The Rag Blog

The USG Open Source Center translates an interview in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo with Damien Corsetti, a former private in the US army who served as an interrogator and was charged with crimes. He says he witnessed torture but did not commit it himself. He also says that most of the individuals he interrogated had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Many of the practices Corsetti says he witnessed are already illegal. Others would be banned by a new bill passed by the House of Representatives, which George W. Bush has threatened to veto. The bill would place the Central Intelligence Agency under the same rules as obtain for the US military and would disallow waterboarding, mock executions, and sexual humiliation. I repeat, Bush has pledged to veto this legislation.

Former US interrogator recounts torture cases in Afghanistan and Iraq
El Mundo (Internet Version-WWW)
Monday, December 10, 2007 . . .
Document Type: OSC Translated Text . . .

Former US interrogator recounts torture cases in Afghanistan and Iraq

Discharged US army private Damien Corsetti has described the “morally unacceptable” cases of physical and psychological torture he says he witnessed as an interrogator at the prisons of Bagram in Afghanistan and Abu-Ghurayb in Iraq. Speaking in an interview with a Spanish paper, he said the vast majority of the individuals he questioned in the course of his duties “had nothing to do with either the Taleban or Al-Qa’idah” and that while he never took part in acts of abuse, many were tortured “to make them suffer, not to get information out of them”. The following is the text of the report on the interview with Corsetti published by the Spanish popular liberal newspaper El Mundo website on 10 December; subheading as published:

Fairfax (Virginia): Damien Corsetti looks at me with his small eyes and says: “Look, they leave us alone in this room, they give me a roll of duct tape to tie you to the chair, I turn off the light and in five hours you sign a piece of paper for me saying that you’re Usamah Bin-Ladin”.

It is a Thursday night. Damien Corsetti – who, according to The New York Times was nicknamed “The King of Torture” and “The Monster” by his colleagues at Bagram prison, in Afghanistan – is sitting down having a glass of wine in a French restaurant in Fairfax, on the outskirts of Washington. Four days ago, this US private arrived on the outskirts of Washington from North Carolina, where he had been living since September 2006, when he was discharged from the army following a trial in which he was found not guilty of the charges of dereliction of duty, maltreatment, assault and performing indecent acts with prisoners at Bagram.

Now, Corsetti – who was also under investigation in the Abu-Ghurayb torture case – only wants to put his life “in order”. It is a difficult task. Because first he will have to forget the torture to which he says he was a witness in Afghanistan of prisoners such as Al-Qa’idah leader Omar al-Faruq. “The cries, the smells, the sounds are with me. They are things that stay with you forever”, he recalls.

Corsetti arrived in Afghanistan on 29 July 2002. He was a military intelligence soldier, not an interrogator. “But the army needed reliable interrogators, because most interrogators do not meet security requirements. They are not reliable. So we arrived there”. A five-hour course in Afghanistan and, at 22, Corsetti began trying to extract information from the prisoners in the jail – prisoners who, in his opinion, “in 98 per cent of cases had nothing to do with either the Taleban or Al-Qa’idah”.

That is how Corsetti found himself interrogating prisoners at the jail. Many of them were people who had nothing to do with (George W.) Bush’s war on terror, like his first prisoner, whose name he still remembers: Khan Zara. “He was a peasant and grew opium. But he was there three months until he told us. Do you know how I found out. Because of his hands. His hands were full of calluses. Those are not the hands of a terrorist”.

Other prisoners include a farmer who had put mines on his land to kill his neighbour, with who he had a long-standing family dispute, and an Afghan who had bombs in his house to fish in the river. They were people like Dilawar, a taxi driver detained in 2002 who had nothing to do with the Taleban and who died after four days of beatings from US soldiers.

Because Bagram is a very tough prison. “Each prisoner has in his cell a carpet measuring 1.2 m by 2.5 m. And they spend 23 hours a day sat on it, in silence. If they speak, they are chained to the ceiling for 20 minutes and black visors are put on them so they can’t see and protectors are put on their ears so they can’t hear. They are taken down to the basement once a week, in groups of five or six, to shower them. It’s done to drive them crazy. I almost went crazy”, recalls Corsetti. Apart from those normal cells, in the basement of the prison there are six isolation cells, plus two rooms for who the former soldier describes as “special guests”.

But Bagram has an underworld in which the CIA tortures the leaders of Al-Qa’idah. “One day I went to an interrogation session and as soon as I arrived I knew that it was not a normal case. There were civilians, among them a doctor and a psychiatrist. The prisoner was called Omar al-Faruq, an Al-Qa’idah leader in Asia who had been brought to the prison by one of those agencies”, recalls Corsetti. “I don’t want to go into details because it could be very negative for my country, but he was brutally beaten – daily. And tortured by other methods. He was a bad man, but he didn’t deserve that”. Al-Faruq escaped from Bagram in action which, according to some, was tolerated by the USA and was killed in April 2006 by the British in the Iraqi city of Basra.

Corsetti says that he never took part in the torture. “My sole job was to sit there and make sure the prisoner didn’t die. But there were several times when I thought they were about to die, when they were interrogated by those people who have no name and who work for no-one in particular. It’s incredible what a human being can take”. A resistance similar to that of the memory of those torture sessions. Because Corsetti, a veteran of two wars, says: “I have seen people die in combat. I shot at people. That is not as bad as seeing someone tortured. Al-Faruq looked at me while they tortured him and I have that look in my head. And the cries, the smells, the sounds, they are with me all the time. It is something I can’t take in. The cries of the prisoners calling for their relatives, their mother. I remember one who called for God, for Allah, all the time. I have those cries here, inside my head”.

“In Abu-Ghurayb and Bagram they were tortured to make them suffer, not to get information out of them”. And the fact is that at times the torture had no other goal that “to punish them for being terrorists. They tortured them and didn’t ask them anything”. That is the case of the practice known as “the submarine”: to simulate the drowning of the prisoner. “They have them hooded and they pour water on them. That makes it very difficult to breath. I think you can’t die with the submarine. I certainly never saw anyone die. However, they do cough like crazy because they are totally submerged in water and that gets on their lungs. Perhaps what it can give you is serious pneumonia”. The civilians who took part in the interrogations used the submarine whenever they wanted. They gave it to them for five or 10 minutes and didn’t ask anything”.

Other torture included using extreme cold and heat. “I remember one of my prisoners trembling with cold. His teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. I put a blanket on him and then another, and another, and his teeth never stopped chattering, never stopped. You could see that man was going to die of hypothermia. But the doctors are there so that they don’t die, so as to be able to torture them one more day”. At other times, “they put them under blinding lights that worked mechanically, giving out flashes”.

“They are going to kill your children”

An important subject was that of psychological torture, administered by psychiatrists. “They tell them they are going to kill their children, rape their wives. And you see on their faces, in their eyes, the terror that that causes them. Because, of course, we know all about those people. We know the names of their children, where they live – we show them satellite photos of their houses. It is worse than any torture. That is not morally acceptable under any circumstances. Not even with the worst terrorist in the world”, says Corsetti, before adding: “Sometimes, we put one of our women (female US military personnel) in burqas and we made them walk through the interrogation rooms and we told them: ‘That is your wife’. And the prisoner believed it. Why wouldn’t they! We had those people going without sleep for a whole week. After two or three days with no sleep, you believe anything. In fact, it was a problem. The interpreters couldn’t understand what they were saying. The prisoners were having hallucinations. Because, of course, this is not like if you or me go three days without sleep when we’re partying. I’ve gone five days without sleep when I’ve been partying. But this is different. You’re in a cell where they let you sleep only a quarter of an hour every now and then. With no contact with the outside world. Without seeing sunlight. Like that, a days seems like a week. Your mental capacity is destroyed”.

In the opinion of Corsetti, the only thing his experience as an interrogator taught him “is that torture doesn’t work. One thing is losing your temper and punching a prisoner, another is to commit these acts of brutality. In Bagram we managed to find out about an Al-Qa’idah plan to blow up dozens of oil tankers across the world. We smashed the plot so well that they only managed to attack one, the French oil tanker Limburgh, in Yemen in October 2002. And we managed to get a guy to tell us without laying a finger on him”.

WASHINGTON (Dec. 15) – The Bush administration told a federal judge it was not obligated to preserve videotapes of CIA interrogations of suspected terrorists and urged the court not to look into the tapes’ destruction.

In court documents filed Friday night, government lawyers told U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy that demanding information about the tapes would interfere with current investigations by Congress and the Justice Department.

It was the first time the government had addressed the issue of the videotapes in court.

Kennedy ordered the administration in June 2005 to safeguard “all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay.”

Five months later, the CIA destroyed the interrogation videos. The recordings involved suspected terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri

Government lawyers told Kennedy the tapes were not covered by his court order because Zubaydah and al-Nashiri were not at the Guantanamo military prison in Cuba. The men were being held overseas in a network of secret CIA prisons. By the time President Bush acknowledged the existence of those prisons and the prisoners were transferred to Guantanamo, the tapes had been destroyed.

In court documents, acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey S. Bucholtz was concerned that Kennedy might order CIA officials to testify about the tapes. Bucholtz said that “could potentially complicate the ongoing efforts to arrive at a full factual understanding of the matter.”

The administration has taken a similar strategy in its dealings with Congress on the issue. On Friday, the Justice Department urged Congress to hold off on questioning witnesses and demanding documents because that evidence is part of a joint CIA-Justice Department investigation.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey also refused to give Congress details of the government’s investigation into the matter Friday, saying doing so could raise questions about whether the inquiry was vulnerable to political pressure.

Even if Kennedy accepts the argument that government did not violate his order, he still could demand a hearing. He could raise questions about obstruction or spoliation, a legal term for the destruction of evidence in “pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation.”

Zubaydah was the first high-value detainee taken by the CIA in 2002. He told his interrogators about alleged Sept. 11 accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh, and the two men’s confessions also led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who the U.S. government said was the mastermind behind the terrorist attacks.

Al-Nashiri is the alleged coordinator of the 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 sailors. Like Zubaydah, he is now at Guantanamo.

12/14/07 “ich” — — — Fascist! A word that is thrown around all too commonly in today’s political debates and partisan quibbling that is common among the cable “news networks.” A flip of the channel on any night to CNN, FOX, Headline News or other similar programs reveals time slots devoted to the latest celebrity scandal or any other unimportant story. When not emphatically debating the latest celebrity DUI or child-custody battle, you will frequently see a story or hear a media talking head propagate the fear-mongering about hoards of radical Muslims swimming across both oceans to destroy the very fabric of the North American homeland. Wouldn’t that be an impressive feat of stamina? But these individuals will not be referred to as just fanatics, terrorists or Islamists, but instead the newest trend “Islamofascists.”

Huh, did I miss something? Do these people who spew out rhetoric with that term even consider what fascism stands for or actually means. After all, would you not think that “esteemed” members of the media and their “expert” guests would actually understand what they are saying? Is that too much to ask? Unfortunately, yes. Not only do these individuals not use the term in a proper manner, they purposely distort the term in order to evoke thoughts of fear and insecurity.

Fascism?

So what defines a fascist society? Often times, fascism is subconsciously linked to the grainy black and white pictures of marauding Wermacht and SS troops from the 1940s. However, this shows a mental normalness which is incorrect. While Nazism did have fascist overtones, Nazism is not a form of government. Nazism is political ideology implemented through the use of a fascist government system. It is this system that needs to be understood and not the policy employed through it. This is vital since any form of government – yes, including a democracy – can be operated through a fascist structure. It is not exclusive to a dictatorship. As this article will show, you may be surprised by the results of the analysis.

Now, you reader, may argue that “who cares what the actual meaning of the word is, because it has taken on further societal overtones and inferences which society and it’s people now attribute to the word.” However, this does not do justice to the reality of the word or the reality of the world we live in today. You see, if we were to associate the word Fascist with Nazi, then we consciously set ourselves up to be oblivious to actual fascist tendencies which do not exhibit the racial or genocidal image that one has of Hitler’s master race. In order to analyze the events of the world today, we need a clear understanding of the true nature of Fascism, separate from its societal inferences. When this is done we see surprising results.

So what is fascism ? Lawrence Britt, writing in Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2, summarizes fourteen common traits of a fascist society.

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause

4. Supremacy of the Military

5. Rampant Sexism

6. Controlled Mass Media

7. Obsession with National Security

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined

9. Corporate Power is Protected

10. Labor Power is Suppressed

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

14. Fraudulent Elections

I recommend a read of his article to gain a deeper understanding of each point. While I wholeheartedly agree with the above delineation of a society crippled by the thrones of fascist power, I differ in the analysis as to how a government becomes fascist. I would to key in on Britt’s point number “9. Corporate Power is Protected.”

Corpofascism?

My argument comes at the issue from a different point of view. Instead of considering the above as traits of fascism, I believe that in fact, the fascist structure of government is what enables these attributes to manifest themselves. That fascist structure of government begins with the co-option of corporate and government interests becoming one in the same. This is the primary transition in the nature and operation of the government apparatus. Corporate power is not so much as protected; it is one in the same as government power. Hence the government is an extension of the corporate powerbrokers in society. Let me elaborate.

It begins with the unfettered control of government by corporate and business interests which leads to the detriment of the well-being of the many for the benefit of the few. Once the corporate and money powers have co-opted government, they are then able to work with government officials – who may have their own self-interested motives and ideologies – to instill policy that meets Britt’s thirteen other points.

So, fascism begins to manifest itself at the point when corporate interests highjack the operations of the government. Yes, business and government have and always been intertwined, it would be naïve not to think so. Yet, while intertwined in history there was a degree of separation and distinction between the functioning of each body. Each worked separately but in mutual respect of the other and would lend a helping hand to the other party. They mutually serve to promote each other. When working within the appropriate checks and balances, this enables a capitalist society to prosper and grow. After all, this is not fascism but capitalism at its very definition. In order for a society and its people to continue to be free and prosper the government must let economies thrive. However, in order for a society and its people to be treated equally and with justice, the government is needed to legislate and regulate the capitalist system so that it does not ultimately devour itself through its own desire for continual wealth. This is the act of mutual balance that is needed in a strong and healthy capitalist system.

A fascist government is one which is terminally ill with an incurable cancer. In a fascist society this system of mutual balance has completely and utterly collapsed to the point where government is not functioning as the representative of the people, but the security guard for the corporate interests. So if “experts” can throw around the word “Islamofacism”, let me make up a term “Corpofascism.”

So what happens when corporate interests rein supreme? We get a government system that exhibits the following:

1. It is a system where business interests and motives are held supreme over the interests of the public – usually leading to detrimental impacts on the public good.

2. It is a system where government has compromised every ounce of its duty, in order to serve the interests of the power brokers and money men through the legislation of laws and policies which benefit the rich and the corporations over those of the society.

3. It is a system where members of the government and the business community are indistinguishable from each other. Thus leading to patronage and cronyism beyond the normal expectations of a government official.

4. It is a system dominated by think-tanks and lobbying groups that influence politicians to act in the benefit of the industries and businesses they represent.

5. It is a system where politicians are corrupted and compromised through significant political contributions by big business (both under and over the table).

6. It is a system where the military, government and business are indistinguishable from each other. Succinctly described by Eisenhower as the “military industrial complex”.

7. It is a system where no distinction can be made between the overall policies and stances taken by opposing political parties within the Corpofascist system. The approach may differ, but the end result is the same.

8. It is a system with a domineering drive to reduce the scope of public services and the continued drive to privatize essential societal needs – health, education, welfare, etc.

9. It is a system where the public is inundated with propagandized rhetoric in order to distract them from the important issues. This maintains resistance to a minimum and enables the corporate interests to be served unabated.

Once a government structure begins to exhibit the above characteristics, it is safe to say that the government is now simply a tool – a very powerful tool at that – to serve the interest of the corporate masters. The checks and balances that once existed to keep government from falling into such a state have effectively been overwhelmed and defeated. The system is effectively broken and replaced with a Corpofascist operating racket.

Once this has occurred the government is used by the business and corporate interests not to further the advancement or well-being of the people, but instead to further the profit making abilities of the corporation. Laws and regulations are passed which benefit business by the same people that only months or a few years ago were commanding figures in industry and business. These “public citizens” now passing legislation were once minions serving as officers or directors for large multinational corporations. Their allegiance does not lie with the commoner, but with the industrial elites to whom they once belonged or to whom they owe their election financing. These same individuals maintain close business relationships and once their terms in office are complete frequently return to serve with the same corporations that they did before office or that they generously assisted while in office. The entire system is structured as a self-perpetuating revolving door that continues to perpetuate the corporate benefactor.

Maintaining the System

But certainly you say that such a corrupt system would be noticeable to the good citizenry of any nation and that they would rise up and demand more of their political masters. They would protest, use the power of their vote and demand a change to the way things are. Oh really? Well, a cursory application of the traits of a Corpofascist society reveals that this isn’t the case. And the reason is because the public is effectively disengaged and distracted from the truth through an ingenious use of a variety of means. This is where I will bring into my analysis Britt’s remaining points.

The Corpofascist government and its handlers know all too well that their power is only derived by the ability to distract the citizenry from the true nature of the racket they are operating. Therefore they employ a number of tools that do just this. These aren’t haphazardly applied, but instead carefully crafted to achieve the results of the corporate state.

It begins with the creation of an enemy upon which to blame all of the country’s problems and to distract the unknowing public from the actual events that are occurring in the echelons of power. These are the scapegoats to blame for all the state’s problems. This enemy is all powerful, all evil and just about ready to strike at the innocent children of the citizenry.

This enemy must be confronted. Alas, a call to arms is made using nationalistic and patriotic overtones that would make even a Nazi giddy with joy. The call to defend the homeland, to snoop on your neighbours and to serve your country becomes the heralded and virtuous duty of the citizen. Such indoctrination can only be completed by the complicit corporately controlled mass media which spews half-truths and utter lies on the television in order to whip the masses into fervor. Those who say that the media is separate and free from the government, forget that the government is not free and separate from the same corporations that control and own the media outlets.

To confront the enemy usually includes two further traits of a fascist society:

1. the use of military power to attack, invade and “liberate” the threat.
2. a curb on the domestic freedoms and civil liberties of the governments domestic citizenry in order to contain and monitor dissent.

In its thirst for power and growth the Corpofascist state indulges in the patriotic use of the nations military to secure access to regions, resources and access points that are critical to the profiteering of the business. Innocents on both sides of the military adventure endure the wrath of war while the corporate masters sit back in their air-conditioned offices. Countries are invaded, innocent women and children of brown skin (usually – let’s be honest) are considered “collateral damage” while their husbands, fathers, brothers and uncles are labeled as “terrorists.” Soldiers of the invading force, believing in the nobility of their mission – as a result of the lies they have been fed by their military and corporate masters, are brought home in body bags or on stretchers with arms and legs missing. They and their families suffer the continued mental and physical scars of a war to which they see no purpose.

Human rights, foreign and domestic, are flaunted by the Corpofascist state. In order to denigrate the worth of the people they are bombing wild stories of incomprehensible evil are spun and attributed to the enemy. Extraordinary measures, renditions and torture are employed to fight the enemy all in the name of preserving security. The Corpofascist state citizen is confronted with a perception of a government that is there to protect and genuinely take care of its citizens. Nothing could be further from the truth, but the veil of benevolence must be cast to get the citizen to capitulate their moral and intellectual fiber to the Corpofascist state.

When the veneer of goodwill is removed and dissent within the society begins to stir, the domestic populace is subject to strategies of harm reduction. Dissenters are characterized as unpatriotic, terrorist sympathizers and the all too common anti-semitic. Domestic criticism is quelled and laws are passed by the society to clamp down on citizen protests. The domestic police force is increasingly militarized in order to scare and confront the citizenry. Instead of serving and protecting the people they serve and protect the interests of the elite and the business powers.

While overt action against dissenters is taken the mass populace is kept in a state of ignorance. The corporate media feed them dribble about insignificant events which would be better served to be written on toilet paper. Stories of non-events are pumped, exaggerated and continually reported on by “experts” and “respected” members of the media. Celebrity gossip dominates the airwaves as a way to distract the individual from their own lives and important events. This is just fine for the Corpofascists.

Political discourse and debate is drawn down to severe partisan lines, whereby perceived differences are introduced within the political parties, despite the fact that the overall goal – the advancement of the corporate interest – is still paramount. Issues of debate between the political parties in the respective house of government focus on “distracting issues.” While important issues in their own rights – abortion, gay-rights, women’s rights, minority rights, etc. – these bear no relation to the prevailing problem with the sick society. No mention is made or attention paid to the domineering influence of the corporation within all aspects of the society. Corporate interests at all levels are hidden, minimized or protected by the Corpofascists even though vital areas of the citizenry are impacted – food, water, health, education, civil rights, human rights, domestic policy, foreign policy, energy security, and on and on.

The facade of fair and free elections is propagandized to the public. The citizen is made to feel like their vote counts. Little do the people realize that the “nominees” and “contenders” within the electoral process have already been pre-selected by the Corpofascist masters – the business elite. Despite theres being nominal differences between political parties, the interests of the Corpofascist elite will continued to be served. Nevertheless, elections are still tampered with. Fraud, corruption, intimidation and other immoral methods are used move the elections in the way the masters want them to go.

And thus, the cycle maintains its continuance. More and further enemies – real and imagined, mainly imagined – are constructed, and the entire cycle perpetuates itself. This is the essence of living in a Corpofascist state. The perpetuation is not infinite as the weight of the corruption and demagoguery will eventually erode the system from within. It will be a classic case of the cancer killing the host and itself in the process. How long and how terrible the suffering of the people under the system is a matter of how much of a fight the beast puts as it is being destroyed.

So What?

Given the above analysis, one has to ask, does the term “Islamofascist” even make any sense. The simple answer is no.

The main reason is that by nature fascism is a form of government, not an incurrence of political ideology like Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, Arabism or Islamism. Therefore, a non-stateless entity is incapable of being fascist by the very nature that a system of government is lacking.

So are there governments in the world today which meet the criteria for a Corpofascist state? Yes, of course. To varying degrees there are numerous nations across the globe that meet the criteria. Is it unexpected? Not at all. Is it worrying? Yes. However, I propose an increasingly worrisome proposal. A certain nation, the richest and most powerful in the world, founded on the principles of freedom, liberty and justice has succumbed to the sweet nectar of Corpofascism.

A cursory look at the operations and characteristics of the United States Government reveals that the good ole US of A meets each and every one of the criteria mentioned above. The United States is a great nation in theory and on paper; the great experiment in liberty, freedom and democracy. And it still can be. However, in actuality the once proud banner of freedom and justice has been hijacked. The USA is a thriving example of a Corpofascist state. I will not go into presenting detailed facts in this narrative. That is not my objective. My objective was to highlight the traits of a Corpofascist state in order to engage the reader to follow up and apply the criteria for themselves.

Nonetheless, a look at the application of the Corpofascist criteria against readily available information – out there in the public domain – would lead even a fleeting reader in agreement. The only problem is that majority of the American people are not aware of this.

The solution is not too late. There is still time to change, but time is running out and a shift in the public consciousness and awareness is imperative. The first step is becoming aware of the issues and realizing the problem. It is important to realize that the problem is deeper and is more than solely the cause of one administration over another. It is a pervasive problem that has clung itself at the roots of government. Informed citizenry must come together to make people aware about the depths of corporate influence and corruption within the American government. Focus must be paid to the root case (corporate influence) and this issue must be confronted head-on through activism, information programs, and ‘spreading the gospel.’ Only then can real change be brought into the system.

The ultimate goal is not to reach a state of utopia. No government system is perfect, to believe so would be irrationally naïve. However, there is a point in time where the threshold between the checks and balances of a society can only be stretched so far. The line has been crossed, and now it is time for individuals to exercise their social conscious and fulfill their obligation as a citizen. And this matters not only for the American people. Being the only superpower and current imperialistic nation in the world, the functioning of the American government apparatus has far-reaching consequences on the livelihood and lives of all individuals that inhabit the planet. Most will say that the fate of the world depends on it.

As President Eisenhower stated in his farewell address, Jan. 17, 1961:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.

May I add guard against the unwarranted influence of any industrial or corporate complex. Only then can the American dream of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” be achieved.

12/14/07 “The Nation” — — Three senior members of the House Judiciary Committee have called for the immediate opening of impeachment hearings for Vice President Richard Cheney.

Democrats Robert Wexler of Florida, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin on Friday distributed a statement, “A Case for Hearings,” that declares, “The issues at hand are too serious to ignore, including credible allegations of abuse of power that if proven may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under our constitution. The charges against Vice President Cheney relate to his deceptive actions leading up to the Iraq war, the revelation of the identity of a covert agent for political retaliation, and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens.”

In particular, the Judiciary Committee members cite the recent revelation by former White House press secretary Scott McClellan that the Vice President and his staff purposefully gave him false information about the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert agent as part of a White House campaign to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson. On the basis of McClellan’s statements, Wexler, Gutierrez and Baldwin say, “it is even more important for Congress to investigate what may have been an intentional obstruction of justice.” The three House members argue that, “Congress should call Mr. McClellan to testify about what he described as being asked to ‘unknowingly [pass] along false information.’”

Adding to the sense of urgency, the members note that “recent revelations have shown that the Administration including Vice President Cheney may have again manipulated and exaggerated evidence about weapons of mass destruction — this time about Iran’s nuclear capabilities.”

Although Wexler, Gutierrez and Baldwin are close to Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, getting the Michigan Democrat to open hearings on impeachment will not necessarily be easy. Though Conyers was a leader in suggesting during the last Congress that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney had committed impeachable offenses, he has been under immense pressure from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, to keep Constitutional remedies for executive excesses “off the table” in this Congress.

It is notable, however, that Baldwin maintains warm relations with Pelosi and that Wexler, a veteran member of the Judiciary Committee has historically had an amiable and effective working relationship with Conyers. There is no question that Conyers, who voted to keep open the impeachment debate on November 7, has been looking for a way to explore the charges against Cheney. The move by three of his key allies on the committee may provide the chairman with the opening he seeks, although it is likely he will need to hear from more committee members before making any kind of break with Pelosi — or perhaps convincing her that holding hearings on Cheney’s high crimes and misdemeanors is different from putting a Bush impeachment move on the table.

The most important immediate development, however, is the assertion of an “ask” for supporters of impeachment. Pulled in many directions in recent months, campaigners for presidential and vice presidential accountability have focused their attention on supporting a House proposal by Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nod, to impeach Cheney. When Kucinich forced consideration of his resolution on November 7, Pelosi and her allies used procedural moves to get it sent to the Judiciary Committee for consideration. Pelosi’s hope was that the proposal would disappear into the committee’s files.

The call for hearings by Wexler, Gutierrez and Baldwin puts impeachment on the table, at least as far as activists are concerned, creating a pressure point that can serve as a reply when House Democrats who are critical of Bush but cautious about impeachment ask: “What do you want me to do?” The answer can now be: “Back the call for Judiciary Committee hearings on whether to impeach Dick Cheney?”

“Some of us were in Congress during the impeachment hearings of President Clinton. We spent a year and a half listening to testimony about President Clinton’s personal relations. This must not be the model for impeachment inquires. A Democratic Congress can show that it takes its constitutional authority seriously and hold a sober investigation, which will stand in stark contrast to the kangaroo court convened by Republicans for President Clinton. In fact, the worst legacy of the Clinton impeachment – where the GOP pursued trumped up and insignificant allegations – would be that it discourages future Congresses from examining credible and significant allegations of a constitutional nature when they arise,” write Wexler, Gutierrez and Baldwin.

“The charges against Vice President Cheney are not personal,” the House members add. “They go to the core of the actions of this Administration, and deserve consideration in a way the Clinton scandal never did. The American people understand this, and a majority support hearings according to a November 13 poll by the American Research Group. In fact, 70 percent of voters say that Vice President Cheney has abused his powers and 43 percent say that he should be removed from office right now. The American people understand the magnitude of what has been done and what is at stake if we fail to act. It is time for Congress to catch up.”

Arguing that hearings need not distract Congress, Wexler, Gutierrez and Baldwin note that the focus is on Cheney for a reason: “These hearings involve the possible impeachment of the Vice President — not our commander in chief — and the resulting impact on the nation’s business and attention would be significantly less than the Clinton Presidential impeachment hearings.”

They also argue, correctly, that the hearings are necessary if Congress is to restore its position in the Constitutionally-defined system of checks and balances.

After the invasion of Iraq, the US government claimed that women there had ‘new rights and new hopes’. In fact their lives have become immeasurably worse, with rapes, burnings and murders now a daily occurrence.

They lie in the Sulaimaniyah hospital morgue in Iraqi Kurdistan, set out on white-tiled slabs. A few have been shot or strangled, some beaten to death, but most have been burned. One girl, a lock of hair falling across her half-closed eyes, could almost be on the point of falling asleep. Burns have stretched the skin on another young woman’s face into a fixed look of surprise.

These women are not casualties of battle. In fact, the cause of death is generally recorded as “accidental”, although their bodies often lie unclaimed by their families.

“It is getting worse, especially the burnings,” says Khanim Rahim Latif, the manager of Asuda, an Iraqi organisation based in Kurdistan that works to combat violence against women. “Just here in Sulaimaniyah, there were 400 cases of the burning of women last year.” Lack of electricity means that every house has a plentiful supply of oil, and she accepts that some cases may be accidents. But the nature and scale of the injuries suggest that most were deliberate, she says, handing me the morgue photographs of one young woman after another. Many of the bodies bear the unmistakable signs of having been subjected to intense heat.

“In many cases the woman is accused of adultery, or of a relationship before she is married, or the marriage is not sanctioned by the family,” Khanim says. Her husband, brother or another relative will kill her to restore their “honour”. “If he is poor the man might be arrested; if he is important, he won’t be. And in most cases, it is hidden. The body might be dumped miles away and when it is found the family says, ‘We don’t have a daughter.'” In other cases, disputes over such murders are resolved between families or tribes by the payment of a forfeit, or the gift of another woman. “The authorities say such agreements are necessary for social stability, to prevent revenge killings,” says Khanim.

In March 2004 George Bush said that “the advance of freedom in the Middle East has given new rights and new hopes to women … the systematic use of rape by Saddam’s former regime to dishonour families has ended”. This may have given some people the impression that the American and British invasion of Iraq had helped to improve the lives of its women. But this is far from the case.

Even under Saddam, women in Iraq – including in semi-autonomous Kurdistan – were widely recognised as among the most liberated in the Middle East. They held important positions in business, education and the public sector, and their rights were protected by a statutory family law that was the envy of women’s activists in neighbouring countries. But since the 2003 invasion, advances that took 50 years to establish are crumbling away. In much of the country, women can only now move around with a male escort. Rape is committed habitually by all the main armed groups, including those linked to the government. Women are being murdered throughout Iraq in unprecedented numbers.

In October the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (Unami) expressed serious concern over the rising incidence of so-called honour crimes in Iraqi Kurdistan, confirming that 255 women had been killed in just the first six months of 2007, three-quarters of them by burning. An earlier Unami report cited 366 burns cases in Dohuk in 2006, up from 289 the year before, although most were not fatal. In Irbil, the emergency management centre had reported 576 burns cases since 2003, resulting in 358 deaths.

When questioned, Iraqi doctors have told UN investigators that many of these burnings are self-inflicted. “More than half of these women had sustained between 70-100% burns which, according to doctors, suggested that they were self-inflicted,” the earlier Unami report said. A UN human rights officer has relayed to me the words of one judicial investigator in Irbil: “The woman is unhappy, or there is domestic abuse, but the family doesn’t listen. So she does it because she wants to draw attention to herself.”

The claim that some of these injuries are self-inflicted is something you hear from different quarters in Iraq. The human rights minister in the Kurdistan regional government, Yousif Aziz, says: “[Burnings take] place daily. Some are killed, some burn themselves.” Activists, however, say that if the wounds are self-inflicted, it is because the women have been forced to do it.

The Iraqi penal code prescribes leniency for those who commit such crimes for “honourable motives”, enabling some of the men involved to get off with no more than a fine. The Kurdish authorities, Aziz says, have removed these provisions for leniency from the code – but the killings continue to mount. “The politicians say the situation of women is all right with the new constitution in Iraq and new laws in Kurdistan,” says Khanim, “but it is deteriorating.”

Khanim’s organisation sees cases from across Iraq, including from Baghdad and as far away as Basra. She tells me of a man from Kirkuk who accused his sister of adultery. “When we asked him why he wanted to kill his sister, he said, ‘Because it is now a democracy in Iraq’. He thought that democracy meant he could do whatever he wanted.” But the man’s stupidity hid an important point: under the new system of government developing in Iraq, family disputes are increasingly settled not in state courts but by local tribal or religious authorities. “Not that any religion allows such abuse – it is the culture,” says Khanim. “And we see cases from all the communities, including the Christians. It is even worse outside Kurdistan.”

An Iraqi staff member at the UN mission agrees. “As there is no state authority in Iraq, everyone turns to the local sheikh. Every year since 2003 honour killings have increased.” In just one month last year, 130 unclaimed women’s bodies were counted in the Baghdad morgue, a representative from the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq has told the BBC. Another women’s activist tells me why she refuses all media interviews: “The work has to be secret. In Kurdistan it is possible, but in Baghdad we couldn’t open a shelter for women, we would just be attacked.”

In a nondescript building on a busy road in the north I visit one of the few secret shelters in Iraq for women fleeing violence. A broom-cupboard door is unlocked to reveal a hidden staircase, leading to a two-room apartment where the morning sunshine and the hum of traffic filter through high-set windows. A pile of thin mattresses show that up to 20 women can stay here at any one time. The most recent arrivals are a woman and her two children from the local area. The woman, Zaynab, says she wants to divorce her abusive husband, a drunk, but he has refused. She had gone to live with her mother but he had come to threaten her. “I love my children. My family wanted me to marry again but I don’t want to marry anyone, I want to be with my children.” She stretches her arm out towards the room next door where her curly-haired daughter, eight, and son, seven, are playing.

Nur is here because she helped someone on impulse. Near her home in Diyala she heard the screams of a man locked in a compound and helped him escape. It turned out he was being tortured by a militia group. Later, the militia found out she had helped the man. “My father is dead, I have no brothers, just my mother and my little sister. They can’t protect me.” She fled north to Kirkuk, where she heard about the shelter.

Solaf, the young manager of the shelter, is used to receiving threats herself. (Her name, like those of Nur and Zaynab, has been changed for this article.) With nowhere else for the women to go, she tries to negotiate with their families to see if they can be reconciled, sometimes threatening to take them to court. “Women now know more about human rights, but the men and the culture don’t allow it. Sometimes the family marries off the daughter from a young age – from 12 years old. But even if she stays out shopping too long, they say she is a bad woman.”

I ask about the burnings. “Sometimes the family burns their daughter or wife, because no one can tell. They say in the hospital it was an accident. Some kill themselves.” Solaf can see that I still find it hard to accept that someone, even under duress, would commit suicide by burning herself alive. “You have to realise,” she says, “that the family just locks the girl into a room until she does it. They may leave her a knife, but it is hard to kill yourself with a knife. In one way, it is easier with fire.”

At the Iraqi parliament in Baghdad, the women MPs file into the chamber beside their male counterparts, smiling, arguing, some in white or coloured headscarves, a few in the full-length abaya or the Iranian-style chador, a handful with heads uncovered. Under the new constitution a quarter of the 275 seats are reserved for women, making the level of female representation among the highest in the world. But, as one MP reminds me: “Even getting here is dangerous. People watch you come in.” In 2005, one female MP, Lamia Abed Khadouri, was gunned down and killed on her doorstep.

“If security in Iraq can be provided – and it’s a big if – then we have great hope,” says a Baghdad economics professor who herself survived an assassination attempt last year (and also asked not to be named). “Three years has been a short time for women to be mainstreamed in the political establishment, but women have had the courage to expose themselves as activists. They have a chance to prove themselves outside of the home, to establish NGOs, to work in parliament and in the private sector.” But asked if she believes that security will improve in the long term, her optimism disappears. “No. It is not in the interest of the different groups that make up the government for the security situation to get better. The domination of the religious parties, which is a negative for women, is helped by the insecurity. The ground is emptied for them.”

While the new constitution has empowered women in parliament, she fears that what it has to say about the family may have had the opposite effect in the home. A committee reviewing the constitution is due to present its final amendments to parliament by the end of the year, and an alliance of women’s organisations has been lobbying for the removal of article 41, under which the old statutory family law will be replaced with a new system where marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance will be determined according to the different religions and sects in Iraq.

Campaigners argue that this would strengthen the control of religious institutions and give “constitutional legitimacy to sectarianism”. Most of all they fear an explosion in violence against women as traditional tribal codes take hold.

But only two of the committee’s 27 members are women, and many of the women MPs represent the more conservative religious parties. Some are escorted everywhere by their husbands. A cabinet minister in Baghdad tells me: “The Islamisation had already started under Saddam, but now it is much more pronounced. My young son came to me laughing and showed me what he had in his schoolbook. It was a verse from the Koran saying that when a man has a son in his family he will be happy but when a girl is born he will be sad. They had made them learn that.”

Many meetings for MPs are now held outside the country. One evening earlier this year I joined a group of women MPs in Amman who were attending a UN gathering on women’s rights. During a traditional Jordanian meal of mansaf – lamb cooked in goat yoghurt – one of them, Samira al-Musawi, a member of Iraq’s ruling Shia alliance and chair of the women’s committee in the Iraqi parliament, said: “We are making progress, because now we are a democracy and we can discuss these issues together.” Her faced framed in black, she dismissed the concerns over article 41 and said that “only one or two” members of her committee wanted it changed. Reaching forward for some green salad known locally as zjerzil, she suddenly pulled back. “It is haram – forbidden,” explained her companion, and then in an undertone: “It increases sexual desire.” I broke off a small corner of the leaf. It was a kind of rocket.

At another table, an Arab Sunni MP in a white headscarf disagreed pointedly over article 41. “We want the old law back, we and the Kurds, but the Shia prevent it. You want to know what the situation of women is? How many widows are there now?” But her bitterest comments were reserved for Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki. Earlier that week three members of the interior ministry’s public order forces had been accused of raping a Sunni woman, who was admitted to a hospital in the government’s fortified green zone compound. Two days later, Al-Maliki publicly rejected the woman’s account and instructed that the policemen should be honoured. “They may have done it, or they may not, but how could he just say she was lying before any proper investigation had been done? He has turned them into heroes.”

The coordinator of a women’s organisation in Baghdad, who asked not to be named, says some groups target women – through kidnapping or sexual assault – “to make a family weak”. “A girl was raped and returned to her family but she committed suicide rather than face the shame. Saddam was a dictator but at least then we had the freedom to go out. Then there was only one criminal – Saddam – but now they are everywhere, you do not know who your persecutor is.”

Claims of rape being used as a weapon of war to humiliate and terrify communities are now frequently made against all the main parties in the conflict, and not just Iraqi forces. Since 2003 US forces have denied numerous allegations that soldiers have raped and abused female detainees or held them as bargaining chips in the hunt for family members wanted as insurgents. But the Pentagon’s Taguba report into abuse at Abu Ghraib prison confirmed that US military police had photographed and videotaped naked women prisoners and referred to a guard “having sex with a female detainee”. Earlier this year, four US soldiers were found guilty of the rape and murder of 14-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza and three members of her family in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, in an attack the US military had at first blamed on Sunni insurgents. Abeer’s body had been set on fire, her killers believing that their guilt could be burned away.

Rapes carried out against Shia or Christian women have been justified by insurgent groups as revenge for what was done to women in Abu Ghraib. But the extent to which the abuse of women has become both the vehicle and the justification for sectarian hatred in Iraq was demonstrated most chillingly in the April killing of Du’a Khalil Aswad. A 17-year-old from Nineveh, Du’a was stoned in front of hundreds of men, some of whom videoed what happened on their mobile phones.

Climbing steadily past olive groves north of Mosul, the road into Du’a’s home town of Bashiqa is dominated by the conical shrines of the Yezidi sect, an ancient religion that predates both Islam and Christianity. Their veneration of a fallen angel in the form of a blue peacock has led to the common slur in Iraq that the Yezidis are devil-worshippers and the community suffers entrenched discrimination.

After Du’a’s death, the international media widely repeated a claim made on a number of Islamic extremist websites that she had been killed because she converted to Islam, but local reports do not concur. Some people tell me she had run away with her Muslim boyfriend and they had been stopped at a checkpoint outside Mosul; others say she had been seen by her father and uncle just talking with the boy in public and, fearing her family’s reaction, they had sought protection at the police station. Either way, the police handed Du’a into the custody of a local Yezidi sheikh. One woman tells me that after she was stoned in the town square, Du’a’s body was tied behind a car and dragged through the streets.

But the killers’ taste for publicity quickly backfired. As the videos circulated around mobile phones in the region, and were even posted on the internet, Islamic extremists called for Yezidis to be killed in revenge. Meanwhile Du’a’s body was exhumed and sent to the Medico-Legal Institute in Mosul so that tests could be performed to see whether she had died a virgin.

Just after 3pm on April 22 a bus carrying workers from a textile factory in Mosul back to Bashiqa was stopped at a fake checkpoint. Gunmen ordered the Muslims and Christians off the bus and drove it to the east of the city. They then dragged out the Yezidis. They were lined up, there was a shout of “Allah, curse your devil” and then they were shot. Other Yezidis living in the city started fleeing to the countryside, as an extremist Sunni group claimed responsibility. In all 24 Yezidi men were killed.

Former military dictator Jorge Rafael Videla and 16 other military leaders in Argentina will be prosecuted on charges of conspiring to kidnap and kill political activists in a scheme known as Plan Condor, developed by Henry Kissinger and George Bush Sr., head of the CIA at the time. Dictators in Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina killed opponents in the 1970s and 80s under the plan, also known as Operation Condor. The United States and Latin American military governments developed Operation Condor as a a transnational, state-sponsored terrorist coalition among the militaries of South America. In Argentina alone some 30,000 people were disappeared as result, leaving loved ones to seek justice decades later.

Coordinating Terror with U.S. support

Plan Condor began with the U.S. supported military coup against Chile’s democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende. Allende’s government was targeted as a threat to U.S. strategic policy in Latin America early on. White House tapes reveal that on Sept. 14, 1970, then-President Richard Nixon ordered measures to force the Chilean economy into bankruptcy. “The U.S. will not accept a Marxist government just because of the irresponsibility of the Chilean people,” declared Henry Kissinger, Nixon´s secretary of State.

Declassified U.S. Department of State documents have provided evidence to Plan Condor’s broad scope. The Operation was an ambitious and successful plan to coordinate repression internationally. FBI special agent intelligence liason to the Southern Cone countries Robert Scherrer (now deceased) sent the letter to the U.S. embassy in Argentina on September 28, 1976: “‘Operation Condor’ is the code name for the collection, exchange and storage of intelligence data concerning so-called ‘leftists,’ communists and Marxists, which was recently established between cooperating intelligence services in South America in order to eliminate Marxist terrorist activities in the area.”

The memo also specified Argentina’s enthusiasm over the plan. “Members of ‘Operation Condor’ showing the most enthusiasm to date have been Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. The latter three countries have engaged in joint operations, primarily in Argentina, against the terrorist target.” Operation Condor has been difficult to investigate, due to the selectivity of victims and lack of official declassified documents from the CIA and Department of State. Many of the documents that have been released have been heavily censored. However, following an extensive investigation by Argentine courts beginning in 1999 and the decade long work of human rights groups to collect forensic evidence, 17 military leaders will be put on trial for their participation in the illegal persecution of social activists.

Argentina’s dictatorship and Plan Condor

Former dictator Jorge Videla, now 82, is currently under house arrest, already found guilty for stealing babies born in captivity during the bloody junta. The former dictator may now face a jail cell for his participation in Operation Condor.

In 1977, Videla speaking to journalists recognized the phenomenon of forced disappearances but suggested they were disappeared because they were participating in armed, clandestine struggle. “In our country people have been disappeared, this is a sad reality. But objectively we should recognize why and through whom they were disappeared. These people went disappeared because they went clandestine.”

At least 25 Bolivian citizens were disappeared in Argentina during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Another 5 Bolivians were disappeared in Chile during the regime of Dictator Augustin Pinochet.

Ruth Llanos, a representative from the Bolivian Association of Family Members of The Detained and Disappeared said regional dictatorships used Plan Condor to target dissidents with the support of former U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. “Plan Condor was a joint plan developed through Henry Kissinger, a criminal who hasn’t been punished yet. The plan established with the military dictatorships in Latin America was a process of forced disappearances of all social activists who in the 70’s and 80’s were looking for social transformation in their respective countries.”

Orletti Auto Garage, Prototype for Plan Condor

“My name is Emi Dambra, mother of two disappeared. A girl and a boy. The girl was disappeared here in Buenos Aires and taken to the Orletti Auto-Garage.” In front of the clandestine detention center where her daughter was tortured while pregnant and later murdered, Emi Dambra participated in a homage to victims of Plan Condor. “Orletti was the prototype example of Plan Condor, here they held prisoners from Uruguay and other countries,” said Dambra Inside the Orletti Auto-Garage, which also functioned as a clandestine detention center tucked in a residential neighborhood in Buenos Aires, hundreds perished, not only Argentines but also citizens from Uruguay, Cuba, Chile and Bolivia.

Some 132 Uruguayans were “disappeared” through the Condor years (127 in Argentina, three in Chile, and two in Paraguay). Orletti functioned as the clandestine detention center for international prisoners. The clandestine detention center was rented out to the military under the guise of an Auto-Garage, secretly tucked in between homes. Commando groups would bring prisoners to the Garage in the middle of the night. During the day, witnesses say the torturers inside would leave the front gate half-way open. In one instance a Uruguayan couple were able to escape Orletti, naked and brutally tortured, in the middle of the night.

According to Dambra, those responsible for leading the bloody military junta should be put behind bars and not like former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla under house arrest. “We want to know what happened to each one of the victims, we want the people who organized this slaughter to be put in regular jails, with life sentences.”

Fight against forced disappearances

The practice of forced disappearances was systematized in the Southern Cone by military governments in the 1970’s with U.S. financial support and trainings. It is estimated that 90,000 people in Latin America have been disappeared since the 1950’s. And the practice continues today in places like Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, and Argentina.

Patrick Rice, an Irish Priest who was disappeared by a commando group in a Buenos Aires shanty town in 1976 said that internationally coordinated disappearances of people continues today. “The phenomenon is occurring more and more now in the context in what is called the global war on terrorism. The practice of forced disappearances continues with secret detention centers such as Guatanamo. With the return to the use of the hood, the hood for us is a symbol of forced disappearances. People detained on places of undisclosed location, the practice of extraordinary renditions. All of this points to a new form of Operation Condor.”

Operation Condor set precedents for internationally coordinated torture crimes that have transcended from the alleged “war on communism,” “the war on drugs,” to “the war on terror.” Today, prisoners in undisclosed locations in Iraq face torture techniques similar to those used during Argentina’s 1976-1983, a carry over for U.S. policy implemented during the Plan Condor years.

Long time human rights activists like Ruth Llanos who lost her husband in the scheme known as Plan Condor say that it is more important than ever to push for the ratification of the U.N. treaty against forced disappearances. Even in countries like Argentina which ratified the treaty in November, 2007 disappearances continue with cases like missing witness Julio Lopez. Lopez, a retired construction worker and former political prisoner disappeared just hours before he was slated to give his final testimony on the eve of the conviction of the former police investigator, Miguel Etchecolatz. With Julio Lopez disappeared for more than a year, it is almost certain that he is dead. His capturers are using his body as a negotiating tool to protect military personnel from any further criminal charges or trials.

Videla and other military leaders will face trial early next year. Human rights groups continue to push for nations to sign the UN sanctioned treaty against forced disappearances, which the U.S. has refused to ratify.

A Senate panel found former presidential adviser Karl Rove and current White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten in contempt of Congress yesterday for refusing to testify and to turn over documents in the investigation of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys last year.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved contempt citations against Rove and Bolten on a 12 to 7 vote, rejecting the White House position that the work of two of President Bush’s closest advisers is covered by executive privilege.

Earlier this year, the House Judiciary Committee cited Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers for contempt. But action by either chamber of Congress is still weeks or months away. Lawmakers and aides said neither house will take up the issue until late January at the earliest.

More than six months ago, the Senate Judiciary Committee requested Rove’s public testimony on the firings of the prosecutors and issued subpoenas for internal White House e-mails, memos and other related documents. As custodian of White House documents, Bolten was cited for his refusal to turn them over.

“White House stonewalling is unilateralism at its worst, and it thwarts accountability. Executive privilege should not be invoked to prevent investigations into wrongdoing,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.).

Two senior Republicans, Sens. Arlen Specter (Pa.) and Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), supported the contempt charges.

The White House yesterday repeated its offer to allow Rove and other current and former senior aides to testify about the firings behind closed doors, not under oath and with no transcript. White House press secretary Dana Perino said the Justice Department would refuse to convene a grand jury if either the full House or the full Senate approved the contempt citations; that would leave Democrats unable to force the question of the limits of executive privilege into the federal courts.

“The constitutional prerogatives of the president would make it a futile effort for Congress to refer contempt citations,” Perino said.

The contempt vote came a year after seven of the prosecutors were removed on one day. The firings provoked a furor on Capitol Hill and led to the resignation of former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales.

The Justice Department’s inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility are conducting an internal investigation of the firings and whether Gonzales obstructed congressional probes of the matter.

MIAMI (Dec. 13) — In a stinging defeat for the Bush administration, one of seven Miami men accused of plotting to join forces with al-Qaida to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower was acquitted Thursday, and the case against the rest ended in a hung jury.

Federal prosecutor Richard Gregorie said the government planned to retry the six next year, and the judge said a new jury would be picked starting Jan. 7.

The White House had seized on the case to illustrate the dangers of homegrown terrorism and trumpet the government’s post-Sept. 11 success in infiltrating and smashing terrorism plots in their earliest stages.

Lyglenson Lemorin, 32, had been accused of being a “soldier” for alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste. He buried his face in his hands when his acquittal was read.

Lemorin, a legal U.S. resident originally from Haiti, was subject to an immigration hold and would not be immediately released, his lawyer said.

The jury gave up on the other defendants after nine days of deliberations on four terrorism-related conspiracy charges that carry a combined maximum of 70 years in prison. The jury twice sent notes to the judge indicating they could not reach verdicts but were told to keep trying.

U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard declared a mistrial after their third note, which she quoted as saying: “We believe no further progress can be made.”

Prosecutors said the “Liberty City Seven” — so-named because they operated out of a warehouse in Miami’s blighted Liberty City section — swore allegiance to al-Qaida and hoped to forge an alliance to carry out bombings against America’s tallest skyscraper, the FBI’s Miami office and other federal buildings.

The group never actually made contact with al-Qaida. Instead, a paid FBI informant known as Brother Mohammed posed as an al-Qaida emissary.

The defense portrayed the seven men as hapless figures who were either manipulated and entrapped by the FBI or went along with the plot to con “Mohammed” out of $50,000.

The group never actually made contact with al-Qaida and never acquired any weapons or explosives. Prosecutors said no attack was imminent, acknowledging that the alleged terror cell was “more aspirational than operational.”

But then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said after the arrests in mid-2006 that the group was emblematic of the “smaller, more loosely defined cells who are not affiliated with al-Qaida, but who are inspired by a violent jihadist message.”

“This racial dilemma poses a serious problem for white America…And the entire dark world is watching, waiting to see what the American government will do to solve this problem once and for all.” (Malcolm X, “America’s Gravest Crisis” October, 1963)

Democrat Jerry Brown and rock star Linda Ronstadt were the flower children of the media during Brown’s term as Governor of California. This was back in the day, 1975 to 1983. Jerry Brown is still around, without Linda, of course. In fact, back here in the Midwest, I was surprised when I was told Brown is, as of this year, the Attorney General of California. Of course this is not news to folks in California, particularly people in Oakland, since Brown served as Mayor there from 1998 to 2006. The point is – Jerry Brown is still around and, as Attorney General of California, he has focused his office’s attention on the San Francisco 8.

In 1992, Brown, running for president (third time) against Bill Clinton, according to Time Magazine, ran an “anti-establishment crusade” campaign against big-money. Brown seemed to the “vessel of protest against big-money politics” (Time April 6, 1992). The article continues, “Brown – who, even his fondest admirers admit, is a political changeling constantly taking on new personas – has finally embraced a cause that returns him to his political roots as a post-Watergate clean-government crusader in California.”

Well, it seems Jerry Brown has changed again. Brown, the ex-Flower child, ex-boyfriend of Linda Ronstadt, ex-Rock star politician is now very much the ESTABLISHMENT.

What’s Brown up to as California’s Attorney General? Well, ask any ex-Black Panther. He’s hunting them down from New York to California. Brown took office as AG this year and immediately had the ex-Black Panthers and supporters known as the San Francisco 8 arrested and imprisoned in January, 2007 for the 1971 murder of Police Sgt. John Young.

Keep in mind that, as Ron Jacobs in The Case of the San Francisco 8 reports, the “federal court ruled in 1974 that both San Francisco and New Orleans police had engaged in torture to extract a confession (see the Legacy of Torture video), and a San Francisco judge dismissed charges against three men in 1975 based on that ruling.”

In 2003, however, the U.S. Department of Justice re-opened the case, “using funds set aside for the Department of Homeland Security,” according to Ron Jacobs. Grand juries convened over the coming years, resulting in not a single prosecuting attorney willing to pursue the case. Again in 2005, a Grand Jury was convened with no further evidence and this Grand Jury expired in October 31, 2005. DNA was taken from the men in 2006 and they were subpoenaed. “We refused to speak,” Richard Brown, one of the San Francisco 8, told me. “We were held in contempt of court. I was in jail for six weeks.”

But then came 2007 and Jerry Brown was sworn in as Attorney General of California. Round-e-up Jerry Brown has no qualms with confessions obtained through torture in 1971. He’s all about law and order in the new era of COINTELPRO. The case of the San Francisco 8 is “green-lighted,” said Claude Marks, Committee for the Defense of Human Rights. According to an affidavit from the AG’s office, Brown threw his weight behind a multi-taskforce comprised of the San Francisco Police Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, California Bureau of Investigation, and the United States Attorney’s Office, and ordered the arrest of Richard Brown, 65, Ray Boudreaux, 64, Hank Jones, 70, Richard O’Neal, 58, Harold Taylor, 58, and Francisco Torres, 58, on January 23, 2007. Herman Bell, 59, and Jalil Muntaqim, 55, already in prison for the last 30 years, were re-arrested for this case. The men arrested were held until recently because they refused to cooperate with these Kangaroo kourt proceedings – still with no new evidence. According to Steve Zelter, San Francisco Labor Planning Committee member, “if this case were up to the city of San Francisco, this wouldn’t happen.” Brown’s office, Zelter added, is “going along with the Federal government” on this case. The man who was a “vessel of protest against big-money politics” is on the side of “big-money politics” now and against those willing to protest injustice and inequality.

Let’s remember what Martin Luther King, Jr. said a year before he was gunned down:

It’s not merely a struggle against extremist behavior toward Negroes. And I’m convinced that many of the very people who supported us in the struggle in the South are not willing to go all the way now. I came to see this in a very difficult and painful way in Chicago… And I came to see that so many people who supported morally and even financially what we were doing in Birmingham and Selma, were really outraged against the extremist behavior of Bull Connor and Jim Clarke toward Negroes, rather than believing in genuine equality for Negroes. And I think this is what we’ve gotta see now, and this is what makes the struggle much more difficult. (“The Other America” April 14, 1967)

And it has become difficult. The corporate-controlled media compels us to look at the face of an “extremist”: Blacks looting and shooting for control of valuable city turf, Latino men reclaiming U.S. soil by taking jobs or raping little girls, and Muslims planning to attack local malls everywhere. In gated-communities, white America hears the message: They are conspiring against you.

We are distracted, once again, with a simplistic debate about skin color as if the clocks have been turned back and we have not covered this ground before. The word “prejudice” re-surfaces and it is criminal, anti-American to discuss in any significant way the very real collective striving of white Americans, Republican or Democrat, right wing or liberal, toward the dominance of white supremacy. The dominance of white supremacy is an absurd concept in a world populated by people of darker hue. “You and I haven’t realized it, but we aren’t exactly a minority on this earth,” Malcolm told an audience in 1965! The word “equality” precipitated the “big chill” and scared some whites into running back to the ideals of their parents, who in turn, knew that the only solution to the idea of equality (social, economical, and political) required more than just shooting Black, Latino/a, and Native American leadership.

Consciously or unconsciously, they co-opted King’s “beloved community” and got to work, securing safe places (gentrification and sub-prime loans), securing the economy and employment (outsourcing for wealthy corporations), and educational opportunities (charter schools), along with promoting a war on drugs and a war on terror to contain domestic and foreign danger outside the “beloved community.”

White liberals and even notable Republicans have expressed “outrage” at the extreme behavior of King George, Darth Vader, and the Neo-Cons who are the Bull Conners and Jim Clarkes of today, but these same whites are still unwilling to consider racial equality.

Brown shows him a flag. “It looks like an original flag from Castro’s July 26 movement,” said Marc Cooper, as he sits in the car of then Mayor Jerry Brown of Oakland, California (“Mayor Jerry, Take II, The Nation, March, 2002).”You got it,” says the Mayor. “It was given to me by Che Guevara’s widow one night after I spent eight hours talking to Castro. I’m taking it home from my office to keep it in a safe place.”

Brown’s focus, writes Cooper, “seems to drift inward for a moment.” And Cooper hears Brown say quietly: “That was a long time ago,” and Brown, Cooper writes, “starts the car and drives out of the City.”

Yes, that was a long time ago and for a very short time, as William Hurt’s character said in the 1983 film, The Bill Chill. It was a long time ago when we knew one another – whites and Blacks – and Malcolm and then King galvanized Blacks and whites to protest against war and poverty. It was a long time ago and it did not last long because the idea of equality, human rights for all must be felt in a personal way, not just by the oppressed, but by the would-be supporters of human rights as well. Campaigning for Mayor of Oakland, Brown vowed to work on reducing crime, re-vitalizing downtown, and establishing more charter schools. As mayor, he talked about “the flow of capital” following the “rules of capitalism,” insisted that his job was to assure investors that they were making right decisions in their efforts to gentrify West Oakland where the majority population was Black. According to Cooper, when Brown was asked about the criticism by Blacks and others displaced by the “rules of capitalism,” Brown responded that he “no longer” knew what “they mean by gentrification.” He “no longer” knew! Such innocence!

Today, white liberals like Brown, along with the Neo-cons, talk about “crime,” building more corporate-operated detention centers, and conspiracies. “Now we can see it was part of a larger plan to kill cops,” said David Druliner, prosecutor for the Office of the California Attorney General, referring to the San Francisco 8 case. Attorney General Brown is determined to enforce the federal prosecution of the San Francisco 8.

“Since when did you get so friendly with cops,” Hurts’ character in The Big Chill asked the character played by Kevin Kline. The answer, when there was a huge summerhouse, wife, and children to protect. He couldn’t do it alone. And who would expect those Blacks left to sort out the mess after the killings of Malcolm, Evers, King, and COINTELPRO executions and imprisonment of Black Panthers and their supporters. Did anyone say it was “conspiracy” that wiped out the Black leadership?

Jerry Brown will be Jerry Brown. We must call for justice! Along with the International Call for Justice (November 30, 2007) by Nobel laureates including South Africa Archbishop Desmond Tutu, we must call for charges against the San Francisco 8 to be dropped. Contact freethesf8.org (the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, P.O. Box 90221, Pasadena, California 91109).