Drop charges against Lynndie

[Pure]

hi cant and mcfb; this thread is about the US military prisons and the abuses that have come to light.

Today's news, two items:

The judge in the courts martial [re Abu Ghraib] has ruled that the higher ups, can be called:


Gen John Abizaid, US central command.

LT Gen Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition forces in Iraq

Maj Gen Barbara Fast, military intelligence commander

Col Thomas Pappas commander US intelligence brigade.

Brg Gen Janis Kaarpinski, commander of MP brigade, in charge of all prisons in Iraq.

Rumsfeld is on record in a memo as approving of 'water boarding'
"A technique in which the detainee is strapped to a board and dunked in water to simulate drowning."

He believes this method is NOT torture, but withdrew approval after military lawyers objected.

 

[cantdog]

The dude is getting right into detail, isn't he? Suggesting specific moves on the torture floor...

 

[Pure]

Yes, Cant, there are some pretty specific lists floating around. Tonight on CNN, the methods of 'clothing removal' and 'having dogs around' were mentioned.

The pentagon claims that waterboarding (dunking), was only *theoretically proposed (as justified) but not actually carried out.

There is a devastating critique of Abu Ghraib 'abuse' so-called. at

http://slate.msn.com/id/2102373/

by Hitchens.

He believes we haven't seen the worst, i.e., the murders, weird sex acts, and rapes.

 

[Pure]

the approved list

The Pentagon

In a Nov. 27, 2002, memo to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon's chief lawyer, William J. Haynes II, recommended that he approve the use of 14 interrogation techniques on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, such as yelling at a detainee during questioning and the use of "stress positions," like standing, for a maximum of four hours. Haynes also recommended approval of one technique among four harsher methods requested by U.S. military authorities at Guantanamo Bay: use of "mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing."

Among the techniques that Rumsfeld approved on Dec. 2, 2002, in addition to yelling and stress positions:

-- Use of 20-hour interrogations.

-- Removal of all comfort items, including religious items.

-- Removal of clothing.

-- Using detainees' "individual phobias such as fear of dogs to induce stress."

In a Jan. 15, 2003, note, Rumsfeld rescinded his approval and said a review would be conducted to consider legal, policy and operational issues relating to interrogations of detainees held by the U.S. military in the war on terrorism.

Rumsfeld's decision was prompted at least in part by objections raised by some military lawyers who felt the techniques approved for use at Guantanamo Bay might go too far, officials said earlier this year.

 

[Pure]

Abu Ghraib has been declared a crime scene, not to be tampered with.

 

[Pure]

Testimony Ties Key Officer to Cover-Up of Iraqi Death
By DEXTER FILKINS

Published: June 25, 2004


BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 24 — The company commander of the unit charged with abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib testified Thursday that the top military intelligence officer at the prison was in the cellblock the night a prisoner died during interrogation.

His testimony suggested the officer, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, was aware of efforts to conceal the death.




Testifying at a hearing for one of the seven accused members of his unit, the 372nd Military Police Company, Capt. Donald Reese said that one night in November 2003, he saw the bloodied body of an Iraqi prisoner who had died during interrogation inside a shower stall in a prison cellblock. He said a number of officers were standing around it, discussing what to do.

One of them, he said, was Colonel Pappas, the head of the military intelligence at the prison. "I heard Colonel Pappas say, `I'm not going to go down alone for this,' " Captain Reese testified.

An autopsy the next day established the cause of death as a blood clot from trauma, he said.

The hearing was for Specialist Sabrina Harman, 26, of Alexandria, Va., who appears in some of the photographs of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib showing a human pyramid of detainees. Specialist Harman also appears in a photograph with the dead detainee referred to in Captain Reese's testimony, his body packed in ice. She has been charged with conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, making a false statement and assault.

In addition to Colonel Pappas, Captain Reese testified that among the others in the room were members of the Central Intelligence Agency. He also said there was a female major present, as well as a man named Jordan. It was not clear whether he was referring to Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the head of the interrogations center at Abu Ghraib.

Captain Reese, whose testimony lasted several hours and was covered in a news pool report, said he had been told the detainee had died from "a heart attack." But, he said, the body was "bleeding from the head, nose, mouth."

The testimony appears to be the first to suggest that a senior officer was aware of a suspicious death immediately after it happened, and that he was involved in or knew of attempts to hide it. The testimony also offered a wealth of details on the case, from a request for ice to preserve the detainee's body to an attempt to spirit it out of the prison, connected to an intravenous drip to make it appear the dead man was simply ill.

Captain Reese testified that the detainee had been captured during a firefight and had died during his interrogation. "He died in the shower," Captain Reese said. "I was told that when he was brought in he was combative, that they took him up to the room and during the interrogation he passed."

The body was left locked in the shower overnight. The next day an intravenous drip was fitted to it and it was taken away. "I was told the reason they did that was they didn't want the other inmates to get upset he had passed during the interrogation," he said. He said he was told the body "was taken to Baghdad somewhere."

An American military policeman said in sworn testimony in April that the man had been brought to Abu Ghraib by "O.G.A.," initials for other government agency, or the C.I.A., with a sandbag over his head. Military guards took the prisoner to a shower room at the prison, which was used as a temporary interrogation center, according to the account by Specialist Jason A. Kenner, also of the 372nd Military Police Company.

"He went into the shower for interrogation and about an hour later he died on them," said Specialist Kenner, whose account left unclear whether the detainee had been examined by a doctor or given any medical treatment before he died.

Captain Reese's testimony added further details. He said that when Colonel Pappas and the other officers were gathered around the body, a man he identified only as Jordan ordered a lower-ranking officer "to get some ice out of the chow hall" to store the body.

"Jordan" and Colonel Pappas were "talking about the situation" and the "O.G.A. guys were visibly upset this had happened." Captain Reese said the incident occurred after an attack on the International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad. Meshing with other accounts, he said the detainee had been brought in alive by Navy Seals. Captain Reese said the detainee was one of three men captured; the other two had been killed in the fighting.

 

[cantdog]

Thanks again.

It is lovely, but I do doubt we shall see war crimes tribunals on even a colonel.

cantdog, being pessimistic

 

[Pure]

Nice discussion of Bush Administrations defense of torture, and memos, etc. Article by Lewis.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17230
------
La Gegene

http://www.antiwar.com/ips/godoy.php?articleid=2897

June 29, 2004
US Hawks Owe More to the French Than They Realize

by Julio Godoy

[start excerpts]
Journalists who covered the Algerian war have found similarities between French military doctrines and the U.S. army conduct in Iraq.

"As I saw the photographs taken by U.S. soldiers in Abu Ghraib which shocked the world a few weeks ago, I immediately knew that I had seen comparable documents in Algeria in the 1950s," journalist Jacques Duquesne told IPS.

Duquesne, senior editor with the French weekly L'Express, covered the Algerian war of independence (1954-1962) fought between the French army and the National Liberation Front (FLN), the Algerian independence guerrilla movement.

The French army resorted to extensive torture and summary executions in a fruitless effort to break the freedom movement. France accepted Algerian independence in 1962 under Gen. Charles de Gaulle.

"In Algeria, the French army widely employed what our soldiers called la gegene, electroshocks in the genitals," Duquesne recalled. "The photos from Abu Ghraib could have been taken in Algeria."

The French military campaign in Algeria was seen by many as the first experiment in anti-guerrilla warfare, and it influenced U.S. army methods in Vietnam and in Latin America.

Marie-Monique Robin, TV journalist and producer of a documentary on the French hand in counter-insurgency operations in South America in the 1970s points out that French generals who had fought in the Algerian war went on to teach at U.S. military academies.

"Gen. Paul Aussaresses, the second highest French officer in Algeria in the late 1950s, and responsible for most of the tortures, taught at Fort Bragg between 1960 and 1963," Robin told IPS. Fort Bragg is the headquarters of the U.S. Army special operations command, the military unit specializing in psychological warfare, including torture.

Aussaresses also taught at Argentinean and Brazilian military academies during the early 1970s. Some years later, the armies of those countries launched Operation Condor, a coordinated campaign to exterminate opponents of the right-wing dictatorships.

Aussaresses has publicly admitted that during the Algerian war French officers used the term "death squads" to describe clandestine military units given charge of torturing and executing Algerians considered to be terrorists.

"Torture was efficient," he said in a book titled Algeria: Special Services 1955-1957 published in 2001. "The majority of people crack and talk. Then, most of the time, we killed them. Did this pose problems of conscience? I have to say, No. I was used to those things."
[end excerpts]