By- Sad But True @ 1:39 PM EDT
Recently we are learning more and more about the Bush administration’s vulnerability to war crimes charges. Back in mid June McClatchy reported that:
The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.
The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.
“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
You’d think that would have Bush and his evil minions squirming a little, and canceling any plans for travel outside of the US after their terms end. Then just days ago it was revealed:
(From Raw Story:)
In a secret report last year, the Red Cross found evidence of the CIA using torture on prisoners that would make the Bush administration guilty of war crimes, The New York Times reported Friday.The Red Cross determined the culpability of the Bush administration after interviewing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, according to the article.
Prisoner Abu Zubaydahwho said he had been waterboarded, “slammed against the walls” and confined in boxes “so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position.”
[…]
Mayer cited “sources familiar with the report” to explain the confidential document as a warning “that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted.The report was submitted to CIA last year and concluded that American interrogation methods are “categorically” torture that violates both domestic and international law, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported Friday.
Great reaction from Jonathan Turley in the video accompanying that Raw Story, by the way. The information about this Red cross report was revealed in Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. (See the book review in Salon)
On the heels of these two damning stories came the fruits of a Canadian Supreme Court decision last May that granted Omar Khadr access to materials held by the Canadian Government concerning his treatment in America’s Gulag, Guantanamo Bay prison.
Included in those materials is a tape of Khadr being interviewed in 2003 by an unidentified agent of CSIS – The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. Watching the video, he certainly doesn’t seem to be very sympathetic.
You can see the tape and a report on CTV.ca, from Raw Story, or on CNN.com. (Sorry, no embeds available yet.) It’s very interesting to compare and contrast the way this story is being handled in Canada, the UK and elsewhere with the way the US Lamestream Media treats it. More on that later in a separate post.
UPDATE: We now have embedded video, courtesy of the fine folk at TPM:
Compared to actual tapes of CIA-conducted interrogations, which we are never likely to see, these are pretty tame, I’m sure. Nevertheless, one finds it hard to believe that Khadr represents “the worst of the worst” as we have been told ALL Gitmo detainees are. What we see here is not a hardened terrorist, but a frightened kid who has been abused and manipulated by every authority figure he’s ever had the misfortune to know.
Make no mistake, there will be considerable fallout from the release of these previously secret materials on both sides of the border. Just read this report from last week (thanks again CTV.ca)
Canada knew Khadr was abused at Gitmo: report
…newly released documents show Canada was aware that he was deprived of sleep for weeks to soften him up for interrogation.The U.S. Air Force and Department of Foreign Affairs documents say Canadian official Jim Gould visited Omar Khadr in 2004 in Guantanamo Bay and was told that measures were taken to make the then-17-year-old more pliable.
[…]
“In an effort to make him for amenable and willing to talk, (name omitted) has placed Umar (Omar) on the `frequent flyer program,”’ the reports read.
[…]
Last month a Canadian Federal Court judge ruled that the U.S. military’s treatment of Khadr violated international laws against torture, but did not disclose details.Judge Richard Mosley said the way the military prepared Khadr for interrogation with visiting Canadian government officials broke human rights laws, including the Geneva Conventions.
[…]
Mosley also chastised the interrogator from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, saying Canada “became implicated’ when the agent proceeded to meet Khadr despite learning of the efforts to prime the prisoner.
(Underlines mine) – In Canada, the mere fact that officials knew this was happening and did nothing about it is at the very least an embarrassment, and possibly grounds for criminal charges. It certainly leaves the government open to lawsuits from Khadr (Maher Arar was awarded $10 Million by Canadian courts for the role Canada played in his abduction by FBI thugs and subsequent rendition and torture .) What does that say about the complete inability of the US justice system to even stop this program, let alone charge the criminals in charge of it?
Excellent coverage from McClatchy
(This item was cross-posted from Les Enragés.org)
All I could think of this morning when I seen this boy on the news was my own sons at 15, how could anyone not think of their own children? Remember how easily they and yourself could be manipulated at that age. We signed the Geneva Convention for a reason.
All the news on CBS could say this morning (after they showed a tape of the boy crying and pointing towards his chest) was that he grew 8 inches while at Gitmo. If CBS wanted to say he was treated well and grew, all it made me do is remember my own children and grow angry at those who torture and those who ORDER it done.
The Criminals who ordered the torture need to be held accountable!
Thanks for posting this SBT.
If you click through some of the links I provided teak, you’ll see that Khadr was pointing to wounds that still hadn’t healed from the time he was captured. In the grisly picture I provided, those gaping holes you see are exit wounds. IOW the brave US soldiers that captured him SHOT HIM IN THE BACK WHILE HE WAS TRYING TO RUN AWAY. If you do a further search at Les Enragés, you’ll see at least one of my Khadr posts reveals that eyewitness reports indicate that the Navy corpsman (usually misidentified as a ‘medic’, but that’s not likely since he was with the marines) Khadr is charged with murdering was killed with a grenade, which the US forces were using, but the Afghanis Khadr was with were not. This whole incident has the smell of a cover-up designed to conceal a ‘friendly’ fire death.
Like pretty much everything else associated with Bu$hCo™’s Great War on Tur, this stinks to high heaven.
Hypocrisy of the “Repatriate Omar Khadr to Canada” Movement
As soon as the Gitmo interrogation tape of Omar Khadr hit the Internet, the blogosphere was flooded with demands to repatriate him to Canada. This wave is reminiscent of a Soviet campaign to free Luis Corvalán from the “fascist regime” of Augusto Pinochet thirty five years ago. The scenario is strikingly similar. A “victim” held by “fascist regimes” this time run by Bush and Harper, and a public outcry for justice. Except for the fact that Luis Corvalán didn’t kill anyone and didn’t fight for a terrorist group that wants to impose Sharia.
The “repatriate Khadr” crowd describes him as “a child”, “a kid”, “a boy”, and even “a torture victim”, with no facts to substantiate the torture claims notwithstanding. They complain about Khadr being mistreated, again, without anything to back up their claims. Some of them are outraged about “child abuse.” And they all scream for justice.
They want justice? OK, let’s talk about JUSTICE. What about justice for Sgt. First Class Christopher J. Speer, who was (according to an eyewitness) murdered by this “child”? What about justice for Tabitha Speer, who is a widow because of this “kid”? What about justice for Taryn and Tanner Speer, who are left without a father by this “a boy”? And what about all those Afghani civilians and NATO troops who are a little bit safer because this “torture victim” is behind bars? How many of these “repatriate Khadr” hypocrites concern themselves with justice for real victims? In literally hundreds of posts, we couldn’t find a single one.
One would ask, what is the reason for this idiocy? The answer is simple. Ignorance. Complete and utter ignorance. Let’s forget for a second that Omar Khadr killed Christopher Speer. Let’s forget that Khadr’s father was an al Qaeda financier. Let’s forget that Khadr’s family is known for it being al Qaeda sympathizers. Let’s just remember what this “child” was fighting for in Afghanistan.
This is what Taliban-imposed Sharia looks like in real life: http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2000/07/hypocrisy-of-repatriate-omar-khadr-to.html
Why don’t all of you, bleeding heart demagogues go to Afghanistan and spend a day in a Taliban-controlled territory? And let’s talk about Khadr when you get back. If you get back.
You might be surprised to learn that I agree with you 95% reformislam. I was saying that fundamental Islamists are the greatest threat to world security long before George W. Bush emerged. As an atheist I oppose all theocratic tendencies no matter their source. And being old enough to recall the Achille Lauro hijacking, dozens of airline hijackings and hundreds of suicide bombs I’m well aware that Islam has been committing their own atrocities world-wide for decades.
One point on which we part company is that I don’t believe the evidence against Khadr is clear-cut, or even credible. Some early witness interviews point more to a friendly fire incident, and there is little proof that the insurgents even had hand grenades. The marines did, without doubt.
In any case as a matter of international law Khadr, who was 15 at the time cannot be considered to be responsible for his actions. I think that he was probably forced to be in Afghanistan to begin with, by his father and an uncle who were violent extremists. In that regard he was a victim of Muslim extremism first, which put him in the way of American extremism. Anyway however wrong the Islamist factions were, are and will doubtless continue to be, it doesn’t justify the U.S. taking actions that are equally boneheaded.
He doesn’t deserve 10.5 million. He deserves freedom and a ride back to his terrorist family. That’s all. Canada doesn’t owe anything to him.