A spokesman the Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project, Professor Meg Satterthwaite of NYU Law School, said "detainee abuses were widespread, and few people have truly been brought to justice." Added Tom Malinowski, of Human Rights Watch, one of the participating groups, "We've seen a series of half-hearted investigations and slaps on the wrist."
As ex-President Carter writes in "Our Endangered Values"(Simon & Schuster) the "superficial investigations" into torture conducted by the Pentagon "have made it obvious that no high-level military officers or government officials will be held accountable..."
USA may be holding 11,000 prisoners in Iraq , Afghanistan , and at Guantanamo , Cuba , Human Rights First says. So far, more than 100 prisoners are said to have perished in U.S. custody. Captives include 800 Pakistani boys aged 13-15, some of them tortured, the International Red Cross has charged.
A key architect of the "new paradigm" torture policy is ex-White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales, now Attorney General, author of a torture memo in January of 2002. He dismissed the Geneva Conventions banning torture as "quaint."
His predecessor, Attorney General John Ashcroft, told Bush the Conventions outlawing torture did not apply to Taliban detainees. The CCR sued Ashcroft on behalf of Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who was abducted to Syria and tortured. Immigration and Naturalization Service(INS) and FBI agents who arrested Arar at JFK Airport and put him on a plane to Syria are culpable.
In addition to Ashcroft, the CCR suit cited Larry Thompson, Acting Attorney General said to have signed the rendition order; FBI Director Robert Mueller; J. Scott Blackman, regional INS director; Edward McElroy, then INS director for the New York City district; and INS Commissioner James Zigler.
High Bush aides responsible for torture include Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, who on August 1, 2002, drafted what became known as the "torture memo." Also, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff who, when head of Justice's criminal division, advised the CIA it was okay to use water torture.
Other law violators include John Yoo, now a University of California professor, who advised Bush the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees; Jack Goldsmith, who drafted the torture policy for Gonzales when he headed Justice's Office of Legal Counsel; David Addington, Cheney's top lawyer and a principle author of a White House memo justifying torture of terrorism suspects; Douglas Feith, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy who had oversight for Abu Ghraib and like prisons; and former Pentagon general counsel William Haynes II, author of memos rationalizing torture.
That such policy memos were translated into action was established by Human Rights Watch, which reported prison interrogators in the Baghdad area got a lecture from military lawyers saying Geneva Conventions did not apply and torturing was legit.
Among military officers involved in torture are:
# Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, U.S. senior commander in Iraq for about a year starting in June, 2003. His memo of September 14, 2003, authorized use of interrogation techniques such as dogs, isolation, and stress positions. Major General Walter Wojdakowski was his deputy commander in charge of an involved military intelligence brigade and is one of those named in the CCR criminal complaint. And Major General Barbara Fast, cleared by the Army of any wrongdoing, served as chief of intelligence for Sanchez.
# Colonel Thomas Pappas, head of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, was in charge of Iraq prisons and therefore responsible for what took place. He is also named in the CCR suit for torture "amounting to war crimes." Lieutenant Colonel Steve Jordan, of 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, is said by CCR to even have witnessed one detainee's death caused by his subordinates' mistreatment.
# Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, with direct charge for Abu Ghraib and subsequently demoted to colonel, admitted to violation of the Geneva Conventions by holding so-called "ghost detainees" in secret. Sanchez, Pappas, and Karpinski are named in an ACLU complaint. Also, Captain Carolyn Wood, who oversaw interrogation at Bagram prison and approved the use of dogs and stress positions.
# Lt. General William Boykin reportedly advised Cambone to use water torture and to humiliate captives via religious taunting. Participating doctors, nurses, and paramedics who aided torturers at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere would be culpable as well.
# Air Force General Counsel Mary Walker, who headed a Rumsfeld working group on interrogation guidelines, rationalized that some criminal conduct was "not unlawful."
# Lt. Colonel Stephen Jordan, former supervisor of interrogators at Abu Ghraib was named in the CCR complaint as having "clear knowledge" of ongoing abuses, and Lt. Colonel Jerry Phillabaum, commander of a military police battalion that oversaw Abu Ghraib was said by CCR to have failed to report war crimes.
# CCR also filed a class action suit in Federal court against Titan Corp. of San Diego and CACI International of Arlington, Va., and three of their employees, Stephen Stefanowicz and John Israel of CACI, and Adel Nahkla of Titan for abuses Abu Ghraib. Plaintiffs said they were hooded and raped, stripped naked and urinated on, prevented from praying, beaten with chains and boots, and forced to watch their father tortured to death. CACI has strongly denied the charges.
Sherwood Ross has worked as a publicist for Chicago; as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and workplace columnist for Reuters. He has also been a media consultant to colleges, law schools, labor unions, and to the editors of more than 100 national magazines. A civil rights activist, he was News Director for the National Urban League, a talk show host at WOL Radio, Washington, D.C., and holds an award for "best spot news coverage" for Chicago radio stations for civil rights reporting. He is the author "Gruening of Alaska,"(Best Books)and several plays about Japan during World War II, including "Baron Jiro," and "Yamamoto's Decision," read at the National Press Club, where he is a member. His favorite quotations are from the Sermon on The Mount.
Just because there is "Special Rendition" it does not follow there is torture. To put Clinton in the same catagory as Bush II is silly,no it is dishonest and ethically bankrupt. The right and wrong of Special Rendition totally depends on the case and situation. In order to fight a war against terrorism, the government must have some tools. Since the terrorist have no ground rules about the brutal murder of civilian and are told by Ayman al-Zawahri and Adam Yehiye Gadahn that "no Muslim should shed tears for Westerners killed by al-Qaida attacks" which means innocent women and babies murdered on trains and airlines or even young Muslim girls at weddings in Jordan who have nothing to with this war should be mourned. The radical Muslims have no compassion or love for anyone or anything. They are like the god and prophet they worship.
How come all these verbal attacks are always against the West and never against the dark evils of radical Islam such as Hebollah's cowardly hiding behind women and children? This war in Iraq is ridiculous. It has nothing to do with the death struggle with radical Islam, and the torturing of anyone is just to get down on the same despicable level of evil as the evil radical Islamists themselves. If we could "Special Rendition" the whole leadership of the radical Islamist out of whatever country, we would be mortally remiss in our duties to not do that, and I do mean MORTALLY and not morally. If Bush One or Clinton had Special Renditioned Osama ben Laden out of Afghanistan or Sudan, we would not be in the mess with thousand upon thousands of innocent people being murdered by these radicals.
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pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 940 comments)
on Sunday, September 3, 2006 at 1:53:46 PM
