Same Shit Different Puppet - The U.S Governments Crimes Against Humanity

 

 Jeremy Scahill reports the Obama administration is continuing to use a notorious military police unit at Guantanamo that regularly brutalizes unarmed prisoners, including gang-beating them, breaking their bones, gouging their eyes and dousing them with chemicals. This force, officially known as the Immediate Reaction Force, has been labeled the Extreme Repression Force by Guantanamo prisoners, and human rights lawyers call their actions illegal.

Part two 

On December 2, 2002 the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed his name at the bottom of a document that listed eighteen techniques of interrogat

The Torture Team delves deep into the Bush administration to reveal:

 ·        How the policy of abuse originated with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, and was promoted by their most senior lawyers

·        Personal accounts, through interview, of those most closely involved in the decisions

  ·        How the Joint Chiefs and normal military decision-making processes were circumvented

·        How Fox TV’s 24 contributed to torture planning

·      

 ·        How the senior lawyers who crafted the policy of abuse exposed themselves to the risk of war crimes charges

ion--techniques that defied international definitions of torture. The Rumsfeld Memo authorized the controversial interrogation practices that later migrated to Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, as part of the policy of extraordinary rendition.

The Torture Team delves deep into the Bush administration to reveal:

 ·        How the policy of abuse originated with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, and was promoted by their most senior lawyers

·        Personal accounts, through interview, of those most closely involved in the decisions

  ·        How the Joint Chiefs and normal military decision-making processes were circumvented

·        Guantanamo is where a thug squad called the Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) tortures inmates while pointing their required video cameras at the floor to hide their beatings.
In illegal and cowardly assaults on tied-up inmates that violate the Geneva Conventions, five or more Pentagon IRF MPs will spray Mace in a prisoner's face and then gang-beat him. The MPs are known to break bones, gouge eyes, squeeze testicles, inject disease, force the prisoner's head into a toilet or bang it on a concrete floor, smear the prisoner with feces, douse him with noxious chemicals, urinate on him and even sodomize him. A prisoner may also be virtually buried alive in total darkness underground for as long as three weeks, during which he is denied adequate food and sleep. Prisoners have also been hog-tied in painful positions for hours on end. In short, Guantanamo’s prisoners have suffered tortures far worse than France's notorious Devil’s Island.

The above facts about Guantanamo are according to distinguished investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill in an article published for "World View News Service." He quotes Michael Ratner, president of the Center For Constitutional Rights(CCR) as saying: "They (the IRF) are the Black Shirts of Guantanamo. IRFs can't be separated from torture. They are part of the brutalization of humans treated as less than human." Adds Scott Horton, a leading expert on the U.S. military and constitutional law, "They (the IRF) were trained to brutally punish prisoners in a brief period of time, and ridiculous pretexts were taken to justify" the beatings. (One prisoner said he was beaten for feeding crumbs to some lizards.)
"I have seen detainees suffer serious injuries as a result of being IRF'ed," said David Hicks, an Australian citizen held at Guantanamo. "I have seen detainees IRF'ed while they were praying or by refusing medication."
In his book, "An Innocent Man in Guantanamo,"(Palgrave/Macmillan), Murat Kurnaz, held there for five years even though it was clear to U.S. authorities he was innocent, writes, "Blows from the IRF team were the basic form of punishment at Camp X-Ray…beating us and then chaining our hands and feet, connecting those chains with a third one. You couldn't move your arms, they were pressed to your body. Then they'd leave you sitting there like that and take away your blanket and the thin mattress. It could take days before they'd unshackle you…” Perhaps the ultimate in sadism, Kurnaz recalls, “fathers had to watch as their sons were beaten, and vice versa."
Kurnaz writes that when General Geoffrey Miller took over Guantanamo in 2003 the plight of the prisoners “dramatically worsened.” “The interrogations got more brutal, more frequent, and longer. The first order General Miller issued was to commence Operation Sandman, which meant we were moved to new cells every one or two hours. The general’s goal was to completely deprive us of sleep, and he achieved it.” Kurnaz said that if he dozed off an IRF guard would punch him in the face.
The CCR has called upon the Obama regime to immediately end the use of IRF teams at Guantanamo. One Guantanamo defense lawyer said that after Obama took office his clients reported "a ramping up in abuse." Horton says, "detainees should be entitled to compensation for injuries they suffered," Scahill says.
"As Commander in Chief of United States Armed Forces under the terms of the United States Constitution, President Obama has an absolute obligation to terminate torture and war crimes committed by the IRFs on Gitmo," says Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign.
"Failure to do so renders him liable for these international crimes under international criminal law, U.S domestic criminal law, and U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 on the Law of Land Warfare under the doctrine of Command Responsibility. The best way to do this would be to terminate the IRFs on Gitmo." Boyle is author of "Tackling America's Toughest Questions"(Clarity).
Scahill says that while Barack Obama, almost immediately upon taking office, issued an executive order saying he was going to close down Guantanamo within a year and that he was going to respect the Geneva Convention while his administration reviewed Guantanamo, the (IRF) force under Obama has continued to torture prisoners.

 

  ·  

·        How interrogation techniques were approved for use

·        How the new techniques were used on Mohammed Al Qahtani, alleged to be “the 20th highjacker”

 ·        How the senior lawyers who crafted the policy of abuse exposed themselves to the risk of war crimes charges

Show less

oint, Phillipe Sands investigates how the Rumsfeld Memo set the stage for a divergence from the Geneva Convention and the Torture Convention and holds the individual gatekeepers in the Bush administration accountable for their failure to safeguard international law.

The Torture Team delves deep into the Bush administration to reveal:

 ·        How the policy of abuse originated with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, and was promoted by their most senior lawyers

·        Personal accounts, through interview, of those most closely involved in the decisions

  ·        How the Joint Chiefs and normal military decision-making processes were circumvented

·        How Fox TV’s 24 contributed to torture planning

·        How interrogation techniques were approved for use

·        How the new techniques were used on Mohammed Al Qahtani, alleged to be “the 20th highjacker”

 ·        How the senior lawyers who crafted the policy of abuse exposed themselves to the risk of war crimes charges

Iraq jailbreaks: Hundreds escape in Taji and Abu Ghraib

Hundreds of inmates have escaped from two Iraqi prisons after gunmen stormed two jails near Baghdad.

Fighting raged for several hours after the jails - Abu Ghraib to the west of the capital and Taji to the north - came under attack.
Mortar fire and suicide bombs were used to gain access to the jails, whose inmates include al-Qaeda prisoners.
At least 20 members of the security forces were killed as they struggled to regain control.

The Iraqi authorities initially said that the attackers had failed to free the prisoners in Taji and Abu Ghraib. They said security forces reacted quickly enough to seal the area and cut off any escape route.
But it quickly emerged that they were wrong, as reports came out that at least 500 prisoners had indeed managed to escape. The government had to admit that "some" prisoners had escaped, without saying how many.
In the past, several attacks on prisons have resulted in dozens of inmates being freed, as well as records and precious information about them being destroyed or stolen.
In Mosul, too, the army took a painful hit, another reminder that the northern city remains one of the most dangerous for security forces in Iraq.
It is not just Mosul, however, and not just the security forces that are suffering. Continuous waves of attacks across the country have exposed the government's chronic failure to secure the country.

• Prospects of fragmentation
• Iraq admits prison system errors

A senior Iraqi MP, Hakim Al-Zamili, said that about 500 prisoners had escaped from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Most of them were senior members of al-Qaeda who had been sentenced to death, he told Reuters news agency.
"It's obviously a terrorist attack carried out by al-Qaeda to free convicted terrorists with al-Qaeda," the agency quoted an unnamed security official as saying.
Abu Ghraib was used to torture opponents of the regime during Saddam Hussein's rule, and its infamy increased in 2004 when photographs were published showing detainees being abused by US guards.
Mortar rounds The prison attacks were launched at about 21:30 (18:30 GMT) on Sunday night.
Gunmen fired mortar rounds at the prisons, and then used car bombs at the entrances.
The situation was eventually brought back under control on Monday morning, with the use of military helicopters.
Iraqi authorities initially denied any prisoners had escaped in the attacks, but now acknowledge "some" prisoners escaped.
Interior Minister Wissam al-Firaiji said the attackers, whom he called "terrorists," had been well-armed.
"The attack against Taji jail alone was carried out by nine suicide bombers and three car bombs driven by suicide bombers," he told reporters.
"The attackers also lobbed more than 100 mortar shells," he added. "The inmates are now under control."