tagged w/ POWs
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You just can't make this stuff up!
CIA officers who were involved in cases of wrongful imprisonment, mistreatment and even detainee deaths have often avoided serious punishment and in many cases been promoted within the agency, an investigation by the Associated Press has found.
CIA officers who were involved in cases of wrongful imprisonment, mistreatment and even detainee deaths have often avoided serious punishment and in many cases been promoted within the agency, an investigation by the Associated Press has found.
Take the case of German citizen Khaled El-Masri, who was kidnapped and transferred to a secret prison in Afghanistan for interrogation in 2003. U.S. officials have since admitted that the CIA wrongfully imprisoned El-Masri.
Though the lawyer who signed off on the decision received a reprimand, the CIA never punished the analyst who pressed for El-Masri’s wrongful rendition, despite recommendations from the CIA’s inspector general, AP reported.
A former CIA official told the Washington Post in 2005 that the analyst “didn’t really know. She just had a hunch” when she made the decision regarding El-Masri. The analyst now runs the CIA’s Global Jihad unit, which leads the U.S. government’s counterterrorism efforts against al-Qaeda.
She’s hardly the only example of the CIA’s failure to hold officers accountable for their decisions. Other cases in the AP story in which officers made serious mistakes with little to no punishment include:
A case in which a terrorism suspect froze to death in a makeshift prison in Afghanistan after CIA officers stripped him and left him overnight in an unheated cell. An investigation of the incident raised concerns about the top officer at the prison, the CIA’s station chief in Afghanistan, and management at headquarters. Nobody was punished.
A case in which a CIA interrogator performed a “mock execution” by holding an unloaded gun and bitless drill to the head of an al-Qaeda operative at a secret CIA prison in Poland. Mock executions are not authorized by the Justice Department, but the interrogator received only a reprimand.
A case of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in which a prisoner was interrogated, covered by a hood, shackled to a window, and found dead a half hour later. His death was ruled a homicide and the medical examiner said the hood over his head and the position he was constrained to contributed to his death, but the CIA officer who ran the detainee unit only received a letter of reprimand.Many of the internal investigations which found past mistakes by CIA officers were conducted by the CIA’s inspector general—a position that sat vacant for more than a year before a new inspector general was sworn in last fall.
A CIA spokesman told the AP, “Any suggestion that the agency does not take seriously its obligation to review employee misconduct — including those of senior officers — is flat wrong,”and said that CIA Director Leon Pannetta has fired employees for misconduct.
Shorter versions of the AP story have been published elsewhere, but for all the details, read the full report.You just can't make this stuff up!
CIA officers who were involved in cases of... more
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Barack Obama's pledge to shut down Guantanamo Bay will not be honored until at least a year after the President's self-imposed deadline – and may not be completed in his administration.Barack Obama's pledge to shut down Guantanamo Bay will not be honored until at... more
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A serving US Army officer who told a court he feels that the Guantanamo Bay prison camps should be closed down has been removed from a jury hearing allegations of war crimes against an alleged child soldier. Among the seven jurors remaining on the panel are officers who have lost close friends or colleagues fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.A serving US Army officer who told a court he feels that the Guantanamo Bay prison... more
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An attorney for Canadian prisoner Omar Khadr expressed outrage this week over a ruling by a U.S. military judge allowing Khadr's confessions to interrogators to be used as evidence against him in his murder and terrorism conspiracy trial at Guantanamo.An attorney for Canadian prisoner Omar Khadr expressed outrage this week over a ruling... more
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A coalition of major news organizations is challenging as unconstitutional Pentagon rules that were used in May to ban four reporters from covering military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.A coalition of major news organizations is challenging as unconstitutional Pentagon... more
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McClatchy Newspapers reports that a federal judge has put Yemeni citizen Mohammed Mohammed Hassan Odaini on the path to freedom after eight years imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.McClatchy Newspapers reports that a federal judge has put Yemeni citizen Mohammed... more
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The Obama administration is considering using Afghanistan's U.S.-run Bagram Air Base prison to indefinitely detain terrorism suspects captured far from a battlefield and who have not been charged with a crime - without any judicial oversight.The Obama administration is considering using Afghanistan's U.S.-run Bagram Air... more
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The American Bar Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and numerous other legal organizations are demanding that the Senate Armed Services Committee reject a provision in a House of Representatives bill that would mandate an investigation into lawyers representing Guantanamo Bay detainees.The American Bar Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and numerous other... more
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A Spanish prosecutor has asked a judge there to authorize the arrest of 13 CIA agents for their alleged role in the Bush administration's extraordinary rendition program. The agents are accused of participating in the rendition of Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen who was kidnapped in 2003 and flown to a CIA-run "black site" in Afghanistan, where he was secretly detained and tortured for months before being abandoned on a hillside in Albania. He was never charged with a crime.A Spanish prosecutor has asked a judge there to authorize the arrest of 13 CIA agents... more
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A former interrogator at the US prison in Bagram, Afghanistan said in court testimony that he and other interrogators would terrify detainees into confessing by threatening them with dying from multiple gang rape "by four big black guys" who would catch little Afghan boys in the shower of a U.S. prison.A former interrogator at the US prison in Bagram, Afghanistan said in court testimony... more
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A bipartisan Senate report concluded that decisions by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were a "direct cause" of inhumane treatment of POWs.
The report, endorsed by Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is the most forceful denunciation to date of the role that Rumsfeld and other top officials played in the prisoner abuse scandals of the last five years.
The document also challenges assertions by senior Bush administration officials that the most egregious cases of prisoner mistreatment were isolated incidents of appalling conduct by U.S. troops.
"The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own," the report says.
Instead, the document says, a series of high-level decisions in the Bush administration "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody."A bipartisan Senate report concluded that decisions by Defense Secretary Donald H.... more
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bshipp
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added this
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3 years ago
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Clark’s relationship with McCain is distant these days. The two haven’t talked much since McCain was elected a U.S. senator in 1982.
But there was a time when the two men were closer than either would have liked. Clark and McCain were prisoners of war together at the Hoa Lo prison, or the “Hanoi Hilton,” in Vietnam.
They endured solitary confinement, the cement slabs the North Vietnamese called beds and the torture inflicted upon them. They also experienced the camaraderie that is borne out of captivity.
They played bridge. They shared story after story. And they made it home to talk about it.
Clark calls the 30 or so men who were held at the Hanoi Hilton toward the end of the Vietnam War some of the “meanest and ornery” Americans captured during the war. He speaks of McCain with the highest regard.
Yet, as McCain and Barack Obama vie for every last vote as Election Day draws near, Clark isn’t saying whether he’ll be voting for McCain or Obama.
“I know there can’t be anybody that cares about the country more than John McCain,” Clark said. “I have great regard for him as an individual and as a patriot.”
“You were respected for that time, that place and who you were,” Clark said. “(McCain) was just another one of the guys who had overcome enormous difficulties.”
MORE AT LINK, REALLY INTERESTING ARTICLEClark’s relationship with McCain is distant these days. The two haven’t... more
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The Republican US presidential candidate John McCain was not tortured during his captivity in North Vietnam, the chief prison guard of the jail in which he was held has claimed.
In an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Nguyen Tien Tran acknowledged that conditions in the prison were "tough, though not inhuman". But, he added: "We never tortured McCain. On the contrary, we saved his life, curing him with extremely valuable medicines that at times were not available to our own wounded."
McCain, who fell into enemy hands after his plane was shot down in 1967, has frequently referred to being tortured and has cited his experiences as a reason for vigorously opposing the endorsement by the Bush administration of the use of techniques such as "water-boarding" on terrorist suspects.
Shortly after his release in 1973 McCain told US News & World Report that his prison guards had beaten him "from pillar to post". After being worked over at intervals for four days, he said, he had become suicidal and agreed to sign a "confession" admitting to war crimes.The Republican US presidential candidate John McCain was not tortured during his... more
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McCains early life of recklessness and dishonesty. Called McNasty and punk by his school friends. The good "dirt" starts on page 3.
No one could make this stuff up.McCains early life of recklessness and dishonesty. Called McNasty and punk by his... more
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A just released book about the 2008 Republican presidential nominee takes a critical look at Arizona Sen. John McCain's rise to power and his amazingly successful political career, which continues to draw its inspiration from a questionable military career.
Vetting John McCain is based on carefully researched and meticulously documented public and military records, eyewitness accounts, and on statements McCain made in his book, Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir.
Written by Vietnam veteran and former Green Beret Ted Sampley, the book explores McCain's years at the United States Naval Academy, his early career as a Navy aviator, and his exploits before and after his five and one-half years in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp.
Sampley, a long-time POW/MIA activist delves into McCain's puzzling relationship with his former captors and his apparent abandonment of other Americans left behind in Vietnam as missing or prisoners of war.
Leaders of the POW/MIA movement describe how they fought to have McCain and the U.S. government investigate reported sightings of missing and imprisoned military members, and describe their contemptuous treatment by McCain and his staff.
"My overall impression is that this is the book that needed to be written about McCain 20 years ago, before he became a national political figure," former Rep. John LeBoutillier (R-N.Y.) said. "The public should have known this side of John McCain."
LeBoutillier was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives committee investigating the fate of American POWs and MIAs in Vietnam. His familiarity with the issue, and his personal knowledge of McCain, provides credence to his comments. He said the book contains facts never explored by the mainstream media.
"Obviously, the media has never known or talked about what went on [when McCain was a] POW," LeBoutillier said. "They have embellished for McCain how badly he was treated as a POW. This book will hurt him against some vets. His womanizing, how he treated first wife, will hurt him among women.A just released book about the 2008 Republican presidential nominee takes a critical... more
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BuddyP
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3 years ago
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John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.
Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain's role in it, even as McCain has made his military service and POW history the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War have also turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn't talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war... more
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McCain has worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home.
Research support provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute; a longer version of this article is available at nationinstitute.org.
John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.
Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain's role in it, even as McCain has made his military service and POW history the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War have also turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn't talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.
The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a Special Forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington and even sworn testimony by two defense secretaries that "men were left behind." This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number -- probably hundreds -- of the US prisoners held in Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.
The Pentagon had been withholding significant information from POW families for years. What's more, the Pentagon's POW/MIA operation had been publicly shamed by internal whistleblowers and POW families for holding back documents as part of a policy of "debunking" POW intelligence even when the information was obviously credible. The pressure from the families and Vietnam veterans finally produced the creation, in late 1991, of a Senate "Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs." The chair was John Kerry, but McCain, as a POW, was its most pivotal member. In the end, the committee became part of the debunking machine.
Included in the evidence that McCain and his government allies suppressed or tried to discredit is a transcript of a senior North Vietnamese general's briefing of the Hanoi Politburo, discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar in the 1990s. The briefing took place only four months before the 1973 peace accords. The general, Tran Van Quang, told the Politburo members that Hanoi was holding 1,205 American prisoners but would keep many of them at war's end as leverage to ensure getting reparations from Washington.
Throughout the Paris negotiations, the North Vietnamese tied the prisoner issue tightly to the issue of reparations. Finally, in a February 1, 1973, formal letter to Hanoi's premier, Pham Van Dong, Nixon pledged $3.25 billion in "postwar reconstruction" aid. The North Vietnamese, though, remained skeptical about the reparations promise being honored (it never was). Hanoi thus held back prisoners -- just as it had done when the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and withdrew their forces from Vietnam. France later paid ransoms for prisoners and brought them home.
*********CONTINUESMcCain has worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about... more
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"To see McCain resort to playing the POW card when answering legitimate questions, in my mind, cheapens that experience. And by cheapening his own experience in war, he degrades all of our experiences in war. He turns the horrific incidents we've all seen, touched, smelled, and felt into a lame excuse to earn political points. And it dishonors us all."
-- Brandon Friedman, a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan
John McCain has been exploiting his prisoner of war experience every chance he gets. He has used this story to justify everything from not knowing how many homes he has to his healthcare plan to his marital infidelities to his taste in music. The McCain campaign is even using his POW story in paid ads. But now a veteran who was a prisoner with McCain in Vietnam is explaining loud and clear that being a POW does not qualify McCain to lead our country."To see McCain resort to playing the POW card when answering legitimate... more
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John McCain has been exploiting his prisoner of war experience every chance he gets. He has used this story to justify everything from not knowing how many homes he has to his healthcare plan to his marital infidelities to his taste in music. The McCain campaign is even using his POW story in paid ads. But now a veteran who was a prisoner with McCain in Vietnam is explaining loud and clear that being a POW does not qualify McCain to lead our country.
Dr. Phillip Butler knew McCain as a fellow POW. Watch and listen!
We are sure this video will draw an onslaught of right-wing attacks, but we bring it to you because it is our job to continue to convey the truth together and give these issues national attention. As Dr. Butler has said, McCain does not have the temperament to have his finger near the red button. Get this video to everyone you know—friends, family members, coworkers, and especially those who don't share your political views. The video is designed to reach them. Get it on your social networking sites like Digg. And get it to every blog, newspaper, and TV station that has ever overplayed McCain's POW story. It is time to fight back with truth!
The mainstream press has already begun to call out McCain for overusing his POW story. And it's cut across all political persuasions. * "Whether he's deflecting criticism over his health-care plan or mocking a tribute to the Woodstock music festival, Senator John McCain has a trump card: the Hanoi Hilton. — Edwin Chen, Bloomberg * "Noun, Verb, POW" — Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic Monthly * "The McCain campaign's constant invocation of the candidate's POW past is weird bordering on irrational..." — Ana Marie Cox, TIME * "I think they are going to it way too many times." — Howard Fineman, Newsweek
Remember how Joe Biden got the press to refer to Rudy Giuliani as "A noun, a verb, and 9/11"? Well, let's actually take Andrew Sullivan's lead here and get the media to boil McCain down to a similar phrase: "A noun, a verb, and POW." Considering how often the McCain campaign invokes his POW story, isn't that what they're already doing?
http://therealmccain.com/butlerJohn McCain has been exploiting his prisoner of war experience every chance he gets.... more
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John McCain's captivity in a Vietnam prison is the defining narrative of his life. Now, as he prepares to accept the Republican presidential nomination here this week, it is an increasingly prominent part of his presidential campaign.
No biography of the former Navy pilot would be complete without an account of his harrowing years as a prisoner of war, the permanent physical damage he suffered from torture and inadequate medical care after his plane was shot down in 1967. The only question is whether it is possible to overplay such a dramatic episode.
In recent weeks, McCain and his aides have invoked his POW years to undercut Democratic nominee Barack Obama's national security credentials, fight back after McCain appeared uncertain about how many houses his family owns, and crush the idea that he cheated by getting questions in advance at a religious forum.
In the Twin Cities this week, the South Carolina GOP is sponsoring a cable TV ad that describes the "home" where McCain was "starved, beaten, tortured and maimed for life" from 1967 to 1973. "So the next time Barack Obama talks about one of John McCain's homes, remember this one."
Yet military service has little impact on most voters, and a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll last month suggests a POW ordeal is even less likely to affect their decisions. Three in five people said military service would make no difference in their choice of a candidate. Four in five said the same about a POW experience.
When he ran in 2000, McCain's captivity was part of his stump speech and a video shown at fundraisers and other events. It is even more central now.
"They were formative experiences," McCain said this week on Fox News Sunday. "We don't know what's around the corner of history, and we have to judge people's character. And my character, a great part of the formation of that character took place in a prison camp."
Sometimes McCain brings up his POW years to devastating effect. In April, after Elizabeth Edwards criticized McCain's health-care plan and said he'd had government health care all his life, the permanently disabled candidate, who walks stiffly and cannot raise his arms, shot back on ABC's This Week: "I did have a period of time where I didn't have very good health care. I had it from another government."
The POW experience also figures in several McCain TV ads. The script for one: "Summer of love — half a world away, another kind of love. Of country. Shot down, bayoneted, tortured. Offered early release, he said no. He had sworn an oath."
Democrats are trying, with care, to hammer home two points about McCain and his POW past. One is that you can respect him without voting for him. The other is that McCain's military career doesn't necessarily qualify him for the White House.
"It's fair to claim that heroic military service shows character. It's another thing to then leap to the idea that you have better judgment about national security," says retired general Wesley Clark, a former NATO commander who made a brief run for the Democratic nomination in 2004.
Political scientist John Mueller, a military affairs expert at Ohio State University, is more blunt. "Exactly how much he learned about national policy while sitting in a prison in Hanoi is terribly limited," he says of McCain. Furthermore, he says, the "grueling experience … might lead to questions about how healthy he is. The Hanoi Hilton logically could be expected to decrease your life expectancy." John McCain's captivity in a Vietnam prison is the defining narrative of his... more
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