1/ Why do CIA Director, Porter Goss, and the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lowell Jacoby, HATE AMERICA?
"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists," CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
"These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism," he said. "They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries." ...
"Our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment," Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate panel. "Overwhelming majorities in Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia believe the U.S. has a negative policy toward the Arab world."
Jacoby said the Iraq insurgency has grown "in size and complexity over the past year" and is now mounting an average of 60 attacks per day, up from 25 last year. Attacks on Iraq's election day last month reached 300, he said, double the previous one-day high of 150, even though transportation was virtually locked down.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28876-2005Feb16.html
Our Iraq war has become a recruiting tool and training ground for terrorists? What kind of liberal propaganda is this? Don't Goss and Jacoby care about SPREADING FREEDOM?
2/ Why would our Iraq war "fuel Islamic resentment"? Don't they see the great things we are doing?
An Iraqi whose corpse was photographed with grinning U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib died under CIA interrogation while in a position condemned by human rights groups as torture - suspended by his wrists, with his hands cuffed behind his back, according to reports reviewed by The Associated Press. ...
Al-Jamadi was one of the CIA's "ghost" detainees at Abu Ghraib - prisoners being held secretly by the [CIA].
His death in November 2003 became public with the release of photos of Abu Ghraib guards giving a thumbs-up over his bruised and puffy-faced corpse, which had been packed in ice. ...
Al-Jamadi died in a prison shower room during about a half-hour of questioning, before interrogators could extract any information, according to the documents, which consist of statements from Army prison guards to investigators with the military and the CIA's Inspector General's office.
One Army guard, Sgt. Jeffery Frost, said the prisoner's arms were stretched behind him in a way he had never before seen. Frost told investigators he was surprised al-Jamadi's arms "didn't pop out of their sockets," according to a summary of his interview.
Frost and other guards had been summoned to reposition al-Jamadi, who an interrogator said was not cooperating. As the guards released the shackles and lowered al-Jamadi, blood gushed from his mouth "as if a faucet had been turned on," according to the interview summary. The military pathologist who ruled the case a homicide found several broken ribs and concluded al-Jamadi died from pressure to the chest and difficulty breathing.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002183506_abuse18.html
Can you BEGIN to imagine the outrage in this country if these descriptions (and photos) of torture recounted the treatment of US prisoners by some foreign power? (Any time you hear some right-wing apologist making excuses for the latest revelation of US torture, ask him whether he would consider that acceptable treatment of a US prisoner.)
And this is not an isolated incident. This stuff just keeps dribbling out:
A cache of documents disclosed Thursday provides several instances of prisoner abuse by American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq that appeared to have been investigated only briefly. The documents, released by the American Civil Liberties Union, include one file in which an Iraqi detainee asserted that Americans in civilian clothing beat him repeatedly, dislocated his shoulder, stepped on his nose until it broke, choked him with a rope and hit him in the leg with a bat. Medical reports in the file confirmed the broken nose and fractured leg.
But the documents show the investigation was closed after the detainee signed a statement recanting. He later asserted that he was threatened with indefinite detention if he did not sign.
The file, in which the names of the detainee and the first lieutenant in charge of the unit involved were blacked out, included a statement from an army investigator saying that the statement recanting the allegations was itself an indication that it was the product of threats.
Another file concerns the discovery of a compact disk during an office clean-up in Afghanistan in July 2004 that contained images of what appeared to investigators to be abuse of detainees.
The report said the pictures showed uniformed soldiers pointing rifles and pistols at the heads of hooded detainees and posing detainees in awkward positions. A statement from a sergeant says that many such photos were destroyed after the April 2004 disclosure of mistreatment at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/politics/18abuse.html ("Files Show New Abuse Cases In Afghan and Iraqi Prisons")
And if you can take more of this, read this shocking story of US soldiers shooting to death to unarmed Afghan men and then trying to cover it up:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/international/asia/18afghan.html
This is the price of empire: Our souls.
3/ Meanwhile, the big winner in Iraq is the latest target of the Bush administration's macho rhetoric, Iran:
When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq two years ago, it envisioned a quick handover to handpicked allies in a secular government that would be the antithesis of Iran's theocracy -- potentially even a foil to Tehran's regional ambitions.
But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base -- and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is the last thing the administration expected from its costly Iraq policy -- $300 billion and counting, U.S. and regional analysts say. ...
Yet the top two winning parties -- which together won more than 70 percent of the vote and are expected to name Iraq's new prime minister and president -- are Iran's closest allies in Iraq.
Thousands of members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite-dominated slate that won almost half of the 8.5 million votes and will name the prime minister, spent decades in exile in Iran. Most of the militia members in its largest faction were trained in Shiite-dominated Iran. ...
Iranian-born Sistani is now Iraq's top cleric -- and the leader who pressed for elections when Washington favored a caucus system to pick a government. His aides have also rejected Iran's theocracy as a model, although the Shiite slate is expected to press for Islamic law to be incorporated in the new constitution.
For now, the United States appears prepared to accept the results -- in large part because it has no choice.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21679-2005Feb13.html
So, who is the leader of the United Iraqi Alliance, winner of a majority of seats in the new Iraqi parliament?
Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq [SCIRI], says he wants to put Islam and Sharia law at the top of the political agenda of the new Iraq.
One of Iraq's most prominent Shiite clerics, Hakim ended more than two decades of exile in Iran Saturday after a farewell speech during weekly prayers in Tehran telling the faithful that Iraq's future belongs to Islam.
"There is no time now for me to talk to you in detail about the future of Iraq, but I tell you the future of Iraq belongs to Islam," he said, committing himself to the struggle. ...
Hakim called in a recent statement for "the rules of Sharia (Islamic laws) to be put in place and integrated into the social and political life of a future Iraq."
http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/platform-of-al-hakims-leader-of-united.html
4/ So, how are our relations with Iran now that it is the dominant regional power, with a sympathetic Shiite government in a weak and chaotic neighboring Iraq, its former enemy?
Iran, facing mounting U.S. pressure over its nuclear program, promised yesterday a "scorching hell" for any aggressor as tens of thousands marched to mark the 26th anniversary of its Islamic revolution.
A month after President Bush warned that the United States hasn't ruled out military action against Iran, President Mohammed Khatami responded before a crowd gathered on a snowy square in Tehran. ...
"Will this nation allow the feet of an aggressor to touch this land?" Khatami asked at the crowd. "If, God forbid, it happens, Iran will turn into a scorching hell for the aggressors."
His statements drew chants of "Death to America!" from the crowd.
Khatami is widely recognized as a leader of a moderate faction in Iran. Indeed, Khatami himself indicated in his speech that the talk of a possible U.S. invasion was pushing him into a united camp with Iran's hard-liners against foreign meddling.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002177190_iran11.html
Remember Khatami? He was our great hope among the liberal reformers in Iran. Now he says he is being driven by the US into the arms of the hardliners. Our invasion of Iraq has basically killed the reform movement in Iran, with hardliners dominating elections since then.
_______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
