meehawl

I noted this last July:

AMERICAN forces may have breached human rights and then removed evidence after the so-called wedding party airstrike that killed more than 50 Afghan civilians this month, according to a draft United Nations report seen by The Times. A preliminary UN investigation has found no corroboration of American claims that its aircraft were fired on from the ground … It states that there was clear evidence that human rights violations had taken place and that coalition forces had arrived on the scene very quickly after the airstrikes and cleaned the area, removing evidence of shrapnel, bullets and traces of blood. Women on the scene had their hands tied behind their backs.

Earlier here and here.

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Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, [with] a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter. Most of all, apparently, we’re not supposed to know the National Security Council’s top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios.

Earlier here.

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A man and his 12-year-old daughter spent the last four years living in a remote hillside in Portland’s Forest Park … Under a tarp-covered, wood-framed shelter, [police] found sleeping bags, a partially burnt log, a Bible, a stack of old World Book Encyclopedias, rakes and other tools. A rope swing, a tilled vegetable garden and a small creek were nearby … The pair went into the city twice a week to stop by the bank, attend church, buy groceries and clothes from Goodwill. Frank, a devout Christian, said he taught his daughter using the old encyclopedias. They grew vegetables and used the nearby creek to keep clean. They stored perishable foods in a small pool of water at the creek’s edge … The girl had been home schooled … Officials said the girl, who would be normally in 7th grade, is at a 12th grade equivalency.

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The Bush administration wants the U.N. Security Council to renew on Friday a controversial resolution exempting American peacekeepers from prosecution by the new International Criminal Court … The draft resolution, introduced by the United States on Wednesday, would place U.S. troops and officials serving in U.N.-approved-missions beyond the reach of the court. Specifically, it would exempt “current or former officials” from prosecution or investigation.

The treaty is meant to apply primarily to those countries that are either unwilling or unable to prosecute cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide that are committed by individuals under their control. ICC proponents say that so long as the United States government is willing to investigate and prosecute such crimes, as it is currently doing in the case of the Abu Ghraib abuses, the ICC prosecutor would have no grounds for asserting jurisdiction.

A series of Justice Department memorandums written in late 2001 and the first few months of 2002 were crucial in building a legal framework for United States officials to avoid complying with international laws and treaties on handling prisoners … They also suggested how officials could inoculate themselves from liability by claiming that abused prisoners were in some other nation’s custody … [they] anticipated the possibility that United States officials could be charged with war crimes, defined as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. The document said a way to avoid that is to declare that the conventions do not apply.

Earlier here.

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Feith … who was described by … Gen Tommie Franks, as “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth”, has been at the center of virtually everything else that has gone wrong in Iraq … It was his office, for example, that created shortly after 9/11 the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans (OSP) which re-assessed 12 years of raw intelligence and the Arab press, to find evidence of ties between the regime of former Iraq President Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist group … It was Feith’s office, along with the Defense Policy Group (DPG) whose members Feith appointed, that served as the point of entry and influence for Iraqi National Congress (INC) chief Ahmed Chalabi and his “defectors” who provided phony intelligence about Hussein’s vast stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It was Feith’s office that was charged with planning the post-war occupation and reconstruction process … Colin Powell is alleged by Woodward to have referred to Feith’s operation as the “Gestapo Office”.

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Arms dealer Viktor Bout was the merchant of death wanted for feeding conflicts in Africa – until Iraq happened. Today the United States and Britain are using his extensive mercenary services in Iraq. The condemnation of his role in the diamond wars and other conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa over the past ten years is being silently erased … The UN Security Council drafted a resolution in March to freeze the assets of mercenaries and weapons dealers who backed ousted Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. Bout should top that list, French diplomatic sources say. But the diplomats and UN sources say the United States has been working to keep Bout off that list. U.S. officials have indicated unofficially that the reason is that Bout is useful in Iraq.

More about Viktor Bout.

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[Chalabi's] prescient seizure of Saddam’s intelligence files a year ago has equipped him with a useful tool to intimidate opponents. In politics, despite his apparent lack of general appeal, he has been carving out a role as the Ian Paisley of the Iraqi Shia, fomenting sectarian assertiveness and brokering deals.

Earlier here.

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I just noticed the chociest quote in all the wedding party massacre coverage:

Major General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, was scathing of those who suggested a wedding party had been hit. “How many people go to the middle of the desert … to hold a wedding 80 miles (130km) from the nearest civilisation? There were more than two dozen military-age males. Let’s not be naive.” When reporters asked him about footage on Arabic television of a child’s body being lowered into a grave, he replied: “I have not seen the pictures but bad things happen in wars. I don’t have to apologise for the conduct of my men.”

I take two things from this that pretty much sum up the unsurprising and historically mundane colonial arrogance of Major General James Mattis. The first is that people who live in tiny hamlets such as Mukaradeeb (with all of 25 houses) are indeed far from civilised, and probably up to no good and should not expect to indulge their uncivilised traditions. And the second is that any gathering of 20+ “military-age males” in Iraq is now fair game for artillery barrage and aerial attack, not to mention ground troops liquidation after the fact. For a country where half the population is under 25, this means pretty much every city, town, or even tiny village is a “legitimate” target.

“I saw something that nobody ever saw in this world,” said Mr Nawaf. “There were children’s bodies cut into pieces, women cut into pieces, men cut into pieces.” Among the dead was his daughter Fatima Ma’athi, 25, and her two young boys, Raad, four, and Raed, six. “I found Raad dead in her arms. The other boy was lying beside her. I found only his head,” he said. His sister Simoya, the wife of Haji Rakat, was also killed with her two daughters.

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“We were in Mukaradeeb. At 3am they rained the air with bombs … One after another the bombs were falling. Three houses with the guests inside were hit. They fired as if there were an armoured brigade inside, not a wedding party” … Wedding guests had been firing in the air. American troops had come to investigate and then left. At about 3 am, they returned in helicopters and destroyed two houses.

“We went out of the house and the American soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one,” she said. She ran with her youngest child in her arms and her two young boys, Ali and Hamza, close behind. As she crossed the fields a shell exploded close to her, fracturing her legs and knocking her to the ground. She lay there and a second round hit her on the right arm. By then her two boys lay dead. “I left them because they were dead,” she said. One, she saw, had been decapitated by a shell. “I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked me. I pretended to be dead so he wouldn’t kill me. My youngest child was alive next to me.” … Among the dead were 27 members of the extended Rakat family, their wedding guests and even the band of musicians hired to play at the ceremony … 11 of the dead were women and 14 were children.

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Why did the Bush administration turn against its former favorite Iraqi [Ahmed Chalabi]? Almost certainly because it realized that Chalabi, maddened by the realization that he was being excluded from the post-June 30 hand-over arrangements, was putting together a sectarian Shiite faction to destabilize and destroy the new Iraqi government. “This all started since [U.N. envoy Lakhdar] Brahimi announced that Chalabi would be kept out of the new arrangement”.

Earlier here.

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