Sy Hersh on child sodomy at Abu Ghraib, chaos at Pentagon

[swag]

From edcone.com via omnibb.

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Seymour Hersh says the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."

. . .

Hersh describes a Pentagon in crisis. The defense department budget is “in incredible chaos,” he says, with large sums of cash missing, including something like $1 billion that was supposed to be in Iraq.

"The disaffecion inside the Pentagon is extremeley accute," Hersh says. He tells the story of an officer telling Rumsfeld how bad things are, and Rummy turning to a ranking general yes-man who reassured him that things are just fine. Says Hersh, "The Secretary of Defense is simply incapable of hearing what he doesn’t want to hear."

. . .

Worth a read. www.edcone.com

[Media_Lies_Daily]

1. This is very bad. Still more quotes from the article linked above....

"'The disaffecion inside the Pentagon is extremeley accute,' Hersh says. He tells the story of an officer telling Rumsfeld how bad things are, and Rummy turning to a ranking general yes-man who reassured him that things are just fine. Says Hersh, 'The Secretary of Defense is simply incapable of hearing what he doesn’t want to hear.'

The Iraqi insurgency, he says,was operating in 1-to-3 man cells a year ago, now in 10-15 man cells, and despite the harsh questioning, 'we still know nothing about them...we have no tactical information.'

He says the foreign element among insurgents is overstated, and that bogeyman Zarqawi is 'a composite figure' hyped by our government.

The war, he says, has escalated to 'fullscale, increasingly intense military activity.'"

[AliceWonderland]

2. This bears repeating:

He says the foreign element among insurgents is overstated, and that bogeyman Zarqawi is "a composite figure" hyped by our government.

I suspect this is the case for many of the figures/groups/cells labelled "al Qa'eda," since the nature of that organization has never been sensibly explained. It's interesting that someone as prominent as Hersh has said this.

The entirety of this talk is a must read/hear. The Pentagon in chaos, "neo-conservative cultists" given free reign over the most destructive war machine on earth, unthinkably large sums of money simply disappearing from DoD... good god, that's not even mentioning the videotapes...

[maggrwaggr]

30. every time you think you know how bad it is, you discover

that it's worse.

Rumsfeld is gonna be right up there with Vlad the Impaler when this thing finally shakes out.

[ClassWarrior]

32. So when's his next New Yorker article due out?

n/t

[G_j]

34. Iraqi Resistance Dwarfs Recent US Estimates (not 5,000 but 20,000)

http://www.wstm.com/Global/story.asp?S=2015807

Baghdad, Iraq-AP -- U-S military officials say the Iraqi resistance dwarfs recent official U-S estimates of about five-thousand guerrilla fighters.

Several officials tell The Associated Press that the uprising has so much popular support among nationalists who resent the U-S presence, a military victory is impossible.

One official who has criss-crossed Iraq to learn more about rebels says the resistance also doesn't fit the Bush administration's description.

An Iraq analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies says official estimates of a core of five-thousand fighters are "now clearly ridiculous."

Military analysts estimate up to 20-thousand rebels, including part-time fighters.
..more..

--------------
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/19190 /

Facing the Enemy on the Ground

By Scott Ritter, AlterNet. Posted July 9, 2004.


The Iraqi resistance has been years in the making. And with the help of American involvement, the insurgency will continue to flourish and grow until no force can defeat it.

The battle for Iraq's sovereign future is a battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. As things currently stand, it appears that victory will go to the side most in tune with the reality of the Iraqi society of today: the leaders of the anti-U.S. resistance.

Iyad Allawi's government was recently installed by the United States-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to counter a Ba'athist nationalism that ceased to exist nearly a decade ago. In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein's regime shifted toward an amalgam of Islamic fundamentalism, tribalism and nationalism that more accurately reflected the political reality of Iraq. Thanks to his meticulous planning and foresight, Saddam's lieutenants are now running the Iraqi resistance, including the Islamist groups.

Not only has the United States failed to put into place a viable government to replace the CPA in the aftermath of the so-called "transfer of sovereignty," but more importantly, it continues to misidentify the true nature of the Iraqi insurgency. As a consequence, the resistance will inevitably continue to flourish and grow until no force can defeat it, Iraqi or American.

..more..

[Walt Starr]

12. Oh come off it! Emmanuel Goldstein er...um...Abu Musab Zarqawi

is NOT a composite character. Big Brother...er...um...George Bush will capture Goldstein....er...um...Zarqawi and we will win the war with Eurasia!

We have ALWAYS been at war with Eurasia....er...um...Al Queda!

[tandot]

3. oh common...they were just letting off steam ...

and ALL of them are terrorists anyway. They deserve it... /sarcasm

They are trying to sweep it under the rug and hope that people will forget about their war crimes. I guess we shouldn't be surprised that the "liberal" media is not raising hell about this.

Hey lurking Freeper a**holes: Is that the compassionate conservatism you are so fond off? Raping and sodomizing kids? I guess sodomy is alright with you homophobic monsters as long as it isn't consensual.

:mad: :puke: :mad: :puke: :mad: :puke: :mad: :puke: :mad: :puke: :mad: :puke:

[iconoclastic cat]

4. The public has to force the issue.

Bang down the doors to the media and make them take notice.

[AFSCME girl]

5. Yes we do.........

the damage that has been done to those children is
IRREPARABLE. It would be a travesty for this to get
"swept under the rug" :mad: :puke:

[BeFree]

6. Welcome, AFSCME

<sarcasm> I know what we can do... blame Kerry for the war! <end sarcasm>

What we can do is to make sure every bit of political energy we use in public is positive energy ensuring Kerry gets elected.

[AFSCME girl]

10. Glad to be here........

:bounce:

Every ounce of energy I possess (and ALL OF MY FRIENDS) will go to getting KERRY/EDWARDS elected !

[BeFree]

15. That's what we like to hear!

Just imagine if we'd felt this way in 2000. Gore would be running for reelction. sigh.

[AFSCME girl]

17. I know........

:hi:

[tom_paine]

27. Welcome to DU, AFSCME Girl!

:toast: :toast:

And we are ALL to blame for 2000. On the other hand, who could have guessed or even considered for a moment that we were not dealing with Fellow Americans but Totalitarian Monsters of the same disposition (if not identical views) and unquestioning obedience as the Nazis.

I sure didn't. I nosed around the edges, saw odd things which were really just tiny tips of the mighty Goebbels v2.0 iceberg, but like most people, never understood the magnitude of danger from what we faced until it was too late.

[AFSCME girl]

33. I am SO glad to be a new DUer!

:bounce:
...and you are absolutely right, we are all to blame for 2000. It is so amazing to me, as each day passes, that the next AWFUL thing to
come out of this "administration" is so much worse than the next
awful thing. Who woulda thunk..... :mad:

[swag]

9. Thanks,

I sent the video link and the summary to the reasonable columnist at the Oregonian.

[AFSCME girl]

16. Great!

:yourock:

[truthspeaker]

14. As long as the victims are Arabs, sure.

Or black Americans. Same diff to the freepers. There is a strong undercurrent of racism in the Iraq war and the "war on terror". Why do you think people were so eager to punish Iraq for something Saudi Arabians had done? Because they're all the same ethnic group.

[Jokinomx]

7. As stated so eloquently in F 9-11 by one of our military.....

"We must win the hearts and souls of the Iraqi people."... or something very close to this....

Each one of those children ... and each one of those tortured and humiliated have families and friends who will not ever forgive us for what we have done....

[AFSCME girl]

11. A big hello and welcome to DU.......

You are so right about this! The anguish these families must be
in is unbelievable :mad:

[LittleApple81]

8. If you watch the VIDEO, he says he is working on the rest of the

story for publication. And because the New Yorker has a very strict verification process it takes a long time to do it (I guess because some of his sources must be anonymous).

[TexasSissy]

13. Who is Seymour Hersh? Pentagon, or journalist? Why doesn't

he release the tapes to the public? I don't believe all these rumors without evidence to back it up. We saw where that got us before the IW regarding WMD.

[AP]

He's like 110 years old and he's the ONLY reporter doing investigative...

...journalism in relation to Iraq.

Younger journalists (ie, all other journalists) should be ashamed.

[TexasSissy]

23. Thanks.

[swag]

18. Who is Seymour Hersh

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh

You should check recent back issues of the New Yorker for some articles by Mr. Hersh, all of which seem to have checked out very well so far - certainly beyond the realm of "rumors".

Happy reading.

[TexasSissy]

24. Thanks for the link. Very impressive stuff there.

[BeFree]

19. Hey, Ms. sissy

Sy Hersh is a journalist. A good 'un. He doesn't have the tapes. The pentagon does, and you can bet they wish they didn't have those tapes, but they do. Some congresscritters have seen some of the tapes in question. Sy gets his info from them, or others, who must remain anonymous. You can imagine why, eh?

[TexasSissy]

25. Thanks mucho.

[redqueen]

20. *sigh*

:(

[bobbieinok]

22. he's the reporter who broke the My Lai story in the 60s

[TexasSissy]

26. My Lai, huh? Most impressive. Thanks for the info.

[Stephanie]

28. Archived Seymour Hersh articles in the New Yorker - link:

You can find most of his Iraq reporting here:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/previous/?040712frprsp_previous1

[bobbieinok]

21. SEE 'Making Torture Legal' in NY Review of Books ... Anthony Lewis

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17230

Volume 51, Number 12 · July 15, 2004
Email to a friend

Feature
Making Torture Legal
By Anthony Lewis
1.
Reading through the memoranda written by Bush administration lawyers on how prisoners of the "war on terror" can be treated is a strange experience. The memos read like the advice of a mob lawyer to a mafia don on how to skirt the law and stay out of prison. Avoiding prosecution is literally a theme of the memoranda. Americans who put physical pressure on captives can escape punishment if they can show that they did not have an "intent" to cause "severe physical or mental pain or suffering." And "a defendant could negate a showing of specific intent...by showing that he had acted in good faith that his conduct would not amount to the acts prohibited by the statute."

These quotations are from a draft report to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by an ad hoc group of lawyers he chose, mostly political appointees in the Defense and other departments, to advise him on interrogation techniques for prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. The report is dated March 6, 2003; on the title page it says, "Classified by: Secretary Rumsfeld."

Another theme in the memoranda, an even more deeply disturbing one, is that the President can order the torture of prisoners even though it is forbidden by a federal statute and by the international Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a party.

The idea that presidential power overrides treaties and congressional laws appeared soon after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. John Yoo, a professor at the University of California in Berkeley, was then a deputy assistant attorney general. He wrote several memos in late 2001 and then, in collaboration with Robert J. Delahunty, another Justice Department lawyer, an important paper dated January 9, 2002. It was addressed to the Defense Department's general counsel, William J. Haynes II. "Restricting the President's plenary power over military operations (including the treatment of prisoners)" would be "constitutionally dubious," the memo said.

.....
The Defense Department memorandum of March 2003 incorporated the ideas and much of the language in the Bybee memo. It expressed the idea of impervious presidential power in sweeping terms:

(quote)

In order to respect the President's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign,... (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority.... Congress may no more regulate the President's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield.... Any effort by Congress to regulate the interrogation of unlawful combatants would violate the Constitution's sole vesting of the Commander-in-Chief authority in the President.

(end quote)

much more......


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them. Wm Jennings Bryan, Cross of Gold speech, 1896

[TrogL]

29. Hersch confirms US is in the throes of a fascist coup

Hersh described the folks in charge of US policy as "neoconservative cultists" who have taken the government over.

[JNelson6563]

31. Which was a very important point too!

He just hit on out-of-the-ballpark points in rapid succession. The "Utopia" he mentioned these "neo-conservative cultists" were striving to achieve was right on the money.

Each point he hit on was horrifying. The thought of being one of those mothers present as the children were raped....it makes me feel physically sick. I cannot even imagine how it was to be one of the children.

These idealogues have led this country into a horrid nightmare by way of what was disguised to look like a prim-rose path but once you get past a point in path......the facade falls away, revealing the portrait in the attic.

Never, in the history of the world, will any country be as hated as we will be before eveything's said and done.

Julie

[Hubert Flottz]

35. Kick

:kick: