after-words.org

Attorneys at the state appellate prosecutors office plan to drop the double murder case against a man who spent time on death row for killing a Paris couple, paving the way for his release from prison as soon as Friday. Prosecutors have sent a motion to drop the case against Gordon Randall "Randy" Steidl to Edgar County Judge Dean Andrews, the appellate prosecutors office announced Thursday morning. "Based on the totality of the circumstances, this was the most appropriate choice," special prosecutor David Rands said in a prepared statement. He was in court Thursday and did not immediately return a phone message. [...] Steidl, 52, was convicted of the 1986 murders of newlyweds Dyke and Karen Rhoads. The couple were stabbed more than 50 times before their house was set on fire. Steidl was convicted in June 1987 and sentenced to death. His sentence was reduced to life in prison without parole in 1999 after a state judge ruled his trial attorney had not adequately prepared for the sentencing hearing. Another man, Herbert Whitlock, was convicted separately of killing Karen Rhoads and is serving a life sentence. He has maintained his innocence, and attorney Richard Kling said he was working on an appeal. [...] Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced in March she would not appeal McCuskey's order to retry or release Steidl. The decision by Madigan's office came after a lengthy reinvestigation that included DNA testing on evidence.

Inmate to be freed still suspect, state says
New murder trial not mounted by judge's deadline
By Steve Mills
Chicago Tribune (registration required)
Published May 28, 2004

On the eve of former Death Row prisoner Gordon "Randy" Steidl's release, prosecutors said Thursday he remains a suspect in the 1986 double murders that sent him to prison. "Our action is in no way a declaration of Steidl's innocence...There is no statute of limitations on murder, and Randy Steidl remains a suspect in this case," said David Rands of the state appellate prosecutor's office in Springfield. "He is, of course, presumed innocent until convicted of any new charges."

The prosecutor's statement angered Steidl's lawyers, who have fought since the late 1980s to win his release. They are set to pick him up Friday morning at the Danville Correctional Facility in central Illinois. "The true fact is that Randy walks out of prison tomorrow," said Michael Metnick of Springfield, one of Steidl's attorneys. "The state can give whatever reason they want. But if there was any credible evidence that Randy was guilty, I think there are ways that they could deal with it." [...] The case long has been controversial. An Illinois State Police inquiry completed four years ago concluded that local police botched the investigation so badly that it led to the convictions of innocent men. No physical evidence links Steidl and Whitlock to the murders. The main witnesses against them, both of whom went to police long after the crime, have recanted testimony they gave during the trial. Last year, a federal judge awarded Steidl a new trial, saying his attorney had failed to investigate all the avenues that might have cast doubt on the prosecution's case. He said if all the evidence had been heard at trial, it was "reasonably probable" a jury would have acquitted Steidl. [...] Karen Daniel, an attorney at the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, which also represents Steidl, said the statement was not unexpected. "It's somewhat irresponsible to say they haven't had enough time to investigate the case but to say, without that reinvestigation, that Randy Steidl is a suspect," said Daniel. "Not only have they had time, but they have reinvestigated. They've got to say something that makes it logically possible to keep Herb Whitlock in prison...."

That tried and true cleansing duo -- soap and water -- kills the AIDS virus, scientific research shows. Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco combined the lather of Ivory soap with varying amounts of body fluids containing HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, in a test tube. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. [...] "The soap consistently trumped the virus," HIV researcher Dr. Jay Levy said in the June issue of POZ magazine, a publication for those who are HIV-positive.

Dr. Jonathan Li, a researcher in Dr. Levy's laboratory, and Elizabeth Mack, a lab technician, assisted in the research and confirmed the results. "In the laboratory, HIV can be killed by soap and water. There are yet to be any clinical studies showing it will work in the general population," Dr. Li said.

Said Miss Mack: "We didn't test the soap in sexual situations. But we can say the amount of virus we tested the soap against [in the laboratory] was higher" than the amount transmitted through sexual contact.

Dr. Levy said it is still uncertain how useful soap and water will be against acquiring HIV through sexual intercourse.

The nation's growing obesity problem may have contributed to an increase in breast cancer among American men over the past 25 years. Breast cancer remains a tiny risk in men, but the number of cases in the United States climbed by 26 percent between 1973 and 1998, according to a new study -- the largest to date -- on more than 2,500 American men with the disease. It was published Monday in the online version of Cancer, the American Cancer Society's journal. "We didn't know before this that male breast cancer was increasing," said Dr. Sharon Giordano, assistant professor of medicine and breast medical oncology at the University of Texas' MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who authored the study. "It remains a very rare disease, even though it's gone up. [...] The study also found that men tended to be diagnosed with breast cancer later than women, likely because screenings are not as common for men. Men were slightly older -- 67 compared to 62 for women -- when the cancer was found, and the disease was typically in its later stages when discovered in men. Despite this, cancer experts say the breast cancer risk for men remains low enough that they should be more concerned with common killers, such as heart disease and lung, prostate and colorectal cancers.

May 26, 2004, 6:57 PM EDT

BOSTON -- A disturbing new study has found that 15 percent of older men with supposedly normal readings on the widely used PSA test have prostate cancer anyway -- and some even have aggressive tumors.

The findings intensify the dilemma of how to interpret the test results and how vigorously to treat men with no symptoms. Some experts think the threshold for what constitutes normal on the PSA test should be lowered, at least in some cases. But others say that could lead to more unnecessary operations in the many men whose tumors are so slow-growing that something else will kill them before the cancer ever does. [...] The test measures bloodstream levels of a protein manufactured by the prostate, a male sex gland. Cancer expands the gland, pumping out more of the protein and raising the PSA count. A count of 4 or below (calculated in nanograms per milliliter) has been widely considered to be normal. However, the researchers found that 15 percent of 2,950 men ages 62 to 91 -- all with normal PSA counts and rectal exams -- had prostate cancer anyway. And 2 percent of the overall group had tumors that looked aggressive under a microscope. "This study adds to information that perhaps the PSA threshold may be dropped to 2.5 or so," said Gomella, the Philadelphia urologist. "The number 4 may not be the, quote, normal that we look at anymore."

Lead study author Dr. Ian Thompson of the University of Texas at San Antonio said the findings justify stronger measures for some men who have low PSAs but other risk factors, such as prostate cancer in the family. However, other patients may decide more often to watch and wait, since the findings -- viewed in another light -- add to the evidence that harmless prostate cancer is quite common, Thompson suggested. "It will allow two men to look at these data and come to different conclusions," he said.

The stakes are high in doing too little. Cancer of the prostate kills more men than any other kind except lung cancer. About 230,900 cases will be diagnosed this year among American men, and around 29,900 will die from it during the same period, according to the American Cancer Society.

At a press briefing packed with more than 100 of her supporters who shouted down reporters asking questions, Troutman said alleged Black Disciples Marvel Thompson and Donnell Jehan came to her 20th Ward offices as "businessmen" who shared her concerns about helping people in the community get ahead.

She said she only found out they were gang members when they were indicted on May 13 for allegedly running a brutal drug empire. [...] The Chicago Sun-Times reported within a week of the indictments that an envelope from the Chicago Police Department addressed to Troutman was found in the hands of the gang during a May 12 raid. Her attorney confirmed that two envelopes from police were found. And on Tuesday, a source said Jehan has been at her South Side home and has, on occasion, driven her SUV.

Troutman spent a good portion of the news conference touting the projects she has supported in the ward and suggesting that because she represents some of the city's poorest and most dangerous areas, it is likely she will meet with criminals and those who don't fit the "status quo.'' [...] Regarding the envelopes, the alderman said she often reuses envelopes that come to her office. When constituents come in to pick up information, her staff will put paperwork inside an old envelope. "Those envelopes were there not out of any inappropriate relationship,'' said her attorney, Sam Adam Jr.

As for whether Jehan has ever driven her SUV, the alderman said, "For years, I have let everybody drive my car.''

And when asked to confirm a television report that her brother said she had a "personal relationship'' with Jehan, Troutman dodged the question. "Are you going to take what I said? Or what Ben said? If you want to talk to Ben, you can go and interview Ben.''

Obama admits he dislikes his most loyal follower
May 21, 2004
BY DAVE MCKINNEY AND SCOTT FORNEK Staff Reporters
Chicago Sun-Times

SPRINGFIELD -- For the past 10 days, U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama hasn't been able to go to the bathroom or talk to his wife on his cell phone without having a camera-toting political gofer from his Republican rival filming a few feet away. In what has to be a first in Illinois politics, Republican Jack Ryan has assigned one of his campaign workers to record every movement and every word of the state senator while he is in public. That means Justin Warfel, armed with a handheld Panasonic digital camcorder, follows Obama to the bathroom door and waits outside. It means Warfel follows Obama as he moves from meeting to meeting in the Capitol. And it means Warfel tails Obama when he drives to his campaign office.

"It's standard procedure to record public speeches and things like that," Obama told reporters as the bald, 20-something operative filmed away. "But to have someone who's literally following you a foot and a half away, everywhere you go, going into the restrooms, standing outside my office, sitting outside of my office asking my secretary where I am, seems to be getting a little carried away."

Warfel interrupted Obama several times with heckling questions, but wouldn't respond when reporters asked him about who he was and why he was filming Obama's every move. "You'll have to speak to the campaign office," Warfel said tartly to practically every inquiry.

Some senior Republicans were turned off by the tactic. "I don't care if you're in public life or who you are," Senate Minority Leader Frank Watson (R-Greenville) said. "You deserve your space, your privacy. I don't think it's appropriate."

But Jason Miller, Ryan's campaign manager, insisted Obama's public movements are fair game and the point is to make sure Obama doesn't contradict himself with his public statements...

Ryan campaign apologizes for ''up-close'' taping
By Andy Shaw
abc7chicago.com

May 21, 2004 — There's an apology in the race for the U.S. Senate from Illinois. Republican Jack Ryan says that a cameraman may have crossed the line. The photographer was hired by the Ryan campaign to video type the democrat. Most big political campaigns these days do employ so-called trackers. They videotape the opponents' speeches at news conferences so they can immediately react to a flip-flop and inconsistency or attack. But the tracker hired by the Jack Ryan campaign has been behaving more like a stalker, who got so up close and personal the Ryan campaign is offering an apology and ordering the tracker to back off.

"I have no reason to doubt his word and I offer an apology on behalf of the campaign," said Bill Pascoe of the Ryan campaign.

The Ryan campaign is ordering staffer Justin Warfel to back off. And videotape opponent Barack Obama from a distance when the candidate is in Springfield. After Obama accused Warfel of virtually `stalking' him in the state capitol for the past week. And even recording personal phone conversations from two or three feet away.

An Army summary of deaths and mistreatment involving prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan shows a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.

The cases from Iraq date back to April 15, 2003, a few days after Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled in a Baghdad square, and they extend up to last month, when a prisoner detained by Navy commandos died in a suspected case of homicide blamed on "blunt force trauma to the torso and positional asphyxia." Among previously unknown incidents are the abuse of detainees by Army interrogators from a National Guard unit attached to the Third Infantry Division, who are described in a document obtained by The New York Times as having "forced into asphyxiation numerous detainees in an attempt to obtain information" during a 10-week period last spring. [...] the details paint a broad picture of misconduct, and show that in many cases among the 37 prisoners who have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army did not conduct autopsies and says it cannot determine the causes of the deaths.

The law is short, only 70 words long.

But the newly passed amendment to Virginia's Affirmation of Marriage Act has caused an uproar among gays and lesbians who are unsure how it will affect them when it takes effect July 1....

New law may void same-sex benefits
By CHRISTINA NUCKOLS, The Virginian-Pilot
© May 22, 2004

After a long struggle with her employer, Lisa Z. Morgan was allowed to extend her health insurance this year to her lesbian partner, Niely , and their two children.

But a new state law banning civil unions, partnerships and other contracts between same-sex couples could invalidate those insurance benefits when it becomes effective on July 1 – and could make Virginia the most restrictive state in the country for gays who want some of the same legal benefits as heterosexual couples.

“I’m afraid that after having them for only a few months, they’ll be jerked away from us and my children will be uninsured,” said Morgan, a Norfolk systems analyst whose children are 9 and 4 .

The General Assembly passed the law this winter in reaction to progress made by gays and lesbians in other states to secure official recognition for same-sex marriages. The marriage movement gained a foothold four years ago, when Vermont began granting civil unions – a legal status similar to marriage – and culminated this week when Massachusetts became the first state to permit gay marriages. [...] Virginia’s law, however, could be the broadest restriction on gay rights in the 50 states unless courts act to narrow its scope, said Greg Nevins, a senior staff attorney with Lambda Legal, a national organization that pursues court actions to protect and expand gay rights.

The law says, “A civil union, partnership contract or other arrangement between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage is prohibited. Any such civil union, partnership contract or other arrangement entered into by persons of the same sex in another state or jurisdiction shall be void in all respects in Virginia and any contractual rights created thereby shall be void and unenforceable.”

Gov. Mark R. Warner attempted to amend the bill last month to eliminate its sweeping references to contracts and other agreements, but legislators overruled him and approved the original wording. [...] The author of the law, Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William, said it is worded to prevent any type of civil union or domestic partnership from being recognized in Virginia. [...] Marshall said the Virginia law is intended to ban child custody and guardianship agreements between same-sex partners. He said he was not attempting to void insurance policies, wills, powers of attorney or medical agreements, and he does not believe the law is that broad.

“You could designate Saddam Hussein as your durable power of attorney if you want to,” he said. “You can leave everything in your will to your parrot.”

Marshall’s intentions, however, are irrelevant now that the legislation has been adopted as state law. It will be up to the courts to determine the meaning of the law, and no one is certain of the outcome.

Despite the Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence vs. Texas declaring state sodomy laws unconstitutional, Virginia continues to prosecute gay men under its old law by targeting those who solicit sodomy in public but don’t engage in any public sexual acts. Meanwhile, lawmakers are expected next month to study options for a new law intended to bring Virginia into compliance with the high court’s ruling by prohibiting both homosexual and heterosexual public sex while maintaining the state’s sodomy statute.

Since the court’s June ruling, the prosecutions have continued. Twenty-six men were indicted in July for soliciting for sex in an adult bookstore in Harrisonburg. [...] Greg Nevins, senior staff attorney at Lambda Legal, defended a man charged with solicitation of sodomy in Virginia Beach after the Supreme Court ruling. He said that the state’s sodomy statute is moribund after the Lawrence ruling and prosecutors and law enforcers are unfairly targeting men soliciting in public for sodomy but not publicly engaging in sodomy.

“Virginia does not have a public sodomy statute,” Nevins said. “What they have done post-Lawrence is try to criminalize a request by using a law that on its face says all requests, all solicitations of sodomy are criminal. You have the right to ask for something that is an illegal act but Virginia prosecutors are still trying to use those laws to target speech that’s protected by the First Amendment.”

But not all sodomy prosecutions have resulted in convictions. A Rockingham County Circuit Court judge dismissed sodomy solicitation charges in two separate trials last Tuesday after ruling prosecutors lacked evidence to prove the crimes, the Virginia Daily News-Record reported. The two men, Jessie Lee Morris, 59 of Grottoes, and Justin Wayne Sites, 47, of Crimora, are two of the 26 men arrested in the Harrisonburg sting operation this summer.

Despite the death toll for American troops in Iraq, recruiting efforts seem to be on target, say national and regional military officials. Staff Sgt. Will Price, a Marine Corps public affairs representative in Jacksonville, said the Marines have been meeting their national annual recruitment goals of about 37,000 to 38,500 new recruits since 2001.

Recruiting pitch called scare tactic
By Tim Jones and Michael Kilian
Chicago Tribune (registration required)
Published May 23, 2004

MariAnn Curta said she was "freaked out" during much of her son's recently completed nine-month tour of duty in Iraq, where he drove a fuel truck in the Sunni Triangle.

But when she got the call from a recruiter last weekend warning that her 22-year-old son, Bill, now on the Army's inactive reserve list, could be headed back to Iraq quickly unless he enlisted in the Illinois National Guard, her emotion changed from fear to rage. "It's devious, it's deceptive, it's dishonest, it's valueless," Curta said. "I can't believe they'd pull this kind of fast trick on kids who have already served."

As part of an aggressive effort to bolster the dwindling pool of available reservists, Army and National Guard recruiting units throughout the country have called thousands of inactive reservists in hopes of persuading them to re-enlist in the active reserves or join their local Guard units. If they don't, many recruiters warned, they could soon be headed to Iraq. The warnings come by telephone, and they have been concentrated in four areas: Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis and Louisiana. "It then spread through the country, with the exception of New England," said Army Reserve spokesman Steven Stromvall.

Stromvall said some National Guard recruiters heard about this and then began using similar tactics. [...] Army Reserve commanders decided to try to identify members of the Individual Ready Reserve by pay grade and military occupational specialty and contact them about voluntarily filling vacant slots in the Selective Reserve. For each of the past few weeks, about 1,000 or more inactive reservists nationwide have been moving to the active reserve, a much higher number than usual.

[Lt. Col. Bob Stone, an Army Reserve spokesman] said the Army Reserve has ordered a stop to intimidating retention methods and informed personnel of the proper procedures to follow in dealing with reservists. "It was a mistake," he said.

Previously secret sworn statements by detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq describe in raw detail abuse that goes well beyond what has been made public, adding allegations of prisoners being ridden like animals, sexually fondled by female soldiers and forced to retrieve their food from toilets. The fresh allegations of prison abuse are contained in statements taken from 13 detainees shortly after a soldier reported the incidents to military investigators in mid-January. The detainees said they were savagely beaten and repeatedly humiliated sexually by American soldiers working on the night shift at Tier 1A in Abu Ghraib during the holy month of Ramadan, according to copies of the statements obtained by The Washington Post. [...] Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, detainee No. 151108, told investigators that when he first arrived at Abu Ghraib last year, he was forced to strip, put on a hood and wear rose-colored panties with flowers on them. "Most of the days I was wearing nothing else," he said in his statement.

Hilas also said he witnessed an Army translator having sex with a boy at the prison. He said the boy was between 15 and 18 years old. Someone hung sheets to block the view, but Hilas said he heard the boy's screams and climbed a door to get a better look. Hilas said he watched the assault and told investigators that it was documented by a female soldier taking pictures.

"The kid was hurting very bad," Hilas said....

Sworn Statements by Abu Ghraib Detainees (Individual statements in PDF, Adobe Acrobat required)

Videos Amplify Picture of Violence (Real Player required.)

Soldier's Credibility May Aid Prosecution
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 21, 2004; Page A19

BAGHDAD, May 20 -- Spc. Jeremy Sivits's tearful apology and no-excuse testimony at his court-martial on Wednesday will make him a credible witness against other soldiers charged with mistreating Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and could undermine arguments that they were simply following orders, military legal experts said Thursday. Sivits, the first of seven U.S. soldiers charged with prisoner abuse to be convicted, told an Army judge that he knew what he was doing was wrong, saying, "sir, I am truly sorry. I am sorry for what I've done."

The 24-year-old Army reservist agreed to testify against his fellow soldiers in the 372nd Military Police Company in exchange for a lighter sentence. A judge ordered him to spend a year in jail for failing to stop the abuse and for taking a photograph of prisoners being tormented.

The sentence was the maximum amount allowed in a special court-martial, the type of proceeding called in Sivits's case. Three other soldiers charged with abuse face more serious general courts-martial and much longer prison terms if they are found guilty of beating and humiliating prisoners.

Sivits "made it appear he was genuinely sorry," said Stephen A. Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University and a former Air Force lawyer. "It gave him a fairly substantial amount of credibility." [...] Elizabeth Lutes Hillman, a professor at Rutgers University law school in New Jersey, said that because Sivits's involvement in the abuse was so brief -- about 30 minutes one night in November out of the two months that the mistreatment is alleged to have occurred -- his case would not help defense attorneys or prosecutors finger higher-ups.

"He seemed to stumble on this, frankly," she said of Sivits. "He will be less help to get information to prosecute those up the chain of the command."

....As the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling is marked, the country's public schools are, in effect, resegregating, according to federal Census and Education Department data.

Educators, federal monitors and civil rights activists are warning that an unequal educational system -- one based on wealth and cutting along racial lines -- is returning to classrooms in Little Rock and the rest of the country, creating a skills gap between white and minority students.

"It's an elephant under the rug: It's an obvious problem we're ignoring," says Gary Orfield of Harvard University's Civil Rights Project. "We've abandoned the tools we had."

The White House's top lawyer warned more than two years ago that U.S. officials could be prosecuted for "war crimes" as a result of new and unorthodox measures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism, according to an internal White House memo and interviews with participants in the debate over the issue.

The concern about possible future prosecution for war crimes -- and that it might even apply to Bush adminstration officials themselves -- is contained in a crucial portion of an internal January 25, 2002, memo by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales obtained by NEWSWEEK. It urges President George Bush declare the war in Afghanistan, including the detention of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, exempt from the provisions of the Geneva Convention.

In the memo, the White House lawyer focused on a little known 1996 law passed by Congress, known as the War Crimes Act, that banned any Americans from committing war crimes -- defined in part as "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions. Noting that the law applies to "U.S. officials" and that punishments for violators "include the death penalty," Gonzales told Bush that "it was difficult to predict with confidence" how Justice Department prosecutors might apply the law in the future. This was especially the case given that some of the language in the Geneva Conventions -- such as that outlawing "outrages upon personal dignity" and "inhuman treatment" of prisoners -- was "undefined."....

MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT

Unitarian Universalists have for decades presided over births, marriages and memorials. The church operates in every state, with more than 5,000 members in Texas alone.

But according to the office of Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a Denison Unitarian church isn't really a religious organization -- at least for tax purposes. Its reasoning: the organization [...] Strayhorn's ruling, as well as a similar decision by former Comptroller John Sharp, has left the comptroller's office straddling a sometimes murky gulf separating church and state.

What constitutes religion? When and how should government make that determination? Questions that for years have vexed the world's great philosophers have now become the province of the state comptroller's office.

Questions about the issue were referred to Jesse Ancira, the comptroller's top lawyer, who said Strayhorn has applied a consistent standard -- and then stuck to it. For any organization to qualify as a religion, members must have "simply a belief in God, or gods, or a higher power," he said.

"We have got to apply a test, and use some objective standards," Ancira said. "We're not using the test to deny the exemptions for a particular group because we like them or don't like them."

The Village Voice: Nation: Liberty Beat: The Sudan Genocide by Nat Hentoff

In a BBC interview on March 19, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, said of the genocide in Darfur that it is "the world's greatest humanitarian crisis, and I don't know why the world isn't doing more about it. . . . The only difference between Rwanda and Darfur now is the numbers involved."

The Arab killers and rapists in Darfur are Muslims, and so are the victims -- black African farmers. The Arabs are herdsmen, and have been competing for water, forage, and the land itself with the African farmers. Sudan's government is supporting the Arab Janjaweed militia's ferocious intent to make Darfur, in the west of Sudan, "Zurga-free." That term is the equivalent of "nigger" used by white racists. It also echoes the Nazis' mission to make Europe "judenfrei" -- Jew-free. [...] Nicholas Kristof, who interviewed displaced African farmers at the border of Sudan and Chad, reported in The New York Times about the choices that parents still trapped in Darfur have to make "when the Janjaweed seize their children, or gang-rape their daughters.

"Should they resist, knowing they will then be shot at once in front of their children? Or what about the parents described by Human Rights Watch who were allowed by the militia to choose how their children would die, burned alive or shot to death?" [...] Remember the black African parents' choice: You want your children burned alive or shot to death?

Then, on May 4, the primary source of this genocide was elected to serve a three-year term on the U.N. Human Rights Commission!

Walking out in disgust, American ambassador Sichan Siv said: "The United States is perplexed and dismayed by the decision to put forward Sudan—a country that massacres its own African citizens—for election to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights."

Sudan lashes out at NGOs (News24.com, South Africa, 17/05/2004

Sudan is to monitor unnamed non-governmental organisations (NGOs) accused of having supported rebels in west Sudan's Darfur region, where a bitter conflict is raging amid strong criticism of the Sudan government's actions. Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Hussein and Humanitarian Affairs Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid told a press conference here Sunday that some of the hundreds of NGOs operating in Darfur region "used humanitarian operations as a cover for carrying out a hidden agenda and proved to have supported the rebellion in the past period". For this reason, "the authorities will be careful in permitting such NGOs to operate in Darfur," Hamid said.

The press conference was called to announce the dispatch of a new police unit to Darfur, where United Nations agencies and rights groups say there is a humanitarian catastrophe. Hussein said the force, whose strength he refrained from disclosing, had a high level of training and was equipped with modern weapons and 130 vehicles. "The police force is going there to enforce law and order and to protect the people of Darfur and their property," he said. Hussein also repeated the Sudanese government line that the problem in Darfur "is not an ethnic problem but an economic one connected with pasture and farming and was politicised by the rebels", who, he said, managed to rally local inhabitants "for their own purposes".

Government 'Scorched Earth' Campaign In Darfur Reflecting Fear And Sudan Power Struggle, Says U.S. Official
allAfrica.com
NEWS
Posted to the web May 7, 2004

Rebellion and "effective" military operations in Sudan's western Darfur area by the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) "poses in many respects a greater threat than the activities of the SPLM (Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement) in the south." This explains much of the government's brutal response, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Charles R. Snyder told the House International relations Committee Thursday.

Rarely is the full committee called to discuss an African issue. But the unusual and powerful coalition of conservatives and liberals that keep a watchful eye on that beleagured east African nation is now calling Darfur's conflict "the world's worst humanitarian crisis." According to Snyder, sustained rebel attacks by combined SLM and JEM forces, on and around the regional capital of El Fasher early this year, rang loud alarm bells in Khartoum. At one point this past summer, the rebels appeared about to cut off the roads linking the Sudanese capital of Khartoum with Nyala, the main city in Southern Darfur state. "The SPLM has never threatened the north militarily," said Snyder. This past March, Ted Dagne, an Africa specialist at the Congressional Research Service told the Associated Press: "Darfur has really shaken up this regime. Where do they stop this train? If you give in to the political demands of the Darfur rebels, why not to the Beja (in eastern Sudan), why not to the Nuba (in central Sudan) and a bunch of the other marginalized areas."

As a result, said Snyder, Khartoum's response has been ruthless and what amounts to 'ethnic cleansing' is taking place "on a large scale." The government, he told the committee, has armed Arab 'Jinjaweed' militias to carry out attacks against civilians. Government security forces have also been coordinating Jinjaweed attacks, he says. [...] Estimates of the number of civilians killed so far range between 15,000 and 30,000. More than one million people have been displaced because of bombing, torching, and violence that includes mass rape. Roger Winter, Assistant Administrator for USAID's Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance, told the committee that in a worst-case senario, by the end of the year the number of deaths could reach 350,000 through gunfire and disease. "We think more than 100,000 people will die no matter what, at this point," he said [...] [Sudan Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail] also lashed out at the United States saying, it should back off of Sudan given its actions in Iraq. "What the U.S. soldiers are doing there, torturing people with electric shock punishments, all these have been shown on the TV."

DARFUR DESTROYED
Ethnic Cleansing by Government and Militia Forces in Western Sudan
(Human Rights Watch, May 7, 2004)

he government of Sudan is responsible for “ethnic cleansing” and crimes against humanity in Darfur, one of the world’s poorest and most inaccessible regions, on Sudan’s western border with Chad. The Sudanese government and the Arab “Janjaweed” militias it arms and supports have committed numerous attacks on the civilian populations of the African Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups. Government forces oversaw and directly participated in massacres, summary executions of civilians-including women and children—burnings of towns and villages, and the forcible depopulation of wide swathes of land long inhabited by the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. The Janjaweed militias, Muslim like the African groups they attack, have destroyed mosques, killed Muslim religious leaders, and desecrated Qorans belonging to their enemies.

The government and its Janjaweed allies have killed thousands of Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa-- often in cold blood, raped women, and destroyed villages, food stocks and other supplies essential to the civilian population. They have driven more than one million civilians, mostly farmers, into camps and settlements in Darfur where they live on the very edge of survival, hostage to Janjaweed abuses. More than 110,000 others have fled to neighbouring Chad but the vast majority of war victims remain trapped in Darfur.

CHAD-SUDAN: Janjawid militia in Darfur appears to be out of control (IRINnews.org, 14 May 2004): The Arabic-speaking Janjawid militia groups fighting alongside Sudanese government forces against rebels in Sudan's western Darfur province have been blamed for a series of ceasefire violations within Darfur and have now begun terrorising villages across the border in eastern Chad.

Diplomats and Chadian government officials say these cattle raiders equipped by the Sudanese government with modern weaponry need to be reigned in quickly if rapidly souring relations between the desert neighbours are to be salvaged.

However, they question how much control Khartoum has over these nomadic horsemen and whether the Sudanese government has the will or the capability to bring them back under government control. [...] One captured Janjaweed fighter who was presented to the press in Chad this week confirmed fears that the militia were operating on their own initiative without necessarily following orders from Khartoum. “Nobody sent us to Chad,” said Abakora Abbo Sakhairoun, who identified himself as a Janjawid fighter captured by the Chadian army. “The Sudanese government equipped us with light weapons - kalachnikovs and bazookas - to fight the rebels in Darfur,” he said as he faced the cameras dressed completely in white. “But we take advantage of this to steal cattle in Chad, though we perfectly know that it is not our mission.”

One of the bloodiest episodes of fighting in the city in the last few years erupted on Sunday morning after a disagreement between two militias of the same clan who are loyal to two business people. It involved forces guarding a hotel in the northern district of Behani, and those loyal to a local businessman from the Warsangeli clan, which reportedly attacked the hotel, the property of a businesswoman from the Wabudan clan.

Security Council supports self-determination plan for Western Sahara
(United Nations News Service, 29 April 2003)

The United Nations Security Council today supported a plan that would allow the people of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, to determine their own political future, disallowing both Morocco’s rejection of the plan and its proposal to give Western Saharans limited autonomy under its rule.

The Council also extended the mandate of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) until 31 October, instead of 28 February 2005, as Secretary-General Kofi Annan had recommended in his report on the situation.

The report contained Morocco’s April 2004 letter rejecting the 2003 plan for peace between itself and the Western Saharan Frente POLISARIO (Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro), but the Council did not mention it.

In April of 2002, a cargo ship, the Jade, was steaming toward Miami carrying a cargo of mahogany illegally cut from the Brazilian Amazon. Two Greenpeace activists tried to clamber aboard the ship and hang a banner that read "President Bush: Stop Illegal Logging." None of which is unusual. The trees of the Amazon are logged day after day, year after year, despite a host of treaties and laws and despite the fact that scientists agree that an intact rain forest is essential for everything from conserving species to protecting the climate. And Greenpeace, day after day, tries to call attention to such crimes. It pesters rich, powerful interests about toxic dumping and outlaw whaling and a hundred other topics that those interests would rather not be pestered about. The Miami activists were arrested, spent a weekend in jail, pleaded guilty and were sentenced to time served. All in a day's work.

But here's where it starts getting weird: More than a year after the ship boarding, the Justice Department indicted Greenpeace itself. According to the group's attorneys, it's the first time an organization has been prosecuted for "the speech-related activities of its supporters."

How far did the government have to stretch to make its case? The law it cited against boarding ships about to enter ports was passed in 1872 and aimed at the proprietors of boardinghouses who used liquor and prostitutes to lure crews to their establishments. The last prosecution under the "sailor-mongering" act took place in 1890. The new case could be like something straight out of "Master and Commander."

The matter goes to trial next week in a federal district court in Miami, and if Greenpeace loses, the organization could be fined $20,000 and placed on probation. The money's no big deal; outraged supporters would probably turn such a verdict into a fundraising bonanza. But the probation would be. The group might well be prevented from engaging in any acts of civil disobedience for years to come. If it crossed the line, the group's officers might be jailed and its assets seized. Since civil disobedience is what Greenpeace does best, the Justice Department might in effect be shutting the group down.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday visited Abu Ghraib prison, the facility at the center of the detainee abuse scandal, and dismissed as "garbage" any suggestion the Pentagon tried to cover up the mistreatment of prisoners. He also said lawyers are advising the Pentagon not to publicly release any more photographs of abuse. "As far as I'm concerned, I'd be happy to release them all to the public and to get it behind us," Rumsfeld told reporters. "But at the present time I don't know anyone in the legal shop in any element of the government that is recommending that."

The government lawyers argue that releasing such materials would violate a Geneva Convention stricture against presenting images of prisoners that could be construed as degrading, Rumsfeld said while en route to Baghdad on a trip that was not announced in advance due to security concerns.

The Central Intelligence Agency has used coercive interrogation methods against a select group of high-level leaders and operatives of Al Qaeda that have produced growing concerns inside the agency about abuses, according to current and former counterterrorism officials. At least one agency employee has been disciplined for threatening a detainee with a gun during questioning, they said. In the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a high-level detainee who is believed to have helped plan the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, C.I.A. interrogators used graduated levels of force, including a technique known as "water boarding," in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown. These techniques were authorized by a set of secret rules for the interrogation of high-level Qaeda prisoners, none known to be housed in Iraq, that were endorsed by the Justice Department and the C.I.A. The rules were among the first adopted by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 attacks for handling detainees and may have helped establish a new understanding throughout the government that officials would have greater freedom to deal harshly with detainees.

Defenders of the operation said the methods stopped short of torture, did not violate American anti-torture statutes, and were necessary to fight a war against a nebulous enemy whose strength and intentions could only be gleaned by extracting information from often uncooperative detainees. Interrogators were trying to find out whether there might be another attack planned against the United States. The methods employed by the C.I.A. are so severe that senior officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have directed its agents to stay out of many of the interviews of the high-level detainees, counterterrorism officials said. The F.B.I. officials have advised the bureau's director, Robert S. Mueller III, that the interrogation techniques, which would be prohibited in criminal cases, could compromise their agents in future criminal cases, the counterterrorism officials said.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, President Bush signed a series of directives authorizing the C.I.A. to conduct a covert war against Osama bin Laden's Qaeda network. The directives empowered the C.I.A. to kill or capture Qaeda leaders, but it is not clear whether the White House approved the specific rules for the interrogations.

The White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment on the matter. [...] The C.I.A. has been operating its Qaeda detention system under a series of secret legal opinions by the agency's and Justice Department lawyers. Those rules have provided a legal basis for the use of harsh interrogation techniques, including the water-boarding tactic used against Mr. Mohammed. One set of legal memorandums, the officials said, advises government officials that if they are contemplating procedures that may put them in violation of American statutes that prohibit torture, degrading treatment or the Geneva Conventions, they will not be responsible if it can be argued that the detainees are formally in the custody of another country.

U.S. soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners has undercut the Bush administration's legal rationale for key components of its anti-terrorism policies, with some officials privately worrying that the scandal may hurt the administration's chances of winning three test cases before the Supreme Court, lawyers close to the Bush legal team said. [...] The Abu Ghraib revelations also clashed with remarks Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement made to the court during oral argument in the Padilla case.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg posed a scenario for Clement's response: "Suppose the executive says mild torture, we think, will help get this information," she said. "It's not a soldier who does something against the code of military justice, but it's an executive command. Some systems do that to get information."

"Well, our executive doesn't," Clement, the administration's second-ranking Supreme Court advocate, replied. "Where the government is on a war footing . . . you have to trust the executive to make the kind of quintessential military judgments that are involved in things like that."

That night, the first pictures emerged. If the justices held to court routine, they voted on the Hamdi and Padilla cases two days later.

In a few weeks, George Bush will travel to Omaha Beach for the 60th anniversary of D-Day. The image of the American soldier of that "Greatest Generation" is of a selfless and heroic liberator of Europe. It is the image of the soldier we cherish, the ideal we honor with the new memorial on the Mall. Unfortunately, the image of the American soldier the world has seen this week is that of the jailers of Abu Ghraib humiliating hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners of war in their cellblock. [...] If we wish to create a pro-American democracy in Baghdad, we are going to have to fight a guerrilla war lasting years, against thousands of insurgents. Winning means more photos of abused Iraqi prisoners and dead Iraqi civilians. These photos will sicken and dishearten us, but they will enrage and inflame the Arab world. Are we up to it?

If Bush and his team are unprepared to deal with a lengthening list of U.S. casualties, and more pictures or videos that portray our soldiers in ways we did not see them in "Saving Private Ryan," they had best look for the next exit ramp out.

Massu won the Battle of Algiers. But France lost the war. For the tactics Massu and his "Paras" used to locate and eradicate the terrorists made the Algerian Arabs come to accept they were a people apart. And the revulsion Massu's tactics engendered in France broke the will of the French to hold on to an Algeria to which they were far more attached than any American is to an Iraq that we have occupied for scarcely a year.

With pictures of the sadistic sexual abuse of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison still spilling out onto the front pages, it is not too early to draw some conclusions.

The neoconservative hour is over. All the blather about "empire," our "unipolar moment," "Pax Americana" and "benevolent global hegemony" will be quietly put on a shelf and forgotten as infantile prattle.

America is not going to fight a five- or 10-year war in Iraq. Nor will we be launching any new invasions soon. The retreat of American empire, begun at Fallujah, is underway.

With a $500 billion deficit, we do not have the money for new wars. With an Army of 480,000 stretched thin, we do not have the troops. With April-May costing us a battalion of dead and wounded, we are not going to pay the price. With the squalid photos from Abu Ghraib, we no longer have the moral authority to impose our "values" on Iraq.

Bush's "world democratic revolution" is history.

Given the hatred of the United States and Bush in the Arab world, as attested to by Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, it is almost delusional to think Arab peoples are going to follow America's lead.

It is a time for truth. In any guerrilla war we fight, there is going to be a steady stream of U.S. dead and wounded. There is going to be collateral damage – i.e., women and children slain and maimed. There will be prisoners abused. And inevitably, there will be outrages by U.S. troops enraged at the killing of comrades and the jeering of hostile populations. If you would have an empire, this goes with the territory. And if you are unprepared to pay the price, give it up.

The administration's shock and paralysis at publication of the S&M photos from Abu Ghraib tell us we are not up to it. For what is taking place in Iraq is child's play compared to what we did in the Philippines a century ago. Only there, they did not have digital cameras, videocams and the Internet.

Iraq was an unnecessary war that may become one of the great blunders in U.S. history. That the invasion was brilliantly conceived and executed by Gen. Franks, that our fighting men were among the finest we ever sent to war, that they have done good deeds and brave acts, is undeniable. Yet, if recent surveys are accurate, the Iraqis no longer want us there. [...] What should Bush do now? He should declare that the United States has no intention of establishing permanent bases in Iraq, and that we intend to withdraw all U.S. troops after elections, if the Iraqis tell us to leave. Then we should schedule elections at the earliest possible date this year.

The Iraqi peoples should then be told that U.S. soldiers are not going to fight and die indefinitely for their freedom. If they do not want to be ruled by Sheik Moqtada al-Sadr or some future Saddam, they will have to fight themselves. Otherwise, they will have to live with them, even as they lived with Saddam. For in the last analysis, it is their country, not ours.

The government is opening thousands of records showing the FBI and other agencies turned their heads from the murky pasts of alleged Nazi collaborators living in the United States.

Government historian Norman J.W. Goda, in a collaborative book based on records being released Thursday at the National Archives, said the FBI "did not dig deep for the truth" on these people because it wanted them on America's side in the Cold War.

Among them was Viorel Trifa, an alleged student leader in Romania's fascist Iron Guard movement who became bishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the United States and once led prayers in Congress.

In the thousands of files released, the CIA also is shown seeking the Immigration and Naturalization Service's help in easing travel in and out of America for Mykola Lebed, a Ukrainian accused of aiding German storm troopers in brutal suppression of local resistance during World War II. The INS found "some basis for at least some of these allegations," according to a 1953 letter from the agency seeking direction from the Justice Department. If they were true, the agency said, Lebed should be deported.

But INS called off its investigation of Lebed at the CIA's request, even while declining at that time to give him freedom to leave and return to the United States at will. "I do not feel that we are in any position to give such assurance, since there is a strong likelihood that subject is inadmissible under the immigration laws," the INS commissioner wrote ... In another case, former Croatian interior minister Andrija Artukovic slipped into the United States under a false name in 1948. Goda said he had authorized anti-Serb and anti-Jewish legislation in Croatia, as well as mass shootings, deportations and creation of concentration camps. He said the Justice and State departments stymied Yugoslavia’s attempts to have him extradited for years, and Hoover believed he had “great potential propaganda value.” But he was finally extradited in 1986, sentenced to death, and died awaiting execution. The papers also detail the case of John Avdzej, a Byelorussian who was installed as a Polish mayor by the Germans during the war and came to America in 1950. Goda said Avdzej was thought to have participated in the execution of thousands of Jews.

Last week a British reporter was detained by immigration officials and then expelled from the United States for traveling here without knowing that the visa rules had changed. More precisely, she didn't know that a decades-old unenforced rule was suddenly being enforced against friendly tourists long accustomed to entering the country without a visa at all. Elena Lappin, a freelance journalist from the United Kingdom (who has written for Slate), was stopped at Los Angeles International Airport, subjected to a body search, handcuffed, frog-marched through the airport, and then held in a cell at a detention center overnight—all because she dared travel to the United States without a special journalist visa. There has been a rule on the books since 1952 requiring foreign journalists to obtain special "I visas," but foreign journalists say it was invariably ignored by Immigration and Naturalization Service officials who required only that citizens of friendly countries apply for a visa waiver, an exemption allowing most residents of 27 enumerated countries to visit the United States for business or pleasure for up to 90 days without jumping through any INS hoops.

No more. When the INS was folded into the Department of Homeland Security in March 2003, the I-visa rule began to be enforced in earnest, sometimes, resulting in at least 15 journalists from friendly countries being forcibly detained, interrogated, fingerprinted, and held in cells overnight—with most denied access to phones, pens, lawyers, or their consular officials. Their friendly welcome at the detention center included lights that shone all night long and video surveillance of the entire cell, often including toilets. David James Smith of the Times of London described being denied a blanket, coffee, or a pen during his overnight detention last March. When he first learned he was being denied entry on an immigration technicality, he madly assumed he'd be put up in an airport hotel.

These reporters are not enemy combatants. They are not chroniclers of scathing injustices of the Bush administration. One Australian reporter was here to interview Olivia Newton-John. (God knows, someone has to.) She reported being "body searched and groped" by immigration and customs officials. Ten French and British journalists were here to report on last summer's Electronic Entertainment Expo, the video-game industry's annual trade show. Unless Super Mario Brothers are secretly accumulating weapons of mass destruction, this mistreatment of journalists from allied countries serves as yet another example of overzealous, unbridled discretionary excesses by government officials who still can't figure out who we're fighting in the War on Terror. [...] Far worse than the fact that we're singling out reporters for abuses: Since when is the U.S. government in the business of accrediting journalists—foreign or domestic? What possible journalistic standards must be met in order to prove to the INS that one is enough of a journalist to merit a press visa? The list of enumerated requirements would make it impossible for a reporter from an allied country to cover a breaking story in a timely way. Reporters must now provide a letter from their employer detailing their assignment and place their hope in the broad discretion afforded immigration authorities. Of course, freelancers just looking for a story without a contract in their pocket are presumably out of luck, too. Unless, of course, they elect to lie and call themselves tourists with super-big cameras. The state cannot be in the business of acting as arbiter of who's allowed to come and write about America.

A video posted Tuesday on an Islamic militant Web site showed the beheading of an American civilian in Iraq, and said the execution was carried out by an al-Qaida affiliated group to avenge the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers. The video bore the title "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American." It was unclear whether al-Zarqawi -- an associate of Osama bin Laden -- was shown in the video, or was claiming responsibility for ordering the execution. Al-Zarqawi also is said to have ties to terrorist groups ranging from Ansar al Islam in Iraq to Egyptian Islamic Jihad. He's believed to be behind many attacks in Iraq, including numerous high-profile operations.

The video pictures of the execution showed five men wearing headscarves and black ski masks, standing over a bound man in an orange jumpsuit -- similar to a prisoner's uniform -- who identified himself as Nick Berg, a U.S. civilian whose body was found on a highway overpass in Baghdad on Saturday. "My name is Nick Berg, my father's name is Michael, my mother's name is Suzanne," the man said on the video. "I have a brother and sister, David and Sarah. I live in ... Philadelphia."

There was no way to be certain the tape was authentic.

After reading a statement, the men were seen pulling the man to his side and putting a large knife to his neck. A scream sounded as the men cut his head off, shouting "Allahu Akbar!" -- "God is great." They then held the head out before the camera.

Berg's family said Tuesday they knew their son had been decapitated, but didn't know the details of the killing. When told of the video by an Associated Press reporter, Berg's father, Michael, and his two siblings hugged and cried. "I knew he was decapitated before. That manner is preferable to a long and torturous death. But I didn't want it to become public," Michael Berg said.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with his family," said White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, traveling with President Bush in Arkansas. "It shows the true nature of the enemies of freedom. They have no regard for the lives of innocent men, women and children. We will pursue those who are responsible and bring them to justice."

Because Berg was a U.S. citizen, the FBI has jurisdiction to investigate the case as a criminal matter. A senior law enforcement official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the FBI would probably get involved so long as adequate security is provided by the military for investigators to do their work.

Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war.

Indeed, the damage done to the U.S. military and the nation as a whole by the horrifying photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the notorious prison is incalculable.

But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons. [...] The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish. From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and isolated. The message to the troops: Anything goes.

In addition to the scores of prisoners who were humiliated and demeaned, at least 14 have died in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army has ruled at least two of those homicides. This is not the way a free people keeps its captives or wins the hearts and minds of a suspicious world. [...]
Army commanders in Iraq bear responsibility for running a prison where there was no legal adviser to the commander, and no ultimate responsibility taken for the care and treatment of the prisoners.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, also shares in the shame. Myers asked "60 Minutes II" to hold off reporting news of the scandal because it could put U.S. troops at risk. But when the report was aired, a week later, Myers still hadn't read Taguba's report, which had been completed in March. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also failed to read the report until after the scandal broke in the media.

By then, of course, it was too late.

Myers, Rumsfeld and their staffs failed to recognize the impact the scandal would have not only in the United States, but around the world. [...] On the battlefield, Myers' and Rumsfeld's errors would be called a lack of situational awareness -- a failure that amounts to professional negligence.

To date, the Army has moved to court-martial the six soldiers suspected of abusing Iraqi detainees and has reprimanded six others.

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who commanded the MP brigade that ran Abu Ghraib, has received a letter of admonishment and also faces possible disciplinary action.

That's good, but not good enough.

This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential -- even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war.

-- Military Times editorial, May 17 issue

The New Yorker: Fact: CHAIN OF COMMAND
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
How the Department of Defense mishandled the disaster at Abu Ghraib.
Issue of 2004-05-17
Posted 2004-05-09"

...In his news conference last Tuesday, Rumsfeld, when asked whether he thought the photographs and stories from Abu Ghraib were a setback for American policy in Iraq, still seemed to be in denial. "Oh, I'm not one for instant history," he responded. By Friday, however, with some members of Congress and with editorials calling for his resignation, Rumsfeld testified at length before House and Senate committees and apologized for what he said was "fundamentally un-American" wrongdoing at Abu Ghraib. He also warned that more, and even uglier, disclosures were to come. Rumsfeld said that he had not actually looked at any of the Abu Ghraib photographs until some of them appeared in press accounts, and hadn't reviewed the Army's copies until the day before. When he did, they were "hard to believe" he said. "There are other photos that depict . . . acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman." Later, he said, "It's going to get still more terrible, I'm afraid." Rumsfeld added, "I failed to recognize how important it was."

NBC News later quoted U.S. military officials as saying that the unreleased photographs showed American soldiers "severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi prisoner, and 'acting inappropriately with a dead body.' The officials said there also was a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys."

NEWSWEEK: Abu Ghraib and Beyond
By John Barry, Mark Hosenball and Babak Dehghanpisheh

...Just what was "the treatment" given to Iraqis? The answer to that question could ultimately decide Rumsfeld's fate. According to the Red Cross, interrogation methods at the U.S. military's "high-value detention" facility in Iraq, Camp Cropper, located near Baghdad International Airport, include "hooding a detainee in a bag, sometimes in conjunction with beatings, thus increasing anxiety as to when blows would come"; handcuffs so tight they broke the skin; beatings with rifles and pistols; threats against family members; and stripping detainees naked for several days in solitary confinement in a completely dark cell.

General Miller, in a press briefing, tried to show how he was now cleaning up interrogation procedures at Abu Ghraib. "We have approximately 50 approved interrogation techniques. They come from Army Field Manual 34-52," Miller said. Asked to explain what Miller meant, U.S. Army Intelligence Center spokesperson Tanja Linton said she would go away and inquire. She came back to report: "They have no idea what he is talking about." But a senior Defense Department official, speaking on background, confirms that there is a secret list of what he called "categories" of interrogation techniques—which, he says, can be used only with the case-by-case approval of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.

Bush praises Rumsfeld amid scandal
BY KEN FIREMAN
WASHINGTON BUREAU

Even as new photographic evidence of Iraqi prisoner abuse surfaced yesterday, the Bush administration signaled strong support for its embattled defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Bush even praised Rumsfeld after a meeting at the Pentagon. "You are doing a superb job," he said to Rumsfeld at a short news conference today. The remarks appeared to be uttered in order to head off speculation that Rumsfeld would resign as both men braced for the anticipated release of more pictures and video images showing Iraqi prisoners being abused by American soldiers.[...] After several days of conflicting signals - during which White House officials let it be known that President George W. Bush was unhappy with some aspects of Rumsfeld's handling of the affair, even as Bush expressed public support for him - Vice President Dick Cheney weighed in strongly on Rumsfeld's side. "Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had," Cheney said in a statement late Saturday. "People ought to get off his case and let him do his job."

NEWSDAY: A year of warnings
By Steve Wick
Staff Writer

...Months before the Red Cross and a whistle-blowing soldier independently alerted officials in January of widespread prisoner abuse, there were clear signs that the American handling of detainees was out of control.

Interviews with returning reservists of the 800th Military Police Brigade, whose administrative offices are housed in a one-story brick building on Oak Street in Uniondale, along with the blistering report, show the warning signs of an impending disaster. Yet nothing was done. The interviews and the report detail how the reserve military police units under the 800th's direct supervision -- whose job was to guard more than 7,000 Iraqi prisoners at 16 Army-run prisons -- were ill-prepared, hopelessly outnumbered, poorly trained and badly supervised. [...] When former Master Sgt. Lisa Girman, of Pittston, Pa., an expert on military prisons and a Pennsylvania state trooper, told Newsday she informed a superior about her concerns over conditions at Camp Bucca near Basra in Southern Iraq, she said he told her, "If you're going to cry, take your weapon and go back to your tent." [...] Now back in their Pennsylvania homes, five members of the 320th interviewed for this story say they tried in vain to bring problems to the Army's attention as early as April of last year -- the morning of the Palm Sunday riot. [...] It was Darby, an automobile mechanic in his civilian life, who became deeply troubled after looking at a CD that included dozens of photographs -- prisoners naked and piled on the floor, detainees masturbating, another with his face wrapped in a women's panties. After seeing the photographs, he blew the whistle on the abuse.

According to a story in the Los Angeles Times, Darby copied the photos onto his computer, and then slid an anonymous letter under the door of the office of the Army's Criminal Investigative Division in January. On Jan. 13, Darby came forward and gave investigators a sworn statement.

Because of what he did, seven members of the 372nd now faces charges of abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib. England was charged by the military Friday with allegedly assaulting detainees and conspiring to mistreat them. She is in restricted custody at Fort Bragg, N.C.

In nearby Cumberland, Md., where many of the 372nd members live, Darby is now a controversial figure.

"Darby's going to be shunned," said Tanya Vargas, 29, a former weekend reservist with the 372nd. "He's going to be blackballed. His life is in jeopardy, because he's a snitch. I hope they have protection for him."

Alabama's renegade Chief Justice Roy Moore was already the darling of the far right when he rallied cheering supporters on the steps of the state courthouse last August. Nationally known as the "Ten Commandments Judge," Moore had installed a 5,280-pound granite sculpture of an open book inscribed with the commandments shortly after he was elected in 2001, and then defied a federal court order to remove it. Observers couldn't help being reminded of Gov. George Wallace's infamous stand in the schoolhouse door, rallying Alabama segregationists in defiance of a federal court order to integrate the University of Alabama.

Now, almost everywhere Moore goes, people ask him to do something else Wallace did: run for president.

The possibility that Roy Moore could challenge President Bush in November may not be costing Karl Rove any sleep -- yet. But the chance that the popular conservative judge could do to Bush what Ralph Nader did to Al Gore in 2000 -- split his ideological base, and cost him the presidency -- has analysts crunching numbers and weighing Moore's chances. Moore and his spokeswoman did not return telephone and e-mail messages from Salon, but Moore's public statements have been consistent in recent months. He is keeping his options open, he says, and he will decide if he will run when he has exhausted his court appeals in the Ten Commandments case.

Meanwhile, the 57-year-old Moore is acting more and more like a candidate as he crisscrosses the country, speaking at gatherings of Christian rightists, home-schoolers and state conventions of the far-right Constitution Party, which was on 41 state ballots in the 2000 election, and is courting Moore to head its ticket. If he ran on the Constitution Party ticket, he would probably be on more state ballots than Nader this year. With 320,000 members it is the third-largest party in the U.S, in terms of registered voters.

Will the dynamics of the race change if Moore throws his hat in the ring? Hastings Wyman, a former aide to the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., and editor of the Southern Political Report, thinks so. Wyman told Salon that he thinks Moore has the potential to "do to Bush what Nader did to Gore." Other Republican and Democratic strategists aren't so sure, but no one thinks Bush can stand much erosion in his base. Certainly some Republican leaders take Moore seriously enough to quietly court him, hoping to keep him in the party and preserve the president's Christian far-right constituency.

If Theron McGriff had a live-in girlfriend instead of a live-in boyfriend, would he have lost custody of his two children? That is the crux of a case argued Monday before the Idaho Supreme Court.

McGriff believes he lost custody because he is gay. His ex-wife's attorney argued that wasn't what happened at all. She argued that McGriff lost custody because he was uncooperative and unreasonably angry at his ex-wife, Shawn Weingartner.

McGriff's relationship with his ex-wife and his decision to have a live-in partner both were part of a lower court decision that ended McGriff's joint custody arrangement and gave sole custody to Weingartner.

Political scientists and gay rights activists believe the Supreme Court decision -- expected to be issued in about six months -- could have an impact on other gay parents in Idaho. Family law issues are generally state-centered, according to legal scholars, so the case is not expected to have national implications. [...] As each attorney presented arguments, justices interrupted with questions and comments that cut to the key issues of the case, peppering each side equally:
- Justice Wayne Kidwell to McGriff's attorney, Richard Hearn: "I'm wondering if the magistrate was on fairly solid ground if he had not referred to the same-sex matter."
- Chief Justice Linda Copple Trout to Hearn: "There were a number of factors of conflict between the mother and father. There was even the father's own statement that he does not want to talk to the mother. That's not enough evidence?"
- Justice Kidwell to Weingartner's attorney, Marie Tyler: "You say this is not a gay rights issue. I've gone through the file fairly carefully, and the only thing I see is about homosexuality. It's very convenient now for you to say no, when it's very clear that was the concern when you filed the petition. You made it a gay rights issue."

Idaho high court takes up gay dad's caseBy REBECCA BOONE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

BOISE, Idaho -- Homosexuality should be no more of a factor when determining child custody than a health condition like epilepsy, the attorney for a gay father argued before the Idaho Supreme Court on Monday.

Theron McGriff of Idaho Falls appealed to the high court after a magistrate ruled in 2002 that he could no longer see his two daughters if he lived with his partner of many years. "We feel it would be especially inappropriate for the court to get involved in the gender of Theron's partner," said Richard Hearn, representing McGriff. "There is no evidence that this had any impact on the children." In 1938, Hearn said, the Idaho Supreme Court found that a mother could not be denied custody because she remarried three weeks after her divorce, though at the time such behavior was stigmatized. The court made a similar ruling when presented with a parent suffering seizures from epilepsy, Hearn said.

US soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey, Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal human rights envoy to Iraq has claimed. Labour MP Ann Clwyd said she had investigated the claims of the woman in her 70s and believed they were true. [...] Ms Clwyd said the Iraqi woman was arrested in Iraq last July and accused of having links to a former member of Saddam Hussein’s regime, a charge she denied. The abuse occurred in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison and at another coalition detention centre, Ms Clwyd said. "She was held for about six weeks without charge," the envoy told yesterday’s Evening Standard. "During that time she was insulted and told she was a donkey. A harness was put on her, and an American rode on her back."

Ms Clwyd said the woman had recovered physically but remained traumatised. "I am satisfied the case has now been resolved satisfactorily,” the envoy told BBC radio. “She got a visit last week from the authorities, and she is about to have her papers and jewellery returned to her.”

Editor’s note: The report includes graphic descriptions of events some readers may find objectionable.

The Bush administration asked Congress Wednesday for an additional $25 billion for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, congressional Republicans said, a retreat from the White House's earlier plans not to seek such money until after the November elections. [...] But as recently as Monday, a senior administration official downplayed the need for money right now for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. [...] So far, Bush "has not been told that there is a resource problem,'' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

If you have ever seen the cult '60s British television program The Prisoner, in which captured Cold War spies live on an island under constant surveillance, you can imagine what life may soon be like on Ayers Island, on the Penobscot River near the University of Maine. In coming years, visitors to Ayers Island, the site of an abandoned paper and textile mill in Orono, Maine, will be spied upon by a comprehensive network of video cameras, motion detectors and sensors. Lurking behind all of those sensors will be an artificial intelligence system that will decide who can be trusted and who is deserving of greater scrutiny.

The engineers, drawn largely from the nearby University of Maine, will use the network to test the reliability of new sensors. They will also attempt to demonstrate that AI, combined with ubiquitous sensors, may be able to provide civil authorities with comprehensive, real-time intelligence about the whereabouts of individuals and cars, and the status of buildings and other structures within a particular geographical area.

The island's initial monitoring systems will be rudimentary, made from off-the-shelf parts and store-bought alarm systems. But eventually, ubiquitous cameras and biometric readers, backed by a central computer, will recognize and record faces and license plates, and make it possible for someone sitting at a computer monitor to track individuals everywhere they go on the island, said George Markowsky, president of Ayers Island LLC. "This is going to push the envelope on a lot of fronts," said Markowsky. "The goal is to detect anyone coming onto the island at any point, and to follow them if they exhibit suspicious behavior."

The Immigration and Refugee Board has rejected the asylum case of a Mexican homosexual man on the grounds that he is not "visibly effeminate" and therefore not vulnerable to persecution in his homeland.

Fernando Enrique Rivera, who lifts weights, wears his hair closely cropped and favours jeans and conservative sports shirts, believes the IRB's decision shows a stereotypical understanding of homosexuality. "I know some gay refugees who put on lipstick and dressed effeminately for their hearings because they thought it would help their case. But that is not who I am," Mr. Rivera said in an interview in a Church Street eatery in the heart of Toronto's gay village. "You don't choose to be gay. It's not like being a vegetarian. It's a very complex thing."

During the interview, a waiter jokingly chided him: "Your problem is, you're too butch." IRB member Milagros Eustaquio essentially came to the same conclusion. "Effeminate gestures come naturally and unconsciously," she wrote in her decision in December, 2002. "If he were indeed visibly effeminate, I do not think it is likely he would have been able to easily land a job with the 'macho' police force of Puerto Vallarta."

Last month, the federal court upheld the IRB ruling and now Mr. Rivera fears he could be deported if his final avenue of appeal -- a humanitarian and compassionate review -- fails.

The IRB believed his story. But the panel member also found that Mr. Rivera could relocate to Mexico City where conditions for homosexuals are more favourable. Only effeminate men, HIV-positive men, political activists and whistle blowers in Mexico need refugee protection, according to documentary evidence relied on by the IRB. [...] He said he fled after he was repeatedly the victim of police extortion. He believed Canada would offer him a haven and he did not want to pretend to be effeminate to bolster his chances of success with the refugee process. "I believed in the system and I still do," Mr. Rivera said. "Canada is an open society with so much diversity. I can't go back to Mexico to lead a life of deception. I want to be in a society that accepts me the way I am."

A 2003 report from the Washington-based World Policy Institute says that despite human-rights codes outlawing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, local officials abuse gays in some parts of Mexico.

The Bush administration is struggling to develop a damage-control strategy to counter the mounting global backlash against the United States after revelations that U.S. military and intelligence personnel abused Iraqi prisoners, according to U.S. officials. The search for a strong response follows a review of international reaction by the State Department's Intelligence and Research Department that revealed devastating fallout and criticism well beyond the Islamic world, from Brazil and Britain to Hong Kong, U.S. officials said. [...] The effort to produce a convincing explanation of what happened at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison comes as the State Department prepares to release its annual report accounting for how the United States supports human rights and democracy around the world. The report is due out Wednesday.

On February 25, 2004, Secretary Powell held a special briefing to announce the release of the 2003 Human Rights Reports. Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Lorne W. Craner, also spoke and held a question-and-answer session.

The report entitled "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" is submitted to the Congress by the Department of State in compliance with sections 116(d) and 502B(b) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (FAA), as amended, and section 504 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended. The law provides that the Secretary of State shall transmit to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate, by February 25 "a full and complete report regarding the status of internationally recognized human rights, within the meaning of subsection (A) in countries that receive assistance under this part, and (B) in all other foreign countries which are members of the United Nations and which are not otherwise the subject of a human rights report under this Act." We have also included reports on several countries that do not fall into the categories established by these statutes and that thus are not covered by the congressional requirement.

The Bush administration's plan to use military tribunals to try some of the detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which has faced considerable skepticism, has been receiving some of its sharpest attacks from the military defense lawyers who are participating in the process. Senior government planners once expected that the first of the prisoners to go before a tribunal would plead guilty as part of an agreement to reduce their jail time. But the five military lawyers assigned to defend the first group of prisoners have radically altered that hope, the officials now acknowledge.

The uniformed lawyers have been especially forceful, not only in asserting their clients' innocence but also in denouncing the tribunal system as inherently unfair and rigged. [...] Last month, an audience at Oxford University in England was stunned, witnesses said, when two of the lawyers, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift of the Navy and Maj. Mark Bridges of the Army, said the tribunals were not capable of producing a fair and just result. [...] The day before the Oxford event, Maj. Michael Mori of the Marines, another defense lawyer, said at a London news conference, "The system is not set up to provide even the appearance of a fair trial." [...] Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer, who was a judge in the Air Force until being assigned to defend a Sudanese detainee, said she had told audiences of her "great concerns about whether he can receive a fair trial with rules that are written that are twisted against the defense." Like the other defense lawyers, she was critical of rules requiring that motions do not go to the panel of judges "but to the same officer who approved the charges in the first place." [...] Lt. Cmdr. Philip Sundel of the Navy, one of the lawyers, has complained that the tribunal process lacks the needed checks and balances to be fair. [...] Last month, Commander Swift filed the first lawsuit on behalf of a detainee directly challenging the military tribunal system. It asserts that the Bush administration's plans for his client violate the Constitution, federal law and the nation's obligations under the Geneva Conventions.

n the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world's most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. As many as fifty thousand men and women -- no accurate count is possible -- were jammed into Abu Ghraib at one time, in twelve-by-twelve-foot cells that were little more than human holding pits.

In the looting that followed the regime's collapse, last April, the huge prison complex, by then deserted, was stripped of everything that could be removed, including doors, windows, and bricks. The coalition authorities had the floors tiled, cells cleaned and repaired, and toilets, showers, and a new medical center added. Abu Ghraib was now a U.S. military prison. Most of the prisoners, however -- by the fall there were several thousand, including women and teen-agers -- were civilians, many of whom had been picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints. They fell into three loosely defined categories: common criminals; security detainees suspected of "Crimes against the coalition"; and a small number of suspected "high-value" leaders of the insurgency against the coalition forces.

Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

There was stunning evidence to support the allegations, Taguba added—“detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence.” Photographs and videos taken by the soldiers as the abuses were happening were not included in his report, Taguba said, because of their “extremely sensitive nature.” [...] Myers, who was one of the military defense attorneys in the My Lai prosecutions of the nineteen-seventies, told me that his client’s defense will be that he was carrying out the orders of his superiors and, in particular, the directions of military intelligence. He said, “Do you really think a group of kids from rural Virginia decided to do this on their own? Decided that the best way to embarrass Arabs and make them talk was to have them walk around nude?”

In letters and e-mails to family members, Frederick repeatedly noted that the military-intelligence teams, which included C.I.A. officers and linguists and interrogation specialists from private defense contractors, were the dominant force inside Abu Ghraib. In a letter written in January, he said:

I questioned some of the things that I saw . . . such things as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell—and the answer I got was, “This is how military intelligence (MI) wants it done.” . . . . MI has also instructed us to place a prisoner in an isolation cell with little or no clothes, no toilet or running water, no ventilation or window, for as much as three days.

The military-intelligence officers have “encouraged and told us, ‘Great job,’ they were now getting positive results and information,” Frederick wrote. “CID has been present when the military working dogs were used to intimidate prisoners at MI’s request.” At one point, Frederick told his family, he pulled aside his superior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Phillabaum, the commander of the 320th M.P. Battalion, and asked about the mistreatment of prisoners. “His reply was ‘Don’t worry about it.’”