Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber — a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms — our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other. George Bush, September 20, 2001 before a Joint Session of Congress and the American people.
Apparently there was an easy fix to handle people who hate us for our freedoms, and only this administration was clever enough to see it. Major General Anthony Taguba:
The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, we can see the full scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has inflicted—both on America’s institutions and our nation’s founding values, which the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to defend.
In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.
After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.
Time to break out the big USA #1 foam finger, because man I feel proud, as we sure showed those guys who hate us for our freedoms. Heckuva job, Bush.
See also the entire McClatchey investigative report.
*** Update ***
By the way- CNN is giving this solid coverage, while at MSNBC the big news is that Tim Russert is still dead. Elsewhere, the Editors alert us to the fact that the lead editorial at the WaPo was Michael Gerson venting about Al Franken’s potty mouth.
jake
Also time to start screaming “Phony Soldier!” while a froth of Cheetos and Mountain Dew runs down our chins.
Thank goodness we’ve got the 101st Frightened Keyboardists or there wouldn’t be a real warrior in the U.S.
4tehlulz
No. SA2SQ
Kevin
Brought to you by the administration which is systematically dismantling all of those freedoms.
I get a good sardonic laugh out of stuff like that.
bs23
thanks for the link to the mcclatchey report; i’ve been wanting an overview of the whole story, with links to original sources, for a while now. Links to additional sources (or on the wiretapping story) much appreciated!
Keith
Amazingly, 95% of US people hosting TV shows didn’t see this one coming when every response to inquiries into this were met with the same, robotic line “We do not torture”, even when the question was “Well, then, what is your definition of torture?”.
Zifnab
Times like this make me wish I believed in Hell.
dslak
Curious fact: This story does not appear on MSNBC.com or FoxNews.com. CNN.com carries it on its international page, but not its US page.
Is the phrase ‘asinine fucktards’ too strong?
jrg
I think what’s kept the Dems from acting on these revelations is the fact that the right will cry “Partisan Witch Hunt!!” as soon as a war crimes trial or impeachment hearings start.
I’ll bet that somewhere in those X million missing emails is an outline of this strategy. If there was proof that the administration knew that they were committing crimes and planned to dismiss the accusations as partisan, wouldn’t that be a tacit admission of guilt?
Where are those emails? I’ve worked in tech for a long enough time to know that no one “loses” that much data – it was deliberately destroyed because it proves that Bush is a traitor and a war criminal.
Wilfred
Oh, I can think of several other questions, beginning with whether or not anyone of any rank will ever be held accountable for wholesale murder and torture. Several days ago Rachel noted the Pentagon admission of the use of WP in Fallujah, a city our brave marines leveled with thousands of tons of ordnance in the name of FREEDOM.
Anyone who tortures or commits a war crime is a scumbag, not just the people who ordered it. Anybody who authorized, participated or stood by and smirked should be prosecuted. The whole machine is rotten.
Notorious P.A.T.
In the words of INXS, it’s hard to believe we need a place called Hell.
John Cole
Wilfred, if you start this WP is a chemical weapon bullshit again so help me fucking God I will explode. And second, Rachel was talking about Depleted Uranium, a standard munition.
jake
No. SA2SQ 2 Electric Bugaloo.
Cris
I don’t know about too strong, but it seems ripe for anagramming.
unsatisfied crank
a face turd sinks in
Notorious P.A.T.
It’s not just torture that we’re in the forefront of!
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iYcq1TVit1bEKek4glkc8ntxZgMA
Golden age!
El Cid
Without a doubt, the best thing for this nation is to put
Iran-Contrathe regretful policies of the Bush Jr. Presidency behind us.Surely no one closely involved in wrongdoings or even criminal acts in
Iran-Contrathe regretful policies of the Bush Jr. Presidency would be likely to maintain a prominent public role or position ever again, whether in government or in public life whatsoever.People such as
Elliot Abrams or John Negroponte or John PoindexterElliot Abrams or John Negroponte or John Poindexter have certainly been exposed for their callous commitment to their own preferred policies over domestic and international norms.We need to move on, people, and the best way to do that is to forget, to fail to remember, to drink of the River Lethe, so that we may forget.
Wilfred
When you think of a man as if he were an animal. in the terms used here, what difference does it make whether you or anyone else considers WP a chemical weapon? It’s a flexible definition, made by the US, which also doesn’t consider cluster bombs to be necessarily bad.
Rule of engagements, definitions of torture, types of munitions – all of these were made flexible enough to embrace the dehumanization and murder of Arab Muslims.
John Cole
White phosphorous munitions have been in use for at least since WWII, and probably before, and are no more a chemical weapon than are regular bullets (OMG LEAD APPEARS ON THE PERIODIC TABLE OF ELEMENTS- BULLETS ARE CHEMICAL WEAPONS!),
Cut the bullshit.
Turbulence
Regarding Falluja, one point to bear in mind is that the Marines didn’t want to level the place. They proposed a plan that involved setting up checkpoints and spending a few weeks methodically figuring out who was coming in and going out while developing local intelligence that would allow them to find the bad guys who could then be taken out in targeted assaults. Their plan was vetoed by Bush because he wanted bold results NOW damnit and he didn’t have time for well thought out counterinsurgency. I believe the USMC brass tried to explain to him that doing things this way was going to be less successful and was going to lead to higher casualties, but, well, you know what happens when experts try to explain stuff to Bush. Doesn’t really work that well.
Rudi
The MSNBC coverage of Santas helper Tim Russert is nauseating, but the sattelite feed of Springsteen’s acoustic tribute to Timmy doing Thunder Road was great.
nightjar
BREAKING NEWS’
John Yoo caught crossing the Rio Grande in a rubber ducky. Apparently trying to enter Mexico, Yoo was heard mumbling something about “Pardon me dear leader” and “I wants my mommie dearest”. He has been taken to a secure facility for observation and other ” enhanced therapeutic techniques”.
Punchy
John, there were a ton of diaries on GOS about 2 years ago flagging this WP thing. Sure made it sound like it reacts with the moisture on your skin and burns the living bejesus out of whatever it touches. Then, when panicky people attempt to wash it off with water, it burns even hotter.
Nasty shit, if true. Probably why some peeps are calling it a chemical weapon.
RSA
It’s nice to see Bush, at least inadvertently, admit that in one respect there’s very little difference between himself and a terrorist.
jrg
No joke. I can’t get away with killing one person, let alone thousands. No matter how pissed I get in traffic, I would be locked away for good if I started shooting at other drivers. That’s why we have laws.
Why don’t laws apply to people like Bush? What kind of precedent are we setting for future leaders of the U.S.? How many times are we going to allow stuff like this to happen before we start dealing with these people like the criminals they are?
The thing that sickens me most about these crimes is that there will be no repercussions for the guilty. We are _begging_ for this kind of thing to happen again by sending a signal that says “If you’re rich enough and powerful enough, the laws no longer apply to you”.
John Cole
I know what it is, and the diaries were not just at DKOS, they were at Thin Progress, the Liberal Avenger, and all over the place. And it was bullshit then, and it is bullshit now.
WP is not a chemical weapon. It is a pretty standard munition used by military forces worldwide. What it does is ugly and terrifying and awful (there is a scene in Platoon where a guy is burned by WP if you want a depiction of it, and it carmelizes the skin and is horrifying), but it is not a chemical weapon.
Chemical weapon takes on a connotation of mustard gas, sarin, etc. WP does not fit in that category.
I am not going to excuse what happened in Fallujah, and to be honest, I forget what happened mainly other than it was levelled. But I am not going to let people assert that WP is a chemical weapon, when it is not.
libarbarian
Did you know that mess halls in Iraq are stocked with mustard – the key ingredient in Mustard Gas.
True Story.
Cris
The thing is, its potential antipersonnel use is distinct from its general incendiary and smoke-screen uses. So when the Pentagon says “sure, we used WP,” that’s not the same thing as admitting to using it in a way that targets or even maximizes the possibility of skin contact.
The very quote Wilfred uses above indicates that they were using WP in Fallujah to flush out targets, not for direct assault. It’s like if your spaniel flushes ducks out of the rushes, and then you shoot them with your shotgun; I wouldn’t say that you were using your dog as an attack dog, even though dogs can be used for that purpose.
nightjar
Add that to the GI diet of salt peter and SOS (shit on a shingle) and you have one mean mother of a soldier chemical gas weapon, provided teh enemy remains downwind.
trizzlor
Dude! Just preface the link so it’s “(notoriously left-leaning) McClatchey reports” and everything is fine again.
cyntax
There’s a reason sleeping bags are called fart sacks…
Zifnab
Yeah, this is less an issue of “OMG! THE US USES CHEMICAL WEAPONS!” and more a case of “Omg, what the hell are we doing to random civilians in combat zones?”
It would be like Gitmo interrogators saying, “Sure, we gave the guy we were interrogating some water while he was strapped to a board.” Then wingnuts coming back and saying “HOW IS THAT TORTURE?!”
Unreasonable people type in all caps, all the time, fyi.
Cris
per Internet Tradition
Calouste
I could make a comparison here about The Leader overriding the plans of military top brass and the consequent results, but that would invoke Godwin’s Law.
John D.
Chlorine, a notorious chemical weapon used in many wars to devestating effect, can be found in almost every household in the USA — in our salt! We’re a terrorist nation!
Dreggas
Seems to me WP is a lot less bad (no weapon of any variety is “good”) than napalming the entire city, or hell bringing back the zippo flamethrower tanks or even flamethrowers (which were discussed in regards to afghanistan).
Dreggas
So can amonia and everyone knows what happens when Chlorine and Amonia are mixed. Or at least they should know.
Jay B.
Their leaders are self-appointed.
As opposed to installed by a court picked by his father ruling on a vote presided over by his brother.
#1 BITCHES!
Oh and let’s fuck up some innocent Arabs too. USA! USA! USA!
Dreggas
Shari’a Law comes to the U.S. courtesy of Blackwater
jake
Yeah, you have to be careful about some diswashing liquids an bleach too. [Cough, wheeze]
I assume the only reason DHS hasn’t set the Rainbow of Terror to magenta and broken the lever is because they don’t know about cleaning supply threat hanging over our nation.
If I wake up tomorrow and have to show ID to buy Clorox, I’m blaming Dreggas.
cmorenc
Guess WHAT purportedly major “news” website has not a single word or even indirect hint about this “war crimes” story: Give up?
FOX NEWS, whose lead headlines are:
– “Bush Lays out 4-Point Plan to Fight Oil Prices”
– “Pooh Policy” – “Winnie the pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security” (purported quote from Richard Danzig, Obama advisor).
Zifnab
Yes, but napalm and flamethrowers were intended as a defoliant, to clear out brush and tear down trees that the Vietcog loved to hide in.
Using napalm and flamethrowers in the streets of Bagdad would make about as much sense as using bunker buster bombs in the jungle.
And all that aside, I’m still not clear how coating someone’s skin in burning napalm is supposed to be significantly better or worse than coating someone’s skin in burning phosphorous. Burned victims are burn victims. There’s really no gentle way to set a guy on fire.
Ed Marshall
We have the laws on the books and because some of these folk got “interrogated” to death the mandatory penalty is lethal injection at Levinworth.
Hedley Lamarr
I thought the lead WaPo editorial was Freddy H. still pushing to stay in Iraq forever.
Zifnab
I AM AWARE OF ALL CABLE NEWS TRADITIONS
John Cole
Well, there is also the fact that napalm and flamethrowers are banned by the Geneva conventions. As a practical matter, I don’t think there is any substantive difference for someone burned to death with WP or a flamethrower, at least from the victim’s perspective.
My point is simple- WP is not banned, it is not classified as a chemical weapon by the Chemical Weapons Convention, so calling it a chemical weapon is unnecessarily queering the debate. All of this stems from an AAR in an artillery magazine, by the way, in which shake and bake missions were discussed post-Fallujah, which means using WP to get people into the open where you can then use HE rounds. that would be an illegal use of WP, I believe, but it still does not make it a chemical weapon.
JL
BBC online has the story with this quote “One of the doctors, Allen Keller, said: “As a physician with more than 15 years of experience evaluating and caring for torture victims from all over the world, the torture and abuse these men were subjected to in Abu Ghraib and the resulting trauma are second to none.” Bush always did say we were the leader of the world. I’m sick. Hopefully it’s okay to quote from BBC..
Martin
Michael Gerson is a c#nt who plasters on his makeup like a trollop.
And Blackwater loves sharia law. (h/t to TPM).
Watching nationalism unravel is wicked entertaining…
Grumpy Code Monkey
WP is a chemical weapon the same way napalm is a chemical weapon. It kills the same way napalm does, by inflicting massive burn trauma. It does not target mucous membranes or the nervous system the way “true” chemical weapons do.
Doesn’t mean it isn’t nasty, though.
nightjar
True chemical weapons, I think, are those which cause foreign molecules of some Chemical compound to enter the blood stream via lungs or skin and interrupt normal physiological functions causing death or incapacitation. One reason they are banned is the lack of control in their deployment, going literally where the wind takes them. And also, if they don’t kill you they will leave horrible lifetime disabilities. I personally would rather go out with fast acting Sarin than napalm or WP, but that’s just me. Nice post dinner topic of discussion. Cake or tea anyone.
Dreggas
Flamethrowers were used to great effect to suck the oxygen out of spider holes being used by the VC and also in part of WWII in the pacific, not just to defoliate areas.
John, unless I am mistaken flamethrowers were not banned like napalm, they had just fallen into disuse because they were high maintenance and took two people to operate. There was talk in 01 when we went into Afghanistan of using Flamethrowers to clear caves if I recall correctly.
Dreggas
Fixed
nightjar
:) very much better.
Xenos
we could not be bothered to prosecute Prescott Bush for trading with the enemy, nor G.H.W. Bush for trading with the enemy and obstruction of justice, and we are not likely to prosecute W. for his 1,000 crimes. Since we have what appears to be a geometric progression in criminality, I am getting very worried about what the next Bush might bring.
Mike D.
Ooh, ooh, I can name that troubling, nagging doubt in one note. Let me guess: napalm is sick and wrong, cluster bombs are imprecise and kill the wrong people, but (effectively) napalm bomblets that sprinkle unquenchable fire on a captive population are A-O-K, right? Set your mind at ease. The answer is no, they wouldn’t be okay; the point is moot since we don’t use “napalm bomblets”; and Michael Moore is fat.
Kerosene isn’t a chemical weapon, and a Very pistol from a lifeboat’s survival kit isn’t a dual-use munition. But if Army X sprays a crowd of civvies with kerosene and then fires a signal flare into their midst, just to mark their position — “Yo, watch out! Flammables here!” — Army X can be divided into people who are deeply fucked up and need to be junk-stomped, and people who can’t stop puking up their immortal souls. Oh, and people who, you know, _have their orders,_ and they gotta follow ’em, they can’t pick and choose, that’s the _chain of command,_ dummy. Also jeep drivers and pastry chefs.
If we start listing things the Geneva convention forbids but which we’ve always done anyway and are still doing, we’ll be here until Michaelmas. Someday the use of shotguns and beehive rounds in Vietnam will be as firmly “tinfoil” as… ah, you fill in the rest, I’m tired.
N.B. Defoliants are for rotting forests and vegetation to deny cover to the enemy. Incindiaries are for raining fire on the enemy, so they’re burned alive and their huts are levelled like something out of the Old Testament. Americans have had bad luck with defoliants, but always rain fire on people at the earliest opportunity. It’s a distinction with a hell of a difference.
D. Mason
Well, hey, you’re ahead of me. I’m still worried about the rest of what this one’s going to bring.
Fulcanelli
Internet TraditionsArmageddon.Unless, of course we just start playing by the same fucking rules they do, and start
picking ’em offspanking them in public, one by one. It’s only a matter of time before somebody does anyway. Critical Mass should begin to percolate about an hour after the MUP’s transition team moves into the State, Justice and Homeland Security department computers and files. And then there’s the Pentagon, the FBI, the CIA and the NSA.From 2009 on, it’s gonna be like finding a trail of rotting, mutilated bodies in the search for a serial killer. The stink is going to massive and reach from the WH to Fox News. Look what we already know and they’re running interference 24/7 as we speak.
The first official act the MUP should do on Jan. 20th is put the entire Bush administration and the Republican party from the bottom to the top on the FBI no-fly list, and watch how many get nabbed on their way to the Bush ‘compound’ in Paraguay.
Especially after 2-star General Anthony Taguba just went public about Abu Ghraib and is talking war crimes charges for the Bush Administration. And some of the MSM seems to be running with it…
The flak the right and the media is dishing out about Obama, from Wright, to his ‘muslim-ness’ and all the rest of the smears, are a smokescreen. The real reason they don’t want him elected is the “transparency” issue. They’re all fuck-ed and they know it. They knew they could bargain with Billary and her skeletons. Barry O… Not so much.
I. Can. Not. Fucking. Wait.
Xanthippas
When the Bush administration started torturing innocent men and children, I was suddenly proud of my country for the first time in my adult life.
Zifnab
Ah, well, I guess I’m wrong there.
Of course, the bottom line to all of this is that America has a very bad habit of gang-busting its way into 3rd world countries and killing a whole bunch of people who probably haven’t seen a white guy in their lives in the name of national security.
WP rounds, napalm, cluster bombs, nukes, mustard gas, ebola bullets, a board with a nail in it… that’s really beside the poin
J. Michael Neal
I think that this entire debate misses the point. What it shows is that defining what “chemical weapons” are is beyond difficult, and reaches the point of useless navel gazing. In terms of effect or wide-scale danger, the stuff that gets labeled as chemical weapons has no business being lumped in with nuclear weapons in a catch-all category, “WMD.”
They were banned due to revulsion after World War One, but I would bet that this happened more because there was a feeling that something had to be banned, just because the war was so hideous. Gas caused a miniscule percentage of the death and suffering. In the end, its most effective use was to make the other side don their gas masks, and thus reduce their effectiveness. That’s why the main target ended up being artillery batteries. The British also used them as a morale weapon, in part through the invention of Livens projectors, which were capable of dropping an immense amount of gas on a German position with no warning, and so giving German soldiers the feeling that they were never safe.
Mike D.
Gotta disagree again. Hanging is a precise art. The convict’s weight, the length of the rope, the stoutness of the rope, and surprisingly the exact placement of the correctly tied knot, plus regular trap-door maintenance, adds up to a quick drop, a slightly elongated neck, and a certain drippiness about the pants cuffs. Do it wrong and the head pops off or you get the infamous hemp fandango. Professionals do it right.
After the failed bunker-bombing assassination, Hitler filmed the hanging of several of the top plotters and ordered the movie to be widely screened. By the standards of an Old West executioner, he did it exactly wrong; by Hitler’s standards, it was a job well done, for he too had his precise measurements and deliberately substituted metal implements for Manila hemp.
Dead is dead. Is it an artistic difference we’re talking about? Is there truly no meaning except as interpreted by the viewer, maaaan? ‘Cause, duuude, just ’cause _you_ think deliberately prolonged strangulation death porn, distributed as part of a “friends don’t let friends blow up government officials” campaign, is wrong, that don’t make you _right,_ brother. Everybody has a different point of view, you know. You have to deconstruct a complex moral episode like totally sealing off a village and bombarding it with “marker rounds” and the the first step is to free your mind of _classifications_ like what’s a weapon, what’s a noncombatant, what’s international law, it just weighs you _down,_ brother.
Chuck Butcher
White Phosphorus is nasty stuff, but so are HE rounds, you have to stop to think for moment what happens with one. There is the pressure wave followed by the heat wave and all the flying crap, shrapnel, splinters, masonry, glass. The pressure wave tries to make all the stuff inside you get outside, the heat wave cooks it, and the flying stuff, well, it’s going hundreds of miles per hour.
The US used some thermobaric bombs in Afghanistan, which are essentially fuel bombs to suck the oxygen right out of caves, not to mention the heat wave. Getting your knickers in a knot about WP is missing a bit of the picture. For all of that a 30-06 round out of a Garrand is more humane than a .223 out of an M16. Humane…
CW are indiscriminate, they are not aimed. Probably most damning though is the kills/buck.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
WP is not a chemical weapon. It is a pretty standard munition used by military forces worldwide. What it does is ugly and terrifying and awful (there is a scene in Platoon where a guy is burned by WP if you want a depiction of it, and it carmelizes the skin and is horrifying), but it is not a chemical weapon.
As with depleted uranium, the true test would be the reaction if a swarthy Middle-Eastern type spread it over an American city.
I’m pretty certain people claiming “it’s not a chemical weapon” or “it’s not radioactive” would be ignored or condemned in the rush to retaliate againt the EvilBastards (who can be distinguished from the NobleLiberators by the colour of their skins).
Phoenician in a time of Romans
John, unless I am mistaken flamethrowers were not banned like napalm, they had just fallen into disuse because they were high maintenance and took two people to operate. There was talk in 01 when we went into Afghanistan of using Flamethrowers to clear caves if I recall correctly.
There’s also the minor problem that they’re short range and when they show up, everybody on the other side starts firing at the guy holding them. Strapping napalm to your back and becoming a bullet magnet isn’t your average soldier’s idea of a good time.
Rudi
DU is more a heavy metal, like lead, and the real danger is ingestion, not exposure to very low level radiation from the U238 isotope. DU kills in the same way old lead paint chips kill kids who ingest these chips. DU isn’t like Polonium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-238
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium
Gus
Guess what the top story on CBS Evening News was last night. Tiger Woods’ knee injury. I had to check twice to make sure I wasn’t watching Sports Center.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
DU is more a heavy metal, like lead, and the real danger is ingestion, not exposure to very low level radiation from the U238 isotope.
Yes, I know. That’s the point.
Consider:
J Random Person: “Burning people with WP isn’t very nice.”
John Cole: It is not chemical warfare!
J Random Person: “Spraying a population with dust from a heavy metal like DU which may very well fuck their shit up isn’t very nice.”
Whoever: “But it’s not radioactive!”
I don’t care whether it is radioactive or not, just like I don’t care whether a rabid dog is a Republican or a Democrat, or whether a bullet being fired at me was made in the US or in Russia.
When I ask “does spray dust from it over a population fuck people up”, a reply of “it’s not radioactive!” doesn’t answer the fucking question.
“Does spraying DU dust over a population fuck them up” might differ depending on whether the population is Iraqi or American…