Monday, February 27, 2006

Democracy Now: Michael Ratner, Clive Stafford Smith, Maher Arar; Maureen Farrell, Danny Schechter


Defense Contractor Admits Giving GOP Congressman $1M in Bribes

  1. In political news, a defense contractor admitted on Friday that he paid former Republican Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California more than one million dollars in bribes. Michael Wade, the former president of the defense contractor MZM, also admitted to making a total of $80,000 in illegal donations to other members of Congress. Press accounts have identified the two as Republicans, Katherine Harris of Florida and Virgil Goode of Virginia. Wade faces up to 20 years in prison.

    Army to Allow Halliburton Not to Repay Disputed Costs
  2. The New York Times is reporting the Army has decided to reimburse a Halliburton subsidiary for nearly all of its disputed costs on a $2.4 billion no-bid contract to deliver fuel and repair oil equipment in Iraq. Auditors had recommended the Army withhold $263 million from Kellogg Brown and Root, but the Army decided to withhold just $10 million. California Congressman Henry Waxman said "Halliburton gouged the taxpayer, government auditors caught the company red-handed, yet the Pentagon ignored the auditors and paid Halliburton hundreds of millions of dollars and a huge bonus."

    Over 200 Dead in Iraq Since Wednesday's Mosque Bombing
  3. In Iraq, at least 29 people died on Sunday even though security forces had imposed a rare daytime curfew barring all vehicular traffic in Baghdad and its suburbs. In the deadliest attack, a Shiite neighborhood came under mortar fire in Southwest Baghdad. 16 people died and another 53 were injured. Over 200 people have been killed since Wednesday's bombing at a holy Shiite shrine in Samarra. On Saturday gunmen broke into the home of a Shiite family northeast of Baghdad and killed 13 people. Three people also died on Saturday during the funeral of the Atwar Bahjat -- the well-known Al-Arabiya journalist who was killed last week.

    The above three items are from today's Democracy Now! Headlines and were selected by Brad, KeShawn and Mia. Democracy Now! ("always informing you," as Marcia says):


    Headlines for February 27, 2006

- U.S. Holds 500 in Afghan Prison "Worse" Than Guantanamo

- Over 200 Dead in Iraq Since Wednesday's Mosque Bombing

- No Word on Kidnapped Journalist Jill Carroll

- UN: Shiite Militias Killing & Torturing Hundreds

- Katrina Evacuees Blocked From Voting at Out-of-State Polling Sites

- Texas Warns Half of Katrina Evacuees Have No Health Insurance

- Defense Contractor Admits Giving GOP Congressman $1M in Bribes

- Army to Allow Halliburton Not to Repay Disputed Costs- Science Fiction Writer Octavia Butler, 58, Dies

Los Titulares de Hoy: Democracy Now!'s daily news summary translated into Spanish

Total Information Awareness Lives On Inside the National Security AgencyMore than two years ago Congress halted plans for a controversial plan called Total Information Awareness to create the world's largest surveillance database to track your phone calls, purchases, Internet usage, reading material, banking transactions. The National Journal has now revealed the program has quietly continued inside the NSA.

"Worse" Than Guantanamo: U.S. Expands Secretive Prison Inside Bagram Air Base in AfghanistanThe U.S. is holding 500 at the base in wire cages at the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul in Afghanistan. Some have been detained for up to three years. They have never been charged with crimes. They have no access to lawyers. They are barred from hearing the allegations against them. Officials describe the jail's conditions as primitive. We speak with human rights attorneys Clive Stafford Smith and Michael Ratner.
Excerpt:
AMY GOODMAN: Now, can you, though, explain? I mean, it sounds like the reason Bagram is growing is because of all of the international outcry around Guantanamo, but also Guantanamo's legal relationship with the United States on a U.S. air base in Cuba. Can you explain the legality of Afghanistan, where Bagram is and Guantanamo, these two detention camps?
MICHAEL RATNER: Well, both Clive and I were in the early case about Guantanamo, in which the U.S. tried to say Guantanamo was like Bagram, that there were no legal rights there. You couldn't go to court for people in Guantanamo. They had no constitutional rights, and the U.S. said it could do what it wanted to people at Guantanamo. We won a big case in the Supreme Court, the Rasul case in June of 2004, that opened the courts to people at Guantanamo and opened them so people like Clive and Center lawyers could go to Guantanamo.
Even with that, those set of rights, the administration, in the Graham-Levin Bill and the Detainee Treatment Act, is trying to eliminate even those rights we won in the Supreme Court. But as far as Bagram is concerned, the legal position of the administration is similar to what it was about Guantanamo. There are no legal rights, but they have the additional argument, that they would make, that because it's not on a U.S. permanent military base like the one in Cuba, that there's even fewer rights.
I don't think they're correct. I think that any person detained anywhere in the world has a right to go into a court, has a right to be visited by an attorney, but the administration's view is whatever Guantanamo rights are, the rights at Bagram are nil, absolutely none, and so what they did, according to the Times report, was a few months after we won the Rasul case, they said they stopped sending people to Guantanamo and started to send them to other places -- Bagram is the one that we know the most about at this point -- because the administration's view is that no court, no lawyer, no one, has any right to visit anyone in Guantanamo -- anyone in Bagram, and that nobody --and that the people at Bagram have no legal rights at all. An extraordinary statement in today's world.

"They've Ruined My Life": Torture Survivor Maher Arar Recalls how U.S. Sent Him to Syria Where He Was Jailed and Tortured For 10 MonthsCanadian citizen Maher Arar announces he will "most likely" be appealing a recent U.S. federal court ruling to dismiss his lawsuit challenging the U.S. government policy known as extraordinary rendition. The judge, David Trager, said he could not interfere in the case because it involves crucial national security and foreign relations issues. [includes rush transcript]
Excerpt:
AMY GOODMAN: That's Professor Al McCoy. Maher Arar, from your experience of being held for almost a year in Syrian jail, your response?
MAHER ARAR: Well, I do agree 100% with what I just heard. I can tell you, for example, during the first two weeks of my stay in Syria, I was physically beaten. What happened during this initial period is I just wanted them to leave me alone, even in that dark and damp underground cell. But after a while, the psychological torture that I endured during this lengthy period, I was ready -- I was ready, especially by the end of my stay, by the end of the ten-month period in this underground cell, I was ready, frankly, to confess to anything. I would just write anything so that they could only take me from that place and put me in a place where it is fit for a human being. I was -- not only that, I was ready to endure more physical beatings, more physical beatings just to get rid of this place.
AMY GOODMAN: And what did --
MAHER ARAR: And I do agree 100% with what -- it's a personal experience I lived, and I think if you ask other torture victims who have been psychologically tortured, they will tell you the same thing.

Also, Karen notes that the report provides links to past Democracy Now! coverage of Maher Arar:

Maher Arar Fights to Keep Torture Suit Against U.S. Government Alive
U.S. Claims Maher Arar "Extraordinary Rendition" Lawsuit Jeopardizes National Security
Amnesty Calls for Release of Syrian Canadian Jailed in Damascus for Over 2 Years
Canadian Man Deported by U.S. Details Torture in Syria
Canadian Citizen Deported to Syria By U.S. Returns Home to Montreal After Spending A Year in Damascus Jail
Canada Warns Its Citizens About Traveling in the United States: Advisory Comes After U.S. Officials Secretly Detain a Canadian Citizen and Deports Him to Syria, Where He Hasn't Lived in 14 Years

Let's start highlights. Eddie notes Marueen Farrell's latest, "When Big Brother Gets Under Your Skin" (BuzzFlash):

In Sept., 2001, the late Hunter S. Thompson assessed the state of our Brave New World. "The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now," he wrote. While that seems true enough, what will the future hold for those babies' babies? Newborns are already being tracked via RFID technology, and it's not unfeasible that "chipping" could become as commonplace as circumcision. After all, when a former government official tells a major daily newspaper that RFID "will prevent babies from being picked up by the wrong people in a maternity ward and make sure people in nursing homes don't walk away" and announces plans to get "chipped" himself, the day might come when Big Brother could literally get under our skins.
After all, in the past few years, the notion of Big Brother has gone from George Orwell's fantasy to mainstream acceptance. And though Mark of the Beast superstitions are often quite laughable, they become less humorous against the backdrop of today's Apocalyptic political climate. ("This is going to be just like the Book of Revelation said it was going to be -- the end of the world as we knew it," Thompson concluded in July, 2003 -- an assessment a surprising number of Americans seem to share.)
Is this technology something to be dreaded or welcomed? Time will tell. Fear of the unknown has existed peripherally alongside every advancement. Nearly 200 years ago, for example, Mary Shelley responded to the threats posed by the Industrial Revolution by writing Frankenstein, sounding an enduring warning against the "over-reaching" of mankind.
And while RFID technology might not be as frightening as Frankenstein's monster, Ms. Albrecht seems to disagree. "This technology poses serious risks to privacy and civil liberties," she said in Oct. 2005. "These RFID spychips can be read silently from a distance, right through your clothes, wallet, backpack or purse by anyone with the right reader device. Already these companies have developed ways to use RFID tags embedded in credit cards and sewn into clothing to identify and track people."
Our children, it appears, will have monsters to conquer, too.

Farrell's a voice the community knows from BuzzFlash. If you missed it, check out
"And the "tone" screamers scream on (smart people ignore them)" (The Third Estate Sunday Review) for how some useless sorts want BuzzFlash to start freting over "tone" a opposed to doing the very real business of informing the public that BuzzFlash does so well.


Billie notes "Federal Judge Orders Government to Release Guantanamo Detainees' Identities for the First Time As Attorneys Charge Violations of Due Process in New Review Boards" (Center for Contitutional Rights):

U.S. Federal Judge Orders Pentagon to Releases Identities of Hundreds of Prisoners and Uncensored Transcripts of Detainee Hearings by March 3 Center for Constitutional Rights Leads Effort to Challenge New Annual Review Boards
In New York, on February 24, 2006 a new round of reviews of the Guantánamo Bay detainees began, but attorneys say the United States government is flouting military and international law by preventing any meaningful consideration of proposed evidence and denying information to the detainees’ attorneys. Experts from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the organization currently overseeing 450 pro-bono attorneys representing the detainees, expressed outrage about this violation of due process and pointed to a new federal court decision vindicating their calls for transparent and fair hearings.
On February 23, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff ordered the Department of Defense to release the names of hundreds of detainees and uncensored transcripts of their hearings by March 3, dealing a major blow to the government's attempts to maintain total secrecy over its detainment process. The Pentagon has said it will comply.
CCR Legal Director Bill Goodman explained why the U.S. government record on Guantánamo is drawing fire from the courts and many attorneys involved in the proceedings: "For five years now, the government has detained prisoners without due process; lied about who these people are; concealed their treatment from the public and denied basic information to the very people who are authorized to represent the detainees. This Administration prefers to operate in the shadows, but Judge Rakoff's ruling helps shine a light that can make this process to be more open and democratic. As the facts finally get out, we expect even more people will be outraged by this illegal process, which we continue to fight in court."
CCR is challenging the detentions during the government's Annual Review Board (ARB) meetings, arguing that the government has made a fair hearing impossible by denying access to the Guantánamo base or basic information and factual returns. Thus, attorneys have no information or notice to rebut the government's statements or potential findings against the detainees. The ARB's were designed to function like a parole board and have led to the release of a handful of detainees. In what is expected to be the largest number to date, CCR is filing ARB's for about 120 detainees, including a challenge to the lack of due process and the legitimacy of the proceedings.
CCR Deputy Legal Director Barbara Olshansky explained that the ARB proceedings are completely illegitimate: "These proceedings provide no due process, which reveals they are sham trials designed to prevent people from proving their innocence."
According to recent estimates, the government is currently detaining about 500 prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. CCR won the Supreme Court case establishing the detainees' right to challenge their detention in U.S. court (Rasul v. Bush).

And let's make it a Michael Ratner day. Rachel notes that today on WBAI from four to six pm (EST; three to five Central; one to three Pacific). WBAI's in fundraising and Rachel thinks this may be a special broadcast. (Ratner day? Ratner was a guest on Democracy Now! today and he's the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.)
Ruth heard the same thing Rachel does and "I'm hoping it's a special broadcast of Law and Disorder." Hopes aside, what Ruth knows is that the Center for Constitutional Rights is offering Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush.

Chad notes that a portion of Lewis Lapham's "The Case For Impeachment" (Harper's Magazine) is available online.

By early August [2001] the Bush Administration has sufficient confidence in its dommsday story to sell it to the American public. Instructed to come with awesome text and shocking images, thee White House hits upon the phrase "mushroom cloud" and prepares a White Paper describing the "grave and gathering danger" posed by Iraq's nuclear arsenal. [Lapham footnote: The Goup counted among its copywriters Karl Rove, senior political strategist, Andrew Card, White House chief of staff, National Security Advisor Condolezza Rice, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff.] The objective is three-fold -- to magnify the fear of Saddam Nussein, to present President Bush as the Christian savior of the American people, a man of conscience who never in life would lead the country into an unjust war, and to provide a platform of star-spangled patriotism for Republican candidates in the November congressional elections. [Lapham footnote: Card later told the New York Times that "from a marketing point of view . . . you don't introduce new products in August."]
The ad campaign rolls out on September 7, when Britain's Tony Blair stands in front of television camers at Camp David, Maryland, with President Bush to say that a new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency shows new activity at Iraq's nuclear weapons sites. [Lapham footnote: Bush confirms Blair's statement saying, "I don't know what more evidence we need. In Vienna, the day before the IAEA issued a statement saying that there was no such report.] On September 8, National Security Advisor Rice appears on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, to picture a mushroom cloud in America's future, and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, on Face the Nation, invits Bob Schieffer to "imagine a September 11 with weapons of mass destruction." On the same day, Vice President Cheney shows up on Meet the Press to assure Tim Russert that "first of all, no decision's been made yet to launch a military operation." The President stays on both messages, informing reporters gathered at an Oval Office photo op on September 25 that when discussing the War on Terror, "You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam," and then on October 1, after meeting with members of Congress, "Of course, I haven't made up my mind if we're going to war with Iraq." [Lapham footnote: Collaborating in what was a team effort between March 2002 and March 2004 various high-ranking adminstration officials made 237 false or misleading statements (55 of them from President Bush himself) connecting Saddam to Al Qaeda, exaggerating Iraq's biological and chemical weapons capabilities, misrepresenting Iraq's nuclear activitis.]
The autom sales promotion reaches its crescendo on October 7, when the Presidnet, speaking to a live television audience from the Cincinnati Museum Center, pulls all the dead rabbits out of Karl Rove's magic hat -- Saddam possessed of "horrible poisons and diseases and gasses and atomic weapons . . . we know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. . . . America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot waot fpr the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud . . ."
[. . .]
Its war policy thus firmly established in all the major media markets, the Bush Administration cover the span of the next five months holds fast to the policy of deceiving itself as well as the American people and the Congress. While the Pentagon assembles its forces for Operation Iraqi Freedom on March 20, 2003, President Bush continues to present himself as the victim of outrageous circumstance. In answer to a reporter's question at a White House press conference, he says, "You said we're headed to war in Iraq. I'm the person who gets to decide, not you." Vice President Cheney tells Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, that unless his scouts soon find Saddam's WMD in Iraq, the United States "will not hesitate to discredit inspections in favor of disarmament"; meanwhile, having come to believe the lies stuffed into his mouth by informants paid to do just that, he appears on Meet the Press to say, mouth by informants paid to do just that, he appears on Meet the Press to say, "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." President Bush in his state of the Union Address on January 28 falsely informs Congress that Saddam has been trying to buy enriched unranium in Africa; at the U.N. Security Council on February 5, Secretary of State Colin Powell conjures up the "sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network." [Lapham footnote: Powell occasionally complained about the falsehoods the administration obliged him to tell; a few days before delivering the U.N. speech he mentioned his unhappiness to Cheney, who told him, "Your poll numbers are in the seventies, you can afford to lose a few points."]

It's an important essay so, if only a portion is available online, check your bookstores and libraries. (And on Collie The Blot Powell, check out "TV Review: Barbara and Colin remake The Way We Were.")



Now, DATE CHANGE: MARCH 15TH is the new date for MediaChannel.org and United for Peace and Justice's event.

From Danny Schechter's "Why Protest Media Coverage Mar 15?" (News Dissector, MediaChannel.org):


The national day for local media protest announced last week on Mediachannel.org received such a positive response that the organizers of United For Peace and Justice, the country's largest anti-war coalition, decided to change the date from March 21 to March 15 to make a focus on the media the kickoff event for this years week-long "spring offensive" against the war to mark the third anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq.
Activists, peace groups and media reformers are being encouraged to organize protests in every city and community.
I wanted to add some personal comments to this campaign because journalists as a rule and Mediachannel until now has reported on protests, not helped organize them. Usually, media people are not activists but this case is different. Here the issue is not about politicians or causes, but our own profession and industry.
If we are not willing to speak out on a problem so close to home, who will? If we don't stand up for media freedom and against deceptive news practices, how can we lecture or editorializes other institutions to practice ethical standards, accountability and transparency?
I know there are colleagues of ours who find protests, well, unseemly, and likely to do no good. Some readers feel that way too. To these "nattering nabobs of negativity," to quote the late and great Spiro T Agnew, a politician with loose standards but clever language, I would respond, it is the duty of all of us who believe in the need for honest journalism to say so publicly.
Remember the phrase "my country right or wrong, my country!" The response is always "My country right or wrong, but when wrong, set it right." The same goes for the press.
I have been fighting this media battle for a long time. In his foreword to my book WHEN NEWS LIES on media complicity and the Iraq War, Michael Wolff calls me "the 2000 year old" media critic in the spirit of Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner’s hysterical 2000 year old man shtick.
Yes, I have been doing it a while but mostly in the media, dissecting news on the radio or producing TV and films. In the case of Iraq, I have written two books and made the documentary WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception). I think I know what I am talking about.
I have spoken on the issue all over this country and throughout the world. And yes, I know from painful personal experience, how easy it is to be ignored, or patronized and marginalized.
Speaking Truth to power has never been a well-rewarded vocation.
Now I will be joining the marches on the media on March 15th.
Over the last years, I have seen arrogant and aloof know it all media outlets forced to admit some of their mistakes and publish mea-culpas. I have seen public opinion shift against this war as it has against earlier military adventures. And now, I am pleased that United For Peace and Justice, the anti-war coalition is acknowledging the importance of taking on the media and setting a day aside for a long needed protest.
Most journalists and editors and media owners see themselves as serving the public even when they aren't. They should be confronted with the anger and concerns of their readers and viewers. It’s time for some feedback to penetrate the bubble of self-righteousness and unexamined media routines that they are encapsulated within.
Shaming the media is something we can do. Can it have any impact? Let's find out.

By the way, Danny's commenting on Dexter Filkins' book review. We'll note that either later today or tomorrow morning. (If you want to read it now, go to News Dissector now.) (And for those who needed no heads up because they'd already visited this morning, pats yourselves on the back. One of those would be Lynda who noted in her e-mail this morning that it looks like there are no more problems -- hackings -- at News Dissector.)

We've noted the event here last week (and will continue to note it) but you might also want to check out "Nancy Chang and Danny Schechter on Media Silence (add your own voice to the mix) " (The Third Estate Sunday Review).

On The Third Estate Sunday Review, Kayla writes to say that they recorded ABC's line up Friday and she and her husband made a point to watch again Sunday evening and they did hear what Ava and I noted in "TV Review: America's Funniest F**king Videos" -- the f-word is used twice. Beware of programs quick to assure you of their own goodness.



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

















Posted by at

NYT: "German Intelligence Gave U.S. Iraqi Defense Plane, Report Say" (Michael R. Gordon)

Two German intelligence agents in Baghdad obtained a copy of Saddam Hussein's plan to defend the Iraqi capital, which a German official passed on to American commanders a month before the invasion, according to a classified study by the United States military.
In providing the Iraqi document, German intelligence officials offered more significant assistance to the United States than their government has publicly acknowledged. The plan gave the American military an extraordinary window into Iraq's top-level deliberations, including where and how Mr. Hussein planned to deploy his most loyal troops.
The German role is not the only instance in which nations that publicly cautioned against the war privately facilitated it. Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for example, provided more help than they have disclosed. Egypt gave access for refueling planes, while Saudi Arabia allowed American special operations forces to initiate attacks from its territory, United States military officials say.

The above is from Michael R. Gordon's "German Intelligence Gave U.S. Iraqi Defense Plan, Report Say" in this morning's New York Times. (If it looks familiar, Skip steered us to a highlight from Australia in last night's "And the war drags on . . ." entry.) What do Germans members of the community think about this? Those who've e-mailed this morning think it's curious the way this suddenly emerges as does the news that German officials may have aided extraordinary renditions. They think it's curious the news emerges when Merkel has publicly advocted for answers about the rendention and when Germany is among those calling for the closing of Guantanamo.


Also in this morning's paper, Erika notes James Glanz' "Army to Pay Halliburton Unit Most Costs Disputed by Audit:"

The Army has decided to reimburse a Halliburton subsidiary for nearly all of its disputed costs on a $2.41 billion no-bid contract to deliver fuel and repair oil equipment in Iraq, even though the Pentagon's own auditors had identified more than $250 million in charges as potentially excessive or unjustified.
[. . .]
The Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency had questioned $263 million in costs for fuel deliveries, pipeline repairs and other tasks that auditors said were potentially inflated or unsupported by documentation. But the Army decided to pay all but $10.1 million of those contested costs, which were mostly for trucking fuel from Kuwait and Turkey.
That means the Army is withholding payment on just 3.8 percent of the charges questioned by the Pentagon audit agency, which is far below the rate at which the agency's recommendation is usually followed or sustained by the military — the so-called "sustention rate."
Figures provided by the Pentagon audit agency on thousands of military contracts over the past three years show how far the Halliburton decision lies outside the norm.
In 2003, the agency's figures show, the military withheld an average of 66.4 percent of what the auditors had recommended, while in 2004 the figure was 75.2 percent and in 2005 it was 56.4 percent.

Does a profit from the war mean never having to say you're sorry? It plays like that these days.

Cindy notes Thomas Wilner's "Guantanamo: American Gulag" (LA Times via Common Dreams):

We interviewed our clients in Camp Echo, one of several camps where prisoners are interrogated. We entered a room about 13 feet square and divided in half by a wall of thick steel mesh. On one side was a table where the prisoner would sit for our interviews, his feet shackled to a steel eyelet cemented to the floor. On the other side were a shower and a cell just like the ones in which prisoners are ordinarily confined. In their cells, prisoners sleep on a metal shelf against the wall, which is flanked by a toilet and sink. They are allowed a thin foam mattress and a gray cotton blanket.
The Pentagon's files on the six Kuwaiti prisoners we represent reveal that none was captured on a battlefield or accused of engaging in hostilities against the U.S. The prisoners claim that they were taken into custody by Pakistani and Afghan warlords and turned over to the U.S. for bounties ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 — a claim confirmed by American news reports. We have obtained copies of bounty leaflets distributed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by U.S. forces promising rewards -- "enough to feed your family for life" -- for any "Arab terrorist" handed over.
The files include only the flimsiest accusations or hearsay that would never stand up in court. The file on one prisoner indicated that he had been seen talking to two suspected Al Qaeda members on the same day -- at places thousands of miles apart. The primary "evidence" against another was that he was captured wearing a particular Casio watch, "which many terrorists wear." Oddly, the same watch was being worn by the U.S. military chaplain, a Muslim, at Guantanamo.
When I first met my clients, they had not seen or spoken with their families for more than three years, and they had been questioned hundreds of times. Several were suspicious of us; they told me that they had been interrogated by people who claimed to be their lawyers but who turned out not to be. So we had DVDs made, on which members of their families told them who we were and that we could be trusted. Several cried on seeing their families for the first time in years. One had become a father since he was detained and had never before seen his child. One noticed his father was not on the DVD, and we had to tell him that his father had died.
Most prisoners are kept apart, although some can communicate through the steel mesh or concrete walls that separate their cells. They exercise alone, some only at night. They had not seen sunlight for months -- an especially cruel tactic in a tropical climate. One prisoner told me, "I have spent almost every moment of the last three years, and eaten every meal, here in this small cell which is my bathroom." Other than the Koran, prisoners had nothing to read. As a result of our protests, some have been given books.
Every prisoner I've interviewed claims to have been badly beaten and subjected to treatment that only could be called torture, by Americans, from the first day of U.S. captivity in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They said they were hung by their wrists and beaten, hung by their ankles and beaten, stripped naked and paraded before female guards, and given electric shocks. At least three claimed to have been beaten again upon arrival in Guantanamo. One of my clients, Fayiz Al Kandari, now 27, said his ribs were broken during an interrogation in Pakistan. I felt the indentation in his ribs. "Beat me all you want, just give me a hearing," he said he told his interrogators.
Another prisoner, Fawzi Al Odah, 25, is a teacher who left Kuwait City in 2001 to work in Afghan, then Pakistani, schools. After 9/11, he and four other Kuwaitis were invited to dinner by a Pakistani tribal leader and then sold by him into captivity, according to their accounts, later confirmed by Newsweek and ABC News.
On Aug. 8, 2005, Fawzi, in desperation, went on a hunger strike to assert his innocence and to protest being imprisoned for four years without charges. He said he wanted to defend himself against any accusations, or die. He told me that he had heard U.S. congressmen had returned from tours of Guantanamo saying that it was a Caribbean resort with great food. "If I eat, I condone these lies," Fawzi said.
At the end of August, after Fawzi fainted in his cell, guards began to force-feed him through tubes pushed up his nose into his stomach. At first, the tubes were inserted for each feeding and then removed afterward. Fawzi told me that this was very painful. When he tried to pull out the tubes, he was strapped onto a stretcher with his head held by many guards, which was even more painful.

Erika believes Wilner was the Guantanomo prisoners attorney who was recently on Law & Disorder (which airs most Mondays on WBAI).

Brad notes Charles Babington's "Specter Proposes NSA Surveillance Rules" (Washington Post):

The federal government would have to obtain permission from a secret court to continue a controversial form of surveillance, which the National Security Agency now conducts without warrants, under a bill being proposed by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).
Specter's proposal would bring the four-year-old NSA program under the authority of the court created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The act created a mechanism for obtaining warrants to wiretap domestic suspects. But President Bush, shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks, authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on communications without such warrants. The program was revealed in news reports two months ago.

Tuesday Pacifica will air the NSA hearings, gavel to gavel, live.

Remember to check out Ruth's Public Radio Report from Saturday. Her focus was Democracy Now! which is celebrating its tenth anniversary. And remember to listen, watch or read Democracy Now! today.

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







Posted by at

Sunday, February 26, 2006

And the war drags on . . .

Iraqi police are stepping up the search for kidnapped US journalist Jill Carroll; but report no new developments as the deadline set by her captors for the US to meet their demands draws near.
The 28-year-old freelancer for the Christian Science Monitor was kidnapped in Baghdad on 7 January and last seen in a videotape broadcast this month by Alrai, the private Kuwaiti television station.
Jassem Boudai, the station owner, said the kidnappers set a Sunday deadline for US and Iraqi authorities to meet their demands or they would kill her.
The kidnappers had demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraq but Boudai indicated the group had provided more specific conditions which he refused to reveal.
[. . .]
Also on Sunday, Aljazeera broadcast a tape it received from the family of Canadian hostage James Loney appealing for his release and that of three colleagues abducted with him in Baghdad last November.
"James is a loving, compassionate, selfless man," said a woman relative who appeared on the tape.

The above, noted by Lynda, is from "Jill Carroll captors' deadline nears" (Al Jazeera). It's Sunday, we're focused on news from outside the US mainstream media. (Though, time permitting, we'll be noting the New York Times in this entry at one point.)

Stephen Hadley is attempting a wave of Operation Happy Talk ("They've stared into the abyss a bit.") as you'll note in Vic's highlight, "Iraqi officials lift curfew, citing drop in sectarian attacks" (Canada's CBS) which offers these bits of Sunday reality that seem to have escaped Hadley:

Mortar rounds fired into a mainly Sunni neighbourhood in Baghdad killed at least 15 people and wounded 49 others.
A mortar shell killed three and wounded six in a Shia-dominated neighbourhood in the city.
A bomb exploded at a Shia mosque in Basra, injuring two.
Gunmen shot up a soccer game in a mixed neighbourhood outside Baghdad, killing two teenagers and wounding five others.
Three U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad.
Five people died when a bomb destroyed a minibus in Hilla, a Shia town south of Baghdad.

(FYI, Hadley was the deputy to Condi Rice when she was the National Security advisor. After her "brilliant" job, she moved over to to head the State Department and Hadley became the National security advisor.)

While Hadley tries to launch yet another wave of Operation Happy Talk, James in Brighton steers us to some realistic prospects via Michael Howard's "Sunni-Shia schism 'threatening to tear Iraq apart', says conflict group" (The Guardian of London):

Iraq is on the verge of breaking up along religious, ethnic and tribal lines - a process bloodily amplified by the Shia versus Sunni violence in the wake of last week's bomb attack on the gold-domed shrine in Samarra, the International Crisis Group says in a report out today.
The conflict resolution organisation warns that, left unchecked, the widening fissures in Iraqi society that have been exposed since the removal of the Ba'athist regime in 2003 could bring further "instability and violence to many areas, especially those with mixed populations".
The most pressing problem is the Sunni-Shia schism which "threatens to tear the country apart" says the report, entitled The Next Iraqi War? It urges Iraqi leaders and the international community to take immediate action to prevent the conflict from escalating into a civil war that could cause Iraq's disintegration and spread chaos through the region.
But it also calls for the international community, including Iraq's neighbours, to start preparing for the "regrettable" scenario in which the country falls apart.
"Until now, such an effort has been a taboo, but failure to anticipate such a possibility may lead to further disasters in the future," the ICG warns.

Time to sing it:

They're just there to try and make the people free,
But the way that they're doing it, it don't seem like that to me.
Just more blood-letting and misery and tears
That this poor country's known for the last twenty years,
And the war drags on.
-- words and lyrics by Mick Softly (available on Donovan's Fairytale)

Let's note the American military fatalitiy count for the month of February: 49. Forty-nine on this 26th day of February. Last Sunday when we noted the American military fatality count since the start of the invasion the number was: 2273. This Sunday, the number's up to 2291. What's the magic number before we realize the "cakewalk" is a death march and get the hell out? If you've missed it conservative William F. Buckley is now staying it's time to leave. There's an e-mail from a visitor stating that Bill O'Leilly of Fox "News" is making the same call.
(We've made it here from the start. As Mike would say, "Welcome to the party.") How many Iraqis have to die? (After the occupation ends, will the US government release the figures for the toll, the figures we all know they're keeping?) What's the magic number?

Here's a number, three years. Three years in March since Rummy and the others in the administration lied us into war promising a cakewalk and a path strewn with roses. They lied then, they lie now. Next month (which is only days away, we're at the end of February) it will be three years. There will be protests, rallies, house parties and much more to get the word out.
On that and speaking out, Marci asked if we could note the following from today's edition of The Third Estate Sunday Review:

"Editorial: Use your voice "
"And the "tone" screamers scream on (smart people ignore them)"

Get active, get vocal. Make yourself heard.


Sidebar, NPR has a really bad habit of letting the "pundits" -- each time this year -- make the claim that the violence is abating based upon the figures for February. They note that February's American military fatalities are down from January's. What they never note is that February is a shorter month than January and, in fact, the shortest month of the year. If you hear a gas bag make that "talking point" remember what they fail to note -- it's a shorter month. The American military fatalities for January were 62, by the way. Remember that when you hear that things "grew" calmer this month. Calmer?

It is like a nightmare in that you don't realise i'’s a nightmare while having it-- only later, after waking up with your heart throbbing, and your eyes searching the dark for a pinpoint of light, do you realise it was a nightmare....

That's from Riverbend's latest (noted by Joan) entitled "Volatile Days..." (Baghdad Burning):

The last few days have been unsettlingly violent in spite of the curfew. We've been at home simply waiting it out and hoping for the best. The phone wasn't working and the electrical situation hasn’t improved. We are at a point, however, where things like electricity, telephones and fuel seem like minor worries. Even complaining about them is a luxury Iraqis can't afford these days.
The sounds of shooting and explosions usually begin at dawn, at least that's when I first sense them, and they don't really subside until well into the night. There was a small gunfight on the main road near our area the day before yesterday, but with the exception of the local mosque being fired upon, and a corpse found at dawn three streets down, things have been relatively quiet.
Some of the neighbors have been discussing the possibility of the men setting up a neighborhood watch. We did this during the war and during the chaos immediately after the war. The problem this time is that the Iraqi security forces are as much to fear as the black-clad and hooded men attacking mosques, houses and each other.

Calmer? More reality comes via Jonah's highlight, Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed's "Mosque Outrage Also Brings Solidarity" (IPS):

Widespread sectarian violence generated by the recent bombing of the Shia Golden Mosque in Samarra has also brought widespread demonstrations of solidarity between Sunnis and Shias across Iraq. The revered Al-Askariyya Mosque in Samarra, 135 km northwest of Baghdad, is one of four sacred places for Shias in Iraq. The mosque was bombed at 6:55am Feb. 22 by men who tied up the guards and planted the explosives.
This being the third attack on the Shias in as many days, outrage was immediate, violent and widespread. Bloody retaliatory attacks took the lives of three Sunni Imams and scores of civilians, while over 50 Sunni mosques were attacked. Yet the violence led also to demonstrations of solidarity after Shia and Sunni leaders called for calm and restraint.
Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani called for "easing things down and not attacking any Sunni mosques and shrines." Sistani's office was quick to issue a statement: "We call upon believers to express their protest...through peaceful means. The extent of their sorrow and shock should not drag them into taking actions that serve the enemies who have been working to lead Iraq into sectarian strife."
Muqtada Al-Sadr, arguably the second most influential Shia cleric in Iraq told reporters: "It was not the Sunnis who attacked the shrine of Imam Al-Hadi, God's peace be upon him, but rather the occupation (forces) and Ba'athists...God damn them. We should not attack Sunni mosques. I have ordered the Al-Mahdi Army to protect both Shia and Sunni shrines."
Sadr returned promptly from Lebanon and called on the Iraqi parliament to vote the departure of occupation forces from Iraq. Sunni religious authorities called for peace and asked people to confront those trying to generate a sectarian war. Many Arab media outlets blamed the floundering Iraqi government for failing to provide the security needed to prevent the attacks. But thousands of people who joined demonstrations blamed American troops for failing to protect the Iraqi people.

DK notes Damien McGuinness's "Iraq's Worsening Crisis" (Germany's Der Spiegel):

According to the left-leaning Berliner Zeitung, it is impossible to measure the extent of the damage caused by Wednesday's bomb. "Since the attacks one act of revenge has followed the next. On Wednesday night over 200 Sunni mosques went up in flames. The number of victims of retaliatory acts has kept rising. The fear that the ethnically and religiously divided Iraq might sink into civil war has accompanied the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein. But now it is becoming true." Most worrying, believes the paper, is the fact that the Sunni politicians did not go to a crisis meeting and announced that they didn't want to be a part in discussions over the creation of a national unity government. "A government of national unity and integration of the Sunnis into a cabinet would have been a major set-back (for foreign terrorists). The Samarra bombing has prevented that. It is now these terrorists and insurgents who are dictating what is happening in Iraq. The United States must try and come up with a new strategy."

Gareth notes Sameer Yacoub's "Dozens killed after Baghdad lifts curfew" (The Independent of London) which provides more reality from Iraq:

Mortars slammed into crowded Baghdad neighbourhoods, killing 18 people and injuring dozens, as security measures were eased in the capital after the bombing of a revered Shia shrine and a wave of bloody sectarian violence.
At least nine others victims, including two teenage boys playing football in Baqouba, were killed in other attacks yesterday.
A 24-hour transport ban remained in effect in Baghdad and its suburbs as authorities tried to halt the violence that has claimed nearly 200 lives since the Shia Askariya shrine was destroyed in Samarra on Wednesday. But traffic restrictions were lifted in the strife-prone provinces of Diyala, Babil and Salahuddin, where the shrine was located.
At least seven mortar rounds hit in a Shia enclave of Dora, a predominantly Sunni Arab district and one of the most dangerous parts of the city. Eighteen people were reported killed and at least 45 injured.
Britain's former ambassador to Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, warned that the country was slipping into a state of low-level civil war, with the conflict pitting rival ethnic and religious groups against each other. The sectarian fighting, he said, bore a resemblance to ethnic cleansing in some parts of the country.

Break here. Susan e-mailed noting that the Iraq entries on Sunday and Thursday nights are her "must reads." She said that they can be "hell to get through" due to the news in them. Members know Susan's been a part of the community forever now. They also know she loves music. She didn't ask in this e-mail what she usually does but I'll provide it anyway. What am I listening to? Right now at this moment, Judy Collins' In My Life. (Which happens to be one of Susan's favorite albums.) Susan's shared before that she couldn't pick one song from this album as her favorite but she could probably narrow it down to three: "In My Life," "Pirate Jenny" and the "Marat/Sade" suite. (From the last one: "We want our rights and we don't care how/ We want a revolution now.") I love all three songs as well (and others on the album) but for another version of "Pirate Jenny," look for Nina Simone's.

On what album? Well, Kat's got a review ready. Why isn't it up? She can't deal with this word verification. (Which is sometimes a grouping of random letters in a cursive text that, I agree, you can't read. There's not a standard "cursive.") But at some point, Kat will post that. (Or I'll post it in the evening for her.) I told her she was more than welcome to post the two reviews (she has both completed) at her site first and we'd get them up here when Blogger/Blogspot dealt with this nonsense. (I even offered that they could go up at The Third Estate Sunday Review.) But her attitude is that she started them here and they should go up here first.

Which is a long way of saying: No, we still can't do e-mail posts. I expected when I woke up I'd be able to post Isaiah's latest. Problem still exists. Blogger/Blogspot has again been contacted (maybe in a month or so they'll reply?). So if the problem's fixed this week, we'll have an evening comic from Isaiah. If not, I'll probably see if he wants to slide it over to the gina & krista round-robin.

So that updates everyone and also winds down our break. The news isn't surprising from Iraq but Susan's e-mail made me think a break might be needed in the midst of this (and Democracy Now! offers musical segments during their breaks so if you're going to copy, copy from the best).

Liang notes Mike Marqusee's "When 3 Million People Across the World Took to the Streets to Stop the War" (CounterPunch) which looks back to the Feb. 15, 2003 mass mobilization of protests around the world and the realities of Iraq today:

Countless horrors have accompanied the conflict. The looting and destruction of Iraq's (humanity's) ancient heritage. The wave of kidnapping and assassinations that has taken the lives of more than 250 of the country's leading educators and intellectuals. The one hundred journalists killed either by the occupiers or the resistance. The plunder of the the Iraqi treasury by corrupt officials and multi-national corporations. The erosion of women's rights.
The occupiers have proclaimed one turning-point after another. But despite referenda and elections, constitutions and cabinets, the high-tech bludgeoning of alleged rebel hot-beds such as Fallujah, Tal Afar, Samarra, Al-Qa'im, Haditha, Ramadi, and Husaybah, warfare continues and self-determination for Iraqis remains a remote prospect. The writ of the central government remains negligible and its authority dependent on the 180,000 US-led foreign troops. Meanwhile, the occupiers' divide-and-rule strategy (the only one left in their arsenal once it became clear that the bulk of the population, however relieved to be rid of Saddam Hussein, did not welcome their presence) has unleashed sectarianism and pushed Iraqi society perilously close to civil war.
A common theme of speeches at the 15th February demonstrations was that attacking Iraq was likely to increase the jihadi terrorism it was supposed to combat. So it has proved -- in Iraq, in London and elsewhere. In Greek mythology, Cassandra's tragedy was that she saw the future but no one believed her predictions. The protesters' tragedy was that nearly everyone believed their predictions but the rulers proceeded on course for disaster regardless.
The remaining proponents of the initial invasion argue that all this is still better than rule by Saddam Hussein. Many in Iraq would disagree, but in any case what kind of a measure is this? Are these the only alternatives the west is prepared to offer the people of Iraq? For the dead, injured, impoverished and abused, this kind of calculus never adds up.
In the US and Britain, more people than ever broadly agree with the what the protesters were saying three years ago, but there are fewer people protesting. Ironically, one of the reasons for the decline in numbers on the streets is the extraordinary success of 15th February, and the concomitant sense of failure that ensued. The record-breaking turn-outs did not stop the US and Britain from going to war. "We protested in huge numbers, numbers never seen before, and still it made no difference, people in London say. "They didn't listen. They never listen. So what's the point of protesting again?
Actually, it's far too early to judge the long-term significance of what happened on 15th February 2003. People who took part in the non-cooperation and civil disobedience campaigns in India in the twenties and thirties had to wait a long time for swaraj. There were eight years of protest and more than two million dead before the Vietnam war came to an end.

As everyone in this community knows, it's a process (as Marqusee notes). It's not going to happen overnight. Bully Boy doesn't want the occupation to end. The people are going to have to make their (our) voices heard. In London, they did just that. Olive notes the AFP's "London rally calls for peace in Iraq" (via Australia's ABC):

Several thousand people have gathered in central London to protest against the attack on a Shiite mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra and warn about the risk of civil war in Iraq.
The protesters, carrying banners declaring 'Iraqis stand united in Iraq', also held pictures of the mosque before and after the attack, as well as portraits of Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
The demonstration drew up to 15,000 people, according to organisers, while police put the number at 5,500.
Protest organiser Mohammed Al-Hilli, 27, whose family fled Iraq to Britain when he was two years old, said the event saw both Sunni and Shia Muslims voice their opposition to the attack on the shrine.

We have two highlights from Pru for this entry and we'll note this one first, "Iraq will join global anti-war protest" (Great Britain's The Socialist Worker):

Baghdad and Basra will march with us
The people of Basra and Baghdad will be joining next month's global protest against the US and British occupation of Iraq.
From British occupied Basra, Faraj Rabat Mizbhan of the independent Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions is urging trade unionists, peace activists and opponents of the occupation to demonstrate in their tens of thousands across the world on 18 March.
"We are indebted to the people who have raised their voices against the occupation of our country -- whether they are British, Americans, Russians or from anywhere across the globe," he told Socialist Worker from Basra.
"By opposing this war, and opposing this occupation you are standing by the Iraqis who have to endure the terror of occupation.
"You are standing up for our right to independence, our freedom from the thieves who have descended on our country.
"People in Britain will have seen the film of British soldiers savagely beating the four lads in Ammara.
"This is the reality of the occupation. Carry this image in your minds when you demonstrate. This is what we are ­struggling against."
Demonstrations called in Baghdad and Basra on Friday 17 March are backed by the Al-Sadr Movement, the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions and the Iraqi National Foundation Conference.
The Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions represents thousands of oil workers across the country. The union has campaigned against the privatisation of Iraqi industry.
The Iraqi National Foundation Conference represents Shia and Sunni opponents to the occupation.
Muqtada al-Sadr has repeatedly demanded an end to the occupation. He led two uprisings against the US in 2004. His party has the largest number of MPs in the Iraqi parliament.
An activist assembly at the World Social Forum in Venezuela in January also backed the global protest.
Lindsey German, national convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, says, "Tony Blair tells us that we are there to protect the Iraqi people and help them build democracy.
"In reality all opinion polls show the Iraqi people want the troops to leave. With thousands of Iraqis set to take to the streets demanding troops out, his lies will be well and truly exposed."
From London to Jakarta, Baghdad to Madrid, Florida to Santiago millions will take to the streets around 18 March to demonstrate against the occupation of Iraq, and threats of war on Iran. Join them.
Demo on 18 March
Troops home / Don't attack Iran12 noon, Parliament Square, central London http://www.stopwar.org.uk/
© Copyright Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original and leave this notice in place.

Ian notes "Shock over Iraqi reporter's death" (BBC):

The killing of Atwar Bahjat, who rose to fame reporting from Iraq for both main Arabic satellite news networks, has shocked Arab journalistic circles.
Gunmen kidnapped and killed her and two members of her crew near Samarra where they had gone to cover reaction to Wednesday's shrine bombing.
A member of the al-Arabiya TV team who escaped described how two gunmen showed up as they stood in a crowd of Iraqis.
They dragged Bahjat and her colleagues away and shot them.
Their bodies were found on the outskirts of Samarra, an area racked by sectarian violence since Wednesday's explosion that destroyed the revered Shia Muslim al-Askari shrine.
A spokesman for al-Arabiya said Bahjat, an Iraqi citizen, was a Sunni Muslim. She was one of very few women to work as frontline conflict reporters for Arabic television.

We have a problem with our link to Alive in Baghdad and I'll attempt to fix that after the two entries are up. But Melissa notes Brian Conley's "In Iraq, Electricity and Civil War, at the Turn of a Switch" (Alive in Baghdad):

I just finished chatting with Omar, my friend and translator who lives in the Mansur area of Baghdad.
I’m worried that, with all the exaggerations about civil war and violence, we are forgetting to remember the on-the-ground reality in Iraq.
Violence happens everyday in Iraq.
People are killed everyday in Iraq.
Just because the mainstream press doesn't report it until it starts being called a civil war, doesn't mean it isn't happening.
Omar tells me he's glad the gunfire and violence hasn't been near his area in the Mansur neighborhood lately, but he hears it constantly, and, like all Iraqis, just waits for it to come knocking.
According to the figures at Icasualties.org, this month hasn't been all that different from previous months.

Skip notes "Germans 'gave US Saddam war plan'" (The Australian Herald Sun):

GERMAN intelligence agents in Baghdad obtained a copy of Saddam Hussein's plan to defend the Iraqi capital, which was passed on to US commanders a month before the 2003 invasion, The New York Times has reported.In providing the Iraqi document, German intelligence officials offered more significant assistance to the US than their government has publicly acknowledged, the newspaper said on its website.
The plan gave the American military an extraordinary window into Iraq's top-level deliberations, including where and how Saddam planned to deploy his most loyal troops, the Times said.
An account of the German role in acquiring a copy of the Iraqi plan is contained in an American military study, which focuses on Iraq's military strategy and was prepared in 2005 by the US Joint Forces Command, it said.

Now for the New York Times. Prepare to chuckle (and thanks to Rob for pointing it out, I often skip the book section and had intended this to be one of those days):

But [Paul L.] Bremer bears a heavy responsibility for keeping silent -- and so does General Sanchez. If we can ssume that Bremer's recollection is correct, then General Sanchez's remarks indicate that Baghdad was indeed out of control, that both he and Bremer knew it and that without more troops, it was likely to stay out of control. [. . .]
By staying silent, Bremer ensured that there would be no public debate on the merits of deploying more Americans troops. By staying silent, he ensured that there would be little public discussion over the condition of the Iraqi security forces, whose quality he doubted. [. . . .]

What do we learn from the above? It's by an in-house writer at the paper so it's safe to assume (no surprise) that the Times argument remains "Stay until more are slaughtered!" Yeah, they're making the idiotic argument that "more troops" are needed. Got to protect those foreign investments, got to protect that "free market," no need to leave until we've privatized everything. That's their real argument. The Times can support human rights . . . to a point. The point is where human rights intersects with a "healthy" profit motive. At that point, the paper tosses human rights out the window.

Listening to the scolding of Bremer (who deserves it) for his silence is anyone else thinking of all that the paper of record has been silent on? The Bully Boy hump? The NSA warrantless and illegal spying that they sat on for a year. And so much more. (For years and years and years.)
If you're thinking, "Who is the Times to scold anyone for staying silent?" wait, it's about to get a whole lot funnier (and more hypocritical). The review is entitled "Desert Sturm" (oh, aren't they cute -- in their minds). And the writer? Dexter Filkins.

Dexter Filkins who stayed silent on the slaughter he should have witnessed in Falluja. Supposedly he was there in November 2004. But to read his rah-rah, video game reporting, it was all, people killed, people who had it coming to them. And it was so 'totally cool' judging by his breathless reporting. (Did the American troops have to swat him on the snout to get him to stop humping their legs?) It was all so glorious, so wonderous to read Dexy's "award winning" "reporting." The piece that took over six days to make it into print. Who edited that report? Who had to clear it? Why did it take so long to make it into the paper?

Those are questions Dexy may have to answer someday (probably sooner than he thinks). But the man who couldn't report the truth on Iraq (not just on Falluja, on the entire occupation) now wants to scold Bremer for staying silent. It's interesting to watch the liars turn on one another.
As the Judith Miller controversy was in its final stages, I said repeatedly that if she helped get us into war (she was part of a large number of helpers -- she didn't do it alone), it's the "reporters" like Dexter Filkins who keep us over there by refusing to report the truth. Now Dexter wants to scold Bremer for "staying silent"? Filkins' press releases live from the Green Zone will not be forgotten. He can pretend like the only one staying silent was Bremer but it was him too. Had the Times written the truth about the occupation long ago, America might have woken up sooner.

And we close out with Pru's second highlight, Simon Assaf's "Revealed: the brutality of the US reign of terror in Iraq" (Great Britain's The Socialist Worker):

Abu Ghraib was no one-off. Simon Assaf reports on the documents that reveal systematic torture by secret US military units in Iraq and elsewhere -- and the attempts to cover it up
Newly declassified documents have exposed widespread and systematic torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay by a shadowy US military unit operating as part of a "Special Access Programme". This secret unit is funded directly by the US Congress.
The documents have been obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). They reveal a cover-up of the activities of Task Force 626, comprising CIA agents and special forces involved in torture.
One set of papers refers to an investigation by the US Criminal Investigation Command into the abuse of a detainee at Baghdad international airport, a facility reserved for "high value" prisoners.
The victim's name is blanked out, but he is referred to as the son of one of Saddam Hussein's bodyguards captured in the city of Tikrit on 5 January 2004.
The documents reveal how the man was stripped naked, doused with water and made to stand in front of a freezing air conditioning unit. He was repeatedly beaten until he passed out, revived and beaten again.
The investigation was cut short because of the involvement of the Special Access Programme. The investigator informed his superiors that any further enquiry was useless, since Task Force 626 members had faked names, shredded medical records and wiped their computers.
The agent tells his superior, "Hell, even if we reopened it [the case], we wouldn't get any more information than we already have."
The same document confirms allegations that the US army is operating secret torture chambers and was part of a widescale cover-up after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal broke.
One investigator admits in a June 2004 e-mail that his caseload in Iraq was "exploding with high visibility cases". Yet only a few low ranking soldiers have been prosecuted.
Other e-mails detail the type of intimidation used to halt investigations. A memo from vice admiral Lowell Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, describes how agents who complained about abuses were threatened, had their car keys confiscated and their e-mails monitored.
The memo, written on 25 June 2004 and headed "alleged detainee abuse by TF 626", describes how investigators were ordered "not to talk to anyone in the US" or leave their base "even to get a haircut".
The ACLU has forced the US government to declassify the documents under freedom of information legislation. They have secured over 35,000 documents so far.
The latest batch, some 9,000 documents, include e-mails, heavily censored legal records and testimonies of soldiers and civilians. Many of the documents describe in harrowing detail widespread use of sadistic torture and casual violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
The documents also reveal huge tensions between government agencies, as departments and individuals tried to expose the scale of torture and abuse.
One e-mail in May 2004 from "on-scene commander, Baghdad" ordered FBI agents to ignore instructions from senior White House officials to use military dogs, sleep deprivation, stress positions and sensory deprivation during interrogation.
An e-mail from an FBI agent in Guantanamo Bay, released by the ACLU last year, warns superiors that interrogators from the department of defence were posing as FBI agents and torturing victims in order to discredit the agency.
The new documents confirm the widespread operations of Task Force 626 and another shadow unit, Task Force 20.
Earlier documents refer to Task Force 20 members "sodomising" an elderly Iraqi woman with a stick. The investigation into the allegation was abandoned.
Documents released last year include accounts of "about 90 incidents" of abuse by Task Force 626 at al-Azimiyah palace in Baghdad.
In statements, a civilian reports abuse of male and female detainees, including forced sodomy, electric shocks, cigarette burns and beatings.
One report reveals that CIA interrogators in Task Force 626 are involved in the torture of "ghost prisoners" -- Iraqis held in secret facilities.
One document describes how they beat a detainee to death then dumped his body in a taxi, instructing the driver to "take it to a morgue".
These documents have shed more light on the cover-up of torture after the revelations at Abu Ghraib. In February last year the ACLU discovered documents that confirm "house cleaning" after the prison scandal broke.
Hundreds of pictures and videos from Afghanistan were destroyed to avoid "another public outrage".
Among the images are ones purported to be of US soldiers posing during the mock execution of captives in southern Afghanistan.
Declassified documents also reveal the extent of "Qur'an abuse" in Guantanamo Bay, and incidents where torture victims were forced to wrap themselves in Israeli flags.
The ACLU is attempting to obtain more documents declassified and believes the US government is holding back documents that prove the continued use of torture and secret prisons.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Soldier's testimony: 'We just drove off looking for more people to kill'
Many of the new documents include testimonies by soldiers and civilians describing abuse they have witnessed in Iraq.
Among the documents is a statement by an army private describing how his platoon attacked a village after soldiers joked that their sergeant was a coward.
The sergeant decided to prove himself by setting an ambush for an Iraqi civilian.
"Right before a mission one night [the sergeant] went up to his gunner and asked him if he wanted to test the MK-19 [multiple grenade launcher] on someone tonight.
"We usually just drive around and look for people with AKs [rifles] and confiscate them. We have always been able to drive up to them and take the weapon from them with no shots fired.
"That night on a mission we saw an Iraqi civilian walking towards us on the other side of the canal. So we decided to set up an ambush and kill him.
"We waited until he was next to us on the other side of the canal and opened fire on him. He never took his rifle off his shoulder.
"He just ran away from us into a field for cover. In the countryside in Iraq all people have guns for protection.
"After the man ran into the field we waited close to a minute and there was never any fire returned. That's when my platoon sergeant told his gunner to spray the field with MK-19 [grenade] rounds.
"The gunner put about four to five rounds into the field. Still there was no return fire. But next door to the field was a house.
Screaming
[The climate] is so hot that everybody sleeps outside. After the MK-19 explosions all you heard was women and children screaming.
"My platoon sergeant told my gunner to get his eyes [night vision equipment] on the house. There were two men, four to six women and about ten children. My platoon sergeant asked my gunner if there were any weapons and he said 'no', that the two men were just trying to get [the women and children] all inside.
Then a single shot came off in the distance well over 500 meters away. My platoon sergeant said 'f--k it' and ‘light them up'.
His gunner shot about three to four MK-19 rounds into the front yard and everyone else shot M16 [assault rifles]. It lasted about ten seconds.
"Then we just stopped and saw that the two men were injured. One of them had his arm blown off.
"All the people at the house were panicking. Some ran into the woods, some into the house, and a couple next door into another house. We just sat there and watched them.
"Finally an [Iraqi civilian vehicle] drove by and loaded a bunch of injured people and drove off. And so did we, looking for more people to kill."
The soldier recounts how captured Iraqis would be "hog tied" to the front of their Humvee military vehicles.
Captive
"We would put the [captive] on top of the Humvees with the gunner until one tried to throw up. After that we would hog tie them and stuff them in between the hood and the brush guard.
"I asked, 'At least tie his leg to the brush guard so he doesn't fall off' and my [superior] would say, 'Who cares? If he falls off we just run him over and it's one less to worry about'."
The private describes in his statement how his platoon was involved in looting the homes of Iraqis.
The platoon would follow expensive cars to their homes. Soldiers would then search the home and "steal stuff from the houses or POWs [prisoners], such as bricks of money, Iraqi army medals, uniforms, pictures of Saddam... all the way down to cigarette lighters".
Despite the private's seven page testimony, none of the other soldiers in his platoon were prepared to back him up. The rest of the report is composed of denials.
The report concludes that no action would be taken and all charges were dismissed.
You can read summaries of the latest documents at http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/011206/
© Copyright Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original and leave this notice in place.

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













Posted by at
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)