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May 30, 2005
Non-Verbal
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U.S. Navy officer found not guilty in death of an Iraqi prisoner
SAN DIEGO, May 27 – A Navy Seal lieutenant was acquitted Friday on charges that he had struck a detainee in Iraq in 2003 and failed to restrain his men from hitting the prisoner, who later died at Abu Ghraib prison.
The jury of six Navy officers deliberated for three hours before clearing the defendant, Lt. Andrew K. Ledford, of any misconduct in connection with his platoon’s capture of the detainee, Manadel al-Jamadi, in November 2003. Mr. Jamadi died after he was turned over to the C.I.A. for interrogation.
…A photograph of Mr. Jamadi’s body, wrapped in plastic and packed in ice, became a dominant image in the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. His death, hours after the Seal team turned him over to C.I.A. custody and he was taken to Abu Ghraib for interrogation, spawned investigations by both the military and the C.I.A…..
Posted by: Nugget | May 30 2005 16:13 utc | 2
looks like photoshop to me.
I’d otherwise prefer to see a #2.
Posted by: Lupin | May 30 2005 17:37 utc | 4
Definitely photoshop; however these images are Not!
Posted by: Friendly Fire | May 30 2005 18:05 utc | 5
This was on the cover of Tariq Ali’s ‘Bush in Babylon.’
Posted by: biklett | May 30 2005 18:16 utc | 6
“At our National Cemetery, we’re reminded why America has always been a reluctant warrior.”
President Commemorates Memorial Day
—
A Chronology of U.S. Imperialism
(scroll down for a list)
What is Memorial Day?
The Copernican revolution in historical perception is as follows. Formerly it was thought that a fixed point had been found in “what has been,” and one saw the present engaged in tentatively concentrating the forces of knowledge on this ground. Now this relation is to be overturned, and what has been is to acquire its dialectical fixation through the synthesis which awakening achieves with the opposing dream images. Politics attains primacy over history. Indeed, historical “facts” become something that just now happened to us, just now struck us: to establish them is the affair of memory. And awakening is the great exemplar of memory-that occasion on which we succeed in remembering what is nearest, most obvious (in the “I”). –Benjamin, from the Arcades Project
So, the memory induced by the iconic image of, say, the Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima, becomes a “dialectical image” in which the aim of US militarism is re-presented not as a force of good, but a darkness revealing this moment of senseless conquest.
Posted by: slothrop | May 30 2005 19:11 utc | 8
slothrop: question for you and any other members of the MOA Marxist Front over on the last open thread.
Forgotten and long-term consequences of war: More Than a Decade Later, Bosnian Children Born of War Rape Start Asking Questions
But the war is not over for children like Rade. As these war babies reach adolescence, they are beginning to ask questions about their past – and those with the answers are faced with the choice of keeping them in the dark or telling them the agonizing truth.
“The mother is now in Austria, is happily married and wants nothing to do with the child,” said the social worker, Bakira Hasecic.
Hasecic is herself a Bosnian war rape victim, and her sister died in a Serbian rape camp. She is now helping others to come to grips with their torment.
…
While Serb and Croat women also were raped, Bosnia’s Muslims were the main victims. An estimated 20,000 Muslim women were raped during the 2 1/2 year conflict that ended in 1995 with hundreds of thousands of people dead or missing and more than 1 million displaced.
Most of the perpetrators were Serbs, who often used mass rape as a weapon of terror.
Many women were dragged to concentration camps and raped repeatedly. Some were brought back to their homes and dumped in front of their husbands. Other women were violated in their husbands’ presence as part of a shock campaign.
The systematic use of rape led to the U.N. war crimes tribunal to recognize ethnically motivated rape as a war crime, part of the Serbs’ campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Posted by: Fran | May 30 2005 20:42 utc | 10
The chief of police in Basra admitted yesterday that he had effectively lost control of three-quarters of his officers and that sectarian militias had infiltrated the force and were using their posts to assassinate opponents.
Speaking to the Guardian, General Hassan al-Sade said half of his 13,750-strong force was secretly working for political parties in Iraq’s second city and that some officers were involved in ambushes.
Other officers were politically neutral but had no interest in policing and did not follow his orders, he told the Guardian.
“I trust 25% of my force, no more.”
The claim jarred with Basra’s reputation as an oasis of stability and security and underlined the burgeoning influence of Shia militias in southern Iraq.
“The militias are the real power in Basra and they are made up of criminals and bad people,” said the general.
“To defeat them I would need to use 75% of my force, but I can rely on only a quarter.”
….he was frustrated that a weak, fledgling state left him powerless to purge his force of members of Iraq’s two main rival Shia militias: Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army and the Badr Brigade of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri).
Sciri is one of the dominant parties in the Shia-led government in Baghdad and Mr Sadr, a radical cleric, has become a mainstream political player since leading two uprisings against occupation forces last year.
Both groups have been implicated in targeting officials from Saddam’s ousted regime. Since such people tend to be Sunni Arabs, the score settling is often perceived as sectarian.
“Some of the police are involved in assassinations,” said Gen Sade……
Posted by: Nugget | May 31 2005 0:39 utc | 11
Franklin admits he disclosed classified information in AIPAC affair
WASHINGTON – Pentagon official Larry Franklin has admitted that he may have disclosed classified information to a foreign official who was not authorized to receive it. The admission appeared in an FBI affidavit submitted to a U.S. District Court last week.
A Virginia grand jury is expected to indict Franklin for giving classified information to representatives of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in the coming days.
The charges will replace the criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Justice Department at the beginning of the month.
Haaretz reported on Monday the U.S. Justice Department is also expected to file indictments against two former senior American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) staffers – Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman – and, according to sources familiar with the affair, the charges will be subsumed under the Espionage Act.
According to sources, the grand jury will submit indictments against Rosen, the former head of foreign policy for the lobbying organization, and against Weissman, who was responsible for the Iranian brief in AIPAC.
Franklin appeared last Wednesday before a Federal District Court judge in West Virginia, where he was indicted for holding secret documents in his residence.
Franklin was released on $50,000 bail last week and his court date was set for the beginning of September. The Justice Department is also expected to indict two former senior AIPAC staffers, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, in the next few weeks on charges covered under the Espionage Act.
According to an FBI affidavit filed on May 24 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, “Franklin admitted that he may have disclosed information from one of the classified documents found at his residence to a foreign official who was not authorized to receive that information.”
The official was believed to be Naor Gilon of the Israeli embassy in Washington, although his name and Israel have not been mentioned in any official legal documents….
Posted by: Nugget | May 31 2005 0:52 utc | 12
Oh well since today some people appear to be discussing war and it’s nastiness I thought I should throw in this link from the Independant It details some papers wrested out of a defence department tribunal into allegations of mistreatment at Guantanamo
After last November’s debacle I had sworn off stnding outside the tent that is the US and pissing in. Not because I in any way approved or empathised with what was happening in Iraq but because like many others discovered too late that pointing out the other fellow’s error is counter-productive. No I’m not gonna take responsibility for the debacle that was the re-election but I suspect if the rest of world hadn’t been overcome with horror at an allegedly civilised society like the US resorting to thuggery and theft and had instead kept their mouths shut perhaps the citizenry in the US wouldn’t have felt so compelled to circle the wagons and give the rest of the world the finger. So appropos of the rape stories and the like above, the Independant story on torture at Guantanamo tells us little more than when you go to war, be it an invasion of another land, or an illusory war on terror, horrible and foul acts will be committed in your name no matter who you are. The only reason I have reproduced it here is that I doubt somehow it is going to make it into the mainstream media in the US. One of the most telling little vignettes:
” One detainee, whose name and nationality were blacked out, along with many of names in the transcripts, said his medical problems from alleged abuse have not been taken seriously. “Americans hit me and beat me up so badly I believe I’m sexually dysfunctional,” he said.
“I can’t control my urination, and sometimes I put toilet paper down there so I won’t wet my pants. I point to where the pain is. … I think they take it as a joke and they laugh.” The tribunal president promised to take up the man’s medical complaint, but in five pages of questioning, never brought up the alleged abuse, the agency reported.”
People from outside the US who read this have every right to be indignant at the attitude of the so-called “proper authorities” to the torture in the American gulags, but they better not feel morally superior because rape and torture happens in ALL wars no matter how ‘honorable’ the cause. I suspect in fact that the validity of the cause doesn’t make a jot of difference to what happens once people start fighting and killing each other. There aren’t many people that would argue with the ‘rightness’ of the allied position in WW2 but I have heard some hair raising yarns from gentle old diggers and I don’t just mean against enemy combatants either, the worst atrocities always seem to happen to the civilians caught up in this bestiality.
Posted by: Debs is dead | May 31 2005 6:47 utc | 14