Two-day ceasefire in Gaza -- for CONDI???

Anyone want to hear my USUAL rant against Condeleeeeeeeeeza Rice?

Man, what a terrible role model !!!!

To save her shoes, they can stop killing Arab children for two days????

INSANITY and MADNESS reign supreme wherever these psycopaths go, is about all I can say.

God help us all.

Veeger

Israel pulls out of Gaza leaving 110 dead

Jenny Booth and agencies

Israeli tanks and infantry moved out of Gaza before dawn today after a five day operation to kill militants that left more than 110 Palestinians dead, including 22 children.

Hopes that the incursion had ended the barrage of Palestinian rockets raining down from Gaza on Israeli border towns proved in vain, however, when three missiles hit the resort town of Ashkelon this morning, damaging an apartment building. No-one was hurt.

Israel said that its withdrawal did not mean it was scaling back its operation against the Islamists, but merely suspending it temporarily for a two day visit by Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State.

“This very limited (Gaza) operation was intended to show Hamas what could happen, what you may call a ’prequel’,” said an Israeli official.

“If they decide they’ve seen enough and stop the rockets, if they get the message, then we may get into a period of quiet. If they continue to fire the rockets, then there will be more operations like this one, or worse.”

But Hamas, the Islamist group which rules the Gaza Strip since its military overthrow of forces from its rival Fatah movement, issued a taunting message saying that the Israeli incursion had flopped.

"This retreat is an expression of the failure of the Israeli soldiers facing the fighters of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades," said Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman.

A senior Israeli security source has told The Times that the incursion was triggered last Wednesday when an airstrike killed five top Hamas militants who had been training in Iran and Syria. They had been planning to carry out a terrorist attack inside Israel, the source said.

Hamas launched a barrage of homemade al-Qassam rockets in retaliation for their deaths, prompting the Israeli army to move beyond the borders of Gaza where the rockets were being launched. The fiercest day of fighting was Saturday, when more than 60 Palestinians died, about half of them civilians.

Yesterday the streets of Gaza City were choked with funeral corteges, as gunbattles between militants and Israeli soldiers raged a couple of miles away. The victims included several children and a 21-month-old baby. Israel said the high civilian death toll was Hamas's fault for storing weapons in residential areas.

Israeli airstrikes continued during the night, targeting a Hamas administration building and militants' workshops where weapons were made and stored.

The military withdrawal began around midnight, as foot soldiers moved back from the Jabaliya refugee camp, where there has been fighting for several days. Palestinian medics found at least three more bodies in Jabaliya after the Israelis moved back. Residents who had been trapped in their homes emerged to fetch food and scavenge any equipment that the Israelis had left behind.

Ahmed Dardouna said that he and his nine children had for days been confined to one room by soldiers who took over the rest of the house.

"We couldn't distinguish day from night," he said. "The sounds of shooting and explosions, mixed with the screaming of soldiers and the screaming of my children who were asking to go to the bathroom and for food, is still in my ears."

The Israeli death toll is believed to number three - two soldiers killed in the fighting in Jabaliya, and a civilian killed by a rocket.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President who belongs to the Fatah movement which Hamas removed from Gaza, has broken off peace talks with Israel in protest at the death toll in Gaza, and the UN, the EU and Turkey have criticised Israel for disproportionate use of force.

Riots broke out in the Fatah-controlled West Bank cities yesterday as Palestinians protested against the killings. One person died and a dozen were injured in clashes with Israeli security forces.

Hamas has called for renewed talks with the West Bank administration to reforge a Palestinian national unity government, which was broken by Hamas when its gunmen drove Fatah forces from Gaza.

Dr Rice is to hold talks in Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah tomorrow and Wednesday on moving Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations forward. Washington hopes a Palestinian statehood deal can be reached this year.

But as both sides count the cost of the five days of violence, the peace process is likely to be the most prominent casualty.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3473788.ece

Israel mounts bloody offensive against Gaza

By Jean Shaoul
3 March 2008

In the last few days, Israel has mounted a massive offensive against the political leadership of Hamas and its military wing as well as the civilian population of Gaza. The attacks, claiming the lives of over 100 Palestinians, including many civilians, presage a full scale aerial bombardment and a possible ground invasion. Israeli officials are already describing the conflict with Gaza as a “war”.

Early Sunday morning, Israel’s air force demolished the office of Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, in Gaza City, wounding five people, and hit seven weapons depots in northern Gaza, killing five militants. While the office was empty at the time of the air strike, there was no mistaking its message to the Hamas leadership—the same given to Yasser Arafat in April 2002 when his Ramallah compound was demolished—that nothing but total submission to Israel’s diktats will suffice. It was one of a dozen targets of a dawn raid by the Israel air force.

The previous day, in the deadliest attack since Israel supposedly “disengaged” from Gaza in August 2005, Israeli ground forces entered northern Gaza, targeting militants in and around Jabaliya refugee camp. They killed 61 Palestinians, at least two dozen of whom were civilians, including a baby, and wounded about 200, 14 of them critically.

“We are in the middle of a total war. We hear the rockets and the explosions everywhere... we cannot leave our homes,” a Jabaliya resident, Abu Alaa, told the BBC. “They’re shooting at everything that moves.”

Gaza’s streets are deserted. Universities and schools have closed.

The latest attacks bring to at least100 the number of Palestinians killed since Wednesday last week. This compares with 80 Palestinians killed and 82 injured in January, with deaths running at the rate of at least 20 a week in the last few months. In 2007, 379 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces.

The number of Israel casualties testifies to the grossly unequal balance of forces. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven were injured in the operations over the weekend. While the injured soldiers were airlifted for treatment to a hospital in Beer Sheva, where six of them are reported to be in a good condition and the seventh in a moderate condition, wounded Palestinians face a desperate situation where the hospitals have little or no power or medication as a consequence of Israel’s economic blockade of the territory. Only 100 Palestinians are to be allowed to enter Egypt for medical treatment.

Added to this, there is now the threat of water borne disease. Gaza’s water authority has urged people to boil their drinking water as Israel has withheld essential supplies such as chlorine. Water contamination, now a very real threat, could lead to a health disaster for Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Israel would press on with military action against Gaza rocket squads, saying the current operation would not be halted even for a second.

“If anyone in Gaza has illusions that extending the range of rocket fire will bring our operations to an end they are sorely mistaken,”

Olmert told ministers in a cabinet meeting.

“Let me be clear, Israel has no intention of stopping the fight against terror for even a second, and we will act according to the blueprint set by the government at a time and intensity of our choosing, in order to strike the terror organizations and those who provide them with cover and the ability to operate.”

The immediate pretext for Israel’s declared intention of wiping out Hamas’s political leadership by targeted assassinations and of destroying its military capabilities is the ongoing firing of Qassem rockets from Gaza against Israel’s southern towns. Most of the rockets are inaccurate, with less than half reaching Israel. But they have caused 13 Israeli deaths, numerous injuries, and considerable damage and disruption since 2001. Sederot, which borders the Gaza Strip, has faced daily rocket attacks.

In January, 267 rockets and 256 mortars were fired at Israel, injuring nine Israelis. In February, three children were wounded, one of whom lost his leg. Last Wednesday, a 47-year-old Israeli was killed by a Hamas fired rocket, the first fatality in Sederot in nine months. On Saturday, six Israelis were injured.

On Thursday, in a new development, a rocket hit a block of flats in Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 inhabitants, ten miles north of the Gaza Strip, breaking through the roof and slicing through three floors below. While no one was injured in that incident, another rocket landed near a school, wounding a 17-year-old school girl.

The greater range and accuracy of these latest rocket attacks has raised the possibility that Hamas has obtained more lethal weapons from Iran, possibly during the Gaza breakout in January.

The former army general, Matan Vilnai, utilised this unproven threat to warn that Israel was close to launching a full scale military operation against Gaza and that the Palestinians

“would bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves”.

His remarks were particularly significant as he used the Hebrew word shoah which is usually reserved for the Nazi genocide of six million European Jews.

On Thursday, February 28, Defence Minister and Labour Party member Ehud Barak, speaking in Ashkelon, said that a response was “required”.

“Hamas bears responsibility for this deterioration and it will also bear the results,”

he continued. Yesterday, Barak made it clear that Israeli Defence Force (IDF) was intending to escalate operations against Gaza. He said that the IDF operation against Gaza rocket fire would broaden, and reiterated earlier comments that a major ground offensive was a real and tangible option.

“We are not happy about it [referring to the Palestinian civilian casualties], we won’t shy from it,”

Barak told Israel Radio.

“There are many considerations about the timing,”

he said, without elaborating.

In a separate interview on Army Radio, Barak said,

“This is not the broad ground operation, but whoever says there will not be a big ground operation speaks on his own behalf.”

Any broad incursion into Gaza would seek to crush militant rocket squads and also

“weaken the Hamas rule, in the right circumstances even bring it down,”

he said.

Israel’s Kadima coalition cabinet, including Labour Party members, support such an escalation, with many calling for a full scale invasion. Eli Yishai (Shas party), Haim Ramon (a former Labour party member who joined Ariel Sharon’s Kadima party in 2005), and Ami Ayalon (Labour) have gone so far as to propose that the IDF fire on residential areas from which the Qassem rockets are launched after warning residents to evacuate their homes.

Such a policy in fact flows inexorably from former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s policy of “escalate, escalate, escalate” in pursuit of the Zionist aim of a Greater Israel at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian population (and of the Israeli working class, who have borne the costs)—an aim that can only be achieved by military means. It was for this purpose that he formed the Kadima party from both the Likud and the Labour parties, with the backing of Washington.

While the government is determined to press ahead with its attacks on Gaza and Hamas, yet another opinion poll indicated that 64 percent of Israelis want an end to the conflict and favour direct negotiations with Hamas to secure a ceasefire and the release of Gilad Shalit, the young soldier captured by Hamas in June 2006.

Hamas has indicated that it is willing to negotiate a ceasefire in return for the release of prisoners held in Israel and a lifting of the blockade on Gaza.

The broader context of Israel’s military offensive against Gaza is Washington’s increasingly threatening stance against Iran, which backs Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Syria. The US decision to deploy the USS Cole and other warships off the coast of Lebanon has also been linked by Nabih Berri, the Lebanese parliament speaker and opponent of the pro-Washington government of Fouad Seniora, to Israel’s raids in the Gaza Strip.

“The target [of US warships] is Gaza. It is aimed to allow what must happen in Gaza to happen without anyone moving to support [the Palestinians],”

he said.

“This is a real threat, not merely a muscle-flexing.”

Berri also said that the US military move was designed to focus attention on

Lebanon “in order to cover up the massacres being committed in Gaza”

He added,

“This [US] fleet comes to back Israel so that it can complete its plan.”

Israel’s actions drew perfunctory condemnation from the European Union, while the Arab regimes were also muted in their criticism. The United Nations Security Council voiced its concern at the events. The US, which as a permanent member can veto any resolution, would not accept any criticism of Israel’s actions.

The White House made clear its support for the Israeli onslaught. While issuing a formal call for an “end to violence,” national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe, speaking from Bush’s Texas ranch, stressed,

“There is a clear distinction between terrorist rocket attacks that target civilians and action in self-defence.”

Both Democratic presidential contenders chimed in with support for the Israeli attacks.

“Israel has a right to defend itself,”

declared Senator Barak Obama, while Senator Hillary Clinton criticized the White House for failing to take

“a more active role in bringing international pressure on Hamas.”

Riyad Mansour, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the UN, accused the international community of an “unjustifiable and unacceptable” silence on events in Gaza.

Gazan schoolteacher Tawfek Shaban, a 44-year-old father of five, summed up the reaction of the people of Gaza when he told the Associated Press,

“Shame on the Arabs, shame on the Muslims, shame on humanity ... When they will act to stop Israel?”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who lost control of Gaza to Hamas last June, condemned Israel’s operations on Saturday, calling Israel’s pounding of Gaza a “holocaust” and “genocide” and suspended peace talks. These recent attacks on Gaza threaten to unleash a backlash against him in the West Bank. In Ramallah, thousands of schoolchildren demonstrated against Israel. Some accused Abbas of being an Israeli agent, and protesters threw stones at cars and burned tires, forcing shopkeepers to close their stores.

Violent protests erupted near Jerusalem, as Palestinians in Atarot, Har Adar and Qalandia began throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at IDF troops. Spontaneous demonstrations took place throughout the West Bank at checkpoints, watchtowers and patrol routes and there were angry clashes with the IDF. In Hebron, hundreds of Palestinian youths threw stones and bottles at an Israeli checkpoint in the city centre. Israeli troops fired on the crowd, killing a teenager and wounding two people.

Later, about 2,000 angry Hamas supporters marched through the city, waving copies of the Quran and green Hamas flags and chanting, “Revenge. Revenge. Retaliate in Tel Aviv”. Demonstrations also took place in Palestinian refugee camps in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

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Privatized Prisons for Immigrants: The Expansion Continues

Libertad ⇒ “Ignorance and obscurantism have never produced anything other than flocks of slaves for tyranny.” — (Emiliano Zapata's letter to Pancho Villa)

Since the launch of the “global war on terror,” a large majority of Americans have conveniently been led to cower under the pseudo-protective umbrella of a permanent Nation Security State. Last year I wrote several posts about the current prison-industrial complex and the increasing number of privatized prisons being used to house thousands of detained immigrants. The rise of the prison-industrial complex is one the most disturbing things going on in this country. According to a recent report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics - released on June 30, 2006 and revised in July 2007 - there are over 2 million people behind bars in the United States.

At the time of the report, there were about 180,000 in federal custody, 1.2 million in state custody, and 760,000 in local jails. The BJS statistics also reported there were over 90,000 immigrants (both documented and undocumented) who were held over 12 months by three jurisdictions: the Federal system housed 33,701; California housed 15,849; and Texas housed 9,227.

In a recent “year in review” report, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had rounded up more than 30,000 immigrants - doubling the number from last year. According to Detention Watch Network, a D.C. based advocacy group, more than 186,600 immigrants were deported in 2006. However, more disturbingly, in 2007, ICE had detained more than 300,000 immigrants. These frightening statistics only confirm this country’s commitment to lock up an insurmountable amount of people; and the reality of it all, this is an integral part of the globalization of capital.

Prison Construction Continues to Mushroom
Private prisons are changing the face of American incarceration. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like winning the lottery. Analysts say profit margins are higher at detention centers than prisons, according to a 2006 New York Times article. The explosive growth in the detention business has drawn many cities and counties to partner these corporations in exchange for lucrative federal contracts.

Last month, Louisiana-based Emerald Correctional Management LLC made a pitch to the Caldwell Commissioners Court to build a $30 million, 1,000-bed private detention center in Central Texas. The proposed facility would be built between Lytton Springs and Dale, about 30 miles southeast of Austin. ICE would house men and women separately. In November, Homeland Security agreed to pay Los Angles County $51 million to house 1,400 immigrants at the Mira Loma Detention Center, making it the largest facility of its kind in California. According to the contract obtained by the Daily Journal, County officials will charge the Homeland Security $100.09 a day to house a detainee.

One week before Christmas, the city of Aurora, Colorado held a town meeting to debate the proposed plan to expand the existing 400-bed facility, Aurora ICE Processing Center, into a 1,500-bed center, making it the second largest detention center. The largest is located in Raymondville, TX with 2,000-beds. The Aurora ICE Processing Center is run and operated by the Geo Group (formerly known as the Wackenhut Corrections Corporation). According to Geo, the facility can currently hold up to “400 males, females, children (unsentenced).” The detainees being held in the Aurora Processing Center are the immigrants that have been picked up from Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Utah.

In order to diffuse the tension that was beginning to build up in Aurora, Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for ICE, made sure to state that ICE had no influence in GEO’s decision to expand their facility and that there is “no guarantee” that ICE would require an additional “1,100 beds at the Aurora facility.”

Recently, the Miami Herald reported on the military’s plan to build a tent encampment to detain up to 45,000 migrants seeking asylum in the event of a Caribbean migrant crisis. Last May, at a cost of $16.5 million, “the Navy hired a Jacksonville contractor to build concrete buildings with 525 toilets and 248 showers on an empty corner of the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.”

This is part of a larger plan by Homeland Security, dubbed “Operation Vigilant Sentry.” Vigilant Sentry is a massive operation that also includes federal, state and local law enforcement agencies “to thwart a mass influx of boat people fleeing political upheaval or natural disaster in the Caribbean.”

According to Reuters, part of the encampment was finished a few years ago. The site can currently “hold up to 400 migrants in tents and cots stored in shipping containers on the base. A barbed-wire fence separates it from a neighboring galley and bar.” Reuters is also reporting that is will cost the federal government $110 million to finish the site.

However, one must be concern if the Bush administration is planning to replicate Australia’s use of ‘offshore’ processing camps - infamously known as the ‘Pacific Solution’ - to process all asylum claims. Adopted in 2001 by the Howard Government, the ‘Pacific Solution’ was the name given to Australia’s immigration policy to detain all asylum seekers who arrive independently, without permission to offshore detention centers in the Pacific Ocean such as Christmas Island, the tiny island nation of Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island until it can process their asylum requests.

The Pacific Solution has been criticized by human rights groups and by the UN. Asylum-seekers in offshore processing centers had no recourse to the appeals system available in Australia. Part of the policy included mandatory detention for adults and children seeking asylum for the duration of their processing by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA). Particular concerns have been expressed by many over the detention of children in Australia’s Immigration Detention Centers. Although the US military did not mention if the new site will also house the children of asylum seekers, one does have to wonder what will happen to the children once the asylum seekers are captured by the Coast Guard.

If so, it would be wise for this government to also take note of the latest developments regarding Australia’s Pacific Solution. During the latter months of 2007, the newly elected Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, began dismantling the discredited policy. Rudd confirmed that the detention centers on Manus Island and on Nauru would be closed.

Influencing Incarceration
The private prison industry exerts whatever pressure it can to encourage state legislators to privatize state prisons. The rise of modern prison privatization was based on the notion that government was doing a poor job of incarceration. The phenomenon of private prisons and their corollary industries, private inmate transportation, private inmate food services and private inmate medical services, came into the public eye in the mid-1980s, when the fledgling Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) opened its first detention center in Houston, TX. Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (now Geo Group), the prison-management division of global security giant Wackenhut Security, entered the market soon after. These developments drew little attention, but this changed in 1985 and 1986 when governments began to contract with private firms to operate secure facilities that functioned as county jails and state prisons.

For too long now, the American public has looked on in despair or resignation as private corporations shape public policies to advance the interests of their industry, often at the expense of the common good. Nearly, 50 years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us of the dangers of “a permanent arms industry of vast proportions” in addressing the looming “military-industrial complex.” While the former general was well aware of the military threat posed by the Soviet Union, he also was well aware that war profiteers in the US had their own agendas, too.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

What makes this industry so complex is that it’s comprised of think tanks, former corporate executives, consultants and shareholders of top US defense companies “who profit by manufacturing arms and selling them to the government.” Subsidized by the Complex, pro-war think tanks have become a major force in promoting our current (Afghanistan and Iraq) and upcoming (Iran) wars. Billions of dollars are sent, without hearings and often unquestioned because they’re ostensibly for “defense,” to Congressional districts across the country. This process, of course, fuels incumbent campaigns for re-election.

The fact is, politicians, regardless of party affiliations march to the drums played by US multinational corporations who fund their political careers. As we try to understand the prison industrial complex, we have to look at all of these pieces together.

Like the military-industrial complex, the prison industrial complex is also a set of bureaucratic, political, and economic interests that encourage increased spending on imprisonment, regardless of the actual need. One of the principal mechanisms used to advance their cause comes from a little-known organization called the American Legislative Council (ALEC), a conservative public policy think tank with members that include private corporations, trade organizations, and 2,400 state and federal legislators. ALEC’s primary function is to draft model legislation for legislator-members to take back to their home jurisdictions and do their best to turn into law; it’s essentially a forum for corporations and government to “co-author” laws.

In 2000, over 3,100 bills based on ALEC’s model legislation were introduced into legislatures by its members, with 450 such bills signed into law. According to ALEC itself, the most productive of ALEC’s various divisions is the Criminal Justice and Homeland Security Task Force, which has passed its model legislation into real laws. Due in large part to these laws, the population of incarcerated Americans has risen dramatically from 740,000 prisoners in 1985 to more than 2.2 million in 2006. Although ALEC takes care to obscure the role played by corporations standing to benefit from its legislative initiatives, it comes as no surprise that both CCA and Geo Group have been private-sector members of ALEC, that both have been among its major benefactors of ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Force. It is also important to note that CCA executives have co-chaired Criminal Justice Task Force for many years.

It is hard to say what role, if any, CCA and/or Geo Group has played in the drafting and promoting of ALEC-sponsored legislation aimed at expanding our prison population. However, one thing is for certain, each company pays thousands of dollars in annual membership dues for a seat at the drafting table with influential legislators. While some try to downplay the idea that government has been taken over by powerful special interests, the simple fact is that for-profit prison operators need to maintain a steady flow of prisoners in order to prosper.

Politics is the only reason the Bush Administration feels bound to continue with a policy that is demonstrably inhumane and unjust. It has exploited our broken immigration system and manufactured a political crisis by demonizing immigrants. Today, the calculated and ubiquitous use of pejorative rhetorical descriptors define every element of the government’s framing of the immigration issue - “terrorist,” “Muslim” “illegal,” “etc” - a process that only serves to establish a socially accepted discourse around racism and the repression of all people of color, whether they live in the US or not. The prison industrial complex is profiting from an evil in the US that neither Democrats nor Republicans will seek to remedy.

The corporate will has replaced the will and conscience of the people. Both the Democrats and the Republicans have abdicated their responsibility to their constituency. How many people must be restrained, denied human dignity, treated as inhuman for society to finally wake up? How many people must be detained under the name of so-called safety and morality for society to finally realize our society is inching toward totalitarianism?

Immigration reform should not lie in an uncompromising policy of deterrence based on detention as a form of collective punishment but on treating those who arrive unlawfully with compassion and justice. Nor does it lie in a draconian system, which is costly and difficult to enforce, but more importantly perpetuates the inhumane elements of a flawed system that has undermined the integrity of this country.

It is not in this country’s best interests to deprive people of their dignity and the right to earn a living. This can only reduce them to a state of fragility that will leave them ill-equipped to make sensible decisions about their future. Further, it seriously undermines their integration into society as strong, independent and resourceful citizens with existing and beneficial links to the community.

By definition, human rights are universal; however, by detaining these unfortunate immigrants, this country not only has isolated them from society but also has deemed them unworthy of the most basic human rights. As a result, this country now faces a legal and moral crisis of such monstrous dimensions that it threatens our centuries-old understanding of human rights, of what is fair, humane and just.

There is much to be done to help reunite these people with their families and to heal their fractured minds and broken spirits. Now is the time to demand that this country show the same care and compassion to all immigrants whether they arrive on these shores armed with the relevant visa or not. Seeking a better life is a human right, not a crime.

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Torturegate: More on fighting about US torture "tactics"

Gitmo interrogator describes tactics

2/16/2008, 12:51 p.m. PT By ANDREW O. SELSKY The Associated Press

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — Interrogators got intelligence from detainees that helped U.S. troops in Afghanistan attack Taliban fighters last summer — and they did it through casual questioning and not torture, the military's chief interrogator here said.

In a rare interview with The Associated Press, veteran interrogator Paul Rester complained that his profession has gotten a bad reputation due to accounts of waterboarding and other rough interrogation tactics used by the CIA at "black sites."

Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees, however, allege their clients have been subjected to temperature extremes, sleep deprivation and threats at this U.S. military base in southeast Cuba.

Wearing a blue-striped business shirt without a tie and looking more like a harried executive than a top interrogator, Rester groused that his line of work is "a business that is fundamentally thankless."

He sat hunched over a table in a snack room inside the building where the top commanders keep their offices. In an attempt to keep personnel from blabbing about intelligence-gathering, a poster showed a picture of a hooded gunman and the words: "Keep talking. We're listening" — today's version of the World War II-era admonishment that "Loose lips sink ships."

"Everybody in the world believes that they know how we do what we do, and I have to endure it every time I turn around and somebody is making reference to waterboarding," Rester said. He insisted that Guantanamo interrogators have had many successes using rapport-building and said that technique was the norm here.

For security reasons, he would only discuss one of the successes, and that was only because his boss, Rear Adm. Mark Buzby, already had described it in a speech last month. Buzby said several detainees, using poster board paper and crayons, drew detailed maps of the Tora Bora area in eastern Afghanistan that enabled coalition forces to wipe out safe houses, trenches and supplies last summer as Taliban forces were returning to the stronghold they had abandoned more than five years ago.

Buzby, in a separate interview with the AP, said a U.S. commander in Afghanistan had requested the information on a Friday and it was obtained and sent to Afghanistan by the end of the weekend.

Rester indicated the interrogators casually asked the detainees about their knowledge of Tora Bora, not letting on that it was tactically important for a pending military strike.

"And it may in fact, since it was five years old, have seemed totally innocuous to the persons we were talking to," Rester said.

Buzby, the top commander of detention operations at Guantanamo, said the intelligence "had a very positive effect ... for us and a very negative effect on the enemy operating in that area." He declined to be more specific.

In the interview, Rester said only two detainees were given rougher treatment in Guantanamo, and that was during the earlier days: Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged 20th hijacker who was turned away from the United States by immigration officials just before the Sept. 11 attacks, and an unidentified man Rester said recruited lead hijacker Mohamed Atta.

"Most of the stories (of detainee abuse) that have propagated all stem from those two," said Rester, who began his career in the Vietnam War. "The constant attention on that takes away from the fact that the productive, consistent direct approach ... has enabled us to possess the vast body of knowledge that we actually have."

Al-Qahtani told a military panel at Guantanamo that he was beaten, restrained for long periods in uncomfortable positions, threatened with dogs, exposed to loud music and freezing temperatures and stripped nude in front of female personnel at Guantanamo. He said he admitted meeting Osama bin Laden and agreeing to participate in a "martyr mission" for al-Qaida only because he was tortured, and told the panel that he was innocent.

A 2005 military investigation concluded that al-Qahtani had been subjected to harsh treatment approved by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld because he would not crack under interrogation. He is one of six Guantanamo detainees who were charged Monday in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. The Pentagon said it was seeking the death penalty for all six.

Under the Military Commissions Act, statements obtained through torture are not admissible. But some statements obtained through "coercion" may be admitted at the discretion of a military judge.

Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer who represents several detainees, scoffed at Rester's contention that rough treatment at Guantanamo was restricted to just two men.

"There are so many accounts by FBI agents ... and others who personally saw non-rapport-building techniques that Rester's statement is just not credible," he said.

The 2005 military investigation stemmed from FBI agents' allegations that detainees were being mistreated, and determined that interrogators used unauthorized techniques when two detainees were short-shackled to an eyebolt on a floor, when duct tape was used to "quiet" a detainee and when interrogators threatened the family of a detainee.

"It distracts from the efforts of every other individual who has been in contact with (military) intelligence," Rester said. "Nothing is a substitute for really knowing the subject matter, having the knowledge of the language and culture and being able to sit down with someone and speak as grown-ups."

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

January 25, 2006, TD Blog Interview with Joshua Colangelo Bryan

On January 18, 2006, I had the privilege of speaking with Joshua Colangelo Bryan, an attorney with the New York office of the law firm of Dorsey and Whitney, and counsel to three currently detained inmates of the American detention facility at Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Juma Al Dossari, Salah Abdul Rasool Al Blooshi and Essa Al Murbati, all nationals of Bahrain. Three of Mr. Colangelo Bryan's clients have previously been released from American custody at Guantanamo Bay. The remaining three are in less than ideal condition; Al-Dossari attempted suicide during a meeting with Mr. Colangelo-Bryan (as alluded to in my interview with Baher Azmy) and Al Murbati is involved in the hunger strike by a number of detainees. The following are my interview notes as reviewed and, as necessary, corrected by Mr. Colangelo Bryan.

The Talking Dog: As is my custom, I start with this question. Where were you on September 11, 2001?

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: I was in Gracanica, Kosovo, working for the United Nations Mission to Kosovo. I learned of the events of September 11th later in the day, at the office in Pristina, where other people pointed it out, and I saw it on television, probably on CNN.

The Talking Dog: Are you from the New York area?

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: Born and raised in Manhattan... the events of 9-11 were very personal to me.

The Talking Dog: Do you know where your clients were, and to the extent not classified or privileged, can you tell me?

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: A couple of my clients were in Bahrain. A couple were in the Pakistan/Afghanistan border area, working with refugees there from the Afghan civil war; they had been there a couple of months as of September 11th.

The Talking Dog: How did you-- and your law firm-- come to represent the Bahrainian detainees specifically?

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: After the Rasul case, the Center for Constitutional Rights asked Dorsey & Whitney if it would take on a case for the Guantanamo Bay detainees. At that time, a number of the families of detainees were seeking representation. One of those groups was from Bahrain. I personally had a couple of years working with and applying international human rights law and international criminal law in the Balkans, which was useful experience.

The Talking Dog: I recently read of an effort spearheaded by you to obtain representation for previously unrepresented Bahraini (and perhaps other) detainees before enactment of the Graham-Levin-Kyl Amendment. Were those efforts successful? Do you know, as of the time the President signed the bill into law, how many detainees did not have active cases, and would, under Senator Levin's reckoning at least, be completely without a habeas corpus remedy?

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: There are no unrepresented Bahrainians [at Guantanamo]. There were six Bahraini detainees at Guantanamo Bay, three of whom have been transferred home to Bahrain. Before Graham Levin passed, the Center for Constitutional Rights brought an action on behalf of all unidentified detainees for whom no action was pending, so all detainees now have a pending action.

The Talking Dog: I've read a number of accounts of your client Juma Al-Dossari making a suicide attempt during a conference he had with you; in brief, if you could tell me how it has effected later meetings you have had with Mr. Al-Dossari (extra precautions, for example, or anything else that comes to mind)?

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: I met with Juma three weeks after the suicide attempt. The meeting was in the naval hospital at Guantanamo. The military did not want to bring him to Camp Echo [where attorney client meetings are held] after the prior incident.

The Talking Dog: I've recently read that Mr. Al-Dossari tried to tear open a wound in his right arm (which, for whatever reason, the Government has decided is not a suicide attempt) and transferred to the Naval Hospital at Guantanamo Bay. You had filed court papers with Judge Reggie Walton, and I understand Judge Walton ordered the Government to produce an Affidavit as to the conditions of Mr. Al-Dossari's confinement. Did the Government submit it, have you seen it, and has anything changed? Can you tell me what the difference is between Delta Camp One, Delta Camp Five, and just how many separate "camps" there are within the X-Ray, Delta and other apparatus there, and what you understand the differences are? What is the condition (as far as you know) of your other clients still held? Are your clients participating in the hunger strike?

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: Yes, I later learned that Juma tried to open the wound in his right open. The Government has characterized it as a suicide attempt. I have not met him since that event. The Government did send me a letter advising of this, but otherwise, the government provides no information whatsoever as to the condition of detainees. In this case, they sent a two sentence letter stating that Juma reopened the wound. The Government was ordered to produce an affidavit with the details of Juma’s conditions of confinement by Judge Walton. They have produced an affidavit, but at its essence it is hopelessly vague, without solid representations as to the extent, for example, of the isolation or solitary confinement at Camp One, which we believe is certainly a contributing factor to Juma’s deteriorating condition. As to the “layout” of detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Camp Delta consists of Camps 1,2,3 and 4, Camp 5 is an entirely separate prison, and Camp 6 is a “long term” facility still under construction. Camp 4 is the most “liberal” facility, where there are, for example, more exercise privileges allowed, for prisoners who are perceived as lower security risks. I’m not aware of any distinctions between Camps 1 through 3. Camp 5 is a maximum security facility with individual cells where the prisoners can’t see out; this is where Al-Dossari had been held for over 1 ½ years. One of my clients– Al-Blooshi– is in Camp 4, as a “low security risk.” The allegations against him are weaker than against many prisoners who have been released. Al-Murbati is now in the detainee hospital, on a hunger strike. I did not meet him the last time I went to Guantanamo for, I was told, logistical reasons. Hopefully, I will see him the next time I go down.

The Talking Dog: I understand that at various times, the government releases some kind of letter or statement to you as the condition of Mr. Al-Dossari and your other clients; in discussions with your clients (again, to the extent not privileged or classified), is the government's descriptions accurate, or inaccurate, in the view of your client, and to the extent you have otherwise been able to confirm on your own?

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: No explanation is ever given by the Government; the 2-sentence letter on Juma opening his wound was a rare exception.

The Talking Dog: Am I correct that some of your clients have been released (at the behest and request of the Bahrainian government) but three (Juma Al Dossari, Salah Abdul Rasool Al Blooshi and Essa Al Murbati) are still detained at Guantanamo Bay?

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: Again, no explanation is ever given as to why prisoners are held, or prisoners are released. We have urged the Bahraini government to demand that its citizens be returned to Bahrain, and certainly we have been trying to generate publicity to encourage the Bahrainian government to do just that.

The Talking Dog: Judge Joyce Hens Green ruled around a year ago that the entire Guantanamo detention process was illegal, for among other reasons, violating the third Geneva Convention. Naturally, the government appealed that ruling. I understand that the Geneva Convention aspect was addressed by the D.C. Circuit in the Hamdan case, and the Supreme Court has, for the moment, accepted review in Hamdan. What is the status of remaining issues associated with the appeal of Judge Green's decision, and specifically, how it relates to your clients, and I take it this is all held up by Graham Levin?

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: An appeal is still pending in the D.C. Circuit. It has been fully argued and briefed for months. The Graham Levin issue has created another subject for further briefing. By its own terms, Graham Levin does not apply to these cases, which have been pending for years. Even if, as the Government argues, it did, it would be unconstitutional for violating the suspension clause. Likely, if the Hamdan case addresses the Graham Levin issues, they will have bearing on our case.

The Talking Dog: I understand that Mr. Al-Dossari recently released a detailed testimony of his abuse, both in custody in Afghanistan and later in Cuba, that you provided to Amnesty International. I take it that even this statement had to be vetted by the United States government (for secret codes, I suppose!) before you could release it, correct? I understand the same applies to your own notes; I understand that in one case at least, the government lost your notes in transit from Cuba to Virginia; was a suit filed or other action taken over that? Mr. Al-Dossari's testimonial is pretty graphic [including allegations of a number of beatings, application of electric shocks, starvation, sleep deprivation and other abuses]. Can you characterize any other abuse that you're aware of that he did not document?

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: I fought quite a bit to have that statement cleared, and ultimately, despite Government opposition, it was cleared in large measure. Some portions of some pages have been redacted as classified. Juma did not write this in front of me. It is a 20 page, single spaced handwritten document. He was allowed to keep it and give it to me. Interestingly, prisoners have been permitted to keep “attorney client” communication documents, though materials have been taken if shown to another prisoner on the theory that they are no longer privileged; so much for the joint defense privilege. The government did indeed lose my notes. What happened was some motion practice that appears to have somehow gotten lost between Judge Green and Judge Walton demanding that the Government reimburse us for the costs of another trip to Guantanamo– around $5,000– including transportation, translators and so forth– for what amounts to its own error. There is no resolution on that motion. As to additional details, Juma obviously didn’t discuss details we have learned from governmental personnel about the conditions of his confinement, as he doesn’t know what we have discovered in that manner.

The Talking Dog: I understand that the only evidence the government purports to have by way of "a charge" against Mr. Al-Dossari is that he was "present at Tora Bora". Has the government ever expanded or provided more detail for its statement of charges-- whether in classified form or public form? Are you aware of any further charges against him? I understand that there were reports out of the Buffalo Evening News a number of years ago that Mr. Al-Dossari was a reputed Al Qaeda recruiter who may have approached the defendants in the "Lackawanna Six" case. Has the government made any reference to that as far as a basis to detain Mr. Al-Dossari? Has any effort been made to obtain evidence from Mr. Al-Dossari with respect to that Lackawanna Six case, or any other legal action?

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: The Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) expressly found that there was no evidence to support this Lackawanna Six connection, and it was expressly not a basis for his continued detention. An interview with at least one of the Lackawanna Six in prison revealed that that defendant had never so much as met Mr. Al-Dossari. I understand that he was also questioned at Guantanamo about this.

The Talking Dog: Do you know what the charges or allegations of the Government are with respect to your other clients still detained? What are they? What were the charges against the clients who were released? Was there any rationale, rhyme or reason or explanation given for why some were released, and some still held?

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: Again, other than the limited (if any) explanations given by the CSRT, there is absolutely no explanation ever given of why anyone is detained, or why anyone is released.

The Talking Dog: Do you know who Abdullah Mesud is (leading a guerrilla movement in Pakistan)? Are you aware of allegations that Mahmoud Habib trained AQ in hand to hand combat? Any explanation for why he gets released, and your other clients get released, but Al-Dossari, Al-Blooshi and Al-Murbati are not? Do you think this is a fundamental problem with the arbitrariness of the whole process? Any way we can convince the public that it is the arbitrariness- and not the release- that is the problem?

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: Well, how does one reconcile the detention of my clients on the thinnest of accusations, while releasing an Australian who allegedly trained Al Qaeda terrorists including the 9-11 hijackers in martial arts and hand to hand combat–

The Talking Dog: You’re referring to Mahmoud Habib... who was released just ahead of proceedings in an action complaining of his side trip to Egypt for “extraordinary rendition” where he alleges he was tortured...

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: Exactly... Or a number of British prisoners who were released because Tony Blair insisted that it was politically necessary for him that they be released, a similar situation that has occurred with other European governments. By contrast, very few prisoners from Arab countries have been released. I am familiar with Abdullah Mesud in passing and from reading about him– but the fact that he is released, and my clients continue to be held just shows that there is no rhyme or reason to the system that has been set up.

The Talking Dog: Anything else that I should have asked you, or that my readers, the American public, the Bahraini public, or anyone else needs to know about your representations, or anything else?

Joshua Colangelo Bryan: We should all know that by our military’s own admissions, there are innocent men at Guantanamo Bay, and they have been horrifically abused. Not only is this legally and ethically disastrous, it is bad strategically, and ultimately, politically counterproductive.

The Talking Dog: I’m sure I join all of my readers in saying thank you for that most informative interview.

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Comments

I had been employed by Wachenhut Inc. (private prison system) which changed their name to GEO Inc. (who has been active with Guatanomo Bay) when I worked at one of their prisons in Kyle, Texas as a chemical dependency counselor. I know how irrational, abusive and unprofessional the staff is and the correctional officers are trained and encouraged to be abusive. The "modified" Therapeutic Community model that all these prisons have been using is a very confrontational form of abuse designed to tear down and rebuild the offender (in the name of treatment) that has been used in Texas and many other states for over 13 years with convicted drug offenders. There is no escape from the constant mental torture and mind/behavior control and this modality of treatment can be corrupted by the correctional profession and turned into pure torture. With this much evolution in the growth of psychological torture (in the name of treatment) with our own prisoners, it is not surprising that we now have such an accepted mode of operation with POWs.

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Could we not call a spade "a spade" ?

Guantanamo is a Concentration Camp - nothing else ! Similiar to what the nazi's operated. What happens there is meant to be secret as it was in Germany. Americans generally don't believe what goes on there, similiar to the Germans' denial of what occurred in their "camps"

Posted

There's another good account of what Guantanamo is like at an ACLU blog.

Yes, it is our concentration camp. We last had one in the Philipines I think (could be wrong -- 20s Nicaragua?)

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February 15, 2008, Broken record

The broken record paradigm of the Bush Administration has a number of variations, suich as a record of breaking nearly 800 continuous years of the Magna Carta, or his record budget deficits, or his record numbers of "signing statements" or record attendance at protests against he and his policies or American lawlessness and universal derision...

But in this case, it's that Bush sounds like a broken record, when chiming in that "Congress is endangering America". Man, how often have we heard that? Ever since 9-11, he has asserted continuously that the Democrats threaten our safety, unless they cave to his dictatorial whims; ah, the old politics of fear, as someone might say.

The President's current stated point is that Congress (the lower house, that is) refused to pass his version of "the protect America act", or whatever Orwellian term he has for retroactive immunity for private telecom companies that cooperated in unconstitutional invasions of our freedoms and privacy.

The irony, of course, is that the President is absolutely right on this. Congress continues to endanger this nation each and every minute that it refuses to entertain his impeachment and conduct ongoing investigations of the rampant lawlessness that the executive branch has subjected us to over these last seven years and change. Just over 340 days until, presumably, someone else gets to start cleaning up his mess.

Israeli state terror is okay?

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Israeli State Terror is O.K.

This took place yesterday in the Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip when an Israeli missile leveled a three-story house and damaged several houses next to it. Eight were murdered, including a brother and a sister aged 5 and 6. Over 50 were injured, including 17 children.

Any protests from the U.S.? From the E.U.? From the U.N.? Of course not.

Keep this in mind if a suicide bombing takes place in Israel.

PCAS releases a song against Siege: Take the Siege away

From the depth of death and darkness, from the depth of drastic inhuman siege, Gazans sing for peace, freedom and ending siege. Two Young youths seek peace and ending siege through singing!

PCAS as part of its endless initiatives, actions and projects, is releasing a new song in the coming 2 days. The song is done by two promising Palestinian singers, HATEM & NASEEM

The song narrates the misery and burdens facing 1.5 million of civilians. It shows siege's ramifications in all aspects of daily life, such as shortage of medicines and closed crossings.

A video clip will be designed and broadcasted in many TVs and media outlets.

You can check our website in the coming 3 days to download the video: www.freegaza.ps

Here you have the Lyrics:

Take the siege away…

By Hatem & Naseem

A girl named Sarah,

Innocence’s in her eye,

'cause of no medication,

She’s about to die

In Gaza, there’s siege

Why can’t you hear!

Children, women, old men

No one can bear

Don’t let her feel the pain

Don’t let her suffer again

Just let her fly, like a bird in the sky, and take the siege away

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Ali ambitious student

Drawing a rainbow on the sand

He wants to reach his college

But besieged in his land

He wants to learn abroad

To come back and build a road

The road toward freedom,

just and safe abode

Don’t take his dreams away

Don’t let him miss the way

Just let him fly, like a bird in the sky, and take the siege away

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Away from the siege, away from despair

Away from violence, and agony everywhere

Don’t let us stay deprived, we just wanna survive

Gaza’s under siege, and no one can bear…

No medicine for Sarah, no passing through borders…

Families are separated, can't meet each others..

Patients die everyday, suffering everyday, take the siege away

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