Torture

[wannabe_bootneck]

Are Peds facts completely straight, 2 chinooks full of troops who came out and massacred people willy nilly? No on here has all the facts, has anyone here toured Iraq? We don't know the true situation on the ground, things are shittier than are made out, forces really are in deep over there. The task of peacekeeping in Iraq is almost impossible, as is the task of arms collection, each household is allowed to have 2 automatic weapons for example. Something must have construed a threat to the Yanks or all these people just ignored the rules of engagment. Something went on there to kick this all of, I can't believe that indiscriminate rifle fire caused these huge assault, it must have been targetted or really flooky??

[Ex-URNU-Student]

A tape's out today which apparently showed a wedding party in progress up to the bombing...

[Frank S.]

Oh for chrissakes.... Once again:

Those who play or have played Basketball are familiar with the tactic called "drawing the foul":
to position oneself so an opposing player cannot help but initiate 'illegal' contact.
In Iraq, as elsewhere, this can mean positioning oneself in the vicinity of a civilian gathering and firing at enemy (allied) aircraft to draw fire upon the gathering.
The political results are obvious, and you may later return to the area pretending to mourn the deaths, thus finding fertile recruitment ground.

It's been done many times before. And media are a crucial factor. It is an amplifier.

Police in most democratic countries have dealt with such things for a long, long time. Everybody's got a videocamera and trying to entice cops to do something for which the city will be sued for millions.
I can't be arsed to give examples. Just look around.

[Peds]

The good thing about Forums is that they allow a group of people to share not only the facts but ALSO their opinions on matters.

Twice now, on the same day, a lot of people have been offended by what I say. I have no idea whether or not the Forum has changed at all since the last time I was here, but I dont remember being shouted at this much for simply expressing my view.

There is a difference between the opinion I gave and the one insulting me - mine was making a valid point, the other was attention seeking.

I also find it offensive that people should instantly disregard my opinions because I am a student. Has it ever occured to you (the people disregarding) that students are intelligent people? People that will one day hold the jobs that control the country? On another military forum I use (http://www.network54.com/Forum/login?forumid=269944), I am constantly defending the actions of the armed forces across the world. You cannot justify a direct insult without first knowing the entire mindset of the person you are talking to.

[Frank S.]

We're veering off topic again.
Peds, your post on another thread did anger me, but I don't think my reply to your post on this 'torture' thread was off the mark. You did make a personal estimation of the US soldier' comments as self serving and arrogant (I haven't seen or heard those comments he made).
The validity of your point hinges entirely on facts which are either not known or disputed.
There is a difference as well between being smart and being intelligent.
The first processes information (input and output) while the second delves into the underlying issues and their consequences.

[Seven]

Twice now, on the same day, a lot of people have been offended by what I say

I don't think anyone would have attacked you on your remarks if you stated them as your opinion, which you did not. You described the incident as some sort of My Lai massacre, for which there is no proof whatsoever.

The videos I saw merely showed a party where one man was shown, who was also amongst the dead of the incident. That does not say anything about the conduct of American forces in this incident.

[BenChug]

Even if these clowns were just firing into the air and just celebrating a wedding then there stupidity was there downfall. The AK series has a very distinctive sound when fired and would be picked up by any american forces in the region.

Even if they were just firing into the air, then once again maybe they should think before firing weapons into the air in a war zone.

As for women and children being among the targets, so what in Gulf One iraq put POWs in targeted instillations. They hide in mosques so we won;t engage them for PR reasons. They throw molotov cocktails from crowds at our soldiers. Maybe if anything they attempted to engage US forces and there plan backfired and the US shot the shit out of them any way, I would find that acceptable. Lots of bad PR is coming out of this war for example the british forces 'apperantly' abusing Iraqi POWs, that turned out to be rubbish. Now the American run camps, maybe you should sit and watch before you start going off at our boys, or you no better than the bloody media.

[Tab]

Now the Americans claim to have recovered a range of weapons from this place, false documents, and over 2 million dollars. It looks like it was a very rich wedding party with armed guards to safe guard the money before the happy pair went to Disney Land.

[Frank S.]

This picture raises more questions than it answers. But, it appears to have been taken in the summer of 2003. It shows Paul Wolfowitz touring Abu Ghraib (he is in center front, to the right of Lane Mc Cotter).
Was Wolfowitz there in connection with Copper Green, getting briefed on intel collection at the prison, or simply 'visiting'?
Eric Schmitt of the New York Times was also there (in the background):
"He [Wolfowitz] led another tour through the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, where thousands of Iraqis were tortured and executed. Throughout the trip he referred to Saddam as a tyrant," killer" and sadist."

Who is Lane Mc Cotter?

Working for a private prison company, he urged the reopening of Abu Ghraib and trained the guards in '03. Prior to all this he resigned from the Utah Department of Corrections in '97:
"after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time."
He, along with the team of professionals sent to manage and organize detention facilities in Iraq was hand picked by AG John Ashcroft.

Again the question:why would Military Police brigade elements require training by civilian contractors in how to perform their jobs?

[Mince]

A tape's out today which apparently showed a wedding party in progress up to the bombing...

I'm glad you included the word 'apparently'.

The good thing about Forums is that they allow a group of people to share ... their opinions on matters.

That will surely include their opinion on your opinions, n'est pas? Penny and yer bun...

I can't be arsed to give examples/no better than the bloody media.

Seamless use of local parlance! Applause!

[Peds]

I have no problem at all with people giving their opinions on my opinions, as long as they have the decency to respect mine.
Back on topic, anyway.

if this Lane Mc Cotter was supposedly responsible for that death, why was he hired to do the job in iraq? surely there should be some kind of restriction on the process?

[Frank S.]

No details about Mc Cotter's time in Utah. The parallel between the Utah inmate's death and the happenings at Abu Ghraib are interesting, but what one comes away with, from researching the abuse stories is that the more stones you turn over, the more civilians creep out of the dirt.

Researching this is made more difficult by the way the contracts were awarded. Take CACI international, who had translators there. You will not find the contract either at the Pentagon or State Department, even.
The contract was awarded by the Department of the Interior.
This seems highly irregular and suggest a fudging of fingerprints, so to speak.
It's important to understand the Department of Interior guidelines to award or expand contracts are not suited to the intricacies of intelligence matters. That, is a euphemism.
CACI is making money hand over fist in Iraq. If the vaunted system of checks and balances we have in government does work (anytime, now!), that company may well end up having serious trouble.
Whomever designed this system of contracting in the government likely had experience in the Iran Contra dealings, I'm willing to bet.

[Peds]

"the more stones you turn over, the more civilians creep out of the dirt."

beautiful analogy there!

[chrisfow]

I love how they always claim that shooting their weapons in the air is a traditional celebration, as the Iraqis explained away the gunfire at the wedding. Kalashnikovs have been around for how long, in comparison with their ancient culture? Some tradition, just an excuse dressed up as a tradition so that anyone who attacks it is racist or Islam hating.

They're not thick!

[Frank S.]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FF09Ak01.html

Torture: Another blow for Rumsfeld?
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - A classified Pentagon report, providing a series of legal arguments apparently intended to justify abuses and torture against detainees, appears to undermine public assurances by senior US officials, including President George W Bush, that the military would never resort to such practices in the "war on terrorism".

Short excerpts of the report, which was drafted by Defense Department lawyers, were published in the Wall Street Journal on Monday. The text asserts, among other things, that the president, in his position as commander-in-chief, has virtually unlimited power to wage war, even in violation of US law and international treaties.

"The breadth of authority in the report is wholly unprecedented," says Avi Cover, a senior attorney with the US Law and Security program of Human Rights First, formerly known as Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. "Until now, we've used the rhetoric of a president who is 'above the law', but this document makes that [assertion] explicit; it's not a metaphor anymore," he added.

While it is unknown whether Bush himself ever saw or approved the report, it was classified "secret" by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld on March 6, 2003, the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, according to the Journal.

A full copy of the report is expected to be published on the Internet soon, according to sources who declined to say on which website it would appear.

The report's partial publication comes amid growing charges that the Pentagon is engaged in a cover-up of the full extent of abuses committed by US forces in their anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan, Iraq, at the US naval facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere.

The abuse scandal first came to light in April when news organizations published photographs of the sexual humiliation and abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad that took place last October and November. Seven soldiers have been charged in those cases.

While the Pentagon and the White House have claimed that the abuses were committed by a "few bad apples", evidence of much more widespread abuse, including severe beatings and torture, has steadily accumulated over the past month.

Former detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan, as well as other prisons in Iraq, have complained about similar tactics used against them, leading a number of lawmakers and other observers to conclude that such treatment was authorized, or at the least, condoned by authorities at much higher levels.

The Defense Department has itself launched six investigations or reviews into the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, but none is designed to probe the role of senior officers or the civilian leadership in the Pentagon or relevant policies that they may have developed.

At the same time, lawmakers from the governing Republican Party have been actively discouraged from undertaking investigations of their own.

"Rumsfeld has really launched a massive cover-up operation within the Department of Defense," according to Scott Horton, president of the International League for Human Rights and an expert on military law with the New York City Bar Association. "The investigations going on right now have all the hallmarks of a cover-up."

Horton was approached in April 2003 by senior uniformed military attorneys (Judge Advocates General, or JAGs), who were troubled by detention and interrogation policies they said were being developed by political appointees at the Pentagon.

"It's quite a reasonable inference to say that this report [the subject of the Journal articles] is what rattled them," Horton said. "We knew they were extremely upset about something very much like this."

The report, according to the Journal account, was initiated as a result of the failure of interrogators at the Guantanamo base, where suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban members are being held, to obtain information using conventional techniques. It was drafted by a working group appointed by the Pentagon's general counsel, William Haynes, who last June assured Congress that the military could fully abide by the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT).

Much of the text, which reportedly runs more than 100 pages, deals with legal issues relating to interrogation tactics. But, according to the Journal, at its core, the report asserts that nothing is more important, including the normal restrictions on torture, than "obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens".

The report further cited possible defenses for the use of torture, including the "necessity" for such methods to prevent an attack, or "superior orders", also known as the Nuremberg defense that supposedly absolves the responsibility of subordinates for following orders from others higher up the chain of command.

Both defenses are inconsistent, however, with US law and the United Nations' CAT, which was ratified by the United States in 1994. It states that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture", and that orders from superiors "may not be invoked as a justification of torture". US army field manuals also say that soldiers are prohibited from obeying any superior order to torture someone.
In its report, the working group took the position that neither the US Congress, the courts, nor international law could interfere with the president's powers to wage war. That means, according to the report, that the president himself is not bound by US law, such as the federal Torture Statute or the constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual" punishment.

"In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign ... [the prohibition against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority," the document stated, adding later that "without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes [against torture or abuse] are not read as infringing on the president's ultimate authority" to wage war.

"What's most terrifying about this is the argument that the administration has been making since September 11 - that the president has unlimited power to do whatever he deems necessary," said Cover. "It doesn't matter what Congress says, what the constitution says, or what international law says."

But the report also bolsters the growing belief that easing the rules governing interrogations was a top-level policy decision that better explains why reports of abuses are so widespread.

"If anyone still thinks that the only people who dreamt up the idea about torturing prisoners were just some privates and corporals at Abu Ghraib, this document should put that myth to rest," said Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch. "It's not hard to see how these abstract arguments made in Washington led to appalling and systematic abuses that ended up doing huge damage to US interests," he said.

"Effectively, what you've got here is a group of government attorneys trying to justify war crimes," Horton told Inter Press Service. "It makes a mockery of Haynes' statement about adhering to the CAT and Bush's assurances that the US would not torture or subject detainees to cruel or inhumane treatment.

"If we apply the same rules to ourselves as we have advocated in the international tribunals on Yugoslavia and Rumsfeld [that the civilian leadership is responsible for war crimes committed by their militaries], then Donald Rumsfeld is in very serious trouble."