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14 May 2004
Bush Supporters Are Split on How to Pursue
Iraq Plan
By DAVID E. SANGER and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
New York Times, 14 May 2004
EXCERPT: Speaking briefly on the South Lawn of the White House, Mr. Bush
appeared to try to use the beheading of Nicholas Berg, a young Pennsylvania
man seeking work rebuilding Iraq, to refocus attention on the nature of the
enemy the United States faces rather than on the continuing investigation
into the abuses of Iraqi prisoners in American custody. But some of Mr.
Bush's aides and many of his outside advisers said in interviews that
conservatives who had backed the war were now badly fractured on how the
administration should pursue its Iraq strategy, and they fear that the
combination of the prisoner abuse scandal and the inability of American
forces to put down the insurgency are taking a toll on the Bush re-election
race.
Everyone in a U.S. uniform represents 'our
military'...
Accused Soldier's History
WPVI.com, 12 May 2004
 EXCERPT:
One of the soldiers from Pennsylvania who is facing charges in the Iraq
prisoner abuse scandal also mistreated inmates in the U.S., according to an
exonerated inmate from the Delaware Valley. Exonerated Pennsylvania death
row inmate Nicholas Yarris told a crowd at Bucks County community college of
his firsthand experience with Charles Graner. Yarris was an inmate at the
Corrections Institution in Greene where Graner was a guard. He says the
level of mistreatment does not rise to the level seen in the photos of Iraq
but it was similar in its aim to humiliate. Nicholas Yarris/exonerated
inmate: "Charles in particular enjoyed the infliction of rules to the nth
degree because he enjoyed that kind of mindset. He does not represent our
military."
Berg Died for Bush, Rumsfeld 'Sins' -
Father
by Jon Hurdle
Common Dreams, 13 May 2004
EXCERPT: The father of Nick Berg, the American beheaded in Iraq, directly
blamed President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday for
his son's death. "My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald
Rumsfeld. This administration did this," Berg said in an interview with
radio station KYW-AM. In the interview from outside his home in West
Chester, Pennsylvania, a seething Michael Berg also said his 26-year-old
son, a civilian contractor, probably would have felt positive, even about
his executioners, until the last minute. "I am sure that he only saw the
good in his captors until the last second of his life," Berg said. "They did
not know what they were doing. They killed their best friend."
Polls Show Bush's Job-Approval Ratings
Sinking
By DAVID E. SANGER
New York Times, 14 May 2004
EXCERPT: Mr. Bush's job-approval numbers have sunk to all-time lows, with a
majority of Americans now saying, for the first time, that the invasion of
Iraq was not worth the mounting cost. At the same time, they give the
president far higher marks for his execution of the battle against
terrorists, even though he has argued that they are all part of one war.
Congress, including prominent conservatives, has grown so restive about the
wisdom of Mr. Bush's strategy that on Thursday the deputy secretary of
defense, Paul D. Wolfowitz, had to retreat from a Senate hearing when
members of both parties demanded far more specifics than he could provide
about plans for spending the $25 billion the president is seeking to pursue
the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And for the first time, even some of the
most loyal administration aides, who have regularly defended every twist in
the Iraq strategy, are conceding that the president and his top advisers are
stuck in what one of them called "the perpetual debate" about whether to
change strategy or soldier on. Mr. Bush's usually sunny campaign advisers
make no effort to hide the depth of the problem.
Pew Research
Center
Letter to President Bush:
Inhumane Treatment of Prisoners Produces Blowbacks and Backlashes
by Ralph Nader
May 13, 2004
EXCERPT:
George W. Bush
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
Re: Inhumane treatment of prisoners produces blowbacks and backlashes
Dear Mr. President:
The reported widespread abuse of prisoners by your Administration adds
another condition that reflects on your failure of leadership. Anticipation
and prevention of such tragedies should have been routine by the top
officials whom you command. How can you imagine winning the hearts and minds
of the Iraqi people? You are expanding what the intelligence agencies call
"blowbacks" - expanding the networking of stateless terrorists against the
United States. In addition, your Administration's actions put US soldiers
and civilians in Iraq at increased risk from the backlash to the abuse of
Iraqi prisoners, most of whom the press reports were charged with no
wrongdoing when imprisoned. ...The International Committee of the Red Cross
issued a report concerning prisoner abuse based on private interviews with
prisoners of war and civilian internees during the 29 visits ICRC staff
conducted in 14 places of detention across Iraq between March 31 and October
2, 2003. The report said that as far back as last May, the Red Cross
reported to the military about 200 allegations of abuse, and that in July it
complained about 50 allegations of abuse at a detention site called Camp
Cropper -- including one case of treatment that included being deprived of
sleep, kicked repeatedly and injured and having a baseball tied into the
prisoner's mouth. On May 10 the Red Cross stated that the organization's
president, Jakob Kellenberger, complained about the prison abuses directly
to top administration officials during a two-day visit to Washington in
mid-January when he met with Secretary of State Colin Powell, national
security advisor Condoleezza Rice and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz.
You cannot claim that you were unaware of these allegations. You are briefed
daily. In addition to these allegations being reported in the media, human
rights groups have specifically written to your Administration about them.
In July 2003, Amnesty International sent your administration a Memorandum on
Concerns Relating to Law and Order in Iraq. The Memorandum included
allegations of torture and ill-treatment of Iraqi detainees by US and
Coalition forces.
Noted...again.
Report Calls for Accountability and Services to Deal
With Sexual Assaults in Military
By LYNETTE CLEMETSON
New York Times, 14 May 2004
EXCERPT: The Defense Department called on Thursday for more accountability,
more education and more services to deal with sexual assault cases within
the ranks of the United States armed forces. Acknowledging serious
deficiencies in the way the military has handled such cases, the department
laid out proposals for change in a report that was ordered in February by
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to investigate more than 100
accusations of sexual assault and misconduct over 18 months within the
United States Central Command area, which includes Iraq, Afghanistan and
Kuwait.
Globe Grows Darker as Sunshine Diminishes
10% to 37%
By KENNETH CHANG
New York Times, 13 May 2004
EXCERPT: In the second half of the 20th century, the world became, quite
literally, a darker place. Defying expectation and easy explanation,
hundreds of instruments around the world recorded a drop in sunshine
reaching the surface of Earth, as much as 10 percent from the late 1950's to
the early 90's, or 2 percent to 3 percent a decade. In some regions like
Asia, the United States and Europe, the drop was even steeper. In Hong Kong,
sunlight decreased 37 percent. No one is predicting that it may soon be
night all day, and some scientists theorize that the skies have brightened
in the last decade as the suspected cause of global dimming, air pollution,
clears up in many parts of the world. Yet the dimming trend — noticed by a
handful of scientists 20 years ago but dismissed then as unbelievable — is
attracting wide attention. Research on dimming and its implications for
weather, water supplies and agriculture will be presented next week in
Montreal at a joint meeting of American and Canadian geological groups.
A Crude Shock
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 14 may 2004
EXCERPT: ...if there is a major supply disruption, the world will have to
get by with less oil, and the only way that can happen in the short run is
if there is a world economic slowdown. An oil-driven recession does not look
at all far-fetched. It is, all in all, an awkward time to be pursuing a
foreign policy that promises a radical transformation of the Middle East —
let alone to be botching the job so completely.
Accidental E-mail from WSJ shows ill temperament
Wall Street Journal vs. 'Jersey Girls'
by Lloyd Grove
Common Dreams, 13 May 2004
EXCERPT: Wall Street Journal pundit Dorothy Rabinowitz - who last month
penned an acid assault on the "Jersey Girls," four 9/11 widows who've dared
to criticize the Bush administration - received some payback yesterday at
the hands of "Jersey Girl" Kristin Breitweiser.
13 May 2004
"It is doubtful we can go on much longer like this. The
American people may not stand for it -- and they should not. ...I do not
believe we had a clearly defined war strategy, end state and exit
strategy before we commenced our invasion. Had someone like Colin Powell
been the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], he would not have
agreed to send troops without a clear exit strategy. The current OSD
[Office of the Secretary of Defense] refused to listen or adhere to
military advice."
--A senior general officer at the Pentagon |
Protecting the System
Washington Post, 13 May 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration still seeks to mislead Congress and the
public about the policies that contributed to the criminal abuse of
prisoners in Iraq. Yesterday's smoke screen was provided by Stephen A.
Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence. Mr. Cambone assured the
Senate Armed Services Committee that the administration's policy had always
been to strictly observe the Geneva Conventions in Iraq; that all procedures
for interrogations in Iraq were sanctioned under the conventions; and that
the abuses of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison were consequently the
isolated acts of individuals. These assertions are contradicted by
International Red Cross and Army investigators, by U.S. generals overseeing
the prisoners, and by Mr. Cambone himself. Start with adherence to the
Geneva Conventions, which Mr. Cambone's boss, Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld, has publicly derided as outdated and which the administration
acknowledges are not being adhered to at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison.
Mr. Cambone said yesterday that the administration considered all detainees
at Abu Ghraib to be covered by either the Third or Fourth Geneva Convention.
But he also confirmed a statement by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the current
commander at Abu Ghraib, that techniques officially available for
interrogation have included hooding, sleep deprivation and stress positions.
An official report by the Red Cross confirms that those techniques as well
as harsher ones have been used systematically, and not only at Abu Ghraib.
The report says they have been employed by tactical military intelligence
units all over Iraq, including at a permanent facility at the Baghdad
airport. According to Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), an Army report says that
the policy for Iraq specifies that permission of the commanding general can
be sought for the use of "sleep management, sensory deprivation, isolation
longer than 30 days and dogs." ...The sickening abuse of Iraqi prisoners
will do incalculable damage to American foreign policy no matter how the
administration responds. But if President Bush and his senior officials
would acknowledge their complicity in playing fast and loose with
international law and would pledge to change course, they might begin to
find a way out of the mess. Instead, they hope to escape from this scandal
without altering or even admitting the improper and illegal policies that
lie at its core. It is a vain hope, and Congress should insist on a
different response.
SEE ALSO: (revisited item)
Techniques of Prisoner Abuse Part of Past
Special Forces
Training...Now Employed by Contractors
David Leigh
The Guardian , 8 May 2004
EXCERPT: The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was
not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment
and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being
disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they
are doing, according to British military sources. The techniques devised
in the system, called R2I - resistance to interrogation - match the crude
exploitation and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad. One
former British special forces officer who returned last week from Iraq,
said: "It was clear from discussions with US private contractors in Iraq
that the prison guards were using R2I techniques, but they didn't know what
they were doing." He said British and US military intelligence soldiers
were trained in these techniques, which were taught at the joint
services interrogation centre in Ashford, Kent, now transferred to the
former US base at Chicksands. "There is a reservoir of knowledge about these
interrogation techniques which is retained by former special forces soldiers
who are being rehired as private contractors in Iraq. Contractors are
bringing in their old friends". Using sexual jibes and degradation,
along with stripping naked, is one of the methods taught on both sides of
the Atlantic under the slogan "prolong the shock of capture", he said.
Female guards were used to taunt male prisoners sexually and at British
training sessions when female candidates were undergoing resistance training
they would be subject to lesbian jibes. ...A number of commercial firms
which have been supplying interrogators to the US army in Iraq boast of
hiring former US special forces soldiers, such as Navy Seals. [BWUSA
emphasis]
SEE ALSO:
War, Profits, and the Vacuum of Law
(Brookings Institution)
Circle the Wagons
by Jim Lobe
TomPaine.com, 12 May 2004
EXCERPT: Indeed, President George W. Bush—backed by his vice president
and national security adviser—have been circling the wagons around Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld since the White House told reporters that the
president had given him a mild rebuke over the prisoner abuse scandal in
Iraq. But the embattled Pentagon chief may have made too made
enemies—particularly within his armed forces—to be saved. While Bush praised
Rumsfeld for "doing a superb job" during a rare visit to the Pentagon Monday
morning, his words were somehow unable to overcome the distinct sounds of
knives being sharpened in the hallways just outside, as well as across town
on Capitol Hill and at the State Department where Secretary of State (and
former Army general) Colin Powell compared the possible impact on U.S.
foreign policy of the abuse photographs to the 1969 disclosure of the
infamous My Lai Massacre in Vietnam.
1,800 New Pictures Add to US Disgust
Stills shown of women forced to bare breasts
Dan Glaister and Julian Borger in Washington
The Guardian, 13 May 2004
EXCERPT: Images of guard dogs snarling at cowering prisoners and Iraqi women
being forced to expose their breasts were among the 1,800 new pictures and
video stills depicting abuse at the Abu Ghraib jail shown to members of the
US Congress yesterday. The pictures, which have not been released to the
public by the US military, were described by one member of Congress as worse
than had been expected.
Kerry Says He Wants Republican McCain as
Defence Secretary
Julian Borger
The Guardian, 13 May 2004
EXCERPT: The Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, yesterday made a
dramatic bid for crossover votes, declaring that if elected, he would choose
John McCain, an outspoken Republican senator, as defence secretary.
Senator Kerry named another senior Republican, Senator John Warner,
currently chairing hearings into the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, as an
alternative.
AUDIO LINK
Medicare Prescription Drug Discount Cards
NPR's Diane Rehm Show
New government-approved discount cards can help seniors save money on
prescription drugs. But there are 73 to choose from and it can be tough to
know exactly how any one of them will work. Diane and her guests look at the
advantages and drawbacks of the new program.
Leslie Norwalk, deputy administrator of the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services
Ron Pollack, president of Families USA
Mary Ann Wagner, president and consumer health adviser for
the Pharmacy Care Alliance
Rep. Marion Berry, (D-Arkansas)
12 May 2004
The Accountability Act
By Richard Cohen
Washington Post, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: For the consequences of a wrongheaded policy, Rumsfeld and all the
other Bushies will not apologize. Nor will they take responsibility. They
exist in a dream world, a corporate suite of yes men, where the end of the
war was visualized as the Baghdad version of Pasadena's Tournament of Roses
-- our boys might fall, but only from allergic reactions to all those
flowers. The administration listened to Iraqi exiles who, putting Max
Bialystock to shame, produced an entire war so that they could get back into
business. Mel Brooks would be speechless. It is a joke, this business of
taking responsibility and blame. The way it's done in Washington amounts to
just the opposite -- not taking responsibility and not accepting blame. This
is what Donald Rumsfeld did, to the evident satisfaction of his boss.
SEE ALSO:
Reckless Executive
David Corn
TomPaine.com, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: It’s the incompetence, stupid. That should be the battle cry of the
forces of anti-Bushism. Sure, the war was a boneheaded policy move and
predicated on false claims. But worse, its backers have repeatedly botched
the job.
SEE ALSO:
A Failure of Leadership at the Highest Levels
Army Times, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has
emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu
Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war. Indeed, the damage
done to the U.S. military and the nation as a whole by the horrifying
photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the notorious prison
is incalculable. But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong
morons. ...This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command
level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here
is essential — even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time
of war.
Bush Donors Among Drug Card Providers
By Sharon Theimer
AP in Boston Globe, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: A few weeks after the Bush administration named Medco to be one of
the first Medicare drug card providers, a company executive helped throw a
$100,000 fund-raiser for the president that was headlined by Health and
Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. The role of the Medco Specialty
Pharmacy Services president, Alan Lotvin, a cochairman of the mid-April
event in New Jersey, is just one of the ways prescription drug card
providers have reached out to Washington politicians over the last two
years. In all, companies that won approval from Thompson's department to be
the first Medicare drug discount card providers spent at least $35 million
lobbying in 2003, and their executives and lobbyists donated or raised
hundreds of thousands of dollars more for President Bush's reelection, an
Associated Press review found.
Just Trust Us
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: Didn't you know, in your gut, that something like Abu Ghraib would
eventually come to light? When the world first learned about the abuse
of prisoners, President Bush said that it "does not reflect the nature of
the American people." He's right, of course: a great majority of Americans
are decent and good. But so are a great majority of people everywhere. If
America's record is better than that of most countries — and it is — it's
because of our system: our tradition of openness, and checks and balances.
Yet Mr. Bush, despite all his talk of good and evil, doesn't believe in that
system. From the day his administration took office, its slogan has been
"just trust us." No administration since Nixon has been so insistent that it
has the right to operate without oversight or accountability, and no
administration since Nixon has shown itself to be so little deserving of
that trust. Out of a misplaced sense of patriotism, Congress has deferred to
the administration's demands. Sooner or later, a moral catastrophe was
inevitable. ...Meanwhile, Abu Ghraib will remain in use, under its new
commander: General Miller of Guantánamo. Donald Rumsfeld has "accepted
responsibility" — an action that apparently does not mean paying any price
at all. And Dick Cheney says, "Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense
the United States has ever had. . . . People should get off his case and let
him do his job." In other words: Just trust us.
Almost 10% of All Prisoners Are Now
Serving Life Terms
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
New York Times, 12 May 2004
EXCERPT: Almost 10 percent of all inmates in state and federal prisons are
serving life sentences, an increase of 83 percent from 1992, according to a
report released yesterday by the Sentencing Project, a prison research and
advocacy group. In two states, New York and California, almost 20 percent of
inmates are serving life sentences, the report found.
"Compassionate
Conservatism" means making it most difficult for those least able
to cope
73 Options for Medicare Plan Fuel Chaos, Not Prescriptions
By JOHN LELAND
New York Times, 12 May 2004
EXCERPT: When Mildred Fruhling and her husband lost their prescription drug
coverage in 2001, they suddenly faced drug bills of $7,000 a year. Mrs.
Fruhling, now 76, began scrambling to find discounts on the Internet, by
mail order, from Canada and through free samples from her doctors. "It's the
only way I can continue to have some ease in my retirement," she said. Last
week, when the federal government rolled out a new discount drug program,
Mrs. Fruhling studied her options with the same thoroughness. What she
found, she said, was confusion: 73 competing drug discount cards, each
providing different savings on different medications, and all subject to
change. "I personally feel I can do better on my own," she said. But she
added, "At this point, I don't think anyone can make an evaluation."
..."Even the person who came to explain it to us didn't understand it," said
Mary Shen, 77, at the Whittaker Senior Center on Manhattan's Lower East
Side. "It's not fair to expect seniors, who have enough difficulties
already, to have to figure this out."
Patriotic Fundamentalism Colors Bush
Policy
By Peter S. Canellos
Boston Globe, 12 May 2004
EXCERPT: After more than four hours of testimony before Congress, which
began with a prepared statement offering a ''deep apology" for the torture
of Iraqi prisoners, Donald H. Rumsfeld seemed to get a little tired of
showing contrition. When Rhode Island Democrat Jim Langevin asked him how
the United States can ''restore our credibility" on human rights matters,
the secretary of defense asserted that America was already superior: ''I
mean, why do people line up to get into this country year after year after
year? I read all this stuff -- people hate us, people don't like us. The
fact of the matter is, people line up to come to this country every year
because it's better here than other places, and because they respect the
fact that we respect human beings." Few would disagree with the notion that
the United States maintains a higher standard of living than most of the
world and affords more personal dignity than most nations. But Rumsfeld was
in the process of apologizing for truly humiliating acts of rape, torture,
and possibly murder by American GIs. Moreover, his words were being
translated into Arabic to help win support for the United States in the
Middle East. And to those in Iraq and neighboring countries, America's
respect for human beings inside its own borders wasn't really the issue at
hand. So who was Rumsfeld talking to? Almost certainly, his words were aimed
at the domestic political audience. And he was signaling, in his
cantankerous way, a message that the Bush administration has put out
relentlessly: that the United States doesn't care too much about foreign
criticism
11 May 2004
Military Spending Raises Questions: Bush
Bypassed Congress
By Dan Morgan
Washington Post, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: When Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio) went on an inspection trip to
several Persian Gulf countries in the summer of 2002, he was dazzled by the
state-of-the-art command centers, airstrips and other facilities being built
there for the U.S. military. But he was also troubled. Some of what he saw
or learned from military briefers had not been approved by the House
Appropriations Committee panel on military construction, which he then
chaired. "I knew I didn't have that kind of money," he quipped recently.
Hobson's inquiries ultimately led to a modest tightening of controls over
the Pentagon's ability to move money between military accounts without prior
approval from Congress. But the episode has sparked concerns on the part of
some lawmakers that the Bush administration largely bypassed Congress as it
expanded installations in the Persian Gulf region before the war with Iraq.
President Bush has acknowledged that months before Congress voted an Iraq
war resolution in October 2002, he approved about 30 projects in Kuwait that
helped set the stage for war, with "no real knowledge or involvement" of
Congress, according to "Plan of Attack," a new book by Bob Woodward, an
assistant managing editor at The Washington Post. A Pentagon briefing paper
supplied to Congress after publication of the Woodward book states that by
July 2002, "in the course of preparing for a contingency in Iraq, U.S.
Central Command [Centcom] developed rough estimates of $750 million in
preparatory tasks."
The Neoconomists
The Bush administration's other revolutionaries.
By Daniel Altman
Slate, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: While neoconservatives in the Bush administration remake American
foreign policy, another cadre of ideologues—call them the neoconomists—is
busy attempting to transform American society. The revolution in economic
policy is not being televised. There was no big speech by President Bush to
mark its birth, no "Axis of Evil" catchphrase designed to capture headlines.
Yet it is every bit as dramatic and risky a change. The neoconomists have
one goal: to increase the rate at which the economy grows by changing how
the nation uses its resources. It is a worthy goal, too. Following such as
path could lead to a period of untold prosperity, with living standards
rising faster than ever before. Or it might not. But even if the plan works,
it might just lead to the collapse of the capitalist system.
Across America, War Means Jobs
Defense Spending Pumps New Life Into Small or Dying Towns
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: The economy is always helped by war. That's just a fact," said Gary
Gayer, an appliance salesman in St. Marys. There are economic downsides. In
inflation-adjusted terms, the war's cost will surpass the United States'
$199 billion share of World War I sometime next year. Coming on top of three
major tax cuts, that spending will drive the federal budget deficit to more
than $400 billion this year. That borrowing will eventually have to be
repaid in higher taxes or reduced government services and benefits.
Economists have long argued that war is an inefficient use of government
revenue. A dollar spent on a highway not only employs workers but also
creates a lasting, broadly shared benefit for the economy. A dollar spent on
military equipment is soon lost to enemy attack or the rapid wear of war. If
it bought a bomb or bullet, it simply explodes. The families of thousands of
National Guard members and reservists have been dealt severe financial blows
by the extended deployments of breadwinners.
Bush Approval Hits New Lows in Poll;
Support for War in Iraq Also Lowest Ever
CNN, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush holds a single-point lead over Democratic challenger
John Kerry in the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of likely voters, but
voters' approval of Bush's performance and support for the war in Iraq
dropped to new lows in the survey.
The survey found that among all adults -- not just likely voters -- only 46
percent approved of Bush's performance in office -- the lowest rating of his
presidency in this poll.
After April's heavy casualties in Iraq and the emerging scandal of the
treatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops, only 44 percent said they
believed the war was worthwhile -- another low.
Fifty-four percent said last year's invasion of Iraq was a mistake, and only
41 percent of adults said they believed Bush was doing a good job handling
the war.
Only 37 percent of those surveyed said they were satisfied with the way
things are going in the United States -- a sharp drop from early January,
when 55 percent said they were satisfied. Those findings had a margin of
error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
SEE ALSO:
The
Misunderestimated Man
How Bush chose stupidity.
By Jacob Weisberg
Slate, 7 May 2004
The question I am most frequently asked about Bushisms is, "Do you really
think the president of the United States is dumb?"
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is yes and no.
Richard Perle, foreign policy adviser: "The first time I
met Bush 43 … two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The
other was that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he
didn't know very much."
David Frum, former speechwriter: "Bush had a poor memory
for facts and figures. … Fire a question at him about the specifics of his
administration's policies, and he often appeared uncertain. Nobody would
ever enroll him in a quiz show."
Laura Bush, spouse: "George is not an overly introspective
person. He has good instincts, and he goes with them. He doesn't need to
evaluate and reevaluate a decision. He doesn't try to overthink. He likes
action."
Paul O'Neill, former treasury secretary: "The only way I
can describe it is that, well, the President is like a blind man in a
roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection."
Kerry Addresses Health Care Costs
By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: Sen. John F. Kerry charged Monday that President Bush was ignoring
soaring health care costs, as the Democratic presidential candidate launched
a week-long campaign to highlight his plan to reduce insurance premiums and
extend coverage to 27 million uninsured Americans. U.S. health care spending
has increased by about 10 percent a year since President Bush took office,
and the number of people without health care insurance has risen to 43
million. Kerry is promoting a plan designed to cut costs largely by
retooling or expanding existing government programs. Under the Kerry
approach, the federal government would pay for the most expensive health
expenses, known as catastrophic costs. The plan would also provide tax
credits and other benefits to businesses to provide lower-cost coverage to
employees and would permit the reimportation of prescription drugs from
Canada, among other things. The idea is to push prices down by easing
pressure in several areas, from business to bureaucracy, simultaneously. To
spread coverage to the uninsured, Kerry would expand existing programs for
lower-income workers, through Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance
Program, or CHIP.
Monsanto Pulls Plan To Commercialize
Gene-Altered Wheat
By Justin Gillis
Washington Post, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: The Monsanto Co. yesterday scrapped plans to commercialize
genetically engineered wheat, the biggest defeat yet for advocates of
agricultural biotechnology -- and a victory for skeptics who said the
company was trying to foist on the world a crop it did not want or need.
Monsanto said it would indefinitely delay plans to commercialize Roundup
Ready wheat, a product that three years ago seemed headed for quick approval
in the United States and Canada. The company said it would cut most of the
$5 million it spends annually to develop the crop. It did not rule out
reviving it some day, but said it would do so only as part of a larger
package of genetic alterations in the wheat plant that might win broad
acceptance in the marketplace. Monsanto said any decision to revive the
product would be four to eight years away.
10 May 2004
Conservatives Restive About Bush Policies
Fresh Initiatives Sought On Iraq, Domestic Issues
By Dana Milbank and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: After three years of sweeping actions in both foreign and domestic
affairs, the Bush administration is facing complaints from the conservative
intelligentsia that it has lost its ability to produce fresh policies. The
centerpiece of President Bush's foreign policy -- the effort to transform
Iraq into a peaceful democracy -- has been undermined by a deadly
insurrection and broadcast photos of brutality by U.S. prison guards. On the
domestic side, conservatives and former administration officials say the
White House policy apparatus is moribund, with policies driven by political
expediency or ideological pressure rather than by facts and expertise.
Conservatives have become unusually restive. Last Tuesday, columnist George
F. Will sharply criticized the administration's Iraq policy, writing: "This
administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to
think and, having thought, to have second thoughts." Two days earlier,
Robert Kagan, a neoconservative supporter of the Iraq war, wrote: "All but
the most blindly devoted Bush supporters can see that Bush administration
officials have no clue about what to do in Iraq tomorrow, much less a month
from now." The complaints about Bush's Iraq policy are relatively new, but
they are in some ways similar to long-standing criticism about Bush's
domestic policies. In a book released earlier this year, former Bush
Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill described Bush as "a blind man in a room
full of deaf people" and said policymakers put politics before sound policy
judgments.
U.S. Must Find a Way to Move Past the
Images
By DAVID E. SANGER
New York Times, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: When President Bush travels to the Pentagon on Monday morning for a
classified briefing on the Iraq war, the subtext of the conversation will
have little to do with the commanders' latest assessments of whether
insurgents can be routed from Falluja and Najaf. Instead, some of Mr. Bush's
senior aides conceded in conversations this weekend, the far larger question
hanging over Mr. Bush's encounter with his embattled secretary of defense,
Donald H. Rumsfeld, and the nation's military leaders is whether the
revelations of prisoner abuse have so undermined American political
objectives for remaking Iraq that the military challenges have suddenly
become a secondary problem.
A Candidate's Spouse Attacks Bush's
Environmental Policy
By MICHAEL BRICK
New York Times, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: Teresa Heinz Kerry reproached President Bush on environmental
issues in a speech yesterday to several dozen followers of the Rev. Al
Sharpton at a ballroom in Manhattan. Mrs. Heinz Kerry, the wife of the
presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry of
Massachusetts, used voter registration as a jumping-off point to discuss the
environment, education, children's health and Social Security. She called
the administration's efforts to alter the clean air and water acts
"inexcusable and unforgivable." "It's a sin against humankind, period," she
said. She also outlined specific policy ideas, including her husband's plan
to have the government pay for a four-year college education in exchange for
two years of community service right after high school.
A Father's Nemesis Who Became a Son's
Trusted Aide
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
New York Times, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: At the heart of the melodrama playing out in Washington is the
complex character of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the great warrior
of Iraq and Afghanistan who is now struggling to hang on to his job. If he
survives, it will largely be because of President Bush, who spanked him last
week for his handling of the Iraq prison abuse scandal but insisted Mr.
Rumsfeld's position was secure. Mr. Bush's relationship with Mr. Rumsfeld
seems complicated right now, but it is nothing compared to the relationship
that Mr. Rumsfeld had with Mr. Bush's father. People close to the Bushes say
the family history may color Mr. Rumsfeld's future, even if it means that
the second President Bush, whose administration has so often gone in the
opposite direction of the first one's, will deal with Mr. Rumsfeld in an
entirely different way than his father did.
Straight from the corporate board room...
Shift on Salmon Reignites Fight on Species
Law
By TIMOTHY EGAN
New York Times, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: Three years ago, Mark C. Rutzick was the timber industry's top
lawyer trying to overturn fish and wildlife protections that loggers viewed
as overly restrictive. Back then, he outlined to his clients a new strategy
for dealing with diminishing salmon runs. By counting hatchery fish along
with wild salmon, the government would help the timber industry by getting
salmon off the endangered species list, Mr. Rutzick wrote. Now, as a
high-ranking political appointee in the Bush administration who is a legal
adviser to the National Marine Fisheries Service, Mr. Rutzick is helping to
shape government policy on endangered Pacific salmon. And in an abrupt
change, the Bush administration has decided for the first time to consider
counting fish raised in hatcheries when determining if some species are
going extinct. The new plan, which officials have said is expected to be
formally announced at the end of the month, closely follows the position
that Mr. Rutzick advocated when he represented the timber industry.
...biologists say that including hatchery salmon in the calculation for when
a fish can be listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act is akin
to counting animals in a zoo. By this reasoning, river or forest habitats of
a rare species will never be protected, so long as the animal can be
reproduced by artificial means.
8-9 May 2004
The America Bush denies...
Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in U.S.
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
New York Times, 8 May 2004
EXCERPT: Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been
uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public
knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human
rights advocates. In Pennsylvania and some other states, inmates are
routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new
prison or a new unit within their prison. In Arizona, male inmates at the
Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear women's pink underwear as a
form of humiliation.
...the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq
last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director
of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while
shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from
schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time. The Utah official, Lane
McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of
whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was
sent to Iraq as part of a team of prison officials, judges, prosecutors and
police chiefs picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to rebuild the
country's criminal justice system. Mr. McCotter, 63, is director of business
development for Management & Training Corporation, a Utah-based firm that
says it is the third-largest private prison company, operating 13 prisons.
In 2003, the company's operation of the Santa Fe jail was criticized by the
Justice Department and the New Mexico Department of Corrections for unsafe
conditions and lack of medical care for inmates. No further action was
taken. [Bush's record in Texas shows a consistent disinterest in prison
conditions. -BWUSA] In a 1999 opinion, Judge Justice wrote of the situation
in Texas, "Many inmates credibly testified to the existence of violence,
rape and extortion in the prison system and about their own suffering from
such abysmal conditions." ...When Mr. Ashcroft announced the appointment of
the team to restore Iraq's criminal justice system last year, including Mr.
McCotter, he said, "Now all Iraqis can taste liberty in their native land,
and we will help make that freedom permanent by assisting them to establish
an equitable criminal justice system based on the rule of law and standards
of basic human rights." A Justice Department spokeswoman, Monica Goodling,
did not return phone calls on Friday asking why Mr. Ashcroft had chosen Mr.
McCotter even though his firm's operation of the Santa Fe jail had been
criticized by the Justice Department.
The Tipping Point
by Karen Kwiatkowski, Lt. Col. USAF (ret.)
MilitaryWeek.com, 6 May 2004
EXCERPT: Neoconservatives were once unified by the sheer fantastical nature
of their "strategy" for creating a Middle East in democratic obsequiousness
to Washington. Today they are peeling off like a bad paint on an old Chevy.
Perle was let go early this year from the Defense Policy Board, possibly to
prevent another financial scandal. It is likely the Pentagon warned the
President about this pending crisis. Funny how the months of
investigations into numerous human rights abuses and war crimes in Abu
Ghraib Prison by American service members (and their cameras) did not
warrant a Presidential brief. There are strong hints that Doug Feith,
the ardent friend of Israel occupying the office of Defense Under Secretary
for Policy is on his way out the door in a few months. Sadly, this rumor has
abounded inside the Pentagon since his arrival in 2001, but there is hope
today. A description of him by former Central Command commander Tommy Franks
as "the f*cking stupidest guy on the face of the earth" was probably
somewhat unhelpful at his last performance review. Marc Zell, Feith's
past and probably future law partner and Amero-Iraqi contract recipient, has
recently spoken out against Ahmad Chalabi, with a tone and emotion
immediately recognized by those battling for custody of the family dog in a
nasty divorce. Even ancillary figures in the administration, but notably
those with the best connections, are getting out while the getting is good.
Margaret Tutwiler, after working hard to get an administration job
back in Washington from her prestigious political posting as Ambassador to
Morocco, got her wish. But after only months as Assistant Secretary of State
for Public Diplomacy, she has quietly accepted a position at the New York
Stock Exchange.
The current ship of state may not be leaking presidential information, but
it is leaking bodies left and right.
The 135,000 men and women in uniform in Iraq don't count in this political
equation. The number of bloodied bodies and flag-draped corpses of good
Americans in wars have never been the real indication of a tipping point, in
Iraq or anywhere else. This is as it should be. If a battle is worth
fighting, or a war worth winning, Americans have always known what they have
to do, and they've done it boldly, decisively, with courage and ferocity. We
would do it in Iraq, if it was truly an American war, an American value, or
an American interest. Irrelevant as well are the thousands of dead Iraqis,
and the millions more who have risen up in nationalistic anger at this
interminable and bewildering occupation. But the bloodless evacuation of
the appointed ideologues from Washington to some safe and profitable haven
is a sign you can trust. We have indeed reached the tipping point. [BWUSA
empahsis]
Will Rumsfeld Keep His Job?
New York Times, 8 May 2004
EXCERPT: ...Mr. Rumsfeld's testimony met with mixed reaction, as Democrats
continued to call for his resignation while his own party supported him. Mr.
Rumsfeld managed to hang on for now to the Republicans on the Senate Armed
Services Committee, the group with the biggest influence on his future. "I
thought he did a good job saying `I'm sorry,' " Senator Lindsey Graham,
Republican of South Carolina, told reporters afterward. "I'm still unclear
about who knew what when, and that's important, in terms of how much
accountability to assess to someone." Mr. Graham, a member of the Armed
Services Committee, added that removing a defense secretary in the middle of
a war "may send the wrong signal to our enemy and empower them," and
implored Democrats calling for Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation to slow down. But
Mr. Graham, in comments echoed by his colleagues, also made it clear that
Mr. Rumsfeld's job was not assured, particularly after videos and more
pictures detailing the American abuse become public.
SEE ALSO:
Mr. Rumsfeld's Defense
New York Times, 8 May 2004
EXCERPT: Mr. Rumsfeld, the military brass and some of the
lawmakers badly missed the point by talking endlessly about a few bad apples
in one military unit. The despicable acts shown in those famous photos — and
in videos that are being held back by the military but may still produce
another round of global humiliation — were uniquely outrageous and
inexcusable criminal acts. But behind them lies a detention system that
treats all prisoners as terrorists regardless of their supposed offenses,
and makes brutal interrogations all too common. The hearings also gave
Americans a chilling new reminder of the mess the Bush administration,
particularly Mr. Rumsfeld, has made of the Iraq occupation. With their
perfect sense of certainty that they were right and everyone else wrong, Mr.
Rumsfeld and his colleagues never planned adequately for the occupation.
They were unprepared to handle the 43,000-plus Iraqi prisoners they
ultimately took or the armed insurgents they faced — even though disorder
and resistance were widely predicted.
The destructive stress created by the administration's lack of preparation
was distressingly evident yesterday, when the hearings revealed that the
members of the Army Reserve military police detachment stationed at Abu
Ghraib had been sent to Iraq without being trained as ordinary prison
guards, much less for the nightmarish duty they would face. Mr. Rumsfeld and
other Pentagon witnesses said those untrained part-time soldiers had been
put under the supervision of military intelligence officers who farmed out
interrogation work to private contractors. That inexplicable chain of
shifted responsibility violated not just any sort of common sense, but also
military rules.
Although the Army's own report said the guards had been told by intelligence
officers and their consultants to "soften up" prisoners for interrogation by
depriving them of sleep and subjecting them to pain and humiliation, Mr.
Rumsfeld said he "cannot conceive" that they thought their actions were
condoned or encouraged. When he insisted that the normal rules for handling
prisoners were in effect, several senators reminded him that he had said in
January 2002 that suspected terrorists were not covered by the Geneva
Convention.
Mr. Rumsfeld told the senators that his remarks about ignoring the
international rules on the treatment of prisoners applied only to people
captured in Afghanistan, not Iraq. That was a fine distinction some of the
minimally prepared guards at Abu Ghraib may not have grasped, particularly
since they were never instructed on the rules of the Geneva Convention. Like
most Americans, however, they had heard their commander in chief paint the
war in Iraq as an antiterrorism campaign.
Mr. Rumsfeld's belated apology yesterday was nice to hear. But the secretary
spent a lot of time dodging responsibility. When he was chided for not
telling the public, Congress or even the president about Abu Ghraib, Mr.
Rumsfeld claimed that the Army had provided all the disclosure necessary
last January with its inadequate press release announcing the criminal
investigations. But when he was pressed on why he had not kept track of the
case, Mr. Rumsfeld offered the astonishing argument that he could not have
been expected to find this one case among the pile of 3,000 courts-martial
initiated in the last year.
Using the Courts to Wage a War on Gay
Marriage
By THOMAS CRAMPTON
New York Times, 9 May 2004
EXCERPT: The map that hangs above Liberty Counsel's weekly planning meeting
measures the small firm's national reach, with color-coded tabs marking the
status of 33 active cases in 13 states. Their agenda: stop same-sex marriage
by using the courts. From an unmarked beige tin warehouse near a railway
line at an address they insist on keeping secret, Liberty Counsel has
employed a range of legal tactics to fight same-sex marriage across the
country. "This is the central command center for the defense of traditional
marriage against the same-sex marriage movement," said Mathew D. Staver,
president, general counsel and founder of the firm. "We will use every means
the law can provide."
Oil Spike Puts Inflation Back on Agenda
By Kevin Morrison
Financial Times, 8 May 2004
EXCERPT: The surge in oil prices this week above $40 has made central
bankers and political leaders increasingly nervous about the inflationary
impact of high energy prices. The attack on a petrochemical complex in Saudi
Arabia last weekend increased concerns about supply disruptions in the
Middle East, while the very tight supply and demand conditions in the US
gasoline market, which accounts for more than 11 per cent of global oil
consumption, has also put pressure on prices. The benchmark crude futures on
Friday popped through the key psychological $40 barrier on the New York
Mercantile Exchange for the first time since October 1990, just two months
after Iraq invaded Kuwait and triggered the Gulf war. But the June Nymex WTI
crude futures contract slipped from its peak to close at $39.93, a rise of
56 cents on the day. More worrying is the fact that oil prices are at their
highest continuous level since crude futures trading began in 1983.
Government edict by the Christian right
Morning-After-Pill Ruling Defies Norm
By GARDINER HARRIS
New York Times, 8 May 2004
EXCERPT: ...top federal drug official said yesterday that he rejected not
only the judgment of an advisory panel but also the recommendations of his
own staff when he refused to allow a morning-after pill to be sold over the
counter. Dr. Steven Galson, acting director of the Food and Drug
Administration's center for drug evaluation and research since October,
acknowledged in an interview that his action was not the norm. "I am not
trying to convey this decision as being common or usual," Dr. Galson said.
The morning-after pill, called Plan B, is an emergency birth-control
medicine that is currently sold only by prescription. Made of high-dose
birth-control pills, it can interfere with ovulation and perhaps prevent a
fertilized egg from being implanted if taken within 72 hours of unprotected
sex. The pill's maker, Barr Pharmaceuticals, hopes to sell it over the
counter, a prospect that seemed likely in December when a federal advisory
panel voted 23 to 4 to approve Barr's application. The agency normally
follows the recommendations of its advisory panels, especially when their
votes are overwhelming. Barr's hopes were raised even further when Dr.
Galson's staff similarly recommended approval. But on Thursday, the agency
sent Barr a "nonapprovable" letter, saying it had rejected the company's
application because it did not provide enough information about how young
teenagers would be able to use the drug properly. In interviews yesterday,
several former F.D.A. officials said that they could not remember another
instance in which Dr. Galson, a career officer in the public health service,
or any of his predecessors had overruled both an advisory committee and
staff recommendations. "I can't ever remember the center director ever
signing a nonapprovable letter," said Dr. Raymond Lipicky, who retired from
a top agency position in 2002 after 18 years in the agency. "In my
experience, that never happened." Such letters are invariably issued at a
much lower level than the director. Dr. Robert R. Fenichel, who left the
agency in 2000 after 12 years, said, "This is simply unheard of." ...the
agency's decision to take into account how some people might change their
behavior because a drug is more available is also unprecedented, critics
charge. Dr. Scott Spear of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America,
noted that the agency was unlikely to ask the makers of anticholesterol
pills if people would eat more cheeseburgers when their drugs became
available over the counter. "It's a bogus issue," Dr. Spear said. "They
should be asking if the drug is safe and whether it's effective. That's it."
But Wendy Wright, senior policy director at Concerned Women for America, a
conservative group, said the agency's questions were entirely appropriate.
"One cheeseburger is not going to kill you, while risky sex can be
life-threatening in one instance," she said.
7 May 2004
Evangelical Christians Name Oliver North Honorary
Chairman of National Day of Prayer -- Bush Smirks
Washington Post, 7 May 2004
 EXCERPT:
During yesterday's event, one of thousands of National Day of Prayer
observances held across the United States, Bush recognized Rabbi Tzvi
Hersh Weinreb of the Orthodox Union of Jews, other religious leaders, as
well as conservative Oliver L. North, an Iran-contra figure turned radio
talk show host who is honorary chairman of this year's National Day of
Prayer.
"This is stroke-the-base, stroke-the-base, stroke-the-base," said
John Kenneth White, who teaches in the politics department at Catholic
University and has written about the values that divide the country.
Early Warning - Unheeded Once Again
The U.S. Army can hardly be surprised by its problems with contractors in
Iraq
By Alan Green
Center for Public Integrity, 5 May 2004
EXCERPT: One year before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, then-Secretary of the
Army Thomas E. White informed a trio of top-level Department of Defense
officials that the army lacked the basic information required to effectively
manage its burgeoning force of private contractors. In a
memorandum dated March 8, 2002, White warned the under secretaries
responsible for army contracting, personnel and finances that reductions in
the service's civilian and military work force, carried out over the
previous 11 years, had been accompanied by an increased reliance on private
contractors—a personnel shift, he noted, apparently done without adequate
analysis. "Currently," White admitted, "Army planners and programmers lack
visibility at the Departmental level into the labor and costs associated
with the contract work force and of the organizations and missions supported
by them." The Defense Department's increased reliance on civilian
contractors in Iraq, tens of thousands of whom are now on the ground there,
has been part of an unfolding scandal over inmate abuse at the Abu Ghraib
prison, 20 miles west of Baghdad. The role of private contractors in Iraq
first earned widespread public attention over revelations about contracts
awarded to Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer, Halliburton. Last
October, the Center for Public Integrity
detailed for the first time
the 70-plus companies and individuals awarded up to $8 billion in contracts
for their work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. The Center report,
Making a Killing:
The Business of War, released in 2002, also documented the U.S.
government's increasing reliance on private military companies for much of
its work. "The emerging story of inadequate contractor oversight in Iraq was
not merely predictable, but was effectively predicted," says Dan Guttman, a
fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Center for the Study of American
Government. "As the secretary of the army's memo illustrates, our
highest-level officials are increasingly calling on contractors to perform
sensitive national and homeland security missions, even as they admit that
the government lacks the data and official resources needed to account for
contractors who are increasingly performing even the most sensitive
government work."
SEE ALSO:
Contractors in Sensitive Roles, Unchecked
By JOEL BRINKLEY and JAMES GLANZ
New York Times, 7 May 2004
EXCERPT: The military's reliance on civilians to serve as interrogators and
translators in Iraq is now so great that many people are being sent abroad
without complete background investigations or full qualifications for the
positions, government officials and industry experts say. Once on the job,
several experts said, many of the contractors are barely supervised. Two
contract workers have been implicated in the Abu Ghraib prison abuses, and
investigators found that one of them, a translator working with
interrogators who were trying to obtain sensitive information from Iraqi
prisoners, had no security clearance at all. The revelations at Abu Ghraib
have also led to the disclosure that private contractors are now carrying
out highly sensitive duties that until very recently were the province of
government agencies only. Although senior Pentagon officials have long
called for privatizing much of the military's work, current and former
officials say the new reliance on contractors for intelligence and
interrogation work resulted from the unexpected demands of the war in Iraq
and had not been long planned. Kevin Hendzel, an officer with the American
Translators' Association, which represents translators nationwide, said the
government's need for Arabic translators "is so great that demand has
completely outstripped supply, draining the pipeline," so that now "people
with no real qualifications are being hired."
Authentic USA...product/victims of the Bush Team
From a Picture of Pride to a Symbol of Abuse in Iraq
By JAMES DAO
New York Times, 7 May 2004
|
 |
Pfc. Lynndie R. England with an Iraqi prisoner at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Washington Post Photo |
EXCERPT: For weeks, the Mineral County courthouse has proudly displayed
the photographs of local soldiers stationed in Iraq along the stairway at
its front entrance. "We're hometown proud," the banner said. But in the last
few days, one photograph was taken down, that of Pfc. Lynndie R. England,
whose face has become famous for a painfully different reason. Private
England is perhaps the most prominently displayed person in a series of
photographs taken in the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad that show members of
the 372nd Military Police Company abusing prisoners. In one image, Private
England is clenching a cigarette between her teeth while giving a thumbs-up
in front of naked Iraqi prisoners. In another that became public on
Thursday, she is holding a leash attached to a naked prisoner's neck. ...The
photographs have left her family and friends aghast and searching for
answers. They are convinced that she would never have thought up anything so
cruel on her own and that she must have been following orders. If that is
the case, the family and friends then have to reconcile how the tough, bold
and independent young woman they know followed an order that seemed so
obviously wrong. ...A friend, Kerry Shoemaker-Davis, said: "She is straight
in your face, tells you how it is. That's why it shocked me. It's so not
her. It's not in her nature to do something like that. There's not a
malicious bone in her body." ...Like another West Virginia woman whose life
was turned upside-down by her experiences in Iraq, Jessica D. Lynch, who
enlisted, Private England joined the Army Reserve because she wanted money
for college and the chance to see the world outside her small town.
Under Bush, Abuse Common in US and
Texas Prisons
By Alan Elsner
Reuters, 6 May 2004
EXCERPT: Horrific abuses, some similar to those revealed in Iraq, regularly
occur in U.S. prisons with little national attention or public outrage,
human rights activists said on Thursday. "We certainly see many of the same
kinds of things here in the United States, including sexual assaults and the
abuse of prisoners, against both men and women," said Kara Gotsch, public
policy coordinator for the national prison project of the American Civil
Liberties Union. "This office has been involved in cases in which prisoners
have been raped by guards and humiliated but we don't talk about it much in
America and we certainly don't hear the president expressing outrage," she
said. President Bush has said he was disgusted by the abuse of Iraqi
prisoners. Yet, there were many cases of abuse in Texas when he served as
governor from 1995 to 2000. For example, in September 1996, guards at the
Brazoria County jail in Texas staged a drug raid on inmates that was
videotaped for training purposes. The tape showed several inmates forced to
strip and lie on the ground. A police dog attacked several prisoners; the
tape clearly showed one being bitten on the leg. Guards prodded prisoners
with stun guns and forced them to crawl along the ground. Then they dragged
injured inmates face down back to their cells. In a 1999 opinion, federal
Judge William Wayne Justice wrote of the situation in Texas state prisons:
"Many inmates credibly testified to the existence of violence, rape and
extortion in the prison system and about their own suffering from such
abysmal conditions." Judy Greene of Justice Strategies, a New York City
consultancy, said: "When I saw Bush's interview on Arab TV stations, I was
thinking, had he ever stepped inside a Texas prison when he was governor?"
SEE ALSO:
Bush's Atrocious Human Rights Record
(BushWhackedUSA)
Quid Pro Quo
Utilities Have Helped Bush, GOP,
then Received Relief from Pollution Laws
Industry has donated $6.6 million since
1999. It also got relief from costly pollution laws.
By Elizabeth Shogren
LA Times via Common Dreams, 6 May 2004
EXCERPT: The 30 companies that own most of the dirtiest power plants in the
country, and their trade association, have raised $6.6 million for President
Bush and the Republican National Committee since 1999, and were given relief
from pollution regulations that would have cost them billions of dollars,
according to a new analysis. Ten utility industry officials were so good at
fundraising for the president that his campaign named them Rangers for
bringing in at least $200,000 or Pioneers for bringing in at least $100,000,
according to the analysis by Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, and
the Environmental Integrity Project, an environmental watchdog organization.
Collectively these 10 people have raised more than $1.5 million since 1999.
"It is no coincidence that a wholesale assault on the Clean Air Act is
taking place today," said Environmental Integrity Project Director Eric
Schaeffer.
Bush Campaign Banned Students from
Attending Rally in Michigan
By David Corn
The Nation, 6 May 2004
EXCERPT: Shouldn't college students seeking knowledge--especially knowledge
that might challenge their own biases--be encouraged? Not so, it seems,
according to the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign and the College Republicans
of Kalamazoo College. When seven sophomores at the school showed up at Wings
Stadium in downtown Kalamazoo to see George W. Bush at a campaign rally on
May 3 and presented the tickets they had obtained for the event, security
officers would not allow them in. The problem, according to these students,
was that College Republicans volunteering at the event fingered them as
liberals who did not support Bush. And such citizens were not welcome at the
rally.
SEE ALSO:
Bush, Wife to Skip Daughters' Graduations
(Salon)
Nancy Reagan Tackles Bush on Stem
Cells
Former president's wife to make public
plea in support of extending research to include embryos
By Gary Younge
The Guardian, 7 May 2004
EXCERPT: Nancy Reagan, the wife of the former president Ronald Reagan, is to
make a public plea in favour of embryonic stem cell research in a growing
bid to force the issue to the top of the agenda in a presidential election
year. Mrs Reagan will deliver a speech on the subject at a Beverley Hills
fundraiser sponsored by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation this
weekend. While Mrs Reagan, whose husband has Alzheimer's disease, has never
publicly contradicted Republican presidents while in office, she has made
known her views on the subject and her disappointment with the current
administration's policy.
Lobbyists Bankrolling Politics
Bush gets nearly four times as much as Kerry
By Alex Knott
Center for Public Integrity, 6 May 2004
EXCERPT: More than 1,300 registered lobbyists have given slightly more
than $1.8 million to President George W. Bush over the last six years,
according to a Center for Public Integrity study comparing the donations of
all registered lobbyists from 1998 through March 2004. Sen. John Kerry
received $520,000 from 442 lobbyists during the same period. Such numbers
account for a significant percentage of those who ply the influence game. In
fact, the lobbyists who donated to Bush have represented about 6,000
clients; those who gave to Kerry, approximately 3,000 clients. Combined,
these figures add up to more than half of all the companies that hire
lobbyists, according to the Senate Office of Public Records. The SOPR says
that there are currently 24,000 lobbyists registered to represent 15,000
clients.
Back
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|
14 May 2004
Dancing Alone
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times, 13 May 2004
EXCERPT: It is time to ask this question: Do we have any chance of
succeeding at regime change in Iraq without regime change here at home?
"Hey, Friedman, why are you bringing politics into this all of a sudden?
You're the guy who always said that producing a decent outcome in Iraq
was of such overriding importance to the country that it had to be kept
above politics." Yes, that's true. I still believe that. My mistake was
thinking that the Bush team believed it, too. I thought the
administration would have to do the right things in Iraq — from prewar
planning and putting in enough troops to dismissing the secretary of
defense for incompetence — because surely this was the most important
thing for the president and the country. But I was wrong. There is
something even more important to the Bush crowd than getting Iraq right,
and that's getting re-elected and staying loyal to the conservative base
to do so. It has always been more important for the Bush folks to defeat
liberals at home than Baathists abroad. That's why they spent more time
studying U.S. polls than Iraqi history. That is why, I'll bet, Karl Rove
has had more sway over this war than Assistant Secretary of State for
Near Eastern Affairs Bill Burns. Mr. Burns knew only what would play in
the Middle East. Mr. Rove knew what would play in the Middle West.
...Add it all up, and you see how we got so off track in Iraq, why we
are dancing alone in the world — and why our president, who has a strong
moral vision, has no moral influence.
Senators Assail Request for Aid for
the Military
By ERIC SCHMITT
New York Times, 14 May 2004
EXCERPT: Senate Democrats and Republicans attacked Bush administration
officials on Thursday for submitting a vaguely worded request to add $25
billion to pay for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan beginning on Oct.
1. The new money would be added to the more than $400 billion already
sought for military uses worldwide in fiscal 2005. Lawmakers complained
that the request lacked specific details and sought to circumvent the
Senate's oversight role.
The Wrong Direction
New York Times, 14 May 2004
EXCERPT: Watching President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld this week, it was hard to avoid the sinking feeling that they
had already moved on from the Abu Ghraib prison mess and were back to
their well-established practice of ignoring all bad news and marching
blindly ahead as if nothing unusual had happened. That was the
impression that emerged from Mr. Bush's disconnected performance on
Monday, when he viewed photos and video stills of the atrocious
treatment of prisoners by soldiers under his and Mr. Rumsfeld's command,
and then announced that the defense secretary was doing a "superb job."
It was stronger than ever yesterday, during Mr. Rumsfeld's road trip to
Iraq, where he drew a curious parallel between himself and Ulysses S.
Grant and announced his approach to the prison scandal: "I've stopped
reading newspapers." Mr. Rumsfeld told the soldiers that they had broad
public support at home despite the Abu Ghraib scandal. That is obviously
true. It is also beside the point. The proper way for Mr. Bush and Mr.
Rumsfeld to show support for the troops is not to use them as a screen
from the heat over the mismanagement of the military prisons. It is to
fix the problem, now. The solution is real changes, not cosmetic ones
like yesterday's announcement that Abu Ghraib's inmates would be moved
within the prison grounds to new temporary quarters, which have been
dubbed Camp Redemption. Each passing day has made it more clear that the
routine treatment of prisoners in military prisons violates
international law, the Geneva Conventions and American values of due
process and humane behavior. This is a terrible burden for the fine men
and women serving in Iraq to bear, as they live their lives among an
ever more hostile populace. Rather than assuring his uniformed audience
— and the world — that the administration is moving heaven and earth to
wipe out the rottenness within the prison system, the defense secretary
simply urged the soldiers to ignore the politics back home.
General Took Guantánamo Rules to Iraq
for Handling of Prisoners
By TIM GOLDEN and ERIC SCHMITT
New York Times, 13 May 2004
EXCERPT: When Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller arrived in Iraq last August
with a team of military police and intelligence specialists, the group
was confronted by chaos. ...General Miller and some of his former aides
have dismissed the notion that his visit to Iraq helped unleash the
abuses. They argue that if his prescriptions had any link to the
problems there, it was because they were misinterpreted by ineffective
commanders in a chaotic environment. ...Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, in
his report on Iraqi prison abuses, said General Miller's recommendation
of a guard force that "sets the conditions for the successful
interrogation and exploitation of internees/detainees" violated Army
doctrine; the report hinted that it might also have contributed to the
abuses. The Taguba report also highlighted General Miller's
recommendation that commanders in Iraq form and train a prison guard
force "subordinate to the Joint Interrogation Debriefing Center (J.I.D.C.)
Commander" that "sets the conditions for the successful interrogation
and exploitation of internees/detainees." The former director of
that interrogation center, Lt. Col. Steve Jordan, was implicated in the
abuses by General Taguba and is under investigation in a separate
military inquiry. At Guantánamo the role of guards in intelligence
gathering was largely limited to observing the detainees' behavior and
trying to detect their leaders, according to interrogators who worked
there.
U.S. Soldier Paints a Scene of
Eager Mayhem at Iraq Prison
By KATE ZERNIKE
New York Times, 14 May 2004
EXCERPT: Then a fresh crop of detainees arrived at Abu Ghraib prison one
night in late October, their jailers set upon them. The soldiers pulled
seven Iraqi detainees from their cells, "tossed them in the middle of
the floor" and then one soldier ran across the room and lunged into the
pile of detainees, according to sworn statements given to investigators
by one of the soldiers now charged with abuse. He did it again, jumping
into the group like it was a pile of autumn leaves, and another soldier
called for others to join in. The detainees were ordered to strip and
masturbate, their heads covered with plastic sandbags. One soldier
stomped on their fingers and toes. "Graner put the detainee's head into
a cradle position with Graner's arm, and Graner punched the detainee
with a lot of force, in the temple," Specialist Jeremy C. Sivits said in
his statements to investigators, referring to another soldier charged,
Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. "Graner punched the detainee with a
closed fist so hard in the temple that it knocked the detainee
unconscious." "He was joking, laughing," Specialist Sivits said. "Like
he was enjoying it."
SEE ALSO:
Harsh C.I.A. Methods Cited in Top Qaeda
Interrogations
By JAMES RISEN, DAVID JOHNSTON and NEIL A. LEWIS
New York Times, 13 May 2004
EXCERPT: The Central Intelligence Agency has used coercive interrogation
methods against a select group of high-level leaders and operatives of Al
Qaeda that have produced growing concerns inside the agency about abuses,
according to current and former counterterrorism officials. At least one
agency employee has been disciplined for threatening a detainee with a gun
during questioning, they said. In the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a
high-level detainee who is believed to have helped plan the attacks of Sept.
11, 2001, C.I.A. interrogators used graduated levels of force, including a
technique known as "water boarding," in which a prisoner is strapped down,
forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown.
'E&P' Editor on CNN Urges Press
to Consider Iraq Pullout
by E&P Staff
Common Dreams, 13 May 2004
EXCERPT: Appearing on CNN this morning, E&P Editor Greg Mitchell renewed
his call in a recent column (see When Will First Major Newspaper Call
for a Pullout in Iraq?) that newspaper editorials strongly consider
advocating a phased U.S. pullout from Iraq, or at the minimum begin a
"healthy debate" on this subject. MItchell cited a new CNN/USA
Today/Gallup poll which found that 47% of the respondents said they
favored withdrawing some or all troops from Iraq. This was up from 37% a
month ago. "So it's odd," he said, "that the largest newspapers are
seemingly not even taking this position seriously."
Europe Growing Uneasy over Alliance
with U.S.
by Julio Godoy
Common Dreams, 13 May 2004
EXCERPT: European officials seem agreed that the abuse of Iraqi
prisoners by U.S. and British forces rule the two countries out of an
international peace initiative. But they stop short of considering a
European policy independent of the United States. At the least the
pictures of abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners have further undermined
the already weak European backing for the war and occupation. Earlier
supporters of the United States are now in withdrawal mode.
"Morons" or methods spread from "Gitmo?"
Guantánamo Abuse Same as Abu Ghraib, say Britons
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington, Tania Branigan and Vikram Dodd
The Guardian, 14 May 2004
EXCERPT: Two British men who were held at Guantánamo Bay claimed that
their US guards subjected them to abuse similar to that perpetrated at
the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In an open letter to President
George Bush, Britons Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal accused US military
officials of deliberately misleading the public about procedures at
Guantánamo. Mr Rasul and Mr Iqbal, who were freed in March after being
arrested in Afghanistan and held without charge for more than two years,
allege that heavy-handed treatment was systematic.
Blair
Urged to Loosen Ties with US
Ministers call for public disengagement
Nicholas Watt and Michael White
The Guardian, 14 May 3004
EXCERPT: Senior figures across the Labour party are intensifying
pressure on Tony Blair to publicly detach himself from the Bush
administration, calling on him to spell out an independent British
position on the Middle East, peacekeeping in Iraq and the US
presidential election.
Further jeopardizes India sending troops to Iraq
The Once and (Probably) Future First Family of India
By AMY WALDMAN
New York Times, 14 May 2004
EXCERPT: When the cameras caught up to Rahul Gandhi in his rural
constituency on Thursday, Mr. Gandhi, the descendant of three Indian
prime ministers — and possibly soon a fourth — could barely contain his
dimpled grin. It was a good day to be the latest star of the
Nehru-Gandhi family dynasty. Written off as calcified, out-of-touch,
visionless and nepotistic, that dynasty is poised once again to lead the
world's most populous democracy. On Thursday, the Indian National
Congress, which the family has controlled in fact or in spirit since
before independence, emerged from elections as the largest party in
Parliament.
Guest
Commentary
My Country, Right and Wrong
An essay offered by Dom Stasi.
Previously published at
Spectacle.org
EXCERPT: Ours is a government by, for, and
of the people, and people is just another way of saying human beings. And what
is a human being if not a thinking, reasoning, self-aware being? As every
honorable veteran knows, when a soldier in the service of America accepts My
country, right or wrong, he does so as a deliberate act of free will and
human dignity. But he does surrogate his personal freedom of choice for some
period when he takes the oath. He does so as an act of trust, firm in the
knowledge that his civilian leadership will be a just and responsible
leadership. He trusts that his civilian leadership will be honest and act
honorably under the flag of his country. One cannot deny, however, that the
soldiers sailors, airmen, and marines of mine and subsequent generations have
not always seen their trust in the modern crop of civilian leaders justified.
My country, right or wrong is an illusion built and sustained upon the naiveté
of our expendable youth and that of the adults who would sacrifice them to the
will of whoever holds power.
13 May 2004
Caught
in another lie,
Bush fails to take action...again
Powell Says Bush Was 'Informed'
of Red Cross Concerns
Officials Advised President 'In General Terms'
About Reports of Abuse, He Says
By Mark Matthews
Baltimore Sun, 12 May 2004
EXCERPT: Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that he and
other top officials kept President Bush "fully informed ... in general
terms" about complaints made by the Red Cross and others over
ill-treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. Powell's statement suggests
Bush may have known earlier than the White House has acknowledged about
complaints raised by the International Committee of the Red Cross and
human rights groups regarding abuse of detainees in Iraq. We kept the
president informed of the concerns that were raised by the ICRC and
other international organizations as part of my regular briefings of the
president, and advised him that we had to follow these issues...
...Powell said that he, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld kept Bush "fully informed of the
concerns that were being expressed, not in specific details, but in
general terms." White House spokesman Scott McClellan said last week
that the president was first informed about the abuse of detainees in
Iraq by Rumsfeld, who "let the president know that there were
allegations of prisoner abuse in Iraq and that the military was taking
action to address it."
Line Increasingly Blurred Between
Soldiers and Civilian Contractors
By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Renae Merle
Washington Post, 13 May 2004
EXCERPT: Private contractors have long served alongside soldiers in
wars, but their duties used to be relatively mundane: cooking,
supporting technology systems, transporting supplies. There has been a
significant shift in recent years, however, in the duties the Pentagon
has entrusted to contractors. Companies are now taking more
responsibility for some of the military's most sensitive jobs --
providing technical trainers, security protection details, linguistics
experts, and "intelligence services," a catchall term that includes
everything involved in the gathering and analysis of data. Fairfax's SRA
International Inc., for example, provides scientists to help investigate
biological and chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein's regime might have
developed. Arlington's CACI International Inc. has a one-year contract
to provide prison interrogators. San Diego's Titan Corp. -- Drobnick's
employer -- supplies interpreters who are inseparable from soldiers who
go out into Iraqi communities in their Humvees. Pentagon officials have
said using contractors saves money, allows the military to tap the
private sector for skills it lacks and forces it to concentrate on its
core mission of protecting the country. But the independence with which
contractors operate is heightening concerns that the line between the
military and contractor has become too blurry and whether the military
become too dependent on contractors it can't properly control. Of
particular concern to Congress has been where -- or if -- contractors
fall in the military chain of command.
NOTABLE QUOTE--
On the battlefield, Myers’ and Rumsfeld’s errors would be called a
lack of situational awareness — a failure that amounts to
professional negligence.
To date, the Army has moved to court-martial the six soldiers
suspected of abusing Iraqi detainees and has reprimanded six
others. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who commanded the MP brigade
that ran Abu Ghraib, has received a letter of admonishment and
also faces possible disciplinary action.
That’s good, but not good enough.
This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command
level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top.
Accountability here is essential — even if that means relieving
top leaders from duty in a time of war.
—
Military Times editorial, May 17 issue |
Cleric Ready to Disband Militia in
Security Deal
US troops Kill Fighters in Clash Near Mosque
Rory McCarthy
The Guardian13 May 2004
EXCERPT: Moqtada al-Sadr, the rebel Shia cleric who has led uprisings
across Iraq, said yesterday he was ready to disband his militia although
he still opposed the US occupation.
His comments came after US troops attacked his gunmen in the holy city
of Kerbala, killing up to 25 near a mosque they had been using to store
weapons. Mr Sadr, 30, has come under intense political pressure as the
US military has moved against his fighters in Kerbala and Najaf, further
south. Iraq's mainstream Shia parties have tried to convince the young
cleric to disband his militia, the Jaish al-Mahdi. An apparent deal
is being struck under which many of the gunmen would be absorbed into a
legal Iraqi force which will take over security of the two holy cities
and allow the US military to withdraw. A similar agreement was reached
last month to end the fighting in the troubled Sunni city of Falluja,
west of Baghdad. [BWUSA emphasis]
|
Regime Change...UK
Blair Acknowledges Job is On the Line as Abuse
Row Inflicts Further Damage
Michael White and Nicholas Watt
The Guardian, 13 May 2004
EXCERPT: Tony Blair yesterday took personal responsibility for the
controversy surrounding UK forces in Iraq, in the face of growing
criticism of his handling of Red Cross complaints about the
treatment of prisoners - from Labour as well as opposition MPs. In
an attempt to placate his enemies, he went out of his way to accept
that "I have to accept responsibility for the position I am in, and
the country is in today, because I am the prime minister who brought
this situation about." His remarks, which came amid growing fears
among Labour loyalists that Iraq is inflicting immense damage on the
prime minister, were seen as highly significant at Westminster last
night. MPs said that Mr Blair, who famously declared in his speech
to the US Congress last summer that history would vindicate him, was
showing that he accepted that his job was on the line. Amid signs
that some cabinet heavyweights, most notably Jack Straw, the foreign
secretary, are placing some distance between themselves and
Washington, Mr Blair reached out to critics with two key statements.
While friends insisted that he would never abandon George Bush, the
prime minister made it clear that he wanted to withdraw British
troops from Iraq as soon as possible - but not before the job was
done.
SEE ALSO:
Pressure Grows for Blair to Go
Brown supporters turn up heat as PM urged to change tack on Iraq
Michael White, political editor
The Guardian , 13 May 2004
EXCERPT: Gordon Brown has seen the influential media tycoon Rupert
Murdoch twice this week amid fears among allies of Tony Blair that
the chancellor is growing more restless in his ambition to succeed
the beleaguered prime minister. |
US Accused of Abusing and Beating
Afghan Detainees
Private facing court says she obeyed orders
Julian Borger in Washington
The Guardian , 13 May 2004
EXCERPT: The US military prison torture scandal widened further
yesterday as new evidence emerged of beatings and sexual abuse of
detainees in army jails in Afghanistan.
An Afghan police colonel told reporters from the New York Times and
Associated Press that he had been repeatedly beaten, stripped naked and
threatened with dogs for nearly 40 days last year at several US-run
bases in Afghanistan. He also accused American prison guards of sticking
their fingers in his anus and taunting him sexually
War, Profits, and the Vacuum of
Law (pdf file)
Peter W. Singer
Brookings Institution
EXCERPT: Introduction: Recent events in Iraq have focused attention on
private military contractors' role in U.S. military operations. Their
activities include personnel security, meal service, logistics, and
prisoner interrogation. Peter W. Singer examines these functions and
whether current law can adequately regulate them.
SEE ALSO:
Interview with Peter Singer
NPR's Terry Gross and Fresh Air,
13 May 2004
 EXCERPT:
Singer, an analyst at The Brookings Institution, is the author of the
book Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry.
He'll discuss the use of private military contractors in Iraq,
especially in light of the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison where
civilian military contractors were involved in interrogations. Singer is
an Olin Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings
Institution and coordinator of the Brookings Project on U.S. Policy
Towards the Islamic World
12 May 2004
The incredible morality of the "moral
majority"
The Right's Abu Ghraib Denial:
Is the Liberal Outrage Really Worse than the Torture?
By Timothy Noah
Slate, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: The rapidly emerging conservative line on Abu Ghraib is that
Congress and the news media are exploiting the story in order to
discredit the Bush administration. "Clearly, the images are serving the
political agenda of many newspapers," sniffed Col Allen, editor-in-chief
of the New York Post, to the New York Times. Until this past Saturday
Abu Ghraib was kept off Page One of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Post,
proving that the Post's loyalty to right-wing politics is greater than
its not-inconsiderable loyalty to Fleet Street-style tabloid journalism.
Murdoch publications have downplayed Abu Ghraib even more than the rest
of the conservative press. The Weekly Standard's Web site had nothing to
say until yesterday, and the Times piece quotes Fox News executive
producer Bill Shine saying he's "dialing back" on use of the
photographs.
The dodge is on...
Rumsfeld Aide and a General Clash on Abuse
By ERIC SCHMITT
New York Times, 12 May 2004
EXCERPT: The Army general who first investigated abuses at Abu Ghraib
prison stood by his inquiry's finding that military police officers
should not have been involved in conditioning Iraqi detainees for
interrogation, even as a senior Pentagon civilian sitting next to him at
a Senate hearing on Tuesday disputed that conclusion. The officer, Maj.
Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that it
had been against the Army's doctrine for another Army general to
recommend last summer that military guards "set the conditions" to help
Army intelligence officers extract information from prisoners. He also
said an order last November from the top American officer in Iraq
effectively put the prison guards under the command of the intelligence
unit there. But the civilian official, Stephen A. Cambone, the under
secretary of defense for intelligence, contradicted the general. He said
that the military police and the military intelligence unit at the
prison needed to work closely to gain as much intelligence as possible
from Iraqi prisoners to prevent attacks against American soldiers. Mr.
Cambone also said that General Taguba misinterpreted the November order,
which he said only put the intelligence unit in charge of the prison
facility, not of the military police guards. While General Taguba
depicted the abuses at the prison as the acts of a few soldiers under a
fragmented and inept command, he also said that "they were probably
influenced by others, if not necessarily directed specifically by
others." His report called for an inquiry into the culpability of
intelligence officers, which is still under way.
SEE ALSO:
A Failure of Leadership at the Highest
Levels
(Army Times)
SEE ALSO:
Army General Says Abuse Caused by Faulty
Leadership
(NYT)
SEE ALSO:
Up to 90% of Iraqi Detainees
Arrested by Mistake, Red Cross Says
BY ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS
The Guardian, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: Up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested ''by
mistake,'' according to coalition intelligence officers cited in a Red
Cross report disclosed Monday. Abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American
soldiers was widespread and routine, the report finds -- contrary to
President Bush's contention that the mistreatment ''was the wrongdoing
of a few.'' Red Cross delegates saw U.S. military intelligence officers
mistreating prisoners under interrogation at Abu Ghraib prison and
collected allegations of abuse at more than 10 other detention
facilities, according to the report.
SEE ALSO:
General Overseeing Prison Says She Was
Overruled
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White
Washington Post, 12 May 2004
EXCERPT: The U.S. general who was in charge of running prisons in Iraq
told Army investigators earlier this year that she had resisted
decisions by superior officers to hand over control of the prisons to
military intelligence officials and to authorize the use of lethal force
as a first step in keeping order -- command decisions that have come in
for heavy criticism in the Iraq prison abuse scandal. Brig. Gen. Janis
L. Karpinski, head of the 800th Military Police Brigade, spoke of her
resistance to the decisions in a detailed account of her tenure
furnished to Army investigators. It places two of the highest-ranking
Army officers now in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller and Lt. Gen.
Ricardo Sanchez, at the heart of decision-making on both matters.
Karpinski has been formally admonished by the Army for her actions in
Iraq. She said both men overruled her concerns about the military
intelligence takeover and the use of deadly force. Each man contests
portions of her account, which appears in the classified annex to the
Army's internal probe into the abuse and torture of detainees at Abu
Ghraib prison. Her account was described by a U.S. government official
to The Washington Post and confirmed by her attorney.
Focus Shifts to Jail Abuse of Women
Luke Harding
The Guardian, 12 May 2004
EXCERPT: For Huda Shaker, the humiliation began at a checkpoint on the
outskirts of Baghdad. The American soldiers demanded to search her
handbag. When she refused one of the soldiers pointed his gun towards
her chest.
"He pointed the laser sight directly in the middle of my chest," said
Professor Shaker, a political scientist at Baghdad University. "Then he
pointed to his penis. He told me, 'Come here, bitch, I'm going to fuck
you.'" The incident is one of a number in which US soldiers are alleged
to have abused, intimidated or sexually humiliated Iraqi women.
According to Prof Shaker, several women held in Abu Ghraib jail were
sexually abused, including one who was raped by an American military
policeman and became pregnant. She has now disappeared. Most of the
coverage of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib has focused on Iraqi men.
But there is compelling evidence that several female prisoners, who are
in a minority at the jail, were abused as well.
Getting Out of a Quagmire
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Washington Post, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: It's not clear anymore that there is a plausible way to turn
the Bush administration's disastrous policy in Iraq into anything that
would look remotely like success.
That's why the conventional wisdom among policymakers has reached a
tipping point over the past month. Until recently, the widely accepted
view was that the United States would have to "see through" the
commitment President Bush made. Now, thoughtful people -- including
moderates, conservatives and foreign policy realists -- are discussing
how to get the United States out of Iraq sooner rather than later, at
the lowest possible cost to our own standing in the world and to Iraqis.
This view is being taken seriously because of the incoherence of the
administration's approach and its arrogance in dealing with its critics.
If you think that word "arrogance" is too strong, consider the statement
Vice President Cheney issued through a spokesman over the weekend: that
"Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States has
ever had," and that "people ought to get off his case and let him do his
job."
SEE ALSO:
For Iraqis to Win, the U.S. Must Lose
(NYT)
No Flinching From the Facts
By George F. Will
Washington Post, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: How should he (Rumsfeld), and we, think about what comes next?
Consider an axiom, a principle, two questions and then a second axiom.
The first axiom is: When there is no penalty for failure, failures
proliferate. Leave aside the question of who or what failed before Sept.
11, 2001. But who lost his or her job because the president's 2003 State
of the Union address gave currency to a fraud -- the story of Iraq's
attempting to buy uranium in Niger? Or because the primary and only
sufficient reason for waging preemptive war -- weapons of mass
destruction -- was largely spurious? Or because postwar planning, from
failure to anticipate the initial looting to today's insufficient force
levels, has been botched? Failures are multiplying because of choices
for which no one seems accountable. The principle is: The response by
the nation's government must express horror, shame and contrition
proportional to the evil done to others, and the harm done to the
nation, by agents of the government. Americans are almost certainly
going to die in violence made worse in Iraq, and not only there, by the
substantial aid some Americans, in their torture of Iraqi prisoners,
have given to our enemies in this war. And by the appallingly dilatory
response to the certain torture and probable murder committed in that
prison. The nation's response must, of course, include swift and public
prosecutions. And the destruction of that prison. And punctilious
conformity to legal obligations -- and, now, to some optional procedures
-- concerning persons in American custody. But this is not enough. One
question is: Are the nation's efforts in the deepening global war -- the
world is more menacing than it was a year ago -- helped or hindered by
Rumsfeld's continuation as the appointed American most conspicuously
identified with the conduct of the war? This is not a simple call. But
being experienced, he will know how to make the call. Being honorable,
he will so do. ...The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
Rules of the System
Washington Post, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: ...a growing body of evidence shows that the connection is
integral. The commander who oversaw the implementation of the
interrogation procedures at Guantanamo Bay, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D.
Miller, visited Abu Ghraib in September and recommended that at least
one part of what he calls the Guantanamo Bay "model" be applied there:
the subordination of prison guards to the intelligence interrogators
trying to extract information. There is considerable evidence that Abu
Ghraib prison guards abused prisoners on the instruction of
interrogators. The abuses they committed were, to a certain extent, an
extreme and undisciplined version of practices that the Pentagon has
officially condoned. Mr. Miller is now in charge of Abu Ghraib; he
recently acknowledged that techniques such as hooding, sleep deprivation
and other "very aggressive" techniques had been used there. He did not
say the practices would be stopped -- only that they would need specific
approval in the future.
Administration officials have justified the use of aggressive
tactics in interrogations by saying that they are used on al Qaeda
terrorists and others who can be legitimately deemed "unlawful
combatants" under the Geneva Conventions and that they are needed to
extract intelligence essential to preventing terrorist attacks. It may
or may not be true that such techniques, when practiced under close
supervision by highly trained interrogators, are effective. The
administration has offered no evidence that they are, and many outside
experts believe otherwise.
But the administration hasn't limited its system to Guantanamo Bay
or to senior al Qaeda detainees. It has applied the practices loosely
across a network of detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan and
elsewhere, and it has trusted its implementation to civilian contractors
and reservists. The result has been outrages that have done far more
damage to the United States than any intelligence collection could
justify.
Mr. Bush traveled across the Potomac yesterday to congratulate Mr.
Rumsfeld for the "superb job" he is doing as defense secretary. The
president again characterized the abuses as the aberrations of a "small
number" of servicemen and women. These are not the right responses to
one of this nation's worst disgraces. Instead, the administration should
reform the system so that it meets the guarantees that Mr. Bush falsely
offered last June.
SEE ALSO:
In Shameful Photos, the Specter of
Failure
By Jefferson Morley
Washington Post, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: The latest photographs of the torture and humiliation of Iraqi
prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison are being greeted with a chorus of
"shame" in the international online media. In the infamous images,
online commentators see racism, imperialism and sadism. Even supporters
of the U.S. invasion of Iraq sense a profound defeat looming for the
United States and its ambitions in the region.
Democracy Now
The Bush administration seems not to
recognize how widespread, and how bipartisan, is the view that Iraq is
already lost or on the verge of being lost.
by Robert Kagan and William Kristol
Weekly Standard, 17 May issue, Volume 009, Issue 34
EXCERPT: ...Iraq could be lost if the Bush administration holds to the
view that it can press ahead with its political and military strategy
without any dramatic change of course, without taking bold and visible
action to reverse the current downward trajectory. The existing Bush
administration plan in Iraq is to wait for U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to
name an interim Iraqi caretaker government by the end of May that will
take power on July 1, and prepare for elections in January 2005. This
plan might have been adequate a couple of months ago. But it is
inadequate to meet the new challenge.
Among the biggest mistakes made by the Bush administration over the past
year has been the failure to move Iraq more rapidly toward elections.
It's true that many, inside and outside the administration, have long
been clamoring to hand over more responsibility to Iraqis,
responsibility above all for doing more of the fighting and dying. But
the one thing even many of these friends of Iraq have been unwilling to
hand over to Iraqis is the right to choose their own government. This is
a mistake.
We do not believe in the present circumstances that the current
administration plan moves quickly enough toward providing Iraqis real
sovereignty. It is not real sovereignty when a U.N. official tells
Iraqis who their next prime minister will be. We strongly doubt that the
announcement of a new interim government--three to four weeks from now,
to take office almost two months from now--will have sufficient impact
on Iraqi public opinion to overcome the images of American soldiers
abusing Iraqi prisoners. Nor do we believe the present course will give
the American people and their representatives sufficient reason to hope
that a corner may be turned in the near future. The coming weeks are
critical.
Afghan Gives Own Account of U.S. Abuse
By CARLOTTA GALL
New York Times, 12 May 2004
EXCERPT: A former Afghan police colonel gave a graphic account in an
interview this week of being subjected to beating, kicking, sleep
deprivation, taunts and sexual abuse during about 40 days he spent in
American custody last summer. He also said he had been repeatedly
photographed, often while naked.
Guest
Commentary
My Country, Right and Wrong
An essay offered by Dom Stasi.
Previously published at
Information Clearing House.
EXCERPT: Ours is a government by, for, and
of the people, and people is just another way of saying human beings. And what
is a human being if not a thinking, reasoning, self-aware being? As every
honorable veteran knows, when a soldier in the service of America accepts My
country, right or wrong, he does so as a deliberate act of free will and
human dignity. But he does surrogate his personal freedom of choice for some
period when he takes the oath. He does so as an act of trust, firm in the
knowledge that his civilian leadership will be a just and responsible
leadership. He trusts that his civilian leadership will be honest and act
honorably under the flag of his country. One cannot deny, however, that the
soldiers sailors, airmen, and marines of mine and subsequent generations have
not always seen their trust in the modern crop of civilian leaders justified.
My country, right or wrong is an illusion built and sustained upon the naiveté
of our expendable youth and that of the adults who would sacrifice them to the
will of whoever holds power.
11 May 2004
"My thinking changed after 9/11."
--G.W. Bush
The Psychology of Torture: Past Incidents Show Abusers Think Ends
Justify the Means
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: The U.S. troops who abused Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison near
Baghdad were most likely not pathological sadists but ordinary people
who felt they were doing the dirty work needed to win the war, experts
in the history and psychology of torture say. Torturers usually believe
they are carrying out the will of their societies -- and feel betrayed
when the public professes outrage after the abuses come to light, said a
range of historians, activists and psychologists. This mentality has
played out in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, in the conflict in
Northern Ireland, during the Holocaust and within the Chicago Police
Department. "When torture takes place, people believe they are on the
high moral ground, that the nation is under threat and they are the
front line protecting the nation, and people will be grateful for what
they are doing," said John Conroy, author of "Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary
People," which examined torture in several settings. What happened at
Abu Ghraib, Conroy and other experts said, probably grew out of a shift
in American priorities after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: the
subordination of human rights to victory in the war against terrorism.
..."Since 9/11, the Defense Department has openly adopted stress and
duress techniques," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human
Rights Watch. "We have learned from the Army that there is a 72-point
matrix of stress that the Pentagon has adopted to guide interrogators.
It outlines different forms of coercion that can be applied. It includes
everything from different amounts of sleep deprivation and sensory
deprivation, to sensory overload, stripping, hooding, binding detainees
in various positions -- essentially everything we have seen in these
pictures short of the sexual humiliation." ...Christopher Browning, a
historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the
author of "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final
Solution in Poland," said that although there are obvious differences
between the abuses at Abu Ghraib and during the Holocaust, there are
similarities. "Our government from the top has sent innumerable signals
that placed combating the 'war on terror' above any concern for the
Geneva convention," he said by e-mail, adding that "the chickens have
come home to roost."
Fox News has erroneously reported that all those
interrogated were terrorist suspects
Mistreatment Of Detainees Went Beyond Guards' Abuse; Ex-Prisoners, Red
Cross Cite Flawed Arrests, Denial of Rights
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Scott Wilson
Washington Post, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: Problems in the U.S.-run detention system in Iraq extended
beyond physical mistreatment in prison cellblocks, involving thousands
of arrests without evidence of wrongdoing and abuse of suspects starting
from the moment of detention, according to former prisoners, Iraqi
lawyers, human rights advocates and the International Committee for the
Red Cross.
Chain of Command
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
How the Department of Defense mishandled the disaster at Abu Ghraib.
New Yorker, 9 May 2004
EXCERPT: The International Red Cross and human-rights groups have
repeatedly complained during the past year about the American military’s
treatment of Iraqi prisoners, with little success. In one case,
disclosed last month by the Denver Post, three Army soldiers from a
military-intelligence battalion were accused of assaulting a female
Iraqi inmate at Abu Ghraib. After an administrative review, the three
were fined “at least five hundred dollars and demoted in rank,” the
newspaper said.
Author of Prison Abuse Report to
Testify
Lawmakers discuss release of more photos, video
From Joe Johns and Steve Turnham
CNN, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: The author of a 53-page Army report critical of the "sadistic,
blatant and wanton criminal abuse" of some Iraqi prisoners is scheduled
to testify before a Senate committee Tuesday. Meanwhile, top Democrats
and Republicans were meeting to discuss whether and how to release to
Congress digital video clips and about 100 additional pictures of the
abuse at the Abu Ghraib prisoner outside Baghdad, Iraq.
Red Cross: Treatment of Iraqis
'Tantamount to Torture'
CNN, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: Many detainees arrested by mistake, report says Iraqi detainees
considered likely intelligence sources faced coercion that in some cases
was "tantamount to torture," a Red Cross report concluded in February.
The report also said that up to 90 percent of Iraqis held by U.S. and
allied troops have been arrested by mistake. "In certain cases, such as
in Abu Ghraib military intelligence section, methods of physical and
psychological coercion used by the interrogators appeared to be part of
the standard operating procedures by military intelligence personnel to
obtain confessions and extract information," observers from the
International Committee of the Red Cross found. Intelligence officers
told the ICRC that it was standard procedure to subject prisoners to
"inhumane and degrading treatment, including physical and psychological
coercion, against persons deprived of their liberty to secure their
cooperation." The report, which CNN obtained Monday, brought what it
called "serious violations of international humanitarian law" to the
attention of U.S. and British authorities. It quotes intelligence
officers who estimate that between 70 percent and 90 percent of those
imprisoned "had been arrested by mistake," often in cases in which
soldiers used excessive force in the process. The use of excessive force
during arrests "seemed to reflect a usual modus operandi by certain CF
[coalition forces] battle group units," the report's summary concluded.
Secret World of U.S. Interrogation
Long History of Tactics in Overseas Prisons Is Coming to Light
By Dana Priest and Joe Stephens
Washington Post, 11 May 2004
EXCERPT: In Afghanistan, the CIA's secret U.S. interrogation center in
Kabul is known as "The Pit," named for its despairing conditions. In
Iraq, the most important prisoners are kept in a huge hangar near the
runway at Baghdad International Airport, say U.S. government officials,
counterterrorism experts and others. In Qatar, U.S. forces have been
ferrying some Iraqi prisoners to a remote jail on the gigantic U.S. air
base in the desert. The Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where a unit of U.S.
soldiers abused prisoners, is just the largest and suddenly most
notorious in a worldwide constellation of detention centers -- many of
them secret and all off-limits to public scrutiny -- that the U.S.
military and CIA have operated in the name of counterterrorism or
counterinsurgency operations since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. These
prisons and jails are sometimes as small as shipping containers and as
large as the sprawling Guantanamo Bay complex in Cuba. They are part of
an elaborate CIA and military infrastructure whose purpose is to hold
suspected terrorists or insurgents for interrogation and safekeeping
while avoiding U.S. or international court systems, where proceedings
and evidence against the accused would be aired in public. Some are even
held by foreign governments at the informal request of the United
States.
SEE ALSO:
Chicken's Roost
(Slate)
10 May 2004
Undercutting Mideast Democracy
By Jackson Diehl
Washington Post, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: ...the mess in Iraq is not all that is undercutting the
initiative. Also hurting are the Middle East headlines the White House
has deliberately made in the past two months -- and which, to an Arab
audience, appear entirely at odds with the president's democracy agenda.
The photos from Abu Ghraib prison may have destroyed what was left of
the Bush administration's credibility with Arab popular opinion. But its
seemingly contradictory or hypocritical policy decisions are alienating
some of the very Arab democracy advocates who might otherwise welcome
the Greater Middle East Initiative.
The first of these was Bush's embrace of another man's big and
bold plan for the Middle East -- that of Ariel Sharon. The Israeli prime
minister's proposed withdrawal of settlements from the Gaza Strip was
welcomed by most Arabs, above all the liberals. But Bush's gratuitous
concession to Sharon of far-reaching changes in the public U.S. stance
on the terms of a final Israeli-Palestinian settlement was greeted with
dismay. It wasn't just the substance, though even the most liberal Arabs
oppose Bush's new policy. By caving in to Sharon's demands, Bush
willingly agreed to absorb another political pounding in the Middle East
even though the White House must have known that would weaken the
democracy initiative.
At a recent meeting on democratic change in the Middle East, I heard an
Arab with impeccable reformist credentials angrily demand to know why
every recent speech on the Middle East by President Bush seemed to
contain a bouquet for Libya's strongman. This would-be democratizer, who
asked me not to identify him because of his official position, pointed
out that Gaddafi represents everything the Bush initiative is meant to
be against. He is a massive violator of human rights and a dictator who
grooms his children to succeed him. He seeks the same devil's bargain
with the United States that Arab autocrats have always cut: Ignore my
domestic thuggery, and I'll sell you oil and cooperate with your foreign
policy. Bush has sworn off such deals -- yet two weeks ago he lifted
economic sanctions against Libya, allowing U.S. oil companies to return,
in exchange for Gaddafi's promise to give up weapons of mass
destruction. The Arab official was contemptuous: Libya's aging mustard
gas and disassembled centrifuges weren't likely to pose a serious threat
to the United States, he argued. But Bush's embrace of Gaddafi would
warm the heart of other Arab presidents-for-life, who would conclude
that Washington's demand for change could be easily bought off.
...Promotion of democracy remains the top priority -- except when it
conflicts with something else. [BWUSA emphasis]
SEE ALSO:
As Insurgency Grew, So Did Prison Abuse
(Washington Post)
More Bad News May Be on the Way for Bush
By TERENCE HUNT
Guardian, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: In one of the darkest weeks of his administration, President Bush
saw America's reputation sullied, the U.S. effort in Iraq damaged and his
own campaign for re-election clouded. And more bad news may be on the way.
While the world already has been horrified by pictures of American soldiers
abusing Iraqi prisoners, the Pentagon warns there are many more photos and
videos that have not been disclosed. They show ``acts that can only be
described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman,'' embattled Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress. From the White House to Capitol
Hill, policy-makers are worried that the United States faces lasting damage
abroad - particularly in the Middle East - from the pictures of naked Arab
men being tortured and humiliated by American soldiers, the same forces sent
to Iraq to liberate the country from Saddam Hussein's torture and
repression. Analysts describe the pictures as great recruiting tools for al-Qaida
and other extremist groups and said they undermine America's claims to a
moral high ground. Rumsfeld said the impact was ``radioactive.'' Bush, in
his weekly radio address Saturday, said, ``They are a stain on our country's
honor and reputation.'' He said the abuses were the work of a few and do not
reflect the overall character of the 200,000 members of the U.S. military
who have served in Iraq in the past year. Six months from the November
elections, Iraq weighs heavily on the president. ...``The real issue is
there's more stuff that's going to come out that is troubling, beyond
humiliation and torture. Deaths I think,'' said Campbell, director of
international security at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies. ``And there's going to be quite a long record of warnings that were
either ignore or dismissed. And that I think is going to be problematic,''
Campbell said. Lawmakers worried the pictures would harm U.S. credibility
for years, perhaps decades. While the United States champions freedom and
democracy in Iraq, the pictures show vivid scenes of cruelty and
insensitivity. Splashed across front pages across the Middle East and around
the world, the pictures may undermine ``the substantial gains toward the
goal of peace and freedom in various operation areas of the world, most
particularly Iraq,'' said Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate
Armed Services Committee. Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the committee's top
Democrat, said the abuses ``dishonored our military and our nation and they
made the prospects for success in Iraq even more difficult than they already
are.'' Added Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla.: ``This was a political and public
relations Pearl Harbor.'' Bush pledged in his radio address that the United
States would not be thrown into retreat.
SEE ALSO:
Senators Fault Pentagon As New Photos Emerge
Lawmakers Split on Rumsfeld Resignation
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post, 10 May 2004
Republican and Democratic senators criticized the Pentagon yesterday for
what one Republican termed a "systemic failure" in overseeing the detention
of prisoners in Iraq but expressed divided opinions on whether Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld should resign in the wake of the scandal over
the humiliation of Iraqis and other prison abuses. As they spoke, a series
of new photographs came to light of U.S. military personnel using German
shepherd guard dogs to threaten and apparently attack a naked Iraqi prisoner
last December at Abu Ghraib prison, where other publicized cases of abuse
were photographed and videotaped. The New Yorker magazine said the photos
had been held by a member of the 320th Military Police Brigade, the same
unit implicated in other abuses at the prison, west of Baghdad. One photo,
which the magazine published, showed the prisoner cowering while the dogs
barked; others in the series, which were described, showed a soldier pinning
the same man on the ground while displaying a bleeding wound to his leg. If
the sequence was accurately described, it would be the first to surface from
the prison that displays an act of deliberate wounding, stretching beyond
the humiliation and acts of physical abuse of naked Iraqi prisoners depicted
in photos already published. Although no pictures depicting murder have
become public, military investigators are looking into at least two apparent
slayings by prison guards since December 2002 and 10 more Iraqi deaths, as
well as 10 assaults, at detention facilities under the control of Central
Command.
Senators Warn Against Abuse Scapegoating
By JENNIFER C. KERR
AP in the Guardian, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: The Army investigation into the Iraq prison scandal should have
repercussions for higher-ups, not just the military police accused of
abusing detainees, lawmakers said Saturday. ``I think command responsibility
has to be looked at just as seriously as the abusers,'' Republican Sen.
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said in an interview. ``The culture that
led to this outrageous conduct has to be addressed just as much as the
conduct itself.'' Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., added: ``I think we need to move
beyond scapegoating here of privates and sergeants to get at the facts as to
what truly did happen.''
SEE ALSO:
Prison Revolt
To Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the Abu
Ghraib Investigation Is About Scapegoating, but She's Having None of It
By Libby Copeland
Washington Post, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski has her back up. She says she has
been scapegoated for the abuses that some U.S. soldiers inflicted on Iraqi
detainees at Abu Ghraib, abuses that occurred when she was in charge of 16
prisons in Iraq, and that were carried out by soldiers under her command.
Karpinski believes that higher-ups are attempting to make her the public
face of failed leadership
Brutal Images Buttress Anger of
Ex-Prisoners
By IAN FISHER
New York Times, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: There were photographs at the human rights center here Sunday: of
fingers with deep infected gouges; of an imprisoned husband; of the corpse
of a former Iraqi general who died late last year in American custody, the
swollen pink zipper of an autopsy cut running from his groin to his neck.
There was also much screaming. "I don't want compensation — I only want my
husband!" shouted Hadiya Taha, 45, who said she had not seen her husband,
Badr Hassan Ali, since he was detained by American soldiers in January. "I
don't know the accusations against him! I don't know anything!" There are
likely to be more scenes like the one Sunday at a news conference organized
by the Organization for Human Rights in Iraq for former inmates and the
families of some of the thousands of prisoners in American-run jails — their
anger given new credibility after the release of pictures showing
mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib by their American guards.
Officials Grapple With How and When to
Release Images
By THOM SHANKER
New York Times, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: The Defense Department is planning to provide Congress with many
more pictures of the abusive treatment of Iraqi detainees, but has not
decided whether to release them to the public, Congressional leaders and
Pentagon officials said Sunday. In the end, President Bush is likely to make
the determination on making the images public, aides said. Inside the White
House, several of Mr. Bush's aides have argued that he has little choice but
to make them public. Sooner or later, they say, the images will leak out,
prolonging the pain, fueling Iraqi and Arab suspicions of a
Pentagon-orchestrated cover-up, and giving new life to calls for Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's removal. Many in the Pentagon, though, are
resisting. Pentagon officials warned that a public release could jeopardize
its criminal inquiry. They theorized that defense lawyers could cite a
governmental release in motions to dismiss charges, arguing that their
clients could not get a fair hearing. So far, seven soldiers are facing
charges related to abuse of Iraqi detainees. In meetings this weekend,
officials who took part said, some senior military officials argued that
releasing the pictures would only further inflame Iraqis, fuel the
insurgency and make it nearly impossible to gain help from Arab allies.
Moreover, the officials expressed fear in those meetings that any captured
American soldiers would be placed at greater risk. That argument broke out
in public on Sunday when the chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, seemed to back keeping
the images from public view, describing them as "of a classified nature" on
the NBC News program "Meet the Press." He was immediately challenged by a
fellow Republican, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who shot back:
"If there's a videotape out there, for God's sake let's talk about it,
because men and women's lives are at stake, given how we handle this. So I
want to get it all out on the table." The Pentagon's chief spokesman, Larry
Di Rita, confirmed that the Defense Department had been in discussions with
Congress to find a way for members to view the photographs and videos.
"We're looking for a mechanism to do that," Mr. Di Rita said.
First Trial Set to Begin May 19 in Abuse
in Iraq
By DEXTER FILKINS
New York Times, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: A 24-year-old military policeman from Pennsylvania will be
court-martialed here on May 19, the first American soldier to face trial in
the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, military officials said
Sunday. In an extraordinary gesture to address outrage over the abuse
scandal, the military is permitting broad public access to the trial and
will invite the Arab news media. The policeman, Specialist Jeremy Sivits,
who American officials contend took some of the photographs of Iraqi
prisoners that captured the abuse as it unfolded, is one of seven American
soldiers to face criminal charges and the first to receive a trial date.
There were indications that Specialist Sivits had reached a plea agreement
with prosecutors in exchange for leniency at sentencing. The decision to
allow a wide level of public access to Specialist Sivits's court-martial
appears to reflect a conclusion by American commanders that the abuse and
the photographs have severely damaged the credibility of the United States
enterprise in Iraq and the country's reputation in the Middle East. While
American courts-martial are not usually conducted in secret, it is unusual
for the military justice authorities to make them easily accessible to the
public.
Iraq Oil Exports Cut by Pipeline Sabotage
By REUTERS
New York Times, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: A sabotage attack against a southern pipeline has reduced Iraq's
oil exports sharply, the South Oil Company President said on Monday. ``The
situation is not good,'' Jabar al-Leaby told Reuters, but declined to say
how much oil was still being exported. Leaby said the attack affected flows
to the Basra terminal, the export point for most of Iraq's 1.8 million
barrels per day of overseas sales -- and the country's only means of earning
foreign currency.
North Korea's Kim Said Won't Abandon Nukes
- Report
By REUTERS in NYT, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il told Chinese President Hu
Jintao last month that Pyongyang was willing to freeze some of its nuclear
programs but would not completely scrap them, a Japanese newspaper said on
Monday. That stance is in line with North Korea's existing position and
China is concerned that it could cause a confrontation at six-party,
working-level talks to start on Wednesday in Beijing on Pyongyang's nuclear
programs, the Yomiuri Shimbun said. North Korea had agreed to join this
week's meeting after the reclusive Kim made a rare visit to Beijing in April
when he was quoted as telling Chinese leaders North Korea would be patient,
flexible and engaged in six-party talks.
Blair Offers an Apology for Abuses by
Soldiers
By PATRICK E. TYLER
New York Times, 10 May 2004
EXCERPT: Prime Minister Tony Blair apologized Sunday for the abuse of Iraqi
prisoners by British soldiers as his government prepared to make a detailed
statement in Parliament on Monday about the investigations into
mistreatment. "We apologize deeply to anyone who has been mistreated by our
soldiers," Mr. Blair said, speaking in Paris in an interview with French
television. "This is totally unacceptable. Those responsible will be
punished according to the army disciplinary rules."
8-9 May 2004
U.S. Presses U.N. on Role in Iraq for
Politicians
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
New York Times, 9 May 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration is pressing the United Nations envoy to
change his proposal for a transitional Iraqi government once self-rule is
returned on June 30, Iraqi and administration officials say. Instead of a
government that is nonpolitical, the administration is pushing for one that
gives prominent roles to people with ties to political parties, the
officials say. The officials said the new thinking in Washington reflected
doubts that a transitional government of technocrats would be strong enough.
Leading Kurdish and Shiite political figures, many of them members of the
American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, have pressed for the change,
administration officials said. These figures are clamoring to hold on to
power after the council is dissolved June 30. In particular, the
administration is said to be wedded to a large role for Adnan Pachachi, the
former foreign minister who has guided the process of writing Iraq's
transitional constitution, and to figures tied to political groups loyal to
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiite cleric. "The government is going
to have both technocrats and people of political stature," said a senior
administration official. "It's important to have both sides in the
government." In Iraq on Saturday, insurgents backing a rebel Shiite cleric
took the offensive in two southern cities against British forces, acting to
seize government buildings and striking at convoys. The move suggested that
a new front was opening in the confrontation between the militias of the
cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, and American and British troops, after days of
American attacks. Only two weeks ago, the administration embraced the
proposal of Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy to Iraq, that the
government consist of technocrats, though a top official cautioned then that
some political presence could not be ruled out. Now the administration is
insisting on such a presence, officials say.
Catastrophe
The White House faced its biggest crisis over Iraq
last week, but its origins lie in practices that may have been routine. We
reveal how the abuse of prisoners began long before the sickening images
which have outraged the world appeared
Peter Beaumont in London, Paul Harris in New York, and
Jason Burke in Baghdad
The Observer, 9 May 2004
EXCERPT: According to one officer recently returned from Iraq, sexual
humiliation of prisoners in Abu Ghraib was not an invention of 'maverick
guards' but part of a system of degradation developed for use by British and
US troops called R2I - resistance to interrogation - which uses sexual jibes
and stripping prisoners to prolong 'the shock of capture' when detainees are
at their most vulnerable. In an interview with the Guardian yesterday, the
officer said: 'It was clear from discussions with US private contractors in
Iraq that prison guards were using R2I techniques, but they didn't know what
they were doing.' What has also emerged is the role that US military
intelligence officers - and private intelligence contractors - have played
in directing the abuse with most of the reservists involved alleging that
they thought their duty was to 'soften up' the prisoners for questioning.
Indeed, Taguba's leaked confidential report identifies at least three
contractors as being potentially to blame for the problems - contractors who
are neither subject to Iraqi law, military discipline or the Geneva
Conventions. Yet even as the scandal has boiled over, according to at least
one of the companies named in Taguba's report, CACI International, the
Pentagon has yet to contact it.
SEE ASLO:
Why Torture Must Lead to Defeat
As history has revealed all too clearly, when soldiers become brutalised
the moral struggle is lost, writes Anthony Sampson.
The Observer, 9 May 2004
EXCERPT: The danger that both America and Britain would become corrupted by
the use of torture was predictable as soon the twin towers in New York were
destroyed on 11 September, 2001. 'We must make sure that in our war against
brutal enemies,' I wrote soon afterwards, 'we are not ourselves brutalised.'
I was influenced by Nelson Mandela, who had seen the horrors of repression
in South Africa - he was quick to condemn the terrorism, but he warned that
the West must not use the same methods as the terrorists. But the pressures
to legitimise torture were soon mounting. The FBI complained that it could
not extract information from terrorists in detention and asked to be allowed
tougher methods for interrogation. The military in Israel, which had become
adept in interrogation of suspected Palestian terrorists, encouraged Western
police to be less squeamish. An Israeli security official told the New York
Times the West might have to use 'other methods' if it was serious about the
war against terrorism. The Americans soon became more resigned to 'other
methods' after the war in Afghanistan, which could be largely concealed from
the public behind the walls at Guantanamo Bay, or in Afghan prisons. It is
now clear that the Iraq war marked a new stage in the acceptance of torture
by the Pentagon - even though it could be much less justified as a defence
against terrorism. But it is also clear that the use of torture was
brutalising individual soldiers, as had so often happened in history.
SEE ALSO:
In Abuse, a Portrayal of Ill-Prepared,
Overwhelmed G.I.'s
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
New York Times, 9 May 2004
EXCERPT: The orders that sent most of the 320th Military Police Battalion to
Iraq came on Feb. 5, 2003, as part of the tide of two-week-a-year soldiers
being called up from the National Guard and the Army Reserve in preparation
for war. In theory, the battalion's specialty was guarding enemy prisoners
of war, a task that was expected to be a major logistical problem. In fact,
an Army report said few of the 1,000 reservists of the 320th had been
trained to do that, and fewer still knew how to run a prison. They were
deployed so quickly from the mid-Atlantic region that there was no time to
get new lessons.
Mirror Pictures 'Reveal' Real Abuse
Kamal Ahmed, Pete Sawyer and Martin Bright
The Observer, 9 May 2004
EXCERPT: It is believed that a number of arrests and courts martial
involving some of those allegedly involved in the incidents are imminent.
...The Observer can also reveal that pornographic images of US troops
allegedly raping Iraqi women in front of bound male captives are being
circulated by Islamist militants to discredit the coalition forces in Iraq.
The images, which began appearing last summer, were originally sent to Arab
media outlets, but were dismissed as fakes. A series of explicit photographs
of a gang-rape sent to Qatar-based satellite channel al-Jazeera last August
is now circulating. The images show three men dressed in combat fatigues
forcing male Iraqi prisoners at gunpoint to watch as they gang-rape a woman
dressed in traditional modest Arab dress.
Bush Runs Out of Options as Chaos Deepens
By Guy Dinmore
Financial Times, 7 May 2004
EXCERPT: Iraq's deepening crisis has left the Bush administration with few
options, and although the US has entrusted the United Nations with the task
of finding a way towards political stability and elections, officials and
analysts close to the White House admit that hopes of success are receding
fast. Insiders describe a lack of direction and a prevailing sense of gloom
and desperation in the administration. This gloom has only been intensified
by the exposure of torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Analysts
point to an absence of clearcut strategy that has seen repeated personnel
changes and policy reversals resulting from continuous battles between the
State Department and the Pentagon. The White House national security
advisers are blamed for not resolving the interagency battles. This
"dysfunctional" administration as described by Robert Kagan, a prominent
foreign policy thinker, is mirrored by an increasingly public battle of
recriminations among President George W. Bush's conservative supporters.
...Anthony Cordesman, just back from Iraq for the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, says political tension has escalated and security
deteriorated to such an extent that the US no longer has a military solution
to fighting insurgents. The US lacked effective options "other than to turn
as much of the political, aid, and security effort over to moderate Iraqis
as soon as possible, and pray that the United Nations can create some kind
of climate for political legitimacy," he wrote this week.
Is This the Beginning of the End in Iraq?
By Helen Thomas
Hearst Newspapers, 7 May 2004
EXCERPT: The United States is now at a fork in the road in its Iraq
policy. We can either try to save face for our mistaken military adventure
by desperately hanging in there, no matter what. Or we can try to save lives
and gracefully depart -- troops and all -- by the end of the year. The Bush
administration's rhetoric enthusiastically opts for "staying the course,"
whatever that means. But there are abundant signs that we are slowly
retreating. Special note should be made of the fact that we are crawling
back to the U.N. Security Council, which we so arrogantly shunned a year ago
when we were determined to invade Iraq. We were touting our superpower
military prowess in going it alone then, remember? Now we are grateful that
the U.N. is willing to help us out of the very tight corner we have
embarrassingly trapped ourselves in, by sponsoring a caretaker government
for Iraq to take over sovereignty by June 30. The new governing body is
being organized by Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. envoy for Iraq, with the
purpose of paving the way for general elections in January. Another sign we
are retreating is the fact that U.S. policy makers have decided not to try
to capture Fallujah and Najaf -- cities controlled by rebel Muslim militias.
Apparently, the price in terms of human losses and what little remains of
our tattered credibility in the Arab world would be too steep to justify a
military invasion of the two cities.
Not Far From the Tree
U.S. President Bush says he wants to get to the bottom of the torture of
prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison -- an unlikely claim from a man who started
the war on Iraq with a lie
By Michael Harris
Ottawa Sun, 6 May 2004
EXCERPT: To grasp the outrage gripping the Arab world in the wake of the
prisoner abuse scandal, imagine for moment U.S. marines standing hooded and
naked before abusive Iraqi captors. Worse than that, predict if you can how
the United States or Britain would react if 25 of their soldiers had died
while in Iraqi prisons, at least two of them murdered by their keepers. And
after you have done that, ask yourself how reassured the West would feel if
the man in charge of the Iraqi forces was "scolded" by Saddam Hussein for
such acts. Yet except for the fact that it was U.S. military personnel and
at least one CIA operative dishing out the death and abuse, that is exactly
what happened this week with the publication of disgusting photographs from
the Abu Ghraib Prison outside Baghdad. While most of the civilized world
expressed their revulsion at what some U.S. forces had done, President Bush
adopted a ludicrously minimalist position to deal with this latest stain on
U.S. honour in Iraq. Despite the fact that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
knew about the documented evidence of widespread prisoner abuse since last
January, he never informed either the president or Congress about it until
the publication of the photos removed the option of silence. Instead of
being fired on the spot for this gross misconduct, Rumsfeld was "scolded" by
the president, who then gave two 10-minute interviews to Arab television
networks, one of them a U.S. puppet station, to denounce what had happened.
President Bush mouthed the right words but showed in his deeds how he really
viewed the prisoner abuse incident -- an inconvenient speed bump on the
run-up to the November presidential elections. ...If President Bush is
really interested in a genuine step toward demonstrating to the Arab world
the war on terror is not just a mask for classic imperialism, he now has an
excellent opportunity. Fire Donald Rumsfeld, demolish the Abu Ghraib Prison,
and let the Iraqi people do what we do over here -- work out their own
destiny on their own terms.
Prison Abuse Revealed in 2003, Agency Says
Red Cross, British official say U.S. authorities were slow to respond
By Mark Matthews
Baltimore Sun, 8 May 2004
EXCERPT: The International Committee of the Red Cross said yesterday that it
had reported to U.S. authorities for more than a year about ill-treatment of
Iraqi prisoners that in some cases was "tantamount to torture." Separately,
a prominent British member of Parliament said she informed coalition
officials in Baghdad in September about allegations that a 73-year-old Iraqi
woman had been mistreated and humiliated during her 6-week detention by the
U.S. military. The Iraqi woman claimed she had been called "a donkey" and
forced to crawl on all fours across her cell with a man on her back,
according to the lawmaker, Ann Clwyd, who is Prime Minister Tony Blair's
representative for human rights in Iraq. The statements by the Red Cross and
Clwyd raised new questions about when U.S. and coalition authorities learned
of the prison abuses and how quick they were to investigate them.
Ill Feeling Abroad About Bush Policies
Tips Over Into Anti-Americanism
Photos and allegations of abuse in Iraq crystallize hostility, observers
say
By Mark Matthews
Baltimore Sun, 6 May 2004
WASHINGTON - The worldwide spotlight on the abuse and torture of Iraqi
prisoners has undercut America's moral authority abroad, particularly in the
Arab world, compounding the damage to the country's reputation caused by the
invasion of Iraq and a widely perceived heavy-handedness in waging the war
on terrorism, commentators say. Anti-American sentiment was on the rise well
before pictures of naked and hooded Iraqis revealed a sadistic current among
at least a small fraction of the occupation forces, whom U.S. officials
described as liberators. But what before was widely seen as opposition to
President Bush's foreign and military policies might now be turning into a
more general hostility toward the United States and Americans, analysts say.
SEE ALSO:
War and Abuse Do Little to Harm U.S.
Brands
By SIMON ROMERO
New York Times, 9 May 2004
EXCERPT: For a variety of reasons, American companies that sell globally say
that they have so far experienced little if any disruption from discontent
over the war in Iraq. For the most part, consumers around the world seem as
likely to be influenced by economic conditions as by politics. And, in a
display of the growing sophistication in marketing big American brands in
global markets, many people see products originating from the United States
as firmly rooted in their own home nations. Even Muslims in the Middle East
and Southeast Asia do not seem to translate their anger into a boycott of
American products. For example, as Hidayat bin Ismail, 19, emerged Friday
from midday prayers at the Sultan Mosque in Singapore, he acknowledged that
he was still patronizing places like McDonald's and KFC even after seeing
the pictures of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. "When Americans
do these things, I don't think all Americans are bad," he said. "And if one
Muslim is bad, it doesn't mean all Muslims are bad either." Still, while
there are few signs that goods and services clearly identified with the
United States are being shunned overseas, that has not prevented American
companies from worrying that their products might eventually become a bigger
target for dissatisfaction with the Bush administration's conduct in Iraq.
"We're more concerned at the moment with higher taxes than with
anti-Americanism," said Fred Irwin, president of the American Chamber of
Commerce here in Frankfurt.
7 May 2004
One Article, Many Headlines
The Guardian, 7 May 2004
•
Bush said, "I was sorry..." to King Abdullah of Jordan
•
Rumsfeld Spends the Day In Retreat
•
Republikuds Angry 'Cause They Didn't See Torture Pictures First
•
President Says Rumsfeld is "Really Good"
•
International Red Cross and human rights groups in Iraq said they had
warned US officials for months of the "humiliating" abuses at Abu Ghraib
prison, but had failed to get a reply.
•
Brit Soldier at the Center of New Abuse Revelations
Restoring Our Honor
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times, 6 May 2004
EXCERPT: We are in danger of losing something much more important than
just the war in Iraq. We are in danger of losing America as an instrument of
moral authority and inspiration in the world. I have never known a time in
my life when America and its president were more hated around the world than
today. I was just in Japan, and even young Japanese dislike us. It's no
wonder that so many Americans are obsessed with the finale of the sitcom
"Friends" right now. They're the only friends we have, and even they're
leaving. This administration needs to undertake a total overhaul of its
Iraq policy; otherwise, it is courting a total disaster for us all. That
overhaul needs to begin with President Bush firing Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld — today, not tomorrow or next month, today. What happened
in Abu Ghraib prison was, at best, a fundamental breakdown in the chain of
command under Mr. Rumsfeld's authority, or, at worst, part of a deliberate
policy somewhere in the military-intelligence command of sexually
humiliating prisoners to soften them up for interrogation, a policy that ran
amok. Either way, the secretary of defense is ultimately responsible, and if
we are going to rebuild our credibility as instruments of humanitarian
values, the rule of law and democratization, in Iraq or elsewhere, Mr. Bush
must hold his own defense secretary accountable. Words matter, but deeds
matter more. If the Pentagon leadership ran any U.S. company with the kind
of abysmal planning in this war, it would have been fired by shareholders
months ago.[BWUSA emphasis]
SEE ALSO:
Perhaps the most
disingenuous "chastisement" so far this century...
Rumsfeld 'Chastised' by President
for His Handling of Iraq Scandal
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
New York Times, 6 May 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush on Wednesday chastised his defense secretary,
Donald H. Rumsfeld, for Mr. Rumsfeld's handling of a scandal over the
American abuse of Iraqis held at a notorious prison in Baghdad, White House
officials said. The disclosures by the White House officials, under
authorization from Mr. Bush, were an extraordinary display of
finger-pointing in an administration led by a man who puts a high premium on
order and loyalty. The officials said the president had expressed his
displeasure to Mr. Rumsfeld in an Oval Office meeting because of Mr.
Rumsfeld's failure to tell Mr. Bush about photographs of the abuse, which
have enraged the Arab world.
SEE ALSO:
BushWhackedUSA: The Blog
SEE ALSO:
Donald Rumsfeld Should Go
New York Times, 7 May 2004
EXCERPT: It is time now for Mr. Rumsfeld to go, and not only because he
bears personal responsibility for the scandal of Abu Ghraib. That would
certainly have been enough. The United States has been humiliated to a point
where government officials could not release this year's international human
rights report this week for fear of being scoffed at by the rest of the
world. The reputation of its brave soldiers has been tarred, and the job of
its diplomats made immeasurably harder because members of the American
military tortured and humiliated Arab prisoners in ways guaranteed to
inflame Muslim hearts everywhere. And this abuse was not an isolated event,
as we know now and as Mr. Rumsfeld should have known, given the flood of
complaints and reports directed to his office over the last year. The world
is waiting now for a sign that President Bush understands the seriousness of
what has happened. It needs to be more than his repeated statements that he
is sorry the rest of the world does not "understand the true nature and
heart of America." Mr. Bush should start showing the state of his own heart
by demanding the resignation of his secretary of defense.
Bush's 'noble mission' marches on...
Private Contractor Hired 'Cooks and
Truck Drivers' as Interrogators in Abu Ghraib Jail
By Julian Borger
The Guardian, 7 May 2004
EXCERPT: Many of the prisoners abused at the Abu Ghraib prison were innocent
Iraqis, picked up at random by US troops and incarcerated by underqualified
intelligence officers, a former US interrogator from the jail told the
Guardian. Torin Nelson, who served as a military intelligence officer at
Guantánamo Bay before moving to Abu Ghraib as a private contractor last
year, blamed the abuses on a failure of command in US military intelligence
and an over-reliance on private firms. He alleged those companies were so
anxious to meet the demand for their services, they sent "cooks and truck
drivers" to work as interrogators. "Military intelligence operations need to
drastically change in order for something like this not to happen again," Mr
Nelson told the Guardian. He claimed many of the detainees are "innocent of
any acts against the coalition". "One case in point is a detainee whom I
recommended for release and months later was still sitting in the same tent
with no change in his status." Mr Nelson said that the same systemic
problems were also responsible for large numbers of Afghans being mistakenly
swept into Guantánamo Bay. He estimated that a third or more of the inmates
at the controversial prison camp had no connection to terrorism.
SEE ALSO:
British Soldier Gives New Details of Iraqi Prisoner
Abuse
(Guardian)
SEE ALSO:
US Troops Treat Elderly Iraqi Woman Like a Donkey
(AP)
SEE ALSO:
Bush Team Has Bragged for Months it Uses 'Lite'
Torture
(Nation)
SEE ALSO:
'Smoke Them': Video Shows Wounded Iraqis Being Shot by
US Helicopters
(Robert Fisk in ZNet)
SEE ALSO:
Bush's Atrocious Human Rights Record
(BushWhackedUSA)
Red Cross Says That for Months It
Complained of Iraq Prison Abuses to the U.S.
By NEIL A. LEWIS and ERIC LICHTBLAU
New York Times, 7 May 2004
EXCERPT: The International Committee of the Red Cross regularly complained
to senior United States officials in Iraq and in Washington over the last
several months about prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, a spokesman for
the group said on Thursday. The spokesman, Roland Huguenin, said, "Our
reports to the U.S. administration contained many aspects which have now
been reported with clear descriptions of the treatment of prisoners." Mr.
Huguenin, who spoke by telephone from London, said the reports were based on
the Red Cross's interviews with prisoners and "were very extensive and
detailed." "We knew everything that was going on," he said.
Torture By the Book
The pattern of abuse of Iraqi prisoners follows established CIA
interrogation techniques
Vikram Dodd
The Guardian, 6 May 2004
EXCERPT: In Britain the debate about photographs depicting abuse of Iraqi
prisoners has centred on their authenticity. In the US there are no doubts
about the pictures showing what American soldiers did in Baghdad's Abu
Ghraib prison. But the photos raise a larger question. Did a gang of
reservists from Virginia hit on ways of mistreating Muslim prisoners to
maximise their humiliation all by themselves? President Bush says the photos
disgust him. However, there is growing evidence that the abuses in Abu
Ghraib were no aberrant act, but a warped product of US policy and the
practices of its intelligence community. In emails released by his
family, Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, a guard at Abu Ghraib, says military
intelligence used dogs to intimidate prisoners, leading to "positive results
and information". In one email he wrote: "We have had a very high rate with
our style of getting them to break. They usually end up breaking within
hours." Sgt Frederick said that he queried some of the abuses: "I questioned
this and the answer I got was: this is how military intelligence wants it
done." Another guard supports his claim that intelligence people controlled
Abu Ghraib, as does the former head of US military prisons in Iraq,
Brigadier General Janis Karpinski. The recently leaked army report into the
abuses, by Major General Antonio Taguba, said military intelligence, CIA
personnel and private contractors "actively requested that guards set
physical and mental conditions for favourable interrogation of witnesses".
They were meant to soften up detainees before the interrogators got to work.
It's not just in Iraq that the US is accused of abusing its prisoners. The
five Britons released from Guantánamo Bay told of beatings and other
ill-treatment. Weeks before last year's alleged abuses at Abu Ghraib, Gen
Karpinski said a team ofintelligence officers from Guantánamo Bay visited
Abu Ghraib to "give them new techniques". While in Iraq in late August
and early September 2003, the Guantánamo team - overseen by Major General
Geoffrey Miller - recommended that military police guards act as "enablers"
for interrogations, Gen Taguba reported. The US is now bringing in Gen
Miller, who ran the camp at Guantánamo Bay, to run prisons in Iraq. He could
at least ensure that guards no longer carry cameras. [BWUSA italics]
How to Get Out of Iraq
A forum with with Jonathan Schell, Noam
Chomsky and Ann-Marie Slaughter, among many others
The Nation, 6 May 2004
EXCERPT: As the situation in Iraq goes from bad to worse, many Americans who
opposed the war, including Nation editors and writers, understand that the
country must find a way to extricate itself from the disaster they
predicted. There is, however, no agreement or even clarity about such an
exit strategy. Nor is any leadership on this crucial issue coming from the
Bush Administration or as yet, alas, from the presumptive Democratic
candidate, Senator John Kerry. With a sense of obligation and urgency, The
Nation, has asked a range of writers, both regular and new contributors to
the magazine, for their ideas on America's way out of Iraq. Some responded
with short essays, while others were interviewed by contributing writer
Scott Sherman, who transcribed and edited their remarks. We hope that what
follows is the beginning toward a necessary end.
'Pro-business'
posture of 'piece keepers' revealed...
NATO Force 'Feeds Kosovo Sex Trade'
By Ian Traynor
The Guardian, 7 March 2004
EXCERPT: Western troops, policemen, and civilians are largely to blame for
the rapid growth of the sex slavery industry in Kosovo over the past five
years, a mushrooming trade in which hundreds of women, many of them
under-age girls, are tortured, raped, abused and then criminalised, Amnesty
International said yesterday. In a report on the rapid growth of
sex-trafficking and forced prostitution rackets since Nato troops and UN
administrators took over the Balkan province in 1999, Amnesty said Nato
soldiers, UN police, and western aid workers operated with near impunity in
exploiting the victims of the sex traffickers. As a result of the influx of
thousands of Nato-led peacekeepers, "Kosovo soon became a major destination
country for women trafficked into forced prostitution. A small-scale local
market for prostitution was transformed into a large-scale industry based on
trafficking, predominantly run by criminal networks." The international
presence in Kosovo continues to generate 80% of the income for the pimps,
brothel-owners, and mafiosi who abduct local girls or traffic women mainly
from Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, and Russia to Kosovo via Serbia, the report
said, although the international "client base" for the sex trade has fallen
to 20% last year from 80% four years ago.
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