Former U.S. commander in Iraq calls for truth commission - CNN.com »
Posted By Radiofreeeuropa 5 months, 1 week ago in News(CNN) -- The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq who retired over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal is calling for a truth commission to investigate Bush-era policies behind the abuse and controversial interrogations of detainees.
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hyperbola5 months, 1 week ago
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Well radio, when "left wingers" start complaining vociferously about Obama appointing the people responsible for much of this to command positions in Afghanistan, then our country will be making progress instead of just playing silly "political theater" games.
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McChrystal Choice Suggests Death Squads in Afghanistan
...McChrystal’s nomination to become director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon in May 2008 was held up for months while the Senate Armed Services Committee investigated a pattern of abuse of detainees by military personnel under his command. Sixty-four service personnel assigned or attached to Special Operations units were disciplined for detainee abuse between early 2004 and the end of 2007..... He was never held accountable for those abuses, supposedly because of the secrecy of the operation of JSOC.
Although he has been linked with detainee abuses and raids that kill numbers of civilians, McChrystal has not had any direct experience with the non-military elements of such a strategy.
The choice of McChrystal certainly appears to signal the administration’s readiness to continue Special Operations forces raids and airstrikes that are generating growing opposition by Afghans to the U.S. military presence.
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/05/14/mcchryst... -
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donald515 months, 1 week ago
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Gen Myers, of the Air Force type, who headed the Joint Chiefs, probably doesn't want a truth commission to find how complicit he was in accepting and telling the military to accept the Bush torture in spite of annual required briefings to every American in uniforn of its illegality! GEN Paine, the former marine Joint Chief is in the same boat!
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Dumya wouldn't promote these guys unless they were complicit with the exception of Petraeus who put his career on the line with the surge as a last effort and took over all the failed Bush contractor training in Iraq. Forcing Gen Shinsheki out early told the generals to tow the line while still in uniform!
Odierno as a division commander believed in just rounding up everybody and sending them to Abu Ghraib to determine if they were terrorists! Dumya liked Odierno!
The height of stupidity on Dumya's part was making an Admiral at CENTCOM in charge of two ground wars. His second stupid decison was a war czar to further screw up the chain of command.... then there is Rummy directing the abolition of the Iraqi bureaucracy and military, sending over a million disgruntled men into the terrorists/insurgent ranks! Failure to even plan to secure the Iraqi cultural heritage and the ammo dumps are quite damning too! Aw, give those generals a Medal of Freedom afterward to shut them up!
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cowboygrandpa5 months, 1 week ago
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FTA
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"Recently released Bush administration Justice Department memos condone the use of such tactics as keeping a detainee naked and in some cases in a diaper, and putting detainees on a liquid diet. One memo said aggressive techniques such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and slapping did not violate laws against torture absent the intent to cause severe pain.
A Senate Armed Forces Committee report released in April, when the memos surfaced, found that senior Bush administration officials authorized aggressive interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists, despite concerns expressed by military psychologists and attorneys.
The report points to then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's approval of such techniques -- including stress positions, removal of clothing, use of phobias (such as fear of dogs), and deprivation of light and auditory stimuli -- in December 2002 for detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His OK prompted interrogators in Afghanistan and Iraq to adopt the aggressive techniques.
"We had different departments that faltered in developing the guidance for executing those policies," Sanchez said. "And then I think we also had a dereliction of duty at those levels when we were faced with the reality and the facts that abuses were occurring on the ground as early as 2002 and we refused to do anything about it."
He said the lack of oversight and guidance from Washington and top brass left his troops "abandoned on the battlefield."
Last year he published his memoirs titled, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story," and he has continued to be a vocal critic of the war.
"Until America can really understand what has happened and look at it objectively and truthfully, we will still continue to be mired in the past," Sanchez said. "We've got to learn the lessons and never go this way again.""
The true shame of the administrations careless and reckless approach to war, and its resulting contamination of the rules of engagement as well as the code of conduct befitting a United States soldier and his commanding officers. -
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antibrainwasher5 months, 1 week ago
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Now, watch the swiftboaters, funded by Texas Billionaires that own huge toxic waste disposal systems, attack Sanchez as a traitor.
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The faux noise machine, owned by a billionaire foreign national, Mulah Murdock and his band of neocon thugs, have undermined the democratic system by selling identy politics to ignorant gullible racist thugs. Their ratings have soared, hate sells, propaganda pablum for walmart trailertrash who hate anyone objective not on his knees worshipping their homosexual baby jew liberal advocate for the poor god.
Amazing these morons worship a homosexual liberal jew who advocated for the poor and railed against the authoritarian government, and was TORTURED to death by the preincarnation of the catholic church and Dick Cheney, while they clamor for war and death penelty and murder abortion doctors and invade muslim countries to murder 500,000 enemies of zion. -
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jimdoze5 months, 1 week ago
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"Sanchez, in charge of combat operations from 2003 into 2004, has been a harsh critic of the war in Iraq, calling it in 2007 a "nightmare with no end in sight." "
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Is there any wonder why it was necessary to replace him as commander in Iraq? Somehow, Iraq is no longer the nightmare it was when he was commander.-
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djn3nunez35 months, 1 week ago
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"Sanchez, in charge of combat operations from 2003 into 2004, has been a harsh critic of the war in Iraq, calling it in 2007 a "nightmare with no end in sight." "
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Is there any wonder why it was necessary to replace him as commander in Iraq?
Do you think he was replaced in 2007 after saying that?
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104=494...
"Asked why he did not speak out about his concerns, Sanchez said general officers take an oath to carry out the orders of the president while in uniform.
“The last thing that America wants, the last thing that you want, is for currently serving general officers to stand up against our political leadership,” he said.
However, general officers do have the option of stepping down if they disagree with the country's leaders.
Sanchez said he felt he could not resign and go public with his reservations while he was in Iraq, because he feared that move could further jeopardize troops serving there.
“I think once you are retired, you have a responsibility to the nation, to your oath, to the country, to state your opinion,” he said."
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Justice4All5 months, 1 week ago
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This is the first war that has openly been criticized my military officers. In all previous conflicts they kept their mouths shut, which was probably best. In this case it was best that they speak out.
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I admire Sanchez. It takes a lot of courage for a man in his position to speak up. Chicken hawks would just shut up and follow orders.-
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hyperbola5 months, 1 week ago
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You must be a young sprout and not come from a military family. In WWII virtually all of our top military commanders (Eisenhower, Halsey, Leahy, Nimitz, LeMay, MacArthur, ....) criticized Truman's use of atomic bombs on Japan.
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That Officers did not protest over Vietnam is also a propaganda myth promulgated by our "national security state".
1970-The Concerned Officers Movement
In May 1970, an ad in the Fayetteville Observer calling for an end to the Vietnam War signed by dozens of officers, must have given local commanders a bad case of heartburn. Within a few months, however, this public dissension had spread across the country, and a similar ad, over more than one hundred officers’ names, was published in the Washington Post.
The Concerned Officers Movement which sponsored these ads was short-lived: most of its members were soon forced to resign their commissions or otherwise leave the military.
http://www.quakerhouse.org/QH%20Exhibit/panel4.htm -
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hyperbola5 months, 1 week ago
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That said, Sanchez is to be admired. Hopefully many more of our military officers will speak out. They would have the support of real american conservatives (like this one).
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May God Forgive America - Time for Military Desertions
At some point, if liberty is to have a fighting chance, American military personnel are going to have to experience an epiphany and decide that they're no longer going to fight on behalf of the bastards running the Regime.
We need to dispense immediately with the idea that releasing the second batch of photos depicting torture and other abuse at Abu Ghraib and six other installations would create an unacceptable danger to U.S. troops in the region.....
If our rulers were genuinely concerned about danger to "our troops," they would release the Abu Ghraib documents and bring the troops home. There -- problem solved! Instead, they are illegally suppressing the photos and keeping the troops in the field -- and now letting it be known that the U.S. military will remain mired in Mesopotamia (which is the more tractable of the two ongoing conflicts) for another decade or longer.
I suspect that the "danger" that preoccupies the ruling Establishment is not that confronted by the troops (about whom that Establishment cares little), but rather the danger potentially posed by those troops if enough of them escape the mental dungeon of official indoctrination and take a good, critical look at the people, institutions, and causes for which they're hired to kill and die.
... "protectors of our foreign policy," not "defenders of our independence" or "guardians of our liberties." The foreign policy referred to entails open-ended entanglements in the affairs of nearly every nation on earth, as well as plundering huge sums from taxpayers to sustain a grotesquely huge military establishment and bribe political elites abroad. That foreign policy cultivates misery and harvests war and terrorism.
Why in God's Name would any decent human being defend that foreign policy in the abstract, much less spill blood to implement it?
...Am I trying to incite desertion? Reducing the matter to terms simple enough for Sean Hannity to understand them -- yes, I am, where desertion is the only way to avoid upholding an immoral, unsustainable policy and serving a depraved Regime. Desertion is a moral imperative when continued service implicates a soldier in crimes against God and mankind. -
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fiftynine5 months, 1 week ago
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I disagree..."in all previous conflicts they kept their mouths shut, which was probably best."....
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58,230 names on a black wall because no one had the guts to speak up and say that what we were doing was wrong.
Don't get me wrong...I believe that when you put on a uniform you follow orders period !! You don't resort to subversion to undermine policy,but when you know that what you are asking of your troops is wrong then it is morally right to say so to your superiors to be on record...But if your superiors ignore you or tell you to do your job then that,as a soldier is what you must do,or retire.
I think Sanchez is a class act..I think that he was right then and i believe he is right now...
We need to get to the bottom of those policy's so we don't see them in the future.Like what was said..if we don't then we are condoning the same action in the future and i don't believe that is what America wants.
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sprzats5 months, 1 week ago
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I give this guy a lot of credit to speak out on this. We as tax payers are financing this war and we have the right to know the ugly truth of what's going or has gone on over there. I don't see why this administration should be so hesitant to investigate this.
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jimdoze5 months, 1 week ago
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Sanchez was clueless as to the strategic reason for the U.S. going into Iraq. Or, he may have understood and simply disagreed. In either case, I fault the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Bush Administration for either ignoring or not knowing this... and for not understanding that because of his predisposition toward the task, he would be ineffective... which he clearly was.
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djn3nunez35 months, 1 week ago
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The invasion and occupation of Iraq was a monumental strategic blunder. The General was following orders from the clueless leaders in the Whitehouse who would not listen to the advice of the most experienced of our Generals. They invaded with too small a force to prevent a large scale insurgency and allowed the country to desend into chaos when the occupying power had control or rather drove the existing government out of business.
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cleare5 months, 1 week ago
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and what do you think the strategic reason was for invading iraq, jimdoze? because it is far from clear to me. we were told it was because iraq had wmd, but they didn't. we guessed it might be to secure cheap oil, and it didn't. it might have been to establish democracy and capitalism, but it isn't.
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so just what strategic objective do you think we've achieved in iraq? -
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FrankHummel5 months, 1 week ago
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You guys should ALL be apprised (if you have not been already) of the fundamental underlying TECHNOLOGICAL alternatives to what has REALLY been the "underlying impetus" to the whole obscenity about which you debate. And however "off track" and/or "geeky" it may seem to you, the underlying reality of things IS what it IS --- and it surely is not MY saying it that makes it so (nor would it be any the less so if it went UNsaid --- by me, or you, or anybody or even EVERYBODY else).
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The unpalatable REALITY is that "we" could have LONG AGO, merely by applying VERY OLD technologies --- have simply by now ELIMINATED MOST of "our" abject, addictive dependency on other peoples' OIL to brainlessly burn as a mere fuel to power "our" automobiles and many "light" vehicles! And the HEAVIER ones COULD LONG AGO NOW ALREADY have been CONVERTED OVER to NATURAL GAS (in the form of LNG) --- which "we" have (for "OUR"SELVES!) in abundance for a substantial while longer, until HYDROGEN alternatives eventually become competitive.
THAT really IS the implication of the Electric / I.C.E "Chimera" automotive architecture exemplified by the soon-to-be forthcoming Chevy VOLT (and now also its EUROPEAN counterpart, jovially dubbed the AMPERE, and other entries into the “development derby” soon to come from all the clever folks over in ASIA) which combine cheap and simple ELECTRIC power together with a “fall-back” I.C.E. used in the manner of that in a DIESEL-ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE!
Wise up, people. You have LONG been SWINDLED by "our" past MISguided (or maybe more like MISBEGOTTEN!) MIS"leadership" (of both the “political” and also “corporate” variety!) who FAILED to fulfill their REAL obligations to the membership of this society and others --- which WOULD have been to OPTIMIZE THE CHARACTER AND THE QUALITY OF "OUR" TECHNOLOGY and PRODUCTS rather than to merely MAXIMIZE ”THEIR” MONEY!
What you grapple with now FOLLOWS from THAT FAILURE!
For those of you who may not yet "get it", GM’s forthcoming Chevy VOLT is an ELECTRIC car, with a battery that will carry it about FORTY miles. Thereafter, an INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE kicks in. But that (petroleum-powered) engine is NOT coupled to the wheels MECHANICALLY. Rather, It drives a GENERATOR that supplies the ELECTRIC motors (THE SAME ONES SUPPLIED BY THE battery UNTIL IT RUNS DOWN!) that propel the wheels. And if you erroneously imagine that no such vehicle can get above 30 miles per hour or get out of the back yard --- well, be advised! All those MASSIVE LOCOMOTIVES on the RAILROADS, and the LARGEST SHIPS on the HIGH SEAS, are (and for MANY years now already HAVE been) propelled by ELECTRIC motors! And the speed record for ELECTRIC cars out at the Bonneville Speedway is somewhere north of 400 Miles per hour the last I heard.-
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FrankHummel5 months, 1 week ago
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Now the thing is, statistics show fully 75% of all automobile usage is “short haul” runs that would “fit” within the 40-mile “power budget” of the VOLT’s battery --- SO MOST OF THE TIME THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE WILL NEVER OPERATE! Ici voila!: THREE-FOURTHS of all petroleum consumption to power “our“ automobiles simply, straightforwardly ELIMINATED --- PERIOD!
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The battery would be charged from the power grid, or (better yet, eventually) YOUR OWN PHOTOVOLTAIC ARRAY or WIND-POWERED-GENERATOR low-voltage auxiliary system, when the vehicle is not in use. (Using electrical power in such a way could render it PRACTICAL to DIRECTLY harness the abundant but intermittent / highly variable FREE energy that perpetually rains down on us DIRECTLY FROM THE SUN --- which “we” traditionally WASTE! For the car battery DOESN’T “CARE” if it is charged intermittently or at a variable rate as long as it ultimately gets charged up!)
Absent such FREE power, about 80 cents worth of "grid" power would “fill the tank”. (Eight such charges, or $6.40 worth, would carry the car for 320 miles --- about the equivalent of a tank of gasoline THAT COSTS ABOUT FOUR TIMES AS MUCH!) Beyond that, fuel consumption would depend on how the car is used --- but for ORDINARY usage the internal combustion engine WOULD BE AT MOST ONLY MINIMALLY ACTIVE!
Moreover, one simply DISPENSES WITH the whole elaborate TRANSMISSION and DRIVE TRAIN (!) --- utilizing simple, relatively UNbreakable MAGNETIC-force (rather than complex, fallible mechanical) drive elements. (There is NO transmission on a Diesel Electric locomotive! We could not even BEGIN to engineer a viable FRICTION-based CLUTCH to harness an internal combustion engine --- which by its basic nature cannot operate all the way down to ZERO RPM as an ELECTRIC motor can --- to start a really HEAVY load moving! THAT is why the whole ELECTRIC-motor paradigm was developed for very HEAVY loads in the first place!) So now, think of all THOSE savings too!
Above all, though, note that the concept is really an adaptation to a MUCH LIGHTER application of VERY OLD, WELL-ESTABLISHED, HEAVY-DUTY technological innovations. The battery-powered car has been around since the EARLIEST days of the automobile, and the Diesel-electric LOCOMOTIVE (and similar systems --- for example, on the largest ships) have been around for ABOUT 60 YEARS NOW ALREADY. There has been no fundamental TECHNOLOGICAL reason why the adaptation to the mere AUTOMOBILE could not have been accomplished MUCH SOONER(!) --- had “we” but mustered the wisdom and the wit to do so! People really should now be thinking about the “FALSE(!) economics” reasons why the alternative was not pursued earlier, and how the rationales for not doing so now prove to have tragically MISLED “us”!
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Icantwait5 months, 1 week ago
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My Fellow Americans: In simple language that all Left Wingers can understand. Just how does any of this apply to what is going on now. I know living in a time warp can be fun for you to write about but maybe you should concern yourselves with your President telling the Arab world that American is Primarily a Muslim Country. What's is that all about? Also, before Obama was elected his father was an Atheist or Agnostic, now he just happens to be a Muslim. Someone has been lying to us and now he is caught Red handed. Maybe you Supporters should start concerning yourselves with the Here and Now. The Real American
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donald515 months, 1 week ago
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Ican't, how do you go through a day looking yourself in the mirror when you propigate such lies and deceptions? You are really a disgusting, un-American fool!
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More than three quarters of America thinks and knows that you are wrong and un-American, not the just the libs! -
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donald515 months, 1 week ago
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The scapegoated soldiers from Abu Ghraib, one of which is still serving time, need to have the truth known.
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Even my local military newspaper published that when they were tried at Fort Hood, the military judge appointed by their own chain of command told them right at the start of their trials that their chain of command would not be available to testify.... so no links up to Cheney, Rummy & Dumya!
The terrorists are still using our inability to restore ourselves to the high moral ground before torture as a recruiting tool!
Then there are people like Jim Doze, Bill O'Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh helping to make more right wing terrorists over the same issue as we see hereon! -
SandmonsterComment removed: Hard Banned2 Replies
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chiowe695 months, 1 week ago
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IT HAS BEEN MY CONTENTION ALL ALONG THAT THERE WAS AND STILL ARE ATROCITIES BEING COMITTED BY AMERICANS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN.THE MUSLIMS CHARGED AT THE ONSET OF THE WAR IN IRAQ THAT AMERICAN SOLDIERS WERE RAPING AND KILLING IRAQI WOMEN.IN FACT THERE HAVE BEEN MANY INSTANCES OF AMERICAN FEMALE SOLDIERS BY THEIR FELLOW MALE SOLDIERS.THE BUSH ADMIN.AND SOME OF THE AMERICAN MILITARY COMMAND SHOULD BE TRIED FOR WAR CRIMES IN THE HAGUE.WHAT THEY HAVE DONE IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN IS FAR WORST THAN WHAT SADDAM DID (AMERICAS FORMER ALLY) AND WHAT CHARLES TAYLOR DID IN LIBERIA OR WHAT MILOSEVIC DID IN THE BALKANS.THE HIDDEN HAND OF THE CRIMINAL AMERICAN GOVERNMENT IS NO LONGER HIDDEN NOW THE WHOLE WORLD IS BECOMING MORE AND MORE CONSCIOUS OF THIS FACT.GOD IS GREAT!
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