Red State Renegade

Iraq Veterans spoke out last month on what they saw and were expected to do in Iraq and Afghanistan, recalling being put into immoral and illegal situations:

Soldiers spoke out at an event sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against The War:

On the initial invasion:
“There were massive amounts of artillery strikes before we even invaded. We saw the results of that. Streets full of bodies – women and children – body parts, extremely indiscriminate. I’m talking about rolling through villages here, not military encampments.”

“I still believed everything we were force-fed: weapons of mass destruction and possibly even a nuclear weapon. We felt, like, we’re going to go in, overthrow this evil dictator and give these people some peace, finally. We thought we were doing a good thing.”

On home raids:
“Usually it was based on a tip – we’re told someone in the home is an insurgent. We would pick up people who had nothing to do with anything, keep them locked up until they came up with something.”

“We kick down the door and all we find are a few women holding babies and a couple of kids. We were ordered to take the babies away and put sandbags on the women’s heads, tie their hands behind their backs, put them on their knees facing the wall. Here I am zip-tying these women, and my buddy is standing next to me holding these babies asking what do I do with these kids? We stood there, like, oh shit, what do we do? The squad leader came in and shouted, ‘Everybody is bagged and tagged – everybody!’ So we did it.”

On interrogations:
“That’s not something I want on my conscience.”

On the very common ‘Shovel order:’
“Anyone carrying a shovel or any sort of implement that could be used to bury an IED could be considered a target…After dark, you can shoot anyone who is outside. Or anyone who puts anything on the side of the road can be considered a target. You won’t find it in writing, but it’s an order indicated to soldiers.”

On accountability:
“(Our commander) made it clear to us that if an innocent person was shot he would stage a scene to protect us”.

On the Haditha Massacre, when 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians, some women and children were killed by angry U.S. soldiers, after losing their brothers in an IED attack:
“My squad was doing medivacs out of the town. I was not there to witness the shooting, but I know many marines who were.”

“I have a lot of feelings about this incident. A friend of mine from my first two tours was in that squad. He was the guy they gave immunity to to testify against the squad leader.”

“The people on the ground are looking at serious prison time. Like life. The people who were giving orders were only relieved of command. And I don’t think that’s right.”

The Haditha massacre, us ugly as it sounds, was not an isolated incident:
“It’s the one that just happened to be uncovered.”

On the Abu Gharaib abuses (after describing some inhumane hazing incidents routinely performed on fellow soldiers):
“What happened at Abu Ghraib is those orders came from the top. If the policy makers and the commanders can dehumanise their own troops, why wouldn’t they dehumanise the Iraqi people?”

On the mission and the war against terror:
“Everything that we were doing seemed almost designed to create more terrorists. To turn people against America. I couldn’t understand how we were liberating anyone. But I could understand how an Afghan person who was ambivalent about America could easily become an extremist based on their interaction with American soldiers.”

On the chain of command:
“The soldiers and marines are just doing their jobs, doing what they were trained for or what they were told to do when they got over there. Things that seem really horrible just become routine – and they are implicitly or explicitly condoned, or encouraged, by the commanders and the policy-makers.”

In desperation, Hillary takes a lesson from the Giuliani fear mongering playbook:

Last night on the democratic debate on ABC TV, Hillary invoked the worst terror attack on US soil to continue her criticisms of Barack Obama, mentioning 9/11 five times to criticize his association with a member of the group Weather Underground (which bombed government buildings in the 60s), his openness to talking to rogue leaders, and even a question about energy policy.

She continued to keep Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Obama’s former pastor) in the news, reiterating her earlier declarations that she would not have Wright as her pastor. This time she invoked the suffering of the people of New York to justify that view:

“But I have to say that, you know, for Pastor Wright to have given his first sermon after 9/11 and to have blamed the United States for the attack, which happened in my city of New York, would have been intolerable for me…”

But is it still intolerable if it is honest and true?

Many others have been denounced for suggesting 9/11 was caused by failed U.S. policy. But regardless of your opinion of Pastor Wright, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates seems to be in agreement with the Pastor, in testifying to the house arms services committee on April 10:

“We were attacked from Afghanistan in 2001, and we are at war in Afghanistan today, in no small measure because of mistakes this government made–mistakes I among others made in the end game of the anti-Soviet war there some 20 years ago.”

I hope the 9-11 ploy works as well for Hillary as it did for Rudy.

Well said!:

WOW!

Jose Padilla was sentenced today to 17 years in prison, a lighter than expected sentence due to the harsh treatment he was afforded within Guantanomo.

This is the guy who made the news as the ‘Dirty Bomber’ (that’s right, a Uranium Suitcase bomb). Despite the sensationalism, Padilla (a U.S. citizen) was held for 4 years without any charges brought against him. All the ‘dirty bomb’ charges went away, used for nothing more than a good pay-off in fear-mongering (of the kind that’s been rampant since 9-11) and the destruction of a person’s life for priceless propaganda.

The main source of evidence against Padilla were his past (yes, murder and violence) and a document in which he signed on for a terrorist training camp.

His jailers said he was “so docile and inactive that he could be mistaken for ‘a piece of furniture.’

According to his lawyers, he was forced to stand in painful stress positions, given LSD and other drugs, deprived of sleep and even a mattress for extended periods and subjected to loud noises, extreme heat and cold and noxious odors.

One psychiatrist, after spending 22 hours with him, said that what happened to him at Guantanomo: ‘was essentially the destruction of a human being’s mind.”

There was NEVER a dirty bomb! Some experts doubt that any such device exists.

Mark my words: He will be out much sooner. I’m not saying he’s a good guy - this guy was always deviant, always violent.

But though the world will soon forget about Jose Padilla, he will be released when people figure out what absolute bullshit his entire case was…

I write the following under a time pressure: The Senate Judiciary Committee is slated to vote on this confirmation tomorrow, November 6.

The Sequel - Brought to you by the gang who confirmed Alberto Gonzales as chief of Torture and Wiretapping:

For weeks now the country has been debating the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey to succeed Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. A month ago, it looked to be a ’slam dunk’ for this confirmation to succeed unanimously. Both Dems and Republicans seemed to agree that Mukasey would do a ‘heckuva job,’ despite a few misgivings and grunts about some radical decisions made about Presidential powers being outside the scope of law (or something equally ‘quaint’ and unimportant).

That was until his confirmation hearings last month, during which Mukasey was asked by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) if he considered waterboarding a form of torture…leading to the following dodge:

MUKASEY: If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.

SEN. WHITEHOUSE: If it’s torture. That’s a massive hedge. I mean, it either is or it isn’t. Do you have an opinion on whether waterboarding…is constitutional?

MUKASEY: If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.

SEN. WHITEHOUSE: I’m very disappointed in that answer. I think it is purely semantic.

MUKASEY: I’m sorry.

His refusal to categorize waterboarding as torture is downright scary, particularly for the man likely to fill the highest law enforcment slot in the land, and in addition being expected to restore the dignity and effectiveness of the Justice department.

Waterboarding has been around for centuries in various forms:

Developed during the Spanish inquisition at the same time as the Rack and Thumbscrew, for centuries it was used extensively in various European wars, and was among techniques used by organized Christianity to ‘Honor the God of Love and to convince unbelievers of the truth and beauty of the One True Faith.’ (Perhaps things haven’t changed all that much…).

In more modern times, it was used by American soldiers on Filipinos during the Philippine-American War, by the Gestapo and the Japanese in WWII, by the Khmer Rouge and used extensively in most recent conflicts in Africa. American troops were investigated for their use of waterboarding in Vietnam.

There is NO debate about whether this is torture:

While there is nothing new about these methods, there has never been a debate about whether waterboarding was torture. It Was. And IS:

—After WWII, we prosecuted Japanese officers for such crimes at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.

—The UN Convention Against Torture prohibits mock executions and the UN committee in charge of enforcing the UNCAT has reprimanded the U.S. for it’s use of waterboarding.

—The Army Field manual specifically prohibits Waterboarding and other forms of torture to be used in interrogations.

—The State Department has repeatedly reprimanded other nations for use of these techniques in it’s annual Human Rights reports.

—The American Psychological Association has written a resolution against torture, specifically condemning ‘water-boarding or any other form of simulated drowning or suffocation.’

—Allen S. Keller, M.D., director of the Bellevue Hospital Center/New York University Program for Survivors of Torture, in written testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, stated:

To think that abusive methods, including the enhanced interrogation techniques [including waterboarding], are harmless psychological ploys is contradictory to well established medical knowledge and clinical experience. These methods are intended to break the prisoners down, to terrify them and cause harm to their psyche, and in so doing result in lasting harmful health consequences.

According to Keller, long term effects or waterboarding include “panic attacks, depression and PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder],” and that it poses a “real risk of death.”

—In Senate Judiciary Committee hearings in 2006 on the prosecution of terrorists, the Judge Advocate Generals from each branch of the military all unanimously and unambiguously agreed that ‘Waterboarding is inhumane and illegal and would constitute a violation of international law, including Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.’

—Finally, last week a group of retired generals and admirals, also ex-Judge Advocate Generals of the military, wrote a letter to the Judiciary committee to dispel any doubt about this manufactured dispute. Excerpts include:

Waterboarding is inhumane, it is torture, and it is illegal.

This is a critically important issue - but it is not, and never has been, a complex issue, and even to suggest otherwise does a terrible disservice to this nation

Waterboarding detainees amounts to illegal torture in all circumstances. To suggest otherwise - or even to give credence to such a suggestion - represents both an affront to the law and to the core values of our nation.

So…What exactly is Waterboarding?:

The media is enabling this debate by muddying up exactly what Waterboarding is. It is not simply pouring a bucket of water on a detainees head. It is not a quick dunking like you see at the county fair (as Dick Cheney would have you believe).

It is a mock execution playing on one of the strongest human primal fears: the fear of drowning. But according to one expert, it is not a mock drowning - it IS a drowning, from which one may or not be rescued at the brink of death.

From a soldier (and terrorism expert) who has experienced waterboarding firsthand as a victim and a witness:
(I urge you to read this disturbing first hand description in it’s entirety)

Waterboarding is not a simulation.

Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.

Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration –usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten with its use again and again.

Call it “Chinese Water Torture,” “the Barrel,” or “the Waterfall,” it is all the same. Whether the victim is allowed to comply or not is usually left up to the interrogator. Many waterboard team members, even in training, enjoy the sadistic power of making the victim suffer and often ask questions as an after thought. These people are dangerous and predictable and when left unshackled, unsupervised or undetected they bring us the murderous abuses seen at Abu Ghraieb, Baghram and Guantanamo.

The Administration Knows this is torture:

ABC News last week revealed that in 2004 a high ranking Justice Department Official tasked with reviewing the administration’s legal position on torture was so concerned with the technique of waterboarding that he went to a military base to experience it himself.

Daniel Levin was at the time acting Assistant Attorney General, having replaced another official who himself had quit the department after 9 months because of disagreements over torture and interrogation tactics. Levin was asked to write a memo on these tactics to replace a controversial one removed by his predecessor.

Levin’s new memo began: ‘Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values’ and went on to say that waterboarding could be illegal torture unless performed in a highly limited way and with close supervision…and that he believed the Bush Administration had failed to offer clear guidelines for its use.

After being waterboarded, he told White House officials that even though he knew he wouldn’t die, he found the experience terrifying and thought that it clearly simulated drowning.

So Where are we now?

One would think that a refusal to call waterboarding torture would be reason to refuse Mukasey’s confirmation accross the board.

But two important committee members late last week (Schumer and Feinstein) came out saying that they will reluctantly vote ‘yes’ to such a confirmation.

As far as I can tell, their reasons are spineless as always (they are Democrats, after all).

Something to the effect that ‘this is the best nominee we will get from George Bush’ or the other standard response ‘We just want to move forward.’

So give these wet noodles a call and shake them up. This is truly important. Tell them we all know that waterboarding is torture; and that as torture it is illegal under US and international law; and that anyone running Justice should be able to own up to this fact. There is no debate:

Charles Schumer (D-NY):
Washington Office: 202-224-6542
N.Y. Office: 212-486-4430
Web Email: http://schumer.senate.gov/SchumerWebsite/contact/webform.cfm

Dianne Fienstein (D-CA)
Washington Office: 202-224-3841
San Francisco Office: 415-393-0707
Web Email: http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMe

The administration was right all along! These guys are scofflaws!

You have to check this out! Lawyers for accused terrorists at Guantanamo bay have for years been trying to get the U.S. government to provide evidence against their clients.

Now a new development threatens not just the alleged terrorists, but their lawyers too!

Commanders at the base have written to the lawyers, accusing the inmates of wearing contraband speedos and vowing to determine and punish whoever is behind the illegal smuggling operation:

“Your client Shaker Aamer, detainee ISN 239, was recently discovered to be wearing Under Armor briefs and a Speedo bathing suit. Neither item was issued to the detainee by JTF-Guantanamo personnel, nor did they enter the camp through regular mail.”

…We are investigating this matter to determine the origins of the above contraband and ensure that parties who may have been involved understand the seriousness of the transgression.”

I love the line about ‘briefs’ in the response back to the judge:

“I hope you understand my frustration at yet another unfounded accusation against lawyers who are simply trying to do their job – a job that involves legal briefs, not the other sort.”

On the implication that he was involved in the smuggling operation, he added:

“I cannot imagine who would want to give my client Speedos or why. Mr Aamer is hardly in a position to go swimming, since the only available water is the toilet in his cell.”

While the administration and the media keep scapegoating Iran and Syria for the mayhem in Iraq:

Some media outlets report that the insurgency is largely made up of Iraqis, and that foreign fighters are but a small minority of the EDTWAUHIWDFTT.** (In effect, the ‘evil-doers’ are simply Iraqis who are fighting the occupation of their land by a hostile foreign power).

The LA Times reports in a sobering article that the overwhelming majority of the inurgensts come not from Syria or Iran but from our “Ally,” Saudi Arabia. (Coincidentally, 15 of the 19 9-11 hijackers also came from Saudi Arabia).

And finally, our own government released a study this week which basically said that we cannot account for 190,000 guns issued to Iraq security forces in the last two years (not to mention hundreds of thousands of helmets and body armor pieces).

So tell me again who is arming the insurgents?

**EDTWAUHIWDFTT: ‘Evil-Doers-That-Will-Attack-Us-Here-If-We-Don’t-Fight-Them-There’

New information released this week should be GIANT news!

In the ‘more-ahead-of-it’s-time-than-we-could-have-ever-imagined’ department, Michael Moore’s highly controversial documentary Farenheit 9-11 made some startling (but later proven) claims that are well documented on his website:

“The White House approved planes to pick up the bin Ladens and numerous other Saudis…At least six private jets and nearly two dozen commercial planes carried the Saudis and the bin Ladens out of the U.S. after September 13th. In all, 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country.”

The organization Judicial Watch has fought for several years to gain access to the FBI documents regarding these flights. Such documents, obtained early on by Judicial Watch and turned over to the 9-11 Commission, represented the first official government admission that such flights even existed.

Earlier versions, however, were heavily redacted by the FBI.

Lawyers for the group believed, based on unredacted footnotes (oddly enough), that the blacked out names included references to Osama Bin Laden himself.

They pressed the issue in court and in 2006, the FBI was ordered to re-release the documents.

The un-redacted documents were released this week and plainly state:

“THE PLANE WAS CHARTERED EITHER BY THE SAUDI ARABIAN ROYAL FAMILY OR OSAMA BIN LADEN”

What can you say?

It is ABSOLUTELY INSANE that the FBI had previously redacted Osama bin Laden’s name from the records in order “to protect privacy interests.” (And that the media is barely reporting this new admission).

The other aspect of the story has to do with just how much these planes were searched or the passengers interviewed.

The 9-11 Commission report said: “We found no evidence of political intervention” to facilitate the departure of Saudi nationals” and that “Our own independent review of the Saudi nationals involved confirms that no one with known links to terrorism departed on these flights.”

Yet the newly released documents show that the FBI work relating to these flights was shoddy at best. The documents claim (eight days after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. History) that not a single Saudi national nor any of the bin Laden family members possessed any information of investigative value, and that they were freed because none of the names showed up on terrorism “watch lists.”

Judicial Watch also points out numerous errors and inconsistencies within the FBI reports, further questioning the caliber of the investigative work:

“For example, on one document, the FBI claims to have interviewed 20 of 23 passengers on the Ryan International Airlines flight (commonly referred to as the “Bin Laden Family Flight”). On another document, the FBI claims to have interviewed 15 of 22 passengers on the same flight.”

Remember when we were the good guys?

Yesterday the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing, alleging that the firm, since 2001, “has provided direct and substantial services to the United States for its so-called ‘extraordinary rendition‘ program,” (this being the method in the ‘War on Terror’ of secretly transferring a person to countries allowing harsh interrogation techniques in order to torture them outside the jurisdiction of a state which prohibits it).

The suit, filed on behalf of three men flown to states like Morroco, Syria, and Egypt for brutal interrogations, marks the first time a blue-chip American firm has been accused of profiting from torture.

It alleges the company was responsible for more than 70 such renditions, and quotes a senior company official as claiming “We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights — you know the torture flights. Let’s face it, some of these flights end up that way.”

One claim involves Binyam Mohammed, a 28-year-old Ethiopian citizen and British resident (now at Guantanamo Bay), who was flown to Morocco, then tortured at a series of detention facilities:

“He was routinely beaten, suffering broken bones and, on occasion, loss of consciousness due to the beatings. His clothes were cut off with a scalpel and the same scalpel was then used to make incisions on his body, including his penis. A hot stinging liquid was then poured into open wounds on his penis where he had been cut.”

Ironic, then, that a report commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board of the CIA on the current state of interrogation methods, recently criticized such techniques as outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.

From the N.Y. Times:

The science board critique comes as ethical concerns about harsh interrogations are being voiced by current and former government officials. The top commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, sent a letter to troops this month warning that “expedient methods” using force violated American values.

In a blistering lecture delivered last month, a former adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called “immoral” some interrogation tactics used by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon.

But in meetings with intelligence officials and in a 325-page initial report completed in December, the researchers have pressed a more practical critique: there is little evidence, they say, that harsh methods produce the best intelligence.

“There’s an assumption that often passes for common sense that the more pain imposed on someone, the more likely they are to comply,” said Randy Borum, a psychologist at the University of South Florida who, like several of the study’s contributors, is a consultant for the Defense Department.

Maybe this administration watches a little too much Jack Bauer?

From the Minnesota Monitor:

Facing a mountain of bad news, the Bush administration needed some good news heading into this weekend. Its “AIDS czar” abruptly resigned after admitting he used an escort service that’s facing federal prostitution charges. Two batches of new documents were released in the widening U.S. attorneys purge case. Condi Rice indicated she’d refuse to comply with a House subpoena to discuss Iraq War intelligence, and the President earned a career-low 28 percent approval rating in a new poll.

The administration got its good news: One of Al-Qaida’s top leaders was captured. But when Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, who is believed to have planned the July 7, 2005, subway attacks in London, was captured — sometime last fall — raises questions about whether the timing of the story’s release was guided by newsworthiness or an effort to combat an unflattering news cycle.

An Unflattering News Cycle! It makes my head spin…No wonder we’re in the toilet!

What an understatement - They did not even mention that the “Aids Czar” that resigned this week was also Condi Rice’s deputy, and the 2nd State Department official to resign this week!

What makes such reporting completely suspect is another report that Abu Ayuub Al-asri, head of Al-Qaida in Iraq, was killed. Some (including the Iraqi government) expressed doubt.

Within a few days, the US propaganda machine was backpedaling, claiming that the the reports were due to confusion after the killing of a lesser Al-Qaida figure…

Would our media ever be effected by the administration for political reasons?