What will the US do about torture?

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
What will the US do about torture?
59
Tue, 06-08-2004 - 1:28pm
Torture: Another blow for Rumsfeld?

By Jim Lobe

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

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

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

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

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

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

{snip, snip}

In its report, the working group took the position that neither the US Congress, the courts, nor international law could interfere with the president's powers to wage war. That means, according to the report, that the president himself is not bound by US law, such as the federal Torture Statute or the constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual" punishment.

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

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

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

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

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

"If we apply the same rules to ourselves as we have advocated in the international tribunals on Yugoslavia and Rumsfeld , then Donald Rumsfeld is in very serious trouble."

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

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Sun, 06-13-2004 - 1:31pm

Alcohol Abuse Cited as Problem at Abu Ghraib, L.A. Times Says.....


http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=ado3pLP6mOx0&refer=us


Senior U.S. military officials tried to crack down on alcohol abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq weeks before investigators uncovered prisoner mistreatment there, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing soldiers.


Commanders instituted a series of measures in December and January to stem illegal activity such as the procurement of alcohol and prostitutes at the prison outside of Baghdad, the newspaper said. Alcohol abuse was so prevalent there was an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter at the prison.


Some officers say alcohol may have played a part in the behavior of guards who have been charged with beating prisoners, stripping them naked, and stacking them in pyramids on the prison floor. At least one prisoner has told investigators he frequently smelled alcohol on the guards' breath in the cellblock where most of the abuses occurred, the paper said.


Possession of alcohol is prohibited under General Order No. 1 issued by U.S. Central Command, the paper said. Some members of the military police at the prison -- including Master Sgt. Greg Rayburn, a medic who was stationed at Abu Ghraib from September 2003 until this April -- have acknowledged alcohol abuse was a problem but dispute the prostitution claim, the paper said.

cl-Libraone~

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Sun, 06-13-2004 - 6:21pm

Despite White House attempts to disavow responsibility for the practices employed at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, the existence of the memos has further eroded U.S. credibility. A Pentagon official tells Time that Rumsfeld is arguing privately to declassify the interrogation techniques because, coming out piecemeal, they are doing a lot of political damage. Some high-ranking military officials, however, say that al-Qaeda already trains its recruits on techniques in the Army field manual, and that if the other ones are made public, the terrorists could use that to their advantage. Things could get even worse. A Republican Senator says charges of manslaughter and rape may soon be brought against U.S. personnel involved in handling detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.


Quote from....... Redefining Torture


Did the U.S. go too far in changing the rules, or did it apply the new rules to the wrong people?



http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040621-650689,00.html?cnn=yes

cl-Libraone~

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Mon, 06-14-2004 - 11:24am
<>

If I must choose, I'll say the first. Hubris made them think they were above the law. I think the US needs a real opinion about limiting the President's power,I've never seen a President be so devious.



iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Mon, 06-14-2004 - 11:27am

>"never seen a President be so devious"<


Makes Nixon look like a straight shooter.

cl-Libraone~

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Mon, 06-14-2004 - 4:08pm
<>

Indeed, as John Dean says in his new book. Also makes Clinton's peccadillo unworthy of impeachment.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Mon, 06-14-2004 - 5:25pm
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/177743_abuse14.html

Abuses at Abu Ghraib were described last fall

Soldiers at Iraqi prison say reports regularly went to senior officers


Monday, June 14, 2004


By ANDREA ELLIOTT
THE NEW YORK TIMES


FRANKFURT, Germany -- Beginning in November, a small unit of interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison began reporting allegations of prisoner abuse, including the beatings of five blindfolded Iraqi generals, in internal documents sent to senior officers, according to interviews with military personnel who worked in the prison.


The disclosure of the documents raises new questions about whether senior officers in Iraq were alerted about serious abuses at the prison before January. Top military officials have said they only learned about abuses then, after a soldier came forward with photographs of the abuse.


"We were reporting it long before this mess came out," said one of several military intelligence soldiers interviewed in Germany and the United States who asked not to be identified for fear they would jeopardize their careers.


At least 20 accounts of mistreatment were included in the documents, according to those interviewed.


Some detainees described abuse at other detention facilities before they were transferred to Abu Ghraib, but the documents say at least seven incidents took place at the prison, four of them in the area controlled by military intelligence and the site of the notorious abuses depicted in the photographs.


The abuse allegations were cited by members of the prison's Detainee Assessment Branch, a unit of interrogators who screened prisoners for possible release, in routine weekly reports channeled to military judge advocates and others.


Military intelligence personnel said the unit's two- to five-page memorandums were to be sent for final approval to a three-member board that included Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the commander of the 800th Military Police Battalion, and Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, the top Army military intelligence officer in Iraq. The sections about the abuse were generally only a paragraph or two in a larger document.


Military officials in Baghdad acknowledged yesterday that lawyers on a magistrate board reviewed the reports, but they could not confirm whether Karpinski and Fast had seen them, or whether any action had been taken to investigate the incidents.


The beating of the former generals, which has not previously been disclosed, is being examined by the Pentagon as part of its inquiry into abuses at Abu Ghraib, according to people knowledgeable about the investigation.


© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Fireworkscl-nwtreehugger


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Tue, 06-15-2004 - 10:54am

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apmideast_story.asp?category=1107&slug=Britain%20Iraq%20Abu%20Ghraib


Tuesday, June 15, 2004 · Last updated 6:28 a.m. PT


Abu Ghraib general says she's a scapegoat


By JILL LAWLESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER


LONDON -- The American general who was in charge of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison claimed she was being made a scapegoat for the abuse of detainees, and said her successor once told her that prisoners should be treated "like dogs." A spokesman for Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, accused of making the "like dogs" remark, categorically denied the charge.


In an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio broadcast Tuesday, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski said Miller told her last autumn that prisoners "are like dogs, and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog then you've lost control of them."


Miller was in charge of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and now oversees U.S. prisons in Iraq.


Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for detention operations in Iraq, said Karpinski's allegations were "categorically false."


"Maj. Gen. Miller made no such comment to Brig. Gen. Karpinski or to anybody else," Johnson said. "This allegation flies in the face of the philosophy of humane treatment for all detainees, under all circumstances, that Maj. Gen. Miller adopted first at Guantanamo, and now at his position in Iraq. Brig. Gen. Karpinski's statement to the media is categorically false."


Karpinski was suspended last month from command of the 800th Military Police Brigade after she and other officers were faulted by Army investigators for paying too little attention to the prison's day-to-day operations and not acting strongly enough to discipline soldiers for violating standard procedures.


Several soldiers are facing courts-martial over abuse allegations at the jail, which flared when pictures of troops abusing and humiliating naked Iraqi detainees were published in April.


In her defense, Karpinski has said that interrogations at the prison were not under her command but were run by a military intelligence unit that was "under increasing pressure to get more, as they call it, actionable intelligence."


Karpinski said that during a visit to Iraq in September, Miller - still the commander at the Guantanamo Bay prison - spoke of wanting to "Gitmoize" Abu Ghraib by applying the Cuban facility's regimented detention and interrogation techniques.


"He talked about Gitmoizing in terms of what the (military police) were going to do; he was going to select the MPs, they were going to receive special training," she said.


"That training was going to come from the military intelligence command," Karpinski added, noting that the troops under her command had no training in such interrogation techniques.


Karpinski said she was being made "a convenient scapegoat" in the abuse scandal.


"The interrogation operation was directed; it was under a separate command and there was no reason for me to go out to look at Abu Ghraib at cell block 1a or 1b or visit the interrogation facilities," she said.


Karpinski said was unaware until November that the International Committee of the Red Cross had visited the jail and expressed concerns about detainees' treatment to U.S. officials. She said she did not see the abuse photos - believed to have been taken late last year - until late January.


"I didn't know in September, I didn't know in October, I didn't know ever" about any abuse, she said.


"Those pictures which I saw on the 23rd of January were more shocking to me than probably the rest of the world ... I was absolutely sickened by those images and I couldn't even fathom a guess as to what happened to these people to make them go in such an opposite direction of how they were trained."

Fireworkscl-nwtreehugger


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Tue, 06-15-2004 - 11:10am
The abuse is not isolated in Abu Ghraib, therefore, it seems logical that this behaviour is sanctioned from higher up, IMO.
cl-Libraone~

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Tue, 06-15-2004 - 12:03pm
<>

A picture says more than a thousand words. I still contend that until the pictures became public no one wanted to acknowledge the abuse. Public opinion is a powerful tool. That's why governmental secrecy is so evil.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Tue, 06-15-2004 - 12:11pm

UK soldiers to face court martial on abuse charges.


FOUR British soldiers from a regiment at the centre of allegations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners are to face courts martial, it was confirmed yesterday.

The men, from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, have been charged with assault, indecent assault and a military charge of prejudicing good order and military discipline.

Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, delivered the decision to try the men in a written statement to the House of Lords. He confirmed that the hearings would be in public.

Allegations of abuse committed by British troops emerged after newspapers published pictures of mistreatment by United States forces at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

The decision to proceed to trial in the case of the four British soldiers was made by the Army Prosecuting Authority (APA).


More.......... http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=678732004

cl-Libraone~

 


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