03/18/05

Mr. Porter Goss, the head of our CIA, was reassuring Senator Carl Levin that the deaths of four prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan were hideous abnormalities. 'We don't do torture,' Goss said .... We can, I think, accept that disavowal. As long as the kind of thing that happened at Abu Ghraib gets front-page attention and universal denunciation, bringing the perpetrators to trial and imprisonment, we are relatively chaste. But the question arises whether the United States and indeed the other western industrial democracies are working convincingly to elevate human cruelty to the rank of infamy, where it belongs...

http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/wfb200503181324.asp

from National Review, by William F. Buckley, Jr.


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

by Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist

(First of two columns)

March 17, 2005

IN AUGUST 2003, when he was commander of the military base at Guantanamo Bay, Major General Geoffrey Miller visited Baghdad with some advice for US interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison. As Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the military police commander in Iraq, later recalled it, Miller's bottom line was blunt: Abu Ghraib should be ''Gitmo-ized" -- Iraqi detainees should be exposed to the same aggressive techniques being used to extract information from prisoners in Guantanamo.

''You have to have full control," Karpinski quoted Miller as saying. There can be ''no mistake about who's in charge. You have to treat these detainees like dogs."

Whether or not Miller actually spoke those words, it is clear that harsh techniques authorized for a time in Guantanamo -- forced nudity, hooding, shackling men in ''stress positions," the use of dogs -- were taken up in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they sometimes degenerated into outright viciousness and even torture. Did the injunction to ''treat these detainees like dogs" give rise to a prison culture that winked at barbarism? Should Miller be held responsible for what Abu Ghraib became? [...] Read more at: http://tinyurl.com/3ow5r The American Progress Action web site has an excellent article on "FCC's Reruns" which gives insight into what is to be expected from President Bush's nominee for FCC chairman. Read it at: http://tinyurl.com/5bo89


© Virginia Metze

Iran has hit out at the United Nations for ignoring abuses by US forces of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, as well as their assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200503/s1326226.htm


From Information Clearing House

'To suggest that senior officials were blameless in fostering the command climate that led to the behavior of those junior guards at the prison is simply not credible,'' retired Army general officer John Johns told Knight Ridder.

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_2611737


From Information Clearing House

"Extraordinary Rendition"? Let us call it what it is: the outsourcing of torture. Having other countries do our dirty work for us. And it stinks to high heaven.

http://tinyurl.com/6crc2

It is illegal under U.S. and international law to send someone to a country where torture is likely.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002211400_goss18.html
http://tinyurl.com/6gfnv


From Information Clearing House

Prisoners Say Countries Break No-Torture Pledges

by Dana Priest

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, March 17, 2005; Page A01

The system the CIA relies on to ensure that the suspected terrorists it transfers to other countries will not be tortured has been ineffective and virtually impossible to monitor, according to current and former intelligence officers and lawyers, as well as counterterrorism officials who have participated in or reviewed the practice. [...] Read the rest at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42072-2005Mar16.html or http://tinyurl.com/6jl3m



© Virginia Metze

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1430686,00.html


Informant: Charles Bremer

03/15/05

At least 26 prisoners have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 in what Army and Navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing military officials. Investigators have closed their inquiries in 18 of those cases reviewed by the Army and Navy and have recommended them for prosecution or referred them to other agencies for action, the Times said...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7203233/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp