America the beautiful is an illusion

In all theaters of war, slaughter, sadism, and other atrocities are institutionalized. Rape becomes a weapon of war. On June 19, 2008, the Security Council agreed, adopting Resolution 1820. It demanded an “immediate and complete halt to acts of sexual violence against civilians in conflict zones.” It said: “Women and girls are particularly targeted by […]

US drone bases throughout the Middle East

The Air Force is now negotiating with Turkey to relocate some of the Predator drones still operating in Iraq to the giant air base at Incirlik next year. Elsewhere in the Greater Middle East, according to Aviation Week, the military is launching Global Hawks from Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, piloted […]

Gruesome photos courtesy US Kill Team in Afghanistan

During the first five months of last year, a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan went on a shooting spree, killing at least four unarmed civilians and mutilating several of the corpses. The “kill team” – members of the 5th Stryker Brigade stationed near Kandahar – took scores of photos chronicling their kills and their […]

George W Bush canceling out on Geneva due to Geneva Conventions

As the news broke that former President George W. Bush had abruptly canceled his scheduled appearance in Geneva to avoid the risk of arrest on a torture complaint, my first thought was — how humiliating, not only for Bush but, by extension, for all Americans. However, those who might have expected Bush to be down […]

Why George W. Bush and cohorts should worry

In his memoir George W. Bush admitted that he authorized that detainees be waterboarded, tortured, a crime under US and international law. Where is the accountability for these crimes? Bush and other criminals will be brought to justice if the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) […]

While U.S. Pastor threatens to burn Korans, U.S. Military burns Bibles

What with all the uproar about the Florida preacher who threatened to publicly burn the Koran (Qu’ran), it turns out that the U.S. military in Afghanistan burned confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two main Afghan languages, Pashto and Dari. This was amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, a […]

Why does the U.S. refuse to probe Bush era torture?

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case of a Canadian man who contends that U.S. authorities mistook him for an al Qaeda operative and shipped him to a secret prison in Syria, where he was beaten with electrical cables and held in a grave-like cell for 10 months. And this despite the fact […]

Britain’s Abu Ghraib

An inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa will detail how Mousa died in Iraq in September 2003, allegedly brutalized by British soldiers in a “free for all”; and how it was that he and nine other men in the same incident were allegedly hooded, forced into painful stress positions, and deprived of sleep, food […]

Bush Torture Program included Human Experimentation

In a 27-page report, “Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program” (available here), the organization Physicians for Human Rights has brought into sharp focus the role played by US medical personnel in torture and human experimentation. As the introduction states, this is “the first report to reveal […]

Canadian teen Omar Khadr and the Afghanistan War

A former U.S. Army combat medic testified that he once found Canadian teen captive Omar Khadr chained by the arms to the door of a 5-foot-square cage at a U.S. lockup in Afghanistan, hooded and weeping, describing the captive as “scared and frustrated,” but “no stronger or weaker than any other detainee in that position.” […]