the good terrorist

Bush Administration officials, so strident when promoting liberation through regime change in Iraq, Ukraine and, ironically, when Islamists overthrew the democratically-elected Kyrgyz president–have downplayed the Uzbek massacre. “After 9/11,” explains Newsweek, “the Bush administration established a strategic partnership with Karimov, plunking down $500 million for a military base in southern Uzbekistan in preparation for operations in Afghanistan and paying $60 million or more a year in military aid and training.”

The Bushies were aware of Karimov’s horrific record back in 2001. That year’s Human Rights Watch report on Uzbekistan put its “conservative estimate” of Uzbek political prisoners at 7,000. According to HRW: “Prison guards systematically beat prisoners with wooden and rubber truncheons and exacted particularly harsh punishment on those convicted on religious charges, subjecting them to additional beatings…Torture remained endemic in pretrial custody as well.” George W. Bush didn’t mind. He accorded Karimov all the honors of a full state visit to the White House shortly thereafter.

How can the United States claim to be fighting a war on terrorism when its biggest allies are terrorists themselves?

Ted Rall, Yahoo (read more. . .)

May 25th, 2005 || PermaLink

open season on detainees

Atrocities happen in all wars. Two things, however, make the reported American transgressions at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram AFB particularly appalling: first, the way they appear to confirm everything Islamist propagandists say about the “crusaders ‘” contempt for Islam; second, that they proceeded directly from the administration’s country-club tough-guy rhetoric.

Classic psychology experiments have repeatedly shown that, absent stringent discipline among their captors, isolated groups rendered helpless and defined as the “other” often fall prey to sadism and brutality–a phenomenon hardly unknown to U.S. military authorities. Instead of proper training, however, inexperienced American Reservists were encouraged to treat the captives as “terrorists” to whom the president naively determined the Geneva Conventions did not apply.

In effect, if not intent, George W. Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who signed off on memos validating torture for “enemy combatants,” declared open season on detainees.

Gene Lyons, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (read more. . .)

May 25th, 2005 || PermaLink

Pretext for War

Intelligence was manipulated, mangled, ignored, and analysts were harassed and bullied to present the false picture that Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S. In talking with intelligence analysts and case officers, in the months leading up to the war none believed that Iraq posed a threat to the U.S. The most basic evidence was the fact that Iraq had never begun work on a long-range missile system (unlike Iran and North Korea), something that can be easily seen by imaging satellites space with a resolution down to the centimeter. And no country has ever built a warhead without simultaneously building a delivery system.

One CIA analyst from the Iraq Non-Proliferation section told me that his boss once called his office together (about fifty people) and said, “You know what if Bush wants to go to war, it’s your job to give him a reason to do so.” The former analyst added, “And I said, ‘All right, it’s time, it’s time to go . . . And I just remember saying, ‘This is something that the American public, if they ever knew, they would be outraged.”

Congress was also lied to. Because Iraq had no long-range missiles, they were told in secret session that Iraq was planning to launch a series of unmanned drones loaded with chemical and biological agents against the East Coast of the U.S. Many members of Congress voted for the resolution exclusively because of that warning. It later turned out that not only did Iraq not have such warheads, the few drones they had were rudimentary, short range, and there was no way to launch them from sea off the East Coast in the first place. There were many such falsehoods.

Kevin Zeese, counterpunch (read more. . .)

May 24th, 2005 || PermaLink

the Rumsfeld continuum of bad behavior

Neither the troops nor the American public signed on for a war in Iraq that would last many years. And I can’t believe there are many Americans who wanted their military sullied by the wanton behavior of the torture crowd.

The troops who do their jobs honestly and diligently, and who fight bravely when they have to, have been betrayed by leaders who encouraged abusive behavior and allowed atrocities to flourish.

Mr. Rumsfeld has driven the military into a ruinous quagmire, and there is no evidence at all that he’s capable of finding a serviceable route out.

Bob Herbert, NYTimes (read more. . .)

May 23rd, 2005 || PermaLink

coverup and lie

The trouble is, normal bounds did not apply at Bagram, because the president had muddied the water with conflicting orders. In a February 2002 memo, he spoke of giving prisoners humane treatment, but only when it suited “military necessity,” and he also said members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban were not entitled to prisoner-of-war status. That led interrogators to believe that they “could deviate slightly from the rules,” according to an Army Reserve sergeant who served at Bagram.

It now appears that those slight deviations included killing prisoners, and then covering up the reason they died.

NYTimes Editorial (read more. . .)

May 23rd, 2005 || PermaLink

condoning torture

Despite Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo - not to mention Iraq and the failure of intelligence - and the various roles they played in what went wrong, Rumsfeld kept his job; Rice was promoted to secretary of state; Alberto Gonzales, who commissioned the memos justifying torture, became attorney general; deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz was nominated to the presidency of the World Bank; and Stephen Cambone, under-secretary of defense for intelligence and one of those most directly involved in the policies on prisoners, was still one of Rumsfeld’s closest confidants. President Bush, asked about accountability, told the Washington Post before his second inauguration that the American people had supplied all the accountability needed - by re-electing him. Only seven enlisted men and women have been charged or pleaded guilty to offenses relating to Abu Ghraib. No officer is facing criminal proceedings.

Seymour Hersh, Guardian (UK) (read more. . .)

May 22nd, 2005 || PermaLink

global strike

If reports from Washington this week are true, a new president, George W. Bush, is inclined to go ahead with the Air Force’s ideas for research, and maybe even development and deployment, of offensive weapons in space. The idea called “Global Strike” would, they say, make it possible for the United States to strike with precision any acre of the planet in less than 45 minutes. I doubt that, but the Air Force says it does not.

“We must establish and maintain space superiority,” says Gen. Lance Lord. That’s a name to be reckoned with, even better than Brass Bancroft. “Simply put, it’s the American way of fighting.”

It is? Well, it’s also the American way of scaring the world into hating us. And it is also the American way of scaring ourselves into spending more than a trillion dollars, one estimate of the cost, to protect ourselves from millions of new enemies.

Richard Reeves, Yahoo (read more. . .)

May 21st, 2005 || PermaLink

the good terrorist

Bush Administration officials, so strident when promoting liberation through regime change in Iraq, Ukraine and, ironically, when Islamists overthrew the democratically-elected Kyrgyz president–have downplayed the Uzbek massacre. “After 9/11,” explains Newsweek, “the Bush administration established a strategic partnership with Karimov, plunking down $500 million for a military base in southern Uzbekistan in preparation for operations in Afghanistan and paying $60 million or more a year in military aid and training.”

The Bushies were aware of Karimov’s horrific record back in 2001. That year’s Human Rights Watch report on Uzbekistan put its “conservative estimate” of Uzbek political prisoners at 7,000. According to HRW: “Prison guards systematically beat prisoners with wooden and rubber truncheons and exacted particularly harsh punishment on those convicted on religious charges, subjecting them to additional beatings…Torture remained endemic in pretrial custody as well.” George W. Bush didn’t mind. He accorded Karimov all the honors of a full state visit to the White House shortly thereafter.

How can the United States claim to be fighting a war on terrorism when its biggest allies are terrorists themselves?

Ted Rall, Yahoo (read more. . .)

May 25th, 2005 || PermaLink

open season on detainees

Atrocities happen in all wars. Two things, however, make the reported American transgressions at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram AFB particularly appalling: first, the way they appear to confirm everything Islamist propagandists say about the “crusaders ‘” contempt for Islam; second, that they proceeded directly from the administration’s country-club tough-guy rhetoric.

Classic psychology experiments have repeatedly shown that, absent stringent discipline among their captors, isolated groups rendered helpless and defined as the “other” often fall prey to sadism and brutality–a phenomenon hardly unknown to U.S. military authorities. Instead of proper training, however, inexperienced American Reservists were encouraged to treat the captives as “terrorists” to whom the president naively determined the Geneva Conventions did not apply.

In effect, if not intent, George W. Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who signed off on memos validating torture for “enemy combatants,” declared open season on detainees.

Gene Lyons, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (read more. . .)

May 25th, 2005 || PermaLink

Pretext for War

Intelligence was manipulated, mangled, ignored, and analysts were harassed and bullied to present the false picture that Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S. In talking with intelligence analysts and case officers, in the months leading up to the war none believed that Iraq posed a threat to the U.S. The most basic evidence was the fact that Iraq had never begun work on a long-range missile system (unlike Iran and North Korea), something that can be easily seen by imaging satellites space with a resolution down to the centimeter. And no country has ever built a warhead without simultaneously building a delivery system.

One CIA analyst from the Iraq Non-Proliferation section told me that his boss once called his office together (about fifty people) and said, “You know what if Bush wants to go to war, it’s your job to give him a reason to do so.” The former analyst added, “And I said, ‘All right, it’s time, it’s time to go . . . And I just remember saying, ‘This is something that the American public, if they ever knew, they would be outraged.”

Congress was also lied to. Because Iraq had no long-range missiles, they were told in secret session that Iraq was planning to launch a series of unmanned drones loaded with chemical and biological agents against the East Coast of the U.S. Many members of Congress voted for the resolution exclusively because of that warning. It later turned out that not only did Iraq not have such warheads, the few drones they had were rudimentary, short range, and there was no way to launch them from sea off the East Coast in the first place. There were many such falsehoods.

Kevin Zeese, counterpunch (read more. . .)

May 24th, 2005 || PermaLink

the Rumsfeld continuum of bad behavior

Neither the troops nor the American public signed on for a war in Iraq that would last many years. And I can’t believe there are many Americans who wanted their military sullied by the wanton behavior of the torture crowd.

The troops who do their jobs honestly and diligently, and who fight bravely when they have to, have been betrayed by leaders who encouraged abusive behavior and allowed atrocities to flourish.

Mr. Rumsfeld has driven the military into a ruinous quagmire, and there is no evidence at all that he’s capable of finding a serviceable route out.

Bob Herbert, NYTimes (read more. . .)

May 23rd, 2005 || PermaLink

coverup and lie

The trouble is, normal bounds did not apply at Bagram, because the president had muddied the water with conflicting orders. In a February 2002 memo, he spoke of giving prisoners humane treatment, but only when it suited “military necessity,” and he also said members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban were not entitled to prisoner-of-war status. That led interrogators to believe that they “could deviate slightly from the rules,” according to an Army Reserve sergeant who served at Bagram.

It now appears that those slight deviations included killing prisoners, and then covering up the reason they died.

NYTimes Editorial (read more. . .)

May 23rd, 2005 || PermaLink

condoning torture

Despite Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo - not to mention Iraq and the failure of intelligence - and the various roles they played in what went wrong, Rumsfeld kept his job; Rice was promoted to secretary of state; Alberto Gonzales, who commissioned the memos justifying torture, became attorney general; deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz was nominated to the presidency of the World Bank; and Stephen Cambone, under-secretary of defense for intelligence and one of those most directly involved in the policies on prisoners, was still one of Rumsfeld’s closest confidants. President Bush, asked about accountability, told the Washington Post before his second inauguration that the American people had supplied all the accountability needed - by re-electing him. Only seven enlisted men and women have been charged or pleaded guilty to offenses relating to Abu Ghraib. No officer is facing criminal proceedings.

Seymour Hersh, Guardian (UK) (read more. . .)

May 22nd, 2005 || PermaLink

global strike

If reports from Washington this week are true, a new president, George W. Bush, is inclined to go ahead with the Air Force’s ideas for research, and maybe even development and deployment, of offensive weapons in space. The idea called “Global Strike” would, they say, make it possible for the United States to strike with precision any acre of the planet in less than 45 minutes. I doubt that, but the Air Force says it does not.

“We must establish and maintain space superiority,” says Gen. Lance Lord. That’s a name to be reckoned with, even better than Brass Bancroft. “Simply put, it’s the American way of fighting.”

It is? Well, it’s also the American way of scaring the world into hating us. And it is also the American way of scaring ourselves into spending more than a trillion dollars, one estimate of the cost, to protect ourselves from millions of new enemies.

Richard Reeves, Yahoo (read more. . .)

May 21st, 2005 || PermaLink