Archive for the ‘imperialism’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Israel accused of ‘colonialism and apartheid’

May 23, 2009

Middle East Online, First Published 2009-05-22


When will these walls be brought down?

Study finds Israeli practices in occupied Palestinian territories resemble those of apartheid South Africa.

LONDON – The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) has released findings that Israel is practicing both colonialism and apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

The 307-page report, co-authored by Arab Media Watch adviser Victor Kattan, will be found online on the HSRC website (www.hsrc.ac.za).

Titled “Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law,” the study represents 15 months of research by a team of experts in international law from South Africa, the UK, Israel and the West Bank.

The team was commissioned by the HSRC to review Israel’s practices in the OPT according to definitions of colonialism and apartheid provided by international law.

The executive summary was first presented by members of the research team at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) on Monday.

Regarding colonialism

The team found that Israel’s policy is to fragment the West Bank and annex part of it permanently to Israel, which is the hallmark of colonialism.

Israel has appropriated land and natural resources in the OPT, merged the Palestinian economy with Israel’s, and dominated the Palestinian people to ensure their subjugation to these measures.

Israel has also denied the Palestinians their right to govern their own natural resources and economic affairs.

These practices violate the prohibition on colonialism which the international community developed in the 1960s during the great decolonisation struggles in Africa and Asia.

Regarding apartheid

The team found that Israel’s laws and policies in the OPT fit the definition of apartheid in the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.

In brief, Israeli law defines the Jewish people as a distinct group with special rights and privileges.

These laws are then channelled into the OPT to convey privileges to Jewish settlers and disadvantage Palestinians on the basis of their identities, which function as racial identities in the sense provided by international law.

A policy of apartheid is especially indicated by the demarcation of geographic ‘reserves’ in the West Bank to which Palestinian residence is confined and which they cannot leave without a permit.

The system is very similar to the policy of ‘Grand Apartheid’ in South Africa, in which blacks were confined to black Homelands (Bantustans).

From the executive summary

“A troika of key laws underpinned the South African apartheid regime…The first pillar was formally to demarcate the population of South Africa into racial groups…and to accord superior rights, privileges and services to the white racial group…The second pillar was to segregate the population into different geographic areas, which were allocated by law to different racial groups, and restrict passage by members of any group into the area allocated to other groups,” the report read.

“The third pillar was ‘a matrix of draconian ‘security’ laws and policies that were employed to suppress any opposition to the regime and to reinforce the system of racial domination, by providing for administrative detention, torture, censorship, banning, and assassination,” it added.

“Israel’s practices in the OPT can be defined by the same three ‘pillars’ of apartheid. The first pillar derives from Israeli laws and policies that establish Jewish identity for purposes of law and afford a preferential legal status and material benefits to Jews over non-Jews…The second pillar is reflected in Israel’s grand policy to fragment the OPT [and] ensure that Palestinians remain confined to the reserves designated for them while Israeli Jews are prohibited from entering those reserves but enjoy freedom of movement throughout the rest of the Palestinian territory,” it continued.

“[The third pillar] is Israel’s invocation of ‘security’ to validate sweeping restrictions on Palestinian freedom of opinion, expression, assembly, association and movement [to] mask a true underlying intent to suppress dissent to its system of domination and thereby maintain control over Palestinians as a group,” it said.

Research

This study was researched and written by scholars and international lawyers based at the SOAS in London, the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in Durban, the Adalah/Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, and the West Bank Affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists.

Consultation on the study’s theory and method was provided by eminent jurists from South Africa, Israel and Europe.

The Middle East Project of the HSRC is an independent two-year project to conduct analysis of Middle East politics relevant to South African foreign policy.

Its funding was provided by the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Government of South Africa.

The analysis in this report is entirely independent of the views or foreign policy of the Government of South Africa, and does not represent an official position of the HSRC.

It is intended purely as a scholarly resource for the Department of Foreign Affairs and the concerned international community.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Human rights, imperialism, Palestine, Uncategorized, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

The March of Folly, Continued

May 22, 2009

Norman Solomon  | The Huffington Post, May 22, 2009

To understand what’s up with President Obama as he escalates the war in Afghanistan, there may be no better place to look than a book published 25 years ago. The March of Folly, by historian Barbara Tuchman, is a chilling assessment of how very smart people in power can do very stupid things — how a war effort, ordered from on high, goes from tic to repetition compulsion to obsession — and how we, with undue deference and lethal restraint, pay our respects to the dominant moral torpor to such an extent that mass slaughter becomes normalized in our names.

What happens among policymakers is a “process of self-hypnosis,” Tuchman writes. After recounting examples from the Trojan War to the British moves against rebellious American colonists, she devotes the closing chapters of The March of Folly to the long arc of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The parallels with the current escalation of the war in Afghanistan are more than uncanny; they speak of deeply rooted patterns.

With clarity facing backward, President Obama can make many wise comments about international affairs while proceeding with actual policies largely unfettered by the wisdom. From the outset of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Tuchman observes, vital lessons were “stated” but “not learned.”

As with John Kennedy — another young president whose administration “came into office equipped with brain power” and “more pragmatism than ideology” — Obama’s policy adrenalin is now surging to engorge something called counterinsurgency.

“Although the doctrine emphasized political measures, counterinsurgency in practice was military,” Tuchman writes, an observation that applies all too well to the emerging Obama enthusiasm for counterinsurgency. And “counterinsurgency in operation did not live up to the high-minded zeal of the theory. All the talk was of ‘winning the allegiance’ of the people to their government, but a government for which allegiance had to be won by outsiders was not a good gamble.”

Now, as during the escalation of the Vietnam War — despite all the front-paged articles and news bulletins emphasizing line items for civic aid from Washington — the spending for U.S. warfare in Afghanistan is overwhelmingly military.

Perhaps overeager to assume that the context of bombing campaigns ordered by President Obama is humanitarian purpose, many Americans of antiwar inclinations have yet to come to terms with central realities of the war effort — for instance, the destructive trajectory of the budgeting for the war, which spends 10 dollars toward destruction for every dollar spent on humanitarian programs.

From the top of the current administration — as the U.S. troop deployments in Afghanistan continue to rise along with the American air-strike rates — there is consistent messaging about the need to “stay the course,” even while bypassing such tainted phrases.

The dynamic that Tuchman describes as operative in the first years of the 1960s, while the Vietnam War gained momentum, is no less relevant today: “For the ruler it is easier, once he has entered a policy box, to stay inside. For the lesser official it is better, for the sake of his position, not to make waves, not to press evidence that the chief will find painful to accept. Psychologists call the process of screening out discordant information ‘cognitive dissonance,’ an academic disguise for ‘Don’t confuse me with the facts.'” Along the way, cognitive dissonance “causes alternatives to be ‘deselected since even thinking about them entails conflicts.'”

Such a psycho-political process inside the White House has no use for the report from the Congressional Progressive Caucus that came out of the caucus’s six-part forum on Capitol Hill this spring, “Afghanistan: A Road Map for Progress.”

Souped up and devouring fuel, the war train cannot slow down for the Progressive Caucus report’s recommendation that “an 80-20 ratio (political-military) should be the formula for funding our efforts in the region with oversight by a special inspector general to ensure compliance.” Or that “U.S. troop presence in the region must be oriented toward training and support roles for Afghan security forces and not for U.S.-led counterinsurgency efforts.”

Or that “the immediate cessation of drone attacks should be required.” Or that “all aid dollars should be required to have a majority percentage of dollars tied or guaranteed to local Afghan institutions and organizations, to ensure countrywide job mapping, assessment and workforce development process to directly benefit the Afghan people.”

The policymakers who are gunning the war train can’t be bothered with such ideas. After all, if the solution is — rhetoric aside — assumed to be largely military, why dilute the potency of the solution? Especially when, as we’re repeatedly made to understand, there’s so much at stake.

During the mid-1960s, while American troops poured into Vietnam, “enormity of the stakes was the new self-hypnosis,” Tuchman comments. She quotes the wisdom — conventional and self-evident — of New York Times military correspondent Hanson Baldwin, who wrote in 1966 that U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam would bring “political, psychological and military catastrophe,” signaling that the United States “had decided to abdicate as a great power.”

Many Americans are eager to think of our nation as supremely civilized even in warfare; the conceits of noble self-restraint have been trumpeted by many a president even while the Pentagon’s carnage apparatus kept spinning into overdrive. “Limited war is not nicer or kinder or more just than all-out war, as its proponents would have it,” Tuchman notes. “It kills with the same finality.”

For a president, with so much military power under his command, frustrations call for more of the same. The seductive allure of counterinsurgency is apt to heighten the appeal of “warnography” for the commander in chief; whatever the earlier resolve to maintain restraint, the ineffectiveness of more violence invites still more — in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

“The American mentality counted on superior might,” Tuchman commented, “but a tank cannot disperse wasps.” In Vietnam, the independent journalist Michael Herr wrote, the U.S. military’s violent capacities were awesome: “Our machine was devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but stop.”

And that is true, routinely, of a war-making administration.

The grim and ultimately unhinged process that Barbara Tuchman charts is in evidence with President Obama and his approach to the Afghan war: “In its first stage, mental standstill fixes the principles and boundaries governing a political problem. In the second stage, when dissonances and failing function begin to appear, the initial principles rigidify. This is the period when, if wisdom were operative, re-examination and re-thinking and a change of course are possible, but they are rare as rubies in a backyard. Rigidifying leads to increase of investment and the need to protect egos; policy founded upon error multiplies, never retreats. The greater the investment and the more involved in it the sponsor’s ego, the more unacceptable is disengagement.”

A week ago, one out of seven members of the House of Representatives voted against a supplemental appropriations bill providing $81.3 billion to the Pentagon, mainly for warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. An opponent of the funding, Congressman John Conyers, pointed out that “the president has not challenged our most pervasive and dangerous national hubris: the foolhardy belief that we can erect the foundations of civil society through the judicious use of our many high-tech instruments of violence.”

Conyers continued: “That belief, promoted by the previous administration in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, assumes that the United States possesses the capacity and also has a duty to determine the fate of nations in the greater Middle East.

“I oppose this supplemental war funding bill because I believe that we are not bound by such a duty. In fact, I believe the policies of empire are counterproductive in our struggle against the forces of radical religious extremism. For example, U.S. strikes from unmanned Predator Drones and other aircraft produced 64 percent of all civilian deaths caused by the U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in 2008. Just this week, U.S. air strikes took another 100 lives, according to Afghan officials on the ground. If it is our goal to strengthen the average Afghan or Pakistani citizen and to weaken the radicals that threaten stability in the region, bombing villages is clearly counterproductive. For every family broken apart by an incident of ‘collateral damage,’ seeds of hate and enmity are sown against our nation. . . .

“Should we support this measure, we risk dooming our nation to a fate similar to Sisyphus and his boulder: to being trapped in a stalemate of unending frustration and misery, as our mistakes inevitably lead us to the same failed outcomes. Let us step back; let us remember the mistakes and heartbreak of our recent misadventures in the streets of Fallujah and Baghdad. If we honor the ties that bind us to one another, we cannot in good faith send our fellow citizens on this errand of folly. It is still not too late to turn away from this path.”

Norman Solomon is the author of a dozen books including “War Made Easy.”

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, imperialism, US policy, USA, warmongers | Leave a Comment »

Barack Obama: From anti-war law lecturer to warmonger in 100 days

May 21, 2009

It didn’t take long for President Barack Obama to swing behind targeted assassinations and bombing raids, says Alexander Cockburn

By Alexander Cockburn | The First Post, May 19, 2009

How long does it take a mild-mannered, anti-war, black professor [lecturer] of constitutional law, trained as a community organiser on the South Side of Chicago, to become an enthusiastic sponsor of targeted assassinations, ‘decapitation’ strategies and remote-control bombing of mud houses at the far end of the globe?

There’s nothing surprising here. As far back as President Woodrow Wilson, in the early 20th century, American liberalism has been swift to flex its imperial muscle and whistle up the Marines. High-explosive has always been in the hormone shot.

The nearest parallel to Obama in eager deference to the bloodthirsty counsels of his counter-insurgency advisors is John F. Kennedy. It is not surprising that bright young presidents relish quick-fix, ‘outside the box’ scenarios for victory.

Obama’s course is set and his presidency is already stained the familiar blood-red

Whether in Vietnam or Afghanistan the counsel of regular Army generals tends to be drear and unappetising: vast, costly deployments of troops by the hundreds of thousands, mounting casualties, uncertain prospects for any long-term success ­ all adding up to dismaying political costs on the home front.

Amid Camelot’s dawn in 1961, Kennedy swiftly bent an ear to the advice of men like Ed Lansdale, a special ops man who wore rakishly the halo of victory over the Communist guerillas in the Philippines and who promised results in Vietnam.

By the time he himself had become the victim of Lee Harvey Oswald’s ‘decapitation’ strategy, brought to successful conclusion in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, on November 22, 1963, Kennedy had set in motion the secret counter-insurgency operations, complete with programs of assassination and torture, that turned South-East Asia and Latin America into charnel houses for the next 20 years.

Another Democrat who strode into the White House with the word ‘peace’ springing from his lips was Jimmy Carter. It was he who first decreed that ‘freedom’ and the war on terror required a $3.5bn investment in a secret CIA-led war in Afghanistan, plus the deployment of Argentinian torturers to advise US military teams in counter-insurgency ops in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Obama campaigned on a pledge to ‘decapitate’ al-Qaeda, meaning the assassination of its leaders. It was his short-hand way of advertising that he had the right stuff. Now, like Kennedy, he’s summoned the exponents of unconventional, short-cut paths to success in that mission.

Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal now replaces General David McKiernan as Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s expertise is precisely in assassination and ‘decapitation’. As commander of the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for nearly five years starting in 2003, McChrystal was in charge of death squad ops, his best advertised success being the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The phrase ‘sophisticated networks’ tends to crop up in assessments of McChrystal’s Iraq years. Actually there’s nothing fresh or sophisticated in what he did. Programmes of targeted assassination aren’t new in counter-insurgency. The most infamous and best known was the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, designed to identify and eliminate cadres of Vietnam’s National Liberation Front, informally known as the Viet Cong, of whom, on some estimates, at least 40,000 were duly assassinated.

In such enterprises two outcomes are inevitable. Identification of the human targets requires either voluntary informants or captives. In the latter instance torture is certain, whatever rhetorical pledges are proclaimed back home. There may be intelligence officers who rely on patient, non-violent interrogation, as the US officer who elicited the whereabouts of al-Zarqawi claims he did.

But there will be others who will reach for the garden hose and the face towel. (McChrystal, not uncoincidentally, was involved in the prisoner abuse scandal at Baghdad’s Camp Nama. He also played a sordid role in the cover-up of the friendly-fire death of ex-NFL star and Army Ranger Pat Tillman.)

Whatever the technique, a second certainty is the killing of large numbers of civilians in the final ‘targeted assassination’. At one point in the first war on Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s, a huge component of US air sorties was devoted each day to bombing places where US intelligence had concluded Saddam might be hiding. Time after time, after the mangled bodies of men, women and children had been scrutinised, came the crestfallen tidings that Saddam was not among them.

Already in Afghanistan public opinion has been inflamed by the weekly bulletins of deadly bombardments either by drones or manned bombers. Still in the headlines is the US bombardment of Bala Boluk in Farah province, which yielded 140 dead villagers torn apart by high explosives, including 93 children. Only 22 were male and over 18.

Perhaps ‘sophisticated intelligence’ had identified one of these as an al-Qaeda man, or a Taliban captain, or maybe someone an Afghan informant to the US military just didn’t care for. Maybe electronic eavesdropping simply screwed up the coordinates. If we ever know, it won’t be for a very long time. Obama has managed a terse apology, even as he installs McChrystal, thus ensuring more of the same.

Obama is bidding to be as sure-footed as Bush in trampling on constitutional rights

The logic of targeted assassinations was on display in Gaza even as Obama worked on the uplifting phrases of his inaugural address in January. The Israelis claimed they were targeting only Hamas even as the body counts of women and children methodically refuted these claims and finally extorted from Obama a terse phrase of regret.

He may soon weary of uttering them. His course is set and his presidency already permanently stained the ever-familiar blood-red tint. There’s no short-cut in counter-insurgency. A targeted bombing yields up Bala Boluk, and the incandescent enmity of most Afghans. The war on al-Qaeda mutates into the war on the Taliban, and 850,000 refugees in the Swat Valley in Pakistan.

The mild-mannered professor is bidding to be as sure-footed as Bush and Cheney in trampling on constitutional rights. He’s planning to restore Bush’s kangaroo courts for prisoners at Guantanamo who’ve never even been formally charged with a crime! He’s threatening to hold some prisoners indefinitely in the US without trial.

He’s even been awarded a hearty editorial clap on the back from the Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Obama deserves credit for accepting that civilians courts are largely unsuited for the realities of the war on terror. He has now decided to preserve a tribunal process that will be identical in every material way to the one favoured by Dick Cheney.”

It didn’t take long. But it’s what we’ve got ­ for the rest of Obama-time.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, Human rights, imperialism, torture, US policy, USA | 1 Comment »

Obama dealt Guantanamo setback

May 21, 2009
Al  Jazeera, May 21, 2009

Obama is expected to outline his plan for the 240 Guantanamo detainees on Thursday [EPA]

The US senate has denied funding for Barack Obama’s plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre by January, voting instead to keep it running indefinitely.

The senate voted on Wednesday to block any transfer of prisoners to facilities on the US mainland, saying they wanted to first see a detailed plan from the president on what would happen to the men.

The crushing 90-6 bipartisan vote comes a day before Obama is scheduled to outline his plan for the 240 detainees still being held at the much-criticised detention centre.

Obama had requested for $80m to transfer the remaining detainees before shutting down the facility at the US naval base in Cuba by January 2010.

The vote comes on the heels of a similar move last week in the House of Representatives.

The Republicans in recent weeks have also called for keeping the Guantanamo prison open.

Plan outline

The White House said after the vote that Obama would reveal details of his plans for the prisoners in a speech on national security on Thursday.

There are concerns over the security risks of bringing the detainees into the US [EPA]

“The president understands that his most important job is to keep the American people safe and that he is not going to make any decision or any judgment that imperils the safety of the American people,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said.Gibbs said Obama had not decided where some of the detainees would be sent but added that the president “understands that there aren’t any easy decisions in this” but was determined to work with congress to fulfil his pledge to shut the place down.

Wednesday’s vote drew criticism from the Pentagon which said legislators were making it “exceedingly difficult” to meet the president’s January deadline.

The senate’s vote, however, is not the final word on the matter.

The congress is expected to complete work on the legislation next month, giving the White House time pursue a compromise that would allow Obama to fulfil his pledge.

Earlier the head of the FBI told a congressional panel about the risks involved in bringing Guantanamo detainees into the US.

Security risks

“The concerns we have about individuals who may support terrorism being in the United States run from concerns about providing financing to terrorists, radicalising others with regard to violent extremism, the potential for individuals undertaking attacks in the United States,” Robert Mueller, the FBI’s director, said.

“Guantanamo is used by al-Qaeda as a symbol of American abuse of Muslims and is fanning the flames of anti-Americanism around the world”

Dianne Feinstein, Democratic senator

Mueller said the threat of Guantanamo detainees radicalising others would apply even if they were held in supermaximum-security prisons on the US mainland.Also this week, John Bates, a US district judge, ruled that some of the prisoners could be held indefinitely at Guantanamo without being charged, increasing the pressure on the Obama administration to develop a plan.

The overwhelming senate vote against Obama’s plan was a victory for the Republicans, but Obama’s Democratic allies, even in voting to deny the funds to close the detention facility, insisted the president was fundamentally correct.

“Guantanamo is used by al-Qaeda as a symbol of American abuse of Muslims and is fanning the flames of anti-Americanism around the world,” Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic senator, said.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, imperialism, Muslims, torture, US policy, USA | Leave a Comment »

Obama’s Embrace of Bush Terrorism Policies is Celebrated as “Centrism”

May 20, 2009

by Glenn Greenwald |  Salon.com, May 19, 2009

I wonder how many people from across the political spectrum will have to point this out before Obama defenders will finally admit that it’s true.  From Harvard Law Professor and former Bush OLC lawyer Jack Goldsmith, systematically assessing Obama’s “terrorism” policies in The New Republic:

Many people think Cheney is scare-mongering and owes President Obama his support or at least his silence.  But there is a different problem with Cheney’s criticisms: his premise that the Obama administration has reversed Bush-era policies is largely wrong. The truth is closer to the opposite: The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric. . . .

[A]t the end of the day, Obama practices will be much closer to late Bush practices than almost anyone expected in January 2009.

Most critically, Goldsmith expresses admiration for Obama’s rhetorical and symbolic changes — such as Obama’s emphasis on obtaining Congressional support for Bush’s  policies while highlighting his deep concern for “civil liberties” — because Goldsmith believes that Obama’s rhetoric vests Bush’s policies with more credibility, ensures more bipartisan and Congressional support for these policies, makes them more palatable to Democrats, and thus ensures that those policies will endure in a stronger and longer-lasting form:

The new president was a critic of Bush administration terrorism policies, a champion of civil liberties, and an opponent of the invasion of Iraq. His decision (after absorbing the classified intelligence and considering the various options) to continue core Bush terrorism policies is like Nixon going to China. . . .

If this analysis is right, then the former vice president is wrong to say that the new president is dismantling the Bush approach to terrorism. President Obama has not changed much of substance from the late Bush practices, and the changes he has made, including changes in presentation, are designed to fortify the bulk of the Bush program for the long-run. Viewed this way, President Obama is in the process of strengthening the presidency to fight terrorism.

What’s most striking about the denial of so many Obama supporters about all of this is that Obama officials haven’t really tried to hide it.  White House counsel Greg Craig told The New York Times‘ Charlie Savage back in February that Obama “is also mindful as president of the United States not to do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency.”  It was in that same article where Savage — a favorite of Bush critics when Bush was president — warned that after the first week of Executive Orders, “the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for other major elements of its predecessor’s approach to fighting Al Qaeda.”

Notably, Savage’s article was written almost three months ago, well before Obama’s announcement that he was adopting many of the most extreme Bush policies.  At the time of Savage’s February article, I wrote: “while believing that Savage’s article is of great value in sounding the right alarm bells, I think that he paints a slightly more pessimistic picture on the civil liberties front than is warranted by the evidence thus far (though only slightly).”  But as it turns out, it was Savage who was clearly right.  As Politico‘s Josh Gerstein recently wrote about Obama’s Terrorism policies:  “A few, like MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, have even hurled the left’s ultimate epithet — suggesting that Obama’s turning into George W. Bush.”

* * * * *

In his New Republic article today, Goldsmith reviews what he calls the “eleven essential elements” of “the Bush approach to counterterrorism policy” and documents how — with only a couple of minor exceptions — Obama has embraced all of them.  In those cases where Obama has purported to “change” these elements, those changes are almost all symbolic and ceremonial, and the few changes that have any substance to them (banning the already-empty CIA black sites and prohibiting no-longer-authorized torture techniques) are far less substantial than Obama officials purport.  None of Goldsmith’s analysis is grounded in the proposition that Obama hasn’t yet acted to change Bush policies, thus rendering a nonsequitur the response that “Obama needs more time; it’s only been 4 months.”  Goldsmith is describing affirmative steps Obama has already announced to adopt the core Bush “terrorism” policies.

Just consider some of Goldsmith’s examples:  Obama makes a melodramatic showing of ordering Guantanamo closed but then re-creates its systematic denial of detainee rights in Bagram, and “[l]ast month Secretary of Defense Gates hinted that up to 100 suspected terrorists would be detained without trial.”  Obama announces that all interrogations must comply with the Army Field Manual but then has his CIA Director announce that he will seek greater interrogation authority whenever it is needed and convenes a task force to determine which enhanced interrogation methods beyond the Field Manual should be authorized.  He railed against Bush’s Guantanamo military commissions but then preserved them with changes that are plainly cosmetic.

Obama has been at least as aggressive as Bush was in asserting radical secrecy doctrines in order to prevent courts from ruling on illegal torture and spying programs and to block victims from having a day in court.  He has continued and even “ramped up” so-called “targeted killings” in Pakistan and Afghanistan which, as Goldsmith puts it, “have predictably caused more collateral damage to innocent civilians.”  He has maintained not only Bush’s rendition policy but also the standard used to determine to which countries a suspect can be rendered, and has kept Bush’s domestic surveillance policies in place and unchanged.  Most of all, he has emphatically endorsed the Bush/Cheney paradigm that we are engaged in a “war” against Terrorists — with all of the accompanying presidential “war powers” — rather than the law enforcement challenge that John Kerry, among others, advocated.

* * * * *

What is, in my view, most noteworthy about all of this is how it gives the lie to the collective national claim that we learned our lesson and are now regretful about the Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism.  Republicans are right about the fact that while it was Bush officials who led the way in implementing these radical and lawless policies, most of the country’s institutions — particularly the Democratic Party leadership and the media — acquiesced to it, endorsed it, and enabled it  And they still do.

Nothing has produced as much media praise for Obama as his embrace of what Goldsmith calls the “essential elements” of “the Bush approach to counterterrorism policy.”   That’s because — contrary to the ceremonial displays of regret and denouncements of Bush — the dominant media view is this:  the Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism was right; those policies are “centrist”; Obama is acting commendably by embracing them; most of the country wants those policies; and only the Far Left opposes the Bush/Cheney approach.

Anyone who doubts that should consider this most extraordinary paragraph from Associated Press’ Liz Sidoti:

Increasingly, President Barack Obama and Democrats who run Congress are being pulled between the competing interests of party liberals and the rest of the country on Bush-era wartime matters of torture, detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists.

When it comes to torture and Bush’s Terrorism policies, it’s the Far Left (which opposes those things) versus “the rest of the country” (which favors them).  And she described Obama’s embrace of Bush’s policies as “governing from the center.”  Apparently, Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies are Centrist.  Who knew?  Her AP colleague Tom Raum said virtually the same thing today:

Internationally, Obama reversed course and is seeking to block the court-ordered release of detainee-abuse photos, revived military trials for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay and is markedly increasing the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. . . .

Still, even though Obama may be irritating liberal purists on both national security and domestic policy, he has no real choice but to move toward the middle.

Adopting the Bush/Cheney approach to war and Terrorism is to “move toward the middle.”  That’s because only “liberal purists” oppose those policies.  The Washington Post‘s CIA spokesman David Ignatius (who I would choose if I had to identify one individual who most embodies the rot of the American political press) celebrated Obama’s recent embrace of Bush Terrorism policies as his “Sister Souljah moment” as he “polished his credentials as a centrist,” and then returned again to announce that “Obama put his responsibilities as commander in chief first — and his loyalty to fellow Democrats second.”

As Maureen Dowd pointed out in the non-plagiarized part of her column on Sunday, the reason Bush was able to do what he did is because “very few watchdogs – in the Democratic Party or the press – were pushing back against the Bush horde in 2002 and 2003, when magazines were gushing about W. and Cheney as conquering heroes.”  But all of this recent media commentary makes clear that media stars and Democratic leaders now are only pretending to find Bush/Cheney policies repugnant because Bush is now so unpopular and his policies were proven to be failures.  As a result, a new face is needed for those policies, but the belief in the rightness of those policies hasn’t changed.  They still consider Bush/Cheney policies “centrist” and responsible — only Leftist Purists oppose them — and thus heap praise on Obama for embracing them.  We’re still the same country we were in 2003.  Our media stars and political leaders from both parties still think the same way.  That’s why the more Obama embraces the Bush/Cheney approach, the more praise he gets for Centrism.

What is most damaging about all of this is exactly what Goldsmith celebrated:  that Obama’s political skills, combined with his status as a Democrat, is strengthening Bush/Cheney terrorism policies and solidifying them further.  For the last eight years, roughly half the country — Republicans, Bush followers — was trained to cheer for indefinite detention, presidential secrecy, military commissions, warrantless eavesdropping, denial of due process, a blind acceptance of any presidential assertion that these policies are necessary to Keep Us Safe, and the claim that only fringe Far Leftist Purists — civil liberties extremists — could possibly object to any of that.

Now, much of the other half of the country, the one that once opposed those policies — Democrats, Obama supporters — are now reciting the same lines, adopting the same mentality, because doing so is necessary to justify what Obama is doing.   It’s hard to dispute the Right’s claim that Bush’s Terrorism approach is being vindicated by Obama’s embrace of its “essential elements.”  That’s what Goldsmith means when he says that Obama is making these policies stronger and more palatable, and it’s what media stars mean when they describe Bush/Cheney policies as Centrist:  now that it’s not just an unpopular Republican President but also a highly charismatic and popular Democratic President advocating and defending these core Bush/Cheney policies, they do become the political consensus of the United States.

© 2009 Salon.com

Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book “How Would a Patriot Act?,” a critique of the Bush administration’s use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, “A Tragic Legacy“, examines the Bush legacy.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, imperialism, US policy, USA | Leave a Comment »

Panetta and Washington’s endless war

May 20, 2009
Bill Van Auken | wsws.org, 20 May 2009
After a week of bitter recriminations between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi over what she was told about torture, CIA Director Leon Panetta sought to put a stop to this public discussion, employing language that echoed the rhetoric of the Bush administration.

Giving his first public speech since he was tapped by Obama to head the CIA, Panetta described the US as “a nation at war” and insisted that the crimes of the Bush administration not become a distraction from current operations by the US military and intelligence apparatus.

“I don’t deny them the opportunity to learn the lessons from that period,” Panetta told his audience at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles. “But…we have to be very careful that we don’t forget our responsibility to the present and to the future. We are a nation at war. We have to confront that reality every day. And while it’s important to learn the lessons of the past, we must not do it in a way that sacrifices our capability to stay focused on…those who threaten the United States of America.”

“We are a nation at war.” This phrase was invoked hundreds if not thousands of times by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gonzales and others to justify military atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, torture, extraordinary rendition, illegal domestic spying and an imperial presidency’s arrogation to itself of unprecedented powers.

Earlier this year, White House aides indicated to the media that the Obama administration was dropping references to the “global war on terrorism,” the Bush administration’s all-purpose justification for its wars abroad and assault on democratic rights at home.

What is becoming ever clearer, however, is that the methods introduced under Bush are being maintained largely intact by the new Democratic administration, while its dishonest rhetoric justifying them is sounding more and more like that of its predecessor.

What does it mean to say America is “a nation at war”? The US Congress has not issued a declaration of war against any country.

America is a nation at war only in the sense that its military is perpetually employed in carrying out illegal invasions, colonial-style occupations, bombings, assassinations by predator drones and other acts of violence against peoples unfortunate enough to find themselves in the way of American capitalism’s plundering of the world’s resources and markets.

The enemy’s identity in this never-ending war is deliberately kept vague as the targets for US military aggression are ever changing. Thus, Panetta refers only to “those that would threaten the United States of America.”

To call this Orwellian is not hyperbole. The perpetual state of war imposed upon the oppressed citizens of Oceania in Orwell’s “1984” could have been written as an allegory for modern US state policy under both Bush and Obama.

Panetta left little to the imagination about the political implications of this supposed state of war.

The CIA director said that he wouldn’t “deny them,” meaning the US Congress, “the opportunity to learn the lessons from that period.” However, he cautioned that any investigation must be done in a “very careful” manner. Probing the war crimes of the past must not interfere with the war crimes of the present and the future.

This warning about circumscribing the scope of any investigation of torture—and above all preventing any top official from being held accountable for this crime—follows Panetta’s public rebuttal of Pelosi’s claim last week that the CIA had lied to her in 2002 about its use of waterboarding in the interrogation of detainees.

Pelosi’s complicity in the policy of torture notwithstanding, it is extraordinary that Panetta, an unelected appointee of the president, felt no compunction about publicly rebuking the elected speaker of the house, who constitutionally is the second in line for succession to the presidency.

When Panetta was first nominated as CIA director, Republicans and some Democrats pointed to his lack of any intelligence experience. In the end, however, he was confirmed by the unanimous consent of the Senate.

He is a man clearly trusted by America’s ruling elite to protect its interests. First a Republican aide to the Nixon administration, he became a Democratic congressman and then chief of staff to President Clinton. Afterward he pursued profitable relations with the centers of corporate and financial power, while remaining deeply involved in state policy. In 2006, he joined the Iraq Study Group, which was formed to effect a tactical shift in US war policy. In 2008, he was paid more than $830,000 in consulting fees and honorariums by the likes of the BP Corporation, Merrill Lynch and the Carlyle Group.

Panetta speaks for the state-within-the-state, the permanent apparatus of the military and the intelligence agencies that dominate the US government no matter which party is in power.

These layers are pushing back following the limited exposure of the Bush administration’s crimes with the release of the torture memos last month. This was further indicated in an article that appeared Tuesday in the Washington Post by Walter Pincus, who enjoys close ties to the CIA. It cited concerns by “agency personnel” that they would not be able to “conduct interrogations effectively,” given new proscriptions against torture, and that “other operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan will come under review.”

The Democrats are cowering before these pressures. Obama’s press secretary has refused to utter a word about the clash between Pelosi and Panetta, while Democrats in Congress are shying away from the debate on torture, treating it increasingly as a distraction.

The Obama administration is acting to perpetuate and politically legitimize the criminal policies initiated under Bush, while shielding those responsible. The two wars launched to assert US hegemony over the Persian Gulf and Central Asia are continuing with bipartisan support, and Obama is responsible for his own war crimes, including this month’s bombing that slaughtered 150 civilians in Afghanistan. Domestic spying, extraordinary rendition and military commissions have all been upheld by the administration. The resumption of torture is inevitable and in all likelihood has already begun.

In the end, this entire process exposes the futility of elections under America’s two-party system. Those who take office—Obama no less than Bush—are accountable not to the American people, but to a narrow constituency consisting of the financial oligarchy, the military command and the intelligence agencies, those who really rule America.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, imperialism, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, warmongers | Leave a Comment »

Why are they letting torturers off the hook?

May 20, 2009

Barack Obama is disappointing expectations that he would at least curb the worst abuses of the Bush administration.

Editorial,

Socialist Worker, May 20, 2009

Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, George Bush

EVERYONE EXPECTS Dick Cheney to rationalize torture by the CIA and U.S. armed forces. But Barack Obama?

Anger is growing among many people who voted for Obama last November over how the president has reversed himself on key issues relating to the treatment of detainees in the “war on terror”–and how the government should handle evidence of past abuses.

First, Obama decided not to release photos of brutal treatment of detainees, citing the safety of U.S. troops as a rationale. Then, reversing a campaign promise to get rid of the Bush administration’s military tribunal system for detainees, the administration admitted it would use “modified” military tribunals, rather than giving these prisoners access to U.S. courts.

Plus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has waded into her own mess over the issue. She came up with first one, then another explanation in denying that she had been briefed about waterboarding–torture by any other name–as early as 2002, in spite of CIA memos suggesting otherwise.

Such incidents are a slap in the face to millions of people who looked to Obama and the Democrats to reverse the worst abuses of the Bush administration–including its rabid defense of the right of the U.S. government to torture prisoners and lock them away indefinitely without due process.

Dick Cheney, of course, is still making his case. Like a bad horror movie villain, the former vice president just won’t go away. In May, he took to the airwaves to lecture America–and especially the Democrats–about how helpful it was to torture “war on terror” prisoners.

“No regrets. I think it was absolutely the right thing to do,” Cheney told CBS News. Harsh “enhanced” interrogations, including waterboarding, “saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives,” he said.

In reality, there’s no evidence that torture “saved lives.” When FBI Chief Robert Mueller was asked by Vanity Fair if he knew of any planned terrorist attacks on the U.S. that had been thwarted thanks to intelligence obtained through “enhanced techniques” of interrogation, he responded, “I don’t believe that has been the case.”

Not only did the torture of detainees fail to “save lives,” it destroyed some prisoners, both mentally and physically. Some “confessed” to plots they couldn’t possibly have been involved in, just to get the torture to stop.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, for example, was waterboarded repeatedly–at least 183 times in a single month in 2005. Little wonder that Mohammed later “admitted” to being involved in more than 30 terrorist plots or activities, including planning the September 11 attacks, personally killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, and plotting the murder of former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and Pope John Paul II.

Such confessions are as reliable as those of women who confessed to being witches during the Salem witch trials.

In truth, if Cheney really wanted “full disclosure” on the issue of torture and interrogations, he’d be in favor of full Congressional hearings on the matter–which, so far, he and other Republicans (and most Democrats) have denounced.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

IF CHENEY and other Republicans have been able to go on the offensive over torture, however, it’s only because Obama and the Democrats are giving them the room to do so.

Pelosi is a case in point. She was caught lying about the fact that, as the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, her aide attended a CIA briefing in which waterboarding was discussed as a tactic being used on detainees. In addition, a national intelligence report showed Pelosi was briefed in 2002–and her aide in 2003–on enhanced interrogation techniques.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama has made a U-turn on important issues related to torture. He justified his decision not to release additional photos showing brutal treatment of detainees with the claim that this would spark a backlash that could put U.S. troops in harm’s way–an excuse used repeatedly by figures in the Bush administration in their attempt to keep Abu Ghraib and other scandals under wraps.

Some of the photos were later released by the Australian television channel SBS–and far from being “not particularly sensational,” as Obama claimed, they show shocking acts of brutality. One picture shows a naked detainee hanging upside-down off a steel bed frame. Another shows a naked man smeared in excrement, standing in a corridor near a menacing-looking guard.

As Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald noted:

Obama sounded positively Rumsfeldian in his insistence that releasing the photos could hurt the troops…For the first time in his presidency, I had the sick feeling that Obama was lying in his remarks on the photos, once when he said the new images “are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib”–I simply don’t believe that–and again when he insisted “the individuals who were involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken.”

That is a flat-out lie. Out of eight prosecutions, mostly of so-called bad apples, only reservist Charles Graner sits in prison today, while the architects who “Gitmo-ized” Abu Ghraib and encouraged torture all went free.”

Likewise, the Obama administration broke its promise to shut down the military tribunal system at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and grant detainees the right to a trial in U.S. courts or under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Instead, the White House will adopt some kind of modified military commissions to try detainees at Guantánamo.

Unlike the commissions planned under Bush, these proceedings will supposedly exclude evidence obtained through torture or other harsh interrogation methods, and limit the use of hearsay as evidence.

But the problem isn’t the way the commissions are handled–it’s the commissions themselves. Like its predecessor, the Obama administration plans to subvert the law by creating its own unconstitutional court system for detainees.

The Obama administration plans to retain military commissions not out of some worry about “terrorists” being tried in civilian courts, but because it is in the interest of the U.S. government to keep such a weapon in its arsenal.

So Obama orders the Guantánamo prison closed down, but keeps open the option of “rendering” prisoners to other countries. He publicly denounces torture, but protects U.S. officials who crafted torture policies from being prosecuted. He claims the mantle of civil liberties, but defends the right of the government to eavesdrop on citizens without a warrant. He travels to Egypt to further a U.S. “dialogue” with the Arab and Muslim worlds, but prevents victims of CIA kidnapping from getting their day in court.

All this is part of the logic that comes with running the world’s only superpower. When it comes to the pursuit of U.S. imperial aims, human rights are expendable.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, imperialism, Muslims, torture, Uncategorized, US policy, USA | Leave a Comment »

Obama’s Animal Farm: Bigger, Bloodier Wars Equal Peace and Justice

May 19, 2009

By Prof James Petras | Global Research,  May 19, 2009

The Deltas are psychos. You have to be a certified psychopath to join the Delta Force”, a US Army colonel from Fort Bragg once told me back in the 1980’s. Now President Obama has elevated the most notorious of the psychopaths, General Stanley McChrystal, to head the US and NATO military command in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s rise to leadership is marked by his central role in directing special operations teams engaged in extrajudicial assassinations, systematic torture, bombing of civilian communities and search and destroy missions. He is the very embodiment of the brutality and gore that accompanies military-driven empire building. Between September 2003 and August 2008, McChrystal directed the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations (JSO) Command which operates special teams in overseas assassinations.

The point of the ‘Special Operations’ teams (SOT) is that they do not distinguish between civilian and military oppositions, between activists and their sympathizers and the armed resistance. The SOT specialize in establishing death squads and recruiting and training paramilitary forces to terrorize communities, neighborhoods and social movements opposing US client regimes. The SOT’s ‘counter-terrorism’ is terrorism in reverse, focusing on socio-political groups between US proxies and the armed resistance. McChrystal’s SOT targeted local and national insurgent leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan through commando raids and air strikes. During the last 5 years of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld period the SOT were deeply implicated in the torture of political prisoners and suspects. McChrystal was a special favorite of Rumsfeld and Cheney because he was in charge of the ‘direct action’ forces of the ‘Special Missions Units. ‘Direct Action’ operative are the death-squads and torturers and their only engagement with the local population is to terrorize, and not to propagandize. They engage in ‘propaganda of the dead’, assassinating local leaders to ‘teach’ the locals to obey and submit to the occupation. Obama’s appointment of McChrystal as head reflects a grave new military escalation of his Afghanistan war in the face of the advance of the resistance throughout the country.

The deteriorating position of the US is manifest in the tightening circle around all the roads leading in and out of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul as well as the expansion of Taliban control and influence throughout the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Obama’s inability to recruit new NATO reinforcements means that the White House’s only chance to advance its military driven empire is to escalate the number of US troops and to increase the kill ratio among any and all suspected civilians in territories controlled by the Afghan armed resistance.

The White House and the Pentagon claim that the appointment of McChrystal was due to the ‘complexities’ of the situation on the ground and the need for a ‘change in strategy’. ‘Complexity’ is a euphemism for the increased mass opposition to the US, complicating traditional carpet ‘bombing and military sweep’ operations. The new strategy practiced by McChrystal involves large scale, long term ‘special operations’ to devastate and kill the local social networks and community leaders, which provide the support system for the armed resistance.

Obama’s decision to prevent the release of scores of photographs documenting the torture of prisoners by US troops and ‘interrogators’ (especially under command of the ‘Special Forces’), is directly related to his appointment of McChrystal whose ‘SOT’ forces were highly implicated in widespread torture in Iraq. Equally important, under McChrystal’s command the DELTA, SEAL and Special Operations Teams will have a bigger role in the new ‘counter-insurgency strategy’. Obama’s claim that the publication of these photographs will adversely affect the ‘troops’ has a particular meaning: The graphic exposure of McChrystal’s modus operendi for the past 5 years under President Bush will undermine his effectiveness in carrying out the same operations under Obama.

Obama’s decision to re-start the secret ‘military tribunals’ of foreign political prisoners, held at the Guantanamo prison camp, is not merely a replay of the Bush-Cheney policies, which Obama had condemned and vowed to eliminate during his presidential campaign, but part of his larger policy of militarization and coincides with his approval of the major secret police surveillance operations conducted against US citizens.

Putting McChrystal in charge of the expanded Afghanistan-Pakistan military operations means putting a notorious practitioner of military terrorism ­ the torture and assassination of opponents to US policy ­ at the center of US foreign policy. Obama’s quantitative and qualitative expansion of the US war in South Asia means massive numbers of refugees fleeing the destruction of their farms, homes and villages; tens of thousands of civilian deaths, and eradication of entire communities. All of this will be committed by the Obama Administraton in the quest to ’empty the lake (displace entire populations) to catch the fish (armed insurgents and activists)’.

Obama’s restoration of all of the most notorious Bush Era policies and the appointment of Bush’s most brutal commander is based on his total embrace of the ideology of military-driven empire building. Once one believes (as Obama does) that US power and expansion are based on military conquests and counter-insurgency, all other ideological, diplomatic, moral and economic considerations will be subordinated to militarism. By focusing all resources on successful military conquest, scant attention is paid to the costs borne by the people targeted for conquest or to the US treasury and domestic American economy. This has been clear from the start: In the midst of a major recession/depression with millions of Americans losing their employment and homes, President Obama increased the military budget by 4% – taking it beyond $800 billion dollars.

Obama’s embrace of militarism is obvious from his decision to expand the Afghan war despite NATO’s refusal to commit any more combat troops. It is obvious in his appointment of the most hard-line and notorious Special Forces General from the Bush-Cheney era to head the military command in subduing Afghanistan and the frontier areas of Pakistan.

It is just as George Orwell described in Animal Farm: The Democratic Pigs are now pursuing the same brutal, military policies of their predecessors, the Republican Porkers, only now it is in the name of the people and peace. Orwell might paraphrase the policy of President Barack Obama, as ‘Bigger and bloodier wars equal peace and justice’.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, imperialism, US policy, USA | Leave a Comment »

Spanish Investigation Reveals ‘An Approved Systematic Plan of Torture’ Under Bush

May 19, 2009

While Obama and the US Congress refuse to hold Bush-era torturers accountable, a Spanish judge fights for accountability and uncovers more US atrocities.

By Jeremy Scahill | RebelReports, May 18, 2009

On Friday, I wrote a piece for AlterNet on how the Obama administration is continuing to use a notorious military police unit at Guantanamo that regularly brutalizes unarmed prisoners, despite Obama’s pledge to uphold the Geneva Convention. This force officially known as the Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) has been labelled the “Extreme Repression Force” by Gitmo prisoners. Its members were also characterized as the “Black Shirts of Guantanamo” by human rights lawyer Michael Ratner. The IRF force is “an extrajudicial terror squad that has regularly brutalized prisoners outside of the interrogation room, gang beating them, forcing their heads into toilets, breaking bones, gouging their eyes, squeezing their testicles, urinating on a prisoner’s head, banging their heads on concrete floors and hog-tying them — sometimes leaving prisoners tied in excruciating positions for hours on end.”

There has been very little public attention focused on this force. But, as I noted in my story, this unit could potentially be subjected to legal scrutiny, even if the Congress and Justice Department refuse to do their jobs. That’s because one of the men brutalized by this force is a primary figure in the (largely ignored by the US media) Spanish investigation—a British resident named Omar Deghayes. (See my article, “Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama,” for more on this story.)

Deghayes’s torture, including under the IRF Teams at Guantanamo, was highlighted in Spanish Judge Balthazar Garzon’s criminal investigation into the US torture program. A total of five Spanish citizens or residents were held by the US at Guantanamo. Testimony of four of those men is cited by the Spanish investigators. In addition to Deghayes, the men are: Hamed Abderraman Ahmed, Lahcen Ikassrien and Jamiel Abdulatif Al Banna. (An English translation of the Spanish writ was recently released by the Center for Constitutional Rights and can be accessed here.)

All of the victims cited in the Spanish investigation were moved to various locations where they were allegedly tortured before ultimately being transferred to Guantanamo where the torture continued and intensified. The torture, according to the Spanish investigation, “all” occurred “under the authority of American military personnel”  and was sometimes conducted in the presence of medical professionals.

The Spanish writ does not name specific defendants or suspects in its investigation, but rather seeks to investigate the role of those who planned, coordinated and implemented the torture of its citizens and residents. “This systematic plan may point to the existence of a coordinated action for the commission of a multiplicity of torture crimes… a plan that would seem to approximate an official level and that, therefore, would give rise to criminal liability for the various schemes of committing, ordering, designing, and authorizing this systematic plan of torture.” On April 29, Garzon gave the green light to the investigation citing Spain’s Universal Jurisdiction law.

While Deghayes’s case appears to include the most extreme case of torture among the five cited by the Spanish investigation, the others contain some pretty gut-wrenching stories. According to the Spanish investigation,

Hamed Abderraman Ahmed was captured in November 2001 in Pakistan and was handed over to the US military in Kandahar, Afghanistan two months later and was then taken to Guantanamo in January 2002. At Camp X-Ray, he was confined to a metal mesh “chicken wire” cell that exposed him to the extreme heat of the Caribbean sun and “left him little more than a half-meter by half-meter of space to move in.” Additionally, the cells were lit with electric lights around the clock, which “produced vision and sleep disorders.” For over a year, he says he and other prisoners were allowed to leave their cells for two 15-minute periods a week. Ahmed also says the US constantly blared “American patriotic songs.” Ahmed was released to Spanish custody by the US in February 2004 and was acquitted by Spain’s Supreme Court.

Lhacen Ikassrien, who is a Moroccan citizen and a 13 year resident of Spain was taken from Afghanistan to Guantanamo in February 2002. He claims US personnel “never explained to him why he had been deprived of freedom.” At Guantanamo, Ikassrien claims he “Received blows to his testicles,” according to the Spanish investigation. “He relates that they inoculated him through injection with ‘a disease for dog cysts.’” Ikassrien and other former prisoners claim the US prison authorities “introduced into the cell very cold air and chemical substances that affected his breathing and joints.” Ikassrien was handed over to Spain in July 2005 and was also acquitted.

A Palestinian citizen, Jamiel Abdelatif al Banna was taken by the US military in Gambia in November 2002 and was ultimately transferred to Guantanamo in January 2003 where he remained until December 2007. Before arriving at Guantanamo, al Banna says US personnel  took him to Afghanistan for a brief period where he was kept “underground in total darkness for three weeks with deprivation of food and sleep, and, forced him to witness torture carried out on other prisoners in Afghanistan,” according to the Spanish investigation. He also “received strong blows to the head with a loss of consciousness.”

Once he arrived at Guantanamo, al Banna was “under a regimen of total isolation for one year, permanently bound with shackles.” During his time at Guantanamo, he was “subjected to some one thousand interrogations in sessions lasting from 2-10 hours per day.” He was also “held by shackles on the hands and feet (wrists and ankles), in forced positions, seated on the floor with his body doubled forward and with pressure from the interrogators on his back to increase the pain until it made him scream and rendered him unable to stand upright on his feet for several hours afterwards.” Al Banna was also “subjected to threats of death by poisoning or by drowning in the sea.” Like Ikassrien, al Banna described chemicals placed in his environment that caused “coughing fits and respiratory problems.” His mesh wired cell allegedly “produced asthenopia (eyestrain) in him and in other prisoners, to the point of rendering him incapable of reading.” Al Banna also describes being attacked by the Immediate Reaction Force teams. “In one of these attacks, Al Banna suffered injuries to the ring finger of his right hand, left side of his forehead and the back part of his left knee,” according to the investigation.

Judge Garzon says the treatment of these men, combined with recently declassified US documents show “an approved systematic plan of torture and ill-treatment on persons deprived of their freedom without any charge and without the basic rights of all detainees as set out and required by applicable international treaties.”

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights has said it “is conceivable that arrest warrants have already been issued or will be soon. Indictments will almost surely follow. The torture team’s travel options are narrowing.”

ShareThis

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in crime, Human rights, imperialism, torture, Uncategorized, US policy, USA | 1 Comment »

US Chiefs Can’t be Sued for ‘Terror Torture

May 19, 2009

By Robert Barnes | The Washington Post, Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The Supreme Court ruled today that former attorney general John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller may not be sued by Arab Muslims who were seized in this country after the 2001 terrorist attacks and allege harsh treatment because of their religion and ethnicity.

The court ruled 5 to 4 that the top officials are not liable for the actions of their subordinates absent evidence that they ordered the allegedly discriminatory activity. The decision followed the court’s ideological split between conservatives and liberals, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy siding with the conservatives and writing the opinion.

In a separate decision, the court ruled that women who worked for companies whose maternity leave policies were discriminatory cannot sue under today’s laws that make such policies illegal. In a case involving AT&T, the court ruled 7 to 2 that such policies were “bona fide” at the time, and women may not challenge them retroactively.

The suit against Ashcroft and Mueller was brought by a Pakistani citizen living legally in the country when he was arrested in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Javaid Iqbal was held in solitary confinement in a section of a Brooklyn prison known as Admax-Shu, for “administrative maximum special housing unit,” where he said he was subjected to numerous beatings and strip searches. He was convicted of document fraud and deported to Pakistan but cleared of any involvement in terrorism. An Egyptian Muslim who was also part of the suit, Ehad Elmaghraby, settled with the government for $300,000. Similar suits are pending.

Iqbal’s case names prison guards, FBI agents, the warden of the prison — who was the subject of a critical report from the Justice Department inspector general — up to Ashcroft, who was attorney general at the time of the attack. Iqbal says policies formulated by Ashcroft and Mueller singled him out as a suspect of “high interest” solely because of his nationality and religion.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York acknowledged that top government officials carry immunity but decided it was at least “plausible” that Ashcroft and Mueller were responsible for, or knew about, the discriminatory actions Iqbal alleges.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, imperialism, Muslims, torture, Uncategorized, USA | Leave a Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »