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What every American should be made to learn about the IG Torture Report

August 25, 2009 /

torture

torture

torture

Specifically the report describes the following treatment of detainees:

(a) threatening to blow their brains out, torture them with drills, rape their mothers, and murder their children; (b) choking them until they pass out; (c) pouring water down their throats to drown them; (d) hanging them by their arms until their shoulders are dislocated; (e) blowing smoke in their face until they vomit; (f) putting them in diapers, dousing them with cold water, and leaving them on a concrete floor to induce hypothermia; and (g) beating them with the butt of a rifle — all things that we have always condemend as “torture” and which our laws explicitly criminalize as felonies.

Glenn Greenwald: What every American should be made to learn about the IG Torture Report

(via Johnny Brainwash)

Calley Apologizes for 1968 My Lai Massacre

August 24, 2009 /

Over forty-one years after the My Lai Massacre, when US troops killed more than 500 men, women and children in Vietnam, the former Army lieutenant who was convicted for his role in the killings has publicly apologized. William Calley was the only US soldier held legally responsible for the slayings. He was convicted on twenty-two counts of murder, and his sentence was later commuted by President Reagan. Last week, William Calley publicly apologized for the first time, saying, “There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai.” He added that he had been following orders.

Seymour Hersh describing the My Lai Massacre and the role of the former Army lieutenant William Calley:

In any case, one mother tucked a child, a two- or three-year-old boy, under her stomach, and somehow he survived all the bullets. And they heard a keening noise, the soldiers told me. And this little boy climbed his way up through the ditch full of other people’s blood, got to the top and began to run across the—you know, just to run away. And Lieutenant Calley turned to Meadlo, his most dependable shooter—others had stopped at a certain point or shot high—and said, “Meadlo, plug him.” And Meadlo looked at one person and couldn’t do it. And Calley then, with a great—you know, very saucy-like—grabbed his carbine—officers had a smaller rifle called a carbine—ran behind him and shot him.

Everybody remembered that, because the next morning, Meadlo was walking on patrol with the soldiers—they moved on to a few clicks away, a mile or so away, and began to patrol again, as they always did—just another day’s work, I guess. I don’t know. And he stepped on a land mine—Meadlo did—and blew his right leg off at the knee. And when the medevac was coming—they called in a chopper to take him away—he began to issue an oath: “God has punished me, Lieutenant Calley, and God will punish you. God has punished me.” And the kids, in telling me about this a year and a half later, all remembered how angry they were. “Get him out of here! Get him out of here!” They didn’t want to hear this.

Democracy Now: Calley Apologizes for 1968 My Lai Massacre

Reports: CIA hired Blackwater to help assassinate terrorists

August 21, 2009 /

The CIA in 2004 outsourced portions of a secret program to kidnap or assassinate terrorists to the controversial private security firm Blackwater USA, now called Xe Services, according to news reports.

The New York Times reports that according to current and former government officials, Blackwater’s involvement was a key factor in CIA Director Leon Panetta’s decision to cancel the program and divulge it to Congress during an emergency meeting with Congress in June. Congress had not been informed previously of the program’s existence, allegedly under orders from then-Vice President Dick Cheney, as The Christian Science Monitor reported last month.

Christian Science Monitor: Reports: CIA hired Blackwater to help assassinate terrorists

(via Disinfo)

The Fifty Top U.S. War Criminals Who Need To Be Prosecuted

August 19, 2009 /

Compiled below, in hopes that it may be of some assistance to Eric Holder, John Conyers, Patrick Leahy, active citizens, foreign courts, the International Criminal Court, law firms preparing civil suits, and local or state prosecutors with decency and nerve is a list of 50 top living U.S. war criminals. These are men and women who helped to launch wars of aggression or who have been complicit in lesser war crimes. These are not the lowest-ranking employees or troops who managed to stray from official criminal policies. These are the makers of those policies.

The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have seen the United States target civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, use antipersonnel weapons including cluster bombs in densely settled urban areas, use white phosphorous as a weapon, use depleted uranium weapons, employ a new version of napalm found in Mark 77 firebombs, engage in collective punishment of Iraqi civilian populations — including by blocking roads, cutting electricity and water, destroying fuel stations, planting bombs in farm fields, demolishing houses, and plowing down orchards — detain people without charge or legal process without the rights of prisoners of war, imprison children, torture, and murder.

The Fifty Top U.S. War Criminals Who Need To Be Prosecuted

Goes on to list the names and probable whereabouts for 50 war criminals.

(via Cryptogon)

The “safe haven” myth

August 19, 2009 /

At an appearance before the Veterans of Foreign Wars yesterday, President Obama defended U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, calling it a “war of necessity.” He claimed that “our new strategy has a clear mission and defined goals — to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies,” and he declared that “If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

This is a significant statement. In effect, the president was acknowledging that the only strategic rationale for an increased commitment in Afghanistan is the fear that if the Taliban isn’t defeated in Afghanistan, they will eventually allow al Qaeda to re-establish itself there, which would then enable it to mount increasingly threatening attacks on the United States.

This is the kind of assertion that often leads foreign policy insiders to nod their heads in agreement, but it shouldn’t be accepted uncritically. Here are a few reasons why the “safe haven” argument ought to be viewed with some skepticism.

Foreign Policy: The “safe haven” myth

(via Jorn Barger)

Target Of Obama-Era Rendition Alleges Torture

August 13, 2009 /

Just because the crazies are sinking their fangs into Obama lately doesn’t let him off the hook:

According to court papers, on April 7, 2009, Azar and a Lebanese-American colleague, Dinorah Cobos, were seized by “at least eight” heavily armed FBI agents in Kabul, Afghanistan, where they had traveled for a meeting to discuss the status of one of his company’s U.S. government contracts. The trip ended with Azar alighting in manacles from a Gulfstream V executive jet in Manassas, Virginia, where he was formally arrested and charged in a federal antitrust probe.

This rendition involved no black sites and was clearly driven by a desire to get the target quickly before a court. Also unlike renditions of the Bush-era, the target wasn’t even a terror suspect; rather, he was suspected of fraud. But in a troubling intimation of the last administration, accusations of torture hover menacingly over the case. According to papers filed by his lawyers, Azar was threatened, subjected to coercive interrogation techniques and induced to sign a confession. Azar claims he was hooded, stripped naked (while being photographed) and subjected to a “body cavity search.”

Huffington Post: Target Of Obama-Era Rendition Alleges Torture

John Metta: Our soldiers should die in war

August 7, 2009 /

While it’s easy to sit in a room somewhere and discuss the merits of building autonomous vehicles to do the “dirty work,” I’m very disturbed by the trend. In fact, it quite sickens me.

I feel that we are at a time when we should be seriously seeking to understand the humanity of each other. Other peoples, other cultures, other ways of being. Looking at the news, it may seem that often, the only thing that we have in common with a person on the other side of the planet is that we are both human.

But, I feel it’s important to remember that this commonality is the only thing that is important. The most important thing we have is our humanity, and humanity means that with makes us human.

Sitting in an office, safely controlling a machine that will extinguish the lives of human beings is not going to connect us to another human. It is not going to give us the chance to learn about that person’s worldview, nor is it going to give us the chance to describe ours. There is no conversation. There is only death.

And this is death at no cost to ourselves.

How disconnected do we want to be? Will we accept war without a price?

Positively Glorious: Our soldiers should die in war

See also: Military Robots and the Laws of War (adapted from PW Singer’s Wired for War)

My position is simpler: we shouldn’t fight wars.

Blackwater founder accused of murder

August 5, 2009 /

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”

Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder

(via Disinfo)

Future of Cyber Security: What Are the Rules of Engagement?

August 3, 2009 /

The fireworks weren’t only in the sky this past Fourth of July but were seemingly in the Intertubes, too, when U.S. and South Korean government websites were struck by a series of cyber sorties that knocked a few sites off line and left some people seeing red — as in the crimson Communist hue.

Anonymous South Korean intelligence agents blamed North Korea for the attacks — despite presenting no evidence to back the claim. U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Michigan) even called on the administration to retaliate with a “show of force” against the Communist regime.

The congressman’s extreme reaction to a minor web attack is a stark reminder that we’ve entered the age of the cyber wars. It’s also a reminder that there are numerous questions — ethical, legal and even bureaucratic — that need to be sorted out about the rules of engagement before the U.S. launches any cyber volleys in retaliation for an attack or otherwise. The most basic being, what constitutes an attack, how do we identify its source and what’s an acceptable response?

Wired: Future of Cyber Security: What Are the Rules of Engagement?

Declassified Docs Reveal Military Operative Spied on WA Peace Groups

August 2, 2009 /

Newly declassified documents reveal that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in Washington state was actually an informant for the US military. The man everyone knew as “John Jacob” was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. The military’s role in the spying raises questions about possibly illegal activity. The Posse Comitatus law bars the use of the armed forces for law enforcement inside the United States. The Fort Lewis military base denied our request for an interview. But in a statement to Democracy Now!, the base’s Public Affairs office publicly acknowledged for the first time that Towery is a military operative. “This could be one of the key revelations of this era,” said Eileen Clancy, who has closely tracked government spying on activist organizations.

Democracy Now: Declassified Docs Reveal Military Operative Spied on WA Peace Groups, Activist Friends Stunned

(Thanks Gabbo)

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