http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/120905A.shtml

Video Allegedly Exposes Security Contractors Shooting Iraqis

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    US Military Probing Video of Road Violence

    By Jonathan Finer and Ellen Knickmeyer

    The Washington Post

    Friday 09 December 2005

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British contractors appear to shoot at Iraqi civilians.

    Baghdad - A silver Mercedes swings into the passing lane when a machine gun opens fire, sending the car smashing into a taxi, whose terrified occupants scatter. Moments later on the video, posted on the Internet and apparently recorded in Iraq, a white sedan is riddled with bullets as it accelerates on an open highway.

    Framed as if on a movie screen by the outline of a sport-utility vehicle's rear window, those scenes and others show what appear to be private security contractors firing on Iraqi civilians. The video footage has prompted an investigation by the US military, a spokesman said Thursday, and by the company linked to the incidents. It even has a soundtrack: Elvis Presley's upbeat "Mystery Train."

    Details about the origin of the video clip and the location shown in it are unknown. It was originally posted last month on a Web site maintained by former employees of Aegis Specialist Risk Management, a London-based company that has a $293 million US government contract to provide security services in Iraq. The video has since been removed from the site.

    "Aegis has established a formal board of enquiry, in cooperation with the US military authorities, to investigate whether the footage has any connection with the company and, should this prove to be the case, under what circumstances any incident took place," the company said in a statement about the incident.

    A public relations representative for Aegis said the company's findings could come within the next week.

    "An investigation has been initiated, but we do not have any details at this time," Army Capt. Bill Roberts, a US military spokesman, said in an e-mail message Thursday.

    There are more than 25,000 private security contractors working in Iraq, according to industry estimates. In an effort to limit the number of US soldiers in Iraq, the military employs private contractors to handle jobs that would otherwise be performed by troops. But the conduct of security contractors has occasionally come under scrutiny, and Iraqi civilians and military commanders have charged that they shoot indiscriminately and flout local laws with impunity.

    The companies, whose employees have been frequent targets of insurgent attacks and perform some of the country's most dangerous jobs, such as guarding highway convoys, maintain that they use force only when necessary for protection. The rules of engagement "allow for a structured escalation of force to include opening fire on civilian vehicles under certain circumstances," Aegis said in its statement about the video.

    Aegis typically performs. 100 "escort assignments" per week on roads in Iraq, according to its Web site.

    But many Iraqis complain that the force used by contractors, who are immune from prosecution under an order signed into Iraqi law last year, is often excessive.

    "At least the police and army are recognized in the street, and they have the right to shoot because they are security forces," said Qasim Muhammed, 44, a Baghdad taxi driver. "But who gave those civilians the right to shoot?"

    The newly released video, which was broadcast widely on Arabic-language satellite television stations in recent days, shows no faces and contains few audible bits of dialogue. Because of that, identifying those involved will be difficult, a US military official said on condition of anonymity.

    The video contains four segments that appear to have been shot from the type of vehicle often used by security companies, and which often have cameras mounted in the back. In some of the segments, it cannot be determined where the bullets are striking. It is also not possible to determine whether anyone was injured in the shootings.

    In the first segment, a man's voice can be heard, along with the music, saying, "These two aren't stopping," as a white sedan emerges from the traffic and travels toward the camera. Machine-gun fire erupts, and the white car slows down. Then a van swings into the passing lane and begins to accelerate, and the machine gun sounds again, continuing to fire as the van fades into the distance.

    The scene quickly shifts to the silver Mercedes on a rural highway. In the third part of the video, someone in the vehicle with the camera throws what appears to be a smoke canister toward oncoming traffic, in an apparent attempt to encourage those vehicles to slow down. When they continue to advance, the vehicle with the camera slows to a crawl and the machine gun fires. An approaching red sedan swerves off the right side of the road.

    The final segment shows the white sedan being riddled with bullets, as a convoy of US military Humvees passes about 60 feet away on a parallel highway.

    Founded three years ago, Aegis is run by Tim Spicer, a former lieutenant colonel in the Scots Guards, a British army unit. A previous firm run by Spicer, Sandline International, was disbanded in the late 1990s after it was accused of breaking an embargo on the sale of arMs. to Sierra Leone.

    The site where the video was first posted does not belong to Aegis, according to a statement on its main page. "It belongs to the men and women on the ground who are the heart and soul of the company," the statement says.

    Another message on the site is said to have been posted by Spicer. "Remember that your job and those of your colleagues indirectly relies on the maintenance of our contract," it reads. "Refrain from posting anything which is detrimental to the company since this could result in the loss or curtailment of our contract with resultant loss for everybody."

    Although the video has been removed, its contents were debated on the message board attached to the Web site.

"although i haven't viewed this footage ive read a lot of posts condenming it. All i can say is if you havent been there you dont have a say," an anonymous poster wrote. "Its the lonliest job on the planet as im sure guys will agree. You and you alone have to make the decision wether to open fire or not."

    Other videos apparently shot by contractors have been made public in recent months. One circulating in Baghdad shows contractors returning fire after being ambushed on the road to Baghdad's international airport. At least one contractor in the video appears to have been killed.

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 Rice with Indefensible Brief; Cheney in Last Throes

    By Ray McGovern

    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Friday 09 December 2005

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    European reaction to visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's statements on torture can be summed up in lead commentary Wednesday in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, among the most widely respected German newspapers. Under the title "Justice à la Rice," the editor "translated" her message into these words: "The end justifies the means and terrorism can be fought with borderline methods on the outer edges of legality." He added: "Rice came to Germany to begin a new era. She has resoundingly failed to do so. Injustice remains injustice, and a wrong policy remains a wrong policy. On this basis you cannot re-launch the trans-Atlantic relationship."

    There was no mushroom cloud, but Rice is radioactive nonetheless. No matter how much she and the embedded reporters traveling with her tried to spin her words, they are falling on deaf ears in Europe. Even here at home, the administration is encountering unusual skepticism in the heretofore-domesticated media. The normally sleepy editorial side of the Washington Post, for example, found it possible to lead its first editorial yesterday by reminding readers that Rice broke no new ground in claiming Wednesday that US personnel - "wherever they are" - are prohibited from using cruel or inhuman interrogation techniques. This is hardly a profile in courage for the Post: The president's spokesman, Scott McClellan, had already told reporters that Rice was merely expressing existing policy.

    Trouble on the Home Front

    With attention riveted on the cause célèbre occasioned by revelations concerning CIA-run prisons abroad, kidnapping, and "extraordinary renditions" of captives to torture-prone foreign countries - and the predictably neuralgic reaction among our allies - it is easy to miss the likely political fallout here at home.

    Vice President Dick Cheney, whose unbridled chutzpah has led him to take public and well as private credit for being the intellectual author of US policy on torture, has become such a glaring liability that his tenure may be short-lived. There is a growing possibility that the vice president will resign at the turn of the year "for reasons of health," and that his partner-in-crime - in what Colin Powell's former chief of staff at the State Department, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, has labeled the "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" - will choose to retire to his home in Taos early next year.

    Never in the sixty years since World War II has an American secretary of state been received with such hostility by our erstwhile friends in Europe. In one sense, it can be seen as poetic justice that Rice, who as national security adviser to the president never heard a Cheney suggestion she didn't like, is taking the heat, while the vice president hides behind her skirts. Poetic justice for Cheney himself, though, may be just around the corner.

    It is no secret that Cheney bears primary responsibility for making our country a pariah among nations by punching a gaping hole in the (until now) absolute ban on torture under international and US law. Under international treaties, including treaties ratified by the US Senate and thus the supreme law of the land, civilized societies have long since prohibited practices widely recognized as torture. No matter. At the instigation of the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal, the inherent human right to physical integrity and personal dignity has become an early casualty of the US "war on terror."

    We did not need Col. Wilkerson to tell us that. What he has revealed in tracing responsibility for the US rogue policy on torture to the office of the vice president and Rumsfeld merely confirmed much of what is already known, but reported meagerly - if at all - in US media.

    Just five days after 9/11, the vice president told Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press:

    "We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side ... a lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies ... it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective."

    At that same time President George W. Bush reportedly issued instructions to the CIA to take a no-holds-barred approach when interrogating suspected terrorists and, according to counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, used colorful language to impress his attitude upon Clarke and Rumsfeld: "I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass." The head of the Counter-terrorism Center at the CIA conveyed the atmosphere quite well when he testified to Congress that after 9/11 "the gloves were off."

    This was the message conveyed to CIA director George Tenet, who dutifully marched off to find interrogators to be set loose on "suspected terrorists" likely to be captured in Afghanistan - and then Iraq. For it was clear from the start that Iraq, too, was in the gun sights of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the president himself.

    "Dark-side" operations, using "any means at our disposal" - like, say, "enhanced interrogation techniques" - by law require a "finding" signed by the president. Before signing, Bush would have sought the advice of his White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales - the more so, since this particular finding raised serious questions with regard not only to international law but also to US criminal statutes, and particularly the War Crimes Act of 1996 (18 U.S.C. 2441).

    Enter the (in)famous memorandum of January 25, 2002, from Gonzales to the president, in which some provisions of the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war were described as "quaint" and "obsolete." Referring to the US War Crimes Act, the author of that memorandum argued that there was a "reasonable basis in law" that Bush could escape future criminal prosecution for violating that law.

    Powell Protests ... Not Too Much

    Then-Secretary of State (and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Colin Powell protested, and his warning, which was inserted into the January 25 memorandum to the president, speaks volumes:

    "A determination that the GPW [Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War] does not apply to al-Qaeda and the Taliban could undermine US military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries."

    In a memo dated January 26, 2002, Powell also warned that such behavior by the US would "undermine public support among critical allies [and] reverse over a century of US policy and practice in supporting the Geneva conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for our own troops." But Powell was a day late and a penny short with these latter warnings. And it is altogether likely that then-national security adviser Rice, at the prompting of the cabal, never showed the president Powell's January 26 memorandum. As for the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush-shy Powell, he confined himself to sending memos to the president's lawyer.

    And so, on February 7, 2002, Bush signed the watershed memorandum telling our armed forces "to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva." Therein lies the gaping loophole that largely accounts for the widespread practice of torture of the kind so graphically represented in the photos from Abu Ghraib. It was not a "few bad apples" at the bottom. The bad apples were at the very top of the barrel.

    But Who Wrote the January 25 Memorandum?

    The author was Cheney's legal counsel, David Addington, whom the vice president had the gall to promote to be his chief of staff after I. Lewis ("Scooter") Libby was indicted. Addington's authorship has been openly acknowledged, and Cheney appears to regard it as a feather in Addington's cap. One searches in vain, however, for legal experts who support Addington's tortured (no pun intended) reasoning. Indeed, in November 2004, 130 prominent jurists - including twelve federal judges, eight former American Bar Association presidents, and former FBI director William Sessions - issued a highly unusual statement criticizing Addington and others by name for failing in their "high obligation to defend the Constitution."

    Bypassing the "Six Blind Mice"

    What is new is the willingness of patriotic officials within the government to put their country before their career and go to the media to blow the whistle on the various indignities and crimes they have witnessed. Those officials, initially cowed by the object lesson served up by White House retaliation against former ambassador Joseph Wilson, have become increasingly scandalized at the jettisoning of long accepted practices like those that used to govern interrogations. And so, officials with first-hand knowledge have now begun to come forward and tell what has been going on, in hopes of getting the country back on track. Cheney no longer has Libby to keep his finger in the dike to prevent leaks that are fast becoming a flood, and Karl Rove is preoccupied with his own efforts to avoid indictment.

    Most important, Cheney's formidable power has been deeply dented by the indictment of his closest aide Libby, and the vice president's unabashed support of torture has prompted old friends and colleagues like Gen. Brent Scowcroft to say, "I don't know Dick Cheney." Absolute power may still corrupt absolutely even when it is deeply dented, but then it is not as threatening to those with the courage to confront it.

    It is no surprise that patriotic truth-tellers within the government have chosen to go to the fourth estate rather than to a Congress controlled by the president's party. Their choice reflects a realization that little but trouble can be expected in seeking recourse from those who have become known as "the six blind mice" - Senators Pat Roberts, John Warner, and Richard Lugar, who chair the committees with jurisdiction in the Senate; and Congressmen Pete Hoekstra, Duncan Hunter, and Henry Hyde in the House.

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    Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was an analyst with the CIA for 27 years and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

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CONTENT:

The Case Against Secretary Rumsfeld

Defending American Values in Court – Torture Victims Visit United States Seeking Accountability and Justice

Human Rights First and the American Civil Liberties Union this week welcomed to the United States two of their clients who have brought a civil action against Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior members of the military seeking accountability for the torture and abuse they and other detainees suffered in U.S. detention facilities overseas. Their suit seeks, among other things, a federal court order declaring unlawful U.S. policies and practices permitting torture and other forms of abuse.

* Read the news clip on ABC News

* Read the blog on ABC News

Our visiting clients:

* Thahe Mohammed Sabbar

* Sherzad Kamal Khalid

Read the press release on the lawsuit
ARABIC VERSION (PDF 157KB)

Video of Press Conference
(03/01/05)

Listen to a Discussion of the Case
Against Rumsfeld

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Human Rights First, Military Leaders and ACLU Sue Defense Secretary Rumsfeld Over U.S. Torture Policies

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld bears direct responsibility for the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. custody, Human Rights First, the ACLU and military leaders charged in the first federal court lawsuit to name a top U.S. official in the ongoing torture scandal in Afghanistan and Iraq. The lawsuit was filed March 1, 2005 and announced at a press conference in Washington, DC. More»

(Updated 03/03/05)

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Our Statements

“This lawsuit presents the opportunity to make clear that the United States is still committed to the rule of law, and that every American, no matter how high-ranking, is bound to comply with those rules.”

– Michael Posner

Read Statement of Michael Posner,
HRF Executive Director, on the lawsuit

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“In dealing with detainees, the attitude at the top was that they are all just terrorists, beneath contempt and outside the law so they could be treated inhumanely. Our effort to gain information vitiated 200 years of history. International obligations didn’t matter, nor did morality or humanity. That attitude dropped like a rock down the chain of command, and we had Abu Ghraib and its progeny.”

– Rear Admiral John Hutson (Ret. USN),
of counsel to Human Rights First

Read Retired Rear Admiral John Hutson’s statement

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“Mr. Rumsfeld has made clear that he does not intend to accept responsibility for the patterns of misconduct emerging in the wake of his policy decisions. We feel the honor of our military is at stake. We owe it to those who still wear the uniform and continue to serve their country honorably to bring this suit. Mr. Rumsfeld's policies have stained our military's record for adherence to the rule of law and observance of human rights. We want to remove that stain.”

– Brig. Gen. James Cullen (Ret. USA),
of counsel to Human Rights First

Read Retired Brig. Gen. James Cullen’s statement

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The Case

Read more about the case

The legal basis for the case (PDF 39KB)

Read the complaint (PDF 433KB)

Legal Briefs and Order Concerning the Assignment of the Case to the District of Columbia Federal District Court

Memo in Support of Motion for Transfer (PDF 672KB)

Response in Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Transfer (PDF 273KB)

Brief in Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Transfer (PDF 841KB)

Reply in Support of Motion for Transfer (PDF 2.3MB)

Transfer Order (PDF 211KB)

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Timeline

This timeline outlines actions Secretary Rumsfeld took that led to abuse and the points at which he was informed of the consequences of his actions. More»

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The Clients

* Arkan Mohammed Ali

* Thahe Mohammed Sabbar

* Mehboob Ahmad

* Sherzad Kamal Khalid

* Said Nabi Siddiqi

* Mohammed Karim Shirullah

* Haji Abdul Rahman

* Ali H.

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Pentagon sticks with 2-war plan

By Rowan Scarborough

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Published December 9, 2005

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The Pentagon, in a major four-year decision, has decided to stick with having the capability of being able to fight two major conflicts at once, The Washington Times has learned.
    
Two officials said that when the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is completed next month, it will retain the requirement that the Pentagon maintain active forces and reserves able to repel and occupy an enemy in one war and defeat a second enemy but not necessarily occupy the capital.
  
  The decision is one of the most important that Pentagon leaders make every four years in the congressionally mandated QDR. From the two-war requirement, other major decisions flow, such as the number of active and reserve troops, fighter air wings and Navy carrier battle groups, and major weapons systems to be procured.
  
  Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is expected to approve the new QDR next month and present it to Congress in February. A Pentagon spokesman said no public comment on the QDR decisions would be issued until then.
   
 The 2005 QDR, two sources said, generally will endorse the current military strategy known as "1421."
   
 The first number represents defending the home front. The "four" is the ability to deter hostilities in four global regions. The "two" is the overriding requirement to defeat two enemies nearly simultaneously. The final "one" is having the capability of decisively defeating one of those enemies and occupying the country if necessary.
  
  Pentagon planning groups have been brainstorming over major QDR decisions for months and at one point considered reducing the military's two-war-plus requirement. But planners, using a tenet that came to be known as "operational availability," decided that a transformed force, even while being used in the global war on terror, still can meet its major war requirements.
   
 Officials think that transforming the 10-division active Army into 70 mobile brigades allows the service to meet future challenges with fewer soldiers.
  
  "The new brigades are so much more mobile and lethal than they used to be," said a senior defense official, citing better precision-guided weapons, improved intelligence links and shorter logistics tail. "They are easier to get to the fight. ... A new Army brigade has more firepower than an old Army division."
  
  Likewise, Navy planners think the fleet today, with 11 carrier battle groups instead of 12, represents more firepower because of better weapons and intelligence links.
 
   "We're able to be more lethal with lower numbers," said the source, who, like the other official, asked not to be named.
  
  In a speech Monday, Mr. Rumsfeld revealed his thinking as the QDR deadline neared.
 
   "I think if I had to pull out one lesson that we've learned over the past four or five years, it would be that in the 21st century we're going to have to stop thinking about things, numbers of things, and mass, and think also and maybe even first about speed and agility and precision," he said.
 
   "The Navy, for the sake of argument, has been able to go from X number of ships down to a much lower number," but each carrier group's firepower is "vastly greater than it was five years ago."
 
   The Pentagon is not likely to terminate any major weapons systems for the 2005 QDR, after killing the Army's next general scout-attack helicopter and self-propelled howitzer. Defense sources said planners may trim the Air Force's buy of F-22 Raptor stealth fighters and order the Army to restructure its Future Combat System, a network of armored vehicles and aircraft.

    Mr. Rumsfeld also shepherded the 2001 QDR, but it was being finalized on September 11, 2001, and planners did not have time to fully incorporate the war on terror into the document.
 
   Besides the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the Pentagon has created Northern Command, with the principal task of defending the United States, and empowered Special Operations Command to head the global war on terror.
    
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Copyright © 2005 News World Communications, Inc.

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Truth for the Troops

By Richard Cohen

Thursday, December 8, 2005; A33

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If, as Samuel Johnson said, "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," then "support our troops" is very close by. It is being used to deflect criticism of the war in Iraq, or to rebut those who call for a pullout or question how incompetents seized control of the government in a coup by ideologues. In the lexicon of some, the only way to support our troops is to ensure that more of them die.

The utter tastelessness of this approach was on display Tuesday when Vice President Cheney spoke to the 10th Mountain Division and the National Guard's 42nd Infantry Division at Fort Drum, N.Y. These are storied outfits. The Mountain Division is Bob Dole's own, and those of us who followed him as he campaigned for the presidency in 1996 will never forget the day in New Hampshire when some of the division's World War II veterans gathered to hear from their old comrade in arms. There was Dole, trying as ever to be stoical, but that day his voice cracked and emotion rocked him and, along the wall of the hall, a mighty cynical press corps fought hard to hold back the tears.

As for the 42nd Division, it is my own. Its famous Rainbow Patch -- Douglas MacArthur said "the 42nd Division stretches like a rainbow from one end of America to the other" -- is among my mementos. I make no great claim to military service -- I was a reluctant Vietnam-era enlistee in the National Guard -- but I trained at Fort Drum, wore the Rainbow Patch and keep it to this day on the bulletin board in my office. By accident and happenstance, it's my outfit. Somehow, it matters.

So I don't need any cheap reminders about supporting the troops. On the contrary, it's the other way around. It is the reminders who need reminding that they owe the troops the highest level of respect. That means, among other things, explaining clearly and honestly why they are being sent into harm's way. If that cannot be done -- if you cannot tell soldiers why they might die -- then you cannot send them. At the very least, you must stick to the strictest truth.

But Cheney was not strictly truthful. He turned the war in Iraq into a war against terrorism, when it is only partly that. The Sunni insurgents have no designs on America. And to say, as Cheney did, that terrorists "believe that, by controlling an entire country, they will be able to . . . establish a radical Islamic empire that encompasses a region from Spain, across North Africa, through the Middle East and South Asia, all the way to Indonesia" is to give credence to the fantasies of Islamic nut cases. This may or may not be the goal of certain terrorists, but it is clearly beyond their reach -- and no reason to fight in Iraq.

Similarly, Cheney once again implied a link between the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Saddam Hussein. His words were slippery, but his meaning was clear: "Some have suggested that by liberating Iraq . . . we simply stirred up a hornet's nest. They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq . . . and the terrorists hit us anyway." Yes, and the crowing of the rooster makes the sun come up. Cause and effect is being mocked here.

As I recently wrote, I do not favor an immediate pullout from Iraq -- not yet, anyway. The arguments advanced for staying make sense to me, and Cheney mentioned some of them in his speech. There is reason to fear civil war in Iraq, the country's dissolution, the creation of a haven for terrorists and the precipitous loss of American prestige, which could encourage even more terrorism.

But I do not fear the emergence of a vast, radical Islamic empire stretching from Granada to Jakarta, and neither do I believe that toppling Hussein dealt a blow to terrorists or made the United States one iota safer. Soon enough we will exceed in military deaths the number of civilians killed on Sept. 11 -- and the culprits, including Osama bin Laden, are still on the loose, still posing a threat. This is a policy that collapsed of its own stupidity.

By dint of heroic effort, the Bush administration long ago lost any credibility. But if we are going to stay in Iraq -- if additional Americans are going to be asked to die -- then Bush, Cheney and others should avoid emotionally compelling, but intellectually fatuous, arguments. As far as the troops are concerned, pay them the ultimate respect for their ultimate sacrifice: Stick to the truth.

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© 2005 The Washington Post Company