Iraqi prisoner abuse and the fallout, pt. 2 -- now the deaths start getting mentioned

He was thrown out of the army but did NOT go to jail.

The other murder was committed by a private contractor who worked for the CIA, the official said.

Why has he been let off scot free? He should've got life.
What would've happened if the murder was in texas?
Bush operates double standards shocker!

What pisses me off though is Bush/Rumsfeld et al's moral fucking high ground on the war. "Do as we say, but not as we do" might as well be the rule of thumb for them :(

Possibly if you follow that famous speech that Orson Welles gave Harry Lime... In that awful times give rise to finer art and culture than stable, peaceful times...

I can't easily see anything else positive about war. At best it is a necessary evil when there is no other choice, i.e. WW2. Mere usage of the word 'necessary' seems cruelly ironic in a thread relating to the whole Iraq fiasco.

Good Josh Marshall post about the disconnect between Washington and Iraq. I think connecting Bush's apparent ignorence of the Taguba Report to his apparent disinterest in CIA intellegence is pretty astute.

but seriously i'm almost inclined to say there's some sort of justice in letting the troops who committed these atrocities off "easy". because i think the responsibility should move up the chain of command to the people who called the invasion in the first place. when the generals say "these are the actions of a few, blah blah blah" i want to say "no these are the actions of people put in a FUCKED-UP situation and YOU put them there"

we can blame stalin's army for executing thousands of it's own soldiers on the german front - or we can blame stalin for throwing waves of (very poorly equipped) troops at the germans.

in both cases i think it's the mistreatment and misuse of soldiers by their superiors that causes this shit to happen.

(the andersonville movie was made for tnt)

that said i don't think you can get away from the fact that if you know what you're doing, who you're doing it for and why you're doing it you'll do a good job. i think that applies to everyone, not just soldiers. i imagine how it feels to go to iraq thinking you're doing this for "freedom" or the iraqis or something and be met with this much hostility. i think i'd feel morally adrift, with a gun.

maybe all war's like that, who knows.

What turns my stomach about the American abuse of Iraqis is that they haven't been at war for years, holed up somewhere with comrades having bits blown off left right and centre, home towns being devastated, etc. I can't see the same dehumanisation from being in Iraq for 6 months, even if it turns out 'freedom' was a bit of a sham.

After pictures apparently showing the abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners were published in the US media, it emerged the report was commissioned back in January.

The investigation by Maj Gen Antonio Taguba was completed on 3 March, the Pentagon said, but as of 4 May Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had still not read it fully.

What's actually going to happen in Iraq? I mean, OK, so everyone but the the True Believers and their courtiers acknowledges that the current status is fucked up. But it will still change somehow, seek some kind of stability. We will "hand over" (ha ha ha) power to someone, and soon -- and probably the Bushies will end up giving up a lot more control than they want to, because circumstances will compel it. But then what?

I know it's hard to get a clear sense of what's going on now, much less think about a year or five years down the road. But there's not enough contemplation of the various realistic long-term options -- which is too bad, because some of those options (say, a Shiite dominated state with a more or less functional democracy and women's rights) are probably better than others (an outright theocracy, civil war, some creepy ex-Saddam thug-ass general, Ahmad Chalabi, etc.), but without some thoughtful assessment we're just going to flounder around grasping at whatever comes along. Which might be intellectually satisfying to those of us who were convinced all along that this administration was bound to severely fuck this thing up, but it's not like we need that opinion validated any more than it has been, and some kind of stable, relatively free Iraq is still better than any of the alternatives.

So what are the choices? Where are we headed?

May 5, 2004
No Plan to Hurt 9/11 Detainees, Ex-Jailer Says
By NINA BERNSTEIN

The former warden of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where the Justice Department and a new lawsuit say Muslim detainees were physically abused after Sept. 11, 2001, said yesterday that there had been no organized effort to mistreat the detainees or to "soften up" those being questioned by federal investigators.

But the former warden, Dennis W. Hasty, said he had recognized the potential for abuse in the charged atmosphere after the World Trade Center attack and took action to try to prevent it. After one detainee complained of mistreatment, the warden began requiring the use of hand-held cameras to videotape all so-called 9/11 detainees whenever they were moved outside their cells.

Some of those videotapes are now being used by the inspector general of the Justice Department as prime evidence of the abuse that took place there. Only a handful of frames from hundreds of tapes have been made public, and none comes close to the shocking images of Iraqi prisoners abused at the hands of American soldiers. But the videotapes captured numerous examples of excessive force being used in Brooklyn, including ramming unresisting detainees into walls, twisting their manacled arms and hands, and mocking them during unnecessary strip searches, the Justice Department said in a report issued in December.

Mr. Hasty, 54, a 30-year veteran of the federal prison system who retired as head of the Metropolitan Detention Center in April 2002, said he would not comment on specific allegations because of pending litigation. He is one of several defendants named in a federal lawsuit that was filed Monday by lawyers for Ehab Elmaghraby and Javaid Iqbal, two Muslim men who say they were physically abused while detained for more than seven months in the center's maximum-security unit before being cleared by the F.B.I. of any terrorist links.

The lawsuit charges that the men were repeatedly slammed into walls and dragged across the floor while shackled and manacled, kicked and punched until they bled, cursed as "terrorists'' and "Muslim bastards,'' and subjected to multiple unnecessary body-cavity searches, including one during which correction officers inserted a flashlight into Mr. Elmaghraby's rectum, making him bleed.

In a phone interview from his home in Springfield, Mo. - his first since the Justice Department issued a critical report about post-9/11 detentions in June - Mr. Hasty stressed that any mistreatment that occurred did so despite his best efforts. "There was no game plan, such as we're hearing about now in Iraq, to break their will," he said, referring to the unfolding scandal over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. "There was no collusion." He added, "I did not subscribe to doing anything but handling detainees in a restrained, professional manner."

At the same time, he said, his officers were not immune to the emotions that ran high after Sept. 11. Recalling that he counted 27 flags on display near one Brooklyn service station as he filled his tank with gas, he said: "People were feeling very patriotic. The city and the country felt victimized and felt threatened by what had happened. Of course many people, my staff included, had neighbors and friends who were killed in the attack."

He described the change that swept the detention center as 84 detainees designated "of high interest" by the F.B.I. were brought in after the terrorist attacks.

"We didn't know how many, if any, were going to be implicated in the conspiracy to attack our country," he said. But he added that he cautioned his staff that some of the detainees brought to the Brooklyn center would be found to have had no involvement at all in 9/11. "We were to house them in constitutional conditions, avoiding anything that would have a hint of cruel or unusual punishment."

But a different picture emerged from the inspector general's two reports. In one case cited in the December report, a lieutenant who denied that any mistreatment had occurred was caught on tape discussing abuse with other officers. According to that report, the lieutenant, apparently not realizing that the audiotape was still running, "suggested how the officers could break some detainees' hunger strikes," saying: " 'Let's get a team. Let's go with a tube. The first guy that gets that tube shoved down his throat, they'll be cured!' He then stated, 'We're going hard,' to which another officer responded, 'Outstanding!' The lieutenant repeated his statement, 'We're going hard.' " Among the hundreds of video and audiotapes belatedly recovered after they had been ordered destroyed by a prison official were some that showed that many of the federal officers, including at least one senior management official, had lied to investigators in denying knowledge of abuse, the December report concluded. It recommended disciplinary action against at least 10 employees of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

No one has yet been disciplined, federal prison officials said, because such administrative action would have interfered with possible prosecutions, which the Justice Department recently decided not to pursue.

"We consider this a very serious matter," Dan Dunne, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said yesterday. "Our review will be done as quickly as possible, while assuring it is done in as thorough a manner as possible."

A broader lawsuit filed in 2002 by the Center for Constitutional Rights challenging the constitutionality of the detentions also includes allegations of abuse. It has been stalled in Federal District Court in Brooklyn pending a judge's ruling on the government's motion to dismiss the case. So far, lawyers for the plaintiffs have not been allowed to view the videotapes themselves, they said.

Mr. Hasty, who had previously been the warden of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, where the 1993 World Trade Center bombers were held, said he ran his detention centers by the book. "We were constantly reminding the staff that it was just essential that they exercise restraint, that they not allow emotions to override their professional training,'' he said.

He added that he warned the staff that Al Qaeda had instructed its members to allege mistreatment, so the behavior of officers toward detainees was bound to come under scrutiny. "We told them," he said, to "make sure that we're squeaky-clean, that we're complying with every jot and tittle of agency policy."

Easy enough for him to say now, but it would have been impossible for this guy to police ALL his staff 24 hrs each and every day. Even the most high tech cameras can't catch every action in all corners. Hint to a guard that this prisoner might have been responsible for the destruction of his/her friends and neighbours: allegation doesn't have to be true for actions to happen.

nichole, what do you mean by this?

They're gonna put you in detention totally fer sher.

White House aides have let it be known privately that Mr Rumsfeld received a dressing-down from President Bush over his handling of the controversial pictures.

The BBC's Justin Webb reports from Washington that Mr Rumsfeld is under the greatest political pressure of his life.

It is possible that he could be forced to resign, our correspondent says.

Dare I dream?

Still, early days yet. If that dressing down DID happen as described, oh to have been a fly on the wall.

sorta like how Bush was 'very disappointed' after the fact by Ashcroft's desclassification of dozens of documents trying to impugn Jamie GorelicK? he's so magnanimous.

"The president is sorry for what occurred and the pain that it has caused," Mr McClellan said after Mr Bush's TV interview.

Asked why Mr Bush himself had not apologised, he added: "I'm saying it now for him."

The White House spokesman also pointed out that Mr Bush had not been pressed to apologise by the two TV channels on which he appeared, the Dubai-based al-Arabiya and the US-funded al-Hurra.

He didn't apologize because they didn't ask him to?

?!??#%#$#????

Every time I think I can't be anymore disgusted and amazed, entire new pits of disgust and amazement open up inside me. Some sick part of me is almost curious about what four more years of this would be like.

Here's Sy Hersh Monday night on O' Reilly:

O'REILLY: Continuing now with our top story tonight, the repercussions of the Iraq torture situation.

Joining us from Washington is investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who became famous during the Vietnam war. You may remember with his expose of the My Lai atrocities, he has written a major article about the Iraq torture situation in this week's issue of "The New Yorker magazine."

All right, you just heard General Karpinski. Do you believe what she is saying?

SEYMOUR HERSH, "THE NEW YORKER": Well, I could just tell you what General Taguba said in his report, which is complicated because he said basically among other things she ran one of the worst brigades he's ever seen. People didn't salute, people dressed casually. Officers were moved around without orders. They didn't keep records. They -- she said that this was not a prison full of hardened, you know, soldiers caught in war. These are full of civilians.

He said upwards of 60 percent of the people in the prison had nothing to do with, no bad feelings toward America whatsoever. They simply were caught in a random roadside check or they were snatched off the street. They should have been processed under the Geneva Convention.

He said they should have been processed. We should have gotten rid of the good guys from the bad guys. There was no control, no paperwork. They had all sorts of problems that she would -- he really gave her...

O'REILLY: All right. But there's a difference between being a poor administrator, as this -- your -- and knowing about torture and looking the other way.

Now, I grant you and I challenged the general. I said look, in these pictures, these soldiers didn't look like they had any fear of anybody coming down on them. I mean, they looked like they were having a rollicking good time. And that tells me there was a problem in management, whether it's middle management or upper management, I don't know.

Now I also know the general as you do was not a trained jail warden. She's a reservist and got thrown in there into this position. But I think for the country's sake, we need to know if this scandal is going to get any worse because we're taking a beating worldwide, And if so, who is the evil doer here?

HERSH: First of all, it's going to get much worse. This kind of stuff was much more widespread. I can tell you just from the phone calls I've had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn't want to mention on international television that was done. There was a lot of problems.

There was a special women's section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It's much worse. And the major general Taguba was very tough about it. He said this place was riddled with violent, awful actions against prisoners.

O'REILLY: All right. So we're going to see in the weeks to come more pictures and videotapes of atrocities against Iraqis? Is that what we can look forward to seeing?

HERSH: Mr. O'Reilly, this is a generation -- you know back -- you and I in our days, if we had something, you know, we came back from war. We would put our pictures and hide them behind the socks in closets and look at them once in a while.

This is a generation that sends stuff on CDs, sends it around. Some kid right now is negotiating with some European magazine. You know, I can't say that for sure, but it's there. It's out there. And the Army knows it.

O'REILLY: Boy.

HERSH: They have tried to recover some of the CD discs from computers, individual computers. But obviously, you can't stop this...

O'REILLY: All right. Well, the damage to the country obviously is just immeasurable. But reading your article in "The New Yorker." I just get the feeling that the Army, when they heard about it, started action almost immediately. It wasn't a cover-up situation. Or did I read your article wrong?

HERSH: This guy Taguba is brilliant. He could have made a living doing -- it's a credit to the Army that somebody with that kind of integrity would write this kind of -- it's 53-page report.

O'REILLY: OK, but Sanchez the commander put him in charge fairly quickly. They mobilized fairly quickly.

HERSH: No, look, I don't want to ruin your evening, but the fact of the matter is it was the third investigation. There had been two other investigations.

One of them was done by a major general who was involved in Guantanamo, General Miller. And it's very classified, but I can tell you that he was recommending exactly doing the kind of things that happened in that prison, basically. He wanted to cut the lines. He wanted to put the military intelligence in control of the prison.

O'REILLY: All right. We'll have more with Seymour Hersh in a moment.

And then later on in the broadcast, President Bush pokes fun at those anti-Bush books. They're legion, but we've uncovered some very interesting information about those books. And we'll give it to you, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'REILLY: Continuing now with investigative reporter Seymour Hersh from Washington, who has the cover story in "The New Yorker" magazine about the Iraq torture situation.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I see unfolding here from what you told me and then General Karpinski told me is that there is a tension between the interrogators who wanted to find out by you know, using means that are dubious information, and the military police who basically who objected to some of these techniques.

But you can understand that like Vietnam, you have people shooting at Americans, blowing them up, and then running into mosques and hiding behind children and all of that. So how far do we go to get the information that protects our own troops?

That I guess is the essential question that led to this scandal, correct?

HERSH: Yes, but one of the things, the problem you have, of course you have to go if you're dealing with hardened al Qaeda. There's not much mercy. And none of us would have much mercy.

The problem here is they were picking on people that they hadn't made any differentiation on. They didn't know. And you know, and the kind of stuff that was going on, Mr. O'Reilly, when you take an Arab man and you make him walk naked in front of other men, this is the greatest shame they can have. And then you have them simulate homosexual activities. You have young women and young men, the women in particular, videotaping and photographing them doing this. This is actually a form of torture and coercion.

O'REILLY: No, there's no question about it. And there's no question. There's no justification for it. But how do you wind up in a prison if you're just innocent and didn't do anything? See, our commanders and our embedded reporters tell me that they're way too busy to be rounding up guys in the marketplace and throwing them into prison.

So I'm going to dispute your contention that we had a lot of people in there with just no rap sheets at all, who were just picked up for no reason at all. The people who were in the prison were suspected of being either al Qaeda or terrorists who were killing Americans and knew something about it.

HERSH: The problem is it isn't my contention. It's the contention of Major General Taguba, who was appointed by General Sanchez to do the investigation.

It's his contention in his report that more than 60 percent of the people in that prison, detainees, civilians, had nothing to do with the war effort.

O'REILLY: How did they get there then? Because I...

HERSH: Because how do they get into the prison?

I'll tell you how they get there. You bust the guy that doesn't have anything to do. You humiliate him. You break him down. You interrogate him. He gives up the name of you want to know who is an insurgent, who is al Qaeda? He gives up any name he knows.

O'REILLY: Do you really believe that U.S. forces were sweeping Baghdad, and the others -- you're just picking people up off the street for no reason?

HERSH: Well, inevitably you get people in a sweep that have nothing to with what you're looking for.

O'REILLY: All right, now that's true. But to the number of...

HERSH: Of course.

O'REILLY: ...50 percent, I'm not buying that. I mean, I could be wrong. But I'm going on the basis of our reporters in the field. And I'm asking them, have you ever seen any of these -- no. These guys are way to busy. They got stuff to do all day long. They're not sweeping people up.

HERSH: We're talking about last fall, when things weren't as cute as they are now, certainly it's a terrible situation right now. and everybody -- nobody is sweeping anything. They're in forced protection.

O'REILLY: Right.

HERSH: But last fall, things were much calmer. People were being swept. This did happen.

O'REILLY: All right.

HERSH: And I could tell you something else. Let me just say this. I believe the services have a -- look, the kids did bad things. But the notion that it's all these kids. The officers are in loco parentis with these children. We send our children to war. And we have officers like that general whose job is to be mother and father to these kids, to keep them out of trouble. The idea of watching these pictures, it's not only a failure of the kids, it's a failure of everybody in the command structure.

O'REILLY: Well, yes, it's the failure of the supervisors of those soldiers to create an environment of fear so they wouldn't do that. See, it's just appalling to me that they would take this so casually.

One more question and I will let you go here. Major General Don Rider is the chief law enforcement officer of the Army. All right? He went in and also looked at this situation. And in a report said yes, we have a lot of trouble, but didn't red flag the kind of trouble that you reported on. Why?

HERSH: I just don't know because Don Rider has a great reputation among investigators in the CID, the criminal investigative division. They adore him. He's got a great reputation, but General Taguba again in his report really went after him in a way that one...

O'REILLY: Yes, he just said he wasn't tough enough on the initial report.

HERSH: He blew it.

O'REILLY: All right, Mr. Hersh, we hope if you get other information, hard information, you will come here and tell us about it after writing for "The New Yorker." Your article is very interesting. We do recommend it and we thank you for your time, sir.

HERSH: Sure.

Interesting NY Times article on that tip, about the famous "Stanford Prison Experiment."

Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo, a leader of the Stanford prison study, said that while the rest of the world was shocked by the images from Iraq, "I was not surprised that it happened."

"I have exact, parallel pictures of prisoners with bags over their heads," from the 1971 study, he said.

At one point, he said, the guards in the fake prison ordered their prisoners to strip and used a rudimentary sex joke to humiliate them.

Professor Zimbardo ended the experiment the next day, more than a week earlier than planned.

Prisons, where the balance of power is so unequal, tend to be brutal and abusive places unless great effort is made to control the guards' base impulses, he said. At Stanford and in Iraq, he added: "It's not that we put bad apples in a good barrel. We put good apples in a bad barrel. The barrel corrupts anything that it touches."

From another Times article today:

Specialist Graner, who wears a Marine Corps eagle tattoo on his right arm, served in the corps from April 1988 until May 1996, when he left with the rank of corporal, according to military records. He went to work immediately at the State Correctional Institution Greene, in southwestern Pennsylvania, where he has held an entry-level corrections officer position ever since.

Two years after he arrived at Greene, the prison was at the center of an abuse scandal. Prison officials declined to say whether Specialist Graner had been disciplined in that case, citing privacy laws.

Inmates and advocates for prisoner rights asserted in 1998 that guards at the prison routinely beat and humiliated prisoners, including through a sadistic game of Simon Says in which guards struck prisoners who failed to comply with barked instructions.

After an investigation, the warden was transferred, two lieutenants were fired and about two dozen guards were reprimanded, demoted or suspended.

Specialist Graner was involved in a bitter divorce. In court papers, his wife, Staci, accused him of beating her, threatening her with guns, stalking her after they separated in 1997 and breaking into her home. Since 1997, local judges have issued at least three orders of protection against him, records show.

...

Sergeant Frederick, whom military investigators have accused of overseeing much of the abuse at Abu Ghraib, works as a corrections officer at the Buckingham Correctional Center in central Virginia, a medium-security prison.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40120000/jpg/_40120817_iraqpow_washpost_203.jpg

CALLER: It was like a college fraternity prank that stacked up naked men --

LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?

"Blow some steam off" FFS!

How telling.

(xpost to N_ts_h way upthread)

LIMBAUGH: These presidental candidates HAVE to let off steam!

Sam Donaldson's greatest triumph.

I am in complete agreement.

I was also surprised at the O'Reilly interview with Hersh, it didn't seem half as toolish as most of his interviews.

xpost yeah but Limbaugh just sounds like a moron - O'Reilly, as Nicole remarks, really seems quite focused and reasonable, esp. given who he is/what he's like

Stanford Prison Experiment to thread.

Staff members of the International Committee of the Red Cross were fully aware of the full spectrum of abuses of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad and had repeatedly urged the United States to take corrective action, a spokesman for the humanitarian organization said today.

The Geneva-based agency, whose staff members visit prisoners in conflict zones under the Geneva Convention to monitor the conditions of detention, usually maintains silence on what it sees in return for access to prisoners.

But in an unusual step, the group broke that practice in the wake of publication of graphic images showing American guards mistreating and humiliating naked Iraqi prisoners. ...

The spokesman for the agency, Roland Huguenin, who visited the Baghdad prison last October, said Red Cross staff members had written regular reports based on private, face-to-face interviews with detainees at Abu Ghraib every six to eight weeks.

Those reports, which in some cases criticized prison conditions and the treatment of prisoners, had been forwarded to the Coalition Provisional Authority with recommendations, he said.

"We can confirm that we knew about this," Mr. Huguenin said. "Our reports to the U.S. administration contained many aspects which have now been reported with clear descriptions of treatment of prisoners."

Torture is okay but humiliation is bad.

After NOT uttering any phrase of apology on Arab TV yesterday, I picture White House aides trying to make W say the word "sorry" and him practicing it but no sound comes out.

*coughs* Meanwhile, I note a Certain Someone's been rather quiet here over the past couple of days...

http://www.economist.com/

Here's from the lead article on the page -- personally I think this cuts a hell of a way to the heart of the matter:

Anger in the Arab and wider Muslim world at America’s policies in the Middle East will only have been intensified by the prominence that the region’s media have given to the alleged abuses by coalition forces. Of course, the Arab press’s angry editorials would have more credibility if they did not so often remain silent on much worse abuses by their own countries’ despotic regimes. And the condemnations by the UN’s human-rights envoy might have more force if the UN itself were not mired in allegations of multi-billion-dollar corruption over its former oil-for-food programme for Iraq. Nevertheless, having claimed higher motives for invading Iraq, America and its allies can only expect to be judged by more exacting standards than those by which others are measured.

It's a good and fair point, John. But I note who he has willingly surrounded himself with, and IF this report of the dressing-down is true and IF he is finally realizing what this could all mean based on who he has relied on and constantly defended, then it's almost too damn late.

Also, please remember that little filmed skit he did joking about looking for WMDs. Maybe he was only guilty of bad taste, but I still find it telling.

"The unbelievers are condemned! We will be redeemed!"
vs
"The Christians are hypocrites! We are not hypocrites!"

"Van Halen rules, Motley Crue sux!"
vs
"Motley Crue reigns supreme, Van Halen are fags!"

etc. etc. etc. etc. It is not helpful or constructive, and only in the last instance is it harmless & even then I'd argue that divisive rhetoric sets the stage only for more divisive rhetoric

c.e.o president my ass. ceos fire people all the time.

Hey, I slept on the night of 9/11, too, and I hadn't been running about all day doing whatever Bush does in times of crisis (poss. sucking his thumb) - I'm not quite an unfeeling monster. Who would you rather have in charge, the guy who got six hours of sleep vs. the guy who's been up for 48 hours straight?

OK, according to some people, I am an unfeeling, inhuman monster for not having the proper response to 9/11.

x-post - Like it or not, we can't be sure that Bush was 'responsible' for the people who died in 9/11. Even if he failed his duties in some way, he wasn't the guy who did it, he wasn't the guy who ordered it done.

Bush has never shown any indication to me that he's less of a feeling (if not thinking) person than any President before him. They've all ordered people to their death, they've all had innocent people die on their watch.

Well, that's where we differ.

You might have an argument for Ford and Carter, relatively benign compared to their predecessors and their followers. But Clinton had terrorist actions on his watch, killed people, sat by while half a million Iraqi children died. Bush I had Panama and Desert Storm, among others. Reagan - too long to list, just too long.

I didn't establish that as the criteria - people dying is the measure by which some are saying Bush doesn't care. "He didn't sleep on 9/11," and so on.

x-post - Scott, I don't disagree with you, but you're saying Bush is worse, cares less, is more unfeeling. What indicates that, other than he's pursuing policies you disagree with?

What policies? I'll accept that he should ultimately shoulder responsibility (which he never does when something goes wrong) but I don't think the torture was somehow ordered by anyone in the White House.

Bush has never shown any indication to me that he's less of a feeling (if not thinking) person than any President before him. They've all ordered people to their death, they've all had innocent people die on their watch.

the implication is that no president is thinking or feeling because innocent people die on their watch. Sorry if I'm misrepresenting you, but that's how I read it.

Also, I wouldn't say that people who I think are pretty much absolutely evil don't have any intelligence or capability for emotion or feeling (even if it's not deployed in a very obvious way). I mean, I'd argue that Nixon was certainly a thinking and feeling president, although clearly I'd disagree that his thoughts and feelings were ones that I think a president should have.

Other than the policies (which would be enough for most people i would think) it's that jokiness. the smugness. the tough talk that doesn't seem genuine. the evasiveness when questions get too sticky. the repeating of rhetoric over and over instead of talking like a human being to other human beings. people are dying every day. But when i see him i don't get the sense that the gravity of that is somehow on his mind. i could go on, i suppose.

There seems to be evidence (and yet more may be uncovered) that Military Intelligence ordered the torture - and not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan, too. Even if it wasn't ordered by the White House directly, he is the Commander-in-Chief and should be aware of orders from, say, Rumsfeld or Rumsfeld's reports that are enacted in the name of his War on Terror.

I have mixed feelings on torture as a last means to extracting information. (It's pretty clear these weren't interrogations of any sort obv.)

Scott, the smugness and so on are grating, but that looks like a product of his being a lousy public figure/speaker and shy, sheltered person his entire life. Like you say, he doesn't seem genuine - but Clinton was a masterful actor and manipulator. I don't know that he was ever genuine, for the entire eight years. Ditto for Reagan, Nixon and JFK, maybe LBJ.

"Similar"?? Like all *their* pre-emptive invasions, for instance?

xpost

A superhero, that one.

But believe me, I served four years in the Army under Reagan, and there is NO comparison to if I was doing it now. I feel extremely lucky. To suggest that nothing about how W conducts his presidency is unprecedented (at least in recent history) seems completely bizarre.

But no, the Bush Presidency is hardly unprecedented. Looking purely at the international death toll resulting from his actions, he comes in on the low end compared to everyone since LBJ. His domestic policies are a little bit of Bush I/Clinton and a lot of Reagan.

You're defining Bush II into an ever-narrowing spectrum of 'bad things' to make him the exception rather than the rule.

And what, exactly, does this have to do with Bush II, Milo?? (And while they may not be thoughtless, overriding/ignoring Powell's Iraq advice for sure made W's neo-con brain trust *reckless* with plenty of innocent people's lives, and apparently clueless to boot.)

x-post to Alex
He hasn't. I'm not saying he has shown himself to be a compassionate, caring individual. God knows I hate the guy and have since 1992. (fuckyoustadiumtax)

The things he's done as mentioned here - joking about WMDs, joking about the woman on death row in Texas before, etc. - are kind of standard-issue rich fratboy fuckhead behavior. And I don't see that it's any different from his predecessors - all I'm saying is that he hasn't appeared to be any less feeling (but far less thoughtful) than the others.

A President's attitude toward troops, or attitude toward compassion, or joking about serious things matter less to me than what a President does with those troops or in those serious matters. Joking about death vs. ordering the death of hundreds or thousands - the former is just insignificant and irrelevant in comparison. That's where they all really come close to each other.

The examples being brought up to damn Bush were about how much he cares for his own troops - I'm saying that this measure is insignificant to me, compared to how much he cares for innocent people. And in that, they almost all fail the test.

It is loaded, but almost all of the people who die in a bombing campaign - whether it's shock and awe or Sudan or wherever - are going to be noncombatants. I count those as innocent people in terms of warfare.

I don't think we're watching the same broadcasts. Did you watch the Al-Arabiya non-apology? I'm not saying that Bush isn't saddened by the images, I really have no idea, but he hasn't really demonstrated how upset he is, which, no matter how much you disdain politics, is incredibly important to our credibility in the eyes of Iraqi's and our allies. Bush's refusal to apologize until after he was criticized for not doing so in every major media outlet illustrates that he doesn't understand the gravity of the situation. So regardless of the fact thatt Bush is a human being who is probably personally upset by pictures of Iraqis being tortured, all he has shown as a leader is a complete disconnect between the torture and the way the war has been conducted.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will tell congressional committees Friday that he plans to form an independent panel to review how the Pentagon handled investigations into allegations of abuses of Iraqi prisoners, a senior administration official said.

He also will bring a poster-sized blowup of a Pentagon press release to counter accusations that he tried to keep lawmakers in the dark about the case.

He will also bring dancing clowns, a big pointer to refer to the blowup, and a theme song in his new role as "Uncle Donny."

Thursday morning, Rumsfeld canceled a planned speech in Philadelphia to focus on his Friday testimony. He met Thursday morning with four Republican members of the Senate Armed Service Committee.

One of those members, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, told CNN that Rumsfeld was upbeat and confident. He said Rumsfeld believes there's a "rational" explanation for everything that happened in the prison.

?!?!?

"Well, see, that one guy who was naked on the leash, he just wanted to participate in a bonding exercise, heh heh."

"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. "

'Private, put a cigarette in your mouth and point at these prisoners while smiling, or it's 30 days in the cooler.'

that picture would be abhorrent if i could actually work out what's going on in it, shudder

this desire to pin the blame on Rumsfeld for all this seems stupid to me. he may be an asshat but why don't people focus on blaming the actual direct perps for once? does Rumsfeld control them remotely? is it in US military serviceman conduct doctrines to indulge in sick bullying and torture (don't answer that)? mind you Leicester manager Micky Adams offered to resign after some of his players were involved in an alleged sex attack so i guess the same 'logic' CAN apply here

yeah, right.

The Taguba report indicates that the military police may have been used to "soften up" detainees in Afghanistan before interrogations there as well. Without providing details, the report includes a reference stating that recent intelligence collection in support of the Afghan operation used the military police to "actively set favorable conditions for subsequent interviews. Such actions generally run counter to the smooth operation of a detention facility, attempting to maintain its population in a compliant and docile state."

The senior Republican congressional source said some Republicans are privately saying an apology may be too little, too late.

The aide summed up the comments of some GOP lawmakers as saying an apology, and the creation of an independent panel Rumsfeld is also slated to announce, should have been offered long before Rumsfeld's job was on the line.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, an Armed Services Committee member and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said asking Rumsfeld to step down is premature and sends the wrong message.

But he said there are "more questions and more questions and more questions" that need to be answered about the way the scandal has been handled.

"I think ultimately you have to go right up the chain to the secretary of defense or to the civilian leadership of the military. ... We don't know where this is going to lead," said Roberts.

May 7, 2004
Abuse Suit Focuses on a Guard Involved in Earlier Scandal
By NINA BERNSTEIN

Seven years ago, Raymond L. Cotton was a central figure in a federal prison scandal so big it had a cinematic name: Operation Badfellas. He was one of 12 guards accused by the government of turning a federal jail in Brooklyn into a Mafia social club where, in exchange for bribes, mob inmates could dine on smuggled-in manicotti while plotting crimes with their associates.

Unlike all the other guards arrested in the scandal, Mr. Cotton, then president of his union local, never lost his job. (The bribery charges against him were dropped after the government's chief witness was accused in an unrelated drug case.)

Now once again, he is a central figure in a ballooning prison scandal at the same place, the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. But while he was accused before of supplying Absolut vodka, pasta and garlic to criminals, now he is accused in a lawsuit of denying food, phone calls and medical care to abused Muslim detainees, and of physically humiliating them in ways that resemble the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers facing court-martial.

Once again, despite a blistering Justice Department report about widespread physical abuse at the Brooklyn detention center, Mr. Cotton remains on the job. Yesterday morning, he answered the phone at his office, where, as "Counselor Cotton," he is the chief liaison between detainees and the outside world.

How he has kept that position of authority after two major scandals is a deepening mystery to Stephen T. Grogan, the lead federal investigator on the Badfellas case. Mr. Grogan wrote a 70-page report submitted to the Federal Bureau of Prisons four years ago that detailed eight years' worth of evidence of corruption against Mr. Cotton, but the prosecution was derailed by the unrelated accusations.

"Based on the information that I had collected on him, this guy was involved in criminal activity and should no longer have been an employee of the Federal Bureau of Prisons," said Mr. Grogan, who retired last year. "All of that evidence was turned over to them. They should have taken administrative action, and if they had, maybe Cotton would not be involved in this current complaint."

As "Counselor Cotton," the 15-year veteran of the federal prison system was named as a defendant in a federal lawsuit filed on Monday by lawyers for Ehab Elmaghraby and Javaid Iqbal, two Muslim men who say that he and at least a dozen other federal officers and guards physically mistreated them during months of detention in the center's maximum-security unit after Sept. 11, 2001.

Among other allegations, the lawsuit charges that during a strip-search on Jan. 8, 2002, "Defendant Cotton willfully and maliciously pushed a pencil into Mr. Elmaghraby's anal cavity," that he denied Mr. Iqbal's requests for medical care after he had been beaten up, and that he prohibited detainees from calling their lawyers or disconnected such calls as soon as the men began to complain of the abuse.

The accusations closely track findings by the Justice Department's inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, in two scathing reports issued last year. Those findings detail a pattern of mistreatment of detainees in the maximum-security unit at the detention center with evidence that included videotapes of officers slamming unresisting, shackled detainees into walls and mocking them during body-cavity searches. Many of those abused had been picked up in the government's post-9/11 anti-terror sweep and were later released.

Among those faulted in the inspector general's report last June for denying detainees contact with lawyers was an individual who went unnamed but whose job description, "unit counselor," matched Mr. Cotton's.

The Justice Department recently decided not to prosecute any of the officers accused of abuse. Instead, Mr. Cotton could be a candidate for administrative discipline by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, where officials say they have begun their own investigation into officers accused of mistreating detainees.

Asked by a reporter about the accusations against him, now and in the past, Mr. Cotton responded by saying, "Let me send you to my executive assistant." He then transferred the call to an answering machine, but a message never received a response.

In a sworn affidavit in May 1997, Mr. Cotton denied ever bringing contraband into the prison or eating and drinking with inmates. He wrote that over his eight-year career, "inmates have attempted to bribe me with cash, cars, lobsters, hotel rooms, CD's, food, repairs on my wrecked vehicle" more than 50 times. He never reported these attempts at bribery, despite prison rules that he do so, "because I feared for my family's safety and for my own welfare," he wrote in the affidavit.

Dan Dunne, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said he would not comment on pending litigation or, "for privacy reasons," on personnel matters. He would not say why Mr. Cotton retained his position after the bureau received the Badfellas report. But he added, "We understand the importance of taking immediate administrative action against staff when the situation warrants, and any suggestions that we act otherwise are misplaced."

According to the August 2000 inspector general's report on Mr. Cotton, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, a score of inmates and several fellow officers described him as having "a special relationship with organized crime" that included accepting bribes totaling about $30,000 to smuggle in everything from steroids and liquor to veal cutlets, drinking vodka and playing cards with mob inmates, hiding contraband for them in his office, warning them of cell inspections, and even arranging telephone calls for them to place racetrack bets.

On one occasion, detailed in the arrest complaint that resulted in a grand jury indictment for bribery, Mr. Cotton allegedly used his office to stash a gallon of olive oil, a box of garlic, 20 pounds of pasta and 10 hero sandwiches for his inmate clientele. Indeed, a mob inmate told investigators that being on Mr. Cotton's floor was like being on the street, and that the food was so good that he gained 40 pounds.

The contrast with the role the Muslim detainees say Mr. Cotton played with them is striking. In an e-mail message from Pakistan, Mr. Iqbal, who lost 40 pounds during his seven-month detention, described Mr. Cotton "as so hateful to all of us" that when the kitchen mistakenly put an apple on the 9/11 detainees' food tray, he confiscated it.

"He says we should die of hunger," wrote Mr. Iqbal, a cable technician who had worked on Long Island for a decade before being picked up in the anti-terror sweep.

On another occasion, the lawsuit says, after Mr. Iqbal had been badly beaten by other officers while cuffed and shackled, Mr. Cotton denied his requests for medical care, which, like requests for legal calls, typically went through him. In his imperfect English, Mr. Iqbal wrote that Mr. Cotton smiled and told him: "I wish they could have rape you and I would have ask you: Why you came to our country to kill my people?"

Mr. Iqbal was eventually cleared by the F.B.I. of any terrorism link and was returned from the maximum security unit to the general population in the detention center. Even then, Mr. Iqbal said, Mr. Cotton cursed and threatened him, saying that if he ever got out, "My boys gonna kill you."

It is unclear who Mr. Cotton meant by his "boys." In the earlier case, other officers told federal investigators that his friendship with mobster inmates extended to coming in on his day off to play handball with them. Several inmates also gave examples of how he forged, falsified and manipulated computerized visitor lists to allow convicted felons in the jail "so that mob business could be conducted in the M.D.C. waiting room," the report said.

Ten other guards accused in the Badfellas scandal went to prison; an 11th was fired when prosecutors dropped his case. After the Bureau of Prisons received the Badfellas report, said Mr. Grogan, the federal investigator, it sent him upstairs as counselor on the maximum security unit. When the shackled detainees arrived, he was the one they had to turn to.

-----
Good ol' girl who enjoyed cruelty
By SHARON CHURCHER in Fort Ashby
May 7, 2004

POINTING crudely at the genitals of a naked, hooded Iraqi, the petite brunette with a cigarette hanging from her lips epitomised America's shame over revelations US soldiers routinely tortured inmates at Abu Ghraib jail near Baghdad.

Lynndie England, 21, a rail worker's daughter, comes from a trailer park in Fort Ashby, West Virginia, which locals proudly call "a backwoods world".

She faces a court martial, but at home she is toasted as a hero.

At the dingy Corner Club Saloon they think she has done nothing wrong.

"A lot of people here think they ought to just blow up the whole of Iraq," Colleen Kesner said.

"To the country boys here, if you're a different nationality, a different race, you're sub-human. That's the way girls like Lynndie are raised.

"Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey. Every season here you're hunting something. Over there, they're hunting Iraqis."

In Fort Ashby, in the isolated Appalachian mountains 260km west of Washington, the poor, barely-educated and almost all-white population talk openly about an active Ku Klux Klan presence.

There is little understanding of the issues in Iraq and less of why photographs showing soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company, mostly from around Fort Ashby, abusing prisoners has caused a furore.

Like many, England signed up to make money and see the world. After her tour of duty, she planned to settle down and marry her first love, Charles Graner.

Down a dirt track at the edge of town, in the trailer where England grew up, her mother Terrie dismissed the allegations against her daughter as unfair.

"They were just doing stupid kid things, pranks. And what the Iraqis do to our men and women are just? The rules of the Geneva Convention, do they apply to everybody or just us?" she asked.

She said she didn't know where her daughter was being held, but had spoken to her on the phone.

"She told me nothing happened which wasn't ordered by higher up," she said.

"They are trying to pin all of this on the lower ranks. My daughter was just following orders. I think there's a conspiracy. "

A colleague of Lynndie's father said people in Fort Ashby were sick of the whingeing.

"We just had an 18-year-old from round here killed by the Iraqis," he said.

"We went there to help the jackasses and they started blowing us up. Lynndie didn't kill 'em, she didn't cut 'em up. She should have shot some of the suckers."

Six soldiers from the 372nd are facing court-martial.

The commander of the prison service in Iraq, Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, 50, has been suspended from duty and is expected to be charged.

Colleagues of the tough, super-fit officer last night described her as a woman with one mission – to raise her own profile.

Sources also said soldiers at Abu Ghraib, where Saddam Hussein was held after his capture, were often drunk – including when the shocking pictures were taken.

One colleague said: "Janis sees herself as making way for women to get to the top in the US Army. But many of her soldiers said she had been promoted beyond her ability because she was a woman.

"She was out of her depth and on a mission to raise her own profile. Now, she ll be forced to quit.

"She should have been aware what her troops were doing, but she wasn't."

Another soldier facing charges is Staff Sergeant Ivan Chip Frederick, 37, of Dillwyn, Virginia.

His father, Ivan Frederick, 76, said his son, an ex-prison guard, sent him a journal outlining the barbaric treatment of Iraqi PoWs.

He said his son was a scapegoat.

"He was unhappy with what he saw. There is no way Chip would do these things unless he was ordered to do," Mr Frederick said.

Pentagon officials have confirmed that other alleged incidents of torture under Brig-General Karpinski's regime were being investigated.

A military source said: "The word is that she was told it would be beneficial if the prisoners were willing to talk.

"Let's just say a blind eye was turned to certain events."
-----

Not that it matters anymore, but I meant: no matter how professional the prison guards should be in working with the prisoners, it's not a surprise if those prison guards would use their anger over 9/11 as an excuse for mistreating the Iraqi prisoners: "Since I can't kick Al-Queda's (or whoever) ass, I'll take my latent frustration out on you" sort of deal.

Hahah...bnw, did you just call the Daily Telegraph liberal? It's called the Daily Torygraph by some for a reason.

"The Democrats are quitting, calling the war unwinnable while we have our men and women and their families sacrificing every day" charged Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

By this logic, I wonder if this guy thinks we should still be in Vietnam.

Most in the pity party equal "learning" with cash. (As in finding some to afford tuition.) The idea of using initiative to search for scholarships and grants must seem like too much hard work.

Somebody had to vote for Bush.

True. Let me know when you find one.

All meant with luv. :-)

Anyway, the larger point about how 'mocking hillbillies = shit' stands. To take one personal example from my experience: some of the more concise expressions of anger towards Bush I've ever heard came from folks living near Shreveport, LA, where there's a large military base to boot.

West Virginia has had several Republican governors though

I am not going to spend an iota of pity on someone who, through their actions and/or words, has made it clear that they would consider me to be subhuman.

SO DOES CALIFORNIA. SAY HI TO THE GOVERONATOR FOR ME. SOMEBODY'S GOT TO VOTE FOR HIM.

Anyway, having several relatives from West Virginia, I can assure you that the state is not filled with people like those quoted in the article.

Haha! OTM.

(xpost Fritz absolutely 100% OTM)

Wisely and obviously so, sir. And indeed Fritz OTM.

There's a lot of free flowing blame going around and little in the way of responsibility of dealing with this systemic problem. Rumsfeld spin controls. Someone blames the CIA, another says it was hillbilly-upbringing, another says it was the soldiers just blowing off steam. I can't remember the last time I've seen such a large disconnect since the trial of the officers that beat up Rodney King.

I was born and grew up in this part of Appalachia, actually. My parents live there. It's insane seeing how Fort Ashby gets portrayed because.. yeah, it's a tiny ass town with nothing to do and probably crappy schools, like all the others around there, but it's only 10 miles from Cumberland which is a decent-sized place. Take it from me when I say that not everybody in that part of the country is an ignorant racist. Yeah, some of them are. It's strange, I never heard or saw anything whatsoever about the Klan being active anywhere around there. That's weird.

Trailer trash torturer
who shames U.S.

From BRIAN FLYNN
in New York

A SICKENING new torture picture featuring an evil woman U.S. soldier shocked the world yesterday.

Lynndie England is seen holding an animal lead around the neck of a naked Iraqi PoW in a notorious Baghdad jail.

England was ALSO the smirking soldier pointing to a prisoner’s genitals in the first shock pictures last week.

The former chicken factory worker from a dirt-poor town is pregnant by one of the other brutes pictured torturing prisoners.

England, 21, was facing a court martial last night.

The latest row threatened to cost American Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld his job.

The rail worker’s daughter comes from a family who live at the end of a dirt track in the isolated community of Fort Ashby, Virginia.

Military officials last night confirmed she is pregnant with a child by Charles Graner, 35 — another of the six soldiers accused of torture.

Agony ... a naked inmate cuffed to a bunk
arches his back as arms are splayed back
Picture: REUTERS

Part-time soldier England joined the Army reserves while still at school — and often wore bits of the uniform into class.

Most locals in the hard-up Appalachian mountains region are poor, barely educated and white.

She was obsessed with thunderstorms and had grand ideas about being a meteorologist.

Instead, she left school for a job in a local grocery store and married a workmate.

But they were together less than a year before divorcing.

Her next job was on the night shift of a chicken processing plant before she was called up for duty in Iraq with 372nd Company, Military Police.

Her role at the notorious Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad — where the pictures were taken — was to process prisoners and take fingerprints.

Obscenity ... hooded and naked Iraqi
prisoner is chained to the door of his cell
Picture: REUTERS

England’s new fiance Graner is a former Marine who was accused of beating up his ex-wife during their bitter divorce.

An Army report has revealed he supervised much of the torture.

England — ordered home in disgrace — is now restricted to the US Army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, awaiting her fate.

She has been demoted from Private First Class and faces a court martial.

The latest torture pictures taken on a digital camera shocked America yesterday. As well as the new shot of England, another shows a naked inmate with a pair of knickers pulled over his head.

Exposed ... England in first shocking snap

He is handcuffed to a bunk bed with his arms splayed so wide that his back is arched. Other horrific pictures included wounded men and corpses.

In one, a dead man with his right arm missing is lying in the back of a truck, his shirt, face and remaining arm covered in blood.

Another shows a soldier grinning and giving a thumbs-up as he leans over a grey, decomposing corpse.

President George Bush yesterday apologised to Jordan’s King Abdullah.

He said: “I told him I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families.”

It is the FIRST time the American leader has publicly said sorry for the sickening treatment.

Sick ... England's lover Graner
poses with prisoners

He did not offer an apology during interviews with two Arabic TV stations designed to quell the international outrage. Mr Bush himself was furious at the pictures — and with his defence chief Mr Rumsfeld.

He called the Pentagon boss to the Oval Office and read him the riot act for not alerting him to the pictures before they appeared on TV.

It is the first time the President has allowed his displeasure at a senior member of his government to be made public. And sources said it was a sign that there were doubts over Rumsfeld’s future.

The Defence Secretary yesterday cancelled a speech to concentrate on preparing for a grilling by senators.

But a White House spokesman yesterday insisted: “The President appreciates the job he is doing.”

A BRITISH soldier with the Royal Lancashire Regiment last night claimed to have given military police the names of comrades he witnessed beating PoWs. The unnamed man described one incident where a corporal poked his fingers in a screaming captive’s eyes.
Meanwhile, US tanks yesterday destroyed the offices of rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the Iraqi holy city of Kerbala. Six of the fanatic’s Mehdi Army fighters were killed and one American was wounded.

And a website message from Osama Bin Laden was reported to offer 10 kg of GOLD — worth around £76,000 — to anyone who kills UN Secretary General Kofi Annan or US Iraq administrator Paul Bremer.

'Story' defended

FAKE photos claiming to show British troops torturing an Iraqi PoW were defended by the boss of the Daily Mirror’s parent company yesterday.

The Trinity Mirror chairman told a shareholders’ meeting: “It’s a major story. We think we’ve done a good job. The core issue raised is about very serious allegations of brutality and torture.”

But the pictures have been widely denounced as fakes which could put Our Boys in danger of reprisals.

Iraq is 'Japan after WW2'

Optimistic ... Mark Kirk

By TIM SPANTON

IRAQ today is like Germany and Japan a year after World War Two, a top US politician claimed yesterday.

Mark Kirk, from the House of Representatives’ powerful appropriations committee, says few in 1946 thought the Axis powers could thrive as democracies.

Articles claiming the Allies won the war but were losing the peace were similar to those about Iraq.

Mr Kirk, 44, said: “The question in 1946 was how to prevent a third world war.

“The question today is, what must the international community do to make sure we do not have a third Iraqi war?

“The war correspondent John Dos Passos wrote in 1946 that the US occupation of Germany had failed.

“The Germans hated us, the French hated us more. Everyone thought we were liberators — now we were looters.

“If 24-hour news channels had been available, they would have said turning the Germans and Japanese into liberal democrats was crazy.

“Yet now they are at the heart of a democratic part of Asia and a democratic Europe.

“That’s what we’re moving towards here in the Middle East.”

Dog killer cop guilty

A BRITISH military policeman who kicked a dog to death while on duty in Iraq was found guilty of “cruel and disgraceful conduct” at a court martial yesterday.

Cpl Adam Matthew Lee, 23, could be jailed for up to two years and dismissed from the ranks when he is sentenced next month.

Lee, of Ramsey, Cambs, killed the little white stray mongrel — which had become an unofficial mascot for troops — at a compound last June.

A hearing in Germany heard that he punched the air in celebration when he finished kicking it to death.

I don't know how close Daniels, Hometown or Mineral Wells are to Ft. Ashby, though.

Michael White OTM.

I may have overstated or badly explained myself. I agree that lazy geo-profiling sucks. What Ms. England did appears to be evil to me and defending her with lame diatribes about whether the Geneva Convention only applies to us is beneath contempt both morally and intellectually. In as much as the coverage has portrayed her as a West Virginian yokel they may be lazy, or they may be simply stating the facts. She is from WV. She lives in a trailer at the end of a dirt track. If you wish me to accept that not all people in those circumstances are evil and ignorant (which, of course I already do), you have to be thick-skinned enough to accept that some are. That right-wing socialism (i.e. the Military) is her only option or her best option is just the reality of the country we live in right now. She has just as much business as anybody else in uniform to be there. As to evangelists, I can't wait to see the look on Jesus' face when he gets back and sees what they (and others) have done in his name.

Army bullets in short supply
America searches for 2nd firm to make enough ammunition

EDINA, Minn. — Alliant Techsystems Inc., the U.S. Army’s sole supplier of bullets, said it can’t keep up with demand that is rising to its highest level since the Vietnam war as the United States fights terrorism and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

... Alliant is in talks to expand its Army-owned Lake City facility to produce another 300 million rounds and the Army is seeking a supplier of 500 million more. Demand could be this high for five years, Murphy said.

-----
But Rumsfeld warned the committee that the worst was yet to come. He said he had looked at the full array of unedited photographs of the situation at Abu Ghraib for the first time Thursday night and found them “hard to believe.”

“There are other photos that depict incidents of physical violence towards prisoners, acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane," he said. “... It’s going to get a good deal more terrible, I’m afraid.”

Rumsfeld did not describe the photos, but U.S. military officials told NBC News that the unreleased images showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi female prisoner and “acting inappropriately with a dead body.” The officials said there was also a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.
-----

Since April 1, an average of five U.S. troops has been killed in Iraq every day. A year after Baghdad first fell, the insurgency is stronger than ever, and U.S. forces require intelligence to help defend themselves from insurgent attack. But the ideological assumption of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" is that most Iraqis welcome the presence of the Coalition troops, while those resisting are a tiny minority of local thugs and foreign terrorists. The reality on the ground, as experienced by tens of thousands of U.S. troops, may be quite different. Polls show that a majority of Iraqis now want the U.S. to leave immediately, and as much as half the population sees violence against Coalition forces as justified in some circumstances. Military commanders on the ground have begun to adapt their tactics to a reality quite different from the official spin of a liberating mission challenged only by foreigners and desperate thugs: At Fallujah, the Marines have given security responsibility to former Iraqi generals who are publicly celebrating the city's "victory" over the U.S., and are recruiting to the new Fallujah security force some of the very people that fought the Marines for control of the city.

U.S. forces are now operating in an environment in which their enemies sometimes have considerable popular support, and they are difficult to distinguish from the civilian population. Under such conditions, interrogation tactics may be necessary to save lives. The key question, though, is whether the prison guards acted on their own, or whether Military Intelligence had issued any general instructions to "soften up" the detainees ahead of interrogations — as those charged with carrying the abuses argue in their defense. No clear answer on this question emerged in Friday's testimony.

The ICRC has a strict policy of never publicly releasing its reports into prison conditions.

But on Friday the Wall Street Journal quoted parts of the 24-page report. It alleges, among other things, that prisoners were kept naked in cells, in darkness and without facilities.

It says prisoners were beaten, in one case leading to death, and that soldiers fired on unarmed prisoners from watchtowers, killing some of them.

The report concludes there have been serious violations of the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of prisoners of war.

The report says the ill-treatment was widely tolerated, especially with regard to extracting information from Iraqis.

The report is at odds with the position of the US government, which insists that cases of abuses were isolated.

ICRC director of operations, Pierre Kraehenbuehl, disputed this.

"We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system," he said.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) warned of further shocks, saying, "The worst is yet to come."

"The American public needs to understand, we're talking about rape and murder here," Graham told reporters in the hallway. "We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience; we're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges."

Graham did not provide further details, and Pentagon officials could not confirm his account.

Military officials who are viewing additional photos and newly disclosed digital video images said the number and nature of the pictures make them certain to further inflame public opinion.

Rumsfeld said he had viewed portions of one of two compact discs, but did not view the second CD, which included video images.

The nature of the additional images was described as more troublesome than those already released publicly, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said. One of the photo images was described as involving oral sex between two people, at least one of whom was a detainee, he said.

A video image on the second CD involved what one defense official familiar with the contents described as "an assault."

"Appalling and jarring" images are intermingled with "benign" photos of soldiers in Iraq, Di Rita said. However, he added, "there are definitely pictures that involve sexual activity."

As if learning were a bad thing, my good man.

But overall responsibility must be shouldered by the man at the top who authorised the invasion, and thus stands for all that comes of it; Bush. But, no... he wouldn't do an LBJ would he? He's too concerned about getting re-elected to ever be that bothered about the path he is leading the country down...

Hopefully Blair will have gone in a few months; I and so many others will never vote for Labour with his 'record' of 'leadership', on the international stage. Leading us to disaster... He's a handicap to Labour, and people had better realise that, or they'll have a nasty shock come elections. Brown would significantly improve Labour's prospects; whether he could sever the close alliance with Bush is a moot point, but if Bush were defeated in Oct./Nov., that may not be the relevant question... Brown should be more able to focus on a domestic agenda that is far more positive for Labour, especially as his policies as chancellor have done more than Blair ever has to achieve economic and public-service successes.

I mean, seriously, what?

I know America is several countries really, rather than a cohesive One Nation... but certain values do get transmitted through US popular culture. I don't think sex should be the issue however; there is more of a violence and gun problem in U.S. society... yet it is a problem that many righteous Religious Rightists see sex as the greatest problem in modern America...

One has, Stuart, to see how this sort of thing would appear *outside of* the parochial prism of one's own perspective.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40133000/jpg/_40133905_dogs_abuse_203.jpg

His latest report, and a CNN interview yesterday. Some key points:

When I asked retired Major General Charles Hines, who was commandant of the Army’s military-police school during a twenty-eight-year career in military law enforcement, about these reports, he reacted with dismay. “Turning a dog loose in a room of people? Loosing dogs on prisoners of war? I’ve never heard of it, and it would never have been tolerated,” Hines said. He added that trained police dogs have long been a presence in Army prisons, where they are used for sniffing out narcotics and other contraband among the prisoners, and, occasionally, for riot control. But, he said, “I would never have authorized it for interrogating or coercing prisoners. If I had, I’d have been put in jail or kicked out of the Army.”

...

At a Pentagon news conference last week, Rumsfeld and Marine General Peter Pace, the Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, insisted that the investigation into Abu Ghraib had moved routinely through the chain of command. If the Army had been slow, it was because of built-in safeguards. Pace told the journalists, “It’s important to know that as investigations are completed they come up the chain of command in a very systematic way. So that the individual who reports in writing [sends it] up to the next level commander. But he or she takes time, a week or two weeks, three weeks, whatever it takes, to read all of the documentation, get legal advice [and] make the decisions that are appropriate at his or her level. . . . That way everyone’s rights are protected and we have the opportunity systematically to take a look at the entire process.”

In interviews, however, retired and active-duty officers and Pentagon officials said that the system had not worked. Knowledge of the nature of the abuses—and especially the politically toxic photographs—had been severely, and unusually, restricted. “Everybody I’ve talked to said, ‘We just didn’t know’—not even in the J.C.S.,” one well-informed former intelligence official told me, emphasizing that he was referring to senior officials with whom such allegations would normally be shared. “I haven’t talked to anybody on the inside who knew—nowhere. It’s got them scratching their heads.” A senior Pentagon official said that many of the senior generals in the Army were similarly out of the loop on the Abu Ghraib allegations.

Within the Pentagon, there was a spate of fingerpointing last week. One top general complained to a colleague that the commanders in Iraq should have taken C4, a powerful explosive, and blown up Abu Ghraib last spring, with all of its “emotional baggage”—the prison was known for its brutality under Saddam Hussein—instead of turning it into an American facility. “This is beyond the pale in terms of lack of command attention,” a retired major general told me, speaking of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. “Where were the flag officers? And I’m not just talking about a one-star,” he added, referring to Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the commander at Abu Ghraib who was relieved of duty. “This was a huge leadership failure.”

The Pentagon official told me that many senior generals believe that, along with the civilians in Rumsfeld’s office, General Sanchez and General John Abizaid, who is in charge of the Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, had done their best to keep the issue quiet in the first months of the year. The official chain of command flows from General Sanchez, in Iraq, to Abizaid, and on to Rumsfeld and President Bush. “You’ve got to match action, or nonaction, with interests,” the Pentagon official said. “What is the motive for not being forthcoming? They foresaw major diplomatic problems.”

---

In an interview Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition," Hersh said he learned that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the American commander in Iraq, put U.S. prisons under the command of military intelligence in November and changed procedures that allowed military police to participate in interrogations.

Hersh said he believed the pressure was on last fall to end a steadily rising insurgency -- and that military intelligence officers being pressured from above passed it on to military police guarding detention facilities.

A recommendation from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller -- then commander of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and now in charge of all U.S. detention centers in Iraq -- made that concept easier to put into play, Hersh writes.

Miller's recommendation suggested a more active role for military police in interrogation procedures, prompting Sanchez to give military intelligence command over the facilities, Hersh reports in his article.

Military intelligence, in turn, pushed MPs to "loosen up" their prisoners, Hersh told CNN.

"The evidence suggests that cameras were part of the interrogation process," said Hersh, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his article on the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.

"One of the ways you could get more leverage was shame, humiliation, to threaten to show these photos to neighbors, others."

Yep, handled REAL well here. The father of the first guy up on a court-martial charge, in an interview from late last month, is not impressed:

But Daniel Sivits, in an interview from April 30, said he thought the abuse scandal stemmed from a lack of leadership.

"All it is lack of leadership, lack of instruction and lack of standard operating procedure and everyone at the top is covering their butts," Daniel Sivits said. "My only question is this: Where was the leadership?"

Jeremy Sivits was charged with conspiracy to maltreat subordinates and detainees, dereliction of duty for negligently failing to protect detainees from abuse and cruelty and maltreatment of detainees, Kimmitt said.

If convicted of all charges, he could face one year in prison, reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of two-thirds of his pay for a year, a fine or a bad conduct discharge, military officials said.

Daniel Sivits said he spent 22 1/2 years in the military and his son grew up in the military. "He knows how to follow instructions," he said.

I do agree that leadership failed spectacularly here, but I still don't see much concern that, in the lack of SOPs, the main instigators are corrections officers in their non-Reservist lives.

Yep, it's a Monday.

Military newspaper the Army Times has joined in with an editorial in effect calling on Mr Rumsfeld to be sacked.

The private newspaper, widely circulated at military bases, says Mr Rumsfeld and his top general, Richard Myers, should be held accountable for their failures.

"On the battlefield, Myers' and Rumsfeld's errors would be called a lack of situational awareness - a failure that amounts to professional negligence," the newspaper says.

But earlier, Vice-President Dick Cheney described Mr Rumsfeld as the best defence secretary the US has ever had.

I want Cheney's drugs because they sure are effective.

http://foreign.senate.gov/about.html

Here is a couple of lists of people to email, if interested.

I've got emails into both of my senators, my congressman and the two senators from my home state.

I'm planning on hitting all of the members of the Armed Services Committee and Senate Committee on Foreign Relations tonight.

China + India + the "islamic world" is about half the world, and that doesn't count social conservatives everywhere else. I'm guessing there are at least twice as many people in the world, hypocritically or not, who would describe America (as well as the rest of the west) as sexually decadent as would describe America as sexually puritanical. I'd bet well over half of Americans would too.

http://www.navytimes.com/content/editorial/pdf/050604dodprisonrebuttal.pdf

From the Military Times editorial:

The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish. From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and isolated. The message to the troops: Anything goes.

In addition to the scores of prisoners who were humiliated and demeaned, at least 14 have died in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army has ruled at least two of those homicides. This is not the way a free people keeps its captives or wins the hearts and minds of a suspicious world.

...

Myers, Rumsfeld and their staffs failed to recognize the impact the scandal would have not only in the United States, but around the world.

If their staffs failed to alert Myers and Rumsfeld, shame on them. But shame, too, on the chairman and secretary, who failed to inform even President Bush.

He was left to learn of the explosive scandal from media reports instead of from his own military leaders.

On the battlefield, Myers’ and Rumsfeld’s errors would be called a lack of situational awareness — a failure that amounts to professional negligence.

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.

Now THAT's cold.

— Giorgio Ra'Shadd, lawyer for alleged Abu Ghraib prisoner abuser Pvt. Lynndie R. England.

PHOTOS SHOW AMERICAN SOLDIERS HAVING SEX WITH ONE ANOTHER

Pentagon possesses three disks of photos, one of which includes some brief video clips. Many of the photos are redundant, and some have little to do with Iraqi detainees but show sex between U.S. soldiers... Pentagon officials prevailed at least temporarily in their insistence that the administration not immediately release the images, which include the forced masturbation of a detainee...

Pentagon officials say they are still deciding whether the photographs seen by Mr Bush and others not yet published in the media should be released publicly.

With new pictures surfacing almost every day - the latest showing soldiers with dogs surrounding a naked prisoner - efforts to draw a line under the scandal appear to have failed.

Troops praised

Mr Bush pledged that any US soldiers who abused prisoners would be brought to justice.

"The conduct that has come to light is an insult to the Iraqi people and is an affront to the most basic standards of morality and decency," he said.

The president also praised the more than 200,000 US military personnel who had served in Iraq since the conflict began last year.

"I know how painful it is to see a small number dishonour the honourable cause in which so many are sacrificing," he said.

The BBC's Justin Webb in Washington says Mr Bush was trying to reassure US troops, and at the same time end suggestions that Mr Rumsfeld should resign.

Calls for him to leave have been made by opposition politicians and various newspapers, including the Army Times which published an editorial in effect calling on Mr Rumsfeld to be sacked.

The private newspaper, widely circulated at military bases, says Mr Rumsfeld and his top general, Richard Myers, should be held accountable.

"On the battlefield, Myers' and Rumsfeld's errors would be called a lack of situational awareness - a failure that amounts to professional negligence," the newspaper says.

People really are still having sex!

The latest nationwide opinion poll suggests, for the first time, that a majority now believe it was not worth fighting.
is mulling whether to release them to the media.