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Best of the Web: Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be 'raped with broken bottles'

Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:51 EST

The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

The following videos were posted to YouTube by the Real News Network on Oct. 26 and Nov. 4, 2009.

Stephen Lendman
SteveLendmanBlog
Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:00 EST

In April 2009, Chavez presented Obama with the book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent which details US aggression in Latin America.

At a time of growing US poverty, hunger, homelessness, and despair, imperial wars without end, and the Obama administration even worse than its predecessor, Venezuela:

-- is a model participatory democracy;

-- holds free, fair and open elections;

-- respects the rule of law, civil liberties, and human rights;

-- doesn't intimidate its neighbors;

-- uses its resources responsibly for the people;

-- provides essential social services for the needy;

-- champions judicial fairness and the rule of law;

-- has a model free and open media;

-- wages no foreign wars;

-- doesn't torture or imprison its adversaries;

-- conducts effective operations to halt illicit drugs trafficking;

-- promotes global peace, solidarity, equality and social justice; and

-- its only threat is its good example that shames its northern neighbor.

Today's U.S. Army and Its Ambitions

William Pfaff
TruthDig
Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:44 EST

It is possible that the creation of an all-professional U.S. Army has been Congress' most dangerous decision. The nation now confronts a political crisis in which the issue has become an undeclared contest between Pentagon power and that of a newly elected president.

Barack Obama has yet to declare his decision on the war in Afghanistan, and there is every reason to think that he will follow military opinion. Yet he is under immense pressure from his Republican opponents to, in effect, renounce his presidential power and step aside from the fundamental strategic decisions of the nation.

Kipling Haunts Obama's Afghan War

Ray McGovern
Truthout
Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:25 EST

Adapted from: DVIDSHUB, jamesomalley, New Amsterdam Book Co.

The White Man's Burden, a phrase immortalized by English poet Rudyard Kipling as an excuse for European-American imperialism, was front and center Thursday morning (October 29) at a RAND-sponsored discussion of Afghanistan in the Russell Senate Office Building.

The agenda was top-heavy with RAND speakers, and the thinking was decidedly "inside the box" - so much so, that I found myself repeating a verse from Kipling, who recognized the dangers of imperialism, to remind me of the real world:

It is not wise for the Christian white
To hustle the Asian brown;
For the Christian riles
And the Asian smiles
And weareth the Christian down.

At the end of the fight
Lies a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased;

And the epitaph drear,
A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East.

William Fisher
Inter Press Service
Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:27 EST

The long road to the proverbial day in court just got longer for five men who claim they were "disappeared" and tortured by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

The men, who say they were victims of the extraordinary rendition programme conducted during the administration of President George W. Bush, have been trying since 2007 to get their cases heard on the merits.

But it is now far from clear that the merits of these cases will be heard any time soon - if ever. The reason is that the Department of Justice - first through Bush administration lawyers, now through Barack Obama administration lawyers - has invoked the so-called "state secrets" privilege, claiming that a public trial would endanger U.S. national security.

Larisa Alexandrovna
The Raw Story
Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:20 EST

Recently declassified documents on the Bush administration interrogation program describe several techniques used on detainees in US custody, some of which may have violated the United Nations Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a signatory.

Included in the large cache of documents is one which describes (pdf) stress positions to be used as interrogation techniques, as well as the use of an abdominal slap as a punishment tool. The "purpose" of the abdominal slap is defined in the documents as being "to instill fear and despair, to punish selective behavior and to instill humiliation or cause insult."

The documents were requested by the American Civil Liberties Union via a Freedom of Information Act request in 2004 and were made public on Oct. 30, 2009.

Scott Horton
Harper's Magazine
Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:12 EST

"When the history of this distinguished court is written, today's majority decision will be viewed with dismay," writes Guido Calabresi, the former Yale Law dean and a man widely viewed as the most illustrious living member of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. He is lodging his dissent in a 7-4 decision of the en banc court concluding that a Canadian software engineer named Maher Arar has no right to sue government officials. What has Calabresi so worked up?

Hendrik Voss
CommonDreams
Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:35 EST

Washington - The military coup led by SOA graduates in Honduras has once again exposed the destabilizing and deadly effects that the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC) has on Latin America. Torture survivors and human rights activists from across the Americas, including Bertha Oliva, the founder of the Committee of the Family Members of the Disappeared (COFADEH) from Honduras and human rights defenders from Colombia will travel to Fort Benning, Georgia to participate in the mobilization.

The SOA graduate-led military coup in Honduras and the increasing U.S. military involvement in Colombia put a renewed focus on the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC) and the policies it represents.

Thousands from across the Americas will converge on November 20-22 at Fort Benning, GA for a vigil and civil disobedience actions to speak out against the SOA/ WHINSEC and to demand a change in U.S. foreign policy.

The vigil will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 1989 SOA graduate-led Jesuit massacre in San Salvador, and the many other thousands of victims of SOA/ WHINSEC violence.

The campaign to close the SOA/ WHINSEC is in a crucial phase right now. Despite promising comments from President Obama during his 2008 election campaign, the SOA/ WHINSEC is still in operation, the U.S. is poring millions into failing "military solutions" to combat the drug problems in Mexico and the Pentagon is moving forward with plans to use seven Colombian military bases in Colombia for offensive U.S. military operations.

Jewish Directors Challenge Israel

Sakhr al-Makhadi
Al Jazeera
Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:44 EST

A series of controversial Israeli films are provoking outrage and plaudits in equal measure at the London Film Festival.

The best documentary award has gone to one of the year's most controversial films.

Defamation is a polemic by Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir. In his expose of America's Anti-Defamation League (ADL), he claims anti-Semitism is being exaggerated for political purposes. He argues that American Jewish leaders travel around the world exploiting the memory of the Holocaust to silence criticism of Israel.

At one point, an ADL leader admits to Shamir that "we need to play on that guilt".

Shamir says his film, Defamation, started out as a study of "the political games being played behind the term anti-Semitism".

"It became more a film about perceptions and the way Jews and Israelis choose to see themselves and define themselves - a lot of the time unfortunately choosing the role of eternal victims as a way of life."

Agense France Presse
Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:54 EST

Washington - The US government has no precise figure for how many contractors are employed in Iraq and Afghanistan, inviting the risk of fraud and security threats, a US commission warned on Monday.

"It is both peculiar and troubling that eight years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime, in Afghanistan, and more than six years since the overthrow of Baathist regime in Iraq, we still don't know how many contractor employees are working in the region," said Michael Thibault, co-chairman of the commission on wartime contracting.

The independent commission found that "there is no single source for a clear, complete and accurate picture of contractor numbers, locations, contracts and cost," Thibault said at a commission hearing.

"How can contractors be properly managed if we aren't sure how many there are, where they are and what are they doing?"

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