US AND THEM: US, UN & Iraq, version 8.0

1. What is coming home to roost for us now is the result of a continuation of operational method which American administrations, Republican and Democrat, have followed since the end of the Second World War. Whether it was Kennedy complicit in the assassination of Diem in order to erect a puppet regime, or Rummy with his best ****-eatin' grin shaking Hussein's hand, the MO has been the same for fifty years. But as the street wisdom observes, what comes around goes around. We have gotten bit in the ass, and bit hard, because we have treated foreign states and the peoples of those states cavalierly and with arrogant contempt for more than fifty years.



2. What dismays me the most is the rah-rah rhetoric of a phoney patriotism, advanced to suggest that we are and always have been morally superior, and have only wanted the best for the peoples of other nations. Such an attitude is comensurate with the basic good nature and generosity of the American people. It is the worst hypocricy of venal administrations of either description for that last half-century, and the foolish American electorate are now going to be obliged to pay the price . . . for a long time to come.

It is an absurdity to think that anyone in the Reagan administration ever for a moment considered opposing Russian troops on the ground with American troops on the ground. In the days of the nuclear Mexican stand-off, such events were just not going to occur--too much at stake in situations too likely to escalate out of control before authority could respond.

Walter has one clue, and several people have provided the other clue. The operatives of Central Intelligence who were on the ground, passing out the crisp, new hundred dollar bills really screwed this one up, but in their defense i would point out that from their point of view, one towel-headed sonuvabitch is about the same as another, and little different from a Noriega or a Pinochet--it was just business as usual. Central Intelligence badly dropped the ball. Handing money over to Pakistani security services without oversight was incredibly stupid, and evidence of an overweening arrogance on the part of operatives of Central Intelligence. I strongly suspect that bin Laden became the particular beneficiary of our covert largesse because he was Saudi (although the bin Laden clan are originally Yemeni), and Pappy Bush had extensive contacts in Saudia Arabia.

What is coming home to roost for us now is the result of a continuation of operational method which American administrations, Republican and Democrat, have followed since the end of the Second World War. Whether it was Kennedy complicit in the assassination of Diem in order to erect a puppet regime, or Rummy with his best ****-eatin' grin shaking Hussein's hand, the MO has been the same for fifty years. But as the street wisdom observes, what comes around goes around. We have gotten bit in the ass, and bit hard, because we have treated foreign states and the peoples of those states cavalierly and with arrogant contempt for more than fifty years.

What dismays me the most is the rah-rah rhetoric of a phoney patriotism, advanced to suggest that we are and always have been morally superior, and have only wanted the best for the peoples of other nations. Such an attitude is comensurate with the basic good nature and generosity of the American people. It is the worst hypocricy of venal administrations of either description for that last half-century, and the foolish American electorate are now going to be obliged to pay the price . . . for a long time to come.

Saddam underwear photo angers US

The US military says it is investigating "aggressively" after a picture appeared in a British paper showing Saddam Hussein half naked.
The Sun newspaper's front page image showed the former Iraqi president in a pair of white underpants.

Other pictures showed Saddam Hussein washing his socks in a bowl, shuffling around and sleeping.

The US said the photos appeared to breach Geneva Convention rules on the humane treatment of prisoners of war.

The conventions say countries must protect prisoners of war in their custody from "public curiosity".

'Destroy the myth'

The Sun cited US military sources saying they handed over the pictures showing Saddam as "an ageing and humble old man" in the hope of dealing a blow to the resistance in Iraq.

"It's important that the people of Iraq see him like that to destroy the myth," the paper's source was quoted as saying.

However, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad, Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Boylan, insisted "they were not released by the US military. So the claims in the Sun... are not correct".


A statement from the US-led force said it was "disappointed at the possibility that someone responsible for the security, welfare, and detention of Saddam would take and provide these photos for public release".
The statement added: "This lapse is being aggressively investigated to determine, if possible, who took the photos, and to ensure existing procedures and directives are complied with to prevent this from happening again."

Col Boylan said: "As far as any breaches of the Geneva Convention, that's something we are looking into. We did not officially release those photos, and so there's a question on whether it is actually a breach or not."

The Sun refused to say how it got hold of the pictures, or when they were taken, insisting it needed to protect its sources.

It defended its decision to publish them.

"We thought long and hard about publishing, and took the decision that they're such incredible pictures of the world's most brutal dictator... they were a compelling image that any newspaper or broadcaster would publish," the paper's managing editor, Graham Dudman, told the BBC News website.

Pink chair

Saddam Hussein is awaiting trial on numerous charges in Iraq, including murdering rivals, gassing Iraqi Kurds and using violence to suppress uprisings.

It is not clear when he will go on trial.


The Sun said it "thought long and hard" before publishing

The US said the pictures might be more than a year old.

They show Saddam with a moustache, rather than the beard he sported when he was captured in December 2003, and again when he appeared in court last July.

The Sun said the former Iraqi leader, 68, was allowed black hair dye to disguise his grey hair.

The paper said Saddam Hussein is kept in a 12ft by 9ft (4m x 3m) cell "somewhere near Baghdad", that he has a desk and a pink plastic chair "which he tends to use as a bedside table".

He is watched round the clock through CCTV cameras, even when he goes to the toilet, the paper said.

The source added that Saddam was one of the best behaved prisoners the US had had, it said.

In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths

Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

Dilawar was an Afghan farmer and taxi driver who died while in custody of American troops.


Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.

"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"

At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.

In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.

In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers describe one female interrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one prostrate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shackled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell, kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another prisoner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning.

The Times obtained a copy of the file from a person involved in the investigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the military's response to the deaths.

Although incidents of prisoner abuse at Bagram in 2002, including some details of the two men's deaths, have been previously reported, American officials have characterized them as isolated problems that were thoroughly investigated. And many of the officers and soldiers interviewed in the Dilawar investigation said the large majority of detainees at Bagram were compliant and reasonably well treated.

"What we have learned through the course of all these investigations is that there were people who clearly violated anyone's standard for humane treatment," said the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Larry Di Rita. "We're finding some cases that were not close calls."