UN Torture Envoy Says US Deny Access to Iraq Jails
Reuters
The U.N. investigator on torture said on Tuesday the United States had denied his request to visit U.S.-run jails in Iraq and insisted a visit could help clear its legacy of the prison abuse scandal in Abu Ghraib.
Manfred Nowak, United Nations special rapporteur on torture, said he had received credible information the situation had improved at U.S. detention facilities in recent years, but stressed only a visit would allow him to verify them.
An international outcry erupted in 2004 after images of prisoner abuse by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad, including naked detainees stacked in a pyramid and others cowering before snarling dogs, became public.
The NY Times didn't think the US denial of inspection was newsworthy. Americans never got this story.
-----------
New Report: Coerced Evidence Contaminating Judicial System, Undermining Terrorist Prosecutions
NEW YORK - The introduction of coerced evidence, obtained through the use of official cruelty, into military commission trials at Guantanamo Bay is rapidly contaminating the justice system and jeopardizing the prospects for the successful prosecution of terrorists, a new report charges.
The report--Tortured Justice: Using Coerced Evidence to Prosecute Terrorist Suspects—released today by Human Rights First, finds the Bush administration has undercut its own intended use of the military commission system to bring those responsible for 9/11 to justice, by allowing the admission of evidence tainted by torture.
The administration sanctioned the use of abusive interrogation methods, believing that the need to gather information by any means to prevent future terrorist attacks took precedence over the complications it would cause down the line in prosecuting crimes that had already taken place.
The NY Times, however, didn't thing Americans needed to know about torture and the contamination of the judicial system.
http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0310-04.htm
-----------
Dozens of U.S. troops in Iraq fell sick at bases using “unmonitored and potentially unsafe” water supplied by the military and a contractor (KBR) once owned by Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, the Pentagon’s internal watchdog says.
A report obtained by The Associated Press said soldiers experienced skin abscesses, cellulitis, skin infections, diarrhea and other illnesses after using discolored, smelly water for personal hygiene and laundry at five U.S. military sites in Iraq.
The Defense Department’s inspector general’s report found water quality problems between March 2004 and February 2006 at three sites run by contractor KBR Inc., and between January 2004 and December 2006 at two military-operated locations.
Contaminated water for the troops? Cheney doesn't care. But why would the NY Times not report this? Just not good PR for the war effort?
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/10/7576/
-----------
The decision by the NY Times to ignore last week's Winter Soldier Testimony in DC was indicative of the newspapers support of the Iraq War. Most foreign media was there, but the US elite have decided that the war must continue, and all coverage is at an end. The NY Times may acknowledge 4,000 US soldiers dead, but it will never cover what our forces have done to the Iraq people.
