Precisly!

How can this happen and go ignored?

Still?

Of course not.

I meant his priorities for the Iraq war would be only slightly different.

Have you read Alterman lately
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/

How do you spell "Police-State?"
U-S-A• March 28, 2005 | 12:05 PM ET | Permalink

The United States of America, under the leadership of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, is operating a police state at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere in military and secret prisons throughout the world, where innocent people are being jailed, tortured and sometimes murdered without concern for their guilt or innocence. This is not empty, anti-American rhetoric, it is verifiable truth, and aside from the moral revulsion it causes in anyone who claims to be interested in such matters, it also undermines any claims we might have to the moral leadership of the world community. Do I exaggerate? I think not. Does anyone care? You can bet the rest of the world does. See below:

“Murder Is Us”

Despite recommendations by Army investigators, commanders have decided not to prosecute 17 American soldiers implicated in the deaths of three prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004, according to a new accounting released Friday by the Army.

Jail the innocent; ignore the evidence, cover up the crime

In recently declassified portions of a January ruling, a federal judge criticized the military panel for ignoring the exculpatory information that dominates Kurnaz's file and for relying instead on a brief, unsupported memo filed shortly before Kurnaz's hearing by an unidentified government official.

Kurnaz has been detained at Guantanamo Bay since at least January 2002.
…
According to the Defense Department, 558 tribunal reviews have been held. In the 539 decisions made so far, 506 detainees have been found to be enemy combatants and have been kept in prison. Thirty-three have been found not to be enemy combatants. Of those, four have been released.

No, I hadn't seen Alterman's article. Thanks for the link. He is absolutley right that the rest of the world does care about this issue. Just do a google search and you will see all kinds of articles about this issue. That is why I was particulary upset hearing our Acting Assistant Sec. of State for Democracy, Human Rights & Labor (Michael Kozak) characterize this as just an "image problem" and that it was really a non-issue because we are addressing it. Say what?

These people are acting like Murder, Inc. and they think it is just an "image problem".

Here is the exerpt of the State Dept. Briefing that I mentioned earlier in this thread. As it turns out I just happened to tune into C-span at the very moment that the only question was asked about the U.S. human rights record. It must have been fate!



For the full transcript

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/spbr/43931.htm

March 30, 2005
Suit by Detainee on Transfer to Syria Finds Support in Jet's Log
By SCOTT SHANE

his article was reported by Scott Shane, Stephen Grey and Ford Fessenden and written by Mr. Shane.

WASHINGTON, March 29 - Maher Arar, a 35-year-old Canadian engineer, is suing the United States, saying American officials grabbed him in 2002 as he changed planes in New York and transported him to Syria where, he says, he was held for 10 months in a dank, tiny cell and brutally beaten with a metal cable.

Now federal aviation records examined by The New York Times appear to corroborate Mr. Arar's account of his flight, during which, he says, he sat chained on the leather seats of a luxury executive jet as his American guards watched movies and ignored his protests.

The tale of Mr. Arar, the subject of a yearlong inquiry by the Canadian government, is perhaps the best documented of a number of cases since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in which suspects have accused the United States of secretly delivering them to other countries for interrogation under torture. Deportation for interrogation abroad is known as rendition.

In papers filed in a New York court replying to Mr. Arar's lawsuit, Justice Department lawyers say the case was not one of rendition but of deportation. They say Mr. Arar was deported to Syria based on secret information that he was a member of Al Qaeda, an accusation he denies.

The discovery of the aircraft, in a database compiled from Federal Aviation Agency records, appears to corroborate part of the story Mr. Arar has told many times since his release in 2003. The records show that a Gulfstream III jet, tail number N829MG, followed a flight path matching the route he described. The flight, hopscotching from New Jersey to an airport near Washington to Maine to Rome and beyond, took place on Oct. 8, 2002, the day after Mr. Arar's deportation order was signed.

After seeing a photograph of the plane and hearing its path, Mr. Arar, 35, of Ottawa, said in a telephone interview: "I think that's it. I think you've found the plane that took me."

He added: "Finding this plane is going really to help me. It does remind me of this trip, which is painful, but it should make people understand that this is for real and everything happened the way I said. I hope people will now stop for a moment and think about the morality of this."

Records of the jet's travels also show a trip in December 2003 to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States holds hundreds of detainees, suggesting that it was used by the government on at least one other occasion.

If the plane was used to move Mr. Arar, it is the fourth known to have been used to transport suspected terrorists secretly from one country to detention in another.

Among the three identified in previous news reports is one owned by a company apparently set up by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to The Washington Post. Another, first described by The Chicago Tribune, is an ordinary charter jet that was also used by the Boston Red Sox manager between missions ferrying detainees and their guards to Guantánamo, with the Red Sox logo attached to the fuselage or removed, depending on who was aboard.

Maria LaHood, a lawyer for Mr. Arar, said the new information on the Gulfstream jet lent support to his lawsuit.

"The facts we got from Maher right after he was released are now corroborated by public records," said Ms. LaHood, who works for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a group in New York that advocates investigation of human rights abuses. "The more information that comes out, the better for showing that this is an important public issue that can't be kept secret."

She said Mr. Arar and his attorneys believe that American officials wanted him to undergo a more brutal interrogation than would be permitted in the United States in the hope of getting information about Al Qaeda.

After 10 months in a cell he compared to a grave, and 2 more months in a less confined space, Syrian officials freed Mr. Arar in October 2003, saying they had been unable to find any connection to Al Qaeda. The Syrian ambassador to the United States called the release "a gesture of good will toward Canada."

Charles Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said the government had no comment on the case. The administration has refused to cooperate with the Canadian inquiry into Mr. Arar's case and has asked a judge to dismiss most of his lawsuit, saying that allowing it to proceed would reveal classified information.

President Bush has said it is United States policy neither to engage in torture nor to deliver prisoners to countries where they are likely to be tortured. Former intelligence officials say rendition is useful for cases in which secret information has identified a suspected terrorist but cannot be used for a public prosecution in an American court.

Mr. Arar has told a consistent story since his release: He was detained at Kennedy International Airport in New York on Sept. 26, 2002, while changing planes on the way back to Canada from a vacation in Tunisia. He was then held for nearly two weeks, awakened at 3 a.m. and taken to an airport in New Jersey, where he was put aboard a small jet.

Shackled in place, Mr. Arar says, he followed the plane's movements on a map displayed on a video screen, watching as it traveled to Dulles Airport, outside Washington, to a Maine airport he believed was in Portland, to Rome, and finally to Amman, Jordan, where he was blindfolded and driven to Syria.

According to F.A.A. flight logs for Oct. 8, 2002, only one aircraft flew from New Jersey to the Washington area to Maine to Rome: the 14-passenger Gulfstream III jet, operated by Presidential Aviation, a charter company in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The jet left Teterboro, N.J., for Dulles at 5:40 a.m.; proceeded at 7:46 a.m. to Bangor, Me.; and left Bangor for Rome at 9:36 a.m.

The only conflict with Mr. Arar's story is that the Maine airport was Bangor, not Portland. And the logs cover only flights departing from the United States, so they document the trip only as far as Rome. Court records show, however, that immigration officials ordered him deported to Syria.

Nigel England, director of operations for Presidential, said he would not divulge who rented the Gulfstream that day or discuss any clients.

"It's a very select group of people that we fly, from entertainers to foreign heads of state, a whole gamut of customers that we fly and wouldn't discuss one over the other," he said.

The plane flew about 50 flights a month to various destinations in 2002 and 2003, according to federal records. Presidential's Web site says a similar jet would now rent for about $120,000 for an itinerary like the one on which Mr. Arar apparently was flown.

Records show that the plane was owned in 2002 by MJG Aviation, a Florida company that lists its manager as Mark J. Gordon, an entrepreneur who also owned Presidential at the time. Mr. Gordon could not be reached. The plane has since been sold and the tail number has been changed to N259SK, records show.

As for Mr. Arar, he said he felt the identification of the plane helped establish his credibility. "I don't know for sure but probably people had some doubts about what I said," he said. "This goes to prove and corroborate at least part of my story. I hope even more information will come forward."


Shane Scott reported from Washington for this article, Stephen Grey from London and Ford Fessenden from New York. David Johnston contributed reporting from Washington and Margot Williams from New York.


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/internat...artner=homepage

U.S. Barred From Sending 13 Detainees Abroad

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 30, 2005; Page A11


A federal judge yesterday barred the Bush administration from transferring a group of detainees from the U.S. military prison in Cuba to the custody of foreign governments without first giving the prisoners a chance to challenge the move in court.

U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. said he was preventing transfers without advance notice to bar the government from "unilaterally and silently taking actions" to move detainees outside the reach of U.S. courts. The government must give detainees' lawyers 30 days' notice of any proposed transfer, the judge ruled, so their lawyers have time to object.

The judge also chided the Justice Department for arguing it was giving detainees what they had originally requested: freedom from U.S. control at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. About 540 men are held at the prison based on the government's claim that they are enemy combatants or have ties to terrorists. Some have been there for three years.

The Bush administration has been grappling with how to handle terrorism detainees over the long term. Officials have said they were considering transferring some of the prisoners to their home countries where they would be imprisoned, which prompted lawyers for a number of detainees to file court challenges.

In his ruling yesterday, Kennedy said such transfers are hardly the same as giving detainees "a plane ticket to anywhere they want to go."

"The [government's] assertion that they are merely 'relinquishing' custody of detainees whom the government is simply 'no longer interested in detaining' is disingenuous," Kennedy wrote in issuing an injunction against the government. "It seems beyond question that advocating for release into freedom is not equivalent to advocating for transfer from ongoing detention in one locale to ongoing detention in another."

A Defense Department spokesman said yesterday that the Pentagon was reviewing the decision and could not comment.

David Remes, a lead attorney for the detainees, cheered the ruling. "The government could have sent any of our clients abroad to places where they could be tortured, and we would never have a chance to object," Remes said. "The government would effectively make these cases go away. And right now these cases are a monumental embarrassment to the government."

Several detainees have claimed that U.S. interrogators tortured them, sent them to foreign countries to be tortured, and that the only evidence against them in some cases are the statements of fellow detainees who have been tortured.

Kennedy's decision directly affects 13 Yemenis held at the base in the case he was deciding, but lawyers for 20 more groups of detainees have filed similar requests to block such transfers with other judges.

Legal specialists called Kennedy's decision a significant milestone in the government's anti-terrorism efforts for two reasons. They said he is the first judge to rule that courts have control over detainee transfers. Second, his ruling wrests more control from the government, another court setback for an administration that sought to run Guantanamo without court oversight.

Experts said it could affect the administration's "renditions," a surreptitious practice of sending detainees to foreign countries that can employ more abusive interrogation tactics.

"It's hugely significant because it shows there is a real check against the government's power here," said Matthew S. Freedus, a Washington lawyer and expert in military law.

In his ruling, Kennedy agreed with lawyers for detainees, who said such transfers would probably help the government deny their clients a day in court, and end court and public scrutiny of the government's Guantanamo Bay operations. Those attorneys have accused the military of having little to no factual evidence to hold many of their clients and of torturing many into confessions.

"They got the wrong guys at the wrong place," said Michael Ratner, of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "These people were imprisoned, interrogated and tortured for no reason. So now the government wants to get rid of them, because they just can't justify what they've done."

Kennedy wrote that it "is not a foregone conclusion" that the military has properly classified the Guantanamo Bay detainees as enemy combatants, thus the detainees' legal claims must be protected. Two judges' conflicting decisions on that issue are on appeal to a higher court.

Meanwhile, Navy Secretary Gordon R. England announced yesterday that after conducting military tribunals on 558 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, 38 have been deemed to be "non-enemy combatants" who should be sent back to their home countries, and five have already been transferred. England did not address whether any of 13 Yemeni prisoners in this case are included in the 38 found to be releasable.

Staff writer John Mintz and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2005Mar29.html

Suspect Can Be Examined for Signs of Torture
Judge Grants Request for Physical, Mental Evaluations

Reuters
Wednesday, March 30, 2005; 1:20 PM


A U.S. man accused of plotting with al Qaeda to kill President Bush can be examined by doctors for any evidence of torture while he was being held in Saudi Arabia, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee granted Ahmed Abu Ali's request for physical and mental evaluations to see if there is any evidence of torture.

Lee said Abu Ali had to inform the court by April 25 if he was planning to introduce evidence of torture or claims about his mental and physical health as part of pre-trial motions or during the trial.

Abu Ali has pleaded not guilty to a six-count indictment charging him with providing support and resources to al Qaeda.

In June 2003, Saudi officials arrested Abu Ali, then a student at a Saudi university, and him held in Riyadh for 20 months until his return to Virginia last month after being indicted by a federal grand jury.

Abu Ali and his family have claimed he was tortured during his detention in Saudi Arabia. His lawyers have said Abu Ali has scars from whip marks on his back.

Federal prosecutors said there was no credible evidence to support the claims and said Abu Ali never mentioned that he was being treated badly to U.S officials who visited him in jail in Saudi Arabia.

His family filed a lawsuit last year claiming the U.S. government had Abu Ali arrested and held unlawfully by Saudi Arabia without charges. That pending case in Washington is separate from the case being heard by Lee in Virginia.

In a hearing earlier this month, an FBI agent testified that Abu Ali had admitted he joined al Qaeda while studying in Saudi Arabia.

The agent said Abu Ali admitted to Saudi officials that he discussed plans to kill Bush. He said he also admitted discussing with al Qaeda members plans to carry out possible Sept. 11-like hijackings and other attacks on or in the United States.

REUTERS Reut13:20 03-30-05

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2005Mar30.html

We can talk about it, and write about it till we are blue, but nothing will stop it till we take action (e.g., tax resistance).

Every man has his price. Old tired, used and abused, sun fried, now just wanting a meal, Mr. McCain can now be bought at a 99c store.

The President of the United States stood before the entire world and told a bold face lie. Nobody believed him, and yet he won a reelection.

All those responsible, but the lowliest have been excused.

The fact is that the United States Tortures prisoners, Period. Just pray you or anybody you know doesn't get rounded up some time in the future for some "interrogation".

While I see a tie in with using our taxes inappropriately, I think I would prefer to take action by contacting my representatives and the media on this specific issue alone. But, if you feel approaching this issue through a tax arguement is a good way to address this issue by all means go for it. However, tax resistance is illegal. Action on this will always be preferable to me over inaction (as long as it is legal).

Good luck. Let's us know what your representatives have to say. I hope your approach can have a beneficial effect, however, with the Repubs in the majority in both houses, and the "war on terror" being used to justify the unjustifiable, I doubt it will come to anything.

If you want information on this its here...

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...showtopic=22612

All the documenation you need regarding the lies - what Rumsfeld knew and didn't know...and what Bush knew too...

You may be right but I consider that it is an issue worth fighting for. I'm not ready to throw my hands up in the air and surrender on this issue because it may be difficult. It is far too important to me. I will not quietly let the Bush Administration get away with shirking their responsiblity on this issue and pretending that it is unimportant and insignificant. They must be held accountable for this egregious breach of our country's values. To me, to do otherwise is to give tacit approval to what they have done. I refuse to be part of a silent consent.

Much of this information was already known...more comes out - nothing would have come out if not for the press - Sy Hersh had some excellent articales on the subjetc and his source said Bush knew all about it....and approved the torture...

JOIN THE TAX RESISTOR'S PLEDGE: STOP THE U.S. WAR MACHINE

For those of you who believe that our tax dollars are being misspent, that the US military aggression is immoral and illegal, that the money would be better spent on constructive pursuits (education, health care, housing, etc.) we present a simple solution; refuse to pay your federal taxes.

How many times have you swore that you won’t pay taxes if enough people didn’t. Here is your chance. All of the signers of this pledge, as a group, will engage in collective tax resistance.

- They will refuse to pay all federal income taxes owed by filing a federal income tax return form, and a note of explanation of why a check has not been included, or not filing at all.

- Signers will also refuse to pay federal excise taxes on their phone bills, and include a note of explanation with their phone bills. ( phone service cannot be cut off because of this). This tax also goes to the military.

Note: Due to late date, it is unlikely we will get 200,000 pledges for this year before April 15. We suggest everyone considering pledging this year to file late. This usually only results in a small fine, if anything at all.

Already, the actual risk involved in being a tax resistor is very low. However, in order to insure that there is still further diminished risk, and in order to get the greatest possible number of signers, a strategy of

strength and safety in numbers has been adopted. The more numerous are those who pledge, the less the risk in having any one individual be targeted, and the more the government will listen to the demands of its citizens. The more hollow will be the threats of the IRS. It is possible to jail a handful of tax resistors, as a method of deterrence through fear. However, this tactic, beyond a certain point, becomes economically infeasible, because of the combined loss of revenues through the tax resistor’s withholding of funds and the costs of jailing that citizen (~$22,000 per year of incarceration). Add to this the cost involved in pursuing and bringing that person to court. Add to this the political mileage the tax resistor movement will receive if thousands are put on trial.

All those willing to make the commitment are being asked to join a Yahoo egroup called: TAXFORPEACE.

ALL THOSE WHO JOIN THE GROUP WILL BE CONSIDERED TO HAVE COMMITTED TO TAX RESISTANCE ONCE THE NUMBER OF COMMITTED RESISTORS HAS REACHED THE CRITICAL MASS NUMBER OF 200,000. Members of the egroup "taxforpeace" will receive regular updates on the number of committed tax resistors, and other information related to tax resistance. Members need not give their real names, nor their addresses, or any other identifying information beyond their email addresses. To make the commitment and become a member of the group, go to:


This movement is based on the honor system, which is about all we have left, and we will loose that too if we don’t act.

IMPORTANT: Please distribute this pledge to as many U.S. taxpayers as you possibly can!

"Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their

taxes." Gen. Alexander Haig, U.S. Secretary of State, June 12, 1982

200,000 STANDING TOGETHER 200,000 MINIMUM TO PLEDGE TAX RESISTANCE 200,000 TO SAY NO USING THE INTERNET TO BRING US TOGETHER, A MASS MOVEMENT TO END FUNDING OF KILLING

General approved extreme interrogation methods :

The US administration has maintained any abuse was the result of improper individual action and was not sanctioned by leaders.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,276...c=ticker-103704

http://snipurl.com/dqym


New Torture Memo Implicates Top US General:

A newly released memo shows that US General Ricardo Sanchez authorized illegal interrogation techniques in Iraq just months before the Abu Ghraib abuses. Colin Powell, meanwhile, regrets misinforming the UN about Iraq WMDs.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8406.htm

http://snipurl.com/dqyn


Gen. Sanchez committed perjury when testifying before Congress:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/insomnia/547941.html


Documents: ACLU Obtains September 2003 Memo Central to Abu Ghraib Story
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFre...?ID=17852&c=206

It's interesting how all the discussion and outrage stop when somebody proposes taking a stand that might require some sacrafice.

What does "no retreat, no surrender" mean?

They put the tax resisters here in jail, Andy.
The Montana Freemen went to jail.


You can't coordinate or organize from jail.

You are correct, the print media has been on top of this story. I wish that the TV media would catch up!

We also have to make it uncomfortable for our politicians to sweep this under the rug.

http://www.senate.gov/

http://www.house.gov/writerep/

To contact MSNBC or NBC

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3303518/

CNN

http://www.cnn.com/feedback/

PBS
http://www.pbs.org/aboutsite/aboutsite_feedback.html

Andy, while I feel that our taxes have been used inappropriately on this issue I do not advocate breaking the law by becoming a tax resister. I have removed the links that you included to these sites because our website does not promote breaking the law.

This is an editorial from the Atlanta Journal Constitution

MY OPINION

On torture, U.S. forfeits moral ground

> Published on: 03/31/05
Critics of the United Nations used to revel in its hypocrisy for allowing countries such as Libya to chair the U.N. Human Rights Commission, as it did in 2003. As the U.S. State Department pointed out at the time, Libyan officials "torture prisoners during interrogations and as punishment. . . . [They] arbitrarily arrest and detain persons, and many prisoners are held incommunicado. Many political detainees are held for years without charge."

Today, though, the United States has forfeited the moral standing to make such charges. The evidence is overwhelming that American officials, like Libyan officials, have tortured prisoners during interrogations. They have done so not in isolated cases by rogue units or individuals, but as part of a conscious policy applied broadly and endorsed at the highest levels of government.

Like Libya and other rogue countries, we too have arbitrarily arrested and detained people, and even now hold hundreds incommunicado in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere without charges or access to the outside world.

Apologists for U.S. behavior will no doubt argue that if we have tortured, we have had our reasons. They would cite terror attacks and other dangers. But the Libyans too have had their reasons, as have the Chinese, the Cubans, the Sudanese and others we used to preach to from our place in the pulpit.

In fact, mankind has never had a problem finding ways to justify torture and other violations of human rights. That's why the bans against torture written into both American law and international treaty allow no exceptions.

Those laws were not designed to apply only in normal times, because in normal times no such laws are needed. They were enacted in the hope that clear and explicit legal bans, along with public commitments of national honor, would steel us against the temptation to compromise our standards when times of crisis came.

Tragically, it has not worked, and we have become what we are trying to defeat.

The evidence ranges from eyewitness reports to documents pried out of government hands by court orders or leaked to the press. The incidents come out of Iraq and Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay; they involve Army units, Navy units, the CIA. They involve beatings and torture that end in death, as well as the kidnapping of sometimes innocent citizens of other countries and shipment to third countries to be tortured and interrogated under horrific conditions.

Most recently, the U.S. Army has admitted that more than 30 prisoners were victims of homicide or suspected homicide by U.S. hands, a confession extracted only under federal court order.

Nonetheless, the Bush administration insists that such a record does not demonstrate a failure of leadership or an overall atmosphere of tolerance toward violence against those in U.S. custody. That failure to accept responsibility at the upper levels has left underlings to bear the entire burden.

So Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick III is serving eight years for abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. But Alberto Gonzales, who as White House counsel wrote a memo dismissing the Geneva Conventions protecting prisoners as "quaint" and "obsolete," has been promoted to attorney general of the United States.

Pfc. Willie Brand, an Army reservist, faces charges of involuntary manslaughter because an Afghani prisoner he beat later died. Not so for Jay Bybee, who as a Justice Department lawyer claimed that for physical pain to be considered illegal torture, "it must be of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure." He now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals.

And Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the commanding officer of all U.S. forces in Iraq, denied under oath to the Senate Armed Services Committee that he had approved harsh interrogation techniques, such as the use of dogs to terrorize inmates. This week, the American Civil Liberties Union released a memo signed by Sanchez in which he explicitly approved such techniques. ("Exploits Arab fear of dogs," he writes.)

Meanwhile, Sgt. Javal Davis is serving six months in prison, in part for lying to investigators about his role at Abu Ghraib.


Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor. His column appears Thursdays and Mondays.

Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion...005/033105.html

Back when they were giving their testimony before that Senate committee, me and Armymom talked about how we could both tell he was lying because of what he said about the rules being posted at the prison. He made a big deal about it, in fact he made too big of a deal about it; he must've referred to them a dozen times once they were mentioned by one of the Senators who was asking questions of him. And then they proceeded to talk about the size of the bulletin board those rules were posted on.

Torture and Accountability
Aired: Tuesday, March 29, 2005 7-8PM ET


The line in the sand is clear. In 1994, the U.S. ratified a U.N. convention that said torture, by any person of any government for any reason, is illegal. Yet, since 9/11, at least 28 prisoners of war in U.S. military custody have died since 2002.

Seventeen U.S. soldiers involved in the murder of three prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan will not be prosecuted. There are also allegations the U.S. is shipping its prisoners of war to countries that have no respect for human rights.

Though the prisoner abuse scandal is toxic for America's image in the Arab world, the buck has stopped long before reaching the upper echelons of the Bush administration. Low-level soldiers are being charged and imprisoned but policy makers and leaders are not.

Hear a discussion on who should be held accountable when prisoners in American custody are tortured and killed .



· Mark Danner, author of "Torture or Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror," professor of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and a staff writer for the New Yorker Magazine
· John Hutson, President and Dean of Franklin Pierce Law School, former Judge Advocate General for the U.S. Navy
· Gary Solis, Professor of Law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, served 26 years in the Marines, author of "Marines and Military Law in Vietnam: Trial by Fire."


Outsourcing of Prisoner Abuse Allegations | Listen


The former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan is alleging that the United States is essentially outsourcing torture to Uzbek authorities. Craig Murray says that the U.S. has handed dozens of terrorism suspects over to Uzbekistan, an authoritarian regime that community employs torture. He also alleges that British and American intelligence officials routinely cite information from Uzbek authorities, almost certainly obtained under torture.

Murray says he tried to raise an alarm about the practice, and soon after, the British government alleged that Murray was guilty of financial and sexual improprieties. He has since been cleared of the allegations, but he retired from Foreign Service last month.

Hear Craig Murray talk about his charge that the U.S. and UK were complicit in the torture of terrorism suspects in Uzbekistan.



· Craig Murray is the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan. He has announced that he will run against British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw for Straw's seat in Parliament in the May 5th British elections.


http://onpointradio.org/shows/2005/03/20050329_a_main.asp

Yeah he did. The other thing I noticed in those hearings was when Rumsfeld, Myers and General Geoffrey Miller testified. General Miller looked scared to death. Rumsfeld & Meyers hid their discomfort but not Miller. He was scared and he periodically looked to Rumsfeld before he answered. At one point after giving a response Rumsfeld sarcastically dismissed Millers response (Smack down). I knew right then that these guys knew a hell of a lot more than they were telling.

Here is an article from the Christian Science Monitor

Terrorism & Security
posted March 22, 2005, updated 12:00 p.m.

Gitmo abuse allegations linger

Reports of more interrogation tapes, and restored sections of FBI memo, again raise questions about tactics.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com


An Australian lawyer who had at one point defended an Australian citizen being held at the US military prisoner facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, says that more than 500 hours of videotape of prisoner interrogations exist, and that they will ultimately reveal abuse of prisoners by US military personnel as "explosive as anything from Abu Ghraib."
The Australian reported Monday that lawyer Stephen Kenny told a legal convention that the existence of the tapes came to light after a member of the US military, who had been told to masquarade as a prisoner during a training session at Guantánamo, was beaten so badly he reportedly suffered brain damage.

The Guardian also reported on the existence of interrogation tapes in May, 2004. US military officials confirmed their existence at that time.


Mr. Kenny said that the American Center for Civil Liberties is pressing for the tapes to be released after a report alleged that a "secret military review" of only 20 hours of the tapes found "10 substantial cases of abuse."

The US government has refused to release the tapes so far on the grounds of "privacy concerns." Kenny's comments came the same day that the US Justice Department released the full-text of a memo written last May by departmental lawyers who "dismissed intelligence obtained by coercive methods used by the military at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as 'suspect at best.' " The New York Times reported Monday that the memo, which had been known about for months, had been heavily edited prior to its first release.

The edited material was only made public when Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan asked the Justice Department to restore those sections. His request followed the Senate confirmation hearings on Michael Chertoff's nomination to be secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

"The facts related to interrogation practices used against some detainees are slowly being forced to the surface, and we will keep pushing for more," Mr. Levin said in a statement in which he referred to the Department of Defense as DOD. "Today we were able to obtain some information that had previously been blacked out in an FBI document critical of DOD interrogation practices. As I suspected, the previously withheld information had nothing to do with protecting intelligence sources or methods, and everything to do with protecting DOD from embarrassment."
The Washington Post reports that the new sections of the memo show that FBI agents who were present in Gitmo, and who witnessed the conteroversial methods of interrogations, found them to be "suspect at best."
The Post also reports another section that was originally withheld said "Justice Department criminal division officials were so concerned about the military interrogation practices that they took their complaints to the office of the Pentagon's chief attorney..."

The FBI memos described "torture techniques" such as "shackling detainees into painful positions, forced nakedness, deafening music, temperature extremes, and sexual humiliation by female interrogators."

The Detroit Free Press says the report also shows that exchanges between the US military personnel and the FBI at Guantánamo were sometimes contentious.

In one of the e-mails, an unidentified FBI agent said 'conversations got somewhat heated' when he told senior military commanders and Pentagon officials that the information produced by the military's interrogations 'was nothing more than what the FBI got using simple investigative techniques.'
The Boston Globe reported last week that the FBI wasn't the only group concerned about the tactics being used at Guantánamo after 9/11. In 2002, top Navy officials at the base were "so outraged" at the abusive interrogation tactics being used that "they considered removing Navy interrogators from the operation, according to a portion of a recent Pentagon report that has not been made public."
A top Navy psychologist reported to his supervisor in December 2002 that interrogators at Guantánamo were starting to use 'abusive techniques' In a separate incident that same month, the Defense Department's joint investigative service, which includes Navy investigators, formally 'disassociated' itself from the interrogation of a detainee, after learning that he had been subjected to particularly abusive and degrading treatment.
The Guardian had also reported last year that British interrogators at Gitmo were concerned about the techniques being used by their American counterparts.
Also last week, Newsweek reported that four women interrogators have been recalled to active duty and may face military court-martials because of their involvement with abusive interrogation techniques. The Miami Herald reported last Wednesday that Army Gen. Bantz Craddock, chief of Miami's Southern Command, could not confirm the report that "investigators have turned up some evidence of abuses" at Guantánamo Bay.

The week before the new allegations of abuse arose, Gen. Craddock had told Congress that the interrogations at the base had been a huge success and that, regardless of FBI comments to the contrary, they had produced "an intelligence bonanza."

Conservative Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, looking at the allegations of abuse of US detainees, wrote Monday that "torture is never worth it."

Some things we don't do, not because they never work, not because they aren't ''deserved," but because our very right to call ourselves decent human beings depends in part on our not doing them. Torture is in that category. Let us wage and win this war against the barbarians without becoming barbaric in the process.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0322/dailyUpdate.html

Despite the Bush Administrations best efforts to downplay it's importance, the torture issue is not going away!

from the March 30, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0330/p02s01-usju.html

Interrogation tactics draw fire
CIA's practice of sending suspects overseas for handling raises pointed legal and moral issues.
By Faye Bowers | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON - As more details emerge from detainees sent by the United States to countries that allegedly engage in torture, the CIA is under growing pressure to account for some of its top-secret actions in the war on terror - especially its interrogation techniques.

The controversy is leading to a rare moral debate about the methods and effectiveness of some of the agency's most shadowy ways of extracting information.

Historically, the public has known relatively little about such back-room techniques. But because so many details have already surfaced - from the exposure of the Abu Ghraib prison abuses to more recent investigations into the use of torture at Guantánamo Bay and other sites - the CIA is under growing criticism from lawmakers and human rights groups to clarify and justify its interrogation policies.

The criticism is particularly acute over the practice of rendition - nabbing and transporting suspected terrorists to other countries, some of which are believed to employ brutal practices that would be illegal in the US to elicit information.

"We need to ask the question of how the [rendition] program was originally conceived and what it is now," says Karen Greenberg, director of the Center for Law and Security at New York University.

At the core of the controversy is whether the CIA has the authority to use other countries in interrogations, whether the practice violates international law, and whether information obtained in this way is credible anyway.

The practice was first authorized by President Reagan in 1986 to deal with terrorists who might have been responsible for the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, experts say. It was again put into use by the Clinton administration to transport terrorists and drug lords to the US or other countries for prosecution.

After 9/11, President Bush reportedly broadened the CIA's authority to use renditions, and as a result, experts say, the agency has sent 100 to 150 people from one country to another for interrogation. They've done this, experts say, without legal hearings and without granting the International Committee of the Red Cross access to the detainees, a right afforded military prisoners under the Geneva Conventions.

Some, such as Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, high-level Al Qaeda operatives, continue to be held in "undisclosed locations." But the detainees have provided invaluable information about Al Qaeda's plans and capabilities, according to government officials and members of the 9/11 Commission. Still, at least three have been released and claim to have been sent to countries where they were tortured.

• Khaled al-Masri, a Lebanese-born German, asserts he was pulled from a bus on the Serbia-Macedonia border in December 2003. He says he was sent to Afghanistan, where he was beaten and drugged. After five months, he was released without being charged. German authorities have stated that al-Masri's story checks out.

• Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, was detained at an airport in New York two weeks after the 9/11 attacks. He was sent to Syria, where he says he was beaten. He was released a year later.

• Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian, was arrested in Pakistan several weeks after the 9/11 attacks. He was moved to Egypt, Afghanistan, and later to Camp Delta at Guantánamo. He says he was beaten and subjected to electric shocks during detention. He was released after 40 months without being charged.

Though the program remains shrouded in secrecy, lawmakers have tried to glean information from CIA Director Porter Goss. At a March 17 hearing, for instance, Sen. John McCain ® of Arizona asked the director if there had been sufficient training and specific guidelines for those carrying out the interrogations.

"I believe that there is policy, and I believe that it is very well understood at this point," Goss responded.

"Well, some of those policies at one time were to make the prisoners feel that they were drowning," Senator McCain replied.

Goss continued: "You're getting into, again, an area of what I will call professional interrogation techniques, and I would like...."

McCain interrupted: "That's the area that I'm concerned about, because I'm not sure that the interrogators are fully aware of ... what they can and cannot do when interrogating a prisoner."

More is known, however, about past practices because the former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit has spoken out in defense of them. Michael Scheuer, who wrote two books about the government's war on terror under "Anonymous," says the rendition program expanded under his watch, when Al Qaeda's intentions to target the US became clear.

How the process works
He estimates that between late 1995 and 1999 the CIA carried out some two dozen renditions. The most common method: CIA operatives would identify a suspected terrorist and get foreign intelligence agents or police to make the arrest. The CIA would then transport the person to a third country - usually Egypt - where either an arrest warrant had been issued or the person had already been convicted of a crime "in absentia."

The goals, says Mr. Scheuer, were to take the person who had either participated in a terror attack or who was planning one off the street and to grab as much evidence - written and electronic - as possible. "Once those two goals were accomplished, the mission was a success," Scheuer says. "We never counted on interrogations producing anything.... The information you'd get from any interrogation would be of limited use."

In fact, he says they learned far more from the materials seized during the raids. "We saw things they didn't expect us to see," Scheuer says. "The information they had entered electronically, particularly, was entered without the expectation that anyone outside the organization would see it."

A road through Egypt
Although Scheuer says he's not allowed to talk about specific cases, he does cite several arrests in his first book, "Through Our Enemies' Eyes." In one instance, he says that an Al Qaeda cell in Albania was successfully broken up by arresting and sending four suspected operatives to Egypt.

In general, Scheuer says that although they obtained assurances that the Egyptians wouldn't torture suspects, he thought they might, and says they never followed up because Egypt was a sovereign country.

"The goal of the program was to protect Americans, and that seems to get lost in the shuffle," he says.

From here, the controversy over the program is only likely to grow. The CIA's Inspector General (IG) is investigating several instances in which torture allegedly took place during some of these interrogations. At least two Senate oversight committees are waiting for the IG's report and pushing for more accountability from CIA leaders. Moreover, three foreign countries - Italy, Sweden, and Germany - are investigating possible CIA abductions of people in their countries.

On the legal issue, a recent report issued by the New York University School of Law together with the Association of the Bar of the City of New York found that rendition is an "illegal practice under both domestic and international law." It said the US is "duty bound" to cease all such acts.

Unbelievable


Gitmo taunter teaches tactics

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - An ex-Army interrogator punished for sexually humiliating detainees at the Guantanamo prison is now teaching soldiers interrogation techniques, the Daily News has learned.
Former Staff Sgt. Jeannette Arocho-Burkart, 37, is an instructor at the Army Intelligence School in Fort Huachuca, Ariz., despite being reprimanded in 2003 for her sexually taunting tactics that included smearing fake menstrual blood on terror suspects, according to four sources who knew her there.

"She did get in trouble," confirmed one former colleague at Gitmo. "Huachuca could probably do better."

The source said that Arocho-Burkart was a "competent" interrogator, but "she fudged the line to an uncomfortable level."

"It wasn't torture, but touching the detainee inappropriately to humiliate him," the source said.

Besides wearing skimpy clothing to make Muslim men uncomfortable during questioning, Arocho-Burkart allegedly smeared red ink on a detainee's face, saying it was her menstrual blood - an act that got her punished.

Last week, Vice Adm. Albert Church, in a Pentagon report that cited only three cases of "substantiated" abuse at Gitmo, wrote that "two female interrogators ... touched and spoke to detainees in a sexually suggestive manner ...to incur stress based on the detainees' religious beliefs."

"Those reprimands were verbal, strong and immediate, and dealt with the situation," said another source who knew Arocho-Burkart at the prison camp.

Arocho-Burkart, raised in Mount Holly, N.J., and Puerto Rico, couldn't be reached for comment.

She left the Army and spent last year as a contractor with the Phoenix Consulting Group, where she was handpicked by the Defense Intelligence Agency to teach "strategic debriefing," or eliciting information from willing sources.

Last month, she left the agency and Phoenix. She now teaches an interrogation course at the Army school under contract with defense company Anteon Corp., officials said.

Officials at Huachuca and Phoenix's chairman, John Nolan, said they weren't aware until recently that Arocho-Burkart was reprimanded for detainee abuse.

Before she quit the agency job, Arocho-Burkart was quizzed about the allegations and denied them, a military official said.

Officials checked with Guantanamo before hiring Arocho-Burkart, but weren't told of the reprimand. Had they learned of it, "We wouldn't have hired her," the official said. Nolan added, "We're not interested in [hiring] somebody who colors outside the lines."

Originally published on March 16, 2005

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/290459p-248637c.html

New Support For Account Of Flight To Syria Prison Horror
Scott Shane

Wahington. Maher Arar, a 35-year-old Canadian engineer, is suing the United States, saying American officials grabbed him in 2002 when he was changing planes in New York and transported him to Syria, where he was held for 10 months in a dank, tiny cell and brutally beaten with a metal cable.....

The Bush administration has refused to cooperate with the Canadian inquiry into Arar's case and has asked a judge to dismiss most of his lawsuit, saying that allowing it to proceed would reveal classified information.

The New York Times
International Herald Tribune 31 March 05

As we have seen with other cases, the Bush adminstration uses the "classified information' claim quite frequently. They are not worried about classified information, they are worried about avoiding embarassing and potentially damaging information from being revealed.

Let's hope the judge has been paying attention to their other false claims about not being able to release documents due to "national security" or because the document is "classified information". They are sounding more and more like the boy who cried wolf.

If they aren't uncomfortable now...they never will be...

No, I am talking about making it uncomfortable by contacting them. They may not react to the issue but they do react when enough of their constituents contact them. They may not care enough about torture but they do care about being re-elected.

Court cuts torture sentences

Declan Walsh in Kabul
Friday April 1, 2005
The Guardian

An Afghan court substantially cut the jail sentences of the American mercenary Jack Idema and his two accomplices yesterday, but refused to overturn their conviction for kidnap and torture.
Idema, his right-hand man, Brent Bennett, and Edward Caraballo, a journalist, were found guilty last September of running a freelance operation to catch and interrogate al-Qaida suspects.

Eight Afghan detainees, including a judge, said they were imprisoned for days in a private jail, hung from the ceiling and doused with scalding water.

Yesterday's closed-door hearing reduced Idema and Bennett's 10-year sentences to five and three years respectively. Caraballo, an Emmy-winning documentary maker from New York, had his term cut from eight years to two.

The three Americans were arrested last July and convicted two months later after a chaotic trial marred by petulant outbursts, erratic court procedures and poor translation.

Idema, a 48-year-old former Green Beret, claimed that he was on a secret US government mission to track down al-Qaida members, including Osama bin Laden.

The defence department denied his claims, but was embarrassed by video evidence and emails that proved it had some links with Idema, originally from North Carolina.
The US army admitted that he had delivered a suspect to it, but said it released the man soon afterwards.

The Nato peacekeeping force Isaf also admitted to helping Idema, claiming it had been duped by him.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/stor...1449866,00.html

BUSH PLOT:
Doctor looks for signs of torture
By JERRY MARKON
Washington Post



WASHINGTON - An American student charged in a conspiracy to kill President Bush can have his own doctor examine him for evidence that he was tortured while in Saudi custody, a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., ruled Wednesday.

In granting the defense request, the judge took no position on whether Ahmed Omar Abu Ali of Falls Church, Va., was, in fact, tortured in Saudi Arabia before being flown back to the United States and charged last month. Defense attorneys contend that he was - and has the scars on his back to prove it. Prosecutors say a doctor who already examined Abu Ali concluded he wasn't.

The ruling raises the prospect of clashing experts on one of the most important issues surrounding the case. Abu Ali, 24, is charged with material support of al-Qaida in a plot to kill Bush and establish an al-Qaida cell in this country. The government says he confessed to the assassination plot and admitted discussing with members of al-Qaida his plans to conduct a Sept. 11-style terrorist attack in the United States.

But Abu Ali's attorneys and family members contend that any statements he made while detained in Saudi Arabia were obtained through torture. The allegation is one of many potential complications that legal experts say could make the case difficult to prosecute in a U.S. courtroom.

If the doctor for the defense finds evidence of torture, U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee will have to decide whether the defense or government expert is more credible, said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond law school. "We have dueling experts in almost every other kind of case. Why not here?" Tobias said.

Even if the judge decides Abu Ali was tortured, legal experts have said the defense will face a series of hurdles in getting the case thrown out. Abu Ali would need to show, according to some experts, that U.S. personnel participated in the torture.

In his ruling Wednesday, Lee gave defense attorneys until April 25 to notify him if they plan to use torture as grounds to have Abu Ali's statements thrown out before trial or if they plan to raise the torture allegations at trial.

An attorney for Abu Ali did not return telephone calls Wednesday. Prosecutors declined to comment.

Saudi security officials arrested Abu Ali in June 2003 while he was attending a university there. He was suspected of having connections to people involved in the bombing of three Western residential compounds in Riyadh, which killed 23 people, law enforcement officials have said.

Federal prosecutors unsealed the six-count indictment against Abu Ali on Feb. 22. At a detention hearing a week later, an FBI agent testified that Abu Ali had admitted while in Saudi custody that he and other members of an al-Qaida cell in Saudi Arabia planned to hijack airplanes overseas and crash them into targets in the United States. The conspirators also discussed plans to kill members of Congress, blow up ships in U.S. ports and aircraft at U.S. military bases and free terrorist prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the agent testified.

The charges followed a lawsuit that Abu Ali's family filed in federal court in Washington D.C., contending that he had been tortured and that the U.S. government had condoned it.

Any defense doctor who examines Abu Ali must submit to a security background check and abide by the strict conditions under which Abu Ali is held, Lee wrote in his ruling. The medical exam will not be monitored by the FBI, which monitors visits Abu Ali receives other than from his attorneys. The rules also prohibit anyone who visits Abu Ali from discussing the visits with the media.

Abu Ali's parents have protested the measures, saying the government will not allow them to speak with their son in Arabic. Law enforcement officials said family members may speak with Abu Ali in Arabic but only with an interpreter in the room. They contend that is needed to ensure that he does not try to communicate with the outside world.

http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_sho...l?article=52702

Bob Herbert at the NYT has once again written an excellent column. I don't know how anyone could not get involved in this issue after reading one of his columns. I sent him an email thanking him for his good work. I hope that after you read this article that you will make it a point to contact your Congressional Reps. and the media demanding that they take this issue seriously. We MUST have an independent investigation. It would also be nice if you could take a few moments to write Mr. Herbert a brief email to let him know that we support what he is doing.

April 1, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
We Can't Remain Silent
By BOB HERBERT

At dinner on a rainy night in Manhattan this week, I listened to a retired admiral and a retired general speak about the pain they've personally felt over the torture and abuse scandal that has spread like a virus through some sectors of the military.

During the dinner and in follow-up interviews, Rear Adm. John Hutson, who is now president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., and Brig. Gen. James Cullen, a lawyer in private practice in New York, said they believed that both the war effort and the military itself have been seriously undermined by official policies that encouraged the abuse of prisoners.

Both men said they were unable to remain silent as institutions that they served loyally for decades, and which they continue to love without reservation, are being damaged by patterns of conduct that fly in the face of core values that most members of the military try mightily to uphold.

"At some point," said General Cullen, "I had to say: 'Wait a minute. We cannot go along with this.' "

The two retired officers have lent their support to an extraordinary lawsuit that seeks to hold Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ultimately accountable for policies that have given rise to torture and other forms of prisoner abuse. And last September they were among a group of eight retired admirals and generals who wrote a letter to President Bush urging him to create an independent 9/11-type commission to fully investigate the problem of prisoner abuse from the top to the bottom of the command structure.

Admiral Hutson, who served as the Navy's judge advocate general from 1997 to 2000, said he felt sick the first time he saw the photos of soldiers abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. "I felt like somebody in my family had died," he said.

Even before that, he had been concerned by the Bush administration's decision to deny the protections of the Geneva Conventions to some detainees, and by the way prisoners at Guantánamo Bay were being processed and treated. He said that when the scandal at Abu Ghraib broke, "I knew in my soul that it was going to be bigger than that, that we had just seen the tip of the iceberg and that it was going to get worse and worse and worse."

The letter to President Bush emphasized the wide scope of the problem, noting that there were "dozens of well-documented allegations of torture, abuse and otherwise questionable detention practices" involving prisoners in U.S. custody. It said:

"These reports have implicated both U.S. military and intelligence agencies, ranging from junior enlisted members to senior command officials, as well as civilian contractors. ... No fewer than a hundred criminal, military and administrative inquiries have been launched into apparently improper or unlawful U.S. practices related to detention and interrogation. Given the range of individuals and locations involved in these reports, it is simply no longer possible to view these allegations as a few instances of an isolated problem."

Admiral Hutson and General Cullen have worked closely with a New York-based group, Human Rights First, which, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, filed the lawsuit against Mr. Rumsfeld. A report released this week by Human Rights First said that the number of detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan has grown to more than 11,000, and that the level of secrecy surrounding American detention operations has intensified.

Burgeoning detainee populations and increased secrecy are primary ingredients for more, not less, prisoner abuse.

One of the many concerns expressed by Admiral Hutson and General Cullen was the effect of the torture and abuse scandal on members of the military who have had nothing to do with it. "I think it does stain the honor of people who didn't participate in it at all," said Admiral Hutson. "People in the military who find that kind of behavior abhorrent are painted with the same broad brush."

General Cullen, who has served as chief judge of the Army's Court of Criminal Appeals, spoke in terms of grief. "You feel sorrow," he said, "because you know there are so many servicemen and women out there who want to do the right thing, who are doing tough jobs every day. And to see these events blacken their names and call into question their whole mission just makes me sad. Very, very sad."


E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/opinion/01herbert.html?

NR,NS: You've posted a lot of interesting articles about the prisoner abuse. Given the level of control this administration has, what do you think can actually be done about it?

If public opinion can be mobilized on this issue we can finally force an independent investigation. I just posted some comments on the NYT website that I plan on posting on my personal blog here. In essence, what I believe is that this issue is not a Party issue but an American issue. Check out my personal blog.

I think that is valuable...but that should not be the sole action taken - i find letters to the editor more effective becuase they say - depending upon th epopulation density - for every letter to the editor there are at least a 100 other people who feel the same way...so a letter to the editor demanding action by a legislator can be that much more effective in hastening action

So use these articles to construct letters to the editor and constuct a protect and a rally in your community...

Persistence makes permanent. We can work on that control,

A picture is worth a million words....we need images, and they ARE out there.

See here....


http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/040105Z.shtml

Good points...

Article Published: Friday, April 01, 2005

jim spencer
Good guys? Military logic tortured
By Jim Spencer
Denver Post Columnist


Fort Carson - "I did my job."

That's how Lewis Welshofer Jr. concluded a statement issued through his lawyer Thursday morning.

The problem for Welshofer is also the moral dilemma for all Americans considering his assertion.

Business as usual, by Welshofer's measure, meant killing a captured Iraqi general by stuffing him upside down in a sleeping bag, binding him in wire, sitting on his chest and covering his mouth.

What the chief warrant officer called a warrior's patriotic duty, the Army called murder. On Thursday, Welshofer chose to waive his right to a preliminary hearing on this distinction, leaving it to a court-martial to resolve many months from now.

A deeper question will transcend the trial: Does this country want to be more civilized than its enemies?

"In a forward combat area, I used what I believed were approved techniques," Welshofer said in his statement. "I provided critical information, which aided offensive combat operations. These operations prevented further insurgent attacks, thereby saving American soldiers' lives."

The government obviously disputes Welshofer's claim that he used "approved techniques" in trying to extract information from Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush. But this country's leaders have encouraged and condoned so much prisoner abuse since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that Welshofer's anything-goes attitude might now be the rule instead of the exception.

When he worked as White House counsel, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales redefined torture. He left out a lot of stuff average Americans would describe as cruel and unusual, especially if a foreign soldier did it to them.

That mentality showed through in the preliminary hearings for three other soldiers charged in Mowhoush's death.

Testimony Wednesday in those hearings revealed murky moral waters.

How does forcing claustrophobic prisoners into wall lockers and banging on the lockers with pipes strike you?

It struck Welshofer and others as a good strategy for gathering intelligence, testimony showed.

Testimony also indicated that Welshofer's immediate superiors knew what was going on. When the brass doesn't care if the envelope gets pushed, the message filters down quickly.

A former military interrogator who isn't charged in the Mowhoush case testified Wednesday. He wouldn't admit it was wrong to sit on a prisoner's chest or cover his mouth to block his breathing.

This, said the former interrogator, was a "gray" area.

Thursday, a lawyer for Mowhoush defendant Jefferson Williams denied that his client threw a 20-pound case of rations at the general, breaking his ribs.

Still, attorney William Cassara reminded everyone, Mowhoush "was a violent and belligerent terrorist whose job and goal was to kill American soldiers."

In his statement, Welshofer stressed that, too.

"An unlawful enemy was killing American soldiers and butchering civilians," he wrote.

"Because of my efforts, more soldiers were able to return home alive and in one piece."

It was the old ends-justifies-the-means defense. We've heard it before when holding suspected terrorists indefinitely without charging them or letting them talk to lawyers. We've seen it in the sexual humiliation of prisoners and the use of attack dogs to instill fear.

And now we are asked to apply it to a man so bad that "other government agencies" beat him savagely a few days before the Army crammed him into a sleeping bag and smothered him.

We get to wink at human rights because we're the good guys.

Welshofer actually wrote that.

"I am not a murderer, and I did not torture anyone," he maintained. "If you ask anyone who knows me, they will tell you I'm actually a pretty nice guy."

Saddam Hussein's intelligence agents doubtless felt the same way.
Jim Spencer's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com .

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...2792663,00.html

Thanks for the link. I am going to post that story here. In a previous article in this thread it mentioned the video tape that was out there. The ACLU is doing a great job in getting a lot of what is now coming out. I hope that they are successful in getting the video out.

Tombstoned found this article. Thanks Tombstoned. I'm hoping the ACLU will make progess in court getting not only these photos but the videos. Americans need to know what has been done and may still be done in their names.

The Pentagon's Secret Stash
By Matt Welch
Reason Magazine
April 2005 Edition

Why we'll never see the second round of Abu Ghraib photos.

The images, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress, depict "acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman." After Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) viewed some of them in a classified briefing, he testified that his "stomach gave out." NBC News reported that they show "American soldiers beating one prisoner almost to death, apparently raping a female prisoner, acting inappropriately with a dead body, and taping Iraqi guards raping young boys." Everyone who saw the photographs and videos seemed to shudder openly when contemplating what the reaction would be when they eventually were made public.

But they never were. After the first batch of Abu Ghraib images shocked the world on April 28, 2004, becoming instantly iconic-a hooded prisoner standing atop a box with electrodes attatched to his hands, Pfc. Lynndie England dragging a naked prisoner by a leash, England and Spc. Charles Graner giving a grinning thumbs-up behind a stack of human meat-no substantial second round ever came, either from Abu Ghraib or any of the other locations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay where abuses have been alleged. ABC News broadcast two new photos from the notorious Iraq prison on May 19, The Washington Post printed a half-dozen on May 20 and three more on June 10, and that was it.

"It refutes the glib claim that everything leaks sooner or later," says the Federation of American Scientists' Steven Aftergood, who makes his living finding and publishing little-known government information and fighting against state secrecy. "While there may be classified information in the papers almost every day, there's a lot more classified information that never makes it into the public domain."

It's not for lack of trying, at least from outside the government. Aftergood, for example, sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the Defense Department on May 12, asking generally for "photographic and video images of abuses committed against Iraqi prisoners" and specifically for the material contained on three compact discs mentioned by Rumsfeld in his testimony. The Defense Department told him to ask the U.S. Central Command, which sent him back to Defense, which said on second thought try the Army's Freedom of Information Department, which forwarded him to the Army's Crime Records Center, which hasn't yet responded. "It's not as if this is somehow an obscure matter that no one's quite ever heard of," Aftergood notes.

Officials have given two legal reasons for suppressing images of prisoner abuse: "unwarranted invasion of privacy" and the potential impact on law enforcement. The Freedom of Information Act's exemptions 6 and 7 (as these justifications are known, respectively) have been used repeatedly to rebuff the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which since October 2003 has unearthed more than 600 torture-related government documents but zero images.

The privacy objection is easily answered: Why not just obscure any identifying features? The law enforcement question, which has a firmer legal footing, is whether distribution of the images could "deprive a person of a fair trial or an impartial adjudication." Yet even there, the globally publicized photographs of Charles Graner, for instance, were ruled by a military judge to be insufficient grounds to declare his trial unfair. And Graner, sentenced to 10 years for his crimes, is the only one of the eight charged Abu Ghraib soldiers to contest his case in court.

"We've seen virtually no criminal investigations or criminal prosecutions," says ACLU staff attorney Jameel Jaffer, who plans to challenge the nondisclosure in court. "The vast majority of those photographs and videotapes don't relate to ongoing criminal investigations; on the contrary they depict things that the government approved of at the time and maybe approves of now."

Legalities are one thing, but the real motivation for choking off access is obvious: Torture photos undermine support for the Iraq war. In the words of Donald Rumsfeld, "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse."

The Abu Ghraib photos did more to kneecap right-wing support for the Iraq war, and put a dent in George Bush's approval ratings, than any other single event in 2004. Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote two glum pieces about "the failure to understand the consequences of American power"; The Washington Post's George Will called for Rumsfeld's head; blogger Andrew Sullivan turned decisively against the president he once championed; and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned: "We risk losing public support for this conflict. As Americans turned away from the Vietnam War, they may turn away from this one."

News analyses about the war coalition's crackup competed for front-page space with the Abu Ghraib reports for nearly two weeks, until a videotape emerged showing American civilian Nick Berg getting his head sawed off in Iraq. Suddenly, editorialists were urging us to "keep perspective" about "who we're fighting against."

By that time, the executive and legislative branches had learned their lesson: Don't release images. The day after the Berg video, members of Congress were allowed to see a slide show of 1,800 Abu Ghraib photographs. The overwhelming response, besides revulsion, was, in the words of Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.), that the pictures "should not be made public." "I feel," Warner said, "that it could possibly endanger the men and women of the armed forces as they are serving and at great risk."

Just before former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, author of two memos relating to interrogation methods and the Geneva Conventions, faced confirmation hearings to become attorney general, there were press whispers that the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin (D-Mich.), might choose the occasion to force more disclosure of torture photos. It didn't happen. "He and Senator Warner," says Levin spokeswoman Tara Andringa, "are on the same page."

As is, no doubt, a good percentage of the U.S. population. Public opinion of journalism has long since plummeted below confidence levels in government. Prisoner abuse wasn't remotely an issue in the 2004 presidential campaign, let alone an electoral millstone for the governing party. The mid-January discovery of photographs showing British soldiers abusing Iraqis barely caused a ripple in the States. Neither did the Associated Press' December publication of several new photos of Navy SEALs vamping next to injured and possibly tortured prisoners (prompting the New York Post to demand an apology from...the Associated Press).

As The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto put it, with great cynicism and possibly great accuracy, "if the Democrats really think that belaboring complaints about harsh treatment of the enemy is the way to 'score points with the public,' they're more out of touch than we thought."

Looking ahead to the next four years, there is little doubt that the administration, its supporters, and Congress will use whatever legal means are available to prevent Abu Ghraib-the public relations problem, not the prisoner abuse-from happening again. The Defense Department has commissioned numerous studies about America's problem with "public diplomacy" since the September 11 massacre; all those compiled since last May hold up the iconic torture images as the perfect example of what not to let happen again.

"The Pentagon realizes that it's images that sell the story," Aftergood says. "The reason that there is a torture scandal is because of those photographs. There can be narratives of things that are much worse, but if they aren't accompanied by photos, they somehow don't register....The Abu Ghraib photos are sort of the military equivalent of the Rodney King case....And I hate to attribute motives to people I don't know, but it is easy to imagine that the officials who are withholding these images have that fact in mind."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/040105Z.shtml

'One Huge US Jail'
By Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark
The Guardian UK

Saturday 19 March 2005

Afghanistan is the hub of a global network of detention centres, the frontline in America's 'war on terror', where arrest can be random and allegations of torture commonplace. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark investigate on the ground and talk to former prisoners.
Kabul was a grim, monastic place in the days of the Taliban; today it's a chaotic gathering point for every kind of prospector and carpetbagger. Foreign bidders vying for billions of dollars of telecoms, irrigation and construction contracts have sparked a property boom that has forced up rental prices in the Afghan capital to match those in London, Tokyo and Manhattan. Four years ago, the Ministry of Vice and Virtue in Kabul was a tool of the Taliban inquisition, a drab office building where heretics were locked up for such crimes as humming a popular love song. Now it's owned by an American entrepreneur who hopes its bitter associations won't scare away his new friends. Outside Kabul, Afghanistan is bleaker, its provinces more inaccessible and lawless, than it was under the Taliban. If anyone leaves town, they do so in convoys. Afghanistan is a place where it is easy for people to disappear and perilous for anyone to investigate their fate. Even a seasoned aid agency such as Médécins Sans Frontières was forced to quit after five staff members were murdered last June. Only the 17,000-strong US forces, with their all-terrain Humvees and Apache attack helicopters, have the run of the land, and they have used the haze of fear and uncertainty that has engulfed the country to advance a draconian phase in the war against terror. Afghanistan has become the new Guantánamo Bay.

Washington likes to hold up Afghanistan as an exemplar of how a rogue regime can be replaced by democracy. Meanwhile, human-rights activists and Afghan politicians have accused the US military of placing Afghanistan at the hub of a global system of detention centres where prisoners are held incommunicado and allegedly subjected to torture. The secrecy surrounding them prevents any real independent investigation of the allegations. "The detention system in Afghanistan exists entirely outside international norms, but it is only part of a far larger and more sinister jail network that we are only now beginning to understand," Michael Posner, director of the US legal watchdog Human Rights First, told us.

When we landed in Kabul, Afghanistan was blue with a bruising cold. We were heading for the former al-Qaida strongholds in the south-east that were rumoured to be the focus of the new US network. How should we prepare, we asked local UN staff. "Don't go," they said. None the less, we were able to find a driver, a Pashtun translator and a boxful of clementines, and set off on a five-and-a-half-hour trip south through the snow to Gardez, a market town dominated by two rapidly expanding US military bases.

There we met Dr. Rafiullah Bidar, regional director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, established in 2003 with funding from the US Congress to investigate abuses committed by local warlords and to ensure that women's and children's rights were protected. He was delighted to see foreigners in town. At his office in central Gardez, Bidar showed us a wall of fil