By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Report
January 2006
The International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes against Humanity
Committed by the Bush Administration convened last weekend in New
York City’s Riverside
Church. Martin Luther King Jr.’s
portrait hangs in the foyer. Dr. King delivered his historic 1967 speech,
“Beyond Vietnam: A Place
to Break the Silence,” opposing the war and calling for the removal of all
foreign troops from Vietnam,
in that same church.
Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael
Ratner, who delivered a keynote address to the commission of inquiry, invoked
Dr. King’s words from 1967: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”
The following year, the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal put the US
government on trial for “crimes without precedent” it was committing
in Vietnam. In
the tradition of the Russell tribunal, the panel of judges at the commission of
inquiry heard evidence of George W. Bush’s war crimes and crimes against
humanity committed in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Guantánamo
Bay, and elsewhere.
Ratner said that Bush openly and notoriously
“laid the plan for coup d’état in America”
with a small paragraph in his “signing statement” attached to the
McCain anti-torture amendment. Bush wrote that his commander in chief power
allows him to do anything he thinks is necessary, including torture,
notwithstanding the amendment passed by Congress. Ratner called that a
“historic, unprecedented grab for power” that spells the end of
checks and balances in our government. Bush, according to Ratner, has declared
that George Bush is the law.
Harry Belafonte gave the other keynote address.
“When a government fails to protect justice,” Belafonte declared,
“it is the responsibility of the people to rise up and change the guard,
change the regime.” In a hoarse voice, the legendary singer charged,
“Those who fail to answer that call should be charged with patriotic
treason.”
T r u t h o u t writer Ray McGovern, a CIA
analyst from 1961 to 1990, took the testimony of Scott Ritter, a senior United
Nations weapons inspector in Iraq
from 1991 to 1998. The allegation that Iraq
possessed weapons of mass destruction was the only justification on which
George W. Bush’s war in Iraq
was based, McGovern said. He cited statements by Colin Powell and Condoleezza
Rice before
that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs and was unable to pose even a conventional threat
to his neighbors. After September 11, however, Donald Rumsfeld expressed
“no doubt” that Hussein had WMDs. “A trained ape knows
that,” Rumsfeld said.
Ritter noted that Rumsfeld knew Iraq
had disarmed and had no ongoing weapons program. By 1998, the weapons
inspectors had accounted for 95 to 98 percent of Iraq’s
WMDs, Ritter said. “No nation had hard factual data that Iraq
retained or was reconstituting WMDs,” Ritter added. “No nation had
those facts.”
The Bush administration willfully misled the
American people about Iraq’s
weapons programs, Ritter charged. When Dick Cheney said that Iraq
was constituting its nuclear program, he “was lying,” Ritter said.
From 1991 to 2003, the United
States policy in Iraq
was regime change, according to Ritter. The US
and the United Kingdom
sought to maintain the public perception that Iraq
was not complying with its obligations to disarm, in order to justify regime
change. The US
never intended to disarm Iraq;
it would have had to lift the sanctions, which were aimed at undermining Iraq’s
welfare, weakening the government, and facilitating regime change.
“Intelligence” in the George W. Bush
administration “was being fixed around the policy of regime change,”
Ritter maintained. “What passes for intelligence is nothing more than
politically motivated propaganda.” He said, “There was no
intelligence failure because the policy wasn’t disarmament; it was regime
change.”
Another witness, David Swanson, from www.afterdowningstreet.org,
detailed the Downing Street Minutes, which were prepared in March 2002 and July
2002, but were leaked to the public last spring. They disclosed that Bush was
determined to go to war and was building a case to accomplish that goal.
“Intelligence was being fixed around the policy,” the minutes reveal.
“Going to the UN was an attempt to legalize a war that had already been
decided upon,” Swanson testified.
Dahr Jamal, who spent 8 months in occupied Iraq
as an independent journalist, also testified at the commission. He charged that
the US military
carried out collective punishment in Fallujah in violation of international
law. Snipers engaged in targeted killings, and troops prevented ambulances from
reaching the wounded and prevented the wounded from receiving medical
attention, violations of the Geneva Conventions.
The United States
decided that the entire city of Fallujah,
with more than 350,000 civilians, was “a free-fire-zone,” Jamal said.
In the attack on Fallujah in November 2004, between 4,000 and 6,000 civilians
were killed. The US
military employed illegal weapons, including cluster bombs, depleted uranium,
and white phosphorous.
Jamal accused the media, including CNN, Fox, Judith
Miller, Thomas Friedman, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh, of aiding and
abetting the Bush administration’s war crimes and crimes against humanity in
their coverage of the US
assault on Fallujah.
Another eyewitness to the occupation, journalist
Jeremy Scahill, testified about the targeted killing of independent journalists
by the US
military. He cited the killing of an Al Jazeera reporter and the bombing of the
Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, both on
unembedded journalists were in that hotel, and the US
knew it, Scahill contended. The attack killed two cameramen.
Scahill said the Pentagon warned unembedded
journalists, “Baghdad is not a
safe place. You should not be there.”
The Bush administration has consistently attempted
to link Iraq
with the September 11 attacks. Scahill observed, “There is a connection
between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. It’s called Washington,”
he said.
Challenging the Democrats to end the war, Scahill
alleged: “We can’t be vegetarians between meals. A loyal opposition is not
going to end this war.”
Craig Murray, the UK’s
ambassador to Uzbekistan,
testified before the commission. Murray
charged that Uzbekistan
practices torture on an industrial scale. He cited a UN investigation that
concluded torture was widespread and systemic in that country. Thousands of
people are tortured every year, Murray
said. This includes rape with objects like broken bottles, smashing of limbs,
pulling out of fingernails, and immersing people into boiling liquid.
Uzbekistan,
Murray said, is a US
ally in the war on terror, a member of the coalition of the willing. Murray
displayed a letter on the big screen. It was from Ken Lay, former chairman of
Enron, to then Texas Governor George W. Bush in April 1997. It began,
“Dear George” [“Look who’s boss,” Murray
noted], and continued, “You will be meeting with” the Uzbek
ambassador to the United States
to discuss Enron’s $2 billion oil and gas contract.
The real reason underlying the war in Iraq,
Murray testified, was oil and gas.
So “they needed false intelligence from torture chambers,” he said,
in order to justify the war on terror. Sir Michael Wood informed Murray
that the official position was that it’s not illegal to get information from
torture provided they do not themselves torture or direct that a specific
individual be tortured.
“You can’t build security on evil,” Murray
said. “I don’t believe torture works,” he concluded. “But even
it if did work, I’d rather die than have anyone tortured to save my life.”
I presented the testimony of Janis Karpinski, a
brigadier general who was assigned to Iraq
in July 2003 to oversee 17 prison facilities, including Abu Ghraib. Karpinski
described how General Geoffrey Miller transferred the interrogation techniques
he had instituted at the US
prison at Guantánamo Bay
to Abu Ghraib.
Miller was specially selected by Rumsfeld and sent
to Iraq to run
the interrogations operation, to work with the military intelligence personnel
and teach them new and improved interrogation techniques to obtain more
actionable intelligence from their interrogations.
When Miller arrived at Abu Ghraib, he said,
“It’s my opinion that you’re treating the prisoners too well. At
Guantánamo, the prisoners know that we are in charge, and they know that from the
very beginning.” He said, “You have to treat the prisoners like dogs,
and if you think or feel differently, you’ve lost control.”
Miller declared, “We’re going to Gitmo-ize the
operation” (referring to the techniques they used at Guantánamo
Bay).
Karpinski thought Miller came with the authority of
Rumsfeld because General Ricardo Sanchez, who was a 3-star, deferred to Miller,
although he was only a 2-star. Even though Miller told Congress he was sent to
Abu Ghraib merely in an assisting capacity, Colonel Thomas Pappas furnished
Miller with a daily report detailing the results of interrogations at Abu
Ghraib.
Sanchez himself signed an 8-page memorandum with a
laundry list of harsher interrogation techniques, including the specific use of
unmuzzled dogs, Karpinski said.
Control of cellblocks 1-A and 1-B, “the hard
sites,” was transferred to military intelligence. Karpinski didn’t learn
of the torture and abuse until
12, 2004
the progress of interrogations was discussed. Sanchez said, “We scheduled
them specifically when she would not be available to attend.”
When Karpinski was told about the photographs and
the abuse, she prepared to hold a press conference and tell the Iraqis in
Arabic that there would be a full investigation. But Sanchez warned her off.
“He looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘absolutely not. You are not to
discuss this with anyone. And that’s an order.'”
Karpinski discovered that all personnel and documents
relating to the scandal had been removed from Abu Ghraib. The only thing that
remained was a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld. It was called, “Approval of
Harsher Interrogation Techniques,” and listed sleep deprivation, stress
positions, playing loud music, insulting religious beliefs. In the margin,
there was a note in Rumsfeld’s handwriting. It said, “Make sure this
happens.”
Sanchez would not have implemented the techniques
without the approval of Rumsfeld, and Rumsfeld would not have authorized them
without the approval of the vice president, Karpinski testified. “And so
it filtered down, and it never filtered down to me because I wasn’t even
responsible for interrogations.”
Ultimately, however, Karpinski and 7 low-ranking
soldiers were made the scapegoats. Karpinski was demoted to colonel. “I
believe the Pentagon wanted to put this into a nice little package, 7 so-called
bad apples, out of control on the night shift, and a female officer. They
wanted to put that in a package, tie it up in a bow, and sink it forever, to
make people believe we got it under control, we solved the problem.”
Karpinski also testified that American female
soldiers in Iraq
were assaulted or raped by male soldiers in the women’s latrines, and an
alarming number committed suicide. “Because the women were in fear of
getting up in the darkness [to go to the latrine], they were not drinking
liquids after 3 or 4 in the afternoon,” Karpinski said. “In the 100
degree heat, they were dying of dehydration in their sleep. Rather than making
everyone aware – it was shocking – they told the surgeon not to brief on the
details, and don’t say specifically that they were women.” Karpinski
identified the commander who ordered that the cause of death of the women not
be listed on the death certificates. It was General Sanchez, she said.
The commission heard testimony about the Bush
administration’s criminal responsibility for indefinite detention, rendition
for torture, destruction of the global environment, attacks on global public
health and reproductive rights, and actions and inactions leading up to and
following Hurricane Katrina. The panel of judges will consider the testimony
and release its findings.
(Read my exclusive t r u t
h o u t interview with Janis Karpinski: Abu Ghraib General Lambastes Bush
Administration.)