ORIGINAL MATERIAL PRODUCED BY THE GLOBAL BEAT SYNDICATE William Dowell: on the Bush administration and "plausible denial" Charles Knight: on outsourcing torture and the problem of "quality control" Ehsan Ahrari :on occupation as the real culprit behind prison abuse in Iraq

New York University

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Removing the dead after the assassination of of Ezzedin Salim, the head of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council

Israel fires missiles at a Palestinian crowd in Gaza (Click here for story) India's Sonia Ghandi decides not to become Prime Minister

SEYMOUR HERSH'S EXPLOSIVE ARTICLE IN THE NEW YORKER
Quoting highly placed CIA officials, Seymour Hersh reports that a top secret program authorized U.S. intelligence agents to use sexual humiliation and physical coercion in order to get information from terrorist suspects. According to Hersh's sources, the program was pushed by Donald Rumsfeld and more closely followed by Rumsfeld's protege, Stephen Cambone. Both Condoleeza Rice and President Bush were informed of its existence. The plan turned sour, Hersh suggests, when the Pentagon enalrged the operation to include ordinary suspects and lower ranking military personnel began copying tactics previously limited to a few highly trained professionals. (Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, May 17, 2004)

ABC News broadcast a new photo Wednesday of. Army Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr gloating over the corpse of an Iraqi prisoner who died while in U.S. custody at Abu Ghraib prison. For charges against Graner and others at Abu Ghraib, click here...

•Seymour Hersh and Senator Carl Levin on CBS' "Face The Nation" Hersh points out that the Bush administration is furious about the New Yorker article, but it hasn't actually denied the facts reported in it. Senator Carl Levin says he has a commitment from Senate Armed Services chairman Warner that investigations will continue. (Face the Nation, CBS News, May 16, 2004- pdf transcript)

NEWSWEEK: THE WHITE HOUSE MEMOS
Newsweek reports that some U.S. soldiers and CIA operatives may eventually be accused of war crimes. The photograph of a hooded Iraqi with electric wires attached to his hands is actually a replay of a torture technique which U.S. professionals nicknamed "the Vietnam." Ordinary military police are unlikely to have known about it. It seems much more likely that an intelligence professional introduced them to the concept. That means that responsibility for the abuse in Iraq extends higher than the enlisted men now on trial. According to Newsweek, a cabal of right wing lawyers in the White House argued that in the wake of 9/11, international laws and the Geneva convention were no longer applicable. Guantanamo Bay was chosen as a prison precisely because it could be argued to be in a legal twilight zone. White House legal counsel, Alberto Gonzales, argued in a memo that the Geneva Convention should be disallowed so that administration officials would be able to defend themselves at a later date against prosecution under legislation passed in 1996 which makes war crimes a prosecutable offense under U.S. law. As Gonzales explained his thinking to Bush, "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." (Newsweek, May 17, 2004)

WASHINGTON POST: THE "FEAR UP HARSH" MEMO
According to the Washington Post, that Colonel Thomas M. Pappas, the head of U.S. intelligence operations at Abu Ghraib prison, notified Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commanding general in Iraq, last November that he planned to force a prisoner to a race with a hood over his head through a gauntlet of attack dogs in order to terrorize him. Pappas called the technique, "Fear Harsh Up" and interrogators joked that it would diminish the prisoners belief in" the Allah factor", i.e. that God could save him. The Post says that Army documents state that Pappas wanted military police to throw chairs and tables in the path of the Iraqi detainee, and to invade his "personal space." Sanchez assigned Pappas authority over the military police guarding prisoners on November 19, eleven days before the photographed abuse of prisoners took place. Sanchez, who has also been cited by Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, refused comment to the Post. (R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post, May 15, 2004)

ROBERT JAY LIFTON: ON CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR ATROCITY
In "atrocity producing" situations, perfectly ordinary people can find themselves committing monstrous acts. The Germans learned that under World War II Nazism. The U.S. had an uncomfortable taste of it from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, and now in Iraq. "What ultimately drives the dynamic," notes Lifton, "is an ideological vision that equates Iraqi fighters with "terrorists" and seeks to further justify the invasion. All this is part of the amorphous, even apocalyptic, "war on terrorism," as is the practice of denying the human rights of detainees labeled as terrorists..." (Robert Jay Lifton, The Nation, May 17, 2004)

COLIN POWELL ON "MEET THE PRESS"
Speaking from the World Economic Forum's regional meeting in Jordan, Colin Powell did his best to counter the firestorm building up mover the administration's handling of Iraq. The most dramatic point of the interview came when Powell's press secretary tried forcefully to knock Powell off the air, effectively terminating the interview by swinging the camera away. Powell finally told his press secretary to get out of the way and stop trying to block the broadcast. Senators McCain and Biden also appeared on the show. (Meet The Press, May 16, 2004)
•incident reported in the New York Times
•Summaries of discussions at the World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan

ANTHONY CORDESMAN: U.S. OFFICIALS IN A STATE OF DENIAL
While the U.S. can still prevail militarily over any specific insurgent group in Iraq, the chances are evaporating for creating a viable independent state based on democratic principles. It is even less probable that the final outcome will be pro-American. Cordesman notes that American officials in Iraq appear to be in a state of denial about the fact that the majority of the Iraqi public sees both Najaf and Fallujah as U.S. military defeats. (Anthony Cordesman, Center for Strategic and International Studies, May 5, 2004)

CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE: AL QAEDA ATTACKS BEFORE AND AFTER 9/11
According to the Congressional Research Service, Al Qaeda was responsible for four attacks before 9/11, and a total of ten since then. Statistics are approximate since despite the war on terror, the U.S. government has published no official figures after 2002. (Congressional Research Service, March 31, 2004)

A "SENIOR MILITARY OFFICIAL" BRIEFS ON THE STRATEGY OF INTERROGATION
(Lawrence De Rita, and "Senior Military Officials," the Pentagon, May 14, 2004)
• The New York City Bar Association on the U.S. and International Laws concerning torture
•New Yor Bar on indefinite detention

CHINA: MIXED REACTIONS TO U.S. SCANDALS IN IRAQ
While the Chinese government relishes the irony of seeing the U.S. accused of human rights abuse in Iraq, Chinese internet chat groups are showing a different reaction. To many ordinary Chinese, the fact that the U.S. is honestly exploring its weaknesses and failures in public on television and in the press has earned the admiration of those who live in a more closed society.(Anthony J. Spires in Yale Global On Line, May 14, 2004)

U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE: IRAQ IS NOT VIETNAM, BUT...
The size of the U.S. commitment in Vietnam was vastly greater than the U.S. effort in Iraq has been so far and the tactical situation was completely different. But the war in Vietnam resembles Iraq in the inability of the U.S. to create a viable state in a radically different cultural environment and the time limit imposed by growing public resistance to the the war at home. If Iraq goes the same way as Vietnam, it will have disastrous implications for the future of U.S. foreign policy (By Jeffrey Record and W. Andrew Terrill, the Strategic Studies Institute, the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, May 2004)

U.S. ISSUES HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT
The annual report on U.S. efforts to promote human rights and democracy in the rest of the world is required by Congress. The report was delayed briefly this year because of the scandal over abuse of prisoners in Iraq.
(State Department, May 17, 2004

THE RAFAH ATTACK
Israel claims that it just wanted to send a warning when it fired tank round, machineguns and missiles from helicopters into a crowd of Palestinian protesters at a refugee camp in Southern Gaza. At least 8 people were killed, and dozens injured. The Palestinians are claiming that the attack constitutes a war crime, and they want an international force to mediate a ceasefire. The Israelis are determined to continue with their campaign intended to stop smuggling of guns and supplies into the area. (Haaretz, May 19, 2004)
•BBC Report
•Al Jazeera

INDIA'S SONIA GHANDI DECIDES SHE DOES NOT WANT TO BECOME PRIME MINISTER
Sensitive to violent reactions from India's unltranationalist Hindu BJP party and to the assassinations of her husband and mother-in-law, Indira Ghandi, Italian-born Sonia says that an inner voice has told her not to take the post. there have been strong reactions in new Delhi, urging her to reverse her decision. Some experts speculate that the election victory, which came partly as a reaction to the excesses of the BJP, had taken Ms. Ghandi by surprise. She never expected to win at this early stage. The rest of India seems primarily concerned with establishing a stable government that will pay more attention to India's crushing poverty. The Center for Strategic and International Studies' Teresita Schaffer and Sumit Ganguly, who heads India studies at Indiana University, discuss the implications with Ray Suarez on PBS' News Hour. (News Hour, May 18, 2004)
•BBC: Congress Party picks Manmohan Singh as next PM
•TIMES OF INDIA:Sonia wants to remain in politics
•HINDUSTAN TIMES:Manmohan Singh will be first prime minister from a minority community

WHERE DID IT ALL GO WRONG?RETHINKING THE BUBBLE OF AMERICAN EMPIRE In a prophetic essay in the Atlantic Monthly last December, the financier George Soros argued that the Bush administration had used 9/11 to impose a radical neoconservative shift in U.S. foreign policy. Soros' essay is worth rereading now that history has shown his analysis to have been extraordinarily prescient. Soros writes: "...September 11 could not have changed the course of history to the extent that it has if President Bush had not responded to it the way he did. He declared war on terrorism, and under that guise implemented a radical foreign-policy agenda whose underlying principles predated the tragedy. Those principles can be summed up as follows: International relations are relations of power, not law; power prevails and law legitimizes what prevails. The United States is unquestionably the dominant power in the post-Cold War world; it is therefore in a position to impose its views, interests, and values. The world would benefit from adopting those values, because the American model has demonstrated its superiority. The Clinton and first Bush Administrations failed to use the full potential of American power. This must be corrected; the United States must find a way to assert its supremacy in the world. This foreign policy is part of a comprehensive ideology customarily referred to as neoconservatism, though I prefer to describe it as a crude form of social Darwinism. I call it crude because it ignores the role of cooperation in the survival of the fittest, and puts all the emphasis on competition. In economic matters the competition is between firms; in international relations it is between states. In economic matters social Darwinism takes the form of market fundamentalism; in international relations it is now leading to the pursuit of American supremacy... The Bush doctrine, first enunciated in a presidential speech at West Point in June of 2002, and incorporated into the National Security Strategy three months later, is built on two pillars: the United States will do everything in its power to maintain its unquestioned military supremacy; and the United States arrogates the right to pre-emptive action. In effect, the doctrine establishes two classes of sovereignty: the sovereignty of the United States, which takes precedence over international treaties and obligations; and the sovereignty of all other states, which is subject to the will of the United States. This is reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm: all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.... (George Soros, The Atlantic Monthly, December 2003) THE SPECTATOR: BRITAIN ALMOST A PARIAH "...Today there is no pleasure in being British," writes Peter Oborne, "We are almost a pariah nation. Ordinary British citizens are now starting to learn about the terrible things that have been done in our name. We have been collaborators with the Americans in something so gross, murderous, barbaric and obscene that it defies belief. It is no excuse that US troops have been responsible for the most bestial of the atrocities. We are part of a joint command in Iraq, and thus share the joint shame. Tony Blair went to great lengths to share the credit with President Bush during their triumphalist, flag-draped victory summit 12 months ago. Now he must stomach the disgrace..."(Peter Oborne, The Spectator,May 15, 2004) ROBIN WRIGHT: FAILING CIVILIZATION AT THE END OF THE MODERN ERA "...I've covered the rage of the Islamic world," writes Robin Wright, "witnessing much of it up close, losing friends who became victims to its extremist wings and watching its furies swell. But I've never been scared until now. "The stakes in Iraq -- for which the Abu Ghraib prison has tragically become the metaphor -- are not just the future of a fragile oil-rich country or America's credibility in the world, even among close allies. The issues are not simply whether the Pentagon has systemic problems or whether Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the Pentagon brass or even the Bush administration can survive The Pictures. And the costs are not merely the billions from the U.S. Treasury to foot the Iraq bills today or the danger that Mideast oil becomes a political weapon during tumultuous days down the road. "The stakes are instead how the final phase of the Modern Era plays out..." (Robin Wright, The Washington Post, May 16, 2004)

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