Iraq exhibit to show work depicting Rumsfeld Boots deliver message 'America rules world' | |
| by Hamza Hendawi | |
| BAGHDAD—The photo both enraged and inspired Muayad Muhsin: U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sitting back in an airplane seat, his feet — in heavy army boots — stretched out in front of him. "It symbolized America's soulless might and arrogance," said Muhsin, whose painting of Rumsfeld in a similar pose is to be unveiled in an exhibition opening in Baghdad on Monday.
After President George W. Bush, most Iraqis see Rumsfeld as the man behind the invasion of their oil-rich country and the chief architect of U.S. military actions in Iraq. Those who closely follow Rumsfeld remember his infamous comment — "Stuff happens" — when asked why U.S. troops did not actively seek to stop the lawlessness in the Iraqi capital in the weeks that followed the city's capture in April 2003. Another memorable Rumsfeld comment, also made in 2003, was his suggestion that Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction were deeply hidden in Iraq. "It's a big country," he said. Muhsin first saw the Rumsfeld photo about 18 months ago. He went to work right away, but did not finish the painting — titled "Picnic" — until recently. The oil-on-canvas work shows Rumsfeld in a blue jacket, tie, khaki pants and army boots reading from briefing papers. His boots are resting on what appears to be an ancient stone.He sits next to a partially damaged statue of a lion standing over a human — a traditional image of strength in ancient Babylon. The statue's stone base is ripped open, revealing shelves from which white pieces of papers are flying away, later turning into birds. Muhsin said the symbolism has to do with Washington's repeated assertions before the U.S.-led invasion that Saddam's regime had weapons of mass destruction, the cornerstone of the Bush's argument for going to war. No such weapons turned up, but the Bush administration maintained that removing Saddam's regime alone justified the decision to invade Iraq. "Rumsfeld's boots deliver a message from America: `We rule the world,'" Muhsin, 41, said in an interview. "It speaks of America's total indifference to what the rest of the world thinks." Muhsin said he signed the painting in the middle, instead of the customary bottom corner, to avoid having it under Rumsfeld's boots. "The Americans brought us rosy dreams but left us with nightmares. They came with a broad smile but gave us beheaded bodies and booby-trapped cars." I am impressed by his work, and would want a print of the painting except I find the thought of looking at Rumsfeld everyday deplorable- Yet to support the spirit of Iraq that america has stolen unmercilessly, would be worth the cause. |
9.6.06
Painting Captures U.S. Arrogance, Artist Says
Painting Captures U.S. Arrogance, Artist Says
For the Women of Iraq, the War is Just Beginning
For the Women of Iraq, the War is Just Beginning
by Terri Judd |
| The women of Basra have disappeared. Three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, women's secular freedoms - once the envy of women across the Middle East - have been snatched away because militant Islam is rising across the country. Across Iraq, a bloody and relentless oppression of women has taken hold. Many women had their heads shaved for refusing to wear a scarf or have been stoned in the street for wearing make-up. Others have been kidnapped and murdered for crimes that are being labelled simply as "inappropriate behaviour". The insurrection against the fragile and barely functioning state has left the country prey to extremists whose notion of freedom does not extend to women. In the British-occupied south, where Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army retains a stranglehold, women insist the situation is at its worst. Here they are forced to live behind closed doors only to emerge, concealed behind scarves, hidden behind husbands and fathers. Even wearing a pair of trousers is considered an act of defiance, punishable by death. One Basra woman, known only as Dr Kefaya, was working in the women and children's hospital unit at the city university when she started receiving threats from extremists. She defied them. Then, one day a man walked into the building and murdered her. Eman Aziz, one of the first women to speak publicly about the dangers, said:"There were five people on the death list with Dr Kefaya. They were threatened 'If you continue working, you will be killed'." Many women are too afraid to complain. But, fearful that their rights will be eroded for good, some have taken the courageous step of speaking out. Dr Kefaya was only one of many professional women murdered in recent months. Speaking to The Independent near Saddam's old palace in the middle of Basra, Mrs Aziz, reeled off the names of other dead friends. Three of her university class have been killed since the invasion. "My friend Sheda and her sister. They were threatened. One day they returned to their house with two other women. They were all shot," she said. Her language is chillingly perfunctory. "And my friend Lubna, she was with her fiancé. They shot him in the arm and then killed her in front of him," she explained. Then there were the two sisters who worked in the laundry at Basra Palace base. With a shrug, she briefly detailed each life cut short. Under Saddam, women played little part in political life but businesswomen and academics travelled the country unchallenged while their daughters mixed freely with male students at university. Now, even the most emancipated woman feels cowed. A television producer Arij Al-Soltan, 27, now exiled, said: "It is much worse for women in the south. I blame the British for not taking a strong stand." Sajeda Hanoon Alebadi, 37, who - like Mrs Aziz - has now taken to wearing a headscarf, said: "Women are being assassinated. We know the people behind it are saying we have a fatwa, these are not good women, they should be killed." Behind the wave of insurgent attacks, the violence against women who dare to challenge the Islamic orthodoxy is growing. Fatwas banning women from driving or being seen out alone are regularly issued. Infiltrated by militia, the police are unwilling or unable to crack down on the fundamentalists. Ms Alebadi said: "After the fall of the regime, the religious extremist parties came out on to the streets and threatened women. Although the extremists are in the minority, they control powerful positions, so they control Basra." To venture on the streets today without a male relative is to risk attack, humiliation or kidnap. A journalist, Shatta Kareem, said: "I was driving my car one day when someone just crashed into me and drove me off the road. If a woman is seen driving these days it is considered a violation of men's rights." There is a fear that Islamic law will become enshrined in the new legislation. Ms Aziz said: "In the Muslim religion, if a man dies his money goes to a male member of the family. After the Iran-Iraq war, there were so many widows that Saddam changed the law so it would go to the women and children. Now it has been changed back." Mrs Alebadi estimated that as many as 70 per cent of women in Basra had been widowed by the constant conflicts. "You see widows on the streets begging at the intersections." Optimists say the very fact that 25 per cent of Iraq's Provincial Council is composed of women proves women have been empowered since the invasion. But the people of Basra say it is a smokescreen. Any woman who becomes a part of the system, they say, is incapable of engineering any change for the better. Posters around the city promoting the constitution graphically illustrate that view. The faces of the women candidates have been blacked out, the accompanying slogan, "No women in politics," a stark reminder of the opposition they face. Ms Aziz said: "Women members of the Provincial Council had many dreams but they were told 'With respect, you don't know anything. This is a world of men. Your view is good but not better.' More and more they just agreed to sign whatever they were told. We have got women in power, who are powerless." Many of the British officers in Basra say they feel "uncomfortable" with the situation but a spokesman for the Foreign Office would only say: "As part of the new government's programme, they do say in their top 10 items to be looked at that women constitute half of society and are nurturers of the other half and, therefore, must take an active role in building the society and the state. Their rights should be respected in all fields." In the villages around Basra, the shy women who peer round doorways are uncomplaining. For one Marsh Arab, Makir Jafar, the fact she has been given enough education to help her 10-year-old son with his homework is enough. "Life is nice. There is the river. I do not want for anything," she said. There is a growing fear among educated women, however, that the extreme dangers of daily life will allow the issue of women's oppression to remain unchallenged. In Mrs Kareem's words: "Men have been given a voice. But women will not get their part in building this country." |
Report Implicates 20 Nations in 'Spider's Web' of CIA Abductions
Report Implicates 20 Nations in 'Spider's Web' of CIA Abductions
by Jonathan S. Landay |
| WASHINGTON - More than 20 nations - from Central Asia to Western Europe - colluded in a CIA-run "spider's web" of secret flights and prisons for abducted terrorism suspects that breach European and international human rights accords, a report to Europe's top human rights organization charged Wednesday. "Rather than face any form of justice, suspects become entrapped in the spider's web," the report says. The findings could further damage the United States' image in Europe and the Muslim world, where many people already are angry about the Iraq invasion, alleged torture of U.S.-held detainees and what they perceive as a Bush administration bias toward Israel. Bush administration spokesmen said the report rehashed old allegations with no basis in facts. They denied that the United States practices torture and said rendition - transporting suspects to face criminal charges in their native countries - was legal under international law. "The fight against terrorism is our highest priority, but it must be conducted with respect for the international rule of law," asserted Rene van der Linden, the president of the 46-nation Council of Europe. The council, Europe's oldest human rights organization, can pressure member governments and legislatures into using the report as the basis for further investigations. It has no power on its own to enforce human rights accords, however. The report, by Swiss Sen. Dick Marty, charges that 14 European governments and eight other nations aided the CIA in some way in illegally seizing suspected Islamic terrorists. It didn't give a total number of abductions, but said investigators had confirmed 10 cases of "alleged unlawful interstate transfer" involving 17 men. The men claimed they were abducted by American agents, trussed up and blindfolded, subjected to maltreatment that included beatings and flown to U.S. prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Afghanistan or to Poland, Morocco, Romania, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Several of the men were released after investigators found that they'd been erroneously identified as Islamic terrorists or accomplices. "Rendition is not something that began with this administration, and it's certainly going to be practiced, I'm sure, in the future," White House spokesman Tony Snow said. But Marty said that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush administration oversaw a "critical deviation" in U.S. rendition policy under which the practice was used to "place captured terrorist suspects outside the reach of any justice system and keep them there." The "absence of human rights guarantees" and the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" led in several cases "to detainees being subjected to torture," he said. The extraordinary renditions were carried out by "an elite, highly trained and highly motivated group of CIA agents who traveled around the world mistreating victim after victim," the report charges. Interviews with released detainees found they suffered from "lasting psychological damage," it says. Marty said he had "no formal evidence" to substantiate American news reports that the CIA maintained secret detention centers in Poland and Romania. Both countries deny the allegation. "Nevertheless, it is clear that an unspecified number of persons . . . were arbitrarily and unlawfully arrested and/or detained and transported under the supervision of (security) services acting in the name, or on behalf, of the American authorities," he wrote. The report traced specific flights of U.S. military and CIA-operated aircraft, often beginning in Washington, using flight logs from Eurocontrol, the European air-traffic authority, and national aviation authorities. It also relied on the statements of people who claimed to have been abducted, interviews with American and European officials, and police and judicial investigations in several countries. Among the cases the report cites is that of Khaled El Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent who was detained in Macedonia in 2003 and flown to Baghdad and then to Kabul, where he was imprisoned until May 2004. El Masri, who's sued the CIA in the United States, claimed he was stripped, beaten, drugged and chained up during his abduction. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said last December after speaking with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about El Masri that the United States "has acknowledged being in error." Washington denied that Rice had admitted a mistake. The report also cited the CIA's alleged 2003 abduction in Milan, Italy, of an Egyptian cleric suspected of links to Islamic militants, who was flown to Cairo. Italian authorities have issued arrest warrants for 22 CIA officers in the case. |
Cheney Cuts Senator Out of Democratic Process
Cheney Cuts Senator Out of Democratic Process
Specter's Uneasy Relationship With White House Is Revealed in a Letter to Cheney
By Carl Hulse and Jim Rutenberg
The New York Times
Specter's Uneasy Relationship With White House Is Revealed in a Letter to Cheney
By Carl Hulse and Jim Rutenberg
The New York Times
Thursday 08 June 2006
Washington - A senior Republican lawmaker went public on Wednesday about his often tense and complicated relationship with the Bush White House in a remarkable display of the strains within the party.
The lawmaker, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, accused Vice President Dick Cheney of meddling behind his back in the committee's business, bringing into the open a conflict that has simmered for months.
In a letter to Mr. Cheney that the senator released to the news media, Mr. Specter said the vice president had cut him out of discussions with all the other Republicans on his own committee about oversight of the administration's eavesdropping programs, a subject on which Mr. Specter has often been at odds with the White House.
The trigger for Mr. Specter's anger was a deal made by Mr. Cheney with the other Republicans on the committee to block testimony from phone companies that reportedly cooperated in providing call records to the National Security Agency.
Mr. Specter, who had been considering issuing subpoenas to compel telephone company executives to testify, learned of Mr. Cheney's actions only when he went into a closed meeting of the committee's Republicans on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after encountering the vice president at a weekly luncheon of all Senate Republicans.
Mr. Specter's tone in the letter was restrained, but he made no effort to hide his displeasure at having been outmaneuvered and, in his view, undermined, by Mr. Cheney.
"I was surprised, to say the least, that you sought to influence, really determine, the action of the committee without calling me first, or at least calling me at some point," Mr. Specter wrote. "This was especially perplexing since we both attended the Republican senators caucus lunch yesterday and I walked directly in front of you on at least two occasions en route from the buffet to my table."
A spokeswoman for Mr. Cheney, Lea Anne McBride, said Wednesday night that the vice president "has not had an opportunity to study" the letter.
"We're going to continue to work with members, listening to their legislative ideas," Ms. McBride said, although she added that it was "not necessary to have legislation to carry out the terrorist surveillance program."
She had no comment on the assertion that Mr. Cheney had worked behind the chairman's back.
Mr. Specter's evident frustration underscored the growing unease on Capitol Hill, among some Republicans as well as many Democrats, over the administration's efforts to exert executive power. At the same time, the White House has been trying to repair its relations with Congress.
One Republican with close ties to the administration, who was granted anonymity to discuss the thinking at the White House, said Mr. Specter had been increasingly nettlesome to the administration with his persistent criticism, especially of the surveillance programs.
Noting that the White House was ultimately pleased with Mr. Specter's help in securing the confirmations of Mr. Bush's Supreme Court nominees, this Republican said, "All of that good will he's built up has really been dissipated because he keeps smacking them around."
A senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the president's chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, had reached out to Mr. Specter on Friday to press the administration's case for how to handle the phone companies.
The official described the conversation as "cordial but not productive."
"That's when we started reaching out to other members," the official said. "It was not out of disrespect."
The official went on, "The chairman's position is well known, and he knows our position, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't work with other members who may be more open to our position."
Mr. Specter has been the leading Republican voice raising questions about the legal underpinnings of the surveillance programs.
In his letter, Mr. Specter told Mr. Cheney that events were unfolding in a "context where the administration is continuing warrantless wiretaps in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and is preventing the Senate Judiciary Committee from carrying out its constitutional responsibility for Congressional oversight."
Mr. Cheney, by contrast, has led the White House's effort to defend the surveillance programs on legal and national security grounds.
The vice president has also been the primary force behind the administration's efforts to expand executive power in a wide variety of areas, a stance that has at times put him in direct conflict with Mr. Specter.
When Mr. Specter faced a difficult primary challenge in 2004, Mr. Bush sided with Mr. Specter, giving him vital political support.
In an interview, Mr. Specter described his relationship with Mr. Cheney as generally friendly and cordial. But he was clearly put out by the vice president's handling of the issue and his failure to pull Mr. Specter aside as he made several trips to the buffet for tuna salad and hard-boiled egg, salad dressing and fruit.
"He can talk to anybody he wants to," Mr. Specter said. "I think as a matter of basic protocol he ought not to exclude the chairman."
8.6.06
Cheney's Office Declares Exemption From Secrecy Oversight
Cheney's Office Declares Exemption From Secrecy Oversight
By Michelle Chen
The NewStandard
By Michelle Chen
The NewStandard
Wednesday 07 June 2006
Thickening the haze of secrecy surrounding the executive branch, the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney has declared itself exempt from a yearly requirement to report how it uses its power to classify secret information. (He's a drunk, and when drunk talks too much)
In its 2005 report to the president released last month, the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), a branch of the National Archives, provides a quantitative overview of hundreds of thousands of pages of classified and declassified documents. But the vice president's input consists of a single footnote explaining that his office failed to meet its reporting requirements for the third year in a row.
Open-government advocates say Cheney's refusal to divulge even basic information about classification activities reflects an alarming pattern of broadening executive privilege while narrowing public accountability.
"It's part of a larger assertiveness by the Office of the Vice President and a resistance to oversight," said Steve Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy, a division of the public-interest association American Federation of Scientists. "It's as if they're saying, 'What we do is nobody's business.'"
Though not the only government entity to shrug off the reporting duties, Cheney's office is unique in that it has actually issued a public justification for its non-compliance. Cheney's office argued on Monday that its dual role in the federal government places it above the reporting mandate.
"This matter has been carefully reviewed, and it has been determined that the reporting requirement does not apply to [the Office of the Vice President], which has both executive and legislative functions," Lea McBride, a spokesperson for Cheney's office, told The NewStandard.
Cheney's press aides declined to specify to TNS how the office's legislative role effectively exempted it from the executive order, or why the office had complied prior to 2003.
In a May 30 letter to J. William Leonard, director of the ISOO, the Project on Government Secrecy contended that Cheney's rationale was illogical, because additional legislative functions should have no bearing on the vice president's executive-branch obligations. Troubled by the continued non-compliance, the organization warned that if the ISOO did not act to enforce the vice president's responsibilities under the executive order, "every agency will feel free to re-interpret the order in idiosyncratic and self-serving ways."
Each year, the ISOO publishes data on the amount of information classified by government entities, such as the Department of Justice and the Pentagon, and broadly analyzes how the bureaucracy processes national-security secrets. Mandated by an executive order, the report is intended to encourage greater accountability and minimize secrecy.
In 2003 - around the time Cheney's office stopped reporting to the ISOO - the Bush administration affirmed and expanded the vice president's classification powers through a revision of Executive Order 12958, the same order mandating the yearly ISOO assessment. The amended order explicitly granted the vice president unprecedented authority to classify information "in the performance of executive duties," including the ability to label information "secret" and "top secret" on par with the heads of federal agencies and the president himself.
Critics also note another legal shield compounding the vice president's reticence about how he handles secrets: Cheney enjoys general immunity from the Freedom of Information Act, which empowers members of the public with a process for demanding the release of government documents.
Along with Cheney's office, the President's Foreign-Intelligence Advisory Board and Homeland Security Council - both advisory bodies attached to the White House - also failed to report classification activity in 2005. In the footnote of its report, the ISOO suggested that the loss of this information was inconsequential, because these entities "historically have not reported quantitatively significant data."
However, Aftergood argued that because the annual report is a statistical breakdown of information processed, the quantitative data merely reflects the volume, not the individual public-interest value, of the secrets withheld by the government.
The most recent report shows that decisions to classify information have declined by about 9 percent since 2004, and the volume of newly declassified information has risen slightly. But watchdogs say the government is still amassing secrets at a disturbing rate: total classification activity was over 60 percent higher in 2005 than in 2001. Overall, agencies reported 14.2 million classification decisions last year.
Though Cheney's obfuscation of his classification activity has been ongoing since 2003, the explosion of the Valerie Plame leak scandal, which centers on the suspected retaliatory leak of a CIA agent's identity by the White House, has invited fresh scrutiny of the administration's political opacity. Some question whether Cheney has wielded his power over secret government information to smear opponents.
In a February interview with Fox News, asked whether he had ever exercised declassification powers, Cheney replied, "I've certainly advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions," though he refused elaborate on the nature of those decisions.
Aftergood said that the ISOO could try to compel Cheney to comply with the executive order through enforcement mechanisms. These could include sanctions, which under the ISOO's mandate might entail "termination of classification authority" or "denial of access to classified information" - or officially requesting an advisory ruling from the attorney general to clarify the vice president's obligations.
Since receiving the letter, Leonard of the ISOO told TNS that he is "currently pursuing the matter." Noting the novelty of Cheney's defense, he added, "I am not aware of any other entity claiming any such 'exemption.'"
Jennifer Gore, communications director for the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight (POGO), pointed to a precedent for public-interest advocates bringing legal challenges to curb executive secrecy. Referring to the Watergate scandal, which also involved a court battle over the White House's refusal to disclose incriminating documents, she said, "In the past, when members of the executive branch have voiced privilege as a reason not to turn something over, then it's time to go to the courts."
To counterbalance the expansion of secrecy under the current administration, POGO is also advocating the Executive Branch Reform Act of 2006. The bill, introduced by Representatives Tom Davis (R-Virginia) and Henry Waxman (D-California), targets new, vaguely defined categories that build on the regular classification system, mainly the "sensitive but unclassified" label that has enabled agencies to limit public access to counterterrorism-related information.
Aftergood said that systemic problems in the classification system undermine the public value of the ISOO's annual report, with or without full compliance from agencies. To move toward genuine transparency, he said, the ISOO's tracking should encompass more aggressive, in-depth reviews of classified materials to monitor whether federal operatives are overusing or abusing their privilege.
"What's really missing is a sense of the quality of the classification activity," Aftergood said. "You could tell me how many things you classify, but that doesn't give me any indication of whether you exercised good judgment or not."
7.6.06
Pentagon Endorses Force-Feeding Hunger Strikers
Pentagon Endorses Force-Feeding Hunger Strikers
by Will Dunham | ||
Don't force feed them laxatives, like you did last hunger strike | ||
| WASHINGTON - A Pentagon document setting rules for medical professionals in detainee operations endorses force-feeding hunger strikers, a practice criticized by rights activists, U.S. officials said on Monday.
Human rights activists have said U.S. medical personnel have been complicit in detainee abuse, and have denounced force-feeding of prisoners as a violation of international codes of medical ethics. The Pentagon said in a statement the new document "reaffirms the policy to prevent injury or loss of life of hunger strikers by involuntarily feeding those at serious risk of injury or death, as approved by the detention facility commanding officer or designated senior officer." Many foreign terrorism suspects held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have engaged in hunger strikes their lawyers call a protest of their conditions and lack of legal rights. The military has involuntarily fed some hunger strikers through tubes inserted through the nose and into the stomach. Critics note that ethical codes endorsed by the American Medical Association, including a declaration by the World Medical Association, state that if a doctor considers a hunger striker "capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment concerning the consequences of such voluntary refusal of nourishment, he or she shall not be fed artificially." 'A HASSLE' Authorities at Guantanamo have said they have strapped some detainees into "restraint chairs" during involuntary feeding and isolated them after determining some had been purposely vomiting the liquid they had been fed. A senior general told reporters some detainees subsequently decided taking part in the hunger strike had become "too much of a hassle." Writing in March in the British medical journal The Lancet, 263 doctors from seven countries called on the United States to stop force-feeding detainees and using restraint chairs. "It seems like the motive (for force-feeding detainees) is to prevent embarrassment to the United States government because they don't appear to be waiting until someone's life or health is in significant danger," said Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of the group Physicians for Human Rights. Detainees' lawyers have previously accused the military of violently shoving tubes through the men's noses and into their stomachs without anesthesia or sedatives and then hurling religious taunts at them when they vomited blood. Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand, a spokesman at Guantanamo, said this weekend the number of hunger strikers there had dropped from 89 as of last Thursday to 18. "The hunger strike technique is consistent with al Qaeda practice and reflects detainee attempts to elicit media attention to bring international pressure on the United States to release them back to the battlefield," a military statement said. The new policy directive also "reaffirms the responsibility of health care personnel to protect and treat all detainees under their care in keeping with the established principles of medical practice and humane treatment," the Pentagon said. Pentagon guidelines do not prohibit medical personnel from assisting interrogations by using knowledge of a prisoner's medical or mental condition. |
6.6.06
Army Manual to Skip Geneva Detainee Rule
Army Manual to Skip Geneva Detainee Rule
...and people wonder why I lost respect for america.
The Pentagon's move to omit a ban on prisoner humiliation from the basic guide to soldier conduct faces strong State Dept. opposition. |
| by Julian E. Barnes |
| Changing a policy that has been broken after the fact, in my opinion still renders the policy valid if it was broken before the policy was changed. Changing these standards are yet another complicit act of US Government, to suit their convoluted agenda's and allow the unthinkable to allow to continue. WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards. The decision could culminate a lengthy debate within the Defense Department but will not become final until the Pentagon makes new guidelines public, a step that has been delayed. However, the State Department fiercely opposes the military's decision to exclude Geneva Convention protections and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider, the Defense Department officials acknowledged. For more than a year, the Pentagon has been redrawing its policies on detainees, and intends to issue a new Army Field Manual on interrogation, which, along with accompanying directives, represents core instructions to U.S. soldiers worldwide. The process has been beset by debate and controversy, and the decision to omit Geneva protections from a principal directive comes at a time of growing worldwide criticism of U.S. detention practices and the conduct of American forces in Iraq. The directive on interrogation, a senior defense official said, is being rewritten to create safeguards so that all detainees are treated humanely but can still be questioned effectively. President Bush's critics and supporters have debated whether it is possible to prove a direct link between administration declarations that it will not be bound by Geneva and events such as the abuses at Abu Ghraib or the killings of Iraqi civilians last year in Haditha, allegedly by Marines. But the exclusion of the Geneva provisions may make it more difficult for the administration to portray such incidents as aberrations. And it undercuts contentions that U.S. forces follow the strictest, most broadly accepted standards when fighting wars. "The rest of the world is completely convinced that we are busy torturing people," said Oona A. Hathaway, an expert in international law at Yale Law School. "Whether that is true or not, the fact we keep refusing to provide these protections in our formal directives puts a lot of fuel on the fire." The detainee directive was due to be released in late April along with the Army Field Manual on interrogation. But objections from several senators on other Field Manual issues forced a delay. The senators objected to provisions allowing harsher interrogation techniques for those considered unlawful combatants, such as suspected terrorists, as opposed to traditional prisoners of war. The lawmakers say that differing standards of treatment allowed by the Field Manual would violate a broadly supported anti-torture measure advanced by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). McCain last year pushed Congress to ban torture and cruel treatment and to establish the Army Field Manual as the standard for treatment of all detainees. Despite administration opposition, the measure passed and became law. For decades, it had been the official policy of the U.S. military to follow the minimum standards for treating all detainees as laid out in the Geneva Convention. But, in 2002, Bush suspended portions of the Geneva Convention for captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Bush's order superseded military policy at the time, touching off a wide debate over U.S. obligations under the Geneva accord, a debate that intensified after reports of detainee abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Among the directives being rewritten following Bush's 2002 order is one governing U.S. detention operations. Military lawyers and other defense officials wanted the redrawn version of the document known as DoD Directive 2310, to again embrace Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. That provision — known as a "common" article because it is part of each of the four Geneva pacts approved in 1949 — bans torture and cruel treatment. Unlike other Geneva provisions, Article 3 covers all detainees — whether they are held as unlawful combatants or traditional prisoners of war. The protections for detainees in Article 3 go beyond the McCain amendment by specifically prohibiting humiliation, treatment that falls short of cruelty or torture. The move to restore U.S. adherence to Article 3 was opposed by officials from Vice President Dick Cheney's office and by the Pentagon's intelligence arm, government sources said. David S. Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, and Stephen A. Cambone, Defense undersecretary for intelligence, said it would restrict the United States' ability to question detainees. The Pentagon tried to satisfy some of the military lawyers' concerns by including some protections of Article 3 in the new policy, most notably a ban on inhumane treatment, but refused to embrace the actual Geneva standard in the directive it planned to issue. The military lawyers, known as judge advocates general, or JAGs, have concluded that they will have to wait for a new administration before mounting another push to link Pentagon policy to the standards of Geneva. "The JAGs came to the conclusion that this was the best they can get," said one participant familiar with the Defense Department debate who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the protracted controversy. "But it was a massive mistake to have withdrawn from Geneva. By backing away, you weaken the proposition that this is the baseline provision that is binding to all nations." Derek P. Jinks, an assistant professor at the University of Texas School of Law and the author of a forthcoming book on Geneva called "The Rules of War," said the decision to remove the Geneva reference from the directive showed the administration still intended to push the envelope on interrogation. "We are walking the line on the prohibition on cruel treatment," Jinks said. "But are we really in search of the boundary between the cruel and the acceptable?" The military has long applied Article 3 to conflicts — including civil wars — using it as a minimum standard of conduct, even during peacekeeping operations. The old version of the U.S. directive on detainees says the military will "comply with the principles, spirit and intent" of the Geneva Convention. But top Pentagon officials now believe common Article 3 creates an "unintentional sanctuary" that could allow Al Qaeda members to keep information from interrogators. "As much as possible, the foundation is Common Article 3. That is the foundation," the senior official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the new policies had not been made public. "But there are certain things unlawful combatants are not entitled to." Another defense official said that Article 3 prohibitions against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" could be interpreted as banning well-honed interrogation techniques. Many intelligence soldiers consider questioning the manhood of male prisoners to be an effective and humane technique. Suggesting to a suspected insurgent that he is "not man enough" to have set an improvised explosive device sometimes elicits a full description of how they emplaced the bomb, soldiers say. The Pentagon worries that if Article 3 were incorporated in the directive, detainees could use it to argue in U.S. courts that such techniques violate their personal dignity. IT DOES "Who is to say what is humiliating for Sheikh Abdullah or Sheikh Muhammad?" the second official asked. "If you punch the buttons of a Muslim male, are you at odds with the Geneva Convention?" Military officials also worry that following Article 3 could force them to end the practice of segregating prisoners. The military says that there is nothing inhumane about putting detainees in solitary confinement, and that it allows inmates to be questioned without coordinating their stories with others. Human rights groups have their doubts, saying that isolating people for months at a time leads to mental breakdowns. "Sometimes these things sound benign, but there is a reason they have been prohibited," said Jumana Musa, an advocacy director for Amnesty International. "When you talk about putting people in isolation for eight months, 14 months, it leads to mental degradation." Jinks, of the University of Texas, contends that Article 3 does not prohibit some of the things the military says it wants to do. "If the practice is humane, there is nothing to worry about," he said. Defense officials said the State Department and other agencies had argued that adopting Article 3 would put the U.S. government on more solid "moral footing," and make U.S. policies easier to defend abroad. Some State Department officials have told the Pentagon that incorporating Geneva into the new directive would show American allies that the American military is following "common standards" rather than making up its own rules. BU*SH*IT Common Article 3 was originally written to cover civil wars, when one side of the conflict was not a state and therefore could not have signed the Geneva Convention. In his February 2002 order, Bush wrote that he determined that "Common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either Al Qaeda or Taliban detainees, because, among other reasons, the relevant conflicts are international in scope and Common Article 3 applies only to 'armed conflict not of an international character.' " Some legal scholars say Bush's interpretation is far too narrow. Article 3 was intended to apply to all wars as a sort of minimum set of standards, and that is how Geneva is customarily interpreted, they say. But top administration officials contend that after the Sept. 11 attacks, old customs do not apply, especially to a fight against terrorists or insurgents who never play by the rules. "The overall thinking," said the participant familiar with the defense debate, "is that they need the flexibility to apply cruel techniques if military necessity requires it." |
...and people wonder why I lost respect for america.
4.6.06
ABC News: Capitol Police Probing Reports of Gunfire
ABC News: Capitol Police Probing Reports of Gunfire
By DAVID ESPO AP Special Correspondent
WASHINGTON May 26, 2006 (AP)— Police investigated reports of gunfire in a House office building on Friday and briefly sealed off the Capitol as a precaution.
Capitol police were investigating "the sound of gunfire in the garage level of the Rayburn House Office Building," said an announcement on the internal Capitol voice alarm system.
There was no confirmation of gunfire. The FBI and D.C. Fire Department said there have been no injuries reported.
Capitol police scheduled a noon EDT briefing.
The Senate was in session at the time, but the House was not as most lawmakers had left for the Memorial Day recess. Four ambulances were on standby outside Rayburn as police methodically searched the office building. Police lined the street between the Capitol and the Rayburn building, rifles prominently displayed.
Dozens of police officers, many of them armed with assault rifles, milled around ouside the entrance to the garage.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., conducting a House Intelligence Committee hearing, interrupted a witness to request those attending the meeting to remain in the room and said the doors must be closed.
"It's a little unsettling to get a Blackberry message put in front of you that says there's gunfire in the building," he said.
The Rayburn House Office Building was completed in early 1965 and is the third of three office buildings constructed for the U.S. House of Representatives. It sits southwest of the Capitol. The building has four stories above ground, two basements and three levels of underground garage space.
Steven Broderick, press spokesperson for Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., was in his car in the Rayburn garage Friday morning getting ready to drive his boss to the airport, when he was ordered by a Capitol Police officer to park the car and put his hands on the steering wheel. The officer then told him to run toward an exit where other officers where gathered.
"He just told me to run and don't look back," Broderick said.
The U.S. Capitol Police Department's Containment & Emergency Response Team maintains an indoor shooting range in the basement of the Rayburn building, according to the department's Web site.
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