Todays Post has this article: http://tinyurl.com/5djw9 On the systematic way that the US has violated human rights, and engaged in torture since since before the Iraq war started and since. All the while denying that it is doing anything wrong and claiming that the abuses were the work of a small cadre of miscreants:
"The June 25 report -- sent by the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency to Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone -- is among dozens of documents made public yesterday that allege brutal and sometimes illegal military interrogation methods employed against prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."
Previous reports had criticized the former head of the Justice Department, John Ascroft for his role in justifying such abuse. But his replacement, is no better. He is the man who as white house counsel wrote the justifications for torture that the US has been using to justify it's illegal behavior. This is awful stuff. And it directly contradicts other reports by the Government such as this one:
http://tinyurl.com/6zenh
That seek to put the blame for abuses on non-existent guidance. It is clear from the documents that there is plenty of guidance, but the Government doesn't want to admit that it is using torture as an instrument of state terror abroad in it's effort to "fight terrorism".
"In the documents, government witnesses describe the regular use of violence -- much of it inflicted on prisoners by a top-secret task force devoted to capturing "high-value targets" in Iraq -- more than seven months after a fact-finding mission reported to senior defense officials that the unit was beating prisoners."
This is evidenced by the report:
"There is no record, among the documents made public yesterday or previously, that makes clear whether the abuses -- separate and apart from the highly publicized incidents at Abu Ghraib -- have stopped or whether anyone has been held responsible for them."
If the administration were serious about stopping the abuse it would put out clear guidelines on the subject and punish those responsible. But as evidenced by the promotion of the very people who originated the guidelines they deny they follow it is pretty clear where they really stand and that they are lying about it:
"The Bush administration, which continues to portray prisoner abuses as isolated events and the Pentagon's response as swift, fought vigorously to keep the new documents from public view. The American Civil Liberties Union released 43 of them after compelling the Bush administration to provide them -- many still heavily censored -- in a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act."
If these guys keep up, we can pretty much expect that act to be repealed soon. Along with most of what we think of as our constitutional protections. The ACLU is already suing to find out just how much these methods -- justified as applying to the war on terrorism -- are being applied to domestic groups with no terrorist agenda.
As Lawyer George Mickum said:
"To detain anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world, indefinitely, under any rules they devise, that just can't be -- must not be -- the law of the land," he said."
http://tinyurl.com/53zwk
And it is not law -- it is outlaw behavior.
Unfortunately in this administration the people behind these techniques are being rewarded and scapegoats are being found to take the blame. The lawyer who wrote the regs excusing torture; promoted. The men commanding the Special forces who oversaw the torture? Promoted. The Hapless MP's who thought it was fun to participate -- punished.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact
"she was in charge of three large jails, eight battalions, and thirty-four hundred Army reservists, most of whom, like her, had no training in handling prisoners."
Major General Geoffrey D. Miller who was behind the abuses at Abu Gharaib in the first place:
Article
"was appointed in April 2004 to run the Enemy Prisoner of War Camps in Iraq, "replacing Gen. Janis Karpinski [who] was suspended amid investigations into the allegations that U.S. soldiers abused Iraqi inmates at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison."
Miller was rewarded for abuses he was directly involved in, while Karpinsky was punished for, apparantly, not being able to stop him. So far the prosecutions have confined themselves mostly on the hapless and stupid people who allowed themselves to be photographed doing pornographic things with prisoners who otherwise were being beaten,tortured and subjected to sleep-deprivation by the "special teams" he heads. It doesn't seem the military minded the torture, they just didn't like the publicity.
Karpinski, who was the least involved senior officer on the scene was relieved of command for being either naive enough to not cover her behind or negligent in not doing more to stop the MP's from passing around photos of it.
This is amazing.
Posted by: chris_holte at December 9, 2004 04:07 PM