From Raw Story:
RESOLUTION OF INQUIRY
Coalition of citizen groups seek formal inquiry into whether Bush acted illegally in push for Iraq war
By Larisa Alexandrovna RAW STORY
A coalition of activist groups running the gamut of social and political issues will ask Congress to file a Resolution of Inquiry, the first necessary legal step to determine whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in misleading the country about his decision to go to war in Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.
The formal Resolution of Inquiry request, written by Boston constitutional attorney John C. Bonifaz, cites the Downing Street Memo and issues surrounding the planning and execution of the Iraq war. A resolution of inquiry would force relevant House committees to vote on the record as to whether to support an investigation.
The Downing Street Memo, official minutes of a 2002 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair, members of British intelligence MI-6 and various members of the Bush administration, notes that MI-6 director Richard Dearlove said, “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
Bonifaz says the minutes were the impetus for his request.
“The recent release of the Downing Street Memo provides new and compelling evidence that the President of the United States has been actively engaged in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the American people,” Bonifaz wrote in a memo to the ranking House Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers (D-MI), outlining the case (read his memo here).
Blair and other British officials have not questioned the minutes’ veracity.
In response to the revelations in the Downing Street memo, Conyers and eighty-eight other members of Congress issued a letter to the White House on May 5 requesting an explanation and answers to questions about whether the President misled Congress into voting for the Iraq war.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan waived off the letter, saying he had “no need to respond,” according to the New York Times.
Frustrated by the media’s silence, save a few articles buried in major American newspapers and pieces in the alternative media such as Air America Radio, the Ed Schultz Show, Salon and RAW STORY, a grassroots progressive movement has pushed the story forward, culminating in a formal request for a Resolution of Inquiry.
Bonifaz wrote the request and outlined the case on behalf of a joint effort by several groups, including: Veterans for Peace, Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), 911Citizens Watch, Democracy Rising, Code Pink, Global Exchange, Democrats.com, Velvet Revolution, and Gold Star Families for Peace.
“The president, among other alleged crimes, may have also violated federal criminal law if the evidence from the Downing Street memo is proven to be true, including the False Statements Accountability Act of 1996,” Bonifaz wrote.
Some have criticized the media’s coverage of the memo.
"To me it's kind of the smoking gun, or maybe the latest in a number of smoking guns,” Editor and Publisher senior editor Dave Astor told RAW RADIO Saturday. “And the fact that the media either didn't cover it or buried the coverage or poo-pooed it is appalling.”
“It goes back to the fact of who owns the media and the media being intimidated by this administration,” he added. “I think that memo indicates an impeachable offense, personally. If we had a Congress that had some spine, and was maybe Democratic-controlled, it could be an impeachable offense.”
Coalition member Medea Benjamin, founding director of Global Exchange, said she supports legal proceedings.
“When a president so callously distorts the facts, manipulates the public and is responsible for so much needless death and destruction, he must be held accountable,” Benjamin told RAW STORY.
Other members of the coalition, loosely titled “After Downing Street,” concur.
“We will be organizing the grassroots to demand Congress move forward with a Resolution of Inquiry,” PDA director Tim Carpenter stated.
As part of Congressional approval for H.R.Res. 114; Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, the administration was required to report to Congress that diplomatic options had been exhausted before or within 48 hours after military action had started.
In a conversation with RAW STORY, Bonifaz expressed the disappointment of many who put their faith in the President.
“Within 48 hours after the attack on Iraq, the president wrote a letter to Congress indicating that Iraq posed a serious and imminent threat to national security and if he knew that was not true at the time he submitted that letter it is a clear violation of the False Statements Accountability Act of 1996,” Bonifaz said.
Under this Act, amending 18 U.S.C. § 1001, it is a crime knowingly and willfully (1) to falsify, conceal or cover up a material fact by trick, scheme or device; (2) to make any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) to make or use any false writing or document knowing it to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; with respect to matters within the jurisdiction of the legislative, executive, or judicial branch.
He goes on to discuss the other statutes and laws that may have been violated, including but not limited to the Federal Anti-Conspiracy Statute (more per above link).
When asked if the Inquiry of Resolution would apply to others involved in the alleged effort to mislead the public into war, Bonifaz explained that the procedure requires that a full inquiry begin from the top of the chain of command.
“Provisions in U.S. Constitution guarantee that when a President abuses power, engages in excesses, and subverts the constitution, the people have a recourse through their elected officials in congress,” he said.
Other member groups behind this coalition want that recourse.
We are "behind this resolution of inquiry because our loved ones were killed for deception and betrayal from George Bush and the rest of the administration," said Gold Star Families for Peace founder Cindy Sheehan. "We would like to see George Bush, Dick Cheney, et al, be held accountable for their lies and arrogance for sending our children off to die in a war that is illegal and immoral."
“We support this resolution of inquiry because we stand for truth and accountability,” said co-founder of 911CitizensWatch Kyle Hence. “It's more important than ever as whistleblowers stand up and documents emerge that point to potential crimes in high places all too often of late veiled by government secrecy.”
Brad Friedman, co-founder of Velvet Revolution, agrees with the need for transparency.
"We believe that a proper inquiry into the facts underlying the Downing Street memo are vital to our constitutional democracy because only Congress can declare war, and a President and his appointed officials cannot be allowed to run the country if indeed they have misled and lied about the basis for the Iraq war,” said Friedman.
Bonifaz hopes the groups, which boast a total membership of several million, are just the beginning of the grassroots groundswell.
The others agree.
“It is time for Congress to do its duty and ask: “Did the administration mislead us into war by manipulating and misstating intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction, suppressing contrary intelligence …and exaggerated the danger Iraq posed to the United States and its neighbors?” said Kevin Zeese, founder of Democracy Rising.
Bonifaz and others ask that citizens of all party affiliations and backgrounds help support his request by writing to their Congressional leaders. They are also seeking other groups to sign on.
More information will be up shortly at: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org.
Wrap....
Thursday, May 26, 2005
A Bush quote...
Emailed a writer friend:
Randi Rhodes played the clip. I think I got it verbatim."I've said that three times. I'll probably say it three more times. See, in this job, you've got to say things over and over again to get it to sink in, to catapult the propaganda."
Wrap.
Randi Rhodes played the clip. I think I got it verbatim."I've said that three times. I'll probably say it three more times. See, in this job, you've got to say things over and over again to get it to sink in, to catapult the propaganda."
Wrap.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Bush the hypocrite..
Bob Herbert, writing in his column at www.nytimes.com has a few questions that two-faced BushCo won't bother to answer...probably won't even bother to acknowledge except with the usual bullshit...if even that. This is a pitiful, pathetic administration if ever I've seen one. BushCo would do beautifully as a dictator down in Africa, for instance. There is an incredible lack of decency. I doubt if there's ever been a thing that individual wanted that he didn't get, nor punishment for anything he's ever done. A more self-centered individual never walked the earth. There are reasons I think that, and some are below in the excerpt from Bob Herbert's column:
May 26 2005
With the Gloves Off
By BOB HERBERT
A photo of President Bush gingerly holding a month-old baby was on the front page of yesterday's New York Times. Mr. Bush is in the habit of telling us how precious he thinks life is, all life.
The story was about legislation concerning embryonic stem cell research, and it included a comment from Tom DeLay urging Americans to reject "the treacherous notion that while all human lives are sacred, some are more sacred than others."
Ahh, pretty words. Now I wonder when Mr. Bush and Mr. DeLay will find the time to address - or rather, to denounce - the depraved ways in which the United States has dealt with so many of the thousands of people (many of them completely innocent) who have been swept up in the so-called war on terror. (Go to the column and read on...)
Wrap.
May 26 2005
With the Gloves Off
By BOB HERBERT
A photo of President Bush gingerly holding a month-old baby was on the front page of yesterday's New York Times. Mr. Bush is in the habit of telling us how precious he thinks life is, all life.
The story was about legislation concerning embryonic stem cell research, and it included a comment from Tom DeLay urging Americans to reject "the treacherous notion that while all human lives are sacred, some are more sacred than others."
Ahh, pretty words. Now I wonder when Mr. Bush and Mr. DeLay will find the time to address - or rather, to denounce - the depraved ways in which the United States has dealt with so many of the thousands of people (many of them completely innocent) who have been swept up in the so-called war on terror. (Go to the column and read on...)
Wrap.
And into space we go!
This just in from The Planetary Society!
COSMOS 1 SHIPS IN PREPARATION FOR JUNE LAUNCHCosmos 1, the world's first solar sail spacecraft,has shipped in preparation for a launch period thatopens on June 21, 2005, traveling from the test facilityof Lavochkin Association in Moscow to the Russiannaval base at Severomorsk.Read more at:http://planetary.org/solarsail/prelaunch_report1_20050523.html_
SAIL PROJECT DIRECTOR UPDATE:POISED FOR SUCCESSby Louis FriedmanThe most frequently asked question I am getting this month about our solar sail mission is, "How do you feel?"Pretty nervous, highly anxious, full of hope, and proud -proud that we have come this far and built the world's first solar sail spacecraft and readied it for launch.We are poised for success.Read the entire update at:http://planetary.org/solarsail/update_20050518.html
Wrap.
COSMOS 1 SHIPS IN PREPARATION FOR JUNE LAUNCHCosmos 1, the world's first solar sail spacecraft,has shipped in preparation for a launch period thatopens on June 21, 2005, traveling from the test facilityof Lavochkin Association in Moscow to the Russiannaval base at Severomorsk.Read more at:http://planetary.org/solarsail/prelaunch_report1_20050523.html_
SAIL PROJECT DIRECTOR UPDATE:POISED FOR SUCCESSby Louis FriedmanThe most frequently asked question I am getting this month about our solar sail mission is, "How do you feel?"Pretty nervous, highly anxious, full of hope, and proud -proud that we have come this far and built the world's first solar sail spacecraft and readied it for launch.We are poised for success.Read the entire update at:http://planetary.org/solarsail/update_20050518.html
Wrap.
Hot books..upcoming...
From Publishers Lunch...my selections...
FICTION:
Toni McGee-Causey's BOBBIE FAYE'S VERY (very very very very) BAD DAY, the misadventures of one extremely pissed off trailer trash Cajun beauty queen who has to outwit former boyfriends, her "hostage" and organized crime in order to rescue her no-good pain-in-the-ass brother from kidnappers run amok in the Louisiana swamps, to Nichole Argyres at St. Martin's, for three books, in a pre-empt, by Lucienne Diver at Spectrum Literary Agency. Film rights are with Vince Gerardis of Created By.lucienne@spectrumliteraryagency.com
NON-FICTION:
Mark Kurzem's THE MASCOT -- tied in to the award-winning documentary of the same name, about a Jewish orphan who was made into a mascot by the Nazis, as years later the mascot and his son set out on a quest that takes them through Minsk, Moscow, Riga, New York, and Stockholm to uncover his past and find a chamber of horrors, past and present, to Hilary Redmon at Viking, by Robert Guinsler at Sterling Lord Literistic (NA).hilary.redmon@Us.penguingroup.com
BIOGRAPHY:
Classics professor Philip Mitchell Freeman's JULIUS CAESAR: A Biography, showing him as a multi-faceted man, at once a great military leader, a master politician, gifted poet and devoted family man, and using Caesar's life as an opportunity to explore Rome's extraordinary transition from a small village to a world power, to Robert Bender at Simon & Schuster, by Joelle Delbourgo at Joelle Delbourgo Associates (world English).joelle@delbourgo.com
BUSINESS:
J. Walter Thompson Greater China CEO Tom Doctoroff's BILLIONS: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer, based on eleven years working with closely with leading international and domestic companies to explain the Chinese consumer, and presenting on-the-ground stories of companies that we are winning and losing in China, to Toby Wahl at Palgrave, at auction, by James Levine of Levine Greenberg Literary Agency (world).jlevine@levinegreenberg.com
HISTORY:
Douglas Egerton's DEATH OR LIBERTY: African Americans in the American Revolution, the story of the black founders of the American republic, both enslaved and free, and of how white Americans responded to the contradictions between Revolutionary ideals and the reality of mass bondage, to Peter Ginna at Oxford University Press, by POM (world).sara.leopold@oup.com
MEMOIR:
Washington Post correspondent Jackie Spinner with commentary by Jenny Spinner's TELL THEM I DIDN'T CRY, a young journalist's story of joy, loss and survival in Iraq, complemented by brief vignettes from her twin sister, who waited and worried on the home front, to Lisa Drew at Lisa Drew Books, by Jeff Kleinman at Graybill & English (world).samantha.martin@simonandschuster.com
NARRATIVE:
Marmot design consultant/spokesperson and contributing editor to Rock and Ice Magazine Pete Takeda's ONCE A SACRED MOUNTAIN: Unlocking the Mystery of Nanda Devi, a mix of adventure narrative and environmental mystery, exploring what happened to India's most sacred mountain (the glacier of which feeds the headwaters of the Ganges) after Americans deployed a plutonium-powered surveillance device aimed down at China during the Cold War, to John Oakes at Thunder's Mouth, in a nice deal, by Rob McQuilkin at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin (NA).rob@lmqlit.com
However...the ones I really am impatient to read are TJ Waters' "Class 11" and Colby Buzzell's "My War". Not gonna be satisfied until I have them either.
Wrap.
FICTION:
Toni McGee-Causey's BOBBIE FAYE'S VERY (very very very very) BAD DAY, the misadventures of one extremely pissed off trailer trash Cajun beauty queen who has to outwit former boyfriends, her "hostage" and organized crime in order to rescue her no-good pain-in-the-ass brother from kidnappers run amok in the Louisiana swamps, to Nichole Argyres at St. Martin's, for three books, in a pre-empt, by Lucienne Diver at Spectrum Literary Agency. Film rights are with Vince Gerardis of Created By.lucienne@spectrumliteraryagency.com
NON-FICTION:
Mark Kurzem's THE MASCOT -- tied in to the award-winning documentary of the same name, about a Jewish orphan who was made into a mascot by the Nazis, as years later the mascot and his son set out on a quest that takes them through Minsk, Moscow, Riga, New York, and Stockholm to uncover his past and find a chamber of horrors, past and present, to Hilary Redmon at Viking, by Robert Guinsler at Sterling Lord Literistic (NA).hilary.redmon@Us.penguingroup.com
BIOGRAPHY:
Classics professor Philip Mitchell Freeman's JULIUS CAESAR: A Biography, showing him as a multi-faceted man, at once a great military leader, a master politician, gifted poet and devoted family man, and using Caesar's life as an opportunity to explore Rome's extraordinary transition from a small village to a world power, to Robert Bender at Simon & Schuster, by Joelle Delbourgo at Joelle Delbourgo Associates (world English).joelle@delbourgo.com
BUSINESS:
J. Walter Thompson Greater China CEO Tom Doctoroff's BILLIONS: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer, based on eleven years working with closely with leading international and domestic companies to explain the Chinese consumer, and presenting on-the-ground stories of companies that we are winning and losing in China, to Toby Wahl at Palgrave, at auction, by James Levine of Levine Greenberg Literary Agency (world).jlevine@levinegreenberg.com
HISTORY:
Douglas Egerton's DEATH OR LIBERTY: African Americans in the American Revolution, the story of the black founders of the American republic, both enslaved and free, and of how white Americans responded to the contradictions between Revolutionary ideals and the reality of mass bondage, to Peter Ginna at Oxford University Press, by POM (world).sara.leopold@oup.com
MEMOIR:
Washington Post correspondent Jackie Spinner with commentary by Jenny Spinner's TELL THEM I DIDN'T CRY, a young journalist's story of joy, loss and survival in Iraq, complemented by brief vignettes from her twin sister, who waited and worried on the home front, to Lisa Drew at Lisa Drew Books, by Jeff Kleinman at Graybill & English (world).samantha.martin@simonandschuster.com
NARRATIVE:
Marmot design consultant/spokesperson and contributing editor to Rock and Ice Magazine Pete Takeda's ONCE A SACRED MOUNTAIN: Unlocking the Mystery of Nanda Devi, a mix of adventure narrative and environmental mystery, exploring what happened to India's most sacred mountain (the glacier of which feeds the headwaters of the Ganges) after Americans deployed a plutonium-powered surveillance device aimed down at China during the Cold War, to John Oakes at Thunder's Mouth, in a nice deal, by Rob McQuilkin at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin (NA).rob@lmqlit.com
However...the ones I really am impatient to read are TJ Waters' "Class 11" and Colby Buzzell's "My War". Not gonna be satisfied until I have them either.
Wrap.
Update: Google/libraries/publishers..
This just in from Publishers Lunch:
Google Returns Answers to AAUP Search
Following a flurry of press reports on the letter from AAUP executive director Peter Givler to Google about their Print Publisher and Print Library programs that was posted online by BusinessWeek, Lunch has obtained some clarifications from Google's Tom Turvey.
One issue we reported on Monday was Givler's contention in his letter that he thought he had heard a Google official say at a recent STM publisher meeting that agreeing to participate in Print Publisher was being taken as automatic consent to also allow the display of copyrighted books from the same publisher through the Print Library effort. But Turvey says this is "absolutely not" the case.
Turvey further indicates: "Publishers remain in complete control of which books are displayed on Google, just as web publishers are regarding inclusion of their websites in the index. For any books scanned at libraries, publishers may simply choose not to display these books within Google's index -- no questions asked." He adds that this can be applied title-by-title or to all books from a publisher's list: "Publishers may remove any or all of their books in copyright scanned at libraries from display."
We still don't have a clear read on the circulated, but not confirmed, notion that Google is relying on fair use rights to scan copyrighted books from the collections of academic libraries and display basic matches to search queries even without a publisher's explicit permission. On the service's posted FAQ, they state: "We respect copyright law and the tremendous creative effort authors put into their work. So if we've scanned a library book that's still in copyright, you'll only be able to see a few snippets of text from the book."
To us, this does imply that "snippeting" will occur as a matter of course. But Turvey answers definitively that, regardless of the process under which "snippets" may appear in the Google index, if a publisher requests complete removal, Google will do so.
As for accusations that the service has not honored previous opt-out requests, Turvey replies, "No publisher that has contacted us requesting an opt-out has been denied."
Turvey also comments on another "significant issue in the letter--the idea that Google would assert some kind of tacit copyright ownership of books scanned at libraries or the files from those books. No one at Google has made any statement like this, nor would anyone. Google makes no assertions with regard to copyright for any books it scans, either from libraries or publishers."
And Turvey takes issue with "the notion that Google has not been communicating with publishers." He underscores that the company has met with numerous industry organizations, and worked with publishers' queries "frequently and repeatedly"--including presentations "to some of AAUP's most prominent members more than once, and we have taken and answered their questions during those meetings." He indicates, "We've met personally with Peter Givler more than once. Candidly, we were surprised by the assertion that we haven't been responsive or answered questions."
Wrap...
Google Returns Answers to AAUP Search
Following a flurry of press reports on the letter from AAUP executive director Peter Givler to Google about their Print Publisher and Print Library programs that was posted online by BusinessWeek, Lunch has obtained some clarifications from Google's Tom Turvey.
One issue we reported on Monday was Givler's contention in his letter that he thought he had heard a Google official say at a recent STM publisher meeting that agreeing to participate in Print Publisher was being taken as automatic consent to also allow the display of copyrighted books from the same publisher through the Print Library effort. But Turvey says this is "absolutely not" the case.
Turvey further indicates: "Publishers remain in complete control of which books are displayed on Google, just as web publishers are regarding inclusion of their websites in the index. For any books scanned at libraries, publishers may simply choose not to display these books within Google's index -- no questions asked." He adds that this can be applied title-by-title or to all books from a publisher's list: "Publishers may remove any or all of their books in copyright scanned at libraries from display."
We still don't have a clear read on the circulated, but not confirmed, notion that Google is relying on fair use rights to scan copyrighted books from the collections of academic libraries and display basic matches to search queries even without a publisher's explicit permission. On the service's posted FAQ, they state: "We respect copyright law and the tremendous creative effort authors put into their work. So if we've scanned a library book that's still in copyright, you'll only be able to see a few snippets of text from the book."
To us, this does imply that "snippeting" will occur as a matter of course. But Turvey answers definitively that, regardless of the process under which "snippets" may appear in the Google index, if a publisher requests complete removal, Google will do so.
As for accusations that the service has not honored previous opt-out requests, Turvey replies, "No publisher that has contacted us requesting an opt-out has been denied."
Turvey also comments on another "significant issue in the letter--the idea that Google would assert some kind of tacit copyright ownership of books scanned at libraries or the files from those books. No one at Google has made any statement like this, nor would anyone. Google makes no assertions with regard to copyright for any books it scans, either from libraries or publishers."
And Turvey takes issue with "the notion that Google has not been communicating with publishers." He underscores that the company has met with numerous industry organizations, and worked with publishers' queries "frequently and repeatedly"--including presentations "to some of AAUP's most prominent members more than once, and we have taken and answered their questions during those meetings." He indicates, "We've met personally with Peter Givler more than once. Candidly, we were surprised by the assertion that we haven't been responsive or answered questions."
Wrap...
Man!!!
Just had to go to war with my computer. Ended up phoning Roadrunner and a guy named Rob did a great job getting things settled. Was very strange, cause I had email access all the way...just no internet access. I hate it when that happens.
Yesterday's problem--all posts on this blog disappeared--had to do with someone else's router problem, but that's all well fixed now too. Good!
Okay. So the question is, will that wretched John Bolton be confirmed? Another question: This new House bill...just how the hell do those people think they're gonna increase the size of the Army by 10,000 and the Marines by 1,000? Just raising wages is not gonna do it.
Have to admit that I'm proud of the House for backing the stem cell bill even though Bush says he'll veto. And of course he will. For the first time ever. Too bad enough of them didn't vote for the bill in numbers that would override a veto...but of course the sicky religious right members are not about to do something so humane.
For a guy who should be in a Federal prison with his cohorts for war crimes and treason, he sure rides high, wide and handsome...roughshod over everybody in his way, doesn't he?
I'm of the opinion that the very first act a new Dem prez should do is order his people to break up the media monopolies, big time, so that the few corporate heads that run all our TV, newspapers and radios flat don't have any to run any longer. In short...free the press! If people don't know things are wrong, they can't fix 'em.
Next thing is to undo any connections between church and state...and take away tax exemptions from any religious entity that gets involved with politics or politicians.
Get the Air Force Academy out from under the heel of those same religious fanatics, and give a dishonorable discharge to every officer involved with bringing religious requirements down on the heads of those students. They are, after all, sworn to uphold the Constitution....as is BushCo...and they are not. They have broken their oaths and should be booted out of every position they hold.
Bet I could go on for a considerable time, starting with stopping any and all voting tampering with the machines and demanding a paper trail for each and every one of them.
But I won't.
Wrap...
Yesterday's problem--all posts on this blog disappeared--had to do with someone else's router problem, but that's all well fixed now too. Good!
Okay. So the question is, will that wretched John Bolton be confirmed? Another question: This new House bill...just how the hell do those people think they're gonna increase the size of the Army by 10,000 and the Marines by 1,000? Just raising wages is not gonna do it.
Have to admit that I'm proud of the House for backing the stem cell bill even though Bush says he'll veto. And of course he will. For the first time ever. Too bad enough of them didn't vote for the bill in numbers that would override a veto...but of course the sicky religious right members are not about to do something so humane.
For a guy who should be in a Federal prison with his cohorts for war crimes and treason, he sure rides high, wide and handsome...roughshod over everybody in his way, doesn't he?
I'm of the opinion that the very first act a new Dem prez should do is order his people to break up the media monopolies, big time, so that the few corporate heads that run all our TV, newspapers and radios flat don't have any to run any longer. In short...free the press! If people don't know things are wrong, they can't fix 'em.
Next thing is to undo any connections between church and state...and take away tax exemptions from any religious entity that gets involved with politics or politicians.
Get the Air Force Academy out from under the heel of those same religious fanatics, and give a dishonorable discharge to every officer involved with bringing religious requirements down on the heads of those students. They are, after all, sworn to uphold the Constitution....as is BushCo...and they are not. They have broken their oaths and should be booted out of every position they hold.
Bet I could go on for a considerable time, starting with stopping any and all voting tampering with the machines and demanding a paper trail for each and every one of them.
But I won't.
Wrap...
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
This is how it is...
Every now and then Morialefaka says something in his blog-- http://morialefaka.blogspot.com that is so right on that I feel everyone possible should read and think about it. This is one of those times. Today, he writes:
"Now we are apparently going to build four huge new bases in Iraq. Some say this is to get our troops off the streets and hunkered down safely prior to their return to the United States, after the Iraqis are able to control their country. What B.S. Iraqis will most probably never be able to control their own country without American troops because they don't want to fight their own people, unless perhaps they are of another ethnic or religious group, in which case you are talking civil war. And the U.S. does not want to give up a permanent presence in the oil-rich Middle East. So we are there to stay. Which is exactly the worst thing we can do.
But the die is cast for the neocons dreams of empire. They have no choice now but to continue occupation and all out war against anyone who opposes their U.S. dreams to taking over the world. If they now fail it means for them jail or worse. There is no way the United States can regain its rightful place in the world unless Bush/Cheney and the neocons are held accountable for their monumental war crimes. It will not be enough to simply vote them out of office and pretend this terrible nightmare didn't happen.I cannot see any way out for them at this point in time. Their army is falling apart, recruitment is understandably falling dramatically, desertions are a real problem, Bush's ratings are so low as to be virtually unprecedented, Laura is now being presented as the face of the administration, the Social Security scam is being exposed for the smokescreen it is, they are on the wrong side of stem cell research, and they are about to bankrupt the country, to say nothing of destroying the environment. They do not dare even suggest a draft as that would bring them down in a hurry.
So what is going to happen? If the elections of 2006 do not result in a Democratic takeover of the Senate, and perhaps even the House, you had better make plans to move elsewhere, the farther from the U.S. the better. You might even consider changing your identity. Anyone even remotely connected to this gang of international cuthroats is liable to become fair game for reprisals. You think I am exaggerating? I wish. So take your pick: either all out war endlessly against the rest of the world or an admisstion of guilt and then justice and cooperation with our fellow men."
posted by morialekafa at 8:48 PM
Nuff said.
Wrap.
"Now we are apparently going to build four huge new bases in Iraq. Some say this is to get our troops off the streets and hunkered down safely prior to their return to the United States, after the Iraqis are able to control their country. What B.S. Iraqis will most probably never be able to control their own country without American troops because they don't want to fight their own people, unless perhaps they are of another ethnic or religious group, in which case you are talking civil war. And the U.S. does not want to give up a permanent presence in the oil-rich Middle East. So we are there to stay. Which is exactly the worst thing we can do.
But the die is cast for the neocons dreams of empire. They have no choice now but to continue occupation and all out war against anyone who opposes their U.S. dreams to taking over the world. If they now fail it means for them jail or worse. There is no way the United States can regain its rightful place in the world unless Bush/Cheney and the neocons are held accountable for their monumental war crimes. It will not be enough to simply vote them out of office and pretend this terrible nightmare didn't happen.I cannot see any way out for them at this point in time. Their army is falling apart, recruitment is understandably falling dramatically, desertions are a real problem, Bush's ratings are so low as to be virtually unprecedented, Laura is now being presented as the face of the administration, the Social Security scam is being exposed for the smokescreen it is, they are on the wrong side of stem cell research, and they are about to bankrupt the country, to say nothing of destroying the environment. They do not dare even suggest a draft as that would bring them down in a hurry.
So what is going to happen? If the elections of 2006 do not result in a Democratic takeover of the Senate, and perhaps even the House, you had better make plans to move elsewhere, the farther from the U.S. the better. You might even consider changing your identity. Anyone even remotely connected to this gang of international cuthroats is liable to become fair game for reprisals. You think I am exaggerating? I wish. So take your pick: either all out war endlessly against the rest of the world or an admisstion of guilt and then justice and cooperation with our fellow men."
posted by morialekafa at 8:48 PM
Nuff said.
Wrap.
Religious titles drop..
Just read this in Publishers Lunch, and think maybe readers may be getting tired of the hard religious push that rolled in with BushCo. Veddy interesting!
More Books, More Adjectives
We're pretty much running out of appropriate descriptive words for the continuously scaling abundance of new books published every year. According to the latest preliminary estimates released by R.R. Bowker, title output increased 14 percent last year, to a new high of 195,000. (That's up from 135,000 titles only three years ago, though the latest increase is less than last year's 19 percent jump.)
The extra titles come from...pretty much everywhere. The 12 largest trade houses grew their lists by over 5 percent, comprising 24,159 titles. Of course a handful of the largest POD self-publishers accounted for approximately 20,000 titles on their own, almost matching the top traditional publishers.
University presses were up to 14,484 titles, up more than 12 percent. (In previous years Bowker has broken out just the top 55 U. presses; now the totals reflect 125 presses.)
Bowker says that one "catalyst for growth" in 2004 was adult fiction, which jumped by 43 percent to 25,184 new titles. All of that increase and more came from the genres, as literary fiction actually declined 5.6 percent over 2003. Poetry and drama titles also increased by over 40 percent. But these increases came from smaller publishers; among just the top 12 houses, poetry, literary fiction and religious titles all fell, as business, juvenile, law, sociology, and travel titles rose the most.
One closely-watched category--books translated into English from other languages--continued to fall, by more than 8 percent. The total for 2004 was 4,040 books (including 864 works of fiction).
Following previous trends, the average retail price of adult hardcovers fell 10 cents, to $27.52, as the average price for adult trade paperbacks rose 7 percent to $15.76.
Wrap...
More Books, More Adjectives
We're pretty much running out of appropriate descriptive words for the continuously scaling abundance of new books published every year. According to the latest preliminary estimates released by R.R. Bowker, title output increased 14 percent last year, to a new high of 195,000. (That's up from 135,000 titles only three years ago, though the latest increase is less than last year's 19 percent jump.)
The extra titles come from...pretty much everywhere. The 12 largest trade houses grew their lists by over 5 percent, comprising 24,159 titles. Of course a handful of the largest POD self-publishers accounted for approximately 20,000 titles on their own, almost matching the top traditional publishers.
University presses were up to 14,484 titles, up more than 12 percent. (In previous years Bowker has broken out just the top 55 U. presses; now the totals reflect 125 presses.)
Bowker says that one "catalyst for growth" in 2004 was adult fiction, which jumped by 43 percent to 25,184 new titles. All of that increase and more came from the genres, as literary fiction actually declined 5.6 percent over 2003. Poetry and drama titles also increased by over 40 percent. But these increases came from smaller publishers; among just the top 12 houses, poetry, literary fiction and religious titles all fell, as business, juvenile, law, sociology, and travel titles rose the most.
One closely-watched category--books translated into English from other languages--continued to fall, by more than 8 percent. The total for 2004 was 4,040 books (including 864 works of fiction).
Following previous trends, the average retail price of adult hardcovers fell 10 cents, to $27.52, as the average price for adult trade paperbacks rose 7 percent to $15.76.
Wrap...
Our nation under BushCo...
Here is the opening of this article from YubaNet.com. Go there to be horrified by the rest...
From YubaNet.com
WorldPakistan: U.S. Citizens Tortured, Held Illegally
Author: Human Rights Watch
Published on May 24, 2005, 07:40
U.S. FBI agents operating in Pakistan repeatedly interrogated and threatened two U.S. citizens of Pakistani origin who were unlawfully detained and subjected to torture by the Pakistani security services, Human Rights Watch said today. The brothers Zain Afzal and Kashan Afzal were abducted from their home in Karachi at about 2 a.m. on August 13, 2004. They were released on April 22, 2005 without having been charged.During eight months of illegal detention, Zain Afzal and Kashan Afzal were routinely tortured by Pakistani authorities to extract confessions of involvement in terrorist activities. During this period, FBI agents questioned the brothers on at least six occasions.
The FBI agents did not intervene to end the torture, insist that the Pakistani government comply with a court order to produce the men in court, or provide consular facilities normally offered to detained U.S. citizens. Instead, they threatened the men with being sent to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay if they did not confess to involvement in terrorism.
Human Rights Watch's information is based on extensive and separate interviews with the two brothers since their release and other sources."It is outrageous that Pakistan abducts people from their homes in the middle of the night and tortures them in secret prisons to extract confessions, all the while ignoring court orders to produce their victims in court," said Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. "The United States should be condemning this, but instead it either directed this activity or turned a blind eye in the hopes of gaining information in the war on terror."
*********************
And aren't we proud that all this is being done in our name? Pure and simple, we're ruled by a vicious criminal administration. But of course they've never had to experience being treated like these US citizen prisoners, and are certain they never ever will be, so why should they care? They don't care. Neither do other sociopaths.
Wrap..
From YubaNet.com
WorldPakistan: U.S. Citizens Tortured, Held Illegally
Author: Human Rights Watch
Published on May 24, 2005, 07:40
U.S. FBI agents operating in Pakistan repeatedly interrogated and threatened two U.S. citizens of Pakistani origin who were unlawfully detained and subjected to torture by the Pakistani security services, Human Rights Watch said today. The brothers Zain Afzal and Kashan Afzal were abducted from their home in Karachi at about 2 a.m. on August 13, 2004. They were released on April 22, 2005 without having been charged.During eight months of illegal detention, Zain Afzal and Kashan Afzal were routinely tortured by Pakistani authorities to extract confessions of involvement in terrorist activities. During this period, FBI agents questioned the brothers on at least six occasions.
The FBI agents did not intervene to end the torture, insist that the Pakistani government comply with a court order to produce the men in court, or provide consular facilities normally offered to detained U.S. citizens. Instead, they threatened the men with being sent to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay if they did not confess to involvement in terrorism.
Human Rights Watch's information is based on extensive and separate interviews with the two brothers since their release and other sources."It is outrageous that Pakistan abducts people from their homes in the middle of the night and tortures them in secret prisons to extract confessions, all the while ignoring court orders to produce their victims in court," said Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. "The United States should be condemning this, but instead it either directed this activity or turned a blind eye in the hopes of gaining information in the war on terror."
*********************
And aren't we proud that all this is being done in our name? Pure and simple, we're ruled by a vicious criminal administration. But of course they've never had to experience being treated like these US citizen prisoners, and are certain they never ever will be, so why should they care? They don't care. Neither do other sociopaths.
Wrap..
Monday, May 23, 2005
Class11, Google & the Libraries..
A bit more info on a great book I'm champing at the bit to read: CLASS 11, by TJ Waters finally has a publish date: March, 2006. TJ was part of the first CIA class formed after 9/11, and he tells all about it. Right now, I'm told, it's under editorial review. CIA has okayed it after their review. So make a note on your calendar on Dec 31st that there are only three more months to wait....and put your order in at the bookstore in advance if you want a 1st edition.
Now on to the matter of Google and the Libraries:
From Publishers Lunch today comes the word:
AAUP Pops Quiz on Google Print for Libraries
Questions about--and potential objections to--Google's ambitious program to scan and index online the contents of major academic libraries have moved to a new level with the publication online by Business Week of a letter dated last Friday from Association of American University Presses executive director Peter Givler to Google senior counsel Alexander Macgillivray. Givler says the public posting of the letter "was a complete surprise."
While noting his members were initially enthusiastic about Google Print, Givler cites "mounting alarm and concern" over the library scanning program, saying it "appears to involve systematic infringement of copyright on a massive scale." He tells Lunch that the letter came after less formal questioning failed to produce satisfactory answers: "Google's responses have been completely non-substantive. They've finessed it and said 'It's a wonderful program. We're comfortable with our legal position and just trust us.'"
His goal, he says, is to persuade Google that publishers have some detailed concerns and it's time "to have a serious conversation."
The letter poses a series of 16 detailed questions (and requests answers within a month), and points to some of the currently gray areas in the library scanning program. Perhaps the largest objection is that Google kept the library venture secret even while negotiating with publishers for rights to the basic Google Print program, and an allegation that participation in Print is being used as fait accompli permission for the library program.
Givler says in the letter: "At the recent meeting of scientific, technical and medical publishers in Washington, your colleague J.R. Needham, if I heard him correctly, told us that it was unnecessary for Google to clear permissions for Google Print for Libraries with those publishers who had agreed to participate in Google Print for Publishers, because they had already given their consent. These facts are simply wrong. Publishers' contracts for Google Print are title-specific and can't be interpreted as a blanket license. Furthermore, no publisher knew about Google Print for Libraries until it was announced in mid-December."
Givler says that at least one publisher participating in Print has specifically asked to opt out of the library program on a blanket basis and "to date, Google has not complied," which he uses to question the general assurances that publishers can withdraw from these efforts whenever they want. Since the participating libraries are being given full digital copies of their own works to use as they wish, the letter notes that "'opting out' of Google Print would not remove those digital version from the libraries themselves."
Other gray areas of concern include Givler's understanding that "Google asserts that it can make these copies [the library scans] without seeking permission as a fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act." He thinks the fair use claim pertains to the scanning itself and not the actual posting and indexing of the scanned material, though even there Givler remarks, "They haven't been terribly forthcoming." And Givler is concerned that at a recent presentation in London, Google reportedly asserted that copyright in the digital book scan files themselves would be owned by the search company.
Only time will tell whether this letter (and similar efforts said to be underway by other professional organizations) will simply lead to clarity in Google's positions or more aggressive action in opposition to their program. Here the AAUP is speaking for academic presses, some of which are directly associated with the same institutions whose libraries are partnering with Google. That makes the possibility of "litigation extremely remote"--though it does present a natural means for lobbying through the participating universities that Givler is just starting to explore.
We did not hear back from calls to Google for comment prior to posting.
AAUP letter
Wrap...
Now on to the matter of Google and the Libraries:
From Publishers Lunch today comes the word:
AAUP Pops Quiz on Google Print for Libraries
Questions about--and potential objections to--Google's ambitious program to scan and index online the contents of major academic libraries have moved to a new level with the publication online by Business Week of a letter dated last Friday from Association of American University Presses executive director Peter Givler to Google senior counsel Alexander Macgillivray. Givler says the public posting of the letter "was a complete surprise."
While noting his members were initially enthusiastic about Google Print, Givler cites "mounting alarm and concern" over the library scanning program, saying it "appears to involve systematic infringement of copyright on a massive scale." He tells Lunch that the letter came after less formal questioning failed to produce satisfactory answers: "Google's responses have been completely non-substantive. They've finessed it and said 'It's a wonderful program. We're comfortable with our legal position and just trust us.'"
His goal, he says, is to persuade Google that publishers have some detailed concerns and it's time "to have a serious conversation."
The letter poses a series of 16 detailed questions (and requests answers within a month), and points to some of the currently gray areas in the library scanning program. Perhaps the largest objection is that Google kept the library venture secret even while negotiating with publishers for rights to the basic Google Print program, and an allegation that participation in Print is being used as fait accompli permission for the library program.
Givler says in the letter: "At the recent meeting of scientific, technical and medical publishers in Washington, your colleague J.R. Needham, if I heard him correctly, told us that it was unnecessary for Google to clear permissions for Google Print for Libraries with those publishers who had agreed to participate in Google Print for Publishers, because they had already given their consent. These facts are simply wrong. Publishers' contracts for Google Print are title-specific and can't be interpreted as a blanket license. Furthermore, no publisher knew about Google Print for Libraries until it was announced in mid-December."
Givler says that at least one publisher participating in Print has specifically asked to opt out of the library program on a blanket basis and "to date, Google has not complied," which he uses to question the general assurances that publishers can withdraw from these efforts whenever they want. Since the participating libraries are being given full digital copies of their own works to use as they wish, the letter notes that "'opting out' of Google Print would not remove those digital version from the libraries themselves."
Other gray areas of concern include Givler's understanding that "Google asserts that it can make these copies [the library scans] without seeking permission as a fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act." He thinks the fair use claim pertains to the scanning itself and not the actual posting and indexing of the scanned material, though even there Givler remarks, "They haven't been terribly forthcoming." And Givler is concerned that at a recent presentation in London, Google reportedly asserted that copyright in the digital book scan files themselves would be owned by the search company.
Only time will tell whether this letter (and similar efforts said to be underway by other professional organizations) will simply lead to clarity in Google's positions or more aggressive action in opposition to their program. Here the AAUP is speaking for academic presses, some of which are directly associated with the same institutions whose libraries are partnering with Google. That makes the possibility of "litigation extremely remote"--though it does present a natural means for lobbying through the participating universities that Givler is just starting to explore.
We did not hear back from calls to Google for comment prior to posting.
AAUP letter
Wrap...
Not much it doesn't..
So. Along with the biggest US embassy in the world, there's this:
Wrap...
posted May 23, 2005, updated 12:00 p.m.
US to consolidate forces into four huge bases in Iraq
US military also wants bases in Romania, Azerbaijan, and Bulgaria.
By Tom ReganJim
Bencivenga-->--> csmonitor.com
Top US military officials in Iraq confirmed Monday that they are planning to consolidate the more than 100 bases where US personnel are now stationed in Iraq into four huge, more permanent bases.
The Washington Post reported Sunday, however, that these military officials say that, despite the appearance to the contrary, these moves do not signal a "permanent US presence in Iraq."
****************************
Go here to read the rest....
http://csmonitor.com/2005/0523/dailyUpdate.html
Wrap...
Fairness prevails..finally.
Psychiatric Association Supports Gay Marriage
POSTED: 1:46 pm PDT May 22, 2005
UPDATED: 2:22 pm PDT May 22, 2005
ATLANTA --
Representatives of the nation's top psychiatric group approved a statement Sunday urging legal recognition of gay marriage.
If approved by the association's directors in July, the measure would make the American Psychiatric Association the first major medical group to take such a stance.
The statement supports same-sex marriage "in the interest of maintaining and promoting mental health."
It follows a similar measure by the American Psychological Association last year, little more than three decades after that group removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
The psychiatric association's statement, approved by voice vote on the first day of its weeklong annual meeting in Atlanta, cites the "positive influence of a stable, adult partnership on the health of all family members."
The resolution recognizes "that gay men and lesbians are full human beings who should be afforded the same human and civil rights," said Margery Sved, a Raleigh, N.C., psychiatrist and member of the assembly's committee on gay and lesbian issues.
The document clarifies that the association is addressing same-sex civil marriage, not religious marriages. It takes no position on any religion's views on marriage.
Massachusetts is the only state that allows same-sex marriage. Eighteen states have passed constitutional amendments outlawing same-sex marriage.
Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press.
Wrap...
POSTED: 1:46 pm PDT May 22, 2005
UPDATED: 2:22 pm PDT May 22, 2005
ATLANTA --
Representatives of the nation's top psychiatric group approved a statement Sunday urging legal recognition of gay marriage.
If approved by the association's directors in July, the measure would make the American Psychiatric Association the first major medical group to take such a stance.
The statement supports same-sex marriage "in the interest of maintaining and promoting mental health."
It follows a similar measure by the American Psychological Association last year, little more than three decades after that group removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
The psychiatric association's statement, approved by voice vote on the first day of its weeklong annual meeting in Atlanta, cites the "positive influence of a stable, adult partnership on the health of all family members."
The resolution recognizes "that gay men and lesbians are full human beings who should be afforded the same human and civil rights," said Margery Sved, a Raleigh, N.C., psychiatrist and member of the assembly's committee on gay and lesbian issues.
The document clarifies that the association is addressing same-sex civil marriage, not religious marriages. It takes no position on any religion's views on marriage.
Massachusetts is the only state that allows same-sex marriage. Eighteen states have passed constitutional amendments outlawing same-sex marriage.
Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press.
Wrap...
Goin' nuclear..or not...
This explanation of what now? comes from ABC's The Note:
The Senate gavels into order at 11:30 am ET and conducts a roll call vote at about 5:30 pm to make sure Senators are back from their recess. Cloture was filed Friday by Sen. John Cornyn, concluding the 25 hours or so of debate on the nomination of Priscilla Owen for the 5th circuit court of appeals.
After the vote tonight, the Gang of Twelve is expected to meet privately to try to hash out a final deal. We're told by both sides that reconciling paragraphs three and four of the draft plan —- which deal with the future and what rights the majority leader and the minority will have —- remain the sticking point.
Republicans believe they're in a position of strength because the negotiators seem to agree that judicial nominees should ultimately get an up or down vote, whether it's this week or in, say, July. And Democrats don't really have an argument it seems to pick off the two or three more votes they truly need to prevent a rules change.
The cloture vote, of course, requires 60 ayes for passage under current Senate rules. If it fails Tuesday morning —- if the Senate does not vote to cut off debate —- the majority leader will ask the presiding officer of the Senate, perhaps Vice President Cheney, to rule that filibustering judicial nominees is out of order. The chair would (presumably) do so, and then that's subject to an up or down vote because the Democrats will immediately object in the form of a request to table the point of order.
THAT vote is the key. If a majority agrees to uphold the ruling of presiding officer by REJECTING the Democratic request to table it, then the rules will effectively have been changed and a revote for cloture will occur. 50 + 1 votes will spur an up or down vote.
And then the Democrats will retaliate, somehow.
It's possible that Frist will seek to table the debate after the first cloture vote fails, but that route, which would also trigger the nuclear option, is not as likely as the one we just described.
*****************
So it's all underway today...with cots having been brought in for an all night session. The end result will tell us whether the Repubs are gonna walk all over the Dems when it comes to confirming judges to the Supreme Court or not. This is one tense situation.
Wrap.
The Senate gavels into order at 11:30 am ET and conducts a roll call vote at about 5:30 pm to make sure Senators are back from their recess. Cloture was filed Friday by Sen. John Cornyn, concluding the 25 hours or so of debate on the nomination of Priscilla Owen for the 5th circuit court of appeals.
After the vote tonight, the Gang of Twelve is expected to meet privately to try to hash out a final deal. We're told by both sides that reconciling paragraphs three and four of the draft plan —- which deal with the future and what rights the majority leader and the minority will have —- remain the sticking point.
Republicans believe they're in a position of strength because the negotiators seem to agree that judicial nominees should ultimately get an up or down vote, whether it's this week or in, say, July. And Democrats don't really have an argument it seems to pick off the two or three more votes they truly need to prevent a rules change.
The cloture vote, of course, requires 60 ayes for passage under current Senate rules. If it fails Tuesday morning —- if the Senate does not vote to cut off debate —- the majority leader will ask the presiding officer of the Senate, perhaps Vice President Cheney, to rule that filibustering judicial nominees is out of order. The chair would (presumably) do so, and then that's subject to an up or down vote because the Democrats will immediately object in the form of a request to table the point of order.
THAT vote is the key. If a majority agrees to uphold the ruling of presiding officer by REJECTING the Democratic request to table it, then the rules will effectively have been changed and a revote for cloture will occur. 50 + 1 votes will spur an up or down vote.
And then the Democrats will retaliate, somehow.
It's possible that Frist will seek to table the debate after the first cloture vote fails, but that route, which would also trigger the nuclear option, is not as likely as the one we just described.
*****************
So it's all underway today...with cots having been brought in for an all night session. The end result will tell us whether the Repubs are gonna walk all over the Dems when it comes to confirming judges to the Supreme Court or not. This is one tense situation.
Wrap.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Not good.
Take a look at this, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO505A.html
It totally lays out the plans for a joint US-Israeli attack on Iran, which would lead, of course, to all-out war all over the Middle East.
It totally lays out the plans for a joint US-Israeli attack on Iran, which would lead, of course, to all-out war all over the Middle East.
"Ignore" isn't getting it..
Perhaps the major media think this story is not worth pursuing, but the Dems in Congress beg to differ...as do quite a few citizens of this United States. When an impeachable offense smacks one across the face like a dead fish, one ought to notice. BushCo chooses not to, hoping nobody will notice. Tough, BushCo. Ninety members of congress have noticed and are investigating:
The Sunday Times - Britain
May 22, 2005
Blair faces US probe over secret Iraq invasion plan
Tony Allen-Mills and Tom Pattinson
SENIOR American congressmen are considering sending a delegation to London to investigate Britain’s role in preparations for the war in Iraq.
Democratic opponents of President George W Bush have seized on a leaked Downing Street memo, first published three weeks ago by The Sunday Times, as evidence that American lawmakers were misled about Bush’s intentions in Iraq.
A group of 89 Democrats from the House of Representatives has written to Bush to ask whether the memo is accurate.
It recounts a discussion between Tony Blair and his military and intelligence advisers about the Bush administration’s views in July 2002, three months before Congress authorised the White House to go to war with Iraq.
The Democrat letter, drafted by Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, said that the memo raised “troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your own administration”.
US administration officials tried to shrug off the letter last week. Scott McClellan, Bush’s spokesman, said the White House saw “no need” to respond to an affair that one newspaper dubbed “memogate”. Yet Democratic opponents of the war appear determined not to let the matter drop. “They (the Republicans) are trying desperately to wait it out and hope that nobody will bring this up,” Conyers said. “But this thing will not be snuffed out. ”
The memo was written by Matthew Rycroft, a foreign policy aide to Blair. It described a meeting on July 23, 2002 where Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 who had recently returned from meeting CIA officials in Washington, was quoted as saying that Bush wanted “to remove Saddam (Hussein) through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD (weapons of mass destruction)”.
Dearlove also noted that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”.
Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, was quoted as describing the case against Saddam as “thin”. At the time Bush was still publicly insisting that no decision had been made to go to war and that he was committed to a diplomatic solution.
Conyers said the memo raised “very serious questions about an abuse of power , . . it is a very serious constitutional matter”. Under the US constitution, only Congress has the power to declare war, and it was not until mid-October 2002 that Bush obtained the necessary authorisation to begin military preparations.
“There are members saying that if they knew then what they know now they wouldn’t have given him those powers (to wage war),” Conyers said.
By sending investigators to London, Conyers hopes to stir the US media into re-examining a story largely ignored in America since Bush’s re-election victory in November.
“I deplore the fact that our media have been so reticent on the question of whether there was a secret planning of a war for which neither the Congress nor the American people had given permission,” Conyers said.
“We have The Sunday Times to thank for this very important activity. It reminds me of Watergate, which started off as a tiny little incident reported in The Washington Post. I think that the interest of many citizens is picking up.”
Another Democrat who signed the letter said that the affair could have repercussions on mid-term elections next year. “People are beginning to understand that those crying in the wilderness (opposing the war in Iraq) were not without rationale,” said Congressman Danny Davis of Illinois.
“If we had a plan which people believed was going to take us out (of Iraq) they would feel much better. But the fact is there has not been a real strategy to get us out.”
Wrap...
The Sunday Times - Britain
May 22, 2005
Blair faces US probe over secret Iraq invasion plan
Tony Allen-Mills and Tom Pattinson
SENIOR American congressmen are considering sending a delegation to London to investigate Britain’s role in preparations for the war in Iraq.
Democratic opponents of President George W Bush have seized on a leaked Downing Street memo, first published three weeks ago by The Sunday Times, as evidence that American lawmakers were misled about Bush’s intentions in Iraq.
A group of 89 Democrats from the House of Representatives has written to Bush to ask whether the memo is accurate.
It recounts a discussion between Tony Blair and his military and intelligence advisers about the Bush administration’s views in July 2002, three months before Congress authorised the White House to go to war with Iraq.
The Democrat letter, drafted by Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, said that the memo raised “troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your own administration”.
US administration officials tried to shrug off the letter last week. Scott McClellan, Bush’s spokesman, said the White House saw “no need” to respond to an affair that one newspaper dubbed “memogate”. Yet Democratic opponents of the war appear determined not to let the matter drop. “They (the Republicans) are trying desperately to wait it out and hope that nobody will bring this up,” Conyers said. “But this thing will not be snuffed out. ”
The memo was written by Matthew Rycroft, a foreign policy aide to Blair. It described a meeting on July 23, 2002 where Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 who had recently returned from meeting CIA officials in Washington, was quoted as saying that Bush wanted “to remove Saddam (Hussein) through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD (weapons of mass destruction)”.
Dearlove also noted that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”.
Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, was quoted as describing the case against Saddam as “thin”. At the time Bush was still publicly insisting that no decision had been made to go to war and that he was committed to a diplomatic solution.
Conyers said the memo raised “very serious questions about an abuse of power , . . it is a very serious constitutional matter”. Under the US constitution, only Congress has the power to declare war, and it was not until mid-October 2002 that Bush obtained the necessary authorisation to begin military preparations.
“There are members saying that if they knew then what they know now they wouldn’t have given him those powers (to wage war),” Conyers said.
By sending investigators to London, Conyers hopes to stir the US media into re-examining a story largely ignored in America since Bush’s re-election victory in November.
“I deplore the fact that our media have been so reticent on the question of whether there was a secret planning of a war for which neither the Congress nor the American people had given permission,” Conyers said.
“We have The Sunday Times to thank for this very important activity. It reminds me of Watergate, which started off as a tiny little incident reported in The Washington Post. I think that the interest of many citizens is picking up.”
Another Democrat who signed the letter said that the affair could have repercussions on mid-term elections next year. “People are beginning to understand that those crying in the wilderness (opposing the war in Iraq) were not without rationale,” said Congressman Danny Davis of Illinois.
“If we had a plan which people believed was going to take us out (of Iraq) they would feel much better. But the fact is there has not been a real strategy to get us out.”
Wrap...
Gag the Supreme Court...
Congress moves to restrict court rulings on God
05/18/05
"Vermont Guardian"
WASHINGTON — Conservatives balk at accusations that the current Congress and the Bush administration are intent on turning the United States into a theocracy. Yet, a bill sponsored by 28 members of the U.S. House and Senate looks like a move in that direction.
According to the text of the bill, the proposed Constitution Restoration Act of 2005 would remove the Supreme Court's jurisdiction over "any matter to the extent that relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer or agent of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official or personal capacity), concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government."
Commenting on the general trend, Bill Moyers noted in a March article for the New York Review of Books that the religious right backs nearly half the members of Congress. "Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the most influential Christian Right advocacy groups," he noted.
If passed, the bill also would limit the ability of judges to interpret the Constitution if it involved "any constitution, law, administrative rule, Executive order, directive, policy, judicial decision, or any other action of any foreign state or international organization or agency, other than English constitutional and common law up to the time of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States."
Judges who fail to comply could be impeached or prosecuted. Project Censored award-winning journalist W. David Kubiak charges that the bill would divorce U.S. jurisprudence from "our hard-won secular history and international norms."
The Conservative Caucus has called it an important step that would prevent the U.S. Supreme Court from weighing in on "the acknowledgement of God (as in the Roy Moore 10 Commandments issue); and it also restricts federal courts from recognizing the laws of foreign countries and international law [e.g., against torture, global warming, unjust wars, etc.] as the supreme law of our land."
Thus far, the mainstream media has ignored the legislation. A May 16 search of Google News turned up no coverage, despite the fact that the office of lead sponsor Sen. Richard Shelby, R-AL, told Kubiak last week, "We have the votes for passage."
Copyright: Vermont Guardian.
Wrap...
05/18/05
"Vermont Guardian"
WASHINGTON — Conservatives balk at accusations that the current Congress and the Bush administration are intent on turning the United States into a theocracy. Yet, a bill sponsored by 28 members of the U.S. House and Senate looks like a move in that direction.
According to the text of the bill, the proposed Constitution Restoration Act of 2005 would remove the Supreme Court's jurisdiction over "any matter to the extent that relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer or agent of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official or personal capacity), concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government."
Commenting on the general trend, Bill Moyers noted in a March article for the New York Review of Books that the religious right backs nearly half the members of Congress. "Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the most influential Christian Right advocacy groups," he noted.
If passed, the bill also would limit the ability of judges to interpret the Constitution if it involved "any constitution, law, administrative rule, Executive order, directive, policy, judicial decision, or any other action of any foreign state or international organization or agency, other than English constitutional and common law up to the time of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States."
Judges who fail to comply could be impeached or prosecuted. Project Censored award-winning journalist W. David Kubiak charges that the bill would divorce U.S. jurisprudence from "our hard-won secular history and international norms."
The Conservative Caucus has called it an important step that would prevent the U.S. Supreme Court from weighing in on "the acknowledgement of God (as in the Roy Moore 10 Commandments issue); and it also restricts federal courts from recognizing the laws of foreign countries and international law [e.g., against torture, global warming, unjust wars, etc.] as the supreme law of our land."
Thus far, the mainstream media has ignored the legislation. A May 16 search of Google News turned up no coverage, despite the fact that the office of lead sponsor Sen. Richard Shelby, R-AL, told Kubiak last week, "We have the votes for passage."
Copyright: Vermont Guardian.
Wrap...
Infiltration..big time...
This morning's NY Times online has the article below. I have previously written about the creeping of the religious right fundies into postitions of power before and during this administration. You want a theocracy in this nation, just continue to pay no attention. This excerpt illustrates very well just a small part, but an important one, of their methodologies:
May 22, 2005
On a Christian Mission to the Top
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
For a while last winter, Tim Havens, a recent graduate of Brown University and now an evangelical missionary there, had to lead his morning prayer group in a stairwell of the campus chapel. That was because workers were clattering in to remake the lower floor for a display of American Indian art, and a Buddhist student group was chanting in the small sanctuary upstairs.
Like most of the Ivy League universities, Brown was founded by Protestant ministers as an expressly Christian college. But over the years it gradually shed its religious affiliation and became a secular institution, as did the other Ivies. In addition to Buddhists, the Brown chaplain's office now recognizes "heathen/pagan" as a "faith community."
But these days evangelical students like those in Mr. Havens's prayer group are becoming a conspicuous presence at Brown. Of a student body of 5,700, about 400 participate in one of three evangelical student groups - more than the number of active mainline Protestants, the campus chaplain says. And these students are in the vanguard of a larger social shift not just on campuses but also at golf resorts and in boardrooms; they are part of an expanding beachhead of evangelicals in the American elite.
The growing power and influence of evangelical Christians is manifest everywhere these days, from the best-seller lists to the White House, but in fact their share of the general population has not changed much in half a century. Most pollsters agree that people who identify themselves as white evangelical Christians make up about a quarter of the population, just as they have for decades.
What has changed is the class status of evangelicals. In 1929, the theologian H. Richard Niebuhr described born-again Christianity as the "religion of the disinherited." But over the last 40 years, evangelicals have pulled steadily closer in income and education to mainline Protestants in the historically affluent establishment denominations. In the process they have overturned the old social pecking order in which "Episcopalian," for example, was a code word for upper class, and "fundamentalist" or "evangelical" shorthand for lower.
Evangelical Christians are now increasingly likely to be college graduates and in the top income brackets. Evangelical C.E.O.'s pray together on monthly conference calls, evangelical investment bankers study the Bible over lunch on Wall Street and deep-pocketed evangelical donors gather at golf courses for conferences restricted to those who give more than $200,000 annually to Christian causes.
Their growing wealth and education help explain the new influence of evangelicals in American culture and politics. Their buying power fuels the booming market for Christian books, music and films. Their rising income has paid for construction of vast mega-churches in suburbs across the country. Their charitable contributions finance dozens of mission agencies, religious broadcasters and international service groups....
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Get the idea? Do read the rest of this important article at www.nytimes.com .
Wrap...
May 22, 2005
On a Christian Mission to the Top
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
For a while last winter, Tim Havens, a recent graduate of Brown University and now an evangelical missionary there, had to lead his morning prayer group in a stairwell of the campus chapel. That was because workers were clattering in to remake the lower floor for a display of American Indian art, and a Buddhist student group was chanting in the small sanctuary upstairs.
Like most of the Ivy League universities, Brown was founded by Protestant ministers as an expressly Christian college. But over the years it gradually shed its religious affiliation and became a secular institution, as did the other Ivies. In addition to Buddhists, the Brown chaplain's office now recognizes "heathen/pagan" as a "faith community."
But these days evangelical students like those in Mr. Havens's prayer group are becoming a conspicuous presence at Brown. Of a student body of 5,700, about 400 participate in one of three evangelical student groups - more than the number of active mainline Protestants, the campus chaplain says. And these students are in the vanguard of a larger social shift not just on campuses but also at golf resorts and in boardrooms; they are part of an expanding beachhead of evangelicals in the American elite.
The growing power and influence of evangelical Christians is manifest everywhere these days, from the best-seller lists to the White House, but in fact their share of the general population has not changed much in half a century. Most pollsters agree that people who identify themselves as white evangelical Christians make up about a quarter of the population, just as they have for decades.
What has changed is the class status of evangelicals. In 1929, the theologian H. Richard Niebuhr described born-again Christianity as the "religion of the disinherited." But over the last 40 years, evangelicals have pulled steadily closer in income and education to mainline Protestants in the historically affluent establishment denominations. In the process they have overturned the old social pecking order in which "Episcopalian," for example, was a code word for upper class, and "fundamentalist" or "evangelical" shorthand for lower.
Evangelical Christians are now increasingly likely to be college graduates and in the top income brackets. Evangelical C.E.O.'s pray together on monthly conference calls, evangelical investment bankers study the Bible over lunch on Wall Street and deep-pocketed evangelical donors gather at golf courses for conferences restricted to those who give more than $200,000 annually to Christian causes.
Their growing wealth and education help explain the new influence of evangelicals in American culture and politics. Their buying power fuels the booming market for Christian books, music and films. Their rising income has paid for construction of vast mega-churches in suburbs across the country. Their charitable contributions finance dozens of mission agencies, religious broadcasters and international service groups....
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Get the idea? Do read the rest of this important article at www.nytimes.com .
Wrap...
Homeland Security? Hah.
Talk about a screwed up mess! Take a look at this small excerpt, then go read the whole article:
Contracting Rush For Security Led To Waste, Abuse
By Scott Higham and Robert O'Harrow Jr.
The Washington Post
Sunday 22 May 2005
Scores of government reports, congressional testimony and interviews with dozens of government and business officials document rising costs and specific flaws in some of the major systems underway:
The contract to hire airport passenger screeners grew to $741 million from $104 million in less than a year, but the screeners are failing to detect weapons at roughly the same rate as shortly after the attacks.
The contract for airport bomb-detection machines ballooned to at least $1.2 billion from $500 million over 18 months, but the machines have been hampered by high false-alarm rates.
A contract for a computer surveillance network called US-VISIT to screen foreign visitors could cost taxpayers $10 billion, but it relies on outdated technology that puts the project at risk.
Radiation-detection machines worth a total of a half-billion dollars deployed to screen trucks and cargo containers at ports and borders have trouble distinguishing between highly enriched uranium and common household products. The problem has prompted costly plans to replace the machines.
*************************
"Costly" is an understatement. And the above is just the beginning of what has been costly, what is costly, and what's going to be really costly. Anybody who thinks Repubs can handle money well had better think again.
Wrap...
Contracting Rush For Security Led To Waste, Abuse
By Scott Higham and Robert O'Harrow Jr.
The Washington Post
Sunday 22 May 2005
Scores of government reports, congressional testimony and interviews with dozens of government and business officials document rising costs and specific flaws in some of the major systems underway:
The contract to hire airport passenger screeners grew to $741 million from $104 million in less than a year, but the screeners are failing to detect weapons at roughly the same rate as shortly after the attacks.
The contract for airport bomb-detection machines ballooned to at least $1.2 billion from $500 million over 18 months, but the machines have been hampered by high false-alarm rates.
A contract for a computer surveillance network called US-VISIT to screen foreign visitors could cost taxpayers $10 billion, but it relies on outdated technology that puts the project at risk.
Radiation-detection machines worth a total of a half-billion dollars deployed to screen trucks and cargo containers at ports and borders have trouble distinguishing between highly enriched uranium and common household products. The problem has prompted costly plans to replace the machines.
*************************
"Costly" is an understatement. And the above is just the beginning of what has been costly, what is costly, and what's going to be really costly. Anybody who thinks Repubs can handle money well had better think again.
Wrap...
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Into the Wild Blue Yonder...
Go over to Raw Story and read "Hold On Christian Soldiers" at:
http://rawstoryq.com/news/2005/index.php?p=122
She gets right on the tale of what's happening at the Air Force Academy...and takes off from there.
Wrap...
http://rawstoryq.com/news/2005/index.php?p=122
She gets right on the tale of what's happening at the Air Force Academy...and takes off from there.
Wrap...
A Reagan Republican writes..
A Reputation in Tatters
George W. Bush and his gang of neocon warmongers have destroyed America’s reputation. It is likely to stay destroyed, because at this point the only way to restore America’s reputation would be to impeach and convict President Bush for intentionally deceiving Congress and the American people in order to start a war of aggression against a country that posed no threat to the United States.
America can redeem itself only by holding Bush accountable.
As intent as Republicans were to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying about a sexual affair, they have a blind eye for President Bush’s far more serious lies. Bush’s lies have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, injured and maimed tens of thousands more, devastated a country, destroyed America’s reputation, caused 1 billion Muslims to hate America, ruined our alliances with Europe, created a police state at home, and squandered $300 billion dollars and counting.
America’s reputation is so damaged that not even our puppets can stand the heat. Anti-American riots, which have left Afghan cities and towns in flames and hospitals overflowing with casualties, have forced Bush’s Afghan puppet, “President” Hamid Karzai, to assert his independence from his U.S. overlords. In a belated act of sovereignty, Karzai asserted authority over heavy-handed U.S. troops whose brutal and stupid ways sparked the devastating riots. Karzai demanded control of U.S. military activities in Afghanistan and called for the return of the Afghan detainees who are being held at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Abundant evidence now exists in the public domain to convict George W. Bush of the crime of the century. The secret British government memo (dated July 23, 2002, and available here), leaked to the Sunday Times (which printed it on May 1, 2005), reports that Bush wanted “to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. . . . But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. . . . The (United Kingdom) attorney general said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defense, humanitarian intervention or UNSC (U.N. Security Council) authorization. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult.”
This memo is the mother of all smoking guns. Why isn’t Bush in the dock?
Has American democracy failed at home?
**************************
Well, has it? Is it? All that's required is that citizens stay silent.
Wrap.
George W. Bush and his gang of neocon warmongers have destroyed America’s reputation. It is likely to stay destroyed, because at this point the only way to restore America’s reputation would be to impeach and convict President Bush for intentionally deceiving Congress and the American people in order to start a war of aggression against a country that posed no threat to the United States.
America can redeem itself only by holding Bush accountable.
As intent as Republicans were to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying about a sexual affair, they have a blind eye for President Bush’s far more serious lies. Bush’s lies have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, injured and maimed tens of thousands more, devastated a country, destroyed America’s reputation, caused 1 billion Muslims to hate America, ruined our alliances with Europe, created a police state at home, and squandered $300 billion dollars and counting.
America’s reputation is so damaged that not even our puppets can stand the heat. Anti-American riots, which have left Afghan cities and towns in flames and hospitals overflowing with casualties, have forced Bush’s Afghan puppet, “President” Hamid Karzai, to assert his independence from his U.S. overlords. In a belated act of sovereignty, Karzai asserted authority over heavy-handed U.S. troops whose brutal and stupid ways sparked the devastating riots. Karzai demanded control of U.S. military activities in Afghanistan and called for the return of the Afghan detainees who are being held at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Abundant evidence now exists in the public domain to convict George W. Bush of the crime of the century. The secret British government memo (dated July 23, 2002, and available here), leaked to the Sunday Times (which printed it on May 1, 2005), reports that Bush wanted “to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. . . . But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. . . . The (United Kingdom) attorney general said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defense, humanitarian intervention or UNSC (U.N. Security Council) authorization. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult.”
This memo is the mother of all smoking guns. Why isn’t Bush in the dock?
Has American democracy failed at home?
**************************
Well, has it? Is it? All that's required is that citizens stay silent.
Wrap.
Had enough?
If so, run right over to www.impeachcentral.com and have your say. I signed right up. May be a fruitless gesture given who runs the Judiciary in the House, but no matter. It's the right thing to do and I did it.
Wrap.
Wrap.
Friday, May 20, 2005
So what now?
Thinking about the Madrasses...the schools who teach Osama bin Laden type of religious belief/thinking. Start indoctrination early....quietly....
Which leads me to think about the home-schooling so beloved of the religious right fundamentalists.
Which leads me to think about the steady inflitration onto school boards by their people.
Which leads me to think about their religious universities and colleges.
Which brings me to the US Air Force Academy being taken over by those same type people.
Then there are their evangelist preachers and churches.
And those on town and city councils, from which positions they go on to be elected to state government and finally to federal government.
And all those judges in all states and circuit and appeals courts.
The many who join the military, who become doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, heads of companies, etc. To say nothing of the multitude of citizens.
So now they have the presidency and the attorney general's office.
Which puts the entire nation in danger of becoming a theocracy. Which proves there is nothing more effective than long term planning.
Wrap.
Which leads me to think about the home-schooling so beloved of the religious right fundamentalists.
Which leads me to think about the steady inflitration onto school boards by their people.
Which leads me to think about their religious universities and colleges.
Which brings me to the US Air Force Academy being taken over by those same type people.
Then there are their evangelist preachers and churches.
And those on town and city councils, from which positions they go on to be elected to state government and finally to federal government.
And all those judges in all states and circuit and appeals courts.
The many who join the military, who become doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, heads of companies, etc. To say nothing of the multitude of citizens.
So now they have the presidency and the attorney general's office.
Which puts the entire nation in danger of becoming a theocracy. Which proves there is nothing more effective than long term planning.
Wrap.
BushCo authorized...
In US Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths By Tim Golden The New York Times
Friday 20 May 2005
Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.
The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.
Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.
"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"
At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.
"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.
Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.
The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.
In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.
In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers describe one female interrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one prostrate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shackled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell, kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another prisoner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning.
The Times obtained a copy of the file from a person involved in the investigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the military's response to the deaths.
Although incidents of prisoner abuse at Bagram in 2002, including some details of the two men's deaths, have been previously reported, American officials have characterized them as isolated problems that were thoroughly investigated. And many of the officers and soldiers interviewed in the Dilawar investigation said the large majority of detainees at Bagram were compliant and reasonably well treated.
"What we have learned through the course of all these investigations is that there were people who clearly violated anyone's standard for humane treatment," said the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Larry Di Rita. "We're finding some cases that were not close calls."
Yet the Bagram file includes ample testimony that harsh treatment by some interrogators was routine and that guards could strike shackled detainees with virtual impunity. Prisoners considered important or troublesome were also handcuffed and chained to the ceilings and doors of their cells, sometimes for long periods, an action Army prosecutors recently classified as criminal assault.
Some of the mistreatment was quite obvious, the file suggests. Senior officers frequently toured the detention center, and several of them acknowledged seeing prisoners chained up for punishment or to deprive them of sleep. Shortly before the two deaths, observers from the International Committee of the Red Cross specifically complained to the military authorities at Bagram about the shackling of prisoners in "fixed positions," documents show.
Even though military investigators learned soon after Mr. Dilawar's death that he had been abused by at least two interrogators, the Army's criminal inquiry moved slowly. Meanwhile, many of the Bagram interrogators, led by the same operations officer, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, were redeployed to Iraq and in July 2003 took charge of interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison. According to a high-level Army inquiry last year, Captain Wood applied techniques there that were "remarkably similar" to those used at Bagram.
Last October, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command concluded that there was probable cause to charge 27 officers and enlisted personnel with criminal offenses in the Dilawar case ranging from dereliction of duty to maiming and involuntary manslaughter. Fifteen of the same soldiers were also cited for probable criminal responsibility in the Habibullah case.
So far, only the seven soldiers have been charged, including four last week. No one has been convicted in either death. Two Army interrogators were also reprimanded, a military spokesman said. Most of those who could still face legal action have denied wrongdoing, either in statements to investigators or in comments to a reporter.
"The whole situation is unfair," Sgt. Selena M. Salcedo, a former Bagram interrogator who was charged with assaulting Mr. Dilawar, dereliction of duty and lying to investigators, said in a telephone interview. "It's all going to come out when everything is said and done."
With most of the legal action pending, the story of abuses at Bagram remains incomplete. But documents and interviews reveal a striking disparity between the findings of Army investigators and what military officials said in the aftermath of the deaths.
Military spokesmen maintained that both men had died of natural causes, even after military coroners had ruled the deaths homicides. Two months after those autopsies, the American commander in Afghanistan, then-Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, said he had no indication that abuse by soldiers had contributed to the two deaths. The methods used at Bagram, he said, were "in accordance with what is generally accepted as interrogation techniques."
The Interrogators
In the summer of 2002, the military detention center at Bagram, about 40 miles north of Kabul, stood as a hulking reminder of the Americans' improvised hold over Afghanistan.
Built by the Soviets as an aircraft machine shop for the operations base they established after their intervention in the country in 1979, the building had survived the ensuing wars as a battered relic - a long, squat, concrete block with rusted metal sheets where the windows had once been.
Retrofitted with five large wire pens and a half dozen plywood isolation cells, the building became the Bagram Collection Point, a clearinghouse for prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The B.C.P., as soldiers called it, typically held between 40 and 80 detainees while they were interrogated and screened for possible shipment to the Pentagon's longer-term detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The new interrogation unit that arrived in July 2002 had been improvised as well. Captain Wood, then a 32-year-old lieutenant, came with 13 soldiers from the 525th Military Intelligence Brigade at Fort Bragg, N.C.; six Arabic-speaking reservists were added from the Utah National Guard.
Part of the new group, which was consolidated under Company A of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, was made up of counterintelligence specialists with no background in interrogation. Only two of the soldiers had ever questioned actual prisoners.
What specialized training the unit received came on the job, in sessions with two interrogators who had worked in the prison for a few months. "There was nothing that prepared us for running an interrogation operation" like the one at Bagram, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the interrogators, Staff Sgt. Steven W. Loring, later told investigators.
Nor were the rules of engagement very clear. The platoon had the standard interrogations guide, Army Field Manual 34-52, and an order from the secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, to treat prisoners "humanely," and when possible, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. But with President Bush's final determination in February 2002 that the Conventions did not apply to the conflict with Al Qaeda and that Taliban fighters would not be accorded the rights of prisoners of war, the interrogators believed they "could deviate slightly from the rules," said one of the Utah reservists, Sgt. James A. Leahy.
"There was the Geneva Conventions for enemy prisoners of war, but nothing for terrorists," Sergeant Leahy told Army investigators. And the detainees, senior intelligence officers said, were to be considered terrorists until proved otherwise.
The deviations included the use of "safety positions" or "stress positions" that would make the detainees uncomfortable but not necessarily hurt them - kneeling on the ground, for instance, or sitting in a "chair" position against the wall. The new platoon was also trained in sleep deprivation, which the previous unit had generally limited to 24 hours or less, insisting that the interrogator remain awake with the prisoner to avoid pushing the limits of humane treatment.
But as the 519th interrogators settled into their jobs, they set their own procedures for sleep deprivation. They decided on 32 to 36 hours as the optimal time to keep prisoners awake and eliminated the practice of staying up themselves, one former interrogator, Eric LaHammer, said in an interview.
The interrogators worked from a menu of basic tactics to gain a prisoner's cooperation, from the "friendly" approach, to good cop-bad cop routines, to the threat of long-term imprisonment. But some less-experienced interrogators came to rely on the method known in the military as "Fear Up Harsh," or what one soldier referred to as "the screaming technique."
Sergeant Loring, then 27, tried with limited success to wean those interrogators off that approach, which typically involved yelling and throwing chairs. Mr. Leahy said the sergeant "put the brakes on when certain approaches got out of hand." But he could also be dismissive of tactics he considered too soft, several soldiers told investigators, and gave some of the most aggressive interrogators wide latitude. (Efforts to locate Mr. Loring, who has left the military, were unsuccessful.)
"We sometimes developed a rapport with detainees, and Sergeant Loring would sit us down and remind us that these were evil people and talk about 9/11 and they weren't our friends and could not be trusted," Mr. Leahy said.
Specialist Damien M. Corsetti, a tall, bearded interrogator sometimes called "Monster" -he had the nickname tattooed in Italian across his stomach, other soldiers said - was often chosen to intimidate new detainees. Specialist Corsetti, they said, would glower and yell at the arrivals as they stood chained to an overhead pole or lay face down on the floor of a holding room. (A military police K-9 unit often brought growling dogs to walk among the new prisoners for similar effect, documents show.)
"The other interrogators would use his reputation," said one interrogator, Specialist Eric H. Barclais. "They would tell the detainee, 'If you don't cooperate, we'll have to get Monster, and he won't be as nice.' " Another soldier told investigators that Sergeant Loring lightheartedly referred to Specialist Corsetti, then 23, as "the King of Torture."
A Saudi detainee who was interviewed by Army investigators last June at Guantánamo said Specialist Corsetti had pulled out his penis during an interrogation at Bagram, held it against the prisoner's face and threatened to rape him, excerpts from the man's statement show.
Last fall, the investigators cited probable cause to charge Specialist Corsetti with assault, maltreatment of a prisoner and indecent acts in the incident; he has not been charged. At Abu Ghraib, he was also one of three members of the 519th who were fined and demoted for forcing an Iraqi woman to strip during questioning, another interrogator said. A spokesman at Fort Bragg said Specialist Corsetti would not comment.
In late August of 2002, the Bagram interrogators were joined by a new military police unit that was assigned to guard the detainees. The soldiers, mostly reservists from the 377th Military Police Company based in Cincinnati and Bloomington, Ind., were similarly unprepared for their mission, members of the unit said.
The company received basic lessons in handling prisoners at Fort Dix, N.J., and some police and corrections officers in its ranks provided further training. That instruction included an overview of "pressure-point control tactics" and notably the "common peroneal strike" - a potentially disabling blow to the side of the leg, just above the knee.
The M.P.'s said they were never told that peroneal strikes were not part of Army doctrine. Nor did most of them hear one of the former police officers tell a fellow soldier during the training that he would never use such strikes because they would "tear up" a prisoner's legs.
But once in Afghanistan, members of the 377th found that the usual rules did not seem to apply. The peroneal strike quickly became a basic weapon of the M.P. arsenal. "That was kind of like an accepted thing; you could knee somebody in the leg," former Sgt. Thomas V. Curtis told the investigators.
A few weeks into the company's tour, Specialist Jeremy M. Callaway overheard another guard boasting about having beaten a detainee who had spit on him. Specialist Callaway also told investigators that other soldiers had congratulated the guard "for not taking any" from a detainee.
One captain nicknamed members of the Third Platoon "the Testosterone Gang." Several were devout bodybuilders. Upon arriving in Afghanistan, a group of the soldiers decorated their tent with a Confederate flag, one soldier said.
Some of the same M.P.'s took a particular interest in an emotionally disturbed Afghan detainee who was known to eat his feces and mutilate himself with concertina wire. The soldiers kneed the man repeatedly in the legs and, at one point, chained him with his arms straight up in the air, Specialist Callaway told investigators. They also nicknamed him "Timmy," after a disabled child in the animated television series "South Park." One of the guards who beat the prisoner also taught him to screech like the cartoon character, Specialist Callaway said.
Eventually, the man was sent home.
The Defiant Detainee
The detainee known as Person Under Control No. 412 was a portly, well-groomed Afghan named Habibullah. Some American officials identified him as "Mullah" Habibullah, a brother of a former Taliban commander from the southern Afghan province of Oruzgan.
He stood out from the scraggly guerrillas and villagers whom the Bagram interrogators typically saw. "He had a piercing gaze and was very confident," the provost marshal in charge of the M.P.'s, Maj. Bobby R. Atwell, recalled.
Documents from the investigation suggest that Mr. Habibullah was captured by an Afghan warlord on Nov. 28, 2002, and delivered to Bagram by C.I.A. operatives two days later. His well-being at that point is a matter of dispute. The doctor who examined him on arrival at Bagram reported him in good health. But the intelligence operations chief, Lt. Col. John W. Loffert Jr., later told Army investigators, "He was already in bad condition when he arrived."
What is clear is that Mr. Habibullah was identified at Bagram as an important prisoner and an unusually sharp-tongued and insubordinate one.
One of the 377th's Third Platoon sergeants, Alan J. Driver Jr., told investigators that Mr. Habibullah rose up after a rectal examination and kneed him in the groin. The guard said he grabbed the prisoner by the head and yelled in his face. Mr. Habibullah then "became combative," Sergeant Driver said, and had to be subdued by three guards and led away in an armlock.
He was then confined in one of the 9-foot by 7-foot isolation cells, which the M.P. commander, Capt. Christopher M. Beiring, later described as a standard procedure. "There was a policy that detainees were hooded, shackled and isolated for at least the first 24 hours, sometimes 72 hours of captivity," he told investigators.
While the guards kept some prisoners awake by yelling or poking at them or banging on their cell doors, Mr. Habibullah was shackled by the wrists to the wire ceiling over his cell, soldiers said.
On his second day, Dec. 1, the prisoner was "uncooperative" again, this time with Specialist Willie V. Brand. The guard, who has since been charged with assault and other crimes, told investigators he had delivered three peroneal strikes in response. The next day, Specialist Brand said, he had to knee the prisoner again. Other blows followed.
A lawyer for Specialist Brand, John P. Galligan, said there was no criminal intent by his client to hurt any detainee. "At the time, my client was acting consistently with the standard operating procedure that was in place at the Bagram facility."
The communication between Mr. Habibullah and his jailers appears to have been almost exclusively physical. Despite repeated requests, the M.P.'s were assigned no interpreters of their own. Instead, they borrowed from the interrogators when they could and relied on prisoners who spoke even a little English to translate for them.
When the detainees were beaten or kicked for "noncompliance," one of the interpreters, Ali M. Baryalai said, it was often "because they have no idea what the M.P. is saying."
By the morning of Dec. 2, witnesses told the investigators, Mr. Habibullah was coughing and complaining of chest pains. He limped into the interrogation room in shackles, his right leg stiff and his right foot swollen. The lead interrogator, Sergeant Leahy, let him sit on the floor because he could not bend his knees and sit in a chair.
The interpreter who was on hand, Ebrahim Baerde, said the interrogators had kept their distance that day "because he was spitting up a lot of phlegm."
"They were laughing and making fun of him, saying it was 'gross' or 'nasty,' " Mr. Baerde said.
Though battered, Mr. Habibullah was unbowed.
"Once they asked him if he wanted to spend the rest of his life in handcuffs," Mr. Baerde said. "His response was, 'Yes, don't they look good on me?' "
By Dec. 3, Mr. Habibullah's reputation for defiance seemed to make him an open target. One M.P. said he had given him five peroneal strikes for being "noncompliant and combative." Another gave him three or four more for being "combative and noncompliant." Some guards later asserted that he had been hurt trying to escape.
When Sgt. James P. Boland saw Mr. Habibullah on Dec. 3, he was in one of the isolation cells, tethered to the ceiling by two sets of handcuffs and a chain around his waist. His body was slumped forward, held up by the chains.
Sergeant Boland told the investigators he had entered the cell with two other guards, Specialists Anthony M. Morden and Brian E. Cammack. (All three have been charged with assault and other crimes.) One of them pulled off the prisoner's black hood. His head was slumped to one side, his tongue sticking out. Specialist Cammack said he had put some bread on Mr. Habibullah's tongue. Another soldier put an apple in the prisoner's hand; it fell to the floor.
When Specialist Cammack turned back toward the prisoner, he said in one statement, Mr. Habibullah's spit hit his chest. Later, Specialist Cammack acknowledged, "I'm not sure if he spit at me." But at the time, he exploded, yelling, "Don't ever spit on me again!" and kneeing the prisoner sharply in the thigh, "maybe a couple" of times. Mr. Habibullah's limp body swayed back and forth in the chains.
When Sergeant Boland returned to the cell some 20 minutes later, he said, Mr. Habibullah was not moving and had no pulse. Finally, the prisoner was unchained and laid out on the floor of his cell.
The guard who Specialist Cammack said had counseled him back in New Jersey about the dangers of peroneal strikes found him in the room where Mr. Habibullah lay, his body already cold.
"Specialist Cammack appeared very distraught," Specialist William Bohl told an investigator. The soldier "was running about the room hysterically."
An M.P. was sent to wake one of the medics.
"What are you getting me for?" the medic, Specialist Robert S. Melone, responded, telling him to call an ambulance instead.
When another medic finally arrived, he found Mr. Habibullah on the floor, his arms outstretched, his eyes and mouth open.
"It looked like he had been dead for a while, and it looked like nobody cared," the medic, Staff Sgt. Rodney D. Glass, recalled.
Not all of the guards were indifferent, their statements show. But if Mr. Habibullah's death shocked some of them, it did not lead to major changes in the detention center's operation.
Military police guards were assigned to be present during interrogations to help prevent mistreatment. The provost marshal, Major Atwell, told investigators he had already instructed the commander of the M.P. company, Captain Beiring, to stop chaining prisoners to the ceiling. Others said they never received such an order.
Senior officers later told investigators that they had been unaware of any serious abuses at the B.C.P. But the first sergeant of the 377th, Betty J. Jones, told investigators that the use of standing restraints, sleep deprivation and peroneal strikes was readily apparent.
"Everyone that is anyone went through the facility at one time or another," she said.
Major Atwell said the death "did not cause an enormous amount of concern 'cause it appeared natural."
In fact, Mr. Habibullah's autopsy, completed on Dec. 8, showed bruises or abrasions on his chest, arms and head. There were deep contusions on his calves, knees and thighs. His left calf was marked by what appeared to have been the sole of a boot.
His death was attributed to a blood clot, probably caused by the severe injuries to his legs, which traveled to his heart and blocked the blood flow to his lungs.
The Shy Detainee
On Dec. 5, one day after Mr. Habibullah died, Mr. Dilawar arrived at Bagram.
Four days before, on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr, Mr. Dilawar set out from his tiny village of Yakubi in a prized new possession, a used Toyota sedan that his family bought for him a few weeks earlier to drive as a taxi.
Mr. Dilawar was not an adventurous man. He rarely went far from the stone farmhouse he shared with his wife, young daughter and extended family. He never attended school, relatives said, and had only one friend, Bacha Khel, with whom he would sit in the wheat fields surrounding the village and talk.
"He was a shy man, a very simple man," his eldest brother, Shahpoor, said in an interview.
On the day he disappeared, Mr. Dilawar's mother had asked him to gather his three sisters from their nearby villages and bring them home for the holiday. But he needed gas money and decided instead to drive to the provincial capital, Khost, about 45 minutes away, to look for fares.
At a taxi stand there, he found three men headed back toward Yakubi. On the way, they passed a base used by American troops, Camp Salerno, which had been the target of a rocket attack that morning.
Militiamen loyal to the guerrilla commander guarding the base, Jan Baz Khan, stopped the Toyota at a checkpoint. They confiscated a broken walkie-talkie from one of Mr. Dilawar's passengers. In the trunk, they found an electric stabilizer used to regulate current from a generator. (Mr. Dilawar's family said the stabilizer was not theirs; at the time, they said, they had no electricity at all.)
The four men were detained and turned over to American soldiers at the base as suspects in the attack. Mr. Dilawar and his passengers spent their first night there handcuffed to a fence, so they would be unable to sleep. When a doctor examined them the next morning, he said later, he found Mr. Dilawar tired and suffering from headaches but otherwise fine.
Mr. Dilawar's three passengers were eventually flown to Guantánamo and held for more than a year before being sent home without charge. In interviews after their release, the men described their treatment at Bagram as far worse than at Guantánamo. While all of them said they had been beaten, they complained most bitterly of being stripped naked in front of female soldiers for showers and medical examinations, which they said included the first of several painful and humiliating rectal exams.
"They did lots and lots of bad things to me," said Abdur Rahim, a 26-year-old baker from Khost. "I was shouting and crying, and no one was listening. When I was shouting, the soldiers were slamming my head against the desk."
For Mr. Dilawar, his fellow prisoners said, the most difficult thing seemed to be the black cloth hood that was pulled over his head. "He could not breathe," said a man called Parkhudin, who had been one of Mr. Dilawar's passengers.
Mr. Dilawar was a frail man, standing only 5 feet 9 inches and weighing 122 pounds. But at Bagram, he was quickly labeled one of the "noncompliant" ones.
When one of the First Platoon M.P.'s, Specialist Corey E. Jones, was sent to Mr. Dilawar's cell to give him some water, he said the prisoner spit in his face and started kicking him. Specialist Jones responded, he said, with a couple of knee strikes to the leg of the shackled man.
"He screamed out, 'Allah! Allah! Allah!' and my first reaction was that he was crying out to his god," Specialist Jones said to investigators. "Everybody heard him cry out and thought it was funny."
Other Third Platoon M.P.'s later came by the detention center and stopped at the isolation cells to see for themselves, Specialist Jones said.
It became a kind of running joke, and people kept showing up to give this detainee a common peroneal strike just to hear him scream out 'Allah,' " he said. "It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes."
In a subsequent statement, Specialist Jones was vague about which M.P.'s had delivered the blows. His estimate was never confirmed, but other guards eventually admitted striking Mr. Dilawar repeatedly.
Many M.P.'s would eventually deny that they had any idea of Mr. Dilawar's injuries, explaining that they never saw his legs beneath his jumpsuit. But Specialist Jones recalled that the drawstring pants of Mr. Dilawar's orange prison suit fell down again and again while he was shackled.
"I saw the bruise because his pants kept falling down while he was in standing restraints," the soldier told investigators. "Over a certain time period, I noticed it was the size of a fist."
As Mr. Dilawar grew desperate, he began crying out more loudly to be released. But even the interpreters had trouble understanding his Pashto dialect; the annoyed guards heard only noise.
"He had constantly been screaming, 'Release me; I don't want to be here,' and things like that," said the one linguist who could decipher his distress, Abdul Ahad Wardak.
The Interrogation
On Dec. 8, Mr. Dilawar was taken for his fourth interrogation. It quickly turned hostile.
The 21-year-old lead interrogator, Specialist Glendale C. Walls II, later contended that Mr. Dilawar was evasive. "Some holes came up, and we wanted him to answer us truthfully," he said. The other interrogator, Sergeant Salcedo, complained that the prisoner was smiling, not answering questions, and refusing to stay kneeling on the ground or sitting against the wall.
The interpreter who was present, Ahmad Ahmadzai, recalled the encounter differently to investigators.
The interrogators, Mr. Ahmadzai said, accused Mr. Dilawar of launching the rockets that had hit the American base. He denied that. While kneeling on the ground, he was unable to hold his cuffed hands above his head as instructed, prompting Sergeant Salcedo to slap them back up whenever they began to drop.
"Selena berated him for being weak and questioned him about being a man, which was very insulting because of his heritage," Mr. Ahmadzai said.
When Mr. Dilawar was unable to sit in the chair position against the wall because of his battered legs, the two interrogators grabbed him by the shirt and repeatedly shoved him back against the wall.
"This went on for 10 or 15 minutes," the interpreter said. "He was so tired he couldn't get up."
"They stood him up, and at one point Selena stepped on his bare foot with her boot and grabbed him by his beard and pulled him towards her," he went on. "Once Selena kicked Dilawar in the groin, private areas, with her right foot. She was standing some distance from him, and she stepped back and kicked him.
"About the first 10 minutes, I think, they were actually questioning him, after that it was pushing, shoving, kicking and shouting at him," Mr. Ahmadzai said. "There was no interrogation going on."
The session ended, he said, with Sergeant Salcedo instructing the M.P.'s to keep Mr. Dilawar chained to the ceiling until the next shift came on.
The next morning, Mr. Dilawar began yelling again. At around noon, the M.P.'s called over another of the interpreters, Mr. Baerde, to try to quiet Mr. Dilawar down.
"I told him, 'Look, please, if you want to be able to sit down and be released from shackles, you just need to be quiet for one more hour."
"He told me that if he was in shackles another hour, he would die," Mr. Baerde said.
Half an hour later, Mr. Baerde returned to the cell. Mr. Dilawar's hands hung limply from the cuffs, and his head, covered by the black hood, slumped forward.
"He wanted me to get a doctor, and said that he needed 'a shot,' " Mr. Baerde recalled. "He said that he didn't feel good. He said that his legs were hurting."
Mr. Baerde translated Mr. Dilawar's plea to one of the guards. The soldier took the prisoner's hand and pressed down on his fingernails to check his circulation.
"He's O.K.," Mr. Baerde quoted the M.P. as saying. "He's just trying to get out of his restraints."
By the time Mr. Dilawar was brought in for his final interrogation in the first hours of the next day, Dec. 10, he appeared exhausted and was babbling that his wife had died. He also told the interrogators that he had been beaten by the guards.
"But we didn't pursue that," said Mr. Baryalai, the interpreter.
Specialist Walls was again the lead interrogator. But his more aggressive partner, Specialist Claus, quickly took over, Mr. Baryalai said.
"Josh had a rule that the detainee had to look at him, not me," the interpreter told investigators. "He gave him three chances, and then he grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him towards him, across the table, slamming his chest into the table front."
When Mr. Dilawar was unable to kneel, the interpreter said, the interrogators pulled him to his feet and pushed him against the wall. Told to assume a stress position, the prisoner leaned his head against the wall and began to fall asleep.
"It looked to me like Dilawar was trying to cooperate, but he couldn't physically perform the tasks," Mr. Baryalai said.
Finally, Specialist Walls grabbed the prisoner and "shook him harshly," the interpreter said, telling him that if he failed to cooperate, he would be shipped to a prison in the United States, where he would be "treated like a woman, by the other men" and face the wrath of criminals who "would be very angry with anyone involved in the 9/11 attacks." (Specialist Walls was charged last week with assault, maltreatment and failure to obey a lawful order; Specialist Claus was charged with assault, maltreatment and lying to investigators. Each man declined to comment.)
A third military intelligence specialist who spoke some Pashto, Staff Sgt. W. Christopher Yonushonis, had questioned Mr. Dilawar earlier and had arranged with Specialist Claus to take over when he was done. Instead, the sergeant arrived at the interrogation room to find a large puddle of water on the floor, a wet spot on Mr. Dilawar's shirt and Specialist Claus standing behind the detainee, twisting up the back of the hood that covered the prisoner's head.
"I had the impression that Josh was actually holding the detainee upright by pulling on the hood," he said. "I was furious at this point because I had seen Josh tighten the hood of another detainee the week before. This behavior seemed completely gratuitous and unrelated to intelligence collection."
"What the hell happened with that water?" Sergeant Yonushonis said he had demanded.
"We had to make sure he stayed hydrated," he said Specialist Claus had responded.
The next morning, Sergeant Yonushonis went to the noncommissioned officer in charge of the interrogators, Sergeant Loring, to report the incident. Mr. Dilawar, however, was already dead.
The Post-Mortem
The findings of Mr. Dilawar's autopsy were succinct. He had had some coronary artery disease, the medical examiner reported, but what caused his heart to fail was "blunt force injuries to the lower extremities." Similar injuries contributed to Mr. Habibullah's death.
One of the coroners later translated the assessment at a pre-trial hearing for Specialist Brand, saying the tissue in the young man's legs "had basically been pulpified."
"I've seen similar injuries in an individual run over by a bus," added Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, the coroner, and a major at that time.
After the second death, several of the 519th Battalion's interrogators were temporarily removed from their posts. A medic was assigned to the detention center to work night shifts. On orders from the Bagram intelligence chief, interrogators were prohibited from any physical contact with the detainees. Chaining prisoners to any fixed object was also banned, and the use of stress positions was curtailed.
In February, an American military official disclosed that the Afghan guerrilla commander whose men had arrested Mr. Dilawar and his passengers had himself been detained. The commander, Jan Baz Khan, was suspected of attacking Camp Salerno himself and then turning over innocent "suspects" to the Americans in a ploy to win their trust, the military official said.
The three passengers in Mr. Dilawar's taxi were sent home from Guantánamo in March 2004, 15 months after their capture, with letters saying they posed "no threat" to American forces.
They were later visited by Mr. Dilawar's parents, who begged them to explain what had happened to their son. But the men said they could not bring themselves to recount the details.
"I told them he had a bed," said Mr. Parkhudin. "I said the Americans were very nice because he had a heart problem."
In late August of last year, shortly before the Army completed its inquiry into the deaths, Sergeant Yonushonis, who was stationed in Germany, went at his own initiative to see an agent of the Criminal Investigation Command. Until then, he had never been interviewed.
"I expected to be contacted at some point by investigators in this case," he said. "I was living a few doors down from the interrogation room, and I had been one of the last to see this detainee alive."
Sergeant Yonushonis described what he had witnessed of the detainee's last interrogation. "I remember being so mad that I had trouble speaking," he said.
He also added a detail that had been overlooked in the investigative file. By the time Mr. Dilawar was taken into his final interrogations, he said, "most of us were convinced that the detainee was innocent."
Wrap...
Friday 20 May 2005
Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.
The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.
Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.
"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"
At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.
"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.
Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.
The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.
In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.
In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers describe one female interrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one prostrate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shackled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell, kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another prisoner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning.
The Times obtained a copy of the file from a person involved in the investigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the military's response to the deaths.
Although incidents of prisoner abuse at Bagram in 2002, including some details of the two men's deaths, have been previously reported, American officials have characterized them as isolated problems that were thoroughly investigated. And many of the officers and soldiers interviewed in the Dilawar investigation said the large majority of detainees at Bagram were compliant and reasonably well treated.
"What we have learned through the course of all these investigations is that there were people who clearly violated anyone's standard for humane treatment," said the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Larry Di Rita. "We're finding some cases that were not close calls."
Yet the Bagram file includes ample testimony that harsh treatment by some interrogators was routine and that guards could strike shackled detainees with virtual impunity. Prisoners considered important or troublesome were also handcuffed and chained to the ceilings and doors of their cells, sometimes for long periods, an action Army prosecutors recently classified as criminal assault.
Some of the mistreatment was quite obvious, the file suggests. Senior officers frequently toured the detention center, and several of them acknowledged seeing prisoners chained up for punishment or to deprive them of sleep. Shortly before the two deaths, observers from the International Committee of the Red Cross specifically complained to the military authorities at Bagram about the shackling of prisoners in "fixed positions," documents show.
Even though military investigators learned soon after Mr. Dilawar's death that he had been abused by at least two interrogators, the Army's criminal inquiry moved slowly. Meanwhile, many of the Bagram interrogators, led by the same operations officer, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, were redeployed to Iraq and in July 2003 took charge of interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison. According to a high-level Army inquiry last year, Captain Wood applied techniques there that were "remarkably similar" to those used at Bagram.
Last October, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command concluded that there was probable cause to charge 27 officers and enlisted personnel with criminal offenses in the Dilawar case ranging from dereliction of duty to maiming and involuntary manslaughter. Fifteen of the same soldiers were also cited for probable criminal responsibility in the Habibullah case.
So far, only the seven soldiers have been charged, including four last week. No one has been convicted in either death. Two Army interrogators were also reprimanded, a military spokesman said. Most of those who could still face legal action have denied wrongdoing, either in statements to investigators or in comments to a reporter.
"The whole situation is unfair," Sgt. Selena M. Salcedo, a former Bagram interrogator who was charged with assaulting Mr. Dilawar, dereliction of duty and lying to investigators, said in a telephone interview. "It's all going to come out when everything is said and done."
With most of the legal action pending, the story of abuses at Bagram remains incomplete. But documents and interviews reveal a striking disparity between the findings of Army investigators and what military officials said in the aftermath of the deaths.
Military spokesmen maintained that both men had died of natural causes, even after military coroners had ruled the deaths homicides. Two months after those autopsies, the American commander in Afghanistan, then-Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, said he had no indication that abuse by soldiers had contributed to the two deaths. The methods used at Bagram, he said, were "in accordance with what is generally accepted as interrogation techniques."
The Interrogators
In the summer of 2002, the military detention center at Bagram, about 40 miles north of Kabul, stood as a hulking reminder of the Americans' improvised hold over Afghanistan.
Built by the Soviets as an aircraft machine shop for the operations base they established after their intervention in the country in 1979, the building had survived the ensuing wars as a battered relic - a long, squat, concrete block with rusted metal sheets where the windows had once been.
Retrofitted with five large wire pens and a half dozen plywood isolation cells, the building became the Bagram Collection Point, a clearinghouse for prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The B.C.P., as soldiers called it, typically held between 40 and 80 detainees while they were interrogated and screened for possible shipment to the Pentagon's longer-term detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The new interrogation unit that arrived in July 2002 had been improvised as well. Captain Wood, then a 32-year-old lieutenant, came with 13 soldiers from the 525th Military Intelligence Brigade at Fort Bragg, N.C.; six Arabic-speaking reservists were added from the Utah National Guard.
Part of the new group, which was consolidated under Company A of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, was made up of counterintelligence specialists with no background in interrogation. Only two of the soldiers had ever questioned actual prisoners.
What specialized training the unit received came on the job, in sessions with two interrogators who had worked in the prison for a few months. "There was nothing that prepared us for running an interrogation operation" like the one at Bagram, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the interrogators, Staff Sgt. Steven W. Loring, later told investigators.
Nor were the rules of engagement very clear. The platoon had the standard interrogations guide, Army Field Manual 34-52, and an order from the secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, to treat prisoners "humanely," and when possible, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. But with President Bush's final determination in February 2002 that the Conventions did not apply to the conflict with Al Qaeda and that Taliban fighters would not be accorded the rights of prisoners of war, the interrogators believed they "could deviate slightly from the rules," said one of the Utah reservists, Sgt. James A. Leahy.
"There was the Geneva Conventions for enemy prisoners of war, but nothing for terrorists," Sergeant Leahy told Army investigators. And the detainees, senior intelligence officers said, were to be considered terrorists until proved otherwise.
The deviations included the use of "safety positions" or "stress positions" that would make the detainees uncomfortable but not necessarily hurt them - kneeling on the ground, for instance, or sitting in a "chair" position against the wall. The new platoon was also trained in sleep deprivation, which the previous unit had generally limited to 24 hours or less, insisting that the interrogator remain awake with the prisoner to avoid pushing the limits of humane treatment.
But as the 519th interrogators settled into their jobs, they set their own procedures for sleep deprivation. They decided on 32 to 36 hours as the optimal time to keep prisoners awake and eliminated the practice of staying up themselves, one former interrogator, Eric LaHammer, said in an interview.
The interrogators worked from a menu of basic tactics to gain a prisoner's cooperation, from the "friendly" approach, to good cop-bad cop routines, to the threat of long-term imprisonment. But some less-experienced interrogators came to rely on the method known in the military as "Fear Up Harsh," or what one soldier referred to as "the screaming technique."
Sergeant Loring, then 27, tried with limited success to wean those interrogators off that approach, which typically involved yelling and throwing chairs. Mr. Leahy said the sergeant "put the brakes on when certain approaches got out of hand." But he could also be dismissive of tactics he considered too soft, several soldiers told investigators, and gave some of the most aggressive interrogators wide latitude. (Efforts to locate Mr. Loring, who has left the military, were unsuccessful.)
"We sometimes developed a rapport with detainees, and Sergeant Loring would sit us down and remind us that these were evil people and talk about 9/11 and they weren't our friends and could not be trusted," Mr. Leahy said.
Specialist Damien M. Corsetti, a tall, bearded interrogator sometimes called "Monster" -he had the nickname tattooed in Italian across his stomach, other soldiers said - was often chosen to intimidate new detainees. Specialist Corsetti, they said, would glower and yell at the arrivals as they stood chained to an overhead pole or lay face down on the floor of a holding room. (A military police K-9 unit often brought growling dogs to walk among the new prisoners for similar effect, documents show.)
"The other interrogators would use his reputation," said one interrogator, Specialist Eric H. Barclais. "They would tell the detainee, 'If you don't cooperate, we'll have to get Monster, and he won't be as nice.' " Another soldier told investigators that Sergeant Loring lightheartedly referred to Specialist Corsetti, then 23, as "the King of Torture."
A Saudi detainee who was interviewed by Army investigators last June at Guantánamo said Specialist Corsetti had pulled out his penis during an interrogation at Bagram, held it against the prisoner's face and threatened to rape him, excerpts from the man's statement show.
Last fall, the investigators cited probable cause to charge Specialist Corsetti with assault, maltreatment of a prisoner and indecent acts in the incident; he has not been charged. At Abu Ghraib, he was also one of three members of the 519th who were fined and demoted for forcing an Iraqi woman to strip during questioning, another interrogator said. A spokesman at Fort Bragg said Specialist Corsetti would not comment.
In late August of 2002, the Bagram interrogators were joined by a new military police unit that was assigned to guard the detainees. The soldiers, mostly reservists from the 377th Military Police Company based in Cincinnati and Bloomington, Ind., were similarly unprepared for their mission, members of the unit said.
The company received basic lessons in handling prisoners at Fort Dix, N.J., and some police and corrections officers in its ranks provided further training. That instruction included an overview of "pressure-point control tactics" and notably the "common peroneal strike" - a potentially disabling blow to the side of the leg, just above the knee.
The M.P.'s said they were never told that peroneal strikes were not part of Army doctrine. Nor did most of them hear one of the former police officers tell a fellow soldier during the training that he would never use such strikes because they would "tear up" a prisoner's legs.
But once in Afghanistan, members of the 377th found that the usual rules did not seem to apply. The peroneal strike quickly became a basic weapon of the M.P. arsenal. "That was kind of like an accepted thing; you could knee somebody in the leg," former Sgt. Thomas V. Curtis told the investigators.
A few weeks into the company's tour, Specialist Jeremy M. Callaway overheard another guard boasting about having beaten a detainee who had spit on him. Specialist Callaway also told investigators that other soldiers had congratulated the guard "for not taking any" from a detainee.
One captain nicknamed members of the Third Platoon "the Testosterone Gang." Several were devout bodybuilders. Upon arriving in Afghanistan, a group of the soldiers decorated their tent with a Confederate flag, one soldier said.
Some of the same M.P.'s took a particular interest in an emotionally disturbed Afghan detainee who was known to eat his feces and mutilate himself with concertina wire. The soldiers kneed the man repeatedly in the legs and, at one point, chained him with his arms straight up in the air, Specialist Callaway told investigators. They also nicknamed him "Timmy," after a disabled child in the animated television series "South Park." One of the guards who beat the prisoner also taught him to screech like the cartoon character, Specialist Callaway said.
Eventually, the man was sent home.
The Defiant Detainee
The detainee known as Person Under Control No. 412 was a portly, well-groomed Afghan named Habibullah. Some American officials identified him as "Mullah" Habibullah, a brother of a former Taliban commander from the southern Afghan province of Oruzgan.
He stood out from the scraggly guerrillas and villagers whom the Bagram interrogators typically saw. "He had a piercing gaze and was very confident," the provost marshal in charge of the M.P.'s, Maj. Bobby R. Atwell, recalled.
Documents from the investigation suggest that Mr. Habibullah was captured by an Afghan warlord on Nov. 28, 2002, and delivered to Bagram by C.I.A. operatives two days later. His well-being at that point is a matter of dispute. The doctor who examined him on arrival at Bagram reported him in good health. But the intelligence operations chief, Lt. Col. John W. Loffert Jr., later told Army investigators, "He was already in bad condition when he arrived."
What is clear is that Mr. Habibullah was identified at Bagram as an important prisoner and an unusually sharp-tongued and insubordinate one.
One of the 377th's Third Platoon sergeants, Alan J. Driver Jr., told investigators that Mr. Habibullah rose up after a rectal examination and kneed him in the groin. The guard said he grabbed the prisoner by the head and yelled in his face. Mr. Habibullah then "became combative," Sergeant Driver said, and had to be subdued by three guards and led away in an armlock.
He was then confined in one of the 9-foot by 7-foot isolation cells, which the M.P. commander, Capt. Christopher M. Beiring, later described as a standard procedure. "There was a policy that detainees were hooded, shackled and isolated for at least the first 24 hours, sometimes 72 hours of captivity," he told investigators.
While the guards kept some prisoners awake by yelling or poking at them or banging on their cell doors, Mr. Habibullah was shackled by the wrists to the wire ceiling over his cell, soldiers said.
On his second day, Dec. 1, the prisoner was "uncooperative" again, this time with Specialist Willie V. Brand. The guard, who has since been charged with assault and other crimes, told investigators he had delivered three peroneal strikes in response. The next day, Specialist Brand said, he had to knee the prisoner again. Other blows followed.
A lawyer for Specialist Brand, John P. Galligan, said there was no criminal intent by his client to hurt any detainee. "At the time, my client was acting consistently with the standard operating procedure that was in place at the Bagram facility."
The communication between Mr. Habibullah and his jailers appears to have been almost exclusively physical. Despite repeated requests, the M.P.'s were assigned no interpreters of their own. Instead, they borrowed from the interrogators when they could and relied on prisoners who spoke even a little English to translate for them.
When the detainees were beaten or kicked for "noncompliance," one of the interpreters, Ali M. Baryalai said, it was often "because they have no idea what the M.P. is saying."
By the morning of Dec. 2, witnesses told the investigators, Mr. Habibullah was coughing and complaining of chest pains. He limped into the interrogation room in shackles, his right leg stiff and his right foot swollen. The lead interrogator, Sergeant Leahy, let him sit on the floor because he could not bend his knees and sit in a chair.
The interpreter who was on hand, Ebrahim Baerde, said the interrogators had kept their distance that day "because he was spitting up a lot of phlegm."
"They were laughing and making fun of him, saying it was 'gross' or 'nasty,' " Mr. Baerde said.
Though battered, Mr. Habibullah was unbowed.
"Once they asked him if he wanted to spend the rest of his life in handcuffs," Mr. Baerde said. "His response was, 'Yes, don't they look good on me?' "
By Dec. 3, Mr. Habibullah's reputation for defiance seemed to make him an open target. One M.P. said he had given him five peroneal strikes for being "noncompliant and combative." Another gave him three or four more for being "combative and noncompliant." Some guards later asserted that he had been hurt trying to escape.
When Sgt. James P. Boland saw Mr. Habibullah on Dec. 3, he was in one of the isolation cells, tethered to the ceiling by two sets of handcuffs and a chain around his waist. His body was slumped forward, held up by the chains.
Sergeant Boland told the investigators he had entered the cell with two other guards, Specialists Anthony M. Morden and Brian E. Cammack. (All three have been charged with assault and other crimes.) One of them pulled off the prisoner's black hood. His head was slumped to one side, his tongue sticking out. Specialist Cammack said he had put some bread on Mr. Habibullah's tongue. Another soldier put an apple in the prisoner's hand; it fell to the floor.
When Specialist Cammack turned back toward the prisoner, he said in one statement, Mr. Habibullah's spit hit his chest. Later, Specialist Cammack acknowledged, "I'm not sure if he spit at me." But at the time, he exploded, yelling, "Don't ever spit on me again!" and kneeing the prisoner sharply in the thigh, "maybe a couple" of times. Mr. Habibullah's limp body swayed back and forth in the chains.
When Sergeant Boland returned to the cell some 20 minutes later, he said, Mr. Habibullah was not moving and had no pulse. Finally, the prisoner was unchained and laid out on the floor of his cell.
The guard who Specialist Cammack said had counseled him back in New Jersey about the dangers of peroneal strikes found him in the room where Mr. Habibullah lay, his body already cold.
"Specialist Cammack appeared very distraught," Specialist William Bohl told an investigator. The soldier "was running about the room hysterically."
An M.P. was sent to wake one of the medics.
"What are you getting me for?" the medic, Specialist Robert S. Melone, responded, telling him to call an ambulance instead.
When another medic finally arrived, he found Mr. Habibullah on the floor, his arms outstretched, his eyes and mouth open.
"It looked like he had been dead for a while, and it looked like nobody cared," the medic, Staff Sgt. Rodney D. Glass, recalled.
Not all of the guards were indifferent, their statements show. But if Mr. Habibullah's death shocked some of them, it did not lead to major changes in the detention center's operation.
Military police guards were assigned to be present during interrogations to help prevent mistreatment. The provost marshal, Major Atwell, told investigators he had already instructed the commander of the M.P. company, Captain Beiring, to stop chaining prisoners to the ceiling. Others said they never received such an order.
Senior officers later told investigators that they had been unaware of any serious abuses at the B.C.P. But the first sergeant of the 377th, Betty J. Jones, told investigators that the use of standing restraints, sleep deprivation and peroneal strikes was readily apparent.
"Everyone that is anyone went through the facility at one time or another," she said.
Major Atwell said the death "did not cause an enormous amount of concern 'cause it appeared natural."
In fact, Mr. Habibullah's autopsy, completed on Dec. 8, showed bruises or abrasions on his chest, arms and head. There were deep contusions on his calves, knees and thighs. His left calf was marked by what appeared to have been the sole of a boot.
His death was attributed to a blood clot, probably caused by the severe injuries to his legs, which traveled to his heart and blocked the blood flow to his lungs.
The Shy Detainee
On Dec. 5, one day after Mr. Habibullah died, Mr. Dilawar arrived at Bagram.
Four days before, on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr, Mr. Dilawar set out from his tiny village of Yakubi in a prized new possession, a used Toyota sedan that his family bought for him a few weeks earlier to drive as a taxi.
Mr. Dilawar was not an adventurous man. He rarely went far from the stone farmhouse he shared with his wife, young daughter and extended family. He never attended school, relatives said, and had only one friend, Bacha Khel, with whom he would sit in the wheat fields surrounding the village and talk.
"He was a shy man, a very simple man," his eldest brother, Shahpoor, said in an interview.
On the day he disappeared, Mr. Dilawar's mother had asked him to gather his three sisters from their nearby villages and bring them home for the holiday. But he needed gas money and decided instead to drive to the provincial capital, Khost, about 45 minutes away, to look for fares.
At a taxi stand there, he found three men headed back toward Yakubi. On the way, they passed a base used by American troops, Camp Salerno, which had been the target of a rocket attack that morning.
Militiamen loyal to the guerrilla commander guarding the base, Jan Baz Khan, stopped the Toyota at a checkpoint. They confiscated a broken walkie-talkie from one of Mr. Dilawar's passengers. In the trunk, they found an electric stabilizer used to regulate current from a generator. (Mr. Dilawar's family said the stabilizer was not theirs; at the time, they said, they had no electricity at all.)
The four men were detained and turned over to American soldiers at the base as suspects in the attack. Mr. Dilawar and his passengers spent their first night there handcuffed to a fence, so they would be unable to sleep. When a doctor examined them the next morning, he said later, he found Mr. Dilawar tired and suffering from headaches but otherwise fine.
Mr. Dilawar's three passengers were eventually flown to Guantánamo and held for more than a year before being sent home without charge. In interviews after their release, the men described their treatment at Bagram as far worse than at Guantánamo. While all of them said they had been beaten, they complained most bitterly of being stripped naked in front of female soldiers for showers and medical examinations, which they said included the first of several painful and humiliating rectal exams.
"They did lots and lots of bad things to me," said Abdur Rahim, a 26-year-old baker from Khost. "I was shouting and crying, and no one was listening. When I was shouting, the soldiers were slamming my head against the desk."
For Mr. Dilawar, his fellow prisoners said, the most difficult thing seemed to be the black cloth hood that was pulled over his head. "He could not breathe," said a man called Parkhudin, who had been one of Mr. Dilawar's passengers.
Mr. Dilawar was a frail man, standing only 5 feet 9 inches and weighing 122 pounds. But at Bagram, he was quickly labeled one of the "noncompliant" ones.
When one of the First Platoon M.P.'s, Specialist Corey E. Jones, was sent to Mr. Dilawar's cell to give him some water, he said the prisoner spit in his face and started kicking him. Specialist Jones responded, he said, with a couple of knee strikes to the leg of the shackled man.
"He screamed out, 'Allah! Allah! Allah!' and my first reaction was that he was crying out to his god," Specialist Jones said to investigators. "Everybody heard him cry out and thought it was funny."
Other Third Platoon M.P.'s later came by the detention center and stopped at the isolation cells to see for themselves, Specialist Jones said.
It became a kind of running joke, and people kept showing up to give this detainee a common peroneal strike just to hear him scream out 'Allah,' " he said. "It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes."
In a subsequent statement, Specialist Jones was vague about which M.P.'s had delivered the blows. His estimate was never confirmed, but other guards eventually admitted striking Mr. Dilawar repeatedly.
Many M.P.'s would eventually deny that they had any idea of Mr. Dilawar's injuries, explaining that they never saw his legs beneath his jumpsuit. But Specialist Jones recalled that the drawstring pants of Mr. Dilawar's orange prison suit fell down again and again while he was shackled.
"I saw the bruise because his pants kept falling down while he was in standing restraints," the soldier told investigators. "Over a certain time period, I noticed it was the size of a fist."
As Mr. Dilawar grew desperate, he began crying out more loudly to be released. But even the interpreters had trouble understanding his Pashto dialect; the annoyed guards heard only noise.
"He had constantly been screaming, 'Release me; I don't want to be here,' and things like that," said the one linguist who could decipher his distress, Abdul Ahad Wardak.
The Interrogation
On Dec. 8, Mr. Dilawar was taken for his fourth interrogation. It quickly turned hostile.
The 21-year-old lead interrogator, Specialist Glendale C. Walls II, later contended that Mr. Dilawar was evasive. "Some holes came up, and we wanted him to answer us truthfully," he said. The other interrogator, Sergeant Salcedo, complained that the prisoner was smiling, not answering questions, and refusing to stay kneeling on the ground or sitting against the wall.
The interpreter who was present, Ahmad Ahmadzai, recalled the encounter differently to investigators.
The interrogators, Mr. Ahmadzai said, accused Mr. Dilawar of launching the rockets that had hit the American base. He denied that. While kneeling on the ground, he was unable to hold his cuffed hands above his head as instructed, prompting Sergeant Salcedo to slap them back up whenever they began to drop.
"Selena berated him for being weak and questioned him about being a man, which was very insulting because of his heritage," Mr. Ahmadzai said.
When Mr. Dilawar was unable to sit in the chair position against the wall because of his battered legs, the two interrogators grabbed him by the shirt and repeatedly shoved him back against the wall.
"This went on for 10 or 15 minutes," the interpreter said. "He was so tired he couldn't get up."
"They stood him up, and at one point Selena stepped on his bare foot with her boot and grabbed him by his beard and pulled him towards her," he went on. "Once Selena kicked Dilawar in the groin, private areas, with her right foot. She was standing some distance from him, and she stepped back and kicked him.
"About the first 10 minutes, I think, they were actually questioning him, after that it was pushing, shoving, kicking and shouting at him," Mr. Ahmadzai said. "There was no interrogation going on."
The session ended, he said, with Sergeant Salcedo instructing the M.P.'s to keep Mr. Dilawar chained to the ceiling until the next shift came on.
The next morning, Mr. Dilawar began yelling again. At around noon, the M.P.'s called over another of the interpreters, Mr. Baerde, to try to quiet Mr. Dilawar down.
"I told him, 'Look, please, if you want to be able to sit down and be released from shackles, you just need to be quiet for one more hour."
"He told me that if he was in shackles another hour, he would die," Mr. Baerde said.
Half an hour later, Mr. Baerde returned to the cell. Mr. Dilawar's hands hung limply from the cuffs, and his head, covered by the black hood, slumped forward.
"He wanted me to get a doctor, and said that he needed 'a shot,' " Mr. Baerde recalled. "He said that he didn't feel good. He said that his legs were hurting."
Mr. Baerde translated Mr. Dilawar's plea to one of the guards. The soldier took the prisoner's hand and pressed down on his fingernails to check his circulation.
"He's O.K.," Mr. Baerde quoted the M.P. as saying. "He's just trying to get out of his restraints."
By the time Mr. Dilawar was brought in for his final interrogation in the first hours of the next day, Dec. 10, he appeared exhausted and was babbling that his wife had died. He also told the interrogators that he had been beaten by the guards.
"But we didn't pursue that," said Mr. Baryalai, the interpreter.
Specialist Walls was again the lead interrogator. But his more aggressive partner, Specialist Claus, quickly took over, Mr. Baryalai said.
"Josh had a rule that the detainee had to look at him, not me," the interpreter told investigators. "He gave him three chances, and then he grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him towards him, across the table, slamming his chest into the table front."
When Mr. Dilawar was unable to kneel, the interpreter said, the interrogators pulled him to his feet and pushed him against the wall. Told to assume a stress position, the prisoner leaned his head against the wall and began to fall asleep.
"It looked to me like Dilawar was trying to cooperate, but he couldn't physically perform the tasks," Mr. Baryalai said.
Finally, Specialist Walls grabbed the prisoner and "shook him harshly," the interpreter said, telling him that if he failed to cooperate, he would be shipped to a prison in the United States, where he would be "treated like a woman, by the other men" and face the wrath of criminals who "would be very angry with anyone involved in the 9/11 attacks." (Specialist Walls was charged last week with assault, maltreatment and failure to obey a lawful order; Specialist Claus was charged with assault, maltreatment and lying to investigators. Each man declined to comment.)
A third military intelligence specialist who spoke some Pashto, Staff Sgt. W. Christopher Yonushonis, had questioned Mr. Dilawar earlier and had arranged with Specialist Claus to take over when he was done. Instead, the sergeant arrived at the interrogation room to find a large puddle of water on the floor, a wet spot on Mr. Dilawar's shirt and Specialist Claus standing behind the detainee, twisting up the back of the hood that covered the prisoner's head.
"I had the impression that Josh was actually holding the detainee upright by pulling on the hood," he said. "I was furious at this point because I had seen Josh tighten the hood of another detainee the week before. This behavior seemed completely gratuitous and unrelated to intelligence collection."
"What the hell happened with that water?" Sergeant Yonushonis said he had demanded.
"We had to make sure he stayed hydrated," he said Specialist Claus had responded.
The next morning, Sergeant Yonushonis went to the noncommissioned officer in charge of the interrogators, Sergeant Loring, to report the incident. Mr. Dilawar, however, was already dead.
The Post-Mortem
The findings of Mr. Dilawar's autopsy were succinct. He had had some coronary artery disease, the medical examiner reported, but what caused his heart to fail was "blunt force injuries to the lower extremities." Similar injuries contributed to Mr. Habibullah's death.
One of the coroners later translated the assessment at a pre-trial hearing for Specialist Brand, saying the tissue in the young man's legs "had basically been pulpified."
"I've seen similar injuries in an individual run over by a bus," added Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, the coroner, and a major at that time.
After the second death, several of the 519th Battalion's interrogators were temporarily removed from their posts. A medic was assigned to the detention center to work night shifts. On orders from the Bagram intelligence chief, interrogators were prohibited from any physical contact with the detainees. Chaining prisoners to any fixed object was also banned, and the use of stress positions was curtailed.
In February, an American military official disclosed that the Afghan guerrilla commander whose men had arrested Mr. Dilawar and his passengers had himself been detained. The commander, Jan Baz Khan, was suspected of attacking Camp Salerno himself and then turning over innocent "suspects" to the Americans in a ploy to win their trust, the military official said.
The three passengers in Mr. Dilawar's taxi were sent home from Guantánamo in March 2004, 15 months after their capture, with letters saying they posed "no threat" to American forces.
They were later visited by Mr. Dilawar's parents, who begged them to explain what had happened to their son. But the men said they could not bring themselves to recount the details.
"I told them he had a bed," said Mr. Parkhudin. "I said the Americans were very nice because he had a heart problem."
In late August of last year, shortly before the Army completed its inquiry into the deaths, Sergeant Yonushonis, who was stationed in Germany, went at his own initiative to see an agent of the Criminal Investigation Command. Until then, he had never been interviewed.
"I expected to be contacted at some point by investigators in this case," he said. "I was living a few doors down from the interrogation room, and I had been one of the last to see this detainee alive."
Sergeant Yonushonis described what he had witnessed of the detainee's last interrogation. "I remember being so mad that I had trouble speaking," he said.
He also added a detail that had been overlooked in the investigative file. By the time Mr. Dilawar was taken into his final interrogations, he said, "most of us were convinced that the detainee was innocent."
Wrap...
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Milblog plus a comment...
http://thisisyourwar.blogspot.com Was reading this milblog a few minutes ago. Guy is a terrific writer, very visual, very introspective, and in his most recent post, in a killing rage. I've been following his blog for months, along with quite a few others. I think highly of the military. There have been members of my family fighting for this nation since they hit the east coast in 1630, including my four brothers....every war that's come along. I'm a liberal. So are they. So when I read the comment this bastard wrote, it torqued me instantly:
COMMENT:
giblet said...
Riveting, captivating, sobering, spell bounding, utterly eye opening. Your writing transends time and the thousands of miles that separate you soldiers from our world. A brief thank you from a chicken salesman.
The bitter, liberal left, hate filled information filtered to us through our cancerous media is mind numbing and turns the average reader away from your war. Your honesty, fine prose and intense verbage is a breath of fresh air.God sent me to your blog, and is bleeding words into it through your eloquent writing. Thank you sir for your sacrifice. You are appreciated.
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Twas the uncalled for insult to liberals that lit my flame. Oh, to meet "giblet" face-t0-face!
Wrap...
COMMENT:
giblet said...
Riveting, captivating, sobering, spell bounding, utterly eye opening. Your writing transends time and the thousands of miles that separate you soldiers from our world. A brief thank you from a chicken salesman.
The bitter, liberal left, hate filled information filtered to us through our cancerous media is mind numbing and turns the average reader away from your war. Your honesty, fine prose and intense verbage is a breath of fresh air.God sent me to your blog, and is bleeding words into it through your eloquent writing. Thank you sir for your sacrifice. You are appreciated.
********************************
Twas the uncalled for insult to liberals that lit my flame. Oh, to meet "giblet" face-t0-face!
Wrap...
Honest, we didn't do this...
Russian lake disappears, baffling villagers
19 May 2005 16:56:21
GMTSource: ReutersMOSCOW, May 19 (Reuters) -
A Russian village was left baffled on Thursday after its lake disappeared overnight.
NTV television showed pictures of a giant muddy hole bathed in summer sun, while fishermen from the village of Bolotnikovo looked on disconsolately.
"It is very dangerous. If a person had been in this disaster, he would have had almost no chance of survival. The trees flew downwards, under the ground," said Dmitry Zaitsev, a local Emergencies Ministry official interviewed by the channel.
Officials in Nizhegorodskaya region, on the Volga river east of Moscow, said water in the lake might have been sucked down into an underground water-course or cave system, but some villagers had more sinister explanations.
"I am thinking, well, America has finally got to us," said one old woman, as she sat on the ground outside her house.
Wrap...
19 May 2005 16:56:21
GMTSource: ReutersMOSCOW, May 19 (Reuters) -
A Russian village was left baffled on Thursday after its lake disappeared overnight.
NTV television showed pictures of a giant muddy hole bathed in summer sun, while fishermen from the village of Bolotnikovo looked on disconsolately.
"It is very dangerous. If a person had been in this disaster, he would have had almost no chance of survival. The trees flew downwards, under the ground," said Dmitry Zaitsev, a local Emergencies Ministry official interviewed by the channel.
Officials in Nizhegorodskaya region, on the Volga river east of Moscow, said water in the lake might have been sucked down into an underground water-course or cave system, but some villagers had more sinister explanations.
"I am thinking, well, America has finally got to us," said one old woman, as she sat on the ground outside her house.
Wrap...
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
A toy for war...
Wonkette posted this interesting bit on her blog...and I think it's sure one solution. If there's anything our military is known for, it's jury-rigging. So...this is a perfect example of outside the box thinking:
"Because the official equipment for such purposes is too expensive, soldiers in Iraq are using remote-controlled toy cars to determine if unidentifiable road debris is explosive or not. Here's Sgt. Greg Papadatosof the 69th Infantry Regiment explaining the technique at MilitaryDiaries.com:
"E.S. sends out his little RC car and rams it. If it's light enough to be moved or knocked over, it's too light to be a bomb, so we can approach it and get rid of it. If it's heavy, we call EOD. At night, they duct tape a flashlight to the car.
The military actually has robots that it uses for such things, but they are larger, slower, higher-tech, and frightfully expensive. Only EOD units have them, and you could wait for hours and hours before they show up with their robot. If 200 units read about this idea, and 50 units actually buy a toy RC car, and it saves just one single life, it would all be worth it."
You bet it would. People, mail remote controlled toy cars...with flashlights and batteries...of to your nearest soldier!
Wrap...
"Because the official equipment for such purposes is too expensive, soldiers in Iraq are using remote-controlled toy cars to determine if unidentifiable road debris is explosive or not. Here's Sgt. Greg Papadatosof the 69th Infantry Regiment explaining the technique at MilitaryDiaries.com:
"E.S. sends out his little RC car and rams it. If it's light enough to be moved or knocked over, it's too light to be a bomb, so we can approach it and get rid of it. If it's heavy, we call EOD. At night, they duct tape a flashlight to the car.
The military actually has robots that it uses for such things, but they are larger, slower, higher-tech, and frightfully expensive. Only EOD units have them, and you could wait for hours and hours before they show up with their robot. If 200 units read about this idea, and 50 units actually buy a toy RC car, and it saves just one single life, it would all be worth it."
You bet it would. People, mail remote controlled toy cars...with flashlights and batteries...of to your nearest soldier!
Wrap...
Gov Moonbeam goes for it...
http://jerrybrown.typepad.com is now Mayor of Oakland Jerry Brown's blog! Just discovered it in the LA Times today. Mr Brown is going to do two things: get married in July for the first time, and run for California State Treasurer. Now that should give Arnold something to think about.
Wrap...
Wrap...
Driftglass...
His URL is http://driftglass.blogspot.com/ and as a previous Indy-Weblog blogger said, this guy can rant! Indeed.
Wrap.
Wrap.
Shithouse Rat Crazy....
In the long history of fucking de-range-edly bad ideas, Weaponizing Space comes near the top of my list; Just after “starting a land war in Asia” (check) and “giving an electoral mandate to an anti-Science, pro-Rapture Evangelical Wingnut Party” (check) and just before canceling “Homicide”.
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And that's just the start of "driftglass"s rant about the neocon's weapons in space idea. I'll go get his URL and post it.
Wrap....
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And that's just the start of "driftglass"s rant about the neocon's weapons in space idea. I'll go get his URL and post it.
Wrap....
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