#Seymour_Hersh on spies, state secrets, and the stories he doesn’t tell - Columbia Journalism Review
▻https://www.cjr.org/special_report/seymour-hersh-monday-interview.php
Bob Woodward once said his worst source was Kissinger because he never told the truth. Who was your worst source?
Oh, I wouldn’t tell you.
U.S. must release Abu Ghraib photos, judge says | Reuters
▻http://www.reuters.com/article/abughraib-photos-idUSL1N1F82JM
The U.S. Department of Defense must release a cache of photos showing how Army personnel treated detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison and other sites in Iraq and Afghanistan, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan said the release was proper because departing Defense Secretary Ash Carter failed to show why publishing the photos would endanger Americans deployed outside the United States.
Hellerstein’s decision is a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil and veterans rights groups whose lawsuit seeking the photos under the federal Freedom of Information Act began in 2004.
#abu_ghraib #torture #irak
Photos depicting abuse at Abu Ghraib began to emerge in 2004, with some detainees claiming to have endured physical and sexual abuse, electric shocks and mock executions.
The number of photos sought in the lawsuit has not been disclosed but has been estimated at roughly 2,000, according to the Congressional Record and court papers.
Comment les #Etats-Unis ont choisi la #torture sexuelle
▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/150117/comment-les-etats-unis-ont-choisi-la-torture-sexuelle
Pyramide d’hommes nus. Photo prise à la prison d’Abu Ghraib Au lendemain du 11-Septembre, le gouvernement Bush systématise le recours à la torture. Les prisonniers de la « guerre contre le terrorisme » seront privés de leur humanité, frappés, « waterboardés ». Mais pas seulement : ils seront aussi humiliés, violés et agressés sexuellement, selon des méthodes validées au plus haut niveau du pouvoir américain. Cette enquête est publiée dans le cadre de l’opération « #Zero_Impunity », contre l’impunité qui protège les auteurs de violences sexuelles en conflit armé.
#International #CIA #Libertés #USA
The ’War on Terrorism’ Just Keeps Making It Worse
▻http://www.unz.com/pcockburn/politicians-are-to-blame-for-terrorist-attacks-by-not-eliminating-isis
At such times, the media is at its self-righteous worst, whipping up hysteria and portraying horrifying but small-scale incidents as if they were existential threats. This has always been true, but 24/7 news coverage makes it worse as reporters run out of things to say and lose all sense of proportion. As the old American newspaper nostrum has it: “if it bleeds, it leads.”
But in over-reacting, governments and media play into the hands of the terrorists who want to create fear and demonstrate their strength, but whose greatest gains come when they provoke an exaggerated self-destructive response. 9/11 was the most successful terrorist attack in history, not just because it destroyed the Twin Towers but because it lured the Bush administration into invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Subsequently, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, rendition, torture and “targeted killings” (otherwise known as assassination campaigns), all justified by 9/11, have acted as recruiting sergeants for al-Qaeda type organisations.
The war on terror has failed more demonstrably than most wars: al-Qaeda numbered in the hundreds in 2001, but today – along with Isis – it has tens of thousands of fighters and supporters spread across dozens of countries.
The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب : Caesar’s pictures about Syria and Abu Ghraib
▻http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2015/03/caesars-pictures-about-syria-and-abu.html
Caesar’s pictures about Syria and Abu Ghraib
Let me explain the US government positions on pictures: the US government is fully in support releasing the gruesome pictures of the Caesar’s collection that allegedly show the images of victims of the Syrian regime but is categorically and firmly opposed to releasing pictures of Abu Ghraib. As for the US media? Pretty much in support of the US position.
(Caesar se présente comme un photographe ayant opéré - contre sa volonté bien entendu - dans les chambres de torture du régime syrien.)
Etat islamique, fruit de la politique de Washington, Bagdad et Damas (HRW) / Sputnik France - Actualités - Prises de Position - Radio
▻http://fr.sputniknews.com/international/20150129/1014180956.html
Selon HRW, l’Etat islamique tire ses origines de l’invasion américaine de l’Irak et des « mauvais traitements infligés aux détenus de la prison d’Abu Ghraib et d’autres centres de détention américains ».
« Le financement de groupes extrémistes par les pays du Golfe a également joué un rôle important. Les politiques sectaires des gouvernements irakien et syrien, ainsi que l’indifférence de la communauté internationale envers les violations flagrantes des droits de l’homme perpétrées par ces gouvernements ont constitué, elles aussi, un facteur substantiel », souligne le document.
Cela vient de la version française du site sputnik.com (signalé par De Defensa).
Paris Terrorist Was Radicalized by Bush’s Iraq War, Abu Ghraib Torture
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/paris-terrorist-was-radicalized-by-bushs-iraq-war-abu-ghraib-torture
Sharif and Said Kouashi, the two brothers for whom the French police are searching, were born in Paris of Algerian parents, Mokhtar et Freiha Méguireche, according to a profile published by Le...
2004: Hersh: Children sodomized at Abu Ghraib, on tape
▻http://www.salon.com/2004/07/15/hersh_7
Hersh gave a speech last week to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it. The speech was first reported in a New York Sun story last week, which was in turn posted on Jim Romenesko’s media blog, and now EdCone.com and other blogs are linking to the video. We transcribed the critical section here (it starts at about 1:31:00 into the ACLU video.) At the start of the transcript here, you can see how Hersh was struggling over what he should say:
“Debating about it, ummm … Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and 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. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”
2014: Classified Evidence: US Soldiers Raped Boys In Front Of Their Mothers
▻http://www.mintpressnews.com/classified-evidence-us-soldiers-raped-boys-in-front-of-their-mothers/200160
Ten years ago when the initial Abu Ghraib scandal was in the news, the Guardian published the testimony of an Abu Ghraib detainee who allegedly witnessed one of these brutal attacks.
Former detainee Kasim Hilas said in their testimony that:
“I saw [name blacked out] fucking a kid, his age would be about 15-18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [blacked out], who was wearing the military uniform putting his dick in the little kid’s ass, I couldn’t see the face of the kid because his face wasn’t in front of the door. And the female soldier was taking pictures.”
Now, over a decade later the evidence of these events are beginning to surface, but the Department of Defense is still doing their best to keep it under the radar. That is why now more than ever, it is important to keep the pressure on and force the release of this evidence, while the torture report is fresh in the minds of the general population.
What is it like to be a refugee in #Germany?
▻http://africasacountry.com/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-refugee-in-germany
“Gitmo in Germany?” and “German Abu Ghraib” were two of the headlines across news wires in late September after photos and a video documenting the abuse of Algerian asylum seekers by security officers in an asylum center had circulated. The photo shows a guard standing next to an asylum seeker who is lying on the floor with his hands tied […]
Abu Ghraib Torture Victims Ordered To Pay U.S. Contractor’s Legal Fees
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/abu-ghraib-iraq_n_3876177.html
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered four Iraqis who were imprisoned at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison to pay nearly $14,000 in legal fees to defense contractor CACI, an Arlington, Va.-based company that supplied interrogators to the U.S. government during the Iraq War.
The decision in favor of CACI stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the former prisoners in 2008, alleging that CACI employees directed the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The suit was dismissed in June, when U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee ruled that because the alleged acts took place on foreign soil, CACI was “immune from suit” in U.S. court.
Lee did not, however, directly address the question of whether CACI employees took part in the mistreatment of prisoners.
(...)
CIA doctors face human experimentation claims
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/02/cia-usa
Doctors and psychologists the CIA employed to monitor its “enhanced interrogation” of terror suspects came close to, and may even have committed, unlawful human experimentation, a medical ethics watchdog has alleged.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a not-for-profit group that has investigated the role of medical personnel in alleged incidents of torture at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other US detention sites, accuses doctors of being far more involved than hitherto understood.
PHR says health professionals participated at every stage in the development, implementation and legal justification of what it calls the CIA’s secret “torture programme”.
Presidio Modelo in #Cuba and the #panopticon idea
►http://dprbcn.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/presidio-modelo-in-cuba-and-the-panopticon-idea
The last prisoner from Presidio Modelo was released in 1967 and now the old building serves as a museum and is declared a National Monument. Presidio Modelo doesn’t exists anymore as a #prison, but what happens with sites like Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib et al, where fear is used to control and prisoners are incommunicated and abused. Maybe the shape is not circular any more, but the ends are the same as 200 years ago: Architecture to be oppressive – the #architecture of fear.
En Irak la guerre est « subrogée » (Il Manifesto) par Manlio DINUCCI
►http://www.legrandsoir.info/en-irak-la-guerre-est-subrogee-il-manifesto.html
Nos troupes sont sorties d’Irak « la tête haute », a annoncé le commandant en chef Barack Obama. Les USA ont de quoi être fiers. Ils quittent un pays envahi en 2003 au motif qu’il possédait des armes de destruction de masse, motif qui s’est révélé infondé. Mis à feu et à sang par plus d’un million et demi de soldats, que le Pentagone a déployés par rotations, avec aussi des centaines de milliers de contractor militaires (mercenaires), en employant n’importe quel moyen pour écraser la résistance : des bombes au phosphore contre la population de Fallujah aux tortures d’Abu Ghraib.
Provoquant environ un million de victimes civiles, qui s’ajoutent à celles de la première guerre contre l’Irak et de l’embargo. Contraignant plus de 2 millions d’Irakiens à quitter leur maison et autant à se réfugier en Syrie et en Jordanie. Laissant un pays sinistré, avec un chômage à plus de 50%, la moitié des médecins qu’il avait avant l’invasion, un tiers des enfants affectés de malnutrition, à qui s’ajoutent ceux qui ont des malformations génétiques dues aux armes du Pentagone. Une guerre que les USA ont payée de 4.500 morts et plus de 30mille blessés chez les militaires, dont 30% sont rentrés chez eux avec de graves problèmes psychiques. Guerre qui a coûté 1.000 milliards de dollars, à quoi s’ajoutent environ 4mille milliards de dépenses indirectes, comme celles de l’assistance aux anciens combattants. Elle en a cependant valu la peine : dorénavant « l’avenir de l’Irak sera dans les mains de son peuple », assure le président Obama. Est-ce ainsi qu’il a gagné le Prix Nobel de la Paix ? On peut en douter en lisant le manuel de la US Army sur « La guerre subrogée pour le 21ème siècle » : une guerre menée en substituant aux forces armées traditionnelles, qui interviennent ouvertement, des forces spéciales et agents secrets qui agissent dans l’ombre, avec le soutien de forces alliées, de fait sous commandement étasunien. Divers faits le confirment. Le personnel de l’ambassade étasunienne à Bagdad, la plus grande du monde, passera de 8mille à 16mille personnes. Son « bureau de coopération et sécurité », qui entraîne et arme les forces irakiennes sera renforcé. Depuis 2005, le gouvernement irakien a acheté des armements étasuniens pour une valeur de 5 milliards de dollars et, selon le programme, il en achètera d’autres pour 26 milliards. Parmi lesquels, 36 chasseurs F-6 avec leurs armements (qui pourraient augmenter jusqu’à 96), dont les pilotes seront entraînés aux Etats-Unis et dont les bases seront de fait sous le contrôle du Pentagone. Des unités de la Cia et des forces spéciales étasuniennes continuent à entraîner (et de fait à diriger) les « forces de sécurité » qui, sur ordre du premier ministre Nouri al-Maliki, ont déjà arrêté des centaines d’ex-baasistes accusés, sur la base de preuves fournies par le Cnt libyen, d’avoir préparé un coup d’état avec l’appui de Kadhafi. En même temps Washington s’attache le gouvernement régional kurde de Masoud Barzani avec lequel ExxonMobil a conclu un gros contrat d’exploitation pétrolière, en doublant le gouvernement de Bagdad.
Au Kurdistan irakien opèrent depuis 2003 des forces spéciales étasuniennes, sous les ordres du général Charles Cleveland. Celui-là même qui -révèle le journal égyptien al-Arabi- entraîne et dirige aujourd’hui en Turquie les commandos de l’ « armée syrienne libre » pour la « guerre subrogée » contre la Syrie.