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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r Me thinks you're reading a little too much into a simple question. There's nothing between the lines with that question which still stands...why isn't it closed? I know the arguments as to why it should be as much as anybody here (for the most part) but I haven't come across anything concrete as to why it's still actually open if so much is wrong with it. |
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r Don't worry, you should know me by now, if I wanted to arguement a point I wouldn't be quite has cryptic as you thought my question was...  |
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| Originally posted by LiquidX Q5echo.. you are the perfect example of the only view portrait to you, and thats the one portrait in America. Go out and open up and see things from the other perspectives.. there are plenty, it might elight your mind a bit. |
...ass
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| Originally posted by Q5echo a view portait? before you ask me that, can you ask an Iraqi that voted in the last election first. i didn't vote, sorry. i was surfing. hey, when are you going to Envy or Space again. ...ass |
And if we make the assumption that American and British conducted polls may be of some relevance:
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| polls showed that Iraqis were of course keen to avoid yet another war. In March, Jonathan Steele of the Guardian sampled the views of some of the 300,000 Iraqi refugees, students and businesspeople living in Jordan. Steele reported: "According to a Guardian straw poll, a majority is opposed to war, giving the lie to those who claim that the imminent attack by US and British forces has the overwhelming backing of the Iraqi people. "The Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, is deeply unpopular, but only 35 per cent of those asked see the use of massive force as the correct way to oust him." (Steele', 'Exiles voice fears as conflict looms', The Guardian, March 19, 2003) |
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ZNet | Iraq Johann Hari and Noam Chomsky A debate with a UK Independent journalist by David Edwards and David Cromwell; Medialens; December 06, 2003 On November 20, we received the following email from Johann Hari of the Independent in response to our Media Alert, Friendly Bombs, Part 1 (November 20, 2003): ________________________________________________________________ Dear David and David, Thank you for your e-mail. While I obviously disagree profoundly with you, I am never less than provoked and stimulated by your alerts, which provide a very valuable function in making journalists justify their position. As I'm sure you can understand, I am insanely rushed but I hope you will accept this brief response. We have a legitimate disagreement over what the Iraqi people want. I made clear before the war that we could not know what Iraqi people wanted with the scientific certainty of a MORI poll (I don't have time to check quotes but all my pre-war articles are amply available on my website, www.johannhari.com. Pore through them if you are self-punishing enough and you'll find everything I mention here). However, the International Crisis Group survey and my own limited experiences with the Iraqi people in Iraq itself and my more extensive experiences with the Iraqi exile community led me to believe that there was support for the invasion. This was subsequently proven to be correct, because every single opinion poll following the liberation - produced by firms who have successfully predicted the results of general elections across the world - showed that Iraqis wanted the invasion to proceed. I am basing my interpretation of Iraqi opinion on polls, the best source of information that we have. You seem to be basing yours on guesswork, supposition and telepathy. I was also, of course, basing my view on the experience of Northern Iraq, where, under US and British military protection since 1991, the Kurds have built a thriving democracy. Why do you never mention this? Do you congratulate the Kurds on their incredible achievement - 70 free newspapers, a democratic parliament and Prime M inister (who supported the invasion of the South), and female High Court judges - I know that the Americans allowed Turkish troops to attack Kurdish freedom fighters on a handful of occassions, and I am appalled by that - but does it undnermine the whole achievement and make their democracy meaningless? Of course not. The same sanctions applied in Northern Iraq as in Saddam's tyranny, and all the factors which you attribute to sanctions and I attribute to Saddam did not occur. How do you explain that? Please don't just give me quotes from Dennis Halliday and say "he knows better than you": actually answer the argument. You ask when the United States changed its mind from supporting tyranny in the Muslim countries (as your friend George Galloway has in the past: I refer you to his Mail on Sunday article in which he says that ""in poor third world countries like Pakistan, politics is too important to be left to petty squabbling politicians. Pakistan is always on the brink of breaking apart into its widely disparate components. Only the armed forces can really be counted on to hold such a country together ... Democracy is a means, not an end in itself."). I refer you to George Bush, who said apologised yesterday for "decades of failed US policy in the Middle East? we should not tolerate oppression for the sake of stability." Nor, he implied, should they fund and arm it. Yes, it will take time to turn around all US policy: we can discuss (and must campaign about) the horrors of Uzbekistan and the House of Saud. But I believe it is beginning. Do I think the US will promote deep democracy, a form better than our own corporate semi-democracy? Of course not. It will be deeply imperfect and bounded within neoconservative precepts that you and I reject. But it will be a damn sight better than Ba'athist Stalinism, and it was worth fighting for. It is a shame that you have to imply that every single person who disagrees with you has some sinister mission to corrupt the truth. For example, you act as though you have cunningly exposed that I went to Iraq in September 2002 as part of a holiday tour. Yes: I cunningly disguised this by writing it as a front page story for the Guardian. I hope you'll understand if I don't enter into a lengthy dialogue, although I will be very interested in your response. I also hope you'll understand that I feel your revelation that you would not have fought a war against Nazism but rather would have spent your energies informing the British people that they were complicit while gay people and Jews were systematically murdered on the other side of the Channel somewhat undermines your ability to take the moral high ground on issues pertaining to tyranny. Lastly, I hope the people who have e-mailed in response to your original message will accept this response. Thanks again for an interesting media alert, Johann ________________________________________________________________ Dear Johann Many thanks for your kind words. We appreciate your taking the time to respond at such length. You say that you accept one "could not know what the Iraqi people wanted with the scientific certainty of a MORI poll", and yet in the Independent you have written repeatedly of "the indisputable wishes of the Iraqi people". (Hari, 'The state visit of President Bush: I support Bush on Iraq - but I'll join the protests', The Independent, November 19, 2003) "Indisputable" suggests certainty, does it not? It is curious that you focus so intensely on the highly uncertain wishes of the Iraqi people, and yet you ignore the very clear democratic wish of the British people +not+ to invade and bomb them. This time last year support for invasion without UN backing stood at barely 10% anywhere outside the United States. In January, 81% of the British public was opposed to unilateral military action by the US and UK, with 47% opposed to war in all circumstances. Only 10% of those polled believed that the war should start regardless of UN backing. (Alan Travis, 'Support for war falls to new low,' The Guardian, January 21, 2003) Surely your respect for the indisputable wishes of the British people means you should have been fiercely opposed to war. You describe our analysis of Iraqi opinion polls as "guesswork, supposition and telepathy". In reality, like most journalists we debate with, you have simply ignored the points we made: the poll of Iraqis mentioned by Jonathan Steele in the Guardian, the absence of "concrete evidence" of Iraqi support for invasion, the ICG's establishment links and sympathies, and so on. You also ignored our point that the Iraqi people "cheering us on" were in reality facing a miserable choice between war or continued genocidal sanctions that had already claimed one million lives. A reasonable range of options presented by pollsters might, for example, have included: No invasion but continued genocidal sanctions and bombing with Saddam Hussein retaining power. US/UK invasion deposing Saddam Hussein. UN-backed invasion deposing Saddam Hussein by a genuinely international coalition under the auspices of the UN. Full Iraqi compliance with UNMOVIC inspections leading to 100% disarmament of WMD and the lifting of non-military sanctions, with Saddam retaining power. In your Independent articles, you have presented no evidence to suggest that the Iraqi people were polled on such a range of options. Even if they had been, Iraqis might well have felt inclined to simply ignore options that avoided war but which were clearly not on the West's agenda. It is absurd to state that the Iraq people freely chose the invasion while looking down the barrel of a gun. It is interesting to consider the latest polls of the people you claim were "cheering us on" during the invasion. An October poll by Iraq's Centre for Research and Strategic Studies showed that 67 per cent of Iraqis viewed "coalition" forces as "occupying powers", more than 20 per cent higher than a survey conducted shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein. According to the poll, the number of Iraqis who viewed the coalition as a "liberating" force had dropped from 43 to 15 per cent, with very few feeling safe in the presence of the police or occupying armies. (Peter Beaumont, 'US helicopter shot down in Iraq', The Observer, October 26, 2003) Oxford Research International (ORI), sampled the views of 3,244 Iraqis interviewed in their own homes in October and early November. They found that 79 percent of people questioned had "no trust" or "very little trust" in the US-led "coalition" - 8 percent said they had a great deal of confidence in the occupying force. 42 percent said they had a great deal of trust in Iraq's religious leaders. The authors of the survey said: "The very troops which liberated Iraqis from Saddam are the most mistrusted institution in Iraq today." You refer to the situation in Northern Iraq. Echoing familiar government propaganda, you write: "The same sanctions applied in Northern Iraq as in Saddam's tyranny, and all the factors which you attribute to sanctions and I attribute to Saddam did not occur." The reality is revealed by considering the issue of child mortality. While it is true that child mortality rates were lower in the autonomous north than in south/central regions controlled by Saddam Hussein, UNICEF noted that, "the difference [in child mortality rates] cannot be attributed to the differing ways the Oil for Food Programme is implemented in the two parts of Iraq". The same point was reiterated by UN humanitarian co-ordinator, Tun Myat, who noted on several occasions that the "improvement in nutrition in the north was not due to differences in distribution, or the fact that the United Nations was responsible for implementation of the programme in the north". (UN Press Briefing, November 19, 2000) Important differences between the north and the south/centre described by the UN included: � "that the sanctions have not been so rigorously enforced in the north as the border is more 'porous' than in the [south/centre]". (UNICEF, August 1999) � that the north, with roughly 15% of Iraq's population, has 50% of Iraq's productive arable land. (UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, September 2000) � that the north "received 22% more per capita [than the south/centre] and gets 10% of all UN-controlled assistance in currency" while the rest of the country received only commodities. (UNICEF, August 1999) � "the fact that the north has received far more support per capita from the international community than the south and centre of the country". (UNICEF, August 1999) You write, "The same sanctions applied in Northern Iraq as in Saddam's tyranny." But Professor Richard Garfield, a leading epidemiologist at Columbia University, pointed out in the New York Times on September 13, 1999, that the embargo in the North is "not the same embargo": "The North enjoys porous borders with Turkey, Syria, and Iran, and thus is effectively less embargoed than the rest of the country. It benefits from the aid of 34 Non-Government Organizations, while in the whole rest of the country there are only 11... "Food, medicine, and water pumps are now helping reduce mortality throughout Iraq, but the pumps do less for sanitation where authorities cannot buy sand, hire day laborers, or find many other minor inputs to make filtration plants work. Goods have been approved by the UN and distributed to the North far faster than in the Center or South. The UN Security Council treats people in that part of the country like innocents. Close to 20 million civilians in the Center and South of the country deserve the same treatment." Finally, Gabriel Carlyle of Voices In The Wilderness UK, told us, "it is interesting to note that child mortality rates in south/central Iraq were also lower in some of those areas close to the border with the autonomous governorates, where similar conditions prevail and where people have been able to fall back on traditional patterns of life". (Email to Media Lens, January 16, 2003) You celebrate "a democratic parliament and Prime Minister (who supported the invasion of the South)" in northern Iraq. This will be Barham Salah, the prime minister who said of the oil-for-food programme that has left Iraq devastated: "The oil-for-food programme is a good programme; it must continue. It is the best thing that has happened to Iraq since the foundation of the Iraqi state. By the way, not only for the Kurdish areas but also for the rest of Iraq, because we never had it so good - all Iraqis not just Kurds." (Interviewed in The Mother of all Ironies, by John Sweeney, Correspondent, BBC2, June 23, 2002) This is crude pro-Western propaganda, but then Salah is doubtless sensitive to the harsh realities of realpolitik in "democratic" northern Iraq. Perhaps he had read the New York Times report in March 2002 noting that the Bush administration had assured its Turkish ally that in the event of an invasion it would "ensure Iraq's territorial integrity" and not allow the creation of an independent Kurdish state. (New York Times, March 10, 2002) Last February, the Washington Post reported that the White House had attempted to cut a deal with Turkey - if Turkey allowed the US to open a northern front against Iraq, Washington would prevent the Kurds from establishing a permanent autonomous region or federal-style government in postwar Iraq. The US would also turn a blind eye to a Turkish "incursion" into Iraq. (Conn Hallinan, 'Double Crossing the Kurds', ZNet, March 29, 2003) This makes perfect sense given, rhetorical flourishes aside, the consistent US policy of indifference to the Kurds and their suffering. Ten days after the gassing of 5,000 Kurds at Halabja in March 1988, Jim Hoagland made an accurate prediction in the Washington Post: "Washington's friendship for Baghdad is likely to survive one night of poison gas and sickening television film. TV moves on, shock succeeds shock, the day's horror becomes distant memory. The Kurds will stay on history's margins, and policy will have continuity." (Hoagland, Washington Post, March 26, 1988) "Iraq has not paid much of a diplomatic price for its actions," the Christian Science Monitor noted on December 13 that same year. Indeed, on September 8, 1988, when US Secretary of State George Shultz met with Saadun Hamadi, Iraq's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs in Washington, he expressed merely "concern" about Halabja. "The approach we want to take [toward Iraq] is that, 'We want to have a good relationship with you, but that this sort of thing [the Halabja massacre] makes it very difficult,'" a State Department official explained. (Quoted, Anthony Arnove, 'Convenient And Not So Convenient Massacres', ZNet Commentary, March 28, 2002) In explaining "when the United States changed its mind from supporting tyranny in the Muslim countries" you refer "to George Bush, who said [sic] apologised yesterday for 'decades of failed US policy in the Middle East - we should not tolerate oppression for the sake of stability'." It is remarkable that you should present as serious evidence the words of a president who has this year revealed an almost infinite capacity for deceit. You refer to an alleged revolution in American foreign policy in the above message and also in a second email - we will return to this in our next alert. We have never suggested that any journalist is on a "sinister mission to corrupt the truth". We are forever pointing out that we reject sinister conspiracy theories of this kind - the idea that journalists are involved in dark "missions" to deceive people. We're sure you are sincere in everything you're saying. Finally, you write that the fact that we "would not have fought a war against Nazism" undermines our "ability to take the moral high ground on issues pertaining to tyranny." We are much more interested in fighting tyranny in all its forms than in aspiring to some "moral high ground". The essence of Nazism was the belief that violence, fear, hatred of enemies, and deception, could be harnessed as tools of elite aggrandisement and enrichment. One of the terrible ironies of the West's violent destruction of the Nazi killing machine is that violence thereby became even more deeply entrenched in our own economic and political systems. To paraphrase Nietzsche, when we looked into the abyss of mass violence and total war, the abyss looked into us. Generally speaking, real solutions to problems rooted in greed, hatred and irrationality can only be found in compassion, restraint and reason. We received a second response from Johann Hari on November 29 also in response to our Media Alert, Friendly Bombs, Part 1 (November 20, 2003) ________________________________________________________________ Dear David and David, I've been moping in bed with 'flu all day and just had an amicable row with a friend who read your alert and basically agrees with it. Some interesting points emerged from our discussion of it (and some e-mail exchanges with some of your readers), so I thought I'd add them to my previous e-mail if I may. I realise that my answer to your question about when US foreign policy towards the Middle East changed was somewhat cursory. I think there is a growing realisation among US elites since September 11th that the policy of propping up tyrannies in the Middle East has led to disaster for America. Of course they are not suddenly worried about Arab lives in some purely altruistic sense. Rather, they have developed a new sense of enlightened self-interest, where America will only become safe if the Middle East undergoes a bourgeois democratic revolution and Arab grievances can find outlets within democratic processes. Read Bush's Guild Hall speech: it is a fairly candid statement of that, and as close to a retraction and apology for US foreign policy in the region for the last forty years. (Of course, like you, I would like to see the criminals who enacted that policy - Henry Kissinger at the forefront, but also Bush's own father and countless others - tried. We should keep arguing for that, forlorn though it may be; but that should not blind us to other positive developments). Of course there is a danger in taking what politicians with an abysmal history of lying say at face value. We will have ample opportunity to see if Bush is this time telling the truth. On a separate but related point, you say: "what 'we' need [if we are to justify any war on humanitarian grounds] is a credible track record of compassionate, humanitarian intervention." I believe that we are developing that track-record. The Kosovo war - which you see as part of a devilish plot - would be my first example, but since that is contentious, let us leave it aside. Let's look at Sierra Leone. Noam Chomsky admitted to me at a New Statesman lunch that this was 'probably' a sincere humanitarian intervention, although he did add, "that's probably because I haven't looked into it too closely." He hasn't looked into it, I fear, because he suspects that if he did it would displease his fan base and undermine his thesis that Western powers invariably (as opposed to often, as I believe) act in line with a rapacious imperialism. Sierra Leone was - to summarise crudely, albeit in a way that nobody to my knowledge disputes - a desperately poor country whose democracy was about to be liquidated by a gang of hand-chopping thugs. Only intervention from the British army prevented it descending into civil war, with all the attendant human miseries. Britain had no strategic or financial interest in that devastated country. Blair did it for the same reason he has dedicated so much energy to the Northern Ireland peace process: because he believed it would make the world a better place. Is this not humanitarian intervention? And if you concede that Blair can act in a humanitarian way at least once, doesn't that undermine your position that his government is obviously reprehensible in everything it does? Does it undermine your hero Harold Pinter, who bizarrely claimed on the Today programme that Blair bombed Kosovo because "he enjoys killing children"? Onto another point. You ask why I did not agitate for the ending of sanctions, a course that the Iraqi people clearly wanted throughout the nineties: a proper and important question. As I explained in my earlier message, the primary responsibility for the deaths caused by sanctions lie with Saddam Hussein, because the same sanctions did not cause anything like the same number of deaths in Northern Iraq, where Saddam's power (mercifully) did not extend. However, my position was simple, and it was firmly opposed to sanctions. Sanctions should not have been implemented, because the whole policy of 'containment' - locking a dictator in a box along with the Iraqi people, where he could merrily butcher them - was heinous. Your alternative to sanctions was to leave Saddam in place and hope that the battered, tyrannised Iraqi people could somehow find a way to break the lock of a modern totalitarian state and overthrow him. I believe that this course would have resulted in far, far more deaths than the current invasion: look at how many people were slaughtered in just one uprising, in 1991. My alternative to sanctions was regime change. We both wanted them to end; it was only our tactics that differed. There is a wider disagreement between us concerning the attitude towards power that we on the left should adopt. You seem to believe - I hope this is a fair pr�cis - that the holders of power in our world, even in advanced democracies (which are mere husks of democracy in your telling), are depraved perpetrators of genocide and mass murder, utterly contemptible and beyond redemption. The only possible course decent people can adopt is to smash this power structure and begin the long course of building a new one. To engage those with power, to try to make it more decent and to coax it to do good things, is, at best, a fool's errand, and at worst an attempt to humanise a monster. The only decent thing that can be done with power as it is currently constituted is to oppose it entirely and to agitate for a better world. I have wrestled with this view. I do not want to spend my life putting a humanitarian veneer on horrendous policies, and there are days - usually when Donald Rumsfeld gives a press conference - when I wonder if that is what I am doing, and whether you are right. That is why I welcome your alert, even though it obviously isn't pleasant to be harshly criticised: anybody with a conscience should have to examine their relationship to power, and justify themselves. My own attitude to power is that we should formulate our political philosophies independently, and support governments when they accord with them and oppose them when they do not. I hope you will accept that this is what I try to do. Whether or not George Bush was in favour of overthrowing Saddam, I was on the side of the Iraqi people, backing the end of his tyranny. Whether or not Tony Blair is in favour of gay rights (mercifully, he is), rights for refugees (appallingly, he most certainly is not), I hold to my independent position. Whatever Bush and Blair say, I will support (in whatever pathetically small way I can through my column) the people of Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea and (yes) Uzbekistan against the tyrants who repress them. If Bush and Blair act to end their tyrannies - which would require a very substantial reversal when it comes to Uzbekistan - then I will welcome them. I can see why you are tempted to see any support for the recent war as cow-towing to power. Bluntly, in the case of many journalists, it was. Establishment arse-lickers like William Rees-Mogg (who wrote a preposterous piece in the Times the other day about how America "always" supports democracies) like the Downing Street invites and the places on corporate boards. But can't you see there is a substantial difference between the Rees-Moggs, who suddenly discover a concern for Iraqi democracy when it is convenient, and people like Nick Cohen and Christopher Hitchens, who were in favour of the overthrow of Saddam long before any powerful person thought it prudent, or for that matter David Aaronovitch, who was advocating an invasion when the idea seemed preposterous years ago? Our positions must be independent of those with power. I fear that those of your heroes John Pilger and Noam Chomsky is determined by power just as simplistically as the likes of Rees-Mogg, because where he will always snap into line with the US government, they will oppose it, not matter what it does. So Pilger heroically backed the East Timorese liberation movement for decades, but then then, when the US very belatedly changed its policy and Pilger's East Timorese friends thanked the heavens, he opposed that too! (I recommend Francis Wheen's excellent forthcoming book for documentation of all this, along with clear accounts of Noam Chomsky's horrifying blindness to the genocide in Cambodia). So: no Rees-Mogg line in defence of power, no Pilger line opposed to it; independent principles, which we hold those with power to. Sierra Leone is evidence that great good can happen within existing power-structures. If your apparent position - oppose all that the existing power structure does - had been adopted in Sierra Leone, we would have been lobbying in effect for the liquidation of a very fragile African democracy and its descent into becoming a failed state, with many horrific deaths. That is not a political position I am comfortable with. If we wait for the existing power-structures of the world to be torn down before we advocate any positive action, there will be an awful lot more countries like Sierra Leone ripped to shreds before we're done. Anyway, I have written far more than I intended, and my tissues have turned into a soggy mush that cannot absorb any more mucus no matter how hard I try, so I'll leave this here until your response, if that's okay. Hope you are well, Yours sincerely, Johann ________________________________________________________________ Dear Johann Even by the standard of the responses we've received from mainstream journalists your arguments are remarkable. You write, accurately, that your answer to the question of when US foreign policy in the Middle East became guided by "enlightened self-interest" was "somewhat cursory". You explain: "I think there is a growing realisation among US elites since September 11th that the policy of propping up tyrannies in the Middle East has led to disaster for America." The oil companies, arms manufacturers, indeed much of corporate America, might have something to say about that. No matter, let's take a look at your evidence. But what is so remarkable is that there is none - your non-cursory evidence supporting this extraordinary claim consists, quite literally, of a speech by George Bush at the Guild Hall! You do add that on "a separate but related point" there is a growing track-record of humanitarian intervention, as indicated by the actions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone (we'll return to these, and your gross misrepresentation of Chomsky's position below). But as these took place in 1999 and 2000, respectively, they of course cannot support your non-cursory explanation relating to September 11, which thus continues to rely on one speech by Bush. Your comment on how America understands it "will only become safe if the Middle East undergoes a bourgeois democratic revolution" reeks of the unthinking arrogance of so many media commentators - of course the United States should be supported in asserting its moral and legal right to promote "democratic revolution" wherever it pleases. Let the world's lone superpower overturn whichever government it chooses through mass violence out of - what else? - "self-defence". The US writer Edward Herman has been studying US foreign policy in great depth and with great intelligence for decades. We thought it would be interesting to see what he made of your argument. This was his response: "[Hari's] suggestion that US policy in the Middle East is geared to making America 'safe' is comical - did he swallow the notion that Saddam, with or without WMD, could pose a real security threat to the US? If safety is not the criterion, how about domination of oil and control and projection of power so openly announced by the Bush team in 1992 and later? Also the protection of Sharon and ethnic cleansing in Palestine. I like his phrase 'only if Arab grievances can find outlets within democratic processes'! No suggestion that they might have grievances from US supported massive ethnic cleansing in favor of settlers, which is so god-damned obvious as a grievance and crime." (Email to Media Lens, November 29, 2003) You write: "Of course there is a danger in taking what politicians with an abysmal history of lying say at face value. We will have ample opportunity to see if Bush is this time telling the truth." There is indeed a danger - the tens of thousands of Iraqi dead from the latest war you supported will +not+ have ample opportunity to see if Bush is telling the truth. The idea that, based on zero evidence, we should sit back while Bush wages war around the world and see if "this time", at last, great power is finally telling the truth is too absurd even to discuss. While you are waiting and seeing, even establishment foreign policy analysts like Samuel Huntington are warning that "America's imperial ambition" is a threat to everyone, the United States included (Foreign Affairs, March-April, 1999). Robert Jervis also writes in Foreign Affairs of how the Bush administration has one aim: "unilateral world domination through absolute military superiority". (Foreign Affairs, July-August, 2001) You say that the war on Iraq is part of a new humanitarian trend rooted in Bush's recognition that "we should not tolerate oppression for the sake of stability". And yet UN resolution 1441, used by the Bush administration to prepare the way for war, was rammed through the Security Council by senior US officials whose job was "to urge leaders to vote with the United States on Iraq or risk 'paying a heavy price'." (Dafna Linzer, Boston Globe, February 24, 2003), with the fate of Yemen after the 1991 Gulf War doubtless on everyone's minds. Noam Chomsky makes the obvious point: "The support is in fact submission; signers understood what the alternative would be. In systems of law that are intended to be taken seriously, coerced acquiescence is invalid. In international affairs, however, it is honoured as diplomacy." (Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, Routledge, 2003, p.36) You assert that we see the Kosovo war "as part of a devilish plot". This, again, hardly merits comment. You write: "Noam Chomsky admitted to me at a New Statesman lunch that this was 'probably' a sincere humanitarian intervention, although he did add, 'that's probably because I haven't looked into it too closely.' He hasn't looked into it, I fear, because he suspects that if he did it would displease his fan base and undermine his thesis that Western powers invariably (as opposed to often, as I believe) act in line with a rapacious imperialism." Your first sentence struck us as deeply implausible. Chomsky has repeatedly stated that he believes it is quite possible that there has not in all history been an example of humanitarian state intervention. We suspected he was trying to make a typically honest point to you about the need to actually study issues rather than rushing to judgement. We asked Chomsky to clarify his position. This was his response: "I have no idea whether I met him at the lunch, but I certainly didn't 'admit' anything of the sort. Rather, I stated that Britain in Sierra Leone might be an authentic example of humanitarian intervention. And there was no 'although'; another flight of the Hari imagination. Rather, I stated that I hadn't looked into it more closely. The reasons are not his silly inventions -- which tell us a lot about him; more below -- but rather a moral truism, that I have repeated to the point of boredom, and did again at the lunch: a person is responsible for the anticipated consequences of his or her own acts, and if capable if comprehending moral truisms, will therefore focus finite energy and attention on them -- +focus+, which does not mean, as the subservient intellectuals like to pretend, keep to them exclusively. "Of course, I would not expect him to understand the moral truism that I repeated, once again, at the lunch. Nor will he ever understand it, I suppose, any more than it could be understood by his Stalinist counterparts. As anyone familiar with Russia in the old days knows, the loyal commissars could never understand -- or at least pretended not to understand -- why Soviet dissidents concentrated on the actions of Russia, not someone else's. And their Western mimics, like Hari, cannot understand why I concentrate on actions of the US, and he should concentrate on actions of England. Of course, I don't suggest a comparison. He is far more depraved than his models, who could at least plead fear for their conformity to power, and who had far less responsibility for the actions of their states than he and I have -- REPEAT, FAR LESS for obvious reasons, a deeply significant fact, but another one that he will never comprehend, I presume. "Those who do understand moral truisms and elementary facts will understand at once why, in a life with finite time and energy, I wouldn't undertake the kind of research project about Britain in Sierra Leone than I do about issues for which I share responsibility, which I can influence, and which therefore should take priority. That would be true even if I had not again explained the obvious, in monosyllables, at that lunch. The fact that he would resort to these idiotic fabrications tells us a lot about him; even more, perhaps, than his apparent utter inability to comprehend moral truisms." (Email to Media Lens, November 29, 2003) Your response to these comments on your website is revealing: "I think that rant speaks for itself really." (www.johannhari.com) Your suggestion that someone as honest and rational as Chomsky would not look too closely at an issue because it might "displease his fan base and undermine his thesis" reveals your ignorance of his work. The whole point about Chomsky is that he focuses on precisely the presumed strongest examples testing his arguments - such as the idea that Watergate demonstrates the independence of the press, that the Kosovo intervention indicates a "new humanitarianism" - to show the true scale of state-corporate lying and deceit. You say of Britain's intervention in Sierra Leone: "Blair did it for the same reason he has dedicated so much energy to the Northern Ireland peace process: because he believed it would make the world a better place. Is this not humanitarian intervention?" Again, naturally, no evidence is required - it's enough just to say it. British historian Mark Curtis has unearthed remarkable evidence in released government documents that reveal the British motivation for interventions in the Third World since 1945. His work - in particular The Ambiguities Of Power (Zed Books, 1995) and Web Of Deceit (Vintage, 2003) - are must-read books. We asked Curtis what he thought of your analysis of the interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone: "I have looked through the formerly secret government files on numerous past British military interventions and if there is one thing that is clear, it is that the publicly stated reasons for intervention are never the real ones. In the case of British Guiana in 1953, for example, when British troops were sent to remove a democratically-elected government, the government told Parliament it was intervening to stop the Guianan government acting as a stooge of Moscow; the files reveal, however, that British planners were really concerned about the Guianan government threatening British business interests. In Malaya in the 1950s, the official reasons for intervention - repeated for a decade - were to prevent "communism terrorism"; the files, however, show that planners saw the war primarily as "in defence of [the] rubber industry", which British business interests effectively controlled. These are just two examples. "Coming closer to the Blair government and Sierra Leone, it should be remembered that the intervention took place only a few months after the bombing of Yugoslavia. This was again trumpeted - with the support of the entire mainstream media - as an humanitarian intervention to save the lives of thousands of Kosovans. Yet the record makes clear that it was following the NATO bombing that the worst humanitarian catastrophe ensued; before, human rights abuses were horrific, certainly, but on far lower scale than the Foreign Office was putting out, and indeed in the context of a civil war between the Belgrade government and the KLA. Only when the NATO bombing started were huge numbers of people pushed over the borders. "This is not to excuse Milosevic for gross horrors; it is simply to state the facts. And indeed, Blair and Clinton stated quite openly what is a more plausible reason for their bombing than humanitarian intervention - the "credibility" of NATO. That, around the 50th anniversary of NATO, the US and UK could not let Milosevic undermine the Alliance. I also think other factors were at play - such as forcing Milosevic's removal at a time when NATO and the EU wanted to expand eastwards. "On Sierra Leone, the safest thing to say is that when we see the declassified files in 30 years, I suggest we will see a different story than that spun by Blair's propagandists and their allies in the mainstream media. If we look for plausible reasons for the intervention, the immediate one is the restoration of a pro-British government, which had of course been overthrown. This followed, it should be remembered, the coup in neighbouring Gambia, which also overthrew a very long-standing British ally, virtually a puppet. The major country in the region is of course Nigeria. I am just looking through the declassified files on the civil war there in the late 1960s - they reveal very clearly the UK's support for the Lagos government and the primacy of British oil interests, which dictated British then, and we can assume also now. "This is the UK's prize in the region, along with the stability needing to be provided by pro-British governments. This is also in the context of ongoing rivalry between France and the UK in the region. I think London was worried that the instability/conflict in the area, based as they see it around Liberia, was threatening pro-British governments, the wider British role in the region and possibly Nigeria itself. "I also think an additional factor, related to this, was the need to demonstrate British power in this region - to show that it was still capable of defending its interests through military force, a similar issue, indeed, to 'credibility'. This is also similar to some of France's concerns in the region. This is not to say that the intervention has not had some benign effects - the opposition RUF were clearly entirely gruesome. But to argue that humanitarian reasons were primary in deciding Whitehall to act is another thing altogether. "Nigeria is a good example of how propping up favoured governments in the region works against West Africans interests - British oil companies and Nigerian elites have been bleeding ordinary Nigerians dry for decades. They have seen hardly any of the benefits of oil revenues and many have become poorer. We should not expect a pro-British government in Sierra Leone to deliver benefits for people over the long term; this would simply be defying history. "It is typical that the mainstream media takes at face value, and accepts, the governments arguments for intervention in Sierra Leone, as elsewhere - then, discussion merely takes place around whether the government is promoting the right tactics to achieve its noble purposes, based on its own propaganda. In the light of what is publicly known about the government's propaganda strategy on Iraq, this role of the media is really remarkable, a tremendous elite achievement in democratic society." (Email to Media Lens, December 2, 2003) It's important that we add Chomsky's response to your reference to his "horrifying blindness to the genocide in Cambodia". We can only imagine that you have not read Chomsky and Herman's work on the issue - particularly The Political Economy of Human Rights, Volumes 1 and 2 (South End Press, 1979), or the responses to it, all of which have been comprehensively rebutted. Chomsky writes: "Very interesting. Neither he [Hari], nor anyone, has found even a misplaced comma in what Ed [Herman] and I wrote about Cambodia (I wrote nothing relevant of my own), which of course bitterly and prominently condemned the atrocities, suggested that US intelligence was probably the most reliable source (as proved to be the case in retrospect; we were probably the only ones to cite them), but argued that one should try to tell the truth about the horrifying atrocities, not concoct lies of a kind that would have made Stalin and Goebbels gasp -- which is no exaggeration. "As noted, not the slightest error, or hint of an error, has ever been unearthed. Ask Hari to produce one, instead of just following his crowd in the obligatory tantrum. The tantrum is extremely revealing. We were challenging the right to lie in service to the holy state, and that is intolerable. Hence the reactions in which Hari joins, possibly in total ignorance in his case, just repeating what he's heard at some dinner party. "There is another point, which takes the intelligence of a ten-year old to understand, so I rarely bother with it. In our two volumes, Ed and I were comparing the reaction to atrocities, depending on the source and the way domestic power wanted them to be perceived. Our two prime examples were East Timor and Cambodia, a very good test case as anyone familiar with the facts is aware, and as we showed in detail. We described the atrocities as comparable in scale and character, as was true (bending over backwards to give the benefit of the doubt to the US-UK and their educated classes). "The prime difference was that in one case the US-UK bore direct responsibility, and were in fact carrying forward their decisive support for the crimes at the very moment we wrote, while in the other case the crimes could be blamed on an official enemy and could also be exploited to justify further US-UK crimes (as they were, as we also have documented). The difference in treatment was dramatic. Massive lying in both cases, but in opposite directions, going well beyond what we predicted. "The revelation of the subservience of intellectuals to power in the case of Cambodia has elicited a huge mountain of tantrums (to which Hari adds his toothpick) -- though, as noted, not a particle of evidence or argument to support any of the hysterical charges, just more lying (as we've also reviewed). The chapter on East Timor has almost never been mentioned, though by any moral standards it was vastly more important, since what we revealed there were ongoing crimes, for which we share enormous responsibility. You might check, for example, to see what Hari wrote about the fact that his hands are dripping with blood of Timorese, right up to late September 1999, and what he has written about the comparable crimes of the official enemy. That would tell us a lot about whether the comparison to Stalinist commissars is fair -- to the commissars. "Here's the point of logic, admittedly beyond the capacity of deeply indoctrinated Western intellectuals to understand. We described the two crimes as comparable. Therefore, those who claim (like Hari) that we were downplaying the crimes of Pol Pot are themselves downplaying their own crimes in East Timor. That's elementary logic. And the conclusion is also obvious. To deny one's own ongoing crimes is vastly more disgraceful than denying the crimes of someone else. Hence Hari is, once again, declaring that he falls well below the Stalinist commissars he seems determined to mimic. Elementary logic suffices to demonstrate that. Note that this would be true even if we were downplaying Pol Pot's crimes, which is a pure lie, as he would discover if he sought to try the experiment of literacy instead of repeating gossip he's heard somewhere." Johann, it is reasonable for you to imagine that you can repeat fact-free establishment propaganda - including the usual smears - in the Independent and come away with your credibility intact. It is a big mistake, however, to expect the same outcome in media where evidence, consistency and rationality are deemed important. Best wishes David Edwards and David Cromwell Hari has since responded a third time. We will not be responding to this email. It is available at the Media Lens website www.medialens.org under 'latest', and also at www.johannhari.com |
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r I can't understand how people would think such a thing could ever happen over a weekend?  |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z I have yet to hear a single valid point from you. |
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r Me thinks you're reading a little too much into a simple question. There's nothing between the lines with that question which still stands...why isn't it closed? |
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In the same period, reporter Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention: "Some of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men ... . The women were passing messages saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened.' "Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out." |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z Here's a thread started by Opus: tranceaddict Forums > Other > Political Discussion / Debate > Abu Ghraib just won't go away In my last post when you said I got personal and called you ignorant/biased, well, this is exactly why. Now stfu about US innocence. |
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r and where exactly did I say the US was innocent? |
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| Originally posted by Shakka or any other regimes that are openly hostile towards us or who blatantly violate human rights.
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r Whitewashing the question regarding Guantanamo with Abu Ghraib and jumping back to personal opinion still doesn't answer the question. What relivance is Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo when I'm asking about Guantanamo? |
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r Or am I just supposed to stand back and listen to the *boom* *boom* *boom* of the anti-American base drum when I'm asking a specific question? |
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r Should I just accept that fact that you actually might not know? That's fine with me, just fess up and don't try and baffle me with bullshit and insult my intelligence. |
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r and where exactly did I say the US was innocent? |
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| Originally posted by Shakka or any other regimes that are openly hostile towards us or who blatantly violate human rights.
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r I won't think any less of you. In fact, it's much easier to read, "I don't know" than wasting time with piles of irrelavant cut and paste... |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z Don't we love being hypocritical. The US guilty of this itself on several occasions. And to address your point about torture/sexual abuse earlier (which is also related to my previous statement), boy don't you have a selective memory. And what about the prisoners in Guantanamo and prisoners transferred to other parts of the world were the US can conduct brutal torture against people who they have no proof of guilt against. blah blah blah |
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r ... why wasn't it closed down then? |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z That has nothing to do with the point I made earlier, and in no way invalidates it. |
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r Me thinks you're reading a little too much into a simple question. There's nothing between the lines with that question which still stands...why isn't it closed? I know the arguments as to why it should be as much as anybody here (for the most part) but I haven't come across anything concrete as to why it's still actually open if so much is wrong with it. |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z I'll let you ponder over that one. I've already tried and apparently I can't get through to you. |
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r What relivance is Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo when I'm asking about Guantanamo? |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z What question about Guantanamo? |
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| Originally posted by Shakka You mean trying to establish democracy where there was only totalitarian dictatorship? |
@ Fir3start3r: To address the guantanamo question, "Why hasn't it been closed?" Well, I'm not sure. That's a good question. Sorry about the confusion. I forgot that I mentioned it in my post and I looked at it again realizing that I did (perhaps a little selective memory on my part? 
). But your question also wasn't specific enough:
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| Originally posted by Fir3strat3r why wasn't it closed down then? |
), I forgot that I mentioned it.| quote: |
| Originally posted by shaolin_Z Don't we love being hypocritical. The US guilty of this itself on several occasions. And to address your point about torture/sexual abuse earlier (which is also related to my previous statement), boy don't you have a selective memory. <--- This part refers to Abu Gharid | | v Note the use of a CONJUNCTION (And) as opposed to a discjuntion (or) And what about the prisoners in Guantanamo and prisoners transferred to other parts of the world were the US can conduct brutal torture against people who they have no proof of guilt against. |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z Don't we love being hypocritical. The US guilty of this itself on several occasions. And to address your point about torture/sexual abuse earlier (which is also related to my previous statement), boy don't you have a selective memory. And what about the prisoners in Guantanamo and prisoners transferred to other parts of the world were the US can conduct brutal torture against people who they have no proof of guilt against.
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That is so logical. | quote: |
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Guant�namo � an icon of lawlessness (1) 6 January 2005 AI Index: AMR 51/002/2005 Imagine this. Hundreds of US nationals are picked up around the world by a foreign government fighting a "war for national security". The government in question is reacting to evidence that a recent bombing on its territory which left thousands of civilians dead was instigated by a shadowy network based in the United States. The detainees, according to evidence the detaining power says it has but refuses to reveal, are in some way associated with this network. The detainees, a few of them children, are strapped, shackled and blindfolded, into transport planes. Some are forced to urinate and defecate on themselves during the long flights to an island military base. In this offshore prison camp they are held incommunicado in tiny cells, denied access to lawyers, relatives or the courts, and subjected to repeated interrogations and a punitive regime aimed at encouraging their "cooperation". A presidential order announces plans to try some of the detainees in front of executive bodies with the power to hand down death sentences against which there would be no right of appeal to any court. The months turn into years. Allegations of torture and ill-treatment of the US detainees emerge from the island base, as do reports of psychological deterioration and suicide attempts among the detainees. Interrogation teams are said to have access to the medical files of the detainees in order to help them locate individual weaknesses. The detaining power admits to having authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, isolation, hooding, sensory deprivation and the use of dogs to induce fear. Evidence mounts that these and other techniques have been more widely used than the authorities are willing to admit. It becomes known that the detaining power earlier discussed how its agents could avoid prosecution for torture and war crimes committed during interrogations in the "war for national security". Some detainees are released back to the USA, appearing to have had no or only very tenuous links to the shadowy network. At every turn, the detaining power continues to resist efforts to have the lawfulness of the hundreds of remaining detentions challenged in court. All the time, it continues to profess its commitment to the rule of law and human rights. Its words are increasingly recognized as empty rhetoric, but some other governments begin to imitate its practices, using the "war for national security" as a pretext for their own repressive conduct. Would the USA tolerate this treatment of its citizens by another government? Would the international community accept this threat to the rule of law and human rights? Surely not, and yet the USA continues to perpetrate just such abuses in the far from hypothetical Guant�namo Bay prison camp in Cuba, where almost 550 detainees of more than 30 nationalities remain detained without charge or trial. On 11 January 2005, the Guant�namo prison will enter its fourth year. In its more than 1,000 days of executive detentions, Guant�namo has become a symbol of a government�s attempt to put itself above the law. The example it sets is of a world where basic human rights are negotiable rather than universal. Such a world, although built in the name of national security, is dangerous to us all. The question of lawfulness in relation to Guant�namo can be divided into four categories: the legal limbo of the detainees; their treatment and conditions; secrecy and the suffering of family members; and the planned trials by military commission. The continuing legal limbo More than six months after the US Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts can hear appeals from the Guant�namo detainees, it is not because of the slowness of the legal system that hundreds remain held without charge or trial and virtually incommunicado in the naval base. It is the result of a government seeking to drain the Supreme Court ruling of any real meaning and aiming to keep any review of detentions as far from a judicial process as possible. The US administration responded to the June 2004 decision by establishing the Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT), panels of three military officers whose sole aim is to confirm or reject each detainee�s status as a so-called "enemy combatant". This is neither a court of law, nor the "competent tribunal" required by the Third Geneva Convention. Unlike the latter which presumes a detainee to be a prisoner of war until proved otherwise, the CSRT process places the burden on the detainee to disprove his "enemy combatant" status. The detainee does not have access to legal counsel or to secret evidence. Many have boycotted the CSRT process, and to date only two have been released as a result of it, while 230 have been confirmed as "enemy combatants". Each detainee confirmed as an "enemy combatant" will also have an annual review of his case by an Administrative Review Board (ARB) to assess whether he "continues to pose a threat to the United States or its allies, or whether there are other factors bearing upon the need for continued detention". In December 2004 the Pentagon announced that it had conducted its first ARB. Again, detainees have no access to lawyers or to secret evidence for this administrative review. Evidence extracted under torture or other coercion could be admitted by either body. Also in December, six months after the US Supreme Court�s ruling, the government notified the detainees that they can file habeas corpus petitions in federal court. It even gave them the address of a US District Court in which to file them. In this Kafkaesque world of Guant�namo, however, the government has argued to that very same court that the detainees have no basis in constitutional or international law on which to challenge the lawfulness of their detentions. It maintains that review by the Combatant Status Review Tribunal and the Administrative Review Board is more than sufficient due process. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the detainees have still not had access to lawyers. In Amnesty International�s view, international human rights law applies to all the Guant�namo detainees, and as such each and every one of them has the right to full judicial review of his detention and to release if that detention is unlawful � a basic protection against arbitrary arrest, torture and "disappearance". This was always the case for those numerous detainees who were picked up outside the international armed conflict in Afghanistan. However, even those captured in that war � who should have been treated as prisoners of war until a competent tribunal determined otherwise (2) � are now also covered by human rights law because the international conflict in Afghanistan ended more than two years ago and their treatment by the USA remained unchanged by that fact. When the conflict ended, presumed prisoners of war were required to be released or charged and brought to fair trial. Although the administration claims that it is holding the detainees under the laws of war, it has refused to apply those laws as it should have. Previously secret government documents now tell us that the administration refused to apply the Geneva Conventions in order to free up US interrogators and make their prosecution for war crimes less likely. There is little sign of an apologetic mood within the administration. Indeed, one of the architects of this policy, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, has been nominated by President Bush to the post of Attorney General. In his draft statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee for the nomination hearing on 6 January 2005, Alberto Gonzales says that he has a "deep and abiding commitment to the rule of law". He must be held to that pledge. Treatment of the detainees The very conditions in which the detainees are held � harsh, isolating and indefinite � can in themselves amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. There is much additional evidence that numerous detainees in Guant�namo � as well as in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere � have been subjected to direct torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment during the interrogation or detention process. This situation could be seen as an inevitable outcome where a government believes there are people "who are not legally entitled" to humane treatment, as President Bush suggested in a previously secret memorandum, dated 7 February 2002, on "war on terror" detention policy. Yet no detainee anywhere, not even "killers" or "bad people", as the President has described those held without charge or trial in Guant�namo, can ever fall outside the prohibition on torture and ill-treatment. To suggest otherwise, as this central policy memorandum does, points to a serious gap in a government�s understanding of international law and indicates that it views human rights as privileges that can be granted, and therefore taken away, by the state.(3) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, echoing President Bush, has described Guant�namo detainee Mohammed al-Kahtani as "a very bad person". A harsh interrogation plan was approved for this Saudi national. According to recent revelations, Mohammed al-Kahtani was put on a plane, blindfolded in conditions of sensory deprivation, and made to believe that he was being flown to the Middle East. After several hours in the air, the plane returned to Guant�namo and Mohammed al-Kahtani was allegedly put in an isolation cell and subjected to harsh interrogations conducted by people he was encouraged to believe were Egyptian security agents. (4) This is an interrogation technique known in the USA as "false flag" and was one of several methods authorized by Secretary Rumsfeld in April 2003. Another technique promoted by the Pentagon�s April 2003 Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism is "threatening to transfer to a 3rd country where subject is likely to fear he would be tortured or killed". In February 2002, following President Bush�s decision to reject the application of the Geneva Conventions to those held in Guant�namo, the White House gave assurances that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) would be able to visit all detainees in private (5). The ICRC was denied access to Mohammed al-Kahtani during the period of interrogations described above. The ICRC protested such denial of access to a number of detainees in meetings with the Guant�namo authorities in late 2003. Four months later, in a meeting on 2 February 2004, the ICRC was informed that it could still not see one of the detainees "because of military necessity" (6). The detainee in question, reported to be Moroccan national Abdullah Tabarak, was transferred to Morocco in August 2004. In an interview last month, he alleged that he had been tortured and ill-treated in US custody. In Guant�namo, he said that he had been beaten, given forcible injections, and held in a dark cell which has left him with eyesight problems. He said that he suffers from other physical ailments as a result of his confinement, as well as insomnia and nightmares (7). It is more than a year since the ICRC made public its concern about the serious deterioration the detention regime was having on the psychological health of the detainees. In November it emerged that it had also protested more direct torture and ill-treatment, adding yet more weight to the allegations of released detainees and others. In heavily redacted documents released to the American Civil Liberties Union following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed a year earlier, FBI agents have referred to "torture techniques" and "highly aggressive interrogation techniques" being used in Guant�namo. In one email, an FBI agent sends a colleague "an outline of coercive techniques in the military�s interviewing tool kit". Of the military�s interrogation plan for one particular detainee, the sender writes: "You won�t believe it!" Another FBI agent reported seeing a detainee in Guant�namo "sitting on the floor of the interview room with an Israeli flag draped around him, loud music being played and a strobe light flashing". Another tells of having witnessed the use of a dog to intimidate a Guant�namo detainee, who was also subjected to three months of isolation in a cell with 24-hour illumination. The detainee was later witnessed to be displaying conduct "consistent with extreme psychological trauma". In an email, another FBI agent wrote: "Here is a brief summary of what I observed at GTMO. On a couple of occassions (sic), I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food, or water. Most times they had urinated or defacated (sic) on themselves and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more. On one occassion (sic), the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. When I asked the [military police guards] what was going on, I was told that interrogators from the day prior had ordered this treatment, and the detainee was not to be moved. On another occassion (sic), the A/C had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room probably well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night. On another occassion (sic), not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor." Such evidence adds weight to earlier allegations made by released detainees. For example, in July 2004, Swedish national Mehdi Ghezali recalled to Amnesty International how: "One prisoner had removed his ID-strap that the prisoners were forced to wear around their wrist. As punishment, the guards shackled both his hands and feet in his cell for more than 10 hours. During this time, the prisoner was not given any food and was not allowed to go to the toilet, although he had to. He could not hold himself. It was very degrading for him." Mehdi Ghezali also described to Amnesty International the pain of "short shackling", temperature manipulation, and the use of loud noise and music during interrogations. He said that he was subjected to sleep deprivation, and that Australian detainee Mamdouh Habib had been subjected to sleep deprivation at the end of which "there was blood coming from both his nose and ears." In an affidavit recently made public, another Australian national David Hicks alleges that he has been "deprived of sleep as a matter of policy" and that he and other detainees have been subjected to other forms of torture and ill-treatment in US custody. UK national Moazzam Begg was held in isolation for 600 days. The administration has yet to denounce such interrogation techniques or detention conditions. In similar vein, Amnesty International has still not received a substantive response from the US authorities to the allegation that a Chinese delegation visited Guant�namo in September 2002 and participated in interrogations of ethnic Uighurs held there. An inside source told the organization that during this time, the detainees were subjected to intimidation and threats, and other torture or ill-treatment, some of it on the instruction of the Chinese delegation. Other detainees, the source has informed Amnesty International, were subjected to sexual humiliation during interrogations. A former interrogator recently confirmed that female interrogators had sexually harassed detainees (8). The administration has continued with its assurances that all detainees in US custody are treated humanely and all allegations of abuse investigated. The evidence is mounting that this is simply false. "They don�t use dogs in Guant�namo Bay during the interrogation process and never did", the Senate Armed Services Committee was told in September 2004 (9). The former commander of Guant�namo, Major General Geoffrey Miller, testified on oath that dogs were never used to intimidate detainees at the base. Yet, now FBI agents have added to the allegations of detainees that dogs have been used. For example, FBI agents have reported witnessing sleep deprivation and "the utilization of loud music/bright lights/growling dogs" in interrogations at Guant�namo. According to a leaked military document, the ICRC raised allegations in a meeting with the Guant�namo authorities in October 2003 that interrogators at the base had had access to the medical files of detainees, that the files were "being used by interrogators to gain information in developing an interrogation plan", and "that there is a link between the interrogation team and the medical team". Major General Miller rejected the allegations (10). However, in a new article published in The New England Medical Journal of Medicine, two medical doctors write that their own research into "medical involvement in military intelligence gathering in Iraq and Guant�namo Bay has revealed a more troublesome picture": "Not only did caregivers pass health information to military intelligence personnel; physicians assisted in the design of interrogation strategies, including sleep deprivation and other coercive methods tailored to detainees� medical conditions. Medical personnel also coached interrogators on questioning technique� The conclusion that doctors participated in torture is premature, but there is probable cause for suspecting it. Follow-up investigation is essential�" (11). On 5 January 2005, US Southern Command announced that it would carry out an internal investigation into the FBI allegations of abuses (12). In Amnesty International�s view, more is needed. There is a need for a full independent commission of inquiry into the USA�s detentions in Guant�namo and elsewhere. Such a commission, called for by Amnesty International since May 2004, must have the power to investigate the role of officials in the highest echelons of government, including in the White House and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and must cover all aspects of the USA�s "war on terror" detention and interrogation policy and practices, in all locations. Secrecy and imprecision as avenues for abuse and suffering The Pentagon refuses to give precise numbers of detainees held in Guant�namo. The concern is that this could allow secret detainee transfers to take place. In early 2004, for example, approximately seven detainees remained unaccounted for in the official announcements about transfers to and from Guant�namo (13). In the light of revelations about so-called "ghost detainees" in US custody in Iraq and the continued allegations of secret transfers between the USA and countries with records of torture, there is reason for deep concern in this regard. A legal motion filed in federal court in November 2004 and declassified on 5 January 2005, renews concern on the case of Australian detainee Mamdouh Habib. The motion begins: "In October, 2001, the Unites States military � in cooperation with the Pakistani and Egyptian Governments � rendered Mamdouh Habib to Egypt, knowing and intending he would be tortured Mr. Habib spent six months in Egyptian custody, where he was subjected to unspeakable brutality. Afterwards, Mr. Habib was returned to United States custody, travelling first to Bagram Air Force Base, then to the U.S. military facility at Kandahar, then to Guant�namo Bay, Cuba, where he has been held since May, 2002. Recently, undersigned counsel learned from press reports that the United States Government is negotiating with Egypt to render Mr. Habib back to that country, where he would once again be tortured." The motion seeks a restraining order to prevent the feared transfer of Mamdouh Habib to Egypt or the Egyptian authorities (14). The document details the alleged torture to which Mamdouh Habib was previously subjected in Egypt, including electric shocks, water torture, physical assaults, suspension from hooks, and threats with dogs. It gives details about how US agents were present at his interrogations in Pakistan after his arrest, and during his secret transfer to Egypt. The details echo those given by others who claim to have been subjected to such "rendition". For example, Amnesty International is still awaiting a reply to a letter it sent to the US authorities in August 2004 on the case of Khalid El Masri, a German national of Lebanese origin who alleges that he was secretly flown to incommunicado detention in Afghanistan from Macedonia in early 2004, and that US agents were present during interrogations in secret detention in Kabul (15). His claims that he was taken to a plane by agents dressed in black, that he had his clothes cut from him with scissors, and that he was made to wear a blue track suit, match the allegations raised in federal court about Mamdouh Habib�s previous transfer to Egypt with the involvement of US agents. Amnesty International has spoken to many relatives of Guant�namo detainees who themselves are in deep distress from the lack of transparency and information about their loved ones. In November 2004, for example, the sister and brother of Kuwaiti detainee Abdullah Al Kandari told the organization of how their parents "are not the same people they were three years ago" because of losing their son to the black hole of Guant�namo. Earlier in the year, the brother of Yemeni detainee Jamal Mar�i related how his mother has developed high blood pressure and sinks into bouts of depression from the strain of not knowing what is happening to the son she has not seen for more than three years. In other contexts, the suffering of the relatives of the "disappeared" has been found by the UN Human Rights Committee to amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Similar cruelty is inflicted upon the relatives of people held in indefinite virtual incommunicado detention without charge or trial. It is notable that numerous relatives of the Guant�namo detainees have referred to their loved one as having disappeared. Military commissions The fourth category of unlawfulness in relation to the Guant�namo concerns the US administration�s continuing efforts to bring selected detainees to trial by military commission. These bodies entirely lack independence from the executive. Set up to obtain convictions on lesser standards of evidence, they can admit secret or coerced testimony. Their verdicts cannot be appealed to any court. Only non-US nationals can be so tried, in violation of the prohibition on the discriminatory application of fair trial rights. Amnesty International had an observer at the recent pre-trial hearings for the first four detainees charged in preparation for trial by commission. Her observations confirmed the organization�s worst fears that this is a system unable to deliver a fair trial. The commission panel�s ignorance of the law and the disparity of resources allocated to prosecution and defence team in a process controlled by the executive, were particularly obvious. So too was the low quality of interpreting and translation standards � on several occasions the defence had to request that proceedings be halted because the quality of interpreting was so bad. The commission rejected the defence counsel�s attempt to bring in six expert witnesses to explain various aspects of international law and military law. The prosecution asserted that the only law that binds the panel is "commission law", a set of rules and orders developed in the US Department of Defense. It is shocking that people could face execution after such trials, which clearly fail to meet basic international standards. Commission proceedings were suspended in November 2004 after a federal judge concluded that those captured in Afghanistan should have been presumed to be prisoners of war, which precluded their trial by military commission. Even if they were found not to be POWs by a competent tribunal, the judge said, the commission rules allowing the use of secret evidence would still violate due process. The administration has appealed to a higher court arguing that the judge�s ruling "constitutes an extraordinary intrusion into the Executive�s power to conduct military operations". The outgoing Attorney General, presumably referring not only to this judge�s ruling, but also that of the Supreme Court in June, condemned what he characterized as a "profoundly disturbing trend" of "intrusive judicial oversight and second-guessing of presidential determinations". With the US administration showing disdain for its own courts, the international community faces an uphill task to persuade it to change course. The USA should be reminded not only of the various aspects of unlawfulness raised by the Guant�namo detentions, but that this regime also contravenes the USA�s National Security Strategy which proclaims that respect for human dignity and the rule of law is the route to security, as well as its National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, which asserts that a world in which such standards are embraced as the norm will be "the best antidote to the spread of terrorism". "This", the latter strategy concludes "is the world we must build today". Instead, the USA built a prison camp which has become an affront to human rights and the rule of law. The international community must redouble its efforts to bring this intolerable situation to an end. Endnotes (1) Amnesty International delivered a shorter version of this text at a hearing on the Lawfulness of Detentions by the United Sates in Guant�namo Bay held by the Council of Europe�s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights in Paris, France, on 17 December 2004. (2) Even the US Army�s interrogation Field Manual FM 34-52 of 1992 states that �Captured insurgents and other detained personnel whose status is not clear, such as suspected terrorists, are entitled to [Prisoner of War] protection until their precise status has been determined by competent authority�. (3) See USA: Human dignity denied: Torture and accountability in the �war on terror�, AI Index: AMR 51/145/2004, October 2004, http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR511452004. (4) Fresh details emerge on harsh methods at Guant�namo. New York Times, 1 January 2005. (5) Fact Sheet. Status of detainees at Guant�namo. The White House, 7 February 2002. (6) ICRC meeting, 2 February 2004. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-sr...emo02-02-04.pdf (7) Released Moroccan Guant�namo detainee tells Islamist paper of his �ordeal�. BBC, 30 December 2004. (8) Fresh details emerge on harsh methods at Guant�namo. New York Times, 1 January 2005. (9) Major General George Fay. Testimony to Senate Armed Services Committee, 9 September 2004. (10) See page 94 of Human dignity denied: Torture and accountability in the �war on terror�. (11) When doctors go to war. By M. Gregg Bloche and Jonathan H. Marks. The New England Medical Journal of Medicine, Volume 352:3-6, 6 January 2005, Number 1. (12) Southcom investigates abuse allegations at Guant�namo. United States Southern Command News Release, 5 January 2004. (13) See page 101-102 of Human dignity denied: Torture and accountability in the �war on terror�. (14) Habib v Bush. Petitioner�s memorandum of points and authorities in support of his application for injunctive relief. Civil Action No. O2-CV-1130 (CKK), in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. (15) See page 186 of Human dignity denied: Torture and accountability in the �war on terror�. |
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US 'erodes' global human rights A leading human rights group has criticised the US over the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay....... .....It also highlights the coercive interrogation techniques used on prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib jail. "Governments facing human rights pressure from the United States now find it easy to turn the tables," said Mr Roth. "Washington can't very well uphold principles that it violates itself." .... |
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r If Guantanamo is so bad, why isn't it closed?? |
This is a winner.
Stop spamming Shakka. You've done it before in the Israel/Pals thread. It's sarting to get really annoying.
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z Stop spamming Shakka. You've done it before in the Israel/Pals thread. It's sarting to get really annoying. |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z remain detained without charge or trial. |
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| Originally posted by Reverend_Trance Foreign nationals do NOT have any rights under the U.S. Constitution. They could stay there until the end of the world. A military tribunal reviews the cases of the prisoners and allows then to make appeals to the tribunal which investigates their claims. |
Now this isn't a case in guantanamo, but these guys are AMERICAN CITIZENS:
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The Other Face of the War on Terror By Brad Adams, published in Dawn The brothers Zain Afzal and Kashan Afzal, US citizens of Pakistani origin, were abducted from their home in Karachi on August 13 last year. They were released on April 22 this year, without having been charged. During eight months of illegal detention, they were allegedly tortured by Pakistani personnel to extract confessions of involvement in terrorist activities. During this period, FBI agents questioned the brothers on at least six occasions. The FBI agents, who did not intervene to end the torture, insisted that the Pakistani government comply with a court order to produce the men in court, or provide consular facilities normally offered to detained US citizens. They threatened the men with being sent to the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay if they did not confess to involvement in terrorism. Pakistan�s poor record on illegal detentions and torture, well-known to the United States, should have acted as a deterrent for the FBI. Instead, the FBI abetted the actions of the Pakistani personnel by participating in the interrogations. While the brothers were being detained, their mother and Zain Afzal�s wife attempted to lodge an abduction case with the local police. The police refused to register the case, informing them that �this was a matter involving the intelligence agencies.� The police finally registered the case on November 15, 2004, on the orders of the Sindh High Court. During habeas corpus hearings, filed by their mother, Pakistani authorities denied holding the two men. Zain Afzal�s wife made frequent public pleas for the brothers� release and approached the US embassy, but received no help. The 2004 US state department human rights report makes clear that embassies in Pakistan can meet their nationals in custody: �Foreign diplomats may meet prisoners when they appear in court and may meet citizens of their countries in prison visits.� Yet no such visits took place until the Human Rights Watch (HRW) intervened seven months after the brothers were abducted. When queried by the HRW about the status of the brothers and the role of the FBI, the US consul in Karachi in March replied: �We are aware of the reports indicating two American citizens are missing, or �disappeared� in Pakistan, and we are looking into them. Due to Privacy Act considerations, we are unable to provide additional information on these two individuals. The safety and security of Americans overseas is of paramount importance to us, and we continue to work both here and abroad to provide all possible assistance to our citizens. I refer you to the FBI for any information on their involvement.� While US officials say the safety and security of Americans overseas is paramount, it appears the US government did nothing to help the Afzal brothers until their cases were reported in the international press. The US knew exactly where the brothers were all along, while their family was terrified, not knowing whether they were dead or alive. This is profoundly wrong and should send a chill up the spine of every US citizen living overseas. Invoking the US Privacy Act to withhold information from a wife and mother about a husband and son who had been �disappeared� is Orwellian: the Privacy Act was adopted to protect the privacy of individuals, not to shield the state from answering questions about the whereabouts of those individuals when they have been �disappeared� by state authorities and when FBI agents are regularly meeting them. �Disappeared� persons would obviously not want the Privacy Act to stand in the way of allowing family members to know where they were. US authorities should be ashamed at the way they handled this case. Kashan Afzal and Zain Afzal were abducted between midnight and 2 a.m. on August 13, 2004, in a raid that involved at least 30 armed Pakistani personnel. Neighbours came out of their homes to see what was happening, but were ordered to go back inside. During the operation, the personnel specifically demanded to see the US passports and all other US government-issued identity papers held by the brothers. Once the papers were located, they handcuffed and hooded them and took them away in a convoy of jeeps and vans typically used by Pakistan�s intelligence agencies and police. The brothers told the HRW that approximately three months into their detention their captors returned their clothes and told them that they would be going home soon. Instead, they, along with scores of others, were blindfolded, shackled, handcuffed and made to board a plane and told they were being taken to Guantanamo Bay. But the plane landed less than two hours later in a place where the �guards all spoke Urdu.� Subsequent to the change of city, the brothers claim they were repeatedly interrogated by the FBI. �I was blindfolded and taken into another room. When my blindfold was removed I saw a Pakistani man in plain clothes and two white men who flashed FBI badges and said that they had come from the US to investigate me. They asked me my life history all over again. I told them everything. Then they showed me photographs and told me that the pictures were of Al Qaeda members.� ��Do you know them?�� they asked. I saw the photos and told them I recognized no one, knew nothing ... The FBI officer said, �We have been told you and your brother have Al Qaeda links.� This interrogation went on for three to four hours. I told the FBI that I was illegally detained and had been tortured. They said they would try to help but that all decisions were to be taken by Pakistani authorities and Pakistan was beyond their jurisdiction. About 7-10 days later, the same FBI officers and Pakistani officer showed me new pictures. I asked them that they had already held me and my brother for five months and how much longer did they intend to hold us? I told them I had never been involved in a criminal act. If you have any proof, then show it to me. Or at least tell me how long this will take. I asked to be presented in a court and to be given a lawyer. The FBI agents did not respond to the request for a lawyer or my demand to be presented in a court and charged. They did tell me that �we cannot say what your crime is and how long you will be held. But you are a terrorist and you could be taken to Cuba.� [In another session] I said if you think we are guilty of a crime please charge us in court or release us. I pointed out that my brother was very ill. They said �we are the court.�� The brothers claim they were released in Lahore and dumped at the airport but only after they were threatened to remain silent by their abductors. The abductors said �Your case is almost over� and �You will be released soon. ... But we will only release you on condition that you will never speak to the press or media or speak against us. Your well-being lies in silence otherwise you and your family will be in big trouble.� The brothers asked for their American passports and other ID papers and were told the documents would be delivered to them in Karachi. This happened on April 22. They have not received the passports and though they have requested the US consulate in Karachi to reissue the passports, they have had no response yet. The Human Rights Watch is of the view that the Pakistani authorities must return the US passports and other personal material confiscated from the two brothers when they were illegally detained. The United States embassy should issue new passports immediately upon request if the passports are not promptly returned. More importantly, the government of Pakistan must take immediate steps to end the practice of illegal arrest and detention of persons as part of the �war on terror� and also end the use of torture and other mistreatment. The use of secret detention facilities must cease immediately. The HRW has also called on the Bush administration to provide full information on its role in the Afzal case. Specifically, the US must clarify whether the Afzal brothers were held in Pakistani custody at the request of the United States, and state the policy of the US government when it knows or has reason to know that persons being questioned abroad are being tortured or subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The Convention against Torture, to which the United States is a party, prohibits �an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.� The war on terror cannot be won by resorting to illegal detentions and torture. It is time for the US to decide whether it will continue to be complicit in criminal activity in its fight against terrorism, or whether the rule of law will prevail. And if President Musharraf wants to convince the world that he is indeed an enlightened moderate, he needs to immediately order an end to such abusive practices. |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z Stop spamming Shakka. You've done it before in the Israel/Pals thread. It's sarting to get really annoying. |
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| Originally posted by Shakka This is a winner. |
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