Question:
An International Committee of the Red Cross report which was leaked today said some coalition intelligence officers estimated that 70-90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake. The report also directly contradicted Bush administration assertions that abusive treatment of Iraqi detainees was the work of an isolated few, stating that such abuse was in fact widespread and systematic. The report cites abuses – some "tantamount to torture" – including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of "imminent execution." US soldiers "entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property," the report said. "Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people," it said. "Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles." This is the sort of behavior which the founding fathers of American correctly identified as "tyranny." It was wrong when King George III’s henchmen did it in the 18th century and it is wrong when we do it in the 21st century. The report also stated that prisoners were stripped naked and kept in completely dark concrete cells. At other times they would be forced to parade around in women’s underwear. Pierre Kraehenbuehl, ICRC director of operations, said Friday the report had been given to U.S. officials in February, but it only summarized what the agency had been telling U.S. officials in detail between March and November 2003 "either in direct face-to-face conversations or in written interventions." So the U.S. government cannot feign surprise at these findings. The ICRC has been keeping them informed since the war began in March of last year. Kraehenbuehl said the abuse of prisoners represented more than isolated acts, and that the problems were not limited to Abu Ghraib. "We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system," Kraehenbuehl was quoted as saying. The report "suggested the use of ill-treatment against persons deprived of their liberty went beyond exceptional cases and might be considered a practice tolerated by" coalition forces. These outrageous human rights abuses by the USA need to stop now. As long as they continue, every American woman and man, myself included, shares the shame and disgrace of our government’s lawless, rogue behavior. I urge every American of conscience to write to their elected representatives and local newspapers today, and on a regular basis, demanding an end to arbitrary detention and abuse in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere. Source: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040510/ap_on_re_eu/red_… Chris, USA
Response:
> US soldiers "entered houses usually after dark, breaking down >doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members >into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house >and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property," the report said.
Sounds like your average American police raid.
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>> US soldiers "entered houses usually after dark, breaking down >doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family >members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of >the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property," >the report said. > Sounds like your average American police raid.
And with men parading around in women’s panties, an average Friday night in San Francsico.
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Chris, If I knew this to be true, I would agree 100%. Time will soon tell. With what we do know already, I am sickened me to hear the things these soldiers did in my nation’s name. The Arab world will hate us no matter what we do or don’t do because of our backing for Israel (which I support), but sexual humiliation of prisoners is sickening and intolerable. I can only hope that heads roll up the chain of command. We need to use other methods of interrogation, which could include minimal food and water, constant bright lights in cells, constant clanging outside cell doors, high volume rap music, and other related activities meant to wear down prisoners, but to videotape rapes or pose people in sexually auggestive poses… nope, can’t agree to that. Greg, also of the USA – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> An International Committee of the Red Cross report which was > leaked today said some coalition intelligence officers estimated that > 70-90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake. The report > also directly contradicted Bush administration assertions that abusive > treatment of Iraqi detainees was the work of an isolated few, stating > that such abuse was in fact widespread and systematic. The report > cites abuses – some "tantamount to torture" – including brutality, > hooding, humiliation and threats of "imminent execution." > US soldiers "entered houses usually after dark, breaking down > doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family > members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of > the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property," > the report said. > "Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, > including elderly, handicapped or sick people," it said. "Treatment > often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with > rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles." This is the > sort of behavior which the founding fathers of American correctly > identified as "tyranny." It was wrong when King George III’s henchmen > did it in the 18th century and it is wrong when we do it in the 21st > century. > The report also stated that prisoners were stripped naked and > kept > in completely dark concrete cells. At other times they would be > forced to parade around in women’s underwear. > Pierre Kraehenbuehl, ICRC director of operations, said Friday the > report had been given to U.S. officials in February, but it only > summarized what the agency had been telling U.S. officials in detail > between March and November 2003 "either in direct face-to-face > conversations or in written interventions." So the U.S. government > cannot feign surprise at these findings. The ICRC has been keeping > them informed since the war began in March of last year. > Kraehenbuehl said the abuse of prisoners represented more than > isolated acts, and that the problems were not limited to Abu Ghraib. > "We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There > was a pattern and a system," Kraehenbuehl was quoted as saying. The > report "suggested the use of ill-treatment against persons deprived of > their liberty went beyond exceptional cases and might be considered a > practice tolerated by" coalition forces. > These outrageous human rights abuses by the USA need to stop now. > As long as they continue, every American woman and man, myself > included, shares the shame and disgrace of our government’s lawless, > rogue behavior. I urge every American of conscience to write to their > elected representatives and local newspapers today, and on a regular > basis, demanding an end to arbitrary detention and abuse in Iraq, > Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere. > Source: > http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040510/ap_on_re_eu/red_cr > oss_prisoner_abuse_5 > Chris, USA
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Please delete alt.support.attn-deficit when reply to Chris. Support groups do not appreciate being cluttered by messages from people who take perverse delight in how long a thread they create. thank you for your cooperation.
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Why the crossposting? Just say what you want to say. No problem there. But this crossposting is stupid. Don’t be stupid.
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– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> Chris, > If I knew this to be true, I would agree 100%. Time will soon tell. > With what we do know already, I am sickened me to hear the things these > soldiers did in my nation’s name. The Arab world will hate us no matter > what we do or don’t do because of our backing for Israel (which I > support), but sexual humiliation of prisoners is sickening and > intolerable. I can only hope that heads roll up the chain of command. > We need to use other methods of interrogation, which could include > minimal food and water, constant bright lights in cells, constant > clanging outside cell doors, high volume rap music, and other related > activities meant to wear down prisoners, but to videotape rapes or pose > people in sexually auggestive poses… nope, can’t agree to that. > Greg, also of the USA > An International Committee of the Red Cross report which was > leaked today said some coalition intelligence officers estimated that > 70-90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake. The report > also directly contradicted Bush administration assertions that abusive > treatment of Iraqi detainees was the work of an isolated few, stating > that such abuse was in fact widespread and systematic. The report > cites abuses – some "tantamount to torture" – including brutality, > hooding, humiliation and threats of "imminent execution." > US soldiers "entered houses usually after dark, breaking down > doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family > members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of > the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property," > the report said. > "Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, > including elderly, handicapped or sick people," it said. "Treatment > often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with > rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles." This is the > sort of behavior which the founding fathers of American correctly > identified as "tyranny." It was wrong when King George III’s henchmen > did it in the 18th century and it is wrong when we do it in the 21st > century. > The report also stated that prisoners were stripped naked and > kept > in completely dark concrete cells. At other times they would be > forced to parade around in women’s underwear. > Pierre Kraehenbuehl, ICRC director of operations, said Friday the > report had been given to U.S. officials in February, but it only > summarized what the agency had been telling U.S. officials in detail > between March and November 2003 "either in direct face-to-face > conversations or in written interventions." So the U.S. government > cannot feign surprise at these findings. The ICRC has been keeping > them informed since the war began in March of last year. > Kraehenbuehl said the abuse of prisoners represented more than > isolated acts, and that the problems were not limited to Abu Ghraib. > "We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There > was a pattern and a system," Kraehenbuehl was quoted as saying. The > report "suggested the use of ill-treatment against persons deprived of > their liberty went beyond exceptional cases and might be considered a > practice tolerated by" coalition forces. > These outrageous human rights abuses by the USA need to stop now. > As long as they continue, every American woman and man, myself > included, shares the shame and disgrace of our government’s lawless, > rogue behavior. I urge every American of conscience to write to their > elected representatives and local newspapers today, and on a regular > basis, demanding an end to arbitrary detention and abuse in Iraq, > Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere. > Source: > http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040510/ap_on_re_eu/red_cr > oss_prisoner_abuse_5 > Chris, USA
The problem with using even the coercive interrogation methods that you suggest (bright lights, constant noise) is that when you put prisoners in a situation that will be intolerable unless they confess to something, they’ll make up something to confess. Some might argue that if we KNOW they have information that they aren’t sharing, then coercion is legitimate, but I’d venture to say that if we KNOW they have the information (i.e. we have proof of what they’re witholding) then we have the info we need, and the interrogation is unnecessary. The Dirty Harry situation, in which a perpetrator CLEARLY has information that could save lives, that is otherwise unavailable, is rare in police situations, and I bet it’s rare in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo as well.
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Oh it depends on which "america". True. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> US soldiers "entered houses usually after dark, breaking down >doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members >into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house >and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property," the report said. > Sounds like your average American police raid.
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Could you possibly keep this rubbish out of these newsgroups where it is not appropriate? I am sure you could find some sort of audience in a more appropriate venue than alt.support.attn-deficit and alt.guitar.amps. Perhaps you are afraid to post in those newsgroups where people actually know what they are talking about. But in any case, please do have the courtesy to find more appropriate newsgroups for your rants. Most sincerely, W.T. Hatch – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> An International Committee of the Red Cross report which was >leaked today said some coalition intelligence officers estimated that >70-90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake. The report >also directly contradicted Bush administration assertions that abusive >treatment of Iraqi detainees was the work of an isolated few, stating that >such abuse was in fact widespread and systematic. The report cites abuses >- some "tantamount to torture" – including brutality, hooding, humiliation >and threats of "imminent execution."
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: Please delete alt.support.attn-deficit when reply to Chris. Support groups : do not appreciate being cluttered by messages from people who take perverse : delight in how long a thread they create. : thank you for your cooperation. The "what is terrorism?" thread was a renamed continuation of a thread originally started by someone in alt.support.attn-deficit back in 2001. You, Mark, posted hundreds of responses to that thread in an unsuccessful attempt to argue that certain actions of the USA do not constitute terrorism. It is a bit late for you to be taking the position you just took in your above note. You are now behaving like a bad sport after having attempted to refute me and repeatedly making a hash of it. The title of this thread is new because I feel the old topic has been run in to the ground. There is not, in fact, any definition of the word "terrorism" which encompasses every act which apologists for the USA’s conduct in foreign policy would wish to label "terrorism" in others, which does not simultaneously encompass actions of which the USA itself is also guilty. This failure has been amply demonstrated in the lengthy "what is terrorism?" thread. I have had some interesting exchanges with certain members of alt.support.attn-deficit in the past and would like that to continue if there is any interest, as I suspect there will be. In compliance with netiquette, I have clearly labeled this new thread title as off topic ("OT") and will consistently use exactly the same title henceforth so that those who do not wish to see this thread may killfile the title and exclude it from their view. Those who do reply from alt.support.attn-deficit are encouraged to ignore Mark and leave the newsgroup on their follow-up line. I am interested in the views of members of alt.support.attn-deficit and encourage your participation. The world is entering a crisis period and never has world opinion been so overwhelmingly negative towards the USA as now. Why is this? I believe this issue needs to be discussed and that the internet is an ideal medium for such a discussion to occur. Chris, USA
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7139-2004May6?language=printer U.S. Faces Lasting Damage Abroad By Robin Wright The Washington Post Friday 07 May 2004 Moral High Ground Lost, Experts Say. The United States faces the prospect of a severe and enduring backlash not just in the Middle East but also among strategic allies, putting in question the Bush administration’s ability to make serious headway on a range of foreign policy goals for the rest of this presidential term, according to U.S. officials and foreign policy experts. The White House damage-control campaign, including the long-awaited apology from President Bush yesterday, is likely to have only limited, if any, success in the near term, administration officials said yesterday. The White House is so gloomy about the repercussions that senior adviser Karl Rove suggested this week that the consequences of the graphic photographs documenting the U.S. abuse of Iraqi detainees are so enormous that it will take decades for the United States to recover, according to a Bush adviser. "It’s a blinding glimpse of the obvious to say we’re in a hole," conceded Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage. He said the backlash in Europe is even greater than in the 22-nation Arab world. "For many of our European friends, what they saw on those horrible pictures is tantamount to torture, and there are very strong views about that," he said yesterday on CNN’s "Paula Zahn Now" show. "In the Arab world, there is general dismay and disgust, but in some places we were not real popular to start with. So I think I’m actually seeing a European reaction quite strong — quite a bit stronger." In public and private communications, European officials have become critical or disdainful of the United States. France’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the abuse is "totally unacceptable" and, if confirmed, "constitute clear and unacceptable violations of international conventions." The issue for Arabs and other allies extends beyond the treatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison, which is seen as a metaphor for a stubborn and often defiant U.S. foreign policy under the Bush administration. Washington first justified military intervention to oust Saddam Hussein, without U.N. support, by asserting that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were a real and imminent threat — but then found none. The administration has since shifted gears, arguing that its primary goal has instead been to create a democracy that would inspire Arabs and the wider Islamic world — only to delay for several months acknowledgement or action on the chronic abuse of Iraqi detainees, analysts note. As a result, the United States has lost the moral high ground in Iraq, putting its credibility on the line. Now, its broader goals for the region — including an ambitious project to promote democracy, set to be unveiled by Bush at three international summits next month — are in jeopardy, foreign policy and Middle East analysts say. "The mask of civility has fallen. It used to be that Americans just don’t do that. Now you hear Arabs say, ‘Don’t lecture us about democracy and respect for human rights,’ " said Raghida Dergham, senior diplomatic correspondent for the London-based al Hayat newspaper. "No quick fix is going to reverse the current antagonism toward American policies." The pictures — and the global reaction — will also complicate efforts by U.S. institutions, including private humanitarian and human rights groups, to promote greater respect for democratic reforms, added Mark Schneider, vice president of International Crisis Group. Bush’s attempt to invoke historic U.S. values to counter the international fallout is unlikely to ameliorate the foreign backlash. "Bush’s moral confidence in the ultimate goodness of American culture and justice will not convince people who are hopping mad today, and who are chronically cynical about the words of politicians and leaders," said Ellen Laipson, former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council and now president of the Stimson Center, a foreign policy think tank. The tragic irony, Arab and foreign policy analysts note, is that the third justification for the intervention in Iraq was the war on terrorism — which they say the pictures of the abuse of Iraqi detainees will instead fuel. "If you want recruitment tools, these are the best anyone could imagine. They are a big blow and a stimulant to spur people to act against the United States. The real kicker for terrorism is indignity and humiliation, and that’s what these pictures are about," said Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy magazine. The haunting pictures will serve as "manna from heaven" for al Qaeda and other extremist groups, increasing the dangers to U.S. national security, said Hisham Melham, Washington correspondent for al-Arabiya, an Arab television network. The United States, for now, may also find allies reluctant to engage on other priorities. "There are a slew of issues — from drug trafficking and the environment — that the United States won’t make much progress on by acting alone. It needs the help of international countries, and it’s going to be very hard for many politicians, not only Muslims, to be a friend of the United States," Naim said. State Department officials are sanguine about the need for additional and dramatic overtures. "We know there is outrage and it’s going to be around for a long time — until it’s clear we’ve cleaned it up and it will never happen again. We have to make sure we meet our promises to do that," said a senior State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Yet Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol, who once worked for Vice President Dan Quayle, suggested that Washington will be able to turn around global public opinion by showing that abuse is not tolerated. "It’s terrible and it’s made life difficult for awhile," Kristol said. "But if it becomes clear that this is the exception and [the troops involved] are held accountable, it could end up being an impressive demonstration to countries where torture is routine."
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/chitribts/20040508/ts_… For Many Iraqis, Abuse Settles Opinion of U.S. By Evan Osnos and Deborah Horan The Chicago Tribune Saturday 08 May 2004 The crowd outside the prison walls seethes, demanding to visit the thousands inside. Sunni and Shiite Muslims, engineers and farmers, mothers, uncles and militants are gathered on this scorching Friday. Each frantically waves the name and prisoner number of a brother, a father or a son, scribbled on a shred of paper, a scrap of a cigarette box, or typed on a crumpled bit of stationery. "They will only let 30 people inside today," the Iraqi official from Abu Ghraib prison shouts as the angry cluster of roughly 100 visitors erupts in jeers. "Whoever is here without an appointment must come back next week." More than a week into the fallout of abuse disclosures at Abu Ghraib prison, Iraqi outrage has swelled far beyond just photos of cruelty and torture and has seized on a much broader target: the entire U.S. system of raids, captures and detention. The human toll from a year of mounting confinements has emerged as an essential factor darkening Iraqi perceptions of the occupation and the United States. Abu Ghraib, in short, has become the symbol of a deep sense of humiliation and frustration that crosses sectarian and class lines–a feeling that many argue is fueling the very insurgency the prisons are intended to contain. "This will be a turning point," Ismael Zayer, editor in chief of the daily Al-Sabah Al-Jadid newspaper, said of the prison scandal. Facing that realization, U.S. officials acknowledge they are scrambling to sharply reduce the size of Iraq’s prison population, hoping to shrug off a costly project they never planned to manage on this scale. At its peak population early this year, Abu Ghraib prison held 8,000 people–nearly double its capacity–with all but several hundred prisoners living in basic canvas tents. The average detainee stayed more than four months. "We recognized that is it is a bone of contention with the people we are supposed to be helping," a senior coalition official said. "We are really pushing the accelerator pedal to reduce the prisoner population for obvious reasons." The Army never planned to be so enmeshed in the prison business in Iraq. But U.S. forces had barely settled in Baghdad in April 2003 before the bloodshed from a growing insurgency demonstrated that detaining civilian insurgents would fast become a part of the occupation. Detention Duty a Struggle From the beginning, the captures were presented by U.S. officials as steps toward peace. For months, U.S. military spokesmen stood before reporters in Baghdad and announced how many dozens of coalition opponents had been captured in raids each day. Thousands were being sent to Abu Ghraib and 15 other U.S.-run detention facilities throughout Iraq. Yet military forces struggled to handle them. An internal Army report on the prison-abuse scandal prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba found that the military police unit at Abu Ghraib at the time had received no training in running a prison before setting foot in Iraq. In fact, neither of the Army’s two battalions trained in confinement have ever been assigned to Iraq, the report notes. One is in Afghanistan , and the other is in Kuwait. By comparison, says Detlev Vagts, a Harvard international law professor and expert on the , Allied occupation of Germany after World War II, the U.S. planned far in advance for assuming a role as prison masters if needed. "They had already started preparation of American troops to take control of Germans by the summer of 1942," two years before the Allied invasion of Western Europe, Vagts said. "We trained interpreters. We had specialist teams who came in early and immediately began sorting out arrangements with police forces [for detention facilities]." The prison abuse case has triggered an investigation into military intelligence practices and the training of military police who work in jails. The newly appointed chief of U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, says he is considering restricting the use of certain "particularly aggressive" interrogation techniques. President Bush , meanwhile, and other top U.S. officials have offered apologies to the Iraqi people. Apologies Too Late But to many Iraqis, the apologies and declarations are too late to bridge a widening gap in the U.S.-Iraqi relationship. Despite U.S. officials’ insistence that abusive practices are not widespread, many on the streets of Baghdad see the photos of men being forced into humiliating sexual positions as another illustration of the U.S. attitude toward Iraq. People feel their dignity has been insulted," said Ahmad al-Samaree, the imam of a large Sunni mosque in Baghdad. "What will a father tell his son when an American soldier comes and handcuffs him, then makes him lay down and then a female soldier comes and steps on his head?" U.S. officials argue that the insurgency is confined largely to loyalists to the former regime and foreign extremists. But to al-Samaree, who has close ties to rebels in Fallujah and Baghdad, that argument overlooks the effect that a year of building national frustration may have had in enabling rebels to operate. "That’s why we hear them on their way to the cemetery saying, `Revenge, revenge,’" he said. That pervasive feeling of dishonor is voiced by a wide array of Iraqis, far beyond the ranks of those who have been arrested or detained. Zayer, the newspaper editor, is a prominent journalist and longtime U.S. ally who headed al-Sabah, a popular coalition-funded newspaper, until American "arrogance" recently drove him to quit, he said. "They refused to recognize our independence," Zayer said of coalition officials. "The whole newspaper resigned. We walked out." Many Allegations Credible In the days since the abuse cases gained wide public notice with the publication of shocking photos, a flood of allegations have poured forth from former detainees–most of them impossible to confirm. Some are dubious, but many others are credible, including shared experiences of sleep deprivation, long hours forced into "stress positions," and naked interrogations, among others. The validity of those anecdotes was buttressed Thursday when the International Committee of the Red Cross announced it had reported precisely such allegations to U.S. authorities months before the abuse cases came to light. But to the scores of Iraqis who flow into this bleak prison parking lot each day from around Iraq, the international spotlight does not mend the damage from a bitter year. Mohammed Ahmed al-Samarai, 48, arrived April 6 for a scheduled visit with his uncle at Abu Ghraib, as he had several times since the arrest last May. But when he arrived, he was told that his uncle, Saadan Hassan had died, days earlier, in a rebel mortar attack on the prison. Instead of a visit, officials told al-Samarai to retrieve the body, he recalls. The uncle, he says, was 80 years old. U.S. officials say they are working to accelerate the review board process that decides who gets a trial and who gets released. But in the meantime, the problem for 30-year-old Fawzia Waharbia is more practical than matters of justice. Her husband, a clerk in a Baghdad court, was arrested 10 months ago, on charges that he was a captain in Saddam Hussein ’s Fedayeen Saddam. Waharbia says she soon ran out of money for her five children. She works now cleaning a school in the mornings and sells some of her government-supplied food rations for the bus ticket to the prison every day. From a pocket deep inside her black abaya, the tiny woman pulls out a slip of paper scrawled with internee no. 15024065. "Can you help me?" she pleaded, her eyes filling with tears. "I need him out."
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http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/05/08/MNG0G6IFJN… Rumsfeld Warns of Photos Depicting Worse Abuses By Marc Sandalow The San Francisco Chronicle Saturday 08 May 2004 Washington — Not since the Vietnam War a generation ago has the credibility of top U.S. military commanders been challenged as aggressively and openly as it was Friday on Capitol Hill. For more than six hours and with television cameras broadcasting the event around the world, members of both parties — those who support the U.S. war in Iraq and those who don’t — expressed alarm over the Pentagon’s seemingly snail-paced response to the gut-wrenching photographs that one Republican House member characterized as the public relations equivalent of Pearl Harbor. As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that he had personally previewed more pictures, and that the worst is yet to come, many fear that the nation may be reaching a tipping point in its tolerance for what already has been the deadliest U.S. military conflict since Vietnam. "I’m gravely concerned that many Americans will have the same impulse as I did when I saw (these) pictures, and that’s to turn away from them," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a strong supporter of President Bush’s policy in Iraq. "We risk losing public support for this conflict. As Americans turned away from the Vietnam War, they may turn away from this one unless this issue is quickly resolved," McCain said. With no weapons of mass destruction found, few signs of democracy blossoming and now graphic evidence that the abuse of Iraqi civilians — at least in isolated incidences — did not end with the ouster of Saddam Hussein, "the whole logic of the war is gone," said former Sen. Gary Hart. Often, certain moments galvanize American opinion in times of war. The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Tet Offensive in 1968, the dragging of American corpses through the streets of Somalia in 1994 and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001 had profound effects on America’s resolve for battle. For many, the pictures of U.S. soldiers seeming to derive pleasure from brutalizing Iraqi detainees has shaken the widely held belief that the U.S. cause in Iraq is just and that Americans — even in times of war — rise above such blatant cruelty. "People are not confident that we are winning. Nor are they confident that we are doing the right thing," said Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion expert with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. Public opinion on the war has reached an all-time low. The latest polls, conducted earlier this week, find Americans evenly divided over whether it was a mistake to have started the war in Iraq, and support has eroded steadily since the war began last year, when an overwhelming majority said it was the right thing to do. The numbers today are nearly identical to what they were in 1968, shortly after the Tet Offensive, as public opinion began to turn against the Vietnam War. Americans typically are reluctant to say going to war was a mistake. A majority supported the Persian Gulf War in 1991 through its conclusion, and it took until 1968, several years after heavy U.S. involvement in Vietnam, for a majority to turn against that war. It was not until 1973, after President Richard Nixon had withdrawn nearly all the troops, that as many as 70 percent of Americans said the Vietnam War was a mistake. But as casualties mount in Iraq and the rationale of the war has eroded, so has public support. Just last week, Bush said that as a result of removing Hussein, "there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq." Yet even if Hussein’s oppression was incomparable by its order of magnitude, there are now pictures of mass graves in a soccer field in Fallujah, of torture at the hands of U.S. captors and, as Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina warned Friday, videos that may contain images of rape and murder. Rumsfeld repeatedly drew contrasts between the American occupiers and Hussein, noting that no apologies or investigations ever sprang from his dictatorship. "People do bad things to other people," Rumsfeld said, "(but) we have a free, open system. We’re not an evil society. America is not what’s wrong with the world." Yet some members of Congress openly challenged Rumsfeld’s willingness to cooperate with them. "I see arrogance and a disdain for Congress," said Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia. "I see misplaced bravado and an unwillingness to admit mistakes. I see finger-pointing and excuses. Given the catastrophic impact that this scandal has had on the world community, how can the United States ever repair its credibility? How are we supposed to convince not only the Iraqi people, but also the rest of the world, that America is, indeed, a liberator and not a conqueror, not an arrogant power?" Byrd asked. As in the Vietnam era, the credibility of the Pentagon has been jeopardized. Members of Congress were incredulous that after months of internal investigations and months of warning from such agencies as the International Red Cross, Rumsfeld said he didn’t have enough information to take to Congress. "Mr. Secretary, there was no other way for you to find this out? You were not aware of concerns offered by the Red Cross?" asked Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D- Walnut Creek. The political consequences for the Bush administration are uncertain. "If Mr. Bush fires Mr. Rumsfeld, the voters may well conclude it is time to fire him," warned an editorial in Friday’s Wall Street Journal. What seems more certain is that the revelations of the prison abuse and the questions they raise will hurt the U.S. mission in Iraq. "Do you think this incident will have any effect?" Democratic Rep. Madeleine Bordallo, the House delegate from Guam, asked Rumsfeld. "Of course," Rumsfeld said. "In what way?" she inquired. "Harmful," he responded.
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http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E416%257E,00.html Tear down Abu Ghraib prison The Denver Post Tuesday, May 11, 2004 By Chris Dugan The resignation or firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz will be an essential first step for the U.S. to regain face in the wake of the revelations about torture and maltreatment of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison. But the prison itself needs to be torn down. This should have been done immediately after the U.S. took control of Iraq in last year’s war. It had long been a symbol of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny and cruelty. Demolishing the structure would have sent the message that the U.S. was serious about "liberating" the Iraqi people from dictatorship and torture. Instead, we moved into the prison and continue to use it for essentially the same purposes as Hussein. Now it has become an international symbol of American arrogance, corruption, hypocrisy and disregard for established international standards of human rights. It is time for the wrecking ball.
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Keep in mind that according to CIA operative Abdulrahman Khadr, who infiltrated the Guantanamo Bay prison population for several months under deep cover, most of the detainees there were never al-Qaeda or Taliban and don’t belong there. Also keep in mind that the report from the International Committee of the Red Cross which was leaked yesterday stated that some coalition intelligence officials have stated that 70-90% of the detainees in US custody in Iraq are probably innocent. This is the predictable result when one abandons established standards of evidence and due process. How can the USA lecture the rest of the world about "basic human rights" while holding thousands of people, most of them innocent, incommunicado without habeus corpus rights, without trial etc.? Chris http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1212197,00.html U.K. Forces Taught Torture Methods By David Leigh The Guardian U.K. Saturday 08 May 2004 The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they are doing, according to British military sources. The techniques devised in the system, called R2I – resistance to interrogation – match the crude exploitation and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad. One former British special forces officer who returned last week from Iraq, said: "It was clear from discussions with US private contractors in Iraq that the prison guards were using R2I techniques, but they didn’t know what they were doing." He said British and US military intelligence soldiers were trained in these techniques, which were taught at the joint services interrogation centre in Ashford, Kent, now transferred to the former US base at Chicksands. "There is a reservoir of knowledge about these interrogation techniques which is retained by former special forces soldiers who are being rehired as private contractors in Iraq. Contractors are bringing in their old friends". Using sexual jibes and degradation, along with stripping naked, is one of the methods taught on both sides of the Atlantic under the slogan "prolong the shock of capture", he said. Female guards were used to taunt male prisoners sexually and at British training sessions when female candidates were undergoing resistance training they would be subject to lesbian jibes. "Most people just laugh that off during mock training exercises, but the whole experience is horrible. Two of my colleagues couldn’t cope with the training at the time. One walked out saying ‘I’ve had enough’, and the other had a breakdown. It’s exceedingly disturbing," said the former Special Boat Squadron officer, who asked that his identity be withheld for security reasons. Many British and US special forces soldiers learn about the degradation techniques because they are subjected to them to help them resist if captured. They include soldiers from the SAS, SBS, most air pilots, paratroopers and members of pathfinder platoons. A number of commercial firms which have been supplying interrogators to the US army in Iraq boast of hiring former US special forces soldiers, such as Navy Seals. "The crucial difference from Iraq is that frontline soldiers who are made to experience R2I techniques themselves develop empathy. They realise the suffering they are causing. But people who haven’t undergone this don’t realise what they are doing to people. It’s a shambles in Iraq". The British former officer said the dissemination of R2I techniques inside Iraq was all the more dangerous because of the general mood among American troops. "The feeling among US soldiers I’ve spoken to in the last week is also that ‘the gloves are off’. Many of them still think they are dealing with people responsible for 9/11". When the interrogation techniques are used on British soldiers for training purposes, they are subject to a strict 48-hour time limit, and a supervisor and a psychologist are always present. It is recognised that in inexperienced hands, prisoners can be plunged into psychosis. The spectrum of R2I techniques also includes keeping prisoners naked most of the time. This is what the Abu Ghraib photographs show, along with inmates being forced to crawl on a leash; forced to masturbate in front of a female soldier; mimic oral sex with other male prisoners; and form piles of naked, hooded men. The full battery of methods includes hooding, sleep deprivation, time disorientation and depriving prisoners not only of dignity, but of fundamental human needs, such as warmth, water and food. The US commander in charge of military jails in Iraq, Major General Geoffrey Miller, has confirmed that a battery of 50-odd special "coercive techniques" can be used against enemy detainees. The general, who previously ran the prison camp at Guant?mo Bay, said his main role was to extract as much intelligence as possible. Interrogation experts at Abu Ghraib prison were there to help make the prison staff "more able to garner intelligence as rapidly as possible". Sleep deprivation and stripping naked were techniques that could now only be authorised at general officer level, he said.
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– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> In alt.parenting.spanking M.a.r.k P.r.o.b.e.r.t-May 10, 2004 <M.a.r.k > : Please delete alt.support.attn-deficit when reply to Chris. Support groups > : do not appreciate being cluttered by messages from people who take perverse > : delight in how long a thread they create. > : thank you for your cooperation. > The "what is terrorism?" thread was a renamed continuation of a > thread originally started by someone in alt.support.attn-deficit back in > 2001. You, Mark, posted hundreds of responses to that thread in an > unsuccessful attempt to argue that certain actions of the USA do not > constitute terrorism.
Chris, I was wrong to try to refute your greatness. You are wonderful. You are the most knowledgeable. Now, kindly FOAD and quit spamming off topic newsgroups.
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Chris obviously does not entertain polite reuqests to not post off topic to newsgroups. The only way to end these threads is to never respond to him.
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>And with men parading around in women’s panties, an average Friday night >in San Francsico.
Or Denver.
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> US soldiers "entered houses usually after dark, breaking down >doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members >into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house >and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property," the report said. > Sounds like your average American police raid.
Yep, drug raid at 4AM. Ooops. Wrong house. sorry…
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> Keep in mind tha<snip>
OK. So you insist on being stupid. Join the your friends. *plonk*
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Truth is, this where the completely powerless flap jaws (typing) to "vent" and are 110% ignored by the powerful. Marc Mulay Laguna Hills, CA – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – > The world is entering a crisis period and never has world opinion > been so overwhelmingly negative towards the USA as now. Why is this? I > believe this issue needs to be discussed and that the internet is an ideal > medium for such a discussion to occur. > Chris, USA
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While posturing as the "land of the free," the USA has the largest per capita prison population of any country in the world, including the so-called "axis of evil" countries. And the kinds of abuses depicted in the recent photos from Abu Ghraib prison are far from rare in the US prison system. But try to get anyone to care! Chris http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&u=/nm/20040506/ts_nm/ir… Abuse Common in U.S. Prisons, Activists Say Thursday May 6, By Alan Elsner WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Horrific abuses, some similar to those revealed in Iraq, regularly occur in U.S. prisons with little national attention or public outrage, human rights activists said on Thursday. "We certainly see many of the same kinds of things here in the United States, including sexual assaults and the abuse of prisoners, against both men and women," said Kara Gotsch, public policy coordinator for the national prison project of the American Civil Liberties Union (news – web sites). "This office has been involved in cases in which prisoners have been raped by guards and humiliated but we don’t talk about it much in America and we certainly don’t hear the president expressing outrage," she said. President Bush has said he was disgusted by the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Yet, there were many cases of abuse in Texas when he served as governor from 1995 to 2000. For example, in September 1996, guards at the Brazoria County jail in Texas staged a drug raid on inmates that was videotaped for training purposes. The tape showed several inmates forced to strip and lie on the ground. A police dog attacked several prisoners; the tape clearly showed one being bitten on the leg. Guards prodded prisoners with stun guns and forced them to crawl along the ground. Then they dragged injured inmates face down back to their cells. In a 1999 opinion, federal Judge William Wayne Justice wrote of the situation in Texas state prisons: "Many inmates credibly testified to the existence of violence, rape and extortion in the prison system and about their own suffering from such abysmal conditions." Judy Greene of Justice Strategies, a New York City consultancy, said: "When I saw Bush’s interview on Arab TV stations, I was thinking, had he ever stepped inside a Texas prison when he was governor?" PRISON GUARDS INVOLVED Two of those allegedly involved in the abuse of Iraqis were U.S. prison guards. Spc. Charles Graner, who appears in some of the most lurid photographs, was a guard at Greene County State Correctional Institution, one of Pennsylvania’s top security death row prisons. Two years after he arrived at Greene, the prison was at the center of an abuse scandal in which guards routinely beat and humiliated prisoners. Prison officials have declined to say whether Graner had been disciplined in that case. Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick was a corrections officer at Buckingham Correctional Center in Virginia. In a statement published by the Richmond Times Dispatch on Thursday, Frederick compared his role at Abu Ghraib in Iraq with his job as a guard in Buckingham, where he said he had "very strict policies and procedures as to how to handle any given situation." In Iraq, he said, there were no such policies. Jenni Gainsborough of Penal Reform International said: "I don’t think we routinely torture prisoners in the United States but abuse and humiliation regularly occur. They may have been trying to get information out of the Iraqis but some of those photographs look to me as if the U.S. personnel were enjoying inflicting the humiliation." BRUTALITY DOCUMENTED In Cook County Jail in Chicago, the elite Special Operations Response Team has been implicated in scores of incidents of racially motivated violence and brutality in recent years. One of the most dramatic took place on Feb. 4, 1999, when SORT members accompanied by four guard dogs without muzzles ordered 400 prisoners to leave their cells in response to a gang-related stabbing three days earlier. According to a 50-page report by the sheriff’s Internal Affairs Division, the guards ransacked cells, then herded inmates into common areas where they were forced to strip and face the wall with hands behind their head. Anyone who looked away from the wall was struck with a wooden baton. Some prisoners were forced to lie on the floor, where they were stomped and kicked. One inmate, who did not leave a cell fast enough said he was beaten with fists and batons until he urinated on himself and went into convulsions. At least 49 inmates told investigators they had been beaten. After the beatings, guards prevented inmates from receiving immediate medical care. Corrections officer Roger Fairley testified in a deposition last year that guards were afraid to come forward to tell of what they had seen in case their colleagues took revenge. "On many and many occasions I witnessed excessive force, abuse of power, intimidation," he said.
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> Chris, > If I knew this to be true, I would agree 100%. Time will soon tell.
Greg I really wish I could share your optimism that "time will soon tell." The reason I do not share it is that this is actually not a "new story" at all. Serious allegations of widespread systemic prisoner abuse in Iraq have been public for well over a year now, from credible sources such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and Amnesty International. I know I was aware of them back in March of 2003 when the current Iraq war first began because I recently did a search of my own postings and found that I started posting about it back then. I learned of these allegations simply by reading Reuters News Service and CBS.com. As far back as July I was posting specifically about Abu Ghraib prison and abuses there. Somehow, I was able to learn all this just from reading the mainstream news, yet the President of the United States claims he knew nothing about any of this until last week when the shocking photos first appeared on television and became a political liability for him during an election year. There has already been plenty of "time" but it has yet to "tell." Note that the International Committee of the Red Cross report which was leaked on Monday which said that 70-90% of Iraqi detainees were mistakenly imprisoned has been in circulation for months behind the scenes. It is only "new" to you and me because of the recent leak which made it public. > With what we do know already, I am sickened me to hear the things these > soldiers did in my nation’s name. The Arab world will hate us no matter > what we do or don’t do because of our backing for Israel (which I > support), but sexual humiliation of prisoners is sickening and > intolerable. I can only hope that heads roll up the chain of command.
I must disagree that the Arab world will always hate the USA no matter what. In the not so distant past, America was quite popular with the average Arab on the street despite frustrations with the USA’s support of Israel’s rejectionist stance and noncompliance with various key UN resolutions. Watergate created the impression that America is a place where there is so much democracy that the president has to resign just for telling a single lie. And American pop culture and music was well received and created a favorable impression of America and Americans. The near-universal loathing of the USA which has emerged in the Arab world under Mr. Bush’s watch is something quite new. If I were a conspiracy theorist (which I am not) I might suspect that Bush was secretly working for al-Qaeda, because he certainly is helping them recruit new members and mobilize the muslim world in their favor while causing more American deaths than any al-Qaeda action aside from 9-11. Under Saddam, al-Qaeda members were imprisoned and killed in Iraq. Now Iraq is a shining opportunity for them to advance their agenda, all thanks to the actions of the Bush administration. > We need to use other methods of interrogation, which could include > minimal food and water, constant bright lights in cells, constant > clanging outside cell doors, high volume rap music, and other related > activities meant to wear down prisoners, but to videotape rapes or pose > people in sexually auggestive poses… nope, can’t agree to that.
I respectfully opine that even this goes too far. When American detainees in unfriendly countries are forced to endure days of sleeplessness and deprived of adequate food and water, the USA quite correctly denounces this as a violation of basic human rights. It is equally wrong when American forces do the same things to detainees in their custody. Chris
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: Fuck you, Dugan. Ah Lord Valve, I see you are still around. How have you been, old chum? You haven’t changed, I see – still dazzling us with scintillating logic and facts as always. :-) : You’re a leftist creep As you already know, I am a registered Republican and a supporter of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. : who roots for the enemy. You’ve been doing it for years. This perennial claim that I "root for the enemy" is nonsense, of course. If there were any truth to this sort of empty charge you would post links to previous notes of mine in which I have expressed support for bin Laden and his goals. No such notes exist, so you must resort to empty smears like the above. : You’re no better : than Levin – an anti-American loser who provides soundbites : for Al Jazeera. Drag your lame ass outta that communist : "institution of higher learning" you’re hiding in and try : spouting your defeatist bullshit in a room full of *regular* : Americans. See if they don’t hand you your fucking ass. In other words, it frustrates you that on the internet, Americans may express views which are domestically unpopular without being physically beaten up for it. I quite understand. It must be very frustrating for you to be emotionally attached to views which you are unable to defend in any more cogent manner. I think your problem is that you get all your "news" from a silly right wing opinion website, WorldNetDaily.com, while dismissing virtually the entire mainstream media, both in the USA and out, as "bullshit." On July 21st you said that CBSNEWS.com "= Bullshit." This was in response to a CBS report I reposted which detailed serious allegations about abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US forces in the Abu Ghraib prison. Your entire response to early news of this serious scandal which is now shaking the world was to post cut the entire report except for the words "CBSNEWS.com" and then add the phrase "= Bullshit." On July 26th you said that the entire Public Broadcasting System in America "= bullshit," The Independent (UK) "= bullshit," The Washington Post "= MAJOR bullshit," The Boston Globe "= bullshit," United Press International "= bullshit," and Reuters News Service "= bullshit." On August 9th you said The Guardian (UK) "= communist bullshit. On August 8th you said that The Agence France Presse "= frog bullshit." On August 2nd you said Al-Ahram Weekly "= ARAB bullshit," and the United Nations "= bullshit." On July 28th you said that The Economist "= bullshit," The New York Times "= bullshit" and The Financial Times "= bullshit." You, Lord Valve, live in a world of your own. And in this respect, you are very much like many other of my fellow Americans. I do hope you will continue to post on this thread. When you do so, you illustrate an important facet of why America has come so far down the wrong path, and do so more vividly than I ever could. Having said all of this, I shall now return to ignoring you as I generally do 99% of the time. ;-) Chris, USA
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– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – > : Fuck you, Dugan. > Ah Lord Valve, I see you are still around. How have you been, old > chum? You haven’t changed, I see – still dazzling us with scintillating > logic and facts as always. :-) > : You’re a leftist creep > As you already know, I am a registered Republican and a supporter of > the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. > : who roots for the enemy. You’ve been doing it for years. > This perennial claim that I "root for the enemy" is nonsense, of > course. If there were any truth to this sort of empty charge you would > post links to previous notes of mine in which I have expressed support for > bin Laden and his goals. No such notes exist, so you must resort to empty > smears like the above. > : You’re no better > : than Levin – an anti-American loser who provides soundbites > : for Al Jazeera. Drag your lame ass outta that communist > : "institution of higher learning" you’re hiding in and try > : spouting your defeatist bullshit in a room full of *regular* > : Americans. See if they don’t hand you your fucking ass. > In other words, it frustrates you that on the internet, Americans may > express views which are domestically unpopular without being physically > beaten up for it. I quite understand. It must be very frustrating for > you to be emotionally attached to views which you are unable to defend in > any more cogent manner. > I think your problem is that you get all your "news" from a silly right > wing opinion website, WorldNetDaily.com, while dismissing virtually the > entire mainstream media, both in the USA and out, as "bullshit." > On July 21st you said that CBSNEWS.com "= Bullshit." This was in > response to a CBS report I reposted which detailed serious allegations > about abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US forces in the Abu Ghraib prison. > Your entire response to early news of this serious scandal which is now > shaking the world was to post cut the entire report except for the words > "CBSNEWS.com" and then add the phrase "= Bullshit." > On July 26th you said that the entire Public Broadcasting System in > America "= bullshit," The Independent (UK) "= bullshit," The Washington > Post "= MAJOR bullshit," The Boston Globe "= bullshit," United Press > International "= bullshit," and Reuters News Service "= bullshit." > On August 9th you said The Guardian (UK) "= communist bullshit. > On August 8th you said that The Agence France Presse "= frog bullshit." > On August 2nd you said Al-Ahram Weekly "= ARAB bullshit," and the > United Nations "= bullshit." > On July 28th you said that The Economist "= bullshit," The New York > Times "= bullshit" and The Financial Times "= bullshit." > You, Lord Valve, live in a world of your own. And in this respect, you > are very much like many other of my fellow Americans. I do hope you will > continue to post on this thread. When you do so, you illustrate an > important facet of why America has come so far down the wrong path, and do > so more vividly than I ever could. > Having said all of this, I shall now return to ignoring you as I > generally do 99% of the time. ;-) > Chris, USA
Bravo! That was brilliant!
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The continuing pattern of US violation of international laws to which it is a solemn signatory, such as Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, not only shames all Americans in the eyes of the world, it emboldens human rights violators the world over. "See?" they can argue, "The USA does it so why shouldn’t I do it too?" Chris, USA Memo Lets CIA Take Detainees Out of Iraq Sun Oct 24, 8:21 AM ET By Dana Priest, Washington Post Staff Writer At the request of the CIA, the Justice Department drafted a confidential memo that authorizes the agency to transfer detainees out of Iraq for interrogation — a practice that international legal specialists say contravenes the Geneva Conventions. One intelligence official familiar with the operation said the CIA has used the March draft memo as legal support for secretly transporting as many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq in the last six months. The agency has concealed the detainees from the International Committee of the Red Cross and other authorities, the official said. The draft opinion, written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and dated March 19, 2004, refers to both Iraqi citizens and foreigners in Iraq, who the memo says are protected by the treaty. It permits the CIA to take Iraqis out of the country to be interrogated for a "brief but not indefinite period." It also says the CIA can permanently remove persons deemed to be "illegal aliens" under "local immigration law." Some specialists in international law say the opinion amounts to a reinterpretation of one of the most basic rights of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which protects civilians during wartime and occupation, including insurgents who were not part of Iraq’s military. The treaty prohibits the "[i]ndividual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory . . . regardless of their motive." The 1949 treaty notes that a violation of this particular provision constitutes a "grave breach" of the accord, and thus a "war crime" under U.S. federal law, according to a footnote in the Justice Department draft. "For these reasons," the footnote reads, "we recommend that any contemplated relocations of ‘protected persons’ from Iraq to facilitate interrogation be carefully evaluated for compliance with Article 49 on a case by case basis." It says that even persons removed from Iraq retain the treaty’s protections, which would include humane treatment and access to international monitors. During the war in Afghanistan, the administration ruled that al Qaeda fighters were not considered "protected persons" under the convention. Many of them were transferred out of the country to the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere for interrogations. By contrast, the U.S. government deems former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and military, as well as insurgents and other civilians in Iraq, to be protected by the Geneva Conventions. International law experts contacted for this article described the legal reasoning contained in the Justice Department memo as unconventional and disturbing. "The overall thrust of the Convention is to keep from moving people out of the country and out of the protection of the Convention," said former senior military attorney Scott Silliman, executive director of Duke University’s Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. "The memorandum seeks to create a legal regime justifying conduct that the international community clearly considers in violation of international law and the Convention." Silliman reviewed the document at The Post’s request. The CIA, Justice Department and the author of the draft opinion, Jack L. Goldsmith, former director of the Office of Legal Counsel, declined to comment for this article.
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Love God. Love you rneighbor. Forgive 7 x 70. Don’t worry about the splinter in your neighbor’s eye, when you have a log in your own eye. Bush has taken us so far from Jesus.
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>Love God. >Love you rneighbor. >Forgive 7 x 70. >Don’t worry about the splinter in your neighbor’s eye, when you have a log >in your own eye. >Bush has taken us so far from Jesus.
Who cares? Buzz off. Claude
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I have been wrong over and over again regarding this war. No matter how bad I think it will be, in the long run things turn out even worse than that. Bush has publically stated that "terrorists cannot hide behind innocent civilians anymore." Clearly, he spoke the truth. The USA has been shooting right through them to get at its enemies. Now, we learn that 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died. And we wonder, why do they hate us? Chris, USA http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?floc=NW_1-T&oldflok=ne-us-… Study: 100,000 Excess Civilian Iraqi Deaths Since War By Patricia Reaney LONDON (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in violence since the U.S.-led invasion last year, American public health experts have calculated in a report that estimates there were 100,000 "excess deaths" in 18 months. The rise in the death rate was mainly due to violence and much of it was caused by U.S. air strikes on towns and cities. "Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq," said Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in a report published online by The Lancet medical journal. "The use of air power in areas with lots of civilians appears to be killing a lot of women and children," Roberts told Reuters. The report came just days before the U.S. presidential election in which the Iraq war has been a major issue. Mortality was already high in Iraq before the war because of United Nations sanctions blocking food and medical imports but the researchers described what they found as shocking. The new figures are based on surveys done by the researchers in Iraq in September 2004. They compared Iraqi deaths during 14.6 months before the invasion in March 2003 and the 17.8 months after it by conducting household surveys in randomly selected neighborhoods. Previous estimates based on think tank and media sources put the Iraqi civilian death toll at up to 16,053 and military fatalities as high as 6,370. By comparison about 849 U.S. military were killed in combat or attacks and another 258 died in accidents or incidents not related to fighting, according to the Pentagon. VERY BAD FOR IRAQI CIVILIANS The researchers blamed air strikes for many of the deaths. "What we have evidence of is the use of air power in populated urban areas and the bad consequences of it," Roberts said. Gilbert Burnham, who collaborated on the research, said U.S. military action in Iraq was "very bad for Iraqi civilians." "We were not expecting the level of deaths from violence that we found in this study and we hope this will lead to some serious discussions of how military and political aims can be achieved in a way that is not so detrimental to civilians populations," he told Reuters in an interview. The researchers did 33 cluster surveys of 30 households each, recording the date, circumstances and cause of deaths. They found that the risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher than before the war. Before the war the major causes of death were heart attacks, chronic disorders and accidents. That changed after the war. Two-thirds of violent deaths in the study were reported in Falluja, the insurgent held city 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad which had been repeatedly hit by U.S. air strikes. "Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce non-combatant deaths from air strikes," Roberts added in the study. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, said the research which was submitted to the journal earlier this month had been peer-reviewed, edited and fast-tracked for publication because of its importance in the evolving security situation in Iraq. "But these findings also raise questions for those far removed from Iraq — in the governments of the countries responsible for launching a pre-emptive war," Horton said in an editorial.
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> (Reuters) > estimates > assumptions > we think > appears to be > Reuters. > estimates > accidents > incidents not related to fighting > Reuters > 33 cluster surveys of 30 households > Falluja > "Our results need further verification…"
= propaganda. Speculation. Laughable. Next? Lord Valve American
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: Laughable. Next? I am glad you are able to see the humor in thousands of innocent civilians killed by your government and mine, Lord Valve. I don’t. Chris, USA
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If anyone on this thread can document a single instance of a bonafide al-Quaeda spokesperson publically expressing support for John Kerry, please post it. I made the rounds of conservative op-ed websites and came up empty handed after hours of wading through one empty "terrorists for Kerry" spin article after another, all without a scrap of supporting evidence for the claim. Meanwhile, what little material I was able to find regarding al-Quaeda’s preferences in the US election, all leaned towards a preference for four more years of Bush. Here is the evidence that Islamist terrorists would prefer Bush to Kerry. According to the Columbia Journalism Review [1] an article by London-based expert on radical Islamic groups, Dr. Hani Al Sibai, appeared on October 4th in the Saudi government’s official Arabic language London newspaper, Al Sharq Al Awsat, entitled, "The Fundamentalists Disagree Over the First Debate in US Presidential Elections Campaign and Some of Them Hope Bush Will Win Because He Opened a New Front for ‘Al Qaeda’ in Iraq." Dr. Al Sibai explains, "Kerry might withdraw the US forces … and this will mean a big loss for the jihadists." This is consistent with the position of the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, the al-Qaeda linked group taking credit for the murderous train bombings in Madrid on March 11 which killed over 200 innocent people. Reuters News Service [2] reported on March 17th that this group had issued a statement declaring that it, "supported U.S. President George W. Bush in his reelection campaign, and would prefer him to win in November rather than the Democratic candidate John Kerry, as it was not possible to find a leader ‘more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom.’" The terrorists, addressing themselves to President Bush, stated, "Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilisation. Because of this we desire you (Bush) to be elected." That radical Islamists linked to Osama bin Laden support Bush’s relection bid ought to surprise no one. Under Bush’s watch, the wave of international sympathy for America following the 9/11 attacks evaporated, leaving the USA more hated and distrusted by the world at large than perhaps at any time in its history, according to international polls conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project [3,4]. The ill-conceived, botched invasion of an Arab country with no connection to the events of 9/11 in the name of a "war on terror" has greatly furthered al-Qaeda’s campaign to unite Muslim world opinion against the USA, and brought them a welcome new surge in recruitment. Saddam Hussein was a bitter enemy of Osama bin Laden, ruthlessly suppressing Islamist groups within Iraq’s borders. Now, thanks to Mr. Bush, Iraq has truly become the operating theater for al-Qaeda which the Bush administration wrongly claimed it to be before the invasion. And the Abu Ghraib prison scandal must have exceeded Mr. Bin Laden’s most ferverent hopes that the American infidels would play into his hands, appearing as little short of a gift from Allah Himself. The images of Americans torturing and humiliating Muslims galvanized anti-American fervor more effectively than anything al-Qaeda could ever have done or said. If Mr. Bin Laden’s prayers are answered again, his next gift from Heaven will be a second term for George W. Bush. Chris, USA Sources: 1. http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/001000.asp 2. http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040317/325/eotq9.html 3. http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/2004/1001/p09s02-cods.html 4. http://www.publicagenda.org/aboutpa/pdfs/yankelovich_terrorism.pdf
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Chris, While on a much grander scale, the reasoning isn’t all that different from research on children who were spanked. They have an increased likelihood to demonstrate antisocial and violent behavior, towards peers and siblings as children and towards society as adults. After all, "If my parents can do it, why shouldn’t I do it to?" LaVonne – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – > The continuing pattern of US violation of international laws to which > it is a solemn signatory, such as Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva > Convention, not only shames all Americans in the eyes of the world, it > emboldens human rights violators the world over. "See?" they can argue, > "The USA does it so why shouldn’t I do it too?" > Chris, USA > Memo Lets CIA Take Detainees Out of Iraq > Sun Oct 24, 8:21 AM ET > By Dana Priest, Washington Post Staff Writer > At the request of the CIA, the Justice Department drafted a confidential > memo that authorizes the agency to transfer detainees out of Iraq for > interrogation — a practice that international legal specialists say > contravenes the Geneva Conventions. > One intelligence official familiar with the operation said the CIA has > used the March draft memo as legal support for secretly transporting as > many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq in the last six months. The agency > has concealed the detainees from the International Committee of the Red > Cross and other authorities, the official said. > The draft opinion, written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal > Counsel and dated March 19, 2004, refers to both Iraqi citizens and > foreigners in Iraq, who the memo says are protected by the treaty. It > permits the CIA to take Iraqis out of the country to be interrogated for a > "brief but not indefinite period." It also says the CIA can permanently > remove persons deemed to be "illegal aliens" under "local immigration > law." > Some specialists in international law say the opinion amounts to a > reinterpretation of one of the most basic rights of Article 49 of the > Fourth Geneva Convention, which protects civilians during wartime and > occupation, including insurgents who were not part of Iraq’s military. > The treaty prohibits the "[i]ndividual or mass forcible transfers, as well > as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory . . . > regardless of their motive." > The 1949 treaty notes that a violation of this particular provision > constitutes a "grave breach" of the accord, and thus a "war crime" under > U.S. federal law, according to a footnote in the Justice Department draft. > "For these reasons," the footnote reads, "we recommend that any > contemplated relocations of ‘protected persons’ from Iraq to facilitate > interrogation be carefully evaluated for compliance with Article 49 on a > case by case basis." It says that even persons removed from Iraq retain > the treaty’s protections, which would include humane treatment and access > to international monitors. > During the war in Afghanistan, the administration ruled that al Qaeda > fighters were not considered "protected persons" under the convention. > Many of them were transferred out of the country to the naval base in > Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere for interrogations. By contrast, the > U.S. government deems former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and > military, as well as insurgents and other civilians in Iraq, to be > protected by the Geneva Conventions. > International law experts contacted for this article described the legal > reasoning contained in the Justice Department memo as unconventional and > disturbing. > "The overall thrust of the Convention is to keep from moving people out of > the country and out of the protection of the Convention," said former > senior military attorney Scott Silliman, executive director of Duke > University’s Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. "The memorandum > seeks to create a legal regime justifying conduct that the international > community clearly considers in violation of international law and the > Convention." Silliman reviewed the document at The Post’s request. > The CIA, Justice Department and the author of the draft opinion, Jack L. > Goldsmith, former director of the Office of Legal Counsel, declined to > comment for this article.
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I love how these right-wingers are trying to blame this on the Democrat’s. I love how Drudge tries to blame this on the young boy’s. Republicans = slime balls. Mr Soul 
Posted in Parenting Book | 
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Jan 
I wish I was in a bigger city, upin Seattle they would let you take the car seats out to your vehicle to test them for fitting. Now I’m in the middle of a corn-field and people look at me like I’m crazy when I ask things like that. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – > They say to have the child face the rear till they weigh 20 pounds. > The longer the better though. You won’t find a rear facer that a 30 > lb child will fit in. The cheap $30 model at walmart fits in my dads > extended cab and it only touches the headrest. Can you adjust the > height of the headrest to accomodate your child seat? 