Today, the Center for Constitional Rights (CCR) filed suit against private contractors involved in the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

In light of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, and similar abuses at Guantanamo Bay and Baghram, it has become clear that the Bush administration has a wide spread and systematic disregard for human rights and the Geneva Conventions.
CCR is challenging this policy. CCR just filed suits and actions in the last two weeks:
* Challenging the conditions and the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay
* Demanding information from the government about its policies with regard to detentions, interrogations and deaths in custody
* CCR is also working with military lawyers to challenge the upcoming military tribunals.

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is a non-profit legal and educational organization dedicated to protecting and advancing the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If you can spare some change, go help them out.

Update: The AP reports on the lawsuit, and repeats some of the ugliest accusations--and they are ugly.

Greg Ford, a California National Guardsman, makes some new Iraqi prisoner abuse allegations:

A California National Guardsman says three fellow soldiers brazenly abused detainees during interrogation sessions in an Iraqi police station, threatening them with guns, sticking lit cigarettes in their ears and choking them until they collapsed. Sgt. Greg Ford said he repeatedly had to revive prisoners who had passed out, and once saw a soldier stand on the back of a handcuffed detainee's neck and pull his arms until they popped out of their sockets.

"I had to intervene because they couldn't keep their hands off of them," said Ford, part of a four-member team from the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion that questioned detainees last year in Samarra, north of Baghdad. He said the abuse took place from April to June.

Ford's commanding officers deny the allegations, but an investigation is underway.

The New York Times doesn't mince words in its editorial today on Iraq, Abu Ghraib and the secret torture memo:

Each new revelation makes it more clear that the inhumanity at Abu Ghraib grew out of a morally dubious culture of legal expediency and a disregard for normal behavior fostered at the top of this administration. It is part of the price the nation must pay for President Bush's decision to take the extraordinary mandate to fight terrorism that he was granted by a grieving nation after 9/11 and apply it without justification to Iraq.

...We do not know how high up in the chain of command the specific sanction for abusing prisoners was given, and we may never know, because the Army is investigating itself and the Pentagon is stonewalling the Senate Armed Services Committee. It may yet be necessary for Congress to form an investigative panel with subpoena powers to find the answers. What we have seen, topped by that legalistic treatise on torture, shows clearly that Mr. Bush set the tone for this dreadful situation by pasting a false "war on terrorism" label on the invasion of Iraq.

[comments got hijacked by two bickering commenters, we've closed them. Take your personal spats outside please]

Apparently, the Bush Administration wants to argue out of both sides of its mouth when it comes to the detainees at Guantanamo and torture.

In the secret draft memo (text here), the authors point out that the torture statute only applies to those being held outside the United States and argue that Guantanamo is inside the U.S. In the appeals briefs filed in the cases of the Guantanamo detainees, DOJ argues the opposite. Via the BeatBushBlog:

Title 18, section 2340A of the United States Code, the "Torture Statute," makes it a crime, punishable by up to 20 years imprisonment, for any United States national to torture anyone outside the United States. If the torture results in death, the torturer may be sentenced to death or life imprisonment (statute quoted below, in part; emphasis added):
Sec. 2340A. - Torture
(a) Offense. -
Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.

The Department of Justice, at page 7 of its recently released March 6, 2003 draft memorandum, "Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism: Assessment of Legal, Historical, Policy, and Operational Considerations," takes the position that detainees at Guantanamo are within the United States and, as such, may be tortured without violating the Torture Statute (emphasis added to below):

A big thanks is due law professor Michael Froomkin of Discourse.Net for tackling the 56 page secret torture memo (text here) and providing a thoughtful analysis. Bottom line:

If anyone in the higher levels of government acted in reliance on this advice, those persons should be impeached. If they authorized torture, it may be that they have committed, and should be tried for, war crimes. And, as we learned at Nuremberg, “I was just following orders” is NOT (and should not be) a defense.

Newsweek has put the "secret torture memo" online here.

The March 6, 2003 draft memo from the Defense Department, which was obtained in part by NEWSWEEK, is titled a “WORKING GROUP REPORT ON DETAINEE INTERROGATIONS IN THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM” and explores numerous legal defenses for acts that might be construed as torture. (Click here to read the memo). It was first disclosed by The Wall Street Journal on Monday. Along with several other memos to come out of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel—two them previously disclosed by NEWSWEEK—the 56-page DoD memo is believed to form the main basis for legal arguments justifying intense interrogation methods used at Guantanamo Bay. Some of those methods were later believed to be adopted for use at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Our Newsweek link didn't work, but law Prof Eric Muller has it up here at Is That Legal?

Check out Gunner Palace, a new documentary of American soldiers in Iraq. It's an amazing story, and trailers are on the site, easily viewed. In a nutsell,

The videos feature American solders rapping about the war; another doing a Hendrix inspired "Star Spangled Banner" on the roof of Uday Hussein's Palace. It's not really a musical, it's real and it's happening now. As a soldier says in the film, "For y'all this is just a show, but we live in this movie."

M. Tucker, the filmmaker says:

The purpose of my visit was to embed myself with a unit for as long as they would have me. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, owing to the fact that I was briefly in the military and come from a military family, I found a unit that embraced my presence. The unit, 2/3 Field Artillery aka the "Gunner" Battalion was based in Uday Hussein's Azimiya Palace-sitting in the middle of Adhamiya, the most volatile area in Baghdad.

The Palace itself, now referred to as "Gunner Palace", was a welcome retreat from the chaos of Baghdad's streets. It had a swimming pool. A putting green. It even had a stocked fishing pond. 2/3's commander, LTC Bill Rabena called it an "adult paradise". He lived in the Love Shack-a pumpkin shaped building where Uday Hussein apparently engaged in all kinds of debauchery-the LTC slept in Uday's circular bed, something right out of Austin Powers.

by TChris

In another affront to open government and Congressional oversight, John Ashcroft refused to allow lawmakers to see a policy memo concerning interrogation techniques deemed legally permissible by the Justice Department. The memo was prepared by DOJ's office of legal policy for White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales.

Angry Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee called on Ashcroft to provide the document, saying leaked portions that have appeared in news reports suggest the Bush administration is reinterpreting U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture.

Although Ashcroft "said he could not discuss whether there had been any order or directive from Bush regarding interrogations," he also said: "There is no presidential order immunizing torture." Ashcroft's willingness to deny that there was an order "immunizing" torture, coupled with his unwillingness to comment on the existence of any other order regarding interrogations, implies that Bush made some kind of order or directive regarding interrogations. Was there an order or directive that encouraged or excused torture? Ashcroft won't say.

Abu Ghraib interrogator Joe Ryan's March 21-April 02 diary entries have turned up in the Alexa cache. (His April 11-26 entries were pulled out of the Google cache a while back but are all over the internet). Go to the cache and get it while you can. You can also search Alexa for "joe ryan" site:am1500.com "

Among other things Ryan says: "Please note the difference between the American Red Cross, a great organization, and the International Red Cross, the anti-American fascist organization."

If you're not familiar with Joe Ryan, the Abu Ghraib interrogator and his diaries, go read Billmon here.

by TChris

Nine out of thirteen soldiers killed in Iraq during the first week of June belonged to the National Guard or reserves.

The death toll among National Guard and Reserve soldiers has been climbing in recent months, and the pace of casualties so far this month has been the highest of the war. May had the largest number of Guard and Reserve deaths in Iraq, 22 of the month's 80 total U.S. troop deaths.

In all, 827 American troops have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003. Of the total, 687 have died since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1, 2003.

We're not easily impressed but Billmon at Whiskey Bar is overwhelming in his torture coverage. Not only with the news, but with his insightful analysis and sourcing. Between him and the Wall Street Journal (subscription only, skip the opinion pieces), you get it all.

Update: Torture Memo Available Here.

The Wall Street Journal reports that it has reviewed a classified draft of a Pentagon report from 2003 in which the authors conclude that President Bush is not bound by laws prohibiting torture and that the Justice Department cannot prosecute U.S. soldiers or agents who engage in torture at his direction. If you don't have access to the Journal, you can read this Reuters account of the report.

One of the authors of the draft report is William Haynes, now awaiting confirmation as a federal judge.

According to Bush administration officials, the report was compiled by a working group appointed by the Defense Department's general counsel, William J. Haynes II. Air Force General Counsel Mary Walker headed the group, which comprised top civilian and uniformed lawyers from each military branch and consulted with the Justice Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies. It isn't known if President Bush has ever seen the report.

Robert Dreyfuss at TomPaine.com has more.

....here’s how the Pentagon’s shysters split the torture hairs: "The infliction of pain or suffering, whether it is physical or mental, is insufficient to amount to torture,’ the report advises. Such suffering must be ‘severe,’ the lawyers advise, and they rely on a dictionary definition to suggest that it ‘must be of such a high level of intensity that the pain is difficult for the subject to endure.’

The report goes on to say that Congress has no business trying to regulate whether U.S. soldiers or other officials torture prisoners, since that would violate the commander-in-chief’s constitutional power to wage war. “Sometimes the greater good for society will be accompanied by violating the literal language of the criminal law,” says the report.

Intel Dump also covers the WSJ report.

Some quotes from the WSJ article: