If the past decade plus didn’t answer that question, after 9/11, as well as the one about our ‘freedoms’, because you didn’t pay attention to what’s done in your names over the decades, maybe these very recent news reports will jog that overwhelming arrogance and total apathy embedded in the minds of this country.
Tag: Abu Ghraib
Oct 22 2010
The Chapel at Abu Ghraib
Apr 14 2010
BushCo knew GITMO “worst of worst” were innocent.
Wilkerson’s sworn statement should be the clanging death knell for Obama’s military commissions
Via the Times Online and Truthout‘s Jason Leopold, we have Lt. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson’s sworn affidavit in support of GITMO detainee Adel Hassan Hamad’s lawsuit against Bush, Rumsfeld, et al., for wrongful imprisonment and abuse, that the majority of both GITMO and Abu Ghraib detainees were arbitrarily imprisoned.
With respect to the assertions by Mr. Hamad that he was wrongfully seized and detained, it became apparent to me as early as August 2002, and probably earlier to other State Department personnel who were focused on these issues, that many of the prisoners detained at Guantánamo had been taken into custody without regard to whether they were truly enemy combatants, or in fact whether many of them were enemies at all. I soon realized from my conversations with military colleagues as well as foreign service officers in the field that many of the detainees were, in fact, victims of incompetent battlefield vetting. There was no meaningful way to determine whether they were terrorists, Taliban, or simply innocent civilians picked up on a very confused battlefield or in the territory of another state such as Pakistan.
Dec 17 2009
Iraq War Inquiry, Day 14
Drip, drip, drip…………… more from the faucet of recent history coming out from across the pond. When following this Inquiry, especially in viewing, insert American faces of those known from the cheney/bush administration and multiply the known and unknown ten, twenty, thirty……….times as they were the ringleaders and intelligence manipulators seeking justification to invade and destroy an innocent people and their country.
Just think how long before the Brits found out about the following did our administration and probably many in the ‘lockstep rubber stamping congress’ know:
Jun 29 2009
CIA Crucified Prisoner In Abu Ghraib
from Sherwood Ross, June 28, 2009
The Central Intelligence Agency crucified a prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to a report published in The New Yorker magazine.
“A forensic examiner found that he (the prisoner) had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs,” the magazine’s Jane Mayer writes in the magazine’s June 22nd issue. “Military pathologists classified the case a homicide.” The date of the murder was not given.
“No criminal charges have ever been brought against any C.I.A. officer involved in the torture program, despite the fact that at least three prisoners interrogated by agency personnel died as a result of mistreatment,” Mayer notes.
An earlier report, by John Hendren in The Los Angeles Times indicted other torture killings. And Human Rights First says nearly 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Jun 25 2009
Torture Accountability Action Day! June 25, 2009!
h/t David Swanson
A large coalition of human rights groups has planned rallies and marches in major U.S. cities, including a rally in Washington, D.C.’s John Marshall Park at 11 a.m. followed by a noon march to the Justice Department where some participants will risk arrest in nonviolent protest if a special prosecutor for torture is not appointed. Torture Accountability
For those who are not able to go to Washington, D.C., rallies are also planned for San Francisco, CA; Pasadena, CA; Thousand Oaks, CA; Boston, MA; Salt Lake City, UT; Seattle, WA; Portland, OR; Las Vegas, NV; Honolulu, HI; Tampa, FL; Philadelphia, PA; and Anchorage, AK, with details available online: Events Across the U.S. Hopefully, some of you will be able to attend one of these very important rallies.
Of interest, in San Francisco and Pasadena, citizens will submit a formal judicial misconduct complaint against 9th Circuit Court Judge, Jay Bybee, former Assistant Attorney General. I can only think of this as a positive move in this maze of affiliates of considered, acted upon, carried out TORTURE!
Keep going!
May 23 2009
“I don’t care if we’re holding 15,000 innocent civilians! We’re winning the war!”
Brigadier General Janis R Karpinski: “The secret here is getting these people released, and we’re holding innocent people out there. ”
And General Wodjakowski turned around and said to me ” I don’t care if we are holding 15,000 innocent civilians! We are winning the war! “
Cross-posted from dailykos.com
That quote came from this 237 page official document which was released to the ACLU by a FOIA request. The actual quote by General Wodjakowski can be found on page 171.
This document not only addresses the necessity and inability of our military to release detainees who were innocent and had no intelligence value at all, it touches upon the known abuse of innocent Iraqi citizens, as well as the over-crowded conditions within the detainees facilities.
Rather than giving you my version of this document, I thought it would be more beneficial to allow you to read it for yourself and form your own opinion.
May 19 2009
“Bad Apples”? The Interrogation of Prisoner #151363
The following is an example of the requested approval for exceptions to the interrogation policy at Abu Ghraib, in this case made on behalf ofthe interrogation plan for internee #15163, a (presumably young) Syrian male. Such requests meant that extraordinary means were to be used, i.e., torture, and needed, per Pentagon policy, approval by the higher ups. This request was made by Col. Thomas Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, Iraq, to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.
The version here comes from scvhistory.com. A big H/T for my finding this document goes to Dr. Steven Miles, where a large excerpt and analysis of the document can be found on pp. 56-57 of his excellent book, Oath Betrayed: America’s Torture Doctors (UC Press, 2009).
May 15 2009
Jason Leopold Exclusive: “Army Documents Describe Prisoner Abuse Photos Obama is Withholding”
Barack Obama backflipped on his promise to make public photos depicting detainee abuse by U.S. personnel overseas, however one intrepid independent reporter has managed, digging through government files obtained through an ACLU FOIA request, to unearth detailed documents describing the photographs.
U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan took dozens of pictures of their colleagues pointing assault rifles and pistols at the heads and backs of hooded and bound detainees and another photograph showed two male soldiers and one female solider pointing a broom to one detainee “as if I was sticking the end of a broom stick into [his] rectum,” according to the female soldier’s account as told to an Army criminal investigator.
President Barack Obama said Wednesday he would not release these photographs, reversing a promise he made a month ago, fearing it would stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger U.S. troops.
I found the documents that describes the photographs on the website of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU obtained the files, but not the photographs, in 2005 as part of the organization’s wide-ranging Freedom of information Act lawsuit against the federal government related to the Bush administration’s treatment of “war on terror” prisoners in U.S. custody.
May 13 2009
Tortured to death
I posted this over at DailyKos and it was my first rec-listed diary there.
There was a front-page post the other day on DailyKos about the detainees that have died in US custody since 2002 after being tortured and abused, so I’m following up on that post with more information I’ve found.
In 2005, the ACLU released findings from autopsy reports of detainees held by the US in Afghanistan and Iraq. Twenty one of the autopsies were ruled homicides. Something the ACLU notes that’s interesting (ugh, I hate using that word for this seriously sick finding) is that while at the time CIA abuse was being widely reported in the media, their autopsies revealed a problem with abuse by Navy Seals and military intelligence too.
Some things the report found… and I have to warn you this whole post is graphic:
A detainee at Abu Ghraib Prison, captured by Navy Seal Team number seven, died on November 4, 2003, during an interrogation by Navy Seals and “”OGA.”” A previously released autopsy report, that appears to be of Manadel Al Jamadi, shows that the cause of his death was “”blunt force injury complicated by compromised respiration.”” New documents specifically record the circumstances of death as “”Q by OGA and NSWT died during interrogation.””
A detainee was smothered to death during an interrogation by Military Intelligence on November 26, 2003, in Al Qaim, Iraq. A previously released autopsy report, that appears to be of General Mowhoush, lists “”asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression”” as the cause of death and cites bruises from the impact with a blunt object. New documents specifically record the circumstances of death as “”Q by MI, died during interrogation.””
The documents were obtained from the Department of Defense from a Freedom of Information Act request and a judge also ordered that more Abu Ghraib photos should be released, but as of this article the decision was stayed. Are those the ones due to be released this year?
May 08 2009
Torture, backwards logic and catch-22
(I just posted a version of this over at DailyKos and I thought it might be appreciated here.)
This is interesting. I don’t know how much relevance it actually has at this point but I end up researching odd things throughout the day and I found this.
There have been a few instances of soldiers going AWOL and fleeing into Canada instead of fighting in Iraq. At the time this was happening, a lot of people were saying horrible things about these soldiers. That was stupid to say even without knowing what we know now but still, it’s worth talking about.
When these soldiers were tried, they used the defense that it’s an illegal war and violates international law. And still others used the defense that soldiers who would’ve gone to war would’ve been forced to participate in illegal acts.
One of the judges, in a ruling against one of these soldiers, in 2007 said there’s no evidence the US “as a matter of deliberate policy or official indifference, required or allowed its combatants to engage in widespread actions in violation of humanitarian law.”
So, maybe these cases are worth another look? We can argue that a lot of these people were using legal defenses and weren’t actually able to see the future, or whatever. But they were, you know, right.
May 01 2009
Released FBI Memo Documents Bush Ordering Torture (updated)
For the Soldier who fights for Truth, calls his enemy his brother. — William Blake
Jason Leopold had an amazing find when perusing a new released FBI document the ACLU posted on their site earlier this week. [Update: Leopold informs me that the document was released in Dec. 2004, but he caught the info while perusing the ACLU collection over these past months.]
Senior FBI agents stationed in Iraq in 2004 claimed in an e-mail that President George W. Bush signed an executive order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other harsh tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees.
The FBI e-mail — dated May 22, 2004 — followed disclosures about abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and sought guidance on whether FBI agents in Iraq were obligated to report the U.S. military’s harsh interrogation of inmates when that treatment violated FBI standards but fit within the guidelines of a presidential executive order.