Cheney: Death only option for some detainees if Gitmo closed

 

By Jon Ward (Contact) | Monday, June 1, 2009

UPDATED:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that the only alternative to holding some suspected terrorists indefinitely would be to execute them, arguing against the Obama administration’s plans to close the Guantanamo detainee prison.

“If you’re going to be engaged in a world conflict such as we are, such as the global war on terrorism, if you don’t have a place where you can hold these people, your only other option is to kill them,” Mr. Cheney said.

“And we don’t operate that way.”

The former vice president’s statements only raise the stakes in fierce debate with his critics, who believe Mr. Cheney presided over the formulation of interrogation techniques that they regard as torture and remains unapologetic for approving waterboarding and other harsh methods used.

Mr. Cheney bases his argument on the view that suspected terrorists should be considered prisoners of war and said such persons “ought to be held until the end of the conflict.

He also criticized the Obama administration for failing to think through its plans to shutter Guantanamo.

“The administration made a mistake of the president issuing an order that he wants it closed within a year, but didn’t have a clue as to how to proceed,” Mr. Cheney said. “And now they’re having trouble because they’re having to come up with a plan of some kind.”

Mr. Cheney, who has become the most prominent figure to defend the Bush administration’s record on terror and national security, spoke and took questions at a lunch honoring journalism award winners at the National Press Club.

The former vice president said that the Guantanamo Bay prison is “a fine facility” and that the White House will have a “very difficult” time closing it, because of the legal, political and diplomatic challenges associated with indefinite detention.

Mr. Obama has indicated that even after Guantanamo’s closure, the government will still hold some detainees in prolonged detention. He has also restarted the military commissions process to try some detainees there instead of in civilian courts, following a Bush-era policy.

In arguing for the continued use of Guantanamo, Mr. Cheney cited recent press reports that said about 14 percent of the more than 500 prisoners released from Guantanamo have returned to what he called that jihad business. However, more recent reporting has indicated that the recidivism rate among freed detainees is likely much lower.

Mr. Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo, however, was praised by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu during a visit to Washington.

For the psychological atmosphere the symbolic issues are important, Mr. Davutoglu said during an interview with a small group of journalists at his Washington hotel. Many things in our region are psychological.

But on the domestic political front, one of the leading contenders for the Republican nomination to run against Mr. Obama in 2012, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, took aim at the president’s foreign policy and defense budget cuts.

Mr. Romney characterized Mr. Obama’s last two trips abroad as a tour of apology and criticized signs from the White House that they might back off a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

“Arrogant, delusional tyrants can’t be stopped by earnest words and furrowed brows,” Mr. Romney said. “Action, strong bold action coming from a position of strength and determination, is the only effective deterrent.”

North Korea and Iran were two of the topics that Mr. Cheney admitted the Bush administration did fall short on.

We didn’t bat 1,000. No question about it. And Iran and North Korea are still out there, Mr. Cheney said in response to a question about the growth of nuclear programs in both regimes during the eight years that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were in office. I wish we could have done more, but those are problems that are passed on to the next administration.

But Mr. Cheney did assign responsibility to the CIA for both the pre-war intelligence prior to the invasion of Iraq, and for proposing the enhanced interrogation techniques that have been the cause of so much controversy.

The former vice president also said that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is not the threat he once was.

I don’t think he can have much impact in terms of managing the organization, because that link between Obama and the people under him is pretty fragile, Mr. Cheney said, inserting the president’s first name for bin Laden’s, a gaffe committed in the past by numerous politicians.

I don’t think he has the capacity to do as much harm as he did at one point, but we ought to still continue to chase him, Mr. Cheney said of bin Laden.

Abu Ghraib abuse photos ‘show rape’

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

 

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent and Paul Cruickshank
Last Updated: 8:21AM BST 28 May 2009

A previous image of Iraq prison abuse

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

 

Related Articles

• New outrage over Iraq prison abuse photographs

• US troops could stay in Iraq for a decade

• Obama attempts to block release of ‘torture’ photos

• Barack Obama to release up to 2,000 photographs of prisoner abuse

• Concern at ‘prisoner abuse’ photographs as Barack Obama prepares to block publication

• Barack Obama attempts to block alleged torture photos

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.

Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.

“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.

“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

In April, Mr Obama’s administration said the photographs would be released and it would be “pointless to appeal” against a court judgment in favour of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.

Earlier this month, he said: “The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”

It was thought the images were similar to those leaked five years ago, which showed naked and bloody prisoners being intimidated by dogs, dragged around on a leash, piled into a human pyramid and hooded and attached to wires.

Mr Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: “I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.”

The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Mr Obama said the individuals involved had been “identified, and appropriate actions” taken.

Maj Gen Taguba’s internal inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, included sworn statements by 13 detainees, which, he said in the report, he found “credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses.”

Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”

The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US.

Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed.

U.S. Military Investigator Confirms Women and Children Were Raped At Abu Ghraib

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, May 28, 2009

 

It only took five years, but the mainstream media has finally acknowledged the truth behind why certain photos and videos from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison camp have been blocked from public release – they show U.S. soldiers and other prison guards raping female detainees as well as children.

In an interview with the London Telegraph, Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, confirmed the details of his original army report, that the unreleased photos showed rape and sexual abuse of women and minors.

“At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee,” reports the Telegraph, adding, “Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.”

Taguba also verified the credibility of eyewitness statements from other detainees that described an American-Egyptian male translator in uniform raping teenage boys.

Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”

 

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t
• 

“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba told the Telegraph.

Taguba’s confirmation that the photos depict rape mean that President Obama could only have been lying when he claimed, “I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.”

As we reported last week, such horrors have been on the record for years, yet corporate media coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal still frames the entire issue in the context that the “abuse” consisted merely of college fraternity-style humiliation and stacking prisoners in human pyramids.

In reality, the very worst of the torture has never been seen and it includes raping women and children, as well as brutally beating detainees to death.

Further details were also made public by New Yorker investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who in July 2004 told an ACLU conference,

“Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay?” said Hersh. “Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”

Following his refusal to release the unseen photos, the ACLU charged that President Obama “has essentially become complicit with the torture that was rampant during the Bush years by being complicit in its coverup.” The Obama administration has also sought to protect intelligence officials involved in torture from prosecution at every turn.