Friends,
When I first saw those torture photos, with the grinning female GI, I
knew something unusual was coming down. The torture itself was of course
not news. We've already seen numerous reports of prisoners being
tortured, beaten to death, and murdered in Iraq and Afghanistan. I've
published some of those and I'm sure you folks get such stuff off the
net as well. The involvement of junior soldiers and females was a bit
odd, and the fact that photos were taken and distributed freely around
the prison was certainly not traditional procedure. But the strangest
thing was the fact that we were seeing the images and hearing the
stories on mainstream TV. What was that about? Why was the media
undermining the President and a war that the media has been staunchly
supporting all along? Why have the networks suddenly sprouted a social
conscience?
Part of the reason, of course, is that once the photos were distributed
widely in the military, and then uploaded to the net, the story became
difficult to sit on. "Someone's going to break it, so why not get in
early?". Perhaps that's the whole reason for the media coverage. But I
doubt it very much. There is lots of disturbing evidence all over the
net, regarding all sorts of American transgressions - which never sees
the light of a media camera. When has the mainstream media ever talked
about depleted uranium, or snipers shooting unarmed women and children,
or units firing heavy weapons into unarmed crowds? I've gotten hundreds of
reports like that, and I believe there are photos available as well. If
they can sit on all that and more, month after month, why couldn't they
sit on the torture story?
My suspicion was that there is some kind of struggle emerging in
high-level circles. Circles high enough to get leaks published and
high enough to infiltrate the prison and initiate the photo activity.
Evidently, it seemed to me, there is a very well-connected little circle
within the bigger elite circle, and that little circle is hostile to the
neocons. It is not difficult to guess what kind of people are likely to
be in that little circle of friends. It is open knowledge that veteran
brass and intelligence people are very pissed off at the neocons. Those
veterans knew there were no weapons of mass destruction, they know that
there was plenty of warning before 9/11, and they know that the
interceptors were held back on the day. And yet they're the ones who are
taking the blame for "intelligence failures" and they are the ones who
have to send GIs off to die in Iraq. The neocons are arrogant upstarts
in DC, a bit like JFK was, and like him they've made a lot of enemies.
Not even the oil companies are happy about administration policy in
Iraq. The little circle may not be all that little.
OK, enough preamble. Something big is coming down, and I'd like to show
you some of the breaking news items. I'll quote excerpts from various
articles, and include the URLs of the full articles.
To begin with, and as you know from the media - the revelations are not
stopping with that first batch of photos. Even as the White House
scurries into damage-control mode, damning testimony and new evidence is
appearing in rapid succession.
This first article is an interview with Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey, a 12 year
Marine veteran who served in both Iraq campaigns. Here is someone with
very high public credibility. He wasn't involved with prisons, but he
describes, or more confesses, things he and others did in Iraq. He talks
about wiping out a group of unarmed young demonstrators, and says, "The
order to shoot the demonstrators, I believe, came from senior government
officials, including intelligence communities within the military and
the U.S. government." He talks graphically about depleted uranium, and
cluster bombs. He goes on to tell how his actions became increasingly
difficult for him to justify, despite his strong sense of duty and
discipline as a Marine. He describes an incident with a superior:
______________________________________________________
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/051804A.shtml
Atrocities in Iraq: 'I Killed Innocent People for Our Government'
By Paul Rockwell
Sacramento Bee
Sunday 16 May 2004
There was an incident. It was right after the fall of Baghdad, when we
went back down south. On the outskirts of Karbala, we had a morning
meeting on the battle plan. I was not in a good mindset. All these
things were going through my head - about what we were doing over there.
About some of the things my troops were asking. I was holding it all
inside. My lieutenant and I got into a conversation. The conversation
was striking me wrong. And I lashed out. I looked at him and told him:
"You know, I honestly feel that what we're doing is wrong over here.
We're committing genocide.'"
He asked me something and I said that with the killing of civilians
and the depleted uranium we're leaving over here, we're not going to
have to worry about terrorists. He didn't like that. He got up and
stormed off. And I knew right then and there that my career was over. I
was talking to my commanding officer.
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/051804C.shtml
The Roots of Torture
By John Barry, Michael Hirsh and Michael Isikoff
Newsweek International
May 24 Issue
The road to Abu Ghraib began after 9/11, when Washington wrote new rules
to fight a new kind of war.
The story begins in the months after September 11, when a small band of
conservative lawyers within the Bush administration staked out a
forward-leaning legal position. The attacks by Al Qaeda on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, these lawyers said, had plunged the
country into a new kind of war. It was a conflict against a vast,
outlaw, international enemy in which the rules of war, international
treaties and even the Geneva Conventions did not apply. These positions
were laid out in secret legal opinions drafted by lawyers from the
Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and then endorsed by the
Department of Defense and ultimately by White House counsel Alberto
Gonzales, according to copies of the opinions and other internal legal
memos obtained by NEWSWEEK.
By Jan. 25, 2002, according to a memo obtained by NEWSWEEK, it was clear
that Bush had already decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply
at all, either to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. In the memo, which was
written to Bush by Gonzales, the White House legal counsel told the
president that Powell had "requested that you reconsider that decision."
Gonzales then laid out startlingly broad arguments that anticipated any
objections to the conduct of U.S. soldiers or CIA interrogators in the
future. "As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of
war," Gonzales wrote to Bush. "The nature of the new war places a - high
premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain
information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to
avoid further atrocities against American civilians." Gonzales concluded
in stark terms: "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete
Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and
renders quaint some of its provisions.
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
http://truthout.org/docs_04/051904AA.shtml
'Definitely a Cover-Up'
By Brian Ross and Alexandra Salomon
ABCNEWS.com
Tuesday 18 May 2004
Former Abu Ghraib Intel Staffer Says Army Concealed Involvement in Abuse
Scandal
Dozens of soldiers - other than the seven military police reservists
who have been charged - were involved in the abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib
prison, and there is an effort under way in the Army to hide it, a key
witness in the investigation told ABCNEWS.
"There's definitely a cover-up," the witness, Sgt. Samuel Provance,
said. "People are either telling themselves or being told to be quiet."
Provance, 30, was part of the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion
stationed at Abu Ghraib last September. He spoke to ABCNEWS despite
orders from his commanders not to.
Top military officials have claimed the abuse seen in the photos at Abu
Ghraib was limited to a few MPs, but Provance says the sexual
humiliation of prisoners began as a technique ordered by the
interrogators from military intelligence.
______________________________________________________
These are hard-hitting stories. Their content, like the torture photos,
is not particularly new or surprising - but their presence in mainstream
channels is. And each of the stories I quoted not only expands on the
list of crimes, but also points the finger upwards, to high officials
and intelligence officers. This is the kind of media material that can
turn the whole population against the war, and against Bush and the
neocons. Now that it's OK to put out damning Iraq stories - regardless
of why it's now OK - there are lots of reporters and interviewees who
will go for it because they think it's the right thing to do. It can't
be stopped now. The damn has broken, and it's beginning to feel like the
early days of Watergate.
If there is a 'little circle' out to get the neocons, then they have
succeeded in launching a media blitz that will make the Monica Lowenski
affair seem minor. Bush, it would seem, is on his way out. This is his
scandal, like Lowenski before, and the Iranian Hostage Crisis before
that.
Is there really a 'little circle'? This next article might shed some
light on that question
______________________________________________________
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/051904C.shtml
Army, CIA Want Torture Truths Exposed
By Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Tuesday 18 May 2004
Washington - Efforts at the top level of the Bush administration and
the civilian echelon of the Department of Defense to contain the Iraq
prison torture scandal and limit the blame to a handful of enlisted
soldiers and immediate senior officers have already failed: The scandal
continues to metastasize by the day.
Over the past weekend and into this week, devastating new
allegations have emerged putting Stephen Cambone, the first
Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, firmly in the crosshairs
and bringing a new wave of allegations cascading down on the head of
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when he scarcely had time to catch
his breath from the previous ones.
Even worse for Rumsfeld and his coterie of neo-conservative true
believers who have run the Pentagon for the past 3 1/2 years, three
major institutions in the Washington power structure have decided that
after almost a full presidential term of being treated with contempt
and abuse by them, it's payback time.
Those three institutions are: The United States Army, the Central
Intelligence Agency and the old, relatively moderate but highly
experienced Republican leadership in the United States Senate.
None of those groups is chopped liver: Taken together they comprise
a devastating Grand Slam.
The spearhead for the new wave of revelations and allegations - but
by no means the only source of them - is veteran investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh. In a major article published in the New
Yorker this week and posted on to its Web-site Saturday, Hersh revealed
that a high-level Pentagon operation code-named Copper Green
"encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation" of Iraqi
prisoners. He also cited Pentagon sources and consultants as saying
that photographing the victims of such abuse was an explicit part of
the program meant to force the victims into becoming blackmailed
reliable informants.
Hersh further claimed in his article that Rumsfeld himself approved
the program and that one of his four or five top aides, Cambone, set it
up in Baghdad and ran it.
...intelligence and regular Army sources have told UPI that senior
officers and officials in both communities are sickened and outraged by
the revelations of mass torture and abuse, and also by the incompetence
involved, in the Abu Ghraib prison revelations. These sources also said
that officials all the way up to the highest level in both the Army and
the Agency are determined not to be scapegoated, or allow very junior
soldiers or officials to take the full blame for the excesses.
______________________________________________________
As a follow-up, here's an article about the Republican leadership in
the US Senate:
______________________________________________________
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/051804D.shtml
Senators to Press Scandal
By Richard Simon and Elizabeth Shogren
Los Angeles Times
Monday 17 May 2004
A GOP-controlled panel, feeling slighted by the administration and
obliged to look at abuse of prisoners, has no plan to drop the issue
soon.
Washington - As the White House struggles to get beyond the prisoner
abuse scandal, it faces an unsettling fact: The Senate Armed Services
Committee - controlled by Republicans - plans to keep the issue alive
for weeks to come.
That promises more headaches for the White House and once
undreamed-of opportunities for Democrats on the committee, such as Sen.
Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and other critics of President Bush's
handling of the war in Iraq.
The Armed Services Committee, led by 77-year-old Senate veteran John
W. Warner of Virginia, has served noticed that it would not pull back,
as the House Armed Services Committee has done. Instead, Warner plans
extended hearings to call on the carpet such high-profile officials as
Army Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, and L. Paul
Bremer III, head of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority.
More disturbing still for the White House, Democrats and Republicans
on the Senate committee say they will shift the focus from the misdeeds
of a handful of guards at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. What they
want to dig into instead is how senior Pentagon officials loosened the
rules protecting prisoners during interrogation.
______________________________________________________
Think about the sequence of events. The media sequence was: (1) photos,
(2) more revelations, (3) Senate decides to investigate, (4) Senate
decides to be a bull dog on the matter. The public is supposed to assume
that (1) led to (2) led to (3) led to (4). But does that make sense? If
Martin Sieff, a UPI Senior News Analyst, has properly checked his
sources, as he would with such an article, then the Grand Slam of Army,
CIA, and Republican Senate leadership have had it in for Bush for some
time now. And certainly these people talk to each other all the time.
The Armed Services Committee, the CIA, and the Army work together very
closely, and sharing secrets is a routine part of their jobs. These are
hardball players. Why would they not pursue their common interests,
using very straightforward means easily at their disposal?
The Army and the CIA would have no trouble at all between them setting
up whatever conditions and climate they wanted at Abu Ghraib. And who do
you imagine it is in DC that liaisons with the media? Who actually makes
the phone calls and passes the leaks to the key editors? In most cases
that would be the CIA's job. Relationships build up over time, trust
develops. The editor gets a call, "Trust me on this one, run with it.
You won't get roasted."
The real sequence of events goes more like this. (1) our little circle
decides to take action, (2) Army, CIA, and Senate each prepare for their
role, (3) when all is in place, the photos are published. The dead
give-away is the rapidity of the media version of the sequence. Just as
the War on Terrorism sprung into life impossibly quickly after the
towers collapsed, so have too many ducks fallen into place too quickly
since the photos appeared. And just as we learned later about the
neocon's "New Pearl Harbor" agenda, now we learn of long-simmering
resentment in the Grand Slam. You do the math.
What we are seeing is a power struggle between the neocons and the
old-cons - the traditional conservatives. So far it looks like a replay
of Watergate, and if it goes that way the neocons will be out, and Kerry
will be working within a new power alignment and a new set of
priorities. The glove, to some extent, will be put back on the fascist
fist.
But the neocons are not pushovers. They obviously have their own little
fascist circles, within the CIA, military intelligence, and the private
sector, or they wouldn't have been able to do all the things they've
been doing, in the face of institutional disapproval. They too can play
hardball. They proved that on 9/11. Whatever little circles pulled that
off, domestic or foreign, are still in place - and they're in it up to
their necks now, committed to the program.
There's one obvious scenario that could keep the neocons in power and
enable them to aggressively pursue their New American Century: (1) a
major "terrorist" event just before the election, something big -
perhaps the Senate building, (2) Al Qaeda is immediately blamed and
'evidence' released, (3) Bush declares Marshall Law and cancels the
election, (4) see: German history from 1933.
And guess what? Just as the neocons told us about the new Pearl Harbor
before it happened, now they're telling us what to expect next...
______________________________________________________
From U.S. News and World Report
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/040524/whispers/24whisplead.htm
Washington Whispers
From the White House, a nightmare scenario
White House officials say they've got a "working premise" about
terrorism and the presidential election: It's going to happen. "We
assume," says a top administration official, "an attack will happen
leading up to the election." And, he added, "it will happen here." There
are two worst-case scenarios, the official says. The first posits an
attack on Washington, possibly the Capitol, which was believed to be the
target of the 9/11 jet that crashed in Pennsylvania. Theory 2: smaller
but more frequent attacks in Washington and other major cities leading
up to the election. To prepare, the administration has been holding
secret antiterrorism drills to make sure top officials know what to do.
"There was a sense," says one official involved in the drills, "of mass
confusion on 9/11. Now we have a sense of order."
______________________________________________________
Sense of order indeed. Which sense? "Alles in Ordnung" sense? "New World
Order" sense? Take your pick.
rkm
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Wexford, Ireland
_____________________________
"...the Patriot Act followed 9-11 as smoothly as the
suspension of the Weimar constitution followed the
Reichstag fire."
- Srdja Trifkovic
There is not a problem with the system.
The system is the problem.
Faith in ourselves - not gods, ideologies, leaders, or programs.
_____________________________
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