Iraq Prisoner Abuse, Pt. 5. 1st Trial Of American Soldier Underway

Can anyone enlighten me about anything they've heard about legal status of contractors? And whose laws apply to them?

Let's call them Unlawful Combatants.

I haven't had coffee yet and I read this as

They deferred eating peas and were ordered to appear in court again on 21 June.

Memos Reveal War Crimes Warnings

By ANTHONY DEUTSCH, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits received the maxium penalty Wednesday — one year in prison, reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge — in the first court-martial stemming from mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Sivits, who pleaded guilty to four abuse charges, broke down in tears as he apologized for taking pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated.

"I'd like to apologize to the Iraqi people and those detainees," he said in his statement. "I should have protected those detainees, not taken the photos."

During the hearing, Sivits, 24, told the court he saw one U.S. soldier punch one Iraqi in the head and other guards stomp on the hands and feet of detainees. He also recounted that prisoners were stripped and forced to form a human pyramid.

His laywer had appealed to the court for leniency, saying Sivits could be rehabilitated and had contributed to society in the past. Sivits himself pleaded with the judge, Col. James Pohl, to allow him to remain in the army, which he said had been his lifes' goal.

"I have learned huge lessons, sir," he said. "You can't let people abuse people like they have done."

Sivits, a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, a Reserve unit based in Cresaptown, Md., was found guilty of two counts of mistreating detainees, dereliction of duty for failing to protect them from abuse, cruelty, and forcing a prisoner "to be positioned in a pile on the floor to be assaulted by other soldiers," a military briefer said after the proceedings.

Military officials said Sivits would be transferred to a military regional confinement facility to serve his sentence but did not specify which facility.

He had been expected to get a relatively light sentence and then testify against others. But prosecutors asked the judge to impose the harshest sentence despite Sivits' willingness to provide details about the crimes of other defendants, saying that Sivits knew that abuse was banned by the Geneva Conventions.

Earlier Wednesday, three others from Sivits company accused in the abuse — Sgt. Javal Davis, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick Frederick and Spc. Charles Graner Jr. — appeared for arraignment in the courtroom at the Baghdad Convention Center, located in the heavily guarded Green Zone.

The three waived their rights to have charges read in court, and their pleas were deferred pending another hearing June 21 after the defense complained it had been denied access to two victims of abuse who were government witnesses. The judge asked prosecutors for an explanation.

Arab television stations appeared deeply skeptical of the proceedings, with reporters from the Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya satellite networks questioning why cameras were barred from the courtroom. Others demanded that higher ranking American officials be punished.

"Those who are executing the laws and the orders are not the problem ... Punishment of the officials who gave the orders is what matters," Samer al-Ubedi, who claimed his brother died in U.S. custody, told al-Jazeera. "The punishment must be as severe as the crime."

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq, said a fair and impartial trial "will go a far way in demonstrating to people that, yes, these pictures did happen, yes, these acts did happen, but we're taking the right corrective action to investigate prosecute and bring to trial those accused of these crimes. "

1st Lt. Stanley L. Martin, Sivits' lawyer, had expressed concern about the huge media coverage of the trial, asking the judge, "Can you make a fair decision?"

Pohl replied: "Just because it's on TV, it doesn't mean it's true."

In an emotional description of events at Abu Ghraib prison on the evening of Nov. 8, Sivits said he was asked by Frederick, of Buckingham, Va., to accompany him to the prison facility.

Pausing in his struggle to speak, Sivits told the judge he was on detail outside Abu Ghraib and had done some maintenance work on generators when Frederick approached him. Sivits took a detainee with him, and when he arrived at the scene where the crimes took place, there were seven other detainees.

"I heard Cpl. Graner yelling in Arabic at the detainees," he said. "I saw one of the detainees lying on the floor. They were laying there on the floor, sandbags over their heads."

Sgt. Javal Davis, 26, of Maryland, and another soldier, Pfc. Lynndie England, 21, were "stamping on their toes and hands."

"Graner punched the detainee in the head or temple area," Sivits said. "I said. 'I think you might have knocked him out.'"

Sivits also said: "Graner complained that he had injured his hand and said, "Damn, that hurt."'

Sivits said all prisoners were then stripped and forced to form a human pyramid.

He quoted one of the other six accused soldiers, whom he did not identify, as saying guards were "told to keep doing what they were doing by military intelligence." He added, however, that he did not believe the soldier.

The defense lawyer told the judge that Sivits had reached a pre-trial agreement with the prosecution, presumably to testify against others accused in the case.

In Sivits' tiny home town of Hyndman, Pa., more than 200 residents wore yellow ribbons and clutched small American flags during a candlelight vigil to support him.

His father, Daniel Sivits, made a brief statement.

"I want to make explicitly clear, Jeremy, no matter what, is still my son. We still love him," Daniel Sivits said. "I am veteran of the Vietnam war and I want to say one thing — Jeremy is always a vet in my heart and in my mind."

Graner's lawyer, Guy Womack, said Wednesday that his client was following orders at the prison, and that officers from U.S. military intelligence and the CIA and civilian contractors were directing the abuse.

"The photographs were being staged and created by these intelligence officers and, of course, we have the two photographs that prove that they were present and supervising," Womack said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America."

He said Graner sought clarification of his orders and complained to his superiors and to military intelligence officers about what he was being asked to do.

"All of them consistently said that he was to follow the order and not question it. So he didn't," the lawyer said.

Warner added that Sivits also was simply following orders.

On Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits' plea deal:

"Spc. Sivits ... should have gone to trial and been acquitted like the others," the lawyer said. "I feel sorry for the young specialist pleading guilty."

The U.S. military allowed news coverage of the proceedings in the hope it will demonstrate American resolve to determine who was responsible for the abuse and punish the guilty.

Nine Arab newspapers and the prominent Arab television networks Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya are among 34 news organizations being allowed to have reporters in the courtroom. No audio or TV recordings will be allowed in the courtroom, however.

On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch said that U.S. occupation authorities have refused to allow Iraqi and international human rights groups to attend the court martial.

"Barring human rights monitors from the court martial is a bad decision in its own right," Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch Middle East and North Africa division, said in a statement. "It also sends a terrible signal to Iraqis and others deeply concerned about what transpired in Abu Ghraib."

The case has been closely followed by many of the 135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq — with varied opinions.

"If these people are guilty, it should come out," Marine Gunnery Sgt. Tracey Reddish, 34, of Jessup, Ga., said. "Court-martials are very fair."

Another Marine, Lance Cpl. Kyle Morgan, 20, of Beaumont, Texas, said the case was pushed by "the people in Washington sitting in their cushy chairs, judging our men here who are trying to save lives ... But the politicians are just worried about their own necks."

The scandal broke last month with the broadcast and publication of pictures of prisoners suffering sexual humiliation and other brutality at the hands of American MPs serving as guards at Abu Ghraib.

One photo showed a naked, hooded prisoner on a box with wires fastened to his hands and genitals. According to Fredericks' indictment, the detainee had been told he would be electrocuted if he touched the ground.

Another picture showed a female MP holding a leash attached to the neck of a naked prisoner on the floor.

The report also said intelligence officers of the U.S.-led coalition had told Red Cross officials that up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees had been arrested by mistake.
____

Associated Press correspondents Scheherezade Faramarzi in Baghdad and Katarina Kratovac in Fallujah contributed to this report.

This is an altogether predictable reaction, but not a very creditable one. I am sure it is shared by many millions of Americans who think of themselves as moral, upstanding good people - despite the fact that the same argument could just as easily justify kidnapping Iraqi children and stealing their blood to transfuse into wounded soldiers.

To a soldier in a battle zone, acts of unspeakable violence are a daily reality and bloodshed is the normal solution to the problem of how to survive another day. In a deeply pragmatic way these people understand that, if we are willing to rip apart the flesh of numerous Iraqis with bullets and explosives and paint the walls with their brains and guts (including many unfortunate civilians), then it is hypocritical to be squeamish about such 'harmless' antics as humiliating them, beating them, and torturing them.

Hell, they think, these shits come out of it alive, and I know guys in my platoon who aren't so lucky. They should be grateful we didn't cut their balls off and stuff them in their mouths. Which is the way soldiers tend to think, with some good reason, in every war.

Which is ultimately the reason you don't ever, ever go to war for such chickenshit reasons as "to bring the blessings of democracy to the Middle East." Armies don't bring democracy. Until hostilities end, armies can only bring death and destruction and brutality and bloodshed.

Hostilities are increasing. The violence of our response is increasing. The opportunity for constructive measures is diminishing and destructive measures are completely dominating our strategy. I see the US army command is starting to publish body counts of dead insurgent fighters from each firefight. We are asked to view this as evidence of our progress toward some ever-vaguer idea of victory. We are deep, deep, deep in the shit now.

To say, as many jingoists would have it, that I am gloating over these tragic turns of events and reveling in the chance to chant I-told-you-so, gawd, nothing could be further from the truth. Watching this happen only makes my stomach churn and writhe.

The only importance of I-told-you-so at this late stage is that, if I could foresee this (and I did), it proves others also could have. Those others include Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and all those whose decisions brought us here. It was their DUTY to foresee this and to forestall this, and they FAILED and they are still FAILING and they are asking us to endorse their FAILURES and reward them for it.

The Marine I quoted at the top of this post has it wrong in many ways, but in the biggest, broadest sense he has it right. He knows this is a leadership failure. Nothing else smells like this.

I like this part the best:

Which is ultimately the reason you don't ever, ever go to war for such chickenshit reasons as "to bring the blessings of democracy to the Middle East." Armies don't bring democracy. Until hostilities end, armies can only bring death and destruction and brutality and bloodshed.

Brutal interrogation in Iraq
Five detainees' deaths probed
By Miles Moffeit
Denver Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

'VERY TROUBLING'

Pentagon records provide the clearest view yet of the U.S. tactics used at Anu Ghraib and elsewhere to coax secrets from Iraqis.

Brutal interrogation techniques by U.S. military personnel are being investigated in connection with the deaths of at least five Iraqi prisoners in war-zone detention camps, Pentagon documents obtained by The Denver Post show.

The deaths include the killing in November of a high-level Iraqi general who was shoved into a sleeping bag and suffocated, according to the Pentagon report. The documents contradict an earlier Defense Department statement that said the general died "of natural causes" during an interrogation. Pentagon officials declined to comment on the new disclosure.

Another Iraqi military officer, records show, was asphyxiated after being gagged, his hands tied to the top of his cell door. Another detainee died "while undergoing stress technique interrogation," involving smothering and "chest compressions," according to the documents.

Details of the death investigations, involving at least four different detention facilities including the Abu Ghraib prison, provide the clearest view yet into war-zone interrogation rooms, where intelligence soldiers and other personnel have sometimes used lethal tactics to try to coax secrets from prisoners, including choking off detainees' airways. Other abusive strategies involve sitting on prisoners or bending them into uncomfortable positions, records show.

"Torture is the only thing you can call this," said a Pentagon source with knowledge of internal investigations into prisoner abuses. "There is a lot about our country's interrogation techniques that is very troubling. These are violations of military law."

Internal records obtained by The Post point to wider problems beyond the Abu Ghraib prison and demonstrate that some coercive tactics used at Abu Ghraib have shown up in interrogations elsewhere in the war effort. The documents also show more than twice as many allegations of detainee abuse - 75 - are being investigated by the military than previously known. Twenty-seven of the abuse cases involve deaths; at least eight are believed to be homicides.

No criminal punishments have been announced in the interrogation deaths, even though three deaths occurred last year.

PRISONER ABUSE IN IRAQ
EXTRAS

Beyond the interrogation deaths, the military documents show that investigators are examining other abuse cases involving soldiers using choking techniques during interrogations, including the handling of prisoners at a detention facility in Samarra, Iraq, where soldiers allegedly "forced into asphyxiation numerous detainees."

Also under investigation are reports that soldiers in Iraq abused women and children. One April 2003 case, which is awaiting trial, involves a reservist who pointed a loaded pistol at an Iraqi child in front of witnesses, saying he should kill the youngster to "send a message" to other Iraqis.

Pentagon officials, asked to comment on synopses of the cases provided by The Post, released a statement saying they do not discuss ongoing investigations. "Make no mistake; we will take whatever corrective actions are determined to be appropriate," the statement said. "The offenders will be dealt with, and action will be taken to prevent such situations from happening again."

Military officials and the Bush administration face international scrutiny over the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, which entailed a range of physical assault, mental abuse and sexual humiliation by military police officers. The role of military intelligence personnel in abuse cases has been murky. On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that an American officer who led interrogations at the prison acknowledged that intelligence personnel sometimes instructed military police to mete out abuse.

In the case of Iraqi Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who headed Saddam Hussein's air force, intelligence officers' role was documented in abuse that soon turned fatal, documents show,

Mowhoush, considered a "high-priority target," turned himself in for questioning in November, according to documents. After two weeks in custody at an Al Qaim detention facility, northwest of Baghdad, two soldiers with the 66th Military Intelligence Company, slid a sleeping bag over his body, except for his feet, and began questioning him as they rolled him repeatedly from his back to his stomach, the documents show.

Then, one of the soldiers, an interrogator, sat on Mowhoush's chest and placed his hands over the prisoner's mouth, according to the report: "During this interrogation, the (general) became non-responsive, medics were called and he was later pronounced dead." According to the documents, "The preliminary report lists the cause of death as asphyxia due to smothering and chest compressions."

Immediately after Mowhoush's death was reported, U.S. military officials released a statement acknowledging he died during an interview.

"Mowhoush said he didn't feel well and subsequently lost consciousness," read the press statement, which is still posted on a Pentagon website. "The soldier questioning him found no pulse, then conducted CPR and called for medical authorities. According to the on-site surgeon, it appeared Mowhouse died of natural causes."

An investigative report was finalized in late January, and the interrogating soldiers received reprimands, in addition to being barred from further interviews, documents show. According to the report obtained by The Post, commanders have not taken criminal action against the soldiers, citing an ongoing investigation.

Criminal punishments apparently have not been pursued in the other interrogation-death cases, which also are ongoing.

Another Iraqi prisoner was assaulted by interrogators on two occasions in early January of this year at the FOB Rifles Base in Asad, Iraq, documents state. U.S. forces arrested him for allegedly possessing explosive devices, and he was later placed in an isolation cell for questioning by special-forces soldiers with the Operational Detachment Alpha, where he was shackled to a pipe that ran along the ceiling. After he was allowed to sit, he lunged at one of the soldiers, grabbing his shirt. "The three ODA members punched and kicked (the prisoner) in the stomach and ribs for approximately one to two minutes," documents show.

Three days later, the prisoner escaped from his cell and was recaptured.

During questioning, the detainee refused to follow instructions. When he refused orders to remain quiet in his cell, his hands were tied to the top of his cell door, the report shows. When he still refused, he was gagged, the report notes, and five minutes later, a soldier "noticed that he was slumped down and hanging from his shackles" dead.

According to the investigative report, special forces commanders are reviewing "consideration of misconduct" in the case.

Other prisoner deaths under homicide investigation, records show:

The beating in early April of a detainee at the LSA Diamondback facility in Mosul, Iraq, who was found dead in his sleep. A death report showed "blunt- force trauma to the torso and positional asphyxia." He had gone to sleep immediately after questioning by members of the Naval Special Warfare Team. No disciplinary action was noted in the report, but the investigation continues, the report states.

In June, at a "classified interrogation facility" in Baghdad, an Iraqi detainee was found dead after being restrained in a chair for questioning. "While in custody the detainee was subjected to both physical and psychological stress," the report shows. An autopsy determined that he died of a "hard, fast blow" to the head. The investigation continues. No disciplinary action was noted.

On Nov. 4, an Iraqi died at Abu Ghraib during an interview by special forces and Navy SEAL soldiers. "An autopsy revealed the cause of death was blunt force trauma as complicated by compromised respiration." The report notes that Navy investigators concluded Navy personnel did not commit a crime leading to the detainee's death. But the investigation, including by CIA officials, is still ongoing. No disciplinary action was noted.

Amid a storm of controversy over prisoner handling in recent weeks, U.S. military officials have launched eight separate internal investigations into abuse cases, administrative procedures and interrogation techniques.

They also have acknowledged that reports of abuse at Abu Ghraib violate the Geneva Conventions and other treaties.

According to Human Rights Watch, which monitors prisoner maltreatment around the world, the patterns of interrogation tactics known as "stress techniques" in the death cases is tantamount to torture and should be investigated by an "independent" body or government.

"It sounds as though the Iraqi general and others were being subjected to extreme techniques we are only just now learning about, and it's clearly cruel and degrading treatment," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "This highlights the need for independent scrutiny at a minimum by Congress or possibly an independent commission of inquiry."

Of the detainee cases that were not homicides, commanders typically handed down lenient job-related punishments to the accused, instead of seeking criminal convictions. Of 47 punishments given to those accused of prisoner abuse, according to the report, only 15 involved court-martial. Criminal penalties ranged from reprimands to 60 days' confinement.

Unlike civilian practices, in the military, commanders decide whether to send accused soldiers to trial.

Alleged abuses

Military investigations regarding allegations of Iraqi detainee abuse:

April 12, 2004: Member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force abused a detainee involved in shooting death of a Marine lieutenant and sergeant. During interrogation, detainee was kicked in the rib cage, punched in kidney area and slapped in the head. Incident being investigated.

Jan. 9, 2004: FOB Rifles Base detainee died while in custody. The detainee, an escapee who had been recaptured, was shackled to the door of his cell with his hands over his head and gagged. Five minutes later, he was found dead. The death is under investigation.

Dec. 31, 2003: Military police officer used butt of M-4 rifle to strike a detainee in the face and on the back of the neck. Then the officer placed the muzzle of his M-4 rifle in the detainee's mouth and pulled trigger on the empty weapon. Officer then chambered a round and pointed the rifle at detainee, firing a round 5 or 6 feet from detainee. The incident is under investigation.

Nov. 26, 2003: At the 3rd ACR detention facility, Iraqi Gen. Abed Hamad Mowhoush, a "high-priority target," was placed inside a sleeping bag with only his feet exposed. He was rolled back and forth while being questioned. One of the interrogators sat on his chest and placed hands over his mouth. He died during the interrogation, and an autopsy confirmed evidence of blunt force trauma to the chest and legs. The interrogating officers were given general officer reprimands, prohibited from conducting further interrogations and referred for consideration of misconduct charges.

Sept. 11, 2003: A guard at the FOB Packhorse detention facility fatally shot a detainee who was throwing rocks. The soldier, who did not follow regulations, was reduced in rank and discharged from the military in lieu of trial by court-martial.

June 13, 2003: A sergeant beat a detainee while his squad leader was present. Sergeant received rank reduction and 60 days' confinement. His commanding officer - who also beat detainees - was charged with dereliction of duty, given a reprimand and fined $2,000.

Staff researcher Monnie Nilsson contributed to this report.

General John Abizaid, who is in charge of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, admitted that abuse had taken place in both countries.

But he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that there was no "culture of abuse" in the prison system.

During the hearing, the committee's chairman revealed that a fourth disc of photographs of abuse had been found.

Senator John Warner said he had heard from the Pentagon that a new disc had been found and was to be made available to Congress.

--

Gen Miller acknowledged that there had been isolated cases of abuse at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he used to be the commander.

But he strongly denied that any of the abuses in Guantanamo Bay or Iraq were officially sanctioned.

It was not true that he had ordered the "softening up" of Iraqi prisoners, during a visit to Abu Ghraib last year, he said.

The committee looked closely at an order issued by Gen Sanchez last November putting the prison under the command of a senior military intelligence officer.

Gen Sanchez said the order was for security purposes, because the prison was coming under attacks by Iraqi insurgents. He said the order did not put military police at the prison under the control of intelligence officials.

He denied authorising interrogation techniques such as sleep deprivation, stress positions or sensory deprivation.

A top US officer in Iraq confirmed that 40 people had been killed in the area - but said US forces had targeted a safe house used by foreign fighters.

He said coalition troops had retaliated after coming under attack.

"We took ground fire and we returned fire," said Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the US military in Iraq.

He said there were no indications that the victims of the attack were part of a wedding party.

He added that a large amount of money, Syrian passports and satellite communications equipment had been found at the site after the attack.

Footage

An Iraqi police official in the town of Ramadi told AP news agency that up to 45 people were killed by US fire.

Arab TV channel al-Arabiya, quoting eyewitnesses in the border town of Qaim, said a frontier village was attacked before dawn.

The incident apparently happened after wedding guests in the village started firing in the air in celebration, the report said.

The BBC's Nick Childs in Washington says it is clear that these are two very different versions of the same incident.

One man told al-Arabiya: "The US planes dropped more than 100 bombs on us."

"They hit two homes where the wedding was being held and then they levelled the whole village.

"No bullets were fired by us, nothing was happening," he added.

AP Television filmed relatives burying the alleged victims at Ramadi, a stronghold of insurgents against the coalition.

The US, which is facing a Shia and Sunni Muslim insurgency in Iraq, says foreign fighters are entering the country from Syria.

when was a ruling issued?

"2. These nonresident enemy aliens, captured and imprisoned abroad, have no right to a writ of habeas corpus in a court of the United States. Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 ; In re Yamashita, 327 U.S. 1 , distinguished. Pp. 777-781"

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=339&page=763

Cuba certainly wouldn't qualify here, and after all this, I doubt that US military bases will either. They'd better fucking not.

Meanwhile, Gabbneb wasn't kidding about how Chalabi is no longer the golden boy.

The air strike happened in the early hours of Wednesday at the village of Makr al-Deeb, near the border town of Qaim.

"At about 3am we were sleeping and the planes starting firing," one Iraqi, Bassem, told The Associated Press.

"They fired more than 40 missiles. As soon as they started attacking, firing the first missile, I went away. I was running...

"There are no fighters. These are lies. There's no resistance. Even the bride and the groom died."

Another man told Arab TV channel al-Arabiya: "The US planes dropped more than 100 bombs on us."

"They hit two homes where the wedding was being held and then they levelled the whole village."

A member of Iraq's US-appointed Governing Council said he thought the US had hit a wedding party by mistake.

"Their story does not look very convincing," Mahmoud Othman told Reuters news agency.

And Kimmitt?

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the US military in Iraq, said the US would look into the Iraqi allegations, but that he was convinced the military had struck a legitimate target.

"We are satisfied that the intelligence was validated by what we found on the ground," he told reporters in Baghdad.

"This is one of the routes we have watched for a long time as a place where foreign fighters and smugglers go."

Mmm.

"Well it was a wedding and they were playing the Gap Band's "You Dropped a Bomb on Me," heh heh heh...am I ALONE in here, HELLO?"

Please tell me he didn't really say this.

At the very least. I mean, WHAT the flying fuck.

"Heh. Is this thing on?"

http://mail.rochester.edu/~ms002j/pictures/Picture(19).jpg

I'M A TERRORIST

Dan, please don't do that. I, for one, would be depressed.

WELL NO SHIT. PEOPLE WERE FIRING GUNS AT A WEDDING. THERE WILL BE BOTH GUNS, AND CASH AT THE SITE.

It is a sign of the uncertainty surrounding coalition policy that the handover is being promoted as a watershed, and at the same time is being downplayed as merely a shift to a caretaker administration.

What was once planned as an orderly transfer of power in Iraq over a period of months in an atmosphere of peace and co-operation is now a race against violence and chaos. What once looked like sensible planning now looks like muddle.

And none of it has been helped by the scandals over the prisoner abuse, nor by the fighting against the militant cleric Moqtada Sadr and the confusion over who really controls Falluja.

The British official, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who was Britain's senior representative in the Coalition Authority in Baghdad until recently, told the BBC: "What we are really looking towards in the next few months is not what happens in the interim government, but in elections for a national assembly... that will be the real test."

So Sir Jeremy is trying to extend the timeline of expectation from the interim government of 30 June, to the government which will emerge from the assembly elections early next year.

That leaves another six months of uncertainty.

--

The interim government has not yet been named. Efforts to get agreement among Iraqi political leaders are being led by the United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, but it is unclear whether he will select technocrats as he originally suggested or a more forceful political line-up which might provide more leadership.

The interim government will have a three-person presidency plus a prime minister who will be the key figure. Under him, ministers will be appointed to the various ministries.

This government will hold office only until the assembly elections. Then the assembly will appoint a transitional government. It will not be until the end of next year that a directly elected government will be formed.

The US and UK are also seeking a new UN resolution to get international approval for the arrangements.

Mr Bush has decided to try to show that he is not a passive onlooker, but can exert some influence.

His speech on Monday will be followed by others in the run-up to 30 June.

The other office Feith oversees, the Office of Special Plans, probably wrought even worse damage that the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Unit: Its job was postwar planning, which even many conservatives now admit has been a disaster. As USA Today's Walter Shapiro put it this month when he summed up a one-year anniversary panel discussion on Iraq at the American Enterprise Institute (hardly a bastion of the antiwar left): "An easy summary of the overall impression fostered by the panel would be: Right war, wrong postwar plan."

Why is Feith involved with all these foul-ups? How could one man be so consistently in error? Nearly every critique of the Pentagon's plan for Iraq's occupation blames the blinkers imposed by ideology. For example, The New Yorker reported last fall that Feith intentionally excluded experts with experience in postwar nation-building, out of fear that their pessimistic, worst-case scenarios would leak and damage the case for war. In the Atlantic earlier this year, James Fallows told a similar story: The Pentagon did not participate in CIA war games about the occupation, because "it could be seen as an 'antiwar' undertaking" that "weakened the case for launching a 'war of choice.' " The State Department's Future of Iraq Project, an effort that accurately predicted some contingencies that the Pentagon overlooked, was dismissed by Feith and company out of hand.

---

Some of the vitriol directed at Feith by anonymous sources may be due to personal animus. A 2002 Washington Post profile of Feith noted that he is "disliked by many people who work with him on a daily basis," and in March 2003 the National Journal noted that "it is hard to overstate how utterly Feith is reviled in certain circles." The latest manifestation of this is the juicy quote by Gen. Tommy Franks in Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack, in which Franks calls Feith "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth."

Franks shows a military man's ability to get to the heart of the matter. But Feith isn't dumb. His defenders, in fact, frequently stand up for him by citing his brilliance. But Franks' lament is a blunter, less eloquent version of what Fallows wrote in the Atlantic of the office of the secretary of Defense, particularly Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith: "What David Halberstam said of Robert McNamara in The Best and the Brightest is true of those at OSD as well: they were brilliant, and they were fools."

*shakes head*

Then there's this Gitmo picture -- it's a couple of years old but now I look at it with fresher eyes.

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2004/US/05/20/gitmo.interrogation/story.detainees.jpg

Meanwhile, more on the legal front:

"The defense of superior orders is no defense if the accused knows the act is illegal," explained Michael Noone, a retired Air Force colonel and military attorney. Soldiers are required to disobey unlawful commands, he said, but the "big issue is going to be whether or not the order was obviously illegal."

--

The treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib "was being controlled and devised by the military intelligence community and other governmental agencies, including the CIA," said Guy Womack, an attorney for Spc. Charles Graner Jr., who was arraigned in Baghdad along with Frederick and Sgt. Javal Davis. "There's going to be plenty of evidence that they orchestrated all of this."

The defense just might work, said Tim Naccarato, the former chief of the criminal law division of the Army's Judge Advocate General School.

"If these lower-ranking military policemen can make the case they were told to do these things, instructed to do these things, they were cooperating with intelligence to soften up these prisoners so they would provide more information, they have the ability to be found not guilty based not so much on `I was following orders' but based on the theory that a criminal act requires not only an act but criminal intent," Naccarato said.

Some members of Congress want to investigate whether the Bush administration erected a legal foundation that opened the door for the mistreatment by announcing in 2002 that al Qaeda detainees did not qualify for protection by the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits mistreatment.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld dismissed that assertion as "garbage," but Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, insisted that questions remain about "how those in positions of responsibility either ordered, encouraged or authorized -- or maybe looked the other way."

The superior orders defense will be extremely difficult to assert in the courts-martial because the accused must prove who gave them the orders.

"Certainly, the lawyers they're going to have their work cut out for them," said Eugene Fidell, a defense attorney and president of the National Institute of Military Justice.

Military law experts could not recall a single case in which the superior orders defense completely cleared a defendant, but said it often works to reduce prison time.

"It may not absolve you, but it would certainly mitigate what you've done," said David Sheldon, a former Navy attorney.

---

It is unclear whether fellow soldiers on the court-martial juries would be sympathetic toward the accused. Many serving in Iraq may blame the scandal for making their tour more dangerous.

Then again, they also know how hard it can be to disobey a potentially illegal order, said David Sheldon, a Washington-based military attorney.

"Ask any American what the Geneva Convention requires in the gray area of intimidation, or ask a young, unsophisticated private guarding a prison while their buddies on the outside are being shot," Sheldon said. "You're going to do exactly what these people did if told to."

About the Army - Man, it hurts my heart to write this about an institution I dearly love but this army is completely dysfunctional, angry and is near losing its honor. We are back to the Army of 1968. I knew we were finished when I had a soldier point his Squad Automatic Weapons at me and my bodyguard detail for driving down the street when he decided he would cross the street in the middle of rush hour traffic (which was moving at about 70 MPH) ... He made it clear to any and all that he was preparing to shoot drivers who did not stop for his jaunt because speeding cars are "threats."

I also once had a soldier from a squad of Florida National Guard reservists raise weapons and kick the door panel of a clearly marked CPA security vehicle (big American flag in the windshield of a $150,000 armored Land Cruiser) because they wanted us to back away from them so they could change a tire ... as far as they were concerned WE (non-soldiers) were equally the enemy as any Iraqi.

Unlike the wars of the past 20 years where the Army encouraged (needed) soldiers, NGOs, allies and civil organizations to work together to resolve matters and return to normal society, the US Forces only trust themselves here and that means they set their own limits and tolerances. Abu Ghuraib are good examples of that limit. I told a Journalist the other day that these kids here are being told that they are chasing Al Qaeda in the War on Terrorism so they think everyone at Abu Ghuraib had something to do with 9/11. So they were encouraged to make them pay. These kids thought they were going to be honored for hunting terrorists.

You want your ideologues, you got 'em. Hope you're happy.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40178000/jpg/_40178829_prisoner_washpost_203.jpg

Among them is a shot of one of the soldiers currently facing a court martial apparently hitting handcuffed prisoners.

Another shows a naked prisoner who appears to be covered in mud or excrement being paraded down a prison corridor, and one of a hooded prisoner apparently collapsed against some railings.

The Washington Post report also describes a video clip which shows an inmate shackled to a door.

He repeatedly slams his head into the metal, leaving streaks of blood, before he ultimately collapses at the feet of the cameraman.

Defense Department spokesman Lawrence T. DiRita said the photographs, by description, sounded like those the Pentagon has exhibited to members of Congress and that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had warned might yet become public. "There are a series of investigations going on as a result of the disclosure of the activities depicted on photos," DiRita said last night.

Much of the info in that article and here in this Post article, drawn from detainee statements as part of Taguba's investigation, is pretty damned raw. Click through only if you're up for it.

Shortly before the physical abuses of Iraqis were photographed in Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad last year, the top U.S. military official in Iraq signed a classified memorandum explicitly calling for interrogators to assume control over the "lighting, heating . . . food, clothing, and shelter" of those being questioned there.

The Oct. 12, 2003, memorandum signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez called for intelligence officials at the prison to work more closely with the military police guarding the detainees to "manipulate an internee's emotions and weaknesses."

The Pentagon is considering the release of videotapes or a still photograph to bolster its contention that a target attacked Wednesday by the U.S. military in western Iraq was not a wedding party, officials said. A Pentagon official said the photo shows no evidence of any wedding celebration. The Pentagon is not disputing that innocent civilians may have been killed in the airstrike, but officials insist there was intelligence that "foreign fighters" were using the site and it was not a gathering of wedding celebrants.

"There were people standing around and there were four by fours and jewelry = we HAD to kill them."

Besides which, wouldn't it have been more valuable if they really thought someone was there to try and capture them alive for intelligence reasons?

Separately, U.S. officials said that some of the women who died in an attack in western Iraq that killed about 40 people may have been struck by fire from U.S. aircraft. Many Iraqis on the scene said that most of the victims were woman and children who were part of a wedding celebration. U.S. officials said the raid targeted a haven for arms smugglers.

"They may have died from some of the fire that came from the aircraft, but no American soldier shot women, no American soldiers involved in that operation shot children," Kimmitt said. "We're keeping an open mind as to exactly what happened on the ground. That's why we're continuing to try to gather all the facts."

Very timely of them, that last part.

Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tennessee, called the allegation that Chalabi misled U.S. officials "one of most disturbing developments of the war."

Cooper held up a copy of Friday's New York Times that featured a front-page photo of Chalabi just behind first lady Laura Bush during the State of the Union address in January.

"This seems to be a substantial development in the war, when one of the most highly paid and trusted advisers may have deliberately misled our nation for months and years and some of our officials may have swallowed it hook, line and sinker," Cooper said.

Cooper asked Myers about what prompted the raid and who ordered it.

"The information that I have is that it was ordered by the minister of Interior, that it was carried out by the Iraqi Police Service, that U.S. forces, or coalition forces, provided an outer cordon so they weren't involved in going into the facilities," Myers said.

Cooper said that until last week, the United States was paying hundreds of thousands of dollars each month to Chalabi and his organization.

"If this man was on the U.S. payroll until last week, what has changed in the last few days to make him subject of a raid of this type?" Cooper asked.

"That I can't tell you," Myers said. "What I can tell you is the organization that he is associated with has provided intelligence to our intelligence unit there in Baghdad that has saved soldiers' lives."

That last point is interesting, and maybe even accurate.

As their protests "became more apparent" in late 2002, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ended the use of such tactics pending the outcome of a comprehensive review that stretched from mid-January 2003 to mid-April, a senior civilian Pentagon lawyer told reporters on Thursday.

The lawyer, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity because details are classified secret, said Rumsfeld in April 2003 approved new guidelines which won the military lawyers' blessing.

Those guidelines are different -- allowing harsher methods -- than the approaches used in Iraq because all prisoners in Iraq are deemed by the Bush administration to be covered by prisoner protections of the Geneva Conventions, whereas those at Guantanamo Bay are not, the lawyer said.

Larry Di Rita, chief spokesman for Rumsfeld, confirmed the basic timeline of the Guantanamo Bay interrogation policy but said he could not reveal specifics about the interrogation techniques used there.

"It's highly sensitive information," he said. "Everybody (was) mindful of the uniqueness -- it was new, it was complicated, and it was balancing the need for intelligence versus the need to do it right.

Di Rita described the interrogation tactics used at Guantanamo Bay earlier in 2002 as "non-doctrinal." This means they were not in accordance with the military doctrine written to apply to interrogations of prisoners of war, not terrorists.

Padilla documents

With a triumphant chorus of "We-told-you-so"s, the Justice Department unveiled yesterday a seven-page document summarizing all the accumulated evil that lurks in the heart of alleged enemy combatant Jose Padilla. Why release all this information now? The folks at Justice say they were just responding to a request from Sen. Orrin Hatch. As though Hatch's was the first and only demand for some tangible piece of evidence against Padilla. ...
The DOJ insists that the timing of this release has nothing to do with public outrage about unsubstantiated warnings of stepped-up terror threats. They also say it has nothing to do with the Supreme Court's deliberations over Padilla's case, due to be decided this month. (Your instincts were right, Stephen Breyer, Padilla really is a bad guy!) Perhaps it also has nothing to do with mitigating the public horror about the information-at-all-costs ethos that led to the events at Abu Ghraib. (OK, so we torture them some, but just look at what they planned to do to us!) Maybe it also has nothing to do with the fact that the solicitor general's office, most likely unintentionally, misled the Supreme Court at oral argument in this case, with claims that this administration allowed no prisoners to be tortured, even as the government knew what had happened in Iraq. (OK, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, so we lied about the torture thing, but see how dangerous this guy is anyhow?) Something needed to be done to remind the world and the court how serious the case against Padilla really is.
The question is: Does this constitute a case against Padilla? Isn't it wacky that all this evidence—released as a sop to an American public that's about had it with secrecy, abuse, and intimidation—was itself obtained through secrecy, abuse, and intimidation? You can call it the military brig in South Carolina, or call it Abu Ghraib. But evidence procured in dank rooms, by threat of interminable isolation and coercive interrogation and without the protections of the Constitution or the Geneva Conventions, is generally hard to credit. That's why we have a Constitution.
The U.S. Constitution didn't simply hatch out of an egg one morning. Like the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights was largely conceived to correct for failures of earlier systems. In 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh was tried for treason and not permitted to cross-examine his accuser. This, it turns out, engendered unreliable evidence. The Sixth Amendment's confrontation clause was the constitutional remedy for this problem. Unremitting and unwanted prosecutorial interrogation could lead to false confessions. This made for unreliable evidence. The Fifth Amendment was, in part, the constitutional remedy for this. Years of delay prior to trials degraded evidence. The Sixth Amendment's right to a speedy trial was the constitutional remedy for this. Indefinite government detention without charges led to innocent men languishing in prison without recourse. The right to habeas corpus is thus codified in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution to remedy this. We sometimes forget that the purpose of these and other constitutional protections is not only to let guilty guys roam free (attractive though that prospect may seem), the purpose is also to protect the quality of the evidence used in criminal trials. A conviction based on a tortured confession isn't justice. It's theater.
In his comments accompanying the release of the Padilla document, Deputy Assistant Attorney General James Comey offered the following weird little tribute to the joys of suspending the Constitution at will: Had the government charged Padilla criminally, he said, "He would very likely have followed his lawyer's advice and said nothing, which would have been his constitutional right. ... He would likely have ended up a free man." Comey's point seems to be that constitutional protections produce bad evidence, in which case we should probably get rid of the Constitution in every criminal case. What he was really saying was that if you permit them to perform unconstitutional interrogations, the administration can get the accused to say exactly what we all wanted to hear.
The evidence in this document was collected during a two-year detention, in which Padilla was in solitary confinement, never charged with a crime, and only given access to his attorney this spring. Certainly his confessions might still be reliable, along with the confessions of Abu Zubaydah and other confederates being interrogated in secret. Or they might not. Without a trial we can never know, and as Phil Carter recently observed, there can now be no trial on the strength of this evidence since it was obtained unconstitutionally.
No one at the DOJ seems even to have pondered whether the public would credulously accept the truth of a document that—by its own admission—is a product of secret government interrogations. The lesson of Abu Ghraib was that we no longer trust what happens in dark dungeons, where the rule of law has been cast aside. To reassure us, the Justice Department responds with the assurance that no one there trusts what happens in the bright light of a constitutional democracy.
Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2101632/