War & Peace: December 2004 Archives

From the Washington Post...

The Bush administration is facing a wave of new allegations that the abuse of foreign detainees in U.S. military custody was more widespread, varied and grave in the past three years than the Defense Department has long maintained.

New documents released yesterday detail a series of probes by Army criminal investigators into multiple cases of threatened executions of Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers, as well as of thefts of currency and other private property, physical assaults, and deadly shootings of detainees at detention camps in Iraq.

In many of the newly disclosed cases, Army commanders chose noncriminal punishments for those involved in the abuse, or the investigations were so flawed that prosecutions could not go forward, the documents show. Human rights groups said yesterday that, as a result, the penalties imposed were too light to suit the offenses.

The complaints arose from several thousand new pages of internal reports, investigations and e-mails from different agencies, which, with other documents released in the past two weeks, paint a finer-grained picture of military abuse and criminal behavior at prisons in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan than previously available.

The documents disclosed by a coalition of groups that had sued the government to obtain them make it clear that both regular and Special Forces soldiers took part in the abuse, and that the misconduct included shocking detainees with electric guns, shackling them without food and water, and wrapping a detainee in an Israeli flag.

Somehow, I find the bit about the flag to be the most disturbing part of a very disturbing story. Because not only would the detainees regard this as an insult, but clearly, American soldiers did too.

I was going to write something sarcastic and bitter, but I just... can't.

So sick.

From Salon.com/Joe Conason:

...An internal FBI memo indicates that the directive to discard traditional restraints came from the very highest civilian official in the Pentagon: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

That revealing memo is dated May 10, 2004, a time when the Abu Ghraib revelations were humiliating the United States before the entire world. An e-mail, it is addressed to FBI counterterrorism officer Thomas J. Harrington from an agent whose name is redacted (along with much else), and its subject is captioned "Instructions to GTMO [Guantánamo] Interrogators." The memo's obvious purpose is to set down, for the record, the FBI's opposition to the Pentagon's use of coercive and abusive methods when questioning the Guantánamo detainees. It describes the FBI's fundamental disagreement over interrogation tactics with Gen. Geoffrey Miller and Gen. Michael Dunlavey, then the military commanders at Guantánamo Bay.

"I will have to do some digging into old files," the unnamed author begins. "We did advise each supervisor that went to GTMO to stay in line with Bureau policy and not deviate from that ... I went to GTMO ... We had also met with Generals Dunlevy & Miller explaining our position (Law Enforcement Techniques) vs. DoD [Department of Defense]. Both agreed the Bureau has their way of doing business and DoD has their marching orders from the SecDef [Secretary of Defense]. Although the two techniques [of interrogation] differed drastically, both Generals believed they had a job to accomplish."

The e-mail goes on to recall how, during the questioning of one prisoner, the Pentagon interrogators wanted to "pursue expeditiously their methods" to "get more out of him ... We were given a so-called deadline to use our traditional methods."

Hey, even the Republicans are turning against the guy.

In recent days, conservative GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska raised public concerns about Rumsfeld's management of the war. William Kristol, a former Republican White House aide and a leading conservative commentator, and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, senior commander during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, also have offered harsh indictments. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a prominent moderate, criticized the Pentagon on Thursday for providing inadequate armor protection for troops in Iraq.

Republicans have been largely supportive of President Bush's Iraqi policies. But there appears to be growing Republican concern about the conduct of the war.

Perhaps he'll retire soon. For his health. Yeah, that's the ticket...

From CNN:

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld faced tough questioning Wednesday from troops about to be deployed to Iraq.

Soldiers in Kuwait peppered Rumsfeld with queries about the standard of equipment they would be using and about the Pentagon's "stop-loss" policy, which prevents troops from leaving the military service, even if they are eligible to retire or quit.

One soldier, identified by The Associated Press as Army Spc. Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team, asked Rumsfeld why more military combat vehicles were not reinforced for battle conditions.

More precisely...

Army Spc. Thomas Wilson, a 31-year-old member of a Tennessee National Guard unit, asked Rumsfeld why vehicle armor is still scarce, nearly two years after the start of the war.

"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?" Wilson asked.

The question prompted shouts of approval and applause from the estimated 2,300 soldiers assembled in a hangar in Kuwait to hear Rumsfeld.

His wife is unsurprised.

Regina Wilson wasn't entirely surprised to see her husband, a guardsman bound for Iraq, on television Wednesday challenging Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with a tough question.

"He is always like that," she said. "I don't think he understands the concept of biting one's tongue. It wouldn't matter if it was Bush himself standing there. He would have dissed him the same."

I'm sure she was also unsurprised that Rummy's answer sucked.

"As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want," Rumsfeld said.

He added, "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank, and it can [still] be blown up."

Remember when Michael Dukakis was sunk by his tepid answer to a question about the death penalty, and his feelings about it if his wife were to be murdered?

Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but I think this may have been such a moment for Donald. It's always been clear to some of us that He Just Doesn't Get It. Now maybe the Fox News watchers will see it too.

From the NY Times

A classified cable sent by the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief in Baghdad has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon, according to government officials.

The cable, sent late last month as the officer ended a yearlong tour, presented a bleak assessment on matters of politics, economics and security, the officials said. They said its basic conclusions had been echoed in briefings presented by a senior C.I.A. official who recently visited Iraq.

The officials described the two assessments as having been "mixed," saying that they did describe Iraq as having made important progress, particularly in terms of its political process, and credited Iraqis with being resilient.

But over all, the officials described the station chief's cable in particular as an unvarnished assessment of the difficulties ahead in Iraq. They said it warned that the security situation was likely to get worse, including more violence and sectarian clashes, unless there were marked improvements soon on the part of the Iraqi government, in terms of its ability to assert authority and to build the economy.

Together, the appraisals, which follow several other such warnings from officials in Washington and in the field, were much more pessimistic than the public picture being offered by the Bush administration before the elections scheduled for Iraq next month, the officials said.

No doubt if Bush could pronounce "nattering nabobs of negativism", he would utter the phrase disdainfully... but a purge is worth a thousand words.

Via ABC news in Australia...

US military review panels can use evidence obtained through torture in deciding the fate of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, the US Government has conceded.

Lawyers acting for Australian detainees in Cuba have called on the Australian Government to renounce the practice.

About 70 years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled evidence gained through torture was inadmissible.

Deputy associate Attorney-General, Brian Boyle, has told the District Court in Washington DC, that the Guantanamo review panels are allowing such evidence.

And from another article...

The United States Navy is investigating photos posted on the Internet that appear to depict abuse of Iraqi detainees during their capture in May 2003 by Navy special forces, a Navy spokesman said on Friday.

At least a dozen photos showing bloodied detainees were handed over to officials at the Naval Special Warfare Command at Coronado, California, by an Associated Press reporter who found them on a commercial photo-sharing website.

The photographs, posted by a woman who said her husband brought them home from Iraq, appear to show the aftermath of raids on civilian homes, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

The AP reported that Navy SEALs were seen sitting on hooded and bound detainees, holding a gun to a detainee's bloodied head, and placing a boot on the chest of a prone man.

Other photos showed grinning US personnel sitting or lying atop three hooded prisoners in the bed of a utility, the AP reported.

To reiterate: bleh.

Well, when you have a war... you end up with war widows.

As if by ricochet, each American service man and woman killed in combat leaves behind a trail of secondary casualties: spouses, children, parents. Through Nov. 20, 45% of the 1,374 U.S. service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since September 2001 were married, the Defense Department says.

Considered survivors, the widows and widowers of war dead are among the conflict's walking wounded. Amid heavy fighting in recent weeks, the toll is rising.

Full story from USA Today

Incidentally, when did USA Today start publishing longer, better articles? A welcome change...