Rumsfeld Wants Torture Case Dismissed

Rumsfeld Wants Torture Case Dismissed : "Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit that would hold him personally responsible for allegations of torture in oversees military prisons.

The lawsuit, filed by two civil rights groups, describes the imprisonment of nine foreigners detained in Iraq and Afghanistan. The lawsuit contends the men were beaten, suspended upside down from the ceiling by chains, urinated on, shocked, sexually humiliated, burned, locked inside boxes and subjected to mock executions.

President Bush has called the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq the biggest mistake of the war.

Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First say Rumsfeld and top military officials authorized such abuses and should be held liable in federal court."

(Via Salon.)

Panel: Bush Iraq policy ‘not working‘

Panel: Bush Iraq policy ‘not working‘: "President Bush's policy in Iraq 'is not working,' a high-level commission said bluntly on Wednesday, prodding the administration to use diplomacy to stabilize the country and allow withdrawal of most American combat troops by early 2008.

'There is no path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved,' the commissioners said after an exhaustive review of a war that has taken the lives of more than 2,900 U.S. troops and grown so unpopular at home that it helped trigger a Democratic takeover of Congress in last month%u2018s elections.

President Bush received the report in an early morning meeting at the White House with commission members. He pledged to treat each proposal seriously and act in a 'timely fashion.'

The report painted a grim picture of Iraq nearly four years after U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein . It urged Bush to embrace steps he has thus far rejected, including a call to involve Syria and Iran in negotiations over Iraq%u2018s future."

(Via Google News.)

Democrats Won, But Arabs in America Still Suffer from Bush's War on Terror

But Arabs in America Still Suffer from Bush's War on Terror: "But all this has not stopped the government from continuing its harassing of Al-Arian. Judge Moody recently ruled that compelling Al-Arian to testify in the grand jury investigation of the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Herndon, Va., would not violate the plea agreement. Several people close to the case fear that the current attempt to make Al-Arian testify is part of an effort to charge him with perjury and set him up for a new trial. The assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia, Gordon Kromberg, like many involved in the case, has made derogatory and racist comments about Muslims. When Al-Arian's lawyers asked Kromberg to delay the transfer of the professor to Virginia because of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan they were told 'if they can kill each other during Ramadan they can appear before the grand jury.' Kromberg, according to an affidavit signed by Al-Arian's attorney, Jack Fernandez, also said: 'I am not going to put off Dr. Al-Arian's grand jury appearance just to assist in what is becoming the Islamization of America.'"

(Via AlterNet.)

A vote for more cooked intelligence?

A vote for more cooked intelligence?: "Little-known documents link Rumsfeld replacement Robert Gates with the kind of trumped-up reports that unleashed the Iraq war.

Dec. 4, 2006 | Robert Gates won't be forced to run much of a gauntlet Tuesday during his Senate confirmation hearing on the way to becoming the next secretary of defense. The former CIA director has bipartisan support. And during his interrogation, Washington's near-total preoccupation with the situation in Iraq will crowd out any serious probing of Gates' past, including his murky role in the Iran-Contra scandal and the cooking of intelligence on the Soviet Union during Gates' tenure at the CIA more than a decade ago."

...

"But in the rush to discharge Rumsfeld, the Senate may not fully explore a blemish in Gates' dossier that seems particularly relevant now. A close examination of Gates' record, including little-known documents obtained by Salon from the National Security Archive, shows that as Gates was rising through the echelons of the CIA in the late 1980s to be CIA director in 1991, he was involved in the trafficking of intelligence reports that relied on compromised sources to show an exaggerated foreign threat. With the U.S. struggling for an exit strategy from Iraq and eyeing adversaries like Iran, President Bush has selected a man to head the Pentagon who was once in charge during an intelligence fiasco not unlike the one that unleashed the Iraq war.

In September 1995, CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz recommended that Gates be held accountable for his role in hyperbolic intelligence reporting on the danger posed by the Soviet Union. In those reports, the CIA relied on sources the agency knew or should have known had been under Moscow's influence, Hitz found. At that time, though, a robust Soviet threat was music to the ears of some hard-liners in Washington, and the trumped-up intelligence made it into the hands of the president and Pentagon leaders."

Emphasis Mine

(Via Salon.)

U.N. Secretary Says Iraq Is Engulfed in Deadly Civil War

U.N. Secretary Says Iraq Is Engulfed in Deadly Civil War: "Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, said Sunday that Iraq had descended into a civil war that was even deadlier and more anarchic than the 15-year sectarian bloodshed that tore apart Lebanon.

'When we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war; this is much worse,' Mr. Annan said in an interview with the BBC.

In making his remarks, Mr. Annan joined a growing number of foreign and Iraqi leaders, policy makers and news organizations who say that Iraq is in the grip of civil war. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said last Wednesday at a conference in the United Arab Emirates that Iraq is in a civil war. A former Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, said the same last March.

The Bush administration has not characterized the conflict as a civil war."

(Via NY Times.)

Bush isolation exposed by memo

Bush isolation exposed by memo: "President George W. Bush's isolation over Iraq deepened on Sunday following the publication of the leaked memo from sacked defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld calling for a 'major adjustment' in Iraq policy.

John Warner, the outgoing Republican chairman of the Senate armed services committee, told NBC's Meet the Press that the president should respect the will of the people, and seek agreement with the Democrat leaders of the new Congress on a new Iraq policy.

...

White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley on Sunday tried to play down the significance of the Rumsfeld memo, which was leaked to the New York Times and which included an option to 'begin modest withdrawals of US and coalition forces (start taking our hands off the bicycle seat)' — a policy shift favoured by the Democrats."

(Via MSNBC.)