24. War Crimes of General Stanley McChrystal
Project Censored (Sonoma State University)
Student Researcher: Cristina Risso (Sonoma State University)
Faculty Evaluator: Elaine Wellin (Sonoma State University)
A little more than a year before he was fired on June 23, 2010, for making potentially insubordinate remarks in a Rolling Stone profile, General Stanley McChrystal was appointed by President Barack Obama as commander in charge of the war in Afghanistan. He had been formerly in charge of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) headed by former Vice President Dick Cheney. Most of what General McChrystal has done over a thirty-three-year career remains classified, including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of the JSOC, a special black operations commando unit of the Navy Seals and Delta Force so clandestine that the Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence.
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Seymour Hersh claims that the Bush administration ran an executive assassination ring that reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney, and that Congress had no oversight of it whatsoever. The JSOC team would go into countries, without talking to the ambassador or to the CIA station chief, find people on a to-be-killed list, execute them, and leave. There was an ongoing list of targeted people, cleared by Vice President Cheney’s office, who had committed acts of war or were suspected of planning operations of war against the United States. Hersh asserts that there have been assassinations in a dozen countries in the Middle East and Latin America. “There’s an executive order, signed by President Ford, in the ’70s, forbidding such action. It’s not only contrary—it’s illegal, it’s immoral, it’s counterproductive,” he added.
JSOC was also involved in war crimes, including the torture of prisoners in secret “ghost” detention sites. Camp Nama in Iraq was one such “ghost” facility hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the international body charged under international law with monitoring compliance with the Geneva Conventions, and given the right to inspect all facilities where people are detained in a country that is at war or under military occupation. On July 22, 2006, Human Rights Watch issued a report, titled “No Blood, No Foul,” about American torture practices at three facilities in Iraq. One of them was Camp Nama, accused of some of the worst acts of torture, and operated by JSOC, under the direction of McChrystal. McChrystal, then a Major General, was officially based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, but he was a frequent visitor to Camp Nama and other bases in Iraq and Afghanistan under his command.
To Read the Rest of the Report and Access Sources
Showing posts with label US Foreign Policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US Foreign Policy. Show all posts
Friday, March 18, 2011
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Riz Khan: Tariq Ali and Zalmay Khalilzad -- As social revolutions sweep through the Arab world, how will they affect the role of the US in the region?
As social revolutions sweep through the Arab world, how will they affect the role of the US in the region?
Riz Khan (Al Jazeera)
Will the changes sweeping across the Middle East revolutionise the US' relationship with the region?
In 2009, Barack Obama, the US president, took the stage at Cairo University and spoke of a new beginning between Washington and the Arab world.
Yet, less than two years later, on February 18, 2011 the Obama administration used its first United Nations Security Council veto to strike down a resolution declaring Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem to be illegal.
This leads many to question whether the state of political flux in the Middle East will encourage the US to adopt changes in its foreign policy.
Riz Khan ... speak[s] with world-renowned author and historian Tariq Ali. Also on the show is Zalmay Khalilzad, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Riz Khan (Al Jazeera)
Will the changes sweeping across the Middle East revolutionise the US' relationship with the region?
In 2009, Barack Obama, the US president, took the stage at Cairo University and spoke of a new beginning between Washington and the Arab world.
Yet, less than two years later, on February 18, 2011 the Obama administration used its first United Nations Security Council veto to strike down a resolution declaring Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem to be illegal.
This leads many to question whether the state of political flux in the Middle East will encourage the US to adopt changes in its foreign policy.
Riz Khan ... speak[s] with world-renowned author and historian Tariq Ali. Also on the show is Zalmay Khalilzad, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Emptywheel: Spain Will Investigate Gitmo Torture
Spain Will Investigate Gitmo Torture
Emptywheel
The High Court in Spain has decided that it can proceed with its investigation of the torture that Lahcen Ikassrien alleges he suffered at Gitmo.
Here’s what the Center for Constitutional Rights has to say about the news:
As always, it pays to be skeptical that the US won’t still find a way to quash this investigation. But given the exposure WikiLeaks gave DOJ’s prior interventions with Spanish officials, they may have overplayed their hand.Also note, this is not the case that implicates the 6 lawyers who approved torture. I suspect that the pending suits against John Yoo and others might give the DOJ the ability to claim that crime is still being investigated here in the states.
Link to the Report and To Access More Resources
Emptywheel
The High Court in Spain has decided that it can proceed with its investigation of the torture that Lahcen Ikassrien alleges he suffered at Gitmo.
A Spanish court Friday agreed to investigate a complaint by a Moroccan who said he was tortured while in the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, judicial sources said.
The National Court said it was competent to take the case as the complainant, Lahcen Ikassrien, has been living in Spain for 13 years.
[snip]
The judges Friday rejected an appeal by prosecutors who sought to have the case thrown out on the grounds that Ikassrien did not have sufficient links with Spain.
Here’s what the Center for Constitutional Rights has to say about the news:
This is a monumental decision that will enable a Spanish judge to continue a case on the “authorized and systematic plan of torture and ill treatment” by U.S. officials at Guantanamo. Geoffrey Miller, the former commanding officer at Guantánamo, has already been implicated, and the case will surely move up the chain of command. Since the U.S. government has not only failed to investigate the illegal actions of its own officials and, according to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, also sought to interfere in the Spanish judicial process and stop the case from proceeding, this will be the first real investigation of the U.S. torture program. This is a victory for accountability and a blow against impunity. The Center for Constitutional Rights applauds the Spanish courts for not bowing to political pressure and for undertaking what may be the most important investigation in decades.
As always, it pays to be skeptical that the US won’t still find a way to quash this investigation. But given the exposure WikiLeaks gave DOJ’s prior interventions with Spanish officials, they may have overplayed their hand.Also note, this is not the case that implicates the 6 lawyers who approved torture. I suspect that the pending suits against John Yoo and others might give the DOJ the ability to claim that crime is still being investigated here in the states.
Link to the Report and To Access More Resources
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Arundhati Roy and Chalmers Johnson: Blowback
Who is Osama bin Laden really? Let me rephrase that. What is Osama bin Laden? He's America's family secret. He is the American president's [George W. Bush] dark Doppelganger. The savage twin of all that purports to be beautiful and civilized. He has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to waste by America's foreign policy: its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal, its vulgarly stated policy of "full-spectrum dominance," its chilling disregard for non-American lives, its barbarous military interventions, its support for despotic and dictatorial regimes, its merciless economic agenda that has munched through the economies of poor countries like a cloud of locusts. ... Now that the family secret has been spilled, the twins are blurring into one another and gradually becoming interchangeable.
--Arundhati Roy, The Guardian (September 27, 2001)
"Blowback" does not mean just revenge but rather retaliation for covert, illegal violence that our government has carried out abroad that it kept totally secret from the American public (even though such acts are seldom secret among the people on the receiving end). It was a term invented by the Central Intelligence Agency and first used in its "after-action report" about the 1953 overthrow of the elected government of Premier Mohammed Mossadeq in Iran. This coup brought to power the U.S.-supported Shah of Iran, who would in 1979 be overthrown by Iranian revolutionaries and Islamic fundamentalists. The Ayatollah Khomeini replaced the Shah and installed the predecessors of the current, anti-American government in Iran. This would be one kind of blowback from America's first venture into illegal, clandestine "regime change"--but as the attacks of September 11, 2001, showed us all too graphically, hardly the only one.
--Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006)
Sunday, February 06, 2011
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed: Tunisia, Egypt, and the Big Picture
Tunisia, Egypt, and the Big Picture: Egypt lies on the fault lines of the convergence of global ecological, energy, and economic crises—and thus, on the frontlines of deepening global system failure.
by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Yes Magazine
The toppling of Ben Ali in Tunisia in the wake of mass protests and bloody street clashes is likely to signify a major transformation in the future of politics and geopolitics for the major countries of the Middle East and North Africa. The Tunisian experience triggered the escalation of unprecedented protests in Egypt against the Mubarak regime. The question is: ‘Will events in Tunisia and Egypt have a domino effect throughout the Arab world?’
The potential fall of Hosni Mubarak is serious stuff. Egypt is “the most populous country in the Arab world,” viewed by the United States, Britain and the West as “a strategic pivot” and a “a vital ally” in the ‘War on Terror’. No wonder then that activists across the world are holding their breath in anticipation that one of the world’s most notorious dictators, and one of the West’s most favored client-regimes, might be overthrown.
The eruption of political unrest in Egypt and elsewhere cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the context of accelerating ecological, energy, and economic crises.What is happening in Tunisia and Egypt is only a manifestation of a deeper convergence of fundamental structural crises, which are truly global in scale. The eruption of social and political unrest has followed the impact of deepening economic turbulence across the region, due to the inflationary impact of rocketing fuel and food prices. As of mid-January, even before Ben Ali had fled Tunis, riots were breaking out in Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, and Jordan. The key grievances? Rampant unemployment, unaffordable food and consumer goods, endemic poverty, lack of basic services, and political repression.
Global food crisis
In many of these countries, certainly in both Tunisia and Egypt, tensions have simmered for years. The trigger, it seems, came in the form of food shortages caused by the record high global prices reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in December 2010. The return of high food prices two to three years after the 2008 global food crisis should not be a surprise. For most of the preceding decade, world grain consumption exceeded production—correlating with agricultural land productivity declining almost by half from 1990–2007, compared with 1950–1990.
This year, global food supply chains were again “stretched to the limit” following poor harvests in Canada, Russia and Ukraine; hotter, drier weather in South America cutting soybean production; flooding in Australia, wiping out its wheat crops; not to mention the colder, stormier, snowier winters experienced in the northern hemisphere, damaging harvests.
So much of the current supply shortages have been inflicted by increasingly erratic weather events and natural disasters, which climate scientists have long warned are symptomatic of anthropogenic global warming. Droughts exacerbated by global warming in key food-basket regions have already led to a 10–20 percent drop in rice yields over the last decade. By mid-century, world crop yields could fall as much as 20–40 percent due to climate change alone.
But climate change is likely to do more than generate droughts in some regions. It is also linked to the prospect of colder weather in the eastern United States, east Asia, and northern Europe—as the rate of Arctic summer sea ice is accelerating, leading to intensifying warming, the change in atmospheric pressure pushes cold Arctic air to the south. Similarly, even the floods in Australia could be linked to climate change. Scientists agree they were caused by a particularly strong El Niño/La Niña oscillation in the Tropical Pacific ocean-atmospheric system. But Michael McPhaden, co-author of a recent scientific study on the issue, suggests that recently stronger El Niño events are “plausibly the result of global warming.”
The global food situation has been compounded by the over-dependence of industrial agriculture on fossil fuels, consuming ten calories of fossil fuel energy for every one calorie of food energy produced. The problem is that global conventional oil production has most likely already peaked, having been on an undulating plateau since 2005—and forecast to steadily and inexorably decline, leading to higher prices. Although oil prices dropped after the 2008 crash due to recession, the resuscitation of economic activity has pushed up demand, leading fuel prices to creep back up to $95 a barrel.
The fuel price hikes, combining with the predatory activities of financial speculators trying to rake in profits by investing in the commodity markets, have underpinned worldwide inflation. Just as in 2008, the worst effected have been the poorer populations of the South. Thus, the eruption of political unrest in Egypt and elsewhere cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the context of accelerating ecological, energy and economic crises—inherently interconnected problems which are symptomatic of an Empire in overstretch, a global political economy in breach of the natural limits of its environment.
To Read the Rest of the Essay and Access HyperLinked Resources
by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Yes Magazine
The toppling of Ben Ali in Tunisia in the wake of mass protests and bloody street clashes is likely to signify a major transformation in the future of politics and geopolitics for the major countries of the Middle East and North Africa. The Tunisian experience triggered the escalation of unprecedented protests in Egypt against the Mubarak regime. The question is: ‘Will events in Tunisia and Egypt have a domino effect throughout the Arab world?’
The potential fall of Hosni Mubarak is serious stuff. Egypt is “the most populous country in the Arab world,” viewed by the United States, Britain and the West as “a strategic pivot” and a “a vital ally” in the ‘War on Terror’. No wonder then that activists across the world are holding their breath in anticipation that one of the world’s most notorious dictators, and one of the West’s most favored client-regimes, might be overthrown.
The eruption of political unrest in Egypt and elsewhere cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the context of accelerating ecological, energy, and economic crises.What is happening in Tunisia and Egypt is only a manifestation of a deeper convergence of fundamental structural crises, which are truly global in scale. The eruption of social and political unrest has followed the impact of deepening economic turbulence across the region, due to the inflationary impact of rocketing fuel and food prices. As of mid-January, even before Ben Ali had fled Tunis, riots were breaking out in Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, and Jordan. The key grievances? Rampant unemployment, unaffordable food and consumer goods, endemic poverty, lack of basic services, and political repression.
Global food crisis
In many of these countries, certainly in both Tunisia and Egypt, tensions have simmered for years. The trigger, it seems, came in the form of food shortages caused by the record high global prices reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in December 2010. The return of high food prices two to three years after the 2008 global food crisis should not be a surprise. For most of the preceding decade, world grain consumption exceeded production—correlating with agricultural land productivity declining almost by half from 1990–2007, compared with 1950–1990.
This year, global food supply chains were again “stretched to the limit” following poor harvests in Canada, Russia and Ukraine; hotter, drier weather in South America cutting soybean production; flooding in Australia, wiping out its wheat crops; not to mention the colder, stormier, snowier winters experienced in the northern hemisphere, damaging harvests.
So much of the current supply shortages have been inflicted by increasingly erratic weather events and natural disasters, which climate scientists have long warned are symptomatic of anthropogenic global warming. Droughts exacerbated by global warming in key food-basket regions have already led to a 10–20 percent drop in rice yields over the last decade. By mid-century, world crop yields could fall as much as 20–40 percent due to climate change alone.
But climate change is likely to do more than generate droughts in some regions. It is also linked to the prospect of colder weather in the eastern United States, east Asia, and northern Europe—as the rate of Arctic summer sea ice is accelerating, leading to intensifying warming, the change in atmospheric pressure pushes cold Arctic air to the south. Similarly, even the floods in Australia could be linked to climate change. Scientists agree they were caused by a particularly strong El Niño/La Niña oscillation in the Tropical Pacific ocean-atmospheric system. But Michael McPhaden, co-author of a recent scientific study on the issue, suggests that recently stronger El Niño events are “plausibly the result of global warming.”
The global food situation has been compounded by the over-dependence of industrial agriculture on fossil fuels, consuming ten calories of fossil fuel energy for every one calorie of food energy produced. The problem is that global conventional oil production has most likely already peaked, having been on an undulating plateau since 2005—and forecast to steadily and inexorably decline, leading to higher prices. Although oil prices dropped after the 2008 crash due to recession, the resuscitation of economic activity has pushed up demand, leading fuel prices to creep back up to $95 a barrel.
The fuel price hikes, combining with the predatory activities of financial speculators trying to rake in profits by investing in the commodity markets, have underpinned worldwide inflation. Just as in 2008, the worst effected have been the poorer populations of the South. Thus, the eruption of political unrest in Egypt and elsewhere cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the context of accelerating ecological, energy and economic crises—inherently interconnected problems which are symptomatic of an Empire in overstretch, a global political economy in breach of the natural limits of its environment.
To Read the Rest of the Essay and Access HyperLinked Resources
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Democracy Now: Uprising in Egypt: A Two-Hour Special on the Revolt Against the U.S.-Backed Mubarak Regime
Uprising in Egypt: A Two-Hour Special on the Revolt Against the U.S.-Backed Mubarak Regime
Live Reports from Cairo with Democracy Now! senior producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Democracy Now! correspondent Anjali Kamat.
Democracy Now
Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif on how life in Tahrir Square "is truly democracy in action."
Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi on the impact of the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings on the Middle East.
Mohamed Abdel Dayem of the Committee to Protect Journalists on the continued attacks on journalists by supporters of the Mubarak regime.
Khaled Fahmy, professor at the American University in Cairo, on reports that Hosni Mubarak has resigned as head of the ruling NDP party.
University of California-Santa Barbara professor Paul Amar on the military’s role in a post-Mubarak Egypt.
Stanford Professor Joel Beinin on the Egyptian labor movement and the historical roots of the Jan. 25 uprising.
Egyptian-American activist Mostafa Omar on the role of Egyptian youth in the protests.
And we play the "video that started the revolution"–Asmaa Mahfouz’s Jan. 18th message calling for protests in Tahrir Square on Jan. 25.
To Watch the Reports
Live Reports from Cairo with Democracy Now! senior producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Democracy Now! correspondent Anjali Kamat.
Democracy Now
Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif on how life in Tahrir Square "is truly democracy in action."
Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi on the impact of the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings on the Middle East.
Mohamed Abdel Dayem of the Committee to Protect Journalists on the continued attacks on journalists by supporters of the Mubarak regime.
Khaled Fahmy, professor at the American University in Cairo, on reports that Hosni Mubarak has resigned as head of the ruling NDP party.
University of California-Santa Barbara professor Paul Amar on the military’s role in a post-Mubarak Egypt.
Stanford Professor Joel Beinin on the Egyptian labor movement and the historical roots of the Jan. 25 uprising.
Egyptian-American activist Mostafa Omar on the role of Egyptian youth in the protests.
And we play the "video that started the revolution"–Asmaa Mahfouz’s Jan. 18th message calling for protests in Tahrir Square on Jan. 25.
To Watch the Reports
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Noam Chomsky: “This is the Most Remarkable Regional Uprising that I Can Remember”
Noam Chomsky: “This is the Most Remarkable Regional Uprising that I Can Remember”
Democracy Now
In recent weeks, popular uprisings in the Arab world have led to the ouster of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the imminent end of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, a new Jordanian government, and a pledge by Yemen’s longtime dictator to leave office at the end of his term. We speak to MIT Professor Noam Chomsky about what this means for the future of the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy in the region. When asked about President Obama’s remarks last night on Mubarak, Chomsky said: "Obama very carefully didn’t say anything... He’s doing what U.S. leaders regularly do. As I said, there is a playbook: whenever a favored dictator is in trouble, try to sustain him, hold on; if at some point it becomes impossible, switch sides."
To Watch/Listen/Read
Democracy Now
In recent weeks, popular uprisings in the Arab world have led to the ouster of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the imminent end of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, a new Jordanian government, and a pledge by Yemen’s longtime dictator to leave office at the end of his term. We speak to MIT Professor Noam Chomsky about what this means for the future of the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy in the region. When asked about President Obama’s remarks last night on Mubarak, Chomsky said: "Obama very carefully didn’t say anything... He’s doing what U.S. leaders regularly do. As I said, there is a playbook: whenever a favored dictator is in trouble, try to sustain him, hold on; if at some point it becomes impossible, switch sides."
To Watch/Listen/Read
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