Those who have followed the multiple citings of stories about the MEK, Camp Ashraf and the Bulgarian troops assigned there during the bulk of the occupation will find this of keen interest.

Iraqi forces raided a camp housing members of an Iranian opposition group on Tuesday, sharply escalating tensions that have been on the rise since the U.S. military turned over responsibility for the camp to the Iraqis.

Four people were killed by the Iraqi police and scores more injured…

[snip]

The raid came a day after the Iraqi government, which has maintained a security cordon around the camp’s perimeter, said it would assume complete control of the camp but promised to protect the people inside.

Shortly afterward, the group’s leaders announced they were willing to return to Iran if they were guaranteed immunity from prosecution. They insisted on guarantees in writing from Iran, the United States, the United Nations and Iraq.

A legal counsel at the camp, Behzad Saffari, said the Iraqis also opened fire in Tuesday’s melee. He claimed American troops witnessed the event but did not intervene except to take pictures. Source

A staggering, impressive and laudatory show of defiance and fierce bravery.

[Saeed] Hajarian is confined to a wheelchair and able to speak only with great difficulty, having suffered severe spinal cord damage after being shot in the face by a fundamentalist who, though later convicted, hardly served any jail time. He survives only with the help of daily medication, intensive physiotherapy and regular consultations with a neurosurgeon. He cuts as unthreatening a figure as any government is likely to encounter. But that hasn’t stopped Iran’s intelligence ministry from locking him up in Evin’s Section 209 – reserved for the most potent political suspects – and subjecting him to regular interrogations.

Hajarian’s captors fear his brain. They are trying to force him to sign a confession owning up to plotting a “colourful” or velvet revolution that would have seen the Islamic republic toppled and replaced by a pro-western puppet government, the political bogeyman that keeps Khamenei and his acolytes awake at night. In return, he would be allowed to leave prison – thereby handing the regime a propaganda coup and sparing it the increasing embarrassment of imprisoning a man whom it is already responsible for reducing to a shell.

But Hajarian – himself one of the principal founders and architects of the intelligence ministry in his younger days – has turned the tables by refusing to leave prison. He has refused to give any admission, even when his jailers tried to break his resolve by interrogating his wife and detaining – though later releasing – his son. Effectively, the prisoner is holding his captors hostage, forcing them to provide, and even administer, the treatment needed to keep him alive. His interrogator has been reduced to carrying out his daily physiotherapy sessions. Source

M*A*S*H was cute — and fictional. This is neither:

The first full-time female FBI agent to be stationed at Guantanamo says she was made to bunk with vermin that gave her a tropical disease and was ostracized because she refused to join in a “spring break” atmosphere in which agents were encouraged to drink, date, and frolic when not interrogating alleged terrorists.…

[snip]

In her claim against Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice, Foley says she has photographs depicting “personnel at Guantanamo engaged in drunken carousing in a sexually charged atmosphere, day and night,” including shots of “”emale employees in bathing suits or revealing attire sitting on the laps of male employees, and female employees being hugged, kissed and likely groped by male employees.”

Her complaint states: “Other photographs reveal, among other things, what appear to be intoxicated FBI employees wearing some type of mocking imitation of Arab or Afghan attire, and personnel at a Halloween party dressed in orange detainee jumpsuits (apparently as a joke). Still other employees appear to be completely intoxicated and engaged in various activities which indicate both a pervasive discriminatory atmosphere toward women, as well as behavior inappropriate for employees stationed at a detention facility for terrorists. Some of the behavior resembles stereotypical ’spring break’ behavior. This highly inappropriate behavior by FBI personnel and other U.S. Government personnel working at Guantanamo, was known by the FBI, was encouraged by the FBI, and was tolerated by the FBI.” Source

Horrid.

The snippet comes from (and is linked to) a Google translation (slightly modified for clarity) of an article in Le Figaro:

Several stories circulating in the medical [sic], Rasoul Akram Hospital, not far from Tehran University, would have received from the “Black Monday” (June 15), 38 corps[es], including 28 wounded and 10 dead . “We found that the bullets had passed through the torsos to the diagonal, which means they were fired from above - ie [sic] a roof,” says the second doctor.

According to an official review, at least 17 people have been killed since the beginning of the dispute. However, a first quietly made by the nursing staff from different hospitals showed that to date more than 92 people died in Tehran and its environs. A woman eight months pregnant is one of the victims. Shot and killed, near the presidential palace, it was then transported to the hospital. Other disturbing stories are beginning to emerge in broad daylight. As one of the six corpses of young men found last week in Shahriar, on the outskirts of the capital. Their skulls had been smashed and their brains had been opened, presumably to retrieve the ball to clear the trace of the crime,” says the second doctor informed of this terrible massacre by a trusted colleague. Translated Source

Original article in French here.

As U.S. forces ostensibly “pull back” to the barricaded acreage of 300-plus bases on Iraqi soil:

Al-Maliki’s government has declared Tuesday National Sovereignty Day and decreed a public holiday.

[snip]

Iraqi officials have warned people to stay away from crowded places and al-Maliki appealed for national unity. Source

Hidden in so far as the vast majority of front-page mainstream media is concerned, that is.

The United States has sent a shipment of weapons and ammunition to the government of Somalia, according to a U.S. official who said the move signals the Obama administration’s desire to thwart a takeover of the Horn of Africa nation by Islamist rebels with alleged ties to al-Qaeda.

The shipment arrived in the capital, Mogadishu, this month, according to the official, who is helping craft a new U.S. policy on Somalia and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

“A decision was made at the highest level to ensure the government does not fall and that everything is done to strengthen government security forces to counter the rebels,” the official said.

[snip]

The Obama administration’s approach is different in many respects from that of the Bush administration, which focused almost exclusively on targeting several suspects in the embassy bombings and other rebel leaders with alleged al-Qaeda ties.

The Bush administration paid a group of notorious Somali warlords to hunt terrorism suspects. But the policy backfired, giving rise to a diverse Islamist movement, including al-Shabab, which gained popularity by defeating the hated warlords. The Bush administration then tried backing an Ethiopian invasion in 2006 to overthrow the Islamists and install a transitional government, a move that triggered the al-Shabab rebellion that continues today. The Bush administration conducted airstrikes targeting al-Qaeda suspects, but only one of those targeted was ever confirmed killed.

Meanwhile, the rebels continued to advance across southern Somalia and eventually helped force the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops this year.

To cut off the rebels’ weapons and supplies, the United States has stepped up pressure on Eritrea, and foreign warships patrolling Somali waters to combat piracy have begun blocking cargo ships heading to the rebel-held port of Kismaayo in southern Somalia. Source

After more than 7½ years’ incarceration by the U.S.:

Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al-Janko was tortured by al-Qaeda and imprisoned by the Taliban for 18 months because the groups’ leaders thought he was an American spy.

Abandoned by his captors in late 2001, he was picked up by U.S. authorities, who shipped him to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on suspicion that he was a member of the two groups.

[On Monday], a federal judge ordered Janko’s release, saying the government’s legal rationale for continuing to detain him “defies common sense.”

In a 13-page opinion that he read from the bench, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ordered the government to engage in diplomatic efforts to find a country that would host the 30-year-old detainee.…

[snip]

…al-Qaeda leaders suspected him of spying for the United States and tortured him for three months until he confessed falsely to the charges, Leon said. Janko then spent 18 months in a Taliban prison in Kandahar, the judge said.

The Taliban fled the prison in late 2001, leaving Janko behind, Leon said. U.S. authorities then picked up Janko.…

[snip]

Leon ruled that the government’s case was too weak and illogical to justify the continued detention. He said the government failed to prove that Janko had been a member of the two groups.

[snip]

The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by Janko under the centuries-old legal doctrine of habeas corpus, which allows prisoners to challenge their confinement before independent judges.… Source

Each and every such case serves to further taint the credibility and basis of the prosecution in all cases.

Shorter version of the official British policy regarding atrocities: ‘Avert your eyes.’

Tony Blair was aware of the ­existence of a secret interrogation policy which ­effectively led to British citizens, and others, being ­tortured during ­counter-terrorism investigations, the Guardian can reveal.

The policy, devised in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, offered ­guidance to MI5 and MI6 officers ­questioning detainees in Afghanistan whom they knew were being mistreated by the US military.

British intelligence officers were given written instructions that they could not “be seen to condone” torture and that they must not “engage in any activity yourself that involves inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners”.

But they were also told they were not under any obligation to intervene to prevent detainees from being mistreated.

“Given that they are not within our ­custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this,” the policy said.

The policy almost certainly breaches international human rights law, according to Philippe Sands QC, one of the world’s leading experts in the field, because it takes no account of Britain’s obligations to avoid complicity in torture under the UN convention against torture. Despite this, the secret policy went on to underpin British intelligence’s ­relationships with a number of foreign intelligence agencies which had become the UK’s allies in the “war against terror”.

The policy was set out in written instructions sent to MI5 and MI6 officers in January 2002, which told them they might consider complaining to US officials about the mistreatment of detainees “if circumstances allow”. Source

It naturally follows that, as the policy was developed in response to witnessed torture or other abuse, that those instances — clearly implicating and confirming U.S. personnel as being among those performing such acts — had to occur in 2001, at or near the very beginning of the war in October of that year.

Yet more reason to investigate the still secret Justice Department memos whose existence is known, particularly the one from Nov. 20, 2001, all the more so as so many of the DOJ memos have been demonstrated as being developed to provide cover for circumstances already undertaken.

Winds of hope?

Moderate leaders of the Taliban say they have quietly and steadily made progress in third-party talks between the active Taliban insurgency and representatives of the Afghan and U.S. governments.

Two Taliban leaders — who held high-ranking positions in the now-deposed Taliban government and who are directly involved in the talks — say they’ve recently established a framework of an agreement through the shuttle negotiations. They say the process has included contact with the spiritual leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar.

The talks began last year under the auspices of Saudi Arabia and have involved a series of secret meetings in Mecca, including a gathering several months ago. Observers have for months maintained that the Saudi talks have produced more rumors than real progress.

But now, in extensive interviews with GlobalPost two former Taliban officials directly involved — Abdul Hakim Muhajid and Arsenal Rahmani — said negotiations have gained momentum and laid the groundwork for real movement.

Rahmani went so far as to say a deal could be reached before Afghanistan’s August presidential elections.

[snip]

All sides seem to agree a new diplomatic tone and military strategy set by Washington has contributed to the momentum. President Barack Obama earlier this year called for negotiations with moderate elements of the Taliban. CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus has discussed the need for a more complex approach to dealing with what he calls “reconcilables” within the insurgency. Source

With friends like these…

Among the countries congratulating Mr Ahmadinejad on his victory were Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela and North Korea. Source

More:

As European capitals appear to weigh their reaction to the Iranian poll against their desire to engage Tehran in constructive talks, most of Iran’s neighboring states have opted for simply congratulating the winner.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai was the first head of state to do so as he called Ahmadinejad on June 14. Karzai’s office said he congratulated the Iranian people “for making a decision about their destiny” and hoped Afghanistan’s ties with Iran would continue to strengthen during Ahmadinejad’s second four-year term in office.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani followed shortly after with a telegram to Ahmadinejad expressing confidence that their two countries “friendly and neighborly relations” will improve in the coming years.

Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, told Ahmadinejad the victory was “an acknowledgment of your outstanding services.”

[snip]

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Musa also congratulated Ahmadinejad….Source

Other side of the coin: Unlike major capitals of the EU, Canada voices sharply stated outrage.

It’s coming to a boil, and bound to be nasty and brutish — but not short.

… the “army’s already in action” in Waziristan, though full-scale combat does not appear to have started. Military analysts believe NATO forces in Afghanistan are likely to launch a parallel operation to cut off the militants’ retreat.

The assault on Baitullah Mehsud comes after a challenger emerged from his own tribe, Qari Zainuddin, who is being secretly backed by the Pakistan state and is already believed to have weakened the fearsome warlord. [More on that here – voxd]

[snip]

Pakistan has fought Mehsud three times since 2004 but has lost each encounter and then been forced to cut a peace deal that only emboldened the Taliban. This time, locals living in towns on the edge of Mehsud’s South Waziristan lair report massive movement of military men and equipment, on a scale not seen in the past. Source

Applying law enforcement to criminality as a primary tool. What a concept.

Though the initiative is a work in progress, some senior counter-terrorism officials and administration policy-makers envision it as key to the national security strategy President Obama laid out last week — one that presumes most accused terrorists have the right to contest the charges against them in a “legitimate” setting.

The approach effectively reverses a mainstay of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism, in which global counter-terrorism was treated primarily as an intelligence and military problem, not a law enforcement one. That policy led to the establishment of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; harsh interrogations; and detentions without trials. Source

Jury is still out on the robustness (if any) of oversight and accountability measures to be included, as well as strictures applied or unapplied to such activities as wiretapping, warrantless searches, etc.

Awful bookends for this month of May.

End of the month — Maj. Gen. (ret.) Anthony Taguba (Source):

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

Start of the month — Gen. (ret.) Barry McCaffrey (Source):

“We should never, as a policy, maltreat people under our control, detainees. We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A.”

The following seemed to get lost or glossed over during the long holiday break, but is much too clear-eyed and sane not to merit attention.

Washington is in the throes of an increasingly self-indulgent debate about whether the promotion of human rights and democracy should play a central role in U.S. foreign policy.…

… the United States is apt to be tempted by realist “grand bargains” in which we would in effect trade our commitment to democracy and human rights for security.

[snip]

There are other reasons for our hesitancy to push democracy and human rights. The financial crisis, the debate over Guantánamo, and now the corruption scandal in Britain, have some asking: Who are we to export liberal values when our own house is not in order?

This misses the point. Obviously, we in the West are no more virtuous than anybody in any other country. But our system of democracy is. It’s things like independent courts, free media and the verdict of the ballot box that help to sort our deficiencies. What’s more, history shows that opportunistic deals with dictators not only betray our values; they seldom deliver over time on those very interests we claim to be pursuing.

What to do? First, let’s not tire of affirming that individual liberty is a universal value and that democracy is the best way to protect freedom and human rights. […] We need to insist, though, that our support for free media and independent NGOs and our respect for human rights be an essential part of our dialogue with their countries. Source

Level-headed layout.

President Barack Obama’s support for preventively detaining terrorism suspects undoubtedly surprised some of his longtime backers.…

But the possibility had been percolating for months. With his pledge in January to close the Guantanamo prison within a year, Obama set off a fierce, mostly under-the-radar debate among legal experts about whether it will be possible to meet the goal he announced yesterday: to build “a legitimate legal framework” for imprisoning terrorism suspects indefinitely.

The question affects more than Guantanamo. The fates of 169 detainees there remain undecided, according to Obama’s numbers yesterday, and administration officials have suggested that they will be unable to prosecute as many as 100. But the legal status of thousands more held by the United States in Afghanistan and elsewhere overseas also hangs in limbo, and any detention policy will have ongoing effects as the fight against al-Qaida continues.

Here are some of the key issues facing the architects of a new preventive detention system, or, as it’s sometimes called, a “national security court”… Source

…yet remain too widely unlearned or willfully ignored.

Officials use torture when they have already dehumanized their victims —- a witch is not a normal person, a “terrorist” is a beast —- when a government puts revenge before other goals, and when a sense of helplessness rules.

Promoting fear of the unknown enemy who must be exposed through torture gives officials a great sense of their own importance; and, because they can waterboard a suspect like Abu Zubaydah 83 times, they do have considerable power —- to inflict pain, not to obtain useful information. In the process, the torturers dehumanize themselves.

Leaving all moral qualms aside, are we to learn nothing from the experience of keen observers who have understood torture’s uselessness over the centuries? Source

Why and how is there still any public deliberation deeming any approving torture as a tool of the state even marginally credible?

And for those armchair Torquemadas who would still smugly or vengefully (and absent any record of proof, particularly of any sole or unique and testable, replicable value) tout that “torture worked” — well, slavery worked. Quite efficaciously for many centuries too, but the weight of its innate and central immorality, bigotry and wretched, corruptive maleficence properly cast it into obliteration as accepted practice.

As for Mr. Cheney, ye old scribe turns once more to Churchill:

The dangers and consequences of validating leadership, fomenting policy or upending and twisting universal, civilized illegalities into mandated practice under the banner of fanaticism are historically self-evident.

Update May 21: After listening to both speeches today, some quick thoughts.

Cheney: PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) is real, and giving a wide banner labeled ‘credibility’ to an obvious untreated long-term PTSD sufferer to spout rabid, repetitive and one-dimensional points, many spun out of the flimsiest of data(if indeed any at all) does not serve to bolster nor advance any cogent argument. Indoctrination by fear is no less offesnive and repugnant than is indoctrination by force.

Obama: Quicker and more sure-footed progress is always made when standing on solid ground than when balancing on a high wire. The latter position is where he chose to perch too frequently. Splitting the difference on inalienable human rights affords no rights at all, merely a facade of same. Compromise on basic tenets of justice gives succor and viability to the unjustified.

Waziristan bloodbath (emphasis added) next?

Or a semi-shrouded message to specific or ancillary factions to lay low or pull back?

Or a showpiece, transitory operation which will peter out as before?

And little to no mention anywhere of bustling Quetta (see again here and additional citations), where criminally-geared and terror-affiliated segments (that is to say, directly relevant to and revolving around operations in Afghanistan rather than the more local sovereignty movement or breakaway factions) yet plainly exist and operate visibly and with near impunity.

The high-profile convention of clerics in the Pakistani capital was the second in three days to condemn suicide attacks and beheadings, two of the Taliban’s favored tactics, as “haram,” or contrary to Islam.

Both conventions also supported the Pakistani military offensive against Taliban in Swat and two adjoining districts, although almost all the clerics share the militants’ goal of establishing Islamic law in Pakistan.

[snip]

The shift, coupled with intense pressure from Washington and a more sober assessment of the threat posed by the militants, appears to have roused the government of President Asif Ali Zardari.

Zardari has said that Pakistan would extend its military offensive to Waziristan, the area along the Afghan border that’s a base for Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, and also for al Qaida. That would trigger a major conflict, in which the support of the clergy could be vital.

[snip]

A deeply religious people, Pakistanis tend to take guidance from senior clerics, and their previous ambivalence and confusion about Islamic extremism rose in part from the clergy’s silence or from denials that Muslims could have perpetrated acts of violence against civilians.

At the two religious conventions, however, there was even criticism of the Pakistani military’s past patronage of jihadist groups.

“We are now harvesting the crop we sowed three decades ago,” Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman told a lively convention of some 4,000 clerics on Sunday, referring to the policy of backing Afghan “mujahedeen” guerrillas in the 1980s under U.S.-backed dictator Gen. Zia-ul-Haq.

[snip]

Sunday’s meeting was organized by clerics from the Barelvi sect, the dominant Islamic school in South Asia, a Sunni creed that preaches a tolerant brand of religion but whose voice is often drowned out by firebrands from more radical sects.

Tuesday’s conference was sponsored by the government and involved broader participation, including from Shiites, Pakistan’s other main Islamic denomination, and even some clerics from the Deobandi school, a branch of the Taliban that preaches a purist Islam akin to the Wahabi [sic] faith of Osama bin Laden.

While the majority of Pakistanis are Barelvi, the Deobandis run most of the madrassas — Islamic schools — that churn out religious scholars and foot soldiers for the Taliban and other extreme religious groups. Source

One meanwhile fervently hopes that there is strong and constant backchannel pressure coming from the U.S., the U.K., Russia and China, directed at India to put all and any moves regarding Kashmir, with the exception of negotiations, totally on ice for the duration.

The high ground holds no place, no corner, no nook or cranny, no refuge for the dark side.

Thank you, Mr. Sorenson. Thank you.

“Intellectually and morally dishonest lawyers (in the Department of Justice) disgraced not only their country but their profession” in claiming that waterboarding and other forms of torture were legal, he said.

“In a country based on the rule of law, in which no man is above the law, whatever his rank or title, no man can undertake, authorize or immunize unlawful conduct,” Sorensen said.

[snip]

“…the moral authority of the United States, its traditional ability to occupy the moral high ground in an international conflict, is an important part of our security,” he said.

“More important than the worthless statements extracted from torture’s victims who will cry out anything to halt it.” Source

A bit more:

Virtually every lawyer worth his diploma knows that the United States is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions on War Crimes and the 1984 Convention Against Torture; that waterboarding is torture and that torture is illegal, regardless of pieces of paper from Justice Department lawyers who disgraced not only their country but their profession, a fact of which their respective Bar Associations should take note. Those lawyers apparently thought in 2003-04 that their client was the President and later his Attorney General. Wrong. Their client was the American people who had a right to expect that their lawyers would know the law and uphold it, not attempt to redefine it or interpret it away… Source

Not good. Not good at all. And odd too, isn’t it, how any mention of the purported use of such banned materiel or similar munitions on civilians during the devastation of Fallujah escapes mention in the article.

Taleban fighters have been using deadly white phosphorus munitions, some of them manufactured in Britain, to attack Western forces in Afghanistan, according to previously classified United States documents released yesterday.

[snip]

Although a full investigation is under way, it is not yet clear how the Taleban and other insurgent forces using them had acquired the white phosphorus munitions from Britain. However, Major Willis said that Afghanistan was littered with ordnance of every kind and it was not a surprise that the insurgents had got their hands on white phosphorus.

[snip]

Major Willis said that the use of white phosphorus in IEDs was a relatively new development. The earliest report of the insurgents using white phosphorus was in February 2003, but the eight known IED cases, including one in the south, have all occurred since March 2007. Source

It should be noted that some previous reports of announcements of identified ordnance markings have been credibly disputed or entirely retracted. That is not to deny this report, but to qualify it within the context of both the Iraq and Afghanistan mayhem.

The fog of war is dense indeed, but not totally impenetrable if there exists the will and the drive to thoroughly investigate, and by that not meaning only an institutional or in-service investigation, such as have been accomplished before.

…a March 14, 2009, incident in which an 8-year-old girl in Kapisa province was burned by white phosphorus munitions, Human Rights Watch said…. A NATO spokesperson has denied allegations from the girl’s father that NATO forces had fired the rounds that caused her injuries.

[snip]

NATO officials have said that according to their records, no rounds were found to have landed near the house, though have not denied using white phosphorus during this engagement.… Source

Noting the last egress of British forces in Iraq now underway.

“The role of British ground forces is finished,” a defence official said, having completed their mission of mentoring and training two Iraqi army divisions. [The] ceremonies were in many ways symbolic. British forces had been winding down their presence in Basra for many weeks and had already handed over responsibility for Basra’s security to the Iraqis at the start of the year.

It was significant that UK forces handed over their base not to the Iraqis but the Americans. US forces will remain in Basra protecting the important supply route from Kuwait, and helping the Iraqi army and police force. Source