Uncommon Thought Journal

At the January 31 congressional hearing on the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense, Senator John McCain ripped into him for his critique of the Iraq war:

"The question is, were you right or were you wrong?" McCain demanded, pressing Hagel on why he opposed Bush's decision to send 20,000 additional troops to Iraq in the so-called 'surge.'

"I'm not going to give you a yes-or-no answer. I think it's far more complicated than that," Hagel responded. He said he would await the "judgment of history."

Glaring at Hagel, McCain ended the exchange with a bitter rejoinder: "I think history has already made a judgment about the surge, sir, and you are on the wrong side of it." [2]

Before the revisionist history of the surge gets chiseled into marble, let me repeat part of what I wrote in this report at the time, December 2007:

The American progress is measured by a decrease in violence, the White House has decided--a daily holocaust has been cut back to a daily multiple catastrophe. And who's keeping the count? Why, the same good people who have been regularly feeding us a lie for the past five years about the number of Iraqi deaths, completely ignoring the epidemiological studies. A recent analysis by the Washington Post left the administration's claim pretty much in tatters. The article opened with: "The U.S. military's claim that violence has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts within and outside the government, who contend that some of the underlying statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends."

To the extent that there may have been a reduction in violence, we must also keep in mind that, thanks to this lovely little war, there are several million Iraqis either dead, wounded, in exile abroad, or in bursting American and Iraqi prisons. So the number of potential victims and killers has been greatly reduced. Moreover, extensive ethnic cleansing has taken place in Iraq (another good indication of progress, n'est-ce pas? nicht wahr?)--Sunnis and Shiites are now living more in their own special enclaves than before, none of those stinking mixed communities with their unholy mixed marriages, so violence of the sectarian type has also gone down. On top of all this, US soldiers have been venturing out a lot less (for fear of things like . . . well, dying), so the violence against our noble lads is also down.

One of the signs of the reduction in violence in Iraq, the administration would like us to believe, is that many Iraqi families are returning from Syria, where they had fled because of the violence. The New York Times, however, reported that "Under intense pressure to show results after months of political stalemate, the [Iraqi] government has continued to publicize figures that exaggerate the movement back to Iraq"; as well as exaggerating "Iraqis' confidence that the current lull in violence can be sustained." The count, it turns out, included all Iraqis crossing the border, for whatever reason. A United Nations survey found that 46 percent were leaving Syria because they could not afford to stay; 25 percent said they fell victim to a stricter Syrian visa policy; and only 14 percent said they were returning because they had heard about improved security.

How long can it be before vacation trips to "Exotic Iraq" are flashed across our TVs? "Baghdad's Beautiful Beaches Beckon." Just step over the bodies. Indeed, the State Department has recently advertised for a "business development/tourism" expert to work in Baghdad, "with a particular focus on tourism and related services." [3]

Another argument raised again recently to preserve George W.'s legacy is that "He kept us safe." Hmm . . . I could swear that he was in the White House around the time of September 11 . . . What his supporters mean is that Bush's War on Terrorism was a success because there wasn't another terrorist attack in the United States after September 11, 2001 while he was in office; as if terrorists killing Americans is acceptable if it's done abroad. Following the American/Bush strike on Afghanistan in October 2001, there were literally scores of terrorist attacks--including some major ones--against American institutions in the Middle East, South Asia and the Pacific: military, civilian, Christian, and other targets associated with the United States.

Even the claim that the War on Terrorism kept Americans safe at home is questionable. There was no terrorist attack in the United States during the 6 1/2 years prior to the one in September 2001; not since the April 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. It would thus appear that the absence of terrorist attacks in the United States is the norm.

Notes

1. Remarks by President Obama at Dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library
2. Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2013
3. Anti-Empire Report, #52, December 11, 2007

William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2; Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower; West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir; Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire. Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org. He is also a Contributing Editor for Cyrano's Journal Today.

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Now, that trio did write some great works, of course, but not one of them had much to say about American politics. And when they are taught in our public and private institutions, their politics--personal or literary--are studiously avoided. And there's the rub! Because, if we are ever to grasp our fleeting Zeitgeist, we need the whole round picture--politics, the Arts, slang, sexuality, food--the whole cascading shebang!

The American poet who best provides that, for his time and ours, is Robinson Jeffers, who died one year before JFK was killed, but at 75, had lived to see terrible presentiments:

"While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity,

Heavily thickening to empire,

And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops

And sighs out, and the mass hardens,

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make

fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.

Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances,

ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother."

Thus, the first 2 stanzas of what may be his best-known poem, 1925's "Shine, Perishing Republic." In five quatrains, Jeffers plays Laocoon to the fast-food, quick-to-the-draw Empire the Republic would become--"You making haste haste on decay"--sounding his alarm while fortifying his moral stance:

"...for my children, I would have them keep their dis-

tance from the thickening center; corruption

Never has been compulsory. ..."

And he warns:

"... be in nothing so moderate as in love of man,

A clever servant, insufferable master.

There is the trap that catches noblest spirits. ..."

Can there really be love without wisdom? Attraction, surely; even, affection. But love? Can there be love of country without knowledge of a country's history? These are the kinds of questions implicit in his work. In "Cassandra," he evokes the Trojan prophetess, bids caution again, even in our approach to "poets-laureate," "inaugural poets," etc.:

"Truly men hate the truth; they'd liefer

Meet a tiger on the road.

Therefore the poets honey their truth with lying."

Such words do not sit well with literary establishments--then or now. Before the Second World War, Jeffers was one of America's most celebrated poets, his handsomely rugged face adorning a 1932 cover of TIME. That was a safe bet for conservative ultra-millionaire publisher, Henry Luce. Jeffers' creds were even better than Eliot's: a theology professor's son, he had learned Greek, Latin and Hebrew as a boy and burnished his early education with three years in Germany and Switzerland--all before entering the University of Western Pennsylvania at fifteen. At 19, his affair with another USC student, the beautiful and very-much married Una Call Custer, had been sensationalized in a 1913 LOS ANGLELES TIMES article, "Two Points of the Eternal Triangle." Very publicly, they had tried to break off their relationship, Una traveling to Europe for a year while Robinson "drifted into idleness" without her, but somehow managing to collect his thoughts and sentiments in his first book. They were married within seven months of Una's return, and, soon after, settled in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where Jeffers and their two sons would later build, stone by stone, their famous "Tor House."

He had been through crises and overcome. His genius could not be denied; his erudition shone through his straight-forward lines. In the midst of the Great Depression, Jeffers' resilient, indefatigable spirit was worthy of Luce's and the nation's emulation and celebration.

But, his prophetic, truth-speaking side could not be purchased for fame or money. In "Woodrow Wilson," in 1924, he wrote:

"Visionless men, blind hearts, blind mouths, live still."

And:

"As to betrayals: there are so many

Betrayals, the Russians and the Germans know."

He was writing, of course, about the infamous Versailles Treaty, when Wilson had the rug pulled out from under him, his noble "14 Points" bartered for the scurrilous "peace" Britain and France exacted from no-more war-guilty Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottomans and Russia.

"Victory/ you know requires

Force to sustain victory, the burden is never lightened. ..."

1924. ... 2013. ... The "Great War" then. The "War on Terror" now. "The burden is never lightened."

The Depression deepened. Top-hatted Fred Astaire whirled sparkling Ginger Rogers and the masses escaped into a celluloid realm of riches; and behind it all, more clamoring for war. In 1938, in "Shine, Republic," he takes his earlier poem a warier step further: "The love of freedom has been the quality of Western man," he proclaims. And, "you, America, that passion made you. You were not born to prosperity, you were born to love freedom." And, "we cannot have all the luxuries and freedom also."

That same year, a year after Picasso's "Guernica" had vivified the torturous horrors of the Spanish Civil War, Jeffers wrote in "Contemplation of the Sword": "Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide." Increasingly, his father's faith wavered in him. He called his own philosophy/religion "inhumanism," focussing on his belief that "the man-brained and man-handed ground ape" was far too self-absorbed "to feel/ Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural/ Beauty." An earlier age might have called him a pagan. But his was no blind, Romanticist faith in the beauty of Nature. More like humble awe before infinite mysteries. With world war approaching again, he writes:

"Dear God, who are the whole splendor of things and the/ sacred stars, but also the cruelty and greed, the/ treacheries/ And vileness, insanities and filth and anguish: now that this thing comes near us again I am finding it hard

To praise you."

And, in the same poem,

"You are the one that tortures himself to discover himself: I am

One that watches you and discovers you, and praises you

in little parables, idyl or tragedy, beautiful

Intolerable God."

A professor of mine once lamented Jeffers' "bitterness." I disagreed then, and disagree now. Jeffers gaze was not so much bitter as it was unflinching, steady, resolute and sui generis. "The cold passion for truth," he wrote, "hunts in no pack."

A prophet is without honor in his native land, and as the years advanced he took refuge, walking the hills around Big Sur, watching the hawks he loved. A month before the Second World War began he wrote: "They are warming up the old horrors; and all that they say is echoes of echoes." And, also from "The Soul's Desert": "Clearly it is time/ To become disillusioned, each person to enter his own soul's desert/ And look for God--having seen man."

His was the despair of a great soul, and the hungering for beauty of a true poet: "The night herons flapping home wore dawn on their wings."

Others could be fooled; but not Jeffers. Late in 1943, Stalin, FDR and Churchill met in Teheran to plan the post-war peace:

"Personal greatness/ Was never more than a trick of the light. ... Who are these little smiling attendants/ On a world's agony, meeting in Teheran to plot against whom what future?"

In the same "Teheran" poem, he foresaw the Cold War behind the drapery:

"... there will be Russia/ And America; two powers alone in the world; two bulls in one pasture."

A few months later, in "So Many Blood-Lakes," he wrote:

"We have now won two world-wars, neither of which concerned us, we were slipped in."

And, ominously:

"We have won two wars and a third is coming." And, foreseeing our 21st Century:

"We have enjoyed fine dreams; we have dreamed of unifying the world; we are unifying it--against us."

Concluding: "... patriotism has run the world through so many blood-lakes: and we always fall in."

His face took on the look of the crags he wandered; his eyes became hawk-eyes. No American poet has ever perceived his country better: the longing for freedom and nobility; and all the traps and losses.

_____
Gary Corseri has posted/published his work at hundreds of websites and publications worldwide, including Cyrano's Journal Today, Uncommon Thought Journal, The New York Times and The Village Voice. His books include novels and poetry collections. His dramas have been produced on Atlanta-PBS and elsewhere, and he has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum. He has taught in American prisons and public schools and at American and Japanese universities. He can be contacted at [email protected]

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Speaking on NBC News yesterday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pressed for Washington to take military action against Syria.

He repeated unsubstantiated allegations that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, which have been refuted by UN investigator Carla del Ponte, claiming, "It is clear the regime has used chemical weapons and missiles." Claiming that a "red line" had been crossed, he said: "We want the United States to assume more responsibilities and take further steps. And what sort of steps they will take, we are going to talk about this."

Erdogan dismissed out of hand reports that chemical weapons used in Syria were in fact used by the US-backed opposition.

He stressed that his government would support US imposition of a "no-fly zone" in Syria, which would involve destroying Syrian air defenses and shooting down any Syrian aircraft that took to the skies.

Erdogan's calls for military action were echoed across the American press. The Washington Post 's editorial board called for "an air campaign as well as arms for the moderate opposition" aimed to "quickly tip the military balance against the Assad regime." Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens proposed a long list of attacks against Assad, including sending in US ground forces: "disable the runways of Syrian air bases, including the international airport in Damascus...use naval assets to impose a no-fly zone over western Syria...supply the Free Syrian Army with heavy military equipment, including armored personnel carriers and light tanks; and be prepared to seize and remove Syria's chemical weapons stockpile, even if it means putting boots (temporarily) on the ground."

The calls for war come amid reports of major setbacks in Syria for the US-backed opposition, reflecting its small size and lack of popular support, and growing military assistance from Russia, Iran, and Lebanon for the Assad regime.

After two months of heavy bombardment, government forces have retaken the strategic town of Khirbet Ghazaleh from the "rebels," re-opening government transport routes to Deraa, the city where initial opposition protests began two years ago. Opposition leaders acknowledged it as a major setback. "Tomorrow, the big tragedy will happen, the regime's supply route to Deraa will reopen, and the officers will go back and ammunition will be resupplied and the bombardment will resume," said Abu Yacoub, commander of the Martyrs of Khirbet Ghazaleh brigade.

Yesterday, BBC Middle East bureau chief Paul Danahar wrote that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) amounts to little more than "men with guns," united only by the fact that they "point their guns in the same direction." He said the FSA is not a "cohesive force" and lacks a "command structure."

A Jerusalem Post article of May 3rd entitled "Is Assad Winning in Syria?" describes the defeat of opposition militias around Qusayr by Hezbollah forces, as well as the capture of Otaiba by Assad's forces last week, indicating the growing strength of Assad vis-à-vis the US proxy forces. According to the article, "morale among supporters of the regime has improved markedly in recent weeks." It concluded, "Assad shows no signs of cracking."

Under these conditions, Assad's allies are stepping up military deliveries to Damascus. The Russian government has announced plans to sell S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems to Syria, in a $900 million deal that would substantially bolster the Syrian regime's capacity to defend itself against US and Israeli airstrikes.

Secretary of State John Kerry criticized the sale as "destabilizing," and the Israeli government appealed to Russia to halt the transaction. Syria's purchase comes in after Israeli air strikes that used long-range "stand-off" missiles to attack Damascus from beyond the Syrian border.

On Thursday, Iran vowed to respond to the Israeli raids with "blows under the belt in several locations." Iran's envoy to Syria, Ali Akbar Salehi, promised "full and unlimited support from Iran, politically, militarily, and economically, to the Syrian leadership and people, against the takfiris [Al Qaeda-type Sunni extremist forces], terrorists, Israel, the US, and all who dare attack this country."

Also on Thursday, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah announced that Syria would supply his militia "special weapons it never had before," calling the decision "game-changing." The weapons are apparently being transferred as a response to Israel's air strikes on Damascus. "This is the Syrian strategic reaction," he explained.

These deliveries highlight the broad regional implications of the proxy war Washington has waged against the Assad regime, relying primarily on Islamist forces tied to Al Qaeda, and the risk of a US war in Syria escalating into a regional or even global conflict.

There is broad opposition in the working class to the US drive to war in Syria overseen by President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. A recent poll pegged popular opposition to war at 62 percent of the US population.

The conflict has already taken a horrific toll on the Syrian people. Over the past several months, the number of Syrians displaced from their homes by the war has increased from 2 million to 4.25 million. A total of 6.8 million Syrians, including 3.1 million children, are classified as "in dire need of humanitarian assistance" by the UN's Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Jordanian officials have stated that Syrian refugees now make up 10 percent of Jordan's total population, with this figure set to explode to 40 percent by mid-2014 on current trends.

The ramping up of US military operations against Syria is accompanied by diplomatic efforts to bring about a post-Assad government on terms favorable to US imperialism. Secretary of State John Kerry has sought an agreement with Russia, which would pave the way for a power-sharing arrangement.

This plan also received significant endorsement in US strategic and media circles. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a prominent architect of US imperial policy, issued a strong criticism of proposed US military action against Syria, proposing instead to try to involve Russia and China in US plans to remove Assad through diplomacy.

He said, "The various schemes that have been proposed for a kind of tiddlywinks intervention from around the edges of the conflict--no-fly zones, bombing Damascus and so forth--would simply make the situation worse. None of the proposals would result in an outcome strategically beneficial for the US On the contrary, they would produce a more complex, undefined slide into the worst-case scenario. The only solution is to seek Russia's and China's support for U.N.-sponsored elections in which, with luck, Assad might be 'persuaded' not to participate."

Along these lines, David Ignatius of the Washington Post proposed "a military transition government" that would include "reconcilable elements of Assad's army," under the leadership of US-backed General Salim Idriss, a defector who now commands Syrian opposition forces.

Effectively, US officials are hoping that, in the context of negotiations jointly organized by the Russian government, they could persuade Syrian officers to organize a coup to oust Assad, and then make a deal with the US-backed opposition. Their plan involves a new ruling coalition composed of opposition and regime elements, described by Ignatius as a "military transition government that would include reconcilable elements of Assad's army." Assad would be removed, though lower-ranking members of his government might remain.

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On May 9, Russia commemorated Victory Day. Ceremonies included an elaborate Red Square military parade. Vladimir Putin spoke on the occasion. He's mindful of Washington's imperial plans. He stressed Russia's commitment to peace, saying:

 

"We remember what the tragedy of war means, and we will do everything, everything that we can to ensure that no one ever dares unleash another one, to ensure that no one threatens our children, our home, our land."

"We will do everything to strengthen global security."

Washington, key NATO partners, Israel, and other regional allies threaten it. They're heading incrementally for more war. Ousting Assad remains policy.

On May 9, Secretary of State Kerry reiterated where America stands.

During a meeting with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, he claimed all sides were working to "effect a transition government by mutual consent of both sides, which clearly means that in our judgment President Assad will not be a component of that transitional government."

In other words, Assad must go. Syrians have no say. International law doesn't matter. US-prioritized regime change overrules it. Washington rules alone count. Same old, same old remains policy.

Recent events suggest what's coming. Israel's very much involved. Last weekend's premeditated bombings were a joint US/Israeli operation. Very likely they advanced the ball toward full-scale intervention.

Falsely accusing Syria of using chemical weapons did so further. Western-backed death squad massacres blamed on Assad pile on more.

Bayda is the latest. On May 3, London's Guardian headlined an AP story. It said "Syrian National Coalition (SNC) claims 50 killed in new massacre."

Assad loyalists "were killed with guns, knives and blunt objects." A SNC statement said:

"It is time for the world to intervene and put an end to the grievous crimes of the Assad regime."

Obama said he's considering all options. One got little attention at home. Joe Novotny is House of Representatives reading clerk.

Appearing on C-SPAN, he read Obama's "Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to the Actions of the Government of Syria."

"The President took these actions to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the actions of the Government of Syria in supporting terrorism, maintaining its then-existing occupation of Lebanon, pursuing weapons of mass destruction and missile programs, and undermining US and international efforts with respect to the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq."

He accused Syria of sending "foreign fighters" to Iraq. He claimed Assad did so to destabilize the country. He said:

"While the Syrian regime has reduced the number of foreign fighters bound for Iraq, the regime's own brutality and repression of its citizens who have been calling for freedom and a representative government endangers not only the Syrian people themselves, but could yield greater instability throughout the region."

"The Syrian regime's actions and policies, including obstructing the Lebanese government's ability to function effectively, pursuing chemical and biological weapons, and supporting terrorist organizations, continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States."

"As a result," he extended "the national emergency declared on May 11, 2004." It's been renewed annually since then.

No threat existed earlier. None does now. Obama's manipulating public sentiment. He's selling war. He's claiming a nonexistent national threat. He's extending national emergency powers to address it.

Merriam-Webster defines one as "an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action."

Obama said "the United States condemns the Assad regime's use of brutal violence and human rights abuses and calls on the Assad regime to step aside and immediately begin a transition in Syria to a political process that will forge a credible path to a future of greater freedom, democracy, opportunity, and justice."

"The United States will consider changes in the composition, policies, and actions of the Government of Syria in determining whether to continue or terminate this national emergency in the future."

Testimony during 1973 congressional hearings, said:

A national emergency "denotes the existence of conditions of varying nature, intensity and duration, which are perceived to threaten life or well-being beyond tolerable limits."

Who decides? Most often, checks and balances don't matter. Presidents do what they want. Bush claimed "unitary executive" powers. Congress didn't constrain him.

In times of war or heading toward it, Capitol Hill goes along. Presidents have virtual dictatorial powers. Anything's fair game.

In a post-9/11 environment, national emergency powers can include martial law and suspension of constitutional protections.

Boston experienced them on lockdown. It can happen anywhere or nationwide. Events now head incrementally toward more conflict. War on Syria looms. It has risks. Iran and Hezbollah back Syria. They're committed to defend their ally.

Russia and China want peace. Attacking Syria prevents it. It remains to be seen what steps they'll take. Will either nation or both draw red lines? Will they challenge efforts to cross them?

Will another US war be one too many? Will it spill out of control?

Given Washington's permanent war agenda, its determination to oust Assad, a commitment by Syria's allies to prevent it, and the destructive power of today's weapons, it's terrifying to imagine what's possible.

_________________

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity." http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

 

http://www.dailycensored.com/obamas-syria-game-plan-libya-2-0/

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"If she is dead," he said, "I just want to bury her with my own hands, so at least in my mind I know that I have finally found my daughter."

Then the despairing man succumbed to his uncontrollable tears.

His daughter Hamida had been working right along his other young daughter who had miraculously escaped the collapse of several factories in the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka on April 24.

Hundreds of dead bodies were retrieved, most of whom were women and young girls who made a living working under the harshest of conditions in the country's many sweatshops.

Hundreds more were still trapped and presumed dead. Many of those who were freed had to sacrifice a limb as it was the only way to freedom.

Images of the devastation dominated the news for days after the eight-storey building collapsed on top of nearly 3,000 cheap laborers who were already trapped in another sense - in the endless poverty and exploitation of factory owners.

Over 3.5 million people work in the country's estimated 4,000 factories, generating about 80 per cent of Bangladesh's total exports.

Some estimates put the monthly salary of a garment worker in Bangladesh at $70 (£45) to $100 (£64).

Other estimates are lower, considering that the country's monthly minimum wage hovers above $38 (£24).

Quoted by the BBC last August, Rosa Dada of Four Seasons Fashion Limited found the business logic simple and convincing.

"In Bangladesh the average monthly salary for garments workers is only around $70 to $100. If I produce here, [the] price is much more competitive."

Competitiveness is key, even if it is at the expense of impoverished people who have no other option but to accept miserable pay and highly dangerous work conditions.

Of course a Four Seasons executive would not accept work for a $70 a month.

Dada must be aware that most of the garment industry laborers in Bangladesh are women.

When one calculates the long-term loss brought on by the death of a mother working under inhumane conditions, no numbers, no statistics, no charts and certainly not Dada's quest to stay above the competition, could possibly do this tragedy any justice.

The story of Bangladesh's pain is dotted with tragedy, government corruption and unmitigated greed.

It also involves many companies and garment distributors in Western countries, China, the Middle East and elsewhere.

Moreover, it would not be an exaggeration to say that in some way, our constant hankering for cheap prices, untamable desire for "good deals" and lust after brand names is happening at the expense of the sweat, blood, tears and in some cases, the crushed bones of cheap laborers like 13-year-old Hamida.

Walmart, Gap, JCP, Abercrombie, Kohl's and many more are very much part and parcel of this story. Some of these companies still refuse to take any real action to avoid future tragedies.

The collapse of the Rana Plaza building was not the first of such disasters and is unlikely to be last, especially since government action has been so lacking, to say the least.

As for most Western companies, they merely resort to public relations tactics to circumvent their direct and indirect responsibility, as opposed to rethinking their negligent approach altogether.

True, there has been much media coverage of the tragedy, which even by the country's poor work conditions standard is unprecedented.

But there has been ample evidence for many years that Bangladeshi laborers are being abused, humiliated and sacrificed in the name of profit.

Abusive business owners often lock and bolt exit doors to ensure that workers can't go out.

They build without permits and authorities turn a blind eye to their many illegal practices.

According to Human Rights Watch, the government has a workforce of 18 inspectors who are supposed to oversee and prevent illegal practices in thousands of factories in the Shaka district, which is the heart of the garment industry.

Workers' rights activists contend that officials are paid handsomely for their silence.

Human Rights Watch said that "factory owners - a powerful force in Bangladesh, with ties to government officials - are usually given advanced notice before an inspection."

Just five months ago, 112 workers died in a Tazreen Fashions garment factory near Dhaka.

Some workers jumped to their death from high windows to escape the fire because the doors were bolted.

The complicity of international companies was also found in the traces of the burnt building.

The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) said recently that "Walmart-labeled product was found in Tazreen and now one of the factories in the Rana complex, Ether-Tex, had listed Walmart-Canada as a buyer on their website."

Predictably, "Walmart has yet to contribute to the worker compensation fund for Tazreen victims."

But there is more that Walmart and others haven't done. It is yet to sign the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement which, according to ILRF, is a legally "binding agreement that has (only) been endorsed by two global brands, (and if implemented) would create rigorous inspections, transparency and oversight and ensure that workers and their organizations are an integral part of the solution."

To avoid the "hassle" of accountability, some companies have decided to carry out their own inspections and of course made sure that the international media knows of their supposedly grand effort.

The two companies that signed the agreement are German retailer Tchibo and PVH Corp, which owns the brands Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.

But two more need to sign for the agreement to take effect. Walmart, along with other large companies, is yet to sign.

Considering the rampant corruption and Bangladeshi's dire need for foreign funds which are partly secured through the $20 billion (£13bn) per year industry, expectations are low that the government will do much to right this ongoing injustice.

Attempts at unionizing garment factory workers have not been successful. Respected workers' rights activist Aminul Islam was reportedly harassed by the police, had his phone tapped and "domestic intelligence agents once abducted and beat him," reported the New York Times last September.

When he disappeared for few days on April 4 last year there was a general understanding of who might have been the culprit.

Days later his body was discovered. He had been tortured to death. His small office once stood amid towering buildings - some surely constructed without permit.

With his murder, Dhaka's workers have lost a great friend, an ally. Now they have lost hundreds of their equally poor colleagues whose entire monthly salary is barely enough to purchase one Tommy Hilfiger item.

Writing in Spiegel International online, German journalist Hasnain Kazim and others wrote that "the disaster ... created sights and sounds that many will find hard to forget. Rezaul, for example, vividly remembers a woman with disheveled hair and a blood-encrusted face whose right leg was pinned down by a concrete pillar. 'She begged me to saw off her leg and free her,' he says. 'I just happened to be there'."

The main photo of the article was that of a head barely rising above a heap of concrete, while the entire body, apart from an arm was submerged.

It was of a handsome young man's face, with eyes so peacefully closed, and his barely free left arm, resting gently over the debris.

The most painful part of this tragedy is that it was completely preventable, but perhaps neither the government, nor Walmart and many others find the issue urgent enough for decisive action to spare poor people a horrible death.
______________
Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is: My Father Was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press).

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In the context of US efforts to manage not eliminate, the multibillion dollar global trade in illegal narcotics, Cartes electoral victory might very well be a shot in the arm for certain three-lettered US intelligence agencies, eager beavers always on the lookout for new allies--and an endless supply of black funds--to carry out hemisphere-wide dirty ops against leftist governments. The current US destabilization campaign targeting Venezuela's newly elected president, Nicolás Maduro and the Bolivarian revolution, is instructive in this regard.

A key factor driving US regional operations is control over the narcotics market. As researchers Oliver Villar and Drew Cottle revealed in Cocaine, Death Squads and the war on Terror: "Paraguay was the first country in Latin America to be publicly exposed for its involvement in the drug trade. Paraguay in the early 1970s was a vital center for the Corsican mafia, leading to the development of a vast heroin-trafficking network supplied from Turkey, and based in Marseille, the infamous 'French Connection.' Corsicans coordinated the transport of heroin from Marseille to the United States via Paraguay. The CIA," Villar and Cottle averred, "used such networks as transit stops in transporting Asian heroin to the United States with the help of corrupt high-ranking government and military officials."

"Later," journalist Vicky Pelaez disclosed in The Moscow News, "cocaine trafficking was added. It was transported through Chaco's wild and rough terrain. Chaco is a vast, semi-arid and semi-humid region in western Paraguay, where there are at least 900 covert airplane runways and where between 60 and 70 tons of cocaine circulate annually, according to former Interior Minister Carlos Filizzola."

"Curiously," Pelaez averred, "there are two US bases in that region. One is located in the city of Pedro Juan Caballero, in the Amambay province, and is operated by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The other, run by the Pentagon, is part of the Mariscal Estigarribia airport, in the Boquerón province, and boasts a 3,800-meter long runway."

When Fernando Lugo was removed from office last year after an expedited impeachment "trial" by Paraguay's Senate, it was widely denounced across Latin American as a parliamentary coup d'état which had more than a passing resemblance to the 2009 ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.

And like the Honduran coup against Zelaya, the World Socialist Web Site pointed out that "both countries have been the focus of attention of the US military and intelligence apparatus, which shares intimate connections with its local counterparts. Security forces in both countries have been trained and advised by the Pentagon and would not support the overthrow of an existing government without its approval."

Elected in 2008, Lugo, a former Catholic bishop and proponent of Liberation Theology, promised to combat Paraguay's endemic corruption and implement policies favoring a "preferential option for the poor." Lugo however, was no Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales or Rafael Correa, populist leaders who defied the Global Godfather by charting an independent course.

Despite a mildly reformist agenda which increased access to healthcare and education for Paraguay's working class majority, when it came to the key issue of land reform Lugo's administration hit a brick wall.

Shortly after assuming office, Lugo became the target of that nation's entrenched landed oligarchy, multinational agricultural corporations (including such paragons of virtue as Monsanto, Pioneer, Syngenta, Dupont, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, and Bunge) and the transnational drug cartels which continue to rule Paraguay with an iron fist much as they did under the 35-year dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner.

Paraguay, a landlocked nation in which 2 percent of the population control more than 80 percent of the landed wealth, most of which had been expropriated by the kleptocratic Stroessner regime and handed out to favored cronies of his Colorado party, agrarian reform should have topped Lugo's agenda.

As The Moscow News pointed out, "Monsanto was naturally involved in the conspiracy. The world's largest producer of genetically modified crops disapproved of Lugo's idea to abolish the per-ton royalty of $4 on soybeans, to be paid by growers using Roundup Ready RR1 and Intenta RR2 Pro seeds. Recall that on his fifth day in office, the new president, Federico Franco, offered new concessions to Monsanto concerning the distribution of its GM cotton, soybean and corn seeds in Paraguay."

According to Pelaez, "Over the past ten months, unofficial employment has soared to 66% (this proportion is higher only in Peru (67%) and in Haiti (92%)). The bulk of the shadow labor market is formed by farmers pushed off the fields by such groups as Monsanto and Cargill, which use biotechnology to industrialize agricultural production and convert farmland into a contaminated 'green desert,' slowly but surely implanting a system of 'farming without farmers'."

Blocked at every step, and relying on the right's largesse to remain in office, Lugo's betrayal of the campesino base that put him in office and his retreat and capitulation to Paraguay's elite doomed his administration.

In fact, as journalist and researcher Benjamin Dangl reported in UpSideDownWorld last year, "Lugo was no friend of the campesino sector that helped bring him into power. His administration regularly called for the severe repression and criminalization of the country's campesino movements. He was therefore isolated from above at the political level, and lacked a strong political base below due to his stance toward social movements and the slow pace of land reform."

Using a police provocation and subsequent massacre of 11 landless farmers who had occupied land belonging to ex-Colorado Senator Blas Riquelme, illegally seized by the Stroessner regime as a pretext, the Chamber of Deputies launched proceedings to remove Lugo from office. Scarcely 24 hours later, the Senate voted to impeach the president. Who was leading the charge for Lugo's removal? Why none other than the Colorado Party's declared candidate for the presidency, then-Senator Horacio Cartes.

But the final straw may have been the decision by Lugo's administration three years earlier, to cut off access to the country by the US military. By 2007, the Pentagon had deployed some 400 Marines under the guise of "medical readiness training" exercises that were denounced by grassroots activists as a ploy to identify "dangerous" rural leaders of the landless movement. At the same time, the Pentagon was planning to expand US operations at the giant Mariscal Estigarribia air base, 120 miles from the Argentine and Bolivian borders.

Journalist Conn Hallinan reported back in 2005, "US Special Forces began arriving this past summer at Paraguay's Mariscal Estigarribia air base, a sprawling complex built in 1982 during the reign of dictator Alfredo Stroessner. Argentinean journalists who got a peek at the place say the airfield can handle B-52 bombers and Galaxy C-5 cargo planes. It also has a huge radar system, vast hangers, and can house up to 16,000 troops. The air base is larger than the international airport at the capital city, Asunción."

During a 2009 press conference, Lugo rejected further US troop deployments under the Bush-era "New Horizons" program. In a decision that greatly angered Washington, Lugo remarked, "we don't see it as convenient that the Southern Command has a presence in Paraguay."

Coming on the heels of Ecuador's 2009 closure of the giant US airbase at Manta, of which Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa famously said: "We can negotiate with the US about a base in Manta, if they let us put a military base in Miami," the Pentagon and CIA looked to Paraguay for a platform for what Southern Command described as "counternarcotics surveillance," but which regional neighbors denounced as a threat to hemispheric security.

Ominously, the US ambassador in Asunción, Liliana Ayalde declared: "It's a regrettable decision."

Indeed it was, for Lugo and the Paraguayan people.

The (Narco) Ties that Bind

In their relentless drive to accumulate riches at the expense of their citizens, comprador elites, particularly those who mix land grabs, far-right politics with currying favor from their imperialist overlords, utilize state institutions as cash cows.

And when those elites are also plugged into the international narcotics trade and control the state's machinery of repression, well, it's a win-win all around!

Who would imagine that a central banker would have ties to criminals and narcotraffickers? Why, the US Embassy that's who!

A 2007 Cable Gate file published by WikiLeaks noted that former Central Bank president Dr. Angel Gabriel González Cáceres, "a strong Colorado with close ties to [former] President Duarte, who appointed him Central Bank president in September 2003," was named "Paraguay's new director of SEPRELAD, the Secretariat for the Prevention of Money Laundering," and that reviews of his previous performance were "quite mixed."

Variously described by the Embassy as "a technician with a long trajectory at the Central Bank who has cooperated with the Embassy on money laundering and terrorist financing," as Banking Superintendent however, González "opposed creation of SEPRELAD because he wanted the Central Bank to retain responsibility for fighting money laundering."

But perhaps there were other factors, and interests, at work?

According to Asunción Deputy Chief of Mission Michael J. Fitzpatrick, Paraguay's counternarcotics director Hugo Ibarra would have "nothing to do with" González. The counternarcotics chief then "volunteered that González had a direct personal role as Central Bank president in white-washing ('blanquear') funds for so-called pillar of the community Horacio Cartes and his Banco Amambay, noting that 80 percent of money laundering in Paraguay moves through that banking institution."

"Ibarra indicated," Embassy officials averred, "that González is still involved with Amambay, and questioned why a former Central Bank president would take a lower level position as SEPRELAD director--managing an office with less than a dozen employees--in the absence of some other financial incentive."

Certainly a relevant question; however, no answers were forthcoming.

In 2008, another WikiLeaks file disclosed that shortly after assuming office, Lugo informed the US Embassy of his interest "in closer counternarcotics cooperation with the United States and requested U.S. assistance with microenterprise development during a Friday, August 29 dinner with the Ambassador."

Significantly, "Lugo made clear that he does not trust some of his closest advisors or cabinet ministers. During dinner, which took place before the weekend rumors emerged regarding coup planning, Lugo told Ambassador about a tape recording of former President Duarte and General Lino Oviedo betting that Lugo will last only three to eight months in office."

A 2009 secret WikiLeaks file, "Paraguayan Pols Plot Paraguayan Putsch," noted that "discredited General and UNACE party leader Lino Oviedo and ex-president Nicanor Duarte Frutos are now working together to assume power via (mostly) legal means should President Lugo stumble in coming months."

Oviedo, "serving time for involvement in the 1999 assassination of Vice President Luis Argana and the subsequent Marzo Paraguayo massacre of unarmed student protesters," the Embassy noted it was Duarte "who used his control of the Supreme Court to free Oviedo from jail" in 2007.

A 2003 CIA report published by the Library of Congress informed us that "Brazilian and U.S. officials generally consider former General Lino César Oviedo to be head of the so-called Paraguay Cartel. He reportedly has amassed at least US$1 billion, including numerous properties in the TBA [Tri Border Area]."

The Argentine investigative news magazine Página/12 published a 2001 Argentine Chamber of Deputies report on money laundering which noted that according to Brazilian officials, the US Embassy and the DEA, Oviedo was involved with "drug trafficking (cocaine and marijuana), weapons, money laundering and the smuggling of various items."

In 1994 for example, a "load of seven tons of cocaine, worth $70 million, which was seized with the participation of the CIA, and destined for the USA," was linked to Oviedo and his employees. Later that year, according to DEA documents, another load of five tons of cocaine was seized from "Oviedo accomplices" attempting to smuggle it across the Paraguayan border.

The Chamber of Deputies report concluded: "Oviedo is accused of being the head of a drug trafficking, arms trafficking [cartel] and being involved in the murder of media entrepreneur Carlos Honorio Cubillas and Paraguayan Vice President Argana. The various charges against him made by the DEA were, by former U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay and the Brazilian CPI."

As noted above, in 2007, Oviedo's conviction for orchestrating an attempted military coup in 1996 was annulled by Paraguay's Supreme Court. Again a candidate for the presidency in 2013, nominated by the ironically named National Union of Ethical Citizens (Unión Nacional de Ciudadanos Éticos, UNACE), Oviedo died in a "helicopter accident" after a campaign appearance in February, clearing the path to power for Horacio Cartes.

The Cartel: Back in Power

Last Sunday in an unusually critical article, The New York Times reported that during the campaign, Cartes "was pressed to explain why antinarcotics police officers apprehended a plane carrying cocaine and marijuana on his ranch in 2000; why he went to prison in 1989 on currency fraud charges; and why he had never even voted in past general elections."

Good questions, all of which were dismissed by Cartes' top aides as "conspiracy theories" and "slander."

The most serious charges involve Cartes connection to drug trafficking, money laundering and the smuggling of contraband cigarettes.

Another WikiLeaks file, this one from 2010, informed us that a joint that a joint ATF-DEA-ICE-OFAC US anti-money laundering investigation dubbed "Heart of Stone," revealed that Cartes is the head of a transnational criminal organization and the main target of the operation.

"OPERATION HEART OF STONE is a coordinated, transnational investigation focused on the disruption and dismantlement of a significant drug trafficking and money laundering enterprise operating within the Tri Border Area (TBA) of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, and elsewhere throughout the world. This investigation has established links between and among drug trafficking, money laundering and other criminal organizations and, as such, was approved as a designated Consolidated Priority Organizational Target (CPOT) investigation during April 2009."

The WikiLeaks file averred: "The investigative team has implemented strategies and operations aimed at attacking the financial infrastructure of drug trafficking supply network (DTO's) and other criminal enterprises operating within the TBA. Using a strategic approach to target the international command and control centers of these criminal organizations based in the TBA, agents have successfully focused investigative activity in an effort to develop this investigation with an aim toward a DEA UC introduction to CPOT designee Horacio CARTES. Through the utilization of a DEA BACO cooperating source and other DEA undercover personnel, agents have infiltrated CARTES' money laundering enterprise, an organization believed to launder large quantities of United States currency generated through illegal means, including through the sale of narcotics, from the TBA to the United States."

Despite the seriousness of the allegations, and others enumerated below, The Independent reported that Cartes "has publicly denied the allegations and says he has received assurances from the embassy that the US Drugs Enforcement Agency and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are conducting no investigations against him, something the cables allege."

If true, this raises a disturbing question: did the DEA drop the ball or were they ordered to back away from the investigation by Obama's State Department?

"'When it comes to drug trafficking, Horacio has made it clear what his position is,' says Julio Velazquez, a Colorado senator standing for re-election tomorrow."

Ludicrously, Velazquez told The Independent: "'There's no concrete allegation against him. Horacio has investments in the US. Do you think the Americans would allow a narco to bring money into their country?'"

Memo to Senator Velazquez: Not only would the Yankees "allow a narco to bring money into their country," they'd look the other way as US banksters laundered the funds and extracted hefty fees in the process!

Another front in the Cartes empire involved Banco Amambay and illegal tax evasion. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) reported earlier this month that "five directors of Banco Amambay created a secret bank in the Cook Islands with no building and no staff."

Journalists Marina Walker Guevara and Mabel Rehnfeldt disclosed that "top officials of a Paraguayan bank owned by Horacio Manuel Cartes, the country's leading candidate in this month's presidential election, operated a secret financial institution in a tax haven in the South Pacific."

According to the ICIJ's investigation, "Cartes' father, Ramón Telmo Cartes Lind, and four other executives of Paraguay's Banco Amambay S.A. created Amambay Trust Bank Ltd. in 1995 in the Cook Islands, a tiny chain of atolls and volcanic outcroppings more than 6,000 miles away from the South American nation."

"The Cook Islands bank, which was operational until 2000," the same year the Cook Islands landed on of the OECD's money laundering blacklist, "a dishonor roll for places the OECD considers havens for dirty money," was de-registered a month prior to OECD sanctions.

Guevara and Rehnfeldt reported that the Cook Islands were condemned for "'excessive secrecy provisions'" that "allowed owners of offshore companies and accounts to hide in the shadows. It noted the islands' government had 'no relevant information on approximately 1,200 international companies that it had registered' and that the offshore banks located in the Cooks weren't required to document the identity of their customers."

"It was not the only time that Banco Amambay and its officials made headlines for alleged money laundering, but the accusations have never resulted in convictions."

"Just last month," the ICIJ averred, "the head of Paraguay's anti-money laundering agency said that the bank was being investigated alongside other financial institutions for illegal money transfers abroad. The following day the official recanted his words and said he had misspoken. Amambay denied any involvement in criminal activities."

With the election of another "teflon president" accused of operating a drug trafficking and money laundering enterprise, and with powerful connections to prominent right-wing politicians suspected of decades' long ties to global narcotics rackets, the Pentagon and US secret state agencies must be salivating over the prospect of the cartel's return to power.

After all, as State Department spokesperson Patrick Ventrell said during an April 22 press briefing when queried about Cartes dodgy record: "The United States values its relationship with Paraguay and looks forward to working with the President-elect, with President-elect Cartes, on many of our shared interests, such as defending and promoting democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, and expanding trade and economic opportunities."

When pressed about Cartes long history of criminal allegations, Ventrell didn't bat an eyelash and averred: "I'm not aware of specific allegations one way or another, but we do congratulate him on his electoral victory. And I think I just was clear about working with him going forward."

And so it goes...

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, he is a Contributing Editor with Cyrano's Journal Today. His articles can be read on Dissident Voice, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press and has contributed to the new book from Global Research, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.

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This article answers the question I asked earlier. It documents the fact the Obama administration never rescinded a Bush-era memo on the use of controversial interrogation tactics for use by the U.S. military. The memo concerned "restricted" techniques to be included in the 2006 revision of the Army Field Manual.  As a result, today torture and abuse remain a part of U.S. military interrogation doctrine.

The April 13, 2006 memo was written by Stephen Bradbury, who was also author of two 2005 memos on the CIA torture-interrogation program that were subsequently withdrawn.

According to LTC Todd Breasseale in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), Obama's January 2009 Executive Order EO 13491, "Ensuring Lawful Interrogation," widely understood and cited as voiding the Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel torture memos, "did not cancel Mr. Bradbury's legal review" of a rewritten Army Field Manual and its controversial Appendix M.

The latter, with its provisions for use of isolation, sleep deprivation, and forms of sensory deprivation, has been denounced as torture or abuse by a number of human rights and legal groups (see here andhere, for example).

LTC Breasseale explained in an email response to my query last year:

Executive Order (EO) 13491 did not withdraw "'All executive directives, orders, and regulations... from September 11, 2001, to January 20, 2009, concerning detention or the interrogation of detained individuals.'" It revoked all executive directives, orders, and regulations that were inconsistent with EO 13491, as determined by the Attorney General.... [bold emphasis added]

One last point - you seem suggest below that EO 13491 somehow cancelled Steven Bradbury's legal review of the FM. EO 13491 did not cancel Mr. Bradbury's legal review of the FM."

When I then asked the Department of Justice to confirm what Breasseale had said for a story on the Bradbury memo, spokesman Dean Boyd wrote to tell me, "We have no comment for your story." The fact Boyd did not object to Breasseale's statement seems to validate the DoD spokesman's statement.

Breasseale also described DoD's view that both the current AFM and Appendix M were "not inconsistent with EO 13491," which "expressly prohibits subjecting any individual in the custody of the U.S. Government to any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation, that is not authorized by and listed in the FM. In addition, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 expressly prohibits subjecting any individual in the custody of the U.S. Department of Defense to any treatment or technique of interrogation that is not authorized by and listed in the FM. In short, both the President and the Congress have determined that the interrogation techniques listed in the FM are lawful," Breasseale said.

But just how "lawful" were these interrogation techniques in the new AFM and Appendix M? A look at the history of their development belies DoD's assurances.

Double-talk on Interrogation Executive Order

It is somewhat understandable that most people believe President Obama cancelled all the Bush-era torture memos by executive order soon after taking office. The following is from the January 22, 2009 background briefing on the subject by the White House (emphases added):

Executive Order revokes Executive Order 13440 that interpreted Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. It requires that all interrogations of detainees in armed conflict, by any government agency, follow the Army Field Manual interrogation guidelines. The Order also prohibits reliance on any Department of Justice or other legal advice concerning interrogation that was issued between September 11, 2001 and January 20, 2009. [bold added for emphasis]

But the blanket prohibition on reliance on "any" DoJ advice regarding interrogation is not what Obama's Executive Order stated. EO 13491 states (emphases added):

Section 1.  Revocation.  Executive Order 13440 of July 20, 2007, is revoked.  All executive directives, orders, and regulations inconsistent with this order, including but not limited to those issued to or by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from September 11, 2001, to January 20, 2009, concerning detention or the interrogation of detained individuals, are revoked to the extent of their inconsistency with this order.  Heads of departments and agencies shall take all necessary steps to ensure that all directives, orders, and regulations of their respective departments or agencies are consistent with this order.  Upon request, the Attorney General shall provide guidance about which directives, orders, and regulations are inconsistent with this order.

So this is not a blanket but a conditional prohibition, with a determination on what will be revoked dependent upon advice from the Attorney General. Eric Holder is President Obama's attorney general.

While the famous torture memos written by John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Stephen Bradbury and others were revoked, one of Bradbury's memorandums was not revoked. This was the memo that authorized the rewritten Army Field Manual on interrogation and its Appendix M.

History of the Bradbury Memo on Appendix M

In April 2006, Stephen Bradbury, who wrote the 2005 torture memos that replaced earlier Office of Legal Counsel approvals for "enhanced interrogation" by John Yoo and Jay Bybee, signed off in a "Memorandum for the Record" on interrogation techniques in then soon-to-be-published new edition of the Army Field Manual guidelines on human intelligence gathering. The conclusions from Bradbury's analysis were sent by letter to Department of Defense (DoD) General Counsel William Haynes on the same date as the memo was filed.

The previous OLC approvals of DoD interrogation methods had a more confusing background than did even those for the CIA. In March 2003, the Department of Justice (DoJ) had released a memo approving various torture techniques for DoD. The memo was written by John Yoo. But by December 2003, OLC chief Jack Goldsmith had said the 2003 Yoo memo should be rescinded as too flawed. Yet it appears it was not finally withdrawn until June 2004. The entire narrative remains murky, as explained to the best of our current knowledge by Marcy Wheeler in an article a few years back.

It appears that OLC thought it had covered itself on approval of DoD techniques by referencing a briefing by Associate Deputy Attorney General Patrick Philbin given to the House Select Committee on Intelligence on July 14, 2004. Certainly by the time Bradbury was writing his memo signing off on Appendix M and the new AFM, he referenced the Philbin testimony as evidence that the DoD techniques did not amount to torture.

While Bradbury did not indicate when the AFM underwent revision, a major revision was already being circulated for comment by the JAG corps as early as summer 2004. It's drafting, speculatively, was a reaction to the slow-motion withdrawal of the March 2003 Yoo memo.

For its part, the Philbin testimony noted that 17 of the 24 DoD techniques previously approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had been in use for some years, and that only seven of the 24 techniques were "new" and in question. They were: 1) placing detainee in an "les than comfortable environment"; 2) "altering his diet"; 3) changes in environment to cause "moderate discomfort", such as temperature changes; 4) adjusting the sleep cycle, "for example by requiring him to sleep days instead of nights, but without depriving him of sleep"; 5) convincing the detainee he is held by a country other than the U.S. ("False Flag"); 6) physical isolation, no longer than 30 days; and 7) "Mutt and Jeff", or the good cop/bad cop routine.

In his testimony, Philbin essentially reiterated that under current U.S. law and judicial precedents, none of these techniques amounted to torture. In his AFM/Appendix M memo, Bradbury turned to the question of whether the techniques proposed in Appendix M violated laws against cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, laws rooted in the UN Convention Against Torture treaty signed by the United States, and reiterated at that time in the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act.

According to Bradbury, the Philbin testimony had taken the torture issue off the table. But there weredifferences between what would be in Appendix M and the techniques listed by Philbin, though Bradbury falsely minimized them.

"Although the restricted techniques described in Appendix M differ in certain minor respects from those submitted in the Philbin testimony," Bradbury wrote, "we do not think those differences are sufficient to alter the conclusions previously reached that the techniques comport with the general criminal statutes, the prohibition on torture, and the War Crimes Act."

Many of the descriptions of the restricted techniques are censored in the released Bradbury AFM/Appendix M memo. But Bradbury did understand and made a point of stating that some of the techniques wouldn't pass muster "if they were permitted in interrogation of all DoD detainees, regardless of their combatant status and without regard to the level of intelligence they might possess" [italics in original]. Bradbury also would not verify the Appendix M techniques would be lawful "if used in the criminal justice process as a means of obtaining information about ordinary crimes."

While Appendix M has "Mutt and Jeff" and "False Flag" techniques, it also includes, according to Bradbury, three "Adjustment" techniques "designed to change the detainee's environment," though not supposedly in a torturous fashion.

"Separation"

Bradbury also discusses the "Separation" technique, admitting it amounts to isolation "not to exceed 30 days without express authorization from a senior military officer." Philbin had not discussed extensions to isolation beyond 30 days, but Bradbury doesn't mention that. He cites the senior officer authorization, and the fact that detainees would "continually be monitored by medical personnel" as safeguards against harm to the detainee. It is clear, too, that such isolation is not merely for safety purposes, as Bradbury notes "the important role isolation can play in conditioning detainees for interrogation."

Bradbury never mentions that unlike the Philbin memo authorizations, the AFM was approving use of limited sleep deprivation (no more than 4 hours of sleep allowed per day for up to 30 days, with extensions allowed by senior officers) and sensory deprivation (use of black-out goggles in so-called "field expedient separation").

In his memo, Bradbury explained that DoJ/OLC had "not been asked to assess the consistency of those [Appendix M] techniques with the requirements of the Uniform Code of Military Justice" [UCMJ]. Hence, Bradbury said he assumed that DoD had "determined that the authorized use of the techniques, consistent with the applicable safeguards, accords with" the requirements of the UCMJ.

When asked if DoD made such a legal determination, LTC Breasseale said the new AFM "was scrutinized via a very thorough legal review at the highest level in the Pentagon prior to publication, so it is absolutely inconceivable for such a review not to have considered all legal aspects of the manual, including its adherence to the UCMJ." He was not more specific about who specifically reviewed it, nor was there a reference to any particular document citing this adherence. Breasseale did note the manual has had no changes made to it since its publication in September 2006.

One Sentence Reviews Bulk of Army Field Manual

One of the most egregious aspects of Bradbury's memo occur right at its very beginning. There, he states that the differences between the new AFM and its previous 1992 version (FM 34-52) amount to only "modest revisions" that are "fully consistent with... historical practice and thus do not require us to undertake a more detailed analysis of these issues."

Thus in one sentence does Bradbury dismiss a number of significant changes to protections and policies of the old field manual. The sweep of his dismissal is breathtaking.

In fact, changes to the new AFM included significant revisions to how a controversial technique called "Fear Up" was used. In the new manual, interrogators were now allowed to produce "new phobias" for exploitation in the prisoner, something forbidden previously. Using phobias to produce stress and fear in detainees was a "Category II" interrogation technique in a list of techniques proposed to DoD based on SERE counter-resistance interrogation school methods.

The main text of the new AFM also included the excision of prohibitions against sleep deprivation and stress positions. The former was necessary to allow the use of sleep deprivation in Appendix M.

Former military interrogator Matthew Alexander wrote in a 2010 New York Times op-ed about the abuse inherent in the changes on sleep allowed in Appendix M:

The manual also allows limiting detainees to just four hours of sleep in 24 hours. Let's face it: extended captivity with only four hours of sleep a night (consider detainees at Guantánamo Bay who have been held for seven years) does not meet the minimum standard of humane treatment, either in terms of American law or simple human decency.

And if this weren't enough, some interrogators feel the manual's language gives them a loophole that allows them to give a detainee four hours of sleep and then conduct a 20-hour interrogation, after which they can "reset" the clock and begin another 20-hour interrogation followed by four hours of sleep. This is inconsistent with the spirit of the reforms, which was to prevent "monstering" -- extended interrogation sessions lasting more than 20 hours.

Finally, there were changes in the language concerning the drugging of detainees, as I have discussed in detail elsewhere. Use of drugs on detainees was not previously prohibited in the earlier AFM, citing language disallowing use of any drugs that produced "chemically induced psychosis." In the new AFM, drugs could be used as long as they did not "induce lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage," a lower standard, requiring evidence of significant "lasting or permanent" harm.

Our understanding of exactly how DoD has used drugs on detainees is still evolving (see DoD's IG reportand analyses of it here and here). As a matter of reference, according to a September 2004Congressional Research Service report on "Lawfulness of Interrogation Techniques under the Geneva Conventions," even the allowance of drugs in the 1990s version of the AFM was a change from earlier doctrine, which prohibited the use of drugs entirely for interrogations.

According to an article cited by CRS, "any attempt to extract information from an unwilling prisoner of war by the use of chemicals, drugs, physiological or psychological devices, which impair or deprive the prisoner of his free will without being in his interest, such as a bonafide medical treatment, will be deemed a violation of Articles 13 and 17 of the [1949 Geneva POW] Convention."

Most recently, The Constitution Project's Task Force on Detainee Treatment, in a 560-page report documenting the use of torture by U.S. government agencies, noted:

The Army Field Manual on Interrogation should be amended so as to eliminate Appendix M, which permits the use of abusive tactics and to allow for the legitimate use of noncoercive separation. Language prohibiting the use of stress positions and abnormal sleep manipulation that was removed in 2006 should be restored.

Part of the problem in tackling the issue of torture and interrogation abuse in the current Army Field Manual concerns the misrepresentations concerning the steps actually taken in rewriting that document, as well as a myth that has grown up around Obama's Jan. 2009 Executive Order on interrogations. With the recent admission by DoD that the Bradbury Appendix M memo was never rescinded by Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama, we are closer to the day when such inhumane treatment is banished from official U.S. military intelligence doctrine.

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Originally published at Firedoglake. Reprinted with permission of the author.

Jeffrey Kaye, a psychologist living in Northern California, writes regularly on torture and other subjects for Truthout, The Public Record and Firedoglake. He also maintains a personal blog, Invictus. His email address is sfpsych at gmail dot com.

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