Bush War Crimes                 

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Bush Wants Liberty*

Incredibly, with more than 1,360 American troops dead and more than 10,000 wounded, and with scores of thousands of Iraqis dead and wounded, the president never once mentioned the word Iraq in his Inaugural Address. He avoided all but the most general references to the war. Lyndon Johnson used to agonize over the war that unraveled his presidency. Mr. Bush, riding the crest of his re-election wave, seems not to be similarly bothered. . .As the well-heeled Bush crowd was laughing and dancing in tuxedos and designer gowns, the situation in Iraq was deteriorating to new levels of horror. The Black Tie and Boots Ball was held on the same day that 26 people were killed. . .With the elections just a week and a half away, American commanders, . . . are seeking "to prepare public opinion in Iraq and abroad for one of the bloodiest chapters in the war so far."  Herbert, NY Times, 1/21/05  MORE

Bush's Depleted Morality*

American soldiers also are beginning to suffer injuries from a silent and pernicious weapon material of U.S. origin—depleted uranium (DU). . . It is pyrophoric, burning spontaneously on impact, and extremely dense, making DU munitions ideal for penetrating an enemy’s tank armor or reinforced bunker. It also is the toxic and radioactive byproduct of enriched uranium, the fissile material in nuclear weapons. 
When a DU shell hits its target, it burns. . .dispersing a fine toxic radioactive dust . . . The U.S. Army and Air Force have fired 127 tons of DU . . .Asaf Durakovic, a physician and nuclear medicine expert . . . examined the GIs and performed the testing. The Daily News quoted him as saying: “These are amazing results, especially since these soldiers were military police not exposed to the heat of battle. Other American soldiers who were in combat must have more depleted uranium exposures.”  Frida Berrigan, In These Times, 5/18/04

Bush Torture, Not a Prank*

At least five Iraqi prisoners have died in U.S-run detention camps, including one high-ranking Iraqi general. Three of the deaths happened last year - yet no criminal punishments have been announced.

The military documents acknowledge that the Iraqi general died under questionable circumstances, but the Pentagon's website on Wednesday still listed the cause of death as "natural causes."  At least 75 cases of abuse are being investigated, the documents show. That's about twice the number the military has publicly acknowledged. Twenty-seven of the cases involve deaths; eight of those are being investigated as homicides.

Given the military's performance to date, an outside look clearly is needed to ensure that incidents aren't covered up and that systemic problems aren't ignored.  Denver Post Editorial 5/20/04

The Bush Crusade*

He said the soldiers told him that if he cooperated with interrogators they would release him in time for Ramadan. He said he did, but still was not released. He said one soldier continued to abuse him by striking his broken leg and ordered him to curse Islam. "Because they started to hit my broken leg, I curse my religion," he said. "They ordered me to thank Jesus I'm alive."
The detainee said the soldiers handcuffed him to a bed.
"Do you believe in anything?" he said the soldier asked. "I said to him, 'I believe in Allah.' So he said, "But I believe in torture and I will torture you.' "  Scott Higham and Joe Stephens, Washington Post, 5/21/04

 

Rape of Women Prisoners*

Astonishingly, the secret inquiry launched by the US military in January, headed by Major General Antonio Taguba, has confirmed that the letter smuggled out of Abu Ghraib by a woman known only as "Noor" was entirely and devastatingly accurate. While most of the focus since the scandal broke three weeks ago has been on the abuse of men, and on their sexual humilation in front of US women soldiers, there is now incontrovertible proof that women detainees - who form a small but unknown proportion of the 40,000 people in US custody since last year's invasion - have also been abused.  The Guardian (U.K.), 5/20/04

Army, CIA Want Truth*

President George W. Bush in his weekly radio address Saturday claimed that the Abu Ghraib abuses were only "the actions of a few" and that they did not "reflect the true character of the Untied States armed forces."
But what enrages many serving senior Army generals and U.S. top-level intelligence community professionals is that the "few" in this case were not primarily the serving soldiers who were actually encouraged to carry out the abuses and even then take photos of the victims, but that they were encouraged to do so, with the Army's well-established safeguards against such abuses deliberately removed by high-level Pentagon civilian officials.
Abuse and even torture of prisoners happens in almost every war on every side. But well-run professional armies, and the U.S. Army has always been one, take great pains to guard against it and limit it as much as possible. Martin Sieff
UPI 5/18/2004

Bush Guilty*

a NEWSWEEK investigation shows that, as a means of pre-empting a repeat of 9/11, Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods. It was an approach that they adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war. In doing so, they overrode the objections of Secretary of State Colin Powell and America's top military lawyers—and they left underlings to sweat the details of what actually happened to prisoners in these lawless places. While no one deliberately authorized outright torture, these techniques entailed a systematic softening up of prisoners through isolation, privations, insults, threats and humiliation—methods that the Red Cross concluded were "tantamount to torture."  John Barry, Michael Hirsh and Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, 5/24/04 Issue

Rumsfeld Guilty*

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, . . .
According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.  SEYMOUR M. HERSH, The New Yorker, 5/24/04 Issue

The Abu Ghraib Spin

The administration and its Republican allies appear to have settled on a way to deflect attention from the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib: accuse Democrats and the news media of overreacting, then pile all of the remaining responsibility onto officers in the battlefield, far away from President Bush and his political team. . . These silly arguments not only obscure the despicable treatment of the prisoners, most of whom are not guilty of anything, but also ignore the evidence so far. While some of the particularly sick examples of sexual degradation may turn out to be isolated events, General Taguba's testimony, and a Red Cross report from Iraq, made it plain that the abuse of prisoners by the American military and intelligence agencies was systemic. NY Times Editorial, 5/12/04

Bush/Rumsfeld War Crimes

A secret report by the international Red Cross in February warned U.S. authorities that American forces were behaving brutally toward Iraqis, committing human rights violations that were "in some cases tantamount to torture." . . . U.S. occupation authorities are running a brutal, unjust prison system that is damaging the lives of tens of thousands of people. . . The report details several horrific cases of torture, including one in which troops in Basra beat and stomped on a group of detainees -- one, a 28-year-old father, died. ICRC staffers told of finding two detainees who had been hooded, manacled and forced onto hot surfaces -- thought to be vehicle engines. One was permanently disabled.  JAMES RUPERT, Newsday, 5/11/04