8 Million Dead In 'War On Terror'?

- by Stephen Lendman
An earlier article discussed Iraq's dire conditions after seven years of occupation, and a decade of sanctions.
It presents a grim overall picture, besides Gideon Polya's September 13, 2010 estimated eight million "War on Terror" deaths, mostly in Iraq, what he calls "avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality" ones.
Conditions now include:
 -- 4.5 million refugees;
-- 2.8 million internal ones (IDPs), one-third in squatter slums;
-- mass impoverishment and depravation;
-- rampant human rights abuses; and
-- settlements without basic services, such as clean water, sanitation, electricity, health care, and education.

Nir Rosen's September 13, 2010 ZNet article adds more.
"Welcome to the new Iraq," he says, "same as the old Iraq," including:
 -- "automatic weapons pointed at your head out of military vehicles;"
-- mountains of garbage everywhere;
-- the stench of sewage; and
-- daily violence, chaos, terror, and toxic environment, the same conditions everywhere under direct or proxy US occupations. The definition below explains how Iraqis see their "liberation."

Merriam-Webster defines dystopia as "an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives." Other definitions include extreme deprivation, oppression, and terror. These conditions apply to Iraq, a living hell under occupation, not the sanitized Western image when anything at all is reported. New Amnesty International (AI) Report on Iraq
AI's report explains more, titled "New Order, Same Abuses: Unlawful Detentions and Torture in Iraq." It debunks Western mythology with the harsh reality of "unlawful detention(s), enforced disappearance(s) and torture or other ill-treatment of thousands of people since 2003 by the US-led Multinational Force (MNF) in Iraq and the Iraqi authorities."
Saddam's Iraq was paradise by comparison. Most Iraqis would agree, given their lack of freedom, mass impoverishment, and human misery with no hope for change under occupation. It's how America planned it.
Many detainees are held arbitrarily, "without charge or trial, for seven years" or longer. For some, it's despite Iraqi courts ordering them released for lack of evidence, and the 2008 Amnesty Law requiring it after six or 12 months, depending on the circumstances. Yet thousands remain lawlessly imprisoned, many held incommunicado, tortured or abused without access to counsel, and for some, no family visits. Many aren't told where their relatives are held.
Under US imposed rules, "An estimated 30,000 untried detainees are currently being held by the Iraqi authorities, although the exact number is not known as the authorities do not disclose such information." Most are in severely overcrowded facilities under poor conditions. As a result, untreated health problems are common.
America's January 1, 2009 implemented SOFA (status of forces agreement) instituted permanent occupation and much more, including releasing or transferring all detainees to Iraqi custody. However, nothing is said about US or Iraqi human rights obligations, what Washington doesn't now or ever cared about. Former US diplomat George Kennan explained it in his February 1948 "Memo PPS23," saying:
We must "dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming....we (cannot) afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction....We should dispense with the aspiration to 'be liked' or to be regarded as the repository of high-minded altruism....We should (avoid considering) unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. (The) less we are hampered by idealistic slogans (ideas and practices), the better."
The father of Soviet containment, Kennan was a dove. Hard-liners toughened his ideas, implementing them for over six decades, including in present day Iraq (and Afghanistan) where the vast majority of detainees are suspected of unproved terrorism or related offenses. Iraq's Amnesty Law
Effective on February 27, 2008, its Article 1 says those detained can be pardoned and released by one of the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council's established judicial committees. Article 2 lists exceptions, including:
 -- prisoners sentenced to death;
-- those convicted of terrorism causing death or permanent disability;
-- anyone convicted of crimes against humanity; and
-- others sentenced for premeditated murder, kidnapping, rape, homosexual acts, adultery, incest, forging official documents, counterfeiting, smuggling artifacts, and offenses under the Iraqi Military Criminal Code.
"In practice, the Amnesty Law appears to have been widely ignored and to have had little effect or impact on prisoner numbers. Some detainees have been released, but thousands" remain imprisoned without charges or trials in violation of international laws, including Fourth Geneva, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
For example, ICCPR's Article 9 states:
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention....Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time" or released.
Principle 4 of the UN Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment states:
"Any form of detention or imprisonment and all measures affecting the human rights of a person under any form of detention or imprisonment shall be ordered by, or be subject to the effective control of, a judicial or other authority."

Its Principle 11 says "A person shall not be kept in detention without being given an effective opportunity to be heard promptly by a judicial or other authority."
America and its puppet Iraqi regime systematically violate international law provisions, harming all Iraqis, those in detention most. In some cases, arrests weren't for suspected crimes, but to extort money from detainees and their families. America turns a blind eye, including complete disregard for human rights, civil liberties, and democratic freedoms. In today's Iraq, they don't exist, the occupation in place to assure it.
Yet "The policy of locking people up on mere suspicion (in some cases against regime critics) and denying them justice has contributed to, not alleviated" the sectarian divisions and insecurity. Worse is how they're treated, AI detailing:
 "Rape or the threat of rape. Beating with cables and hosepipes. Prolonged suspension by the limbs. Electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body. Breaking of limbs. Removal of toenails with pliers. Asphyxiation using a plastic bag over the head. Piercing the body with drills. Being forced to sit on sharp objects such as broken bottles....just some of the torture methods used against men, women and children," inflicting enough pain to get anyone to confess to stop it.
One detainee told his interrogators he'd sign anything, even a blank sheet of paper to end it. He did and told AI he was innocent, yet under Iraqi "law," his confession is admissible as evidence. "The Iraqi criminal justice system relies heavily on (forced) confessions as evidence of guilt," many then convicted, including hundreds sentenced to death on torture-extracted admissions, mostly from innocent victims.
Women are as mistreated as men, many reporting being repeatedly raped during interrogations and in detention. For others, men and women, torture results in death. Investigations aren't conducted or whitewashed, death certificates citing heart failure or other natural causes. "In all cases, those responsible for abuses have not been brought to justice. The failure to deal seriously and effectively with torture and other human rights violations....has created a culture of impunity."
At times, prison guards and other security officers were suspended, even arrested, then granted immediate amnesty and released. These practices began under George Bush. Obama continues them seamlessly and shamelessly, what media accounts never report. A Final Comment
In 2004, Americans and world audiences recall the horrors of torture, rape, sodomy, murder, and other abuses by US military personnel at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. Today under occupation, every US and Iraqi-controlled detention facility is Abu Ghraib or worse, their tortures, extreme abuses and appalling conditions continue.
Thousands of civilians are thus victimized by imperial Washington's lawlessness. Human lives and welfare are thus sacrificed, a shocking indictment of America's true aim and employed means, abroad and at home. Obama is as culpable as Bush.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
 http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Tony Blair's Latest on The War On Terror

From Tony Blair Interview 4th October, 2010. Verbatim.


“We should wake up to the absurdity of our surprise at the prevalence of this extremism. Look at the funds it receives. Examine the education systems that succour it. And then measure, over the years, the paucity of our counter-attack in the name of peaceful co-existence. We have been outspent, outmanoeuvred and out-strategised.” Warning that it was impossible to defeat extremism ”without defeating the narrative that nurtures it”, Blair added: ”We think if we sympathise with the narrative – that essentially this extremism has arisen as a result, partly, of our actions – we meet it halfway, we help the modernisers to be more persuasive. We don’t. We indulge it and we weaken them. Worse, a reaction springs up amongst our people that we are pandering to this narrative and they start to resent Muslims as a whole.”
Got that? No, me neither.

Calvin Gibbs - All Round Regular Kind of Guy

Hey, Calvin was a killer's killer. A GI's GI :-

“All he said was, ‘I don’t know where these guys are getting this stuff,’” said Eric Thomas, a childhood friend here, after speaking with Sergeant Gibbs by telephone. “Calvin Gibbs is not a murderer,” Thomas said. Many of Gibbs friends and people at Billings claimed he had only been serving his country.  Members of his unit in Afghanistan paint a devastating picture of Sergeant Gibbs, 26. He is one of five soldiers facing potential courts-martial on charges that they killed Afghan civilians for sport, planting weapons near them to fake combat situations, collecting their body parts and taking photographs posing with their corpses.
Documents in the case obtained by The New York Times, including statements by soldiers and investigators, portray Sergeant Gibbs as the ringleader in three separate incidents involving the murder of civilians near Kandahar, Afghanistan, this year, and as the force behind intimidating other soldiers in his unit to keep quiet.
“He told me the type of soldier he was looking for was the type that could kill anybody,” Pfc Ashton Moore told an investigator in May.
The case has prompted the military to 'review' all combat deaths with which Sergeant Gibbs has been involved.


Several soldiers recalled Sergeant Gibbs and Specialist Morlock tossing severed fingers in front of a soldier who had reported the widespread use of hashish within the unit. Old Gibbsy. What a character!

Iraq Inquiry - Evidence of Ralph Zacklin

Submission made by Ralph Zacklin, former UN assistant secretary general for legal affairs.
LINK

Blair Government Met Tommy Franks Before Invasion

By Jason Lewis
Last updated at 2:20 PM on 3rd October 2010

America's most senior general flew into Britain for top secret talks on the invasion of Iraq 11 months before the attack on Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Details of the classified meeting, held at RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, suggest Tony Blair’s Government was involved in detailed discussions about toppling the Iraqi dictator earlier than previously disclosed.
American General Tommy Franks flew in to the base in April 2002 to attend a summit meeting called by the then Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon.

It followed similar meetings Gen Franks had in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Secret Pentagon documents reveal Mr Hoon asked about ‘US plans for Iraq’.
Exactly what was said has been censored, but declassified sections of the documents show Gen Franks had a separate meeting with Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, then Britain’s chief of defence staff, and senior officers.
At that meeting, ‘regional issues’ including Iraq were discussed, and Gen Franks was told the Ministry of Defence had ‘put together a small cell’ for ‘thinking strategically about Iraq’ and ‘what courses of action are available to handle the regime’.
Hoon did not mention the meeting when he gave evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on Iraq earlier this year. And Admiral Boyce, now Lord Boyce, told the Chilcot panel he had set up an Iraq planning group, but only in May 2002.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1317264/Britain-held-war-talks-US-general-Tommy-Franks-Iraq-invasion.html?#ixzz11JCh6hUD

Afghanistan - More Nato Claptrap and Carnage

On Saturday, NATO says Afghan and coalition forces who were pursuing a 'suspected insurgent' have killed an Afghan adult male and a child. The coalition says another adult civilian was wounded.

The alliance says a patrol thought the suspected militant was about to 'fire a weapon' when the shootings happened in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province.

A team of Afghan and coalition members is 'investigating' the shootings.

NATO also says an air strike destroyed an  ' insurgent compound' in the Arghandab district of Kandahar province Saturday. Alliance officials say they believe the compound 'contained more than 1,200 kilograms of explosives, enough to make 50 bombs.'

This stinks of the usual NATO spin which follows their incompetent brutality on a daily basis. The same tired old weasel-phrases. 'Suspected Insurgent', 'insurgent compound' 'enough to make 50 bombs'. There is not an honest syllable in those phraseologies all of which have been trotted out in the aftermath of NATO killings of innocents before. The sooner the pictures are published of the 'kill for kicks' scumbags, and they will surely emerge one way or another, the sooner the true nature of the occupation of Afghanistan will be widely exposed.

War Crimes In Iraq

In March 2009, Gideon Polya used the Just Foreign Policy estimate of 1.32 million Iraqi deaths post-March 2003 alone, a number considerably higher today. It's also well below his post-9/11 eight million "war on terror" total, mostly affecting women and children, aged five and younger, killed by war, diseases, and/or depravation, America's horrific ongoing genocidal legacy - air-brushed from history. Azzawi adds more:

-- at least 4.5 internal or external refugees, many victimized by "militias and police raids and terrorist groups;"

-- death squads targeting "certain ethnic and sectarian groups" daily; and

-- in cities throughout Iraq, sieges cutting off "all life support aids on people, (affecting) Thousands of children, women and elderly who could not leave their houses and were subjected to collective punishment...." For weeks, these areas were deprived of food, water, healthcare, and electricity. As a result, contaminated water was used "from ditches and nearby rivers," causing cholera and other waterborne diseases. Article here.

Sgt.Calvin Gibbs Interview - The New Abu Ghraib

The war crimes investigation is the most serious the US army has faced in Afghanistan during its nine-year presence.

Soldiers who served with Sgt Gibbs in Afghanistan allegedly told investigators he pressed his comrades to cut fingers off Afghan corpses, and kept at least two fingers wrapped in cloth hidden in an empty water bottle.

Some allegedly claimed he planned to intimidate other members of his unit to keep quiet, and one soldier said Sgt Gibbs claimed he planned to make a necklace with the fingers.

More, including video, here.