by TChris

Putting unpopular figures on trial is a great way to jump start a political campaign, so cynics might wonder at the timing of Prime Minister Allawi's announcement that members of Saddam Hussein's government will go on trial next week.

War crimes trials against senior lieutenants of Saddam Hussein will start in Baghdad next week, the interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said yesterday. But other members of the government said little preparatory work had been done for court proceedings. Saddam Hussein is unlikely to face trial until much later.

Complaints that the defendants haven't had access to their lawyers or an opportunity to learn of the evidence against them are apparently untroubling to Allawi, but others take a different view.

Saddam's Jordan-based lawyer, Ziad al-Kasawneh, said: "The Iraqi court will be in violation of the basic rights of the defendants, which is to have access to legal counsel while being interrogated and indicted." Mr Kasawneh, who has not yet met his client, doubted the trials would start next week. "I think Mr Allawi is dreaming," he said. "He cannot make such a bold announcement without consulting with his boss, President [George] Bush."

U.S. Staff Sgt. Jeremy Horne has pleaded guilty to unpremeditated murder of a 16 year old Iraqi. Horne and another soldier came upon the wounded teen in a burning vehicle and Horne either ordered the teen shot or shot him himself to put him out of his misery. Horne received a three year sentence, a demotion to private, loss of wages and a dishonorable discharge.

The charges relate to the Aug. 18 killing of a 16-year-old Iraqi male found in a burning truck with severe abdominal wounds sustained during clashes in Baghdad's Sadr City, an impoverished neighborhood that was the scene of fierce fighting between U.S. forces and Shiite rebels loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. A criminal investigator had said during an earlier hearing that the soldiers decided to kill him to "put him out of his misery."

Staff Sgt. Cardenas J. Alban, 29, of Inglewood, Calif., is also charged in the death. His case is pending.

Human rights groups have condemned the illegal killings of Iraqis either civilians or wounded fighters by the U.S. military, saying such acts amount to violations of international humanitarian rights and should be dealt with as war crimes. Critics also say poor understanding by young U.S. troops of the rules of military engagement leads to the killing of civilians.

"It doesn't help you win the hearts and minds of the public if you put a bullet in their hearts and another in the minds," said Mark Garlasco, senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch.

The teen was 16-year-old Qassim Hassan, who was working with relatives collecting rubbish. More details here.

by TChris

Prof. Carl Luna, noting the conspicuous silence of the "Republican Talk Radio Machine" immediately after Secretary Rumsfeld's petulant response to soldiers who asked him why he wasn't doing more to protect the troops from harm, calls attention to the subsequent right wing "talking points" about Rumsfeld's disastrous performance. The primary "talking point" is the assertion that Rumsfeld was set up by a liberal press that fed antagonistic questions to soldiers who evidently can't think for themselves.

Luna's response: "Horse feathers."

Such mindless chatter is simply another example of the bait and switch approach so often used by the nattering nabobs of talk radio to distract people from the real issue at hand. ... It doesn’t matter if the question concerning lack of adequate armor had been written on a hairball hocked up by a cat at Rumfeld’s feet. What matters is the validity of the claim that such armor protection is lacking and the quality of Rumsfeld’s response.

Luna also notes that 2500 soldiers yelled "Hurrah" in response to the tough questions.

Unless someone wants to claim the reporter “coached” the entire audience, that “Hurah” was the sound of soldiers genuinely affirming their feeling that their high command has left them to march naked into combat.

by TChris

President Bush this morning offered an "unusually sober" (and unusually truthful) assessment of the war in Iraq: "acknowledging that the insurgency is getting worse, that newly trained Iraqi soldiers are fighting poorly at times and that the war's casualties are taking a heavy toll on military families." Where was that candor in the months leading up to the election? Has the President finally decided to read the morning papers?

Perhaps the President's belated recognition of reality was necessary given that -- with good reason -- the troops are complaining.

Former U.S. Marine Jeremy Heinzman is seeking asylum in Canada. A hearing is underway. A fellow marine, former staff sergeant Jimmy Massey, provided this shocking testimony:

A former United States marine told a refugee hearing for an American war dodger Tuesday that trigger-happy U.S. soldiers in Iraq routinely killed unarmed woman and children, and murdered other Iraqis in violation of international law.

In chilling testimony intended to bolster the asylum claim of compatriot Jeremy Hinzman, former staff sergeant Jimmy Massey recounted how nervous soldiers trained to believe that all Iraqis were potential terrorists often opened fire indiscriminately.

"I was never clear on who the enemy was," Massey, 33, told the hearing.

Also head on over to Salon today and read about an alleged torture whitewash and a veteran U.S. seargeant who was shipped out on a stretcher after reporting what he saw even though he wasn't sick.

Little by little, thanks to hard work by the ACLU who continues to fight government secrecy, the shameful details of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal continue to come out. As a result of Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the organization, new Government memos have turned up.

U.S. special forces accused of abusing prisoners in Iraq threatened Defense Intelligence Agency personnel who saw the mistreatment, according to U.S. government memos released Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The special forces also monitored e-mails sent by defense personnel and ordered them "not to talk to anyone" in the United States about what they saw, said one memo written by the Defense Intelligence Agency chief, who complained to his Pentagon bosses about the harassment. In addition, the special forces confiscated photos of a prisoner who had been punched in the face.

The description of the condition of some of the prisoners is appalling:

A bombing today at the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia left 12 dead and several are still inside. No Americans were killed:

In Riyadh, U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Carol Kalin said four of the five employees killed held administrative jobs and one was a private contract guard on the consulate's payroll. Four other embassy workers - all hired locally - were hospitalized, Kalin said. She said all American employees were safe and none had been taken hostage.

Three of the attackers were killed and two have been captured.

They've served their time in the armed forces but they can't get out. The military keeps extending their terms, under what it refers to as a "Stop-Loss Policy." The soldiers say it's a back-door draft and will file suit today with the help of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

these soldiers are already overseas - transporting supplies, working radio communications and handling military contracts, somewhere in the desert.

"You should know I'm not against the war," said David W. Qualls, one of the plaintiffs and a former full-time soldier who signed up in July 2003 for a one-year stint in the Arkansas National Guard but now expects to be in Iraq until next year.

"This just isn't about that. This is a matter of fairness. My job was to go over and perform my duties under the contract I signed. But my year is up and it's been up. Now I believe that they should honor their end of the contract." Some military experts described the soldiers' challenge as both surprising and telling, given the tenor of military life, where soldiers are trained throughout their careers to follow their commanders' orders.

Up to 7,000 troops have been affected by the policy. According to one of the suing soldier's lawyers:

More than 13,000 U.S. army reserves have spent a year or more in medical hold units after being injured in Iraq. Congress is investigating:

Critics inside and outside the Army say "med hold" units are choked with reservists who should have been home much sooner with family or friends. Instead, they find themselves in a system that some Army officials acknowledge was unprepared to handle the thousands of soldiers wounded in combat overseas or injured while training or serving on U.S. military bases.

Shortly after the March 2003 Iraq invasion, when casualties started returning to the U.S., "the system was immediately overloaded," said Col. Lynn Denooyer, an Army Reserve nurse stationed at Fort Carson between March 2003 and August 2004.

Soldiers, veterans' advocates and some lawmakers say that despite recent efforts to beef up medical staffing and speed delivery of care, the Army still hasn't caught up, particularly when it comes to caring for National Guard and Res. erve soldiers.

The purpose of the med-hold program is to allow injured soldiers keep their full-time pay while under review. The problem is, they never leave.

Guard and Reserve soldiers can spend months in med-hold units, unable to return to their civilian lives, while the military decides whether they are fit to serve or must be discharged - and if so, how much pay they should receive.

Military hearings on the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib are underway. Here's a list of links to the most important reports and documents. Most are in pdf format, requiring the Adobe reader.

• Defense Dept. Report
• Schlesinger Report
• Taguba Abuse Report
• The Law of War [including the Geneva Conventions and Protocols]

Pretrial hearings are underway today at Fort Hood for soldiers accused of humiliating and assaulting prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Among those involved: Sabrina Harman and Javal Davis.

The Judge ordered Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinski, the former commander of U.S. prisons in Iraq, to testify about conditions at Abu Ghraib and about interaction between guards and military interrogators at Javal Davis' hearing:

Charges against Davis, a native of Roselle, N.J., include conspiracy to maltreat detainees, assault, dereliction of duty for failing to protect detainees from abuse and lying in official statements. He has acknowledged stepping on the fingers and toes of detainees, but denied hurting anyone.

Davis says the military officials condoned the abuse. Karpinski says she's been made the fall guy.

The "few bad apples" theory loses more credibility as new photos emerged today of Navy Seals abusing detained Iraqi prisoners . The photos were posted by a woman whose husband served in Iraq and brought them home with him.

The U.S. military has launched a criminal investigation into photographs that appear to show Navy SEALs in Iraq sitting on hooded and handcuffed detainees, and photos of what appear to be bloodied prisoners, one with a gun to his head.

Some of the photos have date stamps suggesting they were taken in May 2003, which could make them the earliest evidence of possible abuse of prisoners in Iraq. The far more brutal practices photographed in Abu Ghraib prison occurred months later.

An Associated Press reporter found more than 40 of the pictures among hundreds in an album posted on a commercial photo-sharing Web site by a woman who said her husband brought them from Iraq after his tour of duty. It is unclear who took the pictures, which the Navy said it was investigating after the AP furnished copies to get comment for this story.

The photos appear to have been taken after raids on civilian homes: