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Posted by Harkavy at 3:18 PM, May 7, 2008
High-tech horror: Widespread cell-phone violence against women in Iraq and the Congo.
The downside of the 21st century's high-tech age is lower than you can imagine: Cell phones and cell-phone technology are prime culprits in a growing epidemic of rape, beatings, and murder of women in the Congo and Iraq.
A war over "coltan," a crucial ingredient in the manufacture of cell phones and other electronic devices, has helped cause the ongoing tragedy of rape and murder by the millions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The DRC horrors far outstrip even Darfur as a tragedy, as I noted in June 2005.
Go to Seeing is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News, the website of Czech-Canadian Katerina Cizek's documentary film series of that name, to read "Cell Phones Fuel Congo Conflict." . The series explains how the fight over coltan, only one of the treasures in the resources-rich Congo, is directly responsible for much of the savage war in which millions have died and hundreds of thousands, at the very least, have been raped and otherwise brutalized.
Eve Ensler, famous for the Vagina Monologues, is one of the few Westerners to latch onto the rampage against women in the Congo and try to publicize it. Incongruously, her monologue on the violence, gleaned from a trip there, can be found in Glamour. Here's the second paragraph of Ensler's in-your-face August 2007 article:
How do I tell you of girls as young as nine raped by gangs of soldiers, of women whose insides were blown apart by rifle blasts and whose bodies now leak uncontrollable streams of urine and feces?
Meanwhile, in Iraq, cell phones as finished products are prime weapons — in a high-tech fashion — for brutalizing women.
Amanj Khalil, a young journalist for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, described on May 2 one recent incident in Iraq's northern Kurdish area:
Salma trusted her boyfriend enough to speak freely with him about romance, love and even sex.
But she has paid a high price for her candour. Salma, who asked that her real name be concealed because of the sensitivity of her story, is hiding in a women’s shelter in the northeastern city of Sulaimaniyah, her body battered and bruised.
Her boyfriend recorded their intimate conversations on his phone and passed them onto her family through a friend when she refused to marry him. Salma’s body still bears the scars of her family’s response. The 28-year-old’s hand was fractured during one of the beatings from her brothers, father and uncles.
“They started to beat me without even letting me speak,” she said. “They beat me so severely that I fainted several times."
Salma's just one of many Iraqi women being brutalized in a high-tech way by lower-than-low scumbags.
It's worse in the Congo. Natural disasters, like the cyclone that ravaged Burma, are one thing. Manmade disasters are another. And no manmade disaster is as unnatural as what's going on in the DRC, surely the rape capital of the world.
Here's a grim fact: In the Congo, "vaginal destruction" has become an official term of medical art used by beleaguered doctors and nurses to describe war-related injuries.
Western governments and the mainstream press usually, but not always, ignore the DRC. (Certainly, Western corporations don't ignore it the country's rich natural resources.) So you have to go elsewhere to find out about the situation. Thanks to the Web, the upside of high-tech, you can.
One of the best pieces, and I've referred to it previously, is Sarah J. Coleman's June 2005 article on Beliefnet, "Congo's Conflict: Heart of Darkness." Her lede is worth repeating:
How do you measure the horror in the Democratic Republic of Congo? Add up all of the American deaths in every single war we've fought in since 1776, including World War II and the Civil War (1,540,665). Now add to that the estimated deaths from the recent tsunami (169,752 confirmed dead, 127,294 missing). Next, add to that the estimated death toll in the conflict in Darfur (400,000). Then, add to that the victims of genocide in Rwanda, one of the most horrific slaughters of the 20th century (937,000).
Add all of the deaths together — and you still have a smaller number than the 3.5 million people who have died in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since 1998.
The toll's up to an estimated 5 million now — that's the scope of the Holocaust. Read Stephen Lewis's April 12 speech at Ensler's V-Day Celebration in New Orleans.
Lewis really got down to it in September 2007, quoting from "The Shame of War: Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls in Conflict," a March 2007 major report from IRIN, the U.N.'s excellent and free global news service:
“As a result of the systematic and exceptionally violent gang rape of thousands of Congolese women and girls, doctors in the DRC are now classifying vaginal destruction as a crime of combat. Many of the victims suffer from traumatic fistula — tissue tears in the vagina, bladder, and rectum.
Additional long-term medical complications for survivors may include uterine prolapse (the descent of the uterus into the vagina or beyond) and other serious injuries to the reproductive system, such as infertility, or complications associated with miscarriages and self-induced abortions. Rape victims are also at high-risk for sexually transmitted infections.”
I won't apologize for the graphic nature of this, because we need to face the unexpurgated facts.
The Congo violence is the biggest war tragedy, but of course it's far from the only manmade disaster. Among the many battlegrounds of violence against women is Kurdish Iraq. That northern region of Iraq has long been thought to be the most civilized area of the war-torn country (aside from the increasing number of skirmishes between Turkey and the Kurd separatists). But Salma's story is far from unique.
Here's the intrepid reporter Khalil again to give the broader view of cell-phone-induced violence in Iraq:
Mobile phones have become a new threat to young women’s safety in Iraq’s northern region, members of parliament and women’s rights campaigners warn.
Men are using them to take photos and record audio and video clips of women and girls who are breaking social codes by having sexually explicit conversations or intimate relations with their boyfriends. In many cases, the conversations and videos have been widely distributed, damaging women’s reputations and, in doing so, putting their lives at risk.
In 2007, nearly 350 women were the victims of violence in mobile-phone related cases, according to statistics compiled by women’s organisations and the Sulaimaniyah police directorate. In 2006, 170 cases were recorded.
However, experts believe that the actual number of incidents is much higher.
Can you hear me now?
Posted by Harkavy at 10:34 AM, January 3, 2008
Spare us the comparisons between John Durham — the newly named special prosecutor of Interrogate, the CIA tapes scandal — and Plamegate prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
The Washington Post succumbs to this typical piece of journalist b.s., noting this morning:
Several courtroom adversaries compared Durham, a Roman Catholic reared in the Northeast, to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the staid U.S. attorney in Chicago who served as special prosecutor in the investigation of the leaked identity of a CIA officer. "He's Fitzgerald with a sense of humor," said Hugh O'Keefe, a Connecticut criminal defense lawyer who has known Durham for 20 years.
That's the easiest trick in political journalism: Get a quote from someone who shares the small, local stage with Durham — and who doesn't know whether Durham can handle the big stage — and run with it, instead of doing some serious checking to see whether Durham has any frame of reference in dealing with national and international crimes, criminals, and cases.
The Post does at least add that caveat:
But Durham has had little experience with national security issues and with cases involving executive authority that appear to be less than black-and-white. His probe may require calling lawyers and aides to Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the CIA before a grand jury to testify about their knowledge of the tapes' destruction.
Durham made his bones by prosecuting GOP Connecticut governor John Rowland for sleazy business dealings. Rowland wound up exiting Hartford and entering prison for a short bid.
Fitzgerald, on the other hand, had vast experience in national and international cases before he tried to hound Scooter Libby. He prosecuted the plotters of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
The new attorney general, Mike Mukasey, knows the difference. He presided over that WTC case. But as Bill Kunstler pointed out at the time (read my earlier item here), Mukasey should have recused himself (because he's a fundamentalist Jew) from presiding over the case, which, after all, was against fundamentalist Muslims.
Unfortunately, Durham comes with the recommendation of Kevin O'Connor. Who he? Again from the Post:
Two former prosecutors and a Justice Department official said that Durham, 57, was recommended for his assignment by his former boss, Kevin J. O'Connor, who was the U.S. attorney in Connecticut until he became an assistant to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales shortly before Gonzales resigned last year. O'Connor is awaiting confirmation as an associate attorney general.
Durham is supposedly a guy who's tough on violent criminals. That really sets him apart from other prosecutors. Dealing with White House schmucks is another matter altogether. And this is a monumental chore that requires some nuanced pressuring of true heavyweight schnooks. As this morning's New York Times story says:
The announcement is the first indication that investigators have concluded on a preliminary basis that C.I.A. officers, possibly along with other government officials, may have committed criminal acts in their handling of the tapes, which recorded the interrogations in 2002 of two operatives with Al Qaeda and were destroyed in 2005.
C.I.A. officials have for years feared becoming entangled in a criminal investigation involving alleged improprieties in secret counterterrorism programs. Now, the investigation and a probable grand jury inquiry will scrutinize the actions of some of the highest-ranking current and former officials at the agency.
The tapes were never provided to the courts or to the Sept. 11 commission, which had requested all C.I.A. documents related to Qaeda prisoners. The question of whether to destroy the tapes was for nearly three years the subject of deliberations among lawyers at the highest levels of the Bush administration.
Don't expect much, and don't expect it soon.
Posted by Harkavy at 9:39 AM, October 24, 2007
The convergence of America's pastimes — religious crackpotism, fast food, and immigration — on America's former pastime
Greeley Tribune Future spiritual godfather of radical Muslims Sayyid Qutb (with Hitlerian mustache) poses in Greeley, Colorado, with college prexy William R. Ross in 1949.
Just wait until the World Series, which opens tonight in Boston, shifts to Denver on Saturday. That's when Jesus and Muhammad — and Sayyid Qutb, the spiritual godfather of Al Qaeda — will join the millions of other viewers.
Colorado's a great setting for what used to be America's pastime. Our country's real manias about fast food, religion, and immigration have strong roots there.
South of Denver lies Colorado Springs, headquarters of Focus on the Family's James Dobson, the godfather of America's religious right-wingers. (See my 1997 story "King James's Version.")
North of Denver is Greeley, the slaughterhouse capital for the fast-food industry. Colorado Rockies owner Charlie Monfort owes his good fortune to his daddy's massive abattoirs in Greeley. The family's cattle feedlots are also the stamping grounds for immigrants brought in to deal with the muck and death. (For inhumane treatment of animals, see this. For inhumane treatment of immigrants who perform this inhumane treatment of animals, see this.)
And in a weird confluence of human and animal slaughter philosophies, Greeley is the town where Sayyid Qutb lived in 1949, where he learned to hate Americans' "immoral" behavior before he returned to the Middle East and became the most influential 20th century thinker for radical schnooks like Osama bin Laden. (See Mike Peters's 2002 Greeley Tribune story "Roots of Terrorism Reach to 1949 Greeley" and Daniel Brogan's 2003 story "Al Qaeda’s Greeley Roots" in the Denver magazine 5280.)
Not that all the strange confluences in Colorado are bad. Northern Colorado is also the home of the amazing Temple Grandin, an ingenious autistic person made famous by Oliver Sacks. Grandin, more attuned to animals than people, revolutionized cattle feedlots by at least making the treatment of cattle more humane before they're slaughtered. Her life story is fascinating — especially the "Squeeze Machine" she invented for herself.
You can't make this shit up — except for Charlie Monfort and his family's cattle feedlots. As Eric Schlosser wrote in Fast Food Nation:
You can smell Greeley, Colorado, long before you can see it. The smell is hard to forget but not easy to describe, a combination of live animals, manure, and dead animals being rendered into dog food. The smell is worst during the summer months, blanketing Greeley day and night like an invisible fog. Many people who live there no longer notice the smell; it recedes into the background, present but not present, like the sound of traffic for New Yorkers. Others can't stop thinking about the smell, even after years; it permeates everything, gives them headaches, makes them nauseous, interferes with their sleep.
The money from Greeley's feedlots wafted down to Denver, enabling Charlie Monfort and his family to buy the Rockies and feed campaign contributions to right-wing religious wackos like Rick Santorum and Tom Tancredo.
As for the Rockies' players themselves, Denver Westword's Michael Roberts pleads, "Please, Don't Play the Jesus Card, Rockies."
Today's timid New York Times article reminds the nation that the Rockies are a Christian team by intelligent design: Monfort is born-again, and General Manager Dan O'Dowd is not only a dedicated Christian but purposely recruits other Christians to be his players.
Bob Nightengale (a former colleague of mine years ago at the Arizona Republic) broke that story nationally in a piece last summer for USA Today. The Times's Ben Shpigel begins his story today with a denial by a Jewish Rockie that the team's Christianity is forced down his throat. Shpigel, in a typical Times skin-back, then notes:
The role of religion within the Rockies’ organization first entered the public sphere in May 2006, when an article published in USA Today described the organization as adhering to a "Christian-based code of conduct" and the clubhouse as a place where Bibles were read and men’s magazines, like Maxim or Playboy, were banned.
The article included interviews with several players and front office members, but team players and officials interviewed this week said it unfairly implied that the Rockies were intent on constructing a roster consisting in large part of players with a strong Christian faith. Asked how his own Christian faith affected his decision-making, General Manager Dan O’Dowd acknowledged it came into play, but not in a religious way. He said it guided him to find players with integrity and strong moral values, regardless of their religious preference.
Yeah, right.
In any case, I hope the Rockies slaughter the Red Sox — religious nuts like Qutb and Dobson notwithstanding.
Posted by Harkavy at 7:28 AM, September 18, 2007
IBC
Here's a question, raised in 1979 by the mellifluous Mighty Diamonds:
Who's gonna bodyguard ya, Mr. Bodyguard?
I want to know who.
Thirty years later, the answer's clear: The Pentagon, that's who. At best we'll get the "rogue security contractor" excuse from the Bush regime for Sunday's cacophonous killing of 11 Iraqis in Baghdad by the North Carolina mercenary army Blackwater.
That excuse has worked before. As I wrote in July 2004, it was used by the Pentagon after the Abu Ghraib tortures came to light. SecDef Don Rumsfeld blamed "rogue" soldiers.
Our memories are short when it comes to the mercenaries employed by the Bush regime. As I pointed out in August 2004, private "interrogators" from CACI were employed by the Pentagon at Abu Ghraib, where all that "fear up" went down.
After this latest incident of privatized violence, we have Blackwater saying its boys were ambushed. Blackwater has 1,000 "troops" in Iraq and guards Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Yes, they guard Crocker, and the administration guards them. Monday's Washington Post concisely captured the two versions of the latest Blackwater escapade. Here's the first:
The shooting started at noon on Sunday when a car bomb exploded near a State Department motorcade traveling through the western Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad near Nisoor Square, U.S. officials said. Following the explosion, Blackwater employees guarding the diplomats exchanged fire with armed attackers, Blackwater and U.S. officials said.
The subsequent battle killed at least nine people and wounded 14, Iraqi police and hospital workers said. [An Iraqi official] put the death toll at 11.
Followed by the second version:
"We were shocked when we saw these fighters getting out of their SUVs and shooting randomly at people," said Sgt. Mohammed Juwad Hussein, an Iraqi army soldier who said he was manning a checkpoint in Baghdad near the scene of the fighting. "We didn't know who they were targeting or who they wanted to shoot."
They wanted to shoot them some Ay-rabs, pal. The way I see it, the Mighty Diamonds sang about the possibility of dreadlocked Rastafarians someday making bodyguards pay the price:
One of these days it a go dread (dreader than dread)
Ev'ryone looking a place to hide 'em head (well dread)
But don't worry, Blackwater bodyguards, the Bush regime will shelter you. Iraq's citizens are the ones who can't hide. As of this morning, IBC's "documented civilian deaths from violence" totals somewhere between 72,596 and 79,187.
Yes, the Blackwater "incident" was notable. But as the IBC "recent events" list notes, on that same Sunday, many other Iraqis died, and not at the hands of American mercenaries, whom our press continues to euphemistically label "contractors" or "bodyguards."
One of the victims was a 12-year-old boy who was killed in Diwaniya during a raid by U.S. and Iraqi troops, according to news reports assembled by IBC. Wonder what happened there?
In any case, this particular bloody Sunday was predestined. IBC's list of 38 people who were killed just the day before includes this entry:
Baghdad: car bomb kills 11 outside bakery, Amil; 11 bodies.
And this one:
Karma: 3 bodies.
Posted by Harkavy at 9:45 PM, September 11, 2007
Why Uzbekistan is something to think about on this day.
Past offense: Uzbek despot Karimov lays a wreath at Ground Zero in 2002
By this time on the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 horror, you will have seen plenty of images of pols trying to launch themselves from the sacralized Ground Zero — though Rudy Giuliani got scorched on his latest takeoff when some victims' families accused him of exploiting the tragedy now that he's a presidential candidate.
Giuliani, who would never have been a presidential candidate if not for 9/11, was the first pol to exploit Ground Zero, but he's not the last, of course, and he's probably not even the most worrisome. In 2002, Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov used the sacralized 9/11 site as a photo-op — with the blessing of Giuliani's successor, Mike Bloomberg.
Why bring up Karimov's Ground Zero visit five years after the fact? Who cares if a foreign pol desecrated what has become sacred ground? The reason is that Uzbekistan is nothing but an Iran in the making, Karimov is its shah, and we're the dupes who have helped prop him up. All that in a world that's more dangerous than it was six years ago.
Iraq has become a training ground for terrorists since our 2003 invasion. Uzbekistan, which is about as geopolitically strategic (see map below), is liable to become such a training ground for terrorists even without a U.S. invasion.
Our fairly warm relationship with Karimov grew warmer after 9/11, when we enlisted in our "war on terror" this dictator who conducts a war of terror on his own people. Dangerous move by the Bush regime, because the radical Muslims who will probably take over undemocratic Uzbekistan when the aging despot dies or is deposed will also have long memories. They're sure to remember that, under the once-secret "rendition" scheme, we shipped Muslim prisoners to his jails for interrogation. They'll also remember how our government stood by and did nothing during Karimov's notorious Andijan massacre of dissidents in the spring of 2005 and then tried to suppress an independent investigation of the slaughter.
Expect to see those images of Karimov at Ground Zero and cuddling with Bush used eventually as devices to stir up hatred of the U.S.
The Central Asian "republic" is destined to be the next "-stan" to push its way into headlines, and the news will be bad. Am I crazy? Yes. Am I wrong about Uzbekistan? I don't think so. Here's how the mainstream International Crisis Group summed things up late last month:
Uzbekistan remains a serious risk to itself and its region. While 69-year-old President Islam Karimov shows no signs of relinquishing power, despite the end of his legal term of office more than half a year ago, his eventual departure may lead to a violent power struggle.
The economy remains tightly controlled, with regime stalwarts, including the security services and Karimov’s daughter Gulnora, exerting excessive influence, which drives away investors and exacerbates poverty. The human rights situation is grave, and those who seek to flee abroad live in constant danger of attempts to return them forcibly.
While the government cites the "war on terror" to justify many policies, its repression may in fact be creating greater future danger. Efforts at international engagement have been stymied by its refusal to reform and to allow an independent investigation of the May 2005 Andijan uprising. Little can be done presently to influence Tashkent, but it is important to help ordinary Uzbeks as much as possible and to assist the country’s neighbours build their capacity to cope with the instability that is likely to develop when Karimov goes.
If understanding our history with Karimov and Uzbekistan is important, then recalling how we "handled" the shah and Iran is instructive.
Yes, Karimov is following right in the footsteps of Shah Reza Pahlavi. What's worse is that our government is traipsing down the same garden path with Uzbek's dictator as we did with the shah. And our relationship with Karimov and his NSS is similar to our relationship with the shah and his dreaded secret service, SAVAK, which was shaped by the CIA. Alfred McCoy, in A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror, wrote:
There was little public reaction in the United States to revelations about the CIA's ties to the Shah's secret police.
Yet Iran provided an important cautionary tale. By buttressing the shah's rule with riot police and ruthless interrogation, the CIA unwittingly contributed to the rising opposition that eventually toppled his regime. After training his police, Washington underestimated the stigma attached to torture and stood by, confused, while its key Persian Gulf ally lost legitimacy. The lesson was clear: Torture introduced to defend the shah had instead destroyed the shah.
Karimov rules the same way the shah did. We haven't been as close to Karimov as we were to the shah, but our allowing Karimov to use 9/11 as a symbol back in 2002 was cynical: The Bush regime buttered him up as an ally, and Bloomberg was careful not to offend him because of New York's large number of Bukharan Jewish emigres, many of whom supported him.
Karimov himself is pretty cynical: In his own nation, he generally tolerates Jews and even protects them, because the Bukharan Jews have lived there for a thousand years and pose no threat to his power. But he harshly represses Christians — and even the Muslims who make up nearly 90 percent of the California-sized country of 27 million people.
As I pointed out a couple of years ago, New York's Jewish Week described the strange embrace of Karimov by the city's Bukharan Jews:
Most of the estimated 40,000-strong Bukharan Jews living in the New York area appear to be maintaining their community’s longstanding support for Islam Karimov, the beleaguered president of their native Uzbekistan, despite international media reports that Karimov’s army responded to an uprising and prison break by firing on protesters and killing 500 or more people, including innocent civilians.
That support comes with a caution, though.
The United States, several prominent Bukharan leaders said, should stand by Karimov in this crisis for fear that Islamists might take over the country and persecute the estimated 30,000 to 50,000 Jews remaining there. But these leaders contend that Karimov must change course and allow more democracy and economic liberalization.
George W. Bush's relationship with Karimov isn't quite as old as Karimov's relationship with Uzbek Jews. Bush's dealings with Karimov date back to 1997, when Dubya was still the hangingest governor in U.S. history: Enron's Ken Lay, Bush's biggest campaign contributor, wanted to make a deal with Uzbekistan so Lay instructed Dubya to meet with one of Karimov's minions to grease the skids.
By 2002, the Bush regime wanted to curry favor with Karimov because Uzbekistan borders on Afghanistan. When Karimov visited the States, he got the royal treatment. At Ground Zero, the dictator looked like the religious type, right? I mean, he laid a wreath and even signed his name on a memorial wall.
Bloomberg gave Karimov freer rein in New York City than he gave the 500,000 Americans protesting at the Republican National Convention in 2004. And in December 2005, Bloomberg blasted a New York transit strike as "morally reprehensible." But it was OK for the mayor to roll out the red carpet three years earlier for a morally reprehensible dictator.
Anyway, by the time of the 2002 visit, Karimov was already known as a harsh despot, and Bloomberg tried to keep the news pretty quiet that he was schlepping a dictator around town. You couldn't find on the mayor's website the photos of him and Karimov in the mayor's office or of Karimov at Ground Zero. But the pix were trumpeted on the Uzbekistan government site.
Five years after his visit to Ground Zero, Karimov is surely nearing the end of his 20-year reign — one sign is that there's more and more repression in Uzbekistan.
Forum 18, an Oslo-based religious-freedom group that snoops on repressive regimes around the world, noted just the other day that Karimov and his secret police, the National Security Service, have stepped up their spying on religious communities. Forum 18's Felix Corley wrote on September 5:
Members of a variety of religious communities have told Forum 18 News Service of hidden microphones in places of worship, the presence of NSS agents during worship and the recruitment of spies within communities. … "Two secret police officers sit in each church across the country — but not just churches, they are there in mosques and in other places of worship," one Protestant who preferred not to be identified for fear of reprisals told Forum 18 News Service.
But the NSS has also stepped up its covert spying on and within religious communities of all faiths in recent years as the climate in the country has grown more repressive. Few religious leaders are prepared to talk to outsiders about such spying, fearing reprisals if they do so.
It's one thing for a predominantly Muslim country to spy on Christians or for a predominantly Christian nation to spy on Muslims — that happens in many places. But Karimov is playing with fire, just as the shah did in Iran, because he's hassling Muslims in a Muslim country. Forum 18's Corley noted:
The NSS keeps a very close eye on imams and future imams. The independent news website Uznews.net reported on 1 February that the NSS keeps the Islamic University in Tashkent under close scrutiny. The university was opened with great ceremony by President Islam Karimov in April 1999 and is the flagship educational institution for Muslim students, some of whom go on to become imams.
Uznews said that students complain that the authorities regard them with mistrust. They know that each one is being closely monitored by the NSS. One first-year student was quoted by Uznews as reporting that as soon as they join the university, all students without exception face meetings with NSS officers. "During the meetings, you are given to understand that from now on we are under the constant surveillance of this service," the student reported, "and they have to approve all the steps we take in advance."
Students that are too pious, too devoted to their studies or who question any aspects of the teaching they are being given are regarded with the most suspicion and face "serious problems". Those who questioned the teachers' approach, citing the hadiths (oral traditions attributed to the Muslim prophet Muhammed), faced pressure not only from senior university officials but from NSS officers, Uznews reported.
Uznews notes that this NSS surveillance and intimidation leaves students as "frightened shadows" who have received only a superficial Islamic education.
Karimov's day of reckoning with his country's Muslim radicals is approaching. And it won't help Americans worried about the spread of terrorists that our government is supporting him till the bitter end.
Posted by Harkavy at 6:38 PM, August 29, 2007
Lieutenant Colonel Steve Jordan's acquittal of charges in his court-martial over Abu Ghraib tortures should have been no surprise. Only a week ago, some of the most serious charges against Jordan — including that he lied — were dropped just before the court-martial began.
It didn't matter that the Abu Ghraib scandal — and its coverup — reached all the way up to the White House of Dick Cheney. Check out my August 22 piece, "Chains of Command," for links to the Washington Post series on Cheney and to great stuff by the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh.
The Post's Josh White reports today:
The jury of nine colonels and a one-star general concluded that Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, 51, of Fredericksburg, Va., was not responsible for training or supervising soldiers who have been convicted of abusing detainees at the prison. Jordan was also cleared of charges that he personally abused prisoners, after prosecutors tried to link him to supervising the use of forced nudity and the use of military working dogs to intimidate detainees in interrogations in late 2003.
What's curious is that White's story today doesn't at least mention the previous dropping of charges. After all, White's excellent August 21 story reported it:
Military prosecutors dropped two charges against Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan yesterday, hours before his court-martial for allegedly abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was set to begin at Fort Meade.
The dismissal of allegations that Jordan lied to investigators in the 2004 probe of the notorious abuses was a last-minute surprise in the military courtroom at the Maryland Army base. Based on new evidence that surfaced over the weekend, prosecutors determined that Jordan had not been read his rights before giving detailed statements to Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, who led the seminal investigation into the Abu Ghraib scandal. Those statements are therefore inadmissible in the proceedings. …
The development was a significant victory for Jordan's defense attorneys, who had been arguing for suppression of the statements. Jordan gave extensive statements to Fay outlining his role at Abu Ghraib and explaining specific incidents for which he has been criminally charged. In May, Henley also tossed out statements Jordan gave to Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, because Taguba also did not properly advise him of his rights. Now, none of Jordan's statements can be used against him.
White explained the situation quite well in his earlier story, just before the court-martial trial began:
Fay's failure to read Jordan his rights appears to be a major oversight in the probe, and prosecutors did not explain the discrepancy. The move reduces Jordan's potential sentence almost by half, to a maximum of 8 1/2 years.
It was the latest in a series of odd twists in Jordan's case. Prosecutors have recommended for years that Jordan face administrative punishment rather than trial. An investigative officer once advocated a reprimand to avoid a public rehashing of the Abu Ghraib abuses. And emerging evidence has now led to the dismissal of eight out of 12 original charges against the Army officer. Jordan said in a recent interview with The Washington Post that he believes he is a scapegoat because authorities want an officer to go to trial as a final chapter in the Abu Ghraib scandal, even though a more senior officer who admitted approving the use of dogs, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, received only a reprimand and a fine.
Jordan, 51, is the last soldier to face charges related to the Abu Ghraib abuses and the only officer to go to court-martial for alleged crimes there. A jury panel of nine Army colonels and one brigadier general is expected to hear opening statements in the case today, and yesterday each member told the court — under questioning by Capt. Samuel Spitzberg, one of Jordan's defense attorneys — that they would not use Jordan's trial as "a referendum on Abu Ghraib."
In any case, don't let Abu Ghraib slip down the memory hole. We've known for a long time that the genesis of the abuse was in D.C., that it was a rogue presidency, not just rogue soldiers. Read Hersh's June story on Taguba and Taguba's own 2004 report.
Posted by Harkavy at 9:22 AM, August 27, 2007
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, getting almost as much heat as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, has resigned, according to news reports.
It was just a matter of time, after his own party savaged him earlier this month. Now you can relax and enjoy some of his greatest hits, starting with his confirmation hearing in January 2005.
His reign was pure torture, even after John Ashcroft's gospel show.
Even when he was Bush's counsel during the POTUS's term in Texas as the nation's hangingest governor, Gonzales was lame. As I noted in January 2006, "his timing is off, but his boss's execution never is."
Gonzales was small, but he was slow
Posted by Harkavy at 12:55 PM, August 22, 2007
To unravel the tortured excuses for Abu Ghraib abuses, go back to June 25, a day of brilliant journalism.
Once so proud of plans for "War on Terror detainees" that they even showed off their special Gitmo chains and other jewelry, the Bush regime's various soldiers are now crying, as the Nazis did, "We were only following orders." Or they're saying, "Hey, I didn't even give the orders."
Blame them, but save the biggest share of blame for their higher-ups — all the way up to Vise President Dick Cheney.
The freshest example is that of Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, whose court-martial right now at Fort Meade, Maryland, for Abu Ghraib abuses that occurred on his watch is a travesty of cover-up upon cover-up.
Despite the fact that the soldiers under Jordan got off by torturing and humiliating prisoners — most of whom were innocent and none of whom were of any intelligence value — Jordan himself will probably get off with a wrist-slap.
Today's account of this extremely important trial is buried on page A14 of the Washington Post:
Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the only officer charged in connection with abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, did not train, supervise or work directly with interrogators who questioned detainees, the prison's top military intelligence officer testified yesterday.
Testifying for the prosecution in Jordan's court-martial at Fort Meade, Col. Thomas M. Pappas said that Jordan's duties centered on improving the quality of life for soldiers at the austere base outside Baghdad and improving the flow of intelligence information — not on the interrogations or harsh methods of eliciting information approved for use at the time.
The news cycles of real news, especially follow-ups, cause so much frustration. How can anyone put his or her hands around what's going on?
Abu Ghraib blazed in the headlines in 2004, but now that details of who did what and when are coming out, it's considered old news. That's why I try to salt my posts with so many links. All we can do is point to some stories that point to the facts and provide context.
And one unmistakable fact is that no matter what happens to Jordan, the torture scandal goes all the way up the chain of command, right into the White House run by Dick Cheney.
When it comes to Abu Ghraib, all you really have to do is focus on just one day's worth of brilliant journalism. Go back to this past June 25 and you'll see what I mean.
Now, I'm not faulting the Post for burying today's Jordan story. It has kicked the ass of the New York Times on almost every topic since the Bush regime came to power. While Jordan's court-martial continues, go back and re-read the Post's stellar series on Cheney, particularly Barton Gellman and Jo Becker's June 25 "Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power," which I wrote about that day. Here's how that Post story began:
Shortly after the first accused terrorists reached the U.S. naval prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on Jan. 11, 2002, a delegation from CIA headquarters arrived in the Situation Room. The agency presented a delicate problem to White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, a man with next to no experience on the subject. Vice President Cheney's lawyer, [ David Addington], who had a great deal of experience, sat nearby. The meeting marked "the first time that the issue of interrogations comes up" among top-ranking White House officials, recalled John C. Yoo, who represented the Justice Department. "The CIA guys said, 'We're going to have some real difficulties getting actionable intelligence from detainees'" if interrogators confined themselves to humane techniques allowed by the Geneva Conventions.
From that moment, well before previous accounts have suggested, Cheney turned his attention to the practical business of crushing a captive's will to resist. The vice president's office played a central role in shattering limits on coercion in U.S. custody, commissioning and defending legal opinions that the Bush administration has since portrayed as the initiatives, months later, of lower-ranking officials. Remarkable stuff. Too bad it didn't come out before the November 2004 presidential election.
If you really want to understand how such a coverup happened — and what tragic roles this Colonel Jordan and various other officials played in this sick drama —go back to Seymour Hersh's brilliant piece "The General’s Report: How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties," also published on June 25.
Taguba's investigation (PDF of his report) was circumscribed by his higher-ups, Hersh reveals. And of course now it comes out that Jordan supposedly wasn't read his rights at the proper time and he might skate on serious charges.
What about the people above — way above — Jordan? Hersh's reporting explodes the Bush regime's lame excuse that Abu Ghraib's abuses were the work of a few "rogue soldiers":
Taguba came to believe that Lieutenant General [ Ricardo] Sanchez, the Army commander in Iraq, and some of the generals assigned to the military headquarters in Baghdad had extensive knowledge of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib even before Joseph Darby came forward with the CD. Taguba was aware that in the fall of 2003 — when much of the abuse took place — Sanchez routinely visited the prison, and witnessed at least one interrogation. According to Taguba, "Sanchez knew exactly what was going on."
Taguba learned that in August, 2003, as the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was gaining force, the Pentagon had ordered Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander at Guantánamo, to Iraq. His mission was to survey the prison system there and to find ways to improve the flow of intelligence. The core of Miller’s recommendations, as summarized in the Taguba report, was that the military police at Abu Ghraib should become part of the interrogation process: they should work closely with interrogators and intelligence officers in "setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees."
Taguba concluded that Miller’s approach was not consistent with Army doctrine, which gave military police the overriding mission of making sure that the prisons were secure and orderly. His report cited testimony that interrogators and other intelligence personnel were encouraging the abuse of detainees. "Loosen this guy up for us," one M.P. said he was told by a member of military intelligence. "Make sure he has a bad night."
The M.P.s, Taguba said, "were being literally exploited by the military interrogators. My view is that those kids" — even the soldiers in the photographs — "were poorly led, not trained, and had not been given any standard operating procedures on how they should guard the detainees." Rogue soldiers? No, a rogue presidency.
Posted by Harkavy at 8:54 AM, August 14, 2007
Harkavy
Monument to failure: DeLay and Abramoff are long gone. Now Rove is almost gone, and only Cheney (right) is left.
George W. Bush nicknamed Karl Rove "The Architect," but the POTUS isn't much of a reader, so we need a better definition of the guy who always relished his role as Rasputin.
My dictionary says "rove" is the past tense of "rive":
1. To tear apart or in pieces by pulling or tugging; to rend or lacerate with the hands, claws, etc.; to pull asunder.
(Yes, I know that "My dictionary says …" is a hackneyed device, but my dictionary is the OED on CD-ROM, and Rove himself is a hackneyed device, so do me a favor and keep reading.)
The fact is that Rove is definitely not past tense on Capitol Hill, as I noted early yesterday. Later in the day, New York senator Chuck Schumer spoke the obligatory words:
Karl Rove's resignation will not stop our inquiry into the firings of the U.S. attorneys. He has every bit as much of a legal obligation to reveal the truth once he steps down as he does today.
That ship has sailed. As a verb by its intransitive lonesome, "rove" takes on another meaning:
To practise piracy; to sail as pirates.
Unfortunately, this political plunderer's shredder is probably overheating right now. We already know that thousands of juicy e-mails describing his plots are out there. But shredding is Rove's name, if you believe the OED, and I do:
To tear up (a letter, document, etc.), so as to destroy or cancel.
For the sake of history, though, Rove is "rove" in a broader sense:
To commit spoliation or robbery; to reave; to take away from. Now dial.
What's the use. Rove's already in transit out of D.C. If issues make you reach for tissues, this definition (of "rive" and thus "rove") is for you:
To rend (the heart, soul, etc.) with painful thoughts or feelings.
Whether or not he's ever called back from Texas to testify — and it would probably take a stint at Gitmo to get him to do it — Rove could very well end up as a memorable, if improper, noun. This 15th century usage fits, but it's obsolete:
1. a. A scabby, scaly, or scurfy condition of the skin. b. A scab; the scaly crust of a healed or healing wound.
No, forget "architect," scabs, and all other nouns. To me, Rove will always be a verb, especially in this sense:
To shoot with arrows at a mark selected at pleasure or at random, and not of any fixed distance.
Kind of a Robin Hood, except that Rove, as I pointed out yesterday, robs the poor to give to the rich.
What a con he pulled on us marks. Yes, that is true "roving." The OED elaborates:
The object of roving was evidently to give practice in finding the range of the mark, while shooting at the butts and pricks taught accuracy of aim.
Posted by Harkavy at 3:58 PM, August 1, 2007
Mayor Bloomberg and torturer Karimov in the mayor's office in 2002. Bloomberg didn't want you to see this photo. But he does want to stop the public — even groups as small as two people — from shooting film or video unless they have permits.
If Mike Bloomberg winds up running for president (only if Rudy Giuliani doesn't win the GOP nomination), all the money in the world won't save the billionaire New York mayor from the glare of bad publicity.
Unless he stops people from shooting pictures, video, or film. That's exactly what Bloomberg (a one-person Green Party) is trying to do. One of his latest stunts would stunt others' ability to shoot film or video or even pictures on New York's streets.
Of course, in his own case, he likes to choose what pictures to show. For example, Bloomberg's official website showed no photographic evidence back in 2002 that Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, whose underlings have been known to boil people to death, had not only visited New York; the torturer had chatted with Bloomberg in the mayor's office while the two posed for photos (see above). You could find the pictures only on Karimov's Uzbekistan website.
Now, in a city full of film-and-video students armed with digital equipment, Bloomberg's film office has a plan to stop crews as small as two people from taking pictures of anything on city streets. Here's the New York Times's Colin Moynihan the other day in a story about protesters protesting Bloomberg's clampdown:
The new rules, which were proposed by the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting, would require any group of two or more people who want to use a camera in a public place for more than 30 minutes to get a city permit and $1 million in liability insurance. The same requirements would apply to any group of five or more people who plan to use a tripod in a public location for more than 10 minutes, including the time it takes to set up the equipment. The permits would be free.
Yeah, free. Not free to shoot, but free of charge, except for purchasing the insurance. And no hassle, except for having to register with the government before you take pictures on the street.
Bloomberg did a fine job protecting the GOP from the public during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Central Park, the natural spot for half a million protesters, was off-limits, and demonstrators were herded like cattle in a feedlot.
A group called Picture New York is fighting the new restrictions. Sorry, don't have any pictures of them.
Posted by Harkavy at 8:30 AM, July 25, 2007
"Please help us understand": Gonzales being grilled July 24 by Schumer.
On January 6, 2005, Texas senator John Cornyn kicked off the confirmation hearings for attorney general wannabe Alberto Gonzales by introducing him as "an inspiration to anyone." Well, Gonzales certainly inspired Chuck Schumer yesterday. The New York senator brought out the perspiration in Gonzales.
Call me Ishmael, but Spencer Ackerman and Paul Kiel did a whale of a job on tpmmuckracker.com, quickly posting commentary and clips of Schumer and Arlen Specter lobbing spears at the AG's blowhole.
At one point, Gonzales said he "clarified" a previous statement by calling Washington Post reporter Dan Eggen and retracting it. A few minutes later, Gonzales was forced to admit that one of his aides actually contacted Eggen and that Gonzales himself didn't know what was said.
Eggen was more charitable in his front-page story this morning, but his nut graf was this:
The session was a political low point for the attorney general, whose reputation has eroded over the past seven months in Congress, in public opinion polls and among many of his own employees.
What a tough job it is to be one of the handlers of Gonzales or Bush. You got to watch those two like a hawk. And what the hell do you do when either of them is nakedly grilled? (See the full transcript of yesterday's hearing for an answer.)
In unrehearsed moments, their performances are staggering. Death-penalty foe Sister Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking) recalls an anecdote by Tucker Carlson that left even that Bush fan astonished at the president's callousness and stupidity while the two discussed one of the people Bush had killed, Karla Faye Tucker.
Has there ever been a lawyer who's worse at thinking on his feet? Not much of a shock that Gonzales looked stupid yesterday. Sometimes pols intentionally act that way, of course. It may be difficult to tell whether Gonzales is lying or just plain dumb as a post, but the probable answer: both. He was grossly unqualified in the first place to be attorney general, as the confirmation hearings a year and a half ago showed. See my "Torture in Real Time" coverage of Gonzales trying to answer questions about the then-fresh Abu Ghraib scandal. (The full transcript of the January 6, 2005, session is here.)
Ted Kennedy was apoplectic during the confirmation hearings as he questioned Gonzales on the "techniques" of "live burial."
Yesterday's hearing showed how that's actually carried out.
Nobody should be surprised at Gonzales's performance. Russ Feingold noted back in January 2005 that, during Gonzales's term as counsel to Governor George W. Bush — when Bush became the hangingest governor in U.S. history — Gonzo didn't prepare memos on each case until the day of the execution.
Gonzales insisted that the memos merely "summarized discussions," what he called a "rolling series of discussions" with Bush "about every execution."
That was a lie. Alan Berlow's masterful "The Hanging Governor," way, way back in May 2000 in Salon, noted:
Even Bush's former counsel, Judge Alberto R. Gonzales, says that a typical execution would receive no more than 30 minutes of the governor's time.
A lot shorter, in other words, than yesterday's strangling.
Posted by Harkavy at 8:13 AM, July 6, 2007
This morning's L.A. Times report that the U.S. and its allies are killing more Afghan civilians than the Taliban are could be just the tip of the coffin.
In Iraq, documents that the ACLU pried from the War Department indicate that the U.S. often rejects claims — even defying judges' rulings — that its troops have killed innocent civilians. And one of those rejected claims shows that a seldom-used word — "incorporeity" — is creeping into the wartime language.
Judges are granting "incorporeity damages" for civilian deaths, as the document below shows, but U.S. officials often rejected such claims. In the case below, an Iraqi claims that his son was killed by troops as he approached a checkpoint on his way to market. A judge valued the son at $7,500 — $5,000 for "killed my son" and $2,500 for "incorporeity damages" — but U.S. officials said his behavior was "threatening" and refused to pay.
Heretofore not used to describe the death of Iraq civilians, "incorporeity" comes from "incorporeal," according to my OED, which I guess you could say backs up the U.S. position: The first OED definition of "incorporeal":
Having no bodily or material structure; not composed of matter; immaterial.
The second definition gets right to it:
Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of immaterial beings.
That's accurate. As I pointed out in October 2004, General Tommy Franks remarked early on, "We don't do body counts," but others were, including Iraq Body Count, which has documented 65,000 violent deaths so far. It used to be that we did most of the killing, but now of course it's the rebels' bombs and suicide runs that account for most of it. Nevertheless, IBC noted in a March 2007 rundown:
Coalition-caused deaths.
Coalition forces, principally US as well as some UK, were identified to have killed at least 536 Iraqi civilians in year four (excluding a major incident in Najaf in January which is still under investigation by IBC). This compares with 370 in year three. If 536 seems insignificant in light of the overall total, consider for a moment what it would mean if in your country there were, on average, three incidents a week in which a foreign army killed civilians, including the killing of a 5-yr-old girl and entire families with their children. Would this army be a stabilising influence?
Check out the batch of Iraq death claims yourself at this ACLU page; there's even a search engine on civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The same kind of destabilizing is happening in Afghanistan, where Hamid Karzai's government is shakier all the time. This morning's L.A. Times story notes:
After more than five years of increasingly intense warfare, the conflict in Afghanistan reached a grim milestone in the first half of this year: U.S. troops and their NATO allies killed more civilians than insurgents did, according to several independent tallies. . . .
But the growing toll is causing widespread disillusionment among the Afghan people, eroding support for the government of President Hamid Karzai and exacerbating political rifts among NATO allies about the nature and goals of the mission in Afghanistan.
More than 500 Afghan civilians have been reported killed this year, and the rate has dramatically increased in the last month.
The Times story tries to be fair:
Still, Western military leaders argue that any comparison of casualties caused by Western forces and by the Taliban is fundamentally unfair because there is a clear moral distinction to be made between accidental deaths resulting from combat operations and deliberate killings of innocents by militants.
"No [Western] soldier ever wakes up in the morning with the intention of harming any Afghan citizen," said Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. "If that does inadvertently happen, it is deeply, deeply regretted."
Well, it's not true that no Western soldier wakes up in the morning with the intention of harming a civilian. How about the Abu Ghraib tortures, which my colleague Graham Rayman recently revisited?
A better example is soldier Steven Green, leader of a rape crew that prosecutors say got drunk, put on masks, invaded an apartment, raped a 14-year-old girl and killed her and her whole family.
Green's now facing the death penalty, so maybe at some point he'll become incorporeal himself.
Posted by Harkavy at 8:16 AM, July 5, 2007
Blow up the candles. Blow them up all over the world. George W. Bush's 61st birthday is tomorrow, July 6. Things are so bad that even the Presidential Prayer Team, focusing on "Today's Immediate Concerns," is praying as we speak that our troops come home:
Pray for President Bush today as he continues to work with military leaders and the Iraqi government to bring strength and stability to that nation, enabling eventual withdrawal U.S. troops...
Pray also for the President as he observes his 61st birthday tomorrow, asking God for protection and strength for him...
Pray for residents of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas who are struggling to recover from devastating floods there...
Naturally, the prayer team's birthday wishes for Bush take precedence over a bunch of Okies and Kansans, not to mention people from his adopted home state. But for Bush — remember his slow reaction to the tsunami and his performance before and after Hurricane Katrina — natural disasters aren't his focus.
Manmade disasters are his thing. So buy at least 3,583 candles.
Yes, Bush's birth date, among other things, makes him a Cancer with a capital "C." As for our de facto president, Dick Cheney, you'll have to wait six months to celebrate his next birthday: He turns 67 on January 30, 2008.
It should have already dawned on you that we really are living in the age of Aquarius.
Posted by Harkavy at 6:57 AM, June 25, 2007
Grabbing onto the coattails of the Washington Post's brilliant series, "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency," Democratic party activists and consultants are wailing that "Dick Cheney is a war criminal."
I guess that makes the whole host of Democrats who went along with the regime's march to war during the crucial Congressional votes of October 2002 "war schlemiels."
Barefoot boy with sheikh: An Arab being tortured at Abu Ghraib, thanks to the brainstorming of Cheney (far right).
The Post series is indeed explosive. As this morning's dispatch, "Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power," by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, shows, Cheney and other top officials personally brainstormed how to violate the Constitution and perfect the torture of Arabs captured during the War of Terror.
Basically, Cheney acts as if he were a sheikh, kind of a Dick of Arabia. No wonder Halliburton, which continues to take cues from ex-CEO Cheney and kept paying a salary to the vice president through at least the first six years of his reign at the White House, has fled to Dubai. The United Arab Emirates is one of the most repressive regimes on Earth. Our own State Department says:
• "The law permits indefinite routine prolonged incommunicado detention without appeal."
• "The constitution provides for freedom of speech and of the press; however, the government restricted these rights in practice. The government drafts all Friday sermons in mosques and censors private association publications. . . . The law prohibits criticism of the rulers, and from acts to create or encourage social unrest.
• "Organized public gatherings require a government permit. No permits were given for organized public gatherings for political purposes."
• "There are no political organizations, political parties, or trade unions."
• "Unrestricted foreign travel and emigration is permitted for male citizens, except those involved in legal disputes under adjudication. Custom dictates that a husband can bar his wife, minor children, and adult unmarried daughters from leaving the country by taking custody of their passports."
• "The law does not provide to citizens the right to change their government peacefully, or to freely change the laws that govern them. There are no democratic elections or institutions and citizens do not have the right to form political parties."
Otherwise, Dubai, where the world's tallest building is being erected, is a great place. It's the dream of people like Cheney. Business and government are one and the same. Most of the workers are foreigners — only 5 percent of Emirati citizens work. Development has run amuck. An oligarchy controls everything.
Burdened by an intolerable climate (as hot as Phoenix and as humid as Houston), Dubai is bursting with outrageous resorts. It's a playpen for the rich — more like a sandbox.
D.C. isn't the greatest place, either, and it's also a playpen, as the Post series points out. From this morning's piece:
Shortly after the first accused terrorists reached the U.S. naval prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on Jan. 11, 2002, a delegation from CIA headquarters arrived in the Situation Room. The agency presented a delicate problem to White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, a man with next to no experience on the subject. Vice President Cheney's lawyer, who had a great deal of experience, sat nearby. The meeting marked "the first time that the issue of interrogations comes up" among top-ranking White House officials, recalled John C. Yoo, who represented the Justice Department. "The CIA guys said, 'We're going to have some real difficulties getting actionable intelligence from detainees'" if interrogators confined themselves to humane techniques allowed by the Geneva Conventions.
From that moment, well before previous accounts have suggested, Cheney turned his attention to the practical business of crushing a captive's will to resist. The vice president's office played a central role in shattering limits on coercion in U.S. custody, commissioning and defending legal opinions that the Bush administration has since portrayed as the initiatives, months later, of lower-ranking officials.
Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a novel distinction between forbidden "torture" and permitted use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" methods of questioning. They did not originate every idea to rewrite or reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they translated muscular theories, from Yoo and others, into the operational language of government.
Hope there's a special section in the George W. Bush Presidential Libary on Cheney. Actually, that library should be only a wing to Dick Cheney's tome tomb.
Where were the Post and other U.S. media back in the spring of 2005 when the Times of London — one of Rupert Murdoch's papers — revealed what became known as the Downing Street Memo and other documents laying out the furtive plotting in 2002 behind the unjustified invasion of Iraq?
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