[Marxism] Newsweek expose follows torture trail to White House

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I am including introductory comments by Prof. Mark Jensen, a leader of
United for Peace of Pierce County (Seattle, Washington area) and
moderator of the Snow-News list.
Fred Feldman

[Clearly, events have overtaken the Pentagon.  While it issues denials
and
prepares to court-martial underlings, there is now abundant evidence
that the
responsibility for the universally condemned abuse at Abu Ghraib prison
lies
very high up the chain of command -- very likely, all the way up.  --
On
Sunday, *Newsweek International* posted an investigation into "The Roots
of
Torture" to be printed in its May 24 number.  What it all boils down to
a
determination on the part of the administration to ignore the Geneva
Conventions, thus taking a giant step back toward the dark ages.  --

Playing
a key role:  White House counsel Alberto Gonzales.  In a Jan. 25, 2002
memo to
Bush, Gonzales essentially led the George W. Bush to believe that he
could
legally do anything to anyone, under the cover of the war on terrorism.
"As
you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war," Gonzales

wrote.  "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's
strict
limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of
its
provisions."  Colin Powell of the Dept. of State resisted, but succeeded
only
minimally in impeding developments.  --

At this point, things have gone so
far in the development of a secret web of torturers that the U.S. is now

"running a covert charter airline moving CIA prisoners from one secret
facility to another."  Covert, because it is considered "impolitic (and
too
traceable) to use the U.S. Air Force."  --  There seems to be
considerable
momentum for deep investigations into these horrors.  *Newsweek
International*
concludes:  "Today there is no telling where the scandal will bottom
out."
--Mark]


<http://www.ufppc.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=586&Itemid=2
>
http://www.ufppc.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=586&Itemid=2

A NEWSWEEK investigation

THE ROOTS OF TORTURE
By John Barry, Michael Hirsh, and Michael Isikoff

** The road to Abu Ghraib began after 9/11, when Washington wrote new
rules to
fight a new kind of war. **

Newsweek International
May 24, 2004 [posted May 16]

It's not easy to get a member of Congress to stop talking.  Much less a
room
full of them.  But as a small group of legislators watched the images
flash by
in a small, darkened hearing room in the Rayburn Building last week, a
sickened silence descended.  There were 1,800 slides and several videos,
and
the show went on for three hours.  The nightmarish images showed
American
soldiers at Abu Ghraib Prison forcing Iraqis to masturbate.  American
soldiers
sexually assaulting Iraqis with chemical light sticks.  American
soldiers
laughing over dead Iraqis whose bodies had been abused and mutilated.
There
was simply nothing to say.  "It was a very subdued walk back to the
House
floor," said Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House
Intelligence
Committee.  "People were ashen."

The White House put up three soldiers for court-martial, saying the
pictures
were all the work of a few bad-apple MPs who were poorly supervised.
But
evidence was mounting that the furor was only going to grow and probably
sink
some prominent careers in the process.  Senate Armed Services Committee
chairman John Warner declared the pictures were the worst "military
misconduct" he'd seen in 60 years, and he planned more hearings.
Republicans
on Capitol Hill were notably reluctant to back Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld.  And NEWSWEEK has learned that U.S. soldiers and CIA
operatives
could be accused of war crimes.  Among the possible charges:  homicide
involving deaths during interrogations.  "The photos clearly demonstrate
to me
the level of prisoner abuse and mistreatment went far beyond what I
expected,
and certainly involved more than six or seven MPs," said GOP Sen.
Lindsey
Graham, a former military prosecutor.  He added:  "It seems to have been

planned."

Indeed, the single most iconic image to come out of the abuse scandal --
that
of a hooded man standing naked on a box, arms outspread, with wires
dangling
from his fingers, toes and penis -- may do a lot to undercut the
administration's case that this was the work of a few criminal MPs.
That's
because the practice shown in that photo is an arcane torture method
known
only to veterans of the interrogation trade.  "Was that something that
[an MP]
dreamed up by herself?  Think again," says Darius Rejali, an expert on
the use
of torture by democracies.  "That's a standard torture.  It's called
'the
Vietnam.'  But it's not common knowledge.  Ordinary American soldiers
did
this, but someone taught them."

Who might have taught them?  Almost certainly it was their superiors up
the
line.

Rest of article:
 <http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4989481/> http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4989481/



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