By Paul Kamen

“It’s enough to put my head in a guillotine.”
Bob Dylan, It’s Alright Ma (I’m only Bleeding)

“These Photos Are Very Disturbing” reads the discretion warning in Dahr Jamail’s recent dispatch reporting the new set of torture images to come out of Iraq. On February 16, 2006, the Australian public broadcaster SBS released the carnal photographs and videos of inhumane treatment inflicted upon Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib in 2003-04.

After viewing the nearly homo-erotic “pornographic” like photos and video clips, one could put an “E” rating—for morally evil-- on this sequel to the 2004 prison abuse scandal. There are many versions as to how this troubling incident happened in an Iraqi chicken coop, guarded by U.S. military foxes, but the origin is the most telling and indisputable.

Seymour M. Hersh wrote in “The Gray Zone,” “The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie are not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved by… Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.”1 Called by U.S. black ops in code names (i.e., “Copper Green” in Afghanistan), interrogation of prisoners in Iraq is based on research presented by the late cultural anthropologist Raphael Patai in his 1973 “The Arab Mind.”2

The book, which defined the psychological make-up of Arab peoples, became the bible for how to break them down psychologically and morally. Patai claims Arabs only understand force, and an Arab’s weakness is shame and humiliation. Thus, techniques for coerced sexually explicit humiliation were openly enforced in the prisons, and photographed to the delight of the U.S. MP guards.

Abu Ghraib – The Tipping Point

By the summer of 2004, after the American corporate media was forced to show the truth of what occurred in Abu Ghraib, public support for President Bush’s Operation Iraqi Freedom started showing dramatic disapproval, registering as high as sixty percent. John Mueller, Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University and an expert on wartime public opinion, has argued that eroding support for Iraq matches patterns for wars in Korea and Vietnam.

“The most striking thing about the comparison among the three wars is how much more quickly support has eroded in the case of Iraq,” he writes in Foreign Affairs.3 By the start of last year with just 1,500 American troops dead, public opinion on Iraq dropped to depths only reached in the seven-year Vietnam War after the Tet Offensive, when some 20,000 Americans had been killed.

When U.S. forces arrived in Iraq in March 2003, they found most of Iraq’s institutional prisons in unsuitable condition to hold prisoners, since Saddam Hussein had shut the majority of them down, in his release of (primarily political) prisoners.

Consequently, U.S. Military Police battalions set up “tent camps” in the hot, dusty desert to contain the growing number of “suspected” anti-coalition Iraqis. Of these, Camp Bucca, near Um-Qasr next to the Kuwait border, and Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport, were the most notable. Ironically, the camps provided no better accommodations than the decaying institutional edifices could have, becoming fly infested cesspools of diseased hell on earth.

These “tent camps” could be considered a seed of the Iraqi resistance movement. Here, Iraqi males were sequestered with no adherence to their Muslim customs, without latrines, no appropriate medical care, no adequate food or water, no adequate protection from the harsh desert climate, and no processing classification system for proper interrogations.

Camp Bucca, named after Ronald Bucca, a soldier with the 800th Military Police Brigade and New York City Fire Marshall who died in the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, was significantly over-extended in capacity (7,000 inmates) and undermanned within the first two months of the U.S. military occupation.

Similarly, by mid summer 2003, over 7,000 inmates, a mix of criminals with civilians left to fend for themselves, were crammed into Camp Cropper. By this time, there were hundreds of “tent camps” throughout Iraq, suffering similar problems, and abandoned by high-ranking Nietzsche military command oversight. Perhaps the absent commanders were blinded by their own Spartan standards of a foot soldier’s survival projected upon the “POWs” they considered deserving of subhuman management in retaliation for 9/11. A feral dog in Iraq got better treatment.

Left with no recourse for alleviation from inhumane conditions, inmates threw themselves upon the perimeter coil razor wire, lacerating themselves so that they could throw their blood at a patrolling U.S. Military Police (MP) guard. They also dug their hands into the piles of rotting human feces piled about the camp, tossing it at the military personnel in protest. When it rained, they formed baseball-sized clumps of clay from the dirt, which, when dry, became projectile weapons of defense. On searing hot days, the “tent camps” broke out in riots.

When MP officers became desperate about their own safety from rebellious inmates and complained through the chain of command, they were brushed off. Abu Ghraib, being refurbished, was soon to open.

Abu Ghraib reopened in August 2003, renamed the Baghdad Central Confinement Facility (BCCF) or Baghdad Central Correctional Facility. It is affectionately called the “hard site” by occupying U.S. military forces to distinguish it from tent prisons.

Under the orders of Major General Geoffrey D. Miller, commander at Guantanamo Bay, the 800th Military Police Brigade Brig. General Janis L. Karpinski, consolidated the functions of the MP’s and intelligence officers to set “conditions for the successful interrogation and exploitation” of the prisoners. The import of this experimental innovation of Miller’s from Guantanamo Bay, Camp Delta, would ultimately backfire in Iraq.

Karpinski, a corporate management consultant before being called back to active duty, rarely visited Abu Ghraib. She was based in Baghdad and the frequency of insurgent attacks prohibited her from making routine visits, compromising her ability to adequately oversee the proper operation and treatment of the prisoner cellblocks.

By the end of 2003, the guard-to-prisoner ratio was about one to 15, or one battalion guarding 7,000 at Abu Ghraib. Army doctrine calls for one battalion per 4,000 enemy soldiers. In U.S. prisons, one guard per three inmates is considered the norm. Consequently, oversight and accountability was severely marginalized, compromising the Military Police standard operating procedures of prisons.

Accountability to military codes of conduct became virtually nonexistent. Prisoner abuse could easily be covered up by the haphazard methods of managing the inmate population. Worse yet, a segment of the 320th Battalion, the 372nd MP Company, never trained and inexperienced in the guarding of prisons, was given the most sensitive mission: control of the 203 cells on Tier 1A and 1B, the “high priority detainees held for interrogation by civilian and military intelligence officers.”4

In the fall of 2003, Sergeant Blas Hidalgo, while standing guard in an Abu Ghraib prison tower, heard stories of MP’s torturing prisoners. He dismissed them as sounding too crazy. At the same time, Major General Donald J. Ryder, the provost marshal in charge of Army Military Police, was conducting a “comprehensive review of the entire detainee and corrections system in Iraq.”

Though Ryder’s report underscored flawed operating procedures, lack of training, and inadequate prisoner classification systems, Ryder concluded, “...there were no military police units purposely applying inappropriate confinement practices.”

Ryder excluded mention of “Other Government Agencies,” a common expression for the CIA, bringing Iraqis to Abu Ghraib, keeping the MP’s in the dark about their identities and reasons for capture. These secret prisoners were classified as, “ghost detainees.”

At no time were the Geneva Conventions posted in Abu Ghraib, although required by law. Neither were the MP’s informed of the violations of international law committed by holding “ghost detainees,” although they were ordered to hide “ghost detainees” from visiting International Red Cross inspectors. This disregard for international humanitarian law is in keeping with the approval of Secretary of Defense Ronald H. Rumsfeld during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, that U.S. forces, during their “cordon and knock” house-to-house night searches, “Grab whom you must. Do what you want.”

Because it was standard procedure for military intelligence personnel to order the MP’s to “loosen this guy up” and “make sure he has a bad night,” the methods escalated to the perverse, as outlined by the U.S. black ops interrogation bible, Patai’s 1973, “The Arab Mind,” and Rumsfeld’s disregard to the Geneva Convention.

First evidence of the photographic images of the sexual abuse of prisoners were stamp dated October 17, 2003, apparently a month before military intelligence took command of the prison, according to the investigative Taguba Report5. The report claimed the abuses were only conducted between 0200-0400 hrs for just a few days in late October and early November. What was not mentioned, as already pointed out, was the indisputable, systematic torture style indicative of CIA black ops methods of sexual humiliation and abuse of Arabs already used on Afghanistan prisoners.

On January 13, 2004, Sergeant Joseph Darby, a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, had had enough. He slipped a compact disc of the digital images with an anonymous note describing the serious criminal abuses, under the door of an Army criminal investigator. Sergeant Darby was exercising Uniform Code of Military Justice Article 138 – The Soldier’s Right to Complain; the most powerful right, but one of the least known and least used by military personnel.6

Three days later, after an Army Criminal Investigation Division reviewed the incidents, and the military made mention of the investigation in a one-paragraph press release.

At the same time, Dahr Jamail, just arrived in Iraq, was already chasing down the blunt truth of illegal arrests and imprisonments by U.S. forces that bled over into the Abu Ghraib scandal. In his December 15, 2003 dispatch “Home Pillaged, More Illegal Detentions” Dahr reported about U.S. troops raiding a home of 43 year-old college professor, Taharoh Muhammad Munahi in the Al Ewadiyah neighborhood of Baghdad and taking Leith, a family member.

Returning the next day to apologize that they had been given wrong information by an informant, the U.S. soldiers asked Taharoh about the whereabouts of Iftihar, a brother-in-law, who was at the time at the Rasafah US base asking about the whereabouts of Leith. Unable to arrest Iftihar, they arrested Taharoh, giving no reasons. This was more the norm than an isolated incident.

In Dahr’s dispatch titled, “Jubilation, grief, and sadness in occupied Baghdad” he wrote, “The stories of peoples homes being stormed and searched for resistance fighters continue to pour in… just this morning I interviewed a woman who had her brother and sister taken to prison after a fruitless raid by Americans who had stormed her home at 10pm one night… The home was devastated, and two family members [were] taken to prison for no reason.” These actions are in direct violation of Crimes Against Humanity.7

On December 16, 2003, Dahr reflected, “This is another reason, along with the catastrophic state of daily life for most Iraqis, that unless the US changes its policy here immediately, we are only seeing the beginning of a resistance against the [US] occupation.”

A month later, on January 20, 2004, CNN reported: “…new details from the Army’s criminal investigation into reports of abuse of Iraqi detainees… U.S. soldiers reportedly posed for photographs with partially unclothed Iraqi prisoners… the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division has focused on these pictures, which may depict male and female soldiers. … there are ‘credible reports’ that there may be photographs of alleged abuse.”

President Bush, doing damage control from the CNN report, made a sugarcoated statement of apology from the White House Rose Garden to the American people. The following day, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld apologized disavowing the evidence before Congress, hoping to sweep the incident under the Pentagon covert black ops veil of secrecy.

When 26- year-old, by-the-book West Point graduate, devout Christian and recipient of two Bronze Stars for valor in the war on terror, Captain Ian Fishback heard Rumsfeld try to cover up what he had seen first hand8 as a direct violation of “the letter of the Geneva Convention”, Captain Fishback tried through the military chain of command to make those superiors come clean. After seventeen months of stonewalling by his superiors – a violation of Article 138 – The Soldier’s Right to Complain -- Captain Fishback broke rank and went to Human Rights Watch.

“That’s basic officership, that’s what you learn at West Point. It blows my mind,” said Captain Fishback while giving testimony to the human-rights watchdog group. In an open letter to Senator John McCain, Captain Fishback, accusing the top brass of contributing to murder by refusing to set clear guidelines wrote, “If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession.”

It was reported that an infuriated Rumsfeld order subordinates to go after Captain Fishback, “…either break him or destroy him, and do it quickly.”9

Abu Ghraib became a big international story when CBS’ 60 Minutes broadcasted some of the inhumane images of prisoner abuse in April 2004. For someone flicking the television channels with a remote, the horrific images could very well have been mistaken for an American prime-time episode of reality-show ultraviolence, “must-bleed” killer instinct – murder – rape – mutilation bumper crop programming.

Bloodthirsty networks and basic-cable competition have used so much violence in a feeding frenzy for viewer ratings, that American viewers have become numb to any real life atrocities committed by their government. Of American’s top television entertainment programming genres, grisly forensic sexual assault porn and ludicrously lurid child molestation rank the highest.

All this time, Dahr had been reporting not only the illegal arrests of Iraqi men, but the protests outside of Abu Ghraib by family members, who were being stonewalled by U.S. forces. Protesting Iraqi families were refused any information about reasons for incarcerating their relatives or any indication of their whereabouts. Dahr’s reportage went largely ignored by corporate mainstream media, though his dispatches bore the truth well before American media even touched on the matter with watered down fluff pieces claiming it was just a few bad apples in the ranks.

The most striking thing about the whole Abu Ghraib situation is it reeks of Saddam Hussein’s Secret Police methodology, similar to Soviet Russia’s KGB, where an Iraqi civilian could be suddenly taken off the street, hauled off to prison, tortured and interrogated, and then held up to nine months or executed. At that time, you just knew when someone didn’t come home, they had been “taken,” and hopefully, God willing, they would be released in a few months. Most of all, you went quietly about your business, not wanting to draw any attention that might reflect badly on your loved one being held in custody, which often brought them back alive.

The Department of Defense and the Pentagon’s tactical handling of Iraqi prisoners had become indistinguishable with Saddam Hussein’s Secret Police. Sixty percent of the Iraqi detainees did not meet the criteria of being a member or in support of anti-coalition forces, the Taguba Report found. American diplomacy in liberating Iraq from tyranny had turned as obscene, criminal and brutally clumsy as the tyranny itself.

Only seven lower ranking military personnel were court-martialed for the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse photographs.

Dahr continued to report testimonies of abuse from Abu Ghraib inmates during the Spring of 2004 such as: “The Americans brought electricity to my ass before they brought it to my house.” Dahr wrote, “promises to bring justice… to these heinous acts… have fallen on the distraught ears of family members who wait outside the gates of the prison to see their loved ones inside. ”10

Dahr’s dispatches continued to be ignored by the American embedded corporate media pack mentality that was intentionally slow to jump on widespread allegations of deliberate abuse by U.S. military personnel and CIA intelligence operatives in Iraq’s prisons. Perhaps these “journalists” were afraid of alienating themselves with the Pentagon and the White House. Dahr watched first-hand from Baghdad as President Bush appeared on Arab television condemning the prisoner abuse, but never openly apologizing to the Iraqi people.

Prior to the 2004 media report of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse photographs, there were 150 attacks on U.S. military troops a week. Immediately afterwards, this figure escalated to 700 a week continuing through 2005.

This newest set of “Very Disturbing” photos released in Australia will most likely be the last of any photographs and videos of Iraqi prisoner abuse publicly released, though the violations of humanitarian rights continue. Since Rumsfeld said, “Hey, the guys aren’t allowed to have cameras anymore,” the only evidence of an inconvenient contradiction of the Bush administration’s presumption of democracy in Iraq will have to come from “afteraction” journalism from Green Zone embeds, copying verbatim DoD press releases. If not for the independent journalists covering the U.S. occupation, Americans would have been kept well in the dark about the unconscionable suffering of the Iraq civilians at the hands of the Bush-Cheney regime.

The violence and degradation continues for Iraqi detainees

To date, the steady influx of Iraqi detainees has increased 20 percent from 2004, causing the U.S. Military Police to continue to operate at surge capacity, in violation of Army doctrine. Estimated total inmates stands at 17,000, although records and classifications remain mismanaged, making it extremely difficult to compile accurate records of the widespread incarceration of the Iraqi male population in a country of 25 million people.
The average age of the inmate population of an estimated 38 Iraqi compounds11 is between the ages of 20 and 40, less than 60 percent have a high school education.

Meanwhile, projected expansion of private contract construction costs are estimated at $55 million.

According to journalist Herman Grech, the “US is aware of torture taking place in Iraqi prisons.”

Grech recently had a frank interview with retired, Dr. John Pace, U.N. Human Rights Chief, who served in Iraq for two years. Dr. Pace admitted, “Yes, torture is happening now, mainly in illegal detention places. Such centers are mostly being run by militia that have been absorbed by the police force.”

Dr. Pace estimates that over 23,000 Iraqis are being held in detention centers of which 80 to 90 percent are innocent. In July 2005 alone, Dr. Pace claims that the Baghdad morgue received 1,100 bodies, 900 of which bore evidence of torture or summary execution. In December 2005, he counted 780 bodies, 400 of which died of gunshot wounds or injuries from electric drills. Dahr also documented such brutality in the Baghdad morgues, and recorded photographic evidence of execution-style deaths.

NGO Prisoner’s Association for Justice (PAJ) was established to assist prison detainees who have suffered human rights abuses. Spokesman Khalid Rabia’a reported that their organization alone has received 125 reports of prisoner abuse inside Iraqi prisons.

The United Nations Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) quoted one former detainee in their February 22, 2006 report. “I was tortured by the Iraqi army and they used horrible ways to get information out of me,” said Fahed Ahmed, who was received beatings with cables and was sodomized twice. “But after three months, they released me without proof I was helping the insurgency.”

Conduct Unbecoming of the Commander-In-Chief

As mentioned earlier in the case of Captain Fishback breaking ranks to testify about prisoner abuse, a U.S. soldier takes an oath to defend America’s constitutional democracy and its way of life. They are prepared to give their life in defense and conviction of this “call to duty” cause.

In light of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the tipping point of American support for President Bush’s illegal, pre-emptive strike of Iraq, we are not assured that under this current Commander in Chief, our soldiers are being allowed to uphold military codes of conduct in accordance with their oath to protect and defend American democracy.

Some soldiers claim that Article 133 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (Conduct Unbecoming), is being used to silence from leaking information about military atrocities. The commanding superiors argument is that it’s meant to suppress dissent in the ranks, but the forced silence of military personnel should not be taken as an endorsement that soldiers aren’t in disagreement with the Bush administration. According to a recent Zogby poll, 72% of U.S. soldiers in Iraq want to leave12. If more soldiers read the UCMJ, they would be alarmed to find out what Captain Fishback knew as a “by-the-book” soldier, and could, as matters stand, make an assault on their chain of command that would shine light on the illegality of their “call of duty” in Iraq.

Moreover, Article 133, under section (3), states; “committing, or attempting to commit crimes involving moral turpitude,” could be argued that sodomizing Iraqi prisoners, forcing them to masturbate, and raping female Iraqi prisoners meets this criterion of prosecution under military law.

And Article 134 (Assault-indecent) makes it punishable to bring discredit upon the armed forces. This falls under acts of violation of civil and foreign law which brings disrepute or which tends to lower the U.S. armed forces in public esteem.

Military members who willfully disobey the lawful orders of their superiors risk serious consequences. Thus, “I was only following orders” is commonly used as a legal defense.
An order requiring the performance of a military duty or act may be inferred to be lawful and it is disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate. This inference must not, however, apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime. Thus, the “I was only following orders” argument can be an unsuccessful defense, most notably by Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg tribunals following WWII.

Military courts hold military members accountable for their actions even while following orders – if the order is illegal.

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution states that treaty obligations of the United States are the “supreme law of the land,” and the U.S. Supreme Court has held that international law, to include custom, are part of the U.S. law. This means that treaties and agreements the United States enters into enjoy equal status as laws passed by Congress and signed by the President. Therefore, all persons subject to U.S. law must observe the United States’ Law of Armed Conflict obligations. In particular, military personnel must consider LOAC to plan and execute operations and must obey LOAC in combat. Those who violate LOAC may be held criminally liable for war crimes and court-martialed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Under the Rules of War13 “The Law of Armed Conflict aims to protect civilians, prisoners of war, the wounded, sick and shipwrecked. DoDD 5100.77 requires each military department to design a program that ensures LOAC observance, prevents LOAC violations, ensures prompt reporting of alleged LOAC violations, appropriately trains all forces in LOAC, and completes legal review of new weapons. LOAC training is the treaty obligation of the United States under provisions of the 1949 Geneva Conventions”
The Bush-Cheney administration has carried out the destruction of Iraq violating the UN Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter, the Law of Armed Conflict and patently commissioning through the chain of command violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Laying the Foundation: The Gulf War Crimes

None of this is particularly shocking if we look at the many signals of the Bush dynasty’s thirst for global domination. Take for example Ramsey Clark’s indictment of 1991 Gulf War Crimes14 “The United States intentionally bombed and destroyed civilian life, commercial and business districts, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, shelters, residential areas, historical sites, private vehicles and civilian government offices.”

“General Thomas Kelly commented on February 23, 1991, that by the time the ground war begins "there won't be many of them left." General Norman Schwarzkopf placed Iraqi military casualties at over 100,000.” The ratio of U.S. soldier’s K.I.A. (148) to Iraqi combined military and civilian deaths was well over 1 to 20.

By the time the U.S. military was finished with Desert Storm, seven times the explosive force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (100,000 killed) had been expended upon Iraq, returning their economic infrastructure to a pre-industrial age.
“The purpose of the attacks,” writes Clark, “was to destroy life, property and terrorize the civilian population. On the highways, civilian vehicles including public buses taxicabs and passenger cars were bombed and strafed at random to frighten civilians from flight, from seeking food or medical care, finding relatives or other uses of highways…”
General Colin Powell’s response to the extraordinary number of noncombatant deaths was, “It’s really not a number I’m terribly interested in.”15
During the ten years of U.S. enforced sanctions in Iraq after Desert Storm, 525,000 men, women and children died from starvation, untreated disease, depleted uranium radiation exposure, and malnutrition.
The intention of the Bush- Quayle administration was to destroy all military facilities and equipment and permanently impoverish Iraq and threaten its people with famine and epidemics. Now, with the Bush II- Cheney administration, we see the widespread incarceration of Iraqi males. Operation Iraqi Freedom is set upon decimating the military age male population (15 to 40) so Iraq could not raise a substantial force for half a generation.16 That is why the Pentagon has yet to raise a substantial Iraqi Army.
The Fifth Columnists – Disloyal Americans

The genesis of Operation Iraqi Freedom came, in part, from the infamous Paul Wolfowitz Report17, a velociraptor of “strike first” principles that commits crimes against peace18 and introduces a new version of human commoditization, abolishing selfhood, and stirring one’s memory of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

Moreover, George H.W. Bush’s New World Order, revised as Newt Gingrich’s “Contract For America,” which evolved into Bush II’s post 9/11 “War on Terror,” and has now become the DoD’s “Long War19,” mandates that Congressional U.S. policy “turn back the clock” to the pre-WWII era of unchallenged colonial domination in the Middle East. This, in partnership with the United Arab Emirates, a feudal system of government that ignores democratic human rights.

Such is the evidence of financial collusion unearthed by Ramsey Clark over ten years ago: “An extensive investment portfolio that includes, Chase Manhattan Bank, Saudi Industrial Development Fund of the Saudi Monetary Authority, Citicorp, who handles Emir of Kuwait’s $120 billion investment portfolio.” This mere handful of total beneficiaries has put at the disposal of the Bush family over one trillion dollars to become the dread of the world’s 195 countries.20

The Bush-UAE-Carlyle Group-Halliburton-Exxon cabal has amassed trillions since then in war profiteering military contracts, an incestuous racketeering firm, which masquerades as leaders for protecting American democracy. One must understand that there is no allegiance to the U.S. constitution by these thugs, who to date, have tossed our world into a swirling current of social destruction. Such was the case in Europe, seventy-years ago.

Doing business with the enemy is nothing new in the Bush pedagogy. Exploiting cheap labor from enslaved minorities in Europe made the founder of the Bush political dynasty, the late Senator Prescott Bush, millions prior to and during WWII as a financial architect for the Third Reich treasury during the 1930’s. He was caught and fined for breaking the Trading With The Enemy Act of 1941 that ordered seizure of all German banking interests, including the Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush held one stock.

Moreover, Prescott Bush’s investments in the Consolidated Silesian-American Steel Corporation and the IG Farben Corporation, who produced the cyanide that killed the Jews in the concentration camp gas chambers, made him complicit with the Nazi’s using slave labor from Oswiecim that later became the Auschwitz concentration camp.21

Just as George W. Bush’s grandfather fraternized with Nazi business investments at the expense of civilians lives, so has his father continued the war profiteering habit with the Bin Laden family relationship, maintaining a triad investment portfolio that literally controls pharmaceuticals, banking, and oil corporations, and is exclusively entwined with the UAE. But bearing in mind, just as the Nazi’s had to find cheap labor to keep their war machine going, so does the Bush-Cheney administration face a similar dilemma.

In 2002, former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft disclosed a plan to allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights. He proposed to build “enemy combatant” camps on U.S. soil to contain them, most likely modeled after the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Senator Lindsey Graham has since suggested to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new populace to fill those U.S. camps: Fifth Columnists.22 Within this plan, it has been disclosed that these inmates can be used for labor under the control of the Army Corp of Engineers.

The Army Corps of Engineers have awarded a $385 million dollar contract to Kellogg Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, to build detention centers for the Homeland Security Department on U.S. soil. Even though the Pentagon claims that construction hasn’t started, Jamie Zuieback, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the centers would only be used in times of emergency, “like the one when thousands of Cuban floated on rafts to the United States.” Or, if there is another terrorist attack on American soil, shadowy U.S. citizens termed, “Fifth Columnists” will need to be sequestered, just as American-Japanese were in WWII.

Criminal punishment for resistance against the Bush-Cheney regime here at home is nearing the same standards inflicted upon the inmates of concentration camps, gulags, offshore “black cell” interrogation prisons, and those prior political prisoners of Abu Ghraib under Saddam Hussein’s regime, towards the killing-off an open and free society.

Once our president convinces Americans that ordinary countries are just colonial peoples, as the Nazi’s called them untermenschen, subhuman, “We the People” will have destroyed the basis of all civilized codes of conduct. And just in case there is going to be any citizen rebellion to the Bush-Cheney doctrine, most likely, these anti-Bushists will become America’s new labor force of feudal servitude.

It is considered a fundamental fact that in the U.S. occupation of Iraq, “as history tells, foreign military powers cannot long prevail over the territory of a people, in this case the Sunnis of central Iraq, who are prepared to fight to the death,”23 But this time around, President Bush has the UAE as his cash cow, aside from the federal government’s taxpayer’s $2 trillion dollar cash flow, to establish an invincible nuclear military power complex to enforce global submission.

Adjuration For Bush To Be Court-Martial

The Associated Press reported on February 18, 2006 that representatives of 34 US members of the World Council of Churches issued a statement of dissent to the Bush administration: “We lament with special anguish the war in Iraq, launched in deception and violating global norms of justice and human rights.” The World Council of Churches includes more than 350 mainstream Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox churches; however, the Roman Catholic Church is not a member.

The U.S. National Council of Churches issued a statement citing that reports of U.S. prisoner torture violated “the fundamental Christian belief in the dignity of the human person.” In this regard, “…nations have been demonized and God has been enlisted in national agendas that are nothing short of idolatrous.”

The announcement encompasses what any sensible person would feel, but its timing looks like a dog running with its tail between its legs, just as American’s learned of the holocaust after Germany’s surrender in the pages of Look Magazine. Where were the WCC three years ago as a self-sustaining institution of human rights that holds a preponderance of religious power more or less over an open society? Yet, the WCC’s call for human justice stands as a demand, a Christian indictment against the Bush-Cheney regime, which shows what a holy mess they’re stuck in.

The Constitution empowers the President to serve as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States, as well as various state militias. In this capacity, he has the duty to see that the laws of this country are faithfully served.

“This includes International Laws which the US is party to. The Law of Armed Conflict is the branch of international law that prescribes the rights and obligations of combatants, noncombatants, belligerents and prisoners. It consists of those principles and usages that, in time of war, define the status and relations not only of enemies, but also of person’s subject to military control.”24

President George W. Bush has clearly enacted unitary executive power, abolishing the cohesiveness of a judicial, legislative and executive government by subjugating the Jus ad Bellum (Just War Ethics)25 in attacking Iraq and threatening the world with his “either you’re with us, or you’re against us” rhetoric.

President George W. Bush, being subject to military jurisdiction as Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces, is ultimately liable for war crimes. He can be court-martialed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice provisions for enforcing patently illegal orders through the military chain of command in the commission of crimes that wantonly violated the LOAC and signed treaties of international law, specifically for relief of the Iraqi people.

As evidenced by the Abu Ghraib photographs and the continuing preponderance of evidence of tens of thousands of Iraqi noncombatant deaths (which are in direct violation of the LOAC principles of military necessity, distinction, and proportionality26) as exhibited on Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches website, President Bush has violated his oath of office, forfeiting his executive immunity, for no longer executing his policies and duties -- under oath -- within the boundaries of a constitutional democracy.

Ostensibly, President Bush is found to be in collusion with the UAE free-trade accord27, given the recent Dubai Port Deal28, as a means to privatize American government by abolishing its Constitution and Bill of Rights, and scheming to manipulate world commerce and economic scales of economy for his own profit, by willfully impoverishing the welfare of the commons.

Consequently, any U.S. soldier sworn to follow the president’s orders when the president is in accordance with his oath of office, is not obligated to follow such orders by a negligent president in violation of his executive office. If they do so, they put themselves in direct violation of Article 91 and 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and are liable to be court-martial before a military tribunal that recognizes the providence of the oath of a commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces which unwaveringly upholds the constitution, the democratic lifestyle of the American people, and which each soldier vows to give his life to defend.

Chronology of Abu Ghraib: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/daily/graphics/abughraib_050904.htm

1 Hersh, Seymour H., The Gray Zone, How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib, The New Yorker, May 24, 2004 ( http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact )

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_Green

3 http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101faessay84605/john-mueller/the-iraq-syndrome.html?mode=print

4 http://foi.missouri.edu/whistleblowing/prisononbrink.html

5 US Government investigation conducted by Major General Antonio M. Taguba, Lieutenant General Anthony R. Jones, Major General George R. Ray and former defense secretary James R. Schlesinger

6 Under Article 138 of the UCMJ, “any member of the armed forces who believes himself (or herself) wronged by his (or her) commanding officer” may request redress. If such redress is refused, a complaint may be made and a superior officer must “examine into the complaint.”

7 Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950; No. 82, Principle VI (c): Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.

8 “Fucking a PUC” – a “person under control” – in which Army cooks wielding Louisville Slugger baseball bats were encouraged to let off steam by savagely beating detainees.

9 Capt. Ian Fishback, Rolling Stone, December 29, 2005 – January 12, 2006, p. 75

10 “Bringing Electricity To Their Asses" (May 24, 2004) retrieved from http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-jamail240504.htm

11 List of Military Detention Centers in Iraq 2004

12 http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075

13 http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/wars/a/loac.htm

14 http://deoxy.org/wc/warcrim2.htm#charge

15 Patrick E. Tyler, "Powell Says U.S. Will Stay In Iraq," New York Times, March 23, 1991: Al + .

16 Ibid

17 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz

18 Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950; No. 82, Principle VI (a) i. Planning, preparation, initiation or waging war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; ii. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

19 http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2006/20060301_4363.html

20 http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-consp.htm#one

21 http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html

22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_column

23 Galbraith, James K., Withdrawal Symptoms, Mother Jones, March + April 2006 p. 30-31

24 http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/wars/a/loac.htm

25 http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:5gbFu8R0WhgJ:carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/04winter/wester.pdf+Six+Criteria+for+Jus+ad+Bellum+&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=8&client=firefox-a

26 http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/wars/a/loac.htm

27 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022306B.shtml

28 http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=20428

Samir Khader: Do you think that because of such a memo we have to stop working? Of course we can’t. We have to do our job. If the memo was true and George Bush wanted to bomb Jazeera, what can we do? They can do that, and the whole world will know. It’s not because a journalist is threatened that he will not do his job. So, no problem for us.

DJ How do you operate in countries where you’ve been prohibited from working, like Iran and Iraq?

SK As you know, Al-Jazeera has a history of being kicked out from many countries. It’s not new for us. But at the end, these governments reverse their decision and allow us to work. Because at the end, they can’t hide behind masks. They have to tell the truth one day. And one day they discover that we are telling the truth, whether it’s with them or against them. When they kick us out of a given country, they deprive themselves from a mean to answer all the accusations made. For example, if we make accusations at a given country of doing this and this and that and we’re kicked out, they have no means of answering these accusations.

So they realize it is better to have Jazeera with them, under their eyes, so they can use it and use it as a podium also because we are open to everybody. Whether it is opponents or governments, we give the possibility to anyone to express himself or herself. So denying access to al-Jazeera in their own country will in the end be at their own expense.

DJ Which countries right now have prohibited Jazeera from operating in them?

SK Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Algeria. These countries completely prohibit al-Jazeera, 100%. There are other countries who don’t allow us to have a correspondent or to work on a regular basis, but allow us sometimes, for major events, to send a reporter for a couple of days only, then he shall have to leave the country. For example, India and Tunisia. These are important countries where we can only operate on the spot, but not on a regular basis.

Kuwait was one of these countries, but at the end they realized it was better to have al-Jazeera with them, so they allowed us to work there.

DJ Did Jazeera receive an apology or explanation for the leaked Bush/Blair memo?

SK No. Our manager explained that yesterday in his press conference. He explained the whole story. The official spokesman of the British government said there was nothing in that memo that referred to al-Jazeera and Tony Blair also said that at the House of Commons.

But in answering other enquiries from British nationals, the same spokesman recognized that this document, this memo exists and there is a reference to al-Jazeera. So there is a contradiction in their own statements. All we want as a channel is to know the truth. Was it true or not?

So, we’re trying. We didn’t receive an answer yet, but we’re trying.

DJ What are al-Jazeera’s greatest challenges today?

SK Today? Personal opinion of course. The problems of the Middle East, problems of the people. Like democracy and human rights. In all the countries of the Middle East everybody talks about democracy. And when you have elections in one given country, the government starts saying, “Look at our democracy!” But elections are not democracy. Democracy is something else.

I think that we have to focus more on the needs of our people in these times in terms of democracy and human rights. To tell them, “Don’t believe that elections mean democracy. No, it is something else.” And human rights, I don’t think that there is one single Arab country that really respects human rights. Freedom of the press? Where is it? I don’t see it-freedom of the press. We might enjoy it at al-Jazeera, but we are only a tiny part of the press in the Arab world. So all these things, I think we should focus on them more and more.

DJ What are Jazeera’s future plans?

SK We have plans to continue to cover Pakistan, Afghanistan, India or South America. Also we should cover them because we are an international channel. But we have a priority. We are an Arab Channel and we have to address our Arab populations. And I think the management has plans to focus more on these things.

SK I spent two weeks in Fallujah in April ’04. I then went to the “Green Zone” and went two times to press conferences of General Kimmitt where he asked Iraqis and Arabs to change the channel. I did an interview with him and I asked, “General…you’re not supposed to be afraid of us. We’re here everyday with you. Why did you ask people to change the channel?” He said, “Look, you do your job and I’ll do mine.” (he laughs) It amazes me that the Americans complain about al-Jazeera. When I was, at that time in 2004, in the field in Iraq, I didn’t feel that the Americans used to look at al-Jazeera as the enemy.

I used to hear Donald Rumsfeld attacking al-Jazeera, depicted as the enemy. But on the field, no. I used to look at and try to socialize with the simple American soldiers. These are poor guys! Most of them, they don’t know what they are doing in Iraq. They were told to go there for many reasons. Some want a scholarship, others want citizenship, any other reason. Some, because they are patriots. They are patriots, of course, all of the American soldiers. But they told them they had a job to do-to topple Saddam Hussein, to occupy Iraq, they did the job. And then what? To become the police? It’s not the role of an army to do the policing in a country, in a vast country like Iraq. So, this is a big problem for the Americans.

If I was in the shoes of George W. Bush I don’t know what I would do. As an Arab I will tell him to get out of Iraq. But if I were an American and a high ranking official in that administration, I don’t know. He’s really in a very bad position.

DJ Would you like to comment on the current state of journalism?

SK Journalism has changed much in the last years. Can you imagine, if Bob Woodward and Bernstein, were to uncover Watergate today? Would they be able to do it? Because today, now, they tell you, “What’s your source?” You have to uncover your source, otherwise you go to jail. And this happened with Judith Miller. Which means that journalists no longer have the ability to do their job.

I tried to meet with Bob Woodward last May when I was in Washington DC. I went to Washington and NY and tried to meet with him just to ask him this question: If you had similar information, inside information like that which led to Watergate, would you be able to publish it? I’m sure of the answer, but I couldn’t find him.

The Voice of America’s Washington DC based bureau daily radio broadcast promotes President Bush’s State of the Union battle cry for global democracy and freedom as the altruistic war weapon against terrorism just as the Central Intelligence Agency broadcasted to Soviet occupied European countries during the Cold War.

VOA also reported that, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, is restructuring the U.N.’s Human Rights program, claiming it is fraudulent and ineffective, most likely so Bush can eliminate international whistle-blowers on his excessive executive policy violations of human rights with alleged terrorist detainees. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is touting saber rattling brinkmanship to justify another unilateral preemptive military strike, this time upon the alleged rogue-state Iran for reopening the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant and two others. And President Bush continues to conduct his knee-jerk legislation from the Oval Office, professing in the vein of Richard Nixon that as Commander in Chief he has the right to subvert constitutional law for the sake of national security. Freedom and liberty spoken from the mouths of Republicans has become the synonym for War.

“The apotheosis of State power is war. War creates a hell on earth.”1

The calculation of prosperity for the lavish lifestyles of a Republican congressional majority; empowered by a $2.5 trillion federal-state-local conglomerate cash cow – with an estimated $2 trillion dollar investment in the Iraq war2 -- supplying 50 percent of all weapons for sale on the world market – a 2.1 billion dollar a year K Street Project launched by former majority House of Representatives leader, Tom Delay -- is wholly separate from that of the common people’s interests of sovereignty.

By instituting an ersatz “state of war” the Bush-Cheney vanity has gained unprecedented unipolar power by conscripting patriotic American wage earners under the control of its unitary executive doctrine enhanced by promoting emotion-charged irrelevancies in the media, which is as formidable even in the absence of military conquest, e.g. War on Christmas. The insatiable assembly-line demand and tolerance for violence by America, buffered by the luxurious bubble of continental isolationism from the horrors inflicted on billions of innocent humans outside its borders, has smeared the hands of its citizenry with blood.

The dark sordid ambitious high-stakes payoff for war profits is good enough for Republicans to enact a hostile take over of democracy, who discount cold-blooded killing of innocent lives as a necessary sacrifice in exchange for corporate exploitation.

"Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war." ~Donald Rumsfeld

The falsified dangers of national security breaches in the Bush-Cheney administration era have encouraged the Republican Congress and its bribing-for-votes special interest allies to look for more trumped-up emergencies and moral equivalents for war to rally the citizenry and persuade them to give up more of their liberty and their constitutional rights to the State’s body politic. Because of a fatal lack of solidarity to the democratic system by the American people, Republicans have shifted majority partisanship into a pedigree of totalitarian government.

All of it is a deliberate deception to mislead with “Swiftboating” ambiguousness by aiming at the common people’s anxieties to seduce them into the “national effort”: Republican belittling of the rule of law. “The most egregious example is the conduct of the war in Iraq,” reports Elizabeth Holtzman in “The Impeachment of George W. Bush.”3

“We inherit the warlike type; and for most of the capacities of heroism that the human race is full of we have to thank this cruel history.”4

The list of recent abrogation’s of constitutional law duly enacted by the tyranny of Republicans broadening their despotism continue in a laundry list of a drudged through scandal after scandal with no constitutional accountability to its subversions. The president’s testimony on his own controversial actions is never impartial, often dangerous, and always useful, for it reveals the mind of the man if not the truth of the matter.

- Bush to criminalize protesters under Patriot Act as “disruptors” that violates civil rights.5

- Bush nullifies the anti-torture McCain Amendment with wavier right to use torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct when he sees fit. ''The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in Chief," Bush wrote, adding that this approach ''will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President . . . of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks." This was reinforced by Vice President Dick Cheney who said, “I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it…” By asserting constitutional authority in violation of the statute where it would assist the war on terrorism, Bush as re-opened the torture loophole.6

- President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.7

- Bush issued warrantless wiretapping on Americans prior to 9/11.8 The National Security Administration’s eavesdropping policy shows the extent to which Bush’s corruption has spurred the intelligence community to flout legal conventions domestically and internationally where the most covert tools of national-security policy have been misused.9

- Bush advocates he is above the rule of law under the Theory of Unitary Executive10, endorsed by Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito11 that undermines our constitutional legislative and judicial branches of government. Bush specifically claims that his executive authority outweighs the province of duty of the judicial department to interpret legislation.12

“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.” -- Edward R Murrow

There is a call to arms among us in the midst of this constitutional crisis. The need for mental alertness and dedication to clear critical thinking as rules of political engagement to checkpoint propaganda – a constant exercise of democratic judgment in discriminating and exposing propaganda for what it is - the deception of the Bush-Cheney regime to herd people into lock-step docility, and exhibit proof, the business of equality that American democracy was founded upon. Democratic constitutions are not designed to confirm the predominance of any elite interest, but to prevent it by upholding the permanent reign of rule of law against arbitrary partisan opinion.

As Dahr Jamail pointed out in “US Propaganda vs. Iraqi Reality” another his bullet point look at foreign media outlets yields the following developments that continue to be ignored or under-reported in the US: All told, over two hundred noncombatant Iraqis died in a three day period.

Moreover, from Dahr Jamail’s dispatch, “Freedom in action” I can concur with his anonymous friend’s comment in the email sent to Mr. Jamail from Iraq. “The Iraqis now get frightened from the local police and military as they exhibit a very high level of misconduct and abuse of the authority that they now have.”

This morning my exchange with a middle-aged Iraqi citizen in Baghdad was guarded but explicit about his living conditions. He had not slept in 48 hours, remaining alert to the unstable conditions outside on the streets. Fearful of harassment by the U.S. military patrols or Iraqi Police, he prefers to stay hidden in his house. In a desperate attempt to make light of his confining situation, he says he wants to fly to my country, where it’s safe to be outside.

In “‘Democracy’ Brings Bleak Days,” written by Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed for the Inter Press Service, the fear of national security forces stems from no impunity for their abuses and violations of the new Iraqi constitution, a constitution that sanctifies a police state rather than an open society. The similarities to Saddam Hussein’s regime are frightfully parallel.

“People have no recourse to law any more. "We are not living in a proper way," restaurant owner Qassim Abdul Hamed told IPS. "We are suffering at the hands of those who come in their vehicles just to have meals free of charge." The restaurant has to go on serving free meals to the Iraqi police, he said. "We can't say a word because they have guns."

Thus is the complimentary acrimonious style of George W. Bush’s arbitrary executive policy that has crept into the homes of Americans.

"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious" - 1984 - George Orwell

Ask a Republican if they are more willing to kill “over there” in cold blood, and they will blindly vote to wage war as the ideal harvest of an elitist democracy; the pure pugnacity of love glory that triggers the salivating appetite for foreign plunder of an unrestrained oligarchy. This kind of reckless Republican ego inflation has been enforced upon the egalitarian general welfare just as the Iraqis experience the brutal iron heel of oppression by the Pentagon’s military-industrialized complex.

“The military feelings are too deeply grounded to abdicate their place among our ideals until better substitutes are offered than the glory and shame that come to nations as well as individuals from the ups and downs of politics and the vicissitudes of trade.”13

Obviously no substitutes have been offered, even after George H. W. Bush Sr. wrote, “Why We Didn’t Remove Saddam.”14 I paraphrase his Time magazine article:

“Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in “mission creep,” and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we have been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.’s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different – and perhaps barren – outcome.”

Of three intellectual perceptions on Bush’s utopian despotism; Kevin Phillips’, “plutocracy”; Bertram Gross’ “friendly fascism” and Robert Kaplan’s Athenian oligarchies, I side with Kaplan. “The powerful exact what they can,” said the Athenians, “and the weak grant what they must.” American politics in the 21st century is a democracy in theory, and an oligarchy in practice. For as the Athenians learned, partisan corruption has a better chance of slipping through the fingers of justice in a democracy for all things are done by dint of money.

Just as the Bush administration has fundamentally divided the working class by race, creating a massive geoeconomic quadrant beyond the reach of “We the People,” these illicit strategies have been executed upon the Iraqi people as the greatest fallacies of far-fetched foreign policies in preserving national security.

Chris Floyd writes, “This was vividly demonstrated in one of the most revolting scenes in recent U.S. history: Bush's State of the Union address in January 2003, delivered to Congress and televised nationwide during the final frenzy of war-drum beating before the assault on Iraq. Trumpeting his successes in the war on terror, Bush claimed that "more than 3,000 suspected terrorists" had been arrested worldwide -- "and many others have met a different fate." His face then took on the characteristic leer, the strange, sickly half-smile it acquires whenever he speaks of killing people: "Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem.””15

The Bush-Cheney regime has established War as America’s reason for existence, not liberty and freedom; it is a new brand of democracy in extremis, propagated by an egomaniacal Unitary Executive Power: The Mega State of War to established a never ending global dictatorship.

1 The State of War, Chapter 9; Libertarianism, by David Boaz http://www.libertarianism.org/ex-11.html

2 Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes estimate the cost of the Iraq war to be between $1-2 trillion.

3 Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman served four terms in Congress, where she played a key role in House impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060130/holtzman

4 The Moral Equivalent of War by William James, 1906 http://www.constitution.org/wj/meow.htm

5 ACLU Opposes Patriot Act Provision http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/12/AR2005121201448.html

6 Bush Could Bypass New Torture Ban, by Charlie Savage

7 President Signs H.R. 3402, the "Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005" http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060105-3.html

8 Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11 by Jason Leopold http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011306Z.shtml

9 State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration by James Risen http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743270665/ref=ase_bookstorenow57-20/002-5594253-0312050?n=283155&tagActionCode=bookstorenow57-20

10 View of the George W. Bush Administration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_Executive_theory

11 The Wall Street Journal, 5 January 2006, p.1

12 Scholar says Bush has used obscure doctrine to extend power 94 times, by Jennifer Van Bergen, The Raw Story; http://rawstory.com/news/2005/CanExecutive_Branch_Decide_0923.html

13 The Moral Equivalent of War by William James, 1906 http://www.constitution.org/wj/meow.htm

14 Time (2 March 1998) http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/bushsr-iraq.htm

15 Sacred Terror: Bush's "Universal Death Squad" By Chris Floyd, December 10, 2005; Bush Watch http://bushwatch.com/floyd.htm

Interviewed by Omar Khan for www.dahrjamailiraq.com, read the interview of Dr. Kwiatkowski's blistering and revealing comments about the neo-conservatives, Bolsheviks, fascism and the Bush Administration agenda in Iraq and beyond.

KK: Basically, they gave me a full ROTC scholarship, and I needed money to go to college. That was the deal. I was happy to do it actually. I had applied for navy and army, and the one that I got was Air Force.

My dad had served in the navy for 4 years in, I guess, the late 50s. And he used to always talk about how great the military was. So we were pretty disposed to the military, but I joined the Air Force because they’re the ones that coughed up the money for college.

OK: So military service has been a tradition in your family for at least two generations.

KK: It’s definitely looked highly upon in my family. Actually, I have two brothers, both—one was for his career in the navy, just retired. The other was in the marines for about seven or eight years.

OK: What do you mean when you’ve elsewhere referred to the military as an apolitical institution?

KK: When I refer to the military as apolitical, that’s because, as an institution, it’s supposed to be. But it’s kind of political in the sense that if you’re what’s called a conservative—usually you’re in good company when you’re in the military. You’re around a lot of people that care about some of those basic things. So there’s that aspect. But technically apolitical.

We swear an oath to the constitution—to defend it against enemies, both foreign and domestic. They’re words, but every time you get promoted you have to retake the oath. So it does make you think about the constitution. You’re reminded of it in a way that other people in other jobs are not reminded of it. So we have this constant idea—it’s kind of reinforced to us throughout our careers: what we’re supposed to be doing, what we’re all about.

OK: How did you see whistleblowing in terms of these values?

KK: You’re oath is not to a political party, it’s not to an institution, but to an idea: to a constitutional republic. So we have a president who serves for 4-8 years.

And he has—according to the constitution—limited duties that he takes care of. We have a legislature; and a judiciary. So if you care about those things, and you’re out to preserve that balance—to respect that balance rather than persons—you don’t think of it as whistleblowing, you think of it as, you know, my loyalty is to what is right, to how these things are supposed to work. I was working pretty closely with those who lied to the American people into buying an unnecessary war, an illegal war, I think. But my loyalty is not to those people—whether those people are the president, Republican or Democrat, whether those people political appointees, whether those people are civil servants. The loyalty is to the system, and the system is set up in such a way to prevent stupid things from happening in foreign policy.

OK: What do you mean when you characterize neoconservatism as a dead philosophy of anticommunism?

KK: In 2002, before I was actually working with people doing Near East policy and seeing and meeting these neoconservatives—I didn’t even know what a neoconservative was. I began to look at who these individuals were, what they were doing before in our government, and what they cared about politically. These are the same guys that are responsible for Iran-Contra. They don’t care about the law. They are liberals at home—very much not a traditional conservative political perspective domestically, but closer to the more Social Democratic approach, somewhat like our Democratic party used to be, domestically; but, in terms of foreign policy, very hawkish, extremely hawkish, extremely aggressive—black and white, murder, death, kill basically. I hate to say that, but that’s what it is: they have to die so we can live. Intervention oriented foreign policy, which is not conservative either. This is kind of the political home of neoconservatives.

The Cold War was perfect for this crowd; and this crowd made their political bones during that time. These guys were the hardcore anticommunists even within the Reagan administration. Richard Perle actually left the administration in 1986 based on Reagan’s overtures and receptivity to Gorbachev. Perle, Wolfowitz, Armitage, Rumsfeld, Cheney—all these guys, though not always in the exact same way, had a place in the Reagan administration as hardline hawks, even though many of them were not Republicans. In fact Richard Perle to this day is a registered Democrat.

OK: What is your view of the legacy to which the neocons are heirs?

KK: The intellectual fathers of neoconservatism—what shapes their approach internationally—are the Bolsheviks. International revolution, international change—radical change, global revolution. And these same terms, these same ideas—of international change, revolution, transformation—these are the words of Michael Ledeen and some of the other articulators of neoconservatism. And the actual people, and they’re not ashamed to really say this, but guys like Irving Crystal and other intellectuals of the 30s had actually been Bolsheviks.

One of the characterizations of neocons today is that they are neo-Jacobins—philosophically, this idea that people are the same, all want the same thing, and should have the same thing. That ‘same thing’ in a modern neoconservative view is this idea of ‘democracy.’ But is it really democracy that they want, or is democracy simply a trojan horse. Certainly for Iraq, George Bush has been left with one story as to why we went in

If they had democracy, they’d take a vote, and we’d be kicked out of there immediately.

Certainly we don’t want them to have democracy, because then they’ll make us leave. So it’s unclear that democracy is a goal, but that’s what they talk about: the God of Democracy. So it’s not like Trotskyism in the sense that they’re not advocating global communism but they are advocating universal, radical—and in effect, catastrophic—change. And this is kind of a clear thread for many years.

So the neoconservatives are not new; during the Reagan era, the ‘Cold War’ was their vehicle for credibility—this evil enemy that we must face, or else the end of the world is coming. They cannot work without this global enemy, almost a kind of class warfare. You can’t just have a mere enemy; it has to be a monstrous enemy, something that can destroy us. They’ve found that in, or rather cultivated it, in what is called ‘Islamic Fascism.’ Unfortunately this doesn’t exist. No one advocates it. No one articulates it. In the 1930s, Hitler had fascism and he talked about it. Islamic Fascism is a made up thing. . But it doesn’t matter: what matters is that it’s useful in generating fear, and serves that same larger purpose—providing a platform from which to operate.

Now you can follow the money too. The neocon philosophy provides a construct within which we can—‘we,’ being the establishment, corporatism—can move. So you have this construct that talks of ‘fear’ ‘protection,’ ‘security.’ Which are used to advocate intervention—intervention for security, what Iraq was effectively sold as: ‘intervention for American security.’

OK: Please say a little bit about your experience in the Pentagon.

KK: I worked four and a half years for the Pentagon. Between May of 2002 and March of 2003, I worked in Near East South Asia (NESA) bureau in the Pentagon, which worked alongside The Office of Special Plans (OSP)—a group of twenty-five people or so in August 2002—under Bill Luti. It was dissolved in August 2003—about four months after the invasion and the mission accomplished declaration by the president.

Its job had been done.

The whole idea with Iraq was to destroy Iraq. It was not to rebuild it, turn it into a democracy. It was simply to take a country that had no navy, no airforce, and a very small—you know—fourth rate army and turn it into a country with no navy, no airforce, and no army. We did this, and OSP did its part in promoting that. Once it was done there was no need for OSP.

One of the amenities with which we were provided as staff officers were talking points—Saddam Hussein, WMD, and terrorism. If there is anything that you’d need to research on Iraq, you’d only need to take verbatim from the latest version of what OSP had produced on any one of these talking points. These same bullet points would of course be in presidential speeches. I can only assume—since they were producing them for us, on a very routine basis—I can only assume that OSP was the creative entity here in doing that.

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had a staff of 6 or 7 people dedicated intelligence people who had no other job than to support our boss, Bill Luti (Deputy under NESA and OSP). Their only job was to answer Bill Luti’s questions and provide Bill Luti with the intelligence that the intelligence community had, particularly DIA intelligence. So the means by which a policy receives its information was perverted. It may have been perverted before then, but I know that it was perverted in the time that I was there, from May 2002 to March 2003. The DIA people were told: ‘no this is not what I want to hear, go back and do a better job’

This is what I saw as an observer. Not as a person inside DIA. But I can tell you, I talked to these guys—who’d come over to brief the lower level people on a routine basis:

They were always under pressure. OSP saying, ‘I don’t need that, give me what I need,’ and DIA saying, ‘I can’t give you something that doesn’t exist.’

I actually explained this to the Senate staffers during the Phase I investigation of intelligence. They were like: oh, whatever. Basically unwilling to entertain the possibility. But there was clearly a huge contempt for information; what they did, instead was to ask for exactly what they wanted to hear, probably about 95% of which was entirely false.

Anyone who talked of sanctions and continual bombing of Iraq over a dozen years, or said that there’s no evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Pentagon in 2002 was going to be told: I don’t want to hear that, go back and find me something I can use. And if you didn’t do that, like in the case of the DIA guy, who went back and looked and couldn’t find anything, he was then disinvited from meetings. Bill Luti had one briefing on Weapons of Mass Destruction, supposed to be prepared by the DIA—had been historically prepared by the DIA guy, had been historically prepared by the DIA guy. He didn’t like the way the DIA guy had done it, so transferred the responsibility to a policy office, that of course exaggerated, presented a threat that didn’t exist. But this made everybody happy, since Americans were getting excited for war. A noble lie taken as far as it can go.

OK: How does this fit into what you’ve called ‘grand plans’ that today ‘walk the corridors of the Pentagon’?

KK: This global enemy—‘Islamic fascism,’ ‘Islamic terrorism,’ or whatever it is—enables war in the Mideast. So the ‘grand plan’ is a Mideast transformation plan, which guys like Michael Ledeen have been talking about for a long time. Since we have this apocalyptic enemy, it’s either us or them. So in Iraq: the money goes for ‘security’— American bases, and police power to defend those bases. The things we’ve destroyed we have not rebuilt or fixed. The things that we have protected have been the Oil Ministry and the Finance Ministry. This is from the very beginning. Those bases in Iraq will be how we deal with (intimidate) the rest of the Middle East. Keep those other countries in line—politically, economically, and in every other way. This is clearly articulated, for example, in “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” actually written for Netanyahu: Iraq must first be changed, and from there we will be able to deal with our enemies—primarily, Syrians and Iranians. But this has nothing to do with America, or with American interests—in my opinion, anyway. Who benefits from this kind of foreign policy? This needs to become a topic that can be publicly discussed. If we can’t talk about it, then we shouldn’t be paying for it. What are they forecasting: something like 2 trillion dollars, or something, for this war? This is not an insignificant amount of money. So this question—Who benefits from this kind of foreign policy?—needs to become a topic that can be publicly discussed.

During a recent trip to Panama, President Bush pontificated that Americans “do not torture”—his deployment of executive authority to keep Congress from imposing rules on prisoner treatment notwithstanding. With the implementation of the Patriot Act of 2001, President Bush was given express power to declare anyone suspected of having a connection to terrorists or terrorism an “enemy combatant” and thereby suspend his right to habeas corpus. The Senate diligently voted to cast innocent people into pain and darkness without recourse or rights. American citizens declared “enemy combatants”should not be denied the constitution; but a formable squawk about rights and habeas corpus forced a compromise of allowing a post-conviction appeal – for people who had been arbitrarily seized and held in isolation for years without charges, which had been tortured, humiliated and driven to madness, some committing suicide before facing a kangaroo court. Such was the deal cobbled together for Bush to present as a triumph of human spirit and the American way.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, in his confirmation hearing proceedings, represented the American way in matters of torture to be waterboarding, use of dogs to induce stress, forced nudity, hooding, sensory deprivation, food and sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures, a face or stomach slap, the forcible injection of mood-altering drugs, mock executions, and threatening to send detainees to countries where they would be tortured, “might… be permissible in specific circumstances, if appropriately limited, depending on the nature of the precise conduct under consideration.”

The Senate Judiciary members failed to question Gonzalez about a March 2003 Associated Press report referring to the “the (U.S.) military listening closely to Israeli experts and picking up tips from years of Israeli Army operations in Palestinian areas and Lebanese towns.” Gonzalez skirted questioning suggesting he may have been aware of quid-pro-quo prison “interrogation training” (known to insiders as “R-21,” short for “resistance-to-interrogation”) in exchange for the awarding of billions of dollars in Homeland Security contracts to Israel, an expert in torture interrogations. The Senate left untouched validated reports of an interrogation facility in Jordan, employing “interrogation methods… banned by U.S. law.”

More findings of torture this past week: BBC’s Caroline Hawley in Baghdad reported the discovery of 173 Iraqis imprisoned in the central Jadiriya district of Baghdad by Iraqi security forces. The building used to sequester the Sunni prisoners, verified by Mohsen Abdul-Hamid, head of the Iraqi Islamic Party, was allegedly used as a base for the militia called the Badr Brigade, a covert operations squad.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim concurred with the Hawley’s report that the detainees appeared malnourished, and may have been “subjected to some kind of torture. “In order to search for a terrorist, they used to detain hundreds of innocent people and torture them brutally,” Abdul-Hamid, added, an apparent precondition of democracy in Iraq.

Seymour Hersh has said that the U.S. government has videotapes of children being raped at Abu Ghraib prison. “Some of the worst things have happened you don’t know, okay? 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.”

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Why the compulsion to torture? Roger Burbach and Jim Tarbell wrote in their book, Imperial Overstretch: George W. Bush and the Hubris of Empire, as “an imperial nation flagrantly imposing its will on others.” Torture demonstrates a righteousness based on the conviction that the virtues of democracy need to be promoted with the real intention to “ensure that the US penetrates other countries’ economies” – the same purpose that animates the US policy in Central and Latin America. The catchphrase, “free market democracies” is deconstructed as “controlled democracies that would recognize the prerogatives of international conflict.” And what better way to emerge as an unchallenged world empire under the guise of the “war on terrorism” as the means to promote a “petro-military complex” than by perpetuating armed conflict and torturing others into compliance.

According to the Center for Defense Information’s “The Defense Monitor” (September/October 2005) “[t]he annual Congressional Research Service report, the United States remains the world’s largest exporter of arms to developing nations and led all countries in both arms transfer agreements and arms deliveries in 2004, including $6.9 billion of transfer agreements with developing nations.” Before 9-11, of the 189 member nations of the U.N., the U.S. already had a military presence in 153. Since then, Bush has established fourteen new military bases extending from Eastern Europe through Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, called “forward operating bases.”

If one senses a beast bearing on the world, it is a familiar one; it came from the darkest organic forces in American Cold War politics. It went back into hiding when President Richard M. Nixon broke the stalemate between the U.S. and Soviet Russia standoff, but has been allowed to claw its way back out of the shadows in the Oval Office. Again, it comes from a man who is morally feeble, lacks self-humiliation, and is fueled more and more by the commie pinko phobia that is deeply imbedded in his father’s extreme right winger’s (e.g. John Birch Society, and the American Nazi Party) Texas oil milieu, and was infested with organized crime figures to plot to assassinate Fidel Castro by colluding with the Mafia and the CIA. Since George W. Bush’s presidency, we have been thrust into the belly of the beast. As the invasion of Iraq loomed in 2002, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia James Akin remarked, “The American oil companies are going to be the main beneficiaries of this war. We take over Iraq, install our regime, produce oil at the maximum rate and tell Saudi Arabia to go to hell.” And, with it, the U.S. Constitution.

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Yale historian, Paul Kennedy wrote in his book, “The Rise and Fall of Great Powers” (1987) that the United States “runs the risk, so familiar to historians of the rise and fall of previous Great Powers, of what might roughly be called ‘imperial overstretch.’” Certainly, the Bush administrations manifestations of strength, as we’ve come to know as shrouded in layers of untruths of “not torturing” so called “enemy combatants” does in fact signal strategic weakness.

The terrorist attacks, however misguided and criminal, can be directly traced to US military presence in Arab countries, and as an effort to stop foreign corporate takeover and a seemingly unending Bushist totalitarian military crusade. Tariq Ali writes in Planet Porto Alegre of Bush’s warmongering, “It is a multi purpose mantra. The first aim is to convince the public that the terrorists are crazed Muslims who are bombing modernity/democracy/freedom/ ‘our values’, etc.”

Remember Satar Jabar, the faceless man in the widely circulated photograph as the iconic hooded figure with electric wires attached standing upon a crate derisively described by many Iraqis as the “Statute of Liberty”? Satar Jabar is made to look like a demon straight out of Breughel’s painting, “The Triumph of Death” an allegorical depiction of the horrors of war—a city panorama engulfed in blacken smoke and armies of skeletons slaughtering people in a horrific ways. In the midst of the carnage, a fool plays a flute while a skeleton plays along.

9/11 unfortunately changed the lives of non-Americans more than it did Americans. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been imprisoned, tortured, killed and disenfranchised without the human rights protection of habeas corpus. England’s Prime Minister Tony Blair has even weighed in on the right to torture issue, rebuking his own senior judges in Britain by saying, “Should legal obstacles arise, we will legislate further, including, if necessary amending the Human Rights Act.” Blair must be taking his lead from Bush. Bush’s sinister assault on what remains of democracy is the complete removal of habeas corpus within the U.S. Constitution.

This is especially troubling as one of a plethora of reasons given by the Bushists for the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a humanitarian intervention: to overthrow a brutal dictatorship and attempt to replace it with a government founded upon principles of democracy, rule of law, and respect for human rights.

Ironically, you have Iraqi-on-Iraqi abuse by Iraqi government agents, such as Iraqi police against Iraqi prisoners, just as it was with Saddam Hussein. Nothing has changed when you consider the evidence of rape and sexual torture at Abu Ghraib orchestrated by U.S. officials.

“It’s not about who they are. It’s about who we are,” Senator John McCain (R-AZ) stated, defending his amendment to a defense appropriations bill that would bar U.S. officials from inflicting “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” on detainees in the war on terror. But somebody ought to explain to Senator McCain, a Vietnam war veteran who suffered torture by his captors for five years in a Vietnamese prison camp, that Bush’s coercive interrogation policy is predicated on a double standard: according to the administration we can do it to “them” because “they” are different from “us.” This turns a jaundice eye towards dissenters in Congress. Although this premise has resulted in untold numbers of homicides, as we’ve yet to know fully the extent of the Central Intelligence Agency’s controlled secret prisons (located in Eastern Europe) “black sites” interrogation techniques and the defined exception to humane treatment of prisoners.

Senator McCain’s infusion of an anti-torture amendment was hailed by editorialists across the country as a great leap forward, but it he did nothing but regurgitate the rule of law. American forces were already forbidden from subjecting any captive “to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” as prohibited by the Constitution and the UN Convention Against Torture.

*

Alexander Herzen said, in another age, “We are not the doctors. We are the disease.” By even Pentagon figures, more than 21,000 innocent people have been caged without due process in Iraq alone. The prisons are so full, that as a propagandized gesture of humanitarian good will, the Bush administration released 1,500 detainees at the end of Ramadan. Truth be known, the overcrowded living conditions are quickly deteriorating. Classed as “enemy combatants”—untold thousands, like Iraqis, have been unjustly imprisoned around the world. We, English and Americans, have openly and willingly allowed the Iraqi people to suffer the worse of the Bush administration’s deliberate travesty of human rights.

Under the recent stripping of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum provision by the passage of the Graham-Levin Amendment to the Military Authorization Bill by the United States Senate, a cornerstone of Western jurisprudence has been removed. Now, even U.S. citizens can be arbitrarily imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial, the same kind of judicial process that Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin loved and Saddam Hussein emulated. Anyone deemed an “enemy combatant” can be plunged into a dark hole somewhere, indefinitely, with no way to appeal innocence or their status.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has established a thousand points of darkness across the globe that will unleash Bush’s demented bidding. No more checks and balances of the courts enshrined in the US Constitution for the common people. To legislate this is disgraceful, but the scandal is more intriguing. The Great Writ of Habeas Corpus is as old as the Magna Carta. “It is too fundamental, too important, too precious, to be rewritten on the back of an envelope, then passed as a floor amendment to an authorization bill on four day’s notice, and then hastily further revised.” No committee hearings were held, no committee reports were had—no Senator even saw the Graham-Levin bill until the day it was put to a vote. Clearly, by the hand of political treachery, they rushed to rip up the admirable merits of the American constitution to purposely violate equal protection, due process, and other human rights. The Graham-Levin Amendment has made America an express enemy of human rights. And yet Bush has the audacity to claim that the new Iraqi constitution has established a democracy. In reality, as we are seeing in America, the Iraqis are being subjected to an “alternative legal system.”

The corporate media, as we have come to know as an accomplice to the Bush administration’s secrecy, deliberately avoided putting light on such constitutional travesties and subsequent actions. They are purposely kept in the shadows from the American people. But when it concerns their own backyard, as in the case of the Rumsfeld-Poindexter Total Information Awareness system that would have given the Bushist’s and all-seeing eye straight out of Orwell’s “1984,” editors throughout the nation showed a light of editorial complaint. Consequently, this has been blocked because our state sanction journalist “watch-dog” expects clemency for parading in sync bylines in the lock step with Bush’s death march.

The Christian Peacemaker Teams reported on November 1, 2005 that Iraqis need our help to end state-sponsored torture by Iraqi security forces. CPT has spent nearly two years documenting abuse of Iraqi detainees in U.S. run prisons in Iraq. Instrumental are the new commando groups, Wolf and Scorpion Brigades, reminiscent of the Central American Death Squads, orchestrated by career diplomat John Negroponte, Director of National Intelligence for the United States, who covered upon human rights abuses carried out by CIA-trained operatives in Honduras under the Reagan-Bush administration. Negroponte knows what it means to put obtaining new territory as a priority over killing innocent people. It is the banal truth of the hideous reality of The Beast.

CPT received firsthand accounts of what most of the world already knows about the U.S. run prisons in Iraq: “Method of torture reported by survivors and families include beatings with cables (a favorite of Saddam’s henchmen), electric shock, electric drilling (two detainee deaths have surfaced this week in Basra who show indisputable evidence of being drilled to death) food and sleep deprivation, beatings of feet, stress positions, and suspension from the ceiling.

Torture is as much a common a practice in Bush’s “war on terrorism” as it was during the Spanish Inquisition. Heretics were burned at the stake, executed on cartwheels, suspended on poles. Labor was forced and the religious aristocracy spit upon any declaration of human rights. Putting a ban on cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment has its clear implications, as it is written in the new Iraqi Constitution.

I doubt many Americans have taken the time to read the complete translated version, though they have paid billions and homeland lives for its implementation. Few are aware of the provisional loopholes, the inconsistencies and obvious language manipulations, such as the regional segregation of the parliamentary two-thirds vote clause that allows the occupation to dictate the type of “sovereignty” they want to form in this holy cradle of humanity. There is no “one person, one vote” for the Iraqis to chose their president. The contract for democracy in Iraq is a sanitized document, not surprisingly meant to pervert any safeguard for human rights with gray areas of interpretation that promote a monarchy, not democracy.

Moreover, it is blatantly clear that U.S. troop presence is violating the democratic provisions of the newly approved constitution. After December 31, 2005, when the new Iraq government takes power, it will be interesting to note just exactly how Bush plans on orchestrating control and accountability, without violating the very democracy principles he boasts to have put in place. Until now Bush as failed miserably as a role model for enforcing rule of law. Explicit in the Transitional Administrative Law issued by the Iraqi Governing Council, for instance, were several guarantees of “fundamental rights” to Iraqis, such as equality before the law (Article 12). Where was this enforced for the tens of thousand detainees?

Today, the preamble to the Iraqi reads: “Sons of Mesopotamia, the land of prophets, resting place of the holy imams, the leaders of civilization and the creators of the alphabet, the cradle of arithmetic” and “inspired by the injustice against the holy cities… create a new Iraq, Iraq of the future, without sectarianism, racial strife, regionalism, discrimination or isolation.”

The medieval writ of habeas corpus stated, “You (shall) have/hold the body to be subjected to (examination)” and though reflected somewhat in Iraq’s constitutional wording, there is no explicit clarification that holds accountable the current human rights infractions of the U.S. occupation.

Article (17): Each person has the right to personal privacy as long as it does not violate the rights of others or general morality. 2nd – The sanctity of the home is protected. They cannot be entered or searched or violated except by judicial decision and in accordance with the law.

Another provision, if applied to U.S. military forces, would put an end to “cordon and search” operations in urban settings. Iraqis know this technique well, as their homes are are raided at night, occupants herded into one room, while still in their bed clothes, and the men are filed out, some being taken away in cuffs.

Article (19): 5th – The accused is innocent until his guilt is proven in a just, legal court. The accused cannot be tried for the same accusation again after he has been freed unless new evidence appears. “Unless new evidence appears” seems to be an ominous telling as well as there is no provision for a swift and speedy trial.

Under 12 –a (Arbitrary) detention shall not be allowed.

General Kimmitt has defended the procedures used by American commanders in Iraq as being even more rigorous than those required by international law. “There is a review board that is set up that is done far more frequently than required by the Geneva Conventions where a board takes a look at that person’s case,” he said. “And after a period of time, when those persons are deemed to no longer be a threat to the security of the nation, then they are released.” The board of three persons was clearly not doing its job according to Major General John Ryder’s report (2004), in which it was revealed that Iraqis had been held for several months for nothing more than expressing “displeasure or ill will” toward U.S. troops. Hundreds of Iraqi prisoners were held at Abu Ghraib “despite a lack of evidence that they posed a security threat to American forces.”

Article (21): 1st – An Iraqi shall not be handed over to foreign bodies and authorities.

For the past four years the CIA has established a network of covert prisons in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe at abandoned Soviet compounds. Known as “black sites” in White House jargon, the existence and locations are known only to a handful of officials in the U.S., including the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country, the Washington Post reports. Citing national security issues, the CIA and the White House has dissuaded Congress from open testimony about the conditions and captives being held.

Part Two of the constitution, it clearly states that torture will not be tolerated.

Article (35): 1st – (a) The freedom and dignity of a person are protected. (b) No one may be detained or investigated unless by judicial decision. (c) All forms of torture, mental or physical, and inhuman treatment are forbidden. There is no recognition of any confession extracted by force or threats or torture, and the injured party may seek compensation for any physical or mental injury that is inflicted. 2nd – The state is committed to protecting the individual from coercion in thought, religion or politics, and no one may be imprisoned on these bases.

Article (44): All individuals have the right to enjoy the rights stated in international human rights agreements and treaties endorsed by Iraq that don’t run contrary to the principles and rules of this constitution.

The conservative Spanish publication La Razon (December 16) stated, “It is alarming to see that the fear existing after 9-11 in the most powerful nation has blinded its leaders to such an extent that they would see as a good a crime of the state and to consider legal the execution, without previous trial, of people accused, by a discredited security service, of terrorism…”

On October 24-28, 2005, nearly 100 communities worldwide rang a bell once a minute, 1,000 times, symbolizing the more than 100,000 deaths of Iraqi civilians since the US invasion of March 2003, initiated by the Voices for Creative Nonviolence. The 100,000 Rings solemn bell-ringing ceremony was based upon the British medical journal, The Lancet, death toll estimates from a year ago. The purpose of this ceremony is to bring attention to the gravity of the U.S.’s impact on Iraq’s population.

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“Paint me as I am,” said Cromwell – “Less than truth my soul abhors.” In the long sweep of recorded history, there are defining moments, more often than not eponymized by figures noble and ignoble. Historians debate; revisionism has become cottage industry. Winston Churchill thought truth so precious as to require a bodyguard of lies. Lies shielded Nixon’s truth, the subterfuge of politics that bred contempt while sacrificing sovereignty. The reality of the genesis of Bush’s invasion in Iraq is regrettably based upon lies, more than the cumulative effect of his presidential predecessors in driving the constitutional government right off its rails.

This pseudo-biblical passage from George Bush: “We’ve climbed the mighty mountain. I see the valley below, and it’s a valley of peace,” reeks of the credibility gap that has seduced him to abuse his power. Certainly he was not thinking of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. It is self evident that the well documented and heavily investigated and researched events of the Bush administration betrayals gravitate toward that critical mass of hard material as the foundation, the solid source, the primary source, in concurrence with the muck and mire slung from the Oval Office at his alleged “enemies” that borders on the same hellish paranoia that Nixon harbored.

And like Nixon, Bush confuses his political aims with national security. The tragedy of Bush is that he has unleashed the Beast’s hubris upon his country, Iraq and the destiny of the world. Those close to him, his minions, who have tried to save him from himself in vain effort, know the surreal deceitful atmosphere suffused in the White House. Constructive criticism of Bush’s statesmanship is condemned, because honesty looks weak. Instead, stalwart utility, as in terrorism, is geared toward protecting the Bush administration. Instead, it is corroding democracy.

Vulnerability, sentiment, kindness, trust are criterion meant for fools according to Republicans. Any politician knows that his humble God-given talents constitute the only moral route to power. And so corrupted politicians, who in the face of being caught in their lies, throw up more lies, lies to incinerate “enemies”, imaginative devious lies about having ever lied in the first place, spewing out streams of homilies, wrapping themselves in truth, justice and the American way, while all the time in the back alley, they cowardly stab Justice in the back.

We cannot excuse illegal conduct on the basis that others got away with it, either in our homeland or on foreign soil. American democracy is comprised of individuals and the only binding contract that we have is the protection of the rule of law; habeas corpus. Not even the President can willfully violate human rights when claiming victory in Iraq, because it would ring hollow. We cannot fail to punish those in government who abuse its power and obstruct justice; otherwise we enshrine criminality as our legacy.

George W. Bush, the rich Ivy League boy with no natural ability for politics, with Texas oil elitists mentoring him in the passion for secrecy, academically unsophisticated, socially suspicious, clumsy in speech, inept at political debate and diplomacy, defiantly stonewalling cover ups, the sheer audacity to portray himself as a victim of the liberal establishment, and his failures upon subordinates; Bush has snapped the natural bond of the government and the will of the people for grandiose political gain.

As a result, Bush has violated the cardinal rule of politics: Don’t unleash the Beast. In the end, the forty-third President of the United States will have impeached himself simply because of the absence of credible transparency and administrative accountability from the beginning of his regime—for the dismantling of habeas corpus, for the sake of torture.

Haloed by headlights and surrounded by agitated soldiers, mother and son were separated from each other and hidden from view of other family members behind a wall of troops and humvees. They were blindfolded and handcuffed tightly with the plastic zap straps and hoods that have become potent symbols of the dehumanization of Iraqis under occupation.

Ms. Swadi and Safa were made to squat on the highway’s dirt embankment while Zaid, her eldest son, was issued a handwritten receipt for his mother and brother. As Zaid yelled into the crowd of soldiers, trying to get response from his mother, Ms. Swadi and Safa were being packed into humvees for the trip to the Airport Detention Facility for further processing, leaving Zaid in a cloud of dust, clutching his receipt and trying to console his sobbing sister.

I first met Amal Swadi in Istanbul, at the culminating session of The World Tribunal on Iraq. Ms. Swadi was part of the Iraqi delegation invited to give testimony on their experiences of occupation; as a lawyer representing women held in Abu Ghraib and other U.S. and British detention facilities in Iraq, Ms. Swadi was there to speak on the degenerating state of human rights.

As I found out, Ms. Swadi is no stranger to the occupation, or the media covering it. As a lawyer willing to take on the mass of occupation, she is well known for her outspoken advocacy for those unfortunates caught in the machinery of occupation.

Amal Swadi is 52, and was accompanied to the Istanbul tribunal by her daughter, and eldest son Zaid, who is also a lawyer. At the events opening party, I was presented to Ms. Swadi and Zaid, whose love and respect for his mother were instantly apparent. He studied me closely as I was introduced, and when I put my hand out to shake his mother’s, he smiled and took it warmly.

Ms. Swadi, a humble religious woman, immediately forgave my lack of understanding of Islamic culture, and after a short conversation, agreed to be interviewed (the video of this interview will be available shortly).

Ms. Swadi’s involvement with investigations into female prisoners of the occupation started when she was told about a message the women detained in Abu Ghraib were trying to get to the resistance. The message, which had become public knowledge in the streets of Bagdad, was begging the resistance to attack Abu Ghraib with rockets, as the women held inside had given up hope, and could no longer bare the gross abuses and torture inflicted upon them daily. In Islam, as in Christianity, suicide is regarded as an ultimate sin, so these women were asking to be killed. Since then, Ms. Swadi has tirelessly worked for the recognition and release of these detainees (at the time I met her, she was representing nine of these shadow women).

Ms. Swadi told me of her visits to Abu Ghraib, and the difficulties she experienced in trying to gain access to the women held inside, including U.S. force’s outright denial of the women’s existence. When attempts to intimidate her did not work, dismissive guardsmen simply turned her away. When Ms. Swadi returned to Abu Ghraib for her second visit, she was accompanied by a determination cast in the previous sleepless night. Her resolve was eventually rewarded, and after waiting all day in one of the compound’s courtyards under the desert sun, without water or food, she was finally allowed access to her clients (six in total). Ms. Swadi told me the emotion of the experience was overwhelming, and she broke down and sobbed along with the first detainee presented.

Detainees were presented to her in a small, dark cement room that looked to be set up for interrogations. The women were escorted into the room through a heavy door behind a chair and desk. The guards accompanying her remained inches from these broken souls throughout the visits (it is referred to as being ‘in control’ of their subject).

The first detainee presented was a young woman in her 20’s. She was in poor condition, pale and gaunt, barely able to stand, and looked to be suffering from mental collapse. The woman stared at the floor, and when she did finally look up and see her visitor from the outside world, the two broke down.

During her brief interview, hindered not only by the woman’s captors who hovered only inches away at all times, but also by the woman’s fragile, quivering voice, Ms. Swadi learned how this woman’s young son and brother were killed in front of her during a raid on her home conducted by U.S. forces. She carried a crudely stitched wound the length of her forearm, which came from the bayonet of a soldier involved in the raid.

Since her arrest, the woman had been held naked in a small cement cell, without proper bedding or toilet. The woman spoke of rape and torture at the hands of her American and Iraqi captors. With Congress being presented with the images of Iraqi women forced to bare themselves as U.S. soldiers held guns to their heads, and with the Pentagon’s own acknowledgment of rape in their detention facilities, it is not hard to give credence to Ms. Swadi’s claims.

General Antonio Taguba, appointed to head the Pentagon’s investigation into Abu Ghraib torture and abuse allegations (which was restricted to investigation into members of the 800th Military Police Brigade), acknowledged that U.S. soldiers participated in rape at the prison. This acknowledgment came in the form of an inter-Pentagon memo in which General Taguba referred to images of American guards ‘having sex’ with female Iraqi detainees. Mr. Taguba’s choice of language when referring to rape is revealing, and further clarifies the Pentagon’s desensitized, casual attitude towards these crimes.

These images clearly depict violent sex crimes, with one congressman who was given access to these images collected by the Pentagon, stating that he believes the release will spark massive demonstrations and endanger Americans abroad (hardly the image of ‘consensual sex’ alluded to by Taguba).

General Taguba also reported that U.S. soldiers made videos of these violent sex crimes, a common practice amongst sex offenders, who often take trophies from their crimes to help them relive the event later (it is a practice that has aided greatly in the prosecuting of sex offences and will hopefully do the same in these cases). General Taguba has also acknowledged at least two pregnancies resulting from these sex crimes involving female detainees in Abu Ghraib.

With a recent attempt by the Senate to ban the Pentagon’s use of torture, and President Bush’s response of threatened veto of this bill, along with White House negotiations to exempt the CIA from any restraint with regards to torture, the image of a systematic use of torture becomes illuminated. For those already aware of the Phoenix Operation and the CIA’s past publication of torture manuals, this comes as no surprise.

On January 27, 1997, Baltimore Sun journalists Gary Cohn, Ginger Thompson, and Mark Matthews ran a story in their paper under the headline “Torture was taught by CIA”. The reporters relied heavily on two manuals printed by the CIA, and released under pressure from the Sun’s 1994 freedom of information challenge. The first manual, entitled KUBARAK Counterintelligence Interrogation- July 1963, along with the updated Human Resources Exploitation Training Manual-1983 Human Resources Exploitation Training Manual-1983, paint a picture of decades of CIA torture policy.

Although the Pentagon has maintained that these manuals were created only for educational purposes, in order to help U.S. troops identify torture facilities, the manuals themselves refute this position.

The 1963 manual states in the section entitled The Coercive Counterintelligence Interrogation of Resistant Sources that “drugs (and the other aids discussed in this section) should not be used persistently to facilitate the interrogative debriefing that follows capitulation. Their function is to cause capitulation, to aid in the shift from resistance to cooperation. Once this shift has been accomplished, coercive techniques should be abandoned both for moral reasons and because they are unnecessary and even counter-productive.”

The 1963 version also deals with the layout of ‘interrogation’ facilities, as noted in the Sun’s article. The manual states: “the electric current should be known in advance, so that transformers or other modifying devices will be on hand if needed.”

It is important to note that the updated 1983 manual first came to light publicly when it was recovered by resistance forces in Guatemala, who recovered it from U.S. backed military death squads in that country, who acquired this manual from the CIA School of the Americas training camp in Fort Benning, Georgia. It is also important to note that the U.S. embassy in neighboring Honduras has been generally accepted as the headquarters of CIA operations in Central America, with John Negroponte acting as ambassador during the bloody 1980’s (the same Negroponte apointed ambassador to Iraq when torture policy in Iraq first came to light).

These two manuals, and the visage of years of torture policy in Vietnam under the watchful eyes of the CIA, leave any argument of ‘rogue element’ responsibility for torture rather than systematic policy, totally unbelievable and impotent.

In the closing years of the U.S. occupation of Vietnam, and as it became more publicly obvious the U.S. was fighting those it claimed to protect (that in fact attacks on U.S. forces deep inside South Vietnam were being launched by the South Vietnamese themselves), the CIA launched a massive counter intelligence campaign aimed at targeting the South Vietnamese resistance, code named Phoenix.

With the Phoenix operation, the CIA started to compile lists of Vietnamese persons of interest. These lists were based on collected data and information gathered during subject ‘interviews’, and listed men, women and children as young as 15 and as old as 70.

This intelligence-gathering program was jointly run by US agents and those they recruited amongst the South Vietnamese forces. The administration of this program was eventually handed over completely to South Vietnamese forces, which kept no record of their victims; The CIA however, did, and by the end of official CIA involvement in Phoenix, over 20,000 Vietnamese listed had been tortured and murdered.

In 1971, Bart Osborn, a former CIA agent, told Congress "I never knew in the course of all those operations, any detainee to live through his interrogation. They all died. There was never any reasonable establishment of the fact that any one of those individuals was, in fact, cooperating with the VC, but they all died and the majority were either tortured to death or . . . thrown out of helicopters."

As Nick Schou reports, “Operation Phoenix detainees were tortured with electric shocks applied to their genitals, while women prisoners were typically raped, occasionally with foreign objects.” (hauntingly similar to claims of treatment of modern Iraqi detainees).

Mr. Schou also points out in his article: Operation Phoenix Rises from the Ashes of History, that the CIA is now employing the Saddam era Mukhabarat (Iraqi Secret Intelligence similar in scope to the CIA) to investigate resistance support. Mr. Schou relies on statements by Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of CIA counter-terrorism, to highlight what this means. Cannistraro was quoted in the Sunday Telegraph as saying "They’re clearly cooking up joint teams to do Phoenix-like things, like they did in Vietnam."

As an advocate for those held without charge or trial by an occupation rooted in illegality, and under the increasing scrutiny of a world skeptical of U.S. intentions in Iraq, Amal Swadi is a person of interest indeed.

Amal Swadi and her 17-year-old son Safa, were brought into the heart of the machinery of occupation for processing. Ms Swadi blindfold and shackles were removed and she was instructed by her interrogator to answer questions related to her person.

Ms. Swadi and Safa, were scanned and fingerprinted. Her name, her husband’s name, and the names of her children were all documented. She was also asked her age, her address, and her occupation. Most alarming however was the collection of data on her religious status; apparently the U.S. military occupation felt it was pertinent to document if Ms. Swadi was Shia or Sunni.

What must be addressed is the motivation of U.S. occupational forces in recording individual’s religious affiliations in a country that is increasingly being divided along these very same religious lines, both in reality and by an oversim