mtanga

Archive: POLITICS

>please note: some links may no longer be active.

Boston College Professor resigns in protest of Condi

Steve Almond, an adjunct professor of English at Boston College for the past five years, is resigning in protest of the college's decision to invite Condoleezza Rice to be the commencement speaker at this year's graduation. In his letter to the president of the college, Almond is both courageous, and direct:

Many members of the faculty and student body already have voiced their objection to the invitation, arguing that Rice's actions as secretary of state are inconsistent with the broader humanistic values of the university and the Catholic and Jesuit traditions from which those values derive.

But I am not writing this letter simply because of an objection to the war against Iraq. My concern is more fundamental. Simply put, Rice is a liar.

She has lied to the American people knowingly, repeatedly, often extravagantly over the past five years, in an effort to justify a pathologically misguided foreign policy.

The public record of her deceits is extensive. During the ramp-up to the Iraq war, she made 29 false or misleading public statements concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda, according to a congressional investigation by the House Committee on Government Reform.

Read his full letter at truthout.org

Hobbes, The NSA, and You

Billmon has written an outstanding article on the greater importance – and danger – of the data collection being done by the NSA in order to "protect us".

...this is alarming not because – or at least, not just because – it’s part of a deliberate conspiracy to turn the United States into a high-tech police state, but because it reflects some powerful, built-in trends that are driving the national security Leviathan in that very direction. These include, roughly in ascending order of importance:

* The U.S. intelligence community’s traditional faith in technology as the all-purpose solution to its obvious deficiencies in human intelligence gathering.

* The even more long-standing tradition – at work since the first Europeans arrived on the continent – of substituting cheap capital (processor chips) for expensive labor (spooks.)

* The economic need to stuff the giant, gaping maw of the defense industry with IT contracts, and the willingness of guys like Brent Wilkes to hand out poker chips and pussy in order to obtain same.

* The complete lack of any countervailing force in American politics, to the point where it is no longer possible to imagine any president – much less a retired general – standing up to warn his fellow citizens about the growing power of the military-industrial complex.

* The replication of the behavior and values of that same complex throughout corporate America and in American society as a whole.

On the Job Training

That last bullet point strikes me as the most important in many ways. It’s one possible explanation for why popular opinion remains so blasé about the NSA’s Orwellian strip tease act – even though at some point soon it could reveal some really naughty bits. The millions of Americans, like yours truly, who work in the corporate or public sector white collar world have already grown accustomed to a loss of personal privacy and a degree of social control that make Pentagon data mining look like an ACLU fundraising dinner.

Read the full, very important piece at Billmon's Whiskey Bar

Newest NSA revelations

You can find in-depth insights into the newest revelations about the NSA acquiring and using huge, domestic phone record databases at almost any good blog. I have a very simple point to make: Given that Qwest refused to turn over their records to the NSA on the basis that the NSA wouldn't (read: couldn't) produce FISA authorizations, and that the government chose not to take Qwest to court over the matter, is there any doubt whatsoever that there are, minimally, questions about the legality of the program?

I think that the answer is self-evident.

UPDATE: Zbignew Brzezinski made essentially the same point in CNN Sunday morning, wondering aloud why, if this program was so essential to national security, the White House allowed Qwest to resist.

Russell Tice, a former intelligence officer for the NSA, is planning to reveal even more damning information when he testifies to the Senate Armed Services Committee next week.

“I think the people I talk to next week are going to be shocked when I tell them what I have to tell them. It’s pretty hard to believe,” Tice said. “I hope that they’ll clean up the abuses and have some oversight into these programs, which doesn’t exist right now.”

Read about the fireworks to come at Think Progress

Countries A and B

Jonathan Schwarz, who is one of my favorite liberal bloggers, succinctly (and amusingly) summarizes the insanity of the current Iran problem:

Living as I do in the World's Insanest Country, I sometimes don't notice our loonitude. It gets to seem normal after a while. A few White House speeches and New York Times op-eds about the Aresian Threat and you find yourself earnestly considering whether we need to invade Mars.

Take this statement about Iran by Fox's John Gibson:

...world leaders may be coming to the U.S. saying, "Would you please use your super-duper nuke bunker-busters to end this thing with the least possible -- pardon the phrase -- collateral damage?"

...Do we use ours on them first or wait for them to use theirs on us?...It may come down to them or us."

What would we think if we were outside looking in at this? Imagine two countries, A and B.

Country A:

• is the richest and most powerful country that's ever existed
• has been inexorably expanding since its founding 230 years ago
• has previously used nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear nation
• has invaded a dozen countries within past 50 years, and recently attacked Country B's neighbor on the pretext this totally disarmed neighbor of Country B posed an intolerable threat to it

And Country B:

• was until 25 years ago ruled by a dictator installed when Country A overthrew its democratically-elected government
• has 1/4 the population of country A
• has an economy 1/25 the size of country A's
• has not invaded anyone in living memory
• was recently invaded by Country B's neighbor—at the urging of Country A
• has no proven nuclear weapons program

Then, a prominent news anchor in Country A advocates a nuclear first strike against Country B in "self-defense," and claims the rest of the world may beg Country A to do this.

Also, the anchor's network is owned by a billionaire who's a ferocious supporter of Country A's government, while also hosting fundraisers for the most prominent member of the "opposition" party.

Who in this scenario is dangerously bonkers? I think the answer is obvious: Tom Cruise.

Visit Jonathan's Tiny Revolution site

The hidden issue Underlying the Palestinian Problem

While redistricting is a topic which has been addressed recently in the mainstream American press, almost all of the related articles are about controversial domestic examples such as the hotly disputed 2000 redistricting in Texas. But even many of those who regularly follow the news from the Middle East might be surprised to learn how important that issue has become within the complex set of problems which exists between Israel and Palestine. Jonathan Cook, a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, has written a useful overview of this nexus in Counterpunch.

In November 2003 Olmert, Sharon's deputy, all but announced the coming Gaza Disengagement Plan before it had earnt the official name. A few weeks before Sharon revealed that he would be pulling out of Gaza, Olmert outlined to Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper the most serious issue facing Israel. It was, he said, the problem of how, when the Palestinians were on the eve of becoming a majority in the region, to prevent them from launching a struggle similar to the one against apartheid waged by black South Africans.

Olmert's concern was that, if the Palestinian majority renounced violence and began to fight for one-man-one-vote, Israel would be faced by "a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle -- and ultimately a much more powerful one". Palestinian peaceful resistance, therefore, had to be pre-empted by Israel.

The logic of Olmert's solution, as he explained it then, sounds very much like the reasoning behind disengagement and now convergence: "[The] formula for the parameters of a unilateral solution are: To maximise the number of Jews; to minimise the number of Palestinians." Or, as he put last week, "division of the land, with the goal of ensuring a Jewish majority, is Zionism's lifeline".

Read the full article here

Sanctions aimed at Hamas, but who gets hurt?

Ali Abunimah, an author whose articles on the Middle East have been published in leading newspapers around the world, provides a sharp reminder of who can get caught in the crossfire when sanctions are imposed.

Suppose I were to leave my office here in Chicago and walk the short distance to the kidney dialysis unit down the road and pull out the tubes to which four elderly patients were attached, making them seriously ill or killing them. Suppose I said I did this because I disagreed with the Bush Administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq, its use of torture, and its countless other profoundly undemocractic and illegal policies. What would that make me? A murderer for sure, a monster and a new vicious, kind of terrorist. Such an action would be unconscionable in any moral system.

And yet this is what the so-called "international community," a few powerful governments, feel entitled to do to Palestinians because those governments disagree with the policies of the elected Hamas authority. Ha'aretz reported yesterday that "At least four people suffering from kidney diseases died in the Gaza Strip in April, after the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority Health Ministry cut the Shifa Hospital's budget for the necessary dialysis treatments."

Read the full post in The Guardian (UK)

Anger, and Democrats self-defeating fear of using it

Glenn Greenwald gets it just right:

The "Angry Left" cartoon has forever been a favorite tactic of those models of Civility and Rhetorical Restraint on the Right -- and as demonstrated by the head-patting praise which the "good boy" Cohen received from Bush supporters, it still is. And many Democrats have internalized it, too. Anger is a bad, bad thing and must be avoided at all costs. McGovern's 1972 defeat proves that.

This argument is false -- dangerously so -- for so many reasons. Most successful political movements need passion. Anger, when constructively directed, is a potent and inspiring passion. It is noble to be angry about dangerous situations and corrupt leaders, and there are few passions which can compete with anger for inspiring oneself and others to meaningful action.

Conversely, those who are entirely devoid of anger are often lifeless, limp, uninspiring figures who seem to be drained of soul and purpose. An anger-less political movement is embodied by a plodding, bespecled, muttering Jay Rockefeller. Or John Kerry's non-response to the Swift Boat attacks.

Read Glenn's full (albeit long) post here

The Hidden Costs of War

There are so many insidious repercussions of war, that the superficial calculations fed to us by the mainstream media, and used by cynical politicians, invariably fail to reflect anything close to the true costs. Consider the terrible psychological scars which mark so many of the soldiers returning from combat zones. Hellblazer, a member of the "Shadow Recon Platoon of 2-63AR BN" in Iraq, wrote eloquently on the topic in a recent post at the Fight to Survive blog:

If one repeatedly rubs their hand lightly across a rough surface, the hand will become numb to the sensation and to any sensation of equal or lesser intensity. This holds true for the mind. If one constantly exposes themselves to extreme situations, then all sensations there after of equal or lesser intensity offer no stimulation. A heroin addict must constantly increase the dose because the mind has grown tolerant to a lower dosage. A cocaine addict must snort more and more to obtain the same rush of endorphins that was felt the first time. This constant increase to obtain a desired effect is met with graduation to a more intense medium or fatality. However, a higher dosage or different medium does not always exist to take the addict to the next level, and even if he were to continue to utilize his current choices, the supply is not always infinite. When the supply diminishes, one is left numb to all sensation, and hence follows an increasingly desperate situation. For the soldier; war is his drug. His mind grows an addiction to its ravenous stimuli from abnormally stressful situations. His time within this medium is finite, and when it comes to an end, he will find it hard to deal with his unwanted addiction. This is the tragedy of all those who have fallen to the drug of war, myself included. Life becomes dull and frustrating. Normal situations make one feel a sense of anxiety, of desperation, as if constantly hoping for a sudden horrible rage to sweep across and take normal right down to hell, where things are violent, and gruesome, and stimulating, and the adrenaline flows. Where veins bulge and the mind sweats, and purpose is abundantly clear, to fight, to win, to love the drug of war. But it is no more. I feel the phantom left behind by this drug milling around in my mind, and I hear its fateful whispers, begging me to take it back to where the drug flows endless. I beat this demon down everyday, and come to grips with my reality. That I am a shelved piece of machinery that must now perform tasks it was never meant to. This is life for those whose purpose was unique but is no more. This is life through the eyes of a weapon of which the machine has no use for anymore.

Read the full, impressive post here

What are the Republicans (and Tim Russert) afraid of?

The answer is oversight. And the Democrat who strikes the greatest fear into the hearts of those with something to lose, something to hide, and/or something to be ashamed of, is John Conyers. One of the very few Democrats who can stand tall after the last six years, Conyers gives the pathetic excuse for a journalist, Tim Russert, a well-deserved dressing down in today's Huffington Post:

[And] none other than Tim Russert launched an attack. While interviewing my Leader, Nancy Pelosi, Russert intoned ominously "The chair of the Judiciary cmte would be someone named John Conyers, I went to his website and this is what was on his website." He then showed the headline of my website where I call for the creation of a Sam Ervin-style bipartisan Committee, equally composed of Democrats and Republicans, to investigate pre-war manipulation of intelligence and other matters and, if warranted, to make recommendations to the Judiciary Committee on possible grounds for impeachment.

"That's the man who would be Chairman of the Judiciary Committee," Russert ominously declared. He then asked if "John Conyers should take down his website."

Perhaps Mr. Russert has forgotten, but I have been a Chairman before. For five years, from 1989 to 1994, I was the Chairman of the House Government Operations Committee, now called the Government Reform Committee. I have a record of trying to expose government waste, fraud and abuse.

That was back when Congress did something called "oversight." You know, in our tri-partite system of government, when Congress actually acted like a co-equal branch. The Republican Congress decided to be a rubber stamp for President Bush instead.

Perhaps, if we had a little oversight, we wouldn't be mired in a war based on false pretenses in which we have lost thousands of our brave men and women in uniform and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

Perhaps we would not have had an energy policy drawn up in secret with oil company executives that has led to gas prices of more than three dollars per gallon.

Perhaps, if we had a little oversight, we wouldn't have a prescription drug plan written by the pharmaceutical companies, that prohibits the government from negotiating for lower prices with the same drug companies, and that no one really understands.

Perhaps, if we had a little oversight, we would know the extent to which our own government is spying on our phone calls, emails and other communications, contrary to the law of the land.

Read Conyers full post here

Steven Colbert review

I assume that most of you are aware of the scathing performance which comedian Steven Colbert put on at the recent White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington. I haven't posted about it previously, precisely because it has been so widely reported and analyzed. But the Washington Post's indespensible Dan Froomkin has a superb overview, which you might like to read in order to catch up.

"To the audience that would watch Colbert on Comedy Central, the pained, uncomfortable, perhaps-a-little-scared-to-laugh reaction shots were not signs of failure. They were the money shots. They were the whole point."

–Time TV critic James Poniewozik

[snip]

Former Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal writes in Salon: "Some in the press understand the peril posed to the First Amendment by an imperial president trying to smother the constitutional system of checks and balances. For those of the Washington press corps who reproved a court jester for his irreverence, the game of status is apparently more urgent than the danger to liberty. But it's no laughing matter."

Froomkin's full piece can be found here

"paralyzed by cowardice"

Josh Marshall condenses, with the help of George Packer, the awful truth of Bush's approach to the Iraq war:

It is with a special anguish that I now read George Packer's New Yorker dispatches on Iraq. But I thought George captured the moral dimension of our current national predicament in one sentence in his piece in this week's Talk of the Town, where he describes the president's strategy as "muddling through the rest of the Bush Presidency, without being forced to admit defeat, until January of 2009, when the war will become a new President's problem."

This really is the issue. Brazen it out, burn off men and money, not admit there's any real problem and then pass it off on the next guy who will take the blame.

The president lacks the courage to change course. The whole country is paralyzed by his cowardice.

Read Packer's piece here, and Josh at TPM

100,000 dead

Forget the official estimates. Serious, seasoned reporters, who have spent many months at a time in Iraq, put the death toll in its proper perspective:

"If one counts excess mortality from collapsed healthcare, polluted water, poverty and the like - at least 100,000 Iraqis have died since the US invaded Iraq," Christian Parenti, author of the book The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq wrote me this week. Parenti, who has reported for over 5 months from Iraq and is a regularly contributor to The Nation magazine, added, "How many people have been killed by US troops? How many in sectarian violence? It's impossible to say, but the point is this: Iraq has been destroyed by the US invasion and the process of its disintegration will go on for years. It is a horror no matter what the numbers are."

David Enders, an American freelance journalist who has spent 18 months reporting from Iraq and author of the book Baghdad Bulletin, told me yesterday, "I visited the Baghdad morgue, and they were receiving between 30-40 bodies every day. That didn't include car bombs and people who'd died for obvious reasons. That was more than a year ago, and that was just for Baghdad. I think it's probably safe to say that well over 100,000 Iraqis have died during the occupation."

Read the full, terrible report from Dahr Jamail at truthout.org

Lt. General Odom: "Cut and Run? You Bet."

Lt. Gen. William E. Odom (Ret.), senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University, has written an article for the new issue of Foreign Policy. Here's the gist:

Two facts, however painful, must be recognized, or we will remain perilously confused in Iraq. First, invading Iraq was not in the interests of the United States. It was in the interests of Iran and al Qaeda. For Iran, it avenged a grudge against Saddam for his invasion of the country in 1980. For al Qaeda, it made it easier to kill Americans. Second, the war has paralyzed the United States in the world diplomatically and strategically. Although relations with Europe show signs of marginal improvement, the trans-Atlantic alliance still may not survive the war. Only with a rapid withdrawal from Iraq will Washington regain diplomatic and military mobility. Tied down like Gulliver in the sands of Mesopotamia, we simply cannot attract the diplomatic and military cooperation necessary to win the real battle against terror. Getting out of Iraq is the precondition for any improvement.

Read Odom's full article at Foreign Policy

Scott Ritter on Iran

As most of you know, Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector, was almost completely correct when he raised specific warning flags prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Recently, Ritter has been speaking out on Iran, and we should pay attention.

Just how naive can Europe be? While public sentiment against the US-led invasion (and ongoing occupation) of Iraq remains high, manifesting itself in the reduction of the original "coalition of the willing" to pathetic levels, Europe ("old" and "new") continues to behave as if the current conflict with Iraq and the potential of future conflict with Iran remain two separate and distinct issues.

It is shocking to see European officials, skilled in the heavily nuanced world of EU diplomacy, accept without question the sophomoric equivocation by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice that "Iran is not Iraq". This phrase has been used repeatedly by Rice to deflect any query as to whether or not there are any parallels between the current US "diplomatic" stance on Iran and the "diplomacy" undertaken in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, which has widely been acknowledged as representing little more than a smokescreen behind which the Bush administration prepared for a war already decided upon.

Read Ritter's full post on The Guardian (UK) on-line

not just purses anymore

BEIJING — At first it seemed to be nothing more than a routine case of counterfeiting in a country where faking it has become an industry.

In mid-2004, managers at the Tokyo headquarters of the Japanese electronics giant NEC started receiving reports that pirated keyboards and blank CD and DVD discs bearing the company's brand were on sale in retail outlets in Beijing and Hong Kong. So like many other manufacturers combating intellectual property thieves in China, the company hired an investigator to track down the pirates.

After two years and thousands of hours of investigation in conjunction with law enforcement agencies in China, Taiwan and Japan, the company said it had uncovered something far more ambitious than clandestine workshops turning out inferior copies of NEC products.

The pirates were faking the entire company.

Evidence seized in raids on 18 factories and warehouses in China and Taiwan over the past year showed that the counterfeiters had set up what amounted to a parallel NEC brand with links to a network of more than 50 electronics factories in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Read the full NY Times article here

the spirit of judy miller lives on

The release of suspects from Guantánamo Bay has been stymied by concerns that the prisoners may not be treated humanely by their own governments.

–NY Times, April 30, 2006 (link)

A former US soldier who worked on interrogations at Guantanamo Bay has written a damning expose of the brutal, degrading treatment he says was meted out to prisoners there.

–BBC News, May 9, 2005 (link)

Detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were shackled to the floor in fetal positions for more than 24 hours at a time, left without food and water, and allowed to defecate on themselves, an FBI agent who said he witnessed such abuse reported in a memo to supervisors, according to documents released yesterday.

In memos over a two-year period that ended in August, FBI agents and officials also said that they witnessed the use of growling dogs at Guantanamo Bay to intimidate detainees -- contrary to previous statements by senior Defense Department officials -- and that one detainee was wrapped in an Israeli flag and bombarded with loud music in an apparent attempt to soften his resistance to interrogation.

–Washington Post, December 21, 2004 (link)

It really does illustrate the surreal times we live in when the above lede would be more appropriately placed in The Onion ("America's Finest [satirical] News Source"), rather than the front page of today's NY Times.

As an aside, I wonder what percentage of the prisoners whose release has been stymied share those concerns?

best headline/photo combo of the year

If intentional, the AP deserves a Pulitzer. Link to the original article

america: A great nation?

A great nation is like a great man:
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults
as his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy
as the shadow he himself casts.

–Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Thanks to Chris Floyd

republican politics in a nutshell

House Speaker Dennis Hastert waddles from an alternative (hydrogen) fueled vehicle, which he cynically used as part of a photo-op today, to his massive, gas-guzzling SUV.

Politicians like Hastert assume that most of the public is stupid, and the past six years' election results seem to confirm that assumption. Many people are finally beginning to pay attention, however, and here's yet another wake-up call. Let's prove them wrong in November.

Read the story here, and a special thanks to AP Photographer Pablo Martinez Monsivais for the above classic

remember the good ol' days?

You know, early in Bush's first term, when the number of scandals was actually manageable? One of those early scandals, which foreshadowed the sordid, tripartite theme (i.e. arrogance, secrecy, and mendacity) which will ultimately define this administration, was Dick Cheney's refusal to disclose what went on in his meetings with energy company representatives when he was "crafting a national energy policy". Well, Steve Clemons is absolutely right to rekindle the issue, and Democrats (plus any politicians who care about the country more than their party) should act on it.

Oil barons are inappropriately lining their coffers with mountains of dollars from American citizens by generating oligopolistic cartel conditions on the price of refined oil and gasoline. Yesterday, Exxon posted a first-quarter profit of $8.4 billion and is on track to outpace the most profitable year in its history.

Dems and other outraged Americans should beat on the oil and gas industry and immediately suspend all tax giveaways that we have arranged for an industry that is sucking away a greater share of the meager resources of America's struggling middle class and less well off families.

The combination of Katrina damage in the Gulf and the increased drumbeat for a hot strike against Iran have given oil firms the camouflage they need to drive prices higher in an implicitly organized cartel. The government -- even with competent investigations -- will be unable to do much in this environment.

But no one seems to be going back and pounding on Dick Cheney again to demand once more -- Supreme Court decision or not -- that he disclose what America's energy firms sought from him, what they advised him, what was bartered between his office and the energy firms in secret meetings when assembling a "national energy policy."

Read Steve's full post here

the ~~emperor~~ secretary of state has no clothes

"In order to be credible the Security Council has to act," Rice told reporters at the NATO session. "The Security Council is the primary and most important institution for the maintenance of peace and stability and security and it cannot have its word and its will simply ignored by a member state."

–Condoleeza Rice on Iran, April 28, 2006

Unless, of course, that member state happens to be the U.S...

The 15-member United Nations Security Council did not authorize the March 19, 2003 attack on Iraq. It unanimously passed Resolution 1441 on November 8, 2002, calling for new inspections intended to find and eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. (The Arms Control Association provides a chronology of previous weapons inspections in Iraq.) Iraq accepted the renewed inspections, which were to be carried out by UNMOVIC and the IAEA. Under the terms of the resolution, if Iraq obstructed their work, the chief inspectors were to report promptly back to the Security Council, which would "convene immediately" to consider the situation and "the need for full compliance." The resolution also threatened "serious consequences" if Iraq failed to comply.

The United States, backed by Britain and Spain, began to seek a second U.N. resolution to declare Iraq in material breach of its obligation to disarm. Veto-wielding permanent members France, Russia and China, as well as a number of other members, preferred to give inspectors more time on the premise that inspections were working. Up against a deeply divided Council, the U.S. pulled its proposal on March 17.

–Overview (including sources) from HRCR

The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, declared explicitly for the first time last night that the US-led war on Iraq was illegal.

Mr Annan said that the invasion was not sanctioned by the UN security council or in accordance with the UN's founding charter. In an interview with the BBC World Service broadcast last night, he was asked outright if the war was illegal. He replied: "Yes, if you wish."

He then added unequivocally: "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view and from the charter point of view it was illegal."

–The Guardian (UK) September 16, 2004

human rights watch briefing paper

A couple of conclusions in the report:

The DAA Project has documented over 330 cases in which U.S. military and civilian personnel are credibly alleged to have abused or killed detainees. These cases involve more than 600 U.S. personnel and over 460 detainees. Allegations have come from U.S. facilities throughout Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay. (These numbers are conservative and likely lower than the actual number of credible allegations of abuse...)

[snip]

No U.S. military officer has been held accountable for criminal acts committed by subordinates under the doctrine of command responsibility. That doctrine provides that a superior is responsible for the criminal acts of subordinates if the superior knew or should have known that the crimes were being committed and failed to take steps to prevent them or to punish the perpetrators. Only three officers have been convicted by court-martial for detainee abuse; in all three instances, they were convicted for abuses in which they directly participated, not for their responsibility as commanders.

Review the full HRW report here

More politics? click here!

•••

books