"Better to look the torture in the face and having looked, to remember, and having remembered, to respond, and having responded, to call those responsible to account so that we never do this again."
Above Quote from: Jonathan Schell " Truth & Torture " The Nation, May 27,2009
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Robert Gibbs Responding to reports in the UK Telegraph on the rape of detainees & other abuses:
"White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, later in the day, widened the assault to a general one against British journalism. “If I wanted to read a writeup today of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champions League Cup, I might open up a British newspaper,” Gibbs said. “If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I'm not entirely sure it'd be in the first pack of clips I'd pick up.” "
Quote from: " The Bogus Torture Coverup " by Scott Horton, at The Daily Beast & Huff Post,May 29, 2009
" It is not difficult to see that the extent of devastation caused by the invasion and occupation of Iraq goes beyond loss of life, livelihood and property. The historical and cultural roots of the nation have been destroyed."
"Gandhi, the apostle of non-violent resistance said:
"I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. I refuse to live in other people's houses as an interloper, a beggar or a slave."
This is an idea rendered irrelevant in the current scenario, where the mightier among the world's nations have secured the mandate to invade, with impunity, any society and any state that can be exploited for resources. Unlike earlier times, modern-day invasions are invariably camouflaged by a façade of elaborate deceit that claims altruistic intent as the motive of assault. In this new scheme of things, resistance is deemed as insurgency and dissent is unpatriotic. Those that are invaded do not have the luxury to decide between being beggar and slave. Culture would be the last thing on their minds as they struggle to stay alive. Yet it is the loss of their culture that ultimately causes the disintegration of these societies to the absolute advantage of their victors.
It is said that history is written by the victor. What is not said is that destroying the enemy is only half the purpose of a victor. The other half is the subjugation and drastic alteration of the self-perception of the enemy, so as to gain unquestioned control over every aspect of the subjugated state, its populace and its resources, so that having won victory it can get on with the "much bigger business of plunder," according to Franz Fanon, philosopher, psychiatrist, author and a pre-eminent thinker of the twentieth century.
Quote from: " Colonizing Culture " by Dahr Jamail, Truthout.org, Perspective, May 27,2009
Robert Gibbs Jokes about torture accuses all British Newspapers as lacking in Journalistic Integrity. Meanwhile he backs up his opinion that the story was false because & Get THIS THE PENTAGON TOLD HIM SO - The Pentagon which has been lying to the America media & public at least for lat eight years if not the past fifty or so. So is Obama's sell out to the military now complete.Did Gibbs & Obama forget the US media has been acting as part of the Bush Regime's Propaganda Machine.
Gibbs: British Papers Reliable On Soccer Coverage, Not Torture
Anyway once again it appears the torture & abuse of detainees at Abu Ghriab & Gitmo & other US detainee (prisoner of war) facilities was worse than so far reported in the mainstream media who tend to sanitize or ignore certain details to make the abuse more palatable and acceptable for their "Know Nothing" & "War Mongering" audiences who have no sympathy or empathy for those who are not like the average White Christian American. Even the rape of young boys by American personnel at Abu Ghraib and other US run prisons or so called " detention facilities" it appears doesn't bother Robert Gibbs or Obama as long as they can find a way to avoid any unpleasant confrontations with the former Bush administration or with the C.I.A. & the US military & the "National Security Bureaucracy". Heaven forbid Americans ever face some hard truths about their nation & its institutions or its out of control foreign policies. The US we are told is morally superior to all other nations and cannot be judged by any other nation or people. Remember The United States of America was founded by God fearing bunch of white guys who though they were each being directed in their thinking & their actions by God Himself.
" Abu Ghraib Abuse Photos 'Show Rape' " By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent and Paul Cruickshank May 28, 2009 "The Telegraph"
Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.
-- -At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.
Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.
It seems evident that the propaganda Machinery of the Bush administration & that of the Media & the US military worked and so Americans see those imprisoned in US facilities as "Subhuman" or as "Evil" and under the influence of "Evil Forces " ie Satan . It would seem given the lack of outrage over the issue of torture & now rape of male detainees that many Americans believe that the so-called detainees deserve to be tortured , abused & raped & murdered because America needs more "pay-back" for the 9/11 attacks.Even the Obama administration is now convinced it must keep most of the Bush policies intact though "re-branded" in order to fight against these so-called Evil-Doers in America's ongoing Christian Crusade against what they believe to be the Heathen Barbarians.Whether Obama really believes this is uncertain but at least for reasons of public Relations he is assuming this posture in public. He is all for defending the torturers & those who ordered the torture since he sympathizes or empathizes with them that is with their fear & anger over 9/11. As for those tortured , raped, abused or murdered or bombed or burned to death by White Phosphorus he has little interests it appears.
Even the Obama administration over this issue is questioning the journalistic integrity & sense of responsibility & ethics & ability of Britain's journalists as if American journalism had been in general forthright & honest in its writing about the Bush Regime's activities or the military's & the C.I.A.s in the last eight years. Torture has even become a subject in the Obama administration for light hearted banter & a few jokes about any who dare bring up the subject.Tell me Mr. Gibbs what's so funny about men raping young boys & girls. Are they now copying the Rumsfeld Karl Rovian style of media control with little interest in the actual facts or evidence presented.
So is Obama now going to stoop to attacking journalists rather than trying to deal with the evidence of abuse, rape & torture of detainees. Obama once again seems to be defending the practices of the Bush Regime & so one wonders what is Obama & his administration now allowing to take place in these US run detention facilities in Iraq & Afghanistan & elsewhere. No matter what Obama or Eric Holder or the Bush Regime claims American personnel are not free to do as they please outside Continental America. Is this really what Obama & Holder & Gibbs are arguing which is very much what Cheney & Condoleezza Rice argued that American personnel can treat prisoners or even civilians in other countries anyway they see fit since they are not obliged to adhere to US Laws or International Laws or the Laws of the Nation in which they are stationed. The American Empire is therefore a law onto itself . Whatever America does they believe is not the business of any other nation or people. And anyone who dares criticize America or America's troops is to be considered an enemy who is by definition on the side of America's enemies. The number of America's enemies it appears increases directly in proportion to the number innocent people the Americans imprison, torture , rape or kill . As George Bush said to paraphrase " I never apologize for America no matter what the facts are" or no matter how outrageous her actions are. Empires we know never apologize for their wanton killings, massacres or abuses of the civilians of the nations they intend to conquer.
" The Bogus Torture Coverup " by Scott Horton, at The Daily Beast & Huff Post,May 29, 2009
The Pentagon is denying the facts: Photographs of Abu Ghraib torture are even more sexually explicit than first reported, including rape and sodomy, writes The Daily Beast's Scott Horton, who has obtained specific and detailed corroboration of the photos.
The Daily Beast has confirmed that the photographs of abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, which President Obama, in a reversal, decided not to release, depict sexually explicit acts, including a uniformed soldier receiving oral sex from a female prisoner, a government contractor engaged in an act of sodomy with a male prisoner and scenes of forced masturbation, forced exhibition, and penetration involving phosphorous sticks and brooms.
The Daily Beast has obtained specific corroboration of the British account, which appeared in the London Daily Telegraph, from several reliable sources, including a highly credible senior military officer with firsthand knowledge, who provided even more detail about the graphic photographs that have been withheld from the public by the Obama administration.
A senior military officer familiar with the photos told me that they would likely provoke a storm of outrage if released. The well-informed source confirmed, just as reported in the Telegraph, that many of the photographs are sexually explicit, including those mentioned above. The photographs differ from those already officially released. Some show U.S. personnel engaged in sexual acts with prisoners and each other. In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed. In another, a prisoner is suspended naked upside down from the top bunk of a bed in a stress position.
The Telegraph article quoted retired Major General Antonio Taguba, who directed the official inquiry in 2004 into the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Taguba told the Telegraph that the “pictures show torture, abuse, rape, and every indecency.” The Telegraph reported: “At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee. Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire, and a phosphorescent tube. Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.”
In response to the Telegraph account, Bryan G. Whitman, a deputy assistant secretary of Defense, attacked the newspaper. “That news organization has completely mischaracterized the images," he said. “None of the photos in question depict the images that are described in that article.” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, later in the day, widened the assault to a general one against British journalism. “If I wanted to read a writeup today of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champions League Cup, I might open up a British newspaper,” Gibbs said. “If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I'm not entirely sure it'd be in the first pack of clips I'd pick up.”
...The Obama administration’s decision to challenge the Telegraph account presents a dilemma because many of the photographs have already been leaked, and they match the very images that Taguba described and which Pentagon spokesman Whitman denied. The already leaked photographs can be seen at the Web sites of Salon.com, the Sydney Morning Herald of Australia, the Australian Broacasting Corp. Dateline program, and the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
...The immediate pushback against the Telegraph story from the Pentagon, coupled with the decision of White House press secretary Gibbs to chime in, suggests the sensitivity of the issue. The full-scale strike against the Telegraph, the leading conservative quality newspaper in Britain, broadened into an offensive against the whole of British journalism, suggesting the precariousness of the public-relations effort.
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Jeremy Scahill points out the absurdity of Robert Gibbs making fun of British journalist & suggesting that US journalists have more integrity & interests in uncovering the truth than do British journalists.Given that the Media in the US for the most part became Propagandists for the Bush Regime it seems a rather ridiculous charge.
" Gen. Taguba Alleges Existence of Prisoner Rape Photos; White House Press Secretary Attacks ... British Media"Posted by Jeremy Scahill, Rebel Reports May 28, 2009.
Hey Gibbs: Instead of attacking the 'British media' why don't you go after Gen. Taguba, who lost his job for confronting Bush-era torture?
Wow. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs is really embodying the idea that when the message is devastating, you attack the messenger. Except in this case, Gibbs is not even attacking the messenger, but rather the newspaper that quoted the messenger.
In a major story today, London’s Daily Telegraph quoted Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba describing photos (that the Obama administration is fighting to keep secret), which allegedly depict U.S. personnel raping prisoners, other sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube. “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba said. Put that statement against this one from the president: In defending his decision to fight the ACLU in its efforts to have the photos publicly released, Obama said on May 13, “I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational.”
At the White House press briefing today, Gibbs lashed out -- not at Gen. Taguba, who made the allegation on the record, and not even specifically at the paper that quoted Taguba. Instead, Gibbs went after the entire British media, saying “I think if you do an even moderate Google search (heh) you’re not gonna find many of these newspapers and ‘truth’ within say 25 words of each other:”
“I want to speak generally about some of reports I’ve witnessed over the past few years in the British media and in some ways I’m surprised it filtered down,” Gibbs said. “Let’s just say that if I wanted to look up, if I wanted to read a writeup today of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champions League Cup, I might open up a British newspaper… If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I’m not sure that would be the first stack of clips I picked up.”
No, instead perhaps Gibbs would pick up one of those stellar U.S. papers with spotless track records on “the truth.” He could start with The New York Times, which was basically a conveyor belt for the lies of the Bush administration during the lead up to the Iraq war. Or he could turn to any number of U.S. lie factories masquerading as media outlets.
This is pathetic. Really. Hey, Gibbs, here’s a suggestion: go after Gen. Taguba, a 34 year, decorated military veteran whose career was brought to an end for battling Rumsfeld and the torture machine at the Pentagon. Go after the General who last year (when Bush was still in power) called for prosecutions of the torturers. “There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account,” Taguba wrote in June 2008. Go after him, Gibbs. Call him a liar. Say he is a dirty propagandist that wants to hurt U.S. troops. Oh, right, you can’t. Taguba actually agrees with Obama on this issue, as he told the lying, evil British media:
“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them."
The use of torture by the US did not bring about the desired results of reliable intel or prevent a number of imaginary attacks on the US. Though Obama seems now to be falling for the rather imaginative narrative which Cheney, Rove & the US Media has now creatively put together based upon non-existent facts. Obama even seems afraid to challenge this alternative reality created by the Bush/Cheney Regime of " signs " & "wonders" in order to maintain the status quo & keep feeding the beasts of Empire Building .
" Torture and Truth " by Jonathan Schell The Nation & TruthOut.org, May 27,2009
...When the full history of the Bush administration is finally told, one event may prove iconic: the torture of the Al Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who recently died, allegedly by his own hand, in a prison in Libya, where he was sent by the United States. Libi was captured in Pakistan in late 2001. At first, he was interrogated by the FBI, and he provided useful information on the inner workings of Al Qaeda. But more was wanted from him. The Bush administration, hellbent on justifying its forthcoming invasion of Iraq, was ransacking the intelligence bureaucracy to find or produce two things that, it turns out, did not exist: weapons of mass destruction programs in Iraq and cooperation between Al Qaeda and the regime of Saddam Hussein. Pressure to find evidence of both intensified in 2002.
At the same time, the practice of torture--authorized by the White House, the Justice Department and the Pentagon--was spreading throughout the intelligence and military establishments. Soon, prisoners were being tortured to provide evidence of the Al Qaeda-Saddam link. As Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, has stated, the "harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002...was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and Al Qaeda." And according to the recent Senate Armed Services Committee report on the treatment of detainees, a former Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, has confirmed the charge. "A large part of the time," he told Army investigators, "we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not successful.... The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link...there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results." The CIA took custody of Libi and began to expose him to abuse. Next, it "rendered" him to Egypt, where he was subjected to, among other torments, severe beatings and confinement in a tiny cage for more than eighty hours. He then produced the desired false statements linking Al Qaeda with the Iraqi government.
Just as minute specifications for torture were flowing down through the ranks of bureaucrats from the Justice Department, the Pentagon and the White House (where an array of abuses was once demonstrated to high officials, reportedly including cabinet members), so the results of the torture were flowing upward. By this route, Libi and his testimony were destined for a history-making role. The centerpiece of Powell's speech before the UN Security Council justifying the invasion of Iraq devoted a full nine paragraphs to a "senior terrorist operative" who "fortunately...is now detained." Libi, though unnamed, was the star of the performance.
Powell unwound a long tale of terrorists and weapons of mass destruction (all subsequently disavowed by Libi as well as otherwise discredited). Al Qaeda, Powell said, had been pursuing weapons of mass destruction in Afghanistan but, finding the resources inadequate, had needed "to look outside of Afghanistan for help." So "they went to Iraq," where they received "chemical or biological weapons training." Thus did Powell weave together the two main fabrications about Iraq--that it was pursuing weapons of mass destruction and was cooperating with Al Qaeda. And Iraq's avowals to the contrary? "It is all a web of lies," he said.
Jacob Hornberger asks in his article the disturbing question about whether rape & sodomizing of prisoners was part of the softening up of prisoners as part of the Cheney/Rumsfeld "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques ".
" Was Rape an Enhanced Interrogation Technique?" By Jacob G. Hornberger May 28, 2009 "fff"
-- There are those who argue that U.S. officials who authorized waterboarding and who performed waterboarding should not be held criminally accountable, notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. government prosecuted Japanese military personnel who waterboarded U.S. POWs during World War II. Their reasoning goes as follows: Since the president’s attorneys redefined torture to mean only those actions that threaten death or serious injury to bodily organs, waterboarding did not meet that redefinition.
What about rape? It would seem that rape, like waterboarding, would not meet the Bush administration’s redefinition of torture. Rape doesn’t threaten death or serious injury to bodily organs. Should U.S. officials who authorized enhanced interrogation techniques be let off the hook for rapes committed by U.S. officials as part of enhanced interrogations of detainees?
...Well, think back to the Abu Ghrab photos and videos, which depicted sordid sexual acts being committed by U.S. personnel on Iraqi prisoners. You may have forgotten that there was a particular set of photos and videos that were never released to the public because they depicted acts that were apparently much worse than anything that was shown in the photos that were released. Therefore, U.S. officials decided to keep those particular photos and videos under lock and key.
What do those photos and videos reflect? We don’t really know, but according to an article dated July 15, 2004, on Salon.com, Seymour Hersh is quoted as saying in a speech to the ACLU:
Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... 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. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out.
The Salon article concludes with the following paragraph:
(Update: A reader brought to our attention that the rape of boys at Abu Ghraib has been mentioned in some news accounts of the prisoner abuse evidence. The Telegraph and other news organizations described “a videotape, apparently made by US personnel, is said to show Iraqi guards raping young boys.” The Guardian reported “formal statements by inmates published yesterday describe horrific treatment at the hands of guards, including the rape of a teenage Iraqi boy by an army translator.”)
It should be noted that that batch of photos and videos is a different batch from the ones that the Obama administration is now doing its best to keep secret. The rationale for keeping both batches secret is that the photos and videos will inflame anger and hatred among foreigners against the United States. It’s difficult to imagine how the photos and videos that are being kept secret could be much worse than the Abu Ghraib photos and videos that were released, but one distinct possibility is that they show people being raped.
Is it inconceivable that rape was employed as an enhanced interrogation technique? Well, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a regime used rape as an enhanced interrogation technique. Think back to the Pinochet coup in Chile, a coup in which the CIA played a role — as yet undefined — in the murder of a young American journalist, Charles Horman, at the hands of Pinochet’s forces. According to an article in The Independent, “Prisoners at both centres were subjected to electric shocks, severe beatings, suspensions from ceilings until their wrists tore, and rapes.”
Paul Craig Roberts asks the rather facetious question about whether Americans feel a twinge of guilt about the abuse & torture of detainees. This is a no-brainer - as a superior people of course not only fools would even care about such matters. It's like Obama wasting his time trying to explain a foreign concept to Americans such as "Empathy" . As we have seen in the past week or so many Americans see Empathy as a form of weakness or feeble-mindedness.
"Do Americans Have a Moral Conscience?" By Paul Craig Roberts, May 28, 2009 "Information Clearing House"
--- Torture is a violation of US and international law. Yet, president George W. Bush and vice president Dick Cheney, on the basis of legally incompetent memos prepared by Justice Department officials, gave the OK to interrogators to violate US and international law.
The new Obama administration shows no inclination to uphold the rule of law by prosecuting those who abused their offices and broke the law.
Cheney claims, absurdly, that torture was necessary in order to save American cities from nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists. Many Americans have bought the argument that torture is morally justified in order to make terrorists reveal where ticking nuclear bombs are before they explode.
However, there were no hidden ticking nuclear bombs. Hypothetical scenarios were used to justify torture for other purposes.
We now know that the reason the Bush regime tortured its captives was to coerce false testimony that linked Iraq and Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda and September 11. Without this “evidence,” the US invasion of Iraq remains a war crime under the Nuremberg standard.
Torture, then, was a second Bush regime crime used to produce an alibi for the illegal and unprovoked US invasion of Iraq.
Obama regime reverting to Bush Cheney style attacks on the press rather than deal with evidence of abuse, rape & torture.
So is one of the reasons Robert Gibbs & others in the Obama administration are attacking journalists in the UK part of a pattern because the Obama administration is being criticized in the UK & Europe on his policies regarding detainees at Guantanamo & his reluctance to even publicly condemn those who ordered the torture & abuse of detainees let alone those who took part especially in the C.I.A. & the US military. Of course a few individuals were charged & tried possibly to satisfy liberals they may a charge a few more soldiers as part of their cover-up of how wide spread torture & abuse of detainees was or even possibly still is. Obama still shockingly & erroneously insists it was a matter of "a few bad apples"
" The World Is Taking Notice of Congress's Cowardice " Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly at 9:27 AM on May 29, 2009.
Congressional cowardice has not gone unnoticed on the international stage. It's a real problem.
...Imagine that. These European governments were largely inclined to help out when they assumed a wide variety of nations would share the detention burden. But now that these foreign officials have heard U.S. lawmakers -- from both parties -- suddenly come to believe that Guantanamo detainees are far too dangerous for U.S. soil, their willingness to cooperate is waning.
American politicians are assuming that their constituents will never tolerate a process that allows dangerous detainees in their states/districts. European politicians are, not surprisingly, wondering how they'll respond to their own constituents about the same dynamic, especially if U.S. lawmakers are unwilling to accept any detainees at all.
New York Times Still acting as The Propaganda Voice of Bush, Cheney & the Conservatives & the pro-Torture Lobby.
NYT's Pentagon Propaganda: Misleading Report on Guantánamo and Terrorism from FAIR & CommonDreams.org ,NEW YORK - May 27
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