Meet the U.S.

ED · December 19, 2004

I quoted Edward and he mentioned nothing of the war in Iraq. The US isn't confronting "terrorism".

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On the contrary US is very actively contributing and creating spooning grounds for terrorism, in my and 80% of the worlds opinion, it MUST and HAS to serve to someone’s national interests, certainly not US’s!

But ironically of a sudden all those voices who were screaming against this war amazingly stopped, silenced, including overgrown moose like Michel More who is busy collecting awards and stashing the cash in offshore bank accounts

ED · December 19, 2004

You got to envy likudniks really, for making the US implementer of its foreign policy bullshit.

Nakharar · December 19, 2004

You got to envy likudniks really, for making the US implementer of its foreign policy bullshit.

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ANCA and the AAA are in no way capable of what AIPAC and the other jongos are achieving.

Anonymouse · December 19, 2004

On the contrary US is very actively contributing and creating spooning grounds for terrorism, in my and 80% of the worlds opinion, it MUST and HAS to serve to someone’s national interests, certainly not US’s!
But ironically of a sudden all those voices who were screaming against this war amazingly stopped, silenced, including overgrown moose like Michel More who is busy collecting awards and stashing the cash in offshore bank accounts

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It's definitely not in American interests to fight this war. It is in Israeli interests, which is what this is all about.

The first problem with this war is that you do not, ever, under any circumstance declare war on a tactic - terrorism.

The second problem is the lies that surround this war, and the blindness of the American dupes, including the silencing of top military officials who expressed dissent with this war. Indeed, their insights proved to be true. Apparently America has learned nothing from the French in Algeria, the Soviets in Afghanistan, and America itself in Vietnam, and this is merely a repeat. With the American troops so thin, there will come a time where a draft will be policy.

ED · December 19, 2004

ANCA and the AAA are in no way capable of what AIPAC and the other jongos are achieving.

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Bayts menq misht baroyakan haghtanak Ktanenq

Stormig · December 21, 2004

This is an interesting one.

As Bush Stands Firm, States Flirt with Europe on Carbon Controls

December 17, 2004 — By Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press

BUENOS AIRES — Two sets of Americans have come here to talk global warming: the United States, opposed to controls on carbon emissions, and a bloc of united states, from Maine to Delaware, that plan to impose them.

"It's not an in-your-face thing," Kenneth Colburn, helping coordinate the nine-state effort, said of the seeming defiance of the Bush administration. "They're doing what they think needs to be done."

That may even include linking up with the Europeans in a backdoor trading scheme on emissions -- although a key Republican says that would meet a "lot of skepticism" in Congress.

The American by-play is taking place at the annual U.N. conference on climate change, where delegates from scores of nations are filling in last-minute details on the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 pact that takes effect Feb. 16 requiring 30 industrial nations to reduce, by 2012, emissions of "greenhouse gases" that scientists blame for global warming.

The biggest pollutant is carbon dioxide, byproduct of fossil fuel burning by automobile engines, power plants and other industrial operations.

The United States is not among the 30. The Bush administration has rejected Kyoto, protesting that it would damage the U.S. economy and that it should also cover poorer nations, such as China and India.

But in the pyramid of powers called the U.S. federation, there were other ideas.

"The United States is `states' with an `s,'" said Fred Butler, a New Jersey public utilities commissioner here for the U.N. conference. The 50 states are 50 "laboratories of ideas," he said.

More than two dozen U.S. states have taken action individually to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, by ordering cuts in power-plant emissions, for example, and limiting state government purchases of fuel-inefficient sport utility vehicles.

Most significantly, California regulators last September ordered the auto industry to trim exhaust levels on cars and light trucks in the state by 25 percent before 2016. Other states may follow if California's move survives a court challenge.

In the U.S. Northeast, New York Gov. George Pataki, a Republican, in April 2003 invited other states to develop a regional plan for "cap and trade" on power-plant emissions of carbon dioxide -- a system whereby plants that don't use up their reduced quotas of emissions can sell "offsets," or credits, to other companies that overshoot their allowances.

Under an existing consortium, the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, eight other states joined in: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and Delaware. Four have Republican governors, four Democratic. Combined, they account for 14 percent of U.S. carbon emissions.

A proposed design for the system is expected next April, to be considered and approved by the nine states. Colburn, executive director of the Boston-based consortium, said the states may be trading carbon emission credits in two or three years. "It's a question of `when,' not `if,'" he said.

Although the governors want to help ease climate change, there's a host of other environmental, health and economic motivations, Colburn said.

For one thing, New York is seeing London take the lead in "carbon trading," which may balloon into a multibillion-dollar market. "We're missing out on this economic opportunity," he said.

The 25-nation European Union launches its own carbon-trading system on Jan. 1, and it has left the door open for outside participants, a possibility the U.S. states are examining.

"I don't see why our own individual power plants couldn't register and purchase allowances in the European system," Colburn said.

The head of the Bush administration delegation to the climate talks was asked about such a merger of U.S. and European markets. "We haven't had an opportunity yet to analyze and look at such proposals -- what it would mean for U.S. law and international law," replied Paula Dobriansky, an undersecretary of state.

Republican congressman Joe Barton was less noncommittal.

Any international compact involving state governments would have to be approved by Congress, said the Texas lawmaker, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

"We would tend to look at it with a lot of skepticism," he said.

But Colburn questioned the need for federal authorization, saying any trans-Atlantic trades would be pure commercial transactions, not government-to-government. In some states the plan won't even need legislative approval, but could be enacted via executive regulations, he said.

The list of trading states may grow. Washington, Oregon and California, jointly developing plans to control carbon dioxide, are studying the possibility of carbon trading. And next-door Canada, which like the European Union has ratified the Kyoto Protocol, may be yet another natural partner.

Source: Associated Press

Stormig · January 3, 2005

2004: Year Of Perversion

By Lara Riscol, AlterNet

Posted on December 28, 2004, Printed on January 3, 2005

http://www.alternet.org/story/20857/

What a shame, a sham. When sex morphs into America's daily news staple, political barometer, only moral compass – even as Armageddon's fetus slaughters and mutilates innocents daily – you know you survived an election year. As President Bush's Revival sends shudders throughout the world – certainly over poor women and children stripped of reproductive health services – corporate media continues to slam "sex as moral values" down our throat. I am so ***ing glad to dump 2004 like a bad date who doesn't understand the meaning of No. Don't. Stop!

From abstinence to Super Bowl's Nipplegate to "The queers are coming to get you," conservative politicos and pundits have made sexual perversion an art form. Sex as distraction. Sex as distortion. Sex as defamation. All non-marital sex as death, disease and destruction. Sex so far away from what is good and right and beautiful, from our gift to pleasure, to touch the divine.

As the mother of the most beautiful 2-year-old boy in the world, some would say it's typical for my interest in sex to wane. So despite seeing the retro right's sexual train wreck barreling down upon truth and integrity, I had better things to do this year than keep up with sex smears against liberals. Instead I indulged in such loony left deviances as breastfeeding and otherwise caring fulltime for my son; traveling with my husband's work to keep the family together, and buying a new home closer to Jared's papa, and surrounded by great schools, trees, trails and kids.

Obviously way out of touch with Real Americans who vote their values, which apparently involve other people's groins, wombs and fallibility.

Not that conservatives can't be considered fallible. They're gay. Have gay parents, or daughters named Mary. Late August, a gay blogger posted a taped phone message allegedly of Rep. Ed Schrock (R-Va.) soliciting sex from men. Considered the second most conservative member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Shrock was the co-sponsor of the proposed Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The practicing Baptist soon dropped his re-election bid and went into seclusion with his wife and son – until he was offered a job last week by fellow Congressman, Rep. Thomas Davis III (R-Va.) as the top staff person for a subcommittee of the Government Reform Committee.

He still won't be able to personally carry out America's mandate of his Constitutional amendment – a commitment renewed by Bush immediately after November 2 when 11 states voted for such state amendments – to protect, of course, the sanctity of marriages like Sprock's and Britney Spears'.

In one year, the world's most famous Lolita pop tart and self-professed virgin wedded and divorced in the same Las Vegas trip, and then blissfully became Mrs. Federline just after new hubby's old live-in gave birth to their second child. See between breaking up families, raunchy photo shoots, and stripper stage moves, Britney's a vocal Bush supporter and traditional values proponent, especially of saving, kind of, yourself for marriage.

Ah, abstinence. Bush launched the year with a wink to America's reigning family dogma nonprofits by pledging in his State of the Union address to double unproven abstinence education funding, thus fattening even more faith-based coffers. Although short of his pledge, Congress found another $170 million for 2005 while slashing most domestic spending, including college financial aid. Almost 1.5 million low-income students will suffer the loss, but at least Bush appointed another chastity crusader as Secretary of Education, the formerly divorced Margaret LaMontagne, who now goes by the name Margaret Spellings.

With a third of our HIV prevention billions promised to anti-abortion Christian-based groups, America is now exporting white weddings as social panacea from here to Africa. Masters of misinformation, theo-conservatives have spun abstinence successes into justification for their bulging billion-dollar entitlement. Abstinence works, they say, seizing upon 2004 data showing a big drop in teen pregnancy during the 90s – attributing 25 percent to abstinence and 75 percent to increased contraception use.

Duh. Abstinence from intercourse avoids pregnancy. And 30 years of peer-reviewed research says that comprehensive sexuality education delays first intercourse and reduces risky behavior once one's sexually engaged. Not only does the data say nothing about the impact of abstinence programs, but President Clinton's abstinence dollars under Welfare Reform didn't reach states until 1998. Bush's more restrictive abstinence didn't hit the streets until 2001. Recent preliminary results actually show that abortion has increased since Bush has been pandering to its sex-obsessed base.

But it's all about perception. Though almost no one does it – that is, sex only with one's spouse until death do you part – the retro right has mainstreamed abstinence, which obscures its larger agenda to legislate a biblical worldview. Think The Handmaid's Tale, or at least strict "man on top" gender roles and reinstituted enforcements of sexual morality.

But 2004 proves once again that purity politics works. In October, Bush spotlighted "real families" in Iowa when signing the Working Families Tax Relief Act. After Bush celebrated Mike and Sharla Hintz' 13th wedding anniversary, Mike – a youth pastor and father of four – told reporters: "Where we are in this world, with not just the war on terror, but with the war with our culture that's going on, I think we need a man that is going to be in the White House like President Bush, that's going to stand by what he believes."

Earlier this month, the First Assembly of God Church fired Mike Hintz for sexual exploiting a 17-year-old girl in his church youth group.

Still, conservatives perpetuate their perceived stand for moral absolutes as a salve from our sex saturated culture, and their opponents as promoters of moral relativism, or even perversion.

In the aftermath of 2004's greatest smirch upon America, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the conservative Heritage Foundation – source of strict abstinence-only language driving funding and intervention throughout the world – syndicated a column linking the Iraq prisoner torture to liberal rot:

"With the non-judgmental, sex-crazed, anything-goes culture that we have become at home, it seems that America has set herself up for international humiliation. Our country permits Hollywood to put almost anything in a movie and still call it PG-13. We permit television and computers to bring all manner of filth into our homes. We permit school children to be taught that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle. We allow Christianity and the teaching of Judeo-Christian values to be scrubbed from the public square. We allow our children to be taught how to use condoms in school, rather than why to avoid sex."

In one distorted swoop, conservatives discredit proponents of sexual health and justice with the sick, the bad, the ugly.

But Abu Ghraib marked just one occasion for conservatives to paint liberals into the perv corner. During Super Bowl halftime, Justin Timberlake rips bare Janet Jackson's breast in mock sexual aggression. The Free Speech Coalition – an adult film industry advocate – denounces the stunt as inappropriate. And though more a symptom of unfettered capitalism, the liberals still get saddled with this new cultural low (one the media is forced to digitally blur and repeat over and over again in slow-mo for outraged Americans everywhere).

The right's latest oppositional snuff campaign surrounds the Oscar-nominated Alfred Kinsey biopic. Through distortions and lies, traditional attack dogs slime as pedophile the decades-deceased pioneering sex researcher, whose blasphemous conclusion was that American men and women are diverse sexual beings.

But in the Age of Abstinence, sexual health educators and researchers are easy targets for dumping all that is wrong in the world. Last year Bill O'Reilly had multiple field days sliming a Kansas University sexuality educator attacked by a Republican state senator. After enduring months of pedophile accusations and death threats, a formal university investigation cleared the beloved Dennis Dailey of all wrongdoing. Swiftly killing his own scandal this fall, O'Reilly settled sexual harassment charges involving masturbatory phone sex and falafel shower fantasies. Ratings shot sky high. Recently, Dailey – who refers to his wife of 43 years as his "partner" – announced he's retiring.

The good guys don't always win. The worst perversion of 2004 is the retro right's march to ensure sex does, in fact, lead to death, disease and despair. Pushing traditional values, abstinence advocates have lowered condom use by inflating its failure rate, blocked emergency contraception from over-the-counter status and from rape victims at hospitals, allowed pharmacists to refuse filling contraceptives based on moral grounds, and again de-funded the United Nations Population Fund, a family planning and health lifeline in more than 140 countries.

So sick of today's sexual perversion, I yearn for the days of simple toe-sucking. My New Year's resolution is to balance my personal mom duties with my more public responsibility to keep the newly emboldened moralizers out of my pants and their hypocritical shit out of my kid's head.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/20857/

Nakharar · January 3, 2005

In the aftermath of 2004's greatest smirch upon America, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the conservative Heritage Foundation – source of strict abstinence-only language driving funding and intervention throughout the world – syndicated a column linking the Iraq prisoner torture to liberal rot:

"With the non-judgmental, sex-crazed, anything-goes culture that we have become at home, it seems that America has set herself up for international humiliation. Our country permits Hollywood to put almost anything in a movie and still call it PG-13. We permit television and computers to bring all manner of filth into our homes. We permit school children to be taught that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle. We allow Christianity and the teaching of Judeo-Christian values to be scrubbed from the public square. We allow our children to be taught how to use condoms in school, rather than why to avoid sex."

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I think I'm going to puke after reading this trash. And what's even worse is that this "foundation" is the same one which publishes the yearly Freedom index. Guess which country comes first every year. :angry:

Stormig · January 18, 2005

Amerikanski W(et)MD(ream) story for the birds...

US officially ends hunt for Iraqi WMD

By Joseph Kay

18 January 2005

Ever so quietly, the Bush administration acknowledged last week that it had officially abandoned its search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Thus, with only the most perfunctory notice in the US media, one of the greatest lies of modern politics limped to its ignominious end.

There was barely a mention that the dire warnings of Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, backed by incontrovertible “intelligence,” had served as the pretext for a war that has already killed 100,000 Iraqis and nearly 1,400 Americans, and is costing billions of dollars every month.

Needless to say, the American press and broadcast media felt no responsibility to explain its own critical role in promulgating the administration’s war propaganda.

On January 12, the Washington Post published an article headlined “Search for Banned Arms in Iraq Ended Last Month,” which stated, “Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the [iraq Survey Group’s] final conclusions and will be published this spring.”

The preliminary report released by Duelfer in October concluded that any chemical and biological weapons Iraq possessed had been destroyed in 1991, and no WMD program had even been reconstituted. It also found “no indication that Iraq had resumed fissile material or nuclear weapons research and development activities since 1991.”

In other words, the government’s chief weapons hunter acknowledged that the claims used to justify an unprovoked war were entirely bogus, vindicating those, such as former US weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who accused the Bush administration of carrying out a deliberate deception.

The Bush administration responded to the Post report by essentially dismissing the significance of its failure to find a single weapon of mass destruction. In an interview with Barbara Walters of ABC News, broadcast on January 14, Bush repeated his mantra that “Saddam was dangerous and the world is safer without him in power.” The war, he said, was “absolutely” worth the cost.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said, “Based on what we know today, the president would have taken the same action because this is about protecting the American people.” McClellan did not explain why the overthrow of a regime that did not pose a threat to the United States was essential to protect the American people.

Nor did he explain—and the motley White House press corps did not press him to explain—why, if the existence or non-existence of Iraqi WMD was of so little consequence, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and other top administration officials placed so much emphasis on the issue in the run-up to the invasion.

All of them made definitive statements that the US possessed proof that Iraq possessed such weapons. Here, for example, is what Cheney had to say on August 26, 2002: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” Bush declared on October 7, 2002: “After 11 years, during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more.”

Then there was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous statement before the House Armed Services Committee on September 18, 2002, when he said, “We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons. His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons—including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas.”

If Bush and company feel they can escape any accountability for having gone to war on the basis of lies, it is because they know they will not be challenged either by the media or the Democratic Party.

Typical of the reaction of the liberal establishment was the editorial in the New York Times, “Bulletin: No WMD Found,” published on January 13. Attempting to whitewash its own complicity, the newspaper wrote, “Fear of nonexistent WMD brought us a war.” The Times, it seems, was a victim of government lies, not an accessory to the crime of propagating them.

“This proves once again the difficulties of debunking hard-held convictions,” the newspaper continued. “Mr. Bush did such a good job selling the weapons-hunting nostrum that 40 percent of Americans recently said the weapons were there.”

Several things need to be said about this attempt to shift the blame from the Times’s own shoulders. First, hundreds of millions of people in the US and around the world had no difficulty seeing through the administration’s lies. Some 20 million of them marched and demonstrated on February 15, 2003 in the largest international anti-war protests ever held.

Second, if many Americans still believe there are WMD in Iraq, then the fault must lie with “news” sources like the Times, which did their best to keep the deception going and bury the revelations that disproved it.

In typical Times fashion, the editorial includes a dishonest gesture of contrition—“our own failures to deconstruct all the spin and faulty intelligence”—while failing to note the role of its own reporters and commentators, such as the notorious Judith Miller, in promoting the lies, which it euphemistically labels “faulty intelligence.” Neither Miller nor any other journalist or editor at the newspaper has been fired for helping to perpetrate this fraud on the people of America and the world.

Why didn’t the Times, which relentlessly investigated the Clintons’ failed real estate deal in Arkansas (Whitewater) and mercilessly persecuted Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, bother to investigate the Bush administration’s claims of Iraqi WMD, even after they were debunked by United Nations weapons inspectors? There is no mystery here: the Times, along with the rest of the so-called liberal establishment, supported the unprovoked and illegal invasion of oil-rich Iraq.

The editorial concluded by noting that the members of the Iraqi Survey Group have abandoned their weapons-hunting activities to fight Iraqi insurgents. “We hope they succeed,” the Times wrote. “If they do not, large swaths of Iraq could become a no man’s land, where terrorists will be free to work on WMD projects and United Nations weapons inspectors cannot go to thwart them.”

In other words, the final and official debunking of the government’s lies must not become the occasion for opposing the war, but the very opposite: it should be used to justify more death and destruction.

The response from leading Democrats was similarly perfunctory and dishonest. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called on Bush to “explain to the American people why he was so wrong, for so long, about the reasons for war.” More to the point: when will she explain to the American people why her party nominated as its presidential candidate a man who voted to authorize the war, long after the WMD lies had been exposed, and why her party continues to support the occupation?

Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2000, refused even to concede that Iraq had no such weapons: “The fact that we didn’t discover large stocks of weapons of mass destruction doesn’t mean that Saddam Hussein didn’t have them,” he told Fox News.

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World Socialist Web Site

Stormig · January 21, 2005

Even if like this symbolic gesture, anything of the like among the Amerikanski army? http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=67122005

Abuse pictures that shame British Army

ALLAN HALL

IN OSNABRUECK

Key points

• British soldiers on trial for abuse of Iraqi prisoners in echo of Abu Ghraib

• 22 photographs form basis of evidence against three soldiers

• Charges follow soldiers' interpretation of order to 'work prisoners hard'

Key quote

"Even though the order to make them work was unlawful, had these defendants done no more than what that order envisaged they would not be facing these charges. These charges are a long way outside that order. In no way did that order envisage conduct of the type that I have described" - Lt-Col Nick Clapham, prosecutor

Story in full PHOTOGRAPHS of British troops abusing Iraqi looters at their base in Iraq were shown at the soldiers’ court martial in Germany yesterday.

The photos taken on 15 May 2003 at a supply depot in Basra show naked Iraqis being forced to simulate degrading sex acts.

They show one blindfolded Iraqi man trussed up like a chicken suspended from the prongs of a forklift truck. And they show one soldier standing on a prostrate captive like a hunter with his prey.

The 22 colour photos form the case against three soldiers of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, who face lengthy jail terms and dismissal with disgrace from the army if found guilty.

The photos come as British troops still struggle for hearts and minds in Iraq ahead of democratic elections. There are fears that incident will be compared around the world to the abuse that took place at Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad, where US troops degraded and humiliated their prisoners.

In an attempt to limit the damage, the head of the army, General Sir Mike Jackson, said yesterday he condemned utterly all acts of abuse.

Lt-Col Nick Clapham, prosecuting in the case that opened at Roberts Barracks in Osnabrueck, said: "It cannot be said that these pictures are of incidents that are anything other than shocking and appalling."

The soldiers were guarding the camp, which had been plagued by looters.

The prosecution says the accused - L-Cpl Mark Cooley, 25, L-Cpl Darren Larkin, 30, and Cpl Daniel Kenyon, 33 - took the law into their own hands after an unauthorised order issued to them by their commander.

L-Cpl Mark Cooley is seen driving a forklift truck with a blindfolded Iraqi trussed up and suspended. He claims he was moving the man out of the sun.

Picture: PA

Major Dan Taylor, in charge of the facility, called Camp Bread Basket - a food centre - was fed up with the stores being looted nightly by raiders.

After requesting extra staff - which he received - he issued an edict that the looters stealing were to be rounded up "and worked hard". But Maj Taylor’s order contravened both military law and the Geneva Convention governing the treatment of civilians in an occupied country.

"He was not authorised to issue such an order," said Lt-Col Clapham. "Even though the order to make them work was unlawful, had these defendants done no more than what that order envisaged they would not be facing these charges. These charges are a long way outside that order.

"In no way did that order envisage conduct of the type that I have described."

Lt-Col Clapham told the seven officers sitting in judgment on the three men that the order to catch and punish the Iraqi looters was called "Operation Ali Baba".

It involved men dressed in training kit armed with camouflage poles - long sticks used to erect netting around parked military vehicles - going hunting for looters.

Once they were brought back with their plunder they were made to run in searing heat with boxes of dried milk on their heads.

But then this "beasting", in army parlance, turned worse when the Iraqis were split into small groups.

Cpl Kenyon, who was part of a platoon drafted into Camp Bread Basket specifically to boost security, was in charge of men who took three or four Iraqis away from the main body of captives.

The army alleges that he, as a senior man, aided and abetted in the abuse that was his duty to stop.

The court heard that L-Cpl Cooley drove the forklift truck and that most of the photos were taken by a fusilier convicted in an earlier case relating to the abuse.

The pictures will send shockwaves through the British Army, which still has 9,000 soldiers around Basra in the run-up to Iraqi elections.

Another image shows Iraqi men making a thumbs-up gesture as they simulate sex.

Picture: PA

Among the images are photos of two naked Iraqi men simulating anal sex with their thumbs raised up to the cameras and a close-up photograph of two Iraqi men simulating oral sex.

A grinning L-Cpl Cooley is also seen driving a forklift truck with an Iraqi male suspended from the forks, which are raised about two metres.

The court heard that L-Cpl Cooley admitted driving the truck, but that he claimed it was "to move the man out of the sun".

A statement from Emma Louise Blackie, who works in a photo developing shop in Tamworth, Staffordshire, was read into court about the day when Fusilier Gary Barclam came into the store with the "trophy snaps" which led to the court martial.

She told police that she was shocked by the content of the photos, which she thought "looked like PoWs being abused.

"I remember the man who brought them in as being very polite," Ms Blackie said. "But I called the police straight away. I knew something was very wrong."

Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the Chief of the General Staff, said yesterday that all such allegations of abuse were investigated immediately.

In a statement, he stressed that only a "small number" of the 65,000 servicemen and women who had served in Iraq were alleged to have been involved in such incidents.

And he promised that the outcome of the court martial would be studied to see if it raised any further issues for the army.

Sir Mike said that for legal reasons he could not comment directly on the photographs while the hearing was continuing in Germany. "In the meantime, we can only repeat what we have said in the past about abuse," he said.

"We condemn utterly all acts of abuse. Where there is evidence of abuse, this is investigated immediately.

"We have always made clear that the proper way of dealing with allegations of abuse by the armed forces is for them to be investigated by the service police and, as appropriate, prosecuted by the independent service authorities.

"I have every confidence in the military investigative and judicial system."

Cpl Kenyon faces six charges in total, including two of aiding and abetting a person to force two naked males being detained by British troops to simulate a sex act.

L-Cpl Cooley faces three charges, including tying an unknown male prisoner to a forklift truck, as well as simulating punching and kicking another unknown male also being detained by the army.

Both entered not-guilty pleas to the abuse charges.

L-Cpl Larkin, 30, from Oldham, Greater Manchester, admitted one charge of assaulting an unknown male at the camp, but denied another charge of forcing two Iraqi males to undress in front of others.

William England, representing L-Cpl Larkin, said his client was ashamed of the offence to which he had pleaded guilty.

He said: "He knows he has brought shame on his proud regiment, his name and his family."

All the men have been allowed to continue to serve with their regiment until the commencement of the trial, but they are facing between four and ten years in prison if found guilty of all the charges.

The trial is expected to last a month.

ED · January 21, 2005

as soon as this circus "inaurguration" ends, hawks in washington dont waist any time to bang the war drums, what seems to be de-ja-vue all over again, now its irans turn, as article in todays LA Times states, Israeli security is on the top of this admn's agenda.

U.S. Adds Israel to the Iran Equation

The Jewish state 'might well decide to act first' to foil Tehran's nuclear ambitions, Cheney says.

WASHINGTON — In bluntly threatening terms on Inauguration Day, Vice President Dick Cheney removed any doubt that in its second term the Bush administration intended to directly confront the theocracy in Tehran.

Cheney, who often has delivered the Bush team's toughest warnings to foreign capitals, said Iran was "right at the top" of the administration's list of world trouble spots, and expressed concern that Israel "might well decide to act first" to destroy Iran's nuclear program. The Israelis would let the rest of the world "worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterward," he added in a radio interview with Don Imus that was also broadcast on MSNBC.

The tough talk was part of the administration's attempt to halt what Iran contends is a peaceful, civilian nuclear energy program but which Washington believes is a clandestine program to develop nuclear weapons.

Facing weak diplomatic and military options, the administration has issued increasingly stern warnings in hopes that threats of sanctions and international isolation will convince Iran to shun nuclear weapons. President Bush and other top administration officials also have spoken in menacing terms about Iran in recent days.

But Cheney's words marked the first time that a senior official has amplified the threat by suggesting that the United States could be unable to prevent military attack by its close allies in Jerusalem, analysts and diplomats said.

The startling reference to an Israeli attack was "the kind of strong language that will get their attention in Tehran," said one allied diplomat in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"There's a rhetorical escalation here: They've ratcheted up the threat level by bringing Israel in," said Henri J. Barkey, a former State Department official during the Clinton administration. "They're using the fact of the inauguration, and the uncertainty people have about where they're going in the next term, to say, 'Look, we're not going to let up on Iran.' "

Despite Iranian denials, Cheney said the United States believed Tehran had a "fairly robust, new nuclear program." Germany, France and Britain are trying to negotiate with Iran on the issue, an approach U.S. officials say they support but refuse to join as they express doubts over its prospects.

Cheney said the American emphasis was on diplomacy and supporting the European efforts. But he added, "At some point, if the Iranians don't live up to their commitments, the next step will be to take it to the United Nations Security Council and seek the imposition of international sanctions."

U.S. officials cited Iraq's failure to live up to U.N. resolutions on its weapons programs as a reason for launching war in that country. Despite the administration's insistence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, none have been found.

Reports have swirled in recent weeks that U.S. officials have contemplated ways of taking military action against Iran, but Cheney raised the stakes by suggesting that Israel might act first. Cheney addressed the issue when asked whether the U.S. could ask Israel to lead military action against Iran.

"One of the concerns that people have is that Israel might do it without being asked," Cheney said. "If in fact the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had significant nuclear capability — given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel — the Israelis might well decide to act first."

Israeli analysts have said they believe Iran could develop a bomb in two to three years; U.S. intelligence has predicted it could take slightly longer. Israeli officials have said they might turn to military strikes as a last resort.

But military strikes would have no value if Iran developed the ability to enrich uranium, which Israel believes is possible in within a year, the officials said. At that point, the Iranians would be able to disperse their equipment sufficiently to put it beyond the reach of any attacker.

Cheney's comments come at a time when there has been increasing public discussion of the possibility of military strikes, and heated public exchanges from officials in Washington and Tehran on the nuclear program.

On Monday, Bush said in an interview that he could not rule out the use of military force if Tehran could not be persuaded to abandon its efforts. On Tuesday, during her confirmation hearing, Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice condemned Iran for its support of terrorism and its hostility toward Israel. She included Iran among six "outposts of tyranny" that would be targeted by the State Department. Iran was also one of the three nations — along with Iraq and North Korea — that Bush described as an "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of Union address.

This week, a report in the New Yorker magazine said U.S. commandos had been operating inside Iran to find potential targets for attack. The Pentagon said the report was "riddled with errors," but did not directly deny a commando presence there.

In response, Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran's influential former president, said the country would "not be intimidated by foreign enemies' threats and sanctions."

Israel has expressed anxiety over Iran's stance. "Iran poses a clear threat to international peace and security," said an Israeli diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Iran is a leading sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East, while actively developing weapons of mass destruction and nuclear programs. The world should unite and pressure Iran from these destructive activities."

Cheney was a leading administration proponent of the war against Iraq, and remained adamant during Thursday's MSNBC interview that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the outside world because of weapons of mass destruction, despite repeated findings that Iraq's production capabilities had been eliminated and that there were no stockpiles of weapons.

Intelligence reports cited by the administration to support its view that there were weapons later proved to be wrong.

"But he had a lot of other things," Cheney said, citing a CIA inspection report. "He had the technology, he had the people who'd done it before…. He kept open labs and the intelligence service that were still doing ongoing research and so forth. And he clearly had the intentions, once sanctions were lifted, that he would go back — be back in business again."

Cheney also asserted that, in 1991, Iraq was less than a year away from the ability to produce a nuclear bomb. He reiterated the widely contested view that there was a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

The commission created to study the Sept. 11 attacks concluded that there was no "collaborative, operational relationship" between Iraq and the terrorist group.

And the CIA report cited by Cheney said that Iraq in 1991 was "within a few years" of producing a nuclear weapon, but that the Persian Gulf War and U.N. sanctions ended the program.

By 2003, when the U.S. went to war against Iraq, the CIA concluded that though Hussein hoped to one day resume his weapons program, he lacked a written strategy, staff or infrastructure to do so.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines

Stormig · January 25, 2005

The logic of the irrational: Bush’s inaugural address and the global strategy of American imperialism

By David North

22 January 2005

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However personally insignificant the man himself, the inaugural address delivered Thursday by President George Bush is a major political statement and must be taken with deadly seriousness. As an expression of the global strategy of the United States, the speech presages a massive escalation of military operations all over the world.

The address was not written by Bush—who would be hard put to construct a single grammatical sentence—but by a team of high-level professional advisers, led by Michael Gerson, who gave careful thought to what the president would and would not say.

Among the most glaring omissions from the inaugural address, which has been noted by many commentators, was any explicit reference to Iraq. The obvious, though only partial, reason is that Bush’s speechwriters considered it ill-advised to call attention to the disastrous consequences of the US invasion of that country. More striking, however, was Bush’s failure to make any reference whatsoever to the cause for which the invasion of Iraq was supposedly undertaken—the “war on terror.” Neither that phrase, nor the words “terrorism” or “terror,” were uttered even once by President Bush.

This is an extraordinary omission given the fact that the global struggle against “terror” has been invoked endlessly as the principal justification for virtually every action undertaken by the Bush administration. Above all, the imperatives of the anti-terror crusade were invoked to legitimize the invasion of Iraq and the prospect of further “preventive” wars against Iran and North Korea.

When Bush went before Congress three years ago, on January 29, 2002, to deliver his State of the Union address, he denounced these three states “and their terrorist allies” as “an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.” Bush declared, “By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of theses cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.”

The subsequent failure to discover either weapons of mass destruction or links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda terrorists made it all too clear that the war had been justified on the basis of lies that concealed the real reason for the invasion of Iraq—the pursuit of global hegemony and world domination by the United States.

The lesson drawn by the Bush administration from the world-wide exposure of its criminal deceit was that the United States should not justify the next round of military actions by claiming it faces any specific, concrete, physical threat from Iran or any other country targeted for military attack. Such claims of imminent or even potential physical danger to the security of the United States lead only, as far as the Bush administration is concerned, to annoying and time-wasting demands for verification.

It is for this reason the inaugural address dropped all reference to “terror” and “terrorism,” and invoked as the new justification for war something far more abstract and ethereal: the struggle against “tyranny” and for “liberty” and “freedom.”

In the key passage of his address, Bush declared: “We have seen our vulnerability—and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny—prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder—violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat.”

It is this “mortal threat” posed by “tyranny” that the United States must now fight “by force of arms when necessary.”

Of course, this rationale for war rests on a glaring political and psychological absurdity. Bush made no attempt to explain why people living in “whole regions of the world” which “simmer in resentment and tyranny” should despise the United States and pose a threat to Americans. The only rational explanation for this phenomenon is that they see the United States as an oppressor and enemy. Thus, the claim that the United States is engaged in a global crusade against tyranny is contradicted by Bush’s own description of the conditions which he invokes as a justification for war.

The crass absurdity of the argument is rooted not in the subjective intellectual limitations of Bush’s advisers—though they are certainly very limited men—but in the real contradiction between the needs and aspirations of the world’s masses and the brutal objectives of America’s global policies.

As a matter of practical policy, the morphing of the struggle against terror into the struggle against tyranny has immediate and profound consequences: it both lowers the threshold for American military action and vastly expands the range of its targets.

The redefinition of the Bush Doctrine of preventive war no longer requires that the United States be endangered because one or another state has, and plans to use at some point in the future, a weapon of mass destruction or some other form of terror against the US. Rather, it is enough for the United States to identify whatever country it chooses as a “tyranny” where violence is, in various unseen and mysterious ways, gathering and multiplying.

Precisely what does the Bush administration have in mind as it embarks upon its second term?

The answer to this question is suggested by a column by Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, which appeared the day after Bush’s inaugural. The timing, of course, is not accidental. Krauthammer’s column, like so many other editorials and columns welcoming the inaugural address, marked the beginning of a campaign to massage and manipulate public opinion in accordance with the agenda of the second Bush administration.

The old war on terror that preoccupied Bush during his first term, Krauthammer explains, is receding in importance. New dangers loom. “The bad news is a development more troubling than most observers recognize: signs of the emergence, for the first time since the fall of the Soviet empire, of an anti-American bloc anchored by Great Powers.” What is Krauthammer talking about?

“It is no accident that Russia has begun hinting at making common cause with China. This is potentially ominous because of China’s rising power and its status as the leading have-not nation, the Germany of the 21st century. In December, during the week of the rerun Ukrainian election that finally brought the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko to power, Russia made two significant moves toward China. First was the announcement of intensified economic cooperation in developing Russia’s vast energy resources. More ominous was the Russian defense minister’s Dec. 27 announcement of, ‘for the first time in history,’ large joint military exercises on Chinese territory.

“China in turn is developing relationships with such virulently anti-American rogue states as Iran. Add such various self-styled, anti-imperialist flotsam as Syria, North Korea, Cuba and Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, and you have the beginning of a significant ‘anti-hegemonic’ bloc—aimed at us.”

The list of American enemies is truly endless! Billions of people, on continents all over the globe, are new targets for American “liberation” from “tyranny.” The struggle can never end, for, as Krauthammer proclaims at the conclusion of his column, “There is no rest for the weary.”

If all this sounds insane, it is because it is. But like the contradictions to which I have already referred, the insanity is lodged not in the brains of people like Bush, Krauthammer and the hoards of editorial writers who showered praise on the inaugural address, but rather in the very nature of the American imperial project.

The Bush administration has now begun a second term whose policies and deeds will result in even more bloodshed, human misery and tragedy than the first. As it heads over the abyss, the question is: how much of the country and the world will it take with it?

Stormig · January 25, 2005

PRIORITY: Torture: who gives the orders?

Isabel Hilton

13 - 5 - 2004

“Torture thrives when those who make the policy are convinced that they possess a moral superiority that should not be constrained by regulation.” From Argentina to Iran and Central America, Isabel Hilton excavates the logic as well as the gruesome precedents of America’s moral collapse at Abu Ghraib.

Among the organisations seeking to prevent torture, working with tortured people, and researching the multiple meanings and effects of torture, are the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (MFCVT) in London, and the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) in Copenhagen, Denmark

When the images from Abu Ghraib first appeared, an Argentinian friend telephoned in distress. For her, those images were a rerun of a national nightmare of the “dirty war” of 1976-83: an experience that she and her compatriots had tried to forget on the premise that it was an aberration, a departure from the norm of civilised behaviour.

The images from Iraq had ruptured that shield. Torture was not, after all, an aberration.

The distress of my Argentinian friend was equalled if not exceeded in the Muslim world. There the images punctured any remaining illusions that the occupation of Iraq was a cause that could be defended and, at a stroke, discredited not only the friends of America in the Muslim world but also those more numerous Muslims who stand on their own account for the values of political secularism, the rule of law and democracy.

That language has been appropriated by the United States and its partners in order - as many in the Muslim world now perceive it - to mask a ruthless pursuit of the right of the US to monopolise the world’s resources. For the Argentinian, it was a reminder of a perception that many would rather forget: that the accommodation of torture, to put it no higher, has followed US security policy for decades.

In the shadows of history

The former CIA operative Robert Baer, who joined the CIA in the 1970s, said in a recent interview that when he worked for the agency torture was a sacking offence. He cited the example of two CIA operatives in Guatemala who were dismissed when a Guatemalan colonel they were running was accused of torture.

Yet in Vietnam, thousands of prisoners had already died in US “tiger cages.” In Iran under the Shah’s regime, the Savak used methods outlined in CIA training manuals. In Latin America in the 1970s and early 1980s torture and disappearance became established practices throughout the continent under military dictatorships that had the support of the United States, whose officers had been trained in the US-run School of the Americas in Panama and whose security policies were coordinated through a network organised and run by US agencies.

Argentina, Chile, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay tortured wholesale under successive US administrations without suffering any sanctions from Washington. President Carter (1976-80) tried to take a different course, and was accused of being “soft on communism.” When Ronald Reagan came to power in 1980, a pandemic of torture and extra-judicial murders spread throughout Central America, practiced by military officers who had received US training in “interrogation techniques.” If the methods were not publicly approved, the results were applauded.

In the Reagan years (1980-88), torture was a central part of a pattern of abuse and illegality that underlay a wider strategic policy. CIA recruited “deniable assets”, many of them Cuban exiles, who could pursue Ronald Reagan’s definition of freedom with fewer constraints than salaried employees. US diplomats who protested were marginalised, US and international law was broken and Congress was deceived.

When the Iran-Contra scandal erupted in late 1986, a few scapegoats were charged but the high-level politicians escaped unscathed. When the first George Bush (director of the CIA from 1976-77) succeeded Ronald Reagan as US president in 1989, he distributed pardons to those in the outgoing administration who might otherwise suffer judicial inconvenience, including the former president himself.

After the Clinton interregnum (1992-2000), George W. Bush celebrated his arrival in Washington by welcoming back to power many of the men implicated in the 1980s abuses in Central America. John Negroponte, the US ambassador to Honduras during that period, was implicated both in the activities of the Contras in Nicaragua and with death squads in Honduras. He has now been named as ambassador to Iraq. James Steele, who served in El Salvador in 1985, is now serving as US advisor to the Iraqi security forces. Both men were also implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal.

The damage done

If is not yet provable that the use of torture in Iraq is high-level policy, it is demonstrable that the use of torture follows the flag. In Latin America, the cattle-prods were wielded by native labour, but the victims often reported the presence of US personnel.

One of the best historical analyses of the phenomenon of torture is by scholar of Islam and openDemocracy contributor Malise Ruthven, Torture: the grand conspiracy (1978)

No administration will acknowledge torture as a policy. But torture thrives when those who make the policy are convinced that they possess a moral superiority that should not be constrained by regulation. Ronald Reagan waged battle with an entity he described as the “evil empire”. Local struggles, civil wars, labour disputes, campaigns for inclusion in a political process - all were defined as part of a global contest between opposing global ideologies: democracy and freedom against totalitarianism. How it played out at the grassroots might not be pretty, but the cause was just.

The accounts we have of that period are largely from survivors, but there are a few from the perpetrators that give us an insight into how a group of men, bonded together by an ideology that tells them they are engaged in mortal struggle against evil, rapidly descend into a morass that permits any physical and sexual violation. Once the rules are discarded, anyone can become a victim.

Even before 9/11 the Bush administration demonstrated an unusual contempt for rules and constraints. After 9/11 the disregard became widespread. Within weeks of the attack on the twin towers the use of torture was openly discussed in the establishment press. Conservative voices argued the hypothetical case of the ticking bomb and the terrorist subject. Surely torture, they said, was legitimate to pre-empt an atrocity? Liberal voices like the Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz argued that torture was probably inevitable and should therefore be acknowledged and regulated by the courts through a system of licenses to torture.

In the Senate hearings on 7 May 2004, Donald Rumsfeld described the abuses of Abu Ghraib as “fundamentally un-American”, a claim echoed throughout the administration. This is historically questionable but even if it had been true in the past, there was a policy shift after 9/11 when the CIA general counsel issued a new set of rules governing interrogation. The new rules sanctioned methods that cause “temporary physical or mental pain.” By any definition the door was officially opened to torture.

With the war on Afghanistan the gloves came off. On 21 November 2001, 8,000 Taliban soldiers and civilians surrendered at Konduz to the warlord (and US ally) General Abdul Rashid Dostum. They were loaded into containers, without food water or enough air to be shipped to Sheberghan prison, 120 kilometres away. Then the containers were machine-gunned. Those who survived were later massacred in the presence of US special forces.

In the attempt to dismantle al-Qaeda and capture Osama bin Laden, the US set up a network of secret prisons, an international gulag into which prisoners vanish, all rights suspended, all information denied to families, all methods permitted.

The camp at Guantanamo Bay is the most notorious, a place occupied (in the words of George W. Bush), by the most evil of the evil, but there are many others. Exact numbers worldwide are unknown, in addition to the 700 in Guantanamo itself, there are an estimated 10,000 detainees in Iraq and 1,000 in Afghanistan. Of this host of prisoners, scarcely a handful has ever been charged with any crime, despite the treatment they have received.

The pattern of abuse is global. The New York Times(12 May 2004) reported that the Afghan Human Rights Commission has noted forty-four complaints of abuse by US personnel against detainees in Afghanistan, at a range of bases from Bagram to Kandahar and Gardez. The methods inflicted include sexual humiliation, beating, sleep deprivation and being repeatedly photographed when naked while in US custody. The abuses have been documented for more than a year, yet the US embassy in Kabul claimed this week that it had been unaware of any complaints.

Detainees released from Guantanamo have their own harrowing stories of ill- treatment at the hands of US allies in Afghanistan and of US personnel there. Others are farmed out for torture by proxy regimes in Egypt, Uzbekistan, Syria and Jordan. Several of the deaths in custody in Iraq are attributed to individuals among the 20,000 “private contractors” sent there at US taxpayers’ expense, operating in a legal black hole, immune from official reprimand or judicial sanction.

The pattern is too widespread, the official response to the disclosures too muted to allow for any doubt that the sanction for torture comes from a high level of policy.

http://www.opendemocracy.com/debates/article-8-112-1904.jsp

Stormig · January 25, 2005

Hmmm... More from Information Clearing House:

"This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed … were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees.": Rudolf Hoess, the SS commandant at Auschwitz.

Stormig · January 26, 2005

Amerikanskis of the 21st century "bring civilisation to the desert"...

US occupation damages ancient sites at Babylon

Imperialism and cultural vandalism in Iraq

By Harvey Thompson

26 January 2005

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US-led occupation forces in Iraq have inflicted widespread damage and severe contamination to the remains of the ancient city of Babylon, according to a British Museum-commissioned report released this month. Ignoring protests by archaeologists, US and Polish forces have used the world-renowned site as a military depot for the past two years.

Dr John Curtis, curator of the British Museum’s Ancient Near East Department, found “substantial damage” at the site during an investigative visit to Babylon last month. An authority on Iraq’s many archaeological sites, Curtis has worked as an archaeologist in Iraq for decades, personally directing many excavations.

US forces established the military camp at Babylon city—some 50 miles (80km) south of Baghdad—in April 2003, and damage was already visible when Curtis first visited part of the site in June of that year. The Pentagon contracted Kellogg, Brown and Root—a subsidiary of the Halliburton corporation, where US vice-president, Richard Cheney was chief executive officer before joining the Bush administration—to develop and maintain the site, which grew to a 150-hectare camp, housing 2,000 soldiers. The base was officially handed over to Polish forces in September 2003.

Commenting on the decision to site the military base in Babylon, the British Museum report said, “This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain.”

Curtis returned to Iraq following the US-led invasion, when the British Museum led an international effort to assess the damage and losses resulting from the looting of the national museum in Baghdad. He returned last month at the invitation of the Iraqi authorities and inspected Babylon with a team of Iraqi archaeologists. However, he was still not able to inspect the entire site, as part of it is still fenced off and mined.

Curtis therefore warns that his report “should not be seen as exhaustive, but is indicative of the types of damage caused.”

The 14-page British Museum report, compiled during a site visit in December, includes maps and lists numerous examples of visible damage. The report details:

* Damage to the dragons decorating the Ishtar Gate “caused ... by a person or persons trying to remove a decorated brick.” The report details 10 separate areas of damage to the molded brick reliefs.

* Broken bricks inscribed with the name of Nebuchadnezzar lying in spoil heaps. At the “Warsaw Gate” two 20-metre long trenches have been dug here. “In the piles of spoil alongside the trenches there are many fragments of brick, some with inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar,” the report says. One brick clearly has an inscription that reads: “Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, who provides for Esagila and Ezadila, the eldest son of Nabopolassar, King of Babylon, am I.”

* Original brick surface of the great processional route through the gate crushed by military vehicles. Two areas of sixth century BC brick pavement, part of the processional street, are exposed in this area. “In both cases the bricks are badly broken. This is thought to be the result of a heavy vehicle or vehicles driving over them. If this is so, it is likely that the bricks still covered by earth are similarly damaged.”

* Fuel seeping from tanks into archaeological layers.

* Acres of the site leveled, covered with imported gravel—which Curtis said would be impossible to remove without causing further damage—and sprayed with chemicals that are also seeping into the unexcavated buried deposits.

* Thousands of tonnes of archaeological material used to fill sandbags and mesh crates. At one point, outside the base entrance nicknamed the “Reno Gate,” is a 200-metre stretch of road, lined with the mesh baskets “that have clearly been filled with deposits from the Babylon site, containing shards, bones, etc.” And equally damaging, when that practice stopped, thousands more tonnes of material imported from outside the site, contaminating it for archaeologists forever.

* Trenches dug into the ziggurat, one of the distinctive stepped pyramids or Babylonian monuments that probably gave rise to the legend of the Tower of Babel. “Much pottery and many fragments of brick with cuneiform inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar were observed in the bank of spoil” next to the trench.

Other observations include: an old car park vastly expanded to make a helicopter landing zone and parking lot, all flattened and graveled; old tracks covered in new stones, now deeply rutted from heavy vehicles; large areas scooped out to a depth of two metres to fill the sand bags; and metal baskets and earth mounded up to protect six fuel depots, which also show evidence of leakage.

The report also suggests that the most serious damage may be invisible. The contamination and disturbance of areas that have never been excavated may mean that many of Babylon’s secrets, including the site of the hanging gardens, will never be resolved.

In concluding the report, Curtis says, “A full-scale international investigation should be launched into the damage done to the archaeological site of Babylon during its occupation by coalition forces.”

Curtis has said it was not possible for him to determine when the damage took place and which forces did it but the chronology of the findings strongly suggest that the most of it occurred under the aegis of the US military.

Although the coalition authorities have now formally handed over the base, a US military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan, recently told the BBC that the base, which now has around 6,000 troops under Polish command, is needed to “further defeat terrorists and insurgents.”

Archaeological community outraged

The damage has outraged the world archaeological community. Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology, wrote; “What were they thinking? In a war acknowledged to be more about politics and culture than territory, surely the significance of Babylon was not missed? Babylon the capital city of Hammurabi, of Nebuchadnezzar, of the hanging gardens described by Herodotus; Babylon the military powerhouse that ravaged its neighbours in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, yet also developed astronomy, science and art to extraordinary levels. Surely no one in the West was so ignorant at least not to ask: should we not be concerned?

“...Turning the pages of Curtis’s report I see case after case where the document that would tell this story has been ripped apart. An area 50m by 200m close to the ancient Ninmah temple was flattened for a helipad, graveled and treated with petroleum to control the dust. All of these—leveling, introduction of foreign materials and contamination—are potentially destructive of archaeological remains, as are the many cuttings and trenches detailed, the heavy vehicle wheel ruts, the earthmoving and the fuel seepages. And this list—the report’s killer phrase—‘should not be seen as exhaustive, but ... indicative.’”

Many prominent British archaeologists have an extensive knowledge of Iraq’s 10,000 archaeological sites. They catalogued the previous looting and destruction of Iraq’s antiquities under the very nose of indifferent US troops (See: “The looting of Baghdad’s museum and library—US government implicated in planned theft of Iraqi artistic treasures”). They also witnessed the destruction of the historic mosques of Fallujah last November. Thus, they summed up their reaction to the conduct of the US-led forces in Babylon as one of “anger, but not surprise.”

Writing in the Guardian January 17, Dr Mike Heyworth, director of the Council for British Archaeology, said: “The extensive cultural vandalism of archaeological sites in Iraq by US-led forces is deeply depressing, but it comes as no surprise. Archaeological organisations on both sides of the Atlantic were warning British and American governments about these issues for months in advance of the conflict, and we have repeated our concerns many times since.”

Prof. Geoffrey Wainwright, chairman of Wessex Archaeology, writing in the same issue, said: “We should be angry but not surprised at the destruction of Babylon. Despite the requirements of The Hague convention, aggressors throughout history have targeted the cultural treasures of occupied territories in order to undermine their opponents’ national esteem and sense of cultural identity. Nebuchadnezzar created a world wonder, which, 2,600 years later, is the heritage icon for the Iraqi state—past and future. It is also part of a precious global heritage, which belongs to us all.

“We should feel outrage and contempt for the perpetrators whose actions have diminished our common inheritance. At the very least there should now be a proper inventory of the damage to Iraq’s heritage, conducted by an international coalition of concerned nations.”

Tim Schadla Hall, reader in public archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, commented, “In this case we see an international conflict in which the US has failed to take into account the requirements of the Hague convention ... to protect major archaeological sites—just another convention it seems happy to ignore.”

Lord Redesdale, an archaeologist and head of the all-party parliamentary archaeological group, said: “Outrage is hardly the word, this is just dreadful. These are world sites. Not only is what the American forces are doing damaging the archaeology of Iraq, it’s actually damaging the cultural heritage of the whole world.”

Dr Francis Deblauwe, an independent Mesopotamian archaeologist based in Kansas City, Missouri, who runs the 2003 Iraq War & Archaeology web site, dismissed Pentagon claims that it “worked with” local archaeologists on the construction of the base.

“How on earth all this was allowed to happen, long after the fiasco with the National Museum in Baghdad, is beyond my comprehension,” said Deblauwe. “Any civil affairs officer worth his/her salt should have known immediately that leveling whole areas of an ancient archaeological site such as Babylon is just not done.”

He went on to suggest the real relations between archaeologists and the US military: “My guess is that their protests were summarily brushed aside once the wheels of the military machine came into motion. It seems the infrastructure necessary for modern hi-tech warfare was installed and provided for without much—if any—regard for the exceptionally sensitive and unique setting. Furthermore, the constant traffic of heavy trucks and machinery wreaks havoc on the archaeological deposits right underneath the surface.

“Due to security concerns, Iraqi experts were shut out, especially the people from the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH), whom the coalition military probably saw as Ba’athist holdovers.”

By-product of a predatory war

The irreparable damage done to the ancient sites of Babylon is a criminal act whose historical precedent is to be found in the Nazis’ looting of art treasures and destruction of famous monuments throughout Europe during World War II.

The decision to base a military depot in one of the most important archaeological sites in the world can only have been issued from a deeply reactionary and reckless power that is utterly hostile to the cultural achievements of mankind. The damage done to Babylon has seriously impaired the prospect of further understanding an ancient civilisation of world importance, and has curtailed the ability of future generations to study and wonder at the historic sites.

Despite attempts to pass off the vandalism of the sites as the folly of individual troops, this level of cultural and social philistinism has definite political roots. It is the logical by-product of a predatory war and occupation launched by subterfuge, which had as its main goal the seizure of Iraq’s oil resources. In the process, the Iraqi people have been subjugated to military rule and the country’s historical and artistic heritage looted or destroyed—with the complicity or tacit approval of the US military.

In a cruel historical irony that will not be missed by those concerned with the fate of ancient Babylon, the Bush administration, a criminal political elite that purports to be waging war in defence of the values of ‘civilisation,’ is destroying important remnants of the origins of Western civilisation itself.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/arch-j26.shtml

Stormig · January 26, 2005

More than 500 prisoners are still held at Guantanamo Bay.

Picture: PA

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After more than 1,000 days in jail, Guantanamo four fly back to Britain

JAMES KIRKUP

POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

Key points

• Final group of British detainees return home from Guantanamo Bay

• None of four was ever charged - despite nearly three years of detention

• US may be sued for compensation

Key quote

"It is inhumane and degrading treatment. They have all been locked up for three years, and two have been in solitary confinement for most of that time. I have represented my clients for the best part of three years. But tonight is the first time I will get to meet and talk to them - unfortunately it will be in a police station." - Lawyer Louise Christian

Story in full

THE last four Britons held without trial in the United States prison camp at Guantanamo Bay flew home yesterday, a move that civil rights groups said raises the pressure on the UK government to release terror suspects jailed arbitrarily in this country.

The freed men were still at a high-security police station in central London last night, but all are likely to walk free within days.

Three London men - Feroz Abbasi, from Croydon; Martin Mubanga, from Wembley; and Richard Belmar, from St John’s Wood - and Moazzam Begg, from Birmingham, have each spent more than 1,000 days in the custody of the US or its allies. None has been charged with a criminal offence or been allowed to consult a lawyer during the detention.

After landing at an RAF airbase to the west of London at about 5pm, the four were driven to the high-security Paddington Green police station in central London for questioning by anti-terrorism officers.

There is every prospect that they will walk free, perhaps as early as today. The Metropolitan Police is understood to have concluded there is no evidence to warrant charges against any of the four, even though the US authorities held them in the Cuban camp for more than three years on suspicion of terrorism.

It’s time that the US and UK governments ended policies relying on detention without trial and torture once and for all

- Shami Chakrabarti, Liberty

Five other British citizens released from Guantanamo Bay last year were, likewise, questioned and released on their return to the country.

The UK government was tight-lipped about yesterday’s releases, but the Pentagon issued a statement saying Britain had "assured the US government that the detainees will not pose a continuing security threat to the US or its allies".

Despite lengthy and, at times, tortuous negotiations between Britain and the US, the decisive factor in the men’s release was almost certainly not pressure from London but a growing acceptance in Washington that Guantanamo Bay has become a largely useless international embarrassment.

Citizens of several other nations have been released recently and there is speculation that the whole facility could be wound up amid suggestions that interrogations there have yielded little useful intelligence.

Until yesterday, the four Britons were among some 545 prisoners from 42 countries still held at Guantanamo Bay, most of them captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the wake of the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September, 2001, and the war against the Taleban that followed.

To date, 207 detainees have left the camp - 146 have been freed and 61 transferred to the custody of other governments.

Abbasi, 24, was reportedly arrested by US forces in northern Afghanistan in December 2001. Belmar, 25, and Begg, 37, were said to have been arrested in Pakistan in February 2002, while Mubanga, 32, was detained in Zambia.

Begg and Abbasi have been kept in solitary confinement for much of their time in Cuba, raising fears about their mental health. They were reportedly held in Camp Echo, a "prison within a prison", where they were denied the recreational facilities, joint prayer sessions and limited association with other inmates allowed to other detainees.

Their return home came as an RAF C-17 transport plane touched down at RAF Northolt, having carried the four men with what officials called a "basic level of comfort." Doctors and British police officers had accompanied them on their flight.

As the flight landed, Begg’s father, Azmat Begg, told BBC Radio "it is a nice thing I am watching ... I am a little bit nervous and emotional".

Belmar’s sister, Jeanette, said she feared he would never be able to return to a normal life. "If he wants to start his life again, he will have that behind him - ‘Richard Belmar, Guantanamo Bay prisoner’," she said.

British lawyers for the four are now considering legal action against the US to claim compensation for their ordeal.

Louise Christian, one of the lawyers representing the men, criticised the British authorities for detaining the four on the their return to this country.

"It is inhumane and degrading treatment," she said. "They have all been locked up for three years, and two have been in solitary confinement for most of that time.

"I have represented my clients for the best part of three years. But tonight is the first time I will get to meet and talk to them - unfortunately it will be in a police station."

Even as the four UK citizens were returning to this country, campaigners were stepping up their demands for the British government to end the detention without trial of 12 foreign nationals held at a London jail.

The men, most of them from North Africa, are being held at Belmarsh, where several are said to have suffered similar mental harm as those released from Guantanamo.

The 12 have been detained under the Terrorism Act, although the Law Lords ruled last month that their imprisonment without trial is illegal.

So far, ministers have refused to act on that ruling, although the legislation allowing the detentions must be renewed by parliament in March.

Civil liberties groups said the release of the four Britons should usher in the end of the terror laws that permit the Belmarsh detentions.

"After three years, it’s time that the US and UK governments ended policies relying on detention without trial and torture once and for all," said Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty.

Her warning echoed a call earlier this week from the Law Society of England and Wales.

Edward Nally, the society’s president, said that "indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial is totally unacceptable" and insisted that ministers must stop ignoring the Law Lords’ ruling.

Delivery formats for "Scotsman.com News"

[more info]

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=96112005

Arpa · January 28, 2005

Shooting oneself in the foot.

We all know what that means. To harm oneslf rather than the opponent. The cliche has many uses now but it was first coined during times when soldiers would shoot themselves in the foot to avoid active duty. The best illustration would be to discharge ones weapon (downward) when it is still in the holster, tantamount to shooting from the hip.

Is this what the US is doing.?

We have just witnessed Ms. White's swearing in and induction as the Secretary of State. But that seems to be non-news. The media buzz is about the impending iraqshens, :oops: that blasted Freud again! in Iraq. Elections!! The news is scantilly interspersed with saber rattlings agianst Tehran and its nuclear ambitions as well.

Iraqi demgraphics is; total population 26 million, 60 % Shiite (taht is more than 15 million), mostly in the south around Basra, the remaining 40 % divided among the Sunnis around Baghdad, Kurds in the north and others. It does not take a magician to see that the Shiites will prevail. One other country with a majority of Shiites is... you guessed right .... Iran.

Speaking of shooting onself in the foot, is not the US creating another satellite to Tehran by virtually converting Baghdad into an Ayatollah suburb of Tehran?

Is it not reminiscent of removing the Shah only to replace him with a bigger satan?

Stormig · February 24, 2005

----- Original message -----

From: "Institute for Public Accuracy"

To: public@lists.accuracy.org

Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 11:47:00 -0500

Subject: Major Developments in 9/11 Whistleblower Case

Institute for Public Accuracy

915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045

(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org

___________________________________________________

11:30 a.m. ET -- Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Major Developments in 9/11 Whistleblower Case

There are major developments in the case of Sibel Edmonds, a government

whistleblower who has stated that prior to 9/11, in April 2001, the U.S.

government had information about plans for airplanes to be used on

suicide

missions in U.S. cities in the coming months. Her statements contradict

what administration officials told the 9/11 Commission in public

testimony.

Edmonds has also charged that the FBI has been compromised in various

ways

and that her raising these issues led to her dismissal.

The Washington Post reports today on a case pertaining to Edmonds

brought

by the Project On Government Oversight: "The Justice Department has

backed

away from a court battle over its authority to classify and restrict the

discussion of information it has already released, handing a local

advocacy

group a victory by granting it explicit permission to publish letters

written by two senators that contain the contested information." [see:

]

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Edmonds, notes

today that this "development also follows the Justice Department's

release

of the full Inspector General report on Edmonds's dismissal at 5:00 p.m.

on

Friday, February 18, at the beginning of a holiday weekend. The ACLU

said

that the executive summary released last month actually revealed more

information than the full 106-page Inspector General report, as the bulk

of

it was redacted." [see:

]

SIBEL EDMONDS, [via Paul Silva, media@aclu.org], SibelDeniz@aol.com,

http://www.justacitizen.com

Edmonds worked as a language specialist for the FBI. After reporting

security breaches, cover-ups, and blocking of intelligence, Edmonds was

ultimately fired in March 2002. She said today: "This clearly shows that

for three years the Department of Justice has been using capricious and

illegal actions, such as gagging of the Congress, excessive and reckless

secrecy and classification, and unwarranted assertion of 'State Secrets

Act' and 'National Security,' not to protect our nation's security, but

only to protect themselves against accountability. ... It is past time

for

Congress to exercise its oversight authority and bring about

accountability." Paul Silva is a press officer for the ACLU. For

background

on the Sibel Edmonds case and more information on national security

whistleblowers, go to .

DANIELLE BRIAN, BETH DALEY, beth@pogo.org http://www.pogo.org

Brian is the executive director of the Project On Government Oversight;

Daley is the group's communications director. Brian said today: "Our

hearing scheduled for yesterday morning before U.S. District Judge John

D.

Bates was abruptly cancelled after the Justice Department gave up and

admitted that the information it had retroactively classified could be

released to the public. Last June, the Project On Government Oversight

sued

then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and the U.S. Justice Department for

retroactively classifying information related to whistleblower Sibel

Edmonds' allegations of wrongdoing in an FBI translation unit. The suit

alleged that the retroactive classification was unlawful and violated

POGO's First Amendment right to free speech."

Daley added: "The information at issue was presented by the FBI to the

Senate Judiciary Committee during two unclassified briefings in 2002.

The

information was referenced in letters from U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy

(D-Vermont) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) to DOJ officials. The

senators'

letters were posted on their Web sites but were removed after the FBI

notified the Senate in May 2004 that the information had been

retroactively

classified."

Daley also said: "During a June 2004 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing,

Ashcroft defended the decision to retroactively classify the

information,

claiming that its further dissemination could seriously impair the

national

security interests of the United States, even though for more than two

years the information was widely available to the public. The fact that

the

Justice Department gave up on the eve of the hearing shows that this

information was classified for an improper purpose."

For further background, see the July 8, 2004, IPA news release "Ashcroft

Denying 9-11 FBI Whistleblower Day in Court: A Cover-up?"

.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:

Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Stormig · February 24, 2005

Doomed to fail

By Scott Ritter

02/22/05 "Baltimore Sun" - - NORTH KOREA'S dramatic public revelation that it possesses nuclear weapons represents a stark challenge for the Bush administration.

The North Korean claim, if true, underscores the failure of President Bush's nonproliferation policies that since the beginning of his first term had been subordinated to a grander vision of regime change. That policy was intended to transform strategically vital regions of the world into Western-style democracies supportive of the United States and the Bush administration's vision of American global dominance.

The intermingling of nonproliferation and regime change policies was doomed to fail. One requires skillful multilateral diplomacy based on the principles of uniform application of international law, the other bold application of a unilateral doctrine of aggressive liberation rhetoric backed by the real threat of military power. When blended, as the Bush administration did, unilateralism trumps multilateralism every time. North Korea's announced accession to the nuclear club represents the inevitable result.

The end of America's meaningful role as a promoter of global nonproliferation can be traced to decisions made in the 1990s regarding regime change in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The United Nations had embarked on a bold effort to roll back the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction through disarmament and, despite some initial difficulties, scored a dramatic success.

It is now clear that Iraq, under pressure from U.N. weapons inspectors, was disarmed of its WMD by 1991 and had dismantled and destroyed the last vestiges of its weapons programs by 1996. But the United States had, since 1991, committed to a policy of regime change in Iraq, which required economic sanctions-based containment linked to a continued finding of Iraqi noncompliance with its disarmament obligation.

Rather than embracing weapons inspections, three successive U.S. administrations denigrated and subverted the work of the inspectors in order to keep the primary policy objective of regime change in Iraq on track. The nail in the coffin of U.S. nonproliferation efforts came when the Bush administration willfully misstated the extent of the Iraqi WMD programs in order to justify its invasion of Iraq.

North Korea and Iran concluded from events leading to the U.S. invasion of Iraq that the Bush administration did not regard nonproliferation as an endgame but a tool designed to weaken a target state to the point that it could succumb to the grander U.S. policy objective of regime change.

Mr. Bush had stated that the world would be a better place with the regimes in Pyongyang and Tehran removed. Therefore, all diplomatic efforts - whether the six-party framework with North Korea or the European Union-brokered negotiations with Iran - were regarded as disingenuous fronts intended not to facilitate nonproliferation and stability but rather instability and regime change.

With Iraq a model of the reality of America's unilateral militaristic approach toward bringing about regime change, North Korea and Iran have embarked on the only path available to either of them - acquisition of an independent nuclear deterrent intended to forestall what they perceive as irresponsible U.S. aggression.

The Bush administration has come face to face with the reality of the failure of its policies. Rather than curtailing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the administration's crusade against global tyranny has served as an accelerant in placing the most dangerous weapons known to man in the hands of xenophobic regimes that have been backed into a corner.

But the situation in North Korea and Iran could still be resolved in a way that promotes global nonproliferation objectives.

Real and meaningful economic incentives, backed by U.S. and allied willingness to permit North Korea and Iran to possess civilian nuclear programs operated under stringent international monitoring, could succeed in rolling back North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons and provide incentive for Iran to cease and desist in its own program.

But the key to any such salvation lies with the willingness of the Bush administration to unlink nonproliferation efforts from regime change. This is highly unlikely, given the reality of the ideological composition of those at the senior decision-making levels of the Bush national security team and the huge political investment Mr. Bush has made in support of his global crusade against tyranny.

"Freedom is on the march," Mr. Bush has said. Unfortunately for the United States, North Korea and Iran don't see it that way. And if America keeps marching, it could very well be in the direction of a nuclear apocalypse.

Scott Ritter, a former intelligence officer and U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, is author of the forthcoming Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America's Intelligence Conspiracy.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

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http://207.44.245.159/article8138.htm

Armen · February 24, 2005

This is indeed one of the biggest challenges to Buch administration. And consider the timing of North Korea's statement. Iraq, Iran, Syrian and one more on the other side of the world. Even if North Korea doesn't have nucs the statement alone is huge public pressure on Bush adiministration this article being a witness of that.

Stormig · February 26, 2005

----- Original message -----
From: "Institute for Public Accuracy"
To: public@lists.accuracy.org
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 11:47:00 -0500
Subject: Major Developments in 9/11 Whistleblower Case

Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org
___________________________________________________

11:30 a.m. ET -- Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Major Developments in 9/11 Whistleblower Case

(...)

style_images/master/snapback.png

Some background on that:

http://antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=2917

Sibel Edmonds began working for the FBI shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, translating top-secret documents pertaining to suspected terrorists. She was fired in the spring of 2002 after reporting her concerns about sabotage, intimidation, corruption and incompetence to superiors. She first gained wide public attention in October of that year when she appeared on 60 Minutes on CBS and charged that the FBI, State Department, and Pentagon had been infiltrated by Turkish individuals suspected of ties to terrorism. On October 18, 2002, at the request of FBI Director Robert Mueller, Attorney General Ashcroft imposed a gag order on Ms. Edmonds, citing possible damage to diplomatic relations or national security. Edmonds is a key witness in a pending class-action suit filed by 9/11 families against the government. The following interview, conducted this past weekend for almost three hours by telephone, reveals sordid new details about U.S. intelligence practices.

Christopher Deliso: Sibel, first of all, thanks very much for speaking with us today. I'm delighted to have this chance to speak with someone of your experience and bravery in the face of governmental opposition and intimidation.

Sibel Edmonds: Well thanks very much for having me.

CD: Despite your media prominence, I don't think readers know so much about you. So can you tell us a bit about yourself? Are you from Turkey? Or just of Turkish descent?

SE: No, I am from Turkey originally.

CD: But you speak excellent English – and with an American accent too. That's why I thought maybe you were just of Turkish descent. So, how long were you in Turkey before coming to the U.S.?

SE: I had a pretty interesting upbringing. I was actually born in Iran, where I lived until I was two and a half. Then I lived in Turkey till I was 5, then back in Iran till I was 11. And then in Turkey again until I was 18.

CD: That's quite a lot of moving. Why did you come and go so much?

SE: My father is Azerbaijani. He was a doctor during the Shah regime. After the revolution, they kept useful foreigners like him. During the Iran-Iraq war, he was taken to the front lines, and we weren't allowed to leave the country.

CD: Wow! And when did you come to America?

SE: Actually, I came as a student in 1988. My idea was to study for three or four years and then go back to Turkey. But I guess you can't plan life in advance – in my third year I met my future husband and ended up staying.

CD: What drew you to eventually work for the FBI?

SE: Well, I actually studied criminal justice with a major in psychology at George Washington University. When I was finishing in 1997-98, I decided to apply for any kind of a job that would give me hands-on experience in criminal justice. I worked for the Alexandria [Va.] Juvenile Court, working with kids from a deprived background or who had been sexually abused or involved with drugs, etc. At that time I also thought I would apply with the FBI for a similar, hands-on job.

CD: As a linguist?

SE: No, actually I just applied for a general position. It was only after they'd seen all my qualifications and background that they said they were interested in my linguistic abilities.

CD: Now I know you speak Turkish – but what else?

SE: Because of my time in Iran, I also know Farsi. And Azerbaijani.

CD: Which is fairly close to Turkish.

SE: Yes, a Turkic language.

CD: So what did you do next? The FBI?

SE: Well, no, the process actually took a very long time. There was the linguistic proficiency test, forms to fill out, urine and blood samples and polygraph tests – the whole works. Then they said they'd need to do background checks, which would take anywhere from nine to 15 months, and finally they would call me to let me know about my application. And that was the last I heard from them for two or three years.

CD: Huh? What happened?

SE: Well I just went on with my life. I did other things. Sheerly out of curiosity, one day in January or February of 2001 I called the FBI up to see what had happened. They put me on hold, checked certain things, then came back on the line, and apologized profusely. Apparently, my application – along with 150 others – had been lost or had disappeared during the past couple years.

CD: Maybe that should have been a warning right there about their incompetence. So the files just disappeared from FBI headquarters?

SE: Actually, it was not headquarters we're talking about, it was the Tyson's Corner office where I'd taken the exam. Apparently they had moved within the same office complex, and maybe the files were lost then. Anyway, they were very apologetic and nice about it.

CD: So you had to apply all over again?

SE: No, they found some information about me remaining on one of their computers. And they promised they would speed up the background check process. But I told them, "look, I can't work for you now," because after all, my life had moved on at that point. Nevertheless they said they would get back to me later.

And so on September 14, 2001, I got a call asking how soon I could start work in their Washington field office. At the time I got their call, I was studying full-time and also working a part-time job. But in the wake of 9/11, with the government on television almost begging for qualified personnel, it was almost like – like duty calling, you know? So I went and met with them. When I explained my situation and other responsibilities they tried to be very flexible, saying I could work whatever hours I wanted, nights, weekends, whatever. That's how desperate they were for qualified translators. I got a job as a "contract" translator, which allowed more flexibility than if they hired me full-time.

CD: And you worked for them until March 2002, when you were fired for being a whistleblower, correct?

SE: Yes.

CD: And how did they handle that? Did you get some notice, or reason for your dismissal?

SE: No. I was literally thrown out of the building. They even didn't give me time to take all my family photos and personal items from my desk. I'm 5 foot 4 and 100 pounds, and you had all these big burly guys forcibly taking me out of the building. It was absurd.

CD: Did they threaten you in any way?

SE: Yes. This guy, one of my superiors, tried to act tough and threatened me that if I said anything to the press, the congress or even a lawyer, "the next time I see you will be in jail." I replied, "well, I maybe in jail, but I won't be the one behind bars."

CD: Wow. That's pretty brave.

SE: [Laughing] This is why one of the top guys, I am not sure whether it was the same guy, later called me a "nightmare."

CD: After they threw you out on the street, did they keep up the pressure?

SE: It was the worst at the beginning but then they saw they could do nothing. Right before the 60 Minutes interview, for example, they threatened that I would go to jail if I talked to the media, a senator or attorney. But that was all hot air.

The strangest thing was when the Turkish government issued an arrest warrant for my middle sister. I have the translated version, allegedly she was to be arrested for "high-level national security matters." Come on! My middle sister worked for KLM Airlines. She didn't even read newspapers – the most apolitical person I know.

Working Conditions in the FBI Translation Department

CD: So what hours did you end up working?

SE: I usually worked about four days a week, generally from 5 to 11 p.m. Basically 20 to 25 hours a week.

CD: Can you describe what your working conditions were like? For example, what was your office like? How many people were you working with?

SE: The FBI's Washington translation center is located about three blocks from headquarters, and is the largest and most important one of its kind in the country. They don't have centers like that in the L.A. or New York offices, for example. So this gigantic department is basically a connected room containing 200 to 250 translators, all working side by side, at very close quarters.

CD: What, in government-issue cubicles?

SE: Not even – maybe half cubicles. I mean, your shoulders were touching those of the translator next to you. It was that tight.

CD: What languages were covered in this office?

SE: Oh, a lot of languages. Certain departments had 25 to 30 translators. Some only had two. It was based on the perceived importance of the language in question.

CD: So you were put in to translate documents related to the war on terror, from Turkish into English, right?

SE: Yes, Turkish and the other two languages I spoke. For one of these I was the first formal person for one of them that they had, but I can't say which one.

Now the FBI has two kinds of translators – "linguists" and "monitors." The first are more highly qualified, can do the whole range of translating whether it be from documents, audio, verbatim, detainee interviews, etc. The latter, because their proficiency levels were lower in either English or the target language, and because they had obtained lower scores in one of the two exams, had a more limited role. For example, they weren't allowed to do verbatim translations, but more like summaries.

CD: Something like a general overview of a document, to judge whether it would require a closer look by someone better qualified?

SE: Exactly. A summary that a more qualified linguist could then translate verbatim if it contained important information.

CD: So you were in the first category, a full linguist?

SE: For Turkish and Azerbaijani I was, yes. But since I hadn't been practicing Farsi for practically 25 years, I was just allowed to be a monitor in that language. I passed all the FBI exams in written Farsi, but not all for speaking. So I didn't do, say, live interviews.

CD: Whom did you work with? Only fellow translators, or did you work with special agents from the field?

SE: Most of our immediate supervisors were former translators who became bureaucrats. They handled things like time sheets, insurance, and making travel arrangements for us when we would have to travel. But yes, I did work on a daily basis with special agents.

CD: From where? Washington or other places too?

SE: Well, the one special agent I worked with most frequently was from the local office, but also there were agents from FBI offices all over the country. They flooded us with urgent translation requests, especially dealing with assignments and investigations begun before 9/11, and connected with 9/11, but that had been neglected before. Close to 75 percent of my assignments then had to do with pre-9/11 intelligence.

CD: Did you get called out for special assignments in other cities?

SE: Yes, I went to other cities, for example to perform translations for detainees who did not speak English. Let's say an agent in Chicago has a detainee suspected of terrorist involvement, they need to know if he should be kept or released. If he doesn't speak much English it can be hard to know. So you need translators.

The Critical Importance of Translators

CD: People have disparaged the job and position as being "low-level." But from this, it sounds like very important work. Did you ever feel the agents were depending on you?

SE: Well, just think about it: if they don't know the language, they are not in a position to make decisions. You are. You're going through thousands of pieces of evidence, and have to decide which ones to do verbatim, which ones to summarize, which ones to throw away as being irrelevant. I mean, a transcript about someone's sex life is not particularly useful. But there might be important clues hidden in some at first glance not very interesting text. So the translator has to sift out what's important, before the analysts and agents even see it.

CD: So you're saying that you would see all of the raw data first, and then decide what to do with it and who would see it?

SE: Correct.

CD: And that they [the agents] don't have any way of knowing if you're telling the truth or giving them the right translation?

SE: Correct.

CD: So more or less, the agents are at the mercy of the translator?

SE: Correct. While the FBI's internal procedures say that a second translator should always take a look at every text, to prevent any faulty translations from occurring, that never happens.

CD: Really? Why not?

SE: Well, a lot of the translators would find that offensive, you know, the idea that someone might think they're not good enough and need to be babysat in their translating. It could end up in a fistfight.

The whole place is like that. It's like the Twilight Zone in there – you have to keep the Pakistani translators on one side of the room and the Indians on the other, or they will come to blows. You have to keep the Hebrew translators separated from the Arabic ones, and so on. It's so unprofessional it's ridiculous. Most of the time people spend trying to dig up dirt on one another. Really.

CD: From this, I gather that most of the FBI's translators are foreign-born?

SE: As far as I saw, yes, everyone was a naturalized citizen. And I understand that some of these guys had only been in the country for, like, four or five years. So they can't have been able to do really detailed background checks on all of them.

CD: But back to your working relationship with the field agents. Did you have to do anything else to bring them up to speed on the situation in question, or just translate the documents?

SE: For the record, I have to say that most of these agents were really, really good and they did their best despite all the nonsense and bureaucratic obstructions. But they can't be expected to be really successful if they don't have the right background. There was this one guy I worked with, he had formerly done the drug beat in L.A. and then was transferred to counter-intelligence. He was a great agent, but since he didn't have the right political and cultural background, he couldn't understand the translated texts in their proper context. And you also have to be up-to-date [on developments taking place in the country where the target language is spoken]. So I had to give him little notes explaining what it all meant.

CD: That does not sound very auspicious.

SE: It's so funny. You would think that that was supposed to be the job of the analysts. That the information would go first from the translators then to the analysts for color commentary, then finally to the agents to be acted on.

But no. You translate it, give it to the agent and if he decides it's important, he will send it to the analysts – maybe seven or eight days later!

CD: That said, what was the general modus operandi of your translations department? I mean, what percent of translators were both translating well and keeping their agents as informed as you were?

SE: A very few translators worked like I did – basically, the few people who actually cared. But also, note that the majority of agents didn't even realize they needed to understand more than the raw translated text to know what they should do next. So, a lot of times very important information was overlooked, simply because no one recognized its significance.

CD: Aside from these frustrations and letdowns, were there any cases in which you felt some of your work produced a clearly positive result through the actions of those you informed?

SE: Yes. Certain investigations I contributed to as a translator were successfully concluded by our agents. On one occasion, the intelligence agency of a certain foreign country sent a commendation letter to the agent I was partnered with, because they had taken an action based on information he had provided them – information which ultimately derived from me.

Incompetence, Corruption and Cover-ups: The Kevin Taskasen Affair

CD: In your October 25 2002 interview with 60 Minutes, "Lost in Translation," you charged the FBI with incompetence and greed – and also of allowing infiltration by foreign intelligence outfits. Some of these charges have also been substantiated by other sources, both congressional and from inside the bureau. For example, there's the Guantanamo Bay Turkish-English translator who actually didn't know either language very well, Kevin Taskasen, I believe? And he worked with you at some point?

SE: Correct.

CD: And also, your bosses told you to work more slowly, in some cases not at all, so that the department's seemingly huge workload would mean more funding the next year, right?

SE: Correct.

CD: Can you provide any more details on these subjects?

SE: Well, as for Kevin – he was this poor little guy who was very nice, his only fault as a translator being that he, well, didn't speak English.

CD: Really! Where was he from? How did he get that job, anyway?

SE: Kevin was from Turkey. He had met an American woman there, married her, and moved to America. But his lower-elementary-school-level English was only enough to get him a job as a busboy/dishwasher in a restaurant.

However, his wife worked in the languages testing center at FBI headquarters in Washington. Hers was the office that takes in the applications of aspiring translators and schedule language proficiency tests.

CD: So in other words, she used her connections to get him a job in the FBI, even though he wasn't qualified?

SE: Correct. There was an Arabic language supervisor in our department, who had about seven or eight family members under his wing, working away in the Arabic language section even though several of them weren't qualified, hadn't passed the proficiency test in either English or Arabic…

CD: So they made a bargain?

SE: Yes, he had made a deal with this woman, Kevin's wife. She had approved all of his extended family members to work for the FBI translations center, and so she then asked to do the same with her poor husband. And I can't really blame him at all, he was just a nice guy who dreamed of opening his own restaurant. But that's not likely to happen when you're working as a busboy for $6.50 an hour.

CD: How much do they pay in the translating department that he was hired to?

SE: The average is $40 an hour.

CD: So basically, what you had was a nudge-nudge wink-wink thing going on between the woman in the application office and the head honcho in the translation center.

SE: Correct. In light of what she'd done for him, the deal was that he [the Arabic supervisor] would turn a blind eye to her poor husband's incompetence for 3 years. He agreed and in October 2001 it started. Again, I can't blame Kevin. He would be coming to me every five minutes asking, "What does this word mean?" He was really trying, but he was struggling because he just didn't know English well enough. So I ended up having to do his work for him too.

CD: How long did this go on for? Did you alert your supervisors?

SE: Yes. I went to them and asked, "what is he doing here?" But nothing was done and only a few months later, in February of 2002, he was given a TDY [travel assignment] – to translate the testimony of Turkic-speaking detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

When told of this assignment, Kevin stood in front of all the other translators. He was crying, and said, "I can't do it, I just can't." I told him to go to the boss – and just say no, if he didn't feel capable. But he didn't.

CD: Come on! One would think that for the marquis interrogation center in the war on terror, the government would send only the best and brightest. Why did they even think of sending him?

SE: Aside from sending Kevin, the FBI had only two options, neither of them good for them. They could send me, as I was the only qualified Turkish linguist, but this raised a red flag considering that I had already started to make a fuss about how the game was being played. Their other choice was to humbly ask the NSA or DIA or another agency to borrow a Turkish-language translator. But they couldn't do this because there is all this intra-agency competition. None of them would ever let it look like their people weren't as good as the other agencies'. So it was partly a matter of pride.

CD: Do you know what happened to Kevin in Guantanamo?

SE: He didn't come back till mid-April [2002]. But surely while there he had heard information he wasn't able to convey properly in English. Maybe clues about 9/11, or about future terrorist attacks in the works. Or maybe information proving that some detainees had been wrongfully imprisoned.

That's another thing. What if a military detainee is on trial? You have to, you simply have to double-check the translations that are being used as evidence against the detainee. After all, you might be sending someone to his death based on faulty evidence! But all too often, they just put the stamp of approval on anything that says "FBI translation," because that is supposed to indicate automatically a certain unassailable level of quality.

CD: After coming back, and after the story broke proving he wasn't a qualified translator, what happened then? Did he get fired?

SE: No. After all that, he is back in Washington D.C., and is the head of the Turkish department in the FBI translations center. As far as I know, he is the only Turkish-speaking translator there now. Even after all this.

CD: Good God! One translator – and an incompetent one at that! Isn't that a national security liability?

SE: Yes, but you have to look at it from their perspective. What if they let him go, and he starts talking about what he knows? Either way, it's about control. If they fire someone, they might either corroborate my story, or even release documents that could prove damning for the FBI … it works out to be more of a liability for them to fire someone than to keep them in the office, where they can continue to compromise our national security.

Criminal Infiltration: The Mysterious "Semi-Legitimate Organizations"

CD: In a fascinating recent interview with Breakfornews.com, you say that with the synoptic view you acquired at the FBI, the "picture" of non-state organized crime linked with state institutions becomes "crystal clear." For the benefit of our readers, let me just re-quote one of your statements:

"[Y]ou have [a] network of people who obtain certain information and they take it out and sell it to … whomever would be the highest bidder. Then you have people who would be bringing into the country narcotics from the East, and their connections. [it] is only then that you really see the big picture."

At several points you state that such organized crime networks employ "semi-legitimate organizations" as their point of interface with governments and the "legit" world. Can you explain exactly what you mean?

SE: These are organizations that might have a legitimate front – say as a business, or a cultural center or something. And we've also heard a lot about Islamic charities as fronts for terrorist organizations, but the range is much broader and even, simpler.

CD: For example?

SE: You might have an organization supposed to be promoting the cultural affairs of a certain country within another country. Hypothetically, say, an Uzbek folklore society based in Germany. The stated purpose would be to hold folklore-related activities – and they might even do that – but the real activities taking place behind the scenes are criminal.

CD: Such as?

SE: Everything – from drugs to money laundering to arms sales. And yes, there are certain convergences with all these activities and international terrorism.

CD: So with these organizations we're talking about a lot of money –

SE: Huge, just massive. They don't deal with 1 million or 5 million dollars, but with hundreds of millions.

CD: From your previous testimony and the examples I want to bring up next, it would seem that organized crime with terrorist links is really holding the reins inside powerful governments, even the American one. No?

SE: That may be, but I don't know. I didn't get high enough up on the ladder to find out. With all of this suspicious and unprecedented "state secrets" obstructionism from Ashcroft, it might seem that way, but I don't have any direct information.

CD: But what do think, within departments such as the Pentagon and the State Department. Do you suspect certain high officials may be profiting from terrorist-linked organized crime?

SE: I can't say anything specific with regards to these departments, because I didn't work for them. But as for the politicians, what I can say is that when you start talking about huge amounts of money, certain elected officials become automatically involved. And there are different kinds of campaign contributions – legal and illegal, declared and undeclared.

CD: Could this apparent toleration of dangerous criminal groups in the midst possibly be interpreted to mean that American policy is driven by the "ends justify the means" philosophy?

SE: But how are the ends possibly met by such activities? To this day, I just can't see how. What is happening does not benefit 99.9 percent of Americans – just a very small elite.

I'm no expert, but from what I have personally seen I can say that our national security is being compromised every day, because important investigations are being stopped, and potentially important clues are being overlooked. It's absolutely incredible that even after 9/11, certain individuals, foreign businessmen and others, among others, are still escaping scrutiny.

Okay, perhaps talking about the pre-9/11 world they could get away with saying "we didn't know," but to continue doing so – I mean, what if we are attacked by nuclear or chemical weapons, what will be their next excuse? That "we didn't know" it could happen? Come on! I can prove they are lying, because they know.

The Jan Dickerson Affair: A Brief History

CD: Right. So let's discuss your specific experiences of criminal infiltration in the FBI, for example when one of your co-workers, Jan [originally "Can"] Dickerson, and her husband tried to recruit you into a criminal network that had infiltrated high levels of the U.S. government.

SE: Alright, sure.

CD: As I understand it, Jan Dickerson was also trying to protect one criminal associate – a Turkish-speaking suspect of an FBI investigation – by blocking translations referring to him. Yes?

SE: Correct.

CD: And this was an official working out of the Turkish Embassy in Washington –

SE: No, that part is not correct. I cannot talk about the position or the job of this person –

CD: But in the other media stories about your case, he was identified as –

SE: Yes, I know. The term "official" was used in the senators' memos from their [summer 2002] meetings with the FBI, and so then when cited by the media it became automatically assumed that he was government – but since this individual has never been named, I can only describe him as working on behalf of a "semi-legitimate" organization.

CD: Okay, so tell us about Jan Dickerson, and that experience.

SE: Well, I have to be somewhat general about this, but based on unclassified sources alone you can get a pretty good idea. Melek Can Dickerson was a Turkish woman –

CD: Originally from Turkey, like you?

SE: Yes, from Turkey, and she met her husband there, Douglas – Major Douglas Dickerson, that is. He was in the U.S. Air Force, stationed in Ankara. They met in 1991 and stayed in Turkey till 1994 or 1995. Then they went to Germany, where he was stationed after, for two or three years. And then they came to the U.S. in 1999.

CD: But first, regarding Turkey: do you know what Dickerson's function was there in the USAF?

SE: He was involved with weapons procurement for various Central Asian and Middle Eastern governments from the United States.

CD: Yo! Do you mean he was procuring weapons on an intra-governmental basis, or something else?

SE: Yes, from the U.S. government for these other governments. I assume it was all legal and part of his job.

CD: Okay, but in the process he could have built up contacts and connections with various unsavory characters in regional governments and in the arms trade –

SE: He could have, but I don't know.

CD: Anyway, what kind of countries are we talking about here?

SE: Oh… I don't know all of them exactly, but I guess these would be countries like Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan –

CD: All of our favorites –

SE: [Laughter] Yes, right, countries like these and some Middle Eastern countries.

CD: And what about after Turkey? When they went to Germany?

SE: Well, he was stationed there, and while in Germany, Jan Dickerson started working for this semi-legitimate organization whose members, much later, were being investigated by the FBI, when I was working there.

CD: Fascinating, And this criminal group that the Dickersons were involved in, what kind of countries did it have connections with and where were its members from?

SE: Oh, that varied. Members came from all over; when you're dealing with those huge amounts of money you get people from everywhere.

CD: Americans?

SE: Of course. But also from Europe, Central Asia, etc. And this organization had branches throughout these places, in the U.S., Germany, and several other countries.

The Fateful Visit

CD: Now let's fast-forward to November 2001, when Jan Dickerson joined you at the FBI. What were her duties?

SE: She was a "monitor," the second type of translator, because she didn't have the scores on one of her two language proficiency exams. As a monitor she was supposed to make general summary translations, not verbatim.

CD: Did you have any idea at the time about her suspect allegiances?

SE: I had no idea at first. It was only after some suspicious behavior and then her and her husband's unannounced visit to our house that everything became clear.

One day in December [2001], my husband and I were at our home in Alexandria, Va., when the doorbell rang. It was Jan and Doug Dickerson. They also lived in Alexandria, so I didn't think of it as suspicious at first. I think the point for her was to introduce her husband to mine. We invited them in for coffee, and –

CD: She started trying to recruit you for their illegal activities?

SE: No, actually she herself did not. It was the husband who started talking about this semi-legitimate organization: "Hey, have you ever heard of this group?" he said, casually mentioning this organization to my husband. He replied, "Yeah, I know about them." And I started sweating, because I knew this organization was under FBI investigation, and I was by law not allowed to discuss anything about it with my husband.

CD: But, for your husband to have heard of it, it had to have been a group that was well known to the public as something fairly innocuous, right?

SE: Yes, as I said, a legitimate front. And Dickerson asked my husband if he'd ever thought of joining the organization.

CD: So there was something socially desirable about belonging in this group?

SE: Correct. And so my husband was kind of surprised, you know, because this wasn't the sort of group just anyone could belong to. "But I thought you had to be such and such a person, with such and such connections and references to get in," my husband was saying.

And then Major Douglas Dickerson smiled and pointed at me. "All you have to do is tell them where your wife works and what she does, and they will let you in like that," he said [snapping his fingers]. They wanted to sell me for the information I could provide, basically.

CD: What did you take this to mean? You would have to hand over classified FBI information –

SE: Correct. The information I could give these people would be worth a lot of money.

CD: And what would you get out of it?

SE: Well, money, and we could leave the country, you know, live a very comfortable life wherever we wanted. We would never have to work again, they promised.

CD: So what did you do then, with him propositioning your husband right in front of you?

SE: I tried to change the subject, because anything I might say on the subject would have been against the law, considering the ongoing investigation.

CD: When you went back to work, did you bring the matter up?

SE: I reported it two days later to my direct supervisor, a former Arabic translator. He told me he would file it immediately with the security department. This was in December 2001. When nothing happened, I pursued the matter with a special agent who had also been getting suspicious about some of Jan Dickerson's translations. When we finally got through to the security department, they said they'd never been notified in the first place about my complaint. I have all of the dated documents, emails, etc., still to prove it.

CD: Did Dickerson's protection of the suspects, and their larger infiltration of the American security apparatus, did these things have a deleterious effect on bureau investigations?

SE: As a result of their penetration, certain people who had been detained were released – people who had valuable information. And other targets of this investigation, key people, were allowed to flee the country, right up through January and February of 2002.

CD: These were foreign nationals based in the United States?

SE: Correct.

CD: Did you have any awareness of this exodus?

SE: I reported some of the suspects' names higher up as I came across them in our investigation. And you know what? Within two weeks, they had all left the country. Just vanished.

The Great Escape

CD: So what happened after? As far as I know, Jan Dickerson has quit the FBI and re-located to Belgium. Was she forced out when your story broke? Did she flee? And is her husband still in the Air Force?

SE: I assume that at the time of that conversation in our house, in December 2001, Douglas Dickerson was in the USAF because finally in August of the next year, the USAF held a formal investigation and confirmed this. This was a major violation of his high-level security clearance. By law he is required to report it if his wife or family members are involved with illegal activities.

Mysteriously enough, only two weeks after the formal Air Force investigation began, they both left the country, on September 9, 2002.

CD: Why did the government just let them escape?

SE: Well, after my case began in June 2002, the judge subpoenaed them and ordered the DOJ not to let them leave the country. But the Air Force gave them a free pass – by sending Major Dickerson off to Belgium to work something with NATO, a minimum two-year assignment.

CD: With NATO? Doing what?

SE: I don't know exactly, just that it was with NATO. So before leaving, a pretty angry Doug Dickerson had to make a declaration under oath that if he was requested by the court at any time he would return, and the FBI would pay for his flight.

CD: So there is still a chance that they will face justice someday?

SE: Well, we discovered that the Dickerson's also had bank accounts in several countries, some of which didn't have the appropriate extradition treaties with the U.S. … so I don't think so, no, I don't think it's likely. They're gone.

But the really outrageous thing is that, for the whole month we were subpoenaing them, starting in June 2002, Jan Dickerson was still working away in the FBI translations department, with her top-security clearance. This even though the FBI had simultaneously admitted to a congressional committee that not only had Jan Dickerson worked for this suspect organization in the past, but that she had maintained ongoing relationships with at least two individuals under investigation.

But How Could She Have Been Hired?

CD: Why was she allowed to stay, and keep her security clearance? Were they trying to protect someone higher up?

SE: I don't know. Is it possible? Yes. But I just don't know.

But at the unclassified meeting between the senators and FBI being held then, the former were in utter disbelief when the FBI admitted Jan Dickerson had been working for this semi-legitimate organization since long before she joined the bureau. "But how!?" asked the senators. You know what their answer was? "Well, she didn't write down any previous employers on her application."

CD: What? None?

SE: Correct. She didn't just neglect to mention that job, aside from others she put down. She just left the whole box blank! As if she had never worked a day in her life!

CD: And the FBI hired her? You can't even get a job in a bar without listing previous employers!

SE: Look, it took me a year and a half to get my background check performed. And that after filling out the complete application – at the bottom of which it states that failure to fill out the form correctly will result in a cash fine and jail term for perjury. A federal crime. So based on that alone, even aside from her other activities, Jan Dickerson should have been prosecuted!

CD: But instead she was hired – and kept on even after things heated up. There's something very, very suspicious about all this, especially considering the way Kevin Taskasen was hired. Do you believe another official on the inside, part of that crime ring, brought her in?

SE: I recently met with a reliable source who confirmed that Melek Can Dickerson was hired and granted TSC [top security clearance] without having to go through a background check/investigation, and that in light of [infamous FBI double-agent Robert] Hanssen the bureau is doing all it can to keep it quiet. Still, I have plenty of unanswered questions: why? By whom?

CD: That indeed seems to be the underlying question here. Did the FBI have anything else to say under this senatorial scrutiny?

SE: They made the quite pertinent point that she [Jan Dickerson] had failed to disclose her previous associations with the suspect organization. A shocked senator said, "If you gave her top security clearance, how could she not have been made to disclose [this information]?"

You know how they [the FBI] replied? "A lack of good training" was behind Dickerson's failure to properly disclose her various relationships.

CD: That's incredible. What was the reaction from the senators?

SE: They were persistent, mentioning that beyond that, hadn't she blocked pertinent information [in translations]? The FBI replied, "Oh, well, we've confirmed this in two or three cases."

Actually, there were hundreds of cases from November 2001 to February 2002 in which she obstructed investigations with her translations – or lack thereof.

CD: Right, how exactly would she do this?

SE: Well, as a monitor, she was supposed to give general translations – or not – and if not the document could be marked "not pertinent," and basically never be seen again.

In those few months, she managed to mark every file that mentioned this, these targets, [the Turkish suspect] as "not pertinent." Hundreds of files. Finally, this special agent working on the case got suspicious, and he tasked me with re-translating all of these documents.

CD: So how did that go? Did you find any damning information?

SE: Oh, yes. There was content that directly linked the suspects with the group under investigation.

CD: How many documents did you translate?

SE: Out of the pile of hundreds, I only got to 17 pieces before I was suddenly terminated.

CD: Can you tell us how long the FBI had been investigating these targets by the time you started working for them?

SE: A long time. There's really no time limit with the big criminal and counter-intelligence investigations, versus the counter-terrorism ones. These are investigations we'd never do anything about –

CD: Why?

SE: [Laughing] Because it would hurt certain foreign relations abroad, of course … and they don't want that. So even after 3,000 people lost their lives on 9/11, those behind these very lucrative illegal activities get a free pass. And they refuse to continue important investigations because of certain diplomatic relations that 99.9 percent of Americans gain no benefits from.

How the FBI Seduces Dissenters

CD: Sibel, I know you made a lot of complaints about several other examples of corruption and incompetence beyond the ones we have time to discuss. Can you just explain a little about how your superiors received your complaints?

SE: Sure. They used what we call the "hooking" procedure. When I first reported some of these translations failures and stalling tactics in December 2001 to my superiors, my mid-level manager said to me, "Now, Sibel, I understand you've been taking on a lot of coursework at your university. Why not take advantage of our workplace opportunities?"

When I asked him what he meant, this boss suggested that I could "bring my school bag" to work on Saturdays and Sundays, and just study. No work. I wouldn't even have to turn on my computer. He told me that I should then put myself down as having worked all those hours on the time sheet, so that, you know, I would be making something like $700 in a weekend – specifically for not working!

CD: Incredible.

SE: And this is what they say when you file a complaint.

CD: So is that the extent of how they tried to appease you and forestall complaints, or do you have other examples?

SE: That's funny, there is another really amazing example. They would come to me and say, "Sibel, we understand you've been going back to Turkey a couple of times a year to visit family. Before you go the next time, just let us know. We'll make it a TDY" [paid travel]. And all I'd have to do is stop off in some liaison office in Ankara a couple times, make my little appearance, and suddenly all my flights, hotels and expenses would be paid for by the FBI. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

CD: An offer you couldn't refuse, huh? I imagine most people in your position would take it.

SE: Oh, so many people will go for it … but if you do, then they [the FBI] can use it against you. Maybe discover irregularities in your expenses at some later date, "forged" documents, or else just hold it over your head. They love to do things like that to hold you in their power.

On another occasion when I complained about working conditions and practices, they actually offered to hire and train me as SA, special agent! I still have a copy of that offer. I said, "I'm not here to ask for a promotion, I'm trying to make a complaint!" Then they would just change the topic. They would go to any length possible to avoid accountability.

The Current Situation: Ashcroft's Obstructionism and a Legal Battle

CD: Sibel, I know you are eager to speak about the lawsuit you have filed against the Department of Justice, and John Ashcroft's questionable use of the "State Secrets Act" to place a gag order on you. Can you give us some background on this legal battle, and the current state of play?

SE: My case originally began in June of 2002, when I filed a First Amendment and Privacy lawsuit against the Department of Justice. In two unclassified meetings in June and July, eight people from two senators met with three FBI officials, including Margaret Gullota, who is still in charge of the FBI languages department. At these meetings, the FBI admitted that all of my charges were accurate. The memos taken down by Senators Grassley and Leahy, two very senior senators, confirmed this. That's very damning for [the FBI].

CD: I understand that Ashcroft's current restrictive tactics have revolved around this concept of classified versus unclassified meetings. Can you please distinguish precisely what is meant by each term?

SE: A classified meeting must be held in a secure room known as a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility), you know, a room swept for bugs, checked for wiretaps, and everyone in there has to have top security clearance. But this wasn't the case in June and July 2002. They didn't follow any of these procedures in the meetings with the senators, because they were never requested to be classified by the FBI in the first place. So now all they can say is, "Whoops, those meetings should have been classified," and thus try to classify them after the fact.

CD: So how has the case gotten to this point? Has there been no progress at all?

SE: From the beginning, there has been zero activity. Four times I was given a hearing date, and four times it was cancelled without explanation.

However, the big law firm Motley Rice subpoenaed me in April of this year, as part of their lawsuit on behalf of family members of the 9/11 victims. Motley Rice wanted copies of all the memos those senators had written during that unclassified meetings in 2002. But as soon as they even listed some of the questions they were planning to ask me, it was suddenly "state secrets" time.

John Ashcroft – you can expect anything from that man – has now broken the law in trying to silence me. I have been speaking out for over two years, but only now is he saying "everything about Sibel Edmonds is classified." It's ridiculous.

CD: But by demanding all the information be dug up and reburied, isn't the DOJ actually bringing more attention to your cause?

SE: Exactly! That's just what it has done. These people are shooting themselves in the foot.

So, returning to the subpoena, I was scheduled to appear on April 27. Two days before, the DOJ started kicking and screaming to hold an emergency proceeding. This was the first time (on April 26) that I had the privilege of going before the judge President Bush had appointed, Reggie Walton. He was not the first judge who had been appointed to the case. Their tactic was to pass it around from judge to judge to make sure the case would never begin. Judge Walton has now sat on it for two years.

CD: But didn't the intervention of Motley Rice help at all? Did Judge Walton make a new hearing date for you?

SE: Well, on June 24 they filed an appeal. But, oh, my case is so messy and complicated. Judge Walton then set a hearing date for June 14, but of course he cancelled it two days later. Now he has said, and I can be verbally exact: "Tentatively, we will have a hearing on July 9, 2004." But it's not going to happen. They're going to drag this thing out. The judge has liberty to sit on it as long as he wants.

CD: But can't you file an appeal or complaint or anything to expedite the process?

SE: Well, yes you can file a complaint, but some in the legal community caution that this can actually backfire because the judge tends to grow more and more antagonistic if you do so.

CD: So basically, you have had no progress on this case.

Is the Tide Turning?

SE: Correct. We have had no progress. Except, now others are joining up. For the past two weeks, we have had new support from the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) and Citizen Watch.

CD: What have they been doing?

SE: The Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) has declared that Attorney General Ashcroft violated their regulations when he put the gag order on me and ordered everything to be re-classified. There are three criteria that need to be met for a gag order to take effect: one, that the order must come from the head of the Department of Justice; two, that the information in question must be reasonably recoverable; and three, that the head of the DOJ first obtain the official approval of the ISOO.

However, only the first of these criteria was met – Ashcroft did indeed give the order. But the second criterion was obviously impossible – so many websites, newspapers and TV had long ago published all of the material relating to my case. It was and is everywhere. There is nothing "reasonably recoverable" about it.

And as for the third criteria, let alone not get permission, Ashcroft didn't even bother to notify the ISOO that he was re-classifying the information related to me. He showed contempt for the regulations by going around them.

CD: So in other words, the Attorney General's actions were completely illegal?

SE: Correct. Because these three criteria were not met, the DOJ has actually violated its own rules!

CD: Do you have the support of any congressmen? I know that Senators Grassley and Leahy, in particular, have stepped up to bat for you.

SE: Well it's very interesting, even though this issue is starting to get major media interest, like the recent articles in The New Republic and New York Times, these two senators are still complying with an order from Ashcroft that is completely illegal.

CD: How exactly?

SE: They have removed texts from their official websites detailing the unclassified meeting they had with the FBI in 2002. We found out when the New York Times printed a leaked memo, on May 19 or 20, that senators were ordered the information had been re-classified.

CD: You have expressed a desire for "one brave senator" to take up your cause. But what can they actually do, if the DOJ and judges rule in favor of classification?

SE: You know what they can do? Any senator or congressman can tell the press everything I have to say.

CD: Really? Doesn't that violate whatever the restrictions are the DOJ is putting on you?

SE: I'm authorized under law to testify in secret, in a secure room [sCIF] before a congressman. But if that congressman believes that national security overrides secrecy, he can put my testimony out there. That's what happened with Daniel Ellsberg. Senator Gravel poured out everything he had said before the congress because it was in the interests of the country. These people like John Ashcroft are actually endangering our national security by destroying civil liberties with such things as the Patriot Act. They are just cowards. They lack guts.

CD: So, have you given up on the elected officials to stick up for you?

SE: No, I haven't given up. I hope that there is at least one person in the congress who will convey my testimony in public. But I'm really starting to believe that the best way to do it is through the press. I recently briefed Congress Waxman (CA), again gave him all the information, but nothing so far. I went back into the SCIF, a black hole into which all information disappears and never comes out. Boy, if only those walls could talk.

CD: Have you ever thought of Representative Ron Paul of Texas? He strikes me as someone who would be sympathetic to your plight.

SE: I know of him, and I have heard that an activist person has been sending his office all the details of my case, but I have not received any request from them.

CD: Is that the way it has to work?

SE: Yes, I have to receive an official request first in order to be interviewed.

FBI Reforms: Still on Hold

CD: Even though you haven't been working for the FBI for over two years, can you give us any updates on the present state of affairs there? Have your revelations shaken things up at all, regarding the way they do business?

SE: From the few contacts I still have, 'cause most of them have been cowed into silence by now, nothing has changed.

CD: Haven't they even attempted any reforms in the translations department?

SE: No.

CD: You said that poor Kevin Taskasen remains the only Turkish-language "translator" there. Given the vast importance of the Turkic languages in today's most important national security issues, why does the FBI put such a low priority on finding good Turkish translators?

SE: That I don't know. But I agree with you, it really doesn't make sense.

Future Plans and Final Thoughts

CD: Do you think you were naïve about what it would be like, working for the FBI in the post-9/11 world?

SE: The amount of sh*t you get exposed to on the inside strips you of any innocence you may have had. In an analogy, take the war on drugs. They say they're fighting drugs and keeping America safe by attacking the low-level dealers and addicts on the street – but leaving the big-time, well-connected dealers alone. That is just disgusting.

CD: What are you planning to do next in your life?

SE: I will start a Ph.D. in January, either in the subject of public policy with relation to transparency, or else conflict resolution analysis, regarding Central Asia and Turkey.

CD: Would you work for government again, after what you've been through?

SE: I'd rather be a watchdog – you know, someone who would push Congress to follow their duties and exercise some oversight. It's really incredible, when I asked a congressman's staff whether they have oversight, they say, "Well … we do, but we don't." When I asked what that meant, he said, "Well, we can make a statement, but the DOJ doesn't listen to us." Then don't say you have it, if you don't!

CD: Have you any plans to write a book about your experiences someday?

SE: Well, maybe someday, but not until all of these legal battles are finished and everything is done. But these past two years I've been staying away from anything that can even remotely be seen as cashing in – the old "oh, she's out to make a profit from this" type of accusation. It's very frustrating for the government that they haven't been able to smear my name.

CD: Aha!

SE: Yes, that's one of the first things they try. To dig up dirt. They have their own ways of doing it – to look into your background, check any arrest record, if you've lied somewhere, etc. But they haven't been able to do that in my case and it is very frustrating for them.

CD: If you win the suit, what will happen next? Will you speak openly about everything you know?

SE: Well, just winning the suit is not enough. As long as the Justice Department considers this information related to my case a "state secret," they will use everything they can to quash it. Even if the judge rules and says no state secrets privileges can be granted, the DOJ will still buy time by appealing. So this will most likely be a long and difficult battle.

CD: If your full testimony is heard by the public, who or what agencies are going to be in the biggest trouble?

SE: Well, as for agencies I guess the DOJ, FBI, State Department. But in a way these agencies get some kind of immunity when you charge them like this … I hate to see how a lot of agents get stigmatized in this. Most of the field agents I met in the FBI were good, honest and hardworking individuals. They were trying to do their best, but up against this ingrown bureaucracy – this is where you have the problem, as will as with certain elected officials.

CD: What are they so afraid of?

SE: They're afraid of information, of the truth coming out, and accountability – the whole accountability issue that will arise. But it's not as complicated as it might seem. If they were to allow the whole picture to emerge, it would just boil down to a whole lot of money and illegal activities.

CD: Hmm, well I know you can't name names, but can you tell me if any specific officials will suffer if your testimony comes out?

SE: Yes. Certain elected officials will stand trial and go to prison.

Stormig · February 26, 2005

Afghans Say No Evidence That Opium Fields Sprayed

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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AFGHANISTAN: February 10, 2005

KABUL - Afghan investigators sent to investigate fresh reports that opium fields had been aerially sprayed with pesticide in violation of official policy found no evidence that it had occurred, the government said on Wednesday.

Officials and villagers in the southern province of Helmand, a major poppy-growing area, said this week that several aircraft had sprayed pesticide on opium fields in four villages last Thursday, prompting the dispatch of Interior Ministry investigators.

"There was no evidence of aerial spraying for eradication of poppy," General Mohammad Dawood, the deputy minister of interior for counter narcotics, said in a statement.

"The MOI investigation team found that a naturally occurring disease affected those four villages in Helmand province."

Dawood did not identify the disease but described reports that spraying had happened as "propaganda" by enemies of Afghanistan who wanted to create misunderstandings between local people, the government and the international community.

The statement said about 150 residents of the province had complained that they were suffering from skin diseases and that livestock had been affected. It said the investigators had brought samples to Kabul for tests.

Government spokesman Jawed Ludin said on Tuesday that aerial spraying of opium fields had occurred in the past even though this was against government policy.

He said the United States, whose troops overthrew the former Taliban government in late 2001, scrapped plans to eradicate opium crops by aerial spraying after President Hamid Karzai declared his opposition to it last year.

Afghanistan's air space is tightly controlled by US-led forces, but the US military and government has repeatedly denied involvement in spraying of opium fields.

Wednesday's Interior Ministry statement came a day after the US embassy said there was "no credible evidence" that aerial spraying had taken place in Helmand.

US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has suggested in the past that such reports could have been concocted by drug lords to thwart international efforts to cut production of narcotics.

Karzai took his position after reports of a mystery spraying of opium fields in an eastern province last year.

The government has expressed concern that aggressive eradication would deprive farmers of their livelihoods and risk feeding the Islamic insurgency in the south where most opium is grown. It has expressed concern that spraying could harm health.

Afghanistan is the world's leading producer of opium and its derivative, heroin, and output soared to near record levels after the Taliban's overthrow. The United Nations says drug exports now account for more than 60 percent of the economy.

armjan · February 26, 2005

:huh:

I thought the CIA was responsible for spraying those fields.

Edited February 26, 2005 by armjan

Stormig · February 27, 2005

That is the point. It is being denied.

armjan · March 6, 2005

its kind of interesting, I have seen so many anti-us threads by ppl like storming, etc...

but i haven't seen threads on islamic fundementalism and the threat they pose to our (civilized world's) way of life.

some may respond by saying "well, we hold the U.S. accountable b/c they are supposed to know better", well yes, but if your intention is to address the troubles facing our current times and not just mouth off like Chirac then plz keep in mind & address the threats facing all of us.

it's amazing to me how some of you focus on the wrong part of the story. Wahabi's have declared/proclaimed for years to want to kill all of us, yet you go and mouth off on the ppl that are protecting your way of life. maybe u haven't realized what the word kill means.

and if u think that islamic fundementalism is only against the U.S., then plz visit or talk to any suni wahabi, and ask them what jihad means. it means to kill all of us who are not wahabis.

the way i c it, is pick a side and stay loyal to it. when pointing out injustices that have been perpetrated, please keep in mind the nature/tactics of our enemy and the circumstances under which the armed services are facing(urban warfare).

Edited March 6, 2005 by armjan

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