Far Too Little, Far Too Late

And now, in "Fox To Guard Henhouse" news, we have this doozy:

Army Probes War Contractor Fraud
By John Heilprin
The Associated Press
Saturday 27 January 2007

From high-dollar fraud to conspiracy to bribery and bid rigging, Army investigators have opened up to 50 criminal probes involving battlefield contractors in the war in Iraq and the U.S. fight against terrorism, The Associated Press has learned.

Really? 50? $750 Billion in a pointless, never-ending, waste-filled war and they've uncovered a whopping 50 prosecutions? Wow, how DOES the Pentagon do it? It's like living in a town with Matlock AND Jessica from Murder She Wrote.

Senior contracting officials, government employees, residents of other countries and, in some cases, U.S. military personnel have been implicated in millions of dollars of fraud allegations.

But... our troops... must blindly support all troops... militarized population conditioned to support all troops, does not compute... does not compute... Oh, what's that? A "Few Bad Apples?" Oh, okay, then.

"All of these involve operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait," Chris Grey, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, confirmed Saturday to the AP. "CID agents will pursue leads and the truth wherever it may take us," Grey said. "We take this very seriously."

Really? Even into the Vice President's office and Halliburton's corporate offices in the Cayman Islands? Who's fooling whom, here? Maybe the AP laps up your bullshit, but no one else is.

Battlefield contractors have been implicated in allegations of fraud and abuse since the war in Iraq began in spring 2003. A special inspector general office that focused solely on reconstruction spending in Iraq developed cases that led to four criminal convictions.

Really? $18,000,000,000 in reconstruction funds TOTALLY WASTED and all you could find was four fucking cases? WOW! Move over C.S.I., the crack financial forensics team of the Pentagon is on the case. Maybe the fact that the electrical grid doesn't work, the phones don't work, the bridges are all still bombed out, the sewage system barely works and the hospitals all lie in ruins should have tipped the Pentagon's investigators off that a FUCKING LOT of Contractors and major Republican-connected firms took $18,000,000,000 from America's taxpayers and built nothing in return? Fuck you, this is clearly a weak attempt to head off Congressional Investigation, and it ain't gonna work. I, for one, cannot WAIT to watch Henry Waxman crawl right up the Pentagon's ass and shake free documentation on all of the people involved with this debacle and where, exactly, their political contributions went.

The problems stem in part from the Pentagon's struggle to get a handle on the unprecedented number of contractors now helping run the nation's wars. Contractors are used in battle zones to do nearly everything but fight. They run cafeterias and laundries for troops, move supplies, run communication systems and repair weapons systems.

Problems created by none other than Vice President Dick Cheney, when he was back in the Bush Sr. White House and recommended that all non-combat aspects of war be outsourced to private companies who supposedly could do the job cheaper and faster and better. Cheney then left public "service" to run the largest of these new military outsourcing contractors. So yeah, first off, I'm unimpressed by the idea that the Pentagon is "getting a handle on the unprecedented number of contractors now helping run the nation's wars" because they eagerly aided and abetted this change.

Also, I love how the article avoids talking about the OTHER set of major contractors in Iraq: the Private Military Contractors who are taking US tax dollars in return for riding roughshod over the country's civilians, thereby making Iraqis hate us all the more. And where do these $5000/week mercenaries come from? Oh, the US Military trains them at the cost of millions of dollars, then loses them to PMC's the second their committments are finished... a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. First, you've paid a fortune to train these mercenaries, then you pay 100x their old military salaries to do the same job. Where's the "savings" in that?

Special agents from the Army's major procurement fraud unit recently were dispatched to Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, where they are "working closely and sharing information with other law enforcement agencies in the region," Grey said.

"Given the billions of dollars in contract dollars that have been and are being spent, it is our experience that our agents will detect millions of dollars in fraud before we are done," Grey said. "And just as likely, we will be instrumental in bringing back to the U.S. government millions of dollars in recoveries."

Wow, bringing back MILLIONS of dollars. Of course, at $18,000,000,000 that means that even if the Pentagon's investigators return $180 Million dollars, it's still only ONE FUCKING PERCENT of the money which was squandered on Iraq's "rebuilding." And that itself is a drop in the bucket compared to the eventual $1-2 TRILLION dollar cost of this war.

One case involves an Army chief warrant officer accused of taking a $50,000 bribe to steer a contract for paper products and plastic flatware away from a government contractor and to a Kuwaiti company, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday in federal court at Rock Island, Ill.

Prosecutors say the officer took the bribe while at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, while he was the Army's food service adviser for Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, according to the indictment. The officer is also accused of trying to smuggle $40,000 in undeclared cash into the United States on a December 2005 flight from Kuwait to Dover, Del.

Sooo... it wasn't so much that investigators caught this guy and investigated him, it's more that he got caught at the border with $40G in cash and then the Pentagon figured it out. Oh, yeah, my confidence IS high.

Other cases involve a government officer manipulating a contract in exchange for large bribes, a contractor making false claims against the government and an official accepting gratuities. The cases range in type, seriousness and complexity and involve contractors both inside and outside the United States.

Other such cases include a former President earning billions off the war that his son started, a sitting Vice President falsifying evidence for this war in order to drive the price of his corporation's stock up by 700% since he entered office, and a stubborn dry drunk of a president unwilling to change course or even admit he's made any mistakes because he's absolutely certain that his benefactors in the Saudi Royal Family will handsomely reward him with lavish "Speaking Fees" for speeches in return for his having demolished Iraq's ability to pump oil. These cases, however, will NEVER be investigated, because to do so would be to expose our country's leadership as a group of Armaments Manufacturers who are simply imitating their great-grandparent's activities in World War One.

The Pentagon has viewed outsourcing a wide variety of military tasks as much more efficient, leaving troops trained in combat to the business of war.

But the Government Accountability Office reported in December that the military has been losing millions of dollars because it cannot monitor industry workers in far-flung locations. The Defense Department's inability to manage contractors effectively has hurt military operations and unit morale and cost the Pentagon money, the GAO said.

Some 150,000 contractors have been supporting the Army in Southwest Asia, which includes Iraq. That compares with 9,200 contractors in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Commanders are often unsure how many contractors use their bases and require food, housing and protection, according to the report. One Army official said the service estimates losing about $43 million each year on free meals provided to contractors who also get a food allowance.

The new Democratic Congress plans to ramp up oversight of the billions of dollars being spent in Iraq, including dollars awarded to contractors. Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has said he plans to target contractor abuse.

The best news of the entire article, but frankly, it's a bit like closing the barn door after the horses have all run away.

A Voice From Gitmo's Darkness

I'm fond of blogging about Gitmo. Oh, sweet Gitmo, apple of Bush's eye... how do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways. Gitmo stands as THE premiere example of what's this entire Administration: (1) It's secretive, (2) It's illegal, (3) they know it's illegal, that it breaks multiple laws and treaties and they don't care, (4) They lie about what happens there, (5) Torture happens there, (6) Innocents are imprisoned there and they know it, (7) Children are imprisoned there and they know it, (8) It violates every notion and legal precept that underlies our Constitution; habeus corpus, fast & fair trial, jury of your peees, right to an attorney, protection against self-incrimination, right to a impartial judge, the right not to be tortured and have whatever you blurt out to make the pain stop suddenly held against you in court, the right to face your accuser... the list goes on and on and on about what's wrong with America's Gulag™ at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

I've written about Bush & Cheney's zealous use of waterboarding, dog-baiting (and biting), freezing temperatures, sleep deprivation, stress-positions, loud noises, Koran-defacing (yes, it happened) and more. I've written myself blue in the face. So, let me stop writing for a second and turn this space over to Jumah al-Dossari, a 33-year-old citizen of Bahrain in his own words, excerpted from letters he wrote to his attorneys:

I AM WRITING from the darkness of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo in the hope that I can make our voices heard by the world. My hand quivers as I hold the pen.

In January 2002, I was picked up in Pakistan, blindfolded, shackled, drugged and loaded onto a plane flown to Cuba. When we got off the plane in Guantanamo, we did not know where we were. They took us to Camp X-Ray and locked us in cages with two buckets — one empty and one filled with water. We were to urinate in one and wash in the other.

At Guantanamo, soldiers have assaulted me, placed me in solitary confinement, threatened to kill me, threatened to kill my daughter and told me I will stay in Cuba for the rest of my life. They have deprived me of sleep, forced me to listen to extremely loud music and shined intense lights in my face. They have placed me in cold rooms for hours without food, drink or the ability to go to the bathroom or wash for prayers. They have wrapped me in the Israeli flag and told me there is a holy war between the Cross and the Star of David on one hand and the Crescent on the other. They have beaten me unconscious.

What I write here is not what my imagination fancies or my insanity dictates. These are verifiable facts witnessed by other detainees, representatives of the Red Cross, interrogators and translators.

During the first few years at Guantanamo, I was interrogated many times. My interrogators told me that they wanted me to admit that I am from Al Qaeda and that I was involved in the terrorist attacks on the United States. I told them that I have no connection to what they described. I am not a member of Al Qaeda. I did not encourage anyone to go fight for Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have done nothing but kill and denigrate a religion. I never fought, and I never carried a weapon. I like the United States, and I am not an enemy. I have lived in the United States, and I wanted to become a citizen.

I know that the soldiers who did bad things to me represent themselves, not the United States. And I have to say that not all American soldiers stationed in Cuba tortured us or mistreated us. There were soldiers who treated us very humanely. Some even cried when they witnessed our dire conditions. Once, in Camp Delta, a soldier apologized to me and offered me hot chocolate and cookies. When I thanked him, he said, "I do not need you to thank me." I include this because I do not want readers to think that I fault all Americans.

But, why, after five years, is there no conclusion to the situation at Guantanamo? For how long will fathers, mothers, wives, siblings and children cry for their imprisoned loved ones? For how long will my daughter have to ask about my return? The answers can only be found with the fair-minded people of America.

I would rather die than stay here forever, and I have tried to commit suicide many times. The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people, and I have been destroyed. I am hopeless because our voices are not heard from the depths of the detention center.

If I die, please remember that there was a human being named Jumah at Guantanamo whose beliefs, dignity and humanity were abused. Please remember that there are hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo suffering the same misfortune. They have not been charged with any crimes. They have not been accused of taking any action against the United States.

Show the world the letters I gave you. Let the world read them. Let the world know the agony of the detainees in Cuba.

This is a Gulag of President Bush's making. The Supreme Court ordered him to unmake it and instead he twisted their rebuke into a sign of assent. The man is just this side of a South American dictator, and the crimes that happen at Guantánamo aren't his alone... they belong also to the 52% of Americans who re-elected him, but most especially to the 32% who still inexplicably support his every action. Jummah might say "I know that the soldiers who did bad things to me represent themselves, not the United States" but he is WRONG. Those soldiers represent the express desires of a stupid, uncaring population of the priviledged and uninformed. Those soldiers and their tortures represent a White House which redefined torture into a state policy. Those soldiers and their waterboarding represent a brutal thug of a President who refuses to admit the lessons that HUNDREDS of years of police work has proven: that beatings and torture produce false confessions and that personal interaction and produce actionable information. Bush doesn't have these people in Gitmo because he thinks they're truly guilty... the military itself has told him repeatedly that this is NOT true.

No, Bush has those people there because he likes torturing people. His personal relationship with God assuages his guilt... but what assuages OURS? Gitmo has been in existence for five years now, with no end in sight. Call your Senators and Congressperson and tell them enough is enough.

The BTK Presidency - Cheney Confirms Waterboarding

Dick Cheney, the black heart of this presidency, has spoken out forcefully for his right to Bind, Torture and Kill people his boss has unilaterally designated as "enemy combatants."

In an interview with conservative talk show host, Scott Hennen, on Tuesday, Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed that U.S. interrogators subject captured prisoners at America's gulag in Guantánamo Bay to the interrogation technique known as "waterboarding:"

Hennen: "And I've had people call and say, please, let the Vice President know that if it takes dunking a terrorist in water, we're all for it, if it saves American lives. [...] Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?"

Cheney: "It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the Vice President 'for torture.' We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in. We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that. And thanks to the leadership of the President now, and the action of the Congress, we have that authority, and we are able to continue the program."

Swell. Our Vice President just admitted to drowning people until they confess to being terrorists... but it's okay, he's assured us, because drowning isn't torture.

Except that it IS torture. In 1947, the United States prosecuted a Japanese soldier for war crimes and sentenced him to 15 years hard labor for using the technique on a U.S. prisoner. The US court described the crime as "torture."

The physical effects of waterboarding can be extreme pain and damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation and sometimes broken bones because of the victims struggling against their restraints. The psychological effects of waterboarding can also be longlasting. Dr. Allen Keller, director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, has treated a number of people who had been subjected to waterboarding. In an interview with The New Yorker, Dr. Keller explained that some victims were still traumatized years later... one patient couldn't take showers, and panicked when it rained.

This brings up an interesting question: What IS waterboarding, exactly? America's TV News has done a very poor job of explaining the technique to the American people, thus giving the impression that it's acceptable behavior, or that "The Terrorists" are only getting "dunked" in some water. See the attached newspaper illustration, which doesn't nearly get across the methodical, vicious and deliberate nature of modern CIA-improved waterboarding.

There are three historical variations of waterboarding:

(1) The Spanish Inquisition Method: the victim is strapped to a board, their arms and legs immobilized, and they are submerged in water until the prisoner believes he or she is drowning. The Inquisition started without the board, but soon realized that using the board prevented the victim from fighting back. Whenever possible since, the board has been used.

(2) The Vietnam War Method: the victim is strapped to a board with a wet towel placed over their face and water is dripped into their nose until they think they are about to drown.

(3) The CIA's Improvement: this is the system currently used in Guantánamo and in the CIA's secret Eastern European gulags. The victim is strapped to a board, the board is inclined about 20 degrees so that the feet are above the head, saran wrap is wound over the face so that it covers the eyes, nose, and mouth (facial hair is shaved to ensure a tight seal), and then, through a plastic tube, water is poured under the saran wrap covering the face, running down from the chin to the forehead, so that water is forced into the nose. Because of the angle of the victim's body, the water fills up the sinuses, then the throat and the mouth in that order. Unavoidably, the gag reflex immediately kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt. Because of the angle of the body, the lungs are NOT filled with water keeping oxygen in the blood and prolonging the victim's sensation that they are drowning. The saran wrap is there as a bonus multiplier. If the victim coughs to try to blow the water out of their throat or mouth, the plastic catches the water and shoves it back. The saran wrap also acts as a one-way valve, opening to let more air out and then closing again to prevent inhalation. Eventually the victim ends up with collapsed, empty lungs, no ability to inhale more air, a throat, mouth, and nose that's still full of water, and no capacity to get the water out since they've already fully exhaled.

Modern CIA-designed waterboarding isn't about asphyxiation (like, say, the Nazi method of merely shoving a prisoner's head into a tub filled with water)... it's much more diabolical. Waterboarding is about the uncontrollable physical response to forced sustained water inhalation. If you've ever accidentally inhaled water you know that even the smallest amount of liquid in the larynx and trachea is an immediate, hardwired hotline directly to the panic portion of the brain that death is imminent. The terror of imminent drowning is the key element of the technique. According to ABC News, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the waterboarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

The White House has redefined "torture" thusly: ""must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." That pretzled, logic was designed explicitly by the president's staff to exclude waterboarding. While Bush and his torture-happy staff might not think waterboarding is torture, experts such as John Sifton of Human Rights Watch disagree: "The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law." And it's not just gay liberal terrorist enablers like Human Rights Watch, either... The U.S. Army, senior Republican lawmakers, human rights experts worldwide and many experts on the laws of war also consider waterboarding cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment that's banned by U.S. law and by international treaties that prohibit torture.

Most dishearteningly, not only is waterboarding clearly torture, but it's also pointless as an intelligence gathering tactic. Sure, victims confess... but many experienced intelligence agency and military interrogators argue waterboarding often provides false or misleading information because the victim gets so desperate that he begins telling interrogators what they want to hear in order to make the waterboarding stop. In at least one instance, ABC News was told that the techniques led to questionable information aimed at pleasing the interrogators and that this information had a significant impact on U.S. actions in Iraq.

The CIA's escalating interrogation method is reported this:
(1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him,
2. The Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear,
3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury like a punch would,
4. Stress Positions: Among the most effective techniques. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions,
5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water. and finally,
6. Waterboarding

According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi finally broke after being waterboarded and then placed in a stress position and forced to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals.

His statements became part of the basis for the Bush administration claims that Iraq trained al Qaeda members to use biochemical weapons, which was touted as another rationale for the Iraq War. It was later established that al Libbi had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment. Al Libbi does not appear to have sought to intentionally misinform investigators, but rather to please his torturers... but the result is the same: more false "intelligence" which is used as "proof" that the waterboarding was necessary in the first place, thus leading to more waterboarding being used to obtain more "intelligence" which justifies more waterboarding and so on and so on.

Confessions obtained this way are an unreliable tool. There is little to be gained by these techniques that could not be more effectively gained by a methodical, careful, psychologically based interrogation. According to a classified report prepared by the CIA Inspector General John Helgerwon and issued in 2004, the techniques "appeared to constitute cruel, and degrading treatment under the (Geneva) convention." Former CIA office Bob Baer says that waterboard is "bad interrogation. I mean you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture's bad enough." Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and a deputy director of the State Department's office of counterterrorism, recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "What real CIA field officers know firsthand is that it is better to build a relationship of trust … than to extract quick confessions through tactics such as those used by the Nazis and the Soviets."

It's important for Americans to recognize that noted characteristic... waterboarding is the tool of the Spanish Inquisition, of the Nazis, of the KGB, of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge, of the South American Dictatorship... it's not a technique to gain intelligence, it is a technique designed and used exclusively in the past to gain forced confessions by despotic regimes when knew that the confessions were coerced but didn't care. But now the BTK administration has made waterboarding a key element of their intelligence services, which can ONLY lead to more false confessions and incorrect assesments of the real-world threats facing us. Torture and false confession are now the official voted-on policy of the United States of America and its Bind, Torture, Kill President.





Incidentally, it's also important to note that the individuals who George B.T.K. Bush is torturing have not been convicted of anything. Guantanamo Bay currently holds over 500 prisoners. The Bush administration has repeatedly described these men as "the worst of the worst." Ten have been formally charged with crimes and will someday face military tribunals. The rest wait to learn what they have done wrong. Instead they have been denied the right to a fair trial free of evidence coerced through torture, non-rebuttabal hearsay evidence, and "classified" evidence that the defendant is not able to dispute. They have been denied the right to counsel, they are denied the most basic human rights, and now the BTK Congress has signed off on laws allowing them to be tortured and eventually murdered by their Republican BTK President.

*** a reader wrote in to inform me that one of the key purposes of drenching people with water and making them stand in cold rooms afterwards is to induce a state of Hyperalgesia, which is an extreme sensitivity to pain, which in one form is caused by damage to nociceptors in the body's soft tissues. Hyperalgesia can be experienced in focal, discrete areas (commonly associated with wounds), or as a more diffuse, body-wide form (like that intended at Guantánamo. Conditioning studies have established that it is possible to experience a learned hyperalgesia of the latter, diffuse form... meaning that after doing this to a victim a number of times, the torture victim can LITERALLY feel the all-over-body pain without even being subjected to the cold or water. Neato! Pavlov would be proud. Or sickened. The idea that military doctors are cooperating with this torture bullshit is beyond the pale. First do no harm, scumbags.

The Democrats had better rescind all of this shit, should they take over the House & Senate.