Report on Abuse Faults 2 Officers in Intelligence

[maddezmom]

An internal Army investigation has found a virtual collapse of the command structure in a prison outside Baghdad where American enlisted personnel are accused of committing acts of abuse and humiliation against Iraqi detainees.

A report on the investigation said midlevel military intelligence officers were allowed to skirt the normal chain of command to issue questionable orders to enlisted personnel from the reserve military police unit handling guard duty there.

The Army has already begun one investigation into the abuse allegations. Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, the incoming deputy commander of Army intelligence, is examining the interrogation practices of military intelligence officers at all American-run prisons in Iraq and not just the Abu Ghraib prison.

A second review was ordered Saturday by Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, head of the Army Reserve, to assess the training of all reservists, especially military police and intelligence officers, the soldiers most likely to handle prisoners. Six members of an Army Reserve military police unit assigned to Abu Ghraib face charges of assault, cruelty, indecent acts and maltreatment of detainees.

~snip~
more: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/03/international/middleeast/03ABUS.html


Total CYA mode.

[maddezmom]

1. read entire article, calls Myers out for inconsistency

~snip~
Appearing on three Sunday talk shows, Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave conflicting answers when asked if the problems at Abu Ghraib were systemic throughout detention centers in Iraq.

At first, General Myers insisted that the instances of mistreatment were not widespread and were the actions of "just a handful" of soldiers who had unfairly tainted all American forces in Iraq. But when pressed, he acknowledged that he had not yet read a classified, 53-page Army report completed in February by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, first reported in the May 10 issue of The New Yorker, that chronicled the worst of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. General Myers left open the possibility the abuses could be broader, saying, "We don't know that yet."

A spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that the secretary had not been briefed on General Taguba's report either, but had been kept abreast of the investigative process.

General Myers also acknowledged that he had asked the CBS News program "60 Minutes II" to delay broadcasting photographs of the abuses taken by guards inside the prison to avoid worsening tensions in Iraq at a time when attacks against American forces are on the rise and one soldier is being held hostage by insurgents. "I thought it would be particularly inflammatory at that time," General Myers said on the ABC News program "This Week."

~snip~

[MSgt213]

7. Nobody finds it strange that Myers or any of the top military or civilian

brass claims not to have seen the report done early telling everyone there were serious problems with the prisons there.

[maddezmom]

9. I sure do, considering he got CBS to hold off on the photos

ya think he might have done some follow-up...oh but he alread probably read the 2 earlier reports of abuse. Guess he didn't feel the need to read the 54 pager.

[nolabels]

17. Another example of a bunch of lying dogs

He makes the phone call to CBS telling them not to run the story and they take up on it. Then after two they do. He goes on interview says he really don't know much about it except it was just some kind of isolated incident. Asked he he had seen the report the military made, and said he never read it. Yea we believe you, you lying bastard.

As for SEYMOUR M. HERSH, in ways it seemed like Hersh is being a apologist for it. Like it was because the GI's were so back woods and folksy it kind of seemed normal to them. I would like to ask Hersh when the last time he did some of that stuff, and did they teach him grade school or a little later.

Yea Hersh draws the line in the middle and falls to the right when his job or sources are at jeopardy, that don't mean everybody will be hearing what you say like you know what's going on.

At one point in the interview with "Democracy Now" Hersh even started talking himself into circles and befuddled himself like he couldn't believe the kind of things that were coming out of his mouth. Like they say don't follow leaders and watch the parking meters. Hersh may be a good source for some information but I wouldn't take everything he says verbatim.

[Just Me]

19. I have to admire that Hersh recognizes the complexity of life.

He tries harder than any reporter I know to reflect from various human positions. After all, even "facts" are perceived from a lot of different angles. Believe me, I know, having (in my previous life) been a litigator and watch quite sincere "witnesses" to a single incident give completely different versions of "the facts". It blew me away!!!

[nolabels]

21. Yea there is that little spot on the brain that does that

My dad was like that, and sometimes my mother and several family members. The only one that wasn't in my family got smart moved way far away, became a nurse and now helps elderly in a nursing home.

I had a supervisor so bad with that kind of brain lock that after I had got several people, including a few of his supervisors we still couldn't get the guy to understand a simple mathematical calculation that was done routinely.

I was astonished at it, the denial was so deep for such a simple thing that it seemed like he must be from another world. That stuff is out there, you just have to build up witnesses for your side.

[Just Me]

22. To me,...it was simply a "loss" of basic principles.

Each person was so driven by a life-time dish of "judgment" that they lost all sense of principle and had no capacity to simply "perceive" and report.

I guess the term would be "denial". I haven't figured all that out *LOL*. If I ever do,...if we ever figure all that out,...then, we can act like "God".

[nolabels]

23. You just have

Identifying with the victim and perpetrators as well the audience or wittneses while going to point where all of them are at from a very personal aspect is what any good actor or lawyer does (most any other good professional, as far as I can see)does. The capacity of belief takes them to that point.

ingrained tradition, belief and personal loss are the most perennial of reasons for denial, but then others may have something similar going on also, like group think or something being very abhorrent. What ever the reasons that builds up, the plus or minus to the equation is the difficult part.

That's when we have to come back to our own feelings (which of course is a no-no when getting to the point of being objective and a tightrope to be sure). Harming others is where I usually will pull the plug, there is no reason for it and should never take place. This idea of letting your hair down (and in essence your guard), is a simple matter when you can determine it will be in your best interest. I sometimes like to check out Alen Watts


http://users.compaqnet.be/cn111132/watts/the_world_as_emptiness.htm

The World As Emptiness
by
Alan Watts

(or, How the Dharma Bum Spent His Easter Vacation (transcribing))



This particular weekend seminar is devoted to Buddhism, and it should be said first that there is a sense in which Buddhism is Hinduism, stripped for export. Last week, when I discussed Hinduism, I discussed many things to do with the organization of Hindu society, because Hinduism is not merely what we call a religion, it's a whole culture. It's a legal system, it's a social system, it's a system of etiquette, and it includes everything. It includes housing, it includes food, it includes art. Because the Hindus and many other ancient peoples do not make, as we do, a division between religion and everything else. Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it. But you see, when a religion and a culture are inseperable, it's very difficult to export a culture, because it comes into conflict with the established traditions, manners, and customs of other people.

So the question arises, what are the essentials of Hinduism that could be exported? And when you answer that, approximately you'll get Buddhism. As I explained, the essential of Hinduism, the real, deep root, isn't any kind of doctrine, it isn't really any special kind of discipline, although of course disciplines are involved. The center of Hinduism is an experience called _maksha_, liberation, in which, through the dissipation of the illusion that each man and each woman is a separate thing in a world consisting of nothing but a collection of separate things, you discover that you are, in a way, on one level an illusion, but on another level, you are what they call 'the self,' the one self, which is all that there is. The universe is the game of the self, which plays hide and seek forever and ever. When it plays 'hide,' it plays it so well, hides so cleverly, that it pretends to be all of us, and all things whatsoever, and we don't know it because it's playing 'hide.' But when it plays 'seek,' it enters onto a path of yoga, and through following this path it wakes up, and the scales fall from one's eyes.

Now, in just the same way, the center of Buddhism, the only really important thing about Buddhism is the experience which they call 'awakening.' Buddha is a title, and not a proper name. It comes from a Sanskrit root, 'bheudh,' and that sometimes means 'to know,' but better, 'waking.' And so you get from this root 'bodhih.' That is the state of being awakened. And so 'buddha,' 'the awakened one,' 'the awakened person.' And so there can of course in Buddhist ideas, be very many buddhas. The person called THE buddha is only one of myriads. Because they, like the Hindus, are quite sure that our world is only one among billions, and that buddhas come and go in all the worlds. But sometimes, you see, there comes into the world what you might call a 'big buddha.' A very important one. And such a one is said to have been Guatama, the son of a prince living in northern India, in a part of the world we now call Nepal, living shortly after 600 BC. All dates in Indian history are vague, and so I never try to get you to remember any precise date, like 564, which some people think it was, but I give you a vague date--just after 600 BC is probably right.

Most of you, I'm sure, know the story of his life. Is there anyone who doesn't, I mean roughly? Ok. So I won't bother too much with that. But the point is, that when, in India, a man was called a buddha, or THE buddha, this is a title of a very exalted nature. It is first of all necessary for a buddha to be human. He can't be any other kind of being, whether in the Hindu scale of beings he's above the human state or below it. He is superior to all gods, because according to Indian ideas, gods or angels--angels are probably a better name for them than gods--all those exalted beings are still in the wheel of becoming, still in the chains of karma--that is action that requires more action to complete it, and goes on requiring the need for more action. They're still, according to popular ideas, going 'round the wheel from life after life after life after life, because they still have the thirst for existence, or to put it in a Hindu way: in them, the self is still playing the game of not being itself.

But the buddha's doctrine, based on his own experience of awakening, which occured after seven years of attempts to study with the various yogis of the time, all of whom used the method of extreme asceticism, fasting, doing all sort of exercises, lying on beds of nails, sleeping on broken rocks, any kind of thing to break down egocentricity, to become unselfish, to become detached, to exterminate desire for life. But buddha found that all that was futile; that was not The Way. And one day he broke is ascetic discipline and accepted a bowl of some kind of milk soup from a girl who was looking after cattle. And suddenly in this tremendous relaxation, he went and sat down under a tree, and the burden lifted. He saw, completely, that what he had been doing was on the wrong track. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. And no amount of effort will make a person who believes himself to be an ego be really unselfish. So long as you think, and feel, that you are a someone contained in your bag of skin, and that's all, there is no way whatsoever of your behaving unselfishly. Oh yes, you can imitate unselfishness. You can go through all sorts of highly refined forms of selfishness, but you're still tied to the wheel of becoming by the golden chains of your good deeds, as the obviously bad people are tied to it by the iron chains of their misbehavior
(snip)

Here is one,
http://www.ci.sausalito.ca.us/library/watts_collection/watts05.htm
(snip)
C 414 ON FEELING YOU ARE GOD (given on Japan tour 1965) – Examination of types of such feelings and their frequent classification in the West as delusional states. A probing of the psycho-neurological happenings that constitute the experience and their integration into life experience.
(snip)

I mostly just listen to him on radio, some links here
http://www.alanwatts.net/watts.htm

[damnraddem]

13. They're admitting to dereliction of duty.

That's so much better than admitting to participation in a coverup -- or with ordering the policy of torture in the first place.

[bahrbearian]

8. Condi's bed time, reading aloud time is all booked up!

"But when pressed, he acknowledged that he had not yet read a classified, 53-page Army report completed in February by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, first reported in the May 10 issue of The New Yorker, that chronicled the worst of the abuses at Abu Ghraib"

[0007]

2. Yes, let's skate around the Military Intelligence and the CIA

These Army Generals are what mannequins' are to Department Stores

[maddezmom]

3. names 2 contractors and 2 officers

<<The report identifies Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th military intelligence brigade, Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the former director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center and Liaison Officer to the 205th Military intelligence Brigade, Steven Stephanowicz, an Army contract employee from CACI, and John Israel, a contractor and civilian interpreter with CACI, as the people suspected of being "either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib." >>

[0007]

10. I'd start cutting out tongues, beginning with the interpreters,

Then I'd get Senator Bill Frist to sew 'em back on when the necessary information was obtained, LOL!!

Don't get excited folks, I have my tongue in cheek.

[keithyboy]

4. This is total 'bullshit'

They all know and knew what has been going on there and even in Afghanistan BEFORE we invaded Iraq.

[maddezmom]

5. Sy Hersch just said on CNNI in an interview...54 pg report was the 3rd

on the incident and others were completed in Sept and Oct. So the shock and surprise of Myers and others is for the camera. What a bunch of sick pigs.... :puke:

[TahitiNut]

6. Standard answer:

"No actionable intelligence"


:puke:

[nolabels]

11. Didn't you mean "What a bunch of LYING sick pigs"

http://www.phrusa.org/waronterror/letter_071503.html

Update:
Letter to President Bush - March 21, 2003
Bush Statement on Torture- June 26, 2003
Human Rights Groups Respond to Bush Statement on Torture
For Immediate Release

June 26, 2003
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

Today, on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States declares its strong solidarity with torture victims across the world. Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.

Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. Beating, burning, rape, and electric shock are some of the grisly tools such regimes use to terrorize their own citizens. These despicable crimes cannot be tolerated by a world committed to justice.

Notorious human rights abusers, including, among others, Burma, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Zimbabwe, have long sought to shield their abuses from the eyes of the world by staging elaborate deceptions and denying access to international human rights monitors. Until recently, Saddam Hussein used similar means to hide the crimes of his regime. With Iraq's liberation, the world is only now learning the enormity of the dictator's three decades of victimization of the Iraqi people. Across the country, evidence of Baathist atrocities is mounting, including scores of mass graves containing the remains of thousands of men, women, and children and torture chambers hidden inside palaces and ministries. The most compelling evidence of all lies in the stories told by torture survivors, who are recounting a vast array of sadistic acts perpetrated against the innocent. Their testimony reminds us of their great courage in outlasting one of history's most brutal regimes, and it reminds us that similar cruelties are taking place behind the closed doors of other prison states.

The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy. I further urge governments to join America and others in supporting torture victims' treatment centers, contributing to the UN Fund for the Victims of Torture, and supporting the efforts of non-governmental organizations to end torture and assist its victims.

No people, no matter where they reside, should have to live in fear of their own government. Nowhere should the midnight knock foreshadow a nightmare of state-commissioned crime. The suffering of torture victims must end, and the United States calls on all governments to assume this great mission
(snip)

[maddezmom]

12. here's the transcript

~snip~
HERSH: You know, that's a funny description, the bad seed description. What you see is a prison that was out of control, according to the Taguba report. That's Major General Antonio Taguba wrote the report, and a quite brilliant 53-page report, devastating report, turned in, in February, in which he said the problems were systemic, endemic throughout the command structure. Since last fall, the Army, the high level in Iraq and certainly in Washington, knew there were problems in the prison system. His was the third major study done of the prison system. And he just was, I have to tell you, to the credit of the general, very straightforward. He criticized some of the earlier reports that had been done, said they missed it. They didn't get the story.

And so -- and I also had the advantage of reading some of the trial transcripts in which GIs do describe the fact that they could do this stuff and photograph it and just walk around. In some photographs, for example, you see as many as 12 or 13 different pairs of feet. And so, only six have been named. Clearly, a lot of other people were aware of what's going on and were doing it. It sounds awful, but it is true.

O'BRIEN: You talk about the prison system. A lot of what we heard is only specifically this particular prison, the Abu Ghraib prison. Are you saying then it's not only widespread within this prison, it's widespread systematically across Iraq?

HERSH: Well, the woman in charge, General Karpinski, Janis Karpinski who is saying that she didn't know much about what happened with the photographs, General's Taguba's report was very, very critical of her for the way she ran the prison system. She was in charge of the three main prisons in Iraq. There are three larges ones and many smaller detention centers. And he made it clear in his report that the abuses were widespread. Of course, they weren't photographing other places like they did at Abu Ghraib.


http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0405/03/ltm.01.html

[maddezmom]

14. Official: CIA Not Involved in Abu Ghraib Abuses

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA inspector general is conducting an investigation of the death of an Iraqi prisoner while being held at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, a senior CIA official said on Monday.
But the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was not aware that any CIA officers involved in interrogating prisoners there participated in the abuses depicted by recent photographs.

"I know of no CIA officers involved in the abuses which are now so famously described," the official told Reuters.

~SNIP~

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=5019005

Before the investigation is complete, the CIA knows for sure they aren't involved...yah okay whatever. :shrug:

[nolabels]

16. Believe everything they tell you, they never lie:-6

http://www.radio4all.org/crackcia/torture.htm

Excerpts from the CIA Torture Manual
As reprinted in Harper's Magazine, April 1997 issue. Psychological Torture, CIA-Style

From the "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual--1983," a handbook written by the Central Intelligence Agency and used during the early 80's to teach Latin American security forces how to extract information from prisoners. The manual was obtained in January through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Baltimore Sun as part of an investigation of the CIA's involvement in Honduras. In 1985, the CIA renounced the use of coercive interrogation techniques (sic) and amended the manual accordingly; in the copy obtained by the Sun, the original 1983 text is legible beneath the agency's handwritten revisions and deletion marks.

THEORY OF COERCION

The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavioral level. As the subject regresses, his learned personality traits fall away in reverse chronological order. He begins to lose the capacity to carry out the highest creative activities, to deal with complex situations, or to cope with stressful interpersonal relationships or repeated frustrations.

COERCIVE TECHNIQUES

Arrest

The manner and timing of the subjects arrest should be planned to achieve surprise and the maximum amount of mental discomfort. He should therefore be arrested at a moment when he least expects it and when his mental and physical resistance are at their lowest--ideally, in the early hours of the morning. When arrested at this time, most subjects experience intense feelings of shock, insecurity, and psychological stress, and have great difficulty adjusting to the situation.

Detention

A person's sense of identity depends upon the continuity in his surroundings, habits, appearance, relations with others, etc. Detention permits the questioner to cut through these links and throw the subject back upon his own unaided internal resources. Detention should be planned to enhance the subject's feelings of being cut off from anything known and reassuring.

Deprivation of Sensory Stimuli

Solitary confinement acts on most persons as a powerful stress. The symptoms most commonly produced by solitary confinement are superstition, intense love of any other living thing, perceiving inanimate objects as alive, hallucinations, and delusions.

Threats and Fear

The threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself. For example, the threat to inflict pain can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain.

The threat of death has been found to be worse than useless. The principal reason is that it often induces sheer hopelessness; the subject feels that he is as likely to be condemned after compliance as before. Some subjects recognize that the threat is a bluff and that silencing them forever would defeat the questioner's purpose
(snip)



The CIA's Secret Manual on Coercive Questioning

by Jon Elliston
ParaScope Dossier Editor
[e-mail]

Faced with a FOIA lawsuit, the Central Intelligence Agency recently released an interrogation manual to the Baltimore Sun that details brutal methods of extracting information from resistant sources. The "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation" manual does more than simply outline various psychological and physical torture tactics: it demonstrates a real-world application of the CIA's mind control research and offers clues on the agency's role in human rights abuses around the world. This report examines the historical context of the interrogation manual, the MKULTRA connection, and the manual itself, presented here verbatim for the first time online.
(snip)
http://www.parascope.com/articles/0397/kubarkin.htm

[bobbieinok]

20. colleague who taught Spanish and course on Latin America

got hold of a school of the americas or cia torture manual in spanish to be used by the right in central america

students would freak out about this

[BeHereNow]

15. Total CRAP, As usual, SHAM investigations

My nephew tells me this shit has been going
on over there ALL over- Afghanistan too.
It is COMMON knowledge among the civilians
and the troops.
To say ten or so people are the bad apples,
now end of story, is just CRAP.
My nephew says there are maybe two in ten rational
people around him- the rest, in his words, are uneducated,
sadistic "white trash." He says the racism and hatred
is intolerable to him, that he had no idea just
how sick his fellow service men were.
Needless to say, he wont be re-enlisting.
He can't wait to get out.
He is disgusted with the whole scene.
Also says the Halliburton crew is taking the
tax payers for the ride of their life and the
the provisions for the troops are simply miserable-
the cheapest of cheap, food, supplies, etc...
with Beverly Hills prices.
BHN

[nolabels]

18. Here is story for you

Iraqis gather outside the prison in Abu Ghraib, outside Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites), Sunday, May 2, 2004 as a US soldier stands guard. Hundreds of Iraqis who have relatives being held in the prison of Abu Ghraib demanded to see them after the release of pictures allegedly showing prisoners being humiliated by their U.S. captors. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040502/481/ans10205022143

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1208408,00.html

Torture commonplace, say inmates' families

Luke Harding at Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, where stories of US guards routinely abusing prisoners come as no surprise to Iraqis

Monday May 3, 2004
The Guardian

For the families standing in the dusty car park of Abu Ghraib prison yesterday, the revelations of torture and abuse came as no surprise. Every morning, relatives of Iraqi detainees inside the US prison, just west of Baghdad, gather in the hope that their loved ones might be released. They rarely are.

The photos of US soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees may have provoked outrage across the world. But for Hiyam Abbas they merely confirmed what she already knew - that US guards had tortured her 22-year-old son Hassan.

Breaking down in tears, Mrs Abbas said US guards had refused to let her in. She had so far only managed to see Hassan once - two months ago - following his arrest last November.

"He told me: 'Mum, they are taking our clothes off. We are nude all the time. They are getting dogs to smell our arses. They are also beating us with cables.'

"It's completely humiliating," Mrs Abbas said. "My son is sick and suffering from hypertension. During the interview the American soldiers were standing so close to us. My son was crying."

Her son had been detained in the Baghdad suburb of Al-Dora, after a gang broke into their house. What did she think of the Americans now?

"They are rubbish," she said. "Saddam Hussein may have oppressed us but he was better than the Americans. They are garbage
(snip)