More gulag stories

This article is a longish piece providing a timeline of what's publicly known about the torture scandal, if "scandal" is the right word for war crimes:  Catastrophe Guardian (UK) 05/09/04.

The "security contractors" are a very important part of the story.  Potentially the most important part, as the Bush-Cheney-Rusmfeld government attempts to run significant military operations secretly and outside the law.  It's no accident that they've brought so many figures from the Iran-Contra scandal back into the government. Military contractors -- Above the law? San Francisco Chronicle 05/10/04 (my emphasis).

It now appears that this deeply disturbing episode -- in which Iraqi prisoners were beaten, sexually assaulted and forced to perform simulated sexual acts, among other things -- may have involved not only soldiers but also private contractors hired as interrogators.

That private contractors are interrogators in U.S. prison camps in Iraq should be stunning enough. This is incredibly sensitive work and takes our experiment with the boundaries of military outsourcing to levels never anticipated. But even more outrageous is the fact that gaps in the law may have given them a free pass so that it could be impossible to prosecute them for alleged criminal behavior.

Most people by now know that in an attempt to fill the gap between the demand for professional forces and the limited number deployed by the Pentagon, an array of traditional military and intelligence roles have been outsourced in Iraq, all without public discussion or debate. There are 15,000 to 20,000 private military contractors operating in Iraq, outsourcing critical military roles from logistics and local Army training to guarding installations and convoys. This outsourcing of critical roles to private companies represents a sea change in the way we fight a war.

Pentagon Was Warned of Abuse Months Ago Washington Post 05/08/04.

Amnesty International sounded an alarm at a Baghdad news conference in May 2003, only one month after the Iraqi capital fell to U.S.-led troops. Three months later, Bremer pressed the military to improve conditions and later made the issue a regular talking point in discussions with Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, said U.S. officials familiar with the discussions, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The Red Cross delivered repeated warnings during the same period, its president said yesterday. The organization dispatched investigators to 14 detention centers in Iraq and delivered graphic reports about U.S. mistreatment, including evidence of humiliation, physical abuse and excessive force.

Rumsfeld, the figure at the epicenter of the crisis, defended his record yesterday under six hours of sharp congressional questioning. He said he saw photographs of mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison only on Thursday, but asserted that his department had taken appropriate steps to improve conditions and oversight of the jails.

More articles on the Red Cross' investigations.  It's not clear to mewhy they are investigating conditions in Iraq under the name Red Cross rather than Red Crescent, which they normally use in Muslim countries.  Maybe it's because the Baath government was secular rather than religious, or maybe because the main occupying power (the US) is a traditionally Christian country.

Red Cross report describes systematic U.S. abuse in Iraq AP 05/10/04
Red Cross Was Told Iraq Abuse 'Part of the Process' Reuters 05/10/04

And on the political fallout: Is the nation nearing turning point in support of war? San Francisco Chronicle 05/08/04.

Not since the Vietnam War a generation ago has the credibility of top U.S. military commanders been challenged as aggressively and openly as it was Friday on Capitol Hill.

For more than six hours and with television cameras broadcasting the event around the world, members of both parties -- those who support the U.S. war in Iraq and those who don't -- expressed alarm over the Pentagon's seemingly snail-paced response to the gut-wrenching photographs that one Republican House member characterized as the public relations equivalent of Pearl Harbor.