Another Gulf War Syndrome?
From Mother Jones:
Burning trash on bases is sickening soldiers, but the Army refuses to extinguish the burn pits.
Before her last deployment, 31-year-old Staff Sergeant Danielle Nienajadlo passed her Army physical with flying colors. So when she started having health problems several weeks after arriving at Balad Air Base in Iraq, no one knew what to make of her symptoms: headaches that kept her awake; unexplained bruises all over her body; an open sore on her back that wouldn’t heal; vomiting and weight loss. In July 2008, after three miserable months, Nienajadlo checked into the base emergency room with a 104-degree fever.
She was sent to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and learned she had been diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia, a fast-progressing form of the disease. She told her doctors and her family she…
Secret Document Calls Wikileaks ‘Threat’ to U.S. Army
David Kravets writes on WIRED’s Threat Level:
Wikileaks presents a “threat to the U.S. Army” and publishes “potentially actionable information” for targeting military personnel, according to a classified intelligence report posted on the whistleblowing site.
The 32-page report entitled Wikileaks.org — An Online Reference to Foreign Intelligence Services, Insurgents, or Terrorist Groups? indicates the government’s concern that “current employees or moles” within the Defense Department or the U.S. government “are providing sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.” To stop this, the 2008 report had suggested a campaign to expose and punish those who leak to the site, which was founded in 2007 by Chinese dissidents, journalists and mathematicians.
“Wikileaks.org uses trust as a center of gravity by assuring insiders, leakers, and whistleblowers who pass information to Wikileaks.org personnel or who post information to the…
Bush Officials Warned 9/11 Commission Against Probing Too Deeply
Some people ask, “Why do conspiracy theories get such traction in people’s minds?”
Perhaps because the arguments against them are not entirely dissuasive, but I have to say, if nothing else, it’s largely because of stories like this one, that actually lend credence to people’s suspicions by providing them with objective proof of the government’s attempt to obfuscate and withhold vital information.
Whether it is done in order to prevent embarrassment, or to protect themselves from prosecution, the fact remains, Bush officials in Washington were more concerned with covering their own butts, than publicly revealing an inconvenient truth. Even if it meant that national security might be improved and a similar event avoided.
As of today, it has been revealed via a FOIA request made by the ACLU, that Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet sent a letter dated January 16, 2004 to the members of the 9/11 Commission that there was an investigatory line it was “not allowed to cross.”
The line was in questioning the terrorist suspects that the Bush Administration was busy torturing, in violation of both U.S. and international law. In other words, the Commission was not allowed to question the accused.
Hardly a high point for American jurisprudence.
U.S. Attorney General: Bin Laden Will Be Killed
Does anyone else think this is likely a precursor to Osama turning up dead before long? From the Washington Post:
Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress on Tuesday that Osama bin Laden will never face trial in the United States because he will not be captured alive.
In testy exchanges with House Republicans, the attorney general compared terrorists to mass murderer Charles Manson and predicted that events would ensure “we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden” not to the al-Qaida leader as a captive.
Holder sternly rejected criticism from GOP members of a House Appropriations subcommittee, who contend it is too dangerous to put terror suspects on trial in federal civilian courts as Holder has proposed.
The attorney general said it infuriates him to hear conservative critics complain…
Karl Rove Says He’s ‘Proud’ U.S. Waterboarded Suspected Terrorists
Evil and proud of it – as reported by the BBC:
A senior adviser to former US President George W Bush has defended tough interrogation techniques, saying their use helped prevent terrorist attacks.
In a BBC interview, Karl Rove, who was known as “Bush’s brain”, said he “was proud we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists”. He said waterboarding, which simulates drowning, should not be considered torture.
In 2009, President Barack Obama banned waterboarding as a form of torture. But the practice was sanctioned in written memos by Bush administration lawyers…
Cartman of ‘South Park’ Signs for 500 AK-47s, Like Just Like Blackwater Did…
Art imitating life? Not quite … Spencer Ackerman reports on the Washington Independent:
On Feb. 23, I broke a story about how the Senate Armed Services Committee determined that Blackwater employees in Afghanistan signed for hundreds of AK-47s and pistols using the name “Eric Cartman,” evidently a reference to the popular South Park character.
On March 17 — which Dave Weigel tells me is the season premiere — South Park will show Eric Cartman signing for the guns.
Splitting the Sky on Trial in Canada for Attempting to Arrest President Bush
Via YouTube:
A man named Splitting the Sky, tried to arrest former President George W. Bush for war crimes. He crossed police lines on one of President Bush’s visits to Canada and was arrested. He now faces criminal charges in court, the trial began today.
Waterboarding For Dummies
MARK BENJAMIN writes on Salon:
Self-proclaimed waterboarding fan Dick Cheney called it a no-brainer in a 2006 radio interview: Terror suspects should get a “a dunk in the water.” But recently released internal documents reveal the controversial “enhanced interrogation” practice was far more brutal on detainees than Cheney’s description sounds, and was administered with meticulous cruelty.
Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney “specially designed” to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner’s nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking — and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.
The documents also lay out, in chilling…
Birth Defects on the Rise in Fallujah
Via the Daily Mail:
A Fallujah mother holds her little girl, who was born without a left forearm and hand.
A high number of children are being born with birth defects in an Iraqi city where U.S. forces may have used chemical weapons during a fierce battle in 2004.
Children in Fallujah are being born with limb, head, heart and nervous system defects.
There is even a claim that a baby was born with three heads. The number of heart defects among newborn babies is said to be 13 times higher than the rate in Europe.
The city, 40 miles west of Baghdad, was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the Iraq war in late 2004. U.S. Marines led Operation Phantom Fury to recapture it from insurgents.
British troops were involved in manning…
One Child Dies Every Two Minutes in Afghanistan
Tom Parry writes on uruknet.info:
Children in Afghanistan are more likely to die before the age of five than children anywhere else in the world, according to Save the Children.
At the current appalling rate, one child dies every two minutes in the violence-wracked nation. The study shows that last year was also the deadliest for Afghan children since the fall of the Taliban.
More than 1,050 were killed in suicide attacks, air strikes, explosions and crossfire, according to latest figures. Save the Children insists the true scale of the humanitarian crisis facing the country remains hidden because of the focus on the conflict.
It says: “The international community needs to ensure families across the country — not just those living in the conflict zones — are able to access the clean water, nutritious…
Pakistan Knows Where Osama Bin Laden Is – But Won’t Tell
So says author Stephen Tanner in an interview with CNN’s Afghanistan Crossroads:
Osama bin Laden – remember him? Where is he, and is the U.S. getting closer to killing or capturing him?
Those are the questions hovering over several recent developments in the Afghanistan war: the capture of Afghan Taliban military leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the killing of two key Taliban commanders and an increase in drone attacks.
But several authorities on the eight-year Afghanistan war say no one should expect to see bin Laden in handcuffs anytime soon.
“No, I don’t think we’re getting any closer,” says Stephen Tanner, author of Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the War against the Taliban.
Tanner says the ISI, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, knows where bin Laden is hiding, but is not ready to say…
Many Are Dying For Our Having Hoped Obama Would Not Practice Imperialism
In retrospect, does it not sound terribly naive that we would hope a U.S. president whose candidacy was selected and backed by our most powerful bankers would be permitted, just maybe, perhaps by virtue of his being black and well spoken, to modify the intense imperialism that has characterized all previous presidencies since, if not including, that of Teddy Roosevelt and before?
He said he would bomb Pakistan and he has.
He indicated he would be willing to sacrifice men, women and children to assassinate leaders of those warring against American occupations and he has.
He said he would, and he did, send more troops to broaden the war against Pashtun Taliban, formerly the Reagan approved and recognized government of Afghanistan.
He has praised Americans for having fought the Vietnamese in their own country…
Ex-Intel Committee Chair Blasts GOP Successor for Killing Torture Probe
From Mother Jones:
A former Democratic senator who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at the start of the US government’s campaign against Al Qaeda tells Mother Jones he cannot fathom why his Republican replacement squashed his request for an independent review of the interrogation techniques then being used by the CIA. That onetime senator, Bob Graham of Florida, says he believes Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) neglected his obligations as head of the intel panel by smothering Graham’s proposal for a committee assessment of so-called enhanced interrogation practices.
On February 4, 2003, according to a CIA memo released last week, senior CIA officials—including Stanley Moskowitz, the agency’s head of congressional liaison; Scott Muller, the agency’s top lawyer; and James Pavitt, the deputy director for operations—presented a classified briefing in a Capitol Hill office…
Too Much Bang, Bang: The Need to Demilitarize US National Security
From Truthout:
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave a provocative and even dangerous speech at the National Defense University (NDU) last week that revealed the cold-war thinking of a key holdover from the Bush administration. With language reminiscent of the worst days of the cold war in the 1950s, Gates argued that the “demilitarization of Europe – where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it – has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st century.” He concluded that a perception of European weakness could provide a “temptation to miscalculation and aggression” by hostile powers. Gates didn’t name these so-called hostile powers; indeed, it…
With No Modification and Little Debate, Democrats Send Patriot Act Extension to Obama
Even though I didn’t expect any better, this story really breaks my heart. As long as this law is in effect, 9/11 never ends. Whether you believe it is the government or the terrorists who were behind the attack, it’s obvious that someone was trying to really screw you over nine years ago, and this story is a little reminder of that. Kudos to Dennis Kucinich for holding his ground on this and other civil liberties issues that other Democrats won’t touch for fear of being soft on terrorism. Personally, I’d rather be hard on human rights.
From The Raw Story:
Kucinich jeers: Congress is ‘complicit’ in violating Americans’ constitutional rights. In the wake of congressional Democrats’ reauthorization and extension of the USA Patriot Act, few elected Democrats have been as vocal about the post-9/11 security measures as they were during the Bush administration.
Leave it to stalwart House progressive Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to raise a rallying cry against what he called America’s love of its fears.
“This legislation extends three problematic provisions of the PATRIOT Act and, at the same time, leaves some of the most egregious provisions in place, absent any meaningful reform and debate,” he declared in a media advisory.
Mossad ‘Factory’ Churned Out Fake Australian Passports
Adam Korman writes on ABC News (Australia):
A former Mossad officer has alleged the Israeli spy agency has its own “passport factory” to create or doctor passports for use in intelligence operations. Relations between Australia and Israel are under strain after three Australian passports were apparently used by suspects in the killing of top Hamas leader Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in Dubai last month.
Dubai police say they are 99 per cent sure Mossad was behind the operation to smother Mabhouh with a pillow in his hotel room. Victor Ostrovsky, a case officer at Mossad for several years in the 1980s, says he has no doubt Australian passports have been forged or fraudulently used for similar operations in the past.
“They need passports because you can’t go around with an Israeli passport, not even…
Bush’s CIA Torture Psychologists Sought To Use ‘Mock Burials’
Documents reveal that burying detainees alive was sought as an interrogation method by the Bush’s torture psychologists, but rejected by the Department of Justice “in the rush to approve waterboarding”:
CIA’s torturers asked DOJ to let them use mock burials. But DOJ said no.
PDF page 42 of the OPR Report (searchable copy here) includes a list of the torture techniques that Mitchell and Jessen recommended be used with Abu Zubaydah. Whereas the Bybee Two Techniques memo approves ten techniques, Mitchell and Jessen recommended twelve. In other words, Mitchell and Jessen asked for two techniques to be approved that did not get specific approval.
The twelfth technique–which Mitchell and Jessen wanted approved but which Yoo excluded because of the rush to approve waterboarding–is mock burial.
There must have been significant discussion about the decision to…
Washington Times Reports 9/11 Inconsistencies
Jennifer Harper for the Washington Times:
A lingering technical question about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still haunts some, and it has political implications: How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds? A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center.
“In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of time, the material must have been artificially, exploded outwards,” says Richard Gage, a San Francisco architect and founder of the nonprofit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
Mr. Gage, who is a member of the American Institute of Architects, managed to persuade more than 1,000 of his peers to…
The New York Times on Its ‘Kill More Civilians’ Op-Ed Writer
Glenn Greenwald writes in Salon:
Last week, I wrote about the mysterious Op-Ed writer, Lara M. Dadkhah, published by the New York Times, who urged that the U.S. be less restrained about slaughtering Afghan civilians with air attacks (when Dadkhar reads things like this from today — “Airstrike kills dozens in Afghanistan … Ground forces at the scene found women and children among the casualties” — she presumably thinks: “yes, that’s exactly what we need more of”).
As I noted, beyond how deranged the argument was, virtually no information was disclosed about Dadkhah herself, who was allowed to tout her work for a “defense consulting company” without even specifying who it was. The Hillman Foundation’s Charles Kaiser asked NYT Op-Ed Page Editor David Shipley about this strange matter and received this reply:
