The Road of Bones

WARNING! THIS VIDEO CONTAINS DISTURBING IMAGES AND NUDITY. IT IS HIGHLY OFFENSIVE, AND SHOULD NOT BE VIEWED BY MINORS.

On Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2006, Australia's SBS Dateline aired this report on newly discovered photographs and video shot in the American-run Abu Ghraib prison/torture camp. This is not for the weak of heart or stomach! Click here to watch the report.


Now, before you get upset and write a blistering email telling me how many troops I killed by posting this link, you should consider the following ...

From Newsweek:

Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods. It was an approach that they adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war. In doing so, they overrode the objections of Secretary of State Colin Powell and America's top military lawyers—and they left underlings to sweat the details of what actually happened to prisoners in these lawless places. While no one deliberately authorized outright torture, these techniques entailed a systematic softening up of prisoners through isolation, privations, insults, threats and humiliation—methods that the Red Cross concluded were "tantamount to torture."

From USA Today:

The Justice Department in 2002 asserted that President Bush's wartime powers superseded anti-torture laws and treaties. Gonzales, while at the White House, wrote similar memos.

[...]

[T]he original documents set up a legal framework that led to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at the U.S. prison camp for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"What they're trying to do is continue their attacks on President Bush because of his policies since 9/11 that the people didn't buy on Nov. 2," [Texas Senator John] Cornyn said. "They also are trying to muddy the water to make it harder for the president to nominate him for the Supreme Court later on."

From The Washington Post:

The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

[...]

But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military -- which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress -- have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.

From CNN:

Retired U.S. Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, who served as former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, told CNN that the practice of torture may be continuing in U.S.-run facilities.

"There's no question in my mind that we did. There's no question in my mind that we may be still doing it," Wilkerson said on CNN's "Late Edition."

"There's no question in my mind where the philosophical guidance and the flexibility in order to do so originated -- in the vice president of the United States' office," he said. "His implementer in this case was [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department."

At another point in the interview, Wilkerson said "the vice president had to cover this in order for it to happen and in order for Secretary Rumsfeld to feel as though he had freedom of action."

From Veterans for Common Sense:

The latest is something that once would have been unthinkable as a policy of the United States: The officially sanctioned abuse and inhumane treatment of some prisoners or suspects in the war on terror.

Cheney mounted a major effort to defeat an amendment to the defense spending bill that merely adopted as U.S. policy the standard Geneva Convention language prohibiting the treatment of terrorist prisoners or suspects in "cruel," "humiliating" and "degrading" ways. The amendment was introduced by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a Navy hero in the Vietnam War who was among the many Americans who were beaten, abused and tortured as prisoners of war.

After the Senate adopted the amendment by a vote of 90-9, Cheney began urging Republican senators to at least add a loophole that would exempt operatives of the CIA from that policy. In other words, America's veep would have America tell the world that it is OK for certain U.S. personnel to treat prisoners and suspects in ways that are "cruel," "humiliating" and "degrading" - as long as the U.S. personnel draw paychecks from the appropriate pocket of the U.S. bureaucracy. In this case, the CIA.

So, before you rail against any media outlet for letting you know what your government is doing, think long and hard about your reasons. Which is more dangerous - politicians who order the torture of prisoners who are not accused of any crime? Or the reporters who find out about it and tell the truth? Which inflames "the enemy" more? The act its self? Or those who would speak truth to power?

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfield, John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales made this happen. They wrote the orders, the memos, the legal opinions; they allow these crimes to be committed in the name of America.

The Administration encourages this abuse, committed in your name, like it or not.

Want it to stop?

Democrats.com is organizing protests in front of the homes of our federal representatives. They aim to pursuade members of Congress from every congressional district in the United States to support the impeachment of George W. Bush and the end of his war of aggression against Iraq.

Please support the effort to restore America's moral standing in the world. With centralized organization, the peace movement can once again shake the halls of power. These people answer to us, but only with a concerted, unified voice will we be able to hold them accountable for the horrors they have executed in our name.

Posted by The Gonzo Muckraker on Friday, February 17, 2006 at Friday, February 17, 2006 | Permalink