May 2009 archive

Okay so the Dog has not been around this week (if you care he has been at Caterpillar Production System for Dealers training, which is a 6 Sigma Lean methodology for transforming value streams instead of single processes. Everyone’s eyes glazed over yet?) so of course it is likely that most of the hot topics have been blogged to death, but cut a hound some slack as he sits at O’Hare waiting for his flight home, eh?  

Barack Obama backflipped on his promise to make public photos depicting detainee abuse by U.S. personnel overseas, however one intrepid independent reporter has managed, digging through government files obtained through an ACLU FOIA request, to unearth detailed documents describing the photographs.

U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan took dozens of pictures of their colleagues pointing assault rifles and pistols at the heads and backs of hooded and bound detainees and another photograph showed two male soldiers and one female solider pointing a broom to one detainee “as if I was sticking the end of a broom stick into [his] rectum,” according to the female soldier’s account as told to an Army criminal investigator.

President Barack Obama said Wednesday he would not release these photographs, reversing a promise he made a month ago, fearing it would stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger U.S. troops.

I found the documents that describes the photographs on the website of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU obtained the files, but not the photographs, in 2005 as part of the organization’s wide-ranging Freedom of information Act lawsuit against the federal government related to the Bush administration’s treatment of “war on terror” prisoners in U.S. custody.

Read the entire article at The Public Record…

This is very simple. It’s so simple I can’t believe I missed it all this time. We’ve been looking too closely at this story. I remember at the time there was speculation that she was outed in part because she worked on counterproliferation in places like Iran. And other reasons. But after taking another look it’s obvious to me that the Bush administration wasn’t interested in debate on the issue.

They wanted a link. Any evidence there wasn’t a link was met with harsh criticism and outing of CIA agents.

Joe Wilson was sent by the CIA to investigate claims of Iraq trying to obtain yellowcake uranium from Africa:

Over the past months, however, the CIA has maintained that Wilson was chosen for the trip by senior officials in the Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division (CPD) — not by his wife — largely because he had handled a similar agency inquiry in Niger in 1999. On that trip, Plame, who worked in that division, had suggested him because he was planning to go there, according to Wilson and the Senate committee report.

Cheney had asked for more information on an intelligence report earlier on the same day questioning the link between Iraq and al Qaeda. In response to his request, the CIA sent Wilson to Africa, and an aide to Cheney testified that he had no idea his request would result in that trip.

So, he wanted information but didn’t think they’d send someone to get information?

The DIA in question had some very interesting and useful information. You’re definitely going to want to read this:

WASHINGTON — A government document raises doubts about claims that Al Qaeda members received training for biological and chemical weapons in Iraq, as Senate Democrats yesterday defended their push for a report on how the Bush administration handled prewar intelligence.

[…]

The document from February 2002 showed that the agency questioned the reliability of Al Qaeda senior military trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. He could not name any Iraqis involved in the effort or identify any chemical or biological materials or cite where the training took place, the report said.

The agency concluded that al-Libi probably misled the interrogators deliberately, and he recanted the statements in January, according to the document made public by Senator Carl Levin, top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Here are Levin’s statements on the report.

Got that? Dick Cheney found out about a DIA saying the links between Iraq and al Qaeda were suspect, and that al Libi was probably making stuff up also about the link.

Al Libi was tortured.

A number of reports have sprung up in the last few days following the very tragic shooting by one soldier in killing five of his fellow soldiers at an in country military stress clinic, of which he himself was receiving care.

Military training alone starts the process of the change needed from how most are brought up and what they are taught and told to be able to serve and defend, if needed, this country.

Place these now trained soldiers in a War Zone creating the Occupation of same lasting many years and now in these times many tours being served and not only in one but two and for many the stress of war, what they experience, their individual incidents, what they see, feel, and just know, is overwelming!

They aren’t the only ones, think of those who live in these occupied countries! It also isn’t only a war that creates the traumatic nightmares, individuals that experience trauma in theirs lives also can suffer, most silently, from those traumas!

Below is a number of recent reports, this subject should have been takin seriously many years ago after finally realizing what War and Trauma can do to a Human Being!

Crossposted from Antemedius

Pepe Escobar:

No one really knows the fate of the man who was the reason for the Bush administration-proclaimed “war on terror”. Some influential Pakistanis say the Americans don’t know it. The Americans admit they don’t know it. President George W. Bush wanted him dead or alive. No one really knows whether he’s dead or alive. President Barack Obama says he and his organization remain the number one threat to the U.S. But even America’s most media-savvy general admits his organization is not in Afghanistan anymore. Would that be reason enough for the U.S. to finally leave Afghanistan? On the contrary: now there’s a new – counterinsurgent – top boot on the ground.

Real News Network – May 15, 2009

Obama and Osama – McChrystal clear

The more it changes, the more the “war on terror” stays the same