Breaking: David Petraeus linked to Brutal Torture in Iraq (TPM/Guardian)

[KoKo]

Revealed: Pentagon’s Link To Iraqi Torture Centers

The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the “dirty wars” in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq, that set up secret detention and torture centres to get information from insurgents. These units conducted some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and accelerated the country’s descent into full-scale civil war.

Colonel James Steele, then 58, was a retired special forces veteran nominated by Donald Rumsfeld to help organise the paramilitaries in an attempt to quell a Sunni insurgency, according to an investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic. After the Pentagon lifted a ban on Shia militias joining the security forces, the membership of the Special police commandos was increasingly drawn from violent Shia groups like the Badr brigades.

A second special advisor, retired Colonel James H Coffman (now 59) worked alongside Steele in detention centres that were set up with millions of dollars of US funding. Coffman reported directly to General David Petraeus, sent to Iraq in June 2004 to organise and train the new Iraqi security forces. Steele, who was in Iraq between 2003 - 2005, and kept returning to the country through 2006, reported directly to Rumsfeld.

The allegations made by both American and Iraqis witnesses in the Guardian/BBC documentary, for the first time implicates US advisors in the human rights abuses committed by the commandos. It is also the first time that General David Petraeus - who last November was forced to resign as director of the CIA after a sex scandal - has been linked through an advisor to this abuse. Coffman reported to Petraeus and described himself in an interview with the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes as Petraeus’s “eyes and ears out on the ground” in Iraq.

“They worked hand in hand,” said General Muntadher al-Samari, who worked with Steele and Coffman for a year while the commandos were being set up. “I never saw them apart in the 40 or 50 times I saw them inside the detention centres. They knew everything that was going on there … the torture, the most horrible kinds of torture.”

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/03/pentagon_iraq_torture_centers.php?ref=fpb


=========================================
Special investigation
From El Salvador to Iraq: Washington's man behind brutal police squads

In 2004, with the war in Iraq going from bad to worse, the US drafted in a veteran of Central America's dirty wars to help set up a new force to fight the insurgency. The result: secret detention centres, torture and a spiral into sectarian carnage

An exclusive golf course backs onto a spacious two-storey house. A coiled green garden hose lies on the lawn. The grey-slatted wooden shutters are closed. And, like the other deserted luxury houses in this gated community near Bryan, Texas, nothing moves.

Retired Colonel Jim Steele, whose military decorations include the Silver Star, the Defence Distinguished Service Medal, four Legions of Merit, three Bronze Stars and the Purple Heart, is not at home. Nor is he at his office headquarters in Geneva, where he is listed as the chief executive officer of Buchanan Renewables, an energy company. Similar efforts to track him down at his company's office in Monrovia are futile. Messages are left. He doesn't call back.

For over a year the Guardian has been trying to contact Steele, 68, to ask him about his role during the Iraq war as US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld's personal envoy to Iraq's Special Police Commandos: a fearsome paramilitary force that ran a secret network of detention centres across the country – where those suspected of rebelling against the US-led invasion were tortured for information.

On the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion the allegations of American links to the units that eventually accelerated Iraq's descent into civil war cast the US occupation in a new and even more controversial light. The investigation was sparked over a year ago by millions of classified US military documents dumped onto the internet and their mysterious references to US soldiers ordered to ignore torture. Private Bradley Manning, 25, is facing a 20-year sentence, accused of leaking military secrets.



MORE WITH VIDEOS ....NEW REVELATIONS AT:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/06/pentagon-iraqi-torture-centres-link

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/06/el-salvador-iraq-police-squads-washington

[HERVEPA]

1. I'm shocked. Shocked! I say.

[KoKo]

3. Actually it's a new Investigative Report...with more detail that

verifies what many of us thought was going on...but, didn't have the absolute proof.

The Guardian's videos on this are overloaded with the breaking news...but I can't wait to view them when the traffic dies down.

I thought this would be posted here in LBN...and was surprised that there's so little interest. I guess the "Fuck You's" to Rand Paul are more popular here than that "Old Iraq" stuff about brutal torture outside of GITMO...and the Billions of our Taxpayers dollars spent in that Invasion and Occupation.

Oh well...

[malaise]

5. Well said

There was a thread about this yesterday that sank like a stone.

[kenny blankenship]

4. Next they'll be telling us that McChrystal ran Death Squads

It's just so outlandishly incredible! Only other countries do this sort of thing, not the US. Why, these men both received high level appointments from a Democratic President! (Like that nice looking Mr. Brennan, who is being viciously slandered now as a torturer and an assassin.) I just can't believe it. No. Definitely not. That would never happen.

[Berlum]

2. "Torture is one of our core Republican values. Sneer" - George AWOL Bush (R)

[G_j]

6. K&R

for exalted war criminals..

[sabrina 1]

7. Time to give that man a Medal of Freedom!!

I remember when the Left was outraged by these things. But why is anyone even talking about it now? Didn't they get the memo? We are moving on, we 'don't do torture' anymore and we won't be prosecuting anyone who did because we need to move forward and prosecuting war criminals is bad for America. In fact, what is best for America is to appoint them to positions of power.

We are lost, face it. No one cares now, the Left has gone silent on many things so the path is clear for the old Cold War torture and murder policies to continue.

But let's keep on talking about those 'freedoms' we are fighting for.

Thanks for the effort, but I'm not hopeful that there will be much outrage here of these horrendous human rights abuses anymore.

[KoKo]

8. The only hope is that this gives some help to Bradley Manning's

case evidence. If there could be a debate on the taxpayers right to know that torture was done and where billions wasted and unaccounted for in Iraq (just revealed which didn't get much eyeballs here on DU) then Bradley Manning should be praised and not in prison for life.

I'm guessin my hope will be in vain...but, still there's just so much coming out that verifies how we taxpayers must accept austerity, while Bankers/Wall Street and War Profiteers and Torturers get not even a tap on the hand.

[KoKo]

9. Methinks the "SEX SCANDAL" took him down..but, someone was

Gunning for him. Just doing that retrospective thingy...

[Mojorabbit]

13. That was my first thought also.nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Ok....how shocked and surprised should I pretend to be?

New war, same old shit.

[KoKo]

11. Nadin...I think it goes into more detail and verification...

I truly wasn't trying to post "Old News" and I hope you understand that.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. I realize that

The problem I fear...is that those who need to read it won't, if you get my drift...see the discussion on drones...that is those cute frankesteins coming home to roost.

[idwiyo]

14. K&R

[Solly Mack]

15. k/r

[KoKo]

16. Weekend Kick. New proof that torture went on outside Gitmo...

Guardian has Videos up. They were overloaded when I posted this but they are viewable now at the site.