Lest We Forget–The Children of ‘the Iraqi Hiroshima’
source–vice.com
LONG
LIVE WESTERN ILLUMINATI ANGLO-AMERICAN APARTHEID ETHNIC CLEANSING AND TERRORIST
ENTITY CALLED ISRAEL!!!
NEW Torture Photos: US Soldiers Raped, Sodomized Prisoners
By Tom Eley
In
an interview with the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph published
Wednesday, former US General Antonio Taguba said that photographs the
Obama administration is seeking to suppress show images of US soldiers
raping and sodomizing Iraqi prisoners. Taguba, who conducted the
military inquiry of prisoner abuse at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in
2004 after some photos of US soldiers torturing prisoners became
public, said that among the photos are images of soldiers raping a
female prisoner, raping a male detainee, and committing “sexual assaults
on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and
phosphorescent
Gen. Taguba said even the description
of the photos is explosive. “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape
and every indecency,” Taguba said. “The mere description of these
pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”
Taguba’s revelations expose the deceit
of President Barack Obama’s claim, used to justify the photos’
suppression, that they “are not particularly sensational, especially
when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.”
In all, it is believed that there are some 2,000 photographs depicting
about 400 cases of US military personnel torturing Iraqis and Afghans at
seven military prisons. The Bush administration, and now Obama, have
sought to block publication of the images.
Obama also claimed that “the most
direct consequence of releasing them…would be to inflame anti-American
public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.” While this may
likely be true, the criminal nature of the US occupation of Iraq and
Afghanistan is already well known by the nations’ populations, who have
died and been made refugees in the hundreds of thousands since being
invaded in 2003 and 2001, respectively. Indeed, this claim only exposes
the true nature of the US occupations: they have never been about
establishing democracy, but aimed at stamping out resistance to US
control of the strategically important nations through mass bloodletting
and terror, the historical modus operandi of every imperialist
occupying power.
However, the central reason Obama has
chosen to fight the photos’ release is that top US generals announced
their opposition to their publication. The generals’ intervention came
in the midst of increasingly open dissension from the ranks of the
military-intelligence apparatus over Obama’s handling of “the war on
terror.” After Obama released four Bush administration legal memos
justifying torture, a campaign, spearheaded by Bush Vice President Dick
Cheney, was launched, appealing to the military brass and spies. Obama
responded by promising he would block any investigation of the previous
administration’s carefully crafted and controlled torture policies. He
then reversed an earlier decision to not appeal a judge’s ruling in
response to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) freedom of
information lawsuit launched in 2004, which demanded the release of
dozens of the torture photos.
An Obama Pentagon spokesman denied
that the suppressed images depict rape, while a carefully worded
statement seemed to indicate other photos depict precisely such actions.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Telegraph “has completely
mischaracterized the images…. None of the photos in question depict the
images that are described in that article.” Whitman did not specifically
deny Taguba’s claims.
Obama claims that the torture depicted
in the photographs was committed by “a small number of individuals,”
and that those “involved have been identified, and appropriate actions
have been taken.” Here we may safely assume Obama is referring to a
small handful of rank-and-file soldiers.
But what of the high-ranking officers
who oversaw, endorsed and most likely ordered the torture and rape of
prisoners? If there are 2,000 photographs of prisoner torture that fell
under the control of the Pentagon, how many more cases were not
photographed? It is clear that the torture and rape of prisoners went
far beyond the actions of “a few bad apples.” This torture and sexual
humiliation of prisoners—up to and including rape—can only be described
as the systematic policy of the US military and Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), sanctioned at the highest levels of government. Indeed,
the generals’ opposition to further publication of the photos is likely
based in part on their own association with the crimes.
The policy of torture came from higher
still, however, as recently released Justice Department legal memos and
other evidence show. Various forms of torture, including forced nudity
and sexual humiliation were studied, justified, and individually
approved by top White House and congressional officials. A US Senate
Armed Services Committee report issued in April reveals that Bush
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally approved 15 “harsh
interrogation” methods. A version of Rumsfeld’s document was used,
verbatim, at Abu Ghraib, according to the report. (See “Bush, top
cabinet officials monitored torture of detainees”)
In his Telegraph interview,
Taguba solidarized himself with Obama’s decision to suppress the photos.
Taguba’s own investigation in 2004 was in fact a partial cover-up. He
later admitted that he was ordered to confine his investigation to
low-ranking military police, although he was aware that high-ranking
generals had “extensive knowledge” of the torture. And though he was
aware of the photographic evidence of torture and rape at the time,
Taguba’s report made no mention of them.
Because his report was not a total
whitewash, however, the Bush administration forced the major
general into retirement in 2007. He has since described the actions of
the Bush administration in Iraq as war crimes. “There is no longer any
doubt that the current administration committed war crimes,” Taguba
wrote in the forward for a report by Physicians for Human Rights. “The
only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to
account.”
The photographic evidence of rape
substantiates evidence Taguba gathered in his investigation, which only
became public due to another freedom of information lawsuit. For
example, in a sworn deposition Kasim Mehaddi Hilas said he witnessed US
military personnel raping a boy. “I saw [a US military translator rape] 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
[the soldier] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in
the little kid’s **** and the female soldier was taking pictures.”
The sworn deposition also described
the anal rape of prisoners with phosphorescent tubes and police clubs,
as well as the use of wire in sexual torture.
The rape of Iraqi boys by US military
personnel is corroborated by other evidence. Journalist Seymour Hersh,
who played a critical role in breaking the Abu Ghraib story in 2004, has
evidently seen all of the photos, and is aware of video footage
depicting rape. He has not written publicly on their content, but a 2004
speech he gave to the ACLU indicates the sheer horror of the US
military’s methods:
“Some of the worst things that
happened you don’t know about, okay?” Hersh said. “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.” In another
speech, quoted by Rick Pearlstein, Hersh spoke of “horrible things done
to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.”
The unfathomable crimes depicted in
the photos arise inexorably from the project of aggressive wars based on
lies. As such, they are the flip side of the conspiracy against the
democratic rights of the American people. Both arise from the deepening
crisis of US capitalism, which the ruling elite seeks to offset by
seizing hold of key resources and strategic advantage over its rivals.
One can only react with horror.
Contained in the stories and images of the torture of defenseless
prisoners, some of them boys and women, is the true face of US
imperialism, which finds no crime beneath its dignity in its effort to
subjugate Iraq and Afghanistan. Just as the Vietnam War conjures up
images of napalmed children fleeing US soldiers, and Nazi Germany
invokes images of emaciated prisoners near death, the images of sexual
torture will forever be associated with the American “war on terror.”
In acting to suppress the images and
protect the torturers, Obama has made himself an accomplice in these
crimes. Moreover, in the absence of criminal investigation, there is
every reason to believe that similar crimes continue.
We can no longer in good conscience trust the politicians
to police themselves. Link to this article from forums and blogs.
Mention it with links in your comments on blogs. PROMOTE IT.
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PLEASE – Re-Post to Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, etc.
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"UK court ruled that Belhaj could not sue MI6 as it would harm “national interests,”"
Pressure mounts on UK over CIA’s ‘black site’ jail in Indian Ocean
A human rights group is urging Britain’s Foreign office to “come clean” over claims that a British-administered island in the Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia, was used as a secret "black site" detention center by the CIA.
“We need to know immediately whether ministers misled parliament over CIA torture on British soil,”
Cori Crider, strategic director at Reprieve, a legal action charity group, said in a letter to UK Foreign Secretary William Hague.
“If the CIA operated a black site on Diego Garcia, then a string of official statements, from both this and the last government, were totally false,” Crider said.
The letter followed a report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee that Britain had allowed the US to run a “black site” prison on Diego Garcia to secretly hold suspects without accountability. The Diego Garcia prison held some “high-value” detainees and was operated with the “full cooperation” of the British government, US officials familiar with the Senate report said.
“Were ministers asleep at the wheel? Or, as the report suggests, have we been lied to for years?” Crider wrote.
Reprieve is also representing Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, a rebel military commander and opponent of the late Libyan leader, Mohamed Gaddafi, who was arrested in Malaysia and rendered to Libya, allegedly via Diego Garcia, in a joint US-UK intelligence operation.
“The Foreign Secretary must urgently clarify whether the CIA ran a secret prison on Diego Garcia, and whether our clients Abdel-Hakim Belhaj and his wife Fatima Boudchar were among its victims,”
Crider said.
Belhaj became Tripoli's military commander in 2011, after the rebels took over the capital and ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. In 2004 Belhaj – the then-leader of the anti-Gaddafi Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – and his wife were detained by US intelligence officers at Bangkok airport, Thailand, when they were to fly to London to claim asylum.
Belhaj was then returned to Libya, allegedly due to a British tip-off, where he was tortured and jailed for almost six years, until Gaddafi was ousted.
Belhaj claims the UK helped the US to arrange his rendition. He launched legal action against the UK government, the former head of counter-terrorism at intelligence agency MI6, Mark Allen, and then-Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
"The first time I heard that I had gone through a place called Diego Garcia was when I was told by the head of the Libyan intelligence, Moussa Koussa, during my first interrogation session in a prison outside Tripoli," Belhaj said. “[Moussa Koussa] told me that he knew, and that the plane had landed on an island in the Indian Ocean called Diego Garcia.”
The case could "jeopardize this country’s international relations and national security interests," said Peregrine Simon, a British High Court judge.
"The government must come clean about the UK's role in this dirty affair," Polly Rossdale, deputy director at Reprieve, told The Observer on Sunday.
For years, the British government consistently denied that any detainees were held at Diego Garcia or that a secret CIA prison ever existed there. They only admitted in 2008 that two rendition flights carrying detainees stopped for refueling on Diego Garcia in 2002. “The US government confirmed that there have been no other instances in which US intelligence flights landed in the UK, our Overseas Territories, or the Crown Dependencies, with a detainee, on board since 11 September 2001,” UK Foreign Office minister David Liddington told the UK parliament in 2011.
The recent revelations about “the secret prison” are hugely troubling for the UK government as they spark questions about the UK's relationship with the US.
Apart from the news about the CIA secret black site, the US Senate also found that the CIA purposely deceived the US Justice Department to attain legal justification for use of torture techniques. It also found that the CIA distorted how many detainees it held in “black site” prisons throughout the world and how many were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” many amount to torture.
The Committee and the CIA have in recent weeks gone back and forth with accusations of spying, meddling, and misrepresentation, highlighting an on-going feud between the agency and the Committee since the Senate probe began in 2009.
LESSONS TO BE LEARNED, MAYBE
BUT MARTYR MILTON WILIAM COOPER AND I KNOWN FROM EXPERIENCE THAT SHEEPLE NEVER LEARN!
Former Eastenders Actress Blames Terminal Eye Cancer On Decades Of Sunbed Use
Mum-of-one Debi Gibson started using sunbeds without protective goggles as a teen and reckons that’s why she’s developed eye cancer
By Sophia Moir | Yahoo Lifestyle – 10 hours ago
A
former model and actress has called for a ban on sunbeds after she
developed terminal eye cancer from 20 years of unprotected use.
The mum-of-one started using sunbeds when she was 14 and opted not to wear protective goggles so she didn’t have any tan lines.
'I want something good to come out of my death. All this because I wanted to be brown. I would like sunbeds to be banned,’ said 42-year-old Debi Gibson from Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire.
'I am going to have to leave my daughter behind. She knows it all. She doesn't understand everything, she just knows that mummy is going to go to heaven soon, that mummy has a nasty disease called cancer and it is going to kill her.'
Debi – who has appeared on Eastenders and on-stage in Evita – had to have one of her eyes removed after being diagnosed with eye cancer in October 2012 and has been told the cancer is terminal after the disease spread to her liver.
She stopped using sunbeds in 2005 and after hearing horror stories of people dying of cancer – but it was too late after decades of using sunbeds.
In April 2012, she was told she had a choroidal melanoma, a very rare type of eye cancer that affects just one in six million people.
Chemotherapy failed to kill the cancer and a year later, surgerons removed her left eye.
It was in early 2014 that she was given the news that the cancer had spread to her liver and was now terminal.
'There is this pressure when you are modelling or in the acting profession to be the perfect colour. I saved up the money myself when I was 14 to buy a sunbed and had it at my parents' house,’ she said.
'I used it all the time, back then there weren't any guidelines around, people thought this was the safest way to tan.
'I eventually became a personal trainer at a gym and I used to use the sunbed there as well.
'They came with goggles, but those left you with ugly tan lines so I didn't use them, I never thought that would kill me.
'I moved to London when I was 18 to become an actress and a model. There was so much pressure to look tanned, I went through that with the film industry.
'Then around 2005, there was a lot of bad press around sunbeds, so I stopped using them.
'In 2012 I woke up and found everything was blurry, I went to my doctors and he sent me to the hospital.
'They did a scan and sat me down and told me that half of my eye was covered in a tumour.
‘It's rare, only around one in every six million people get it, the doctors said it is only seen in sunny countries and they only thing they could think caused it was my use of sunbeds without the protection.
'They tried chemo but eventually they told me it hadn't worked as they had hoped.
'I was already going blind at this point, so it felt easier when they told me they were going to take the eye out.
'It happened pretty quickly. They told me I needed the operation in the October, and it was removed in the November. It was a horrendous time.
'Then after about a year I went back for another scan and they told me it had spread to my liver and I was going to die.
'The doctor gave me eight weeks to live, which runs out next week.'
'At first I went mad, completely mad, I pulled my daughter straight out of school and we all went on holiday.
'But after a little while I came to terms with it. The doctors have me on a trial drug and are giving me chemo to shrink the tumour. That could give me months or years more time.'
Her husband Darren Gibson said that his wife ‘never seems scared’ but then again she is an actress.
'It has been horrendous. Nurses have been coming out to see her from the Douglas Macmillan Hospice and they have been fantastic,’ he said.
'Debi is an amazing woman. She never seems scared, I'm sure she's struggling inside sometimes, but she is an actress.'
[Five healthier alternatives to sun beds]
LESSONS TO BE LEARNED, MAYBE
BUT MARTYR MILTON WILIAM COOPER AND I KNOWN FROM EXPERIENCE THAT SHEEPLE NEVER LEARN!
"She said: "I remember the day my mother died, and it's still hard to talk about it. I just blocked it out. I went to school the next day because my father's mentality was 'keep calm and carry on."
"So we all went to school and tried to act as if nothing had happened. But it had happened. I didn't grieve. I didn't cry at her funeral. I couldn't express anything because I was just numb to it all. I didn't start grieving for my mother properly until I was maybe 16."
Peaches Geldof Found Dead Aged 25 - Last Tweet Was About Her Mum
RIP Peaches #TooYoung
By Julia White | omg – 1 hour 3 minutes ago
The showbiz world was in shock tonight at the news that mum-of-two Peaches Geldof has been found dead at just 25.
Police were called to the home of the daughter of Bob Geldof and Paula Yates near Wrotham, Kent at 1.35pm this afternoon.
The socialite, who has two young children, was pronounced dead by South East Coast ambulance service.
A spokesperson for Kent Police said it was being treated as an "unexplained sudden death" and that police were working to establish the cause.
Peaches' father Bob Geldof this evening released a statement confirming the death saying: "Peaches has died. We are beyond pain. She was the wildest, funniest, cleverest, wittiest and the most bonkers of all of us.
[Twittersphere awash with celebs paying tribute to Peaches Geldof]
"What a beautiful child. How is this possible that we will not see her again? How is that bearable?"
Peaches, who had been out in public as recently as last week at a fashion event in London, had been absent from her social media channels for 24 hours.
But her last tweet, 23 hours ago, referenced her mum, Paula Yates, who died nearly 14 years ago in September 2000.
She simply tweeted: "Me and my mum" alongside a picture of the two of them when she was a child.
Peaches has two sons,
Astala, who is set to be two on April 21 and Phaedra, whose first
birthday will be on April 24, with her husband Thomas Cohen.
Musician Thomas said in a statement tonight: "My beloved wife Peaches was adored by myself and her two sons.
"I shall bring them up with their mother in their hearts everyday. We shall love her forever."
The blonde had married the lead singer of the South Easte London band S.C.U.M on September 8 2012 at a church in Davington, where her mother's funeral took place.
She was previously married to rock musician Max Drummey but they separated in 2009 after a six-months.
Peaches, who was born in 1989, spent most of her life in the media eye after launching her career writing a column for Elle magazine aged just 15.
She contributed to The Telegraph and the Guardian as well as TV shows including OMG! with Peaches Geldof on ITV2.
She lost her mother when she was 11 and in an interview with Elle Magazine two years ago revealed she struggled to cope.Musician Thomas said in a statement tonight: "My beloved wife Peaches was adored by myself and her two sons.
"I shall bring them up with their mother in their hearts everyday. We shall love her forever."
The blonde had married the lead singer of the South Easte London band S.C.U.M on September 8 2012 at a church in Davington, where her mother's funeral took place.
She was previously married to rock musician Max Drummey but they separated in 2009 after a six-months.
Peaches, who was born in 1989, spent most of her life in the media eye after launching her career writing a column for Elle magazine aged just 15.
She contributed to The Telegraph and the Guardian as well as TV shows including OMG! with Peaches Geldof on ITV2.
She said: "I remember the day my mother died, and it's still hard to talk about it. I just blocked it out. I went to school the next day because my father's mentality was 'keep calm and carry on.
"So we all went to school and tried to act as if nothing had happened. But it had happened. I didn't grieve. I didn't cry at her funeral. I couldn't express anything because I was just numb to it all. I didn't start grieving for my mother properly until I was maybe 16."
Peaches Geldof Was Found Dead With Baby Son Phaedra By Her Side
Her husband raised the alarm when she didn't answer her phone
By Jennifer Ruby | omg – 15 hours ago
She was tragically found dead on Monday morning.
And now it's been revealed that Peaches Geldof's 11-month-old son Phaedra was actually WITH her when she passed away.
The little one was found playing close to his mum when the star's body was discovered after her husband Thomas Cohen raised the alarm after frantically trying to call the house.
[ Peaches Geldof 'May Have Had Eating Disorder' Before Death Claims Doctor ]
The sad situation bizarrely mirrors the death of her mother Paula Yates back in 2000 - who was found dead with her four-year-old daughter Tiger Lily playing beside her.
According to The Sun,
musician Thomas had spent the night away from their Kent home with
their eldest son, Astala, but became panicked when he couldn't reach her
by phone.
A source told the paper: "Phaedra was by her side most of the time, even when she was sleeping. At the very least, there can be some comfort that she wasn't by herself when she died."
But although the little 'un was with her mother the whole time, he is probably too young to have realised what was happening.
The source added: "The hope is that Phaedra is so young he wasn't aware of what was going on. The most important thing is that he's OK.
"It is devastating for Tom that he wasn't there but it couldn't have been avoided."
The circumstances are eerily similar to the way her famous mum was found 14 years ago - discovered in her home by a family friend, with her youngest by her side.
Peaches' former nanny Anita Debney, who is also Phaedra's Godmother, is the latest person to pay tribute to the star.
On Thursday she wrote on Instagram: "She has been the greatest joy, the greatest blessing, the most tender part of my heart and soul. I loved her through the good times and the bad. We struggled and survived the darkest of times.
"I never lost faith in her spirit and strength. Always held out my hand to help her when she struggled and fell. She overcame so much and my love and appreciation of her indomitable spirit never wavered."
She continued: "The joy we shared in her beautiful babies was so deep and meaningful and filled both of our hearts with love and devotion.
"She blossomed in motherhood and excelled at raising the sweetest, happiest babies in the world. She was passionate in her zeal to speak up for the needs of babies everywhere and lives have been changed because of that.
"What a wonderful legacy she has left to the world. My darling girl. You almost made it."
After an inconclusive postmortem (???), Peaches' body has now been released to her family, with the funeral expected to take place at in Kent.
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