...all three of the reporters who covered it were murdered.

[kpete]

Wikileaks document confirm Tom Fox died for our sins


Tom Fox with some children

Christian Peacemaker members, including some of those who have been taken captive, had been investigating abuses at the hands of special police and military groups months before the Nov. 15 discovery of 173 detainees in the basement of an Interior Ministry building. American soldiers who liberated the prisoners said some appeared to have been tortured by their Iraqi government captors.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/13/193689/-Tom-Fox,-death-squadsthe-dogs-of-war

At the time I knew the quote was too kind. At the time I knew US trained Death Squads were active in Iraq. The 173 liberated hostages did not "appear to have been tortured" as the American press so delicately put it. The BBC was much more honest:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/7/170153/-Are-US-trained-death-squads-in-Iraq-holding-Christian-hostages

The return to torture and killing by the security forces is another embarrassment for the American and British governments

The list compiled by Human Rights Watch includes beating detainees with cables, hanging them from their wrists for long periods and giving electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body.

From a video given to the BBC by the Association of Muslim Scholars (a Sunni Muslim organization), it seems another particularly brutal form of torture can also be added - drilling into the knees, elbows and shoulders of victims

............

UPDATE: Some may find this claim hard to swallow. When these stories were hot topics in 2005, all three of the reporters who covered it were murdered.

Steve Vincent (New York Time), Yasser Salihee (Knight Ridder) and Fakher Haider (New York Times).

All three journalists have this in common: That was the last story these journalists covered before they were shot to death in Iraq in 2005.

More:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Wikileaks-document-confirm-by-Henry-Porter-101022-915.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/10/22/912817/-Tom-Fox-died-for-our-sins.-%28UPDATE%29

[lonestarnot]

1. Yep.

[bemildred]

2. Sounds like Mexico. nt

[EFerrari]

24. It sounds like El Salvador. n/t

[hootinholler]

44. Wasn't skeletor in charge down there too?

The whole death squad thing.

-Hoot

[bjobotts]

46. Lied us into a war, lied about torturing and killing innocents, lied about the surge.Nothing but lie

[leveymg]

51. G.H.W.Bush, Bill Casey, Donald Gregg, John Negroponte, others named here>

Negroponte, in particular, was the State Dept. guy in charge of managing the repercussions from both U.S.-led death squad operations. Hence, the name for the Iraqi death squads, "The Salvador Option." Here is the story of its genesis:

http://www.nthposition.com/homelandinsecurity.php.

The CIA underwent a major reorganisation in 1974 after William Colby fired counter-intelligence chief James Angleton, and exposed the CIA's "family jewels" at a Congressional Hearing conducted by Representative Otis Pike (D-NY). Chaos became the International Terrorism Group (ITG), and the repository of some of the "hip pocket" operations that forced Angleton from the Agency. The ITG remained buried in the bowels of the CIA until it was resurrected as Howard Bane's Office of Terrorism in late 1977. The Iran hostage crisis and the disaster of Desert One enabled Ronald Reagan to steal the presidency, denounce Carter's Human Rights crusade, and initiate a new foreign policy based on combating terrorism.

In 1981, Reagan's Director of Central Intelligence, William Casey, saw the political possibilities of turning Bane's Office of Terrorism into a "back-channel" mechanism, like Chaos under Angleton and Richard Ober <2>, for conducting secret "hip pocket" operations outside the normal chain of command. Casey replaced aging Howard Bane with CIA officer William Buckley, a special warfare expert who had managed the CIA's Counter-Terror Program in Vietnam from 1969-1972. Buckley renamed Bane's unit the Office of Domestic Terrorism, and the ODT became the official manifestation of the off-the-shelf Enterprise formed by Bush père, while he was Director of Central Intelligence (Jan. 1976-Jan. 1997), and his anti-terrorism guru, the CIA's Assistant Deputy Director of Operations, Theodore Shackley <3> in mid-1976 <4>

The ultimate object of Reagan Administration policy was the destruction of the Soviet Union through the application of "low-intensity warfare" in Afghanistan; counter-terror in the Middle East; and pro-active terror in Latin America. Effecting this policy involved a number of illegal covert actions, and so Casey had to run his Counter-Terror Network outside the CIA itself, through a cabal of secret agents throughout the government, acting under his direction through a group of veteran CIA officers who embrace the same essentially fascist world view. Like Chaos, the Counter-Terror Network had a secure communications system, as Peter Dale Scott observed, "that excluded other bureaucrats with opposing viewpoints."

As Scott notes, "The counter-terrorism network even had its own special worldwide antiterrorist computer network, codenamed Flashboard, by which members could communicate exclusively with each other and their collaborators abroad."

Casey laid the groundwork for this Counter-Terror Network in 1981, when he appointed David Whipple as the CIA's National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for counter-terrorism. A veteran CIA officer with extensive service in the Far East, Whipple had been serving as the CIA's station chief in Switzerland, where he'd conducted successful counter-terror operations, before being summoned back to headquarters to take on the job as Casey's NIO for counter-terrorism.

According to Whipple, Casey's staff consisted of 16 NIOs, eight of whom were responsible for geographical divisions, while the other eight were responsible for issues, such as narcotics, counter-intelligence, nuclear weapons, economics, and in Whipple's case, counter-terror. Under Casey's direction, every government agency established a counter-terror office as part of this secret apparatus. Whipple as NIO co-ordinated them all, collating all the information they provided at CIA headquarters. In consultation with Casey, Whipple assisted the CIA's division chiefs, making sure their station chiefs were properly handling counter-terror issues in their designated areas.

Whipple monitored Buckley's Office of Domestic Terrorism, and its staff that included an operations chief, intelligence analysts, photo interpreters, and several case officers. Because it had the authority to access any division's files and to co-opt its most precious penetration agents, the ODT was resisted by the divisions -- especially by the Near East Division, which was on the front lines of the war against terrorism. Thus in 1983 Casey sent his pet, William Buckley, to Beirut to personally oversee counter-intelligence operations there. And he conscripted Oliver North, a doe-eyed Marine lieutenant colonel assigned to the National Security Council, as his penetration agent inside the NSC. Notably, Whipple served as North's case officer in this monumental misadventure.

North was a Vietnam veteran, cut from the same ideological mould as G. Gordon Liddy (the deranged former FBI agent who, as one of Nixon's infamous Plumbers, burglarised the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist) and William Buckley. How he got the job has never been explained, but in1982 North was named the NSC staff co-ordinator for crisis management. Vice President Bush was in overall charge as chair of the cabinet-level Crisis Management Committee. Starting in February 1983, North, according to Scott, developed a secret Crisis Management Center, and "a plan (REX 84) to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent, or national opposition to a US military invasion abroad."

Sound familiar? In light of the recent national emergency, it is not surprising that North's plan called for "the round-up and internment of large numbers of both domestic dissidents (some twenty-six thousand) and aliens (perhaps as many as from three to four thousand), in camps such as the one in Oakdale, Louisiana." And just as the vast majority of Congresspersons went along with the draconian anti-terror legislation passed on 29 October, Senator Daniel Inouye in 1986 cut off all debate about North's plan to suspend the Constitution when Congressman Jack Brooks raised the issue during the televised Iran-Contra Hearings.

North next formed a personal relationship with Vice President Bush in the winter of 1983, when they inspected El Salvador's death squad commanders. After that North's stock soared, and in April 1984 he created the Terrorist Incident Working Group (TWIG) specifically to rescue several American hostages, including Buckley, held in Lebanon. North became TWIG's chairman, and in October 1985 he managed its first successful operation -- the capture of the hijackers of the Achille Lauro.

A few months earlier, in June, after the hijacking of a TWA Flight 847 to Beirut, Bush created the Vice President's Task Force on Combating Terrorism. According to Scott, as the NSC's liaison to the Task Force, "North drafted a secret annex for its report which institutionalized and expanded his counter-terrorist powers, making himself the NSC coordinator of all counter-terrorist actions."

On 20 January 1986, North's efforts were crowned with National Security Decision Directive 207, making him chief co-ordinator of the Administration's counter-terror program, and providing him with a secret office and staff known as the Office To Combat Terrorism. Working through the inter-agency Operations Sub-Group (OSG), North co-ordinated the secret Counter-Terror Network and retired Air Force General Richard Secord's Enterprise in a series of mind-boggling illegal operations, including illegal arms sales to Iran through Israel's counter-terrorism expert Amiram Nir; illegal Contra drug smuggling by through CIA asset Manuel Noriega in Panama, by a group of anti-Castro Cubans, all of whom were directly connected to Bush through his chief of operations, Donald Gregg, via Rudy Enders and Felix Rodriguez (all Phoenix Program <5> veterans); illegal arms supply operations to the Contras through right-wing domestic terror groups; and the repression of domestic dissent on a massive scale unmatched until the recent assaults mounted on the civil liberties of American citizens by fundamentalist Attorney General John Ashcroft and the US Congress.

As Scott notes, "the Office to Combat Terrorism became the means whereby North could co-ordinate the propaganda activities of Carl "Spitz" Channel and Richard Miller (and) the closing of potential embarrassing investigations by other government agencies."

The ranking members of this Counter-Terror Network included: Donald Gregg (Bush's National Security Advisor); CIA officer Charles Allen (Whipple's replacement as Casey's Counter-Terror National Intelligence Officer in 1985); Robert Oakley at the State Department's Office of Counter-Terrorism (a former CIA officer with experience in political operations in Vietnam, Oakley co-chair of North's Operations Sub-Group until mid-1986); Richard Armitage (a member of the Enterprise) at the Defense Department, Lt. Gen. John Moellering at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, FBI Counter-Terror Chief, Oliver Revell, and, wonder of wonders, Michael Ledeen at the National Security Council.

[maryf]

55. posted in wrong place...

[EFerrari]

58. If you haven't seen the lecture I've link in #52, try to catch it.

It's an elegant exposition of this material.

[EFerrari]

57. Yes. And Greg Grandin wrote a book that shows really simply

how the "Salvador Option", which was to control the population with death squads, was migrated to Iraq. That was his observation.

If you can stream video, here he is laying it out. I bet you'll really like him, hoot.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/194769-1

[leveymg]

59. I've been aware of Greg's work for some time. His discussion of the Salvador Option from minute 50

in this CSpan coverage is most on-point, but his theme throughout the talk of how torture, massacres, and religious genocide is the product of, and justified by the persecuted world view of the New Right is most telling. I also particularly enjoyed his dialogue toward the end with the audience member who teaches university classes to military officers. Highly recommended.

Thanks for that!

[EFerrari]

60. Good! I'm so glad you enjoyed that.

:)

[stray cat]

3. The murderers are guilty - Or is it a progressive value to defend murderers for politics sake

[kenny blankenship]

5. ?

Finally snapped completely? Has your hatred of progressive values brought you to this low point of accusing progressives of a disposition to side with or cover up murders and torture by US trained death squads? Or are you just expressing something else clumsily?

[Rex]

12. Whatever it is, have you noticed it is ALWAYS negative toward the OP?

No matter what the subject is. Funny that. :eyes:

[Hannah Bell]

14. staying true to form....

[RainDog]

30. this post says so much about you.

honestly.

[Bluebear]

48. Don't be surprised.

[Hissyspit]

40. Oh, please...

[gratuitous]

4. Oh, let's focus on Juan Williams some more

He's a courageous, independent journalistic voice, you know.

[L0oniX]

6. K & R

[bkozumplik]

7. porfoundly and epicly

depressing.

[oxbow]

8. This has always been a personal story for me

I know members of the Tom Fox's family. I remember everything they went through, and we went through with them as their friends and support network. It was a time of uncertainty and real despair for all of us. There is a lot of blood that was spilled in and around this story. I don't know whether I even want to talk with them about these darker alleged connections that are surfacing though. There's a lot of hurt still there and I don't know if something positive can come out of all this.

[nilram]

26. Well, his family would have "standing" in court

They could sue and perhaps bring it further to light. (Though the government would likely claim "national security" and not release the docs.) Not saying you should or shouldn't, but that's something (perhaps) good that could come of it. Shrug.

[madrchsod]

9. since the start of the war it is acceptable to torture people or...

overlook those who do.

welcome to the new america

[molly77]

10. Our tax dollars at work.

And we liberated Iraq from sadam hussein because he tortured. But they had electricity then....and weren't getting bombed and murdered 24/7 for having the audacity to live in a country which has oil under their feet.

[Capitalocracy]

21. Well, they seem to be mustering enough electricity

to use it to torture people.

I wonder how many classrooms could be illuminated with the electricity used to torture people in our newest client state.

[bluesmail]

28. Upthread it was posted sounds like Mexico Yet another says El Salvador

Sounds like the f*ing USofA. IMO the Nazi's were never defeated. Operation Paperclip makes that abundantly clear. :scared:

[truedelphi]

50. And just as scary, Obama wants to extend powers to the Federal government such that not only

Would Julian Assange be cosnidered an "enemy combatant" but so too would be any of us who chose to download the Wikileaks files.

[AzDar]

11. K & R

:kick:

[nc4bo]

13. "...we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards."

And why should we do that? It's something that I've never stopped wondering ever since the POTUS first uttered those words.:grr:

Even President Obama enables this whitewash when he plays the role of America's Lot and tells us "...we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards." I'm sorry Mr. President, but I can't take that journey with you. I have not mastered Umberto Ecco's Ars Oblivionalis, the Dark Art of Forgetting. I cannot ignore the bitter taste memory leaves in my mouth. I know it will never go away as long as we shut our eyes to the fact we are covered in blood.

To all of the heroes who tried to inform and warn us all. :patriot:

[DeSwiss]

37. +1000

[swilton]

15. 1,000 Recs

[BlueIris]

16. Horrifying. nt

[felix_numinous]

17. K & R

[Georgia farmer]

18. Google the names.

Only one of the Iraqi reporters died as a result of the Americans. The other three died after being kidnapped by the insurgents or Al Quaeda.

[Capitalocracy]

22. Kidnapped by al Qaeda

or kidnapped by profit-driven criminal groups, possibly influenced to do so by unknown forces, and then sold to al Qaeda?

Just offering another perspective, not making a federal case here.

[background n015e]

35. All three were murdered after reporting this story.

In all three cases, this was the last story they reported on -- after being warned to ignore it. You mentioned a fourth -- he was killed by an American Army sniper at a checkpoint near his home. Shot in the head while sitting behind the wheel of his car.

[background n015e]

36. Vincent "Wrote his own epitaph"

Here is how the Times of London reported it.

[flyarm]

19. I feel sick to my stomach..and I am Profoundly ashamed to be American today

and every day since these wars began and continue to kill and murder and torture!

What a disgrace my nation has become.

[BrklynLiberal]

20. We have met the enemy..and he is us. Well, we sure have become at least as evil as they.

We have become indistinguishable from the "enemy"..and that is why so many of our troops come home and either commit murder,or kill themselves. It must be horrible to have to live with what some of them have seen.

[Dash87]

52. Both wars are entirely about money.

Wars turn people into monsters, and the only thing we're doing over there is ruining families for profit. I don't think these wars have any "Good guys." :(

♥

[Uncle Joe]

23. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[kpete]

32. and thanks

for being here
Uncle Joe,
peace. kp

[Panaconda]

25. K&R n/t

[Devil_Fish]

27. Wait, I thought this was the "War on Terror" This seems to indicate that U.S.A. is the terrorist...

Have we lost the war? are we now run by the terrorist? what ever the case, it sure seems like they won.

A drill to the knees, elbos, and shoulders...... We have become worse then Hitler.

[Aaria]

49. There's a pattern, War of Terror, All children left behind.

[Dash87]

53. We lost when we decided to use terrorism to fight terrorism.

Which is like trying to extinguish a fire with a flame thrower. :(

♥

[RainDog]

29. so tragic.

thank you for this post, as sad as it is.

bookmarked.

[defendandprotect]

31. Like every other corrupt and violent thing US does in other countries .. will come home to roost--!!

[felix_numinous]

33. The American people are being made to bear this guilt

as long as no one is being held accountable.

[JDPriestly]

34. Wow! Now this is likely to be a big story.

[Hissyspit]

41. Haven't you heard? There's nothing new in the Iraq War Logs.

Except for all the new stuff...

[DeSwiss]

38. K&R

[ProudDad]

39. K&R

Daily life in the Empire...

USAmerican Iraqi clients acting just like Saddam's secret police...

Just like in Afghanistan (Vietnam), El Salvador (Vietnam), Granada (Vietnam), Panama (Vietnam), Nicaragua (Vietnam), Vietnam (Vietname) and that just takes us back to the 60s...

The Permanent War Economy(tm) wholly owned subsidiary of the Corporate States of Amerika...

[MrMickeysMom]

42. They were close...

What does that tell you?

[bertman]

43. We have become The Beast. nt

[laughingliberal]

45. Rec for exposure. nt

[democrank]

47. What on earth have we become?

[soryang]

54. Yes, the Nuremberg crime is an "embarrasment" because...

...all other evil flows from it. But the Chief Military Editor of the NY Times won't discuss that this morning on CSPAn because that is an antiwar argument and thus summarily dismissable as the ravings of a lunatic outside the realm of reasonable discourse.

Iraq and Afghanistan are long term commitments. That's all we peons need to know. The circumstances are too complicated for we simpletons to understand. Only the blue blooded experts that started these wars know how best to carry on.

[maryf]

56. K&R nt