And hell.. if you don’t believe me why not listen to a guy who actually worked in senior positions in the CIA and the Intelligence community throughout his career.

Bolton and the Art of Cooking Intelligence

(UPDATED TWICE)

Last Wednesday, the 18th, Scott McClellan said this about Newsweek, There has been some lasting damage that has been done to our image… and it’s going to take some work to repair that damage.

Today the FBI released a report from one of their agents that says, About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet.

I’m tired today.. didn’t get enough sleep.. so forgive my punchyness. But this kind of shit makes me really angry. I’m angry that people keep believing in people who are so obviously lying. I was watching the Rochester, NY (NBC?) digital channel last night and they showed Bush entering a hall to the cheers of the audience. Why the hell are they cheering this guy? HE is responsible for Guantanamo Bay. HE is responsible for the Koran flushing down the toilet. HE is responsible for those 15 lives that were lost in riots in Afghanistan.

And yet he does nothing… worse… he only continues the trend. And people applaud him for doing so.

Oh and by the way, Amnesty International released its’ annual report today. They have some predictably choice words for the US Administrations current disdain for Human Rights.

President Bush’s refusal to apply the Geneva Conventions to those captured during the international armed conflict in Afghanistan and transferred to the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was challenged by a judicial decision in November. The ruling resulted in the suspension of trials by military commission in Guantánamo, and the government immediately lodged an appeal. The US administration’s treatment of detainees in the “war on terror” continued to display a marked ambivalence to the opinion of expert bodies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and even of its own highest judicial body. Six months after the Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts had jurisdiction over the Guantánamo detainees, none had appeared in court. Detainees reportedly considered of high intelligence value remained in secret detention in undisclosed locations. In some cases their situation amounted to “disappearance”.

Who’s going to be left to clean up the disaster that 4 more years of George Bush will create?

UDPATE

Here’s the transcript of summaries provided by the FBI through the ACLU.

LT-Smash has again challenged me on my assertion that Newsweek got it right. I ask him, and others. In Journalism accusations of wrongdoing are often the basis of the news. This case is no different.

Until there is an investigation that proves this one way or the other, the Pentagon and Administration can deny it all they want, but it’s just a matter of “he said/she said” for now.

The scandal is that the US Administration refuses to investigate it at all… the scandal is that these detainees at Guantanamo have been denied their rights under the Geneva Conventions the US Supreme Court deems that to be wrong (as mentioned in the BBC article above).

The Link above to the ACLU has one summary that states:

Notes that REDACTED “accused Pakistani Police with giving him electric shocks and U.S. troops of beating him. . . . REDACTED lied to the interrogators in Kandahar because he felt that if he didn’t say what the interrogators wanted, they would continue to beat him. REDACTED was then shown a photograph of himself taken in Kandahar and asked to point out where any bruises or signs of a beating were located. REDACTED then admitted to lying about the beatings.”

So now that he’s admitted about lying about the beatings I’m supposed to automatically believe that he was lying about the Koran as well? No, not when I see this in an ABC report (also linked by Smash).

In January 2003, the military issued a three-page written guideline for handling a detainee’s Quran, including a stipulation that it should be handled “as if it were a fragile piece of delicate art,” and that it not be placed in “offensive areas such as the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet or dirty/wet areas.”

(the abuse allegedly happened in 2002, I wonder why they mentioned a toilet specifically?)

and this from an earlier ABC report that Smash sent me in an email.

While the guards held him, she removed her blouse, embraced the detainee from behind and put her hand on his genitals. The interrogator was on her menstrual period and she wiped blood from her body on his face and head,” the memo stated.

A similar incident was described in a recent book written by a former Guantanamo interrogator.

Are they going to accuse the interrogator of lying as well?

The honest thing to do here would be for the Administration to launch a full, independant investigation by an NGO like, say, the ICRC (because it *is* their job after all). Of course, if you listen to Smash and friends you’ll hear that the ICRC is obviously biased because all they care about is all those lefties who only care about avoding wars and “demoralizing” the troops and that the US Administration can obviously police itself.

What the past 3 years has taught me is that the US Administration is far from capable in that regard.

UPDATE 2

In response to Smashs’ response in the comments.

I would appreciate it if you would refrain from putting words in my mouth. For instance, I never said anything like:

“the ICRC is obviously biased because all they care about is all those lefties who only care about avoding wars and “demoralizing” the troops and that the US Administration can obviously police itself.”

The ICRC is, in fact, allowed access to prisoners at Guantanamo. They provide feedback on the conditions to the US Gov’t. They have played this role in conflicts around the globe for almost 100 years now. I might not agree with everything they say, but I appreciate the vital services they perform. Who knows, I might need them on my side one day.

Fine. I retract that statement for you personally as you never said it verbatim. However it was mainly directed at the responses that I knew I would get from your readers and from others. And since you chose to attack me personally, I did the same.. I should not have. The ICRC, while commending the efforts to allow them unfettered access still considers the prisoners legal status unacceptable. You can read this report from one of the ICRC reps who went to Gitmo for yourself.

The problem is that the ICRC only communicates to Govt agencies. It does not reveal its’ findings to the public. This is for good reason… however, when things get crazy like they have after the Newsweek article and after the photos at Abu Graib, a completely open and transparent investigation is the only thing that’s going to fix the problem and de-politicize the situation.

If the US let in Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International or Human Rights First (formerly Lawyers Committee for Human Rights) to investigate and report publicly then we wouldn’t be having this “he said she said” problem. We would know, and have access to, the truth. Unfortunately, they refused during the Gitmo trials and they have continued to refuse to this day.

Instead, the US Administration simply denies it and hopes that it goes away. Which will never work… and only adds to the problem and perception of guilt.

The FBI report is not a fully open investigation. It has no names. It doesn’t say what was actually said in the entire interrogation. And it had to be obtained specifically through a Freedom of Information request.

This is in response to my last thread on George Bush as a war criminal and the posts therein… I will simply post my last answer in that thread and then elaborate. I don’t usually get personal.. but since this discussion was brought onto me personally and people are taking issue with me personally then both barrels might as well come out.

I will respond to this as the rest is just the same old sarcasm and lack of actually reading what I wrote.. If you all had actually read and understood (I know that’s a stretch for some) what I had wrote you would have noticed that I consider BOTH Saddam and Bush a war criminal. That’s what happens when you commit the SAME CRIME!)

You said, The sad truth is that, to you, nothing is worth fighting for.

I’ve heard this so many times and it’s such a load of BS…

I, and many others who share my viewpoints on Iraq, am not a pacicifist. Granted there are plenty of people who are… but I am not one of them, nor, I believe, are the majority of others who are “anti-Iraq-war”. I do not believe that war is obselete. While I hope for a day where war is no longer required… I fully recognize there are situations where it must happen. Iraq could have been one of those situations. The fact that it didn’t is the reason there is so much opposition to it.

Saying something is an ultimate last resort is not the same as saying something must be banned outright.

I, along with many others, believe that had the case for the Iraq war been more convincing, that is, the case brought to the UN that was based on 2 things only , WMD programs and Links to Terrorism (the 3rd, humanitarian case was only emphasized by the US Administration much much later precisely because it was not a tenable reason to wage war) then many many more people would have supported the war.

Many surveys (Pew did the most extensive one) done before the war indicated that support for the war spiked as soon as there was UNSC approval. Without UNSC approval, the invasion was opposed by every population outside the US and UK (barely).

Indeed. Had it been found, incontrovertably, that Saddam had WMD in the quantities asserted by Bush and Co. or Saddam had refused to allow inspectors in after Resolution 1441… then the UNSC would have had no choice but to admit that Saddam was a threat. The fact is that that case simply wasn’t there. And now it has become clear that the initial WMD disarmament program after 1991 was highly successful in stripping Saddam of his capabilities.

Let me say that more clearly… the *UN MONITORED WMD INSPECTORS SUCCESSFULLY DISARMED SADDAM*. They did it so well in fact that the whole world and the UN itself thought Saddam *must* have been hiding something, which he wasn’t.

Mass graves and atrocities that happened 10 years prior are not a reason to invade a country. To put it simply, if it were, then there would be a lot more countries that we’d be compelled to invade and topple. *That* is not an option. Humanitarianism is aboutpreventing suffering and the loss of life not adding to it by waging war.

You talk about Hypocrisy when in fact what I am proposing is following a path that avoids hypocrisy completely. What is more hypocritical than punishing one leader for invading a country and not punishing the other 12 years later?

SADDAM HUSSEIN AND GEORGE BUSH BROKE EXACTLY THE SAME LAW!

As my wife would say… this isn’t rocket surgery.

This is in response to Lt Cmdr Smash’s comments at his blog. You can read them here. He served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and we have had an ongoing dialogue and discussion since 2003. Over time my position has hardened while he has stuck true to his line but our basic disagreement has always been the same and has mirrored the ongoing debate of the pro and anti Iraq-war camps.

Before I explain my overall reasoning for considering George Bush a war criminal let me address Smashs’ position that the situation on the ground in Iraq was such that any action to remove Saddam was justified no matter what the legalities. My position and the position of most anti-war activists, I think, is that the days when War are necessary are, or at the very least should be, numbered. If that is not the goal of the civilized world, then really why are we here? History tells us war only brings pain and suffering and decades of rebuilding. To avoid war is to avoid hell on earth. If war must be brought upon this world it must be done for absolutely incontrovertible reasons. We must demand the highest standard and we must demand the utmost in cooperation and support so that the war is as fast, complete and successful, during and after.

So while the anti-war movement understood the pain of Iraqis as they suffered and toiled under the Iraqi regime we also understood that war… and especially war without consensus… would do little to help common Iraqis. Yes, the Oil-for-Food program was terribly flawed… but compared to war, and the post-war situation we see now, most Iraqis were employed, had food, electricity, water, and fuel. For the past 2 years since the war… Iraqis have had none of this… and instead have had ongoing violence in their streets, kidnappings, and general disorder. Today we are again hearing that due to the security situation, progress in all sectors, even Oil, is at a near standstill.

Would it have been different with a UN sanctioned coalition? What if Saddam finally totally complied and we realised he really didn’t have any WMD? We’ll never know. All we know now is that Iraq is struggling to find itself and the US is struggling to maintain security. I hope the Iraqi government discovers its independance and sovereignty soon but without the security to deliver basic services to its’ citizens, what chance does it have. All it seems we can do is hope for the best. In the meantime, it does not change the fact that the way the war was brought to Iraq was illegal. Just as Saddams invasion of Kuwait was a breach of International Law, so to was this war…

So here goes… (more…)

So. Now that it’s all over and the confidence votes have passed can we please get back to business?

Yes. I am outraged at the corruption found in the governing party. Yes, I believe they don’t deserve to lead. However, the past few weeks have made one thing clear.

There is no alternative.

Stephen Harper has dug himself the deepest of graves. He can no longer hope for the CPC to win any number of seats in Ontario in the near future.

His only hope to be PM is for him to survive the summer and fall sessions of Parliament and then hope for a particularly damning Gomery Report in December.

My own mother summed it up the best, I watched the Parliament vote re the budget…history in the making….boo to Belinda Stronach!! But I don’t like the Conservatives, either….so….

So indeed… The question I believe Canadians are asking is, what alternative is there? If there was still a Progressive Conservative party of Canada then there is no doubt in my mind that they would be at the forefront of the political scene right now. Canadians still see the current Conservative party as Reform/Alliance and Stephen Harper has done little to change that view.

It’s an unfortunate situation… the only saving grace of the current political climate is the minority government, which forces the Liberals to show modecum of humility. They do not deserve a majority.