What are we to believe?
HOMEA couple links to help you quickly and easily contact your State's Representatives and Senators. Also lists important Congressional issues
CapWiz via NOW
CapWiz via The Nation
Links to transcripts of Pres, VP, Pentagon etc
Ari Fleischer
President
('News by Date' in col)
Pentagon
(Rumsfeld, Meyers, Franks, Wolfowitz)
CNN
(crossfire, Aaron Brown etc)
Cheney
Tracking press conferences, news reports and and other publicly disseminated information that are either untrue or clearly misleading.
Usually these are items that lead viewers/US citizens to believe that the war against Iraq is not only justified and that US citizens need to be very afraid of what Saddam will do to them if he's allowed to live.
CapWiz via NOW
CapWiz via The Nation
Ari Fleischer
President
('News by Date' in col)
Pentagon
(Rumsfeld, Meyers, Franks, Wolfowitz)
CNN
(crossfire, Aaron Brown etc)
Cheney
Tracking press conferences, news reports and and other publicly disseminated information that are either untrue or clearly misleading.
Usually these are items that lead viewers/US citizens to believe that the war against Iraq is not only justified and that US citizens need to be very afraid of what Saddam will do to them if he's allowed to live.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Cheney reasserts al-Qaeda-Saddam link as latest Pentagon report dismisses connection [04-05-07]
Vice President Dick Cheney repeated his assertions of al-Qaeda links to Saddam Hussein's Iraq on Thursday as the Defense Department released a report citing more evidence that the prewar government did not cooperate with the terrorist group.
Cheney contended that al-Qaeda was operating in Iraq before the March 2003 invasion led by U.S. forces and that terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was leading the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda. Others in al-Qaeda planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June,” Cheney told radio host Rush Limbaugh during an interview. “As I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq.”
However, a declassified Pentagon report released Thursday said that interrogations of the deposed Iraqi leader and two of his former aides as well as seized Iraqi documents confirmed that the terrorist organization and the Saddam government were not working together before the invasion.
The Sept. 11 Commission's 2004 report also found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network during that period.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Text from Bush news conference (APWire 12-26-06)
As we work with Congress in the coming year to chart a new course in Iraq and strengthen our military to meet the challenges of the 21st century, we must also work together to achieve important goals for the American people here at home.
This work begins with keeping our economy growing.
As we approach the end of 2006, the American economy continues to post strong gains.
The most recent jobs report shows that our economy created 132,000 more jobs in November alone, and we've now added more than 7 million jobs since August of 2003.
The unemployment rate has remained low at 4.5 percent. The recent report on retail sales shows a strong beginning to the holiday shopping season across the country.
And I encourage you all to go shopping more.
....
Q: Mr. President, less than two months ago, at the end of one of the bloodiest months in the war, you said: Absolutely, we're winning.
Yesterday, you said: We're not winning; we're not losing.
Why did you drop your confident assertion about winning?
BUSH: My comments - the first comment was done in this spirit: I believe that we're going to win. I believe that - and, by the way, if I didn't think that, I wouldn't have our troops there. That's what you've got to know. We're going to succeed.
My comments yesterday reflected the fact that we're not succeeding nearly as fast as I wanted, when I said it at the time, and that the conditions are tough in Iraq, particularly in Baghdad.
....
Friday, December 08, 2006
Rumsfeld's Farewell Speech (WaPo 12-08-06)
if you just watched what's happening every time there's a bomb going off in Baghdad, you'd think the whole country's aflame. But you fly over it, and that's just simply not the case.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
"I have never painted a rosy picture...you'd have a dickens of a time trying to find instances where I've been excessively optimistic." - Donald Rumsfeld
Friday, June 23, 2006
Transcripts - Defense Department News Briefing (WaPo 06-22-06)
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, there has been a lot made on Capitol Hill about these chemical weapons that were found and may be quite old. But do you a real concern of these weapons from Saddam's past perhaps having an impact on U.S. troops who are on the ground in Iraq right now?
RUMSFELD: Certainly. What has been announced is accurate, that there have been hundreds of canisters or weapons of various types found that either currently have sarin in them or had sarin in them, and sarin is dangerous. And it's dangerous to our forces, and it's a concern.
So obviously, to the extent we can locate these and destroy them, it is important that we do so. And they are dangerous. Anyone -- I'm sure General Casey or anyone else in that country would be concerned if they got in the wrong hands.
They are weapons of mass destruction. They are harmful to human beings. And they have been found. And that had not been by Saddam Hussein, as he inaccurately alleged that he had reported all of his weapons. And they are still being found and discovered.
Democrats Criticize Claim on Iraqi Arms (WaPo 06-23-06)
The assertion by two Republican lawmakers that a new intelligence study proves that chemical weapons were found in Iraq has triggered sharp criticism from Democrats that the GOP is distorting intelligence for political purposes.
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"Iraq was not a WMD-free zone," Santorum told reporters earlier this week. "We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons." He added that he had been chasing the intelligence report "for 2 1/2 months."
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representatives of three intelligence agencies who told reporters that the study differed little from a 2004 report of a team of American weapons inspectors led by Charles A. Duelfer that concluded that Hussein was not in possession of significant stocks of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons at the time of the U.S.-led invasion.
The intelligence officials also said that the munitions referred to in the report were produced before the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and that they had degraded and could not be used as designed.
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Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, asked about the study, told reporters yesterday the munitions and canisters found are dangerous to coalition forces. "So obviously to the extent we can locate and destroy them it's important to do so." Rumsfeld also said there was concern "if they got into the wrong hands" because "they are weapons of mass destruction," and he added that the former Iraqi ruler did not declare or destroy them.
Lawmakers Cite Weapons Found in Iraq (WaPo 06-22-06)
Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) told reporters yesterday that weapons of mass destruction had in fact been found in Iraq, despite acknowledgments by the White House and the insistence of the intelligence community that no such weapons had been discovered.
"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Santorum said.
The lawmakers pointed to an unclassified summary from a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center regarding 500 chemical munitions shells that had been buried near the Iranian border, and then long forgotten, by Iraqi troops during their eight-year war with Iran, which ended in 1988.
The U.S. military announced in 2004 in Iraq that several crates of the old shells had been uncovered and that they contained a blister agent that was no longer active. Neither the military nor the White House nor the CIA considered the shells to be evidence of what was alleged by the Bush administration to be a current Iraqi program to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
Last night, intelligence officials reaffirmed that the shells were old and were not the suspected weapons of mass destruction sought in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls (USAToday 05-11-06)
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.
For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.
AT&T recently merged with SBC and kept the AT&T name. Verizon, BellSouth and AT&T are the nation's three biggest telecommunications companies; they provide local and wireless phone service to more than 200 million customers.
Among the big telecommunications companies, only Qwest has refused to help the NSA, the sources said. According to multiple sources, Qwest declined to participate because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants.
Qwest's refusal to participate has left the NSA with a hole in its database. Based in Denver, Qwest provides local phone service to 14 million customers in 14 states in the West and Northwest. But AT&T and Verizon also provide some services — primarily long-distance and wireless — to people who live in Qwest's region. Therefore, they can provide the NSA with at least some access in that area.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
For Leading Exxon to Its Riches, $144,573 a Day (NYTimes 04-15-06)
For 13 years as chairman and chief executive, Lee R. Raymond propelled Exxon, the successor to John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust, to the pinnacle of the oil world.
Under Mr. Raymond, the company's market value increased fourfold to $375 billion, overtaking BP as the largest oil company and General Electric as the largest American corporation. Net income soared from $4.8 billion in 1992 to last year's record-setting $36.13 billion.
....
For his efforts, Mr. Raymond, who retired in December, was compensated more than $686 million from 1993 to 2005, according to an analysis done for The New York Times by Brian Foley, an independent compensation consultant. That is $144,573 for each day he spent leading Exxon's "God pod," as the executive suite at the company's headquarters in Irving, Tex., is known.
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Shareholder advocates point to what they describe as stealth compensation arranged for Mr. Raymond but not disclosed in proxy filings. Consumer groups complain that while last year's rise in global oil prices left many consumers feeling less prosperous, oil executives have become a lot richer from the higher prices. And some corporate governance experts argue that much of Mr. Raymond's pay came from easy profits generated by skyrocketing oil prices.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War (WaPo 04-12-06)
On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."
The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.
A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.
The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.
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"There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that came to be associated with the trailers: "the biggest sand toilets in the world."
....
Throughout the summer and fall of 2003, the trailers became simply "mobile biological laboratories" in speeches and press statements by administration officials. In late June, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared that the "confidence level is increasing" that the trailers were intended for biowarfare. In September, Vice President Cheney pronounced the trailers to be "mobile biological facilities," and said they could have been used to produce anthrax or smallpox.
By autumn, leaders of the Iraqi Survey Group were publicly expressing doubts about the trailers in news reports. David Kay, the group's first leader, told Congress on Oct. 2 that he had found no banned weapons in Iraq and was unable to verify the claim that the disputed trailers were weapons labs. Still, as late as February 2004, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet continued to assert that the mobile-labs theory remained plausible. Although there was "no consensus" among intelligence officials, the trailers "could be made to work" as weapons labs, he said in a speech Feb. 5.
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Back at the Pentagon, DIA officials attempted a quick resolution of the dispute. The task fell to the "Jefferson Project," a DIA-led initiative made up of government and civilian technical experts who specialize in analyzing and countering biological threats. Project leaders put together a team of volunteers, eight Americans and a Briton, each with at least a decade of experience in one of the essential technical skills needed for bioweapons production. All were nongovernment employees working for defense contractors or the Energy Department's national labs.
The technical team was assembled in Kuwait and then flown to Baghdad to begin their work early on May 25, 2003. By that date, the two trailers had been moved to a military base on the grounds of one of deposed president Saddam Hussein's Baghdad palaces. When members of the technical team arrived, they found the trailers parked in an open lot, covered with camouflage netting.
The technical team went to work under a blistering sun in 110-degree temperatures. Using tools from home, they peered into vats, turned valves, tapped gauges and measured pipes. They reconstructed a flow-path through feed tanks and reactor vessels, past cooling chambers and drain valves, and into discharge tanks and exhaust pipes. They took hundreds of photographs.
By the end of their first day, team members still had differing views about what the trailers were. But they agreed about what the trailers were not.
"Within the first four hours," said one team member, who like the others spoke on the condition he not be named, "it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs."
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The technical team's preliminary report was transmitted in the early hours of May 27, just before its members began boarding planes to return home. Within 24 hours, the CIA published its white paper, "Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants," on its Web site.
After team members returned to Washington, they began work on a final report. At several points, members were questioned about revising their conclusions, according to sources knowledgeable about the conversations. The questioners generally wanted to know the same thing: Could the report's conclusions be softened, to leave open a possibility that the trailers might have been intended for weapons?
In the end, the final report -- 19 pages plus a 103-page appendix -- remained unequivocal in declaring the trailers unsuitable for weapons production.
"It was very assertive," said one weapons expert familiar with the report's contents.
Then, their mission completed, the team members returned to their jobs and watched as their work appeared to vanish.
"I went home and fully expected that our findings would be publicly stated," one member recalled. "It never happened. And I just had to live with it."
Report Raises New Questions on Bush, WMDs (WaPo 04-12-06)
The Washington Post reported that a Pentagon-sponsored team of experts determined in May 2003 that two small trailers were not used to make biological weapons. Yet two days after the team sent its findings to Washington in a classified report, Bush declared just the opposite.
"We have found the weapons of mass destruction," Bush said in an interview with a Polish TV station. "We found biological laboratories."
Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday that Bush was relying on information from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency when he said the trailers seized after the 2003 invasion were mobile biological laboratories. That information was later discredited by the Iraq Survey Group in its 2004 report.
US shelved evidence discounting Iraq's WMD (WaPo 04-12-06)
On May 29, 2003, President George W. Bush hailed the capture of the trailers, declaring "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."
But a Pentagon-sponsored fact-finding mission had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons, the Post reported, citing government officials and weapons experts who participated in the secret mission or had direct knowledge of it.
The Post said the group's unanimous findings had been sent to the Pentagon in a field report, two days before the president's statement.
Friday, April 07, 2006
W.House does not dispute Bush leak allegation (ReutersUK 04-07-06)
According to court papers filed on Tuesday, Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, told a federal grand jury that Cheney had told him Bush authorised him to disclose information from a secret National Intelligence Estimate to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller.
The disclosure arose out of a long-running investigation into the leak of CIA's operative Valerie Plame's identity. Plame is Wilson's wife and the former diplomat has accused the White House of revealing her identity to get back at him.
Libby resigned from the administration last October when he was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the leaking of Plame's name. His trial is expected to begin next January.
The court documents did not say that Bush or Cheney authorised Libby to disclose Plame's identity.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Libby Traces Approval of Disclosure Back to Bush [LATimes 04-06-06)
President Bush personally authorized leaking long-classified information to a reporter in the summer of 2003 to buttress administration claims, now discredited, that Saddam Hussein was attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction for Iraq, according to a court filing by prosecutors in the case against former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted in October on charges that he lied to investigators about his role in the unmasking of former CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Court papers filed by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald late Wednesday said that before Libby's indictment, he told a federal grand jury investigating the leak that Cheney told him to pass on information about a secret National Intelligence Estimate to the press and that Bush had authorized the disclosure, according to the court papers.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Bush-Blair memo shows war penciled in early (PalmBeachPost 04-01-06)
Meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Jan. 31, 2003, President Bush suggested disguising a U.S. plane with United Nations markings and flying it over Iraq to see if Saddam Hussein would shoot at it. That doesn't sound as if Mr. Bush was trying to avoid a war.
In fact, a five-page memo on the meeting, written by a top adviser to Mr. Blair and obtained by The New York Times and others, makes it sound as though Mr. Bush had made up his mind to invade. "The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," the memo noted. The war began on March 19. The author, David Manning, who was at the meeting, also said it was evident that "our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning."
Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair were concerned that U.N. inspectors had found no weapons of mass destruction. But they were concerned mostly from a public relations standpoint. They wanted some trigger to justify the invasion. That's when, the memo says, Mr. Bush suggested "flying U-2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," because "if Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."
Such an attack by Hussein could have led the U.N. to pass a second resolution specifically authorizing an invasion - a resolution Mr. Bush wanted but never got. At that Jan. 31 meeting, though, he made clear to Mr. Blair that he intended to invade even without another resolution.
Monday, March 27, 2006
Bush Was Set on Path to War, British Memo Says (NYTimes 03-27-06)
Bush Was Set on Path to War, British Memo Says (NYTimes 03-27-06) Printer Ready
During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.
"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.
"The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."
The timetable came at an important diplomatic moment. Five days after the Bush-Blair meeting, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was scheduled to appear before the United Nations to present the American evidence that Iraq posed a threat to world security by hiding unconventional weapons.
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The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups." Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.
The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.
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At several points during the meeting between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair, there was palpable tension over finding a legitimate legal trigger for going to war that would be acceptable to other nations, the memo said. The prime minister was quoted as saying it was essential for both countries to lobby for a second United Nations resolution against Iraq, because it would serve as "an insurance policy against the unexpected."
The memo said Mr. Blair told Mr. Bush, "If anything went wrong with the military campaign, or if Saddam increased the stakes by burning the oil wells, killing children or fomenting internal divisions within Iraq, a second resolution would give us international cover, especially with the Arabs."
Running Out of Time
Mr. Bush agreed that the two countries should attempt to get a second resolution, but he added that time was running out. "The U.S. would put its full weight behind efforts to get another resolution and would twist arms and even threaten," Mr. Bush was paraphrased in the memo as saying.
The document added, "But he had to say that if we ultimately failed, military action would follow anyway."
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Faces of the Fallen-Fatalities In Iraq (WaPo)
Month by month list of all US Soldiers killed in Iraq along with photos.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Did oil execs lie to Congress about White House meeting (CNN 11-17-05)
Democrats asked the U.S. attorney general Wednesday to investigate whether top executives from big oil companies lied to Congress when they said their companies did not take part in Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force
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At a Senate hearing last week on record oil profits, Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey asked five executives, "Did your company or any representatives in your companies participate in Vice President Cheney's energy force in 2001?"
Each executive answered the question in the negative.
However, The Washington Post reported Wednesday that a White House document showed some companies did in fact meet with the task force. It said the document showed officials from Exxon Mobil Corp. (Research), Conoco (Research), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc., whose executives testified at last week's Senate hearing, met with Cheney aides.
Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force (WaPo 11-16-05)
A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.
The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.
In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not participate "to my knowledge," and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know.
Friday, November 04, 2005
CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons (WaPo 11-02-05)
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.
The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.
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It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.
CIA holds terror suspects in secret prisons (CNN 11-07-05)
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement, the Washington Post reported.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents, the paper said Tuesday.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Kamikaze Jet Hijacking (Rotten.com)
Nevertheless, if anyone tells you that they "don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon -- that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," rest assured that person is lying or woefully, woefully misinformed.
Timeline
10 Nov 1972 Two men hijack Southern Airways Flight 49 out of Birmingham, and hopscotch it variously in the U.S., Canada, and Cuba while demanding $7M. At one point they circle Oak Ridge National Laboratory and threaten to crash the plane into that top secret nuclear installation.....
and on and on and on and on....
Bush holds video rally for troops in Iraq (MSNBC 10-13-05)
The president engaged in a carefully choreographed question-and-answer session with 10 American servicemen and women and one Iraqi soldier, whom he saw on a large video screen set up in a room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House.
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Before it began, a Pentagon official coached the troops, telling them the president planned to ask questions on three topics: The overall security in Iraq, how they were preparing for the vote on Saturday and how much progress had been made in the training of Iraqi troops.
Allison Barber, a Pentagon official, said Bush would ask them specifically, “In the last 10 months, what kind of progress have we seen?”
She asked who was prepared to answer the question. “Master Sgt. Lombardo,” one said.
Here's a video including the audio from the pre-questioning prepping that the troops required to ensuer they gave Bush the best propaganda....
bushphotoopoct1305.wmv
Thursday, October 06, 2005
God told me to invade Iraq, Bush tells Palestinian ministers (BBC 10-06-05)
"President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"
Abu Mazen was at the same meeting and recounts how President Bush told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state."
GAO- Bush Team Broke Law With 'Covert Propaganda' (Editor&Pub 09-30-05)
The Bush Administration violated laws prohibiting the use of covert propaganda when it secretly paid broadcaster/ columnist Armstrong Williams to promote its education policies, and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said Friday.
Williams received about $240,000 from the federal Department of Education. Tribune Media Services dropped Williams' syndicated column in January when it learned about the payments.
In its account Saturday, The New York Times said the report "provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities....In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated 'covert propaganda' in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban."
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Best Quotes -- Katrina Style (Joeuser.com 09-10-05)
"Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?" --Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) to some evacuee children at the Houston Astrodome. I suggest Tom lose his home and have to flee and then decide for himself.
"Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." --George Bush, telling America who the real victim of Katrina is. They'll be sipping Southern Comfort and listening to a chorus of "Day's nevah finish' / Masa' got me workin' / Someday Masa set me free..."
"Brownie, you're doin' a heckuva job!" --George Bush, seven days before he removed Brown from overseeing Katrina relief, after it was realized that Brown was a big, unqualified, douchebag liar.
"It's untidy. Freedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes." --Donald Rumsfeld, talking about looters. So, okay, this one is a cheat, he's actually talking about Iraqi looters. But the irony is delicious.
"Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney. Go fuck yourself, you asshole." --a Mississippi ER doctor who lost his home in the storm. The home video is now available on E-bay.
"God does speak to you, and he's telling you, 'Take a hint.' " --Bill Maher, talking about George Bush on his television show.
". ..they didn't have the necessary brains and common sense to get out of the way of a Cat 5 Hurricane and then when it hit them- stood on the side of the convention Center expiring while reporters were coming and going..." --Mark Williams on "ShowBiz Tonight," neglecting to mention that most of those people were too poor (a matter of money, not brains) to find a way out of the city...and then held in on the east side of the river by men with guns and not allowed to leave.
"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did." --Republican Representative Baker of Baton Rouge. His God sounds a bit like a raging alcoholic.
"...children out of school because of Hurricane Corrina are starting school this week..." --Laura Bush, getting the name of Hurricane Katrina wrong on national television. She would later, in the same interview, refer to "Hurricane Corrina" again. Either Laura's on some new sedatives or there was another hurricane last week we didn't know about.
"This is all the perspective you need!" --Shepherd Smith to gasbag Sean Hannity after Hannity expressed doubt at Smith's description of conditions in New Orleans.
"These declarations will allow federal agencies to coordinate all disaster relief efforts with state and local officials." --George Bush on Aug 28, talking about the declarations of emergency that would allow FEMA and DHS to bring aid to hurricane-struck areas. Bush must have forgotten about those, because he's still trying to pass the buck.
"We've provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they've gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day." --Michael Brown on Sept. 2. I'd have a comment here but the next quote says it all.
"Lies don't get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President." -- the New Orleans Times-Picayune, responding to Brown's statement.
"The city of Louisiana is underwater." --DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff. The city of Mississippi was also hit by the storm, we hear.
"I don't think anyone expected the levees to be breeched." --George Bush, who must find lots to do beneath the rock under which he lives.
“We were briefing them way before landfall. It’s not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped." -- Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, mentioning what his center had told the government. Bush must have been asleep.
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this is working very well for them." --Barbara Bush, chuckling slightly. She must think the Astrodome is some kind of Xanadu.
"May the people in the city of New Orleans be broken by God's Holy Law." --Anti-Abortion group Columbia Christians for Life -- wishing death on people in order to save the unborn.
"As specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas." --The Salt Lake City Tribune on just one wise use of emergency services by the federal government.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Right-Wing Myths About Katrina, Debunked (ThinkProgress 09-13-05)
CLAIM — STATE AND LOCAL OFFICIALS WERE MOSTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR FAILURES: “White House Shifts Blame to State and Local Officials” [Washington Post, 9/4/05]
FACT – BUSH PUT FEMA IN CHARGE OF EFFORT BEFORE KATRINA STRUCK: “Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency.” [White House, 8/27/05]
FACT — FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ABLE TO ACT WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM STATES: The Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Chertoff activated the National Response Plan last Tuesday by declaring the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina an ‘Incident of National Significance.’ The plan, which was rolled out to much fanfare in January, essentially enables Washington to move federal assets to the disaster without waiting for requests from state officials.” [Wall Street Journal, 9/13/05]
CLAIM — NO ONE COULD HAVE PREDICTED BREACHED LEVEES: On ABC’s Good Morning America, Bush said, “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.” [Good Morning America, 9/1/05]
FACT — LEVEE BREACH PREDICTED REPEATEDLY: Responding to Bush’s comments on Meet the Press, Dr. Ivor Van Heerden of the LSU Hurricane Center “I didn’t buy that because, you know, we had discussed on numerous occasions that a worst-case scenario would be if we had one of these major hurricanes and then we lost the levee systems.” A White House advisor sat in on the “Hurricane Pam Exercise,” a computer simulation of the possible effects of a Category 3 hurricane on New Orleans. The exercise found that “…a storm like Hurricane Pam would: cause flooding that would leave 300,000 people trapped in New Orleans, many of whom would not have private transportation for evacuation.” [Meet the Press, 9/11/05]
CLAIM — GOV. BLANCO DELAYED STATE OF EMERGENCY DECLARATION: In a Sept. 4 Washington Post article, which was corrected hours later, an anonymous Bush administration source claimed Governor Blanco had not yet declared a state of emergency in Louisiana. The Post reported, “As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.” [Washington Post, 9/4/05]
FACT — GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO DECLARED A STATE OF EMERGENCY IN LOUISIANA ON AUGUST 26: Three days prior to when Katrina made landfall. [Office of the Governor, 8/26/05]
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Bush wife doesn't know name of hurricane (CNN Video from 09-08-05)
"...children out of school because of Hurricane Corrina are starting to school this week...
...and I also want to encourage anybody who is affected by hurrican Ca..Corrina to make sure their children..." --Laura Bush
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Transcript for September 4 - Meet the Press (MSNBC 09-04-05)
MR. RUSSERT: People were stunned by a comment the president of the United States made on Wednesday, Mr. Secretary. He said, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." How could the president be so wrong, be so misinformed?
Mayor C. Ray Nagin's Interview - transcript (NYT 09-02-05)
NAGIN: I don't know whose problem it is. I don't know whether it's the governor's problem. I don't know whether it's the president's problem, but somebody needs to get their ass on a plane and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out right now.
WWL: What can we do here?
NAGIN: Keep talking about it.
WWL: We'll do that. What else can we do?
NAGIN: Organize people to write letters and make calls to their congressmen, to the president, to the governor. Flood their doggone offices with requests to do something. This is ridiculous.
I don't want to see anybody do anymore goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city. And then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can't even count.
Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.
Chertoff is the head of Homeland Security and doesn't seem to even have a clue as to what's really going on in New Orleans.
He not only says: "There is a more than adequate law enforcement presence in New Orleans" (which is clearly a false statement demonstrated by limitless live video footage of the LACK of security in New Orleans) but he also refers to the CNN and NPR reports of thousands of people without food and water as "rumors"
There are NPR and CNN reporters who have seen THOUSANDS of people at
the Convention Center (this is not the Superdome, it's about 10-blocks
away from the Superdome) who have been told to go there but have NO
food and NO water and haven't had any for days. There are at least
two dead bodies (elderly in wheelchairs) and it's a complete desperate
mess with no security and nobody in charge.
Chertoff claims that there is plenty of food and water and the only
people that aren't getting it are the ones that the authorities can't
get to because of the flooding.
And he refers to these CNN and NPR reports as "rumors" and "someones
anecdotal version of something"
If you haven't heard it, listen for yourself, the first link is
Chertoff, the 2nd is the reporter in New Orleans:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4828771
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4828774
The big disconnect on New Orleans (CNN 09-02-05)
the conflicting views on Thursday came within hours, sometimes minutes of each of each other, as reflected in CNN's transcripts. The speakers include Michael Brown, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, evacuee Raymond Cooper, CNN correspondents and others. Here's what they had to say:
Uncollected corpses
Brown: That's not been reported to me, so I'm not going to comment. Until I actually get a report from my teams that say, "We have bodies located here or there," I'm just not going to speculate.
Hospital evacuations
Brown: I've just learned today that we ... are in the process of completing the evacuations of the hospitals, that those are going very well.
CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta: It's gruesome. I guess that is the best word for it. If you think about a hospital, for example, the morgue is in the basement, and the basement is completely flooded. So you can just imagine the scene down there. But when patients die in the hospital, there is no place to put them, so they're in the stairwells. It is one of the most unbelievable situations I've seen as a doctor, certainly as a journalist as well. There is no electricity. There is no water. There's over 200 patients still here remaining.
Violence and civil unrest
Brown: I've had no reports of unrest, if the connotation of the word unrest means that people are beginning to riot, or you know, they're banging on walls and screaming and hollering or burning tires or whatever. I've had no reports of that.
CNN's Chris Lawrence: From here and from talking to the police officers, they're losing control of the city. We're now standing on the roof of one of the police stations. The police officers came by and told us in very, very strong terms it wasn't safe to be out on the street.
Reporters Confront Leaders on Government's Response (LATimes 09-03-05)
On Thursday's "Nightline," ABC News' Ted Koppel assailed Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael D. Brown for his inability to offer an accurate count of refugees at the New Orleans Convention Center: "Don't you guys watch television? Don't you guys listen to the radio? Our reporters have been reporting about it for more than just today."
On CNN, reporter Soledad O'Brien also lit into Brown: "How is it possible that we're getting better intel than you're getting? … Why no massive airdrop of food and water? In Banda Aceh, in Indonesia, they got food dropped two days after the tsunami struck."
"No one, no one in government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far-reaching calamitous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime," said CNN commentator Jack Cafferty. The cable network reported being flooded with e-mails praising Cafferty's diatribe.
Also on CNN, Anderson Cooper had a bristling exchange Thursday evening with Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who was thanking leaders and praising the emergency aid bill Congress was about to pass.
"Excuse me, Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi," Cooper said. "And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated…. It kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats."
On MSNBC, host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough called the situation in the Gulf Coast region "nothing short of a national disgrace."
Last man leaves Superdome (ChicagoSunTimes 09-04-05)
The last 300 refugees in the Superdome climbed aboard buses Saturday bound for new temporary shelter.
The sight of the last person -- an elderly man wearing a Houston Rockets cap -- prompted cheers from Texas National Guard members who were guarding the facility.
The dome was to be searched to ensure there are no bodies beneath the trash, while crews will rake away the piles to discourage rats.
No one knows how many were killed by Hurricane Katrina's floods and how many more succumbed waiting to be rescued. But the bodies are everywhere: hidden in attics, crumpled on wheelchairs, abandoned on highways.
And the dying goes on -- at the convention center and an airport triage center, where bodies were kept in a refrigerated truck.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Saturday that she expected the death toll to reach the thousands.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
A CIA Cover Blown, a White House Exposed (LATimes 08-25-05)
For the last 20 months, a tough-minded special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has been looking into how the media learned that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative.
Top administration officials, along with several influential journalists, have been questioned by prosecutors.
Beyond the whodunit, the affair raises questions about the credibility of the Bush White House, the tactics it employs against political opponents and the justification it used for going to war.
What motivated President Bush's political strategist, Karl Rove; Vice President Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; and others to counter Wilson so aggressively? How did their roles remain secret until after the president was reelected? Have they fully cooperated with the investigation?
The answers remain elusive. As Fitzgerald's team has moved ahead, few witnesses have been willing to speak publicly. White House officials declined to comment for this article, citing the ongoing inquiry.
But a close examination of events inside the White House two summers ago, and interviews with administration officials, offer new insights into the White House response, the people who shaped it, the deep disdain Cheney and other administration officials felt for the CIA, and the far-reaching consequences of the effort to manage the crisis.
July 6, 2003....
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Robertson - U.S. should 'take out' Venezuela's Chavez(CNN 08-23-05)
"Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has called for the United States to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him "a terrific danger" bent on exporting Communism and Islamic extremism across the Americas.
"If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson told viewers on his "The 700 Club" show Monday.
....
In October 2003, Robertson, criticizing the State Department during an interview on "The 700 Club," said "maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom to shake things up," referring to the nickname for the department's headquarters in Washington.
....
In July 2003, Robertson asked his audience to pray for three justices to retire from the Supreme Court so they could be replaced with more conservative jurists. "One justice is 83 years old, another has cancer and another has a heart condition," he said.
....
In November 2002, Robertson charged that the Muslim holy book, the Quran, incites followers to kill people of other faiths and disputed Bush's characterization of Islam as a religion of peace."
Bush links Iraq war with Sept. 11 attacks (MSNBC 08-20-05)
"President Bush said Saturday U.S. troops in Iraq were fighting to protect Americans at home from terrorism like the Sept. 11 attacks four years ago."
Army Planning for 4 More Years in Iraq (SF Gate 08-20-05)
"The Army is planning for the possibility of keeping the current number of soldiers in Iraq — well over 100,000 — for four more years, the Army's top general said Saturday."
Friday, July 29, 2005
Profit Soars at Exxon Mobil (WaPo 07-29-05)
Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, said yesterday that second-quarter profit rose 32 percent, to $7.64 billion, as Asia and North America used more crude oil and gasoline.
The quarterly profit was the third-highest in the company's history. Revenue climbed 25 percent, to $88.57 billion, Exxon said. A doubling of oil prices since 2003 has put the Irving, Tex.-based company on a pace to surpass Wal-Mart Stores Inc. this year as the largest U.S. company by total revenue.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Galloway vs The US Senate - Transcript of Statement (TimesOnline 05-17-05)
On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.
"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein.
"As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defense made of his.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Smoking Gun Memo (FAIR 05-10-05)
The document, first revealed by the London Times (5/1/05), was the minutes of a July 23, 2002 meeting in Blair's office with the prime minister's close advisors. The meeting was held to discuss Bush administration policy on Iraq, and the likelihood that Britain would support a U.S. invasion of Iraq. "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided," the minutes state.
The minutes also recount a visit to Washington by Richard Dearlove, the head of the British intelligence service MI6: "There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
That last sentence is striking, to say the least, suggesting that the policy of invading Iraq was determining what the Bush administration was presenting as "facts" derived from intelligence. But it has provoked little media follow-up in the United States. The most widely circulated story in the mainstream press came from the Knight Ridder wire service (5/6/05), which quoted an anonymous U.S. official saying the memo was "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" during Dearlove's meetings in Washington.
Molly Ivins They Lied to Us (alternet 05-10-05)
On May 1, the Sunday Times of London printed a secret memo that went to the defense secretary, foreign secretary, attorney general and other high officials. It is the minutes of their meeting on Iraq with Tony Blair. The memo was written by Matthew Rycroft, a Downing Street foreign policy aide. It has been confirmed as legitimate and is dated July 23, 2002. I suppose the correct cliché is "smoking gun."
The secret Downing Street memo (Sunday Times 05-01-05)
The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.
The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.
The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
New Details on F.B.I. Aid for Saudis After 9-11 (NYTimes 03-27-05)
The episode has been retold so many times in the last three and a half years that it has become the stuff of political legend: in the frenzied days after Sept. 11, 2001, when some flights were still grounded, dozens of well-connected Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden, managed to leave the United States on specially chartered flights.
Now, newly released government records show previously undisclosed flights from Las Vegas and elsewhere and point to a more active role by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in aiding some of the Saudis in their departure.
The F.B.I. gave personal airport escorts to two prominent Saudi families who fled the United States, and several other Saudis were allowed to leave the country without first being interviewed, the documents show.
Friday, March 25, 2005
Schiavo's parents appeal another legal setback (Mercury news 03-25-05)
Terry, the spokesman for Schiavo's parents and former leader of the antiabortion group Operation Rescue, threatened to unleash political retribution on those who did not support them.
''I promise you, if she dies, there's going to be hell to pay with pro-life, pro-family, Republican people of various legislative levels, both statewide and federally, who have used pro-life, pro-family, conservative rhetoric to get into power, and then when they have the power they refuse to use it,'' he said.
Baby dies after hospital removes breathing tube (Houston Chron 03-16-05)
"It's sad this thing dragged on for so long. We all feel it's unfair, that a child doesn't have a chance to develop and thrive," said William Winslade, a bioethicist and lawyer who is a professor at the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
....
Texas Children's contended that continuing care for Sun was medically inappropriate, prolonged suffering and violated physician ethics. Hudson argued her son just needed more time to grow and be weaned from the ventilator.
....
Sun was born with a fatal form of dwarfism characterized by short arms, short legs and lungs too tiny, doctors said. Nearly all babies born with the incurable condition, often diagnosed in utero, die shortly after birth, genetic counselors say.
TX HEALTH & SAFETY CODE - CHAPTER 16
§ 166.046. PROCEDURE IF NOT EFFECTUATING A DIRECTIVE OR
TREATMENT DECISION. (a) If an attending physician refuses to
honor a patient's advance directive or a health care or treatment
decision made by or on behalf of a patient, the physician's refusal
shall be reviewed by an ethics or medical committee. The attending
physician may not be a member of that committee. The patient shall
be given life-sustaining treatment during the review.
(b) The patient or the person responsible for the health
care decisions of the individual who has made the decision
regarding the directive or treatment decision:
(1) may be given a written description of the ethics or
medical committee review process and any other policies and
procedures related to this section adopted by the health care
facility;
(2) shall be informed of the committee review process
not less than 48 hours before the meeting called to discuss the
patient's directive, unless the time period is waived by mutual
agreement;
(3) at the time of being so informed, shall be
provided:
(A) a copy of the appropriate statement set forth
in Section 166.052; and
(B) a copy of the registry list of health care
providers and referral groups that have volunteered their readiness
to consider accepting transfer or to assist in locating a provider
willing to accept transfer that is posted on the website maintained
by the Texas Health Care Information Council under Section 166.053;
and
(4) is entitled to:
(A) attend the meeting; and
(B) receive a written explanation of the decision
reached during the review process.
(c) The written explanation required by Subsection
(b)(2)(B) must be included in the patient's medical record.
(d) If the attending physician, the patient, or the person
responsible for the health care decisions of the individual does
not agree with the decision reached during the review process under
Subsection (b), the physician shall make a reasonable effort to
transfer the patient to a physician who is willing to comply with
the directive. If the patient is a patient in a health care
facility, the facility's personnel shall assist the physician in
arranging the patient's transfer to:
(1) another physician;
(2) an alternative care setting within that facility;
or
(3) another facility.
(e) If the patient or the person responsible for the health
care decisions of the patient is requesting life-sustaining
treatment that the attending physician has decided and the review
process has affirmed is inappropriate treatment, the patient shall
be given available life-sustaining treatment pending transfer
under Subsection (d). The patient is responsible for any costs
incurred in transferring the patient to another facility. The
physician and the health care facility are not obligated to provide
life-sustaining treatment after the 10th day after the written
decision required under Subsection (b) is provided to the patient
or the person responsible for the health care decisions of the
patient unless ordered to do so under Subsection (g).
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Baby at center of life support case dies (CNN 03-15-05)
A critically ill 5-month-old was taken off life support and died Tuesday, a day after a judge cleared the way for doctors to halt care they believed to be futile. The infant's mother had fought to keep him alive.
Sun Hudson had been diagnosed with a fatal genetic disorder called thanatophoric dysplasia, a condition characterized by a tiny chest and lungs too small to support life. He had been on a ventilator since birth.
Explanation of Sun Hudson's Disease - Thanatophoric Dysplasia (eMedicine)
Although the literature documents several reports of survival into childhood, TD virtually is always lethal in the neonatal [1st 4-wks of life] period. Respiratory insufficiency secondary to reduced thoracic capacity or compression of the brainstem leads to death.
Terri Schiavo, Terri Schiavo, Terri Schiavo....
Schiavo Case Timeline (WPBF 03-18-05)
1990 Feb. 25: Terri Schiavo collapses in her home
1998 May: Michael Schiavo files petition to remove Terri's feeding tube.
....
2005 March 24, 2:06 p.m. EST: Greer rules that Gov. Jeb Bush and DCF don't have legal ground to take custody of Schiavo.
For Bush, High Drama and Mixed Reviews (WaPo 03-21-05)
It's unanimous here in Washington: We've just witnessed some great political theater. It doesn't get much better than the president rushing home from his beloved ranch to sign emergency, life-or-death legislation passed by Congress in the middle of the night.
But there is no such unanimity when it comes to speculation over what President Bush's primary motivation was for making such a dramatic move. And the long-term impact of his decision on voters -- and the country -- is still anyone's guess.
....
"I will continue to stand on the side of those defending life for all Americans, including those with disabilities," he said
....
Bush signed a Texas law in 1999 that created a legal mechanism to allow attending physicians and hospital ethics boards to pull the plug on patients -- even if that specifically contradicts patient or family wishes.
Poll - No Role for Government in Schiavo Case (ABC 03-24-05)
Regardless of their preference on the Schiavo case, about two-thirds of conservatives and evangelicals alike call congressional intervention inappropriate. And majorities in both groups, as in others, are skeptical of the motivations of the political leaders seeking to extend Schiavo's life.
Should Feeding Tube Be Removed?
Support Oppose
Non-evangelical 77% 18
Evangelical 46 44
Catholics 63 26
Liberals 68 24
Moderates 69 22
Conservatives 54 40
Democrats 65 25
Independents 63 28
Republicans 61 34
Conservative Reps. 55 40
Should Federal Government Intervene?
Support Oppose
Non-evangelical 26% 71
Evangelical 44 50
Catholics 38 56
Liberals 34 62
Moderates 29 67
Conservatives 48 49
Democrats 34 63
Independents 31 61
Republicans 39 58
Conservative Reps. 41 57
Baby born with fatal defect dies after removal from life support (Houston Chron 03-15-05)
Sun's death marks the first time a hospital has been allowed by a U.S. judge to discontinue an infant's life-sustaining care against a parent's wishes, according to bioethical experts. A similar case involving a 68-year-old man in a chronic vegetative state at another Houston hospital is before a court now.
....
Texas law allows hospitals can discontinue life sustaining care, even if patient family members disagree.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Before and After the War (WaPo 01-12-05)
The chart below compares findings from the Iraq Survey Group investigation into Iraqi weapons programs and claims made by the Bush administration officials before U.S. troops invaded Iraq in March 2003
Iraq WMD search ended (reutersUK 01-12-05)
The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ended last month, but the analysis of documents seized in the hunt continues, U.S. officials have said.
Charles Duelfer, the CIA special adviser who led the investigation, has returned home and is expected next month to issue a final addendum to his September report that concluded pre-war Iraq had no WMD stockpiles, officials said.
Asked if Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group, or ISG, had stopped actively searching for WMD, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "That's my understanding." He added, "A lot of their mission is focused elsewhere now."
The Washington Post newspaper on Wednesday quoted ISG officials saying the violence in Iraq coupled with a lack of new information led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas -- nearly two years after President George W. Bush invaded the country, accusing it of a secret weapons program.
Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month (WaPo 01-12-05)
The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.
...
Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring.
President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials asserted before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, had chemical and biological weapons, and maintained links to al Qaeda affiliates to whom it might give such weapons to use against the United States.
Thursday, October 07, 2004
U.S. Report Finds No Evidence of Iraq WMD (WaPo 10-07-04)
The report of weapons hunter Charles Duelfer was presented Wednesday to senators and the public in the midst of a fierce presidential election campaign in which Iraq and the war of terror have become the overriding issues.
The report chronicles the decay of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs after its defeat in the 1991 Gulf War. By the late 1990s, only its long-range missile efforts continued in defiance of the United Nations; even then, Iraq's ballistic and cruise missile designs had not proceeded far past the drawing board. Saddam's other plans would have to wait until he was free of the sanctions and free of international attention.
"Indeed, from the mid-1990s, despite evidence of continuing interest in nuclear and chemical weapons, there appears to be a complete absence of discussion or even interest in BW at the presidential level," according to a summary of Duelfer's 1,000-page report.
And Iraq also abandoned its nuclear program after the war, and there was no evidence it tried to reconstitute it.
Saddam's intentions to restart his weapons programs were never formalized.
"The former regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions," the summary says. "Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policymakers or planners separate from Saddam. Instead his lieutenants understood WMD revival was his goal from their long association with Saddam and his infrequent, but firm, verbal comments and directions to them."
Report Iraq had no WMDs (Indianapolis Star 10-07-04)
Contradicting prewar statements by President Bush and top administration officials, the final report of the chief U.S. arms inspector concludes that Saddam Hussein did not have chemical and biological stockpiles when the war began and his nuclear capabilities were deteriorating, not advancing.
....
Also this week, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld backed off the Bush administration's assertion that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organization was working with Hussein and that they posed an imminent threat to the United States.
On Monday, Rumsfeld backtracked, said he had seen ''no strong, hard evidence" to support the notion that the two had a working relationship. That follows a similar conclusion reached by the independent Sept. 11 commission..
On Wednesday, the White House asserted anew that there were clear ties between Hussein before the invasion and the al-Qaida-linked terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
....
Key findings of U.S. weapons report
Nuclear weapons
• Saddam Hussein ended his nuclear program in 1991, after the Gulf War, and there was no evidence he tried to restart it. Senior Iraqi officials thought Hussein would restart the program if U.N. sanctions imposed after the Gulf War were halted.
Biological weapons
• Baghdad abandoned its biological weapons program in 1995 out of fear it would be discovered and make it harder to free itself of U.N. sanctions.
• Iraq destroyed its hidden biological weapons stocks in 1991 and 1992. It kept a few samples that would have been useful in starting a biological weapons program and had scientists knowledgeable about such weapons.
Chemical weapons
• Iraq destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile in 1991, and there is no evidence it resumed producing such weapons.
Before the war, the Bush administration cast Hussein as an immediate threat, not a gathering threat.
In a speech on Aug. 26, 2002, 6 1/2 months before the invasion, Vice President Dick Cheney said:
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us."
In a speech on Oct. 7, 2002, Bush laid out what he described then as Iraq's threat:
• "It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."
• "We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas."
• "Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles -- far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other nations -- in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work.""
Monday, September 27, 2004
Key Bush assertions about Iraq in dispute (Reuters 09-27-04)
Many of President George W. Bush's assertions about progress in Iraq -- from police training and reconstruction to preparations for January elections -- are in dispute, according to internal Pentagon documents, lawmakers and key congressional aides on Sunday
.....
He said nearly 100,000 "fully trained and equipped" Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other security personnel are already at work, and that would rise to 125,000 by the end of this year.
.....
documents show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training. Another 46,176 are listed as "untrained," and it will be July 2006 before the administration reaches its new goal of a 135,000-strong, fully trained police force.
....
Bush touted preparations for national elections in January, saying Iraq's electoral commission is up and running and told Americans on Saturday that "United Nations electoral advisers are on the ground in Iraq."
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So far, the United Nations has been reluctant to send staff back into the battle zone. It only has 30 to 35 people now in Baghdad, no more than eight working on the elections.
"The framework for it (free and fair elections) hasn't even been set up. The voter registration lists aren't set. There have to be hundreds of polling places, hundreds of trained monitors and poll watchers. None of that has happened," Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State for President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, told ABC's "This Week."
No Regrets From the President (WaPo 09-27-04)
Even Karl Rove recognized that, in retrospect, the "Mission Accomplished" banner was a mistake.
But President Bush, not one to admit mistakes, is standing firm.
...
Bill O'Reilly, in a sit-down with the president taped last week, "asked Bush whether he would still do the carrier landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln beneath the 'Mission Accomplished' banner. At the time, 16 months ago, Bush referred to Iraq as a 'victory' and declared an end to major combat there.
" 'Absolutely,' the president replied
....
Adam Nagourney and Robin Toner write in the New York Times that "Mr. Bush never actually said 'mission accomplished,' but stood in front of a banner that contained those words."
In fact, in that May 1, 2003 speech, Bush did not use that term but did declare: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
And visiting troops in Qatar a month later, he was explicit: "I am happy to see you, and so are the long-suffering people of Iraq. America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished."
....
Five months ago, Bush's chief political adviser met with the Columbus Dispatch and expressed regret.
" 'I wish the banner was not up there,' Rove said.
How Much U.S. Help (Time 09-27-04)
U.S. officials tell TIME that the Bush team ran into trouble with another plan involving those elections — a secret "finding" written several months ago proposing a covert CIA operation to aid candidates favored by Washington. A source says the idea was to help such candidates — whose opponents might be receiving covert backing from other countries, like Iran — but not necessarily to go so far as to rig the elections. But lawmakers from both parties raised questions about the idea when it was sent to Capitol Hill. In particular, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi "came unglued" when she learned about what a source described as a plan for "the CIA to put an operation in place to affect the outcome of the elections." Pelosi had strong words with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in a phone call about the issue.
Saturday, July 10, 2004
Pentagon-Bush military records destroyed (Seattle Times 07-09-04)
"Military payroll records that could more fully document President Bush's whereabouts during his service in the Texas Air National Guard were inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.
In a letter responding to a freedom of information request by The Associated Press, the Defense Department said that microfilm containing the pertinent National Guard payroll records was damaged and could not be salvaged. The damaged material included payroll records for the first quarter of 1969 and the third quarter of 1972.
"President Bush's payroll records for those two quarters were among the records destroyed," wrote C.Y. Talbott, of the Pentagon's Freedom of Information and Security Review section. "Searches for back-up paper copies of the missing records were unsuccessful.""
Thursday, July 08, 2004
PAKISTAN FOR BUSH - July Surprise (NewRepublic 07-08-04)
The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs [Hige Value Targets] by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections."
Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations--according to a recently departed intelligence official, "no timetable[s]" were discussed in 2002 or 2003--but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt.
Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, "The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections.
....
What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston. "
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
A little flashback to late March 2003 when a handful of US soldiers were taken prisoner and were shown (unbelievably!) on TV. (hmmmm... like the bodies of Saddam's sons? Or maybe like the images of a ragged Saddam having his teeth checked. What kind of war criminals would do such a thing?)
american_pows_iraq.jpg 
Man those DOD boys sure liked the Geneva Convention back then. They were ready to "punish" and charge the Iraqis with war crimes because FIVE POWs WERE SHOWN ON TV SAYING THEIR NAMES!:
Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with KABC-TV (DOD 03-23-03)
Wolfowitz: It is very important to stress to the people who are holding them that there are very clear obligations under the Geneva Convention about the proper treatment of prisoners including a prohibition on anything that humiliates them. And that sooner or later, and probably sooner rather than later, we will be in control of that country and if they violate the Geneva Convention they will be punished.
Secretary Rumsfeld Interview - Face The Nation (DOD 03-23-03)
Rumsfeld: I will say this, the Geneva Convention indicates that it's not permitted to photograph and embarrass or humiliate prisoners of war, and if they do happen to be American or coalition ground forces that have been captured, the Geneva Convention indicates how they should be treated.
Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with WSVN-TV (DOD 03-23-03)
Wolfowitz:...if they violate the Geneva Conventions that require that these people be treated humanely, they themselves are going to be in serious jeopardy soon of being punished for that.
Q: Apparently they were actually interviewed on television, which you said was against the Convention.
Wolfowitz: There's definitely a rule in the Convention against humiliating prisoners and I'd have to see exactly the interview to see whether that in itself violated the Convention, but the Convention is very clear that prisoners have got to be treated properly. We are treating the Iraqi prisoners extremely well. In fact I think they get good food and shelter and they're free from the horrible commanders they used to work for. I think most of them are much happier, frankly.
Rumsfeld Interview with Tim Russert, NBC Meet The Press (DOD 03-23-03)
Rumsfeld: under the Geneva Convention, it's illegal to do things with prisoners of war that are humiliating to those individuals.
Wolfowitz Interview with New England Cable News (DOD 03-23-03)
Wolfowitz: ...there are very clear obligations under the Geneva Convention to treat prisoners humanely, not to humiliate them, and in this case, I think we'll be in a position before long to enforce any violations of the Geneva Convention.
News Briefing - ASD PA Clarke and Maj. Gen. McChrystal (DOD 03-24-03)
Clarke: ....it is a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention to humiliate and abuse prisoners of war or to harm them in any way. As President Bush said yesterday, those who harm POWs will be found and punished as war criminals. The Iraqi regime must allow the International Red Cross to see the prisoners.
Rumsfeld Interview with CNN Late Edition (02-23-03)
Rumsfeld: ....the Geneva Convention makes it illegal for prisoners of war to be shown and pictured and humiliated.
Wolfowitz Interview with BBC World Service (DOD 03-24-03)
Wolfowitz: The Geneva Convention is very clear on the rules for treating prisoners. They're not supposed to be tortured or abused, they're not supposed to be intimidated, they're not supposed to be made public displays of humiliation or insult, and we're going to be in a position to hold those Iraqi officials who are mistreating our prisoners accountable, and they've got to stop.
News Briefing - Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers (DOD 03-25-03)
In recent days, the world has witnessed further evidence of their brutality and their disregard for the laws of war. Their treatment of coalition POWs is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Wolfowitz Interview with KIRO-TV (DOD 03-23-03)
Wolfowitz: I think it's very important for the Iraqis who are holding our people to understand clearly the obligations they're under, under the Geneva Convention, to treat these people humanely, not to humiliate them. And they ought to understand that we are going to be in a position when that regime goes -- and it's on its way out -- to enforce the provisions of the Geneva Convention.
We observe them ourselves. We have hundreds of Iraqi prisoners that are being treated well. They're being fed. I would imagine they're actually relieved no longer to be under command of the brutal army that they used to work for.
And heaven forbid that we forget how Bush feels about the topic
President Discusses Military Operation (Whitehouse transcripts 03-23-03)
people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals.
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Diplomats, military leaders call for Bush ouster (Toronto Star 06-13-04)
"Angered by his administration policies they contend endanger national security, 26 retired U.S. diplomats and military officers are urging Americans to vote U.S. President George W. Bush out of office in November.
The group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, does not explicitly endorse Democrat John Kerry for president in its campaign, which will start officially Wednesday at a Washington news conference.
Among the group are 20 ambassadors, appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents, other former U.S. State Department officials and military leaders whose careers span three decades.
Prominent members include retired marine Gen. Joseph Hoar, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East during the administration of Bush's father; retired Adm. William Crowe, ambassador to Britain under former president Bill Clinton and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under former president Ronald Reagan; and Jack Matlock, a member of the National Security Council under Reagan and ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991."
Saturday, June 12, 2004
TIA now verifies flight of Saudis (St Petersburg Times 06-09-04)
"Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men and left.
The men, one of them thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family, were accompanied by a former FBI agent and a former Tampa police officer on the flight to Lexington, Ky.
The Saudis then took another flight out of the country. The two ex-officers returned to TIA a few hours later on the same plane.
For nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports and widespread Internet speculation about its purpose.
But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, TIA officials have confirmed that the flight did take place and have supplied details"
General Granted Latitude At Prison (WaPo 06-12-04)
"Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq, borrowed heavily from a list of high-pressure interrogation tactics used at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and approved letting senior officials at a Baghdad jail use military dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns, sensory deprivation, and diets of bread and water on detainees whenever they wished, according to newly obtained documents.
The U.S. policy, details of which have not been previously disclosed, was approved in early September, shortly after an Army general sent from Washington completed his inspection of the Abu Ghraib jail and then returned to brief Pentagon officials on his ideas for using military police there to help implement the new high-pressure methods.
The documents obtained by The Washington Post spell out in greater detail than previously known the interrogation tactics Sanchez authorized, and make clear for the first time that, before last October, they could be imposed without first seeking the approval of anyone outside the prison. That gave officers at Abu Ghraib wide latitude in handling detainees.
Unnamed officials at the Florida headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, which has overall military responsibility for Iraq, objected to some of the 32 interrogation tactics approved by Sanchez in September, including the more severe methods that he had said could be used at any time in Abu Ghraib with the consent of the interrogation officer in charge.
As a result, Sanchez decided on Oct. 12 to remove several items on the list and to require that prison officials obtain his direct approval for the remaining high-pressure methods. Among the tactics apparently dropped were those that would take away prisoners' religious items; control their exposure to light; inflict "pride and ego down," which means attacking detainees' sense of pride or worth; and allow interrogators to pretend falsely to be from a country that deals severely with detainees, according to the documents."
Thursday, June 10, 2004
US marines plead guilty to prisoner abuse (Guardian UK 06-03-04)
"Two US marines have pleaded guilty to giving electric shocks to an Iraqi prisoner they were guarding at a temporary detention centre south of Baghdad, the US military announced today.
The torture occurred in early April inside the Al Mahmudiya prison, several months after the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, military officials said. "
Ashcroft Refuses to Release '02 Memo (WaPo 06-09-04)
"Document Details Suffering Allowed In Interrogations
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft told Congress yesterday that he would not release a 2002 policy memo on the degree of pain and suffering legally permitted during enemy interrogations, but said he knows of no presidential order that would allow al Qaeda suspects to be tortured by U.S. personnel.
Under questioning, Ashcroft said he could not discuss whether the president issued any orders on the interrogation of detainees, but said: "I want to confirm that the president has not directed or ordered any conduct that would violate any one of those enactments of the United States Congress or that would violate the provisions of any of the treaties as they have been entered into by the United States."
Ashcroft said he would not discuss the contents of the Justice and Pentagon memos, and would not turn over the Justice memo to the committee. "I believe it is essential to the operation of the executive branch that the president have the opportunity to get information from the attorney general that is confidential," he said.
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) warned Ashcroft that his refusal might place him in contempt of Congress.
"If such a memo existed, would that -- is that good law? . . . Do you think that torture might be justified?" Biden demanded.
Ashcroft responded, "I condemn torture. I don't think it's productive, let alone justified." "
Memo Ashcroft Wouldn't Release - military_0604.pdf
""
From Bush, Saddam-Style Justice (Business Week 06-07-04)
"Imagine for a moment, federal agents hustle you off an airplane and take you...somewhere. You're locked up for two years. You're never charged with any crime. You're never allowed to see a lawyer or communicate with your family. The Justice Dept. will never charge or try you. Instead, it intends to keep you imprisoned indefinitely.
The stuff of a cheap paperback novel? Can't happen here? Actually, it has.
....
The Bush Administration believes that it alone has the right to decide who is protected by the legal system. Which brings us to Brandon Mayfield, who's a pretty lucky guy, all things considered. Luckier for sure than Padilla.
WAY OUT OF LINE. Mayfield is a lawyer from Aloha, Ore. Like Padilla, he's an American citizen who converted to Islam. And, like Padilla, he was accused of being involved in a bombing plot. In some respects, the allegations against Mayfield were even more serious. The FBI claimed that a fingerprint found on an explosive device used in last March's Madrid train bombing -- which killed 191 people -- was Mayfield's. As a result, he was arrested and held for two weeks as a material witness.
But, unlike Padilla, Mayfield had access to the legal system. He retained an attorney and invoked his right to due process. And thanks in part to his aggressive defense counsel, the FBI was forced to admit it had the wrong guy. The fingerprint on which the government held Mayfield for two weeks...well, it wasn't his. A judge ordered Mayfield released immediately.
The government was way out of line in Mayfield's case. It leaked word of his arrest to the media, trashed his reputation in public, and by holding him as a material witness, it tried to limit his legal rights. And why did it take two weeks for the FBI to correctly read a fingerprint in such a high-profile case. Still, Mayfield's ordeal "
Sunday, June 06, 2004
The Serious Implications Of President Bush's Hiring A Personal Outside Counsel For The Valerie Plame Investigation (FindLaw 06-04-04)
"from what I have learned from those who have been quizzed by the Fitzgerald investigators it seems unlikely that they are interviewing the President merely as a matter of completeness, or in order to be able to defend their actions in front of the public. Asking a President to testify - or even be interviewed - remains a serious, sensitive and rare occasion. It is not done lightly. Doing so raises separation of powers concerns that continue to worry many.
Instead, it seems the investigators are seeking to connect up with, and then speak with, persons who have links to and from the leaked information - and those persons, it seems, probably include the President. "
Saturday, June 05, 2004
President Bush Discusses the Iraqi Interim Government (Whitehouse Transcripts 06-01-04)
"Q Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Chalabi is an Iraqi leader that's fallen out of favor within your administration. I'm wondering if you feel that he provided any false information, or are you particularly --
THE PRESIDENT: Chalabi?
Q Yes, with Chalabi.
THE PRESIDENT: My meetings with him were very brief. I mean, I think I met with him at the State of the Union and just kind of working through the rope line, and he might have come with a group of leaders. But I haven't had any extensive conversations with him."
Special Guests of Mrs. Bush at the State of the Union (Whitehouse 01-20-04)
"Dr. Ahmed Chalabi"
Meet The Press with George W Bush Transcript (MSNBC 02-13-04)
"Q: If the Iraqis choose, however, an Islamic extremist regime, would you accept that, and would that be better for the United States than Saddam Hussein?
A: They're not going to develop that. And the reason I can say that is because I'm very aware of this basic law they're writing. They're not going to develop that because right here in the Oval Office I sat down with Mr. Pachachi and Chalabi and al-Hakim, people from different parts of the country that have made the firm commitment, that they want a constitution eventually written that recognizes minority rights and freedom of religion. "
Picture of Laura Bush & Chalabi at State of Union (Whitehouse 01-20-04)
Sunday, May 30, 2004
Bush Keeps Saddam's Pistol As Trophy (Guardian UK 05-30-04)
"President Bush keeps in his White House offices a trophy of one his high points in the Iraq war, the pistol that Saddam Hussein held when soldiers pulled him from his underground hideaway. "
CNN asks Florida court for ineligible voters list (CNN 05-28-04)
"As Florida county election boards review a list of thousands of potentially ineligible voters -- including some who may be felons -- CNN is suing the state, claiming the public and media should also be able to review the list.
The move comes four years after the state's voter rolls were at the center of one of the closest elections in U.S. history.
The state Monday denied a CNN request for a copy of the list of up to 48,000 people. These people, according to the state, could be ineligible to vote because they are felons or have multiple registrations -- or have died since the last election.
The county election boards have been asked to review the list to make sure the people are correctly identified as individuals who should be denied the right to vote.
"Unless people look at the list and see their names and know that it's wrong, then they could end up in a situation where they don't have the right to vote," said Tampa attorney Gregg D. Thomas of the law firm Holland & Knight, who is representing CNN in the matter. "It is incredible that information this important to a constitutional right, the right to vote, is not freely and openly disseminated."
CNN filed suit Friday in a state circuit court in Tallahassee, Florida.
In the 2000 election, state officials purged voter rolls of the names of more than 173,000 people identified as felons or otherwise ineligible to vote, but civil rights activists as well as some Florida county elections supervisors have charged that those lists contained numerous errors, and that thousands of eligible voters were prevented from casting ballots in the election."
Bush Calls for 'Culture Change' (Christianity Today 05-28-04)
"President George W. Bush, in a rare on-the-record session with religion editors and writers on Wednesday, said his job as president is to "change cultures."
In wide-ranging comments inside the Roosevelt Room, Bush spoke passionately about his resolve to establish a free Iraq, his desire to promote cultural change in the United States through his faith-based initiative, and his belief in the power of prayer. Appearing relaxed and self-assured, the President also reaffirmed his support for a Federal Marriage Amendment, urging the American people to become more involved.
Taking a firm line on the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, Bush said that while he was sorry for those who had been humiliated, and has said so publicly, "I never apologized to the Arab world.""
Lou Dobbs Transcripts with General Zinni (CNN 05-26-04)
"We, unfortunately, went into this war despite the fact of my disagreements of going into it the wrong time, wrong place, wrong threat, wrong priority. We went into it ill equipped because we went into it with a pie in the sky best case. We bought into what ever the exiles were selling us, and what we wanted to believe: flowers in the street, to go in and score a quick victory and this would turn almost automatically.
A handful of people from the Pentagon going in trying to reconstruct the country, pulling together the CPA from embassies around the world and dragging people in that weren't cohesive part of an organization like the military, that have worked together that understand the problem.
You can see the results we've got. If you disagree with me or if anyone disagrees with me, tell me you're satisfied with the planning, the strategy, the decisions that have led us to this point. We are about to have our 800th kid killed out there. I believe we're at 799 today. We have had 4,500 kids wounded, injured, maimed, some of them, tragically, severely.
We are about to approach $200 billion of our treasure. Where are we for all of that? I think the American citizens have to ask that question. For someone to tell me it's unpatriotic to question this while our troops are out there doing this and to see what is happening to our image and our reputation around the world, I think it is unpatriotic not to ask these questions and not pose these challenges. "
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Blair and Powell clash over Iraqi veto on Allied forces (Independent UK 05-26-04)
"Tony Blair called yesterday for a "real and genuine" transfer of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government as he put pressure on the Bush administration to allow the Iraqis a veto over the allies' military operations.
His comments appeared to open up an immediate and rare public disagreement with America as Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, insisted that its forces will remain under American control.
"Ultimately, however, if it comes down to the United States armed forces protecting themselves or in some way accomplishing their mission in a way that might not be in total consonance with what the Iraqi interim government might want to do at a particular moment in time, US forces remain under US command and will do what is necessary to protect themselves."
Mr Blair said: "If there's a political decision as to whether you go into a place like Fallujah in a particular way, that has to be done with the consent of the Iraqi government and the final political control remains with the Iraqi government. That's what the transfer of sovereignty means." "
Abuse of Captives More Widespread, Says Army Survey (NYTimes 05-26-04)
"An Army summary of deaths and mistreatment involving prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan shows a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.
The cases from Iraq date back to April 15, 2003, a few days after Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled in a Baghdad square, and they extend up to last month, when a prisoner detained by Navy commandos died in a suspected case of homicide blamed on "blunt force trauma to the torso and positional asphyxia."
Among previously unknown incidents are the abuse of detainees by Army interrogators from a National Guard unit attached to the Third Infantry Division, who are described in a document obtained by The New York Times as having "forced into asphyxiation numerous detainees in an attempt to obtain information" during a 10-week period last spring. "
General Is Said To Have Urged Use of Dogs (WaPo 05-26-04)
"A U.S. Army general dispatched by senior Pentagon officials to bolster the collection of intelligence from prisoners in Iraq last fall inspired and promoted the use of guard dogs there to frighten the Iraqis, according to sworn testimony by the top U.S. intelligence officer at the Abu Ghraib prison.
According to the officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, the idea came from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who at the time commanded the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was implemented under a policy approved by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top U.S. military official in Iraq.
"It was a technique I had personally discussed with General Miller, when he was here" visiting the prison, testified Pappas, head of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade and the officer placed in charge of the cellblocks at Abu Ghraib prison where abuses occurred in the wake of Miller's visit to Baghdad between Aug. 30 and Sept. 9, 2003. "
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
C.I.A. Bid to Keep Some Detainees Off Abu Ghraib Roll Worries Officials (NYTimes 05-24-04)
"Under a new plan, General Craddock would move to the Southern Command, opening the spot for General Casey in Iraq, one defense official said.
"Casey is a more forceful type than Craddock," said the defense official, who suggested that the last-minute changes may have been a result of Mr. Rumsfeld and his top advisers deciding they needed "a different personality."
"More importantly," said the official, "where is Sanchez going, because Craddock is going to Southcom instead, leaves no seats when the music stops."
....
The memorandum criticizing the practice of keeping prisoners off the roster was signed by Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, and a James Bond, who is identified as "SOS, Agent in Charge." Military and intelligence officials said that they did not know of a Mr. Bond who had been assigned to Abu Ghraib, and that it was possible that the name was an alias.
....
On Capitol Hill on Monday, the Senate Armed Services Committee said the Army had promised to deliver about 2,000 pages of supporting documents missing from copies of General Taguba's report that was sent to Congress earlier this month.
Pentagon aides have described the omission as an administrative oversight. But Senate officials said the missing documents included about 200 pages from Colonel Pappas's sworn statement, including a document titled, "Draft Update for Secretary of Defense.""
Bush Poll Numbers On Iraq at New Low (WaPo 05-25-04)
"Public approval of President Bush's handling of the conflict in Iraq has dropped to its lowest point with growing fears that the United States is bogged down and rising criticism of Bush's handling of the prison abuse scandal, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll.
Support for Bush on virtually every aspect of the Iraq conflict has declined in the past month as the administration has battled insurgents and grappled with the expanding investigation into the treatment of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.
The poll underscored the political challenges that confronted Bush as he went on national television last night to defend his policy and outline the steps that will lead to a transfer of governing authority to a new Iraqi government on June 30.
Bush's overall job approval rating declined to 47 percent, the lowest the Post-ABC News polls have recorded since he took office, with 50 percent saying they disapprove. Just four in 10 Americans gave the president positive marks for his handling of Iraq, the lowest since he launched the conflict in March 2003.
On the question of whether U.S. forces should remain in Iraq until that country is stabilized or withdraw to avoid further casualties, 58 percent said they favored staying there, down from 66 percent last month. The percentage favoring a troop withdrawal reached 40 percent, up 7 percentage points in the past month."
No. 2 Army General to Move In as Top U.S. Commander in Iraq (NYTimes 05-25-04)
"The top American officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, will leave his command this summer, to be replaced by the Army's second-ranking general, senior Pentagon officials said Monday. The change is part of an overhaul of the American command structure in Iraq that will put a higher-ranking officer in charge.
....
Some lawmakers have criticized General Sanchez, among other top officers, for failing to give Congress an early warning about politically explosive photographs of American military police officers abusing Iraqi prisoners that were turned over to military investigators in January.
....
Under a new plan, General Craddock would move to the Southern Command, opening the spot for General Casey in Iraq, one defense official said.
"Casey is a more forceful type than Craddock," said the defense official, who suggested that the last-minute changes may have been a result of Mr. Rumsfeld and his top advisers deciding they needed "a different personality."
"More importantly," said the official, "where is Sanchez going, because Craddock is going to Southcom instead, leaves no seats when the music stops.""
Jon Stewart's ('84) Commencement Address (William&Mary 05-16-04)
"Thank you Mr. President, I had forgotten how crushingly dull these ceremonies are. Thank you.
....
I am honored to be here and to receive this honorary doctorate. When I think back to the people that have been in this position before me from Benjamin Franklin to Queen Noor of Jordan, I can’t help but wonder what has happened to this place. Seriously, it saddens me. As a person, I am honored to get it; as an alumnus, I have to say I believe we can do better. And I believe we should. But it has always been a dream of mine to receive a doctorate and to know that today, without putting in any effort, I will. It’s incredibly gratifying. Thank you. That’s very nice of you, I appreciate it.
I’m sure my fellow doctoral graduates—who have spent so long toiling in academia, sinking into debt, sacrificing God knows how many years of what, in truth, is a piece of parchment that in truth has been so devalued by our instant gratification culture as to have been rendered meaningless—will join in congratulating me. Thank you.
....
I was not exceptional here, and am not now. I was mediocre here. And I’m not saying aim low. Not everybody can wander around in an alcoholic haze and then at 40 just, you know, decide to be president. You’ve got to really work hard to try to…I was actually referring to my father.
....
I was in New York on 9-11 when the towers came down. I lived 14 blocks from the twin towers. And when they came down, I thought that the world had ended. And I remember walking around in a daze for weeks. And Mayor Giuliani had said to the city, “You’ve got to get back to normal. We’ve got to show that things can change and get back to what they were.”
And one day I was coming out of my building, and on my stoop, was a man who was crouched over, and he appeared to be in deep thought. And as I got closer to him I realized, he was playing with himself. And that’s when I thought, “You know what, we’re gonna be OK.”
Thank you. Congratulations. I honor you. Good Night. "
Sunday, May 23, 2004
US general linked to Abu Ghraib abuse (Guardian UK 05-22-04)
"Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, head of coalition forces in Iraq, issued an order last October giving military intelligence control over almost every aspect of prison conditions at Abu Ghraib with the explicit aim of manipulating the detainees' "emotions and weaknesses", it was reported yesterday.
The October 12 memorandum, reported in the Washington Post, is a potential "smoking gun" linking prisoner abuse to the US high command. It represents hard evidence that the maltreatment was not simply the fault of rogue military police guards. "
Prison Visits by General Reported in Hearing (Washington Post 05-23-04)
Alleged Presence of Sanchez Cited by Lawyer
"A military lawyer for a soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib abuse case stated that a captain at the prison said the highest-ranking U.S. military officer in Iraq was present during some "interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse," according to a recording of a military hearing obtained by The Washington Post.
The lawyer, Capt. Robert Shuck, said he was told that Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez and other senior military officers were aware of what was taking place on Tier 1A of Abu Ghraib.
....
Shuck noted that the abusive tactics used in Tier 1A of Abu Ghraib were not a secret.
"All of that was being questioned by the chain of command and denied, general officer level on down," Shuck said. "Present during some of these happenings, it has come to my knowledge that Lt. Gen. Sanchez was even present at the prison during some of these interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse by those duty [non-commissioned officers]." "
Prison Visits by General Reported in Hearing (Washington Post 05-23-04)
Alleged Presence of Sanchez Cited by Lawyer
"A military lawyer for a soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib abuse case stated that a captain at the prison said the highest-ranking U.S. military officer in Iraq was present during some "interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse," according to a recording of a military hearing obtained by The Washington Post.
The lawyer, Capt. Robert Shuck, said he was told that Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez and other senior military officers were aware of what was taking place on Tier 1A of Abu Ghraib.
....
Shuck noted that the abusive tactics used in Tier 1A of Abu Ghraib were not a secret.
"All of that was being questioned by the chain of command and denied, general officer level on down," Shuck said. "Present during some of these happenings, it has come to my knowledge that Lt. Gen. Sanchez was even present at the prison during some of these interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse by those duty [non-commissioned officers]." "
Army discovers an increase in detainee deaths (Baltimore Sun 05-22-04)
"Army criminal investigators are looking into the deaths of at least 37 detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past two years, officials said yesterday, eight more cases than they reported two weeks ago.
Officials said some cases involve multiple deaths. But they could not immediately provide a precise figure on the total number of prisoner deaths being investigated.
Eight of the cases involve detainees who died before or after being interrogated, according to two officials who briefed reporters at the Pentagon on condition of anonymity.
Thirty of the cases involve deaths inside U.S.-run facilities; three were outside. Fifteen cases were determined by American authorities to have been deaths by natural or undetermined cause, the senior defense official said.
Of the 15 possible homicide cases thought to have happened inside detention facilities, four were categorized as justifiable homicides, two as homicides, and nine are still under investigation, the official said. Eight of those nine have been classified as homicides involving suspected assaults on detainees before or during questioning."
Trucks made to drive without cargo in dangerous areas of Iraq (Sun Herald 05-21-04)
"Empty flatbed trucks crisscrossed Iraq more than 100 times as their drivers and the soldiers who guarded them dodged bullets, bricks and homemade bombs.
Twelve current and former truckers who regularly made the 300-mile re-supply run from Camp Cedar in southern Iraq to Camp Anaconda near Baghdad told Knight Ridder that they risked their lives driving empty trucks while their employer, a subsidiary of Halliburton Inc., billed the government for hauling what they derisively called "sailboat fuel.""
America's 'Best Friend' A Spy (CBS 05-21-04)
"Senior U.S. officials have told 60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl that they have evidence Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi has been passing highly-classified U.S. intelligence to Iran.
The evidence shows that Chalabi - who was once seen as the man likely to lead Iraq by White House and Pentagon officials - personally gave Iranian intelligence officers information so sensitive that if revealed it could, quote, "get Americans killed." The evidence is said to be "rock solid." "
2 Journalists Subpoenaed Over Source of Disclosure (NYTimes 05-23-04)
"federal grand jury has subpoenaed at least two journalists, Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press" and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, to testify about whether the Bush White House leaked the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer to the news media.
Lawyers for NBC and Time said they would fight the subpoenas. NBC said its subpoena could have a "chilling effect" on its ability to report the news.
....
Subpoenas to the news media are rare, and many courts have acknowledged significant legal protections for the press. But the leading Supreme Court case, decided in 1972, rejected the argument that the First Amendment protected reporters from grand jury subpoenas seeking information about crimes they have witnessed.
In the Plame investigation, the journalists could be in a similar position. Not all leaks are crimes, but there is a law that specifically prohibits the disclosure of the identities of undercover intelligence operatives."
Friday, May 21, 2004
Skipped autopsies in Iraq revealed (Denver Post 05-21-04)
"Autopsies were not performed on at least five Iraqi prisoners who died of mysterious causes at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention camps, according to Pentagon records.
And the lack of forensic investigations may conflict with international standards, including the Geneva Conventions, for the handling of war-detainee deaths.
Among the cases is a prisoner who died, the records show, after "gasping for air." Another detainee who had "prior head injuries" fell out of a hospital bed and struck his head on the floor. One prisoner began having "chest pains and collapsed."
Synopses of the death investigations, which do not disclose whether the prisoners were interrogated, are enclosed in documents obtained by The Denver Post from a high-level Pentagon source this week.
The deaths, all characterized as having "undetermined" causes, raise more serious questions about the treatment of detainees in the custody of U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib and other combat-zone facilities, say U.S. lawmakers and human-rights organizations."
Justice Memos Explained How to Skip Prisoner Rights (NYTimes 05-21-04)
"A series of Justice Department memorandums written in late 2001 and the first few months of 2002 were crucial in building a legal framework for United States officials to avoid complying with international laws and treaties on handling prisoners, lawyers and former officials say.
....
The memorandums provide legal arguments to support administration officials' assertions that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees from the Afghanistan war. They also suggested how officials could inoculate themselves from liability by claiming that abused prisoners were in some other nation's custody.
....
A lawyer and a former government official who saw the memorandum said it anticipated the possibility that United States officials could be charged with war crimes, defined as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. The document said a way to avoid that is to declare that the conventions do not apply.
The memorandum, addressed to William J. Haynes, the Pentagon's general counsel, said that President Bush could argue that the Taliban government in Afghanistan was a "failed state" and therefore its soldiers were not entitled to protections accorded in the conventions. If Mr. Bush did not want to do that, the memorandum gave other grounds, like asserting that the Taliban was a terrorist group. It also noted that the president could just say that he was suspending the Geneva Conventions for a particular conflict."
Iraqi Security Official Says Four Arrested in Berg Killing (AP via TBO 05-21-04)
"Four people have been detained in the killing of American Nicholas Berg, whose decapitation was captured on videotape, an Iraqi security official and a U.S. military official said Friday. The Iraqi official said the group that killed Berg was led by a relative of Saddam Hussein.
The suspects were former members of Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen paramilitary organization, the Iraqi security official said on condition of anonymity. Iraqi police arrested them on May 14 in a house in Salaheddin province, north of Baghdad. The province includes Tikrit, Saddam's hometown.
....
The group that was involved in the killing of Berg was led by Yasser al-Sabawi, a nephew of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi security official said. He said American intelligence had asked Iraqi authorities to hand over the suspects, but they were still in Iraqi hands.
Al-Sabawi was not among those arrested, the Iraqi official said. "
Videos Amplify Picture of Violence (Washington Post 05-21-04)
"The video begins with three soldiers huddled around a naked detainee, his thin frame backed against a wall. With a snap of his wrist, one of the soldiers slaps the man across his left cheek so hard that the prisoner's knees buckle. Another detainee, handcuffed and on his back, is dragged across the prison floor.
Then, the human pyramid begins to take shape. Soldiers force hooded and naked prisoners into crouches on the floor, one by one, side by side, a soldier pointing to where the next ones should go. The video stops. But there is more.
In a collection of hundreds of so-far-unreleased photographs and short digital videos obtained by The Washington Post, U.S. soldiers are shown physically and emotionally abusing detainees last fall in the Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad. "
New front in Iraq detainee abuse scandal (NBC News 05-20-04)
NBC News exclusive: Delta Force subject of investigation; Pentagon official denies abuse
"With attention focused on the seven soldiers charged with abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. military and intelligence officials familiar with the situation tell NBC News the Army’s elite Delta Force is now the subject of a Pentagon inspector general investigation into abuse against detainees.
The target is a top-secret site near Baghdad’s airport. The battlefield interrogation facility known as the “BIF” is pictured in satellite photos.
According to two top U.S. government sources, it is the scene of the most egregious violations of the Geneva Conventions in all of Iraq’s prisons. A place where the normal rules of interrogation don’t apply, Delta Force’s BIF only holds Iraqi insurgents and suspected terrorists — but not the most wanted among Saddam’s lieutenants pictured on the deck of cards.
These sources say the prisoners there are hooded from the moment they are captured. They are kept in tiny dark cells. And in the BIF’s six interrogation rooms, Delta Force soldiers routinely drug prisoners, hold a prisoner under water until he thinks he’s drowning, or smother them almost to suffocation.
In Washington Thursday evening, a senior Pentagon official denied allegations of prisoner abuse at Battlefield Interrogation Facilities operated by Delta Force in Iraq. And he said the tactics described in this report are not used in those facilities. "
New Details of Prison Abuse Emerge (WaPo 05-21-04)
"Previously secret sworn statements by detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq describe in raw detail abuse that goes well beyond what has been made public, adding allegations of prisoners being ridden like animals, sexually fondled by female soldiers and forced to retrieve their food from toilets.
The fresh allegations of prison abuse are contained in statements taken from 13 detainees shortly after a soldier reported the incidents to military investigators in mid-January. The detainees said they were savagely beaten and repeatedly humiliated sexually by American soldiers working on the night shift at Tier 1A in Abu Ghraib during the holy month of Ramadan, according to copies of the statements obtained by The Washington Post.
The statements provide the most detailed picture yet of what took place on the cellblock. Some of the detainees described being abused as punishment or discipline after they were caught fighting or with a prohibited item. Some said they were pressed to denounce Islam or were force-fed pork and liquor. Many provided graphic details of how they were sexually humiliated and assaulted, threatened with rape, and forced to masturbate in front of female soldiers.
....
The disclosures come from a new cache of documents, photographs and videos obtained by The Post that are part of evidence assembled by Army investigators putting together criminal cases against soldiers at Abu Ghraib. So far, seven MPs have been charged with brutalizing detainees at the prison, and one pleaded guilty Wednesday.
The sworn statements, taken in Baghdad between Jan. 16 and Jan. 21, span 65 pages. Each statement begins with a handwritten account in Arabic that is signed by the detainee, followed by a typewritten translation by U.S. military contractors. The shortest statement is a single paragraph; the longest exceeds two single-spaced typewritten pages.
....
Hilas also said he witnessed an Army translator having sex with a boy at the prison. He said the boy was between 15 and 18 years old. Someone hung sheets to block the view, but Hilas said he heard the boy's screams and climbed a door to get a better look. Hilas said he watched the assault and told investigators that it was documented by a female soldier taking pictures."
US troops raid Chalabi's headquarters in Iraq (Reuters 05-20-04)
"U.S. troops and Iraqi police mounted a raid on Thursday on the headquarters of the party led by Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon favourite who has become increasingly estranged from Washington.
The soldiers raided the headquarters of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and a nearby house also used by Chalabi, and removed computers, files and equipment.
INC spokesman Haider Moussawi said the troops had wanted to arrest two party members but were told by Chalabi they were not present. Chalabi, who returned from exile after the fall of Saddam Hussein, was not detained.
"They have been putting political pressure on us for weeks. It's part of an attempted character assassination and it's politically motivated," he said.
"When someone stands up independently and puts his views firmly it appears the Americans don't like it."
U.S. officials said on Tuesday the Pentagon had cut off its funding of some $340,000 a month to Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said that decision "was made in light of the process of transferring sovereignty to the Iraqi people".
"We felt it was no longer appropriate for us to continue funding in that fashion," he told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
"There's been some very valuable intelligence that's been gathered through that process that's been very valuable for our forces. But we will seek to obtain that in the future through normal intelligence channels."
....
U.S. officials said in February that an Iraqi who had been the source for Washington's prewar claim that Iraq had mobile biological weapons labs had fabricated the allegation. The man had been introduced to U.S. intelligence by Chalabi's group. No stockpiles of banned unconventional weapons have been found in Iraq."
Rethinking the Chalabi Connection (Newsweek 05-19-04)
"Pentagon officials say the decision by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to cut off funding this week for the Iraqi National Congress was made because U.S. financial backing of an Iraqi political party had become “inappropriate” in light of efforts to set up a new Iraqi government on June 30. But the funding decision follows disclosures that INC leader Ahmad Chalabi and some of his aides supplied sensitive information about U.S. security operations in Baghdad to the Iranian government, according to U.S. intelligence sources."
Ruling- Medicare video was propaganda (UPI via Washington Times 05-20-04)
"The General Accounting Office has deemed the Bush administration's videotapes about Medicare propaganda and illegal, the New York Times said.
The investigative arm of Congress said the videos were a form of "covert propaganda" because the government was not identified as the source of the materials, which were broadcast by at least 40 television stations in 33 markets.
....
The accounting office said the videos were "not strictly factual news stories" and were flawed by "notable omissions and weaknesses" in their explanation of the Medicare law. But the main problem, it said, is that they were "misleading as to source.""
Finally, Some Answers in the Offing (WaPo 05-20-04)
"The press corps has been asking the White House for months: Who exactly will the United States be handing over power to in Iraq on June 30? And how much power?
At long last, administration officials promise that answers will be forthcoming in the next several days and weeks.
As a prelude, President Bush high-tails it up to the Hill this morning to brief -- and reassure -- Republican lawmakers.
Then, starting on Monday, the president takes his plan to the public.
Robin Wright and Mike Allen write in The Washington Post: "President Bush will lay out details of the U.S. plan for the Iraq transition at a major speech Monday in a bid to counter mounting public anxiety over the escalating violence and uncertainty less than six weeks before the handover of political power in Baghdad, according to U.S. officials.
....
"Hours after telling graduates at the Coast Guard Academy that 'the president of the United States has made a commitment' in Iraq and 'that commitment will be kept,' Vice President Dick Cheney, now settled back into the cocoon of Air Force Two, was asked how the war was going.
" 'You ought to ask Rumsfeld,' he said. 'I don't do military briefings.'
Propaganda Watch
Amy Goldstein writes in The Washington Post: "The Bush administration violated two federal laws through part of its publicity campaign to promote changes in Medicare intended to help older Americans afford prescription drugs, the investigative arm of Congress said yesterday."
And Goldstein reports that "Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said he is preparing a bill that would require Bush's presidential campaign to reimburse the money." "
Thursday, May 20, 2004
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/darktips/story/0,24330,3591742,00.html
Definitely a Cover-Up (ABC News 05-18-04)
""There's definitely a cover-up," the witness, Sgt. Samuel Provance, said. "People are either telling themselves or being told to be quiet."
Provance, 30, was part of the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion stationed at Abu Ghraib last September. He spoke to ABCNEWS despite orders from his commanders not to.
"What I was surprised at was the silence," said Provance. "The collective silence by so many people that had to be involved, that had to have seen something or heard something."
Provance, now stationed in Germany, ran the top secret computer network used by military intelligence at the prison.
He said that while he did not see the actual abuse take place, the interrogators with whom he worked freely admitted they directed the MPs' rough treatment of prisoners.
"Anything [the MPs] were to do legally or otherwise, they were to take those commands from the interrogators," he said.
Top military officials have claimed the abuse seen in the photos at Abu Ghraib was limited to a few MPs, but Provance says the sexual humiliation of prisoners began as a technique ordered by the interrogators from military intelligence. "
Brutal interrogation in Iraq (Denver Post 05-19-04)
"Five detainees' deaths probed
Brutal interrogation techniques by U.S. military personnel are being investigated in connection with the deaths of at least five Iraqi prisoners in war-zone detention camps, Pentagon documents obtained by The Denver Post show.
The deaths include the killing in November of a high-level Iraqi general who was shoved into a sleeping bag and suffocated, according to the Pentagon report. The documents contradict an earlier Defense Department statement that said the general died "of natural causes" during an interrogation. Pentagon officials declined to comment on the new disclosure.
Another Iraqi military officer, records show, was asphyxiated after being gagged, his hands tied to the top of his cell door. Another detainee died "while undergoing stress technique interrogation," involving smothering and "chest compressions," according to the documents.
Details of the death investigations, involving at least four different detention facilities including the Abu Ghraib prison, provide the clearest view yet into war-zone interrogation rooms, where intelligence soldiers and other personnel have sometimes used lethal tactics to try to coax secrets from prisoners, including choking off detainees' airways. Other abusive strategies involve sitting on prisoners or bending them into uncomfortable positions, records show."
Pentagon 'finds more prison abuse images' (Reuters 05-20-04)
"The US Defence Department has located another disc of images related to abuses of Iraqi detainees, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said.
"I've just been informed that the Department of Defense has informed the committee that another disc of pictures has been located, and I'll soon advise the committee on the conditions under which and the timing they can be viewed," said US Senator John Warner, a Virginia Republican.
His committee was holding a hearing on the abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqi detainees by US forces at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. "
Former Guantánamo chief clashed with army interrogators (Guardian UK 05-20-04)
"The commander of Guantánamo Bay, sacked amid charges from the Pentagon that he was too soft on detainees, said he faced constant tension from military interrogators trying to extract information from inmates.
Brigadier General Rick Baccus was removed from his post in October 2002, apparently after frustrating military intelligence officers by granting detainees such privileges as distributing copies of the Koran and adjusting meal times for Ramadan. He also disciplined prison guards for screaming at inmates.
In one of the general's first interviews since his dismissal, he told the Guardian: "I was mislabelled as someone who coddled detainees. In fact, what we were doing was our mission professionally."
Gen Baccus's unceremonious departure offers a rare insight into how the Pentagon rewrote the rules of warfare to suit the Bush administration's view of a radically changed world following the terror attacks of September 11 2001.
Although the detainees at Guantánamo were not given the protections of the Geneva Convention, Gen Baccus says he took steps to ensure they were not subjected to abuse.
"We had instances of individuals that used verbal abuse, and any time that that was reported we took action immediately and removed the individual from contact with detainees." Gen Baccus said there were fewer than 10 instances of abuse during his seven months in command.
After his departure, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, gave military intelligence control over all aspects of Guantánamo, including the MPs, and Gen Miller was appointed commander.
Under his watch, Guantánamo instituted a "72-point matrix for stress and duress", which the Washington Post said set out a guide for the levels of force that could be applied to detainees. These included hooding or keeping prisoners naked for more than 30 days, threatening by dogs, shackling detainees in positions designed to cause pain, and extreme temperatures. "
Sivits Receives Year in Prison for Prisoner Scandal (AP via TBO 05-19-04)
"A special court martial Wednesday sentenced Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits to a maximum penalty of one year in prison, reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge for his role in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse case.
"I'd like to apologize to the Iraqi people and those detainees," Sivits said, breaking down in tears as he made his statement. "I should have protected those detainees, not taken the photos."
"I have learned huge lessons, sir," he added. "You can't let people abuse people like they have done." "
White House Is Trumpeting Programs It Tried to Cut (NYTimes 05-19-04)
"Like many of its predecessors, the Bush White House has used the machinery of government to promote the re-election of the president by awarding federal grants to strategically important states. But in a twist this election season, many administration officials are taking credit for spreading largess through programs that President Bush tried to eliminate or to cut sharply.
For example, Justice Department officials recently announced that they were awarding $47 million to scores of local law enforcement agencies for the hiring of police officers. Mr. Bush had just proposed cutting the budget for the program, known as Community Oriented Policing Services, by 87 percent, to $97 million next year, from $756 million.
Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, announced recently that the administration was awarding $11.7 million in grants to help 30 states plan and provide coverage for people without health insurance. Mr. Bush had proposed ending the program in each of the last three years.
The administration also announced recently that it was providing $11.6 million to the states so they could buy defibrillators to save the lives of heart attack victims. But Mr. Bush had proposed cutting the budget for such devices by 82 percent, to $2 million from $10.9 million."
More Photos Surface (ABCNews 05-19-04)
Soldiers Shown Giving Thumbs Up Sign By Body of Dead Iraqi Prisoner
"ABCNEWS has obtained two new photos taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq showing Spc. Charles Graner and Spc. Sabrina Harman posing over the body of a detainee who was allegedly beaten to death by CIA or civilian interrogators in the prison's showers. The detainee's name was Manadel al-Jamadi.
According to testimony from Spc. Jason Kenner, obtained by ABCNEWS, the man was brought to the prison by U.S. Navy Seals in good health. Kenner said he saw extensive bruising on the detainee's body when he was brought out of the showers, dead.
Kenner says the body was packed in ice during a "battle" between CIA and military interrogators over who should dispose of the body. "
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Reuters, NBC Staff Abused by U.S. Troops in Iraq (Yahoo 05-18-04)
"U.S. forces beat three Iraqis working for Reuters and subjected them to sexual and religious taunts and humiliation during their detention last January in a military camp near Falluja, the three said on Tuesday.
The three first told Reuters of the ordeal after their release but only decided to make it public when the U.S. military said there was no evidence they had been abused, and following the exposure of similar mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
An Iraqi journalist working for U.S. network NBC, who was arrested with the Reuters staff, also said he had been beaten and mistreated, NBC said on Tuesday.
Two of the three Reuters staff said they had been forced to insert a finger into their anuses and then lick it, and were forced to put shoes in their mouths, particularly humiliating in Arab culture. "
LYNNDIE BARES NEW JAIL HORRORS (New York Post 05-18-04)
"Notorious Abu Ghraib leash girl Lynndie England told investigators that male Iraqi prisoners were forced to wear women's "maxi pads" and crawl on their hands and knees through broken glass.
In a sworn statement, she also said that Cpl. Charles Graner, by whom she is pregnant, would sew up prisoners' wounds with a needle and thread - after inflicting the damage during beatings, The Los Angeles Times reported.
"Cpl. Graner would personally stitch up detainees if the wounds weren't too bad," she said. "He would take pictures of his work. [In] one particular incident, Cpl. Graner ran a former Iraqi general into a wall and split his lip. Cpl. Graner stitched up his lip."
England said "everyone in the company, from the commander down," knew about the abuse, which she described as "basically us fooling around."
"Personnel from MI [military intelligence] . . . would tell us to keep it up, that we were doing a good job," she said. "I was just told we were doing a good job." "
Memos Reveal War Crimes Warnings (Newsweek 05-19-04)
Could Bush administration officials be prosecuted for 'war crimes' as a result of new measures used in the war on terror? The White House's top lawyer thought so
"The White House's top lawyer warned more than two years ago that U.S. officials could be prosecuted for "war crimes" as a result of new and unorthodox measures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism, according to an internal White House memo and interviews with participants in the debate over the issue.
The concern about possible future prosecution for war crimes—and that it might even apply to Bush adminstration officials themselves— is contained in a crucial portion of an internal January 25, 2002, memo by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales obtained by NEWSWEEK. It urges President George Bush declare the war in Afghanistan, including the detention of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, exempt from the provisions of the Geneva Convention.
In the memo, the White House lawyer focused on a little known 1996 law passed by Congress, known as the War Crimes Act, that banned any Americans from committing war crimes—defined in part as "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions. Noting that the law applies to "U.S. officials" and that punishments for violators "include the death penalty," Gonzales told Bush that "it was difficult to predict with confidence" how Justice Department prosecutors might apply the law in the future. This was especially the case given that some of the language in the Geneva Conventions—such as that outlawing "outrages upon personal dignity" and "inhuman treatment" of prisoners—was "undefined." "
====
The memo itself is here -> Jan 25 2002 memo - gonzales_memo.pdf
The following is Gonzales' memo to George W Bush. "GPW" refers to the treatment of prisoners of war as laid out by the Geneva Convention.
"I understand that you decided that GPW does not apply with respect to the conflict with the Taliban. I understand that you decided that GPW does not apply and, accordingly, that al Qaeda and Taliban deteinees are not prisoners of war under the GPW
The Secretary of State has requested that you reconsider that decision.
....
The consequences of a decision to adhere to what I understood to be your earlier determination.... include the following:
Positive:
....
Substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act""
EXECUTION- FOUR HELD (Sky News 05-18-04)
"Four people are being held over the beheading of American Nicholas Berg, Iraq sources have told the AFP news agency.
The 26-year-old businessman's decapitated body was found 10 days ago in Baghdad.
Asked if more than one person had been arrested in connection with the killing, the source told AFP: "Four people".
"We have made good progress," the source added, referring to the investigation, but declined to give any further details on the identity of the four people held in detention.
But Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations, said on Tuesday: "We have no information from the Coalition that any arrests were made today.""
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Suicide car bomb kills Iraqi leader (Reuters 05-17-04)
"A suicide car bomb has killed the head of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and at least eight other people at a checkpoint outside the main Baghdad headquarters of the U.S.-led administration.
Abdul Zahra Othman Mohammad, a Shi'ite council member also known as Izzedin Salim, had been waiting at a checkpoint to enter the "Green Zone" compound in Baghdad when the bomb went off, Deputy Foreign Minister Hamed al-Bayati told Reuters."
Suicide car bomb kills Iraqi leader (Reuters 05-17-04)
"A suicide car bomb has killed the head of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and at least eight other people at a checkpoint outside the main Baghdad headquarters of the U.S.-led administration.
Abdul Zahra Othman Mohammad, a Shi'ite council member also known as Izzedin Salim, had been waiting at a checkpoint to enter the "Green Zone" compound in Baghdad when the bomb went off, Deputy Foreign Minister Hamed al-Bayati told Reuters."
This story is full of the same kind of stuff that Symour Hersh said recently:
The Roots of Torture (Newsweek 05-24-04)
The Roots of Torture P2 (Newsweek 05-24-04)
The Roots of Torture P3 (Newsweek 05-24-04)
"The road to Abu Ghraib began after 9/11, when Washington wrote new rules to fight a new kind of war. A NEWSWEEK investigation
But a NEWSWEEK investigation shows that, as a means of pre-empting a repeat of 9/11, Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods. It was an approach that they adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war. In doing so, they overrode the objections of Secretary of State Colin Powell and America's top military lawyers—and they left underlings to sweat the details of what actually happened to prisoners in these lawless places. While no one deliberately authorized outright torture, these techniques entailed a systematic softening up of prisoners through isolation, privations, insults, threats and humiliation—methods that the Red Cross concluded were "tantamount to torture."
The Bush administration created a bold legal framework to justify this system of interrogation, according to internal government memos obtained by NEWSWEEK. What started as a carefully thought-out, if aggressive, policy of interrogation in a covert war—designed mainly for use by a handful of CIA professionals—evolved into ever-more ungoverned tactics that ended up in the hands of untrained MPs in a big, hot war. Originally, Geneva Conventions protections were stripped only from Qaeda and Taliban prisoners. But later Rumsfeld himself, impressed by the success of techniques used against Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay, seemingly set in motion a process that led to their use in Iraq, even though that war was supposed to have been governed by the Geneva Conventions. Ultimately, reservist MPs, like those at Abu Ghraib, were drawn into a system in which fear and humiliation were used to break prisoners' resistance to interrogation."
Do the right thing, even when you get no credit for it, even if you get hurt by doing the right thing. Do the right thing when no one is watching or will ever know about it. You will always know.
- Colin Powell at Wake Forest Commencement Address 05-17-04
Monday, May 17, 2004
Powell Some Prewar Iraq Intel Erroneous (AP via Yahoo 05-16-04)
"Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged Sunday that the CIA was wrong about the presence of mobile biological weapons labs in Iraq before the war last spring. In a February 2003 speech to the United Nations, Powell presented the claim as part of the evidence that Saddam Hussein was pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
On "Meet the Press" Sunday, Powell said his presentation "was based on the best information that the Central Intelligence Agency made available to me. ... In the case of the mobile trucks and trains, there was multiple sourcing for that. Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out to be not accurate."
Powell continued: "At the time that I made the presentation, it reflected the collective judgment, the sound judgment of the intelligence community. But it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading."
In April, Powell used vaguer language in discussing the intelligence that led him to believe the Iraqis had mobile biological weapons labs. "It appears not to be the case that it was that solid," he said. "
US guards 'filmed beatings' at terror camp (Guardian UK 05-16-04)
"Dozens of videotapes of American guards allegedly engaged in brutal attacks on Guantanamo Bay detainees have been stored and catalogued at the camp, an investigation by The Observer has revealed.
The disclosures, made in an interview with Tarek Dergoul, the fifth British prisoner freed last March, who has been too traumatised to speak until now, prompted demands last night by senior politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to make the videos available immediately.
....
Dergoul tells of one assault by a five-man ERF in shocking terms: 'They pepper-sprayed me in the face, and I started vomiting. They pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes, and forced my head into the toilet pan and flushed.
'They tied me up like a beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking and punching. Finally they dragged me out of the cell in chains, into the rec[reation] yard, and shaved my beard, my hair, my eyebrows.'
After their release last March, Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed, the so-called Tipton Three from Staffordshire, told of similar ERF attacks.
....
Senator Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has been an outspoken critic of the Abu Ghraib abuse, said he would demand that Rumsfeld must produce the videos this week.
'Congressional oversight of this administration has been lax in many areas, including detention policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo,' Leahy said. 'It is past time for that to change. If photos, videotapes or any other evidence exists that can help establish whether or not there has been mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, it should be provided without delay to Congress. "
Knowledge of Abusive Tactics May Go Higher PG1 (WaPo 05-16-04)
Knowledge of Abusive Tactics May Go Higher PG2 (WaPo 05-16-04)
Knowledge of Abusive Tactics May Go Higher PG3 (WaPo 05-16-04)
"Army intelligence officers suspected that a Syrian and admitted jihadist who was detained at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad knew about the illegal flow of money, arms and foreign fighters into Iraq. But he was smug, the officers said, and refused to talk. So last November, they devised a special plan for his interrogation, going beyond what Army rules normally allowed.
An Army colonel in charge of intelligence-gathering at the prison, spelling out the plan in a classified cable to the top U.S. military officer in Iraq, said interrogators would use a method known as "fear up harsh," which military documents said meant "significantly increasing the fear level in a security detainee." The aim was to make the 31-year-old Syrian think his only hope in life was to talk, undermining his confidence in what they termed "the Allah factor."
According to the plan, interrogators needed the assistance of military police supervising his detention at the prison, who ordinarily play no role in interrogations under Army regulations. First, the interrogators were to throw chairs and tables in the man's presence at the prison and "invade his personal space."
Then the police were to put a hood on his head and take him to an isolated cell through a gantlet of barking guard dogs; there, the police were to strip-search him and interrupt his sleep for three days with interrogations, barking and loud music, according to Army documents. The plan was sent to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.
....
While the Army has blamed the physical abuses documented in soldiers' photographs on a handful of night-shift soldiers at Abu Ghraib who ignored rules on humane treatment, government officials and humanitarian experts say the order indicates the abuses could instead have been an outgrowth of harsh treatment that had been approved.
But three directives in particular have already begun to attract congressional scrutiny:
The first is a classified report by Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller on Sept. 9, 2003, demanding that the military police at Abu Ghraib be dedicated and trained to set "the conditions for the successful interrogation and exploitation of internees/detainees." The report, which Cambone has testified was presented to his deputy William Boykin, contained five recommendations spelling out how this was to occur and reported it had already begun.
The second is an Oct. 12 classified memo signed by Sanchez that demanded a "harmonization" of military policing and intelligence work at Abu Ghraib for the purpose of ensuring "consistency with the interrogation policies . . . and maximiz[ing] the efficiency of the interrogation."
The memo, obtained by The Washington Post, also states "it is imperative that interrogators be provided reasonable latitude to vary their approach," depending on a detainee's background, strengths, resistance and other factors. It also explicitly demands humane treatment and requires that any dogs present during the interrogations be muzzled.
The third is a Nov. 19 memo from Sanchez's office that formally placed the two key Abu Ghraib cellblocks where the abuses occurred under the control of Pappas and his 205th Military Intelligence Brigade. It was 11 days later, after this memo placed the military police responsible for "security of detainees and base protection" in Pappas's hands, that he sought, in his memo to Sanchez, to draw military police explicitly into applying pressure on the Syrian. "
Sunday, May 16, 2004
Reaction to Sy Hersh's most recent New Yorker article about Rumsfeld/Cambone-driven interrogation black ops
Statement from DoD Spokesperson Mr. Lawrence Di Rita (05-15-04)
"Assertions apparently being made in the latest New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib and the abuse of Iraqi detainees are outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture.
"The abuse evidenced in the videos and photos, and any similar abuse that may come to light in any of the ongoing half dozen investigations into this matter, has no basis in any sanctioned program, training manual, instruction, or order in the Department of Defense.
"No responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses as witnessed in the recent photos and videos.
"To correct one of the many errors in fact, Undersecretary Cambone has no responsibility, nor has he had any responsibility in the past, for detainee or interrogation programs in Afghanistan, Iraq, or anywhere else in the world.
"This story seems to reflect the fevered insights of those with little, if any, connection to the activities in the Department of Defense."
THE GRAY ZONE (The New Yorker 05-15-04)"by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib.
The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.
According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.
throughout the world, as American Special Forces units seeking to move quickly against suspected terrorist cells were compelled to get prior approval from local American ambassadors and brief their superiors in the chain of command.
Rumsfeld reacted in his usual direct fashion: he authorized the establishment of a highly secret program that was given blanket advance approval to kill or capture and, if possible, interrogate “high value” targets in the Bush Administration’s war on terror. A special-access program, or sap—subject to the Defense Department’s most stringent level of security—was set up, with an office in a secure area of the Pentagon. The program would recruit operatives and acquire the necessary equipment, including aircraft, and would keep its activities under wraps. America’s most successful intelligence operations during the Cold War had been saps, including the Navy’s submarine penetration of underwater cables used by the Soviet high command and construction of the Air Force’s stealth bomber. All the so-called “black” programs had one element in common: the Secretary of Defense, or his deputy, had to conclude that the normal military classification restraints did not provide enough security.
“Rumsfeld’s goal was to get a capability in place to take on a high-value target—a standup group to hit quickly,” a former high-level intelligence official told me. “He got all the agencies together—the C.I.A. and the N.S.A.—to get pre-approval in place. Just say the code word and go.” The operation had across-the-board approval from Rumsfeld and from Condoleezza Rice, the national-security adviser. President Bush was informed of the existence of the program, the former intelligence official said.
....
according to the military report, the American and Coalition forces knew little about the insurgency: “Human intelligence is poor or lacking . . . due to the dearth of competence and expertise. . . . The intelligence effort is not coördinated since either too many groups are involved in gathering intelligence or the final product does not get to the troops in the field in a timely manner.” The success of the war was at risk; something had to be done to change the dynamic.
The solution, endorsed by Rumsfeld and carried out by Stephen Cambone, was to get tough with those Iraqis in the Army prison system who were suspected of being insurgents. A key player was Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the detention and interrogation center at Guantánamo, who had been summoned to Baghdad in late August to review prison interrogation procedures. The internal Army report on the abuse charges, written by Major General Antonio Taguba in February, revealed that Miller urged that the commanders in Baghdad change policy and place military intelligence in charge of the prison. The report quoted Miller as recommending that “detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation.”
Miller’s concept, as it emerged in recent Senate hearings, was to “Gitmoize” the prison system in Iraq—to make it more focussed on interrogation. He also briefed military commanders in Iraq on the interrogation methods used in Cuba—methods that could, with special approval, include sleep deprivation, exposure to extremes of cold and heat, and placing prisoners in “stress positions” for agonizing lengths of time. (The Bush Administration had unilaterally declared Al Qaeda and other captured members of international terrorist networks to be illegal combatants, and not eligible for the protection of the Geneva Conventions.)
Rumsfeld and Cambone went a step further, however: they expanded the scope of the sap, bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation.
....
The abuses at Abu Ghraib were exposed on January 13th, when Joseph Darby, a young military policeman assigned to Abu Ghraib, reported the wrongdoing to the Army’s Criminal Investigations Division. He also turned over a CD full of photographs. Within three days, a report made its way to Donald Rumsfeld, who informed President Bush.
The inquiry presented a dilemma for the Pentagon. The C.I.D. had to be allowed to continue, the former intelligence official said. “You can’t cover it up. You have to prosecute these guys for being off the reservation. But how do you prosecute them when they were covered by the special-access program? So you hope that maybe it’ll go away.” The Pentagon’s attitude last January, he said, was “Somebody got caught with some photos. What’s the big deal? Take care of it.” Rumsfeld’s explanation to the White House, the official added, was reassuring: “‘We’ve got a glitch in the program. We’ll prosecute it.’ The cover story was that some kids got out of control.”
....
One puzzling aspect of Rumsfeld’s account of his initial reaction to news of the Abu Ghraib investigation was his lack of alarm and lack of curiosity. One factor may have been recent history: there had been many previous complaints of prisoner abuse from organization like Human Rights Watch and the International Red Cross, and the Pentagon had weathered them with ease. Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he had not been provided with details of alleged abuses until late March, when he read the specific charges. “You read it, as I say, it’s one thing. You see these photographs and it’s just unbelievable. . . . It wasn’t three-dimensional. It wasn’t video. It wasn’t color. It was quite a different thing.” The former intelligence official said that, in his view, Rumsfeld and other senior Pentagon officials had not studied the photographs because “they thought what was in there was permitted under the rules of engagement,” as applied to the sap. “The photos,” he added, “turned out to be the result of the program run amok.”"
Powell Says Troops Would Leave Iraq if New Leaders Asked (WaPo 05-15-04)
"Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, joined by the foreign ministers of nations making key contributions of military forces in Iraq, emphatically said yesterday that if the incoming Iraqi interim government ordered the departure of foreign troops after July 1, they would pack up without protest.
"We would leave," Powell said, noting that he was "not ducking the hypothetical, which I usually do," to avoid confusion on the extent of the new government's authority.
His statement, which was echoed by the foreign ministers of Britain, Italy and Japan, and by the U.S. administrator in Iraq, came one day after conflicting testimony on Capitol Hill by administration officials on the issue. Testifying before the House International Relations Committee on Thursday, Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman appeared to say that the interim government could order the departure of foreign troops, only to be contradicted by Lt. Gen. Walter Sharp, sitting at his side, who asserted that only an elected government could do so. Iraqi elections are scheduled for January. "
US troops to stay in Iraq - Bush (The Age 05-16-04)
"US President George W Bush vowed that US troops would stay in Iraq after the June 30 handover of sovereignty or until the country was secure, as fierce fresh fighting across the country claimed dozens of lives.
Speculation increased that the leader of the strongest ally of the US in the war on Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, might stand down early amid a scandal about abuse of Iraqi prisoners by coalition forces.
The US military meanwhile said it had scrapped inhumane interrogation techniques used in Iraq such as sleep deprivation in the wake of the furore over abuse claims.
The comments followed those by the foreign ministers of the United States, Britain, Italy and Japan, who said their countries would withdraw their troops from Iraq if the new interim authority requested."
Saturday, May 15, 2004
Top Commander in Iraq Bans Several Interrogation Methods (NY Times 05-14-04)
"The American military's top commander in Iraq has banned several methods of interrogating prisoners that are at the heart of the scandal over the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Pentagon officials said today.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters in Washington that the commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, had issued orders that tactics like depriving prisoners of sleep, hooding them for long periods of time or forcing them into "stress positions" to weaken their resistance to interrogation would no longer be allowed.
The deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace of the Marines, acknowledged that taken individually some of the techniques could be interpreted as violations of the Geneva Conventions. Mr. Wolfowitz even allowed that a senator's hypothetical example of a prisoner who was hooded, naked and forced to crouch for 45 minutes "goes quite beyond what is permitted."
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers of the Air Force, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, testified that the American military in Iraq was adhering to the conventions.
Some of the techniques approved by General Sanchez last fall, including sensory deprivation, the use of guard dogs to intimidate prisoners, and stress positions like prolonged periods of standing or crouching, required the general's approval. But officials said on Thursday, and reiterated today, that the general had never approved the use of those tactics at Abu Ghraib.
....
Two photographs, seemingly contradictory in nature, have also become an issue.
Specialist Graner's lawyer, Guy Womack, has said his client was just following orders in Iraq, and today The Wall Street Journal published a photograph showing Specialist Graner, hands on hips, watching as an overweight man in military clothes apparently adjusted a small number of shackled, naked men clutching each other as they lay on the floor of Abu Ghraib.
The photograph, in which numbers have been etched on five men so they can be identified, was supplied to Mr. Womack by Specialist Graner, the lawyer told the newspaper.
Mr. Womack says he was told by Specialist Graner that four of the soldiers in the photograph were from military intelligence and that the man seen adjusting the Iraqis was a civilian under contract to military intelligence.
"Look at that guy — he's too fat to be in the Army," Mr. Womack told The Journal, citing the man adjusting the detainees. "And look at my M.P. — he's not giving orders, he's taking them.""
Editorial - Double Standards (WaPo 05-14-04)
"SEN. JACK REED (D-R.I.) asked two senior Pentagon officials exactly the right question yesterday about the Bush administration's interpretation of the Geneva Conventions. "If you were shown a video of a United States Marine or an American citizen in control of a foreign power, in a cell block, naked with a bag over their head, squatting with their arms uplifted for 45 minutes, would you describe that as a good interrogation technique or a violation of the Geneva Convention?" The answer is obvious, and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, honestly provided it. "I would describe it as a violation," Mr. Pace said. "What you've described to me sounds to me like a violation of the Geneva Convention," Mr. Wolfowitz said.
Case closed -- except that the practices described by Mr. Reed have been designated by the commanding general of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, as available for use on Iraqi detainees, and certified by the Pentagon as legal under the Geneva Conventions. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, they have been systematically applied to prisoners across that country.
Mr. Rumsfeld brushed off those conclusions. "Geneva doesn't say what you do when you get up in the morning," he declared. "Some will say . . . it is mental torture to do something that is inconvenient in a certain way for a detainee, like standing up for a long period . . . someone else might say [it] is not in any way abusive or harmful." "
15 Anomalies Surrounding Death Of Nick Berg (Rense.com 05-14-04)
"Arab linguists have said the man posing as the Jordanian Zaraqawi did not speak with a Jordanian dialect. Others have suggested the man reading the written statement may not have been a native speaker of Arabic.
Zaraqawi was missing one leg and had been outfitted with an artificial leg that did not fit or function properly. He was unable to walk or stand normally with his ill-fitting limb. No man in the group showed evidence of such an infirmity.
Numerous indigenous sources have said Zaraqawi was killed by a US helicopter attack months ago when he was unable to move quickly enough to escape the targeted house. While others managed to exit the house in time to survive, he died in the collapsed building.
As any surgeon will testify, the alleged beheading was a fake. A beheading would result in a tremendous amount of spurting blood. There would have been blood everywhere had an actual beheading taken place. When the executioner holds up Berg's head immediately following what is represented as an actual decapitation of a living person, there is no significant blood flow from the neck or blood splatters showing anywhere on the executioner. Furthermore, the cut was simply too neat to have been done crudely and with such amazing speed by a man wielding a knife. Anybody who has ever carved a turkey knows there is something wrong with the supposed beheading. The suspended head looks more like Berg had been neatly beheaded by a guillotine.
The orange jumpsuit was standard US military issue to men in custody. It is unlikely Berg would have continuing wearing a US custodial uniform if he had been released by the military as they claim. The fact he was still wearing the suit is both anomalous and suggestive. One is forced to speculate as to whether there was an immediate transfer of Berg from the US military to unknown persons, thusly preventing Berg from discarding his US prison garb.
Several of the men in the film were fat by Iraqi standards. If they were Feyadeen or mujahadeen, they probably have been living underground since the first days of the occupation. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been shown on news stories as they have marched and demonstrated. One would be hard pressed to point out a single fat man among these thousands.
Some men had what can only be described as pasty-white hands. Once again, one would be hard pressed to find Arab men with pasty-white hands.
The lack of spurting blood suggests Berg was already dead at the time of the alleged decapitation. It is possible Berg's dead body was displayed with his head already partially or totally severed. In any case, he almost certainly was killed before the staged beheading. If so, it suggests the captors had no stomach for an actual beheading of a living person, and they opted to fulfill their assignment quietly and with the least amount of gore.
The scream that is heard has been interpreted as a woman's scream by many viewers. Videotape cognoscenti have further said the scream was amateurishly added to the tape.
The U.S. government translation of one statement made on the film is: "Does al Qaeda need any further excuses?" This is a falsification. The actual statement urged fellow insurgents to get off their hind ends and do something. One assumes the translator being used by the US military is a native speaker of Arabic, so this cannot be explained as an innocent flub. This suggests the US government wanted to inject an alleged al- Qaeda group into the murder of Nick Berg.
Iraqis who have seen the videotape on Arabic news broadcasts are universally saying the men in the film are not Iraqis. Are they saying this partly because the speaker does not employ an Iraqi dialect? Where does their certainty come from?
Firearms experts have stated the AK-47 carried by one man was a "Gilal." This actually is an Israeli-made weapon that improves on the famous AK- 47. Feyadeen and other insurgents almost universally use AK-47s.
The man in the videotape who is purported to be Zarqawi is wearing a gold ring. This is absolutely proscribed by Islamic law.
The US military has stated that Berg was never in US custody and that he had been in custody of the Iraqi police. The Iraqi police adamantly deny he was ever in their custody. On April 1, an e-mail from Beth A. Payne, the U.S. consular officer in Iraq, was sent to the family of Nick Berg. It stated that Ms. Payne had located Nick, and he was currently in custody of the US military. We have to conclude that either the email was bogus or the US military has been lying.
The chair that Berg was seated in during the filming was a standard issue military chair of the exact same kind as seen in a color photo taken at the Abu Ghraib Prison. The chances a terrorist cell would be using this same chair are minimal at best."
Friday, May 14, 2004
Rice gaffe at dinner has tongues wagging (Houston Chronicle 04-25-04)
"There's continuing buzz over a comment national security adviser Condoleezza Rice made at what was apparently an off-the-record Washington power dinner with New York Times Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. and other Times people at the home of Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman.
Rice, according to an account in this week's New York magazine, at one point said: "As I was telling my husb ... " then stopped and said, "As I was telling President Bush. ... "
Eyebrows jumped; jaws dropped. There was a slight pause in the chatter. Some speculate she may have a husband hidden somewhere or in her past.
Meanwhile, Taubman is said to be much put out over the publicity and has ordered everyone to clam up."
Condi's Slip (NewYork Metro 04-26-04)
"Political Conversation: Condi’s Slip
A pressing issue of dinner-party etiquette is vexing Washington, according to a story now making the D.C. rounds: How should you react when your guest, in this case national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, makes a poignant faux pas? At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, “As I was telling my husb—” and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, “As I was telling President Bush.” Jaws dropped, but a guest says the slip by the unmarried politician, who spends weekends with the president and his wife, seemed more psychologically telling than incriminating. Nobody thinks Bush and Rice are actually an item. A National Security Council spokesman laughed and said, “No comment.”"
Hastert rips White House (The Hill 05-13-04)
"Republicans on the Hill are so frustrated with the White House that when Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) criticized the administration at a House GOP meeting last week, the caucus burst into applause.
The meeting was only the latest sign in an accumulating body of evidence that lawmakers are unhappy with the way the administration treats them.
One GOP lawmaker at the caucus meeting said Hastert “expressed outright dismay with the White House staff for the way the transportation bill had been handled. They did not give the priority necessary to the issue in resolving it as the Speaker had wanted. It’s in absolute limbo.”"
LEASH GAL'S SEX PIX ( 05-13-04 New York Post)
"Shocking shots of sexcapades involving Pfc. Lynndie England were among the hundreds of X-rated photos and videos from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal shown to lawmakers in a top-secret Capitol conference room yesterday.
"She was having sex with numerous partners. It appeared to be consensual," said a lawmaker who saw the photos.
And, videos showed the disgraced soldier - made notorious in a photo showing her holding a leash looped around an Iraqi prisoner's neck - engaged in graphic sex acts with other soldiers in front of Iraqi prisoners, Pentagon officials told NBC Nightly News. "
Diplomat's E-Mails Show Berg in Custody (WJLA 05-13-04)
"Family members provided e-mails Thursday that say Nicholas Berg was held by the U.S. military before he was kidnapped and beheaded, but the government contends the messages were based on erroneous information.
Berg's family has called on the U.S. government to tell all it knows about its contacts with the 26-year-old businessman in the weeks before his body was found last weekend in Baghdad and a gruesome video that showed his beheading was posted on the Internet.
To back its claims that Berg was in U.S. custody, the family on Thursday gave The Associated Press copies of e-mails from Beth A. Payne, the U.S. consular officer in Iraq.
"I have confirmed that your son, Nick, is being detained by the U.S. military in Mosul. He is safe. He was picked up approximately one week ago. We will try to obtain additional information regarding his detention and a contact person you can communicate with directly," Payne wrote to Berg's father, Michael, on April 1. "
Transcript of Live From (CNN 05-12-04)
"O'BRIEN: Well, let me ask you this. You've had a chance to really listen to this tape and get a sense who might be responsible, just by deciphering, say, accents. And certainly, there in the Arab world, they're very attuned to that. And given the fact of who this may or may not be, does that have some effect on how it is being played?
NASR: Yes, and if you listen to these voices that we're hearing on Arab networks, Iraqis are condemning this execution. And they're saying these are foreigners. These are not Iraqis. They do not represent us and so forth.
Now, of course, the original claim was that Zarqawi is the actual man who performed this execution. Our experts listened to the accent, as you said, and they determined the accent is not Jordanian...
O'BRIEN: He is a Jordanian who is working supposedly, allegedly, at the behest of al Qaeda in Iraq. So go ahead.
NASR: Right, he is very close to bin Laden, and works, you're right, as an agent of al Qaeda in Iraq. Now, the accent is not Jordanian so that takes the Jordanian element out of the story immediately.
O'BRIEN: Interesting. All right, now one final thought here. You did a very careful translation of your own, of the statement. And in it, you see no reference to al Qaeda. And yet the official U.S. government translation does. Explain how that happened.
NASR: Oh, I find it very interesting, because out of the blue, there is a mention of al Qaeda on the U.S. government translation. It says: "Does al Qaeda need any further excuses?" Any speaker of the Arabic language is going to notice a difference between the word al Qaeda, which means "the base," and al qaed, which means "the one sitting, doing nothing."
My translation says: "Is there any excuse for the one who sits down and does nothing?" Basically they're telling people, you have no excuse for not doing anything, for not acting and defending Islam and so forth. Whereas the U.S. government translation has this factual error, I'm sure it's an honest mistake, but basically it sort of adds al Qaeda to the statement, which is not on the statement. "
Thursday, May 13, 2004
General Who Made Anti-Islam Remark Tied to POW Case PG1 (Reuters 05-11-04)
General Who Made Anti-Islam Remark Tied to POW Case PG2 (Reuters 05-11-04)
"The U.S. Army general under investigation for anti-Islamic remarks has been linked by U.S. officials to the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, which experts warned could touch off new outrage overseas.
A Senate hearing into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was told on Tuesday that Lt. Gen. William Boykin, an evangelical Christian under review for saying his God was superior to that of the Muslims, briefed a top Pentagon civilian official last summer on recommendations on ways military interrogators could gain more intelligence from Iraqi prisoners.
Critics have suggested those recommendations amounted to a senior-level go-ahead for the sexual and physical abuse of prisoners, possibly to "soften up" detainees before interrogation -- a charge the Pentagon denies.
Boykin touched off a firestorm last October after giving speeches while in uniform in which he referred to the war on terrorism as a battle with "Satan" and said America had been targeted "because we're a Christian nation." He said later he was not anti-Islam or any other religion."
Rumsfeld approved 'harsh' interrogation (The Age 05-13-04)
"US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved the use of "harsh" interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay, including stripping detainees naked, making them hold "stress" positions and depriving them of sleep, a Pentagon official has confirmed.
Stephen Cambone, the under-secretary of defence for intelligence, also said severe interrogation techniques, including the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners, had been approved by military commanders in Iraq.
Revealing the interrogation methods allowed in Iraq, the Senate Armed Services Committee released a single page titled "Interrogation Rules of Engagement", listing two categories of measures.
The first showed basic techniques approved for all detainees, while the second involved tougher measures that required approval by Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US forces in Iraq. Among the items on the second list were stress positions for up to 45 minutes, sleep deprivation for up to 72 hours and use of muzzled dogs. "
Congressmen Describe Pornographic and Violent Images (AP via TBO 05-12-04)
"Members of Congress saw classified images of Iraqi prisoner abuse Wednesday. Some of their descriptions of the photos and videos they saw:
- A clothed man beating himself against a wall as though to knock himself unconscious. "I saw cruel, sadistic torture," said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif.
- A prisoner apparently sodomizing himself with a foreign object. "There were certain wounds," said Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz. "I didn't see anyone inflicting wounds but it was certainly implied that they were inflicted."
- More than seven soldiers standing in a hallway with a clump of people tied together on the floor. "You can't tell me all of this is going on with seven or eight Army privates," said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.
- Pornographic images involving prisoners. "It was hard to tell what orifice you were looking at in the pictures I saw," said Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla.
- Dogs snarling at prisoners and women being forced to disrobe. "I don't know how the hell these people got into our army," said Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo.
- People in body bags and a person with a disfigured face, although apparently no images of violence being done to those people. "It's hard to believe that these injuries or pictures that you see would have occurred without violence," said Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.
- "People were, I believe, forced to smash heads against doors until their heads broke open. There were people who were forced to have sex with each other," said Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y.
- U.S. soldiers engaged in "pornographic" acts with each other. "It certainly was so far unbecoming of what we expect from American soldiers. It's so terribly disappointing," said Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn.
- A dead prisoner and others with several cuts on their bodies. "We have no clue if that was inside the prison or in a battleground. There is no context to a lot of these pictures," said Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio. "
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
A 'clear ... system failure' (CS Monitor 05-10-04)
"New photos, videos, and Red Cross report show Iraqi prisoner abuse was widespread.
The United States military has told Congress it will see other graphic photos and videos of violent abuse of Iraqi prisoners this week, as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal spreads into its third week of constant media coverage. And a previously confidential Red Cross report published by the Wall Street Journal Monday shows that the abuse in the prison system spread far beyond six individuals and cites abuses -- – "tantamount to torture" – including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of "imminent execution." The report also shows that 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake.
Also an investigation by Newsweek shows how widespread that abuse is across the US military prison system – and not just in Iraq – and that many in the US military are trying to pass the buck when it comes to who was responsible for the abuse. "
Boy, 16, 'was subjected to mock execution by US interrogators' (Independent UK 05-10-04)
"American soldiers subjected a 16-year-old Iraqi prisoner to a mock execution inside an American detention centre and made his brothers watch, one of the brothers alleged yesterday.
Husam Mahawish told The Independent he was forced to watch as an American soldier put a handgun to his younger brother Mohammed's forehead and pulled the trigger. "I thought he was going to kill Mohammed," Mr Mahawish said. "But instead there was a click. There was no bullet."
Mr Mahawish, claims he and his three brothers were beaten, given electric shocks, forced to stand under cold water and forced to kneel for hours on end under American interrogation. They were questioned about their father, Abed Hamad, but they did not know he had given himself up to US forces three days after they were captured. After the torture came five months of detention without charge. When they were released in March, the brothers discovered their father's body had been delivered to the local hospital by US soldiers. They claim it showed signs of torture"
Stress and duress PG1 (Salon 05-06-04)
Stress and duress PG2 (Salon 05-06-04)
Stress and duress PG3 (Salon 05-06-04)
Stress and duress PG4 (Salon 05-06-04)
"When he first saw the photographs of Iraqi prisoners suffering abuse at the hands of American soldiers, Kenneth Roth was shocked but not surprised. Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch, a U.S.-based human rights organization. In March -- a month before CBS News and the New Yorker revealed details of abuses by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- HRW issued a report alleging that U.S. troops had engaged in the similar mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan.
The White House and the Pentagon have tried to portray the incidents of abuse in Iraq as isolated episodes, the work of a few misguided soldiers and officers. In an interview aimed at Arab television viewers on Wednesday, President Bush explained that, in a democracy, "everything is not perfect" and "mistakes are made."
But Roth and other human rights activists see a pattern here, and they say it's not an accidental one. Roth says the abuses in Iraq are part of a "systemic problem" that arises from the U.S. government's approval of "stress and duress" interrogation techniques and its failure to crack down on soldiers and intelligence officers who go too far.
Salon spoke with Roth by telephone Wednesday.
SALON: What is the appropriate way to interrogate detainees? There are those who would say, "These people destroyed the World Trade Center" -- putting aside, for the moment, that these aren't those people -- "and there's nothing we could do that would be too harsh if it will prevent another attack."
International law and domestic law are absolutely clear: You can never torture a detainee regardless of the circumstances, even in the midst of a war. Similarly, you can never engage in cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment or punishment ... My fear is that the military has clearly gone over the line. Our understanding is that the military has adopted a 72-point matrix of different forms of stress that can be imposed upon a detainee as part of "stress and duress" interrogation techniques...
I haven't seen the matrix. But we understand it to describe different kinds of stress that can be put on a detainee -- how much sleep deprivation, how much sensory deprivation, how much sensory overload, what kind of handcuffing you can use -- a variety of different ways of putting pressure on a detainee to try to force him or her to cooperate with an interrogator. Obviously, while there is always some pressure inherent in being questioned or detained, this idea of ratcheting up the pain in various ways is a dangerous process that, I fear, almost inevitably will bring the U.S. government over the line into the area of prohibited cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment or punishment.
SALON: Last June, President Bush issued a statement in which he vowed that the United States would lead the way in the "worldwide elimination of torture." Has the president done enough to try to prevent the sort of abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib, or has he created a culture that encouraged them?
There has been a culture of permissiveness with respect to interrogations that goes all the way to the top, including to Donald Rumsfeld. You see it first of all at Guantánamo, where the Bush administration basically ripped up the Geneva Conventions -- simply refused to apply absolutely straightforward provisions of the Geneva Convention with respect to who is a prisoner of war, what kind of hearing are they entitled to, things that were followed in other wars with enemies who were comparably hated.
The Bush administration just refused to apply these straightforward provisions. That automatically sends a signal that international law is not going to bind the United States in fighting its war on terrorism.
Second, [the administration has been slow to act] even in cases where there clearly has been abuse in the interrogation process. For example, in the cases of the two people who died in U.S. custody at Bagram Air Base about two years ago now, who were declared by the U.S. military [medical] examiner to be cases of homicide, still to this day there is no public accounting of what happened to the people who were responsible for those homicides. "
Lessons of a by-the-Book Soldier PG1 (Washington Post 05-12-04)
Lessons of a by-the-Book Soldier PG2 (Washington Post 05-12-04)
"Forthright, terse, direct, Taguba turned out to be a by-the-book soldier worthy of central casting. The man sent to investigate the warped doings at Abu Ghraib appeared to be the straightest arrow imaginable. He didn't just nod to Army rules and regulations; he seemed to have memorized every page of every manual.
Early in Taguba's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) asked him: "Why do you believe that there should be a separation between the military police and intelligence officers?"
He answered: "Army regulation 190-8, which is a multiservice regulation, establishes the policy in executive agency for detention operations. And there enumerates in paragraph 1-5 the general policy and the treatment of not just [prisoners of war] but civilian internees, retained personnel and other detainees. . . . We also used the M.P.s' doctrine on detention operations, which is Field Manual 3-19.40. And we further referred to . . . Field Manual 3452."
In their hunt for the facts about what happened at Abu Ghraib and why, the senators have heard many half-answers, nonresponses and promises to get back to them. Committee Chairman Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) tried to pin down Stephen Cambone, a senior Pentagon civilian in charge of military intelligence, by asking, "In simple and plain words, how do you think this happened?"
Cambone's answer: "With the caveat, sir, that I don't know the facts, it's, for me, hard to explain."
Warner put the same question to Taguba. "In simple words -- your own soldier's language -- how did this happen?"
Taguba's answer: "Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down. Lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant. Those are my comments." "
The Psychology of Torture PG1 (Washington Post 05-11-04)
The Psychology of Torture PG2 (Washington Post 05-11-04)
""When torture takes place, people believe they are on the high moral ground, that the nation is under threat and they are the front line protecting the nation, and people will be grateful for what they are doing," said John Conroy, author of "Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People," which examined torture in several settings.
What happened at Abu Ghraib, Conroy and other experts said, probably grew out of a shift in American priorities after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: the subordination of human rights to victory in the war against terrorism.
"Since 9/11, the Defense Department has openly adopted stress and duress techniques," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "We have learned from the Army that there is a 72-point matrix of stress that the Pentagon has adopted to guide interrogators. It outlines different forms of coercion that can be applied. It includes everything from different amounts of sleep deprivation and sensory deprivation, to sensory overload, stripping, hooding, binding detainees in various positions -- essentially everything we have seen in these pictures short of the sexual humiliation."
The Bush administration has said U.S. forces do not use torture. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has called the abusers "un-American" and asserted that the guards were acting on their own. But according to the military investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib, guards said they were told to prepare Iraqis for interrogation, and military intelligence personnel commended the abusers for making detainees compliant.
One witness told a military investigation that interrogators had asked guards to "loosen this guy up for us." Another said the abuse was "to get these people to talk." A third said that male detainees "were made to wear female underwear, which I think was to somehow break them down."
Christopher Browning, a historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland," said that although there are obvious differences between the abuses at Abu Ghraib and during the Holocaust, there are similarities.
"Our government from the top has sent innumerable signals that placed combating the 'war on terror' above any concern for the Geneva convention," he said by e-mail, adding that "the chickens have come home to roost."
The abuses at Abu Ghraib were similar to abuses in many other conflicts, said Conroy, author of an examination of torture in the Israeli-Palestinian and Northern Ireland conflicts and in the Chicago Police Department.
After the Israeli government gave permission to use torture in "ticking bomb" scenarios, the technique became widely applied to large numbers of Palestinian prisoners. Conroy said that the problem is that investigators rarely know who has valuable information.
But even on its own terms, Conroy said, torture may cost more lives than it saves. After the British used torture against a dozen Irish Republican Army prisoners in 1971, Conroy said, the news caused widespread anger.
"People started walking through the doors of the IRA begging to join," he said. "In the year after the torture was exposed, the number of deaths rose by 268 percent." "
Monday, May 10, 2004
Pentagon Was Warned of Abuse Months Ago PG1 (Washington Post 05-08-04)
Pentagon Was Warned of Abuse Months Ago PG2 (Washington Post 05-08-04)
"Months before Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld publicly acknowledged the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers, top U.S. officials and several international human rights organizations repeatedly warned the Defense Department to halt the mistreatment of detainees.
From U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to investigators for the International Committee of the Red Cross, a broad array of officials pressed the Pentagon to improve conditions or face a likely Iraqi backlash, officials from the government and the organizations said yesterday.
Amnesty International sounded an alarm at a Baghdad news conference in May 2003, only one month after the Iraqi capital fell to U.S.-led troops. Three months later, Bremer pressed the military to improve conditions and later made the issue a regular talking point in discussions with Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, said U.S. officials familiar with the discussions, speaking on the condition of anonymity."
Red Cross Was Told Iraq Abuse 'Part of the Process' PG1 (Reuters 05-10-04)
Red Cross Was Told Iraq Abuse 'Part of the Process' PG2 (Reuters 05-10-04)
"The Red Cross saw U.S. troops keeping Iraqi prisoners naked for days in darkness at the Abu Ghraib jail in October, and was told by the intelligence officer in charge it was "part of the process," a leaked report said on Monday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross also described British troops forcing Iraqi detainees to kneel and stomping on their necks in an incident in which one prisoner died.
The Red Cross said it had repeatedly alerted U.S.-led occupation authorities to practices it described as "serious violations of international humanitarian law" and "in some cases tantamount to torture."
It confirmed the confidential February 4 report, which appeared on the Wall Street Journal Web Site Monday, was genuine.
The 24-page report concluded that "persons deprived of their liberty face the risk of being subjected to a process of physical and psychological coercion, in some cases tantamount to torture, in the early stages of the internment process."
During a visit to Abu Ghraib in October, Red Cross delegates witnessed "the practice of keeping persons deprived of their liberty completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness," the report said.
"Upon witnessing such cases, the ICRC interrupted its visits and requested an explanation from the authorities. The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was 'part of the process'." "
Red Cross Report Describes Systematic U.S. Abuse in Iraq (AP via TBO 05-10-04)
"The international Red Cross saw U.S. military intelligence officers routinely mistreating prisoners under interrogation during a visit to Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison last October, according to a report by the agency disclosed Monday.
President Bush said the mistreatment "was the wrongdoing of a few," but the report by the International Committee of the Red Cross offers details to support the agency's contention that U.S. prisoner abuse was broad and part of a system, "not individual acts." "
CHAIN OF COMMAND (The New Yorker 05-09-04)
More from Symour Hersh
"Other photographs show the dogs straining at their leashes and snarling at the prisoner. In another, taken a few minutes later, the Iraqi is lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a soldier sitting on top of him, knee pressed to his back. Blood is streaming from the inmate’s leg. Another photograph is a closeup of the naked prisoner, from his waist to his ankles, lying on the floor. On his right thigh is what appears to be a bite or a deep scratch. There is another, larger wound on his left leg, covered in blood.
The International Red Cross and human-rights groups have repeatedly complained during the past year about the American military’s treatment of Iraqi prisoners, with little success. In one case, disclosed last month by the Denver Post, three Army soldiers from a military-intelligence battalion were accused of assaulting a female Iraqi inmate at Abu Ghraib. After an administrative review, the three were fined “at least five hundred dollars and demoted in rank,” the newspaper said.
On January 16th, three days after the Army received the pictures, Central Command issued a blandly worded, five-sentence press release about an investigation into the mistreatment of prisoners. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said last week that it was then that he learned of the allegations. At some point soon afterward, Rumsfeld informed President Bush. On January 19th, Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the officer in charge of American forces in Iraq, ordered a secret investigation into Abu Ghraib. Two weeks later, General Taguba was ordered to conduct his inquiry. He submitted his report on February 26th. By then, according to testimony before the Senate last week by General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, people “inside our building” had discussed the photographs. Myers, by his own account, had still not read the Taguba report or seen the photographs, yet he knew enough about the abuses to persuade “60 Minutes II” to delay its story.
NBC News later quoted U.S. military officials as saying that the unreleased photographs showed American soldiers “severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi prisoner, and ‘acting inappropriately with a dead body.’ The officials said there also was a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.”"
Military Personnel Don't Read This! (Time 05-08-04)
"It's not exactly every day that the Pentagon warns military personnel to stay away from Fox News. But that's exactly what some hopeful soul at the Department of Defense instructed, in a memo intended to forbid Pentagon staff reading a copy of the Taguba report detailing abuse of detainees at prisons in Iraq that had been posted at the Fox News web site. "
The Pentagon Email Itself
"Fox News and other media outlets are distributing the Tugabe report (spelling is approximate for reasons which will become obvious momentarily). Someone has given the news media classified information and they are distributing it. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED. ALL ISD CUSTOMERS SHOULD:
1) NOT GO TO FOX NEWS TO READ OR OBTAIN A COPY
2) NOT comment on this to anyone, friends, family etc.
3) NOT delete the file if you receive it via e-mail, but
4) CALL THE ISD HELPDESK AT 602-2627 IMMEDIATELY "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11227-2004May8?language=printer
"Deep divisions are emerging at the top of the U.S. military over the course of the occupation of Iraq, with some senior officers beginning to say that the United States faces the prospect of casualties for years without achieving its goal of establishing a free and democratic Iraq.
Their major worry is that the United States is prevailing militarily but failing to win the support of the Iraqi people. That view is far from universal, but it is spreading and being voiced publicly for the first time.
Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who spent much of the year in western Iraq, said he believes that at the tactical level at which fighting occurs, the U.S. military is still winning. But when asked whether he believes the United States is losing, he said, "I think strategically, we are."
Army Col. Paul Hughes, who last year was the first director of strategic planning for the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad, said he agrees with that view and noted that a pattern of winning battles while losing a war characterized the U.S. failure in Vietnam. "Unless we ensure that we have coherency in our policy, we will lose strategically," he said in an interview Friday.
A senior general at the Pentagon said he believes the United States is already on the road to defeat. "It is doubtful we can go on much longer like this," he said. "The American people may not stand for it -- and they should not."
Asked who was to blame, this general pointed directly at Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. "I do not believe we had a clearly defined war strategy, end state and exit strategy before we commenced our invasion," he said. "Had someone like Colin Powell been the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], he would not have agreed to send troops without a clear exit strategy. The current OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] refused to listen or adhere to military advice."
Jeff Smith, a former general counsel of the CIA who has close ties to many senior officers, said, "Some of my friends in the military are exceedingly angry." In the Army, he said, "It's pretty bitter."
Retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, a frequent Pentagon consultant, said, "The people in the military are mad as hell." He said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, should be fired. A spokesman for Myers declined to comment.
A Special Forces officer aimed higher, saying that "Rumsfeld needs to go, as does Wolfowitz.""
FBI investigates underground tunnel requests PG1 (Daily Texan 05-06-04)
FBI investigates underground tunnel requests PG2 (Daily Texan 05-06-04)
FBI investigates underground tunnel requests PG3 (Daily Texan 05-06-04)
"Then, the call. A number and a voice he didn't know.
"Hey Mark, we're at your dorm," the voice said. "We want to talk with you."
"Who are you?" asked Miller, a physics freshman.
"Law enforcement."
Two men met him in the hotel lobby and flashed badges: FBI. Secret Service. The questions began.
"Do you belong to any student activist organizations?"
"Have you ever thought of joining any student activist organizations, like UT Watch?"
He wasn't an activist. Nor a suspect or the messenger of a bomb threat, for that matter.
What interested the agents, from Austin's Joint Terrorism Task Force, was an open records request he filed with UT administrators for information about the underground campus tunnel system.
"The question is how did the FOI act request get from [Miller] to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and how did the Joint Terrorism Task Force find out about it?" said Edna Perry, special agent-in-charge of the Austin Secret Service office"
US military confirms existence of horrific pictures and video (Independent UK 05-09-04)
"The Bush administration was bracing itself last night for the release of new pictures and video footage from Abu Ghraib which show US soldiers having sex with an Iraqi woman prisoner, troops almost beating a prisoner to death, and the rape of young boys by Iraqi guards at the jail.
NBC also reported that the rape of young boys by Iraqi guards, apparently in a special section of the prison, had been filmed by US soldiers.
There are even suggestions that the murder of a prisoner has been recorded. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina questioned Mr Rumsfeld on Friday about why the abuse had not been detected earlier. "The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience.""
Soldiers' warnings ignored (Baltimore Sun 05-09-04)
"The two military intelligence soldiers, assigned interrogation duties at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, were young, relatively new to the Army and had only one day of training on how to pry information from high-value prisoners.
But almost immediately on their arrival in Iraq, say the two members of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, they recognized that what was happening around them was wrong, morally and legally.
They said in interviews Friday and yesterday that the abuses were not caused by a handful of rogue soldiers poorly supervised and lacking morals but resulted from failures that went beyond the low-ranking military police charged with abuse.
The beatings, the two soldiers said, were meted out with the full knowledge of intelligence interrogators, who let military police know which prisoners were cooperating with them and which were not.
"I was told, 'Don't worry about it - they probably deserved it,'" one of the soldiers said in an interview, referring to complaints he made while trying to persuade the Army to investigate.
"I don't know where they got this from, but the MPs would say it all the time," one of the soldiers said. "MI would drop off a guy who wasn't talking, and the MP would say, 'So looks like I'll be going cowboy on him' or 'Looks like he needs some wild, wild west.'"
The terms meant beatings, they said, and the military intelligence interrogators and private contractors did nothing to discourage them."
The Price of Arrogance (Newsweek 05-17-04)
"I take full responsibility," said Donald Rumsfeld in his congressional testimony last week. But what does this mean? Secretary Rumsfeld hastened to add that he did not plan to resign and was not going to ask anyone else who might have been "responsible" to resign. As far as I can tell, taking responsibility these days means nothing more than saying the magic words "I take responsibility."
After the greatest terrorist attack against America, no one was asked to resign, and the White House didn't even want to launch a serious investigation into it. The 9/11 Commission was created after months of refusals because some of the victims' families pursued it aggressively and simply didn't give up. After the fiasco over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, not one person was even reassigned. The only people who have been fired or cashiered in this administration are men like Gen. Eric Shinseki, Paul O'Neill and Larry Lindsey, who spoke inconvenient truths.
Within weeks after September 11, senior officials at the Pentagon and the White House began the drive to maximize American freedom of action. They attacked specifically the Geneva Conventions, which govern behavior during wartime. Donald Rumsfeld explained that the conventions did not apply to today's "set of facts." He and his top aides have tried persistently to keep prisoners out of the reach of either American courts or international law, presumably so that they can be handled without those pettifogging rules as barriers. Rumsfeld initially fought both the uniformed military and Colin Powell, who urged that prisoners in Guantanamo be accorded rights under the conventions. Eventually he gave in on the matter but continued to suggest that the protocols were antiquated. Last week he said again that the Geneva Conventions did not "precisely apply" and were simply basic rules.
The conventions are not exactly optional. They are the law of the land, signed by the president and ratified by Congress. Rumsfeld's concern—that Al Qaeda members do not wear uniforms and are thus "unlawful combatants"—is understandable, but that is a determination that a military court would have to make. In a war that could go on for decades, you cannot simply arrest and detain people indefinitely on the say-so of the secretary of Defense."
Friday, May 07, 2004
Details emerge of past cases (Houston Chron 05-07-04)
"Before many of the notorious photos of Iraqi prisoners being abused by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison were taken, U.S. military officials were investigating accusations of abuse by eight Marine reservists at a detention facility outside Nasiriya, including a case in which one prisoner died.
The Whitehorse detention case is among several dozen cases of potential abuse of prisoners by American personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan investigated by the military dating back to December 2002. Criminal charges have been filed in only a handful of the incidents so far, and some of the accused faced no punishment beyond demotion, discharge or sacrifice of pay, according to available reports and public records. "
Rumsfeld to blame for prison abuses (Toronto Star 05-07-04)
"Beginning more than two years ago, Rumsfeld decided to overturn decades of previous practice by the U.S. military in its handling of detainees in foreign countries. His Pentagon ruled that the U.S. would no longer be bound by the Geneva Conventions; that army regulations on the interrogation of prisoners would not be observed; and that many detainees would be held incommunicado and without any independent mechanism of review.
The lawlessness began in January, 2002 when Rumsfeld publicly declared that hundreds of people detained by U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan "do not have any rights" under the Geneva Conventions. That was not the case: At a minimum, all those arrested in the war zone were entitled under the conventions to a formal hearing to determine whether they were prisoners of war or unlawful combatants. No such hearings were held, but then Rumsfeld made clear that U.S. observance of the conventions was now optional. Prisoners, he said, would be treated "for the most part" in "a manner that is reasonably consistent" with the conventions — which, the secretary suggested, was outdated. "
Partial Transcript - O'reilly - Inside Iraq's Abu Ghraib Prison (FoxNews 05-04-04)
"it's going to get much worse. This kind of stuff was much more widespread. I can tell you just from the phone calls I've had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn't want to mention on national television that was done. There was a lot of problems.
There was a special women's section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It's much worse. And the Maj. Gen. Taguba was very tough about it. He said this place was riddled with violent, awful actions against prisoners.
O'REILLY: I'm going to dispute your contention that we had a lot of people in there with just no rap sheets at all, who were just picked up for no reason at all. The people who were in the prison were suspected of being either Al Qaeda or terrorists who were killing Americans and knew something about it.
HERSH: The problem is that it isn't my contention. It's the contention of Maj. Gen. Taguba, who was appointed by General Sanchez to do the investigation.
It's his contention, in his report, that more than 60 percent of the people in that prison, detainees, civilians, had nothing to do with the war effort.
O'REILLY: How did they get there then? Because I...
HERSH: Because how do they get into the prison?
I'll tell you how they get there. You bust the guy that doesn't have anything to do. You humiliate him. You break him down. You interrogate him. He gives up the name of you want to know who is an insurgent, who is Al Qaeda? He gives up any name he knows. "
FAA Managers Destroyed 9-11 Tape (Washington Post 05-06-04)
"Six air traffic controllers provided accounts of their communications with hijacked planes on Sept. 11, 2001, on a tape recording that was later destroyed by Federal Aviation Administration managers, according to a government investigative report issued today.
The report was conducted at the request of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) after the panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, officially known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, complained that the FAA had been less than forthcoming in turning over documents and issued a subpoena to the agency for more information.
the second manager said he destroyed the tape between December 2001 and January 2002 by crushing the tape with his hand, cutting it into small pieces and depositing the pieces into trash cans around the building, the report said.
The tape's existence was never made known to federal officials investigating the attack, nor to FAA officials in Washington. Staff members of the 9/11 panel found out about the tape during interviews with some controllers who participated in the recording."
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Rush Limbaugh about Iraqi prison abuse (Media Matters 05-04-04)
"CALLER: It was like a college fraternity prank that stacked up naked men --
LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off? "
MP3 file of Rush broadcast (05-04-04).mp3
Policing Iraq - How to stay in--without staying the course (Slate 05-04-04)
"The Joint Chiefs of Staff persuaded CBS to withhold the story about prison torture for two weeks. (CBS went with the story, finally, when it was clear Seymour Hersh was about to publish similar findings in The New Yorker.) Yet even now, Gen. Richard Myers, the Joint Chiefs' chairman, maintains that he has not yet read the 53-page report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, which served as Hersh's main source. Myers says the report is still coming up the chain of command. Bush says the same. "
Transcript from Jim Lehrer NewsHour - Iraqi Prisoner Abuse (05-04-04)
"MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC News: General Myers said on Sunday that he had not seen the report. I don't believe you had seen the report even if -- I don't know if you have now. Isn't this something you would have liked to have been flagged about?
DONALD RUMSFELD: It's, I guess the way to put it is that the department has been aware of it since it was first noticed, and up the chain of command we're told that there were investigations into alleged abuses as long ago as last Jan. 16. It takes time for reports to be finished -- correction: to be gathered. This is a very comprehensive report. I mean, the fact of the matter is that this is a serious problem. And it's something that the department is addressing.
The system works. The system works. "
Rape Rooms A Chronology - What Bush said as the Iraq prison scandal unfolded (Slate 05-05-04)
"Rape Rooms: A Chronology
What Bush said as the Iraq prison scandal unfolded.
"Iraq is free of rape rooms and torture chambers."—President Bush, remarks to 2003 Republican National Committee Presidential Gala, Oct. 8, 2003
"One thing is for certain: There won't be any more mass graves and torture rooms and rape rooms."—Bush, press availability in Monterrey, Mexico, Jan. 12, 2004
etc etc etc etc"
Bush doesn't lead - he gives appearance of leading (The Hill 05-06-04)
"When a reporter noted that Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said only the day before that he hadn’t read the report, the president responded: “Well, if Myers didn’t know about it, I didn’t know about it. In other words, he’s part of the chain — actually, he’s not in the chain of command, but he’s a high-ranking official. We’ll find out.”
On Tuesday, another reporter gave it another try, in the following exchange with White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan:
Reporter: Has the president read the Taguba report yet? I mean, it’s all over the media; everybody else seems to have read it.
McClellan: Is this the one that General Myers was asked about?
Reporter: The one The New Yorker wrote about, and that the New York —
McClellan: No."
Army tightly guarded pictures of prison abuse (Baltimore Sun 05-06-04)
"Bush unaware of photos until broadcast on TV
From the beginning, the concern was about the photographs.
Spc. Joseph M. Darby, a 24-year-old Army Reserve soldier with the 372nd Military Police Company of Cresaptown, Md., heard about the computerized photos and video of the detainees, naked and in humiliating poses, with his fellow soldiers smiling nearby.
He got a set of the photos on a computer disk, said an Army official familiar with the investigation. Troubled by the images that flashed on the screen Jan. 13, Darby turned them over to a sergeant in his unit, who immediately notified Army criminal investigators.
Within hours, the investigators seized computers and disks from members of the unit. The next day, Gen. John Abizaid, commander of all U.S. forces in the region, was on the phone to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld."
Whiskey Bar An Iraq Prison Diary (billmon.org 05-02-04)
"Bernhard, a Whiskey Bar reader in Germany, has made a spectacular catch - or cache, I should say, since it comes from the bowels of the Google data base.
What he stumbled across is the diary of one Joe Ryan, a frequent caller and on-air personality at station KSTP, a conservative talk radio station in Minneapolis. More recently, Joe has been serving as a military interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and KSTP has been posting his diary on their web site.
For some strange reason, though, the radio station recently removed Joe's diary from its site.
The diary is a fascinating read - not least because it documents the fact that as of last Sunday, one of the private contractors identified in the Army's own internal investigation of the torture scandal was still at Abu Ghraib, and may still have been supervising or conducting interrogations."
Google Cache of Joe Ryan Iraq Diary (KSTP AM 04-26-04)
""
PDF Investigation of Iraqi Prison Abuse - prison_abuse_report.pdf
""
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Sept 11 Commission Quotes (Guardian UK 04-29-04)
"Some of the reaction to Thursday's appearance by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney before the Sept. 11 commission:
``We discussed a lot of things, a lot of subjects. And it was a very cordial conversation. I was impressed by the questions. I think it helped them understand how I think and how I run the White House and how we deal with threats.'' -President Bush. "
Correction-Amplification Regarding Dover Casket Photos (Memory Hole 05-xx-04)
"Among the 361 Dover casket photos are a minority of images showing coffins of the Columbia astronauts. [Read more.] I didn't realize this at the time that I posted them, mainly because when the Air Force asked for clarification during the process, I specifically told them that I wasn't requesting photos of the Columbia astronauts, only military personnel killed overseas. "
Air Force Letter (Memory Hole 05-xx-04)
"Below is the cover letter that the Air Force sent with the CD containing the now-famous Dover coffin photos. When the story became so huge, I decided that I would post it. A lot of people have asked me about this letter, particularly whether the Air Force explained why it reversed its original decision to deny release. Other people are under the misapprehension that the Pentagon released these photos, when actually it was the Air Force."
Sunday, May 02, 2004
Officer Suggests Iraq Jail Abuse Was Encouraged PT1 (NY Times 05-02-04)
Officer Suggests Iraq Jail Abuse Was Encouraged PT2 (NY Times 05-02-04)
"An Army Reserve general whose soldiers were photographed as they abused Iraqi prisoners said Saturday that she knew nothing about the abuse until weeks after it occurred and that she was "sickened" by the pictures. She said the prison cellblock where the abuse occurred was under the tight control of Army military intelligence officers who may have encouraged the abuse.
The suggestion by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski that the reservists acted at the behest of military intelligence officers appears largely supported in a still-classified Army report on prison conditions in Iraq that documented many of the worst abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, including the sexual humiliation of prisoners.
The New Yorker magazine said in its new edition that the report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba found that reservist military police at the prison were urged by Army military officers and C.I.A. agents to "set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses.""
Families of the 372nd tormented by stories of POW abuses in Iraq (Baltimore Sun 04-30-04)
"Lynndie England, a railroad worker's daughter who made honor roll at the high school near here, had enlisted in the 372nd for college money and the chance to widen her small-town horizons. In January, however, she gave her family the first inkling that something had gone woefully wrong.
"I just want you to know that there might be some trouble," she warned her mother in a phone call from Baghdad. "But I don't want you to worry."
Lynndie England said she was under orders to say no more. The military has told the family nothing; all the Englands know is that she has been detained, apparently in connection with the unit's alleged misconduct at the prison.
"Whether she's charged or not, I don't know," Terrie England said.
This was not supposed to be the fate of a girl who grew up hunting turkey or killing time with her sister at the local Dairy Dip, making wisecracks about the cars whizzing past.
"She wanted to see the world and go to college," said Terrie England, whose T-shirt bore a design of heart-shaped American flags. "Now the government turned their back on her, and everything's a big joke."
She held photos of her daughter in khakis, smiling atop a camel in Iraq.
At most, the 372nd's alleged abuses of prisoners were "stupid, kid things - pranks," Terrie England said, her voice growing bitter. "And what the [Iraqis] do to our men and women are just? The rules of the Geneva Convention, does that apply to everybody or just us?""
TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB (New Yorker 04-30-04)
"General Karpinski was formally admonished and quietly suspended, and a major investigation into the Army’s prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, was under way. A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which reported to Karpinski’s brigade headquarters.) Taguba’s report listed some of the wrongdoing:
Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee. "
Friday, April 30, 2004
Photos show jail abuse by US troops (Syndey Morning Herald 04-30-04)
"United States soldiers at a prison outside Baghdad have been accused of forcing Iraqi prisoners into acts of sexual humiliation and other abuses.
The charges, first announced by the military in March, were documented by photographs taken by guards in the prison.
Some of the photographs, and descriptions of others, were broadcast in the US on Wednesday by a CBS television news program and were verified by military officials.
In one photograph naked Iraq prisoners stand in a human pyramid, one with a slur written on his skin in English.
In another, a prisoner stands on a box, his head covered, wires attached to his body. The news show said that, according to the army, he had been told that if he fell off the box he would be electrocuted. Other photographs show male prisoners positioned to simulate sex with each other.
"The pictures show Americans, men and women, in military uniforms, posing with naked Iraqi prisoners," a transcript said.
"And in most of the pictures, the Americans are laughing, posing, pointing or giving the camera a thumbs-up."
The program's producers said the army also had photographs showing a detainee with wires attached to his genitals and another that showed a dog attacking a prisoner. "
Abuse Of Iraqi POWs By GIs Probed (CBS News 04-29-04)
"Last month, the U.S. Army announced 17 soldiers in Iraq, including a brigadier general, had been removed from duty after charges of mistreating Iraqi prisoners.
But the details of what happened have been kept secret, until now.
It turns out photographs surfaced showing American soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqis being held at a prison near Baghdad. The Army investigated, and issued a scathing report.
Now, an Army general and her command staff may face the end of long military careers. And six soldiers are facing court martial in Iraq -- and possible prison time
“Frankly, I think all of us are disappointed by the actions of the few,” says Kimmitt. “Every day, we love our soldiers, but frankly, some days we're not always proud of our soldiers."
One of the soldiers facing court martial is Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Chip Frederick.
Frederick is charged with maltreatment for allegedly participating in and setting up a photo, and for posing in a photograph by sitting on top of a detainee. He is charged with an indecent act for observing one scene. He is also charged with assault for allegedly striking detainees – and ordering detainees to strike each other.
Six months before he faced a court martial, Frederick sent home a video diary of his trip across the country. Frederick, a reservist, said he was proud to serve in Iraq. He seemed particularly well-suited for the job at Abu Ghraib. He’s a corrections officer at a Virginia prison, whose warden described Frederick to us as “one of the best.”
Frederick says Americans came into the prison: “We had military intelligence, we had all kinds of other government agencies, FBI, CIA ... All those that I didn't even know or recognize."
Frederick's letters and email messages home also offer clues to problems at the prison. He wrote that he was helping the interrogators:
"Military intelligence has encouraged and told us 'Great job.' " "
Friday, April 23, 2004
JohnKerryIsADouchebagButImVotingForHimAnyway website
"Why it's crucial that you, I, and everyone else cast a vote for Kerry this fall... NO MATTER WHAT"
Honor the Fallen - Military Coffins from Iraq at Dover AFB (a couple new Dover AFB pics)
"Flag-draped coffins are secured inside a cargo plane on April 7 at Kuwait Internationsl Airport. Military and civilan crews take great care with the remains of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq. Soldiers from an honor guard and say a prayer as, almost nightly, coffins are loaded for the trip hom."
Senator's son among troops on front line (Houston Chronicle 03-21-04)
"Supporting the troops in Iraq is a matter of course for most members of Congress; for Sen. Tim Johnson, who has a son near the front lines, it is more personal.
Johnson, D-S.D., said he periodically slips away from the Senate floor, embroiled Friday in a lengthy debate on the budget, to catch the latest news from Iraq.
Although lawmakers receive classified briefings, he said he is "pretty much like any other parent" who gets most of his information from the media and unsure where the war has taken his son.
Brooks Johnson, 31, is a staff sergeant with the 101st Airborne, which was stationed in Kuwait before the fighting began. He is involved in his fourth campaign in five years, having served in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
Other lawmakers have sons or daughters in the military or the reserves, but Johnson said he is unaware of any colleagues with children in the Iraqi theater. "
Curtains Ordered for Media Coverage of Returning Coffins (Washington Post 10-21-03)
"Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets.
To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases.
In March, on the eve of the Iraq war, a directive arrived from the Pentagon at U.S. military bases. "There will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Ramstein [Germany] airbase or Dover [Del.] base, to include interim stops," the Defense Department said, referring to the major ports for the returning remains.
A White House spokesman said Bush has not attended any memorials or funerals for soldiers killed in action during his presidency as his predecessors had done, although he has met with families of fallen soldiers and has marked the loss of soldiers in Memorial Day and Sept. 11, 2001, remembrances.
Ceremonies for arriving coffins, not routine during the Vietnam War, became increasingly common and elaborate later. After U.S. soldiers fell in Beirut, Grenada, Panama, the Balkans, Kenya, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the military often invited in cameras for elaborate ceremonies for the returning remains, at Andrews Air Force Base, Dover, Ramstein and elsewhere -- sometimes with the president attending.
President Jimmy Carter attended ceremonies for troops killed in Pakistan, Egypt and the failed hostage rescue mission in Iran. President Ronald Reagan participated in many memorable ceremonies, including a service at Camp Lejeune in 1983 for 241 Marines killed in Beirut. Among several events at military bases, he went to Andrews in 1985 to pin Purple Hearts to the caskets of marines killed in San Salvador, and, at Mayport Naval Station in Florida in 1987, he eulogized those killed aboard the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf.
During President George H.W. Bush's term, there were ceremonies at Dover and Andrews for Americans killed in Panama, Lebanon and aboard the USS Iowa.
But in early 1991, at the time of the Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon said there would be no more media coverage of coffins returning to Dover, the main arrival point; a year earlier, Bush was angered when television networks showed him giving a news briefing on a split screen with caskets arriving.
But the photos of coffins arriving at Andrews and elsewhere continued to appear through the Clinton administration. In 1996, Dover made an exception to allow filming of Clinton's visit to welcome the 33 caskets with remains from Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown's plane crash. In 1998, Clinton went to Andrews to see the coffins of Americans killed in the terrorist bombing in Nairobi. Dover also allowed public distribution of photos of the homecoming caskets after the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000.
The photos of coffins continued for the first two years of the current Bush administration, from Ramstein and other bases. Then, on the eve of the Iraq invasion, word came from the Pentagon that other bases were to adopt Dover's policy of making the arrival ceremonies off limits. "
Last homecoming (New York Daily News 04-23-04)
"America's war dead lie in plain 7-foot-long aluminum cases filled with ice, each draped with an American flag.
And until this week, all images of those somber homecomings were banned from publication by the Pentagon.
"It doesn't matter that no one's watching. What matters is respecting those who have sacrificed the ultimate for their country," said Lt. Allison Tedesco, a base spokeswoman.
But military officials mistakenly released 361 of the moving photographs to an anti-secrecy activist yesterday, who posted them on his Web site.
Bush administration officials have said privately they worry such grim images would undermine public support for an increasingly controversial war in an election year.
Critics say that hiding the return of the dead dishonors those who have given their lives for their country.
Anti-secrecy crusader Russ Kick of Arizona filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Air Force last year for access to the photos. Kick was rejected but "I appealed on several grounds, and - to my amazement - the ruling was reversed," he wrote on his Web site, TheMemoryHole.org.
The Pentagon said the release was an accident. "
Photos of Military Coffins (Casualties From Iraq) at Dover Air Force Base (The Memory Hole 04-22-04)
"Since March 2003, a newly-enforced military regulation has forbidden taking or distributing images of caskets or body tubes containing the remains of soldiers who died overseas. [read more]
Immediately after hearing about this, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the following:
All photographs showing caskets (or other devices) containing the remains of US military personnel at Dover AFB. This would include, but not be limited to, caskets arriving, caskets departing, and any funerary rites/rituals being performed. The timeframe for these photos is from 01 February 2003 to the present.
I specified Dover because they process the remains of most, if not all, US military personnel killed overseas. Not surpisingly, my request was completely rejected. Not taking 'no' for an answer, I appealed on several grounds, and—to my amazement—the ruling was reversed. The Air Force then sent me a CD containing 361 photographs of flag-draped coffins and the services welcoming the deceased soldiers.
Score one for freedom of information and the public's right to know."
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Dominican Republic to Pull Out of Iraq (Washington Post 04-20-04)
"The Dominican Republic will pull its troops out of Iraq early, in the next few weeks, following the lead of Spain and Honduras, Gen. Jose Miguel Soto Jimenez said Tuesday.
The announcement came just two days after President Hipolito Mejia pledged to keep the country's 302 troops in Iraq until their one-year committment ended in August.
"The troops in Iraq will be coming back in the next couple weeks," the Dominican Armed Forces general said.
Soto Jimenez said the president changed course based on security concerns for Dominican soldiers after Honduras announced its troops would be pulled back early.
The Dominicans have been serving with the 370 Honduran troops under a Spanish-led brigade policing Iraq's al-Qadisiya and Najaf provinces since August.
On Sunday, Spain said it would pull out its 1,300 soldiers early, prompting Honduras to follow Monday. The two countries' troops were expected home in about six weeks. "
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Pentagon deleted key comment from Rumsfeld transcript (CNN 04-21-04)
"The Pentagon said Wednesday it deleted a key section from a transcript of an interview that reporter Bob Woodward conducted last year with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
That edited transcript was posted this week on the Pentagon's Web site.
"Don Rumsfeld is on the record, if you look on the Pentagon Web site, saying that he said, 'This war plan, you can take it to the bank. It's going to happen,'" the reporter said in a CNN interview earlier this week.
But he was wrong. The transcript of the October 23 interview posted by the Pentagon had been edited -- and that quote had been deleted with no reference on the Web site that any deletions had been made."
Pentagon Deleted Rumsfeld Comment - Page 1 (Washington Post 04-21-04)
Pentagon Deleted Rumsfeld Comment - Page 2 (Washington Post 04-21-04)
"The Pentagon deleted from a public transcript a statement Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made to author Bob Woodward suggesting that the administration gave Saudi Arabia a two-month heads-up that President Bush had decided to invade Iraq.
At issue was a passage in Woodward's "Plan of Attack," an account published this week of Bush's decision making about the war, quoting Rumsfeld as telling Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, in January 2003 that he could "take that to the bank" that the invasion would happen.
Woodward supplied his own transcript showing that Rumsfeld told him on Oct. 23, 2003: "I remember meeting with the vice president and I think Dick Myers and I met with a foreign dignitary at one point and looked him in the eye and said you can count on this. In other words, at some point we had had enough of a signal from the president that we were able to look a foreign dignitary in the eye and say you can take that to the bank this is going to happen."
The transcript made it clear that the foreign dignitary Woodward was discussing was Bandar, although Rumsfeld would not say that. "We're going to have to clean some of this up in the transcript," Rumsfeld said in the omitted passage. "We'll give you a -- I mean you just said Bandar and I didn't agree with that so we're going to have to -- I don't want to say who it is but you are going to have to go through that and find a way to clean up my language too." "
Plan of Attack of the Digits - Page 1 (CNN 04-21-04)
Plan of Attack of the Digits - Page 2 (CNN 04-21-04)
"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday released a transcript of his chat with Woodward, minus, he said, "the ums and urs" but no substance, only banter.
Banter as in this section where he calls Woodward a liar.
"And you lie. You told people I stuck a finger in your chest," Rumsfeld said, referring to Woodward's last book, "Bush at War," in which Rumsfeld told Woodward, "We have them off-balance," and then jabbed three fingers into Woodward's chest. That, Woodward wrote, "tipp[ed] me back and slightly off balance."
"I never stuck a finger your chest," Rumsfeld said, according to the transcript.
"Yes sir, yes, yes," Woodward insisted.
"I never touched your chest."
"I swear you did."
"Did I?"
"Yeah, you did."
"Physically?"
"You did, physically. It wasn't hostile, you were illustrating a point. I explained that [in the first book]. I thought you scored a very good point, which was about surprise and off-balance."
"Oh yes," Rumsfeld said. "I did. I remember that, you're right."
"Exactly."
"Exactly. . . . He's right. I'm wrong," Rumsfeld said.
"Okay. Good," Woodward said.
"I told you my memory is not that good."
"That's on the record I hope."
"Go to hell it is, that doesn't go on." [Laughter]
"We'll clean that up," said Rumsfeld spokesman Lawrence T. DiRita.
"And then we'll print it," Woodward said. "
Monday, April 19, 2004
Gas-price cut foreseen as U.S. election ploy (Seattle Times 04-19-04)
"Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, promised President Bush the Saudis would cut oil prices before November to ensure that the U.S. economy is strong on Election Day, journalist Bob Woodward said yesterday.
Woodward said the prince pledged the Saudis would try to fine-tune oil prices to prime the U.S. economy for the election, a move they think would help Bush be re-elected.
Questioned about his assertion at a time when oil prices are nearing a 13-year high, Woodward responded: "They're high. And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly." "
Saudis said to boost oil output (CNN 04-19-04)
"Saudis said to boost oil output
No. 1 oil exporter will reportedly increase production before election in effort to help Bush.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States and a long-time friend of the Bush family, has given the pledge that "certainly over the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly." "
Security Companies Shadow Soldiers in Iraq (NYTimes 04-19-04)
"They have come from all corners of the world. Former Navy Seal commandos from North Carolina. Gurkas from Nepal. Soldiers from South Africa's old apartheid government. They have come by the thousands, drawn to the dozens of private security companies that have set up shop in Baghdad. The most prized were plucked from the world's elite special forces units. Others may have been recruited from the local SWAT team.
But they are there, racing about Iraq in armored cars, many outfitted with the latest in high-end combat weapons. Some security companies have formed their own "Quick Reaction Forces," and their own intelligence units that produce daily intelligence briefs with grid maps of "hot zones." One company has its own helicopters, and several have even forged diplomatic alliances with local clans.
more and more, they give the appearance of private, for-profit militias — by several estimates, a force of roughly 20,000 on top of an American military presence of 130,000.
"I refer to them as our silent partner in this struggle," Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican and Armed Services Committee chairman, said in an interview.
after months of sabotage and insurgency, some officials now say a much higher percentage will go to security companies that unblushingly charge $500 to $1,500 a day for their most skilled operators.
"I believe that it was expected that coalition forces would provide adequate internal security and thus obviate the need for contractors to hire their own security," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the new inspector general of the authority. "But the current threat situation now requires that an unexpected, substantial percentage of contractor dollars be allocated to private security."
"The numbers I've heard range up to 25 percent," Mr. Bowen said in a telephone interview from Baghdad.
In an interview, Patrick Toohey, vice president for government relations at Blackwater, grappled for the right words to describe his men's actions. At one moment he spoke proudly of how the Blackwater men "fought and engaged every combatant with precise fire." At another he insisted that his men had not been engaged in combat at all. "We were conducting a security operation," he said.
"The line," he finally said, "is getting blurred.""
Spain plans quick pull out of Iraq (CNN 04-18-04)
"Spain's 1,400 troops in Iraq will be withdrawn "in the shortest possible time," the country's new prime minister said Sunday.
Zapatero said there were "no apparent indications" that there would be a U.N. resolution meeting his requirements by the end of June."
Friday, April 16, 2004
McCain Iraq plan was 'inadequate' (CNN 04-15-04)
"The Pentagon should have known it needed more troops in Iraq and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should have overruled his generals on the matter, Sen. John McCain said Thursday night.
"I was there last August. I came back after talking with many, many people, and I was convinced we didn't have enough boots on the ground," said the senator from Arizona and decorated Vietnam War veteran.
McCain, while voicing enormous admiration for Rumsfeld, said he knew months ago that the U.S. military would "pay a heavy price" for being understaffed, and he called the secretary's planning "inadequate."
"I'm saying it's not an accident that this was the bloodiest month of the war since combat ended, and we need to adjust," he said."
Text of President Bush's Press Conference (NYTimes 04-13-04)
"QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.
In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you'd made in your life, and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa.
You've looked back before 9-11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9-11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have learned from it?
BUSH: I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it.
John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could've done it better this way or that way. You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet.
-----
QUESTION: Mr. President, why are you and the vice president insisting on appearing together before the 9-11 commission? And, Mr. President, who will we be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30th?
BUSH: We'll find that out soon. That's what Mr. Brahimi is doing. He's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over.
And, secondly, because the 9-11 commission wants to ask us questions, that's why we're meeting. And I look forward to meeting with them and answering their questions.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) I was asking why you're appearing together, rather than separately, which was their request.
BUSH: Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9-11 commission is looking forward to asking us. And I'm looking forward to answering them
----
Secretary of State Powell and Secretary of State Rumsfeld and a number of NATO defense and foreign ministers are exploring a more formal role for NATO
----
There's no question it's been a tough, tough series of weeks for the American people. It's been really tough for the families. I understand that. It's been tough on this administration.
----
Finally, the attitude of the Iraqis toward the American people -- it's an interesting question. They're really pleased we got rid of Saddam Hussein, and you can understand why. This guy was a torturer, a killer, a maimer. There's mass graves.
I mean, he was a horrible individual that really shocked the country in many ways, shocked it into a kind of a fear of making decisions toward liberty. That's what we've seen recently. Some citizens are fearful of stepping up.
And they were happy -- they're not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either.
----
Sir, you've made it very clear tonight that you're committed to continuing the mission in Iraq, yet, as Terry pointed out, increasing numbers of Americans have qualms about it. And this is an election year.
BUSH: Yes.
QUESTION: Will it have been worth it, even if you lose your job because of it?
BUSH: I don't plan on losing my job. I plan on telling the American people that I've got a plan to win the war on terror. And I believe they'll stay with me. They understand the stakes.
Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens. "
Sunday, April 11, 2004
whitehouse.pdf - Copy of just released Aug. 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (CNN 04-10-04)
Disputing Rice testimony (Newsda 04-10-04)
"The FBI on Friday disputed National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony that it was conducting 70 separate investigations of al-Qaida cells in the United States before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Rice, testifying before the Sept. 11 commission Thursday, said that those 70 investigations were mentioned in a CIA briefing to the president and satisfied the White House that the FBI was doing its job in response to dire warnings that attacks were imminent and that the administration felt it had no need to act further.
But the FBI Friday said that those investigations were not limited to al-Qaida and did not focus on al-Qaida cells. FBI spokesman Ed Coggswell said the bureau was trying to determine how the number 70 got into the report.
In addition to these investigations, Rice told the panel that FBI headquarters, reacting to alarming but vague intelligence in the spring and summer of 2001 that attacks were imminent, "tasked all 56 of its U.S. field offices to increase surveillance of known suspected terrorists" and to contact informants who might provide leads.
That, too, is news to the field offices. Commissioner Timothy J. Roemer told Rice that the commission had "to date ... found nobody, nobody at the FBI, who knows anything about a tasking of field offices." Even Thomas Pickard, at the time acting FBI director, told the panel that he "did not tell the field offices to do this," Roemer said."
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Bush Was Warned of Possible Attack in U.S., Official Says (New York Times 04-10-04)
"President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.
The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford."
Briefing on Al Qaeda Included Specifics PAGE1 (Washington Post 04-10-04)
Briefing on Al Qaeda Included Specifics PAGE2 (Washington Post 04-10-04)
"The classified briefing delivered to President Bush five weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks featured information about ongoing al Qaeda activities within the United States, including signs of a terror support network, indications of hijacking preparations and plans for domestic attacks using explosives
The information on current threats in the briefing, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," stands in contrast to repeated assertions by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other Bush administration officials as recently as this week that the document is primarily historical and includes no warning or threat information.
White House officials, after indicating Thursday that the briefing document could be declassified within a day, announced yesterday that they were delaying any release until at least next week.
Even the briefing's heading is a matter of minor disagreement. Then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters on May 17, 2002, that the briefing was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike the United States," while Rice testified Thursday that it was "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." Numerous sources said in 2002 and this week that the correct title is "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." "
Friday, April 09, 2004
Transcript Testimony of Condoleezza Rice Before 9-11 Commission (NYTimes 04-08-04)
"KERREY. You've used the phrase a number of times and I'm hoping with my question to disabuse you of using it in the future, you said the president was tired of swatting flies. Can you tell me one example where the president swatted a fly when it came to Al Qaeda prior to 9/11?
RICE. I think what the president was speaking to -
KERREY. No, what fly had he swatted?
RICE. Well, the disruptions abroad was what he was really focusing on. When the C.I.A. would go after Abu(?) -
KERREY. No, no. He hadn't swatted -
RICE. - or go after this guy. That was what was meant.
KERREY. Dr. Rice, we only swatted a fly once on the 20th of August 1998. We didn't swat any flies afterwards. How the hell could he be tired?
RICE. We swatted - I think he felt that what the agency was doing was going after [audio glitch on CNN] and there. And that's what he meant by swatting flies. It was simply a figure of speech.
KERREY. Well, I think it's an unfortunate figure of speech. Because I think especially after the attack on the Cole on the 12th of October 2000 it would not have been swatting a fly. It would not have been - we did not need to wait to get a strategic plan. Dick Clarke had in his memo on the 25th of January overt military operations. He turned that memo around in 24 hours, Dr. Clarke.(as spoken) There were a lot of plans in place in the Clinton administration, military plans in the Clinton administration. In fact, just since we're in the mood to declassify stuff, he included in his Jan. 25 memo two appendixes. Appendix A, strategy for the elimination of the jihadis threat of Al Qaeda. Appendix B, political military plan for Al Qaeda. So I just, why didn't we respond to the Cole? Why didn't we swat that fly?
=============
BEN-VENISTE. Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the Aug. 6 P.D.B. warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that P.D.B.
RICE. I believe the title was Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States
=============
KERREY. Dr. Clarke, look, let me say I think you could have come in here if you said look we screwed up. We made a lot of mistakes. And you obviously don't want to use the `m' word in here. And I would say, fine. It's game, set and match. I understand that. But this strategic and tactical, it sounds like something for a seminar.
RICE. I just don't believe -
KERREY. It doesn't -
RICE. I do not believe to this day that it would have been a good thing to respond to the Cole given the kinds of options that we were going to have. And with all due respect to Dick Clarke, if you're speaking about the Delinda plan, my understanding is it was A, never adopted and that Dick Clarke himself has said that the military portion of this was not taken up by the Clinton administration so -
KERREY. Let me move into another area, Dr. -
RICE. - so we were not presented, I just want to be very clear on this because it's been a source of controversy. We were not presented with a plan.
KERREY. That's not true.
RICE. We were not -
KERREY. It is not -
RICE. We were not presented - we were presented with the -
KERREY. I've heard you say that, Dr. Clarke. If that 25 Jan. 2001 memo was declassified I don't believe -
RICE. That Jan. 25 memo -
KERREY. I don't -
RICE. That Jan. 25 memo has a series of actionable items having to do with Uzbekistan, Northern Alliance -
KERREY. Let me move to another area.
RICE. May I finish answering your question though because this is an important point.
KERREY. I know it's important. Everything that's going on here is important but I've got 10 minutes.
RICE. But since we have a point of disagreement I'd like to have a chance to address it.
KERREY. Actually, we have many points of disagreement, Dr. Clarke. We'll have a chance to do in closed session. You can't - please don't filibuster me. It's not fair. It is not fair. I have been polite. I have been courteous. It is not fair to me. I understand that we have a disagreement.
RICE. Commissioner, commissioner, I am here to answer questions. And you've asked me a question.
KERREY. No, it -
RICE. And I'd like to have an opportunity to answer it. The fact is that what we were presented on January the 25th was a set of ideas -
KERREY. O.K.
RICE. - and a paper, most of which was about what the Clinton administration had done and something called the Delinda plan, which had been considered in 1998 and never adopted. We decided to take a different track. We decided to put together a strategic approach to this that would get the regional powers - the problem wasn't that you didn't have a good counterterrorism person. The problem was you didn't have a approach against Al Qaeda because you didn't have an approach against Afghanistan. And you didn't have an approach against Afghanistan because you didn't have an approach against Pakistan. And until we could get that right you didn't have a policy.
KERREY. Thank you for answering my question. "
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Prober I knew in days U.S. 'wrong' on WMD (NY Daily News 04-07-04)
"David Kay, with whom the Bush administration placed its hopes of finding Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, sent a startling E-mail to CIA Director George Tenet in early July 2003.
"I wrote that it looks as though they did not produce weapons," Kay reveals in an interview with the new Vanity Fair.
It wasn't until late January this year that Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "we were almost all wrong" on Iraq.
Kay told Vanity Fair, in its 22,000-word opus, "The Path to War," that he was actually ready to come home in mid-December. Tenet said no.
"If you resign now, it will appear that we don't know what we're doing and the wheels are coming off," he said Tenet told him. "So I said, 'Fine, I'll wait.'""
Medical evacuations in Iraq war hit 18,000 (UPI 03-31-04)
"In the first year of war in Iraq, the military has made 18,004 medical evacuations during Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Pentagon's top health official told Congress Tuesday.
The new data, through March 13, is nearly two-thirds higher than the 11,200 evacuations through Feb. 5 cited just last month to Congress by the same official, William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs.
"Is it a question of incompetent medical care or a question of a well-organized government system that achieves just what it is supposed to achieve?" Retired Army Reserve First Sgt. Gerry Mosley, who served in Iraq, asked the panel.
"Use people, strip them of all human dignity, disrespect them, wear them down, and be pleased when soldiers no longer have the physical and mental capacities to continue to fight to have the same rights and respect as those American citizens for whom we have fought to preserve those entitlements."
Mosley said that after returning from Iraq last summer, he has had to drive 195 miles each way at his own expense to see a specialist. He said the Army put him out of service without compensating him for a neck injury or vertigo apparently triggered from mortar explosions. He can no longer work his civilian job. Since being put out of the Army, he has been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.
The wives of two soldiers also testified. Laura Ramsey, wife of Florida Army National Guard Spc. John A. Ramsey, said through tears that she did not want her husband to serve in the guard anymore, after fighting for nine months to get surgery on his shoulders that were injured in Iraq. "Not after the nine months of hell that we have been through," Ramsey said."
Saturday, April 03, 2004
Iraq bioweapons claim came from unreliable source (NZ Herald 03-29-04)
"The case for war against Iraq was dealt another embarrassing blow today as it emerged that the only first-hand intelligence source on Saddam Hussein's alleged mobile bioweapons labs was a politically motivated Iraqi defector now dismissed as an "out-and-out fabricator".
The mobile labs, since exposed by weapons inspectors to be hydrogen production facilities at best and phantoms at worst, were one of the centrepieces of US Secretary of State Colin Powell's prewar address to the United Nations.
As recently as January, Vice-President Dick Cheney still held out the possibility that discovery of the labs would provide "conclusive" proof that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
According to a detailed investigation in the Los Angeles Times, however, the sole source claiming to have seen mobile bioweapons labs with his own eyes was the brother of one of the top aides to Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress who recently boasted how the erroneous information provided by his group achieved his long-cherished goal of toppling Saddam.
Aside from the mobile labs, Secretary Powell showed slides of what he said were chemical munitions facilities surrounded by trucks he called "decontamination vehicles".
The "chemical munitions" works were later identified by Mr Ritter and others as a site well known to UN inspectors and thus a lousy hiding place for illicit weapons programmes.
The vehicles were later shown to have been fire engines.
Mr Powell also showed surveillance footage of an Iraq plane dropping simulated anthrax in what he said was a military exercise.
It later emerged the plane in question was destroyed in 1991. "
Powell Blames C.I.A. for Error on Iraq Mobile Labs (NYTimes 04-03-04)
"Speaking to reporters on a flight home from Europe, Mr. Powell said he had sought to highlight the laboratory charge in his presentation to the United Nations in February 2003 because it was especially "dramatic." But he said he included it only after studying four sources that were used to compile the intelligence.
"I looked at the four elements that they gave me for that one, and they stood behind them," he said of his intelligence briefers. "Now it appears not to be the case that it was that solid.""
Friday, April 02, 2004
Building Blue-Collar... Burgers (CBS News 02-23-04)
"The annual Economic Report of the President has already stirred controversy by suggesting the loss of U.S. jobs overseas might be beneficial, and predicting that a whopping 2.6 million jobs will be created in the country this year.
As first reported by The New York Times, the fast food issue is taken up on page 73 of the lengthy report in a special box headlined "What is manufacturing?"
"The definition of a manufactured product," the box reads, "is not straightforward."
"When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a 'service' or is it combining inputs to 'manufacture' a product?" it asks.
reclassifying fast food workers as manufacturing employees could have other advantages for the administration.
It would offset somewhat the ongoing loss of manufacturing jobs in national employment statistics. Since the month President Bush was inaugurated, the economy has lost about 2.7 million manufacturing jobs, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That continues a long-term trend. "
Prosecutors Are Said to Have Expanded Inquiry Into Leak of C.I.A. Officer's Name (Washington Post 04-02-04)
"In looking at violations beyond the original focus of the inquiry, which centered on a rarely used statute that makes it a felony to disclose the identity of an undercover intelligence officer intentionally, prosecutors have widened the range of conduct under scrutiny and for the first time raised the possibility of bringing charges peripheral to the leak itself.
The expansion of the inquiry's scope comes at a time when prosecutors, after a hiatus of about a month, appear to be preparing to seek additional testimony before a federal grand jury, lawyers with clients in the case said. It is not clear whether the renewed grand jury activity represents a concluding session or a prelude to an indictment."
Top Focus Before 9-11 Wasn't on Terrorism (Washington Post 04-01-04)
Top Focus Before 9-11 Wasn't on Terrorism (Washington Post 04-01-04) page 2
"On Sept. 11, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to outline a Bush administration policy that would address "the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday" -- but the focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from Islamic radicals.
The speech provides telling insight into the administration's thinking on the very day that the United States suffered the most devastating attack since the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. The address was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy, and contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups
And two days before Sept. 11, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," Rice said the administration was ready "to get serious about the business of dealing with this emergent threat. Ballistic missiles are ubiquitous now."
In the speech prepared for Sept. 11, Rice intended to point out that the United States had spent $11 billion on counterterrorism, about twice as much as it spent on missile defense, during the previous year, although the speech did not point out that that was when President Bill Clinton was still in office. "
Saturday, March 20, 2004
http://www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/
Best Link Ever. This has a searchable database of the Bush Administrations statements about the war in Iraq
Transcripts - Face The Nation (03-14-2004) - face_031404.pdf
"Sec. RUMSFELD: you and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase 'immediate threat.' I didn't. The president didn't. And it's become kind of a folklore that that's--that's what's happened. "
September 18th, 2002 Testimony of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Senate Armed Services Committee:
"No terror state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq"
Foster - White House Had Role In Withholding Medicare Data (washingtonpost 03-19-04)
"Foster has said publicly in recent days that he was warned repeatedly by his former boss, Thomas A. Scully, the Medicare administrator for three years, that he would be dismissed if he replied directly to legislative requests for information about prescription drug bills pending in Congress. In an interview last night, Foster went further, saying that he understood Scully to be acting at times on White House instructions, probably coming from Bush's senior health policy adviser."
Withheld files show windfall for insurers - Congress used low estimates in debate on Medicare law (SF Chronicle 03-20-04)
"Richard Foster, the chief actuary of Medicare, provided Congress with documents Friday showing that federal payments to private health insurance plans under a new Medicare law could far exceed what Congress assumed when it passed the measure last fall.
For months, lawmakers had been seeking the data, but Foster said in an interview that he had withheld it under instructions from Bush administration officials.
Foster, who has been a government actuary for more than 30 years, said Scully had threatened to fire him if he gave the data to Congress.
Scully, who left the government in December, confirms that he told Foster to withhold certain information but denies threatening to fire him.
Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said that no White House official had instructed Foster or Scully to withhold information from Congress. But Duffy acknowledged that the actuary's cost estimates had been sent to White House officials, including Doug Badger, a special assistant to President Bush who negotiated with Congress on the Medicare bill. "
US health chief seeks Medicare cost dispute probe (Reuters 03-17-04)
"The U.S. health secretary, facing charges of administration misconduct surrounding the hotly debated Medicare prescription drug law, requested a probe on Tuesday into treatment of a government expert who reportedly said he was threatened with dismissal.
Criticism erupted last week after a report the government's top expert on Medicare costs, Richard Foster, was warned he would be fired if he told lawmakers about cost estimates that could have doomed the measure as too expensive.
During congressional debate on the Medicare bill in November, the administration embraced an estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that it would cost $395 billion in the first 10 years.
Five months earlier, Foster had estimated a similar plan would cost $551 billion over 10 years, according to a report by Knight Ridder newspapers.
Eight Democrats and one independent lawmaker also called on the health department's inspector general to investigate if "video news releases" touting the Medicare law violated restrictions on using taxpayer funds for political propaganda."
Let's see what the Bush Administration had to say about this back in Jan. when they "first" heard about the $150 BILLION increase.
Transcripts from Press Briefing by Scott McClellan (Whitehouse 01-30-04)
"MR. McCLELLAN: This is really the first time that we've come up with a full and precise cost estimate because we were going through our budget processes -- the first time that the HHS actuaries have come up with a full and precise cost estimate
....
Q Did the President try to check with his own actuaries, his own estimators, did the President try to check with them in November, to see if maybe this would cost more than what the CBO estimated?
MR. McCLELLAN: Again, the President was briefed on this recently, just in the last two weeks. And that's when this estimate was presented to --
Q So he did --
MR. McCLELLAN: -- to the President. But the President --
Q -- he waited for a briefing.
....
Q Scott, staffers involved, congressional staffers involved in drafting the legislation -- I have a couple questions here -- say that as of June or July, the Medicare actuaries were predicting costs in the range of $520 billion to $600 billion over 10 years, and that their access to those actuaries was cut off by administration officials. Is this not true?
MR. McCLELLAN: First I've heard about that, Wendell. "
Transcripts - President Meets with Top Economists - Economy Continues to Grow (Whitehouse 01-30-04)
"Q Mr. President, are you concerned at all that the new ballooning cost of Medicare bill will get you in trouble, political trouble, with members of your own party who voted for it only on the assurance that it wouldn't go above $400 billion?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I, two weeks ago, received an estimate about Medicare. I asked two questions to the estimators. One, does the Medicare reform do what we want it to do still, which is to provide modern medicine for our seniors, and to introduce competition, which will eventually hold down costs of Medicare.
And, secondly, the new estimate of Medicare costs fulfilled my promise to reduce the deficit in half over a five year period of time. And the budget we'll submit on Monday does fulfill that promise, that we'll reduce the deficit in half.
Now, it's going to require Congress to be wise with the taxpayer's money. The Medicare reform we did is a good reform, fulfills a long-standing promise to our seniors. Congress is now going to have to work with us to make sure that we set priorities and are fiscally wise with the taxpayer's money. I'm confident they can do that if they're willing to make tough choices. And so the budget we submit will show that we can cut the deficit in half over a five year period. "
Bush - New Medicare price tag means 'tough choices' (Washington Post 01-30-04)
"President Bush said Friday the news that his Medicare overhaul would cost significantly more than expected would require lawmakers to be careful with spending.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the disparate numbers do not mean the president misled Congress. He said the administration's actuaries in the budget office began work on the numbers only after the bill became law.
"It is a very complex and difficult matter to predict," McClellan said. "Now the legislation has passed, and we made our best estimate based on the latest economic data available." "
Nashville's WTVF-TV red-faced by fake news (Washington Times-UPI 03-19-04)
"Nashville's WTVF-TV was embarrassed to discover it had aired a Bush administration Medicare commercial that simulates television news reports.
The commercials, which have come under fire from several professional journalist organizations, involve paid actors pretending to be reporters giving favorable coverage of Medicare legislation.
The New York Times reported Friday the General Accounting Office is investigating the use of federal funds to produce the fake TV news segments."
'Daily Show' satirizes Channel 5 for running fake government news (The Tennessean 03-19-04)
"When WTVF-TV news director Mike Cutler first heard accounts that the Bush administration had managed to slip simulated Medicare news reports into local television coverage, he wondered who could have fallen for such a ruse.
Yesterday, the American Society of Newspaper Editors wrote a letter to Tommy Thompson, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to protest the practice.
''Certainly, material distributed to television stations that doesn't identify the government as the source and ends with a voice-over such as 'In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting' is outside the bounds of ethical behavior for HHS or any other government agency,'' wrote ASNE President Peter Bhatia. The letter asks that the department stop using these ''deceptive practices.''"
Retired Air Force Col. On How Bush Admin. Used Psy-Ops, Propaganda and Information Warfare In Build-Up to Iraq Invasion (DemocracyNow 10-17-03)
"A new report by a retired Air Force Colonel who teachers at the National War College charges the U.S. and Britain relied on information warfare and psychological operations to inform the public in the lead-up and during the invasion of Iraq.
While the fictional aspects of the Jessica Lynch story have been widely reported, the new report by Col. Sam Gardiner suggests the Lynch story was one of only 50 stories that appeared in the U.S. media that was either purposely false or misleading. "
Link to pdf of full 46 page report
Sunday, February 29, 2004
Catholic abuse reports paint disturbing picture (USAToday 02-29-04)
America's Catholic leaders have confronted the clergy sexual abuse scandal in two new reports. One is a statistical study — how many abusers since 1950, how many victims and the financial costs of abuse — conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
....
The John Jay report found 4,392 priests allegedly abused 10,667 children and teens between 1950 and 2002.
....
church records (source of the data)
Note, this means that 4% of the US's clergy has been accused of sexually abusing children or teens. Nice track record although not nearly as bad as those Catholics in Boston. And who knows how many of these abuses were never reported? WOuldn't be surprising to find that 1 in 10 priests were sexually abusing minors.
Saturday, February 28, 2004
Diocese gives abuse data (Boston Globe 02-27-04)
The Archdiocese of Boston yesterday said that 7 percent of its priests were accused of abusing minors from 1950 to 2003
Saturday, January 24, 2004
WMD hunter No stockpiles in Iraq (CNN 01-24-04)
"The man who has led Washington's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, David Kay, says he doesn't think large weapons stockpiles existed there past the mid-1990s.
"I don't think they existed," Kay told Reuters news agency on Friday. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the [1991] gulf war, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the '90s." "
Skeptic May Take Over Iraq Arms Hunt (NYTimes 01-23-04)
"Charles A. Duelfer, the former No. 2 United Nations weapons inspector for Iraq, is likely to be named soon to succeed David Kay as the leader of the American team searching in that country for evidence of illicit weapons, according to senior American officials.
Mr. Duelfer recently expressed deep public skepticism that any chemical or biological weapons would be found in Iraq, and he has suggested that the task ahead for American inspectors may be understanding Iraq's intentions on illicit weapons rather than any actual arsenal.
For that reason, Mr. Duelfer's choice could be disputed among those in the Bush administration who have stuck to the view that illicit weapons — cited by the administration as a principal reason for going to war — will eventually be discovered. "
Infiltration of files seen as extensive (Boston Globe 01-22-04)
"Senate panel's GOP staff pried on Democrats
Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe.
From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics.
The office of Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle has already launched an investigation into how excerpts from 15 Democratic memos showed up in the pages of the conservative-leaning newspapers and were posted to a website last November.
With the help of forensic computer experts from General Dynamics and the US Secret Service, his office has interviewed about 120 people to date and seized more than half a dozen computers -- including four Judiciary servers, one server from the office of Senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, and several desktop hard drives.
Democrats now claim their private memos formed the basis for a February 2003 column by conservative pundit Robert Novak that revealed plans pushed by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, to filibuster certain judicial nominees. Novak is also at the center of an investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA agent whose husband contradicted a Bush administration claim about Iraqi nuclear programs."
Friday, January 09, 2004
No proof links Iraq, al-Qaida, Powell says (MSNBC 01-08-04)
"Secretary of State Colin Powell reversed a year of administration policy, acknowledging Thursday that he had seen no “smoking gun [or] concrete evidence” of ties between former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida."
Just a flashback post from a year ago
White House 'Solid' Evidence Iraq Has Weapons (NewsMax 12-06-02)
"The White House said Thursday that it had "solid" evidence Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.
"Iraq has lied before, and they're lying now about whether they possess weapons of mass destruction," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
"President Bush has said Iraq has weapons of mass destruction." British Prime Minister "Tony Blair has said Iraq has weapons of mass destruction." Defense Secretary "Donald Rumsfeld has said Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Richard Butler [the former head of U.N. weapons inspections] has said they do. The United Nations has said they do. The experts have said they do.
'You Can Choose Who to Believe'
"Iraq says they don't. You can choose who you want to believe," he said.
"The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it," Fleischer said."
O'Neill Calls Bush a Disengaged President (Newsday 01-09-04)
"Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, pushed out of the administration for not being a team player, says President Bush was so disengaged during Cabinet meetings that he was like a "blind man in a roomful of deaf people."
O'Neill said that the atmosphere was similar during the one-on-one meetings he held with Bush.
Speaking of his first meeting with the president, O'Neill said, "I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage (Bush) on. ... I was surprised it turned out me talking and the president just listening. It was mostly a monologue." "
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
British spies 'misled' media on Iraq (The Australian 12-29-03)
"Britain's intelligence services ran a publicity campaign to gain support for sanctions and the use of military force in Iraq, it has emerged.
The Government confirmed at the weekend that MI6 had organised Operation Mass Appeal, a campaign to plant stories in the media about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
The revelation will create embarrassing questions for Tony Blair in the run-up to the publication of the report by Lord Hutton into the circumstances surrounding the death of government weapons expert David Kelly.
A senior official admitted that MI6 had been at the heart of a campaign launched in the late 1990s to spread information about Saddam's development of nerve agents and other weapons, but denied that it had planted misinformation. "There were things about Saddam's regime and his weapons that the public needed to know," the official said.
The admission followed claims by Scott Ritter, a former US Marine who led 14 inspection missions in Iraq, that MI6 had recruited him in 1997 to help with the propaganda effort. He described meetings where the senior officer and at least two other MI6 staff had discussed ways to manipulate intelligence material.
"The aim was to convince the public that Iraq was a far greater threat than it actually was," Mr Ritter said last week. "
Saturday, December 20, 2003
No 'smoking gun' to convict Saddam Hussein yet, say Iraqi experts (Yahoo News 12-18-03)
"Iraqi legal experts warned of the huge difficulties ahead in finding decisive evidence of Saddam Hussein's guilt in crimes committed by his regime in Iraq.
Much of the international community has been debating whether Saddam could face the death penalty for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
But the experts said at a Washington meeting organised by the American Enterprise Institute that any trial of Saddam could simply get bogged down over the lack of evidence.
"It is one thing to say what we all know about what Saddam did. But it's another to prove it in a court of law," warned Kanan Makiya, founder of the Iraq Memory Foundation, one of the groups helping to draw up a new Iraqi constitution.
Because "we don't have a smoking gun to convict Saddam. We will need witnesses, documents," he said.
The foundation is gathering and analyzing documents from various parts of the Iraqi regime, including the intelligence services, police and army.
Some six million pages, most signed by the former Iraqi leader and his close deputies over the three decades of his regime have been collected by the foundation.
According to Hassan Mneimneh, an official at an Iraqi research and documentation center at Harvard University, "Saddam was shielded.""
Saddam relative and bodyguard handed him over to US troops (ChinaDaily 12-19-03)
"Saddam Hussein was betrayed by a relative who was his personal bodygyard and who led US troops to the ousted Iraqi leader's hideout after drugging him, a Jordanian newspaper reported, quoting a source close to the US-led coalition in Iraq.
"A source close to the occupation forces ... revealed that the one who informed on Saddam, betrayed him and handed him over to the American forces is his relative, General Mohammed Ibrahim Omar al-Muslit," Al-Arab Al-Yawm daily said Thursday from Baghdad.
Muslit was Saddam's "personal bodyguard and companion throughout the period of his disappearance as he moved from one hideout to another," the report said.
According to the source, Muslit was the link between the former Iraqi president and his relatives and knew of his various hideouts.
He informed some of his relatives of his plans to betray Saddam and "contacted the Americans through one relative he trusted," the newspaper said.
They agreed on a plan by which Muslit had "to drug the Iraqi president ... to guarantee his capture alive, without giving him a chance to resist or to escape from the trap that was laid out for him," the report said.
The officer "succeeded in drugging Saddam in his hideout," the report added. "
Friday, December 12, 2003
Soldiers in Iraq 'did not have WMD protection' (IndependentUK 12-12-03)
"British forces went into battle in the Iraq war without protective equipment against weapons of mass destruction -- the very "threat" used by Tony Blair to justify joining the American-led invasion.
Not one single tank or armoured vehicle was fitted with the required filter to guard against chemical and biological attacks. And the entire stock of vapour detection kits, needed after a suspected chemical attack, was found to be unusable.
An official audit found that many soldiers were issued with NBC (nuclear, chemical and biological) suits of the wrong size, making them useless, as well as ill-fitting respirators."
U.S. faces backlash over contracts (CNN 12-11-03)
"The United States is facing an international backlash over its decision to bar some of its major trading partners from bidding for Iraqi reconstruction, including possible legal action.
Countries that did not back the U.S.-led coalition that toppled Saddam Hussein will not be eligible to compete for $18.6 billion worth of contracts, according to U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
In Ottawa, incoming Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin said the decision was difficult to understand because Canada had already spent $300 million to support Iraq and also has troops in Afghanistan.
"I find it really very difficult to fathom," said Martin, who will take the helm of Canada's government Friday from outgoing Prime Minister Jean Chretien.
"There's a huge amount of suffering going on there, and I think it is the responsibility of every country to participate in developing [Iraq.]"
According to a memo posted on a Pentagon Web site, those countries that either participated in the Coalition effort in the war or supported it -- including Britain, Australia, Spain, Italy, Poland, Turkey and Japan -- were on the list of nations that could be awarded primary rebuilding contracts. "
War Opponents Denounce U.S. Rules on Iraq Contracts (Washington Post 12-10-03)
"A U.S. decision to bar countries that did not support the war in Iraq from competing for major U.S.-funded reconstruction contracts drew angry complaints from Europe and Canada today, and the European Union warned it may take the issue to the World Trade Organization.
The reactions were triggered by an announcement Tuesday that the United States would limit bidding on $18.6 billion in prime reconstruction contracts to countries that have backed the U.S. war effort or contributed forces to the U.S.-led coalition now occupying the country. These contracts, funded by U.S. taxpayers, are to be awarded by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and the U.S. Department of Defense to equip the new Iraqi army, rebuild the electricity grid and carry out various infrastructure projects in the public works, housing, health, transportation, communications and oil sectors.
The directive, signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and posted Tuesday on a Pentagon Web site, effectively excludes firms from Russia, Germany, France, China and Canada from a large portion of the biggest nation-rebuilding effort since World War II.
The White House defended the policy today. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said it was "appropriate and reasonable that prime contracts for reconstruction funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars should go to the Iraqi people and those countries who are working with the United States on the difficult task of helping to build a free, democratic and prosperous Iraq."
Reacting with anger and disbelief, some of the affected governments warned that the move could create problems for efforts to rebuild Iraq, restructure its foreign debt and patch up strained relations between Europe and the United States.
France questioned legality of the ban, Germany called it "unacceptable," and Russia indicated it would take a harder line against writing off Iraqi debt. Canada, which has pledged about $225 million for reconstruction in Iraq and has sent troops to Afghanistan, threatened to withhold funding for Iraq. "
Bush Seeks Help of Allies Barred From Iraq Deals (NYTimes 12-11-03)
"President Bush found himself in the awkward position on Wednesday of calling the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to ask them to forgive Iraq's debts, just a day after the Pentagon said it was excluding those countries and others from $18 billion in American-financed Iraqi reconstruction projects.
White House officials were fuming about the timing and the tone of the Pentagon's directive, even while conceding that they had approved the Pentagon policy of limiting contracts to 63 countries that have given the United States political or military aid in Iraq.
The Russian defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, when asked about the Pentagon decision, responded by ruling out any debt write-off for Iraq.
The Canadian deputy prime minister, John Manley, suggested crisply that "it would be difficult" to add to the $190 million already given for reconstruction in Iraq.
White House officials said Mr. Bush and his aides had been surprised by both the timing and the blunt wording of the Pentagon's declaration. But they said the White House had signed off on the policy, after a committee of deputies from a number of departments and the National Security Council agreed that the most lucrative contracts must be reserved for political or military supporters.
Those officials apparently did not realize that the memorandum, signed by Paul D. Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, would appear on a Defense Department Web site hours before Mr. Bush was scheduled to ask world leaders to receive James A. Baker III, the former treasury secretary and secretary of state, who is heading up the effort to wipe out Iraq's debt. Mr. Baker met with the president on Wednesday.
When the committee was drafting the policy, officials said, there was some discussion about whether it would be wise to declare that excluding noncoalition members was in the security interests of the United States. As a matter of trade law, countries are often allowed to limit trade with other nations on national security grounds.
"The intent was to give us the legal cover to make the decision," one official said. "
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
White House version of mid-air exchange disputed (ReutersUK 12-01-03)
"British Airways says that none of its pilots made contact with President George W. Bush's plane during its secret flight to Baghdad, contradicting White House reports of a mid-air exchange that nearly prompted Bush to call off his trip.
Honor Verrier, a spokeswoman for British Airways in North America, said on Monday two BA aircraft were in the area at the time and neither radioed the president's plane to ask if it was Air Force One.
"We have spoken to the British Airways captains who were in the area at the time and neither made comments to Air Force One nor did they hear any other aircraft make the statement over the radio," Verrier said in response to a question from Reuters.
The White House had no immediate comment on the discrepancy.
Bush aides recounted with excitement last week the moment during the flight to Baghdad when they said a BA pilot thought he spotted the president's blue and white Boeing 747 from his cockpit.
"Did I just see Air Force One?" the pilot radioed, according to the White House.
There was a pause. Then came the response from Air Force One: "Gulfstream 5" -- a much smaller aircraft.
As one of Bush's aides recounted, the BA pilot seemed to sense that he was in on a secret, and replied: "Oh."
The exchange was one of the most suspenseful moments during Bush's secret flight to Baghdad, according to the White House."
Democrats can't question DeLay on redistricting (Houston Chronicle 12-01-03)
"A three-judge federal court Monday rejected Democrats' attempts to question U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay about his role in helping the Legislature pass a Republican congressional redistricting plan this year.
Democrats and minority groups are asking a federal court to throw out the redistricting plan in a trial set to begin Dec. 11.
Democrats had wanted to take a deposition from DeLay, who motivated the Legislature to take up redistricting and was instrumental in negotiating its final passage.
The court held that federal case law requires "a showing of exception circumstances" before discovery can be taken from high government officials in lawsuits where they are not a direct party.
The Democrats wanted to question DeLay, R-Sugar Land, and U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, because they may provide insight in the Legislature's "intent" in redrawing congressional district boundaries, the court said.
"At this early stage, before the plaintiffs and intervenors have presented evidence as to whether the redistricting plan has an unconstitutional or statutorily prohibited effect, this court cannot conclude that such testimony or documents are `essential to the case.' "
But the court left open the possibility that the Democrats can question DeLay if they present such evidence once the trial begins. "
Friday, November 28, 2003
Telling the truth won't set you free (Seattle Post Op-Ed 11-27-03)
"In Iraq, they are just numbers, bloodstains on a road. But in the little town of Madison, Wis., last week, they were all too real on the front page of the local paper, the Capital Times. Sgt. Warren Hansen, Spc. Eugene Uhl and 2nd Lt. Jeremy Wolfe of the 101st Airborne Division were all on their way home for the last time.
Hansen's father had died in the military. Uhl would have been 22 at Thanksgiving but had written home to say he had a "bad feeling." His father had fought in Vietnam, his grandfather in World War II and Korea. Two of the three men were killed in the Black Hawk helicopter crash over Tikrit.
But of course, President Bush, our hero in the "war on terror," won't be attending their funerals. The man who declined to serve his nation in Vietnam but has sent 146,000 young Americans into the biggest rat's nest in the Middle East doesn't do funerals.
Nor do journalists, of course. The U.S. television networks have feebly accepted the new Pentagon ruling that they can't show the coffins of America's young men returning from Iraq. The dead may come home, but they do so in virtual secrecy.
Take the case of Drew Plummer from North Carolina who enlisted during his last year in high school, just three months before 9/11.
Home on leave, he joined his father, Lou, at a "bring our troops home" vigil. Lou Plummer is a former member of the U.S. 2nd Armored Division whose father, unlike Bush, served his country in Vietnam. Asked for his opinion on Iraq by an Associated Press reporter, Drew Plummer replied, "I just don't agree with what we're doing right now. I don't think our guys should be dying in Iraq. But I'm not a pacifist. I'll do my part."
But free speech has a price for the military in the United States these days. The U.S. Navy charged Drew Plummer with violating Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: disloyal statements. At his official hearing, he was asked if he "sympathizes" with the enemy or was considering "acts of sabotage." He was convicted and demoted"
Pentagon Questions Reports on Osama-Saddam Ties (Editor & Publisher 11-18-03)
"Several newspapers and other media outlets had egg on their face Monday after reporting or endorsing a Weekly Standard story revealing new evidence of an "operational relationship" between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.
Several outlets, including the New York Post, The Washington Times and FOX News, ran with the story. There was just one problem: On Saturday, the Pentagon issued a press release stating that "news reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq ... are inaccurate."
Despite this, the New York Post on Monday titled its editorial on the subject: "Bush Was Right." [And on Wednesday, New York Times columnist William Safire endorsed the report, alleging that the secret memo "has gone relatively uncovered by the major media" only because it had surfaced in Weekly Standard. Oddly, his column is titled "Mistakes Were Made" and in it he suggests 10 different areas (but not this one) where corrections are due. ]"
Case Decidedly Not Closed (Newsweek 11-19-03)
"A leaked Defense Department memo claiming new evidence of an “operational relationship” between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein’s former regime is mostly based on unverified claims that were first advanced by some top Bush administration officials more than a year ago—and were largely discounted at the time by the U.S. intelligence community, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials.
The Oct. 27, 2003, memo, prepared by Deputy Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith’s office, was written in response to detailed questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee about the basis for intelligence pushed by Feith and other senior Pentagon officials during the run-up to the Iraq war.
With a few, inconclusive exceptions, the memo doesn’t actually contain much “new” intelligence at all. Instead, it mostly recycles shards of old, raw data that were first assembled last year by a tiny team of floating Pentagon analysts (led by a Pennsylvania State University professor and U.S. Navy analyst Christopher Carney) whom Feith asked to find evidence of an Iraqi-Al Qaeda “connection” in order to better justify a U.S. invasion.
Within the U.S. intelligence establishment, the predominant view—then as now—is that the Feith-Carney case was murky at best. Culling through intelligence files, the Feith team indeed found multiple “reports” of alleged meetings between Iraqi officials and Al Qaeda operatives dating back to the early 1990s when Osama first set up shop in Sudan. But many of these reports were old, uncorroborated and came from sources of unknown if not dubious credibility, U.S. intelligence officials say. (Not unlike, as it has turned out, much of the “reporting” on Iraq’s ever-elusive weapons of mass destruction.) Moreover, other reports—some of which came foreign intelligence services and Iraqi defectors—were selectively presented by the Feith team and are, as one U.S. official told NEWSWEEK, “contradicted by other things.”"
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Brit Envoy - We Warned U.S. (CBS News 11-17-03)
"Britain warned the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq that it was not planning sufficiently for postwar reconstruction and pressed for the invasion to be delayed, a former British ambassador told a London newspaper.
Sir Christopher Meyer — ambassador to the United States from 1997 to just before the war — told The Observer in Sunday editions that the advice on postwar planning was ignored. "
CIA Seeks Probe of Iraq-Al Qaeda Memo Leak (Washington Post 11-18-03)
"The CIA will ask the Justice Department to investigate the leak of a 16-page classified Pentagon memo that listed and briefly described raw agency intelligence on any relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network, according to congressional and administration sources.
In addition, the leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Vice Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), are considering making their own request for a Justice investigation. The top-secret memo was attached to an Oct. 27 letter to them from Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith. Feith was answering a request that he support his assertion during a closed-door hearing in July that there was intelligence to support a longtime relationship between the Iraqi leader and the terrorist group.
Excerpts from the memo were first published Saturday in the issue of the Weekly Standard dated Nov. 24. Under the headline "Case Closed," the article described the memo as documenting "an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003" between bin Laden and Hussein. It describes the memo as containing "50 numbered points" that are "best viewed as sort of a 'Cliff's Notes' version of the relationship. It contains the highlights, but it is far from exhaustive." "
Sunday, November 16, 2003
As the Administration continues to try and back its way out of their mistakes in Iraq and get us out before the next presidential election, The Weekly Standard writes the following article:
Case Closed (Weekly Standard 11-15-03)
"OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD"
And the DOD responds
DoD Statement on News Reports of al-Qaida and Iraq ConnectionsDefense (DoD News 11-15-03)
"News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate.
...
Individuals who leak or purport to leak classified information are doing serious harm to national security; such activity is deplorable and may be illegal."
Thursday, November 13, 2003
'We could lose this situation' (Guardian UK 11-13-03)
"The White House yesterday drew up emergency plans to accelerate the transfer of power in Iraq after being shown a devastating CIA report warning that the guerrilla war was in danger of escalating out of US control.
The report, an "appraisal of situation" commissioned by the CIA director, George Tenet, and written by the CIA station chief in Baghdad, said that the insurgency was gaining ground among the population, and already numbers in the tens of thousands.
One military intelligence assessment now estimates the insurgents' strength at 50,000. Analysts cautioned that such a figure was speculative, but it does indicate a deep-rooted revolt on a far greater scale than the Pentagon had led the administration to believe.
An intelligence source in Washington familiar with the CIA report described it as a "bleak assessment that the resistance is broad, strong and getting stronger".
"It says we are going to lose the situation unless there is a rapid and dramatic change of course," the source said.
"There are thousands in the resistance - not just a core of Ba'athists. They are in the thousands, and growing every day. Not all those people are actually firing, but providing support, shelter and all that." "
Sunday, November 09, 2003
Mossad chief - invasion has created a holy war (The Independent 11-09-03)
"A former chief of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, has accused the United States and Britain of lack of foresight over the Iraq invasion and warned of even greater violence unless the civic infrastructure is established quickly.
Major General Danny Yatom said the presence of Western forces in Iraq has presented the opportunity for a holy war, or jihad, by Islamists in a country surrounded by Muslim neighbours.
Speaking during a visit to London, Gen Yatom said: "Colin Powell has always said that if the coalition went into Iraq, they had to get out. But it seems America did not have such a plan in place. They are lacking such a plan, and that is what is urgently needed now.""
Saturday, November 08, 2003
Exit strategy now on table (Christian Science Monitor 11-07-03)
"With the election just about a year off and public support for American involvement in Iraq waning, the Bush administration has begun searching for an exit strategy that will not further destabilize that beleaguered country.
The administration continues to rule out sending US reinforcements. Instead it's studying a phased withdrawal of troops, to be replaced by a newly reconstituted Iraqi Army - an idea vaguely reminiscent of the Nixon plan to "Vietnamize" the war in Vietnam.
The Philadelphia Inquirer quotes a Pentagon official saying, "We should turn this over to someone else and get out as fast as possible." At the moment, this is mainly military talk. But political advisers must be considering how it will look as the campaign heats up if US troops are bogged down and suffering casualties."
Woman's Anti-Bush Obituary Draws Donations to Democratic Candidates (AP via Tampa 11-07-03)
"Gertrude M. Jones didn't want flowers or cards when she died. She wanted to get rid of President Bush.
The 81-year-old woman's obituary asked that memorial donations be given "to any organization that seeks the removal of President Bush from office."
And people around the country are following her wishes. "
Jessica Lynch Criticizes U.S. Accounts of Her Ordeal (NYTimes 11-07-03)
"Ms. Lynch says others' accounts of her heroism often left her feeling hurt and ashamed because of what she says was overstatement.
At first, a military spokesman in Iraq told journalists that American soldiers had exchanged fire with Iraqis during the rescue, without adding that resistance was minimal. Then the military released a dramatic, green-tinted, night-vision video of the mission. Soon news organizations were repeating reports, attributed to anonymous American officials, that Ms. Lynch had heroically resisted her capture, emptying her weapon at her attackers.
But subsequent investigations determined that Ms. Lynch was injured by the crash of her vehicle, her weapon jammed before she could fire, the Iraqi doctors treated her kindly, and the hospital was already in friendly hands when her rescuers arrived."
Jessica Lynch 'I'm No Hero' (ABC 11-06-03)
Jessica Lynch 'I'm No Hero' PT2 (ABC 11-06-03)
Jessica Lynch 'I'm No Hero' PT3 (ABC 11-06-03)
Jessica Lynch 'I'm No Hero' PT4 (ABC 11-06-03)
"In the interview, Lynch also clears up conflicting stories about her actions during the March 23 ambush in which Lynch was taken prisoner. Initial reports portrayed the Army supply clerk, then 19, as a hero who was wounded by Iraqi gunfire but kept firing until her ammunition ran out, shooting several Iraqis.
But Lynch confirms that was not the case. She tells Sawyer she was just a soldier in the wrong place at the wrong time, whose gun jammed during the chaos. "I'm not about to take credit for something I didn't do," she tells Sawyer in the interview, airing Tuesday, Nov. 11.
"I did not shoot, not a round, nothing," she tells Sawyer. "When we were told to lock and load, that's when my weapon jammed … I did not shoot a single round … I went down praying to my knees. And that's the last I remember."
Lynch, now 20, says she feels hurt to have received praise she says her colleagues deserved. "It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about. They did not know whether I did that or not. Only I would have been able to know that, because the other four people on my vehicle aren't here to tell that story. So I would have been the only one able to say, 'Yeah, I went down shooting.' But I didn't. I did not."
"I don't look at myself as a hero," she adds. "My heroes are Lori [Pfc. Lori Piestewa], the soldiers that are over there, the soldiers that were in that car beside me, the ones that came and rescued me." Piestewa was one of the 11 members of Lynch's unit, the 507th Maintenance, who were killed in the ambush near the southern Iraqi town of Nasiriyah.
She says it may have been Piestewa who fought fiercely and went down firing. "That may have been her. But that wasn't me, and I'm not taking credit for it," Lynch said.
Lynch says she remembers Piestewa protecting her: "She was there for me … She had my back the whole time."
She said she was never mistreated at the hospital, but she still feared for her life. "I kept repeating, 'Please don't hurt me, please don't hurt me,'" she said.
She said she refused the food they offered her, fearing that it could be poisoned or unsanitary. Lynch said no one among the staff at the Iraqi hospital was abusive to her, "no one beat me, no one slapped me, no one, nothing … I mean, I actually had one nurse, that she would sing to me."
The U.S. military filmed the rescue, and U.S. television networks aired the dramatic green night-vision footage repeatedly as they reported how the special forces team, acting on a tip from a brave Iraqi lawyer, engaged in firefights on their way into and out of the hospital.
"I don't think it happened quite like that," Lynch said, "though … anyone, you know, in that kind of situation would obviously go in with force, not knowing who was on the other side of the door."
It later emerged that there were no firefights at the hospital. The hospital staff said there were no Iraqi soldiers there, and questioned the need for the Americans to use force. Lynch told Sawyer she does not remember seeing the lawyer, Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, who is the focus of a TV movie that is being made without her participation. But if he did help her, she said, she is grateful.
Asked whether the military's portrayal of the rescue bothers her, Lynch said, "Yeah, it does. It does that they used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff. I mean, yeah, it's wrong … I don't know what they had … or why they filmed it." "
Friday, November 07, 2003
Bush Aides Play Down Effort to Avert War at Last Minute (NYTimes 11-07-03)
"Top Iraqi intelligence officials tried to open a secret communications channel with the administration, according to intermediaries and others familiar with the channel. The Iraqis told a Lebanese-American businessman that they no longer had any illicit weapons, that Baghdad would allow American experts to conduct an independent search and that Saddam Hussein would turn over a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
But the businessman and others said that Baghdad's entreaties were rebuffed by the Bush administration.
The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said that Iraq had had plenty of chances over the years to comply with United Nations resolutions. "The United States exhausted every legitimate and credible opportunity to resolve this peacefully," he said.
But Mr. McClellan declined to say whether President Bush was ever told of the back-channel contacts with the Iraqis. "
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Bush unfazed by death toll (Herald Sun Au 11-05-03)
"While media were allowed to photograph the wounded, the US military is sticking to a policy forbidding TV crews and photographers from filming soldiers' coffins.
US officials say the policy was created out of respect for relatives."
Hiding the Bad News (Washington Post 11-04-03)
""It is almost impossible for a journalist to talk to any official from the authority without getting the approval of a public information officer. Recently, when an army major and the head of operations of an American agency here sought to take a reporter for coffee at the Rashid Hotel, where senior American personnel live and eat, a sentry told them that no reporter could enter the hotel without an escort from the press office. The American officials were more astonished than the reporter.
"If civilian authorities here see reporters as ignoring good news, reporters view the coalition public information officers as determined to withhold information, out of fear that it would become 'bad news.' The result is gaps in information that make it harder for American readers to assess just how good or bad the news really is.
"For example, American officials have said that many suicide bombings and other attacks on American soldiers have been thwarted. But they won't say how many. Publicly, the officials cite security reasons; when speaking behind a veil of anonymity, officials say they don't want to cause alarm.
"It's no secret that shoulder-fired missiles have been fired at planes coming into Baghdad International Airport. How many? American officials will not say.
"At a news briefing last week, Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling was asked if he could provide the numbers of those killed and wounded at each police station during a string of attacks on Monday. He declined to do so.
" 'That's too morbid,' he said. The total number was provided by other officials. General Hertling suggested to the reporters that their accounts should emphasize not the deaths and injuries, but the heroic efforts of the Iraqi police officer whose actions, he said, had prevented more deaths."
As for the e-mail writer, she "lives in a guarded compound and, as she noted in her message, must have an armed escort to go even a few blocks to get a pizza."
So much for understanding the problems of ordinary Iraqis. "
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Saddam's New War (Newsweek 10-29-03)
"There is growing evidence that the devastating series of terrorist attacks bedeviling U.S. troops in Iraq may have been planned by Saddam Hussein and his lieutenants as part of a well-coordinated guerilla war strategy that was hatched well before the U.S. invasion of Iraq last March, U.S. intelligence sources tell Newsweek.
Scraps of evidence-most not publicly acknowledged by the administration—suggest that Saddam and some of his top Baath Party lieutenants began detailed logistical planning and purchasing for possible guerilla fighting in the months before the war, officials say.
The most intriguing clues to support this view, officials say, are reports that dozens-and possibly even hundreds-of “suicide vests” rigged with explosives and detonators were discovered in caches by U.S. forces sweeping through Iraq as Saddam’s military and security apparatus crumbled and then melted away."
U.S. reports more attacks in Iraq; more deaths than during active combat (CBC News 10-29-03)
"- In a dramatic upsurge in attacks, insurgents destroyed an American tank north of Baghdad and wounded seven Ukrainians in the first ambush against the multinational force patrolling central Iraq, U.S. and coalition officials said Wednesday.
U.S. policy in Iraq suffered another setback when the international Red Cross announced it was reducing its international staff in the country, two days after a deadly suicide car-bombing at its Baghdad headquarters.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell had urged the Red Cross and other nongovernment organizations to remain in Iraq because "if they are driven out, then the terrorists win."
The latest attacks, 233 over the last seven days according to the U.S. military, have driven the combat death toll during the occupation over the number killed before U.S. President George W. Bush declared an end to active combat on May 1."
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
White House pressed on 'mission accomplished' sign (CNN 10-29-03)
"Attention turned Tuesday to a giant "Mission Accomplished" sign that stood behind Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln when he gave the speech May 1.
The president told reporters the sign was put up by the Navy, not the White House.
"I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff -- they weren't that ingenious, by the way," the president said Tuesday.
Now his statements are being parsed even further.
Navy and administration sources said that though the banner was the Navy's idea, the White House actually made it.
"We took care of the production of it," McClellan said. "We have people to do those things. But the Navy actually put it up." "
Bush disavows background banner in May speech (USA Today 10-29-03)
"President Bush tried to distance himself Tuesday from a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" that hung on an aircraft carrier where he staged a fighter-jet landing May 1. He said the banner was the Navy's idea and a reference to the mission of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Military officials agreed that the banner was their idea but said White House aides signed off on it, made it and positioned it prominently behind the spot where Bush made his remarks.
On Tuesday, Bush said the banner was put up by the crewmembers of the Abraham Lincoln to say that their mission was accomplished. "I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff — they weren't that ingenious, by the way," Bush said.
Bush's advance staff did have a hand in the banner, said other military officials who asked not to be identified. Personnel aboard the Abraham Lincoln asked the White House to make the banner because there were no art supplies aboard the ship, the officials said. The White House advance team then brought the banner to the ship and positioned it behind Bush."
Bush Press Conference transcripts (whitehouse.gov 10-28-03)
"The "Mission Accomplished" sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished. I know it was attributed some how to some ingenious advance man from my staff -- they weren't that ingenious, by the way. "
Press Briefing by Scott McClellan Transcripts (whitehouse.gov 10-29-03)
Q Scott, did the President misspeak yesterday in the Rose Garden when he talking about the banner that was behind him when he was on the USS Abraham Lincoln? Did he misspeak when he said the White House --
MR. McCLELLAN: In what way?
Q When he said the White House press advance had nothing to do with --
MR. McCLELLAN: That's not what he said. That's not what he said. Do you recall what he said?
Q He said, I believe --
MR. McCLELLAN: He said -- he said that it was put up by members of the USS Abraham Lincoln saying that their mission was accomplished. The President was pleased to personally thank our sailors and aviators and naval officers on board the USS Lincoln for their service and sacrifice after what was a very lengthy deployment. It was the Navy, the people on board the ship who had the idea of this banner and made the suggestion, because they wanted to have a way to commemorate the fact that these sailors and the crew on board the ship had completed their mission, after a very lengthy deployment. And the President was --
Q He also said that his advance team hadn't had any part in it. And you're now -- you're now saying that you actually did create the banner.
MR. McCLELLAN: That's not what he said. That is not what he said. Look back at what he said. We said all along, and we said previously that it was the idea -- that the idea of the banner -- for the banner was suggested by those on board on ship. And they asked --
Q So who ordered --
MR. McCLELLAN: And they asked -- they asked if we could help take care of the production of the banner. And we more than happy to do so because this is a very nice way to pay tribute to our sailors and aviators and men and women in the military who are on board that ship for a job well done.
Q Scott, just to follow up , did you not have anything to do, though, with the placement of the banner? I know the White House often makes sure that things are placed right, behind the President so that when it's on the TV --
MR. McCLELLAN: Of course, our advance people work closely with people at event sites when the President is participating in an event. But again, this was an idea that was suggested by those on board the ship.
Q Scott, knowing what we know now, that the Navy, apparently they say that they did request this banner, that what the President said was technically accurate, but would you concede that the gist of what he was saying was misleading because it left the impression for -- that he was saying that the White House didn't have anything to do it. You don't think it was misleading?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, that's not what he -- no, that's not what he said.
Q It's not what he said literally, but --
MR. McCLELLAN: And keep in mind what this -- what this --
Q It's what he suggested.
MR. McCLELLAN: That is not what he said. This was about paying tribute to our men and women in the military for a job well done, for a mission that they had accomplished after a very lengthy deployment. And the President was proud to do that.
Q Now, given the fact that this was six months ago, and there were lots of questions about this, why did he feel the need to talk about who made this banner now, as opposed to --
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, one, it came up in a question. But there's been some reporting --
Q -- specifically asked --
MR. McCLELLAN: -- there has been some reporting that mischaracterized the actual event.
Q What do you mean by that?
MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead, Mark.
Q Are you denying now that the President had the distinct intention at the time of that speech that Americans would see that picture and think the mission in Iraq has been accomplished, the overall mission?
MR. McCLELLAN: What I'm saying is that this was about paying tribute to our sailors and aviators and naval officers on board the USS Lincoln. That's what this was about. Let's keep that in context. And the President was pleased to personally go on board the USS Lincoln and thank our men and women in the military for an outstanding job, for accomplishing their mission, and for -- when they were returning to the United States.
Q The President did not want Americans to see "mission accomplished" and think, great, the war is over?
MR. McCLELLAN: The idea for the banner and the idea for the sign was suggested by those on board ship. And we were pleased to help them with that.
Q And he never knew that would be the interpretation, that the mission -- his mission was accomplished?
MR. McCLELLAN: The mission for those people on board the ship was accomplished.
Q But the President didn't know that this would be interpreted throughout the world that we had -- that the combat mission was over, basically?
MR. McCLELLAN: The major combat operations were over. That's what the President said in his remarks. But he also went on to say that there are difficulties that remain and dangers that continue to exist, and that it's important that we stay the course and finish our work and continue to work with the Iraqi people to help them realize a better future. And that's exactly what we are doing right now.
Q Let me follow up on that. When this happened, when the event happened, all of us reported that the President made this speech under a banner "mission accomplished." Why at the time did you not say -- take pains to tell us, actually, it was the Navy's idea, it wasn't ours?
MR. McCLELLAN: I think the reports -- it was later, after the fact, that some of the reports mischaracterized what had happened. You had a number of men and women in the military on board that ship, sailors, aviators, naval officers, that were on board that ship, they were returning back to the United States and returning to -- one stop along their way -- to their home port up in Washington, I believe -- the state of Washington, stopping in San Diego. And those on board the ship thought it was nice way to say to all those on board the ship, thank you for a job well done. And the President personally went there to do that.
Q But the President did --
Q I just want to take a break from bannergate for a minute --
Q Could we stay on this, Scott?
MR. McCLELLAN: We can stay on banner. We can stay on banner, and I'll come to it. Go ahead, Ken.
Q I believe you said a little while ago that we previously said that the banner was the idea of the Navy. When did you previously say that? Can you point to any statements before yesterday?
MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, I think that some of our staff has previously pointed out when asked that the Navy came up with the idea for the banner. The Navy themself -- if you'll call the people involved --
Q I understand yesterday --
MR. McCLELLAN: -- they would say that.
Q Before yesterday, when did you say that? Can you point us to something?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, again, there was reporting -- I believe others had said previously that this was something that was asked for by the Navy because there was previous reporting about this, about the whole banner. And we pointed out at that point that the banner was something that was suggested by the Navy.
Q When was that?
MR. McCLELLAN: I don't have the exact dates. I didn't bring the articles with me, but if you look back at some of the coverage, I think you will find it.
Did you have one?
Q Why wasn't this said at the very beginning? Because any reasonable person would look at the photographs and look at the video and say the President is saying that what the U.S. forces have been doing in the Iraq theater is essentially over.
MR. McCLELLAN: He said the major combat operations were over in his remarks.
Q That's right. Why wasn't -- but why wasn't it clarified --
MR. McCLELLAN: He was on board the USS Lincoln --
Q -- that the "mission accomplished" banner --
MR. McCLELLAN: He was on board the USS Lincoln that was returning home and there were --
Q But that wasn't said --
MR. McCLELLAN: And there were -- there a number of sailors and aviators --
Q Why didn't he say it?
MR. McCLELLAN: -- and crew on board that ship that were returning home to port.
Q Why didn't the President indicate --
MR. McCLELLAN: And I think -- I think you may want to ask them. I think they may have left that banner up for a little while afterwards.
Q Why didn't the President, when he was making this nationally televised addressed, reference the sign over his right shoulder and say, this is paying tribute to the --
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, first of all, you're wrong because the President did thank those on board the ship for the job that they had done --
Q But he didn't make the connection between the sign --
MR. McCLELLAN: -- he did thank the people for the job well done that were on board the USS Lincoln. So I think you've got that wrong.
Jessica Lynch snubs Iraqi who helped to free her (Telegraph UK 10-29-03)
"A journey to the home town of Jessica Lynch by the Iraqi lawyer who helped to free the young American soldier ended in embarrassment for all concerned when she snubbed him.
Miss Lynch, portrayed as a heroine of our times for her courage while a prisoner of war, was too busy to receive the visitor, her family's lawyer said. Her saviour, Mohammed al-Rehaief, was outwardly understanding of her failure to appear during his trip. "I know she had a very difficult time in Iraq and she takes rest," he said.
However, Mr al-Rehaief, who has been granted asylum in the United States for fear of revenge attacks in Iraq, was reported to be disappointed by her failure to meet him on his visit to Palestine, West Virginia."
