CONTENTS / BLOG (13), Just World Campaign

• A world where everyone understands one another is a better world.

   Hans Malv, malv@telia.com , Sweden, www.2-2.se/en/index.html , (by e-mail, May 28, 2004), first displayed on WWW April 14, 2004
   SWEDEN: This document deals with language difficulties within the EU [European Union], the UN [United Nations] and the world at large and the importance of reaching an agreement over which language should be used for international communication. Additionally, the document addresses the reasons for why it is important to preserve and protect "small" languages. This has to be done to save many of them from extinction.
   The UN has six official languages, the EU will soon have 20 which is both difficult to manoeuvre and expensive.
   My name is Hans Malv and I am a medical doctor. I have written this document on my own initiative and am thus not working for an organisation or pressure group. Nor have I received any compensation for writing this piece. Why then have I written it? My reason for doing so is my belief in the importance of communication between all people who share this planet, even if they belong to different linguistic areas.
   My address is: Slåttervägen 9, SE-239 31 Skanör, Sweden
   If you want to write me a letter, please write in English, but I can't promise you an answer.
   "The boundaries of my language are the boundaries of my universe" --Ludwig Wittgenstein.

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This series begins at: http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/cont.htm    We can decrease the costs of the EU by 500 million pounds or 800million USD. In the long run we will be able to decrease the cost of the UN by comparable amounts. The money can be used where it is better needed. A more peaceful world follows as a bonus.
   This concerns your world. You have a responsibility here.
   In a few years it may suffice to learn two languages; one's mother tongue and a language for the rest of the world. Knowing two languages will be enough to be able to speak to and understand all other people. 2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2 [...]
A better world
   If all children and adolescents around the world were to begin to learn Esperanto today [as a second language], they would be able to communicate freely with each other in a few years time. The youth of today are the adults of tomorrow. We can give them a better world to live in, a world without language barriers.
   To give all children around the world an elementary education would cost an additional 6 billion dollars. (I do not know if this sum includes the study of languages.) In comparison, Europeans today spend 105 billion USD on alcohol. In 1987, the military expenditure of the world's governments amounted to 840 billion USD (all figures according to the UN). It is better to teach a man to use a fishing rod than to give him a fish.
   Do you accept that millions of children around the EU and the rest of the world are forced to spend a large portion of their school years studying your language (English) or other foreign languages that most students will never master? Would you not spare coming generations from this, given that there is a far superior alternative?   . . . [Apr 14, 04]
• Bush's secret war plan revealed.

   The Sunday Times, Perth, W. Australia, http://www.sundaytimes.news.com.au/common/ story_page/0,7034,9305042%255E1702,00.html , From Calvin Woodward and Siobhan Mcdonough in Washington, Associated Press, Apr 17 2004
   WASHINGTON: US President George W. Bush secretly ordered a war plan be drawn up against Iraq less than two months after US forces attacked Afghanistan and was so worried the decision would cause a furore he did not tell everyone on his national security team, according to a new book on his Iraq policy.
   Bush feared if news got out about the Iraq plan as US forces were fighting another conflict, people would think he was too eager for war, journalist Bob Woodward writes in Plan of Attack, a behind-the-scenes account of the 16 months leading to the Iraq invasion.
   Asked about the claims today, Bush said: "I do know that it was Afghanistan that was on my mind and I didn't really start focusing on Iraq 'til later on."
   The Associated Press has obtained a copy of the book, which will be released in the United States next week.
   "I knew what would happen if people thought we were developing a potential war plan for Iraq," Bush is quoted as telling Woodward. [Apr 17, 04]
• RC Justice Commission says Australia 'bullying' East Timor.

CathNews (from Church Resources, Australia), "Commission says Australia 'bullying' East Timor," http://www.cathnews.com/news/404/89.php , Apr 20 2004
MELBOURNE, Australia: East Timor and Australia showing the oilfields much closer to the former. 68kb. CathNews 20 Apr 04

East Timor and Australia showing the oilfields much closer to the former. 68kb. CathNews 20 Apr 04

Melbourne's Catholic Commission for Justice Development and Peace has accused the Australian government of making a "greedy grab" for the Timor Sea oil revenue to the detriment of East Timor.
   Australia and East Timor are engaged in talks in Dili this week to establish a permanent maritime boundary in the oil-rich Timor Sea. Australia had earlier won an 82% slice, but East Timor wants the new seabed boundary no further away than halfway between the two countries.
   Commission executive officer Marc Purcell said under the International Law of the Sea, the boundary should be drawn in the sea halfway between the two countries - handing East Timor two-thirds of the oil riches.
   He said the Australian government has refused to submit to the international "umpire", the International Court of Justice, to resolve the dispute.
   "If a line were drawn half way in the sea between the two countries, two thirds of these riches would lie closer to East Timor and, according to the International Law of the Sea, be rightfully theirs," Mr Purcell said.
   Officials fear negotiations could drag on for decades, with Australia preferring to meet only twice a year for boundary talks, while the East Timorese wanted to meet monthly. ...
SOURCE:
Australia 'bullying' E Timor over oil (AAP/Sydney Morning Herald 19/4/04)
LINKS:
THIRTY BILLION REASONS TO HELP EAST TIMOR TO ITS OIL (Catholic Commission for Justice Development & Peace 18/4/04)
TIMOR LESTE AND THE TIMOR SEA (Australian Catholic Social Justice Council Briefing, March 2004)
East Timor fears grim future (The Age 20/4/04)
East Timor turns up pressure over boundary negotiations (ABC Radio The World Today 19/4/04)
The line share (The Australian 20/4/04)
Timorese fury at 'immoral oil grab' (The Guardian 19/4/04)
Timor Sea, Boundaries and Oil (ETAN) | Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri" Timor Sea oil is passport from poverty (ETAN 2/9/02)
Office of Territory Development: Timor Sea Oil and Gas
Angola's bishops want oil wealth shared (The Tablet 17/4/04) [Apr 20 2004]
• Crushing democracy by closing Aboriginal-TSI assembly.

The West Australian, "Crushing democracy," letter from John Massam, p 20, Tuesday April 20 2004
   AUSTRALIA: The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission [ATSIC] should not be abolished, even though it is accused of waste and nepotism. Surely our three levels of government are often accused of exactly the same thing.
   One huge government-controlled enterprise, for example, spent $3 billion buying an overseas information technology asset really worth about $1 billion. Its value has now dropped to about zero.
   ATSIC is the second elected Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander body that Canberra has set up, and later abolished.
   Haven't our indigenous people got enough problems of their own without us abolishing ATSIC? Isn't this teaching them that democratic bodies can be crushed, and the rest of us won't care?
   What would happen if it was our turn and our parliaments were abolished? [April 20 2004]
• Rapist's backer is school counsellor. [Weygers]
   The West Australian, http://www.thewest.com.au/20040426/news/general/tw-news-general-home-sto123893.html , by BEN MARTIN, page 1, Monday, April 26 2004
   PERTH: A civil libertarian who claims serial rapist Gary Narkle has more to fear from women than they have to fear from him is a psychologist in several Perth primary schools.
   WA Council for Civil Liberties president Peter Weygers, who counsels students as a Department of Education psychologist, claimed Narkle had been wrongly convicted of rape at least three times, angering parent groups and politicians.
   Mr Weygers, an ardent Narkle supporter, yesterday compared the violent rapist with soccer star David Beckham, who has been beset by a sex scandal.
   "Some women are drawn to David Beckham because he is rich and famous and some women are attracted to Gary Narkle," Mr Weygers said. "Women like this are attracted to him, they will turn around and do it again. He is blamed when they voluntarily have sex with him and later regret it."
   He said Narkle, who was freed on Friday after prosecutors said his alleged 14th victim was too distraught to testify against him, was not a danger to women.
   "He is a sensitive person, he is an artist and these women have turned to him and then have regretted it."
   Mr Weygers, who was awarded a Centenary of Federation Medal for the advancement of human rights and civil liberties, said he was a registered psychologist and had been a school counsellor for 32 years but had not done a proper psychological assessment of Narkle.
   WA Council of State School Organisations president Rob Fry said the statements were likely to be raised at a State council meeting next week.
   Attorney-General Jim McGinty said Mr Weygers' comments were bizarre and it was unhelpful for someone who had not read the legal and psychological reports to be making hurtful and shallow comments.
   Education and Training Minister Alan Carpenter refused to comment but Education director-general Paul Albert said the matter would be investigated.
   [COMMENT: The follow-up letters and newsitems went on for three more days. It was sad to see civil libertarian "elder" Brian Tennant fall into the hole of trying to defend Mr Weygers' bizarre comments. The defence by Mike Ward was as regrettable as his recent claim that women's spending on cosmetics was as bad as men's spending on liquor. COMMENT ENDS.]
[April 26, 04]
• Australians need to curb immigrants and cut back to stop harming the land.
   Joondalup Community newspaper, "An unsustainable population," Guest Columnist, Dr John Coulter, founding member, Sustainable Population Australia, www.population.org.au , p 6, Thursday, May 6, 2004
   PERTH, Western Australia: Reservoirs are half full. Australians have just experienced one of the worst droughts on record. The Earth is hotting up. The last decade has seen a series of years in which overall global temperatures have been the highest since records began.
   These climate change events are just one indication of the increasing impact which humans are having on nature. Loss of animal and plant species, spreading salinisation of once-productive soils, decline of fish stocks, pollution and damage to rivers and ground water are a few of the many other indicators.
   What is going on? What are the fundamental drivers of these damaging impacts?
   Humans are one species among millions yet we are adversely affecting all others and even damaging the physical and biological processes on which both humans, animals and plants depend. These impacts are intensifying, causing many to worry about the world that we leave for our children and more distant descendants.
   On average each human is making too large a demand on the environment and there are too many human beings making these demands.
   The significance of each factor differs in different parts of the world.
   In poor countries the individual demand may be small but the population may be very large. In rich countries like Australia the population may seem small but the effect both locally and globally is very large and unsustainable because each of us, on average, makes such a large demand on the environment.
   Australians are not living sustainably in and on Australia. Our demands on the global environment are also unsustainable.
   If we care about the Australia we leave for our children each of us must work at reducing his or her environmental damage. But even more importantly we must seek to stabilise the size of our population as rapidly as possible.
   We must resist attempts to increase the fertility rate and seek a much lower immigration intake, restricting that smaller intake to genuine refugees and substantially increasing our very mean contribution to foreign aid.
(Dr Coulter was in Perth last month for a conference on population growth.) [May 6, 2004]
• Red Cross explains position over Iraq detention report and treatment of prisoners; been telling Powell and Coalition Forces throughout much of 2003; written report to Bremer in February 2004.

   International Committee of the Red Cross, www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/5YRMYC?OpenDocument , May 7, 2004; GENEVA, Switzerland. [...]
   A second point I would like to make is that this report includes observations and recommendations from visits that took place between March and November 2003. The report itself was handed over to the Coalition Forces (CF) in February of 2004.[...]
   In that sense the ICRC has repeatedly made its concerns known to the Coalition Forces and requested corrective measures prior to the submission of this particular report.[...]
   ..."we were dealing here with a broader pattern and a system, as opposed to individual acts..." ...
   Some of the elements the ICRC found "were tantamount to torture...."

Iraq: ICRC explains position over detention report and treatment of prisoners

Source: www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/5YRMYC?OpenDocument
International Committee of the Red Cross, May 7, 2004 Introductory statement and summary of main points made by the ICRC's director of operations, Pierre Krähenbühl, at a press conference at the organization's headquarters, 7 May 2004, following the publication by the Wall Street Journal of excerpts of an ICRC report.
   Thank you for joining us at this press conference that the ICRC has called following the publication today of articles in the Wall Street Journal that quote large excerpts from a confidential report on detention in Iraq dated January 2004 and submitted by the ICRC to the Coalition Forces in February 2004.
[PICTURE: The ICRC's director of operations, Pierre Krähenbühl. ©ICRC/T. Gassmann/]
   Let me say that the President of the ICRC, Mr Jakob Kellenberger, is today in Brussels. Had he been in Geneva, he would have addressed you personally. As you are aware, President Kellenberger has been directly, regularly and recently dealing with issues related to detention of people in US hands. This Wednesday, he took the initiative of discussing the ICRC's observations and concerns related to Abu Ghraib prison with Secretary of State Colin Powell over the phone. You will have seen references in the media to this and to the fact that Secretary Powell indicated that the ICRC findings were taken very seriously.
   In his absence, President Kellenberger has asked me to share the following ICRC position with you:
   I would like to begin by underlining that the report (excerpts of the report) was made available to the public without the consent of the ICRC. The preparation and submission of such reports is part of the ICRC's standard procedures in the field of its visits to prisoners worldwide.
   As a reminder, the ICRC last year visited 469,648 detainees, held in 1,923 places of detention, in about 80 countries.
   These reports carry a specific mention that they are strictly confidential and intended only for the authorities to which they are presented. It adds that the reports may not be published, in full or in part, without the consent of the ICRC.
   As already indicated this report was, however, released without our consent. In view of the fact that this notion of confidentiality is an element vital to obtaining access to prisoners world-wide and that access is in turn essential for us to carry out meaningful work for the persons detained, the ICRC is unhappy to see this report being made public.
   A second point I would like to make is that this report includes observations and recommendations from visits that took place between March and November 2003. The report itself was handed over to the Coalition Forces (CF) in February of 2004.
   It is important to understand that this report represents the summary of concerns that were regularly brought to the attention of the CF throughout 2003.
   I should perhaps explain here briefly how these visits work:
   ICRC delegates traditionally negotiate access to all persons deprived of their freedom in situations of armed conflict or internal violence. Upon obtaining such access they carry out detailed visits to a given prison, police station or any other type of detention place. They do this to review the overall functioning of the prisons and well-being of the prisoners.
   They meet individually with the detainees for private talks, without the presence of witnesses. This allows them to ascertain the treatment and conditions of detention and enables the prisoner to write a message to his or her family.
   The visits end with a formal talk with the detaining authority to share findings and concerns and to make recommendations for improvements. [ Read both pages at: www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/cont13.htm#redcross ]

   This is important to understand in the sense that what appears in the report of February 2004 are observations consistent with those made earlier on several occasions orally and in writing throughout 2003. In that sense the ICRC has repeatedly made its concerns known to the Coalition Forces and requested corrective measures prior to the submission of this particular report.
   Both for Abu Ghraib and for other places of detention in Iraq, oral and written interventions of the ICRC specifically recalled the laws and norms that States have committed themselves to respect by adhering to the Geneva Conventions.
   You are well aware of the insistence of the ICRC, stated bilaterally and publicly for months now, on the importance of full respect for international humanitarian law (which includes the Geneva Conventions) that represents a crucial and relevant set of rules aimed at preserving the life and dignity, and the lawful treatment, of prisoners.
   Thank you.

Responding to questions from the journalists present Mr. Krähenbühl also made the following points:
   How the ICRC transmitted the report to the detaining authorities:
The report in question was handed to Mr. Paul Bremer and Lt-Gen. Ricardo Sanchez in February 2004; various aspects of its contents had been discussed with the Coalition authorities at different times and at different levels during 2003 and included in documents submitted to them; "I won't go into the details but ... they don't concern only issues of water and food but also clearly of treatment."
   On feedback from the authorities and the impact of the ICRC's reporting:
On a number of occasions the ICRC was assured that its findings were being taken very seriously, and that measures would be taken; in later visits there were indications that some of the material problems had been addressed; however, more remained to be done, particularly given that "we were dealing here with a broader pattern and a system, as opposed to individual acts..."
   On questions of treatment raised in the leaked report:
Some of the elements the ICRC found "were tantamount to torture.... I think you will have different definitions of what torture amounts to; what we feel, and I think what you see from the photographs...is that there were clearly instances of degrading and inhumane treatment."
   On the dilemma of confidentiality and maintaining access to prisoners:
The extracts of the leaked report shows how the ICRC approaches detention problems; "there were situations that remained unacceptable and difficult and there were others that were worked on �" and that is the kind of approach that we have.... in terms of reputation it is certainly valued by many people �" first and foremost by the people we visit..." The ICRC believed that its visits made a difference �" "Had we not [thought so], we would maybe have come to another conclusion and taken other measures..." Source: International Committee of the Red Cross, May 7, 2004
www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/5YRMYC?OpenDocument [To view the leaked Red Cross Report, click: www.truthout.org/mm_01/4.rcr.iraq.pdf. For a free PDF reader, click Adobe® Acrobat® Reader™, or obtain one from an internet magazine's CD-ROM.]
www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/cont13.htm#redcross

[May 7, 2004]
• Chain of Command. How the Department of Defense mishandled the disaster at Abu Ghraib.
   New Yorker, New York, USA, http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040517fa_fact2 , by SEYMOUR M. HERSH, Issue of 2004-05-17, May 9, 2004
   NEW YORK: In his devastating report on conditions at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq, Major General Antonio M. Taguba singled out only three military men for praise. One of them, Master-at-Arms William J. Kimbro, a Navy dog handler, should be commended, Taguba wrote, because he "knew his duties and refused to participate in improper interrogations despite significant pressure from the MI" -- military intelligence -- "personnel at Abu Ghraib." Elsewhere in the report it became clear what Kimbro would not do: American soldiers, Taguba said, used "military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee."
   Taguba's report was triggered by a soldier's decision to give Army investigators photographs of the sexual humiliation and abuse of prisoners. These images were first broadcast on "60 Minutes II" on April 28th. Seven enlisted members of the 372nd Military Police Company of the 320th Military Police Battalion, an Army reserve unit, are now facing prosecution, and six officers have been reprimanded. Last week, I was given another set of digital photographs, which had been in the possession of a member of the 320th. According to a time sequence embedded in the digital files, the photographs were taken by two different cameras over a twelve-minute period on the evening of December 12, 2003, two months after the military-police unit was assigned to Abu Ghraib. An Iraqi prisoner and American military dog handlers. Other photographs show the Iraqi on the ground, bleeding.
   One of the new photographs shows a young soldier, wearing a dark jacket over his uniform and smiling into the camera, in the corridor of the jail. In the background are two Army dog handlers, in full camouflage combat gear, restraining two German shepherds. The dogs are barking at a man who is partly obscured from the camera's view by the smiling soldier. Another image shows that the man, an Iraqi prisoner, is naked. His hands are clasped behind his neck and he is leaning against the door to a cell, contorted with terror, as the dogs bark a few feet away. Other photographs show the dogs straining at their leashes and snarling at the prisoner. In another, taken a few minutes later, the Iraqi is lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a soldier sitting on top of him, knee pressed to his back. Blood is streaming from the inmate's leg. Another photograph is a closeup of the naked prisoner, from his waist to his ankles, lying on the floor. On his right thigh is what appears to be a bite or a deep scratch. There is another, larger wound on his left leg, covered in blood.
   There is at least one other report of violence involving American soldiers, an Army dog, and Iraqi citizens, but it was not in Abu Ghraib. Cliff Kindy, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, a church-supported group that has been monitoring the situation in Iraq, told me that last November G.I.s unleashed a military dog on a group of civilians during a sweep in Ramadi, about thirty miles west of Fallujah. At first, Kindy told me, "the soldiers went house to house, and arrested thirty people." (One of them was Saad al-Khashab, an attorney with the Organization for Human Rights in Iraq, who told Kindy about the incident.) While the thirty detainees were being handcuffed and laid on the ground, a firefight broke out nearby; when it ended, the Iraqis were shoved into a house. Khashab told Kindy that the American soldiers then "turned the dog loose inside the house, and several people were bitten." (The Defense Department said that it was unable to comment about the incident before The New Yorker went to press.)
   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."
   The International Red Cross and human-rights groups have repeatedly complained during the past year about the American military's treatment of Iraqi prisoners, with little success. In one case, disclosed last month by the Denver Post, three Army soldiers from a military-intelligence battalion were accused of assaulting a female Iraqi inmate at Abu Ghraib. After an administrative review, the three were fined "at least five hundred dollars and demoted in rank," the newspaper said.
   Army commanders had a different response when, on January 13th, a military policeman presented Army investigators with a computer disk containing graphic photographs. The images were being swapped from computer to computer throughout the 320th Battalion. The Army's senior commanders immediately understood they had a problem -- a looming political and public-relations disaster that would taint America and damage the war effort.
   One of the first soldiers to be questioned was Ivan Frederick, the M.P. sergeant who was in charge of a night shift at Abu Ghraib. Frederick, who has been ordered to face a court-martial in Iraq for his role in the abuse, kept a running diary that began with a knock on his door by agents of the Army's Criminal Investigations Division (C.I.D.) at two-thirty in the morning on January 14th. "I was escorted . . . to the front door of our building, out of sight from my room," Frederick wrote, "while . . . two unidentified males stayed in my room. 'Are they searching my room?' " He was told yes. Frederick later formally agreed to permit the agents to search for cameras, computers, and storage devices.
   On January 16th, three days after the Army received the pictures, Central Command issued a blandly worded, five-sentence press release about an investigation into the mistreatment of prisoners. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said last week that it was then that he learned of the allegations. At some point soon afterward, Rumsfeld informed President Bush. On January 19th, Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the officer in charge of American forces in Iraq, ordered a secret investigation into Abu Ghraib. Two weeks later, General Taguba was ordered to conduct his inquiry. He submitted his report on February 26th. By then, according to testimony before the Senate last week by General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, people "inside our building" had discussed the photographs. Myers, by his own account, had still not read the Taguba report or seen the photographs, yet he knew enough about the abuses to persuade "60 Minutes II" to delay its story.
   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."
   Secrecy and wishful thinking, the Pentagon official said, are defining characteristics of Rumsfeld's Pentagon, and shaped its response to the reports from Abu Ghraib. "They always want to delay the release of bad news -- in the hope that something good will break," he said. The habit of procrastination in the face of bad news led to disconnects between Rumsfeld and the Army staff officers who were assigned to planning for troop requirements in Iraq. A year ago, the Pentagon official told me, when it became clear that the Army would have to call up more reserve units to deal with the insurgency, "we had call-up orders that languished for thirty or forty days in the office of the Secretary of Defense." Rumsfeld's staff always seemed to be waiting for something to turn up -- for the problem to take care of itself, without any additional troops. The official explained, "They were hoping that they wouldn't have to make a decision." The delay meant that soldiers in some units about to be deployed had only a few days to prepare wills and deal with other family and financial issues.
   The same deliberate indifference to bad news was evident in the past year, the Pentagon official said, when the Army conducted a series of elaborate war games. Planners would present best-case, moderate-case, and worst-case scenarios, in an effort to assess where the Iraq war was headed and to estimate future troop needs. In every case, the number of troops actually required exceeded the worst-case analysis. Nevertheless, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and civilian officials in the Pentagon continued to insist that future planning be based on the most optimistic scenario. "The optimistic estimate was that at this point in time" -- mid-2004 -- "the U.S. Army would need only a handful of combat brigades in Iraq," the Pentagon official said. "There are nearly twenty now, with the international coalition drying up. They were wildly off the mark." The official added, "From the beginning, the Army community was saying that the projections and estimates were unrealistic." Now, he said, "we're struggling to maintain a hundred and thirty-five thousand troops while allowing soldiers enough time back home."
   In his news conference last Tuesday, Rumsfeld, when asked whether he thought the photographs and stories from Abu Ghraib were a setback for American policy in Iraq, still seemed to be in denial. "Oh, I'm not one for instant history," he responded. By Friday, however, with some members of Congress and with editorials calling for his resignation, Rumsfeld testified at length before House and Senate committees and apologized for what he said was "fundamentally un-American" wrongdoing at Abu Ghraib. He also warned that more, and even uglier, disclosures were to come. Rumsfeld said that he had not actually looked at any of the Abu Ghraib photographs until some of them appeared in press accounts, and hadn't reviewed the Army's copies until the day before. When he did, they were "hard to believe," he said. "There are other photos that depict . . . acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman." Later, he said, "It's going to get still more terrible, I'm afraid." Rumsfeld added, "I failed to recognize how important it was."
   NBC News later quoted U.S. military officials as saying that the unreleased photographs showed American soldiers "severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi prisoner, and 'acting inappropriately with a dead body.' The officials said there also was a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys."
   No amount of apologetic testimony or political spin last week could mask the fact that, since the attacks of September 11th, President Bush and his top aides have seen themselves as engaged in a war against terrorism in which the old rules did not apply. In the privacy of his office, Rumsfeld chafed over what he saw as the reluctance of senior Pentagon generals and admirals to act aggressively. By mid-2002, he and his senior aides were exchanging secret memorandums on modifying the culture of the military leaders and finding ways to encourage them "to take greater risks." One memo spoke derisively of the generals in the Pentagon, and said, "Our prerequisite of perfection for 'actionable intelligence' has paralyzed us. We must accept that we may have to take action before every question can be answered." The Defense Secretary was told that he should "break the 'belt-and-suspenders' mindset within today's military . . . we 'over-plan' for every contingency. . . . We must be willing to accept the risks." With operations involving the death of foreign enemies, the memo went on, the planning should not be carried out in the Pentagon: "The result will be decision by committee."
   The Pentagon's impatience with military protocol extended to questions about the treatment of prisoners caught in the course of its military operations. Soon after 9/11, as the war on terror got under way, Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly made public his disdain for the Geneva conventions. Complaints about America's treatment of prisoners, Rumsfeld said in early 2002, amounted to "isolated pockets of international hyperventilation."
   The effort to determine what happened at Abu Ghraib has evolved into a sprawling set of related investigations, some of them hastily put together, including inquiries into twenty-five suspicious deaths. Investigators have become increasingly concerned with the role played not only by military and intelligence officials but also by C.I.A. agents and private-contract employees. In a statement, the C.I.A. acknowledged that its Inspector General had an investigation under way into abuses at Abu Ghraib, which extended to the death of a prisoner. A source familiar with one of the investigations told me that the victim was the man whose photograph, which shows his battered body packed in ice, has circulated around the world. A Justice Department prosecutor has been assigned to the case. The source also told me that an Army intelligence operative and a judge advocate general were seeking, through their lawyers, to negotiate immunity from prosecution in return for testimony.
   The relationship between military policing and intelligence forces inside the Army prison system reached a turning point last fall in response to the insurgency against the Coalition Provisional Authority. "This is a fight for intelligence," Brigadier General Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored Division, told a reporter at a Baghdad press briefing in November. "Do I have enough soldiers? The answer is absolutely yes. The larger issue is, how do I use them and on what basis? And the answer to that is intelligence . . . to try to figure out how to take all this human intelligence as it comes in to us [and] turn it into something that's actionable." The Army prison system would now be asked to play its part.
   Two months earlier, Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the task force in charge of the prison at Guantanamo, had brought a team of experts to Iraq to review the Army program. His recommendation was radical: that Army prisons be geared, first and foremost, to interrogations and the gathering of information needed for the war effort. "Detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation . . . to provide a safe, secure and humane environment that supports the expeditious collection of intelligence," Miller wrote. The military police on guard duty at the prisons should make support of military intelligence a priority.
   General Sanchez agreed, and on November 19th his headquarters issued an order formally giving the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade tactical control over the prison. General Taguba fearlessly took issue with the Sanchez orders, which, he wrote in his report, "effectively made an MI Officer, rather than an MP officer, responsible for the MP units conducting detainee operations at that facility. This is not doctrinally sound due to the different missions and agenda assigned to each of these respective specialties."
   Taguba also criticized Miller's report, noting that "the intelligence value of detainees held at . . . Guantanamo is different than that of the detainees/internees held at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities in Iraq. . . . There are a large number of Iraqi criminals held at Abu Ghraib. These are not believed to be international terrorists or members of Al Qaeda." Taguba noted that Miller's recommendations "appear to be in conflict" with other studies and with Army regulations that call for military-police units to have control of the prison system. By placing military-intelligence operatives in control instead, Miller's recommendations and Sanchez's change in policy undoubtedly played a role in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. General Taguba concluded that certain military-intelligence officers and civilian contractors at Abu Ghraib were "either directly or indirectly responsible" for the abuses, and urged that they be subjected to disciplinary action.
   In late March, before the Abu Ghraib scandal became publicly known, Geoffrey Miller was transferred from Guantanamo and named head of prison operations in Iraq. "We have changed this -- trust us," Miller told reporters in early May. "There were errors made. We have corrected those. We will make sure that they do not happen again."
   Military-intelligence personnel assigned to Abu Ghraib repeatedly wore "sterile," or unmarked, uniforms or civilian clothes while on duty. "You couldn't tell them apart," the source familiar with the investigation said. The blurring of identities and organizations meant that it was impossible for the prisoners, or, significantly, the military policemen on duty, to know who was doing what to whom, and who had the authority to give orders. Civilian employees at the prison were not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but they were bound by civilian law -- though it is unclear whether American or Iraqi law would apply.
   One of the employees involved in the interrogations at Abu Ghraib, according to the Taguba report, was Steven Stefanowicz, a civilian working for CACI International, a Virginia-based company. Private companies like CACI and Titan Corp. could pay salaries of well over a hundred thousand dollars for the dangerous work in Iraq, far more than the Army pays, and were permitted, as never before in U.S. military history, to handle sensitive jobs. (In a briefing last week, General Miller confirmed that Stefanowicz had been reassigned to administrative duties. A CACI spokeswoman declined to comment on any employee in Iraq, citing safety concerns, but said that the company still had not heard anything directly from the government about Stefanowicz.)
   Stefanowicz and his colleagues conducted most, if not all, of their interrogations in the Abu Ghraib facilities known to the soldiers as the Wood Building and the Steel Building. The interrogation centers were rarely visited by the M.P.s, a source familiar with the investigation said. The most important prisoners -- the suspected insurgency members deemed to be High Value Detainees -- were housed at Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport, but the pressure on soldiers to accede to requests from military intelligence was felt throughout the system.
   Not everybody went along. A company captain in a military-police unit in Baghdad told me last week that he was approached by a junior intelligence officer who requested that his M.P.s keep a group of detainees awake around the clock until they began talking. "I said, 'No, we will not do that'," the captain said. "The M.I. commander comes to me and says, 'What is the problem? We're stressed, and all we are asking you to do is to keep them awake.' I ask, 'How? You've received training on that, but my soldiers don't know how to do it. And when you ask an eighteen-year-old kid to keep someone awake, and he doesn't know how to do it, he's going to get creative.'" The M.I. officer took the request to the captain's commander, but, the captain said, he backed me up.
   "It's all about people. The M.P.s at Abu Ghraib were failed by their commanders -- both low-ranking and high," the captain said. "The system is broken -- no doubt about it. But the Army is made up of people, and we've got to depend on them to do the right thing."
   In his report, Taguba strongly suggested that there was a link between the interrogation process in Afghanistan and the abuses at Abu Ghraib. A few months after General Miller's report, Taguba wrote, General Sanchez, apparently troubled by reports of wrongdoing in Army jails in Iraq, asked Army Provost Marshal Donald Ryder, a major general, to carry out a study of military prisons. In the resulting study, which is still classified, Ryder identified a conflict between military policing and military intelligence dating back to the Afghan war. He wrote, "Recent intelligence collection in support of Operation Enduring Freedom posited a template whereby military police actively set favorable conditions for subsequent interviews."
   One of the most prominent prisoners of the Afghan war was John Walker Lindh, the twenty-one-year-old Californian who was captured in December, 2001. Lindh was accused of training with Al Qaeda terrorists and conspiring to kill Americans. A few days after his arrest, according to a federal-court affidavit filed by his attorney, James Brosnahan, a group of armed American soldiers "blindfolded Mr. Lindh, and took several pictures of Mr. Lindh and themselves with Mr. Lindh. In one, the soldiers scrawled 'shithead' across Mr. Lindh's blindfold and posed with him. . . . Another told Mr. Lindh that he was 'going to hang' for his actions and that after he was dead, the soldiers would sell the photographs and give the money to a Christian organization." Some of the photographs later made their way to the American media. Lindh was later stripped naked, bound to a stretcher with duct tape, and placed in a windowless shipping container. Once again, the affidavit said, "military personnel photographed Mr. Lindh as he lay on the stretcher."
   On July 15, 2002, Lindh agreed to plead guilty to carrying a gun while serving in the Taliban and received a twenty-year jail term. During that process, Brosnahan told me, "the Department of Defense insisted that we state that there was 'no deliberate' mistreatment of John." His client agreed to do so, but, the attorney noted, "Against that, you have that photograph of a naked John on that stretcher."
   The photographing of prisoners, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq, seems to have been not random but, rather, part of the dehumanizing interrogation process. The Times published an interview last week with Hayder Sabbar Abd, who claimed, convincingly, to be one of the mistreated Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib photographs. Abd told Ian Fisher, the Times reporter, that his ordeal had been recorded, almost constantly, by cameras, which added to his humiliation. He remembered how the camera flashed repeatedly as soldiers told to him to masturbate and beat him when he refused.
   One lingering mystery is how Ryder could have conducted his review last fall, in the midst of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, without managing to catch it. (Ryder told a Pentagon press briefing last week that his trip to Iraq "was not an inspection or an investigation. . . . It was an assessment.") In his report to Sanchez, Ryder flatly declared that "there were no military police units purposely applying inappropriate confinement practices." Willie J. Rowell, who served for thirty-six years as an agent of the C.I.D., told me that Ryder was in a bureaucratic bind. The Army had revised its command structure last fall, and Ryder, as provost marshal, was now the commanding general of all military-police units as well as of the C.I.D.
   He was, in essence, being asked to investigate himself. "What Ryder should have done was set up a C.I.D. task force headed by an 0-6" -- full colonel -- "with fifteen agents, and begin interviewing everybody and taking sworn statements," Rowell said. "He had to answer questions about the prisons in September, when Sanchez asked for an assessment." At the time, Rowell added, the Army prison system was unprepared for the demands the insurgency placed on it. "Ryder was a man in a no-win situation," Rowell said. "As provost marshal, if he'd turned a C.I.D. task force loose, he could be in harm's way -- because he's also boss of the military police. He was being eaten alive."
   Ryder may have protected himself, but Taguba did not. "He's not regarded as a hero in some circles in the Pentagon," a retired Army major general said of Taguba. "He's the guy who blew the whistle, and the Army will pay the price for his integrity. The leadership does not like to have people make bad news public." [Emphasis added]
[COMMENT: But then torture is what the DoD (Department of Defence) teaches at the (now renamed) School of the Americas, isn't it? COMMENT ENDS.] [May 9 2004]
• Red Cross Report: Naked in lightless cells; brutality; up to 90% arrested by mistake; breaking house furniture; telling officials Mar-Nov 2003.
   Truthout, "Red Cross Report Describes Abuse in Iraq (Full Report)," http://truthout.org/docs_04/051104B.shtml , By Alexander G. Higgins, The Associated Press, Monday 10 May 2004
   (To view the leaked Red Cross Report: Click Here. A PDF reader is required)
   A Red Cross report disclosed Monday said coalition intelligence officers estimated that 70-90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake and said Red Cross observers witnessed U.S. officers mistreating Abu Ghraib prisoners by keeping them naked in total darkness in empty cells.
   The report by the International Committee of the Red Cross supports its allegations that abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers was broad and "not individual acts" - contrary to President Bush's contention that the mistreatment "was the wrongdoing of a few."
   "ICRC delegates directly witnessed and documented a variety of methods used to secure the cooperation of the persons deprived of their liberty with their interrogators," according to the confidential report.
   The delegates saw in October how detainees at Abu Ghraib were kept "completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness," the report said.
   "Upon witnessing such cases, the ICRC interrupted its visits and requested an explanation from the authorities," the report said. "The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was 'part of the process.'"
   This apparently meant that detainees were progressively given clothing, bedding, lighting and other items in exchange for cooperation, it said.
   It said it found evidence supporting prisoners' allegations of other forms of abuse during arrest, initial detention and interrogation.
   Among the evidence were burns, bruises and other injuries consistent with the abuse that prisoners alleged, it said.
   The 24-page document, confirmed by the ICRC as authentic after it was published Monday by the Wall Street Journal, said the abuses were primarily during the interrogation stage by military intelligence.
   Once the detainees were moved to regular prison facilities, the abuses typically stopped, it said.
   The report cites abuses - some "tantamount to torture" - including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of "imminent execution."
   "These methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information and other forms of cooperation from person who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an 'intelligence value.'"
   The agency said arrests allegedly tended to follow a pattern.
   "Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property," the report said.
   "Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people," it said. "Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles."
   It said some coalition military intelligence officers estimated "between 70 percent and 90 percent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake. They also attributed the brutality of some arrests to the lack of proper supervision of battle group units."
   Pierre Kraehenbuehl, ICRC director of operations, said Friday the report had been given to U.S. officials in February, but it only summarized what the agency had been telling U.S. officials in detail between March and November 2003 "either in direct face-to-face conversations or in written interventions."
   Kraehenbuehl said the abuse of prisoners represented more than isolated acts, and that the problems were not limited to Abu Ghraib.
   "We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system," he said, declining to give further details.
   The report described how male prisoners were forced to parade around in women's underwear.
   It said that information obtained "suggested the use of ill-treatment against persons deprived of their liberty went beyond exceptional cases and might be considered a practice tolerated by" coalition forces.
   Kraehenbuehl said the ICRC regretted the publication and said it would have preferred sticking to its policy of confidential discussions with coalition authorities because the United States had been making progress toward meeting its demands.
   ICRC chief spokeswoman Antonella Notari declined to discuss the full report. [May 10 2004]
• Torture of prisoners is 'normal' for conquest-type wars such as the present illegal occupation of Iraq.
   Information Clearing House, www.informationclearinghouse.info/ , received May 11 2004
   VARIOUS CITIES:
   Exposed: President Bush's Torture and Rape Rooms
Seymour M. Hersh: Chain Of Command
   The man, an Iraqi prisoner, is naked. His hands are clasped behind his neck and he is leaning against the door to a cell, contorted with terror, as the dogs bark a few feet away. Other photographs show the dogs straining at their leashes and snarling at the prisoner. In another, taken a few minutes later, the Iraqi is lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a soldier sitting on top of him, knee pressed to his back. Blood is streaming from the inmate's leg. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6164.htm
Boy, 16, 'was subjected to mock execution by US interrogators':
   American soldiers subjected a 16-year-old Iraqi prisoner to a mock execution inside an American detention centre and made his brothers watch, one of the brothers alleged yesterday. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=519718
Red Cross Was Told Iraq Abuse 'Part of the Process':
   The Red Cross saw U.S. troops keeping Iraqi prisoners naked for days in darkness at the Abu Ghraib jail in October, and was told by the intelligence officer in charge it was "part of the process," a leaked report said on Monday. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5090507
Soldier: Foul photos of inmates were prized:
   Brutality was also in the air. Sindar recalled a 14-year-old Iraqi with a broken arm being hurled to the ground and then mocked by U.S. soldiers as the boy wept and wet himself in the prison intake center. http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/nation/8629607.htm
Top brass 'picked man who ordered torture':
   The creation of torture units was the consequence of orders by the Defence Department -- headed by Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- to prise information out of prisoners. http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9519057^401,00.html
People Court Pronounces U.S. Guilty :
   A 'jury of conscience' declared Sunday after scores of witnesses testified before a 'World Tribunal on Iraq' that "the U.S. government is guilty of committing a war of aggression against Iraq." It also held the United States guilty of committing war crimes. http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=23664
Eric Margolis: Sadism in war old habit:
   Americans should not be surprised their soldiers and intelligence agents are using torture and sexual humiliations to break the will of Iraqis to resist American occupation. That is the nature of colonial warfare and so-called "war of terror." http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2004/05/09/452554.html
Outside the law :
   Mr Rumsfeld, like his president, does not much care for truth. Truth undermines his own portrayal of himself, his administration and his nation as victims. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1213194,00.html
Like the Wehrmacht, we've descended into barbarity :
   The predisposition to see the enemy as inferior, bestial, or outside the law, so the argument goes, produces a rapid descent into casual brutality and mistreatment http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1213035,00.html
Sometimes They Pretended to Kill Me :
   Read this article to understand the facts behind why the Bush Administration continually attacks Al-Jazeera TV News: http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/newsArticle.asp?id=1718
CIA passed on prisoners 'for torture' :
   "We don't kick the **** out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the **** out of them," the official is reported to have said. http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1433692002
What about the other secret U.S. prisons? :
   Across the world, the United States is holding detainees in offshore and foreign prisons where allegations of mistreatment cannot be monitored. It has also been accused of sending terror suspects to countries where information has been beaten out of them. http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=518058.html
In case you missed it
'Too nice' jail commander is fired:
   The commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp - who was criticised in the United States press for being too soft on the inmates - has been dismissed. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/16/1034561210959.html
Postcards from the edge: "We saw the pictures":
   The system of injustice that, since 9/11, we've sent offshore and organized globally -- from Guantanamo, Cuba to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan -- is by its nature also a system of torture. It was designed from the beginning to be a Bermuda Triangle of injustice, existing in an extrajudicial darkness beyond "our" sight or oversight. http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?pid=1430
Robert Fisk: If we see our enemies as inhuman, then we ourselves end up as savages:
   It's not difficult to see how the American thugs at the Abu Ghraib prison acquired their cruelty. Born-again Christians who no doubt publicly wished to be seen upholding a "pure, clean and upright life" treated the Iraqis as if they were "fiends in human form", as "fanatics", as "flies". www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6169.htm [Emphasis added]
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   I need your help to offset the costs associated with site hosting and bandwidth usage. If you find this site informative please help by clicking here www.informationclearinghouse.info/support.htm
In case you missed it.
   Those Who Deny the Crimes of the Past: Reflections on American Racist Atrocity Denial, 1776-2004 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=5135
American Denial:
   A Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday found that six out of ten Americans still believed that the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib were "isolated incidents," the rationalization that all the pundits and spinmeisters led with as soon as the story broke. http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May2004/Mahajan0509.htm
In case you missed it
   16 May, 2003: Coalition 'tortured Iraqi POWs': "In one case we are talking about electric shocks being used against a man and in others people are being beaten for the whole night and are still being kicked and their teeth broken. I think you would call that torture," he said. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3034031.stm
Military Personnel: Don't Read This!:
   How a Pentagon email sought to contain the prison abuse scandal http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,634638,00.html
Rumsfeld Criticized by Army Times Newspaper:
   "While responsibility begins with the six soldiers facing criminal charges, it extends all the way up the chain of command to the highest reaches of the military hierarchy and its civilian leadership. " http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2903288.php
The Media War against Iraq:
   Never have the media been so influential in propagating war against innocent people. We are constantly being propagandised to approve of war. The media and the government sanitize war. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6165.htm
In case you missed it
War Is A Racket:
   A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4377.htm
The Logic of Occupation:
   The face of occupation is not a friendly face, but one that is increasingly at odds with rhetoric. Speak of freedom then ignore it for Palestinians in Israel. Speak of the rule of law, and then sanction the extra-judicial assassinations Israel commits. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6168.htm
In case you missed it
Manhunt in Iraq: Israel Trains U.S. Assassination Squads:
   Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh reveals how a new Special Forces group assembled to "neutralize" Iraqi resistance is working with Israeli commandoes to train in assassination and other tactics - comparable to the Phoenix Program in Vietnam http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5364.htm
The Israeli Torture Template
   Rape, Feces and Urine-Dipped Cloth Sacks http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen05102004.html
Rights groups: Israel imprisons, abuses Palestinian youths:
   More than 300 Palestinian teens are routinely subjected to physical and psychological abuse in Israeli prisons now, two human rights groups charged Monday. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/425849.html
We have met the evildoers... and they are us
   These bright-eyed young Americans are war criminals. They did not achieve such infamy overnight or on their own, however. Rather, just like the Americans they represent back home in Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, and Texas, they gradually lost their bearings as a result of a sustained media- and policy-induced trance asserting that Americans and the United States constitute a special class of humanity: privileged, above the law, stronger, better, and more deserving than others. http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=5496
Failure And Betrayal:
   Has America lost its way, if not its soul, in Iraq ? http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6167.htm
Mandela chides US, Britain over Iraq war:
   "We look on with horror as reports surface of terrible abuses against the dignity of human beings held captive by invading forces in their own country," he said http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/7F8260BC-83C5-42BA-814D-4257AA599A7E.htm
34 killed as U.S. troops clash with resistance fighters:
   U.S. forces stepped up pressure on Shiite gunmen loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, pushing with tanks yesterday into the holy city of Kufa and assaulting militia positions in the narrow streets of a Shiite enclave in Baghdad. At least 34 Iraqis were killed. http://tinyurl.com/2xle8
Four killed in UK air strikes:
   Residents in the southern Iraqi city of Amarah have blamed British air strikes for the deaths of four civilians, including an eight-month-old child. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,1271,-4070210,00.html?=ticker
Gunmen Kill 2 In Kirkuk:
   Officials say a South African is dead and a New Zealander seriously hurt in an ambush in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. The head of Kirkuk's security forces says an Iraqi was also killed by the gunmen. http://www.kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=1853373&nav=0s3dMyi0
Iraq Cleric to Widen War After U.S. Bombs Baghdad HQ:
   Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr Monday ordered his Mehdi Army to launch a broad new offensive against U.S.-led occupying forces following a U.S. crackdown on his strongholds in Baghdad and across the south. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=5091197
Poll: Muqtada al-Sadr, the second most-respected man in Iraq:
   A majority of Iraqis said they'd feel safer if the U.S. military withdrew immediately. http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/nation/8623441.htm
Moqtada Sadr, Militia Seizes Control of Baghdad Slum
   Gunmen and commanders loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr took over the giant Sadr City slum in Baghdad on Sunday, seizing control of police forces in an area just five miles east of U.S. administration headquarters. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13066-2004May9?language=printer
UK: Poll shows majority want UK troops to pull out:
   Should British troops pull out of Iraq by 30th June? 55 per cent: YES - 28 per cent: NO http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=519735
Blair faces resignation call:
   Prime Minister Tony Blair, dogged by speculation about his future, faced a call for his resignation on Sunday by a senior member of his Labour Party. http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=507187
I believed In This War.. I was So Wrong:
   STOP me if I am missing something here, but if former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic can end up on trial for war crimes committed under his leadership, then why can't Tony Blair? http://tinyurl.com/27knp
War tab swamps Bush's estimate:
   With troop commitments growing, the cost of the war in Iraq could top $150 billion through the next fiscal year - as much as three times what the White House had originally estimated. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/05/09/MNGOU6IK1J1.DTL&type=printable
'BRIT TRAINED FOR 9/11' :
   The FBI ignored his warnings that the attacks were imminent. http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13084544,00.html
U.S. Senator Ernest F. Hollings:
Bush's failed Mideast policy is creating more terrorism:
   With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush's policy to secure Israel. http://hollings.senate.gov/~hollings/opinion/2004506A17.html
'Poor paying for war on terror':
   "Some of the world's poorest people are already paying for the war on terror as the giving of aid by the world's richest countries is ruled by the rhetoric of 'with us or against us'. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3696683.stm
Someone Knew: There Were No Weapons of Mass Destruction http://www.counterpunch.org/giebel05082004.html
The Bin Laden Tapes: Fact or Fiction:
   How much do we really know about the origins of these audiotapes, or their authenticity? Precious little time is dedicated to such considerations. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6166.htm
Seven Afghans killed in attack on customs post:
   At least seven Afghans were killed when gunmen attacked a customs post in the southeast of the country, an official said on Monday. http://www.arabtimesonline.com/arabtimes/breakingnews/view.asp?msgID=5769
Israeli minister wants Arabs expelled:
   An Israeli cabinet minister has called for the expulsion of about 1.3 million Palestinian citizens of Israel who constitute nearly one fifth of the state's population. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FED27702-1D56-4699-8BC1-3415D354D3B6.htm
Colombian paramilitaries arrested in Venezuela:
   Venezuelan police have arrested more than 70 Colombian paramilitary fighters who were allegedly plotting to strike against the government in Caracas, according to the country's president, Hugo Ch�vez. http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,12716,1213445,00.html
Two Israeli men arrested after high-speed chase in Tennessee:
   Once the men were apprehended, officers also found a "Learn to Fly" brochure in the truck, leading Harris and others to express concern about security at the Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Erwin. http://newsobserver.com/nc24hour/ncnews/v-print/story/3575253p-3177621c.html
News headlines forSunday 05/09/04 here http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/#05-09-04
   Liberty can not be preserved without general knowledge among people."-- (August 1765) John Adams
   A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.-- Aristotle
   He who does wrong does wrong against himself. He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he makes himself bad.-- Marcus Aurelius
   "The United States stands at the pinnacle of world power. This is a solemn moment for the American democracy. For with primacy in power is joined an awe-inspiring accountability for the future." -- Winston Churchill
   Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -- Voltaire (1694 - 1778)
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   1 YEAR - 31 DAYS ... AND STILL NO WMD FOUND IN IRAQ. [May 11 2004]
• A chain of prisons built in past two years.
   The West Australian, "We disagree" group of letters, letter from Vicki Payne, Cottesloe (Perth), p 18, Wed May 12 2004
   AUSTRALIA: No ... The torture of Iraqi prisoners is not due to "rogue elements" but is systemic according to an International Committee of the Red Cross report.
   Over the past two years America has been building a "gulag" of detention centres from Bagram in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to 10 major facilities in Iraq. ...
• Australia's Downer knew of accusations in January.
   The West Australian, "We disagree" group of letters, letter from Phil Shepherd, Mt Tarcoola, p 18, Wed May 12 2004
   AUSTRALIA: ... Mr Downer knew in January that the US was investigating claims of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners. ... are more politicians now suffering from selective-hearing syndrome? It is time this fiasco ended. ...
• Resign, withdraw, let Muslims keep the Iraq peace.
   The West Australian, "War in Iraq" group of letters, letter from James Black, Redcliffe (Perth), p 19, Wed May 12 2004
   AUSTRALIA: The graphic picture on yesterday's front page demands action. Any resolution of the Iraq conflict will be difficult and the relatives of those who have fallen on both sides will ask why.
   The only sensible process is for George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard to resign immediately and to accept the responsibility for the present chaos.
   The newly elected replacements should call for a ceasefire and request urgent negotiations in the United Nations with all parties represented, including Afghanistan and Iraq.
   The negotiations should revolve around a planned withdrawal of all allied troops. Muslim nations will be nominated as peacekeepers in those two countries after the controlled withdrawal of all other forces.
   Assistance from the West should comprise of financial aid and the savings from the cessation of all military activity will be financially beneficial to all concerned.
• Israeli Intelligence Sends NZ Message Via Asian-Based NGOs.
   Scoop, New Zealand, http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0405/S00133.htm , By Selwyn Manning, Scoop Co-Editor, 11:15 pm, Thursday, May 13, 2004
   NEW ZEALAND: Non-Government-Organisations with New Zealand connections are being sent a stern message from the Israeli intelligence community apparently in retaliation for New Zealand openly trying two suspected Israel intelligence connectives on passport charges.
   South East Asian based non-government organisations are specifically being targeted.
   In April, in a sting titled Operation Cloak, New Zealand Police arrested two suspected Israeli agents on illegal passport charges. Israel asked the New Zealand Government to keep details of the arrest secret and for the matter to be handled diplomatically. New Zealand refused the request.
   Scoop understands Israel is now applying pressure against NGOs based overseas who are operated by New Zealanders with strong connections to the current New Zealand Cabinet.
   Most recent is the Cambodian-based NGO called Global PAC (Global Protect All Children, see global-pac.org), set up to overtly expose human trafficking and child prostitution in the Indo-Chinese region. . . . [May 13, 04]
• A systematic process learned from Cold War.
   The Independent (London), http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=521074 , By Paul Vallely, May 14, 2004
   LONDON: Experts in torture are not surprised by the details in the stories of abuse which continue to emerge from US-run prisons in Iraq. And the more that emerges, the less it seems to be the work of a handful of sadists or perverts. Rather they are in line with sophisticated techniques of modern torture.
   At the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture ( http://www.torturecare.org.uk ) in London, which has dealt with tens of thousands of torture cases over the past three decades, one of its senior staff, Sherman Carroll, said yesterday: "The idea of it being 'a few bad apples' won't wash. It looks increasingly like a systematic process. And there have clearly been conscious attempts by psychologists to make the techniques culturally relative to a Muslim population," he added, referring to reports of enforced nakedness, the simulation of oral sex, forced masturbation and naked human pyramids which seemed calculated particularly to offend followers of Islam.
   The techniques, which rest on principles of psychological disorientation rather than inflicting physical pain, were pioneered in Russia and China after the Second World War. They included humiliation, hooding, disorientation and depriving prisoners of sleep, warmth, water, food and human dignity. The KGB and Chinese secret police passed them on to the North Koreans who used them on Britons during the Korean War.
   British military intelligence applied similar methods in colonies such as Kenya, Aden and Cyprus. They were carried over to Northern Ireland, too. In 1970 a unit from the British Army's intelligence wing deprived 12 IRA suspects of food and sleep, placed hoods over their heads and forced them to lean against walls with only their fingertips while playing into their ears a piercing high-pitch screech of "white noise". When the incident became public, the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that the practices were inhumane, degrading and unlawful. Edward Heath's government banned the techniques in 1971.
   In these years, when the Cold War rather than terrorism was the main threat to the West, the tide turned against torture. In 1984 the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment was enacted. The international community, with the US State Department at the head, set up operations to monitor torture. The State Department still produces annual reports, with Burma, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Turkey being censured in the latest.
   But although both the UK and the US signed up to the convention, both continued to train selected military personnel in them. At Ashford, Kent, and at a former US base at Chicksands, the tactics are used to train soldiers who may be captured behind enemy lines. In R2I - resistance to interrogation - training a strict 48-hour time limit is imposed. Stripping naked and sexual humiliation is part of the system of ill-treatment and degradation.
   But in 1997 it became clear that the United States employs such techniques on its enemies. Then two CIA interrogation manuals became public. They spelt out the theory that detention should prolong the shock of capture by disrupting the things on which the prisoner's sense of identity depends: continuity in surroundings, habits, appearance, relations with others. "Detention should be planned," one manual says, "to enhance feelings of being cut off from anything known and reassuring."
   Psychological rather than physical pain is more effective, one manual says: "The threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself." Threats trigger fears more damaging than pain itself. Actual pain often produces false confessions, whereas psychological pain undermines the prisoner's "internal motivational strength".
   In June last year President George Bush denied that the US was using torture, in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay or Iraq. But on Wednesday his Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, admitted that sleep deprivation, dietary changes and stress positions were being used.
   Pentagon lawyers, according to the US pressure group Human Rights Watch, have drawn up a 72-point "matrix" of acceptable stress, including: stripping prisoners naked, subjecting them to bright lights or blaring noise, hooding them, exposing them to heat and cold (from 110F to 10F), and binding them in uncomfortable positions. The more stressful techniques must be approved by senior commanders, but all are permitted. The lawyers' advice, and the matrix allowing "graduated levels of force", are being kept secret. It is thought to argue that torture conventions do not apply where detainees are formally in the custody of another country.
   Since then a battery of 50-odd special "coercive techniques" was introduced in Iraq last autumn after Major-General Geoffrey Miller left Guantanamo Bay to take over as US commander in charge of military jails there.
   Apologists for the harsher regime insist that it stops just short of torture. Human rights campaigners disagree. The UN Convention says torture means "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental," is inflicted, says Sherman Carroll of the Medical Foundation.
   Such techniques do not work, critics say. "Torture produces hallucinations," says Mr Carroll, "and confessions that may be lies." There are also concerns that interrogators are notoriously poor at regulating the "graduated levels of force". In Israel what was called "moderate physical force" was once lawful and security forces ended up torturing as many as 85 per cent of Palestinian security detainees - thousands of people - before Israel's Supreme Court in 1999 outlawed acts such as shaking prisoners, hoods, 'frog crouching', 'chair perching' and sleep deprivation.
   Despite this, according to Human Rights Watch, the practice seems to have increased in the past year and the head of the American defence contracting firm implicated in the torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison visited an Israeli "anti-terror" training camp in the occupied West Bank earlier this year.
   But US officials insist that torture does work. The leading al-Qa'ida suspect Abu Zubaydah, under "intensive questioning", they say, revealed details of a plot to build a dirty bomb.
   Yet even if it does yield fruits, critics insist that torture is always unacceptable. "Victims of Saddam's regime are re-visiting the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture," says Sherman Carroll. "The recent photos have brought flashbacks of their torture under Saddam." [May 14 04]
• A year's torture by Coalition ends in Iraqi backlash.
   Letter sent to various news media, May 14, 2004
   AUSTRALIA: With all the outcry over the fact that since Fallujah the Iraqi resistance has turned cruel, even following ancient teaching by cutting limbs off and beheading outsiders, we now learn that for about a year the Red Cross or Amnesty have been complaining about the cruelty in the interrogation of captives by the Coalition. Tit for tat?
   Have any commentators, politicians, or courts asked Howard, Blair and Bush about prisoners' rights not to be "interrogated"?
   During World War II the public was told that it was illegal to make prisoners of war give any more information than their name, rank, and serial number. The Gestapo and their Japanese and Soviet counterparts tortured and killed prisoners, but the Allies said they were wicked to do so.
   When the police arrest someone suspected of crime, they are supposed to tell their prisoner that she/he does not have to give information; any they do give may be used in evidence.
   For some years the United States, now pretending that the captives are neither POWs nor criminals, evidently hasn't been following these rules, so why have Australian troops been handing prisoners over to the US?
   [COMMENT: Prisoners of war also are supposed to give their date of birth as well, it seems. - JWC, 03 Jul 04. COMMENT ENDS.] [Letter sent May 14, 04]
• Civil libertarian faces harassment investigation; Sex probe cites Weygers.
   The West Australian, by Ben Martin and Charlie Wilson-Clark, p 4, Sat May 15, 2004
   AUSTRALIA: Education officials have found a prima facie case of sexual harassment against controversial school psychologist and civil libertarian Peter Weygers.
   The preliminary findings have prompted senior officials to launch an independent investigation in the sex harassment claims, which could result in Mr Weygers being disciplined or sacked.
   Two female teachers have accused Mr Weygers, who publicly supported serial rapist Gary Narkle, of sexually harassing them just before Easter.
   The accusations sparked a preliminary investigation in which their allegations were put to Mr Weygers.
   It is understood the officials were not satisfied with Mr Weygers' answer to the women's claims. They appointed an independent investigator to make a finding and, if a breach of discipline is found, recommend a penalty to the director-general of Education and Training.
   The West Australian revealed the sexual harassment claims during a storm of outrage over Mr Weygers' support for Narkle.
   That support is not linked to the harassment probe but education officials said they would launch a separate investigation into Mr Weygers' public comments if they received a complaint.
   They were concerned that Mr Weygers discussed his role as a school psychologist when he claimed women approached Narkle and voluntarily had sex before crying rape.
   He compared the sexual predator's long history of sex crimes to soccer star David Beckham's recent sex scandal.
   "I think (Narkle) has got a problem with the way women deal with him," Mr Weygers said.
   "I think this sort of woman seeks him out. He is a sensitive person, he is an artist and these women have turned to him and then have regretted it afterwards."
   Mr Weygers, banned from contact with students, did not return calls yesterday.
   WA State School Teachers' Union president Mike Keely said the Department of Education and Training should follow strict guidelines in dealing with the case.
   "My understanding is that they should not be making any judgments on it at all," Mr Keely said. "They should be saying they are calling in an investigator to look into the matter -- there are standard procedures for these serious concerns."
   WA Council of State Schools Organisation president Rob Fry said he was pleased to hear the investigation was progressing. [Emphasis added]
   [COMMENT: The union leader is right -- standard procedures ought to be followed. But, it is not up to the Education Department to handle such accusations. There is an anti-discrimination authority, to which the women ought to have addressed their complaints, and the news reporting ought to have been less strident. Mr Weygers' claims that Mr Narkle is a sensitive artistic person are hopelessly "off", because Mr Narkle has been attacking women to rape them since his teenage years. - Just World Campaign, 03 July 2004. COMMENT ENDS.] [Article: May 15, 04]
• Let Muslim countries pacify and rebuild Iraq.
   The West Australian, "War in Iraq" group of letters, letter by John Falconer, Mt Claremont (Perth), p 20, Sat May 15, 2004
   AUSTRALIA: The most sensible letter on Iraq was from James Black (12/5). His suggestion of peacekeepers from Muslim nations and withdrawal of all allied troops is logical. This farce, if allowed to continue, could end up lasting 50 years, as has the Israeli-Palestinian problem. [May 15, 04]
• Atrocities in Iraq: 'I killed innocent people for our government'.
   Information Clearing House, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6201.htm , By Paul Rockwell -- Special to The Bee, Sunday, May 16, 2004
   For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp.
   The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C.
   When I talked with Massey last week, he expressed his remorse at the civilian loss of life in incidents in which he himself was involved. [...]
Q: A demonstration? Where?
A: On the outskirts of Baghdad. Near a military compound. There were demonstrators at the end of the street. They were young and they had no weapons. And when we rolled onto the scene, there was already a tank that was parked on the side of the road. If the Iraqis wanted to do something, they could have blown up the tank. But they didn't. They were only holding a demonstration. Down at the end of the road, we saw some RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) lined up against the wall. That put us at ease because we thought: "Wow, if they were going to blow us up, they would have done it."
Q: Were the protest signs in English or Arabic? A: Both.
Q: Who gave the order to wipe the demonstrators out? A: Higher command. ... [May 16, 04]
• Weygers group in sex trial warning.
   The West Australian, www.thewest.com.au/20040517/news/general/tw-news-general-home-sto125062.html ; by Ben Martin, pages 1 and 8, Monday, May 17, 2004
   PERTH: The storm surrounding civil libertarian Peter Weygers has erupted again with revelations that he befriended the family of an alleged sex attack victim then gave evidence against her in the witness box.
   Mr Weygers, who is also a school psychologist and a supporter of serial rapist Gary Narkle, told the District Court that the girl's family was only after criminal compensation.
   He was giving evidence at the trial of a taxi driver, who at the time was secretary of Mr Weygers' Council for Civil Liberties.
   The taxi driver was accused of forcing the 17-year-old girl to perform oral sex on him in his cab, though he was acquitted at the trial last May. [...]
   ... security officers had to evict a CCL member from court. [...]
   ... the taxi driver was the first person to greet Narkle when he was released from jail last month ... [more on p 8]
• Intimidating witnesses and eyeballing jurors is all in a day's work for the so-called civil rights group; Taking liberties with law.
   The West Australian, http://www.thewest.com.au/20040517/news/general/tw-news-general-home-sto125062.html#target1 ; by Ben Martin, p 8, Monday, May 17, 2004
   PERTH: Fresh questions have been raised about the role and motives of the Council for Civil Liberties after revelations about the group's links to alleged sex attackers and the involvement of its members in a sexual assault trial. [...]
   CCL members packed the public gallery last May during the trial of the council's then secretary, a taxi driver accused of picking up a 17-year-old girl in Northbridge just before dawn in May 2001 and forcing her to perform oral sex. [...]
   In the first extraordinary outburst recorded on the official court transcript, a CCL member yelled as a court official evicted her for trying to intimidate the [complainant] girl's mother.
   "Don't touch me," the woman yelled. "I would like to know why. I have a right as the junior vice-president of the Council for Civil Liberties, I have a right."
   "Excuse me a moment, madam, you are being asked to leave the court for a very good reason," Judge Peter Nisbet said. "You are gesticulating, you are making comments, you are disrupting the proceedings and trying to influence them." [...]
   The taxi driver told The West Australian last night he was disgusted by the CCL's actions at the time and he had resigned from the group immediately after his acquittal. [...]
   ... I thought it would jeopardise my whole trial. ... [May 17, 04]
• US forces inflict sexual, anal, and religious abuse on Reuters news bureau staff.
   Forbes Network, "Reuters staff abused by U.S. troops in Iraq," http://www.forbes.com/iraq/newswire/2004/05/18/ rtr1375639.html , by Andrew Marshall, Reuters, 11:46 AM ET, May 18 2004
   BAGHDAD, May 18 (Reuters) - U.S. forces beat three Iraqis working for Reuters and subjected them to sexual and religious taunts and humiliation during their detention last January in a military camp near Falluja, the three said on Tuesday.
   The three first told Reuters of the ordeal after their release but only decided to make it public when the U.S. military said there was no evidence they had been abused, and following the exposure of similar mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
   Two of the three said they had been forced to insert a finger into their anus and then lick it, and were forced to put shoes in their mouths, particularly humiliating in Arab culture. ... [May 18, 04]
• Report of the Red Cross (ICRC) on the POWs etc in Iraq.
   "Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on the treatment by the Coalition forces of prisoners of war and other protected persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq during arrest, internment and interrogation," http://cryptome.org/icrc-report.htm , February 2004 (sighted and to website May 19, 04)
   IRAQ: . . . Exposure while hooded to loud noise or music, prolonged exposure while hooded to the sun over several hours, including during the hottest time of the day when temperatures could reach 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher;
Being forced to remain for prolonged periods in stress positions such as squatting or standing with or without the arms lifted.
26. These methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information or other forms of cooperation from persons who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offences or deemed to have an "intelligence value."
27. In mid-October 2003, the ICRC visited persons deprived of their liberty undergoing interrogation by military intelligence officers in Unit 1A, the "isolation section" of "Abu Ghraib" Correctional Facility. Most of these persons deprived of their liberty had been arrested in early October. During the visit, ICRC delegates directly witnessed and documented a variety of methods used to secure the cooperation of the persons deprived of their liberty with their interrogators. In particular they witnessed the practice of keeping persons deprived of their liberty completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness, allegedly for several consecutive days. Upon witnessing such cases, the ICRC interrupted its visits and requested an explanation from the authorities. The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was "part of the process". . . .
3.4 Previous action taken by the ICRC in 2003 on the issue of treatment
32. On 1 April, the ICRC informed orally the political advisor or the commander of British Armed Forces at the CF Central Command in Doha about methods of ill-treatment used by military intelligence personnel to interrogate persons deprived of their liberty in the internment camp of Umm Qasr. . . . [E-mailed by Michael P, and sighted May 19, 04]
• PM admits nation misled over Iraqis; now admits Australians knew as early as October.
   The West Australian, Perth, W. Australia, "PM admits nation misled over Iraqis," by Ben Ruse, Canberra, with Sydney Morning Herald, page 1, Wednesday, June 2, 2004
   CANBERRA, Australia: Prime Minister John Howard and top Defence officials were forced yesterday to admit the Federal Government misled the public over when Australian officers knew of prisoner abuse in Iraq
   Mr Howard admitted Australian soldiers knew as early as October of abuse claims against United States forces they did not know until January.
   "I regret very much that I was given the wrong advice. I regret that very much," Mr Howard said after Defence Department secretary Ric Smith and Defence Force chief of staff Gen. Peter Cosgrove apologised to the Senate estimates committee for releasing a misleading statement on the issue last Friday.
   The mea culpas came as it emerged that the scale of Australian knowledge of the abuses and involvement in detention issues was much wider than first thought.
   That included revelations that military lawyer Major George O'Kane briefed the notorious US intelligence unite alleged to have meted out the worst of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. His advice concerned the legality of interrogation procedures.
   It was disclosed that another ADF legal officer, Lt-Col Paul Muggleton, also knew about International Committee of the Red Cross concerns about widespread abuse of prisoners in October.
   Another officer, Colonel Mike Kelly, back now in Iraq, liaised closely with the Red Cross and made seven visits to Abu Ghraib well before Major O'Kane's first contact with the jail in August last year.
   It took 15 hours of questioning by the estimates committee [of the Senate] before Mr Smith and Gen. Cosgrove made a statement of contrition for deceiving Australians.
   Mr Smith said there was no cover-up within Defence and no one should be dismissed over the mix-up. It had resulted from communication problems in the department.
   Mr Howard said it was impossible for him to have personal knowledge of what had gone on. He had relied on information from the Defence Department.
   American defence attorneys for Abu Ghraib prison guards facing court-martial will try to get access to documents written by Major O'Kane.
   [COMMENT: It was not a "mix-up", and did not result from "communication problems". If the Geneva Convention or common decency is breached with United States or others kidnapped by the Iraqi resistance or terrorists, the Australian leadership is quick to point out how it breaches some convention or treaty. Wouldn't any decent public servant be as quick to point out breaches of other prisoners of war? If not, why not?
   The leadership has been acting dishonourably since before the Iraq invasion. In my opinion the Australian Defence Department knew, or ought to have known, within a week or so of the fall of Baghdad. The Australian defence forces fought in Vietnam, so the older members would remember that the US forces used brutality in questioning Vietnamese prisoners of war. So, our Defence Department ought to have been LOOKING for similar treatment under US command, and ought not to ever release any POWs they catch to the USA. In addition, Amnesty International had reported in 2003, and we now know that the International Committee of the Red Cross had been complaining to the Coalition Forces (i.e., USA, UK, and Australia) from soon after the invasion. Some of the "rules" about the torture were on notices on the walls of the Abu Ghraib prison.
   Remember also, a short time before Mr Howard's June 2004 confession, one of the Federal Ministers insulted a television journalist by saying that it was the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Broadcasting Commission that were trying to fix some blame about the torture of the prisoners of war on to Australian defence forces. He repeated it more than once. But the ABC was right to pursue the questions, and so was the Senate. And in this matter, so is the ALP. The Federal Liberal-National Government has told lies about the Iraq situation before, during, and after the invasion. The WA editorial on page 18 did not seem to realise the enormity of the prolonged bouts of lying by the three Coalition partners. - jcm 20 Jun 04. COMMENT ENDS.] [Article: Jun 2, 04]
• Various letters to the Editor about Iraq, the torture, and the Fremantle incident.
   The West Australian, pp 20-21, Wednesday, June 2, 2004
   PERTH, Western Australia:

"US anger": Letters from three US cities objecting to comments on WA off-duty police chasing Notre Dame University students and forcing one down, after an argument about US abuse of prisoners in a Fremantle hotel.

"Hard question": Prime Minister John Howard's statement that US Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had assured him that Australian prisoners David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib had not been mistreated at Guantanamo Bay is akin to asking Hitler if the Jews were being mistreated at Auschwitz. Mr Wolfowitz was asked by the Senate investigation into the Iraq torture claims if he considered putting a wet bag over a prisoner's head for 72 hours was inhumane. ... forced him into answering in the affirmative. ... Michael Macaulay, Bayswater.

"Iraq": ... In Vietnam, the US and its allies were fighting a coherent military and political enemy. In Iraq, there is a melange of religious, political and ethnic groups with diverse objectives, interests and political alignments. I did not support the invasion ... But now ... if would be morally reprehensible if the invaders ... were to retreat and leave Iraq in a mess. Neil Bloomfield, Kallaroo.
   [COMMENT: It is obvious that many people haven't yet faced the reality that an unprovoked invasion, followed by torturing prisoners of war and other prisoners, are NOT ways to make the world a better place. - jcm 20 June 04 COMMENT ENDS.] [Jun 2, 04]
• Boston Protester Faces Felony Charges For Protesting Abu Ghraib Abuse.
   DemocractNow! (USA), www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/03/142254 , Thursday, June 3rd, 2004
   BOSTON (Mass.) USA: * Joseph Previtera is a 21-year-old Boston College student who was arrested last week for standing outside a military recruitment office dressed like the hooded Iraqi prisoner held at Abu Ghraib prison. He was wearing a black cape, had a hood over his head and had stereo wires dangling from his hands.
   A 21-year-old college student could spend years in jail on bomb threat charges after he stood silently outside a military recruitment office dressed like an Iraqi prisoner: in a black cape, hooded, wearing stereo wires hanging from his fingers. The police charged Joseph Previtera with making a bomb threat since the stereo wires resembled wires to a bomb.
   An article in today's Boston Phoenix begins like this:
   "It was a skinny pair of stereo wires that got 21-year-old Joe Previtera charged with two felonies. A week ago on Wednesday, the Boston College student poked his head through a gauzy shawl, donned a black pointy hood, and ascended a milk crate positioned to the right of the Armed Forces Recruitment Center's Tremont Street entrance.
   "He extended his arms like a tired scarecrow; stereo wires dangled from his fingers onto the ground below.
   "Without those wires, the Westwood native could have been mistaken for an eyeless Klansman dipped in black, or maybe even the Wicked Witch of the West...
   "But those snaky cords made the costume's import clear: Previtera was a dead ringer for one of Abu Ghraib's Iraqi prisoners - specifically, the faceless man who'd allegedly been forced to balance on a cardboard box lest he be electrocuted."
   Prvitera stood outside the recruitment center for over an hour. And then the police arrived. Within hours he was facing charges more serious than any US soldier is facing for their role in the actual prison abuse in Iraq. Previtera was charged with three crimes: disturbing the peace, possession of a hoax device and making a false bomb threat. If convicted he could face years in prison.
   The Boston Herald reported on Wednesday that prosecutors in the Suffolk County District Attorney's office are considering "amending" bomb-threat charges against Previtera.
   But the Boston police have defended the arrest:
   Michael McCarthy, a spokesman for the Boston Police Department told the Boston Phoenix: "It can be implied, with fingers and wires - especially in a heightened state of alert, as we are. Mr. Previtera should know better.
   He's a young adult educated at Boston College from a wealthy suburb. I'm sure he knows wires attached to his fingers, running to a milk crate, would arouse suspicion outside a military recruiters' office [when he's] dressed in prisoner's garb.
   If he has any questions as to why people think he may've had a bomb, then he needs to maybe go back to Boston College to brush up on his public policy. Or at least common sense, but they can't really teach that there." [Jun 3, 04]
• In denial and on the defensive.
   The Weekend Australian, by Cameron Stewart and John Kerin, p 21, June 5-6, 2004
   AUSTRALIA:
   Mishandling of the questions about the treatment of Iraqi prisoners has put the spotlight on Canberra's defence establishment. Cameron Stewart and John Kerin Report
   After the worst week of his golden career, defence force chief Peter Cosgrove must have felt a wave of nostalgia as he welcome home 90 Diggers [Australian soldiers] from East Timor in Brisbane on Thursday. . . .
   This week's extraordinary and embarrassing mea culpa from Cosgrove and Department of Defence secretary Ric Smith on what Australian officials knew about prisoner abuse in Iraq is the latest in a series of setbacks for the man they call the soldier's soldier. [...]
   The fiasco began on May 27 when a Sydney newspaper reported that Australian military legal officer Major George O'Kane was aware of allegations of prisoner abuse as early as October last year and had passed details on to Australian military officials.
   The claims contradicted a May 11 statement in which [Defence Minister Robert] Hill said the Government knew nothing about prisoner abuse before January.
   The report suggested O'Kane had seen in October a damning Red Cross report containing details of serious mistreatment at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.
   Within 24 hours, Howard, misinformed by defence, misled the Australian public over the October report's contents, claiming it focused on prison conditions and did not report prisoner abuse.
   On May 28, Cosgrove and Smith released a statement that maintained none of the Australians who served in Iraq were aware of mistreatment at Abu Ghraib.
   But, the same day, defence discovered the October report and read it. By last Sunday might, Hill, Cosgrove and Smith were fully aware that the October report contained allegations of mistreatment.
[MORE TO BE DONE]
   [COMMENT: This is no criticism of the newspaper report, but because of the evasive nature of the public figures from whom information has been extracted, some of the claims such as "misinformed", "appeared to have a poor grasp", "discovered ... and read it", "lack of cohesion", etc in the above article are probably incorrect. It is more likely that the Australian intelligence community, and therefore the Federal Ministry, knows of the cruelty in all of the United States military and quasi-military prisons, and that they silently approve of it, just as the US leaders do, but hypocritically pretend they don't.
   An Australian government which approves of the illegal imprisonment of hundreds of untried people at Guantanamo Bay is obviously an opponent of human rights. Irregular US "interrogation" has been an open secret at least since the Vietnam War (ended 1975), including questioning Vietnamese in helicopters flying over the sea and threatening to throw them out if they did not talk. Some cruel soldiers threw them out whether they gave information or not.
   Mr Howard, who in May-June 2004 admitted that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, some days later was presenting citations to returned troops. The wording included praise for their work on "weapons of mass destruction". That is rewriting rewritten history, with a vengeance!
   The facts are that the authorities of the Coalition Forces know of other prisons in Iraq and in Afghanistan, of which the news media and the public as yet know very little. Even the Red Cross has only recently been granted permission to visit a number of Afghan prisons which they were not permitted to until the brave actions of honourable soldiers revealed the cruelty and murders at just one Iraq prison. Under the Geneva Convention these visits ought to have been occurring throughout the whole period from the start of the attack on Afghanistan to the present day. COMMENT ENDS.] [Newsitem June 5-6, 2004]
• Australia's Major George O'Kane helped US general admit breaking Geneva Convention.
   The Courier-Mail, Brisbane (Australia), "O'Kane 'helped' US break rules," www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9776729%255E421,00.html , By Ian McPhedran, June 8, 2004
   AN Australian military lawyer drafted a letter for the discredited head of prisons in Iraq that allowed guards to ignore the Geneva Convention.
   [Picture: Prisoners inside Abu Ghraib jail / AFP file]
   Major George O'Kane, who first found out about alleged abuses in Iraqi jails last August and reported it up the command chain in October, worked as a legal adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority.
   Part of his job was advising US forces about the convention plus dealing with Red Cross concerns about abuses.
   He drafted letters for suspended Military Police Chief Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski and advised US military intelligence about the legality of interrogation procedures.
   Brig-Gen Karpinski, who ran US prisons in Iraq, is accused of failing to control staff at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
   ABC TV's Four Corners program last night reported that one letter drafted by Major O'Kane gave jailers the green light to ignore the international convention protecting prisoners of war.
   The December 24 letter said the army took the legal view that "where absolute military security so requires, security internees will not obtain full Geneva Convention protection".
   It was drafted in response to Red Cross concerns, specifically about prisoners deemed to have "ongoing intelligence value".
   According to Red Cross reports, these prisoners were found naked and in total darkness, Four Corners reported.
   Major O'Kane's response was that the condition of the prisoners should be seen "in the context of ongoing strategic interrogation", and under the circumstances "we consider their detention to be humane". The letter was signed by Brig-Gen Karpinski.
   An Australian Government source said the letter merely pointed out differences between POWs and people captured after hostilities ended.
   During Senate Estimates grillings last week, Defence chiefs were forced to apologise for misleading the Government and the Australian people about who knew what and when about the abuses.
   An internal inquiry is under way by former Labor staffer Mike Pezzullo.
   Prime Minister John Howard has ordered Defence Minister Robert Hill to come clean in detail in Parliament next Tuesday.
- additional reporting AAP. © The Courier-Mail
   [ADDITION: for MORE INFORMATION: Truthout, "Red Cross Report Describes Abuse in Iraq (Full Report)", http://truthout.org/docs_04/051104B.shtml , By Alexander G. Higgins, The Associated Press, Monday 10 May 2004
    To view the leaked Red Cross Report: Click Here. PDF requires Adobe® Acrobat® Reader™. ADDITION ENDS.] [Head article: Jun 8, 04]
• It isn't just the ABC and ALP saying Australia shares blame.
   Letter sent by John Massam, "Red Cross did say Coalition Forces were told," June 8, 2004
   AUSTRALIA: On the ABC on June 7 Mr Downer said that the ABC and the Labor Party were pushing the line that Australia was somehow responsible for some aspects of the atrocities in the Iraqi prison (that is, the ones the public know about so far).
   This was when the reporters revealed that Australian major O'Kane had helped draft a Coalition report admitting that the Geneva Convention did not apply to prisoners said to be "security risks".
   But you see, Australia is one of the Coalition Forces, and the International Committee of the Red Cross's director of operations, Pierre Krähenbühl, at the May 7 press conference had said:
   "... what appears in the report of February 2004 are observations consistent with those made earlier on several occasions orally and in writing throughout 2003. In that sense the ICRC has repeatedly made its concerns known to the Coalition Forces and requested corrective measures prior to the submission of this particular report.
   "Both for Abu Ghraib and for other places of detention in Iraq, oral and written interventions of the ICRC specifically recalled the laws and norms that States have committed themselves to respect by adhering to the Geneva Conventions." -- www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/5YRMYC?OpenDocument
   To me this means that the Coalition Forces, including Australia, have been told about these "atrocities" since about March 2003. Even those who wanted to believe the "children overboard" untruths are beginning to doubt the dodging by the present government, which is sounding more and more like the Hawke-Keating outfit every month.
   And did you notice that Mr Krähenbühl said that the ICRC had made interventions for "other places of detention in Iraq"? How much more brutality and murder (yes, there have been murders) will we discover?
   Indeed, if someone hadn't put the CD-ROM disc under an honest officer's door, the Iraqi prisoners might have been still suffering in another 12 months. What is going on at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, might we ask.
   However, I will thank Mr Downer for labelling the activities of the US forces as "atrocities." Didn't Australia join in the Atlantic Charter's call for Freedom from Fear all those decades ago? Were the sacrifices of D-Day in vain?
   And read this: Report: US 'not bound by torture laws':
   The report contended that the president, as commander-in-chief, has the authority to approve almost any physical or psychological actions during interrogation, including torture, the newspaper reported. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3783869.stm
(Krähenbühl = Kraehenbuehl if the umlauts don't show) [Jun 8, 04]
• Priest honored for opposing Fort Benning which trains Latin Americans in repression.