Two Hundred War Crime Links

Assembled by Lawrence McGuire (blmcguire@hotmail.com)

I collected these links over the course of the last few months, and I have not put them in any particular order, because I don't have the time, and I don't think it is really necessary right now.

If you have any war crime links that are not on the list, please put them together on a word document first, as I have done here, with an excerpt, and when you have 20 or more collected you can email them to me, and I will add them to this list. Please take the time and effort to verify that your new links are different from what I have here.

I collected them by surfing on the web and adding them to my 'favorites', then I opened one link at a time, copied a paragraph or two, copied the link, and pasted everything onto a Microsoft Word document. Yes, that is a time consuming process. If you have a better system let me know.

Most of the links come from mainstream news sources. Sometimes these sources are collected on other websites like www.commondreams.org or www.informationclearinghouse.info.

Sometimes an article that was once free now requires a payment.

Sometimes an excerpt I have made may be out of the general context of the source article.

Some articles are not kept at all (for example Yahoo does not keep its articles from AP on file very long).

Some articles are not directly about war crimes, but seem directly related in some way to me.

Generally the source is named or can be determined by reading the link.

These collections of links can be used as sources to write articles and to provide evidence for those who doubt the extent of US war crimes in Iraq.

I think the invasion itself constitutes a war crime, the crime of aggressive war, and therefore President Bush and the architects of the war are all guilty of war crimes.

I am also sympathetic with those who see war itself as always a crime, and so the concept 'war crime' is an oxymoron. My disagreement with this is that I think people have a right to self defence against violent aggression, and I hesitate to label this self-defence as a crime too.

Some sites focused solely on US War Crimes:

http://www.worldtribunal.org/

http://i-p-o.org/int-war-crimes-commission-iraq.htm

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Afghanistan-Criminal-Tribunal10mar04htm

http://www.brusselstribunal.org/

http://www.cageprisoners.com/

Various war crimes are documented below, including:

The crime of aggressive war: The invasion of Iraq

Preventing aid agencies from bring aid into Fallujah

Exporting prisoners from Iraq

Incarcerating people in Guantanamo Bay etc without legal representation

Torture and murder in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib etc

Shooting wounded civilians dead

Deliberately destroying Iraq's civilian infrastructure

Use of Depleted Uranium

Use of cluster bombs in civilian areas

Use of 2000 lb bombs in civilian areas

Selling off Iraq's companies and re-working its constitution

Deliberate killings of civilians

Mass reprisals ( 600 killed in the first onslaught on Fallujah early this year as a
reprisal for 4 US mercenaries)

Destroying hospitals and killing doctors

Indiscriminate bombing of Fallujah

Killing fleeing or non-combatant civilians

Deliberate attacks on Journalists

Preventing civilians from fleeing a combat zone

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1311

Has the U.S. Government Committed War Crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq?
May 23, 2004
Robert Higgs
The Independent Institute

"First, in the light of voluminous evidence now available to everybody, it seems clear that leaders and advisers of the Bush administration engaged in “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression.” After all, Iraq posed no threat to the United States. Its government had neither the means nor the intention of waging war against this country; nor did it issue any threat to harm the United States. That high officials of the U.S. government and their supporters in the news media and elsewhere openly made many false statements to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq surely exonerates nobody; if anything, those statements cast the guilty parties in an even starker light."

http://tomwatson.typepad.com/tom_watson/2004/05/war_crimes_tria.html

Tom Watson Blog

"In our name, the American government is holding without charge and in often humiliating conditions, thousands of prisoners - some combatants, some terrorists, some bystanders. They have no redress, no legal protection, no legal status. And in our name, some are being tortured, and some subjected to conditions that lead to their deaths. And this is an Administration that has argued against adherence to the Geneva Conventions - and one reason for that argument was to protect Bush and his ministers from prosecution on war crimes charges by successor administrations."

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov2004/Stainsby1122.htm

Resistance is Warranted
by Macdonald Stainsby
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 22, 2004

"Beginning on November 30, 2004 George W Bush will be in a country that has endorsed the WCC. Despite certain protestations to the contrary, Canada is legally obliged to arrest George W Bush for war crimes. Going all the way back to Nuremberg, the precedent for the WCC, the number one crime -- the crime that got the Nazis hanged -- is to launch “aggressive” war. All other crimes, such as torture at Abu Ghraib, murder of wounded prisoners, targeting of hospitals during war, denying basic medicines -- stem from the primary crime against humanity, the crime against international peace. It is of little consequence how many of these crimes can be proved to involve Bush's direction. What matters is he launched illegal aggressive war. If Canada does not arrest him, it means Canada is in breach of their international obligations as a signatory in the Hague."

http://www.socialistworker.org/2004-2/521/521_04_MediaGuide.shtml

A guide to the U.S. media’s doublespeak

November 19, 2004 |

"CORPORATE JOURNALISTS in the United States are generally little more than stenographers for U.S. government propaganda. But in times of war--or alleged war--they tend to abandon stenography for cheerleading as their preferred mode of “reporting” the “news.”"

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/75E3CA31-83B0-46FD-A762-0C1157C408F9.htm

Falluja troops told to shoot on sight

Thursday 09 December 2004, 10:58 Makka Time, 7:58 GMT

"On the eve of the assault on Falluja, the US military ordered troops to shoot any male on the street between the ages of 15 and 50 if they were seen as a security threat, regardless of whether they had a weapon."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E4F9CD7D-282E-47A9-99C4-B6F5B8BF56CC.htm

Iraqi civilians gunned down at checkpoint

Monday 22 November 2004, 13:18 Makka Time, 10:18 GMT

"US marines have killed several Iraqi civilians after opening fire at a bus which drove through a checkpoint in the city of Ramadi, the US military and Iraqi police say."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FK20Aa01.html

US military on the scent of oil
By Colonel Daniel Smith

The 2003 Defense Department's "Base Structure Report" lists 702 foreign bases owned or leased by the Pentagon, with about 6,000 more installations in the US and its possessions. As vast as this network seems, the report inexplicably fails to include any locations in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Qatar and Kosovo. And to these must now be added at least 14 garrisons in Iraq.

Then there is "under-reporting". In Asia, the 10 US Marine Corps facilities on Okinawa, including the sprawling 485-hectare USMC Futenma Air Station, have only one entry. The array of intelligence gathering and other military installations in Britain are nowhere to be found in the report, possibly because they all are technically Royal Air Force facilities. Moreover, while a surface-based "boost-phase" missile defense system to counter North Korean missiles can be deployed on ships in the international waters of the Sea of Japan, effective coverage by a surface-based system to counter Iranian missiles would require launch sites in at least Afghanistan and Iraq (and possibly Turkmenistan), according to a Congressional Budget Office study completed in July.

THE ROVING EYE
The recipe for civil war
By Pepe Escobar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FK25Ak04.html

Thousands of Fallujah refugee families are living in dire conditions in makeshift shelters around the city. Those not lucky enough to have relatives in Baghdad are camping in places like the University of Baghdad campus. Nobody has received any aid from Allawi's government and its Ministry of Health - no medicine, no doctors, although there has been a rhetorical promise. Baghdad is filled with refugees telling horror stories of fear under the relentless American bombing, of being sprayed with what they claim was poisonous gas, of snipers killing women and children or anyone trying to cross the Euphrates river, of no water, no electricity and no food. No Sunni in his right mind believes in the "reconstruction" of Fallujah: they point to the example of Sadr City - bombed in October and still in ruins. The Iraqi Red Crescent says all their relief teams are still blocked from entering Fallujah, while the Americans say the refugees will have to wait at least two more weeks before they can go back to their city in ruins.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A809-2004Nov20

Children Pay Cost of Iraq's Chaos
Malnutrition Nearly Double What It Was Before Invasion

By Karl VickWashington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 21, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the United States led an invasion of the country 20 months ago, according to surveys by the United Nations, aid agencies and the interim Iraqi government.

Dead-Check in Falluja

by Evan Wright
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0447,wright,58644,1.html

November 24 - 30, 2004 "Village Voice" -- In April 9, 2003, the day the statue of Saddam Hussein was being toppled in Baghdad, symbolizing the promised liberation of Iraq, I was embedded with a Marine unit engaged in fierce combat about 30 miles north of the city, on the outskirts of Baquba. Late that afternoon, the Humvee I was in was following about 50 feet behind a Marine Light Armored Vehicle when it pulled alongside a Toyota pickup pushed to the side of the road, its doors riddled with bullet holes. The head of at least one occupant was visible in the truck, but I couldn't determine if he was moving or not. Nor did I see any weapons. As our Humvee stopped behind the truck, a Marine in the vehicle ahead of us leapt out, pointed his rifle into the window of the pickup and sprayed it with gunfire. It was a cold-blooded execution.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7369.htm

Falluja's Health Damage

The bombing of hospitalized patients, forced starvation and dehydration, denial of medicines and health services to the sick and wounded must be recognized for what they are: war crimes and crimes against humanity.

by MILES SCHUMAN

[from the December 13, 2004 issue The Nation Magazine]

While the North American news media have focused on the military triumph of US Marines in Falluja, little attention has been paid to reports that US armed forces killed scores of patients in an attack on a Falluja health center and have deprived civilians of medical care, food and water.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/reichard.php?articleid=4060

November 26, 2004 Greetings from Fallujah!
by L. Reichard White

Preamble:

April 28, 2003: U.S. soldiers kill 18 Fallujah school children.

Act I

April, 2004: In the attack on Fallujah, which ended after 3 weeks in defeat of the "coalition":

"U.S. forces bombed the power plant at the beginning of the assault; ..The town was placed under siege; the ban on bringing in food, medicine, and other basic items was broken only when Iraqis en masse challenged the roadblocks. ... After initial instances in which people were prevented from leaving, U.S. forces began allowing everyone to leave except for what they called 'military age males,' men usually between 15 and 60. Keeping noncombatants from leaving a place under bombardment is a violation of the laws of war.

"The main hospital in Fallujah is across the Euphrates from the bulk of the town. Right at the beginning, the Americans shut down the main bridge, cutting off the hospital from the town. ... This hospital closing (not the only such that I documented in Iraq) also violates the Geneva Convention.

"In addition to the artillery and the warplanes dropping 500, 1000, and 2000-pound bombs, and the murderous AC-130 Spectre gunships that can demolish a whole city block in less than a minute, the Marines had snipers criss-crossing the whole town. For weeks, Fallujah was a series of sometimes mutually inaccessible pockets, divided by the no-man's-lands of sniper fire paths. Snipers fired indiscriminately, usually at whatever moved. Of 20 people I saw come into the clinic ... only five were 'military-age males.' I saw old women, old men, a child of 10 shot through the head...

"One thing that snipers were very discriminating about every single ambulance I saw had bullet holes in it. Two I inspected bore clear evidence of specific, deliberate sniping. Friends of mine who went out to gather in wounded people were shot at. When we first reported this fact, we came in for near-universal execration. Many just refused to believe it. Some asked me how I knew that it wasn't the mujahedin. Interesting question. Had, say, Brownsville, Texas, been encircled by the Vietnamese and bombarded ... and Brownsville ambulances been shot up, the question of whether the residents were shooting at their own ambulances, I somehow guess, would not have come up. Later, our reports were confirmed by the Iraqi Ministry of Health and even by the U.S. military.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1359871,00.htm l

Smoking while Iraq burns

Its idolisation of 'the face of Falluja' shows how numb the US is to everyone's pain but its own

Naomi Klein
Friday November 26, 2004
The Guardian

"On second thoughts, perhaps Miller does deserve to be elevated to the status of icon - not of the war in Iraq, but of the new era of supercharged American impunity. Because outside US borders, it is, of course, a different marine who has been awarded the prize as "the face of Falluja": the soldier captured on tape executing a wounded, unarmed prisoner in a mosque. Runners-up are a photograph of a two-year-old Fallujan in a hospital bed with one of his tiny legs blown off; a dead child lying in the street, clutching the headless body of an adult; and an emergency health clinic blasted to rubble. "

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/Swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5366150

Tuesday 15.03.2005, CET 00:48

November 26, 2004 3:30 PM

Turk lawmaker says US in Iraq worse than Hitler

By Gareth Jones

ANKARA (Reuters) - The head of Turkey's parliamentary human rights group has accused Washington of genocide in Iraq and
behaving worse than Adolf Hitler, in remarks underscoring the depth of opposition in Turkey to U.S. policy in the region.

The United Sates embassy said the comments were potentially damaging to Turkish-U.S. relations.

"The occupation has turned into barbarism," Friday's Yeni Safak newspaper quoted Mehmet Elkatmis, head of parliament's human
rights commission, as saying. "The U.S. administration is committing genocide...in Iraq.

"Never in human history have such genocide and cruelty been witnessed. Such a genocide was never seen in the time of the

pharoahs (of ancient Egypt), nor of Hitler nor of (Italy's fascist leader Benito) Mussolini," he said.

"This occupation has entirely imperialist aims," he was quoted as telling the human rights commission on Thursday.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=44358&SelectRegion=Iraq_Crisis&SelectCountry=IRAQ

IRIN is a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Thousands of families are said to be in a critical humanitarian situation after the Iraqi government and US forces prohibited NGOs from delivering supplies, due to safety concerns.

A convoy carrying thousands of food parcels, blankets, tents and medical supplies arrived in Fallujah with the help of the US-led forces who gave authorisation to the IRCS to deliver and allowed for one of the clinics to be converted into a temporary hospital for treating the injured.

"Bodies can be seen everywhere and people were crying when receiving the food parcels. It is very sad, it is a human disaster," Muhammad al-Nuri, a spokesman for the IRCS, told IRIN in Baghdad.

Al-Nuri added that according to their information, they believe there could be more than 6,000 dead in Fallujah and that it is difficult to move around inside the city due to dead bodies in the streets.

http://news.independentco.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=586045

Witnesses say US forces killed unarmed civilians

By Kim Sengupta in Baghdad

24 November 2004

Allegations of widespread abuse by US forces in Fallujah, including the killing of unarmed civilians and the targeting of a hospital in an attack, have been made by people who have escaped from the city.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/112604I.shtml

Where's Picasso?
By Saul Landau
Progreso Weekly

25 November to 01 December 2004 Issue

Falluja: The 21st Century Guernica

On November 12, as U.S. jets bombed Falluja for the ninth straight day, a Redwood City California jury found Scott Peterson guilty of murdering his wife and unborn child. That macabre theme captured the headlines and dominated conversation throughout workplaces and homes.

Indeed, Peterson "news" all but drowned out the U.S. military's claim that successful bombing and shelling of a city of 300,000 residents had struck only sites where "insurgents" had holed up. On November 15, the BBC embedded newsman with a marine detachment claimed that the unofficial death toll estimate had risen to well over 2,000, many of them civilians.

As Iraqi eyewitnesses told BBC reporters he had seen bombs hitting residential targets, Americans exchanged viewpoints and kinky jokes about Peterson. One photographer captured a Falluja man holding his dead son, one of two kids he lost to U.S. bombers. He could not get medical help to stop the bleeding.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/outrage?pid=2028

11/24/2004

The Facts in Iraq

Last weekend, The Washington Post reported that acute malnutrition among children in Iraq has doubled since before the US invasion in March of 2003. That is just one statistic, out of many, that paints a disturbing picture of the US occupation. After reading press dispatches, think-tank reports and public opinion polling, The Daily Outrage compiled this sampling of the facts on the ground.

Epidemics

** 400,000 Iraqi children suffer from chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein, according to a UN development report. Iraq's child malnutrition rate now roughly equals that of Burundi--a war-torn central African nation--and is far above both Uganda and Haiti.

** 60 percent of rural residents and 20 percent of urban dwellers have access to nothing but contaminated drinking water.

** Hepatitis outbreaks have doubled since the war began.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002097353_chelala22.html

Monday, November 22, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.

Guest columnist
Another round of misery for the children of Iraq

By César Chelala
Special to The Times

Before the Iraq war, Physicians for Human Rights had warned about the serious public-health and human-rights risks to the already vulnerable Iraqi population, should the war take place.

Its predictions have been recently, and sadly, confirmed by an article in the medical magazine The Lancet. According to the article, there have been in excess of 100,000 civilian deaths since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, including a substantial number of children. Carol Bellamy, UNICEF's executive director, has called the death of 34 children in recent bomb attacks "an unconscionable slaughter of innocents."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1374895,00.html

November 26, 2004

Anybody can be persuaded to be a torturer, says Abu Ghraib study
By Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent

VIRTUALLY everybody is capable of the abuse committed by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, psychologists said yesterday.

The degrading treatment of Iraqi prisoners of war was not the result of particular cruelty or evil on the part of the abusers, but was more heavily influenced by social processes to which all of us are susceptible.

An expert analysis of the scandal, in which naked prisoners were beaten, forced to simulate sex and in one case paraded on a dog’s leash, has indicated that the perpetrators of such crimes are rarely psychopathic or even particularly sadistic.

Evidence from more than 25,000 studies involving eight million participants shows that almost anybody is capable of performing acts of apparently inexplicable cruelty when the conditions are right.

Most people can be persuaded to take part in activities they would normally find morally repugnant by a combination of peer pressure, the influence of authority figures, stress and the portrayal of the enemy as a dehumanised “outgroup”.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1126-01.htm

Published on Friday, November 26, 2004 by the Inter Press Service

'Unusual Weapons' Used in Fallujah

by Dahr Jamail

BAGHDAD, Nov 26 (IPS) - The U.S. military has used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians in Fallujah, eyewitnesses report..

”Poisonous gases have been used in Fallujah,” 35-year-old trader from Fallujah Abu Hammad told IPS. ”They used everything -- tanks, artillery, infantry, poison gas. Fallujah has been bombed to the ground.”

Hammad is from the Julan district of Fallujah where some of the heaviest fighting occurred. Other residents of that area report the use of illegal weapons.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1126-02.htm

Published on Friday, November 26, 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle

U.S. Threatens to Cut Aid over Court
Congress Wants Immunity Accords for Americans

by Colum Lynch

UNITED NATIONS -- The Republican-controlled Congress has stepped up its campaign to curtail the power of the International Criminal Court, threatening to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid to governments that refuse to sign immunity accords shielding U.S. personnel from being surrendered to the tribunal.

The move marks an escalation in U.S. efforts to ensure that the first world criminal court can never judge American citizens for crimes committed overseas.

http://www.antiwar.com/jamail/?articleid=4039

'We Live Like Dogs'
by Dahr Jamail

"Doctors in Fallujah are reporting there are patients in the hospital there who were forced out by the Americans," says Mehdi Abdulla, a 33-year-old ambulance driver at a hospital in Baghdad. "Some doctors there told me they had a major operation going, but the soldiers took the doctors away and left the patient to die."

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-11/22/content_2244359.htm

Ten days in Fallujah battlefield

www.chinaview.cn 2004-11-22 05:31:08

by Li Jizhi, Jiang Xiaofeng

BAGHDAD, Nov. 21 (Xinhuanet)

But he told Xinhua that some doctors in Fallujah were shocked tosee that many bodies were charred without apparent injuries.With fierce clashes on the ground and bombardment by USaircraft, many houses were leveled or people were killed."My friend and I heard the groaning of some injured people underruins of some destroyed houses, but we could do nothing for them."He was the witness of a scene where six injured Iraqis dragged by several US soldiers to a street were rolled over by a tank.He also saw an Iraqi cameraman gunned down by a sniper whileshooting in face of US vehicles

http://logicvoice.blogspot.com/2004/12/tribunal-rules-documents-on-guantanamo.html

Tribunal rules documents on Guantanamo detainee cannot be released as they could "damage international relations"

In other words, the Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal has refused a freedom of information request to release documents relating to Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks because revelations about further abuse and torture could strain the relationship between John Howards ruling government, and the Bush regime.

For those unaware of David Hicks, here's some information for you:

According to sworn testmony by Mr Hicks:

I have been menaced and threatened, directly and indirectly, with firearms and other weapons before and during interrogations.

I have been in the company of other detainees who were beaten while blindfolded and handcuffed. At one point, a group of detainees, including myself, were subjected to being randomly hit over a eight hour session while handcuffed and blindfolded.

I have had my head rammed into asphalt several times (while blindfolded).

I have had medication - the identity of which was unknown to me, despite my requests for information - forced upon me against my will. I have been struck while under the influence of sedatives that were forced upon me by injection.

I have witnessed the activities of the Internal Reaction Force (hereinafter "IRF"), which consists of a squad of soldiers that enter a detainee's cell and brutalize him with the aid of an attack dog. The IRF invasions were so common that the term to be "IRF'd" became part of the language of the detainees. I have seen detainees suffer serious injuries as a result of being IRF'ed. I have seen detainees IRF'ed while they were praying, or for refusing medication.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200412/s1255125.htm

Last Update: Wednesday, December 1, 2004. 6:41am (AEDT)

An international legal team has filed a criminal complaint against US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top US officials over the Abu Ghraib prisoner torture and abuse scandal in Iraq.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7436.htm

Afraid To Look in the Moral Abyss

by James Carroll

12/07/04 "Boston Globe"

The main horror of what the "coalition" is doing is not a matter of the occasional soldier who, in the heat of battle, commits a war crime, but the steady destruction rained on cities, villages, the Iraqi people. This violence is wreaked calmly, from a distance, within the rules of engagement.

The war itself is the American war crime. But that is lost in the "normalcy" of the news.

http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=5853

Aid finally reaches Fallujah civilians 11/27/2004 9:31:00 PM GMT

''U.S. forces has launched a military operation in Fallujah. The city has become the scene of a human disaster'', Red Crescent Deputy Director General Bulent Ay said on Wednesday.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/23FBDBB2-C104-4E69-BA80-F476CC64C4A1.htm

No end to destruction in Falluja

Sunday 02 January 2005, 12:44 Makka Time, 9:44 GMT

Iraqis returning to Falluja have found their properties either vandalised or demolished and now live in more of a ghetto than a city, according to a national TV station.

Iraq's al-Sharqiya TV said on Friday that locals bussed back into the destroyed city saw the US army knocking over even more homes.

The report added: "Search operations began in the city's east, where each house was either marked with an X or an X inside a circle. X meant the house was safe, where as the circle symbolised the house was a source of danger and was to be demolished."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F0A47D67-7D17-4140-A992-2AEC1CF0624A.htm

US army blocks aid convoy for Falluja

Tuesday 30 November 2004, 8:25 Makka Time, 5:25 GMT

The US military has prevented an aid convoy from reaching the besieged city of Falluja, a doctor based in Baghdad who accompanied the convoy says.

"The Iraqi ministry of health asked us to go to Falluja. When we were on our way, the US army stopped our convoy, and carried out a search," said Dr Ibrahim al-Kubaisi

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/politics/10660755.htm

Posted on Sun, Jan. 16, 2005

Wounded child, mass graves behind soldier's refusal to return to Iraq

RUSS BYNUM

Associated Press

In an interview with The Associated Press at his home just outside Fort Stewart, Benderman said he never grasped the misery that war inflicts on civilians as well as combatants until he saw it all firsthand.

He told of bombed out homes and displaced Iraqis living in mud huts and drinking from mud puddles; mass graves in Khanaqin near the Iranian border where dogs fed off bodies of men, women and children.

He recalled his convoy passing a girl, no older than 10, on the roadside clutching a badly injured arm. Benderman said his executive officer refused to help because the troops had limited medical supplies.

"Her arm was burned, 3rd-degree burns, just black. And she was standing there with her mother begging for help," Benderman said. "That was an eye opener to seeing how insane it really is."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33733-2005Jan24?language=printer

Army Closed Many Abuse Cases Early
Few Detainee-Treatment Inquiries Led to Penalties, Documents Show

By R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 25, 2005; Page A01

Army personnel have admitted to beating or threatening to kill Iraqi detainees and stealing money from Iraqi civilians but have not been charged with criminal conduct, according to newly released Army documents.

Only a handful of the 54 investigations of alleged detainee abuse and other illicit activities detailed in the documents led to recommended penalties as severe as a court-martial or discharge from military service. Most led to administrative fines or simply withered because investigators could not find victims or evidence.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7629.htm

Army Doctors Implicated in Abuse

Medical Workers Helped Tailor Interrogations of Detainees, Article Says

By Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writer

01/06/05 "Washington Post" -- U.S. Army doctors violated the Geneva Conventions by helping intelligence officers carry out abusive interrogations at military detention centers, perhaps participating in torture, according to an article in today's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Medical personnel helped tailor interrogations to the physical and mental conditions of individual detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to the article. It says that medical workers gave interrogators access to patient medical files, and that psychiatrists and other physicians collaborated with interrogators and guards who, in turn, deprived detainees of sleep, restricted them to diets of bread and water and exposed them to extreme heat and cold.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4113679.stm

New jail abuse allegations hit US

Tuesday, 21 December, 2004, 11:24 GMT

Fresh allegations have emerged of serious mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by US military personnel.

Memos between FBI officials detailing abuses, some dated after the Abu Ghraib jail scandal, were released as part of a lawsuit against the government.

Others allege serious abuse of inmates held at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, mostly captives from the Afghan war.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4066835.stm

Eyewitness: Taking detainee testimony in Iraq

Friday, 24 December, 2004, 12:57 GMT

Peggy Gish, 62, is an American woman who has spent 13 months over the past two years logging the cases of Iraqi detainees with the ecumenical humanitarian group Christian Peacemaker Teams.

She told the BBC News website about her experiences.

We heard about very violent house raids in the middle of the night, in which US soldiers would storm in, and if the men did not get down immediately, they would knock them down and beat them.

Then their house would be ransacked, often with property damage. Many would report that at the end of that time jewellery and money would be missing. Then the men of the household would be taken away.

We also heard about sexual abuse and beatings when they were being questioned. If they did not give information about an explosion or something they would be knocked down, kicked in the groin, and hurt in other ways.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4047469.stm

Aid reaches Falluja's citizens

Saturday, 27 November, 2004, 13:13 GMT

In comments reported by the UN information network Irin, spokesman Muhammad al-Nuri said the Red Crescent believed more than 6,000 people may have died in the fight for Falluja.

He said it was difficult to move around the city due to the number of dead bodies.

"Bodies can be seen everywhere and people were crying when receiving the food parcels. It is very sad, it is a human disaster," Mr Nuri reportedly said.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/12/05/returning_fallujans_will_face_clampdown/

By Anne Barnard, Globe Staff | December 5, 2004

Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/12/26/us_disclosures_signal_wider_detainee_abuse/

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | December 26, 2004

WASHINGTON -- A trove of government disclosures forced by a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit has signaled that the abuse of detainees in Iraq and at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was much broader than the Bush administration has portrayed it since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal became public this spring.

http://www.socialistworker.org/2004-2/522/522_01_BringThemHome.shtml

Sent to die in Bush’s war for oil and empire
Bring them home now!

December 3, 2004 | Page 1

THE U.S. military has reduced Falluja to a pile of rubble. “They used everything--tanks, artillery, infantry, poison gas,” resident Abu Hammad told reporters. “Falluja has been bombed to the ground.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7434.htm

Britain 'complicit in offences at Guantanamo Bay'
By Joshua Rozenberg, Legal Editor

12/08/04 "The Telegraph" -- The first British lawyer to visit the American detention centre at Guantanamo Bay accused Foreign Office officials yesterday of complicity in an offence against humanity.

Clive Stafford Smith, who also holds American citizenship, was cleared to visit his client Moazzam Begg at the base in Cuba last month. Under American law, Mr Stafford Smith is not allowed to reveal what his client told him until written statements lodged last week with a government censor in Washington have been cleared.

However, the lawyer said that the conditions under which his client was being held were "worse than any death row I have ever seen". Mr Begg had been held in solitary for more than 18 months, said Mr Stafford Smith.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7909.htm
Briton saw detainees beaten to death
By AFP
From correspondents in London

January 30, 2005 "Daily Telegraph" -- ONE of four Britons freed last week from US detention in Guantanamo Bay has described being tortured, witnessing the killing of fellow detainees by US interrogators and receiving threats to his family.

Moazzam Begg's testimony was quoted in Britain's Independent on Sunday today.

He said his ordeal, beginning at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, included being shackled and dragged, having a "suffocating hood" placed on his head and being struck in the head several times.

http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/ccr/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=394

Call for a Special Prosecutor to Investigate U.S. Torture

The Center for Constitutional Rights is calling for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor to conduct a full, independent and public inquiry into the role of high-ranking U.S. officials in the abuse and torture of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo and elsewhere around the world.

With each week, more appalling government memos and documents come to light from a Freedom of Information Act request CCR filed with the American Civil Liberties Union, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense, and Veterans for Peace: the Bush Administration has systematically encouraged torture techniques prohibited under the Geneva Conventions and the Covenant against Torture.

Our clients who have been released from Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib describe a deliberate program of abuse. Other CCR clients have been shipped off by our government to countries like Syria and Egypt to be interrogated under torture, a practice called “extraordinary rendition” chronicled in an early-February New Yorker article and a Bob Herbert’s column in The Times.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/kelly.php?articleid=4093

December 2, 2004 Child Sacrifice in Iraq
by Kathy Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness

Shortly before sunrise this morning, a small band of us gathered at a busy Chicago intersection and unfurled vinyl banners bearing enlarged pictures of Iraqi children. One banner called for an end to U.S. warfare in Iraq. On my banner was Johan, smiling wanly, a 14-year-old child who weighed 75 pounds shortly before she died of cancer in the oncology ward of a Baghdad hospital on Sept. 21, 2003. As our banners flapped in the wind, I tried to compose a letter in my head to her teenage brother, Laith, who recently wrote to tell me how much he misses her.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/30/falluja.residents/index.html

From CNN Producer Arwa Damon
Wednesday, December 1, 2004 Posted: 0738 GMT (1538 HKT)

FALLUJA, Iraq (CNN) -- Mahmoud Zubari and his family fled their home in Falluja after it was bombed and his 13-year-old son was killed.

Zubari, his wife and their remaining eight children, ages 2 to 16, spent the next 20 days in the house of a friend while the U.S.-led onslaught to drive out insurgents in the city got under way.

Last week, the family was picked up by the Iraqi Red Crescent, under Marine escort, and taken to the humanitarian group's compound in the city. Tuesday, the family returned to the home they took sanctuary in.

"All the wealth will not bring back my son, but now I have to think of the future for the rest of my children," said Zubari's wife, Selma. "What will become of us?"

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/LAW/12/02/guantanamo.detainees/index.html

Government: Evidence gained by torture allowed

Wednesday, December 8, 2004 Posted: 0842 GMT (1642 HKT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. military panels reviewing the detention of foreigners as enemy combatants are allowed to use evidence gained by torture in deciding whether to keep them imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the government conceded in court Thursday.

The acknowledgment by Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Brian Boyle came during a U.S. District Court hearing on lawsuits brought by some of the 550 foreigners imprisoned at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The lawsuits challenge their detention without charges for up to three years so far.

Attorneys for the prisoners argued that some were held solely on evidence gained by torture, which they said violated fundamental fairness and U.S. due process standards. But Boyle argued in a similar hearing Wednesday that the detainees "have no constitutional rights enforceable in this court."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1208-05.htm

Published on Wednesday, December 8, 2004 by OneWorld.net

Congress Moves to Cut Aid to Allies That Support World Criminal Court

by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON -- Amid persistent tensions between the United States and its allies, the Republican-led Congress is expected to ban tens of millions of dollars in U.S. economic aid to some of its closest friends overseas unless they formally agree to exempt U.S. citizens from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1230-01.htm

Published on Thursday, December 30, 2004 by the Inter Press Service

Dead Soldier's Dad Finds No Enemy in Iraq

by Rebecca Romani

At the hospitals he saw youngsters dying from the lack of medicine and learned that a number of others had been killed picking up unexploded cluster bombs or when trying to hand them in to U.S. soldiers.

The bombs look like tennis balls or beer cans, Suarez explains. And when the children try to give them to U.S. soldiers, they are shot on the spot -- military orders.

Cluster bombs, munitions that scatter hundreds of small "bomblets" over a wide area, are designed to inflict high numbers of casualties. "I asked a colonel why they couldn't clean up the cluster bombs, and I was told, confidentially, that they couldn't, there were too many."

And then Suarez's voice gets hard.

"They say Saddam had illegal weapons. Jesus died because of an illegal weapon. Cluster bombs are illegal under the Geneva Conventions."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7614.htm

Death in Fallujah rising, doctors say

Reuters

01/04/05 FALLUJAH -- (IRIN) - "It was really distressing picking up dead bodies from destroyed homes, especially children. It is the most depressing situation I have ever been in since the war started," Dr Rafa'ah al-Iyssaue, director of the main hospital in Fallujah city, some 60 km west of Baghdad, told IRIN.

According to al-Iyssaue, the hospital emergency team has recovered more than 700 bodies from rubble where houses and shops once stood, adding that more than 550 were women and children. He said a very small number of men were found in these places and most were elderly.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/26/1450204

Wednesday, January 26th, 2005
Seymour Hersh: "We've Been Taken Over by a Cult"

On the other hand, the facts -- there are some facts. We can’t win this war. We can do what he's doing. We can bomb them into the stone ages. Here's the other horrifying, sort of spectacular fact that we don't really appreciate. Since we installed our puppet government, this man, Allawi, who was a member of the Mukabarat, the secret police of Saddam, long before he became a critic, and is basically Saddam-lite. Before we installed him, since we have installed him on June 28, July, August, September, October, November, every month, one thing happened: the number of sorties, bombing raids by one plane, and the number of tonnage dropped has grown exponentially each month. We are systematically bombing that country. There are no embedded journalists at Doha, the Air Force base I think we’re operating out of. No embedded journalists at the aircraft carrier, Harry Truman. That's the aircraft carrier that I think is doing many of the operational fights. There’s no air defense, It's simply a turkey shoot. They come and hit what they want. We know nothing. We don't ask. We're not told. We know nothing about the extent of bombing. So if they're going to carry out an election and if they're going to succeed, bombing is going to be key to it, which means that what happened in Fallujah, essentially Iraq -- some of you remember Vietnam -- Iraq is being turn into a “free-fire zone” right in front of us. Hit everything, kill everything. I have a friend in the Air Force, a Colonel, who had the awful task of being an urban bombing planner, planning urban bombing, to make urban bombing be as unobtrusive as possible. I think it was three weeks ago today, three weeks ago Sunday after Fallujah I called him at home. I'm one of the people -- I don't call people at work. I call them at home, and he has one of those caller I.D.’s, and he picked up the phone and he said, “Welcome to Stalingrad.” We know what we're doing. This is deliberate. It's being done. They're not telling us. They're not talking about it.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1215-01.htm

Published on Wednesday, December 15, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times

Details of Marines Mistreating Prisoners in Iraq Are Revealed

by Richard A. Serrano

WASHINGTON — Marines in Iraq conducted mock executions of juvenile prisoners last year, burned and tortured other detainees with electrical shocks, and warned a Navy corpsman they would kill him if he treated any injured Iraqis, according to military documents made public Tuesday.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7519.htm
Disgraced by Silence
Editorial

12/19/04 "Los Angeles Times" -- When will the president respond to the cascading allegations of prisoner abuse by the military? A Marine guard in Iraq sprayed an alcohol-based liquid on a detainee, struck a match and ignited the prisoner, burning and blistering the man's hands. Another Marine held wires from an electric transformer to a detainee's shoulders, so that the man "danced as he was shocked," according to military documents made public this month.

In photographs now under investigation, Navy SEALs appeared to sit on a hooded and handcuffed Iraqi prisoner and to point a gun at another, bleeding detainee. Army troops repeatedly beat Afghan prisoners in their custody, ripped off their toenails, shocked them and dunked them in cold water, according to recent reports from a U.N. group. Most incidents occurred in 2002 and 2003.

The cascading allegations of prisoner abuse, of which these are but a few examples, long ago demolished the president's claim that only a few bad apples were responsible. So did reports that soldiers and officers who complained to their superiors about this mistreatment were threatened with reprisals and even physical harm. Yet as reports of unexplained deaths, humiliations and depravity across the services multiply, President Bush has recently remained silent.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cassel01042005.html

January 4, 2005

They Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial Charged with No Crime, Implicated in No Wrongdoing By ELAINE CASSEL

On Sunday, Jan 2, Dana Priest, writing in the Washington Post, described the plans of the Pentagon and the Justice Department to imprison indefinitely, perhaps for life, persons it wants "removed" from society. Having committed no crime, but believed to be associated with "terrorism" however that is defined at any given moment in time"the people will live in prison camps modeled on American prisons.

At this moment, the CIA admits that it has imprisoned hundreds of people in foreign prisons. Amnesty International puts that number at well over 1000. At least one American citizen, Ahmed Abu Ali, has been thus imprisoned in Saudi Arabia at the demand of federal prosecutors. Charged with no crime, implicated in no wrongdoing.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1203-09.htm

Published on Friday, December 3, 2004 by the Boston Globe

Escaping Blame for Abu Ghraib

by Derrick Z. Jackson

While England remains the face of Abu Ghraib, reports keep coming out that her superiors were warned earlier than previously thought that widespread abuse existed beyond Abu Ghraib. The Washington Post reported this week that a report by retired Colonel Stuart Harrington found that Special Operations and CIA task force members abused Iraqi prisoners throughout that nation in secret facilities. The report found that the US military sweeps of thousands of people off the streets were so indiscriminate that they were "counterproductive to the coalition's efforts to win the cooperation of the Iraqi citizenry."

This is on top of the New York Times report this week on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Times obtained a confidential Red Cross report issued in July that cited extensive physical and psychological abuse. The report said, "The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual, and degrading treatment and a form of torture."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1203-02.htm

Published on Friday, December 3, 2004 by the Associated Press

Evidence Gained Through Using Torture OK, US Officials Say

by Michael J. Sniffen

Statements produced under torture have been inadmissible in U.S. courts for about 70 years. But the U.S. military panels reviewing the detention of 550 foreigners as enemy combatants at the U.S. naval base in Cuba are allowed to use such evidence, Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Brian Boyle acknowledged at a U.S. District Court hearing Thursday.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7508.htm

Democracy Now!

Exclusive: Conscientious Objector Witnessed Abuse, Killing of Iraqi Detainees at Abu Ghraib
We speak with former Army Reserve Specialist Aidan Delgado. At Abu Ghraib, he witnessed U.S. soldiers abuse and killing of Iraqi detainees.

AIDAN DELGADO: Yeah, I had given in my weapon long ago. So, but everyone else in my unit went out there, because there was a prisoner demonstration that had become out of control. They were throwing tent stakes and pieces of stone and debris. And they had struck one of the soldiers with a rock. He wasn't seriously injured, but he was annoyed. And so in response, they had asked for the permission to use lethal force. It was still unclear afterwards, in the military's very cursory investigation, whether they actually got the order to use lethal force-- it was obscure. So, they opened fire with a heavy machine gun and they killed five prisoners-- several of whom took several days to die. This is something that I learned about from the horse's mouth when they came back and told me, “Oh, here is a photo of the guys we killed. I killed three, I killed two. My guy took three days to die, I shot him in the groin with a machine gun.” And the command had even posted these photographs in our headquarters, and they had been very ghoulishly circulating them. It was very much a trophy-taking thing. And I remember just sort of questioning the guy, saying, “Do you really feel proud of having shot an unarmed man who threw a stone?” He was like, “Well, I'm doing my job.” It was a very machismo thing, to have killed someone. I felt this immense loathing and this immense disgust for the whole incident.

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes475.html

Falloujans Get an Unsettling Look at Their City
Refugees eager to return change their minds after seeing the ruin. Will balloting be feasible?
By Edmund Sanders
Times Staff Writer

December 30, 2004

BAGHDAD — Yasser Abbas Atiya swore he'd sooner sleep on the streets of his beloved hometown of Fallouja than spend another night in the squalid Baghdad shelter where his family had been squatting.

Thirty minutes after he returned home this week, however, Atiya had seen enough. He left in disgust and had no plans to go back.

"I couldn't stand it," the grocer said. "I was born in that town. I know every inch of it. But when I got there, I didn't recognize it."

Lakes of sewage in the streets. The smell of corpses inside charred buildings. No water or electricity. Long waits and thorough searches by U.S. troops at checkpoints. Warnings to watch out for land mines and booby traps.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1210-23.htm

Published on Friday, December 10, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

Falluja Atrocities Expose True Face of U.S. War

by Joseph Nevins

Images of a U.S. marine killing an unarmed wounded prisoner during the recent battle for Falluja resulted in widespread shock, leading the Pentagon to withdraw the soldier from battle and launch an investigation. However, the issue--similar to Abu Ghraib--has served as a smokescreen, diverting attention from much larger atrocities and the very nature of war.

No doubt many U.S. soldiers took care in Falluja--as elsewhere in Iraq--to respect international humanitarian law and avoid injuring civilians. But as throughout the U.S. invasion and the ongoing conflict, war crimes and civilian casualties were frequent and often systematic, rather than rare and exceptional.

In breach of the Geneva Conventions, for example, U.S. troops refused to allow males of "military-age" (16 to 55)--defining them all as potential enemy combatants--to flee Falluja. Given the heavy American bombardment of the city, one wonders how many of these men are among the estimated 1,200 to 1,600 categorized by U.S. authorities as dead insurgents.

http://crisispictures.org

Friday, February 25, 2005

OUTSIDE KIRKUK, IRAQ
This is NOT Home

Ahmed Rawi, a spokesman for the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC), told IRIN that the situation of internally displaced people (IDPs) from Fallujah was critical, requiring a huge quantity of supplies. Perhaps if there were a flood, someone might care, but that seems unlikely.

What We Are

Crisis Pictures is a non-commercial organization dedicated to building awareness of global crisis areas through pictures. Our goal is to make distant events personal by showing real people living through them. The face of a mother mourning her child needs no explanation. Crisis Pictures makes “stories about other people” into “stories about other people just like me."

Faith in the character of the American people if they are shown the whole truth about what is done in their name and on their dollar.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/121004_fallujah_napalmed.shtml

FALLUJAH NAPALMED

Nov 28 2004
US uses banned weapon... but was Tony Blair told?
By Paul Gilfeather, Political Editor

http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=14920109&method=full&siteid=106694&
headline=fallujah-napalmed-name_page.html

US troops are secretly using outlawed napalm gas to wipe out remaining insurgents in and around Fallujah.

News that President George W. Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun governments around the world.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7413.htm

Fallujah Refugees Tell of Life and Death in the Kill Zone

*Journalists and residents who have fled Fallujah share accounts of US troops killing unarmed and wounded people; Dahr Jamail continues interviewing survivors as images of a city under US assault further emerge.*

by Dahr Jamail

Baghdad , Dec 3 " NewStandard" -- Men now seeking refuge in the Baghdad area are telling horrific stories of indiscriminate killings by US forces during the peak of fighting last month in the largely annihilated city of Fallujah.

In an interview with The NewStandard, Burhan Fasa’a, an Iraqi journalist who works for the popular Lebanese satellite TV station, LBC, said he witnessed US crimes up close. Burhan Fasa’a, who was in Fallujah for nine days during the most intense combat, said Americans grew easily frustrated with Iraqis who could not speak English.

"Americans did not have interpreters with them," Fasa’a said, "so they entered houses and killed people because they didn’t speak English. They entered the house where I was with 26 people, and [they] shot people because [the people] didn’t obey [the soldiers’] orders, even just because the people couldn’t understand a word of English."

http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fisher.php?articleid=4324

January 11, 2005 Fresh Horrors at Guantanamo
by William Fisher

NEW YORK - A leading civil rights group says that government records pertaining to an investigation of prisoner abuses at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba are still being withheld, and those it has received under a court order are so heavily censored that they "raise more questions than they answer."

Still, correspondence handed over to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recounts what one observer calls "treatment that was not only aggressive, but personally very upsetting," including leaving prisoners shackled in the fetal position and covered in urine and feces.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7397.htm

From Guernica to Fallujah

"It's difficult to believe that in this day and age, when people are blogging, emailing and communicating at the speed of light, a whole city is being destroyed and genocide is being committed - and the whole world is aware and silent. Darfur, Americans? Take a look at what you've done in Fallujah." - Female Iraqi blogger Riverbend

Pepe Escobar

12/01/04 "Asia Times" -- The Fallujah offensive has virtually disappeared from the news cycle. But history - if written by Iraqis - may well enshrine it as the new Guernica. Paraphrasing Jean-Paul Sartre memorably writing about the Algerian War (1956-62), after Fallujah no two Americans shall meet without a corpse lying between them: the up to 500,000 victims of the sanctions in the 1990s, according to United Nations experts; the up to 100,000 victims since the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, according to the British medical paper The Lancet; and at least 6,000 victims, and counting, in Fallujah, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1221-01.htm

Published on Tuesday, December 21, 2004 by the Associated Press

Group Says FBI Ruse Used at Guantanamo

by John J Lumpkin

The ACLU's latest disclosures primarily constitute e-mails between FBI officials whose names the government removed before releasing them. In several, the writers describe and criticize various interrogation techniques they say they witnessed at Guantanamo.

In one of the e-mails message, dated from August, the writer reports more than once witnessing prisoners chained to the floor in a fetal position, with no food or water. They had often soiled themselves.

On one occasion, the temperature in a room was lowered so much the barefooted detainee shivered. In another, the room was so hot the detainee had pulled out some of his hair before passing out.

In one e-mail, the writer described seeing a "detainee sitting on the floor of the interview room with an Israeli flag draped around him, loud music being played and a strobe light flashing." Another Guantanamo prisoner has, in a court petition, described detainees wrapped in Israeli flags, among other allegations. At the time, a Guantanamo Bay spokesman denied his statements.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1399409,00.html

US captors' 'systematic torture'

Vikram Dodd
Thursday January 27, 2005
The Guardian

Vikram Dodd

While anti-terrorism police were yesterday interviewing the four Britons released from Guantánamo Bay further details emerged of the alleged treatment of the men by their US captors.

The US lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, who saw his client, Moazzam Begg, in Guantánamo Bay this month, said the captive had alleged persistent beatings, death threats and psychological torture first at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, then at the Cuba base.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1382362,00.html

US plans permanent Guantanamo jails

Julian Borger in Washington
Monday January 3, 2005
The Guardian

The United States is preparing to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely without trial, replacing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp with permanent prisons in the Cuban enclave and elsewhere, it was reported yesterday.

The new prisons are intended for captives the Pentagon and the CIA suspect of terrorist links but do not wish to set free or put on trial for lack of hard evidence.

The plans have emerged at a time when the US is under increasing scrutiny for the interrogation methods used on the roughly 550 "enemy combatants" at the Guantanamo Bay base, who do not have the same rights as traditional prisoners of war.

A leaked Red Cross report described the techniques used as "tantamount to torture".

Over the weekend the New York Times quoted a former interrogator as saying one in six detainees were subject to harsh techniques including sleep deprivation, exposure to constant loud music or adver tising jingles, and being shackled for long periods to a low chair.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1384908,00.html

US doctors accused over Guantánamo abuse
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Friday January 7, 2005
The Guardian

Doctors at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib used their medical knowledge to help devise coercive interrogation methods for detainees including sleep deprivation, stress positions and other abuse, it was reported yesterday.

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine provides the most authoritative account so far that doctors were active participants in the abuse of prisoners in America's "war on terror".

"Clearly, the medical personnel who helped to develop and execute aggressive counter-resistance plans thereby breached the laws of war," says the article, which is based on interviews with more than two dozen military personnel and recently released official documents. It adds: "The conclusion that doctors participated in torture is premature, but there is probable cause for suspecting it."

http://i-p-o.org/int-war-crimes-commission-iraq.htm

Call for establishment of International War Crimes Commission for Iraq

Vienna, 14 May 2004/P/RE/18712c-is

In a message delivered to the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations, the International Progress Organization has called for the establishment of an International War Crimes Commission for Iraq.

Referring to the Memorandum on the legal implications of the Iraq war 2003, including measures of criminal justice of 12 August 2003, the President of the I.P.O. explained that the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by personnel of the occupying powers in Iraq cannot be investigated in an objective manner by the military justice system of the involved countries. This is proven by the fact that serious breaches of the respective Geneva Conventions and other international crimes have been committed in the territory of Iraq since over a year without the authorities of the occupying powers having initiated proper legal proceedings. Prosecutorial measures have been taken only recently after the release of photos of abuse of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib jail near Baghdad.

The international crimes that have been reported so far include crimes against humanity and war crimes, in particular grave breaches of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, committed mainly by personnel of the United States and the United Kingdom. The alleged crimes – crimes against humanity such as murder, torture, rape, and other forms of sexual violence; war crimes such as willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, and unlawful confinement – are international crimes for which there exists universal jurisdiction on the basis of the provisions of the respective Geneva Conventions (Art. 129 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, and Art. 146 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War) and, where applicable, Arts. 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0117-08.htm

Published on Monday, January 17, 2004 by the Associated Press

Images Behind Soldier's Iraq Refusal

by Russ Bynum

Benderman told of bombed out homes and displaced Iraqis living in mud huts and drinking from mud puddles; mass graves in Khanaqin near the Iranian border where dogs fed off bodies of men, women and children.

He recalled his convoy passing a girl, no older than 10, on the roadside clutching a badly injured arm. Benderman said his executive officer refused to help because troops had limited medical supplies.

"Her arm was burned, third-degree burns, just black. And she was standing there with her mother begging for help," Benderman said. "That was an eye opener to seeing how insane it really is."

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=606033

My nightmare of torture and assault, by Briton held in Guantanamo

By Severin Carrell, Raymond Whitaker and Andrew Buncombe

30 January 2005

One of the four Britons freed from Guantanamo Bay last week has alleged being tortured, nearly suffocated and repeatedly assaulted in American detention, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7613.htm

Injustice as State Policy : The Guantanamo Gulag

"The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."

Winston Churchill

"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

U.N. Convention Against Torture; Article 2, Section 2

By MIKE WHITNEY

01/03/05 "Counterpunch" -- The prison facility at Guantanamo Bay is the brightest star in the Bush firmament. It towers over the political landscape like a monument to human cruelty. That's why the administration chose to slap it up in full view of the world. It's their way of announcing that the fundamental rules of the game have changed.

There's no need for Guantanamo. The United States has plenty of experience concealing political prisoners from the public. The CIA has been transporting enemy suspects to hidden locations since its inception. Certainly, an increase of 600 prisoners or so wouldn't have caused much of a stir if they were tucked away in some remote corner of the earth. But, that's not the purpose of Guantanamo. Guantanamo is intended to send a message that the internationally accepted norms of justice have been rescinded. From now on, all law proceeds from Washington.

The world seems oddly bewildered by this development. Individuals have protested the particularly heinous aspects of the new system, like the use of torture, or detention without charges. But, these are just the trimmings and don't get to the heart of the matter. Guantanamo is a deliberate effort to overturn every legal protection that safeguards the individual from the arbitrary actions of the state. Simply put, it is the end of the law.

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Afghanistan-Criminal-Tribunal10mar04htm

Final Written Opinion of Judge Niloufer Bhagwat 10mar04

THE PEOPLE

Versus

GEORGE WALKER BUSH
President of the United States of America

The Prosecution has presented a formidable Indictment against the Defendant, George Walker Bush, President of the United States and Commander -in-Chief of US military forces for serious crimes ; waging a war of aggression on Afghanistan, war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Afghan people, against prisoners of war ; and the use of radioactive depleted uranium weapons of mass destruction , against the people of Afghanistan ; with serious fall out effects on the military personnel of the United States ,UK and other forces deployed ; and on countries, in and around the region .

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0111-32.htm

Published on Tuesday, January 11, 2005 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Investigate Alleged Violations of Law in Fallujah Attack

by Dr. Jim McDermott and Dr. Richard Rapport

At the beginning of their recent attack on Fallujah, U.S. Marines and Iraqi National Guard troops stormed Fallujah General Hospital, closing it to the city's wounded and confiscating cell phones from the doctors. A senior officer told The New York Times the hospital was "a center of propaganda."

Interviews with hospital personnel (which had revealed the extent of civilian casualties in an aborted April invasion) would not be a problem this time.

As the invasion proceeded, air strikes reduced a smaller hospital to rubble and smashed a clinic, trapping patients and staff under the collapsed structure. With the main hospital empty and other facilities destroyed, only one small Iraqi military clinic remained to serve the city.

U.S. forces cut off Fallujah's water and electricity. About 200,000 residents were forced to flee, creating a refugee population the size of Tacoma. Those who remained faced a grim existence; they were afraid to leave their homes for fear of snipers and they had little to eat and only contaminated water to drink.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050104/325/f9nqf.html

Tuesday January 4, 10:27 PM

Iraq abuse "went on until July"

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi prisoners continued at least three months after the Abu Ghraib scandal was revealed, according to accounts by alleged victims published in the latest issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

Vanity Fair writer Donovan Webster, in a report on 60 hours of interviews he conducted with 10 former detainees including a 15-year-old boy, quoted several accounts of mistreatment that included Iraqi prisoners being sexually assaulted by American soldiers or being hooded, beaten, subjected to electric shock and kept in cages or crates.

One man said he was hung naked from handcuffs in a frigid room while soldiers threw buckets of ice water on him.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7403.htm

Iraq's civilian dead get no hearing in the United States

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

12/02/04 "Daily Star" -- Evidence is mounting that America's war in Iraq has killed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and perhaps well over 100,000. Yet this carnage is systematically ignored in the United States, where the media and government portray a war in which there are no civilian deaths, because there are no Iraqi civilians, only insurgents.

American behavior and self-perceptions reveal the ease with which a civilized country can engage in large-scale killing of civilians without public discussion. In late October, the British medical journal Lancet published a study of civilian deaths in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion began. The sample survey documented an extra 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths compared to the death rate in the preceding year, when Saddam Hussein was still in power - and this estimate did not even count excess deaths in Fallujah, which was deemed too dangerous to include.

The study also noted that the majority of deaths resulted from violence, and that a high proportion of the violent deaths were due to U.S. aerial bombing. The epidemiologists acknowledged the uncertainties of these estimates, but presented enough data to warrant an urgent follow-up investigation and reconsideration by the Bush administration and the U.S. military of aerial bombing of Iraq's urban areas.

http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/news/news14.htm

Friday-Saturday, January 14-15, 2005

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A military court hearing ended for a Navy SEAL lieutenant accused of abusing and posing in degrading photos with a handcuffed and hooded prisoner who died a short-time later in Abu Ghraib prison.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1208-01.htm

Published on Wednesday, December 8, 2004 by the Globe & Mail (Canada)

Killed Unarmed Iraqis, Ex-Marine Tells Hearing
U.S. deserter was right to flee his post, immigration and refugee board told

by Marina Jiménez
With a report from Canadian Press

A former U.S. marine testified yesterday that the U.S. military "murdered" civilians in Iraq and that he pumped 500 rounds of bullets into vehicles that failed to stop at military checkpoints.

Jimmy Massey, a former marine staff sergeant, told an immigration and refugee board hearing in Toronto that he and his fellow marines shot and killed more than 30 unarmed men, women and children and even shot a young Iraqi who got out of his car with his arms in the air.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1201-24.htm

Published on Wednesday, December 1, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

Looking The Other Way

by Kathy Kelly

Shortly before sunrise, this morning, a small band of us gathered at a busy Chicago intersection and unfurled vinyl banners bearing enlarged pictures of Iraqi children. One banner called for an end to US warfare in Iraq.

On my banner was Johan, smiling wanly, a 14 year old child who weighed 75 pounds shortly before she died of cancer in the oncology ward of a Baghdad hospital on September 21, 2003.

As our banners flapped in the wind, I tried to compose a letter in my head to her teenage brother, Laith, who recently wrote to tell me how much he misses her.

Had Johan lived in a country that wasn’t reeling from 13 years of economic sanctions, she might have survived childhood leukemia. She is one of hundreds of thousands of children who died while economic sanctions and war shattered Iraq’s health care delivery system.

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes464.html

By Richard A. Serrano
Times Staff Writer

3:26 PM PST, December 20, 2004

WASHINGTON — FBI agents are increasingly complaining about what they consider abusive physical and mental torture by military officials against prisoners held in Iraq and Cuba, including lighted cigarettes stuck in detainees' ears and Arab captives being humiliated with Israeli flags wrapped around them, according to new documents released today.

The FBI records are the latest set of documents obtained by the ACLU in its lawsuit against the federal government and include instances in which bureau officials were disgusted that military interrogators pretended to be FBI agents and used the scheme as a "ruse" to glean intelligence information from prisoners.

In addition, the FBI complained that military interrogators have gone far beyond the restrictions of the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture and have followed an apparently new executive order from President Bush that permits the use of dogs and other techniques to harass prisoners.

http://www.counterpunch.org/alam12132004.html

December 13, 2004

Abused Iraqis, Abused Americans The War is the War Crime By M. JUNAID ALAM
A Special Investigation by CorpWatch

This was a war to transcend all wars a war fought not for crass interests or crude motives, but for freedom and democracy. Or so we were told. Once this grand narrative was felled by reality, however, the story of its basic actors was twisted to meet new requirements: since it could not possibly be that the war aims were themselves corrupt, it must be the Iraqis the supposed recipients of liberation, and the American soldiers the deliverers of that liberation who were flawed. This twist was to serve as punishment for those Iraqis who interpreted "freedom" to mean not only freedom from Saddam but freedom from US control, and as a smear job against those US soldiers who interpreted "defending the country" to mean something other than killing innocents and creating more hatred for America.

And so a new narrative was fleshed out by the administration and its sycophants: Iraqis are not so good after all; many of them are terrorists, dead-enders, and crazed murderers who need to be brought to heel or wiped out. Moreover, not all those Americans who signed up to defend their country are good, either: those who report atrocities, fight against illegal extension of their service, and reject a war based on lies are deemed cowards, criminals, and traitors.

As the struggle in Iraq intensifies, its bitter and revealing ironies rise like angry waves, pummeling the eroding promontory of the war's many myths - foremost among them its very viability. Iraqis resisting occupation, soldiers exposing the brutalities that are fueling anti-occupation sentiment, and other Americans reluctantly being pressed into service to strengthen that occupation, are, in uneven, overlapping and contradictory ways, all victims of this war.

Consider the case of the case of Sergeant Frank Ford, a counterintelligence agent in the National Guard's 223rd Military Intelligence division with 30 years of military service. He was witness to five incidents of torture and abuse of Iraqis in Samarra before he decided he could no longer stand by and do nothing. US Army counterintelligence agent David Debatto, who spoke with Ford, related his story thusly:

http://www.counterpunch.org/chmiel01132005.html

January 12, 2005

Down the Memory Hole Hearts and Minds, Revisited By MARK CHMIEL and ANDREW WIMMER

The ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds
of the people who actually live out there.

--Lyndon Johnson, on Vietnam

There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war as least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

--Daniel Berrigan, on the peace movement

Here is how Sergeant William Marshall puts it:

You know, you let us all go off to war and said, "Yea, team," you know, "fight in Vietnam," and all this kind of shit, in 1965 through 1968. Now 1968 comes along, and it's "Boo, team, come on home," and all this shit, you know, "and don't say nothing about it, because we don't wanna hear about it, because it's upsetting around dinner time, you know." Well, goddamn, it upset me for a whole goddamned year; it upset a lot of people to the point where they're fucking dead, you know, and all this shit. Now you don't wanna hear about it, well I'll tell you about it everyday, make you sit down and puke in your dinner, you dig, because you got me over there, and now you done brought me back here, and you wanna forget it, so somebody else can go do it somewhere else? Hell no, nuh-huh, you're gonna hear it all, everyday, as long as you live, because, hey, it's gonna be with me as long as I live, when I get up in the morning, when John gets up in the morning, when a lot of dudes that's sitting around here, their gut hurts cause they got shot there. I gotta put on an arm and a leg because it ain't there no more, you dig. And my man here has got a hole in his stomach, he can't work right, you know. Now you do something about that, make that all disappear, you dig, you know, make it all go away with the six o'clock news, turn it off, you know or switch it to another channel and all that shit. The hell with that, you dig, it's here, it's for real, and it's gonna happen again unless these folks just get up off their ass and realize that it has happened.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7432.htm

Memos Say 2 Officials Who Saw Prison Abuse Were Threatened
By NEIL A. LEWIS

12/08/04 " New York Times" -- WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 - Two Defense Department intelligence officials reported observing brutal treatment of Iraqi insurgents captured in Baghdad last June, several weeks after disclosures of abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison there created a worldwide uproar, according to a memorandum disclosed today.

The memorandum, written by the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency to a senior Pentagon official, said that when the two members of his agency objected to the treatment, they were threatened and told to keep quiet by other military interrogators. The memorandum said that the Defense Intelligence Agency officials saw prisoners being brought in to a detention center with burn marks on their backs and complaining about sore kidneys.

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney11292004.html

November 29, 2004

How to Market a Siege

The US Media and Fallujah

By MIKE WHITNEY

The real story of Falluja is nowhere to be found in American media. 300,000 people were expelled from the city so that the military could exact its revenge against the killers of four mercenaries. By all accounts, the city is in ruins; bodies left on the streets are bloated and some are being devoured by dogs. Those who chose to stay (many because they were invalid or afraid that their homes would be looted) were left for two weeks without food, water or electricity. Even now, the relief efforts of the Red Crescent have been stymied by the Marines; leaving many of the wounded without medical attention. Half of the city's mosques have been damaged or destroyed; roads and infrastructure have been laid to waste, and upwards of 2,000 people have been killed. This is the real picture of Falluja; a picture that is scrupulously omitted from any mainstream newspaper or TV station in the country.

http://www.crisispapers.org/topics/morality-war.htm

If the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make; when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle: for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument! Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it.

Shakespeare, King Henry V

http://www.counterpunch.org/oden01192005.html

January 19, 2005

Torture and Civilian Deaths in Iraq The Nuremberg Principles Today By NANCY ODEN

At the Nuremberg, Germany trials of Nazis following World War II, the world listened with revulsion as Nazi troops reported committing atrocities because, they said, they were "just following orders."

As a result of the Nuremberg Trials, a group of nations, including the United States, crafted and ratified the Nuremberg Principles in 1950, agreeing to abide by these Principles in perpetuity. (See: http://www.nuclearfiles.org/)

Today in Iraq our young people are being ordered to commit terrible acts. Torture and killing of women, children, injured people, doctors, nurses, and bombing of places of worship and hospitals are all illegal under the Nuremberg Principles. Repulsive atrocities are being carried out in our names.

With Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States, we can, unless we make ourselves heard in large numbers, expect more of the same. Gonzales advised President Bush that torture was all right, and that the Geneva Accords were irrelevant.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1204-03.htm

Published on Saturday, December 4, 2004 by the Associated Press

Navy Probes New Iraq Prisoner Photos

by Seth Hettena

CORONADO, Calif. - The U.S. military has launched a criminal investigation into photographs that appear to show Navy SEALs in Iraq sitting on hooded and handcuffed detainees, and photos of what appear to be bloodied prisoners, one with a gun to his head.

Some of the photos have date stamps suggesting they were taken in May 2003, which could make them the earliest evidence of possible abuse of prisoners in Iraq. The far more brutal practices photographed in Abu Ghraib prison occurred months later.

An Associated Press reporter found more than 40 of the pictures among hundreds in an album posted on a commercial photo-sharing Web site by a woman who said her husband brought them from Iraq after his tour of duty. It is unclear who took the pictures, which the Navy said it was investigating after the AP furnished copies to get comment for this story.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000753452

'NYT' Obtains 10 Emails, with Photos, Sent by Accused Abu Ghraib Abuser
By E&P Staff

Published: January 14, 2005 10:45 AM ET

NEW YORK The New York Times has obtained 10 previously undisclosed e-mails, including attached photos, sent by Spc. Charles A. Graner Jr., now on trial in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, around November 2003.

In one of the graphic messages, titled “just another dull day at work,” Graner wrote, "The guys give me hell for not getting any pictures while I was fighting this guy,"referring to a photograph of a bound and naked detainee howling with pain, his legs bleeding.

http://www.brusselstribunal.org/

Questioning the New Imperial World Order
A Hearing on the Project for the New American Century ( PNAC)

The Brussells Tribunal is a hearing committee composed of academics, intellectuals and artists in the tradition of the Russell Tribunal, set up in 1967 to investigate war crimes committed during the Vietnam War. The hearing was scheduled for 14-17th April 2004 at The Beursschouwburg and Les Halles in Brussels. It was presided by Professor François Houtart, who participated in the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal on US Crimes in Vietnam in 1967, and who is one of the founding fathers of the World Social Forum in Porto Allegre. It was directed against the war in Iraq and the Imperial war policies of the Bush II administration. Its main focus was the ‘Project for the New American Century’, the think tank behind this war, in particular three of the co-signatories of the mission statement: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, as they are the physical link between the discourse and the brutal practice of the New Imperial World Order as designed by PNAC. Read more...

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=7490

HUMANITARIAN LAW GROUPS FILE RIGHTS PETITION AT OAS AGAINST THE UNITED STATES FOR ATTACKS ON HOSPITALS, CLINICS IN FALLUJA

Los Angeles-based Humanitarian Law Project/International Educational Development (HLP/IED and San Francisco-based Association of Humanitarian
Lawyers (AHL), submitted a petition to the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights of the Organization of American States on behalf of
“unnamed, unnumbered patients and medical staff both living and dead” at
the medical facilities in Falluja. The Commission had authority to
investigate human rights violations committed by a member State of the
OAS and to seek remedies for victims.

“Attacks on hospitals and medical personnel are truly shocking. We hope
that this will result in the immediate improvement of the situation of
the patients and staff, to additional remedies for these victims, and an
end to the United States violations of human rights and the Geneva
Conventions in Iraq,” stated Lydia Brazon, Executive Director of the
United Nations credentialed HLP/IED.

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/12/304947.shtml

Canadian Lawyers Charge Bush with Torture
Tuesday November 30 2004

Today in Vancouver, Lawyers Against the War filed torture charges against George W. Bush under the Canadian Criminal Code. The charges were laid by Gail Davidson, co-chair of Lawyers against the War--LAW, under provisions enacted pursuant to the U.N. Torture Convention, ratified by both Canada and the United States. The charges concern the well known abuses of prisoners held by US Armed Forces in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1208-07.htm

Published on Wednesday, December 8, 2004 by Knight Ridder

Prisoner Abuse was Worse Than Officials Admitted, Documents Show

by Drew Brown

WASHINGTON - More than two months after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq shocked the world, an official memo described how military intelligence officers witnessed further prisoner abuse in Baghdad but were threatened to prevent them from reporting it.

The memo was the most recent in a collection of government documents released Tuesday. It was dated June 25 and written by Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, who directs the Defense Intelligence Agency. Lowell described how two DIA officers, assigned as interrogators to a special operations unit designated as Task Force 6-26, witnessed evidence of prisoner abuse while working at an unnamed "temporary detention facility" in Baghdad

The extensive collection of government documents suggests that abuse of detainees in Iraq and elsewhere was more widespread and systematic than senior officials have admitted publicly. The officials repeatedly have tried to characterize abuse last year at Abu Ghraib as an isolated series of incidents. A small number of low-ranking soldiers already have been prosecuted or are awaiting trial in these cases.

http://www.counterpunch.org/boyle11182004.html

November 18, 2004

The Dems Are Caving on Gonzales War Criminal as Attorney General? By Prof. FRANCIS A. BOYLE

As White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales originated, authorized, approved, and aided and abetted grave breaches of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949 (e.g., torture and Gitmo kangaroo courts), which are serious war crimes. In other words, Gonzales is a prima facie war criminal. He must be prosecuted under the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act.

For example, article 129 of the Third Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War provides in relevant part with respect to prima facie U.S. war criminals such as Gonzales: "Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such graves breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1130-01.htm

Published on Tuesday, November 30, 2004 by Reuters

Red Cross: Guantanamo Tactics 'Tantamount to Torture'

WASHINGTON - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has accused the U.S. military of using tactics "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

An ICRC inspection team that spent most of June at Guantanamo Bay reported the use of psychological and sometimes physical coercion on the prisoners, the newspaper said.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0125-31.htm

Published on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Resist U.S. War Crimes

by Jeremy Brecher

Most Americans hold these truths to be self-evident: Torture is wrong; attacking another country that hasn't attacked you is wrong; occupying another country with your army and imposing your will on its people is wrong. These policies are not only immoral. They are illegal.

Most Americans believe that even the highest government officials are bound by law. They reject Attorney General-designate Alberto Gonzales' view that the law is whatever the President says it is - that if the President says something isn't torture, then it's O.K. to order it.

Most Americans don't agree that their president can unilaterally annul treaties like the Geneva conventions. They don't accept, as Gonzales put it in a 2002 legal memo, that if the President simply declares there's a "new paradigm" he can thereby "render obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners."

Aggression, military occupation, and torture were the war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity for which the Axis leaders were prosecuted at the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after World War II. The U.S. has supported similar charges against Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.

But what about the U.S. attack on Iraq, which Kofi Annan has bluntly called "illegal"? What about the leveling of Fallujah and the targeting of hospitals and urban neighborhoods? What about torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? If a single standard is applied, these too are crimes of war. And as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal stated, "Anyone with knowledge of illegal activity and an opportunity to do something is a potential criminal under international law unless the person takes affirmative measures to prevent the commission of the crimes." How many Americans can honestly claim to know nothing about this "illegal activity"? It's reported in detail in the daily newspapers and shown in full color on the nightly news, from the phony reports of Iraq's "yellowcake" uranium to the shooting of ambulances to the horrors of Abu Ghraib.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05002/435436.stm

Many refugees from Iraqi city find battle-worn hometown unlivable

Sunday, January 02, 2005

By Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Yasser Abbas Atiya swore he'd sooner sleep on the streets of his beloved hometown of Fallujah than spend another night in the squalid Baghdad shelter where his family had been squatting.

Thirty minutes after he returned home this past week, however, Atiya had seen enough. He left in disgust and had no plans to go back.

"I couldn't stand it," the grocer said. "I was born in that town. I know every inch of it. But when I got there, I didn't recognize it."

Lakes of sewage in the streets. The smell of corpses inside charred buildings. No water or electricity. Long waits and thorough searches by U.S. troops at checkpoints. Warnings to watch out for land mines and booby traps. Occasional gunfire between troops and insurgents.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0204-21.htm

Published on Friday, February 4, 2005 by the Toronto Star

Rumsfeld Fears War Crimes Charges in Germany
Abu Ghraib-related; Tried to Resign Twice

by Tim Harper WASHINGTON -- U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld conceded yesterday that fears he could be charged as a war criminal may keep him from a conference in Germany set for next week.

A lawsuit filed by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights with German prosecutors accuses Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials with war crimes for their part in the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal.

Until Rumsfeld was asked about the possibility at a news briefing, the Pentagon had maintained it was merely a scheduling conflict which could prevent him from attending the Munich Conference on Security Policy, an annual event which draws top defense officials from all over the world.

German law allows charges to be laid in war crimes and human rights cases regardless of the nationality of the accused, but because the United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court, charges cannot be laid in this country.

"It's something that we have to take into consideration,'' Rumsfeld said.

http://www.sfbayview.com/122904/theseiege122904.shtml

San Francisco Bay View
National Black Newspap

An eyewitness account of the siege of Fallujah

by Dahr Jamail

Horror stories — including the use of napalm and chemical weapons by the U.S. military during the siege of Fallujah — continue to trickle out from the rubble of the demolished city, carried by weary refugees lucky enough to have escaped their city.

A cameraman with the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. who witnessed the first eight days of the fighting told of what he considered atrocities. Burhan Fasa’a has worked for LBC throughout the occupation of Iraq.

“I entered Fallujah near the Julan Quarter, which is near the General Hospital,” he said during an interview in Baghdad. “There were American snipers on top of the hospital shooting everyone.”

http://www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news489.htm

All this is in clear breach of international law – it’s global piracy, 21st century style. In 2003 the Coalition Provisional Authority enacted Order 39 allowing foreigners to own up to 100% of all privatised industries. By the time elections were held, 200 state-owned enterprises had been privatised and unemployment had climbed to 70%. The oppression of Iraq is being embedded in a corporate-friendly restructuring of the economy. Only a defeat for US and British troops will allow Iraqis to run their own country.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/122804A.shtml

Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War
By Dana Priest
The Washington Post

Monday 27 December 2004

The airplane is a Gulfstream V turbojet, the sort favored by CEOs and celebrities. But since 2001 it has been seen at military airports from Pakistan to Indonesia to Jordan, sometimes being boarded by hooded and handcuffed passengers.

The plane's owner of record, Premier Executive Transport Services Inc., lists directors and officers who appear to exist only on paper. And each one of those directors and officers has a recently issued Social Security number and an address consisting only of a post office box, according to an extensive search of state, federal and commercial records.

Bryan P. Dyess, Steven E. Kent, Timothy R. Sperling and Audrey M. Tailor are names without residential, work, telephone or corporate histories - just the kind of "sterile identities," said current and former intelligence officials, that the C.I.A. uses to conceal involvement in clandestine operations. In this case, the agency is flying captured terrorist suspects from one country to another for detention and interrogation.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010505Y.shtml

Torture - From J.F.K. to Baby Bush:
Gonzales and the Horse He Rode In On
By Steve Weissman

When Alberto Gonzales assured Mr. Bush that presidential war powers trumped anti-torture laws and treaties, the White House lawyer was doing what too many of his profession do. Like an ENRON tax lawyer or Mafia consigliere, he was helping his client commit crimes.

Big crimes. War crimes. Not Private Lyndie England having a good time forcing naked Iraqi captives with sacks of over their heads to masturbate at Abu Ghraib, though Gonzales's words certainly led to the subsequent scandal. His sin was far more substantial. As Counsel to the President, he enabled and encouraged the systematic use of torture, duly authorized by the Commander-in-Chief.

100

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/113004A.shtml

Setting the Conditions for War Crimes
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tueday 30 November 2004

I was drafted in 1967 and I served in Vietnam for 1 year ... So this area was mostly all free-fire zones. So it was with this understanding that it was a free-fire zone that everything was fair game. If at any time you saw people in any way trying to avoid you or run away or make suspicious movements, that was free game. You could go ahead and shoot them and kill them. - Testimony of Guadalupe G. Villarreal, Dellums (House of Representatives) War Crimes Hearings, Apr. 28, 1971, Washington D.C.

Thirty-six years later, NBC war correspondent Kevin Sites, embedded with the U.S. Marines in Fallujah, wrote in his November 10 blog: "The Marines are operating with liberal rules of engagement." Sites heard Staff Sgt. Sam Mortimer radio that "everything to the west is weapons free." Weapons Free, explained Sites, "means the Marines can shoot whatever they see - it's all considered hostile." On November 13, Sites videotaped a U.S. Marine killing an unarmed, wounded Iraqi in a Fallujah mosque.

During the U.S. attack on Fallujah, dubbed "Operation Phantom Fury," Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein saw U.S. soldiers "open fire on the houses." Hussein also reported seeing U.S. helicopters fire on and kill people, including a family of five, who tried to cross the river.

"A large number of people including children were killed by American snipers," according to the Independent (U.K.). Civilians who remained in Fallujah "appeared to have been seen as complicit in the insurgency," the Independent reported. "Men of military age were particularly vulnerable. But there are accounts of children as young as four, and women and old men being killed."

Free fire zones, and indiscriminate killing of civilians, which constitute willful killing, are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. The U.S. War Crimes Act considers grave breaches of Geneva to be war crimes, which can result in the death penalty for those convicted.

101

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120104X.shtml

Rumsfeld Sued for Alleged War Crimes
Deutsche Welle

Tuesday 30 November 2004

Alleging responsibility for war crimes and torture at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, a human rights group has filed a criminal complaint in Germany against US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top US officials.

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Berlin's Republican Lawyers' Association said they and five Iraqi citizens mistreated by US soldiers were seeking a probe by German federal prosecutors of leading US policymakers.

They said they had chosen Germany because of its Code of Crimes Against International Law, introduced in 2002, which grants German courts universal jurisdiction in cases involving war crimes or crimes against humanity.

102

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7630.htm

Terror Suspect Alleges Torture

Detainee Says U.S. Sent Him to Egypt Before Guantanamo

By Dana Priest and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers

01/06/05 "Washington Post" -- U.S. authorities in late 2001 forcibly transferred an Australian citizen to Egypt, where, he alleges, he was tortured for six months before being flown to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to court papers made public yesterday in a petition seeking to halt U.S. plans to return him to Egypt.

Egyptian-born Mamdouh Habib, who was detained in Pakistan in October 2001 as a suspected al Qaeda trainer, alleges that while under Egyptian detention he was hung by his arms from hooks, repeatedly shocked, nearly drowned and brutally beaten, and he contends that U.S. and international law prohibits sending him back.

103

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7384.htm

Terrorism: No Name Death from the Sky

By: Jack Dalton

11/29/04 : "ICH"

I wonder what the toll on Iraqi’s will be in terms of PTSD as a result of all the bombs, rockets, mortars and artillery shells the U.S. has dropped and fired on every city and town in Iraq? Iraq is a nation (or was) of 26 million people with over 50% of them under the age of 18. Half of Iraq is children. We know the effects of PTSD on adults, we’ve seen it with those of our people in uniform that are still affected from the Vietnam war; If adults are affected that severely, what about Iraq’s children?

We’re talking about 12-13 million children that have been subjected to almost daily bombings for over ten years and are currently being bombed by an occupying Army. What will be the result of all this on them? I can only imagine, but I do know from my own experiences that it will not be anything nice. In all probabilities, the next generation of insurgents, freedom fighters, and radicalized fundamentalists are being born out of the madness that has become Iraq.

104

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11877583%255E2703,00.html

The Australian

Under interrogation
Washington correspondent Roy Eccleston
January 08, 2005

IT was supposed to be just a few bad apples and largely limited to Iraq but a spate of new internal memos from the FBI has provided fresh accusations that the abuse of US prisoners in the "war on terror" has been systematic and sanctioned.

The memos also suggest the harsh techniques - "tantamount to torture", according to the International Committee for the Red Cross - were often used at Guantanamo Bay, where two alleged Australian al-Qa'ida members - David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib - are in custody.

Habib, through his lawyers, made detailed claims this week that he was brutally tortured in Egypt after being transferred there by the US in October 2001, following his capture in Pakistan.

105

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/123104Davies/123104davies.html

Special Report

The crime of war: from Nuremberg to Fallujah

A review of current international law regarding wars of aggression, and its implications for U.S. policy in Iraq and elsewhere

By Nicolas J S Davies
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Download a .pdf file for printing.
Adobe Acrobat Reader required.
Click here to download a free copy.

December 31, 2004—In September, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan told the BBC that the U.S./British invasion of Iraq was illegal under international law [1]. The following week, he dedicated his entire annual address to the U.N. General Assembly to the subject of international law, saying, "We must start from the principle that no one is above the law, and no one should be denied its protection." So, how was the invasion of Iraq illegal? How does that affect the situation there today? And what are the practical implications of this for U.S. policy going forward, in Iraq and elsewhere?

The Secretary General presumed what the world generally accepts, that international law is legally binding upon all countries. In the United States however, international law is spoken of differently, as a tool that our government can use selectively to enforce its will on other nations, or else circumvent when it conflicts with sufficiently important U.S. interests. For the benefit of readers in the U.S., I therefore feel obliged to preface a review of war crime in Iraq with a look at the actual legal status of international law, both in international terms and in terms of our own national framework of constitutional law

106

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=10594

The Daily Star

Iraq's civilian dead get no hearing in the United States

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Evidence is mounting that America's war in Iraq has killed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and perhaps well over 100,000. Yet this carnage is systematically ignored in the United States, where the media and government portray a war in which there are no civilian deaths, because there are no Iraqi civilians, only insurgents.

American behavior and self-perceptions reveal the ease with which a civilized country can engage in large-scale killing of civilians without public discussion. In late October, the British medical journal Lancet published a study of civilian deaths in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion began. The sample survey documented an extra 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths compared to the death rate in the preceding year, when Saddam Hussein was still in power - and this estimate did not even count excess deaths in Fallujah, which was deemed too dangerous to include.

107

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=4242

The Great Crime Spree of 2004
Rape, torture, murder, war crimes, and treason – your government at work by Justin Raimondo

If 2003 was the year of the liars, as I opined last year, then 2004 was the year of the war criminals, starting with Time magazine's designated Man of the Year, criminal-in-chief George W. Bush. It was Bush who presided over the torture and abuse not only at Abu Ghraib but in U.S.-run dungeons from Guantanamo to Afghanistan – and spare me the cries of protest that he didn't know, and Abu Ghraib was an "isolated incident."

To begin with, he did know. Thanks to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the president's personal responsibility in this disgusting saga has been revealed, along with the existence of FBI internal memos and other material that cite a previously unknown Executive Order authorizing torture at Abu Ghraib and other prison facilities.

108

The Quiet of Destruction and Death

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7407.htm

Dahr Jamail

12/02/04 "ICH"

This past Sunday a small Iraqi Red Crescent aid convoy was allowed into Fallujah at 4:30pm. I interviewed a member of the convoy today. Speaking on condition of anonymity, (so I’ll call her Suthir), the first thing she said to me was, “I need another heart and eyes to bear it because my own are not enough to bear what I saw. Nothing justifies what was done to this city. I didn’t see a house or mosque that wasn’t destroyed.”

Suthir paused often to collect herself, but then as usual with those of us who have witnessed atrocities first hand, when she started to talk, she barely stopped to breath.

“There were families with nothing. I met a family with three daughters and two sons. One of their sons, Mustafa who was 16 years old, was killed by American snipers. Then their house was burned. They had nothing to eat. Just rice and cold water-dirty water…they put the rice in the dirty water, let it sit for one or two hours, then they ate the rice. Fatma, the 17 year-old daughter, said she was praying for God to take her soul because she couldn’t bear the horrors anymore.”

109

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002130461_gitmo25.html

FBI reports said to back claims of Guantánamo Bay detainees

By Carol D. Leonnig

The Washington Post

At least 10 current and former detainees at the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have lodged allegations of abuse similar to incidents described by FBI agents in newly released documents. The detainees' claims were denied by the government but gained credibility with the reports from the agents, their attorneys say.

In public statements after their release and in documents filed with federal courts, the detainees have said they were beaten before and during interrogations, "short-shackled" to the floor and otherwise mistreated as part of the effort to persuade them to confess to being members of al-Qaida or the Taliban.

110

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1376189,00.html

November 27, 2004

6,635 bodies in Baghdad mortuary: counting cost of crime and chaos

From Anthony Loyd in Baghdad

SHOT, stabbed, blown up,burnt: the bodies of Iraqis killed in Baghdad lie piled in overcrowded refrigerators at the city’s central mortuary, their ever-increasing number overwhelming both staff and storage space in a wave that marks the city’s descent into a Hobbesian world of crime and brutality.

“Our morgue was designed to cope with between five and ten bodies a day,” explained Kais Hassan, the harrassed statistician whose job it is to record the capital’s suspicious deaths. He gestured into the open door of a refrigeration unit at the stomach-turning sight of tangled corpses inside, male and female, shaded with the brown and green hues of death. “Now we’re getting 20 to 30 in here a day. It’s a disaster.”

111

http://www.counterpunch.org/paterson01192005.html

January 19, 2005

Simulated Sex and a Forklift Hanging A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq By TONY PATERSON
The Independent

"Shocking and appalling" photographs of British troops allegedly torturing and sexually humiliating Iraqi civilians were revealed yesterday.

The images were produced at a court martial of three British soldiers accused of acts of abuse on Iraqis in an aid camp weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein. They include forcing detainees to strip and simulate sex acts which were photographed by servicemen.

One of the photographs showed a grimacing Iraqi civilian bound tightly in an army cargo net being suspended from a forklift truck driven by a British soldier. A second depicted a soldier dressed in shorts and a T-shirt standing on the bound and tied body of an Iraqi civilian. Other pictures showed two naked Iraqi men being forced to simulate anal sex and two Iraqis forced to simulate oral sex.

Publication of the photographs echoes the controversy surrounding US troops' abuse of Iraqi prisoners--which was also captured on film--at the Abu Ghraib jail near Baghdad.

112

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7409.htm

Torture by Americans a nightmarish picture

Molly Ivins

12/03/04 "Arizona Daily Star" -- It is both peculiar and chilling to find oneself discussing the problem of American torture. I have considered support of basic human rights and dignity so much a part of our national identity that this feels as strange as though I'd suddenly become Chinese or found Fidel Castro in the refrigerator.

One's first response to the report by the International Red Cross about torture at our prison at Guantanamo is denial. "I don't want to think about it; I don't want to hear about it; we're the good guys, they're the bad guys; shut up. And besides, they attacked us first."

But our country has opposed torture since its founding. One of our founding principles is that cruel and unusual punishment is both illegal and wrong. Every year, our State Department issues a report grading other countries on their support for or violations of human rights.

The first requirement here is that we look at what we are doing - and not blink, not use euphemisms. Despite the Red Cross' polite language, this is not "tantamount to torture." It's torture. It is not "detainee abuse." It's torture.

113

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0106-09.htm

Published on Thursday, January 6, 2005 by the Inter Press Service

Trickle of Prison Abuse Reports Becoming A Torrent

by William Fisher

NEW YORK - Even as the alleged ringleader of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal faces court-martial Friday, human rights groups are questioning whether his case is really the ”aberration” the Pentagon claims.

”The trial of Charles Graner is a first step toward accountability, but no one should confuse it with the end of the process,” said Reed Brody, special counsel at Human Rights Watch. ”The issue isn't only who was the local ringleader, but whether his superiors led him to believe he had permission to engage in such atrocities.”

The scope of U.S. mistreatment of prisoners, at home and abroad, has continued to widen in recent weeks, even as the government is reportedly considering building a 25-million-dollar, 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever appear before a military tribunal for lack of evidence.

114

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7623.htm

U.S. Army Sergeant May Refuse Re-Deployment To Iraq

By Robert S. Finnegan
Managing Editor, Southeast Asia News

“I have both a professional and a moral obligation to call into question why we are still in Iraq after accomplishing the mission – in President Bush’s words – of deposing Saddam, and why U.S. military personnel are increasingly killing non-combatants. On my last deployment in Iraq elements of my unit were instructed by a Captain to fire on children throwing rocks at us.” This is not what he signed up for, Benderman said.

Both Benderman, 40, and his wife Monica realize the possible ramifications of his stand.

“We have no other choice,” Benderman’s wife said. “This is what we have to do, I have always told my children that the right thing is the most important thing, and doing it is the only thing that allows you to keep your integrity, regardless of the consequences.” Their actions are only reflecting their core beliefs she said.

115

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/9946.html

U.S. human rights lawyers ask German court to expand war crimes probe of U.S. officials

By MELISSA EDDY | Associated Press
January 31, 2005

FRANKFURT, Germany - A group of American human rights lawyers asked German prosecutors Monday to investigate U.S. Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales on allegations of war crimes as part of a requested probe of U.S. officials' actions in Iraq, the group said.

Attorneys from the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights filed a suit with German federal prosecutors last November charging that U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former CIA director George Tenet, are responsible for acts of torture committed at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

116

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0204-20.htm

Published on Friday, February 4, 2005 by the Associated Press

U.N. Experts Fear 'Irreversible Psychiatric Symptoms' in Guantanamo Detainees

by Sam Cage GENEVA - U.N. human rights experts Friday expressed concern about possible "irreversible psychiatric symptoms" developing among suspected terrorists entering a fourth year of virtual solitary confinement at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The experts on arbitrary detention noted allegations that detainees at Guantanamo may be subject to "inhuman and degrading treatment."

Human rights officials have expressed concern about the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo.

A secret report obtained by The Associated Press found that guards punched some detainees, tied one to a gurney for questioning and forced a dozen to strip from the waist down. One squad was all-female, traumatizing some Muslim prisoners, according to the report that summarized what investigators saw when they viewed 20 hours of videotapes of the squads.

"The conditions of detention, especially of those in solitary confinement, place the detainees at significant risk of psychiatric deterioration, possibly including the development of irreversible psychiatric symptoms," the U.N. experts said in a statement. "Many of the inmates are completing their third year of virtually incommunicado detention, without legal assistance or information as to the expected duration of their detention."

117

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1203-08.htm

Published on Friday, December 3, 2004 by Seattle Post-Intelligencer

United States Undermines International Criminal Court

by Helen Thomas

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is adding an economic punch to its campaign to escape the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

The Bush administration fears that Americans could be brought before the tribunal by foreign countries -- and that concern has led to the U.S. policy to undermine the court's work.

The ICC is the first permanent international body set up to investigate and prosecute individuals accused of crimes against humanity, genocide and crimes of war. It could possibly apply to the modern day genocide in the Sudan and the Congo or Rwanda.

It replaces the ad hoc war crimes tribunals set up by the United Nations; one example was the court is trying former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague, Netherlands.

The treaty creating the court was adopted in 1998 at an international conference in Rome after intense negotiations. Its purpose was to avoid a repeat of the tragedies of what Human Rights Watch has called "the bloodiest century in human history," the 20th century. The pact was approved by 120 nations.

From the court's inception, the Bush administration has loudly proclaimed that U.S. service members won't be subject to its jurisdiction -- a theme that coincided with the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Two years ago, Congress passed the American Servicemenbers' Protection Act, which ended military aid to countries that refused to grant amnesty to U.S. nationals suspected of committing war crimes abroad.

Now comes a provision in the 2005 omnibus federal spending bill -- obviously part of the administration's foreign policy agenda -- that would bar economic assistance to any country that does not grant amnesty to U.S. citizens.

118

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=4139

December 9, 2004 US Attacks Global Court as GIs Sanctioned
by Jim Lobe

The United States is poised to punish some of its closest friends overseas for supporting the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a growing number of its soldiers are being sanctioned for abusing prisoners in the "war on terrorism," said U.S. human rights groups Wednesday.

A measure inserted into the current omnibus appropriations bill in Congress would ban tens of millions of dollars in U.S. economic aid to some of its allies unless they formally agree to exempt U.S. citizens from the ICC's jurisdiction.

119

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1226-02.htm

Published on Sunday, December 26, 2004 by the Boston Globe

US Disclosures Signal Wider Detainee Abuse

by Charlie Savage

A heavily redacted internal e-mail from an FBI agent in June, for example, reported hearing of ''numerous serious physical abuse incidents of Iraqi civilian detainees . . . strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees' ear openings, and unauthorized interrogations" and refers to ''coverup efforts."

120

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1201-03.htm

Published on Wednesday, December 1, 2004 by the Washington Post

U.S. Generals in Iraq Were Told of Abuse Early, Inquiry Finds

by Josh White

A confidential report to Army generals in Iraq in December 2003 warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees, a finding delivered more than a month before Army investigators received the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison that touched off investigations into prisoner mistreatment.

The report, which was not released publicly and was recently obtained by The Washington Post, concluded that some U.S. arrest and detention practices at the time could "technically" be illegal. It also said coalition fighters could be feeding the Iraqi insurgency by "making gratuitous enemies" as they conducted sweeps netting hundreds of detainees who probably did not belong in prison and holding them for months at a time.

121

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7431.htm

US Marine claims unit killed Iraqi civilians

12/08/04 "Agence France-Presse (AFP) --

A former US Marine said his unit killed more than 30 innocent Iraqi civilians in just two days, in graphic testimony to a Canadian tribunal probing an asylum claim by a US Army deserter.

Former Marine Sergeant Jimmy Massey appeared as a witness to bolster claims by fugitive paratrooper Jeremy Hinzman that he walked out on the 82nd Airborne Division to avoid being ordered to commit war crimes in Iraq.

Mr Hinzman, 26, claims he would face persecution if sent home to the United States, in a politically charged case which could set a precedent for at least two other US deserters seeking asylum in Canada.

Mr Massey told Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) that men under his command in the 3rd battalion, 7th Marines, killed "30 plus" civilians within 48 hours while on checkpoint duty in Baghdad.

"I do know that we killed innocent civilians," Mr Massey told the tribunal, relating the chaotic days after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

122

http://ancapistan.typepad.com/photos/navy_seals_torturing_iraq/index.html

AP: Navy Probes New Iraq Prisoner Photos, Dec 3, 2004

The U.S. military has launched a criminal investigation into photographs that appear to show Navy SEALs in Iraq sitting on hooded and handcuffed detainees, and photos of what appear to be bloodied prisoners, one with a gun to his head.

These and other photos found by the AP appear to show the immediate aftermath of raids on civilian homes. One man is lying on his back with a boot on his chest. A mug shot shows a man with an automatic weapon pointed at his head and a gloved thumb jabbed into his throat. In many photos, faces have been blacked out. What appears to be blood drips from the heads of some. A family huddles in a room in one photo and others show debris and upturned furniture.

123

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1203-05.htm

Published on Friday, December 3, 2004 by the Denver Post

US on Trial in Germany

by Reggie Rivers

When I saw the Los Angeles Times story about an American civil rights group going to Germany to file a criminal complaint against the Bush administration, I couldn't believe it.

The complaint, filed by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, alleges that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials condoned torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The organization said it had to file charges in Germany, which is allowed to hear cases involving human-rights abuses anywhere on the globe, because U.S. investigations had failed to probe the issue deeply enough.

124

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=4078

November 30, 2004 US Pushes War-Crimes Immunity in Foreign-Aid Bill
by Jim Lobe

"The fact is, most Republicans want to see the ICC killed and see this as another nail in its coffin," one aide told OneWorld last week.

The ICC, whose mandate is to investigate and prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and similar atrocities, was established under the 1998 Rome Statute, which has been ratified by 97 countries – including all of Washington's NATO allies and members of the European Union (EU) – of the 139 countries that have signed it.

125

Posted 12/23/2004 8:22 AM

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-12-23-iraq-children_x.htm

Number of malnourished Iraqi children rises, study says

A study by a Norwegian institute says the percentage of Iraqi children ages 6 months to 5 years suffering from malnutrition has nearly doubled to 7.7% from 4% in March 2003 — but Iraq's Health Ministry disputes these findings.

"It's on the level of some African countries," Jon Pederson, deputy managing director of the Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies, told the Associated Press. "Of course, no child should be malnourished, but when we're getting to levels of 7%-8%, it's a clear sign of concern."

126

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1212-02.htm

Published on Sunday, December 12, 2004 by The Sunday Herald (Scotland)

Victim of Latin American Torture Claims Abu Ghraib Abuse was Official US Policy

by Andrew McLeod

FOR many Latin American victims of torture, the infamous pictures of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison brought back not only chilling recollections of their own experiences, but also confirmed what they have long maintained: that their torturers were following interrogation guidelines set by the US Army School of the Americas (SOA).

"I had flashbacks when I saw the guy with the hood [at Abu Ghraib]," says Carlos Mauricio, a Salvadorean who was tortured in 1983. Founder of Stop Impunity, a group that seeks to prosecute human rights violators, dismisses as a "whitewash" the Bush administration's view that Abu Ghraib abuse was the work of a few US army misfits.

"What happened at Abu Ghraib was torture by the book; they were implementing US policy," Mauricio, 51, told the Sunday Herald.

127

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0202-03.htm

Published on Wednesday, February 2, 2005 by the Associated Press

Videos of Riot Squads at Guantanamo Show Prisoners Being Punched and Stripped From the Waist Down

by Paisley Dodds

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Videotapes of riot squads subduing troublesome terror suspects at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay show the guards punching some detainees, tying one to a gurney for questioning and forcing a dozen to strip from the waist down, according to a secret report. One squad was all-female, traumatizing some Muslim prisoners.

128

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7437.htm

War Crime

by Paul Craig Roberts

12/08/04 "Creators Syndicate"

Bush has destroyed US prestige in the Middle East and reduced America’s support among Middle Eastern populations to the single digits.

Bush has made Osama bin Laden a hero and recruited tens of thousands of terrorists to his ranks, while simultaneously alienating Middle Easterners from the secular puppet rulers we have imposed on them.

At a minimum Bush is responsible for between 14,619 and 16,804 Iraqi civilian deaths during the 21 months since the invasion. Compiled from hospital, morgue, and media reports, these figures understate civilian deaths. In keeping with Islam’s quick burial requirement, many Iraqis were buried in sports fields and in back gardens during protracted US assaults on urban areas. A recent report in the British medical journal, The Lancet, estimates that 100,000 Iraqis have been killed since March 20, 2003. This figure does not include the large number of Iraqi deaths from the embargo and US bombing for more than a decade prior to the US invasion.

Projecting the reported Iraqi civilian deaths for four more years of US occupation produces a figure of 51,621 civilians killed as "collateral damage." Projecting the Lancet’s figure produces a figure of 328,571 civilian deaths by the end of Bush’s second term.

Then there are the civilian injured, for which there appear to be no figures. If we assume the same ratio of killed to wounded for civilian deaths as holds for the US military, the reported death figure gives a civilian wounded figure of 392,320. The Lancet estimate gives a wounded figure of 2,497,139

129

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20986-2004Dec22?language=printer

washingtonpost.com

War Crimes
Thursday, December 23, 2004; Page A22

THANKS TO a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups, thousands of pages of government documents released this month have confirmed some of the painful truths about the abuse of foreign detainees by the U.S. military and the CIA -- truths the Bush administration implacably has refused to acknowledge. Since the publication of photographs of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in the spring the administration's whitewashers -- led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- have contended that the crimes were carried out by a few low-ranking reservists, that they were limited to the night shift during a few chaotic months at Abu Ghraib in 2003, that they were unrelated to the interrogation of prisoners and that no torture occurred at the Guantanamo Bay prison where hundreds of terrorism suspects are held. The new documents establish beyond any doubt that every part of this cover story is false.

130

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200412/s1255126.htm

Last Update: Wednesday, December 1, 2004. 1:10am (AEDT)

War in Iraq has caused a public health disaster that has left the country's medical system in tatters and increased the risk of disease and death, according to a report by Britain-based charity Medact.

Medact, which examines the impact of war on health, says cases of vaccine-preventable diseases are rising, and relief and reconstruction work had been mismanaged.

"The health of the Iraqi people has deteriorated since the 2003 invasion," Gill Reeve, the deputy director of Medact, said.

"Immediate action is needed to halt this health disaster."

The report is based on interviews in Jordan with Iraqi civilians, relief organisations and health professionals who worked in Iraq.

131

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7679.htm

We won't go home and we won't vote, say refugees of Fallujah

By Robert Fisk in Baghdad

01/13/05 "The Independent" -- They live beneath old fly-blown tents in the car-park of the Mustafa mosque and their canvas-roofed kitchen stands next to a pool of raw sewage, but the refugees from Fallujah will not return home.

Firstly, because many have no homes to go to; secondly, because they are - with the encouragement of local clerics - listing a series of demands that include the withdrawal of all American soldiers from the city; the maintenance of security by Fallujans themselves; massive compensation payments; and the return of money and valuables that those who have just visited Fallujah say were stolen by American troops.

And they are very definitely not going to vote in the January 30 elections. Squatting on the floor of his concrete-walled office in his black robes to eat lunch, Sheik Hussein - he pleads with me not to print his family name - insists that his people are not against elections. "We are not rejecting this election for the sake of it," he says. "We are rejecting it because it is the 'tent' of the occupation. It is the vehicle for the Americans to ensure that (Prime Minister Iyad) Allawi gets back in. And we are still under occupation."

132

http://www.antiwar.com/jamail/?articleid=4470

January 19, 2005 What Is the US Trying to Hide in Fallujah?
by Dahr Jamail

"The soldiers are doing strange things in Fallujah," said one of my contacts in Fallujah who just returned. He was in his city checking on his home and just returned to Baghdad this evening.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, he continued, "In the center of the Julan Quarter they are removing entire homes which have been bombed, meanwhile most of the homes that were bombed are left as they were. Why are they doing this?"

According to him, this was also done in the Nazal, Mualmeen, Jubail, and Shuhada'a districts, and the military began to do this after Eid, which was after Nov. 20.

He told me he has watched the military use bulldozers to push the soil into piles and load it onto trucks to carry away. This was done in the Julan and Jimouriya quarters of the city, which is of course where the heaviest fighting occurred during the siege, as this was where resistance was the fiercest.

"At least two kilometers [1.2 mi.] of soil were removed," he explained. "Exactly as they did at Baghdad Airport after the heavy battles there during the invasion and the Americans used their special weapons."

He explained that in certain areas where the military used "special munitions," 200 square meters [2,150 sq. ft.] of soil was being removed from each blast site.

133

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1208-23.htm

Published on Wednesday December 8, 2004 by the Boston Globe

Who Knew What at Abu Ghraib?

by Derrick Z. Jackson The accountability gap between the grunts and generals of Abu Ghraib widened this week. Charles Graner, one of the soldiers accused of prisoner abuse, tried to have charges dismissed on the grounds that a jury would be tainted by the prior condemnation of the abuse by President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers.

Military judge James Pohl rejected the defense motion, saying the Bush administration never said any of the individuals were guilty nor cited any individual soldier by name.

Graner's attorney, Guy Womack, was also rebuffed by Pohl in an effort to force Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the former US commander in Iraq, to testify. Sanchez has not been accused of any wrongdoing, but has been criticized for not acting quickly enough over reports of abuse. Womack said Sanchez's testimony "would show how the ball started rolling downhill that ended up with this Abu Ghraib case."

134

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0506-02.htm

Published on Thursday, May 6, 2004 by the Associated Press

Widow of Maine Soldier Urges Americans to Question Policy

by Wilson Ring

EDEN, Vt. - The widow of a Maine National Guard soldier killed in Iraq last month is calling on Americans to question their government´s policy in that country.

Lavinia Onitiu-Gelineau, clutching a pink teddy bear her husband gave her when they last met in February, said Wednesday it was good for Americans to be patriotic but people need to question whether the things the troops are doing in Iraq are right.

"I am very angry," Onitiu-Gelineau said. "I am very angry. I was angry before, but I didn´t want to say anything."

135

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0111-11.htm

Published on Tuesday, January 11, 2005 by the Associated Press

Witness: CIA and SEALs Beat Prisoners During Interrogation in Iraq

by Seth Hettena

SAN DIEGO - A former Navy SEAL says he saw fellow SEALs and CIA officials kick, choke and eye-gouge detainees at a U.S. military base in Iraq.

The former SEAL testified at a military hearing Monday that he saw "interrogation by means of abuse" take place at Camp Jenny Pozzi, the SEAL base at Baghdad International Airport

He said a prisoner under interrogation by the CIA was abused in October 2003 by two or three SEALs. On another occasion a month later, the witness said he watched as SEALs punched, choked and poked their fingers in the eye of Iraqi Manadel al-Jamadi, who also was punched by a CIA official when he didn't answer questions.

Al-Jamadi, a suspect in the bombing of a Red Cross facility in Iraq, died a few hours after he was captured during a joint CIA-special operations mission in November 2003. He died while being interrogated by CIA personnel in the shower room of the Abu Ghraib prison.

136

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7475.htm

World Tribunal on Iraq
Premeditated Death and Destruction Unleashed Against a Sovereign Nation and People

by Niloufer Bhagwat

Opening statement before the Iraq tribunal hearings at Tokyo,

11 Dec 2004

Honorable Judges , Prosecutors , Amici Curiae , witnesses of the satanic death and destruction of the people of Iraq , of homes and livelihood , of hospitals , schools and places of worship; concerned citizens of Japan .

We live in strange times. For even as a war rages fiercely in Iraq which in epic terms can be compared to a "Mahabharat" , a fierce war between the forces of right and wrong , justice and injustice , occupation and national liberation ; we resume this trial in the dark shadows of an "Apocalypse" which is the continuing military occupation and the reduction of the entire population of Iraq into the inmates of a vast concentration camp unmonitored even by the Red Cross and other UN and other International humanitarian organizations. Unprecedented in the annals of legal history, evidence is being recorded in this trial even as crimes continue to be committed with impunity, bringing home to us the reality of human existence, that words are never enough to defeat a brutal tyranny and even those of us who use words as tools are speechless in the face of the deliberate and premeditated death and destruction unleashed against a sovereign nation and people ,a member state of the United Nations waged solely to capture its oil resources and with that objective to subjugate and eliminate its population through one strategy or another.

137

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7414.htm

You asked for my evidence, Mr Ambassador. Here it is

In Iraq, the US does eliminate those who dare to count the dead

Naomi Klein

12/04/04 "The Guardian " --

David T Johnson,
Acting ambassador,
US Embassy, London

Dear Mr Johnson, On November 26, your press counsellor sent a letter to the Guardian taking strong exception to a sentence in my column of the same day. The sentence read: "In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly eliminating anyone - doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to count the bodies." Of particular concern was the word "eliminating".

The letter suggested that my charge was "baseless" and asked the Guardian either to withdraw it, or provide "evidence of this extremely grave accusation". It is quite rare for US embassy officials to openly involve themselves in the free press of a foreign country, so I took the letter extremely seriously. But while I agree that the accusation is grave, I have no intention of withdrawing it. Here, instead, is the evidence you requested.

In April, US forces laid siege to Falluja in retaliation for the gruesome killings of four Blackwater employees. The operation was a failure, with US troops eventually handing the city back to resistance forces. The reason for the withdrawal was that the siege had sparked uprisings across the country, triggered by reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed. This information came from three main sources: 1) Doctors. USA Today reported on April 11 that "Statistics and names of the dead were gathered from four main clinics around the city and from Falluja general hospital" 2) Arab TV journalists. While doctors reported the numbers of dead, it was al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya that put a human face on those statistics. With unembedded camera crews in Falluja, both networks beamed footage of mutilated women and children throughout Iraq and the Arab-speaking world. 3) Clerics. The reports of high civilian casualties coming from journalists and doctors were seized upon by prominent clerics in Iraq. Many delivered fiery sermons condemning the attack, turning their congregants against US forces and igniting the uprising that forced US troops to withdraw.

138

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=6744

Why I’ll be on the streets of Ottawa.

by Troy Cochrane

November 28, 2004

A war criminal is coming to our city, the capital of Canada. He is being welcomed, with open arms, by our prime minister, Paul Martin. He will be fêted and celebrated by Ottawa’s political and business elite. The two will participate in photo ops. There will be a public demonstration of the mutual affection between the two leaders. They will show what a good friend Canada has. He will eat a hearty dinner and then fly off to Halifax.

He will never be challenged by Martin, or anyone else with direct access to him. He won’t be criticized for invading Iraq which, crippled by war and then more than a decade of sanctions, posed no threat to its neighbours, let alone his country. He won’t be taken to task for the 100,000 Iraqi deaths since the start of the war. He won’t be asked why his army has set up torture camps at Abu Graib or in Guantanamo. There will be no question about the criminalization of people of Middle
Eastern ancestry. He won’t have to prove the necessity of the multi-billion dollar hand-out to the defence industry called ballistic missile defence.

This war criminal won’t be challenged because Canada’s leaders and this man have a common vision of a world based on control by the wealthy. What about the poor? They can choose between submission or death.

139

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=80&ItemID=6987

Torture and International Human Rights
A roundtable discussion with Francis Boyle, Michael Mandel, Liz Holtzman, H. Victor Conde, and Mark Levine

Boyle et al interviewed by January 09, 2005 ......... Mark Levine

LeVine: In my own research on war crimes committed by US forces in Iraq. I counted at least two-dozen classes of offenses systematically committed by the Occupation administration and US or US-allied military forces in the invasion and subsequent period of CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) rule. This includes violations of articles and 17, 18, 33, and 147 of the Geneva Convention covering the killing, hostage-taking and torturing of civilians

Boyle: As I just argued at Fort Stewart Georgia in the court martial proceedings for Sgt. Camilo Mejia for desertion, the accountability here goes directly up the chain of command under the terms of the US Army Field Manual 27-10. Specifically, paragraph 501 makes clear that commanders who have ordered or knew or should have known about war crimes and failed to stop it are themselves guilty of war crimes. If you look then at the public record, it is clear that Gens. Sanchez and Miller ordered war crimes and both should be relieved of command immediately: abuse of prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

140

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=6791

Letter from a GI in Falluja:
"This wasn't a war, it was a massacre"

by hEkLe December 04, 2004 Socialist Worker online

The fighter jets were right on time and made their grand appearance with a series of massive air strikes. Between the pernicious bombs and fierce artillery, the sky seemed as though it were on fire for several minutes at a time. First, you would see a blaze of light in the horizon, like lightning hitting a dynamite warehouse, and then hear the massive explosion that would turn your stomach, rattle your eyeballs and compress itself deep within your lungs. Although these massive bombs were being dropped no further than five kilometers away, it felt like it was happening right in front of your face.

At first, it was impossible not to flinch with each unexpected boom, but after scores of intense explosions, your senses became aware and complacent towards them.

At times, the jets would scream menacingly low over the city and open fire with smaller missiles meant for extreme accuracy. This is what Top Gun, in all its glory and silver screen acclaim, seemed to be lacking in the movie's high budget sound effects.

These air-deployed missiles make a banshee-like squeal, sort of like a bottle rocket fueled with plutonium, and then suddenly would become inaudible. Seconds later, the colossal explosion would rip the sky open and hammer devastatingly into the ground, sending flames and debris pummeling into the air.

And as always, the artillery--some rounds were high explosive, some were illumination rounds, some were reported as being white phosphorus (the modern-day napalm).

It occurred to me many times during the siege that while the Falluja resistance was boldly fighting us with archaic weapons from the Cold War, we were soaring far above their heads, dropping Thor's fury with a destructive power and precision that may as well been nuclear. It was like the Iraqis were bringing a knife to a tank fight.

And yet, the resistance toiled on, many fighting until their deaths. What determination!

Some soldiers call them stupid for even thinking they have a chance in hell to defeat the strongest military in the world, but I call them brave. It's not about fighting to win an immediate victory. And what is a conventional victory in a non-conventional war?

It seems overwhelmingly obvious that this is no longer within the United States hands.

We reduced Falluja to rubble. We claimed victory and told the world we held Falluja under total and complete control. Our military claimed very few civilian casualties and listed thousands of insurgents dead. CNN and Fox News harped and cheered on the television that the battle of Falluja would go down in history as a complete success, and a testament to the United States' supremacy on the modern battlefield.

141

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=6741

'Unusual Weapons' used in Fallujah ......... by Dahr Jamail November 27, 2004

BAGHDAD, Nov 26 (IPS) - The U.S. military has used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians in Fallujah, eyewitnesses report.

Hammad is from the Julan district of Fallujah where some of the heaviest fighting occurred. Other residents of that area report the use of illegal weapons.

”They used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud,” Abu Sabah, another Fallujah refugee from the Julan area told IPS. ”Then small pieces fall from the air with long tails of smoke behind them.”

He said pieces of these bombs exploded into large fires that burnt the skin even when water was thrown on the burns. Phosphorous weapons as well as napalm are known to cause such effects. ”People suffered so much from these,” he said.

Macabre accounts of killing of civilians are emerging through the cordon U.S. forces are still maintaining around Fallujah.

”Doctors in Fallujah are reporting to me that there are patients in the hospital there who were forced out by the Americans,” said Mehdi Abdulla, a 33-year-old ambulance driver at a hospital in Baghdad. ”Some doctors there told me they had a major operation going, but the soldiers took the doctors away and left the patient to die.”

142

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=7161

Guantanamo Abuses Caught on Tape, Report Details ......... by Jessica Azulay February 02, 2005 The NewStandard
Nearly nine months after former Guantánamo detainee Tarek Dergoul went public with allegations that a special punishment squad abused him during his incarceration at the Cuba base and that the treatment was videotaped, some of the content on those tapes has been leaked to the press.

Last May, Dergoul, a British citizen who had spent 22 months in detention at Camp Delta, told the media that a US squad known among the prisoners as the "Extreme Reaction Force," or "ERF," had pepper-sprayed him in the face, pinned him down and attacked him, poked their fingers in his eyes, forced his head into a toilet pan and flushed, tied him up "like a beast," dragged him out of his cell in chains, and shaved his beard, hair, and eyebrows.

At the time, some US lawmakers and British officials demanded release of the videotapes, which were confirmed to exist by Lieutenant Colonel Leon Sumpter, spokesperson for the Guantánamo Joint Task Force. Sumpter told the UK Independent that all actions by the ERF were filmed and kept in an archive.

Now, the Associated Press reports it has obtained a report written by investigators from US Southern Command in Miami, Florida detailing some twenty hours out of approximately 500 hours of videotapes involving squads called "Immediate Reaction Forces" -- also referred to as "Immediate Response Forces," or "IRF."

143

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=6835

Uncle Sam Has His Own Gulag
Behaving Like The Soviet Secret Police Won't Make America Safer
......... by Eric Margolis December 10, 2004 Toronto Sun

According to a report leaked to the New York Times, the Swiss-based International Red Cross has accused the Bush administration for a second time of employing systematic, medically supervised torture against suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay, and at U.S.-run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The second Red Cross report was delivered to the White House last summer while it was trying to dismiss the Abu Ghraib prison torture horrors as the crimes of a few rogue jailers.

According to the report's allegations, many tortures perfected by the Cheka (Soviet secret police) -- notably beating, freezing, sensory disorientation, and sleep deprivation -- are now routinely being used by U.S. interrogators.

144

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=72&ItemID=6784

How the NYT Misreports
An Interview with Howard Friel
......... Howard Friel interviewed by December 03, 2004

We knew that neither the news pages or editorial page at the Times had invoked international law when previous US administrations had threatened or used force in the past. So we sort of anticipated that this would happen again with regard to what appeared to be the Bush administration's intention to invade Iraq. As it turned out, in over 70 editorials on Iraq from September 11 2001 to March 20 2003, the editorial page never even mentioned the words "international law" or "UN Charter." Likewise, the news pages quoted only foreign sources -- Russian, French, German, Arab, Iraqi, and UN -- to the effect that an invasion without Security Council approval in this instance would violate the UN Charter. Either no US international law experts viewed an invasion as illegal under the circumstances -- we in fact knew many such experts who were willing to tell the readers of the Times that an invasion would have been illegal -- or the Times never bothered to talk to them.

The wholesale exclusion of international law from the Times coverage not only of Iraq but of nearly the entirety of US foreign policy since World War II seemed to us to be something worth writing a book about, and also an opportunity to argue as we do that US compliance with international law would have resulted in much wiser US foreign policy over that period, and that incorporating international law as a standard of editorial policy would have resulted in much better journalism at the Times with respect to both its news and editorial-page coverage of US foreign policy.

145

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=511104

Army Destroyed Mock Execution Pictures

Documents: Army Pictures of Mock Afghan Executions Were Destroyed After Iraq Prison Scandal

NEW YORK Feb 18, 2005 — Pictures of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan posing with hooded and bound detainees during mock executions were destroyed after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq to avoid another public outrage, Army documents released Friday by the American Civil Liberties Union show.

The results of an Army probe of the photographs were among hundreds of pages of documents released after the ACLU obtained a federal court order in Manhattan to let it see documents about U.S. treatment of detainees around the world.

The ACLU said the probe shows the rippling effect of the Abu Ghraib scandal and that efforts to humiliate the enemy might have been more widespread than thought.

"It's increasingly clear that members of the military were aware of the allegations of torture and that efforts were taken to erase evidence, to shut down investigations and to humiliate the detainees in an effort to silence them," ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said.

146

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=340119&category=REGIONOTHER&BCCode=HOME&newsdate=3/9/2005

Former Marine offers cautionary war story

Iraq veteran Jimmy Massey tells of combat's horrors at Siena event By ROBERT LOPEZ, Staff writer
First published: Wednesday, March 9, 2005

We discharged our weapons into the Kia," he said. "There were four occupants in the vehicle. Three were severely wounded and expiring fast. The driver was unscathed. While we were trying to medevac these individuals out, this young man that was unscathed came up to me and asked, 'Why did you do this? Why did you kill my brother? We're not terrorists.' "

Massey said his commanders sometimes encouraged him to fire almost indiscriminately.

"They were painting a picture that every civilian in Iraq was a potential terrorist, regardless of age or sex." he told the campus audience in Roger Bacon Hall.

147

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8252.htm

Army Details Scale of Abuse of Prisoners in an Afghan Jail

By DOUGLAS JEHL

03/12/05 "New York Times" - - WASHINGTON, March 11 - Two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports that have not yet been made public.

One soldier, Pfc. Willie V. Brand, was charged with manslaughter in a closed hearing last month in Texas in connection with one of the deaths, another Army document shows. Private Brand, who acknowledged striking a detainee named Dilawar 37 times, was accused of having maimed and killed him over a five-day period by "destroying his leg muscle tissue with repeated unlawful knee strikes."

148

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4339419.stm

Vietnam fury at Agent Orange case

Vietnamese plaintiffs have condemned a US court's decision to dismiss their legal action against manufacturers of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

"It is a wrong decision, unfair and irresponsible," said Nguyen Trong Nhan, vice president of Vietnam's Association of Agent Orange (VAVA).

He said his group was thinking of filing an appeal.

Former North Vietnamese solder Ngyuen Van Quy, who is being treated for liver and stomach cancer and whose two children are disabled, also said he would not give up his struggle for compensation.

"I'll fight, not just for myself, but for millions of Vietnamese victims. Those who produced these toxic chemicals must take responsibility for their action," he said.

The plaintiffs had sought compensation from pharmaceutical firms including Monsanto, Dow Chemical and Hercules Incorporated, for the alleged effects of Agent Orange, a defoliation agent used to deprive communist Vietnamese forces of forest cover.

The plaintiffs argued that the chemical caused birth defects, miscarriages and cancer.

149

http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughley03072005.html

March 7, 2005

Twisting the Minds of the American People

More War Crimes By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

Let me paint a word picture. An unarmed, wounded American soldier is lying helpless, bleeding and barely conscious on the floor of a church in a country with which the US is at war. An armed soldier of that country walks up to the wounded American. It so happens that a TV cameraman is present. He films the foreign soldier shouting, "He's fucking faking he's dead!" One of his comrades says "And he's breathing". The first soldier again yells "He's faking he's fucking dead!" He then kills the helpless, wounded man with a burst of fire that blows his head off and spatters the room with blood and tiny bits of flesh and bone. One of the foreign soldiers says "He's dead, now."

Question One: What do you think the reaction of most of the American people would be to the murder of a wounded, unarmed US soldier lying helpless and barely conscious on the floor of a church in a foreign land?

Question Two: What was the reaction of most of the American people to the murder of a wounded, unarmed Iraqi lying helpless and barely conscious on the floor of a mosque in his own country?

***

First Answer: Shrieking outrage and demands for the foreigner to be tried and executed, whichever came first.

Second Answer: Unconcern.

150

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0209-01.htm

Published on Wednesday, February 9, 2005 by the New York Sun

CNN Executive Says G.I.s in Iraq Target Journalists

by Roderick Boyd

The head of CNN's news division, Eason Jordan, ignited an Internet firestorm last week when he told a panel at a World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, that the American military had targeted journalists during operations in Iraq.

Mr. Jordan, speaking in a panel discussion titled "Will Democracy Survive the Media?" said "he knew of about 12 journalists who had not only been killed by American troops, but had been targeted as a matter of policy," said Rep. Barney Frank, a Democrat of Massachusetts who was on the panel with Mr. Jordan.

151

http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2005/02/baghdad_journal8.html

Denial or Despair

By David Enders

February 11, 2005

I ended my day interviewing a 20-year-old physics student who got out of prison a month ago. He was arrested in November when US troops raided his house. Standard story — the garden door knocked in with a humvee, troops bust in, bag over the head (a practice US army spokesman Mark Kimmet said was stopped more than a year ago), loaded on to a truck, gone. First he was held at a base at the south end of Baghdad. He says he was there for about a month, interrogated and beaten daily. He points to his nose, which he says wasn't crooked before he was arrested. He said the prisoners were shocked repeatedly with tasers, forced to spend 24 hours at a time in cells too low to stand and too narrow sit, forced to sit for two days. After that he was moved to the airport where he was held for another month, unceremoniously dropped from a humvee in Amariya, a fairly rough neighborhood -- fearing, though now free, that he'd be killed as a spy.

152

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12431-2005Feb9?language=printer

Detainees Accuse Female Interrogators
Pentagon Inquiry Is Said to Confirm Muslims' Accounts of Sexual Tactics at Guantanamo

By Carol D. Leonnig and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 10, 2005; Page A01

Female interrogators repeatedly used sexually suggestive tactics to try to humiliate and pry information from devout Muslim men held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a military investigation not yet public and newly declassified accounts from detainees.

The prisoners have told their lawyers, who compiled the accounts, that female interrogators regularly violated Muslim taboos about sex and contact with women. The women rubbed their bodies against the men, wore skimpy clothes in front of them, made sexually explicit remarks and touched them provocatively, at least eight detainees said in documents or through their attorneys.

A wide-ranging Pentagon investigation, which has not yet been released, generally confirms the detainees' allegations, according to a senior Defense Department official familiar with the report. While isolated accounts of such tactics have emerged in recent weeks, the new allegations and the findings of the Pentagon investigation indicate that sexually oriented tactics may have been part of the fabric of Guantanamo interrogations, especially in 2003.

The inquiry uncovered numerous instances in which female interrogators, using dye, pretended to spread menstrual blood on Muslim men, the official said. Separately, in court papers and public statements, three detainees say that women smeared them with blood.

153

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8258.htm

Extreme Cinema Verite

GIs shoot Iraq battle footage and edit it into music videos filled with death and destruction. And they display their work as entertainment.

By Louise Roug
Times Staff Writer

03/14/05 "LA Times" - - BAQUBAH, Iraq — When Pfc. Chase McCollough went home on leave in November, he brought a movie made by fellow soldiers in Iraq. On his first night back at his parents' house in Texas, he showed the video to his fiancee, family and friends.

This is what they saw: a handful of American soldiers filmed through the green haze of night-vision goggles. Radio communication between two soldiers crackles in the background before it's drowned out by a heavy-metal soundtrack.

"Don't need your forgiveness," the song by the band Dope begins as images unfurl: armed soldiers posing in front of Bradley fighting vehicles, two women covered in black abayas walking along a dusty road, a blue-domed mosque, a poster of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr. Then, to the fast, hard beat of the music — "Die, don't need your resistance. Die, don't need your prayers" — charred, decapitated and bloody corpses fill the screen.

"It's like a trophy, something to keep," McCullough, 20, said back at his cramped living quarters at Camp Warhorse near Baqubah. "I was there. I did this."

In another video, made by members of the Florida National Guard, soldiers are shown kicking a wounded prisoner in the face and making the arm of a corpse appear to wave. The DVD, which is called "Ramadi Madness," includes sections with titles such as "Those Crafty Little Bastards" and "Another Day, Another Mission, Another Scumbag," came to light in early March after the American Civil Liberties Union obtained Army documents using the Freedom of Information Act.

154

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=5891

Doctor Salam Ismael took aid to Fallujah last month. This is his story of how the US murdered a city

IT WAS the smell that first hit me, a smell that is difficult to describe, and one that will never leave me. It was the smell of death. Hundreds of corpses were decomposing in the houses, gardens and streets of Fallujah. Bodies were rotting where they had fallen—bodies of men, women and children, many half-eaten by wild dogs.

A wave of hate had wiped out two-thirds of the town, destroying houses and mosques, schools and clinics. This was the terrible and frightening power of the US military assault.

The accounts I heard over the next few days will live with me forever. You may think you know what happened in Fallujah. But the truth is worse than you could possibly have imagined.

155

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=612865

UK diplomat says Britain is part of a worldwide torture plot. Is he telling the truth?

Our former ambassador to Uzbekistan refuses to go quietly. The Government should come clean about interrogation methods, he tells Raymond Whitaker

20 February 2005

Craig Murray is a very undiplomatic diplomat. Former ambassadors are supposed to be tending their flowers in Home Counties gardens, but this one is not. He is, instead, making extraordinary allegations, the most damaging of which is that Britain is using information obtained from torture to imprison people indefinitely. So convinced is he of the truth of this and other claims that he plans to stand against his former employer, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, at the general election.

156

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/mar2005/rums-m08.shtml

World Socialist Web Site
by: Don Knowland on: 8th Mar, 2005

Federal suit charges Rumsfeld authorized detainee torture

Four Afghans and four Iraqis have sued US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in federal court in Chicago, the city of his principal residence, for implementing interrogation policies that resulted in their torture at the hands of US military forces. The case was filed on behalf of these plaintiffs on March 1 by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First, until recently known as Lawyers for Human Rights.

According to the complaint, all the plaintiffs “are and were non-combatant civilians who pose no threat to the United States.” They were not engaged in hostilities against the US, were never prosecuted for criminal violations and were released by the military after being brutally tortured. The suit charges that this torture came as a result of a “policy, pattern or practice of torture or other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” authorized at the highest levels of the US military.

The eight plaintiffs have provided detailed accounts of their abuse by US torturers, which form the cornerstone of the lawsuit against Rumsfeld. [See accompanying article “Afghan and Iraqi prisoners detail abuse by US torturers”] They are seeking monetary damages to compensate them for their physical, psychological and emotional injuries.

157

http://csmonitor.com/2005/0218/p01s03-woiq.html

Good night, Fallujah: 'Raider' starts for home

By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

February 18, 2005 edition

In Fallujah they fought and bled, testing themselves in ways they never imagined - leaving an entire city in ruins while hunting insurgents house to house, room to room.

"It's very depressing, actually," says Cpl. Christopher DeBlanc. "Fallujah was the best of times and the worst of times; the most exciting, the most eventful and extraordinary; and the most scary, most miserable, most death-defying."

"I feel like [Fallujah] was the pinnacle of my existence - that nothing I will ever do will be like what I have done," says the religious marine from Spotsylvania, Va. "I'm pretty sure there will be times just as good ... just as awesome - and I'll appreciate it in a different way. But right now, I still have my blinders on; the pall of the city is still over me."

158

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8031.htm

Group: US killed detainees

A US human rights group has alleged that at least 37 detainees died of torture in US detention centres at Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

By AFP

02/10/05 "The Age" - - A US human rights group accused the United States of torturing terror suspects at its detention facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, alleging that at least 37 detainees have died during interrogations.

The World Organisation for Human Rights USA said an upcoming report by the US government to the United Nations Committee Against Torture on its compliance with a UN convention outlawing torture was likely to sidestep abuses committed during its war on terror, blaming them on a few "aberrant individuals."

Morton Sklar, the organisation's executive director, said there were legal memoranda issued at the highest level in the US Department of Justice and the US Department of Defence "justifying and encouraging the use of torture as a military necessity in time of war."

159

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1417227,00.html

'Nobody is talking'

The evidence of two new books demonstrates that 9/11 created the will for new, harsher interrogation techniques of foreign suspects by the US and led to the abuses in Guantánamo, Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. In a special report, James Meek reveals that it is the British who refined these methods, and who have provided the precedent for legalised torture

Friday February 18, 2005
The Guardian

Most of the detainees who have been released from Guantánamo have described being tortured and ill-treated. Nuri Mert of Turkey spoke of "psychological and physical torture". Mehdi Ghezali of Sweden described systematic sleep deprivation, and extremes of temperature, noise and light. Mamdouh Habib of Australia said he had what appeared to be menstrual blood thrown at him by a woman interrogator. Shafiq Rasul of Britain still has back pain from short-shackling. Martin Mubanga of Britain has described being painted with his own urine while being racially abused and being trodden on while chained. Moazzam Begg of Britain was kept in solitary confinement in Guantánamo for 19 months, Feroz Abbasi of Britain for 18 months. Ayrat Vakhitov, of Russia, has described a system of sleep deprivation that automatically moved prisoners from one cell to another every 15 minutes. None of the released men has been charged with a crime.

160

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050218/NEWS/502180362/1018/NEWS02

Reports say Iraqi died while suspended by wrists

BY SETH HETTENA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN DIEGO -- An Iraqi whose corpse was photographed with grinning U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib died under CIA interrogation while suspended by his wrists, with his hands cuffed behind his back, according to reports reviewed by The Associated Press.

The death of the prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, became known last year when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. The U.S. military said then that the death had been ruled a homicide, but the exact circumstances under which the man died were not disclosed.

The prisoner died in a position known as "Palestinian hanging," the documents show. It is unclear whether that position was approved by the Bush administration for use in CIA interrogations. The agency declined to comment for this story, as did the Justice Department.

Al-Jamadi was one of the CIA's "ghost" detainees at Abu Ghraib -- prisoners being held secretly by the agency. His death in November 2003 became public with the release of photos of Abu Ghraib guards giving a thumbs-up over his bruised and puffy-faced corpse, packed in ice.

Al-Jamadi died in a shower room during about a half-hour of questioning, before interrogators could extract any information, according to the documents, which consist of statements from Army prison guards to military and CIA investigators.

One Army guard, Sgt. Jeffery Frost, said the prisoner's arms were stretched behind him in a way he had never seen. Frost told investigators he was surprised al-Jamadi's arms "didn't pop out of their sockets," said a summary of his interview.

The military pathologist who ruled the case a homicide found several broken ribs and concluded al-Jamadi died from pressure to the chest.

161

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8246.htm

S. Marines Engaged in Mock Executions of Iraqi Juveniles

03/12/05

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@aclu.org

Navy Corpsman Described Pressure to "Keep His Mouth Shut"

NEW YORK - U.S. Navy documents released today by the American Civil Liberties Union reveal that abuse and even torture of detainees by U.S. Marines in Iraq was widespread. One Navy criminal investigator sent an e-mail in June 2004 describing his Iraq caseload "exploding" with "high visibility cases."

"Day after day, new stories of torture are coming to light, and we need to know how these abuses were allowed to happen," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "This kind of widespread abuse could not have taken place without a leadership failure of the highest order."

The release of these documents follows a federal court order that directed the Defense Department and other government agencies to comply with a year-old request under the Freedom of Information Act filed by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case.

The documents the ACLU released today, posted online at www.aclu.org/torturefoia, describe substantiated incidents of torture and abuse by U.S. Marines, including:

· holding a pistol to the back of a detainee’s head while another Marine took a picture (Karbala, May 2003)

· ordering four Iraqi juveniles to kneel while a pistol was "discharged to conduct a mock execution" (Adiwaniyah, June 2003)

· severely burning a detainee’s hands by covering them in alcohol and igniting them (Al Mumudiyah, August 2003), and

· shocking a detainee with an electric transformer, causing the detainee to "dance" as he was shocked (Al Mumudiyah, April 2004).

162

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=609538

Britain accused over CIA's secret torture flights

UK airports are believed to be operational bases for two executive jets used by the CIA to carry out 'renditions' of terror suspects. Report by Stephen Grey and Andrew Buncombe

10 February 2005

Britain's intelligence agencies have been accused of helping America in a secret operation that is sending terror suspects to Middle Eastern countries where prisoners are routinely tortured and abused.

163

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=610606

Ministers believe Briton was tortured by US officers

UK calls for new US inquiry, saying that allegations made by former Guantanamo detainee are 'credible'

By Severin Carrell

13 February 2005

British ministers believe US interrogators could be guilty of torturing and abusing Moazzam Begg, one of the Britons released from Guantanamo Bay last month, The Independent on Sunday has learned.

164

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=611496

British troops face new charges as bodies of Iraqi civilians are exhumed

By Kim Sengupta in Basra

16 February 2005

Charges against British troops are believed to be imminent following fresh allegations of crimes committed in Iraq, including cases relating to the deaths of civilians.

165

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/02/11/news/defense.html

Interrogator's defenders cite Bush

The New York Times
Saturday, February 12, 2005

WASHINGTON An interrogator under contract with the Central Intelligence Agency, charged with beating an Afghan prisoner who died the next day, is basing his defense in part on statements by President George W. Bush and other officials that called for tough action to prevent terrorist attacks and protect American lives.

Documents unsealed in the past week in federal court in Raleigh, North Carolina, show that the interrogator, David Passaro, 38, might cite top officials' written legal justifications for harsh interrogation techniques and a Congressional resolution passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon calling on the president "to use all necessary and appropriate force" to thwart further terrorism.

Passaro's lawyers contend in court filings that in passing the legislation under which their client is charged, Congress "cannot have contemplated" the use of the law to "provide grounds for criminal prosecution of a battlefield interrogation of a suspected terrorist linked to constant rocket attacks."

166

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3&art_id=vn20050311111030644C184089

US army held eight-year-old in Iraq prison

March 11 2005 at 01:21PM

Children held by the United States army at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison included one boy who appeared to be only about eight years old, the former commander of the prison has told investigators, according to a transcript.

"He told me he was almost 12," Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told officials investigating prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. "He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying."

Karpinski's statement is among hundreds of pages of army records about Abu Ghraib released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Thursday.

167

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/619/619p15b.htm

From Green Left Weekly, March 16, 2005

Doug Lorimer

The US military used internationally banned chemical weapons, including nerve gas, during their assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah last November, Dr Khalid ash Shaykhli, an Iraqi health ministry official, told a March 3 Baghdad press conference.

According to the Aljazeera satellite news network, Dr Shaykhli “said that researches, prepared by his medical team, prove that US occupation forces used internationally prohibited substances, including mustard gas, nerve gas and other burning chemicals in their attacks in the war-torn city”.

Chemical weapons such as mustard gas, nerve gas and napalm have been banned by international convention since the 1980s. The main justification made by the US, British and Australian governments in March 2003 for their invasion of Iraq was the claim — since proven to have been a complete fabrication — that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed stockpiles of these banned weapons and was preparing to use them, via the al Qaeda terrorist network, to attack the United States.

168

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6947745/

U.S. contractors in Iraq allege abuses

Four men say they witnessed brutality

By Lisa Myers & the NBC investigative unit

Updated: 4:15 p.m. ET Feb. 17, 2005

There are new allegations that heavily armed private security contractors in Iraq are brutalizing Iraqi civilians. In an exclusive interview, four former security contractors told NBC News that they watched as innocent Iraqi civilians were fired upon, and one crushed by a truck. The contractors worked for an American company paid by U.S. taxpayers. The Army is looking into the allegations.

169

http://www.globalecho.org/view_article.php?aid=3324

Iraq Health Ministry: The US did use banned weapons in Fallujah

Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, an official at Iraq’s health ministry, said that the U.S. military used internationally banned weapons during its deadly offensive in the city of Fallujah.

by: Aljazeera on: 5th Mar, 05

Dr. ash-Shaykhli was assigned by the ministry to assess the health conditions in Fallujah following the November assault there.

He said that researches, prepared by his medical team, prove that U.S. occupation forces used internationally prohibited substances, including mustard gas, nerve gas, and other burning chemicals in their attacks in the war-torn city.

The health official announced his findings at a news conference in the health ministry building in Baghdad.

The press conference was attended by more than 20 Iraqi and foreign media networks, including the Iraqi ash-Sharqiyah TV network, the Iraqi as-Sabah newspaper, the U.S. Washington Post and the Knight-Ridder service.

Dr. ash-Shaykhli started the conference by reporting the current health conditions of the Fallujah residents. He said that the city is still suffering from the effects of chemical substances and other types of weapons that cause serious diseases over the long term.

Asked whether limited nuclear weapons were also used by U.S. forces in Fallujah, Dr. ash-Shaykhli said; “What I saw during our research in Fallujah leads me to me believe everything that has been said about that battle.

“I absolutely do not exclude their use of nuclear and chemical substances, since all forms of nature were wiped out in that city. I can even say that we found dozens, if not hundreds, of stray dogs, cats, and birds that had perished as a result of those gasses.”

170

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8114.htm

Papers reveal Bagram abuse

· Prisoners subjected to 'mock executions'
· Photographs of detainees being sexually humiliated

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and James Meek

01/18/05 "The Guardian" - - New evidence has emerged that US forces in Afghanistan engaged in widespread Abu Ghraib-style abuse, taking "trophy photographs" of detainees and carrying out rape and sexual humiliation.

Documents obtained by the Guardian contain evidence that such abuses took place in the main detention centre at Bagram, near the capital Kabul, as well as at a smaller US installation near the southern city of Kandahar.

The documents also indicate that US soldiers covered up abuse in Afghanistan and in Iraq - even after the Abu Ghraib scandal last year.

A thousand pages of evidence from US army investigations released to the American Civil Liberties Union after a long legal battle, and made available to the Guardian, show that an Iraqi detained at Tikrit in September 2003 was forced to withdraw his report of abuse after soldiers told him he would be held indefinitely.

Meanwhile, photographs taken in southern Afghanistan showing US soldiers from the 22nd Infantry Battalion posing in mock executions of blindfolded and bound detainees, were purposely destroyed after the Abu Ghraib scandal to avoid "another public outrage", the documents show.

171

http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-polya110305.htm

Passive Genocide In Iraq

By Gideon Polya

11 March, 2005
Countercurrents.org

A fundamental obligation of an Occupier country is to provide resources necessary for the basic physical survival of the citizens of the invaded and Occupied country.

Mass mortality in an Occupied country in the absence of provision of requisite medical services by the Occupiers is a war crime that can be categorized as "passive genocide".

What is the Occupier medical expenditure versus the avoidable death situation for the subject people of Occupied Iraq?

In short, the 2004 per capita medical expenditure in Occupied Iraq has been about 100 times LESS than that in the Occupier country Australia and this is reflected in an avoidable under-5 infant mortality that is about 100 times GREATER in Iraq.

The Anglo-American Coalition is clearly guilty of horrendous, continuing passive genocide in Occupied Iraq. The basis for this finding is briefly set out below together with requisite references to reputable sources of the underlying information.

172

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2005/03/06/m16a_videoscene_0305.html

By Palm Beach Post Staff Reports

Sunday, March 13, 2005

The 26-minute, 47-second video is a compilation of scenes in Iraq captured by members of the West Palm Beach-based Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 124th Infantry Regiment. The scenes range from routine to poignant to macabre.

Scene 12: Titled 'Bloodclot'

Nighttime outdoors. Location is described by off-screen voice as a few blocks from the target house. Scene shifts to inside the target building. A detainee who appears to have been shot is moaning. Soldier holding a gun looks at the camera and says, "This (expletive) shot at me." Soldier appears to kick wounded detainee. Another detainee is shirtless, "b2-2" scrawled on his back in black marker. Voice says, "The raid went well." Camera moves back to injured man and shows a gunshot wound. Camera moves through the building to area where women are being detained. Off-screen voice says, "Bad women."

173

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8249.htm

That's me, a marine, a murderer of civilians’

Italian reporter shot by US military writes for newspaper that tells raw truth about US role in Iraq

by Tom Whitney

03/11/05 "San Francisco Bay View" - - On March 4, in Baghdad, U.S. soldiers shot the Italian reporter Giuliana Sgrena, who had just been released by hostage-takers. She believes the soldiers shot to kill, and they succeeded in killing Italian Secret Service official Nicola Calipara, who had secured her release from hostage takers and who was with her.

Witnesses accompanying the pair, who also were wounded, told reporters March 5 that, contrary to U.S. allegations, the car in which the four persons were riding was not speeding and that it had already stopped at several checkpoints on its way to the airport.

Il Manifesto (www.ilmanifesto.it), the paper Giuliana Sgrena works for, is described as a “communist paper.” The titles of Sgrena’s recent articles for Il Manifesto, including “Ten thousand Iraqis in US and British prisons” (Dec. 29, 2004); “Two thousand victims in Fallujah” (Nov. 26, 2004); “Napalm raid on Fallujah?” (Nov. 23, 2004); “The death throes of Fallujah” (Nov. 13, 2004); “Stop the massacre” (Nov. 12, 2004); and “Interview with Iraqi Women tortured at Abu Graib,” show that neither she nor the paper pulls any punches when it comes to criticism of U.S. policy and conduct.

The following interview of U.S. Marine Jimmy Massey by Patrizio Lombroso of Il Manifesto appeared the day before Giuliana Sgrena was released and shot. It’s an interview not calculated to win love and friendship in official Washington circles.

‘Yo, un marine asesino de civiles’ (‘That’s me, a marine, a murderer of civilians’)

“I’ve seen the horror that we were causing every day in Iraq. I have been part of it. We are all just murderers.

“We kill innocent Iraqi civilians all the time. That’s the way it is. I believe they need to withdraw all foreign military troops in Iraq right away. And I say this about other soldiers: to avoid punishment or reprisals by the military, they don’t want to talk and admit that killing terrorists is not our mission. It’s to kill innocent civilians.”

174

http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,12538310%255E1702,00.html

This story is from our news.com.au network Source: AFP

Civilians hit by US fire
From correspondents in Mosul, Iraq
14mar05

CHILDREN died when a US military helicopter opened fire on insurgents in Iraq's northern city of Mosul, witnesses said today.

"The helicopter was ... engaged by small arms fire from a nearby building," the US military said.

"The helicopter returned fire.

"At least five Iraqi citizens were injured in the crossfire. The civilians were transported to a local hospital for treatment. An investigation of the incident is under way."

According to witnesses and hospital sources, three people were killed, a woman and two children.

175

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7988.htm

The ethics of war

Is The U.S. Military Guilty Of War Crimes In Iraq?

Jeremy Iggers
Staff Writer

02/06/05 "Star Tribune" -- Some people believe it is unpatriotic even to ask this question, which may be why the issue has been largely ignored by American news media. But the question of U.S. war crimes is not being ignored elsewhere around the world, where images of dead Iraqi women and children, tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the devastation of the city of Fallujah and the shooting of unarmed captives in a Fallujah mosque have done much to destroy America's image abroad.

It isn't only a question about the moral culpability of American troops, their commanders or their political leaders. While they bear moral responsibility for their actions, we as citizens in a democracy share responsibility for actions undertaken in our name. That responsibility is not diminished by the fact that Iraqi insurgents are committing horrific crimes against their own people. In years to come, the world community will likely ask of us: Did we know? Did we care? Did we speak out?

The issue of war crimes has taken on a new urgency in the wake of a recent study by public health researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and a Baghdad medical college, which estimates that 100,000 Iraqi civilians may have died because of the war. Those numbers, which are far higher than previous estimates, are extrapolated from a statistical sampling and may be inaccurate, but they are the best estimate available. The study attributes many of the deaths to aerial attacks by coalition forces, and found that most of the fatalities were women and children.

176

http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/international/middleeast/13habib.html&OQ=exQ3D1108875600Q26enQ3De2e823dfbea6458fQ26eiQ3D5070&OP=3f0d8bc3/hJbch,_FQ24q__zEhEHH1hHEhXlhQ5EQ5DzbqQ5DQ5CzQ5E_Q5DQ5CGhTQ5E,,GbbQ5CQ24zhXlfQ5CcQ5EcQ5BfzTG

By RAYMOND BONNER

Published: February 13, 2005

An Australian citizen held as a terror suspect by the U.S. for 40 months alleges that at every step of his detention he endured physical and psychological abuse.

177

http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?aid=5263

Lawyers Say 18-year-old Canadian Detainee Tortured At Guantanamo

Article Brief Toronto — Attorneys representing an 18-year-old Canadian detainee at Guantanamo Bay — accused of killing an American soldier — claimed Wednesday he was tortured by...

178

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,6119,2-10-1460_1676037,00.html

US troops kill woman, kids
14/03/2005 13:09 - (SA)

Baghdad - Three civilians were killed and another 10 injured, including five children, when US troops retaliated to an earlier missile attack by insurgents from a residential region in Qaim on Monday, said hospital sources.

Dr Mohammed Saleh al-Kubaisi of the border city of Qaim, 500km west of Baghdad, said that insurgents fired missiles on the Qaim customs office building which is being used as a US military base.

The US troops responded by firing on the nearby residential regions, killing three and injuring 10 others. Most of the injured are in serious condition, Kubaisi said.

179

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0308-09.htm

Published on Tuesday, March 8, 2005 by Agence France Presse

Video Documents Iraqi Prisoner Abuse by US Soldiers

MIAMI - US soldiers abused at least one wounded prisoner in Iraq and showed disrespect to dead Iraqis as well as Iraqi civilians, according to a video made public.

The nearly 27-minute video, dubbed "Ramadi Madness," was made early last year by members of the Florida National Guard who served in Iraq as part of the 124th Infantry Regiment and was investigated by the US military as part of its probe of alleged abuses committed by American troops in Iraq.

Results of the army's investigation of events contained in the video were unveiled by the Pentagon on Friday, with documents showing the military had decided not to bring any charges against the soldiers because they had displayed "inappropriate rather than criminal behavior."

The video itself was not released at the time. But it was obtained by The Palm Beach Post and displayed on its Web site on Monday.

One of the scenes displays a wounded Iraqi detainees held at gunpoint by a US soldier. The Iraqi man is moaning from obvious pain while the soldier looks at the camera and says: "This (expletive) shot at me." He then proceeds to kick the wounded man.

Another detainee is shown shirtless, with "b2-2" scrawled on his back in black marker.

The video shows another captured Iraqi being treated for a head wound while a voice off-screen tells him to "smile for the camera."

180

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8250.htm

War crime claims

By: Bill Carey
News 10 Now Web Staff

Click here to launch video report - Real Video

03/10/05 "10 News" - - When the U.S. went to war in Iraq, Jimmy Massey was a staff sergeant with a marine unit that had the job of setting up checkpoints to protect American forces. In a short period of time, Massey claims, he and his men had killed 30 Iraqi civilians. He says he and the others are guilty of war crimes.

“I brought these series of events up through the chain of command. Each time I was told they were terrorists, or they were insurgents. My question to the marine corps at that point became, how was a 6 year old child with a bullet hole in its head a terrorist or insurgent,” says former U.S. Marine, Jimmy Massey.

Massey says he quickly developed post traumatic stress disorder and was shipped out of Iraq after less than 2 months at war. By the end of last year he had undergone psychiatric review and was given a medical discharge. Now, he travels the country speaking out against the war, hoping to bring military action to an end.

181

http://www.worldtribunal.org/main.htm

http://www.worldtribunal.org/Analysis/index.htm

The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) is a worldwide initiative born out of the global outcry against the war in Iraq .

Taking its cue from the Russell Tribunal of 1967, it is aimed at challenging the silences of our time around the aggression against Iraq and seeking the truth about the war and occupation in Iraq .

This will be a record of wrongs, violations and crimes as well as suffering, resistance and silenced voices.

This will be a solemn process of listening, reflection, evaluation and informed judgement based on concrete evidence.

This will be a call to conscience and a call to act to preserve our futures.

This tribunal shall render a decision on the issues presented to it which will be widely distributed throughout the world for the benefit of individuals and groups struggling for peace and justice.

The WTI is comprised of various sessions around the world, each focusing on different aspects of the aggression against Iraq , culminating in Istanbul in June 2005 .

http://www.nodo50.org/csca/agenda2003/con_iraq/informe-brigadas_eng.pdf

182

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0214-07.htm

Published on Monday, February 14, 2005 by Inter-Press Service

World Tribunal on Iraq: Media Held Guilty of Deception

by Dahr Jamail

ROME - A peoples tribunal has held much of Western media guilty of inciting violence and deceiving people in its reporting of Iraq.

The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI), an international peoples initiative seeking the truth about the war and occupation in Iraq made its pronouncement Sunday after a three- day meeting. The tribunal heard testimony from independent journalists, media professors, activists, and member of the European Parliament Michele Santoro.

The Rome session of the WTI followed others in Brussels, London, Mumbai, New York, Hiroshima-Tokyo, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Lisbon. The Rome meeting focused on the media role.

The informal panel of WTI judges accused the United States and the British governments of impeding journalists in performing their task, and intentionally producing lies and misinformation.

The panel accused western corporate media of filtering and suppressing information, and of marginalising and endangering independent journalists. More journalists were killed in a 14-month period in Iraq than in the entire Vietnam war.

The tribunal said mainstream media reportage on Iraq also violated article six of the Nuremberg Tribunal (set up to try Nazi crimes) which states: "Leaders, organisers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes (crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity) are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such a plan."

183

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/afp/20050308/wl_mideast_afp/usiraqprisoners

Soldier who denounced abuses in Iraq given psychiatric exam

WASHINGTON (AFP) - An army sergeant was given a psychiatric examination and sent out of Iraq (news - web sites) after he reported that members of his counter-intelligence team in Samarra were abusing prisoners, according to army investigation documents.

The case was contained in a new batch of army criminal investigation files released in response to a court order obtained as a result of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Unions.

Other documents detailed investigations into alleged abuses by soldiers, harsh interrogations by special operations forces, shooting deaths of prisoners during a riot, and a death in US custody of a prisonr at Abu Ghraib.

But the sergeant's case was unusual in that his superior officers responded to his allegations that members of his counter-intelligence unit were abusing prisoners by having him examined by a military psychiatrist.

184

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=7246

Remembering The First Siege Of Fallujah
Excerpts From Testimony Submitted To The World Tribunal On Iraq
by Omar Khan February 14, 2005 ........ and Dahr Jamail

Background: a firefight

The armed forces of the United States of America laid siege to the Iraqi city of Fallujah in April and later in November of 2004. In order to better understand the role of US news media relative to these assaults, we must begin with an undeniable if rarely repeated reality: US assaults on Fallujah did not begin in April 2004. Let us avoid the unpleasant reminder that during the first Gulf War, Fallujah was among the cities with the highest numbers of civilian casualties—a distinction indebted to precision laser-guided bombs that struck crowded markets in the city center. We can then date assaults on Fallujah to Iraqi Freedom—which, for those who forget, began with the American invasion so named. A Human Rights Watch Report provides background.

A doctor working in a temporary emergency clinic in Fallujah during April’s siege posed a question on Democracy Now!, which he repeated:

When you see a child five years old with no head what can you say? When you see a child with no brain just an open cavity what can you say? When you see a mother just hold her infant with no head and the shells are all over her body?[42]

The doctor’s question is a good one, and for a reason: in April of 2004, as a city was invaded and its residents were fleeing, hiding, or being massacred, there was considerable public awareness in the United States of human beings whose bodies had been mutilated in Iraq, thanks to our news media. But among thousands of references to mutilation in that month alone, we have yet to find one related to anything that happened after March 31st. So, today, we pose the Iraqi doctor’s question once again, this time looking backward: when you saw an Iraqi baby girl with no head, what did you say? Well, that depends on who you are. If you’re the New York Times, you said nothing;[43] if you’re Paul Bremer, you probably said vigilant resolve.

185

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6890A8DA-AF79-45AD-BB4F-42C060978A07.htm

Journalists tell of US Falluja killings

Sunday 20 March 2005, 4:04 Makka Time, 1:04 GMT

All is quiet in Falluja, or at least that is how it seems, given that the mainstream media has largely forgotten about the Iraqi city. But independent journalists are risking life and limb to bring out a very different story.

The picture they are painting is of US soldiers killing whole families, including children, attacks on hospitals and doctors, the use of napalm-like weapons and sections of the city destroyed.

One of the few reporters who has reached Falluja is American Dahr Jamail of the Inter Press Service. He interviewed a doctor who had filmed the testimony of a 16-year-old girl.

"She stayed for three days with the bodies of her family who were killed in their home. When the soldiers entered she was in her home with her father, mother, 12 year-old brother and two sisters.

She watched the soldiers enter and shoot her mother and father directly, without saying anything. They beat her two sisters, then shot them in the head. After this her brother was enraged and ran at the soldiers while shouting at them, so they shot him dead," Jamail relates.

186

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4355779.stm

US detainee death toll 'hits 108'

Wednesday, 16 March, 2005, 18:57 GMT

At least 108 people have died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to figures compiled by the Associated Press news agency.

Most deaths were violent and some 25% are being investigated as possible abuse by US personnel, the agency said.

The death toll - far higher than previously thought - was based on information the agency obtained from the US army, navy and other officials.

187

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/15/1454208

Tuesday, March 15th, 2005
Three U.S. Soldiers Refusing to Fight Speak Out Against the Iraq War
ANONYMOUS AWOL SOLDIER:

One thing that I saw that very much bothered me was as a military policeman some of our jobs. I was in Tikrit, Iraq. We would drive around town and our sergeants, our officers, would get bored so they'd tell us to go raid this whole block of homes, you know. And so we'd go into every home, and if we found anything as small as a knife or a pistol in any home, which I think you could go in any home in America and find a knife or a pistol, but if we found anything like that, we'd arrest all the males in the house, ages eight to 80 and leave all the females behind crying their eyes out, and that was never very fun to watch. Then what we’d go do is throw these men who maybe didn't do anything in the same jails as the ones that we knew had set off I.E.D.s and had set off -- and had tried to kill soldiers. So, you're just throwing them all in with each other, and eventually it is going to change their minds. You know, you are going to make the distant relatives bitter, and you are going to -- you are starting a whole new war with people who really don't deserve it.

188

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8301.htm

Filter Tips

By Chris Floyd

03/18/05 "Moscow Times" - - U.S. President George W. Bush often complains about the "media filter" that distorts the true picture of his administration's accomplishments in Iraq. And he's right. For regardless of where you stand on Bush's policies in the region, it's undeniable that the political and commercial biases of the American press have consistently misrepresented the reality of the situation.

Here's an excellent example. Earlier this month, the American media completely ignored an important announcement from an official of the Iraqi government concerning the oft-maligned U.S. operation to clear insurgents from the city of Fallujah last November. Although the press conference of Health Ministry investigator Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli was attended by representatives from The Washington Post, Knight-Ridder and more than 20 other international news outlets, nary a word of his team's thorough investigation into the truth about the battle made it through the filter's dense mesh. Once again, the American public was denied the full story of one of President Bush's remarkable triumphs.

Dr. ash-Shaykhli's findings provided confirmation of earlier reports by many other Iraqis -- reports that were also ignored by the arrogant filterers, who seem more interested in hearing from terrorists or anti-occupation extremists than ordinary Iraqis and those like Dr. ash-Shaykhli, who serve in the U.S.-backed interim government vetted and approved by President Bush. But while the media elite turn up their noses at such riffraff, the testimony of these common folk and diligent public servants gives ample evidence of Bush's innovative method of liberating innocent Iraqis from tyranny:

189

http://www.counterpunch.org/zeese03162005.html

March 16, 2005

After Two Years of Occupation Both Iraq and the US are Worse Off By KEVIN ZEESE

In the last week I had the pleasure of interviewing an outspoken and intelligent anti-war activist living in Baghdad, Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar. Democracy Rising will be publishing his interview in the next week. As we were exchanging emails one very basic point became evident: the people in Iraq are clearly worse off today than they were under Saddam Hussein They are worse of economically, they are worse of politically and they are less safe and less secure.

190

http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2005-03-10-agent-orange_x.htm

Posted 3/10/2005 11:11 AM

Judge dismisses Vietnamese suit over Agent Orange

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit Thursday charging that American chemical companies committed war crimes against about 4 million Vietnamese citizens by making Agent Orange, the military defoliant that allegedly caused birth defects, miscarriages and cancer.

"There is no basis for any of the claims of plaintiffs under the domestic law of any nation or state or under any form of international law," U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein in Brooklyn wrote in a 233-page ruling. "The case is dismissed."

Lawyers who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Vietnamese citizens said an appeal was planned. They had argued that Agent Orange, which is laden with the highly toxic chemical dioxin, was a poison barred by international rules of war.

191

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/detainees/rpt_disclose_intro.htm

Ending Secret Detentions: A Report by Human Rights First

Ending Secret Detentions, a recent report by Human Rights First, reveals a global network of secret U.S. detention facilities used to imprison detainees caught up in the war on terror. Such detentions violate basic human rights, ignore the principles upon which the United States was founded and establish a dangerous precedent of lawlessness.

Human Rights First calls on the President to end secret detentions and to grant the International Committee for the Red Cross full and immediate access to all individuals in U.S. custody. These steps will in no way jeopardize our national security and will only reaffirm our commitment to human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law.

While the current administration would prefer to operate in secrecy, without checks or balances, Ending Secret Detentions aims to raise awareness about current U.S. practices and to advocate for change.

192

http://msnbc.com/modules/newsweek/pdf/gonzales_memo.pdf

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7775667

Suit Alleges Rumsfeld Approved Torture

By Alan Elsner WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. human rights groups on
Tuesday sued Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying he first authorized
and then failed to stop torture of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First filed suit in
federal district court in Rumsfeld's home state of Illinois on behalf of
eight former detainees who said they were severely tortured. All eight were
subsequently released without being charged.

"Secretary Rumsfeld bears direct and ultimate responsibility for this
descent into horror by personally authorizing unlawful interrogation
techniques and by abdicating his legal duty to stop torture," said Lucas
Guttentag, lead counsel in the case.

193

http://www.juancole.com

A reminder from Juan Cole (http://www.juancole.com/) about Fallujah:

Cole: Readers often write in for an update on Fallujah. I am sorry to say that there is no Fallujah to update. The city appears to be in ruins and perhaps uninhabitable in the near future. Of 300,000 residents, only about 9,000 seem to have returned, and apparently some of those are living in tents above the ruins of their homes. The rest of the Fallujans are scattered in refugee camps of hastily erected tents at several sites, including one near Habbaniyyah, or are staying with relatives in other cities, including Baghdad.

The scale of this human tragedy-- the dispossession and displacement of 300,000 persons-- is hard to imagine. Unlike the victims of the tsunami who were left homeless, moreover, the Fallujans have witnessed no outpouring of world sympathy. While there were undeniably bad characters in the city, most residents had done nothing wrong and did not deserve to be made object lessons--which was the point Rumsfeld was making with this assault. He hoped to convince Ramadi and Mosul to fall quiet lest the same thing happen to them. He failed, since the second Fallujah campaign threw the Sunni Arab heartland into much more chaos than ever before.

194

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/24EBE5BB-CA3F-462B-8279-546BC1D9B7E6.htm

Falluja women, children in mass grave

Sunday 21 November 2004, 18:42 Makka Time, 15:42 GMT

Residents of a village neighbouring Falluja have told Aljazeera that they helped bury the bodies of 73 women and children who were burnt to death by a US bombing attack.

"We buried them here, but we could not identify them because they were charred by the use of napalm bombs used by the Americans," said one resident of Saqlawiya in footage aired on Aljazeera on Sunday.

There have been no reports of the US military using napalm in Falluja and no independent verification of the claims.

The resident told Aljazeera all the bodies were buried in a single grave.

195

http://www.aclu.org/International/International.cfm?ID=13962&c=36

Torture FOIA

March 7, 2005

Government Documents on Torture
Freedom of Information Act

The ACLU filed a request on Oct. 7, 2003 under the Freedom of Information Act demanding the release of information about detainees held overseas by the United States. A lawsuit was filed in June 2004 demanding that the government comply with the October 2003 FOIA request.

Below are documents the government did not want the general public to read -- including an FBI memo (pdf) stating that Defense Department interrogators impersonated FBI agents and used "torture techniques" against a detainee at Guantanamo.

The public has a right to know.

196

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=251539
http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-kratovac161104.htm

AP Photographer Flees Fallujah
Sunday November 14, 2004 6:31 PM

AP Photo BAG121
By KATARINA KRATOVAC

Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - In the weeks before the crushing
military assault on his hometown, Bilal Hussein sent
his parents and brother away from Fallujah to stay
with relatives.

The 33-year-old Associated Press photographer stayed
behind to capture insider images during the siege of
the former insurgent stronghold.

``Everyone in Fallujah knew it was coming. I had been
taking pictures for days,'' he said. ``I thought I
could go on doing it.''

``Destruction was everywhere. I saw people lying dead
in the streets, wounded were bleeding and there was no
one to come and help them. Even the civilians who
stayed in Fallujah were too afraid to go out,'' he
said.

``There was no medicine, water, no electricity nor
food for days.''

``U.S. soldiers began to open fire on the houses, so I
decided that it was very dangerous to stay in my
house,'' he said.

Hussein said he panicked, seizing on a plan to escape
across the Euphrates River, which flows on the western
side of the city

``I wasn't really thinking,'' he said. ``Suddenly, I
just had to get out. I didn't think there was any
other choice.''

Hussein moved from house to house - dodging gunfire -
and reached the river.

``I decided to swim ... but I changed my mind after
seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people
who tried to cross the river.''

He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead
as they tried to cross. Then, he ``helped bury a man
by the river bank, with my own hands.''

197

http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/21/news/edpfaff.html

Torture reconsidered: Shock, awe and the human body

William Pfaff International Herald Tribune

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

PARIS A historian in the future, or a moralist, is likely to deem the Bush administration's enthusiasm for torture the most striking aspect of its war against terrorism.

This started early. Proposals to authorize torture were circulating even before there was anyone to torture. Days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration made it known that the United States was no longer bound by international treaties, or by American law and established U.S. military standards, concerning torture and the treatment of prisoners. By the end of 2001, the Justice Department had drafted memos on how to protect military and intelligence officers from eventual prosecution under existing U.S. law for their treatment of Afghan and other prisoners.

In January 2002, the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales (who is soon to become attorney general), advised George W. Bush that it could be done by fiat. If the president simply declared "detainees" in Afghanistan outside the protection of the Geneva conventions, the 1996 U.S. War Crimes Act - which carries a possible death penalty for Geneva violations - would not apply.

Those who protested were ignored, though the administration declared it would abide by the "spirit" of the conventions. Shortly afterward, the CIA asked for formal assurance that this pledge did not apply to its agents.

In March 2003, a Defense Department legal task force concluded that the president was not bound by any international or federal law on torture. It said that as commander in chief, he had the authority "to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security." Subsequent legal memos to civilian officials in the White House and Pentagon dwelt in morbid detail on permitted torture techniques, for practical purposes concluding that anything was permitted that did not (deliberately) kill the victim.

198

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,12613005-29277,00.html

Guantanamo abuse 'videotaped'

By John Sheed March 21, 2005

From: AAP

VIDEO footage of the treatment of prisoners by the US military at Guantanamo Bay would reveal many cases of substantial abuse as "explosive as anything from Abu Ghraib", a lawyer said today.

Adelaide lawyer Stephen Kenny, who represented Australian David Hicks during the early part of his detention at the military prison in Cuba, told a law conference today 500 hours of videotape of prisoners at the US base existed.

199

http://newsobserver.com/24hour/nation/story/2246327p-10403565c.html

Published: Mar 20, 2005
Modified: Mar 21, 2005 9:15 AM

Court-martial set for SEAL in abuse case

By SETH HETTENA, ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

SAN DIEGO (AP) - In November 2003, Navy SEALs went after Iraqi Manadel al-Jamadi, a suspect in the bombing of Red Cross offices in Iraq that killed 12. The CIA apparently believed he knew the location of a pile of explosives.

On the night of Nov. 4, the SEALs burst into al-Jamadi's apartment outside Baghdad, subdued him after a struggle and whisked him back to their base. En route, the SEALs allegedly kicked and punched al-Jamadi and struck him with their rifles. They also posed for photos with the hooded and handcuffed prisoner.

The SEALs turned al-Jamadi over to the CIA. A few hours later, he was dead.

200

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/smh58.html

Weapons of excruciating pain have the ethicists up in arms

March 20, 2005
The Sun-Herald

A new range of weapons is being developed by scientists.

They have the potential to reduce casualties in conflicts, but could also be used to inflict unimaginable torture on military and civilian populations.

Should the weapons be released?

That's the question ethicists and scientists are asking about a new range of weapons that subdue rioting crowds by causing participants pain so excruciating they are forced to desist.

Using directed energy, the weapons, being considered by the US navy and Marines, trigger the pain receptors in the human body, apparently without causing lasting tissues damage.

But while advocates of the pain guns say they will reduce the need for lethal weapons in crowd control, ethicists are concerned.

"There are all sorts of problems about the secondary deployment of this thing for torture and the control of civil disturbances," Simon Longstaff from the St James Ethics Centre said.