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Extent of Iraqis’ torture revealed

Saturday, July 18th, 2009

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MoD ‘misled courts over Iraqi deaths investigation’

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

A panel of three judges criticised “disturbing failures” in how the MoD handled applications to withhold evidence, saying that all future requests should treated by the courts “with very considerable caution”.

The Government earlier this week ordered a new inquiry into the deaths of 20 Iraqis following a gun battle near the town of Majar-al-Kabir in 2004. Relatives of the victims claim they were murdered and mutilated at Camp Abu Naji, a British base.

Yesterday Lord Justice Scott Baker and two other judges condemned “truly alarming” errors made by the MoD in its efforts to prevent documents becoming public during an earlier investigation.

A public interest immunity (PII) certificate presented to the courts – in which the MoD claimed that permissible interrogation limits issued to soldiers should be kept secret to protect national security – was factually incorrect because the information was already in the public domain, the judges said.

The MoD compounded its error by failing to inform the courts when the inaccuracy was realised, they added.

“The court was misled into making a number of rulings on a false basis, all of which were wrong and should never have been made,” Lord Justice Scott Baker said.

“The steps that are currently being taken by the MoD, including the prospective detailed review of its PII process in this case, must ensure that false assertions are never again made in a ministerial certificate and schedule.”

An MoD spokesman said the errors were a matter of “deep regret”. He said: “There was absolutely no intention of misleading the Court. There will be a thorough review of what went wrong and measures will be introduced urgently to ensure that this cannot happen again.”

The MoD emphatically denies the original allegations and says that the 20 people who died were killed “on the battlefield”.

Announcing the new inquiry on Monday, Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, said that there was no evidence of torture or mutilation.

“However, these are serious allegations and we regret that we have failed to provide the court with timely and sufficient disclosure of information to enable them to determine the facts,” he said.

“Given these failings of disclosure, we have suggested to the court that a fresh investigation be undertaken into allegations of the murder of Iraqi detainees.”

Matthew Moore

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Elite Iraqi troops in forefront after US pullback

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

As Iraqi security services prepare to take back their towns from the Americans on Tuesday, the sharpest arrow in their quiver is an elite, American-trained force with a reputation that leads many Iraqis to call it “the dirty brigade.”

Its real name is the Counter Terrorism Bureau, and its commander insists it’s professional, nonsectarian and not dirty at all.

Violence is already rising and will likely continue after the handover as different factions test the government’s ability to manage without American backup. But Kalib Shegati al-Kenani, the Iraqi Army general who heads the bureau, is confident his force can cope and that his country will not slide into renewed sectarian warfare.

The elite units, armed with high-tech U.S.-made equipment, often pair up with American special forces to go after Iraq’s most wanted foes — both al-Qaida extremists and Shiite militants.

They are thought to have been the main force that assisted the Americans during an offensive in Baghdad’s Sadr City quarter last year to rout Shiite militias, and on operations targeting Sunni insurgents.

Formed soon after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the force became known as the “Dirty Brigade” because it was secretive and until recently operated outside the Iraqi chain of command, reporting directly to its U.S. handlers.

It was so little known that it even was rumored to be used against the Shiite-dominated government’s opponents in the political mainstream_ a charge denied by the Iraqis and the Americans.

Originally numbering about 4,500 members, it is reported to have doubled in size and now reports directly to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

“We are professional and not sectarian forces, and we bring together people from all sections of the population. Each member of the bureau signs a document vowing not to speak about sectarianism, partisan affairs and nationalities. Their commitment is only to Iraq,” al-Kenani told The Associated Press in an interview this week.

Al-Kenani, a 59-year-old veteran of the eight-year Iran-Iraq War and the first Gulf War, is a Shiite, his deputy is a Sunni and one of his top generals is a Kurd.

The force has sought to reinforce its nonpartisan makeup by refusing to accept recruits who previously served in sectarian militias. Also, says Maj. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saedi, a senior commander, it “does not allow any minister or government official to enter its headquarters to prevent any interference in investigations and security operations.”

Its ranks are made up of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, al-Saedi said, but it does not publish breakdowns.

A statement in Arabic posted on the U.S. military’s Web site acknowledged the public’s “misconceptions about this very viable and important unit.”

It picks its targets on the basis of rigorous checks, the statement said. “In short,” it added, “the CTB’s mission is targeting terrorists, not the Iraqi public or political foes.”

Al-Kenani said the bureau has a good intelligence-gathering machine and “cooperation with all ministries.”

The Americans are already leaving the towns and cities, and once they are gone full responsibility will fall to the Iraqi police and military, which numbered 654,362 members at last count.

Although some troops will remain as trainers and advisers, the remaining 133,000 U.S. military personnel will be confined to base unless called in by the Iraqis. A full withdrawal is envisioned by the end of 2011.

The Iraqi government has declared Tuesday a public holiday.

“June 30 is considered an Iraqi victory day,” al-Kenani said, “and we will all celebrate the withdrawal of American forces.”

Explosions around the country have claimed more than 160 lives since June 20, when a truck bomb in the northern city of Kirkuk killed 82. A bombing in Baghdad’s Shiite district of Sadr City killed at least 61 people on Wednesday.

But al-Kenani said the days of mass violence and near-civil war were over. “Whoever carries out explosions and security breaches after the withdrawal of forces will have no excuse,” he said.

“They were repeatedly bragging about fighting the occupation; now the occupation is out.”

Associated Press Writer Patrick Quinn contributed to this story from Baghdad.

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Blair WAS involved in Iraq inquiry talks, minister says

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Gordon Brown is to promise that much of the Iraq inquiry will be held in the open in an attempt to avert a damaging Commons defeat for the Government this Wednesday.

 

Amid fury on the Labour back benches over Mr Brown’s initial decision to stage the inquiry in private, ministers now expect much of the evidence to be given publicly after a change of heart was forced on the Prime Minister.

The Labour rebels’ anger was intensified by the disclosure yesterday that Tony Blair, likely to be the key witness, had consulted with the Cabinet Secretary on the form of the inquiry. They want him to give evidence under oath.

Mr Blair’s involvement in discussions with Sir Gus O’Donnell over the nature of the hearings was confirmed by Shaun Woodward, the Northern Ireland Secretary. “Of course the Cabinet Secretary discussed this with the former prime minister,” Mr Woodward said, “because he obviously will be one of the major witnesses who will be giving evidence to Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry”.

The backbenchers also pointed to a leaked memo yesterday indicating that the former prime minister had been considering the possibility of going to war without a second UN resolution two months before the invasion.

The note, written by his foreign policy adviser Sir David Manning, indicated that Mr Blair and US President George Bush were already discussing ways of legitimising military invasion in case the UN failed to find weapons of mass destruction.

Such documents are likely to go to the heart of the inquiry; suggestions they could be examined in secret provoked uproar among MPs of all parties and senior military and intelligence officers. Mr Brown has already staged a partial retreat by asking Sir John Chilcot, the retired civil servant who will head the inquiry, to hold some sessions in public. But the concession did not go far enough to pacify Labour MPs threatening to support a Tory motion on Wednesday calling for all hearings to be held in public other than for security reasons.

Sir John will tomorrow meet David Cameron, the Tory leader, and Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, to discuss the form of the inquiry.

Ministers said yesterday that they expected the bulk of hearings to be held in public and one senior Whitehall source said: “It’s inevitable that will happen.”

Jack Straw, foreign secretary at the time of the war, said the indications from Sir John were that his hearings would be both public and private. He said: “I have no problem with giving most of the evidence I have in public.”

Mr Straw told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show that he was sure Mr Blair would also be happy to appear publicly.

Sadiq Khan, Britain’s most senior Muslim politician, admitted the controversy over the hearings “looked awful”, blaming the furore on ignorance over the autonomy given to the chairs of inquiries. Mr Khan, a Transport minister, told BBC1’s Politics Show: “I suspect there will be many, many parts of the inquiry held in public.”

The Government is preparing to table a rival motion on Wednesday promising widespread public hearings in an effort to peel off MPs reluctant to support a Conservative motion. Last night Labour MPs opposed to the war said they would only be satisfied by the majority of hearings being public.

Paul Flynn, the MP for Newport West, said: “We want a clear assurance that the inquiry will be open.” Gordon Prentice, MP for Pendle, argued: “The whole way this has been done is so cack-handed and inept it is unbelievable.

“The inquiry should be open with evidence given on oath. There must be an opportunity for the leading players to be cross-examined.”

By Nigel Morris

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All in a day’s work for the Israeli army: beating and torturing children

Friday, June 19th, 2009

Jonathan Cook reports on how Israeli soldiers routinely, and as a matter of policy, practise torture against Palestinian children, hundreds of whom are “convicted in Israel’s military courts each year, with children older than 12 denied access to lawyers in interrogation”.

“He broke his hand here at the wrist. Broke his hand at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left… The next day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting to do the same thing.” – Israeli soldier describing assault by his commander on four-year-old Palestinian boy, 2007

The rights of Palestinian children are routinely violated by Israel’s security forces, according to a new report that says beatings and torture are common. In addition, hundreds of Palestinian minors are prosecuted by Israel each year without a proper trial and are denied family visits.
 
The findings by Defence for Children International (DCI) come in the wake of revelations from Israeli soldiers and senior commanders that it is “normal procedure” in the West Bank to terrorize Palestinian civilians, including children.
 
Col Itai Virob, commander of the Kfir Brigade, disclosed last month that to accomplish a mission, “aggressiveness towards every one of the residents in the village is common”. Questioning included slaps, beatings and kickings, he said.
 
As a result, Gabi Ashkenazi, the head of the armed services, was forced to appear before the Israeli parliament to disavow the behaviour of his soldiers. Beatings were “absolutely prohibited”, he told legislators.
 
Col Virob made his remarks during court testimony in defence of two soldiers, including his deputy commander, who are accused of beating Palestinians in the village of Qaddum, close to Nablus. One told the court that “soldiers are educated towards aggression in the IDF [army]”.
 
Col Virob appeared to confirm his observation, saying it was policy to “disturb the balance” of village life during missions and that the vast majority of assaults were “against uninvolved people”.
 
Last week, further disclosures of ill-treatment of Palestinians, some as young as 14, were aired on Israeli TV, using material collected by dissident soldiers as part of the “Breaking the silence” project, which highlights army brutality.
 
Two soldiers serving in the Harub battalion said they had witnessed beatings at a school in the West Bank village of Hares, southwest of Nablus, in an operation in March to stop stone-throwing. Many of those held were not involved, the soldiers said.
 
During a 12-hour operation that began at 3 a.m., 150 detainees were blindfolded and handcuffed from behind, with the nylon restraints so tight their hands turned blue. The worst beatings, the soldiers said, occurred in the school toilets.
 
According to one soldier’s testimony, a boy of about 15 was given “a slap that brought him to the ground”. He added that many of his comrades “just knee [Palestinians] because it’s boring, because you stand there 10 hours, you’re not doing anything, so they beat people up”.
 
The picture from serving soldiers confirms the findings of DCI, which noted that many children were picked up in general sweeps after disturbances or during late-night raids of their homes.
 
Its report includes a selection of testimonies from children it represented in 2008 in which they describe Israeli soldiers beating them or being tortured by interrogators.
 
One 10-year-old boy, identified as Ezzat H, described an army search of his family home for a gun. He said a soldier slapped and punched him repeatedly during two hours of questioning, before another soldier pointed a rifle at him: “The rifle barrel was a few centimetres away from my face. I was so terrified that I started to shiver. He made fun of me.”
 
Another boy, Shadi H, aged 15, said he and his friend were forced to undress by soldiers in an orange grove near Tulkarm while the soldiers threw stones at them. They were then beaten with rifle butts.
 
Jameel K, aged 14, described being taken to a military camp where he was assaulted and then had a rope tightened around his neck in a mock execution.
 
Yehuda Shaul, of “Breaking the silence”, said soldiers treated any Palestinian older than 12 or 13 as an adult.
 
“For the first time a high-ranking soldier [Col Virob] has joined us in raising the issue — even if not intentionally — that the use of physical violence against Palestinians is not exceptional but policy. A few years ago no senior officer would have had the guts to say this,” he said.
 
The DCI report also highlights the systematic use of torture by interrogators from the army and the secret police, the Shin Bet, in an attempt to extract confessions from children, often in cases involving stone-throwing.
 
Islam M, aged 12, said he was threatened with having boiling water poured on his face if he did not admit throwing stones and was then pushed into a thorn bush. Another boy, Abed S, aged 16, said his hands and feet were tied to the wall of an interrogation room in the shape of a cross for a day and then put in solitary confinement for 15 days.
 
Last month, the United Nations Committee Against Torture, a panel of independent experts, expressed “deep concern” at Israel’s treatment of Palestinian minors.
 
According to the DCI report, some 700 children are convicted in Israel’s military courts each year, with children older than 12 denied access to lawyers in interrogation.
 
It adds that interrogators routinely blindfold and handcuff child detainees during questioning and use techniques including slaps and kicks, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, threats to the child and his family, and tying the child up for long periods.
 
Such practices were banned by Israel’s Supreme Court in 1999 but are still widely documented by Israeli human rights groups.
 
DCI says it has been disturbed by reports from several children of a special tiny cell, referred to as No.36, at a detention centre near Haifa. The cell has no windows or ventilation, its walls are dark and a dim light is kept on 24 hours a day.
 
In 95 per cent of cases, children are convicted on the basis of signed confessions written in Hebrew, a language few of them understand.
 
Once sentenced, the children are held in violation of international law in prisons in Israel where most are denied visits from family and receive little or no education.
 
DCI also criticizes “a culture of impunity” among the Shin Bet, noting that not one of 600 complaints of torture filed against its interrogators during the second intifada has led to a criminal investigation.
 
Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, reported in November that soldiers too rarely face disciplinary action over illegal behaviour.
 
Army data from 2000 to the end of 2007 revealed that the military police had indicted soldiers in only 78 of 1,268 investigations. Most soldiers received minor sentences.
 
Academic studies suggest that Israeli soldiers have been routinely using violence against Palestinian civilians, including children, for many years.
 
In late 2007 Israelis were shocked by the testimonies collected by clinical psychologist Nufar Yishai-Karin from 21 soldiers with whom she shared her military service during the early 1990s.
 
The soldiers told her of incidents in which bystanders were shot or assaulted. In one of the most disturbing testimonies, a soldier said he had witnessed his commander attacking a four-year-old boy playing in the sand in Gaza.
 
“He broke his hand here at the wrist. Broke his hand at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left… The next day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting to do the same thing.”
 
Such revelations have grown in number since the “Breaking the silence” began drawing attention to the army’s mistreatment of Palestinians in 2004.

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Iraq inquiry a ‘whitewash’

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

RINF NEWS

Former Prime Minister Sir John Major has labeled the Governments decision to hold a private inquiry into the Iraq as a ‘whitewash’.

In a statement, Sir John Major said: “The Government’s decision to hold the inquiry into the Iraq war in private is inexplicable - not least in its own interests.

“Any material which puts our national security at risk must, of course, be withheld but if, as the Government proclaims, its position will be wholly vindicated, then it should welcome maximum publicity on all other disclosures.

“It should also engender confidence in its findings by taking evidence under oath. Only then can witnesses be bound to offer full and frank responses.

“The arrangements currently proposed run the risk of being viewed sceptically by some, and denounced as a whitewash by others. I am astonished the Government cannot understand this.”

Also Lord Robin Butler, who led a previous inquiry in 2004 into intelligence failings over whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, said: “There is no prospect that an inquiry conducted entirely in private can purge the national feeling of mistrust.

The form of the inquiry proposed by the government has been dictated more by the government’s political interest than the national interest.”

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Torture Photos “Will Not See The Light Of Day”

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

RINF NEWS

Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham, today revealed that a top ranking White House official has stated photographs showing US troops torturing and abusing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan will “not see the light of day.”

Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s chief of staff, plans to block the release of the pictures. 

“He assured me these photos would not see the light of day,” said Senator Graham.

“I have been personally assured by Rahm Emanuel, the White House Chief of Staff, that if Congress fails to do its part in protecting these photos from being released, President Obama will sign an executive order classifying the photos,” he continued.

“The people involved in Abu Ghraib and other detainee abuse allegations have been dealt with. These photos bring nothing new, but the effect of releasing these photos would be to empower our enemies,” said Graham.

“Every photo would become a bullet or IED used by terrorists against our troops,” he added.

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Iraq Death Toll Over 100,000

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

RINF NEWS

The civilian death toll in Iraq is now over 100,000 as the US military confirm that at least 4,313 servicemen and women have been killed since 2003.

The British military has reported 179 deaths.

As of today the global figures for military deaths in Iraq look like this:

Italy, 33
Ukraine, 18
Poland, 21
Bulgaria, 13
Spain, 11
Denmark, 7
El Salvador, five
Slovakia, four
Latvia, 3 
Georgia, 3
Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand and Romania, 2 each
Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan and South Korea, 1 death each

What is often less reported are the civilian deaths which include many families and children. A high civilian death rate comes as a result of aerial bombs and mortar fire.

Dr Madelyn Hicks of King’s College London said: “It seems clear … to protect civilians from indiscriminate harm, as required by international humanitarian law (including the Geneva Conventions), military and civilian policies should prohibit aerial bombing in civilian areas unless it can be demonstrated — by monitoring of civilian casualties, for example — that civilians are being protected.

“Policymakers, war strategists of all persuasions, and the groups and societies that support them bear moral and legal responsibility for the effects that particular combat tactics have on civilians — including the weapons used near and among them.”

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EU “disturbed” by Iraq executions, calls for freeze

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

The European Union protested against reported executions in Iraq on Monday and called on Baghdad to resume a moratorium on the death penalty.

“The European Union is deeply disturbed at reports that in recent days further death sentences were carried out in Iraq, probably totalling number 20,” the Czech EU presidency said.

“Moreover, the European Union is severely alarmed about indications that further mass executions might be imminent,” the EU said in a statement.

The presidency did not specify which executions it referred to. A Czech official told Reuters that EU diplomatic sources in Baghdad had information of recent executions but gave no details.

Baghdad reintroduced the death penalty in 2004 after it was suspended following the U.S.-led invasion a year earlier and has been conducting executions regardless of numerous calls from the international community to suspend them.

Rights groups have warned trials ending in death sentences are often poorly conducted.

“The EU … urges the government of Iraq to resume the de facto suspension of the execution of death penalty, which had been observed in Iraq since August 2007, pending legal abolition,” the Czech presidency statement said.

“This suspension should include all cases still on death row in Iraq.”

The United Nations urged Baghdad in May to reconsider its resumption of the death penalty, saying Iraq’s justice system was not conducting fair trials.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on May 31 that former members of Saddam Hussein’s government on trial for ordering poison gas attacks on Kurdish villages will be executed if found guilty. (Reporting by Jana Mlcochova; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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UK Iraq inquiry ‘must not be held in secret’

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Gordon Brown was under intense pressure last night to throw open a new inquiry into the Iraq war to the public as families of soldiers who died, and anti-war MPs, reacted with horror to suggestions it would be held largely in secret.

Cabinet sources said the prime minister would announce an inquiry early this week, probably on Tuesday. Its structure would be “similar but not identical” to the Franks inquiry into the 1982 Falklands war, which was held behind closed doors.

Last night, as families of the dead said they would march on Downing Street if any of its deliberations were kept secret, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg stoked the controversy saying he would boycott the entire investigation if it was not open, wide in its remit and did not report speedily.

Clegg told the Observer that, unless those in charge were granted full access to all documents, could subpoena witnesses, had a remit to look back to events at least a year before the war began and reported within months, the inquiry would be seen as a sham.

He said: “If it does not have this kind of remit, my party will not back it or participate. We are talking about the biggest foreign policy mistake since Suez. To lock a bunch of grandees behind closed doors in secret and wait for them to come up with a puff of smoke, like the election of the pope … would be an insult.”

Clegg added that the inquiry could be held on the lines of an open Commons select committee that the public and press could attend. “This inquiry is an acid test for all of Gordon Brown’s talk of reforming British politics,” he said.

“If he holds it all or partly in secret and kicks the eventual report into the long grass, it will be a betrayal of all those families who lost children serving in Iraq. They need answers, not another Whitehall stitch-up.”

Labour MP Alan Simpson, chair of Labour Against the War, said Brown’s strategy of using the inquiry as part of a personal political fight-back and to win favour with his backbenchers was in danger of backfiring spectacularly. “If it is done secretively, it could be the final nail in his coffin,” he said.

“We need no less rigorous an examination on this than we had on the far less important issue of MPs’ expenses. A secret examination would be worthless.”

The announcement of an inquiry comes just weeks after British troops officially ended combat operations in Iraq after a six-year campaign in which 179 British servicemen and women died.

The war, which was supported by Brown and which he financed as chancellor, cost the British taxpayer approximately £6.5bn, or roughly £1bn a year, equating to about £100 from every man, woman and child in the country.

Rose Gentle, whose teenage son, Gordon, was killed in Iraq in 2004, said that families who had lost sons and daughters in the conflict would march on Downing Street to protest if the proposed Iraq inquiry was “closed”. She said it was vital that the government dispelled concerns over the reasons for invading Iraq.

“What is the point of an inquiry behind closed doors? No family would be happy with that. We already feel that we have been lied to by the government. We don’t want any more lies. We would be prepared to go to Downing Street if the inquiry is not transparent.”

Philip Cooper, whose son Jamie was the youngest soldier seriously injured in Iraq, said: “Ministers should not treat us like us mushrooms - kept in the dark and fed on shit.”

Former Labour defence minister Peter Kilfoyle, who moved a parliamentary amendment to stop the war in early 2003 that attracted support from more than 130 Labour MPs, said: “Nothing but a completely full inquiry will do.”

Those pressing for an inquiry argue that the war may have been illegal under international law and that Tony Blair made a wholly inadequate case for war by overblowing the case against Saddam Hussein, based on dubious intelligence.

Attorney general Lord Goldsmith’s advice to the government over the legality of the 2003 invasion would also be a key part of any inquiry.

The Conservatives, who supported the war but have since questioned the government’s handling of the run-up to the conflict, welcomed the inquiry and are broadly happy with a Franks-style investigation. William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said: “Given that many key decisions and events were in 2002 and 2003, it is vital that an inquiry starts work with all possible speed. It is crucial that it has access to all government papers, and that it is able to report on what went wrong with the planning and co-ordination of the occupation of Iraq, as well as the decisions about the war itself.”

The Observer

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Torture Worked to Sell the Iraq War

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

Three cheers for Dick Cheney. The former vice president has urged, however rhetorically, that the Obama administration release more of the torture memos. “One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn’t put out the memos that showed the success of the effort,” the former vice president told FoxNews.

    ”I’ve now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was.”

    News reports differ as to whether Mr. Cheney has formally made the request, but he is absolutely right that the American people need to see the complete record. He is wrong about what the record will show. From the material already released or ferreted out by journalists, it is clear that he and Mr. Bush succeeded in using torture, not primarily to secure needed intelligence, but to create the propaganda they used to sell their invasion of Iraq.

    The evidence comes from a variety of sources, including the report on the military’s treatment of detainees, which Sen. Carl Levin’s Armed Services Committee has just released. The report revealed that Pentagon officials began preparing to use torture - or “abusive interrogation techniques” - as early as December 2001. This was less than two months after the start of the war in Afghanistan and eight months before the Department of Justice gave legal authorization in two memos dated August 1, 2002, and signed by Jay Bybee, then-assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. The first memo redefined physical and mental torture and suggested that the president, acting pursuant to his constitutional powers as commander-in-chief, could override the federal anti-torture statute. The second analyzed and approved specific interrogation tactics, including isolation, prolonged sleep deprivation, stress positions and waterboarding, which makes the victim feel that he is drowning.

    If not the Justice Department lawyers, who gave the earlier go-ahead? The Senate report puts the onus directly on the decider-in-chief, President George W. Bush. He issued a written determination on February 7, 2002, “that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees.”

    Former White House terrorist adviser Richard Clarke has confirmed that Mr. Bush gave an informal go-ahead even earlier. According to Clarke’s account in his book, “Against All Enemies,” Bush addressed his national security advisers late on September 11, 2001. “We are at war and we will stay at war until this is done,” Bush told them. “Any barriers in your way, they’re gone.” Later he added in a heated exchange with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.”

    The Senate report also pointed the finger at Mr. Cheney and other top officials of the Bush administration. “Members of the President’s Cabinet and other senior officials participated in meetings inside the White House in 2002 and 2003 where specific interrogation techniques were discussed,” the committee concluded. “National Security Council principals reviewed the CIA’s interrogation program during that period.”

    Why so much attention from the top? McClatchy news has provided the obvious answer. According to a former senior US intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist, the Bush administration wanted “to find evidence of cooperation between al-Qaeda and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime.”

    ”There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used,” said the former official. “The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al-Qaeda and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”

    In part to get that smoking gun, the CIA waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times and Abu Zubaydah 83 times. But neither man told the interrogators what Bush and Cheney wanted to hear about Iraq and al-Qaeda. That came from Ibn al Sheikh al Libi, whom the Bush administration sent to Egypt for what CIA Director George Tenet called “further debriefing.” As PBS Frontline reported back in November 2007, al Libi “confessed” - after being beaten repeatedly and locked in a small box for some 17 hours - that Saddam Hussein had trained al-Qaeda in chemical weapons. Al Libi later retracted his statement and the CIA later rejected it as reliable intelligence. But the torture of al Libi worked to sell the war in Iraq, providing the “evidence” that Secretary of State Colin Powell used when he spoke before the United Nations Security Council in February 2003.

    ”I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these [chemical and biological] weapons to al-Qaeda,” Powell asserted. “Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story.”

    Torture might not work as well as conventional interrogation to provide sound intelligence, but it certainly worked for Bush and Cheney in exactly the way they most wanted.

Steve Weissman

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Blackwater Lingers in Iraq

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

By Jason Ditz |

Though three months ago the Iraqi government formally declared Blackwater Worldwide persona non grata in the nation, citing “excessive use of force” in the 2007 massacre of 17 Baghdad civilians, the group continues to have presence in the nation.

Despite no longer having a license to operate there Blackwater, which has since changed its name to Xe in an effort to distance itself from the taint of its infamous role in Iraq, continues to operate, guarding diplomats and providing air security for diplomatic convoys. The State Department signed a $22 million deal with Xe after the Iraqi government announced it would no longer be licensed to operate in the nation.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh says that Iraq “do not want Blackwater to work in Iraqi airspace or land … under one name or another.” Though it seems the unwelcome contractor will have a presence in the nation at least through this Summer (and potentially well into 2010), Dabbagh insists that Iraq will not allow them to have a long-term presence in the nation, but the delay is still outraging victims of the organization.

Contractors for Blackwater are facing 14 charges of manslaughter and 20 charges of attempted manslaughter over the September 2007 incident. The State Department also intends to review the contractor’s operations in Afghanistan.

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Thousands protest anniversary of Iraq war

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

They want troops out now, fear that Obama is ’stalling’

By Nafeesa Syeed |

WASHINGTON — Before war protesters ended their demonstration yesterday afternoon, several placed cardboard coffins in front of the offices of northern Virginia defense contractors such as KBR Inc. and Lockheed Martin Corp. as riot police stood by.

 

“Lockheed Martin, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!” they chanted as part of a demonstration that began in Washington to mark the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

Arlington County, Va., authorities estimated there were 2,500 to 3,000 protesters.

Organizers from the ANSWER Coalition said more than 1,000 groups sponsored the protest to call for an end to the Iraq war.

Demonstrators carrying cardboard coffins and signs saying “We need jobs and schools, not war” and “Stop the war!” beat drums and played trumpets as they marched.

Protesters demanded that President Barack Obama immediately withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq, saying that thousands of Iraqis have died and thousands of American troops have been wounded or killed.

“We think it’s especially important for this new administration to feel the pressure from people that we don’t want more war,” said Obama supporter Pat Halle, 59, of Baltimore.

Anti-war activists said even though former President George W. Bush is out of power, they are disappointed with what they see as stalled action from Obama.

“Obama seems to be led somewhat by the bureaucracies. I want him to follow up on his promise to end the war,” said 66-year-old Perry Parks of Rockingham, N.C., who said he served in the Army for nearly 30 years, including in Vietnam. “But the longer it goes, the more it seems like he’s stalling.”

Obama has said he plans to withdraw roughly 100,000 troops by summer 2010. He promises to pull the last of the U.S. troops by the end of 2011, which is in accord with a deal Iraqis signed with Bush.

About 138,000 U.S. troops were in Iraq as of March 13.

Meanwhile, in California, hundreds of protesters gathered in Hollywood. Among them were peace advocate Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, Oscar-winning screenwriter Paul Haggis and Ron Kovic, a paralyzed Vietnam veteran whose story was chronicled in the book and film Born on the Fourth of July.

Protesters in Los Angeles were expected to follow a rally with a march and then a symbolic “die in” where they would lie down in a major Hollywood Boulevard intersection to symbolize the soldiers who have died in the war.

Protesters waved signs and sold bumper stickers and T-shirts commemorating the event.

Denise Clendenning, 51, an environmental scientist from Chino Hills, Calif., said she hopes Obama will rethink his strategy of withdrawing most of the troops from Iraq and call all of them back instead, and those in Afghanistan as well. “We all have a lot of confidence in him,” she said, holding two signs that read “Out of Iraq” and “End the War.”

Donna Moreno, 32, a medical worker from Gardena, Calif., said she was representing her Vietnam-veteran father at the rally.

“I know Obama is making the effort. I have hope,” she said, wearing an Obama shirt and several buttons. “But I’m here to protest the war and job situation.”

This year, the protest in Washington was held on a weekend, a few days after the March 19 anniversary of the war, which began in 2003. Last year’s weekday protest was marked by lower turnout than in previous years.

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Blackwater sued in US court over alleged cover-up

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

The widow of a 32-year-old Iraqi has filed suit in a federal court against private security firm Xe, formerly Blackwater, for allegedly trying to hide that her husband was killed by one of its security agents who was drunk.

According to the suit filed in federal court in San Diego, California, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, “on Christmas eve 2006, a highly intoxicated and heavily armed Xe-Blackwater employee named Andrew Moonen, shot and killed a man named Raheem Khalaf Sa’adoon, for no reason.”

“Although Xe-Blackwater has learned of their employee’s crime short after it occurred, Xe-Blackwater acted, and continues to act, in conspiracy with Moonen to evade any accountability whatsoever,” the suit charges.

The lawsuit also alleges the company rushed to get the agent out of Iraq, and destroyed documents in the case.

It also charges that Xe, which until recently was a contractor for the Department of State in Iraq, does not punish employees found guilty of wrongdoing, but “instead, Xe-Blackwater continued to rehire and deploy mercenaries known to have killed innocents.”

The company, which made hundreds of millions of dollars protecting State Department officials in war zones, was banned from working in Iraq two months ago because of a 2007 incident in which 17 civilians were killed by Blackwater guards.

An Iraqi investigation found that 17 civilians were killed and 20 wounded when Blackwater guards opened fire with automatic weapons in Baghdad while escorting an American diplomatic convoy.

US prosecutors say 14 civilians were killed in the incident. Five former Blackwater guards pleaded not guilty in January to manslaughter charges.

“From Mr. Sa’adoon’s death to the litany of other civilian shootings by Xe-Blackwater personnel, the company has created, fostered and refused to curb a culture of lawlessness and unaccountability,” said a statement from Susan Burke, an attorney for Sa’adoon’s widow.

AFP

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No freedom here

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

Have Your Say: No freedom here
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