Rights Group: Abu Ghraib Abuses 'Tip of Iceberg'

Wed Apr 27, 2005 07:39 AM ET By Ian Simpson

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A rights watchdog said on Wednesday the abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison were just the "tip of the iceberg" of U.S. mistreatment of Muslim prisoners.

The abuses at Abu Ghraib are part of a larger pattern of U.S. rights violations of detainees in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, New York-based Human Rights Watch said.

Its summary of accusations of abuses came on the eve of the first anniversary of publication of photos showing humiliation and mistreatment of prisoners at the Iraqi jail.

"Abu Ghraib was only the tip of the iceberg," Reed Brody, special counsel for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

"It's now clear that abuse of detainees has happened all over -- from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay to a lot of third-country dungeons where the United States has sent prisoners. And probably quite a few other places we don't even know about."

The group said it was concerned the United States had not stopped the use of what it called illegal coercive interrogation.

It said nine detainees were known to have died in U.S. custody in Afghanistan. At least 11 al Qaeda suspects have also "disappeared" in U.S. custody, with no evidence of where they are being held.

It said there was growing evidence that prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on suspicion of links to radical Islamic groups "have suffered torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment."

Abuses there include chained detainees being forced to sit in their own excrement, Human Rights Watch said.

The CIA has also transferred up to 150 prisoners to countries in the Middle East known to practice torture routinely, the group added.

The U.S. military says its treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay is humane and justified and says it has changed some of its policies in Iraq since the abuses at Abu Ghraib, which included sexual humiliation of detainees.

The photographs depicting U.S. forces mistreating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, once a notorious prison under Saddam Hussein, triggered international criticism of U.S policies.

The former U.S. commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, was cleared of wrongdoing by an army panel last week. The head of the military police unit at Abu Ghraib received a letter of reprimand and was relieved of her command.

US rights groups call for special prosecutor to probe alleged torture

Sunday April 24, 12:51 PM Agence France-Presse
US rights groups call for special prosecutor to probe alleged torture

US rights groups called for a special prosecutor to look into the alleged torture of war prisoners in the wake of a Pentagon report that cleared top US army officers of wrongdoing in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch say responsibility in the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere lies in the top echelons and not just on rank-and-file soldiers.

In the Pentagon report, only Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who commanded a military police unit found responsible for sexually humiliating prisoners, forcing them into stress positions and intimidating them with guard dogs, was relieved of her command and is being recommended for a career-ending reprimand, defense officials said late Friday.

However, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, who as commander of US forces in Iraq from June 2003 to July 2004 had briefly issued a set of tough interrogation guidelines that some say had encouraged the abuse, was fully exonerated, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The probe, completed by Army Inspector General Lieutenant General Stanley Green, comes on the heels of a slew of independent and internal Pentagon investigations undertaken since April 2004, when information about the pervasive abuse at Abu Ghraib leaked into the media.

The White House would not confirm the contents of the latest report, but a spokeswoman said detainee abuse would not be tolerated.

"The United States does not tolerate wrongdoing when it comes to detainees. When we find it we act to hold those responsible to account and take steps to prevent it from happening again," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

But the American Civil Liberties Union denounced the report and called for a special prosecutor to look into torture allegations against US troops. The group has released thousands of pages of internal military documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

The documents "clearly show that the command breakdown that led to these abuses was more than the work of one scapegoated officer," ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said.

"As we continue to receive more information, the government cannot ignore the systematic nature of the torture that implicates the military chain of command to the very top."

Separately, Human Rights Watch demanded that a special prosecutor be named to investigate US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet and other top officials for possible war crimes related to the torture and abuse of prisoners.

The rights group argues that evidence indicates that decisions and policies made by Rumsfeld and other high-ranking officials facilitated widespread abuse of prisoners in violation of US and international law, notably the Geneva Conventions.

It cited mounting evidence that they knew or should have known violations took place, and failed to act to stem the abuse, making them legally liable for the actions of subordinates further down the chain of command.

The report also cites Sanchez and Major General Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of a military-run detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Seven rank-and-file soldiers who had been assigned to guard duty at Abu Ghraib have been charged with physically and sexually abusing the detainees. Five of them have already been found guilty or pleaded guilty, while two courts-martial are still pending.

Several officers have received non-judicial punishment.

But top US commanders in Iraq have largely escaped punishment despite allegations some of them might have tacitly encouraged soldiers to rough up prisoners in order to "soften" them before interrogation.

The Green report sought to address these concerns, but found fault only with Karpinski, who is accused of failing to provide proper oversight of her troops, the defense officials said.

Though not released to the public, the document is seen as the military's final word in the year-long saga that has tarnished the reputation of the US armed forces and fueled multiple calls for Rumsfeld's resignation.

According to defense sources, the other officials cleared include Sanchez's former deputy, Major General Walter Wojdakowski, who stood accused of failing to staff the prison with better trained guards, Major General Barbara Fast, the former chief intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, and Colonel Marc Warren, the command's top legal officer.

All continue to hold top jobs in the US military. Sanchez, for example, is now commander of the Army Fifth Corps in Germany, while Fast has been given command of an Army intelligence center at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

However, the findings appear to contradict last year's report by an independent panel led by former defense secretary James Schlesinger, who argued that commanders should be held accountable "for their action or inaction."

Bloodied Marines Sound Off About Want of Armor and Men

By MICHAEL MOSS NYTimes Published: April 25, 2005

On May 29, 2004, a station wagon that Iraqi insurgents had packed with C-4 explosives blew up on a highway in Ramadi, killing four American marines who died for lack of a few inches of steel.

The four were returning to camp in an unarmored Humvee that their unit had rigged with scrap metal, but the makeshift shields rose only as high as their shoulders, photographs of the Humvee show, and the shrapnel from the bomb shot over the top.

"The steel was not high enough," said Staff Sgt. Jose S. Valerio, their motor transport chief, who along with the unit's commanding officers said the men would have lived had their vehicle been properly armored. "Most of the shrapnel wounds were to their heads."

Among those killed were Rafael Reynosa, a 28-year-old lance corporal from Santa Ana, Calif., whose wife was expecting twins, and Cody S. Calavan, a 19-year-old private first class from Lake Stevens, Wash., who had the Marine Corps motto, Semper Fidelis, tattooed across his back.

They were not the only losses for Company E during its six-month stint last year in Ramadi. In all, more than one-third of the unit's 185 troops were killed or wounded, the highest casualty rate of any company in the war, Marine Corps officials say.

In returning home, the leaders and Marine infantrymen have chosen to break an institutional code of silence and tell their story, one they say was punctuated not only by a lack of armor, but also by a shortage of men and planning that further hampered their efforts in battle, destroyed morale and ruined the careers of some of their fiercest warriors.

The saga of Company E, part of a lionized battalion nicknamed the Magnificent Bastards, is also one of fortitude and ingenuity. The marines, based at Camp Pendleton in southern California, had been asked to rid the provincial capital of one of the most persistent insurgencies, and in enduring 26 firefights, 90 mortar attacks and more than 90 homemade bombs, they shipped their dead home and powered on. Their tour has become legendary among other Marine units now serving in Iraq and facing some of the same problems.

"As marines, we are always taught that we do more with less," said Sgt. James S. King, a platoon sergeant who lost his left leg when he was blown out of the Humvee that Saturday afternoon last May. "And get the job done no matter what it takes."

The experiences of Company E's marines, pieced together through interviews at Camp Pendleton and by phone, company records and dozens of photographs taken by the marines, show they often did just that. The unit had less than half the troops who are now doing its job in Ramadi, and resorted to making dummy marines from cardboard cutouts and camouflage shirts to place in observation posts on the highway when it ran out of men. During one of its deadliest firefights, it came up short on both vehicles and troops. Marines who were stranded at their camp tried in vain to hot-wire a dump truck to help rescue their falling brothers. That day, 10 men in the unit died.

Sergeant Valerio and others had to scrounge for metal scraps to strengthen the Humvees they inherited from the National Guard, which occupied Ramadi before the marines arrived. Among other problems, the armor the marines slapped together included heavier doors that could not be latched, so they "chicken winged it" by holding them shut with their arms as they traveled.

"We were sitting out in the open, an easy target for everybody," Cpl. Toby G. Winn of Centerville, Tex., said of the shortages. "We complained about it every day, to anybody we could. They told us they were listening, but we didn't see it."

The company leaders say it is impossible to know how many lives may have been saved through better protection, since the insurgents became adept at overcoming improved defenses with more powerful weapons. Likewise, Pentagon officials say they do not know how many of the more than 1,500 American troops who have died in the war had insufficient protective gear.

But while most of Company E's work in fighting insurgents was on foot, the biggest danger the men faced came in traveling to and from camp: 13 of the 21 men who were killed had been riding in Humvees that failed to deflect bullets or bombs.

Toward the end of their tour when half of their fleet had become factory-armored, the armor's worth became starkly clear. A car bomb that the unit's commander, Capt. Kelly D. Royer, said was at least as powerful as the one on May 29 showered a fully armored Humvee with shrapnel, photographs show. The marines inside were left nearly unscathed.

Captain Royer, from Orangevale, Calif., would not accompany his troops home. He was removed from his post six days before they began leaving Ramadi, accused by his superiors of being dictatorial, records show. His defenders counter that his commanding style was a necessary response to the extreme circumstances of his unit's deployment.

Company E's experiences still resonate today both in Iraq, where two more marines were killed last week in Ramadi by the continuing insurgency, and in Washington, where Congress is still struggling to solve the Humvee problem. Just on Thursday, the Senate voted to spend an extra $213 million to buy more fully armored Humvees. The Army's procurement system, which also supplies the Marines, has come under fierce criticism for underperforming in the war, and to this day it has only one small contractor in Ohio armoring new Humvees.

Marine Corps officials disclosed last month in Congressional hearings that they were now going their own way and had undertaken a crash program to equip all of their more than 2,800 Humvees in Iraq with stronger armor. The effort went into production in November and is to be completed at the end of this year.

Defense Department officials acknowledged that Company E lacked enough equipment and men, but said that those were problems experienced by many troops when the insurgency intensified last year, and that vigorous efforts had been made to improve their circumstances.

Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis of Richland, Wash., who commanded the First Marine Division to which Company E belongs, said he had taken every possible step to support Company E. He added that they had received more factory-armored Humvees than any other unit in Iraq.

"We could not encase men in sufficiently strong armor to deny any enemy success," General Mattis said. "The tragic loss of our men does not necessarily indicate failure - it is war."

Trouble From the Start

Company E's troubles began at Camp Pendleton when, just seven days before the unit left for Iraq, it lost its first commander. The captain who led them through training was relieved for reasons his supervisor declined to discuss.

"That was like losing your quarterback on game day," said First Sgt. Curtis E. Winfree.

In Kuwait, where the unit stopped over, an 18-year-old private committed suicide in a chapel. Then en route to Ramadi, they lost the few armored plates they had earmarked for their vehicles when the steel was borrowed by another unit that failed to return it. Company E tracked the steel down and took it back.

Even at that, the armor was mostly just scrap and thin, and they needed more for the unarmored Humvees they inherited from the Florida National Guard.

"It was pitiful," said Capt. Chae J. Han, a member of a Pentagon team that surveyed the Marine camps in Iraq last year to document their condition. "Everything was just slapped on armor, just homemade, not armor that was given to us through the normal logistical system."

The report they produced was classified, but Captain Royer, who took over command of the unit, and other Company E marines say they had to build barriers at the camp - a former junkyard - to block suicide drivers, improve the fencing and move the toilets under a thick roof to avoid the insurgent shelling.

Even some maps they were given to plan raids were several years old, showing farmland where in fact there were homes, said a company intelligence expert, Cpl. Charles V. Lauersdorf, who later went to work for the Defense Intelligence Agency. There, he discovered up-to-date imagery that had not found its way to the front lines.

Ramadi had been quiet under the National Guard, but the Marines had orders to root out an insurgency that was using the provincial capital as a way station to Falluja and Baghdad, said Lt. Col. Paul J. Kennedy, who oversaw Company E as the commander of its Second Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment.

Before the company's first month was up, Lance Cpl. William J. Wiscowiche of Victorville, Calif., lay dead on the main highway as its first casualty. The Marine Corps issued a statement saying only that he had died in action. But for Company E, it was the first reality check on the constraints that would mark their tour.

Sweeping for Bombs

A British officer had taught them to sweep the roads for bombs by boxing off sections and fanning out troops into adjoining neighborhoods in hopes of scaring away insurgents poised to set off the bombs. "We didn't have the time to do that," said Sgt. Charles R. Sheldon of Solana Beach, Calif. "We had to clear this long section of highway, and it usually took us all day."

Now and then a Humvee would speed through equipped with an electronic device intended to block detonation of makeshift bombs. The battalion, which had five companies in its fold, had only a handful of the devices, Colonel Kennedy said.

Company E had none, even though sweeping roads for bombs was one of its main duties. So many of the marines, like Corporal Wiscowiche, had to rely on their eyes. On duty on March 30, 2004, the 20-year-old lance corporal did not spot the telltale three-inch wires sticking out of the dust until he was a few feet away, the company's leaders say. He died when the bomb was set off.

"We had just left the base," Corporal Winn said. "He was walking in the middle of the road, and all I remember is hearing a big explosion and seeing a big cloud of smoke."

The endless task of walking the highways for newly hidden I.E.D.'s, or improvised explosive devices, "was nerve wracking," Corporal Winn said, and the company began using binoculars and the scopes on their rifles to spot the bombs after Corporal Wiscowiche was killed.

"Halfway through the deployment marines began getting good at spotting little things," Sergeant Sheldon added. "We had marines riding down the road at 60 miles an hour, and they would spot a copper filament sticking out of a block of cement."

General Mattis said troops in the area now have hundreds of the electronic devices to foil the I.E.D.'s.

In parceling out Ramadi, the Marine Corps leadership gave Company E more than 10 square miles to control, far more than the battalion's other companies. Captain Royer said he had informally asked for an extra platoon, or 44 marines, and had been told the battalion was seeking an extra company. The battalion's operations officer, Maj. John D. Harrill, said the battalion had received sporadic assistance from the Army and had given Company E extra help. General Mattis says he could not pull marines from another part of Iraq because "there were tough fights going on everywhere."

Colonel Kennedy said Company E's area was less dense, but the pressure it put on the marines came to a boil on April 6, 2004, when the company had to empty its camp - leaving the cooks to guard the gates - to deal with three firefights.

Ten of its troops were killed that day, including eight who died when the Humvee they were riding in was ambushed en route to assist other marines under fire. That Humvee lacked even the improvised steel on the back where most of the marines sat, Company E leaders say.

"All I saw was sandbags, blood and dead bodies," Sergeant Valerio said. "There was no protection in the back."

Captain Royer said more armor would not have even helped. The insurgents had a .50-caliber machine gun that punched huge holes through its windshield. Only a heavier combat vehicle could have withstood the barrage, he said, but the unit had none. Defense Department officials have said they favored Humvees over tanks in Iraq because they were less imposing to civilians.

The Humvee that trailed behind that day, which did have improvised armor, was hit with less powerful munitions, and the marines riding in it survived by hunkering down. "The rounds were pinging," Sergeant Sheldon said. "Then in a lull they returned fire and got out."

Captain Royer said that he photographed the Humvees in which his men died to show to any official who asked about the condition of their armor, but that no one ever did.

Sergeant Valerio redoubled his effort to fortify the Humvees by begging other branches of the military for scraps. "How am I going to leave those kids out there in those Humvees," he recalled asking himself.

The company of 185 marines had only two Humvees and three trucks when it arrived, so just getting them into his shop was a logistical chore, Sergeant Valerio said. He also worried that the steel could come loose in a blast and become deadly shrapnel.


For the gunners who rode atop, Sergeant Valerio stitched together bulletproof shoulder pads into chaps to protect their legs.

"That guy was amazing," First Sgt. Bernard Coleman said. "He was under a vehicle when a mortar landed, and he caught some in the leg. When the mortar fire stopped, he went right back to work."

A Captain's Fate

Lt. Sean J. Schickel remembers Captain Royer asking a high-ranking Marine Corps visitor whether the company would be getting more factory-armored Humvees. The official said they had not been requested and that there were production constraints, Lieutenant Schickel said.

Recalls Captain Royer: "I'm thinking we have our most precious resource engaged in combat, and certainly the wealth of our nation can provide young, selfless men with what they need to accomplish their mission. That's an erudite way of putting it. I have a much more guttural response that I won't give you."

Captain Royer was later relieved of command. General Mattis and Colonel Kennedy declined to discuss the matter. His first fitness report, issued on May 31, 2004, after the company's deadliest firefights, concluded, "He has single-handedly reshaped a company in sore need of a leader; succeeded in forming a cohesive fighting force that is battle-tested and worthy."

The second, on Sept. 1, 2004, gave him opposite marks for leadership. "He has been described on numerous occasions as 'dictatorial,' " it said. "There is no morale or motivation in his marines." His defenders say he drove his troops as hard as he drove himself, but was wrongly blamed for problems like armor. "Captain Royer was a decent man that was used for a dirty job and thrown away by his chain of command," Sergeant Sheldon said.

Today, Captain Royer is at Camp Pendleton contesting his fitness report, which could force him to retire. Company E is awaiting deployment to Okinawa, Japan. Some members have moved to other units, or are leaving the Marines altogether.

"I'm checking out," Corporal Winn said. "When I started, I wanted to make it my career. I've had enough."

UN Investigator Who Exposed US Army Abuse Forced Out of His Job

By Nick Meo in Kabul 25 April 2005

The UN's top human rights investigator in Afghanistan has been forced out under American pressure just days after he presented a report criticising the US military for detaining suspects without trial and holding them in secret prisons.

Cherif Bassiouni had needled the US military since his appointment a year ago, repeatedly trying, without success, to interview alleged Taliban and al-Qa'ida prisoners at the two biggest US bases in Afghanistan, Kandahar and Bagram.

Mr Bassiouni's report had highlighted America's policy of detaining prisoners without trial and lambasted coalition officials for barring independent human rights monitors from its bases.

Prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region are held at US bases, often before being shipped to Guantanamo Bay. Human Rights Watch called on Saturday for a US special prosecutor to investigate the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and Charles Tenet, the former-CIA director, for torture and abuse of detainees in jails around the world, including Abu Ghraib in Iraq. They should be held responsible under the doctrine of "command responsibility," it said.

On Friday, the US army investigation into the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib cleared four out of five top officers of responsibility for the scandal which shocked the world when it broke a year ago. The only officer recommended for punishment is Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of Iraqi prisons at the time.

The UN eliminated Mr Bassiouni's job last week after Washington had pressed for his mandate to be changed so that it would no longer cover the US military.

Just days earlier, the Egyptian-born law professor, now based in Chicago, had presented his criticisms in a 24-page report to the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.

The report, based on a year spent travelling around Afghanistan interviewing Afghans, international agency staff and the Afghan Human Rights Commission, estimated that around 1,000 Afghans had been detained and accused US troops of breaking into homes, arresting residents and abusing them.

Top Army Officers Are Cleared in Abuse Cases

By Josh White The Washington Post Saturday 23 April 2005

One General will likely get reprimand over Abu Ghraib.

An Army inspector general's report has cleared senior Army officers of wrongdoing in the abuse of military prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere, government officials familiar with the findings said yesterday.

The only Army general officer recommended for punishment for the failures that led to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan is Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, who was in charge of U.S. prison facilities in Iraq as commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade in late 2003 and early 2004. Several sources said Karpinski is expected to receive an administrative reprimand for dereliction of duty.

The report put no blame on Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez.

Karpinski, who has said she would fight such a charge, did not return calls yesterday. Her attorney, Neal A. Puckett, has not seen the report but said other general officers share responsibility for shortfalls. "I don't think it's fair, and it continues to make her the scapegoat for this entire situation, which has been her feeling all along," Puckett said.

The investigation essentially found no culpability on the part of Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez and three of his senior deputies, ruling that allegations they failed to prevent or stop abuses were "unsubstantiated." A military source said a 10-member team began the investigation in October and based its conclusions on the 10 major defense inquiries into abuse and interviews with 37 senior officials, including L. Paul Bremer, who led the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. The report has not been released.

Of those 10 major inquiries, the inspector general's was designed to be the Army's final word on the responsibility of senior leadership in relation to the abuses. It was the only investigation designed to assign blame, if any, within the Army's senior leadership. Questions about Sanchez's and other senior leaders' role in approving harsh interrogation tactics - including the use of military working dogs to intimidate detainees - have swirled since photographs of abuse at Abu Ghraib surfaced almost exactly a year ago.

Army officials said yesterday that they have identified 125 soldiers and officers who were either tried at courts-martial or issued administrative punishments for detainee abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. So far, seven low-ranking soldiers have faced the most serious charges in the sexual humiliation and physical abuse cases arising out of Abu Ghraib; five have pleaded guilty or have been found guilty, and two have courts-martial scheduled for next month. Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., who was characterized as the ringleader of the abuses there, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The administrative reprimand Karpinski is expected to receive is the kind of punishment that can end a military career, and officials said it is possible she could be relieved of her command as a result.

Sources close to the investigation said two high-ranking military intelligence officers who worked at Abu Ghraib - Col. Thomas M. Pappas and Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan - could face criminal charges or disciplinary measures for their roles at the prison. Both supervised interrogations, and Sanchez ultimately gave them responsibility for the entire Abu Ghraib operation.

"The dereliction happened at the brigade level and below," said one defense official familiar with the report.

In a statement released by the Army yesterday, Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the top Army spokesman, did not comment on the inspector general's findings but said the Army has thoroughly investigated the abuses. In the 10 major investigations, more than 1,700 people have been interviewed and more than 15,000 pages of documents assembled, according to the Army.

"We will not rush to judgment in these cases or in any others," Brooks said. "The recommendations and decisions are consistent with, and appropriate to, the findings of these very thorough investigations."

Top-level investigations into the abuses have largely stopped short of calling them systemic, but some found major problems with the way detention operations in Iraq were conducted after President Bush declared major combat in Iraq over in April 2003. A lack of planning and resources, the reports generally agreed, led to the U.S. detention system getting overwhelmed and fostered frustration with a lack of actionable intelligence with which to fight the insurgency. In addition, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have since proposed an overhaul of the military's wartime detention operations.

Previous inquiries have addressed the roles of distinct military disciplines at the prisons. Some of the probes identified senior leadership as being indirectly responsible for the climate that led to abuses but made no findings on culpability. Responsibility for such findings was given to the Army inspector general.

A comprehensive report about Abu Ghraib by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay concluded that there were failures at the highest levels, mainly in oversight lapses. He found that Sanchez and his deputy "failed to ensure proper staff oversight of detention and interrogation operations" and "reacted inadequately" to warnings that abuse was occurring.

Sanchez's top intelligence adviser, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, learned of abuses in late 2003 after commissioning an independent investigation, but the Abu Ghraib abuses did not get command attention until January 2004, when a soldier turned over digital photographs of some of the abuses.

Fast, who recently assumed command of the Army's intelligence center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., also was cleared of wrongdoing.

An overarching, independent analysis of the abuses by James R. Schlesinger said senior leadership should bear responsibility. "Commanders are responsible for all their units do or fail to do, and should be held accountable for their action or inaction," the report said.

Although the Army has not officially announced the results of the investigation, senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee staff were briefed on the results this week, Hill staff members said. Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the committee, attended a portion of the briefing. Staff members with Sen. Carl M. Levin's (D-Mich.) office were briefed, but a spokesperson for Levin declined to comment on the issue.

Warner has been adamant about getting to the bottom of senior leadership responsibility, and he issued a statement yesterday in which he said it is "absolutely essential to determine what went wrong, up and down the chain of command, both civilian and military."

Warner did not specifically address the findings, but he vowed to have another Armed Services Committee hearing about detainee abuses after the reviews are complete, saying that he wants "to examine the adequacy of those reviews, and to offer the opportunity to senior Department and military leadership to address the issue of accountability."

Bush Lies, America Cries This just in: Global terrorism rates are higher than any time since 1985. Thanks, Dubya!

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Friday, April 22, 2005

Oh my God I feel so much safer. Don't you?

I mean, don't you feel so much more secure in your all-American gun-totin' oil-happy lifestyle now that we have wasted upward of $300 billion worth of your child's future education budget, along with 1,600 disposable young American lives and over 20,000 innocent Iraqi lives and about 10,000 severed American limbs and untold wads of our spiritual and moral currency, all to protect America from terrorism that is, by every account, only getting worse? Nastier? More nebulous? More anti-American?

Here's something funny, in a rip-your-patriotic-heart-out-and-spit-on-it sort of way: Just last week, BushCo's State Department decided to kill the publication of an annual report on international terrorism. Why? Well, because the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985. Isn't that hilarious? Isn't that heartwarming? Your tax dollars at work, sweetheart.

Lest you forget, this is what they do. They trim. They edit. They censor. BushCo kills what they do not like and fudges negative data where they see fit and completely rewrites whatever the hell they want, and that includes bogus WMD reports and CIA investigations and dire environmental studies and scientific proofs about everything from evolution to abortion and pollution and clean air, right along with miserable unemployment data and all manner of research pointing up the ill health of the nation, the spirit, the world.

In other words, if BushCo doesn't like what comes out of their own hobbled agencies and their own funded studies, they do what any good dictatorship does: They annihilate it. Now that's good gummint!

Let's be clear: The obliteration of the National Counterterrorism Center report merely goes to prove what so many of us already know -- that BushCo's brutish and borderline traitorous actions since they leveraged 9/11 to blatantly screw the nation have done exactly nothing to stem the tide of terrorism -- and, in fact, have, by most every measure, apparently increased the threat of terrorism. In other words, the world is a more dangerous place because of George W. Bush. Is that clear enough?

Let's put it another way: Under Bush, in the past five years, the U.S. has made zero new friends. But we have made a huge number of new and increasingly venomous enemies. And no, they don't hate us because of our malls, Dubya. They don't hate us because of our freedoms. They don't hate us because of our low-cut jeans and our moronic 8 mpg Ford Expeditions or our corrupt Diebold voting system that snuck you into office.

They hate us, George, because of our policies. Anti-Muslim. Pro-Israel. Oil-uber-alles. Anti-U.N. Anti-Kyoto. Anti-planet. Pro-war. Pro-insularity. Pseudo-swagger. Bogus staged "town hall" meetings stocked with prescreened monosyllabic Bush sycophants. Ego. Empire.

But here's the truly sad part, the hideous and depressing and soul-shredding part about all those young kids in the U.S. military right now, all those mostly undereducated, lower-middle-class kids, most of whom aren't even old enough to buy beer and many of whom have barely had sex and many who got sucked into the military vortex in an honest attempt to help pay for a college education so they could go out and not find a decent job in this miserable economy. The sad part is all those kids in the military who've been trained/brainwashed to believe they are serving in Iraq to protect America's freedom, to protect us from, well, something dark, and sinister, and deadly. When in fact, they're not. Not even close.

The truth is, we were never under threat from Iraq. There were never any WMDs, and Bush knew it. Our military is protecting nothing so much as our access to future stores of petroleum, nothing so much as helping set up a giant police station in Iraq to ensure surrounding nations don't get all uppity about just who controls the rights to those oil fields.

So let's get honest and just ask it outright: Is this a worthy use of the massive bloated machine that is the U.S. military? Of the largest and most advanced fighting force in the world? To protect the flow of oil to the most gluttonous and wasteful and least accountable developed nation on the planet? Is this worth so many young American lives?

You already know the answer. Ask any oil exec. Any government economist. Any BushCo war hawk or auto manufacturer or the leaders of any major manufacturing industry. Ask the president himself. They all say the same thing: You're goddamn right it is.

Here, then, is the warped, convoluted irony: We went to war under the lie of a Saddam-fueled terrorism threat that never existed. We are at war, instead, to protect our oil and to establish regional control, an act that, in turn, has destabilized the Middle East even further and is actually inciting much of the very terrorism we were ostensibly there to battle in the first place, thus producing a level of anti-U.S. hatred not even a (still alive and apparently very chipper) Osama bin Laden could have wet dreamed. Isn't democracy fun?

We are not "spreading democracy" by invading Iraq. We are not giving a gift of a more peaceable Iraq to a grateful world. That is merely insidious Republican PR spin. Right now, the U.S. military is, in short, protecting your right to a $3 gallon of gas, which will soon be $4 and then maybe $5 and $6 as we are running out of the stuff faster than anyone thought and the fight for that which remains will only turn uglier and more violent and so I have to ask again, do you feel safer?

Because if you say yes, you are, quite simply, lying. Or delusional. Or you have had your brain edited by BushCo. Or those are some mighty powerful drugs you are obviously taking and you might wish to consider switching to aspirin and wine and Fleshbot.com.

They say that violence is the last refuge of a desperate nation. And violence under the guise of secrecy and outright lie such as BushCo has foisted upon the nation is the last refuge of a nation of thugs. Yes, I'm looking at you, Rummy. I'm looking at you, Cheney. I'm not looking at you, Karl Rove, because looking at you makes my colon clench and looking at you makes birds die and looking at you makes small children feel hopeless and lost, like the world is full of black venomous hate and bilious condescension that is aimed squarely at their heads, like a gun.

It's true. We are living in a nation run by overprivileged alcoholic frat boys and power-mad thugs. This much we know. This much we need to be reminded of, over and over again, until we finally wake up.

Ah, but there is good news. There is always good news. The good news is, they are now confiscating all cigarette lighters at the airport. In the name of safety. In the name of homeland security. In the name of America, apple pie, babies, puppies, Jesus and guns. Lighters are now forbidden on all air travel. I mean, thank God. I feel safer already.

Guardsman in Iraq Tells Local Paper Armor for Vehicles Still Inadequate

Editor & Publisher Thursday 07 April 2005

New York - When a National Guardsman in Kuwait, with some encouragement from a Tennessee reporter, questioned Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld about lack of armor on vehicles in Iraq last December it drew national attention, and helped spark military efforts to upgrade the protection. Now another guardsman has sent a letter to a local newspaper indicating that progress in this area still needs the Pentagon's attention.

Tom Loftus, reporter for the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal, opened his story Thursday this way: "Kentucky Army National Guard soldiers in Iraq are being put at risk because their trucks are unreliable, poorly armored and lack protective glass, according to a guardsman stationed in Iraq."

He revealed that Staff Sgt. Brad Rogers, 33, had declared in e-mails to the paper on Wednesday that Kentucky National Guardsman Sgt. James A. Sherrill might have survived a bomb attack Sunday if his truck had protective glass.

"We have great people and great leadership. I just want answers on why we can't get better equipment with full armor including ballistic windows," Rogers wrote. "They need to stop these missions until we get these things."

The paper said that the Kentucky National Guard said Rogers' claims are being reviewed. "We have done and will continue to do everything in our power to ensure that our soldiers have the very best equipment they can, and that any deficiencies will be corrected as soon as possible," the statement read.

Sandra Rogers told Loftus that her husband had informed her recently that his unit's trucks are inferior to those used by regular active-duty military units. "He's not a rookie. He knows the difference between what regular active gets and what they're getting. He's a very reputable man," she said. The couple has two children and live in Hebron.

Rogers wrote in an email to the newspaper: "The only thing we have is what they call 'hillbilly armor,' which consists of one armor panel on the passenger side and one armor panel on the driver's side."

Rogers said Sherrill's death inspired him to issue his warning, hoping to alert the media and lawmakers: "I know these things that happen in war. I was in Desert Storm. This didn't have to happen, and this shouldn't have happened."

Abu Gharib attack wounds 56

Abu Gharib attack wounds 56
The Independent

BAGHDAD, April 3. — Heavily armed insurgents launched an audacious attack on the notorious Abu Gharib prison in Iraq, wounding 44 American soldiers and 12 prisoners, the US military said today.

The night-time raid, later claimed by the self proclaimed Al-Qaida wing in Iraq, targeted an outbuilding with two suicide car bombs and followed up with a further explosion, small arms fire and grenades in an hour-long fire fight.

In a statement, posted on a website that regularly carries extremist Islamic material, it was claimed “snipers” fired more than 39 Katyusha rockets at US forces before militants detonated several suicide car bombs at the prison’s main gates.

“Columns of smoke were seen rising from the crusaders’ bases,” the statement said. “This battle is part of a series of raids... which began yesterday across the land of Mesopotamia.” The group said it would provide a film of the attack soon.

It was believed to be the largest and most determined attack on Abu Gharib, a prison where more than 3,000 suspected insurgents are held in US detention and which was at the centre of a prisoner abuse scandal last year.

A spokesman said the fighting kicked off at 7 p.m. yesterday as the sun began to set when a car bomb exploded at the prison’s southeast corner, followed by rocket-propelled grenades, small arms and mortar fire, the spokesman said. “Some of the fire was from nearby buildings.” A second car bomb went off soon after somewhere on the prison’s northern side, as the insurgents pressed their assault, he added.

US soldiers returned fire with automatic weapons and 50 millimetre calibre shells, while three Apache attack helicopters were deployed overhead but did not open fire, he said. At least one insurgent was killed, he added. Six US soldiers and one detainee were take out to other medical facilities, with one of them flown to Germany. US troops had been on high alert for a rebel offensive.