WHO DECIDED AMERICA WOULD USE TORTURE ???

The American public learned in April 2004 that some detainees were being abused in Iraq by U.S. military police who were encouraged to do so by Military Intelligence and by civilian employees of private intelligence contractors, of which there were sixty in Iraq. Little more would come to light about the private contractors, but eventually a substantial body of evidence developed suggesting the use of torture in the war on terror was by no means confined to isolated occurrences.



We now know that torture was widespread in the second battle of Fallujah and that the people there called our men "the murderous maniacs." A sergeant in the 82 Airborn said torturing prisoners was "sport" " a way to work out your frustrtions." Troops routinely went to the detention area. He described how a cook broke a detainee's leg for fun. Acook broke a fellow's leg. Troops were routinely invited to come to a detention tent to " fuck a PUC, ' --meaning beat someone--or "Smoke a PUC"-- meaning up to rendering unconscious. The term "POW" was deliberately avoided, these people were only under confinement.


In May, 2004 photographs surfaced in May, 2004 two soldiers posing with the dead body of a detainee who had apparently been beaten to death by CIA or private intelligence contractor operatives. The body was there because the CIA and military interrogators could not agree on who should dispose of it.The Red Cross had been complaining about the abuses since October, 2003 and Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had also expressed deep concern about the abuses. The Red Cross claims that 52 prisoners have tried to kill themselves, and some former guards suggest the number is much higher. The administration claimed abuses were isolated to a handful of wayward National guard personnel. Yet some of the photographs revealed torture techniques known only skilled professionals.

It soon became apparent that a pattern of abuse had existed in Afghanistan and at the Guantanimo detention facility. In Bagram, in Afghanistan two men died due to repealed beatings in December, 2002. At first, the military tried to sweep the matter under the rug, but eventually seven soldiers were charged with abuses. The investigation continued for two years, but documents were somehow lost, key people not interviewed, and evidence was mishandled. Finally, in October, 2004 it appeared that twenty others might be charged for offenses ranging from lying to unintentional manslaughter.

It became known that commandos, probably acting under operation "Copper Green," seized people in Afghanistan and placed them in "the Pit" and other detention centers, where they were subjected to various forms of abuse, including sexual. They had learned that sex, especially homosexual sex, was especially taboo among Muslims. It was thought that sexual degradation and photographing people in compromising sexual situations would produce information and even recruit prisoners to become informers. It was bnelieved that the prisoners would do whatever was necessary to prevent the photographs from being shown to their families.These techniques would also be employed in Iraq, and interrogation methods designed to play upon Islamic sensibilities were to be widely reported in Afghanistan, Guantanimo, and Iraq.

One of the Military Intelligence units involved in Bagram abuses was transferred to Iraq, where they continued to ply their skills. Months after the first revelation,, reports began to surface that some prisoners who were released from Guantanamo were claiming that they had been tortured by "prostitutes." This was the first indication that the pattern of abuse existed in Afghanistan and Guantanimo before we had military prisons in Iraq.Evidence surfaced that these men were questioned at Guantanimo by women in late night sessions that included fake menstrual blood. Tight T-shirts, sexual touching, parading in miniskirts, and leaving bras and thong underware hanging in the room. One woman in a tight shirt rubbed her breasts against the back of a praying internee and then mocked him because he had an erection.

In one case, a Gutmo interpreter worked with a female who told him it was necessary to place a barrier between the detainee and Allah. She removed fatigues shirt and rubbed her chest against the detaainee's back and then placed his hands on her tits, taunting him all the time. The detainee had taken flight training in Arizona, and she obviuously thought he possessed vital information.

There is evidence that duty was not easy for the US forces at Gutmo. The interpreter who wrote an account of what he saw knew of only two gratuitous beatings, and added that the basckup tapes that would document them were lost. There was heavy drinking and much friction beteween the MPs and interpreters. The military police had been repeatedly told that all the detainees were terrorists. One of the most common abuses was minor. The MPs routinely stepped on the cookies the detainees had set aside for later snacks.

Four months of extreme abuses at Abu Gharib seemed to begin after the Guantanimo Camp X-Ray commander, Major General Geoffrey Miller was ordered to visit the site. He was sent to Gitmoize the facility, and he told its commander Reserve Brigadier General Janice Karpinski to turn over effective . On September 14, 2003, Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez also ordered more intense questioning methods, but they did not include the most troubling techniques revealed in photographs, except the use of dogs. Nevertheless, some of the Military Intelligence officers accused of abuse said they assumed their methods were condoned by Sanches's order.

Most of the abuses occurred in Cellblock 1A, which was off-limits to Karpinski and her Reserve troops.It is unclear what measures General Miller recommended.At some time after the visit, he was briefed –"read in"- about an operation called "Copper Green" which Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice had approved after 9/11, and most probably pursuant to the program Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft signed off to, which was designed to extract information from "high value" prisoners.

It was a "black", special-access program (SAP), that authorized elite personnel from the CIA, Seals, and other agencies to "Grab whom you must. Do what you want." It was the creation of this program and its subsequent extension to Iraq that set the scene for horrible transgressions. Among them were guards urinating on detainees, riding them, and having snakes bite them.There were reports of homosexual rape and of guards jumping on the injured leg of a prisoner.Under- Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone authorized "Copper Green" tactics at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq.

Apparently "Copper Green" originally dealt with the abuse of high value detainees. Cambone’s order made possible the use of these techniques against many more detainees. More Military Intelligence and civilian intelligence people appeared, using alias, and instructed military police to abuse the detainees. Some detainees were singled out for such extensive abuse that their names were not recorded. They were "ghost detainees" who existed in no records.In one instance, the sickly son of a former Iraqi official was stripped naked, driven around in a truck with mud spattered over him in order to induce the "high value" detainee to talk. He did so when more threats were made against the boy and rest of the family. The boy was later placed in cell block where a sergeant warned he was likely to be raped.

Smothering and chest compression techniques were often used to bring on near asphyxiation as a means of getting other high value captives to talk.At least two high ranking Iraqi officers died this way, and there are believed to be at least six other homicides; although twenty-seven people died under interrogation in Iraq. One of the dead was the former head of the Iraqi Air Force, Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush.There have been complaints of Islamic women being raped. A British paper first broke this story. Then Newsweek said that unreleased photographs showed a soldier having sex with a female detainee and soldiers having sex with juveniles.

Nadia, az reporter for a London-based paper, was held there for six months and was first raped five soldiers to the refrains of heavy metal music. She reported:"One month later, a soldier showed up and told me in broken Arabic to take a shower. And before finishing my bath, he kicked the door open. I slapped him but he raped me like animals and called two of his colleagues, who forced me to have sex with them for up to 10 times," added Nadia."Four months later, the female soldier came along with four male soldiers with a digital camera. She stripped me naked and started fondling me as if she was a man while her male colleagues broke into laughter and started taking photos."Reluctant as I was, she fired four shots close to my head and threatened to kill me if I resist. Then, four soldiers raped me sadistically and I lost conscience. Later, she forced me to watch a clip of my raping, saying bluntly: ‘Your were born to give us pleasure’."

When it was clear that the operations at Abu Gharib prison had gotten out of hand, the CIA withdrew from the project. However, there have been recent reports of a network of secret or "black" CIA prisons in eastern Europe and elsewhere. An effort in now underway to find the person who leaked this information, without at the sametime admitting that the secret prisons exist. A recent number of The New Yorker carries a detailed discussion of a detainee's death that could be attributed to the CIA.

FBI personnel who visited Guantanamo were creitical of the torture practicse they found and pronounced them useless. Several military Judge Advocate General officers tried unsuccessfully to get the New York State Bar Association to intervene.There was also great concern about the number of civilian contractors used in the operation because they were subjected to no restrains. For months, the International Red Cross and various human rights organizations had alerted the administration to the growing abuses.

It is unclear if the deaths of high- value detainees at Al Asad, a remote air base, were connected to this program. There is unmistakable evidence based on photographic evidence that Sunni tribal leader Abdul Kareem Abdul Jaleel was tortured to death there. American medical personnel said he died of natural causes.About five bodies a week are delivered to Forensic Institute in Baghdad from American detention facilities. The Iraqi coroners and scientists are forbidden to examine bodies for which there is a US- issued death certificate, but they do look at them. Off the record, they say the bodies show obvious signs of torture.High value high value terrorists could be moved across borders and kept in various locations in a vast US interrogation network.

This secret gulag or network of prisons was linked largely by CIA operated Gulfstream and other executive jets . It is a different network from the black prisons that came to light in November, 2005. There is evidence that a number of shell corporations were used in these rendition operations. One was Aero Contactors, which operated out of the Johnston County Airport in Smithfield, NC. Prisoners were also turned over to other regimes in Egypt, Syria, and Pakistan for torture and interrogation. One Canadian citizen was held in Syria for three months, a matter that caused great consternation in Canada. Some were sent to other countries known for the use of brutal torture techniques Austrailian citizen Mamdouh Habid was held for forty eight months in Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo.The experiences he claimed are consistent with reports from other former detainees. He may have been considered a fairly high value prisoner because U..S. authorities knew he had trained in two Al Qaeda camps and had reason to suspect he might have trained people for the attack on 9/11.

At several of these sites, electric shock techniques were employed. Sometimes a wired helmet was used, which interrogators said was truth detector. American female interrogators touched his private parts, and one reached under her skirt and threw what she claimed was blood at him. `Egyptians snubbed out cigarettes on his skin anda Pakistani interrogator drop kicked him in the skull. Americans also beat him, and his head was hit against the floor at Guantanimo.In the mid- 1990s, the Clinton administration laid the foundations for this program when it began sanction the transportation of terrorist detainees to foreign countries for questioning. This policy of "rendition" was limited to people who had already been found guilty in our courts. The Bush administration broadened this policy to include mere suspects, and about one hundred and fifty have been subjected to rendition since 2001.

The new policy was part of what Alberto Gonzales called the New Paradigm, the administration’s new approach to detention and interrogation. Gonzales had called the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and "obsolete." According to a Wall Street Journal report, one of the lawyers who was involved in reshaping torture guidelines said they were an "assertion of "presidential power at its apex."

Rendition also changed in that it often meant more than just sending detainees to foreign countries, they were often held and questioned by Americans in safehouses in those countries.Some theorize that much of the torture would have occurred even without the involvement civilian and military authorities because soldiers were led to believe that the people they were fighting were terrorists, closely connected to those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.

Eventually, Pentagon officials admitted that 90% of its detainees were innocent. The Geneva Conventions states :"No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed," and "collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited." So far, the preferred opinion of the government and most Americans is that this the abuses were very limited and entirely the actions of a few low-ranking individuals.

Much of the rhetoric surrounding the war has dehumanized the enemy in the eyes of both the general public and members of the military. By torturing an enemy or condoning it, we diminish him as a human being and think we are psychologically making a statement about our own righhteousness. We are enhanced in some weay by his suffering and possible death. In July, 2004, the Department of Defense said the enemy was the "universal Adversary," evil itself. Presidential rhetoric hass cast the war in religious terms, one between God and the Devil.
It has been suggested that this approach might appeal especially to evangelicals. There is no way of knowing that this is true. It also appeals strongly to neoconservatives under the influence of Leo Strauss. Superior people are entitled to rule and create superior states, which are entitled to use any means to extend their benevolent hegemony.

At the end of World War II, Andre Malraux said that the German concentration camps were proof that "Satan has visibly reappeared in the world." Recently Al Gore put the matter in different terms: "one of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, as degraded."

THE U.S.-- A REPUBLIC IN NAME ONLY

Gennady Ymayev, a Soviet brain-truster, wrote that REagan's America had become a "mistaken democracy" and he cited bought legislators, a soft bourgeois press that parroted the administration line, the great power of the evangelists and religious Right, and the messianic belief in the need for the US to be the world's policeman. He later admitted that he had gone too far in his criticism and was reacting to US denunciations of the "evil empire."

Gary Hart has recently suggested that we are a republic in name only. The former senator is no radical; indeed, he is a "New Democrat," more friendly to some Republican ideas than most Democrats. He argued that republics are based on "civic virtue, popular sovereignty, resistance to corruption (by special interests) and a sense of the commonwealth." In 1787, Ben Franklin announced that the constitutional fathers had produced a republic, and added that it would take effort to keep it.

There is much truth in the saying that "for an empire to be born, a republic has to die." In the long term a nation cannot be brutal abroad and preserve republican virtues at home. People in our political class appear supine and unwilling to mount serious opposition to what torturers are doing in our name and what is happening to our institutions. They carp now and then about how the US was led into the Iraq war, but most do so only to garner marginal political gain, not to strengthen the republic. The mainstream press has been uniquely unable to comprehend or report on what torturers have done in our name or the damaged being done to our domestic institutions. To call the press and Democratic politicians supine is almost a compliment, so grave are their failings.

On the other hand, they may simply be acting on the knowledge that the nation has moved to the right and has shelved some of its democratic and republican values.

THE BUNGLED HUNT FOR BIN LADEN

In December, 2005, it will have been three years since Osama bin Laden slipped escaped from Tora Bora. Over the next three years the master terrorist has remained at large, and the Bush administration has gone long periods without mentioning him. On the other hand, it constantly invokes 9-11 to justify its policies and frequently leaves the impression that the war in Iraq is intended to extract revenge for 9-11.

During the 2004 campaign, George Bush and Dick Cheney repeatedly denied that the US knew Bin Laden was at Tora Bora. General Tommy Franks, campaigning for them, dished out the same misinformation. In March, 2005, the Pentagon was forced to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request and acknowledge that it knew that Osama bin Laden was at Tora Bora in late 2001.

Bin Laden had dispersed many of his fighters after 9-11 but retained several thousand to battle the Americans. He brought a large force to Tora Bora on the night of November 12, in a convoy said to number as many as a thousand vehicles. This movement would have been difficult to miss, but he was not attacked from the air.

Gary Bernstein , leading a CIA team named Jawbreaker, reported the terrorists’ location and recommended that a large number of American troops be deployed. There were about two dozen black-clad Special Forces troops there and a few Brits. Additional ground troops were not provided because the US saving troops to be deployed in Iraq. Bernstein is now retired and awaiting CIA clearance of his book on the hunt for Bin Laden.

The fight against bin Laden was left to Afghan mercenaries, some of whom had already been bribed to let him escape. Some parts of the attack on Al Qaeda there were essentially a grand charade. According to chieftain Malik Osama Khan, the U.S. Command left three sides of Tora Bora essentially unguarded by ground forces. There was a great deal of air bombardment, but several escape routes were untouched. According to Afghan sources, bin Lasden was able to escape with several thousand "foreign militants." The departures occurred over several days, and the terrorists were able to leave in large groups.

Earlier in the war, Northern Alliance troops took the city of Kunduz, the United States permitted six Pakistani cargo planes to evacuate hundreds of Al Queda, Taliban, and Pakistani volunteers were Seymour Hersh has reported that this evacuation was carried out in co-operation with ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service. [ It might be recalled that ISI provided Mohammed Atta with $100,000.] Many of these fighters were probably sent to Kashmir. This activity was never acknowledged by the Department of Defense.

The International Institute of Strategic Studies in Great Britain estimated that "ninety percent of bin Laden’s forces survived" the war in Afghanistan. . Every day he survived, Bin Laden enjoyed another victory of sorts that inspired angry young men throughout Islam.

Soon after the Afghan war ended, many resources were diverted from the hunt for Bin Laden. General Tommy Franks told Senator Bob Graham, then chair of the Intelligence Committee, that only four months after Afghanistan had been invaded the shifting of important resources began. The Predator drone aircraft were critical in the search effort but were also moved. Special Forces were moved from the hunt to the Iraq front. Sri Lankan terrorism expert Rohan Gunaatna said "I feel that if they had not gone to Iraq they would have found Osama by now." A former CIA operative that for a year and a half, it was necessary to give low priority to the search for Bin Laden. Electronic intelligence from the National Security Agency was diverted and its satellites were focused on Iraq. Planes used to airlift supplies to various outposts were pulled out, and the decision was made not to try to curb the narcotics traffic, which revived with the fall of the Taliban. The CIA’s limited number of Arabic speakers were diverted to Iraq. Likewise, the special who spoke Arabic were also shifted. The agency delayed spending $80 million to equip and train Afghan intelligence forces and it closed forward bases in Kandahar, Herat, and Mazar-e Sharif. Two thirds of the personnel in Task Force 5 were moved to the Middle East. This was a covert team whose job was to track down bin Laden and his top operatives. Later funds for reconstructing Afghanistan were diverted to Iraq.
Had the hunt for Osama bin Laden been this badly bungled under a President Al Gore, there would have been repeated calls for Congressional investigations. Some would even suggest the evidence suggested a lack of interest in nabbing the master terrorist. Who can doubt that Hannity and Limbaugh would be clamoring for impeachment? Had Bin Laden remained at large more than a year under Gore, the Republican noise machine would exploit the topic daily and the mainstream press would serve as a vast echo chamber for the right’s charges.

THE DETENTION AND TORTURE OF CHILDREN

Vice President Dick Cheney and White House personnel are busy lobbying to prevent the Senate from amending the Armed Forces Appropriations Bill to prohibit the torturing of prisoners. Cheyey and others warn that President Bush will veto the bill if it contains this amendment, which was offered Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsay Graham. The Arizonan rightly said, the issue is less about torture than about what Americans are. The Bush-Cheney position gives us more than a hint of what they think Americans are or should be.

The British Secret Intelligence Service, in 2002, secretly warned its operatives in Afghanistan to avoid joining Americans in the "inhumane or degrading treatment " of prisoners, and added that such conduct would incur criminal liability under international law. At least 20 detainee have died in American custody. Estimates of the number of detainees held by the US outside its soil run as high as 70,000– a figure that seems almost unimaginable.

We have kidnaped people and outsourced them for questioning and torture to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. In 2002, Chinese interrogators were brought to Guantanimo to deal with Ighur detainees. A variety methods of sexual taunting were employed, and a British paper recently reported that even children experienced sexual abuse. Other practices include urinating on prisoners and forcing them to wrap the Koran in the Israeli flag. In a recent case, it was revealed that prisoners at Bagram were routinely chained to ceilings in isolation cells and that torture methods were taught in official training. A soldier has testified that guards were taught how to deliver the blows that killed 2 Afghan detainees. ( for more on abuse of detainees, scroll down to other entries.)

Last January, White House Counsel explained to a Senate committee that the Convention against Torture was subordinate to American law. This was been his position when the first steps were taken to authorize what has been called aggressive interrogation techniques. In March, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice complained that "too few in the world…know of the value we place on international institutions and the rule of law."

The August 1 London Sunday Mirror carried a troubling report that raises questions about the accuracy of Dr. Rice’s claim. The paper claimed that at least one child detainee was raped by two soldiers at Abu Gharib and that a little girl was badly beaten. The same report told of two naked boys cuffed together being beaten as male and female guards laughed and took pictures. Maybe these are some of the pictures the Pentagon refuses to hand over to Congress. One interrogation technique is degrading a child while the father is forced to watch. The International Red Cross was told by military authorities that there are 107 juveniles in 6 prisons, but an Iraqi TV reporter who had been a detainee said he saw "certainly hundreds of children" at one camp.

UNICEF and Human Rights Watch have repeatedly raised questions about the detention of children. Under International law, children can be very briefly detained as a last resort. The United States has refused to permit UNICEF to look into the matter presumably because the agency has an obligation to help enforce international law.

One can only hope that the Sunday Mirror got it wrong. The story has not been picked up by the American mainstream press. Most Americans seem unwilling to consider that torture does occur in our camps. Rush Limbaugh discounts the possibility with constant talk of "Club Gitmo" and another propagandist has said he would rather shoot than torture many of the prisoners. Bush and Cheney would not be taking a public stand against banning torture unless they thought most Americans shared their values.

HOW WRONG WAS NEWSWEEK IN ITS REPORT ON ABUSING THE KORAN?

In May, 2005, Newsweek magazine published an apology for printing an article which said that an unidentified Pentagon official said that a certain document showed that military interrogators at Guanatanamo had flushed a copy of the holy Koran down a toilet. For an undisclosed reason, the anonymous source later said he was not sure which document said this had occurred. He did not deny that he was privy to this information; he simply claimed he did not know in which document or documents he had read it. There is no question that Newsweek reporters had not properly verified the story.

There had been other complaints about abuses of the Koran in military prisons, and days after the apology The Los Angeles Times reported that seven other detainees had lodged similar complaints. On May 25, 2005 the FBI's summaries of interviews were obtained by the ACLU, and they revealed that almost a dozen detainees reported mistreatment of copies of the Koran. In reports in 2002 and early 2003, the International Committee of the Red Cross provided documentation of "corroborated allegations" of "multiple instances" in which US troops were mishandling or disrespectful Korans at Guantanamo. The Financial Times ( December 30, 2004) reported that some prisoners had tape placed over their mouths for reciting the Koran. The Independent of London reported on March 17, 2004 that 70 inmates went on a hunger strike after a guard kicked a copy of the Koran. On May 1, 2004, The New York Times reported that one of the three hunger strikes at the facility was touched off by guards tossing copies of the Koran into a pile and apparently stomped upon.

The mishandling of the Koran was only the tip of the iceberg; there appears to have been a pattern of interrogation methods designed to be offensive to Muslims. Dogs were used to threaten Islamic detainees, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez’s September, 2003 memo authorizing the practice indicates that this would "exploit Arab fear of dogs." Similarly, the frequent photographing of nude Muslim men and "removal of facial hair" were approved by Donald Rumsfeld in November, 2002, and were designed to place detainees in positions in which they were in violation of deeply held religious beliefs.Detainees were often forced to be naked in front of one another or in front of the opposite sex, and threats were made to show these humiliating photographs to their families.

There were also reports of Muslims having alcohol and pork being forced down their throats.Reports began to surface in 2004 t hat some prisoners who were released from Guantanamo were claiming that they had been tortured by "prostitutes." These men were questioned by women in late night sessions that included fake menstrual blood. The fake menstrual blood would render the detainees unclean and unable to pray. After smearing it on a prisoner, a female interrogator said, "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself."

Sexual intimidation included interrogators sporting tight T-shirts, sexual touching, parading in miniskirts, and leaving bras and thong underwear hanging in the room. One woman in a tight shirt rubbed her breasts against the back of a praying internee and then mocked him because he had an erection.

Vice Admiral Albert T. Church III later investigated these incidents and said only two women were involved and that they had devised these techniques entirely on their own.Even before the first abuses were reported. British observers voiced concerns that that many American troops had an unhealthy attitude toward the Iraqis which would threaten the success of the occupation. A senior British commander said, "They don’t see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. If such an attitude did sometimes prevail, it would be worthwhile to learn why. Similarly, it is imperative that we learn why the evidence points to a pattern of interrogation techniques that exploited Muslim religious and cultural sensibilities.

One can only wonder to what extent these abuses can be traced to the Bush administration's decision to redefine the meaning of "torture" as used in Title 18 of the US Code, Sections 2340-2340. The Bush Justice Department decided that abuse ws not turture if its main intention was extraction of information. Later, in July 2005, Senator John McCain attempted to amend a defense appropriations bill to ban torture, and he had enough support among Republican senators that Vice President Cheney was sent to bring them into line. The Bush administration threatened to veto the bill if it included the McCain amendment. Only nine senators voted against it.

On the other hand, some abuses of human rights are simply inherent in warfare and particularly in wars that claims that all enemies are somehow complicit in terrorism. British troops, like American, seemed to believe this and the first abuses reported by Tariq Ali in Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq were of British soldiers sexually abusing civilians and filming themselvbes doing so.

Conservatives used Newsweek’s blunder to underscore its claim that the mainstream press could not be trusted and to insist that the claims of abuse of Muslim detainees have been greatly exaggerated. The mainstream press framed the story of the magazine’s sloppy reporting in a manner that usually ignored the fact that there had been many other reports of the abuse of the Koran in military prisons. Just as the uproar over Dan Rather’s poor handling of documents relating to George W. Bush’s military service made inquiries into the president’s Texas-Arkansas Air Guard services almost impossible to cover, the flap over Newsweek’s error could produce similar results. However, the main conservative response to the torture scandal is to minimize it. Rush Limbaugh consistently refers to "Club Gitmo," claiming the conditions there are similar to those at a resort. On another occasion, he pronouncedm "This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin people's lives over it....." He added that we should recognize that our troops needed "to blow some steam off." The "its no big deal" defense has worked pretty well.

Some aspects of the scandal, such as torture at the hands of civilian contractors, have received very little attention. Brigadier General Karl R. Horst recently complained that mercenaries who are on the streets lften "do stupid stuff" like shoot people. Yet the whole matter of using mercenaries are nearly invisible, even after they turned up in New Orleans, boasting about their pay and what they had done in Iraq.

There are now reports that some of the meals an American contractor provides Iraqi truck drivers provides Filipino and and Turkish employees of the occupation forces contain pork. Moreover, they regularly send outdated and spoiled food to Filipino and Muslim employees. Some of the Filipinos are Muslim. Some of the Filipino employees are Muslim , as are the Turks. Often the food is left over from soldiers' cafeterias and is shipped in garbage bags. To be fair here, it should be noted that American soldiers also receive spoiled and outdated food. What is involv ed here is not discriminatioon, rather it is good, old-fashioned greed and run of the mill overilling. . Let's watch the mainstream press to see how much coverage this gets.
( revised October 23)
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Condi Rice and the Sudanese Regime

Colin Powell charged the Sudanese government with genocide in Dafur. The Sudanese army and paramilitays known as the Arab Janjaweed accomplished this by gang rapes, burning of villages, and mass killings. Condi Rice, his successor, has reversed Powell's policy and written to Lieutenant General Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, the Sudanese head of state, saying that she hoped for "close cooperation" in battling terrorism.

In late April, a CIA jet brought Major General Salah Abdalah Gosh, head of the Sudanese intelligence agency Mukhabarat, to Washington for secret talks. Gosh has been accused of playing a major role in the mass murders. His agency has provided useful information on Al Qaeda, and the US relies on his operatives in Muslim countries where it lacks human assets.

In May, the White House moved to kill the Dafur Accountability Act. The death toll in Dafur is somewhere between 400,000 and 800,000 human beings. The UN refuses to deal with the Dafur situation, and the International Criminal Court will probably not be able to address the matter for at least a year.

THE US POSITION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Many of us do not fully understand how the Right managed to take control of the country. The fact is that the US has long tilted to the right.

1. It has accepted only 13 of 44 UN human rights treaties.
2. It has ratified 14 0f the ILO's 162 active treaties.
3. Only the US and Somalia have refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

The current administration is particularly opposed to such agreements and is very committed to a go-it-alone posture. Though having a much better record on human rights than the GOP, Democrats have not rushed to embrace such agreements. A recent position paper issued by the Republican Policy Committee denounces the International Red Cross because it has raised questions about the treatment of detainees by the military and says it is losing credibility by claiming the torture has occurred in these facilities.

Recall the scorn and vitriol heaped on Jimmy Carter when he tried to address human rights. Even in those last days of Democratic power, there were real limits to what an administration could do on behalf of human rights.


LOOSE BUSHIE TALK ABOUT DEPLOYMENT OF NUCLEAR ARMS THREATENS NON-PROLIFERATION


Douglas Roche, former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament, has raised warning flags about the Bush administration's speculation about when it could deploy nuclear weapons in a China-Taiwan conflict, a North Korean attack on South Korea, and various scenarios in which Arabs attack Israel. In some cases, this talk represents the first time the US has contemplated using nuclear devices against non-nuclear powers. Of course, it is a violation of the letter and spirit of the Non-Prolifertion Treaty of 1970.

In 2000, the signatories agreed upon Thirteen Practical Steps that would lead to eliminating nuclear weapons. Since 2001, the United States has moved in violation of these principles and carried out a nucler posture review that makes it all too clear that nuclear weapons will remain the cornerstone of our national security policy for another half century. Commenting on all this, a Brazilian spokesman said, "one cannot worship at the altar of nuclear weapons and raise heresy charges against those who do not join the sect."

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty comes up for review again in May. No doubt the signatories will find a way to paper over the problem, adjusting to the policy shifts of the main nuclear power, but the movement has probably lost its steam. In 2015, there will probably be many more than 8 nuclear powers.

REAGAN, THE BUSHES, AND IRAN

The conventional wisdom in Washington is that the neocons have plans to bomb Iran and send limited forces into Syria. However, it is doubtful if the nation would stand still for these initiatives, even if one were directed against a nation in the "axis of evil." It is now known that the military is negotiating with Sunni dissidents in an effort to find a way to extricate itself from its quagmire in Iraq. Now faced with the enormous costs of rehabilitating the Gulf Coast, the Bush Administration has little choice but to find a reasonably expeditious way out of IraQ.

If these negotiations are not successful, it could become necesssary to cut a deal with Iran, which has great influence with the ruling Shiites of Iraq. Indeed, one of the first actions of the new Iraqi gopvernment was to declare that Iran was in the right in the Iraq-Iran War. Zalmay Khalizad, the present US ambassador to Baghdad has long supported better ties with Iran. If the US is to get out while retaining influence ovcer Iraqi oil, the intervention of Iran might be necessary. The situation is complicated by the possibility that Mahmoud Ahradinejad, Iran's new president, may have been a leader of the radicals who held American diplomatic personnel hostage in 1979-1981. However, this is probably not the kind of problem that clever information management could not overcome. It would be a dangerous policy option, but two previous Republican administrations developed working relationships with Iran.

In the 1980 race for the White House, Republicans apparently thought the stakes were so high that they secretly negotiated with representatives of a enemy foreign power. Fifty two Americans were being held as hostages in Iran, and campaign manager William Casey, Edward Meese, and others successfully negotiated a deal with representatives of the Iranian government to assure that the hostages would not be released while Jimmy Carter was president. One of the influential clerics they dealt with was Mehdi Karrubi.

The Iranian government they was divided over what to do with the hostages, and foreign minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh publically protested that Reagan, backed by Henry Kissinger, was working to block resolution of the crisis until after Carter left office.Casey had the help of many asctive and former CIA personnel who resented Carter’s reforms at the agency. Robert Gates, a high CIA official attached to the NSC, fed the Republicans information, and Carter was certain that NSC member Donald Gregg also fed national security information to the Republicans. Cyrus Hashemi, an Iranian banker, was supposed to be assisting Carter, but he actually functioning as a back channel for the Republicans.There was suspicion that Lt. Colonel Oliver North and Major General Richard Secord sabotaged Operation Eagle Claw, the failed rescue mission launched by Carter.

Casey was able to get in touch with the Iranians with the help of the French intelligence service, Count Alexandre de Marenches. Carter had unwittingly sealed his own fate by refusing to trade arms for hostages. Among other things, Casey promised that Israel would sell some arms to Iran immediately and that they would sell many more after Ronald Reagan became president. Israel believed it was important to weaken Iraq, and many Israeli officials detested Carter for pushing Begin into the Camp David agreements. The Iranians were also promised the return of $12 billion in blocked funds. Prime Minister Menachin Begin, who had promised not to sell so much as a shoelace to Iran, cooperated with the Republicans’ efforts to undermine the Carter position.

These activities thoroughly undermined the activities of the legitimately elected government of the United States and weakened the U.S. position in bargaining for the return of the hostages. Once before, a Republican presidential candidate had practiced back-channel diplomacy to benefit himself and undermine the policy of the sitting government. In 1968, Richard Nixon sent Claire Chenault to persuade President Thieu of South Vietnam to block peace talks at least until after the election. This maneuver eventually came to light, and there was no great uproar. Perhaps, Casey assumed that this kind of conduct was now considered acceptable.There were a number of meetings between Republican operatives and representatives of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Paris and Madrid.

Casey went to Madrid four times, were he laid out the main outlines of the deal, which was concluded in mid October at a meeting in a Paris suburb. The Iranians were promised weapons for delaying the release of the hostages, and it has been suggested that millions were given to the Iranian leadership in bribes.The weapons were shipped to Portugal on ships by means of false documents, where other items were added to their cargoes. The payment in arms then went to Israel for transshipping to Iran. It has often been charged that vice presidential candidate George Bush attended that meeting, and there is evidence to sustain the charge.

Whether Bush was flown there by Gunter Russbacher is another matter. Russbacher had taken part in a number of Naval Intelligence and CIA operations. A Russian speaker who even knew Gorbachev, Russbacher was eventually accused of profiting from covert operations and imprisoned. However, there is not enough solid evidence to prove that Bush attended the Paris meeting. On the other hand, Bush’s explanation of where he was then cannot be proven and seems somewhat implausible. He has refused to release the kind of information that would settle the matter.

The Republican effort to derail Carter’s efforts to free the hostages was assisted by Republicans in the CIA, other parts of the intelligence community, and the State Department. As a result of their activities, the Reagan campaign often had better information on the Iranian situation than the President of the United States. Sympathetic elements in the press, including columnist Jack Anderson, printed classified information and clever disinformation in a successful effort to thwart Carter’s efforts to free the hostages.The Israelis had been asked to sell a limited number of arms to Iran, and they wanted a green light from potentially the next American government to sell more. For that reason, Israeli intelligence sent an Arab merchant with Iranian ties to negotiate with Republican operatives at the L’ Enfante Hotel in Washington. He proposed the kind of deal Casey negotiated, except that Israel would immediately begin unlimited arms sales. The Republicans attending those meetings were Richard Allen, Robert McFarlane, and Lawrence Silberman.

They were unaware of the deal Casey was negotiating and were very much interested in pursuing the possibility of damaging Carter’s efforts. Casey was assisted in this by banker David Rockefeller and Casey business associate John Shaheen. Shaheen and Iranian banker Cyrus Hashemi would eventually profit from a complex banking transaction associated with the GOP plan to fcree the hostages on their own terms. Casey was a hard-bitten capitalistic high-roller with intelligence experience. He knew how possession of power would have positive economic consequences for himself and his friends. Others may have been driven more by ideology. Carrying on diplomatic negotiations with a foreign enemy is a violation of the law, as was coordinating arms shipments to Iran, before and after Reagan took power. One would think that patriots would want the hostages returned as soon as possible and would support the nation’s foreign policy in a time of crisis, even if the president was a Democrat.

The Republican plotters, aided by an informal group called "Spooks for bush" and the Israeli intelligence service, had better knowledge about wehat was going on in Tehran than Carter and his staff. Moreover, tghey had vastly more influence. On September 16, 1980, the very frustrated Iranian foreign minister, Sadegh Ghitbzadeh complained to the press that Reagan and Kissinger would do anything possible to block the release of the hostages until after the inauguration of Reagan. By then, the Reagan campaign hierarchs were in direct contact with senior Iranian cleric Mehdi Karrubi.

What led these people to violate the law overcame any patriotic impulses to carry on their own destructive foreign policy. The best answer is that they were so convinced by their own ideology and attacks on the Democrats that they felt justified in doing anything necessary to restore Republican control of the White House. It was as though elected Democrats automatically lack legitimacy, except when they co-operate in enacting and carrying out Republican policy. The CIA people who worked to short-circuit Arter policies had respect for the Georgian's sharp mind, but they believed it their duty to remove him from office because his idealism had led to serious foreign policy mistakes. There was an op-ed piece and a PBS special outlining the facts in this matter in 1991. At that time ther was a half-hearted Congressional inquiry into this Most of the material remains classified but some of it has been leaked.

Not one Republican politician or pundit expressed any interest in the possibility that this may have happened. So-called liberal politicians and journalists showed little interest when it became clear that there was not overwhelming evidence that President George Bush was involved. Years later, Yasir Arafat told Jimmy Carter that the Republicans had asked them to help with the arms deal used to keep the hostages captive until after the election. In 1993, Russia gave Congressional investigators files that showed that Casey met with the Iranians in 1980 and that Robert Gates and George H.W. Bush were involved in the deal with Iran.There was a House investigation in 1992 of allegations that Republicans derailed CArter's efforts to retrieve the hostages . It turned up little other than secret testimony that a former CIA official heard a new ambassador discuss the operation with Casey in 1981.

There has been speculation that $20,000,000 from the shah's family was pumped into the operation via a newly created bank in the Philippines. It is doubtful that we will be able to piece together more in this story.IRAN-CONTRA The second operation involved efforts to install a right-wing regime in Nicaragua. Reagan’s great popularity provided his administration with an effective shield when the Iran-Contra Scandal came to light. Congressional committees investigated, but neither the politicians nor the press were very thorough in their probe.The offenses involved were so serious that had a less popular president been involved, impeachment would have been seriously discussed. Lawrence Walsh, a committed Republican, who was charged with investigating the Iran-Contra Scandal was the object of ceaseless press attack.

Walsh explained in his book how the Reagan administration covered up thedetails of its arms sales to Iran and his experiences completely changed his views about how the U.S. government works. This deal involved selling arms to Iran in return for release for some of a smaller group of hostages. The proceeds from the sale would be used to arm right-wing revolutionaries in Nicaragua. It was illegal to assist the Nicaraugan contras or assist Iran. At a meeting in thee situation room of the White House, Attorney General Edwin Meese played the leading role. It was agreed that Secretary of State Edwin Meese and National Security assistant Colonel Robert Mc Farlaine engineered the arms sale, but that McFarlane did not tell President Reagan. In September, 1992 Howard Teicher, a former NSC staffer, revealled he and Lt. Colonel Oliver North had thoroughly briefed Vice President George H.W. Bush on the arms for hostages deal.

The 1985 sale was a violation of the Arms Control Act, and Reagan’s involvement would have been an impeachable offense. Chief of Staff Don Regan had been present when the sale was discussed with Reagan. Schultz and Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger had objected to the sale but did not object while the cover story was being hatched. Also present were National Security Advisor Ambassador John Poindexter, and CIA Director Casey. Schultz returned to the State Department and dictated a memo to an aid saying the record had been "rearranged" and that Bud McFarlane was designated to shoulder the blame.

A year later, Lt. Colonel Oliver North and Bud McFarlane successfully hid the truth when testifying before Congress and convinced most observers that Iran-Contra had been a rogue operation. President Reagan later appeared before the Tower Commission to discuss the Iran-Contra deal and read to the commissioners his state directiojns. In 1991-1992, Walsh and his staff found evidence of the cover-up in papers of Casper Weinberger and his staff. They soon found evidence that Bush aid Donald Gregg had lied about what he knew about how money from the sales was used to resupply the Nicaraguan Contras. A memo showed that Gregg was to discuss "resupplying the contras" with Bush. George Bush claimed he was "out of the loop" on Iran-Contra and refused to give the investigators his papers. During Bush’s presidency, an aid found the portion of his secret diary that discussed Iran. In it, Bush said "I’m one of the few people that know fully the details." Bush aid Boyden Gray decided the diary was largely exculpatory and should not be revealed to the investigators.Bush destroyed the investigation by pardoning Caspar Weinberger, who had been indicted twice, as well as others involved in the matter.

Lawrence Walsh had revealled in June, 1992 that Weinberger had 1700 pages of notes that showed that Bush's "out of the loop" defense was pure nonsense. Much of the press treated Weinberger as a hero and was critical of Walsh’s tenaciousness. A subsequent investigation found that Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi businessman and major arms dealer, had acted as middle man for North in the deal with the mullahs. He borrowed millions from the now discredited Bank of Credit and Commerce International ( B.C.C.I.) to obtain the embargoed weapons and claims to have lost ten million dollars in the transactions. BCCI collapsed in 1991, after defrauding thousands of depositors. When Bush’s son, George W., became president, he reinterpreted legislation on the release of presidential papers to greatly delay the release of those pertaining to Iran-Contra.

The involvement of George H.W. Bush in Iran-Contra has all but proven in recent years. Still the case is not air-tight, and that may be a reason why his papers have not been releasesd as the law requires. It is not certain how extensive is role was in plotting with the Iranians to keep Americans hostage a bit longer. The evidence on the roles of Casey, Kissinger, and some intelligence people is very strong. Nevertheless, an air-tight casxe does not exisat. There will always be critical pieces of evidence that simply will not turn up.

An historian who strictly practices Rankean precepts will, probably have little choice but to ignore the many evidences of chicanery or worse in both cases and simply go to the defaualt position and reproduce whatever the official line might be. In this way, he has been true to traditional academic standards and will not offend any students or readers. Certainly, journalists have little choice but to accept the default position. Whether they are serving the best interests of their great country and their fellow citizens is another matter.