Here's a transcript of Daniel Ellsberg, the man who blew the whistle on the Pentagon thirty years ago, on CNN Newsnight with Aaron Brown, 10/18/02.   A chapter from his new book, "Secrets" is available online at www.ellsberg.net
Iraq-related excerpts from Daniel Ellsberg's speech in honor of Mordechai Vanunu (the man who blew the whistle on Israel's nuclear arms program) @ http://www.ellsberg.net/weblog/9_28_02.htm

Fond regards, L
*************

Weblog Entry
October 19, 2002

Transcript of Ellsberg on CNN Newsnight with Aaron Brown, 10/18/02

BROWN: We came across some quotes from the President arguing for military action. "Our credibility is at stake," he said. "The dangers involved action is less than the danger resulting from inaction. Creating a free and democratic nation is essential to America's security." It sounds like some of the things we've been hearing from President Bush of late, but this it was Lyndon Johnson, and the nation was Vietnam.

Daniel Ellsberg, for one, believes we risk forgetting the lessons of that terrible war as we consider the prospects of a new one in Iraq. We should add Mr. Ellsberg has a new book out "Secrets, a Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers." We are pleased to welcome him to the program. It's nice to see you. You are a little hoarse tonight, so we'll bear with you.

I want to talk about Vietnam and the papers for a bit. Did it ever occur to you that what you were doing, as strongly as you believed it was right, might be wrong, that you might, in fact, be doing great damage to the country? That ever hit your mind?

ELLSBERG: I read the papers. I knew these documents. I was one of the first who read all of them. I'd worked for the government for 15 years as a Marine and as a consultant and in the pentagon. I knew these documents should have been made public to Congress and to the press years before. And I knew I should have done it.

BROWN: And you never thought that your wisdom and your conscience, as sharp as you are and as good as you are, that that judgment might be wrong? And that the judgment of five presidents and countless secretaries of defense and the list goes on might, in fact, have had the country's best interests in mind?

ELLSBERG: First, of course, I can always be wrong. I'm human just like those presidents. And I know I've been wrong many times before, and I'll be wrong again. There's never been a time when I was sure I was right, except that I felt pretty sure that I'd been wrong to keep my mouth shut so long when Congress was being lied into a reckless gamble, into an unnecessary war and a wrongful war. You know, I used to be asked that question an awful lot right after the papers came out. That was 30 years ago. "What gave you the right to make this decision on your own?" And I used to ask myself, I wonder why I never got asked the question that I have to ask myself: "What gave me the right to conceal that so long? What gave anyone in the executive branch the right, when they knew that the country was being lied into this war?" I don't think I was - I wasn't elected. But I didn't really take - I took an oath to uphold the constitution, and what we were doing was clearly not constitutional.

BROWN: All right. Let's fast forward and try and bring these two things together as much as they fit together. In some ways they don't. There are lots of people who oppose the president's way about doing this. But, at the same time - we've had him on this week in fact - who will. . .

ELLSBERG: You're talking about history or today?

BROWN: No, today. I'm sorry, today, in talking about Iraq.

ELLSBERG: It is very hard because I feel that I'm waking up to the world I left 30 years ago.

BROWN: But don't you - don't you see a difference between a Vietnam of 1960 and an Iraq of today? They are not the same, are they?

ELLSBERG: Oh, no. Their language is different; religion is different. There's lots of - actually, there are lots of differences. For example. . .

BROWN: No, but I mean the threat is different.

ELLSBERG: We are facing a very serious threat today from Al Qaeda. According to the CIA director, George Tenet, which he - I give him credit for saying in an unclassified letter to Congress - he said Saddam Hussein is a threat to his own people. He surely is. He is a tyrant. He's even a monster, like a lot of others, but that doesn't excuse him. He is not a threat to us unless he is attacked. He's not behind al Qaeda, as far as the CIA can make out, and as far as the Senate Intelligence Committee can make out, and statements to the contrary by Vice President Cheney and President Bush appear to be without any basis.

BROWN: We've got about a half a minute left. Do you think there is - is it your view then that there is some hidden agenda here?

ELLSBERG: Well, I feel confident that the reasons being given for this war by the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense, they can't be right. They're contradicted by everything that comes out from the Senate Intelligence Committee, from the CIA and so forth. So we have to look for other reasons. That's, by the way, part of the job. That's what I did when I worked for presidents. They - the message of my book and of the Pentagon Papers, unfortunately, is that officials, like me and my bosses did, lie and conceal far more than any outsider can even imagine.

But there is another side to that. It's possible to tell the truth. The message I would like to get to people inside right now: if they feel that what the President and the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense are saying is deceptive of the public, is not founded on the evidence that they know passing across their desks or they know, by expertise, I would like them to consider doing what I wish I'd done in 1964 and 1965, rather than waiting five years, as I did until 1969. They should consider going to Congress and the press and telling the truth with documents. They shouldn't do what I did, wait until the bombs are falling. That's why I think the message in my book is urgent. So urgent, in fact, that I decided to put the first chapter on the internet tonight on Ellsberg.net. You don't have to buy the book to read that. That tells us what is happening right now. It's about the week that Congress passed the first Tonkin Gulf Resolution, having now - this is the time to read it, when they've just passed the second one.

BROWN: Mr. Ellsberg, it's nice to meet you. Thanks for coming in tonight. Good luck.

ELLSBERG: Thank you.

For the first chapter of Ellsberg's book, www.ellsberg.net

To TOP    of PAGE

  THE GENERAL ('Taguba's) REPORT
By Seymour M. Hersh.
June 17, 2004

Comment by Dick McManus:
  Hersh's report is the most confusing bit of writing I have ever read by a "noted" journalist. I have re-written Hersh's article/commentary so you can understand it. I have summarized it somewhat as well, because Hersh is writing to other journalist more then writing to the general reader.
  That is, he includes comments from sources, that speak in defense or spin these matters to support or protect the Bush administration.   I have not included this BS.   Hersh has had to write these comments to retain his image of impartiality.  
I am not afraid of taking a point of view, because in my opinion the facts below speak for themselves, speak the truth. I have also added my past Newsletter material about his subject.
Dick (dick.mcmanus@yahoo.com) N&V newsletters:   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewsViewsnolose

 
A RE-WRITE of the article by Hersh, THE GENERAL'S REPORT the follows a time line:
 
Taguba learned that in August 2003, the Pentagon had ordered Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander at Guantanamo, to Iraq. His mission was to survey the prison system there and to find ways to improve the flow of intelligence. The core of Miller's recommendations, as summarized in the Taguba report, was that the military police at Abu Ghraib should become part of the interrogation process: they should work closely with interrogators and intelligence officers in "setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees."

        "Between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility (BCCF), numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees.

  On January 13, 2004, a military policeman named Joseph Darby gave the Army's Criminal Investigation Division (C.I.D.) a CD full of images of abuse.   Two days later, General Craddock and Vice-Admiral Timothy Keating, the director of the Joint Staff of the J.C.S., were e-mailed a summary of
the abuses depicted on the CD.
 
(On 31 January 2004, U.S. Army Major General   Antonio Taguba was appointed by a Lt. General.)   His orders were clear, however: he was to investigate only the military police at Abu Ghraib, and not those above them in the chain of command.   "From what I knew, troops just don't take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups," Taguba told (Hersh).   "These M.P. troops were not that creative," he said. "Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority. I was limited to a box."
 
Taguba decided to keep the photographs from most of the interrogators and researchers on his staff of twenty-three officers. "I didn't want them to prejudge the soldiers they were investigating, so I put the photos in a safe," he told Hersh). "Anyone who wanted to see them had to have a need-to-know and go through me."
 
Taguba told Hersh, "early on, a senior general in Iraq had pointed out to him that
the abused detainees were "only Iraqis."
 
"I kept on asking these questions of the officers I interviewed: 'You knew what was going on. Why didn't you do something to stop it?' "
 
Taguba came to believe that Lieutenant General Sanchez, the Army commander in Iraq, and some of the generals assigned to the military headquarters in Baghdad had extensive knowledge of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib even before Joseph Darby came forward with the CD. Taguba was aware that in the fall of 2003 -- when much of the abuse took place -- Sanchez routinely visited the prison, and witnessed at least one interrogation. According to Taguba, "Sanchez knew exactly what was going on."
 
Taguba's assignment was limited to investigating the 800th M.P.s, but he quickly found signs of the involvement of military intelligence -- both the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, commanded by Colonel Thomas Pappas, which worked closely with the M.P.s, and what were called "other government agencies," or O.G.A.s, a euphemism for the
C.I.A. and special-operations units operating undercover in Iraq. Some of the earliest evidence involved Lieutenant Colonel Steven L. Jordan, whose name was mentioned in interviews with several M.P.s. For the first three weeks of the investigation, Jordan was nowhere to be found, despite repeated requests. When the investigators finally located him, he asked whether he needed to shave his beard before being interviewed -- Taguba suspected that he had been dressing as a civilian. "When I asked him about his assignment, he says, 'I'm a liaison officer for intelligence from Army headquarters in Iraq.'" But in the course of three or four interviews with Jordan, Taguba said, he began to suspect that the lieutenant colonel had been more intimately involved in the interrogation process -- some of it brutal -- for "high value" detainees.
 
Taguba said that Jordan's "record reflected an extensive intelligence background." He also had reason to believe that Jordan was not reporting through the chain of command. But Taguba's narrowly focussed mission constrained the questions he could ask. "I suspected that somebody was giving them guidance, but I could not print that," (in his final report) Taguba said.
 
"After all Jordan's evasiveness and misleading responses, his rights were read to him," Taguba went on. Jordan subsequently became the only officer facing trial on criminal charges in connection with Abu Ghraib and is scheduled to be court-martialled in late August (2007) ...for failure to obey an order or regulation; cruelty, and maltreatment; and false swearing and obstruction of justice.
 
At the time he filed his report, in March of 2004, Taguba said, "I knew there was C.I.A. involvement, but I was oblivious of what else was happening" in terms of covert military-intelligence operations.
 
Their essential tactic was seizing and interrogating terrorists and suspected terrorists; they also had authority from the President to kill certain high-value targets on sight. The most secret task-force operations were categorized as Special Access Programs, or S.A.P.s.
 
COMMENT:   Extra-judical murders just like Operation Phoenix in Vietnam.
 
Whether the President was told about Abu Ghraib in January (when e-mails informed the Pentagon of the seriousness of the abuses and of the existence of photographs) or in March (when Taguba filed his report), Bush made no known effort to forcefully address the treatment of prisoners before the scandal became public, (April 28, 2004) or to re-evaluate the training of military police and interrogators, or the practices of the task forces that he had authorized. Instead, Bush acquiesced in the prosecution of a few lower-level soldiers. The President's failure to act decisively resonated through the military chain of command: aggressive prosecution of crimes against detainees was not conducive to a successful career.
 
April 28, 2004:   60 Minutes II Has Exclusive Report On Alleged Mistreatment, 28 Apr 04: CBS shows images from 2003 of inmates being subjected to abuses by US soldiers
 
News reports. "George Bush is shocked" May 1, 2004
 
On the afternoon of May 6, 2004, Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba was summoned to meet, for the first time, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his Pentagon conference room.   Rumsfeld and his senior staff were to testify the next day, in televised hearings before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees, about abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq.   The previous week, revelations about Abu Ghraib, including photographs showing prisoners stripped, abused, and sexually humiliated, had appeared on CBS and in the *NewYorker*.
 
Lt. Gen. Taguba was not prepared for the greeting he received when he was finally ushered in (to speak to Rumsfeld and his boys).

"Here . . . comes . . . that *famous* General Taguba -- of the Taguba report!" Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice.   The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.), and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials.

Taguba, said, sadly, "I thought they wanted to know.   I assumed they wanted to know.   I was ignorant of the setting."
 
In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib. "Could you tell us what happened?" Wolfowitz asked.   At that point, Taguba recalled, "I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and (Taguba) said 'That's not abuse.   That's torture.'   There was quiet."
 
Rumsfeld was particularly concerned about how the classified report had become public.   "General," he asked, "who do you think leaked the report?"   ...Rumsfeld also complained about not being given the information he needed.   "Here I am," Taguba recalled Rumsfeld saying, "just a Secretary of Defense, and we have not seen a copy of your report.   I have not seen the photographs.
 
COMMENT:   Why did Rumsfeld fake ignorance.   He and Bush made no known effort to forcefully address the treatment of prisoners.
 
Taguba had submitted more than a dozen copies of his report through several channels at the Pentagon and to the Central Command headquarters,   By the time he walked into Rumsfeld's conference room, he had spent weeks briefing senior military leaders
on the report...When Taguba urged one lieutenant general to look at the photographs, he rebuffed him, saying, "I don't want to get involved by looking, because what do you do with that information, once you know what they show?"

Taguba also knew that senior officials in Rumsfeld's office and elsewhere in the Pentagon had been given a graphic account of the pictures from Abu Ghraib, and told of their potential strategic significance, within days of the first complaint back in January 2004.
 
Taguba told Hersh) that the first wave of materials included descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees.   Taguba said that he saw "a
video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee."
 
Rumsfeld, in his appearances before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees on May 7, 2004, claimed to have had no idea of the extensive abuse.
Rumsfeld told the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees:   "There were rumors of photographs in a criminal prosecution chain back sometime after January 13th . . . I don't remember precisely when, but sometime in that period of January, February, March. . . . The legal part of it was proceeding along fine.   What wasn't proceeding along fine is the fact that the President didn't know, and you didn't know, and I didn't
know.

Taguba, watching the hearings, was appalled.   He believed that Rumsfeld's testimony was simply not true. Taguba said.   "He and his aides have abused their offices and have no idea of the values and high standards that are expected of them. And they've dragged a lot of officers with them."
 
What happened to Lt. Gen. Taguba:
 
A few weeks after his report (into the torture at Abu Ghraib) became public, Taguba, who was still in Kuwait, was in the back seat of a Mercedes sedan with General John Abizaid. Abizaid's driver and his interpreter, who also served as a bodyguard, were in front. Abizaid turned to Taguba and issued a quiet warning: "You and your report will be investigated."
Taguba said. "I'd been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia."
 
One of Rumsfeld's his senior press aides, Lawrence Di Rita, stated to Taguba. Di Rita, who was standing beside Rumsfeld, said sarcastically, "See what you started, General? See what you started?"
 
Taguba had been scheduled to rotate to the Third Army's headquarters, at Fort McPherson, Georgia, in June of 2004   A retired four-star Army general later told Taguba that he had been sent (instead) to the job in the Pentagon so that he could "be watched." Taguba realized that his career was at a dead end.
 
In January of 2006, Taguba received a telephone call from General Richard Cody, the Army's Vice-Chief of Staff. "This is your Vice," he told Taguba. "I need you to retire by January of 2007." No pleasantries were exchanged, although the two generals had known each other for years, and, Taguba said, "He offered no reason."
 
Taguba went on, "There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this."
 
"From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service," Taguba said. "And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable."
 
Hersh article continues:
 
Later that summer of 2004 after he submitted his report, Taguba learned that the C.I.A. had serious concerns about the abusive interrogation techniques that military-intelligence operatives were using on high-value detainees.
 
Hell, even if we reopened it we wouldn't get any more information than we already have."
The Army also protected General Miller.   Since 2002, F.B.I. agents at Guantanamo had been telling their superiors that their military counterparts were abusing detainees.   The F.B.I. complaints were ignored until after Abu Ghraib.   When an investigation was opened, in December 2004, and   Air Force Lieutenant General Randall M. Schmidt, ordered to investigate the charges, which included alleged abuses during Miller's tenure at Guantanamo..
 
Schmidt, who retired last year, told Hersh, . "I found some things that didn't seem right. For lack of a camera, you could have seen in Guantanamo what was seen at Abu Ghraib."
At Guantanamo, Schmidt told the investigators, Miller "was responsible for the conduct of interrogations that I found to be abusive and degrading. The intent of those might have been to be abusive and degrading to get the information they needed. . . . Did the means justify the ends? That's fine. . . . He was responsible."

        According to a Dec. 20, 2005 Army inspector general's report on Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commanding general in charge of Gitmo, Rumsfeld approved an interrogation plan for Mohammed al-Kahtani, the alleged 20th hijacker:
        In a sworn statement to the inspector general, [Lt. Gen. Randall] Schmidt described Rumsfeld as “personally involved" in the interrogation and said that the defense secretary was “talking weekly" with Miller.
        Rumsfeld developed an interrogation plan that required the Gitmo detainee to “stand naked in front of a female interrogator, was accused of being a homosexual, and was forced to wear women's underwear and to perform ‘dog tricks' on a leash." Schmidt said that the open-ended policies Rumsfeld approved, and that the apparent lack of supervision of day-to-day interrogations permitted the wide-scale abuse to take place. http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/04/14/18154701.php

Schmidt formally recommended that Miller be "held accountable" and "admonished."
LT. Gen. Craddock rejected this recommendation and absolved Miller of any responsibility for the mistreatment of the prisoners. The Inspector General inquiry endorsed Craddock's action. (Lieutenant General Bantz J. Craddock, was promoted about serving as Rumsfeld's senior military assistant)
 
"I was open with them," Schmidt told (Hersh), referring to the I.G. investigators. "I told them, 'I'll do anything to help you get the truth.'" But when he read their final report (Dec. 20, 2005), he said, "I didn't recognize the five hours of interviews (by IG) with me (Schmidt, in the IG report)."
 
Rumsfeld was in frequent contact with Miller about the progress of Qahtani's interrogation, and personally approved the most severe interrogation tactics. ("This wasn't just daily business, when the Secretary of Defense is personally involved," Schmidt told the Army investigators.)
 
  Military investigators were precluded from looking into the role of Rumsfeld and other civilian leaders in the Pentagon; the result was that none found any high-level intelligence involvement in the abuse.
 
  In an April, 2005, memorandum, a C.I.D. officer -- his name was redacted -- complained to C.I.D. headquarters, at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, about the impossibility of investigating military members of a Special Access Program suspected of prisoner abuse: "[C.I.D.] has been unable to thoroughly investigate . . . due to the suspects and witnesses involvement in Special Access Programs (SAP) and/or the security classification of the unit they were assigned to during the offense under investigation. Attempts by Special Agents . . . to be "read on" to these programs has [sic] been unsuccessful."
 
The C.I.D. officer wrote that "fake names were used" by members of the task force; he also told investigators that the unit had a "major computer malfunction which resulted in them losing 70 per cent of their files; therefore, they can't find the cases we need to review."
The military task forces were under the control of the Joint Special Operations Command, the branch of the Special Operations Command that is responsible for counterterrorism. One of Miller's unacknowledged missions had been to bring the J.S.O.C.'s "strategic interrogation" techniques to Abu Ghraib. In special cases, the task forces could bypass the chain of command and deal directly with Rumsfeld's office. A former senior intelligence official told me that the White House was also briefed on task-force operations.
 
The former senior intelligence official said that when the images of Abu Ghraib were published, there were some in the Pentagon and the White House who "didn't think the photographs were that bad" -- in that they put the focus on enlisted soldiers, rather than on secret task-force operations. Referring to the task-force members, he said, "Guys on the inside ask me, 'What's the difference between shooting a guy on the street, or in his bed, or in a prison?'" A Pentagon consultant on the war on terror also said that the "basic strategy was 'prosecute the kids in the photographs but protect the big picture.'"
 
A recently retired C.I.A. officer, who served more than fifteen years in the clandestine service, told me that the task-force teams "had full authority to whack -- to go in and conduct 'executive action,'" the phrase for political assassination.     "It was surrealistic what these guys were doing," the retired operative added. "They were running around the world without clearing their operations with the ambassador or the (CIA) chief of station" (the CIA's chain of command).
 
COMMENT: Here we learn why a SAP was needed, without telling Congress.   A program where only those with the need to know were read onto it.   This is done to limit the risk of compromise or leak to the press.   If you don't have a record of enemy combatants (ghost detainees) in Abu Ghraib or in secret prisons, you can kill them and nobody can prove the U.S. killed them, extra-judicial murders.
 
J.S.O.C.'s special status undermined military discipline. Richard Armitage, the former Deputy Secretary of State, told me that, on his visits to Iraq, he increasingly found that "the commanders would say one thing and the guys in the field would say, 'I don't care what he says. I'm going to do what I want.' We've sacrificed the chain of command to the notion of Special Operations and GWOT" -- the global war on terrorism. "You're painting on a canvas so big that it's hard to comprehend," Armitage said.
 
A former high-level Defense Department official said that, when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Senator John Warner, then the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, was warned "to back off" on the investigation, because "it would spill over to more important things." A spokesman for Warner acknowledged that there had been pressure on the Senator, but said that Warner had stood up to it -- insisting on putting Rumsfeld under oath for his May 7th testimony, for example, to the Secretary's great displeasure.
 
An aggressive congressional inquiry into Abu Ghraib could have provoked unwanted questions about what the Pentagon was doing, in Iraq and elsewhere, and under what authority. By law, the President must make a formal finding authorizing a C.I.A. covert operation, and inform the senior leadership of the House and the Senate Intelligence Committees. However, the Bush Administration unilaterally determined after 9/11 that intelligence operations conducted by the military -- including the Pentagon's covert task forces -- for the purposes of "preparing the battlefield" could be authorized by the President, as Commander-in-Chief, without telling Congress.
 
There was coordination between the C.I.A. and the task forces, but also tension. The C.I.A. officers, who were under pressure to produce better intelligence in the field, wanted explicit legal authority before aggressively interrogating high-value targets. A finding would give operatives some legal protection for questionable actions, but the White House was reluctant to put what it wanted in writing.
 
A recently retired high-level C.I.A. official, who served during this period and was involved in the drafting of findings, described to me the bitter disagreements between the White House and the agency over the issue. "The problem is what constituted approval," the retired C.I.A. official said. "My people fought about this all the time. Why should we put our people on the firing line somewhere down the road? If you want me to kill Joe Smith, just *tell* me to kill Joe Smith. If I was the Vice-President or the President, I'd say, 'This guy Smith is a bad guy and it's in the interest of the United States for this guy to be killed.' They don't say that. Instead, George" -- George Tenet, the director of the C.I.A. until mid-2004 -- "goes to the White House and is told, 'You guys are professionals. You know how important it is. We know you'll get the intelligence.' George would come back and say to us, 'Do what you gotta do.' "
 
The Pentagon consultant said in an interview late last year that "the C.I.A. never got the exact language it wanted." The findings, when promulgated by the White House, were "very calibrated" to minimize political risk, and limited to a few countries; later, they were expanded, turning several nations in North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia into free-fire zones with regard to high-value targets. I was told by the former senior intelligence official and a government consultant that after the existence of secret C.I.A. prisons in Europe was revealed, in the *Washington Post*, in late 2005, the Administration responded with a new detainee center in Mauritania. After a new government friendly to the U.S. took power, in a bloodless coup d'état in August 2005, they said, it was much easier for the intelligence community to mask secret flights there.

End of Harsh article:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/25/070625fa_fact_hersh

 
========== Dick McManas ===================
What is JTF-121?

IT is a highly classified field Army/AirForce/Navy unit that has been activated to coordinate the hunt for "high-value targets." Its organization and structure have been streamlined to improve its ability to concentrate on real-time hunter-killer missions (to kill or capture and interrogate) against terrorist leaders and cells. A three-star command is also being designed to oversee the most clandestine elements of U.S. special operations, according to senior officers close to the community.

The very secretiveness of special operations makes it hard for the public, or even members of Congress charged with oversight, to keep informed about the new tactics or to measure their effectiveness.

Only about 1,500 "black" special operators are assigned to clandestine units at any one time, including JTF 121 and the so-called Gray Fox intelligence unit.

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news1/latimes81.html

The "buzz" on the Internet is that Task Force 121 is a new elite assassination death squad trained by the Israelis at Fort Bragg. First, Task Force 121 is not a brand new Special Operations unit....More likely, the Israelis were sharing intelligence or maybe some of their vast experience in operating in Arab countries. (translated: their vast experience in torture methods).

http://students.engr.scu.edu/~jabraham/specwar/specops/us/tf121/page1.html

What is SOG?

Six years ago when he took charge of the CIA, George Tenet began rebuilding the supersecret Special Operations Group (SOG). Hundreds of millions of additional dollars have been pumped into the CIA budget by President George W. Bush. He has ordered SOG operatives to join forces with foreign intelligence services. He has even authorized the CIA to kidnap "terrorists" in order to break their cells or kill them.

Comment: When was torture authorized? Because there existed a "JTF-121 interrogation policy".

The CIA had about 100 officers and SOG troops roaming in Afghanistan during the U.S. invasion.

Intelligence sources tell Time that the CIA had requested that commandos from the U.S. Army's elite Delta Force join its first team going into Afghanistan but that the Pentagon refused to send them.

The part of the (CIA) SOG air force that has received the most publicity lately is the fleet of remote-controlled Predator drones, armed with 5-ft.-long Hellfire missiles, that the agency bought from the Air Force.

In November 2001 the CIA deployed the drone to eliminate bin Laden's lieutenant, Mohammed Atef. Last November's Predator hit in Yemen killed an al-Qaeda commander and his entourage of five, though the strike was controversial: one of the dead men turned out to be a U.S. citizen. .Administration officials say Bush did not specifically order the Predator attack in Yemen. But after Sept. 11 he gave the CIA the green light to use lethal force against al-Qaeda.

"http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030203-411370,00.html"

[My related research:]
 
Is the torture methods used at Abu Ghraib the product of CIA research?

Forced standing:   has a long proven history of use by torturers because it leaves few mark

This torture is well known to intelligence agencies worldwide. The CIA documented the effects of forced standing 40 years ago. And the technique is valued because it leaves few marks, and so no evidence.

Forced standing was a prescribed field punishment in West European armies in the early 20th century. The British Army called it Field Punishment No. 1, though the soldiers referred to it as "the crucifixion." The French Legionnaires called it "the Silo."

By the 1920s, forced standing was a routine police torture in America. In 1931, the National Commission on Lawless Enforcement of the Law found numerous American police departments using forced standing to coerce confessions.

In the 1930s, Stalin's NKVD also famously used forced standing to coerce seemingly voluntary confessions for show trials. The Gestapo used forced standing as a routine punishment in many concentration camps. It even created small narrow "standing cells," Stehzelle, where prisoners had to stand all night.

In 1956, the CIA commissioned two experts, Harold Wolff and Lawrence Hinkle, who described the effects of forced standing. The ankles and feet swell to twice their normal size within 24 hours. Moving becomes agony. Large blisters develop. The heart rate increases, and some faint. The kidneys eventually shut down. ("A Long-Standing Trick of the Torturer's Art," The Seattle Times, May 14, 2004)

In the mid-20th century, torturers learned how to use the swelling and blistering to cause more pain. The South African and Brazilian police made prisoners stand on cans or bricks, the edges causing excruciating pain to the sensitive feet. In 1999, the South African Truth Commission determined that forced standing was the third-most-common torture during apartheid, after beating and applying electricity.

Hooding was a common feature of Brazilian and South African torture. In the 1970s, the Brazilians added the electrical supplement. They threatened victims with electroshock if they began to give up and collapse in exhaustion. The jolts of electricity would make the hooded victims' feet stick to the cans and force them to stand up straight.

Source: The Seattle Times, 14 May 2004, by Darius Rejali. He is the author of "Torture and Democracy" (forthcoming, Princeton University Press) and a 2003 Carnegie Scholar. He is an associate professor of political science at Reed College in Portland.

"http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/05/torturers-art.html".
 
Torture at Abu Ghraib Followed CIA's Manual (Stress and Duress Techniques)
by Alfred W. McCoy

CIA torture techniques noted in the phonographs from the Abu Ghraib prison are snapshots not of simple brutality or a breakdown in discipline, but have been developed by the US intelligence community.

From 1950 to 1962, the CIA led secret research into coercion and consciousness that reached a billion dollars at peak. After experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, electric shocks, and sensory deprivation, this CIA research produced a new method of torture that was psychological, not physical -- best described as "no touch" torture.

The CIA's discovery of psychological torture was a counterintuitive breakthrough. Under the CIA's new psychological paradigm, however, interrogators used two essential methods to achieve their goals.

In the first stage, interrogators employ the simple, nonviolent techniques of hooding or sleep deprivation to disorient the subject; sometimes sexual humiliation is used as well.

Once the subject is disoriented, interrogators move on to a second stage with simple, self-inflicted discomfort such as forced standing for hours with arms extended. In this phase, the idea is to make victims feel responsible for their own pain and thus induce them to alleviate it by capitulating to the interrogator's power.

 
--------------------

o.. Men ordered to masturbate in front of each other and in front of female American soldiers, a humiliating experience which offends their religion (see: "The application of procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality");

o.. Men ordered to simulate homosexual sex with one another, a humiliating experience condemned by their religion (see: "The application of procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality");
o.. A man, hooded, standing on a box with electrodes attached to his fingers and penis, who was told that if he stepped off the box, he would be electrocuted to death

o.. A naked man menaced by, and then attacked by, a vicious dog

Comment: I think these sexual tortures, etc. were the result of years of experimentation by the CIA.

In the below article you will see some of these torture methods spelled out in a formerly classified CIA torture manual dated 1963. This manual was produced based on a whole lot of classified CIA research projects in years proceeding its publication.

Iraq Tactics Have Long History With U.S. Interrogators
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post

13 June 2004

A CIA handbook on coercive interrogation methods, produced 40 years ago during the Vietnam War, shows that techniques such as those used in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have a long history with U.S. intelligence and were based on research and field experience.

Declassified 10 years ago, the training manual carries in its title the code word used for the CIA in Vietnam, "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation - July 1963." Used to train new interrogators, the handbook presents "basic information about coercive techniques available for use in the interrogation situation."
Note The CIA was never to be mentioned by name in any documents or in oral communications; instead the Agency was referred as KUBARK .

The specific coercive methods it describes echo today's news stories about Guantanamo and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. At Abu Ghraib, for example, photographs and documents have shown that detainees were hooded, blindfolded, dressed in sloppy garb and forced to go naked.

The KUBARK manual suggests that, for "resistant" prisoners, the "circumstances of detention are arranged to enhance within the subject his feelings of being cut off from the known and the reassuring and of being plunged into the strange."

The 1963 handbook describes the benefits and disadvantages of techniques similar to those authorized for use at Abu Ghraib, such as forcing detainees to stand or sit in "stress positions," cutting off sources of light, disrupting their sleep and manipulating their diet.

And among the manual's conclusions: The threat of pain is a far more effective interrogation tool than actually inflicting pain, but threats of death do not help.

Like the lists of interrogation methods approved for Iraq and Guantanamo, the KUBARK manual offers a menu of options for confusing and weakening detainees. A neat or proud individual was to be given an outfit one or two sizes too large without a belt "so that he must hold his pants up," the manual said. Forced changes in diet and sleep patterns should be done "so that the subject becomes disorientated [and] is very likely to create feelings of fear and helplessness."

Tactics involving deprivation of accustomed sights, sounds, taste, smells and tactile sensations were presented as primary methods for producing stress, and mirror the techniques seen at Abu Ghraib. Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top U.S. military officer in Iraq, approved in September a list of methods that included "sensory deprivation," "minimum bread and water," "light control," enforced silence and yelling at prisoners. Those methods have since been barred in Iraq.

The KUBARK manual cited research supporting the effectiveness of the deprivations. "Results produced only after weeks or months of imprisonment in an ordinary cell can be duplicated in hours or days in a cell which has no light or weak artificial light which never varies, which is sound-proofed, and in which odors are eliminated," the manual said.

An experiment referred to in the handbook was done in the 1950s and involved conditions designed to produce stress before an interrogation - similar to those applied to John Walker Lindh after his capture in Afghanistan. Lindh was tied to a stretcher naked and later held for long periods in a large metal container.

In the experiment done about 50 years earlier, volunteers were "placed in a tank-type respirator" with vents open so that the subjects could breathe but their arms and legs were enclosed in "rigid cylinders to inhibit movement and tactile contact." Lying on their backs in minimal artificial light, the subjects could not see their own bodies, and the respirator motor was the only sound.

Only six of the 17 volunteers completed the 36 hours of the experiment; the other 11 asked for early release - four because of anxiety and panic, and the others because of physical discomfort.

The conclusion reached, the handbook said, was that "the early effect of such an environment is anxiety" and that "the stress becomes unbearable for most subjects," some of whom "lose touch with reality [and] focus inwardly."

The payoff of such techniques, the manual said, is that when the interrogator appears, he or she appears as a "reward of lessened anxiety . . . providing relief for growing discomfort," and that sometimes, as a result, "the questioner assumes a benevolent role."

When it comes to torture, however, the handbook advised that "the threat to inflict pain . . . can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain."

"In general, direct physical brutality creates only resentment, hostility and further defiance," the manual said.

Intense pain, interrogators were taught, "is quite likely to produce false confessions concocted as a means of escaping from distress."

While pain inflicted by others tends to create resistance in a subject, the manual said, "his resistance is likelier to be sapped by pain which he seems to inflict upon himself."

Reports from Iraq and Afghanistan indicate that detainees have been told to stand at attention for long periods or sit in "stress positions." In one of the photographs from Abu Ghraib, a hooded detainee is shown being forced to stand on a box with wires attached to his body. He was told he would get an electric shock if he moved. Seven military police soldiers have been charged in connection with the abuse shown in that and other photographs. Investigations continue into the role military interrogators played in those incidents.

In such situations, the manual said, the source of pain "is not the interrogator but the victim himself." And while the subject remains in that uncomfortable or painful position, he must be made to think that his captor could do something worse to him, creating in him the stress and anxiety the interrogator seeks.

Threats of death, however, were described as "worse than useless" because they can leave the prisoner thinking "that he is as likely to be condemned after compliance as before."

Experiments at that time also showed that creating physical weakness through prolonged exertion, extremes of heat, cold or moisture, or through drastic reduction of food or sleep do not work.

"The available evidence suggests that resistance is sapped principally by psychological rather than physical pressures," the handbook advised.

http://www.truthout.org/docs04/061404K.shtml

===============================
PEntagon leak confirms US tortured Iraqis illegally   Aug 28 2004

WASHINGTON -- On (25 Aug 04), the Pentagon made public unclassified part of the 171-page report by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay on the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

A senior Defense Department official" leaked "classified parts of the
Fay report to the *New York Times*, the paper reported in a front-page story Friday, Aug. 27.

Classified passages involving General Sanchez's orders were among several deleted from the unclassified version of the report.

Classified parts of the report say Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former top
commander in Iraq, approved the use in Iraq of some severe interrogation
practices intended to be limited to captives held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Afghanistan.

"Interrogators at Abu Ghraib used both dogs and isolation as interrogation
practices," a classified part of the report said. "The manner in which they
were used on some occasions clearly violated the Geneva Conventions."

The classified parts of the do not appear to contain sensitive material about interrogations or other intelligence-gathering methods. They do show in much clearer detail than ever before how interrogation practices from Afghanistan and Guantanamo were brought to Abu Ghraib...

Military officials and others in the Bush administration have repeatedly said
the Geneva Conventions applied to all prisoners in Iraq.

The classified sections of the Fay report reinforce criticisms made by the independent panel headed by James R. Schlesinger. That panel argued that General Sanchez's actions effectively amounted to an unauthorized suspension of the Geneva Conventions in Iraq by categorizing prisoners there as unlawful combatants.

In an interview on Thursday with reporters and editors of the *Times*, Gen.
Paul J. Kern, the senior officer who supervised General Fay's work, said the
Fay inquiry had not addressed whether General Sanchez was authorized to
designate detainees in Iraq as unlawful combatants, as the administration has
treated prisoners in Afghanistan.

The classified section of the Fay report also sheds new light on the role
played by a secretive Special Operations (Group) /Central Intelligence Agency task force that operated in Iraq and Afghanistan as a source of interrogation procedures that were put into effect at Abu Ghraib. It says that a July 15, 2003, "Battlefield Interrogation Team and Facility Policy," drafted by use by Joint Task Force 121, which was given the task of locating former government members in Iraq, was adopted "almost verbatim" by the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, which played a leading role in interrogations at Abu Ghraib.

That task force policy endorsed the use of stress positions during harsh
interrogation procedures, the use of dogs, yelling, loud music, light control,
isolation and other procedures used previously in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The techniques approved by General Sanchez were among those previously approved by the Pentagon for use in Afghanistan and Cuba, and were recommended Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller and his Team, a commander at Guantanamo who had been sent to Iraq by senior Pentagon officials, and by a military intelligence unit (JTF-121) that had served in Afghanistan and was taking charge of interrogations at Abu Ghraib.

The Schlesinger panel described that reasoning as "understandable," but said
General Sanchez and his staff should have recognized that they were "lacking specific authorization to operate beyond the confines of the Geneva
Convention.''

Comment: Translated:... lacking a Presidential finding (order) to use torture.

The role played by members of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg, N.C., some of whom were identified as having taken part in the abuses, is given particular attention in the classified parts of the report.

Members of the 519th MI BN had earlier served in Afghanistan, where some were implicated in the deaths of two detainees that are still under investigation, and the report says commanders should have heeded more carefully the danger that members of the unit might again be involved in abusive behavior.

The 519th MI Bn had worked closely with Special Operations Forces (JTF-121) in Afghanistan, and "at same point" it "came to possess the JTF-121 interrogation policy" used by the joint Special Operations (Group)/C.I.A. teams, the classified section of the report says.

Source: via Mark Jensen, Professor, PLU

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/politics/27abuse.html?th

      How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib      

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

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

Note: That during the Clinton administration, the CIA started built a secret paramilitary (aka Special Forces) Army estimated in size to be 200 to 500 men.

Rumsfeld authorized the establishment of the SAP that was given blanket advance approval to kill or capture and, if possible, interrogate "high value" targets in the Bush Administration's war on terror. The program would recruit operatives and acquire the necessary equipment, including aircraft. Fewer than two hundred operatives and officials, including Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were "completely read on to the program," the former intelligence official said. The goal was to keep the operation protected.

"Rumsfeld's goal was to get a capability in place to take on a high-value target-a standup group to hit quickly," a former high-level intelligence official told me. "He got all the agencies together-the C.I.A. and the N.S.A.-to get pre-approval in place. Just say the code word and go." The operation had across-the-board approval from Rumsfeld and from Condoleezza Rice, the national-security adviser. President Bush was informed of the existence of the program, the former intelligence official said.

The people assigned to the program worked by the book, the former intelligence official told me. They ...recruited, after careful screening, highly trained commandos and operatives from America's élite forces-Navy seals, the Army's Delta Force, and the C.I.A.'s paramilitary experts.

In theory, the operation enabled the Bush Administration to respond immediately to time-sensitive intelligence: commandos crossed borders without visas and could interrogate terrorism suspects deemed too important for transfer to the military's facilities at Guantanamo, Cuba. They carried out instant interrogations-using force if necessary-at secret C.I.A. detention centers scattered around the world. The intelligence would be relayed to the sap command center in the Pentagon in real time, and sifted for those pieces of information critical to the "white," or overt, world.

One Pentagon official who was deeply involved in the program was Stephen Cambone, who was named Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in March, 2003. Early in his tenure, Cambone provoked a bureaucratic battle within the Pentagon by insisting that he be given control of all special-access programs that were relevant to the war on terror.

In mid-2003, the special-access program was regarded in the Pentagon as one of the success stories of the war on terror. "It was an active program," the former intelligence official told me. "It's been the most important capability we have for dealing with an imminent threat. If we discover where Osama bin Laden is, we can get him. And we can remove an existing threat with a real capability to hit the United States-and do so without visibility." Some of its methods were troubling and could not bear close scrutiny, however.

By then, the war in Iraq had begun. The sap was involved in some assignments in Iraq, the former official said.

Rumsfeld and Cambone went a step further, however: they expanded the scope of the sap, bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation.

"They weren't getting anything substantive from the detainees in Iraq," the former intelligence official told me. "No names. Nothing that they could hang their hat on. Cambone says, I've got to crack this thing and I'm tired of working through the normal chain of command. I've got this apparatus set up-the black special-access program-and I'm going in hot. So he pulls the switch, and the electricity begins flowing last summer. And it's working. We're getting a picture of the insurgency in Iraq and the intelligence is flowing into the white world. We're getting good stuff. But we've got more targets"-prisoners in Iraqi jails-"than people who can handle them."

Cambone then made another crucial decision, the former intelligence official told me: not only would he bring the sap's rules into the prisons; he would bring some of the Army military-intelligence officers working inside the Iraqi prisons under the sap's auspices...Hard-core special operatives, some of them with aliases, were working in the prison at Abu Ghraib.

By fall, according to the former intelligence official, the senior leadership of the C.I.A. had had enough. "They said, 'No way. We signed up for the core program in Afghanistan-pre-approved for operations against high-value terrorist targets-and now you want to use it for cab drivers, brothers-in-law, and people pulled off the streets'"-the sort of prisoners who populate the Iraqi jails. "The C.I.A.'s legal people objected," and the agency ended its sap involvement in Abu Ghraib, the former official said.

Comment: Was CIA Director Trent fired because he blow the whistle on Bush and Rumsfeld's secret SAP to HERSH?

The C.I.A.'s complaints were echoed throughout the intelligence community. There was fear that the situation at Abu Ghraib would lead to the exposure of the secret sap, and thereby bring an end to what had been, before Iraq, a valuable cover operation. "This was stupidity," a government consultant told me. "You're taking a program that was operating in the chaos of Afghanistan against Al Qaeda, a stateless terror group, and bringing it into a structured, traditional war zone. Sooner or later, the commandos would bump into the legal and moral procedures of a conventional war with an Army of a hundred and thirty-five thousand soldiers."

In a separate interview, a Pentagon consultant, who spent much of his career directly involved with special-access programs, spread the blame. "The White House subcontracted this to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon subcontracted it to Cambone," he said. "This is Cambone's deal, but Rumsfeld and Myers approved the program." When it came to the interrogation operation at Abu Ghraib, he said, Rumsfeld left the details to Cambone. Rumsfeld may not be personally culpable, the consultant added, "but he's responsible for the checks and balances. The issue is that, since 9/11, we've changed the rules on how we deal with terrorism, and created conditions where the ends justify the means."

The government consultant said that there may have been a serious goal, in the beginning, behind the sexual humiliation and the posed photographs. It was thought that some prisoners would do anything-including spying on their associates-to avoid dissemination of the shameful photos to family and friends. The government consultant said, "I was told that the purpose of the photographs was to create an army of informants, people you could insert back in the population." The idea was that they would be motivated by fear of exposure, and gather information about pending insurgency action, the consultant said.

. One book that was frequently cited was "The Arab Mind," a study of Arab culture and psychology, first published in 1973, by Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist who taught at, among other universities, Columbia and Princeton, and who died in 1996. The book includes a twenty-five-page chapter on Arabs and sex, depicting sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression. "The segregation of the sexes, the veiling of the women . . . and all the other minute rules that govern and restrict contact between men and women, have the effect of making sex a prime mental preoccupation in the Arab world," Patai wrote. Homosexual activity, "or any indication of homosexual leanings, as with all other expressions of sexuality, is never given any publicity. These are private affairs and remain in private." The Patai book, an academic told me, was "the bible of the Neocons on Arab behavior." ...It became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March, 2003, invasion of Iraq.

In 2003, a group of senior military legal officers from the Judge Advocate General's (jag) Corps to pay two surprise visits within five months to Scott Horton, who was then chairman of the New York City Bar Association's Committee on International Human Rights. "They wanted us to challenge the Bush Administration about its standards for detentions and interrogation," Horton told me. "They were urging us to get involved and speak in a very loud voice. It came pretty much out of the blue. The message was that conditions are ripe for abuse, and it's going to occur." The military officials were most alarmed about the growing use of civilian contractors in the interrogation process, Horton recalled. "They said there was an atmosphere of legal ambiguity being created as a result of a policy decision at the highest levels in the Pentagon. The jag officers were being cut out of the policy formulation process." They told him that, with the war on terror, a fifty-year history of exemplary application of the Geneva Conventions had come to an end.

http://newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040524fa fact

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. MY NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is MY NEWSLETTER endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

To TOP    of PAGE

VIDEO | Murtha on Patriotism and the Cost of the War An Interview by Geoffrey Millard and Scott Galindez http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm
In Part 2 of our interview with Congressman John Murtha, we ask him about the attacks on his patriotism, the cost of the war, and his opposition to permanent bases in Iraq.

Murtha Lays the Dead at Rumsfeld's Door

Murtha Lays the Dead at Rumsfeld's Door
[vfp-all] 9/15/2006 3:07 PM

Jason Leopold | Murtha Lays the Dead at Rumsfeld's Door
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091506J.shtml
Democratic congressman John Murtha has released a 12-page report outlining severe shortfalls plaguing the US Army as thousands of troops prepare to be deployed to Iraq. Murtha said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld bears full responsibility for the military's consistent readiness failures and demanded that he resign.
 
Murtha Lays the Dead at Rumsfeld's Door
        By Jason Leopold
        t r u t h o u t | Report
        Friday 15 September 2006
        Democratic congressman John Murtha released a 12-page report outlining severe shortfalls plaguing the US Army as thousands of troops prepare to be deployed to Iraq.
        Murtha, a 37-year Marine Corps veteran who entered the political arena in 1990, said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld bears full responsibility for the military's consistent readiness failures and demanded that the Defense Secretary resign.
        "Many Army combat and support units scheduled to deploy to Iraq in 2007 will have less than the required one year period for rest and re-training," the report says. "This is one of the key indicators that lead many Army officials to conclude that current deployment rates cannot be sustained without breaking the force."
        Murtha publicized the report at a news conference Wednesday where he was joined by Congressman David Obey, D-Wisconsin. Murtha read the most explosive parts of the report, much of which is based on detailed, internal Army documents his staff requested over the past few months.
        The findings are damning.
        "In effect, the Army has become a 'hand-to-mouth' organization," Murtha said, reading from the report. "Its inability to get ahead of the deployment and training curves is rooted in the Secretary's miscalculations and blind optimism about troop and industrial surge requirements for the US occupation of Iraq."
        Murtha added that "thousands of key Army weapons platforms - such as tanks, Humvees, Bradley Fighting Vehicles - sit in disuse at Army maintenance depots for lack of funding ... there are over 600 tanks - enough for one full Army division - sitting at Anniston Army Depot."
        An Army spokesman said Murtha's report is wildly overblown, and released a statement in response to the congressman's charges.
        "Today's Army is the highest quality Army this Nation has ever produced - it has not 'gone south,'" a statement released by the Army says. "To imply otherwise is an insult to the young men and women who have volunteered to protect our nation's freedoms."
        But Murtha refuses to back down. Frustrated by the White House's refusal to hold Rumsfeld accountable for failing to prepare for a lengthy ground war in Iraq, which, according to career military officials have led to thousands of US casualties, Murtha released a resolution calling for Rumsfeld to immediately step down.
        "For the good of the country, the United States of America must restore credibility both at home and abroad and the first step toward restoring that credibility must be to demonstrate accountability for the mistakes that have been made in prosecuting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by
immediately effecting the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and replacing him with someone capable of leading the nation's military in a strategy to resolve our deployment in Iraq," Murtha's resolution says.
        Megan Grote, a spokeswoman for Murtha, said the resolution has five co-sponsors and is gaining support among House Democrats. However, she cautioned not to read too much into that, since the resolution is just starting to make the rounds among Murtha's colleagues in the House.
        "It's still too early to know, because it's only been a day since the resolution was released," Grote said. "There are other members who've called for [Rumsfeld] to resign in the past whose offices may not have heard about the resolution yet."
        Career military officials have long believed the reason the Iraq war hasn't been a "cakewalk," as Bush administration officials described it prior to the March 2003 US-led attack, is because of the flawed war plan Rumsfeld designed in 2002.
        In October 2002, Rumsfeld ordered the military's regional commanders to rewrite all of their war plans to capitalize on precision weapons, better intelligence, and speedier deployment in the event the United States decided to invade Iraq.
        The goal was to use fewer ground troops, a move that caused dismay among some in the military who said concern for the troops requires overwhelming numerical superiority to assure victory.
        Rumsfeld refused to listen to his military commanders, saying that his plan would allow the military "to begin combat operations on less notice and with far fewer troops than thought possible - or thought wise - before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks," the New York Times reported in its October 13, 2002, edition.
        Military officials viewed Rumsfeld's approach as injecting too much risk into war planning and said it could result in US casualties that might be prevented by amassing larger forces, according to published reports.
        Those predictions have been borne out over the past 41 months, and that is of grave concern to Murtha, who spent most of his life in the military. Murtha said during Wednesday's news conference that issues plaguing today's military are so severe that "of the 16 active-duty, non-deployed combat brigades in the United States managed by the Army's Forces Command, the vast majority of them are rated at the lowest readiness ratings."
        "The situation facing the Army Guard and Reserve is comparatively worse," Murtha added. "Of all the Guard units not currently mobilized, about four-fifths received the lowest readiness rating. Personnel shortages are the major reason behind the decline in Guard and Reserve readiness-shortages created for the most part by mobilizations having lapsed or personnel having been pulled from units to augment others. Perhaps most troubling to many of the Army's senior uniformed leaders is the lack of national attention to the Army's plight."
        Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.
    -------

James Starowicz
Blog: Imagine A World Of,
"PTSD: You didn't fight Alone Then,
You needn't fight Alone Now!!"

      Murtha predicts Iraq pullout      

AP: Murtha predicts Iraq pullout or Democratic control of House by 2007
[snow-news] 5/13/2006 9:40 PM

[On Thursday, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA 12th) told AP that either George W. Bush will yield to public opinion and pull U.S. troops out of Iraq or Democrats will regain control of Congress in the 2006 off-year elections.   --   Murtha predicted Democrats would gain between forty and fifty seats; only fifteen would be needed to shift control of the U.S. House of Representatives out of Republican control.   --   Murtha was first sent to Congress "in a February 1974 special election that signaled the political weakness of Richard Nixon" (*Almanac of American Politics 2004*, p. 1392), and on Thursday he compared today's political situation to the time when as a 41-year-old decorated Marine veteran of Vietnam (Murtha was the first Vietnam vet to serve in Congress) he was elected from the district that includes the site of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794.   --Mark]

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4467/

1. U.S.Washington
MURTHA PREDICTS U.S. PULLOUT FROM IRAQ By Kimberly Hefling
Associated Press May 12, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/11/AR2006051101235.html

CAPTION: Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa. is interviewed by the Associated Press in his Capitol Hill office, Thursday, May 11, 2006.PHOTO

WASHINGTON -- Rep. John Murtha, a Vietnam veteran first elected in the anti-war fever of 1974, says American troops will be brought home from Iraq by 2007.

Either President Bush will bow to public opinion or Democrats will have won control of the House of Representatives and increased pressure on the White House, Murtha, D-Pa., said in an Associated Press interview Thursday.

Most likely, there will be a "tidal wave" that propels Democrats into the majority, said Murtha.   He predicts Democrats will gain 40-50 seats -- well more than the 15 needed for the party to gain control.

Murtha, 73, a retired Marine colonel who has generally been hawkish on war issues, shocked Washington in November when he said the war could not be won and it was time for troops to come home.   He offered a plan that would keep troops in the region in case of a national security emergency.

Murtha was elected in 1974, when public outrage over the Watergate scandal and President Nixon swept Democrats into office.   He compared this election year to that of 1974 and to 1994, when the GOP rolled into power -- partly because of discontent with President Clinton.

"Republicans are spinning the fact that it's going to be very hard.   From my experience in '74 and '94, they can't stop it . . . even if they did something dramatic," Murtha said.

Murtha said he thinks President Bush would have to bring more than half the troops in Iraq back to the United States before election day for it to start to make a difference to voters.

"If that happens, he would have to admit he made mistakes," Murtha said.   "The biggest problem he has had is admitting he made a mistake in going in there in the first place

      Murtha re Troop Moral, [PTSD]      

MARINES KILLED IRAQI CIVILIANS 'IN COLD BLOOD': U.S. LAWMAKER
AFP May 17, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060518/wl_mideast_afp/usiraqrightsmarines

A U.S. lawmaker and former Marine colonel accused U.S. Marines of killing innocent Iraqi civilians after a Marine comrade had been killed by a roadside bomb.

"Our troops over-reacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood," John Murtha told reporters.   The November 19 incident occurred in Haditha, Iraq.

"There was no firefight" that led to the shootings at close range, the Vietnam war veteran said, denying early official accounts, which said that a roadside bomb had killed the Iraqis.

"There were no (roadside bombs) that killed these innocent people," he said.

*Time* magazine reported the shootings on March 27, based on an Iraqi human rights group and locals, who said that 15 unarmed Iraqis died, including women and children, when Marines barged into their home throwing grenades and shooting.

"It's much worse than reported in *Time* magazine," Murtha said.

At least three Marine officers are under official investigation, and no report has been released, *Army Times* said Tuesday.

Murtha is a harsh critic of the war in Iraq and said that such incidents are the result of inadequate planning, training, and troop numbers in Iraq.

2. Politics & government
PENTAGON REPORT SAID TO FIND KILLING OF IRAQI CIVILIANS DELIBERATE By Drew Brown
Knight Ridder May 17, 2006

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/14604341.htm

WASHINGTON -- A Pentagon report on an incident in which U.S. Marines shot and killed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians last November will show that those killings were deliberate and worse than initially reported, a Pennsylvania congressman said Wednesday.

"There was no firefight.   There was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed those innocent people," Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said during a news conference on Iraq.   "Our troops over-reacted because of the pressure on them. And they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.   That is what the report is going to tell."

Murtha's comments were the first on-the-record remarks by a U.S. official characterizing the findings of military investigators looking into the Nov. 19 incident.   Murtha, the ranking Democrat on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee and an opponent of Bush administration policy in Iraq, said he hadn't read the report but had learned about its findings from military commanders and other sources.

Military public affairs officers said the investigation isn't completed and declined to provide further information.   "There is an ongoing investigation," said Lt. Col. Sean Gibson, a Marine spokesman at Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla.   "Any comment at this time would be inappropriate."

Both Gibson and Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin said that the military has yet to decide what, if any action, might be taken against Marines involved in the incident.

"It would be premature to judge any individual or unit until the investigation is complete," Irwin said.   Said Gibson, "No charges have been made as we have to go through the entire investigatory process and determine whether or not that is a course of action."

Three Marine commanders whose troops were involved in the incident were relieved of duty in April, but the Marines didn't link their dismissals to the incident, saying only that Gen. Richard Natonski, commander of 1st Marine Division, had lost confidence in the officers' ability to command.   Gibson reiterated that point Wednesday.   "It's important to remember that the officers were relieved by the commanding general of 1st Marine Division as a result of events that took place throughout their tour of duty in Iraq," he said.

The dismissed officers were Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, commander of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, and two of his company commanders, Capt. James S. Kimber and Capt. Lucas M. McConnell. Gibson said all three have been assigned to staff jobs with the 1st Division.

U.S. military authorities in Iraq initially reported that one Marine and 15 Iraqi civilians traveling in a bus were killed by a roadside bomb in the western Iraq insurgent stronghold of Haditha.   They said eight insurgents were killed in an ensuing firefight.

But Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the ground commander of coalition forces in Iraq, ordered an investigation on Feb. 14 after a reporter with *Time* magazine told military authorities of allegations that the Marines had killed innocent civilians.

After CNN broke the news of the initial investigation in March, military officials told Knight Ridder that the civilians were killed not in the initial blast but were apparently caught in the crossfire of a subsequent gun battle as 12 to 15 Marines fought insurgents from house to house over the next five hours.   At that time, military officials told Knight Ridder that four of the civilians killed were women and five were children.

Subsequent reporting from Haditha by *Time* and Knight Ridder revealed a still different account of events, with survivors describing Marines breaking down the door of a house and indiscriminately shooting the building's occupants.

Twenty-three people were killed in the incident, relatives of the dead told Knight Ridder.

The uncle of one survivor, a 13-year-old girl, told Knight Ridder that the girl had watched the Marines open fire on her family and that she had held her 5-year-old brother in her arms as he died.   The girl shook visibly as her uncle relayed her account, too traumatized to recount what happened herself.

"I understand the investigation shows that in fact there was no firefight, there was no explosion that killed the civilians on a bus," Murtha said. "There was no bus.   There was no shrapnel.   There was only bullet holes inside the house where the Marines had gone in.   So it's a very serious incident, unfortunately.   It shows the tremendous pressure these guys are under every day when they're out in combat and the stress and consequences."

Murtha, who retired as a colonel after 37 years in the Marine Corps, said nothing indicates that the Iraqis killed in the incident were at fault.

"One man was killed with an IED," Murtha said, referring to a Marine killed by the roadside bomb.   "And after that, they actually went into the houses and killed women and children."

      West Point Graduates Against the War      

[PolyPsySp] West Point Graduates Against the War [yes, really! :-)]
4/14/2006 10:13 PM

I was ecstatic when heard about these guys.
 
From the West Point Graduates Against the War Statement of Purpose:
          "...When we West Point graduates took our commissioning oath of office one past June morning, we swore to protect our nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The deceitful connivances of the current administration have resulted in a war catastrophic to our nation's interests: politically, economically, militarily, and morally. We now stand to protect our nation from these deceivers. We will not serve their lies..."
(http://www.westpointgradsagainstthewar.org/ourpurpose_2.htm)
 
Also THE (full) LANCET STUDY (documenting the 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed - finished in 2004, and not even including those since) is at West Point Graduates Against The War .Org. "Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey": http://www.westpointgradsagainstthewar.org/thelancetstudy.htm
 
-Chris

      GI Resistance      

How GI Resistance Altered The Course Of History:
“Sir, No Sir," A Timely Film,
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/opin/pr_sirnosir.html
Premiers Week of 4/3/2006
 
by Paul Rockwell
Oakland, California

        “General, your tank is a mighty vehicle.
        It shatters the forest and crushes a hundred men.
        But it has one defect:
        It needs drivers.

        General, a man is quite expendable.
        He can fly and he can kill.
        But he has one defect:
        He can think."
        -- Bertolt Brecht

When award-winning actors Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland organized an anti-war review, touring U.S. military bases and towns around the world, the GI rebellion against the war in Vietnam was already in full force.

In one theatrical episode, evoking laughter and applause from thousands of soldiers and Marines, Fonda played the part of an aide to President Richard Nixon.

        “Richard," she exclaims. “There's a terrible demonstration going on outside."
        Nixon replies: “Oh, there's always a demonstration going on outside."
        Fonda: “But Richard. This one is completely out of control. They're storming the White House."
        “Oh, I think I better call out the 3rd Marines." Nixon exclaims.
        “You, can't, Richard," says Fonda.
        “Why not?" says Nixon.
        She answers: “Because they ARE the 3rd Marines!"

Archival footage of the Fonda tour appears in David Zeiger's exciting new film, “Sir, No Sir," which opens in select theatres throughout the U.S. this month. (See www.sirnosir.com for schedule.)

“Sir, No Sir," the untold story of the GI movement to end the war in Vietnam, is a documentary. It's not a work of nostalgia. It's an activist film, and it comes at a time when GI resistance to the current war is spreading throughout the United States.

There are more than 100 films -- fiction and nonfiction -- about the war in Vietnam. Not one deals seriously with the most pivotal events of the time -- the anti-war actions of GIs within the military.

The three-decade blackout of GI resistance is not due to any lack of evidence. Information about the resistance has always been available. According to the Pentagon, over 500,000 incidents of desertion took place between 1966 and 1977. Officers were fragged. Entire units refused to enter battle.

Large social movements create their own “committees of correspondence" -- communication systems beyond the control of power-holders and police authority. Despite prison sentences, police spies, agent provocateurs, vigilante bombing of their offices, coffee houses and underground papers sprung up in the dusty, often remote towns that surrounded U.S. military bases throughout the world. “Just about every base in the world had an underground paper," Director Zeiger tells us in Mother Jones.

When the first coffee house opened in Columbia, South Carolina, near Fort Jackson, an average of six hundred GIs visited each week. Moved by the courage and audacity of soldiers for peace, civilians raised funds to help operate the coffee houses and to provide legal defense.

When local proprietors, like Tyrell Jewelers near Fort Hood, fleeced GIs, GI boycotts were common. At one point, the Department of Defense tripled its purchase of non-union produce in order to break the United Farm Workers boycott. American GIs, many from the fields and barrios of California, immediately joined the Farm Worker pickets. Mocking signs appeared on military bases saying “Officers Buy Lettuce." The GI movement was a profoundly class-conscious movement.

A counter-culture blossomed inside the military. Affinity groups, like “The Buddies" and “The Freaks" were formed. Afros, rock and soul music, bracelets and beads, the use of peace signs and clenched fists -- a culture antithetical to the totalitarian culture of military life -- proliferated. Prison riots in the stockades, from Fort Dix to the Marine brig in Da Nang, were common by 1970.

In response to a detested recruitment slogan -- "Fun, Travel, Adventure" -- GIs named one periodical “FTA," which meant “Fuck The Army." When GIs ceased to cooperate with superiors, the military lost control of culture and communication.

Military attacks on GI rights -- the right to hold meetings, to read papers, to think for themselves, to resist illegal orders -- did not subdue the growing anti-military movement. Repression actually widened the resistance.

Like Pablo Paredes, Kevin Benderman, Kelly Dougherty, Camilo Mejia -- to name a few war resistors of our time -- the GI resistors of the 60s and 70s showed incredible courage. Pvt. David Samas, one of the Fort Hood Three, who refused to serve in Vietnam, said in one impassioned speech: “We have not been scared. We have not been in the least shaken from our paths. Even if physical violence is used against us, we will fight back...the GI should be reached somehow. He doesn't want to fight. He has no reason to risk his life. And the peace movement is dedicated to his safety."

In July 1970 forty combat officers sent a letter to the commander-in-chief. If the war continues, they wrote, “young Americans in the military will simply refuse en masse to cooperate." That's exactly what happened. Nothing is so fearful to power-holders as non-cooperation. In 1971, even the Armed Forces Journal published an article by a former Marine Colonel, entitled, “The collapse of the Armed Forces."

A point was reached where the resistance became infectious, almost unstoppable. It spread from barracks to aircraft carriers, from army stockades and navy brigs into the conservative military towns where GIs were stationed. Even elite colleges like West Point were affected by revolt. Thousands of defiant soldiers went to prison. Thousands went into exile in Canada and Sweden.

In the end the GI anti-war movement -- enlisted youth, draftees, poor kids from ghettos, farms and barrios--paralyzed the biggest death machine of modern times. In short, people power altered the course of history. (The book “Soldiers In Revolt," by David Cortright, makes an excellent companion to “Sir, No Sir.")
 
Meeting The War Resisters
“Sir, No Sir" is organized around the testimony of prominent war resistors. Yes, there are a lot of talking heads in “Sir, No Sir." But their revelations, backed with images and footage of rebellion, are unforgettable. We meet Donald Duncan, the decorated member of the Green Berets, who resigned in defiance in 1963 after 15 months of service in Vietnam. His article in Ramparts, “I Quit," generated great excitement in the student movement.

We also meet Howard Levy, the Green Beret medic who refused to use medical practices as a political tactic in war. His court martial caused a huge impact on GI and civilian consciousness. The troops supported him.

“When the court martial began on base," he tells us on film, “it was the most remarkable thing when hundreds and hundreds would hang out of the windows of the barracks and give me the V-sign, or give me the clenched fist. Something had changed here, something very important was happening."

That something was GI revolt.

Thousands of separate, individual acts of moral defiance eventually merged into a collective movement with a specific goal: end the war.

“Sir, No Sir" is not a preachy film. Geiger does not lecture us; he tells a story. Yet we cannot afford to miss the built-in lesson from the eventual triumph of the GI resistance, a lesson that goes against media ideology and conventional wisdom. In the words of George Lakey, “People power is simply more powerful than military power. Nothing is more important for today's activists to know than this: the foundation of political rule is the compliance of the people, not violence. People power is more powerful than violence. The sooner we act on that knowledge, the sooner the U.S. Empire can be brought down."

Of course times have changed. The '60s are over. And while every generation determines its own destiny in its own way, while history itself is but “a light on the stern" -- it is still true that “The spirit of the people is greater than man's technology."

“Sir, No Sir" is a work of hope.

Paul Rockwell is a columnist for In Motion Magazine. His latest essay on military resistance appears in “Ten Excellent Reasons Not To Join The Military," edited by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, just published by New Press.

Published in In Motion Magazine April 3, 2006.
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/opin/pr_sirnosir.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Never again shall one generation of veterans abandon another."
James Starowicz
Member: Veterans For Peace
Blog: 'Imagine' a World of...

      Field commanders tell Pentagon Iraq war 'is lost' (ref: Gen. Pace)     

<http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/printer_8790.shtml>
  From Capitol Hill Blue

The Rant
Field commanders tell Pentagon Iraq war 'is lost'
By DOUG THOMPSON
Jun 5, 2006, 07:13

Military commanders in the field in Iraq admit in private reports to the Pentagon the war "is lost" and that the U.S. military is unable to stem the mounting violence killing 1,000 Iraqi civilians a month.

Even worse, they report the massacre of Iraqi civilians at Haditha is "just the tip of the iceberg" with over-stressed, out-of-control Americans soldiers pushed beyond the breaking point both physically and mentally.

"We are in trouble in Iraq," says retired army general Barry McCaffrey. "Our forces can't sustain this pace, and I'm afraid the American people are walking away from this war."

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has clamped a tight security lid on the increasingly pessimistic reports coming out of field commanders in Iraq, threatening swift action against any military personnel who leak details to the press or public.

The wife of a staff sergeant with Kilo Company, the Marine Unit charged with killing civilians at Haditha, tells Newsweek magazine that the unit was a hotbed of drug abuse, alcoholism and violence.

"There were problems in Kilo company with drugs, alcohol, hazing [violent initiation games], you name it," she said. "I think it's more than possible that these guys were totally tweaked out on speed or something when they shot those civilians in Haditha."

Journalists stationed with the unit described Kilo Company and the Third Battalion of Marines as a "unit out of control," where morale had plummeted and rules went out the window.

Similar reports emerge from military units throughout Iraq and even the Iraqi prime minister describes American soldiers as trigger happy goons with little regard for the lives of civilians.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki says the murder of Iraqi civilians has become a "daily phenomenon" by American troops who "do not respect the Iraqi people."

"They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion. This is completely unacceptable," Maliki said. The White House tried to play down Maliki's comments, saying the prime minister was "misquoted" although Maliki himself has yet to made such a public claim.

''Can anyone blame Iraqis for joining the resistance now?'' Mustafa al-Ani, an Iraqi analyst living in Dubai, told The Chicago Tribune. ''The resistance and the terrorists alike are feeding off the misbehavior of the American soldiers.''

As the resistance mounts and daily violence escalates, the over-stressed U.S. units are unable to control the mounting violence and conclusions escalate that the war is lost.

"Our troops over-reacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood," says Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa.

The former commander of American forces in Northern Iraq admits incidents like Haditha add to the impression that the U.S. cannot win the war.

"Allegations such as this, regardless of how they are borne out by the facts, can have an effect on the ability of U.S. forces to continue to operate," says Army Brig. Gen. Carter Ham. Others say the incident just shows the U.S. has lost he "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people.

"When something like Haditha happens, it gives the impression that Americans can't be trusted to provide security, which is the most important thing to Iraqis on a day-to-day level," says Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It tends to confirm all of the worst interpretations of the United States, and not simply in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan and in the region."

© Copyright 2005 Capitol Hill Blue

To TOP    of PAGE

[pieces:]

[vfp-all] Murtha Details His Exit Strategy - CBS "60 Minutes - 1/15/2006:  
      The beginnings of actual political fallout began to find its way into the White House last week. Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the House Democrats' most vocal defense hawk, joined Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to declare that the conflict is "unwinnable." Murtha, a Vietnam veteran, rocked the Democratic caucus when he said at a leader's luncheon Tuesday that the United States cannot win the war in Iraq.
      "Unwinnable." Well, it only took about 14 months.
      Also last week, calls for the resignation of Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld became strident. Pelosi accused Rumsfeld of being "in denial about Iraq," and said U.S. soldiers "are suffering great casualties and injuries, and American taxpayers are paying an enormous price" because Rumsfeld "has done a poor job as secretary of defense." Representative Charlie Rangel, a leading critic of the Iraq invasion, has filed articles of impeachment against Rumsfeld.

===============[ ------------ ]================
Bill Moyers comments:
Our present Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has a plaque on his desk that reads, "Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords." Perhaps, but while war is sometimes necessary, to treat it as sport is obscene. At best, war is a crude alternative to shrewd, disciplined diplomacy and the forging of a true alliance acting in the name of international law. Unprovoked, "the noblest sport of war" becomes the slaughter of the innocent. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/anniversary/moyers.htm

===============[   ]================

To TOP    of PAGE

BACKGROUND: *NY Times* reports on intra-military debate on Rumsfeld-related issues
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4396/

[]The *New York Times* reported Sunday on its front page that "an extraordinary debate" is underway among "junior and mid-level officers" throughout the military around issues raised by the controversy over whether U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should resign.[1]   --   Although Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (http://usmilitary.about.com/od/punitivearticles/a/mcm88.htm) says that "Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct," (constitutional challenges to this law have consistently failed; see *United States v. Howe*, 37 C.M.R. 555 [A.B.R. 1966], *reconsideration denied*, 37 C.M.R. 429 [C.M.A. 1967], in which a conviction was upheld even thought the lieutenant convicted was off duty and wearing civilian clothes at the time he carried a sign insulting President Lyndon B. Johnson in an anti-war demonstration), "the military correspondents of the *Times*" set out to give officers an opportunity to publish expressions of their contempt for civilian leaders anonymously.   --   Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt quote an Army major in Special Forces who said, "I believe that a large number of officers hate Rumsfeld as much as I do, and would like to see him go."   --   The *Times* reporters seem oblivious to the fact that by soliciting such comments, they are doing more than reporting on "a debate" within the military.   --   They are, in fact, encouraging and stimulating insubordination against civilian leadership of the military.   --   There are, of course, ample grounds for contempt.   --   Historian Chalmers Johnson has written:   "The old and well-institutionalized American division of labor between elected officials and military professionals who advised elected officials and then executed their policies was dismantled [after Vietnam], never to be recreated.   During the Reagan administration, an ever-burgeoning array of amateur strategists and star-wars enthusiasts came to occupy the White House and sought to place their allies in positions of authority in the Pentagon.   The result was the development of a kind of military opportunism at the heart of government, with military men paying court to the pet schemes of inexperienced politicians and preparing for lucrative post-retirement positions in the arms industry or military think tanks.   Top military leaders began to say what they thought their political superiors wanted to hear, while covertly protecting the interests of their individual services or of their minifiefdoms within those services.   The military establishment increasingly became a gigantic cartel, operated to benefit the four principal services -- the army, navy, Marine Corps, and air force -- much the way the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) functions to maintain the profits of each of its members. Shares of the defense budget for each service have not varied by more than 2 percent over the past twenty-five years, during which time the Soviet Union collapse and the United States fought quite varied wars in Panama, Kuwait, Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.   Military needs did not dictate this stability" (*The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic* [Metropolitan Books, 2004], pp. 61-62).   --Mark[]

U.S.
Washington
YOUNG OFFICERS JOIN THE DEBATE OVER RUMSFELD By Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt

** Secretary's Woes Raise Wider Military Issues **
New York Times April 23, 2006 Section 1, Page 1
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/washington/23military.html

PHOTO (http://graphics9.nytimes.com/images/2006/04/23/world/military.190.jpg) CAPTION: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at the 2004 graduation ceremony of the United States Military Academy.

WASHINGTON -- The revolt by retired generals who publicly criticized Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has opened an extraordinary debate among younger officers, in military academies, in the armed services' staff colleges and even in command posts and mess halls in Iraq.

Junior and mid-level officers are discussing whether the war plans for Iraq reflected unvarnished military advice, whether the retired generals should have spoken out, whether active-duty generals will feel free to state their views in private sessions with the civilian leaders and, most divisive of all, whether Mr. Rumsfeld should resign.

In recent weeks, military correspondents of the *Times* discussed those issues with dozens of younger officers and cadets in classrooms and with combat units in the field, as well as in informal conversations at the Pentagon and in e-mail exchanges and telephone calls.

To protect their careers, the officers were granted anonymity so they could speak frankly about the debates they have had and have heard.   The stances that emerged are anything but uniform, although all seem colored by deep concern over the quality of civil-military relations, and the way ahead in Iraq.

The discussions often flare with anger, particularly among many midlevel officers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and face the prospect of additional tours of duty.

"This is about the moral bankruptcy of general officers who lived through the Vietnam era yet refused to advise our civilian leadership properly," said one Army major in the Special Forces who has served two combat tours.   "I can only hope that my generation does better someday."

An Army major who is an intelligence specialist said:   "The history I will take away from this is that the current crop of generals failed to stand up and say, 'We cannot do this mission.'   They confused the cultural can-do attitude with their responsibilities as leaders to delay the start of the war until we had an adequate force.   I think the backlash against the general officers will be seen in the resignation of officers" who might otherwise have stayed in uniform.

One Army colonel enrolled in a Defense Department university said an informal poll among his classmates indicated that about 25 percent believed that Mr. Rumsfeld should resign, and 75 percent believed that he should remain.   But of the second group, two-thirds thought he should acknowledge errors that were made and "show that he is not the intolerant and inflexible person some paint him to be," the colonel said.

Many officers who blame Mr. Rumsfeld are not faulting President Bush -- in contrast to the situation in the 1960's, when both President Lyndon B. Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara drew criticism over Vietnam from the officer corps.   (Mr. McNamara, like Mr. Rumsfeld, was also resented from the outset for his attempts to reshape the military itself.)

But some are furiously criticizing both, along with the military leadership, like the Army major in the Special Forces.   "I believe that a large number of officers hate Rumsfeld as much as I do, and would like to see him go," he said.

"The Army, however, went gently into that good night of Iraq without saying a word," he added, summarizing conversations with other officers.   "For that reason, most of us know that we have to share the burden of responsibility for this tragedy.   And at the end of the day, it wasn't Rumsfeld who sent us to war, it was the president.   Officers know better than anyone else that the buck stops at the top.   I think we are too deep into this for Rumsfeld's resignation to mean much.

"But this is all academic.   Most officers would acknowledge that we cannot leave Iraq, regardless of their thoughts on the invasion.   We destroyed the internal security of that state, so now we have to restore it.   Otherwise, we will just return later, when it is even more terrible."

The debates are fueled by the desire to mete out blame for the situation in Iraq, a drawn-out war that has taken many military lives and has no clear end in sight.   A midgrade officer who has served two tours in Iraq said a number of his cohorts were angered last month when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that "tactical errors, a thousand of them, I am sure," had been made in Iraq.

"We have not lost a single tactical engagement on the ground in Iraq," the officer said, noting that the definition of tactical missions is specific movements against an enemy target.   "The mistakes have all been at the strategic and political levels."

Many officers said a crisis of leadership extended to serious questions about top generals' commitment to sustain a seasoned officer corps that was being deployed on repeated tours to the long-term counter-insurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, while the rest of the government did not appear to be on the same wartime footing.

"We are forced to develop innovative ways to convince, coerce, and cajole officers to stay in to support a war effort of national-level importance that is being done without a defensewide, governmentwide, or nationwide commitment of resources," said one Army colonel with experience in Iraq.

Another Army major who served in Iraq said a fresh round of debates about the future of the American military had also broken out.   Simply put, the question is whether the focus should be, as Mr. Rumsfeld believes, on a lean high-tech force with an eye toward possible opponents like China, or on troop-heavy counterinsurgency missions more suited to hunting terrorists, with spies and boots on the ground.

In general, the Army and Marines support maintaining beefy ground forces, while the Navy and Air Force -- the beneficiaries of much of the high-tech arsenal -- favor the leaner approach.   And some worry that those arguments have become too fierce.

"I think what has the potential for scarring relations is the two visions of warfare -- one that envisions near-perfect situational awareness and technology dominance, and the other that sees future war as grubby, dirty and chaotic," the major said.   "These visions require vastly different forces. The tension comes when we only have the money to build one of these forces. Who gets the cash?"

Some senior officers said part of their own discussions were about fears for the immediate future, centering on the fact that Mr. Rumsfeld has surrounded himself with senior officers who share his views and are personally invested in his policies.

"If civilian officials feel as if they could be faced with a revolt of sorts, they will select officers who are like-minded," said another Army officer who has served in Iraq.   "They will, as a result, get the military advice they want based on whom they appoint."

Kori Schake, a fellow at the Hoover Institution who teaches Army cadets at West Point, said some of the debates revolved around the issues raised in *Dereliction of Duty*, a book that analyzes why the Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed unable or unwilling to challenge civilian decisions during the war in Vietnam.   Published in 1997, the book was written by Col. H. R. McMaster, who recently returned from a year in Iraq as commander of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment.

"It's a fundamentally healthy debate," Ms. Schake said.   "Junior officers look around at the senior leadership and say, 'Are these people I admire, that I want to be like?'"

These younger officers "are debating the standard of leadership," she said. "Is it good enough to do only what civilian masters tell you to do?   Or do you have a responsibility to shape that policy, and what actions should you undertake if you believe they are making mistakes?"

The conflicts some officers express reflect the culture of commander and subordinate that sometimes baffles the civilian world.   No