Abu Ghraib and Beyond

[seemslikeadream]

The Bush administration says the U.S. atrocities at Saddam's old jail were the work of a few. But prisoner abuse is more widespread, and lots of people are passing the buck. A NEWSWEEK investigation


The captive mind: Geneva Convention protocols may have been stretched and sometimes ignored in many prisons in Iraq

By John Barry, Mark Hosenball and Babak Dehghanpisheh

NewsweekMay 17 issue - Abu Ghraib Prison sits in the middle of one of Iraq's nastiest patches. Ever since "major combat" ended a year ago, snipers hidden in the palm groves that surround the vast prison compound have routinely fired on U.S. patrols. The guardrails on the highway in front of the prison are mangled for miles from the large number of IEDs (improvised explosive devices). Helicopters constantly buzz around. At night, soldiers in the guard towers get drawn into raging gun battles. And mortars rain on the prison like a lethal hailstorm. "I can't even count how many mortar attacks we've had," S/Sgt. Joseph Lane, an operating-room technician in the prison hospital, told NEWSWEEK last week. "Sometimes there are two or three in a day." And all this while military police must process thousands of Iraqis each month, never knowing who among them is a "bad guy" trying to kill them.


It's hard to imagine a more high- pressure job. And late in the blazing-hot summer of 2003, military-intelligence officers working at Abu Ghraib were taking flak from their superiors inside as well as the insurgents outside. A series of bombings in August had leveled the Jordanian Embassy and the main U.N. office in Baghdad and killed a pro-U.S. ayatollah. At the Pentagon and in the field, military commanders began to mutter that too many intelligence personnel were engaged in the seemingly fruitless search for WMD and too few assets were assigned to find out who was killing American troops. The word came down from Washington: we need better intelligence. "There was extraordinary pressure being put on MI from every angle to get better info," says Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the former 800th MP Brigade commander, who at the time was responsible for Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons. "Where is Saddam? Find Saddam. And we want the weapons of mass destruction."

So Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the Coalition commander in Iraq, and his top intel officer, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, asked for a fixer. They got one in Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commandant at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. military had held more than 600 detainees for more than two years without charges. A Texan with a jutting jaw and thinning hair, Miller was nothing if not self-assured, much like his ultimate superior, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. According to a subsequent inquiry by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, Miller's task was "to review current Iraqi Theater ability to rapidly exploit internees for actionable intelligence." Translated into English, that meant to beef up interrogation techniques so as to break prisoners more quickly. Or as Karpinski puts it, Miller's plan was to "Gitmo-ize" the place, to teach the soldiers manning Abu Ghraib his best psychological and physical techniques for squeezing information out of detainees. That included using Karpinski's MPs to "enhance the intelligence effort." At a meeting of top military-intelligence and MP commanders last September, Miller bluntly told Karpinski: "You're going to see. We have control, and know it."

more
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4934436/

[saigon68]

1. GEN MYERS TIBUTE TO UNMUZZLED MILTARY POLICE DOGS

SCHINDLER'S LIST



Ralph Fiennes plays a chilling Amon Goeth in the movie, and plays him to the point that some
people have had trouble distinguishing him from the real thing.

Poldek Pfefferberg, one of the Schindler Jews, famously said, "When you saw Göeth, you saw
death."



GENERAL MYERS TRIBUTE TO AMON GOETH



THIS IS GOING OVER REAL WELL IN EUROPE

[seemslikeadream]

4. Who Let the Dogs Out?

"O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!"

Torture, the CIA and the Press

Who Let the Dogs Out?

By DOUGLAS VALENTINE


We were at risk and unable to strike back against terrorists, because the CIA had stopped putting tough agents in the field, Hersh reported, and was relying on technology and friendly foreign services to do the dirty work. He said that in the new war on terror, it was no longer feasible to assign CIA agents undercover as diplomats or cultural attaches at American embassies in major cities. Having said that, he drew a blueprint of exactly what was to come: "in Afghanistan," he said, "or anywhere in the Middle East or South Asia, a C.I.A. operative would have to speak the local language and be able to blend in. The operative should seemingly have nothing to do with any Americans, or with the American embassy, if there is one. The status is known inside the agency as "nonofficial cover," or NOC. Exposure could mean death."

Is this not a recipe for the type of "contractors" who flooded Iraq after the invasion and occupation? The only difference is that a CIA agent under "non-official cover" is no longer referred to as a NOC, but as an OGA, for Other Government Agency.

Before I continue to put in context the persuasive impact of what Hersh said two and half years ago, when he was prodding America to unleash its dogs of war, let me remind you that the agents who drew the CIA into the line of fire over the systematic use of torture at Abu Ghoryab prison ­ as a result, ironically, of Hersh's most recent "explosive" article in The New Yorker ­ were two individuals who fit the "nonofficial cover" bill exactly: Mr. John Israel, a contract US civilian interpreter, working for the company CACI, and ostensibly attached to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade; and Mr. Steven Stephanowicz, a contract US civilian interrogator, also working for CACI, but not attached to Military Intelligence, and certainly working for the CIA.

The whereabouts of Messrs. Stephanowicz and Israel are currently unknown, and CACI doesn't have to tell, because: 1) as we are told by Hersh, "Exposure could mean death," and 2) because, their trail leads to the CIA people who hired them; and the one thing Bush cannot accept, is having heroic a CIA agent brought up on a murder rap.

Try, if you can, to imagine a trial by jury, or tribunal, in which a CIA officer was sentenced to death for killing an Iraqi civilian.

Then come quickly to your senses, and realize that CIA officers have a license to kill, just as Army snipers can assassinate Iraqi civilians with impunity. The fact is, the war crime of murder is not punishable by death under the Bush Regime, for it was the Bush Regime that lifted all the moral and legal restraints on its soldiers and spies in the first place. So far, murdering Iraqis carries with it only a less than honorable discharges.

more
http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine05082004.html


Led Zeppelin - Your Time Is Gonna Come

Lyin', cheatin', hurtin, that's all you seem to do.
Messin' around with every guy in town,
Puttin' me down for thinkin' of someone new.
Always the same, playin' your game,
Drive me insane, trouble is gonna come to you,
One of these days and it won't be long,
You'll look for me but baby, I'll be gone.
This is all I gotta say to you woman:

*Your Time Is Gonna Come X4

Made up my mind to break you this time,
Won't be so fine, it's my turn to cry.
Do want you want, I won't take the brunt.
It's fadin' away, can't feel you anymore.
Don't care what you say 'cause I'm goin' away to stay,
Gonna make you pay for that great big hole in my heart.
People talkin' all around,
Watch out woman, no longer
Is the joke gonna be on my heart.
You been bad to me woman,
But it's coming back home to you.

Led Zeppelin - Your Time Is Gonna Come

[seemslikeadream]

2. Too Little, Too Late?

No one knows exactly what went wrong at Abu Ghraib. But Miller's "Gitmo rules" were being introduced into a much more uncontrolled environment in Iraq. Gitmo has no "hot" war outside its walls and only 600-800 detainees, all of them pre-screened as terrorist suspects and controlled by 800 guards. Abu Ghraib has had as many as 7,000 detainees—and about 700 guards, which is shockingly low. (Karpinski has pointed out that a civilian U.S. prison would have double that prisoner-to-guard ratio.) Many soldiers say they are just as horrified and saddened as the U.S. public by the photos. Sgt. Stacy Renee Ferguson of Factoryville, Pa., was with the 320th Military Police Battalion when it shifted out of Abu Ghraib and the 372d MP unit shifted in. Last week she recalled that the 372d was full of bad attitudes because they had been jerked around—idling forever in Kuwait, told they were shipping back to the United States, eventually detailed to Abu Ghraib. "They obviously didn't want to be there."

Still, some question how seriously Rumsfeld is taking the allegations even now. At hearings last week, he was not shy about admitting mistakes. But he reserved most of his self-flagellation not for moral offenses but for, as he put it, "not understanding and knowing" there were hundreds of photos "that could eventually end up in the public and do the damage they've done." The role and culpability of the military-intelligence hierarchy remained carefully shrouded. And before the photos came out, noted Sen. Jack Reed sardonically, none of the senior officers in the affair had suffered worse than a reprimand. "Is that because a trial, and due process, would bring this out?" Reed asked. We are now likely to discover just that.

more
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4934736/

[smallprint]

11. Nice pic comparison

It's dead on.

I was looking at photos of Rumsfeld earlier this week and thinking, "my God, he sure looks German... must be those glasses."


also made me think of this guy:

[happynewyear]

12. yes Rummy is German

Rummy's roots were traced back to the town in Germany where the Rumsfeld's are from. Upon discovering the town, the TOWN itself did not want anything at all to do with Rumsfeld. I wish I had a link to this story but I remember it very well being I am interested in this subject on another level - genealogy.

[fearnobush]

3. So it is finally said in a Newsweek headline.

The Bush administration says the U.S. atrocities at Saddam's old jail were the work of a few. But prisoner abuse is more widespread, and lots of people are passing the buck. A NEWSWEEK investigation

Only Proves that * and co. not only knew, but covered up. I think the word Impeachment may get a lot louder these days. If not for our country, but the for the need of truth and a commitment to justice for the world to see.

[BeHereNow]

5. Oh my...

"Or as Karpinski puts it, Miller's plan was to "Gitmo-ize" the place,
to teach the soldiers manning Abu Ghraib his best psychological
and physical techniques for squeezing information out of detainees."

Well this certainly does not shed a positive light on the fate
of the detainees at "Gitmo" now does it?

As a taxpayer, I DEMAND a full investigation by
Amnesty Int. and the Red Cross-
FULL access and unmonitered interviews with ALL
detainees in ALL locations.
GOD DAMN THOSE FUCKERS IN THE WH.
GOD DAMN THEM TO HELL FOR WHAT THEY
HAVE DONE IN MY NAME!

To LURKING Congress men-
Either you do your job or we WILL vote your ass out.
That's a promise, which is more than you have kept
to the people who elected you.
BHN
:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

[RaRa]

6. Wasn't it rummy who said

"geneva shmneva"? I may have even seen the link here. Would LOVE to have that link now, if anyone has one...

[seemslikeadream]

7. Torture as Normalcy As American as Apple Pie

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Torture's back in the news, courtesy of those lurid pictures of exultant Americans laughing as they torture their Iraqi captives in Abu Ghraib prison run by the US military outside Baghdad. Apparently it takes electrodes and naked bodies piled in a simulated orgy to tickle America's moral nerve ends. Kids maimed by cluster bombs just don't do it any more. But torture's nothing new. One of the darkest threads in postwar US imperial history has been the CIA's involvement with torture, as instructor, practitioner or contractor. Since its inception the CIA has taken a keen interest in torture, avidly studying Nazi techniques and protecting their exponents such as Klaus Barbie. The CIA's official line is that torture is wrong and is ineffective. It is indeed wrong. On countless occasions it has been appallingly effective.

Remember Dan Mitrione, kidnapped and killed by Uruguay's Tupamaros and portrayed by Yves Montand in Costa-Gavras's film State of Siege? In the late 1960s Mitrione worked for the US Office of Public Safety, part of the Agency for International Development. In Brazil, so A.J. Langguth (a former New York Times bureau chief in Saigon) related in his book Hidden Terrors, Mitrione was among the US advisers teaching Brazilian police how much electric shock to apply to prisoners without killing them. In Uruguay, according to the former chief of police intelligence, Mitrione helped "professionalize" torture as a routine measure and advised on psychological techniques such as playing tapes of women and children screaming that the prisoner's family was being tortured.

In the months after the 9/11/01 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, "truth drugs" were hailed by some columnists such as Newsweek's Jonathan Alter for use in the war against Al Qaeda. This was an enthusiasm shared by the US Navy after the war against Hitler, when its intelligence officers got on the trail of Dr. Kurt Plotner's research into "truth serums" at Dachau. Plotner gave Jewish and Russian prisoners high doses of mescaline and then observed their behavior, in which they expressed hatred for their guards and made confessional statements about their own psychological makeup.

As part of its larger MK-ULTRA project the CIA gave money to Dr. Ewen Cameron, at McGill University. Cameron was a pioneer in the sensory-deprivation techniques. Cameron once locked up a woman in a small white box for thirty-five days, deprived of light, smell and sound. The CIA doctors were amazed at this dose, knowing that their own experiments with a sensory-deprivation tank in 1955 had induced severe psychological reactions in less than forty hours. Start torturing, and it's easy to get carried away.

Torture destroys the tortured and corrupts the society that sanctions it. Just like the FBI after 9/11/01 the CIA in 1968 got frustrated by its inability to break suspected leaders of Vietnam's National Liberation Front by its usual methods of interrogation and torture. So the agency began more advanced experiments, in one of which it anesthetized three prisoners, opened their skulls and planted electrodes in their brains. They were revived, put in a room and given knives. The CIA psychologists then activated the electrodes, hoping the prisoners would attack one another. They didn't. The electrodes were removed, the prisoners shot and their bodies burned. You can read about it in our book, Whiteout.

more
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn05082004.html

[acmavm]

8. What a beacon for humanity. Makes one proud, does it not?

Assholes.

[seemslikeadream]

10. The Baghdad museum (left) is looking forward to a new exhibit (right)

Uday and Qusai to Go On Display in Iraqi Museum," in New Yorkish, online, July 28, 2003: "'We'd like to give every Iraqi the opportunity to see the corpses for themselves,' said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq. 'With the museum empty, we thought it would be the perfect venue,' he added. General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was excited about the new exhibit. 'We couldn't recover most of those stolen antiquities,' said Myers, 'but we're real happy to have something else to stick in the museum so we can finally reopen the doors,' ..." "And Myers dismissed the suggestion that viewing the corpses in person may still not convince many Iraqis. 'We think the audio tour of the museum -- which will include commentary from soldiers and coroners -- will help a lot,' said Myers. 'It also makes an excursion to the museum a lot more fun for the whole family,' he added." "But Donny George, the U.S. official who is the now the museum's director, brushed off the criticism. 'I'm just thrilled we'll have some fresh material on display,' he said. 'Well,' George said backtracking, 'I wouldn't necessarily call two dead bodies 'fresh material' but it's better than having an empty exhibit hall.'"

http://cctr.umkc.edu/user/fdeblauwe/iraqhumor.html

[dArKeR]

9. Former detainees tell of Iraq prison drama - IOL

By Deborah Pasmantier

Baghdad - From north to south, Iraqis have detailed abuse at United States-run detention centres as military officials insist gruesome deeds at the Abu Ghraib jail were the work of a few and not an indictment of the entire system.

But human rights campaigners say torture is endemic at camps across the country, while others lambast the American military for continuing to deny all but the International Committee of the Red Cross access to security detainees.

Qusay Mehawish, 23, told reporters that he was held for five months at various prisons, including the infamous Abu Ghraib, because the Americans were hunting down his father, a former army general under deposed leader Saddam Hussein.

http://iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=qw1084192741965I621&set_id=1