In this issue:

Bush Picks Up Two 9/11 Commission Recommendations

Hagel: Panic Is Not the Order of the Day

Guess Who's Concerned About Civil Liberties?

Ridge Said To Be Planning To Quit

Cheney, Rumsfeld Named in Abu Ghraib Hearing

Retired Air Force General Blasts Bush

Detainee Case Challenges U.S. Torture Policy

Kerry Compares Bush to Hoover

No Debate Allowed at Republican Convention

Ex-Guantanamo Prisoners Detail Torture and Abuse

From Volume 3, Issue Number 32 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Aug. 10, 2004

United States News Digest

Bush Picks Up Two 9/11 Commission Recommendations

Speaking in a Rose Garden appearance Aug. 2, President George W. Bush said he will ask Congress to substantially revise the 1947 National Security Act, to create a post of National Intelligence Director (NID), appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, but, unlike the 9/11 Commission recommendation, not within the Executive Office of the President. The NID would serve at the pleasure of the President, whose principal intelligence adviser he will be. The NID will oversee and coordinate foreign and domestic activities of the entire intelligence community. He will have authority to "coordinate budgets." He will not be a member of the Cabinet. Bush did not mention any relation of the NID to the National Security Council.

Bush will create a National Counterterrorism Center, as recommended by the Commission, through Executive Order, to be on top of all counter-terror intelligence and operations, foreign and domestic. Its head will report to the NID, and to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), until the NID post is created. Bush will consider creating a second such center on WMD.

(See this week's InDepth for Lyndon LaRouche's commentary on the 9/11 Commission report: "A G.W. Bush Intelligence Czar Is Obviously an Oxymoron.")

Hagel: Panic Is Not the Order of the Day

As two more hearings were held on Capitol Hill on the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb) warned, in an Aug. 3 op-ed in the Washington Post, of the potential damage to the intelligence community, if proposals for reform become a partisan tool during the Presidential elections. "We must not allow false urgency, dictated by the political calendar. to overtake the need for serious reform," Hagel wrote.

Although he regards reform as necessary, Hagel said that the American people should feel secure about their intelligence system, which he called the best in the world. "They should not be misled into believing that they are at risk because of an incompetent, inadequate intelligence system," Hagel states. "Panic is not the order of the day. Responsible reform is the objective."

Guess Who's Concerned About Civil Liberties?

A "senior administration official" gave a background briefing to reporters on July 30, concerning the White House's planning in response to the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. The official claimed that many of the Commission's recommendations are actually an endorsement of counter-terrorism policies already put into effect by the administration. The official also claimed that the White House wants to put a premium on protecting civil liberties.

In response to which, ACLU spokesman Anthony Romero noted the irony, stating: "I wish they had shown similar concerns about civil liberties before the Patriot Act ... it's cynical to trot out arguments on civil liberties when they don't like the findings of the 9/11 report."

Ridge Said To Be Planning To Quit

Associated Press reported July 31 that Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has told colleagues he will resign after the November elections, regardless of the outcome. Ridge himself would not comment on the reports.

This is consistent with the recent report, published in the Capitol Hill Blue leak sheet, that Ridge has been complaining that he never gets to see President Bush, and that his marching orders come from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who is called "Bush's Himmler" by some of Ridge's staff.

Cheney, Rumsfeld Named in Abu Ghraib Hearing

A hearing opened on Aug. 2 at Fort Bragg, N.C., in the case of PFC Lynndie England, who had participated in posed pictures of naked and contorted Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. England's grinning face was seen around the world holding the end of a dog leash, which was clasped around a naked prisoner's neck.

The Article 32 hearing is the equivalent of a grand jury, but is open, and attended by the defendant. England is charged with 13 counts of abusing detainees and six counts stemming from possession of sexually explicit photos. She is facing a maximum possible sentence of 38 years in prison. Six other low-level U.S. military personnel have also been charged.

NPR radio reported that England's lawyers have requested all torture memos related to the prison investigation, asserting that England is a "poster child" for flawed U.S. war policies. In the hearing, England will be able to call witnesses; however, her lawyers' request to call Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was denied.

Retired Air Force General Blasts Bush

Retired Gen. Tony McPeak, Air Force Chief of Staff during the 1991 Gulf War, gave the Democratic response to President Bush's radio address on July 31. McPeak, who campaigned for Dole in 1996, and was a "Veteran for Bush" in 2000, said that "what has happened over the last three years is such a tragedy, such a national disaster." He said that the alliances that won World War II and the Cold War were gone, while the administration has "alienated our friends, damaged our credibility around the world, reduced our influence to an all-time low in my lifetime, [and] given hope to our enemies."

McPeak was one of the generals on the podium at the Democratic Convention, backing John Kerry.

Detainee Case Challenges U.S. Torture Policy

The case of Ahmed Abu-Ali is putting a spotlight on another side of the lawlessness of the Bush Administration in the pursuit of its so-called war on terrorism: the turning over of terrorist suspects to other countries to be interrogated and tortured for information.

Abu-Ali is a 23-year old American citizen who has been held in Saudi Arabia at the behest of the U.S. government, his family and lawyer say. Abu Ali was arrested by Saudi authorities in June of last year, while he was a student at the Islamic University of Medina, and has been held without charge ever since. Morton Sklar, the executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights, and Abu Ali's lawyer, said at a press conference Aug. 4, that he believes that Abu Ali's detention is related to the policy termed "rendition to torture," i.e., turning suspects over to other countries. He noted that within five hours after the family filed a habeas corpus petition in D.C. Federal court demanding that the U.S. government seek Abu Ali's release, on July 28, the State Department called the family claiming that Saudi authorities were about to file criminal charges against Abu Ali, even though the Saudi Embassy in Washington said, in a statement to the Washington Post on July 29, that they would release him to U.S. custody the moment they received a request to do so. He cited the State Department phone call as another sign that the Saudis are acting under U.S. direction, and charged that the U.S. is attempting to undercut the authority of U.S. courts to act on this matter.

As for the wider implications of the case, Sklar said that if the court rules in Abu Ali's favor, then the policy of rendition to torture will be open to challenge. Sklar's organization estimates that there have been more than 200 such cases. He noted that the problems of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and so forth "indicate that the United States government is following the pattern and practice of using interrogations ... of torture and stressful techniques to obtain information ... and it's being abused very extensively, so we very much want to challenge that policy in general as well as to get Ahmed back home to the U.S."

Kerry Compares Bush to Hoover

In campaigning across the U.S., last week, John Kerry has been upping his attacks on President Bush and his policies. Speaking in Washington Aug. 4, to the minority journalists' convention, Kerry compared Bush to President Herbert Hoover, who denied the existence of the Great Depression.

"Just saying that you've turned a corner doesn't make it so, Kerry said. "Just like saying there are weapons of mass destruction [in Iraq] doesn't make it so. Just like saying you can fight a war on the cheap doesn't make it so. Just like saying 'mission accomplished' doesn't make it so.... The last President who used that slogan, who told us that prosperity was just around the corner, was Herbert Hoover, during the Great Depression."

Kerry also hit Bush on 9/11: "Had I been reading to children, and had my top aide whispered in my ear that America is under attack, I would have told those kids very nicely and politely that the President of the United States has something that he needs to attend to."

No Debate Allowed at Republican Convention

Columnist Robert Novak, in his Washington Post column of Aug. 5, leaked a dirty little secret: Dissenting Republicans "need not apply" to the Republican convention. Moreover, the way Bush-Cheney are handling the Republican "platform" is even worse than the way that the DNC dealt with the Democratic platform. Novak says that with only three weeks to go before the Republican platform committee meets, "no draft platform exists, no subcommittees have been named, ... no accommodations have been made, but "all this looks like a coolly calculated plan."

"The suspicion has grown that Bush's reelection strategists—Karl Rove and Karen Hughes—do not want the open debate over principles and policies.... The carefully guarded Bush campaign game plan is to present delegates ... with an unpleasant surprise: ... a trimmed down document with virtually no time to debate it." Like the Dems, the GOP platform will finally be released on Tuesday of the convention, and voted on Thursday.

While it is unlikely that there will be any kind of political explosion openly, there is a revolt—but it is mainly about the desire to kick Dick Cheney off the ticket.

Ex-Guantanamo Prisoners Detail Torture and Abuse

Three Muslim men from England have provided graphic, first-hand accounts of their experiences after being captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 by Northern Alliance forces under General Dostum. According to a report released Aug. 3 by the Center for Constitutional Rights, they were transported in shipping containers to Kandahar (they were among the 20 survivors of 200 who were packed into the containers), and then eventually handed over to U.S. military custody and shipped to Guantanamo. At all points until arriving at Guantanamo, they were beaten, held without adequate food, clothing, or sanitation; the abuses and torture continued at Guantanamo, and intensified dramatically after the first commander was relieved and replaced by Gen. Geoffrey Miller. (Miller was later deployed to Iraq to "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib prison there.)

The sexual humiliation of prisoners began after Miller took over; this was accompanied by religious humiliation, all of which, the men believed, was targetted at those who would be most affected by it.

Eventually, conditions became so unbearable, both physically and psychologically, that many prisoners confessed to things that they had not, and could not have, done. One of the three, Asif Iqbal, confessed to being a person shown in a videotape with Osama bin Laden. However, since his release, it has been proven that he was living and working in England at the time the videotape was made.

The 115-page report compiled from statements of the three British men, has been submitted to Senators John Warner (R-Va), Carl Levin (D-Mich), and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) by the Center for Constitutional Rights in the U.S.

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