[Peace-discuss] Pentagon Archipelago

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The NYT is fronting an administration propaganda campaign about how
"valuable" the prison camp at Guantanamo is. E.g., from yesterday's Times:
"Military officials say prisoners at the detention center here have
provided a stream of intelligence to interrogators during the past two
years, including detailed information about Al Qaeda's recruitment of
Muslim men in Europe. Military and intelligence officials also said those
detainees who were cooperative had provided information about Al Qaeda's
chemical and biological weapons efforts, had spoken about the training of
suicide bombers, and had described Al Qaeda's use of charities to raise
money for its aims..."  Another story is told by those who were
immediately released by the British when they were turned over by American
military jailers. Here's an account.  --CGE]

Night Sweats

By Chris Floyd

03/21/04 (Moscow Times) -- This is the story of three innocent men, held
in brutal captivity for more than two years; three innocent men, stripped,
blinded, beaten, tortured, caged and silenced, all in the name of freedom
and civilization; three innocent men, ground into the dust by an
implacable power that defends its "enduring moral values" with the boot in
the groin, the gun to the head -- and the abetting of atrocity and murder.

It's the story of three Britons released last week from the U.S.
concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- 26 months after they began
their progress through the guts of the Pentagon Archipelago, the chain of
U.S. detention camps and "interrogation centers" that now encircle the
Earth. In the Observer -- a pro-war British paper -- Shafiq Rasul, Ruhal
Ahmed and Asif Iqbal from Tipton, England, told reporter David Rose of
their sojourn in the Bush Regime's legal purgatory.

The three men, lifelong friends in their early 20s, went to Pakistan in
September 2001 for Iqbal's wedding. The following month, as Afghanistan's
civil war flared under the shadow of the impending U.S. attack, the
friends joined Muslim relief efforts in war-ravaged Afghan villages. As
avowed moderates, they were under constant threat from the Taliban -- the
virulent extremists who'd been armed, funded and sustained in power by
U.S. ally Pakistan and the Bush Family's business partners in Saudi
Arabia, as Salon.com reports.

When American bombs started falling, the friends tried to flee the
country. But they were trapped in Kunduz with thousands of refugees when
the city fell to U.S.-backed warlord Rashid Dostum, a former Soviet
collaborator turned jihadnik. Known for his macabre punishments -- he
liked to see his victims torn apart by tanks -- Dostum fell upon the
surrendered masses with his wonted fury. Thousands died on a death march
through the mountains to Shebargan, where Dostum linked up with U.S.
Special Forces. There, the captives, including the Tipton men, were packed
by the hundreds into metal truck trailers, where they were left for days
to suffocate and die. Fires were lit under some of the trailers, roasting
those trapped inside. Of the 35,000 who left Kunduz, only 4,500 remained
alive.

The survivors were crammed into Shebargan's open-air prison, where they
continued to die in droves -- as U.S. forces watched coolly from the
perimeter. Finally, the three friends were sent to an American camp in
Kandahar, where, hooded and chained, they were "processed": stripped,
rectally probed, beaten, forced to kneel for hours, naked, their necks
pressed to the floor by a guard's boot. Then came the first
"interrogation": again kneeling, chained, with beatings and kicking
followed by questioning -- as an agent stood on the back of their legs,
pressing a pistol to their heads. This routine went on for weeks. The only
relief came when British spies appeared for a session: "Don't worry, they
won't beat you while we're here," the jolly James Bonds would say. At
night, there were head counts every hour to prevent the prisoners from
sleeping.

One day, for reasons unexplained -- perhaps, as often happened, a false
confession was beaten out of someone who gave names of "accomplices" to
satisfy his interrogators -- the Tipton men were frog-marched onto a plane
bound for Cuba, triple-chained and beaten along the way, beaten and kicked
upon their arrival.

Then began the long, dazed limbo-life of Guantanamo. Endless
interrogations: Each man was grilled at least 200 times, sometimes for 12
hours at a stretch, always kneeling, chained to the floor. Constant
punishments: for "back talk," or seeking privacy for their bowel
movements, or arranging their utensils incorrectly. And always, over and
over, the farcical accusations that could have easily been disproved with
five minutes of investigation.

But their captors weren't interested in the truth; they wanted "results."
Finally, after two years of relentless physical and psychological pressure
-- including the ever-present threat of a military tribunal and execution
without appeal -- the friends cracked and signed false confessions to the
most ludicrous charge of all: that they were top bin Laden lieutenants,
pictured with him in a video from August 2000, despite the existence of
documentary evidence -- witnesses, pay stubs, school records -- that
proved they were in England at the time. But before their show trial could
begin, British intelligence belatedly examined the charge and confirmed
the alibis of all three men.

Now they're free, as the Regime flushes the most embarrassing cases out of
the system before the Supreme Court rules on the "legality" of the Bush
gulag this summer. The treatment of these three innocent men, chained and
beaten for two years, is not just a crime, but also -- like that other
crime, the invasion of Iraq -- an enormous waste of time and resources in
the "war on terrorism." We saw the grim fruit of this waste in Madrid last
week.

But of course, the Pentagon Archipelago wasn't designed to fight
terrorism; it's designed to advance terrorism -- state terrorism. Its
purpose is to establish the principle of arbitrary rule -- in the name of
"military necessity" -- above the rule of law, in America and around the
world. It's part of an overarching system of terror -- aggressive war,
assassination, indefinite detention, torture -- employed to achieve the
Regime's openly stated ideological goal: "full-spectrum dominance" of
global politics and resources, particularly energy resources. Al-Qaida has
the same goal, and uses the same methods, albeit on a smaller,
"asymmetrical" scale.

Now we are all at the mercy of these entwined terrorist factions -- both
led by fundamentalist sons of two financially linked elitist clans. We
will see more Guananamos, more Madrids, before this long, dark night is
over. 

Annotations

How We Survived Jail Hell
The Observer, March 14, 2004

The Full Story of the Guantanamo Britons
The Observer, March 14, 2004

Did the Saudis Buy a President?
Salon.com, March 12, 2004

Even Death Row is Preferable to This
The Observer, Feb. 22, 2004

My Hell in Camp X-Ray
The Daily Mirror, March 12, 2004

This Creeping Sickness
The Guardian, March 13, 2004

Five Are Free, But Bush Shows No Remorse
Glasgow Sunday Herald, March 14, 2004

Pentagon Dismisses as 'Lies' Guantanamo Tales of Abuse
Agence France Presse, March 15, 2004

The Empire Backfires
The Nation, March 29, 2004 edition

The Getaway
The New Yorker, Jan. 21, 2001

For Some Defendants, An American Gulag
St. Petersburg Times, March 14, 2004

For More Years of Camp Bush?
The Nation Institute, March 2004

The House of bin Laden
The New Yorker, Nov. 12, 2001

Who is Osama bin Laden?
Centre for Research on Globalization, Sept. 11, 2001

Bush's Death Squads
Ratical.org, Jan. 31, 2002

Bush Has Widened Authority of CIA to Kill Terrorists
New York Times, Dec. 15, 2002

Special Ops Get OK to Initiate Its Own Missions
Washington Times, Jan. 8, 2003

The Enemy Within
The Observer, Oct. 27, 2002

CIA Worked in Tandem With Pakistan to Create Taliban
The Times of India, March 7, 2001

The Role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence in the Sept. 11 Attacks
Centre for Research on Globalisation, Nov. 2, 2001

Spy Chief's Exit Due to Links With Terrorist
Dawn (Pakistan), Oct. 9, 2001

The Search for Osama
New Yorker, July 28, 2003

Terror in the Saudi Kingdom
Salon.com, Aug. 1, 2003

General Ashcroft's Detention Camps
Village Voice, Sept. 10, 2002

Blowback: Bin Laden Comes Home to Roost
MSNBC.com, Aug. 24, 1998

FBI Claims Bin Laden Inquiry was Frustrated
The Guardian, Nov. 7, 2001

M16 Halted Bid to Arrest bin Laden
The Observer, Nov. 10, 2002

Knowing Much, Bush Did Little to Protect America
Village Voice, March 16, 2002

Bin Laden Money Flow Leads to Midland, Texas
In These Times, October 2001

Bush Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' Before Becoming President
Glasgow Sunday Herald, Sept. 15, 2002

Rebuilding America's Defenses
Project for a New Century, September 2000

Statement of Principles
Project for a New American Century, June 3, 1997

National Security Strategy of the United States
The White House, September 2002

Cheney Dirtied by Iraqi Oil

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sept. 5, 2002

Coward's War in Yemen
Spiked, Nov. 11, 2002

Drones of Death
The Guardian, Nov. 6, 2002

© 2004 Moscow Times