Worth reading: Acts of Conscience

Before coming to HRW, Marc spent seven years in the Pentagon as a senior intelligence analyst covering Iraq. His last position there was chief of high-value targeting during the Iraq War in 2003. Marc was on the Operation Desert Fox (Iraq) Battle Damage Assessment team in 1998, led a Pentagon Battle Damage Assessment team to Kosovo in 1999, and recommended thousands of aimpoints on hundreds of targets during operations in Iraq and Serbia. He also participated in over 50 interrogations as a subject matter expert.

In a study of activities between October 2000 and April 2004, HRW's reports and activities on Israel were found to be systematically and exceedingly biased. Most of the 103 reports, press releases, letters, photo essays and film festivals focus on condemning Israeli responses to terror, in comparison to only 13 that deal with Palestinian terror attacks. This record illustrates HRW's exploitation of the rhetoric of universal human rights in order to pursue political and ideological objectives in concert with international demonization of Israel.


HRW's systematic condemnations of Israeli policies erase the context of Palestinian violence, and when terrorism is mentioned, it is marginalized, and not reflected in action items. HRW also ignores systematic anti-Israel incitement to hatred and the glorification of terrorists.

http://www.ngo-monitor.org/issues/hrw.htm

Considering that the NGO monitor is based in Jerusalem makes me wonder just how unbiased they are but that's another discussion.

You mean to tell me that this guy expressed an opinion and then when the facts came out he admitted that he made a mistake!?

Yikes!

People who change their minds based on new information are "hacks". Right? I just want to be clear on that.

I don't know the stories that you're referring to so I'll have to check them out when I get a chance.

Do you believe he was a hack when he worked at the Pentagon or is he newly hackish?

You, of course, are entitled to your own opinion - and I think we can guess what that will be.

Hi Boomer, This is indeed a seriously interesting story.


I have been following the torture trail re the US for some time and have been continually vilified, as has anyone else who has done so, by SierraSong/Brandon clones for raising facts as they come to light here.

It is interesting that the name calling has gone from liar and lunatic to the "why do you hate America" stuff.....


I suspect in saner times these brave men and women who are raising these uncomfortable truths will be regarded as heroes...whicc I think they are, to follow their conscience and human decency in the midst of terrifying group think.

dlowan wrote:

Hi Boomer, This is indeed a seriously interesting story.


I have been following the torture trail re the US for some time and have been continually vilified, as has anyone else who has done so, by SierraSong/Brandon clones for raising facts as they come to light here.

It is interesting that the name calling has gone from liar and lunatic to the "why do you hate America" stuff.....


I suspect in saner times these brave men and women who are raising these uncomfortable truths will be regarded as heroes...whicc I think they are, to follow their conscience and human decency in the midst of terrifying group think.

You have any words of criticism for the Iraqi insurgents who kidnap civilians, use them for blackmail, and then cut their heads off; or for the Palestinian advocates who blow themselves up in marketplaces where women and children are sure to be; or for the people who flew civilian airlines into the World Trade Center? Our worst prisoner abusers look like choir boys by comparison.

Known as the doctrine of command responsibility and formalized by the Geneva Conventions of 1949, it is the idea that officers must shoulder the blame when they know their troops are committing war crimes and fail to take "all feasible measures" to stop them

But Fishback balked when Garlasco asked to talk to the soldiers in his unit. He was their superior officer and it was his duty to protect them, he said. He wasn't ready to do a taped interview yet, either. And he didn't feel comfortable talking to any more Democrats. It might come off as partisan and soldiers shouldn't get mixed up in politics. He had to make it clear that he was fighting for a principle and not a party

If he had thought they were supposed to follow the Geneva Conventions, he said, he would have immediately stopped what was going on. That is a failure of command responsibility that he feels acutely, and he can't understand why so few officers feel the same. "It is infuriating to me that officers are not lined up to accept responsibility for what happened. It blows my mind that officers are not. It should've started with the chain of command at Abu Ghraib, and anybody else that witnessed anything that violated the Geneva Conventions or anything that could be questionable should've been standing up saying, 'This is what happened. This is why I allowed it to happen. This is my responsibility.' That's basic officership. That's what you learn at West Point."

I suspect in saner times these brave men and women who are raising these uncomfortable truths will be regarded as heroes...whicc I think they are, to follow their conscience and human decency in the midst of terrifying group think.

dlowan wrote:

I suspect in saner times these brave men and women who are raising these uncomfortable truths will be regarded as heroes...whicc I think they are, to follow their conscience and human decency in the midst of terrifying group think.

This really hits the nail on the head.

I think it is interesting that there appears to have been such a breakdown in the chain of command at Abu Gharib prison and that the commanding officers really didn't step up and take responsiblity for what happened under their watch.

I also think Fishback's comment about the futility of torture in interrogations is so very important.

I guess what I'm trying to understand is how America came to this point.

And don't start screaming 9-11 at me.