Rove's White House 'Murder, Inc.'

[Octafish]

Here's a bit on Rove's role in Fourth Reich:

Rove's White House 'Murder, Inc.'

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Download a .pdf file for printing.
Adobe Acrobat Reader required.
Click here to download a free copy.

May 21, 2004—On September 15, 2001, just four days after the 9-11 attacks, CIA Director George Tenet provided President Bush with a Top Secret "Worldwide Attack Matrix"—a virtual license to kill targets deemed to be a threat to the United States in some 80 countries around the world. The Tenet plan, which was subsequently approved by Bush, essentially reversed the executive orders of four previous U.S. administrations that expressly prohibited political assassinations.

According to high level European intelligence officials, Bush's counselor, Karl Rove, used the new presidential authority to silence a popular Lebanese Christian politician who was planning to offer irrefutable evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon authorized the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian men, women, and children in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla in 1982. In addition, Sharon provided the Lebanese forces who carried out the grisly task. At the time of the massacres, Elie Hobeika was intelligence chief of Lebanese Christian forces in Lebanon who were battling Palestinians and other Muslim groups in a bloody civil war. He was also the chief liaison to Israeli Defense Force (IDF) personnel in Lebanon. An official Israeli inquiry into the massacre at the camps, the Kahan Commission, merely found Sharon "indirectly" responsible for the slaughter and fingered Hobeika as the chief instigator.

The Kahan Commission never called on Hobeika to offer testimony in his defense. However, in response to charges brought against Sharon before a special war crimes court in Belgium, Hobeika was urged to testify against Sharon, according to well-informed Lebanese sources. Hobeika was prepared to offer a different version of events than what was contained in the Kahan report. A 1993 Belgian law permitting human rights prosecutions was unusual in that non-Belgians could be tried for violations against other non-Belgians in a Belgian court. Under pressure from the Bush administration, the law was severely amended and the extraterritoriality provisions were curtailed.

Hobeika headed the Lebanese forces intelligence agency since the mid- 1970s and he soon developed close ties to the CIA. He was a frequent visitor to the CIA's headquarters at Langley, Virginia. After the Syrian invasion of Lebanon in 1990, Hobeika held a number of cabinet positions in the Lebanese government, a proxy for the Syrian occupation authorities. He also served in the parliament. In July 2001, Hobeika called a press conference and announced he was prepared to testify against Sharon in Belgium and revealed that he had evidence of what actually occurred in Sabra and Shatilla. Hobeika also indicated that Israel had flown members of the South Lebanon Army (SLA) into Beirut International Airport in an Israeli Air Force C130 transport plane. In full view of dozens of witnesses, including members of the Lebanese army and others, SLA troops under the command of Major Saad Haddad were slipped into the camps to commit the massacres. The SLA troops were under the direct command of Ariel Sharon and an Israeli Mossad agent provocateur named Rafi Eitan. Hobeika offered evidence that a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon was aware of the Israeli plot. In addition, the IDF had placed a camera in a strategic position to film the Sabra and Shatilla massacres. Hobeika was going to ask that the footage be released as part of the investigation of Sharon.

CONTINUED...

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/052104Madsen/052104madsen.html

Madsen's Great!

[seemslikeadream]

1. REALLY REALLY GOOD

The Syrian hit team was ordered by Assef Shawkat, the number two man in Syrian military intelligence and a good friend and brother in law of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Assad's intelligence services had already cooperated with U.S. intelligence in resorting to unconventional methods to extract information from al Qaeda detainees deported to Syria from the United States and other countries in the wake of 9-11. The order to take out Hobeika was transmitted by Shawkat to Roustom Ghazali, the head of Syrian military intelligence in Beirut. Ghazali arranged for the three remote controlled cars to be parked along Hobeika's route in Hamzieh.

The plan to kill Hobeika had all the necessary caveats and built-in denial mechanisms. If the Syrians were discovered beforehand or afterwards, Karl Rove and his associates in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans would be ensured plausible deniability.

Hobeika's CIA intermediary in Beirut, a man only referred to as "Jason" by Hobeika, was a frequent companion of the Lebanese politician during official and off-duty hours. During Hobeika's election campaigns for his parliamentary seat, Jason was often in Hobeika's office offering support and advice. After Hobeika's assassination, Jason became despondent over the death of his colleague. Eventually, Jason disappeared abruptly from Lebanon and reportedly later emerged in Pakistan.

Karl Rove's involvement in the assassination of Hobeika may not have been the last "hit" he ordered to help out Sharon. In March 2002, a few months after Hobeika's assassination, another Lebanese Christian with knowledge of Sharon's involvement in the Sabra and Shatilla massacres was gunned down along with his wife in Sao Paulo, Brazil. A bullet fired at Michael Nassar's car flattened one of his tires. Nassar pulled into a gasoline station for repairs. A professional assassin, firing a gun with a silencer, shot Nassar and his wife in the head, killing them both instantly. The assailant fled and was never captured. Nassar was also involved with the Phalange militia at Sabra and Shatilla. Nassar was also reportedly willing to testify against Sharon in Belgium and, as a nephew of SLA Commander General Antoine Lahd, may have had important evidence to bolster Hobeika's charge that Sharon ordered SLA forces into the camps to wipe out the Palestinians.

Based on what European intelligence claims is concrete intelligence on Rove's involvement in the assassination of Hobeika, the Bush administration can now add political assassination to its laundry list of other misdeeds, from lying about the reasons to go to war to the torture tactics in violation of the Geneva Conventions that have been employed by the Pentagon and "third country" nationals at prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.


http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/052104Madsen/052104madsen...





If I gave you everything that I owned and asked for nothing in return
Would you do the same for me as I would for you?
Or take me for a ride, and strip me of everything including my pride
But spirit is something that no one destroys
And the sound that I'm hearing is only the sound
The low spark of high-heeled boys

Traffic

[seemslikeadream]

2. What Might Sharon Know About CACI?

Two former Mobile police officers working in Iraq


New York Times reports that one, Kenneth Powell, screened prisoners for private company at Abu Ghraib prison
Thursday, May 27, 2004
By RON COLQUITT
Staff Reporter
Former Mobile police Lt. Kenneth Powell is one of the civilian contractors who has worked screening prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, the facility that is the subject of an international prisoner abuse scandal, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The Times report focused on the experience and security clearance status of civilian contractors working at the prison on the western outskirts of Baghdad. It cites Powell's name as having been mentioned in military documents obtained by the Times.

Powell, the Times reported, "recently retired after 24 years with the Mobile, Ala., police force, where presumably he picked up the skills, and the security clearance, to screen Iraqi prisoners."

There is no mention that Powell had any knowledge of, or participation in, any of the abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib, outraging many in the Arab and Western worlds.

more
http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/news/10856494505...


What Might Sharon Know About CACI?

Right now, Americans are so mesmerized by those photos, which daily increase in number and luridness, that the facts of who did what and who knew what, and just what the “hey” and worse went on in those prisons, are just dribbling out, like water from a leaky faucet.

What might Sharon know? He might know whether the four “contract” interrogators identified as the foremost abusers — John Israel, Steven Stephanowicz, Torin Nelson, and Adel Nakha — were trained in their “craft” in Israel, or by Israelis.

Initial news reports indicate that two companies, Titan of San Diego, California, and California Analysis Center Incorporated (CACI, pronounced “khaki”) of Arlington, Virginia, employed these now-notorious “contractors.” But Titan and CACI themselves reportedly deny being their “direct” employers. And Titan and CACI refuse to identify who is.

What might Sharon know? Well, surely he knows that CACI was founded in the 1960s by Herbert Kerr and Harry Markowitz, a Chicago Jew, who worked together at The Rand Corporation in the 1950s. Markowitz, a mathematics genius with a Ph.d. from the University of Chicago, received the 1990 Nobel prize in economics (shared) for his theory of “portfolio choice,” which allows market investors to analyze risk as well as their expected return. But Markowtiz and Kerr’s work at Rand was in computer matrix codes with industrial and defense applications. This is the work that CACI still does now. With creative innovations, apparently.

What might Sharon know?

Sharon certainly knows that in February 2004, the Jerusalem Fund of Aish Ha Torah, a Zionist “worldwide foundation” specializing in “educational outreach,” according to CACI’s own press release, gave CACI its Albert Einstein award “for promoting peace in the Middle East.” CACI’s CEO, Jack London, was presented the award by Israel’s Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski in a glittering, elaborate ceremony at the Jerusalem City Hall. The ceremony was billed as part of the “First Annual Defense Aerospace Homeland Security Mission of Peace to Israel and Jordan.”

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=44927&d=14&m=5&y=200...

[seemslikeadream]

4. Mercenaries not hired by DOD Gale Norton is their boss

but working on a cookbook on the side for extra cash!


CWebster

Follow Torture Trail at Abu Ghraib


The actual interrogators accused of encouraging U.S. troops to abuse Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail were working for at least one company with extensive military and commercial contacts with Israel. The head of an American company whose personnel are implicated in the Iraqi tortures, it now turns out, attended an "anti-terror" training camp in Israel and, earlier this year, was presented with an award by Shaul Mofaz, the right-wing Israeli defense minister.

According to J.P. London's company, CACI International, the visit of London -- sponsored by an Israeli lobby group and including U.S. congressmen and other defense contractors -- was "to promote opportunities for strategic partnerships and joint ventures between U.S. and Israeli defense and homeland security agencies."

The Pentagon and the occupation powers in Iraq insist that only U.S. citizens have been allowed to question prisoners in Abu Ghraib but this takes no account of Americans who may also hold double citizenship. The once secret torture report by U.S. Gen. Antonio Taguba refers to "third country nationals" involved in the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq.

Taguba mentions Steven Staphanovic and John Israel as involved in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Staphanovic, who worked for CACI -- known to the U.S. military as "Khaki" -- was said by Taguba to have "allowed and/or instructed MPs (military police), who were not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by 'setting conditions' ... he clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse." One of Staphanovic's co-workers, Joe Ryan -- who was not named in the Taguba report -- now says he underwent an "Israeli interrogation course" before going to Iraq.



http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0526-05.htm


seemslikeadream

"John Israel" from earlier posts

finecraft

Abu Ghraib civilian interrogator's diary online


From Billmon (http://billmon.org ) - "Bernhard, a Whiskey Bar reader in Germany, has made a spectacular catch - or cache, I should say, since it comes from the bowels of the Google data base.

What he stumbled across is the diary of one Joe Ryan, a frequent caller and on-air personality at station KSTP, a conservative talk radio station in Minneapolis. More recently, Joe has been serving as a military interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and KSTP has been posting his diary on their web site."

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:XYYOCOWnu_8J:www.am1500.com/perso ...



orthogonal

Here's a bit of that diary that gives me pause


From that diary link: "CW3 Dan Adkins said to the television, 'kill 1,000 for every hostage killed. No need to discriminate either.'"

Much as I wholeheartedly support our troops, I have to be honest and say that this idea of mass reprisals -- and without discrimination, which apparently means just rounding up insurgents or civilians -- for the deaths of American troops reminded me of this:

In some occupied areas in which the Nazis had to contend with well organized and active guerrilla units, they applied a simple rule: they would massacre one hundred nearby civilians for every German soldier killed; fifty for every one wounded. Often this was a minimum that might be doubled or tripled. They thus killed vast numbers of innocent peasants and townsfolk, possibly as many as 8,000 in Kraguyevats, 1,755 in Kraljevo, and overall 80,000 in Jajinci, to name just in a few places in Yugoslavia alone. Most executions were small in number, but day by day they added up. From an official German war diary: 16 December 1942, "In Belgrade, 8 arrests, 60 Mihailovich supporters shot;" 27 December, "In Belgrade, 11 arrests, 250 Mihailovich supporters shot as retaliation." A German placard from Belgrade announced that the Nazis shot fifty hostages in retaliation for the dynamiting of a bridge. On 25 May 1943 the Nazis shot 150 hostages in Kraljevo; in October they shot 150 hostages in Belgrade; fifty hostages in Belgrade in August 1943; 150 Serbs at Cacak in October; and so on. In Greece, as another example, the Nazis may have burned and destroyed as many as 1,600 villages each with populations of 500 to 1,000 people, no doubt massacring many of the inhabitants beforehand. Overall, the Nazis thus slaughtered hundreds of thousands in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Greece, and France; and millions overall in Poland and the Soviet Union.


(from: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NAZIS.CHAP1.HTM )


NewYorkerfromMass


http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=888

from: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&ie=ascii&q=torture+Iraq+p ...


Nordic65

Civilian interrogator at your service...

Wow, talk about spilling their beans...


#1 - Evidence from the horses mouth. No mention of any military involvement thou.

"I worked the guy from the Ar Ramadi area again tonight. I got home about 3:00am after writing reports and putting together the associations with the others in his group. It was great because my guy knows where the forged citizenship papers are made and by who and the real names and origins of the other detainees captured with him. It is hard for the other guys to lie when I already know all about their backgrounds, but they sure are trying."


#2 - Anyone associated with this prisoner can just log on the net and take the necessary precautions - very unprofessional and bordering on giving information to enemy. Of course he's a civilian and probably cannot be charged with treason.

"My smuggler friend just keeps on talking. I have nick-named him Han Solo since he is a smuggler extraordinaire. I have received information regarding the entire network from start to finish on how foreign fighters are coming into Iraq; who is paying for it; how they communicate; how they get their weapons once here; and how they move to their target locations. This will never make the papers, but it sure is exciting to know the information."


THIS IS BAD!

Tinoire

About these 3rd party nationals

<snip>

Speculation that "John Israel" may be an intelligence cover name has fueled speculation whether this individual could have been one of a number of Israeli interrogators hired under a classified contract. Because U.S. citizenship and documentation thereof are requirements for a U.S. security clearance, Israeli citizens would not be permitted to hold a Top Secret clearance. However, dual U.S.-Israeli citizens could have satisfied Pentagon requirements that interrogators hold U.S. citizenship and a Top Secret clearance. Although the Taguba report refers twice to Israel as an employee of Titan, the company claims he is one of their sub-contractors. CACI stated that one of the men listed in the report "is not and never has been a CACI employee" without providing more detail. A U.S. intelligence source revealed that in the world of intelligence "carve out" subcontracts such confusion is often the case with "plausible deniability" being a foremost concern.

In fact, the Taguba report does reference the presence of non-U.S. and non-Iraqi interrogators at Abu Ghraib. The report states, "In general, US civilian contract personnel (Titan Corporation, CACI, etc), third country nationals, and local contractors do not appear to be properly supervised within the detention facility at Abu Ghraib."

The Pentagon is clearly concerned about the outing of the Taguba report and its references to CACI, Titan, and third country nationals, which could permanently damage U.S. relations with Arab and Islamic nations. The Pentagon's angst may explain why the Taguba report is classified Secret No Foreign Dissemination.

<snip>

During his testimony before the Senate Armed Service Committee, Rumsfeld was pressed upon by Senator John McCain about the role of the private contractors in the interrogations and abuse. McCain asked Rumsfeld four pertinent questions, ". . . who was in charge? What agency or private contractor was in charge of the interrogations? Did they have authority over the guards? And what were the instructions that they gave to the guards?" When Rumsfeld had problems answering McCain's question, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the Deputy Commander of the U.S. Central Command, said there were 37 contract interrogators used in Abu Ghraib. The two named contractors, CACI and Titan, have close ties to the Israeli military and technology communities. Last January 14, after Provost Marshal General of the Army, Major General Donald Ryder, had already uncovered abuse at Abu Ghraib, CACI's President and CEO, Dr. J.P. (Jack) London was receiving the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah's Albert Einstein Technology award at the Jerusalem City Hall, with right-wing Likud politician Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski in attendance. Oddly, CACI waited until February 2 to publicly announce the award in a press release. CACI has also received grants from U.S.-Israeli bi-national foundations.

Titan also has had close connections to Israeli interests. After his stint as CIA Director, James Woolsey served as a Titan director. Woolsey is an architect of America's Iraq policy and the chief proponent of and lobbyist for Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. An adviser to the neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, Project for the New American Century, Center for Security Policy, Freedom House, and Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Woolsey is close to Stephen Cambone, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, a key person in the chain of command who would have not only known about the torture tactics used by U.S. and Israeli interrogators in Iraq but who would have also approved them. Cambone was associated with the Project for the New American Century and is viewed as a member of Rumsfeld's neo-conservative "cabal" within the Pentagon.

<snip>

http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen05102004.html

Steven Staphanovic we were talking about him before but his name was spelled differently and some did not know if it was the same person. Would you happen to know another spelling or the thread from awhile back? There was some good stuff there.


PaDUer

Steven Stefanowicz


http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11776879&BRD=2185&PAG=461&de...

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11776865&BRD=2185&PAG=461&de...

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11776867&BRD=2185&PAG=461&de...

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11776869&BRD=2185&PAG=461&de...

seemslikeadream

Diary of an interrogator: After a tough day's questioning, a relaxing evening of jail-roof golf

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
09 May 2004



Among the golfers is a civilian accused by a US Army report of being "directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse" at the prison. The diary also reveals the pressure on interrogators and the extremely right-wing views of some.

Joe Ryan, a former Green Beret working in Abu Ghraib for CACI International, a defence IT contractor, had been keeping the diary for a conservative talk-show radio station in Minneapolis, KSTP 1500. The diary was posted on the station's website until, Mr Ryan said, military authorities requested its removal. On 25 April, Mr Ryan wrote: "We have foreign fighters from Morocco, Syria, Jordan, and other countries detained here. They are not sponsored by their respective countries to come here, but it is due to their individual choices, be it religious or stupidity ... I got to take the rest of the day off after our long booth time. This gave us a nice evening after dinner to head to the roof and play a round of golf.

"Scott Norman, Jeff Mouton, Steve Hattabaugh, Steve Stefanowicz, and I all took turns trying to hit balls over the back wall and on to the highway. Since the club is a left-handed 3 iron, I had an unfair advantage and missed a dump truck by only about 10 feet ... We do what we can to make it fun here."

Mr Stefanowicz, 35, a former naval reserve officer also employed by Arlington-based CACI International as an interrogator, became a reservist in the aftermath of the terror attacks of September 2001. A CACI official said last week that Mr Stefanowicz was "by all accounts doing a damn fine job". But Major General Antonio Taguba, who carried out an investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib, believed Mr Stefanowicz was one of the people "either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib".
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=519434


seemslikeadream

Joe in his own words

Anyway, here's Joe in his own words:

For those of you who do not know my military and civilian background, let me give a little bio to maybe clarify how I look at things while I am here.
I was in Air Force Junior ROTC in high school and went to University of Colorado for two years on Air Force ROTC scholarship. I decided that Aerospace Engineering was not for me and left college.

I enlisted into the Army as a PFC for an interrogator position with an airborne slot. My language wish list consisted of Russian, German, or Spanish. In the army's omnipotence, they chose to send me to the Foreign Service Institute in Washington, DC to learn Swahili. My first assignment was with 3rd Special Forces Group where I was in-processed a whole 13 days prior to going on my first deployment with a team to Uganda. I have spent time in 10 African countries with the teams and earned my "S" identifier after completion of selection and qualifying course for weapons specialist (18B), but was never released by MI branch since I was one of two Swahili linguists in the army, so carried the 18B as a secondary specialty. I went through the DOD Strategic Debriefer Course, Israeli Interrogation Course, and the SCAN Course. In 1994, I went into Haiti with two SF teams into La Cayes on the southern peninsula. After securing our objective, we were informed the invasion was canceled. This meant no further reinforcements for 28 days and forever resentful to the philandering president. In Haiti I performed more than 80 interrogations and conducted the force protection assessments.

Since MI Branch would not release me, I reclassified to 98C (Signals Intelligence Analyst) so I could advance my career. So a Swahili linguist was sent to Korea for a year upon completion of the school. The blessing is that I met my wonderful wife in 98C school and spent the year in Korea with her. I was in charge of the two Trojan Spirit systems for the 2nd Infantry Division.

Needing a desk to try on for size, I went to work for the National Security Agency for the last 17 month of my active duty. As the only military person in the department and the only one to have spent time in Eastern Africa, I had four civilians making MUCH more money than I working for me during the height of the Sudanese civil war.
more
http://billmon.org/archives/001450.html



".....In order to avoid going back to active duty, I signed on with a defense contractor and am now over here as an interrogator."

LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/services/site/premium/access-registered.interce ...


Octafish

Right wing ideologue. Tortures for a living. Plays reckless golf.


The entire man's life is devoted to killing.

Plus, as a civilian contractor, he gives his boss "plausible deniability."

From the article:

Elsewhere he says: "'Wild' Bill Armstrong is one of our interrogators. Bill is married with five kids and a devout Christian, father, and husband ... Politically, Bill makes (the right wing radio host) Rush Limbaugh look like a flaming liberal."

Thanks for finding this article, seemslikeadream! It wasn't in my Sunday paper today.

These fellows are the same as the NAZIs.

"The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were." — John Fitzgerald Kennedy

seemslikeadream

text from the memory hole - JCMach1


JCMach1

Here is the text from the memory hole

http://www.thesyndrome.com/archives/00000856.htm



Octafish
The boy's a right-wing NUTJOB...

... raised on Reagan. The guy makes clear his hatreds, even when they're superior officers. He also blames the media for distorting the picture -- just like Ollie and 'Nam. "We'd a won if it weren't for the pictures in the living rooms." This stuff needs be archived. From the link -- one entry of MANY:

"Meanwhile, While We Were Torturing: Joe Ryan's Iraq Diary (from Abu Ghraib)"

EXCERPT...

I ask that everyone say a prayer or two over the next 48 hours for PFC Keith Maupin, KBR employee Thomas Hamill, and for the Marines in our area. God willing, all three will make the media and give a good story to report for a change. Enough said about that.

Work is fast and furious, but we are more productive right now than we have been since I have been here. Some intelligence things are really coming together and could shift a few things to our advantage, at least west and north of Baghdad. The Al Fallujah situation is being guided by results from the intelligence gleaned from here as well as at their division cage. We are making progress on rooting out foreign fighters as well as those individuals that are helping/hiding them.

Christine Chaney is another of our three CACI females here. She left the army last fall and was actually in the 202nd MI BN that we are working with here. Christine is tall like my sister-in-law, so my posture always improves like when I am around my sister-in-law. She also was in Afghanistan last year with the 202nd and is a fluent Farsi and Pashto linguist in addition to being an experienced interrogator. It is impressive because the three women we have here are all former army and hard chargers. They are more professional and tougher than most of the female soldiers here.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thesyndrome.com/archives/00000856.htm



nolabels

No need for stories we have some real ones

YOU GET EXCATLY WHAT IT SAYS IN THE BROCHURE !

INFACT YOU’LL LIKE IT SO MUCH

YOU WON’T WANT TO GO HOME

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=myspace.chez.tiscali.fr/Large_C ...

Nordic65

Here is the diary...

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:XYYOCOWnu_8J:www.am1500.com/perso ...


seemslikeadream

A few revealing entries from his diary - daleo

daleo A few revealing entries from his diary - hard to read this stuff

Here he is advocating genocide and murdering journalists:

"We watched the Al Jazeera footage of the two American soldiers that are being held hostage. CW3 Dan Adkins said to the television, "kill 1,000 for every hostage killed. No need to discriminate either." We know they were captured right down the road from our location. We also know they are still in the general area. The first thing that needs to happen is to stake every Al Jazeera reporter in the middle of the desert and let the buzzards have them. "

Here he describes a "contractor" who forgets she is not in charge of the soldiers she works with:

"Berryl Jackson is one of the three females we have here. She is a retired Chief Warrant Officer 3. To show you what a small world it is, she was my interrogation instructor when I went through the school 13 years ago. BJ is from Costa Rica originally and is a real character. She sometimes forgets that she is no longer in the military and is not in charge of the soldiers that she works with, but she is a wealth of knowledge and one heck of an interrogator."

Here he is, keeping the Iraqi Governing Council in the dark:

Today was a short day. There were six of us that had to come in early and conduct long interrogations to ensure that certain detainees were only able to be seen, but not talked to. The Iraqi Governing Council came and looked through our mirrors into the booths to see some of the foreign fighters we have detained. They wanted to talk to them and film to show the international media, but we refused, due to not being able to interrupt interrogations. They were much more patient than we thought they would be so they tried to wait us out. Five and a half hours in the booth was a long time, but we finally outlasted them. The IGC left with only the satisfaction that we have foreign fighters from Morocco, Syria, Jordan, and other countries detained here.

Here is a pretty chilling comment given what we now know:

"Christine Chaney is another of our three CACI females here. She left the army last fall and was actually in the 202nd MI BN that we are working with here. Christine is tall like my sister-in-law, so my posture always improves like when I am around my sister-in-law. She also was in Afghanistan last year with the 202nd and is a fluent Farsi and Pashto linguist in addition to being an experienced interrogator. It is impressive because the three women we have here are all former army and hard chargers. They are more professional and tougher than most of the female soldiers here."

http://www.thesyndrome.com/archives/00000856.htm


starroute

More on Steven Stefanowicz

He comes from the next town down the road from me, and the local papers have been full of the story. Here are a couple of links:

http://www.pottstownmercury.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11614603&BRD=1674 ...

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-a1_2abusemay08,0,2804243.story?col ...


seemslikeadream

Telford abuzz about man ID'd in abuse report

By Pervaiz Shallwani
Of The Morning Call
May 9, 2004


Steven Stefanowicz played volleyball and basketball and belonged to student government groups at Souderton Area High School in the late 1980s. Four years ago he joined the Naval Reserve, and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he volunteered for active duty and served in the Middle East.

Now, the 34-year-old from Franconia Township, near Telford, has been named as one of four men who might be responsible for the humiliation and attempted murder of Iraqi prisoners inside the


Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

The allegations are outlined in an Army report that details soldier abuse at the prison between October and December. It lists near-death beatings, electric torture and threats to rape male Iraqi detainees, and mentions a photo of a woman soldier holding a dog chain or strap that's tied around a naked detainee's neck.
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-a1_2abusemay08,0,2804243.story?col

seemslikeadream

Lt. Col. Jerry Phillabaum Steven Stephanowicz

Under suspicion

BETH COHEN , Staff Writer 05/08/2004

Lt. Col. Jerry Phillabaum of Snyder Road in Towamencin was suspended from his duties as commander of the 320th Military Battalion on Jan. 17‚ 2004‚ according to a U.S. Army report on the investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba.
Also named is civilian intelligence contractor Steven Stefanowicz‚ who has been cited in various published reports although there is a discrepancy in the spelling of his last name‚ with it also listed as Stephanowicz.


The U.S. Navy’s Chief of Naval Information Office at the Pentagon in Arlington‚ Va.‚ on Thursday said they had no record of a Steven Stephanowicz‚ but did have records showing that a Steven Anthony Stefanowicz enlisted in the U.S. Navy on Feb. 20‚ 1998.

He became an Intelligence Specialist 3rd Class‚ U.S. Naval Reserve‚ on Feb. 8‚ 2002‚ according to information supplied by Lt. Mike Kafka‚ Navy spokesman. Stefanowicz also received numerous awards‚ ribbons and medals during his service.


Page 29 of Taguba’s 34-page report‚ available at on the Internet at www.politrix.org/foia/iraq/taguba/html ‚ states that Steven Stephanowicz‚ contract U.S. civilian interrogator‚ CACI‚ 205th Military Intelligence Brigade‚ should be officially reprimanded‚ terminated from his Army job‚ and that his his security clearance be revoked based on the following allegations:

“Made a false statement to the investigating team regarding the locations of his interrogations‚ the activities during his interrogations‚ and his knowledge of abuses.”

“Allowed/and or instructed MPs‚ who were not trained in interrogation techniques‚ to facilitate interrogations by ‘setting conditions’ which were neither authorized and in accordance with applicable regulations/policy. He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse.”

http://www.thereporteronline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11615058&BRD=227 ...


saltara

propaganda and/or...

PR literature touting the money to be made "playing golf" and working as an interrogator for the likes of CACI?

"I got to take the rest of the day off after our long booth time. This gave us a nice evening after dinner to head to the roof and play golf." (quote from Whiskey Bar blog - link below)

"Like his military masters, Ryan is also obsessed with the idea that 'foreign fighters' are responsible for the insurgency in Iraq.... In Joe's world, Fallujah is a city held hostage by foreign terrorists - even though the aftermath of the Marines' withdrawal brought jubilant victory celebrations in the streets.... All this raises the unsettling idea that the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were abused and tortured simply so the idiots at the top of this lunatic enterprise could have their own pet theories falsely confirmed."

http://billmon.org/archives/001457.html

Also, here's an interesting quote to ponder from a right-wing source whose name came up in an article written by Justin Raimondo ("The S&M War" on his site antiwar.com). In an article from October 24, 2003, David Leo Gutmann, a professor of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences at "North-Western university Medical School, in Chicago" writes:

"If we are to defeat terror, a kind of regime change is required: on our campuses, in our press, and in Hollywood. And responses to that need, previously silenced voices are being heard. Organizations like Students for Academic Freedom, FIRE, Campus Watch, ACTA and the National Association of Scholars are fighting the good fight for free speech on our thought-policed campuses; and networks like Fox News are providing pulpits for informed conservative opinion on TV. Perhaps most hopeful of all, a lively and uninhibited blogger's Samizdat offers new internet outlets, unmonitored by the Thought Police, for a new generation of gifted commentators who gleefully and intelligently refute the pious orthodoxies of the pro-jihad Left."

"Shame, Honor and Terror in the Middle East"
by David Leo Gutmann
http://frontpagemag.com/articles/Printable.asp?ID=10489

Would Joe's blog do the trick? When did Joe's blog first appear and how widely was it read, quoted, anyone know?

(For more on Gutmann's pet theories and their appearance in a study published by the military, see "The S&M War" on antiwar.com)


seemslikeadream

Steve Stefanowicz

I got to take the rest of the day off after our long booth time. This gave us a nice evening after dinner to head to the roof and play a round of golf. Scott Norman, Jeff Mouton, Steve Hattabaugh, Steve Stefanowicz, and I all took turns trying to hit balls over the back wall and onto the highway. Since the club is a left handed 3 iron, I had an unfair advantage and missed a dump truck by only about ten feet. Not bad since the highway is about 220 yards. We do what we can to make it fun here.

http://www.thesyndrome.com/archives/00000856.htm

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=275 .


seemslikeadream

CHAIN OF COMMAND (Sy Hersh New Yorker 5/17)

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
How the Department of Defense mishandled the disaster at Abu Ghraib.
Issue of 2004-05-17
Posted 2004-05-09
In his devastating report on conditions at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq, Major General Antonio M. Taguba singled out only three military men for praise. One of them, Master-at-Arms William J. Kimbro, a Navy dog handler, should be commended, Taguba wrote, because he “knew his duties and refused to participate in improper interrogations despite significant pressure from the MI”—military intelligence—“personnel at Abu Ghraib.” Elsewhere in the report it became clear what Kimbro would not do: American soldiers, Taguba said, used “military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.”

Taguba’s report was triggered by a soldier’s decision to give Army investigators photographs of the sexual humiliation and abuse of prisoners. These images were first broadcast on “60 Minutes II” on April 28th. Seven enlisted members of the 372nd Military Police Company of the 320th Military Police Battalion, an Army reserve unit, are now facing prosecution, and six officers have been reprimanded. Last week, I was given another set of digital photographs, which had been in the possession of a member of the 320th. According to a time sequence embedded in the digital files, the photographs were taken by two different cameras over a twelve-minute period on the evening of December 12, 2003, two months after the military-police unit was assigned to Abu Ghraib.

more at
http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?040517fa_fact2

http://newyorker.com/online/slideshows/pop/?040510onslpo_prison_02?fal ...


seemslikeadream

Joe Ryan is likely a witness to

maybe an accomplice to multiple felonies. He should be arrested and taken into custody as soon as he enters the U.S

JCMach1
Link to the almost complete WEBLOG

http://www.thesyndrome.com/archives/00000856.htm

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic...

[Octafish]

6. CACI sounds nice.

Like a right nice bunch of killers for the BFEE. And these turds are professional nutjobs, which is what's with all the plausible deniability. Somedays I'm almost tempted to write there won't be enough prisons for all these turds, then I remember we can always build a new Spandau for this Homeland set. I hope there's a box on my 1040-EZ where I can send a portion of my taxes to speed its construction.



Source: http://history.farmersboys.com/Postings/Germany/Berlin/spandau_prison.htm

[seemslikeadream]

7. I'm suprised there wasn't a torture photo

with old Steve teeing off from one of the prisoners

Steve Stefanowicz

I got to take the rest of the day off after our long booth time. This gave us a nice evening after dinner to head to the roof and play a round of golf. Scott Norman, Jeff Mouton, Steve Hattabaugh, Steve Stefanowicz, and I all took turns trying to hit balls over the back wall and onto the highway. Since the club is a left handed 3 iron, I had an unfair advantage and missed a dump truck by only about ten feet. Not bad since the highway is about 220 yards. We do what we can to make it fun here.

http://www.thesyndrome.com/archives/00000856.htm

[Octafish]

14. HET: 'Human Exploitation Teams'

Gee, seemslikeadream. You don't think the BFEE would try anything like this ... at home?



Intelligence Agents Encouraged Abuse

By MATT KELLEY
Associated Press Writer
May 29, 2004, 9:45 PM EDT

WASHINGTON -- Several U.S. guards allege they witnessed military intelligence operatives encouraging the abuse of Iraqi prison inmates at four prisons other than Abu Ghraib, investigative documents show.

Court transcripts and Army investigator interviews provide the broadest view of evidence that abuses, from forcing inmates to stand in hoods in 120-degree heat to punching them, occurred at a Marine detention camp and three Army prison sites in Iraq besides Abu Ghraib.

That is the prison outside Baghdad that was the site of widely published and televised photographs of abuse of Iraqi detainees by Army troops.

Testimony about tactics used at a Marine prisoner of war camp near Nasiriyah also raises the question whether coercive techniques were standard procedure for military intelligence units in different service branches and throughout Iraq.
At the Marines' Camp Whitehorse, the guards were told to keep enemy prisoners of war -- EPWs, in military jargon -- standing for 50 minutes each hour for up to 10 hours. They would then be interrogated by "human exploitation teams," or HETs, comprising intelligence specialists.

CONTINUED...

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/ats-ap_politics10may29,0,2617122.story?coll=ny-top-headlines

[seemslikeadream]

16. Hawaii Man Named In Iraq Prisoner Abuse Probe

We got us another one of those mercenaries today cowboy!



Honolulu Attorney Hired To Represent Interrogator


HONOLULU -- One of the people being investigated in the Iraq prisoner abuse case is a man from Hawaii, KITV 4 News has learned.
Daniel E. Johnson is an employee of the Virginia-based company, CACI Premier Technology. He was one of the civilian interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison.

The scandal over prisoner abuse there erupted after photos showing abuse of detainees were made public.

Johnson is not accused of the kind of abuse shown in the photos. He was named in an article in The New York Times Thursday.

The Times said Army investigators say Johnson acknowledged that "he is aggressive in an interview. He generally yells in their face, and throws the table in the room."

more
http://www.thehawaiichannel.com/news/3358235/detail.html

Telltale Signs of Torture Lead Family to Demand Answers


Wife, Daughters Tell of Iraqi Man Discharged from U.S. Custody in Coma
by Dahr Jamail (bio)
Brian Dominick (bio) contributed to this item.

Editor's Note: Part of the following feature story was first reported by Baghdad correspondent Dahr Jamail back in January, when almost no one was paying attention to stories of the horrifying treatment dealt to Iraqi prisoners by their Western captors. Now that the world has deemed the topic newsworthy, Jamail has returned to the story for more thorough coverage. As part of our mission to The NewStandard will continue to pursue this and other stories like it in the near future. As any Iraq correspondent who speaks with Iraqis can attest, there is no shortage of them.


Baghdad , May 4 - Not all evidence of military personnel mistreating Iraqis held in US custody come from leaks within the American- and British-run detention facilities. In many cases, such as that of Sadiq Zoman, 57, who last year entered US custody healthy but left in a vegetative state, the story originates with family members desperate to share their loved one’s story with anyone willing to listen.

American soldiers detained Zoman at his residence in Kirkuk on July 21, 2003 when they raided the Zoman family home in search of weapons and, apparently, to arrest Zoman himself.

More than a month later, on August 23, US soldiers dropped Zoman off, already comatose, at a hospital in Tikrit. Although he was unable to recount his story, his body bore telltale signs of torture: what appear to be point burns on his skin, bludgeon marks on the back of his head, a badly broken thumb, electrical burns on the soles of his feet. Additionally, family members say they found whip marks across his back and more electrical burns on his genitalia.






Daughter Rheem stated, "My father is a good man who helped so many people in our community. Why have they done this to him? Can you tell me? Everyone who knows him can say that he did so many good things to help people."

With tears in her eyes, Hashima Zoman added, "Is it fair for any man's family to be made to suffer like this? Is it right that his daughters must see him like this? Our lives will never be the same again, no matter what happens."


http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=275.

[Octafish]

17. My God! No words can describe the horror of those photos.

Even if he worked for Saddam, there was no reason to do that to that poor man. Going by the size of the dent to the skull, the force of the hit to the back of the head probably separated the man's brain from the brain stem. That is not barbarian. These operatives of the BFEE are NAZIs.

In the US, most people have a quality of life pretty far removed from the level of violence experienced by the people of Iraq. It's not just today or this year or this administration. Iraq has been under a state of siege and economic sanction for more than 14 years. The human misery caused to the people of Iraq -- from Kurds to Chaldeans to Shia to Sunni -- is unbelievable. The human toll is in the tens of thousands per year from lack of food and medicine.

The only reason I knew this is while working on an unrelated matter, I had the good fortune of meeting a woman who was organizing relief workers to help stop the craziness. Her story has not been covered by the local papers for 13 years.

Here's another forgotten story. Poppy Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft and Barry McCafferty don't wnat people to think too much about:


(Photo Credit: © 1991 Kenneth Jarecke / Contact Press Images)


WAR CRIMES
A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal

by Ramsey Clark and Others



Incinerated body of an Iraqi soldier on the "Highway of Death," a name the press has given to the road from Mutlaa, Kuwait, to Basra, Iraq. U.S. planes immobilized the convoy by disabling vehicles at its front and rear, then bombing and straffing the resulting traffic jam for hours. More than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of charred and dismembered bodies littered the sixty miles of highway. The clear rapid incineration of the human being suggests the use of napalm, phosphorus, or other incindiary bombs. These are anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols. This massive attack occurred after Saddam Hussein announced a complete troop withdrawl from Kuwait in compliance with UN Resolution 660. Such a massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Convention of 1949, common article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who "are out of combat." There are, in addition, strong indications that many of those killed were Palestinian and Kuwaiti civilians trying to escape the impending seige of Kuwait City and the return of Kuwaiti armed forces. No attempt was made by U.S. military command to distinguish between military personnel and civilians on the "highway of death." The whole intent of international law with regard to war is to prevent just this sort of indescriminate and excessive use of force.

"It has never happened in history that a nation that has won a war has been held accountable for atrocities committed in preparing for and waging that war. We intend to make this one different. What took place was the use of technological material to destroy a defenseless country. From 125,000 to 300,000 people were killed... We recognize our role in history is to bring the transgressors to justice." Ramsey Clark

Next » Preface

SOURCE:

http://deoxy.org/wc/warcrime.htm

[seemslikeadream]

18. Oh Octafish I long for the good old days when torture was simplier

just a rope and a crowd.

WITHOUT SANCTUARY


Lynchers often paraded their victim down the main street, through black neighborhoods, and in front of "colored schools" that were in session.

Jesse Washington, seventeen years old, was the chief suspect in the May 8, 1916, murder of Lucy Fryer of Robinson, Texas, on whose farm he worked as a laborer. After the lynching, Washington's corpse was placed in a burlap bag and dragged around City Hall Plaza, through the main streets of Waco, and seven miles to Robinson, where a large black population resided.

His charred corpse was hung for public display in front of a blacksmith shop. The sender of this card, Joe Meyers, an oiler at the Bellmead car department and a Waco resident, marked his photo with a cross (now an ink smudge to left of victim).


This card bears the advertising stamp, "katy electric studio temple texas. h. lippe prop." inscribed in brown ink: "This is the Barbecue we had last night my picture is to the left with a cross over it your son Joe."

Repeated references to eating are found in lynching-related correspondence, such as "coon cooking," "barbecue," and "main fare."
http://www.musarium.com/withoutsanctuary/main.html

[Octafish]

3. The BFEE is GLOBAL.

A terrorist by any other name...

The Sabra and Shatila massacres - why do we ignore them?

Chris Tolworthy
March 2002

The massacres at Sabra and Shatila provide an interesting comparison to the September 11th tragedy. Both killed around 2800 innocent people (although the exact count at Sabra and Shatila may be much higher). Both were probably guided by men with a history of terrorism. However, while Sepember 11th is remembered in the west, Sabra and Shatila are largely ignored.

In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and killed between 2000 and 3500 innocent civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The striking thing is that the west almost ignores it. Try a web search for "Sabra and Shatila" and look for western sources. For example, the Time Magazine web site just headlines the invasion as "Israel Strikes at The PLO" and barely mentions the massacre. Yet everyone agrees that it took place.

"In 1983, an Israeli state inquiry found Mr Sharon, then defense minister, indirectly responsible for the killing of hundreds of men, women and children at Sabra and Shatila camps during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon." ."(1)

On December 16, 1982 the United Nations General Assembly condemned the massacre and declared it to be an act of genocide. Sharon resigned as defense minister, but later became Israeli Prime Minister.

http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/MiddleEast/TerrorInUSA/faq/Sabra.asp



BTW: Heck of a song and album, seemslikeadream! I just popped it on to return my mind to peace.

[seemslikeadream]

5. I just can't get those high heeled boys out of my head!

Barrett808

CACI in the Dark On Reports of Abuse (Employee Still Working in Iraq)

CACI in the Dark On Reports of Abuse
Employee Named in Army Report Still Working in Iraq, Company Says
By Anitha Reddy and Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 6, 2004; Page E01

Officials at CACI International Inc. fought back against allegations that one of its employees was involved in abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, saying that it has not been notified of any problems, that the man is still at work and that he has been doing "a damn fine job."

Clearly exasperated, J.P. "Jack" London, the Arlington-based company's chief executive, said during a conference call Wednesday with investment analysts that he still had not received any information from the government about a report that said a CACI interrogator, an interpreter and two military intelligence officials were probably "either directly or indirectly responsible" for problems at the prison.

"The information we've been getting comes from the news media and there's been plenty of it, as you all know," London said.

For the past few days, CACI has been in the awkward position of defending itself against accusations in a report it has not been given by the Defense Department but which has been widely circulated. To get a copy, CACI downloaded it from the Internet.

(more)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5677-2004May5.html


daleo

Check the invoices, Jack


There must be some "per torture" charges you can look up, to see what your boys were up to. Of course, head office never knows what the field workers are doing. You just sit back and collect the checks.

He and Bush must have taken the same classes at MBA school, the ones about avoiding responsibility and pretending you don't know what your employees actually do.


PaDUer

page 2 of the article...


CACI is among an elite group of Washington area companies that do classified work for the federal government. The company, formed in the 1960s, first caught the government's eye with a computer language it developed that could be used to build battlefield simulation programs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5677-2004May5_2.html


seemslikeadream

Richard Armitage, the current deputy US secretary of state, sat on CACI’s

Edited on Thu May-06-04 10:57 AM by seemslikeadream
But these soldiers aren’t simply mavericks. Some accused claim they acted on the orders of military intelligence and the CIA, and that some of the torture sessions were under the control of mercenaries hired by the US to conduct interrogations. Two “civilian contract” organisations taking part in interrogations at Abu Ghraib are linked to the Bush administration.
California-based Titan Corporation says it is “a leading provider of solutions and services for national security”. Between 2003-04, it gave nearly $40,000 to George W Bush’s Republican Party. Titan supplied translators to the military.
CACI International Inc. describes its aim as helping “America’s intelligence community in the war on terrorism”. Richard Armitage, the current deputy US secretary of state, sat on CACI’s board.
No civilians, however, are facing charges as military law does not apply to them. Colonel Jill Morgenthaler, from CentCom, said that one civilian contractor was accused along with six soldiers of mistreating prisoners. However, it was left to the contractor to “deal with him”. One civilian interrogator told army investigators that he had “unintentionally” broken several tables during interrogations as he was trying to “fear-up” detainees.
Lawyers for some accused say their clients are scapegoats for a rogue prison system, which allowed mercenaries to give orders to serving soldiers. A military report said private contractors were at times supervising the interrogations.
Kimmitt said: “I hope the investigation is including not only the people who committed the crimes, but some of the people who might have encouraged the crimes as well because they certainly share some responsibility.”
Last night, CACI vice-president Jody Brown said: “The company supports the Army’s investigation and acknowledges that CACI personnel in Iraq volunteered to be interviewed by army officials in connection with the investigation. The company has received no indication that any CACI employee was involved in any alleged improper conduct with Iraqi prisoners. Nonetheless, CACI has initiated an independent investigation.”
However, military investigators said: “A CACI investigator’s contract was terminated because he allowed and/or instructed military police officers who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations which were neither authorised nor in accordance with regulations.”

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:LGgQIc6IKxoJ:southafrica.indymedi...


PaDUer

I found this interesting...in bold...

The company, formed in the 1960s, first caught the government's eye with a computer language it developed that could be used to build battlefield simulation programs.

Interesting...wonder if THIS is the one they used that day?


seemslikeadream

I knew EDS sounded familiar - Interesting

Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State is president and partner of Armitage Assoc. LLP, was a Boeing consultant, a Raytheon consultant and an advisory board member. Armitage was also President Bush's special emissary to Jordan's King Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War. Armitage has also worked in the past for Halliburton.
http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=45246&group=webcast

From March 1992 until 1993, Armitage as ambassador, funneled U.S. dollars into the new independent states of the former Soviet Union. In January 1992, the Bush Administration's desire to cozy up to the NIS (and their oil) resulted in Armitage's appointment as Coordinator for Emergency Humanitarian Assistance.

During this time Armitage took on the other international patronage projects that normally follow war, accommodating the assuagement of the European Community, Japan and other donor countries.

Armitage owns Electronic Data Systems stock worth $250,001 to $500,000 (EDS is the 49th largest defense contractor, and lobbies the Defense Dept. over various appropriations issues), General Electric stock worth $500,001 to $1 million, Merck & Co. stock worth $100,001 to $250,000 (Merck lobbied the Defense Dept. over the Biological Weapons Convention implementation protocol), and Verizon Communications stock worth $250,001 to $500,000.

Armitage also worked as a consultant to Halliburton. Armitage is a former co-chairman of the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. He was instrumental in the reconstruction of the emerging economies of the former Soviet republics, after the fall of the Communist empire; along with Condi Rice, who rode herd on the Bush cabal's bid for U.S. control of the Caspian oil.
http://www.ifpafletcherconference.com/army2000/bios/armitage_rt.htm
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/outside/commentary/2002/0204oil_b ...

AccuPoll has teamed with Electronic Data Systems to jointly bid on voting system opportunities. EDS is a leading global information technology services company for over 40 years, and one of the leading systems integration companies in the world, with over 140,000 employees and annual revenues in excess of $21 Billion. EDS will provide deployment, training, and customer support services to state and local governments. Management believes that EDS currently has relationships with, or does business with, more than seventy percent of every federal, state and local government in the United States.

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:wH5Q2g-CjDAJ:www.accupoll.com/New

[Disturbed]

8. Criminal War Profiteers

Bushco and it's offshoots are comprised of war profiteers, sociopaths and sadists. This is a large Criminal Org. with many sub contractors.

[Octafish]

13. Breslin says people call them for what they are: NAZIs!

Higher-ups beware the lowly stool pigeon

By Jimmy Breslin

May 27, 2004

I am told that there are over 30 homicides in the prison run by Americans in Baghdad. If the averages hold up, and there is no reason they should not, there should be 30 stool pigeons who can identify people in lineups, make statements against them and appear in court as witnesses to bury the accused.

SNIP...

That George Bush made a speech to his country the other night and did not utter a word about the prison torture in Baghdad was an omission of the greatest magnitude. Bush and the people who tell him what to say, somebody named Karl Rove is the main influence, didn't have the slightest conception of what the 30 murders are.

They think it's something you can leave out of a major speech and nobody will notice.

And the people associate it immediately with Nazis.

CONTINUED...

http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-nybres273820692may27,0,6074250.column

[seemslikeadream]

9. Apartheid Enforcers Guard Iraq For the U.S.

Erinys is an international Security Services and Risk consultancy. We provide clients with a range of services and capabilities to reduce the impact of operating in volatile, uncertain or complex environments such as sub-saharan Africa and the Middle East.

Formed in 2001 by senior managers and executives of the security & risk management industry our combination of skills and experience has enabled Erinys to rapidly establish a pre-eminent reputation in its field. A reputation exemplified by a client list representative of some of the world's largest and most important corporations.


Apartheid Enforcers Guard Iraq For the U.S.

By Marc Perelman

02/21/04: (The Forward) In its effort to relieve overstretched U.S. troops in Iraq, the Bush administration has hired a private security company staffed with former henchmen of South Africa’s apartheid regime.

The reliance on apartheid enforcers was highlighted by an attack in Iraq last month that killed one South African security officer and wounded another who worked for the subsidiary of a firm called Erinys International. Both men once served in South African paramilitary units dedicated to the violent repression of apartheid opponents.

François Strydom, who was killed in the January 28 bombing of a hotel in Baghdad, was a former member of the Koevoet, a notoriously brutal counterinsurgency arm of the South African military that operated in Namibia during the neighboring state’s fight for independence in the 1980s. His colleague Deon Gouws, who was injured in the attack, is a former officer of the Vlakplaas, a secret police unit in South Africa.

“It is just a horrible thought that such people are working for the Americans in Iraq,” said Richard Goldstone, a recently retired justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and the Pentagon did not return requests for comment.
In Iraq, the U.S. government has tapped into the ever-growing pool of private security companies to provide a variety of defense services, including protecting oil sites and training Iraqi forces. Observers worry that a reliance on these companies and the resulting lack of accountability is a recipe for further problems in a volatile region.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5723.htm

Guarding a Vital Asset
Are Iraqis ready to protect their valuable, vulnerable oil?By Joe Cochrane
Newsweek InternationalFeb. 16 issue - It might be a stretch to call Ali and Muhammad the guardians of Iraq's future. Pulling guard duty recently in the rain-soaked northern town of Kirkuk, home of one of the world's largest oilfields, the two men sport mismatched uniforms and clutch rusty AK-47s. But looks are deceiving. Faced with continuing attacks by anti-U.S. insurgents and, according to some, insufficient ground troops to stop them, the U.S. military is counting on Ali and Muhammad (not their real names) and thousands of other private guards to protect Iraq's vast oil infrastructure. The task is daunting: dozens of oilfields, refineries and pumping stations, along with thousands of kilometers of pipeline that crisscross Iraq, are prime targets for insurgents bent on denying the U.S.-led occupying force money for long-term reconstruction. They also hope to exacerbate ongoing fuel shortages in hopes of further enraging a population already angered by long queues for petrol and kerosene. "Production at the refineries is already down 40 to 50 percent," says Asim Jihad, a spokesman for Iraq's Oil Ministry, "so any attacks seriously affect the flow of oil for export and our ability to provide things for the people."


The vast majority of the attacks around the country each day are directed at U.S. troops and the Iraqis who support them, including the Feb. 1 bombing in Arbil that killed 100 Kurds and wounded 247 more. Similar strikes at targets like the Kirkuk fields or Daura oil refinery in Baghdad could seriously disrupt production and oil exports, and have major implications for Iraq's recovery. "One attack could be catastrophic to the oil industry," says Col. Tom O'Donnell, commander of Task Force Shield, which oversees the security of Iraq's oil infrastructure. Anti-U.S. fighters have launched at least 100 attacks against the oil infrastructure since Baghdad fell, including two last fall on a northern pipeline route that halted crude-oil exports to Turkey. The Coalition has been forced to buy oil products from neighboring countries to meet domestic needs.

U.S. war planners gave high priority to seizing Iraq's northern and southern oilfields before Saddam Hussein could sabotage them. But after major combat operations ended, manpower was shifted elsewhere, leaving the oil industry dangerously exposed. To protect its infrastructure, last September the Pentagon awarded a $40 million contract to Erinys International, a private, Britain-based security firm. In only four months Erinys has trained, armed and deployed more than 9,000 Iraqi guards across the country, and plans to expand its force to nearly 15,000 in the coming months. The U.S. military also struck deals with tribal leaders to provide an additional 5,000 guards in their areas.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4208603 /


South African mercenary question in Iraq

Is Iraq a zone of conflict? A war zone? Or is it a peace-building situation? On the answer to these questions rests the fate of more than 1,500 South Africans now working in Iraq.
Among them are some of the known assassins and torturers from the apartheid era. Most have been recruited as bodyguards, security consultants or security guards at salaries ranging up to $10,000 a month.
The issue came to a head after the bombing of the Shaheen hotel in Baghdad earlier this month, which South African Frans Strydom died and another South African, Deon Gouws, was seriously injured.
Gouws, a former policeman, was linked to the notorious South African Vlakplaas death squad.
The murderous activities of Vlakplaas were exposed when its commander, Colonel
Eugene de Kock, gave full details of the unit. Gouws and others associated with it were exposed and applied for amnesty to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
The TRC granted amnesty to Gouws for at least 15 murders and the petrol bombings of the homes of between 40 and 60 anti-apartheid activists. He was discharged from the police force in 1996 as medically unfit and apparently had difficulty finding or settling down to another job.
Strydom was a former warrant officer in the Koevoet (‘Crowbar’) counterinsurgency unit that achieved notoriety for being paid bounties for the bodies of ‘terrorists’ in Namibia. They conducted a reign of terror in the northern parts of that country in the years before independence.
The backgrounds of these men are not yet widely known in Iraq, let alone the wider region. But those officials who have become aware expressed shock and anger that such ‘mercenaries’ could have been recruited.
As this information spreads and undoubtedly becomes embellished, there is likely to be a backlash against private security companies operating in Iraq.

http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/paper/index.php?article=1497


Johannesburg - Francois Strydom learnt about killing in the Koevoet, the apartheid-era paramilitary police unit, notorious for violence, torture and murder.

In Iraq, Strydom found his skills were in demand.

Employed by US-based firm SAS International, Strydom was one of a number of South Africans in Iraq working as private "security experts" before a January 28 bomb outside the Shaheen Hotel prematurely terminated his contract.

The aftermath of the blast sent shockwaves through the media, as Strydom"s death revealed an embarrassing situation. It was estimated that 1 500 former soldiers and policemen were operating in Iraq, in defiance of stringent legislation forbidding the practice.

It emerged that the men make up along with US and British personnel the largest contingent of commercial "military service providers" on the ground in Iraq.

Most are said to be members of former elite units, disbanded following the end of apartheid, their members suddenly finding themselves unemployed, their skills no longer required.

http://www.africancrisis.org/ZZZ/ZZZ_News_2085.ASP


Hired Guns with War Crimes Past

By Louis Nevaer, Pacific News Service
May 4, 2004

When a suicide bomber parked a van disguised as an ambulance in front of the Shaheen Hotel in the Karadah neighborhood of Baghdad on Jan. 28 and blew himself up, he killed four people and wounded scores of others.


He also blew the lid off a dirty little secret of the Coalition Provisional Authority: due to its "outsourcing" of privatized security services, the CPA has put terrorists, mercenaries and war criminals on the payrolls of companies contracted by the Pentagon.


After the Shaheen Hotel blast, departmental spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa at South Africa's Foreign Ministry confirmed that one of the Westerners killed was South African Frans Strydom. Four of the wounded were also South African nationals, including Deon Gouws, who sustained serious injuries.


News that Strydom and Gouws were in Iraq sent shockwaves throughout South Africa: In front of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, both men were granted amnesty after confessing to killing blacks and terrorizing anti-apartheid activists, acts that can only be called crimes against humanity.


In Iraq, Strydom and Gouws were employed by Erinys International, a security firm based in the United Kingdom. Erinys Iraq, the subsidiary of Erinys International, was awarded a two-year, $80 million contract in August 2003 to protect 140 Iraqi oil installations. Erinys has been awarded subcontracts to protect American construction contractors, including San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp. and Halliburton's subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root

more
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18588


When we're the evildoers in Iraq
With immoral U.S. leadership, is it so shocking to find torturers in the ranks?


President Bush is again refusing to take responsibility for any of the horrors happening on his watch. This time it is the abuse of Iraqi prisoners carried out by low-ranking military police working under the direct guidance of military intelligence officers and shadowy civilian mercenaries. Our president launched this war with the promise to the Iraqi people of "no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone." What went wrong?
The president has called the now-exposed pattern of violence an isolated crime performed by "a few people." Yet the Pentagon's own investigation of the incident shows that not only was the entire Abu Ghraib prison out of control, it was the MPs' immediate military superiors who "directly or indirectly" authorized "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" of the prisoners as a way to break them in advance of formal interrogations.

"Military intelligence interrogators and other U.S. government agency interrogators actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses," says the report. The report, completed in March and kept secret until it was revealed on the New Yorker website Friday, also stated that a civilian contractor employed by a Virginia company called CACI "clearly knew his instructions" to the MPs called for physical abuse.

Furthermore, in a statement released Friday, Amnesty International reported that in its extensive investigations into human rights in post-invasion Iraq, it "has received frequent reports of torture or other ill treatment by coalition forces during the past year," including during interrogations, and that "virtually none of the allegations of torture or ill treatment has been adequately investigated by the authorities."

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=16891

[cliss]

10. OMG, SLAD!! You are an encyclopedia.

It's getting too late in the evening for me to read all of this. I'll continue tomorrow.

Incredible stuff. Wow. Really awesome. Thanks.

[seemslikeadream]

11. No no no!

All this was right here at the Democratic Underground. Brought here by some great people. I just knew where to find it. It is incredible stuff, isn't it?

[Alerter_]

12. the stench gets stronger

unbelievable

[9215]

15. That's a treasure trove of info SLAD! Thanks

The Bushies dredge up all the thugs in the world to help them in their vile little enterprise in Iraq.