US Col Lawrence Wilkerson, Gen Antonio Taguba, Bush war crim

[outsider]

Major General Taguba accuses Bush Administration of War Crimes for torturing prisoners:
http://www.truthout.org/article/us-general-accuses-bush-administration -war-crimes

Maj. Gen. Taguba Accuses Bush Administration of War Crimes
By Democracy Now!

Retired Major General Antonio Taguba, the Army general who first investigated the abuse at Abu Ghraib, has accused the Bush administration of committing war crimes. “The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture,” Taguba said.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20130.htm

Retired General Antonio Taguba who led the US army’s investigation into the Abu Ghraib abuses has accused the Bush administration of “a systematic regime of torture” and war crimes. Taguba’s accusations appear in the preface to a new report released by Physicians for Human Rights. The report uses medical evidence to confirm first-hand accounts of eleven former prisoners who endured torture by US personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay.

Taguba writes “there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

The report was published in the midst of two days of Congressional hearings on Capitol Hill. On Tuesday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held an 8-hour hearing that exposed the role of top Bush administration officials in authorizing the use of harsh interrogation techniques. The committee released a series of previously classified documents detailing how the Pentagon and the CIA transformed the military’s SERE resistance training program into a blueprint for interrogating terrorist suspects. Committee Chair Senator Carl Levin explained the timeline of implementing the SERE or Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape techniques and the role of military psychologists in devising these routines.

The Pentagon’s former general counsel William Haynes was repeatedly questioned at Tuesda’s hearing about his role in authorizing the interrogation techniques. During two hours of testimony, Haynes responded to dozens of questions by saying he could not recall or remember details about the process of approving the interrogation techniques. Democratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island blasted Haynes’ role in authorizing torture.

A major McClatchy newspaper series investigating the detention of terrorist suspects names Haynes as one of a group of five lawyers at the White House, Pentagon, and Justice Department who called themselves the “War Council” and reinterpreted US and international laws about accountability and the treatment of prisoners. Other members of the War Council include Vice President Cheney’s former legal advisor and current chief of staff, David Addington; former attorney general Alberto Gonzalez; former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo; and former deputy to Gonzalez Timothy Flanigan.

Despite the new revelations of systematic prisoner abuse sanctioned at the highest level of government, White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto insisted Tuesday that the administration does not abuse detainees.

Today we spend the hour on torture. We begin we Mark Benjamin, National Correspondent for Salon.com. He covered the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday.

Mark Benjamin, national correspondent for Salon.com. His most recent article is A Timeline to Bush Government Torture

[outsider]

Ex-State Dept. official: Hundreds of detainees died in U.S. custody, at least 25 murdered:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20128.htm

Ex-State Dept. official: Hundreds of detainees died in U.S. custody, at least 25 murdered

By Think Progress

19/06/08 -- -- At yesterday's House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil Rights hearing on torture, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, told Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) that over 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody, with up to 27 of these declared homicides:

NADLER: Your testimony said 100 detainees have died in detention; do you believe the 25 of those were in effect murdered?

WILKERSON: Mr. Chairman, I think the number’s actually higher than that now. Last time I checked it was 108.

A February 2006 Human Rights First report found that although hundreds of people in U.S. custody had died and eight people were tortured to death, only 12 deaths had “resulted in punishment of any kind for any U.S. official.”

Transcript:

NADLER: Colonel Wilkerson, in your prepared testimony, you write that “as I compiled my dossier for Secretary Powell, and as I did further research, and as my views grew firmer and firmer I had to reread that memo (of February 7, 2002), “I needed to balance in my own mind the overwhelming evidence that my own government had sanctioned abuse and torture, which at its worse had led to the murder of 25 detainees and at least 100 detainee deaths. We have murder at least 25 people in detention. That was the clear low point [lower end of the range] of the evidence.” Your testimony said 100 detainees have died in detention; do you believe the 25 of those were in effect murdered?

WILKERSON: Mr. Chairman, I think the number’s actually higher than that now. Last time I checked it was 108, and the total number that were declared homicides by the military services, or by the CIA, or others doing investigations, CID, and so forth — was 25, 26, 27.

NADLER: Were declared homicides?

WILKERSON: Right, starting as early as December 2001 in Afghanistan.

NADLER: And these were homicides committed by people engaged in interrogations?

WILKERSON: Or in guarding prisoners, or something like that. People who were in detention.

NADLER: They were in detention, not trying to escape or anything, declared homicides by our own authorities.

[TonyGosling]

Sander Hicks speaks with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, an hour long conversation with rigorous honesty about the crimes of Iraq, torture, Israel and Zionism. Time to end the plutocracy and the permanent war state

Link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULAk_u15yZU
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: The New York Megaphone Interview