war crimes

CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran

BY SHANE HARRIS AND MATTHEW M. AID

"According to recently declassified CIA documents and interviews with former intelligence officials like Francona, the U.S. had firm evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks beginning in 1983. At the time, Iran was publicly alleging that illegal chemical attacks were carried out on its forces, and was building a case to present to the United Nations. But it lacked the evidence implicating Iraq, much of which was contained in top secret reports and memoranda sent to the most senior intelligence officials in the U.S. government. The CIA declined to comment for this story".

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/25/secret_cia_files_prove_america_helped_saddam_as_he_gassed_iran?page=full

Full Declassified Report

http://www.scribd.com/doc/163045562/Iran-Iraq-Situation-Report

Ex-CIA Agent, Whistleblower John Kiriakou Sentenced to Prison While Torturers He Exposed Walk Free

"Former CIA agent John Kiriakou speaks out just days after he was sentenced to 30 months in prison, becoming the first CIA official to face jail time for any reason relating to the U.S. torture program. Under a plea deal, Kiriakou admitted to a single count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by revealing the identity of a covert officer to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it. Supporters say Kiriakou is being unfairly targeted for having been the first CIA official to publicly confirm and detail the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding. Kiriakou joins us to discuss his story from Washington, D.C., along with his attorney, Jesselyn Radack, director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project. "This ... was not a case about leaking; this was a case about torture. And I believe I’m going to prison because I blew the whistle on torture," Kiriakou says. "My oath was to the Constitution. … And to me, torture is unconstitutional."".

http://m.democracynow.org/stories/13426

US war-murdered 20-30 million since WW2: arrest today’s War Criminals

hyperlinks live at source: http://www.examiner.com/nonpartisan-in-national/us-war-murdered-20-30-million-since-ww2-arrest-today-s-war-criminals

US covert and overt criminal Wars of Aggression caused 20-30 million deaths of human beings since World War 2, according to the outstanding documentation of James Lucas or Countercurrents.org. The US use/support of armed attacks is documented in 37 countries, and in direct violation of treaties after both world wars (Kellogg-Briand and UN Charter) to forever end armed attacks unless first attacked by another nation’s government.

The end of this gruesome and psychopathic history of armed attacks and war-murders in the Orwellian names of unalienable rights and freedom will end upon the demand of enough in the 99% to arrest the obvious current War Criminals.

What will you think, say, and do at this historic moment in US history?

What would make your family and you most proud, with consideration of your relatives who sacrificed dearly in wars?

Patriot Act Extension Signed By Obama

Patriot Act Extension Signed By Obama

MAY 27, 2011

JIM ABRAMS 05/27/11 07:37 AM ET

WASHINGTON — Minutes before a midnight deadline, President Barack Obama signed into law a four-year extension of post-Sept. 11 powers to search records and conduct roving wiretaps in pursuit of terrorists.

“It’s an important tool for us to continue dealing with an ongoing terrorist threat,” Obama said Friday after a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

With Obama in France, the White House said the president used an autopen machine that holds a pen and signs his actual signature. It is only used with proper authorization of the president.

Congress sent the bill to the president with only hours to go on Thursday before the provisions expired at midnight. Votes taken in rapid succession in the Senate and House came after lawmakers rejected attempts to temper the law enforcement powers to ensure that individual liberties are not abused.
The Senate voted 72-23 for the legislation to renew three terrorism-fighting authorities. The House passed the measure 250-153 on an evening vote.

A short-term expiration would not have interrupted ongoing operations but would have barred the government from seeking warrants for new investigations.

Congress bumped up against the deadline mainly because of the stubborn resistance from a single senator, Republican freshman Rand Paul of Kentucky, who saw the terrorist-hunting powers as an abuse of privacy rights. Paul held up the final vote for several days while he demanded a chance to change the bill to diminish the government’s ability to monitor individual actions.

The measure would add four years to the legal life of roving wiretaps – those authorized for a person rather than a communications line or device – of court-ordered searches of business records and of surveillance of non-American “lone wolf” suspects without confirmed ties to terrorist groups.

The roving wiretaps and access to business records are small parts of the USA Patriot Act enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But unlike most of the act, which is permanent law, those provisions must be renewed periodically because of concerns that they could be used to violate privacy rights. The same applies to the “lone wolf” provision, which was part of a 2004 intelligence law.

Paul argued that in the rush to meet the terrorist threat in 2001 Congress enacted a Patriot Act that tramples on individual liberties. He had some backing from liberal Democrats and civil liberties groups who have long contended the law gives the government authority to spy on innocent citizens.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said he voted for the act when he was a House member in 2001 “while ground zero was still burning.” But “I soon realized it gave too much power to government without enough judicial and congressional oversight.”

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said the provision on collecting business records can expose law-abiding citizens to government scrutiny. “If we cannot limit investigations to terrorism or other nefarious activities, where do they end?” he asked.
“The Patriot Act has been used improperly again and again by law enforcement to invade Americans’ privacy and violate their constitutional rights,” said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington legislative office.

Still, coming just a month after intelligence and military forces tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden, there was little appetite for tampering with the terrorism-fighting tools. These tools, said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, “have kept us safe for nearly a decade and Americans today should be relieved and reassured to know that these programs will continue.”

Intelligence officials have denied improper use of surveillance tools, and this week both FBI Director Robert Mueller and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sent letters to congressional leaders warning of serious national security consequences if the provisions were allowed to lapse.

The Obama administration says that without the three authorities the FBI might not be able to obtain information on terrorist plotting inside the U.S. and that a terrorist who communicates using different cell phones and email accounts could escape timely surveillance.

“When the clock strikes midnight tomorrow, we would be giving terrorists the opportunity to plot attacks against our country, undetected,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on the Senate floor Wednesday. In unusually personal criticism of a fellow senator, he warned that Paul, by blocking swift passage of the bill, “is threatening to take away the best tools we have for stopping them.”

The nation itself is divided over the Patriot Act, as reflected in a Pew Research Center poll last February, before the killing of bin Laden, that found that 34 percent felt the law “goes too far and poses a threat to civil liberties. Some 42 percent considered it “a necessary tool that helps the government find terrorists.” That was a slight turnaround from 2004 when 39 percent thought it went too far and 33 percent said it was necessary.

Paul, after complaining that Reid’s remarks were “personally insulting,” asked whether the nation “should have some rules that say before they come into your house, before they go into your banking records, that a judge should be asked for permission, that there should be judicial review? Do we want a lawless land?”

Paul agreed to let the bill go forward after he was given a vote on two amendments to rein in government surveillance powers. Both were soundly defeated. The more controversial, an amendment that would have restricted powers to obtain gun records in terrorist investigations, was defeated 85-10 after lawmakers received a letter from the National Rifle Association stating that it was not taking a position on the measure.

According to a senior Justice Department national security official testifying to Congress last March, the government has sought roving wiretap authority in about 20 cases a year between 2001 and 2010 and has sought warrants for business records less than 40 times a year, on average. The government has yet to use the lone wolf authority.

But the ACLU also points out that court approvals for business record access jumped from 21 in 2009 to 96 last year, and the organization contends the Patriot Act has blurred the line between investigations of actual terrorists and those not suspected of doing anything wrong.

Two Democratic critics of the Patriot Act, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Udall of Colorado, on Thursday extracted a promise from Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that she would hold hearings with intelligence and law enforcement officials on how the law is being carried out.

A Long History of America's Dark Side

A Long History of America's Dark Side

By Peter Dale Scott and Robert Parry
October 7, 2010

Editor’s Note: Many Americans view their country and its soldiers as the “good guys” spreading “democracy” and “liberty” around the world. When the United States inflicts unnecessary death and destruction, it’s viewed as a mistake or an aberration.

In the following article – cobbled together from previous stories published at Consortiumnews.com – Peter Dale Scott and Robert Parry examine the long history of these acts of brutality, a record that suggests they are neither a “mistake” nor an “aberration” but rather conscious counterinsurgency doctrine on the "dark side":

There is a dark -- seldom acknowledged -- thread that runs through U.S. military doctrine, dating back to the early days of the Republic.

The Bush Crime Syndicate

The Bush Administration MUST be investigated, prosecuted, & held accountable for their criminal activity. Find out the six major laws that the Bush administration violated after 9/11 in the exposé: The Bush Crime Syndicate

http://www.mediaroots.org/watch.php

Global People's Formation issues statement on 8th anniversary of 9/11

The International League of Peoples' Struggle (ILPS), an anti-imperialist and democratic formation founded in 2001 in Europe and has now grown to have attracted "to its fold hundreds of organizations with millions of members in more than 40 countries and in most of the global regions" came out with the following statement on the occasion of the eighth anniversary of 9/11:

ILPS REITERATES CONDEMNATION OF 9/11
AND THE US GLOBAL WAR OF TERRORISM

By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee
International League of Peoples' Struggle

September 11, 2009

Torture indictment for George Bush: a draft

from: http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner with links to documentation of the below information.

Torture apologists prefer that Americans surrender their powerful voices on this issue. Torture addicts propagandize that the legal issue is somehow too complicated for your little intellect to understand. Torture sadists use false rhetoric for you to submit to American torture under your flag and your tax dollars by telling you “torture keeps America safe;” a Rovian spin as reprehensible as “torturing your children makes them love you” or “torture promotes American values.” The trick is to take a universal virtue and link it to whatever you want to do. It’s the “big lie” that Hitler wrote is so outrageous that the stupid common people will believe it because of its outrageousness. Recent scientific data also posit the human tendency to justify evil just because you'd rather not embrace its implications.

But you’re smarter than Nazi dupes. You're committed to intellectual prowess and moral courage. You're ready to confront and end this repulsive episode of sanctioned cruelty.

US War Crimes: torture and a call for Truth and Reconciliation

from: http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner

"Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause... for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country."
- General George Washington, letter to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775

Wayne Prante on 911, War Crimes, Peace, Truth and Justice - Toronto 5.27.09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzoGi2uPJfM

Canadian 911 Truth, Justice and Peace activist Wayne Prante speaks at an organizing meeting in preparation for the Bush-Clinton War Criminals Protest in Toronto on May 27th, 2009. He discusses the need for the Peace Movement to address and embrace the 911 issue if we are to be effective (as it was the original lie of the Bush admin), the need for a change in tactics; becoming more community oriented as individuals (rather than relying on mass demonstrations in city centres), as well as changing our attitudes and approach to 911 Truth by being more service oriented to get the message out.

The audio-video quality is not good, but was the best we could do under the circumstances.

--

‘Abu Ghraib US prison guards were scapegoats for Bush’ lawyers claim

‘Abu Ghraib US prison guards were scapegoats for Bush’ lawyers claim

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article6207484.ece

(Pls also see comments at Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/02/abu-ghraib-prison-guards_n_195100.html)

Tim Reid in Washington

Prison guards jailed for abusing inmates at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq are planning to appeal against their convictions on the ground that recently released CIA torture memos prove that they were scapegoats for the Bush Administration.

The photographs of prisoner abuse at the Baghdad jail in 2004 sparked worldwide outrage but the previous administration, from President Bush down, blamed the incident on a few low-ranking “bad apples” who were acting on their own.

The decision by President Obama to release the memos showed that the harsh interrogation tactics were approved and authorised at the highest levels of the White House.

Students send the CIA packing

Students send the CIA packing

http://socialistworker.org/2009/04/13/students-send-cia-packing

By Martin Smith | April 13, 2009

URBANA, Ill.--Students and activists won a victory April 9 when they forced the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) into a last-minute cancellation of its recruitment session at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

For a third year, members of the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN), Iraq Veterans Against the War and the International Socialist Organization joined forces to protest the CIA, but this is the first year that the agency canceled, after activists exposed the agency's dark history of assassinations, political sabotage and torture.

Outside the recruitment session door, one activist donned a black Grim Reaper cloak and stood with arms extended on a milk crate to greet potential recruits and remind them of the atrocities conducted at Abu Ghraib with CIA complicity. Another used a simple pillowcase as a hood and kneeled with arms clasped behind his back to show how prisoners are commonly treated at Bagram Air Base and Guantánamo Bay.

Splitting The Sky vs War Criminal George W. Bush et al

Meet the MAN who tried to arrest George W. Bush on March 17th, 2009 in Calgary, and learn why he did this.

Direct Link:
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=4237471280373245988

In this interview Splitting the Sky (aka John Boncore) explains his actions in Calgary, Canada's laws pertaining to war crimes. and attempts to have Bush barred or arrested. He makes connections to 9/11, references his personal history with that day, discusses his investigations into put option stocks, then ties this to AIG, Hank Greenburg, Soros, Obama, Brezizinski, Kissinger, et al and the current financial meltdown (controlled economic collapse).

A Grand Slam!

This video is from "Face to Face" with guest host Chris Cook, to be aired soon in Victoria, BC, southern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, potentially reaching 400,000 viewers.

Long Arm of Justice: Fujimori’s Lesson for Bush

Fujimori’s Lesson for Bush
by Jacob G. Hornberger

http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2009-04-09.asp

If President Bush and Vice-President Cheney think that time is on their side with respect to crimes committed by their administration, this week’s criminal conviction of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori should put those thoughts to rest. Returning to Peru in the hope of returning to power, Fujimori was instead put on trial and convicted of “crimes against humanity,” including the killing of 25 people by military death squad.

Meanwhile, a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon, has opened a criminal investigation of six former Bush officials — Alberto Gonzalez, Douglas Feith, David Addington, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and William Haynes — for torture allegations arising out of the Pentagon’s operations at Guantanamo.

Garzon was the judge who secured a criminal indictment of former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet, which led to Spain’s extradition request for Pinochet when he visited London. While the request was ultimately unsuccessful, Pinochet was detained in London for a year awaiting the final disposition of the request.

RSS