Prison Abuse: Rumsfeld Issued an Order to Hide Detainee in Iraq

Prison Abuse: Rumsfeld Issued an Order to Hide Detainee in Iraq:
"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, acting at the request of George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, ordered military officials in Iraq last November to hold a man suspected of being a senior Iraqi terrorist at a high-level detention center there but not list him on the prison's rolls, senior Pentagon and intelligence officials said Wednesday.

This prisoner and other 'ghost detainees' were hidden largely to prevent the International Committee of the Red Cross from monitoring their treatment, and to avoid disclosing their location to an enemy, officials said.

Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, the Army officer who in February investigated abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, criticized the practice of allowing ghost detainees there and at other detention centers as 'deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law.'"

This prisoner, who has not been named, is believed to be the first to have been kept off the books at the orders of Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Tenet. He was not held at Abu Ghraib, but at another prison, Camp Cropper, on the outskirts of Baghdad International Airport, officials said.…

Pentagon and intelligence officials said the decision to hold the detainee without registering him - at least initially - was in keeping with the administration's legal opinion about the status of those viewed as an active threat in wartime.

Seven months later, however, the detainee - a reputed senior officer of Ansar al-Islam, a group the United States has linked to Al Qaeda and blames for some attacks in Iraq - is still languishing at the prison but has only been questioned once while in detention, in what government officials acknowledged was an extraordinary lapse.

"Once he was placed in military custody, people lost track of him," a senior intelligence official conceded Wednesday night. "The normal review processes that would keep track of him didn't."

The detainee was described by the official as someone "who was actively planning operations specifically targeting U.S. forces and interests both inside and outside of Iraq."

But once he was placed into custody at Camp Cropper, where about 100 detainees deemed to have the highest intelligence value are held, he received only one cursory arrival interrogation from military officers and was never again questioned by any other military or intelligence officers, according to Pentagon and intelligence officials.

At Camp Cropper, some prisoners had been held since June 2003 for nearly 23 hours a day in solitary confinement in small cells without sunlight, according to a report by the international Red Cross.

The suspected Ansar official was segregated from the other detainees and was not listed on the rolls. Under the order that had filtered down to General Sanchez, military police were not to disclose the detainee's whereabouts to the Red Cross pending further directives.

The prisoner fell into legal limbo as the military police pressed their superiors for guidance, which has still not formally come.

"Over the course of the next several weeks, the custodians at the prison asked for additional guidance, but there were no interrogations," Mr. Di Rita said.

Before this case surfaced, the C.I.A. has said it had discontinued the ghost detainee practice, but said that the Geneva Conventions allowed a delay in the identification of prisoners to avoid disclosing their whereabouts to an enemy.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/politics/17abuse.html?pagewanted=all&position=

How Much Is That Uzi in the Window?

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: How Much Is That Uzi in the Window?:
"By the time of the coalition invasion, Iraq had one of the largest conventional arms stockpiles in the world. According to one American military estimate, this included three million tons of bombs and bullets; millions of AK-47's and other rifles, rocket launchers and mortar tubes; and thousands of more sophisticated arms like ground-to-air missiles. Much of the arsenal was stored in vast warehouse complexes, some of which occupied several square miles. As war approached, Iraqi commanders ordered these mountains of munitions to be dispersed across the country in thousands of small caches."

The marines I was embedded with — a forward reconnaissance unit at the front of the initial invasion — were stunned by the sheer amounts of weaponry they saw as we raced across some 400 miles to Baghdad. Along much of the route, Iraqi forces had dug holes every couple of hundred yards in which they'd piled grenades, mortars and other munitions. Village schools, health clinics and other government buildings had been turned into ammunition dumps. New rifles, sometimes still sealed in plastic bags, littered the roadsides like trash along a blighted American highway.

But under orders to reach Baghdad as quickly as possible, the marines rarely had a chance to remove, destroy or even mark the stockpiles. In one village, combat engineers (led by local children whom they had bribed with bags of Skittles candies) discovered an underground bunker crammed with dozens of sophisticated air-to-ground missiles. Yet higher-ups in the division insisted that there was no time to destroy them. The marines moved on, leaving the missiles unguarded.

The job of removing ordnance was complicated by the fact that many of the combat engineers in the invasion were not adequately trained for the task. Munitions are not easy to destroy. Bullets, bombs and rockets are designed to be shock-resistant. As the combat engineers often discovered, blowing up a stack of ammunition just scattered it, unexploded, in all directions.

Ordnance disposal is best carried out by specialized technicians; the entire First Marine Expeditionary Force (which was responsible for roughly half the invasion) had the services of only about 200. As one of those overworked technicians told me the day we reached Baghdad, it would have taken the experts attached to the First Division a year just to clear the munitions they discovered in the city's eastern suburbs.

And within 24 hours of the fall of the capital, the dangers posed by all those unchecked arms became obvious. The marines I was with occupied a warehouse in the Shiite slum now called Sadr City, which quickly became the center of armed insurgence in Baghdad. The moment it got dark, tracer fire lit up the sky, as gun battles erupted across the city.

The marines were told not to worry; their commanders informed them that the violence was a result of "red on red" engagements, meaning that Iraqis were shooting at other Iraqis. When American patrols entered Shiite neighborhoods starting the next day, locals begged them to get rid of the arms. They told us that semi-automatic rifles, nearly unobtainable during Saddam Hussein's rule, could now be obtained for about the cost of a pack of cigarettes. Heavier weapons were not much more expensive. Unexploded artillery shells (which are now being used to make the improvised roadside bombs) were free for the taking, scattered about backyards and alleys.

…by the time occupation authorities got serious about disarming Iraq, many of the munitions that American forces bypassed in the invasion had fallen into the hands of those bent on killing Americans.

American forces have now destroyed some 300,000 tons of munitions. Yet the troops on the ground still complain that the old regime's supply depots remain woefully underguarded. Nobody knows how long it will take to dispose of known stockpiles — American military estimates range from one year to 10. And then there are the unaccounted stashes, which, based on Iraqi documents, are thought to contain hundreds of surface-to-air missiles, tens of thousands of bombs and half a million pounds of C-4 plastic explosive.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/opinion/17WRIG.html

Smack That Cheney-Bot!

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Smack That Cheney-Bot!:
"The Republicans messed up their first attempt at this, when they took Dick Cheney to an undisclosed location to switch him with a replicant. Instead of an affable, reassuring presence, as he was in Bush I, the Bush II vice president is a macabre automaton who keeps repeating, over and over, as contrary evidence piles up, that Saddam and Al Qaeda were linked, and that Mohamed Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague."

Mr. Cheney did it again on Monday in Florida speaking at — where else? — a conservative think tank; he said Saddam "had long-established ties with Al Qaeda." This claim, used by the White House to justify its gallop to war, was once more flatly contradicted by the 9/11 panel's report yesterday: "Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."

The report says Osama did seek help from Saddam in the 90's, "despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime." But aside from sending an official to meet with Osama in Sudan, Saddam stiffed his request for weapons and training-camp space.

Mr. Cheney isn't programmed to process evidence that shows he was wrong; he simply keeps repeating the same nonsensical claims as if he has a microchip malfunction.

Unfortunately, there's no spouse to give him a knock on the head, as the Stepford husbands do when their Farrah fem-bots go haywire and keep repeating things like, "I'll just die if I don't get that recipe. . . . I'll just die if I-I-I [bop!] don't get that recipe. . . .…"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/opinion/17DOWD.html

Posted Privacy Policy Unenforceable Unless Plaintiffs Claimed to Have Read It

Judge tosses online privacy case - News - ZDNet:
"The dismissal of lawsuits brought against Northwest Airlines has online privacy advocates renewing calls for federal privacy legislation.

In a decision dated June 6, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson ruled that seven consolidated class action lawsuits against Northwest had no merit--in part because the privacy policy posted on the airline's Web site was unenforceable unless plaintiffs claimed to have read it. The plaintiffs had contended that the airline, in giving passenger information to the government in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, violated laws and its own privacy policy.

'Although Northwest had a privacy policy for information included on the Web site, plaintiffs do not contend that they actually read the privacy policy prior to providing Northwest with their personal information,' Magnuson noted. 'Thus, plaintiffs' expectation of privacy was low.…'"

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5234971.html

Fair Use on Digital Media Drives Scholars to Lawbooks

Permissions on Digital Media Drive Scholars to Lawbooks:
"When some 20,000 first-year American medical students reported to their schools last summer, they received a free 20-minute multimedia collage of music, text and short video clips from television doctor dramas, past and present, burned onto a CD-ROM.

'The patients you meet in the coming years may have doubts about you because of the doctors they see on prime-time television,' the introduction reads. 'The aim of this presentation is to explore why that is, and suggest what you can do about it.'"

But the CD was perhaps more of an education for its developer, Joseph Turow, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication.

"It's crazy," Professor Turow said of the labyrinth of permissions, waivers and fees he navigated to get the roughly three minutes of video clips included on the CD, which was paid for by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The process took months, Professor Turow said, and cost about $17,000 in fees and royalties paid to the various studios and guilds for the use of clips. The film used ranged from, for example, a 1961 episode of "Ben Casey" to a more-recent scene from "ER."

This Friday, Professor Turow and other experts will meet at a conference sponsored by the Annenberg School to debate how digital media fits into the concept of "fair use" - a murky safe harbor in copyright law that allows scholars and researchers limited use of protected materials for educational or commentary purposes.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/business/media/14fair.html

Earlier Warning of Abuse in Iraq

Unit Says It Gave Earlier Warning of Abuse in Iraq:
"Beginning in November, a small unit of interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison began reporting allegations of prisoner abuse, including the beatings of five blindfolded Iraqi generals, in internal documents sent to senior officers, according to interviews with military personnel who worked in the prison.

The disclosure of the documents raises new questions about whether senior officers in Iraq were alerted about serious abuses at the prison before January. Top military officials have said they only learned about abuses then, after a soldier came forward with photographs of the abuse."

"We were reporting it long before this mess came out," said one of several military intelligence soldiers interviewed in Germany and the United States who asked not to be identified for fear they would jeopardize their careers.

The Red Cross has said it alerted American military commanders in Iraq to abuses at Abu Ghraib in November. But the disclosures that the military's own interrogators had alerted superiors to abuse back then in internal documents has not been previously reported.

At least 20 accounts of mistreatment were included in the documents, according to those interviewed. Some detainees described abuse at other detention facilities before they were transferred to Abu Ghraib, but at least seven incidents said to be cited in the documents took place at the prison, four of them in the area controlled by military intelligence and the site of the notorious abuses depicted in the photographs.

The abuse allegations were cited by members of the prison's Detainee Assessment Branch, a unit of interrogators who screened prisoners for possible release, in routine weekly reports channeled to military judge advocates and others.

Military intelligence personnel said the unit's two- to five-page memorandums were to be sent for final approval to a three-member board that included Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the commander of the 800th Military Police Battalion, and Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, the top Army intelligence officer in Iraq. The sections in which the abuse was cited were generally only a paragraph or two in a larger document.

Military officials in Baghdad acknowledged Sunday that lawyers on a magistrate board reviewed the reports, but they could not confirm whether Generals Karpinski and Fast had seen them, or whether any action had been taken to investigate the incidents. Col. Jill E. Morgenthaler, chief of public affairs at military headquarters in Baghdad, said Sunday that officials were "trying to find the documents in question."

"Until then, there's nothing we can say," she said.

Most of the Abu Ghraib incidents were reported before January, said military intelligence personnel. In one case a detainee told workers from the Detainee Assessment Branch that he was made to stand naked, holding books on his head, while a soldier poured cold water on him. Among the other incidents cited by military personnel: a man was shoved to the ground before a soldier stepped on his head; a man was forced to stand naked while a female interrogator made fun of his genitals and a woman was repeatedly kicked by a military police guard.

The beating of the former generals, which had not been disclosed, is being examined by the Pentagon as part of its inquiry into abuses at Abu Ghraib, according to people knowledgeable about the investigation.

By mid-December, those people said, two separate reports of the beating had been made — one by the assessment branch and one by a military intelligence analyst. The analyst asked a former general at the end of an interrogation what had happened to his nose — it was smashed and tilted to the left, and a gash on his chin had been stitched.

The prisoner, in his 50's, told the story of the beating, which he said had occurred about a week earlier. His account closely matched that given independently to the Detainee Assessment Branch by another former general around the same time.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/international/middleeast/14ABUS.html?pagewanted=all&position=

File this Under "What Were They Thinking?"

U.S. to Drop Benefit Cuts Linked to Drug Discounts:
"The Bush administration said Saturday that it would rescind a federal policy that threatened to cut food stamp benefits for several million low-income elderly and disabled people who save money on their medicines by using the new Medicare drug discount cards.

The administration's reversal came two days before President Bush was scheduled to visit Missouri to promote use of the cards, which have received a tepid reaction from many Medicare beneficiaries.

In interviews this week, state officials across the country said low-income people who used the cards could find their food stamp benefits reduced as a result. The cuts, they said, were a direct result of federal regulations and a policy statement issued by the Agriculture Department on March 10."

The purpose of the discount cards is to reduce out-of-pocket drug costs. But when a person's drug expenses go down, state officials said, the food stamp program assumes that the person has more money available to spend on other needs, including food. So the person may receive a smaller food stamp allotment, they said.

Judy K. Toelle, the food stamp director in South Dakota, confirmed that such cuts would occur under the federal rules. For example, she said, a woman with monthly income of $1,060, shelter expenses of $555 and drug costs of $325 now receives $51 a month in food stamps. But, she said, if the card reduced her out-of-pocket drug costs by $100, the woman would get $41 less in food stamps, so the net saving would be $59.

Food stamp officials in California, Colorado, Missouri , New Mexico and Washington State said they were simply following federal rules in reducing food stamp benefits to take account of the fact that people with discount cards spent less on prescription drugs. Those regulations have not been changed.

But after inquiries from The New York Times, Eric M. Bost, an under secretary of agriculture, said, "We will immediately be clarifying policy guidance to ensure that food stamp applicants or recipients who use the new Medicare discount card will experience no impact on their eligibility or benefits."

The abrupt shift highlights the confusion between federal and state officials, and between the two federal agencies that administer Medicare and food stamps.

Medicare officials said on Tuesday that they were unaware of the Agriculture Department policy.

Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the drug card, which carries a $600 subsidy for low-income people, was not supposed to "take away any existing federal benefits.…"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/national/13drug.html

U.S. Alliance Is Built on Shifting Sands

News Analysis: The Constitution: Kurds Find U.S. Alliance Is Built on Shifting Sands:
"'It's not just that we have been misled by the Americans,' said a high-ranking Kurdish official. 'It's also that they change their position day to day without any focus on real strategy in Iraq. There's a level of mismanagement and incompetence that is shocking.'

The temporary constitution, hammered out under American supervision in March, was hailed by the American authorities at the time as one that would prevail until a new constitution is written and ratified and a permanent government takes office under its provisions.

But Iraq's new leaders, in statements this week, described it as only operative until the beginning of next year, when a newly elected national assembly convenes to write the permanent charter.

Iraq's new prime minister, Iyad Allawi, who was picked under a process led by the United Nations, said in Baghdad that the document approved last March remains the law of the land for now. His comment was intended to reassure Kurds, but Kurdish spokesmen said Thursday that it may have had the opposite effect.…"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/11/politics/11DIPL.html

Reagan's Legacy Now Begins the Test of Time

Legacy of Reagan's Presidency Now Begins the Test of Time:
"'But he was not a great president,' said Sean Wilentz, professor of history at Princeton University. 'He was master at projecting a mood; he could certainly rally the country. He would have made a great king, a great constitutional monarch, but we do not have that form of government.'

Success in war underpins the claims to greatness of many presidents. Jackson wins the plaudits of historians for broadening the character of American democracy by extending the franchise. But he was a celebrated soldier long before he became president, as were Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose standing among historians and other commentators has increased markedly since he left office. Lincoln, F.D.R., Truman and James K. Polk (the victor in the Mexican War) were all wartime commanders in chief."

Mr. Reagan spent World War II, the global conflict fought and won by his generation, making training films in Hollywood. But he came to power as the cold war was nearing a denouement, and he did all he could to hasten the process by beefing up the American military and then, in Berlin, boldly challenging Soviet leaders to "tear down this wall." After that, it would have been hard for Mikhail S. Gorbachev to believe that Americans had lost their will to resist Soviet power, and he joined with Mr. Reagan to bring the long struggle to a conclusion. It was the result of 45 years of aggressive allied containment, but the commander in chief, as always, got much of the credit.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/11/politics/11REAG.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Higher-Ranking Officer Is Sought for Abu Ghraib Inquiry

Higher-Ranking Officer Is Sought to Lead the Abu Ghraib Inquiry:
"The commander of American forces in the Middle East asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this week to replace the general investigating suspected abuses by military intelligence soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison with a more senior officer, a step that would allow the inquiry to reach into the military's highest ranks in Iraq, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.

The request by the commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, comes amid increasing criticism from lawmakers and some military officers that the half dozen investigations into detainee abuse at the prison may end up scapegoating a handful of enlisted soldiers and leaving many senior officers unaccountable.

General Abizaid's request, which defense officials said Mr. Rumsfeld would most likely approve, was set in motion in the last week when the current investigating officer, Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, told his superiors that he could not complete his inquiry without interviewing more senior-ranking officers, including Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the ground commander in Iraq.

But Army regulations prevent General Fay, a two-star general, from interviewing higher-ranking officers. So General Sanchez took the unusual step of asking to be removed as the reviewing authority for General Fay's report, and requesting that higher-ranking officers be appointed to conduct and review the investigation.…"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/politics/10ABUS.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Reagan's Legacy, he capitalized on anti-black populism

Online NewsHour: Historians Discuss Reagan's Legacy -- June 7, 2004:
"ROGER WILKINS: Well, Reagan was an incredible combination of a person who was very optimistic, upbeat, but underneath there were some really ugly parts of his politics.

He was, I said once before on this program, by going to Philadelphia and Mississippi , for example, in the beginning of his campaign in 1980.

Nobody had ever heard of Philadelphia and Mississippi outside of Mississippi , except as the place where three civil rights workers had been lynched ?3 in 1964 ?3 he said I believe in states rights. "

Everybody knew what that meant. He went to Stone Mountain , Georgia , where the Ku Klux Klan used to burn its crosses, and he said Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine.

He was rebuked by the Atlanta newspapers – they said we don't need that any more here. He went to Charlotte, North Carolina one of the most successful busing for integration programs in the country and he said I'm against busing and again the Charlotte papers rebuked him. And the impact of that plus his attacks on welfare women, welfare queens in Cadillacs, for example. And his call for cutting the government. He didn't cut the government; the military bloomed in his time. But programs for poor people day diminished entirely and America became a less civilized and less decent place.…

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/remember/jan-june04/historians_reagan_6-7.html

Bans on Torture Didn't Bind Bush

Legal Opinions: Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn't Bind Bush:
"A team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security.

The memo, prepared for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, also said that any executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons.

One reason, the lawyers said, would be if military personnel believed that they were acting on orders from superiors 'except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful.'"

"In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign," the lawyers wrote in the 56-page confidential memorandum, the prohibition against torture "must be construed as inapplicable to interrogation undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority."

Senior Pentagon officials on Monday sought to minimize the significance of the March memo, one of several obtained by The New York Times, as an interim legal analysis that had no effect on revised interrogation procedures that Mr. Rumsfeld approved in April 2003 for the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/08/politics/08ABUS.html?pagewanted=all&position=

The military's justice system is neither particularly free nor particularly democratic.

Judging Abu Ghraib: Why Military Justice Can Seem Unjust:
"Compared with the accepted legal practices of the civilian world, the military's justice system is neither particularly free nor particularly democratic. And it rarely operates in the bright glare of public scrutiny. Justice is not secondary, the system's defenders say, but it is subject to other considerations, not least of which is accomplishing the military's mission, often in the middle of war.

As a result, justice in the military ultimately depends almost entirely on the judgment of commanders. An offense that sends one soldier to Leavenworth after a public court-martial can end for another soldier in a quiet discharge or retirement, with the exact nature of his or her punishment protected by privacy laws.

For example, in the first court-martial stemming from the abuses at Abu Ghraib last fall, Specialist Jeremy C. Sivits pleaded guilty last month to four charges of humiliating Iraqi prisoners and agreed to testify against others. He was demoted and sentenced to a year in prison.

A few months before, in September, a soldier at a smaller prison northwest of Baghdad wrongfully shot and killed a prisoner who was throwing rocks. Facing a court-martial for using excessive force, the soldier asked, and was allowed by his commander, to leave the Army with a demotion. "

"I don't want to in any way diminish what happened at Abu Ghraib, which was torture, but we're talking about murder here," said Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, which has been monitoring allegations of abuse by American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/weekinreview/06myer.html

Has Bush Learned Anything From His Mistakes?

Has Bush Learned Anything From His Mistakes?:
"With his occupation of Iraq teetering on the brink of strategic catastrophe and his reasons for invading discredited, President Bush has offered us no sign that he has learned from his mistakes, no course correction, and all too much robotic repetition of rhetorical platitudes.

Bush's May 24 speech to the nation was all too typical: No honest coming to grips with the seriousness of the crisis we face. No acknowledgment of the administration's blunders that have aggravated that crisis. No pledge to expand the clearly overstretched occupation force. No plan to turn the tide against the insurgents, other than a pathetic, too-little, too-late proposal to replace the Abu Ghraib prison with a kinder, gentler lockup. No serious move to persuade foreign leaders to help. No hope of stemming the crescendo of America-hating around the world that Bush has inflamed with his arrogant diplomacy and cowboy posturing."

The best that can be said of the speech is that it was less appalling than Bush's recent news conference, at which he ranged between utter unresponsiveness, feckless fumbling, and vacuousness. He has refused not only to talk with reporters, but also to engage with the Republican lawmakers to whom he spoke on Capitol Hill on May 20, only to flee the scene without taking any of their anxious questions.

Bush is seen by a widening circle of Democrats, independents, and even Republicans as alarmingly unequal to the demands of his office—a shallow-minded ideologue impervious to the lessons of experience and incapable of thoughtful reflection.…

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/nj/taylor2004-06-03.htm

The danger and the fundamental unfairness embedded in the president's 'what, me worry?' approach to the war

Level With Americans: "The stop-loss policy is the latest illustration of both the danger and the fundamental unfairness embedded in the president's 'what, me worry?' approach to the war in Iraq. Almost the entire burden of the war has been loaded onto the backs of a brave but tiny segment of the population— the men and women, most of them from working-class families, who enlisted in the armed forces for a variety of reasons, from patriotism to a desire to further their education to the need for a job.

They never expected that the failure of their country to pay for an army of sufficient size would result in their being trapped in a war zone with the exit doors locked when their enlistments were up.

Meanwhile, the rest of us have been given a pass. The president has not asked us to share in the sacrifice and we haven't demanded the opportunity to do so. We're not even paying for the war. It's being put on credit cards issued in the names of future generations.

For America's privileged classes, this is the most comfortable war imaginable. There's something utterly surreal about a government cutting taxes and bragging about an economic boom while at the same time refusing to provide the forces necessary to relieve troops who are fighting and dying overseas.… "

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/07/opinion/07HERB.html

public demand versus the entrenched institutional interests that block radical change

Foreign Affairs - The New Politics of Intelligence: Will Reforms Work This Time? - Richard K. Betts:
"The failure to prevent the attacks of September 11, 2001, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, and the proliferation of official investigations trying to figure out what went wrong in both cases have combined to put intelligence issues in a very unusual position this year: at the center of a closely contested presidential campaign.

All the attention creates both an opportunity and a danger. The opportunity stems from the consensus that major reforms are necessary. Previous controversies over the quality of intelligence have generally been inside-the-Beltway debates leading to only minor reforms at best. That will probably be true this time as well. But if there were ever a moment when public demand might overcome the entrenched institutional interests that block radical change, this should be it.…"

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040501facomment83301/richard-k-betts/the-new-politics-of-intelligence-will-reforms-work-this-time.html

No investigation completely independent of the Pentagon exists

Investigations: Wide Gaps Seen in U.S. Inquiries on Prison Abuse:
"No investigation completely independent of the Pentagon exists to determine what led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, and so far there has been no groundswell in Congress or elsewhere to create one.

But on Capitol Hill, even some Republicans have begun to question whether the Pentagon's inquiries are too narrowly structured to establish the causes of the abuses, as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others have pledged to do, and then to determine if anyone in the chain of command was responsible for them."

Some House Republicans, bucking their leaders who have said the focus on Abu Ghraib is distracting from the larger effort in Iraq, have joined Democrats in urging a more aggressive review of the investigations. In the Senate, members of both parties said there remained major aspects that fell outside the scope of any of the investigations that are under way — including the role of military lawyers in drafting policy on detainees and the involvement of civilian contractors in their interrogations.…

Dozens of criminal investigations into accusations of abuses against prisoners have yet to be resolved, and some may never be, officials concede. Additional criminal cases stemming from the abuses at Abu Ghraib appear to have been put on hold while a separate investigation is completed into the role military intelligence soldiers may have played there and at other prisons in Iraq — an inquiry whose findings have been delayed at least until July.

In addition to the criminal cases, which have included investigations into the deaths of at least 40 prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has ordered six inquiries or reviews since a soldier came forward in January with evidence of the Abu Ghraib abuses. Two have been completed. The others have narrow focus and limited scope; while in theory they could recommend criminal charges, that is not their focus.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/international/middleeast/06ABUS.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Abu Ghraib Abuse Could Constitute War Crime

U.N. Says Abu Ghraib Abuse Could Constitute War Crime:
"The United Nations' top human rights official said today that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers could constitute a war crime, and he called for the immediate naming of an international figure to oversee the situation.

Bertrand Ramcharan, the acting high commissioner for human rights, acknowledged that the removal of Saddam Hussein represented 'a major contribution to human rights in Iraq' and that the United States had condemned the conduct and pledged to bring violators to justice."

"Everyone accepts the good intentions of the coalition governments as regards the behavior of their forces in Iraq," he said in a 45-page report issued at the agency's headquarters in Geneva.

But, Mr. Ramcharan declared, after the occupation of Iraq, "there have sadly been some violations of human rights committed by some coalition soldiers."

In an apparent reference to the incidents of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison and to cases where Iraqi prisoners have died in detention, Mr. Ramcharan said that "willful killing, torture and inhuman treatment" represented a grave breach of international law and "might be designated as war crimes by a competent tribunal."

He said it was a "stark reality" that there was no international oversight or accountability for the thousands of detainees, the conditions in which they were held and the manner in which they were treated.

To correct this situation, he said, the coalition authorities should immediately appoint "an international ombudsman or commissioner." That person would be charged with monitoring human rights in Iraq and producing periodic reports on "compliance by coalition forces with international norms of human rights and humanitarian law.…"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/international/middleeast/04CND-NATI.html

Lakhdar Brahimi Wants New Iraq Government to Court Foes of Occupation

Politics: U.N. Envoy Wants New Iraq Government to Court Foes of Occupation:
"The United Nations special envoy called on the new Iraqi government on Wednesday to broaden discussions to include Iraqis who oppose the American occupation, and he suggested that his own authority in shaping the new government had been sharply limited by American officials."

Lakhdar Brahimi, at a news conference wrapping up a nearly monthlong visit here, suggested that the Americans were pursuing a strategy in Iraq that relied too heavily on force and not enough on subtlety and persuasion.

Mr. Brahimi, who called L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator here, a "dictator," seemed to stop just short of calling on the United States to open talks with the insurgents.

"Why is there what is, I think, to use a neutral term, there is this insurgency?" Mr. Brahimi said, addressing reporters in both Arabic and English. "I think it's a little bit too easy to call everybody a terrorist. And I think if you find out that there are people who are not terrorists who are respectable, genuine Iraqi patriots you must find a way of talking to them."

Mr. Brahimi suggested he might have done things differently if he had been given a freer hand in setting up the new government that was unveiled on Tuesday. Asked about the selection of the prime minister, which became a divisive affair, he alluded to the role of Mr. Bremer.

"The government of Iraq, I sometimes say — I'm sure he doesn't mind my saying it — Mr. Bremer is the dictator of Iraq," Mr. Brahimi said. "He has the money. He has the signature. Nothing happens without his agreement in this country."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/international/middleeast/03IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Yes, Prints Can Lie

Can Prints Lie? Yes, Man Finds to His Dismay:
"In front of the immigration judge, the tall, muscular man began to weep. No, he had patiently tried to explain, he was not Leo Rosario, a drug dealer and a prime candidate for deportation.

He was telling the truth. He was Rene Ramon Sanchez, an auto-body worker and merengue singer from the Bronx who bore not even a passing resemblance to Mr. Rosario, a complete stranger 12 years his junior and a half-foot shorter.

'Why don't you get his photo then?' Mr. Sanchez cried out in Spanish, pounding a fist into his palm. 'And compare my fingerprints with his?'"

The judge, Alan L. Page, had been told the prints were the same. "The general rule is, the prints don't lie," Judge Page had said earlier. "If you got the same prints that Leo Rosario has, you're Leo Rosario. And there's nothing I can do about it."

So Mr. Sanchez, in late 2000, was sent back for another week in a grim detention center in Lower Manhattan, severed from his family and livelihood, because his fingerprints had been mistakenly placed on the official record of another man.

Remarkably, this was not the first time Mr. Sanchez had paid for that mistake. He had been arrested three times for Mr. Rosario's crimes, and ultimately spent a total of two months in custody and was threatened with deportation before the mistake was traced and resolved in 2002.

Mr. Sanchez's ordeal, unearthed from court records and interviews, amounts to a strange, sometimes absurd odyssey through a criminal justice system that made a single error and then compounded it time and again by failing to correct it.

The limits of fingerprint evidence have been much in the news. An Oregon lawyer jailed as a material witness in the Madrid train bombings was freed this month after the F.B.I. said it had mistakenly matched his prints with others found near the scene of the attacks.

Mr. Sanchez's case, if less dire or public, is no less chilling a lesson in how easily a person's identity can be smudged in this era of shared databases, and how long it can take to cleanse it — particularly if, like Mr. Sanchez, he speaks little English and has a minor police record of his own.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/31/nyregion/31IDEN.html?pagewanted=all&position=