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'VICTORY IN IRAQ': A STRATEGY TO MASK DEFEAT

By Richard Reeves

DECEMBER 9, 2005

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NEW YORK -- "Victory has a thousand fathers ..." John F. Kennedy once said, famously. Last week one of his successors, President Bush, used the word about that many times as he tried to explain how we would win one day in Iraq.

Alas, that is not going to happen. But Mr. Victory is talking as fast as he can to avoid thinking about JFK's next line: "Defeat is an orphan."

Hopefully, Bush, whom I characterized a week ago as running a strong race to be our worst president ever, will look a little better next week after the Iraqi elections we made possible. That would be a good thing for Iraq as it seems to collapse before our eyes. Certainly our ever-changing strategies there are collapsing. In fact, the "Plan for Victory," as the president called his speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, is a strategy to mask defeat.

Bravado aside, the new strategy, borrowed from failure in Vietnam and 19th-century British colonialism, could be called "Bases and Borders." The president put it this way: "We will increasingly move out of Iraqi cities, reduce the number of bases from which we operate and conduct fewer patrols and convoys."

What we will do, as laid out in the 35-page strategy paper that accompanied the Annapolis speech, is to begin redeploying our troops in force-protection areas. They will then venture out on raids now and then -- and try to secure the borders from what Bush called "regional meddling and infiltration." That means trying to block Syria, Iran and Turkey from pursuing their interests on Iraqi soil.

Newly trained Iraqi units will be left to try to turn the Iraqi-protected cities into larger versions of what were called "strategic hamlets" in Vietnam. The border strategy is an updating of the Demilitarized Zone between South and North Vietnam, or British forts along barren boundaries between tribes in make-believe countries. Unfortunately for us, the real problems of our adventure are already inside the borders of Iraq. Once more we are in a civil war, this time one we helped trigger by clumsily overthrowing a vicious dictatorship.

And all the while, as happened at home in the 1970s and happened in Britain in the late 1800s, we will tear up our own country in the process. I got a sample of that last week, when I compared Bush with poor old James Buchanan, blamed by many as the president who made our own Civil War inevitable. The number of e-mails I received topped 10,000 and counting, the majority of them heavy on two words, one printable, "f...ing" and "moron." (Many of them can be read on richardreeves.com or Yahoo!News Op-Ed.)

Not all the reaction was bad, and not all of the bad was bad. There are valid arguments for "staying the course," though I was partial to e-mail 11,409, which said on the subject of Iraq threatening us: "If we had waited for Vietnam to invade us, we'd still be waiting."

The basic thrust of the reaction to emphasizing Bush's proud and stubborn ignorance of history was that people like me, who were against this thing from the start and laid out how it would inevitably end, are the reason it has gone badly. Actually the reason adventures like this go badly is that we attacked people who have occupied desert or jungle for thousands of years, and will still be there a thousand years from now -- and we won't.

"The neighborhood is inhospitable," Bush told our future Navy and Marine officers. He got that right. It would have been better if he understood that from the beginning rather than listening to the flag-waving pipe dreams of Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

Pray for a good election next week. Let that be the beginning of Iraqis fighting each other for a new Iraq -- or no Iraq, which is a possibility. Then President Bush can "redeploy." He could take a lesson from his hero, President Reagan, who vowed to stay the course after his reckless words siding with Christians against Muslims in Lebanon in 1983 led to the killing of more than 250 U.S. Marine peacekeepers in a suicide bombing at the Beirut airport. Then Reagan waited a few weeks and announced "redeployment" -- to ships 30 miles offshore.

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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2005 12:00 AM

Ex-Marine leader poses hard questions about war

BY ADAM PARKER

The Post and Courier

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Within the first days of the invasion in 2003, the U.S. military dropped leaflets in Iraq: "Surrender and be part of the new Iraq."

"It was a brilliant success," said Nathaniel Fick, a former Marine commander who participated in that first campaign.

Then, as the operation began to heat up, the military dropped "humanitarian rations," which did not include pork or chemical heater packs, which some in Afghanistan had ingested to their great peril. The rations came in bright yellow boxes so they could be seen easily.

This won the hearts of many, Fick said.

Then the military began dropping cluster bombs, some of which failed to explode upon impact. They came in bright yellow packages, too.

"Wires get crossed, with unintended consequences," Fick said.

Those consequences - the erosion and eventual loss of trust in American forces and American policy - were the subject of a recent lecture Fick offered College of Charleston students and faculty when he stopped here as part of a book tour. He is the author of "One Bullet Away," a memoir of his experience as a commander in the Marines' elite 1st Reconnaissance Unit.

Fick was one of the first to respond to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as part of the invasion force into Afghanistan, and he helped lead the charge into Iraq about two years later. His book recounts his prewar training and experience in two conflicts as a captain of an infantry platoon.

His perspective is said to be unique because he was a Marine who straddled the historical line between pre-9/11 and post-9/11 America. His Dartmouth University education and degree in classics make his an especially articulate first-person account of battle.

But Fick is no yes-man.

He has harsh words for the Bush administration and its policies in the Mideast as well as for the yellow-ribbon crowd that refuses to question U.S. leadership.

"Occupation breeds resentment," he said. "When you have a boot on someone's neck, they don't appreciate it."

Fick bemoaned missed opportunities, such as the chance in December 2001 to go after Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora after reliable intelligence showed the al-Qaida leader likely was holed up there. But senior brass called off the operation to seal the valleys - the only way out - instead leaving matters in the hands of the Afghan Northern Alliance.

Fick said he suspects some improvised negotiating resulted in bin Laden's escape.

"Kick the anthill and everyone would scatter," he said. "And they'll never be in one place again."

While Fick disparages some of the politics that determine the United States' Iraq policy, he is quick to point out that the Marines fundamentally are apolitical. The military is merely a tool politicians use to get what they want. And in the case of Iraq, it can only set the stage for the Iraqis themselves to rebuild their nation.

"Marines set preconditions for political change," Fick said. "The military, however, cannot affect that change."

Just because the Armed Forces are apolitical - they follow the orders of the commander in chief regardless of his party affiliation - that doesn't mean they have no politics, Fick said.

The military is made up of individuals who are overwhelmingly conservative and predominantly Republican, he notes. "And that's a problem."

When most people in an organization share the same view, the world is seen in terms that are too absolute, he said.

Fick, who worked with Canadian, British, Australian and German forces, said he had the sense that they were more diverse politically and economically than the U.S. military.

This diversity encourages a nuanced interpretation of world events, he said.

Still, in the throes of battle, Marines have no time to ruminate on the finer points of political strategies, Fick said. They are focused on the mission and cannot afford distractions.

That mission, which was to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and set the stage for democracy, is terribly imperiled for several reasons, Fick said.

Perhaps the biggest risk is represented by a largely apathetic public.

"People don't care about it because it doesn't touch them," he said.

The vast majority of Americans have made no sacrifice or investment in the Afghan and Iraqi wars. Instead of asking them to turn in metal objects to the government or reduce their consumption of gasoline, President Bush merely encouraged more consumerism, Fick said in an interview.

"Americans were told to keep shopping!"

If you really support the troops, then fight to have the tax cuts repealed or encourage Congress to pass a gas tax, he said. Don't make Americans bleed, he said, make them pay.

"What's important to me is that we're not apathetic about it," he said. "I have more sympathy with the anti-war protesters, at least they're involved. My gripe is with the apathetic middle."

Fick, whose book and other writings have captured the attention of policymakers, military careerists and citizens alike, said he cannot agree with either of the options now on the table concerning Iraq.

To "stay the course" would be a huge mistake. "We're focused almost exclusively on offense, on killing insurgents," he said.

Instead, "We must provide concrete, tangible benefits to people in Iraq. In my view, we've done a poor job showing why our system is better than (terror leader) Zarqawi's system."

Likewise, Fick blasts those who advocate bringing the troops home now. Iraq could spiral into chaos, he said. The important thing is to empower Iraqis to govern themselves, and that can't be done overnight.

What's needed is a radical shift in strategy, one that brings the war home to Americans, encourages the development of alternative energy sources and changes the focus of the conflict away from fighting terrorism (which Fick defines as a tactic, not an enemy) to fighting the causes of terrorism.

His book tour has provided him with opportunities to exercise his rhetorical skills and confront some difficult questions posed by readers of "One Bullet Away." Fick said he expected more sympathy from pro-war Republicans and more tough questions from antiwar Democrats, but it's been the exact opposite.

Blue-state people seem to be relieved that an ex-Marine, of all people, would speak out against current policy, while red-state folks seem to be less willing to think through the issues, he said.

The exception is the military. There, people have been much more willing to listen critically, Fick said, because they are directly affected by the decisions that come from Washington.

The future of Iraq is still up in the air, he said.

At the lecture, he showed a photograph of a young Iraqi, perhaps 12, kneeling over a box of rations.

We are still within that window of time when actions on the ground have not yet established a destiny for this boy, Fick said. Whether he becomes a suicide bomber or a future elected president depends on what the United States and the Iraqis do today.

"What will this kid think in 20 or 30 years?" Fick asked his rapt audience. "I think it's still very much in doubt."

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December 11, 2005

Commission Finds Irregularities in Iraqi Voter Registration

By EDWARD WONG

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BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 11 - With just four days to go until parliamentary elections, the Iraqi electoral commission said today that it had found irregularities in voter registration in the volatile northern oil city of Kirkuk.

The discovery was the first instance of an election irregularity announced by the commission as the country prepared for the vote on Thursday.

The commission said experts conducting an audit of voter lists found that there had been an unexpected surge in voter registration in the area. When the experts scrutinized the voter registration forms, the commission said in a written statement, they found that many had been filled out incorrectly. Some had missing signatures and others had more than one signature. In some cases, the same name appeared on several forms.

Adel al-Lami, the director general of the Iraqi electoral commission, said in an interview that in his view the voter registration irregularities were technical errors and not politically motivated. "Please stay away from political conspiracies," he said. "There's no political reason for this."

Kirkuk is considered one of the most potentially incendiary cities in Iraq, because of its diverse ethnic and religious mix and its oil resources. The area, north of Baghdad, has 10 to 20 percent of the country's oil reserves. As a result, several competing groups - Kurds, Turkmens and Arabs - claim dominance over the city.

Under the rule of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab, the government pushed Kurds and Turkmens out of Kirkuk and moved in Arabs, many of them from the south. After the American invasion, the two main Kurdish political parties began an aggressive campaign of resettling the region with Kurds.

Homes for Kurds are being built at a fevered pace in Kirkuk, further stirring the fears of Arabs and Turkmens. Unlike the situation in Mr. Hussein's time, the Kurds also control the provincial council, the police force and most of the provincial ministries.

No reliable census of the city has been taken for decades. The new constitution says Kirkuk Province will hold a referendum vote by the end of 2007 to determine whether it will be governed by the autonomous northern region of Kurdistan, or by the central government. One expert on the area, Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group, has recommended that Kirkuk itself be designated a special autonomous region.

The election commission said today that Kirkuk had an average 45 percent increase in voter registration across the region, compared with an average 8.19 percent increase across Iraq. That prompted experts to look at the registration forms that had been turned in recently.

The commission said it would distribute to polling places a list of names for whom forms had been rejected, and that those people would not be allowed to vote.

The Ministry of Interior laid out security plans today for the period surrounding the elections. The measures are similar to ones put in place during last January's elections and during the constitutional referendum in October. The government will shut down from Tuesday to Saturday, as a national holiday, and a nightly curfew of 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. will be in place. In addition, civilians will not be allowed to carry guns even if they have a permit.

Iraqi forces will also clamp down on movement across the country's borders and on travel between provinces.

Advance voting is to take place Monday in hospitals and prisons.

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Kirk Semple contributed reporting for this article.

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Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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December 10, 2005

AMERICA'S SECRET WAR

On the Trail of the CIA

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Since Sept. 11, the CIA has played a vital role in the war on terror. But what role is it? Operating in the shadows, American secret services have been given wide-ranging powers by the Bush Administration. And they include murder, abduction and torture. 

REUTERS
Questions about the CIA and Bush's handling of the war on terror have been dogging the president of late.

It's Saturday, Sept. 15, 2001, four days after the terror attacks in New York and Washington. US President George W. Bush withdraws with his closest advisors to Camp David in order to escape the chaos of the week and to develop the first plans to confront the new and unprecedented challenge facing the United States.

In the afternoon, then CIA head George Tenet distributes a file to all participants of the crisis summit. It's called "Going to War." Inside are the first rough outlines of the coming war against terrorism. In the upper left corner of the file's cover, there is a red circle inside of which is a portrait of Osama bin Laden with a black line drawn through it.

Tenet wants to finally go on the offensive. And his list of priorities is ambitious. Goal number one: Destroy al-Qaida and close off the terror group's zones of safety wherever they might be.

According to Bob Woodward in his book "Bush at War," this is a list with wide-ranging powers granted to authorities battling worldwide terror. And Tenet does not hold back. He requests that his agents be given the go-ahead to eliminate al-Qaida wherever the CIA comes across the terror group. He wants Carte blanche for clandestine operations without having to first go through the long process of having them authorized. In addition, CIA agents should once again be given the authority to kill -- a power withdrawn from US intelligence agents in 1976 by then President Gerald Ford.

Also on Tenet's wish list is a request for hundreds of millions of dollars to be used in buying intelligence assistance from foreign secret services. Specifically, Tenet was thinking about agents from Egypt, Jordan and Algeria -- and he is sure that help from these country's secret services would dramatically increase the CIA's ability to track down and eliminate al-Qaida.

Three days later, Bush signs a Presidential Directive whose exact wording only a very few Americans know until this day. Point for point, the demands made by the CIA were granted, and with that, the document became the first shot fired in the worldwide war on terror. Bush ordered the CIA to be the first on the new front -- America's secret service was unleashed.

Four years later, America's secret services -- and especially the CIA (the "flagship of the business ... where you come if you want the gold standard," according to the agency's new director Porter Gosss) -- have become one of the most controversial weapons in the fight against terrorism. While the most powerful army in the world has become ever-more an occupying power in Iraq and, by it's mere presence, has attracted a whole new generation of mujahedeen, Bush's secret services have fought their part of the battle under the apparent motto, "The end justifies all means."

America's agents, whose worldwide presence and disdain for international legal norms right up through the 1970s gained them a reputation for being ugly Americans, are back on the international political stage. Not everybody is happy to see them.

And Bush is using all the tools at his disposal. Measured by sheer numbers and capability, America's gigantic secret service apparatus appears just as omnipotent as his military: Fifteen secret services with 200,000 employees and a yearly budget of some $40 billion. The sum represents more than most countries even spend on their militaries. The satellites of these agencies can read license plates from space -- and the newest generation of these advanced spy satellites are just as sophisticated as the Hubble Space Telescope. But instead of looking out into the depths of the universe, they are focused downwards to the goings on here on Earth.

Every day, analysts from this secret army deliver their findings to their superiors and, in the form of the Presidential Daily Briefing, to President Bush himself. It's a sort of super-secret daily newspaper -- with severely limited circulation of course -- generally comprising between 12 and 30 pages. It's the most important thing you have to read every day, Bush Senior -- himself head of the CIA for a year -- told his son when Bush Junior took office.

But the secret war does not end with America's spy agencies. Likewise in the shadows -- sometimes operating within international law, sometimes outside the boundaries -- are the special forces of the American military. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sends them on missions across the globe; indeed they may, some say, already be operating inside of an Iran that continues its pursuit of nuclear weapons. He would be "surprised and disappointed" if covert measures were not already under way against Iran's armaments program, says Ashton Carter, assistant secretary of defense under Bill Clinton.

And where American personnel can't go, the National Security Agency's (NSA) worldwide network can eavesdrop. The NSA routinely listens in on what is going on in the United Nations in New York -- and UN General Secretary Kofi Annan, for awhile at least, was one of the agency's number one targets says James Bamford, a leading expert on the NSA.

One of the newest weapons in the secret service arsenal is called "geolocating." Should, for example, satellites identify the location of a suspect through a mobile phone signal, then special forces or warplanes can quickly strike. The technology has become so precise, that mobile telephones can be located to within one meter.

Indeed, the ability to precisely locate a target was instrumental, in November 2001, in killing al-Qaida military head Mohammed Atif in his house near Kabul, or in the arrest of bin-Laden aide Abu Subeida in Pakistan. But the system also makes grave mistakes. In 2002 in Afghanistan, for example, hastily scrambled bombers dropped their ordnance on a wedding party instead of on a targeted meeting of terrorists. 

AP
US President Bush with CIA head Porter Goss.

CIA head Goss, himself a CIA agent for 10 years before he went into politics, encourages the taking of risks by his agents. "And when it goes wrong, I will support you," he has told them. He sends his agents with deadly powers and backpacks full of dollars into operations all over the world where they also have the authority to call in air power. Or, alternatively, they can call in a Predator -- drones armed with laser-controlled Hellfire rockets and which can be steered from half a world away using a simple joystick.

In the 1980s and 90s, secret operations in foreign countries became more and more seldom and analysis was emphasized. That, though, was the old CIA -- an organization former agent Melissa Boyle derided by saying, that the days of James Bond were long gone. But now, the enemies of yesteryear are history. President Bush has repeatedly warned Americans that the new enemy confronting the US is totally different than all those that have come before.

The warning also represents the birth of the new CIA -- an agency that should strike fear into the hearts of its enemies.

So is the CIA on the road to re-establishing the notoriety it for so long had in the Third World? That of a frightening, secret power that kidnapped politicians, bought mercenary troops and toppled governments at will merely because Washington didn't approve of them?

Already shortly after the agency's founding on July 26, 1947 by President Harry Truman, the CIA had made the world its playground and had began deciding who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. And they punished the bad guys at the order of the White House.

The "firm" had license to kill, and used it during the Cold War against a Soviet enemy that was at least as brutal. In the 1960s, the CIA developed a highly poisonous arrow that was supposed to leave no traces whatsoever during an autopsy. They also experimented with training dolphins to deliver explosives to a given target.

But in reality, these were hollow victories. Mixed in with the successes were disastrous missions abroad and embarrassing mistakes at home. The combination led to the CIA becoming more of a burden then a help. The nation was horrified to learn that President Richard Nixon used former agents for the Watergate break-in; Americans were disgusted by the government's spying on tens of thousands of citizens critical of their government; the term "America's Gestapo" began to make the rounds.

The result was a reigning in of Big Brother. In 1974, a law went into effect requiring that all clandestine operations abroad had to be rubber-stamped by Congress. The secret services began concentrating almost exclusively on technological data-gathering methods -- and thus largely stayed out of the Iranian revolution. And in an Afghanistan fighting against the USSR, the CIA didn't pick up that the mujahedeen -- generously supplied by the Americans with arms and money -- were not only fanatic opponents of the Soviets, but were also against the American "crusaders."

(CONTINUES)

Part II: Cheney goes to the dark side

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AP
Standard supplies issued to prisoners at Guantanamo.

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Indeed, the pact with the Islamist warriors -- in combination with an almost blind faith in the Pakistani secret services -- played a large role in the development of the Taliban and al-Qaida both. Afghanistan became Bin Laden Land.

The fact that Sept. 11 resulted in major changes to the American secret services was thus hardly a surprise. What was surprising, though, was the speed with which the secret services regained their old, bad reputation. The list is growing once again: allegations that the CIA handed out large sums of money in Venezuela in an effort to topple Hugo Chavez; and a growing number of terrorists executed by the agency's drones.

A Hellfire rocket fired by a CIA Predator took out, in Yemen, the alleged ring-leader of the 2000 attack on the USS "Cole." The CIA killed the Egyptian Hamsa Rabia -- the al-Qaida number three -- in Pakistan not far from the Afghanistan border using the same weapon earlier this month.

Vice President Richard Cheney, who, even on his good days, increasingly resembles an old-style Soviet general secretary, publicly announced the CIA's change of directions. One has to operate in the shadows, he says. In order to defeat the terrorists, America's agents "have to work the dark side, if you will." If the enemy doesn't play by the rules, then we won't either, is Cheney's message.

The war in Afghanistan, and the hunt for bin Laden, showed to what extent the CIA was willing to use its new powers. Cofer Black, the coordinator for counter-terrorism, demanded the head of the al-Qaida boss and meant it quite literally. The gruesome trophy should be sent express -- and "on ice" -- to Washington, he said. Bush also takes the hunt for the terrorists personally: In his desk is a list of al-Qaida leaders that he crosses off each time one of them is captured or killed.

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PHOTO GALLERY: TORTURE IN ABU GHRAIB



WARNING: GRAPHIC

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Originally, the CIA likely considered taking out all al-Qaida bigwigs using Hit Teams -- much like Israel's Mossad killed those responsible for the 1972 Olympic bloodbath in Munich or executed the military leaders of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But then, the concern won out that even as the al-Qaida leaders were erased, unknown terror groups could strike again.
A new idea gained credence -- that of capturing al-Qaida members alive in order to interrogate them and profit from information about the organization and its plans. Information was the only way to combat the danger of new attacks.

Exactly how far this system to gather information has gone -- and how widespread the prisons set up to house those captured -- is known by only a very few Americans. At the request of Cheney, only the chairs and vice-chairs of the intelligence committees in the Senate and the House are informed. Such information is top secret, Cofer Black told a congressional group in September 2002. "This is a highly classified area," he said. "All I want to say is that there was before 9/11 and after 9/11. After 9/11 the gloves come off."

All congressional and legal investigations into the abuse of prisoners by Americans until now have had to be performed without the benefit of insight into the practices of the CIA. Not even the Red Cross has been allowed access to a number of high value prisoners from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the planner of the attacks on New York and Washington, to Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, the head of an al-Qaida training camp. They have just disappeared.

AP
Romanian military staff stand at the end of a corridor on the Mihail Kogalniceanu airbase, east of Bucharest.

For those in control of the scattered, CIA prisons, there is no higher power. The Republican John D. Rockefeller, a member of the Senate intelligence committee complains that the government has made it clear that all those who would demand an element of control over these areas are to be criticized as being unpatriotic.

Although the exact extent of the CIA's new powers remains unclear, that which is known is enough to know that human rights are being violated as are international conventions and treaties. Targeted liquidations, the kidnapping of suspects abroad and the delivery of prisoners to other country's secret services are very definitely examples of such violations.

But above all, the interrogation experts from the CIA are still equipped with six notorious torture tools with which they can force prisoners to talk. To define them, government lawyers have chosen harmless-sounding euphemisms: the "Attention Grab" describes the practice of grabbing the shirt of a prisoner and shaking him -- only, of course, to get his attention. Then there's the "Attention Slap" and the "Belly Slap." Doctors recommended not using the fist out of fire of causing internal injuries.

Worse, though, is "long time standing," whereby prisoners are forced to stand uninterruptedly for as long as 40 hours.
Rumsfeld's boorish observation that he too has to stand for hours during his workday seems rather cynical by comparison.

The keyword "cold cell" describes a practice of cooling prisoners' cells down to 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) and then repeatedly pouring cold water over them. But it's "waterboarding" that has generated the most outcry -- a form of water torture which leads the prisoner to believe that he is drowning or suffocating. Only a few seconds of waterboarding are necessary to get the most prisoners to talk. Khalid Sheik Mohammed is said to have held out a mere two minutes and a half. Senator Carl Levin, a Democratic member of the Senate intelligence committee, is demanding transparency. "It's totally unacceptable that documents that are requested from the CIA have not been forthcoming," Levin said during hearings held by a panel investigating the Abu Ghraib abuses.

(CONTINUES)

Part III: Tortured to death by the CIA

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AP/ ABC News
US soldier Sabrina Harman with the "Iceman," an Iraqi prisoner killed in Abu Ghraib.

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It is likely that nobody will ever now how many terror suspects abducted by the CIA have died in the torture chambers of Egyptian, Algerian, Syrian or Saudi Arabian prisons. When every thing possible has been used to extract every last bit of information, the suspects trail often vanishes.

In fact, it is generally good news for prisoners when they end up in prisons controlled directly by the CIA. There, "only" those methods of Torture Light describe above are used. But those examples of prisoners dying while in American hands show just how quickly things can get out of control.

In November 2002, the guards at a secret prison -- called "Salt Pit" -- located not far from Kabul were ordered to strip one uncooperative Afghan prisoner naked, chain him to the concrete floor of his cells, and leave him there in below-zero temperatures all night. In the morning, he was dead. After a hurried autopsy, the guards quickly buried him in an unmarked grave on the edge of the city.

But only one single man connected to the CIA, David Passaro, has been prosecuted by a US court. Passaro, who was on contract with the CIA, stands accused of beating an Afghan prisoner to death during an interrogation in June 2003 on the US military base at Bagram.

The most spectacular case where a prisoner died at the hands of the secret services took place in Abu Ghraib. It's a case that has become infamous the world over by virtue of the private photos made by American soldiers for their own enjoyment.

Alongside the pictures of sexual humiliation, there is one particular photo that stands out: that of the abused corpse of a man -- wrapped in plastic and packed in ice -- above which the American soldier Sabrina Harman poses with a wide grin.

The corpse has come to be known as "The Iceman." And the case will likely haunt the CIA for many years to come as it shows exactly what happens when a legitimate state power is combined with contempt for humanity.

On Nov. 4, 2003 the special forces unit the Navy Seals got a tip-off and searched a house in Baghdad suburb for Manadil al-Jamadi. The man was thought to have delivered explosives for a terrorist attack. Jamadi struggled a great deal when arrested. He didn't exactly come out of the tussle unscathed. He had a black eye and a cut on face -- but nothing fatal.

The Seals first brought their prisoner to the navy camp at Baghdad's airport. Here, according to one eye witness, a CIA interrogator "pushed him in the chest with all his strength." The prisoner was then stripped naked and cold water was thrown all over him. "We'll grill you on an open fire if you don't talk," threatened one of the CIA men. "I'm dying, I'm dying," al-Jamadi moaned. "You're going to wish you were dead," replied the interrogator.

They then transported him to Abu Ghraib, where CIA employee Mark S. took him into custody. Forty-five minutes later he was dead.

The manner in which al-Jamadi died is known, among experts, as a "Palestinian hanging." It is regarded  across the world as an outlawed practice. The prisoner is hung onto a high window by his arms, with his hands tied behind his back. This means that he can't make the slightest movement without experiencing extreme pain. Al-Jamadi collapsed during questioning. "He's only pretending to be dead," S. is reported to have said -- incorrectly, as it turned out. Al-Jamadi was indeed dead.

DPA
US President Richard Nixon resigning as a result of the Watergate break ins.

The case had still not been brought to court even two years after the incident took place. Paul McNulty, the lawyer responsible for the eastern district of Virginia, which had jurisdiction over the CIA headquarters of Langley, is trying to, if not cover up the case, at least drag it out. McNulty is known as a Republican and supporter of Bush. In the meantime he has been nominated as deputy to Minister of Justice Alberto Gonzales, the man who helped make American torture socially acceptable.

The official line of the US government is to call such practices "robust treatment," rather than torture. That, for example, allowed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on her most recent European tour, to deny that America carries out torture. The director of the CIA Porter Goss referred to the interrogation methods his agents used as "unique and innovative" methods of making prisoners talk.

But Republican Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, says that practices such as waterboarding are nothing more than mock executions, which, regarded as torture, are outlawed all over the world. "In my view," he says, "to make someone believe that you are killing him by drowning is no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank. I believe that it is torture, very exquisite torture."

It is exactly because of the gruesome treatment of prisoners that made it expedient to remove suspects as much as possible from the responsibility of American judges. In this way this practice gave birth to the Guantanamo prisoner camp, as well as a whole range of so-called black sites, or secret interrogation areas, where the CIA keeps its most valuable prisoners under continuous observation. These mobile secret camps came into being exactly because the US government feared that the courts would eventually demand fair trials even for the inmates of the prisons on Cuba.

The solution was to resort to locations in other friendly countries. It appears clear that one of the first black sites was in Thailand. When news leaked out, the government in Bangkok demanded the withdrawal of the interrogation experts from Langley.

For a while the CIA even dreamt of having its very own Alcatraz and looked into setting up a high-security prison in Lake Cariba in Zambia. Although worries about the reliability of government in Lusaka put pay to this scheme, at least the environment would have been ideal. John Radsan, a former CIA lawyer, commented on his former employer's prisoner program by saying "It's the law of the jungle. And right now we happen to be the strongest animal."

Apparently the CIA then turned to the states of Eastern Europe, which are regarded as particularly acquiescent to Washington. They look to teaming up with Europe when it comes to economic development. As far as security goes though, they rely wholeheartedly on cooperation with the United States.

This explains why Europe became the central hub for the transport of CIA prisoners. Hundreds of the now infamous flights used the airspace between Greenland in the north and the Azores in the south, and the Atlantic coast of Ireland in the west and Romania in the east. There is hardly a country which was not used and more details are constantly being unearthed.

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Part IV: Dark flights across Europe

http://lnk.nu/service.spiegel.de/6y8.html

AP
The German citizen Khaled el Masri who was abducted by the CIA in Macedonia.

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An odd alliance of human rights organizations, state government observers, journalists and plane spotters has created a close-meshed network of indicators which raises more and more questions about the US secret services and their dubious practices. Not to mention the stupidity or acquiescence of their European allies.

On Jan. 22 of the previous year, for instance, an unsuspicious-looking Boeing 737 with the identity number N313P landed at the airport of Son Sant Joan in Palma in Majorca. The aircraft came from Algiers and was on the way to Skopje. There it was boarded, the next day, by the Lebanese-born German citizen Khaled al-Masri, who had been abducted by CIA agents and was being flown to the Afghan capital Kabul.

When it became clear that the secret service had captured the wrong man, bitter arguments within the CIA broke out on how to deal with the incident. It was the then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who last week got such a battering all over Europe for the CIA kidnappings, who ordered the German's release.

The illegal prisoner shuttle only became in March, when human rights organizations brought the case of "abduction, illegal arrest and torture" to the local courts. The government in Madrid had no intention of admitting to collaboration with the Americans. The new socialist foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos attempted to smooth over the public outcry and protect the previous conservative government with a "message of peace and calm."

But Moratinos had every cause for concern. According to recent official inquiries, US aircraft, commissioned by the CIA, are thought to have used Majorca as a stop-off point at least 15 times in the last two years. And officials report of nine landings on the Canary island of Tenerife.

Investigators suspect that the incriminated Majorca plane carried out at least 19 cross-border trips for the United States. Apart from landing at Palma, the passenger jet also stopped off in Ireland, Larnaka in Cyprus and in the Swedish town of Orebro.

A mission which took place on Sept. 22, 2003 is especially interesting. On this particular Monday a CIA Airline Boeing took off from Kabul and made its way to the North Polish airport of Szymany. It then flew on to the Rumanian staging post of Mihail Kogalniceanu on the Black Sea. Critics of the CIA, such as the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, have had their eyes on both arms bases for a while now.

Only a few days ago, according to reports by the US channel ABC, high-ranking al-Qaida fighters are thought to have been quickly shipped out of Europe just in time for the visit to Europe of US Security of State Condoleezza Rice. One of these involuntary travelers was Ramzi Binalshibh, who helped plan the attack on the World Trade Center. The new destination: unknown dungeons "somewhere in North Africa."

In Poland cooperation with the CIA has always been strongly denied. The new government refers to the explanation given by the outgoing president Kwasniewski. "Such a prison has never existed," he said. 

Really? The camp in the small town of Szczytno in Mazury is certainly tailor-made for secret missions. Official flights to what has become Poland's most famous airport stopped long ago.

Gone are the big plans whose remnants can only be seen in the multi-lingual signs: "Welcome to the international airport of Szczytno-Szymany."

Only private aircraft land and take off here. When, for example, King Juan Carlos of Spain wants to do a bit of hunting in the forests full of wild beasts. Or, possibly, when American friends have urgent business which needs to be dealt with?

"The airport is always ready for action, the technical equipment is all intact," says the uniformed border guard. Local residents report that black minivans with darkened windows and military markings are always driving by. Vehicles like this belong to the official fleet of the military unit 2669, 20 kilometers away in Stare Kiejkuty.

Two barbed wire fences separate the tiny village from the site with its watch-towers, barriers and far-off red and white radio masts. Photos are strictly prohibited and Polish journalists have had film and memory chips confiscated over the last few days.

Unit 2669 is officially the "training center for news service cadres." And the fact that it is so near, politically to the new American allies, and geographically to the airport, makes the site of particular interest. Respected village resident Krzysztof Uminski, 45, the last farmer in the area, does not like answering pushy questions. After all, he says, most of the other villagers live from "work provided by the state." Only hesitatingly does he admit what that means. The spy school is the only major employer in the remote area surrounding the lake.

The flights via Spain are not the only ones to have attracted attention. A Gulfstream with the identification number N85VM also keeps cropping up as a CIA transporter in international log-books and with human organizations. On April 12, 2004 it took off from Guantanamo with an unidentified cargo. First stop was Spain. The explosive mission's destination was Bucharest.

The airport of Mihail Kogalniceanu, often called simply "MK" by American allies, lies about 200 kilometers from the Romanian capital. The US military has been using the maneuvering area as a supply base for the Iraq war since 2002. Last week Security of State Condoleezza Rice signed an agreement with the government in Bucharest that would allow the USA to keep a base for troops there long-term. The agreement is only a logical next step. Parts of the camp have been American-only military areas for years, as the former minister for defence, Ioan Mircea Pascu was forced to admit.

The British journalist counts 210 dubious flights to England alone, by noting official recordings of flights commissioned by the CIA. There are thought to be dozens more, according to research in Ireland and Portugal. Landings have also supposed to have happened in Prague, Helsinki and Budapest. Estonia, the Netherlands, Iceland, Norway and Denmark all lay on the flight-path.

On Feb. 17, 2003 in Milan a CIA commando force abducted the radical Islamist Abu Omar in "a completely illegal act", as observers describe it, and flew him out of the country. Extradition warrants have been made out for 22 CIA pursuers.

But the central hub for Europe was Germany: the Americans used the Frankfurt Rhein-Main Airbase for 437 flights. It was from here that the Hercules number N8183J took off, and later, on Jan. 21, 2003, set off the alarm with the Austrian air force. Two Austrian military chaser jets were alerted and identifying the plane, which had been built by the US company Tepper Aviation, as a "pseudo-civilian aircraft, let it pass.

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