by TChris

There are reports that Iraq's new Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, executed about a half dozen suspected insurgents in June by standing them against a courtyard wall at the Bahgdad police station in handcuffs and blindfolds and shooting them. Allawi denies the accusation. The award winning journalist who broke the story has left Iraq for his own safety.

If the report is true, it lends support to Time's observation that Allawi "appears to have solid credentials for the role of strongman." Of course, so did Saddam Hussein.

Ed Cone writes about a speech Sy Hersh recently gave to the ACLU.

Seymour Hersh says the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."

He called the prison scene "a series of massive crimes, criminal activity by the president and the vice president, by this administration anyway…war crimes." The outrages have cost us the support of moderate Arabs, says Hersh. "They see us as a sexually perverse society."

Hersh describes a Pentagon in crisis. The defense department budget is “in incredible chaos,” he says, with large sums of cash missing, including something like $1 billion that was supposed to be in Iraq. ....Hersh described the folks in charge of US policy as "neoconservative cultists" who have taken the government over, and show "how fragile our democracy is."

Cone links to Hersh's speech which is streamedhere.

by TChris

A one page summary of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, apparently failed to note the dissenting views contained in the full report. Notes taken by Senate staffers who reviewed the report indicate that the summary presented only one point of view, but the White House refuses to release the summary.

According to Richard Durbin, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee:

"We have requested, through the Senate Intelligence Committee, that the White House produce this document and they have refused. I think that's wrong."

Well, that didn't take long. In fact, the ban on the death penalty hasn't officially been lifted yet. But that didn't stop an Iraqi judge yesterday from sentencing 3 Shiites to death--and praising his own decision:

Judge Saleh Shaibani said the sentences were the first to be handed down by an Iraqi court since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime 15 months ago, after which the US-led occupation administration suspended the death penalty. The caretaker Government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has said the ban will soon be reversed.

The judge, praising his own decision, said the extreme nature of the crimes for which the three men were convicted led him to pronounce the death sentences.

It's true the crimes were particularly gruesome. That's not as important to us as the message the sentences send--that Judges under the new regime see no reason to comply with the "rule of law" and instead feel free to impose their own brand of judicial activism on their subjects. There's a lesson in here somewhere, and it's not just applicable to Iraq.

U.S. News has obtained all classified annexes to the Taguba report on Abu Ghraib prison:

The most comprehensive view yet of what went wrong at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, based on a review of all 106 classified annexes to the report of Major General Antonio Taguba, shows abuses were facilitated--and likely encouraged--by a chaotic and dangerous environment made worse by constant pressure from Washington to squeeze intelligence from detainees.

Daily life at Abu Ghraib, the documents show, included riots, prisoner escapes, shootings, corrupt Iraqi guards, filthy conditions, sexual misbehavior, bug-infested food, prisoner beatings and humiliations, and almost-daily mortar shellings from Iraqi insurgents. Troubles inside the prison were made worse still by a military command structure that was hopelessly broken.

Col. Henry Nelson, an Air Force psychiatrist who prepared a report for Taguba on Abu Ghraib, described it as a "new psychological battlefield," and detailed the nature of the challenge faced by the Americans working in the overcrowded prison. "These detainees are male and female, young and old," Nelson wrote; "they may be innocent, may have high intelligence value, or may be terrorists or criminals. No matter who they are, if they are at Abu Ghraib, they are remanded in deplorable, dangerous living conditions, as are soldiers."

[link via Buzzflash.]

FPC Lynndie England can't catch a break. The military just added more charges against her, relating to indecent conduct. Apparently, these are charges relating to her personal conduct, not her mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib:

The Washington Post reported it had obtained images of England undressed and in sexual poses with a male soldier. Photos released earlier in the abuse scandal showed pointing at Iraqi prisoners' genitals and holding a leash attached to a prisoner. ...Defense lawyer Richard Hernandez told The Post that the new photos were personal and had nothing to do with the prisoner abuse charges.

In a 511-page report released today, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee says intelligence supporting the decision to go to war in Iraq was false or overstated:

...the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee found that the CIA's prewar estimates of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were overstated and unsupported by intelligence. Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, told reporters that intelligence used to support the invasion of Iraq was based on assessments that were "unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence."

Before the war, the U.S. intelligence community told the president as well as the Congress and the public that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and if left unchecked would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade," Roberts said. "Today we know these assessments were wrong."

by TChris

Criminal defense lawyers know that their clients are often unpopular, but that doesn’t matter: the point is to assure that the government treats them fairly and that their rights are protected. Even if the client is Saddam Hussein, who at this point hasn’t met his legal team.

[Muhammad] Rashdan, captain of the defense team, positioned himself as Mr. Hussein's main counsel last December when he formed a committee to represent the former dictator two days after he was found in a spider hole near Tikrit. He said Mr. Hussein's wife, Sajida, who herself has gone underground, gave him power of attorney. The lawyers are now petitioning the tribunal to meet with Mr. Hussein, but they have not heard back yet.

Hussein’s defense team intends to argue that he’s immune from prosecution in Iraq because he was acting as the head of state at the time his actions were taken. It will also contend that the special tribunal established by the occupation authority has no authority to act because there was no legal basis for the invasion of Iraq. But first Hussein has to agree to be represented by them, and then they face “a more bureaucratic problem."

The Iraqi lawyers' union is lobbying to bar foreign lawyers from appearing before the special tribunal. Mr. Rashdan said he was trying to work out a compromise in which his group teams up with local lawyers. The trial is not expected to start for several months.

by TChris

A former associate of Ahmad Chalabi, Muhammad al-Zubaidi, confirms a fact that has been obvious for some time: the Iraqi defectors who served as Chalabi’s “intelligence agents” were coached to lie before meeting with U.S. intelligence agents and journalists.

The defectors spoke of a nation pocketed with mobile weapons laboratories, a new secret weapons site beneath a Baghdad hospital, a meeting between a member of Mr. Hussein's government and Osama bin Laden - accounts that ultimately became potent elements in Mr. Bush's case for war.

"They intentionally exaggerated all the information so they would drag the United States into war," Mr. Zubaidi said. "We all know the defectors had a little information on which they built big stories."

Zubaidi wonders why the C.I.A. fell for the lies: "I don't want to criticize U.S. agencies, but it's strange that the U.S. with all its powerful agencies, the C.I.A., could not manage to know the truth from the lies in these people." A Senate Intelligence Committee report released today is asking the same questions.

The U.S. is investigating whether the kidnapping and threatened beheading of U.S. Marine Wassef Ali Hassoun may have been a hoax. He is believed to be alive and free in his native Lebanon.

Update: CNN reports Hassoun is at the U.S. embassy in Lebanon. (via Back Country Conservative.)

The Naval Criminal Investigation Service was put in charge of the investigation shortly after Hassoun was missing from his unit on June 20, the sources told CNN. Scarber said the NCIS is one step up from the military police and typically investigates missing persons cases. It was brought into the investigation as when it was thought that it was possible Hassoun fell victim to foul play, but no criminal investigation is under way, she said.

Hassoun reportedly called his family in Utah yesterday with a request to be picked up at an undisclosed location in Lebanon. This is one story that's going to get a lot stranger before it's over.

Is this a classic example of a scrub job? The first article has the full details with accounts of the alleged torture of Afghan prisoners by three Americans who were on a counter-terrorism mission, vigilante-style. The second and third versions have the 'classified' material cut out.... Here are three of the articles:

Arrested Americans Abuse Prisoners (AP, Philly Burbs)

Americans arrested in Kabul were running private jail, official says (AP Boston Herald)

Three Americans Arrested in Kabul (AP, MyWay)

Read the first article.

Well, that didn't take long. The new Iraqi Government has authorized Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to declare martial law.

"The lives of the Iraqi people are in danger, they are in danger from evil forces, from gangs of terrorists," said Human Rights Minister Bakhityar Amin, who compared the new law to the U.S. Patriot Act.

....The laws give Allawi the right to impose curfews, to conduct search operations and detain individuals with weapons, once he receives unanimous approval from the Cabinet. It also gives him the right to assign governors, including military leaders, to be in charge of specific areas.

Meanwhile, U.S. soldier deaths keep mounting.

The U.S. military on Tuesday announced that three Marines assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were killed while on duty in western Iraq. Two died in action Monday in Anbar province, while a third died of his wounds later Monday. Another four U.S. Marines were killed Tuesday in the province during security and stability operations, the U.S. military said.