Army, CIA want torture truths exposed (UPI turns on *Co)

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040518-064124-9605r

WASHINGTON, May 18 (UPI) -- Efforts at the top level of the Bush administration and the civilian echelon of the Department of Defense to contain the Iraq prison torture scandal and limit the blame to a handful of enlisted soldiers and immediate senior officers have already failed: The scandal continues to metastasize by the day.

Over the past weekend and into this week, devastating new allegations have emerged putting Stephen Cambone, the first Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, firmly in the crosshairs and bringing a new wave of allegations cascading down on the head of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when he scarcely had time to catch his breath from the previous ones.

Even worse for Rumsfeld and his coterie of neo-conservative true believers who have run the Pentagon for the past 3½ years, three major institutions in the Washington power structure have decided that after almost a full presidential term of being treated with contempt and abuse by them, it's payback time.

Those three institutions are: The United States Army, the Central Intelligence Agency and the old, relatively moderate but highly experienced Republican leadership in the United States Senate.

...more...

(edited title because this is a MUST READ)

i`m not sure bush`s ship will be able to ride that storm out....

When all is out in the open, there is no way that they can survive this.

I don't know. Shit just has a way of flying off of them. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for anything but a landslide election return to get them in the end.

It seems that NOTHING sticks with these neo-con assholes. I hope this does though. PLUS, these administration is so evil, I am scared they will go to extremes and I mean "EXTREMES" to stay in power. I don't trust them at all. They are EVIL!!!!

We are and have been under a tyrranny for the last three years.

We can't even appoint an independent investigator and
try and impeach and remove these suckers.

Our Congress and Supreme Court sold their powers down the river
to Bush and here we are.........

With no Justice System, they can break all the laws they want
and laugh all the way to the bank!!!


"Houston.....We've got a problem"

No shit!!!!

Seriously, it's time for this to be addressed LOUDLY by Kerry as part of the rationale for bouncing Republicans. Clark, always ahead of the curve, did actually use the word "checks and balances" in his Alabama speech last week....I don't know if Kerry has spoken to this, but it should be brought up and drilled into the minds of brain-dead Americans....

I'm not sure this was posted before:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3267.htm

"In Afghanistan, filmmaker Jamie Doran has uncovered evidence of a massacre: Taliban prisoners of war suffocated in containers, shot in the desert under the watch of American troops.

The film has been broadcast on national television in countries all over the world and has been screened by the European parliament. Human rights lawyers are calling for investigation into whether U.S. forces are guilty of war crimes. But no U.S. media outlet has broadcast the film..."

I was really shocked... :(

The Doran film would have been a wake-up call, if it had ever been shown here, and might have prevented the abuses that have happened in Iraq. Who knows, maybe it would have gotten enough people thinking about what war really means that the Iraq invasion could have been prevented.

We need to pressure the media to show that film. Then mainstream America might understand how the rest of the world feels about us.

Brings everything together nicely (the author's writing style sucks, though).

:kick:

This is VERY exciting,...VERY exciting!!!

Whatever fear I had that this "regime" would set up a situation where it could declare martial law has now subsided.

I LOVE this country!!!!

:bounce:

to this great nation would have to draw a line in the sand and hold that line.

To all of you who understand the need and dignity in service to the nation for the greater good, and all you potential whistle blowers, the fate of the nation is in your hands. Join us in the effort to take free America from those who hold it hostage for their own personal gain.

The junta is not America. They do great harm and place those who serve in more danger than is necessary. They arrange for their cronies to take money from the US Treasury. They are traitors.

But still, much of its top leadership has been purged by the Bushistas -- those below can say what they know, but could they stop a coup?

I mean, we are talking about the United States of America!!!!

Who could imagine this kind of shit would happen in this country?

Now, good people are shaking off their assumptions and gracious trust, and acknowledging what is and has really been happening.

Now, good people are taking a stand for continuing the experiment of democracy and for the interests of the American people who have come such a long way in a couple hundred years, as bumpy and shaky and awful as that road has been.

"gracious trust"
"taking a stand for continuing the experiment of democracy"

that bush I was part of them.

just like all the other Bushco outrages that have come and gone before.

But if this article is correct, maybe there really is a sea change here.

snip>

The pattern of the latest wave of revelations is clear: They are coming from significant numbers of senior figures in both the U.S. military and intelligence services. They reflect the disgust and contempt widely felt in both communities at the excesses; and at long last, they are being listened to seriously by senior Republican, as well as Democratic, senators on Capitol Hill.

Rumsfeld and his team of top lieutenants have therefore now lost the confidence, trust and respect of both the Army and intelligence establishments. Key elements of the political establishment even of the ruling GOP now recognize this.

snip>

when published by the Moonie UPI. I notice the author, however is not in line....
Truthout article: http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/041404I.shtml

bush sure is a uniter! He not only has united the world against him, he has united some very powerful agencies and politicians as well. bush and his cabal MUST know that more and more will come out as needed.

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpirq183807317may18,0,2391453.story?coll=ny-editorials-headlines

excerpt:

The operation, code-named "Copper Green," expanded a policy, applied to al- Qaida prisoners at the Guantanamo naval base, to detainees in Iraq, according to Hersh. Drafted by Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, the operation was approved by Rumsfeld, the report said.

If Hersh's article is accurate, it strips Rumsfeld of plausible deniability, making his assertions at Senate hearings at best disingenuous and specious, at worst outright lies.

The Pentagon has denied Hersh's claims, calling the article "outlandish, conspiratorial and filled with anonymous conjecture." Most pointed is Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita's assertion that "no responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses."

That statement is no explanation. Rumsfeld himself needs to address openly and in public the damaging charges in the report. The contradictions with what he and other administration officials have said in recent days are too unnerving to be shrugged off.

Chinks in the administration's defense of its policy on prisoners have already appeared. A memo to President George W. Bush by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, written within months of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington, was dismissive of prisoners' rights under the Geneva Conventions in the war on terror, calling strict limitations on interrogations "obsolete" and "quaint." And in response to an International Red Cross report on a year-long pattern of abuses in Iraq, Pentagon officials have conceded that such mistreatment indeed occurred, though they have shied away from calling it military policy.

"Indeed, intelligence and regular Army sources have told UPI that senior officers and officials in both communities are sickened and outraged by the revelations of mass torture and abuse, and also by the incompetence involved, in the Abu Ghraib prison revelations.

"These sources also said that officials all the way up to the highest level in both the Army and the Agency are determined not to be scapegoated, or allow very junior soldiers or officials to take the full blame for the excesses."

No way Cambone directs a major policy change like this on his own. The abuse goes to the top. Only question is, does enough of the truth come out before the election to seal the fate of Bush or will the coverup be successful? Other possibility is that the coverup works for a while and Bush somehow wins in November and then the coverup falls apart and Bush gets impeached for the coverup as well as for circumventing the Geneva Conventions.

Bush/cheney
Rumsfeld
Cambone
Bremmer
Sanchez?
Pappas?
Barbara Fast?
Karpinski
mp's

These names with ? marks are all names I've heard in leadership. I'm not sure of the correct order. Can anyone list these in proper order?

just now, it should be getting obvious that he's doing exactly the right thing by not distracting attention from the Big Shwo that's unfolding in front of us.

Consider the following quote from the Truthout piece cited above:

U.S. military intelligence assessments in Iraq had concluded that al-Sadr was a fading force. The crowds attending his sermons were smaller. The number of armed supporters he could count on to exert his will was decreasing. The tone of his public pronouncements was becoming shriller and more desperate as the June 30 hand-over date to Iraqi leaders approved by the U.S. authorities came closer.

This information was not false or wishful thinking. It appears to have been entirely accurate. The problem was that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, without whose say-so Bremer does not even dare to breathe, misinterpreted it. By moving against al-Sadr when they did not have to, they revived the firebrand's credibility throughout Iraq's 65 percent majority Shiite community. And they also opened the door for something neoconservative pundits had unanimously agreed was impossible: They made common ground between Sadr's Shiite supporters and the Sunni Islamist guerrillas who have been fighting the United States implacably in their own heartland of central Iraq.


Kerry is not repeating against Bush the mistake that the Vulcans made in dealing with al-Sadr, which was to give him a false legitimacy by attacking him from the outside.

And remember that some ex-military & ex-spook biggies are on Kerry's side in all of this.

Q.E.D.

The Army, CIA and the Senate will do the heavy lifting. Kerry gets to stay above the fray and look like the model of a bipartisan, moderate, thoughtful statesman.

The cancer in the government is growing.

Sid

It harkens back to the signature line of the Watergate hearings: "There is a cancer growing on the presidency." John Dean said that, he of the new book "Worse than Watergate." And as John Dean also said, this present-day cancer, like the one growing on Nixon's presidency, "is growing more deadly every day."

UPI turns on Father Moon's best buddy's little boy?

This is even worse than I thought at first. I figured they were culpable, but that they would skate. Looks like I might be wrong for once!

I'm proud of all the military leaders with the moral courage to oppose the corrupt GW Bush administration. Many officers have sacrificed long and proud careers by opposing the Iraq war. The administration has broken a sacred trust with the military - to only go to war with just cause and as a last resort. Military officers take an oath to uphold the Constitution, NOT the President.

:shrug:

Go the whole 9 yards "+"!!!

:bounce:

I don't see how they could expect to recruit anymore fine young men. If they wanted to enlist they would not trust the Army and turn to other branches. No?

With love ... from the US Military ...AND the CIA. Interesting bed fellows.....

.

I'm seeing this word pop up all over the place lately, much like "proactive" and "gravitas" before it.

Or, on second thought, I checked the OED.

1. intr. Pathol. Of a disease, esp. a tumour: to spread from one part or organ to another; to undergo metastasis

2. intr. Chiefly U.S. In extended use: to transfer or spread from a place of origin; spec. to intensify or escalate in an undesirable manner.

"Spreading like a tumor." Good word for the situation, at least as applied to the Bush Regime.

metastasize

when it spreads from the original site of the illness to other parts of the body and becomes far more dangerous.

It continues to proliferate and spread into part of the body taking up valuable space, destroying function of other organs, all the while sucking the blood supply out of the body to feed its growth until it kills a person......or in this case, our democracy.

Someone better step up and cut out this malignant group of assholes from power or they will destroy our beautiful country.

n/t

Hopefully the article hasn't been pulled....perhaps the site is getting too many hits.

It's about as seminal an assessment of the Pentagoon in-fighting that I've seen in the mainstream press. It's no accident that the Busholini cabal has virtually decimated Army general staff in their attempt to subjugate the cannon fodder. IMHO, it's no accident that Myers is Air Farce. IMHO, it's no accident that the most visible Army generals are predominantly REMF and not those who've walked ankle-deep in blood and are well-versed in writing letters to families of the dead.

cause it contains some really good talking points to include in any LTTE we might write.

"Republican members in the House of Representatives have kept discipline and silence on the revelations. But with the exception of the increasingly isolated and embarrassed Senate Republican Leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, other senior mainstream figures in the GOP Senate majority have refused to go along with any cover-up."

:hi:

Glad to have you with us!

We should start seeing a lot more of this fracturing within the party. Anything to save their own jobs. People all across the nation are beginning to pay attention and that spells doom for the Republicans unless they distance themselves from this Cabal in a hurry.

finally realized they could no longer avoid the writing on the wall. They went to him themselves and told him he no longer had the support. So he turned out the lights, himself. But he would have held on otherwise. It was THEIR coming to him and telling him he had lost his own party that was the coup de grace.

I was surprised to see Orrin Hatch listed among these this time. Wouldn't have expected it of him.

MAN, this is gettin' interesting!

We have months to go. Bush is rapidly becoming a non-viable candidate. I am HORRIBLY worried about that convention.

If the Republican Party purges BushCo, we lose huge momentum. CAN they?

Frist has caused me much shame.

Welcome to DU.

No, I'm from Missouri. And since we're responsible for John Ashcroft, I think I've got you beat all to heck in the shame department!

Thanks very much for the welcome ... I've been lurking for a long time, and it's nice to finally join the conversation.

and it feels so good to see the truth being printed and to have a glimmer of hope that we might get our country back. Personally I loved this guys writing style-some excellent use of descriptive words.

simply cannot afford to lose the Army! It is very, very bad to lose the CIA, but to lose both the CIA and the Army is unsustainable for them politically. ANd there are plenty of "real" Republicans who are more than aware of this. If the neoconnazis cannot figure out a way to correct course, at least in appearences, then the Emperor may be headed for impeachment. The Senate Republicans just might do it. Of course, the lickspitals in the House will aquit him, but the damage would be done. The "real" Republicans are starting to grasp the fact that "coattails" work both ways - you can ride them into power AND you can be dragged by them out of power.

Sadly, only the house can bring the articles of impeachment for the senate's consideration. The house acts as the DA in bringing the charges, the senate is the judge and jury. That's the only way it can happen by the constitution.

Wishful thinking, I guess. Our only hope, at this point, is that the people become so disgusted with the Emperor, that the republicans lose the House. Won't happen, but is nice to think about.

n/t

I'm sure that now that the military understands that contractors were handed untrained reservists for the purposes they sought to mold, they are out to defend the military and it's proper procedure.

Since the CIA has actual patriots involved and a relationship with the gov't\military they watch out for the military, too. I don't think anyone wants to see the kind of division this scandal could foster.

If the public begins to gather an image of those reservists as putty in the hands of the defense contractors Bush was so eager to dole out money AND offer immunity to, we may finally see a level of contempt that matches this presidency.

"The widespread taking of photographs of the victims of such abuses, they said, clearly revealed that civilian "amateurs" and not regular Army or intelligence community professionals were the driving force in shaping and running the programs under which these abuses occurred."

Is this Pentagon 'civilian amateurs', or contractors? Does this imply that they are lasing DynCorp/Blackwater/KBR perhaps?

It has such an evocative flavor, don't you think?

Makes me think of hired guns subverting the law. Which, of course, this is.

They are hired killers, people with anti-social personality disorders hired to kill other human beings. They do so like machines --quickly, quietly, efficiently--with no remorse.

"Even worse for Rumsfeld and his coterie of neo-conservative true believers who have run the Pentagon for the past 3½ years, three major institutions in the Washington power structure have decided that after almost a full presidential term of being treated with contempt and abuse by them, it's payback time."

"It's payback time." Could there be any other words that are more beautiful than these three?

:kick:

sides of this issue that cannot afford let their "side" lose. The fight is going to be ugly and vicious.

cannot be had about the forces at play. This is one of the ways in which we are so easily manipulated. An example of this is the phrase "you are either with us or against us". Life is far more complicated and multi-faceted which is why this situation has such a potential for ugliness.

,...and I certainly am NOT an advocate for "with us or against us" rhetoric.

We DO need to have discussion about our basic, fundamental priorities: basic tenets that guide us in both our personal lives and our influence upon OUR world.

I would advance a first basic tenet and priority as follows: ALL existing human life has value that we must embrace.

I hope not, but if the antiBushites feel unable to resolve this well via legal means, I suspect they will opt for more radical means.

before enough people say, "This has to stop." It's obvious the _Bush machine doesn't intend to pull back, or check itself at any point.

Great THANKS TO UP IN ARMS for posting this helpful, promising article. I've already made a print-out of it to circulate. It has brought up things I truly didn't know, like actual high respect for Seymour Hersch within the military and CIA, and the fact there are some prominant Republicans who are resistant to keeping a lid on this noxious information.

and here's something I learned about Seymour Hersh the other day while I was researching a different topic:

http://www.fact-index.com/m/my/my_lai_massacre.html

Cover-Up

Initial "investigations" of My Lai which had been done by the 11th Brigade's CO, Col Oran Henderson, under orders from Americal's Ass't CO, BG Young.

Six months later a young soldier of the 11th Light Infantry (The Butcher's Brigade) named Tom Glen, wrote a letter accusing the Americal division (and other entire units of the US military, not just individuals) of routine brutality against Vietnamese civilians; the letter was detailed, its allegations horrifying, and its contents echoed complaints received from other soldiers.

Colin Powell white-washed the letter, and questions continued to remain un-answered.

To this day, we might not know about the carnage at My Lai if it hadn't been for another soldier who later sent a letter to his Congressman.

Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the My Lai story on November 12, 1969 and on November 20 the Cleveland Plain Dealer published explicit photographs of dead villagers killed at My Lai.

That is my definition of a true patriot, one who is willing to try to protect this country from corrupt individuals who rise to power and violate the basic tenets of our democracy.

And I really like everything I have read linked to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, too, nice to know they were always this great.

but if this story gets the movement it deserves it may be we've got enough to get the job done, finally!

Didn't know the Cleveland Plain Dealer was the brave organization which stuck its neck out before. WONDERFUL.

A Slate article, I hope is not overly optomistic about Hersh's story:

(snip)
.......Until recently, Rumsfeld, with White House assistance, has quelled dissenters, but the already-rattling lid is almost certain to blow off soon. As has been noted, Secretary of State Colin Powell, tiring of his good-soldier routine, is attacking his adversaries in the White House and Pentagon with eyebrow-raising openness. Hersh's story states that Rumsfeld's secret operation stemmed from his "longstanding desire to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations from the CIA." Hersh's sources—many of them identified as intelligence officials—seem to be spilling, in part, to wrest back control. Uniformed military officers, who have long disliked Rumsfeld and his E-Ring crew for a lot of reasons, are also speaking out. Hersh and Newsweek both report that senior officers from the Judge Advocate General's Corps went berserk when they found out about Rumsfeld's secret operation, to the point of taking their concerns to the New York Bar Association's committee on international human rights.

The knives are out all over Washington—lots of knives, unsheathed and sharpened in many different backroom parlors, for many motives and many throats. In short, this story is not going away.

What is Bush to do? There's not much he can do. Many, including loyal Republicans worried about the election, are urging him to fire Rumsfeld. But that move probably wouldn't stop the investigations. In fact, the confirmation hearings for Rummy's replacement would serve as yet another forum for all the questions—about Abu Ghraib, the war in Iraq, and military policy generally—that the administration is trying to stave off. More than that, Bush has said repeatedly that he won't get rid of Rumsfeld. If he did, especially if he did so under political pressure, he would undermine his most appealing campaign slogan—that he stays the course, doesn't buckle, says what he means and does what he says.

If lesser officials are sacrificed—Cambone, Feith, and so forth—there is no guarantee that they will go gently, especially if they face possible criminal charges. The same, by the way, is true of Rumsfeld himself, a savvy survivor who can be expected to take some interesting memos with him—for possible widespread circulation—if he were forced to leave the building.
(snip/...)

http://slate.msn.com/id/105552/&h=148&w=165&sz=8&tbnid=DzgfDRsLCxoJ:&tbnh=83&tbnw=92&start=18&prev=/images%3Fq%3DWilliam%2BCalley%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26safe%3Dactive">~~~~ link ~~~~


(Click on the article under Rumsfeld's face in the right column, "Locked in Abu Ghraib" for this story.)

The principle story, "Apocalypse Then" is useful, too, especially for anyone who hasn't heard too much about it:

Following the VVAW hearings, the group's leader, John F. Kerry (later Sen. John F. Kerry), told a Senate committee that such acts had occurred "on a day-to-day basis, with full awareness of officers at all levels of command." He summarized the testimony from the three-day hearings:

They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war.
(snip)

(Can you believe the Republicans believe Democrats should have never even tried to clean this stuff up? Their ubiquitous excuse for ALL war atrocities (by U.S. troops) is ,"War Is Hell," as if that's the universal blank check meant to cover EVERYTHING.

in the military is the "coup of 2012" google for it... the elements described in there are now present

And yes that would have an incredibly bad effect for Democracy, unless they called for election soon and forbit real bad actors (DeLay and crew) from running

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no doubt.

guess chimp got another one. :thumbsup:

I sense a mass email emanating from my computer shortly...

on edit: I sent it out. I even added several people I had removed from my email list for various reasons. Time they started paying attention.

national security by exposing your name.

Or UPI site for that matter!

Anybody else having similar problem???

Did the Moonies pull the plug???

:shrug:

:shrug:

without any trouble.

but it came back up. Wonder if they did any final 'editting'.

:shrug:

the article? Maybe someone copied it earlier and might want to compare it?

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

as what's posted now, but I don't remember what it was earlier..

This article has been carefully written to maximize the impact of its assertion that the torture scandal is far from over and will eventually bring down the civillians who ordered these acts.

!

I always wondered if the Neocons wouldn't overreach just once too often in their malignant arrogance. Looks like it has finally happened.

Please Goddess, just let the whole thing unravel now. Pretty please, can we see some perp-walks? Or, just a thundering, crashing, defeat in November? (Bush and Ashcroft always wanted the American people to turn to prayer, and we have.)

Impeach Cheney First.

Hekate
cautiously preparing to celebrate

I don't believe this stuff for a minute, that the CIA and Army will take out Bush is ridiculous. Those guys would drink his poison kool-aid before they'd denounce his leadership.

Basically, this "fight" is going on BETWEEN REPUBLICANS. They will keep this private (out of the mainstream press) and there will be no visible repurcussions, IMO. Bush will be put through some kind of "double-secret probation, in-house spanking machine" by his dad, a few admin types will be shuffled around, a couple dollar-bill bets trade hands, and that's the end of it.

Maybe I'm too cynical after four years of this nonsense, but there's no way the CIA and military would get rid of Bush. No way.