Human Rights Watch: Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention
Human Rights Watch has compiled a comprehensive report about the case of one of the “disappeared”, Marwan Jabour. Most of the docile and pathetic British and US press have ‘reported’ on this publication without managing to link to it or even so much as mention the name of the report!
Here’s a bit from the Summary:
When Marwan Jabour opened his eyes, after a blindfold, a mask, and other coverings were taken off him, he saw soldiers and, on the wall behind them, framed photographs of King Hussein and King Abdullah of Jordan. He was tired and disoriented from his four-hour plane flight and subsequent car trip, but when a guard confirmed that he was being held in Jordan, he felt indescribable relief. In his more than two years of secret detention, nearly all of it in US custody, this was the first time that someone had told him where he was. The date was July 31, 2006.
A few weeks later, in another first, the Jordanians allowed several of Jabour’s family members to visit him. “My father cried the whole time,” Jabour later remembered.
Marwan Jabour was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Lahore, Pakistan, on May 9, 2004. He was detained there briefly, then moved to the capital, Islamabad, where he was held for more than a month in a secret detention facility operated by both Pakistanis and Americans, and finally flown to a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prison in what he believes was Afghanistan. During his ordeal, he later told Human Rights Watch, he was tortured, beaten, forced to stay awake for days, and kept naked and chained to a wall for more than a month. Like an unknown number of Arab men arrested in Pakistan since 2001, he was “disappeared” into US custody: held in unacknowledged detention outside of the protection of the law, without court supervision, and without any contact with his family, legal counsel, or the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The secret prison program under which Jabour was held was established in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when US President George W. Bush signed a classified directive authorizing the CIA to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists. Because the entire program was run outside of US territory, it required the support and assistance of other governments, both in handing over detainees and in allowing the prisons to operate.
–from the Summary of Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention
See also: BBC Report: ‘Sleaze alleged in CIA’
European Union: Report on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transportation and illegal detention of prisoners
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
The Guardian: US commanders admit: we face a Vietnam-style collapse
An interesting article in the Guardian says that General Petraeus and his staff have concluded that the US faces a collapse of political and public support for the war in Iraq within the next six months. In addition, due to low morale, poor readiness and the high morale and level of experience of the resistance groups, the US faces a military collapse similar to the French collapse in Viet Nam in March-May 1954 or the collapse of US forces in Korea in October-December 1950.
US commanders admit: we face a Vietnam-style collapse
Elite officers in Iraq fear low morale, lack of troops and loss of political will
Simon Tisdall
Thursday March 1, 2007
The GuardianAn elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq – or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.The officers – combat veterans who are experts in counter-insurgency – are charged with implementing the “new way forward” strategy announced by George Bush on January 10. The plan includes a controversial “surge” of 21,500 additional American troops to establish security in the Iraqi capital and Anbar province.
But the team, known as the “Baghdad brains trust” and ensconced in the heavily fortified Green Zone, is struggling to overcome a range of entrenched problems in what has become a race against time, according to a former senior administration official familiar with their deliberations…
US commanders admit: we face a Vietnam-style collapse The Guardian
Battle of Chosin Reservoir (wikipedia)
Battle of Dien Bien Phu (wikipedia)
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
Everything is Not Going to be OK: Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly
Everything is Not Going to be OK:
A Scanner Darkly
by Henry Edward Hardy
Richard Linklater’s film, A Scanner Darkly (2006) explores the boundaries of consciousness and identity. Based on the book by Phillip K. Dick, it revolves around the character of Agent Fred, who has been assigned to infiltrate a California commune in order to discover the ultimate origin and means of production of a new powerful psychoactive drug, “Substance D”.
—Note: spoilers follow—
Substance D produces hallucinations and dissociation between the two hemispheres of the brain. As in the book, The Erasers by Alain Robbe-Grillet, the officer turns out to be tracking himself. Agent Fred ends up investigating his alter ego, Substance D dealer Bob.
Phillip Dick was a methamphetamine user and suffered from visions and visitations as he describes in the afterward of the book. He was also a prophet and a very fine writer. His works have been made into some notable science fiction movies such as Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report. Dick, like novelist John Brunner were social critics and visionaries who in the 1970s foresaw a 2000s with a “war on drugs” in which the government suppressive apparatus and the drug kingpins are ultimately one and the same.
The film is live action heavily overlaid with computer graphics. The result is beautiful, but also psychotic and disturbing. Linklater uses a “digital Rotoscoping” process invented by MIT Media Lab guru Bob Sabiston, and earlier used by Linklater in his 2001 film, Waking Life. Produced by Stephen Soderbergh and George Clooney, A Scanner Darkly is a subversive canvass for provocative, and one might say paranoid, ideas and images.
The phrase, “a scanner darkly” is a reference to 1 Corinthians 13:12, For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. A common enough conceit, and one which features in many other “through the looking glass” tales, notably the manga Ghost in the Shell. But an interesting taking off point for a further exploration of consciousness, and the social construction (or destruction) of reality.
A Scanner Darkly (IMDB)
A Scanner Darkly (wikipedia)
A Scanner Darkly (Rotten Tomatoes)
A version of this article appeared previously in Current Magazine and on Electric Current.
Copyright © 2006-2007 Henry Edward Hardy
Snips of Ike: Eugene Jarecki’s Why We Fight
Snips of Ike:
Why We Fight
by Henry Edward Hardy
Eugene Jarecki’s Why We Fight takes as its framework snippets from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous televised farewell to the nation in 1961, often called the “military-industrial complex” speech. Jarecki is best known for The Trials of Henry Kissinger.
One may or may not be sympathetic to the premise of the film, that the United States has become an American Empire, and as such, is behaving badly in the world. Why We Fight makes clever use of icons of the Republican Party such as John McCain and Eisenhower and neoconservatives such as William Kristol and Richard Pearle to make its points.
Why We Fight is also the title of a series of films made for the U.S. government by Frank Capra during World War II. They were commissioned in response to the Nazi use of mass media in films like Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. Since then the title has been (mis-)appropriated a number of times, such as the book by former “Drug Czar” William J. Bennett subtitled “Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism”, and the name of a popular Danish rock band.
Jarecki’s Why We Fight has not been widely seen in the U.S. It was shown on the BBC in March 2005 and won the American Documentary Grand Prize at Sundance in 2005. The film would be stronger if it were better-organized and had a less transparent point to make. For those unfamiliar with some of Eisenhower’s later and more progressive thinking, this film is an interesting introduction.
A version of this article appeared previously in Current Magazine and on Electric Current
Copyright © 2006-2007 Henry Edward Hardy
BBC: More on Tal Afar Iraqi soldiers rape accusation
BBC quotes acting Tal Afar mayor Brig Gen. Nijm Abdullah with more information regarding the alleged rape and torture of a mother of 11 by Iraqi soldiers in northern Iraq:
Iraqi soldiers charged with rape
…Gen Abdullah said he had received a complaint from tribal leaders that a group of soldiers had entered the woman’s house “a few days ago” and raped her.
“One of the soldiers did not approve. His name is Mushtaq Taleb from Basra. He wanted to stop his comrades by threatening them with weapons because it is an immoral act, but the rape took place anyway,” Gen Abdullah added.
He said he had referred the troops to the judiciary for prosecution.
The woman is thought to be a 40-year-old married mother of 11 from Iraq’s Turkoman minority.
The defendants are identified as a lieutenant and three enlisted men.
If the BBC report is correct, then Mushtaq Taleb should be commended for trying to stop the rape and torture of this mother.
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
About Scanlyze
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Scanlyze is an online magazine of essays, commentary, satire, and analysis. Were we half as clever, for inspiration we would take Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Swift, Montaigne, or Seneca.
“The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.”
John F. Kennedy, October 26, 1963
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