The New Yorker:Did Pentagon decisions trigger Abu Gharib?

[weedman]

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and ****** humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.




We're not going to read more people than necessary into our heart of darkness. The rules are 'Grab whom you must. Do what you want.'

Source / Read hole story (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact)

[J-10]

WASHINGTON, May 15 (Xinhuanet) -- The US Defense Department on Saturday strongly denied a New Yorker magazine's report which linked abuse of Iraqi prisoners to a secret operation approved by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last year.

The New Yorker story, citing unnamed current and former intelligence officials, said that Rumsfeld approved a secret operation last year that expanded interrogation methods used in Afghanistan to the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad in order to obtain intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq.

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita called the claims "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture."

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-05/16/content_1472271.htm

[budanski]

Germans wrestle with rights and wrongs of torture
Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,903584,00.html)

Revelation that police signed order to extract confession fuels furious national debate

One of Germany's leading conservative politicians yesterday stepped into a raging controversy about the police use of torture that has opened a rift in the government and led Germans to re-examine assumptions previously regarded as unshakeable.

The row erupted over the conduct of the police in a crime that had nothing to do with politics or religion. It has since widened into a debate about whether the authorities should renounce the use of maltreatment in a world facing the threat of terrorist atrocities on an unprecedented scale.

Jörg Schönbohm, the interior minister of Brandenburg - the state around Berlin - was reported yesterday to have called for people to think about what means they would want the forces of law and order to use "if vast numbers of people were under threat from terrorism".

At the root of the controversy is the question of whether torture - or the threat of torture - is inadmissible in every case and without exception.

One morning last October, for example, Wolfgang Daschner, the deputy commissioner of the Frankfurt police, found himself wrestling with an agonising dilemma.

His officers had arrested a man whom they were convinced was responsible for the kidnapping of an 11-year-old boy, Jakob von Metzler, the son of a rich Frankfurt banker.

For seven hours the day before, interrogators had tried every trick in the book to get Magnus Gäfgen to tell them where he was keeping the boy.

Unknown to the police, Jakob had already been murdered. But, as Gäfgen sent the police off to search one false location after another, the fear grew that the boy's life might be slipping away in some underground hideout.

Mr Daschner decided that the time had come for a radical, but illegal, step. He drew up and signed a written order, which only came to light last week, instructing his subordinates to try to extract the necessary information "by means of the infliction of pain, under medical supervision and subject to prior warning".

The warning alone proved enough. By 8.25am, a terrified Gäfgen had indicated the boy's whereabouts, and confessed to the crime.

Through his lawyer, he has since testified that a police officer told him that a specialist was being flown by helicopter to Frankfurt who could "inflict on me pain of sort I had never before experienced". He was said to have added that, back in Gäfgen's cell, there were two big men waiting to rape him.

Mr Daschner disputes this account, but admitted this week to the magazine Der Spiegel that his officers "made it very plain to him that they had to hurt him until he identified the whereabouts of the child".

His orders were not carried out without resistance. Documents released to the press show that one of his officers protested, and a meeting was held at police headquarters at which his objections "on moral grounds" were discussed, but eventually rejected.

Torture - and the threat of torture - are punishable in Germany by up 10 years in jail.

No action has so far been taken against Mr Daschner; and, after an initially scandalised reaction to his orders, several leading public figures have openly asked whether, in extreme cases, things should be quite so cut and dried.

Roland Koch, the Christian Democrat governor of Hessen - of which Frankfurt is a part - told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag that the deputy commissioner's decision was "personally understandable".

The head of the German judges' federation, Geert Mackenroth, had earlier gone further. "There are situations that cannot really be resolved by legal means, and in which legally protected rights have to be weighed, the one against the other," he said.

His remarks unleashed a storm of controversy within the judiciary, prompting Mr Mackenroth to say that he was not questioning the ban on torture.

The row has also divided the Social Democrats, the senior partners in the governing coalition. The interior minister, Otto Schily, has warned that any tolerance of maltreatment could put Germany on the slide towards reintroducing the death penalty. But his colleague at the justice ministry, Brigitte Zypries, has argued that the law provides for rules to be bent in cases of extreme emergency.

For Amnesty International, that ban remains "absolute" and the same holds good for the Greens, the junior partner in the government. "Just leave the window open a crack," said one Green MP, "and the chill wind of the Middle Ages will soon fill the entire room."

[Kitsune]

Nice Budanski...

But this threads title is: "The New Yorker: Did Pentagon decisions trigger Abu Gharib?"
Too lazy to open a new one?

[budanski]

Weedmans got plenty of these threads to spare.

[Argyll]

Nice Budanski...

But this threads title is: "The New Yorker: Did Pentagon decisions trigger Abu Gharib?"
Too lazy to open a new one?


Weedman has aleady had this pointed out to him by me,in another thread relating to the same abuse,it's called spamming and is against forum rules.

I don't have a problem with such topics but when he's constantly posting the same related articles,it gives an insight to a hidden political agenda,is it neccesary to have 5 threads all about reports of the abuse scandal?

I don't think so!


http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14995

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14672

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/posting.php?mode=editpost&p=287488

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13903

These are some of Weedmans topics,all the same subject,just in this forim alone,others I have deleted there was probably 4-5 others deleted by me along the same lines,no other topic headers in this forum ,all about the abuse cases all with pretty much the same rhetoric...........we all know Weedman's political sidings and his disdain for Bush and the US Foreign policies,but these consistent posts are done not to inform the forum members of the disgusting,of which 99% of the forum agreed on,behaviour of the US troops at the centre of this scandal,but to keep this right in everyones faces,despite the fact that it's been said repeatedly that there are investigations and actions ongoing?

Everyone had a go at Ode when he updated the US KIA fis almost daily,the served no other purpose than to satisy an individuals needs........the same can be said here.

[Tane Angle]

I was just about to ask the same thing, Argyll. How about we keep those discussions in this thread. Seoulstriker has been kind enough to post DoD press releases in the same thread over and over; he doesn't just start a new thread everytime he wants to post a press release. And those aren't even inflammatory. If we really have to make such repetitive posts, perhaps we can keep them localized to one thread? It sort of alienates people when they see fifty threads on the same thing.

Have a good one, and just some thoughts...

[Argyll]

I don't have an issue with the contents,it's the repetativness of them.

They're all part of the same story,updating an existing topic as long as it's not locked is perhaps a better way of avoiding this type of thing?

or creating a Specific Topic sticky about Al Graib and just paste the URL into there?

[Kitsune]

Argyll wrote:
Weedman has aleady had this pointed out to him by me,in another thread relating to the same abuse,it's called spamming and is against forum rules.

I don't have a problem with such topics but when he's constantly posting the same related articles,it gives an insight to a hidden political agenda,is it neccesary to have 5 threads all about reports of the abuse scandal?

I don't think so!


http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14995

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14672

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/posting.php?mode=editpost&p=287488

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13903

These are some of Weedmans topics,all the same subject,just in this forim alone,others I have deleted there was probably 4-5 others deleted by me along the same lines,no other topic headers in this forum ,all about the abuse cases all with pretty much the same rhetoric...........we all know Weedman's political sidings and his disdain for Bush and the US Foreign policies,but these consistent posts are done not to inform the forum members of the disgusting,of which 99% of the forum agreed on,behaviour of the US troops at the centre of this scandal,but to keep this right in everyones faces,despite the fact that it's been said repeatedly that there are investigations and actions ongoing?



budanski wrote:

Weedmans got plenty of these threads to spare.


Ok ok I understand. :D
Its much more ergonomic that way.
It would be a pity if all those thread-space would be wasted. ;)

[Tane Angle]

Yeah, we should be mindful of the abuses, but not bombarded by new threads about them, so maybe a sticky thread dedicated to them is a good idea.

[Kitsune]

Concerning budanskis post.
Until now torture is forbidden in Germany. Neither police, nor Bundeswehr, nor special units, not any intelligence service may use it. No exceptions.
And it looks at present as if will stay that way.

All we have so far are a few guys who have brought up the topic, wether in certain situtations, for example if human lives are at stake and could be saved through information someone refuses to give, torture could be excused.