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Monday, May 10, 2004 |
FEATURED ARTICLES
- Outsourcing Indecency, Associated Press
- Abuse Was Thought Out, Experts Say, Sacramento Bee
- Torture In Iraq And Chile: The United States Connection, By Tito Tricot
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"Walk gently, breathe peacefully, laugh hysterically."
- - Nelson Mandela (1994 Inaugural Speech)
KNOW YOUR HISTORY - MAY
1967 -- International Tribunal on War Crimes accuses US of aggression in Vietnam.
1990 -- Americas Watch says the US violated the Geneva Convention during its invasion of Panama.
1994 -- South African Leader Nelson Mandela inaugurated as President, ending 300 years of white colonial rule.
RHINO HERE:
The sights & sounds of Rumsfeld & the military brass having to answer for the illegal & inhumane interrogation & torture techniques are unique to behold, even to those who have been carefully watching the foreign policy actions of the U.S. Government & U.S. Military for the last 5 decades. But to those who have been paying attention, their lies are as clear as the air that blows through the U.S. Army schools of interrogation & assassination. People around the world know about southern Arizona's Fort Huachuca; The US Army's school of interrogation.
And thousands know about The School of The Americas (SOA) in Fort Benning Georgia, which has trained tens of thousands of young Central and South American boys in the arts of kidnap, torture and assassination. Coincidentally, many of those graduates of the SOA are now working in Iraq as what the Pentagon & the tri-letter media continue to call, "CONTRACTORS." Hundreds are Pinochet's old guard from Chile.
My fellow Americans, if you are not aware of the smoke & mirrors game that Rumsfeld & the boyz from his hood are playing, THE CONTRACTORS ARE PRIMARILY U.S. TRAINED MERCENARIES - PROFESSIONAL TORTURERS & KILLERS PAID FOR WITH US TAXPAYER DOLLARS.
One Rhino's Blog reader writes, "My question is: why can't thousands of us write letters to the editor(s) and e mails etc. and force the press to quit calling those guys 'contractors' like they're putting in bathrooms or something and call them what they are: mercenaries. I think Americans would be shocked to hear that and it would all come together in their minds. We're PAYING people to do this stuff for us. What do you think?"
Rhino thinks it's a great idea. I urge you to write to MoveOn & True Majority, asking them to turn this into a campaign. I also urge you to just do it - write letters to the media telling them to, "GET REAL! CALL THEM MERCENARIES!"
And under the current circumstances, Rhino wonders where is Saddam? What might they be doing to him?
Outsourcing Indecency
By P.W. Singer, AP, May 5th, 2004
The reports of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners during interrogations are both horrifying and depressing. Fortunately, there is a clear and proper legal response. Those accused will be court-martialed and, if found guilty, they will be punished. But the story, sadly, does not end there. It now appears that this deeply disturbing episode - in which Iraqi prisoners were beaten, sexually assaulted and forced to perform simulated sexual acts, among other things - may have involved not only soldiers but also private contractors hired as interrogators. That private contractors are interrogators in U.S. prison camps in Iraq should be stunning enough. This is incredibly sensitive work and takes our experiment with the boundaries of military outsourcing to levels never anticipated. But even more outrageous is the fact that gaps in the law may have given them a free pass so that it could be impossible to prosecute them for alleged criminal behavior...
MORE: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2001919590_abuse05.html
And then there are the psychologists, who help create the curriculum for the schools of interrogation & torture.
Abuse Was Thought Out, Experts Say
By M.S. Enkoji -- Sacramento Bee, May 7, 2004
Graphic images depicting abuse and humiliation of Iraqi captives at the hands of American forces will likely focus attention on the role of psychologists advising the military on interrogation techniques, experts following the controversy said. While aimed at breaking the prisoners, the techniques developed by the psychologists are designed to skirt the Geneva Conventions and U.N. prohibitions of torture, they said. ... In the Muslim world, nudity is taboo, as are the homosexual acts some of the prisoners were forced to portray in the photos taken at Abu Ghraib, the American-held prison near Baghdad. "Using a known cultural value to humiliate would indicate study," Gray said. "It could be accidental, but probably not." For decades, some psychiatrists and psychologists have helped train military interrogators in techniques that attempt to circumvent Geneva Conventions and U.N. policies, said Gray, who is part of a contingent of therapists who denounce others in their field for teaching what they say amounts to psychological torture...
MORE: http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/special_reports/iraq/bee/story/9207743p-10133045c.html
Today's BOTTOM LINE was sent via email & doesn't seem to be posted yet on the web, so I am posting it in full. The writer, Tito Tricot, is a sociologist from Chile, who has written extensively about the history of torture in Chile and the U.S. Government's facilitation of it. For more on that history, check out Rhino's Blog of 9/11/03:
The Other 9/11
http://radio.weblogs.com/0103207/2003/09/11.html
For more articles by Mr. Tricot , go to the Guardian website & search on his name; Tito Tricot
http://www.guardian.co.uk
8:56:11 AM 
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"SEND THIS ARTICLE TO A REPUBLICAN!"
RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE
TORTURE IN IRAQ AND CHILE: THE UNITED STATES CONNECTION
By Tito Tricot, Sociologist, Chile, May 2004
A gentle drizzle covered my home city's soft hills the day I revived torture all over again, not in Chile, but far away in Iraq. Yes, because the pictures of Iraqi prisoners being tortured and humiliated by US soldiers brought back memories of the horrifying ordeal thousands of Chileans went through when other soldiers did exactly the same to defenceless human beings. Different times, different continents, but one common element though, for it was the United States that trained Latin-American officers to wage a dirty war in the 60's and 70's. They did it at the School of the Americas located at a US base in the Panama Canal Zone where nearly 60 thousand Latin-American officers underwent "counter insurgency" training. Nearly 3 thousand of these were Chilean army men who, without a doubt, they did learn their lesson, for they diligently applied torture techniques after the military coup that overthrew president Salvador Allende in 1973. Therefore, allow me to express my scepticism regarding brigadier general Mark Kimmitt`s statement saying he was "horrified" at the abuse committed by his troops on Iraqi prisoners of war. Because the use of torture is nothing new for US troops, in fact, back in 1996 it was discovered that the School of the Americas, that had then been moved to Fort Benning, Georgia, included torture manuals in their academic syllabus. These manuals recommended the utilization of intimidation, executions, beatings and kidnappings, among other torture techniques, to obtain information from the enemy.
Therefore, what happened at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad cannot come as a surprise, although, it is certainly disgusting and shameful that a country which calls itself democratic incurs in such abominable practices. When one hears about the inhuman treatment of Iraqi prisoners, their sexual humiliation, the beatings, the long spells in solitary confinement, their heads covered by hoods, the use of dogs to terrify prisoners, one might as well be describing Chile under the military dictatorship. Too many similarities to be just a coincidence, too many painful memories to keep quiet at such atrocities, especially because the events at Abu Ghraib may not be isolated incidents, but a common practice in occupied Iraq. The United States alleged the existence of weapons of mass destruction to invade the country, but found none. Then they argued they were fighting for freedom and democracy in Iraq, but so far, the Iraqi people have seen neither freedom nor democracy, instead they've witnessed bombings, repression and widespread fear.
It is this fear; the overwhelming sensation of defencelessness that repression and torture entail that prompts me to express my solidarity with these Iraqi prisoners. I do not know them and probably I never will, but we are united in that fear, the sharing of a blindfold, the tied hands, the dried mouth, the wires sending electricity through our bodies. We are connected by torture, by that brutal violation of a human being's integrity.
There is another frightening connection between Chile and Iraq, for the United States' partial privatization of the war has reached our continent too. The US Blackwater Security firm has recruited at least 135 Chilean mercenaries to travel to Iraq to perform security duties. Needless to say they hired former members of the Dictatorship's repressive apparatus and Special Forces. They were trained at a company installation in Moyock, North Caroline, but they also underwent training on Chilean soil. Indeed, at a secret location in El Arrayan, eastern Santiago, they organized their own paramilitary training camp. This, of course, is prohibited under Chilean law, but for some unknown and strange reason, Chilean authorities seemed to have turned a blind eye on the activities of "Red Tactica" Consulting Group, the local subsidiary of Blackwater. Thus, the first hundred of an expected total of 800 Chilean mercenaries left for Iraq.
The School of the Americas changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Perhaps, this is exactly what Blackwater is doing: cooperating with the Pentagon and the US occupying force in Iraq. Perhaps this is the reason they hired ex members of the dictatorship's repressive services; maybe they will need their skills in torturing and killing innocent civilians.
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7:40:52 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Gary Rhine.
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