Peace and Justice Post

· Troops were kept in dark about ban on hooding
· Defence secretary promises further inquiry

Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday January 26, 2008
The Guardian

Serious failings in army leadership, planning and training – particularly about treating civilians in an occupied country – led to the abuse of Iraqis by British soldiers, a Ministry of Defence investigation has found.

Soldiers were not told about their obligations under international law or about a specific ban on hooding imposed by the government 36 years ago, said the report by Brigadier Robert Aitken, the army’s director of army personnel strategy. Troops were given “scant” information on how to treat civilian detainees and needed “a better understanding between right and wrong”.

His report, released yesterday, is a severe indictment of the overall failure to plan for the invasion and its aftermath. It was ordered after a string of cases alleging ill-treatment by British troops, notably the death of Baha Mousa, a Basra hotel receptionist, in September 2003.

Continued . . .

RINF.com, January 24, 2008

By PHILIP SHENON and ERIC LICHTBLAU

The Justice Department lawyer who wrote a series of classified legal opinions in 2005 authorizing harsh C.I.A. interrogation techniques was renominated by the White House on Wednesday to a senior department post, a move that was seen as a snub to Senate Democrats who have long opposed his appointment.

The lawyer, Steven G. Bradbury, who has run the department’s Office of Legal Counsel without Senate confirmation for more than two years, has been repeatedly nominated to the job of assistant attorney general for legal counsel.

But the earlier nominations stalled in the Senate because of a dispute with the Justice Department over its failure to provide Congress with copies of legal opinions on a variety of terrorism issues. Under Senate rules that place a time limit on nominations, Mr. Bradbury’s earlier nominations expired.

Late last year, Democrats urged the White House to withdraw Mr. Bradbury’s name once and for all and find a new candidate for the post after it was disclosed in news reports in October that he was the author of classified memorandums that gave approval to harsh interrogation techniques, including head slapping, exposure to cold and simulated drowning, even when used in combination.

Mr. Bradbury’s memorandums were described by Democrats as an effort by the Bush administration to circumvent laws prohibiting torture and to undermine a public legal opinion issued by the Justice Department in 2004 that declared torture to be “abhorrent.”

Continued . . .

10 Die in Mistaken Afghan Firefight

New York Times, January 25, 2008

By CARLOTTA GALL and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least nine Afghan police officers and a civilian were killed early Thursday in a firefight between American forces and the officers in Ghazni Province, just south of the capital, local officials said.

The American forces were searching houses in a village on the outskirts of Ghazni town and blew open the gates of a house, according to local Afghan officials. District police officers heard the explosion and rushed to the scene, suspecting that the Taliban were in the area, but were themselves mistaken for Taliban and shot by the American soldiers, the officials said. Aircraft supporting the operation fired on one of the police cars.

The killings set off protests in the town on Thursday afternoon, and demonstrators blocked the main highway and prevented a government delegation from reaching the town from a nearby airfield, local officials said.

“Another big cruelty was made by American forces this morning,” said Khial Muhammad Hussaini, a member of Parliament from the province who was among the elders and legislators who had traveled to the town to try to calm people and persuade them to reopen the highway.

Zemarai Bashary, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior in Kabul, confirmed the shooting and called it a “misunderstanding,” but said he had information on only eight deaths.

Keep reading . . .

Information Clearing House, January 24, 2008

By John Pilger

The former president of Tanzania Julius Nyerere once asked, “Why haven’t we all got a vote in the US election? Surely everyone with a TV set has earned that right just for enduring the merciless bombardment every four years.” Having reported four presidential election campaigns, from the Kennedys to Nixon, Carter to Reagan, with their Zeppelins of platitudes, robotic followers and rictal wives, I can sympathize. But what difference would the vote make? Of the presidential candidates I have interviewed, only George C. Wallace, governor of Alabama, spoke the truth. “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Democrats and Republicans,” he said. And he was shot.

What struck me, living and working in the United States, was that presidential campaigns were a parody, entertaining and often grotesque. They are a ritual danse macabre of flags, balloons and bullsh*t, designed to camouflage a venal system based on money power, human division and a culture of permanent war.

Traveling with Robert Kennedy in 1968 was eye-opening for me. To audiences of the poor, Kennedy would present himself as a savior. The words “change” and “hope” were used relentlessly and cynically. For audiences of fearful whites, he would use racist codes, such as “law and order.” With those opposed to the invasion of Vietnam, he would attack “putting American boys in the line of fire,” but never say when he would withdraw them. That year (after Kennedy was assassinated), Richard Nixon used a version of the same, malleable speech to win the presidency. Thereafter, it was used successfully by Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and the two Bushes. Carter promised a foreign policy based on “human rights” – and practiced the very opposite. Reagan’s “freedom agenda” was a bloodbath in Central America. Clinton “solemnly pledged” universal health care and tore down the last safety net of the Depression.

Continued . . .

Osamah Khalil, The Electronic Intifada, 24 January 2008

President George W. Bush and Prince Salman bin Abdul Al-Aziz (right) join sword dancers during the President’s visit to Al Murabba Palace in Riyadh, 15 January 2008. (White House photo by Eric Draper)

A staggering disparity in images has emanated from the Middle East over the past two weeks. While US President George W. Bush received a warm welcome during his tour of the Persian Gulf, Israel pounded Gaza killing over 40 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians. Bush participated in sword dancing ceremonies, watched the prowess of hunting falcons, and in the United Arab Emirates he was finally greeted with the flowers that he once believed American troops would receive in Iraq. The obscene displays of wealth and extravagant gifts by the Gulf states, whose coffers are flush with cash from near-record oil prices, contrasted sharply with the images of death and destruction unleashed on impoverished Gaza. This was compounded by Israel’s total closure of the tiny strip late last week, leaving the 1.5 million Palestinian inhabitants with dwindling food and fuel supplies. As the only power plant in Gaza shut down Sunday night, Palestinian children in a candle-light march covered by Al Jazeera asked, “Where are the Arabs?” Yet, the Arabs weren’t the only ones absent from the scene. Indeed, Gaza appears to have been abandoned by the entire world, further revealing the state of fragmentation and isolation of the Palestinian national movement.

Continued . . .

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Arab regimes may have reconciled themselves to negotiating for negotiation’s sake but it is not something with which the Arab public should have to live with s. Negotiations are a means towards an end, not an end in itself: if they fail to achieve their objective within a reasonable period of time they lose all value and become a burden, even more so when the phase in conflict management is twisted into an instrument for imposing new de facto realities that intensify and complicate the conflict rather than containing or alleviating it. When negotiations drag on unjustifiably and appear, as is the case in the Arab- Israeli conflict, like a wheel that is set to perpetually spin in place then what we have is something akin to a mirage, designed to lure the thirsty yet remain irrevocably distant.The process that ostensibly aimed to resolve the Arab-Zionist conflict began in the immediate wake of the October 1973 War. It will soon be 35 years old. Even supposing that it only began seriously with the 1991 Madrid conference, i.e. when it became a collective process in which all Arab countries took part, it is still more than 15 years old. It is a long time for a negotiating process, though such a span of time could be tolerated should it offer a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Rather than light, though, negotiations have brought only dismay and an intensifying gloom, to the extent that many now believe there will not be a viable peace settlement should negotiations continue for a millennium or more.

Continued . . .

By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted January 24, 2008.

It seems naive to hope Bush’s successor will reject his most destructive policies.

The political calendar indicates that in one more year – on Jan. 20, 2009 – the presidency of George W. Bush will come to an end. However, the worst consequences of his disastrous reign, including the Iraq War, may be nowhere near ending.

Today’s presidential frontrunners, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, were early prominent supporters of the Iraq War and appear to have suffered little political damage for lining up behind Bush in 2002 when he was at the peak of his power.

For his part, McCain – who campaigns with neoconservative independent Sen. Joe Lieberman – has no plan to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq, indeed talks about keeping U.S. troops there for centuries. Clinton, who was a late convert to an anti-war position, now vows to “start withdrawing” U.S. troops by early spring 2009.

So, it seems a sure bet that a McCain presidency would continue Bush’s Iraq policies indefinitely. And it looks like a gamble whether Clinton would press ahead with her “hope” of bringing “nearly all the troops out by the end of” 2009 – or revert to the neocon-lite position that she embraced from 2002 until the start of the Democratic campaign in 2007.

Might Hillary Clinton be to George W. Bush on Iraq what Richard Nixon was to Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam, a President who continued a war for years while gradually moving to wind it down?

Continued . . .

Ma’an News

The beating and arrest of a human rights worker by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Hebron on Saturday were a part of “a policy of systematically harassing human rights defenders,” the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem said on Sunday.

B’Tselem fieldworker Issa Amro was assaulted, then detained by the Israeli military while filming a group of Israeli settlers while they attacked a Palestinian home.

Witnesses told Ma’an’s reporter that four women and two children were also injured when settlers pelted Palestinian homes with stones in Hebron’s Wadi Abu Hussain neighborhood.

“Although a large force of soldiers and police were present,” B’Tselem said “they did nothing to protect the Palestinians and remove the settlers. Two B’Tselem workers were filming the incident from across the street, where they stood along with a number of Palestinians and international activists.

A lieutenant colonel approached ‘Amro and “demanded that he stop filming. A group of settler women then gathered around the B’Tselem workers and two of them tried to grab Amro’s camera. A number of soldiers joined in the fray, beat ‘Amro and then arrested him. They then took him to an army jeep and beat him again.”

Link: imeu.net/news/article007663.shtml

Retired Military Group in Pakistan Tells President to Step Down

By John Ward Anderson and Robin Wright
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 24, 2008; A15

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 23 — As critical elections in Pakistan approach, President Pervez Musharraf is increasingly losing support from major constituencies, including his traditional military base, amid growing questions in both Pakistan and the United States about his ability to govern.

On Wednesday, a group of more than 100 retired military officers, including influential air marshals, admirals, generals and security agency chiefs, called on Musharraf to step down immediately in order to help restore democracy and deal with Islamic radicals who have made territorial inroads in recent months.

A statement from the Ex-Servicemen’s Society said that it had been monitoring recent events “with great concern and anguish” and that Musharraf’s resignation was “in the supreme national interest.”

Musharraf has repeatedly defied expectations of his political demise, and few observers believe that the parliamentary balloting Feb. 18 will lead to his immediate ouster.

But Pakistani analysts and U.S. officials said that the political challenges Musharraf faces are greater than they have been in the past and that his allies at home and abroad are fewer. While he has alienated former military leaders, there are signs that active-duty officers may be distancing themselves from him as well.

Keep reading . . .