Judge Orders Abu Ghraib Photos released

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050929/ap_on_...u_ghraib_photos

 

 

 

Judge Orders Release of Abu Ghraib Photos

 

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 45 minutes ago

 

NEW YORK - A federal judge Thursday ordered the release of dozens more pictures of prisoners being abused at

Abu Ghraib, rejecting government arguments that the images would provoke terrorists and incite violence against U.S. troops in

Iraq.

 

 

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said that terrorists "do not need pretexts for their barbarism" and that suppressing the pictures would amount to submitting to blackmail.

 

"Our nation does not surrender to blackmail, and fear of blackmail is not a legally sufficient argument to prevent us from performing a statutory command. Indeed, the freedoms that we champion are as important to our success in Iraq and

Afghanistan as the guns and missiles with which our troops are armed," he said.

 

Hellerstein ordered the release of 74 pictures and three videotapes from the Abu Ghraib prison, potentially opening the military up to more embarrassment from a scandal that stirred outrage around the world last year when photos of 2003 abuse became public.

 

The photographs covered by Thursday's ruling were taken by a soldier. A military policeman who saw them turned them over to the Army. Some may be duplicates of photos already seen by the public.

 

An appeal of Hellerstein's ruling is expected, which could delay release of the pictures for months.

 

Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command, said Thursday that releasing the photos would hinder his work against terrorism.

 

"When we continue to pick at the wound and show the pictures over and over again it just creates the image — a false image — like this is the sort of stuff that is happening anew, and it's not," Abizaid said.

 

The

American Civil Liberties Union sought release of the photographs and videotapes as part of an October 2003 lawsuit demanding information on the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody and the transfer of prisoners to countries known to use torture. The ACLU contends that prisoner abuse is systemic.

 

"It's a historic ruling, said ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero. "While no one wants to see what's on the photos or videos, they will play an essential role in holding our government leaders accountable for the torture that's happened on their watch."

 

The government argued that America's enemies might exploit the pictures for propaganda purposes by saying the photos represent the attitudes of all Americans toward the Iraqi people.

 

The judge acknowledged such a risk but said "the education and debate that such publicity will foster will strengthen our purpose, and, by enabling such deficiencies as may be perceived to be debated and corrected, show our strength as a vibrant and functioning democracy to be emulated."

 

Bridget F. Kelly, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, said her office was reviewing the ruling and considering its options.

 

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had argued in court papers that releasing the photographs would aid al-Qaida recruitment, weaken the Afghan and Iraqi governments and incite riots against American troops.

 

But the judge said: "My task is not to defer to our worst fears, but to interpret and apply the law, in this case, the Freedom of Information Act, which advances values important to our society, transparency and accountability in government."

 

The ACLU had sought the release of 87 photographs and four videotapes altogether. The judge viewed the pictures and videotapes and ordered some of them edited. Romero said those images apparently contained so many redactions that they would have been unintelligible.

 

The judge said the pictures were important because they were the best evidence of what happened and because they "initiate debate, not only about the improper and unlawful conduct of American soldiers, `rogue' soldiers, as they have been characterized, but also about other important questions as well."

 

 

 

Accountability, FUCK YEAH! You know. This is only happening cuz the left wing media is out to get GWB.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

These are gonna be tough to stomach. They'll probably be heavily censored if they ever get released. Sy Hersh has said they contain photos of children being raped.

[Guest Biggles]

Yeah, the shit will hit the fan all over again because visuals are a thousand times more damning than reports of such things. PETA knows this.

[Guest Biggles]

These are gonna be tough to stomach.  They'll probably be heavily censored if they ever get released.  Sy Hersh has said they contain photos of children being raped.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Um, children? I don't think we had any children at Abu Ghraib.

[CanadianGuitarist 0]

It doesn't matter who the President is(as Cheesala eluded), there's some things that just don't need to be seen.

 

I'm an incredible hippie, but pro-censorship.

[Art Sandusky 0]

That people would feel that they have to push for such things to be shown to the public because apparently words don't do any good is a frightening undercurrent in all of this. What happened to us all that made us into sheep? There shouldn't be any kind of shit our own government wouldn't want to show us in relation to something as seemingly cut-and-dry as prisoner detainment anyway. I side with those who want to get the truth out, but wish they didn't have to resort to this. The administration is correct in saying this'll just piss off the terrorists more, but maybe full disclosure and admitting mistakes will, oh, I dunno, get the country and the world more behind our mission now that we'd be up front about everything.

 

If there's a play made to try and get dead Americans shown on national TV or some shit after this, I'll have to pull back support. Some stuff you don't do.

[NoCalMike 0]

Here is the dilemma too, I mean on one hand you have right wing radio pundits denying torture and abuse allegations, then when photos are released, they relate it to fraternity pranks. Then when people get angry over them it is now the liberals fault for showing these pictures to the world. Something tells me the rest of the world probably already believes what these pictures will tell us anyway, and it OUR citizens that actually need the photographs before they will stop spewing stupidity like, "panties on head is not torture"

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

Yeah, it seems the case of "the answers you are looking for are not exactly what you need". However, this isn't going to be a case about abuse to prisoners. It'll be a case of "the democrats trying to exploit a tragic event for political gain". You know what though? They'll be right and it won't even matter afterwards as the debate will be shifted to something else. So it's not like Bush has anything to worry about because the idea that justice will be served in this case will have taken a back seat to the spin doctor.

[Vyce 0]

So it's not like Bush has anything to worry about because the idea that justice will be served in this case will have taken a back seat to the spin doctor.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What are you pissing and moaning about now? The Democrats WILL exploit this for political gain, and the photos will be used as propaganda to drum up support in the Arab world for Islamic terrorists.

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

So it's not like Bush has anything to worry about because the idea that justice will be served in this case will have taken a back seat to the spin doctor.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What are you pissing and moaning about now? The Democrats WILL exploit this for political gain, and the photos will be used as propaganda to drum up support in the Arab world for Islamic terrorists.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

 

Of course they will. As well I say they should. If Bush and company don't want to do it right, if they can't keep their shit together, then they deserve all the grief they get. It's the conservatives war Vyce. Deal with it and own it. You do know it's POLITICS right?

 

Besides my point was that the media spotlight will be shown upon the Dems response and completely overshadow the horseshit that took place in the prison. Nobody really gives a fuck if the Dems do or don't pick this up. It will become THE issue, distract everyone nicely, and go back about its business. THAT is what I am "pissing and moaning" about.

[NoCalMike 0]

So it's not like Bush has anything to worry about because the idea that justice will be served in this case will have taken a back seat to the spin doctor.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What are you pissing and moaning about now? The Democrats WILL exploit this for political gain, and the photos will be used as propaganda to drum up support in the Arab world for Islamic terrorists.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

 

Of course they will. As well I say they should. If Bush and company don't want to do it right, if they can't keep their shit together, then they deserve all the grief they get. It's the conservatives war Vyce. Deal with it and own it. You do know it's POLITICS right?

 

Besides my point was that the media spotlight will be shown upon the Dems response and completely overshadow the horseshit that took place in the prison. Nobody really gives a fuck if the Dems do or don't pick this up. It will become THE issue, distract everyone nicely, and go back about its business. THAT is what I am "pissing and moaning" about.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

You hit the nail on the head, the media will spin this story as if it is a Democrat vs. Republican issue, when in reality, what it is important is stopping what is going on in these prisons, but that will be overshadowed by all these media outlets as they will have their typical (D) "show the pics"" vs. ® "traitor, sedition" cardboard guests on the show. It will be turned into an argument of whether the pictures should be shown or not, when the real issue is what the pictures reveal about our policy or lackthereof concerning prisoners.

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

Least we'll know who REALLY is doing the "pissing and moaning". Oh how I yearn for the days of "Unmitigated Bullshit"

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

These are gonna be tough to stomach.  They'll probably be heavily censored if they ever get released.  Sy Hersh has said they contain photos of children being raped.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Um, children? I don't think we had any children at Abu Ghraib.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hersh (speech):

 

Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

Also,

http://www.sundayherald.com/43796

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

I, for one, have no interest in seeing any of this.

 

Vyce, give me a friggin' break. You act as if the Republicans wouldn't use them if it was John Kerry or, God forbid, Bill Clinton running the country when this occured. Of course they would've. It's political red meat, and the Democrats aren't the only politically inclined group in this country. Cut out the faux SHOCKANDAWE at the lack of "liberal" tact.

[Guest Biggles]

These are gonna be tough to stomach.  They'll probably be heavily censored if they ever get released.  Sy Hersh has said they contain photos of children being raped.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Um, children? I don't think we had any children at Abu Ghraib.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hersh (speech):

 

Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

Also,

http://www.sundayherald.com/43796

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I am having a hard time fathoming this and am somewhat skeptical. If there is photographic evidence well then this potentially disasterous but I cannot imagine our servicemen, even with a mob mentality, stooping so low.

 

Anyone can say anything, that doesn't make it true. It seems he wants us to think there was some behavior beyind the humiliation of adult male prisoners and I'm not buying it.

 

But his argument is the perfect setup for a conspiracy. If the photos don't show what he claims to know then it's a great big coverup. Add to this the fact that many muslims in the east will believe him and, well, asassination would work well here.

Edited September 30, 2005 by Biggles

[Special K 0]

I, for one, have no interest in seeing any of this.

 

Vyce, give me a friggin' break. You act as if the Republicans wouldn't use them if it was John Kerry or, God forbid, Bill Clinton running the country when this occured. Of course they would've. It's political red meat, and the Democrats aren't the only politically inclined group in this country. Cut out the faux SHOCKANDAWE at the lack of "liberal" tact.

 

Now, now. Remember the restraint the conservatives showed in the Monica Lewinsky trial? And how the liberal media completely ignored that potentially damaging story? That story never damaged the Unites States' reputation. No-how.

 

The important thing is NOT to play the blame game, but to nip this shit in the bud. I'm hoping the abuses were fairly small scale, but that crap needs to end. We're supposed to be a civilized country. And before someone gets a big ol' hard-on about the prisoners being "subhuman slime flarn flarn filth," it was estimated (I think it was an FBI report?)that about half the people there are not terrorists. You can link just about ANYONE to the Baathists or terrorists in Iraq. If someone succesfully invaded the USA, how many of us would be linked to the military? Fucking EVERYONE. (Note: this is in no way comparing our military to terrorists.)

[Justice 0]

So it's not like Bush has anything to worry about because the idea that justice will be served in this case will have taken a back seat to the spin doctor.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What are you pissing and moaning about now? The Democrats WILL exploit this for political gain, and the photos will be used as propaganda to drum up support in the Arab world for Islamic terrorists.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

 

Of course they will. As well I say they should. If Bush and company don't want to do it right, if they can't keep their shit together, then they deserve all the grief they get. It's the conservatives war Vyce. Deal with it and own it. You do know it's POLITICS right?

 

Besides my point was that the media spotlight will be shown upon the Dems response and completely overshadow the horseshit that took place in the prison. Nobody really gives a fuck if the Dems do or don't pick this up. It will become THE issue, distract everyone nicely, and go back about its business. THAT is what I am "pissing and moaning" about.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

You hit the nail on the head, the media will spin this story as if it is a Democrat vs. Republican issue, when in reality, what it is important is stopping what is going on in these prisons, but that will be overshadowed by all these media outlets as they will have their typical (D) "show the pics"" vs. ® "traitor, sedition" cardboard guests on the show. It will be turned into an argument of whether the pictures should be shown or not, when the real issue is what the pictures reveal about our policy or lackthereof concerning prisoners.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

A quick response, but I disagree. I don't think they show much on our 'policy' towards prisoners (Which sort of is turning it into a political issue, as you see Cheesala wanting to accuse Bush because, well, it's obvious he ordered these). Nor do I believe that it is 'necessary' for us to release these pictures. There's a decent argument that by releasing these pictures, we do a lot more harm than anything else, and it's only bringing attention and more drama towards what seems to be more of an isolated event (I don't think anything even close has been even accused of coming out of Gitmo). I do love the reasoning that "These should be used as propaganda against us", despite the fact that this was not actually us, but more a group of fucking sadists in US uniforms.

 

But... I think that we should be as open as possible. There's something to be said for that. While I don't share the enthusiasm of Cheesala for these pictures, and I definitely see it as an uneven tradeoff (We've already been incredibly open about Abu Ghraib, what more do we have to prove), I think it's okay to let these out, though it's really kicking a dead horse at this point.

[SuperJerk 0]

So it's not like Bush has anything to worry about because the idea that justice will be served in this case will have taken a back seat to the spin doctor.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What are you pissing and moaning about now? The Democrats WILL exploit this for political gain, and the photos will be used as propaganda to drum up support in the Arab world for Islamic terrorists.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

And here I thought you LIKED IT when Americans tortured people.

[Guest nosferatu]

So it's not like Bush has anything to worry about because the idea that justice will be served in this case will have taken a back seat to the spin doctor.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What are you pissing and moaning about now? The Democrats WILL exploit this for political gain, and the photos will be used as propaganda to drum up support in the Arab world for Islamic terrorists.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

 

Of course they will. As well I say they should. If Bush and company don't want to do it right, if they can't keep their shit together, then they deserve all the grief they get. It's the conservatives war Vyce. Deal with it and own it. You do know it's POLITICS right?

 

Besides my point was that the media spotlight will be shown upon the Dems response and completely overshadow the horseshit that took place in the prison. Nobody really gives a fuck if the Dems do or don't pick this up. It will become THE issue, distract everyone nicely, and go back about its business. THAT is what I am "pissing and moaning" about.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

You hit the nail on the head, the media will spin this story as if it is a Democrat vs. Republican issue, when in reality, what it is important is stopping what is going on in these prisons, but that will be overshadowed by all these media outlets as they will have their typical (D) "show the pics"" vs. ® "traitor, sedition" cardboard guests on the show. It will be turned into an argument of whether the pictures should be shown or not, when the real issue is what the pictures reveal about our policy or lackthereof concerning prisoners.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

A quick response, but I disagree. I don't think they show much on our 'policy' towards prisoners (Which sort of is turning it into a political issue, as you see Cheesala wanting to accuse Bush because, well, it's obvious he ordered these). Nor do I believe that it is 'necessary' for us to release these pictures. There's a decent argument that by releasing these pictures, we do a lot more harm than anything else, and it's only bringing attention and more drama towards what seems to be more of an isolated event (I don't think anything even close has been even accused of coming out of Gitmo). I do love the reasoning that "These should be used as propaganda against us", despite the fact that this was not actually us, but more a group of fucking sadists in US uniforms.

 

But... I think that we should be as open as possible. There's something to be said for that. While I don't share the enthusiasm of Cheesala for these pictures, and I definitely see it as an uneven tradeoff (We've already been incredibly open about Abu Ghraib, what more do we have to prove), I think it's okay to let these out, though it's really kicking a dead horse at this point.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I agree. I think that we shouldn't look at this as we need to look at our "policy" regarding prisoners because it does seem somewhat of an exception and an isolated event like you mentioned. Just like Farenheit 9/11 did, these photos will paint a bad picture of our american soldiers. I'm positive that most of our soldiers do not conduct this type of behavior. I'm glad that although it doesn't compare to the savagery of the brutal beheadings from the Islamic Terrorists (oh, I'm sorry, "Freedom Fighters" like some would say), these soldiers are being punished for their actions.

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

So it's not like Bush has anything to worry about because the idea that justice will be served in this case will have taken a back seat to the spin doctor.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What are you pissing and moaning about now? The Democrats WILL exploit this for political gain, and the photos will be used as propaganda to drum up support in the Arab world for Islamic terrorists.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

 

Of course they will. As well I say they should. If Bush and company don't want to do it right, if they can't keep their shit together, then they deserve all the grief they get. It's the conservatives war Vyce. Deal with it and own it. You do know it's POLITICS right?

 

Besides my point was that the media spotlight will be shown upon the Dems response and completely overshadow the horseshit that took place in the prison. Nobody really gives a fuck if the Dems do or don't pick this up. It will become THE issue, distract everyone nicely, and go back about its business. THAT is what I am "pissing and moaning" about.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

You hit the nail on the head, the media will spin this story as if it is a Democrat vs. Republican issue, when in reality, what it is important is stopping what is going on in these prisons, but that will be overshadowed by all these media outlets as they will have their typical (D) "show the pics"" vs. ® "traitor, sedition" cardboard guests on the show. It will be turned into an argument of whether the pictures should be shown or not, when the real issue is what the pictures reveal about our policy or lackthereof concerning prisoners.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

A quick response, but I disagree. I don't think they show much on our 'policy' towards prisoners (Which sort of is turning it into a political issue, as you see Cheesala wanting to accuse Bush because, well, it's obvious he ordered these). Nor do I believe that it is 'necessary' for us to release these pictures. There's a decent argument that by releasing these pictures, we do a lot more harm than anything else, and it's only bringing attention and more drama towards what seems to be more of an isolated event (I don't think anything even close has been even accused of coming out of Gitmo). I do love the reasoning that "These should be used as propaganda against us", despite the fact that this was not actually us, but more a group of fucking sadists in US uniforms.

 

But... I think that we should be as open as possible. There's something to be said for that. While I don't share the enthusiasm of Cheesala for these pictures, and I definitely see it as an uneven tradeoff (We've already been incredibly open about Abu Ghraib, what more do we have to prove), I think it's okay to let these out, though it's really kicking a dead horse at this point.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

 

There you go stuffing words in someone’s mouth again. I never said George W. Bush personally handed down the order to rape children. However, as COMMANDER IN CHIEF who's CHOICE it was to set this war in motion I do hold him responsible for putting the pieces on the board that allowed this to happen.

 

Conservatives are going to learn that these types of actions will not be tolerated. That Iraqi/Arab/Muslims ARE in fact people just as deserving of respect dignity and LIFE as you or I. No more casual disregard of "collateral damage". No more jokes about glass parking lots will be given credence. The Bush Admin is too fucking stupid to realize that when shit like this happens it only makes us look worse! You can't talk your way out of it. But apparently the expectation on the media is to do what? Ignore it? Sorry, not going to happen. Accountability is too important. Credibility is everything when we are trying to "win their hearts and minds". And if it turns out that these photos and videos show what we have been hearing they show, then those accountable should be brought down and punished. No amount of spinning of "isolated incidents" is going to help win this fight. We need credibility to do what they say they are trying to do, and Bush has none.

 

Enthusiasm? You are out of your fucking mind. Maybe thats just the word you use when someone is sick to their stomach.

[Justice 0]

There you go stuffing words in someone’s mouth again. I never said George W. Bush personally handed down the order to rape children. However, as COMMANDER IN CHIEF who's CHOICE it was to set this war in motion I do hold him responsible for putting the pieces on the board that allowed this to happen.

 

Stuffing words into your mouth? You just said it again. He's not responsible for what happened: That's equating FDR for any war crimes committed by the Allies. By saying he has some responsibility implies that he had a part in this. He didn't. Welcome the realm of 'personal responsibility'.

 

 

 

Conservatives are going to learn that these types of actions will not be tolerated. That Iraqi/Arab/Muslims ARE in fact people just as deserving of respect dignity and LIFE as you or I.

 

Unless you are somehow suggesting that any of the said parties ordered this, then this part is completely irrelevent.

 

No more casual disregard of "collateral damage".

 

Uh, excuse me? Since when have we had 'casual disregard'? Once again, you are making a statement that's all bark and no bite. If we had 'casual disregard' for 'collateral damage', do you think we'd be in the predicatment we're in? Because we DON'T have that sort of disregard, we are having our trouble.

 

No more jokes about glass parking lots will be given credence. The Bush Admin is too fucking stupid to realize that when shit like this happens it only makes us look worse!

 

Once again, a useless statement because he didn't have a part or say in any of this. You can't reprimand someone for something they had absolutely no part in. Can you write anything that isn't some overly-emotional rant that lacks a strong grounding in reality?

 

You can't talk your way out of it.

 

Not if you are involved, no. You'd have to talk your way into it in the first place.

 

But apparently the expectation on the media is to do what? Ignore it? Sorry, not going to happen.Accountability is too important.

 

It already didn't happen. When it originally came out, it was 24/7 news coverage. Why must we relive it? It doesn't make any sense.

 

Accountability is someone taking responsibility for their actions and correcting them. Releasing more pictures after both of those have been done and over with for a while is no longer accountability. It's beating a dead horse.

 

Credibility is everything when we are trying to "win their hearts and minds".  And if it turns out that these photos and videos show what we have been hearing they show, then those accountable should be brought down and punished.

 

...

 

...

 

...

 

...

 

Are you an idiot? More than a few have already been tried, you moron. That's why so many people think this is useless: Because what it relates to is already past. The point is moot. Why release photos that don't help 'credibility' or 'accountability' and will only hurt us in the end.

 

No amount of spinning of "isolated incidents" is going to help win this fight.

 

Nor will going on long, overemotional rants that lack factual basis and fail to realize that the point is already long been moot, thusly the current action lacks any sort of usefulness.

 

 

We need credibility to do what they say they are trying to do, and Bush has none.

 

Uh, because we've already seen pictures, taken responsibility, and started punishing those involved? You act as though this JUST happened. It didn't. Much of the process is over already. I ask again, why relive it when they can't be tried twice for it? What's the point? It's not accountability if someone has already been held accountable. Credibility? Either you think he has it or not; it doesn't hinge on these pictures at all.

 

Enthusiasm? You are out of your fucking mind. Maybe thats just the word you use when someone is sick to their stomach.

 

Actually, after looking at your argument for this, you are, as you completely lack any sort of logic to what you are saying.

 

Perhaps if took a second to consider that this is, oh, happened two years ago, and that most of the process is finished rather than spewing out rhetorical bullshit, you'd realize how useless doing this really is. It doesn't do anything other than help people politically and Islamists recruit people.

 

I pose this question: Where does accountability end and sensationalism begin? Is it fair to keep showing pictures even after the issue is dead and buried? There is no proof that this is a 'policy' of the US military. Even the Gitmo accusations don't compare to any of this stuff. This is an isolated incident, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise.

Edited October 1, 2005 by Justice

[Special K 0]

I think FDR had bigger things to worry about, like the US being attacked. It all comes back to the validity of the war, which is something that just cannot be brushed away. All this stuff is amplified, because we rushed into war.

[cbacon 0]

THE GRAY ZONE

How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib.

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

Issue of 2004-05-24

Posted 2004-05-15

 

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.

 

Rumsfeld, during appearances last week before Congress to testify about Abu Ghraib, was precluded by law from explicitly mentioning highly secret matters in an unclassified session. But he conveyed the message that he was telling the public all that he knew about the story. He said, “Any suggestion that there is not a full, deep awareness of what has happened, and the damage it has done, I think, would be a misunderstanding.” The senior C.I.A. official, asked about Rumsfeld’s testimony and that of Stephen Cambone, his Under-Secretary for Intelligence, said, “Some people think you can bullshit anyone.”

 

The Abu Ghraib story began, in a sense, just weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, with the American bombing of Afghanistan. Almost from the start, the Administration’s search for Al Qaeda members in the war zone, and its worldwide search for terrorists, came up against major command-and-control problems. For example, combat forces that had Al Qaeda targets in sight had to obtain legal clearance before firing on them. On October 7th, the night the bombing began, an unmanned Predator aircraft tracked an automobile convoy that, American intelligence believed, contained Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader. A lawyer on duty at the United States Central Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, refused to authorize a strike. By the time an attack was approved, the target was out of reach. Rumsfeld was apoplectic over what he saw as a self-defeating hesitation to attack that was due to political correctness. One officer described him to me that fall as “kicking a lot of glass and breaking doors.” In November, the Washington Post reported that, as many as ten times since early October, Air Force pilots believed they’d had senior Al Qaeda and Taliban members in their sights but had been unable to act in time because of legalistic hurdles. There were similar problems 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.

 

The people assigned to the program worked by the book, the former intelligence official told me. They created code words, and recruited, after careful screening, highly trained commandos and operatives from America’s élite forces—Navy seals, the Army’s Delta Force, and the C.I.A.’s paramilitary experts. They also asked some basic questions: “Do the people working the problem have to use aliases? Yes. Do we need dead drops for the mail? Yes. No traceability and no budget. And some special-access programs are never fully briefed to Congress.”

 

In theory, the operation enabled the Bush Administration to respond immediately to time-sensitive intelligence: commandos crossed borders without visas and could interrogate terrorism suspects deemed too important for transfer to the military’s facilities at Guantánamo, Cuba. They carried out instant interrogations—using force if necessary—at secret C.I.A. detention centers scattered around the world. The intelligence would be relayed to the sap command center in the Pentagon in real time, and sifted for those pieces of information critical to the “white,” or overt, world.

 

Fewer than two hundred operatives and officials, including Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were “completely read into the program,” the former intelligence official said. The goal was to keep the operation protected. “We’re not going to read more people than necessary into our heart of darkness,” he said. “The rules are ‘Grab whom you must. Do what you want.’ ”

 

One Pentagon official who was deeply involved in the program was Stephen Cambone, who was named Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in March, 2003. The office was new; it was created as part of Rumsfeld’s reorganization of the Pentagon. Cambone was unpopular among military and civilian intelligence bureaucrats in the Pentagon, essentially because he had little experience in running intelligence programs, though in 1998 he had served as staff director for a committee, headed by Rumsfeld, that warned of an emerging ballistic-missile threat to the United States. He was known instead for his closeness to Rumsfeld. “Remember Henry II—‘Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?’ ” the senior C.I.A. official said to me, with a laugh, last week. “Whatever Rumsfeld whimsically says, Cambone will do ten times that much.”

 

Cambone was a strong advocate for war against Iraq. He shared Rumsfeld’s disdain for the analysis and assessments proffered by the C.I.A., viewing them as too cautious, and chafed, as did Rumsfeld, at the C.I.A.’s inability, before the Iraq war, to state conclusively that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction. Cambone’s military assistant, Army Lieutenant General William G. (Jerry) Boykin, was also controversial. Last fall, he generated unwanted headlines after it was reported that, in a speech at an Oregon church, he equated the Muslim world with Satan.

 

Early in his tenure, Cambone provoked a bureaucratic battle within the Pentagon by insisting that he be given control of all special-access programs that were relevant to the war on terror. Those programs, which had been viewed by many in the Pentagon as sacrosanct, were monitored by Kenneth deGraffenreid, who had experience in counter-intelligence programs. Cambone got control, and deGraffenreid subsequently left the Pentagon. Asked for comment on this story, a Pentagon spokesman said, “I will not discuss any covert programs; however, Dr. Cambone did not assume his position as the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence until March 7, 2003, and had no involvement in the decision-making process regarding interrogation procedures in Iraq or anywhere else.”

 

In mid-2003, the special-access program was regarded in the Pentagon as one of the success stories of the war on terror. “It was an active program,” the former intelligence official told me. “It’s been the most important capability we have for dealing with an imminent threat. If we discover where Osama bin Laden is, we can get him. And we can remove an existing threat with a real capability to hit the United States—and do so without visibility.” Some of its methods were troubling and could not bear close scrutiny, however.

 

By then, the war in Iraq had begun. The sap was involved in some assignments in Iraq, the former official said. C.I.A. and other American Special Forces operatives secretly teamed up to hunt for Saddam Hussein and—without success—for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But they weren’t able to stop the evolving insurgency.

 

In the first months after the fall of Baghdad, Rumsfeld and his aides still had a limited view of the insurgency, seeing it as little more than the work of Baathist “dead-enders,” criminal gangs, and foreign terrorists who were Al Qaeda followers. The Administration measured its success in the war by how many of those on its list of the fifty-five most wanted members of the old regime—reproduced on playing cards—had been captured. Then, in August, 2003, terror bombings in Baghdad hit the Jordanian Embassy, killing nineteen people, and the United Nations headquarters, killing twenty-three people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the head of the U.N. mission. On August 25th, less than a week after the U.N. bombing, Rumsfeld acknowledged, in a talk before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, that “the dead-enders are still with us.” He went on, “There are some today who are surprised that there are still pockets of resistance in Iraq, and they suggest that this represents some sort of failure on the part of the Coalition. But this is not the case.” Rumsfeld compared the insurgents with those true believers who “fought on during and after the defeat of the Nazi regime in Germany.” A few weeks later—and five months after the fall of Baghdad—the Defense Secretary declared,“It is, in my view, better to be dealing with terrorists in Iraq than in the United States.”

 

Inside the Pentagon, there was a growing realization that the war was going badly. The increasingly beleaguered and baffled Army leadership was telling reporters that the insurgents consisted of five thousand Baathists loyal to Saddam Hussein. “When you understand that they’re organized in a cellular structure,” General John Abizaid, the head of the Central Command, declared, “that . . . they have access to a lot of money and a lot of ammunition, you’ll understand how dangerous they are.”

 

The American military and intelligence communities were having little success in penetrating the insurgency. One internal report prepared for the U.S. military, made available to me, concluded that the insurgents’ “strategic and operational intelligence has proven to be quite good.” According to the study:

 

Their ability to attack convoys, other vulnerable targets and particular individuals has been the result of painstaking surveillance and reconnaissance. Inside information has been passed on to insurgent cells about convoy/troop movements and daily habits of Iraqis working with coalition from within the Iraqi security services, primarily the Iraqi Police force which is rife with sympathy for the insurgents, Iraqi ministries and from within pro-insurgent individuals working with the CPA’s so-called Green Zone.

 

The study concluded, “Politically, the U.S. has failed to date. Insurgencies can be fixed or ameliorated by dealing with what caused them in the first place. The disaster that is the reconstruction of Iraq has been the key cause of the insurgency. There is no legitimate government, and it behooves the Coalition Provisional Authority to absorb the sad but unvarnished fact that most Iraqis do not see the Governing Council”—the Iraqi body appointed by the C.P.A.—“as the legitimate authority. Indeed, they know that the true power is the CPA.”

 

By the fall, a military analyst told me, the extent of the Pentagon’s political and military misjudgments was clear. Donald Rumsfeld’s “dead-enders” now included not only Baathists but many marginal figures as well—thugs and criminals who were among the tens of thousands of prisoners freed the previous fall by Saddam as part of a prewar general amnesty. Their desperation was not driving the insurgency; it simply made them easy recruits for those who were. The analyst said, “We’d killed and captured guys who had been given two or three hundred dollars to ‘pray and spray’ ”—that is, shoot randomly and hope for the best. “They weren’t really insurgents but down-and-outers who were paid by wealthy individuals sympathetic to the insurgency.” In many cases, the paymasters were Sunnis who had been members of the Baath Party. The analyst said that the insurgents “spent three or four months figuring out how we operated and developing their own countermeasures. If that meant putting up a hapless guy to go and attack a convoy and see how the American troops responded, they’d do it.” Then, the analyst said, “the clever ones began to get in on the action.”

 

By contrast, 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.

 

“They weren’t getting anything substantive from the detainees in Iraq,” the former intelligence official told me. “No names. Nothing that they could hang their hat on. Cambone says, I’ve got to crack this thing and I’m tired of working through the normal chain of command. I’ve got this apparatus set up—the black special-access program—and I’m going in hot. So he pulls the switch, and the electricity begins flowing last summer. And it’s working. We’re getting a picture of the insurgency in Iraq and the intelligence is flowing into the white world. We’re getting good stuff. But we’ve got more targets”—prisoners in Iraqi jails—“than people who can handle them.”

 

Cambone then made another crucial decision, the former intelligence official told me: not only would he bring the sap’s rules into the prisons; he would bring some of the Army military-intelligence officers working inside the Iraqi prisons under the sap’s auspices. “So here are fundamentally good soldiers—military-intelligence guys—being told that no rules apply,” the former official, who has extensive knowledge of the special-access programs, added. “And, as far as they’re concerned, this is a covert operation, and it’s to be kept within Defense Department channels.”

 

The military-police prison guards, the former official said, included “recycled hillbillies from Cumberland, Maryland.” He was referring to members of the 372nd Military Police Company. Seven members of the company are now facing charges for their role in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. “How are these guys from Cumberland going to know anything? The Army Reserve doesn’t know what it’s doing.”

 

Who was in charge of Abu Ghraib—whether military police or military intelligence—was no longer the only question that mattered. Hard-core special operatives, some of them with aliases, were working in the prison. The military police assigned to guard the prisoners wore uniforms, but many others—military intelligence officers, contract interpreters, C.I.A. officers, and the men from the special-access program—wore civilian clothes. It was not clear who was who, even to Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, then the commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, and the officer ostensibly in charge. “I thought most of the civilians there were interpreters, but there were some civilians that I didn’t know,” Karpinski told me. “I called them the disappearing ghosts. I’d seen them once in a while at Abu Ghraib and then I’d see them months later. They were nice—they’d always call out to me and say, ‘Hey, remember me? How are you doing?’ ” The mysterious civilians, she said, were “always bringing in somebody for interrogation or waiting to collect somebody going out.” Karpinski added that she had no idea who was operating in her prison system. (General Taguba found that Karpinski’s leadership failures contributed to the abuses.)

 

By fall, according to the former intelligence official, the senior leadership of the C.I.A. had had enough. “They said, ‘No way. We signed up for the core program in Afghanistan—pre-approved for operations against high-value terrorist targets—and now you want to use it for cabdrivers, brothers-in-law, and people pulled off the streets’ ”—the sort of prisoners who populate the Iraqi jails. “The C.I.A.’s legal people objected,” and the agency ended its sap involvement in Abu Ghraib, the former official said.

 

The C.I.A.’s complaints were echoed throughout the intelligence community. There was fear that the situation at Abu Ghraib would lead to the exposure of the secret sap, and thereby bring an end to what had been, before Iraq, a valuable cover operation. “This was stupidity,” a government consultant told me. “You’re taking a program that was operating in the chaos of Afghanistan against Al Qaeda, a stateless terror group, and bringing it into a structured, traditional war zone. Sooner or later, the commandos would bump into the legal and moral procedures of a conventional war with an Army of a hundred and thirty-five thousand soldiers.”

 

The former senior intelligence official blamed hubris for the Abu Ghraib disaster. “There’s nothing more exhilarating for a pissant Pentagon civilian than dealing with an important national security issue without dealing with military planners, who are always worried about risk,” he told me. “What could be more boring than needing the coöperation of logistical planners?” The only difficulty, the former official added, is that, “as soon as you enlarge the secret program beyond the oversight capability of experienced people, you lose control. We’ve never had a case where a special-access program went sour—and this goes back to the Cold War.”

 

In a separate interview, a Pentagon consultant, who spent much of his career directly involved with special-access programs, spread the blame. “The White House subcontracted this to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon subcontracted it to Cambone,” he said. “This is Cambone’s deal, but Rumsfeld and Myers approved the program.” When it came to the interrogation operation at Abu Ghraib, he said, Rumsfeld left the details to Cambone. Rumsfeld may not be personally culpable, the consultant added, “but he’s responsible for the checks and balances. The issue is that, since 9/11, we’ve changed the rules on how we deal with terrorism, and created conditions where the ends justify the means.”

 

Last week, statements made by one of the seven accused M.P.s, Specialist Jeremy Sivits, who is expected to plead guilty, were released. In them, he claimed that senior commanders in his unit would have stopped the abuse had they witnessed it. One of the questions that will be explored at any trial, however, is why a group of Army Reserve military policemen, most of them from small towns, tormented their prisoners as they did, in a manner that was especially humiliating for Iraqi men.

 

The notion that Arabs are particularly vulnerable to sexual humiliation became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March, 2003, invasion of Iraq. One book that was frequently cited was “The Arab Mind,” a study of Arab culture and psychology, first published in 1973, by Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist who taught at, among other universities, Columbia and Princeton, and who died in 1996. The book includes a twenty-five-page chapter on Arabs and sex, depicting sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression. “The segregation of the sexes, the veiling of the women . . . and all the other minute rules that govern and restrict contact between men and women, have the effect of making sex a prime mental preoccupation in the Arab world,” Patai wrote. Homosexual activity, “or any indication of homosexual leanings, as with all other expressions of sexuality, is never given any publicity. These are private affairs and remain in private.” The Patai book, an academic told me, was “the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior.” In their discussions, he said, two themes emerged—“one, that Arabs only understand force and, two, that the biggest weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation.”

 

The government consultant said that there may have been a serious goal, in the beginning, behind the sexual humiliation and the posed photographs. It was thought that some prisoners would do anything—including spying on their associates—to avoid dissemination of the shameful photos to family and friends. The government consultant said, “I was told that the purpose of the photographs was to create an army of informants, people you could insert back in the population.” The idea was that they would be motivated by fear of exposure, and gather information about pending insurgency action, the consultant said. If so, it wasn’t effective; the insurgency continued to grow.

 

“This shit has been brewing for months,” the Pentagon consultant who has dealt with saps told me. “You don’t keep prisoners naked in their cell and then let them get bitten by dogs. This is sick.” The consultant explained that he and his colleagues, all of whom had served for years on active duty in the military, had been appalled by the misuse of Army guard dogs inside Abu Ghraib. “We don’t raise kids to do things like that. When you go after Mullah Omar, that’s one thing. But when you give the authority to kids who don’t know the rules, that’s another.”

 

In 2003, Rumsfeld’s apparent disregard for the requirements of the Geneva Conventions while carrying out the war on terror had led a group of senior military legal officers from the Judge Advocate General’s (jag) Corps to pay two surprise visits within five months to Scott Horton, who was then chairman of the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on International Human Rights. “They wanted us to challenge the Bush Administration about its standards for detentions and interrogation,” Horton told me. “They were urging us to get involved and speak in a very loud voice. It came pretty much out of the blue. The message was that conditions are ripe for abuse, and it’s going to occur.” The military officials were most alarmed about the growing use of civilian contractors in the interrogation process, Horton recalled. “They said there was an atmosphere of legal ambiguity being created as a result of a policy decision at the highest levels in the Pentagon. The jag officers were being cut out of the policy formulation process.” They told him that, with the war on terror, a fifty-year history of exemplary application of the Geneva Conventions had come to an end.

 

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.”

 

In their testimony before Congress last week, Rumsfeld and Cambone struggled to convince the legislators that Miller’s visit to Baghdad in late August had nothing to do with the subsequent abuse. Cambone sought to assure the Senate Armed Services Committee that the interplay between Miller and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, had only a casual connection to his office. Miller’s recommendations, Cambone said, were made to Sanchez. His own role, he said, was mainly to insure that the “flow of intelligence back to the commands” was “efficient and effective.” He added that Miller’s goal was “to provide a safe, secure and humane environment that supports the expeditious collection of intelligence.”

 

It was a hard sell. Senator Hillary Clinton, Democrat of New York, posed the essential question facing the senators:

 

If, indeed, General Miller was sent from Guantánamo to Iraq for the purpose of acquiring more actionable intelligence from detainees, then it is fair to conclude that the actions that are at point here in your report [on abuses at Abu Ghraib] are in some way connected to General Miller’s arrival and his specific orders, however they were interpreted, by those MPs and the military intelligence that were involved.. . .Therefore, I for one don’t believe I yet have adequate information from Mr. Cambone and the Defense Department as to exactly what General Miller’s orders were . . . how he carried out those orders, and the connection between his arrival in the fall of ’03 and the intensity of the abuses that occurred afterward.

 

Sometime before the Abu Ghraib abuses became public, the former intelligence official told me, Miller was “read in”—that is, briefed—on the special-access operation. In April, Miller returned to Baghdad to assume control of the Iraqi prisons; once the scandal hit, with its glaring headlines, General Sanchez presented him to the American and international media as the general who would clean up the Iraqi prison system and instill respect for the Geneva Conventions. “His job is to save what he can,” the former official said. “He’s there to protect the program while limiting any loss of core capability.” As for Antonio Taguba, the former intelligence official added, “He goes into it not knowing shit. And then: ‘Holy cow! What’s going on?’ ”

 

If General Miller had been summoned by Congress to testify, he, like Rumsfeld and Cambone, would not have been able to mention the special-access program. “If you give away the fact that a special-access program exists,”the former intelligence official told me, “you blow the whole quick-reaction program.”

 

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.”

 

The former intelligence official made it clear that he was not alleging that Rumsfeld or General Myers knew that atrocities were committed. But, he said, “it was their permission granted to do the sap, generically, and there was enough ambiguity, which permitted the abuses.”

 

This official went on, “The black guys”—those in the Pentagon’s secret program—“say we’ve got to accept the prosecution. They’re vaccinated from the reality.” The sap is still active, and “the United States is picking up guys for interrogation. The question is, how do they protect the quick-reaction force without blowing its cover?” The program was protected by the fact that no one on the outside was allowed to know of its existence. “If you even give a hint that you’re aware of a black program that you’re not read into, you lose your clearances,” the former official said. “Nobody will talk. So the only people left to prosecute are those who are undefended—the poor kids at the end of the food chain.”

 

The most vulnerable senior official is Cambone. “The Pentagon is trying now to protect Cambone, and doesn’t know how to do it,” the former intelligence official said.

 

Last week, the government consultant, who has close ties to many conservatives, defended the Administration’s continued secrecy about the special-access program in Abu Ghraib. “Why keep it black?” the consultant asked. “Because the process is unpleasant. It’s like making sausage—you like the result but you don’t want to know how it was made. Also, you don’t want the Iraqi public, and the Arab world, to know. Remember, we went to Iraq to democratize the Middle East. The last thing you want to do is let the Arab world know how you treat Arab males in prison.”

 

The former intelligence official told me he feared that one of the disastrous effects of the prison-abuse scandal would be the undermining of legitimate operations in the war on terror, which had already suffered from the draining of resources into Iraq. He portrayed Abu Ghraib as “a tumor” on the war on terror. He said, “As long as it’s benign and contained, the Pentagon can deal with the photo crisis without jeopardizing the secret program. As soon as it begins to grow, with nobody to diagnose it—it becomes a malignant tumor.”

 

The Pentagon consultant made a similar point. Cambone and his superiors, the consultant said, “created the conditions that allowed transgressions to take place. And now we’re going to end up with another Church Commission”—the 1975 Senate committee on intelligence, headed by Senator Frank Church, of Idaho, which investigated C.I.A. abuses during the previous two decades. Abu Ghraib had sent the message that the Pentagon leadership was unable to handle its discretionary power. “When the shit hits the fan, as it did on 9/11, how do you push the pedal?” the consultant asked. “You do it selectively and with intelligence.”

 

“Congress is going to get to the bottom of this,” the Pentagon consultant said. “You have to demonstrate that there are checks and balances in the system.” He added, “When you live in a world of gray zones, you have to have very clear red lines.”

 

Senator John McCain, of Arizona, said, “If this is true, it certainly increases the dimension of this issue and deserves significant scrutiny. I will do all possible to get to the bottom of this, and all other allegations.”

 

“In an odd way,” Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said, “the sexual abuses at Abu Ghraib have become a diversion for the prisoner abuse and the violation of the Geneva Conventions that is authorized.” Since September 11th, Roth added, the military has systematically used third-degree techniques around the world on detainees. “Some jags hate this and are horrified that the tolerance of mistreatment will come back and haunt us in the next war,” Roth told me. “We’re giving the world a ready-made excuse to ignore the Geneva Conventions. Rumsfeld has lowered the bar.

 

Abu Ghraib Lesson Unlearned

The 10 inquiries into prisoner abuse have let Bush and Co off the hook

SEYMOUR HERSH / The Guardian (UK) 21may2005

 

 

 

It's been over a year since I published a series of articles in the New Yorker outlining the abuses at Abu Ghraib. There have been at least 10 official military investigations since then — none of which has challenged the official Bush administration line that there was no high-level policy condoning or overlooking such abuse. The buck always stops with the handful of enlisted army reservists from the 372nd Military Police Company whose images fill the iconic Abu Ghraib photos with their inappropriate smiles and sadistic posing of the prisoners.

 

Abu Ghraib Lesson Unlearned: Seymour Hersh: The 10 inquiries into prisoner abuse have let Bush and Co off the hook SEYMOUR HERSH / The Guardian (UK) 21may2005

 

It's a dreary pattern. The reports and the subsequent Senate proceedings are sometimes criticised on editorial pages. There are calls for a truly independent investigation by the Senate or House. Then, as months pass with no official action, the issue withers away, until the next set of revelations revives it. There is much more to be learned. What do I know? A few things stand out. I know of the continuing practice of American operatives seizing suspected terrorists and taking them, without any meaningful legal review, to interrogation centres in south-east Asia and elsewhere. I know of the young special forces officer whose subordinates were confronted with charges of prisoner abuse and torture at a secret hearing after one of them emailed explicit photos back home. The officer testified that, yes, his men had done what the photos depicted, but they — and everybody in the command — understood such treatment was condoned by higher-ups.

 

What else do I know? I know that the decision was made inside the Pentagon in the first weeks of the Afghanistan war — which seemed "won" by December 2001 — to indefinitely detain scores of prisoners who were accumulating daily at American staging posts throughout the country. At the time, according to a memo, in my possession, addressed to Donald Rumsfeld, there were "800-900 Pakistani boys 13-15 years of age in custody". I could not learn if some or all of them have been released, or if some are still being held.

 

A Pentagon spokesman, when asked to comment, said that he had no information to substantiate the number in the document, and that there were currently about 100 juveniles being held in Iraq and Afghanistan; he did not address detainees held elsewhere. He said they received some special care, but added "age is not a determining factor in detention ... As with all the detainees, their release is contingent upon the determination that they are not a threat and that they are of no further intelligence value. Unfortunately, we have found that ... age does not necessarily diminish threat potential."

 

The 10 official inquiries into Abu Ghraib are asking the wrong questions, at least in terms of apportioning ultimate responsibility for the treatment of prisoners. The question that never gets adequately answered is this: what did the president do after being told about Abu Ghraib? It is here that chronology becomes very important.

 

The US-led coalition forces swept to seeming immediate success in the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, and by early April Baghdad had been taken. Over the next few months, however, the resistance grew in scope, persistence and skill. In August 2003 it became more aggressive. At this point there was a decision to get tough with the thousands of prisoners in Iraq, many of whom had been seized in random raids or at roadside checkpoints. Major General Geoffrey D Miller, an army artillery officer who, as commander at Guantánamo, had got tough with the prisoners there, visited Baghdad to tutor the troops — to "Gitmo-ise" the Iraqi system.

 

By the beginning of October 2003 the reservists on the night shift at Abu Ghraib had begun their abuse of prisoners. They were aware that some of America's elite special forces units were also at work at the prison. Those highly trained military men had been authorised by the Pentagon's senior leadership to act far outside the normal rules of engagement. There was no secret about the interrogation practices used throughout that autumn and early winter, and few objections. In fact representatives of one of the Pentagon's private contractors at Abu Ghraib, who were involved in prisoner interrogation, were told that Condoleezza Rice, then the president's national security adviser, had praised their efforts. It's not clear why she would do so — there is still no evidence that the American intelligence community has accumulated any significant information about the operations of the resistance, who continue to strike US soldiers and Iraqis. The night shift's activities at Abu Ghraib came to an end on January 13 2004, when specialist Joseph M Darby, one of the 372nd reservists, provided army police authorities with a disk full of explicit images. By then, these horrors had been taking place for nearly four months.

 

Three days later the army began an investigation. But it is what was not done that is significant. There is no evidence that President Bush, upon learning of the devastating conduct at Abu Ghraib, asked any hard questions of Rumsfeld and his own aides in the White House; no evidence that they took any significant steps, upon learning in mid-January of the abuses, to review and modify the military's policy toward prisoners. I was told by a high-level former intelligence official that within days of the first reports the judicial system was programmed to begin prosecuting the enlisted men and women in the photos and to go no further up the chain of command.

 

In late April, after the CBS and New Yorker reports, a series of news conferences and press briefings emphasised the White House's dismay over the conduct of a few misguided soldiers at Abu Ghraib and the president's repeated opposition to torture. Miller was introduced anew to the American press corps in Baghdad and it was explained that the general had been assigned to clean up the prison system and instil respect for the Geneva conventions.

 

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

 

Such action, or inaction, has special significance for me. In my years of reporting, since covering My Lai in 1969, I have come to know the human costs of such events — and to believe that soldiers who participate can become victims as well.

 

Amid my frenetic reporting for the New Yorker on Abu Ghraib, I was telephoned by a middle-aged woman. She told me that a family member, a young woman, was among those members of the 320th Military Police Battalion, to which the 372nd was attached, who had returned to the US in March. She came back a different person — distraught, angry and wanting nothing to do with her immediate family. At some point afterward, the older woman remembered that she had lent the reservist a portable computer with a DVD player to take to Iraq; on it she discovered an extensive series of images of a naked Iraqi prisoner flinching in fear before two snarling dogs. One of the images was published in the New Yorker and then all over the world.

 

The war, the older woman told me, was not the war for democracy and freedom that she thought her young family member had been sent to fight. Others must know, she said. There was one other thing she wanted to share with me. Since returning from Iraq, the young woman had been getting large black tattoos all over her body. She seemed intent on changing her skin.

[Art Sandusky 0]

That this is even debated in such a manner here and elsewhere perfectly shows off our culture's dead senses of perspective and consequences. Only in the last month or so, and after we had to see some of the most disturbing shit ever in New Orleans, have we actually tried to examine the greater motivations and relations of things. Such petty squabbling over something that should unite everyone in disdain and result in swift justice. We can't keep ignoring truly important shit and concepts much longer. Throwing money at things and commissions won't solve a goddamn thing. The system's done broke. I blame the Nixon era.

[cbacon 0]

Bush Threatens Defense Bill Veto, Warning on Prisoners

 

By REUTERS

Published: September 30, 2005

 

Filed at 3:58 p.m. ET

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Friday threatened to veto a $440.2 billion defense spending bill in the Senate because it wasn't enough money for the Pentagon and also warned lawmakers not to add any amendments to regulate the treatment of detainees or set up a commission to probe abuse.

Skip to next paragraph Reuters

 

Last summer, Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and John Warner of Virginia and others sought legislation banning cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners.

 

The administration has been criticized for holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely. Critics have also questioned whether administration policies led to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

 

The Senate legislation, which includes a $50 billion emergency fund to keep combat operations running in Iraq into next year, could be voted on next month.

 

The measure provides $7 billion less than President George W. Bush requested early this year and is nearly $1 billion below current levels.

 

``These cuts will either result in deterioration of our force readiness'' or will require additional spending requests from the administration later in the fiscal year, the White House budget office warned senators.

 

The House of Representatives last summer passed a fiscal 2006 defense spending bill supported by the Bush administration, although the White House complained about $3 billion in cuts that it said would hamper regular military operations.

 

Referring to the Senate bill, the White House statement on Friday noted that Bush's senior advisers would recommend vetoing a bill ``that significantly underfunds the department (of defense)'' and shifts the money to domestic programs not related to security.

 

In addition, the White House threatened to veto the defense spending bill if it changes the process for considering military base closures within the United States.

 

Besides cutting some operation and maintenance accounts at the Pentagon, the Senate bill would cut the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft by $270 million and would reduce the Transformational Satellite Communications program by $250 million. Spending on a missile defense program would be about $800 million below Bush's request.

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

The judge acknowledged such a risk but said "the education and debate that such publicity will foster will strengthen our purpose, and, by enabling such deficiencies as may be perceived to be debated and corrected, show our strength as a vibrant and functioning democracy to be emulated."

 

 

 

 

Oh and so much has been made of these "corrections"? A few low ranking army creeps and one person demoted in rank. Big fucking whoop dee doo!

 

What stinks alot about this is the way people LIKE Justice or the conservative talk show whores went from denying, to admitting (with an attempted justifying argument), to downplaying, to "let us just forget about it, it was a long time ago." All for what? To keep Rumsfelds head off the stick. Why? Because he is close to the president and if Rumsfeld loses so does Bush and so does conservatism.

 

And some folks want to accuse the democrats of exploiting anything for political gain? I think there might be some raped children who have something to say about that. But what conservatives just can't deal with is maybe just MAYBE liberals were right on this one. Boy is it a doozy. Cuz you can't fucking argue with raped kids. But hey feel free to dip your missiles in pork because you are one glass parking lot away from making this all go under the rug. See? It's all in who you already are.

 

Raped children, Justice. It's not sensationalism, it's just what you can't deal with or afford. As soon as you and your ilk change your attitude maybe Muslims, Arabs, and the "all encompassing umbrella of the widespread liberal media" will see this as just an isolated incident. Instead we will get more of the same with Rumsfeld, Bush, and their "What? Me worry?" horseshit. No wonder so mush of the rest of the world frowns on us. We can't handle our business or admit when we are wrong.

 

http://globalization.about.com/od/humanrig...feldlawsuit.htm

 

 

 

“Secretary Rumsfeld bears direct and ultimate responsibility for this descent into horror by personally authorizing unlawful interrogation techniques and by abdicating his legal duty to stop torture,” said Lucas Guttentag, lead counsel in the lawsuit and director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.

Sponsored Links

 

“He gives lip service to being responsible but has not been held accountable for his actions. This lawsuit puts the blame where it belongs, on the Secretary of Defense.”

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

[bush is] not responsible for what happened...By saying he has some responsibility implies that he had a part in this. He didn't. Welcome the realm of 'personal responsibility'.

 

Torture Memo

 

 

 

But a NEWSWEEK investigation shows that...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.

 

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4989422/

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

These are gonna be tough to stomach.  They'll probably be heavily censored if they ever get released.  Sy Hersh has said they contain photos of children being raped.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Um, children? I don't think we had any children at Abu Ghraib.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hersh (speech):

 

Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

Also,

http://www.sundayherald.com/43796

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I am having a hard time fathoming this and am somewhat skeptical. If there is photographic evidence well then this potentially disasterous but I cannot imagine our servicemen, even with a mob mentality, stooping so low.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican, South Carolina):

 

"The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here."

 

Sergeant Samuel Provance from Alpha Company 302nd Military Intelligence battalion, in interviews with several news agencies, reported the sexual abuse of a 16-year-old girl by two interrogators, as well as a 16-year-old son of an Iraqi general who was driven through the cold after he had been showered and who was then besmeared with mud in order to get his father to talk.

 

And keep in mind:

 

Majority of Detainees "Of No Intelligence Value" or Innocent.

One statement refers to "a lot of pressure to produce reports regardless of intelligence value." Brig. Gen. Karpinski’s deposition also cited the comments of another official, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, who told her, "I don’t care if we’re holding 15,000 innocent civilians! We’re winning the war!" A former commander of the 320th Military Police Battalion notes in a sworn statement, "It became obvious to me that the majority of our detainees were detained as the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and were swept up by Coalition Forces as peripheral bystanders during raids. I think perhaps only one in ten security detainees were of any particular intelligence value.

 

www.aclu.org/torturefoia

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

^ Well there ya go.

[Boon 0]

Party foul.