Jeff Kaye

The New York Times tells how a U.S. soldier intervened to stop the torture of an Iraqi prisoner by Iraqi police. Except that never happened, and the New York Times own document proves it. Why does the Times feel it has to lighten this tragic tale? Because the truth is so awful: the U.S. countenanced wide-scale torture by its puppet government, and still does.

On September 22, in the District Court in Washington D.C., Judge Reggie B. Walton denied the habeas corpus petition of Tawfiq al-Bihani, consigning him to indefinite detention in Guantánamo, on an apparently legal basis, despite the fact that there is no evidence that he ever took up arms against anyone, or had any contact with anyone involved in preparing, facilitating or supporting acts of international terrorism. Judge Walton also ignored that despite being, at most, a lowly foot soldier, al-Bihani was held in a variety of secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan before his transfer to Guantánamo, where he was subjected to torture.

Forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner is interviewed by a Candian newspaper and engages in character assassination in order to make Omar Khadr look like an unrepentant evil terrorist, comparable to Osama bin Laden. Dr. Welner bases this on an evaluation of Mr. Khadr in custody at Guantanamo. The timing of the interview is suspect, as negotiations over a possible plea bargain for the former child “soldier” are ongoing.

A new report by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations corroborates earlier news stories on torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners by the U.S. forces at a secret prison within the Bagram complex near Kabul, Afghanistan. While the vast majority of the press have ignored it, one of the report’s “main findings” was that the abuse of prisoners is linked to use of the Army Field Manual’s Appendix M.

A new article at Truthout describes how Paul Wolfowitz issued a military directive in March 2002 that loosened rules against human experimentation and protections for subjects of such research that had been in place since the early 1970s. According to sources within the Department of Defense, the Wolfowitz Directive, “Protection of Human Subjects and Adherence to Ethical Standards in DoD-Supported Research”, was used to support a top-secret Special Access Program at Guantanamo funded through the Defense Department’s black budget involving “deception detection”, interrogation, and other research upon detainees.

Headlines were made last week concerning revelations that a key researcher who was part of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis experiment had also headed a 1940s project in Guatemala that deliberately inoculated prisoners and insane asylum inmates with various venereal diseases. But there have been many more examples of U.S. government experimentation on unwitting subjects, including CIA experiments on detainees held in the “war on terror.”

Bob Woodward’s new book, Obama’s Wars, is full of the same insider tales of government gossip as his previous books. One reads Woodward to pick out the various gems strewn along the way, cognizant that even those are the products of spin manufactured by the various principals involved. A particularly interesting nugget concerns the way the intelligence agencies passed on information about their torture program to the incoming Obama administration. But did Mike Hayden really have to slap David Shedd in the face?

President Obama’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, invited Henry Kissinger to talk about the history of U.S. involvement in the Indochinese wars. Behind the special treatment for war criminal Kissinger is the current administration’s aggressive pursuit of war in Afghanistan and military and covert operations around the world.

A story at Truthout reports that a Department of Defense Office of Inspector General investigation into allegations of drugging of detainees, completed almost exactly a year ago, was nevertheless hidden from public knowledge for months. Its results remain hidden, labeled classified. This is especially strange as this document was publicly requested by no less than now-Vice President (then Senator) Joe Biden, along with Senators Carl Levin and Chuck Hagel, after a couple of articles — one by Jeff Stein and one by Joby Warrick at the Washington Post — blew the whistle on dozens of reports of alleged drugging of detainees.

Little covered in the United States, twelve U.S. soldiers are facing charges of secretly killing Afghan civilians sport, and collecting body parts as trophies. The Army ignored warnings from soldier family members about what was happening. So far, prosecutors have not yet decided how or if to move forward with the case, though charging papers have been drawn up.