Friday, January 13, 2006

New Army Documents Confirm Black Ops "Special Access Program" Unit Covered Up Detainee Abuse

SPREADING DEMOCRACY? WHAT A LIARS!

To give just one example: the by the neocons 'run' The Netherlands with it's 16+ million inhabitants is again planning to sent up to 15oo pieces of cannonfodder to Afghanistan where they will either get shot or poisoned by depleted uranium.

In clear text: the parasites and malignant managers running NATO and The Netherlands in the for them profitable armed conflicts are sending human beings into their death for their own profits.

Those war criminals - whatever nationality - must be locked up as soos as is possible: they are a bunch of malignant mass murderers and support all the crimes against humanity.

The puppets up front in The Netherlands - like Prime - better said Crime Minister the christian Balkenende has many times aid to openly support the illegal wars going on.

Al laws all rules, all conventions and agreements are breached andd broken: their criminality is global and must be punished.

HR

NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN

New Army Documents Confirm Black Ops "Special Access Program" Unit Covered Up Detainee Abuse

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: media@aclu.org

Army Knew of Systemic Abuse in Afghanistan Back in January 2002

NEW YORK -- The American Civil Liberties Union today released new documents obtained from the Defense Department detailing abuse at U.S. facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. Included in the release is the first publicly available government document confirming the existence of a secret “Special Access Program” involving a special ops unit, Task Force 6-26, which has been implicated in numerous detainee abuse incidents in Iraq, and whose operatives used fake names to thwart an Army investigation.

“These documents confirm that the torture of detainees and its subsequent cover-up was part of a larger clandestine operation, in all likelihood, authorized by senior government officials,” said ACLU attorney Amrit Singh. “Despite mounting evidence of systemic abuse authorized or endorsed from above, however, not a single high level official has thus far been brought to justice.”

In one Army file, an investigator states that he is unable to continue an investigation into claims that a detainee captured by Task Force 6-26 in Tikrit, Iraq, was stripped, humiliated and physically abused until he passed out, because the unit accused of the abuse is part of the Special Access Program (SAP). A memorandum included in the report states that “fake names were used by the 6-26 members” and that the unit claimed to have a computer malfunction which resulted in the loss of 70 percent of their files. The memorandum concludes, “Hell, even if we reopened [the investigation] we wouldn’t get any more information than we already have.”

Also included in the documents released today is a heavily redacted memo referring to a December 10, 2002 “SERE INTERROGATION SOP” (Standard Operating Procedure) for Guantánamo. SERE, which stands for “Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape,” is a secret military program under which detainees held in U.S. custody abroad are subjected to harsh interrogation techniques. According to the ACLU, this document shows that such techniques may have been formally authorized in a memo to military personnel at Guantánamo. The ACLU said it is unclear how this document relates to abusive interrogation techniques authorized for use in Guantánamo by Secretary Rumsfeld in a separate memo on December 2, 2002.

Several sworn statements of military intelligence personnel and a written “Chronology of Guard/Detainee Issues” also released today confirm that the Army began receiving reports of detainees being brutally beaten and abused in Afghanistan as early as January 2002. The documents show that abuse continued into 2004. A February 16, 2004 memorandum recording an interview of an American interrogator stationed in “Orgun-E Military Intelligence Detention Facility” in Afghanistan reveals that its “Standard Operating Procedure” included keeping detainees awake, standing and blindfolded without food for the first 24 hours. The interrogator also refers to standard practices of “OGA” (a common military reference to the CIA) that include the use of drugs and prolonged sensory deprivation. A February 12, 2004 memorandum records the use of a “Fear Up approach” involving “disrespect for the Koran,” insulting the detainee, having a room upstairs with spotlights and turning the music on very loud.

In a March 28, 2004 report released today, the Inspector General of the Combined/Joint Task Force 180 in Bagram found several problems with detainee operations in Afghanistan, including a lack of training and oversight on acceptable interrogation techniques. The report states that “Army doctrine simply does not exist” and that detainees are not afforded “with the privileges associated with Enemy or Prisoner of War status” or the Geneva Conventions.

The documents further reveal gruesome accounts of torture and abuse by U.S. military personnel in Iraq. In one 2004 document, a civil contractor recounts in a sworn statement that he witnessed Marines pouring peroxide and water over the open wounds of an Iraqi prisoner. The contractor also reports that soldiers with the 372nd Military Police Company used slingshots against Iraqi children attempting to steal food from the base.

In another document, following the release of images of abuse at Abu Ghraib, one officer wrote on May 6, 2004, that abusive interrogation techniques, such as the application of cold or ice, loud music, sleep deprivation and confining detainees to a metal box, will “continue to cause us problems, as some interrogation techniques aren’t real defensible given the Abu Ghraib fallout.” 

The documents released today are a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case.

The FOIA lawsuit is being handled by Lawrence Lustberg and Megan Lewis of the New Jersey-based law firm Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione, P.C. Other attorneys in the case are Singh, Jameel Jaffer and Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU; Arthur N. Eisenberg and Beth Haroules of the NYCLU; and Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

To date, almost 90,000 pages of government documents have been released in response to the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The ACLU has been posting these documents online at www.aclu.org/torturefoia.

[andend] - The documents released today are available at: http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/011206

FPF: RELATED REFERENCES & LINKS:

* "Sarah, if the American people had ever known the truth about what we Bushes have done to this nation, we would be chased down in the streets and lynched." - George Bush Senior speaking in an interview with Sarah McClendon in December 1992. - 'The Demonic Cabal - (excellent article!) Url.: http://tinyurl.com/bvtvd

* MSNBC - Live Vote: Do you believe President Bush's actions justifyimpeachment? - Url.: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562904/

* "People do not forget. They do not forget the death of their fellows, they do not forget torture and mutilation, they do not forget injustice, they do not forget oppression, they do not forget the terrorism of mighty powers. They not only don't forget: they also strike back." - 2005 Nobel Literature Prize winner Harold Pinter - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/9cyeq

* One of the best videos made: British MP George Galloway has told US senators who accused him of profiting from Iraq oil dealings their claims were the "mother of all smokescreens". - Full testimony in transcript and a video which is a great pleasure to watch, seeing Galloway sweep the floor with neocon rat Coleman - 47 Minutes - Url.: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8868.htm

* The Nuremberg principles: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment." - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/byurp

* 'The war in Iraq is illegal' - BBC: video & text-interview of the United Nation's Secretary General Kofi Annan - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v

* 'Spreading democracy' - Countries & US Death Squads - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/drnca - A 55' second sound bite concerning the US 'bringing democracy' everywhere - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5u98v

* 'Crying Wolf' - Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/7ttx8

* Reference guide to the Geneva Conventions - Url.:  http://www.genevaconventions.org

* Al Qaeda – The Database - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cqx69

* The 9/11 WTC drama was PNAC terror - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/9np7d - It was an inside job - Google - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/7tj9d

* Wayne Madsen - ''The neo-cons have done to the U.S. Intelligence Community what Hurricane Katrina did to the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. America has never been weaker. Rather than creating a "New American Century," the neo-cons have created a new global "Dark Age" of fear and constant war.'' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/bj754

* Who's financing? - The 'Federal Reserve' and it's usurers is the absolute biggest crime against all humanity ever. - Url.: http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm

* NWO letter: ''we can cancel your credit or freeze your accounts'' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cjo7l

* The infamous US 'Lie Factory' -  http://tinyurl.com/8ncal

* He who travels far will often see things

Far removed from what he believed was the Truth.

When he talks about it in the fields at home,

He is often accused of lying,

For the obdurate people will not believe

Inexperience, I believe,

Will give little credence to my song.

'Journey to the East' - Hermann Hesse

* Help all the troops - of whatever nationality - to come back from abroad! - AND WITH ALL THEIR WEAPONS, WHICH WE WERE FORCED TO PAY FOR BY TAXES - [http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm ] - We need them badly at home in many countries to fight with us against our so called 'governments' and their malignant managers - Url.: http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

* FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.:  http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://tinyurl.com/6v8ru
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/amn3q
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl

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Gag Reflex

By Chris Floyd

01/12/06 "Moscow Times" -- -- If President George W. Bush shows no qualms about violating the 217-year-old U.S. Constitution or the 791-year-old Magna Carta, why should we be surprised to find that he is now violating the 2,400-year-old Hippocratic Oath?

And yet this week's revelation of how U.S. doctors are force-feeding captives on hunger strike in Bush's concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay still has the power to shock and sicken -- not just from the savage act itself, but also for the wider moral defeat it represents: another open embrace of raw brutality, another step in America's accelerating plunge into vicious despotism.

News of the hunger strike has been trickling out from the ever-incurious U.S. media for months. Indeed, Pentagon warlord Donald Rumsfeld even joked about prisoners "going on a diet." But the full scope of the strike -- and the unethical methods being used to quash it -- only emerged this week in The Observer, which obtained legal affidavits from the Army doctors involved in this "torture lite."

The strike, which began last August with a handful of captives, has now spread to 81 prisoners trying to starve themselves to death.

Men driven to such desperation make bad PR for their captors -- especially a blustering pipsqueak who likes to pass himself off as a God-blessed beacon of goodness and freedom. So the strikers are being strapped down and force-fed by tubes shoved through their noses and crammed down into their stomachs.

This daily process leaves them bleeding and retching, according to sworn testimony from the concentration camp's hospital chief, Captain John Edmondson.

The good doctor defended the practice as humane, noting that his medicos grease the captives' nostrils with lubricant, and use only "soft and flexible" 3-millimeter hoses -- an amelioration of their previous technique: stuffing 4.8-millimeter hard-rubber tubes down nose and gullet in order to pump gruel into a prisoner's belly more quickly.

Yet despite the Christ-like tenderness of this treatment, Edmondson is now being sued in California, his native state, for unprofessional conduct. It seems that U.S. doctors are legally bound by the 1975 World Medical Association Tokyo Declaration, which explicitly forbids force-feeding under any circumstances.

Ah, but what are laws, treaties and oaths in our brave new world? There are of course no inherent legal protections or human rights in the Bushist philosophy of power. Like his brother in blood, Osama bin Laden, Bush recognizes no law beyond his own will. Anyone he designates an "enemy" -- without any charges or evidence whatsoever -- becomes sub-human, a piece of trash.

And so it is with the Guantanamo captives. None of them has been charged with any crime, as The Observer notes; none has been shown any evidence justifying their imprisonment, or knows how long they will be held. Many of the hunger strikers have been chained in this agonizing limbo for more than four years, a living death guaranteed to induce torment, madness and fatal despair.

Yet it has been thoroughly documented -- sometimes by the Pentagon itself -- that numerous "Terror War" prisoners are innocent men (and children) who have been falsely accused through incompetent intelligence work, or even sold into captivity by bounty hunters paid by eager Bushist agents, as The Washington Post reports. We know too, by the regime's own admission, that all "high-value" terrorist targets are held in secret CIA prisons hidden around the globe, not at Guantanamo.

But last week Bush turned the screws even tighter on his Gitmo trash, signing a law that strips the captives of the ancient right of habeas corpus, which predates the Magna Carta. They are to have no access to the legal system, not even a simple declaration of why they are being held. What's more, last week Bush also asserted his right to ignore an anti-torture law he had just signed, The Boston Globe reports.

Even as he reaped kudos for his apparent approval of the mild restraints on torture pushed by Senator John McCain, Bush simultaneously issued a "signing statement" -- an unconstitutional "presidential interpretation" of law -- declaring that he can set aside the law if he feels it conflicts with his "authority as commander-in-chief" at any point.

(Cries of "Amen, brother!" were immediately heard in that quadrant of hell where Hitler and Stalin sit gnawing on the anuses of rats.)

No doubt any spot of legal bother about force-feeding captives will be dismissed under the rubric of this unbridled "authority," perhaps with the help of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, a longtime apologist for authoritarian rule by unrestrained presidents.

After all, it was Alito himself who concocted the law-gutting device of the presidential "signing statement" when he was a legal factotum in the Ronald Reagan White House, The Washington Post reports.

But just how far does the "Commander's" torture authority reach? To the crushing of an innocent child's testicles. So says John Yoo, the former deputy assistant attorney general who helped craft the official White House "torture memos" that justified any torture short of permanent maiming or death -- and even countenanced the latter if it was "unintentional."

Yoo also helped devise the regime's crank philosophy of the "unitary executive" -- that is, dictatorship for a "war president." In response to a question at a public debate last month, Yoo declared that Bush could override any law or treaty and order his goons to crush the testicles of a prisoner's child in the name of "national security," commentator Andrew Sullivan reports.

Crushed testicles. Torture. Tyranny. Aggressive war.

Bush better start developing a taste for rat rectums right away. He's going to need it.

Chris Floyd

Annotations - working links to be found at Url.: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11547.htm

Scandal of Force-Fed Prisoners
The Obsever, Jan. 8, 2006

Kinsley on Torture
Andrewsullivan.com, Dec. 17, 2005

Who is Watching the Watchmen?
The Daily Cardinal, Dec. 14, 2005

Bush Adviser Says President Has Legal Power to Torture Children
Information Clearinghouse, Jan. 8, 2006

Alito Once Made Case For Presidential Power
The Washington Pos, Jan. 2, 2006

George Bush's Rough Justice
The Guardian, Jan. 12, 2006

Rumsfeld Defends Guantanamo Decision
Associated Press, Nov. 2, 2005

Amnesty Releases New Gitmo Torture Testimony
Amnesty International, Jan. 10, 2006

NSA, FISA and the DNA of Tyranny
Empire Burlesque, Jan. 11, 2006

3 GOP Senators Blast Bush Bid to Bypass Torture Ban
Boston Globe, Jan. 5, 2006

Wrongful Imprisonment:Anatomy of a CIA Mistake
Washington Post, Dec. 3, 2005

CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
Washington Post, Nov. 2, 2005

Seized, held, tortured: six tell same tale
The Guardian, Dec. 6, 2005

Empire Burlesque, Dec. 28, 2005

The Hippocratic Oath
BBC, Aug. 20, 2003

A Brief History of Habeas Corpus
BBC, March 9, 2005

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


FPF / Related:

* "Sarah, if the American people had ever known the truth about what we Bushes have done to this nation, we would be chased down in the streets and lynched." - George Bush Senior speaking in an interview with Sarah McClendon in December 1992. - 'The Demonic Cabal - (excellent article!) Url.: http://tinyurl.com/bvtvd

* MSNBC - Live Vote: Do you believe President Bush's actions justifyimpeachment? - Url.: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562904/

"People do not forget. They do not forget the death of their fellows, they do not forget torture and mutilation, they do not forget injustice, they do not forget oppression, they do not forget the terrorism of mighty powers. They not only don't forget: they also strike back." - 2005 Nobel Literature Prize winner Harold Pinter - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/9cyeq

* One of the best videos made: British MP George Galloway has told US senators who accused him of profiting from Iraq oil dealings their claims were the "mother of all smokescreens". - Full testimony in transcript and a video which is a great pleasure to watch, seeing Galloway sweep the floor with neocon rat Coleman - 47 Minutes - Url.: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8868.htm

* The Nuremberg principles: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment." - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/byurp

* 'The war in Iraq is illegal' - BBC: video & text-interview of the United Nation's Secretary General Kofi Annan - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v

* Reference guide to the Geneva Conventions - Url.: http://www.genevaconventions.org

* The leaked 'Downing Street Memos' expose the criminal lies by war criminals like Bush, Blair, Berlusconi (It.) Balkenende (NL) - their collaborating media and other malignant ilk - Url.:  http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/

* Wayne Madsen - ''The neo-cons have done to the U.S. Intelligence Community what Hurricane Katrina did to the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. America has never been weaker. Rather than creating a "New American Century," the neo-cons have created a new global "Dark Age" of fear and constant war.'' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/bj754

* Who's financing? - The 'Federal Reserve' and it's usurers is the absolute biggest crime against all humanity ever. - Url.: http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm

* NWO letter: ''we can cancel your credit or freeze your accounts'' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cjo7l

* The infamous US 'Lie Factory' -  Url.: http://tinyurl.com/8ncal

* Help all the troops - of whatever nationality - to come back from abroad! - AND WITH ALL THEIR WEAPONS, WHICH WE WERE FORCED TO PAY FOR BY TAXES - [http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm ] - We need them badly at home in many countries to fight with us against our so called 'governments' and their malignant managers - Url.: http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.:  http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://forpressfound.blogspot.com/
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/amn3q
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl

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The Rise Of Rectal Journalism

***************************************************************
FPF - Strongly related: Journalists Are Killers Too! - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/qpny

***************************************************************
 
David Sirota

Working For Change - 1-12-6 - A lot has already been written about Joe Klein's latest column - a true foray into fantasy. The man is the epitomy of a journalist who is so self-absorbed, so obsessed with himself, or so lazy that he quite literally thinks he can just make things up.

But sadly, Klein epitomzes a new brand of journalism sweeping the nation. It's what I call Rectal Journalism because its based on reporters and pundits simply pulling stuff right out of their asses and peddling it as fact, when in fact it is anything but.
 
Here's what I'm talking about. Klein writes:
 
"A strong majority would favor the NSA program [Bush ordered]...Democrats are about as far from the American mainstream on these issues as Republicans were when they invaded the privacy of Terri Schiavo's family in the right-to-die case last year."
 
Klein published his piece one day after the Associated Press published its poll showing "a majority of Americans want the Bush administration to get court approval before eavesdropping on people inside the United States, even if those calls might involve suspected terrorists." In criticizing the administration for not getting warrants as required by law, Democrats were standing with 56 percent of the public. By contrast, ABC News reported that just 27 percent of the public supported the Republicans' intervention in the Schiavo affair. In other words, Klein made this assertion even though the hard data was there for him to check. He just chose not to look at it (and by the way, it was Klein who, during the Schiavo affair, urged Democrats to support the GOP's actions).
 
This penchant by pundits to pull things straight out of their rectum is really becoming a widespread problem - and it has been on full display over the last few weeks. For example, MSNBC's Chris Matthews recently painted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) as living a middle-class lifestyle - days after the Associated Press published an expose actually analyzing hundreds of documents showing that as DeLay "became a king of campaign fund-raising, he lived like one, too." Specifically, "over the past six years, the former House majority leader and his associates have visited places of luxury most Americans have never seen, often getting there aboard corporate jets arranged by lobbyists and other special interests."
 
Then Newsweek's Eleanor Clift called Newt Gingrich a "bipartisan reformer" in the wake of the revelations about the GOP corruption. There is, of course, no mention about how Gingrich was the architect of the K Street Project at the center of the scandals.
 
Then we saw Time Magazine's Matt Cooper and Mike Allen pull out of their asses the fairy tale that President Bush is fully distanced from the GOP corruption scandals because he supposedly "does not like to have contributors or local officials in his cars, planes or holding rooms unless they are there for a good reason, and he sometimes questions his underlings sharply if someone he considers extraneous is admitted." No, that wasn't the recollection of some acid trip Cooper and Allen had - they repoted that as fact, and simply decided not to mention that "GOP fundraiser Jack Abramoff and his lobbying team logged nearly 200 contacts with the new administration" in just its first 10 months, according to a May 2005 story by the Associated Press.
 
And there was CNN's Wolf Blitzer claiming that Democrats took cash directly from Jack Abramoff and are thus equally implicated into the corruption scandals - again, a line wholly fabricated.
 
Obviously, this is disturbing on a number of levels. First and foremost, rectal journalism grossly misinforms the public to the point where it's actually unfair to blame ordinary citizens for not knowing what's actually going on in the political system that is supposed to represent them. How could they know? More and more of what they see, read and hear is made up fiction by the media "experts."
 
Additionally, it is quite troubling to look at how Rectal Journalism is substituting for coverage of truly important stories. For instance, as the media ramrodded the President's illegal wiretapping into a "he said, she said" story, fawned all over Newt Gingrich, and portrayed Democrats as deeply involved in the Abramoff scandal, they wholly ignored the Bush administration's declaration that the U.S.'s official foreign policy would be officially taking a radical turn.

Also, in their entire coverage of the New York transit strike, they never once mentioned that workers were asking for a fraction of what New York city and state governments had just handed over to Goldman Sachs, the wealthiest investment bank in the world. And the list of uncovered stories goes on...
 
To be honest, I'm not sure what can be done to combat the rise of Rectal Journalism. Because this is not just something that has happened accidentally. I'm not a conspiracy theorist - I just think reporters aren't that dumb as to accidentally peddle horseshit as fact. I think it's a reflex of today's media - whether conscious or subconscious - to worship power and celebrity, to fear making enemies on the D.C. cocktail party circuit, and to ignore the stories that are actually important because they are too hard, or too complex, or too frightening to cover in a serious way.
 
© 2006 Working Assets.
http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/index.cfm? mode=entry&entry=BA2DB1E2-C22D-D4B2-EC2CFD48FE1286A5

MainPage - Url.: http://www.rense.com

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Related:

"If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time." : Abraham Lincoln - (1809 -1865) 16th US President

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