Thursday, March 07, 2013

The War Crimes Bradley opposed

The Voice of Russia notes, "General David Petraeus, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and other high-ranking US colonels were linked to sectarian police commando units in Iraq that operated secret detention and torture centers to get information from insurgents, according a new 15-month investigation published by the Guardian and BBC Arabic." In bad news for bullies, yesterday's news of some of the counter-insurgency crimes in Iraq is already leading to calls for prosecution.  Richard Norton-Taylor (Guardian) offers today:


 If there were any lingering doubts about whether the former US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, should be indicted before a criminal court, evidence that he asked a veteran of American dirty wars in central America to help set up vicious sectarian militias in Iraq should end them once and for all.
A Guardian investigation reports that Colonel James Steele, a special forces veteran, was nominated by Rumsfeld to help organise paramilitaries to quell a growing Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Steele reported directly to Rumsfeld. The paramilitary groups were drawn from Shia militia and set up detention centres where Iraqis were tortured.



War Criminals should be punished and there are plenty of them in US government from the Iraq War (in British government as well).  But let's hope the zeal that sometimes draws in the crazies doesn't take control because, at least for the next few months, one aspect of the story needs more emphasis than what Richard Norton-Taylor's covering -- and what could lead to the very lazy to dust off their old frothing pieces on Rumsfeld to republish today and pretend like they've done some work.

What's the element that needs to be noted?


MANNING, BRADLEY  PFC  HEAD AND SHOULDERS  4-26-2012




As Deutsche Presse-Agentur points out:


 The report said Steele was previously involved in El Salvador as head of a U.S. team of special military advisers that trained units of the Central American country's security forces in counterinsurgency.
The impact of the U.S. backing of the paramilitary forces was that it unleashed a sectarian militia that terrorized the Sunni community and helped stoke a civil war that claimed tens of thousands of lives.
The Guardian/BBC Arabic investigation was sparked by the release of classified U.S. military logs on the website WikiLeaks. Those documents, released by Private Bradley Manning, detailed hundreds of incidents where U.S. soldiers came across tortured detainees in a network of detention centers run by the police commandos across Iraq.

Bradley's court-martial is supposed to start in June.  As Betty pointed out last night, Barack could call off the hounds at any time.  Brandon Muncy (Daily Athenaeum) explains it this way:
Imagine spending more than 1,000 days and nights imprisoned, mostly in solitary confinement.
Imagine that most of the human contact you had was with the individuals who stripped you naked at night and did not return your clothes until the next morning.
Imagine you had not even been convicted of a crime, yet these were the conditions you faced every day and night for nearly three years while you awaited trial.
Imagine that the so-called "crimes" you committed were for simply telling people the truth about their government.
This has been the reality for Bradley Manning, the man who recently pleaded guilty to 10-22 criminal counts levied against him in the investigation of the WikiLeaks scandal, as he awaits his day in court, tentatively scheduled for June 2013.


Here's another imagine: Imagine you were the one who discovered the way the Iraqis were being treated -- after Saddam Hussein had been driven from power.  Imagine these were your words:



I felt we were risking so much for people who seemed unwilling to cooperate with us, leading to frustration and hatred on both sides. I began to become depressed at the situation we found ourselves mired in year after year. In attempting counterinsurgency operations, we became obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists.  I wanted the public to know that not everyone living in Iraq were targets to be neutralized.

Would you have stayed silent?  Or would you have leaked? 

Those were Bradley's words last Thursday to the military court.


The following community sites -- plus PRI , C-SPAN, Pacifica Evening News, Antiwar.com, Susan's On the Edge, Ms. magazine's blog and Media Channel --  updated last night and this morning:



The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.





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