5488

http://www.oaw.org/new/
Not the torturer will scare me
tyujjtt
Nor the body's final fall
http://www.soaw.org/new/
Nor the barrels of death's rifles
http://www.soaw.org/new/
Nor the shadows on the wall
5585http://www.soaw.org/new/
Nor the night when to the ground
http://www.soaw.org/new/
The last dim star of pain is hurled
5545http:/www.soaw.org/new/

But the blind indifference
554585488

rnn
Of a merciless, unfeeling world.
/
85488
- Halfdan Rasmussen, in Roger Waters' 
song Each Small Candle, 1999

"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. 
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. 
We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living."
- General Omar Bradley  
gshg
"Once alienated, an 'unalienable right' is apt to be forever lost, 
in which case we are no longer even remotely the last best hope of earth 
but merely a seedy imperial state whose citizens are kept in lineby SWAT teams and 
whose way of death, not life, is universally imitated."
- Gore Vidal
 g 
"There is a way that seems right to a  man, but its end is the way of  death."
- Solomon
gsh
\/DEATH CULTURE/
gsh

/
"Archbishop Tutu referred to the idea that harsh prison sentences made people safer.
In the invasion of Iraq, he said, they could see the same illusion on a global scale -
- that force and brutality could produce security."
/
-  From "Tutu attacks 'immoral' Iraq war", by Barnaby Mason, BBC 
 /

  We have traveled a long, dark, strange road since the attacks of September 11. We have all suffered, we have all known fear and anger, and sometimes hatred. Many of us have felt - probably more than we are willing to admit it - at one time or another a desire for revenge, so deep was the wound inflicted upon us during that wretched, unforgettable Tuesday morning in September of 2001.

  But we have come now to the end of a week so awful, so terrible, so wrenching that the most basic moral fabric of that which we believe is good and great - the basic moral fabric of the United States of America - has been torn bitterly asunder.

  We are awash in photographs of Iraqi men - not terrorists, just people - lying in heaps on cold floors with leashes around their necks. We are awash in photographs of men chained so remorselessly that their backs are arched in agony, men forced to masturbate for cameras, men forced to pretend to have sex with one another for cameras, men forced to endure attacks from dogs, men with electrodes attached to them as they stand, hooded, in fear of their lives.

  The worst, amazingly, is yet to come. A new battery of photographs and videotapes, as yet unreleased, awaits over the horizon of our abused understanding. These photos and videos, also from the Abu Ghraib prison, are reported to show U.S. soldiers gang raping an Iraqi woman, U.S. soldiers beating an Iraqi man nearly to death, U.S. troops posing, smirks affixed, with decomposing Iraqi bodies, and Iraqi troops under U.S. command raping young boys.

  George W. Bush would have us believe these horrors were restricted to a sadistic few, and would have us believe these horrors happened only in Abu Ghraib. Yet reports are surfacing now of similar treatment at another U.S. detention center in Iraq called Camp Bucca. According to these reports, Iraqi prisoners in Camp Bucca were beaten, humiliated, hogtied, and had scorpions placed on their naked bodies.

  In the eyes of the world, this is America today. It cannot be dismissed as an anomaly because it went on and on and on in the Abu Ghraib prison, and because now we hear of Camp Bucca. According to the British press, there are some 30 other cases of torture and humiliation under investigation. The Bush administration went out of its way to cover up this disgrace, declaring secret the Army report on these atrocities. That, pointedly, is against the rules and against the law. You can't call something classified just because it is embarrassing and disgusting. It was secret, but now it is out, and the whole world has been shown the dark, scabrous underbelly of our definition of freedom.

  The beginnings of actual political fallout began to find its way into the White House last week. Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the House Democrats' most vocal defense hawk, joined Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to declare that the conflict is "unwinnable." Murtha, a Vietnam veteran, rocked the Democratic caucus when he said at a leader's luncheon Tuesday that the United States cannot win the war in Iraq.

  "Unwinnable." Well, it only took about 14 months.

  "I firmly believed that we should not march into Baghdad.
 To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us
 and make a broken tyrant into a latter day Arab hero. 
Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a secretlyentrenched dictator and 
condemning them to fight what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war."
/
- George H.W. Bush ( Bush I ), 1992

  Also last week, calls for the resignation of Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld became strident. Pelosi accused Rumsfeld of being "in denial about Iraq," and said U.S. soldiers "are suffering great casualties and injuries, and American taxpayers are paying an enormous price" because Rumsfeld "has done a poor job as secretary of defense." Representative Charlie Rangel, a leading critic of the Iraq invasion, has filed articles of impeachment against Rumsfeld.

  So there's the heat. But let us consider the broader picture here in the context of that one huge word: "Unwinnable." Why did we do this in the first place? There have been several reasons offered over the last 16 months for why we needed to do this thing.

  It started, for real, in January 2003 when George W. Bush said in his State of the Union speech that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX, 30,000 munitions to deliver this stuff, and that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger to build nuclear bombs.

  That reason has been scratched off the list because, as has been made painfully clear now, there are no such weapons in Iraq. The Niger claim, in particular, has caused massive embarrassment for America because it was so farcical, and has led to a federal investigation of this White House because two administration officials took revenge upon Joseph Wilson's wife for Wilson''s exposure of the lie.

  Next on the list was September 11, and the oft-repeated accusation that Saddam Hussein must have been at least partially responsible. That one collapsed as well - Bush himself had to come out and say Saddam had nothing to do with it.

  Two reasons down, so the third must be freedom and liberty for the Iraqi people. Once again, however, facts interfere. America does not want a democratic Iraq, because a democratic Iraq would quickly become a Shi'ite fundamentalist Iraq allied with the Shi'ite fundamentalist nation of Iran, a strategic situation nobody with a brain wants to see come to pass. It has been made clear by Paul Bremer, the American administrator of Iraq, that whatever the new Iraqi government comes to look like, it will have no power to make any laws of any kind, it will have no control over the security of Iraq, and it will have no power over the foreign troops which occupy its soil. This is, perhaps, some bizarre new definition of democracy not yet in the dictionary, but it is not democracy by any currently accepted definition I have ever heard of.

  So...the reason to go to war because of weapons of mass destruction is destroyed. The reason to go to war because of connections to September 11 is destroyed. The reason to go to war in order to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq is destroyed.

  What is left? The one reason left has been unfailingly flapped around by defenders of this administration and supporters of this war: Saddam Hussein was a terrible, terrible man. He killed his own people. He tortured his own people. The Iraqis are better off without him, and so the war is justified.

  And here, now, is the final excuse destroyed. We have killed more than 10,000 innocent Iraqi civilians in this invasion, and maimed countless others. The photos from Abu Ghraib prison show that we, like Saddam Hussein, torture and humiliate the Iraqi people. Worst of all, we do this in the same prison Hussein used to do his torturing. The "rape rooms," often touted by Bush as justification for the invasion, are back. We are the killers now. We are the torturers now. We have achieved a moral equivalence with the Butcher of Baghdad.

  This war is lost. I mean not just the Iraq war, but George W. Bush's ridiculous "War on Terror" as a whole.

  I say ridiculous because this "War on Terror" was never, ever something we were going to win. What began on September 11 with the world wrapping us in its loving embrace has collapsed today in a literal orgy of shame and disgrace. This happened, simply, because of the complete failure of moral leadership at the highest levels.

  We saw a prime example of this during Friday's farce of a Senate hearing into the Abu Ghraib disaster which starred Don Rumsfeld. From his bully pulpit spoke Senator Joe Lieberman, who parrots the worst of Bush's war propaganda with unfailingly dreary regularity. Responding to the issue of whether or not Bush and Rumsfeld should apologize for Abu Ghraib, Lieberman stated that none of the terrorists had apologized for September 11.

  There it was, in a nutshell. There was the idea, oft promulgated by the administration, that September 11 made any barbarism, any extreme, any horror brought forth by the United States acceptable, and even desirable. There was the institutionalization of revenge as a basis for policy. Sure, Abu Ghraib was bad, Mr. Lieberman put forth. But September 11 happened, so all bets are off.

  Thus fails the "War on Terror." September 11 did not demand of us the lowest common denominator, did not demand of us that we become that which we despise and denounce. September 11 demanded that we be better, greater, more righteous than those who brought death to us. September 11 demanded that we be better, and in doing so, we would show the world that those who attacked us are far, far less than us. That would have been victory, with nary a shot being fired.

  Our leaders, however, took us in exactly the opposite direction.

  Every reason to go to Iraq has failed to retain even a semblance of credibility. Every bit of propaganda Osama bin Laden served up to the Muslim world for why America should be attacked and destroyed has been given credibility by what has taken place in Iraq. Victory in this "War on Terror," a propaganda war from the beginning, has been given to the September 11 attackers by the hand of George W. Bush, and by the hand of those who enabled his incomprehensible blundering.

  The war is lost.

William Rivers Pitt is the senior editor and lead writer for t r u t h o u t. He is a New York Times and international bestselling author of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.' © : t r u t h o u t 2004

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Q. Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden.  Why is that?  

You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. 
 
- White House Press Conference, March 13, 2002

/"Some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden, 
and the requests of our commanders on the ground,and less time responding to the demands 
of MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters."
//
- G.W. Bush, Heritage Foundation, Nov.1,2007

/ /

/

WE WILL REMEMBER 9/11...

/

WE WILL REMEMBER THAT WE ARE NOT THE TYPE OF BARBARIANS WHO WILL KILL AND TERRORIZE THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT CIVILIANS TO GET AT THEIR GOVERNMENT. WE ARE BETTER THAN THEY ARE.

WE WILL REMEMBER THAT THE TERRORISTS WANT US TO KILL AND TERRORIZE THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT CIVILIANS, FANNING THE FLAMES THAT WILL GIVE THEM THOUSANDS OF NEW RECRUITS AND SUPPORT AND FAR GREATER STRENGTH. WE WILL NOT BE SO EASILY MANIPULATED. WE WILL NOT GIVE THEM THAT SATISFACTION.

WE WILL REMEMBER THAT IT WAS SAUDI ARABIANS WHO ATTACKED US, AND SAUDI ARABIA THAT WAS THE CHIEF STATE SPONSORING THE TERRORISTS WHO ATTACKED US; AND WE WILL DEAL WITH THEM ACCORDINGLY. WE WILL NOT LET MONEY OR OIL OR CRONYISM MUDDY OUR MORAL RESOLVE IN THIS.

WE WILL REMEMBER THAT THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION USED THAT TERRIBLE EVENT SHAMELESSLY TO PUSH THEIR TAX CUTS AND PRE-EXISTING AGENDAS FOR BOTH INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC DOMNATION BY A SMALL ELITE.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
/
 "In 1968, a few Democratic senators -
- J. William Fulbright, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern and Robert F. Kennedy -
 - challenged their party's torpor and insisted that President Lyndon Johnson
 be held accountable for his disastrous and disingenuous conduct of the Vietnam War, 
adding weight to public pressure, which, eventually, forced Johnson not to seek re-election.
/
Today, the United States is confronted by another ill-considered war, conceived in ideological zeal and pursued with 
contempt for truth, disregard of history and an arrogant assertion of American power
 that has stunned and alienated much of the world, including traditional allies. 
/
At a juncture in history when the United States needed a president to intelligently and forcefully 
lead a real international campaign against terrorism and its causes, Bush decided instead 
/
to unilaterally declare war on a totalitarian state that never represented a terrorist threat; 
to claim exemption from international law regarding the treatment of prisoners; 
to suspend constitutional guarantees even to non-combatants at home and abroad; and 
to ignore sound military advice from the only member of his Cabinet - Powell - with the most requisite experience.
//

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
//
   "The Red Cross report, published by The Wall Street Journal, said that Iraqi prisoners -
- 70 to 90 percent of whom apparently did nothing wrong - 
- were routinely abused when they were arrested, and their wives and mothers threatened."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

By MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times
May 13, 2004
gbs
"If somebody wanted to plan a clash of civilizations, this is how they'd do it. 
These pictures play into every stereotype of America that Arabs have: 
America as debauched, America as hypocrites."

WASHINGTON

Testifying before the Senate yesterday, General Richard Myers admitted that we're checkmated in Iraq.

"There is no way to militarily lose in Iraq," he said, describing the generals' consensus. "There is also no way to militarily win in Iraq."

Talk about the sound of one hand clapping. And they say John Kerry is on both sides of issues.

Sounding like Mr. Kerry, General Myers summed up: "This process has to be internationalized. The U.N. has to play the governance role. That's how we're, in my view, eventually going to win."

The administration's demented quest to conquer Arab hearts and minds has dissolved in a torrent of pornography denigrating other parts of the Arab anatomy. George Bush, who swept into office on a cloud of moral umbrage, now has his own sex scandal - one with far greater implications than titillating cigar jokes.

The Bush hawks, so fixated on making the Middle East look more like America, have made America look un-American. Should we really be reduced to defending ourselves by saying at least we don't behead people?

Gripped in a "I can't look at them - I've got to look at them" state of mind, lawmakers grimly filed into private screening rooms on the Hill to check out the 1,800 grotesque images of sex, humiliation and torture.

"They're disgusting," Senator Dianne Feinstein told me. "If somebody wanted to plan a clash of civilizations, this is how they'd do it. These pictures play into every stereotype of America that Arabs have: America as debauched, America as hypocrites.

"Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz act like they know all the answers, almost like a divine right," she said. "They don't have a divine right, and they are wrong."

After 9/11, America had the support and sympathy of the world. Now, awash in digital evidence of uncivilized behavior, America has careened into a war of civilizations. The pictures were clearly meant to use the codebook of Muslim anxieties about nudity and sexual and gender humiliation to break down the prisoners.

Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell said some photographs seemed to show Iraqi women being commanded to expose their breasts - such debasement, after a war that President Bush partly based on women's rights.

The problem, of course, is that the war in Iraq started with lies - that Saddam's W.M.D. were endangering our security and that Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda and 9/11.

In a public relations move that cheapens the heroism of soldiers, the Pentagon merged the medals for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, giving the G.W.O.T. medal, for Global War on Terrorism, in both wars to reinforce the idea that we had to invade Iraq to quell terrorism. The truth is that our invasion of Iraq spurred terrorism there and around the world.

That initial deception - and headlong rush to throw off international conventions and old alliances, and namby-pamby institutions like the U.N. and the Red Cross - led straight to the abuse of Abu Ghraib. Now the question is whether the C.I.A. tortured Al Qaeda operatives.

Officials blurred the lines to justify ideological decisions, calling every Iraqi who opposed us a "terrorist"; conducting rough interrogations, perhaps to find the nonexistent W.M.D. so they would not look foolish; rolling all opposition into one scary terrorist ball that did not require sensitivity to the Geneva Conventions or "humanitarian do-gooders," to use the phrase of Senator James Inhofe, a Republican.

Senator Fritz Hollings made it clear yesterday that Rummy has left us undermanned and undertrained in Iraq - another factor in the torture scandal. "Now, in a country of 25 million, you're trying to secure it with 135,000," he scolded Mr. Rumsfeld, adding: "We're trying to win the hearts and minds as we're killing them and torturing them." At least, he said sarcastically, Gen. William Westmoreland never asked a Vietcong general to take the town, "like we have for Falluja. We've asked the enemy general to take the town."

The hawks, who promised us garlands in Iraq, should have recalled the words of the historian Daniel Boorstin, who warned that planning for the future without a sense of history is like planting cut flowers.  

E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
/
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere,
 diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."
dcvsds
- Groucho Marx
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

  By Patrick Sabatier
  Liberation
 May, 08, 2004
/
"International law? I better call my lawyer!  
I don't know what you're talking about, about international law." 
- George W. Bush, in response to the administration's handing out of reconstruction contracts in Iraq, Dec.11,2003

Go to Original

  The history of the United States shows that even more serious than the crime is the attempt to conceal it. Once again, the first question being asked today in Washington, where the scandal of the Iraqi detainees' torture is growing, is: who knew what and when? Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accepted sole responsibility for the scandal. His presence in the Pentagon hangs only on the fact that his departure would be a confession of failure from which Bush would have trouble recovering. Everyone knows, however, that the chain of responsibility ends up in the Oval Office. Nobody in Congress, the media, or the American public believes that Bush found out about the affair on television.

  Seen from abroad, however, the most serious aspect of the affair is that the tortures were not, as the American administration is still trying to make believe, the act of a handful of delinquent criminals. They were, in fact, the disciplined cogs in the wheels of a system that ignored the Geneva conventions and in which the ends (intelligence) justified the means (torture). Bush has established the principle that the United States is above international law, whether it's a question of attacking Iraq, or of indefinitely detaining prisoners at Guantanamo beyond the reach of any law.

  This contempt for the law in the name of order is a danger for democracy itself. It is especially ineffective when one claims to fight terrorism. When the picture of a tortured Iraqi replaces the Statue of Liberty as the symbol of America in the eyes of the world, Osama bin Laden doesn't really need to offer a reward to his murderers in Iraq or elsewhere.

   Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
/
TRUTH ... JUSTICE ...THE AMERICAN WAY
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

rgbIt is time to ask this question: Do we have any chance of succeeding at regime change in Iraq without regime change here at home?

"Hey, Friedman, why are you bringing politics into this all of a sudden? You're the guy who always said that producing a decent outcome in Iraq was of such overriding importance to the country that it had to be kept above politics."

Yes, that's true. I still believe that. My mistake was thinking that the Bush team believed it, too. I thought the administration would have to do the right things in Iraq - from prewar planning and putting in enough troops to dismissing the secretary of defense for incompetence - because surely this was the most important thing for the president and the country. But I was wrong. There is something even more important to the Bush crowd than getting Iraq right, and that's getting re-elected and staying loyal to the conservative base to do so. It has always been more important for the Bush folks to defeat liberals at home than Baathists abroad. That's why they spent more time studying U.S. polls than Iraqi history. That is why, I'll bet, Karl Rove has had more sway over this war than Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Bill Burns. Mr. Burns knew only what would play in the Middle East. Mr. Rove knew what would play in the Middle West.

I admit, I'm a little slow. Because I tried to think about something as deadly serious as Iraq, and the post- 9/11 world, in a nonpartisan fashion - as Joe Biden, John McCain and Dick Lugar did - I assumed the Bush officials were doing the same. I was wrong. They were always so slow to change course because confronting their mistakes didn't just involve confronting reality, but their own politics.

Why, in the face of rampant looting in the war's aftermath, which dug us into such a deep and costly hole, wouldn't Mr. Rumsfeld put more troops into Iraq? Politics. First of all, Rummy wanted to crush once and for all the Powell doctrine, which says you fight a war like this only with overwhelming force. I know this is hard to believe, but the Pentagon crew hated Colin Powell, and wanted to see him humiliated 10 times more than Saddam. Second, Rummy wanted to prove to all those U.S. generals whose Army he was intent on downsizing that a small, mobile, high-tech force was all you needed today to take over a country. Third, the White House always knew this was a war of choice - its choice - so it made sure that average Americans never had to pay any price or bear any burden. Thus, it couldn't call up too many reservists, let alone have a draft. Yes, there was a contradiction between the Bush war on taxes and the Bush war on terrorism. But it was resolved: the Bush team decided to lower taxes rather than raise troop levels.

Why, in the face of the Abu Ghraib travesty, wouldn't the administration make some uniquely American gesture? Because these folks have no clue how to export hope. They would never think of saying, "Let's close this prison immediately and reopen it in a month as the Abu Ghraib Technical College for Computer Training - with all the equipment donated by Dell, H.P. and Microsoft." Why didn't the administration ever use 9/11 as a spur to launch a Manhattan project for energy independence and conservation, so we could break out of our addiction to crude oil, slowly disengage from this region and speak truth to fundamentalist regimes, such as Saudi Arabia? (Addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.) Because that might have required a gas tax or a confrontation with the administration's oil moneymen. Why did the administration always - rightly - bash Yasir Arafat, but never lift a finger or utter a word to stop Ariel Sharon's massive building of illegal settlements in the West Bank? Because while that might have earned America credibility in the Middle East, it might have cost the Bush campaign Jewish votes in Florida.

And, of course, why did the president praise Mr. Rumsfeld rather than fire him? Because Karl Rove says to hold the conservative base, you must always appear to be strong, decisive and loyal. It is more important that the president appear to be true to his team than that America appear to be true to its principles. (Here's the new Rummy Defense: "I am accountable. But the little guys were responsible. I was just giving orders.")

Add it all up, and you see how we got so off track in Iraq, why we are dancing alone in the world - and why our president, who has a strong moral vision, has no moral influence.  

© 2004 New York Times Company 
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________d/f

"Watch how a democracy deals with wrongdoing and with scandal" 
- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, testifying before Congress on the Abu Ghraib scandal, May 7, 2004
/
"Donald Rumsfeld has "accepted responsibility" - an action that apparently
 does not mean paying any price at all."
- "Just Trust Us", by Paul Krugman, New York Times,  May 11, 2004 (BELOW)
////////////////

  
  "Individuals and institutions should be held accountable in proportion to their errors. 
Newsweek mishandled a news item and honestly accepted responsibility. 
The Bush administration and the Pentagon have made far worse mistakes 
- and keep trying to divert responsibility.
 Still, there's no escaping the fact that by stupidly removing safeguards against 
the abuse of prisoners in the war on terror, they have done irreparable damage to the reputation 
of the American military and the international prestige of the United States. "
/
- "Still to Blame", by Joe Conason, Salon.com 
////////////////
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________d/f
/ 

\
" In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations 
on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
/
- White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, in a memo written to President Bush about prisoners' rights
 under the Geneva Conventions a few months after September 11 2001.

Brigadier General David M. Brahms (Ret. USMC)
General Joseph Hoar (Ret. USMC)

Brigadier General James Cullen (Ret. USA)
Rear Admiral John D. Hutson (Ret. USN)

Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote (Ret. USA)
Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy (Ret. USA)

Lieutenant General Robert Gard (Ret. USA)
General Merrill McPeak (Ret. USAF)

Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn (Ret. USN)
Major General Melvyn Montano (Ret. USAF Nat. Guard)

Rear Admiral Don Guter (Ret. USN)
General John Shalikashvili (Ret. USA)

    The Honorable Members of the Senate Judiciary
    United States Senate
    Committee on the Judiciary
    224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
    Washington, DC 20510

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE:

    Dear Senator

    We, the undersigned, are retired professional military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces. We write to express our deep concern about the nomination of Alberto R. Gonzales to be Attorney General, and to urge you to explore in detail his views concerning the role of the Geneva Conventions in U.S. detention and interrogation policy and practice.

vb The United States' commitment to the Geneva Conventions - the laws of war - flows not only from field experience, but also from the moral principles on which this country was founded, and by which we all continue to be guided. We have learned first hand the value of adhering to the Geneva Conventions and practicing what we preach on the international stage.

    During his tenure as White House Counsel, Mr. Gonzales appears to have played a significant role in shaping U.S. detention and interrogation operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo Bay, and elsewhere. Today, it is clear that these operations have fostered greater animosity toward the United States, undermined our intelligence gathering efforts, and added to the risks facing our troops serving around the world. Before Mr. Gonzales assumes the position of Attorney General, it is critical to understand whether he intends to adhere to the positions he adopted as White House Counsel, or chart a revised course more consistent with fulfilling our nation's complex security interests, and maintaining a military that operates within the rule of law.

FULL LETTER

 "...there's no escaping the fact that by stupidly removing safeguards against
the abuse of prisoners in the war on terror, they have done irreparable damage to the reputation 
of the American military and the international prestige of the United States. "

- "Still to Blame", by Joe Conason, Salon.com 

"In my judgment ..."

////////////////

"International law? I better call my lawyer!   
I don't know what you're talking about, about international law."
 
- George W. Bush, in response to the administration's handing out of reconstruction contracts in Iraq, Dec.11, 2003
/b____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________d/f

\
"The United States has been guilty of a gross military, administrative, and moral failure. 
It seems to be finally taking steps to correct these mistakes, but its past history shows that detailed progress reporting is essential.
 The U.S. military has been reluctant at best to come to grips with the need for an effective effort."
/
- "Inexcusable Failure," by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies July 20, 2004
In PDF format :  http://www.csis.org/press/wf_2004_0720.pdf
/

/

xbnxb
Report: 'US war on terror bankrupt'
By Elizabeth Blunt 
BBC World Service
vbsbb

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3749055.stm

Guantanamo: The report describes a pattern of arbitrary and incommunicado detention
The last year has seen "the most sustained attack on human rights and international humanitarian law in 50 years", AI says.

Its annual report notes a lively debate in the Arab world on issues of political, legal and judicial reform.

It goes on to say that despite this, grave human rights violations continued across the region.

'Obligations'

In the Arab world, 2003 was a year of dramatic events, and one which raised serious human rights issues.

"The global security agenda promulgated by the US administration is bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle; using pre-emptive military force where and when [the US] chooses has neither increased security nor ensured liberty." - Irene Khan, Amnesty International secretary general

AI calls on the US and the other occupying powers in Iraq to abide by their obligations in the face of what it calls a pattern of arbitrary and incommunicado detention, ill-treatment and the excessive use of force by the occupying forces.

Speaking at the launch of the report, Amnesty's Secretary General Irene Khan said the abuses in Abu Ghraib jail should have surprised no-one, since it was the logical consequence of the relentless pursuit of global security and the so-called war on terror.

Israel and the Palestinians

As well as the new conflict in Iraq, 2003 brought more violence and human rights abuses in Israel and the occupied territories.

The reports says that the grim toll of killings, including killings of children, continued to rise - around 600 Palestinians killed by the Israeli army; around 200 Israeli victims, many the victims of suicide bombings.

Although the list of accusations against the Israeli authorities is a long one - including detentions without charge, torture and ill treatment of detainees, military trials which fell short of international standards - the report also criticises the Palestinian Authority for detentions without charge and the extrajudicial killings of supposed collaborators.

Political debate

Away from these dramatic events, Amnesty International continues to follow the widespread debate about political and legal reform in the Middle East and North Africa.

But it says that despite government promises of reform, human rights violations continued.

There were arbitrary political arrests and detentions in many countries, prisoners were held incommunicado for long periods, tortured and ill-treated, and the minimum standards for fair trials were often disregarded.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

bghbsbbsb
I believe that, as I told the Crown Prince, the Almighty God
 has endowed each individual on the face of the earth with - - 
--that expects each person to be treated with dignity. This is a universal call.
/
- George W. Bush, Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Jun. 3, 2003

nndfnnn

"The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. 
 Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, 
and we know that God is not neutral between them."

- George W. Bush

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

nndfn
"We have about 60% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. 
In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment.
 Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships 
which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. 

We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction. 
We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as 
human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization.
 The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. 
The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better." 
//
(Policy Planning Study 23 for the US Government, February 24, 1948.)
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TRUTH ... JUSTICE ...THE AMERICAN WAY
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/
 "The Red Cross report, published by The Wall Street Journal, said that Iraqi prisoners -
- 70 to 90 percent of whom apparently did nothing wrong -
-- were routinely abused when they were arrested, and their wives and mothers threatened."/

 - "The Abu Ghraib Spin",  New York Times Editorial, May 12, 2004 (below)
/
"It seemed to me they based some of their decisions on the word of - and the allegations - by people who were held in detention, 
people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble - that means not tell the truth," 
Bush said. He appeared to have intended to use the word "dissemble."

- The Washington Post, June 1, 2005
?
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//
"Because we acted, 25 million people live free of Saddam's tyranny. 
Never again will they have to fear the arbitrary rule of the dictator and his sons -
- the torture chambers, the mass graves, the whole apparatus of terror that sustained their power."
//
- Dick Cheney, World Economic Forum January 24, 2004 
/

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"...This is the most corrupt and racist American administration in over 80 years." 
He said: "Some US journalist came up to me and said: 'How can you say this about President Bush?' 
Well, I think what I said then was quite mild. I actually think that Bush is 
the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. 
The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction." 

/
 

For Many Iraqis, Abuse Settles Opinion of U.S.
ujbho;h;
  By Evan Osnos and Deborah Horan 
  The Chicago Tribune
  Saturday 08 May 2004

The crowd outside the prison walls seethes, demanding to visit the thousands inside.

  Sunni and Shiite Muslims, engineers and farmers, mothers, uncles and militants are gathered on this scorching Friday. Each frantically waves the name and prisoner number of a brother, a father or a son, scribbled on a shred of paper, a scrap of a cigarette box, or typed on a crumpled bit of stationery.

  "They will only let 30 people inside today," the Iraqi official from Abu Ghraib prison shouts as the angry cluster of roughly 100 visitors erupts in jeers. "Whoever is here without an appointment must come back next week."

  More than a week into the fallout of abuse disclosures at Abu Ghraib prison, Iraqi outrage has swelled far beyond just photos of cruelty and torture and has seized on a much broader target: the entire U.S. system of raids, captures and detention. The human toll from a year of mounting confinements has emerged as an essential factor darkening Iraqi perceptions of the occupation and the United States.

  Abu Ghraib, in short, has become the symbol of a deep sense of humiliation and frustration that crosses sectarian and class lines--a feeling that many argue is fueling the very insurgency the prisons are intended to contain.

  "This will be a turning point," Ismael Zayer, editor in chief of the daily Al-Sabah Al-Jadid newspaper, said of the prison scandal.

  Facing that realization, U.S. officials acknowledge they are scrambling to sharply reduce the size of Iraq's prison population, hoping to shrug off a costly project they never planned to manage on this scale. At its peak population early this year, Abu Ghraib prison held 8,000 people--nearly double its capacity--with all but several hundred prisoners living in basic canvas tents. The average detainee stayed more than four months.

  "We recognized that is it is a bone of contention with the people we are supposed to be helping," a senior coalition official said. "We are really pushing the accelerator pedal to reduce the prisoner population for obvious reasons."

  The Army never planned to be so enmeshed in the prison business in Iraq. But U.S. forces had barely settled in Baghdad in April 2003 before the bloodshed from a growing insurgency demonstrated that detaining civilian insurgents would fast become a part of the occupation.

  Detention Duty a Struggle

  From the beginning, the captures were presented by U.S. officials as steps toward peace. For months, U.S. military spokesmen stood before reporters in Baghdad and announced how many dozens of coalition opponents had been captured in raids each day. Thousands were being sent to Abu Ghraib and 15 other U.S.-run detention facilities throughout Iraq.

  Yet military forces struggled to handle them. An internal Army report on the prison-abuse scandal prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba found that the military police unit at Abu Ghraib at the time had received no training in running a prison before setting foot in Iraq. In fact, neither of the Army's two battalions trained in confinement have ever been assigned to Iraq, the report notes. One is in Afghanistan , and the other is in Kuwait.

  By comparison, says Detlev Vagts, a Harvard international law professor and expert on the , Allied occupation of Germany after World War II, the U.S. planned far in advance for assuming a role as prison masters if needed.

  "They had already started preparation of American troops to take control of Germans by the summer of 1942," two years before the Allied invasion of Western Europe, Vagts said. "We trained interpreters. We had specialist teams who came in early and immediately began sorting out arrangements with police forces [for detention facilities]."

  The prison abuse case has triggered an investigation into military intelligence practices and the training of military police who work in jails. The newly appointed chief of U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, says he is considering restricting the use of certain "particularly aggressive" interrogation techniques. President Bush, meanwhile, and other top U.S. officials have offered apologies to the Iraqi people.

  Apologies Too Late

  But to many Iraqis, the apologies and declarations are too late to bridge a widening gap in the U.S.-Iraqi relationship. Despite U.S. officials' insistence that abusive practices are not widespread, many on the streets of Baghdad see the photos of men being forced into humiliating sexual positions as another illustration of the U.S. attitude toward Iraq.

  People feel their dignity has been insulted," said Ahmad al-Samaree, the imam of a large Sunni mosque in Baghdad. "What will a father tell his son when an American soldier comes and handcuffs him, then makes him lay down and then a female soldier comes and steps on his head?"

  U.S. officials argue that the insurgency is confined largely to loyalists to the former regime and foreign extremists. But to al-Samaree, who has close ties to rebels in Fallujah and Baghdad, that argument overlooks the effect that a year of building national frustration may have had in enabling rebels to operate.

  "That's why we hear them on their way to the cemetery saying, `Revenge, revenge,'" he said.

  That pervasive feeling of dishonor is voiced by a wide array of Iraqis, far beyond the ranks of those who have been arrested or detained. Zayer, the newspaper editor, is a prominent journalist and longtime U.S. ally who headed al-Sabah, a popular coalition-funded newspaper, until "American "arrogance" recently drove him to quit, he said.

  "They refused to recognize our independence," Zayer said of coalition officials. "The whole newspaper resigned. We walked out."

 Many Allegations Credible

  In the days since the abuse cases gained wide public notice with the publication of shocking photos, a flood of allegations have poured forth from former detainees--most of them impossible to confirm. Some are dubious, but many others are credible, including shared experiences of sleep deprivation, long hours forced into "stress positions," and naked interrogations, among others.

  The validity of those anecdotes was buttressed Thursday when the International Committee of the Red Cross announced it had reported precisely such allegations to U.S. authorities months before the abuse cases came to light.

  But to the scores of Iraqis who flow into this bleak prison parking lot each day from around Iraq, the international spotlight does not mend the damage from a bitter year.

  Mohammed Ahmed al-Samarai, 48, arrived April 6 for a scheduled visit with his uncle at Abu Ghraib, as he had several times since the arrest last May. But when he arrived, he was told that his uncle, Saadan Hassan had died, days earlier, in a rebel mortar attack on the prison. Instead of a visit, officials told al-Samarai to retrieve the body, he recalls. The uncle, he says, was 80 years old.

  U.S. officials say they are working to accelerate the review board process that decides who gets a trial and who gets released.

  But in the meantime, the problem for 30-year-old Fawzia Waharbia is more practical than matters of justice. Her husband, a clerk in a Baghdad court, was arrested 10 months ago, on charges that he was a captain in Saddam Hussein 's Fedayeen Saddam.

  Waharbia says she soon ran out of money for her five children. She works now cleaning a school in the mornings and sells some of her government-supplied food rations for the bus ticket to the prison every day.

  From a pocket deep inside her black abaya, the tiny woman pulls out a slip of paper scrawled with internee no. 15024065.

  "Can you help me?" she pleaded, her eyes filling with tears. "I need him out."

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
bhhserhrwh

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
mnfdndnf ngfddnfg
ETEKERM
 "You're free. And freedom is beautiful.
And, you know, it'll take time to restore chaos and order-- order out of chaos.  
But we will."

- G. W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 13, 2003
/
/

////
//"The Ambassador and the General were briefing me on the --
-- the vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. 
And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice."
/
- G. W. Bush,  White House, Oct. 27, 2003
/


//

/
Thank you Mr. Rumsfeld!
/
s
/
I couldn't have planned 
it better myself!
///
"Watch how a democracy deals with wrongdoing and with scandal" 
- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, testifying before Congress on the Abu Ghraib scandal, May 7, 2004
/

 Aaron Gach

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/
 "The Red Cross report, published by The Wall Street Journal, said that Iraqi prisoners -
- 70 to 90 percent of whom apparently did nothing wrong -
-- were routinely abused when they were arrested, and their wives and mothers threatened."/
//

 The Abu Ghraib Spin
  The New York Times | Editorial
  Thursday 12 May 2004

The administration and its Republican allies appear to have settled on a way to deflect attention from the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib: accuse Democrats and the news media of overreacting, then pile all of the remaining responsibility onto officers in the battlefield, far away from President Bush and his political team. That cynical approach was on display yesterday morning in the second Abu Ghraib hearing in the Senate, a body that finally seemed to be assuming its responsibility for overseeing the executive branch after a year of silently watching the bungled Iraq occupation.

  The senators called one witness for the morning session, the courageous and forthright Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who ran the Army's major investigation into Abu Ghraib. But the Defense Department also sent Stephen Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence, to upstage him. Mr. Cambone read an opening statement that said Donald Rumsfeld was deeply committed to the Geneva Conventions protecting the rights of prisoners, that everyone knew it and that any deviation had to come from "the command level." A few Republican senators loyally followed the script, like Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who offered the astounding comment that he was "more outraged by the outrage" than by the treatment of prisoners. After all, he said, they were probably guilty of something.

  These silly arguments not only obscure the despicable treatment of the prisoners, most of whom are not guilty of anything, but also ignore the evidence so far. While some of the particularly sick examples of sexual degradation may turn out to be isolated events, General Taguba's testimony, and a Red Cross report from Iraq, made it plain that the abuse of prisoners by the American military and intelligence agencies was systemic. The Red Cross said prisoners of military intelligence were routinely stripped, with their hands bound behind their backs, and posed with women's underwear over their heads. It said they were "sometimes photographed in this position."

  The Red Cross report, published by The Wall Street Journal, said that Iraqi prisoners - 70 to 90 percent of whom apparently did nothing wrong - were routinely abused when they were arrested, and their wives and mothers threatened. The Iraqi police, who operate under American control and are eventually supposed to help replace the occupation forces, are even worse - sending those who won't pay bribes to prison camps, and beating and burning prisoners, according to the report.

   The Red Cross said most prisoners were treated better once they got into the general population at the larger camps, except those who were held by military intelligence. "In certain cases, such as in Abu Ghraib military intelligence section, methods of physical and psychological coercion used by the interrogators appeared to be part of the standard operating procedures by military intelligence personnel," the report said.

  It was alarming yesterday to hear General Taguba report that military commanders had eased the rules four times last year to permit guards to use "lethal force" on unruly prisoners. The hearing also disclosed that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander in Iraq, had authorized the presence of attack dogs during interrogation sessions. It wasn't very comforting that he had directed that these dogs be muzzled.

  These practices go well beyond any gray area of American values, international law or the Geneva Conventions. Mr. Cambone tried to argue that Mr. Rumsfeld had made it clear to everyone that the prisoners in Iraq were covered by those conventions. But Mr. Rumsfeld's public statements have been ambiguous at best, and General Taguba said that, in any case, the Abu Ghraib guards had received no training. All the senators, government officials and generals assembled in that hearing room yesterday could not figure out who had been in charge at Abu Ghraib and which rules applied to the Iraqi prisoners. How were untrained reservists who had been plucked from their private lives to guard the prisoners supposed to have managed it?

  General Sanchez did give some misguided orders involving the Abu Ghraib prison and prisoners in general. But the deeply flawed mission in which he participates is the responsibility of the Bush administration. It was Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld, not General Sanchez, who failed to anticipate the violence and chaos that followed the invasion of Iraq, and sent American soldiers out to handle it without the necessary resources, manpower and training.

© 2004 New York Times Company 
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

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The Price Of Giving Bad Advice

 By William A. Whitlow
  The Washington Post
  Sunday 30 May 2004

William A. Whitlow is a retired major general in the Marine Corps. He served as director of the expeditionary warfare division in the office of the deputy chief of naval operations.   

As the war in Iraq drags on, conservative citizens, mostly Republican, face a growing dilemma in the November election.

  In the face of growing evidence that the president was deceived and misguided about the cause and urgency for waging war on Saddam Hussein, it is time for those responsible to stand forth and accept accountability. True, the president is ultimately responsible for the actions of his vice president, his Cabinet and the executive departments. But it has become clear that the counsel the president received from the vice president, secretary of defense, deputy secretary of defense and senior uniformed leadership was severely flawed and uncorroborated. Whether the president was intentionally misled by neoconservatives or whether their advice was a result of pure incompetence remains to be seen. The fact is that he was misled sufficiently to require him to take bold action to restore his diminished credibility.

  The supposedly urgent need to attack Iraq was based partly on inflated, creative intelligence information, some of which originated with Ahmed Chalabi, an associate of the vice president and deputy secretary of defense. The information from Chalabi led the vice president and defense secretary to believe that war with Iraq would be a "cakewalk" and U.S. forces would be received with open arms. This belief resulted in a fatal flaw in developing a complete war strategy. A principal tenet of forming a strategy -- have a "war termination" phase -- was neglected. Although the tactical and operational phases of the war were conducted flawlessly by superior field commanders, the absence of a complete strategy has needlessly cost lives.

  Our service members are the ultimate victims of this incomplete strategy, misguided policy and false intelligence. It is inconceivable and derelict not to have a viable war termination strategy for an operation as complex as a major theater war. America's citizens and our service members deserve far better for their sacrifices. This combination of things -- misleading the president with false intelligence and omitting a principal element from our war strategy -- is reason enough to seek change in the vice presidency and senior defense leadership, civilian and military.

  It is our patriotic duty to speak out when egregiously flawed policies and strategies needlessly cost American lives. It is time for the president to ask those responsible for the flawed Iraqi policy -- civilian and military -- to resign from public service. Absent such a change in the current administration, many of us will be forced to choose a presidential candidate whose domestic policies we may not like but who understands firsthand the effects of flawed policies and incompetent military strategies and who fully comprehends the price.

William A. Whitlow is a retired major general in the Marine Corps. He served as director of the expeditionary warfare division in the office of the deputy chief of naval operations.  

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//

    Why Rumsfeld Should Go 
    By William Fisher 
    Yubanet
    Saturday 28 May 2005

Go to Original

    Let's give Donald Rumsfeld the benefit of the doubt. He's not a war criminal. He never wrote any memo authorizing specific techniques for abusing prisoners. He doesn't believe in abusing people. He's an amusing guy. He used to be a media superstar in the Bush family firmament. The President called him the best Secretary of Defense in our country's history.

    But it's time for him to go. And here's why.

    One of the principal reasons the United States has a Secretary of Defense is to maintain civilian control over the uniformed military. By that criterion alone, he has been a cataclysmic failure. And by that criterion alone, he might well be judged by history as the worst, not the best, SecDef in the nation's history.

    If the reason for having a SecDef is to control our armed forces, how did they ever get so out of control?

    What's happened on his watch is simply too egregious for Mr. Rumsfeld to get a pass.

    The US invaded a country about which it knew nothing, with too few troops and no awareness that there would even be an occupation, much less a plan for one.

    In so doing, America created the world's biggest job fair for terrorists.

    We know that Rumsfeld believes you go to war "with the army you have, not the army you want." Well, the army we had didn't have the right kinds of troops in the right places at the right times. American soldiers didn't have the protection they needed. Nor did they have the intelligence they needed. So people died and were maimed.

    Then there was Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, Bagram Air Base, and Lord only knows how many other hidden military prisons. People were tortured. People became ghost detainees. People died. Even assuming they were the worst of the worst, prisoners in US custody are not supposed to die. They are supposed to be protected. But die they did.

    And it would be a major error to overlook the superb work of his non-uniformed Viceroy, L. Paul Bremer, who turned enemy soldiers into criminals by disbanding the Iraqi army. Who instituted the so-called De-Baathification program that fired all the teachers and street cleaners and electricians - people who were compelled to join Saddam's party just to get a job. Who supervised the 'training' of Iraqi police and soldiers - America's exit strategy - no doubt immeasurably helped by wannabe Homeland Defense Department boss Bernard Kerik. And who, as a modest token of appreciation for his many contributions, got the Medal of Honor from his president.

    Then there were the omnipresent profiteers - the Halliburtons, the Blackhawks, and the dozens of other Defense Department contractors who did little and made millions.

    And through it all, there was the Rumsfeld Review - Donald's Good News Bears performing their Daily Show at the Pentagon rostrum. Reporters could barely wait for the spin machine to start. It was a wonder to behold the questions evaded, ignored, left answered, the deftness at changing the subject, the assurances that there were now 140,000 (or was it 180,000?) Iraqi police and national guardsmen trained and that things were getting better all the time. The Donald's quips disarmed even veteran journalists and turned the Pentagon press corps into a small army of un-uniformed stenographers, dutifully writing their embedded reassuring pieces in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary supplied by their colleagues on the ground.

    So how does all this add up to civilian control of the uniformed military? It doesn't.

    If one of Rumsfeld's major mandates was to make sure that a suit, not a uniform, would be accountable for all our shock and awe, it didn't happen. No one is accountable.

    The Donald told a congressional committee last year he would resign when he felt he could no longer serve effectively. That time has passed.

    Time to think again, Mr. Secretary.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Visit The World According to Bill Fisher for more.

We Don't Need no Stinkin' Compassion

By Jason Miller

http://billfisher.blogspot.com/

Why did I open that box?
Oh to be blissfully unaware! Alas, in my studies for my activist writing and advocating for social justice, I have opened Pandora's Box. In some ways I wish I could have closed it before frightening truths permeated my mind, but it is too late. As I delve more deeply into the sea of knowledge about current events, history, ideology, and politics, I am experiencing seriously altered perceptions, thoughts and feelings with respect to many facets of the world. Having passed the point of "know return", I remain in America in a physical sense, but in an intellectual sense, "I am not in Kansas anymore!" My faith in America and our government has been severely shaken. While disturbing, my awakening has been quite liberating. In some ways I miss the warm fuzzy feelings that came with belief in the pleasant fiction of the America that our leaders portray. However, in spite of the discomfort, I relish the freedom of seeing my world with clarity. In an ongoing effort, I will strive to seek the information necessary to continue piercing the veil of propaganda disseminated by our leaders. MORE

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/
   "The Red Cross report, published by The Wall Street Journal, said that Iraqi prisoners-
 - 70 to 90 percent of whom apparently did nothing wrong - 
- were routinely abused when they were arrested, and their wives and mothers threatened."
/
- NY Times Editorial (above)
/
"...the citizens of Iraq are coming to know what kind of people we have sent to liberate them. 
American forces and our allies are treating innocent civilians with kindness 
and showing proper respect to the soldiers who surrender. 
The people of the United States are proud of the honorable conduct of our military. 
And I am proud to lead such brave and decent Americans."
/
- President Bush's Radio Address to the Nation, April 5, 2003

jejej

/
"Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms."
/
- Groucho Marx
//
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/
"....there's no escaping the fact that by stupidly removing safeguards against 
the abuse of prisoners in the war on terror, they have done irreparable damage to the reputation 
of the American military and the international prestige of the United States. "
/
- "Still to Blame", by Joe Conason, Salon.com 
/
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/
 "The mask of civility has fallen. It used to be that Americans just don't do that. 
Now you hear Arabs say, 'Don't lecture us about democracy and respect for human rights'" 

  "If you want recruitment tools, these are the best anyone could imagine. 
They are a big blow and a stimulant to spur people