Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Saturday, November 25, 2006
The Reuters news agency has today
reported on Former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis
Karpinski's assertions that outgoing Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld authorized the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib
prison in Iraq. This is an issue we broke over a year ago but
at the time it was the subject of a media blackout.
Karpinski, who ran the prison until early 2004, told Spanish
newspaper El Pais that she saw a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld
detailing the use of harsh interrogation methods.
"The handwritten signature was above his printed name and
in the same handwriting in the margin was written: "Make
sure this is accomplished"," she said.
"The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long
periods, sleep deprivation ... playing music at full volume, having
to sit in uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorized these specific
techniques."
In October 2005 Karpinski appeared on the Alex Jones Show to
make the revelations. We subsequently put
out a report detailing her claims and also the fact
that she was deliberately kept out of the loop and scapegoated
to protect higher ups.
Karpinski was the only general punished in the abuse of detainees
at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Her Army Reserve unit was in charge
of the prison compound when Iraqi detainees were physically abused
and sexually humiliated by military police and intelligence soldiers
in the fall of 2003.
Karpinski had previously admitted that rather than being an isolated
incident under her command, the abuses were, "the result
of conflicting orders and confused standards extending from the
military commanders in Iraq all the way to the summit of civilian
leadership in Washington." Spun as the actions of "a
few bad apples," the Abu Ghraib torture program was sanctioned
from the very top.
The fact that this information is only coming out now proves
that the corporate controlled mainstream media was too cowardly
to report, or under specific orders not to report the claims a
year ago, when Rumsfeld was still in office. Once again this proves
that the alternative media is light years ahead of the mainstream
and highlights how controlled and restricted the mainstream is
now.
A criminal investigation and prosecution of
Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former
CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military
officers, is currently being sought in Germany for their alleged
roles in abuses committed at Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S.
detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Karpinski will be the star
witness should it go to trial.
Along with Rumsfeld, Gonzales and Tenet, the other defendants
in the case are Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen
Cambone; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; former deputy
assistant attorney general John Yoo; General Counsel for the Department
of Defense William James Haynes II; and David S. Addington, Vice
President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Senior military officers
named in the filing are General Ricardo Sanchez, the former top
Army official in Iraq; Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commander
of Guantanamo; senior Iraq commander, Major General Walter Wojdakowski;
and Col. Thomas Pappas, the one-time head of military intelligence
at Abu Ghraib.
Germany was chosen for the court filing because German law provides
"universal jurisdiction" allowing for the prosecution
of war crimes and related offenses that take place anywhere in
the world.
It seems that Rumsfeld and this merry gang, may of which are
no longer in office, have been thrown to the wolves by their masters,
used as sacrificial
lambs to take the fall for the rest of the criminals
at the very top that are still running the government.
Bush and Cheney should be a part of this criminal investigation
too, after all Bush is the decider. In the 2005 Alex Jones interview,
Karpinski identified the masterminds of the torture policy as
occupying the highest rungs of the Bush administration.
In 2005, Dick Cheney tried to amend Sen. John McCain's anti-torture
bill to exempt the CIA. Bush wrote a "signing" statement
to the bill, declaring that he is exempted from its provisions.
His declaration gives him authority above congressional law.
His authority gives him the right to blame others for his misdeeds.
How long will this authority last?
Bush is also planning to abolish
parts of the War Crimes Act of 1996 that makes it
a felony to commit grave violations of the Geneva Conventions.
He is systematically re-writing
laws that could make him accountable for previous
crimes against humanity.
The War Crimes Act was little noticed until the disclosure of
Alberto Gonzales's infamous 2002 "torture memo." Gonzales,
then serving as presidential counsel, advised President Bush to
declare that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to people the
United States captured in Afghanistan. That, Gonzales wrote, "substantially
reduced the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the
War Crimes Act."
Bush signed the memo and OK 'd torture, how is he exempt from
the same treatment as Rumsfeld et al?
Karpinski also stated in 2005 that even though innocent detainees
had been deemed of no further Intel use and were recommended to
be released by their interrogators, the higher uppers read the
riot act and started a pattern whereby no one was to be released
and innocent people were kept locked up without trial or charges.
She went on to speak about the direct links to Bush himself:
"We can trace back now, through documents that were released
through court order, back to the original document, the one that
Alberto Gonzales reviewed and discussed with the President of
the United States, a departure from the Geneva Convention. These
are not prisoners, these are terrorists and these techniques will
be more effective." She said.
The Geneva Convention says prisoners of war should suffer "no
physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion"
to secure information.
"Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened,
insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment
of any kind," the document states.
In December 2002, before the invasion of Iraq, Rumsfeld personally
approved a variety of torture techniques for detainees at Guantanamo.
A PBS
documentary highlighted a memo in which he had written:
“I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing [by prisoners]
limited to four hours?”
These and other torture methods were made standard practice and
transferred to the prisons in Iraq. The official
US Army report listed all the abuses committed at
the Abu Ghraib prison. These methods are standard use in the 'Copper
Green' worldwide torture program.
a. (U) Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid
on detainees;
b. (U) Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;
c. (U) Pouring cold water on naked detainees;
d. (U) Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;
e. (U) Threatening male detainees with rape;
f. (U) Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of
a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall
in his cell;
g. (U) Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps
a broom stick.
h. (U) Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate
detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually
biting a detainee.
.................
a. (S) Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on
their naked feet;
b. (S) Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;
c. (S) Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit
positions for photographing;
d. (S) Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping
them naked for several days at a time;
e. (S) Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear;
f. (S) Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves
while being photographed and videotaped;
g. (S) Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping
on them;
h. (S) Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag
on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis
to simulate electric torture;
i. (S) Writing “I am a Rapest” (sic) on the leg of
a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow
detainee, and then photographing him naked;
j. (S) Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s
neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;
k. (S) A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee; [Rape]
l. (S) Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate
and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely
injuring a detainee;
m. (S) Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees (after detainees
were beaten to death).
Karpinski also previously
revealed that children, some as young as eleven,
were tortured at Abu Ghraib.
The philosophy of the Bush administration's approach to torture
is encapsulated by John “torture” Yoo, professor of
law at Berkeley, co-author of the PATRIOT Act, author of torture
memos and White House advisor.
During a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor
and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel, John Yoo gave
the green light for the scope of torture to legally
include sexual torture of infants.
