PACIFICA RADIO's topics - tribe.net

World Premiere of movie based on Pirate Radio DJ in Bay Area

yahn soon — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:35:36 GMT

Hi,
I have a film making its world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival. It's called "Compound Eye" and it centers around a cartoonist who draws a controversial comic strip depicting the World Trade Center rebuilt as an IHOP with two stacks of pancakes rising high into the sky, and how it affects his roommate who is trying to quietly run a pirate radio station out of his basement. The movie stars Fausto Caceres (from the radio show, Shirley and Spinoza) and Jesse Reklaw (East Bay Express cartoon, "Slow Wave"), and uses their real lives and weaves them into a fictional story.

Go to www.compoundeyemovie.com for info and a trailer.

The screenings are:
Sunday, Oct. 7 at 5:30pm at the CineArts@Sequoia theater in Mill Valley
Sat. Oct. 13 at 2:45pm at the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.

Tickets can be purchased at www.mvff.com (search "Compound Eye")
Please support local filmmaking!

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 0 replies

Democracy Now on XM Radio?

treemama — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 18:12:52 GMT

Does anyone know if Democracy Now can be heard on XM?

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 2 replies

A constitutional amendment banning torture, secret prisons, and extraordinary rendition

demablogue — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 04:07:14 GMT

The first constitutional amendment I would like to propose for your consideration is an amendment banning torture, secret prisons, and extraordinary rendition. I present the text of it below. for the full essay & analysis please see:
http://demablogue.typepad.com/

Amendment XXVIII

Section 1. Amendments V, VI, and VIII shall be understood to apply to all persons, US citizens and non-citizens alike, in times of war as well as in times of peace.

Section 2. Neither the US government nor any branch of the Military or the Intelligence Services shall hold any person without trial or without access to a lawyer, under any circumstances whatsoever.

Section 3. Neither the US government nor any of its agencies shall hold any person, citizen or non-citizen, in any form of secret prison or detention center. Any prison operated by the US government or any of its agencies shall allow access by the media, lawyers, the Red Cross or any other medical agency, and any international watchdog agency wishing to verify the humane conditions therein. These agencies or persons must have access to individual prisoners for private interviews for the purposes of verifying the humane conditions of the prison.

Section 4. Torture of any kind, on any person, citizen or non-citizen, held by the US government or any of its agencies, is espressly forbidden. Torture shall be understood to mean the intentional infliction of any kind of pain or discomfort, physical, mental, or psychological, whether for the purposes of extracting information or not.

Section 5. The US government, or any of its agencies, may not transfer any prisoner, citizen or non-citizen, for any reason, to the custody of any other nation, agency, government or corporation that does not guarantee the same rights and protections specified in this amendment, or that has a verifiable record of torture or other human rights violations.

Section 6. Any prisoners currently held by the US government, or any of its agencies, in conditions prohibited by this amendment, shall be guaranteed trial or released within six months of the passage of this amendment.

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Something's Happening

fspro — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 06:48:27 GMT

Hi everyone,
I am looking for people who are interested in talking about the
PACIFICA RADIO Something's happening,with Roy of Hollywood.
The best radio show in recent history.

Regards,Rick

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 7 replies

Pacifica in Phoenix?

pinworm — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 22:17:34 GMT

I just moved to the Phoenix area from Los Angeles and would LOVE to find out what station I need to tune to get pacifica radio here. Does anyone know?

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 3 replies

Programming

AlbionMoonlite — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 18:33:04 GMT

Would Pacifica be a stronger network if it strictly stayed within politics/public affairs/news? After all, cultural programming is nice as far as it goes, but commercial and college radio cover that ground well enough. Imagine 24/7 political affairs, public service programming, news, and not entertainment.
Would Pacifica grow an larger audience base?

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 3 replies

an art & left politics forum is born

arize — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 00:34:05 GMT

hi. im birthing this forum that focuses mostly on art and left politics.

its all fresh and new and waiting for instigator types to help shape the place. hardly anyone in there right now but it has a lot of potential. who ever gets involved at this point would be key in developing the character of the place.

you can put pictures and stuff in each post.

im still adding a forum or two more and working on the design of the place.

i would be honored by your presence. come check it out: http://p207.ezboard.com/btheemptyroom

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 0 replies

Disinformation Now

AlbionMoonlite — Sat, 09 Apr 2005 16:35:56 GMT

Disinformation Now
by Victor Thorn

The big question that keeps resonating among 9-11 truth-seekers is: why are Amy Goodman of Democracy Now and almost every other member of the “left-leaning” media parroting the official party line on 9-11 (the same one that the Republican Party is spouting)? If there was one issue that would blow the current administration out of the water, it would be their foreknowledge of the World Trade Center/Pentagon attacks 2 ½ years ago. In fact, there is so much incriminating information regarding this diabolical event that the left could bury George W. Bush and his cronies. Yet they either remain strangely silent, or else spew tons of establishment misinformation.

A perfect example of this pathetic state of affairs is Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now. Scott Loughrey wrote about her in a March 14th issue of the Baltimore Indy Media: “Amy Goodman should be regarded as a Left Gatekeeper. Left Gatekeepers, like the journalists in George Orwell’s 1984, function to promote the official propaganda of the state. They amplify what is not credible while excluding other voices from challenging the government’s lies of the day.”

I don’t think anyone could better describe the phoniness of our supposed “leftist” media in this country. The situation is so bad that one day I visited a Barnes & Noble bookstore and selected a dozen different “progressive” publications to see where they stood on 9-11, government drug trafficking, money laundering, arms dealing, and other criminal activities such as the government’s role in the Oklahoma City Bombing. Well, guess what I found. Nothing! Not a word that varied even remotely from the official establishment stance.

The big question is: why? Why won’t Amy Goodman, Mother Jones, Common Dreams, Alternet, Z Magazine, or Pacifica Radio go after their supposed Republican foes? The answer is simple – money. The same forces which support the right are the very same that finance the left. In this sense, the leftist press is no different than those at Fox News. In fact, they’re two sides of the very same coin … two heads of the same serpent. All they’re doing is spouting propaganda, reinforcing the status quo by serving as an enforcement arm for the elite; and dividing people against each other via a Hegelian Dialectic. But, as Executive Director John Moyers of TomPaine.com says, “If they don’t like what we’re doing, we don’t get funded next year.” [For a complete chart of how the Gatekeepers are funded by elitist foundations, click onto: http://www.leftgatekeepers.com/chart.htm] This trend is so pervasive that some people have even begun calling Amy Goodman’s show Disinformation Now.

Considering the seriousness of all that’s taking place in our country and around the world, it’s despicable beyond words that the left is rolling over and playing dead to such an extent. I know this first-hand because when we were doing research for WING TV before it aired on February 1, 2004, we watched a few episodes of Democracy Now. After every show was over, I’d turn to Lisa Guliani and say, “There’s no difference between them and PBS, NPR, or the major networks.” It was lame beyond words; and very disheartening because what Amy Goodman and her ilk are doing is sucking liberals into the old left-right paradigm that the Controllers have designed years ago to preserve their power base. But, since their information is supposedly coming from an “alternative” source, for some reason viewers think they’re getting more legitimate news that what the corporate mass media is giving them. But in reality, they’re being duped all the same. Democracy Now and other venues with similar policies are nothing more than wolves in sheep’s clothing; total sell-outs that are doing much more harm than good.

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 0 replies

Used to work at KPFT Houston Pacifica

Sun, 20 Mar 2005 15:31:02 GMT

We had the distinction of having the KKK blow our trasmitter up. That is why I have lived in San Diego for 18 years. Anyone people from the 80's that listened to a guy named Captain Bondage? No? Yes? That was
me. Came on after a guy named Ellis Deagh (pronounced LSD) lol
Glad I ran across this tribe
Michael

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 0 replies

yesterday, 2/1/05

Grl — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 18:03:17 GMT

I wish they hadn't given so much time to the weird lawyer for the british detainee. she was an awful speaker. maybe I am missing the significance of that case...?

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 0 replies

Karl Rove & His Hoover-esque Behavior

Thu, 30 Dec 2004 02:42:35 GMT

Has any one else discovered reports of homosexual behavior by this protege of the Devil? I've discovered two so far. What's interesting is, a major conservative source is cited - the Washington Times. If these reports are true, it may very well be part of his undoing. I figure Amy Goodman & Co would certainly report such. I don't listen to Democracy Now! every day. Has she made such a report?

Also, if any one is as interested as I am in ending Mr Rove's political career, please see the tribe - "Target Karl Rove."

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 3 replies

Guns and Butter

AlbionMoonlite — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 20:38:56 GMT

In my opinion, far better than Flashpoints and Democracy Now. Not involved in Left Gatekeeping; not interested in star status; just good and insightful reporting.

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 0 replies

yay!

flowerdew — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 19:06:22 GMT

The new moderator is already doing a great job. Just take a look at Amy Goodman in the photo box! Yay!

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 1 reply

does anyone want to take over (moderate) this tribe?

flowerdew — Tue, 15 Jun 2004 17:29:46 GMT

I'm sorry I can't really contribute to this tribe as I would like to- so, would anyone here be interested in taking it on themselves?

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 8 replies

pissed...

flowerdew — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 15:36:24 GMT

that Act One Radio Drama only has the previous show archived on kpfa.org. Lame! I can't get KPFA anymore except at work, on the computer...

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 0 replies

German Rock Pop Music

Wed, 07 Jul 2004 22:07:36 GMT

Does Pacifica have any programming with regards to modern German culture & music.

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 0 replies

Democracy Now's recent reporting on abuse of Iraqi prisoners

flowerdew — Tue, 11 May 2004 18:46:51 GMT

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/10/1417253

Monday, May 10th, 2004
Seymour Hersh: Knowledge of Prisoner Abuse Investigation "Severely and Unusually Restricted"

We speak with Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker which just released a series of photos showing what appears to be a dog attacking a naked Iraqi prisoner. And we hear Sen. John McCain questioning Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the Senate and House Armed Services Committee. [includes rush transcript]

The US military announced this weekend that it would begin its first court martial in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal since graphic images of US personnel abusing Iraqi prisoners were first broadcast April 28th. On May 19, proceedings will begin against Specialist Jeremy Sivits, who is a member of the 372nd Military Police Company. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt made the announcement in the Iraqi capital and said the proceedings would be held in the Baghdad Convention Center, which houses the coalition press office. Kimmit said the trial will be open to media coverage.
Sivits is one of seven soldiers facing charges but appears to be a lesser figure in the case. He is believed to have taken some of the photos of US personnel abusing the prisoners. Amnesty International has labeled some of the actions depicted in the photos as war crimes, while the Vatican said the conduct of the soldiers at the prison, "offended God."
Meanwhile, the Bush administration continues to defend Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Several lawmakers have called for his resignation, while some have gone so far as to begin drafting articles of impeachment against him. In a statement issued late Saturday, Vice President Dick Cheney said, "I think Donald Rumsfeld is the best Secretary of Defense the United States has ever had. People ought to let him do his job."
On Friday, Rumsfeld spent more than 6 hours in front of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.
Republican Senator John McCain questioned Rumsfeld on the chain of command at Abu Ghraib and the role of private contractors at the prison.
Sen. John McCain (R- AZ) questioning Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on May 7, 2004.
One of the most talked about statements made by Rumsfeld during his appearances on Capitol Hill Friday was that the photos currently in the public domain are just a fraction of the videos and pictures of US personnel abusing Iraqi prisoners. The Pentagon is fighting to keep these images from reaching the public and has been negotiating with Congress in an effort to keep them sealed. But more images continue to emerge. The New Yorker magazine just released a series of photos showing what appears to be a dog attacking a naked Iraqi prisoner. The photos are part of the latest article by Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh. It's called called "Chain of Command." <http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040517fa_fact2>
Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for the New Yorker.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: Last night, I spoke with Seymour Hersh about his piece.
SEYMOUR HERSH: The most important thing I covered is that most of the people in the chain of command weren't really informed about what was going on. People that normally would have been alerted to the problems they had, at the prison in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prison, were not clued in. It seems as if the administration simply -- it's not even a cover-up. It's so much more profound than that. What they do in this administration at the top is they simply are incapable of dealing with bad news. So here you have this disastrous event come forth. Somebody comes up with the photographs. It's clear that if this young man and one of the military policemen at the prison hadn't decided that this was wrong and had not gone into the authorities there I think January the 13th of this year with the photographs, if he had not had the videos or the disks, you know, everything would still be a exactly the way it was. Janice Karpinski, the general who ran that brigade would be doing it, and the abuses would probably still be going on. But he had the video. So, they had to act. And so, it gets briefed into Washington. And here you have this sort of amazing freight train coming down the road from January on, and the highest powers in this administration, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and the president, they are just running around rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, any cliché that you want. That is simply because it's something they couldn't deal with. And then in talking to officers and actually when I had known for a long time, some of the -- for example, the GCS and army planners have been trying to tell the -- Rumsfeld and others for a year how bad things were going and how much -- how wrong the estimates are about troops strengths and what's needed. And you can't get them to listen. They only listen to their own little voices, I guess. It's really amazing. And you can understand this sort of inability to hear, this self-deception they practice. They really -- I think some of them may really believe six or seven bad seeds, six or seven bad kids are responsible for what happened in the prison system and that the idea that there's something systematic and something they may have inadvertently or advertently, we don't know yet, started.
AMY GOODMAN: Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh. We will talk with him about the latest picture that has been released in a minute.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Saul Williams, “Not in my name.”, the war and peace report. Looking at Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Seymour Hersh's article in today’s "New Yorker” magazine called “Chain of Command, How the Department of Defense Mishandled the Disaster at Abu Ghraib,” he writes one of the new photographs shows a young soldier wearing a dark jacket of his uniform, smiling into the camera in the corridor of the jail. In the background are two army dog handlers in full camouflage combat gear restraining two German shepherds. The dogs are barking at a man who is partly obscured from the cameras view by the smiling soldier. Another image shows that the man, an Iraqi prisoner is naked. We spoke to Seymour Hersh last night about the photo.
SEYMOUR HERSH: There were two dogs. They there were about 20 that I saw altogether. They were taken by two different cameras over 12 minutes. And one was quite -- the one that the "New Yorker" published was quite graphic, but they show this -- what can I tell you, this terrified man, you know, we have seen pictures like that before in Mississippi during the civil war days -- the civil rights marches and in World War II, we have seen photographs like that. But American military policemen and intelligence officers doing that, I quote one general, retired major general, a man named Heinz that ran the military police, that was in police business for 28 years as an army officer. He said if he had ever done anything like that, he would have been kicked out of the army. This is six or seven years or more back. The progression shows that he's terrified and eventually we don't see the dogs biting him and we see him on the ground, a lot of blood around him and a large gash in his foot, in his thigh rather up the thigh. And so it's clear that the dog bit him, although we don't actually see it in the 20 or so shots I have, but you know, the thing that's amazing about it -- there are two interesting things about it. Well, actually, three, really. One, of course, is, it's just another day on the job for everybody. Nobody is stopping. There's for our five people around and some of the photos. There were two cameras, going, as I said, which means two people were filming, not just one. There's more than just casual photography business. I think it's part of the interrogation process. And three was really much more interesting in terms of the army's -- and the White House's insistence that this is just a few. It's a different group of men and women, the other -- the six or seven people that are undergoing investigation and possible criminal sanctions right now are all from a company known as the 372nd military police, MP company. These slides and snapshots came from someone in the 320th MP battalion, a different group, same prison. Same probably area of the prison, but nonetheless, a different organization, a different unit. So the idea that what was going on there was limited to one unit is wrong. And then elsewhere in the story I did, I quoted another -- I don't quote him by name, but another young captain who ran a military police company at yet another prison at roughly the same time this was last fall. These photographs were taken -- the ones in the photograph in the "New Yorker" this week was -- I think was taken the night or evening of December 2nd or late afternoon, December 12, rather, last year. But at that same time, and in a prison, you know, near Baghdad, yet at another facility, the same sort of pressure was being put on by the military intelligence people. So, what you are seeing is, you are beginning to see evidence -- the photographs are evidence, which I think they are -- of a much more systematic mistreatment of prisoners.
AMY GOODMAN: You also talk about the connections between Iraq, Guantanamo and Afghanistan and talk about how John Walker Lindh was dealt with, the American prisoner who was captured in Afghanistan.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Right, I included the 20 years. Well what is interesting, one of the things in this sort of -- I think in this article I described it, the [inaudible], Antonio, the famous group of reports that everybody was talking about and writing about last week. One of the things that he said was very interesting. He had said that the problems in the prison system, as far he can tell, he was brought on to the scene, after the photographs came and he was ordered to do an investigation in late January, which he completed about a month or five or six weeks. But in his report, he said there were two previous studies. In one of them, in one of the studies, another army general had mentioned that this all came out of Afghanistan in project "Enduring Freedom" was the code word. You go back and you then think about that and you look at John Walker Lindh. I talked to his attorney, a man named James Brass in California, who sent me some of the filings on the case, some of the affidavits. You know how the press is when he was around it, was interesting. And once he got – you everybody sort of stopped paying attention to it after a little while. But in one of the affidavits it's very clear that what happened to him after he was arrested in December 2001, he was stripped and two times over the next few days, people were allowed into take snapshots of a number of photographs were taken of him. In fact, one of them nude ended up being given to one of the networks. So you had a pattern of people photographing you, and also the nudeness and the abusiveness and one of the people, There was I said, there were two investigations. One of the investigations last summer that was done in Iraq on the prison system was done by a man named Jeffrey, Major General Jeffrey Miller who was at that time running the prison in Guantanamo, which is strictly an interrogation facility. And the timeline is this, that by last fall, the American authorities were talking publicly, you know, the insurgency was going and they were talking publicly about 5,000 or so members of the insurgencies, and there's a tremendous pressure about who are the insurgents, let's find them and let's get them. And so, what happened is that -- the best guess you have is by late fall, there were as many as 40,000 detainees. They're not like the people that were taken out of Afghanistan and sent to Guantanamo. Overwhelmingly, 60 or more percentage of them are civilians, people that have nothing -- they were just picked up randomly. There's not much intelligence they get out of them. And anyway there is a separate prison for the hard cases; that we're not talking about. They weren't at Abu Ghraib. They were at other places. And so what you were doing is you were trying to find the 5,000 magic guys, and Miller recommended, do so, that you put the military intelligence people last fall in charge of the prisons.
And Ricardo Sanchez -- all of this is I write in this article, promulgated an order, they call it a FRAGO, frag operation order, promulgated an order last November 19 putting military intelligence in charge of all the prisons. And that meant that the interrogators -- literally that meant you were going to end up with Guantanamos all over the place. Cause whole function of the prison system was getting information. And so the brutality seemed to connect directly with the recommendation of November, December. And so you had a system where -- by the way, every expert in interrogation, and anybody in the American government and elsewhere tells you that interrogations by coercion produce nothing because people only tell you what they think you want. They're the most useless thing. Nonetheless, that seems to have been a widespread decision made, a decision was made and it was decided to escalate the pressure on the people. One of the ways, you know if you are going to humiliate people as they did, as we did, as we know from the photographs, sexually and other ways, it's -- I could tell you right now, I don't know this empirically, but I have been told by many people that there was nothing -- nothing would be as threatening to an Arab men than the idea that you had photographs of him in this horrible position that you could show to friends, neighbors and family. It would be a shaming that would be, you know – a shaming, as shameful and his life would be over in a sense, in terms of his personal integrity in the community. So, out of this, the cameras seem to be much more important, much more systematic. We don't know the answers to all of these questions. But inevitably you're led to thinking that what's happening here is not just something random, but something not only just deliberately or just inadvertently deliberate you know, people come to the same thing at the same place, but there seems to be an overriding system or, you know, a gathering, some notion of how to do it. And therefore, you have some central authority and therefore, somebody like me you seeing it heuristically would say somewhere there's something going on that we have to find out. There's some central mechanism for this.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Seymour Hersh. When did Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense learn about this, when did President Bush?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, all we can go is by what they say, and we have to take them at their word on this. Because we have no basis otherwise. To give you some idea and here is the irony -- this is the -- this is confusing to me and should be confusing to everybody. The January 13, the photographs come out. We know now that by 2:30 the next morning -- this is from accounts of the various people who were being prosecuted, one of them in letters home, by 2:30 the next morning, he was rousted out by the army police, C.I.D., the criminal investigation division, who are pretty straight guys. They do their job. They love to burn officers. Anyway, he is rousted out, by 2:30 the next morning they're on the hunt for people and they are identifying people on the photographs. Within -- Rumsfeld just testified by the 16th, that's two days later, he was notified and he told the president right away. We know by the 19th, General Sanchez ordered an investigation and a few weeks later, he orders Taguba to do his big report. So, within a week, certainly, of the photographs showing up inside this prison at an army criminal investigation division office, within six, seven days, the president knows, Rumsfeld knows, an investigation is begun and the process is underway.
AMY GOODMAN: And again the month and day?
SEYMOUR HERSH: January of -- between the 13th and 19th all this happened. Rumsfeld says, no photographs were seen, but certainly, he must have had a very, very explicit account of what -- something rational that would make him -- compel him -- not only had they be worried about enough so they told the Secretary right away, because as he testified there's 18,000 court-martials in the military system, how am I supposed to know all of them he said at one point in his testimony before Congress last week. Something was special about this right away, but then I think what I'm telling you is the mechanism then is very bad news coming, nobody wants to hear bad news in this administration. So, it just disappears. I know that sounds bizarre, but the disconnects inside this government, particularly on -- as we all see in the Iraqi policy, it's amazing.
AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, you say that the pictures yet to come unreleased, NBC news quoting U.S. military officials, saying they show American soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi prisoner and acting inappropriately with a dead body. The official said there also is a videotape apparently shot by U.S. personnel showing Iraqi guards raping young boys. Where are the videos and photographs?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, the army clearly has some of them, but the big fear they have is, you know, this is -- this is the CD, NAPSTER-burned CD generation. Before the investigation began in early January, these were being pass around throughout [inaudible], throughout the brigade, the brigade of which Janice Karpinski was -- the 800th MP brigade, we're talking about 3,000 or 4,000 people. God knows how many copies and how many videos are out there. But I think it is fair to say that people will be negotiating with the -- with the French photo magazines and the German magazines wherever they can. I don't think we're very far away. I don’t know, I can't tell you that -- where the videos are, but I have heard what NBC wrote, I certainly heard and probably worse.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you think anything useful came out of the questioning of Donald Rumsfeld in the Senate and House?
SEYMOUR HERSH: No.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that the Senators and the Congress members asked the right questions?
SEYMOUR HERSH: No.
AMY GOODMAN: What would you have asked Donald Rumsfeld?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Oh --
AMY GOODMAN: Will he speak you to?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Now, even though I have known him for 30 years and I have to tell you Donald Rumsfeld is a very bright engaging, interesting man. You can disagree with him all you want, but he's always bright. He's the kind of guy that's always nice to the underlings. He's always nice to the people that take care of his coats and serve him meals. He's a very pleasant, amiable, sort of a funny, nice guy. I know I was a reporter during Watergate when I was at the New York Times and I knew him afterwards. And he is funny. The man I see now, I don't understand. The problem with the kind of show you had last week is you really need to have an underlying basis of information before you ask questions to the Secretary of Defense. I'm talking about in Plato’s cave, in the perfect world, so somebody like me won't get much of a chance because it's how you determine something that I may know something and I may know not as much as you, but I may know more than you think I do about this issue. And so it's always safe for the Senator or Congressman. They rarely -- it's just a useless process. Somebody makes headlines and he did say things. But the message that we have gotten out was pretty much his message, which of course is interesting to me, because we really did a good job on this. Everything is under control. There's only six or seven people. I think he actually believes it. As I say, this is a guy, telling the band to ply on the Titanic. I'm sure he thinks they can salvage Iraq. I'm sure the president thinks everything is okay. You cannot get the bad news in to them. And the real reality of what this meant, what the photographs mean, you know, it does say an awful lot about Donald Rumsfeld that he wasn't -- he didn't bother to look at these photographs until just recently.
AMY GOODMAN: And George Bush's response. First, not being able to bring himself to apologize and standing with King Abdullah, what do you think he needs to do right now?
SEYMOUR HERSH: There's nothing -- this is -- there's no way back on this. This is not just a question of the Arab world being mad at us for the mistreatment or seeing hypocrisy. The Arab world really sees sexual perversion in America. We are talking about the moderate Islamics. They have always had problems with the loose -- loose ways of America, you know, and the sexuality and the openness about it. It's always been very confounding for the average Islamic believer. And now they just see this as a perverse society. I'm saying this on the basis of the conversations with people in that part of the world. The sexual stuff that was done to our men with those women and with the photographs, it's -- for them, it's just simply perverse. So, I would venture to say you're going to see a significant drop-off of business and travel and contact with the moderate groups. I think this is a very, very damaging and way beyond Iraq. This is a very damaging event in that part of the world.
AMY GOODMAN: This first man, Jeremy Sivits who will be court-martialed in Baghdad, who is he?
SEYMOUR HERSH: I don’t much about him, he is just one of the six or seven guys that I -- the only thing I know about him is I read about him in the Taguba report. He was somebody who was definitely one of the people and the night shift of the person who was engaging in some of the -- what really amounts to is torture of the prisoners. The sexual stuff that was being done to them is the form of coercion that is equivalent to torture for those, for those particular individuals. They were being tortured although we didn't see them and we just saw a lot of awful things, but that was torture.
AMY GOODMAN: You have been listening to Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter. Exposed My Lai massacre in Vietnam. His pieces are appearing in the "New Yorker” magazine. This is Democracy Now!.
Friday, May 7th, 2004
Iraqis Liken U.S. Occupation to Saddam Hussein Regime
As the number of disturbing photos coming out of Abu Ghraib continues to multiply, Aaron Glantz of Free Speech Radio News speaks with families protesting outside the gates of the notorious Iraqi prison. [includes rush transcript]

President Bush apologized for the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers for the first time since photographs documenting the abuse first emerged a week ago.
The release of the photographs has caused widespread national and international outrage, especially across the Arab world. With King Abdullah of Jordan at his side Bush addressed the nation and the world.
President Bush, speaking at the Rose Graden on May 6, 2004
Bush had come under heavy criticism for not apologizing for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in his appearances on two Arabic-language television networks a day earlier. But many pundits believe that Bush's apology at the Rose Garden came too-little, too-late.
Aaron Glantz of Free Speech Radio News, reporting from outside the prison walls of Abu Ghraib outside from Baghdad

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, and democracynow.org. I'm Amy Goodman. We're broadcasting from Seattle, Washington. At the end of today's program, we'll be speaking with Seattle congressmember Jim McDermott. President Bush has apologized for the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers for the first time since photographs documenting the abuse first emerged a week ago. The release of the photographs has caused widespread national and international outrage, especially in the arab world. With King Abdullah of Jordan at his side, Bush addressed the nation and the world.
GEORGE W. BUSH: We also talked about what has been on the TV screens recently, not only in our country but overseas. The images of cruelty and humiliation. I told his majesty as plainly as I could, that the wrongdoers will be brought to justice, and that the actions of those folks in Iraq do not represent the values of the United States of America. I told him I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners, and the humiliation suffered by their families. I told him I was equally sorry that people that been seeing those pictures didn't understand the true nature and heart of America. I assured him that Americans like me didn't appreciate what we saw. It made us sick to our stomachs.
AMY GOODMAN: President Bush speaking at the Rose Garden yesterday. He had come under heavy criticism for not apologizing for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in his appearances on two arabic language television networks a day earlier. But many pundits say the Bush apology at the Rose Garden is too little, too late. Aaron Glantz reports from Baghdad.
AARON GLANTZ: The number of disturbing photos coming out of Abu Ghraib continues to multiply. The latest picture obtained by the New Yorker magazine shows a dead inmate wrapped in cellophane and packed in ice. Another photograph showed an empty room at the Abu Ghraib prison splattered with blood. On the streets of Baghdad, people are increasingly saying that the U.S. occupation is the same as Saddam Hussein's brutal regime. When asked to respond to those sentiments by the Pentagon-funded arabic language TV station Al-Hurra, President George Bush refused to apologize.
GEORGE W. BUSH: It's also important for the people of Iraq to know that in a democracy, everything is not perfect. That mistakes are made. But in a democracy as well, those mistakes will be investigated, and people will be brought to justice.
AARON GLANTZ: But such statements aren't going over well on the streets of Iraq. "There is no God but God, and America is the enemy of God," hundreds of families chant at the gates of Abu Ghraib. Tariq's brother is behind bars along with his 73-year-old father. Like most of those inside Abu Ghraib, they have been incarcerating for opposing the occupation. Tariq says his father, a senior sheikh from the ancient city of Samarra, suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes, but has received no insulin since he was arrested eight months ago. He says he hasn't been able to see his brother, so he has no idea if he's become a victim of American torture. A few hours after hundreds of people marched on Abu Ghraib prison, the situation has returned to normal. As under the reign of Saddam Hussein, scores of Iraqis huddle outside the barbed wire that circles the prison, hoping for a chance to see their loved ones. Few of the families waiting outside Abu Ghraib have been granted a visit. And many of those with loved ones in American custody have not even been told where their family members are being held. Zahara Ibd Ali's 21-year-old son was arrested by the U.S. military a year ago in a raid that destroyed her house. She has heard rumors that American troops killed him, but she hasn't yet given up hope.
ZAHARA IBD ALI: I have been to every prison in Iraq. In Tikrit, Nasiriyah, um Qasr... Whenever anyone tells me a place, I will go there. I have sold everything, and I am even ready to sell my pots because I don't have any money to go anywhere anymore. It's not a problem if they just give me the dead body of my son. And if he's alive, they have to let me see him. And if he's dead, they have to bring me his body.
AARON GLANTZ: Another of those waiting outside the prison gates is Abdul Rachman Abdul Razak Hassen, a former Army general who was purged from the military when Saddam Hussein became Iraq's president in 1979. He hasn't been able to see his three sons, who are all behind bars at Abu Ghraib. He's also angry about the way they were arrested. First, he says, the American army destroyed his house.
ABDUL RACHMAN ABDUL RAZAK HASSEN: If you want something, you just have to knock on the door and ask. You don't have to come this way. They bombed the door. They destroyed all of the furniture and took every paper in the home. The I.D.'s, the money, the gold, the diamond. They didn't leave anything. And then he said, it's not you we are looking for, it's your sons. We are very sorry. And I told him, this sorry is not one that's paid in cash.
AARON GLANTZ: After that, Abdul Rachman says the American military turned its attention to his farm, attacking it with humvees, tanks and bulldozers.
ABDUL RACHMAN ABDUL RAZAK HASSEN: And they didn't find anything until they destroyed my whole farm and even the farmhouse there. It's all worth about $1 million. I have 19,000 chickens worth $250,000. They're all gone now. The Americans killed them.
AARON GLANTZ: Across Iraq, victims of the American penal system are easy to find. 62-year-old Sheikh Abu Yasin al-Zawi was arrested by the American military a month ago for calling Israel's assassination of Hamas leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin "state terrorism" during Friday prayers.
SHEIKH ABU YASIN AL-ZAWI: They arrived at the mosque at 5:00 p.m. and surrounded the area with hummers and tanks and they said, "you said bad things about the coalition list in Friday's prayers and your son said bad things, too." So they took my son, too.
AARON GLANTZ: Sheikh al-Zawi wasn't taken to Abu Ghraib. He and his son were taken to an American military base near his mosque, where he says they were subject to some of the same practices seen in the photographs on 60 Minutes and in the Washington Post.
SHEIKH ABU YASIN AL-ZAWI: They They kept me in a very small cell without any type of bed or blanket. The soldier didn't allow me to wash for prayer, and they put a hood over my face. Then they didn't bring us food, and even when I wanted to go to the toilet, it was very complicated because the soldier would come with his gun and point if at me while I was on the toilet.
AARON GLANTZ: Sheikh al-Zawi was lucky. After 12 days, the Americans released him. He had been sent to Abu Ghraib, he likely wouldn't have been released for months. Sheikh Ahmed Yahir al-Samarai, who has a brother and two sons incarcerated at Abu Ghraib, explains how two of his sons who run an auto parts store in Baghdad were arrested by the American army.
SHIEKH AHMED YAHIR AL-SAMARAI: They surrounded us. They also took two cars. One was a new Mercedes and the other was a Toyota pickup. They also took American dollars from the shop as well as Iraqi currency. They took all of the copy-books and broke everything in the shop.
AARON GLANTZ: Now Sheikh Ahmed Yahir and his wife are doing their best to raise five grandchildren on their own. They haven't been able to visit either of their sons, but they have been able to piece together a picture of life in Abu Ghraib from a few who have been released. Sheikh Ahmed Yahir's wife, Um Omar.
UM OMAR YAHIR AL-SAMARAI: Even Saddam Hussein didn't treat people as bad as the Americans. They let them three days standing without any food. They're holding them in a tent with lots of other people, without electricity, and the only water is warm water.
AARON GLANTZ: But as angry as they are about the imprisonment of their two sons, their feelings cannot compare to how they feel about the death of a third son at the hands of the American army. Sheikh Ahmed Yahir explains what happened when two of his sons were stopped by the American Army on the road from Baghdad to the northern city of Samara.
SHIEKH AHMED YAHIR AL-SAMARAI: They told them to get out of the car. They ran over the car with the tank. At 1:00 in the morning, the Americans took them to a dam over Samara. The water is quick and powerful. The Americans told them to jump into the Tigris river. You know, it's a place where if you throw a piece of wood in it, it will shatter into pieces. One of my sons survived. The other one was found dead in the river 14 days later.
AARON GLANTZ: The American Army has sent a note of apology to Sheikh Ahmed Yahir and his family, and paid $6,000 in compensation for the destruction of the family car. But there has been no apology for the death of one son, and the imprisonment of two others. For Democracy Now!, I'm Aaron Glantz in Baghdad, Iraq.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/06/149243Thursday, May 6th, 2004
Iraqi Imam Imprisoned and Tortured Under Ba'ath Regime Blasts U.S. Abuse of Prisoners

In his appearance on two Arab-language networks, President Bush failed to apologize for the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by the U.S. military. We speak with Ibrahim Kazerooni, an imam at the Islamic Center in Denver who fled Iraq in 1974 at the age of 15 after being repeatedly imprisoned and tortured for his religious beliefs and his brother, cousin and uncle killed by the Baathist regime. [includes rush transcript]

Compelled to publicly condemn the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by the US military, President Bush appeared on two Arab-language television networks Wednesday in an unprecedented damage-limitation exercise.
Amid growing national and international furor over the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners, Washington was reeling yesterday after the Army revealed that 25 prisoners had died in Iraq and Afghanistan while in U.S. custody. Soon after the news came out, Bush appeared on the U.S.-sponsored al-Hurra television network and the Dubai-based al-Arabiya to address the Arab world. He did not speak to al-Jazeera, the most widely-watched Arabic channel. Each interview lasted a brief 10 minutes.
It was the first time Bush made direct mention of the prisoner abuse since photographs first surfaced a week ago. In the interviews, the president stopped short of making a direct apology.
Ibrahim Kazerooni, Shia imam of the Islamic Center of Ahl Al-Beit in Denver. He fled his native Iraq in 1974 at the age of 15 after being repeatedly imprisoned and tortured by the Baathist regime for his beliefs. His brother, uncle and cousin were also killed.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, as we turn now to our first guest. Ibrahim Kazerooni, an imam of the Islamic Center of Ahl Al-Beit in Denver. He fled his native Iraq in 1974 after being imprisoned and tortured by the Ba'athist regime for his beliefs. Welcome to Democracy Now!.
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: Thank you very much, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Good to have you with us.
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: My pleasure.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you start off by responding to President Bush, what he said on television, and most importantly, what has happened in Iraq?
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: Well, first of all, it fits the overall pattern of publicity stunt that this administration has become so accustomed to. But as far as having an effect in the Middle East, in damage limitation, I don't think they are going to achieve anything because painfully, this lack of apology, in my opinion, was a golden opportunity missed to show to the Arab world, and specifically to the Iraqis, that what this administration was telling them was not just lip service, but they really felt sorry for what was going on, and unfortunately, they missed this opportunity too, like all other opportunities that have been missed before.
AMY GOODMAN: When you hear these descriptions, a lot of people said, how will the Arab world react? But do you think -- I mean, living in Denver here for as long as you have, living in the United States, the Arab world any differently from any other human being in the world?
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: There are two issues, Amy, that one has to look at. Number one, issues to do with all human beings. They would react like everybody else. We have reports coming out that American people, the rest of the world are feeling outraged for the prison abuses and human right violations in Iraq, and naturally, the Iraqis would react and the Arabs in general would reject act in the same way. However, there are issues to do with Iraq specifically, the Arab world specifically, and they have their own way of analysis and conclusion, which could be different from the rest of the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain.
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: The issue, for example, we in the West -- the American administration, specifically in the United States, constantly, even know, we saw the clip of George Bush talking about Americans being there as liberators. Still, the narrative of liberation is being used constantly. As far as the Arab world is concerned, and the Iraqis, they are occupiers. They are not seeing the Americans as liberators at all. And this is a fundamentally different perspective with what the administration has in mind. America is not being seen in the Middle East, in the Muslim world in general and the Arabs in particular, as liberators. They're seen at occupiers. What is happening in Iraq just consolidates and compounds that belief that the United States, they preach and practice two different things.
AMY GOODMAN: So, let's talk about your own experience, when you talk about the US not being involved with liberation. We’re talking to Ibrahim Kazerooni, an imam at the Islamic Center in Denver. You left Iraq in 1974, after being imprisoned and tortured under the Ba'ath regime. Can you talk about what happened you, to your brother, your uncle, your cousins?
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: Amy, this issue of prison abuse, to me, and the thousands of people who survived torture under Saddam, brings back painful memories that we try to somehow not talk about it, and even forget as much as we can. For American administration to go back in Iraq under the promise of liberty and then, even in some cases we have had prisoners who say, in comparison to Saddam's era, this is worse torture than those that they had gone through. I was imprisoned and I was just randomly picked up from the street in Najaf when I was about 15, 15-and-a-half, and taken to Baghdad to the … headquarter, the fifth section, they call it.
AMY GOODMAN: The secret police.
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: Yes. In Baghdad. The usual treatment of beating up and other kinds of torture existed, and finally, I was taken from one prison to another, and ultimately, I was released after many months, and I went back to Najaf. However, they came after me again, and I was fortunate -- fortunately, I was out of the theological school, and I decided to go into hiding and gradually leave Iraq secretly, and through friends, they took me to the western desert and they took me across the) Iraqi-Syrian border. What is happening in Iraq at the moment has the repercussion in a number of kinds of scenarios. First, it could destabilize -- and I predicted this would happen before even America went to war with Iraq. A lack of understanding of Iraqi culture specifically, and the Middle East culture in general, would lead to destabilization of the entire region. People accused me of being anti-American, naive and whatever, unpatriotic. But now we are getting the things that others could not foresee happening in Iraq. As far as stability in Iraq, there is no stability. You only need to listen to some of the comments that a few weeks ago Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary said, that I never envisioned or imagined in my wildest dreams that Iraq after a year of going in would be less secure and less stable. So, I really don't see any opportunity -- any future for Iraq unless the United States comes out immediately.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Ibrahim Kazerooni, a local imam in Denver about his experience in Iraq under the Ba'ath regime, tortured and imprisoned, family members killed, and also about the invasion and occupation. You write a column in the "Denver Post." How did that come to be?
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: I was approached. They asked me to be part of the compass group. Occasionally, I used to respond to various headlines or something that I really felt deeply about, and then I was approached by "Denver Post" for at least a trial period of three months, I could write some articles, which I did.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the articles you have written is about Wahhabism.
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: Yes
AMY GOODMAN: And you talk about it being a threat.
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: I do. I do believe that.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what Wahhabism is?
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: Within Islam there are two major schools of theology, Shia and the Sunnis. And they have most things in common, however, there are minor differences between the two. But the Sunni community, or Sunni school of theology, is divided into four different minor groups. One of the groups is considered to be a kind of very orthodox. Wahhabis are a very small minority of the Muslim community, dominant in Saudi Arabia, which is an offshoot of the one school of theology. Extremely intolerant of others and very, very orthodox in their definition and interpretation of Islam. They consider most of the Muslim world to be not Muslim, truly. And at the moment, they are going around the world with the money that is being -- they are being financed by Saudi Arabia, and propagating this narrow interpretation of Islam wherever they can, even in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: You write that while Sunnis believe the prophet's successor should be chosen by people, Shiites believe in the prophetic appointment of successors. Then you talk about Wahhabism, the state religion of Saudi Arabia, the most austere and regressive, saying that the Wahhabist Saudi Institute teaches Shiite Muslims are, quote, “Jewish agents and not real Muslims.” This can be seen from a letter circulated in Cairo recently by al- Qaeda, reported by the associated press, quote, “The American troops have carried out a massacre to kill Shiites in Karbala, their infidel city, and in Baghdad.”
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: Yes. Indeed. It is a well known fact, no matter how hard the Wahhabis are trying to deny it, the Shiite’s treatment within Saudi Arabia, whether the local native Shiites or those who go there for pilgrimage, is extremely bad and local mosques within the Shiite communities are being destroyed, and the whole structure is being demeaned and undermined. And when you go there as a Shiite, you do not have the freedom to express yourself, and do your religious duties the way you are supposed to, constantly being harassed by the so-called Wahhabi propagators.
AMY GOODMAN: You're a Shia?
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: Yes, I am.
AMY GOODMAN: And the Shia and the Sunni, and for that matter, the Sufis, coming together now in Iraq. George Bush managing to do something Saddam Hussein never could do, and that was unite all of these groups. How significant is this?
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: Well, as far as the Shiites and Sunnis, they have always worked together and lived together as one community. It has been outside forces that have tried to divide them and put one against the other. If you go back to the history of Iraq, you see the British trying to do this, part of the overall pattern of divide and rule. They divided the Iraqi community into Shiites and Sunnis and used one against the other. Saddam tried to do the same thing. However, immediately, it is worth noticing, immediately after the fall of Baghdad, there was a rally in downtown Baghdad that everybody came together, and whether they we Shiites, Sunnis or anything else, and they demanded one country for the whole Iraqi people, irrespective of their religious affiliation. Unfortunately, what is happening again, out of lack of understanding the Iraqi culture and religion, we seem to be oversimplifying the whole thing, and dividing the community into Shiites and Sunnis and saying, well, it is strange they are coming together. They were living together from the beginning.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that the Bush family's close relationship with the Saudi royal family is elevating Wahhabism, protecting it?
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: Well, one can reach a conclusion during the first few days of after 9-11 where the entire commercial flights were not permitted to fly, and we had three or four flights going around picking up Saudis, particularly Bin Laden families and everybody else. They are the financiers of these movements. They were flown out of the United States. They knew full well that 15 of the 19 terrorists were Saudis and they had links to Bin Laden. That says a lot about the link and the relationship of this administration with the Saudis.
AMY GOODMAN: You also write an article entitled, "The One State Solution in the Middle East." What is it?
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: I used to feel that somehow we can get a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis by having -- going back to the United Nations resolutions and getting two-state solutions. I wasn’t the first one that suggested it. After the 1967 War, the PLO suggested in 1969, Menachem Begin suggested it in 1978, and Friedman, a New York article writer even suggested it lately. Unfortunately, the turn of events, and particularly Bush acting as a surrogate mother for the Palestinians, and negotiating with Sharon and condoning whatever he does is making the prospect of a two-state solution for the Palestinian and the Israelis practically impossible. And we have to go back to one-state solution where the present United States model of a kind of liberal pluralistic society where people can live side by side irrespective of their faiths and gender and so on could be the ultimate solution because if you support the Israelis in their illegal settlements and you condone them and say, let them stay and support the war and so on, it's not going to create the possibility of two state solution. Ultimately, it has to be a one-state solution.
AMY GOODMAN: But practically?
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: Like everything else, only history will tell, only time will tell in the future.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for be with us. Ibrahim Kazerooni is an imam of the Islamic Center of Ahl Al-Beit in Denver, fled Iraq in 1974 after being imprisoned and tortured under the Ba'ath regime. Now he writes a column for the "Denver Post." Thank you very much for joining us.
IBRAHIM KAZEROONI: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
AMY GOODMAN: From the imam to the doctor. We'll be back with a doctor who has returned from Germany after treating thousands of US soldiers. Stay with us.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/03/1411207

Monday, May 3rd, 2004
Seymour Hersh: U.S. Knew of Rampant Abuse in Iraqi Prisons Months Ago

We speak with Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh about a classified internal U.S. army report he obtained that reveals systematic torture of at least 20 Iraqi prisoners who were subjected to "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" by their U.S. jailers at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. includes rush transcript]

On May 1st, 2003 President Bush, stood before a giant "Mission Accomplished" sign aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major military combat operations in Iraq.
One year later, a very different set of images shown around the world are being described as the pictures that lost the war.
This past week CBS'"60 Minutes II" broadcast images showing Iraqi prisoners stripped naked, hooded and being humiliated and tortured by their U.S. captors. The images quickly exploded onto the world stage and were shown on television and in newspapers across the globe.
For months, human rights groups and former prisoners had complained of mistreatment at detention centers but their protests were widely dismissed as politically motivated until U.S. command started an investigation in January.
This week, Pulitzer prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker obtained a copy of an explosive internal Army report that reveals what appears to be systematic torture of at least 20 Iraqi prisoners by six to 10 U.S. Army reservists.
The 53-page report, written in February by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba found Iraqi detainees in a cellblock of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad were subjected to "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at the hands of their U.S. jailers. The abuses included sodomizing of prisoners, pouring cold water and chemicals on naked bodies, threatening detainees with rape and dog attacks, hitting them with chairs and broomsticks and locking them in isolation without food, water or a toilet for three days.
The internal report also found a virtual collapse of the command structure in Abu Ghraib with Army reservists being urged by military intelligence and CIA employees to "set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses."
Appearing on three Sunday talk shows yesterday, Chairman of the Joint Cheifs of Staff Gen Richard Myers said, "Torture is not one of the methods that we're allowed to use and that we use. I mean, it's just not permitted by international law, and we don't use it."
Myers gave conflicting answers when asked if the problems at Abu Ghraib were systemic throughout detention centers in Iraq. First he insisted that the instances of mistreatment were not widespread and were the actions of "just a handful" of soldiers. But when pressed, he acknowledged that he had not yet read Taguba's report and left open the possibility the abuses could be broader.
Myers also acknowledged that he had asked the CBS News program "60 Minutes II" to delay broadcasting photographs of the abuses saying it would be particularly inflammatory at the time. CBS, which was originally scheduled to air the images on April 14, complied and delayed the broadcast by two weeks.
Taguba's report has led to a military investigation of the 372nd Military Police Company, which staffed the cellblock. Seventeen soldiers in the company have been suspended and six now face court-martial. The woman in charge of Abu Ghraib, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, was relieved of her command.
Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for the New Yorker.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with the New Yorker. Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s good to have you with us, well there’s a lot to talk about here. Let’s first talk about this explosive report, you’ve published in The New Yorker.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well the report by Taguba, first of all, it’s probably the best report. I’ve been doing this stuff for a long time. It’s probably the most concise, direct report I’ve ever read. This guy is really full of integrity, which is good. And the terrible truth is that, according to his report, since last summer the army’s had a lot of reason to worry about its prison system. Actually, since Afghanistan. Last summer the high command in Iraq, headed by Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, authorized two studies last summer into the whole question of how do you, the prison system and interrogation, the second of which was done by the Provost Marshall of the U.S. Army, a Major General named Don Ryder. Ryder concluded that although there were a lot of problems, administrative problems and people weren’t being processed correctly and the system had broken down, there was no real torture. Taguba said, ‘Boy you missed it.’ So, the problem isn’t so much what the kids showed or what the generals say, General Myers and others, the problem is this report and it’s just a devastating report and you described it totally accurately. It’s as sharp as you depicted it, but the army’s got to deal with this report.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker magazine. You say General Karpinsky wanted to be a soldier since she was five, is a business consultant in civilian life and was enthusiastic about her new job. In an interview last December with the St. Petersburg Times she said that for many of the Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib living conditions now are better in prison than at home. “At one point we were concerned they wouldn’t want to leave,” she said.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Yeah, she did say that and I did begin the piece with that quote because obviously it’s not just a question of dripping with irony, it’s a question of what is the whole sort of filter through which a lot of people want us to see the war and that’s sort of a microcosm of a perception. Did she believe it? I have to take her at her word, that she said what she believed. She’s now saying that she didn’t know what was going on. That the abuses that have become public, she hadn’t known about them but she’s disgusted by them and she’s disgusted by six or seven people. But the Taguba report really is scathing about the way she ran her, she was in charge. She was in the army for a long time, served with special forces and served during the gulf war. He described as the most, simply probably the worst headquarters he’d ever seen. She was in charge of the 3 major prisons – and when we use the word prison we have to remember what we’re talking about – the people in these prisons are civilians. Even in the Taguba report, he makes the point that more than 60% of those people had nothing to do with the lack of security in Iraq. It was simply people trying to mind their business, run their lives. There was a separate wing for women and children and there was no process for filtering out those who were innocent from those who were potentially insurgents or potentially Al Qaeda, or troublemakers or criminals.
Every process they had broke down. Under the Geneva Convention these people and non-combatant detainees must be processed. Within months they have to be given a procedure so you can make a determination whether they should be kept. There, none of this was going on so. There’s nothing wonderful about the way she ran her operation, but it’s also true as she’s been saying publicly for the last few days, that she really didn’t have control over the interrogation process. What happened is the military system there, -- I guess the fair thing to say is that we had turned every prison in Iraq into Guantanamos. The whole function of the prison system was to get interrogations going to break down people, to get interrogations going, so we can extract information, you know this sort of confounding and befuddling opposition we have and continue to have in Iraq and don’t know who or where and we were trying to get more information about it. It’s all sort of, besides being… it’s sad actually to put it mildly.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe the picture that is on top of your piece in the New Yorker, “Torture at Abu Ghraib. ” Seymour Hersh
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well it’s … as being put on top of a container there for MRE’s, meals ready to eat, he’s put on top of one of those boxes and he’s got a hood and he’s got some sort of a blanket over him, you can’t see his face and you can’t see his body. You can see his sort of thinly legs. And he’s got wires going, it’s hard to see from the photograph, but according to the Taguba report … Taguba had access to all investigations. This whole thing heated up from the army, no matter how many complaints that were made as you noticed in the introduction, once the photographs began to circulate in January everybody was at full force, fully alarmed and according.. There were a lot of interviews done with people in the 372nd company and other companies that were attached to Janice Karpinsky’s brigade. And the army criminal investigation division did a lot of interviews and they were handed over to Taguba and he quotes from one. He quotes a woman saying, “in that particular picture, there were wires, they were running electrical charges to his arms, legs and genitals.” I mean, circa, I don’t know, the worst of Vietnam and the worst of all wars and that’s what the picture shows.
Although it’s not obscene, in a way it is obscene. Much more than the picture of the naked man and you know something about culture needs to be said… This is a reserve company, the 372nd from Cumberland, Maryland which is near the West Virginia border. It’s a very rural part of America, the average income is very low and these are people not very sophisticated. Most of them have no college education to speak of, some did but most did not and the in the Arab world, the Islamic world shame is the notion. for a male to be shown naked before other males is terribly humiliating and to be forced to pose in pretend homosexual positions with women around, giving the thumbs up signs – most of the people in your audience have seen the photographs – and being photographed and videotaped, there were videotapes, is the utmost of humiliation.
To the point where are scholars who’d say that’s potentially torture, coercion. It’s all part of a process to break down people before interrogation. There’s no way these young people in the photographs, these smiling faces understood that. Somebody told them what to do and Janice Karpinsky and General Taguba and she’s publicly said this was run by the military intelligence people, the CIA and private contractors basically in charge of the prison. And that’s the issue we have to get to, who’s running the prison. Under the army regulations, army law, that’s not supposed to happen. Military police are guards, the prisons are supposed to be places of serenity not chaos, and it’s clearly, the whole process was perverted into an interrogation center and that’s the issue to get to. And that’s where I think we get to the higher commands if it will ever be fully investigated.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you know the company that is running the Abu Ghraib prison?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Sure, I mean I have the Taguba report.
AMY GOODMAN: And the company that is the private military contractor?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Sure, I know all those people.
AMY GOODMAN: And who are they?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, it doesn’t matter because I have more reporting to do.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about 60 Minutes holding onto the torture pictures at the Abu Ghraib prison. Apparently they were going to run them on April 14th and the Pentagon called and said don’t. Can you talk about this?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, as far as I understand General Myers called and he said as much. Everybody could draw their own conclusions; the fact is that they did run the show. They did do an excellent job when they ran it. And so… thank god they ran it. It made my life easier. We all come at it from our own point of view, so it’s not for me to throw stones at CBS it’s sort of useless. What we have in this society, it goes far beyond CBS. We’ve had a media that’s been really sort of having an incredible problem. I believe in the media, and I believe good stories get out. I really do. I don’t believe there’s any suppression or censorship but there’s an incredible amount of self-censorship and one of the problems we’ve had with this government is that the media has not done a good job with dealing with people that aren’t always straight about what they’re doing. And that puts us in a terrible bind, you just don’t expect it. So I think the media has….There’s going to be, not now, not for years but there’s going to have to be a lot of you know sucking up and thinking about how we got to the state where we’re at.
AMY GOODMAN: The reaction in the Arab world to these pictures?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, what do you expect it to be if the core of that society is based on shame? It’s been wild, it’s been horrific, and it’s sort of proven to the Arab world which doesn’t like us anyway that our interests are not at all. Look. It’s one reason the president last week, if you remember I think Friday or Saturday, he went out of his way to speak out and condemn it. I think not forcibly enough. One of the questions I have for Gen. Myers and for Donald Rumsfeld, both of whom have said that they did not read this report, I would say, “Why not? I mean, are you kidding? You’ve known about this report.” On CBS a couple weeks ago, my story. And the next day Gen. Myers goes on TV and says, “I haven’t read it.” I take his word about that but that’s because he doesn’t want to read it and he wants to go on TV and say “I haven’t read it.” And I think we have to, I don’t want to make it public because … I‘ll do what reporters do, I’m not in the business of disseminating it. I’ll take what I want sort of like a wild animal and leave the rest for the others. But I hope the government puts out the report because the report, as I said, is a model of people with such integrity. There’s a lot of good in the report. They should put it out and maybe they will.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Specialist Joseph Darby. Who is he?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Joseph Darby was one of the guys in the 372nd company who went home on an extended leave and came back to the unit in January and by that time, look, in my generation Vietnam, I was in the army before Vietnam, we had our little pictures of whatever it was – everybody had some kind of photograph they hid behind the sock in the drawer. This is a new generation; we’re all a new generation. And everything was passed around, all those photographs that everybody finds so heinous now, they were pretty excited about it and they were passing them around on cd roms. So he gets back and he gets a cd rom and the army tried to recover some of that and I have to tell you if that whole panoply of what’s on that cd rom ever got out as bad as it is now, it’d be much worse. Anyway, he saw it and really was appalled, unlike the others, he was appalled. And look the judgment these kids used was horrible, some of them beat prisoners, they weren’t killing people, that was being done on the other side.
They were making fun of them they were having a lot of sport with them. And part of me says yes, God, how stupid and they should be punished and the other part of me says we send these guys from rural parts of America into the army and we have an all volunteer praetorian guard and the officers then become local parentis. They really become the father and mother figures for these children. And the idea that these children were so unsupervised and that everybody can go around, including Karpinsky and say I’m so horrified and nobody’s going to say my god, that I fail as an officer. I felt the captain’s generals not only officers, they all failed. You have an incredible institutional breakdown that’s what Taguba’s reporting about. I’m not inventing phrases. This is what he said. And then you have the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff go on TV two days after this is a wild issue for the world and say I haven’t read the report. Just more evidence of an institutional breakdown. We really have a problem.
AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, I want to thank you very much for being with us.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/30/1441248
Friday, April 30th, 2004
Abu Ghraib: New Warden, Same Prison

As CBS broadcasts pictures of U.S. soldiers committing acts of abuse against Iraqi prisoners, we go to Iraq for a report on the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad where thousands of Iraqis are imprisoned and subjected to human rights abuses by their new jailers - the U.S. military. [includes rush transcript}
The US military is pursuing a criminal investigation into allegations that US soldiers committed acts of abuse, humiliation and torture against prisoners in Iraq.
CBS News this week broadcast pictures said to have been taken last November and December inside the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad where US forces are holding thousands of prisoners captured since the beginning of the invasion.
One picture depicts an Iraqi soldier standing on a box with wires attached to his hands. He was reportedly left on the box for a long period and told that he faced electrocution if he fell off. Another shows prisoners kneeling on each other in a human pyramid, naked except for hoods covering their heads. Another shows naked prisoners being forced to pretend to have sex with one another. Many of the photographs show US soldiers smiling and flashing thumbs-up signs.
US officials revealed last month that six soldiers faced courts martial for possible violations of the rights of Iraqi prisoners they had been guarding, but offered few details at the time.
The investigation began when a US soldier from the prison reported the abuse and turned over the photographs, which eventually found their way to CBS.
Following the airing of the photographs, US officials now admit that the affair has become even more far-reaching.
Aaron Glantz, of Free Speech Radio News reports on human rights abuses of Iraqi prisoners in Baghdad.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT
JUAN GONZALEZ: We'll continue now with the next segment. The U.S. military is pursuing the criminal investigation into allegations that U.S. soldiers committed acts of abuse, humiliation and torture against prisoners in Iraq. CBS News this week broadcast pictures said to be taken last November and December inside the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison near Baghdad, where U.S. forces are holding thousands of prisoners captured since the beginning of the invasion. One picture depicts an Iraqi soldier standing on a box with wires attached to his hands. He was reportedly left on the box for a long period and told that he faced electrocution if he fell off. Another shows prisoners kneeling on each other in a human pyramid, naked except for hoods covering their heads. Another shows naked prisoners being made to pretend they're having sex with one another. Many of the photographs show U.S. soldiers smiling and flashing "thumbs up" signs. U.S. officials revealed last month that six soldiers face court martials for possible violations of the rights of the Iraqi prisoners they have been guarding, but offered few details at that time. The investigation begam when a U.S. soldier from the prison reported the abuse and turned over the photographs which eventually found their way to CBS. Following the airing of the photographs, the U.S. officials now admit that the affair has become even more far-reaching. Aaron Glantz of Free Speech Radio News reports on the human rights abuses of Iraqi prisoners in Baghdad.
AARON GLANTZ: The mighty Tigris river runs through the center of Abu Sifa, a farming village an hour's drive north of Baghdad. Cattle graze on the side of the road and date palms sway in the wind. Rejan Mohammad Hassan stands in front of the rubble that was her house and recalls the night last summer when the American Army took her sons and destroyed her house.
REJAN MOHAMMAD HASSAN: Early in the morning, they took us from the home and asked us to stand around. When we asked them, the Americans started to beat the women. After that, two tanks came to our house and started to shoot, using the machine guns on top of the tanks, and then two from the head of the tanks.
AARON GLANTZ: By the time the American Army left Abu Sifa an hour later, 73 men from the village had been rounded up, including all four of Rejan Mohammad Hassan's sons. Villagers say the Americans didn't find the arms caches they were looking for, but the soldiers did confiscate several trucks and large sums of cash. Nine months later, 15-year-old Ahmed tar Hassan is only one of two villagers to have emerged from custody.
AHMED TAR HASSAN: For the first six days, we were all staying in open fields surrounded by razor wire. There was no tent and no mat under us, and we were exposed to the sun and the rain. There were no toilet facilities, so we had to relieve ourselves out in the open. It was impossible to sleep. Every night the American soldiers threw pebbles at us all night long.
AARON GLANTZ: Eventually Ahmed says he was transferred to Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. There he was held in solitary confinement in a three-foot by four-foot cell. The same cell used to keep political prisoners during the reign of Saddam Hussein. He says he was not allowed outside to exercise. He says he was not allowed to see his family, and not allowed to see a lawyer.
AHMED TAR HASSAN: At night they would throw a dog in the cell to frighten me. It was kind of a wolf dog, a police dog. One of the soldiers just entered into the cell every night. Every night it was a different soldier and his dog and finally a Japanese man from the Red Cross visited us. I talked to him. After that, they stopped bringing the dog.
AARON GLANTZ: Ahmed says that the dog went away after he complained to a Red Cross observer who came to his cell. After nine months in prison, the American military released Ahmed tar Hassan, never charging him with any crime. Stories like these are commonplace in Iraq, and have been easy to find for most of the year-long occupation. Few Iraqis are likely to be shocked by the photos shown on "60 Minutes" this week, photos which show American soldiers in uniform posing with naked Iraqis. In one picture, an Iraqi prisoner is shown standing on a box with his head covered, wires attached to his hands. The military says he was told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted. Many here are disgusted by statements like this one from Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt:
MARK KIMMITT: What would you tell the people of Iraq? This is wrong. This is reprehensible, but this is not representative of the 150,000 soldiers that are over here. I'd say the same thing to the American people. Don't judge your Army based on the actions of a few.
AARON GLANTZ: A report released last month by Amnesty International notes regular reports of torture and beatings perpetrated against prisoners in American custody. The report also alleges prisoners are regularly subjected to sleep deprivation, hooding and bright lights. While noting the allegations are as yet unproven, Amnesty International condemns the American Army for not allowing independent monitoring of the prisons. Sa'ad Sultan Hussein, lawyer for the American-appointed Iraqi Ministry for Human Rights says that the occupation force has promised to allow his agency to open an office at Abu Ghraib, but so far the Americans have only given his teams guided tours of the prison.
SA’AD SULTAN HUSSEIN: I have only seen what they wanted me to see. We didn't enter the room for interrogation. We were not aloud to witness any interrogations.
AARON GLANTZ: Then there are those who have simply disappeared into American custody. It's been a year since 70-year-old Boyad Said Jassen last saw his son, Riyadh, who was conscripted into the Iraqi Army to fight the American invasion. He said Riyadh was last seen at a battle at Al Yousefia 15 miles south of Baghdad.
BOYAD SAID JASSEN: A friend of my son told me my son was wounded, and that the Americans picked him up and took him, but to where, nobody knows.
AARON GLANTZ: Boyad Said Jassen quakes as he speaks. He says he visited every American prison in the Baghdad area, including Abu Ghraib, before hearing about the Anglo American P.O.W. Prison at Um Qasr in southern Iraq. During last year's war, George Bush's "coalition of the willing" took more than 7,300 prisoners.
BOYAD SAID JASSEN: I went to Um Qasr in al Basra, a prison run by the British and American forces. I described the situation. And when they checked their computer, they said my son's name is in their record. So I asked them where he is, and they told me, "we can't tell you now because of the security situation."
AARON GLANTZ: Again, Sa'ad Sultan Hussein, chief lawyer for the Ministry of Human Rights, appointed by the Bush administration:
SA’AD SULTAN HUSSEIN: The major problem that Iraqi people suffer from is random capture by the U.S. military. They have disappeared and no one can tell where they are or the reason for their capture. They even don't allow the families to visit them and the Geneva Convention says they must allow the families to visit.
AARON GLANTZ: Another of those missing in custody of the U.S. military is the eldest son of Hussein Salem Khleff. On April 6 last year during the middle of the war, Hussein's entire family was traveling down a main road south of Baghdad, fleeing the front in the family mini bus.
HUSSEIN SALEM KHLEFF: We were surprised by the American forces. They just started shooting over the car. My brother was on top of the trailer carrying a white flag of peace. A bullet hit his leg. The American forces came towards us and then the Americans climbed on the trailer. When they saw that a bullet hit his leg, they called for a medic.
AARON GLANTZ: After a half hour wait, Hussein Salem Khleff says an American medical helicopter came and took his son away. That's the last time that Hussein saw his son.
HUSSEIN SALEM KHLEFF: They told me we are heading for Baghdad, but when he gets well, we will bring him to the same place he was wounded. I have searched for him in every American base. Nobody can tell me where he is.
AARON GLANTZ: A year after his son disappeared, Hussein Salem Khleff has given up on formal processes. He has taken to posting photos of his missing son on lampposts around Baghdad. He's asked Arab satellite TV stations like al-Jazeera to show the photo on a regular basis. So far, nothing has worked. For Democracy Now!, I'm Aaron Glantz in Baghdad, Iraq.
JUAN GONZALEZ: That was Aaron Glantz from Free Speech Radio News reporting from Baghdad. You're listening to Democracy Now!. We'll be back in 60 seconds.

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 3 replies

sound of crickets chirping...

flowerdew — Thu, 04 Mar 2004 21:50:36 GMT

Well, I just felt like saying that I love Caroline Casey and The Visionary Activist show and it's about to come on in like, 5 minutes!

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 3 replies

what did you hear on Pacifica most recently that you enjoyed?

Holden S. — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 20:35:45 GMT

last night, April 21, on KPFK i heard a special on Paul Robeson in celebration of his birthday. what a man! fine voice (both speaking & singing) & a social conscience second to none.

posted in PACIFICA RADIO - 3 replies

You know...

flowerdew — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 20:53:49 GMT

anyone can post at anytime here...

Did anyone listen to the Visionary Activist program last week? Caroline just returned from Syria. It was a good show, I might listen to it again!

PACIFICA RADIO's topics - tribe.net

World Premiere of movie based on Pirate Radio DJ in Bay Area

Democracy Now on XM Radio?

A constitutional amendment banning torture, secret prisons, and extraordinary rendition

Something's Happening

Pacifica in Phoenix?

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an art & left politics forum is born

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Used to work at KPFT Houston Pacifica

yesterday, 2/1/05

Karl Rove & His Hoover-esque Behavior

Guns and Butter

yay!

does anyone want to take over (moderate) this tribe?

pissed...

German Rock Pop Music

Democracy Now's recent reporting on abuse of Iraqi prisoners

sound of crickets chirping...

what did you hear on Pacifica most recently that you enjoyed?

You know...

hello...