HEART OF DARKNESS

White House denies prior knowledge of Abu Ghraib abuse

The top military investigator of the Abu Ghraib scandal, retired Army Major General Antonio Taguba says he described to former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld what he termed the "torture" of "a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum," the magazine reported.

The ex-general, who retired in January, spoke of other, undisclosed material on the Abu Ghraib abuse, including descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees.

He also told the magazine he saw "a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomising a female detainee," adding the video was never made public or mentioned in any court or in public.

Maj Gen Taguba says all high-level officials had avoided scrutiny while the jail keepers at Abu Ghraib were tried in courts-martial.

"From what I knew, troops just don't take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups," Maj Gen Taguba told the New Yorker, adding his orders were to investigate the military police only and not their superiors.

"These (military police) troops were not that creative," he said. "Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority."

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Soldier charged in Iraqi abuse scandal strikes plea deal; absolves higher-ups

U.S. government lawyers have advised against the release of hundreds of even more gruesome pictures and videos, some depicting corpses and several forms of sexual abuse, taken by U.S. soldiers.
Ironically, one reason they give is they would violate a Geneva Convention rule against revealing images that degrade prisoners.
Two top Pentagon officials admitted Thursday that interrogation tactics approved for use at Abu Ghraib violated the convention, which prohibits physical and mental torture of detainees.

Abu Ghraib: the rule, not the exception

Americans are no novices to inflicting pain and humiliation, says torture expert MILES SCHUMAN. U.S.-sanctioned torment has a long and diverse pedigree.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has revealed over the past days that the gross human-rights abuses of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison were not confined to a few soldiers. Indeed, it appears they were well-known to U.S. government and military officials while they occurred. As a physician who has worked with many survivors of torture in Canada -- and has lived in Guatemala, Haiti and Mexico, working with survivors of state-sponsored violence -- the images of the detainees in Abu Ghraib represent a hauntingly familiar pattern of abuse.

THE GOOD GUYS

Red Cross accuses Bush administration of torture

The Red Cross has accused President George Bush's administration of overseeing the intentional physical and psychological torture of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

Rumsfeld sued for war crimes over Abu Ghraib

American human rights lawyers began an attempt in Germany to prosecute Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes yesterday. A case against the US Defence Secretary could embarrass Gerhard Schröder's coalition government.
Peter Weiss and Michael Ratner of the Centre for Constitutional Rights said they had submitted evidence to Germany's federal state prosecutor in connection with torture at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
He said: "Torture at Abu Ghraib has not been properly addressed by the US courts. The point is to make sure that people who torture have nowhere to hide." His action aims to use a 2002 law which lets prosecutors bring charges against those suspected of war crimes irrespective of nationality or where the crimes were committed.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

The rewriting of Iraqi history is now going on at supersonic speed

"Weapons of mass destruction? Forget it. Links between Saddam and al-Qaida? Forget it. Liberating the Iraqis from Saddam's Abu Ghraib life of torture? Forget it. Wedding party slaughtered? Forget it. Clear the decks for both 'full (sic) sovereignty' and 'chaotic events.' This is, at any rate, according to Bush. When I heard his hesitant pronunciation of Abu Ghraib as 'Abu Grub' on Monday night, I could only profoundly agree." -- Robert Fisk

CHAINS OF COMMAND

Soldier's lawyers plan to summon top US officials

Attorneys representing Army Pfc. Lynndie England, charged in the torture-and-abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, said yesterday they plan to call Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as witnesses in her preliminary hearing this month.
During a news conference in Denver, the defense team said it had assembled a list of 136 people to summon when England, 21, appears June 22 before a military Article 32 hearing in Fort Bragg, N.C. The hearing, similar to a grand jury, will determine whether there is enough evidence to prosecute her. If she is tried and convicted on charges of abuse, conspiracy and discrediting the armed forces, England, who is five months pregnant, faces 15-1/2 years in prison.
Her lawyers acknowledge they can't force Cheney or Rumsfeld to show up, because there is no subpoena power for Article 32 hearings. The best they can hope for is the pair might be required, as public servants, to come if called.
Attorney Rose Mary Zapor said she believes the chain of command ordered England and at least six other prison guards at Abu Ghraib to 'soften up' Iraqi detainees before interrogation. One guard, Army Spc. Jeremy Sivits, pleaded guilty last month to abusing prisoners and was sentenced to one year in prison.
England is not in custody and is doing clerical work at Fort Bragg.

Excerpt from an interview aired on the Australian ABC Radio network Text in square brackets may contain transcript errors due to poor quality of recording.

ENGLAND: I was instructed by a person in a higher rank to stand there, hold this leash, they took the picture, [first aisle, and that's all I know].
INTERVIEWER: [You had an] intention of using that picture in some type of psychological operation [that they're inmates].

PRESENTER: Private England was asked if she thought there was anything wrong with what she was doing.
ENG: Oh I mean they were for psyop reasons and the reason was ... I mean ... and so ... to us we were doing our job which meant we were doing what we were told and the outcome was what they wanted. They'd come back and they'd look at the pictures and they'd state, "that's a good tactic, keep it up, that's working, this is working. Keep doing it. Gettin' what we need".

PRES: She didn't name names, but said repeatedly that she was acting under orders.
ENG: We don't feel like we were doing thing that we weren't supposed to, because we were told to do ... we think everything was justified because we were instructed to do this and to do that.
INT: Did things happen in this prison to those Iraqi prisoners worse than [garbled] than being photographed.
ENG: Yes
INT: Can you tell me about that.
ENG: No.
PRES: There are still many questions about what that worse treatment may have involved.

NEW WORLD ORDER

Report says US has 'secret' detention centres

The United States is holding terrorism suspects in more than two dozen detention centres worldwide and about half of these operate in total secrecy, a human rights report says.
Human Rights First, formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, said in a report that secrecy surrounding these facilities made 'inappropriate detention and abuse not only likely but inevitable.'
'The abuses at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib cannot be addressed in isolation,' said Deborah Pearlstein, director of the group's U.S. Law and Security program, referring to the U.S. Naval base prison in Cuba and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq where abuses are being investigated.
'This is all about secrecy, accountability and the law,' Pearlstein told a news conference.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Israeli agents believed involved in Abu Ghraib

Diplomatic sources in Washington tell NewsMax's U.N. correspondent Stew Stogel that Israeli nationals are believed to be involved in the Iraq prison controversy.
'Israelis have been to Abu Ghraib and other prisons [in Iraq],' says one source familiar with the U.S. operations.
It was explained that the Israelis involved have been assigned as 'civilian contractors' to work with Coalition forces in interrogating Iraqi POWs.
The 'contractors' are said to be veterans of Israel's domestic intelligence unit, Shin Bet, as well as the more famous international intelligence agency, the Mossad.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

CIA cut Nick Berg's head off?

The video of execution of American hostage Nick Berg in Iraq is threatening to develop into a major scandal. During a press conference the father of the beheaded American accused Bush and Rumsfeld of killing his son. There are more and more suspicions that Nick Berg was really executed not by Arab militants, but by the US intelligence services in order to divert the attention from the scandal about the tortures in Baghdad prison.

Berg video the smoking gun?

Digital signatures are being incorporated in various digital consumer products. Photocopiers and digital cameras can store an encrypted signature to identify the unit that made the recording.
Today new pictures were released of prison torture at Abu Ghraib prison. But not just still pictures. Today video was released showing prisoners being tortured by Americans. It has been suggested that the digital signature from this latest video has been removed from the sides of the footage -- which is why the video is higher than it is wide, not because it was shot sideways.
The other suggestion is that this was done to conceal the evidence that this was the same camera that was used to film the decapitation.

Berg decapitation video was filmed inside the Abu Ghraib prison

There is now ample evidence that the video showing the decapitation of 26 year old Nicholas Berg of Philadelphia by purported Al queda members is a complete fraud. The real Nick Berg may or may not be dead, but the heavily edited video is nothing but a fake. This is the conclusion of La Voz de Aztlan after a frame by frame analysis and the conclusion of hundreds of film, medical and other experts world wide who downloaded, viewed and analyzed the video as well.

NEW WORLD ORDER

Nick Berg, beheaded by "terrorists" earlier this month, had a strange encounter with "terrorist" a few years ago.

Berg's encounter with 'terrorist' revealed by father

When Nicholas Berg took an Oklahoma bus to a remote college campus a few years ago, the American recently beheaded by terrorists allowed a man with terrorist connections to use his laptop computer, according to his father.
Michael Berg said the FBI investigated the matter more than a year ago.
Government sources told CNN that the encounter involved an acquaintance of Zacarias Moussaoui -- the only person publicly charged in the United States in connection with the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Government sources said Berg gave the man on the bus his password, which was later used by Moussaoui, the sources said.

[Prior to his execution, Berg had been arrested by Iraqi police, detained briefly, and then handed over to U.S. troops who held him in a coalition facility for almost two weeks, a friend told CNN.
And for the conspiratorially minded there are a couple more issues to consider. First, the executioner wore a large gold ring -- prohibited in Islam. Second, check the chair Berg sat on as he awaited his execution. Possibly an Abu Ghraib standard issue. Another Abu Ghraib chair?

JackBlood.com has learned the web addresses for the ‘Islamic Websites’ that posted the Nick Berg decapitation video. The website addresses are www.al-asnar.net and www.al-asnar.biz . Both websites have apparently been disabled by 'authorities.' The location of the web server is reportedly in Malaysia. However, the addresses of the publishers for these sites are located in London, England and Nurnberg, Denmark.
The addresses began to disappear from the internet listings soon after this development was reported.]

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Rumsfeld 'doing a superb job' [at avoiding blame?]

President Bush continued to steer blame for the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal away from Mr Rumsfeld when he led a powerful show of support for his Defence Secretary during a visit to the Pentagon.
But despite this endorsement, there is mounting evidence undermining sworn testimony -- by Mr Rumsfeld and the Pentagon's senior commanders -- that the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison were carried out only by "a handful" of junior officers.
Numerous witnesses told the military's inquiry chief Major-General Antonio Taguba that shocking abuses, including sexual humiliation, were encouraged at the prison by US military intelligence officers.
General Taguba's internal army report described systemic abuse problems at Abu Ghraib and said junior officers were instructed by military intelligence and private contractors to "set the conditions" for prisoner interrogations.

Army Times newspaper, which often reflects opinion in the armed forces, condemned Mr Rumsfeld and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers in an editorial headed "A failure of leadership at the highest levels".

HEARTS AND MINDS

Abuse may have been 'order'

Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter for The New Yorker, said that Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, one of six US military policemen accused of humiliating Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Gharib prison outside Baghdad, wrote home in January that he had 'questioned some of the things' he saw inside the prison, but that 'the answer I got was, 'This is how military intelligence wants it done'.'
The UK Guardian reported the treatment may have been ordered by US military intelligence to extract information from the captives, and was possibly more cruel than officially acknowledged.

CIA behind Iraqi prisoner abuse: Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told The New York Times in a telephone interview that the special high-security cellblock at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad had been under the direct control of army intelligence officers, not the reservists under her command.
Torture commonplace, say inmates' families: Photos of US soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees may have provoked outrage across the world. But for Hiyam Abbas they merely confirmed what she already knew - that US guards had tortured her 22-year-old son Hassan.

TRY OR RELEASE

Many innocents, few released

"Two FBI agents began the questioning, convinced I was involved in some nefarious web of plots, from planning to assassinate the Pope to masterminding al-Qaeda's finance operation in Europe, or being an instructor in one of its Afghan training camps. They had their perceptions about me and were searching for ways to confirm them -- preferably from my own mouth. By now I'd been raised to the status of some rogue James Bond-type figure. They thought I was a graduate from some prestigious British university, that I was fluent in a dozen languages, that I was an expert in computers and several martial arts… Had it not been for this ludicrous situation I'm in, I would have been flattered. I once said to them, 'I should ask you to write my résumé -- I'd find a job anywhere.'"

[A British citizen of Pakistani heritage who was held and tortured at Abu Ghraib and Camp X-Ray for years in solitary confinement before being released when it became obvious he was 'the wrong guy'.]

CORPORATE LAW

Forget Martial Law. What about Corporte Law?

Already, the usual forces of corporate restructuring are lining up. Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary has begun work on a $500 million US Navy contract for emergency repairs at Gulf Coast naval and marine facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Blackwell Security - the folks that brought you Abu Ghraib - are patrolling the streets of our city.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the rich white elite is already planning their vision of New Orleans' reconstruction, from the super-rich gated compounds of Audubon Place Uptown, where they have set up a heliport and brought in a heavily-armed Israeli security company. "The new city must be something very different, one of these city leaders was quoted as saying, "with better services and fewer poor people. Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically"

RIGHTS TRASHED

Freed detainee Habib says he was tortured throughout US custody

Mamdouh Habib still has a bruise on his lower back. He says it is a sign of the beatings he endured in a prison in Egypt. Interrogators there put out cigarettes on his chest, he says, and he lifts his shirt to show the marks. He says he got the dark spot on his forehead when Americans hit his head against the floor at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
After being arrested in Pakistan in the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, he was held as a terror suspect by the Americans for 40 months. Back home now, Mr. Habib alleges that at every step of his detention - from Pakistan, to Egypt, to Afghanistan, to Guantánamo - he endured physical and psychological abuse.
The physical abuse, he said, ranged from a kick "that nearly killed me" to electric shocks administered through a wired helmet that he said interrogators told him could detect whether he was lying.
Speaking publicly for the first time since he was freed two weeks ago, Mr. Habib, a 49-year-old Australian citizen born in Egypt, also described psychological abuse that seemed intended to undermine his identity - as a husband, a father and a Muslim man.

Former spy claims Australian government covered up Iraq prisoner abuse

A former Australian spy contradicted government claims that no Australian was involved in interrogating Iraqi prisoners, saying he himself witnessed and reported the alleged abuse of Iraqis by their US captors.
Rod Barton, a former senior analyst for the Defense Intelligence Organisation (DIO) and a long-time Iraq weapons inspector, said he personally interrogated an Iraqi detainee at Camp Cropper, a US center which held so-called "high value" prisoners.
Barton said he raised concerns with an Australian defense official about the abuse of inmates at Camp Cropper before the mistreatment at Abu Ghraib became public, but no action was taken.

GUILTY SECRETS

Rumsfeld cancels trip fearing war crime suit

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cancelled a planned visit to Germany after a US human rights organisation asked German authorities to prosecute him for war crimes, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) has learned.
Rumsfeld has informed the German government via the US embassy that he will not take part in the Munich Security Conference in February, conference head Horst Teltschik told DPA on Thursday.
The New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights filed a complaint in December with the Federal German Prosecutor's Office against Rumsfeld accusing him of war crimes and torture in connection with detainee abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
Rumsfeld made it known immediately after the complaint was filed that he would not attend the Munich conference unless Germany quashed the legal action.

DOCTOR IN THE BIG HOUSE

Online lessons for doctors on how to deal with prisoner abuse

Experts are concerned that doctors become inured to a culture of abuse at a prison and subsequently help to sustain it.
"They get into an atrocity-producing culture," said Sverre Varvin, a researcher at the University of Oslo and Norwegian expert on ethics and human rights in jails.
Now a course has been developed by the Norwegian Medical Association (NMA) -- following studies in Turkish jails -- to help doctors address dual loyalty to the country holding the inmates captive and to their ethical code.

[An article in the British medical journal The Lancet recently accused US army doctors at Abu Ghraib jail outside Baghdad of failing to report deaths caused by beatings and helping to design abusive interrogation methods.]

NEWSPEAK

Iraq is sovereign ... except it can't make decisions on its own [I believe the expression should have been 'Let freedom RING'.]

White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice Monday informed President Bush in a handwritten note of the transfer of authority in Baghdad, prompting Bush to scribble back: 'Let freedom reign'.

'Mr. President, Iraq is sovereign. Letter was passed from (U.S. administrator Paul) Bremer at 10:26 a.m. Iraq time -- Condi,'

The note exchange took place during a meeting of NATO leaders in Istanbul. Ms Rice handed the note to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who passed it along to Bush.

Iraq Gov't must abide by US-made laws

The US led-coalition, facing a Wednesday deadline to hand back power, has put in place major legal revisions that would force Iraqis to get drivers' licenses, obey traffic laws, ban certain people from holding office and place American contractors above the law.
Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish politician and member of the disbanded US-picked Governing Council, said he thinks the Americans began pushing the flurry of laws once it became clear the occupation would be cut short. Washington's earlier plans, he said, called for a longer occupation that would have allowed Iraq's constitution to be written under US watch.
But critics say the Coalition Provisional Authority's flurry of laws amounts to meddling in Iraq's basic institutions, something that international law places out of bounds for an occupying power.
Especially irksome for Iraqi leaders is the fact that the occupier's edicts remain in force after the occupation ends -- including laws that curtail the powers of the incoming government.

Prisoner 27075 learns limits of sovereignty

Iyad Akmush Kanum, 23, learnt the limits of sovereignty when US prosecutors refused to uphold an Iraqi judges' order acquitting him of attempted murder of coalition troops.
US prosecutors said that he was being returned to the controversial Abu Ghraib prison because under the Geneva Conventions they were not bound by Iraqi law.
Faisal Estrabadi, an Iraqi lawyer, said yesterday after the refusal to release Mr Kanum: "If the Iraqi courts have acquitted an individual he must be released. Anything else is a violation of sovereignty".

GENEVA CON

Interrogation abuses were 'approved at highest levels'

New evidence that the physical abuse of detainees in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay was authorised at the top of the Bush administration will emerge in Washington
this week, adding further to pressure on the White House.
The Telegraph understands that four confidential Red Cross documents implicating senior Pentagon civilians in the Abu Ghraib scandal have been passed to an American television network, which is preparing to make them public shortly.

RIGHT IS MIGHT

The glamorous Meyrav Wurmser is a director of the Center for Middle East Policy and a senior fellow and former executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.
An expert in the Middle East, she is part of a neo-conservative family. Her husband David is special assistant to Undersecretary of State John Bolton and a member of the American Enterprise Institute -- a highly aggressive and well-supported right-wing think tank.
She is, along with a former Colonel in Israeli intelligence, the co-founder of a charity which monitors the Arab media for anti-semitic opinions.
Ms Wurmser was among a group of neo-conservatives who wrote a report intended as advice for the then incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996.
The report, called "Rebuilding Zionism" called for a clean break with the Middle East peace process and talked about "rolling back Syria".
It also spoke about removing Saddam Hussein from power.
Other signatories of that report included Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Douglas Feith - who is now number three at the Pentagon.

Ms Wurmser appeared on Lateline (Australia, 31 May) to answer claims by Amnesty International that the US had lost its moral compass in the fight against terrorism.

Her demeanor and responses were interesting: She said what had occurred at Abu Ghraib was not torture and that everyone needed to get things in perspective.
She said the invasion of Iraq was NOT about WMDs but freedom and democracy.
She also dealt with a citations from journalist Seymour Hersch by laughing and saying he was not a respectable source.
She was also questioned on 'disgraced' Brigadeer Janice Kapinsky's claim that the section of the prison where the torture and abuse was occuring appeared to be run by mysterious plain-clothed men who visited frequently.
Ms Wurmser arched an eyebrow and stated in even tones that the Brigadeer also, was an unreliable source.

Tonight's stories should appear here in about 8 hours.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Top 10 reasons some think Berg beheading was psychological black operation courtesy CIA

1) Hooded executioner identified as 'Al-Zarqawi' within minutes. Others say he lacked a Jordanian accent.
2) There was no blood spurting from neck. Experts noticed the obvious lack of blood spurting from any neck artery which should accompany a beheading - there was none.
3) Video apparently from the same director who did the previous phony Bin Laden Video with the admittedly fake Bin Laden.
4) Berg worked at the Abu Ghraib prison.
5) The link to Moussaoui (referred to as the 20th hijacker in the 911 event). Moussaoui emailed something from Berg's laptop two years ago.
6) Berg had a mysterious Israeli passport stamp.
7) Berg had sensitive electronic equipment on his person that he had no paperwork for.
8) Berg travelled the world helping the disadvantaged?
9) What is a jew doing as a freelancer in the apocalyptic war torn Jew hating Iraq? Does he have a death wish? Is he mentally retarded? Nope, He's a US government agent - and a patsy.
10) Bergs father thinks it's the US Gov killed his son - and not abstractly so either.