Following Donald Rumsfeld's surprise visit to Abu Ghraib, 300 prisoners have been released.

Mohammed al-Musawi, complained that he was humiliated by guards at least once during his 11-month incarceration. "They forced me to take all my clothes off and female prison guards were whispering and laughing at me, " Musawi said while sitting in a room with tribal leaders. He was arrested in Baghdad's Hurriyah neighborhood, for allegedly participating in an attack against a U.S. tank.

Al-Musawi spoke of other detainees who left interrogation rooms with bruises, apparently from beatings."After taking some of the detainees into the interrogation rooms, they would come out with bruises and swellings in their bodies," he said.

At yesterday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, both Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz testified they did not know about the Interrogation Rules used at Abu Ghraib. We published the rules here. Our prior discussion of them is here.

by TChris

Oh darn. One of the President's pet money drains doesn't work. Maybe he'll do better with his plan to occupy Mars.

The multibillion-dollar U.S. ballistic missile shield due to start operating by Sept. 30 appears incapable of shooting down any incoming warheads, an independent scientists' group said on Thursday.

Hey, it's a measley $53 billion over the next five years. Small change compared to the cost of the war in Iraq.

by TChris

TalkLeft reported yesterday on another credibility problem in the Bush administration: Nicholas Berg's family says that Berg was detained by the U.S. military, causing him to delay his departure from Iraq, while the government claims that Berg was detained by the Iraqi police but was never by the U.S. military. The family complains that Berg might be alive if the military hadn't detained him without cause. Today, Berg's family produced evidence to support their version of events.

A U.S. diplomatic official in Iraq told the family of slain American Nicholas Berg in early April that he was being detained by the U.S. military, according to e-mails provided by the family Thursday.

"I have confirmed that your son, Nick, is being detained by the U.S. military in Mosul. He is safe. He was picked up approximately one week ago. We will try to obtain additional information regarding his detention and a contact person you can communicate with directly," the e-mail said.

Is the Bush government programmed to deny every fact that might be unfavorable to the administration, without bothering to investigate?

Update: According to Reuters, the Iraqi police chief has also contradicted the government's story. The Reuters report contains harsh words for the Bush administration from Nick's father, Michael Berg.

"My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This administration did this," Berg said in an interview with radio station KYW-AM.

Today the AP reports on alleged prior prisoner abuse by Abu Ghraib prison guard Charles Graner (purported father of the child expected by Lynndie England.)

His ex-wife once accused him of dragging her out of a room by her hair and trying to throw her down the stairs during a fight over their breakup. At the Pennsylvania prison where he worked as a low-level guard in civilian life, the Army reservist was accused in two lawsuits of brutality. In one, an inmate said Graner planted a razor blade in a plate of his potatoes. The lawsuits were dismissed and no charges were ever filed in the dispute with his wife, but the accusations continue to haunt Graner now that he faces court-martial in the abuse scandal.

We reported Graner's ex-wife's comments here:

Graner married Staci Dean in 1990, after she had become pregnant with the first of their two children. Their marriage ended in 2002 in a bitter divorce. Police were called to the home in March 2001, after the couple had separated. In Fayette County court papers, Staci Graner, who has since remarried and declined to be interviewed, reported that her husband came into the room where she was sleeping and yanked her head by the hair, banged her head against a wall, and tried to throw her down the steps. Criminal charges were not filed.

We also reported this abuse allegation a few days ago :

Bump and Update: Among the photos seen by Congress were many depicting Lynndie England having consensual sex with numerous soldiers in front of the Iraqi prisoners:

Shocking shots of sexcapades involving Pfc. Lynndie England were among the hundreds of X-rated photos and videos from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal shown to lawmakers in a top-secret Capitol conference room yesterday.
"She was having sex with numerous partners. It appeared to be consensual," said a lawmaker who saw the photos. And, videos showed the disgraced soldier - made notorious in a photo showing her holding a leash looped around an Iraqi prisoner's neck - engaged in graphic sex acts with other soldiers in front of Iraqi prisoners, Pentagon officials told NBC Nightly News. "Almost everybody was naked all the time," another lawmaker said.

**************
Original Post 5/12 9:15 pm

Members of Congress today were provided additional photos depicting abuse of Iraqi prisoners. What did they see? According to the Dallas Morning News:

• Military dogs snarling at cowering prisoners.

• Iraqi women forced to expose their breasts.

• Sex acts between male and female U.S. soldiers and forced homosexual acts between prisoners.

• A prisoner forced to violate himself with an object.

• A man beating himself against a wall as though to knock himself unconscious.

"I don't know how the hell these people got into our Army," said Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., after viewing what he called a fraction of the images.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testified Wednesday before the Senate Appropriations Committee on the Pentagon's request for an additional $25 billion to fund the Iraq war. For the first time publicly, he admitted the U.S. might lose the war in Iraq.

Rumsfeld said the prison abuse scandal had delivered a "body blow" to the nation-building effort in Iraq that has cost the lives of more than 770 U.S. troops. "Will it happen right on time? I think so. I hope so. Will it be perfect? No ... Is it possible it won't work? Yes," Rumsfeld said.

There was a great exchange between Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Rumsfeld and Generaly Myers--we've posted the transcript here--in which Rumsfeld defends the treatment of Guantanamo prisoners and engages in legal hair-splitting over the Adminstration's refusal to apply the Geneva Convention to them.

We've reproduced an exhibit introduced at the hearing consisting of the Interrogation Rules for Prisoners in Iraq (pdf.) Rumsfeld insisted they complied with the Geneva Convention. Durbin vociferously disagrees. Monday, Sen. Durbin delivered a blistering floor speech on the Iraq War and Bush's judicial nomination of William Haynes for a lifetime seat on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Some of the most flagrant legal violations have taken place at Guantanamo Bay. The administration claims that the detainees are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, though they may be treated in accordance with some provisions of the conventions ``to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity.'' There is no room for hairsplitting when it comes to the law. This kind of policy sends a signal to lower ranking officials that the law is an obstacle to be overcome, not a bright line that cannot be crossed.

Contrary to this position, the Geneva Conventions protect all captured combatants and civilians. The official commentary on the conventions explains: ``There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can fall outside the law.'' The Geneva Conventions do not allow the hairsplitting which this administration has engaged in at Guantanamo and other places where there are detainees in this war on terrorism.

Here's a press release (pdf) from the World Tribunal on Iraq--New York Session held on May 8, 2004. An international jury of conscience found the Bush Administration guilty of a wide range of war crimes in Iraq and demanded accountability.

The thirteen-member jury considered evidence on a range of violations
including the continued arbitrary detention and torture of Iraqi civilians, the use of cluster munitions in heavily populated civilian areas, the extrajudicial killings of Iraqi civilians, and the destruction of vital services.

The jurors found that "instead of caring for Iraqi people, the US authorities have killed, starved, maimed and tortured thousands of Iraqi people, destroying their infrastructure, including their water and health facilities. ... This was done by the US government. The people of the US are responsible and must hold their government accountable."

As outrage over the torture of Iraqi prisoners by the U.S. military continues to grow both domestically and internationally, the evidence at the tribunal highlighted the systematic brutality of the U.S. invasion and military occupation for the people of Iraq....The Jury's statement (pdf) emphasizes that "the responsibility for defining the future of their country has always rested with the people of Iraq and not with any outside power, or external military force, let alone one that previously encouraged and collaborated with Saddam Hussein in some of his most violent escapades."

Blogger Terry L. Welch (Nitpicker) has been deployed to Afganistan. He writes in:

Seems that the children of Afghanistan want nothing more than they want a pen. It was explained to me that the villages through which I traveled (near Kandahar, where I'm based) are so poor that a pen is like a scholarship to these children. They desperately want to learn but, without a pen, they simply won't. It's a long story. I won't bore you with it. Trust me, though, when I say that it would be a big deal if even a few of you could put up the call for pens for me. Anyone interested in helping out could either send some directly to me or go to Office Depot or any other office supply site and send them, where you can find them for as cheap as $.89 a dozen.

Here's the address to send them:

Terry L. Welch
105th MPAD
Kandahar Public Affairs Office
APO AE 09355

Come home safe and sound Terry, and thanks for looking out for the children.

by TChris

Once again, the credibility of the Bush administration has been questioned. The family of Nicholas Berg insists that he had been had been held by U.S. authorities in Iraq, causing him to miss his scheduled departure. Berg was captured shortly after his release. He was later beheaded.

U.S. officials admit that Berg was visited by the FBI while being held by the Iraqi police, but deny tht he was ever held by U.S. forces.

A State Department official in Washington told the Associated Press that Berg had turned down an invitation to fly out of Iraq. Spokeswoman Kelly Shannon said that a few days after he was released by Iraqi police, Berg spoke to a U.S. consular officer, who offered him a chance to fly back to the United States. "He told the consular officer that he planned to travel over land to Kuwait and would call the family from there," Shannon said.

Berg's family sees it differently. They say Berg was taken into custody by Iraqi police on March 24 and that U.S. officials eventually took custody of him. Berg was detained for 13 days, causing him to miss his scheduled March 30 departure. On April 5, Berg's family filed a federal lawsuit seeking his release. Berg was released on April 6, and his family last heard from him April 9. (Helpful timeline here.)

Farhad Manjoo, writing for Salon (free day pass available) theorizes why Nick Berg did not become a media story until his horrible decapitation was played on an Arab website:

Before Tuesday, none of us knew about the missing American in Iraq named Nick Berg. His family had been agonizing over his fate for weeks and had been hounding the U.S. government for any information it had about the 26-year-old freelance contractor who'd gone to Iraq just to do his patriotic duty, but Berg's story failed to captivate us the way other disappearances in Iraq have pulled us in. In retrospect it's obvious why we didn't pay attention: There were no pictures of Nick Berg's capture, as there were of the former hostage Thomas Hamill or the Japanese civilians caught by militants. Nick Berg disappeared without any of us noticing, and he remained anonymous until Tuesday morning, when, on a Web site affiliated with al-Qaida, the unspeakably gruesome video of his decapitation became available to us all.....

A few people have asked us what it means that Spc. Jeremy Sivits' court martial proceeding set for May 19 in Baghdad is being referred to as a "special court martial" and why it only carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail.

The answer: A "Special Court Martial" is the equivalent of a trial on a misdemeanor in civilian court.

Sivits will be tried before what the Army calls a special court-martial, a proceeding without direct parallel in the civilian world but similar in some ways to a misdemeanor trial. Conviction before a special court-martial carries a maximum of one year in prison. Sivits' punishment also could include reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of two-thirds of his pay for a year, a fine and a bad conduct discharge.

Why is Sivits, who was with the 372nd Military Police Company getting such a break? Probably because he's cooperating with authorities and promising to name others:

Neal Sonnett, a Miami defense lawyer who has represented civilian and military defendants, said the speed with which the trial was scheduled and the decision to try a relatively low-level defendant first suggest a plea bargain is in the works. Military prosecutors might be eager for that outcome, Sonnett said....

Others charged in the Abu Ghraib affair probably will face general courts-martial, which can yield more severe punishments. Seven soldiers currently face charges. Sivits is charged with conspiracy to mistreat detainees, dereliction of duty for failing to protect prisoners and maltreatment of detainees.

Here's more on the "special court martial" rules: