Taliban prisoners of war

open cages - blind folded - deliberately

disoriented - shackled - treated worse

than cattle

So you think Guantanamo is tough? Well, try Idaho

The Great Pretzel Swallower's Guantánamo S&M Porn PR Disaster by Dr. Susan Block

The Bush administration and John Walker Lindh: who are the real "conspirators"?

US torture of John Walker Lindh exposed as frame-up continues

From The Gnostic Liberation Front:

is this an example of what the new world order has planned for all

dissidents? are we already so brutalized that we accept this

treatment of human beings, no matter what their beliefs are, and how

they feel about the united states as justified? even serial killers are

treated more humanely! where is the outrage of the american people?

why is the US defying world opinion so blatantly?

Is it a test to see how brutalized we already are as a people and how much

we would accept without significant dissent?

or is it to be seen as a warning of what the government will do to those

of us who oppose the new world order of the illuminati cabal!

Mr. bush, Mr. ashcroft, mr. rumsfeld, what do you think Jesus would say to

your despicable treatment of other human beings?

where exactly is your "christian" conscience?

and all you american "patriots" out there, flaunting your "christian" values

and morals, where is your outrage? you are nothing but hypocrites, using

jesus and christianity to cover up the fact that you are in reality "of your

father who is the devil, doing the evil deeds of your father." you are the

same kind of people who under the guise of "religion" crucified jesus christ.

and then there is our senator lieberman who not so long ago "brought

religion back" into the realms of government" during the presidential

election campaign with his "pious" statements and demeanor. of course he

is not a christian but an orthodox jew who thus seems to believe in the "eye

for an eye" doctrine of judaism which is exactly what he is proclaiming now

in his statements regarding the "taliban" prisoners of war. he thinks it is

just fine to treat these human beings worse than cattle.

the "new world order" is here!

make no mistake about it

Ezra Pound Precedent

Of course there is a precedent to this "open cage" confinement of "political prisoners," and that is the confinement of Ezra Pound for six month in an open cell on death row in Pisa, Italy in 1945 for treason. After which he was taken for psychiatric evaluation to St. Elizabeth's mental hospital in Washington, DC. During those six month in the death cell, Pound was exposed to the broiling Italian sun during the day, and forced to sleep on the damp ground at night. For weeks his only covering was some newspapers, which a kindly prisoner had tossed into his cell, and at last he was issued a blanket. The death cells were close to a military highway, and the constant dust, as well as the glaring sun, affected his sight. From time to time men in the cells next to his were taken out and executed, and he supposed that his own turn might come any day.

Here are some of Ezra Pound's statements, which brought on him the wrath of the "New World Order Cabal":

Pound thus traced the history of the current war: "This war did not begin in 1939. It is not a unique result of the infamous Versailles Treaty. It is impossible to understand it without knowing at least a few precedent historic events, which mark the cycle of combat. No man can understand it without knowing at least a few facts and their chronological sequence. This war is part of the age-old struggle between the usurer and the rest of mankind: between the usurer and peasant, the usurer and producer, and finally between the usurer and the merchant, between usurocracy and the mercantilist system . . . "The present war dates at least from the founding of the Bank of England at the end of the 17th century, 1694-8. Half a century later, the London usurocracy shut down on the issue of paper money by the Pennsylvania colony, A.D. 1750. This is not usually given prominence in the U.S. school histories. The 13 colonies rebelled, quite successfully, 26 years later, A.D. 1776. According to Pound, it was the money issue (above all) that united the Allies during the second 20th-century war against Germany: "Gold. Nothing else uniting the three governments, England, Russia, United States of America. That is the interest--gold, usury, debt, monopoly, class interest, and possibly gross indifference and contempt for humanity."

World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org

WSWS : News & Analysis : The US War in Afghanistan

US flouts world opinion and Geneva Convention in treatment of Afghan war prisoners By Shannon Jones and Patrick Martin 23 January 2002

The brutal treatment by the United States of Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners in its custody, who are being held in open-air cages at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba, is provoking growing worldwide condemnation as a violation of international law.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said January 21 that those being held by American forces must be classified as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention and were entitled to all the protections offered by it. The ICRC is the international body entrusted with enforcement of the Geneva Convention, and its decision is a political blow to the Bush administration.

Red Cross officials added that some of the terms used by the US government to describe the Afghan prisoners, such as "battlefield detainees," have no legal meaning. The Red Cross has further charged that the US is abusing prisoners in Afghanistan, where it is holding 360 captured fighters in Kandahar in an unsheltered stockade, exposed to the bitter winter cold.

Amnesty International joined the Red Cross and other groups in asking the US government to define the prisoners as POWs. "It is not the prerogative of the Secretary of Defense or any other U.S. administration official to determine whether those held in Guantanamo are POWs," the group said in a statement. "An independent US court, following due process, is the appropriate organ."

The Bush administration and the Pentagon have employed makeshift and invented terms like "illegal combatant" to describe the prisoners, in order to disguise the fact that it is the US government, not the POWs, which is engaged in illegal activity.

Recognizing the POW status of the captured men would defeat the entire purpose of their removal from Afghanistan, which is aimed at facilitating intensive interrogation, drumhead trials before military tribunals, and prolonged imprisonment. Under the Geneva Convention, prisoners cannot be forced to reveal more than their name, rank, serial number and date of birth. Unless they are formally tried for war crimes, POWs must be returned to their home countries at the end of "active hostilities," which could be very soon given the collapse of Taliban resistance in Afghanistan.

An earlier statement by Amnesty International suggested that the mistreatment of Afghan prisoners may itself constitute a war crime: "Any detainee who is suspected of a crime, whether or not they are POWs, must be charged with a criminal offense and tried fairly or released. Denying POWs or other people protected by the Geneva Conventions a fair trial is a war crime."

Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defense, dismissed the mounting criticism of US treatment of prisoners: "I do not feel even the slightest concern about their treatment. They are being treated vastly better than they treated anybody else." This characterization is not only arrogant but concedes that the Bush administration's policy is not based on any objective legal norms.

So weak is the US government's legal position that the Washington Post published an editorial January 17 under the headline, "Follow the Geneva Convention." It is remarkable that the principal newspaper in the US capital should find it necessary to advise the US government not to commit war crimes, even if that caution is couched in the most mealy-mouthed terms.

The Post admitted that Rumsfeld does not have a leg to stand on with his argument that the US is "for the most part" observing the Geneva Convention even though the detainees "do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention."

"That is not the case," the newspaper said. "The Geneva Convention and other international treaties ratified by the United States give the detainees specific rights, rights that the Bush administration should respect.

"The first right most of the prisoners have is for a hearing by a tribunal to determine whether or not they are prisoners of war. Despite Mr. Rumsfeld's declaration, detainees cannot as a group be designated unlawful combatants by the secretary of defense; according to most interpretations of the Geneva Convention, in the case of a dispute about status, prisoners must have a hearing before a tribunal."

Outrage in Europe

In Europe the position of the US government has provoked widespread outrage. British newspapers published photographs of the prisoners at Guantanamo, released by the US Navy, under captions labeling their treatment as "torture." A columnist for the conservative British newspaper the Daily Mail wrote, "this is a bewildering and shocking experience. Even the SS were treated better than this." The security chief of the European Union, Javier Solana, called for the detainees to be treated as POWs entitled to the protection of international law.

A US federal judge in Los Angeles agreed to hear a petition filed by the Committee of Clergy, Lawyers and Professors demanding that the US government bring the prisoners before a US court and spell out the charges against them. University of Southern California law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, a leader of the group, said, "These individuals were brought out of their country in shackles, drugged, gagged and blindfolded, and are being held in open-air cages in Cuba. Someone should be asserting their rights under international law."

There was one significant public defense of the brutal treatment of the prisoners: from Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democratic candidate for vice president in 2000. After a briefing at Central Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, he told reporters, "I think our military is doing just the right thing in the way they are handling them at Guantanamo. These are violent killers. They are already threatening the American personnel who are there to guard them."

The US treatment of the Afghan prisoners violates international law in many respects. The US says that it will carry out "intense interrogation" of captured fighters. But Article 17 of the Geneva Convention states, "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."

As a columnist for the Toronto Star wrote, "Those detainees, brought shacked, shaved and blindfolded to Cuba, are kept in chain link pens under the constant glare, night and day, of halogen lamps (The blindfolding, deliberate disorientation, discomfort and constant light are staples of police states all over the world. The idea is to break down the inmate, weaken him from lack of sleep and thereby make him more pliable when the interrogators begin their work.)"

POWs and the Geneva Convention

The Bush administration plan to use secret military tribunals to try captured al Qaeda and Taliban is a further violation of international law. Article 84 of the Geneva Convention stipulates: "In no circumstances whatever shall a prisoner of war be tried by a court of any kind which does not offer the essential guarantees of independence and impartiality as generally recognized, and in particular, the procedure of which does not afford the accused the rights and means of defense provided for in Article 105."(Right to choose own counsel, right to call witnesses)

Article 102 further enumerates the rights of prisoners of war to a fair trial: "A prisoner of war can be validly sentenced only if the sentence has been pronounced by the same courts according to the same procedures as in the case of members of the armed forces of the Detaining Power."

And article 107 the Geneva Convention stipulates: "Every prisoner of war shall have, in the same manner as the members of the armed forces of the Detaining Power, the right of appeal or petition from any sentence pronounced upon him, with a view to the quashing or revising of the sentence or the reopening of the trial."

Under terms of Article 130 grave breaches of international law include "willfully depriving a prisoner of war of the rights of fair and regular trial presented in this convention."

The housing of prisoners in open-air, chain-link cages six feet by eight feet with concrete floors is both inhuman and a violation of minimum standards set by the Geneva Convention. Article 25 stipulates: "Prisoners of war shall be quartered under conditions as favorable as those for the forces of the Detaining Power who are billeted in the same area....

"The foregoing provisions shall apply in particular to the dormitories of prisoners of war as regards both total surface and minimum cubic space, and the general installations, bedding and blankets.

"The premises provided for the use of prisoners of war individually or collectively shall be entirely protected from dampness and adequately heated and lighted, in particular between dusk and lights out....

The US is violating both terms of the Geneva Convention and the Vienna Convention on Consular Access in holding captives incommunicado and refusing to release their names. Article 70 of the Geneva convention states: "Immediately upon capture, or not more than one week after arrival in camp, even if it is a transit camp ... every prisoner of war shall be enabled to write direct to his family, on the one hand, and to the Central Prisoner of War Agency, on the other hand ... informing his relatives of his capture, address and state of health."

The Geneva Convention stipulates that all prisoners, regardless of their exact status, be treated humanely.

Article 4 outlines broad terms under which captured belligerents must be considered prisoners of war. These include irregular forces such as "Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps" and "Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or authority not recognized by the detaining powers."

Article 5 stipulates that disputes over the status of prisoners cannot be unilaterally decided by the Detaining Power but must be arbitrated by third parties: "Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."

Further, prisoners may not be indefinitely detained following the end of hostilities. Under terms of the Geneva Convention those held must be either repatriated or charged with specific crimes.

The Bush administration actions violate even official US military policy. According to Army regulations, "Leaders and soldiers must be knowledgeable of the Geneva and Hague conventions, applicable protocols, AR (Army Regulations) and US laws."

"The US policy demands that all persons who are captured, detained, or held by US forces during conflict be treated humanely. This policy applies from the moment captives are taken until they are released, repatriated or transferred."

A 1994 Department of Defense document on the treatment of prisoner of war states: "It is DoD policy that: 1 The U.S. Military Services shall comply with the principles, spirit, and intent of the international law of war, both customary and codified, to include the Geneva Conventions."

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------

telegraph.co.uk

So you think Guantanamo is tough? Well, try Idaho
By Alasdair Palmer
(Filed: 27/01/2002)

HE is woken at 4.30 every morning, given a breakfast of powdered eggs, then left incarcerated in a tiny space for the rest of the day and night. The cell is designed to hold just one person, but there are four men sharing it.

The prison generates a number of mortal risks to health, not the least of which come from the other prisoners, some of whom have Aids, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases - never mind the abilty to inflict murderous physical and sexual violence at any moment.

Is the prisoner enduring these risks a member of al-Qa'eda or the Taliban? Is he being humiliated because he's a fanatical Islamic terrorist captured in Afghanistan? No - he's an ordinary American citizen, tried and convicted for a non-violent offence.

Americans who end up in prison could be forgiven for thinking that European politicians and human rights organisations don't care about them, since they have never weighed in on their behalf with the kind of protest which has been generated by the internment of al-Qa'eda terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.

Yet American prisoners endure far worse conditions than the terrorists in the 8 ft x 8 ft cages now stacking up at Guantanamo, and John Walker - an American who knows what he is in for - is probably not in the least relieved to be bound for a cell in Washington DC.

To get an idea of life in an American prison, consider the case of British-born Andy Martin. Mr Martin was first locked up on Rikers Island, New York, with murderers and rapists for companions. Then he was taken in an unventilated van on an eight-day journey to a Florida jail. The journey nearly killed him.

"If, in Britain, you transported animals the way they transported me," he said accurately, "you would be prosecuted for cruelty." Mr Martin is a 55-year-old lawyer, who was standing as a candidate for the Florida Senate when he was arrested, and who had never been in trouble with the law before.

His offence was alleged to be "causing $1,000-worth of damage to a television camera". Like many other American defendants in cases which, in Britain, would never reach the criminal courts, his legs and arms were chained before he had even been sentenced.

Most American jails are hell-holes. Conditions are generally worse than anything that would be tolerated in British or European prisons. "Most prisons are not air conditioned," the Department of Correction in Florida insists in its official publicity hand-out.

It stresses that prisoners must work and grow their own food in order to save taxpayers' money. It adds that "state law now prohibits the purchase of televisions by Florida prisons for recreational purposes". This is PR from state officials eager to show how tough they are.

Court cases involving the US prison system paint a picture of unrelieved bleakness and brutality. Recent litigation has revealed the extent to which prison guards smash the heads of manacled prisoners into walls, break their bones, and scald them with boiling water.

Guards have admitted to raping women prisoners on a regular basis. And if the level of uncontrolled violence from the staff is bad, what the other inmates are capable of is revolting.

In Idaho, for example, a 17-year-old who was in prison for failing to pay a $73 traffic fine was murdered in his cell by the other prisoners after they had tortured him for 12 hours. In another jail in Youngstown, Ohio, two inmates were murdered and 20 stabbed within a single year.

A nationwide investigation found sexual assault by male prisoners on their fellow inmates to be frequent and widespread. No wonder Donald Rumsfeld, the country's Secretary of Defence, says that "to be in an eight-by-eight cell in beautiful sunny Guantanamo Bay is not inhumane treatment". Compared to the conditions in many American prisons, what's on offer to the terrorists in Guantanamo Bay counts as paradise.

That is why the military police have started to complain that the al-Qa'eda members are getting better treatment - hotter food - than they are. It is also why the Pentagon released the pictures of the orange-suited prisoners, manacled and kneeling, with their eyes and ears blocked.

To the Pentagon, as to the American public, the pictures were proof of that they were doing their job properly in looking after the prisoners securely. They didn't have quite that effect in Britain. Still, even here, it is notable that the protest has come from politicians, churchmen, lawyers and journalists, rather than from ordinary voters.

Polls conducted by British newspapers and television stations have come out with heavy majorities in favour of what the Americans are doing. The editor of the Daily Mirror, for instance, who had invited his readers to agree with him that it constituted "torture", discovered that more than 80 per cent of his readers thought there was nothing wrong with what was happening at Guantanamo Bay.

If there is a conflict, it is one between British politicians and the people who vote for them. The conflict between the governed and their governors is present on almost all law and order issues.

Most British voters want tougher and longer sentences, with fewer legal niceties, more defendants convicted and fewer criminals paroled; most politicians (many of whom used to be lawyers) are not convinced of the efficacy of tougher sentencing policies.

And even those who are (such as Michael Howard when he was home secretary) find it very difficult to put their preferences into practical, as opposed to rhetorical, effect. One difference between Britain and America is that in America, the politics of law and order is not insulated in quite the same way from democratic pressure.

America is built on the assumption that only the people ought to be trusted to legislate on crime and punishment - with the result that in many states, many of the top law-enforcement positions, from the senior judges and chief prosecutors to the county sheriffs, are not appointed but elected.

Politicians have to reflect what the voters think on law and order: if they don't, they lose office. There is no "elite consensus", separate from popular views about crime and punishment. If the electric chair, chain gangs for women prisoners and "three strikes and you're out" is what the voters want, that is what their politicians will give them - and have done so.

We can be sure that, should one of those caged al-Qa'eda members end up in a US prison, he will look back on his days in Guantanamo Bay with wistful nostalgia. That is when he might really need the intervention of organisations dedicated to protecting human rights.

Information appearing on Electronic Telegraph is the copyright of Telegraph Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence.

Reproduced gratefully from: telegraph.co.uk

http://www.drsusanblock.com

The Great Pretzel Swallower's Guantánamo S&M Porn PR Disaster

by Dr. Susan Block

From Dr. Strangelove:

Ripper: Were you ever a prisoner of war?

Mandrake: Ah yes I was. Matter of fact, Jack, I was.

Ripper: Did they torture you?

Mandrake: Ah... yes, they did. I was tortured by the Japanese,

Jack, if you must know. Not a pretty story.

Ripper: Well what happened?

Mandrake: Oh... well... I don't know, Jack. Difficult to think of under these conditions. But, well, what happened was they got me on the old Rangoon HNRR railway. I was laying train mines for the bloody Japanese puff puffs.

Ripper: No, I mean when they tortured you, did you talk?

Mandrake: Ah, oh no, I ah... I don't think they wanted me to talk, really. I don't think they wanted me to say anything. It was just their way of having... a bit of fun, the swines. Strange thing is they make such bloody good cameras.

*****

I was beginning to accept The War for what the Great Pretzel Swallower had proclaimed it to be (in so many malapropisms): a Fight for my Freedom to Party. A fight for my freedom to fly, shop, drink champagne, wear miniskirts and, of course, have lots of sex. If any values were worth defending, these were.

Sure, we seemed to be bombing more out of revenge for our wounds and lust for a nice friendly place to lay our pipeline than anything the least bit noble. But at least we gave the impression that we were trying to conduct a relatively "humane" war. I was impressed with our government's apparent concern for the Afghan people (unlike Vietnam). We tried not to kill civilians, though sometimes, of course, when you're bombing the crap out of a country, it can't be helped. We dropped food packets; too bad they looked just like landmines, confusing the now-dead or maimed children who grabbed them. We helped women get on the road to liberation; who doesn't want to see what's under that burqa? We encouraged Afghans to play long-forbidden music, and hey, everybody loves music-except those Evil-Doer, No-Fun Talibans.

In short, we not only won The War on the Battlefield (though not many of our guys stepped onto an actual battlefield-too dangerous), but we were winning the War of World Opinion. That is, we were doing some topnotch PR.

Then I saw The Picture. You know, the one that appears to have been taken on the set of a gay male heavy S&M training film or a Robert Mapplethorpe photograph. About eight or nine submissives are shown kneeling, their knees grounded into the gravel, their legs crossed and shackled under them, their arms manacled in front, their hands bizarrely mittened. They are blindfolded with black, high-tech- looking goggles, earplugged (or are those earphones?) and practically gagged with surgical masks and electrical tape, their day-glo orange outfits blowing in the Cuba Libré breeze, revealing sections of their naked flesh. One of the Orange Men appears to be losing his pants. Obviously, he can't pull them up.

Above this trussed-up, sensory-deprived platoon of bad boys stand two taut Marines (a third is in the distance), clad in crisp camouflage, their heads shaved around the sides, a modern spin on the Medieval bowl-cut. The Marine closest to the camera is leaning over the Orange Men in a casually menacing posture. And, in what's probably just an innocent juxtaposition of objects, a long fence pole seems to be emerging from his pants. And yes, if you squint, it looks like an elongated erection, slim but stiff, towering like a sword over his helpless, senseless captives.

Big Stick, indeed.

The shocking part is that this Guantánamo S&M scene was not snapped by a plucky journalist's lens. The Pentagon officially released it. This is what they want us to see. Does that mean that this is the mild stuff? This is where they just plug up their ears, not their other orifices?

Maybe the Pentagon released The Photo because it's so racy. Maybe they wanted our hearts to race, our spirits to soar at the image of our Marines boldly dominating and humiliating The Enemy. Maybe this is the Revenge of the Raving Castrati after the pain and phallic humiliation of 9.11.

Maybe the shrinks at the Pentagon think we'll feel better about ourselves upon seeing a young US Marine with a Big Stick in his pants lording it over a harem of hapless, hogtied Orange Men made to bow down before their Masters in utter, abject-and in the case of Orange Man #2 and possibly #3, even bare-assed--submission.

Is this Pentagon Porn?

Doubtless, for some Americans, it is. I myself haven't been able to stop staring at The Photo for the last two days, and that's not just because I'm writing this. Actually, I started writing this because I was staring at it, even finding it to be, I confess, weirdly erotic in that perverse way that Hardcore Male-on-Male Sado-Masochistic Porn often is.

Actually, the original photograph is a voyeur's delight. The photographer invites the viewer/voyeur to peer through a hole in a barbed wire fence, to sneak a peak on some state-of-the-art torture, heavy bondage, a little sense denial, maybe some brainwashing (what are they listening to on those earphones anyway?), a bit of wretched mortification.

The Orange Men look like extreme submissives into heavy sensory deprivation. Except they aren't "into" it. Though, maybe, they are. After all, we're told that they're suicidal, so heavy masochistic fetishes would go with that. But the fact is that we don't know what they're into. We don't really know who they are. We don't seem to know what to do with them. We don't even know what to call them.

"Whatever they are, they're not Prisoners of War!" chorused the Great Pretzel Swallower (GPS) and Ayatollah Asscraft, not eager to give these Evil-Doers any extra privileges.

So, what are they, Prisoners of Love? In a way. Consensual S&M (Sadomasochism) and D&S (Dominance and Submission) relationships are often very loving, because the Masochist actually enjoys enduring the pain, and the Submissive longs to surrender to the Master or Mistress whose primary concern is the welfare of their Submissive/Masochist. Nonconsensual S&M is pretty much the opposite, though sometimes, as in cases of domestic violence, the partners feel a kind of toxic love for each other.

It sure looks like a twisted, toxic lovefest going on behind that fence.

Here's another message this photo sends to the world: American soldiers are civilized. They're high-tech. They don't storm into villages and rape the women (too dangerous!) like those funky Serbs and Northern Alliance guys. No. The American military (perhaps a bit gayer than most, what with all the homo-erotic recruitment advertising), prefers to express its testosteronic bloodlust by kidnapping residents of the offending country, then dressing them up in garish, creepy little S&M outfits, and making them get down on their knees and grovel for...? Well, those photos won't be released by the Pentagon. But I hear that NYPD Officers Volpe and Bruder are giving a special seminar at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base on how to use a plunger handle as an interrogation tool (unconfirmed sources). Talk about Giuliani Time...

But enough about minor players. As I study The Photo, I can't help but think of our avenging hero, our smirking leader, the Great Pretzel Swallower, wounded in action while watching TV. I could never imagine our Commander-in-Chief in battle (too dangerous!), but I can easily see him in the role of the cocky Marine with the pole in his pants, as President of Yale's mystical, medievalesque Skull & Bones Society, subjugating the freshmen initiates in some quasi- ceremonial parody of the heroic and obscene rites of war.

Then there's the embarrassing fact that we never did catch Osama. So we got these guys who we're vaguely referring to as higher-ups in the Taliban and Al Qaeda network. Notice how the fantasies about Bin Laden and what we were going to do to him have disappeared? I had my own fantasies of forcing him to have a sex change operation, then sending him back to the Taliban to live as woman. But no more. Now Osama appears to have either died quietly of kidney failure or slipped away to the suburbs of Zürich. This is not a sexually satisfying ending. This doesn't make an American feel his dick at all! So here we are then, putting these Orange Men through their paces. They are our "Osama Surrogates." Our terrorist punching bags. Our bitches. Our Thanatos Therapy. Like the woman at home beaten by her husband when he loses a fight at work.

Another reason for calling them Prisoners of Love: As reported by Molly Ivins, Retired US Army General Bernard Tranor said "Well, they like to spend a lot of time on their knees anyway."

Oh, yeah. On your knees. I know you love it. I'm your Mecca now, baby. Pray to me.

But calling them Prisoners of Love is kind of sappy, and implies some modicum of consent. So, they're calling them "detainees." Sounds rather French and not so bad, like being a "guest." Remember when that other Evil-Doer Saddam Hussein called American hostages "guests"? That went over real well.

This is not going over well either, this hardcore Pentagon Porn. After all, one person's porn is another person's outrage. Government leaders and people around the world are outraged by The Photo, disgusted by our cocky, international law-breaking display of power over our virtually kidnapped captives. Aroused or not, they are not amused. Suddenly, we are losing the PR War.

Quick, Rummy, get re-write! Fire the dude who released The Photo! What happened to the old Pentagon PR team that brought us food packets and smart bombs? Did they all go on vacation? Do they think this War is over? This is just soooo embarrassing. Not for the stupid Taliban with the bare asses. For us. It's one thing to be exposed. It's another to expose yourself.

America is choking on this one like a pretzel we chewed too fast.

"Probably unfortunate" was how Rummy dryly described the incident, then protested that the detainees weren't trussed up in their S&M outfits all that long, and we shouldn't jump to conclusions from this one photo. Perhaps, we should see their other outfits. Perhaps, we should see their cages.

We're told their conditions are not "comfortable" (why should a terrorist be comfortable?), but they are "humane." They are being fed bagels and cream cheese (not so culturally sensitive, but never mind), granola (is that for the Marin County Talib?) and Fruit Loops. Hey now, some of their starving refugee relatives would give up their Kalishnakovs to get their lips around a plastic spoonful of Fruit Loops.

Desperately seeking spin, and having gone a little fruit loopy, Rummy, Asscraft and the gang have tried calling the Orange Men "illegal combatants." But illegal according to which law? The country they were living in was invaded. Maybe they were on the wrong side, maybe they didn't have uniforms, and maybe war itself should be illegal, but as long as it isn't, those guys are as much legal warriors as any. And if they've done something illegal, why haven't they been charged?

Americans are not exactly storming the Pentagon over this, but some are pretty appalled. A coalition of lawyers, clergy and professors, led by LA civil liberties attorney Stephen Yagman (best known for cases involving police abuse), and including former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, filed a petition in a US District Court demanding that the detainees be identified, taken before a court and told of the charges against them. What, give them due process? Well, why not? They're not Prisoners of War.

While we try to figure out what they are and what to do with them, we are holding them like sheep bound for slaughter or chickens in a coop. Rummy says all the S&M gear was for safety purposes only. The warden at Camp X-Ray, Colonel Terry Carrico, was a bit more forthcoming, saying he was determined at all times to maintain what he called "positive control" over the prisoners. If that includes mind control, it explains the earphones.

We hear that they are here to be interrogated. That's when they try to get the chickens in the coops to lay eggs of information, rewarding them with extra Fruit Loops and chicken feed if they tell tales that will, without a doubt, be used against them.

Yes, I know, these are Evil-Doers, terrorists. They're dangerous. They could hurt somebody. I sure wouldn't want any of them busting in on my broadcast studio, guns cocked, like about 20 members of the LAPD did a couple years ago (yes, my lawsuit is still pending. Email me at liberties@blockbooks.com if you want to get involved).

Rummy, ever the avuncular pragmatist, reminds us that these guys are not just bad, they're frenzied lunatics, every one of them a bomb waiting to go off, a dickhead ready to explode, a Hannibal plotting to bite off your face if you loosen his surgical mask, ready to take you down if you take off his mittens, able to hypnotize you with his eyes if you remove his blindfold. Maybe so. But don't all violent prisoners have that potential? Should we treat all violent or potentially violent prisoners like this? Apparently, some folks at the Pentagon think we should. And if you've ever been through Men's Central Jail in LA, you know that that's how it's already done (though the blindfolds and earphones are illegal).

It's enough to make you toss your cookies. But I have to chuckle when I think of some of my sex therapy clients, the guys with the extreme submissive male/male fantasies-and there are a lot of them-- who have been looking at The Photo and going day-glo green with envy. Some have already called asking for a "Guantánamo Roleplay." The desire to be a victim-a terrorist martyr--is as at least as strong as the desire to be a hero, a winner, a tyrant. It's all an embrace of Thanatos, Death (either killing or dying), as opposed to Eros, Love, Sex, the Life Force, the Bonobo Way. Far better to roleplay it with a sex therapist (or your lover) than play it for real on the World Stage.

Now, don't get me wrong. Legal or not, I don't trust these detainees for a second. I don't like their philosophies, their religious fanaticism,their attitudes toward women, or their culture of violence (their behavior would be at least as sadistic if the positions were reversed). And I don't like their mangy beards.

But we can't play S&M games with people just because we don't like them. We can't kidnap them, torture them, and hold them captive without saying what we're going to do with them. Well, we can, and we are. And we shouldn't, and we know we shouldn't, but we will. At least, until somebody figures out what the hell to do with the bastards. But what about in the meantime? We can't kill them. We can't really torture them because the whole world is watching. We can't put most of them on trial. We can't get much evidence on any of them (unlike the Israelis who collected mounds of evidence on the Nazis that they "kidnapped" and tried for war crimes). We probably can't get them to say much of any value in terms of preventing further terrorist attacks, and in any case, we can't interrogate them forever. Rummy! Get re-write! We're about to choke on a pretzel we can't cough up!

It's all about exerting power through Thanatos instead of Eros. Since the Horror of 9.11, everyone's been praying to someone. Now it's my turn. I pray to Eros, Aphrodite, Darwin, Gandhi, Margaret Sanger, my Mom and Josephine Baker: Let us follow the Bonobo Way and stop acting like baboons. Let us stop eroticizing violence and war, and try eroticizing sex and peace. It's much safer. At this point in our evolution, it might even be better, PR-wise.

Amen. And A-women too.

1.26.02

ADDENDUM: American "Detainee" Kidnapped in Pakistan, Held Illegally, Guantànamo S&M Style by Dr. Susan Block

Daniel Pearl playing nonconsensual, and very, very dangerous S&M Games with Pakistani extremists responding to the American S&M Games being played with their countrymen in Guantànamo

Apparently, sometime over the weekend, while I was playing Guantànamo S&M games with Kim and the Bonobo Gang and photographing our fun for the world, some Pakistani dudes calling themselves "The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty" were doing the same thing, only their games were real and involved kidnapping Wall Street Journal South Asian Bureau Chief Daniel Pearl.

Their e-mail to various US media outlets states that they believe that Mr. Pearl is a "CIA officer...posing as a journalist of the Wall Street Journal." Spokespeople from both the CIA and the Wall Street Journal have denied that Mr. Pearl works for the agency. The English- language text of the e- mail states that Mr. Pearl is being held "in very inhuman circumstances quite similar infact to the way that Pakistanis and nationals of other sovereign countries are being kept in Cuba by the American Army."

The e-mail also threatened the kidnapping of other Americans, saying, "If the Americans keep our countrymen in better conditions we will better the conditions of Mr. Pearl and all other Americans that we capture."

Actually, if you compare the photos, Mr. Pearl looks a lot more comfortable than his Guantànamo counterparts; though, of course, it can't be all that comfortable having a gun pressed against your skull, even if it's just for a photo-op.

Without a doubt, the people behind this kidnapping are dirty, low- down thugs and ought to be arrested by somebody, and Mr. Pearl should be freed to go home to his pregnant French wife and job at the Wall Street Journal (which may as well be the CIA in a few respects).

The situation is, of course, quite dangerous. These S&M games can get out of hand. That gun could go off and kill Mr. Pearl, accidentally or on purpose. They--or thugs like them--could go out and pick up a few more unsuspecting Americans. Of course, this is something that could happen at any time, and we should never shape American policies to fit the demands of kidnappers, extremists, hijackers and thugs.

Still, why should we bait them with erotically-charged power plays like the Pentagon's tasteless, internationally illegal Guantànamo S&M porn? Just compare: Is our photo so much more ethical and reasonable than the ones above of poor Mr. Pearl?

The actions of Rummy, Ayatollah Asscraft and the Great Pretzel Swallower down there in breezy Guantànamo Bay have just put innocent individual American lives--especially Americans abroad--in more danger than ever.

Can't we see that Thanatos leads to Thanatos? We are, without a doubt, still the world's biggest, strongest, richest nation. We are also the World's Fattest Target.

If only to protect ourselves and our people, we should beware of throwing our weight around and giving the appearance of being Obnoxious Bullies (even though we know we're the Good Guys)..

Kim and I play Guantànamo S&M. At least my gun is just a dildo.

Come, my fellow Americans, let us show ourselves not only to be the strongest and richest, but also the wisest of nations. Let us respond to Thanatos with Eros! This is not the "sissy way" (no offensive to our transgendered friends); this is the smart way.

And no, it is not an easy way. In the immortal words of the great seventeenth century French courtesan Ninon de l'Enclos: "Much more genius is needed to make love than to command armies." Considering the terrifying situation that America finds itself in these days, a little genius is what we sorely need.

1.28.02

World Socialist Web Site

www.wsws.org

The Bush administration and John Walker Lindh: who are the real "conspirators"?

By David Walsh
25 January 2002

The Bush administration is proceeding with its brutal legal vendetta against John Walker Lindh, the young American who joined the Taliban in Afghanistan last year and surrendered to Northern Alliance forces in November. Walker (who generally goes by his mother’s name) arrived in the US late Wednesday after being taken off the USS Bataan warship—where he has been imprisoned—by helicopter and transferred to another military plane at the airport in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. He was restrained during the flight to the US. Walker made an initial appearance Thursday in US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. US Magistrate Judge W. Curtis Sewell set a preliminary hearing for February 6.

On January 15 the US government charged Walker with four criminal counts. The charges include two counts of providing material support to terrorist organizations, conspiring to kill US nationals abroad and engaging in prohibited transactions with the Taliban.

The charges, which carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, are based almost entirely on Walker’s own alleged confession, extracted from him by the military and FBI on board the US military vessel where he was held incommunicado for more than six weeks. The 20-year-old was neither granted access to the lawyer engaged by his parents nor was he apparently informed that an attorney was available. The International Committee of the Red Cross was prevented from delivering letters to Walker.

On January 16 Attorney General John Ashcroft defended the charges brought against Walker and indicated that the government had not “foreclosed charging other crimes against this individual,” including those which carry the death penalty. The attorney general asserted that Walker had waived his right to remain silent, hypocritically declaring, in regard to the parents’ efforts to provide their son with legal counsel, that “No other individual has a right to impose an attorney on him or to choose an attorney for him.”

In his reactionary and ignorant, albeit defensive, comments to the press Ashcroft did his best to poison public opinion against the young man. “John Walker Lindh chose to fight with the Taliban,” Ashcroft said, “chose to train with Al Qaeda, and to be led by Osama bin Laden. We may never know why he turned his back on our country and our values, but we cannot ignore that he did.” He added: “Youth is not absolution for treachery, and personal self-discovery is not an excuse to take up arms against one’s country. Misdirected Americans cannot seek direction in murderous ideologies and expect to avoid the consequences.”

Ashcroft’s denunciations of Walker follow the comment made by George W. Bush on December 21 that Walker was “the first American al Qaeda fighter that we have captured.” This assertion prompted Anthony Arend, a professor at the Georgetown University law school in Washington, to tell a reporter: “He shouldn’t have said it.... It can prejudice various people and make selecting a jury more difficult.”

In response to Ashcroft’s inflammatory remarks, Avern Cohn, a district judge from Detroit, in a letter to the New York Times, observed that the attorney general “appears to have violated Justice Department guidelines on release of information relating to criminal proceedings that are intended to ensure that a defendant is not prejudiced when such an announcement is made.... Mr. Ashcroft’s statement and news conference seem to suggest that there is really no need for a trial. Moreover, evidence has yet to be presented to a grand jury.”

The judge is referring to a section of the Code of Federal Regulations which prohibits the type of prejudicial comments made by the attorney general January 16 and in subsequent interviews with the media. The regulation instructs Justice Department personnel not to “furnish any statement or information for the purpose of influencing the outcome of a defendant’s trial, nor shall personnel of the Department furnish any statement or information, which could reasonably be expected to be disseminated by means of public communication, if such a statement or information may reasonably be expected to influence the outcome of a pending or future trial.” Furthermore: “Disclosures should only include incontrovertible, factual matters, and should not include subjective observations.” The regulation specifically prohibits the release of “Statements, admissions, confessions, or alibis attributable to a defendant.”

In his comments Ashcroft clearly violated both the letter and the spirit of this regulation. The Bush administration treats Justice Department guidelines with the same contempt it reserves for the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. At every step the administration reveals its authoritarian and anti-democratic proclivities.

In a statement to the press on the eve of Ashcroft’s comments, attorney George Harris—a member of the legal team hired by Walker’s parents—had appealed to the US government to stop commenting about his client to the media.

The decision by the government not to pursue treason charges is an indication that it feels itself on shaky legal grounds. Ashcroft’s demonization of Walker, echoed by an endlessly servile media, is in part an effort to compensate for the deficiencies of the government’s arguments. There is reason to believe that the Justice Department, holding the threat of possibly charging him with a capital crime over his head, may be hoping that Walker and his lawyers can be pressured into agreeing to plead guilty. It is likely that the government is desirous to avoid a trial which could prove politically embarrassing.

Legal experts expect that Walker’s lawyers will first of all challenge the admissibility of their client’s alleged confession, which forms the basis of the government’s case. USA Today noted: “His lawyers could argue that Walker, who had been shot in one leg and medicated for two weeks before his FBI interview, did not intend to waive his right to an attorney. They could also argue that Walker’s statements were coerced. He reportedly had been held in isolation since being wounded in a failed prison uprising.”

We already know, because the incident was captured on videotape, that Walker was taunted and threatened with death during his interrogation by CIA agents at the Mazar-i-Sharif prison. What were his conditions aboard a US navy vessel, entirely isolated and with the full force of the American war machine bearing down on him?

A former Air Force lawyer, Scott Silliman, told the San Francisco Chronicle: “There is no right to silence in military questioning. Then you throw FBI agents at him [Walker], and he’s got to make a voluntary waiver of his rights. Did he understand?” Douglas Kmiec, law school dean at Catholic University and generally a shameless apologist for the Republican Party, commented: “There is a very sizable question whether a federal court would rule these statements as subject to exclusion because they were made in custody [without a lawyer present].”

Criminal complaint

The criminal complaint filed by the Justice Department against Walker fails to substantiate the charges that have been brought against him. It largely recounts or purports to recount Walker’s experiences since May 2001 when the young American left a religious school where he was studying and joined a paramilitary camp run by the Harakat ul-Mujahideen (HUM), to fight in Kashmir on behalf of Islamic fundamentalist forces against the Indian military.

In late May, according to the complaint, Walker traveled to Afghanistan and made his way to a Taliban recruiting center in Kabul. As he spoke Arabic but not any of the Afghan languages or dialects, he was assigned to the al Qaeda group of Osama bin Laden. Walker allegedly attended a training camp, operated by bin Laden, where he received military training. He was apparently offered several options, including the possibility of conducting operations in the US or Israel; he declined that offer and chose instead to fight on the front lines against the Northern Alliance.

Walker, along with his unit, rotated in two-week shifts in the Takhar trenches against the Alliance. When US bombs began to fall the members of his group retreated to Kunduz and, after a withdrawal was negotiated with General Abdul Rashid Dostum, surrendered their arms and were trucked to Mazar-i-Sharif prison. Shortly after he was interrogated by CIA agents, fighting broke out at the prison and Walker, wounded in the leg, retreated to the basement with his comrades. He was thus not a witness to the massacre of the prisoners carried out by Northern Alliance and US forces. Walker stood at one point in cold water for 20 hours before a surrender was arranged and he was transported to a hospital near Mazar-i-Sharif.

The notion that Walker “conspired to kill American nationals” is ludicrous. He joined the forces fighting to defend the Taliban regime against the Northern Alliance in what was then a civil war. The United States was not engaged in a conflict with Afghanistan and indeed has never officially declared war. In the wake of September 11, the US began bombing the positions of his unit; then came his surrender. If anything, the American military “conspired” to kill Walker and his comrades who were not in any position to respond.

The remaining charges deal with Walker’s alleged dealings with and support for “foreign terrorist organizations.” As we have noted before, to apprehend those principally responsible not merely for “transactions with,” but the very existence of these terrorist organizations, the Justice Department needs to look considerably closer to home. The Taliban regime and Islamic fundamentalism both in Afghanistan and Pakistan are largely the products of American intervention in the region. These forces were deliberately incited, funded and armed by Washington in the 1970s and 1980s as part of the ongoing destabilization effort aimed against the Soviet Union. The consequences have been tragic, both for the peoples of the region and the victims of the World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks on September 11.

The venom directed at Walker is part of the attempt by American authorities to throw dust in the public’s eyes and cover their own tracks. Walker is obviously a disoriented young man, whose quest for “spiritual purity” led him down a terribly mistaken path. He is not the first nor will he be the last young person to be repulsed by the state of American society, but in the current ideological climate—with its worship of money, greed and ruthless individualism—he was unable to find his way to any progressive alternative. There is no need to feel any sympathy for his allegiance to Islamic fundamentalism, a deeply reactionary political and social force. Nonetheless, the attempt by the Bush administration and the right-wing media ( Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, the Murdoch-owned television and press) to transform Walker into a “hard-core militant” and “traitor” is as vile as it is inaccurate.

Robert Pelton, the individual who shot the tape of Walker on his hospital bed, told a television interviewer, “He’s actually a very gentle, sort of unassuming person. He’s not a militant person at all.” He later commented to NBC, “He didn’t seem like a very bellicose person. He was very sensitive. I mean, his whole concern was more the moral and religious ... and not the fighting part ... This guy struck me as a [person] that should be going to poetry readings.”

The Bush administration is pursuing Walker so relentlessly, first, because it intends to make an example of him for the purpose of demonstrating its power to pulverize those who resist its policies. Moreover, the central fact of the case is disturbing to the political and media establishment: that a well-educated young man from the Bay Area should turn his back so resolutely on the values of American capitalism. For all its denunciations and assertions that Walker is universally despised, the establishment is concerned that there may be more than a few youth who will find something admirable in Walker’s opposition, if not in the cause he espoused. Also, US authorities are determined to silence Walker one way or another because what he knows about the conflict in Afghanistan (including the massacre at the prison) and what he might communicate to the American public are potentially damaging.

The US government and the media are attempting to focus the anger over September 11 onto Walker, suggesting that he is a sinister figure somehow responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. Walker is no more to blame for the terrorist attacks than is an impoverished Pakistani who joined the Taliban out of some mistaken sense that he could strike a blow against American imperial power. In general, Walker’s role in the operations of bin Laden and the war in Afghanistan is so infinitesimal that one would need a magnifying glass to discover it.

Who are the genuine criminals and conspirators? John Walker, a misguided idealist and Taliban foot soldier, or the government and oil industry officials who, in the selfish and reckless pursuit of American geopolitical interests, have inflicted only misery and suffering on the Afghan and Pakistani populations? Will Carter, Reagan, Brzezinski—the architects of the US policy in the region—face prosecution? Or CIA and American military officials who collaborated with Osama bin Laden and his co-thinkers in the 1980s? Or executives of Unocal, the US oil company, which supported the Taliban in its consolidation of power in 1996, in the interest of a pipeline deal? Or officials of the Clinton administration, who gave tacit blessing to the Taliban regime? Or the elder George Bush and his cohorts like Frank Carlucci, who have had the closest contacts with the Saudi ruling elite and the bin Laden family?

Moreover, there is the conspiracy of silence surrounding the events of September 11 themselves. Will any investigation be launched to ascertain whether officials in the US military and intelligence apparatus had foreknowledge of the terrorist attack?

Any serious discussion of the Walker case, in all its tragic dimensions, must address itself to these and other questions.

World Socialist Web Site

www.wsws.org

US torture of John Walker Lindh exposed as frame-up continues

By John Andrews
25 June 2002

Defense attorneys for John Walker Lindh filed documents describing how, after barely surviving atrocities that claimed the lives of hundreds of his companions, the so-called “American Taliban” was tortured while the FBI wrangled statements out of him in violation of his Fifth Amendment right not to be a witness against himself. The new filings are for a crucial hearing on July 15 to determine whether statements made by Lindh after his capture with an Afghan Army unit will be suppressed or allowed into evidence at trial.

Lindh, who turned 21 three months ago, was found barely alive among the handful of Taliban prisoners who survived the US-backed massacre at Qala-i-Jangi fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan late last November. The upcoming suppression hearing is widely viewed as pivotal in the case. Prosecutors acknowledge that they have little evidence outside of Lindh’s own statements to support their charges that he conspired to murder US citizens and illegally supported terrorist organizations. The charges carry sentences ranging from decades to life in prison. Trial is set to begin in Alexandria, Virginia, within a few miles of the Pentagon, on August 26.

The defendant’s papers include a “Proffer of Facts in Support of Defendant’s Suppression Motions” based principally on information turned over by the government in “discovery,” supplemented with information from news stories and details provided by Lindh himself. (The proffer can be found at http://www.lindhdefense.info/20020613_FactsSuppSuppress.pdf )

The defense document explains that Lindh’s journey to Afghanistan was part of a phenomenon which “dates back to the 1980s, when Afghan and foreign mujahideen, funded in large part by the Untied States” fought against Soviet troops. After rejecting an invitation to participate in operations outside Afghanistan, Lindh became a “member of the Army of the State of Afghanistan” and joined the Taliban front lines in the Takar region of Northern Afghanistan on September 6, 2001, the week before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He stayed there until early November, when forces under the control of the notorious warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, backed by US firepower, routed the Taliban troops.

Lindh’s unit retreated on foot 50 miles to Kunduz in two days. There was little food and water, and the weather was very cold. Lindh and about 100 others became separated from the main group, and were mistaken for Northern Alliance soldiers when they tried to reunite. About one-third of the men with whom Lindh was traveling were killed by the resulting “friendly fire.”

Lindh’s unit surrendered to Dostum after 10 days trapped in Kunduz. A deal was made for the soldiers to receive safe passage to Herat, then still under Taliban control. Instead, the prisoners were taken to the Qala-i-Jangi fortress outside Mazar-i-Sharif. One of the detained Afghan soldiers detonated a grenade as he was being unloaded from a truck. As a result, the remaining prisoners, including Lindh, were crammed into a basement, and a grenade was dropped down an air duct, killing and wounding several men. Dostum’s guards made the prisoners stay in the basement. Unable to find a space in which to lie down, Mr. Lindh spent the night without sleep, crouched near a corner that was used as a toilet by the other men in the basement.

The next day, the prisoners were led out of the basement and into the yard. Their arms were bound behind their backs, and they were made to sit in rows. Dostum’s guards walked among them, randomly hitting and kicking prisoners. Lindh was struck in the back of the head and almost lost consciousness. CIA agent Johnny “Mike” Spann and another agent, working with Dostum’s men, singled out Lindh and questioned him at gunpoint. The episode was captured on videotape and records the Americans saying to Lindh, “The problem is, he needs to decide if he wants to live or die, and die here ... we’re just going to leave him, and he’s going to f—-ing sit in prison the rest of his f—-ing short life. It’s his decision, man. We can only help the guys who want to talk to us.” Lindh remained mute throughout the questioning.

Later that day a prisoner again detonated a grenade. This time, Northern Alliance troops opened fire, mowing down the rows of bound prisoners with automatic weapons. In the ensuing pandemonium Spann was killed under circumstances that have never been made public. It seems not unlikely he was caught in Northern Alliance crossfire. In any event, there is no evidence that Lindh had anything to do with his death.

Lindh was shot in the leg while fleeing the carnage. He lay on the ground for 12 hours, surrounded by corpses and pretending to be dead, while US aircraft bombed the compound, blowing living and dead prisoners to bits. In the middle of the night, Lindh and several other survivors in the yard made their way back into the basement. Wounded, starving and freezing, Lindh was trapped there for the next seven days. Dostum’s troops periodically dropped grenades down air shafts, killing many. One wounded Lindh with shrapnel.

On the fourth day, Northern Alliance troops poured gasoline into the basement and ignited it, incinerating several men. Then Dostum’s soldiers fired rockets into the areas of the basement where the men had fled to escape the flames, littering the area with body parts.

On the sixth day, Dostum’s troops flooded the basement with near freezing water. According to government disclosures, an eyewitness said that the water “was about waist high for one full day. Those who were too injured to stand drowned, and the water was full of blood and waste.” According to the proffer, “Mr. Lindh and others were forced to drink the water to stay alive. Unable to stand without assistance, Mr. Lindh alternated between leaning on a stick and a fellow soldier to keep from falling under the water and drowning. At least once, Mr. Lindh tripped over a dead body and was submerged in the freezing water, which resulted in his suffering hypothermia.”

On December 1, “wounded, starved, frozen and exhausted,” Lindh emerged from the basement with the other survivors, less than 85 of the more than 300 prisoners brought to the Qala-i-Jangi fortress the week before. Dostum’s forces bound his arms behind his back once again, and he was crammed into a metal shipping container with other wounded and sick prisoners for six hours, doubled over with abdominal cramps caused by drinking the polluted water in the basement.

Lindh was transferred to an open-air truck full of dying prisoners and learned that there were media and Red Cross representatives in the area. One told him that Dostum would have killed all the survivors were they not there. Still wet from the basement, Lindh was driven three hours through the cold night to Sheberghan, where he was taken by stretcher into a room about 10 feet by 10 feet, where he was left with approximately 15 other dead or dying prisoners.

It was there that CNN correspondent Robert Pelton found Lindh and began questioning him on videotape. According to the proffer, Lindh at first refused to be interviewed, but relented after Pelton arranged for him to receive food and medical attention from the US military. He was moved into a room without other prisoners. While armed US soldiers stood guard, a medic removed Lindh’s clothes and began treatment. As he answered Pelton’s questions, Lindh was receiving morphine and other medications intravenously. The interview was widely shown on CNN during the month of December.

Pelton told Lindh’s parents about his predicament. They quickly retained prominent San Francisco trial lawyer James Brosnahan, who immediately faxed demands that the US government not interrogate Lindh until they consulted him, and offered to travel to Afghanistan to meet with his new client. Although these letters were faxed to US Attorney General John Ashcroft and other government officials on December 3, Brosnahan was not allowed to speak to his client until January 25, almost two months later, moments before Lindh’s first court appearance in the United States.

Following the Pelton interview, Lindh was interrogated by a member of the US Special Forces at Dostum’s compound without first being advised of his right to remain silent and his right to counsel. The next day, the same Special Forces officer bound Lindh’s hands with rope and placed a hood over his head. Lindh was taken to a schoolhouse in Mazar-i-Sharif, where he was held in a room with the windows covered so that he could not tell the time of day. Round-the-clock armed guards taunted Lindh with epithets like “shitbag” and “shithead.” Lindh was given some food, but was always left hungry. Military interrogations began again, lasting several hours and continuing for several days. Lindh was not advised of his constitutional rights, and when he asked for a lawyer, he was told none was available. His bullet wound was left untreated, “to preserve the chain of custody” of the bullet for its use as evidence at trial.

On December 7, heavily armed US soldiers blindfolded and handcuffed Lindh, scrawled “shithead” across the blindfold, and posed with him for photos. One US soldier told Lindh that he was “going to hang,” and then the pictures could be sold and the proceeds donated to a Christian organization. Another told Lindh that he wanted to shoot him then and there. Lindh was cuffed so tightly that his wrists were scarred, and his hands were numb for months.

Lindh was flown to a Marine airbase in the Afghanistan high desert dubbed Camp Rhino. According to a statement provided in government discovery, a Navy doctor claims a US Special Forces officer told him at Camp Rhino that “sleep deprivation, cold and hunger might be employed” while Lindh was interrogated. That certainly seems to have been the case. Once at Camp Rhino, Lindh’s guards stripped him naked, and fastened him to a stretcher with duct tape and placed him in a metal shipping container. Conditions inside the container would have tested the endurance of anyone, much less someone in Lindh’s weakened condition. There was no light, heat or insulation. Two small holes provided all the ventilation. Guards taunted Lindh through the holes, threatening to spit in his food. Lindh’s hands were tied together. At first he was fully exposed, but eventually the guards covered him with a blanket and placed one underneath him.

For two days, Lindh was provided minimal food and medical attention. He was freezing cold and in constant pain because of the wrist restraints that were too tight. The loud noise of an electric generator echoed in the container. He could not move. Lindh was not even released from the stretcher when he needed to urinate. Instead, guards propped him upright.

On December 9, Lindh was dressed in a hospital gown and taken into a room or tent. When his blindfold was removed, an FBI agent presented him with a form waiving his constitutional rights. The note Lindh’s parents sent to him through the Red Cross, advising that they had retained a lawyer for him, was not delivered. Although Brosnahan was still trying to reach him, the agent repeated than no attorneys were available. Desperate to improve the conditions of his confinement, Lindh signed the waiver and answered the FBI agent’s questions.

The FBI interviews continued for two days. There is no tape or transcript of the interrogations, only the agent’s summary. After the interrogations, Lindh’s conditions improved somewhat. On December 14, he was transferred to the USS Peleliu, where he was treated for dehydration, hypothermia and frostbite. The next day the bullet was removed from his leg. There was no further questioning.

Under existing legal precedent, especially the landmark Miranda decision recently reaffirmed by the US Supreme Court, none of Lindh’s statements can be considered voluntary and therefore admissible over a Fifth Amendment challenge. This outcome was in fact discussed in a series of US Justice Department emails that were leaked to the media after being turned over to United States District Judge Thomas S. Ellis III, who refused to release them to the Lindh defense.

According to the email, one Justice Department lawyer wrote to another on December 7, the day Lindh landed at Camp Rhino, that “The FBI wants to interview American Taliban member John Walker some time next week.... Walker’s father retained counsel for him. The FBI wants to question Walker about taking up arms against the US. I consulted with a Senior Legal Advisor here at PRAO and we don’t think you can have the FBI agent question Walker. It would be a pre-indictment, custodial overt interview, which is not authorized by law.”

The government prosecutors will no doubt be filing their own papers soon, disregarding this assessment and arguing that Lindh’s Camp Rhino waiver of his constitutional rights to remain silent and consult an attorney was “voluntary.” In presenting their claim to Judge Ellis, they will be pushing on an open door. Ellis has openly sided with the prosecutors at every hearing in the case so far, and can be expected to do so at the suppression hearing as well.

At the last hearing, which was held on June 17, Ellis summarily denied seven separate defense motions, rejecting claims that Lindh was a legal combatant entitled to Geneva Convention protections, and that his activities with the Taliban were protected by the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of religion and association.

Demonstrating that he has already judged Lindh and found him guilty, Ellis dispensed with the last argument by stating that “The First Amendment freedom of association is no license to provide terrorists with support.” He then refused to move the venue of the trial from near the Pentagon, where almost 200 people were killed on September 11, or to dismiss the case because of the prejudicial and inappropriate pretrial comments made by John Ashcroft.

Perhaps the most interesting defense motion called for Ellis to dismiss the charges against Lindh because of “selective prosecution.” Lindh’s lawyers filed voluminous documents establishing that he is the only person ever prosecuted for supporting the Taliban, even though many firms and individuals had continued doing business with the Taliban after Clinton issued the executive order Lindh is accused of violating.

The most obvious example is the Unocal pipeline project, which was not finally abandoned until August 2001. The prosecutors’ opposition to the motion states: “the defendant himself notes that some of his ‘evidence’ suggests that the government supported Unocal’s pipeline project, which would have brought natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan by crossing through Afghanistan—a route purportedly preferable to alternative routes through Russia or Iran. The defendant cannot possibly suggest that the executive branch of government may not consider the national interest when deciding whether to bring criminal charges.”

In other words, the oil monopolies and other sections of the corporate elite could violate the law with impunity, because their drive to reap profits by currying favor with the Taliban was deemed to be in “the national interest.” Lindh, on the other hand, can be condemned to lifetime imprisonment because he lacks the connections to the Bush administration enjoyed by the oil executives and makes a convenient scapegoat.

Despite his riveting personal drama, Lindh himself is a relatively insignificant figure. His presence in Afghanistan had no effect on the outcome of the US military campaign, and there is no evidence that he had any involvement in terrorism or fired a single shot at American forces.

He is being prosecuted not only to make an example of him and intimidate others who might oppose US policies, but also to condition public opinion to even more repressive and dictatorial measures, such as those presently being used against Jose Padilla. The Brooklyn-born man, alleged to have participated in a “dirty bomb” plot, is being held incommunicado in a military brig without even the pretenses of due process.

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The Bush administration and John Walker Lindh: who are the real "conspirators"?

By David Walsh 25 January 2002

World Socialist Web Site

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US torture of John Walker Lindh exposed as frame-up continues

By John Andrews 25 June 2002

By David Walsh
25 January 2002

By John Andrews
25 June 2002