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| 5/25 |
| 2004/9/23 [Politics/Domestic/President/Bush, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:33720 Activity:very high |
9/23 Ladies and Gentleman, Irony is officially Alive. Apparently,
"60 Minutes II" ran the Bush TANG memo story by preempting a story
about the forged Niger Uranium documents. [why was the last line of
this description deleted?]
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6073449/site/newsweek
\_ I apologize for brutally hijacking a motd thread, but gwbush
is the original master of irony. An example:
James Harding (Financial Times): Mr. President, I want to return to
the question of torture. What we've learned from these memos this
week is that the Department of Justice lawyers and the Pentagon
lawyers have essentially worked out a way that US officials can
torture detainees without running afoul of the law. So when you say
you want the US to adhere to international and US laws, that's not
very comforting. This is a moral question: Is torture ever
justified?
President Bush: Look, I'm going to say it one more time. ...Maybe I
can be more clear. The instructions went out to our people to
adhere to law. That ought to comfort you. We're a nation of law. We
adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might look at these laws,
and that might provide comfort for you. And those were the
instructions...from me to the government. - danh
\_ Yeah, and? The law also allows for people to kill others given the
right political circumstances.
By your logic:
Soldiers, they kill people, that's bad.
But they were following law, so people who make the law are bad.
Therefore The US Government is bad.
But wait a minute, all governments allow people to be killed for
political reasons.
Therefore government is bad in general.
We should do away with government because killing people should never
be justified.
\_ wow. this is too stupid even for ilyas. -tom
\_ If the alternative is to be smart like you, tom, I d rather
stay an idiot forever. -- ilyas
\_ you're doing a good job. -tom
\_ I think we should pass a law that basically sanctions
torture solely for tom, either that or ship him off
to Afghanistan. I'd think that would get unanimous
consent from both the House and the Senate.
\_ I think we should pass a law not only allowing
tom and ilyas to get married, but forcing them to.
Then we could have a whole reality TV show around
the happy couple.
\_ I think tom's peculiar brand of bulldog yapping
is exclusive to the safety of the Internet. I
would be very surprised if he was like this face to
face. -- ilyas
\_ I'm not sure what you mean by "like this." tom
is just as opinionated in real life, but it
doesn't come off quite the same way. Do you talk
so much about your weapons and about punching
people in the face so much in real life? If so,
I bet you get laughed at. A lot.
\_ I don't remember ever mentioning 'my
weapons' on the motd. I think I mentioned
punches to the face once, maybe twice. I have
never threatened anyone with violence. By
'like this,' I mean that tom comes across as
stuck in ad hominem mode about 90% of the time.
I mean I have to wonder about his mental
health sometimes, he seems really angry, all
the time. -- ilyas
\_ Way to miss the point.
\_ i am aware that torture happens in all wars, it's just a fact
of war. the bush administratoin is doing a spectacularly
bad job of lying about it and pretending they had absolutely
no idea this was happening. we're suppoesd to be the
good guys. if you want to turn into aaron, go read
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17430 - danh |
| 5/25 |
|
| msnbc.msn.com/id/6073449/site/newsweek The journalistic juggling at CBS provides an ironic counterpoint to the furor over apparently bogus documents involving Bush's National Guard service. One unexpected consequence of the network's decision was to wipe out a chance--at least for the moment--for greater public scrutiny of a more consequential forgery that played a role in building the Bush administration's case to invade Iraq. A team of "60 Minutes" correspondents and consulting reporters spent more than six months investigating the Niger uranium documents fraud, CBS sources tell NEWSWEEK. The group landed the first ever on-camera interview with Elisabetta Burba, the Italian journalist who first obtained the phony documents, as well as her elusive source, Rocco Martino, a mysterious Roman businessman with longstanding ties to European intelligence agencies. Although the edited piece never ended up identifying Martino by name, the story, narrated by "60 Minutes" correspondent Ed Bradley, asked tough questions about how the White House came to embrace the fraudulent documents and why administration officials chose to include a 16-word reference to the questionable uranium purchase in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech. But just hours before the piece was set to air on the evening of Sept. The story has since created a journalistic and political firestorm, resulting in a colossal embarrassment for CBS. This week, the network concluded that its principle source for the documents, a disgruntled former Guard official and Democratic partisan named Bill Burkett, had lied about where he got the material. CBS anchor Dan Rather publicly apologized for broadcasting the faulty report. Today, CBS named a two-person team comprised of former US Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former Associated Press chief Louis Boccardi to investigate the network's handling of the story. Bush now claims that 75 percent of the group's key members are out of commission. Some experts say that number is meaningless "This is like living in a Kafka novel," said Joshua Micah Marshall, a Washington Monthly contributing writer and a Web blogger who had been collaborating with "60 Minutes" producers on the uranium story. "Here we had a very important, well-reported story about forged documents that helped lead the country to war. And then it gets bumped by another story that relied on forged documents." Some CBS reporters, as well as one of the network's key sources, fear that the Niger uranium story may never run, at least not any time soon, on the grounds that the network can now not credibly air a report questioning how the Bush administration could have gotten taken in by phony documents. The network would "be a laughingstock," said one source intimately familiar with the story. Although acknowledging that it was "frustrating" to have his story bounced, David Gelber, the lead CBS producer on the Niger piece, said he has been told the segment will still air some time soon, perhaps as early as next week. "Obviously, everybody at CBS is holding their breath these days. I'm assuming the story is going to run until I'm told differently." The delay of the CBS report comes at a time when there have been significant new developments in the case--although virtually none of them have been reported in the United States. According to Italian and British press reports, Martino--the Rome middleman at the center of the case--was questioned last week by an Italian investigating magistrate for two hours about the circumstances surrounding his acquisition of the documents. Martino could not be reached for comment, but his lawyer is reportedly planning a press conference in the next few days. Burba, the Italian journalist, confirmed to NEWSWEEK this week that Martino is the previously mysterious "Mr X" who contacted her with the potentially explosive documents in early October 2002--just as Congress was debating whether to authorize President Bush to wage war against Iraq. The documents, consisting of telexes, letters and contracts, purported to show that Iraq had negotiated an agreement to purchase 500 tons of "yellowcake uranium from Niger, material that could be used to make a nuclear bomb. The embassy soon passed the material on to Washington where some Bush administration officials viewed it as hard evidence to support its case that Saddam Hussein's regime was actively engaged in a program to assemble nuclear weapons. But the Niger component of the White House case for war quickly imploded. Asked for evidence to support President Bush's contention in his State of the Union speech that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa, the administration turned over the Niger documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Within two hours, using the Google search engine, IAEA officials in Vienna determined the documents to be a crude forgery. Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the FBI launched an investigation into the Niger documents in an effort to determine if the United States government had been duped by a deliberate "disinformation" campaign organized by a foreign intelligence agency or others with a political agenda relating to Iraq. So far, the bureau appears to have made little progress in unraveling the case. "The senator is frustrated by the slow pace of the investigation," said Wendy Morigi, the press secretary for Senator Rockefeller, who was recently briefed on the status of the FBI probe. One striking aspect of the FBI's investigation is that, at least as of this week, Martino has told associates he has never even been interviewed by the bureau--despite the fact that he was publicly identified by the Financial Times of London as the source of the documents more than six weeks ago and was subsequently flown to New York City by CBS to be interviewed for the "60 Minutes" report. A US law-enforcement official said the FBI is seeking to interview Martino, but has not yet received permission to do so from the Italian government. The official declined to comment on other aspects of the investigation. The case has taken on additional intrigue because of mounting indications that Martino has longstanding relationships with European intelligence agencies. Martino recently told the Sunday Times of London that he had previously worked for SISMI, the Italian military-intelligence agency, a potentially noteworthy part of his resume given that the conservative Italian government of Berlasconi was a strong supporter of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. A French government official told NEWSWEEK that Martino also had a relationship with French intelligence agencies. But the French official rejected suggestions from US and British officials that French intelligence may have played a role in creating the documents in order to embarrass Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The French never disseminated the documents because they could not establish their authenticity, the French official said. Martino has told Burba and others that he obtained the phony documents from an Italian woman who worked in the Niger Embassy in Rome. He was in turn put in touch with the woman by yet another middleman who, according to Burba's account, had directed Martino to provide the documents to "the Eygptians." Some press reports have suggested the still unidentified middleman who put Martino in touch with his Niger Embassy source was in fact a SISMI officer himself. Burba, who has twice been interviewed by the FBI but never gave up Martino's name, said she had been cooperating with the CBS team on the story in hopes of getting to the bottom of the matter. But now, with the "60 Minutes" broadcast postponed, she is no longer confident that can ever happen. Meanwhile, she said she is fed up with Martino who has "lied" to her and provided contradictory accounts to other journalists. "In this story, you don't know who's lying and who's telling the truth. The sources have been both discredited and discredited themselves." |
| www.nybooks.com/articles/17430 plus appendices AR 15-6 Investigation of the Abu Ghraib Detention Facility and 205th Military Intelligence Brigade by Major General George R Fay August 2004, 142 pp. "Free societies in the Middle East will be hopeful societies, which no longer feed resentments and breed violence for export.... The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear--and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march." abusing women, children, men, and the old men and women whom they arrested randomly and without any guilt. No one can ask them what they are doing, because they are protected by their freedom.... No one can punish them, whether in our country or their country. They expressed the freedom of rape, the freedom of nudity and the freedom of humiliation." They have long since taken their place in the gallery of branded images, as readily recognizable in much of the world as Marilyn struggling with her billowing dress or Michael dunking his basketball: Hooded Man, a dark-caped figure tottering on a box, supplicant arms outstretched, wires trailing from his fingers; and Leashed Man, face convulsed in humiliation above his leather collar, naked body twisted at the feet of the American female in camouflage pants who gazes down at him without expression, holding the leash casually in hand. The ubiquity of these images in much of the world suggests not only their potency but their usefulness and their adaptability. For the first of the many realities illuminated by the Global War on Terror-- or the GWOT, as the authors of the latest reports listed here designate it--is the indisputable fact that much of the world sees America rather differently from the way Americans see themselves. Out of the interlocking scandals and controversies symbolized by Hooded Man and Leashed Man, the pyramids of naked bodies, the snarling dogs, and all the rest, and known to the world by the collective name of Abu Ghraib, one can extract two "master narratives," both dependent on the power and mutability of the images themselves. The first is that of President Bush, who presented the photographs as depicting "disgraceful conduct by a few American troops, who dishonored our country and disregarded our values"--behavior that, the President insisted, "does not represent America." And the aberrant, outlandish character of what the photographs show--the nudity, the sadism, the pornographic imagery--seemed to support this "few bad apples" argument, long the classic defense of states accused of torture. The facts, however, almost from day one, did not: the Red Cross report, the Army's own Taguba report, even the photographs themselves, some of which depicted military intelligence soldiers assisting in abuses they supposedly knew nothing about--all strongly suggested that the images were the brutal public face of behavior that involved many more people than the seven military police who were quickly charged. The new reports not only decisively prove what was long known, widening the circle of direct blame for what happened at Abu Ghraib to nearly fifty people, including military intelligence soldiers and officers--although subsequent disclosures suggest the number is at least twice that. More important, the reports suggest how procedures that "violated established interrogation procedures and applicable laws" in fact had their genesis not in Iraq but in interrogation rooms in Afghanistan and Guantnamo Bay, Cuba--and ultimately in decisions made by high officials in Washington. who were not afforded the protection of the Geneva Conventions, now applied to detainees who did fall under the Geneva Conventions' protections. According to General Fay, these "policies and practices" included, among others, "removing clothing, isolating people for long periods of time, using stress positions, exploiting fear of dogs and implementing sleep and light deprivation." What we know as "the Abu Ghraib scandal" has in fact become an increasingly complex story about how Americans in Afghanistan and Cuba and Iraq came to commit acts, with the apparent approval of the highest officials, that clearly constitute torture. The images themselves, however, having helped force open the door to broader questions of how the Bush administration has treated prisoners in the War on Terror, are now helping as well to block that door; for the images, by virtue of their inherent grotesque power, strongly encourage the view that "acts of brutality and purposeless sadism," which clearly did occur, lay at the heart of Abu Ghraib. Even public officials charged with investigating the scandal--these are the fourth and fifth full reports on the matter, with at least four more to come--at the same time seek to contain it by promoting the view that Abu Ghraib in its essence was about individual misbehavior and sadism: "Animal House on the night shift," as former secretary of defense James Schlesinger characterized it, even as his own report showed in detail that it was a great deal more. The second "master narrative" of Abu Ghraib is that of the Muslim preacher Sheik Mohammed Bashir, quoted above, and many other Arabs and Muslims who point to the scandal's images as perfect symbols of the subjugation and degradation that the American occupiers have inflicted on Iraq and the rest of the Arab world. In this sense the Hooded Man and the Leashed Man fill a need, serving as powerful brand images advertising a preexisting product. Had bin Laden sought to create a powerful trademark image for his international product of global jihad, he could scarcely have done better hiring the cleverest advertising firm on Madison Avenue. And not only are these photographs perfect masterpieces of propaganda; they have, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger, the considerable advantage of being true. Or, to put it another way: if the Hooded Man and the Leashed Man and the naked human pyramids and the rest shocked Americans because of their perverse undermining of the normal, they shocked Iraqis and other Arabs because the images seemed to confirm so vividly and precisely a reality that many had suspected and feared but had tried not to believe. At that moment, the insurgency, wholly unanticipated by American officers on the ground and stubbornly denied by their political masters in Washington, had been gaining strength for months. Enormous suicide bombings had killed hundreds, had driven the United Nations, the Red Cross, and many other international organizations from the country, and had turned Baghdad into a city of stone, its public buildings and hotels and many of its roads encircled by massive concrete blast barriers and its American occupation government wholly inaccessible behind the barbed-wire and machine-gun nests of the grim fortress called the Green Zone. The only Americans most Iraqis saw were the sunglasses-wearing machine-gunners atop the up-armored Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles that barreled through traffic several times a day. These patrols were coming under increasingly frequent attack, usually from the ubiquitous "improvised explosive devices," or IEDs, which insurgents concealed in garbage cans or behind telephone poles. By November the number of attacks against Americans had doubled, to nearly forty a day. In May 2003, the month President Bush declared that "major combat" was over, forty-one Americans died in Iraq; And by and large, as was clear in Iraq at the time, and as these reports amply confirm, the American officers had very little idea who was killing their troops and had become increasingly desperate to find out. in the general vicinity of a specified target as a cordon and capture technique. Representatives of the Red Cross, who visited Abu Graib nearly thirty times in this period, offered a more vivid account of "cordon and capture": Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property. They arrested suspects, tying their hands in the... |