Friday, January 23, 2009
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 Torture Trail Seen Starting with Bush A bipartisan congressional report traces the U.S. abuse of
detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to President George W. Bush’s Feb.
7, 2002, action memorandum that excluded ‘war on terror’ suspects from Geneva
Convention protections. By Jason Leopold Consortium News (Excerpt) Three months
ago, Rice admitted that she led high-level discussions beginning in 2002 with
other senior Bush administration officials about subjecting suspected
al-Qaeda terrorists to the harsh interrogation technique known as
waterboarding, according to documents released by Sen. Carl Levin,
D-Michigan, committee chairman. “The abuse of
detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ‘a
few bad apples’ acting on their own,” the committee report said. “The fact is
that senior officials in the United States government solicited information
on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the
appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.” The Dec. 11
report also disputed the Bush administration’s rationale that the harsh
interrogation methods were effective in extracting valuable intelligence and
protecting the country from terrorist attacks. Instead, the
report said, “Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate
intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and
compromised our moral authority.” The findings,
which were released by Sens. Levin and John McCain of Arizona, this year’s
Republican presidential nominee, drew no dissent from the 12 Republicans on
the 25-member committee. The 19-page
report is the final installment in the Armed
Services Committee’s 18-month investigation, which generated 38,000
pages of documents and relied upon the testimony of 70 people. (Read More)  A “CLEAN BREAK” WITH BUSH-ERA
“POLICY” President Obama
urges Israel to open Gaza borders Daniel Dombey in Washington and
Tobias Buck in Jerusalem The Financial Times (FT) January 22, 2009 President Barack Obama urged Israel on Thursday to open
its borders with Gaza. The plea came in a speech that signalled the new US
administration’s shift from Bush-era policy on the Middle East and the world
as a whole. In a high-profile address on his second day in office, just hours
after he signed an executive order to close the centre at Guantánamo Bay, Mr
Obama proclaimed that the US would “actively and aggressively seek a lasting
peace between Israel and the Palestinians” in the wake of this month’s Gaza
war. (Read More)  Obama overturns Bush order on
access to White House records
January 22,
2009 WASHINGTON –
President Barack Obama began dismantling the Bush legacy Wednesday, using his
first full day to overturn an order that let ex-presidents seal their papers
forever. It was one of a number of big and small steps
by the new president that, taken together, amounted to a slashing
denunciation of his predecessor – from an order halting military tribunals at
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to one meant to make unclassified records more readily
available to the public. "It is a
new day," said Lee White, executive director of the National Coalition
for History, one of scores of groups that had complained for years about the
Bush order regarding White House records. "This ... makes it much more
difficult for a former president to shape his legacy." Researchers
generally can't get access to White House records for at least five years
after a president leaves office. Documents involving national security remain
out of reach far longer. Concerns over
access to White House records had grown more acute as George W. Bush's
retirement became imminent. Bush issued
the controversial order two months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, citing
concerns about the premature release of Clinton-era records, and he defended
the policy this month in an interview. "I am
concerned about information getting into the public domain that shouldn't be
in the public domain," Bush said.
(Read More)  Obama Orders CIA to Shut Down Its
“Network of Secret Prisons” (One must assume that this is the same “network of Secret Prisons” that
“officially” did not exist… ~Owen) By Mark Mazzetti and William Glaberson New York Times January 22, 2009 WASHINGTON — President
Obama signed executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence
Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret
prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within
a year, government officials said. The orders,
which are the first steps in undoing detention policies of former President
George W. Bush, rewrite American rules for the detention of terrorism
suspects. They require an immediate review of the 245 detainees still held at
the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to determine if they should be
transferred, released or prosecuted. (Read More)  GAZA IPS January 22, 2009 BRUSSELS, Jan 22 (IPS) - Israel's refusal to allow civilians any
exit route from Gaza as its defence forces rained bombs down on schools and houses
appears unprecedented in modern warfare, a United Nations investigator has
said. Richard Falk, the UN's special rapporteur on human rights in the
occupied Palestinian territories, described the sealing off of the Gaza Strip
in order to ensure that nobody could flee it as "a distinct, new and sinister war crime." 
GAZA: UN Headquarters and Food Storage Warehouse 
 New evidence of Gaza child deaths Christian Fraser BBC News, Gaza January 22, 2009 Four-year-old
Samar Abed Rabbu is a little girl with a captivating smile to melt the heart
of the most hardened correspondent.
When we first
came across her in the hospital in the Egyptian town of El-Arish, just over
the border from Gaza, she was playing with an inflated surgical glove beneath
the covers. The doctors
had puffed air into the glove, trying to distract her from the further pain
they had to inflict inserting a drip. Samar had been shot in the back at close
range. The bullet damaged her spine, and she is unlikely to walk again. (Read More)  Dime Bombs [Dense Inert Metal
Explosives] leave Israel's Victims with Mystery Wounds Who Provided Israel With
“Advanced” Anti-Personnel Munitions For Use Against Palestinians? Belfast Telegraph – Ireland January 19, 2009 (Excerpt) Erik Fosse, a Norwegian doctor who worked
in Gaza's hospitals during the conflict, said that Israel was using so-called
Dime (dense inert metal explosive) bombs designed to produce an intense
explosion in a small space. The bombs are packed with tungsten powder, which
has the effect of shrapnel but often dissolves in human tissue, making it
difficult to discover the cause of injuries. Dr Fosse said he had seen a number of
patients with extensive injuries to their lower bodies. "It was as if
they had stepped on a mine, but there was no shrapnel in the wounds," he
said. "Some had lost their legs. It looked as though they had been
sliced off. I have been to war zones for 30 years, but I have never seen such
injuries before." However, the injuries matched photographs and
descriptions in medical literature of the effects of Dime bombs. "All the patients I saw had been hit
by bombs fired from unmanned drones," said Dr Fosse, head of the
Norwegian Aid Committee. "The bomb hit the ground near them and
exploded." His colleague, Mads
Gilbert, accused Israel of using the territory as a testing ground for a new,
"extremely nasty" type of explosive. "This is a new
generation of small explosive that detonates with extreme power and
dissipates its power within a range of five to 10 metres," he said. (Read More)  |
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France Signals Hamas Talks Even
Without Their Recognizing Israel Reuters January 20, 2009 PARIS (Reuters) - France signaled on
Tuesday that it might be prepared to hold talks with Hamas even if the
Palestinian Islamist group does not recognize Israel as Paris
and other Western powers have demanded for years. The "Quartet" of Middle
East mediators -- the United States, the European Union, the United Nations
and Russia -- has said there can be no dealings with Hamas until it
recognizes Israel, renounces violence and accepts existing interim peace
deals. French Foreign Ministry spokesman
Eric Chevallier, however, said that renouncing violence was the most important of those three
conditions, an apparent shift in France's position. "We repeat that the elements of
the Quartet have been defined. There is obviously an absolutely major element, which is renouncing
violence," Chevallier told a news conference. (Read More)  What You Don't
Know About Gaza
Thursday, January 8, 2009 Nearly
everything you've been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few
essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which
has taken place in the press, about Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip. THE GAZANS Most of the people living in
Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed
into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that
came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They
were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948. THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under
Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely
considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and
settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still
controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people
in and out. Israel has control over Gaza's air space and sea coast, and its
forces enter the area at will. As the
occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva
Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza
Strip. THE BLOCKADE Israel's blockade of the Gaza
Strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has
grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative
Council elections in January 2006. Fuel,
electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the
Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of
sanitation, health, water supply and transportation. The blockade
has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the
collective punishment - with the tacit support of the United States - of a
civilian population for exercising its democratic rights. THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along
with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire
between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired
from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the
subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The
cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground
attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed. WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians,
whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life
is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians,
most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the
end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis
killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation
is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of
violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms
of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip. This war on
the people of Gaza isn't really about rockets. Nor is it about
"restoring Israel's deterrence," as the Israeli press might have
you believe. Far more
revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces
chief of staff, in 2002: "The Palestinians must be made to understand in
the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated
people." Rashid
Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the author of the
forthcoming "Sowing Crisis: The Cold War
and American Dominance in the Middle East." 
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