Category: Crimes Against Humanity

An SS and a Wehrmach Side of the CIA?

No Comments

That’s one of the quotes in Ken Silverstein’s Harper’s article.

Well over a year ago I reported on a brewing revolt within the CIA over the Bush Administration’s use of renditions, “enhanced interrogation” techniques (otherwise known as torture) and other tough tactics employed in the “war on terrorism.” One former official with whom I spoke at the time told me, “There are people who fear that indictments and subpoenas could be coming down, and they don’t want to get caught up in it.” This person went on to describe a split at the CIA, saying, “There’s an SS group within the agency that’s willing to do anything and there’s a Wehrmacht group that is saying, ‘I’m not gonna touch this stuff’.”

Since then, it’s become clear that dissent within the agency on these matters has become even more intense….

He then goes on to explain Michael Hayden’s retaliatory investigation of the CIA’s inspector general, and relating the resignation of a senior CIA Lawyer over Bush’s pro torture policies.

Not only is Bush breaking the military, he’s breaking the intelligence agencies too.

General Calls Iraq a Nightmare in Stars and Stripes

No Comments

Ricardo Sanchez calls the Iraq war, “A nightmare with no end in sight”, and he does so in a an interview in Stars and Stripes which is is close as you can come to being the Army’s newspaper and not be a part of the Pentagon budget.

The Republicans, of course, going after him in ways that makes Moveon’s dumb-ass “Betray Us” ad seem like a bloody love in, but the fact that this is in Stars and Stripes is significant.

As to Sanchez himself? I think that he is looking at his place in history, and a possible life sentence in the Hague, and trying to backtrack.

Congress Demands Torture Memos

No Comments

Congress seeks justice dept. documents on interrogation.

What is clear here is that Bush and His Evil Minions™ are objectively pro torture, and that they find torture a good thing in and of itself, and so they are using any means necessary to continue to torture.

They have to know that it does not work. They have to know that it damages the US’s reputation and ability to gather competent intelligence. They don’t care.

Ordering torture makes them feel like real men. It makes them feel virile and effective to cause needless harmful pain.

What Jesse Wendel Said.

No Comments

Jesse Wendle of The Group News blog has this post on the Amry’s new “Pain Ray”. I read about it a while back, and filed it under, “Mildly interesting”, wait for a slow news day.

Boy, was I wrong. Jesse makes it clear what this is all about, and I, in my tech geekiness, missed the big picture:

This will be used to torture.

It isn’t up for debate. It isn’t open for question. No matter how many safeguards we put on their sale.

This will be used to torture. As the article goes on to say, quoting a goddamn Ph.D. biologist who specializes in how the brain perceives pain, “They are so obviously useful as torture instruments.“

….

There are worse things than dying. Being burned alive is one of them. Being burned alive over and over again and never being able to escape… Don’t talk to me about humane weapons which burn people without burning them till you’ve gone on a run with me and seen what teenager sisters look, feel, sound and smell like who’ve been burned to death but are still talking to each other because they just don’t fucking know they’re already dead.

This box is a torture device. It’s morally wrong and an abomination upon the face of the earth.

All emphasis is mine.

Burma: Thousands Mead in Massacre

No Comments

This is bloody awful.

Burma: Thousands dead in massacre of the monks dumped in the jungle

By MARCUS OSCARSSON – More by this author » Last updated at 15:04pm on 1st October 2007

Comments Comments (69)
Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma’s ruling junta has revealed.

The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: “Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand.”

Mr Win, who spoke out as a Swedish diplomat predicted that the revolt has failed, said he fled when he was ordered to take part in a massacre of holy men. He has now reached the border with Thailand.

….

More Haditha Massacre Coverup

No Comments

Once again, an a junior officer who knows enough to rat out more senior officers scates.

Capt. Lucas M. McConnell of Napa was granted immunity and ordered to cooperate with officials looking into the November 2005 killings, the Marines said in a press release.

….

Lt. Gen. James Mattis dismissed dereliction of duty charges against McConnell on Sept. 12. and determined that “administrative measures” were an appropriate punishment, the Marines said.

Seriously.

A sergeant gets jail, but a captain, who would be in a position to finger a colonel, who might in turn finger generals…nothing.

This is an excercise in ass covering.

Petraeus US surge has ‘not worked out’, Just Not to Congress

No Comments

Well, here is no surprise, Bush’s hand picked stalking hours on Iraq, David Petraeus is saying that the surge has not worked out in a letter to troops in his command.

General David Petraeus, the commander of United States forces in Iraq, admitted on Friday that sending 30 000 more troops into the war zone in January had failed to yield the desired results. “It has not worked out as we had hoped,” the general said.

The acknowledgement by Petraeus that the situation in Iraq is “exceedingly complex” and that progress had been “uneven” came on the eve of his testimony to Congress on the state of the war. He offered the assessment in a letter to US forces serving in Iraq that was obtained by the Washington Post.

Not quite what he said before congress, huh.

It Should Surprise No one that We Have a Claim of Torture Here

No Comments

Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged “20th Hijacker” claims that his admissions were coerced.

He has recanted his confession, and claimed beatings and other torture.

You know the normal stuff for people detained by US forces:

….included being beaten, restrained for long periods in uncomfortable positions, threatened with dogs, exposed to loud music and freezing temperatures and stripped nude in front of female personnel…..

When did the US become a nation of sadistic torturers anyway?

BTW, this treatment is largely confirmed:

The investigation led by Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt confirmed, among other things, that al-Qahtani was forced to wear women’s underwear, was threatened with dogs, and kept in solitary confinement for 160 days. At one point, he was interrogated for 18-20 hours per day on 48 of 54 days.

Schmidt concluded, however, that while the treatment was abusive it was within policy and not torture because he was not denied food, water or medical care, and interrogators did not inflict physical pain on him.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt should spend the next 5-10 years under the confinement of the UN court in the Hague. Those who actually authorized this should be placed in a hole so deep that they never Ever see sunlight again.

“We don’t torture”, my ass. Osama bin Laden has defeated us, and these pukes running Guantanamo and other US Gulags don’t even know that they are his most effective operatives.

Do Not Give to the ADL Until It Tells The Truth About the Armenian Genocide

No Comments

Speaking as a Jew, and a Zionist, it is with no small amount of disappointment that I call on all people, regardless of faith to neither contribute to, or work with, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which was one the premier organizations opposing anti-Semitism.

They have formally come out in opposition to the congressional resolution decrying the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire during WW I. This Genocide is a FACT, and the idea that they would align themselves with those who would deny this fact is deplorable.

Their excuse is that modern Turkey, whose government had no role in the Genocide is an ally of Israel, and they do not wish to offend them. This is wrong and counter-productive.

What’s more, They fired a longtime ADL and activist because he acknowledged the genicide, which resulted in two of the regional board resigning.

Their statement follows, and I am willing to allow a representative to post here unedited to present their side.

ADL Statement on the Armenian Genocide
New York, NY, August 21, 2007
Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued the following statement:

In light of the heated controversy that has surrounded the Turkish-Armenian issue in recent weeks, and because of our concern for the unity of the Jewish community at a time of increased threats against the Jewish people, ADL has decided to revisit the tragedy that befell the Armenians.

We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as massacres and atrocities. On reflection, we have come to share the view of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide. If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide.

I have consulted with my friend and mentor Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and other respected historians who acknowledge this consensus. I hope that Turkey will understand that it is Turkey’s friends who urge that nation to confront its past and work to reconcile with Armenians over this dark chapter in history.

Having said that, we continue to firmly believe that a Congressional resolution on such matters is a counterproductive diversion and will not foster reconciliation between Turks and Armenians and may put at risk the Turkish Jewish community and the important multilateral relationship between Turkey, Israel and the United States.

I wonder if I’ll get a post from Serdar Argic.

Military Drugs

No Comments

I’ve come across an interesting report on military research into disabling drugs. Normally, one would thing of things like tear gas, but here they are talking about hallucinogens, and “relaxing agents”.

Of note is that the use of such agents by the military is expressly forbidden under the chemical warfare treaties, on the theory that their use would inevitably lead to full blown poison gas use.

This is precisely what happened in the Iran/Iraq war, where tear gas use escalated into poison gas attacks.

Meanwhile The Surge Continues

No Comments

Yes, our presence is helping the Iraqi people, in the same way that John Wilkes Booth helped people enjoy their time in the theater.

New Level of Horror in Iraq: 20 Beheaded, Bound Corpses Discovered in Baghdad
20 Beheaded Bodies Found on Banks of the Tigris River Southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi Police Say
By SINAN SALAHEDDIN
The Associated Press

BAGHDAD

Twenty beheaded bodies were discovered Thursday on the banks of the Tigris River southeast of Baghdad, while a parked car bomb killed another 20 people in one of the capital’s busy outdoor bus stations, police said.

The beheaded remains were found in the Sunni Muslim village of Um al-Abeed, near the city of Salman Pak, which lies 14 miles southeast of Baghdad.

The bodies all men aged 20 to 40 years old had their hands and legs bound, and some of the heads were found next to the bodies, two officers said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

Meanwhile, a parked car bomb ripped through a crowded transport hub in southwest Baghdad’s Baiyaa neighborhood at morning rush hour, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 50, another officer said on the same condition.

Many of the victims had been lining up for buses, awaiting a ride to work. Some 40 minibuses were incinerated in the explosion, police said.

Associated Press Television News video showed an open square strewn with smoldering car parts and charred bodies with clothes in tatters. Bystanders, some weeping, gingerly loaded human remains into ambulances.

A pickup truck rumbled slowly away from the scene, with two pairs of legs the dead bodies of victims dangling out of the back.

One of the police officers who gave information about the ghastly discovery of bodies southeast of Baghdad is based at Interior Ministry headquarters in the capital, and the other is based in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad.

…

These Weapons are For Use on Americans, not Brown and Black People

No Comments

Maybe I’m paranoid, but I can’t see either this administration, or the military being so concerned about the non white or non Christian people that they bomb.
This is intended for use against US Citizens.

Pentagon Struggles To Define Nonlethal Weapons Roadmap(subscription required)

Aviation Week & Space Technology
06/25/2007, page 55

Michael Bruno
Washington

Nonlethal weapons beckon, but Pentagon struggles to ascertain the way forward

Printed headline: Stunned Progression

The U.S. Defense Dept. has a bevy of high-end nonlethal weapon technologies being developed, but whether it can better exploit the seemingly endless possibilities that nonlethal weapons promise, even by the next major war, is still uncertain.

It’s not for lack of trying. There are still dreams of unmanned aircraft raining electromagnetic pulses or corrosive agents on alleged overseas weapons-of-mass-destruction sites to obliterate their navigation, guidance and detonation circuits—as one Naval War College paper once outlined—or UAV fleets dropping polymer foam agents to render an enemy facility temporarily useless without the collateral damage of lethal bombs.


The Active Denial System, heavily promoted by the U.S. Defense Dept. and even formally sought by combat command officials in the Middle East, continues to see deployment slip into the future as researchers try to fine-tune the nonlethal weapon.Credit: U.S. DEFENSE DEPT.

Take the Active Denial System, the Defense Dept.’s first nonlethal directed-energy weapon and the most prominent new-technology effort trumpeted by the Defense Dept. The ADS uses a gyrotron to generate a focused millimeter-wave radio frequency beam that, when directed at targeted humans, creates a subcutaneous heating sensation that is often described as feeling like one is being cooked alive. Assuming enemies flee the targeted beam or the weapon is disengaged, effects do not linger
….

Of course, they tested this on people with no change in their pockets, contact lenses, eyeglasses, etc.
And that guy with the artificial hip? fugget about it

Bush Admin to Create New Gulags

No Comments

Replacing one Gulag with a bunch of little ones….Delightful.

Bush Administration Nears Decision To Close Gitmo

AP) WASHINGTON The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility and move the terror suspects there to military prisons elsewhere, The Associated Press has learned.

President Bush’s national security and legal advisers are expected to discuss the move at the White House on Friday and, for the first time, it appears a consensus is developing, senior administration officials said Thursday.

The advisers will consider a proposal to shut the center and transfer detainees to one or more Defense Department facilities, including the maximum security military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where they could face trial, said the officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal deliberations.

…

CIA ran secret prisons for detainees in Europe, says inquiry

No Comments

Whoopie. We have gulags. I want my country back.

Impeach Dick Cheney Now. Impeach George Bush Tomorrow.

CIA ran secret prisons for detainees in Europe, says inquiry
Stephen Grey
Friday June 8, 2007
The Guardian

The CIA operated secret prisons in Europe where terrorism suspects could be interrogated and were allegedly tortured, an official inquiry will conclude today.

Despite denials by their governments, senior Polish and Romanian security officials have confirmed to the Council of Europe that their countries were used to hold some of America’s most important prisoners captured after 9/11 in secret.

None of the prisoners had access to the Red Cross and many were subject to what George Bush has called the CIA’s ‘enhanced’ interrogation, which critics have condemned as torture. Although suspicions about the secret CIA prisons have existed for more than a year, the council’s report, seen by the Guardian, appears to offer the first concrete evidence. It also details the prisons’ operations and the identities of some of the prisoners.”

….