Truth is the Enemy

Common Sense
John Maxwell

All Hell is breaking loose in the corridors of power.

The United States Senate, reflecting the views of most civilised people, voted a few days ago 90 to nine to ban "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of anyone in US government custody". Even the Majority Leader in the Senate, Bill Frist, voted with the majority.

Earlier in the year he had succumbed to pressure from President Bush and the White House to stop the Senate passing such a measure. This time, he seems to have been overcome either by his finer feelings or by the poll figures.

Mr Bush, however, is unfazed. He has threatened to veto the Bill, a waste of time, because the 90 senators voting for it clearly have the votes to over-ride the veto.

So, Mr Bush has at last admitted what we all knew: the Lynndie England's and all the other poor soldiers who have been punished for torturing and mistreating their captives in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere were in fact following orders. Mr Bush has now admitted as much. Which is more than Mr Milosevich, former president of Yugoslavia/Serbia, has admitted in his trial at the Hague for war crimes.

You will remember that Mr Milosevich was kidnapped from Serbia for trial in the Hague on charges that troops under his authority committed war crimes. There is no allegation that Milosevich authorised anyone to commit the crimes for which he is being tried.

Mr Bush, on the other hand, is curiously cavalier about his own behaviour, asserting that his troops need to be able to torture and mistreat their captives in order to get information.

This attitude may yet put Mr Bush in some danger, as two recent European court judgments defy his administration's contentions about the legality of their actions in Iraq. In January, an Italian judge, Clementine Forieo ruled that five North Africans accused of terrorism could not be so described because they were in reality resistance fighters against an illegal occupation force.

That judgment is supported more recently, by the German Federal Administrative Court which ruled that the attack launched by the US and its allies against the nation of Iraq was a clear war of aggression that violated international law - as specified in Article 4, Paragraph 4 of the UN Charter .

Both judgments are further supported by the Scandinavian legislators who form the jury for the Nobel Peace Prize. They awarded the Prize this year to Mr Mohammed Al Baradei and the International Atomic Energy Authority which he heads.

Mr El Baradei, it may be remembered, was one of those who discredited the Anglo-American claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium from Niger, one of the centrepieces of the case for war. The British PM, Mr Blair, had the grace to congratulate Mr El Baradei, but I suspect that Hell will freeze over before we get a similar concession from Mr Bush.

Life in Washington is becoming even more exciting, with many people speculating that the president's consigliere, Mr Rove, and the vice president's apparatchik-in-chief, Mr Libby, may be indicted quite soon for conspiring to leak the name of Valerie Plame, a CIA undercover agent who is the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Mr Wilson - in the New York Times two years ago, exploded Mr Bush's claims about Iraq and Niger uranium. Valerie Plame's cover was blown by some creeps at the White House, in an effort to discredit Mr Wilson.

It is clear that in Washington and in other places of interest to Washington, the truth is an extremely dangerous commodity.
The head of Reuters news agency has complained to Senator John Warner, head of the Armed Forces Committee about the killing, maiming and illegal imprisonment of journalists and media employees by US forces in Iraq.

The Reuters chief, Mr David Schlesinger, said US troops were out of control and their attacks on media people were inhibiting the accurate reporting of the war in the public interest. In a letter to Sen Warner, he said US forces were limiting the ability of independent journalists to operate.

Mr Schlesinger called on Warner to raise widespread media concerns about the conduct of US troops with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was due to testify to the committee Schlesinger referred to "a long parade of disturbing incidents whereby professional journalists have been killed, wrongfully detained, and/or illegally abused by US forces in Iraq".

Schlesinger urged Warner to demand that Rumsfeld resolve these issues "in a way that best balances the legitimate security interests of the US forces in Iraq and the equally legitimate rights of journalists in conflict zones under international law".

At least 66 journalists and media workers, most of them Iraqis, have been killed in the Iraq conflict since March 2003 at least 13 of them by US troops. The most notorious case was the bombing of the Al Jazeera office in Baghdad in March 2003.

In a letter to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the time, the Committee to Protect Journalists noted that, "the attack against Al-Jazeera is of particular concern since the station's offices were also hit in Kabul, Afghanistan, in November 2001". The Pentagon asserted, without providing additional detail, that the office was a "known Al-Qaeda facility" and that "the US military did not know the space was being used by Al-Jazeera", which was palpably untrue.

Then there was the shelling of the Hotel Palestine by an American tank. The shells were directed at the upper floors of the hotel, in response, the US Army said, to insurgents firing from the lobby on the ground floor of the hotel.

Now, journalists and other media people are being selected for arrest and detention by US troops, without any recourse to law. According to Reuters the US military has refused to conduct independent and transparent investigations into the deaths of the journalists, relying instead on inquiries by officers from the units responsible, who had exonerated their soldiers.

The US military has failed even to implement recommendations by its own inquiry into one of the deaths, that of award-winning Palestinian cameraman Mazen Dana who was shot dead while filming outside Abu Ghraib prison in August 2003.

Schlesinger said Reuters and other reputable international news organisations were concerned by the "sizeable and rapidly increasing number of journalists detained by US forces".

He said most of these detentions had been provoked by legitimate journalistic activity such as possessing photographs and video of insurgents, which US soldiers assumed showed sympathy with the insurgency.

In most cases the journalists were held for long periods at Abu Ghraib or Camp Bucca prisons before being released without charge. It isn't only in Iraq that journalists are being targeted. In Spain a senior Al Jazeera journalists, Taysir Alluni, has been given a long jail term essentially for the crime of having interviewed Osama Bin Laden after the September 11 atrocities. There was, according to all the news reports I have read, no credible evidence against him, although he was accused of ferrying money to people on behalf of Al Qaeda.

The Arab Human Rights League believes that Alluni is a sacrifice to the American, British and Israeli interests attempting to justify their war against 'terror'. Alluni was first arrested in September 2003, but was was later released on bail on health grounds -he suffers from a weak heart and back problems - only to be arrested again and jailed in Madrid in November 2004.

He was released to house arrest in March, but taken back into custody on 16 September and is now to serve seven years in prison. A few weeks ago, Robert Fisk, the distinguished Middle East correspondent of the (London) Independent was refused entry to the United States for a lecture tour, as was Ian McEuan 18 months earlier.

McEuan later received an apology from the US department of Homeland Security. As far as I know, neither Fisk, nor our own Wayne Brown has received any similar expression of regret for their treatment. Since I was warned more than two years ago not to push my luck I was unable to attend my sister's funeral, for fear that mine might follow in the not too distant future.

In Haiti, journalists are being beaten and murdered by forces under the influence of the United States and the UN mission. Guyler Delvas, president of the journalist's association, (who has been on Jamaica radio several times) was arrested and beaten by the presidential security guard (Americans) last week as was another journalist with him, Radio Metropole reporter Jean Wilkens Merone.

They were covering a ceremony marking the beginning of the judicial year. Both journalists reported serious injuries after being dragged inside the courthouse and then severely beaten.

On September 9, journalists Jean Ristil and Kevin Pina were arrested while monitoring a search warrant at Rev Fr Gerard Jean-Juste's church in the Delmas district.

On July 10, journalist Jacques Roche was kidnapped and subsequently tortured and murdered by his assailants. On April 7, reporter Robenson Laraque died from injuries suffered while observing a clash between UN troops and members of the disbanded Haitian military in the city of Petit-Goâve.

On January 14, radio reporter Abdias Jean was murdered while covering a police operation and raid in the Village de Dieu sector of Port-au-Prince.

The Wages of Terrorism

If coming events cast their shadows, what are we to make of an incident at the British Labour Party conference two weeks ago? An 85-year-old man, Walter Wolfgang, who has lived in the UK since fleeing the wrath of Hitler nearly 70 years ago, dared to shout "Nonsense" during the speech of Home Secretary Jack Straw.

Not only was Wolfgang bundled out, roughly and unceremoniously, but another man who protested his brutal treatment was also frog-marched out of the conference.

The ensuing press uproar produced apologies from Prime Minister Blair and other notables. Wolfgang and his supporter were both allowed back into the conference on promises of good behaviour. But not before Wolfgang was arrested and charged under Britain's Anti-Terrorism act.

I promise you, I am not making this up. Heckling is terrorism.

Presumably Wolfgang fell under the section of the Act which sanctions the 'glorification' of terrorism.

I am being serious, because Mr Bush has joined Mr Blair in redefining their enemies, and it appears that anyone who dares make any protest will be classified as a member of the new international Islamo-fascist ideology as defined by Mr Bush.

And if you think that you can seek refuge in the law, think again. The woman who does Mr Bush's legal housekeeping, Mrs Harriet Miers, has been nominated by the president to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the US Supreme Court.

And, being from Texas, she may also be a good friend of Mr DeLay and those others who wish to redefine government until it becomes a dish rag for capitalists. Mrs Miers has never, ever, sat as a judge anywhere.

Can you imagine a British or a Jamaican prime minister making a similar appointment? Can you imagine the outrage?
Anyway, Caligula did make his horse a consul.So there is precedent. As Mr Al Gore has said, the current public discourse in the United States is indeed strange.

Dreadful things are happening but the body politic is silent. They must be, if the people who are supposed to inform them, the media, are too rich or bored, or just too cowardly to care

There have been editorials welcoming the Senate's proposed ban on torture, but where were these worthies when the torture was being discussed? Well, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter and the noted (liberal) legal authority, Alan Dershowitz, to name just two, were both publicly recommending the use of torture at the time.
And no one said a word.