Bush sees CLASSIFIED abuse photos

Monday, May 10, 2004 Posted: 8:14 PM EDT (0014 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush saw several classified photographs Monday that depict acts of apparent abuse of prisoners in Iraq by U.S. soldiers, the White House said.

<snip>

Full text of the article may be found here.

Nothing new here except one little word. One little word which makes all the difference in the world, really. Classified. I haven't seen that word used in reference to the evidence of war crimes and/or crimes against humanity by U.S. troops yet. The army's report on the photos- oh, that's been called classified. But not the evidence itself. Though I do read news frequently, I may have missed it and do apologize for bringing what I consider a very significant tactical change by the Bush administration to your attention, if I have.

Classified. I Googled around to find out what this really meant and possibly determine what it could mean to the dissemination of these photos currently and in the future. I came across some Nuclear Regulatory Commission .pdf file with a pretty nice breakdown of how to identify classified material here. It's pretty clear on the matter, and I have no reason to believe that their definition of classified material is something other than the general definition of such: Information or material which requires protection against unauthorized disclosure in the interest of the national defense or foreign relations of the United States (hereinafter collectively termed national security) is classified Top Secret, Secret or Confidential, depending on the degree of its significance to national security. No other categories are to be used to identify official information or material requiring protection in the interest of national security, except as otherwise expressly provided by statute.

Hrm, ok. Well, what's the big deal, right? It's classified. Well, classified material may be freely destroyed at the whim of the administration at such time as they see fit. Evidence, on the other hand, might be able to escape this administration's disintegrators. I won't even to go into the Federal laws regarding possession of classified material by private citizens but you just might imagine they do not stop at a $50 fine. Having pictures of U.S. soldiers committing war crimes just became a great deal more serious. Based on my rough understanding of the penalties involved, possession of pictures of Iraqi prisoner abuse just became worse than possessing child pornography. I hope I'm wrong, but I just wanted to bring this subtle but important change to your attention if I was not.

-PB

MODS: The title of the article on CNN's main page has the name of the article as it appears in my subject line- it links to an article which has the same title as the main page, save the word classified which is the whole reason for this post. Earlier in the day, when I was at work, I believe the title of the article with the body was named as it appears in my subject line. Since this is the headline of CNN's web page and since I believe it was edited after the fact, I would ask you consider leaving this post. To the best of my abilities, I have made sure that the article conforms in every other way to an LBN posting.

if he took them into the bathroom so he couLd 'study them more carefuLLy'

Babs yesterday..Mother's Day...Wonder if babs said she didn't want to dirty her beautiful mind?

hE WILL BE SINNING IN HIS HEART AND HAND TONIGHT.

if someone wants them to be. then it can take quite a bit to declassify them.

it's not an unreasonable policy, though obviously subject to abuse.

as in this case, most likely. it's highly improbable that this evidence is classified for a legitimate reason, such as being overly revealing of security systems in use or possible escape routes, etc.

Busting citizens back home who have copies will make great cases for the ACLU.

nobody will want to join bush*'s massacre if they spend their whole time out on a hot desert, with inadequate supplies, not enough water...getting KILLED on a regular basis, lots of bugs and diseases...depleted uranium poisoning....

morale is already real poor...expect the draft soon, because bush* doesn't look like he'll stop his WAR madness anytime soon...

based on the needs of "national security" or "national defense". Rummy pushed this rationale hard in his testimony the other day, saying that further disclosure would "make the situation worse" and "put the troops in danger" (not actual quotes, but the general sense of his testimony).

Apparently he was, among other things, laying the groundwork for this.

a courts martial too.

There are many different levels of classified...

FOUO.. For Official Use Only (most likely this is what they mean)
Confidential
Secret
Top Secret (to which Sensative and Eyes Only are appended)

are the most common ones used in the military.

everything the government does is technically classified, since public access papers are classified as such, so the term is really meaningless.

In this sense, they mean these photos will not be released to the public until de-classified as public, which may be 25 years, or it may be after the trial.

Among them: Top-Secret Crypto and Top-Secret Code-Word (various code-words based on need-to-know). I worked at those levels in RVN. I'm sure there are higher levels than that. Perhaps Super-Top-Secret-Because-the-President-Will-Be-Impeached-If-This-Shit-Ever-Gets-Out. Eh?

There is even specific TS classifications for different departments, like State, Treasury, Transportation, or Energy.

But everyone else in the world will be free to look at them.

Oh yeah, they hate us for our freedoms...

I was doing some research late Friday/early Saturday morning to track more of these pictures down on my file-sharing network of choice, but while I noticed no new images, I did noticed the few that were out in the public domain were being circulated by a few people. Interestingly, it's not the local police or the RIAA who would be called in when such information is being disseminated. It's organizations like the FBI and the CIA (which now has the authority to work internally) that would come knocking at your door.

-PB

If it happens to one citizen it can happen to all.

<clips>

Patriot Act Author Has Concerns
Detaining citizens as 'enemy combatants' -- a policy not spelled out in the act -- is flawed, the legal scholar says.
by Richard B. Schmitt


WASHINGTON — The Justice Department's war on terrorism has drawn intense scrutiny from the left and the right. Now, a chief architect of the USA Patriot Act and a former top assistant to Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft are joining the fray, voicing concern about aspects of the administration's anti-terrorism policy.

At issue is the government's power to designate and detain "enemy combatants," in particular in the case of "dirty bomb" plot suspect Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born former gang member who was picked up at a Chicago airport 18 months ago by the FBI and locked in a military brig without access to a lawyer.

Civil liberties groups and others contend that Padilla — as an American citizen arrested in the U.S. — is being denied due process of law under the Constitution.

Viet Dinh, who until May headed the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy, said in a series of recent speeches and in an interview with The Times that he thought the government's detention of Padilla was flawed and unlikely to survive court review.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1130-01.htm

with Iraqi prisoners. Thumbs up!

It's just a hunch, but not all that implausible. He was there on turkey day.

instead of just stating it as abuse.

Rummy said he didn't know why it was classified. That the Congress needed to ask the person who classified it.

When I was in the USAF in 1968, at Ent AFB (now called Peterson, I believe, in CO Springs) it was common for the 'safe' with a big "SECRET" label on it to be left wide open. I often poked thru it when nobody was around. Some of the stuff was in folders marked TOP SECRET. Never saw anything that wasn't mostly public information. What a fukin' joke...
:eyes:

family would disagree with you. The Horman family charges that Kissinger and the US government knew about and took part in Charles' disappearance and murder days after the US-supported overthrow of democratically elected President Allende in Chile. Had the documents been declassified Kissinger and others would be in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity. That's just one example. There are many others. Atrocities in Central America, South America, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., etc., etc.

CLASSIFIED = Hide the Evidence.

I noticed it, at least once, during his testimony because it struck me as very odd and potentially significant for those who have the disks.

I only mention this because I'm not sure that this would be a completely new track, but I totally agree with the sinister overtones that classification entails.

I'd really appreciate it. All the digital images I have have clearly been renamed. I'm trying to track down more of these bits of evidence, but I'm sure they weren't originally named "iraqi_prisoner_abuse". I don't know a way to pull up that information from the raw header information from the file itself. If anyone knows if that's possible, I'd also be interested to find out how it's done.

Thanks,

-PB

So that's not going to be helpful... And it's unlikely anything useful is written in the comment or info fields.

Once a previously-unclassified item goes into public circulation, it can't later be classified. Not even by the Bush boy.

but he, because of his assumed leadership, gets to read classified stuff.

WOW''He never did that before. !!!

He came out and said that Rumsfeld was doing a superb job.

Evil, evil, evil.