I did a batch of post-processing work yesterday, including on the picture below. So far, it’s gotten markedly lower reviews on photo.net than its sister image of benches on Pyramid Lake. This is slightly mysterious to me, because the images feel similar to me, but I’m getting the idea that I’m seeing this image differently than other people. Take a look at the image and feel free to leave feedback on photo.net about why you do or don’t like it.
Another image from the frozen lake on the road to Jasper:
How bad are conditions at the Guantanamo facility?
According to this article, twenty-three prisoners made an orchestrated suicide attempt in 2003. Alltogether, in 2003, there were 350 “self-harm” incidents at the camp. Last year there were 110. There have been 34 actual suicide attempts since the camp opened.
Just yesterday I mentioned an incident where US troops witnessed prisoner abuse by Iraqi domestic forces, but were ordered not to interfere.
The Oregonian has a complete report, including some disturbing pictures. This blog by Eric Umansky has some additional commentary.
The Los Angeles Times is leading today with the headline “Pentagon Files Reveal More Allegations of Abuse in Iraq”. Apparently, a new batch of documents obtained by the ACLU show that various abysmal abuses took place at a detention center set up at Adhamiya Palace, a former villa owned by Saddam Hussein.
The latest allegations add to a pattern that human rights activists said suggested systematic abuse of prisoners at U.S. military detention facilities across the globe. ACLU officials, who have obtained and released thousands of documents in recent months, on Monday accused the Pentagon of a “woefully inadequate” response to hundreds of incidents of alleged abuse.
“Some of the investigations have basically whitewashed the torture and abuse,” said the group’s director, Anthony D. Romero. “The documents that the ACLU has obtained tell a damning story of widespread torture reaching well beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib.”
The document details a number of complaints brought by detainees or the Red Cross, and documented in the new files. Various complaints were corroborated or reported by US army personnel or U.S. civilian military contractors.
The main thrust of the article appears to be that the ACLU is complaining that little has been done to punish those responsible for the abuse or ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
This interesting opinion piece by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts lays out the anti-Bush conservative perspective. In it, he repudiates the idea of the “liberal media conspiracy”:
Apparently, Rush Limbaugh and National Review think there is a liberal media because the prison torture scandal could not be suppressed and a cameraman filmed the execution of a wounded Iraqi prisoner by a US Marine.
[...]
The Iraqi War is serving as a great catharsis for multiple conservative frustrations: job loss, drugs, crime, homosexuals, pornography, female promiscuity, abortion, restrictions on prayer in public places, Darwinism and attacks on religion. Liberals are the cause. Liberals are against America. Anyone against the war is against America and is a liberal. “You are with us or against us.”This is the mindset of delusion, and delusion permits no facts or analysis. Blind emotion rules. Americans are right and everyone else is wrong. End of the debate.
That, gentle reader, is the full extent of talk radio, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal Editorial page, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and, indeed, of the entire concentrated corporate media where noncontroversy in the interest of advertising revenue rules.
[...]
Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it. Thus, the Patriot Act, which permits government to suspend a person’s civil liberty by calling him a terrorist with or without proof. Thus, preemptive war, which permits the President to invade other countries based on unverified assertions.
There are several other interesting passes, as well; you should read the entire article.
The Washington Post is running a story relating the findings of Human Rights Watch regarding the current state of affairs in prisons in Iraq. The report found that
Iraqi police, jailers and intelligence agents, many of them holding the same jobs they had under Hussein, are “committing systematic torture and other abuses” of detainees
Note that the report concerns facilities run by the Iraqi Interior Ministry, not the US armed forces.
More excerpts:
Twenty months after Saddam Hussein’s government was toppled and its torture chambers unlocked, Iraqis are again being routinely beaten, hung by their wrists and shocked with electrical wires, according to a report by a human rights organization.
[...]
Legal safeguards are being ignored, political opponents are targeted for arrest, and the government of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi “appears to be actively taking part, or is at least complicit, in these grave violations of fundamental human rights,” the report concludes.
[...]
“The majority of detainees . . . stated that torture and ill-treatment during the initial period was commonplace” in jails run by the Interior Ministry, the report says. The abuses included “routine beatings . . . using cables, [rubber] hosepipes and metal rods . . . kicking, slapping and punching, prolonged suspension from the wrists,” as well as electric shocks to the genitals and long periods spent blindfolded and handcuffed.
I could go on, but you had better just read the article instead.
Best news in the article? “Hania Mufti, the Baghdad director of Human Rights Watch and chief author of the report, said she did not find examples of abuses that were on a par with the worst atrocities committed under Hussein’s rule”
Worst news in the article? US troops witnessed and photographed prisoner abuse on one occasion, and then:
soldiers entered the compound and found bound prisoners “writhing in pain” and complaining of lack of water. They gave water to the men, moved them out of the sun and then disarmed the Iraqi police. But when the Oregon soldiers radioed up their chain of command for instructions, they were ordered to “return the prisoners to the Iraqi authorities and leave the detention yard.”
This would appear to make the US complicit in the abuse, at least in this one case.
Here’s a frozen lake we passed on the way to Jasper, in Alberta; I’ve got a copy of this one on my wall.
We were in Whistler this past weekend, but it rained pretty much the entire time and I only got a handful of images, none of which look too promising…
Here’s another picture from our trip to Jasper and Banff a couple of months ago; I’ve been working on it lately, and Laura has prints of this image, and the one I posted earlier, for her office.
The peak chair on Whistler:
…except that the forecast is calling for rain, of all things, this weekend. Ugh! Do a snow dance for us folks heading to Whister…
This Toronto Star article by Thomas Walkom discusses the (extremely remote) possibility that Canada could indict President Bush for war crimes, under recently-expanded federal law there making heads of foreign states liable for violations of international law.
This is reminiscent of the case brought (briefly) against Bush in Belgium, under similar laws. This article reports on the case being dismissed by the Belgium courts. Under pressure by the US, Belgium rewrote the law to apply only to Belgian citizens and long-term residents.
Like the (old) Belgian law, the Canadian law would not imperil Bush until he has left office, since Canadian law provides immunity to foreign heads of state while they are still serving.
In an interview with the Washington Post,
Bush said he would not lobby the Senate to pass a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage.
The president said there is no reason to press for the amendment because so many senators are convinced that the Defense of Marriage Act — which says states that outlaw same-sex unions do not have to recognize such marriages conducted outside their borders — is sufficient. “Senators have made it clear that so long as DOMA is deemed constitutional, nothing will happen. I’d take their admonition seriously. . . . Until that changes, nothing will happen in the Senate.”
Bush’s position is likely to infuriate some of his socially conservative supporters, but congressional officials say it will be impossible to secure the 67 votes needed to pass the amendment in the Senate.
I am pleased that Bush, apparently, didn’t really intend to back the constitutional amendment, and that this will alienate him from the most right-wing members of his base.
This points to the continuing danger of further legal action in furtherance of gay rights, though: there is a real possibility that more positive legal rulings will bring about a backlash.
Of course, it can only get so much worse, what with the depressing number of states having passed amendments to their constitutions to ban gay marriage…
Laura and I are heading to Whistler (yes, again) this Thursday, so here’s a picture taken from near the Roundhouse Lodge, halfway up Whistler mountain:
A warm, wet system has installed itself over the Northwest and is predicted to linger for the entire coming week. It’s dumping rain on the mountains instead of snow, since the freezing level is too high. Ugh.
Some forecasts say the weather may turn cooler again in time for the weekend; let’s see those snow dances!
This Financial Times article reports on the White House’s ongoing isolation from the potentially unpleasant reality beyond its gates:
One counterinsurgency expert said Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, had a “brutally accurate” picture of the situation and the potential dangers.
But a member of an influential neoconservative policy group said that such warnings “stop well short of the president”.
He said Mr Rumsfeld, criticised for the conduct of the war, had an interest in hiding the true picture from the president.
According to Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and head of the independent Middle East Policy Council, Mr Bush recently asked Mr Powell for his view on the progress of the war. “We’re losing,” Mr Powell was quoted as saying. Mr Freeman said Mr Bush then asked the secretary of state to leave.
[..]
Analysts are concerned that with the departure of Mr Powell and his replacement by Condoleezza Rice, the president’s loyal national security adviser, the White House will be further shielded from dissent.
Last weekend, it snowed in Seattle overnight, which is pretty unusual. There was about an inch or so on the ground by morning, and I went and walked around the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle. Here is one of the pictures; there is a whole folder of them on on photo.net.
Many months ago, early in 2004, I heard an interview conducted with Donald Rumsfeld at a university somewhere; it was aired on NPR. Towards the end of the interview, the interviewer asked Mr. Rumsfeld to comment on recent criticism of the administration regarding the Guantanamo detention camp. The question was not specifically about indefinite detainment, but Rumsfeld nevertheless spoke for a few minutes about the idea of detaining people indefinitely.
I don’t have a transcript or other record of the interview, but my recollection of his response was that he said something along the lines of “There are a few detainees at Guantanamo that we may choose to release into the criminal justice system for trial, largely because we have enough evidence to try them, and we don’t believe they are of any particular intelligence value to us. However, we have no intention whatsoever of letting go of the majority of the detainees, either by releasing them entirely or turning them over to the criminal court system. These are people who have plotted against the United States and that we picked up on battlefields. If we let them go, they will just take up arms against us again. So we intend to hang on to them until we’re satisfied that they pose no further threat” (not an actual quote).
This was as alarming to me at the time as it is now. Back in early 2004, I had never heard a spokesperson of the administration say so openly that they didn’t believe that people detained by the military should have access to any type of due process whatsoever, and that it was fine for the administration to detain them, at its sole discretion, for as long as it saw fit, unchecked in any way.
Over time, the administration has become more and more forthcoming about its philosophy in this matter, so that now it is quite clear that the executive believes that it is just, legal and appropriate for it to detain people indefinitely with no due process of any kind.
In this NY Times article, the administration explains that fighters captured during recent raids in Iraq are not covered by the Geneva Convention, and “could be transferred out of the country for indefinite detention elsewhere”.
The article goes on to say that
The administration has asserted an authority to detain such prisoners indefinitely, as unlawful combatants, but officials have acknowledged that they cannot say how or when the war on terrorism might be deemed to have reached an end.
A senior American official said in an interview this week that the vast majority of the 550 prisoners now held at the American detention center at Guantánamo no longer had any intelligence value and were no longer being regularly interrogated. Still, the official said the Defense Department planned to hold hundreds of them indefinitely, without trial, out of concern that they continue to pose a threat to the United States and cannot safely be sent to their home countries.
“You’re basically keeping them off the battlefield, and unfortunately in the war on terrorism, the battlefield is everywhere,” a senior administration official said.
The Washington Post reports in this article that:
Administration officials are preparing long-range plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States or other countries, according to intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials.
The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts.
[..]
The new prison, dubbed Camp 6, would allow inmates more comfort and freedom than they have now, and would be designed for prisoners the government believes have no more intelligence to share, the officials said. It would be modeled on a U.S. prison and would allow socializing among inmates.
This blew my mind when I read it. Just to recap, the administration is asking Congress for money to imprison people that the military has captured, potentially forever, without charges of any kind ever being brought against them. These are people regarding whom the government will freely admit:
This is, to my mind, so remarkable a position to take openly in a western democracy that I’m nearly at a loss for words. Presumably we can all accept the premise that there are a variety of difficult-to-classify people that mean the United States harm and that it is legitimate to detain and interrogate these people, within the accepted limits of international law. But it is a huge leap to decide that a single branch of the United States government has sole and complete authority to imprison whomever it seems fit forever, with the detainees having no further recourse available to them.
If on no other grounds than the fact that the military may make mistakes, and detain innocent civilians, ought there not be a dispassionate system of review to determine who remains incarcerated?
Here is a lake on the Sea to Sky Highway that leads to Whistler. This was taken at a turnoff, by the side of the road.
The hunt for WMD in Iraq officially closed up shop shortly before Christmas, according to this story carried by MSNBC. The story mentions that “Bush has expressed disappointment that no weapons or weapons programs were found”, which strikes me as a little odd — was anyone truly hoping that Iraq posed as much of a threat as the administration claimed during the march to war?
Also disturbingly, the article mentions that “a small group of Iraqi scientists” are being held by the military. They are apparently still in custody despite the fact that “Three people involved with the ISG said the weapons teams made several pleas to the Pentagon to release the scientists, who have been interviewed extensively”.
The article mentions that
None of the scientists has been involved in weapons programs since the 1991 Gulf War, the ISG determined more than a year ago, and all have cooperated with investigators despite nearly two years of jail time without charges. U.S. officials previously said they were being held because their denials of ongoing weapons programs were presumed to be lies; now, they say the scientists are being held in connection with the possible war crimes trials of Iraqis.
Sounds like the fate of the Guantanamo detainees…
Here is a hillside, seen from the Roundhouse lodge on Whistler, shortly after dawn:
This was taken during my recent trip to Whistler with my family, shortly before Christmas. I was in Whistler for my birthday this year!
