Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Ustwo
|
Ustwo, it's amusing to watch you "shill" for a totally discredited Bush administration, even as it's approval numbers sink to lows rivaled only by Nixon, on his way out of town in 1974.
You've presented an "OP" invented by the folks that you're on display here, carrying water for. <b>Here's how it goes:</b>
The U.S. military, the CIA, and the subcontractors on their payrolls, carried out an illegal campaign of torture and lesser illegal interrogation techniques and imprisonment, against the population of an Iraq that it invaded and occupied. They were stupid enough to carry out their shocking, administration approved crimes at the "evil dictator", Saddam's....own, most infamous Abu Ghraib prison, and to document their depravity on film, and to lose control over who had access to the filmed evidence.
The Bush administration and the U.S. military then made every effort to hide all of the film evidence, using the courts in a failed attempt to keep the filmed evidence of torture and abuse from the world, via dubious legal challenges, anchored in the hypocrisy that disclosure would further incite violent Arab and muslim reprisals.
At the same time, the military and the administration conducted a sham investigation intended not to obtain and reveal the truth and hold the responsible government and military officials responsible, but to minimize political fallout, deflect criticism, and conceal criminality. The administration and military officers protected themselves as they "served up" a few soldiers of enlisted rank to "take the fall" in sham court martial "show trials".
Now....along comes the NY Times, getting an offshoot story about the U.S. war crimes confused....covering an already confusing, previously covered story of a torture victim.
Ustwo subscribes to attempts to turn this into an indictment of all NY Times reporting that is unfavorable to the Bush administration:
Quote:
|
After alerting the Times Monday about the paper's error, Salon worked with a Times reporter in Dubai and an editor in New York as they reviewed their original story on Qaissi. Salon shared photographs and sources with the Times in an effort to shed light on Qaissi's experience at Abu Ghraib.
|
Unfortunately for Ustwo and the latest "smear OP" authors, the events Salon describes above are indicative of a reputable and functional news gathering and checking process, carried out by media rivals who place a higher priority on "getting it right", than on CYA or on smearing each other.
<b>It seems like a description of a process that is intent on obtaining and delivering the "facts" to us.</b>
Contrast Ustwo's "argument", combined with the spectacle of former Abu Ghraib commander, Gen. Janice Karpinski's <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/IraqCoverage/story?id=751870&page=1">description of events</a> at that prison when the torture took place, after she was forced by the Pentagon to take blame, along with convicted enlisted soldiers, vs. that of former Gitmo warden and Abu Ghraib interrogation technique consultant, <a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1174660,00.html">refusing to testify</a> under oath in a court martial of an enlisted soldier accused of abusing prisoners.
General Miller "took the fifth", and he still holds his rank, his career, and associated benefits.
<b>In the strangely "upside down" world of Ustwo and the Bush administration, it is the NY Times, Gen. Janice Karpinski, and a few enlisted "scape goats", along with the Iraqi who was misidentified in the NY Times story, but who was apparently tortured or abused, who are held up for ridicule and disgrace....
....not the folks who designed and carried out a deliberate program of torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners.....go figure????</b>
Quote:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/20..._photo_update/
March 18, 2006 | WASHINGTON -- The New York Times admitted Saturday to wrongly identifying the man in one of the most iconic photographs of abuse from the Abu Ghraib prison, after Salon presented evidence that the paper had made a mistake.
...On Tuesday, Salon published 279 photos and 19 videos of abuse at Abu Ghraib, along with nine essays explaining the back story of abuse. These documents were obtained last month by Salon's investigative reporter Mark Benjamin from a uniformed member of the military who spent time at Abu Ghraib and is familiar with the criminal investigation.
After alerting the Times Monday about the paper's error, Salon worked with a Times reporter in Dubai and an editor in New York as they reviewed their original story on Qaissi. Salon shared photographs and sources with the Times in an effort to shed light on Qaissi's experience at Abu Ghraib.
The Army records obtained by Salon strongly suggest that Qaissi was a detainee at Abu Ghraib on the night of Nov. 4, 2003, when another detainee, named Saad, was photographed on a cardboard box, with electrical wires on his hands. Military police at the prison knew Saad by his nickname "Gilligan."
At the time of the abuse, multiple digital cameras owned by military police photographed another man, nicknamed "The Claw," who had a deformed hand that matches the description of Qaissi. During the same two-hour period, those same cameras were used to photograph "Gilligan" on a box with electrical wires extending from his hands, according to the Army reports. (All the photos in question can be seen <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/abu_ghraib/2006/03/14/chapter_4/index.html">>here.</a>)
The Army's Criminal Investigation Command (CID) concluded that the five photographs of the man on the box with electrical wires all showed "the same incident" with a single hooded victim, a claim that was supported by the statements of several military police at the prison. Nonetheless, Qaissi and his attorney, Susan Burke of Burke Pyle LLC, still believe that Qaissi, who is also known as Haj Ali, may be in one or more of these photos.
"We know the Abu Ghraib torturers tied wires to Haj Ali's hands, placed him on a box, and sent electricity through his body," Burke told Salon in a statement, adding that she had sources for this account other than Qaissi. "The Abu Ghraib torturers are telling Salon that they never used electricity and photographed only the man nicknamed Gilligan, not the man nicknamed 'the Claw.' We do not trust the torturers."
The Times said on Saturday that Qaissi still maintains that he was forced to stand on a box, forced to wear a blanket, attached to wires and given electric shocks. An analysis of the photographs obtained by Salon cast doubt on his claim that he can be seen in any of the five photographs.
<b>In particular, a close-up photograph of "The Claw's" deformed left hand taken on the night of Nov. 4 shows a scar on the back of his palm, a white bracelet and an overgrown thumbnail. Two side pictures of the man attached to the wires, taken just minutes earlier according to CID, show a closely cropped thumbnail, no bracelet and no apparent scar. The other three pictures of a man on the box, including the one that Qaissi has claimed is not him, were taken by two different cameras in the same room within minutes of each other, according to CID. They show no clear evidence of a deformed left hand.</b>
Before the Times story, Vanity Fair, the PBS program "NOW," and the German magazine Der Spiegel ran stories describing Qaissi's account of abuse with electrical wires. (In October 2005, Salon reprinted the Der Spiegel story.) But two freelance reporters contacted Salon this week to express surprise at Qaissi's account in the Times. Both said they had interviewed Qaissi extensively in 2004 and that he had not mentioned his abuse with electrical wires or his appearance in the iconic photograph.....
|