You’d think, to hear the Dubby talk, that there might be good news to report from Iraq — not. For all the Islamo-terrorism fearspeak the GOP has been shouting in the last few days, fewer than 15% of the insurgency is “foreign.” The rest just want their damned country back. As would we. Meanwhile, civilian deaths in Iraq are going unreported here, with the Pentagon refusing to add casualties from car bombs to the stat’s, and some are reporting nearly 100 bombings a WEEK. With those deaths unrecorded, the Pentagon can announce fewer sectarian killings.
This post will cover several issues — what’s up with torture lately; what’s actually going on in-country, and how its being manipulated for public consumption. The good news is that there is at least as much backlash against the smoke and mirrors as there is PR being produced.
I haven’t posted on Bill Moyers special about the rush to war earlier in the week, but it was dynamite — it held the press accountable, it interviewed those whom it deemed compliant with the Bushy rhetoric and it pointed out case after case of knee-jerk patriotic fervor that took us into preemption. As you can guess, this presentation didn’t get the coverage we would have liked in MSM — but when you have reporters like Dan Rather and Tim Russet explaining themselves, you have the attention of both insiders and issue-followers. It can’t go ignored. By the way, the presentation offered major kudos to McClatchy reporters for not sucking up the Kool Aid, presenting their publication[s] as the one print vehicle that offered optional fare. I was glad to see them singled out in public awareness — it’s easy to define patriots these days, and those guys qualified.
Bush, faced with a Congress that has passed a time-line in both Senate and House, is preparing his veto as we speak; in fact, he’s on tv right now chiding the nation that we shouldn’t be telling Generals how to fight the war … that’s his new sound bite … but it should not be forgotten that he threw out the cooler heads and got him a gen-u-ine factotum in David Petraeus, who has taken on a kind of saintly virtue for the near-hysterical Pubs — he’s the last man standing, and we all know it. I saw him interviewed last night on Charlie Rose and he’s impressive enough, has an excellent grasp on the political problems, but he’s behind the 8-ball, isn’t he. The issue isn’t can we win the war in the next six months — it’s can we win the peace; in order to do that [and it has only the slightest glimmer of happening but a glimmer, still] we would have to be there for years. And THAT is what Bush’s general is planning. Note, mentioned in a couple of articles below, the pricey new prisons and bases we’ve built on occupied soil; George doesn’t think he’s leaving. I trust we can disappoint him.
Again and again, in discussion of missing benchmarks, we hear that Iraqi’s are still not dispersing fairly-shared oil revenues. Turns out, we’ve recently discovered that Iraq is sitting on the world’s third-largest oil reserve — fancy that! Shocked, aren’t you? As gas prices climb for the 11th straight week in the US of A, and much-needed billions are wrenched away from homegrown needs, the Iraqi’s are shareholder in riches they’ll likely never see.
We’ll start with a Fiore ‘toon to set the mood.
Jude
Outta’ Africa
Mark Fiore
04.19.07
Karen Greenberg asks, Will Gitmo Be with Us Forever?
Tom Engelhardt, Tomgram
Apr 27 2007
Back in September 2006, I wrote a post, “The Facts on the Ground, Mini-Gulags, Hired Guns, Lobbyists, and a Reality Built on Fear,” in which I wondered whether any new administration, any new president would ever be able to take real steps toward ridding our world of the realities created by the Bush administration — like, for instance, our second “Defense Department,” the sprawling, ill-organized, incompetent Department of Homeland Security (and the billions and billions of dollars in “security” interests that have already grown up around it), or the military’s unprecedented new North American Command (Northcom).
Noting that a little publicized $30-million maximum-security wing at Guantanamo was just then being completed by the U.S. Navy and that the American prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan had also just undergone an upgrade (as more recently has Camp Cropper, one of our two main prisons in Iraq), I wondered whether a future president would even be capable of shutting down Guantanamo, no less our whole secret, offshore Bermuda Triangle of injustice (and the various “extraordinary rendition” operations that go with it).
As that question refused to quit my brain, I finally asked Karen J. Greenberg, Tomdispatch regular, recent visitor to Guantanamo, co-editor of The Torture Papers, and Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law, to give the problem some serious thought. It seemed to me that a president who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, shut down Guantanamo would be unlikely to do much else that really mattered in our world. Here is her measured response. Any bets on whether it happens? — Tom
* * *
Can Guantanamo Be Closed? What a New President Could Do
By Karen J. Greenberg
A surprising number of Americans of note are in agreement. Guantanamo should be closed. The New York Times and the human rights community have, of course, called for it to be shut down, but so has the new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. So has President Bush. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has given indications that she seconds Bush’s call. Senator John McCain has said he would close the prison immediately upon becoming president.
On the Democratic side, while John Edwards and Bill Richardson have both called for Guantanamo’s closing, the larger field of Democratic candidates has remained curiously silent on the subject. Do they know something we don’t? Admittedly, one Democratic Congressman, James Moran of Virginia, has mentioned the possibility of including funds to close Guantanamo in the 2008 Defense Appropriations Bill, but the leading Democratic presidential hopefuls have as yet said very little about Guantanamo.
Perhaps they sense the Pandora’s box of conundrums that would be unleashed in any genuine attempt to shut the place down. It’s easy enough — almost a no-brainer — to say you want to close Guantanamo. After all, along with those photos from Abu Ghraib, the now-infamous extra-legal detention facility in Cuba has made the American government globally synonymous with the revocation of international law, the disregard of U.S. law, and the torture and abuse of prisoners or, as the Bush administration prefers to call them, “unlawful enemy combatants.”
Actually closing Gitmo, however, is another matter entirely. The hard part is fleshing out the next thought: How exactly would you go about it? As Secretary of State Rice said recently, “The president would close Guantánamo tomorrow if someone could answer the question: And what will you do with the dangerous people who are there?” Congressman John Murtha has made a similar point: Knowing how to shut down Guantanamo — given the set of nearly intractable legal knots the Bush administration has tied the prison complex and its detainees up in — is “not that easy.”
Perhaps those Democratic presidential candidates, realizing exactly this, are only waiting for some direction on the subject. So let’s do our best to separate the wheat from the chaff and focus on what it would really take to move beyond words to action, when it comes to the most notorious prison complex on planet Earth.
First, let’s get clear just what — and who — we’re talking about. Forget those fourteen “high value” detainees, including Ramsi Binalshibh and Khaled Sheik Mohammed, whom the President suddenly transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006 — finally, five years late, bringing the “worst of the worst” to the facility (as the administration had promised to do at its opening). These 14 are almost certain to be tried and convicted before this administration leaves office under the much-redesigned, jerry-rigged military commissions process it already has shakily in place.
Let’s forget as well the nearly 100 detainees who have been cleared for transfer or release, many of them now in a new category — “No Longer Enemy Combatants” — and all of them waiting (and waiting and waiting) for the State Department to find countries willing enough to take them in. Nor are we talking about the 65 to 70 detainees who are considered culpable enough to be tried by some sort of military commission before January 2009.
The real problem — the conundrum wrapped in an enigma — comes with another group. At present, there are in Gitmo perhaps 160 detainees (as the public affairs staff at the facility told me), who will most likely never be charged, never be tried, and may nonetheless never be sent home. It’s a category without a name, or really any precedent — a category that all too conveniently defies solution and so keeps Guantanamo in operation.
For all prospective Gitmo closers, then, the question is: What are we going to do with individuals the Bush administration doesn’t pretend to have sufficient evidence to try (even under its own deficient military commission process), but who, officials claim, are too full of potentially useful information to release? There are a few ideas floating around out there.
There is the suggestion that we transfer them to military prisons inside the United States. Sen. McCain suggested Fort Leavenworth in Kansas; Congressman Moran has urged military brigs in the five states within the jurisdiction of the extremely conservative 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which might be likely to look the other way as prisoners are detained on American soil without recourse of any sort for the rest of their lives.
The other choices are stark: Return these detainees to their countries of origin; find an unlikely third country willing to accept them (possibly in return for some kind of financial quid pro quo) and not likely to torture them; or, of course, when all else fails and the obvious alternatives (each of which presents its own set of problems) seem to lead nowhere, leave them where they are — and leave Gitmo open for business.
So let’s try a little harder. How could a new president extricate us from this mess? The next occupant of the White House should start by accepting the following very American principle: Those who are not going to be charged with a crime should be returned to their home country, a third country, or the country where they were initially captured .
Behind this principle lies a reality which must also be accepted. The current Guantanamo debacle has little to do with the rule of law, the Geneva Conventions, or even, for that matter, a realistic assessment of the more pressing terrorist threats to the United States. At its heart of hearts lies a simple fear of political embarrassment.
U.S. officials have consistently held that they are guarding vital national security interests by keeping the never-to-be-charged detainees in custody. However, the sad truth is that, when it comes to most of these prisoners, what’s really been at stake is the administration’s need to save face by concealing its utter ineptitude.
Privately, even Bush administration officials will acknowledge that the detainees were captured and sent to Gitmo capriciously. Rather than housing the “worst of the worst” (as the administration has regularly bragged), Gitmo penned up the easiest to grab, especially in Afghanistan. Often these were simply the individuals that local bounty hunters could provide or who were found on or near the battlefield. Many were put on planes to Guantanamo based on nothing but an American unwillingness to assert with confidence that they would never be a threat to the United States. Instead of masterminds, what the Bush administration netted were cooks, chauffeurs, wanderers, the mentally deranged, and — sometimes — children.
When an administration defiantly adverse to ever admitting error decided not to send home those who had been seized by mistake, it set itself a trap that it has been unable to escape to this day. Any presidential candidates who hope not to be similarly trapped might consider the following:
The Bush administration is already releasing the wrongly detained. Detainee by detainee, it has been quietly whittling away at its mistakes, sending home 385 detainees who look no more or less guilty than those remaining in custody.
Releasing all detainees who are not going to be charged restores judgment and the rule of law where irrational fear and a Commander-in-Chief presidency have reigned supreme. When asked to explain the threat posed by such detainees, officials and public relations officers at Guantanamo are quick to name the kind of venomous hate-speech that leaps from the mouths of people imprisoned without hope, under generally horrific conditions, for year upon year. The most notorious example of the supposed dangers posed by these detainees has been the Australian kangaroo skinner and Taliban convert David Hicks, who supposedly threatened to hurt American guards and their families if ever released. But there are undoubtedly plenty of other examples as well. Consistently, Guantanamo officials have acted as if angry words held magical powers, as if talking jihad could make it happen. Unfortunately, Gitmo is, by now, a delusional system in a non-judicial bubble, lacking any calming, rational presence, or anyone who can distinguish between something as simple as an angry rant and serious danger.
It is time to return to a system in which terrorists are tried in courts based on actual evidence. Unless this principle is accepted, Guantanamo won’t be closed because there will always be U.S. prisoners who can’t be tried and will never be freed.
A corollary to this that must be accepted is: There can be no absolute guarantee that some of the 160 former detainees, once freed and returned, won’t commit acts of terror. But in the exponential growth of terrorist threats in recent years, particularly in the wake of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, a few of these small fry simply don’t add up to a significant menace. After five years of interrogation, incarceration, and often long periods of isolation, many of them are, in any case, now deemed broken men. If any of them do prove threatening, let them be captured anew and tried for actual acts or plans on any of the many legal grounds available to law enforcement.
To shut Guantanamo, a future president would have to accede to another proposition as well: Those at Gitmo convicted of crimes should serve their sentences in U.S. military prisons on U.S. soil. Opponents insist that this would “endanger” Americans. According to Senator Jim DeMint, “To bring known terrorists, many of whom have killed Americans, to our shores risks the lives of additional Americans and encourages more attacks on our soil.” Does Senator DeMint actually believe this? Does he truly consider the U.S. military incapable of keeping convicted prisoners under lock and key? How would a future president weigh such doubts against the giant sigh of relief the world at large would heave when the last door opened on the last cell in Guantanamo?
There is one additional point — so self-evident that, to date, no one has thought to mention it — all candidates should agree on: Bring no new prisoners to Guantanamo.
Earlier this year, I spoke with a group of burka-clad Muslim women in London who feared that friends or family members now in custody might be transferred to Guantanamo. I dismissed their comments as outdated and their fears as misplaced.
I assured them that, outside of the 14 high-value detainees, the Bush administration hasn’t sent a single new prisoner to Guantanamo since late 2004. But, as it turned out, they knew something I didn’t. Last month, a little story appeared in the back pages of some American newspapers. The United States had indeed moved its first new captive to Guantanamo in over two years — and, according to the Washington buzz, more such detainees can be expected sooner or later, either from a war in Iran or some other “front” in the administration’s global counterterrorism offensive.
To sum up: Separate Guantanamo from a new detention policy based on the rule of law.
It would behoove the next president — and benefit the nation — to close Guantanamo as a sign of starting anew. It should be the first order of global business for anyone entering the Oval Office. The next order of business should be the formation of a bipartisan commission to help settle national policy on the detention of foreign prisoners in any future anti-terror operations. The sooner this commission is formed, the better.
And here’s one final piece of advice: These days it may seem un-American, but perhaps a simple, heartfelt apology to the angry innocents who were held all these years might be in order. More than anything, what Guantanamo needs is an American president with genuine guts, a man or woman who is willing to demonstrate that leadership is about making the hard choices, knowledgeably, openly, and with accountability.
Karen J. Greenberg is the Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law and the editor of The Torture Debate in America and (with Joshua Dratel) The Torture Papers.
Senators Vow to Restore Rights to Detainees
Susan Cornwell, Reuters
Thursday 26 April 2007
Influential U.S. senators vowed on Thursday to restore to foreign terrorism suspects the right to challenge their imprisonment, saying Congress made an historic blunder by stripping them of that right last year.
Hundreds of suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members held at a U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be affected.
The United States has drawn international criticism over its continued detention of terrorism suspects in Guantanamo, with human rights groups demanding the prison be closed and detainees charged with crimes or released.
Last year’s Congress, with a Republican majority, passed a law setting specific rules for U.S. military tribunals. It included a ban on non-citizens labeled “enemy combatants” from using “habeas corpus” petitions to challenge the legality of their detention in court, asserting that military panels at Guantanamo were a substitute for court review.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy warned that the rights of some 12 million legal aliens in the United States - as well as any foreigners visiting the country - had also been infringed by the new law.
“This new law means that any of these people can be detained forever … without any ability to challenge their detention in federal court, or anywhere else, simply on the government’s say-so that they are awaiting determination as to whether they are enemy combatants,” the Vermont Democrat said.
“This is wrong. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American,” Leahy said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which would share jurisdiction on changing the law.
“Serious and Corrosive Problem”
A Defense Department lawyer and some committee Republicans said the law should be allowed to work and be examined by U.S. courts before Congress acts again.
“Detention of enemy combatants in wartime is not criminal punishment and therefore does not require that the individual be charged or tried in a court of law,” said Daniel Dell’Orto, principal deputy general counsel at the Pentagon.
Leahy, along with Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, has introduced legislation to restore habeas corpus right to detainees. With the help of Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, “I hope we can fix this serious and corrosive problem by this summer,” Leahy said.
Levin, a Michigan Democrat, agreed “we have an obligation to act now to establish a process that we can defend.”
The writ of habeas corpus - the phrase in Latin for “you have the body” - has been a centerpiece of Anglo-American jurisprudence since it was first developed over 300 years ago in Britain. It gives defendants the right to have their imprisonment reviewed by a court.
Administration officials say that some of those at Guantanamo have pledged to attack the United States again if released. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recommended that Congress discuss with President George W. Bush ways to close the military prison without freeing the most dangerous detainees.
The congressional hearing occurred as civil liberties groups criticized an administration proposal to restrict the number of meetings between Guantanamo prisoners and their lawyers and to limit the attorneys’ access to some classified evidence in their cases.
“Creating a legal black hole where rights are denied is as un-American as it is illegal,” said Anthony Romero, of the American Civil Liberties Union.
A U.S. appeals court has scheduled a hearing on May 15 to consider the administration’s proposed restrictions.
U.S. Officials Exclude Car Bombs in Touting Drop in Iraq Violence
Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers
Thursday, April 26, 2007
WASHINGTON - U.S. officials who say there has been a dramatic drop in sectarian violence in Iraq since President Bush began sending more American troops into Baghdad aren’t counting one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians.Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn’t include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. “If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory,” he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose.
Others, however, say that not counting bombing victims skews the evidence of how well the Baghdad security plan is protecting the civilian population - one of the surge’s main goals.
“Since the administration keeps saying that failure is not an option, they are redefining success in a way that suits them,” said James Denselow, an Iraq specialist at London-based Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank.
Bush administration officials have pointed to a dramatic decline in one category of deaths - the bodies dumped daily in Baghdad streets, which officials call sectarian murders - as evidence that the security plan is working. Bush said this week that that number had declined by 50 percent, a number confirmed by statistics compiled by McClatchy Newspapers.
But the number of people killed in explosive attacks is rising, the same statistics show - up from 323 in March, the first full month of the security plan, to 365 through April 24.
Overall, statistics indicate that the number of violent deaths has declined significantly since December, when 1,391 people died in Baghdad, either executed and found dead on the street or killed by bomb blasts. That number was 796 in March and 691 through April 24.
Nearly all of that decline, however, can be attributed to a drop in executions, most of which were blamed on Shiite Muslim militias aligned with the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Much of the decline occurred before the security plan began on Feb. 15, and since then radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered his Mahdi Army militia to stand down.
According to the statistics, which McClatchy reporters in Baghdad compile daily from Iraqi police reports, 1,030 bodies were found in December. In January, that number declined 32 percent, to 699. It declined to 596 February and again to 473 in March.
Deaths from car bombings and improvised explosive devices, however, increased from 361 in December to a peak of 520 in February before dropping to 323 in March.
In that same period, the number of bombings has increased, as well. In December, there were 65 explosive attacks. That number was unchanged in January, but it rose to 72 in February, 74 in March and 81 through April 24.
U.S. officials blame the bombings largely on al-Qaida, which they say is hoping to provoke sectarian conflict by targeting Shiite neighborhoods with massive explosions.
Ryan Crocker, who became the U.S. ambassador in Iraq this month, said the bombings are a reaction to the surge of additional U.S. troops into Baghdad.
“The terrorists like al-Qaida would make their own surge,” Crocker said this week.
U.S. officials have said that they don’t expect the security plan to stop bombings.
“I don’t think you’re ever going to get rid of all the car bombs,” Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said this week. “Iraq is going to have to learn as did, say, Northern Ireland, to live with some degree of sensational attacks.”
But some think that approach could backfire, with Iraqis eventually blaming the Americans for failing to stop bombings.
“To win, the insurgents just have to prove they are not losing,” said Denselow, of London’s Chatham House.
Experts who have studied car bombings say it’s no surprise that U.S. officials would want to exclude their victims from any measure of success.
Car bombs are almost impossible to detect and stop, particularly in a traffic-jammed city such as Baghdad. U.S. officials in Baghdad concede that while they’ve found scores of car bomb factories in Iraq, they’ve made only a small dent in the manufacturing of these weapons.
Mike Davis, who recently wrote a history of car bombs, said that once car bombs are introduced into a conflict, they’re all but impossible to eradicate. A few people with rudimentary skills can assemble one with massive effect.
“They really don’t have to be very sophisticated; they just have to be very big,” Davis said.
Davis said checkpoints are useful in detecting car bombs “until they blow up the checkpoint,” and erecting walls is not practically feasible in communities. When U.S. officials proposed building walls around Baghdad’s most troubled neighborhoods to fend off car bomb attacks, residents balked, saying the walls would further divide the city along sectarian lines.
Bombers also have shown that they can adapt quickly. When the U.S. military blocked off markets to vehicular traffic, bombers wearing explosive vests were able to walk into the areas.
Finding a defense against car bombs has fallen to the Joint IED Defeat Organization, a Pentagon task force created in 2003 to find ways to protect U.S. troops from roadside bombs, which remain the No. 1 killer of Americans in Iraq.
But car bombs aren’t the primary killer of American service members, said Christine Devries, the task force’s spokeswoman. Roadside bombs are.
ABOUT IRAQI CIVILIAN CASUALTIES
There are no authoritative statistics on Iraqi civilian casualties. The Iraq Study Group in its report last year found that the Pentagon routinely underreports violence. Other groups have criticized the Iraqi government’s statistics as unreliable - a moot point since the government recently stopped releasing comprehensive totals. On Wednesday, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq chastised the Iraqi government for withholding statistics on sectarian violence.
One study, conducted by Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health and Mustansiriyah University in Baghdad, estimated that 78,000 Iraqis were killed by car bombings between March 2003 and June 2006.
Iraq Body Count, which keeps statistics based on news reports, finds that there have been just over 1,050 car bombs that have killed more than one person since August 2003, when a car bomb detonated in front of what was the United Nations headquarters, killing 17.
McClatchy gathers its statistics daily from police contacts, and while they’re not comprehensive, they’re collected the same way every day.
A roundup of Iraq violence is posted daily on the McClatchy Washington Bureau Web site, click on Iraq War Coverage.
Colonel accused of aiding enemy in Iraq
KIM GAMEL, AP
Thu Apr 26
BAGHDAD - A U.S. officer has been accused of aiding the enemy — a charge that carries the death penalty — for allegedly providing an unmonitored cell phone to detainees while he commanded an MP detachment at the jail that held Saddam Hussein, the military said Thursday.
Army Lt. Col. William H. Steele faces nine charges in all, including fraternizing with a prisoner’s daughter, storing and marking classified material, maintaining an inappropriate relationship with an interpreter and possessing pornographic videos.
The rare charges were among the most serious levied against a senior American officer in Iraq, but were the latest in a series of embarrassments for the U.S. military detention system here.
The alleged incidents occurred from October 2005 to this February, starting when Steele was commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment at Camp Cropper on the western outskirts of Baghdad and in his later post as a senior patrol officer for the provincial transition team headquarters at nearby Camp Victory, the main U.S. military base.
Steele was detained in March and is being held in Kuwait pending an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury hearing, officials said. His age and hometown were not released.
The U.S. military command declined to comment on the case but stressed nothing had been proven. “These are troublesome allegations, but again they are just allegations at the moment,” the main U.S. military spokesman, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, told The Associated Press Radio.
The most serious charge, aiding the enemy, was tied to Steele’s time at the jail at Camp Cropper.
Military officials refused to give any details about the charge, including who used the phone and how.
Saddam spent most of his final days at the Camp Cropper jail before his Dec. 30 execution at an Iraqi military base in northern Baghdad, and many members of his regime remain among the facility’s 3,000 or so prisoners.
A new, $60 million jail opened at the base in August and many inmates were transferred there from Abu Ghraib prison, which was closed and transferred to Iraqi control after gaining notoriety for widely publicized photographs of American guards and interrogators abusing detainees.
Steele served at Camp Cropper from October 2005 through the end of October 2006, after which he transferred to Camp Victory with the 89th Military Police Brigade, said a military spokesman, Lt. Col. James Hutton. He was arrested while based at Camp Victory, the spokesman said.
Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said the charge of aiding the enemy “could cover a multitude of sins,” but he said a prosecutor would be hard pressed to get a death sentence without showing “evidence that the purpose was really to aid the enemy and hurt our side.”
However, he added, Steele could be found guilty regardless of his intent in loaning the phone to a detainee — “even if he thought the detainee was calling his wife’s allergist” — as long as the phone calls helped the detainee or some enemy.
Steele also is accused of fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee toward the end of his tenure at Camp Cropper and during his subsequent posting at Camp Victory.
Other charges stemming from his tenure at Camp Victory include failing to obey an order by an MP deputy commander and possessing pornographic videos. He also is charged with failing to fulfill his obligations in the expenditure of funds, the military said without elaboration.
Hutton declined to provide more details on the charges, saying the investigation was still under way.
In a similar case, a Muslim chaplain in the Army, Capt. James Yee, was charged in 2003 with mishandling classified material, failing to obey an order, making a false official statement, adultery and conduct unbecoming an officer after the military linked him to a possible espionage ring at the Guantanamo Bay prison where suspected terrorists are housed.
All criminal charges were dismissed in March 2004, but Army officials found Yee guilty of the non-criminal charges of adultery and downloading pornography. But the reprimand he received was thrown out by a general a month later and he later received an honorable discharge.
Associated Press writer Sarah DiLorenzo in New York contributed to this report.
Blow to Bush as top US commander warns of worse to come in Iraq
· Democrat resolve stiffened in battle over funding
· Senate backs plans for early troop withdrawal
Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian UK
Friday April 27, 2007
The top US commander in Iraq admitted yesterday that the conflict would “get harder before it gets easier”, providing further ammunition for Democrats determined to face down George Bush in their constitutional clash over the Iraq war.
Hours before the Senate passed legislation ordering troops to start leaving Iraq by October, General David Petraeus said the conflict was “the most complex and challenging I have ever seen”. Gen Petraeus, who was put in charge of the Baghdad troop “surge” to pacify the Iraqi capital, warned of the enormous commitment and sacrifice facing the US in Iraq.
His downbeat assessment, in contrast with Mr Bush’s optimistic statements, stiffened the resolve of Democrats in Congress pushing for an early withdrawal of US troops. Yesterday the Senate followed the House of Representatives in backing legislation that calls for most US troops to be out by spring 2008.
The bill is expected to land on Mr Bush’s table on Tuesday, the fourth anniversary of the speech in which he prematurely declared an end to hostilities. Under the legislation billions of dollars of military funding will be withheld unless Mr Bush sets in motion the withdrawal timetable.
The White House, which has described the bill as a timetable for surrender, reiterated yesterday that Mr Bush would veto it. As the Democrats do not have the two-thirds majority needed to overturn the veto, a stand-off is inevitable.
Democratic members of Congress claim the “surge” is doomed to failure, a scepticism shared by some Republicans.
Gen Petraeus returned to Washington this week to brief the president and members of Congress. Although he agreed with Mr Bush that there had been some improvements in the two months since the arrival of US reinforcements, he also stressed that the achievements “have not come without sacrifice”. He noted the increasing use of car bombs and suicide attacks has “led to greater US losses” and Iraqi military casualties. Suicide bombers claimed the lives of nine US paratroopers this week, while last week witnessed the deadliest single suicide bombing in Baghdad, when 140 died in a market attack.
Asked how long the US would have to remain in Iraq, he said he could not anticipate what the level “might be some years down the road”.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House speaker, said: “The sacrifices borne by our troops and their families demand more than the blank cheques the president is asking for, for a war without end.”
In reality, the Democrats will not choke off funds to US troops in the field. But they will try to force Mr Bush to compromise. One route being discussed by Democrats would be to set benchmarks for the Iraqi government to tackle sectarian violence; failure to act fast enough would trigger withdrawal. One step the Democrats are insisting upon would be for the Shia-led Iraqi government to agree a fair formula for sharing oil revenues with other groups.
Despair stalks Baghdad as plan falters
The US surge involves intelligence-led raids to track down militants
Andrew North, BBC News
Baghdad - Trying to get into the centre of Baghdad earlier this week offered one view of how far away the Americans and Iraqi authorities are from gaining control here.
We were at the airport. Just before we were due to leave, the entrance car park was hit by a car bomb.
US troops and private security forces who guard the perimeter locked the whole area down for the next four hours. No traffic was allowed in or out.
While we waited with scores of other vehicles, mortars were fired at the airport. Fortunately for us they landed on the other side of the runway, plumes of smoke shooting into the air.
You won’t have heard about any of this because at the same time a series of other far more serious attacks was taking place.
One was at the Sadriya market in the city centre, where a massive car bomb killed more than 140 people.
The Sunni extremist surge seems to be having more effect than the American one.
Baghdad bombs kill 200
It was placed at the entrance to a set of barriers put up around another part of the market where a previous single bomb, in February, claimed more than 130 lives.
The market blast “did not penetrate the emplaced barriers” a later US military press release helpfully pointed out, ignoring the fact that the bombers had yet again adapted their tactics with vicious perfection - setting off their device at the point where crowds congregated outside and at the very moment when they were busiest.
Bombers ‘organised’
As we drove into the city, we counted six blast holes left by recent roadside bombs along just one 100-metre stretch or road.
A large patch of damaged, blackened Tarmac on a bridge spoke of another attempt to destroy a key crossing.
The Sunni extremists held to be responsible for these attacks seem to be making a mockery of the US and Iraqi security plan, which is now into its third month.
So far, their surge seems to be having more effect than the American one.
Last month alone there were more than 100 car bombings, and the number of attacks has continued at a similar rate so far this month. This indicates a high level of organisation.
This despite the fact that there are many extra US and Iraqi troops in the city now. There are more raids and patrols.
On our drive into the city, we encountered several Iraqi army checkpoints. But almost every vehicle - including ours - was being waved through.
Many new checkpoints have been set up across Baghdad.
But what is their purpose, many Iraqis ask, when they seem to stop so few people?
It is not always encouraging when they do - a couple of times we have been pulled over by Iraqi soldiers who ask us if we have any bullets to give them.
Optimism fading
Just a month ago there was a cautious - very cautious, but still real - sense of optimism among many Baghdadis that the plan was starting to work.
The daily count of bodies found around the city - mostly Sunni victims of targeted sectarian killings - had dropped off significantly.
The Shia militia of Moqtada Sadr, which was blamed for most of these murders, was largely obeying orders to put away its weapons and co-operate with the security plan.
But there is a deadly and familiar equation here.
With official security forces apparently unable to protect Shia communities, pressure is growing on the militias to do so again.
And there are signs their death squads have returned to work. The body count is creeping up again. Twenty were found yesterday.
Dealing with the car bomb is “our top priority”, says US military spokesman Lt Col Chris Garver.
But as ever it is a game of cat and mouse, played with insurgents who are “very adaptive”, and very well-funded.
A man arrested by US soldiers after placing a truck bomb which failed to go off told interrogators he had been paid $30,000 (£15,000) for the task.
Lt Col Garver says the US believes it is up against several “car bombing networks”.
“If there was just one, we might be able to pull the string and unravel it,” he says.
People still have to be patient, he warns, adding a note of optimism.
“We are still not fully staffed,” he says - there are another two months to go until all the extra US troops are in Baghdad.
Exhaustion
But there is frustration too among the Americans at the Iraqi government’s lack of progress on reconciliation - ultimately the only solution to the conflict, most believe.
Key issues include the need to implement a new law on sharing oil revenues, an amnesty programme and limiting the scope of the de-Baathification process. All of these are crucial to winning over Sunnis.
The idea was that the security drive in Baghdad would create “space” for such efforts to get going. But although new laws have been drafted they are a long way from being approved.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates stepped up the pressure over these issues on his visit to Baghdad. In the meantime, the young men and women sent out here to implement President Bush’s plan are paying a heavy price.
An average of 80-90 Americans die each month. And US personnel have just had their tours extended by another three months.
But, as it has always been since the 2003 invasion, it is the Iraqis who suffer most.
No-one knows the exact figures, but at the end of another week of unspeakable, random carnage, hundreds more Iraqi families are grieving.
Exhaustion and despair hang over the country.
And there are no signs of change.
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
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April 27th, 2007