Chief of Iraq Torture Commandos: "The Americans knew about everything I did"

On March 6, the UK Guardian posted a very important story, with accompanying videos, examining in details and with witnesses the extraordinary efforts by US military and civilian personnel to assemble, train, and direct Shi'a commando brigades in Iraq. These police brigades and paramilitary units unleashed a hellish reign of terror, with massive round-ups, torture, and death squad killings.

The Guardian reveals from photos, interviews, and documentary evidence the chief role of former US Special Operations Colonel James Steele, as well as General Petraeus and other US officials in organizing this counterinsurgency-cum-terror campaign.

Steele had been in charge of training Salvadoran army personnel linked to a campaign of extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and torture during the Salvadoran Civil War in the 1980s. Back in those days, Petraeus was an ambitious up-and-comer, reportedly all too willing to learn what Steele, who'd learned counter-terror techniques in Vietnam, had to teach him, even staying in Steele's house.

Steele came to Iraq as a supposed civilian adviser. He carried a lot of authority, however, according to the Guardian investigation. From whence did that authority derive? Was he on special assignment for Rumsfeld (Rummy apparently is the one who sent him to Iraq)? For the National Security Council and/or the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Was he working with the CIA or JSOC's shadowy Intelligence Support Activity (ISA)? Steele, who is described in the Guardian video as someone who is extremely cold, without feeling, is unlikely ever to reveal that himself.

The Guardian also describes how military authorities commanded US soldiers on the scene, witness to such atrocities, not to intervene when present at such crimes. The order was first issued as FRAGO (Fragmentary Order) 242. The film interviews one of these brave soldiers, a military medic, who describes what he saw when the torture commandos were unleashed in Samarra.

Others interviewed for the film include Adnan Thabit, the chief of the Iraqi Special Police Commandos from 2004-06. The Guardian has excerpted his interview for a short video highlighing Thabit explaining, "The Americans knew about everything I did."

The main article, "From El Salvador to Iraq: Washington's man behind brutal police squads," notes that the Guardian tried to contact Steele for a year to get his side of the matter. He did not respond, and that is not surprising. Spooks never talk about what they are doing, and he may wish to note that anything said could be produced in court someday, because he appears to be a major war criminal, the hatchet man for the murderous policies of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.

US Connivance in Torture and the Case of Bradley Manning

The Guardian piece fleshes out the case I presented in my own story from August 2011 at FDL's The Dissenter, The Forgotten History of David Petraeus, including using evidence I had linked to the Petraeus-Iraq torture scandal, such as the protests of the Oregon National Guard over the stand-down on torture.

The article relies on the release of Wikileaks Iraq War Logs, which documented US knowledge of torture and the orders to soldiers to ignore it. It also interviews Peter Maass, whose 2005 investigatory report in the New York Times first concentrated on the role of Steele. The Guardian appears to be the first to have highlighted the role of Colonel James Coffman, a Petraeus adviser to Thabit's torture thugs.

The role of Wikileaks here is of piquant significance, as Wikileaks' leader, Julian Assange remains huddled up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, having claimed political asylum in the wake of persistent demands for his extradition to Sweden on what appear to be shaky sexual offense charges. The Swedish prosecutors have reportedly refused to come and interview Assange in London. The impact of this and other repressive and financial pressures on Wikileaks may have affected their operations in strange ways.

But in even more dire straits is Private Bradley Manning, who has admitted in military court to turning over documents to Wikileaks. Manning revealed his motivation: he was moved to act after he was forced to help cover-up corruption by the Iraq National Police, and participate in round-ups of men who he strongly suspected would be tortured. Indeed, as Kevin Kosztola pointed out in a March 5 article at The Dissenter, Manning had been powerfully affected by this incident in comments he purportedly made to Adrian Lamo in computer chat logs.

Manning was even more direct in his statement to the military court: he decided to leak information because the US military had turned a blind eye to corruption and torture.

As the Guardian article and documentary on Steele show, Manning was certainly correct to fear the consequences of helping turn prisoners over to Iraq authorities. Yet Manning is on trial with life imprisonment hanging over his head, while David Petraeus, James Steele, Donald Rumsfeld and others walk free, able to enjoy the good life of the freedom this country allows those who play by the rules and ignore crimes against humanity, if not engage in them.

Kosztola also reports that Wikileaks has decided to withhold (for now) the documents that would illuminate just what Manning was referring to in the incident with the INP. Apparently they think they are protecting Manning. Under such dire circumstances as Manning faces, I suppose such release should really be up to Manning and/or his attorneys.

US Denial Over Government Use of Torture

The US counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, including the organization of police commando torture squads and secret prisons, cost over millions, perhaps billions of dollars. The Guardian explains:

In June 2004 Petraeus arrived in Baghdad with the brief to train a new Iraqi police force with an emphasis on counterinsurgency. Steele and serving US colonel James Coffman introduced Petraeus to a small hardened group of police commandos.... [Gen. Thabit] developed a close relationship with the new advisers. "They became my friends. My advisers, James Steele and Colonel Coffman, were all from special forces, so I benefited from their experience... but the main person I used to contact was David Petraeus."

With Steele and Coffman as his point men, Petraeus began pouring money from a multimillion dollar fund into what would become the Special Police Commandos. According to the US Government Accounts Office, they received a share of an $8.2bn (£5.4bn) fund paid for by the US taxpayer. The exact amount they received is classified.

With Petraeus's almost unlimited access to money and weapons, and Steele's field expertise in counterinsurgency the stage was set for the commandos to emerge as a terrifying force. One more element would complete the picture. The US had barred members of the violent Shia militias like the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army from joining the security forces, but by the summer of 2004 they had lifted the ban.

The Guardian report should shake up US denial over torture and the role of top US officials, such as former CIA director Petraeus, Obama's choice for the position after Panetta left to be Secretary of Defense. But US news media have largely ignored the story (though the New York Times noted it, relegating the story to a brief blog commentary), even though a report by Philip Bump at The Atlantic Wire called the Guardian story and video "staggering... blockbuster." Yet Bump's March 6 article only has (to date) about 3,600 views.

In a healthy democracy, there would immediate calls for Congressional investigations and hearings. But instead we have silence, as the US state rushes to maintain its right to project organized violence and terror wherever it wishes. A similar cover-up over the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture is now unfolding, as Marcy Wheeler reports.

The full 51-minute documentary can only for now be viewed at the Guardian site, and I have no way to embed it here. It is essential viewing for anyone who wishes to know the full history of the US invasion and policy in Iraq. Click on the video title here to watch the documentary: James Steele: America's mystery man in Iraq.

Cross-posted at FDL/The Dissenter

RT Video: NSA Whistleblower Reveals We Are All Under Virtual Surveillance

"RT talks to William Binney, whistleblower and former NSA crypto-mathematician who served in the agency for decades."

According to Binney, there is no such thing as privacy in the surveillance state. The FBI has access to all the emails of everyone in the United States, if you become a target for any reason. The emails are being collected in bulk, without requesting the providers for them. 100 billion emails can be collected every day with just one device.

Binney doesn't think there's a filter, the emails are just stored. If you are targeted, they go into the database and pull out all your emails. Binney assumes he himself is on the target list. "I tell them everything I think of them in my emails, so if they read it they'll understand what I think of them.

In the Obama administration, attacks on privacy are getting worse than under the Bush regime. They are collecting more, and storing more.

We should be concerned, as Binney says, because if the government puts you on an enemies list or targets you, they will have access to all of your email electronic records. This is what happened to former Gen. Petraeus, for instance (though he doesn't know what their reason for targeting Petraeus and those associated with the scandal around him were targeted, as there were no laws broken there, so far as we know).

Binney says "the violations of the Constitution and any number of laws" are what bothered him and caused him to leave the NSA. The NSA was building social networks on who was communicating with whom. "The social networks of every US citizen were being compiled over time."

Per Binney, the intelligence agencies are violating the foundations upon which this country was founded.

See also "NSA Whistleblower Details How The NSA Has Spied On US Citizens Since 9/11" at BusinessInsider.com , and Binney's sworn declaration (PDF) in support of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s case against the National Security Agency (Jewel v. NSA) regarding their illegal domestic surveillance programs.

Where's the "Pathway" for Closure of Guantanamo?

Last Friday, November 9, Elisa Massimino, President and CEO of Human Rights First (HRF), hosted a press call with retired Rear Admiral Don Guter. HRF, along with a number of other human rights and legal groups, are calling upon President Barack Obama to fulfill his January 2009 pledge to close Guantanamo's detention facility.

Admiral Guter was the Navy's Judge Advocate General in 2000-2002. Last January, along with 14 other high-ranking former officers, Guter signed an open letter to President Obama calling for the immediate closure of Guantanamo.

The retired military officers were willing to put the blame on Obama's failure to keep his promise on a recalcitrant Congress.

"We recognize the political opposition you have faced in attempting to honor your commitment," Guter and the others wrote. "Congress has repeatedly restricted your ability to transfer detainees held there who have been cleared for release. Congress has also restricted your authority to bring criminal suspects held at Guantanamo to justice in our time-honored federal criminal courts. However, despite these restrictions, we are asking you to act within the discretion available to you to move our nation forward in closing Guantanamo once and for all."

But according to a question I posed to Guter last Friday, neither Obama nor anyone in his administration even bothered to reply to the 15 former "high-ranking former officers," which included General Joseph Hoar (USMC, ret.), former Commander in Chief of U.S. Central Command, and Major General Antonio Taguba, who headed the Army's investigation into the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

But this didn't deter Admiral Guter, who maintains that Guantanamo is "still the symbol of the torture and the other horrific acts that took place down there, and still a symbol of delayed justice which we’re still experiencing." He added that Guantanamo's ongoing detention program has become a "recruiting tool" for U.S. enemies abroad. [Quote updated on 11/14 from an earlier version of this article, thanks to a transcript of the press call provided by HRF]

A Pathway?

Both Guter and Massimino maintained that there was a "pathway" for the closure of Guantanamo and the release of the 86 cleared detainees. But they would not be more specific about what it would be. Massimino indicated that a "policy blueprint" on the topic would be released during an HRF summit in the the first week of December.

I asked whether such a "pathway" would include the use of recent changes in the NDAA guidelines that would allow the Secretary of Defense to issue waivers that would guarantee the necessary security assurances for release. (For those who want Shaker Aamer released, for instance, such an action, long desired, is only a Leon Panetta signature away.)

It seemed that HRF's "pathway" would include such "flexibility in the waiver process", but more specifics were frustratingly withheld, no doubt awaiting the full roll-out of the programmatic call next month. However, Massimino did indicate that HRF will ask Obama to "task someone" to work specifically on the Guantanamo issue.

Despite the perspicacity of HRF and Admiral Guter in sticking with the Guantanamo issue, the reliance on faith in President Obama appears to be misplaced. Not only has he ignored those who have implored him on the issue in the past two years (including Admiral Guter himself), but his administration continues to do what it can to go after whistleblowers on torture (like John Kiriakou), who file suit against administration officials for torture (the latest defeat was in the Vance-Ertel suit against Rumsfeld), and press the Bush-era military commissions invention, only slightly modified from that of the previous administration.

No Accountability for Torture

The list of those who have escaped accountability for torture is getting to be a very long one, as attorney Jesselyn Radack wrote in an article recently about the Kiriakou guilty plea, noting the cover-ups have  spanned two administrations. (I'd note that her list mostly comes from the CIA and DoJ, but there are plenty of DoD operatives who could have been mentioned, too.)

Jose Rodriguez, Enrique "Ricky" Prado, Deuce Martinez, Alfreda Bikowsky, all of the lawyers who said it was legal, including my law school contemporary John Yoo (enjoying his tenured professorship) and now-federal judge Jay Bybee, twisted psychiatrists, including criminal contractors James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, not to mention all of the names we still don't know of the anonymous masked brutes who kidnapped, rendered, beat, waterboarded, and deprived prisoners of the basic human dignities mandated by the Geneva Conventions.

Nor is it clear that a closure of Guantanamo -- should it indeed come -- wouldn't be primarily to cover-up on-going U.S. interrogation and detention crimes at Bagram, or other U.S. black sites from Somalia and Libya to Afghanistan. Indeed, Moon of Alabama has tied the current David Petraeus scandal and resignation to revelations about a CIA detention site in Benghazi, Libya.

But the clearest sign of political weakness on the torture issue lies in the relative disinterest in the topic by the vast majority of the press. During the press call with HRF, mine was the only question by the press. I can't know how many were present during the press call, but I wouldn't be shocked if the turnout was very low.

So, I don't have much faith in the Obama administration doing the right thing. But maybe HRF, Guter, and others will be successful in the long run. Unfortunately, I believe it will take a massive social struggle to change the torture policy of the U.S., as it has long been linked to a military and political policy of support for dictatorial regimes abroad, to such a degree that the problem has become systemic.

The U.S. cannot give up its torture habit, one that goes back decades now, way before Bush and Obama, even if Guter and his co-thinkers believe they can make U.S. military practice more ethical. I wish them luck, but I just don't have the requisite faith they have.

Rarely Seen Video of U.S.-style water torture in action

Former president of the National Lawyers Guild, Marjorie Cohn, commented on recent statements by two GOP presidential candidates who created a stir by defending waterboarding:

[Herman] Cain said, “I don't see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique,” which is what the Bush administration used to call its policy of torture and abuse. [Michelle] Bachman declared, “If I were president, I would be willing to use waterboarding. I think it was very effective. It gained information for our country.” And after the debate, Mitt Romney’s aides told CNN that he does not think waterboarding is torture.

Cohn notes at the end of her article, "Unfortunately, during his hearing to be confirmed as CIA director, David Petraeus told Congress there might be occasions in which we must return to “enhanced interrogation” to get information. Alarmingly, that comment signaled that the Obama administration may return to the use of torture and abuse." Petraeus was confirmed as the new CIA director last August on a 94-0 vote of the U.S. Senate.

Evidence of Torture in the Obama Administration

Despite President Obama's own comments criticizing Cain and Bachman's statements, Cohn points out that Obama's own nominated candidate for CIA director is willing to support waterboarding and the other torture techniques designated "enhanced interrogation" during the Bush/Cheney regime. But there's no "unfortunately" about it. The Obama administration does support torture, but it does so in the old-fashioned U.S. way, through official and/or plausible denial.

But anyone who looks at what the U.S. does, rather than what it says, will know that the torture never ended. Waterboarding may or may not have been ceased, but in the U.S. official Army Field Manual on interrogation, numerous commentators have found clear evidence of the use of torture, including use of debilitating isolation, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, manipulation of phobias, use of drugs, and other "techniques." Some of these techniques, such as use of isolation and sleep deprivation are limited to supposed "illegal" combatants, such as those captured in the "war on terror," as discussed in the AFM's Appendix M (PDF).

The use of controlled suffocation, such as in the water torture used in the video below, was documented to be endemic across the field of Defense Department operations in a series of articles published at Truthout.org recently. Also published at Truthout was an analysis of the possible use of "dryboarding", another suffocation torture technique that may have been used by U.S. interrogators and implicated in the deaths of three prisoners at Guantanamo in 2006.

"Dryboarding"

The "dryboarding" hypothesis was developed by Almerindo Ojeda at the University of California at Davis’s Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas. Ojeda is also principal investigator for the Center’s Guantánamo Testimonials Project. He discovered that Ali Saleh Al-Marri, a purported Al Qaeda "sleeper" agent, who was held for years in solitary confinement at the Navy Brig in Charleston, North Carolina, like fellow domestic internee and U.S. citizen Jose Padilla, had been tortured by having a sock shoved stuffed in his mouth and then having his lips taped shut with duct tape. Al-Marri almost suffocated.

Ojeda noted that all of the dead supposed suicides at Guantanamo had socks stuffed in their mouths or down their throats.

Scott Horton, who wrote an award-winning article on the Guantanamo "suicides," noted in a recent review of Ojeda's work that socks were not allowed for prisoners at Guantanamo. He added:

The “dryboarding” disclosures do not resolve the questions about the Guantánamo deaths, but they give rise to important new questions about interrogation practices that may also have been used at Guantánamo. They also further justify the call for a thorough and independent investigation of the three deaths and underscore the severe credibility issues with the government’s claims about “suicides.”

The investigation of the Guantanamo "suicides" by Horton and Seton Hall University School of Law, Center for Policy and Research (PDF) was the subject of a slur campaign in the media last May, with Horton's article in particular attacked by former Bush Administration officials. Then, strangely, Adweek writer Alex Koppelman and his former Salon.com collaborator Mark Benjamin, jumped in to defend Guantanamo Defense Department authorities' version of events.

Links to the Torturers

The following video was posted at both LiveLeak.com and You Tube, and provides "a glimpse of what went on during interrogations of [Afghan] insurgents by Jonathan Idema," who worked in conjunction with NATO forces in Afghanistan "counterterror" operations.

Idema is a controversial figure. He was arrested by Afghan authorities in July 2004 in Kabul, where according to a New York Times report, he had been holding eight men prisoner. Some of these men "said they were kicked and beaten, had scalding water poured on them, and had their heads repeatedly dunked in a bucket of water." Idema was pardoned by Afghan President Karzai in March 2007. He had claimed all along that he was working at the behest of U.S. authorities. The U.S. denied this, though admittedly he did work with international forces on counterterrorism operations.

In a well-documented examination of his career at Wikipedia, Idema's connections with U.S. Special Forces is dissected. Idema's various disgraces and problems with the military never kept him from working at various times with U.S. Special Forces, and interestingly, he has been connected to private contracting firms associated with the "war on terror," including Star America Aviation Company, Ltd. (SAAC).

One of the latter company's executives is retired Major General Jack Holbein, a former leading commander at U.S. Special Forces Command. SAAC is linked to a shell company, Isabeau Dakota, Inc., that listed Idema's father as president and sole officer, in that both are registered as corporations by the same individual, William L. London, who appears to be an attorney in Sanford, North Carolina. There is some evidence, given the connections noted in his Wikipedia entry, that Idema served as an off-the-record asset or operative of U.S. Special Forces.

Major General Holbein was listed in the 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) report on detainee abuse (large PDF) as one of the recipients of the Defense Department's interrogation-torture proposal developed by James Mitchell and John "Bruce" Jessen at Joint Personnel Services Agency (JPRA). Holbein was then Chief of Staff at U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), and JPRA was under command authority of JFCOM at that time. The implication of the SASC report is that Holbein and others helped send the torture proposal up the chain of command.

JFCOM was disbanded last August, "the first time a Defense Department combatant command has been dissolved" one news account explained. According to the article, by Hugh Lessig at The Daily Press:

The military is keeping the core mission of JFCOM: training the military to operate and fight together. But instead of maintaining a separate four-star command and all the overhead it entails, personnel will report directly to the Joint Staff.

The former JFCOM functions remaining in Hampton Roads include those related to joint training, developing new concepts and doctrine, experimentation and what the military calls "lessons learned."

A Tale of Two Videos

The video below is from As Sahab, a supposedly Al Qaeda linked media outlet, though reposted at LiveLink, and apparently was discovered in the raid on Idema's Afghanistan headquarters in Kabul in 2004. (Other As Sahab videos of torture have been aired by ABC news, and posted at You Tube.) Whether or not Idema was working directly for the Americans or not, the video provides a sickeningly vivid display of the kind of water torture during interrogation that has been documented previously as used by U.S. forces. (See here and here.)



The refusal by either the Obama administration or the U.S. Congress to hold torturers accountable, or to eliminate the torture embedded in the Army Field Manual, means that the torture program continues. It may be more hidden, but it operates nevertheless continuously. While the U.S. puts out propaganda about its "humane" treatment of detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere (see this story by Jason Leopold on the latest video issued in the U.S. propaganda effort), the real truth is hidden as much as possible.

The cozening of torturers, and the successful continuation in one form of the U.S. torture program has found its domestic analogue in the vicious state repression being unleashed upon the reform-minded protesters of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Indeed, the attacks on peaceful protesters demonstrates as much as the history of the torture program that the U.S. government is not an entity to be bargained with, and that new political forms must arise to challenge the social and political status quo. Their first demand must be an end to state violence against peaceful protest.

The Forgotten History of David Petraeus

Originally posted at FDL/The Dissenter

In July, General David Petraeus was approved as CIA Director by both the Senate Intelligence Committee and then the full Senate, whose vote was an astounding 94-0, astounding because this is a man who was deeply implicated in war crimes, including torture.

While Petraeus's record on backing both torture and death/terror squads in Iraq had been looked at before, literally no one brought up this record when the Obama administration's nomination of Petraeus was being sped through the constitutional "advice and consent" process. The failure of any U.S. Senator to ask questions about Petraeus's record on these matters demonstrates the utter bankruptcy of the two political parties, and even more, of U.S. civil society as a whole. Under the leadership of Barack Obama, torture has not only not been ended, its institutionalization has been solidified from the Bush years.

The dubious Yoo/Bybee/Bradbury OLC memos have been rescinded by President Obama's executive order, but the underlying structure of the torture program, which continually metamorphizes so that its existence will not be endangered, remains. Now a primary figure involved in the torture program is head of the CIA. These are dangerous times.

What makes them even more dangerous is the extreme complacency and passivity of the U.S. press, blogger community, and human rights organizations, who never raised a peep over the nomination of Petraeus to head the CIA, and who have for the most part let violations of the UN Convention Against Torture treaty, which makes the handing of prisoners over to state authorities who are likely to torture them a crime, become a unremarkable minor detail in their political reporting and campaigning.

Training the Torturers and the Implementation of FRAGO 242

Petraeus was promoted to lieutenant general in June 2004, and was appointed the first commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command Iraq (MNSTC). The MNSTC was organized to train Iraqi Security Forces, with the supposed aim of making them responsible for Iraqi state security. The context was the dismantling of the Iraqi Army under the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) of L. Paul Bremer. While the CPA was busy privatizing the Iraqi economy, the cobbled-together Iraqi forces were unable to fight the remnants of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the country was rent by sectarian conflict.

It was also in June 2004 that Fragmentary Order 242 was issued, instructing U.S. forces, as the UK Guardian reported, "not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as the abuse of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition. Where the alleged abuse is committed by Iraqi on Iraqi, 'only an initial report will be made … No further investigation will be required unless directed by HQ'."

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the Commander of US ground troops in Iraq, was the likely high official who signed off on this policy, but as the Guardian noted, "Frago 242 appears to have been issued as part of the wider political effort to pass the management of security from the coalition to Iraqi hands." The policy amounted to turning Iraqi prisoners over to security forces trained by Petraeus's MNSTC. The Iraqis tortured the prisoners, while U.S. forces were complicit, and if anyone wanted to intervene, the order tied their hands.

Frago 242 was modified in April 2005: "MNCI FRAGO 039 DTD 29 April 2005 has modified FRAGO 242 and now requires reports of Iraqi on Iraqi abuse be reported through operational channels."

Frago 039 was released in 2005. As Angus Stickler and Chris Woods at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism noted, "It is unclear from the files what happened to the reports of detainee abuse once they had been sent up the chain of command. There are indications that some may have been investigated, but it is not known whether this was by the US or if the files were handed over to the appropriate Iraqi authorities."

A likely example of Frago 242 in operation occurred during a June 29, 2004 encounter between Oregon National Guardsmen assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry, and Iraqi Interior Ministry agents, as reported by Mike Francis in the Oregonian, August 2004 (as reposted by the Seattle Times). Members of the unit had observed the beating of blindfolded prisoners on the grounds of the Ministry. The story continued.

Soon after, a team of Oregon Army National Guard soldiers swept into the yard and found dozens of Iraqi detainees who said they had been beaten, starved and deprived of water for three days.

In a nearby building, the soldiers counted dozens more prisoners and what appeared to be torture devices: metal rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires and bottles of chemicals. Many of the Iraqis, including one identified as a 14-year-old boy, had fresh welts and bruises across their backs and legs.

The Guardsmen moved in, disarmed the Iraqi jailers and Lt. Col. Daniel Hendrickson of Albany, Oregon, radioed for further instructions. The instructions came. Officers up the chain of command in the Army's First Cavalry Division told Hendrickson "to return the prisoners to their abusers and immediately withdraw." The U.S. Embassy later confirmed the incident, and said that the issue was brought up with Iraqi authorities, but wouldn't disclose details, as "it would be 'inappropriate' to discuss 'details of those diplomatic and confidential conversations.' The embassy statement, we now know, was disingenuous in the extreme.

The embassy, in a written statement, said American soldiers are "compelled by the law of land warfare and core values to stop willful and unnecessary use of physical violence on prisoners." The U.S. soldiers involved in the incident, it said, "acted professionally and calmly to ease tensions and defend prisoners who needed help."

The U.S. Guardsmen who entered the Iraqi compound that day knew they had done the right thing by disarming the torturers, but felt it was wrong to move out. According to Francis, they spoke about the incident because they were "really upset." One soldier said, "They were really moved by what they'd seen." Francis wrote, "they wanted Americans to know about the actions they took to protect unresisting prisoners — and that they were ordered by U.S. military officials to walk away."

Reports of Torture After 2004

Reports of torture by Iraqi security forces continued to leak out. In 2005, Richard Galpin at BBC posted an incendiary story about the burgeoning scandal. According to the British news agency, "Iraq's new police force... [faced] mounting allegations of systematic abuse and torture of people in detention, as well as allegations of extra-judicial killings. The minority Sunni community in particular claims it is being targeted by the Shia-dominated police force."

According to Galpin, a list of different torture techniques published by Human Rights Watch at the time included "beating detainees with cables, hanging them from their wrists for long periods and giving electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body."

From a video given to the BBC by the Association of Muslim Scholars (a Sunni Muslim organisation), it seems another particularly brutal form of torture can also be added - drilling into the knees, elbows and shoulders of victims.

And according to press reports, the Shia-dominated commandos then targeting the Sunni minority were organized by -- David Petraeus. In an interview of Arun Gupta by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Petraeus's part in this was described.

What we were talking about two-and-a-half years ago was Petraeus’s role in helping to set up the Special Police Commandos. In 2004, 2005, he was given the mission to train all Iraq military and police forces....

Now, one of the key things that Petraeus did was they decided -- him and his command decided -- that they were going to create this paramilitary force, the Special Police Commandos. They armed them. They funded them. They trained them. And they also issued the usual denials: “Oh, we're not giving them any weapons. This is an Iraqi initiative.” And so, now he’s saying the same thing with the Sunni militias.

So, anyway, the Special Police Commandos quickly morphed into Shiite death squads that were used against the Sunni insurgency and against Sunnis, in general, throughout Iraq.

One of the most notorious police commando units was the Wolf Brigade, which trained with U.S. forces, and was notorious for torture and extrajudicial murders in Sunni neighborhoods.

One of the most extraordinary reports on U.S. backing of the Iraqi terror police was by Peter Maass in the New York Times Magazine in May 2005. Maass was present at a meeting between himself and General Adnan Thabit, head of the Special Police Commandos. Also present was James Steele, "one of the United States military's top experts on counterinsurgency," Maass wrote. "Steele honed his tactics leading a Special Forces mission in El Salvador during that country's brutal civil war in the 1980's." A retired U.S. colonel, Steele was a member of General Petraeus's team working to train the police security units.

The interview with Thabit had barely started, when something bizarre and chilling occurred:

A few minutes after the interview started, a man began screaming in the main hall, drowning out the Saudi's voice. ''Allah!'' he shouted. ''Allah! Allah!'' It was not an ecstatic cry; it was chilling, like the screams of a madman, or of someone being driven mad. ''Allah!'' he yelled again and again. The shouts were too loud to ignore. Steele left the room to find out what was happening. When returned, the shouts had ceased. But soon, through the window behind me, I could hear the sounds of someone vomiting, coming from an area where other detainees were being held, at the side of the building.

Steele was not the only American involved in training the Iraqi terror police. Steve Casteel was "the senior U.S. adviser in the Ministry of Interior," working directly with Iraqi interior minister, Falah al-Nakib. According to Maass, Casteel was "a former top official in the Drug Enforcement Administration who spent much of his professional life immersed in the drug wars of Latin America. Casteel worked alongside local forces in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, where he was involved in the hunt for Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin cocaine cartel."

Steele, Casteel and Petraeus have all told the press at various times that they opposed human rights abuses among Iraqi forces. Petraeus himself told New York Times reporters in May 2006 that he and his team "vigorously pursued allegations of misconduct," and that "he never received evidence of the police carrying out clearly sectarian violence, but that at his insistence three commando leaders were fired or moved to lesser positions for detainee abuse or corruption."

In a September 25, 2004 op-ed for the Washington Post, Petraeus wrote, "Helping organize, train and equip nearly a quarter-million of Iraq's security forces is a daunting task." He cited all the "progress" that had been made under his command. He noted he met "with Iraqi security force leaders every day." In a very slight nod to reports of atrocities, Petraeus wrote, "Though some have given in to acts of intimidation, many are displaying courage and resilience in the face of repeated threats and attacks on them, their families and their comrades. I have seen their determination and their desire to assume the full burden of security tasks for Iraq."

The progress and the U.S. remonstrances against torture have reportedly resulted in the suspension of a handful of Iraqi officers, but the reports about continuing torture by security forces continued, and many were revealed in the Wikileaks Iraq War Logs release earlier this year. Here is one of the reports, from August 2006. As the reader will note, while U.S. forces make a report, no investigation is initiated, and the prisoner and his torturer are said to remain at the Ramadi jail. The case is closed five days later.

*ALLEGED DETAINEE ABUSE BY IRAQI POLICE IN RAMADI ON 17 AUG 2006
SUSPECTED DETAINEE ABUSE RPTD AT 171100D AUG 06

1. DESCRIPTION OF INCIDENT/SUSPECTED VIOLATION (WHO REPORTED INCIDENT AND WHAT HAPPENED):

SGT –––––, 300TH MILITARY POLICE COMPANY, REPORTED IRAQI POLICE COMMITTING DETAINEE ABUSE AT AN IRAQI POLICE STATION IN RAMADI. SGT ––––– WITNESSED 1LT –––– WHIP A DETAINEE ACROSS HIS BACK WITH A PR-24 STRAIGHT SIDE HANDLED BATON AND 1LT –––– KICKING A SECOND DETAINEE. THAT NIGHT SGT ––––– HEARD WHIPPING NOISES WALKING THROUGH THE HALLWAY, AND OPENED A DOOR TO FIND 1LT –––– WITH A 4 GAUGE ELECTRICAL CABLE, WHIPPING THE BOTTOM OF A DETAINEE*S FEET. LATER THAT NIGHT, SGT ––––– CAUGHT 1LT –––– WHIPPING A DETAINEE ACROSS HIS BACK WITH AN ELECTRICAL CABLE. SGT ––––– DOCUMENTED EACH EVENT ON A SWORN STATEMENT FORM AND REPORTED THE INCIDENTS.

2. LOCATION (GRID COORDINATES OR OTHER REFERENCE): 38S LB 37142 99770

3. TIME OF OCCURRENCE AND TIME OF DISCOVERY: REPORTED 17 1100 AUG 06

4. WHO CAUSED (IF KNOWN) OR IDENTITY OF FRIENDLY AND ENEMY UNITS OPERATING IN THE IMMEDIATE AREA (IF KNOWN):

IRAQI POLICE FROM THE AL HURYIA IRAQI POLICE STATION

5. NAME OF WITNESSES (W/UNIT OR ADDRESS): SGT –––– ––––– –––––, 300TH MP COMPANY, MP PIT TEAM

6. UNIT POINT OF CONTACT: CPT –––– – –––– AT DNVT 551-2044 OR ––––.––––@–––––.ARMY.SMIL.MIL

7. EVIDENCE GATHERED AND ITS DISPOSITION: SWORN STATEMENTS AND PICTURES ARE ATTACHED

8. WEAPONS/EQUIPMENT INVOLVED: 4 GAUGE ELECTICAL CABLE, PR-24 BATON

9. DESCRIPTION OF DAMAGE OR INJURIES TO GOVERNMENT/CIVILIAN PROPERTY AND PERSONNEL: CIRCULAR WHIP MARKS, BLEEDING ON BACK, DARK RED BRUISING ON BACK

10. CURRENT LOCATION OF SUSPECTS AND VICTIMS (JAIL, HOSPITAL, AT SCENE, ETC.) BOTH ARE STILL AT AL HURYIA POLICE STATION

11. HOW IS THE SITE BEING SECURED? N/A

12. INVESTIGATING OFFICER. STATUS OF INVESTIGATION: NO INVESTIGATION INITIATED AT THIS POINT.

CLOSED: 22 AUG 2006

In February 2009, three years after the recognition of torture at Al Huryia police station, a U.S. military dispatch shows the Al Huryia police are still torturing prisoners, with U.S. knowledge, and no investigation. The military record merely concludes "Closed."

The case against Petraeus may be circumstantial, as we do not have a specific document that links him to torture, or even the Frago orders. But the General's culpability in these matters is highly likely, and the principle of command responsibility ties him into the policies that occurred under his command. You would have thought that there would have been a Congressional investigation of these matters, or that Petraeus would have been grilled about them at his hearing. Indeed, Petraeus explained at his recent Senate hearing that he would not rule out torture in "ticking time bomb" scenarios.

The United States has become so politically paralyzed that it cannot mount an effective political opposition to the economic fleecing being implemented currently by the executive and legislative branches of what can only be understood to be a torture state. Without a new political opposition, based on a genuine progressive popular movement, and ultimately a new political party that strives for power with a program of ending the dominance of the military and economic elites, then there is no light at the end of the tunnel, only our fear spinning solitary in the dark.

The Significance of HRW's New Call to Prosecute Bush Administration Officials for Torture

Cross-posted from MyFDL/Firedoglake

Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a new report Tuesday. As they stated in the press release announcing the 107-page report, "Getting Away with Torture: The Bush Administration and Mistreatment of Detainees" (HTML, PDF), there is "overwhelming evidence of torture by the Bush administration." As a result, President Barack Obama is obliged "to order a criminal investigation into allegations of detainee abuse authorized by former President George W. Bush and other senior officials."

In particular, HRW singled out "four key leaders" in the torture program. Besides former President George W. Bush, the report indicts former Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and CIA Director George Tenet. But others remain possible targets of investigation and prosecution. According to the report:

Such an investigation should also include examination of the roles played by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Attorney General John Ashcroft, as well as the lawyers who crafted the legal “justifications” for torture, including Alberto Gonzales (counsel to the president and later attorney general), Jay Bybee (head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)), John Rizzo (acting CIA general counsel), David Addington (counsel to the vice president), William J. Haynes II (Department of Defense general counsel), and John Yoo (deputy assistant attorney general in the OLC).

But the key passage in the HRW report concerns the backing for international prosecutions, under the principle in international law of "universal jurisdiction," which was used back in 1998 by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón to indict former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for genocide and murder.

Unless and until the US government pursues credible criminal investigations of the role of senior officials in the mistreatment of detainees since September 11, 2001, exercise universal jurisdiction or other forms of jurisdiction as provided under international and domestic law to prosecute US officials alleged to be involved in criminal offenses against detainees in violation of international law. [emphasis added]

Indeed, in an important section of the report, HRW details the failures and successes of pursuing such international prosecutions in the face of U.S. prosecutors' failure to act and investigate or indict high administration officials for war crimes. This is even more important when one considers that the Obama administration has clearly stated its intention to not investigate or prosecute such crimes, going after a handful of lower-level interrogators for crimes not covered by the Bush administration's so-called "legal" approvals for torture provided by the infamous Yoo/Bybee/Levin/Bradbury memos issued by the Office of Legal Counsel.

Nor has Congress shown even a smidgen of appetite for pursuing further accountability: not one Congressman or Senator has stepped forward as yet to endorse HRW's new call. Instead, they demonstrated their obsequiousness by approving Obama's nomination of General David Petraeus as new CIA director 94-0, despite the fact that Petraeus has been implicated in the organization of counter-terror death squads in Iraq, and was in charge of training Iraqi security forces who repeatedly were documented as engaging in widespread torture. It was during Petraeus's tenure as chief of such training for the coalition forces, that the U.S. implemented the notorious Fragmentary Order (FRAGO) 242, which commanded U.S. forces not to intervene in cases of Iraqi governmental torture should they come across such it (which they often did). No one during Petraeus's testimony in his nomination hearings even questioned him about this.

Why this report now?

I asked Andrea Prasow, a senior counsel at Human Rights Watch, why this report was issued now, noting that some on the left had already questioned the timing of HRW's action.

"Because it really needed to be done," Prasow explained. She noted the recent admissions by former President Bush and Vice President Cheney that they had approved waterboarding. Furthermore, "following the killing of [Osama] Bin Laden, we saw the immediate response by some that torture and the enhanced interrogation techniques led to the capture of Bin Laden. And it became a part of normal debate about torture. It shows how fragile is the current commitment not to torture."

Prasow also noted the recent closure of the Durham investigation, which resulted in the decision to criminally investigate the deaths of two detainees in CIA custody, while 99 other cases referred to his office were closed. I asked her whether she felt, as I do, that the announcement of the two investigations were meant to forestall attempts by European (especially Spanish) prosecutors to pursue "universal jurisdiction" prosecutions of U.S. officials for torture.

"I don't see how there's a defensible justification that the investigations Durham announced can do that," Prasow said. "It's pretty clear that there should be an investigation into the deaths of these detainees," she added, "but it's so clear the investigation is very limited. The scope of the investigation is the most important part. Even if Durham had investigated the 100 or so cases that exceeded the legal authorities, it wouldn't be sufficient. What about the people who wrote the legal memos? Who told them to write the memos?" she said, emphasizing the fact that Durham's investigation was limited by Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to only CIA crimes, and only those that supposedly exceeded the criteria for "enhanced interrogation" laid out in a number of administration legal memos. The torture, Prasow noted, was "throughout the military" as well, including "hundreds or thousands" tortured at sites in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.

Prasow noted that the Obama administration has made it policy to block attempts by torture victims to get compensation for torture, asserting a policy of protecting "state secrets" to shut down court cases. "But there are other ways of providing redress," she said, adding that "providing redress is part of international laws." The HRW report itself states, "Consistent with its obligations under the Convention against Torture, the US government should ensure that victims of torture obtain redress, which may include providing victims with compensation where warranted outside of the judicial context."

The new HRW report comes on the heels of a controversy roiling around a proposed United Kingdom governmental inquiry into torture. A number of British human rights and legal agencies have said they would boycott the UK proceedings as a "whitewash." As Andy Worthington put it the other day:

As a result of pandering to the Americans’ wishes, the terms of reference are “so restrictive,” as the Guardian described it, that JUSTICE, the UK section of the International Commission of Jurists, warned that the inquiry “was likely to fail to comply with UK and international laws governing investigations into torture.” Eric Metcalfe, JUSTICE’s director of human rights policy, said that the rules “mean that the inquiry is unlikely to get to the truth behind the allegations and, even if it does, we may never know for sure. However diligent and committed Sir Peter [Gibson] and his team may be, the government has given itself the final word on what can be made public.”

Andrea Prasow echoed Metcalfe's fears, saying HRW had "some concerns about how much information [in the UK inquiry] was going to be kept secret. I think transparency, making it as public as possible, is most important."

The fight for transparency also makes HRW's call for prosecutions of high government officials, along with "an independent, nonpartisan commission, along the lines of the 9-11 Commission, [that] should be established to examine the actions of the executive branch, the CIA, the military, and Congress, with regard to Bush administration policies and practices that led to detainee abuse," very timely. In a column the other day at Secrecy News -- Pentagon Tightens Grip on Unclassified Information -- Steven Aftergood reported on a Department of Defense proposed new rule regarding classification. While the Obama administration is supposedly on record for greater governmental transparency, the new rule imposes "new safeguard requirements on 'prior designations indicating controlled access and dissemination (e.g., For Official Use Only, Sensitive But Unclassified, Limited Distribution, Proprietary, Originator Controlled, Law Enforcement Sensitive).'"

According to Aftergood, "By 'grandfathering' those old, obsolete markings in a new regulation for defense contractors, the DoD rule would effectively reactivate them and qualify them for continued protection under the new Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) regime, thereby defeating the new policy." Even worse (if possible), "the proposed rule says that any unclassified information that has not been specifically approved for public release must be safeguarded. It establishes secrecy, not openness, as the presumptive status and default mode for most unclassified information."

Much of what we know about the Bush-era torture program is due to the work of the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights, who have used the Freedom of Information Act to gather hundreds of documents, if not thousands, that document the paper trail surrounding the crimes of the Bush administration. Reporters and investigators like Jane Mayer, Philippe Sands, Alfred McCoy, and Jason Leopold have also contributed much to our understanding of what occurred during the Bush years. The work of investigators going back years demonstrates that U.S. research into and propagation of torture around the world goes back decades.

The Senate Armed Services Committee has also produced an impressive, if still partially redacted, investigation (large PDF) into detainee abuse by the Department of Defense. Their report, for instance, concluded regarding torture at Guantanamo that “Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's authorization of interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there."

When one puts together the accelerated emphasis on "state secrets"; the Obama political program of "not looking back" in regards to U.S. war crimes (while supposedly pursuing accountability for torture and war crimes committed by other countries); the political passivity, if not cowardice of Congress; the fact that Obama "has not been transparent on the rendition issue, not even saying what its policy is," according to Andrea Prasow; and finally the lies and propaganda spewed forth by the former Administration's key figures and their proxies, one can only agree with HRW that enough is enough. The time for investigations and prosecutions into torture and rendition is now.

And if they won't listen in Washington, D.C., perhaps they will in Madrid. Or some other intrepid prosecutor in -- who knows? -- Brazil or Argentina or Chile will pay back America, as a matter of poetic but also real justice for the crimes endured by their societies when the U.S. helped organize torture and terror in their countries only a generation ago. There were no U.S. investigations into actions of government figures then, and now we are faced with another set of atrocities produced by our own government. If we do not act now, what will our children face?

Could Durham's CIA "Investigation" Lead to Understanding Migration of Torture Techniques?

Originally posted at MyFDL/Firedoglake

With the news that John Durham has decided to finally open criminal, and not just "preliminary," investigations into the deaths of two prisoners held by the CIA (apparently Manadel al-Jamadi and Gul Rahman) the CIA can now "exhale," as Spencer Ackerman describes it. The CIA's sigh of release is related to the fact that of at least 101 cases of CIA abuse only two might be prosecuted. Spencer quotes outgoing CIA Director Leon Panetta:

“On this, my last day as Director, I welcome the news that the broader inquiries are behind us,” Panetta wrote to the CIA staff on Thursday. “We are now finally about to close this chapter of our Agency’s history.”

Ackerman also quoted the new CIA director, General David Petraeus: "During his confirmation hearing last Thursday, Petraeus issued a public plea to take the 'rear view mirrors off the bus' and drop any inquiries into CIA torture. He also suggested that the CIA might return to abusive interrogations in “special cases” of imminent danger..."

Petraeus was approved for his new CIA position on a unanimous Senate vote. No one in Congress bothered to ask about his affiliation with former "Salvador option" specialist James Steele, or his activities in relation to the training of Iraq security forces, at the same time as U.S. forces were given a "fragmentary order" (FRAGO 242) which told U.S. forces not to interfere with the torture of prisoners they were handing over to these same Iraqi security forces. FRAGO 242 was a direct contravention of U.S. treaty obligations under the Convention Against Torture not to turn prisoners over to forces that would likely torture them.

But this is America, and it appears most of the reporting class, both mainstream and of the more alternative, "blogging" sort, have taken to heart the no-accountability plea of the Obama administration, and never bothered to ask why Petraeus was given such a free ride re questions about torture and other abuse under his command noted above, or his association with the operations of terror groups like the Wolf Brigade. (I plan to write more about this later.)

Comparing the 2002 OLC Memos with Later CIA Iterations of its "Techniques"

But not everyone is letting things slide. Marcy Wheeler is taking a closer look at the new information that we can glean from the Durham investigations. One thing she notes, which she has covered before, is how the techniques used on Rahman were never approved by the Yoo/Bybee memos. The water dousing and exposure to extreme cold were techniques noted in a 2004 letter written by the CIA General Counsel to the OLC's Jack Goldsmith, a follow-up request concerning the CIA's "Legal Principles Applicable to CIA Detention and Interrogation of Al-Qa'ida Personnel," otherwise known as the Bullet Points memo, and the earlier OLC memos . But did someone vet some of these techniques, at another time and place, for a different agency... at DoD perhaps?

I think it's worth noting that the Bullet points memo cited 17 techniques (it's really 16, though) the CIA relied upon, and it would be worth comparing those techniques in general with the ten approved torture techniques in the 2002 Yoo/Bybee memo.

Yoo/Bybee, 2002:
1. Attention grasp
2. Walling
3. Facial hold
4. Facial slap (insult slap)
5. cramped confinement
6. wall standing
7. stress positions
8. sleep deprivation
9. insects placed in a confinement box (really, the use of phobias)
10. the waterboard

-- I'd note, as I have before, that some of these techniques were really omnibus in nature, particularly "sleep deprivation", which included within its definition (from the Bradbury 2005 memo, which avers, however, to how "sleep deprivation" was already being used), "sleep deprivation, forced sleep deficit was combined, as we can see, with shackling, forced positions and forced standing, humiliation, manipulation of diet, sensory overload, and possibly other torture procedures." (quote is from my article)

Now, let's look at the Bullet Point document (4/28/2003), written (PDF) it appears by John Yoo and Jennifer Koester, with duplicated items from August 2002 asterisked; all others are "new" and presumably unapproved (though more on that in a moment).

1. Isolation
2. Sleep deprivation*
3. "reduced caloric intake (so long as the amount is calculated to maintain the general health of the detainee)"
4. deprivation of reading material
5. "loud music or white noise (at a decibel level calculated to avoid damage to the detainee's hearing)"
6. the attention grasp*
7. walling*
8. the facial hold*
9. the facial slap (insult slap)*
10. the abdominal slap
11. cramped confinement*
12. wall standing*
13. stress positions*
14. sleep deprivation [this is a duplication in the list of #2, but is listed twice in the bullet point list, so is included here]
15. the use of diapers
16. the use of harmless insects* [though changed from the more precise use of insects in a confinement box from Yoo/Bybee 2002]
17. the waterboard*

On March 2, 2004, as Marcy Wheeler has noted, "CIA General Counsel Scott Muller [wrote] to Jack Goldsmith asking for reaffirmation of several legal documents, including [the] Legal Principles document, released with redactions". (PDF to Muller's letter)

Muller added some new techniques to the Bullet Points document, including pouring, flicking, or tossing of water ("water PFT) and "water dousing" (using water from a bucket or water hose). "Both water PFT and water dousing are used as part of the SERE training provided to US military personnel," Muller wrote, noting later in his letter, "there are virtually no health or safety concerns with water PFT as part of an approved interrogation plan."

Muller explains, too, that "[a] medical officer is present to monitor the detainee's physical condition during the water dousing session(s), including any indications of hypothermia. Upon completion of the water dousing session(s), the detainee is moved to another room, monitored as needed by a medical officer to guard against hypothermia, and steps are taken to ensure the detainee is capable of generating necessary body heat and maintain normal body functions."

These explanations about safeguards, written over a year after Rahman's death, appear to be a cover for Rahman's death, as evidently there were no safeguards used there. Or perhaps, Rahman was an experimental case, much as Zubaydah was when it came to other torture techniques ("walling" and waterboarding, for instance).

Gul Rahman died of hypothermia (and likely other torture) on November 20, 2002, shackled after a session of water dousing in a cold room in the CIA's infamous Salt Pit prison. Was there a medical monitor present? We have reason to believe that CIA doctors were at all the black sites, so what were they doing on November 20, 2002?

CIA and DoD Techniques Compared

As we have seen, by April 2004, the number of CIA known techniques have escalated to 18 (or 19, given the replication of "sleep deprivation" in the original list, which is, as I will suggest below, a typo, as most likely the second mention of sleep deprivation is really meant to be "sleep adjustment").

Finally, I think it's worth looking at the techniques approved for DoD by Rumsfeld on April 16, 2003, after the infamous "Working Group" review. I'm not going to list them all. They were divided into categories of severity. One of the techniques that led to the Working Group review was "Exposure to cold weather or water (with appropriate medical monitoring") in Jerald Phifer's October 11, 2002 memo to the Commander of Guantanamo's Joint Task Force 170 .

The DoD techniques, approved around the same time as the CIA's Bullet Point list, included (the list below is not definitive, but meant to compare/contrast with those above):

1. "Incentive/Removal of Incentive: Providing a reward or removing a privilege. 'above and beyond those that are required by the Geneva Convention, from detainees. [Sounds very much like "deprivation of reading material" in the Bullet Point document, though could be more related to sensory deprivation]
2. "Fear Up Harsh: Significantly increasing the fear level in a detainee."
3. "Pride and Ego Down: Attacking or insulting the ego of a detainee, not beyond the limits that would apply to a POW."
4. "Futility: Invoking the feeling of futility of a detainee."
5. "Mutt and Jeff: A team consisting of a friendly and harsh interrogator. The harsh interrogator might employ the Pride and Ego Down technique. [Caution: Other nations that believe that POW protections apply to detainees may view this technique as inconsistent with Geneva IIt, Article 13...]"
6. "Dietary manipulation: Changing the diet of a detainee; no intended deprivation of food or water; no adverse medical or cultural effect and without intent to deprive subject of food or water..." [bold emphasis added]
7. Environmental manipulation, including "adjusting temperature"
8. Sleep Adjustment, refers to shifting hours of sleep, i.e., playing around with circadian rhythms, "NOT sleep deprivation" [this may account for the confusion in the Bullet Points document, which appears to draw on approvals made for DoD, whatever the nature of those approvals).
9. False Flag
10. Isolation [which includes a host of caveats, including possible violations of Geneva III, Articles 13, 14, 34 and 126]

Savvy readers will remember that this was a ratcheting down of earlier DoD-approved techniques (Dec. 2002), that also included deprivation of light and auditory stimuli, stress positions, inducing stress by manipulation of detainee's fears (IPCRESS for those who remember that book/movie), 20 hr. interrogations, and hooding, among others.

It appears, from a pursuit of how the torture techniques migrated, that there was a good deal of synergy going on between DoD, CIA, and likely Special Forces. I'd point out that in the Muller letter to Goldsmith, there are some redactions, one of them concerns a redacted technique, one that is associated with SERE.

Like other approved interrogation techniques, [approximately sixteen character spaces redacted] is used as part of the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) training provided to US personnel.

The implication is that some other SERE technique was approved and the technique is being ported over from DoD. I believe the redacted technique could be "exposure to cold", which would fit the redacted area, and speaks to a technique otherwise unremarked in the Bullet Points document, but which was obviously used by CIA, as it was by DoD (under the rubric "environmental manipulation").

It's additionally worth noting there were psychologists and psychiatrists around who moved between all these agencies. Some techniques were apparently never written down or approved, but certainly used, particularly those that played on sexual humiliation or other cultural or religious sensitivities and vulnerabilities.

Factoring in the Experiments Angle

It would be a mistake to think that the documents will provide a full story of what occurred. This is especially true when it comes to considering what kinds of experimentation were actually being conducted on the detainees. Jason Leopold and I have written about the unprecedented use of the antimalarial mefloquine on all incoming detainees (see here, here, and here).

Another possible experiment may have surrounded the use of dietary manipulation, and the Seton Hall School of Law's Center for Policy and Research's study on The Guantanamo Diet noted, "The detainees’ weight varies so wildly that many have been obese briefly and underweight and malnourished at other times.... Professor Denbeaux concluded, “The most compelling question is how can the detainees’ weight swing from obese to under nourished when the medical staff is in complete control of all food intake.”

I'm looking into the latter issue, but will note that dietary manipulation, which shows up in the Bullet Point document as "reduced caloric intake", as well as DoD docs, is allowed so far as I can perceive in the current Army Field Manual (FM 2-22.3). The latter states "Depriving the detainee of necessary food, water, or medical care" is "prohibited," but I think, as in the caveat on dietary manipulation above, re the detainee's "general health" that there is a lot of room for leeway, i.e., what is considered "necessary"? Note the use of the word "intended" as regards "dietary manipulation" in the April 2003 list of DoD "techniques."

The list of AFM prohibited techniques is followed immediately by the following statement: "While using legitimate interrogation techniques, certain applications of approaches and techniques may approach the line between permissible actions and prohibited actions. It may often be difficult to determine where permissible actions end and prohibited actions begin."

No kidding.

City of Walls, Nation of Shame

The U.S. counterinsurgency plan, godfathered by Gen. David Petraeus, to divide up Baghdad neighborhoods into barricaded ghettos has proceeded apace since its inception over a year ago. As a journalist who posted his recent video stories at YouTube notes:

US claims that the military surge is bringing stability to Iraq. By travelling through the heart of Baghdad its easy to see by enclosing the Sunni and Shia populations behind 12ft walls, the surge has left the city more divided and desperate than ever.

The traditional media has convinced the American people that the Bush/Petraeus "surge" has "worked." Democratic Party presidential presumptive nominee Barack Obama, while remaining critical of the Iraq War as a whole, maintains that the "surge" has resulted in an "improved security situation," thanks to "improved counterinsurgency tactics."

But the so-called surge has only acted to cement in place the transformation of Baghdad into a city of prisons, fortified by over twenty miles of walls, and defended by powerful militias. Below is a three part video shot by an Iraqi journalist recently returned to his home in Baghdad. (Parts Two and Three are displayed only via URL.)

Part One: City of Walls



Part Two: Baghdad Killing Fields

Part Three: Iraq's Lost Generation

One cannot watch these clips and not feel a tremendous shame at what evil the country we live in has visited upon the Iraqi people. In their petulant and impulsive aim at imperial glory, aided by the backing of oil, energy, armaments, and national security corporate interests, Bush, Cheney and their cohorts have created a tragedy of epic proportions, one for which this country will be paying, both financially, and in moral capital for decades to come.

The Democratic Party opposition is proving itself once again similarly in thrall to the same interests as their more overtly warlike GOP opponents. As the gleam begins to fade off the newness of the Obama persona, we are left with promises of more war -- this time in Afghanistan -- and minimal accountability for the crimes of lying us into the Iraq War, or engaging in barbaric torture countenanced at the highest levels of government. (See Mark Benjamin's new article over at Salon.com about what Obama will and will not do about holding Bush administration officials accountable in any Obama administration -- should there be such.)

That shadow falling from the walls of Baghdad neighborhoods is the shade of murderous greed in league with sectarian fury. Its darkness is spreading like a cloud of shame over this land, plunging all the inhabitants in a blindness of impotent fear and shame.

Thanks to panicbean over at Daily Kos for the links on this story

Bush's 4th Horseman: Cholera Spreading toward Baghdad

Cholera is a serious intestinal water-borne illness that can reach epidemic proportions, especially when the water supplies in an area are contaminated or suspect. Hence, it often follows where war and social disintegration occur. In 2003, there was an outbreak in the Basra area. An even more serious contagion has emerged recently in northern Iraq and is moving south.

While an Associated Press article on the spreading cholera epidemic in Iraq headlines it is "contained", the article belies such spin by noting that the vicious intestinal disease has spread to three provinces now. The New York Times own article covers the story in more depth, and notes the danger:

A cholera epidemic in northern Iraq has infected approximately 7,000 people and could reach Baghdad within weeks as the disease spreads through the country’s decrepit and unsanitary water system, Iraqi health officials said Tuesday. [emphasis added]

Bush's Rapture = Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Like all would-be prophets, Bush feels very certain of himself. He has long had the support of fundamentalist evangelicals, who, according to a Glenn Greenwald article last year, "believe the Rapture is what is driving (and justifying) not just our current, but also future, conflicts in the Middle East.

Is fighting in order to bring about the Rapture -- whereby "believers will spontaneously disappear from their homes and workplaces and be carried to heaven" -- really all that different from 72 virgins awaiting martyrs in heaven? And much of that language is how the President publicly describes his view of the Middle East.

Then, there was the famous quote by Bush reported in the Guardian UK a few years into the Iraq War:

One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."

But, as Greenwald pointed out, the press studiously avoids questioning Bush about his messianic beliefs, especially as they relate to the Iraq War. My question to Bush would be (and David Gregory, are you listening?): President Bush, given that you believe God has sent you on a mission in your war on Iraq, and given the support you receive from those who believe the Second Coming is at hand, would you interpret the appearance of a cholera epidemic in Iraq to presage the appearance of the fourth, pale green horse of the apocalypse, as marking the imminence of the success of the surge? Or do you wish to announce the coming of Christ right now?

How the "War on Terror" Brought Plague in its Wake

While the bacterium Vibrio cholerae is the material agent of choleric infection, the efficient causal agent is the war itself (to utilize Aristotelian categories of causation). The New York Times article explains how the cholera epidemic begun in the northern regions of Kirkuk and Sulaimaniya, where almost a dozen have died, and thousands stricken, has spread to the provinces of Erbil and Nineveh. What follows is a description of how the contagion has been exacerbated by the actions taken to stem the insurgency:

“The water system represents the main problem,” [Dr. Cerko Abdulla, chief of the Sulaimaniya health directorate] said. “The disease can spread widely through water, and that’s a very serious matter.”

... Dr. Adel Mohsin, said that he was not aware of any cases on the Diyala border. But he said that further spread of the epidemic was “very likely” unless government agencies followed strict guidelines on water testing and maintaining sufficient levels of chlorination, which kills the bacteria.

In a chilling reminder of how difficult it may be to maintain those levels, Dr. Mohsin said that chlorine imports had been severely curtailed as a result of recent insurgent bombs that had been laced with chlorine, which in concentrated form can be deadly.

This is what cholera looks like:

The clinical description of cholera begins with sudden onset of massive diarrhea. The patient may lose gallons of protein-free fluid and associated electrolytes, bicarbonates and ions within a day or two. This results from the activity of the cholera enterotoxin which activates the adenylate cyclase enzyme in the intestinal cells, converting them into pumps which extract water and electrolytes from blood and tissues and pump it into the lumen of the intestine. This loss of fluid leads to dehydration, anuria, acidosis and shock. The watery diarrhea is speckled with flakes of mucus and epithelial cells ("rice-water stool") and contains enormous numbers of vibrios. The loss of potassium ions may result in cardiac complications and circulatory failure. Untreated cholera frequently results in high (50-60%) mortality rates.

Untreated? But surely there are plentiful hospitals and good medical care in Iraq. Sadly, the medical system in Iraq has all but collapsed, according to an article by David Wilson.

Destruction of Health System Another U.S. War Crime

Wilson notes that the Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 56, states:

To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the cooperation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishment and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics.

Wilson continues, reporting on the disaster that is the Iraqi medical "system":

The Iraqi Health Ministry estimates that, as of October 2005, 25% of Iraq's 18,000 physicians had left the country since the invasion in 2003. Earlier this year MEDACT reported that "doctors and other health workers were being attacked, shot at, threatened, kidnapped, and told to leave the country or die"....

Hospitals, their staff and patients have also come under attack from Coalition forces. In the US attack on Fallujah in 2004 the General Hospital was not the place to be for better health and security. Its services and those of clinics throughout the city were obstructed by US Marines with US snipers targeting medical facilities and ambulances....

Iraq's hospitals were once the envy of the Middle East....

Power supply is a major problem for most Iraqi hospitals.... Many hospitals do not have fully functioning backup generators because they lack funds to have them repaired. In many cases, spare parts are unavailable.

Al-Yarmouk, the largest emergency hospital in Baghdad, lacks medicines, disinfectants, surgical requirements, bed sheets, cleaning aids and personnel.... A medical aid worker in Basra informed MEDACT that most hospitals there have limited - and in some cases no - supplies of IV fluids, IV cannulae, antibiotics and oxygen.

Chuwader General Hospital in Sadr City, one of two hospitals covering an area of nearly two million people, has a shortage of most supplies with the lack of potable water the major problem. Chief manager, Dr Qasim al-Nuwesri has said: "of course we have typhoid, cholera, kidney stones but we now even have the very rare Hepatitis Type-E and it has become common in our area". He added that they had not faced these problems before the invasion of 2003.

Meanwhile, in order to further their war aims, the U.S. and their Iraqi partners cut off crucial supplies of chlorine, endangering many thousands with water-borne plague. Why was General Betray Us, I mean Petraeus (so there Faux News!) not questioned by this in the pro-war on terror Congress?

From the Times article again:

“If the water has low chlorination, Vibrio cholerae will go through the central supply,” Dr. Hakki said, and the disease will spread “like a fire in a haystack.”

Dr. Burhan Omar, deputy director of Kirkuk General Hospital, said that because of such problems, water purification plants themselves could be contaminated with the bacteria....

In fact, if those plants are contaminated, the epidemic could hopscotch all the way to Basra, in the south, Dr. Omar said....

The major human displacement caused by the Iraq conflict — people being driven from their homes or simply choosing to leave — is likely to be driving the epidemic, officials say.

Fadela Chaib, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, said: “Frankly speaking, it’s possible that cholera will spread to neighboring provinces and even to Baghdad, because there is a lot of people movement.

End the War Now! No to U.S. Occupation of Iraq!

The U.S. invasion of Iraq, backed by their British junior partners, and facilitated by token forces from "allied" countries that drool after U.S. foreign aid and military assistance, has turned Iraq into a hellhole of misery, war, and death. Bush strides not like Christ, but like Antichrist, bringing chaos, disease, and torture wherever his forces tread. (And I use the terms Christ and Antichrist metaphorically, and with irony, unlike the way Bush and his minions treat these matters -- such true believers, such maniacs.)

Osama bin Laden, who has reappeared like a ghost in videos transmitted in the Arab world (but not in America), speaks in populist terms of the evils of capitalism. But we have nothing to offer the poor and displaced and oppressed peoples of the Middle East, Africa, and Southern Asia, except more exploitation at the hands of multinational corporations seeking cheap natural resources and even cheaper labor to fuel their quest for super-profits.

Rebellious youth in that part of the world have been attracted to Islamic fundamentalism because of its populist, quasi-socialist rhetoric; but only after the U.S. and their third-world allies destroyed the small progressive forces in those countries who fought for democracy, and often for socialism itself. We are watching the same drama unfold in Pakistan today, where a U.S.-backed dictatorship is quashing democratic institutions and imprisoning or banning government opposition. With no other pole of progressive attraction, the youth of that country are being drawn to the Islamic fundamentalists, who promise, as the mullahs in Iran did in the last days of the Shah, more economic equality and a caring approach toward the poor, but delivering social oppression and a religious form of totalitarianism.

We are in deep trouble because what passes for the democratic left in this country is frozen with paralysis and fear. If the Bush regime is not brought down through social protest and impeachment, then the war party will be the stronger for it. And we will await the Fifth Horseman, presumption and hubris, whose task it will be to bring the entire sad affair down around our heads. We must not wait for such a deadly and tragic denouement.

Bagdad Carved Up for Vietnam-like Counterinsurgency

Stephen Soldz over at Psyche, Science and Society, has an important post up on U.S. plans for the "pacification" of Bagdad. He relies heavily on an important story by Robert Fisk, over at the UK Independent: "Divide and Rule -- America's Plan for Baghdad", who calls the U.S. operation "the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the U.S. in Iraq."

Soldz writes that "the plan [is to] to turn half of Baghdad into a series of immense prisons."

From the Fisk article:

US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter.

The campaign of “gated communities” - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of the city’s 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq....

S-Iraqi forces will supposedly clear militias from civilian streets which will then be walled off and the occupants issued with ID cards. Only the occupants will be allowed into these “gated communities” and there will be continuous patrolling by US-Iraqi forces. There are likely to be pass systems, “visitor” registration and restrictions on movement outside the “gated communities”. Civilians may find themselves inside a “controlled population” prison.

But the plan, godfathered by Gen. David Petraeus, apparently is also meant to display a show of force to Iran:

But the campaign has far wider military ambitions than the pacification of Baghdad. It now appears that the US military intends to place as many as five mechanised brigades - comprising about 40,000 men - south and east of Baghdad, at least three of them positioned between the capital and the Iranian border. This would present Iran with a powerful - and potentially aggressive - American military force close to its border in the event of a US or Israeli military strike against its nuclear facilities later this year.

That Petraeus's proposal is akin to Israeli attempts to control the Gaza strip or portions of the West Bank has not gone unnoticed. Fran Shor wrote an interesting piece at Counterpunch a few years back that has lost none of its saliency.

This policy of counterinsurgency, while consonant with Israeli military occupation, is also reminiscent of Vietnam pacification programs. Such programs were intended to dry up the guerrilla sources of support when, in fact, they often led to civilian massacres and the creation of more insurgency. Part of the reason for the failure of US counterinsurgency in Vietnam "was to treat indigenous political culture as a nullity" (Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 590)

Go read one or all of these postings, and get ready to write your editor, your Congressman, or join your favorite antiwar organization!