Human Rights Watch Again Backtracks - Still Keeps Up False Claism
During Georgia's war over South Ossetia Human Rights Watch asserted that Russia used cluster bombs. Russia denies to have used any cluster ammunition in that war. My analysis of the pictures provided by HRW and supposed to show such weapon use found that the weapons in question were obviously of 'western' origin.
A few days later HRW acknowledged that Georgia used cluster bombs in that war but kept up the claim that some of its pictures showed Russian ammunition debris even while the pictures provided obviously do not show the ammunition type HRW claims they show.
In further backtracking HRW now acknowledges that it were Georgian cluster bombs that killed Georgian people. Writes the Wall Street Journal today:
Georgia used cluster bombs that malfunctioned and fell into towns and villages, killing several of Georgia's own civilians during its summer war with Russia, according to new research by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based humanitarian organization. Georgia called that conclusion "impossible."
The group found that Russia also made extensive use of cluster bombs during the brief war.
...
Researchers from Human Rights Watch went further, saying that Georgian cluster bombs landed in at least nine Georgian towns, including several located far from the area where Georgia acknowledges using them against Russian soldiers who stormed the country in fighting over the fate of the breakaway republic South Ossetia.
The cluster bombs, which Georgia says it bought from Israel, appeared to have malfunctioned on an "absolutely massive scale," said Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon intelligence official who now serves as Human Rights Watch's senior military analyst. He said rockets failed to disperse the cluster bombs over the intended targets, and many of the small bombs failed to explode on impact.
It seems that Israel sold dreck (payed for by the U.S.?) to Saakashvili and his soldiers were incompetent in using it, killing their own people.
But while the WSJ repeats the claim of Russian use of cluster ammunition, Human Rights Watch has up to now provide absolutely zero proof that Russia used such in Georgia at all.
Its page on Georgia has not been updated with the new finding but still holds the false claims of Russian cluster bomb use, including the erroneous identification of ammunition debris.
Marc Garlasco is the person that was widely quoted accusing Russia in media pieces that picked up the false HRW claims (but not the subsequent corrections.)
Back in July Garlasco had no problems at all with 'his' side dropping bombs on civilians:
“In their deliberate targeting, the Air Force has all but eliminated civilian casualties in Afghanistan,” said Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst with Human Rights Watch. “They have very effective collateral damage mitigation procedures.”
That quote came only days after U.S. bombs had killed 47 civilians or their way to a wedding.
If Human Rights Watch wants to keep some semblance of neutrality it should look for real experts instead of propagandists like Marc Garlasco.
Posted by b on November 4, 2008 at 15:31 UTC | Permalink
how nice of them to blame the bombs and not the perpetrators:
nobody nows why, but the bombs mal-functioned and, voilà, 'landed' into those poor little bastards heads...
Posted by: rudolf | Nov 4 2008 16:06 utc | 2
Seems to me that the bombs served their purpose. Mal-function?
Posted by: biklett | Nov 4 2008 17:08 utc | 3
Haaretz: Human Rights Watch charges Georgia used defective Israeli-made cluster bombs
A new study by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) organization has found that Georgia used Israeli-made cluster bombs during its war with Russia, and that the weapons were defective, detonating in populated areas, killing Georgian civilians.Huh? Where is that assessment? Why, if it isn't public, has HRW access to it?Georgia, responding to the report, termed its conclusions "impossible."
The HRW report said that Russia also fired cluster bombs in large quantities, according an assessment by American intelligence.
HRW investigators said they discovered that the Georgian cluster bombs fell in at least nine residential areas, several of them a great distance from areas where Georgia said it had employed them in the war against Russian forces.The last graph confirms my "dreck" sentence above.The report states that Georgia said the bombs were acquired from Israel and that the defects in them were apparently found in most of the production run.
...
Israel prefers to buy its cluster bombs from the United States because of the American foreign aid grant that it receives for defense needs. IMI, which also produces cluster bombs, has had difficulty selling them to the Israel Defense Forces, manufacturing them instead for sale to various foreign countries, among them NATO nations.
Marc Garlasco -- "dedicated to human rights".
from a CBS 60 minutes investigation:
At the Pentagon, Garlasco was chief of high value targeting at the start of the Iraq war. He told 60 Minutes how many civilians he was allowed to kill around each high-value target -- targets like Saddam Hussein and his leadership. "Our number was 30. So, for example, Saddam Hussein. If you're gonna kill up to 29 people in a strike against Saddam Hussein, that's not a problem," Garlasco explains. "But once you hit that number 30, we actually had to go to either President Bush, or Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld."
Garlasco says, before the invasion of Iraq, he recommended 50 air strikes aimed at high-value targets -- Iraqi officials. But he says none of the targets on the list were actually killed. Instead, he says, "a couple of hundred civilians at least" were killed.
[In Afghanistan] "I don't think people really appreciate the gymnastics that the U.S. military goes through in order to make sure that they're not killing civilians," Garlasco points out. "If so much care is being taken why are so many civilians getting killed?" [CBS correspondent Scott] Pelley asks. "Because the Taliban are violating international law,” says Garlasco, “and because the U.S. just doesn't have enough troops on the ground. You have the Taliban shielding in people's homes. And you have this small number of troops on the ground. And sometimes the only thing they can do is drop bombs.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/25/60minutes/main3411230.shtml
Cluster bombs have, by design, evil (mal) functions. Even when they failed, they were used for anti-Russian propaganda during the war. Few will take serious note of these 'corrections.'
Posted by: biklett | Nov 4 2008 18:17 utc | 6
Human rights, from Geneva:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/105570/iraqi_mp_to_un:_investigate_iraq's_secret_prisons/>Alternet brief on Iraki prisons
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/front/MP_says_Iraq_holds_thousands_in_secret_prisons.html?siteSect=105&sid=9913868&rss=true&ty=st>same story, Swiss-info
Sabah al Mukhtar, pres. Association of Arab lawyers (London), pointed at Mohammed al Dainy (MP Baghdad) and said, “Remember the face of this man, tomorrow he may be dead.” Ali Wajeeh (TV Al Sharquiyya) looked down.
They have established the existence of 426 secret prisons in Iraq. (Officially, only 27 prisons exist.) They have piles of docs, vids, photos, testimony, etc. Four of Ali Wajeeh's co-workers have been kidnapped and assassinated.
They are requesting, amongst other things, the opening of an International Tribunal. They have given their docs. to the HCR, to the Red Cross, to the HC of the Rights of Man, all of whom recieved them (not easy to achieve at all.)
“In some cells, we counted 200 ppl - in others 700. Women, the elderly, children, mixed up with the men.”
Exactly which prison is run by whom is not known, or impossible to list/sort out, or is skimmed over or muddled. Many are joint US/Iraq operations. During the press conference it was said that the 426 was exclusive of US secret prisons. (I suppose because al Dainy can investigate, and enter, when Iraqis are involved, otherwise not. He is half Sunni and half Shia and calls himself only Iraqi.)
-from the Swiss paper press, end oct. 08. (no links)
Note that Swiss-info on the internet does not give the number 426 and mixes everything up, dragging in some old cherry picked data; transforms things, e.g. calls the proposed Int. Trib ‘an ad hoc int. trib to investigate human rights abuses’; mixes in the title “iraq, the death squads”, which evokes other issues; uses the word ‘believes’ instead of ‘attests’ or ‘documents’; says that permission is not granted to visit prisons (this is false.) Swiss-info used to be excellent, so they got into trouble, and were going to be shut down. They then transformed themselves to stay alive.
The BBC film mentioned by Swissinfo can be seen here, you can see Al Dainy visiting a prison. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-377952052252839443>googlevid The official line -sectarian violence- is pushed hard; two American failed whistleblowers are shown. Unsurprisingly, no conclusions are drawn. (Err I didn’t watch it all.)
Human rights watch is not considered a legitimate actor and never figures in these international negotiations or discussions at official levels.
Posted by: Tangerine | Nov 4 2008 18:36 utc | 7
Hey, they're SOBs but they're OUR SOBs. Or are they? The primary cohorts of prisoners in Iraq are Sadrists and Sunnis, two sects who happen to be anti-Iran. Coincidence?
B, thanks so much for staying on this case and getting this catch.
I've searched on HRW's own website for the new "assessment" but can't find it. It seems it has been selectively leaked only to the WSJ and Haaretz?
HRW also, certainly, needs to retract-- or provide the evidence for-- its still standing claims that "Russia, too" used cluster munitions during the Ossetian war. Those claims by HRW, though still completely unsubstantiated (and denied flat-out by Russia) are still being explicitly cited by Georgian govt officials, e.g. here, at the UNGA, on October 28.
Don B., thanks for putting in the link to Garlasco's past utterances. Maybe he is someone I should interview when I'm in NY? Those quotes from him are very significant.
Posted by: Helena Cobban | Nov 4 2008 19:34 utc | 9
More sleaze from Human Rights Watch:
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3882
Posted by: JohnH | Nov 4 2008 19:45 utc | 10
This Feb 2008 puff-profile of Garlasco is also pretty revealing. Basically, he trained and worked as a DIA "information warfare" specialist and target preparation analyst: "He set his sights on Iraq in 1999, traveling the world to debrief Iraqi nationals who could give him information about Saddam Hussein, at one point sharing a swimming pool with one of the Iraqi president's mistresses while gathering intelligence. 'There were a number of sources that I talked to that informed a lot of bombs on target on Iraq,' Garlasco said. 'It was contingency planning for a war that was probably never going to be fought.'...
The piece also quotes HRW's Washington advocacy director T0om Malinowski as saying, "The objective is not to end war, it's to change the way militaries wage war." To me, this is a huge blondspot in the practice of these big western-based human 'rights' organizations: They truly do not understand that every war itself massively violates the rights (and threatens the lives) of civilians living in the war zones.
When Garlasco talks there about "the locals", that's exactly the kind of demeaning, racist language that allows such actions (the war-waging, the elaborate work on 'targeting', etc) to persist. This piece, together with the CBS transcript make a great jumping-off point for a discussion about-- and possibly with-- this flawed but oh-so-ambitious young man.
Posted by: Helena Cobban | Nov 4 2008 19:53 utc | 11
@Helena - @11 - Maybe he is someone I should interview when I'm in NY?
Helena, maybe you should interview the folks at HRW who hired this nut. On who's recommendation? Or even better - the folks that financed HRW to hire bloodthirsty folks like Garlasco.
The story is much bigger than one person. Who are the people and what is the system that brought him into that (media-)powerful place?
Georgian attacks on civilians were widespread, and they began well before the Russians arrived, as these many eyewitness accounts make clear. The BBC's recent reporting and interviews with residents also show that Ossetian civilians were attacked early and often, beginning on the evening of August 7.
Posted by: Truth For Ossetia | Nov 4 2008 21:37 utc | 13
A few articles on HRW from the Voltaire network journalists...
(note that their website is often down possibly due to DNS attacks so try again if necessary)
http://www.voltairenet.org/article158169.html
http://www.voltairenet.org/article121204.html
http://www.voltairenet.org/article121200.html
http://www.voltairenet.org/article124572.html
http://www.voltairenet.org/article30024.html
Posted by: Stephane | Nov 4 2008 22:09 utc | 14
Now you can imagine what was fabricated for Serbia during Balkan wars of 90ies...in good old times when nobody even had a flying thought that all those HRW -s and CNN-s are lieing bastards.We all now know how they fabricated Racak for the purpose to bombard Serbia , and Markale in Sarajevo to go against Bosnian Serbs...but it was much , much more...
Truth is so distorted and what is more important after awhile when truth comes out no one is paying attention any more and no one cares.And they know it.It's called propaganda WAR and they are playing dirty as war always is...
Posted by: vbo | Nov 4 2008 23:21 utc | 15
HRW now has a press release
Russia has continued to deny using cluster munitions in Georgia, but Human Rights Watch finds the evidence to be overwhelming. Human Rights Watch believes that Russia’s use of cluster munitions in populated areas was indiscriminate, and therefore in violation of international humanitarian law. Human Rights Watch found Georgian clusters in populated areas, but it is not clear whether Georgia targeted such areas or whether they fell short. Human Rights Watch called on Georgia to investigate the situation.Hmm - a thirteen year old ...
...
Human Rights Watch found that many of the cluster munitions landed in populated areas of Georgia. The town of Variani, in the Gori district, was apparently hit the hardest with Russian AO-2.5 RTM submunitions from RBK air-dropped cluster bombs. Human Rights Watch interviewed a number of those wounded during the attacks, including a 13-year-old boy and a 70-year-old man. On the day of the attack, the boy, Beka Giorgishvili, went to a friend’s house to say goodbye before his family fled Variani. He was hit as he was helping pump up his friend’s new bike tire. Beka lost part of his skull, and shrapnel remains inside.
Human Rights Watch also found that many of the submunitions failed to explode on impact as designed, but remained on or slightly buried in the ground – so called “duds” that still pose danger to civilians. People engaged in the clearance effort told Human Rights Watch that there may be thousands of duds. In Ruisi, which was hit very hard by Russian submunitions on August 12, 2008, the clearance organization Norwegian People’s Aid estimated a 35 percent submunition failure rate for an area it was clearing.
And why is the Norwegian People's Aid not even listing Georgia as a country of operation on its website?
Indeed the only things about Georgia I find there, refers to the old false HRW report.
The 'human rights' echo chamber ...
TBILISI, Georgia — Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.
The accounts are neither fully conclusive nor broad enough to settle the many lingering disputes over blame in a war that hardened relations between the Kremlin and the West. But they raise questions about the accuracy and honesty of Georgia’s insistence that its shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, was a precise operation. Georgia has variously defended the shelling as necessary to stop heavy Ossetian shelling of Georgian villages, bring order to the region or counter a Russian invasion.
President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia has characterized the attack as a precise and defensive act. But according to observations of the monitors, documented Aug. 7 and Aug. 8, Georgian artillery rounds and rockets were falling throughout the city at intervals of 15 to 20 seconds between explosions, and within the first hour of the bombardment at least 48 rounds landed in a civilian area. The monitors have also said they were unable to verify that ethnic Georgian villages were under heavy bombardment that evening, calling to question one of Mr. Saakashvili’s main justifications for the attack.
Posted by: biklett | Nov 7 2008 7:18 utc | 17
@biklett - yeah - isn't it laughable that the NYT needs month to find what was obvious to see in real time? Plus that piece is more or less a rewrite of what Der Spiegel International wrote weeks ago based on about the same sources.
I wonder who now gave order to change the propaganda meme ...
I wonder who now gave order to change the propaganda meme ...
Yes, that was exactly what I thought too when I read that article. Thanks for your great and timely reporting on this back when it happened, b.
Posted by: Maxcrat | Nov 7 2008 8:01 utc | 19
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b
hrw is completely untrustworthy. the facts always bear that out. i imagine they have a splendid fture in our future chaos - calling in for pax american
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 4 2008 15:38 utc | 1