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Yes.
That's it.
It's that time of year again.
Commemorating yet another anniversary of the Day of Shame.
A wholly-pwned subsidiary of the Presidency of Shame.
entertaining POPULAR exclusive FREESTYLE MINDFUL CUTTING-EDGE SOCIO-POLITICAL BLOG AVEC a dollop of SNARK now showing the POPular hilarious samizdat "DONALD TRUMP IS MY (frickin'') GURU"
According to a story on TheAtlantic.com, journalist Patrick Tyler’s forthcoming book, A World of Trouble, includes a scene where Tenet is drinking copious amounts of scotch in the pool of a Saudi prince. Drunk and on sleeping pills, Tenet allegedly proceeds to rave about the Bush administrations attempts to pin Iraq’s missing weapons of mass destruction on him.
The December 16 story includes two passages from Tyler’s book.
A servant appeared with a bottle. Tenet knocked back some of the scotch. Then some more. They watched with concern. He drained half the bottle in a few minutes.
“They’re setting me up. The bastards are setting me up,” Tenet said, but “I am not going to take the hit.”
IN A WAR RIDDLED WITH LIES, PVT. LAVENA JOHNSON "COMMITTED SUICIDE" AND "WAS NOT BRUTALLY RAPED AND MURDERED" We Don't Agree.
by Meg White
"They don't care. They put on a uniform and they say honor and integrity and they have no morals, no honor and no integrity, and I don't even know how to sleep at night.
--Linda Johnson, mother of Pvt. LaVena Johnson
Pvt. LaVena Johnson, 19, was so excited to tell her mother that she was definitely going to be home from Iraq for Christmas, her favorite time of year. The next day, she was dead.
The military's casualty liaison told the Johnson family she committed suicide, found dead in her barracks with a gunshot wound to the head. However, two separate contacts told LaVena's father, Dr. John Johnson, that she was found dead in a contractor's tent. Allegedly, a trail of blood led from the contractor's tent into her tent, suggesting she was dragged there. Her tent was lit on fire, according to the witness who found her body.
"The President had to be aware of this.”
[General Taguba] said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.
“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib.
We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention.
We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.” ♦
Interrogations of Saddam Hussein and seized documents confirmed the former Iraqi regime had no links with al-Qaeda, a Pentagon report said today, contradicting the US case for the 2003 invasion.
A two-page resume of the report was published in February, but today the Pentagon declassified the whole 120-page document.
According to the inspector general of the US Defence Department, information obtained after Saddam's fall confirmed the pre-war position of the Central Intelligence Agency and Pentagon intelligence . . .
This position was shored up by interrogations of Saddam, the former Iraqi president, and other top officials captured by the US-led coalition forces in Iraq, the report said.
humane treatment of prisoners of war
Prisoners of war must be humanely treated at all times. Any unlawful act which causes death or seriously endangers the health of a prisoner of war is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions. In particular, prisoners must not be subject to physical mutilation>, biological experiments, violence, intimidation, insults, and public curiosity. (Convention III, Art. 13)
Prisoners of war must be interred on land, and only in clean and healthy areas. (Convention III, Art. 22)
Prisoners of war are entitled to the same treatment given to a country’s own forces, including total surface and cubic space of dormitories, fire protection, adequate heating and lighting, and separate dormitories for women. (Convention III, Art. 25)
Prisoners of war must receive enough food to maintain weight and to prevent nutritional deficiencies, with account of the habitual diet of the prisoners. Food must not be used for disciplinary purposes. (Convention III, Art. 26)
Prisoners of war must receive adequate clothing, underwear and footwear. The clothing must be kept in good repair and prisoners who work must receive clothing appropriate to their tasks. (Convention III, Art. 27)
Prisoners of war must receive adequate medical attention. (Convention III, Art. 30)
Prisoners of war must receive due process and fair trials. (Convention III, Art. 82 through Art. 88)
Collective punishment for individual acts, corporal punishment, imprisonment without daylight, and all forms of torture and cruelty are forbidden. (Convention III, Art. 87)
Attorneys for the government had argued that turning over visual evidence of abuse would violate the United States' obligations under the Geneva Conventions, but the ACLU, supported by experts in international law, said that obscuring the faces and identifiable features of the detainees would address any potential privacy concerns.Yes, just like the reichwing blowhard spinners said, it's not the actual torture and humiliating treatment that violates the Geneva Conventions, but the showing of the pictures that's the problem. Yes, and they're so concerned all of a sudden about not violating the quaint Genevas. A late enlightenment.
Someone shouts: "Drag the Wahhabi," while another describes him as a "bastard." They pause a moment to search for a wire, then they dump him on the side of the road. Another militiaman suggests they bury him. "What do you mean bury him?" the gang leader snaps back with indignation. "Leave him here to the dogs." Then they joke about his underwear and cover the corpse with a cardboard.
Note that life looks absolutely normal in the surroundings. You can see children running about, stores open, religious holiday flags and even a traffic jam. Perhaps Ralph Peters will happen to drive by with an American army patrol and enjoy the scene of children cheering for the troops, while wondering where his civil war is, dude.
Meanwhile, the rising young Shi’ite cleric Yassir Al-Habib, like most of his Islamic counterparts, is just learning how to soar himself to stardom and popularity: by calling for more death and mayhem. Our friend laments the fact that the government has failed to protect the Askari shrine and the cellar of the Imam Al-Mahdi, which he believes is of higher standing with Allah than Jerusalem.
His solution? "Let's send an army of the faithful to liberate Samarra and cleanse it from the rotten Nawasib" (a derogatory term used by fundamental Shia to describe Sunnis, very much like the Rafidha or 'rejectionist' stigma used by some Sunnis when they refer to Shia. Nawasib literally means 'those who set themselves against the household of the prophet.') On second thought, let's cleanse all of Iraq from those infidel scum. He goes on to say that we should destroy all their filthy mosques. We are able to if we are just given the chance. Let's just have another holy war.
RESIDENTS SAY BODIES IN VIDEO FROM US RAID
A video provided by Hamourabi Human rights group shows covered bodies, which Hamourabi says are of a family of 15 shot dead in their home, possibly by US Marines, in Haditha, Iraq. A video of civilians who may have been killed by US Marines in an Iraqi town in November showed residents describing a rampage by US soldiers that left a trail of bullet-riddled bodies and destruction. (Full story here.)
A copy of the video, given to Reuters by Iraq's Hammurabi Organisation for Monitoring Human Rights and Democracy, showed corpses lined up at the Haditha morgue.The chief doctor at Haditha's hospital, Waleed al-Obaidi, said the victims had bullet wounds in the head and chest.
Most residents interviewed by Reuters in Haditha echoed accusations by residents in the video that US Marines attacked houses after their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb.
They said the Marines opened fire on houses. "I saw a soldier standing outside a house and he opened fire on the house," said one resident, who did not want to be identified.
Time magazine has published allegations that US Marines killed civilians in Haditha after one of their comrades was killed by a roadside bomb. It published detailed accounts by people in the town, west of Baghdad. A criminal inquiry into those deaths was launched last week. . .
On November 20, US Marines spokesman Captain Jeffrey Pool issued a statement saying that, on the previous day, a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine. In a later gun battle, US and Iraqi troops had killed eight insurgents, he added.
US military officials have since confirmed to Reuters that that version of the events of November 19 was wrong and the 15 civilians were not killed by the blast but were shot dead. . .
The video given to Reuters shows bodies piled in the back of a white pickup truck outside the morgue. Among them was a girl who appeared to be about three years old.
One man wept and leaned against a wall as he identified a relative and other residents inspected bodies in the morgue. One man's face had been torn apart by bullets, while a blackened corpse was missing legs and forearms.
The repercussions of the Iraq debacle are very likely to affect more places in the Middle East, not less. There is now an explosion, literally, of militant fanatical groups that are bent on destroying the ties of amity and brotherhood between Sunnis and Shia. One can see that this was effective.
The latest International Crisis Group [report] points out the cynical and destructive ways by which the US administration manipulated Iraqi social, sectarian, ethnic, and tribal divisions for its own sake.
Bush, far from being remembered for establishing democracy in Iraq, will most likely be remembered as the man who brought ayat allahs' rule to Iraq, next door to Iran.
Ironically, the model of "democracy" and "secularism" that [George] Bush and the neo-conservatives were planning in Iraq had degenerated into a model of mayhem, pillage, and plunder, and the ayat allahs rule in all but name.
Bush, far from being remembered for establishing democracy in Iraq, will most likely be remembered as the man who brought ayat allahs' rule to Iraq, next door to Iran.. . .Far from seeing evidence of rejuvenation of democracy, one can argue that authoritarian rule in the Middle East has been consolidated due to Bush's doctrine . . . .
One also notices that in all three cases that the Bush administration focused on as showcases of the Bush doctrine - Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq - societies are standing on the verge of civil war. . .
I have no doubt years from now people in the West and East will look back and remember George Bush as the most incompetent and most unwise US president ever.
[Bush's] legacy in the Middle East will grow more horrifically. It will be seen that he has unleashed destructive forces in the Middle East, and has consolidated the rule of most authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. . . . He has also contributed to the rising conflict between Arabs/Muslims and Western governments.
His contribution in that regard will only please Osama bin Laden.
Friday, October 14, 2005; Page A01