Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (132505)	5/10/2004 10:43:01 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

An Ugly Prison Record ________________________ Given the Way it Treats its own Inmates, America Shouldn't be Shocked at the Abuse of Iraqis by Christopher Reed Published on Monday, May 10, 2004 by the Toronto Star For a nation founded on slavery and genocide, Americans retain an astonishingly enduring faith in their continuing righteousness. They are sounding this note again as the prison torture scandal continues in Iraq. In a column in the New York Times last week, Middle East analyst Thomas Friedman warned that the revelations created the "danger of losing America as an instrument of moral authority and inspiration in the world." Does he not read the world's newspapers? Uncle Sam as moral authority? Other U.S. pundits similarly harrumphed about America's endangered integrity and leadership. President George W. Bush himself said the prison mistreatments were not the American way. But they were, and they are. Friedman's column was headlined, "Restoring our honor," but the abuse of prisoners surprises nobody who reads newspapers or scans the Internet. Americans have been mistreating and torturing their fellow Americans in their own lock-ups for decades. What honor is there to restore? In "liberal" California, horror stories have appeared for years from hellholes such as Pelican Bay prison, where they house "the worst of the worst" — and also inflict the worst brutalities. A prisoner dumped in scalding water so his skin peeled off like old varnish; prisoners left naked outside in rainy and bitter weather for days; multiple beatings and rapes; several unexplained deaths. In Corcoran prison, California, guards held their own Roman gladiator games with prisoners pitted against each other in fights to the near death. A disliked and defenseless prisoner was placed in the same cell as the biggest and baddest sex criminal — known as the Booty Bandit — to be duly raped to the amusement of the prisoner's supposed guardians. Pelican Bay is such a fearful place, with prisoners kept under perpetual scrutiny while unable to see any other human being, a psychiatrist told a court that many were going insane. A federal judge finally ordered reforms, as did another over Corcoran, but there is little evidence that either have become proper places even to house the worst. Similar reports surface across America. Texas is especially bad. Significantly, private, for-profit prisons have some of the worst records. They often have such poor medical facilities that prisoners die from curable conditions, as Harper's magazine revealed in an exhaustive inquiry last year. California holds more prisoners than Britain, France, Germany, and Canada combined, yet jails are still grossly overcrowded. Conditions in many southern U.S. prisons resemble some of the worst of the developing world, with prisoners sleeping on filthy floors overrun by rats. In 1999, it was reported that 13 women at California's state-run Chowchilla female detention center had died the previous year from negligent, or non-existent, medical care. Amnesty International reported in 1999 that male guards in several U.S. states routinely raped female prisoners. In a book published in 2001, Going Up The River, former Wall Street Journal reporter Joseph Hallinan told of visiting a prison in Alabama where chained inmates still broke boulders with sledgehammers. The sheriff of Phoenix, Ariz. was re-elected by loyal voters after bringing in female convict chain gangs. All this has been going on since Saddam Hussein was a young man. It has worsened in recent years, despite a massive prison-building program that now incarcerates 2 million, the world's largest prison population. Yet Americans have mostly ignored the disgrace of their penal system. They became so fearful of crime, they lost consideration for the lives of criminals. Any idea of rehabilitation has been abandoned. Even when scandals over mistreatment do emerge, many say the inmates deserve it. This does not excuse commentators such as Friedman, or the shocked, shocked, demeanor of U.S. news anchors and commentators. Yet the details from Iraq itself support the view that prisoner abuse in Iraq was inevitable. At Abu Ghraib prison, the alleged main perpetrator is staff sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick, 37, the senior of six non-officers charged with cruelty and other mistreatment. He is a part-time military policeman called up last year for service in Baghdad — and was a prison guard for six years in Virginia. Another reflection on the role of private enterprise in U.S. incarceration is the background of Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, also a military police reservist in Iraq. When she was put in command of Abu Ghraib and its thousands of Iraqi inmates last year, she had never done penal work before. In the army she was an intelligence officer and in private life, a business consultant. Shortly before her suspension from duty she told a Florida newspaper that her prisoners were living so well, she was worried they wouldn't want to return home. Another American living in dreamland. _______________________________________ Christopher Reed is a Los Angeles-based reporter who has written extensively on prison conditions in the United States. Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited commondreams.org

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (132505)	5/11/2004 9:49:41 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Reinforcements to Vietnam? Oops, I Mean Iraq __________________________________ By Ray McGovern t r u t h o u t \| Perspective truthout.org "It would take 500,000 men to do it and even then it could not be done." So spoke General Jacques Leclerc, the French World War II hero sent to Vietnam in 1946 to estimate how many troops would be required to take back that country. Leclerc's estimate would still be valid two decades later when over 500,000 US troops were in Vietnam, as Barbara Tuchman notes in The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. Fast forward to General Eric Shinseki's testimony to Congress on February 25, 2003 just three weeks before the invasion of Iraq. When asked how many troops would be needed to secure post-war Iraq, Shinseki said "several hundred thousand." Three days later Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz dismissed Shinseki's estimate as "far off the mark," but it is now clear that they had no idea what the occupation of Iraq would require. The Meaning of Fallujah "There are no insurgents in Fallujah," says Mohammed Latif, once a senior intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein's regime and now commander of the Iraqi brigade controlling the city. Washington has been blaming the conflict in Fallujah partly on "insurgents." Resistance to the occupation is a far more accurate description, and there is plenty of that in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq. Words make a big difference. In Vietnam we labeled the Vietnamese Communists "terrorists" and "insurgents." This obscured for far too long the reality that they comprised a deeply nationalist movement determined to resist any and all invaders - however powerful. In this kind of war kill ratios have little meaning. Killed: 58,000 US troops; 2 to 3 million Vietnamese. More Troops? The current focus on the abuse of Iraqi detainees - while entirely appropriate - distracts attention from the key decision confronting the administration and Congress. Should we send still more troops to Iraq? Thus far, very few of our leaders have been willing to pause long enough to weigh this critical step against US objectives - stated and unstated. On May 6, for example, Congressman John Murtha, D-Pa-a strong supporter of the military - said, "We cannot prevail in this war with the policy that is going today. We either have to mobilize or we have to get out." Prevail? This must be measured against our objectives. First the stated objectives: Eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. (There were none, but 60 percent of the American people still believe there were, so the administration can declare this objective achieved.) Prevent Saddam Hussein from providing weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. (The intelligence community considered it extremely unlikely that he would, but could not completely rule out the possibility.) Achieved. Remove the "brutal dictator" who most Americans still believe had a hand in the attacks of 9/11 - a notion fostered with consummate skill by the administration. (President Bush has admitted quietly that there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved, but this was virtually ignored by our corporate-owned, government-handmaiden, "mainstream" press.) Achieved. Introduce democracy to Iraq and other countries of the Middle East. This cannot be done by invading and occupying Iraq. Not achieved; not achievable, according to most experts. Declare Victory Three out of four objectives achieved. Not bad. One option for the administration would be to capitalize once again on the widely misinformed state of our citizenry and to tell Vice President Dick Cheney's favorite TV channel, FOX News, to declare a 75 percent victory and say that we have already "prevailed." This would enable the Bush administration to do the sensible thing: make it clear that it will surrender real power to the UN, and gradually withdraw our troops, with the expectation that peacekeeping troops from other countries would then fill in behind. Unstated Objectives A face-saving solution of this kind, however, would be impossible to achieve absent willingness on the part of the president's current advisers to abandon the real aims of the war. Those aims have little to do with weapons of mass destruction or ties between Iraq and terrorists - and still less with 9/11 or exporting democracy. They have everything to do with the neoconservatives' determination to dominate strategic, oil-rich Iraq, implant a permanent military presence there, and - not incidentally - eliminate any possible threat to Israel's security. On the latter point, several months before the war, Philip Zelikow, a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 2001 to 2003, pointed explicitly to the danger that Iraq might pose to Israel as "the unstated threat - a threat that dare not speak its name…because it is not a popular sell." Yes, Sorry, Unwinnable... ...Even with 500,000 troops. But who will tell the president it was all a big mistake? Not the court sycophants who vie with one another to recite with the most macho what they think he and Cheney want to hear. How long will it take the president to realize he has been poorly served by glib ideologues whose lack of knowledge of the real world matches their extreme arrogance? It is time for the President Bush to widen his circle of advisers to include experienced specialists and other respected citizens inoculated against charges of lack of patriotism for questioning the wisdom of this war. President Lyndon Johnson did precisely that immediately after the Vietnamese Communist countrywide offensive during Tet in January-February 1968. Meeting frequently in March, Johnson's panel of "wise men" came up with solid recommendations in just three weeks, prompting him to make an abrupt turn toward negotiations and persuading him not to run later that year for another term. My colleagues in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and I are appalled at the poverty of the today's discussion - at how few lessons have been assimilated from the experience of Vietnam. Many of us had front-row seats for that misguided war. We had hoped it would be the last such "march of folly" in our lifetimes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years, serving from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (132505)	5/11/2004 1:14:23 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

our prisons are not much better than others in the world They're probably better than most but the dark side of human nature seems essentially the same world over. The thing that makes this a big deal is that we are currently governed by a group that has many times stated confidently to the world that "Americans live in freedom and free people are morally superior." It's one thing to see someone act poorly, it's another thing to see someone act poorly when they've been piously critical of similar actions by others. There are far too many examples of "Americans don't do things like that" rhetoric when, in fact, we do things like that all too often. I remember that when the "actual combat" phase of the war in Iraq was going on and they had our POWs, the Rumsfeld run Pentagon was furious at the publication of POW pictures by Iraqis which showed the suffering side of our men and women in captivity. He was piously raging about how the Geneva conventions absolutely prohibited the "publication of pictures" of POWs. Our entire nation was OUTRAGED at the barbarity of taking and publishing such pictures. It was SUCH a big deal and it was represented as the "difference between a country like ours and a criminal regime that refuses to recognize the Geneva conventions." Of course we don't like the publication of pictures of our men and women returning in flag-draped coffins either but we can't blame their publication on the morally corrupt Iraqi regime. We are, as a nation, pretty stupid sometimes or we wouldn't jump so high when they pull the strings. I don't believe the young and involved nation that America became in the mid 70s wouldn't have put up with this ceaseless manipulation of public opinion based upon such silly, transparent and inconsistent fallacies. But then history is replete with examples of societies which learned the same historical lessons several times.