Gen. Mora: Abu Ghraib, Gitmo ‘first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq.’

[babylonsister]

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/17/mora-abu-ghraib-and-guantanamo-are-first-and-second-identifiable-causes-of-us-combat-deaths-in-iraq/

Mora: Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are ‘first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq.’


Today, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on detainee interrogation. Testifying before the committee, former Navy general counsel Alberto Mora, who battled within the Pentagon to shut down the use of torture, blasted the Bush administration’s abusive detention practices as leading to the recruitment of new radicals and the deaths of more American soldiers:

{T}here are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq — as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat — are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Watch it at link~

Mora denounced the Bush administration’s “decision to use so-called ‘harsh’ interrogation techniques” as “a mistake of massive proportions.”

[aquart]

1. They got our people killed.

But since none of theirs were in the fight, they didn't care.

[Solly Mack]

2. a crime...CRIME...of massive proportions

[babylonsister]

4. Yep. Here's another from today along these lines:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3468505&mesg_id=3468505

Wrongly jailed detainees found militancy at Guantanamo

* Posted on Tuesday, June 17, 2008

By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers


GARDEZ, Afghanistan — Mohammed Naim Farouq was a thug in the lawless Zormat district of eastern Afghanistan. He ran a kidnapping and extortion racket, and he controlled his turf with a band of gunmen who rode around in trucks with AK-47 rifles.

U.S. troops detained him in 2002, although he had no clear ties to the Taliban or al Qaida. By the time Farouq was released from Guantanamo the next year, however — after more than 12 months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers — he'd made connections to high-level militants.

In fact, he'd become a Taliban leader. When the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a stack of 20 "most wanted" playing cards in 2006 identifying militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan — with Osama bin Laden at the top — Farouq was 16 cards into the deck.

A McClatchy investigation found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam — thus inspiring a deep hatred of the United States in them — and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists.

The radicals were quick to exploit the flaws in the U.S. detention system.

Soldiers, guards or interrogators at the U.S. bases at Bagram or Kandahar in Afghanistan had abused many of the detainees, and they arrived at Guantanamo enraged at America.

more...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/story/38779.html

[Solly Mack]

6. and no one could have anticipated

[babylonsister]

7. Not a soul. This wasn't supposed to last long, remember?

:eyes: Not much was 'anticipated'.

[Solly Mack]

8. Amazing...just amazing

Sickening.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. That's interesting.

You'd think "invading Iraq" would be cause #1.

[babylonsister]

5. The fact that we're creating terrorists that want to kill us must trump

the actual invasion.

[OhioChick]

9. K&R

:kick:

[hvn_nbr_2]

10. I'm sure this will be all over MSM.

NOT

[slipslidingaway]

11. The Absurdity of Limiting the Scope of the Congressional Hearing

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2008/06/absurdity-of-limiting-scope-of.html

Marty Lederman


"If you're not watching the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, you ought to be. This is the first time to my knowledge that any legislators -- incuding, but not limited to, Senators Levin, Graham, McCaskill and Reed -- have really started putting together what happened in the military, have begun to express how absurd it is that high-level officials concluded that these various techniques were lawful and permissible.

The problems at GTMO, however -- and Iraq after 4/2003 -- can't really be understood without taking account of the fact that the CIA and the DOD Special Forces had previously been authorized to engage in the same sorts of abuses, and had regularly engaged in those abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan, very much to the knowledge of the interrogators and officers who later considered such things at GTMO and elsewhere. From what I've seen, the Committee is working under the assumption that it may not have any public discussions of the CIA and Special Ops, because the conduct of those agencies is "classified." But that means that they're hamstrung by having to basically begin in the middle of the story, without any of the background or context.

There is no good reason that the discussion of the CIA and Special Ops stories should not be just as public and just as detailed and probing as the discussion of the GTMO and 2003 Iraq abuses. The stories are basically the same, raising the same legal questions, much of the same cast of characters, and, for the most part, the same patterns of conduct, as to similar detainees. When will the Senate start resisting the Administration's insistence that the mere designation of something as "classified" automatically means the Senate cannot have any public deliberations about it?"


From the comments section...

Morris Davis

"I am at Guantanamo Bay waiting to testify (again) on Thursday about unlawful command influence in the military commissions process. Since I have nothing to do until Thursday, I was able to watch today’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing from start to finish. Those of you who got to watch the hearings and saw the testimony of Jim Haynes probably understand why I submitted my resignation within an hour of learning that the Department of Defense chose to place me under his command and control. My ability to ensure full, fair and open trials evaporated at that moment..."


http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080303/tuttle

"...Now, as the murky, quasi-legal staging of the Bush Administration's military commissions unfolds, a key official has told The Nation that the trials have been rigged from the start. According to Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo's military commissions, the process has been manipulated by Administration appointees to foreclose the possibility of acquittal.

Colonel Davis's criticism of the commissions has been escalating since he resigned in October, telling the Washington Post that he had been pressured by politically appointed senior Defense officials to pursue cases deemed "sexy" and of "high interest" (such as the 9/11 cases now being pursued) in the run-up to the 2008 elections. Davis, once a staunch defender of the commissions process, elaborated on his reasons in a December 10, 2007, Los Angeles Times op-ed. "I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system," he wrote. "I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively."

[Disturbed]

12. "We do not torture." GW Bush

Busholini & his Regime are War Criminals!!!

[slipslidingaway]

13. Agree, that's one reason Kucinich got my vote :) n/t