The Emperor has no uniform...no honor...no common
sense...no understanding of the Geneva Accords, the UN
Charter, the Uniform Code of Military Justice or even
of the US Constitution (which he swore an oath to
defend)...
Sidney Blumenthal, Guardian: The Bush administration was well aware of the Taguba report, but more concerned about its exposure than its contents. General Richard Myers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, was dispatched on a mission to CBS news to tell it to suppress its story and the horrifying pictures. For two weeks, CBS's 60 Minutes
II show complied, until it became known that the New
Yorker magazine would publish excerpts of the report.
Myers was then sent on to the Sunday morning news
programmes to explain, but under questioning
acknowledged that he had still not read the report he
had tried to censor from the public for weeks...
Save the US Constituion, Show Up for Democracy in
2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1210588,00.html
This is the new gulag
Bush has created a global network of extra-legal and secret US prisons with thousands of inmates
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday May 6, 2004
The Guardian
It was "unacceptable" and "un-American", but was it
torture? "My impression is that what has been charged
thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is
different from torture," said Donald Rumsfeld, the
secretary of defence on Tuesday. "I don't know if it
is correct to say what you just said, that torture has
taken place, or that there's been a conviction for
torture. And therefore I'm not going to address the
torture word."
He confessed he had still not read the March 9 report
by Major General Antonio Taguba on "abuse" at the Abu
Ghraib prison. Some highlights: " ... pouring cold
water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a
broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees
with rape ... sodomising a detainee with a chemical
light and perhaps a broom stick ... "
The same day that Rumsfeld added his contribution to
the history of Orwellian statements by high officials,
the Senate armed services committee was briefed behind
closed doors for the first time not only about Abu
Ghraib, but about military and CIA prisons in
Afghanistan. It learned of the deaths of 25 prisoners
and two murders in Iraq; that private contractors were
at the centre of these lethal incidents; and that no
one had been charged. The senators were given no
details about the private contractors. They might as
well have been fitted with hoods.
Many of them, Democratic and Republican, were
infuriated that there was no accountability and no
punishment and demanded a special investigation, but
the Republican leadership quashed it. The senators
want Rumsfeld to testify in a public hearing, but he
is resisting and the Republican leaders are blocking
it.
The Bush administration was well aware of the Taguba
report, but more concerned about its exposure than its
contents. General Richard Myers, the chairman of the
joint chiefs of staff, was dispatched on a mission to
CBS news to tell it to suppress its story and the
horrifying pictures. For two weeks, CBS's 60 Minutes
II show complied, until it became known that the New
Yorker magazine would publish excerpts of the report.
Myers was then sent on to the Sunday morning news
programmes to explain, but under questioning
acknowledged that he had still not read the report he
had tried to censor from the public for weeks.
President Bush, Condoleezza Rice and other officials,
unable to contain the controversy any longer, engaged
in profuse apologies and scheduled appearances on Arab
television. There were still no firings. One of their
chief talking points was that the "abuse" was an
aberration. But Abu Ghraib was a predictable
consequence of the Bush administration imperatives and
policies.
Bush has created what is in effect a gulag. It
stretches from prisons in Afghanistan to Iraq, from
Guantánamo to secret CIA prisons around the world.
There are perhaps 10,000 people being held in Iraq,
1,000 in Afghanistan and almost 700 in Guantánamo, but
no one knows the exact numbers. The law as it applies
to them is whatever the executive deems necessary.
There has been nothing like this system since the fall
of the Soviet Union. The US military embraced the
Geneva conventions after the second world war, because
applying them to prisoners of war protects American
soldiers. But the Bush administration, in an internal
fight, trumped its argument by designating those at
Guantánamo "enemy combatants". Rumsfeld extended this
system - "a legal black hole", according to Human
Rights Watch - to Afghanistan and then Iraq, openly
rejecting the conventions.
Private contractors, according to the Toguba report,
gave orders to US soldiers to torture prisoners. Their
presence in Iraq is a result of the Bush military
strategy of invading with a relatively light force.
The gap has been filled by private contractors, who
are not subject to Iraqi law or the US military code
of justice. Now, there are an estimated 20,000 of them
on the ground in Iraq, a larger force than the British
army.
It is not surprising that recent events in Iraq centre
on these contractors: the four killed in Falluja, and
Abu Ghraib's interrogators. Under the Bush legal
doctrine, we create a system beyond law to defend the
rule of law against terrorism; we defend democracy by
inhibiting democracy. Law is there to constrain
"evildoers". Who doubts our love of freedom?
But the arrogance of virtuous certainty masks the
egotism of power. It is the opposite of American
pragmatism, which always under stands that knowledge
is contingent, tentative and imperfect. This is a
conflict in the American mind between two claims on
democracy, one with a sense of paradox, limits and
debate, the other purporting to be omniscient, even
messianic, requiring no checks because of its purity,
and contemptuous of accountability.
"This is the only one where they took pictures," Tom
Malinowski, Washington advocate of Human Rights Watch,
and a former staff member of the National Security
Council, told me. "This was not considered a debatable
topic until people had to stare at the pictures."
· Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to
President Clinton and Washington bureau chief of
Salon.com
Sidney_Blumenthal@yahoo.com
Posted by richard at May 6, 2004 02:23 PM