| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat May 14, 2005 11:49 pm Post subject: Anti-American Protests Spread through Islamic World |
| An Israeli interrogator most likely was responsible for this reported desecration of a Koran (probably the same Israeli interrogator who was having the Arab detainees wrapped in Israeli flags according to what the FBI operatives had seen earlier at Gitmo in Cuba as what American interrogator would do that kind of thing?):
Zionists and Torture in Iraq:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2004/09/09/the-zionists-and-torture-in-iraq.php
Los Angeles Times: US Support of Israel Motivation for 9/11 Attack:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/02/19/la-times-u-s-policy-on-israel-key-motive-for-911-attack.php
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Anti-American Protests Spread through Islamic World
By Carlotta Gall
The New York Times
Saturday 14 May 2005
Kabul, Afghanistan - Thousands of Muslims, from Gaza to Pakistan to Indonesia, emerged from prayer services on Friday to join Afghans in rapidly spreading protests over the reported desecration of a Koran by American interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
In Afghanistan, at least 8 people were killed and more than 40 injured in clashes, bringing the death toll over four days of anti-American rioting to at least 16, with more than 100 injured. For the first time a policeman was killed in the violence.
Three protesters were killed and 23 people wounded as the police grappled with a crowd of more than 1,500 in Baharak, in far northeastern Badakhstan, the police chief of the province, Gen. Shah Jehan Nuri, said in a telephone interview. Ten police officers and members of the border police, who are based in the town, were among the injured, he said.
In three Pakistan cities, Peshawar, Quetta and Multan, hundreds of protesters led largely by religious parties burned American flags and chanted anti-American slogans after Friday Prayer. The protests were peaceful, though, thanks in large part to the large numbers of police officers deployed outside mosques and official buildings.
Hundreds of people gathered peacefully outside a mosque in Jakarta on Friday while a statement was read condemning the United States for the reported abuses. In Gaza, about 1,500 members of the radical Islamic group Hamas marched through the Jabaliya refugee camp as outrage spread over the reports, including a brief item in Newsweek, that interrogators at Guantánamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet in an effort to upset detainees.
Protesters carrying the green banners of Islam and Hamas shouted, "Protect our holy book!" Some burned American and Israeli flags. Anti-American protests are rare among militant Palestinians, who decry American support for Israel but emphasize that their struggle is with Israel, not the United States.
The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said Friday that officials at the Department of Defense were investigating reports of the desecration, and that "they take such allegations very seriously," but he did not indicate when the investigation would be completed, Reuters reported. "We will not tolerate any disrespect for the holy Koran," he added.
In Afghanistan, where the protests began Wednesday, the violence seemed to be spreading, with demonstrations in several provincial towns. Police officers and Afghan National Army troops were prepared in many places but still had trouble quelling the violence, which was directed at the government and international organizations.
The protest in Baharak formed as men emerged from the mosque after Friday Prayer and moved on the offices of three international aid organizations. They looted and burned the office of Focus Humanitarian Assistance, which is financed by the Agha Khan, and broke into offices of a British organization, Afghanaid. Some in the crowd were armed and masked, General Nuri said.
The fighting lasted for two hours. "The main issue was the insulting of the Koran, but unfortunately among the protesters there were some anti-government people, and criminals and robbers, who don't want peace and stability," the commander said.
Violent clashes were also reported in Ghazni, southwest of Kabul, where hundreds of protesters tried to storm the governor's office. Officials told The Associated Press that two protesters and a policeman were killed. Twenty people were injured as police officers and Afghan National Army troops opened fire to quell the riot, according to Bakhtar, the government news agency. Residents said three civilians were killed as well, but that account could not be confirmed. Local officials refused to comment on the situation.
The Bakhtar agency said that several people were arrested, and that the violence had been organized by extremist groups. Some of the armed people were from outside the province, it said.
One protester was killed and one wounded in Qala-i-Nau, in Badghis Province, where a crowd of some 1,000 people gathered outside the offices of the United States-based aid group, World Vision, and of Malteser. a German group backed by the Knights of Malta.
"Police fired in the air to disperse the crowd, and as a result one man was killed and one injured," the local police chief, Amir Shah Nayebzada, said in a telephone interview.
Four protesters were wounded, one seriously, in Gardez, southeast of the capital, Bakhtar reported. Other news agencies reported that one protester was killed and that American forces were deployed to protect the United Nations mission in the town.
Small gatherings took place in Kabul but remained peaceful. One of the most eminent religious leaders and loyal supporters of the government, Sebaghatullah Mojadeddi, led prayers at Kabul's main mosque, Hajji Yaqub. "We respect the Koran and support those who demonstrate," he said in his remarks. "But we want peaceful demonstrations."
Across town in Wazir Akbar Khan, an affluent residential area, Mullah Mohammad Ayaz Niazi, 39, called on people not to turn to violence, and for the police and security forces also to show restraint. "When our brothers are losing control, they should treat them very carefully," he said. "They should not punish them by bullet or sword, because that will be more dangerous." | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 10:10 pm Post subject: Re: Anti-American Protests Spread through Islamic World |
| http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7870840/
| Alpha wrote: | An Israeli interrogator most likely was responsible for this reported desecration of a Koran (probably the same Israeli interrogator who was having the Arab detainees wrapped in Israeli flags according to what the FBI operatives had seen earlier at Gitmo in Cuba as what American interrogator would do that kind of thing?):
Zionists and Torture in Iraq:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2004/09/09/the-zionists-and-torture-in-iraq.php
Los Angeles Times: US Support of Israel Motivation for 9/11 Attack:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/02/19/la-times-u-s-policy-on-israel-key-motive-for-911-attack.php
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Anti-American Protests Spread through Islamic World
By Carlotta Gall
The New York Times
Saturday 14 May 2005
Kabul, Afghanistan - Thousands of Muslims, from Gaza to Pakistan to Indonesia, emerged from prayer services on Friday to join Afghans in rapidly spreading protests over the reported desecration of a Koran by American interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
In Afghanistan, at least 8 people were killed and more than 40 injured in clashes, bringing the death toll over four days of anti-American rioting to at least 16, with more than 100 injured. For the first time a policeman was killed in the violence.
Three protesters were killed and 23 people wounded as the police grappled with a crowd of more than 1,500 in Baharak, in far northeastern Badakhstan, the police chief of the province, Gen. Shah Jehan Nuri, said in a telephone interview. Ten police officers and members of the border police, who are based in the town, were among the injured, he said.
In three Pakistan cities, Peshawar, Quetta and Multan, hundreds of protesters led largely by religious parties burned American flags and chanted anti-American slogans after Friday Prayer. The protests were peaceful, though, thanks in large part to the large numbers of police officers deployed outside mosques and official buildings.
Hundreds of people gathered peacefully outside a mosque in Jakarta on Friday while a statement was read condemning the United States for the reported abuses. In Gaza, about 1,500 members of the radical Islamic group Hamas marched through the Jabaliya refugee camp as outrage spread over the reports, including a brief item in Newsweek, that interrogators at Guantánamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet in an effort to upset detainees.
Protesters carrying the green banners of Islam and Hamas shouted, "Protect our holy book!" Some burned American and Israeli flags. Anti-American protests are rare among militant Palestinians, who decry American support for Israel but emphasize that their struggle is with Israel, not the United States.
The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said Friday that officials at the Department of Defense were investigating reports of the desecration, and that "they take such allegations very seriously," but he did not indicate when the investigation would be completed, Reuters reported. "We will not tolerate any disrespect for the holy Koran," he added.
In Afghanistan, where the protests began Wednesday, the violence seemed to be spreading, with demonstrations in several provincial towns. Police officers and Afghan National Army troops were prepared in many places but still had trouble quelling the violence, which was directed at the government and international organizations.
The protest in Baharak formed as men emerged from the mosque after Friday Prayer and moved on the offices of three international aid organizations. They looted and burned the office of Focus Humanitarian Assistance, which is financed by the Agha Khan, and broke into offices of a British organization, Afghanaid. Some in the crowd were armed and masked, General Nuri said.
The fighting lasted for two hours. "The main issue was the insulting of the Koran, but unfortunately among the protesters there were some anti-government people, and criminals and robbers, who don't want peace and stability," the commander said.
Violent clashes were also reported in Ghazni, southwest of Kabul, where hundreds of protesters tried to storm the governor's office. Officials told The Associated Press that two protesters and a policeman were killed. Twenty people were injured as police officers and Afghan National Army troops opened fire to quell the riot, according to Bakhtar, the government news agency. Residents said three civilians were killed as well, but that account could not be confirmed. Local officials refused to comment on the situation.
The Bakhtar agency said that several people were arrested, and that the violence had been organized by extremist groups. Some of the armed people were from outside the province, it said.
One protester was killed and one wounded in Qala-i-Nau, in Badghis Province, where a crowd of some 1,000 people gathered outside the offices of the United States-based aid group, World Vision, and of Malteser. a German group backed by the Knights of Malta.
"Police fired in the air to disperse the crowd, and as a result one man was killed and one injured," the local police chief, Amir Shah Nayebzada, said in a telephone interview.
Four protesters were wounded, one seriously, in Gardez, southeast of the capital, Bakhtar reported. Other news agencies reported that one protester was killed and that American forces were deployed to protect the United Nations mission in the town.
Small gatherings took place in Kabul but remained peaceful. One of the most eminent religious leaders and loyal supporters of the government, Sebaghatullah Mojadeddi, led prayers at Kabul's main mosque, Hajji Yaqub. "We respect the Koran and support those who demonstrate," he said in his remarks. "But we want peaceful demonstrations."
Across town in Wazir Akbar Khan, an affluent residential area, Mullah Mohammad Ayaz Niazi, 39, called on people not to turn to violence, and for the police and security forces also to show restraint. "When our brothers are losing control, they should treat them very carefully," he said. "They should not punish them by bullet or sword, because that will be more dangerous." | | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 7:45 pm Post subject: The lies that led to war |
| The lies that led to war
A leaked British memo, and other documents, make it clear that Bush
intended all along to invade Iraq -- and lied about it to the American
people. The full gravity of his offense has not yet sunk in.
By Juan Cole
May 19, 2005 | When Newsweek's source admitted that he had
misidentified the government document in which he had seen an account
of Quran desecration at Guantánamo prison, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence
Di Rita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch
said. How could he be credible now?"
Di Rita could have said the same things about his bosses in the Bush
administration.
Tens of thousands of people are dead in Iraq, including more than 1,600
U.S. soldiers and Marines, because of false allegations made by
President George W. Bush and Di Rita's more immediate boss, Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, about Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons
of mass destruction and equally imaginary active nuclear weapons
program. Bush, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice repeatedly made unfounded allegations that led
to the continuing disaster in Iraq, much of which is now an economic
and military no man's land beset by bombings, assassinations,
kidnappings and political gridlock.
And we now know, thanks to a leaked British memo concerning the head of
British intelligence, that the Bush administration -- contrary to its
explicit denials -- had already made up its mind to attack Iraq and
"fixed" those bogus allegations to support its decision. In short, Bush
and his top officials lied about Iraq.
Going to war is the most serious decision a president can make. It
should never be approached in a cavalier fashion. American lives, the
prestige and influence of the country, international relations, the
health of its defenses, and the future of the next generation are at
stake. Yet every single piece of evidence we now have confirms that
George W. Bush, who was obsessed with unseating Saddam Hussein even
before 9/11, recklessly used the opportunity presented by the terror
attacks to march the country to war, fixing the intelligence to justify
his decision, and lying to the American people about the reasons for
the war. In other times, this might have been an impeachable offense.
The media circus around the Newsweek story arrived in time to further
divert attention from the explosive British memorandum. Although the
leaked Downing Street memo, published by the London Times on May 1,
revealed the deeply dishonest and manipulative way that the Bush
administration took the United States (and the United Kingdom) to war
against Iraq, the American press corps studiously ignored it for two
weeks.
The memo reported a July 2002 meeting of key British Cabinet and other
officials, held when Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the British
intelligence service, MI6, returned from a trip to Washington. It
revealed that the decision to go to war had already been made by that
point: "Military action was now seen as inevitable," the notes by
British national security aide Matthew Rycroft revealed. Dearlove
reported, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action,
justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence
and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Members of the British Cabinet were worried by the news, the memo
shows, since they knew that the case against Iraq was tissue-thin in
international law and that there were several more egregious sinners in
the weapons area than Iraq. Because the United Kingdom, unlike the
United States, is a member of the International Criminal Court, its
officials had to worry about being tried for war crimes if they became
involved in an illegal war of aggression launched by Bush and lacking
U.N. Security Council sanction. Prime Minister Tony Blair put his hopes
in a ploy. He thought that Bush should arrange for the United Nations
to demand a return to Iraq of weapons inspectors, with the hope that
Saddam Hussein would refuse, thus creating a legal justification for
war acceptable to the international community.
On May 6, Knight Ridder reporters Warren Strobel and John Walcott said
that a former high official in the U.S. government told them that
Dearlove's remarks were "an absolutely accurate description of what
transpired" during his visit. This past Monday, White House spokesman
Scott McClellan finally responded to the leaked document but denied
that he had read it. Regarding the allegation that Bush fixed the
intelligence around the Iraq war policy he said, "The suggestion is
just flat-out wrong. Anyone who wants to know how the intelligence was
used only has to go back and read everything that was said in public
about the lead-up to the war."
It is hard to see how this absurdly vague methodology could actually
refute the memo's charges or, indeed, to know what exactly McClellan
was driving at. He added, "The president of the United States, in a
very public way, reached out to people across the world, went to the
United Nations, and tried to resolve this in a diplomatic manner." But
as the memo makes clear, that "reaching out" was fraudulent, a smoke
screen to cover a decision that had already been made. Bush went to the
United Nations reluctantly and against the advice of the Cheney and
Rumsfeld faction, mainly as a way of giving Saddam an ultimatum that
would form the basis for a war.
The Bush administration, and some credulous or loyal members of the
press, have long tried to blame U.S. intelligence services for
exaggerating the Iraq threat and thus misleading the president into
going to war. That position was always weak, and it is now revealed as
laughable. President Bush was not misled by shoddy intelligence.
Rather, he insisted on getting the intelligence that would support the
war on which he had already decided. A good half of Americans, opinion
polls show, now believe that the president actively lied to them about
Iraq. In another, less cynical, flag-waving and intimidated age, this
conclusion would provoke a scandal. The question would be, What did
George W. Bush decide about Iraq, and when did he decide it?
The leaked British document demonstrates that the moment of decision
was far earlier than the Bush administration publicly admitted. On Aug.
7, just weeks after the Dearlove visit to Washington, Cheney said in
California that no decision had been made on Iraq. When Bush met with
Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan on Aug. 26, 2002, CNN reported that
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the press, "The president
stressed that he has made no decisions, that he will continue to engage
in consultations with Saudi Arabia and other nations about steps in the
Middle East, steps in Iraq." On Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney was interviewed
by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press." Russert asked, "Will militarily
this be a cakewalk? Two, how long would we be there and how much would
it cost?" Cheney replied, "First of all, no decision's been made yet to
launch a military operation."
The administration continued the charade that no decision had been
taken through the end of 2002 and into 2003. In a White House press
conference on Dec. 17, 2002, a questioner asked Fleischer, "The L.A.
Times today published a poll that found that 72 percent of Americans,
including 60 percent of Republicans, said the president has not
provided enough evidence to justify starting a war with Iraq. Is the
president losing the public relations battle here in the United
States?"
"Well, one, I think that I'll just state what is well known," Fleischer
replied. "The president will not make any decision about war and peace
and the possibility of putting some of our nation's best men and women
in harm's way on the basis of a poll. He will do it on the basis of his
judgment as commander in chief and what it will take to save and
protect American lives in the event that he reaches the conclusion
Saddam Hussein will indeed engage in war against the United States or
provide terrorists with weapons to engage in war against the United
States, just like on September 11th with the attack. And if he reaches
that judgment, he will do so because the information he has and the
judgment he makes suggest that, not because of a poll."
The British memo is only the most decisive in a long list of documents
that make it inescapably clear that Bush had decided to go to war long
before. Indeed, Bush had decided as early as his presidential campaign
in the year 2000 that he would find a way to fight an Iraq war to
unseat Saddam. I was in the studio with Arab-American journalist Osama
Siblani on Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" program on March 11, 2005,
when Siblani reported a May 2000 encounter he had with then-candidate
Bush in a hotel in Troy, Mich. "He told me just straight to my face,
among 12 or maybe 13 Republicans at that time here in Michigan at the
hotel. I think it was on May 17, 2000, even before he became the
nominee for the Republicans. He told me that he was going to take him
out, when we talked about Saddam Hussein in Iraq." According to
Siblani, Bush added that "he wanted to go to Iraq to search for weapons
of mass destruction, and he considered the regime an imminent and
gathering threat against the United States." Siblani points out that
Bush at that point was privy to no classified intelligence on Iraqi
weapons programs and had already made up his mind on the issue.
Siblani's account of Bush's stance is virtually identical to the
impressions Dearlove brought back from Washington a little over two
years later: "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action,
justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD." Iraq had long
played the great white whale to W.'s Ahab, and the chance to move
decisively against Saddam was intrinsic to his presidential ambitions.
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill described to Ron Susskind in
"The Price of Loyalty" the first Bush national security meeting of
principals on Jan. 30, 2001. He writes that after Bush announced he
would simply disengage from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and
"unleash Sharon," he made it clear that Iraq would be a priority. "The
hour almost up, Bush had assignments for everyone ... Rumsfeld and
[Joint Chiefs chair Gen. H. Hugh] Shelton, he said, 'should examine our
military options.' That included rebuilding the military coalition from
the 1991 Gulf War, examining 'how it might look' to use U.S. ground
forces in the north and the south of Iraq ... Ten days in, and it was
about Iraq." Bush hit the ground running with regard to Iraq, shunting
aside key U.S. foreign-policy goals -- such as a resolution of the
Arab-Israeli conflict -- in favor of exploring military options against
Saddam Hussein. O'Neill reports a sense at the meeting that the
reluctance to commit ground forces to an Asian war, a legacy of the
Vietnam War, had ended with the advent of the Bush presidency.
An Iraq war might have been a hard sell, even for the skilled and
highly manipulative Bush team. But Sept. 11 ensured that they could get
congressional approval and public support for a war. Americans were
angry and willing to lash out in any direction specified by the
president. Former terrorism czar Richard Clarke related that on the
evening of Sept. 12, 2001, Bush "grabbed a few of us and closed the
door to the conference room. 'Look,' he told us, 'I know you have a lot
to do and all ... but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over
everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in
any way...'" When Clarke protested that it was clearly an al-Qaida
operation, Bush insisted, "Just look. I want to know any shred ... Look
into Iraq, Saddam." According to Clarke, Bush said it "testily."
Clarke reveals that Rumsfeld was already, on the afternoon of Sept. 12,
"talking about broadening the objectives of our response and 'getting
Iraq.'" Although early accounts of National Security Council meetings
after the attacks highlighted the role of Deputy Secretary of Defense
Paul Wolfowitz in pressing for an immediate war on Iraq, it has become
increasingly clear that he was only one such voice, and hardly the most
senior.
Astonishingly, the Bush administration almost took the United States to
war against Iraq in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. We know about
this episode from the public account of Sir Christopher Meyer, then the
U.K. ambassador in Washington. Meyer reported that in the two weeks
after Sept. 11, the Bush national security team argued back and forth
over whether to attack Iraq or Afghanistan. It appears from his account
that Bush was leaning toward the Iraq option.
Meyer spoke again about the matter to Vanity Fair for its May 2004
report, "The Path to War." Soon after Sept. 11, Meyer went to a dinner
at the White House, "attended also by Colin Powell, [and] Condi Rice,"
where "Bush made clear that he was determined to topple Saddam. 'Rumors
were already flying that Bush would use 9/11 as a pretext to attack
Iraq,' Meyer remembers." When British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived
in Washington on Sept. 20, 2001, he was alarmed. If Blair had consulted
MI6 about the relative merits of the Afghanistan and Iraq options, we
can only imagine what well-informed British intelligence officers in
Pakistan were cabling London about the dangers of leaving bin Laden and
al-Qaida in place while plunging into a potential quagmire in Iraq.
Fears that London was a major al-Qaida target would have underlined the
risks to the United Kingdom of an "Iraq first" policy in Washington.
Meyer told Vanity Fair, "Blair came with a very strong message -- don't
get distracted; the priorities were al-Qaida, Afghanistan, the
Taliban." He must have been terrified that the Bush administration
would abandon London to al-Qaida while pursuing the great white whale
of Iraq. But he managed to help persuade Bush. Meyer reports, "Bush
said, 'I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when
we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.'" Meyer also
said, in spring 2004, that it was clear "that when we did come back to
Iraq it wouldn't be to discuss smarter sanctions." In short, Meyer
strongly implies that Blair persuaded Bush to make war on al-Qaida in
Afghanistan first by promising him British support for a later Iraq
campaign.
That the Afghanistan war went so well quickly enabled Bush to begin
planning for an attack on Iraq. Bob Woodward reports in "Plan of
Attack" that Bush asked Cheney for an Iraq war plan on Nov. 21. On Nov.
26 the Independent reported that Bush had called Saddam Hussein "evil"
and demanded that he accept U.N. weapons inspectors. On Nov. 27 Howard
Fineman of Newsweek reported a conversation with Bush aboard Air Force
One in the wake of the successful Afghanistan campaign. "He wants to
avoid the more profound mistakes his dad made...: his failure, at the
end of the Gulf War, to stop -- once and for all -- Saddam Hussein in
Iraq from threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction."
Nov. 27, 2001, was a significant date. Gen. Tommy Franks in his memoirs
reveals that he received an unexpected call from Rumsfeld. "General
Franks, the president wants us to look at options for Iraq." Franks
knew exactly what the call portended. "Son of a bitch, I thought. No
rest for the weary." There would be another war. The die had already
been cast.
On Dec. 31 Newsweek reported, "In principle, Bush and his
national-security team have decided that Saddam has to go, U.S.
officials say. 'The question is not if the United States is going to
hit Iraq; the question is when,' says a senior American envoy in the
Middle East." The article notes Bush's oft-stated caution that no final
decision had been made, but dismisses it on the basis of insider
information. The main credit for this article was given to Christopher
Dickey and John Barry, but Sami Kohen is listed as reporting from
Turkey. Since a U.S. ambassador is quoted, and Kohen was the only one
of the coauthors in the Middle East, he is likely the one who got the
quote. Was his source Ambassador W. Robert Pearson?
Former Sen. Bob Graham of Florida says in his memoirs, "Intelligence
Matters," that on Feb. 19, 2002, he visited the U.S. Central Command.
Franks revealed to him that the command was no longer engaged in a war
in Afghanistan. Graham was taken aback. Franks told the stunned
senator, "Military and intelligence personnel are being re-deployed to
prepare for an action in Iraq." The implementation phase had already
begun.
In April 2002, Tony Blair went to see Bush at his Crawford, Texas,
ranch. Vanity Fair reports that Blair stressed the need to get the
backing of the United Nations for an Iraq war if he was going to swing
Parliament behind it.
This long-term obsession of George W. Bush, then, was the background of
the meeting in Washington with Dearlove in July 2002. Although Dearlove
reported on a change of mood, such that the Iraq war was now a sure
thing, he was probably actually observing that Bush had moved it to the
front burner. By late July or very early August 2002, according to
Vanity Fair, Blair had called Bush. A senior White House official who
saw the transcript remarked, "The way it read was that, come what may,
Saddam was going to go; they said they were going forward, they were
going to take out the regime, and they were doing the right thing."
Blair, he said, did not need any convincing. Both Blair and Bush would
go on telling the public for months afterward that no final decision
had been made about going to war.
It was also in midsummer 2002 that Franks asked Rumsfeld for $750
million to begin making preparations in Kuwait toward an Iraq war. The
request, reported in Woodward's "Plan of Attack," provoked a good deal
of controversy. Many in Congress felt that no specific appropriation
had been made for such preparations, and the money was essentially
taken from Afghanistan appropriations without congressional approval.
>From Bush's meeting in May 2000 with Osama Siblani and 12 Republicans
in a hotel room in Troy, Mich., until July 2002, his obsession with
attacking Iraq never wavered. His first national security meeting was
all about Iraq. He seriously considered attacking Iraq before
Afghanistan after Sept. 11, and Blair had to argue him into the
Afghanistan war. He had Rumsfeld ask Gen. Franks for an Iraq war plan
on Nov. 27, 2001. The sense that Dearlove had, that the die had been
inexorably cast by July 2002, was entirely correct.
But it is no positive reflection on the head of MI6 that he had not
been able to discern that the die had been cast long before. The
Downing Street memo is remarkable only for the frankness with which it
acknowledges the illegality of the planned war and Bush's policy of
"fixing" the intelligence around the policy. That the decision was made
first, and various pretexts advanced for it in the aftermath, is now
clear to the public.
Why has there not been more outrage in the United States at these
revelations? Many Americans may have chosen to overlook the lies and
deceptions the Bush administration used to justify the war because they
still believe the Iraq war might have made them at least somewhat
safer. When they realize that this hope, too, is unfounded, and that in
fact the war has greatly increased the threat of another terrorist
attack on U.S. soil, their wrath may be visited on the president and
the political party that has brought America the biggest foreign-policy
disaster since Vietnam.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian
history at the University of Michigan and the author of "Sacred Space
and Holy War" (IB Tauris, 2002). | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 3:43 am Post subject: Guantanamo Guards Accused of Mistreating Koran |
| Guantanamo Guards Accused of Mistreating Koran
By Dan Eggen
The Washington Post
Wednesday 25 May 2005
Newly released FBI documents detail allegations.
Nearly a dozen detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba told FBI interrogators that guards had mistreated copies of the Koran, including one who said in 2002 that guards "flushed a Koran in the toilet," according to new FBI documents released today.
The summaries of FBI interviews, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of an ongoing lawsuit, also include allegations that the Koran was kicked, thrown to the floor and withheld as punishment and that guards mocked Muslim prisoners during prayers.
The release of the new FBI documents comes in the wake of an international uproar over a now-retracted story by Newsweek magazine, which reported that an internal military report had confirmed that a Koran was flushed down a toilet. The retracted story has been linked by the Bush administration to deadly riots overseas.
Nearly all of the hundreds of pages of documents consist of FBI summaries of detainee interrogations, and therefore do not generally provide corroboration of the allegations. At least two detainees also conceded that they had not personally witnessed mistreatment of the Koran but had heard about incidents from other inmates, the records show.
But the records, many of which were heavily edited by the government, further underscore the widespread nature of allegations related to the Koran and Islam among detainees at Guantanamo. Red Cross investigators in 2002 and 2003 documented what they considered reliable allegations of Koran mistreatment at the facility, and some detainees have made similar allegations through their attorneys.
A Defense Department spokesman was not immediately available for comment today. Pentagon officials have said previously that detainee allegations about the Koran have not been considered credible, although authorities have launched an internal review in the wake of the Newsweek controversy.
Amrit Singh, an ACLU attorney, said in a press release that "the United States' own documents show that it has known of numerous allegations of Koran desecration for a significant period of time."
"The failure to address these allegations in a timely manner raises grave questions regarding the extent to which such desecration was authorized by high-ranking U.S. officials in the first place," Singh said.
The new documents include other allegations of questionable treatment at Guantanamo, including two reports of beatings by guards and a report that a female guard told a prisoner she was menstruating and then "wiped blood from her body on his face and head."
The latter incident, which would be considered highly offensive to a Muslim man, is similar to a claim made by Erik Saar, a former Army translator at Guantanamo who has written a book about mistreatment of detainees there. The government has said two female interrogators have been reprimanded, including one for smearing fake menstrual blood on a captive.
Following the reports of Koran mistreatment by the Red Cross and others, the Pentagon issued rules in January 2003 governing the handling of the book and forbidding its placement on the floor, near a toilet or in other "dirty/wet areas."
------- | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 5:23 pm Post subject: General Contradicted Abu Ghraib Testimony |
| Anyone have the background on this General Bantz Craddock as Craddock seems like a Jewish name to me.. If so, here is a Jewish General (in Craddock) protecting another Jewish General (in Miller who was in charge of Gitmo and then went to Iraq and told senior officers there - to include General Janis Karpinski - that he was going to 'Gitmo-ize' Abu Ghraib) for the torturing of Arabs... This doesn't look good at all (especially in the Arab/Muslim world). In addition, the following conveys that Miller was in touch with Cambone, Wolfowitz and company.. See how interesting the following two URLs are now after reading that:
Read the 'Implausible Denial' and 'Implausible Denial II' articles which are linked in the right hand margin at the following 'Men from JINSA and CSP' URL:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest
Read the excellent article by James Petras (via the following URL) about Zionists and torture in Iraq (and at Gitmo as well):
Zionists and torture in Iraq:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2004/09/09/the-zionists-and-torture-in-iraq.php
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General Contradicted Abu Ghraib Testimony
By Stephen J. Hedges
The Chicago Tribune
Friday 15 July 2005
Transcripts reveal he briefed top officials.
Washington - An Army general who has been criticized for his role in the treatment of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has contradicted his sworn congressional testimony about contacts with senior Pentagon officials.
Gen. Geoffrey Miller told the Senate Armed Services Committee in May 2004 that he had only filed a report on a recent visit to Abu Ghraib, and did not talk to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or his top aides about the fact-finding trip.
But in a recorded statement to attorneys three months later, Miller said he gave two of Rumfeld's most senior aides - then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary for Intelligence Steve Cambone - a briefing on his visit and his subsequent recommendations.
"Following our return in the fall, I gave an outbrief to both Dr. Wolfowitz and Secretary Cambone," Miller said in the Aug. 21, 2004, statement to lawyers for guards accused of prisoner abuse, a transcript of which was obtained by the Tribune.
"I went over the report that we had developed and gave them a briefing on the intelligence activities, recommendations, and some recommendations on detention operations," Miller added.
Specific interrogation techniques, he said, were not discussed.
Miller's statement about the meeting, if true, suggests that officials at the very top of the Pentagon may have been more involved in monitoring activities at the prison than previously disclosed. Abu Ghraib was later at the center of a scandal surrounding prisoner abuse, which has led to punishments for soldiers.
Miller, Cambone and Wolfowitz, who is now acting director of the World Bank, each declined to respond to written questions about Miller's contradictory statements. Rumsfeld, Cambone, Wolfowitz and Miller have denied knowledge of prisoner abuse.
In the Aug. 21 statement, Miller says that he never spoke directly to Rumsfeld about his Abu Ghraib visit or his subsequent recommendations for new, tougher interrogation tactics there.
Miller's name came up again this week, when he was named in a military investigation made public Wednesday on FBI claims that detainees held by the US at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were being mistreated. The report recommended that Miller be reprimanded for not monitoring the interrogation tactics used on one detainee, Mohamed al-Qahtani, who allegedly intended to be the 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 plot.
Reprimand Overruled
Miller's superior officer, Gen. Bantz Craddock, overruled the reprimand, arguing that there was no evidence that laws had been broken.
Cambone has asserted that he was not briefed by Miller after the general returned from Abu Ghraib. During his own appearance on May 11, 2004, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Cambone said he and Miller did not speak about Abu Ghraib after Miller's return from the September 2003 fact-finding mission.
"I was not briefed by Gen. Miller," Cambone testified. Instead, Cambone said, a military aide, Gen. William Boykin, briefed Cambone on Miller's trip.
Wolfowitz, who also testified before Congress in May 2004 about prisoner abuses, was not asked during the hearings if he was briefed by Miller.
Miller's role at Abu Ghraib has come under scrutiny since news reports first revealed that US personnel within the prison abused inmates. The mistreatment occurred from the fall of 2003 until January 2004, when a soldier reported the abuses.
Miller was sent to visit the prison in late summer 2003 at the suggestion of Cambone, who had dealt previously with Miller on issues related to the detention of terror suspects at Guantánamo. At the time, the insurgency in Iraq was growing more violent, and US commanders were keen to get intelligence from the growing number of Iraqi men detained by US troops.
The abuses at Abu Ghraib began to occur after Miller's visit, according to Pentagon inquiries, and after the arrival of so-called Tiger Team interrogation units from Guantánamo that Miller said in the August 2004 statement that he helped select.
"We tried to pick the best 10 people that we could send," Miller said.
The abuses also took place after new military police and intelligence units arrived at Abu Ghraib, and after the then-US commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, approved a set of interrogation practices recommended by Miller. Those tactics were later scaled back at the recommendation of the US Central Command.
Pentagon officials and several investigative reports conducted by the Army and a civilian panel chosen by Rumsfeld have concluded that the abuses were the actions of lower-ranking soldiers, and were not ordered by senior officers.
7 GIs Convicted in Scandal
So far, seven soldiers have been convicted on charges related to the abuses. Two senior officers, an Army colonel and an Army Reserve brigadier general, have been reprimanded.
When he appeared before the Armed Services Committee on May 19, 2004, to explain his role at Abu Ghraib, Miller said that he had no contact with Cambone or others in Rumsfeld's office after he returned from Iraq in September 2003.
"I submitted the report up to SOUTHCOM [US Southern Command, where Miller was attached in 2003]," Miller told the committee. "I had no direct discussions with Secretary Cambone."
Miller made the same claim in a signed, sworn statement he gave to Army investigators on June 19, 2004. In his Aug. 21, 2004, statement to defense attorneys, though, Miller said he and Cambone discussed "how we could improve the flow of intelligence from Iraq through and in interrogations."
Also present, he told the attorneys, were two top Army officers, Gens. Ron Burgess, the head of intelligence for the Pentagon's Joint Staff, and William Caldwell, the military aide to Wolfowitz.
Miller said there was one other participant in the briefing, but he could not recall who it was.
A spokeswoman for Caldwell, who is now commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, said, "All the meetings and briefs that our commanding general took part in during a previous assignment he considers private and confidential."
Burgess also declined to respond to written questions about Miller's statements.
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Military Lawyers Fought Policy on Interrogations
By Josh White
The Washington Post
Friday 15 July 2005
JAGs recount objections to definition of torture.
Three top military lawyers said yesterday that they lodged complaints about the Justice Department's definition of torture and how it would be applied to interrogations of enemy prisoners captured by US forces, the first time they have publicly acknowledged that they objected to the policy as it was being developed in early 2003.
At a Senate hearing yesterday, the judge advocate generals (JAGs) for the Army, Air Force and Marines said they expressed their concerns as the policy was being hashed out at the Pentagon in March and April 2003. Though their letters to the Defense Department's general counsel are classified, sources familiar with them said the lawyers worried that broadly defined, tough interrogation tactics would not only contravene long-standing military doctrine - leaving too much room for interpretation by interrogators - but also would cause public outrage if the tactics became known.
"We did express opposition," said Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Romig, the Army's top lawyer. "It was accepted in some cases, maybe not in all cases. It did modify the proposed list of policies and procedures."
Sen. Lindsay O. Graham (R-S.C.), who chaired the Armed Services subcommittee hearing yesterday, said he was concerned that the JAG objections may have fallen on deaf ears, and that the policy that emerged may have opened the door to abuses at US detention facilities around the world.
"If they had listened to you from the outset, we wouldn't have a lot of the problems we've dealt with" over the past two years, Graham said.
Considerable internal debate accompanied the development of the policy on treatment and interrogation of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The US policy allowing some harsh techniques has been widely criticized by human rights groups and attorneys for detainees.
While sources had previously discussed the nature of the JAG concerns in media reports, their viewpoints have remained classified and some of the relevant memos have been kept from members of Congress.
In 2002, the State Department's legal adviser expressed concerns that the Bush administration had ignored the Geneva Conventions in deciding how to treat captured members of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Because such captives have been categorized as "enemy combatants" and not prisoners of war, the administration has said the conditions of their detention are not governed by the Geneva Conventions, though they would be treated humanely.
A military investigation into allegations of abuse at Guantánamo Bay reported this week that a number of specific interrogation tactics - such as forced nudity and the use of military working dogs - were employed at Guantánamo Bay to extract information from a high-value detainee. They were considered "authorized" by the Army field manual and Defense Department guidance and were therefore not considered abusive. Identical tactics were later used at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison by military police officers who were not authorized to employ them.
According to senators at the hearing yesterday who cited military investigations into abuse, the JAG concerns ultimately were overruled by the general counsel's office. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence T. Di Rita said yesterday their concerns were weighed along with discussion from intelligence and policy officials and that the result was a collaborative document.
Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), ranking Democrat on the committee, asked the JAGs if they felt the tactics recently reported by investigators were consistent with Geneva Conventions prohibitions on torture. Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack Rives said he believed they were inconsistent. Levin also asked the generals if they would want US prisoners of war treated that way.
"No, Senator, we would not," Rives said.
Graham and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) argued that perhaps Congress should legislate the definitions of enemy combatants and their official legal status, as well as the legal process for adjudicating their cases. They said the delays that have kept hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay without a single prosecution need to end. The military is currently waiting on federal court decisions about how to proceed.
A law enacted in 1994 bars torture by US military personnel anywhere in the world. But the Pentagon working group's 2003 report, prepared under the supervision of general counsel William J. Haynes II, said that "in order to respect the President's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign . . . [the prohibition against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority."
Haynes - through Daniel J. Dell'Orto, principal deputy general counsel for the Defense Department - wrote a memo March 17 that rescinded the working group's report, and Dell'Orto confirmed that withdrawal yesterday at the hearing. According to a copy of the memo obtained by The Washington Post, the general counsel's office determined that the report "does not reflect now-settled executive branch views of the relevant law."
"I determine that the Report of the Working Group on Detainee Interrogations is to be considered a historical document with no standing in policy, practice, or law to guide any activity of the Department of Defense," said the memo, which is signed by Dell'Orto for Haynes.
The memo also refers to the fact that the JAGs proposed a new department-wide interrogation policy in late January this year, calling it an "excellent starting point for discussion" and a "profoundly important issue."
Dell'Orto declined to answer questions about the memo as he was leaving the hearing yesterday.
Di Rita said that there is a department-wide interrogations policy being developed and that it will "reflect the input of everyone who has a stake in it." The Army is also reworking its field manual instructions on interrogations, he said. | | | | Alpha | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
