The Taguba Report: The Truth Is Out There, from Sy, to Alex, to Me, to You! (And you can't just Right it off.)

People want to know: "Where'd you hear that?"

Maybe because Left works harder on cross-referencing obscure evidence - which can be easily challenged by willful ignorance and political bias, and maybe because we generously admit it is actually possible to be wrong... maybe that's why we find ourselves on the defensive.

With the Right, it's easier: "It's the truth! It's on TV! All my friends know!"

So, there is no pressure to challenge anything. In fact, they have internally made it un-cool to look at anything but mild rebukes of official policy as credible, and have broadened that thinking to the point where anyone disagreeing gets tossed into the same pile of "liberals" who can be trusted.

Family who can't be trusted.
Friends who can't be trusted.
Americans who can't be trusted.

To wit: none of the arguments, no matter how carefully researched or reasoned, need to be maturely and soberly dealt with: ignorance is in style baby! The pressure's on to tune-in, turn-on, and drop-out of reality! Despite the value to a democracy of citizens taking the time to present a wealth of evidence, let alone the value of an open dialectic, the situation is simple: half the country thinks the other half are liars, while the other half think the other half are idiots.

They're not "both right", although the evidence is there the situation is more complex.

The ability for the Right to reasonably assess serious criticism of government as an institution has been eroded, so they can't even keep themselves honest by providing a large democractic check on power. We used to more commonly appreciate that both sides were an acceptable check on each other, and could have an honest dialogue that drained the swamp of spin and exposed the best POLICY decisions for the most people. The extremes were always more polarized, but the middle was never this torn apart, and the balance worked well: have the extremes fuel the debate with ideas, and let the middle battle it out more soberly without as much partisan loyalty.

People can believe whatever they want, but when it starts to affect the lives of billions of people they have to stop believing crap. "Credible" people making "ludricrous" accusations just doesn't stand up to repeated scrutiny when we've seen it repeated ad nauseam. Instead of remembering they spent an entire lifetime being credible, the Right tends to cruelly strip them of credibility and integrity in false attacks - an institutional dismantling of our heroes.

This re-writing of history can't be ignored: it devalues the importance of what we already know and the ideals we cherish, and makes all institutional heritage worthless save for the idea of obedience to it in principle. The era of the "big government" conservative is upon us, an unbelievable perversion of their core value as a check and balance in any society - and yet they haven't noticed.

So many things are now "impossible" that possibilities become negblible even when backed up by facts. Predictability is useless, and current analysis outside of the parameters set by official rhetoric is worthless - the facts can't be accepted despite their objective value. All government has to do is build a fantasy and throw new story elements in, maintaining an intellectual hierarchy of new leaked information for smug debate by "insiders". Some people are simply better storytellers and better read, so they can fit their specific knowledge into a larger official framework even in the most vigorous debates.

So, we have a dilemma here: what's the truth?

I would argue it's not necessarily what the mass-media gets all of us excited about. With all their resources and money they're not useless, but they are horrendously bad at exercising good judgement on a collective level, and unable to accurately reflect what a society needs to know. When one network brings something in-style they bend the other networks to their will for ratings, especially when that issue is supported by a rabid group of mainstream fanatics.

Take the Terry Schiavo case - please.

President Bush interrupted his vacation for the first time in history to sign a bill that would interfere with a Florida State Court ruling, and keep Terry Schiavo alive after she was clinically brain-dead for 15 years. Yet, he won't see Cindy Sheehan about her dead son Casey, and he won't stop Muslim men, women and children from being tortured.

The widespread sanction of this is is the blindness of being Right, and having absolute faith in absolute hypocrisy as absolute truth.

So, who do you trust?

I found The Taguba Report, an official government report on the Iraqi prison system by Major General Antonio M. Taguba. Beyond the photos we've seen (which should be damning enough), this gets into the culpability of the Army as judged internally by a very well-respected officer. It's been cited by several mainstream sources, however only a few got into it deep enough to draw solid conclusions, and among the rest of us screaming "This is worse than TV is telling you!" I cite among others:

Seymour Hersh and Alex Jones.

(I'm not sure how they feel about each other, but I like 'em.)

It was fairly big news, CNN interviewed Sy Hersh and other networks mentioned The Taguba Report, confirming its existence and authenticity and that of General Taguba as a real human being testifying before a Senate Committee as a Senior ranked Military Officer.

Then, they dropped it.

Others who read it identified crazy stuff in the exact same OFFICIAL REPORT that the rest of the media didn't cover or whitewashed, and they reported on it.

Same sources.

Same info.

Deeper investigation.

How is this not "news"?

How is this not "truth"?

Now...

I'll admit: there's news and conspiracy theory.

But...

I gotta say, looking at all this news is making me a conspiracy theorist.

The assholes allowing this are clearly capable of anything, and any charge that's not quite as bad as torturing innocent people for years I'll allow to hang around for a bit until disproven...


I've got a couple of shout-outs from Sy and Alex below...


Cheers,
BK


(...)


SY SEZ HELL-O...


The New Yorker
CHAIN OF COMMAND

How the Department of Defense mishandled the disaster at Abu Ghraib.

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

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.”

SOURCE - http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040517fa_fact2


(...)


SEYMOUR HERSH: Well the report by Taguba, first of all, it’s probably the best report. I’ve been doing this stuff for a long time. It’s probably the most concise, direct report I’ve ever read. This guy is really full of integrity, which is good. And the terrible truth is that, according to his report, since last summer the army’s had a lot of reason to worry about its prison system.

SOURCE - http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/03/1411207


(...)


CNN

Journalist: 'Amazing' collapse of Army prison system

Monday, May 3, 2004 Posted: 12:16 PM EDT (1616 GMT)


(CNN) -- The U.S. military is denying reports of widespread abuse of Iraqi prisoners, after an article in The New Yorker magazine cited an Army report describing abuses of inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh, author of The New Yorker piece, discussed his findings Monday with CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about this internal Army report that you obtained. And you base a lot of your reporting, in fact, on this Gen. [Antonio] Taguba's report. He described it as "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at this specific prison. That's a quote there. Give us some of the specifics that you talk about in your report.

HERSH: Well, the big thing that the general did is he said the photographs you saw of the Iraqi men being humiliated are one element, but even before those photographs, there was a consistent pattern of very sadistic treatment being done, not by the kids that you saw, mostly done by the interrogators at the prison.

Every prison has an interrogation section with military intelligence officers, CIA people and private contractors. And in that side of the facility, there were beatings, regular beatings, threats, threatened rape, sodomy. I mean, it's just the usual list of torture stuff that I guess we went to Iraq to stop in the prisons there.

O'BRIEN: You describe it as almost routine. You say it's a fact of Army life, that the soldiers felt no need to hide anything. How do you know that it's routine when everything we have heard from military officials at this point is sort of more of a description of a few bad apples?

HERSH: You know, that's a funny description, the bad seed description. What you see is a prison that was out of control, according to the Taguba report.

SOURCE - http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/05/03/hersh/


(...)


ALEX SAYS "AHH!"...


Links from the Martial Law 9/11: Rise of the Police State Research Companion...

http://www.martiallaw911.info/extrafeatures.htm


MSNBC


Key excerpts from the Taguba report

Updated: 6:20 p.m. ET May 3, 2004

The following are some of the key excerpts from the report prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba on alleged abuse of prisoners by members of the 800th Military Police Brigade at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad. The report was ordered by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of Joint Task Force-7, the senior U.S. military official in Iraq, following persistent allegations of human rights abuses at the prison.

(B)etween October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility (BCCF), numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees. This systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated byseveral members of the military police guard force (372nd Military Police Company, 320th Military Police Battalion, 800th MP Brigade), in Tier (section) 1-A of the Abu Ghraib Prison (BCCF).

In addition, several detainees also described the following acts of abuse, which under the circumstances, I find credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses
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a. Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;

b. Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;

c. Pouring cold water on naked detainees;

d. Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;

e. Threatening male detainees with rape;

f. Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;

g. Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.

h. Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

(T)he intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts:

a. Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;

b. Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;

c. Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;

d. Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;

e. Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear;

f. Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;

g. Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;

h. Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;

i. Writing “I am a Rapest” (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;

j. Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;

k. A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;

l. Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;

m. Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.

These findings are amply supported by written confessions provided by several of the suspects, written statements provided by detainees, and witness statements.

The various detention facilities operated by the 800th MP Brigade have routinely held persons brought to them by Other Government Agencies (OGAs) without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the reason for their detention. The Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center (JIDC) at Abu Ghraib called these detainees “ghost detainees.” On at least one occasion, the 320th MP Battalion at Abu Ghraib held a handful of “ghost detainees” (6-8) for OGAs that they moved around within the facility to hide them from a visiting International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) survey team. This maneuver was deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine, and in violation of international law.

SOURCE - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4894033/


(...)


The Guardian

C4 lines up Guantánamo-style torture show

Dominic Timms
Tuesday February 8, 2005

Channel 4 is to broadcast what it is styling a Guantánamo Bay-style reality show that will examine the effects of mild torture on seven male volunteers.

The Guantánamo Guidebook will recreate some of the practices used at the US naval base where hundreds of so-called "enemy combatants" have been held without trial or access to lawyers for nearly three years.

SOURCE - http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1408237,00.html


(...)


Here is the uncensored version of General Taguba's report:

http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2479

ING

ARTICLE 15-6 INVESTIGATION
OF THE
800th MILITARY POLICE
BRIGADE


SECRET/NO FOREIGN DISSEMINATION
TABLE OF CONTENTS

References .......................... 3

Background ......................... 6

Assessment of DoD Counter-Terrorism
Interrogation and Detention Operations
In Iraq (MG Miller's Assessment).................. 8

IO Comments on MG Miller's Assessment.............. 8

Report on Detention and Corrections
In Iraq (MG Ryder's Report).................. 9

IO Comments on MG Ryder's Report.................. 12

Preliminary Investigative Actions .................. 12

Findings and Recommendations


(...)


Random repilogue...


Uncommon intelligence is better...


i mean really - what do you want? do you want to know the truth or share the lie?

the quality of alternative information is excellent - they have to try harder to sell you against CNN etc., and yet people have been trained like dogs to bark in fear at anything that questions what they know.

this is an extreme charge to be sure, and it's not ABC - read the post. but crazier stuff has happened throughout history - which they no longer teach us on purpose just so we'll act the way doubters do: "i ain't heard it so it can't be true!"

this is destroying the concept of "trust" throughout America, as people are getting suspicious of any "honest" intent outside of their bias or the "official" party line. and yet, government officials have been proven dishonest for thousands of years: dismissing any criticism of them is just historically stupid.

howard zinn wrote a book called "the people's history of the united states", and it's sold one-million copies, a staggering number for any book not starring harry potter. this shows how hungry people are for alternatives to the accepted truth, and frankly here's something for ya:

TO MAKE A CHARGE THIS BALLSY YOU'D BETTER HAVE THE EVIDENCE: NO ONE WILL EVER BELIEVE YOU OR PASS IT ON IF IT'S CRAP, AND IT WOULD BE A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME.

i wouldn't share something this crazy if it wasn't good - why would i put myself on the line and just get flamed? everyone who watches it likes it so far even as entertainment - no complaints...

if i found: "Secret Video - Dubya saves cat from tree in 1986!" then i could have that garbage fly around the web in two seconds, but if it's something this crazy it'd better be well-researched.

hevusa,

respect, gladja liked the site, here's another one that includes an ABC News special on MK Ultra - the CIA's mind control program...

http://www.heartbone.com/various/RedPillVideos.html#D41

and yes...

this time that is really ABC News.