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Swamp Gas
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 4254
Location: On a Hill in the Lowlands |
 Mon May 10, 2004 2:50 pm
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http://www.nomorefakenews.com
TORTURE IN IRAQ: I DON'T THINK DIANA ORTIZ IS SURPRISED
MAY 9, 2004. Most of the information in this backgrounder comes from William Blum’s book, Rogue State. I print this info to give some context to the current prisoner-torture scandal erupting in Iraq, and to supply much-needed insight on the true core mind-set of the CIA and allied intelligence agencies. The examples sketched in below are by no means the entire CIA record in the field of torture.
In the 1980s, while the Afghanistan war was being fought, the CIA, on the other side of the world, was busy in Honduras. It was supplying torture equipment to a Honduran government group called Battalion 316.
Battalion 316 kidnapped citizens and tortured and killed them. The CIA improved 316’s technique, trained 316 personnel (sometimes in the US), and supplied manuals on torture.
The leader of Battalion 316 was General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez. The General actually told the US ambassador to Honduras that he was going to employ grisly Argentine "methods" to deal with subversives. Meaning: kidnapping of babies, general torture of citizens and so-called "disappearances."
The US kept up its support of the Battalion after that, and in 1983 the Reagan administration gave the good General the Legion of Merit award for "encouraging the success of democratic processes in Honduras." (Rogue State, William Blum, p.55)
So this charming band of bumbling goofballs from the CIA by way of Yale and Princeton is actually no MASH unit entertaining America with its mistakes.
Then we have Guatemala, during the 1960s-1980s period. There the torture group was called G-2. Citizens had electric shocks applied to the genitals. This was done with field telephones and generators, "supplied by uncle Sam." With instruction manuals. The CIA advised and equipped G-2. G-2 also would chop off limbs and burn flesh, and had its own crematorium for the bodies.
At least 3 G-2 chiefs during this period were on the CIA payroll.
In 1989 in Guatemala, an American nun, Diana Ortiz, was kidnapped and repeatedly raped and tortured with burning cigarettes, and was put in a pit with corpses. The apparent chief of her torturers had fair skin and was referred to as Alejandro. He cursed in English. Ortiz lived. In 1996. she obtained, on a FOIA request to the US State Department, a document dated 1990.
It said: "VERY IMPORTANT: We need to close the loop on the issue of the 'North American' named by Ortiz as being involved in the case...The EMBASSY IS VERY SENSITIVE ON THIS ISSUE, but it is an issue we will have to respond to publicly..."
The next two pages of this document were blacked out.
Alfred McCoy's published writing on the drug trade reveals some key facts. Within two years of the CIA moving into Afghanistan (1979), it provided enough assistance to the drug growers and processors (both Afghan and Pakistani) to supply 60 percent of the heroin USED IN AMERICA.
McCoy: "During this decade of wide-open drug dealing [in Afghanistan], the US Drug Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures or arrests...US officials had refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by its Afghan allies 'because US narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet influence there.'
McCoy: "In 1995, the former CIA director of the Afghan operation, Charles Cogan, admitted that the CIA had indeed sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War. 'Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. We didn't really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade...I don't think we need to apologize for this. Every situation has its fallout...'"
Let's see. The CIA, together with its underling, the Pakistan intelligence service, ACTIVELY HELPS TO EXPAND TREMENDOUSLY THE HEROIN BUSINESS IN AFGHANISTAN. Then it and the DEA do nothing to intercede and shut it down. THEN, all that heroin gets on the streets of America and twists the lives of kids. Thousands and thousands and thousands of kids. This is called FALL OUT.
Do you really think the current control/participation by the CIA in the torture of Iraqi prisoners is a brief aberration from its standard practices?
JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com
MORE ON THE TORTURE OF PRISONERS
MAY 9, 2004. Even if the CIA comes under the gun for running torture in Iraq (and this is far from a sure bet), you can count on the exposure to be limited to a few men who "took the law into their own hands."
There will be no Agency-wide condemnation, even though the CIA has been VERY pro-active around the world, over the last 50-odd years, in applying and teaching torture.
The CIA has fronted for major transnational corporations in a number of countries, by shoring up and putting into power, ruthless dictators who were/are willing to sell out their people to these corporate interests.
Make no mistake about it, the CIA functions as the operating wing for the cartelization of the planet.
In Iraq, the seizure and control of the oil supply IS a corporate/cartel goal.
That should provide a clue as to the nature of the emerging "democratic government" in Iraq.
If such a government decides to nationalize the oil fields and refineries, it will meet the same fate as the government in Iran did in 1953, when the elected president was murdered after he made moves to nationalize oil in that nation.
Likewise, in Indonesia, in 1965, the threat of nationalization of industries then controlled by foreign corporations led to a horrendous and bloody coup.
The CIA played a key role in both cases.
You might recall that, in 1961, after the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, JFK said privately that he intended to smash the CIA into a million pieces.
Among the reasons for assassinating him, this was on the list.
After ensuing decades of dumbing down the US public and robotizing the American media...people have come to believe that the CIA is nothing more than a bunch of dedicated bureaucrats backed up by some teams of analysts and a relatively few covert-ops agents.
In truth, the whole American intell apparatus has become more devious and complex and submerged---connecting private-sector and public employees and contractors and academicians and media shills and mind-control researchers and advance-men for corporate incursions into foreign nations.
Many of these people work off the books.
A small and vicious node has popped into view in Iraq.
JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com |
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Bhang
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Posts: 641
Location: Classified |
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Mon May 10, 2004 6:09 pm
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I plead 1st Amendment:
Yeah guess who's back.
That's right; big Bhang BACK in MUTHAPHUCKING Baghdad. Yeah, 1st AD got me. I was five days into reintergration when they say, pack your s!@# son, Uncle Sam needs you yet again. We will pay you to die and if you do we will call you hero.
You guessed it... I'm fully disgruntled. I risk life and limb for the past year and they say I'm finished. So I look deep into my wifes' eyes and promise her I will never leave her again.... ha ha ha! RIGHT. Maybe I'm pussy for not sticking to my words and just grabbing her and running to Canada but I felt obligated to come back again, not only duty but a sence of brotherhood tugged at the outer fringes of my soul - if my bros were stuck down here I had to go too. So the day I get back in country a terrorist car bomb ripped through 8 of my friends killing them all... a year to the day they got in country... tragic-f*%$ing-irony. They should have been home by then for a few days but 1st AD has been extended beyond a year - the first unit to do that since WW2. I'm so mad I can't see straight and I fear for my life like never before. The past two days we have been removing IED's that were intended for us. Two 350 pound Russian bombs rigged with RF triggers that would blow holes in our tracked vehicles.
So you want heros? Look no futher than 1 AD. We have the short end of the stick and we are getting reamed. All for what? To force Democracy on a people who don't really want or fully understand it?
Wanna know something? I'm being honest here: When I saw that photo of the prisoner with the hood, standing on the block with his arms stretched out with the wires and read that he was told he would be electrocuted if he dropped his arms or fell off - I laughed out loud in the chow hall. That's right, I laughed.
I laughed because these guys are out here killing us. They use $#@#! tactics and do not adhere to any kind of honorable warfare. You might think what I say is terrible but then again you are not here to see what I see, are you? You are not here to feel the boiling heat and suffer when your good friend is blown into 50 pices just for driving by a neighborhood. You wouldn't understand why I laugh at that foolish and really harmless trick.
He was detained for doing bad things (like killing people) so scaring him is the least he deserved... I could go on and on but I think you get my point.
But don't get me twisted. I do not believe in really (phyically) hurting prisoners. Nor do I think it was right that the prisoners were stripped of clothing but most of these guys we bring in (arrest) are there for killing people who are trying to help their (Iraqi's) country despite the politicks behind it all.
What the Islamic Extremists need to understand is - if they stop fighting and let America think they have won, then the sooner we will leave. If they keep fighting then we will stay longer and I will continue to laugh at murderers who had their feelings hurt.
my 2 cents
Bhang-
back in Iraq.
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Bhang on 05-10-2004] |
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Swamp Gas
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 4254
Location: On a Hill in the Lowlands |
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Mon May 10, 2004 6:39 pm
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Bhang,
Glad to see you're OK, and I am very sorry for your friends getting disintegrated. I am not there, so I can't see first hand, but living in Jersey City, you see some similar things, in Aryan types dealing with Dark-skinned people.
Laws are supposedly made to keep a sense of dignity and civilization. The USA should not taut it's fair system, if it cannot keep it. The Geneva Convention was supposed to prevent such occurences as prisoner abuse. I read that some are innocents picked up in huge dragnets. http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com /StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1083180400050&p=1012571727172
I hear people here calling Iraqis "Sand niggers" and "Ragheads". It hurts me from a genetic standpoint hearing this, and I think this torture has more to do with blind hatred and revenge, than it does with finding information.
Please remember this, Bhang. The Iraqis see themselves as freedom fighters, warding off Modern Day Crusaders, a update to Mongols, British, Russians, and Inquistitors. You and some of your friends may be honorable, but I am beginning to think you are the exception, and not the rule. When the media pumps Pat Tillman, as a "hero", and he says he went in just for revenge, I really begin to doubt what a hero really is anymore.
I am sure we would do the same if Russians or Chinese came to the USA, killing our relatives in the name of "Freedom ®", which is actually in the name of lining Bush and Cheney's pockets.
The reason I answered back that first post on "heroes", is because the little guy never gets credited as a hero. The Iraqis do not see Americans as heros, no more than the Germans in Dresden saw Amercians as heroes, or the Vietnamese saw Americans as heroes. To me, a hero is anyone, of any color or social status, who stands up to tyranny, in any way shape or form. So who then would be more of a hero......Pat Tillman, seeking revenge without all the facts, or a 80 year old lady saying Bush is a tyrant, and we should remove him from office?
We are doing our best to get you guys the hell out of there, and please be safe.
[Edited 4 times, lastly by swamp gas on 05-11-2004] |
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