Sen Whitehouse: The Storyline We Have Been Told About Torture Is False In Every Dimension!

Part 2

Part 3

The Congressional Acquiesence of the Moron's Crimes Continues

So much for Bushmonkey broken ideology. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out!

Bush set to go with a whimper 

By Jim Lobe 

WASHINGTON - With only three months left in office, United States President George W Bush appears increasingly determined to calm the international waters he so vigorously churned up, especially during his first term. 

In just the last several days, he has effectively rehabilitated a charter member of the "axis of evil" - North Korea - by agreeing to take it off the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism in exchange for Pyongyang's agreement to resume its dismantling of a key nuclear facility and cooperate with US and international inspectors. 

As for the other surviving member of the axis, Iran, leaks from the State Department and elsewhere over the last several days suggest that Bush will announce Washington's intention to open a US Interest Section in Tehran shortly after the November 4 presidential elections, effectively re-establishing diplomatic relations that were broken off 29 years ago. 

Although both moves were foreseen already last summer, neo-conservatives and other hawks in and outside the administration who have steadfastly opposed any detente with either country are furious. 

"It is ... the final crash and burn of a once-inspiring global effort to confront and reverse nuclear proliferation, thereby protecting America and its friends," wrote former UN ambassador John Bolton in Monday's Wall Street Journal about the North Korea deal. 

"Having bent the knee to North Korea, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appears primed to do the same with Iran, despite that regime's egregious and extensive involvement in terrorism and the acceleration of its nuclear program," continued Bolton, who is often thought to express the off-the-record views of Vice President Dick Cheney. 

He predicted that Washington will actually open its Interest Section "within days" after the election despite the fact that Tehran has not yet given its approval. "Hard as it is to believe, there may be worse yet to come," Bolton concluded. 

Worse for the hawks, the two moves also tend to undercut the foundering election campaign of Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, in precisely those very few remaining areas - national security and the "war on terror" - in which, according to public opinion polls, he is generally perceived as stronger and more experienced than his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama. 

McCain, who has joked about bombing Iran on the campaign trail, until recently opposed any direct diplomatic engagement with Tehran unless it complied with UN Security Council demands that it freeze its uranium-enrichment program. And he reacted to the latest agreement with Pyongyang by effectively withholding his support. 

"I expect the administration to explain exactly how this new verification agreement advances American interests and those of its allies," he said after the State Department announced that it would take Pyongyang off the terrorism list. Obama, on the other hand, called the deal a "modest step forward". 

Indeed, on a range of key foreign policy issues - including the priority to be given to Israel-Palestinian peace talks, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia after its intervention in Georgia, and even Taiwan, to which McCain supports several big-ticket arms systems currently opposed by both the administration and Obama - Bush now appears closer to the Democratic candidate than to his fellow Republican. 

Many of McCain's closest advisers include neo-conservatives and nationalist hawks whose views were decisive in shaping what became known as the "Bush Doctrine" and inspiring the fateful US invasion of Iraq during the president's first term. 

In that respect, Bush's latest moves reflect the culmination of a "realist restoration" during his second term, one that has witnessed a gradual decline in the hawks' influence and a return to a more traditional reliance by Washington on diplomacy and multilateralism, particularly in coordination with key Western allies, as the preferred option for solving international problems. 

That restoration has been led by Rice and senior career diplomats in the State Department, the intelligence community, and, since late 2006, by Pentagon chief Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff whose conviction that the US armed forces are badly overstretched and cannot afford to fight yet another war, be it on the Korean peninsula, the Middle East, or, for that matter, in the Caucasus, has clearly had an impact in the Oval Office. 

The current financial crisis has no doubt enhanced the White House's appreciation for the degree to which the United States is dependent on foreign powers - not all of them necessarily friendly - and their cooperation, thus strengthening the realists' position as the administration plays out its term. 

Their efforts - and now Bush's, too - are directed primarily at trying to undo the damage to Washington's global position inflicted by the hawks not only during their period of dominance from 9/11 to the end of the first term, but also as a result of their furious rear-guard actions during the second term against realist efforts to engage North Korea and Iran. 

While North Korea's nuclear-weapons program was effectively frozen by a series of accords between Pyongyang and the Bill Clinton administration between 1994 and 2001, Bush's refusal to continue where Clinton left off - as he had been advised by his realist secretary of state at the time, retired General Colin Powell - led to Pyongyang's withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and eventually to its detonation of a nuclear device in Oct 2006. 

Bush finally yielded to Rice's appeal to engage Pyongyang directly, a mission undertaken by her Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs, Christopher Hill. By then, however, Washington's hand had been so badly weakened that Hill was forced to settle for a de-nuclearization accord that inevitably fell short of Bush's one-time promise of a virtually full-proof verification regime that would permit inspectors to go virtually anywhere at any time to suspected, as well as known, nuclear sites. 

To the bitter protests of the hawks, last weekend's announcement that North Korea had been removed from the terrorism list in exchange for its agreement to a more limited inspection regime confirmed that Bush had once more retreated from his maximalist demands. "This isn't diplomacy, it's lunacy," one unnamed former administration official told The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, who is also known to be close to Cheney. 

Realists - including members of the 2006 Iraq Study Group headed by former secretary of state James Baker - have long urged Bush to drop preconditions for direct negotiations with Tehran. In June, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Michael Mullen called for a "broad dialogue" with Iran. 

Less than one month later, Bush sent a senior State Department official to participate for the first time in talks between the other permanent UN Security Council members, Germany, and Iran, amid reports that Iran had successfully tested advanced centrifuges that would permit it to accelerate its uranium-enrichment program. He also tentatively agreed to Rice's idea of opening an Interest Section at that time, but the announcement was reportedly put off when Cheney and others opposed to the move argued that it could harm McCain's election chances. 

The well-connected Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported Sunday, however, that the announcement will be made after the election in mid-November, a report echoed by Bolton the following day. 

Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign policy, and particularly the neo-conservative influence in the Bush administration, can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/. 

Original article posted here.

Condi admits war crimes

Evolution of a not-so-grand Inquisitor

Revelations of an Abu Ghraib Interrogator

by Aaron Glantz

Few people have thought as much about the morality of the US occupation of Iraq than Joshua Casteel, a former US Army interrogator who served at Abu Ghraib prison in the wake of the detainee abuse scandal there. Once a cadet at the US Military Academy at West Point and raised in an evangelical Christian home, Casteel became a conscientious objector while he was stationed at the prison. It wasn't the kind of abuse shown in the famous graphic images that made him feel morally compelled to leave the military – Casteel says that kind of behavior had ceased by the time he showed up in June 2004 – but the experience of gleaning information speaking to the detainees in their own language. Those experiences, and the spiritual awakening Casteel experienced inside the walls of the prison, are contained in "Letters from Abu Ghraib", a compendium of e-mail messages he sent home from the prison, which was published last month by Iowa's Essay Press. The e-mails, compiled in a lean 118-page volume, are less concerned with the details of prison operations than their moral implications. By what right, the former interrogator asks, does one derive the authority to question prisoners as part of a military occupation? It's an important question to ask and timely too given the steady growth in the number of Iraqi prisoners in US custody over the course of its occupation of Iraq. Pentagon statistics show the US military now holds over 24,000 "security detainees" in Iraq – more than double the number incarcerated by Coalition at the time of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal four and a half years ago. US forces are holding nearly all of these persons indefinitely, without an arrest warrant, without charge, and with no right to any type of open legal proceedings. It's perhaps a mark of the failure of the United States' political and religious establishments that it falls to a US Army Specialist like Joshua Casteel to wrestle with the moral difficulties of these massive imprisonments. "Letters from Abu Ghraib" shows how the ethical failures of their leaders affect soldiers on the ground. When he first arrives at Abu Ghraib's interrogation center, Casteel tells his family he really loves his work. "I see my job much more as a Father Confessor than an interrogator," he writes, "As a Confessor you cannot coerce a person to reveal that which they wish to hide. A Confessor's aim is to help the one confessing to be sincere, to arrive at the kind of contrition that actually desires self-disclosure – and to that end, empathy and understanding go a long way." But Casteel, who prays daily and considers "keeping the liturgy with others and taking the Eucharist – Communion" to be "the most important part of the week," begins to feel uncomfortable after just a few weeks on the ground. "The weight of the job sometimes is more painfully present to me than at other times," he writes a month into the deployment. He is uncomfortable "exploiting" prisoners for their "intelligence" value rather then interacting with them as fully equal human beings. Making matters worse is that many of the detainees he interrogated turned out to be completely innocent. "I was constantly being asked, 'Why am I being held here? I want answers!'" Casteel told IPS. "But that was my job. We were supposed to be finding answers to our questions, but we kept being put into situations that were incredibly puzzling because talking to people was like trying to get blood from a turnip. They were the ones that had a greater justification for the need to have answers." Faced with such a dilemma, Casteel turns to an army chaplain for help. "We talked, I vexed and I summoned whatever strength we could conclude upon to go back to my interrogation...He prayed me back into combat," Casteel writes. "I was no longer afraid to demand authority, to play upon certain weaknesses of my detainee, and to question in a most heated fashion – because ultimately, I thought, it would lead me to a more accurate assessment of the veracity of his statements.' "I transgressed no lines of 'proper conduct,' but I certainly, and without hesitation, used a man's anxieties, weaknesses and fears, and my particular place of power and dominance to assess him according to his word...And I even left with what I thought was a clearer picture of the man I was assessing – perhaps to his benefit. So, why did I feel like a complete failure?" The answer to his question comes in October 2004, five months into his tour at Abu Ghraib. "I had an interrogation with a 22-year-old Saudi Arabian who was very straightforward that he had come to Iraq to conduct jihad," Casteel said. "We started having a conversation about religion and ethics and he told me that I was a very strange man who was a Christian but didn't follow the teachings of Jesus to love my enemy and pray for the persecuted...I told him that I thought he was right and that there was a massive contradiction involved with me doing my job and being a Christian." "I wanted to have a conversation with him about ethics and the cycle of vengeance and how idiotic it was that his people said it was okay for him to come and kill me and my people told me it was okay to kill him," he said in an interview. "Why is it that we can't find a different path together?" Since that type of conversation was not possible as a US Army interrogator, Joshua Casteel filed an application for discharge as a conscientious objector. Much to his surprise, his command endorsed it, and offered to speed his transition out of the Army. He now hopes to serve as a bridge between conservative Christians and the antiwar left. He hopes "Letters from Abu Ghraib" will "give conservative Christians an unfiltered picture of one Christian's wrestling with violence and also help the secular world get a backstage pass to the way a conservative Christian operates." Since his discharge, Casteel converted to Catholicism, attracted by the Church's tradition of "social teaching," and has worked with other like-minded Catholics to push the Church play a more active role in bringing the war to an end. He's excited his book has been assigned to students at a number of Catholic high schools in the Midwest and the former interrogator has been invited to speak at religious schools from New Jersey to Colorado. "Catholics are 30 percent of the military. They're equally 30 percent of Congress," he said. "The Vatican had a strong rebuke of the Iraq war but the Iraq war could not have happened were it not for Catholics. Christ has turned up in the people of Iraq's bodies and it's Iraq that's getting crucified and it's largely Christian America that's allowed to be prosperous in the midst of it." Original article posted here.

No further comment needed . . .

U.S. segregates violent Iraqi prisoners in crates

From Barbara Starr

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. military is segregating violent Iraqi prisoners in wooden crates that in some cases are not much bigger than the prisoners.

The U.S. released three photos of crates used to hold detainees for up to 12 hours.

1 of 3

The military released photos of what it calls "segregation boxes" used in Iraq.

Three grainy black-and-white photos show the rudimentary structures of wood and mesh. Some of the boxes are as small as 3 feet by 3 feet by 6 feet tall, according to military officials. There was no image released of a box that size.

The average Iraqi male is 5 feet 6 inches tall, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Health. That leaves little room for a prisoner to move once placed inside. See how a man might fit in the crate »

The photos were made public after a blogger filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2005.

The military said the boxes are humane and are checked every 15 minutes. It said detainees, who stand inside the boxes, are isolated for no more than 12 hours at a time.

"Someone in a segregation box is actually observed more than those anywhere else," said Maj. Neal Fisher, a spokesman for Task Force 134, the Marine unit in charge of detainees. "Their care and custody does not change simply because they are in segregation." Watch why the boxes raise human rights concerns »

A prisoner has never fallen ill or died because of being held in a segregation box, Fisher said.

Human rights advocates say little is known about how the military treats prisoners inside these boxes.

"There are concerns that they could be used in places where the detainees are enclosed in extremely hot conditions. It is important to know whether or not detainees are provided with food," said Jennifer Daskel of Human Rights Watch.

Detainees are given food and water while they are in the boxes, Fisher said.

The United States' handling of detainees has been a concern since the abuses at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison came to light. Conditions have improved for the 20,000 detainees, but life is tough behind the wire. Hundreds are still considered to be Al Qaeda loyalists.

The United States has been releasing prisoners in what Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell calls a "dramatic reduction" of the detainee population under U.S. control.

The United States has released 10,000 prisoners and hopes to release more. In addition to thousands of Iraqis freed, 20 foreign fighters were returned to Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

"We are able to capture threats to the Iraqi government and the population, detain them, rehabilitate them and, 99 times out of 100, release them," Morrell said. "We've made remarkable progress there. And I would just say it looks as though the glidepath is on continuing to reduce the population because of the success we're having within these camps."

Original article posted here.

The ongoing lies and propaganda by the Israelis

Racism and Genocide: Lies of Our Times

by Prof. James Petras

One of the hallmarks of totalitarian ideologues is the use of the big lie: a virulent attack on a defenseless group and then a categorical denial turning victims into executioners and executioners into victims.

Zionist genocide promoter, Benny Morris practices the Big Lie¹. He claims, "I have never supported the brutal expulsion of all Palestinians…I have said, repeatedly, that the expulsion of the Palestinians is immoral and impracticable."

In a recent interview in Israel, Morris states, "Under some circumstances, expulsion is not a war crime. I don’t think that the expulsions of 1948 (of nearly a million Palestinians) were war crimes. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands. Moreover, if he (Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion) was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleaned the whole country – the whole land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he carried out a full expulsion – rather than a partial one – he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations." In its extremism, Morris’ promotion of Judeo-fascist ethnocide of Palestine/Jordan exceeds that of any expressed by a secular public Jewish figure in Israel.

Uprooting, massacring and driving 3 million Palestinians from their homes, land and communities, according to Morris, lessens suffering – for Jews – and promises a quieter life for Israeli Jews! This is the same rationale that Hitler pronounced in his project to ‘purify’ Nazi Germany.

Morris fabricates a tale about Israel’s peaceful role in the Middle East when in fact it has been the most aggressive, militarist, expansionist state in the entire Middle East. He writes, "I am completely unaware that Zionism ever aimed to ‘rule the Middle East’…Zionism simply wanted to establish and maintain a (miniscule) Jewish state in the Land of Israel/Palestine, the patrimony of the Jews…conquered by savage Muslim Arab invaders."

The history of the Israeli state tells us otherwise. Israel has expanded and colonized over three quarters of Palestine since the original partition in 1948. Israel has invaded Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and seized and occupies territory from three of the four countries. Israel is the only country in the Middle East, which has repeatedly invaded Lebanon, destroyed its infrastructure, slaughtered Palestinian refugees in camps and attempted to establish a puppet regime in South Lebanon. Israel is the only Middle Eastern country, which shot down a Libyan commercial airliner carrying pilgrims to Mecca killing all aboard.

Israel’s ‘lobby’ – the Zionist power configuration in the US – has secured over $120 billion dollars of US military aid and the most advanced military technology for Israel, to insure Israel’s ‘overwhelming military superiority’ in the region. The military superiority of Israel has served the Jewish state to threaten, pressure, destabilize and influence Arab states.

The biggest nuclear threat in the Middle East and the sole nuclear power (over 200 nuclear bombs) and the only country, which publicly threatens to attack with nuclear weapons – is Israel. Israel has engaged in cross border terrorist assassinations throughout the Middle East, training death squads in Northern Iraq (Kurdistan) to Colombia and recognizes no sovereign borders in pursuit of its hegemonic goals.

Morris’ style is as revelatory as the substance of his totalitarian beliefs. He claims, "Israel has been threatened by Iran with destruction and the Iranian nuclear project appears to have Israel as its target." Apart from a vague remark, which was grossly mistranslated, of Iranian President Ahmadinejad about Israel "Disappearing from the page of history" (a remark pointing to a political change of the ethnic nature of the state), the Iranian government has never threatened to nuke Israel. Morris, the prophet of Armageddon, with special powers to delve into the "self-sacrificing mindset of the mullahs who run Iran," knows that deterrence will not work. No evidence founded on action is presented. No history of Iranian foreign policy over the past 50 years is presented.

The key to understanding Benny Morris’ proposal for nuclear genocide is his totalitarian-racist view of Arabs, Muslims and Iranians. In an interview in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (2004) regarding Israeli-Palestinian relations he asserted, "Something like a cage has to be built for them…There is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another." According to Morris, Palestinians are "barbarians who want to take our lives…At the moment that society is in the state of being a serial killer. It is a very sick society. It should be treated the way we treat individuals who are serial killers." To Morris, the dispossessed Palestinians are the killers while the Israeli colonial state, which dispossessed millions, tortured tens of thousands, jailed hundreds of thousands and killed thousands and is building a huge ghetto wall destroying the livelihood of 3 million, is a sane, healthy society. Dehumanizing the victims and the use of sub-human analogies is common practice of totalitarian ideologues. Considering Muslims as sub-human eases the way to incinerating them with nuclear weapons.

Benny Morris bases his argument for launching a nuclear attack against Iran on two boldface lies: (1) "Every intelligence agency in the world believes the Iranian program is geared to making weapons, not to the peaceful application of nuclear power"; and (2) "Everyone knows that such measures (economic sanctions) have so far led nowhere and are unlikely to be applied." The sixteen leading US intelligence agencies released a National Intelligence Estimate in 2007 based on all available high tech sources and inside informants, stating that Iran was not preparing enriched uranium for weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has permanent on site inspectors and makes continuous visits to Iranian nuclear facilities over the past decade, has not found any evidence of a weapons program. Every country, except Israel and the Zionist-dominated US Congress and White House believe that negotiations should continue. China, Russia, the states of the Middle East have supported sanctions among other countries. Iran’s uranium enrichment program is legal and is practiced by dozens of countries around the world. Only Israel, the US and the EU have arbitrarily decided to exclude Iran from developing nuclear enrichment programs for peaceful uses. Morris and the Israelis equate Iran’s legitimate activity with nuclear weapon production and extrapolate the latter to an immediate threat against Israel’s very existence.

Morris’ most laughable assertion is his claim that he "never advocated a genocidal attack on Iran with the aim of killing 70 million Iranians." In his own words, just a few weeks earlier in a July 18 editorial in the New York Times he wrote, "Iran’s leaders would do well to re-think their gamble and suspend their nuclear program. Barring this, the best they could hope for is that Israel’s conventional air assault will destroy their nuclear facilities. To be sure, this would mean thousands of Iranian casualties and international humiliation. But the alternative is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland."

By posing the question to Iran as one of ‘no choice’ but surrendering national sovereignty to an "Israeli nuclear threat’ Morris has pre-determined the result: Israel will have to engage in a genocidal nuclear assault on Iran. Morris’ double talk and utter confusion in claiming to oppose Iranian genocide while supporting ‘limited’ nuclear strikes against Iran revels his total ignorance of the most elementary consequences of the long-term, large-scale effects of radiation, contamination, economic devastation and widespread social trauma, not to mention the immediate effects of a thermonuclear attack on a populous nation. A nuclear strike against a country is genocidal in its effects on that nation – involving millions of human beings in Iran and throughout the entire region with widespread global contamination.

Benny Morris’ rant, in itself, is of no great concern were it limited to some Israeli version of a Munich beer hall. But the fact that ‘respectable’ capitalist print media, like the New York Times among others…publish and circulate blatant advocacy of nuclear genocide as ‘just another opinion’ is of prime political concern: It tells us how far imperial-militarism has infected Western political discourse; we have moved from a scratch to gangrene.

¹ see NYT July 18, 2008

---

Postnote: A declaration signed by over 200 Israeli academics and peace activists was released August 5, 2008 stating:

There is no military, political or moral justification to initiate war with Iran. A constant flow of information bears witness to the fact that the Israeli government is seriously considering attacking Iran, in order to disrupt its nuclear plans. We do no disregard irresponsible actions by the Iranian government – we also oppose atomic weapons of mass destruction in the region. However, it is clear that the main source of the immediate danger of a new, widespread war stems from the policies of the Israeli government and the flow of threats from it, backed by provocative military maneuvers.

After serious consideration, we reiterate our position that all the arguments for such an attack are without any security, political or moral justification. Israel might get caught up in an act of adventurism that could endanger our very existence, and this without any serious effort to exhaust the political and diplomatic alternatives to armed conflict.

We are not certain that such an attack will occur. But the very fact that it is being weighed as a reasonable option makes it imperative that we warn and caution against the destructive results of an offensive strike against Iran.

(contact: reuven.kaminer@gmail.com)

Professor Petras is the author of Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Clarity Press 2008) and The Power of Israel in the US (Clarity Press 2006).

James Petras is a frequent contributor to Global Research.Original article posted here.

When a title says it all . . .

Do You Feel Safe Now? Proud?

by Paul Craig Roberts

Now that military officers selected by the Bush Pentagon have reached a split verdict convicting Salim Hamdan, a onetime driver for Osama bin Laden, of supporting terrorism, but innocent of terrorist conspiracy, do you feel safe? Or are we superpower Americans still at risk until we capture bin Laden's dentist, barber, and the person who installed the carpet in his living room? The Bush regime with its comic huffings and puffings is unaware that it has made itself the laughingstock of the world, a comedy version of the Third Reich. Hamdan was not defended by the slick lawyers that got O.J. Simpson off, and he most certainly did not have a jury of his peers. Hamdan was defended by a Pentagon-appointed U.S. Navy officer, and his jurors were all Pentagon-appointed U.S. military officers with an eye on their careers. Even in this kangaroo court, Hamdan was cleared of the main charge. The U.S. Navy officer who was Hamdan's appointed attorney is certainly no terrorist sympathizer. Yet even this United States officer said that the rules Bush designed for the military tribunals were designed to achieve convictions. He also said that the judge allowed evidence that would not have been admitted by any civilian or military U.S. court. He said that the interrogations of Hamdan, which comprised the basis of the Bush regime's case, were tainted by coercive tactics, including sleep deprivation and solitary confinement. Does this make you a proud American? Do you think you are made more safe when you stand there while "your" government implements its own version of Joseph Stalin's show trials? The trial and conviction of Hamdan has made every American very unsafe. The one certain fact about U.S. law is that it is expanded until it applies to everyone. Consider RICO, for example, the asset freeze law that was intended only in criminal cases involving the Mafia; it wasn't long before RICO found its way into civil divorce proceedings. Bush's multi-year, multi-billion dollar "war on terror" has been reduced to railroading a low-level employee, a driver, for "terrorism." One would hope that the Hamdan verdict would be enough shame and ridicule for the U.S. in one day. But no, Bush didn't stop there. On his way to the Beijing Olympics, President Bush expressed "deep concerns" for the state of human rights in China. But not in Guantanamo, nor in Abu Ghraib, nor in the CIA's torture dungeons used for "renditions," nor in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the U.S. is expert at bombing weddings, funerals, children's soccer games, and every assortment of civilians imaginable. As the good book says, clean the beam from your own eye before pointing to the mote in your brother's eye. But Americans, the salt of the earth, have neither beams nor motes. We are the virtuous few, ordained by God to impose our hegemony on the world. It is written, or so say the neocons. What would President Bush say if, heaven forbid, the Chinese were as rude as he is and asked Mr. Superpower why the land of "freedom and democracy" has one million names on a watch list. China with a population four times as large doesn't have a watch list with one million names. What would President Bush say if China asked him why the U.S., with a population one-fourth the size of China's, has hundreds of thousands more of its citizens in prison? The percentage of Americans in prison is far higher than in China and is a larger absolute number. What would President Bush say if China asked him why he used lies and deception to justify his invasion of Iraq. China, unlike Bush, is not responsible for 1.2 million dead Iraqis and 4 million displaced Iraqis. China's human rights policy is not perfect. China's greatest human rights failing is that China is the Bush regime's prime enabler of its war crimes and human rights abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. By financing Bush's budget deficit, China is financing Bush's gratuitous wars. Indeed, China can be said to finance the weaponry that the U.S. gives Israel to enable the suppression of the Palestinians and with which to bomb the civilian population of Lebanon. China is a serious human rights abuser, because China is complicit in Bush's human rights abuses. If we are honest about who is actually murdering and abusing people, it is the U.S., Israel, and the UK. There's your "axis of evil." Original article posted here.

Can't vouch for the accuracy, but interesting enough to pass on

CIA Blackmailed Karadzic With His Gay Porn

Karadzic was threatened he would go to the worst prison if he motioned the deal with Holbrooke.

Richar Holbrooke

Karmen Horvat

V.D.

CIA agents spoke with Radovan Karadzic a few hours before the announcement of his arrest, asking him not to reveal the deal with Holbrooke. In return, they offered him a 40-year sentence in a luxury Swedish prison, Serbian Press Online writes.

The Americans asked him not to mention the details of the deal and not to speak about his confidential contacts with people from the top of the Clinton administration. They wanted Karadzic to tell The Hague everything he knew about general Ratko Mladic and to witness against him during a possible trial.

As a counter favour, the agents guaranteed Karadzic he would get special treatment, according to which he would serve a 40-year sentence in a Swedish prison with all sorts of privileges. They guaranteed that his family would not have any problems in Serbia, the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska and Montenegro.

They also told him that if he does not agree, he would serve his sentence in the worst British prison, together with serial killers, drug dealers and rapists. They threatened him that he would be completely compromised in the Serbian public when they published edited homosexual porn footage, apart from continuing with severe pressure on his family.

Press Online confirmed this information from several independent intelligence sources. Officially, everyone decisively denies that any foreigner had such contacts with Karadzic at the time when he was arrested.

- Nobody will ever verify this, but this is more or less common practice in this region. Well, the Americans worked on Ante Gotovina after his arrest, for several days – an unnamed source points out.

Original article posted here.

American genocide

Death Made In America

By: Mohammed Daud Miraki, MA, PhD

Wondering if your conscience is still anesthetized...

A LITTLE TERRORIST:
ENJOY YOUR HANDIWORK USA.
I took this photo on the last day of my journey: one of triplets.

Afghanistan is has become the disaster words could not describe, hence, I decided to illustrate this disaster via these photos of babies born deformed.

On many occasions, I pointed out that we need funds to build a research institute and the linked monitoring stations. Unfortunately, majority of you simply brushed off my request. I wonder if these photos could elevate your humanity that has been overwhelmed by your comfortable life and materials desires.

Again, it is up to you, to do whatever you think is human; that should not be too difficult. The funds for the research institute are very small price you have to pay after all your tax dollars have created this disaster. Whether you like it, admit or deny it, it does not absolve you from the indirect complicity in these war crimes.

If everyone visiting this web site pays the amount they spend on soft drinks in a month, we would have the funds to build our research facility:

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY IN ACTION- "FREEDOM IS ON THE MOVE" RIGHT? YOUR GOVERNMENT is CRIMINAL BUT YOU ARE equally RESPONSIBLE. YOU MIGHT SAY, "THAT'S LIFE WHAT COULD I DO"PAY FOR THE RESEARCH FACILITY-A TOTAL COST OF FIVE MILLION DOLLARS- PEANUTS COMPARE TO THIS PAIN. I HOPE YOU COULD EAT TONIGHT AND LOOK AT YOUR CHILDREN AND SAY IT IS OKAY TO REMAIN INDIFFERENT. I WOULD NOT BE SURPRISED AFTER ALL IT IS OKAY-YOU HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT, RIGHT? You had everything to do with it, your tax dollars paid for their misery!!! HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF YOUR CHILDREN WERE BORN LIKE THIS?

FROM THE AMERICAN GIFT (URANIUM MUNITIONS) THAT KEEPS ON GIVING. HORRORS UNLIMITED: MADE IN USA. The parents of this child do not give a damn about your freedom BS or some other garbage. OUR CHILDREN WOULD BE BORN THIS WAY FOR EVER THANKS TO THE URANIUM MUNITIONS USED BY YOUR ARMED FORCES PAID FOR BY YOUR TAX DOLLARS. SEE IF YOU COULD EXPLAIN THIS TO HIS PARENTS

OH A FEW MINOR DETAILS ABOUT SITUATIONS IN AFGHANISTAN:

URANIUM MUNITIONS

Due to the use of massive amount of uranium munitions used by the US forces in the initial bombing and subsequently, massive amount of congenital deformities occur all over Afghanistan. The rate of various cancers has gone up significantly. Leukemia and esophageal cancers are very high among children. According to doctors at maternity and children hospitals in Kabul, the rate of various congenital deformities have increased by many folds since the US invasion. In fact, the magnitude of man made isotopes was established by the Uranium Medical Research Center after their investigators made to trips to Afghanistan and collected urine and soil samples. They established that the rate of man made isotopes was gone up 2000 times in some subjects located near the bombed areas.

Since uranium used in the weapons have a half-life of 4.5 billion years, the US forces ensured that generations of Afghans suffer from cancers and deformities. This is certainly not development. In fact, it is the biggest crime ever committed by anyone in the history of humanity.

RECONSTRUCTION

There has been a lot of talk of reconstruction and rebuilding, but this issue could only be understood if one compares the substance against the rhetoric and the large amount of money allocated for the so-called reconstruction. Of all the whooplas made of reconstruction, the US and its client regime has only inaugurated the truck route-highway-between Kabul and Kandahar. This hallmark of achievement that the US brags about was completed 40 percent during the Taliban government. While the highway is inaugurated, it still needs significantly additional work to remain intact. The inauguration of the highway was a political ploy aimed to convince the critiques that the reconstruction has been going smooth. It is hardly so.

When I entered Afghanistan from Pakistan, the lack of achievement was evident. For the past three years, there have been construction efforts underway to pave the road from Torkham, the entry point from Pakistan to Afghanistan, to the city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the Pakistani contractors are more interested to have their tea breaks rather than to do any rebuilding. I brought up this issue with the authorities in Kabul, but to avail.

After reaching Jalalabad, I was further surprised to see the roads in the city with massive potholes, unpaved roads, hence, tremendous amount of dust blown in every direction. The reason for the lack of work in Jalalabad, as is the case almost every where in Afghanistan, corrupt officials eager to make money than to worry about the welfare of the people.

If a Mayor is appointed to a town or city, the would be mayor has to pay $40,000 bribe since he would be making more than $400,000 in selling government land to the highest bidder.

The magnitude of corruption is not limited to a province, but rather officials in the central government in Kabul are equally complicit in massive corruption and inefficiency which I would discuss shortly. Since the main road to Kabul is under construction for the past three years-we had to take a mountain pass called Lataband, which is a very rugged mountain terrain with huge rocks and massive potholes widespread for miles on. Once I reached Kabul, I stopped complaining about the Lataband road-after all Lataband is a mountain pass-Kabul the capital city lacked paved roads with exception of very few. The government in Kabul has not done anything of substance whether it pertains to infrastructure, housing, sanitation or drinking water. These are the essential elements of survival in any city. There are several reasons for the lack of progress. Some of the reasons are fundamentally flawed while others are bureaucratic hurdles and corruption. The fundamental flaws are situated in the free market approach superimposed on Afghanistan. There are two aspects of the free market that impedes the reconstruction of basic infrastructure in Kabul, one is the idea that money spent has to be invested with a return in mind, second, basic development should be contracted to private sector. Both of these issues have impeded the rebuilding of infrastructure.

In the first half of the 20th century, the Afghan government asked for a loan from the US government to build basic infrastructure-paved roads in Kabul, the government and the bank refused the loan on the ground that building roads in Kabul is not profitable investment. The government in Kabul at that time, argued that for any profitable enterprise to succeed basic infrastructure has to be built. So there is very little amount allocated for rebuilding basic infrastructure. It is worth noting that part of the blame goes to the international reconstruction aid as it is dispersed in such a way that some amount is allocated to the government in Kabul while the rest goes to the countless NGOs. Since the first problem, namely investment with a profit in mind, does not materialize in the construction of roads, efforts are made to resolve that problem through contracting out construction of roads to private sector. Thus, contracting out roads to private sector would mean money for contractors, hence, compensate for the lack of profitability associated with paving roads. This created another problem.

Once a road is contracted out, the private contracting firm resort to delaying tactics associated with feasibility study and other related issues in order to fatten its return. This delayed tactic does not serve peoples' needs and the roads remain unpaved. For example, the road from Kabul's airport to the presidential palace was contracted out three years ago it was still not built. This practice of contracting out projects adds to unemployment. Had the government adopted a different method, perhaps by hiring local laborers and using machinery, the chronic unemployment would be reduced, thus, people would have some food on the table.

Three weeks ago, Karzai announced that the road in the Dasht-e-Barchi area repaired and built. The allocated funding is $10,000000 ten million dollars. This is an outrage. Ten million dollars could repair all the roads in the capital, Kabul if only the function is taken over by the ministry of public works.

The Free Market Nonsense:

In order to please the US administration, the regime in Kabul advocated the notion of 'free market' as if this would become a panacea for the national economy. On the contrary, the so-called free market scheme had been tried in the past-the 1930s-- that resulted in fruitless consumerism of imported goods, which otherwise would have been produced domestically. Moreover, the consumption of luxuries received more priority than investment in productive sectors of the economy. A handful of businessmen and investors became rich while the rest of the country remained poor and destitute. Today, in the post-Taliban Afghanistan, the consumption of goods such as television sets and satellite dishes are more important than worrying about clean water and proper schooling. After all, as long as capitalism had brought the culture of corruption and entertainment, other necessities become secondary. Meanwhile, people with money import these goods, pocket their profits and leave. The desire of the installed regime to collect custom duties contributes to the perpetuation of underdevelopment.

Corruption also plays a significant role in the continuation of import than investment in productive infrastructure. For example, for the past 2-3 years over 100,000 tons of cement is imported while the construction plans of four cement factories collect dust. The official reason is that the country does not have a mining law. This year alone 380,000 tons of cement is imported this year alone. The question is how long does it take to formulate a mining law; it has been three years. The profit margin for dealers has skyrocketed while the long-term development prospects have waned down with every imported bag of cement.

AMERICAN CRIMES AND ORGANIZED CRIMES

With the collapse of Taliban, a very profitable, yet nasty sector of the economy has risen to new heights. Organized crime is an extension of what used to be warlords and their armies of bandits. With the warlords and other officials of the Northern Alliance occupying official positions, their former foot soldiers are equipped with new weapons and Toyota trucks, Landcruisers, with only one aim to kidnap people from diverse backgrounds for large sums of money. Once the money is secured, the government officials, who are also leading these bandits, keep 80 percent for themselves and 20 percent for their men.

The Italian aid worker, who was kidnapped in Kabul in broad daylight, was a victim of these organized bandits. After she was released, the government claimed that it secured the release of the aid worker through negotiation, but the truth is otherwise. The kidnappers received 5 million dollars. Those poor souls that can not afford paying ransoms end up dead.

Other groups of criminals kidnap children for money as well as for their organs. This is an epidemic that people sought Talibans' assistance for in the mid-1990s, however, it appears that this is no longer an issue for the US occupation force and their puppets after all when it comes to crimes what could be more criminal that using WMD against civilian population. The US forces have used uranium weapons against the people of Afghanistan, and continue to commit crimes that dwarf what the organized criminals are doing. The followings are some of the examples of the brutality of the US forces in Afghanistan:

Rape and Murder by the US forces

In the Bagrami area of Kabul, the US forces assaulted a small enclave of nomads. The US forces flew over this enclave and saw nomad women near their tents. They landed their helicopter and kidnapped these women by gunpoint. Subsequently, the US soldiers flew away with these women to some location, where these women are gang-raped. After these women were raped and died in the process, the soldiers flew them back to the community from where they were kidnapped. However, this time the helicopter did not land, instead, the women were thrown down from the helicopter. This is not unique for the US forces since they committed similar crimes in Vietnam. American forces are too much of cowards to have landed because they knew they would be shot in revenge.

Another incident occurred when a US helicopter spotted an old shepherd grazing his animals. The shepherd was 70 years old but this did not appear to matter to the US forces. The helicopter landed and raped the old man. His relatives told me that on the one hand we are furious about the crime committed by these beasts, but on the other hand we are curious "what kind of rotten people Americans are."

In another incident, a truck driver was driving his truck north from the Kabul, passing the US base in Bagram when the US patrol stopped him. In the passenger seat of the truck a young boy was sitting. This young man wanted to learn driving a truck, but tragically for him, the Americans noticed him and asked him to step out. The young man stepped out and the soldiers took him away from the truck and gang raped him. When the boy returned to the truck, he was crying and furious. Later that day, he committed suicide. This is another gift of the US's democracy.

In the American military base Bagram, north of Kabul, 15 translators while working for the US forces were gang raped by the very forces for which they worked. Although I have no sympathy for those that work for the US forces, however, no one should be subjected to such extreme cruelty. One of the translators said,

"Around 25 to 30 American soldiers enter the area where we were sleeping and started raping us. I was conscious until to the third soldier started raping me and then lost consciousness." (Hamid-translator for the US forces, June 2005)

In Badakhshan province, the US soldiers had taken forty (40) women and extracted their teeth for oral sex. One member of the parliament, who is a close supporter of Karzai, said:

"The issue of these women treated in such a miserable way was about to get some publicity, however, the US officials made sure that this does not happen." (Parliament member--I can not reveal his name)

In another incident, the US forces were searching local houses between JalaAbad and Kabul, when they entered and tried to search the house, they came across the woman of the house, since she was very beautiful, the soldiers decided to take her to the US base. The husband was not at home. When he returned from Peshawar, he went to get his wife. He told his wife,

"To me you are now my mother and sister, I can not touch you any more, but tell me if they have violated your dignity? 'They raped me by force, I was conscious for the first three men, then lost consciousness'." (The husband whose name I can not reveal his name. He joined Taliban afterward and I do not blame him.)

A young man committed suicide in the Laic-e-Mariam in KairKhana area after the Americans in an NGO raped his sister.

These are some of the very few examples of the many crimes committed by the US forces in Afghanistan, but unfortunately, the coward officials of the puppet regime call it reconstruction. To add insult to injury, the two American soldiers, who murdered two detainees at Bagram airbase, received only 2 and 3 months in jail for crime ruled homicide by the US medical examiners. The two detainees were beaten at their legs while hanging from the ceiling until their legs "pulverized". The term "pulverized" was used by the medical examiner to articulate the magnitude of the fatal injury and the inhumane way of murdering. When one of the victims asked for water, the soldier poured water over his face; subsequently, the poor man died. This is American reconstruction of Afghanistan.

Life for Ordinary People

There is absolutely no hope for the Afghans. The billions of dollars of development aid did not benefit ordinary Afghans. Abject poverty is the rule of the day. Orphans and widows roam the streets to make a living. The NGOs and foreign advisors enjoy life to the fullest. They are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, enjoy luxury vehicles and houses, while ordinary Afghans die from homelessness, hunger and disease.

In light of the London donor conference, which would amount to nothing considering the legacy of so-called reconstruction in Afghanistan; it is prudent to make some points.

It is a tragedy of immense proportion that no one even dare to address the abomination that is called life with inevitable demise at every corner resulting from the massive amount of uranium munitions used by the American forces and their allies. Our so-called Afghans self-sold surrogates are more than happy to jump on the bandwagon and express their gratitude for the token thrown at our people when in fact their entire existence is put in question by the massive use of weapons of mass destruction. Let the progress of the Bonn agreement tell the children of Tora Bora and Shah-e-Kot suffering from Leukemia and Esophageal cancers, or the massive number of sudden abortions occurring among women and animals in those areas.

Another legacy is the corruption of bribery and sheer robbery by the officials of this puppet regime eager to make dollars. Unfortunately, they do not even accept Afghan currency but rather demand dollars. According to an Afghan commission, the amount of bribes paid in Afghanistan ranges from 20 Afghani to 15,000000 Dollars. In a country where an experience medical technologist is paid $40/month, the millions of dollars paid in bribe point to the magnitude of profit individuals and companies expected to enjoy.

Abject poverty is every where and hopes of revival are no where. The billions of dollars donated went into the pockets of NGOs and powerful government officials, while the poor remains poor.

Another problem is Americanization of the system, namely whole sale firing of professionals with decades of experience under the pretext of making hospitals and offices efficient. The truth is the US wants to implement capitalism in Afghanistan and bring open market when in fact no has food to eat or money to pay for healthcare. The shortage of physicians and health technicians is ignored for the sake of this garbage called free market. Now there are no private companies to hire these professionals with decades of experience. It would have been nice if other opportunities existed, but there are none.
Today in Afghanistan, there are a few very rich and the rest extremely poor thanks to the United States of America.

Afghan Resistance and US losses:

The Afghan resistance fighters consist of Pashtuns, entirely. The East, Southeast, South and Southwest, West and part of Central area of Afghanistan are the most volatile. The US forces have lost a lot of soldiers there. In fact, ordinary Afghans used to wondered about the US losses and started to believe a myth that the soldiers that are killed in Afghanistan must come from orphanages in the US, hence, their death is not missed by anyone. To the Afghans, it does not make sense when so many soldiers lose their lives and yet there has not been any outrage on the part of the families of those soldiers. Thus, ordinary Afghans started this myth that the soldiers that are killed in Afghanistan are from orphanages since this was the only rational explanation they could find.

Before going to Afghanistan, different sources claimed that American dead were kept refrigerated on board ships in the Arabian Sea and at US bases in the Middle East. When I went to Afghanistan, many people within the Afghan Ministry of Defense told me similar stories that American dead are stored in refrigerated containers on board ships and at the US bases in the Middle East. In fact, one translator, who was working with the US forces, told me that he had seen refrigerated containers filled with dead US soldiers. The following two incidents should give a glimpse into the US losses and lies about those losses there.

Around June 12, 2005, an Afghan resistance fighter rammed an explosives laden vehicle into the US military convey in Kandahar. The result was severe losses for the US military. Initially, the media reported that five American soldiers were killed, then later that figure was abandoned and replaced with only four wounded. However, the truth was completely different. An eyewitness, Haji Habib told us an entirely different account of the losses:

"A suicide bomber slammed his vehicle into the US convey. The vehicle must have been full of powerful explosives because the explosion was really loud and shattering. After the dust and smoked settled, I counted the charred bodies. There were 39 charred bodies. The American cleanup team came with cranes and picked the destroyed armored vehicles and dead bodies before anyone could take photographs." (Haji Habib: June 14, 2005-my first trip)

In another incident around the 22nd of May 2005, the US forces lost 75 soldiers along with three tanks and three armored vehicles in Helmand province in Southwestern Afghanistan. This occurred when the US unit went to the province and arrested a former Mujahideen commander. The eyewitness, a translator, who witnessed and counted the dead bodies at Kandahar airport after being transported from Helmand described the operation as follows:

"The Americans went to Helamd to arrest a former commander. When they arrested him, his villagers and former Mujahideen fighters blocked the retreat of the US forces. The US forces fired at the men standing in their way, killing six of them. Since the rest of the fighters had already taken positions, the Americans were bombarded with RPG-7 grenade-launchers and heavy machinegun fire. In the firefight, the arrested commander was also martyred but also 75 American soldiers were killed, three of their tanks and three armored vehicles were also destroyed. When the American reinforcement arrived, all the Mujahideen fighters were long gone. Instead, the US helicopters bombed civilian areas." (Abdul Ali-eyewitness to the fight)

At the end of February 2006, in Uruzgan province an American convey was ambushed and 29 American soldiers were killed, while officially they admitted only four. These are just few of the many unreported losses of the US soldiers in Afghanistan.

FINAL NOTE

For those of you who would make the argument that we were attacked by Bin Laden and the Taliban refused to hand him over even though we refused to show his involvement, here is a piece of information revealed by Vice President Cheney. His answer to a question from the Tony Snow Show via telephone, and the link below is that of the White House:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060329-2.html

Q: I want to be clear because I've heard you say this, and I've heard the President say it, but I want you to say it for my listeners, which is that the White House has never argued that Saddam was directly involved in September 11th, correct?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's correct. We had one report early on from another intelligence service that suggested that the lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta, had met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague, Czechoslovakia. And that reporting waxed and waned where the degree of confidence in it, and so forth, has been pretty well knocked down now at this stage, that that meeting ever took place. So we've never made the case, or argued the case that somehow Osama bin Laden [sic] was directly involved in 9/11. That evidence has never been forthcoming. But there -- that's a separate proposition from the question of whether or not there was some kind of a relationship between the Iraqi government, Iraqi intelligence services and the al Qaeda organization.

So the US bombed Afghanistan and killed tens of thousands of people and turned the country into a uranium hellhole on a hunch?

Obviously so, and that is why, they could never produce an ounce of proof of his complicity in the attacks.

Original article posted here.

More war crimes, signs of barbarism and unspeakable acts of fascism and depravity

US detainee's lips sewn shut and wires shoved through his cheeks (w/photo)

Photo leaked from a military computer

Photo leaked from a US military computer network of a detainee held by the United States with face wired, lips sewn, red eyes and torso sacked. According to digital camera metadata the image was taken on Feb 9, 2003 03:49:25. The 6 Aug 2004 is also mentioned in relation to this photo. The facial wiring is clearly non-medical. The location of the detainee is unknown. Readers with information as to the status of this detainee contact usa@sunshinepress.org. Although there is a resemblance to the US Taliban supporter John Walker Lindh, the connection is superficial. The negative image to the right was created by Wikileaks to draw attention to certain regions of the photo on the left.

Original article posted here.

A hint of that this criminal operation might pull . . .

Pre-emptive Presidential PardonsCan you be pardoned for a crime before you're ever charged?

By Jacob Leibenluft

With six months to go before President Bush leaves office, the White House is receiving a flurry of pardon applications. The New York Times reported that "several members of the conservative legal community" are pushing for the White House to grant pre-emptive pardons for officials involved in counterterrorism programs. Wait—can a president really pardon someone who hasn't even been charged with a crime?

Yep. In 1866, the Supreme Court ruled in Ex parte Garland that the pardon power "extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment." (In that case, a former Confederate senator successfully petitioned the court to uphold a pardon that prevented him from being disbarred.) Generally speaking, once an act has been committed, the president can issue a pardon at any time—regardless of whether charges have even been filed.

As the Explainer has pointed out before, there aren't many limits to the president's pardon power, at least when it comes to criminal prosecutions under federal law. The president's clemency power has its origins in the practices of the English monarchy, and as a result, the Supreme Court has given the president wide leeway under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution. There are some exceptions: The chief executive can't pardon someone for a violation of state law or nullify a civil ruling, and his power doesn't extend to convictions handed down in an impeachment proceeding. (It's also not clear whether the president can pardon himself for future convictions.

While pre-emptive pardons remain very rare, there are a few notable exceptions. Perhaps the most famous presidential pardon of all time occurred before any charges were filed. Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon absolved the former president of "all offenses against the United States which he … has committed or may have committed or taken part in" between the date of his inauguration in 1969 and his resignation in August 1974. In other cases, presidents have pardoned individuals after criminal proceedings have begun but before a judgment has been handed down. In late 1992, less than a month before leaving office, President George H.W. Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who had been indicted earlier that year on perjury charges surrounding the Iran-Contra affair. (A lawyer for Roger Clemens' former trainer Brian McNamee claimed the pitcher might receive a similar pardon from Bush if he were ever indicted.) In addition, broad presidential amnesties—like the one President Carter issued to those who had avoided the draft during the Vietnam War—are essentially pre-emptive pardons issued to a large group of individuals.

If someone hasn't yet been charged with a crime, how does the president know what to pardon them for? As in Nixon's case, President Bush could issue a pardon that applies generally to any crimes that may have been committed within a certain range of dates. More likely, a pardon could apply only to actions surrounding a single policy or place—say, the detention or interrogation of suspected al-Qaida members.

Explainer thanks Ken Gormley of Duquesne Law School, Harold Krent of the Chicago-Kent School of Law, and P.S. Ruckman Jr. of Rock Valley College and PardonPower.com.

Original article posted here.

What weazl has been calling for all along (and it doesn't even include the 911 1rst degree murders!)

LOCK THE BASTARDS UP!

Worries About War Crimes Heat up in the White House

By Frank Rich, The New York Times

We know what a criminal White House looks like from "The Final Days," Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's classic account of Richard Nixon's unraveling. The cauldron of lies, paranoia and illegal surveillance boiled over, until it was finally every man for himself as desperate courtiers scrambled to save their reputations and, in a few patriotic instances, their country.

"The Final Days" was published in 1976, two years after Nixon abdicated in disgrace. With the Bush presidency, no journalist (or turncoat White House memoirist) is waiting for the corpse to be carted away. The latest and perhaps most chilling example arrives this week from Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, long a relentless journalist on the war-on-terror torture beat. Her book "The Dark Side" connects the dots of her own past reporting and that of her top-tier colleagues (including James Risen and Scott Shane of The New York Times) to portray a White House that, like its prototype, savaged its enemies within almost as ferociously as it did the Constitution.

Some of "The Dark Side" seems right out of "The Final Days," minus Nixon's operatic boozing and weeping. We learn, for instance, that in 2004 two conservative Republican Justice Department officials had become "so paranoid" that "they actually thought they might be in physical danger." The fear of being wiretapped by their own peers drove them to speak in code.

The men were John Ashcroft's deputy attorney general, James Comey, and an assistant attorney general, Jack Goldsmith. Their sin was to challenge the White House's don, Dick Cheney, and his consigliere, his chief of staff David Addington, when they circumvented the Geneva Conventions to make torture the covert law of the land. Mr. Comey and Mr. Goldsmith failed to stop the "torture memos" and are long gone from the White House. But Vice President Cheney and Mr. Addington remain enabled by a president, attorney general (Michael Mukasey) and C.I.A. director (Michael Hayden) who won't shut the door firmly on torture even now.

Nixon parallels take us only so far, however. "The Dark Side" is scarier than "The Final Days" because these final days aren't over yet and because the stakes are much higher. Watergate was all about a paranoid president's narcissistic determination to cling to power at any cost. In Ms. Mayer's portrayal of the Bush White House, the president is a secondary, even passive, figure, and the motives invoked by Mr. Cheney to restore Nixon-style executive powers are theoretically selfless. Possessed by the ticking-bomb scenarios of television's "24," all they want to do is protect America from further terrorist strikes.

So what if they cut corners, the administration's last defenders argue. While prissy lawyers insist on habeas corpus and court-issued wiretap warrants, the rest of us are being kept safe by the Cheney posse.

But are we safe? As Al Qaeda and the Taliban surge this summer, that single question is even more urgent than the moral and legal issues attending torture.

On those larger issues, the evidence is in, merely awaiting adjudication. Mr. Bush's 2005 proclamation that "we do not torture" was long ago revealed as a lie. Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated detainee abuse for the Army, concluded that "there is no longer any doubt" that "war crimes were committed." Ms. Mayer uncovered another damning verdict: Red Cross investigators flatly told the C.I.A. last year that America was practicing torture and vulnerable to war-crimes charges.

Top Bush hands are starting to get sweaty about where they left their fingerprints. Scapegoating the rotten apples at the bottom of the military's barrel may not be a slam-dunk escape route from accountability anymore.

No wonder the former Rumsfeld capo, Douglas Feith, is trying to discredit a damaging interview he gave to the British lawyer Philippe Sands for another recent and essential book on what happened, "Torture Team." After Mr. Sands previewed his findings in the May issue of Vanity Fair, Mr. Feith protested he had been misquoted -- apparently forgetting that Mr. Sands had taped the interview. Mr. Feith and Mr. Sands are scheduled to square off in a House hearing this Tuesday.

So hot is the speculation that war-crimes trials will eventually follow in foreign or international courts that Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, has publicly advised Mr. Feith, Mr. Addington and Alberto Gonzales, among others, to "never travel outside the U.S., except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel." But while we wait for the wheels of justice to grind slowly, there are immediate fears to tend. Ms. Mayer's book helps cement the case that America's use of torture has betrayed not just American values but our national security, right to the present day.

In her telling, a major incentive for Mr. Cheney's descent into the dark side was to cover up for the Bush White House's failure to heed the Qaeda threat in 2001. Jack Cloonan, a special agent for the F.B.I.'s Osama bin Laden unit until 2002, told Ms. Mayer that Sept. 11 was "all preventable." By March 2000, according to the C.I.A.'s inspector general, "50 or 60 individuals" in the agency knew that two Al Qaeda suspects -- soon to be hijackers -- were in America. But there was no urgency at the top. Thomas Pickard, the acting F.B.I. director that summer, told Ms. Mayer that when he expressed his fears about the Qaeda threat to Mr. Ashcroft, the attorney general snapped, "I don't want to hear about that anymore!"

After 9/11, our government emphasized "interrogation over due process," Ms. Mayer writes, "to pre-empt future attacks before they materialized." But in reality torture may well be enabling future attacks. This is not just because Abu Ghraib snapshots have been used as recruitment tools by jihadists. No less destructive are the false confessions inevitably elicited from tortured detainees. The avalanche of misinformation since 9/11 has compromised prosecutions, allowed other culprits to escape and sent the American military on wild-goose chases. The coerced "confession" to the murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to take one horrific example, may have been invented to protect the real murderer.

The biggest torture-fueled wild-goose chase, of course, is the war in Iraq. Exhibit A, revisited in "The Dark Side," is Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an accused Qaeda commander whose torture was outsourced by the C.I.A. to Egypt. His fabricated tales of Saddam's biological and chemical W.M.D. -- and of nonexistent links between Iraq and Al Qaeda -- were cited by President Bush in his fateful Oct. 7, 2002, Cincinnati speech ginning up the war and by Mr. Powell in his subsequent United Nations presentation on Iraqi weaponry. Two F.B.I. officials told Ms. Mayer that Mr. al-Libi later explained his lies by saying: "They were killing me. I had to tell them something."

That "something" was crucial in sending us into the quagmire that, five years later, has empowered Iran and compromised our ability to counter the very terrorists that torture was supposed to thwart. As The Times reported two weeks ago, Iraq has monopolized our military and intelligence resources to the point where we don't have enough predator drones or expert C.I.A. field agents to survey the tribal areas where terrorists are amassing in Pakistan. Meanwhile, the threat to America from Al Qaeda is "comparable to what it faced on Sept. 11, 2001," said Seth Jones, a RAND Corporation terrorism expert and Pentagon consultant. The difference between now and then is simply that the base of operations has moved, "roughly the difference from New York to Philadelphia."

Yet once again terrorism has fallen off America's map, landing at or near the bottom of voters' concerns in recent polls. There were major attacks in rapid succession last week in Pakistan, Afghanistan (the deadliest in Kabul since we "defeated" the Taliban in 2001) and at the American consulate in Turkey. Who listened to this ticking time bomb? It's reminiscent of July 2001, when few noticed that the Algerian convicted of trying to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on the eve of the millennium testified that he had been trained in bin Laden's Afghanistan camps as part of a larger plot against America.

In last Sunday's Washington Post, the national security expert Daniel Benjamin sounded an alarm about the "chronic" indecisiveness and poor execution of Bush national security policy as well as the continuing inadequacies of the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Benjamin must feel a sinking sense of dj vu. Exactly seven years ago in the same newspaper, just two months before 9/11, he co-wrote an article headlined "Defusing a Time Bomb" imploring the Bush administration in vain to pay attention to Afghanistan because that country's terrorists "continue to pose the most dangerous threat to American lives."

And so we're back where we started in the summer of 2001, with even shark attacks and Chandra Levy's murder (courtesy of a new Washington Post investigation) returning to the news. We are once again distracted and unprepared while the Taliban and bin Laden's minions multiply in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This, no less than the defiling of the Constitution, is the legacy of an administration that not merely rationalized the immorality of torture but shackled our national security to the absurdity that torture could easily fix the terrorist threat.

That's why the Bush White House's corruption in the end surpasses Nixon's. We can no longer take cold comfort in the Watergate maxim that the cover-up was worse than the crime. This time the crime is worse than the cover-up, and the punishment could rain down on us all.

Original article posted here.

The abuse of 16 year old Omar Khadr

The world got its first glimpse of a Guantanamo detainee this morning when lawyers for Omar Khadr released a video of the Toronto man’s 2003 interrogation by Canadian officials.

Guantánamo video shows interrogation of sobbing Canadian youth

Video grab showing 16-year-old Omar Khadr being interviewed by intelligence agents at Guantánamo Bay, in February 2003. Photograph: PA

The first footage showing an interrogation at Guantánamo Bay was released today by the lawyers of Omar Khadr, a Canadian teenager detained by US forces.

The video shows Khadr, at the time aged 16, interviewed by intelligence agents in 2003. During the footage he sobs uncontrollably, removes his shirt to complain about his medical treatment and tells the agents: "You don't care about me."

Left alone in the interrogation room, Khadr cries, holds his head and rocks back and forth. The audio is not clear, but he reportedly repeats the phrase "help me".

The video, at times distressing, is the first footage from inside an interrogation room at the controversial US detention camp to be made public.

Khadr, the son of Ahmed Said Khadr, who had ties to al-Qaida's elite, was captured in July 2002 in Afghanistan when he was just 15. Now 21, he remains in Guantánamo Bay along with around 270 so-called "enemy combatants".

The Pentagon forbids public release of photographs or recordings of the US detention camp and the Canadian government had declined requests by Khadr's lawyers, Nathan Whitling and Dennis Edney, to view the video footage.

But in May, Khadr's legal team won a US supreme court ruling for disclosure of footage - in total lasting several hours - as well as previously classified documents relating to his case.

The edited clip video released today shows Khadr interrogated by a Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agent, a Canadian foreign affairs official Jim Gould, and an unidentified female CIA official - their faces have been blacked out.

The full-length videos, understood to have been recorded from a camera hidden in a ventilation shaft, is expected to be posted online later today.

The video clip opens with Khadr removing the top half of his orange jumpsuit to show his interrogators his injuries resulting from two bullet wounds. He says: "You say this is healthy? I can't move my arm."

The CSIS agent replies: "They look like they're healing well to me. You know, I'm not a doctor but I think you're getting good medical care." Khadr replies: "No I'm not. You're not here."

After Khadr complains further, the agent states: "I understand this is stressful, but by using this as a strategy to talk to us - it's not going to be any more helpful. I mean we've got a limited about of time and, you know, we've heard this story before."

Responding to complaints from Khadr that his interrogators "don't care" about him, the CSIS agent replies: "Well, I do care about you, but I want to talk to the honest Omar I talked to yesterday."

At times Khadr appears confused and despondent, and repeatedly breaks down. In another exchange, the agent says: "You want to go back to Canada? Well, there's not anything I can do about that."

Dennis Edney told the Toronto Star: "I hope Canadians will be outraged to see the callous and disgraceful treatment of a Canadian youth. Canadians should demand to know why they've been lied to."

The video follows documents released last week that revealed senior Canadian officials were aware that Khadr had been subjected to weeks of sleep deprivation, even though they stated publicly that the teenager had been treated humanely. For three weeks, Khadr had been made to move to a new cell every three hours, the documents revealed.

Gould, who has said he was only present during the interrogation to assess Khadr' s wellbeing, reported to Canada's foreign affairs department that Khadr was "a thoroughly screwed up young man".

"All those persons who have been in positions of authority over him have abused him and his trust, for their own purposes," Gould said.

Khadr, who the US accuses of killing a soldier with a grenade, is set to face a military trial later this year for five war crimes. Amnesty International has described him as the first person to be put on trial anywhere in the world for war crimes allegedly committed when he was a juvenile.

Original article posted here.

Torturers copying torturers