Idiot
News
"Nothing
Ever Happens"
Nowhere
Man: George Bush
and the Disappeared
We
could win the war in Iraq. We could have the best economy
in
history. But we would still be honor bound to relieve
George Bush of
his
duties. The last year has proven that he used
lies and fear to
start
a war. This is
reason enough for George to go, but there is
one
more reality that leaves us no choice.
When
they finished the Constitution, the Founding Fathers had
developed
a system of government,
a democracy. At that point, they
realized
that they had a great system...but no rights.
Therefore,
they
added the Bill of Rights.
At the heart of these is the 5th
Amendment. It states:
No
person shall] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without
due
process of law.
So
you can't be arrested without cause.
The
6th Amendment adds:
In
all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right
of a
speedy
and public trial.
You
can't be held indefinitely. So together the 5th and the 6th
amendments
promise the ultimate right.
They guarantee that you will
never
be disappeared. There is one more we must not forget, the
8th
Amendment,
which outlaws "cruel and unusual punishment." In
America,
it
is your right not to be disappeared and not to be tortured.
George
Bush has taken the 5th, the 6th, and now even the 8th
amendments
out of our constitution.
He is not fit to rule.
Step
One Towards Abu Ghraib:
Soon
after 9/11, we imprisoned 761 non-citizens and there was no
due
process
of law. Almost
all were detained without probable cause.
Many
were not allowed lawyers.
Many were not allowed to see the
evidence
against them because it was "classified." People
were
detained
indefinitely... literally for years.
There were no trials.
To
this day, we still do not know the names of all 761 people.
For
many,
even their families did not know where they were or that they
had
even been arrested.
Remember, we're not talking about a few
souls,
we're talking about hundreds!!
They were just
disappeared. In fact, not one of them has since been
linked to
terrorism. Most were eventually deported.
Naturally,
abuse followed. People
were beaten and kicked.
They were
hooded
and deprived of sleep.
They were sexually humiliated and had
things
crammed up their asses.
(Appendix A) As it turns out,
Americans
are no better and no worse than any other people. When
given
absolute power, we are absolutely corrupted
too.
Human
rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human
Rights
Watch were denied access to the prisons.
And we, the people,
allowed
all this to happen.
It was the first step towards Abu Ghraib.
Step 2
Since
they had gotten away with it in the United States, the pattern
was
repeated in Afghanistan.
The Administration declared that the
Geneva
Conventions, the international bill of rights, did not apply.
So
they invented a new label, the "enemy non-combatant." As a
result,
people in Afghanistan, too, were disappeared.
Even teenagers
were
imprisoned for years! Again Human rights organizations were
not
allowed
to observe their conditions. Again, families had no idea that
their
kin were imprisoned. (Appendix B) Newspapers reported torture,
but
it was hard for us to believe that Americans might do these
things.
We, the people, half believe that absolute power only
corrupts
others, not Americans.
We forget that the Bill of Rights
was
written because we are human and because we have human weaknesses
like
anyone else.
Human
Rights Watch reports:
Mistreatment
of prisoners by U.S. military and intelligence personnel
in
Afghanistan is a systemic problem and not limited to a few
isolated
cases. (Appendix B)
People
were beaten and kicked.
They were deprived of sleep,
exposed
to
freezing temperatures while naked, and they were also sexually
abused.
(Appendix B) Guilty until proven innocent doesn't apply
because
no one has had the right to prove their innocence. It has
been
two years and no trials have taken place.
Thus,
the 2nd step towards Abu Ghraib had been taken and they got
away with it again. In addition, there are a select few al
Qaeda of
such
importance, that they do not receive even the limited rights
of
Guantanamo
Bay. No one knows
who they are. No
one knows where they
are
held, not even "President" Bush.
They have been disappeared even
from
the disappeared! God
know what is being done to them, but the
International
Red Cross and Amnesty International do not. (Appendix
C) Let's just trust the administration
on this one, shall we?
Step
3
So
now we have Abu Ghraib.
Gee, maybe we should investigate to see
if
it's systemic! Donald
Rumsfeld tells us it's "only a few bad
apples." For once, I concur. The bad apples are the Secretary of
Defense,
the so called President of the United States, and that Black
lackey
guy, (the Secretary of State).... You remember him? Two months
ago,
he denied that anyone was being abused in Afghanistan or
Guantanamo
Bay saying, "...Because we are Americans, we don't abuse
people
in our care." At the time, he already knew about Abu
Ghraib,
but
after 3 years, Colin Powell has gotten used to lying.
Our
leaders are responsible for disappearing people all over the
world. The tenor of their decisions has led to
the same resulting
abuse
in America, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and no doubt
many
other places that have yet to surface.
A man who starts a war
based
on lies, does not deserve to lead.
A man who disappears
people,
does not deserve to rule.
If George Bush gets even
1%
of the vote in November, I will be embarrassed as an
American.
Appendix
A: Disappearances,
Torture and Abuse of 9/11 Suspects in
American
Prisons:
Activity
that would later become famous at Abu Ghraib occurred in the
Brooklyn
Metropolitan Detention Center.
According to a Justice
Department
Inspector General report (12/24/03), prisoners were
slammed
into walls and dragged across the floor while shackled. We
know
this because it was videotaped.
They were denied access to
lawyers. Egyptian Ehab Elmaghraby says he was "mockingly
displayed
naked
to a female staff member." (NY Times 5/3/04) Anything
sound
familiar? This activity occurred in the United States!
Elmaghraby
adds
that inmates were punched and kicked until they bled and cursed
as
"terrorists" and "Muslim bastards." At one point, a flashlight
was
inserted up his rectum until it bled.
Elmaghraby was innocent.
Other
common Abu Ghraib practices occurred here.
In addition to the
beatings,
Javaid Iqbal describes being left out in cold rain without
shoes
or a jacket, and being returned to his cell where the air
conditioning
was turned on. His
stepson, Paul Harrison said, "I
never
knew what happened.
I felt he fell off the face of the earth."
NYTimes
(5/3/04).
Benamar
Benatta was cleared of terrorist charges in November of 2001
but
no one bothered to tell Benatta.
As of last January, over 2
years
later, he was still in custody.
(Washington
Post, 11/29/03)
Abdallah
Higazy "confessed" to having an aviation radio in
his room
near
the World Trade Center.
In fact, he confessed to obtaining it
three
times under three entirely different circumstances. First he
said
he found it in a subway station.
Then he said he had found it
underneath
the Brooklyn Bridge.
Finally, he admitted to having
stolen
it from the Egyptian Air Force.
Higazy was released 8 months
later
when another guest came looking for the radio.
Higazy had
never
even possessed it. I guess he confessed for the fun of it.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/26/60minutes/main602401.shtml
Perhaps
the most disturbing case is the detention of Maher Arar who
holds
both Canadian and Syrian citizenship.
Arar's requests for a
lawyer
were ignored. He
begged not to be sent to Syria because he
knew
he would be tortured.
(Almost all of the detainees from 9/11
were
eventually deported, often to governments like Syria known
for
torture. This is against international law.)
With no hearing, Arar
was deported. Here is Arar's description of his Syrian cell:
"It
was like a grave. It had no light. It was three feet wide.
It was
six
feet deep. It was seven feet high. It had a metal door, with
a
small
opening in the door, which did not let in light...
There
was a small opening in the ceiling, about one foot by two
feet
with
iron bars. Over that was another ceiling, so only a little
light
came
through this.
There
were cats and rats up there, and from time to time the cats
peed
through the opening into the cell. There were two blankets,
two
dishes
and two bottles. One bottle was for water and the other one
was
used for urinating during the night. Nothing else. No light.
I
spent
10 months, and 10 days inside that grave.
For
a description of his detention and torture,please check out
his
vivid
recollections. They are not unique among 9/11 deportees.
http://www.counterpunch.org/arar11062003.html
Appendix
B: Disappearances,
Torture and Abuse Afghanistan:
In
an interview with The New York Times today, police officer
Sayyed
Nabi Siddiqi says he was falsely accused of being a member
of
the
Taliban last summer and spent some 40 days in detention at
various
U.S. bases in Afghanistan. He alleges he was subjected to
beatings,
sleep deprivation, and sexual abuse. Siddiqi said he was
repeatedly
photographed naked by his U.S. captors, like the Iraqi
prisoners
at the Abu Ghurayb prison. http://www.rferl.org
John
Sifton of Human Rights Watch (5/13/04):
Mistreatment
of prisoners by U.S. military and intelligence personnel
in
Afghanistan is a systemic problem and not limited to a few
isolated
cases...Detainees who were held in Kandahar airport in early
2002
reported being stripped naked, kicked and punched, and forced
to
endure
freezing temperatures.
U.S. officials have told journalists
and
Human Rights Watch that U.S [personnel] in Afghanistan employ
an
interrogation
system that includes the use of sleep deprivation,
sensory
deprivation, and forcing detainees to sit or stand in painful
positions
for extended periods of time.
"We know now that abuse of
detainees
was an established part of the interrogation process."
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/13/afghan8577.htm
Below
is a description by 2 men from totally different detention
locations:
SK
[In western Afghanistan]: The Americans blindfolded us and,
worst
of
all, they made us completely naked and made us to sit in a
cold
room
and we were shivering and trembling because of the cold air.
. . .
[Upon
arrival at airbase in western Afghanistan:]
At the airport,
someone
who was pretty strong held my neck under his arm and pressed
it
hard and meanwhile kept punching me hard on my face and one
punch
hit
me hard on my mouth and two front teeth of my upper jaw fell
out,
which
you can see now [interviewee is missing both teeth]
Other
detainee (In Kandahar): ...they were beating us mercilessly,
without
any reason. They were kicking and punching us. Mostly they
were
beating us on our backs.... After that they took me for an
interrogation
and before asking any questions they started beating
me.
One person picked me up high over his head and threw me onto
a
desk
and made me lie there. And then two or three other persons
hit
me
with their knees on my back and shoulders.... In short, everyone
was
beaten
in Kandahar. It was a bad place.
http://hrw.org/reports/2004/afghanistan0304/3.htm#_Toc64778174
Massacres
in Afghanistan:
Recently
released from Guantanamo Bay, British citizens Shafiq Rasul,
Ruhal
Ahmed, and Asif Iqbal discussed a near escape from massacres
while
detained in Afghanistan. They described how hundreds of
prisoners
were forced into airtight containers.
Approximately 280
of
300 prisoners died of suffocation.
They claim their survival
came
only because someone machine gunned the side of the container
which
killed several prisoners but also allowed a few to breathe
and
thus
survive. (Guardian,
3/14/04)
It
is probable that thousands were killed in this manner. American
ally
and Northern alliance commander Gen Abdul Rashid Dostum was
known
for his massacres in previous Afghan Wars.
For more
information
on these suffocations:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/03/19/wafg219.xml
Guantanamo
Bay:
Dozens
of videotapes of American guards allegedly engaged in brutal
attacks
on Guantanamo Bay detainees have been stored and catalogued
at
the camp.... The disclosures, [were]made in an interview with
Tarek
Dergoul,
the fifth British prisoner freed last March, who has been
too
traumatized to speak until now...: 'They
pepper-sprayed me in the face,
and I started vomiting. They pinned
me down and attacked me, poking
their fingers in my eyes, and forced
my head into the toilet pan and flushed.
They tied me up like a
beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking
and punching. Finally
they dragged me out of the cell in chains, into the
rec[reation]
yard, and shaved my beard, my hair, my eyebrows...."
Rasul
said they led to a new verb being coined by detainees: 'to
be
ERFed'. That, he said, meant being slammed against a floor
by a
soldier
wielding a riot shield, pinned to the ground and beaten up
by
five
armed men. However, it is Dergoul who now reveals that every
time
the
ERFs were deployed, a sixth team member recorded on digital
video
everything
that happened. Lieutenant Colonel Leon Sumpter,
the
Guantanamo Joint Task Force spokesman, confirmed this last
night,
saying
all ERF actions were filmed so they could be 'reviewed'
by
senior officers.
(Guardian,
5/16/04)
Jamal
Udeen gave a description of Guantanamo Bay
(He is a recently
released
British citizen):
Inmates
were kept in wire cages with concrete floors and no
protection
from the elements. "The
beatings were not as nearly as
bad
as the psychological torture - bruises heal after a week but
the
other
stuff stays with you...The whole point of Guantanamo was to
get
to
you psychologically.... After awhile we stopped asking for
human
rights--we
wanted animal rights."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/3504034.stm
Udeen also claims that female prostitutes were brought to the prison
about 10 times to "embarrass and degrade [young Muslims] including
some who had never seen an unveiled woman before."
(NY Times, 3/12/04).
The International Red Cross has been allowed into Guantanamo Bay, but
will not comment publicly. Independent human rights observers have
been refused access. Steve Crawshaw of Human Rights Watch reports:
"If the problems are less than have been described, the US has
everything to gain from allowing people to look into conditions and
talk about them."
By the way, teenagers were incarcerated as enemy combatants and
denied the rights of the Geneva Convention along with the other
prisoners. Assadulah, who thinks he is 12 or 13, was kicked so hard
by American soldiers that his stomach still hurt when he arrived at
Guantanamo Bay several months later. Mohammad Ismail Agha, 15,
said
his family spent 10 months searching for him after his disappearance
in Afghanistan. After over a year, they have both been released
because they had nothing to do with terrorism. (NY Times, 3/12/04)
According to the Amnesty International, other teenagers remain in
Guantanamo.
"Holding the children was wholly repugnant and contrary to basic
principles of human rights," saidAngela Wright of Amnesty
International, and contravened UN rules with "near-universal
acceptance" regarding the treatment of juveniles....The precise legal
ramifications are unclear, since many experts argue that the US is
already in breach of international law by holding any of the detainees
indefinitely without trial or charge, regardless of age. (Guardian
4/23/03)
Iraq:
There is no point in discussing Abu Ghraeb which is all over the
papers. But what happens to regular Iraqi's?
Relatives of wanted Iraqi's have been detained for months. Former
Iraqi Vice President Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri is suspected of
commanding resistance attacks. His wife and daughter were arrested
on November 26, 2003 and were still in custody a month and a half
later. (I don't know if they were ever released.) On January
14,
2004 US troops detained two nephews of al-Douri as well. (Guardian
1/14/04)
This is what happens to well known people. What happens to regular
Iraqi's?