Almost Looks Like They Feel Remorse... Almost

(From L-R are: U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Bush, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace.)

Rumsfeld Authorized Abuse

MADRID (Reuters) - Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the prison's former U.S. commander said in an interview on Saturday.

Former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told Spain's El Pais newspaper she had seen a letter apparently signed by Rumsfeld which allowed civilian contractors to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation.

Karpinski, who ran the prison until early 2004, said she saw a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld detailing the use of harsh interrogation methods.

"The handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written: "Make sure this is accomplished"," she told Saturday's El Pais.

"The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation ... playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorized these specific techniques."

The Geneva Convention says prisoners of war should suffer "no physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion" to secure information.

"Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind," the document states.

Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse

Just days after his resignation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The plaintiffs in the case include 11 Iraqis who were prisoners at Abu Ghraib, as well as Mohammad al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at Guantanamo, whom the U.S. has identified as the so-called "20th hijacker" and a would-be participant in the 9/11 hijackings. As TIME first reported in June 2005, Qahtani underwent a "special interrogation plan," personally approved by Rumsfeld, which the U.S. says produced valuable intelligence. But to obtain it, according to the log of his interrogation and government reports, Qahtani was subjected to forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, prolonged stress positions, sleep deprivation and other controversial interrogation techniques.

U.S. to be First Nation to Authorize Violations of Geneva

Oy.

Yes

Andrew Sullivan:

What the Bush administration wants is to introduce vagueness to get away with exactly the same barabarism they have deploying illegally for the past five years. They must be stopped. And eventually, they must be prosecuted for war crimes.

War Criminals and They Know It

CIA ‘refused to operate’ secret jails

By Guy Dinmore in Washington

Published: September 20 2006 22:07 | Last updated: September 20 2006 22:07

The Bush administration had to empty its secret prisons and transfer terror suspects to the military-run detention centre at Guantánamo this month in part because CIA interrogators had refused to carry out further interrogations and run the secret facilities, according to former CIA officials and people close to the programme.

The former officials said the CIA interrogators’ refusal was a factor in forcing the Bush administration to act earlier than it might have wished.

Torture Insurance for CIA Officers

Need I say more?

Legalizing Torture

NYTimes 9/8/06:

The proposed legislation would provide retroactive immunity from prosecution to government agents who used harsh methods after the Sept. 11 attacks. And, as President Bush suggested on Wednesday, it would ensure that those techniques remain lawful.

"War Crimes Act Changes Would Reduce Threat Of Prosecution"

The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments.

This pretty much speaks for itself.

Supreme Court Says Bush Administration Has Committed War Crimes

David Cole:

The Hamdan decision, while not explicitly addressed to the question of interrogation, should resolve this debate. Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which the Court has now authoritatively declared applies to the conflict with al-Qaeda, requires that all detainees be "treated humanely," and protects them against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." Moreover, the federal War Crimes Act makes it a felony, punishable in some instances by death, to violate Common Article 3 in any way. Thus, CIA and military interrogators are now on notice that any inhumane treatment of a detainee subjects them to prosecution as a war criminal. While they might be confident that the Bush administration would not prosecute them, they cannot be sure that a future administration would overlook such war crimes. And it is quite possible that government officials might actually decide not to commit war crimes — now that they know they are war crimes — even if prosecution is unlikely. (snip) In fact, the Court's decision further suggests that President Bush has already committed a war crime, simply by establishing the military tribunals and subjecting detainees to them. As noted above, the Court found that the tribunals violate Common Article 3, and under the War Crimes Act, any violation of Common Article 3 is a war crime. Military defense lawyers responded to the Hamdan decision by requesting a stay of all tribunal proceedings, on the ground that their own continuing participation in those proceedings might constitute a war crime. But according to the logic of the Supreme Court, the President has already committed a war crime. He won't be prosecuted, of course, and probably should not be, since his interpretation of the Conventions was at least arguable. But now that his interpretation has been conclusively rejected, if he or Congress seeks to go forward with tribunals or interrogation rules that fail Article 3's test, they, too, would be war criminals.

Cheney Is a War Criminal

Documents and memos that have already made their way into the public domain make it clear that the Office of the Vice President bears responsibility for creating an environment conducive to the acts of torture and murder committed by U.S. forces in the war on terror.

Military Justice Idea Rejected for Alleged Terror Defendants

By Peter Spiegel, Times Staff Writer
3:42 PM PDT, July 12, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Bush administration lawyers today rejected congressional suggestions to try alleged Al Qaeda and Taliban war criminals in the U.S. military justice system, saying military courts provide protections for defendants that are unwarranted in the war on terrorism.

Read It and Weep

Abuse report from Guantanamo.

An excerpt:

The plight of the people who have had limbs amputated is among the saddest of the conditions of this ugly camp. I have twice been housed next to prisoners with prosthetic limbs. It was one of the most depressing experiences I have endured. The prisoners were effectively blackmailed by their interrogators who said that they had to cooperate in order to get their prosthetic devices back. They are denied the toilet chairs, the sticks they need to walk and even the cream they
need to ensure that the wound will not become infected and inflamed. The pain is apparently particularly great when they are denied the necessary prosthetic socks, so that the wounds are exposed to the extreme cold of the cells.

Most of the people in Guantanamo were innocent bystanders.

And we fucked them up good.

Doesn't it make you feel proud to be an American?

New Details on Prisoner Abuse in Iraq

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. special operations forces fed some Iraqi detainees only bread and water for up to 17 days, used unapproved interrogation practices such as sleep deprivation and loud music and stripped at least one prisoner, according to a Pentagon report on incidents dating to 2003 and 2004.

The report, with many portions blacked out, concludes that the detainees' treatment was wrong but not illegal and reflected inadequate resources and lack of oversight and proper guidance more than deliberate abuse. No military personnel were punished as a result of the investigation.

Released to the American Civil Liberties Union on Friday, the details of the report were was part of more than 1,000 pages of documents, including two major reports - one by Army Brig. Gen. Richard Formica on specials operations forces in Iraq and one by Brig. Gen. Charles Jacoby, on Afghanistan detainees.

While some of the incidents have been reported previously and reviewed by members of Congress, this was the first time the documents were released publicly. Specific names and locations, including the identities of the military units, were blacked out.

The report comes as the military is grappling with new allegations of war crimes in an increasingly unpopular conflict in Iraq. And they could hamper the Bush administration's election-year effort to turn public opinion around with upbeat reports about the progress of the new government in Baghdad

Haditha

As the U.S. military completes its investigation of the alleged murder of 24 Iraqi civilians at the hands of U.S. Marines last November in Haditha, the next phase likely will be some form of court martial against Marines implicated in the case.

If that happens, President George W. Bush has made clear that he expects justice to be meted out to any Marine found guilty of a war crime against Iraqi civilians. But, as we anticipated in an earlier article, virtually no U.S. media attention has focused on the Nuremberg principles and Bush's culpability in the crime.

In this guest essay, Peter Dyer reviews the principles of international law that were set by U.S. and other allied jurists after World War II, rules against aggressive war that were meant to apply to the architects of illegal conflicts as well as to the grunts on the ground:

George W. Bush -- in his first public comment on the alleged massacre of 24 civilians by U.S. Marines in Haditha, Iraq, last November -- said: “If, in fact, these allegations are true, the Marine Corps will work hard to make sure that ... those who violated the law -- if indeed they did -- will be punished.”

Now that President Bush has resolved publicly that those who committed war crimes will be punished, the subject of U.S. war crimes may begin to move closer to its deserved prominent place in the American public discourse. If this happens, more Americans are likely to realize that the man who spoke of punishing war criminals has himself violated the law and should be accordingly punished.

In fact, according to the Nuremberg Charter, a document which the U.S. had a major role in drafting, those who initiate a war of aggression quite literally bear individual criminal responsibility, not only for waging unprovoked war, but for the war crimes which inevitably flow from aggression.

PENTAGON TO DROP BASIC GENEVA RULE

Read it and weep (or scream):

Washington -- The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to military officials, a step that would mark a potentially permanent shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

The decision culminates a lengthy debate within the Department of Defense, 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, Defense officials acknowledged.

Full Set of Abu Graib Photos

Motherfucking US military.

I wonder what silly distraction will happen now?

Last time we had the Cheney shooting nonsense.

All I Can Say Is

these people are a disgrace to the US and to humanity:

Bush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to people held at the military prison.

In federal court yesterday and in legal filings, Justice Department lawyers contended that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot use legislation drafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to challenge treatment that the detainee's lawyers described as "systematic torture."

What the fuck is the matter with these bastards????

One Nation Under Psy-Ops

Read it and weep.

Abu Ghraib Photos

Need I say more?

I'm Sick of This Shit

and I don't know what else to do so I'll start a blog.

By "this shit" I mean:
the CIA and the US military torturing prisoners. This is a warcrime and it is fucking outrageous the Bush regime is getting away with it.

Then there is "this shit":

Getting Their Wives. You may have heard of the tactic. As a way to leverage information or capture an enemy, terrorists sometimes kidnap innocent women and children in order to put pressure on their husbands or relatives. It's called kidnapping and blackmail. Except that in Rumsfeld's military, the United States now uses the tactic. Sure, it's against the Geneva Conventions. Sure, those Conventions are supposed to apply in Iraq. But this is the Bush administration. King George doesn't have to obey the law; and his military can do anything they want. The Pentagon has gotten used to denying hard evidence of abuse - and no one, of course, has been disciplined for following the instructions given ultimately in Washington. "It's very hard, obviously, from some of these documents to determine what, if anything, actually happened," says the Pentagon spokesman. No, it isn't. And so we slowly descend toward the level of the enemy. Because King George can.

Then there is this mind-blowing outrage:

Details of Sexual Perversion At Detention Centers More Serious Than Media Reports; Pentagon In Possession Of Videos Of Boys Being Sodomized And Detainee Statement Verifies This Fact.

Although lower level military are taking the rap for Abu Ghraib abuse, critics contend Rumsfeld authorized the rape of Iraqi children.
27 Jan 2006

By Greg Szymanski

Although the U.S. government is in possession of video tapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers, the evidence and public clamor to end the torture and killing has done little to change the mindset of the Bush administration.

Lawyers for President Bush, including U.S. Attorney Gen. Alberto Gonzales, have tried to neatly package and justify skirting international law regarding the illegal detention of prisoners.

This blog will try to keep up to date track of Bush regime war crime stories.

The blog's name may be a little awkward, but it is accurate.

Besides,
http://bushisawarcriminal.blogspot.com/
and
http://warcriminal.blogspot.com/
were already taken.