CIA: NO PROOF TORTURE STOPPED TERROR ATTACKS ON U.S.
"The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks"... That undercuts assertions by former vice president Dick Cheney..."
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66895.html
Sunday, April 26, 2009
TORTURE KILLED MORE AMERICANS THAN 9/11
"The use of torture by the US has proved so counter-productive that it may have led to the death of as many US soldiers as civilians killed in 9/11... says Major Matthew Alexander, who personally conducted 300 interrogations of prisoners in Iraq... In the case of foreign fighters – recruited mostly from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and North Africa – the reason cited by the great majority for coming to Iraq was what they had heard of the torture in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. These abuses, not fundamentalist Islam, had provoked so many of the foreign fighters volunteering to become suicide bombers... His overall message is that the American people do not have to make a choice between torture and terror."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/torture-it-probably-killed-more-americans-than-911-1674396.html
"The use of torture by the US has proved so counter-productive that it may have led to the death of as many US soldiers as civilians killed in 9/11... says Major Matthew Alexander, who personally conducted 300 interrogations of prisoners in Iraq... In the case of foreign fighters – recruited mostly from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and North Africa – the reason cited by the great majority for coming to Iraq was what they had heard of the torture in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. These abuses, not fundamentalist Islam, had provoked so many of the foreign fighters volunteering to become suicide bombers... His overall message is that the American people do not have to make a choice between torture and terror."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/torture-it-probably-killed-more-americans-than-911-1674396.html
Saturday, April 25, 2009
IRAQ BOMBINGS A WARNING TO U.S. AND IRAN
"... (a) wave of suicide killings... accounted for more than 250 lives this month... Many of the victims were Iranian pilgrims visiting Shiite shrines. Al Qaeda has not given up on Iraq... By targeting Shiites and Iranian pilgrims with (female) suicide bombers, Osama bin Laden is warning Tehran and Washington that their unfolding bid to bracket their resources together for ending the Afghanistan and Pakistan conflicts will precipitate fresh trouble not only in those arenas, but also in Iraq...
" (a) major change in Iraq has opened the door to al Qaeda's recovery. The 100,000 commanders and fighters of the Awakening Councils, the strong arm of the US surge strategy for crushing al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents, has dropped out of the war... after Shiite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered mass detentions of the Sunni-dominated force's members..."
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=6041
"... (a) wave of suicide killings... accounted for more than 250 lives this month... Many of the victims were Iranian pilgrims visiting Shiite shrines. Al Qaeda has not given up on Iraq... By targeting Shiites and Iranian pilgrims with (female) suicide bombers, Osama bin Laden is warning Tehran and Washington that their unfolding bid to bracket their resources together for ending the Afghanistan and Pakistan conflicts will precipitate fresh trouble not only in those arenas, but also in Iraq...
" (a) major change in Iraq has opened the door to al Qaeda's recovery. The 100,000 commanders and fighters of the Awakening Councils, the strong arm of the US surge strategy for crushing al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents, has dropped out of the war... after Shiite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered mass detentions of the Sunni-dominated force's members..."
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=6041
SADDAM GENERAL REBUFFS U.S. PLEA FOR HELP IN IRAQ
"American and British officials from a secretive unit called the Force Strategic Engagement Cell flew to Jordan to try to persuade one of Saddam Hussein’s top generals... to return home to resume efforts to make peace with the new Iraq. But the Iraqi commander, Lt. Gen. Raad Majid al-Hamdani, rebuffed them... he concluded that Iraq’s leader, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, simply was not interested in reconciliation... Maliki’s earlier effort to reunite the country was one of Washington’s primary benchmarks for measuring political progress in Iraq..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/world/middleeast/26baathists.html?_r=1&hp
"American and British officials from a secretive unit called the Force Strategic Engagement Cell flew to Jordan to try to persuade one of Saddam Hussein’s top generals... to return home to resume efforts to make peace with the new Iraq. But the Iraqi commander, Lt. Gen. Raad Majid al-Hamdani, rebuffed them... he concluded that Iraq’s leader, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, simply was not interested in reconciliation... Maliki’s earlier effort to reunite the country was one of Washington’s primary benchmarks for measuring political progress in Iraq..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/world/middleeast/26baathists.html?_r=1&hp
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
FALSE CONNECTION BETWEEN AL-QAEDA AND SADDAM CAME FROM TORTURE
Legal opinion later concocted to justify it
"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not being successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Army psychiatrist Maj. Paul Burney is quoted in the Senate report as saying about Guantánamo. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link ... there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."
"... The Justice Department opinion condoning abusive interrogations did not come out until August, eight months after the Bush administration started putting the program together and presumably well after... torture had begun."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/04/22/benjamin/index.html
Legal opinion later concocted to justify it
"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not being successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Army psychiatrist Maj. Paul Burney is quoted in the Senate report as saying about Guantánamo. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link ... there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."
"... The Justice Department opinion condoning abusive interrogations did not come out until August, eight months after the Bush administration started putting the program together and presumably well after... torture had begun."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/04/22/benjamin/index.html
Saturday, April 18, 2009
AL-QAEDA BOMBINGS WILL NOT DELAY U.S. WITHDRAWAL
"An Iraqi official... said the bombings would not derail the phased withdrawal of American troops... "It would be good for Al-Qaeda if US forces stayed in Iraq, because they could justify their kidnappings, bombings and killings," he told AFP..."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jx2-KUEQZxdMnueKlUPlqW6Zgnmw
"An Iraqi official... said the bombings would not derail the phased withdrawal of American troops... "It would be good for Al-Qaeda if US forces stayed in Iraq, because they could justify their kidnappings, bombings and killings," he told AFP..."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jx2-KUEQZxdMnueKlUPlqW6Zgnmw
Thursday, April 16, 2009
U.S. AIR RAID DEATHS ARE 85% WOMEN AND CHILDREN
"... Iraq Body Count (IBC) found that 39 per cent of those killed in air raids by the US-led coalition were children and 46 per cent were women. Fatalities caused by mortars, used by American and Iraqi government forces as well as insurgents, were 42 per cent children and 44 per cent women... The report, 'The Weapons That Kill Civilians, Deaths of Children and Noncombatants in Iraq', was compiled from a sample of 60,481 deaths in 14,196 events over a five-year period since the 2003 invasion. Civilian casualties from concentrated bouts of violence, such as the two sieges of Fallujah, were excluded..."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraq-air-raids-hit-mostly-women-and-children-1669282.html
"... Iraq Body Count (IBC) found that 39 per cent of those killed in air raids by the US-led coalition were children and 46 per cent were women. Fatalities caused by mortars, used by American and Iraqi government forces as well as insurgents, were 42 per cent children and 44 per cent women... The report, 'The Weapons That Kill Civilians, Deaths of Children and Noncombatants in Iraq', was compiled from a sample of 60,481 deaths in 14,196 events over a five-year period since the 2003 invasion. Civilian casualties from concentrated bouts of violence, such as the two sieges of Fallujah, were excluded..."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraq-air-raids-hit-mostly-women-and-children-1669282.html