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�Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead�
-Lucille Ball
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
REGISTER TO VOTE
"The time is always right to do what is right"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The "seven social sins": Knowledge without character,
Science without humanity,
Wealth without work,
Commerce without morality,
Politics without principles,
Pleasure without conscience,
Worship without self-sacrifice."
--Gandhi
"We have not inherited the world from our forfathers -
We have borrowed it from our children."
--Kashmiri, proverb
**
If you read the story I linked in yesterday�s entry, you know that the family of Nicholas Berg is mighty upset at our government. This is what appeared to have happened to their son, as they relate the story (I�m unsure what other sources were used for this timeline):
December 2003-Early February 2004:
Berg makes his first trip to Iraq. Berg's family said he wanted to help rebuild Iraq's infrastructure.
March 14, 2004:
Berg returns to Iraq and remains in daily contact with his parents back in Pennsylvania. He does not find work and plans to return home on March 30, according to the Associated Press.
March 24, 2004:
Communication between Berg and his family ends.
March 30:
Berg's father waits at JFK airport in New York for his son, who does not show up.
March 31:
The FBI tells the Berg family that Nicholas had been picked up by Iraqi police in Mosul and transferred to U.S. authority. . .The FBI visited Berg three times while he was in detention and determined he was not involved with criminal or terrorist activities, said the spokesman.
April 5:
The Berg family sues Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department for holding their son without merit.
April 6:
Berg is released from custody, and the lawsuit is abandoned.
April 9:
Berg disappears shortly after telling his parents he would try to leave Iraq as soon as possible.
May 8:
Berg's body is found by an Army patrol on a roadside near Baghdad, and his parents are informed soon after.
May 11, 2004:
The videotaped beheading of Nicholas Berg is posted on an al Qaeda-linked Web site.
- So of course, after all of this was revealed, Rummy�s office had to bring their version of events to light. And here they are:
U.S. Offered Berg a Flight Out of Iraq
By LARA JAKES JORDAN
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. government warned a young American to leave Iraq, and offered him a flight out of the country, a month before his grisly beheading was broadcast on an al-Qaida-linked Web site, officials said.
But authorities in Baghdad denied that Nicholas Berg, 26, was held in U.S. custody before he disappeared in early April, despite claims to the contrary by his family. He had been held by Iraqi police for about two weeks and questioned by FBI agents three times.
The final movements of the telecommunications businessman from suburban Philadelphia remain unclear as officials in Washington and Baghdad try to piece together how Berg crossed paths with a group of Islamic militants who savagely decapitated him in a video released Tuesday bearing the title "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American." It referred to an associate of Osama bin Laden believed to be behind a wave of suicide bombings in Iraq.
Berg's body was found Saturday in Baghdad. Two e-mails he sent to his family and friends show he traveled widely and unguarded throughout Iraq, an unsafe practice rarely done by Westerners.
Shortly before Berg's disappearance, he was warned by the FBI that Iraq was too volatile a place for unprotected American civilians and that he could be harmed, a senior FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday.
On April 10, four days after Berg was released from an Iraqi prison, an American diplomat offered to put him on a flight to Jordan, State Department spokeswoman Kelly Shannon said.
But Berg told the diplomat he "planned to travel overland to Kuwait and would call (his) family from there," Shannon said.
Several days later, around April 12, the diplomat received an e-mail from Berg's family in West Chester, Pa., that "noted he had not been in contact," Shannon said. Staff members at the $30-a-night Al-Fanar Hotel in Baghdad told The Associated Press that Berg stayed there for several days until April 10.
Berg's father, Michael Berg, said that although his son wanted to leave Iraq, he refused the flight offer because he thought the travel to the airport would be too dangerous. Attacks had taken place in the areas his son would need to drive through, Michael Berg said.
On April 14, the U.S. consulate sent a private contractor to the Al-Fanar Hotel in Baghdad, where Berg was believed to be staying, to see whether he was still there.
"The people we talked to at the hotel didn't remember him being there," Shannon said.
Diplomats then alerted the U.S. military to be on the lookout for him.
In Baghdad, U.S. spokesmen Dan Senor and Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt were quick to offer statements of condolence Wednesday to Berg's family and to draw attention to the barbarity of his death. But Senor said that "to my knowledge" Berg was not affiliated with any U.S. or coalition organization, nor was he ever in U.S. custody.
Iraqi police arrested Berg in Mosul on March 24 because local authorities believed he may have been involved in "suspicious activities," Senor said. He refused to elaborate, except to confirm that the Americans were aware Berg was in custody.
"U.S. authorities were notified," he said. "The FBI visited Mr. Berg on three occasions and determined that he was not involved with any criminal or terrorist activity."
Berg was released April 6 and "was advised to leave the country," Senor added. Instead, Berg checked into the Baghdad hotel.
Senor referred questions about the reason for Berg's detention to the Iraqi police. In Mosul, however, police told the AP they had no knowledge of the Berg case. Police official Safwan Talal said the only American arrested there in recent months was a woman who was released soon afterward.
Since Iraq remains under U.S. military occupation, it seems unlikely that the Iraqi police would have held Berg, or any other American, for such a length of time without at least the tacit approval of U.S. authorities.
"The Iraqi police do not tell the FBI what to do, the FBI tells the Iraqi police what to do," Michael Berg told the AP. "Who do they think they're kidding?"
The younger Berg told his family that U.S. officials took custody of him soon after his arrest and he was not allowed to make phone calls or contact a lawyer, his father said.
Kimmitt said U.S. forces kept tabs on Berg during his confinement to make sure he was being fed and properly treated because "he was an American citizen."
But the three FBI visits suggest American authorities were concerned about more than Berg's well-being. They may have had their own suspicions about what the young American was doing in Iraq.
During a briefing Wednesday, Senor confirmed that Berg had registered with the U.S. Consulate in Baghdad but insisted he "was not a U.S. government employee, he has no affiliation with the coalition and to our knowledge he has no affiliation with any Coalition Provisional Authority contractor."
He also said Berg "was at no time under the jurisdiction or detention of coalition forces."
Staffers at the Baghdad hotel, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Berg stayed in room 602 from April 6 until April 10. One of them said Berg lived in the same room during an earlier visit, which the employee could not remember.
An employee described Berg as a "nice guy" who "always smiled and said hello," unlike other foreign guests. "Once he told me, 'I'd like to learn Arabic.' "
"He was very sportive - had muscles - and liked the Internet," another hotel worker recalled. "He usually left the hotel in the morning and returned late, around 10 p.m., usually carrying a sack of beer and mineral water."
Associated Press writers Robert H. Reid in Baghdad, Curt Anderson in Washington and Jason Straziuso in Philadelphia contributed to this report
05/13/04 05:13
� Copyright The Associated Press.
- With a different view of things, comes this story from Newsweek this morning:
Walking a Fine Line in Iraq
How a prisoner is treated depends on who's holding him
By T. Trent Gegax
Newsweek
Updated: 1:27 p.m. ET May 09, 2004
May 8 - It�s an odd day when the following needs to be said: Despite the systematic and sadistic abuse of Iraqi prisoners, the U.S. military is not �Lord of the Flies� in desert cammies. In war, the law of the jungle is a constant lure, especially for soldiers trying to distinguish between detainees who are common criminals, cases of mistaken identity, terrorists or intelligence subjects. The �rendering� techniques of the CIA, who often assist in army interrogations, are as unfamiliar to the public as they are fuzzy in hewing to Geneva Convention rules.
The Army battalion I observed as an embedded reporter during the Iraq war took very seriously its treatment of prisoners. Take the night almost exactly a year ago, inside a tactical operational center near Tikrit. Army Capt. Dave Gray, an intel officer, was fuming as a dust storm raged outside. The battalion had just snatched one of Saddam�s bodyguards after receiving a tip at a checkpoint. The excitement of good detective work paying off gave way to the tedious part of nascent nation building, namely, holding fast to the Geneva Convention. Saddam�s bodyguard was immediately tossed into a hastily built jail�sand-dune walls, concertina wire, a single tent�along with more than two-dozen other enemy prisoners of war (EPWs).
It wasn�t pretty, and Gray was agitated. The body guard needed medical attention and the battalion didn�t have the personnel or supplies to handle its swelling EPW population. �He�s got an eye infection,� he told Sgt. Maj. Jesse Topasna, the battalion�s top non-commissioned officer, �and none of them have blankets or adequate shelter. I called the MPs and told them to improve the conditions, and they said, �F--k you.� So I said, �F--k you,� and I told them I was getting them (the EPWs) out of there. You better get down there now and take care of it. Otherwise, I�m going down there and opening the f--king thing up and letting them out myself. Because right now it�s the most blatant Geneva Convention violation I�ve ever seen. It�s not our fault, we don�t have any support. But we can�t let them sit there like this.�
Other soldiers started listening in. �Yeah, I�m not going to jail over that,� said Capt. Mack Tugman, the officer in charge of the EPW compound. Topasna, the avuncular father of the battalion, reminded everyone of the Geneva Conventions' rules, that the prisoners couldn�t be held without charge for more than 36 hours. �Plus,� he said, �we just don�t have the assets to do that.� Lt. Col. Phil Battaglia, the battalion�s commander, caught wind of the brewing problem as Topasna radioed up to the brigade level for reinforcements at the holding cell. �Get �em off our f--kin� hands, that�s the key,� Battaglia said. �Eventually the Red Cross is going to come in and check our s--t. Let�s not have the Army being accused of not abiding by the Geneva Convention. Go find somebody who knows whether they�re supposed to have a 20-by-20 living space, whatever. Just do it.�
A cynic might say that these soldiers did the right thing only because I was there witnessing the whole thing. But what happens when the media isn�t around? It�s easy to see how a line could be crossed in the CIA�s interrogation of EPWs. The long hours can be as rough on the interrogators as it is on the interrogated. They walk a fine line. The EPW must be broken out of his defenses without being blown out of his psyche. EPWs may want to give bad intel just to stop the interrogation. Answers are constantly checked against information gleaned from his cell phone records, passport and other information he possessed. Often, agents assist the Army, as well as private contractors, during interrogation.
Here�s how a �rendition��short for �rendering� the enemy unto justice�works, according to a 20-year CIA agent who operates in Iraq. The EPW�s vision is obscured or blinded as they�re taken through yelling and bumping to the interrogation cell. Falls down stairs are common. Once in the cell, he receives a physical to establish a baseline from which to calculate what his body can endure. The CIA agent said that in his experience he was always amazed at how quickly EPWs could fly into their cover stories. They were so good that it was common for U.S. military interrogators to disagree with CIA agents about an EPW�s identification. They admit nothing, deny everything and make counter accusations. One day, the agent received an Al Qaeda member with two fresh bullet wounds. Before he was medically treated the suspect sang like bird. After treatment, he gathered his head and shifted his identity.
In the interrogation cell, there�s no day and no night. In addition to an interrogation team of two (they check each other�s temper), a supervisor oversees the session along with an Arabic speaker. Always in a hood, the idea is to keep the EPW as disoriented as possible. He's kept awake and stood in awkward positions for as long as 24 hours at a time. They kneel or stand, with hands and legs tied, in various states of dress, although the agent doesn�t recall EPWs being stripped naked. They�re kept from using a toilet until they soil themselves.
Ultimately, the idea is to ingrain a sense of hopelessness. They�re told things like, �You aren�t going to see a lawyer or the courts, you�re not going anywhere anyway, and Osama�s in Syria with your wife who he�s taken as his own wife.� Through a variety of methods, the EPWs are left to wonder whether they�ll be killed. Force isn�t used as much as one might assume, the CIA agent said.
Middle Eastern EPWs' sociability is used against them; they�re more susceptible to isolation than most people. To an Arab or Middle Easterner, according to the CIA agent, the very definition of torture is being alone. They�re accustomed to extended families. Interrogators also play on greed, avarice, pride, jealousy. In extreme cases, they use �honey traps��the lure of sex, which can work even on the most devout Muslims who, deprived of their rituals and plunged into isolation, often give in to any kind of companionship. At least, that's what used to be thought of as the extreme cases.
� 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
~~~
I also found this article in the same edition of Newsweek to be rather informative. It�s an interview with Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the former spiritual leader of Hizbullah, �the militant group best known for its resistance to Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon�. He was born in Iraq and, �in the hierarchical Shia world, his teachings still carry enormous weight.�
Some of the things he said that I found informative or otherwise interesting:
�We believe in the freedom of human beings, and we reject the occupation. I don't believe Moqtada al-Sadr's plan is to initiate violence, but I believe the methods of [U.S. administrator Paul] Bremer are what prompted [al-Sadr] to do it. Therefore we see violence as the reaction, not the initial action. We see America as a country that can occupy, but does not know how to administer. The United States keeps going from mistake to mistake. The issue of prison torture [at Abu Ghraib] is not the last mistake we are going to see. . .
�We consider occupation to be one of the highest forms of torture. The torture that we are seeing the pictures of in the media is the torture of individuals, but occupation is the torture of an entire people � The majority of Arab and Islamic people do not believe the United States is serious about the freedom of [their] peoples. They believe it to be one of the slogans used for dominating the region.
�When we listen to President Bush we don't find any convincing logic in what he's saying. [But] we should be clear that we distinguish between the U.S. administration and the American people. We would like to be friends with the American people. Our problem is with the American administration.�
QUESTION: What is your reaction to Bush's argument that not all Americans should be blamed for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison?
�I believe it was an inaccurate apology because the people who carried out these acts were carrying out orders � Bremer knew about it, but didn't do anything about it until the photos showed up. These acts showed the American administration does not believe in human rights. I believe these practices encourage terrorism and don't do away with it. The American people have good values; however the administration is not honoring it. The Americans should elect a person who represents these values. . .
QUESTION: Do you see any alternative to armed resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq?
�We believe that the United Nations is by and large acceptable. If the Americans would hand over its authority to the U.N., there is no need for an armed struggle.�
- He also makes some very clear distinctions between the Palestinian�s fight for independence against the Israelis and acts of terrorism. And he makes a lot of sense, if you ask me.
~~~
Happy Birthday To: Bea Arthur, born this day in 1926
~~~
�I�m just an impulsive dufus sometimes.�
- - from money�ergh
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