[lbo-talk] Fwd: Exporting American Values

Chuck Grimes cgrimes at rawbw.com
Sun May 9 10:10:49 PDT 2004


Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in U.S. By Fox Butterfield

[in case we forgot... Doug]

--------

Butterfield of the New York Times doesn't get it. He needs to read the Taguba report. (List lawyers, help me out.) On reflection, I think even Seymour Hersh did quite see the forest for the trees. It seems the news and most of the country has morphed this into a regrettable apparition. I'll say it again. This isn't an incident. It's the plan.

Whatever the treatment of prisoners in US prisons, prisoners have been before a court, found guilty of a crime, then sent to prison for punishment. Well at least prior to the Patriot Act. Once in prison they continue to have limited access to legal assistance and in principle can appeal their sentence. There are no intelligence interrogators who await them and few or no government officials are interested in what prisoners have to say or know. What prisoners have done is already known and presumably demonstrated in a court.

Abu Ghraib, Camp Vigilant, Camp Bucca and other internment facilities in Iraq are not prisons. There are only guards and interrogators. There are no judges, no lawyers, and no prosecutors beyond the walls, or in fact anywhere. This confinement system is operated completely outside the US military's own system of justice. This is not a criminal justice system.

Let us review Criminal Justice 101.

In order to get into a US prison and receive mistreatment, you have to have been arrested, held in jail, formally charged with a crime, arraigned in a court where charges of a specific crime were filed by a prosecutor before a judge. A judge must have reviewed the preliminary evidence presented by the prosecutor and determined if there was sufficient evidence to hold you for trial. You must enter a plea to those charges. Bail was set or denied. You had a lawyer or the court assigned you one. You had a hearing or trial where your lawyer answered the prosecutor's charges and evidence with counter testimony and evidence presented on your behalf. A judge and or a jury considered the evidence on both sides and decided on your guilt or innocence. You were convicted or freed. If found guilty you were sentenced by a judge who was following sentence provisions of a law. Through out these proceedings, the judge was not part of the police department. The judge was not part of the prosecutor's office. The judge was not part of the prison system. Each of these parties in turn were answerable to the judge. Your name, charges, plea, trial, and post trial disposition were all made part of a public court record.

Whatever we think of the US criminal justice system, it does have due process no matter how perfunctory, and there is some form of legal challenge available at each step on the way to prison and while in prison.

So, to repeat the obvious, in order to be tortured, raped, or psychologically abused by guards or fellow inmates in a US prison, one must first be run through the course sieve of the US judicial system as a prerequisite.

No such delicate legal refinements exist in Abu Ghraib or in the rest of Iraq or Afghanistan.

You get into Abu Ghraib and other US military internment facilities by being captured or rounded up by the US military off the street, or rousted out of your home. Once held in confinement you are classified, interrogated, mistreated, or not and can only be released if a non-judicial US military panel authorizes the release. From the Taguba report, under Findings and Recommendations, Part Two, paragraph 24:

``There are currently three separate release mechanisms in the theatre-wide internment operations. First, the apprehending unit can release a detainee if there is a determination that their continued detention is not warranted. Secondly, a criminal detainee can be released after it has been determined that the detainee has no intelligence value, and that their release would not be detrimental to society. BG Karpinski had signature authority to release detainees in this second category. Lastly, detainees accused of committing `Crimes Against the Coalition,' who are held throughout the separate facilities in the CJTF-7 AOR, can be released upon a determination that they are of no intelligence value and no longer pose a significant threat to Coalition Forces...''

According to the report, the signatory officials were reluctant or slow to sign releases, and therefore the system was over crowded. In addition, the former military administrator (BG Karpinski) had conflicting records on how many detainees were held, in what categories, where they were, who they were, and how many had been killed, escaped, or disappeared.

Abu Ghraib is a confinement and interrogation facility---that is a torture center. It has nothing to do with crimes or justice. It's only purpose is gathering intelligence that may or may not be useful.

How to make this clear? Abu Ghraib is a confinement, torture and interrogation center, whose function is to extract intelligence pure and simple. It has no other purpose.

It is one of many. The entire system of camps, guards, interrogators and military administrators constitutes the US War on Terror. Here is the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF-7), Operation Iraqi Freedom mission statement:

``CJTF-7 conducts offensive operations to defeat remaining noncompliant forces and neutralize destabilizing influences in the Area of Operations (AO) to create a secure environment in direct support of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Concurrently, conducts stability operations which support the establishment of government and economic development to set the conditions for a transfer of operations to designated follow on military or civilian authorities...''

Evidently, the detainees were `noncompliant' or `destablizing influences' in the Area of Operations---that is in their own country. So, there is no such thing as guilt or innocence, crimes or punishment in this system. Most of the detainees have been accused of the same offense, `crimes against the coalition' for which there is no specified penalty except apprehension, classification, and indefinite confinement, followed by interrogation, and disposition by non-judicial military authorities of the occupying power, the United States.

This military system itself, its design, its operations, its methods, and its purpose constitute numerous violations of various Geneva Conventions which the US signed. Individual incidences documented in the Taguba report which took place in this system constitute war crimes.

CG



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