The revelation by WikiLeaks of a U.S. military order directing U.S. forces not to investigate cases of torture of detainees by Iraqis has been treated in news reports as yet another case of lack of concern by the U.S. military about detainee abuse. But the deeper significance of the order, which has been missed by …
Continue reading “Torture Orders Were Part of US Sectarian War Strategy”
The publication of a mother lode of secret field reports from the Iraq War is shining a bright light on heretofore unknown or underreported suspicions about the power of private security contractors and the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by their fellow Iraqis, often with their U.S. military counterparts “turning a blind eye.” The release of …
Continue reading “More Iraqi Prison Abuses Exposed on WikiLeaks”
The biggest US security breach in our history, carried off by WikiLeaks, reveals a wealth of information – hundreds of thousands of field reports, the raw material collected by the US military on the ground in Iraq. It will be quite a while before the “gems” are mined from this treasure trove, but initially the …
Continue reading “Frago 242”
Vlahos on getting ‘war crimes’ out in the open
Vlahos: lionizing soldiers won’t help them
Updated at 11:35 p.m. EDT, Sept. 13, 2010
Fighting between suspected al-Qaeda elements and Iraqi security personnel continued in a small town just northeast of Baghdad. Including those casualties, at least 24 Iraqis were killed and 66 more were wounded in the latest violence. One U.S. soldier was also wounded. As happened yesterday, almost all attacks were in Diyala province. While Diyala remains one of the most unstable provinces thanks to continued al-Qaeda presence, it is unlikely that other volatile areas such as Mosul have gone completely without incidents since the end of Ramadan.
Gen. Stan McChrystal, United States Army, will leave active service with four stars instead of three because of a special waiver bestowed on him by President Barack Obama. One is supposed to hold four-star rank for three years before one can retire at that pay grade, something McChrystal obviously didn’t do, but Obama made nice …
Continue reading “Code of Military Justice”
Gen. Stanley McChrystal might have left town through the back door with his four stars barely intact, his 35-year career in the Army humiliatingly cut short by a lack of judgment with a counterculture magazine. But in reality, he got off easy. As a four-star popular with his peers, McChrystal will have professional options most …
Continue reading “The Dark Legacy of Gen. McChrystal”
The Canadian government has quietly been conducting an international criminal probe of the actions of Syrian and U.S. authorities in the case of Maher Arar, the Canadian who was arrested in 2002 by U.S. officials and then rendered to a Syrian jail where he was held incommunicado and tortured for 10 months before being released …
Continue reading “Canadian Rendition Probe Expands to US, Syria”
The quest for justice for a Canadian who was mistakenly tagged as a terrorist by U.S. authorities and shipped off to a Syrian prison for close to a year of abuse came to an abrupt halt Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case. Maher Arar is a Syrian-born Canadian and father …
Continue reading “US High Court Derails Rendition Victim’s Lawsuit”
Human rights groups are turning to an obscure government agency to investigate allegations that medical professionals on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) helped the agency to perform experiments on detainees in U.S. custody following the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, in an effort to make "enhanced interrogation techniques" more efficient and …
Continue reading “Health Agency Urged to Probe CIA Torture Claims” 
