Via Demi-Semi Blog:

Immigrant rights and public health groups are urgently trying to raise public opposition to a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, HR 3722, cynically titled the "Undocumented Alien Emergency Medical Assistance Amendments of 2004." The bill would provide a billion dollars to pay hospitals for care of undocumented immigrants, but at a ghastly moral price: it would force hospitals that accept federal money for the care of an "undocumented alien" patient under the new Medicare bill to demand information about the patient's citizenship status.

For "undocumented aliens" (no word on how hospitals are to identify this group in the first place) the bill would tell hospitals to obtain further personal information plus fingerprints or other "identifiers," and would then expect them to denounce their own patients to the immigration authorities. Per the advocacy groups' analyses, the bill would cause people who lack proper papers to avoid medical care and would put doctors under pressure to violate basic requirements of medical ethics.

by TChris

A comment by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Zay Smith:

The attorney for Pfc. Lynndie R. England, an Army reservist charged Friday with mistreating Iraqi prisoners, regarding the prosecution:

"What is offensive to me is that we have generals and the secretary of Defense hiding behind a 20-year-old farm girl from West Virginia who lives in a trailer park."

That's not quite fair. They are hiding behind her only long enough to see if it works.

by TChris

Saturday marked the 20th anniversary of Bob Marley's "Legend" album.

In the realm of musical-taste-as-statement-of-personal-identity, "Legend'" says: I generally care about world events. I favor cotton clothing. I think stress is bad. I want to stop injustice. I'm all for love. I wouldn't say no to the herb, if you get my drift.

Through songs culled from such Bob Marley and the Wailers' albums as "Burnin'," "Kaya" and "Exodus," the "Legend" worldview is one of universal love, righteous anger, going with the flow and shared single beds.

by TChris

The Bush administration expected Iraqis to welcome and embrace U.S. soldiers as friendly liberators. The administration had no discernable plan for the country after toppling Hussein, and it didn't consider that a caretaker government really has to be a caretaker if it wants to govern. If the U.S. doesn't accord Iraqis the fundamental human rights that we demand at home, it can't expect Iraqis to accept even temporary U.S. governance.

Physical abuse of prisoners is outrageous, but just as damaging to goodwill is the common knowledge that soldiers can arrest an Iraqi on a whim, causing him to disappear for months, detained without access to family or counsel or independent review.

Problems in the U.S.-run detention system in Iraq extended beyond physical mistreatment in prison cellblocks, involving thousands of arrests without evidence of wrongdoing and abuse of suspects starting from the moment of detention, according to former prisoners, Iraqi lawyers, human rights advocates and the International Committee for the Red Cross.

It's not a question of delays in processing people who are detained on the basis of strong evidence of wrongdoing.

In a report in February, the Red Cross stated that some military intelligence officers estimated that 70 percent to 90 percent of "the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake." Of the 43,000 Iraqis who have been imprisoned at some point during the occupation, only about 600 have been referred to Iraqi authorities for prosecution, according to U.S. officials.

There is a special court that hears cases against security detainees, but it's only completed 87 investigations so far. A reporter who tried to observe its proceedings was turned away. A secret court, just like Hussein had.

If the Bush administration wanted to devise a plan to alienate as many Iraqis as possible, it couldn't have done a better job. As a caretaker government, it couldn't have done much worse.

by TChris

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has reinstated a lawsuit against the federal government brought by the family of John McIntyre, alleging that "the FBI contributed to McIntyre's death by giving ... two gangsters free rein to commit crimes because they were also federal informants who provided the FBI with information on the Mafia." McIntyre disappeared in 1984. His body was found in 2000.

During 1984 interviews with agents of the FBI, DEA, and Customs Service, McIntyre provided information implicating James Bulger in arms and drug smuggling operations. McIntyre disappeared six weeks later. His family suspected that Bulger played a role in the disappearance but didn't know how Bulger had learned about McIntyre's cooperation with the government. The family also wondered whether the IRA -- the recipient of Bulger's arms shipments -- had been involved with McIntyre's death.

Eventually, the Boston Globe reported that Bulger was an FBI informant and suggested that FBI agents leaked information to Bulger about informants within his criminal organization. The FBI responded that its "leadership remains outraged at the suggestion that any of its own would engage in that type of treachery." When the Globe ran stories in the mid-1990's about McIntyre's disappearance and his connection to Bulger, the government claimed it was "ludicrous" to speculate that a government agent negligently allowed McIntyre to be killed.

In fact, FBI Agent John Connolly was later convicted of revealing the identities of informants to Bulger in order to protect Bulger's ongoing criminal activities and status as a high-level FBI informant.

by TChris

A weekend survey by CNN found that only 46 percent of those surveyed approved of President Bush's job performance -- the lowest rating Bush has received in the CNN poll. Only 44 percent believe the war in Iraq was worthwhile (another low), while just 41 percent believe that Bush has been doing a good job handling the war.

Only 37 percent of those surveyed said they were satisfied with the way things are going in the United States -- a sharp drop from early January, when 55 percent said they were satisfied. Those findings had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Only 41 percent of voters said they thought Bush was doing a good job handling the economy.

Although widespread opinion that the President can't do anything right should be good news for John Kerry, the poll showed that likely voters are still about evenly split between the two candidates.

by TChris

The author of the Army report exposing abuse of Iraqi prisoners, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, will testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee tomorrow morning. In the meantime, even as President Bush reaffirms his support for Secretary of Defense Donald "See No Evil" Rumsfeld, at least one Republican lawmaker has joined Democrats in questioning whether Rumsfeld -- apologies notwithstanding -- should lose his job.

"I think it's still in question whether Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and, quite frankly, General Myers can command the respect and the trust and the confidence of the military and the American people to lead this country," said [Sen. Chuck] Hagel, a decorated Vietnam veteran.

Update: Arab commentators are predictably upset, leading Reuters to deem the images of abuse "a gift to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden." Dumping Rumsfeld would send a more effective message than the President's assurances that Americans are good people.

"After Mr. Bush's decision to keep Rumsfeld, all their apologies seem like lip service," Dubai-based political analyst Jawad al-Anani told Reuters. "Mr. Rumsfeld would have certainly lost his job if the prisoners were American."

Second update: Background on General Taguba here.

by TChris

Arrogating to themselves the power to decide that certain Iraqi prisoners deserved abuse, "U.S. military personnel singled out senior officials of Saddam Hussein's regime for special abuse in coalition prison, including solitary confinement for months on end," according to information provided to the Associated Press by a source who obtained the information from the Red Cross.

"Since June 2003 over a hundred 'high-value detainees' have been held for nearly 23 hours a day in strict solitary confinement in small concrete cells devoid of daylight," said the [Red Cross] report, which was given to coalition forces in February.

"Their continued internment several months after their arrest in strict solitary confinement constituted a serious violation of the third and fourth Geneva Conventions," said the 24-page report, confirmed by the ICRC as authentic after it was published by The Wall Street Journal Monday.

The AP learned that many of the abused detainees were included in the well-publicized "deck of cards," representing the most-wanted members of Saddam Hussein's regime. It is unclear whether Saddam Hussein has been mistreated.

by TChris

The Associated Press and The Hattiesburg American have sued the U.S. Marshals office as a result of the decision by U.S. Deputy Marshal Melanie Rube to seize and erase recordings of a speech given by recording-phobic Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. TalkLeft's coverage of the issue is here and here.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Jackson, seeks an order to prohibit the Marshals Service from seizing recording devices from reporters involved in the gathering of news. It also asks for guarantees to keep the federal agency from erasing tapes regardless of whether the seizure is lawful or not.

In essence, Luther Munford, an attorney representing the Hattiesburg American and The Associated Press, said in a prepared statement that the news organizations are seeking "a judgment that tells the U.S. Marshals Service and, in effect, other law enforcement agencies, not to do this again."

The lawsuit contends that the Marshals violated the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution, as well as the federal Privacy Protection Act of 1980. The president of Gannett Company's newspaper division, which owns the American, explains that somebody needs to police the police.

"Given the federal government's very tough stance on those who violate the law, the Marshals Service and Deputy Rube must be willing to taste their own medicine," Watson said. "An apology or a hollow commitment to study the issue will not suffice nor serve as a meaningful deterrent to prevent any repeat performances," he said.

As Associated Press assistant general counsel Dave Tomlin said: "People who enforce the law should know what the law is, and especially the basic law that says citizens can't be shaken down by their own government."

Some justice at last at the Department of Justice. It announced today it will reopen the investigation into the death of Emmett Till, a black teenager brutally killed in Mississippi.

Till was abducted from his uncle's home in Money, Miss., on Aug. 28, 1955. The mutilated body of the 14-year-old from Chicago was found by fishermen three days later in the Tallahatchie River. Pictures of the slaying shocked the world. Two white men charged with murder - Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W. Milam - were acquitted by an all-white jury. Both men have since died.

Bob Dylan wrote a song about Emmett's death.

The photos we published linked to this morning from Sydney Australia IndyMedia, a site we warned readers seemed to be anti-semitic and non-neutral, apparently are phony. We are deleting them and apologize to readers who came here by accident to see them. We just logged on for the first time since noon (we are actually on the airplane flying home and this costs a fortune so we won't stay on long) and saw all the comments pointing out the pictures are not real and the source is a hate site. We didn't want to wait any longer to take them down.

Thanks to everyone for letting us know--obviously we did not know they were phony when we posted them.

by TChris

New photos of abuse inflicted on Iraqi prisoners have been acquired by Seymour Hersh at The New Yorker. The sequence of photographs, taken by two cameras over a twelve minute period, depict two German shepherds, restrained by their handlers, barking at a naked Iraqi prisoner. As the dogs pull at their leashes, the prisoner "is leaning against the door to a cell, contorted with terror."

In another, taken a few minutes later, the Iraqi is lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a soldier sitting on top of him, knee pressed to his back. Blood is streaming from the inmate’s leg. Another photograph is a closeup of the naked prisoner, from his waist to his ankles, lying on the floor. On his right thigh is what appears to be a bite or a deep scratch. There is another, larger wound on his left leg, covered in blood.

Hersh reports on another incident in which dogs were used to attack Iraqi citizens during a sweep in Ramadi in November.

Hersh's sources say "that many senior generals believe that, along with the civilians in Rumsfeld’s office, General Sanchez and General John Abizaid, who is in charge of the Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, had done their best to keep the issue quiet in the first months of the year." Why? Because that's the way Rumsfeld's Pentagon does business.

Secrecy and wishful thinking, the Pentagon official said, are defining characteristics of Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, and shaped its response to the reports from Abu Ghraib. “They always want to delay the release of bad news—in the hope that something good will break,” he said.

No news can be good enough to offset the bad news that continues to pour in from Iraq. Investigators are looking into CIA involvement in the death of an Iraqi prisoner; according to Hersh, "an Army intelligence operative and a judge advocate general were seeking, through their lawyers, to negotiate immunity from prosecution in return for testimony." Rapid court martials of those farthest down the chain of command won't be sufficient to make this tragedy disappear from public view.