judgment day

MSNBC - Bush seeks bigger U.S. role in world

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Slime is slime.

If true, this is bad news for Dubya and good news for the rest of us:

Army, CIA want torture truths exposed
By Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Published 5/18/2004 7:16 AM


WASHINGTON, May 18 (UPI) -- Efforts at the top level of the Bush administration and the civilian echelon of the Department of Defense to contain the Iraq prison torture scandal and limit the blame to a handful of enlisted soldiers and immediate senior officers have already failed: The scandal continues to metastasize by the day.

Over the past weekend and into this week, devastating new allegations have emerged putting Stephen Cambone, the first Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, firmly in the crosshairs and bringing a new wave of allegations cascading down on the head of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when he scarcely had time to catch his breath from the previous ones.

Even worse for Rumsfeld and his coterie of neo-conservative true believers who have run the Pentagon for the past 3½ years, three major institutions in the Washington power structure have decided that after almost a full presidential term of being treated with contempt and abuse by them, it's payback time.

Those three institutions are: The United States Army, the Central Intelligence Agency and the old, relatively moderate but highly experienced Republican leadership in the United States Senate.

None of those groups is chopped liver: Taken together they comprise a devastating Grand Slam.

The spearhead for the new wave of revelations and allegations - but by no means the only source of them - is veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. In a major article published in the New Yorker this week and posted on to its Web-site Saturday, Hersh revealed that a high-level Pentagon operation code-named Copper Green "encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation" of Iraqi prisoners. He also cited Pentagon sources and consultants as saying that photographing the victims of such abuse was an explicit part of the program meant to force the victims into becoming blackmailed reliable informants.

Hersh further claimed in his article that Rumsfeld himself approved the program and that one of his four or five top aides, Cambone, set it up in Baghdad and ran it.

These allegations of course are anathema to the White House, Rumsfeld and their media allies. In a highly unusual step for any newspaper, the editorially neo-conservative tabloid New York Post ran an editorial Monday seeking to ridicule and discredit Hersh. However, it presented absolutely no evidence to query, let alone discredit the substance of his article and allegations.

Instead, the New York Post editorial inadvertently pointed out one, but by no means all, of the major sources for Hersh's information. The editorial alleged that Hersh had received much of his material from the CIA.

Based on the material Hersh quoted, his legendary intelligence community contacts were probably sources for some of his information. However, Hersh has also enjoyed close personal relations with many now high-ranking officers in the United States Army, going all the way back to his prize-winning coverage and scoops in Vietnam more than 30 years ago.

Indeed, intelligence and regular Army sources have told UPI that senior officers and officials in both communities are sickened and outraged by the revelations of mass torture and abuse, and also by the incompetence involved, in the Abu Ghraib prison revelations. These sources also said that officials all the way up to the highest level in both the Army and the Agency are determined not to be scapegoated, or allow very junior soldiers or officials to take the full blame for the excesses.

President George W. Bush in his weekly radio address Saturday claimed that the Abu Ghraib abuses were only "the actions of a few" and that they did not "reflect the true character of the Untied States armed forces."

But what enrages many serving senior Army generals and U.S. top-level intelligence community professionals is that the "few" in this case were not primarily the serving soldiers who were actually encouraged to carry out the abuses and even then take photos of the victims, but that they were encouraged to do so, with the Army's well-established safeguards against such abuses deliberately removed by high-level Pentagon civilian officials.

Abuse and even torture of prisoners happens in almost every war on every side. But well-run professional armies, and the U.S. Army has always been one, take great pains to guard against it and limit it as much as possible. Even in cases where torture excesses are regarded as essential to extract tactical information and save lives, commanders in most modern armies have taken care to limit such "dirty work" to very small units, usually from special forces, and to keep it as secret as possible.

For senior Army professionals know that allowing patterns of abuse and torture to metastasize in any army is annihilating to its morale and tactical effectiveness. Torturers usually make lousy combat soldiers, which is why combat soldiers in every major army hold them in contempt.

Therefore, several U.S. military officers told UPI, the idea of using regular Army soldiers, including some even just from the Army Reserve or National Guard, and encouraging them to inflict such abuses ran contrary to received military wisdom and to the ingrained standards and traditions of the U.S. Army.

The widespread taking of photographs of the victims of such abuses, they said, clearly revealed that civilian "amateurs" and not regular Army or intelligence community professionals were the driving force in shaping and running the programs under which these abuses occurred.

Hersh has spearheaded the waves of revelations of shocking abuse. But other major U.S. media organizations are now charging in behind him to confirm and extend his reports. They are able to do so because many senior veteran professionals in both the CIA and the Army were disgusted by the revelations of the torture excesses. Now they are being listened to with suddenly receptive ears on Capitol Hill.

Republican members in the House of Representatives have kept discipline and silence on the revelations. But with the exception of the increasingly isolated and embarrassed Senate Republican Leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, other senior mainstream figures in the GOP Senate majority have refused to go along with any cover-up.

Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Richard Lugar of Indiana, Pat Roberts of Kansas and John Warner of Virginia have all been outspoken in their condemnation of the torture excesses. And they did so even before the latest, most far-reaching and worst of the allegations and reports surfaced. Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, lost no time in hauling Rumsfeld before it to testify.

The pattern of the latest wave of revelations is clear: They are coming from significant numbers of senior figures in both the U.S. military and intelligence services. They reflect the disgust and contempt widely felt in both communities at the excesses; and at long last, they are being listened to seriously by senior Republican, as well as Democratic, senators on Capitol Hill.

Rumsfeld and his team of top lieutenants have therefore now lost the confidence, trust and respect of both the Army and intelligence establishments. Key elements of the political establishment even of the ruling GOP now recognize this.

Yet Rumsfeld and his lieutenants remain determined to hang on to power, and so far President Bush has shown every sign of wanting to keep them there. The scandal, therefore, is far from over. The revelations will continue. The cost of the abuses to the American people and the U.S. national interest is already incalculable: And there is no end in sight.


Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International

A non-denial denial: "Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita issued a statement calling the claims 'outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture.'"
. . . "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," Di Rita said in his statement. "This story seems to reflect the fevered insights of those with little, if any, connection to the activities in the Department of Defense."

The New Yorker about how Abu Ghraib happened and the black operation that fueled it.

King: Iraq Abuse Little More Than Hazing:

May 14, 4:38 PM (ET)

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Republican Rep. Steve King says the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers was little more than 'hazing.'
In a statement in Friday's Des Moines Register, the Iowa congressman said the mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison does not compare to what Iraqi insurgents have done to Americans.
'The dismembered and charred corpses of American contractors dangling over the Euphrates River, in comparison to the abuse committed by a few soldiers at Abu Ghraib, are like the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer compared to those of Heidi Fleiss,' King wrote. 'What amounts to hazing is not even in the same ballpark as mass murder.'
King criticized Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin for calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation.

'If Tom Harkin and his Democrat allies want to continue to act like political cannibals and pitch partisan hooey to anyone who'll listen, then they're eating their own,' King said.

Harkin countered by saying King's comments belittle a serious matter and 'degrade America.' Harkin also said the abuse has made Iraq and America less safe from terrorists. "

I wonder of King's frat anally raped people with foreign objects. Probably.

AP: Saddam's Officials Got Special Abuse

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS

GENEVA (AP) - Up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested "by mistake," according to coalition intelligence officers cited in a Red Cross report disclosed Monday. It also says U.S. officers mistreated inmates at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison by keeping them naked in dark, empty cells.

Abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers was widespread and routine, the report finds - contrary to President Bush's contention that the mistreatment "was the wrongdoing of a few."

While many detainees were quickly released, high-ranking officials in Saddam Hussein's government, including those listed on the U.S. military's deck of cards, were held for months in solitary confinement.

Red Cross delegates saw U.S. military intelligence officers mistreating prisoners under interrogation at Abu Ghraib and collected allegations of abuse at more than 10 other detention facilities, including the military intelligence section at Camp Cropper at Baghdad International Airport and the Tikrit holding area, according to the report.


(AP) Pierre Kraehenbuehl, Director of Operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross,...
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The 24-page document cites abuses - some "tantamount to torture" - including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of "imminent execution."

"These methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information and other forms of cooperation from persons who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an 'intelligence value.'"

High-ranking officials were singled out for special treatment, according to the report, which the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed as authentic after it was published by The Wall Street Journal on Monday.

"Since June 2003 over a hundred 'high value detainees' have been held for nearly 23 hours a day in strict solitary confinement in small concrete cells devoid of daylight," says the report. "Their continued internment several months after their arrest in strict solitary confinement constituted a serious violation of the third and fourth Geneva Conventions."

It did not say who the detainees were, but an official who discussed the report with the Red Cross told The Associated Press they include some of the 55 top officials in Saddam's regime named in the deck of cards given to troops.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said detainees held at Baghdad International Airport include many of the 44 "deck of cards" suspects already captured. It was not clear if Saddam was at the airport, but the Red Cross has said it visited him in coalition detention somewhere in Iraq last month.

The high-value detainees were deprived of any contact with other inmates, "guards, family members (except through Red Cross messages) and the rest of the outside world," the report says.

Those whose investigations were near an end were said to be allowed to exercise together outside the cells for 20 minutes twice a day.

The report says some coalition military intelligence officers estimated "between 70 percent and 90 percent" of the detainees in Iraq "had been arrested by mistake. They also attributed the brutality of some arrests to the lack of proper supervision of battle group units."

The agency said arrests tended to follow a pattern.

"Authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property," the report says.

"Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people," it says. "Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles."

It was unclear what the Red Cross meant by "mistake." However, many Iraqis have claimed U.S. forces arrested them because of misunderstandings, bogus claims by personal enemies, mistaken identity or simply for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

One former detainee who claims he was abused, Haider Sabbar Abed, said he was arrested in July when the driver of the car he was in was unable to produce proper papers at a U.S. checkpoint. He was not released until April 15.

In one operation, U.S. special operations troops detained nearly the entire male population of the village of Habbariyah, ranging in age from 81 to 13, apparently to prevent terrorists from slipping across the border from Saudi Arabia. The 79 men were held for weeks.

Language problems sometimes led to detainees'"being slapped, roughed up, pushed around or pushed to the ground," according to the Red Cross report. "A failure to understand or a misunderstanding of orders given in English was construed by guards as resistance or disobedience."

The report says that in coalition prisons "ICRC delegates directly witnessed and documented a variety of methods used to secure the cooperation" of the inmates "with their interrogators." The delegates saw detainees kept "completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness."

"Upon witnessing such cases, the ICRC interrupted its visits and requested an explanation from the authorities," the report says. "The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was 'part of the process.'"

This apparently meant detainees were progressively given clothing, bedding, lighting and other items in exchange for cooperation, it says.

The report says the Red Cross found evidence supporting prisoners' allegations of other forms of abuse during arrest, initial detention and interrogation - including burns, bruises and other injuries.

Once detainees were moved to regular prison facilities, the abuses typically stopped, it says.

The report also cites widespread abuse of power and ill-treatment by Iraqi law enforcement officers under the coalition, including extorting money from people in their custody by threatening to hand them over to coalition authorities. Under the Geneva Conventions, the coalition is responsible for the Iraqi officers' behavior, the report says.

The Red Cross has emphasized that the report was only a summary of its repeated attempts in person and in writing from March to November 2003 to get U.S. officials to stop abuses. Those earlier interventions by the Red Cross far preceded the Pentagon's decision to investigate after a low-ranking U.S. soldier stepped forward in January.

The Geneva-based organization gave its report to coalition forces in February. The prisoner abuse erupted into an international scandal in recent days after the publication of disturbing photographs from Abu Ghraib.

The Red Cross said it wanted to keep the report confidential because it saw U.S. officials making progress in responding to their complaints. Still, the American reaction was far slower than that of British officials, according to the report.

It says the Red Cross informed the commander of British forces in April 2003 of "ill-treatment" by military intelligence personnel in interrogating Iraqis at Umm Qasr in southern Iraq. "This intervention had the immediate effect to stop the systematic use of hoods and flexi-cuffs in the interrogation section of Umm Qasr."

---

Associated Press correspondent Robert H. Reid contributed to this report from Baghdad.

The whole Bush apology is an exercise in PR and hypocrisy, coming from a man who made jokes about a woman who was about to be executed. There's a question that comes to mind when reading this: "Asked what Mr. Bush knew about abuse in Texas prisons while he was governor, Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said the problems in American prisons were not comparable to the abuses exposed at Abu Ghraib. "

Which does that mean is worse?

Here is yet another reason to admire politicians.

Funding the War on Terror; BNA Homeland Security Procurement Forum to Feature Rep. Chris Cox, 11 DHS Officials and DOD Iraq Funding Officials Mark Lumer and James Crum
May 06, 2004 03:30 PM US Eastern Timezone

Funding the War on Terror; BNA Homeland Security Procurement Forum to Feature Rep. Chris Cox, 11 DHS Officials and DOD Iraq Funding Officials Mark Lumer and James Crum

The Bureau of National Affairs' (BNA) 2nd Annual Contracting with
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Forum

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 6, 2004--
The Bureau of National Affairs' (BNA) 2nd Annual Contracting with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Forum Monday-Wednesday, May 10-12, Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington Virginia





Congressman Christopher Cox, Chair of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, will kickoff BNA's 2nd Annual Homeland Security Forum on Tuesday, May 11 at 8:30 am.

The next two days, over 25 top officials throughout government and the private sector will address the opportunities and risks of homeland security and Iraq reconstruction contracting.

With $18.4 billion recently allocated to reconstruct Iraq, $34 billion in funding for the Department of Homeland Security and tens of billions more available at the state and local level and among venture capitalists, the stakes are enormous and growing.

Top Iraq reconstruction contracting officials to speak include:

-- MARK LUMER, Assistant Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Army, Policy and Procurement for Iraq

-- JAMES CRUM, Director of the Program Management Office, Pentagon, Iraq Reconstruction

Eleven officials representing the Department of Homeland Security officials include:

-- STEVEN I. COOPER, Chief Information Officer

-- JAMES WILLIAMS, Director, US Visit Program

-- C. SUZANNE MENCER, Director, Office of Domestic Preparedness

-- THOMAS LOCKWOOD, Director, National Capital Region Coordination

-- GREGORY ROTHWELL, Chief Procurement Officer

-- KEVIN BOSHEARS, Director, Office of Small Business and Disadvantaged Business Utilization

-- HUGO TEUFEL, Associate General Counsel for General Law

-- DAVID BOLKA, Director, Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA)

-- DAVID HAGY, Director of Local Coordination, Office of State and Local Government Coordination

-- PAT SCHAMBACH, Chief Information Officer, Transportation Security Administration

-- WENDY HOWE, Acting Administrator, Safety Act Implementation

The war on terror waged at home and abroad is leading government, business and the venture capital community to cooperate in unprecedented ways to meet the growing threats.

Yet questions abound:

-- How do the daily security risks and casualties impact the contracting process in Iraq reconstruction?

-- What opportunities will the controversial U.S. VISIT program--estimated to be worth up to $10 billion-- provide to contractors?

-- What products and services will DHS need to develop in the chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological arenas?

-- How will issues regarding the SAFETY Act be resolved? and many others...

BNA's world-class faculty will include two case studies from business executives who recently won contracts from DHS who will share their lessons learned.

The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. publishes over 200 publications including Federal Contracts Report, Federal Contracts Daily and Homeland Security Briefing.

On Monday May 10, a special pre-conference workshop will be held "Venture Capital Investing in Homeland Security". The workshop is co-sponsored by International Business Forecasting (IBF) featuring a world-class faculty from leading VC firms such as:

-- IN Q Tel

-- INTEL CAPITAL

-- MORGENTHALER VENTURES

-- PALADIN CAPITAL GROUP

-- PATRIOT VENTURE PARTNERS LLC

For more information about the 2nd Annual Contracting with the Department of Homeland Security Conference, contact: Randy Cochran IOMA, a BNA Company Tel: 212-576-8740 rcochran@ioma.com

Web site: www.ioma.com/homelandsecurity

Contacts


IOMA
Randy Cochran, 212-576-8740
rcochran@ioma.com
Web site: www.ioma.com/homelandsecurity