http://lnk.nu/crisispapers.org/70m.htm

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Those Secret Torture-Prisons:

A Modest Proposal

By Bernard Weiner
Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers

December 13, 2005

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I am always open to innovative ways of raising money for cash-strapped governments, as long as it doesn't cost me anything extra. Many states, for example, sponsor lotteries; nobody is forced to buy in, but millions of citizens purchase tickets that help underwrite our schools and road-repairs.

In that light, I have a modest proposal for the Bush Administration: Auction off torture rights.

Here's how it would work. The Bush Administration, either through eBay or by establishing a website all its own (>> torturersRus.gov <<), would let citizens bid for the right to brutalize a terrorist suspect in one of the secret CIA prisons around the globe.

The Torture Abroad program would be aimed at those who, for a price, might delight in exercising their dominance and control of dangerous, inferior beings. (Note: This project is NOT to be confused with the similarly-named Torture A Broad program.)

For purposes of full disclosure, it's essential to note that the Bush Administration denies having supersecret CIA prisons around the world, and emphatically insists that torture does not take place at those facilities. If "harsh interrogation methods" are employed at the non-existent prisons, it's totally without the Administration's knowledge or approval.

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A MARKETING FLYER

Trying to be helpful, I've composed some possible text for a Torture Abroad advertising flyer:

Want to do something to aid your country's battle against terrorists, and to participate in frat-style pranks and good, clean aerobic fun at the same time?

Then consider sending in your bid to become a member of Torture Abroad. Remember, high bidders have more chance to be selected.

Wearing our handsome black mask and windbreaker -- with the eye-catching Volunteer Torturer Militia seal -- you'll be flown free on one of the CIA's luxury secret airflights with, of course, stopover privileges in Poland, Romania, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Morocco, et al. Naturally, you'll be in First Class, and your assigned torture-buddy, appropriately enough, will be in Cargo.

You will be permitted to indulge in sexual humiliation, stress positioning, rape, thumb-screws, pyramid-building, baseball bat-play, use of the wrack, whip&chain teasing, the employment of rabid dogs, and so on, but you'll have to pay a bit extra for the privilege of near-drowning (our popular "waterboarding" option) and for the awesome electrification-of-the-genitals display.

We realize, based on our polling data, that some people will be repulsed by this suggestion. Granted, the idea of having to pay this extra fee is offensive, but the whole idea of this enterprise, let us remember, is to raise money to help subsidize our country's vital "war on terror."

Note: If you torture a detainee to death, which has been known to happen even with professionals in charge, there will be a hefty surcharge and you will suffer severe penalties: You will NOT receive the video of your handiwork or the program's parchment certificate signed by Karl Rove Himself.

All torture implements will be provided but if you have certain activities that cannot be accommodated by government-issue, you will be permitted to bring your own props. No chain-saws, please. We do not want to give even the slightest appearance of savagery.

If perchance, as a result of your time spent together, your detainee chooses to confess to something or other, you will be granted a 10% refund. If the confession actually contains anything remotely resembling the truth, you will be gifted another prisoner at no extra charge. (Note: This rarely happens.)

Please be aware that while we carry out due-diligence in certifying our terrorist suspects, in the event that an innocent man or woman was provided you -- which does happen on occasion as street sweeps can be fairly random -- we assume no financial or criminal liability. We also cannot provide assurance that governments or family members of the prisoner won't try to locate you later for purposes of revenge.

But most red-blooded American citizens won't let those minor caveats stop them from coming to the aid of their country in this time of war. And you can have jolly good fun doing so, and feel patriotic pride in your valuable work for the homeland.

Slots are limited, so act now. For the first hundred who sign up, we will provide a framed, autographed photo of Jeffrey Dahmer.

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HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR BID

So that's the basic outline of my proposal, which, as you can see, is a win-win for all concerned. The war effort gains much needed fundage, the capitalist system is promoted, bad guys are punished, ordinary citizens are permitted to participate in important governmental programs, and the recipients of the carnage no doubt will be adopted by liberal do-gooder groups and nursed back to health. If they make it.

Should you be interested in applying to Torture Abroad, send your name, address and phone number, and a good-faith deposit of $5000 cash, to the address below. A special email address for VIP entry into the program will be forwarded to you -- in other words, you won't have to log onto the website's home page, which, as you can imagine, is sure to attract all sorts of low-life thugs.

Mail all inquiries to John Ashcroft, Torture Abroad Program Director, at the Department of Homeland Security, P. O. Box 666, Washington, D.C. Enclose a photo, a brief bio, a key to your home, and your email password.

Thank you from all of us on Torture Abroad's Board of Directors: K. Rove, G. Bush, R. Cheney, D. Rumsfeld, C. Rice, A. Gonzales, L. Libby, J. Ashcroft, S. Hadley, K. Hughes, M. Matalin, J. Bolton, J. Woo, J. Bybee, B. O'Reilly, R. Limbaugh, A. Coulter, J. Inhofe, W. Boykin, G. Miller, S. Cambone, M. Chertoff, and Founding Fathers J. Mengele, A. Eichmann, and T. de Torquemada.

God Bless the United States of America.
 
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Copyright 2005, by Bernard Weiner

http://lnk.nu/informationclearinghouse.info/70b.htm

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Reduced to double talk in defending torture policy

By HELEN THOMAS

12/11/05 "Chron.com" -- -- How long will the American people tolerate the shaming of their nation by the inhumane treatment of prisoners of war and the spiriting of detainees to secret prisons outside the United States?

Is it any wonder that other countries believe that America has lost its moral purpose by surrendering our well-earned reputation for human rights?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is facing the music on her quick trip to Germany, Russia, Romania, Ukraine and NATO headquarters in Brussels.

She had hoped to mend relations that have been strained by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Instead, to her exasperation, she has been hounded with questions about whether the United States has maintained secret prisons in two European nations — as reported by the Washington Post. She has steadfastly refused to answer yes or no, thus providing inadvertent confirmation of the report.

In a departure statement before she left, Rice tried to define the perimeter of acceptable questions. "We cannot discuss information that would compromise the success of intelligence, law enforcement and military operations," she declared.

She stressed that other nations are cooperating and the United States would not transgress their sovereignty without permission.

At the same time, she confirmed that the United States has used "renditions" — the secret transport of terrorist suspects from the country where they were captured "to their home country or to other countries where they can be questioned, held or brought to justice."

Rendition is a "vital tool" in combating international terrorism, she said.

The whole process raises the question of why U.S. officials believe that interrogators in another country would be more successful than American questioners in obtaining information from the person being "rendited." And that raises the possibility that the other questioners could use torture to get answers.

Not so, says Rice, speaking very carefully.

"The United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country where we believe he will be tortured," she asserted.

Get this: "Where appropriate," she added, "the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured." That assumes that some of the destination countries have the reputation for torturing people.

She has a sad mission as she naively tries to defend the indefensible among Europeans, some of whom have long memories of living under inhumane governments.

German officials confronted her with a long list of overflights by CIA airplanes, apparently carrying detainees to clandestine prisons.

At a White House briefing last Tuesday, press secretary Scott McClellan was asked repeatedly why we sent prisoners to other countries to be questioned.

He evaded providing a direct answer, saying: "I'm not going to talk further about intelligence matters."

Nor did he respond to questions on whether there is U.S. oversight of those we send away to make sure they are not tortured.

While Rice insists that the United States does not tolerate torture, many studies by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights First have come to the opposite conclusion.

Torture under the law is described as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Waterboarding or mock drownings, sleep deprivation, beatings, shackles and other horrors apparently do not fall into the administration's definition of torture.

This is the same administration that is threatening a presidential veto of pending legislation that would explicitly prohibit the use of torture. The White House led by Vice President Dick Cheney insists on an exception for the CIA.

The ban is being pushed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who was tortured when he was a prisoner of war in the Vietnam era. Stephen Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, is now seeking a compromise.

How do you compromise torture? Fortunately, McCain says: "No deal."

Human Rights First — a human rights advocacy group — charged that Rice's departure statement continued to fuzz up U.S. obligations under the U.N. convention against torture.

As for detainees, Rice said, "We must treat them in accordance with our laws, which reflect the values of the American people," she added. "We must question them to gather potentially significant, life-saving intelligence. We must bring terrorists to justice wherever possible."

Rice has yet to master the art of diplomacy but she certainly excels in double talk.

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Thomas is a Washington, D.C.-based columnist for the Hearst Newspapers. - hthomas@hearstdc.com

Copyright Chron.com

http://lnk.nu/huffingtonpost.com/70g.html

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12.13.2005

Bush's Shiite Gang in Baghdad

Robert Dreyfuss

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More and more evidence is mounting that Iran’s ayatollahs have their hands deep into the Shiite-led government of Iraq. Astonishingly though, the Bush administration – and its allied phalanx of neoconservatives – have turned a blind eye to Iran’s influence in Iraq. That’s because the Iraqi Shiites, who run the regime in Baghdad, are supposed to be the “good guys,” i.e., the ones we are defending in Iraq.

As I’ve written before, the United States has 160,000 troops in Iraq serving as the Praetorian guard for that Shiite regime. We’re killing hundreds of Sunnis all over western Iraq on their behalf.

Before we get to the latest reports of more torture prisons run by the Shiites, along with death squads, consider the following items from the news.

Knight Ridder, perhaps the single best news organization covering the war in Iraq and its political fallout, carried an important exchange in which the head of the Badr Brigade, the paramilitary force backed by Iran, flatly admits that his 20,000-strong secret army – which is the arm of the ruling Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) – is funded by Iran:

Badr's leader, Hadi al-Amari, has denied maintaining ties to Iran, but in a fit of anger during a recent interview with Knight Ridder he admitted as much while striking out against U.S.-backed secular Shiite politician Ayad Allawi.

"Allawi receives money from America, from the CIA, but nobody talks about that. All they talk about is our funding from Iran," he said, raising his voice. "We are funded by some (Persian) Gulf countries and the Islamic Republic of Iran. We don't hide it."

And the report, by Tom Lasseter, includes this bombshell from General Casey:

"They're putting millions of dollars into the south to influence the elections ... it's funded primarily through their charity organizations and also Badr and some of these political parties," said Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. general in Iraq. "A lot of their guys (Badr) are going into the police and military."

In another breakthrough report, today’s Washington Times carries an interview with a leading former Iraqi general who says that the network of torture prisons run by SCIRI, Badr, and the Iraqi interior ministry is overseen by an Iranian intelligence officer, Tahseer Nasr Lawandi, nicknamed “The Engineer.” Here’s the report, but read the whole thing:

An Iraqi general formerly in charge of special Interior Ministry forces said yesterday that a senior Iranian intelligence officer was in charge of a network of detention centers where suspected insurgents were routinely tortured and sometimes killed.

Gen. al-Samarrai said the Iranian intelligence officer, Tahseer Nasr Lawandi, works directly under the Kurdish deputy minister, Gen. Hussein Kamel, and is known throughout the ministry as "The Engineer."

"The Engineer was behind the torturing and killing in the ministry and was also in charge of Jadriya prison," said Gen. al-Samarrai, who left the ministry after a dispute with superiors and is now living in Jordan.

The Iranian officer not only masterminded interrogations, tortures and executions at the prisons, but also would take part in torture sessions, often using an electric drill, Gen. al-Samarrai said.

Some of the tortured prisoners were found in morgues with drill holes in their legs and eyes, according to another security source, who declined to be identified.

The general said Mr. Lawandi had worked with the minister and deputy minister to form a special security service to run the detention and interrogation operation and a separate group called the Wolf Brigade to capture suspects and bring them to the secret locations -- usually under cover of darkness.

This is critically important stuff, because it utterly destroys the Bush administration’s contention that the United States is building “democracy” in Iraq.

Today’s New York Times has a story about the torture prisons, noting that a senior Iraqi interior ministry official denies that any abuse occurred, and it then quotes U.S. military officials contradicting him.

So the question is: when will hear the Bush administration's top officials start calling the Shiite fundamentalist regime in Baghdad "Islamofascists"? So far, they's applied that term only to the Iraqi resistance, tarring the Sunni-led insurgency by painting them as led by Al Qaeda-style terrorists, when in fact that they are mostly Iraqi nationalists, Baathists, and ex-military men. Their main grievance is that the United States is handing Iraq over to Iran. I'd say they're right.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11300.htm

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What Peace Needs

By Monica Benderman

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12/13/05 "ICH" -- -- The Regional Corrections Facility at Ft. Lewis, Washington is vintage World War II. The windows are cracked and can’t be closed. It’s below freezing on most nights now. I could go on – but what good will it do in this country of warmongers, idealistic pacifists, and evangelicals? Nothing like love for a cause – any cause – as long as it’s impersonal enough that everyone can remain detached, can share their emotions through the war cries and protest chants, staring out into a field of people whose gazes are just as vacant as the featured speaker of the day.

The military prison is filled with the usual criminal element, narcotics and alcohol abusers, thieves, and child molesters. It has been said that the best chance of parole from this facility is for the child molesters – tells you a lot about our society – the society that professes such a high moral standard that we can dare to invade other countries to bring that same standard to their shores.

In among the criminals, sleeping on a three inch thick mattress, sitting in plastic chairs staring at the walls all day, and waiting for months at a time to have his request for a call to his attorney fulfilled, is one who is furthest from the criminal element, a man the Anti-War movement lovingly refers to as a “Prisoner of Conscience.” Labels, always the labels. Sgt. Kevin Benderman stands for everything that should be right in this country. This man stands for liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, FREEDOM to be themselves and live as they choose.

This “Prisoner of Conscience” is jailed because we have been told that we must fear him, just as we fear those who have committed crimes against society, the rapists, molesters and thieves who victimize with their lack of moral principles. Our government has told us we must fear the Conscientious Objectors because they have stood against an illegal war of aggression. Our government, threatened by Sgt. Benderman’s moral stand to defend humanity and our constitution, has imprisoned him in the hopes that the slamming of the rusty, mildewed bars will silence his message of truth.

I know I will get letters, and I know I will anger many. To quote a rather public common citizen of this country, I say “Bring It On.” It’s time for America to face what it has refused to see – itself in its death throes.

War will never bring peace. War will only bring one more generation who will seek war as a solution. We hear repeatedly that victory must be achieved in this war for us to move closer to peace, and that victory means the end to all those who are our enemy now fighting against us. Where is the victory in killing? We are only creating more enemies, and the time without war that will follow will not be a time of peace.

That time will be a time of regrowth, when the wounds of the generations to come out of this war lay quiet and fester. When the anger at the crimes of humanity suffered at our hands is fed with the education of lessons learned in this most recent battle. In time, when we least expect it, the fetid smell of a people no longer willing to live with the guilt of the atrocities they allowed us to commit on their lives, will creep across the oceans and slither across our shores. Our new generation, lulled to sleep with the false sense of peace brought on by an illusion of superiority, will find itself shocked and awed that the security we thought we had was nothing more than a blanket now burning at the foot of a 100 story building built to represent success at the edge of the ghettoes we drive home to each night.

We cannot win at war. No one wins in war. Calling Sgt. Benderman a “coward” because he refuses to be a mercenary for men who do not have the courage to defend themselves, does nothing except show a person’s true colors. Relying on someone else to die so that people can sit on their sofas and grow fat on beer and chips, justifying their right by claiming they pay taxes to this country, is about as worthless an excuse as “men” can have.

Pacifism without a commitment will not achieve peace; it is a cop-out – no different than those evangelicals who go to church each week waiting in prayer believing that someone is coming to save them. Protest marches on weekend afternoons that have been planned for months so that those we speak against will be prepared with cleverly scripted comebacks, are not the way to achieve Peace. Singing the praises of the “prisoners of conscience” who wait in cells for someone to finally see the light, but not demonstrating our commitment to their stance in our own lives, is not the way to achieve Peace. The songs may be great for morale, but whose? Who benefits by songs for a cause when we forget that the “cause” has men like Sgt. Benderman as its foundation. This man speaks the truth so strongly, because he is a soldier who has been to war, and yet sits behind bars for the fear he instills in the administration when he says he will no longer be party to their destructive ways. How can we fight to end a war, and not fight as strongly to end the wrongful imprisonment of a man who dares to speak the truth for all of us?

Sgt. Benderman is wrongfully imprisoned, not for doing great things, but for doing the right thing, and standing against a corrupt system whose administration fears the statement his actions speak. He is also imprisoned because his country has done so little to demand that the principles of our constitution be upheld. He is imprisoned because the citizens of this country have shirked their responsibility by believing the work of Peace was not their job. The citizens of this country have failed, by NOT demanding that moral conscience be the foundation of all of our actions.

He is told how great a stand he is taking and encouraged to continue, and to know that the difficulties he is facing are worth the struggle for the manner in which he is leading others to the truth, all the while people on both sides take full advantage of their “freedom”, taking for granted exactly what the word freedom really means.

Peace takes work; does anybody know what that means? Peace takes passion. Peace requires that we allow ourselves to feel – pain, hurt, agony, loss, heartache, rage, hate.
Peace requires that we act on those feelings with control, and patience. Peace requires that we never let our enemy know we’re coming.

Peace requires that we fight the terrorist tactics of those who would claim that war is the answer by using every passionate means we have to keep ourselves from acting on the pain, the hurt, the agony and the rage with anything less than absolute moral courage.

Peace requires a trust in knowing that rifles and tanks are no match for an adherence to strong ethical principles, the weapons of moral courage that bear NO resemblance to loaded guns.

Peace requires that we look into the eyes of another and see their pain, but also feel their love. Peace requires that we know ourselves, that we look in the mirror and see who we are, our strengths and our weaknesses.

Peace requires that we ACT – that WE act, not that we rely on the actions of another to represent what we would do if we had the courage. Peace requires that we act as a non-violent, yet aggressive consensus against what our government as done in our name.

Peace requires that we all have the courage to face the reality of this dying country, and nurture its goodness in the ways that haven’t been for generations, so that its spirit knows we care enough to fight for its soul, its heart – and defend its life by living up to the ideals on which it was founded, each of us in our individual lives.

Peace requires that we look at those men and women so impersonally labeled as “prisoners of conscience” and know their names, and know what they are fighting for. Peace requires that we know in our hearts that we must give with as much passion for life as they have, and not in words alone.

Can you bear the cold to be honestly free? Can you bear a Christmas without the warmth of a Yule log, without the comfort of a family around you, without the voices of angelic carolers at your door?

Can you dare to look at your enemy square in the eye, lay down your loaded weapon and honor life, putting your enemy’s life above death, trusting your strength enough to know that you can lead him to Peace?

If you cannot, then you do not deserve to say that you fight for Peace, and the strength of the “Prisoners of Conscience” will indeed be something to fear.

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Sgt. Kevin Benderman is a Prisoner of Conscience, serving a 15 month sentence at Ft. Lewis, for filing as a Conscientious Objector to war. Please visit our websites at www.BendermanDefense.org and www.BendermanTimeline.com

http://lnk.nu/guardian.co.uk/70f.html

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The region will wrest back control when the US stumbles out of Iraq

This costly intervention has exposed the myth of America as conductor of a grand democratic Middle Eastern orchestra

Martin Woollacott

Tuesday December 13, 2005

The Guardian

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When the US stumbled out of Vietnam 30 years ago, a void seemed to open up for a world which, for good or ill, had become used to a controlling American hand. The US had suffered a great defeat, in part self-inflicted, in the process betraying an ally, and American will and rationality had been drawn down to the lowest levels. Yet the consequences for the region where the war had been waged were surprisingly limited. The dominoes did not fall, or rather, when they eventually did, they fell the other way as Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were to some degree absorbed back into the global system of which America is still the capstone.

In the Middle East, the consequences of almost any imaginable outcome in Iraq - from a similar defeat all along the spectrum to some kind of qualified success - are likely to be much more radical. As Iraq passes another so-called "milestone" this week, in the shape of parliamentary elections, certain similarities with the last years in Vietnam are evident. The arguments over the real strength of the insurgency echo the claims and counterclaims over the Tet offensive, and the build-up of Iraqi forces stands in for Vietnamisation. Which way these similarities point is unclear. An unmitigated defeat - withdrawal followed by immediate chaos - would sweep the chessboard, tilting America into a period of perplexity and angry isolationism, and endangering the regimes it has supported, from Israel to Egypt. An outcome somewhere between success and failure would lead to a long endgame, something like the period between the withdrawal of US troops in Vietnam in 1973 and the fall of Saigon in 1975 but not necessarily with the same kind of result.

But what can be hazarded even in a best case is that the US is likely to be less engaged in the region in the future than in the past. That runs against the logic of the war on terror, and against the logic of the western world's interest in the critical energy-producing countries, as well as being the opposite of the Bush administration's idea of America as the conductor of a grand democratic Middle Eastern orchestra. But the normal results of a traumatic and costly intervention almost certainly will still apply, in a more cautious approach and in disillusion both with the supposed beneficiaries of American policy and with the reluctant European allies who either helped only a little or not at all.

At a deeper level, the social and political limits to America's raising, maintaining and employment of its military power have been well demonstrated in the past two years. The US will not be throwing its armies around again in the Middle East any time soon. Its reputation has suffered and its diplomacy has been damaged not only by Iraq but by its failure to do much more than trail after Ariel Sharon on Israel and Palestine. Its inability to influence Israel can be seen as a special case of its inability to shape events more generally in the region. So the country that has been the most important outside force in the Middle East for the past 50 years and that has been unchallenged there by any other outside power since the fall of the Soviet Union could well be less interested and almost certainly will be less effective in the region in the future.

Iraq, however the war ends, could turn out to be just part of the story of how the long era of Middle Eastern dependency may finally be drawing to a close. This is a region which has notoriously lagged behind in the emancipation from western power that in India and China, in particular, is so well advanced. Indeed the growing influence of those two nations is shaping the Middle East as they move to strike long-term bargains with countries including Iran, which can supply their energy needs. A partially revived Russia also has some revived reach.

None of these outsiders of course can aspire even in the longer run to anything like an "American" position in the Middle East. Instead, their needs are strengthening the position of energy-rich countries in the region as well as affecting the position of those without such resources. The way in which Iran, for example, has been able simultaneously to work to extend its influence in Iraq, to do business with India and China, and to keep open its nuclear option shows how its room for manoeuvre has been widened.

Europe, setting its Middle East compass by Washington, is also going to find its policies in disarray. Some European countries are in Iraq without having the right to be consulted on the way that that effort has been conducted, either militarily or politically. Much of the European strategy for dealing with its own internal Muslim problems and for dealing with the region rests on the Turkish candidacy for the EU. Yet not much thought seems to have been given to the critical policy decisions, about Iraq in particular, that will have to be made by Turkey during the long waiting period for membership.

Europe's policy on Palestine is running into the sand as Sharon seeks to bury in that same material any chance of a viable two-state solution. Finally, the European effort to engage Iran and steer it away from nuclear weapons development has been unsuccessful so far, possibly because we cannot demonstrate enough distance from the Americans or possibly because the object is unachievable. The European assumption that its successes in the Middle East will come from glossing and nuancing American policies is almost bound to be upset in coming years.

If the Middle East is in the process of shaking off outside control, the prospects are both daunting and hopeful. The local powers - Turkey, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Iraq itself, not to mention Israel - have little experience of working together as truly independent actors. Their alliances and feuds have in the past all been shaped by western and Soviet power, by European wealth, by structures imposed on the Middle East by outsiders. They clearly have a common interest in containing Sunni extremism. But in the past outside support has, paradoxically, allowed them to pursue their differences rather than to consult those common interests except rhetorically. If the Middle East has a good future, it rests with the forces that can capture the caliphate. That is not the fantastical reconstruction of a single politically and religiously uniform entity embracing all Muslim lands which entrances extremists, but the metaphor representing the emancipation of diverse but cooperating states which America's relaxing grasp on the region may now make possible.