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Authorities Arrest Dozens of Terrorists in Aleppo, Destroy Several Cars Equipped with DShK Machineguns

Aug 15, 2012

PROVINCES, (SANA)- The authorities on Tuesday arrested dozens of terrorists near Souq al-Hal area in Aleppo. The authorities also destroyed 7 cars equipped with DShK machineguns with the terrorists inside them in al-Bab area in Aleppo.

In the same context, units of the Syrian armed forces pursued an armed terrorist group in the areas of al-Kura al-Ardiya, the Radio and Saif al-Dawleh in Aleppo, killing and injuring a number of terrorists.

In Kafar Hamra, a group of armed terrorist was killed during an attempt to enter the city of Aleppo, and their vehicle, equipped with DShK machinegun, was destroyed.

Armed forces units cleared the area of the Science Faculty in Aleppo from terrorist and confronted a terrorist group that attempted to attack the Traffic Department, killing a large number of terrorists.

Another armed forces unit clashed with terrorists who were using Abdelrahman al-Dakhel school in Bustan al-Qaser neighborhood in Aleppo as a hideout, eliminating a large number of them.

In Aleppo countryside, armed forces units carried out two operations against terrorist groups in al-Atareb area, destroying two cars equipped with DShK machineguns and killing large numbers of terrorists.

Syrian heroic Army pursues vanquished armed groups in a number of areas in Aleppo, Killing an arresting scores of them

The Syrian heroic Army today pursued the vanquished armed terrorist groups in a number of areas in Aleppo, killing a big number of mercenaries, arresting scores of them and seizing their weapons.

A source in Aleppo told SANA reporter that a unit from the army confronted terrorists who took al-Shifaa Hospital in al-Shaar neighborhood and al-Kifah school as base for their crimes, killing a big number of them.

During its cleaning of Salah al-din neighborhood from the remnants of the mercenaries, the army dismantled 3 explosives put by the terrorists inside three  government stolen cars to be bombed in crowded areas.

The Army soldiers seized big quantities of weapons in the surrounding areas of Salah al-Din, including RPGs, Russian rifles, pistols and ammunitions.

At al-Atareb region in Aleppo countryside, a unit from the Army carried out two specific operations against the armed groups, destroying two cars equipped with Dushka machine guns, killing and injuring many mercenaries.

The army arrested scores of terrorists in Suok al-Hal, al-Ezaa and Saif al-Dawla.

The security forces also destroyed 7 cars equipped with machine guns coming from al-Bab region, destroying other cars equipped with Dushka machine guns at Kfar Hamra area in Aleppo countryside.

Assistant Director of Health Directorate in Daraa Assassinated

In Daraa, an armed terrorist group on Tuesday assassinated doctor Ma’moun al-Zoubi, Assistant Director of the Health Directorate in the city.

SANA reporter quoted a source in the province as saying that a number of terrorists waited for Dr. al-Zoubi while leaving the Directorate at the garage and opened fire on him causing his martyrdom.

The source added that the martyr’s car was stolen by the terrorists.

Security Forces Continue Pursuing Terrorists in al-Tal, Damascus Countryside

The security forces continue pursuing terrorists in the town of al-Tal in Damascus Countryside, arresting a number of them and confiscating their weapons and killing others.

Authorities Clash with Terrorists in Daraa Countryside

While canvassing the area of Tafs in Daraa countryside, the authorities clashed with terrorists, killing a large number of them and arresting others.

Among the terrorists who were killed were Maamoun al-Manbesh, Mohammad Mousa al-Ghanem, Mohammad Kiwan, Mohammad Barakat, Mohammad Horani, Ziyad al-Hourani, and Salim Ouaymer.

In the town of al-Hara in Daraa countryside, security forces clashed with a terrorist group and killed a number of its members, including the group’s leader Barakat Nayef al-Barakat.

The armed forces also continued to pursue terrorists in the areas of Izra’a and Ghabagheb in Daraa countryside.

Infiltration Attempt from Jordan Thwarted

Border patrols managed to thwart an infiltration attempt by terrorists who were trying to cross into Syria from Jordan in Tal Shihab area. A large number of terrorist were killed in the ensuing clash, one of whom was Attaf Abdelrazzaq al-Masalmeh.

Authorities Raid Terrorist Hideout in al-Qseir, Homs

The authorities raided a hideout used by a terrorist group among the farms in Tal Dosar area in al-Qseir countryside, Homs Province.

The ensuing clash resulted in the killing of a number of terrorists, including the group’s leader who is known as Abu al-Hareth, and some of the terrorists were injured.

At al-Adra bridge near Rableh in al-Qseir countryside, the authorities  ambushed a group of four terrorists who were using a pickup truck equipped with a DShK machinegun, destroying the car along with those inside it.

Also in al-Qseir countryside, the authorities took out a sniper who was attacking passersby and cars on one of the roads of Blada al-Zira’a.

Stand in Honor of Martyr Journalist Ali Abbas

Aug 14, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA)- The Syrian Journalists’ Union and workers in the private and public media institutions staged on Tuesday a solidarity stand outside the building of the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) in honor of the martyr journalist Ali Abbas and in solidarity with the kidnapped Syrian journalists.

Martyr Abbas, who was the head of the Internal News Department at SANA, was assassinated by an armed terrorist group in his home in Jdeidet Artouz in Damascus Countryside.

The participant journalists stressed that targeting the Syrian media and its cadres will not deviate them from performing their duty in conveying the truth and exposing the lies and fabrications broadcast by some misleading Arab and foreign satellite channels.

The journalists condemned targeting Syrian qualified cadres, wondering at those who raise slogans of freedom meantime they do their best to silence any opposing opinion.

Head of the Syrian Journalists Union Elias Murad said that the recent development in the conspiracy hatched by foreign powers with the aid of some tools inside Syria in is the direct targeting of journalists.

He stressed that the killing of journalists violates the religious and social values, considering it as an example of the behavior of those who claim to call for freedom and do the contrary, which proves that they have no cause as they are mere tools.

Chairman of the National Media Council, Taleb Qadi Amin said that targeting the Syrian media is because of its role in revealing the reality of the war against Syria and the media machines recruited for this purpose and conveying the real image to the Syrian and international public opinion.

For his part, Director General of the Syrian Arab News Agency, Ahmad Dawa, said that the martyr Abbas was an example of the resistant national journalist in his devotion to duty and morals.

He reiterated the Syrian journalists’ determination to continue carrying out their national duty, adding that these criminal terrorist acts will not affect them.

Dawa said that the foreign intervention in what is taking place in Syria escalates the situation and hinder finding a solution to the crisis in the country, stressing Syria’s ability to come out of the crisis thanks to its army and people.

In turn, Director General of al-Wahda Establishment for Press, Printing, Publishing and Distribution, Khalaf al-Miftah, said that the terrorists’ crimes against the Syrian people reflect their primitive culture which does not belong to the nature of the Syrian people.

He added that the assassination of journalist Abbas indicates that these criminals want to silence every voice that divulge their lies and crimes.

Ali Kassem, editor-in-chief of al-Thawra newspaper, said that the stand came in honor of the souls of our martyr colleagues and all Syria’s martyrs, adding that targeting the media is not accepted.

Managing Editor of the Syrian Al-Thawra newspaper, Mustafa Al-Miqdad, said that anyone who follow the attack against the Syrian media whether through blocking channels, targeting press teams and journalists or through imposing sanctions is aware of the real impact of the Syrian media on its audience.

Member of the People’s Assembly Omar Osi expressed solidarity with Syrian journalists against terrorist acts, adding that the Committee for Freedoms and Human Rights issued a statement in solidarity with the Syrian media in the current stage.

He hailed the Syrian media’s ability to shoulder its responsibilities against the western media and Zionist-US circles which try to destabilize Syria through its tools in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

Iranian TV reporter, Issam al-Hilali, said that targeting the Syrian journalists indicate that the enemies of the Syrian people have lost the battle, adding that the national media in Syria proved that it serves the interest of its people.

Reporter of the Cuban Prensa Latina News Agency, Luis Beaton, condemned the assassination of Syrian journalists, adding that these crimes came within the media campaign launched by western media to hide the reality of what is happening.

He called upon all western media not to fabricate news or convey information that might falsify the reality of events on the ground.

He offered condolences, on the behalf of all Cuban journalists and his own behalf, to the Syrian media institution, stressing that Cuba and Syria are in one line against the imperialism and western colonialist powers.

Solidarity Stand outside Tartous TV and Radio Center in Condemnation of Terrorism against National Media

The Teachers’ Association in cooperation with other popular and youth organizations in Tartous province staged a solidarity stand outside the TV and Radio Center in condemnation of the systematic terrorism targeting the national media, and to salute SANA’s Journalist Martyr Ali Abbas who was assassinated by terrorists.

Participants waved placards condemning the terrorist acts against the national media institutions and cadres, expressing solidarity with the Syrian media which proved credibility and capability to confront the misleading media.

They stressed that targeting the national media cadres will increase Syria’s resolve to go ahead in national work.

Prime Minister, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Discuss Cooperation

Aug 14, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – Prime Minister Dr. Wael al-Halqi discussed on Tuesday with UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valery Amos cooperation between Syria and international organization in humanitarian fields.

Dr. al-Halqi reviewed the economic, political and social reforms taking place in Syria and the considerable efforts exerted by the government to provide services to citizens despite the fact that terrorists are targeting developmental sectors, affirming that Syria can persevere, overcome the crisis, achieve reconciliation and restore security and stability in all areas.

He also detailed the results of the inhumane economic sanctions imposed by the US and some European and Arab countries, which only affect innocent civilians.

Amos also met with State Minister for National Reconciliation Affairs Dr. Ali Haidar, with the meeting focusing on the humanitarian situation in Syria and the need to restore the relations which were established before between Syria and the UN.

In a statement to the press following the meeting, Haidar said that humanitarian situations in any area in Syria cannot be tackled without considering the security situation in it and stopping violence, noting that the government has an ambitious plan for returning citizens who were forced out of their homes for one reason or another to their original places of residence.

He stressed that violence is still the main element that is hindering his ministry’s fieldwork, and that the cessation of violence is a priority of his ministry and the government as a whole.

Haidar also said that the government isn’t relying on international organizations in terms of the Syrian issue as some of them have become a part in the war on Syria and proved ineffective in serving peoples’ interests over the year, adding that instead, Syria depends on friends who are honest in dealing with the Syrian people.

For her part, Amos said that her visit to Syria aims to review commitments in the humanitarian field and discuss the Syrian authorities” evaluation of what is happening on the ground.

In the same context, Deputy Foreign and Expatriates Minister Dr. Fayssal Mikdad discussed with Amos the relations between Syria and the Humanitarian Relief Coordination Office at the UN.

Mikdad lauded the progress made in the plans for evaluation and response to answer the needs of people affected by the current events, while Amos voiced satisfaction over the cooperation achieved since her visit in March, stressing that her office is working to gather as much humanitarian aid as possible to help Syria overcome this crisis in a framework of neutrality and independence.

Russian, Iranian Foreign Ministries Condemn Terrorist Acts against Journalists in Syria

Aug 14, 2012

MOSCOW, TEHRAN, (SANA)- Russia on Tuesday condemned the terrorist acts committed against the journalists in Syria, urging the concerned international organizations to exert pressures to put an end to these acts.

Russia Today website quoted Maria Zakharova, Deputy Director of the Information and Press Department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, as saying in a statement “We vehemently condemn the terrorist acts against journalists. Countries with influence on the Syrian opposition in addition to the regional and international organizations should not be neutral in not responding to these facts.”

She added that Moscow receives, with great concern, the news on the escalation of the attacks committed by the illegal armed groups against journalist in Syria.

Iran Condemns Terrorist Groups’ Killing and Kidnapping Acts against Innocents in Syria

The Iranian Foreign Ministry also condemned the terrorist acts of killings and kidnapping perpetrated by the armed terrorist groups against the innocent civilians and the journalists in Syria.

Speaking at his weekly press conference, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast offered condolences over the martyrdom of the journalist Ali Abbas, the head of Internal News Department at the Syrian Arab News Agency.

He underlined Iran’s continuous efforts with other influential countries to solve the crisis in Syria through peaceful means to ward off its repercussions on the region.

Mehmanparast said that his country has devoted all its efforts to achieve security and stability in Syria and create the appropriate atmosphere to hold dialogue between the government and the opposition.

He added that there is a US-Zionist scheme to sow sedition and undermine stability in Syria in service of the US and Zionist interests, regretting the US role along with its allies to destabilize the region, describing it as “destructive”.

The Iranian Spokesman pointed out that after the massacres committed against the people of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, the US wants to carry out such plot in Syria to ensure its interests through increasing losses of the Syrian people.

Mehmanparast said that Iran opposes suspending Syria’s membership at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, calling for taking the Islamic world’s higher interests into consideration instead of such proposals.

Regarding the kidnapped Iranians in Syria, he stressed that Tehran is working in coordination with other countries to get them released as soon as possible.

Lebanese Foreign Minister: Solution to Crisis in Syria Should Be an Internal Political One

Aug 14, 2012

BEIRUT, (SANA) – The Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour stressed that the “self-distance” policy adopted by Lebanon regarding the crisis in Syria is based on that the solution in Syria should be an internal political one.

Addressing the meeting of the foreign ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Jeddah, Mansour said that the solution in Syria depends mainly on dialogue between the leadership and the opposition and on implementing reforms.

He stressed that the foreign interference will complicate the crisis instead of helping in solving it, adding that the flow of money and arms into Syria threatens its sovereignty, unity of its people and territorial integrity and escalates the killing and violence.

Mansour warned that the systematic media instigation, igniting religious discord and sectarianism and the continuation of violence will have serious repercussions not only on Syria’s people and land but also on the security and stability of all the countries in the region.

The Lebanese Foreign Minister reiterated Lebanon’s stance on the Syrian issue included in the concluding statement of the 4th Extraordinary Islamic Summit Conference on suspending Syria’s membership, distancing itself from the decision on it.

He hoped that Syria will come out of the crisis soon and restore its national and Islamic role.

Mansour criticized the concluding statement for not including a firm decision on ending and suspending all forms of political, trade and economic cooperation with the Israeli enemy and exerting practical pressure on it through tightening the economic boycott.

Russian Diplomatic Source: Bogdanov Made No Statements to Saudi Website

Aug 14, 2012

MOSCOW, (SANA) – A Russian diplomatic source on Tuesday said that the Russian President’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, Deputy Foreign Minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, made no statement to the Saudi Website al-Watan.

In a statement to Russia Today TV channel, the diplomatic source added that circulating the so-called interview of Bogdanov to al-Watan is “a new media provocation”.

“I didn’t speak to any newspaper inside or outside Russia,” Bogdanov told Russia Today reporter by phone, adding that he is on a vacation.

He stressed that what was attributed to him regarding the destiny of the Syrian President is “complete nonsense”.

The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister affirmed that he does not know any journalist at al-Watan newspaper who claimed to have called him, dismissing as baseless everything that was ascribed to him in the alleged interview.

Reuters: Libyan Fighters among Terrorist Groups in Syria

Aug 14, 2012

BEIRUT, (SANA) – Fighters of last year’s civil war in Libya have joined the armed terrorist groups in Syria, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

The news agency quoted a Libyan-Irish terrorist as saying that Libyan “veteran fighters…have come to the front-line in Syria, helping to train and organize rebels.”

Hussam Najjar, who has a Libyan father and Irish mother, has entered Syria, said the agency, noting that Najjar, who goes by the name of Sam, is a trained sniper and was “part of the rebel unit that stormed Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli a year ago, led by Mahdi al-Harati, a powerful militia chief from Libya’s western mountains.”

Harati, Reuters added, now leads a terrorist group in Syria known as the Umma Brigade.

Harati’s brigade, according to Najjar, “is made up mainly of Syrians but also including some foreign fighters, including 20 senior members of his own Libyan rebel unit.”

The agency said that Harati asked Najjar to join him in Syria from Dublin a few months ago.

The Libyan fighters, Najjar told Reuters, “include specialists in communications, logistics, humanitarian issues and heavy weapons.”

He noted that thousands more fighters from the Arab world were gathering in neighboring countries prepared to join the armed groups in Syria.

First Interactive Youth Media Agency and Radio Launched on the Internet

Aug 14, 2012

TARTOUS, (SANA)- A group of youth from the coastal province of Tartous has launched a first interactive youth media agency on the internet under the title ‘Al-Aaan Agency’ to provide minute-by-minute coverage of all the activities and events taking place in the Syrian provinces.

The coverage depends on photos and footages particularly for the events happening in Syria under the current stage with the aim of confronting the campaigns of falsification and misleading undertaken by various tendentious media outlets.

‘Tartous al-Aaan’ internet radio station was also launched to contribute to bolstering the role of the agency.

Editor-in-chief of al-Aaan Agency, Tarek al-Qaht, stressed in a statement to SANA the importance of interactive and social media which depends on reporting the events and news at the moment of its occurrence and posting it on the agency’s social networking sites on the internet.

Al-Aaan Agency includes the launching of websites in a number of provinces with Tartous being first along with Lattakia, Homs and Damascus, while websites will be started soon in Aleppo and Hasaka and later in all the other provinces.

Al-Qaht, who is a student at the Faculty of Political Sciences, told SANA reporter that the main objective of the project is to uncover the fabrication and media misleading targeting the Syrian people and its national unity and back the national media in terms of honestly reporting the reality.

He noted that Tartous al-Aaan page is available in the English language with the aim to reach out to a larger number of expatriate youths.

He also highlighted that the agency seeks to bridge the gap between the citizens and officials by making it possible to receive complaints on every website which will be published transparently along with the responses after being followed up with the officials and parties concerned.

The managing editor, Ali al-Kinj, hailed the quick success achieved by Tartous website in terms of the speed and honesty in reporting the events, referring also to Homs website which was the first to succeed in entering into several tense neighborhoods and areas in the province and reporting the situation suffered by the citizens due to the practices of the armed terrorist groups.

He hailed the determination and strong will of the youth working for the agency, particularly those of the photographer of Homs website who had been shot in his leg by a sniper in a neighborhood in Homs and is continuing his duty with more persistence.

For his part, Ali Wannous, the technical coordinator at the agency, said that the number of visitors to the agency websites has reached 10,000, while the number of those communicating on the Facebook, Twitter and YouTube amounted to 23,000.

He mentioned that the number of people listening to the internet radio, which is currently broadcasting a program through which youth communicate to express their ideas and proposals to overcome the crisis in Syria, has exceeded 1500.

Terrorist Gharibo: I Issued Several Fatwas Upon which the Terrorists Perpetrated Crimes Against Civilians

Aug 14, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – Terrorist Ahmad Ali Gharibo, one of the armed terrorist groups’ Muftis in al-Maliha, Damascus countryside, admitted that he has issued several fatwas to the armed groups that permit killing upon which terrorists have depended to perpetrate a number of crimes against civilians.

“I was born in Aleppo countryside in 1964 and live in al-Maliha, East Ghouta.. I work as the Imam and preacher of Khadija mosque,” Terrorist Gharibo said in confessions to the Syrian TV broadcast Monday.

“One day, a car came to my house at 12 midnight.. four armed men came down and asked me to go with them for one hour.. they threatened me of my son if I rejected to go with them.. they took me to Dir al-Asafeer town.. when we arrived in there, we entered a tent where a group of people were inside with drugs in front of them,” the terrorist added.

He said “After interrogating me by the armed group, I pleaded to them to inform me about the person which threatened me.. they answered that his name was Mazen Zamzamm, a leader of an armed terrorist group in al-Maliha.”

Terrorist Gharib added that those evil persons were drug addicts, and one of them has raped a married woman.

“Later, they introduced me to a man called Abu Adi from Homs who has escaped from the army in Saqba.. they told me that they will give him the leadership of the group and they will name themselves as the free army, I told them you are free, it is up to you,” terrorist Gharibo said.

He added that a fatwa has been issued on a website, known as the fatwa No. 107, because it was issued by 107 Sheikhs inside and outside Syria.. it permits to kill anyone who deals with the State if he was proven a killer, they asked me about my opinion, I answered yes, it is true.

“It was my first fault to give a fatwa to kill.. they were killing in a unnatural way.. they were mutilating the bodies.. I remember that they have killed five persons and threw their bodies in the sewage and rubbish containers,” he said.

Terrorist Gharibo went on to say that al-Qaeda and Jabhat al-Nasra in Syria are takfiris, they believe in sectarianism, they regard bloodshed as lawful and they have no problem to kill civilians during their evil acts.

How Two Administrations and Both Parties Made Illegality the American Way of Life

After a decade of fiery public debate and bare-knuckle partisan brawling, the United States has stumbled toward an ad hoc bipartisan compromise over the issue of torture that rests on two unsustainable policies: impunity at home and rendition abroad.

President Obama has closed the CIA’s “black sites,” its secret prisons where American agents once dirtied their hands with waterboarding and wall slamming. But via rendition — the sending of terrorist suspects to the prisons of countries that torture — and related policies, his administration has outsourced human rights abuse to Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere. In this way, he has avoided the political stigma of torture, while tacitly tolerating such abuses and harvesting whatever intelligence can be gained from them.

This “resolution” of the torture issue may meet the needs of this country’s deeply divided politics. It cannot, however, long satisfy an international community determined to prosecute human rights abuses through universal jurisdiction. It also runs the long-term risk of another sordid torture scandal that will further damage U.S. standing with allies worldwide.

Perfecting a New Form of Torture

The modern American urge to use torture did not, of course, begin on September 12, 2001. It has roots that reach back to the beginning of the Cold War and a human rights policy riven with contradictions. Publicly, Washington opposed torture and led the world in drafting the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the Geneva Conventions in 1949. Simultaneously and secretly, however, the Central Intelligence Agency began developing ingenious new torture techniques in contravention of these same international conventions.

From 1950 to 1962, the CIA led a secret research effort to crack the code of human consciousness, a veritable Manhattan project of the mind with two findings foundational to a new form of psychological torture. In the early 1950s, while collaborating with the CIA, famed Canadian psychologist Dr. Donald Hebb discovered that, using goggles, gloves, and earmuffs, he could induce a state akin to psychosis among student volunteers by depriving them of sensory stimulation. Simultaneously, two eminent physicians at Cornell University Medical Center, also working with the Agency, found that the most devastating torture technique used by the KGB, the Soviet secret police, involved simply forcing victims to stand for days at a time, while legs swelled painfully and hallucinations began.

In 1963, after a decade of mind-control research, the CIA codified these findings in a succinct, secret instructional handbook, the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual. It became the basis for a new method of psychological torture disseminated worldwide and within the U.S. intelligence community. Avoiding direct involvement in torture, the CIA instead trained allied agencies to do its dirty work in prisons throughout the Third World, like South Vietnam’s notorious “tiger cages.”

The Korean War added a defensive dimension to this mind-control research. After harsh North Korean psychological torture forced American POWs to accuse their own country of war crimes, President Dwight Eisenhower ordered that any serviceman subject to capture be given resistance training, which the Air Force soon dubbed with the acronym SERE (for survival, evasion, resistance, escape).

Once the Cold War ended in 1990, Washington resumed its advocacy of human rights, ratifying the U.N. Convention Against Torture in 1994, which banned the infliction of “severe” psychological and physical pain. The CIA ended its torture training in the Third World, and the Defense Department recalled Latin American counterinsurgency manuals that contained instructions for using harsh interrogation techniques. On the surface, then, Washington had resolved the tension between its anti-torture principles and its torture practices.

But when President Bill Clinton sent the U.N. Convention to Congress for ratification in 1994, he included language (drafted six years earlier by the Reagan administration) that contained diplomatic “reservations.” In effect, these addenda accepted the banning of physical abuse, but exempted psychological torture.

A year later, when the Clinton administration launched its covert campaign against al-Qaeda, the CIA avoided direct involvement in human rights violations by sending 70 terror suspects to allied nations notorious for physical torture. This practice, called “extraordinary rendition,” had supposedly been banned by the U.N. convention and so a new contradiction between Washington’s human rights principles and its practices was buried like a political land mine ready to detonate with phenomenal force, just 10 years later, in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Normalizing Torture

Right after his first public address to a shaken nation on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush gave his White House staff expansive secret orders for the use of harsh interrogation, adding, “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.”

Soon after, the CIA began opening “black sites” that would in the coming years stretch from Thailand to Poland. It also leased a fleet of executive jets for the rendition of detained terrorist suspects to allied nations, and revived psychological tortures abandoned since the end of the Cold War. Indeed, the agency hired former Air Force psychologists to reverse engineer SERE training techniques, flipping them from defense to offense and thereby creating the psychological tortures that would henceforth travel far under the euphemistic label “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

In a parallel move in late 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appointed General Geoffrey Miller to head the new prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, and gave him broad authority to develop a total three-phase attack on the sensory receptors, cultural identity, and individual psyches of his new prisoners. After General Miller visited Abu Ghraib prison in September 2003, the U.S. commander for Iraq issued orders for the use of psychological torture in U.S. prisons in that country, including sensory disorientation, self-inflicted pain, and a recent innovation, cultural humiliation through exposure to dogs (which American believed would be psychologically devastating for Arabs). It is no accident that Private Lynndie England, a military guard at Abu Ghraib prison, was famously photographed leading a naked Iraqi detainee leashed like a dog.

Just two months after CBS News broadcast those notorious photos from Abu Ghraib in April 2004, 35% of Americans polled still felt torture was acceptable. Why were so many tolerant of torture?

One partial explanation would be that, in the years after 9/11, the mass media filled screens large and small across America with enticing images of abuse. Amid this torrent of torture simulations, two media icons served to normalize abuse for many Americans — the fantasy of the “ticking time bomb scenario” and the fictional hero of the Fox Television show “24,” counterterror agent Jack Bauer.

In the months after 9/11, Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz launched a multimedia campaign arguing that torture would be necessary in the event U.S. intelligence agents discovered that a terrorist had planted a ticking nuclear bomb in New York’s Times Square. Although this scenario was a fantasy whose sole foundation was an obscure academic philosophy article published back in 1973, such ticking bombs soon enough became a media trope and a persuasive reality for many Americans — particularly thanks to “24,” every segment of which began with an oversized clock ticking menacingly.

In 67 torture scenes during its first five seasons, the show portrayed agent Jack Bauer’s recourse to abuse as timely, effective, and often seductive. By its last broadcast in May 2010, the simple invocation of agent Bauer’s name had become a persuasive argument for torture used by everyone from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to ex-President Bill Clinton.

While campaigning for his wife Hillary in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, Clinton typically cited “24” as a justification for allowing CIA agents, acting outside the law, to torture in extreme emergencies. “When Bauer goes out there on his own and is prepared to live with the consequences,” Clinton told Meet the Press, “it always seems to work better.”

Impunity in America

Such a normalization of “enhanced interrogation techniques” created public support for an impunity achieved by immunizing all those culpable of crimes of torture. During President Obama’s first two years in office, former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz made dozens of television appearances accusing his administration of weakening America’s security by investigating CIA interrogators who had used such techniques under Bush.

Ironically, Obama’s assassination of Osama bin Laden in May 2011 provided an opening for neoconservatives to move the nation toward impunity. Forming an a cappella media chorus, former Bush administration officials appeared on television to claim, without any factual basis, that torture had somehow led the Navy SEALs to Bin Laden. Within weeks, Attorney General Eric Holder announced an end to any investigation of harsh CIA interrogations and to the possibility of bringing any of the CIA torturers to court. (Consider it striking, then, that the only “torture” case brought to court by the administration involved a former CIA agent, John Kiriakou, who had leaked the names of some torturers.)

Starting on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the country took the next step toward full impunity via a radical rewriting of the past. In a memoir published on August 30, 2011, Dick Cheney claimed the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on an al-Qaeda leader named Abu Zubaydah had turned this hardened terrorist into a “fount of information” and saved “thousands of lives.”

Just two weeks later, on September 12, 2011, former FBI counterterror agent Ali Soufan released his own memoirs, stating that he was the one who started the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah back in 2002, using empathetic, non-torture techniques that quickly gained “important actionable intelligence” about “the role of KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.”

Angered by the FBI’s success, CIA director George Tenet dispatched his own interrogators from Washington led by Dr. James Mitchell, the former SERE psychologist who had developed the agency’s harsh “enhanced techniques.” As the CIA team moved up the “force continuum” from “low-level sleep deprivation” to nudity, noise barrage, and the use of a claustrophobic confinement box, Dr. Mitchell’s harsh methods got “no information.”

By contrast, at each step in this escalating abuse, Ali Soufan was brought back for more quiet questioning in Arabic that coaxed out all the valuable intelligence Zubaydah had to offer. The results of this ad hoc scientific test were blindingly clear: FBI empathy was consistently effective, while CIA coercion proved counterproductive.

But this fundamental yet fragile truth has been obscured by CIA censorship and neoconservative casuistry. Cheney’s secondhand account completely omitted the FBI presence. Moreover, the CIA demanded 181 pages of excisions from Ali Soufan’s memoirs that reduced his chapters about this interrogation experience to a maze of blackened lines no regular reader can understand.

The agency’s attempt to rewrite the past has continued into the present. Just last April, Jose Rodriguez, former chief of CIA Clandestine Services, published his uncensored memoirs under the provocative title Hard Measures: How Aggressive C.I.A. Actions after 9/11 Saved American Lives. In a promotional television interview, he called FBI claims of success with empathetic methods “bullshit.”

With the past largely rewritten to assure Americans that the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” had worked, the perpetrators of torture were home free and the process of impunity and immunity established for future use.

Rendition Under Obama

Apart from these Republican pressures, President Obama’s own aggressive views on national security have contributed to an undeniable continuity with many of his predecessor’s most controversial policies. Not only has he preserved the controversial military commissions at Guantanamo and fought the courts to block civil suits against torture perpetrators, he has, above all, authorized continuing CIA rendition flights.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama went beyond any other candidate in offering unqualified opposition to both direct and indirect U.S. involvement in torture. “We have to be clear and unequivocal. We do not torture, period,” he said, adding, “That will be my position as president. That includes, by the way, renditions.”

Only days after his January 2009 inauguration, Obama issued a dramatic executive order ending the CIA’s coercive techniques, but it turned out to include a large loophole that preserved the agency’s role in extraordinary renditions. Amid his order’s ringing rhetoric about compliance with the Geneva conventions and assuring “humane treatment of individuals in United States custody,” the president issued a clear and unequivocal order that “the CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future.” But when the CIA’s counsel objected that this blanket prohibition would also “take us out of the rendition business,” Obama added a footnote with a small but significant qualification: “The terms ‘detention facilities’ and ‘detention facility’ in… this order do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.” Through the slippery legalese of this definition, Obama thus allowed the CIA continue its rendition flights of terror suspects to allied nations for possible torture.

Moreover, in February 2009, Obama’s incoming CIA director Leon Panetta announced that the agency would indeed continue the practice “in renditions where we returned an individual to the jurisdiction of another country, and they exercised their rights… to prosecute him under their laws. I think,” he added, ignoring the U.N. anti-torture convention’s strict conditions for this practice, “that is an appropriate use of rendition.”

As the CIA expanded covert operations inside Somalia under Obama, its renditions of terror suspects from neighboring East African nations continued just as they had under Bush. In July 2009, for example, Kenyan police snatched an al-Qaeda suspect, Ahmed Abdullahi Hassan, from a Nairobi slum and delivered him to that city’s airport for a CIA flight to Mogadishu. There he joined dozens of prisoners grabbed off the streets of Kenya inside “The Hole” — a filthy underground prison buried in the windowless basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency. While Somali guards (paid for with U.S. funds) ran the prison, CIA operatives, reported the Nation’s Jeremy Scahill, have open access for extended interrogation.

Obama also allowed the continuation of a policy adopted after the Abu Ghraib scandal: outsourcing incarceration to local allies in Afghanistan and Iraq while ignoring human rights abuses there. Although the U.S. military received 1,365 reports about the torture of detainees by Iraqi forces between May 2004 and December 2009, a period that included Obama’s first full year in office, American officers refused to take action, even though the abuses reported were often extreme.

Simultaneously, Washington’s Afghan allies increasingly turned to torture after the Abu Ghraib scandal prompted U.S. officials to transfer most interrogation to local authorities. After interviewing 324 detainees held by Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) in 2011, the U.N. found that “torture is practiced systematically in a number of NDS detention facilities throughout Afghanistan.” At the Directorate’s prison in Kandahar one interrogator told a detainee before starting to torture him, “You should confess what you have done in the past as Taliban; even stones confess here.”

Although such reports prompted both British and Canadian forces to curtail prisoner transfers, the U.S. military continues to turn over detainees to Afghan authorities — a policy that, commented the New York Times, “raises serious questions about potential complicity of American officials.”

How to Unclog the System of Justice One Drone at a Time

After a decade of intense public debate over torture, in the last two years the United States has arrived at a questionable default political compromise: impunity at home, rendition abroad.

This resolution does not bode well for future U.S. leadership of an international community determined to end the scourge of torture. Italy’s prosecution of two-dozen CIA agents for rendition in 2009, Poland’s recent indictment of its former security chief for facilitating a CIA black site, and Britain’s ongoing criminal investigation of intelligence officials who collaborated with alleged torture at Guantanamo are harbingers of continuing pressures on the U.S. to comply with international standards for human rights.

Meanwhile, unchecked by any domestic or international sanction, Washington has slid down torture’s slippery slope to find, just as the French did in Algeria during the 1950s, that at its bottom lies the moral abyss of extrajudicial execution. The systematic French torture of thousands during the Battle of Algiers in 1957 also generated over 3,000 “summary executions” to insure, as one French general put it, that “the machine of justice” not be “clogged with cases.”

In an eerie parallel, Washington has reacted to the torture scandals of the Bush era by generally forgoing arrests and opting for no-fuss aerial assassinations. From 2005 to 2012, U.S. drone killings inside Pakistan rose from zero to a total of 2,400 (and still going up) — a figure disturbingly close to those 3,000 French assassinations in Algeria. In addition, it has now been revealed that the president himself regularly orders specific assassinations by drone in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia off a secret “kill list.” Simultaneously, his administration has taken just one terror suspect into U.S. custody and has not added any new prisoners to Guantanamo, thereby avoiding any more clogging of the machinery of American justice.

Absent any searching inquiry or binding reforms, assassination is now the everyday American way of war while extraordinary renditions remain a tool of state. Make no mistake: some future torture scandal is sure to arise from another iconic dungeon in the dismal, ever-lengthening historical procession leading from the “tiger cages” of South Vietnam to “the salt pit” in Afghanistan and “The Hole” in Somalia. Next time, the world might not be so forgiving. Next time, with those images from Abu Ghraib prison etched in human memory, the damage to America’s moral authority as world leader could prove even more deep and lasting.

By Alfred W. McCoy

14 August, 2012

@ TomDispatch.com

Alfred W. McCoy is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror, which provided documentation for the Oscar-winning documentary feature film Taxi to the Darkside. His recent book, Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation (University of Wisconsin, 2012) explores the American experience of torture during the past decade.

Copyright 2012 Alfred W. McCoy

 

 

More Washington insiders are coming to the conclusion that Israel’s leaders are planning to attack Iran before the U.S. election in November in the expectation that American forces will be drawn in. There is widespread recognition that, without U.S. military involvement, an Israeli attack would be highly risky and, at best, only marginally successful.

At this point, to dissuade Israeli leaders from mounting such an attack might require a public statement by President Barack Obama warning Israel not to count on U.S. forces — not even for the “clean-up.” Though Obama has done pretty much everything short of making such a public statement, he clearly wants to avoid a confrontation with Israel in the weeks before the election.

However, Obama’s silence regarding a public warning speaks volumes to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The recent pilgrimages to Israel by very senior U.S. officials — including the Secretaries of State and Defense carrying identical “PLEASE DON’T BOMB IRAN JUST YET” banners — has met stony faces and stone walls.

Like the Guns of August in 1914, the dynamic for war appears inexorable. Senior U.S. and Israeli officials focus publicly on a “window of opportunity,” but different ones.

On Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney emphasized the need to allow the “most stringent sanctions ever imposed on any country time to work.” That, said Carney, is the “window of opportunity to persuade Iran … to forgo its nuclear weapons ambitions.”

That same day a National Security Council spokesman dismissed Israeli claims that U.S. intelligence had received alarming new information about Iran’s nuclear program. “We continue to assess that Iran is not on the verge of achieving a nuclear weapon,” the spokesman said.

Still, Israel’s window of opportunity (what it calls the “zone of immunity” for Iran building a nuclear bomb without Israel alone being able to prevent it) is ostensibly focused on Iran’s continued burrowing under mountains to render its nuclear facilities immune to Israeli air strikes, attacks that would seek to maintain Israel’s regional nuclear-weapons monopoly.

But another Israeli “window” or “zone” has to do with the pre-election period of the next 12 weeks in the United States. Last week, former Mossad chief Efraim Halevi told Israeli TV viewers, “The next 12 weeks are very critical in trying to assess whether Israel will attack Iran, with or without American backup.”

It would be all too understandable, given Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s experience with President Obama, that Netanyahu has come away with the impression that Obama can be bullied, particularly when he finds himself in a tight political spot.

For Netanyahu, the President’s perceived need to outdistance Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the love-for-Israel department puts Obama in a box. This, I believe, is the key “window of opportunity” that is uppermost in Netanyahu’s calculations.

Virtually precluded, in Netanyahu’s view, is any possibility that Obama could keep U.S. military forces on the sidelines if Israel and Iran became embroiled in serious hostilities. What I believe the Israeli leader worries most about is the possibility that a second-term Obama would feel much freer not to commit U.S. forces on Israel’s side. A second-term Obama also might use U.S. leverage to force Israeli concessions on thorny issues relating to Palestine.

If preventing Obama from getting that second term is also part of Netanyahu’s calculation, then he also surely knows that even a minor dustup with Iran, whether it escalates or not, would drive up the price of gasoline just before the election — an unwelcome prospect for Team Obama.

It’s obvious that hard-line Israeli leaders would much rather have Mitt Romney to deal with for the next four years. The former Massachusetts governor recently was given a warm reception when he traveled to Jerusalem with a number of Jewish-American financial backers in tow to express his solidarity with Netanyahu and his policies.

Against this high-stakes political background, I’ve personally come by some new anecdotal information that I find particularly troubling. On July 30, the Baltimore Sun posted my op-ed, “Is Israel fixing the intelligence to justify an attack on Iran?” Information acquired the very next day increased my suspicion and concern.

Former intelligence analysts and I were preparing a proposal to establish direct communications links between the U.S. and Iranian navies, in order to prevent an accident or provocation in the Persian Gulf from spiraling out of control. Learning that an official Pentagon draft paper on that same issue has been languishing in the Senate for more than a month did not make us feel any better when our own proposal was ignored. (Still, it is difficult to understand why anyone wishing to avoid escalation in the Persian Gulf would delay, or outright oppose, such fail-safe measures.)

Seeking input from other sources with insight into U.S. military preparations, I learned that, although many U.S. military moves have been announced, others, with the express purpose of preparation for hostilities with Iran, have not been made public.

One source reported that U.S. forces are on hair-trigger alert and that covert operations inside Iran (many of them acts of war, by any reasonable standard) have been increased. Bottom line: we were warned that the train had left the station; that any initiative to prevent miscalculation or provocation in the Gulf was bound to be far too late to prevent escalation into a shooting war.

SEARCHING FOR A CASUS BELLI

A casus belli — real or contrived — would be highly desirable prior to an attack on Iran. A provocation in the Gulf would be one way to achieve this. Iran’s alleged fomenting of terrorism would be another.

In my op-ed of July 30, I suggested that Netanyahu’s incredibly swift blaming of Iran for the terrorist killing of five Israelis in Bulgaria on July 18 may have been intended as a pretext for attacking Iran. If so, sadly for Netanyahu, it didn’t work. It seems the Obama administration didn’t buy the “rock-solid evidence” Netanyahu adduced to tie Iran to the attack in Bulgaria.

If at first you don’t succeed … Here’s another idea: let’s say there is new reporting that shows Iran to be dangerously close to getting a nuclear weapon, and that previous estimates that Iran had stopped work on weaponization was either wrong or overtaken by new evidence.

According to recent Israeli and Western media reports, citing Western diplomats and senior Israeli officials, U.S. intelligence has acquired new information — “a bombshell” report — that shows precisely that. Imagine.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Radio that the new report is “very close to our [Israel’s] own estimates, I would say, as opposed to earlier American estimates. It transforms the Iranian situation to an even more urgent one.”

Washington Post neocon pundit Jennifer Rubin was quick to pick up the cue, expressing a wistful hope on Thursday that the new report on the Iranian nuclear program “would be a complete turnabout from the infamous 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that asserted that Iran had dropped its nuclear weapons program.”

“Infamous?” Indeed. Rubin warned, “The 2007 NIE report stands as a tribute and warning regarding the determined obliviousness of our national intelligence apparatus,” adding that “no responsible policymaker thinks the 2007 NIE is accurate.”

Yet, the NIE still stands as the prevailing U.S. intelligence assessment on Iran’s nuclear intentions, reaffirmed by top U.S. officials repeatedly over the past five years. Rubin’s definition of “responsible” seems to apply only to U.S. policymakers who would cede control of U.S. foreign policy to Netanyahu.

The 2007 NIE reported, with “high confidence,” the unanimous judgment of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon in the fall of 2003 and had not restarted it. George W. Bush’s own memoir and remarks by Dick Cheney make it clear that this honest NIE shoved a steel rod into the wheels of the juggernaut that had begun rolling off toward war on Iran in 2008, the last year of the Bush/Cheney administration.

The key judgments of the 2007 NIE have been re-asserted every year since by the Director of National Intelligence in formal testimony to Congress.

And, unfortunately for Rubin and others hoping to parlay the reportedly “new,” more alarmist “intelligence” into an even more bellicose posture toward Iran, a National Security Council spokesman on Thursday threw cold water on the “new” information, saying that “the U.S. intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear activities had not changed.”

Relying on the unconfirmed Israeli claim about “new” U.S. information regarding Iran’s nuclear program, Rubin had already declared the Obama administration’s Iran policy a failure, writing:

“Foreign policy experts can debate whether a sanctions strategy was flawed from its inception, incorrectly assessing the motivations of the Iranian regime, or they can debate whether the execution of sanctions policy (too slow, too porous) was to blame. But we are more than 3 1/2 years into the Obama administration, and Iran is much closer to its goal than at the start. By any reasonable measure, the Obama approach has been a failure, whatever the NIE report might say.”

Pressures Will Persist

The NSC’s putdown of the Israeli report does not necessarily guarantee, however, that President Obama will continue to withstand pressure from Israel and its supporters to “fix” the intelligence to “justify” supporting an attack on Iran.

Promise can be seen in Obama’s refusal to buy Netanyahu’s new “rock-solid evidence” on Iran’s responsibility for the terrorist attack in Bulgaria. Hope can also be seen in White House reluctance so far to give credulity to the latest “evidence” on Iran’s nuclear weapons plans.

An agreed-upon casus belli can be hard to create when one partner wants war within the next 12 weeks and the other does not. The pressure from Netanyahu and neocon cheerleaders like Jennifer Rubin — not to mention Mitt Romney — will increase as the election draws nearer, agreed-upon casus belli or not.

Netanyahu gives every evidence of believing that — for the next 12 weeks — he is in the catbird seat and that, if he provokes hostilities with Iran, Obama will feel compelled to jump in with both feet, i. e., selecting from the vast array of forces already assembled in the area.

Sadly, I believe Netanyahu is probably correct in that calculation. Batten down the hatches.

 

By Ray McGovern

14 August, 2012

@ Consortiumnews.com

 

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27 years in CIA’s analysis division, his duties included preparing and delivering the President’s Daily Brief and chairing National Intelligence Estimates.

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