Abuse travels very well

[SunWuKong]

here is a good article about how the brutality and torture by the American military may not be such random occurrences.

Abuse travels very well
By Jack A Smith

There are many differences between the United States war in Iraq and the war in Vietnam. But there are some obvious similarities. Both conflicts, for one example, involved widespread brutality by the American armed forces toward civilians and the torture of "suspected" enemies.

Thirty-five years ago, commenting on the American massacre in My Lai, Vietnam, this author wrote an editorial in the Guardian weekly (US) that contained the following paragraph: "This calculated slaughter of the innocents is neither a mistake nor an aberration, neither a temporary moral lapse on the part of weary GIs nor the debased sadism of a few perverts. The murder of more than 500 civilian residents of My Lai - children in arms, women and men - is the quintessential expression of American imperialism and racism directed toward one hamlet in ravaged South Vietnam."

The murder, rape and torture of My Lai came to mind recently when President George W Bush insisted that the shattering revelations of the use of torture by the US military against inmates in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison were the product of a "few people who have stained the honor of this country". He argued, "that's not the way we do things in America".

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Actually, torture is not uncommon in terms of Washington's interaction with many other countries and in the overall "war on terrorism". Let's look at a few of Washington's experiences with torture in modern times.

After organizing the overthrow of the elected government of Iran in 1953 in order to install a puppet monarchy in Teheran - a political catastrophe resulting in the torture and deaths of thousands of defenders of democracy - the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) created SAVIC, one of the most vicious secret police agencies in the world. To protect its investment, the CIA trained SAVIC in the most up-to-day varieties of torture, which it deployed with abandon until the Shah of Iran was ousted a quarter-century later.

Starting in the mid-1960s, various US government agencies trained the right-wing regime in Uruguay in the refinements of torture. In addition to providing lessons, and taking part in the torture of dissidents and suspected communists in Uruguay, the CIA offered two-month training courses in the US. Over the years the same instructions were provided to the governments of Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and other Latin American regimes, leading to the mass use of torture in Latin America and to the creation of the notorious death squads.

America's most well documented direct participation in mass torture took place during the Vietnam War years when the CIA and US soldiers subjected tens of thousands of poor peasants and "Viet Cong" suspects to the most painful punishments devised since the Inquisition. My Lai was not unique. Nearly 30 years after Vietnam was liberated, the hidden horrors perpetuated by the US are still emerging. The Toledo (Ohio) Blade newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize last month for exposing the atrocities and tortures conducted by the so-called Tiger Force unit.

The US involvement with torture has increased measurably since the Bush administration launched its "war on terrorism" in September 2001, but most of it is conducted outside the country in various concentration camps operated by the Pentagon in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay (Cuba); in smaller secret facilities run by the CIA in unnamed locations in order to interrogate alleged top al-Qaeda suspects; and in foreign countries within Washington's orbit which engage in torture themselves.

This latter practice is known as "rendering," and it consists of turning alleged "terror suspects" over to foreign intelligence services for torture, usually with an agent of the US in attendance. According to the Washington Post of May 11, "Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are well-known destinations for suspected terrorists" identified by the American government. The article revealed that "the Saudis currently are detaining and interrogating [torturing] about 800 terrorism suspects, said a senior Saudi official. Their fate is largely controlled by Saudi-based joint intelligence tasks forces, whose members include officers form the CIA, FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] and other US law enforcement agencies."

All told, over 43,000 Iraqis have been arrested by the US occupation army, up to 90 percent of whom, according to a February report by the usually reticent International Red Cross, had been "arrested by mistake". Many have been subjected to brutality by American troops. Many have been injured or tortured. Many were incarcerated for months without the knowledge of their families. None had legal representation. Some were killed. Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and the Red Cross have identified hundreds of such incidents since the invasion began in March, 2003. The Red Cross concluded that US arrest and detention policies in Iraq "are prohibited under international humanitarian law". Even Washington's hand-picked and usually pliant Iraqi Governing Council several months ago bitterly complained to the ruling Coalition Provisional Authority about arrest and incarceration abuses, to no avail.

So far, 34,000 of the apprehended Iraqis have been released without charges. Most of the rest will be released in time - a process that has been accelerated since the Abu Ghraib crimes became publicly known. Only 600 have ever been charged with a crime, mostly of a civil nature. And nearly all of those arrested, including opponents of Saddam, now despise the US for portraying itself as a "liberator" while acting in the fashion of an overlord.

The Abu Ghraib episode is not a question of a few GIs "staining the honor of their country". It's a matter of the Bush administration undermining what remains of America's honor by engaging in brutal tactics against a civilian population after killing 10,000 other non-combatants in an unjust and illegal war.

[yoMAMA]

and the fallout continues......bush approval rating hits record low......

42% now

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...l_040515180851

[SunWuKong]

Evidence of more widespread abuse
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's contention that the sexual humiliation and physical abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison as depicted in photographs first disclosed two weeks ago were the work of just a "few bad apples" from a poorly trained military police unit is fast becoming untenable.

Human rights groups and US lawmakers have made clear in the past several days that they had submitted to the administration from the outset of its "war on terror" a series of reports of widespread and systemic violations of the Geneva Conventions, not only in Iraq but in Afghanistan, and even at the US navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Abu Ghraib scandal, which has so far prompted several public apologies by President George W Bush and three nationally televised hearings in the US Congress, has resulted in a sharp drop in public support for the US occupation in Iraq, according to two polls released this week by Gallup and the Pew Research Center. According to the polls, more than three quarters of respondents said they had seen the photos, and half said they marked a "major setback" to US strategy in Iraq.

The accounts of former detainees themselves - in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo - have also put a question over the Pentagon's insistence that it has provided humane treatment to prisoners under its control. Moreover, a list of approved interrogation techniques - among them sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation and the presence of military dogs - provided by the Pentagon to congressional committees this week includes some that are prohibited not only by the Geneva Conventions, but also by existing US military manuals.

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[Martino]

Originally Posted by SunWuKong

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Looks like there is a new Evil Empire on the block ....

As another expression of the abuse of 'the enemy' in general, at least one broadsheet here has been asking about Iraq's civillian war dead. The conservative estimate stands at 9100 civillians killed since liberation, excluding those recently killed during the US's shelling/bombing of Falluja (a city of 300,000 people offering considerable scope for collateral damage), but could be much higher. Coalition forces have not been keeping records of Iraqi's killed, which may be another breach of the Geneva Convention. It also suggests to the Arab world that that the US views the lives of ordinary Iraqi's as being worthless.

I'm beginning to suspect that this conflict will ultimatly doom the decades old 'special relationship' between the UK and the USA.

[robotic]

the latest entry at www.hunkabutta.com is very thought-provoking.