Politics > Politics-USA > Re: Police Call on DUHbya to Stop Lying, Cheating, Stealing, and Murdering
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Politics > Politics-USA |
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"Rev. 11D Ricardo MadGello" |
| Date: |
18 Oct 2004 08:31:05 PM |
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Re: Police Call on DUHbya to Stop Lying, Cheating, Stealing, and Murdering |
Bush & Co.: War Crimes and Cover-Up
......... by Marjorie Cohn September 20, 2004
Truthout
As the election approaches, we are bombarded with stories about
swift boats, dereliction of duty, and who's the most macho leader. Missing
from the discourse is a critical examination of why George W. Bush failed to
heed warnings before September 11, why he sat paralyzed for 7 minutes after
being informed of the attacks, how he subsequently turned Iraq into a deadly
cauldron, and committed - then covered up - war crimes in Afghanistan,
Guantánamo and Iraq.
The central theme of the Republican Convention was Bush's bona fides
as a tough president who will save us from another terrorist attack. Instead
of examining why we went to war with a country that posed no threat to us,
the agenda was replete with rhetoric about fighting the terrorists in Iraq
so we wouldn't have to fight them here.
Significantly absent from the patriotic speeches was the "t" word. Not
even a brief acknowledgement that prisoners in American custody were
mistreated. Torture is on the back burner. Every so often, another official
report comes out, with more disturbing revelations, but never directly
implicates Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld.
Even the release of Seymour Hersh's new book, Chain of Command: The
Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, has garnered scant attention in the daily fare
of television staples, where most Americans get their news. But Rumsfeld
noticed. Four days before the book's release, without having read it, the
Department of Defense issued a rare but characteristically preemptive attack
on the book.
Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that his
department was alerted to the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in January
2004. Rumsfeld told Bush in February about an "issue" involving mistreatment
of prisoners in Iraq, according to a Senior White House aide.
These claims are disingenuous. The roots of Abu Ghraib, writes Hersh,
lie in the creation of the "unacknowledged" special-access program (SAP)
established by a top-secret order Bush signed in late 2001 or early 2002.
The presidential order authorized the Defense Department to set up a
clandestine team of Special Forces operatives to defy international law and
snatch, or assassinate, anyone considered a "high-value" Al Qaeda operative,
anywhere in the world.
Rumsfeld expanded SAP into Iraq in August 2003. It was Rumsfeld who
approved the use of physical coercion and sexual humiliation to extract
information from prisoners. Rumsfeld and Bush set this system in motion long
before January 2004. The mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was part of
the ongoing operation.
Hersch quotes a CIA analyst who was sent to the U.S. military prison
at Guantánamo in late summer of 2002, to find out why so little useful
intelligence had been gathered. After interviewing 30 prisoners, "he came
back convinced that we were committing war crimes in Guantánamo."
By fall 2002, the analyst's report finally reached Gen. John A.
Gordon, the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, who
reported directly to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Gordon was
deeply distressed by the report and its implications for the treatment of
captured American soldiers. He also thought "that if the actions at
Guantánamo ever became public, it'd be damaging to the president."
Gordon passed the report to Rice, who called a high-level meeting in
the White House situation room. Rumsfeld, who had been encouraging his
soldiers to get tough with prisoners, was present at the meeting. Yet Rice
asked Rumsfeld "what the issues were, and he said he hadn't looked into it."
Rice urged him to look into it: "Let's get the story right," she declared.
A military consultant with close ties to Special Operations told Hersh
that war crimes were committed in Iraq and no action was taken. "People were
beaten to death," he said. "What do you call it when people are tortured and
going to die and the soldiers know it, but do not treat their injuries?" the
consultant asked rhetorically. "Execution," he replied to his own question.
We should have seen it coming. In Bush's January 2003 State of the
Union Address, he said: "All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have
been arrested in many countries, and many others have met a different fate."
He added, "Let's put it this way. They are no longer a problem for the
United States and our friends and allies."
Bush was admitting he had sanctioned summary execution, in direct
violation of international, and United States, law.
The Bush administration has also admittedly engaged in the illegal
practice of rendition, where people are sent to other countries to be
tortured. The C.I.A. acknowledged in testimony before Congress that prior to
2001, it had engaged in about seventy "extraordinary renditions."
In December 2001, American operatives kidnapped two Egyptians and flew
them to Cairo, where they were subjected to repeated torture by electrical
shocks from electrodes attached to their private parts.
Rapes, sodomy with foreign objects, the use of unmuzzled dogs to bite
and severely injure prisoners, and beating prisoners to death have been
documented at Abu Ghraib. Women beg their families to smuggle poison into
the prisons so they can kill themselves because of the humiliation they
suffered.
Allegations of routine torture have emerged from Mosul and Basra as
well. "Some were burnt with fire, others [had] bandaged broken arms,"
claimed Yasir Rubaii Saeed al-Qutaji. Haitham Saeed al-Mallah reported
seeing "a young man of 14 years of age bleeding from his ***** and lying on
the floor." Al-Mallah heard the soldiers say that "the reason for this
bleeding was inserting a metal object in his *****."
The army has charged one Sergeant with assault and other crimes, and
is recommending that two dozen American soldiers face criminal charges,
including negligent homicide for mistreatment of prisoners in Afghanistan.
Last week, three Americans, running a private prison, but reportedly
working with the CIA, were convicted of kidnapping and torture and sentenced
to 8-10 years in prison by an Afghan court. Afghan police had discovered
three men hanging from the ceiling, and five others were found beaten and
tied in a dark small room.
The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment, a treaty ratified by the U.S. and thus part of our
binding domestic law, defines torture as follows: the infliction of severe
pain or suffering for the purpose of obtaining a confession, discrimination,
coercion or intimidation.
Torture, inhuman treatment, and willful killing are grave breaches of
the Geneva Conventions, treaties ratified by the United States. Grave
breaches of Geneva are considered war crimes under our federal War Crimes
Act of 1996. American nationals who commit war crimes abroad can receive
life in prison, or even the death penalty if the victim dies. Under the
doctrine of command responsibility, a commander can be held liable if he
knew or should have known his inferiors were committing war crimes and he
failed to prevent or stop them.
When John Walker Lindh was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001,
his American interrogators stripped and gagged him, strapped him to a board,
and displayed him to the press. He was writhing in pain from a bullet left
in his body.
Although initially charged with crimes of terrorism carrying life in
prison, John Ashcroft permitted Lindh to plead guilty to lesser crimes that
garnered him 20 years. The condition: Lindh make a statement that he
suffered "no deliberate mistreatment" while in custody. The cover-up was
underway.
Lawyers from the Defense and Justice Departments penned lengthy memos
and created a definition of torture much narrower than the one in the
Torture Convention. They advised Bush how his people could engage in torture
and avoid prosecution under the federal Torture Statute.
Relying on advice in these memos, Bush issued an unprecedented order
that, as commander-in-chief, he has the authority to suspend the Geneva
Conventions. In spite of Geneva's requirement that a competent tribunal
decide whether someone qualifies for POW status, Bush took it upon himself
to decide that Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan were not
protected by the Geneva Convention on the POWs.
This decision was premised on the reasoning of White House Counsel
Alberto Gonzalez, that "the war against terrorism is a new kind of war, a
new paradigm [that] renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on
questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
Quaint!
A still-secret section of the recently-released Fay Report says that
"policies and practices developed and approved for use on Al Qaeda and
Taliban detainees who were not afforded the protection of the Geneva
Conventions, now applied to detainees who did fall under the Geneva
Conventions' protections."
The Schlesinger Report that came out a few weeks ago accused the
Pentagon's top civilian and military leadership of failing to exercise
sufficient oversight and permitting conditions that led to the abuses.
Rumsfeld's reversals of interrogation policy, according to the report,
created confusion about which techniques could be used on prisoners in Iraq.
Rumsfeld has admitted ordering an Iraqi prisoner be hidden from the
International Committee of the Red Cross. Pentagon investigators believe the
CIA has held as many as 100 "ghost" detainees in Iraq. Hiding prisoners from
the Red Cross violates Geneva.
The Schlesinger Report confirmed 5 detainee deaths as a result of
interrogation, and 23 more deaths are currently under investigation.
In May, when the Abu Ghraib scandal was on the front pages, there were
demands for Rumsfeld to resign. But Cheney told Rumsfeld there would be no
resignations. It was blatantly political. We're going to hunker down and
tough it out, Cheney said, so as not to hurt Bush's chances for election in
November.
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the American commander in charge of
detentions and interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison, was sent from Guantánamo
to Iraq last fall to transplant his harsh interrogation techniques. Miller
recently conducted an overnight tour of Abu Ghraib for journalists.
He proudly displayed "Camp Liberty" and "Camp Redemption," newly
renovated in response to the torture scandal.
Under the new system in place at Abu Ghraib, an interrogation plan is
submitted to a lawyer for approval before any interrogation begins. The time
required to process prisoners has been reduced from 120 to 50 days. Since
July, 60% of the reviews have led to releases.
Three hundred Iraqi prisoners were released Wednesday. Each walked
away with $25 and a 12-page glossy pamphlet on Iraq's interim government.
But evidence of war crimes by the Bush administration - notably
Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush - continues to emerge. And in spite of Bush's
renunciation of the International Criminal Court, many people around the
world are clamoring for Bush and his deputies to be held accountable. In the
words of Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman: "It is one thing to protect the
armed forces from politicized justice; quite another, to make it a haven for
suspected war criminals."
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