National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on notice two years before the Abu Ghraib scandal that human rights violations were taking place in U.S.-run prisons abroad.

In March 2002, Hersh writes, a military action against al-Qaida, known as Operation Anaconda, was botched in Afghanistan's mountainous border with Pakistan. Billed at the time as a success story by the Pentagon, it was in fact a debacle, plagued by squabbling between the services, bad military planning and avoidable deaths of American soldiers, as well as the escape of key al-Qaida leaders, likely including Osama bin Laden.

Hersh's story is well known. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1969 exposé of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, in which American soldiers killed more than 500 civilians. He is the author of eight books, including 1983's "The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House." And, since 1998, he's been a staff writer for the New Yorker.

I visited with Hersh this week in his tiny, unadorned two-room office in downtown Washington, where he works amid a whirring fax machine, a constantly ringing phone and delivery men knocking on the door with packages. A map of the world, slightly off-kilter, is taped to the wall behind his desk, which is piled high with papers.

He speaks quickly, answering questions before the sentences can be completed, and hopscotches through conversational topics, as if everything's a race against time. "I have some Brazilians coming in. You know, just to talk about ... wait! Turn it off for a second," he says, gesturing at my recorder. He shares with me a lead he's working on. He flashes me a look at an intriguing document before stealing it away. "OK, let's talk about the book. I've gone over the top here. I'm not pimping anymore. I'm now a full-fledged whore, with red paint," he says, pretending to smear rouge on his cheeks. He loosens his tie. "Let's get on with it!"

What is new in the book, and what is based on your published work?
I'd say about 35 percent of the opening material on Abu Ghraib is new, maybe about 15,000 words, altogether about, I don't know what percentage. Maybe about a third, maybe a little less, is either new or revised or significantly changed. But the bulk of the book is the articles I did, put in a different form and combined in a different way by a very competent editor of mine. This book was edited by the New Yorker and fact-checked by the New Yorker. Everything that is new in the book was fact-checked by the New Yorker.

Who was the editor?

Her name is Amy Davidson. She's a senior editor, and she's great. A man named John Bennet, who is a wonderful editor, was my editor for the first couple of years, and then Amy came on because John's good that way. John is very avuncular, and he wants other people to start editing significant stuff, because among other things, he's always stuck with the big pieces. It was fact-checked by the same people, and the publisher paid for it. And Remnick, to his everlasting credit, David Remnick the editor, agreed that even though there's a very good story at the beginning - the whole Condi Rice meeting issue - he said publish it in your book and go make some money. It was sort of nice of them. It reflects well on the New Yorker. His point was, your being out there reflects well on the New Yorker. We all fight for making a living.

To talk about the new revelations ...

Let me tell you the one I like the most; aside from the obvious stuff about Abu Ghraib, there was a story I didn't write two years ago about Operation Anaconda. I didn't write it because, oh, a lot of complicated reasons. One, it was very hostile to our soldiers, and the military, and General [Tommy] Franks, and [Major Gen. Frank] Hagenbeck, a very nasty story. And then secondly, there was bad blood between the Marine Corps, and General Franks, and CentComm and the Air Force, and it just didn't, uh ... it's one of those stories. The real reason in a funny way is that even though my sources were angry in talking about it, it's one of the stories they really would have regretted, because you're talking about internecine warfare among the services. It's about boys ... anyway.

They would have regretted it?

They would have regretted talking to me about that. In there is an account of the Marines insisting that General Franks sign an MOU, a memorandum of understanding, of how the Marines would be used. We're talking about in combat, this kind of war going on between the services. And, you know, I probably guess it was the right decision, because I had to do obviously an alternate history of the war. And obviously there were certain people talking to me. People on the inside know what's going on. And so, I probably agree it was OK to do it. But I felt bad when I saw [former Gen. Wesley] Clark later. I had talked to Clark about the story at the time. Then two years later I ran into him when he was running for president, or right before, and he said, "Whatever happened to that story?" I said, "Well, I just decided not to write it." And he said, "Well, you should have. It's your job."

He's an amazingly straight guy. A difficult guy. "You should have." He basically told me, "Punk kid. You didn't know what you were doing." I also respect him because ...

Let's talk about some of these revelations.

Oh, so that was the one I liked the most.

But why didn't you write it at the time? You thought it would be too hostile?

No! There was, you know, it was a tough story about troops running from the battlefield, you know; it was just a tough story. [Hersh is referring to the lost battle of Anaconda.] I was writing a lot of other tough stories, and, uh ... it just didn't work. Let's put it that way.

Isn't that what a lot of the mainstream press get accused of - certainly not you - but holding back important information out of sensitivity for the feelings of the nation?

Ain't none of us perfect. It just seemed at the time, some of the people who were talking to me at the time, it would cause a big stink, and some of the Marines who were talking to me would not talk anymore. I also know, in order to do the story right, I would have had to go find some of the guys who were in the mission ... There was a lot of reporting to do, and I don't know, I just didn't do it.

But now you've gone back and revisited it in the book?

Oh yeah. Give me the book. I'll show you right where it is. So I'm not backing off. It was a story that should have been written. Of course I should have written it.

Let's talk about this anecdote about Vice President Cheney saying there would be no resignations [over the Abu Ghraib scandal]. Your publisher emphasized this in the press release, and I wanted to know ...

Now, wait a minute. Are you asking about a press release? Excuse me. That's like asking me about a headline.

Just tell me why you feel it's important.

What? Tell me why I feel it's important that Cheney called up?

What does it reveal?

It's more complicated than you think. For one thing, it reveals that they're all as one. The notion that they're going to fire [Donald] Rumsfeld, as people actually entertained, is comical. After 9/11 he gets in this swaggering mode and says we're going to smoke those terrorists out of their snake holes. And then it's clear there's prisoner abuse and torture going on. But does Cheney call up and say, "Oh, my God! What's going on over there, Don? What kind of craziness are you doing to those prisoners? This is devastating to our campaign. What's going on?" I don't hear that. What I hear is, "Let's all pull together and get past it." Very interesting.
You're an expert on Henry Kissinger. Is there someone who ...

I'm an expert on the side of Henry Kissinger that lied like most people breathed.

Is there someone who is the Henry Kissinger in this administration?
Oh, believe me, I pray for one [clasps his hands and looks beseechingly upward]. Wouldn't it be great if the reality was that they were lying about WMD, and they really didn't believe that democracy would come when they invaded Iraq, and you could go to war with 5,000 troops, a few special forces, a few bombs and a lot of American flags, and Iraq would fold, Saddam would be driven out, a new Baath Party would emerge that's moderate? Democracy would flow like water out of a fountain. These guys believe it. They believe WMD. There's no fallback with these guys. These guys are utopians. They're like Trotskyites. They believe in permanent revolution. They really believe. They believe that they could go in with few forces. They believed that once they went in it would happen quick. Iran would get the message. What they call occupied Lebanon would get the lesson. Even the Saudis would change.

They thought it would happen quickly?

Very quickly. I don't have any empirical basis for it, but if I had to bet, the plan was to go right into Syria. That's why the fourth division was hanging for so long in the desert out there right on the border with Syria. In the early days of the war, before this government figured out how much trouble they were in - which took them a long time - they would drive practice runs, somebody told me. Again, I'm just saying what was told to me; this is not something I reported, but I was told pretty reliably, they were doing practice runs that amounted to the distance from the border to Damascus. It's my belief always - again this is not empirical, it's sort of my heuristic view - that the real reason [Paul] Wolfowitz and others were mad at [Gen. Eric] Shinseki when he testified before the war about [the need for] 200 or 300 troops - it wasn't about the numbers - was, "Didn't he get it? What had he been listening to in the tank? Didn't we explain to him in the tank what we told the chiefs? This is the way it's going to be. Didn't he understand what it's all about?" He didn't get it. He hadn't understood what they meant. This was all going to fall down. It was all going to be peaches and cream. And Shinseki just didn't get it! It wasn't about the numbers. He wasn't a member of the clan. He didn't join the utopia crowd.

You've answered one of my questions. Let's elaborate on it. Clearly there's very little that's, well, in touch with reality in these policies.

Ha, ha, ha. It's so easy for you to say that!

But it's not so clear actually. Many Americans ...

I think I used actually ... I'll get you this word [grabs book from my lap and begins flipping through it] ... there was a "fantastical" quality to the White House's deliberations. Fantastical. That was the phrase I used.

Yes, I read that. And that was my next question. With Kissinger, there were lies, and he knew exactly what he was doing ...

Yes, one of his aides was assigned - literally assigned on one of the secret flights they made to China - to keep track of the lies, who knew what. I think they used to describe it as keeping track of what statements were made, but essentially it was who was being told what, because so many different people were being told different things. But these guys, do you realize how much better off we would be if they really were cynical, and they really were lying about it, because, yes, behind the invasion would be something real, like support for Israel or oil. But it's not! It's not about oil. It's about utopia. I guess you could call it idealism. But it's idealism that's dead wrong. It's like one of the far-right Christian credos. It's a faith-based policy. Only it wasn't a religious faith. It was the faith that democracy would flourish.

So you don't think that this is some Machiavellian, cynical, manipulative ...
I used to pray it was! We'd be in better shape. Is there anything worse than idealism that doesn't conform to reality? You have an unrealistic policy.

It seems that they are very selective not only about what kind of information they present to the public but even in what they decide to believe in themselves.

I think these guys in their naiveté and single-mindedness have been so completely manipulated by - not the Israelis - but the Iranians. The Iranians always wanted us in. I think there's a lot of evidence that Iran had much to do with [Ahmed] Chalabi's disinformation [about nonexistent Iraqi WMD]. I think there were people in the CIA who suspected this all along, but of course they couldn't get their view in. I think the Senate Intelligence Committee's report's a joke, the idea this CIA was misleading the president. They get some analysts in and say, "Were you pressured?" And they all say, "No, excuse me?" Is that how you do an investigation? The truth of the matter is, there was tremendous pressure put on the analysts [to produce reports that bolstered the case for war]. It's not as if anybody issued a diktat. But everybody understood what to do.

Talk about the ...

Wait. You're missing something now. The Iranian stuff. I think Iran probably had more to do with Chalabi's information than people know.
We know that Chalabi had Iranian agents on his payroll.

Yeah, but, well, he admits to that. He had a villa in Tehran. But basically I think Iran was very interested in getting us involved. We get knocked down a peg; they become the big boys on the block.

Are you working on this now?

Yeah, I'm thinking about it. I'm reporting on it. But I'm not working on it. I'm just - it's too cosmic.

Was Chalabi the conduit?

I think Chalabi thought he could handle the Iranians. They were helping him all along with disinformation and documents he could give to the White House. Don't forget, once the neocons decided to go to Iraq in the face of all evidence, they were like a super-reverse suction machine, and anything in the world that furthered the argument that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was hot. I call it stove-piping, because it's a technical work of art. But it was much more than that. It was anything - vavoom! - into the president's [office]. It was so amateurish, it was comical. How hard was it to get some crapola into the White House about WMD without the CIA looking at it?

Do you have any idea of the origin of the forged Niger documents that Bush cited in his January 2003 State of the Union address as proof that Iraq was seeking uranium to make nuclear weapons?

I don't really know. I know that they think it was an inside job. And my idea is that there were people in the government who knew that you could give these guys [the neoconservatives] anything, and within three days, if it said the right thing, there would be a principals meeting [of the senior foreign policy officials] at the White House on it. And one idea would be to get them in a position where they really walked on their dongs, in a way. Give them some bad stuff. They'd have a big meeting about it and [the neocons] would finally be exposed as ludicrous. Nobody anticipated that [the forged documents] would end up in the State of the Union address. I mean, it's beyond belief. I don't believe in these conspiracy theories, about [Michael] Ledeen [a neocon operative] and these things. He's too smart for that. Because it was designed to be caught.

Do you think the responsibility for Abu Ghraib goes directly up to Rumsfeld?
I think they [Rumsfeld and senior administration officials] had a chance in the fall of 2002 to set the limits, and they chose not to. I don't think the CIA analyst who did the report was very explicit in his written document about the abuses. That isn't the way to get ahead. But he certainly told his peers there was a real mess there, so they know it. All she [Rice] had to do was put the word out there. The chain of command is very responsive. If you put out the word that you're not going to tolerate this crap, it's not going to happen. But that's not the word they put out.

Nobody would have countenanced in his right mind Abu Ghraib. But then again, if you think a bunch of kids from West Virginia understood the way to the soul of an Arab man is to take off his clothes and photograph him ... they didn't know that. Somebody told it to them. And that's the thing about the military. In loco parentis. They have an obligation to take our children and protect them, not only from land mines but from doing stupid things that could land them in jail.

The book is filled with reporting that shows how newspapers either got it wrong, or simply accepted the official version of events. What do you think of the performance of the main newspapers people look to as sources of information?

Well, so here I am, I'm busy trying to peddle a book and you're asking me to commit self-immolation! (Laughs). Well, all I'll say is, it speaks for itself.

"Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib"
By Seymour M. Hersh
HarperCollins - 416 pages

Alpha · Last edited by Alpha on Sat Apr 23, 2005 5:31 am; edited 1 time in total

Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:38:00 -0700 (PDT)

Dear Mr. Pyes,

With regard to the your Los Angeles Times article (which was discussed on the 'To the Point' nation radio program yesterday on PRI which one can listen to via the link at www.moretothepoint.com), General Janis Karpinski (of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal) had mentioned that she had met an Israeli interrogator working with the Delta Force (special forces) interrogation team at the detention facility near the Baghdad airport (so there is a strong possibility that Israeli interrogators were also working with US special forces in Afghanistan - perhaps with Delta Force there as well):

http://www.latimes.com/news/yahoo/la-fg-detain21sep21,1,4636052,print.story

You can hear General Karpinski's BBC interview about such via scrolling down to the link at the following URL (the Jane's article about Israelis interrogators working for the USA in Iraq is also linked at the following URL):

Israeli Interrogators in Iraq:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/07/03/breaking-news-bbc-airs-israeli-torture-connection-to-iraq.php

Forwarded:

Israeli torture tactics (hooding, sexual abuse, etc) used at Mosul Prison in Iraq:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2004/09/20/israeli-torture-tactics-in-mosul-iraq-as-well.php

Zionists and torture in Iraq:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2004/08/19/the-zionists-and-torture-in-iraq.php

Treason at the Pentagon:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2004/09/08/treason-in-high-places-pentagon-zionists-aipac-and-israel.php

You might also be interested in James Bamford's new book ('A Pretext for War') which conveys the motivation for why the USA has been attacked (at the World Trade Center in 1993 and on September 11th, 2001). 'A Pretext for War' also conveys the neoconservative agenda for war in Iraq and beyond:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2004/07/22/james-bamford-on-msnbc-hardball-about-a-pretext-for-war.php

http://www.latimes.com/news/yahoo/la-fg-detain21sep21,1,2698482.story

U.S. Probing Alleged Abuse of Afghans
Inquiry focuses on an 18-year-old soldier who died while in American custody. He and seven other prisoners were tortured, witnesses say.
By Craig Pyes and Mark Mazzetti
Special to The Times

September 21, 2004

GARDEZ, Afghanistan — American military investigators have opened a criminal probe into allegations of murder and torture involving an 18-year-old Afghan army recruit who died while in U.S. custody last year. The new inquiry, which will also focus on the alleged torture of seven other Afghan soldiers, was confirmed Monday by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command.

The previously undisclosed death occurred in March 2003 after the eight soldiers were arrested at a remote firebase operated here by the U.S. Army Special Forces, according to witnesses and an Afghan military investigation.

Motivation for those arrests remains cloaked in Afghan political intrigue. The action was requested by a provincial governor feuding with local military commanders, an Afghan intelligence report says.

In the end, none of the eight men was charged with a crime or linked to anti-government conduct.

The dead soldier, identified as Jamal Naseer, a member of the Afghan Army III Corps, was severely beaten over a span of at least two weeks, according to a report prepared for the Afghan attorney general. A witness described his battered corpse as being "green and black" with bruises.

Alleged American mistreatment of the detainees included repeated beatings, immersion in cold water, electric shocks, being hung upside down and toenails being torn off, according to Afghan investigators and an internal memorandum prepared by a United Nations delegation that interviewed the surviving soldiers.

Some of the Afghan soldiers were beaten to the point that they could not walk or sit, Afghan doctors and other witnesses said.

Afghan military prosecutors looking into the incident privately recommended more than a year ago that the Afghan attorney general's office pursue a murder case against unnamed American soldiers at the Gardez firebase. No action on the recommendation was taken, but the prosecutors say the case is still open.

The prosecutors' confidential 117-page investigative report recently was reviewed by a Washington-based nonprofit educational organization, the Crimes of War Project, and the information was provided to The Times. The U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, or CID, stymied in an earlier attempt to investigate the incident, launched its probe over the weekend in response to questions by The Times about the Afghan report.

The eight-man Afghan army unit was taken prisoner as part of a campaign by U.S. forces and the local governor to bring Paktia province in southeastern Afghanistan under the control of the central government, Afghan and U.N. officials said. American forces suspected that some Afghan commanders were selling weapons to anti-government forces, they said.

After Naseer's death, the seven other troops were transferred to Afghan police custody and released without charges. None was linked to Al Qaeda or the forces of the ousted Taliban regime.

Former Atty. Gen. for the Armed Forces Yar Mohammed Tamkin, who directed the Afghan investigation, concluded in the report that there was a "strong possibility" that Jamal Naseer was "murdered as the result of torture" at the hands of his American captors.

He added that under Afghan law, "it is necessary for our legal system to investigate the torture of the seven individuals and the murder of Jamal, son of Ghazi, and other similar acts committed by foreign nationals."

One witness account provided to Tamkin's investigators came from Naseer's brother, an Afghan army commander also among those detained at Gardez. He told investigators in a statement that soon after Naseer died, two "high-ranking" U.S. soldiers squabbled near the body.

One American, he said, grabbed the other by the collar, scolded him for torturing the youth and said he "should have been shot with a bullet," according to the report.

None of the suspected Americans was identified in the Afghan military's investigation.

The 20th Special Forces Group was in charge of the Special Forces mission throughout Afghanistan at the time of the Gardez incident. It is a National Guard group based in Birmingham, Ala., that also draws soldiers from units in Florida and Mississippi. Officials said it was customarily assigned to Latin American operations.

The 20th group was replaced countrywide on March 15, 2003, by the 3rd Special Forces Group from Ft. Bragg, N.C., U.S. officials said.

'The Gardez 7'

In Washington, Pentagon officials said they could find no reports passed up the chain of command as required when a death occurs in U.S. custody, raising questions about possible efforts by American troops in Afghanistan to cover up the incident.

Earlier this year, the CID received a tip about the incident from an Afghan prison official but said it was unable to investigate the matter because of a lack of information.

The case of the "Gardez 7," as CID officials dubbed it, was filed away as unfounded because investigators had no records, victims' names or witnesses, said Christopher E. Coffey, an Army detective based at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

Access to the Afghan military report on the death of Naseer was obtained during an independent investigation of prisoner abuse allegations by the Crimes of War Project.

The group was established in 1999 to provide information that could "lead to greater pressure to prevent [war crimes] and to punish those who commit them." It is described on its website as "a collaboration of journalists, lawyers and scholars dedicated to raising public awareness of the laws of war."

Coffey said that with the new information, the CID would pursue charges of murder and of abuse of a person in U.S. custody.

"We're trying to figure out who was running the base," Coffey said. "We don't know what unit was there. There are no records. The reporting system is broke across the board. Units are transferred in and out. There are no SOPs [standard operating procedures] … and each unit acts differently."

Remote bases such as Gardez are usually operated by Special Forces and intelligence agencies and report to special operations commanders. Even representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross are not allowed to visit such bases.

"Gardez is the worst facility — it is three or four times as bad as any other base in Afghanistan," said Coffey, whose CID group has been assigned to Afghanistan since April 2003.

Disclosures this year of U.S. military abuse of detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison damaged America's image around the world, prompting a series of high-level military reviews by the Pentagon.

A report last month by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger found that prisoner abuse by interrogators in Iraq could be traced, in part, to the use of unauthorized techniques that had previously been applied in Afghanistan.

In July, an investigation of detainee operations in Iraq and Afghanistan by the Army's inspector general, Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, disclosed 94 cases of alleged abuse, including 39 deaths in U.S. custody — 20 of them suspected homicides. The report said the inspector general had found "no incidents of abuse that had not been reported through command channels."

No Documentation

But Naseer's death was not among those counted. The absence of documentation appears to undermine findings that all abuse incidents were properly reported through the chain of command.

Witness accounts provided to Afghan military investigators suggest the possibility that U.S. military officials at Gardez tried to distance themselves from the incident almost immediately after the death. All seven survivors and Naseer's bruised corpse were turned over to local police later the same day, after American officers sought assistance from the governor and local security officials, according to the Afghan military report and interviews.

The Afghan soldiers were transferred to police custody on the governor's orders — with no arrest warrants, no criminal charges filed and no documentation of Naseer's death, Police Chief Abdullah Mujahid acknowledged in a letter to the provincial governor.

The letter was included among evidence in the Afghan military investigation.

At the time, the Gardez police chief told officials of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA, that he was keeping the prisoners in custody only at the request of U.S.-led coalition forces.

An American Special Forces commander also had threatened to kill the chief if he released any coalition prisoners, said a UNAMA official who witnessed the warning.

Gardez police held the men for a month and a half with as many as 13 other inmates in a "secret detention room" built for five prisoners, according to the attorney general's report. While in police custody, the prisoners were treated by local doctors. They told UNAMA that they had received no medical attention during their 17-day detention at the Special Forces base.

At the jail, the men were still wearing the soiled clothes they had on when they were taken into custody, Afghan doctors and other independent witnesses said, and their wounds were not bandaged or treated. Eventually, the men were transferred to a prison near Kabul, but only after their injuries "showed signs of improvement," the military report said.

Their arrival at the Kabul prison without arrest warrants or criminal charges prompted the Afghan government investigation.

The following account is based on evidence and information developed in that investigation, as well as the inquiries conducted by UNAMA and the Crimes of War Project. It was culled primarily from documents and testimony in the Afghan report, the UNAMA internal memorandum and interviews with witnesses and sources familiar with people and events surrounding the death of Naseer.

Local Intrigue

On the morning of March 1, 2003, a group of eight Afghan soldiers manned a frozen military checkpoint at the Sato Kandaw Pass in southeastern Afghanistan's Paktia province, a strategic outpost on the trade route to Pakistan. It was also a crossroads for political rivalries.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, then the special presidential envoy to Afghanistan, had months earlier declared Paktia one of the three most troubled regions in the country in terms of warlord violence. Local intelligence agents also reported suspicions that some military units allied with interim President Hamid Karzai's central government were selling arms to Taliban elements.

Provincial Gov. Raz Mohammed Dalili, a Karzai ally, was being challenged for regional power by tribal warlord Bacha Khan. Local military and police commanders loyal to the central government also opposed Khan but feuded as well with the governor and among themselves.

One way feuding Afghan factions settle old scores or seek fresh advantage is by reporting their enemies to the Americans as Al Qaeda or Taliban members, an Afghan legal expert said.

"It doesn't matter if you're a criminal or not," said Lal Gul, chairman of the Afghan Commission for Human Rights. "People can say what they want against you. The Special Forces, if they want to arrest you, will just take you away…. They can't distinguish between real and false suspects."

One of the governor's projects at the time was to clear the roads of illegal checkpoints run by provincial army commanders.

Dalili said in a recent interview that the Karzai government and the U.S. Embassy had asked him to work closely with American Special Forces in the region. In Kabul, Dalili was considered too weak to take on local commanders alone. The governor said he asked "Mike" — the nom de guerre of the Special Forces commander at Gardez — to move against the Sato Kandaw checkpoint.

UNAMA officials in Gardez said they knew a succession of Special Forces commanders as "Mike." The "Mike" in charge during March 2003 was so aggressive in his avowed mission to rid the country of "bad guys" that a fellow soldier called him "Crazy Mike," a UNAMA official said.

At a March 10 meeting of local security officials sponsored by UNAMA, Mike reportedly warned local commanders that he would kill any one of them if they released his Taliban prisoners or sided with anti-coalition forces. One official in attendance said he stood up and interrupted.

" 'Mike, sit down. This is the United Nations. We don't talk about shooting or killing people here…. If you want to tell him you'll kill him, commence your own meeting and tell him there.' "

Today, Dalili continues to speak proudly about his association with American Special Forces and is effusive in his praise of Mike.

"My only purpose was to bring peace and security," he said in the interview.

Afghan military intelligence in Paktia took a dimmer view. They concluded in a report that the governor ordered the arrests of the men at the Sato Kandaw checkpoint to defame the Afghan Army III Corps commanders with whom he was feuding.

The arrested soldiers also blamed warlord Khan, who coveted control of Sato Kandaw Pass, for providing false intelligence about the soldiers to the American Special Forces.

Tea and Shackles

Most of the eight Afghan soldiers on duty at the pass were in a basement shelter when the U.S. Special Forces unit and its interpreters drove up to the checkpoint about 11 a.m. The "foreign friends" asked to join them for tea and they were invited inside, the men recalled.

The Afghans were led by Naseer Ahmad, known as Commander Pare, a 25-year-old soldier with a vivid scar from the corner of one eye to the lobe of an ear. A thick shock of black hair burst from under his pakol hat. The youngest Afghan soldier was Pare's brother, the slightly built, bearded 18-year-old Jamal Naseer, a new recruit looking for his first permanent job. The security checkpoint was heavily armed, according to the Afghan report.

Just as sugar was being put in the cups, the Americans "pointed their weapons at us and told us, 'Don't move!' " one of the Afghans told prosecutors.

According to accounts from the arrested men, they were disarmed, handcuffed, shackled and blindfolded. Some said they were struck by rifle butts.

"We were taken like animals" to the Gardez firebase, Momin, one of those arrested, told prosecutors. "The behavior of the authorities was completely wild."

17 Days in March

The men said they were interrogated individually. They were asked about Al Qaeda. They were grilled about stealing wood from trucks grinding north over the pass toward Kabul.

The Afghans said they were pummeled, kicked, karate-chopped, hung upside down and struck repeatedly with sticks, rubber hoses and plastic-covered cables. Some said they were immersed in cold water, then made to lie in the snow. Some said they were kept blindfolded for long periods and subjected to electric shocks to their toes.

One of the men, Abdul Rahim, said the beatings stopped only after he convinced the Americans that he was simply the unit's cook.

"They beat us a lot. They tore off our nails…. I was beaten very hard by punches and kicks," Momin, who, like many Afghans, goes by one name, told investigators. "I was seriously injured from the beatings."

In his statement to prosecutors, Noor Mohammed said: "They put us in the water and on the snow and beat us up…. They were throwing us against the wall."

Afghan authorities found substantial corroboration for such claims from witnesses describing the soldiers' physical condition after 17 days in U.S. custody.

Gardez Police Chief Mujahid told military prosecutors that when the men arrived at his jail from the American compound, many had injuries that appeared to be the result of severe impacts. A doctor was called to treat the prisoners.

Dr. Aziz Ulrahman, who worked at the Gardez Hospital, examined Commander Pare that night at the police station. He told the Crimes of War Project that the man's feet were swollen and black and blue, injuries "caused by blunt-force trauma."

The UNAMA delegation interviewed the men at the Gardez jail and described similar injuries in a confidential memo dated March 26, 2003. It reported that two of the men were visibly wounded and one was unable to walk as a result of what he said were beatings to his knees and legs. The men unanimously blamed U.S. soldiers for their injuries, the U.N. team said.

The delegation recommended an investigation into possible human rights violations, torture and other cruel and inhumane treatment by Special Forces personnel.

In an interview, UNAMA officials said they did not know the status of that recommendation.

A Cold, Quiet End

Witnesses remembered it was a bitterly cold day when American soldiers half-carried Commander Pare's younger brother to the warmth of the cook's room at the U.S. firebase. A wood stove held off the late winter chill outside.

But Jamal Naseer was not comforted. He complained to the witnesses of pains in his abdomen. He was so badly bruised he could not walk unaided. After a short time he asked for help getting outside to urinate.

Two Afghans working in the cook's room lifted the 18-year-old under each arm and eased him out the door. In an interview, one of the men who asked not to be named recalled that the young man started to loosen his trousers, then went limp and collapsed to the ground.

The men knelt beside him. They saw his eyes roll upward in a frozen stare. The young soldier died in their arms. It was about midday, the witness said.

Hours later, Commander Pare was brought to his brother's side in a long tent in the prisoner compound, he told a reporter. Apparent efforts by the camp's medical personnel to resuscitate Naseer had failed.

"After I entered the room, I observed that a plastic tube was in my brother's mouth and an injection into his arm," he told investigators. "Meanwhile, three senior [U.S. soldiers] entered and asked the translator who had done the beating…. At this moment, [one soldier] grabbed [another soldier] by the collar and said that he should not have been tortured and should have been shot with a bullet."

Pare said the American officers left, then one returned and offered personal condolences. He said the American told him there had been a misunderstanding.

"They told me that they respected my religion and they asked for forgiveness in mistreating us," Pare told Afghan investigators. "Afterward, they asked what they could do to help me."

The commander said he refused their offer of money for burial expenses. He said he would burn anything given to him by the Americans rather than "spoil the martyrdom of my brother."

Later, the Afghan who had witnessed Naseer's death came to visit Pare. They both wept over the body. The witness later told a reporter he was deeply saddened by the death. "Whether he was innocent or guilty, he was still a Muslim."

The man helped Pare turn the youth's body to face Mecca. Pare sat beside his brother's remains until 10 p.m., until a police vehicle arrived to transport it to the hospital.

At the hospital, doctors were unwilling to conduct an autopsy to determine officially the cause of Naseer's death. They were fearful police would return and beat them, according to a deputy hospital administrator later interviewed by Afghan prosecutors.

What exists of an official death record was provided in a formal statement by a hospital security guard named Haji Abdul Qayum, who prepared the body for burial.

In his statement to prosecutors, Qayum described himself as "a Muslim eyewitness and … someone who has seen the corpse of Jamal."

Describing the state of the corpse after it was picked up from the American compound, the security guard said in his statement: "The body seemed green and black. The area around his knees was injured and was black, and his toes were swollen and his right elbow was bruised and seemed to be burned."

Qayum said in a later interview with a reporter that Naseer's "face was completely swollen, as were his palms, and the soles of his feet were swollen double in size. The face was dark and looked like it was burned, and both eyes were swollen shut."

He recalled that when he stripped away the dead man's clothes, a length of insulated cable fell out of a pant leg. He said it had copper loops at each end. He said he discarded it.

Naseer's mother also attested to the body's condition. In a statement to prosecutors she said, "I observed his entire body, with wounds to his chest and legs and injuries all over his body."

Foreign Friends

Within hours, Americans contacted the governor and other security officials to get the corpse and to transfer the remaining detainees to the custody of Gardez police, according to the military report. The transfers were completed during the night of March 16 and into the next morning on the governor's personal order, the report said.

The transfer set in motion a number of inquires by Afghan civilian and military authorities to determine why the dostan kharagi, or foreign friends, as they referred to the Americans, had arrested and allegedly tortured their soldiers, and on what grounds the men were being held.

In the end, none of the concerned agencies said they had evidence that the men had committed any crimes, or were linked to anti-government elements.

The sole reason for their continued detention, the investigators concluded, was because the Americans wanted the prisoners hidden until their wounds had time to heal.

The men remained in custody another month and a half. Gardez police finally transferred them to the national prison facility near Kabul.

But in Kabul, prison authorities again questioned on what legal grounds the soldiers were being held and asked the Afghan attorney general of the armed forces to investigate.

Afghanistan's attorney general ordered that the case be fully investigated by military prosecutors. A request by Afghanistan's Army III Corps for an explanation of the incident from U.S. military officials received no response, according to documents in the Afghan report to the attorney general.

Much of that lengthy report is written in longhand Dari. Official statements by illiterate soldiers were commonly stamped with their fingerprints after the statements were read back to them.

In the end, the key findings were confined to one page of the report.

The first was that "the seven soldiers who had been transferred to the Kabul prison were being held without evidence of guilt." In response, the attorney general immediately ordered their release.

Second, there was "a strong possibility that one of those arrested, Jamal, son of Ghazi, had been murdered by coalition forces as a result of being tortured." The authors cited the 14th amendment of the penal code of Afghanistan to keep the case open for further investigation. To date, the attorney general has not acted on that recommendation.

The dogeared dossier has been filed away in a provincial outpost. Under Afghan law, there is a 10-year statute of limitations running on any future criminal prosecution of the case, one of the prosecutors said.

Prosecutor Abdulghani Kochai said no one involved in the case on the Afghan side was willing to quit. The mother of Jamal Naseer, he said, wants to eventually testify against those she believes killed her son.

"She cut away a piece of skin from his leg showing the marks of torture, and has wrapped it in a scarf to use as evidence on that day."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Freelance reporter Pyes reported from Afghanistan, where he also prepared investigative reports for the Crimes of War Project. Times staff writer Mazzetti reported from Washington.

Alpha

Frederick Gets 8 Years in Iraq Abuse Case

1 hour, 48 minutes ago Middle East - AP

By TINI TRAN, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The highest-ranking U.S. soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib prison case was sentenced Thursday to eight years in prison, the severest punishment so far in the scandal that broke in April with the publication of photos and video showing Americans humiliating and abusing naked Iraqis.

Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick's civilian attorney, Gary Myers, called the sentence "excessive" and argued that the military command was at fault for failing to train his client — a veteran military policeman and a corrections officer in civilian life — and for failing to address the horrid conditions at the prison on the western outskirts of Baghdad.

The abuses occurred at a time when American intelligence officers were under strong pressure to gather as much information as possible on the burgeoning insurgency, which threatens the entire U.S. mission in Iraq (news - web sites). Since then, the insurgency has spread throughout Sunni Muslim areas of the country, engulfing regions which were relatively safe for Americans and other Westerners only a few months ago.

Attacks across Iraq have increased by about 25 percent since the beginning of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month that began last weekend, with mostly car bombs and strikes on civilians rather than direct assaults on U.S. forces, Pentagon (news - web sites) officials said. U.S. and Iraqi authorities want to curb the violence in order to hold elections in January.

Besides his prison sentence, Frederick, 38, of Buckingham, Va., was reduced in rank to private, ordered to forfeit pay and given a dishonorable discharge under a plea agreement that requires him to testify against others charged with abusing Iraqi detainees. All military verdicts are subject to appeal.

Frederick pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiracy, dereliction of duty, maltreatment of detainees, assault and committing an indecent act.

He admitted that he forced one group of detainees to masturbate publicly and later piled them into a naked, human pyramid. During another infamous incident captured on photos seen around the world, Frederick said he and other guards hooked wires on the hands and feet of a hooded detainee who was told to stand on a box or else be electrocuted.

Photos and a video taken by the soldiers were submitted as evidence during the trial. Frederick said he snapped the photos "just to take back home."

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

Frederick admitted that what he did was wrong but told the court Wednesday that when he complained to his superiors, "they told me to do what MI told me to do," referring to military intelligence.

His company commander, Capt. Donald Reese, testified Wednesday in a video hookup from the United States that Abu Ghraib was "a dangerous place" subject to frequent mortar attacks and with Iraqi guards who "were not to be trusted."

"It was very confusing as to who was in charge of the place," he said, with coalition authorities, the FBI (news - web sites), military police and military intelligence all playing a role.

Reese said the OGA — an acronym for Other Government Agency, which generally refers to the CIA (news - web sites) — interrogated Iraqi inmates at night, when supervision at the prison was low. He said one inmate suffered "panic attacks" after CIA interrogators deprived him of sleep.

Reese said he was angered by the treatment, and demanded the interrogators issue written orders explaining how certain prisoners should be interrogated.

"From that point on, we demanded they put everything in writing," Reese said. "It was very confusing."

Seven members of the 372nd Military Police Company, based in Cresaptown, Md., have been charged in the scandal, including Frederick and Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits of Hyndman, Pa., who already is serving a one-year sentence after pleading guilty in May to three counts.

In addition, Spc. Armin Cruz, 24, a military intelligence soldier, was sentenced last month to eight months in jail.

In violence across Iraq on Thursday:

_ Gunmen ambushed a bus carrying Iraqi women to their jobs at Baghdad International Airport, killing one and wounding 14.

_ Three people who worked in Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's office were killed and a fourth was wounded in an ambush in western Baghdad. Also, mortars fell near the Iraqi leader on a visit to Mosul.

_ Eight people were killed and two wounded in clashes between insurgents and American forces around the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, the local hospital said. There was no confirmation from the U.S. command.

_ Several explosions shook central Baghdad, and sirens wailed from the U.S.-controlled Green Zone.

Alpha

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/05/08/Worldandnation/Report_steers_clear_o.shtml

Iraq Report steers clear of interrogators' boss
By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior Correspondent
Published May 8, 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A scathing report on prisoner abuse in Iraq found that U.S. military intelligence interrogators set "physical and mental conditions" for questioning inmates that contributed to the shocking acts of abuse.

But except for one brief mention, the 55-page report contains nothing about the role of the top military intelligence officer in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast. As head of intelligence for the U.S. command in Baghdad, Fast was in charge of interrogators at Abu Ghraib, where prisoners were beaten, sodomized and photographed in sexually degrading positions.

Experts contacted by the St. Petersburg Times say strict adherence to military protocol - and a possible reluctance to delve too far into intelligence operations - have kept Fast out of the spotlight even as her boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, faces blistering criticism and calls to resign.

That the investigation into prisoner abuse was conducted by a major general may be one reason why Fast, an officer of equal rank, apparently has undergone little scrutiny, one expert says.

"The military is very conscious of rank - if you want to investigate a major general you need a lieutenant general," said Larry Korb, a former Navy captain and assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration.

"I think when they appointed a major general they never assumed it was going to go much higher - they figured it was basically a bunch of out-of-control young reservists and didn't realize the extent to which they had a problem, not the least of which was who was in charge."

Korb said he was amazed at the murky lines of authority at Abu Ghraib, which technically was run by military police, but where certain cell bocks were controlled by military intelligence officers, CIA officials and civilian contractors.

"I worked in the Pentagon, I spent four years in active duty and 20 in the reserves but I've never seen such a command-relations structure where it's so unclear who's reporting to whom," said Korb, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

The investigation focused on abuse of prisoners by members of the 800th Military Police Brigade, led by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski from last July until she was reassigned in January. The report, by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, severely faulted Karpinski's leadership and found that the reservists under her command were poorly trained and supervised.

However, the report also says military intelligence officers set the conditions for "favorable" interrogation of prisoners, including instructions on how to "loosen up" inmates so they would talk.

In a sworn statement, one reservist said prisoners "were made to do various things that I would question morally." Another said "MI" - military intelligence - "would tell us to take away their mattresses, sheets and clothes."

Over Karpinski's apparent opposition, military police units at Abu Ghraib were under the command of Col. Thomas Pappas, whose 205th Military Intelligence Brigade came under Fast's oversight.

"This effectively made a military intelligence officer, rather than a military police officer, responsible for the MP units conducting detainee operations at that facility," the report says. "This is doctrinally unsound due to the different missions and agendas assigned to each of these respective specialties."

The report recommended Pappas be reprimanded for failing, among other things, to ensure his soldiers followed the Geneva Convention on humane treatment of prisoners of war.

Pappas was among those "either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse at Abu Ghraib," the report said.

But Korb, the former assistant secretary of defense, said "it's a legitimate question" why the investigation stopped at Pappas' level and didn't examine the role of his superiors, including Maj. Gen. Fast, head of intelligence in Iraq.

"Whenever Rumsfeld and Myers (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) get around to reading this report, they should say, "Okay, we need to get this major general involved because obviously someone was telling Pappas what to do,"' Korb said.

An investigation into intelligence practices in Afghanistan and Iraq, including at Abu Ghraib prison, was begun April 23 by Maj. Gen. George Fay, the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence.

In Taguba's report, the only mention of Fast refers to her position as "detainee release authority," in charge of deciding which inmates accused of crimes against the coalition could be released.

According to Karpinski, who was formally in charge of Iraq's prison system, those detainees made up 60 percent of the prison population and were the fastest-growing segment. However, Karpinski told investigators, Fast "routinely" denied recommendations to release inmates who were no longer deemed a threat and clearly met the requirements for release.

Karpinski further complained that "the extremely slow and ineffective release process has significantly contributed to the overcrowding of the facilities," Taguba's report said.

As head of intelligence in Iraq, Fast would have been responsible for intelligence officers working inside Abu Ghraib. She also "would have been very interested in the interrogation reports coming out of that prison," says Charles Heyman, senior defense analyst for Jane's Consultancy.

"Information from the prisoners is very valuable to the intelligence community so the intelligence community is going to have someone in that the prison system," he said.

Under standard procedures, "very high-ranking" officers like Fast and Karpinski would have agreed between themselves who would be responsible for what in the prisons.

"Where it could have gone wrong," Heyman said, "is that the CIA could have wandered in and said, "Hey, we're going to park ourselves with the intelligence people' and the intelligence people didn't tell the prison system."

The scant mention of Fast in the report is likely because Taguba was told to focus on the role of the military police, not military intelligence.

"His report at the end of the day will be straight down the parameter he was given," Heyman said, "but the report is probably 20 percent of what he knows."

Neither Taguba nor Karpinski, who was the only female commander in Iraq, could be reached for comment. Fast declined to respond to an e-mailed list of questions because "an interrogation investigation is in process. It would not be appropriate at this time to answer the questions," according to a colonel who replied on her behalf.

Unlike Karpinski, whose military career probably will end because of the scandal, Fast still appears to be highly regarded and remains on active duty in Baghdad.

Fast, 50, graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in education and has a master's degree in business administration from Boston University. Before her current assignment, she was director of intelligence for U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, and deputy commander of Fort Huachuca in Arizona.

Last month, the Pentagon announced Fast will return to Fort Huachuca - to head the Army Intelligence Center.

The fort's Web site described the center as "focused on leading, training, equipping and supporting the world's premier corps of military intelligence professionals - imbued with a warrior spirit, self-discipline and mutual respect."

- Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com

[Last modified May 8, 2004, 01:29:08]

World and national headlines

Bomb kills 14, wounds 215 praying at Pakistani mosque
Election 2004
In Wisconsin, Bush embraces jobs report
Iraq
Report steers clear of interrogators' boss
Soldiers battle in two holy cities
Report: MPs told to 'soften up' Iraqis
Nation in brief
Methodists renew a commitment to unity
World in brief
Sudanese minister denies 'ethnic cleansing'

Alpha · Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2004 7:08 am Post subject: Another Israeli Hit?

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2004/11/18/margaret-hassan-execution-anatomy-of-a-cia-dia-mossad.php

Alpha · Posted: Sun Nov 28, 2004 7:42 am Post subject: Nation of Flies (Abu Ghraib)

http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/columns/flies.htm

Alpha

FBI Claims More Arab Prisoners Abused
By Richard A. Serrano
Times Staff Writer

3:26 PM PST, December 20, 2004

WASHINGTON — FBI agents are increasingly complaining about what they consider abusive physical and mental torture by military officials against prisoners held in Iraq and Cuba, including lighted cigarettes stuck in detainees' ears and Arab captives being humiliated with Israeli flags wrapped around them, according to new documents released today.

The FBI records are the latest set of documents obtained by the ACLU in its lawsuit against the federal government and include instances in which bureau officials were disgusted that military interrogators pretended to be FBI agents and used the scheme as a "ruse" to glean intelligence information from prisoners.

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes464.html

Alpha · Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:21 am Post subject: new US torture charges in Iraq

Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 23:42:17 -0800 (PST)
From: "joe webb" <webfoote41@yahoo.com>
To: "Action Center Iraq" <iac-discussion@lists.riseup.net>, "coalition iraq" <ba-cesi@egroups.com>
Subject: [iac-discussion] new US torture charges in Iraq, llpm news, ch. 4, SF, Dec 20, '04

folks, with no amplification, ch. 4 news just
reported new allegations of torture of Iraqi prisoners
by....I did not make this up...wrapping prisoners in
Israeli flags and somehow pretzeling them into a
"scorpion" posture, which sounds to me like tying one
up so that one's legs are drawn up behind one toward
one's head. call it kosher yoga for Arabs.

A new procrustean bed complete with Israeli blankets.
Puts me in mind of the Israeli guy (who was he?) who
said, "The Palestinians must finally understand in the
deepest part of their psyches that they are a defeated
people". Ditto the Iraqis, and ....wrapped in
Israeli flags while tied up into a scorpion position
must be a very persuasive experience. No wonder many
Iraqis refer to US troops as "jews", that was Friedman
a few weeks ago in the NYTs.

Watch the news tomorrow for this story. What can one
possibly say? The Israeli-Americans have overplayed
their hand? The FBI investigating Aipac for passing
US state secrets to the Zionist Entity, torture with
Israeli flags inflicted on Iraqis? Sexual abuse,
humiliation, etc of Iraqi prisioners? Many reports of
Israelis with US troops in Iraq.? What next?

Are these zionazis truly intoxicated with their
hubris, their pride? Are they nuts? Do they think
they can keep the American people snowed forever with
their mythologies?

Think about street theater: Israeli flags wrapped
around apparently "scorpion" postures of prisoners,
they could be towed on small wagons, etc. throw in a
few US flags for balance.

IF you do not yet loathe Israel, you are not paying
attention.

Joe

Alpha

Subject: IRAQ & GUANTANAMO - ABUSES AND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR BY US MILITARY INCREASINGLY MIMICK ISRAEL'S AGAINST PALESTINIANS!
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 22:35:22 +0100

The 2 splendid articles below demonstrate how Washington's Neocons's , through Bush's Iraq adventure have brilliantly succeeded, of course with the help of Israel's media allies, to shift world attention almost entirely from what Sharon and his government of zealots and thugs are doing every day against Palestinians under occupation. There is hardly any mention in the media anymore about Israel's relentless killing and destruction spree in the Occupied Territories: scores of Palestinians are murdered every day sometimes in the rubble of their humble and destroyed homes, Israel's army continues to target Palestinian's civilian "infrastructure" (what is left of it) and their agricultural livelihood with impunity, whilst jewish only colonies are ILLEGALLY expanded or built on occupied Palestinian land!

R. Jeffrey Smith and Dan Eggen of the Washington Post and the LA Times, both pro-war newspapers eloquently and daringly describe outrageous abuses and criminal behaviour by the US Military against Guantanamo and Iraq detainees, not to mention the wanton destruction of entire cities and killing/wounding of tens of thousands of civilians whilst any independent media or witnesses are deliberately kept away!

The LATimes strongly condemns Bush's disgraceful silence on such conduct which dishonours the best American Military traditions of gallant behaviour at least against captive enemies, whose countries have been invaded and devastated on the basis of fraudulent claims. The Gonzales appointment not only adds insult to the injury suffered by the victims of these abuses but reflects this President's utter contempt for the rule of law, civilized behaviour and any morality at all.

AJGY

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDITORIAL
Disgraced by Silence
When will the president respond to the cascading allegations of prisoner abuse by the military?

December 19, 2004

A Marine guard in Iraq sprayed an alcohol-based liquid on a detainee, struck a match and ignited the prisoner, burning and blistering the man's hands. Another Marine held wires from an electric transformer to a detainee's shoulders, so that the man "danced as he was shocked," according to military documents made public this month.

In photographs now under investigation, Navy SEALs appeared to sit on a hooded and handcuffed Iraqi prisoner and to point a gun at another, bleeding detainee. Army troops repeatedly beat Afghan prisoners in their custody, ripped off their toenails, shocked them and dunked them in cold water, according to recent reports from a U.N. group. Most incidents occurred in 2002 and 2003.

The cascading allegations of prisoner abuse, of which these are but a few examples, long ago demolished the president's claim that only a few bad apples were responsible. So did reports that soldiers and officers who complained to their superiors about this mistreatment were threatened with reprisals and even physical harm. Yet as reports of unexplained deaths, humiliations and depravity across the services multiply, President Bush has recently remained silent.

Soldiers on the battlefield deserve a fair amount of leeway for their conduct under the heat of fire, when adrenaline and the need to kill or be killed prompt people to do things they'd never consider under normal conditions. But many pictures continuing to come to light look a lot more like coldblooded sadism than acceptable combat actions. It's impossible to know what other abuse, past or present, might await discovery.

In May, soon after photographs from Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad became public, Bush said he was "sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi detainees … and their families." But "the cruelty of a few," he said a week later, "cannot diminish the honor and achievement" of the thousands who have served honorably in Iraq.

It is now clear that "the few" are in fact many. So many that either U.S. troops are not under their commanding officers' control or they are beating, burning and sodomizing suspects with the blessing — or worse, at the direction — of their commanders and Washington policymakers.

Either explanation is inexcusable, and as commander in chief, Bush has an obligation to say so.

The president should directly and forthrightly state what he neglected to say last spring: Torture and humiliation of prisoners disgraces every American; such conduct is always unacceptable; and any officer who learns of such behavior and, instead of stopping it, encourages or ignores it, will be court-martialed.

If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.

Article licensing and reprint options

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

washingtonpost.com
New Papers Suggest Detainee Abuse Was Widespread

By R. Jeffrey Smith and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 22, 2004; Page A01

The Bush administration is facing a wave of new allegations that the abuse of foreign detainees in U.S. military custody was more widespread, varied and grave in the past three years than the Defense Department has long maintained.

New documents released yesterday detail a series of probes by Army criminal investigators into multiple cases of threatened executions of Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers, as well as of thefts of currency and other private property, physical assaults, and deadly shootings of detainees at detention camps in Iraq.

In many of the newly disclosed cases, Army commanders chose noncriminal punishments for those involved in the abuse, or the investigations were so flawed that prosecutions could not go forward, the documents show. Human rights groups said yesterday that, as a result, the penalties imposed were too light to suit the offenses.

The complaints arose from several thousand new pages of internal reports, investigations and e-mails from different agencies, which, with other documents released in the past two weeks, paint a finer-grained picture of military abuse and criminal behavior at prisons in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan than previously available.

The documents disclosed by a coalition of groups that had sued the government to obtain them make it clear that both regular and Special Forces soldiers took part in the abuse, and that the misconduct included shocking detainees with electric guns, shackling them without food and water, and wrapping a detainee in an Israeli flag.

The variety of the abuse and the fact that it occurred over a three-year period undermine the Pentagon's past insistence -- arising out of the summertime scandal surrounding the mistreatment at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison -- that the abuse occurred largely during a few months at that prison, and that it mostly involved detainee humiliation or intimidation rather than the deliberate infliction of pain.

After the latest revelations, including the disclosures that officials in other federal agencies had objected to these actions by soldiers -- to the point of urging, in some cases, war crimes prosecutions -- White House spokesman Scott McClellan responded yesterday with a promise that President Bush expects a full investigation and corrective actions "to make sure that abuse does not occur again."

The details of the abuse appeared to catch some administration officials by surprise, although five agencies for weeks have been culling releasable records from their files, under an agreement worked out by U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein. He was responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by five independent groups seeking anything pertinent to detainee deaths, abuse and transfers to other countries since Sept. 11, 2001.

McClellan said that he did not know whether the White House was informed about the incidents detailed in the documents released on Monday. These included the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the impersonation of FBI agents by military interrogators -- two of many practices that provoked concern among FBI agents stationed there.

"In terms of specifics, this information is becoming public, so we're becoming aware of more information as it becomes public, as you are," McClellan said. He also said that he did not know whether FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has notified the Defense Department about his concerns but that the Pentagon takes abuse allegations "very seriously."

Amrit Singh -- a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the four groups that sued to obtain the documents -- said that she thinks the disclosure requirement will eventually encompass hundreds of thousands of pages of internal administration documents, although only 9,000 pages have been released so far. Yesterday, the judge told the CIA that it could not delay making its own disclosures until an internal probe of the abuse is completed, Singh said.

"What the documents show so far was that the abuse was widespread and systemic, that it was the result of decisions taken by high-ranking officials, and that the abuse took place within a culture of secrecy and neglect," Singh said.

Col. Joseph Curtin, the Army's top spokesman, urged a different view of the documents released yesterday, all drawn from the Army's Criminal Investigation Command. In detailing internal probes of 46 cases of misconduct, they show "that the Army does take seriously and investigates any allegation of detainee abuse," he said.

The new documents include several incidents of threatened executions of teenage and adult Iraqi detainees. In one instance, a soldier in a unit that lacked any training in interrogation -- but was nonetheless assigned to process and question detainees -- acknowledged forcing two men to their knees, placing bullets in their mouths, ordering them to close their eyes, and telling them they would be shot unless they answered questions about a grenade incident. He then took the bullets, and a colleague pretended to load them in the chamber of his M-16 rifle.

The documents indicate that the perpetrator, who was investigated on charges of assault and a "law of war violation," was given a nonjudicial punishment by his commander. Threatening detainees with physical harm to compel their testimony is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

In a second case, Army investigators concluded that a sergeant committed offenses including assault, dereliction of duty and cruelty when he conducted "a mock execution of an Iraqi teenager" in front of the boy's father and brother, who were suspected of looting an ammunition factory. Investigators also found that the actions were condoned by a lieutenant who conspired with the sergeant.

An investigative report also details an incident two days earlier, in which the lieutenant ordered a suspected looter to kneel, pointed a 9mm pistol at his head and then pulled the gun away just as he fired a shot. The outcome of both cases is unclear from the records released yesterday.

The documents also divulge a probe of the beatings of three mosque security guards in Baghdad in September 2003. After being arrested and cuffed during a search, the three Iraqis were kicked, stomped and dragged by a group of U.S. soldiers. Five soldiers were given reprimands and reductions in rank after being found guilty of maltreatment of prisoners, assault and other charges, the records show.

In another Baghdad case, a U.S. soldier was accused of trying to force an Iraqi civilian to hold a gun as a justification for killing him. The soldier punched the civilian in the face, held an M-16 rifle to his head and flicked the safety off to threaten him, according to the accounts of 19 witnesses. Another soldier eventually stepped in to protect the civilian, who had been hired by the U.S. Army to guard the Museum of Iraqi Military History, the records show.

Other documents describe the death in 2003 of detainee Abdul Kareem Abdureda Lafta, 44, in a U.S. Army jail in Mosul. He "appeared to be in good health" when taken into custody, and he quickly gained the attention of MPs by continually trying to remove the hood placed on his head and talking when guards told him to be silent, the documents say. One night, Lafta was put to bed with his hands tied behind him. Even so, one guard said he spent much of the night "constantly moving around on the ground" in his cell. In the morning, he was found dead.

A doctor who examined the body told investigators "he did not know what killed him." Another Army document says he was found to have a small laceration on his head. The investigators said "there is no documentation . . . explaining the lack of an autopsy."

In another case, Army investigators found probable cause to court-martial a soldier for shooting to death an Iraqi detainee, Obede Hethere Radad, without warning. But he was punished administratively and discharged.

Khalid Odah, the father of one Guantanamo detainee, said in a telephone interview from Kuwait yesterday that the new revelations make him worry even more about the fate of his son, Fawzi, who was detained by U.S. forces three years ago. "For a very long time, every day, we heard such news but nobody believed us," said Odah, head of the Kuwaiti Family Committee, a group of relatives of Guantanamo detainees. "Now it is coming from inside the government, from the FBI and others. . . . It is very frightening to my family and to other families of Kuwaiti detainees."

U.S. military officials have alleged in legal proceedings that Fawzi Odah is an admitted member of al Qaeda and had connections to the Taliban militia in Afghanistan. Khalid Odah says his son is innocent.

Staff writer John Mintz contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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