May 2004: Week One: This Far and No Further

Back to May 2004 | On to May 2004: Week Two

May 1: The shock and outrage over the photos of Iraqi prisoners being abused and tortured by US, and now British, soldiers continues to mount across the world. Baghdad newspapers have yet to print any of the pictures, because Iraqis will find them so offensive, according to one editor. More photos have been published since the original photos ran on April 28's 60 Minutes II broadcast, including one of a British guard urinating on a prisoner. London's Daily Mirror, which printed the photos, says it received them from soldiers who have returned from Iraq, who claim a rogue element in the British army is responsible for abusing prisoners and civilians. The soldiers told the paper no charges were brought against the unnamed captive. During the captive's eight-hour ordeal, he was threatened with execution, his jaw was broken, and his teeth smashed. After being beaten and urinated on, he was driven away and dumped from the back of a moving vehicle, the soldiers claimed, unaware if he was dead. The reason for making the photos public, the soldiers say, is to show why the US-UK coalition was encountering such fierce resistance in Iraq. One told the paper: "We are not helping ourselves out there. We are never going to get them on our side. We are fighting a losing war."
The response from Blair and the British military is very similar to that of US officials: condemning the actions, but supporting the military and emphasizing that the actions are those of a very few soldiers. Blair says: "Let me make it quite clear that if these things have actually been done, they are completely and totally unacceptable. We went to Iraq to get rid of that sort of thing, not to do it. If these things have happened, they've got to be condemned utterly. I think in fairness, however, we should say that there are thousands of British troops in Iraq doing a very brave, extraordinary job on behalf of the Iraqi people and on behalf of our country to make the country better." British Army commander General Michael Jackson, speaking on behalf of Britain's minister of defense, says he is aware of the allegations and that the ministry has launched an investigation. He says, "The British Army should not be judged by the reprehensible ill discipline of a few soldiers -- who by this shameful behavior have let down the tens of thousands of British soldiers." Amnesty International spokesman Neil Dirkin says, "It's important that the public knows what the British army is doing in Iraq. It's important for Iraqis that they can trust the British army on the streets and feel that if their relatives are taken into custody, they will be at least looked after and, certainly, certainly not tortured."
Ivan Frederick, the father of a military policeman involved in the case, Army Reserve Staff Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick, says his son is "worried, and I'm sure he's scared." Frederick, with the 800th Military Police Brigade based at Cresaptown, Maryland, was relieved of his duties in mid-January, his father says. "When he left [the prison] he said there was some 900 prisoners," up from 400 when he arrived, the father says. He says his son had 70 Iraqis who he was trying to train to be security guards at the prison, and the language barrier made it hard to communicate with them. He says his son had been detained at Camp Victory in Iraq without an attorney for 82 days. "There's two sides to the story," says Frederick. "The military has one and we have another. We are a close-knit family, we always have been, and we are determined to do whatever it takes to get this situation straightened out. He's a perfect son."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan describes the acts depicted in the photos as "despicable." "We cannot tolerate it, and the military is taking strong action against those responsible," McClellan says. He said the president has known about the images for some time, but refuses to elaborate. When asked about a potential worldwide backlash over the pictures, McClellan says, "It does not represent what we stand for, and I think the military has made it very clear that they are going to pursue -- to the fullest extent of the law -- these individuals." US intelligence officials say the CIA Inspector General is cooperating with Defense Department officials in the abuse investigations, including one case in which an Iraqi detainee died in the Abu Ghraib prison. A US intelligence official says CIA personnel had nothing to do with photos taken by US soldiers of Iraqi prisoners being abused at the same prison. "We do not support or condone abusing prisoners, and if we hear any such allegations, they are reported" to the CIA's inspector general, an official says. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the coalition's deputy chief of operations, says he is "appalled that fellow soldiers who wear the same uniforms as us would do this. ...They crossed the line and violated every tenet we teach in the Army about dignity and respect," and adds he is expressing his personal opinion and not speaking on the coalition's behalf. CBS says it has dozens more pictures purportedly showing a range of abuses that it has yet to air.
An investigation began in January after a soldier reported the alleged abuse to superiors, Kimmitt said this week. "We are committed to treating all persons under coalition custody with dignity, respect and humanity," he says. "Coalition personnel are expected to act appropriately, humanely and in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions." Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper in London, says, "It is absolutely shocking. I think this is the end of the story, the straw that broke the camel's back, for America. People will be extremely angry. ...Sexual abuse is the worst thing in that part of the world. It is shocking to all Muslims. America has lost the battle completely. I believe there will be more attacks. ...I think the British job will be extremely difficult because we are associated with this torture. ...Iraqis expected the Americans and British to bring democracy and human rights and not the same thing as under Saddam. We have replaced a brutal dictator with a brutal super-power." Ann Clywd, a Labor MP who serves as Tony Blair's human rights envoy to Iraq, says she had raised the treatment of detainees at the prison with officials at the White House, but they had denied there was a problem. (CNN, CNN, Scotland Evening Times, BBC, Washington Post [gallery of prisoner abuse photos])

"Torture demonstrates weakness, not strength. It does not show understanding, power, or magnanimity. It is not leadership. It is a reaction of government officials overwhelmed by fear who succumb to conduct unworthy of them and of the citizens of the United States." -- Burton Lee, George H.W. Bush's personal physician and a former Army Medical Corps officer, quoted in the Washington Post
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British soldiers are shown abusing Iraqi prisoners

May 1: The British newspaper The Mirror prints statements by two British soldiers detailing the graphic and horrifying abuse they witnessed being meted out to Iraqis in Basra. One soldier describes a prisoner being beaten to death: "Basically this guy was dying as he couldn't take any more. An officer came down. It was 'Get rid of him - I haven't seen him'. The paperwork gets ripped. So they threw him out, still with a bag on his head." Weeks after the pictures were taken, a captive was allegedly beaten to death in custody by men from the same Queen's Lancashire Regiment, members of which are alleged to have tortured a number of Iraqis. One of the soldiers tells of the beating death, beginning with a a young Iraqi hauled in under suspicion of stealing from the docks: "You pick on a man and go for him. Straightaway he gets a beating, a couple of punches and kicks to put him down. Then he was dragged to the back of the vehicle." Immediately a sandbag is placed over the man's head and his hands tied behind his back. "As we took him back he was getting a beating. He was hit with batons on the knees, fingers, toes, elbows, and head. You normally try to leave off the face until you're in camp. If you pull up with black eyes and bleeding faces you could be in sh*t. So it's body shots -- scaring him, saying 'We're going to kill you'. A lot of them cry and p*ss themselves. Because it was so hot we put him in the back of a four-tonner truck which has a canopy over it. That's where the photos were taken. Lads were taking turns giving him a right going over, smashing him in the face with weapons and stamping on him. We had him for about eight hours. You could see blood coming out early from the first 'digs'. He was p*ssed on and there was spew. We took his mask off to give him some water and let him have a rest for 10 minutes. He could only speak a few words, pleading 'No, mister,' No, mister.' I did less than the others. But I joined in. Me and my mate calmed down. Then two lads come on and it starts again. He was missing teeth. All his mouth was bleeding and his nose was all over the place. He couldn't talk, his jaw was out. He's had a good few hours of a kicking. He was on his way to being killed. There's only so much you can take."
After the officer allegedly told the attackers to get rid of the suspect he was driven off: "The lads said they took him back to the dock and threw him off the back of a moving vehicle. They'd have freed his hands, but he'd still be hooded. He'd done nothing, really. I felt sorry for him. I'm not emotional about it, but I knew it was wrong." The second soldier says of the second beating, in September 2003, "It was only a matter of time. We had one who fought back. I thought 'Don't do that', it's the worst thing you can do. He got such a kicking. You could hear your mate's boots hitting this lad's spine. One of the lads broke his wrist on a prisoner's head. Another nearly broke his foot, kicking him. We're not helping ourselves out here. We're never going to get the Iraqis on our side. We're fighting a losing war." The soldier claims that after the September beating, troops were told to destroy incriminating evidence. He says, "We got a warning, saying the Military Police had found a video of people throwing prisoners off a bridge. It wasn't 'Don't do it' or 'Stop it'. It was 'Get rid of it.'" At least one soldier is expected to be charged with manslaughter. The two infantrymen claim abuse has started because Iraqi police are powerless to process suspects. The second soldier says, "There's no point taking them to the police station because they're released within 20 minutes. The coppers don't want any comeback and let them go. All we do is teach them a lesson our way. You're knackered and you don't want to be going to a police station and doing statements, just for them to be released. Give them a kicking, then it's done and dusted. A lot of the younger ones are worse. It's as though they've something to prove. You've got a gun and you're the law. You can make people do whatever you want." Both men fear the situation is worsening, with UK troops now seen as the enemy, rather than liberators. One says: "I can't believe it has taken the Iraqis so long to fight back. If it had been me or my family, I'd have retaliated straightaway. They've just got f*cked around so much. You can't go in now, and say 'Right, let's forget about what has happened and start again.' We're struggling now. There are too many people against us."
Note: The veracity of this story is later thrown into doubt. (Mirror/Global Security)

US soldier beating an Iraqi prisoner

May 1: The head of the US Selective Service proposes drafting women into the military, and says all Americans of draft age need to periodically inform the government of their acquisition of "niche skills" being sought by the military. The proposals, presented on February 11, 2003 by Director Lewis Brodsky to senior Pentagon officials, also recommends raising the draft age from 25 to 34. The proposal was made privately, but was just now obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests. Pentagon officials characterize the proposals as no more than "food for thought." The US Congress would have to vote to reinstate the draft, which was abandoned in 1973 during the Vietnam war; a majority of legislators, along with Joint Chiefs of Staff head Richard Myers and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, pubicly oppose a draft. Nevertheless, the Pentagon has already taken steps to determine the process of reinstituting the draft. Registration for the draft resumed in 1980 under then-President Carter. At present, the Selective Service is authorized to register only young men and they are not required to inform the government about any professional skills. Separately, the agency has in place a special registration system to draft health care personnel in more than 60 specialties into the military if necessary in a crisis. Some of the skill areas where the armed forces are facing "critical shortages" include linguists and computer specialists, the agency says. Americans would then be required to regularly update the agency on their skills until they reach age 35. Individuals proficient in more than one critical skill would list the skill in which they have the greatest degree of competency. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
May 1: In his weekly radio address, Bush says that he foresees peace and stability in Iraq: "Despite many challenges, life for the Iraqi people is a world away from the cruelty and corruption of Saddam's regime," he says. "[W]we will finish our work." The Democratic response is by Iraq war veteran Paul Rieckhoff, who says he is disappointed in Bush and his handling of the war. "Our troops are still waiting for more body armor," he says. "They are still waiting for better equipment. They are still waiting for a policy that brings in the rest of the world and relieves their burden," says Rieckhoff, an Army National Guard first lieutenant who was a platoon leader in Iraq. Rieckhoff calls his comrades in Iraq "and women of extraordinary courage and incredible capability. But it's time we had leadership in Washington to match that courage and match that capability." Bush continues to dispute the basic facts of the Iraqi insurgency, insisting that the resistance, which he still claims is made up of local militias, angry supporters of Saddam Hussein, and foreign terrorists, "have found little support among the Iraqi people." He says he is prepared to let local Iraqis negotiate the disarmament of "radicals" in the city of Fallujah while insisting that militias in the city of Najaf and elsewhere "must disarm or face grave consequences." Yesterday in Fallujah, Iraqi troops replaced US Marines and raised the Iraqi flag at the entrance to the city under a plan to end the monthlong siege there. US officials say military commanders won't wait forever for local political efforts to quell the insurgency in Fallujah. The United Nations' envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, has said that ordering American troops into Fallujah and Najaf "is not the right thing to do" and would anger the Iraqi people. Coalition soldiers surround both cities. Bush says the bigger picture in Iraq is much brighter. Electricity is now more widely available than before the war, he says wrongly, and Iraq has a stable currency with thriving banks, renovated schools and clinics and rebuilt power plants, hospitals, water and sanitation facilities and bridges. He fails to note that most hospitals and schools are still not open, and many that are cannot be operated properly due to shortages of basic materials and constant fighting. Water in Baghdad still approaches lethal toxicity, another point he fails to make, and electricity in the cities is sporadic at best, with lengthy blackouts occurring at any time and lasting for hours, and sometimes days.
The radio address is given on the first anniversary of the infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech of May 1, 2003. A year later, the swaggering, fraudulent bravado of the president strutting about in a flight suit he does not deserve to wear, bragging about an end to a war that is just getting cranked up, has worn painfully thin. Political advisor Karl Rove tells an Ohio newspaper's editorial board, "I wish the banner was not up there" (referring to the giant "Mission Accomplished" banner hung by Bush's PR crew from the conning tower of the aircraft carrier as a backdrop for his entrance and speech). The New York Times's Frank Rich writes in 2006 of Rove's comment, "Not 'I wish that we had planned for the dangers of post-Saddam Iraq before recklessly throwing underprepared and underprotected Americans into harm's way.' No, Rove had his eye on the big picture: better political image management through better set design. In prewar America, presidential backdrops reading 'Strengthening America' and 'Strengthening Our Economy' had worked just fine. If only that one on the USS Lincoln had said 'Strengthening Iraq,' everything would be hunky-dory now." (AP/KFMB-TV, Frank Rich p.125)
May 1: The unusual move of permitting an Iraq veteran to give the Democrat's weekly radio address, and not the usual political figure, attracts plenty of media attention. Paul Rieckhoff, who served with the Army for 10 months in Iraq, says, in part, "I'm giving this address because I have an agenda, and my agenda is this: I want my fellow soldiers to come home safely, and I want a better future for the people of Iraq. I also want people to know the truth. War is never easy. But I went to Iraq because I made a commitment to my country. When I volunteered for duty, I knew I would end up in Baghdad. I knew that's where the action would be, and I was ready for it. But when we got to Baghdad, we soon found out that the people who planned this war were not ready for us. There were not enough vehicles, not enough ammunition, not enough medical supplies, not enough water. Many days, we patrolled the streets of Baghdad in 120 degree heat with only one bottle of water per soldier. There was not enough body armor, leaving my men to dodge bullets with Vietnam-era flak vests. We had to write home and ask for batteries to be included in our care packages. Our soldiers deserved better.
"When Baghdad fell, we soon found out that the people who planned this war were not ready for that day either. Adamiyah, the area in Baghdad we had been assigned to, was certainly not stable. The Iraqi people continued to suffer. And we dealt with shootings, killings, kidnappings, and robberies for most of the spring. We waited for troops to fill the city and military police to line the streets. We waited for foreign aid to start streaming in by the truckload. We waited for interpreters to show up and supply lines to get fixed. We waited for more water. We waited and we waited and the attacks on my men continued...and increased. With too little support and too little planning, Iraq had become our problem to fix. We had nineteen-year-old kids from the heartland interpreting foreign policy, in Arabic. This is not what we were designed to do. Infantrymen are designed to close with and kill the enemy. But as infantrymen, and also as Americans, we made do, and we did the job we were sent there for -- and much more. One year ago today, our President had declared that major combat operations in Iraq were over. We heard of a 'Mission Accomplished' banner, and we heard him say that 'Americans, following a battle, want nothing more than to return home.' Well, we were told that we would return home by July 4th. Parades were waiting for us. Summer was waiting for us. I wrote my brother in New York and told him to get tickets for the Yankees-Red Sox series in the Bronx. Baseball was waiting for us. Our families were waiting for us. But three days before we were supposed to leave, we were told that our stay in Iraq would be extended, indefinitely. The violence intensified, the danger persisted, and the instability grew. And despite what George Bush said, our mission was not accomplished. Our platoon had been away from their families for seven months. Two babies had been born. Three wives had filed for divorce and a fiancee sent a ring back to a kid in Baghdad. 39 men missed their homes. And they wouldn't see their homes for another eight months. But we pulled together -- we took care of each other and we continued our mission. The mission kept us going. The mission was to secure Iraq and help the Iraqi people.
"We saw first-hand the terrible suffering that they had endured. We protected a hospital and kept a school safe from sniper fire. We saw hope in the faces of Iraqi children who may have the chance to grow up as free as our own. And still, we waited for help. And still, the people who planned this war watched Iraq fall into chaos and refused to change course. Some men with me were wounded. One of my squad leaders lost both legs in combat. But our platoon was lucky -- all 39 of us came home alive. Too many of our friends and fellow soldiers did not share that same fate. Since President Bush declared major combat operations over, more than 590 American soldiers have been killed. Over 590 men and women who were waiting for parades. Who were waiting for summer. Who were waiting for help. Since I've returned, there are two images that continue to replay themselves in my mind. One is the scrolling list of American casualties shown daily on the news -- a list reminding me that this April has become the bloodiest month of combat so far, with more than 130 soldiers killed. The other image is of President Bush at his press conference 2 weeks ago. After all the waiting, after all the mistakes we had experienced first hand over in Iraq, after another year of a policy that was not making the situation any better for our friends who are still there, he told us we were staying the course. He told us we were making progress. And he told us that, 'We're carrying out a decision that has already been made and will not change.' Our troops are still waiting for more body armor. They are still waiting for better equipment. They are still waiting for a policy that brings in the rest of the world and relieves their burden. Our troops are still waiting for help.
"I am not angry with our President, but I am disappointed. I don't expect an easy solution to the situation in Iraq. I do expect an admission that there are serious problems that need serious solutions. I don't expect our leaders to be free of mistakes, I expect our leaders to own up to them. In Iraq, I was responsible for the lives of 38 other Americans. We laughed together, we cried together, we won together, and we fought together. And when we failed, it was my job as their leader to take responsibility for the decisions I made -- no matter what the outcome. My question for President Bush -- who led the planning of this war so long ago -- is this: When will you take responsibility for the decisions you've made in Iraq and realize that something is wrong with the way things are going? Mr. President, our mission is not accomplished. Our troops can accomplish it. We can build a stable Iraq, but we need some help. The soldiers I served with are men and women of extraordinary courage and incredible capability. But it's time we had leadership in Washington to match that courage and match that capability. I worry for the future of Iraq and for my Iraqi friends. I worry for my fellow soldiers still fighting this battle. I worry for their families, and I worry for those families who will not be able to share another summer or another baseball game with the loved ones they've lost. And I pledge that I will do everything I can to make sure they have not died in vain and that the truth is heard. Thank you for listening." (Fox News [transcript of entire address])
May 1: Columnist Naomi Klein says that as the situation in Iraq continues to free-fall out of control, more and more nations, military units, and individuals are turning to mutiny as a means of survival and protest. Klein writes, "The last month of US aggression in Iraq has inspired what can only be described as a mutiny: waves of soldiers, workers and politicians under the command of the US occupation authority suddenly refusing to follow orders and abandoning their posts. First Spain announced that it would withdraw its troops, then Honduras, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Kazakhstan. South Korean and Bulgarian troops were pulled back to their bases, while New Zealand is withdrawing its engineers. El Salvador, Norway, the Netherlands and Thailand will likely be next. And then there's the US-controlled Iraqi army. Since the latest wave of fighting, its soldiers have been donating their weapons to resistance fighters in the south and refusing to fight in Fallujah. By late April, Major General Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armoured Division, was reporting that 'about 40% walked off the job because of intimidation. And about 10% actually worked against us.' And it's not just Iraq's soldiers who have been deserting the occupation. Four ministers of the Iraqi governing council have resigned in protest; and half the Iraqis with jobs in the secured 'green zone' - as translators, drivers, cleaners - are not showing up for work. Minor mutinous signs are emerging even within the ranks of the US military: privates Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey have applied for refugee status in Canada as conscientious objectors, and Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia is facing court martial after he refused to return to Iraq on the grounds that he no longer knew what the war was about. Rebelling against the US authority in Iraq is not treachery, nor is it giving 'false comfort to terrorists,' as George Bush recently cautioned Spain's new prime minister. It is an entirely rational and principled response to policies that have put everyone living and working under US command in grave and unacceptable danger. This view is shared by the 52 former British diplomats who, in their letter to Tony Blair, stated that although they endorsed his attempts to influence US policy on the Middle East, 'there is no case for supporting policies which are doomed to failure.'"
Klein continues, "[T]he US occupation does appear doomed on all fronts: political, economic and military. On the political front, the idea that the US could bring genuine democracy to Iraq is now irredeemably discredited: too many relatives of Iraqi governing council members have landed plum jobs and rigged contracts, too many groups demanding direct elections have been suppressed, too many newspapers have been closed down and too many Arab journalists have been killed. The most recent casualties were two employees of al-Iraqiya television, shot dead by American soldiers while filming a checkpoint in Samarra. Al-Iraqiya is the US-controlled propaganda network that was supposed to weaken al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, both of which have also lost reporters to US guns and rockets over the past year. White House plans to turn Iraq into a model free-market economy are in equally rough shape, plagued by corruption scandals and the rage of Iraqis who have seen few benefits -- either in services or jobs -- from the reconstruction. Corporate trade shows have been cancelled across Iraq, investors are relocating to Amman and Iraq's housing minister estimates that more than 1,500 foreign contractors have fled the country. Bechtel, meanwhile, admits that it can no longer operate 'in the hot spots' (there are precious few cold ones), truck drivers are afraid to travel the roads with valuable goods and General Electric has suspended work on key power stations. The timing couldn't be worse: summer heat is coming and demand for electricity is about to soar. As this predictable (and predicted) disaster unfolds, many are turning to the United Nations for help. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called on the UN to support his demand for direct elections back in January. More recently, he called on the UN to refuse to ratify the despised interim constitution, which most Iraqis see as a US attempt to continue to control Iraq's future long after the June 30 'handover' by, among other measures, giving sweeping veto powers to the Kurds -- the only remaining US ally. Before pulling out his troops, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, asked the UN to take over the mission from the United States. Even Moqtada al-Sadr, the 'outlaw' Shia cleric, is calling on the UN to prevent a bloodbath in Najaf."
Klein says that the UN has itself dashed Iraqi hopes that it would design a neutral transition government: "And what has been the UN's response? Worse than silence, it has sided with Washington on all these critical questions, dashing hopes that it could provide a genuine alternative to the lawlessness and brutality of the American occupation. First, it refused to back the call for direct elections, citing security concerns -- a response that weakened the more moderate Sistani and strengthened al-Sadr, whose supporters continued to demand direct elections. This is what prompted Paul Bremer's decision to take out al-Sadr, which in turn led to the provocation that sparked the Shia uprising. The UN has proven equally deaf to calls to replace the US military occupation with a peacekeeping operation. On the contrary, it has made it clear that it will only re-enter Iraq if it is the United States that guarantees the safety of its staff -- seemingly oblivious to the fact that being surrounded by American bodyguards is the best way to make sure that the UN will be targeted. The UN's greatest betrayal of all comes in the way it is re-entering Iraq: not as an independent broker but as a glorified US subcontractor, the political arm of the continued US occupation. The post-June 30 caretaker government being set up by UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will be subject to all the restraints on Iraqi sovereignty that sparked the current uprising. The US will maintain full control over 'security.' It will keep control of the reconstruction funds. And, worst of all, the caretaker government will be subject to the laws laid out in the interim constitution, including the clause that states that it must enforce the orders written by the US occupiers. The UN should be defending Iraq against this illegal attempt to undermine its independence. Instead, it is disgracefully helping Washington to convince the world that a country under continued military occupation by a foreign power is actually sovereign." Klein says that the UN should, in effect, "join the mutiny" against US rule. "This would help to force Washington to hand over real power -- ultimately to Iraqis, but first to a multilateral coalition that did not participate in the invasion and occupation and would have the credibility to oversee direct elections. This could work, but only through a process that fiercely protects Iraq's sovereignty. That means:
- Ditch the interim constitution It is so widely hated that any governing body bound by its rules will be seen as illegitimate. Some argue that Iraq needs the interim constitution to prevent open elections from delivering the country to religious extremists. Yet according to a recent poll by Oxford Research International, Iraqis have no desire to see their country turned into another Iran. There are also ways to protect women and minority rights without forcing Iraq to accept a sweeping constitution written under foreign occupation. The simplest solution would be to revive passages in Iraq's 1970 provisional constitution, which, according to Human Rights Watch, 'formally guaranteed equal rights to women and specifically ensured their right to vote, attend school, run for political office, and own property.' Elsewhere, the constitution enshrined religious freedom, civil liberties and the right to form unions. These clauses can easily be salvaged, and those parts of the document designed to entrench Ba'athist rule struck out.
- Put the money in trust A crucial plank of managing Iraq's transition to sovereignty is safeguarding its assets: its oil revenues, the remaining oil-for-food programme money and what's left of the $18.4bn in reconstruction funds. Right now the US is planning to keep control of this money long after June 30; the UN should insist that it be put in trust, to be spent by an elected Iraqi government.
- De-Chalabify Iraq The United States has so far been unable to install Ahmed Chalabi as the next leader of Iraq -- his history of corruption and lack of a political base have seen to that. Yet members of the Chalabi family have quietly been given control in every area of political, economic and judicial life. It was a two-stage process. First, as head of the de-Ba'athification commission, Chalabi purged his rivals. Then, as director of the governing council's economic and finance committee, he installed his friends and allies in the key posts of oil minister, finance minister, trade minister, governor of the central bank and so on. Now Chalabi's nephew, Salem Chalabi, has been appointed by the US to head the court trying Saddam Hussein. And a company with close ties to Chalabi landed the contract to guard Iraq's oil infrastructure -- essentially a licence to build a private army. It's not enough to keep Chalabi out of the interim government. The UN must dismantle Chalabi's shadow state by launching a de-Chalabification process on a par with the now abandoned de-Ba'athification process.
- Demand the withdrawal of US troops In asking the US to serve as its bodyguard as a condition of re-entering Iraq, the UN has it exactly backwards -- it should go in only if the US pulls out. Troops who participated in the invasion and occupation should be replaced with peacekeepers from neighbouring Arab states charged with making the country secure for general elections.
On April 25, the New York Times editorial board called for the opposite approach, arguing that only a major infusion of American troops and 'a real long-term increase in the force in Iraq' could bring security. But these troops, if they arrive, will provide security to no one -- not to the Iraqis, not to their fellow soldiers, not to the UN. American soldiers have become a direct provocation of violence, not only because of the brutality of the occupation in Iraq but also because of US support for Israel's deadly occupation of Palestinian territory. In the minds of many Iraqis, the two occupations have blended into a single anti-Arab outrage. Without US troops, the major incitement to violence would be removed, allowing the country to be stabilized with far fewer soldiers and far less force. Iraq would still face security challenges -- there would still be extremists willing to die to impose Islamic law, and attempts by Saddam loyalists to regain power. On the other hand, with Sunnis and Shias now so united against the occupation, it's the best possible moment for an honest broker to negotiate an equitable power-sharing agreement. Some will argue that the US is too strong to be forced out of Iraq. But from the start Bush needed multilateral cover for this war -- that's why he formed the 'coalition of the willing,' and it's why he is going to the UN now. Imagine what could happen if countries keep pulling out of the coalition, if France and Germany refuse to recognise an occupied Iraq as a sovereign nation. Imagine if the UN decided not to ride to Washington's rescue. It would become a coalition of one. The invasion of Iraq began with a call to mutiny -- a call made by the US. In the weeks leading up to last year's invasion, US Central Command bombarded Iraqi military and political officials with phone calls and emails, urging them to defect from Saddam's ranks. Planes dropped 8 million leaflets, urging Iraqi soldiers to abandon their posts and promising that no harm would come to them. Of course, these soldiers were promptly fired when Paul Bremer took over, only now they are being frantically rehired as part of the reversal of the de-Ba'athification policy. It's just one more example of lethal incompetence that should lead all remaining supporters of US policy in Iraq to one inescapable conclusion: it's time for a mutiny." (The Nation/Guardian)
May 1: In preparation for Vice President Cheney's upcoming graduation speech at Florida State University, which many believe will be transformed into a campaign speech, an op-ed in the Tallahassee Democrat does a nice job of summing up Cheney's political career to date. Here are the highlights:
- When in doubt, privatize: When Cheney was in charge of the Department of Defense, he decided much of the daily drudgery of military life could be privatized. So he funneled $3.9 million to a company called Halliburton to plan how it could prepare food, do laundry and clean latrines. After Cheney helped create a market for Halliburton, it got another $5 million to study it some more.
- When life hands you lemons, make lemonade: When Bill Clinton won office in 1992, Cheney lost his. His friends at Halliburton were more than happy to give him a job -- as CEO.
- It's all about the bling bling: By 2000, he was pulling in $36,086,635 from the oil-services company.
- Machiavellian politics pay off: In 2000, George W. put Cheney in charge of a team to select a running mate. Cheney chose himself.
- Think outside the box: After creating the Halliburton empire, Cheney turned his attention to creating a new energy policy for the United States. Using his world-famous Rolodex, the vice president merged two seemingly unrelated areas of administration: dealing with rogue states and capturing oil fields.
- Never let a conflict of interest get in the way of a good deal (part one): When Cheney met with his former colleagues to talk about the administration's energy policy, a war in Iraq was a major component.
- Never let a conflict of interest get in the way of a good deal (part two): After we invaded Iraq, who better to clean up the mess than Halliburton? No bidding required. And who knows -- after the Bush administration is out of power, Cheney just might be re-hired by Halliburton. Maybe his buddies could kick up the salary to eight figures. I'd say that Cheney has earned it.
- Timing is everything: The day after Halliburton was forced to admit that two of its employees had taken kickbacks resulting in overcharges of $6.3 million, the Pentagon gave it another contract. This one gives Halliburton $1.2 billion to rebuild Iraq's oil industry.
- Let them eat cake: Just because the vice president works for the people of the United States doesn't mean that they need to know who he actually works with or what he's doing. When he dreamed up the 2001 Energy Task Force, Cheney's guiding principle was that the administration has the right to act as it pleases, and that the public has no right to know what it's doing. Let's hear it for principles!
- Never let a conflict of interest get in the way of a good deal (part three): Nobody knew who was on the 2001 Energy Task Force. When the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch sued to get hold of the list of participants, Cheney went on a duck-hunting trip with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. While killing ducks, the two may have discussed the pending case. Nevertheless, Scalia refused to recuse himself when the case went before the Supreme Court this week.
The editorial concludes, with tongue firmly in cheek and teeth only somewhat gritted, "The graduating class of 2004 should be honored to hear from someone as inspiring as Vice President Dick Cheney, a man whose integrity and principles have made a lasting impression on this country." (Tallahassee Democrat)
May 1: A letter-writer to the Boston Globe puts paid to the entire "ribbons vs. medals" controversy stirred up by the Bush campaign to attack John Kerry's war record. Richard Bartlett, a decorated World War II veteran, says, "What's all this horse manure about ribbons and medals? And it comes from absentee Dick Cheney and semi-AWOL George Bush. ...We now watch in amazement as the coalition of wimps tries to diminish John Kerry's service! I won some medals flying against the Nazis. Now I can't even find my medals or ribbons. The terminology is irrelevant. The ribbons are just the wearable stand-ins for the medals. They aren't important except for being symbols of service. All sevicemen's discharge papers record the awards. I recall the day my wife and I camped out on Lexington Green with John Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. We and hundreds of the region's solid citizens believed that members of the US military who had been hoodwinked into fighting a dirty and mistaken war deserved our support. Kerry was right as a patriot to put his life on the line and then, with the wisdom that came from his experience in Vietnam, to do his best to end the slaughter of young Americans. If that's what this Republican flip-flop issue is about, I think the Bush camp should be ashamed. Cowards shouldn't quibble and accuse. They didn't earn the right." (Boston Globe)
May 1: A "Darwin-free" amusement park is open in Pensacola, Florida. Called "Dinosaur Adventure Land," it combines attractions with a fundamentalist Christian message. Dinosaur exhibits explain that God created dinosaurs on the sixth day of creation, about 6,000 years ago, as told in the book of Genesis. Anti-Darwin and pro-creationism products are sold at the gift shops. Kent Hovind, the minister who opened the park in 2001, said his aim was to spread the message of creationism through a fixture of mainstream America -- the theme park -- instead of pleading its case at academic conferences and in courtrooms. Hovind, a former public school science teacher with his own ministry, Creation Science Evangelism, says he opened Dinosaur Adventure Land to counter all the science centers and natural history museums that explain the evolution of life with Darwinian theory. "There are a lot of creationists that are really smart and debate the intellectuals, but the kids are bored after five minutes," says Hovind. "You're missing 98 percent of the population if you only go the intellectual route."
The theme park is just the latest approach to promoting creationism outside the usual school curriculum route, which Hovind and others see as important, but too limited and not sufficiently appealing to modern young families. Creationist groups are also promoting creationist vacations, including dinosaur digs in South Dakota, fossil-collecting trips in Australia and New Zealand, and tours of the Grand Canyon ("raft the canyon and learn how Noah's flood contributed to the formation"). Dan Johnson, an assistant manager of the park, said there were also creationism-themed cruises, with lectures on the subject amid swimming and shuffleboard. A Kentucky creationist group called Answers in Genesis says it is building a 100,000-square-foot complex outside Cincinnati with a museum, classrooms, a planetarium and a special-effects theater where moviegoers can experience the flood and other events described in Genesis. Ken Ham, the group's chief executive, says marketing surveys suggested that the complex would draw not just home-schooling families and other creationists, but mainstream church groups and curiosity seekers. Ham said a former Universal Studios art director was designing exhibits for the complex, including dioramas of Adam and Eve and a model of Noah's Ark. The complex will open in 2006 at the earliest, Ham said.
At Dinosaur Adventure Land, visitors can make their own Grand Canyon replica with sand and read a sign deriding textbooks for teaching that the Colorado River formed the canyon over millions of years: "This is clearly not possible. The top of the Grand Canyon is 4,000 feet higher than where the river enters the canyon! Rivers do not flow up hill!" (Presumably, visitors are not encouraged to discuss the staggering logical flaw and lack of elementary geological understanding in this statement.) There is a movie depicting the creation, the flood and the fall of man, which fast-forwards from a lush Garden of Eden to a New York City traffic jam. There are no mechanized rides at Dinosaur Adventure Land -- no creationist-themed roller coasters, scramblers or even a ferris wheel -- but instead, a simple discovery center and museum and about a dozen outdoor games, each of which has a "science lesson" and "spiritual lesson" posted nearby. The theme park is part of the evangelical right's battle against science: in the words of Reconstructionist guru R.J. Rushdoony, "Not only is creationism a necessary faith, it is an inescapable fact." Rushdoony's followers routinely describe environmentalists, who have roundly criticized the park, as "neo-pagan pantheists" and "latent Stalinists." (New York Times, Mark Crispin Miller)

Private mercenaries and intelligence agents are involved in the prisoner abuse

May 2: London's Sunday Herald calls them simply "The Pictures That Lost the War." Journalist Neil Mackay writes that the pictures forever cripple the "moral high ground" that Bush and Blair have attempted to occupy over the war. He writes, "It's an image that would do Saddam proud. A terrified prisoner, hooded and dressed in rags, his hands out-stretched on either side of him, electrodes attached to his fingers and genitals. He's been forced to stand on a box about one-foot square. His captors have told him that, if he falls off the box, he'll be electrocuted." The pictures, first of US soldiers abusing and torturing prisoners and then of British soldiers doing the same, have shocked and horrified the world. Pictures of British soldiers urinating on a bloodied prisoner, stomping on him, kicking him in the mouth, and beating him with a rifle butt, have inflamed anti-war protesters throughout Britain. A picture of US soldier Lynndie England, smiling while she fondles a hooded Iraqi's naked buttocks, along with other pictures, have sparked similar reactions in the US. Other pictures of England show her sprawled, laughing, over a pyramid of naked Iraqis while a male colleague grins behind them; England pointing at a naked Iraqi being forced to masturbate for the camera as three other naked, hooded Iraqis hide their groins with their hands; England embracing a male colleague while a naked Iraqi lies at their feet.
Such dehumanization is unacceptable anywhere, but even more so in Arab cultures. Homosexual acts are against Islamic law and it is humiliating for men to be naked in front of other men. Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University, says, "Being put on top of each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in front of each other -- it's all a form of torture." Other pictures show two naked Iraqis forced to simulate oral sex, and a group of naked Iraqi men made to clamber on to each other's backs. One picture features nothing but the bloated face of an Iraqi who has been beaten to death. His body is wrapped in plastic. Other pictures show an empty room whose walls are splattered with blood. Other pictures, not yet released, show a dog attacking a prisoner. An accused soldier says dogs are "used for intimidation factors." There are also pictures of an apparent male rape. An Iraqi POW claims that a civilian translator, hired to work in the prison, raped a male juvenile prisoner. He said: "They covered all the doors with sheets. I heard the screaming...and the female soldier was taking pictures."
The British pictures show a hooded Iraqi aged between 18-20 on the floor of a military truck being brutalized. According to two soldiers who took part in the torture, but later reported it to superiors, the Iraqi's ordeal lasted eight hours and he was left with a broken jaw and missing teeth. He was bleeding and vomited when his captors threw him out of a speeding truck. No one knows if he lived or died. One of the British soldiers said: "Basically this guy was dying as he couldn't take any more. An officer came down. It was 'Get rid of him -- I haven't seen him.'" Another soldier says he witnessed a prisoner being beaten senseless by troops: "You could hear your mate's boots hitting this lad's spine.... One of the lads broke his wrist off a prisoner's head. Another nearly broke his foot kicking him." A video exists of prisoners being thrown to their deaths from bridges. Other photos document a prisoner being beaten to death.
Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram says that if the pictures were real, they were "appalling." The US torture pictures were taken by members of the American 800th Military Police Brigade sometime late last year. Following an investigation, 17 soldiers were removed from duty for mistreating captives. Six face court martial. Brigadier General Janice Karpinski, who ran Abu Ghraib and three other US military jails, is suspended and faces court-martial. Prior to the revelations, Karpinski assured the US media that Abu Ghraib was run according to "international standards." Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of coalition operations in Iraq, says, "These are our fellow soldiers. They wear the same uniform as us, and they let their fellow soldiers down. Our soldiers could be taken prisoner as well -- and we expect our soldiers to be treated well by the adversary, by the enemy -- and if we can't hold ourselves up as an example of how to treat people with dignity and respect...we can't ask that other nations do that to our soldiers as well. This is wrong. This is reprehensible. But this is not representative of the 150,000 soldiers over here." However, the claims that the soldiers are merely "rogues" acting against orders may well be wrong, Some accused claim they acted on the orders of military intelligence and the CIA, and that some of the torture sessions were under the control of mercenaries hired by the US to conduct interrogations.
Two "civilian contract" organizations taking part in interrogations at Abu Ghraib are linked to the Bush administration. California-based Titan Corporation says it is "a leading provider of solutions and services for national security." Between 2003-04, it gave nearly $40,000 to George W Bush's Republican Party. Titan supplied translators to the military. CACI International Inc. describes its aim as helping "America's intelligence community in the war on terrorism." Richard Armitage, the current deputy US Secretary of State, was a member of CACI's board of directors. No civilians, however, are facing charges, as military law does not apply to them. CENTCOM'S Colonel Jill Morgenthaler says that one civilian contractor was accused along with six soldiers of mistreating prisoners. However, it was left to the contractor to "deal with him." One civilian interrogator told army investigators that he had "unintentionally" broken several tables during interrogations as he was trying to "fear-up" detainees. Lawyers for some accused say their clients are scapegoats for a rogue prison system, which allowed mercenaries to give orders to serving soldiers. A military report says private contractors were at times supervising the interrogations. Kimmitt says: "I hope the investigation is including not only the people who committed the crimes, but some of the people who might have encouraged the crimes as well because they certainly share some responsibility." CACI vice-president Jody Brown says: "The company supports the Army's investigation and acknowledges that CACI personnel in Iraq volunteered to be interviewed by army officials in connection with the investigation. The company has received no indication that any CACI employee was involved in any alleged improper conduct with Iraqi prisoners. Nonetheless, CACI has initiated an independent investigation." However, military investigators say: "A CACI investigator's contract was terminated because he allowed and/or instructed military police officers who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations which were neither authorised nor in accordance with regulations."
One of the US soldiers facing court martial, reservist Chip Frederick, blames US intelligence services for encouraging the brutality. Among the agencies coming to the prison were "military intelligence," he says, and adds, "We had all kinds of other government agencies, FBI, CIA." In letters and e-mails home, he wrote: "Military intelligence has encouraged and told us 'Great job.'" He added: "They usually don't allow others to watch them interrogate. But since they like the way I run the prison, they have made an exception.... We help getting [the POWs] to talk with the way we handle them.... We've had a very high rate with our style of getting them to break. They usually end up breaking within hours." Frederick says prisoners were made to live in cramped windowless cells with no clothes, running water or toilet for up to three days. Others were held for 60 days before interrogation. An interrogator told soldiers to "stress one prisoner out as much as possible [as] he wanted to talk to him the next day." Frederick also said one prisoner was "stressed so bad that the man passed away." Prisoners were covered in lice and some had tuberculosis. None were allowed to pray. Frederick says his commander sanctioned all this. Frederick, unlike mercenaries, faces jail and being thrown out of the army. His lawyer, Gary Myers, says: "The elixir of power, the elixir of believing that you're helping the CIA, for God's sake, when you're from a small town in Virginia, that's intoxicating. And so, good guys sometimes do things believing that they are being of assistance and helping a just cause...and helping people they view as important." Kimmitt admitts: "I'd like to sit here and say that these are the only prisoner abuse cases that we're aware of, but we know that there have been others." This also applies to Britain. At least seven civilians have died in British custody in Iraq. Describing the images of abuse as an "atrocity," Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, says: "The liberators are worse than the dictators." From the Red Cross to the UN and from Amnesty to the coalition's loyal "deputy in the Pacific," the Australian premier John Howard, the world is united in horror against the actions of the US and UK forces. The cost of these acts of barbarism by Britain and America is summed up by ex-US Marine Lieutenant Colonel Bill Cowan: "We went to Iraq to stop things like this from happening, and indeed, here they are happening under our tutelage. ...If we don't tell this story, these kind of things will continue, and we'll end up getting paid back 100 or 1000 times over." (Sunday Herald, New Yorker)

An Iraqi prisoner, hooded and wired with electrodes.

May 2: The released Taguba report contains an interview with Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the former commander of Abu Ghraib prison. Taguba finds Karpinski extremely emotional: "What I found particularly disturbing in her testimony was her complete unwillingness to either understand or accept that many of the problems inherent in the 800th MP Brigade were caused or exacerbated by poor leadership and the refusal of her command to both establish and enforce basic standards and principles among its soldiers." Taguba recommended that Karpinski and seven brigade military police officers and enlisted soldiers be relieved of command and formally reprimanded. No criminal proceedings were recommended for Karpinski; apparently the loss of promotion and a public reprimand were considered punishment enough. (Seymour Hersh)

Taguba report shows abuse to be systematic and approved at high levels

May 2: A secret report commissioned by the US Army and written by Major General Anthony Taguba says that the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib is far worse than has previously been revealed. His report, issued in February 2004, says there were "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib, and lists some of them: "Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees...beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape...sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broomstick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees...and in one instance actually biting a detainee." Taguba's report clearly states that, far from being isolated actions by low-level personnel, intelligence interrogators encouraged the military police to "soften up" detainees. He recommended disciplinary action for at least two senior officers apart from Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, whose suspension as chief of military prisons in Iraq was revealed after the photographs were published last week. Other charges, including manslaughter, are being contemplated.
Six suspects -- Staff Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick, who was the senior enlisted man; Specialist Charles Graner; Sergeant Javal Davis; Specialist Megan Ambuhl; Specialist Sabrina Harman; and Private Jeremy Sivits -- are now facing prosecution in Iraq, on charges that include conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty toward prisoners, maltreatment, assault, and indecent acts. A seventh suspect, Private Lynndie England, was reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, after becoming pregnant. The report concludes that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which reported to Karpinski's brigade headquarters.) Taguba chose not to include photos and videos in his report because of their "extremely sensitive nature." The UK has banned visits to Iraq by government officials and other VIPs, fearing kidnappings and retribution.
According to the report, revealed by eminent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, Abu Ghraib was packed with three types of prisoners: common criminals; security detainees suspected of "crimes against the coalition;" and a small number of suspected "high-value" leaders of the insurgency against the coalition forces. Many of the prisoners were detained without charge, and in some instances, US troops guarding the prisoners had no records of their names or any identification whatsoever. Part of the problem rests with the prison administration. Karpinski, an experienced operations and intelligence officer who had served with the Special Forces and in the 1991 Gulf War, had never run a prison system. Now she was in charge of three large jails, eight battalions, and thirty-four hundred Army reservists, most of whom, like her, had no training in handling prisoners. In private life, Karpinski is a business consultant. In December 2003, she told the St. Petersburg Times that, for many of the Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib, "living conditions now are better in prison than at home. At one point we were concerned that they wouldn't want to leave." In January 2004, Karpinski was formally admonished and quietly suspended, and a major investigation into the Army's prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, was under way.
Last fall, General Sanchez ordered Provost Marshal Donald Ryder, a major general, to review the prison system in Iraq and recommend ways to improve it. Ryder's report, filed on November 5th, concluded that there were potential human-rights, training, and manpower issues, system-wide, that needed immediate attention. It also discussed serious concerns about the tension between the missions of the military police assigned to guard the prisoners and the intelligence teams who wanted to interrogate them. Army regulations limit intelligence activity by the MPs to passive collection. But something had gone wrong at Abu Ghraib. There was evidence dating back to the Afghanistan war, the Ryder report said, that MPs had worked with intelligence operatives to "set favorable conditions for subsequent interviews" -- a euphemism for breaking prisoners. "such actions generally run counter to the smooth operation of a detention facility, attempting to maintain its population in a compliant and docile state." General Karpinski's brigade, Ryder reported, "has not been directed to change its facility procedures to set the conditions for MI interrogations, nor participate in those interrogations." Ryder called for the establishment of procedures to "define the role of military police soldiers...clearly separating the actions of the guards from those of the military intelligence personnel." The officers running the war in Iraq were put on notice. Ryder undercut his warning, however, by concluding that the situation had not yet reached a crisis point. Though some procedures were flawed, he said, he found "no military police units purposely applying inappropriate confinement practices." His investigation was at best a failure and at worst a coverup, concludes Hersh.
Taguba, in his report, was polite but direct in refuting his fellow-general. "Unfortunately, many of the systemic problems that surfaced during [Ryder's] assessment are the very same issues that are the subject of this investigation," he wrote. "In fact, many of the abuses suffered by detainees occurred during, or near to, the time of that assessment." The report continued, "Contrary to the findings of MG Ryder's report, I find that personnel assigned to the 372nd MP Company, 800th MP Brigade were directed to change facility procedures to 'set the conditions' for MI interrogations." Army intelligence officers, CIA agents, and private contractors "actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses." Taguba backed up his assertion by citing evidence from sworn statements to Army CID investigators. Specialist Sabrina Harman, one of the accused MPs, testified that it was her job to keep detainees awake, including one hooded prisoner who was placed on a box with wires attached to his fingers, toes, and penis. She stated, "MI wanted to get them to talk. It is Graner and Frederick's job to do things for MI and OGA to get these people to talk."
Another witness, Sergeant Javal Davis, who is also one of the accused, told CID investigators, "I witnessed prisoners in the MI hold section...being made to do various things that I would question morally.... We were told that they had different rules." Taguba wrote, "Davis also stated that he had heard MI insinuate to the guards to abuse the inmates. When asked what MI said he stated: 'Loosen this guy up for us.' 'Make sure he has a bad night.' 'Make sure he gets the treatment.'" Military intelligence made these comments to Graner and Frederick, Davis said. "The MI staffs to my understanding have been giving Graner compliments...statements like, 'Good job, they're breaking down real fast. They answer every question. They're giving out good information.'" When asked why he did not inform his chain of command about the abuse, Sergeant Davis answered, "Because I assumed that if they were doing things out of the ordinary or outside the guidelines, someone would have said something. Also the wing" -- where the abuse took place -- "belongs to MI and it appeared MI personnel approved of the abuse." Another witness, Specialist Jason Kennel, who was not accused of wrongdoing, said, "I saw them nude, but MI would tell us to take away their mattresses, sheets, and clothes." (It was his view, he added, that if MI wanted him to do this "they needed to give me paperwork.") Taguba also cited an interview with Adel Nakhla, a translator who was an employee of Titan, a civilian contractor. He told of one night when a "bunch of people from MI" watched as a group of handcuffed and shackled inmates were subjected to abuse by Graner and Frederick.
General Taguba saved his harshest words for the military-intelligence officers and private contractors. He recommended that Colonel Thomas Pappas, the commander of one of the MI brigades, be reprimanded and receive non-judicial punishment, and that Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan, the former director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, be relieved of duty and reprimanded. He further urged that a civilian contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI International, be fired from his Army job, reprimanded, and denied his security clearances for lying to the investigating team and allowing or ordering military policemen "who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations by 'setting conditions' which were neither authorized" nor in accordance with Army regulations. "He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse," Taguba wrote. He also recommended disciplinary action against a second CACI employee, John Israel. (A spokeswoman for CACI said that the company had "received no formal communication" from the Army about the matter.) "I suspect," Taguba concluded, that Pappas, Jordan, Stephanowicz, and Israel "were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse at Abu Ghraib," and strongly recommended immediate disciplinary action.
The problems inside the Army prison system in Iraq were not hidden from senior commanders. During Karpinski's seven-month tour of duty, Taguba noted, there were at least a dozen officially reported incidents involving escapes, attempted escapes, and other serious security issues that were investigated by officers of the 800th MP Brigade. Some of the incidents had led to the killing or wounding of inmates and MPs, and resulted in a series of "lessons learned" inquiries within the brigade. Karpinski invariably approved the reports and signed orders calling for changes in day-to-day procedures. But Taguba found that she did not follow up, doing nothing to insure that the orders were carried out. Had she done so, he added, "cases of abuse may have been prevented." General Taguba further found that Abu Ghraib was filled beyond capacity, and that the MP guard force was significantly undermanned and short of resources. "This imbalance has contributed to the poor living conditions, escapes, and accountability lapses," he wrote. There were gross differences, Taguba said, between the actual number of prisoners on hand and the number officially recorded. A lack of proper screening also meant that many innocent Iraqis were wrongly being detained -- indefinitely, it seemed, in some cases. The Taguba study noted that more than sixty per cent of the civilian inmates at Abu Ghraib were deemed not to be a threat to society, which should have enabled them to be released.
Karpinski's defense, Taguba said, was that her superior officers "routinely" rejected her recommendations regarding the release of such prisoners. Karpinski was rarely seen at the prisons she was supposed to be running, Taguba wrote. He also found a wide range of administrative problems, including some that he considered "without precedent in my military career." The soldiers, he added, were "poorly prepared and untrained...prior to deployment, at the mobilization site, upon arrival in theater, and throughout the mission." General Taguba spent more than four hours interviewing Karpinski, whom he described as extremely emotional: "What I found particularly disturbing in her testimony was her complete unwillingness to either understand or accept that many of the problems inherent in the 800th MP Brigade were caused or exacerbated by poor leadership and the refusal of her command to both establish and enforce basic standards and principles among its soldiers." Taguba recommended that Karpinski and seven brigade military-police officers and enlisted men be relieved of command and formally reprimanded. No criminal proceedings were suggested for Karpinski; apparently, the loss of promotion and the indignity of a public rebuke were seen as enough punishment.
After the story broke on CBS last week, the commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, Major General Geoffrey Miller, was assigned to head the Iraqi prison system. General Sanchez also authorized an investigation into possible wrongdoing by military and civilian interrogators. While Bush, Blair, and senior military and political leaders insist that the actions at Abu Ghraib were the actions of a rogue few, Taguba's report shows collective wrongdoing and the failure of Army leadership at the highest levels. At Abu Ghraib, Army regulations and the Geneva conventions were routinely violated, and in which much of the day-to-day management of the prisoners was abdicated to Army military-intelligence units and civilian contract employees. Interrogating prisoners and getting intelligence, including by intimidation and torture, was the priority. Former CID agent Willie Rowell says that using force such as Abu Ghraib does little good in producing usable information: "They'll tell you what you want to hear, truth or no truth," Rowell says. "'You can flog me until I tell you what I know you want me to say.' You don't get righteous information." Under the fourth Geneva Convention, an occupying power can jail civilians who pose an "imperative" security threat, but it must establish a regular procedure for insuring that only civilians who remain a genuine security threat be kept imprisoned. Prisoners have the right to appeal any internment decision and have their cases reviewed. Human Rights Watch complained to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that civilians in Iraq remained in custody month after month with no charges brought against them. "Abu Ghraib had become, in effect, another Guantanamo," writes Hersh. (New Yorker, Independent/Truthout)
May 2: Testimony from the Article 32 hearing (the military equivalent of a grand jury hearing) against Sergeant Chip Frederick, held on April 9 but just now released, sheds light on the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib prison. One of the witnesses, Specialist Matthew Wisdom, an M.P., told the courtroom what happened when he and other soldiers delivered seven prisoners, hooded and bound, to the so-called "hard site" at Abu Ghraib -- seven tiers of cells where the inmates who were considered the most dangerous were housed. The men had been accused of starting a riot in another section of the prison. Wisdom said: "sFC Snider grabbed my prisoner and threw him into a pile.... I do not think it was right to put them in a pile. I saw SSG Frederic, SGT Davis and CPL Graner walking around the pile hitting the prisoners. I remember SSG Frederick hitting one prisoner in the side of its [sic] ribcage. The prisoner was no danger to SSG Frederick.... I left after that." When he returned later, Wisdom testified: "I saw two naked detainees, one masturbating to another kneeling with its mouth open. I thought I should just get out of there. I didn't think it was right.... I saw SSG Frederick walking towards me, and he said, 'Look what these animals do when you leave them alone for two seconds.' I heard PFC England shout out, 'He's getting hard.'"
Wisdom testified that he told his superiors what had happened, and assumed that "the issue was taken care of." He said, "I just didn't want to be part of anything that looked criminal." The entire story was first revealed by a complaint filed by Specialist Joseph Darby, an MP whose role emerged during the Article 32 hearing against Frederick. A government witness, Special Agent Scott Bobeck, who is a member of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division (CID), told the court, "The investigation started after SPC Darby...got a CD from CPL Graner.... He came across pictures of naked detainees." Bobeck said that Darby had "initially put an anonymous letter under our door, then he later came forward and gave a sworn statement. He felt very bad about it and thought it was very wrong." Questioned further, Bobeck said that Frederick and his colleagues had not been given any "training guidelines" that he was aware of. The MPs in the 372nd had been assigned to routine traffic and police duties upon their arrival in Iraq, in the spring of 2003. In October of 2003, the 372nd was ordered to prison-guard duty at Abu Ghraib. Frederick, at thirty-seven, was far older than his colleagues, and was a natural leader; he had also worked for six years as a guard for the Virginia Department of Corrections. Bobeck explained: "What I got is that SSG Frederick and CPL Graner were road MPs and were put in charge because they were civilian prison guards and had knowledge of how things were supposed to be run." Bobeck also testified that witnesses had said that Frederick, on one occasion, "had punched a detainee in the chest so hard that the detainee almost went into cardiac arrest."
At the Article 32 hearing, the Army informed Frederick and his attorneys, Captain Robert Shuck, an Army lawyer, and Gary Myers, a civilian, that two dozen witnesses they had sought, including General Karpinski and all of Frederick's co-defendants, would not appear. Some had been excused after exercising their Fifth Amendment right; others were deemed to be too far away from the courtroom. "The purpose of an Article 32 hearing is for us to engage witnesses and discover facts," Myers says. "We ended up with a CID agent and no alleged victims to examine." After the hearing, the presiding investigative officer ruled that there was sufficient evidence to convene a court-martial against Frederick. Myers says Frederick will plead not guilty, and will defend himself on the basis that he was following the explicit orders of his superiors. Myers says, "Do you really think a group of kids from rural Virginia decided to do this on their own? Decided that the best way to embarrass Arabs and make them talk was to have them walk around nude?" In letters and e-mails to family members, Frederick repeatedly noted that the military-intelligence teams, which included CIA officers and linguists and interrogation specialists from private defense contractors, were the dominant force inside Abu Ghraib. In a letter written in January, he said: "I questioned some of the things that I saw...such things as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell -- and the answer I got was, 'This is how military intelligence (MI) wants it done.' ...MI has also instructed us to place a prisoner in an isolation cell with little or no clothes, no toilet or running water, no ventilation or window, for as much as three days." The military-intelligence officers have "encouraged and told us, 'Great job,' they were now getting positive results and information," Frederick wrote. "CID has been present when the military working dogs were used to intimidate prisoners at MI's request."
At one point, Frederick told his family, he pulled aside his superior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Phillabaum, the commander of the 320th MP Battalion, and asked about the mistreatment of prisoners. "His reply was 'Don't worry about it.'" In November, Frederick wrote, an Iraqi prisoner under the control of what the Abu Ghraib guards called "OGA," or other government agencies -- that is, the CIA and its paramilitary employees -- was brought to his unit for questioning. "They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away. They put his body in a body bag and packed him in ice for approximately twenty-four hours in the shower.... The next day the medics came and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake IV in his arm and took him away." The dead Iraqi was never entered into the prison's inmate-control system, Frederick recounted, "and therefore never had a number." Captain Shuck, Frederick's military attorney, closed his defense at the Article 32 hearing last month by saying that the Army was "attempting to have these six soldiers atone for its sins." Similarly, Myers says that he will argue at the court-martial that culpability in the case extended far beyond his client. "I'm going to drag every involved intelligence officer and civilian contractor I can find into court," he says. "Do you really believe the Army relieved a general officer because of six soldiers? Not a chance." (New Yorker, Seymour Hersh)

Iraqi prisoner apparently beaten to death by US soldiers

May 2: Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the former head of the MPs and soldiers running Abu Ghraib prison, says she knew nothing of the abuse and torture going on at her prison until weeks after it occurred and that she was "sickened" by the pictures. She said the prison cellblock where the abuse occurred was under the tight control of Army military intelligence officers who may have encouraged the abuse. Her belief that military intelligence, and the mercenaries employed by MI, has been supported by a report on prison conditions written by Major General Anthony Taguba. Now at home in South Carolina, Karpinski says that while the reservists involved in the abuses were "bad people" who deserved punishment, she suspects that they were acting with the encouragement, if not at the direction, of military intelligence units that ran the special cellblock used for interrogation. She said that CIA employees often joined in the interrogations at the prison, although she says she does not know if they had unrestricted access to the cellblock.
Karpinski, a reservist, says she is speaking out because she believed that military commanders are trying to shift the blame exclusively to her and other reservists and away from intelligence officers still at work in Iraq. "We're disposable," she says of the military's attitude toward reservists. "Why would they want the active-duty people to take the blame? They want to put this on the MP's and hope that this thing goes away. Well, it's not going to go away." Karpinski says that the special cellblock, known as 1A, was one of about two dozen cellblocks in the large prison complex and was essentially off limits to soldiers who were not part of the interrogations, including virtually all of the military police under her command at Abu Ghraib. She says she is not defending the actions of the reservists who took part in the brutality, who were part of her command. She said that when she was first presented with the photographs of the abuse in January, they "sickened me." "I put my head down because I really thought I was going to throw up," she says. "was awful. My immediate reaction was: these are bad people, because their faces revealed how much pleasure they felt at this." But she said the context of the brutality had been lost, noting that the six Army reservists charged in the case represented were only a tiny fraction of the nearly 3,400 reservists under her command in Iraq, and that Abu Ghraib was one of 16 prisons and other incarceration centers around Iraq that she oversaw. "The suggestion that this was done with my knowledge and continued with my knowledge is so far from the truth,"she said of the abuse. "I wasn't aware of any of this. I'm horrified by this."
She says she is alarmed that little attention has been paid to the Army military intelligence unit that controlled Cellblock 1A, where her soldiers guarded the Iraqi detainees between interrogations. She estimates that the floor space of the two-story cellblock was only about 60 feet by 20 feet, and that military intelligence officers were in and out of the cellblock "24 hours a day," often to escort prisoners to and from an interrogation center away from the prison cells. "They were in there at 2 in the morning, they were there at 4 in the afternoon," she says. "This was no 9-to-5 job." She says that CIA employees often participated in the interrogations. Karpinski notes that one of the photographs of abused prisoners also showed the legs of 16 American soldiers -- the photograph was cropped so that their upper bodies could not be seen -- "and that tells you that clearly other people were participating, because I didn't have 16 people assigned to that cellblock." Karpinski says she visited Abu Ghraib as often as twice a week last fall and had repeatedly instructed military police officers under her command to treat prisoners humanely and in accord with international human rights agreements. "I can speak some Arabic," she says. "I'm not fluent, but when I went to any of my prison facilities, I would make it a point to try to talk to the detainees." But she says she did not visit Cellblock 1A, in keeping with the wishes of military intelligence officers who, she said, worried that unnecessary visits might interfere with their interrogations of Iraqis. She acknowledges that she "probably should have been more aggressive" about visiting the interrogation cellblock, especially after military intelligence officers at the prison went "to great lengths to try to exclude the ICRC from access to that interrogation wing." She refers to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has been given access over time to Iraqi detainees at the prison. Karpinski's lawyer, Neal Puckett, a former military trial judge, says he believes that she is being made a scapegoat for others in the military, especially for military intelligence officers who knew what was going on in Cellblock 1A. He says she had repeatedly insisted that troops under her command in Iraq receive instruction in proper treatment of detainees, but that despite her best efforts, some reservists joined in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. "All you can do is give training, give guidance and assume that your soldiers are going to follow orders and are not going to become sick b*stards," he says. (New York Times/CommonDreams)
May 2: Army Chief of Staff Richard Myers says he can't rule out the possibility that the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison was "systematic," and not just the actions of a rogue few, as claimed by many Bush administration officials. Myers says he has not yet read the Taguba report, which documents "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" of Iraqi prisoners, including beatings and sodomy. He says that if the abuse is truly systematic, then it has to be halted. He says there are ongoing investigations into the participation of intelligence personnel and private contractors in the abuse and torture of prisoners. Myers says that no such problems have been reported at the Guantanamo Bay detention camps. (Reuters/World Revolution)
May 2: Facing allegations that the photos of British soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners may be false, the two soldiers who provided the photos to the Daily Mirror are standing by their veracity. The soldiers also say they have further information about the tortures. Army sources have raised doubts about the veracity of the images, while Tory defense spokesman Nicholas Soames questions the decision to print them. The Mirror's editor, Piers Morgan, says he makes no apology for exposing "this outrageous behavior." He adds that the alleged abuse had been "common knowledge among disgusted British servicemen in Basra for months. These soldiers felt compelled to expose what went on because they believed it was fundamentally wrong, and that it would inevitably be reported at some stage. As General Sir Michael Jackson made clear, the people that carried out these sickening acts simply have no place in the British Army." (BBC)
May 2: Iraqi civilian Dhia al-Shweiri says that being in prison under American guard is worse than being imprisoned by Saddam Hussein. Al-Shweiri was twice imprisoned by the Hussein regime and once by the Americans, and says he prefers Hussein's torture to the humiliation of being stripped naked by his American guards. He is a fighter in Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. He says that, while jailed under Hussein, he was electrocuted, beaten and hung from the ceiling with his hands tied behind his back. "But that's better than the humiliation of being stripped naked," he says. "shoot me here," he adds, pointing between his eyes, "but don't do this to us." Al-Shweiri says he is not surprised to see TV images of smiling US soldiers posing by naked, hooded inmates who, in one photograph, were piled in a human pyramid. He says that, while detained by US soldiers, he was asked to take off his clothes only once and for about 15 minutes. "I thought they wanted me to change into the red prison uniform, so I took off my clothes, down to my underwear. Then he asked me to take off my underwear. I started arguing with him but in the end he made me take off my underwear," he says. He adds that he and six other prisoners -- all hooded -- had to face the wall and bend over a little as they put their hands on the wall. "They made us stand in a way that I am ashamed to describe. They came to look at us as we stood there. They knew this would humiliate us." He says that, unlike some of his fellow prisoners, he was not sodomized. "They were trying to humiliate us, break our pride. We are men. It's OK if they beat me. Beatings don't hurt us, it's just a blow. But no one would want their manhood to be shattered. They wanted us to feel as though we were women, the way women feel and this is the worst insult, to feel like a woman."
He says the Americans arrested him along with his father and brother in the Shi'ite neighborhood of Sadr City in Baghdad, accusing him of belonging to the al-Mahdi Army because he had an automatic weapon in his house and some headbands with Islamic sayings on them. His father and brother were released shortly after the arrest. Al-Shweiri insists he wasn't involved in any religious or political group at the time. He worked in a fabric shop in Sadr City, attending Friday prayer sermons at his neighborhood mosque. He says he felt gratitude to the Americans for toppling Saddam, who had barred many Shi'ite public gatherings and whose regime arrested al-Shweiri twice. The first time came 12 years ago, when he was held for 19 months. He was arrested again in 1999 and sentenced to life in prison, charged with belonging to the then-banned Islamic al-Dawa Party, he said. He was freed when Saddam pardoned prisoners at the end of the same year. "I hated Saddam so much that when the Americans came, I viewed them as liberators. I was happy and supported them. But soon it became clear that they are no liberators but occupiers," he says. "I had seen how oppressed people were under Saddam and I refused to give in to oppression and injustice. We must fight oppression." When al-Shweiri left American detention, he said his hatred for Saddam was replaced with one for America and two months ago he joined the Mahdi Army. "If Seyed Muqtada orders us to disband, we will," al-Shweiri says. "If he orders us to die, we will die. And if he tells us to live, we will live. We have nothing to do with the Americans and what they demand from us." (AP/San Francisco Chronicle)
May 2: Defense contractor CACI International Inc. opens an internal investigation of its employees in connection with allegations that Iraqi detainees were abused by U.S. soldiers at an Abu Ghraib. Employees for CACI were serving as interrogators at the facility, according to an attorney for one of the soldiers facing criminal charges. Two CACI employees were named in General Anthony Taguba's internal Army report about abuses at Abu Ghraib. The report alleges that one employee allowed or ordered untrained military police to set conditions for interrogations that amounted to abuse, and recommends he be fired. It recommends that the other be disciplined. CACI acknowledges that its employees had been interviewed by Army officials as part of the investigation, but says that it has "received no indication from the Army that any CACI employee was involved in any alleged improper conduct with Iraqi prisoners." It is unclear who is conducting CACI's investigation. "We are appalled by the reported actions of a few," the company statement says. "The Company does not condone or tolerate illegal behavior on the part of its employees when conducting CACI business in any circumstance at any time."
According to several Internet job sites, CACI has been recruiting interrogators, senior counterintelligence agents and intelligence analysts for work in Iraq for more than a year, requiring some to have active and current top-secret security clearances. An ad posted on Yahoo's HotJobs Web site in February, under the headline "Exciting intelligence opportunities in Iraq!," sought to recruit interrogators with two or more years "conducting tactical and strategic interrogations." Another posting on IntelligenceCareers.com lists opening for senior counterintelligence agent with 10 years experience and intelligence analysts with a minimum of three years' experience. The increasingly prominent and important roles played by civilian contractors in Iraq have stirred criticism from some industry analysts, who said private contractors cannot be held to the same standards as soldiers. The Pentagon's oversight of private contractors around the world is "inconsistent and sometimes incomplete," according to a 2003 General Accounting Office report. "The use of private contractors in Iraq is becoming an increasingly volatile political issue," says the International Peace Operations Association, a Virginia-based nonprofit group representing private military service companies. "This incident could adversely impact an industry that has been instrumental in supporting stability and reconstruction efforts not just in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan, Liberia, Haiti and all over the world." There are 15,000 to 20,000 civilian military contractors in Iraq working at jobs once reserved for soldiers, says Peter Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. The duties have veered from the mundane, such as delivering mail and serving food, to critical activities that include conducting interrogations and coordinating logistics, Singer says. "We have truly pushed the boundaries to this," he observes. (Washington Post)
May 2: The deaths of non-US soldiers in Iraq, while barely noticed by the US press, is setting off waves of protest in those soldiers' home countries and weakening an already-fragile coalition. A case in point is the March death of Estonian soldier Andres Nuiamae from a homemade bomb. Nuiamae's death barely made a dent in US coverage of the war, but in Estonia, which has not lost a soldier in war since 1920 outside of Estonians fighting for the former USSR, a wave of shock and grief has engulfed the tiny Baltic nation. His family received $160,000 in compensation and the nation observed a period of national mourning. While Estonia's government says its solidarity with the Iraqi occupation is unwavering, the citizens are saying something very different, a wave of protests and outcries that can't help but affect the government's resolve to stay the course with the US. "Nuiamae's killing was the equivalent of 2 percent of Estonia's 45-person contingent," observes columnist Elizabeth Sullvan. "That's many times the loss rate for American forces in Iraq, whose 700-plus deaths are balanced against hundreds of thousands of US troops who have rotated through the country since the war began." Another nation rethinking its allegiance with the coalition is Bulgaria, which is still reeling from the loss of five of its troops in a recent truck bombing. Bulgaria is resisting pressure to send more troops to offset the loss of the 1,400 Spaniards recently recalled home. Bulgaria's president, Georgi Parvanov, paid a surprise visit to Iraq to visit the troops and underscore his nation's engagement, and was shot at. He flew home in the company of 11 Bulgarian soldiers, one in a coffin. Seven of the others were said to be suffering "combat stress."
Thailand is another country in the throes of self-doubt over its support of the Iraqi occupation; the loss of two Thais in Karbala shocked the citizenry, who were under the mistaken impression that their 480 soldiers were strictly doing humanitarian relief work. Thailand's prime minister says that although the Thai troops will stay for now, if the situation gets too hot for them to safely carry out their mission of road repair and delivering food and medical care, they will be recalled. Poland is refusing to send more troops to augment the 2,500 Poles already in Iraq after losing a soldier in a convoy ambush. After Spain announced its pullout, a number of Central American countries are also pulling their troops out. The deaths of six Ukranian soldiers have resulted in stiff pressure for Ukraine to recall its troops. Even Italy, whose government has loudly insisted that its troops will stay even after the deaths of 17 troops, is feeling the pressure of a massive civilian protest against an Italian presence. The Bush administration is already paying $1.4 billion to have other nations' troops in Iraq; it hasn't said how much it will request for the next fiscal year, but it seems increasingly clear that for some nations, no amount of money may be enough. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
May 2: Britain is planning to send 4,000 more troops to help the US pacify Najaf, the Shia holy city in Iraq that is currently engulfed in violence. While neither the US nor Britain will confirm this, it is widely believed that PM Tony Blair agreed to send the troops after meeting with US president Bush during a summit of the two leaders in mid-April. Defense chiefs support the deployment, but warn Blair that the British army is at full stretch and would struggle to deal with any other international emergency requiring personnel. Senior officers also warn that the deployment of troops to Najaf and Kut, where heavy fighting has recently taken place, is likely to lead to extensive casualties. Najaf, which contains the most important Shia shrine in Iraq, is where Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shia cleric, has established a 3,000-strong militia force whose members are vehemently opposed to the occupation of their country. A senior Ministry of Defense official says: "Not sending troops was never really an option because of the message it would have sent to the rest of the coalition. It is difficult to predict how long these troops will have to remain in Iraq, but it won't be less than two years." This means that many troops, mainly from the infantry and logistical support units, will have to complete a six-month tour of duty in Iraq every 10 months. For reasons of morale, the interval target between operational tours is supposed to be 24 months. "Plans have been drawn up for the deployment of at least three battle groups and a brigade headquarters to Iraq. Officially, no decisions have been made on troop numbers, but privately units are already being told to prepare for operations." (Daily Telegraph)
May 2: Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler writes that "almost everything we were told before the war, other than that Saddam Hussein is bad, has turned out, so far, not to be the case: the weapons of mass destruction, the imagery of nuclear mushroom clouds, the links between al-Qaeda and Hussein, the welcome, the resistance, the costs, the numbers of troops needed." He argues that, as good as much of the war reportage has been, "it is prewar coverage that counts the most." Getler seems to be acknowledging that the Post, like most other US media outlets, accepted the fictions spun by the Bush administration about Iraq as fact, and played its part in shaping public opinion to favor the invasion. (New York Times)
May 2: The environmental group Clean Air Trust reveals that Exxon/Mobil, one of the world's largest oil and energy consortiums, is funding right-wing think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, in return for these organizations' promotion of Exxon/Mobil's agenda. AEI has responded by issuing reports that say the US government is spending too much money on cleaning up pollution, as Exxon/Mobil lobbies against the cleanup of train and marine diesel fuel as well as cleanup of its refineries. The company reports spending $6.8 million on such propaganda in 2003. Other recipients include The Annapolis Center (which just gave Republican senator James Inhofe an award for his pro-industry views on science); The American Legislative Exchange Council (which promotes industry viewpoints in state legislatures); The AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies (which poses as an impartial think tank); The Cato Institute (a well-known right-wing/libertarianthink tank); The Competitive Enterprise Institute (another reliable corporate ally very big against attempts to deal with global warming); The Federalist Society (the right-wing legal fraternity that provided such corporate defenders as EPA Assistant Administrator Jeffrey Holmstead); The Mercatus Center (a front group housed at George Mason University in Virginia); and The Tech Central Science Foundation (which whips up propaganda against the McCain-Lieberman climate change initiative). Many others have received Exxon/Mobil funding. (Clean Air Trust)

May 3: Families of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib have known for months that their relatives were being abused and tortured by US soldiers. Hiyam Abbas, whose 22-year old son, Hassan, has been in detention since November, has only been allowed to see her son once, in March. She says he told her then that he was forced to go naked in the prison all the time, they were menaced by dogs, and beaten with cables. "It's completely humiliating," she says tearfully. "My son is sick and suffering from hypertension. During the interview the American soldiers were standing so close to us. My son was crying." Hassan was detained after their house was broken into by gang members; his mother has no idea why he is being held. Of his captors, she says, "They are rubbish. Saddam Hussein may have oppressed us but he was better than the Americans. They are garbage." While US officials say "less than 20" soldiers participated in the abuse, Iraqi prisoners have a different take. Former prisoner Abu Salem, who spent six months inside Abu Ghraib between August and February, says abuse by US guards went on all the time. He says he has known about the practice of US soldiers posing for pictures with Iraqi prisoners for five months. "This didn't take place in the general camp but in individual cells," he says. Salem says he had been in the jail shortly before a visit from the International Red Cross in January. Until then, detainees in the prison wing had been kept naked. "The night before the Red Cross arrived, the American soldiers gave them some new clothes," he says. "They told us that if we complained to the Red Cross about our treatment we would be kept in prison forever. They said they would never let us out." Generally, detainees were tortured most frequently in the days immediately after their arrest, during interrogation, he adds. Many of the allegations made by Salem and other former detainees yesterday correspond with the damning internal US army report into Abu Ghraib.
The mother of another detainee, Samira Hassan, said the latest allegations were horribly familiar. Her 22-year-old son Abbas had been arrested three months ago while walking past a US military base in the Baghdad suburb of Amariya. She finally managed to see him in prison two weeks ago. "He told me they are using electric shocks against the prisoners and taking off their clothes," she says. "He also told me something I can hardly talk about -- that the Americans are raping the Iraqi men. This is terrible," she says. "This is shame for us. We have a different culture and different religion. They should not do that. We are not talking about one case but of thousands of cases. The Americans said they would bring us freedom. Is this what they mean?" 70-year old Qahta al-Salim, a Sunni cleric from Samarra, has been in detention for four months since a neighbor told US soldiers he supported the resistance. His son, Mutashar Qahtan, is trying in vain to get news about his father. "My father is an old man," the son says. "He has a heart complaint. The first thing they did was to make him stand up for 12 hours. They then took him to Tikrit and finally to here." Qahtan says the allegations of abuse by US soldiers were "nothing new." He says he spent 47 days last year in US custody in Tikrit. "Personally they didn't do anything wrong to me," he says. "But I saw for myself what they did to others. They forced a group of prisoners to stand naked on the roof for seven days. They also told us that all Iraqis were sh*t." Relatives insist that the majority of "security detainees" are innocent, and claim they are often victims of random arrest following attacks on coalition forces. Either way, the images of torture and humiliation would merely serve to fuel the armed struggle against US occupation, Majid al-Salim, the brother of the imprisoned sheikh, says. "The Americans are driving people into the arms of the Maqawama [resistance]," he says. "We now look back at Saddam's era with nostalgia. He was a good leader. There was security. We hope he comes back." (Guardian)

Naked Iraqi prisoner being menaced by attack dogs

May 3: The two British soldiers who provided the photos of British troops abusing Iraqi prisoners say that hundreds of photos were swapped between soldiers. The latest allegations, by two soldiers serving in the Queen's Lancashire Regiment who sparked controversy after giving the tabloid newspaper photographs showing British soldiers apparently ill-treating an Iraqi prisoner, suggest the problem is much more widespread than has been admitted to by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. After their initial claims last week, Blair said any misconduct in British ranks was "exceptional" and limited to a handful of servicemen. But the two soldiers say the photographs were "just the tip off the iceberg." They claim troops serving in southern Iraq had swapped hundreds of pictures among themselves. The soldiers, who say they stand by "every single word of our story," insist it is not a hoax and that the British Army knew a lot more had happened. One says, "Maybe the officers don't know what is going on -- but everyone else does. I have seen literally hundreds of pictures." Detailing allegations of other assaults, the soldiers describe a baton attack which left a prisoner with a compound fracture of his arm. Many of the pictures were destroyed last September when the soldiers' luggage was searched as they left Iraq. A Ministry of Defense spokesman says they are not aware of any other photographs of prisoners being mistreated or of a culture of trading pictures. He says: "If people have got evidence of such activity, then they should bring it to the attention of the Army authorities." (Independent/Independent Media)
May 3: Although the US media has been relatively compliant in portraying Bush and his officials as shocked and anguished by the Iraqi prisoner abuse revelations, the media in the rest of the world has not been so forgiving. Comparisons between Bush and Saddam Hussein are rampant throughout the world's newspapers. The picture of the hooded Iraqi prisoner standing on a box, electrodes attached to fingers and genitals, is "an image that would do Saddam proud," said the Sunday Herald in Glasgow, Scotland. Many observers emphasized the fact that the abuses occurred in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison where Iraqis were tortured under Hussein's regime. The English language Web site of al-Jazeera quotes Saudi commentator Dawud Shiryan as saying, "Abu Ghraib prison was used for torture in Saddam's time. People will ask now: 'What's the difference between Saddam and Bush?' Nothing!" Shiryan said the photographs "will increase the hatred of America, not just in Iraq but abroad." In a front page story, the Yemen Times reports that many Yemenis "argue that even though Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, the crimes carried out by US soldiers are viewed very much the same." The Bahrain Tribune, a daily newspaper in the Persian Gulf emirate, says: "Bush seized all Saddam's properties and inherited everything Saddam had, including his torturing tools and methods." "The cells, which were criticized by Bush and his mouthpieces, are now used by Bush for jailing Iraqis who oppose the plundering and looting of the wealth of their country," the newspaper continues. "The torturing rooms, which were exposed to the whole world to highlight Saddam's barbaric behavior are now used by Bush and his soldiers to exercise their sick, sadistic and inhuman behavior." The paper said the scenes in the photographs cannot be treated as "rare incidents." "We are talking about the nature of an imperialist, immoral, racist and crusader President who should be driven out of Iraq and a corrupted, immoral, barbaric and impure army that should be forced to end its occupation of a sacred Islamic territory," the paper said.
Musa Keilani, writing in the Jordan Times, sees an element of hypocrisy in the Arab reaction. When Hussein was in power, he writes, "the overriding feeling among the Arabs" was that the "the Arab world needed a leader like Saddam to challenge the West, particularly the US, and, of course, Israel. In the bargain, we all simply forgot that Saddam's continued survival in power in Iraq was at the expense of the basic human rights and well-being of the people of Iraq -- or most of the people of Iraq. Therefore, few wanted to focus attention on what was going on in Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq." The photos of US prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib "brought back memories of the Saddam era to many, and thus the basic question was immediately raised: Is this the way the US, the country which boasts of a great record of respect for human rights and dignity, treats its prisoners?" Keilani says yes. "The US, having invaded Iraq in the name of non-existent weapons of mass destruction and connections with international terrorism and then having shifted the argument to 'democracy' and human rights, is now kicking around the people of Iraq, whether in prison or otherwise. They have no respect for the people of Iraq and they consider every Iraqi as an enemy until proven otherwise." Ehsan Ahrari, columnist for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times, says the photos of Abu Ghraib undermine the Bush administration's only remaining justification for the war. "Once it could not find weapons of mass destruction to justify its invasion of Iraq, the administration of US President George W Bush claimed that the liberation of Iraqis from the most inhumane rule of a dictator was a good enough reason for taking military action against that country. Now reports of the US military's abuse of Iraqi prisoners in that notorious prison threaten to deprive the United States of even that wobbly claim." (Washington Post)
May 3: Seemingly oblivious of the widening prison abuse scandal, Bush tells a campaign crowd in Michigan, "Because we acted, torture rooms are closed, rape rooms no longer exist, mass graves are no longer a possibility in Iraq." He uses almost the exact same phrasing he has used for the past six months, essentially refusing to deal with the reality of the prison scandal. (White House/Slate)
May 3: The opium crop in Afghanistan has broken all known records, flooding Central Asia with cheap heroin, threatening the stability of border countries, and providing al-Qaeda financiers with more funds than ever before. A Western-led campaign against opium-growing and heroin laboratories has been a wholesale failure, and drug-control experts say the number of processing facilities in Afghanistan has exploded over the last year. The trade and huge sums of money involved threaten to undermine vulnerable bordering states such as Tajikistan. "There's absolutely no threat to the labs inside Afghanistan," says Major Avaz Yuldashov of the Tajikistan Drug Control Agency. "Our intelligence shows there are 400 labs making heroin there, and 80 of them are situated right along our border. Some of them even work outside, in the open air." Some 200,000 acres of opium poppies have been planted in Afghanistan and the country's late-summer harvest will produce three-fourths of the world's heroin. That will mean further billions for growers, smugglers, corrupt officials and Afghan warlords, not to mention to al-Qaeda and its sister groups, which are staking their claims to territories in Central Asia. "Drug trafficking from Afghanistan is the main source of support for international terrorism now," Yuldashov says. "That's quite clear." But in recent US congressional testimony about heroin flow out of Afghanistan, Drug Enforcement Administration head Karen Tandy spoke only of "potential links" and "possible relationships" between Afghan traffickers and terrorists. Drug agents in Central Asia say they're baffled by Tandy's hedging, though US observers note a clear desire from the Bush campaign to minimize the issue before the US elections. "The connection is absolutely obvious to us," says Colonel Alexander Kondratiyev, a senior Russian officer who has served with border guards in Tajikistan for nearly a decade. "Drugs, weapons, ammunition, terrorism, more drugs, more terrorism -- it's a closed circle."
That circle has profound implications for the US-led fight against international terrorism. Regional diplomats, aid workers and law-enforcement officials fear that the expanding drug trade will destabilize one of the "stans," the five former Soviet republics that gained independence after the USSR collapsed. They worry about the emergence of a Central Asian narco-state, a country dominated by the drug economy and effectively controlled by a heroin mafia with roots in Afghanistan and ties to al-Qaeda and regional Islamists. "We have a deep responsibility to keep these Central Asian republics from becoming failed states," says a Western diplomat in Tajikistan. "Look what happened in Afghanistan. It was a failed state -- and it became a nest for terrorists. We have to stop that same thing from happening here. For our own security, we can't afford it." At particular risk is Tajikistan, a desperately poor, predominantly Muslim nation of 7 million. Tajikistan produces almost no opium or heroin of its own, but it has become a natural pathway for traffickers due to its 900-mile border with Afghanistan. Also, enough heroin has been "falling off the trucks" in Tajikistan that it now has galloping rates of heroin addiction, drug crime and HIV infection. The Tajik Drug Control Agency -- outmanned, outgunned and poorly equipped -- said it managed to seize nearly 6 tons of heroin from traffickers last year. Senior commanders estimate they catch about 20 percent of the traffic. Some analysts think it's probably about half that much. Tajikistan, isolated and landlocked, has almost no industrial economy other than a state-controlled aluminum smelter. Foreign investment is minuscule; not a single American firm is operating in the country. "Nobody even comes to look anymore," says a foreign diplomat. The national budget is barely $300 million a year, a pittance compared with the size of the drug economy. The heroin trade alone, Yuldashov says, is 10 times bigger. That kind of disparity leaves many Tajiks vulnerable to corruption and compromise by wealthy drug mafiosi, especially when the average salary is $10 a month and 80 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. A single trip as a drug courier can feed a Tajik family for a month.
Another worrisome development is in the offing for Tajikistan: Next month, along the Afghan border, Russia will begin withdrawing 2,200 border-control officers who've been stationed here since the Soviet era. Their departure and the loss of Russian funding could further undermine Tajikistan's ability to defend itself from Afghan drug traffickers. Tajik officers and army conscripts will take over from the Russians, although they'll have no night-vision equipment, satellite phones or helicopters. Even now, many of the border posts lack two-way radios and binoculars. It remains to be seen whether European countries, the target destinations for much of Afghanistan's opium and heroin, will pick up the slack. The United States contributes to UN drug programs in the region, but the DEA has only a minimal presence here in terms of human intelligence: The DEA has deployed two agents to cover all of Afghanistan. There are no DEA agents in Tajikistan or neighboring Kyrgyzstan, another paradise for traffickers. "We know shockingly little about how the drug trade operates out here," says a Western official. Heroin moves out of Afghanistan via the so-called southern route -- through Iran or Pakistan -- or the northern route, which makes its way through the Central Asian "stans." It's unknown how much drug traffic passes through Turkmenistan. The secretive nation doesn't release information on drug seizures and no longer cooperates with regional drug-control initiatives. "They have open borders with Afghanistan, but not even the UN knows what they're doing" about drug trafficking, says Kamol Dusmetov, the head of the Uzbek National Center for Drug Control. Heroin is carried out of Afghanistan in vegetable trucks, fuel tankers and donkey carts. It's hidden in women's underwear, children's backpacks or sacks of pistachios. In Tajikistan, well-organized teams of couriers wade across the Amu Daria and Pyanj rivers, usually at night, backed up by accomplices armed with satellite phones, off-road vehicles, bales of bribe money and plenty of heavy weapons. In one recent seizure, troopers found $280,000 in cash stuffed among the 1-kilogram bags of heroin. In Uzbekistan, which has an 80-mile border with Afghanistan, smuggling can be more rudimentary. Dusmetov says rural couriers sometimes forced their dogs and donkeys to swallow balloons full of heroin. They tie a string to the balloons and wrap the other end of the string around the animal's tooth. Once across the border, the smuggler pulls the string and retrieves the balloons. "Borders [throughout the region] are not guarded well," Dusmetov says. "In many places, like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, borders are virtually open. You jump across a ditch and you're in another country." (Knight-Ridder)
May 3: US military officials debunk Bush administration claims that foreign fighters and terrorists make up the bulk of the anti-American insurgency in Fallujah and the rest of Iraq. While the claims bolster the position of the administration that ordinary Iraqis are not rising up en masse against US occupation, and that the occupation is a key element in the war against terrorism, military experts confirm that foreigners are only playing a tiny role in Iraq's insurgency. In Fallujah, US military leaders say around 90 percent of the 1,000 or more fighters battling the Marines are Iraqis. To date, there have been no confirmed US captures of foreign fighters in Fallujah although a handful of suspects have been arrested. Those who have spent time inside Fallujah describe a city consumed with the fight fathers and sons fighting for the local mujahedeen and wives and daughters cooking and caring for the wounded. "The whole city supports this jihad," says Houssam Ali Ahmed, a Fallujah resident who fled to Baghdad when his neighborhood was caught in the fighting. "The people of Fallujah are fighting to defend their homes. We are Muslim mujahedeen fighting a holy war."
Elsewhere in Iraq, US military commanders say foreigners have an even smaller role in the insurgency. In Baghdad, Major General Martin Dempsey has said foreigners account for just 1 percent or so of guerrillas. Dempsey said his 1st Armored Division detained just 50 to 75 foreign fighter suspects in Baghdad over the past year, among a population of captured guerrillas that reached 2,000. In the south, no one has suggested that foreigners pack the ranks of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army. The group, which has fought U.S. and allied troops across southern Iraq, is made up of

THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy

Written and Compiled by Black Max

May 2004:

Week One

British soldiers are shown abusing Iraqi prisoners

US soldier beating an Iraqi prisoner

Private mercenaries and intelligence agents are involved in the prisoner abuse

An Iraqi prisoner, hooded and wired with electrodes.

Taguba report shows abuse to be systematic and approved at high levels

Iraqi prisoner apparently beaten to death by US soldiers

Naked Iraqi prisoner being menaced by attack dogs