Below is today’s column in the Sunday Washington Post. The column addresses how the continued rollbacks on civil liberties in the United States conflicts with the view of the country as the land of the free. If we are going to adopt Chinese legal principles, we should at least have the integrity to adopt one Chinese proverb: “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.” We seem as a country to be in denial as to the implications of these laws and policies. Whether we are viewed as a free country with authoritarian inclinations or an authoritarian nation with free aspirations (or some other hybrid definition), we are clearly not what we once were. [Update: in addition to the column below, a later column in the Washington Post explores more closely the loss of free speech rights in the West].
Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.
Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?
While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.
These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens — precisely the problem with the new laws in this country.
The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.
Assassination of U.S. citizens
President Obama has claimed, as President George W. Bush did before him, the right to order the killing of any citizen considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism. Last year, he approved the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi and another citizen under this claimed inherent authority. Last month, administration officials affirmed that power, stating that the president can order the assassination of any citizen whom he considers allied with terrorists. (Nations such as Nigeria, Iran and Syria have been routinely criticized for extrajudicial killings of enemies of the state.)
Indefinite detention
Under the law signed last month, terrorism suspects are to be held by the military; the president also has the authority to indefinitely detain citizens accused of terrorism. While Sen. Carl Levin insisted the bill followed existing law “whatever the law is,” the Senate specifically rejected an amendment that would exempt citizens and the Administration has opposed efforts to challenge such authority in federal court. The Administration continues to claim the right to strip citizens of legal protections based on its sole discretion. (China recently codified a more limited detention law for its citizens, while countries such as Cambodia have been singled out by the United States for “prolonged detention.”)
Arbitrary justice
The president now decides whether a person will receive a trial in the federal courts or in a military tribunal, a system that has been ridiculed around the world for lacking basic due process protections. Bush claimed this authority in 2001, and Obama has continued the practice. (Egypt and China have been denounced for maintaining separate military justice systems for selected defendants, including civilians.)
Warrantless searches
The president may now order warrantless surveillance, including a new capability to force companies and organizations to turn over information on citizens’ finances, communications and associations. Bush acquired this sweeping power under the Patriot Act in 2001, and in 2011, Obama extended the power, including searches of everything from business documents to library records. The government can use “national security letters” to demand, without probable cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens — and order them not to reveal the disclosure to the affected party. (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan operate under laws that allow the government to engage in widespread discretionary surveillance.)
Secret evidence
The government now routinely uses secret evidence to detain individuals and employs secret evidence in federal and military courts. It also forces the dismissal of cases against the United States by simply filing declarations that the cases would make the government reveal classified information that would harm national security — a claim made in a variety of privacy lawsuits and largely accepted by federal judges without question. Even legal opinions, cited as the basis for the government’s actions under the Bush and Obama administrations, have been classified. This allows the government to claim secret legal arguments to support secret proceedings using secret evidence. In addition, some cases never make it to court at all. The federal courts routinely deny constitutional challenges to policies and programs under a narrow definition of standing to bring a case.
War crimes
The world clamored for prosecutions of those responsible for waterboarding terrorism suspects during the Bush administration, but the Obama administration said in 2009 that it would not allow CIA employees to be investigated or prosecuted for such actions. This gutted not just treaty obligations but the Nuremberg principles of international law. When courts in countries such as Spain moved to investigate Bush officials for war crimes, the Obama administration reportedly urged foreign officials not to allow such cases to proceed, despite the fact that the United States has long claimed the same authority with regard to alleged war criminals in other countries. (Various nations have resisted investigations of officials accused of war crimes and torture. Some, such as Serbia and Chile, eventually relented to comply with international law; countries that have denied independent investigations include Iran, Syria and China.)
Secret court
The government has increased its use of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has expanded its secret warrants to include individuals deemed to be aiding or abetting hostile foreign governments or organizations. In 2011, Obama renewed these powers, including allowing secret searches of individuals who are not part of an identifiable terrorist group. The administration has asserted the right to ignore congressional limits on such surveillance. (Pakistan places national security surveillance under the unchecked powers of the military or intelligence services.)
Immunity from judicial review
Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has successfully pushed for immunity for companies that assist in warrantless surveillance of citizens, blocking the ability of citizens to challenge the violation of privacy. (Similarly, China has maintained sweeping immunity claims both inside and outside the country and routinely blocks lawsuits against private companies.)
Continual monitoring of citizens
The Obama administration has successfully defended its claim that it can use GPS devices to monitor every move of targeted citizens without securing any court order or review. It is not defending the power before the Supreme Court — a power described by Justice Anthony Kennedy as “Orwellian.” (Saudi Arabia has installed massive public surveillance systems, while Cuba is notorious for active monitoring of selected citizens.)
Extraordinary renditions
The government now has the ability to transfer both citizens and noncitizens to another country under a system known as extraordinary rendition, which has been denounced as using other countries, such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, to torture suspects. The Obama administration says it is not continuing the abuses of this practice under Bush, but it insists on the unfettered right to order such transfers — including the possible transfer of U.S. citizens.
These new laws have come with an infusion of money into an expanded security system on the state and federal levels, including more public surveillance cameras, tens of thousands of security personnel and a massive expansion of a terrorist-chasing bureaucracy.
Some politicians shrug and say these increased powers are merely a response to the times we live in. Thus, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) could declare in an interview last spring without objection that “free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war.” Of course, terrorism will never “surrender” and end this particular “war.”
Other politicians rationalize that, while such powers may exist, it really comes down to how they are used. This is a common response by liberals who cannot bring themselves to denounce Obama as they did Bush. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), for instance, has insisted that Congress is not making any decision on indefinite detention: “That is a decision which we leave where it belongs — in the executive branch.”
And in a signing statement with the defense authorization bill, Obama said he does not intend to use the latest power to indefinitely imprison citizens. Yet, he still accepted the power as a sort of regretful autocrat.
An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will.
The framers lived under autocratic rule and understood this danger better than we do. James Madison famously warned that we needed a system that did not depend on the good intentions or motivations of our rulers: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
Benjamin Franklin was more direct. In 1787, a Mrs. Powel confronted Franklin after the signing of the Constitution and asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?” His response was a bit chilling: “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”
Since 9/11, we have created the very government the framers feared: a government with sweeping and largely unchecked powers resting on the hope that they will be used wisely.
The indefinite-detention provision in the defense authorization bill seemed to many civil libertarians like a betrayal by Obama. While the president had promised to veto the law over that provision, Levin, a sponsor of the bill, disclosed on the Senate floor that it was in fact the White House that approved the removal of any exception for citizens from indefinite detention.
Dishonesty from politicians is nothing new for Americans. The real question is whether we are lying to ourselves when we call this country the land of the free.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.
Washington Post (Sunday) January 15, 2012
Reblogged this on veritasusa and commented:
In case you had any doubts – This is not the America we grew up in Fifty years ago…
http://www.globalresearch.ca/jfk-assassination-marked-the-end-of-the-american-republic/5346419
The JFK Assassination Marked the End of the American Republic
Interview with Martin Broeckers, author of JFK: Coup d’Etat in America“
By Lars Schall
Global Research, August 20, 2013
larsschall.com
USA is the new Soviet Union and it has never been free, but its always been CHEAP.
http://defeatcommunism.com/profiles/blogs/oops-government-of-the-united
Ignorance is a very dangerous disease and it is rampant, that is all I can say!
It seems like awesome submit, nevertheless it just 1 side with the medal. Awesome reading in any case, I normally appreciated good brain teaser and solid amount of wonderful information.
cultural Capture : Blatant academic control fraud
latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uc-president-20130712,0,83979.story
latimes.com
Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security chief, to head University of California.
By Larry Gordon
7:00 AM PDT, July 12, 2013
“Janet Napolitano, the U.S. secretary of Homeland Security and former governor of Arizona, is being named as the next president of the University of California system, in an unusual choice that brings a national-level politician to a position usually held by an academic, The Times has learned. Her appointment also means the 10-campus system will be headed by a woman for the first time in its 145-year history.
Napolitano’s nomination by a committee of UC regents came after a secretive process that insiders said focused on her early as a high-profile, although untraditional, candidate who has led large public agencies…”
Wilbur actually disagreed with the point on expert.
““There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov
lol, what a Wilbur…
I ‘m plumb terrrfitr of this gov/ united nations my old grey headed butt aint skeret I’ve fought all over the world mostly se asia delta 1/9 jan68-69+ WHAT ARE YOU CHICKEN SHIT TYRANTS/SUPRESSEVE GOV GOING TO DO TO ME I’M READY LETS ROCK&ROLL IF WE DON’T LIVE IN A FREE COUNTRY I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE YA GOTTA PAY THE PRICE
/
well said
The secrets that America keeps… And there’s one whopper of which I’m aware.
“What if it we’re forced to look at all of this for real next time, and what if it turns out we can’t accept it? What if murder and corruption is what’s holding it all together? I personally don’t believe that’s true – I believe it all needs to come out and we need to rethink everything together, and we can find a less totally evil way of living – but this is going to be the implicit argument from the secret-keeping side when this inevitable confrontation comes. They will say to us, in essence, “It’s the only way. And you don’t want to know.” And a lot of us won’t.
It’s fascinating, profound stuff. We don’t want to know, but increasingly it seems we can’t not know, either. Sooner or later, something is going to have to give.” -Matt Taibbi
Wikileaks Was Just a Preview: We’re Headed for an Even Bigger Showdown Over Secrets
by Matt Taibbi
POSTED: March 22, 10:53 AM ET
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/wikileaks-was-just-a-preview-were-headed-for-an-even-bigger-showdown-over-secrets-20130322
Excerpt:
The Wikileaks episode was just an early preview of the inevitable confrontation between the citizens of the industrialized world and the giant, increasingly secretive bureaucracies that support them. As some of Gibney’s interview subjects point out in his movie, the experts in this field, the people who worked on information security in the Pentagon and the CIA, have known for a long time that the day would come when all of our digitized secrets would spill out somewhere.
But the secret-keepers got lucky with Wikileaks. They successfully turned the story into one about Julian Assange and his personal failings, and headed off the confrontation with the major news organizations that were, for a time, his allies.
But that was just a temporary reprieve. The secrets are out there and everyone from hackers to journalists to U.S. senators are digging in search of them. Sooner or later, there’s going to be a pitched battle, one where the state won’t be able to peel off one lone Julian Assange or Bradley Manning and batter him into nothingness. Next time around, it’ll be a Pentagon Papers-style constitutional crisis, where the public’s legitimate right to know will be pitted head-to-head with presidents, generals and CEOs.
My suspicion is that this story will turn out to be less of a simplistic narrative about Orwellian repression than a mortifying journey of self-discovery. There are all sorts of things we both know and don’t know about the processes that keep our society running. We know children in Asia are being beaten to keep our sneakers and furniture cheap, we know our access to oil and other raw materials is being secured only by the cooperation of corrupt and vicious dictators, and we’ve also known for a while now that the anti-terror program they say we need to keep our airports and reservoirs safe involves mass campaigns of extralegal detention and assassination.
We haven’t had to openly ratify any of these policies because the secret-keepers have done us the favor of making these awful moral choices for us.
But the stink is rising to the surface. It’s all coming out. And when it isn’t Julian Assange the next time but The New York Times, Der Spiegel and The Guardian standing in the line of fire, the state will probably lose, just as it lost in the Pentagon Papers case, because those organizations will be careful to only publish materials clearly in the public interest – there’s no conceivable legal justification for keeping us from knowing the policies of our own country (although stranger things have happened).
When that happens, we’ll be left standing face-to-face with the reality of how our state functions. Do we want to do that? We still haven’t taken a very close look at even the Bradley Manning material, and my guess is because we just don’t want to. There were thousands of outrages in those files, any one of which would have a caused a My-Lai-style uproar decades ago.
Did you hear the one about how American troops murdered four women and five children in Iraq in 2006, including a woman over 70 and an infant under five months old, with all the kids under five? All of them were handcuffed and shot in the head. We later called in an airstrike to cover it up, apparently. But it barely registered a blip on the American consciousness.
What if it we’re forced to look at all of this for real next time, and what if it turns out we can’t accept it? What if murder and corruption is what’s holding it all together? I personally don’t believe that’s true – I believe it all needs to come out and we need to rethink everything together, and we can find a less totally evil way of living – but this is going to be the implicit argument from the secret-keeping side when this inevitable confrontation comes. They will say to us, in essence, “It’s the only way. And you don’t want to know.” And a lot of us won’t.
It’s fascinating, profound stuff. We don’t want to know, but increasingly it seems we can’t not know, either. Sooner or later, something is going to have to give. end of excerpt
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/22/new_expos_links_torture_centers_in
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: As we continue to mark the 10th anniversary of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, we turn today to a shocking new report by The Guardian newspaper and BBC Arabic detailing how the United States armed and trained Iraqi police commando units that ran torture centers and death squads. It’s a story that stretches from the U.S.-backed involvement in Latin America to the imprisoned Army whistleblower Bradley Manning. In a moment, we’ll be joined by one of the chief reporters behind the investigation, but first I want to play an excerpt of the documentary that accompanies their report.
U.S. SOLDIER: First to fight for the right and to build the nation’s might, and the Army goes rolling along.
NARRATOR: This is one of the great untold stories of the Iraq War, how just over a year after the invasion, the United States funded a sectarian police commando force that set up a network of torture centers to fight the insurgency. It was a decision that helped fuel a sectarian civil war between Shia and Sunni that ripped the country apart. At its height, it was claiming 3,000 victims a month.
This is also the story of James Steele, the veteran of America’s dirty war in El Salvador. He was in charge of the U.S. advisers who trained notorious Salvadoran paramilitary units to fight left-wing guerrillas. In the course of that civil war, 75,000 people died, and over a million people became refugees. Steele was chosen by the Bush administration to work with General David Petraeus to organize these paramilitary police commandos.
This is the only known Iraqi video footage of Steele, a shadowy figure, always in the background, observing, evaluating. The man on his left is his collaborator, Colonel James Coffman. He reported directly to General David Petraeus, who funded this police commando force from a multibillion-dollar fund.
The thousands of commandos that Steele let loose came to be mostly made up of Shia militias, like the Badr Brigades, hungry to take revenge on the Sunni supporters of Saddam Hussein. Steele oversaw the commandos, mostly made up of militias. They were torturing detainees for information on the insurgency.
GILLES PERESS: He hears the scream of the other guy who’s being tortured, you know, as we speak. There’s the blood stains on the corner of the desk in front of him.
GEN. MUNTADHER AL-SAMARI: [translated] The things that went on there: drilling, murder, torture—the ugliest sorts of torture I’ve ever seen.
NARRATOR: The U.S. was desperate for information on the insurgency. And Steele’s expertise was turning that information obtained from thousands of detainees into actionable intelligence.
TODD GREENTREE: Colonel Steele is one of the few people who understands how to conduct intelligence-driven operations against operational cells of an insurgency or terrorist organization.
NARRATOR: The Iraqi leader of these feared commandos was Adnan Thabit. In the city of Samarra, his commandos and their American advisers turned the main library into a detention center, where torture was routine occurrence.
AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt from the Guardian/BBC Arabic documentary Searching for Steele. The investigation into the U.S.-backed commando units was sparked by memos found in the Iraq War logs leaked by Bradley Manning to WikiLeaks.
Joining us now in London from BBC headquarters is Maggie O’Kane. She’s multimedia editor and director of investigations at The Guardian newspaper and executive producer of the new documentary, longtime reporter who’s been named British journalist of the year and foreign correspondent of the year.
Maggie, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about why you undertook this documentary, this investigation.
MAGGIE O’KANE: Well, I think when the WikiLeaks documents came out in November 2011, I had a sense, and the team that I work with who have spent a lot of time covering the war in Iraq, that there was a deeper story here. And one of the things that made us very interested was there was a reference to a thing called “Frago 242,” which was Fragmentary Order 242, which was a U.S. military order instructing U.S. soldiers to ignore Iraq-on-Iraqi torture. Now, this incidence, this Frago 242, came up over a thousand times in the documents as we looked at it, and we wondered why was this order issued and what was the story behind it. And there was also references in the WikiLeaks to a General Adnan Thabit, who was visiting the American embassy. So, it was a sense that there was a deeper story to tell here and that the WikiLeaks documents, because they were the actual documents and what the State Department was sending back to Washington about what was going on, that this was a real treasure trove that we should explore, rather than just become excited about the means of these documents being delivered.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk about Jim Steele’s time in Latin America, specifically El Salvador, and go back to a clip of Searching for Steele.
NARRATOR: Vietnam, the conflict in which over 58,000 U.S. soldiers died, is where James Steele was first introduced to counterinsurgency as an alternative way of combating a guerrilla uprising. Steele served in the Vietnam War in the Blackhorse Regiment from 1968 to 1969. He was described by General George Patton Jr. as the best troop commander in his regiment.
But if Vietnam shaped his formative military career, it was in the war against left-wing insurgents in El Salvador that James Steele secured his reputation as the counterinsurgency specialist. Steele arrived in El Salvador in 1984 as the leader of the U.S. MilGroup, a group of U.S. military advisers to the El Salvadoran army.
Todd Greentree got to know James Steele when he was working in the U.S. embassy in El Salvador at the time.
TODD GREENTREE: Colonel Steele, as the MilGroup commander, was in charge of all of the special forces teams, the training teams that were out at the head—the brigade headquarters.
NARRATOR: The U.S. was trying to defeat a guerrilla insurgency, and American experts trained the Salvadoran security forces in the dark arts of counterinsurgency. Some of these Salvadoran paramilitary units were effectively death squads.
Celerino Castillo was a U.S. drug enforcement agent who was involved in training these paramilitaries. He was widely acknowledged for his efforts. Castillo met James Steele in Salvador.
CELERINO CASTILLO: A very military type, very disciplined. His decorations, medals and stuff that was given to him by the U.S. military and the Salvadoran military, were surrounding his office. So, I was very impressed with Colonel Steele.
NARRATOR: Dr. George Vickers got to know and like James Steele when he visited Salvador to write a Ph.D. thesis on U.S. military strategy in Central America.
DR. GEORGE VICKERS: He was totally committed to defeating the guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador. He used to discuss how he traveled around to the military bases where U.S. trainers were based. He talked about the importance of building human intelligence information as opposed to just technical information. I don’t think he had any hesitations about obtaining information by very rough forms that were being carried out by the Salvadoran armed forces under the eyes of U.S. military trainers.
NARRATOR: Steele was the chief American counterinsurgency expert on the ground in El Salvador, a figure of enormous authority to the El Salvadoran military.
CELERINO CASTILLO: He was the MilGroup commander in El Salvador. Nothing moves without his authority. And their objective was to eradicate the guerrilla movement. It’s very well written, through history, that there were major massacres being conducted.
NARRATOR: We put these allegations to retired Colonel Steele and have received no reply. By the end of the civil war, at least 75,000 Salvadoran civilians had died, and one million refugees had fled the country. The Salvadoran military halted the advance of the guerrillas, leading some in Washington to believe the U.S. advisory role was a success, so much so that even David Petraeus, then an ambitious 33-year-old major, visited El Salvador to study this counterinsurgency campaign. The young Petraeus even reportedly stayed in Steele’s house while there.
AMY GOODMAN: The BBC Arabic/Guardian investigation called Searching for Steele. I wanted to turn right now, in January 2005, Newsweek magazine reporting the Pentagon considering using what it described as the “Salvador Option” in Iraq. Shortly after the article’s publication, investigative journalist Allan Nairn appeared on Democracy Now! His 1984 article in The Progressive magazine, titled “Behind the Death Squads,” exposed the CIA’s backing of El Salvador death squads and led to an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
ALLAN NAIRN: In El Salvador, and not just Salvador, but about three dozen other countries, the U.S. government, in an integrated effort involving the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department, backed the creation of military units that targeted civilian activists. In Salvador, I interviewed many of the officers involved in running these squads. For example, General “Chele” Medrano, who was on the CIA payroll, described how they picked their targets. He said they targeted people who speak—and these are his words—”against Yankee imperialism, against the oligarchy, against military men. These people are traitors to the country. What can the troops do? When they find them, they kill them.”
Actually, they didn’t always kill them. Often they brought them to the headquarters of the treasury police, the national guard, the army, and they tortured them for days. One former member of the Salvadoran treasury police, René Hurtado, described a course that was given at army general staff headquarters, where American officers gave instruction in techniques including electroshock torture. Hurtado himself said he conducted such torture. He said—these are his words: “You put wires on the prisoner’s vital parts. You place the wires between the prisoner’s teeth, on the penis, in the vagina. The prisoners feel it more if their feet are in the water, and they’re seated on iron, so the blow is stronger. … When it’s over, you just throw him in the alleys with a sign saying, Mano Blanco, ESA (Secret Anticommunist Army), or Maximiliano Hernandez Brigade.” These are the names of the Salvadoran death squads.
I was given a chance to see the archives of the Salvadoran national police, the intelligence archives, and you could see they had files marked “union,” “student,” “religious.” They showed me a card file, which included surveillance reports on activists who had traveled to other countries. These surveillance reports were given to them, according to the captain who was giving me this tour, by the CIA. The whole filing system was set up for them by the U.S. Agency for International Development. …
Something on the order of 75,000 Salvadoran civilians were killed by the Salvadoran military, most of them during the ’70s. And the majority of these were targeted by these death-squad-type forces. So, one point is, these were not combatants who were being killed. These were not armed guerrillas. They were sometimes engaged by the Salvadoran military in combat, but the death squad operations, which the Pentagon, according to Newsweek, is now talking about using for Iraq, these went after civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: That was investigative journalist Allan Nairn. His 1984 article in The Progressive magazine was called “Behind the Death Squads.” It exposed the CIA’s backing of El Salvador death squads and led to an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Maggie O’Kane, before we go to break and then move into the Iraq part of this story, flesh out more for us Colonel James Steele, the bridge between Salvador and Iraq.
MAGGIE O’KANE: Well, one of the things that just strikes me, listening to that, is the sort of extraordinary parallels that exist between Salvador and Iraq. One of the interesting things in the WikiLeaks documents is that General Adnan Thabit, who ran the special police commandos that were carrying out the torture, used the phrase “to fight terror with terror,” which is exactly the same phrase that was used by General Montana phon. in El Salvador when they were operating what was called the “platforms,” which were basically the torture and interrogation centers where the American advisers were present. And what you have seen is an almost exact parallel between the platforms in El Salvador, which were the regional torture centers, and the platforms in Iraq, which operated in the same way, which was bringing in hundreds of mostly Sunni men and boys and torturing them for information.
Now, in between the Salvador operation, we find that James Steele was involved in Iran-Contra, was one of six key people, along with Oliver North, that was funneling arms to the Ilopango air base to Nicaragua, to the Contras there. He then went on and was appointed by Dick Cheney to go to Panama to set up the police force there after the overthrow of Noriega. And between that, he goes in and out of the energy business. He’s employed by Enron. He works for various private military companies. And then he seems to be called back in at periods of crisis or at periods where they need his experience. So, in 2004, when the insurgency was gaining strength in Iraq, there is a call from Steele—to Steele directly from Donald Rumsfeld that he is to go to Iraq and to get involved in the training of the special police commandos. And this, we now understand, was to go to Iraq and set up a similar platform operation, which would involve regional torture centers, to get information on the insurgents.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re speaking with Maggie O’Kane, multimedia investigations editor at The Guardian. She’s speaking to us from London, voted best foreign correspondent of the year, as well as British journalist of the year. When we come back, we go to the excerpt of Searching for Steele in Iraq. Stay with us.
“A shocking new report by The Guardian and BBC Arabic details how the United States armed and trained Iraqi death squads that ran torture centers.”
BBC-Guardian Exposé Uses WikiLeaks to Link Iraq Torture Centers to U.S. Col. Steele & Gen. Petraeus
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/22/new_expos_links_torture_centers_in
A shocking new report by The Guardian and BBC Arabic details how the United States armed and trained Iraqi death squads that ran torture centers. It is a story that stretches from the U.S.-backed death squads in Central America during the 1980s to the imprisoned Army whistleblower Bradley Manning. We play extended excerpts of “James Steele: America’s Mystery Man in Iraq,” which exposes the role the retired U.S. colonel James Steele, a veteran of American proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, played in training Iraqi police commando units. “We spent maybe six months trying to track down young American soldiers who served in Samarra,” says the film’s executive producer, Maggie O’Kane, who notes the investigation was sparked by memos found in the Iraq War Logs released by WikiLeaks. “But many were too frightened because of what happened to Bradley Manning.” A Pentagon spokesman told The Guardian it had seen the reports and is looking into the situation. “As you know, the issue surrounding accusation of abuse and torture of Iraqi detainees is a complex one that is full of history and emotion,” said Col. Jack Miller. “It will take time to work a thorough response.” [includes rush transcript–partial. More to come. Check back soon.]
“10 Reasons The U.S. Is No Longer The Land Of The Free”
And here some other reasons:
We’re too comfortable.
We refuse to focus on important issues. Rather we are content with endless distractions.
The horror of the past ten years hasn’t hit home yet, for many/most. Maybe it never will.
If we don’t stand for justice — if we don’t demand it — who are we?
If the shoe fits…
======
James Steele: America’s Mystery Man in Iraq
http://documentary.net/james-steele-americas-mystery-man-in-iraq/
This documentary aired in some European countries last night. The MSM — not a surprise — had no interest. Americans, it might be said, had no interest.
Maggie O’Kane has said that this documentary wouldn’t have been possible with Bradley Manning.
Good Americans must wake up from their slumber. This war has come home to America, but most don’t realize it, yet.
by Matt Sledge
CIA’s Gus Hunt On Big Data: We ‘Try To Collect Everything And Hang On To It Forever’
Posted: 03/20/2013 4:52 pm EDT | Updated: 03/20/2013 8:34 pm EDT
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/cia-gus-hunt-big-data_n_2917842.html
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/gus-hunt-slide.png
Any government tries to amass as much information about its enemies and potential enemies as it can, and to digest the info effectively so that the enemies’ intentions and abilities can be well estimated.
Who does the United State judge its greatest enemy and potential enemy?
Notice that anyone who invokes the US Constitution is labeled “antigovernment.” Asking the officers and functionaries of the state to obey the law: “antigovernment.” And they are/it is right. The US Constitution is an antigovernment statute. It was enacted in the name of “The People of the United States of America.” It describes the structure that “The People” desired their government to be modeled upon. It also sets limits on the power granted by “The People” to the government. Limitations. Definitely antigovernment. Opposed to the unlimited exercise of power. Opposed to unlimited government.
Pentagon Papers lawyer on Obama, secrecy and press freedoms: ‘worse than Nixon’
Career First Amendment and transparency advocate James Goodale sounds the alarm about the current president
by Glenn Greenwald
March 19, 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/19/goodale-obama-press-freedoms-secrecy-nixon
====
March 19, 2013
James Goodale: It’s a bad time for press freedoms
A Q&A with the former chief counsel to The New York Times
By Susan Armitage
http://www.cjr.org/critical_eye/qa_with_goodale_obama_press_fr.php