MG Taguba accuses administration officials of war crimes

The General who investigated Abu Ghraib has openly accused the bu$h administration of complicity in war crimes and called for those responsible to be held accountable. The remarks come in a new report compiled by the group Physicians for Human Rights is the most in-depth medical and psychological examination of former detainees to date.

It is also chilling, infuriating, maddening, embarrassing, humiliating, and a whole lot more negative emotions.

"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

The medial evidence supports the claims made by detainees, and puts the lie to aWol bu$h's insistence that "we don't torture." None of the torture victims the report addresses were ever charged with any crime. But they were detained for years, tortured, threatened, beaten, sexually humiliated and in at least one case, forced to drink urine.

Taguba, who conducted the 2004 investigation that documented and brought to light the abuses at Abu Ghraib is, to the best of my knowledge, the highest ranking military officer to have accused the administration of war crimes "The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture," he wrote.

A White House spokeswoman, Kate Starr, had no comment.


Experts from Physicians for Human Rights, who have long experience studying the effects of torture, spent two days with each of the eleven former captives assessed, and conducted intensive exams and interviews. Tests were administered to detect exaggeration. In two of the cases, medical records were available for review by the physicians.

The report, "Broken Laws, Broken Lives," concurs with a five-part McClatchy investigation of Guantanamo published this week. Among its findings were that abuses occurred — primarily at prisons in Afghanistan where detainees were held en route to Guantanamo — and that many of the prisoners were wrongly detained.

Also this week, a probe by the Senate Armed Services Committee revealed how senior Pentagon officials pushed for harsher interrogation methods over the objections of top military lawyers. Those methods later surfaced in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld didn't specifically approve of the worst abuses, but neither he nor the White House enforced strict limits on how detainees would be treated.

There was no "bright line of abuse which could not be transgressed," former Navy general counsel Alberto Mora told the Senate committee.

Leonard Rubenstein, the president of Physicians for Human Rights, said there was a direct connection between the Pentagon decisions and the abuses his group uncovered. "The result was a horrific stew of pain, degradation and ... suffering," he said.

MG Taguba is one flag-rank officer for whom we both have deep and abiding respect - as do our military veteran spouses. He was one of the very first to stand up and do the right thing, even though it cost him a third star and sent him to base operations to do his retirement packet before he intended to.

We need his voice, along with the voices of Generals Batiste, Eaton, Zinni and Clark. These are men who wore stars on their shoulders and who don't flinch from a fight and who don't buckle under to pressure from a draft-dodging punk, nor a warmongering fuck.

The Candor is Enough to Knock You On Your Ass

Adam Boulton of SkyNews sat down with the President. Do not have liquids in your mouth when you read this.

BOULTON: I mean, has it been good for your marriage -- eight years in the White House?

MRS BUSH: It's been fine for our marriage.

THE PRESIDENT: Never been better.

MRS BUSH: We have a very good marriage. We both have a lot of strength. And believe me, these were years when you really needed to be really strong.

BOULTON: Yes, Cherie Blair called it the "goldfish bowl."

THE PRESIDENT: Let me say this to you about all this popularity stuff. First of all, popularity is fleeting. And I want it to be said about George W. Bush that when he finished his presidency, he looked in the mirror at a man who did not compromise his core principals for the sake of politics, or the Gallup poll, or the latest, you know, whatever. And you can't lead in this world if you're chasing something as temporary as a popularity poll.

BOULTON: I mean, you've talked a lot about freedom. I've heard you talk about freedom -- I think every time I've seen you.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

BOULTON: And yet there are those who would say, look, let's take Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and rendition and all those things, and to them that is the, you know, the complete opposite of freedom.

THE PRESIDENT: Of course if you want to slander America, you can look at it one way. But you go down -- what you need to do -- I think I suggested you do this at a press conference -- if you go down to Guantanamo and take a look at how these prisoners are treated -- and they're working it through our court systems. We are a land of law.
BOULTON: But the Supreme Court have just said that -- you know, ruled against what you've been doing down there.

THE PRESIDENT: But the district court didn't. And the appellate court didn't.

BOULTON: The Supreme Court is supreme, isn't it?

THE PRESIDENT: It is, and I accept their verdict. I don't agree with their verdict. And it's not what I was doing down there. This was a law passed by our United States Congress that I worked with the Congress to get passed and sign into law.

BOULTON: But it looked like an attempt to bypass the Constitution, to a certain extent.

THE PRESIDENT: This was a law passed, Adam. We passed a law. Bypassing the Constitution means that we did something outside the bounds of the Constitution. We went to the Congress and got a piece of legislation passed.

BOULTON: Which is now being struck down, I think.

THE PRESIDENT: It is, and I accept what the Supreme Court did, and I necessarily don't have to agree with it.

My only point to you is, is that yes, I mean, we certainly wish Abu Ghraib hadn't happened, but that should not reflect America. This was the actions of some soldiers. That doesn't show the heart and soul of America. What shows the heart and soul of America is the sacrifice of our troops willing to defend our country and liberate 50 million people, or the generosity of America when it comes to providing money for HIV/AIDS in Africa, or the fact that America feeds more of the hungry in the world than any other country. That's the true America.

Noted without comment...

So, Who's Really in Charge?

The US regularly holds detainees that were freed by Iraqi courts.

In the eyes of Iraqi justice, Yahya Ali Humadi is a free man.

To the U.S. military, he's another of the detainees in yellow jumpsuits held at the sprawling Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.

Humadi — ordered released nine months ago after an Iraqi judge dropped all charges — now spends his days in a legal limbo. It's one that has confronted and confounded thousands of other Iraqis since 2003 who have been freed by their nation's courts but remained in U.S. custody.

"I don't know why the U.S. army brought him to an Iraqi court, if they intend to keep him for an unlimited time," said Humadi's lawyer, Samiya al-Baghdadi.

The American military, however, sees no contradiction.

Commanders say the current international mandate in Iraq, as well as general codes of war, allow them to hold any prisoner until the detainee is no longer considered a threat to U.S. forces. Local law and court rulings do not apply, they add.

The lack of a legal framework--an operative Status of Forces Agreement or SOFA that has been ratified and approved by Congress and not secretly negotiated between the Bush Administration and al-Maliki's government--would fundamentally alter what rules the US would have to abide by. Without that framework, anything goes:

These dual realities — freedom granted by Iraqi courts but continued detention by the Americans — have been faced by about 3,000 Iraqis since 2003 and stand as a sharp contrast between U.S. policies on the battlefield and Washington's appeals for Iraqis to build credible civic institutions.

The differences could grow even more pronounced as Iraqi authorities move ahead with an amnesty program that was strongly supported by the White House as a step to reconcile Iraq's rival factions.

The amnesty rulings could offer an early exit for many of the 27,000 prisoners in Iraqi hands. They also could wipe the slate for hundreds of the roughly 22,000 detainees held by the U.S. military — which then must decide whether to abide by the decisions or ignore a formula that Washington applauded.

Man detained at Abu Ghraib files suit against two American military contractors

An Iraqi man who claims he was tortured while being held for ten months in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison has sued two U.S. military contractors for damages.

Emad al-Janabi's federal lawsuit, filed Monday in Los Angeles, claims that employees of CACI International Inc. and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. punched him, slammed him into walls, hung him from a bed frame and kept him naked and handcuffed in his cell beginning in September 2003.

Also named as a defendant is CACI interrogator Steven Stefanowicz, known as "Big Steve." The suit claims he directed some of the torture tactics.

Phone messages left for Arlington, Va.-based CACI and New York City-based L-3 Communications, formerly Titan Corp., were not immediately returned Monday. There was no phone number listed for Stefanowicz at his Los Angeles address.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles because Stefanowicz lives there, seeks unspecified monetary damages.

The companies named provided interrogators and interpreters to assist the U.S. military at the notorious prison. When photos came out that showed horrific scenes of prisoner abuse and humiliation, the whole world reacted with horror. (The military promptly got down to business and scapegoated some low-level, undertrained and inexperienced reservists, and effectively ended to career of a female one-star, then "move along, nothing to see here" kicked in, and the idiots of the press complied.)

The investigation undertaken by the military determined that the abuse took place in 2003, and that timeline puts interrogators from both L-3 and CACI on site during that time.

Interviewed by the AP on Monday in Istanbul, al-Janabi said he hopes that he hopes the lawsuit serves to bring to light what happened to him and many others who were detained at the prison. "God willing the righteousness will emerge and God willing the criminal will receive his punishment," al-Janabi said. Al-Janabi, 43, said he was detained by U.S. troops during a late-night raid in which he and his family were beaten by their captors. He said he was taken to a military base where he was stripped naked, a hood was placed on his head and his hands and legs were chained.

"They (U.S. troops) did not tell me what was the reason behind my arrest ... during the interrogation, the American soldier told me I was a terrorist ... and I was preparing for an attack against the U.S. forces," said al-Janabi, who denied the accusation and claims he was forced to give confessions under "savage" intimidation.

The lawsuit also claims the contractors conspired in a cover-up by destroying documents and other information, hid prisoners during periodic checks by the International Red Cross and misled military and government officials about what was happening at Abu Ghraib.

Al-Janabi was released in July 2004 and wasn't charged with any crime, according to the lawsuit. He also was forced to form a human pyramid in the nude with other prisoners, according to the lawsuit, but his Philadelphia-based attorney Susan Burke said it wasn't known if he was in the infamous photo that became public.

"Most of this conduct was repeated on more than one occasion," Burke said.

At one point after passing out, al-Janabi said, he was told by an L-3 translator "welcome to Guantanamo." He said he even asked a cellmate whether he could see the ocean from a window.

"I lost the sense of time after the prolonged hours of abusive interrogation and thought that I was transported to Guantanamo," al-Janabi told the AP.The dehumanizing treatment these people were subjected to is a stain on our national honor, and the photos that emerged destroyed any chance we had of winning hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

LTC Jordan "Cleared"

Officer Cleared in Abu Ghraib Case

The only officer charged in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal has been cleared of criminal wrongdoing, his attorney said Thursday. A military jury convicted Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan in August of disobeying an order to not talk about an investigation into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in the fall of 2003. Jordan was acquitted of allegations that he failed to supervise 11 lower-ranking soldiers previously convicted for their roles at Abu Ghraib.

Now the conviction has been thrown out. Maj. Gen. Richard J. Rowe, commanding general of the Military District of Washington, sent Jordan's attorney a memo Tuesday saying the criminal charge has been dismissed. Although a military jury voted to convict Jordan and recommended a criminal reprimand, Rowe had the final say.

The document said simply that the finding of guilty and the sentence had been "disapproved" and that the charges were dismissed, said Maj. Kris Poppe, Jordan's attorney.

Instead of the criminal reprimand, Rowe issued an administrative reprimand that questions Jordan's decision to disobey the order from Maj. Gen. George Fay, who investigated the abuses. The action means Jordan will have no criminal conviction on his record.

Poppe had asked Rowe in a letter last week to dismiss the conviction. Jordan acknowledged he did not follow Fay's order, but he does not believe he committed a crime, Poppe said.

"We simply asked the convening authority, Maj. Gen. Rowe, to consider the fact that Col. Jordan has faced these very serious charges for a long period of time, that he had been found not guilty of any offense related to the abuse of detainees, and that he had a stellar record," Poppe said. "Under the whole circumstances ... it would be unjust to maintain that conviction."

The Abu Ghraib scandal erupted in 2004 with the release of pictures of grinning U.S. soldiers posing with detainees, some naked, being held on leashes or in painful and sexually humiliating positions.

Like Jordan, several other officers were reprimanded administratively for their roles at Abu Ghraib. The highest-ranking soldier to be convicted of a crime was former Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick, a military police reservist, who was paroled in October from military prison after serving about three years of an eight-year sentence.

Jordan, 51, of Fredericksburg, Va., could not be reached for comment, but told The Washington Post that the Army "finally got it right."

"I'm still a little bit shocked by it all, but I'm gratified and glad that General Rowe saw it for what it really is," Jordan told the newspaper. "I don't know if any officer needed to be held accountable, but I obviously don't believe it should have been me."

Poppe said Jordan would remain on active duty at Fort Belvoir, Va., until he retires later this year.

...with full benefits.

Well, good for you, LTC Jordan. I hope you have something to be proud of.