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News :: Civil & Human Rights : Government Secrecy : International Relations : Iraq : Prisons : Regime |
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Iraq Speech: Bush Offers Nothing New Except Prison |
Current rating: 0 |
by Jim Lobe
(No verified email address) |
25 May 2004
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Someone invaded Iraq...and all I got was a lousy SuperMax prison. |
WASHINGTON - Launching a new effort to stem the plummeting loss in public confidence in his Iraq policy, U.S. President George W Bush reiterated his commitment to bringing ''freedom'' and self-government to Baghdad and warned that U.S. failure will ''only mark the beginning of peril and violence''.
Addressing a respectful and unusually restrained group of mid- and senior-level officers at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Bush stressed that the stakes in Iraq, which he called ''the central front in the war on terror'', were extremely high while suggesting that U.S. occupation forces may be more likely to seek political solutions than to resort to military force against suspected rebels or other malcontents.
Citing the U.S. Marines' recent agreement with to permit an all-Iraqi force, including senior officers of dissolved Revolutionary Guard, to take responsibility for security in Fallujah, Bush made clear that he fully endorsed such an arrangement despite complaints, particularly from neo-conservative and right-wing hawks, that the Fallujah deal amounted to ''appeasement''.
''American soldiers and Marines could have used overwhelming force,'' he said. ''Our commanders, however, Ă determined that massive strikes against the enemy would alienate the local population and increase support for the insurgency.''
''So we have pursued a different approach. We're making security a shared responsibility in Fallujah,'' he said, adding later, ''We want the Iraqi people to know that we trust their growing capabilities, even as we help build them''.
Similarly, he reiterated U.S. support for U.N. Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi's efforts to put together members of an interim government, the naming of which Bush said Brahimi hoped to announced later this week.
The U.N. envoy has also come under strong attack, particularly by neo-conservatives who charge that he has a pro-Sunni agenda aimed at restoring power to Arab nationalists.
''America fully supports Mr Brahimi's efforts, and I have instructed the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to assist him in every way possible'', Bush declared, effectively confirming that power within his administration has shifted to the ''realists'' who have long supported a much bigger role in Iraq for the United Nations.
Bush, who spoke for roughly 30 minutes, announced no concrete new initiatives in Iraq, other than the construction of a ''modern maximum-security prison'' whose completion will house detainees who are currently held at Abu Ghraib prison, the site of the now-notorious photos of physical and sexual abuses committed by U.S. soldiers against Iraqi detainees. ''Under the dictator (Saddam Hussein), prisons like Abu Ghraib were symbols of death and torture,'' he said. ''That same prison became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonoured our country and disregarded our values.''
After the new prison's construction, he added: ''Ă We will demolish the Abu Ghraib prison as a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning.''
Bush, whose public approval ratings fell to a record low of 41 percent in the past week, was clearly trying to move the media and public spotlight on recent setbacks, such as Abu Ghraib and recent reports that the Pentagon's long-standing pick to rule Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi, may have been working for Iran, in a more future-oriented and hopeful direction.
To that end, he made a rare admission that some things had not gone according to plan, notably that ''our commanders had estimated that a troop level below 115,000 would be sufficient at this point in the conflict''.
''Given the recent increase in violence'', he said, ''we will maintain our troop level at the current 138,000 as long as necessary''. He added that more troops would be sent to Iraq ''if the commanders said they were needed''.
Except for explicitly endorsing the strategy pursued by the Marines in Fallujah, however, Bush did not suggest any major change in course, as some observers have argued is necessary to regain the confidence of both the U.S. public, and, more important, Iraqis, 90 percent of whom, according to the most recent survey obtained by the 'Chicago Tribune' newspaper over the weekend, now consider U.S. troops to be ''occupiers'' rather than ''liberators''.
With Iraqi public opinion so hostile, some analysts had hoped that Bush would make a dramatic announcement Monday, such as his intention to withdraw all U.S. forces no later than the end of next year, or to renounce any intention of retaining U.S. military facilities or rights to access to bases on Iraqi territory after the occupation is ended.
But Bush kept largely to the script that has been developed over the last six weeks and laid out a five-step plan to ''help Iraq achieve democracy and freedom'', including ''handing over authority to a sovereign Iraqi government; help establish security, continue rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure; encourage more international support; and move toward a national election that will bring forward new leaders empowered by the Iraqi people''.
''I sent American troops to Iraq to defend our security, not to stay as an occupying power. I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them Americans,'' he declared in one of his bigger applause lines.
He said the interim government will ''exercise full sovereignty'' until national elections are held by the end of next year, but did not define sovereignty. He stressed that ''American military forces in Iraq will operate under American command as a part of a multinational force authorised by the United Nations''.
He also noted that the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which is supposed to become the world's largest U.S. embassy with a staff of more than 2,000, will have ''regional offices in key cities (that) Ă will work closely with Iraqis at all levels of governmentĂ ''
At the same time, Bush's tone was significantly less smug and contemptuous than in other recent speeches, particularly with respect to the United Nations and his praise for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which Washington still hopes will decide to assume a substantial security role in Iraq at next month's Istanbul Summit.
Similarly, Bush dispensed with the word ''evil'' or ''evil-doers'' in the address, although he still posed the conflict in black-and-white terms, accusing ''terrorists'' of trying to ''impose Taliban-like rule country by country across the greater Middle East''.
''They seek the total control of every person in mind and soul'', he said. ''It is a totalitarian political ideology pursued with consuming zeal and without conscience.''
Instead of using another phrase that he and his top aides have frequently deployed to describe their determination, ''Stay the course'', he called on the public to ''keep our focus'' and ''do our duty''.
It was an interesting change, prompted no doubt by the fact that ret. Central Command chief, Gen Anthony Zinni, had mocked the phrase in a story featured on the most widely viewed public-affairs television show, CBS' '60 Minutes' Sunday night. ''(T)o think we are going to stay the course; the course is headed over Niagara Falls,'' he said in a sentence that was also widely quoted in the newspapers Monday morning.
In some ways, the choice of the Army War College to deliver the speech was also curious due to the fact that retired army commanders like Zinni, Gen Wesley Clark and the most recent army chief of staff, Gen Eric Shinseki, have been furious with the way the administration has treated their overstretched service since the Iraq War.
Indeed, officers attending Monday's speech appeared respectful, but uncharacteristically subdued toward a sitting Republican president, applauding less than 10 times in the course of a speech that contained dozens of applause lines.
Bush himself occasionally paused during his delivery in apparent anticipation of applause, but, hearing none, forged ahead with his text -- a fitting metaphor, perhaps, for the situation he faces in Iraq.
Copyright © 2004 IPS-Inter Press Service
http://www.ips.org |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
Comments
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Bush Promises the Appearance of Chaos Ahead |
by Matthew Rothschild
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
25 May 2004
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There was a moment in Bush's speech to the nation on May 24 when he appeared lost, and his eyes bugged out, and he paused. He simply did not know how to pronounce the name of the Iraqi prison first made notorious by Saddam's brutality and now made further notorious by the torture some U.S. soldiers committed there.
It's remarkable that the President didn't know how to pronounce Abu Ghraib (he tried three different pronunciations in three different sentences, including "Abu Grump"). This has only been the single biggest scandal of his Administration.
He appeared like an unprepared high school actor who forgot his lines in the class play. Even after countless rehearsal he couldn't get it right.
On the substance of the scandal, all he said was that it amounted to "disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values."
But these "few American troops" weren't the only ones.
Bush did not mention White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who sent out a memo after September 11 that said the war on terrorism "renders obsolete" the "strict limitation on questioning of prisoners" that the Geneva Conventions require. In that memo, Gonzales referred to some of the Geneva protections as "quaint."
Bush did not mention Donald Rumsfeld, who insisted that the Taliban in Afghanistan did not merit the protection of the Geneva Conventions. According to Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker, Rumsfeld gave these interrogators a free hand in Afghanistan and then sent them to Iraq to pry out information from the detainees there.
Bush did not mention his own culpability for unleashing the CIA. "The President has given the agency the green light to do whatever is necessary," one senior official told Bob Woodward in a Washington Post article on October 21, 2001. "The gloves are off."
This scandal is not about a few sadistic soldiers.
Something much more disturbing, something much more systemic, is going on, but Bush did not even come close to describing the magnitude of the problem, much less own any responsibility for it.
Anyone looking for Bush to be contrite, or to come clean, or to fire Rumsfeld was out of luck.
What you found instead was Bush's fusing of the Iraq War yet again with the war against Al Qaeda. "We did not seek this war on terror, but this is the world as we find it," Bush said.
But Bush certainly did seek the war against Iraq, which--as Richard Clarke and Anthony Zinni and many others have noted--was unconnected to the war on terror and actually exacerbated it.
No matter. For Bush, it's all just a matter of playing fill-in-the-blanks for the names of the bad guys.
Forget about Saddam. Now the problem is "an Al Qaeda associate named Zarqawi" and "a young radical cleric [Muqtada al-Sadr] who commands an illegal militia."
Ironically, by waging this unnecessary and illegal war, Bush may have created an Al Qaeda threat in Iraq where none existed before.
It's a threat he feeds off of.
Bush invoked "the flames of September 11," and he took pains to mention that Americans have "learned new terms, like 'orange alert' and 'ricin' and 'dirty bomb.' "
He seems to like nothing more than to remind Americans of how vulnerable we are so that we'll trust him to protect us.
He even alluded to the decapitation of Nicholas Berg, though Berg's family blames Bush for his death.
One particularly alarming moment in Bush's speech came when he was boasting that the American military showed restraint in Fallujah, but then suggested that this might not last forever. "In the city of Fallujah . . . American soldiers and Marines could have used overwhelming force" but decided not to because it could "alienate the local population and increase support for the insurgency," Bush said. But he added, "We will do all that is necessary--by measured force or overwhelming force--to achieve a stable Iraq."
The itch to use overwhelming force has been with Bush for a long time. Here are his words from his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 2000: "A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam: When America uses force in the world . . . the victory must be overwhelming."
A couple of times Bush promised to transfer "full" sovereignty to the Iraqi people on June 30, which is different from the "limited sovereignty" that some of the members of his Administration had been talking about.
But how "full" will that sovereignty be?
Unlike Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said that if the new Iraqi government wants the U.S. troops to leave then they'll leave, Bush said, "After June 30th, American and other forces will still have important duties. American military forces in Iraq will cooperate under American command as part of a multinational force authorized by the United Nations." And Bush said, "We'll maintain our troop level at the current 138,000 as long as necessary," hinting that the number may even rise.
What kind of sovereignty is it that has a massive foreign army in its midst?
And what kind of sovereignty is it that has to accept the new currency that Bush's viceroy Paul Bremer introduced?
And what kind of sovereignty is it that has to accept the privatization of the economy that Bush insisted upon? Bush lauded the Iraqi Governing Council for approving a law Washington drafted "that opens the country to foreign investment for the first time in decades." This law allows for 100 percent repatriation of profits: a dream come true for U.S. corporations.
Bush said "the U.S. occupation will end" on June 30--but it will still be a de facto U.S. occupation.
He played up the prospects of the interim government that U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is feverishly trying to cobble together.
But Bush gave no reason why the turnover of power will go smoothly. Quite the contrary: He said there will be more violence before and after the turnover. And he provided no realistic basis for expecting that the resistance to the U.S. occupation will fade.
Instead, he tried to foreshadow troubles to come. "There are difficult days ahead, and the way forward may sometimes appear chaotic," he said.
That may be the understatement of the year.
Copyright 2004 The Progressive
http://www.progressive.org/ |
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Bush's Speech: Simply More of the Same |
by Minneapolis Star-Tribune editorial
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
25 May 2004
|
Let's be clear at the outset: President Bush's much-anticipated speech Monday night at the Army War College in Pennsylvania wasn't about Iraq. It was about the general election on Nov. 2 and Bush's frantic desire to stop his inexorable slide in public opinion polls, the latest of which has his approval rating at a dismal 41 percent. A Bush aide said as much Sunday, telling the New York Times that the Monday night speech was designed to dispel "this idea that we don't know what we're doing" in Iraq.
Did Bush succeed? Not by a long shot. It's arrogant of a president to believe speeches can dispel the skepticism borne of three years of lies and incompetence on the ground. Lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Incompetence in sizing the American troop strength that would be required to pacify Iraq following the inevitably quick opening combat. Incompetence in failing to plan well for dealing with an occupied Iraq. Incompetence in ceding control of American foreign policy to a small cabal of self-delusional neoconservatives who threw traditional American pragmatism -- conservative pragmatism -- overboard in favor of grandiose plans for remaking the Middle East into a peaceful, democratic region in one fell swoop.
Bush's speech was spectacular for its refusal to retreat from that wholly discredited vision. Throughout his speech, he continued his effort to wrap the war in Iraq in the war on terror. At this late date, just five weeks from the return of some sovereignty to Iraq, Bush refuses to acknowledge what is plain: The war in Iraq had no relationship to the war on terror; it was a distraction from the essential war on Al-Qaida and other terrorists who wish America harm. At one point, Bush referred to Iraq as the "central front" in the war on terror. If it is, that is so only because the United States invaded, and it will cease to be so once the United States leaves.
Bush expressed great belief in the Iraqi people; if they are given the choice, he said, they will choose freedom. Precisely, which is why today the overwhelming majority of Iraqis want the United States out of their country; if it could be arranged today, they would embrace the American departure.
Bush spoke also of returning full sovereignty to the Iraqi people on June 30. He spoke of five steps necessary to make that sovereignty meaningful, but none of it is new; all of it has been known for months. The only new element in the plan he outlined was the proposal to raze Abu Ghraib prison, where American soldiers brutally abused Iraqi prisoners. Even then, Bush could not bring himself to acknowledge the full scope of what transpired. He continued to cling to the politically expedient fiction that the abuses were the work of a few bad apples. In fact, evidence grows daily that this abuse scandal was a consequence of actions up and down the line of American command.
Bush didn't retreat one iota from the line he has followed since before this war started. He acknowledged no error, admitted no lapse in judgment. His five-step "plan" is more a hope than a plan. If everything goes just right; if the U.N. Security Council members play the docile role assigned them and bail the United States out; if the Iraqi factions avoid infighting; if this and if that, then possibly the United States can eventually leave Iraq.
You would think by now that Bush would have learned: Believing in something, hoping for something does not make it so. Incredible hubris led the United States into Iraq and into a maelstrom of unanticipated consequences -- but unanticipated only by the crowd around Bush; the warnings were there for those who wanted to listen, warnings that came most especially from the traditional, pragmatic conservatives who don't look kindly on risky foreign adventures.
Now Bush looks hopefully ahead to a neat solution. It's quite unlikely. As Anthony Zinni, a respected former commander of Central Command and special Middle East envoy for this administration, said Sunday night on CBS' "60 Minutes,"They've screwed up." Indeed, the Bush team has screwed up from the get-go in Iraq, and no amount of feel-good spin will change that.
© 2004 Star Tribune.
http://www.startribune.com/ |
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Re: Iraq Speech: Bush Offers Nothing New Except Prison |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
25 May 2004
|
So Matt, you never really said if liked the speech or not?
I thought he delivered the message that Americans need to hear. We are all in this together and it will be a long tough road ahead.
Victory in Iraq will be but one front in the War on Terror. You mention that this action was illegal. Let's see the Congress approved it, 17 UN resolutions and 12 years of restraint.
I think that about covers it. I would like to see us begin to put some heat on Iran and Syria.
Hell, while were in the neighborhood. We might as well.
Jack |
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Abuse of Captives More Widespread, Says Army Survey |
by DOUGLAS JEHL, STEVEN LEE MYERS and ERIC SCHMITT
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
25 May 2004
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WASHINGTON, May 25 — An Army summary of deaths and mistreatment involving prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan shows a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.
The cases from Iraq date back to April 15, 2003, a few days after Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled in a Baghdad square, and they extend up to last month, when a prisoner detained by Navy commandos died in a suspected case of homicide blamed on "blunt force trauma to the torso and positional asphyxia."
Among previously unknown incidents are the abuse of detainees by Army interrogators from a National Guard unit attached to the Third Infantry Division, who are described in a document obtained by The New York Times as having "forced into asphyxiation numerous detainees in an attempt to obtain information" during a 10-week period last spring.
The document, dated May 5, is a synopsis prepared by the Criminal Investigation Command at the request of Army officials grappling with intense scrutiny prompted by the circulation the preceding week of photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. It lists the status of investigations into three dozen cases, including the continuing investigation into the notorious abuses at Abu Ghraib.
In one of the oldest cases, involving the death of a prisoner in Afghanistan in December 2002, enlisted personnel from an active-duty military intelligence unit at Fort Bragg, N.C., and an Army Reserve military-police unit from Ohio are believed to have been "involved at various times in assaulting and mistreating the detainee."
The Army summary is consistent with recent public statements by senior military officials, who have said the Army is actively investigating nine suspected homicides of prisoners held by Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan in late 2002.
But the details paint a broad picture of misconduct, and show that in many cases among the 37 prisoners who have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army did not conduct autopsies and says it cannot determine the causes of the deaths.
In his speech on Monday night, President Bush portrayed the abuse of prisoners by American soldiers in narrow terms. He described incidents at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which were the first and most serious to come to light, as involving actions "by a few American troops who disregarded our country and disregarded our values."
According to the Army summary, the deaths that are now being investigated most vigorously by Army officials may be those from Afghanistan in December 2002, where two prisoners died in one week at what was known as the Bagram Collection Point, where interrogations were overseen by a platoon from Company A, 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg.
The document says the investigation into the two deaths "is continuing with recent re-interviews," both of military intelligence personnel from Fort Bragg and of Army Reserve military police officers from Ohio and surrounding states, who were serving as guards at the facility. It was not clear from the document exactly which Army Reserve unit was being investigated.
On March 4, 2003, The New York Times reported on the two deaths, noting that the cause given on one of the death certificates was "homicide," a result of "blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease." It was signed by an Army pathologist.
Both deaths were ruled homicides within days, but military spokesmen in Afghanistan initially portrayed at least one as being the result of natural causes. Personnel from the unit in charge of interrogations at the facility, led by Capt. Carolyn Wood, were later assigned to Iraq, and to the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib.
Lt. Col. Billy Buckner, a spokesman for the 18th Airborne Corps, said in an e-mail message on Monday that no one from the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion had yet been disciplined in connection with any deaths or other misconduct in Iraq. He declined to say if anyone from the unit was the subject of an ongoing investigation.
The document also categorizes as a sexual assault a case of abuse at Abu Ghraib last fall that involved three soldiers from that unit, who were later fined and demoted but whose names the Army has refused to provide.
As part of the incident, the document says, the three soldiers "entered the female wing of the prison and took a female detainee to a vacant cell."
"While one allegedly stood as look-out and one held the detainee's hand, the third soldier allegedly kissed the detainee," the report said. It says that the female detainee was reportedly threatened with being left with a naked male detainee, but that "investigation failed to either prove or disprove the indecent-assault allegations."
The May 5 document said the three soldiers from the 519th were demoted: two to privates first class and one to specialist. One was fined $750, the other two $500 each.
In what appeared to be a serious case of abuse over a prolonged period of time, unidentified enlisted members of the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion, part of the California National Guard, were accused of abusing Iraqi detainees at a center in Samarra, north of Baghdad.
The unit, based in San Francisco, operated under the command of the Third Infantry Division, the armored force that led the Army assault on Baghdad last April and continued to patrol the city and the surrounding region into the summer.
According to the Army summary, members of the 223rd "struck and pulled the hair of detainees" during interrogations over a period that lasted 10 weeks. The summary said they "forced into asphyxiations numerous detainees in an attempt to obtain information."
The accusations were based on the statement of a soldier. No other details of the abuse — not the number of suspected soldiers nor the progress of the investigation — were disclosed.
A spokeswoman for the California National Guard in Sacramento, Maj. Denise Varner, said she could not discuss any investigation.
Another incident, whose general outlines had been previously known, involved the death in custody of a senior Iraqi officer, Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who died last November at a detention center run by the Third Armored Cavalry, of Fort Carson, Colo. Soldiers acknowledged to investigators that interviews with the general on Nov. 24 and 25 involved "physical assaults."
In fact, investigators determined that General Mowhoush died after being shoved head-first into a sleeping bag, and questioned while being rolled repeatedly from his back to his stomach. That finding was first reported in The Denver Post.
According to Army officials and documents, at least 12 prisoners have died of natural or undetermined causes, including nine in Abu Ghraib. In six of those cases, the military conducted no autopsy to confirm the presumed cause of death. As a result, the investigations into their deaths were closed by Army investigators.
In another case, an autopsy found that a detainee, Muhammad Najem Abed, died of cardiac arrest complicated by diabetes, without noting, as the investigation summary does, that he died after "a self-motivated hunger strike."
In two cases, involving the deaths of prisoners at Abu Ghraib on Jan. 16 and Feb. 19, investigations continue even though the causes are believed to be natural. In the Feb. 19 case, Muhammad Saad Abdullah was found dead with "acute inflammation of the abdomen." An autopsy classified the death as natural, apparently caused by "peritonitis secondary to perforating gastric ulcer."
Army officials have been reluctant to discuss the type of detail that the document describes, even when investigations into the cases are closed. The Army has refused to make public the synopses of Army criminal investigations into the deaths or assaults of Iraqi or Afghan prisoners while in custody.
At a Pentagon briefing on Friday, a senior military official and a senior Pentagon medical official said the Army was investigating the deaths of 37 detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, an increase from at least 25 deaths that a senior Army general described on May 4.
Army officials have given rough breakdowns of those deaths, including those ruled natural deaths, homicides and ongoing investigations. But Army officials have been stingy with details. Of the two homicide cases the Army has closed, for instance, officials have given only spare details about a soldier who shot and killed an Iraqi detainee who was throwing rocks at the guards. The soldier was demoted and dishonorably discharged from the Army.
When asked Friday about details of pending investigations that military medical examiners had characterized as homicides, and that had been described in news accounts, a senior official would only confirm, "That's an ongoing investigation."
The official described the dates, locations and number of deaths involved in four cases ruled justifiable homicide, all in Iraq, including three at Abu Ghraib. But the official did not give details about the individual cases.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
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Write Your Own George W. Bush Speech |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
25 May 2004
|
It's easy! Otherwise, he wouldn't be able tp pronounce the words [or at least MOST of them].
http://www.actofme.co.uk/bush_speech/bushspeechwriter.html
When you're done, then you get to hear Bush say stupid things. What were you expecting? |
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