Tag: Al Qaeda

[I know buhdy already wrote on this — see cite for him below — but I figured an extra commentary wouldn’t hurt, providing also a bit more information on the legalities involved. — V.]

In a very interesting follow-up to the unfolding story on the 2003 John Yoo memorandum that justified the use of torture, ABC news is reporting how the CIA came to the White House after the spring 2002 capture of al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan and asked for permission to use more “aggressive” interrogation techniques. Citing anonymous sources, ABC says that beginning with the Zubaydah case, “the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency.” These discussions evidently included the use of waterboarding, as the CIA has admitted using this torture technique on Zubaydah.

The “Principals” — high-level Bush administration officials — present included National Security Adviser Condolezza Rice, who chaired the meetings, “Vice President Cheney… Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.”

While Ashcroft is said to have signed off on the legality of the interrogations, he got squeamish about how it was being approved. Perhaps he was afraid of future legal and political consequences. Perhaps he remembered how the secrets of the Wannsee Conference were ultimately leaked. Per the ABC story (also reported over at Reuters):

The New York Times famously writes that it publishes “all the news that’s fit to print.” But there’s a lot that doesn’t get published, even on the Internet. Let’s look at two examples.

Yesterday, the Pentagon made it official. According to a U.S. military study, Saddam Hussein had no links to Al Qaida. None. Nada. But like a pesky gopher that sticks its head up out of the ground, and then swiftly disappears down the hole into its dark tunnels, governmental truth made a very swift appearance yesterday. And now, it’s going to be snatched back out of the light and stuffed into a deep governmental shaft. Here’s the UK Guardian on subject (with a h/t to StuHunter at Daily Kos):

The Pentagon study based on more than 600,000 documents recovered after US and UK troops toppled Hussein in 2003, discovered “no ‘smoking gun’ (ie, direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al-Qaida”, its authors wrote.

George Bush and his senior aides have made numerous attempts to link Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda terror in their justification for waging war against Iraq.

Wary of embarrassing press coverage noting that the new study debunks those claims, the US defence department attempted to bury the release of the report yesterday.

“Alternative procedures.” “Valuable tools in the war on terror.” “Specialized interrogation procedures.” “Safe and lawful techniques.” “Good policies.”

George W. Bush has more euphemisms for torture than his creepy Veep, Cheney, has expletives on supply.

On Saturday, in his weekly radio address, President Bush announced his veto of the Congressional Intelligence bill, which included a ban on CIA use of certain “enhanced” interrogation methods, like waterboarding. Bush defended the use of the so-called “alternative procedures” practiced by the CIA, as necessary for field intelligence officers interrogating “hardened terrorists.” The play upon the fear of Americans of terrorist attack in the aftermath of the horrific 9/11 events turns upon well-understood traumatic mechanisms in the human psyche.

That whole democracy thing isn’t working out so well in Pakistan- for the Bush Administration, anyway. According to McClatchy Newspapers:

Senior Bush administration officials Thursday said they oppose plans by some Pakistani politicians to open talks with Islamic militants, saying that could lead to a repeat of a failed 2006 peace accord.

That accord “didn’t really work,” Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told a Senate committee. U.S. officials say the agreement gave al Qaida and other militant groups breathing space to regroup.

Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, the State Department’s point man on South Asia, was blunter.

“We’ve always found that a negotiation that’s not backed by a certain amount of force can’t really force out the bad guys,” Boucher said in an interview on National Public Radio, referring to militants in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.

“Ultimately, it’s the outcome that matters,” he said.

Of course, all outcomes, under Bush favorite Musharraf’s regime, led us to where we are today. Which is in need of better outcomes. Which pretty much defines where everything Bush has touched stands, today.

The two parties that triumphed in the Feb. 18 elections for the national parliament, however, have stressed the need for a political – rather than a military – solution to the insurgency.

Also, McClatchy reported on Tuesday that the smaller secular party that won the elections in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province plans to open talks with local Islamic insurgents allied with al Qaida.

Because, of course, all Bush accomplished in Afghanistan was to allow al Qaeda to escape back into the Pashtun region that straddles the literally randomly chosen border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they have regrouped, grown stronger, and now, with the also resurgent Taliban, grown strong enough to threaten Pakistan, itself.

According to a new article by Steve Bloomfield in the UK Independent, the U.S. policy of advising Ethiopia in its war with neighboring Somalia has failed. Not surprisingly for the Bush team, it has achieved results entirely the opposite of what it intended. The outcome? UN officials describe it as the “the largest concentration of displaced people anywhere in the world…. the worst humanitarian catastrophe in Africa, eclipsing even Darfur in its sheer horror.”

According to Bloomfield, the U.S. believed that Al Qaida had established a presence in the “failed state” that was Somalia at the beginning of this century. The U.S. wanted to strike at the Union of Islamic Courts, a fundamentalist coalition that was ruling over much of central and southern Somalia.

On Christmas Day 2006, Ethiopia invaded its neighbour, Somalia. The aim: to drive out a coalition of Islamists ruling the capital, Mogadishu, and install a fragile interim government that had been confined to a small town in the west. But Ethiopia was not acting alone. The US had given its approval for the operation and provided key intelligence and technical support. CIA agents travelled with the Ethiopian troops, helping to direct operations.

There are some things one never forgets. I’ll never forget my first, and only, encounter with torture some 40 years ago. Our daylight patrol, some 4 or 5 Marines and probably the same number of Vietnamese Province level militia troops engaged some unseen VC hidden in a tree-line and a firefight ensued. The tree-line held a small hamlet and predictably the village people carrying with them their most valued possessions fled in our direction. The fled because they knew their village would most likely be shelled, strafed or bombed. As it turned out the village was strafed by a couple of passes of a fighter jet spraying the area with 40 mm cannon fire.

Our Vietnamese counterparts detained a young lady they said was a VC, a nurse they claimed. We brought her back to our ragged compound where they bound her, stripped off her shirt and attached wires to her nipples and used a crank operated electrical device to shock her. Needless to say it was thoroughly disgusting. Through it all she refused to talk. I admired her courage. They took her off to the District Hq and we never heard any more about her.

In April 2004, the American public was stunned by televised photographs from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison showing hooded Iraqis stripped naked, posed in contorted positions, and visibly suffering humiliating abuse while U.S. soldiers stood by smiling. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld quickly assured Congress that the abuses were “perpetrated by a small number of U.S. military,” whom New York Times columnist William Safire soon branded “creeps.”

Most Americans became aware of torture when Seymour Hersh broke the story about Abu Ghraib. Where did it all begin? I witnessed torture 40 years ago and have come to wonder why, where and when it all started.

After French soldiers used the technique on Henri Alleg during the Battle for Algiers in 1957, this journalist wrote a moving description that turned the French people against both torture and the Algerian War. “I tried,”

Alleg wrote, “by contracting my throat, to take in as little water as possible and to resist suffocation by keeping air in my lungs for as long as I could. But I couldn’t hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression of drowning, and a terrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me.”

Let us think about the deeper meaning of Alleg’s sparse words–“a terrible agony, that of death itself.” As the water blocks air to the lungs, the human organism’s powerful mammalian diving reflex kicks in, and the brain is wracked by horrifically painful panic signals–death, death, death. After a few endless minutes, the victim vomits out the water, the lungs suck air, and panic subsides. And then it happens again, and again, and again–each

time inscribing the searing trauma of near death in human memory.

from: http://www.zmag.org/content/sh…

An Icelandic woman’s memorable visit.

(h/t The Reaction, via Sott)

Every time Osama bin Laden’s vile visage reappears on America’s television screens, the pundits hyperventilate with excited anticipation of the political benefits for Bush. John Kerry blames his 2004 defeat on bin Laden’s sudden reappearance, on tape, in the days before the election. The calcified conventional wisdom persists that when Americans are reminded of bin Laden and terrorism, they quiver in fear and cower for the cover of their big bad Republican protectors. This is, of course, at best, absurd. In 2004, some right wing shrillmongers even insisted that bin Laden was openly hoping for a Kerry victory. That exact presumptive political calculus actually explains bin Laden’s true motives.

When Bush needs a boost, bin Laden is there to lend a hand. Bin Laden is no fool, and he understands the foolishness of the American media. He understands that they will comply with his true desire, which is to bolster Bush and to help facilitate the continuance of Bush’s national security policies. Unlike the idiots in the American punditocracy, bin Laden is mockingly confident that whatever Bush does will be to bin Laden’s benefit. Never in American history has an American administration’s ineptitude so consistenly benefited America’s enemies.

Once again, because they need be continually explicated, these are the facts: