Three U.S. soldiers killed four handcuffed and blindfolded Iraqi prisoners with pistol shots on the bank of a Baghdad canal last year, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Sergeant First Class Joseph P. Mayo, the platoon sergeant, and Sergeant Michael P. Leahy Jr., Company D’s senior medic and an acting squad leader, made sworn statements in January to Army investigators in Schweinfurt, Germany probing the incident, the newspaper reported on its website.

The men each described killing one of the Iraqi detainees, as directed by First Sergeant John E. Hatley, according to the statements. Hatley shot two other detainees with a pistol in the back of the head, Mayo and Leahy told investigators, according to the NYT.

U.S. soldiers cannot harm enemy combatants once they are disarmed and in custody, the NYT said.

A spokesman for the U.S. Army in Europe declined to comment, saying he could not speculate on any future legal action.

According to Leahy’s statement, cited by the NYT, Army officials directed Hatley’s convoy to release the men because there was insufficient evidence to detain them.

“First Sergeant Hatley then made the call to take the detainees to a canal and kill them,” as retribution for the deaths of two soldiers from the unit, Leahy said in his statement.

“So the patrol went to the canal, and First Sergeant, Sgt. First Class Mayo and I took the detainees out of the back of the Bradley (fighting vehicle), lined them up and shot them,” he added, according to The Times. “Then we pushed the bodies into the canal and left.”

After the men were killed, Hatley told Leahy and Mayo to remove the Iraqis’ bloody blindfolds and plastic handcuffs, according to the newspaper. The three soldiers then shoved the bodies into the canal and drove back to their combat outpost, the paper said.

No charges have been filed against Hatley, Mayo or Leahy — all from Company D, First Battalion, Second Infantry, 172nd Infantry Brigade.

However, four other soldiers have been charged with conspiracy to commit premeditated murder relating to an incident that occurred last year in Baghdad, the U.S. Army in Europe said in a statement last month.

A hearing in that case opened on Tuesday and is still going on in the southern German town of Vilseck, the U.S. Army spokesman said on Wednesday.

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BAGHDAD — The tanks were full of enough clean drinking water for some 200,000 Iraqis at a new distribution station in eastern Baghdad, but local officials struggled Saturday to agree on where it should go.

The dilemma was an example of the obstacles facing the Iraqis and their American backers as they try to rebuild the country. The Iraqi government is flush with oil money, but officials often lack the know-how and experience to dole out the cash efficiently.

U.S. soldiers and Iraqi officials began working on the water distribution site in the former Shiite militia stronghold of New Baghdad in April — part of a broader strategy to provide immediate relief in hopes of boosting confidence in the Iraqi government and preventing militants from regaining support.

Iraq’s government provided $191,000 for the project, which is located on a joint U.S.-Iraqi military base in the area.

Water can either be collected by people filling bottles and other containers from three public taps on the base or from tanker trucks that will deliver it to collection points elsewhere in the neighborhood.

American officials acknowledge it’s a short-term solution. Better if people could receive clean water through their faucets at home.

But the Americans say the distribution system will at least provide Iraqis breathing room to improve infrastructure that has been devastated after more than five years of violence.

Officials need “to rapidly and responsibly meet the needs of the Iraqi people” but also to “sustain, to plan, to budget, execute and provide those services for the people,” said Brig. Gen. Robin Swan, a deputy commander for the 4th Infantry Division in Baghdad.

Iraqis have been able to use the taps at the facility, which has a storage capacity of about 52,800 gallons. But the local municipal council hasn’t decided how many trucks can be used and where they should deliver the water.

“The challenge has been to come up with a distribution plan,” said Maj. Gary Giles, a civil affairs officer with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, which is spearheading the project. “Here we’re having some fits and starts.”

But Giles, 50, was optimistic the issue would be resolved so the trucks can start delivering water by the end of the week.

Mudhafer Ali, the official in charge of the Baghdad water pipes network, said the water would be distributed by trucks carrying nearly 4,000 gallons each and there was a plan to eventually expand the project to provide irrigation water.

“There is an agreement to use five trucks that will work for eight hours to deliver water to the residents,” he said.

Filthy drinking water that is often contaminated by sewage that overflows into the Tigris River has raised fears of cholera and other diseases. Baghdad’s network of aging pipes also suffers damage because impoverished and displaced Iraqis frequently tap into it illegally.

A cholera outbreak in northern Iraq last year killed 14 people, but U.S. military officials say no confirmed cases of cholera have been recorded this year.

U.S. and Iraqi officials insist that the tap water in most of Baghdad is of good quality. The U.S. military claims that nine water treatment plants run by the city’s water authority are capable of producing more than 2 million cubic meters of potable water per day, a 30% increase from last year.

Still, many people lack clean water.

Recognizing the urgency, the Iraqi government has invested or plans to invest more than $200 million, in addition to $50 million in U.S. military emergency funds. More than 100 projects are in the works to improve the capital’s water supply, according to the U.S. military.

Two-thirds of the raw sewage produced in the capital flows untreated into rivers and waterways, Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said in his quarterly report released last month.

But the report also found that more Iraqis nationwide have access to potable water now than before the U.S.-led war began in March 2003 — 20 million people compared with 12.9 million previously.

The World Bank has estimated that it would take $14.4 billion to rebuild the Iraqi public works and water system.

Another water distribution site launched last week in Baladiyat, another eastern Shiite neighborhood, has been welcomed by residents.

“We are suffering a lot due to this problem especially in summer. Water is very vital to us and we hope that further measures are taken to lessen our suffering,” said Abdul-Hussein Hanoun, a 45-year-old Education Ministry worker who lives near the station.

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In a secret report last year, the Red Cross found evidence of the CIA using torture on prisoners that would make the Bush administration guilty of war crimes, The New York Times reported Friday.

The Red Cross determined the culpability of the Bush administration after interviewing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, according to the article.

Prisoner Abu Zubaydahwho said he had been waterboarded, “slammed against the walls” and confined in boxes “so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position.”

The information comes from a new book written by Jane Meyer, who has frequently published articles concerning counter-terrorism in The New Yorker.

The book is titled “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” and will be released next week.

Mayer cited “sources familiar with the report” to explain the confidential document as a warning “that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted.”

The report was submitted to CIA last year and concluded that American interrogation methods are “categorically” torture that violates both domestic and international law, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported Friday.

Although the CIA had already admitted to the use of waterboarding, Meyer says in the book that several CIA officers confirm the findings of the Red Cross, including the other forms of torture mentioned.

Maddow called George W. Bush a “torture-approver-in-chief who has yet to be held to account for anything” and said that congressman Dennis Kucinich had reintroduced his articles of impeachment against the president.

Maddow questioned constitutional law expert Johnathan Turley about the development.

“The problem for the bush admin is that they perfected plausible deniability techniques,” Turley said. “They bring out one or two people that are willing to debate on cable shows whether waterboarding is torture and it leaves the impression that its a closed question.

“It’s not. It’s just like the domestic surveillance program that the federal court said just a week ago was also not just a closed question.”

When asked by Maddow if the chances are now greater that Bush will be prosecuted now or after leaving office by the international community, Turley compared the situation to Serbia in the early 90s.

“I’d never thought I would say this, but I think it might in fact be time for the United States to be held internationally to a tribunal. I never thought in my lifetime I would say that.”

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By Jason Leopold
Online Journal Contributing Writer

When Dick Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton in the 1990s, he urged Congress to ease sanctions against Iran and enter into diplomatic discussions with the country’s leaders so the oilfield services company could legally do business there.

“Let me make a generalized statement about a trend I see in the U.S. Congress that I find disturbing, that applies not only with respect to the Iranian situation but a number of others as well,” Cheney said at the time. “I think we Americans sometimes make mistakes . . . There seems to be an assumption that somehow we know what’s best for everybody else and that we are going to use our economic clout to get everybody else to live the way we would like.”

In March 1995, Clinton signed an executive order that prohibited “new investments [in Iran] by U.S. persons, including commitment of funds or other assets.” It also restricts U.S. companies from performing services “that would benefit the Iranian oil industry. Violation of the order can result in fines of as much as $500,000 for companies and up to 10 years in jail for individuals.”

Cheney was highly critical of the Clinton administration’s policy toward Iran.

“I think we’d be better off if we, in fact, backed off those sanctions [on Iran], didn’t try to impose secondary boycotts on companies . . . trying to do business over there . . . and instead started to rebuild those relationships,” Cheney said during a 1998 business trip to Sydney, Australia, reported by Australia’s Illawarra Mercury newspaper.

Despite assertions by the vice president that Iran has been trying to build a nuclear weapon since the 1990s, the Bush administration decided it would not punish foreign oil and gas companies that invest in Iran or other countries that allegedly sponsor terrorism.

Recently, Bush administration officials said they would not rule out military action against Iran for allegedly interfering in U.S. interests in Iraq.

Halliburton first started doing business in Iran as early as 1995. According to a February 2001 report in the Wall Street Journal, “U.S. laws have banned most American commerce with Iran. Halliburton Products & Services Ltd. works behind an unmarked door on the ninth floor of a new north Tehran tower block. A brochure declares that the company was registered in 1975 in the Cayman Islands, is based in the Persian Gulf sheikdom of Dubai and is “non-American.” But, like the sign over the receptionist’s head, the brochure bears the Dallas company’s name and red emblem, and offers services from Halliburton units around the world.”

In the February 2001 report, the Journal quoted an anonymous U.S. official as saying “a Halliburton office in Tehran would violate at least the spirit of American law.” Moreover, a U.S. Treasury Department website detailing U.S. sanctions against Iran bans almost all U.S. trade and investment with Iran, specifically in oil services. The Web site adds: “No U.S. person may approve or facilitate the entry into or performance of transactions or contracts with Iran by a foreign subsidiary of a U.S. firm that the U.S person is precluded from performing directly. Similarly, no U.S. person may facilitate such transactions by unaffiliated foreign persons.”

Wendy Hall, a spokeswoman for Halliburton, said in an interview with me last year that Halliburton may not agree with Iran’s “policies or actions” and the company makes “no excuses for their behaviors” but “due to the long-term nature of our business and the inevitability of political and social change, it is neither prudent nor appropriate for our company to establish our own country-by-country foreign policy.”

Hall added that “decisions as to the nature of such governments and their actions are better made by governmental authorities and international entities such as the United Nations as opposed to individual persons or companies. Putting politics aside, we and our affiliates operate in countries, to the extent it is legally permissible, where our customers are active as they expect us to provide oilfield services support to their international operations.”

In 1995, Halliburton paid a $1.2 million fine to the U.S. government and $261 million in civil penalties for violating a U.S. trade embargo by shipping oilfield equipment to Libya. Federal officials said some of the well servicing equipment sent to Libya by Halliburton between late 1987 and early 1990 could have been used in the development of nuclear weapons. President Reagan imposed the embargo against Libya in 1986 because of alleged links to international terrorism.

But the fact that Halliburton may have unwillingly helped Libya obtain a crucial component to build an atomic bomb only made Cheney push the Clinton administration harder to support trade with Libya and Iran.

Additionally, while Cheney headed Halliburton the company engaged in secret business dealings with Saddam Hussein’s regime by selling Iraq oil production equipment and spare parts to get the Iraqi oil fields up and running, according to confidential United Nations records.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Cheney vehemently denied that Halliburton did business with Iraq while he was chief executive. He acknowledged that Halliburton did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries, Cheney said, “Iraq’s different.”

“I had a firm policy that we wouldn’t do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal,” Cheney said on the ABC-TV news program “This Week” on July 30, 2000. “We’ve not done any business in Iraq since U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, and I had a standing policy that I wouldn’t do that.”

But it turns out that Cheney was not telling the truth.

In 1998, Cheney oversaw Halliburton’s acquisition of Dresser Industries Inc, the unit that sold oil equipment to Iraq through two subsidiaries of a joint venture with another large U.S. equipment maker, Ingersoll-Rand Co.

The Halliburton subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad through French affiliates from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, U.N. records show. Ingersoll Dresser Pump also signed contracts — later blocked by the United States — to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces destroyed in the Gulf War, the Post reported in a June 2001 story.

The Halliburton subsidiaries and several other American and foreign oil supply companies helped Iraq increase its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion in 2000.

U.S. and European officials have argued that the increase in production also expanded Saddam’s ability to use some of that money for weapons, luxury goods and palaces. Security Council diplomats estimate that Iraq may be skimming off as much as 10 percent of the proceeds from the oil-for-food program, according to documents obtained by the United Nations Security Council.

During his tenure as chief executive of Halliburton, Cheney pushed the U.N. Security Council to end an 11-year embargo on sales of civilian goods, including oil related equipment, to Iraq.

Under Cheney, Halliburton and its subsidiaries were one of several American and foreign oil supply companies that helped Iraq increase its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion in 2000 by exploiting a loophole in the law and selling Iraq spare parts for its oil fields so it could pump more oil. U.S. and European officials have long argued that the increase in Iraq’s oil production also expanded Saddam’s ability to use some of that money for weapons, luxury goods and palaces.

UN documents show that Halliburton’s affiliates have had controversial dealings with Saddam Hussein’s regime during Cheney’s tenure at the company, which played a part in helping the late dictator pocket billions of dollars under the UN’s oil-for-food program. The Clinton administration blocked one deal Halliburton was trying to push through because it was “not authorized under the oil-for-food deal,” according to UN documents. That deal, between Halliburton subsidiary Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. and Iraq, included agreements by the firm to sell nearly $1 million in spare parts, compressors and firefighting equipment to refurbish an offshore oil terminal, Khor al-Amaya. Still, Halliburton used one of its foreign subsidiaries to sell Iraq the equipment it needed so the country could pump more oil, according to a report in the Washington Post in June 2001.

The Halliburton subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad through French affiliates from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, UN records show. Ingersoll Dresser Pump also signed contracts — later blocked by the United States, according to the Post — to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces destroyed in the Gulf War years earlier.

As secretary of defense in the first Bush administration, Cheney helped to lead a multinational coalition against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War and to devise a comprehensive economic embargo to isolate Saddam Hussein’s government. After Cheney was named chief executive of Halliburton in 1995, he promised to maintain a hard line against Baghdad.

But Cheney’s position against Iraq radically changed when he was named CEO of Halliburton. Cheney said sanctions against Iraq took a financial toll on the corporation he headed.

“We seem to be sanction-happy as a government,” Cheney said at an energy conference in April 1996, reported in the oil industry publication Petroleum Finance Week. “The problem is that the good Lord didn’t see fit to always put oil and gas resources where there are democratic governments,” he observed during his conference presentation.

Sanctions make U.S. businesses “the bystander who gets hit when a train wreck occurs,” Cheney said.

“While virtually every other country sees the need for sanctions against Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s regime there, Cheney sees general agreement that the measures have not been very effective despite their having most of the international community’s support. An individual country’s embargo, such as that of the United States against Iran, has virtually no effect since the target country simply signs a contract with a non- U.S. business,” Petroleum Finance Week reported.

“That’s exactly what happened when the government told Conoco Inc. that it could not develop an oil field there,” Cheney told Petroleum Finance Week. Total S.A. “simply took it over.”
Jason Leopold is the author of “News Junkie,” a memoir. Visit www.newsjunkiebook.com for a preview. His new website is The Public Record.

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One gets the impression that there are some people in Washington who believe that Israel or the U.S. can bomb Iran’s nuclear reactors, fly home, and it will be mission complete.

It makes you wonder if perhaps there is a virus going around that is gradually making people stupid. If we or Israel attack Iran, we will have a new war on our hands. The Iranians are not going to shrug off an attack and say, “You naughty boys, you.”

Consider how much trouble Iraq has given us. Some 4,000 dead and 29,000 wounded, a half a trillion dollars in cost and still climbing, and five years later, we cannot say that the country is pacified.

Iraq is a small country compared with Iran. Iran has about 70 million people. Its western mountains border the Persian Gulf. In other words, its missiles and guns look down on the U.S. ships below it. And it has lots of missiles, from short-range to intermediate-range (around 2,200 kilometers).

More to the point, it has been equipped by Russia with the fastest anti-ship missile on the planet. The SS-N-22 Sunburn can travel at Mach 3 at high altitude and at Mach 2.2 at low altitude. That is faster than anything in our arsenal.

Iran’s conventional forces include an army of 540,000 men and 300,000 reserves, including 120,000 Iranian Guards especially trained in unconventional warfare. It has more than 1,600 main battle tanks and 21,000 other armored combat vehicles. It has 3,200 artillery pieces, three submarines, 59 surface warships and 10 amphibious ships.

It’s been receiving help in arming itself from China, North Korea and Russia. Unlike Iraq, Iran’s forces have not been worn down with bombing, wars and sanctions. It also has a new anti-aircraft defense system from Russia that I’ve heard is pretty snazzy.

So, if you think we or Israel can attack Iran and not expect retaliation, I’d have to say with regret that you are a moron. If you think we could easily handle Iran in an all-out war, I’d have to promote you to idiot.

Attacking Iran would be folly, but we seem to be living in the Age of Folly. Morons and idiots took us into an unjustified war against Iraq before we had finished the job in Afghanistan. Now we have troops tied down in both countries.

For some years now, I’ve worried that we seem to be more and more like Colonial England – arrogant, racist, overestimating our own capacity and underestimating that of our enemies. As the fate of the British Empire demonstrates, that is a fatal flaw.

The British never dreamed that the “little yellow people” could come ashore by land and take Singapore from the rear or that they would sink the pride of the British fleet, but they did both.

I suppose no one in Washington can imagine the Iranians sinking one of our carriers in the Persian Gulf. How’d you like to be the president who has to tell the American people that we’ve lost a carrier for the first time since World War II?

Exactly how the Iranians will respond to an attack, I don’t know, but they will respond. In keeping with our present policy, our attack on Iran would be illegal, since under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

Who would have thought that we would become the rogue nation committing acts of aggression around the globe?

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BAGHDAD -Iraqi lawmakers say the United States is demanding 58 bases as part of a proposed “status of forces” agreement that will allow U.S. troops to remain in the country indefinitely.

Leading members of the two ruling Shiite parties said in a series of interviews the Iraqi government rejected this proposal along with another U.S. demand that would have effectively handed over to the United States the power to determine if a hostile act from another country is aggression against Iraq. Lawmakers said they fear this power would drag Iraq into a war between the United States and Iran.

“The points that were put forth by the Americans were more abominable than the occupation,” said Jalal al Din al Saghir, a leading lawmaker from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. “We were occupied by order of the Security Council,” he said, referring to the 2004 Resolution mandating a U.S. military occupation in Iraq at the head of an international coalition. “But now we are being asked to sign for our own occupation. That is why we have absolutely refused all that we have seen so far.”

Other conditions sought by the United States include control over Iraqi air space up to 30,000 feet and immunity from prosecution for U.S. troops and private military contractors. The agreement would run indefinitely but be subject to cancellation with two years notice from either side, lawmakers said.

“It would impair Iraqi sovereignty,” said Ali al Adeeb a leading member of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s Dawa party of the proposed accord. “The Americans insist so far that is they who define what is an aggression on Iraq and what is democracy inside Iraq… if we come under aggression we should define it and ask for help.”

Both Saghir and Adeeb said that the Iraqi government rejected the terms as unacceptable. They said the government wants a U.S. presence and a U.S. security guarantee but also wants to control security within the country, stop indefinite detentions of Iraqis by U.S. forces and have a say in U.S. forces’ conduct in Iraq.

The 58 bases would represent an expansion of the U.S. presence here. Currently, the United States operates out of about 30 major bases, not including smaller facilities such as combat outposts, according to a U.S. military map.

” Is there sovereignty for Iraq - or isn’t there? If it is left to them, they would ask for immunity even for the American dogs,” Saghir said. “We have given Bush our views - some new ideas and I find that there is a certain harmony between his thoughts and ours. And he promised to tell the negotiators to change their methods.”

Maliki returned Monday from his second visit to Iran, whose Islamic rulers are adamantly opposed to the accord. Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei said following meetings with Maliki that we have “no doubt that the Americans’ dreams will not come true.”

Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, criticized the lawmakers for poisoning the public discussion before an agreement is concluded. He said U.S. officials had been flexible in the talks, as well as “frank and honest since the beginning.”

“This is an ongoing process,” Zebari said. “There is no agreement yet. Proposals have been modified, they have been changed and altered. We don’t have a final text yet for them to be judgmental.”

Zebari, who said a negotiating session was held with U.S. officials on the new accord Monday, said any agreement will be submitted to the Iraqi parliament for approval. Leaders in the U.S. Congress have also demanded a say in the agreement, but the Bush administration says it is planning to make this an executive accord not subject to Senate ratification.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain didn’t respond for requests for comment, but the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, said through a spokesman that he believes the Bush administration must submit the agreement to Congress and that it should make “absolutely clear” that the United States will not maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, said he had not heard of a plan to seek 50 or more bases in Iraq, and that if it is the case, Congress is likely to challenge the idea. “Congress would have a lot of questions, and the president should be very careful in negotiating,” Hamilton, who now directs the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, told McClatchy.

The top U.S. Embassy spokesman in Iraq rejected the latest Iraqi criticism.

“Look, there is going to be no occupation,” said U.S. spokesman Adam Ereli. “Now it’s perfectly understandable that there are those that are following this closely in Iraq who have concerns about what this means for Iraqi sovereignty and independence. We understand that and we appreciate that and that’s why nothing is going to be rammed down anybody’s throat.

“It’s kind of like a forced marriage. It just doesn’t work. They either want you or they don’t want you. You can’t use coercion to get them to like you,” he added.

U.S. officials in Baghdad say they are determined to complete the accord by July 31 so that parliamentary deliberations can be completed before the Dec. 31 expiration of the UN mandate.

The agreement will not specify how many troops or where they will be deployed, said a U.S. official who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject, but the agreement will detail the legal framework under which U.S. troops will operate. The U.S. official said that in the absence of a UN resolution authorizing the use of force, “there have to be terms that are in place. That’s the reality that we’re trying to accommodate.”

Iraqis are determined to get their nation removed from the purview of the U.N. Security Council under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which allows the international body to declare a country a threat to international peace, a step the U.N. took after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Iraqi officials say that designation clearly is no longer appropriate.

But even on that basic request, the U.S. has not promised to support Iraq, Saghir said, and is insteadn withholding that support as a pressure point in negotiations.

U.S. demands “conflict with our sovereignty and we refuse them,” said Hassan Sneid, a member of the Dawa party and a lawmaker on the security committee in the parliament. “I don’t expect these negotiations will be done by the exact date. The Americans want so many things and the fact is we want different things.”

“If we had to choose one or the other, an extension of the mandate or this agreement, we would probably choose the extension,” Saghir said. “It is possible that in December we will send a letter the UN informing them that Iraq no longer needs foreign forces to control its internal security. As for external defense, we are still not ready.”

Margaret Talev in Washington contributed.

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Former talk show host Phil Donahue talked about his documentary Body of War. Mr. Donahue was the co-director and executive producer of the documentary about a young man named Tomas Young who, following September 11, 2001, enlisted in the military. In March 2004, he went to Iraq. Less than a week into his tour of duty he was shot and paralyzed from the chest down. After months of recovery, he returned to his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. The documentary tells the story of his physical rehabilitation and his decision to actively protest the war in Iraq. It follows him as he struggles with wearing catheters and attempting to correct his erectile dysfunction. It also follows him as he demonstrates against the war in Texas and Washington, D.C. The program also shows the Senate debate on the resolution to go into Iraq. Video clips of the documentary were shown and Mr. Donahue talked about how he got involved in this project as well as his own feelings about the war in Iraq.

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She had probably done this a dozen times before. Modern digital technology had made clandestine communications with overseas agents seem routine. Back in the cold war, contacting a secret agent in Moscow or Beijing was a dangerous, labour-intensive process that could take days or even weeks. But by 2004, it was possible to send high-speed, encrypted messages directly and instantaneously from CIA headquarters to agents in the field who were equipped with small, covert personal communications devices. So the officer at CIA headquarters assigned to handle communications with the agency’s spies in Iran probably didn’t think twice when she began her latest download. With a few simple commands, she sent a secret data flow to one of the Iranian agents in the CIA’s spy network. Just as she had done so many times before.

But this time, the ease and speed of the technology betrayed her. The CIA officer had made a disastrous mistake. She had sent information to one Iranian agent that exposed an entire spy network; the data could be used to identify virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran.

Mistake piled on mistake. As the CIA later learned, the Iranian who received the download was a double agent. The agent quickly turned the data over to Iranian security officials, and it enabled them to “roll up” the CIA’s network throughout Iran. CIA sources say that several of the Iranian agents were arrested and jailed, while the fates of some of the others is still unknown.

This espionage disaster, of course, was not reported. It left the CIA virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence on one of the most critical issues facing the US - whether Tehran was about to go nuclear.

In fact, just as President Bush and his aides were making the case in 2004 and 2005 that Iran was moving rapidly to develop nuclear weapons, the American intelligence community found itself unable to provide the evidence to back up the administration’s public arguments. On the heels of the CIA’s failure to provide accurate pre-war intelligence on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, the agency was once again clueless in the Middle East. In the spring of 2005, in the wake of the CIA’s Iranian disaster, Porter Goss, its new director, told President Bush in a White House briefing that the CIA really didn’t know how close Iran was to becoming a nuclear power.

But it’s worse than that. Deep in the bowels of the CIA, someone must be nervously, but very privately, wondering: “Whatever happened to those nuclear blueprints we gave to the Iranians?”

The story dates back to the Clinton administration and February 2000, when one frightened Russian scientist walked Vienna’s winter streets. The Russian had good reason to be afraid. He was walking around Vienna with blueprints for a nuclear bomb.

To be precise, he was carrying technical designs for a TBA 480 high-voltage block, otherwise known as a “firing set”, for a Russian-designed nuclear weapon. He held in his hands the knowledge needed to create a perfect implosion that could trigger a nuclear chain reaction inside a small spherical core. It was one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short.

The Russian, who had defected to the US years earlier, still couldn’t believe the orders he had received from CIA headquarters. The CIA had given him the nuclear blueprints and then sent him to Vienna to sell them - or simply give them - to the Iranian representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). With the Russian doing its bidding, the CIA appeared to be about to help Iran leapfrog one of the last remaining engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear weapon. The dangerous irony was not lost on the Russian - the IAEA was an international organisation created to restrict the spread of nuclear technology.

The Russian was a nuclear engineer in the pay of the CIA, which had arranged for him to become an American citizen and funded him to the tune of $5,000 a month. It seemed like easy money, with few strings attached.

Until now. The CIA was placing him on the front line of a plan that seemed to be completely at odds with the interests of the US, and it had taken a lot of persuading by his CIA case officer to convince him to go through with what appeared to be a rogue operation.

The case officer worked hard to convince him - even though he had doubts about the plan as well. As he was sweet-talking the Russian into flying to Vienna, the case officer wondered whether he was involved in an illegal covert action. Should he expect to be hauled before a congressional committee and grilled because he was the officer who helped give nuclear blueprints to Iran? The code name for this operation was Merlin; to the officer, that seemed like a wry tip-off that nothing about this programme was what it appeared to be. He did his best to hide his concerns from his Russian agent.

The Russian’s assignment from the CIA was to pose as an unemployed and greedy scientist who was willing to sell his soul - and the secrets of the atomic bomb - to the highest bidder. By hook or by crook, the CIA told him, he was to get the nuclear blueprints to the Iranians. They would quickly recognise their value and rush them back to their superiors in Tehran.

The plan had been laid out for the defector during a CIA-financed trip to San Francisco, where he had meetings with CIA officers and nuclear experts mixed in with leisurely wine-tasting trips to Sonoma County. In a luxurious San Francisco hotel room, a senior CIA official involved in the operation talked the Russian through the details of the plan. He brought in experts from one of the national laboratories to go over the blueprints that he was supposed to give the Iranians.

The senior CIA officer could see that the Russian was nervous, and so he tried to downplay the significance of what they were asking him to do. He said the CIA was mounting the operation simply to find out where the Iranians were with their nuclear programme. This was just an intelligence-gathering effort, the CIA officer said, not an illegal attempt to give Iran the bomb. He suggested that the Iranians already had the technology he was going to hand over to them. It was all a game. Nothing too serious.

On paper, Merlin was supposed to stunt the development of Tehran’s nuclear programme by sending Iran’s weapons experts down the wrong technical path. The CIA believed that once the Iranians had the blueprints and studied them, they would believe the designs were usable and so would start to build an atom bomb based on the flawed designs. But Tehran would get a big surprise when its scientists tried to explode their new bomb. Instead of a mushroom cloud, the Iranian scientists would witness a disappointing fizzle. The Iranian nuclear programme would suffer a humiliating setback, and Tehran’s goal of becoming a nuclear power would have been delayed by several years. In the meantime, the CIA, by watching Iran’s reaction to the blueprints, would have gained a wealth of information about the status of Iran’s weapons programme, which has been shrouded in secrecy.

The Russian studied the blueprints the CIA had given him. Within minutes of being handed the designs, he had identified a flaw. “This isn’t right,” he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. “There is something wrong.” His comments prompted stony looks, but no straight answers from the CIA men. No one in the meeting seemed surprised by the Russian’s assertion that the blueprints didn’t look quite right, but no one wanted to enlighten him further on the matter, either.

In fact, the CIA case officer who was the Russian’s personal handler had been stunned by his statement. During a break, he took the senior CIA officer aside. “He wasn’t supposed to know that,” the CIA case officer told his superior. “He wasn’t supposed to find a flaw.”

“Don’t worry,” the senior CIA officer calmly replied. “It doesn’t matter.”

The CIA case officer couldn’t believe the senior CIA officer’s answer, but he managed to keep his fears from the Russian, and continued to train him for his mission.

After their trip to San Francisco, the case officer handed the Russian a sealed envelope with the nuclear blueprints inside. He was told not to open the envelope under any circumstances. He was to follow the CIA’s instructions to find the Iranians and give them the envelope with the documents inside. Keep it simple, and get out of Vienna safe and alive, the Russian was told. But the defector had his own ideas about how he might play that game.

The CIA had discovered that a high-ranking Iranian official would be travelling to Vienna and visiting the Iranian mission to the IAEA, and so the agency decided to send the Russian to Vienna at the same time. It was hoped that he could make contact with either the Iranian representative to the IAEA or the visitor from Tehran.

In Vienna, however, the Russian unsealed the envelope with the nuclear blueprints and included a personal letter of his own to the Iranians. No matter what the CIA told him, he was going to hedge his bets. There was obviously something wrong with the blueprints - so he decided to mention that fact to the Iranians in his letter. They would certainly find flaws for themselves, and if he didn’t tell them first, they would never want to deal with him again.

The Russian was thus warning the Iranians as carefully as he could that there was a flaw somewhere in the nuclear blueprints, and he could help them find it. At the same time, he was still going through with the CIA’s operation in the only way he thought would work.

The Russian soon found 19 Heinstrasse, a five-storey office and apartment building with a flat, pale green and beige facade in a quiet, slightly down-at-heel neighbourhood in Vienna’s north end. Amid the list of Austrian tenants, there was one simple line: “PM/Iran.” The Iranians clearly didn’t want publicity. An Austrian postman helped him. As the Russian stood by, the postman opened the building door and dropped off the mail. The Russian followed suit; he realised that he could leave his package without actually having to talk to anyone. He slipped through the front door, and hurriedly shoved his envelope through the inner-door slot at the Iranian office.

The Russian fled the mission without being seen. He was deeply relieved that he had made the hand-off without having to come face to face with a real live Iranian. He flew back to the US without being detected by either Austrian security or, more importantly, Iranian intelligence.

Just days after the Russian dropped off his package at the Iranian mission, the National Security Agency reported that an Iranian official in Vienna abruptly changed his schedule, making airline reservations to fly home to Iran. The odds were that the nuclear blueprints were now in Tehran.

The Russian scientist’s fears about the operation seemed well founded. He was the front man for what may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA, one that may have helped put nuclear weapons in the hands of a charter member of what President George W Bush has called the “axis of evil”.

Operation Merlin has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in the Clinton and Bush administrations. It’s not clear who originally came up with the idea, but the plan was first approved by Clinton. After the Russian scientist’s fateful trip to Vienna, however, the Merlin operation was endorsed by the Bush administration, possibly with an eye toward repeating it against North Korea or other dangerous states.

Several former CIA officials say that the theory behind Merlin - handing over tainted weapon designs to confound one of America’s adversaries - is a trick that has been used many times in past operations, stretching back to the cold war. But in previous cases, such Trojan horse operations involved conventional weapons; none of the former officials had ever heard of the CIA attempting to conduct this kind of high-risk operation with designs for a nuclear bomb. The former officials also said these kind of programmes must be closely monitored by senior CIA managers in order to control the flow of information to the adversary. If mishandled, they could easily help an enemy accelerate its weapons development. That may be what happened with Merlin.

Iran has spent nearly 20 years trying to develop nuclear weapons, and in the process has created a strong base of sophisticated scientists knowledgeable enough to spot flaws in nuclear blueprints. Tehran also obtained nuclear blueprints from the network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, and so already had workable blueprints against which to compare the designs obtained from the CIA. Nuclear experts say that they would thus be able to extract valuable information from the blueprints while ignoring the flaws.

“If [the flaw] is bad enough,” warned a nuclear weapons expert with the IAEA, “they will find it quite quickly. That would be my fear”

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WASHINGTON, Jun 2 (IPS) - For many months, the propaganda line that explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) that could penetrate U.S. armoured vehicles were coming straight from Iran has been embraced publicly by the entire George W. Bush administration. But when that argument was proposed internally by military officials in January 2007, it was attacked by key administration officials as unsupported by the facts.

Vice President Dick Cheney was able to get around those objections and get his Iranian EFP line accepted only because of arrangements he and Bush made with Gen. David Petraeus before he took command of U.S. forces in Iraq.

The initial draft of the proposed military briefing on the issue of EFPs, which asserted flatly that EFPs were being manufactured and smuggled to Iraqi Shiite groups directly by the Iranian regime, was met with unanimous objection from the State Department, Defence Department and National Security Council staff, as administration officials themselves stated publicly.

Defence Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley tried to push back against Cheney’s proposed line because they recognised it as an effort to go well beyond the compromise policy toward Iran that had been worked out in December and early January. The compromise policy had been to focus on networks working on procuring EFPs within Iraq and not to target Iran as directly responsible.

At his regular press briefing on Jan. 24, 2007, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Department spokesman Sean McCormack revealed the primary basis for the State, Defence and NSC opposition to the Cheney line on EFPs.

Asked whether the U.S. government had any evidence that EFPs were manufactured in Iran, McCormack did not answer directly but said, “You don’t necessarily have to construct something in Iran in order for it to be a threat to the U.S. or British troops from the Iranian regime. There are lots of different ways you can do that. You can bring the know-how. You can train other people in Iraq to do that.”

McCormack thus revealed that the State Department wasn’t buying the accusation that Iran was manufacturing EFPs and sending them to the Shiite forces of Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army fighting against U.S. forces.

On Feb. 2, while briefing the news media on the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, Hadley asserted bluntly that the draft military briefing that had been circulated in Washington had not been based on evidence.

“The truth is, quite frankly, we thought the briefing was overstated,” said Hadley. “We sent it back to get it narrowed and focused on the facts.”

Hadley did not tell reporters which points in the draft briefing paper had not been based on the evidence, but the remarks by McCormack and Gates were clear indications that the briefing had made claims of Iranian manufacturing of weapons and smuggling them into Iraq that could not be supported.

Hadley further revealed that he, Gates and Rice had tried to use the imminence of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq to force the issue of the briefing’s exaggerated claims. The briefing, he said was “an attempt to…address some of the issues in the NIE in a briefing on intelligence of Iranian activity in Iraq. And we thought, hey, why are we doing this?”

He said he and his associates wanted a briefing that “we’re confident everyone can stand behind”. The national security adviser was implying that the proposed briefing was not supported by the NIE on Iraq, and that the drafters would therefore have to redraft it so that the intelligence community could support it.

Hadley didn’t say who he meant by “we”, but Gates told reporters the same day that he and Rice had joined Hadley in ensuring that the planned briefing “is dominated by facts”.

The declassified version of the NIE’s main conclusions indicated that it did not support the claim that Iran was exporting EFPs to the Mahdi Army. The only sentence that related to the issue was, “Iranian lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants clearly intensifies the conflict in Iraq.” But in the absence of any language alleging Iranian EFP manufacture and export to Iraq, that phrase appears to be a reference to training of Mahdi Army officers.

Hadley, Rice and Gates thus appeared to believe that the briefing would have to reflect the NIE, and that they would be able to review the revised version before it was presented to the press. On Feb. 9, State Department spokesman McCormack said, “[W]hen the working-level folks at the deputies level…produce a presentation that they are comfortable with, I am sure that they’ll share it with Secretary Rice, Secretary Gates and Steve Hadley over at the NSC just for review.”

But Cheney had a surprise for the opponents of his hard line on Iran. When White House spokeswoman Dana Perino was asked on Feb. 9 about when the briefing would be held, she replied, “Decisions on that are being made out in Baghdad.”

That announcement came just as Gen. George W. Casey was to be replaced by Gen. Petraeus as the new commander. Petraeus had only arrived in Iraq the day before and the changeover ceremony came on Feb. 10.

The day after the ceremony, three military officers presented a briefing to the press which not only asserted that the EFPs could only have been manufactured in Iran but that Iran’s Qods Force was behind the smuggling of those weapons into Iraq. They strongly suggested, moreover, that the Iranian government knew about the smuggling.

Cheney had used the compliant Petraeus to do an end-run around the national security bureaucracy. Petraeus had already reached agreement with the White House to take Cheney’s line on the EFPs issue and to present the briefing immediately without consulting State or Defence.

State and Defence tried to counter this manoeuvre. McCormack argued, rather lamely, that the briefing had really been about “a threat to our troops from these devices and from the networks that supply them”. And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, responded by saying that he could not “from his own knowledge” confirm the assertion that the Qods Force was providing bomb-making kits to Shiite insurgents.

The U.S. command in Baghdad temporarily backed away from the briefers’ charge against Iran. The command spokesman, Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, who had been one of the three military briefers, was forced to tell reporters on Feb. 14 that the purpose of the briefing had been to talk only about the threat to U.S. troops, implying that briefers had gone beyond their brief in making statements about Iranian complicity.

But the hardline position on EFP was the one that dominated press coverage. Instead of the more cautious line focusing on the EFP networks inside Iraq, which was what State, Defence and NSC and agreed to in January, Cheney now had a potential casus belli against Iran.

And Cheney would continue to use his alliance with Petraeus to advance his proposal for an attack on Qods Force bases in Iran. The very first episode in the Cheney-Petraeus alliance sheds additional light on the nomination of Petraeus to become the new CENTCOM commander later this year.

*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

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Death Squads Plead Discrimination

by Mark E. Smith

Today, Friday, May 30, 2008, I sat in Courtroom 13 on the 5th floor of the federal courthouse in San Diego and watched in horror as a white male former Marine general, acting as attorney for Blackwater International, a private Christian evangelical mercenary (death squad) corporation, told a sweet-looking blonde female federal judge, Marilyn Huff, that they were being discriminated against, and the judge not only agreed with their argument and confronted the city attorney with it, but also added a charge of diversity. Diversity? San Diego has too few murderers and killers to meet federal diversity standards?

The story behind this is that Blackwater intends to have a large presence in San Diego, and everywhere else in the U.S. possible, so that it will be in a position to quell any civil unrest that may happen after the next stolen Presidential election in November. In the meantime it will compete for work training U.S. military troops and guarding the border against Mexican invaders. Blackwater tried to open a training facility in Potrero, but seeing that they were likely to be unsuccessful due to public outrage, they quietly began seeking permits for another facility in Otay Mesa under the names of front companies like Raven (raven means black). But their purpose in Otay Mesa was also disguised. They said at different times that it would be a law enforcement training facility, a vocational school, or just a warehouse. Once all the permits had been granted, it became clear to the city that this was to be a mercenary training facility and the city exercised its discretion to stop them from opening before there was further review. Blackwater then went to federal court seeking a temporary restraining order on the grounds of irreparable injury, and the judge will grant their order on Monday.

Obviously Judge Huff does not understand what discrimination is. If people disliked Blackwater because of a historically suspect category, such as age, race, sex, disability, etc., that would be discrimination. But to dislike a company because they are known for shooting civilians indiscriminately and with impunity is not discrimination, it is fear.

In order to get a temporary restraining order in federal court, Blackwater had to show that otherwise they would suffer irreparable injury. The San Diego attorney cited rulings stating that loss of income is not an irreparable injury and the judge asked the Blackwater attorney to state what the injury was. Instead he began talking about our brave fighting men and women defending our country. Believe me, you’ve never seen a Marine speak so respectfully of the Navy before, because it is a contract with the Navy that begins on Monday that Blackwater stood to lose, at least temporarily, if the order was not granted. Since a temporary loss of income is not irreparable, he never did answer the judge’s question, but sought shelter behind false patriotism and phony national security. Mexico is not invading the U.S. and has no intentions of doing so, and our efforts to deport undocumented workers have been so successful that several U.S. farms and factories have had to move to Mexico in order to be able to rehire their deported workers when they could find no adequate replacements for them here. We are not only not under attack, we are waging wars of aggression, so self-defense is not an argument. To hear this mouthpiece say it, you’d think that if the restraining order was not granted, Osama bin Laden and five million crazed terrorists would cross the Mexican border and conquer the United States.

This remarkable proceeding is the final proof, if any more were needed, that the fascist takeover of America is complete. A federal court has no business intervening in a city’s business, not even if the company’s owner is a friend of Bush and Cheney. This means that we no longer have any local or states’ rights whatsoever, as the federal counts, stacked with judges appointed by the fascist regime in Washington, will always intervene on behalf of facism whenever states or municipalities attempt to assert their rights.

The city may appeal the ruling, but the Blackwater presence in San Diego is now a fait accompli and cannot be undone. Even if the city were to win on appeal, which it should because the laws are definitely on the side of the city, the case would just be appealed by Blackwater until it reached the Supreme Court, where the partisan thugs who installed Bush against the will of the people, including some who were appointed by that unelected President, would rule for Blackwater. No matter how illegal or unconstitutional a Supreme Court ruling, there is no possible appeal from that unelected body. A democracy is a form of government in which the ultimate power belongs to the people, not to unelected fascist thugs and their cronies.

An hour before the court hearing began, we held a protest in front of the courthouse. We had “Stop Blackwater” t-shirts, signs, and banners. A woman standing near me was talking about the election, so I asked what has become my standard question these days, “Would you still vote if the only federally approved voting mechanism was a flush toilet?” She said that she would. She is one of millions of people concerned about their right to vote, but who don’t actually care whether or not their vote is really counted or if it gives them a voice in government. As long as they can vote, they’re happy. The man standing next to her said, “Well, if a lot of people didn’t vote, maybe it would make a difference.” I said, “How’s fifty percent?” He said, “But they’re apathetic.” I said, “You don’t care if your vote is counted or not, and you call them apathetic?”

One of the protest organizers asked afterwards if anything like this had happened in Nazi Germany. I explained that it had. That many people had trusted the courts to uphold what laws remained, but the courts were just as fascist as the Nazis. Judges who weren’t, were forced off the bench. Fascist dictators appoint judges on the basis of blind loyalty, and their lapdog legislators confirm them to show their collegial support for and complicity in fascism.

Blackwater has been getting a lot of publicity. As private contractors they consider themselves exempt from all laws, domestic, foreign, and international. But they went running to the law for help when they feared a possible temporary setback to their plans. In truth the city of San Diego might be able to delay their operations, but probably couldn’t keep them out. We have a “strong mayor” system, so the mayor, who only became mayor after not one, not two, but three rigged elections, is the decider, and he said on the radio the night before the hearing that he believed that Blackwater’s permits were in order. We the people don’t get to actually vote on issues of concern to us, we can only vote for “representatives” but our votes are counted secretly by easily and undetectably hackable central tabulators and our elections officials in San Diego are a former voting machine salesperson and a guy who stated publicly that he didn’t think that manipulating a recount so that the ballots would match a fraudulent machine count was wrong. So good luck with those elections.

Author Jeremy Scahill, who has written extensively about Blackwater, will be in San Diego on June 10th. Although they didn’t say so, it is his scheduled book signing at the Unitarian/Universalist church that Blackwater feared might cause them irreparable injury, as Scahill has documented who the owners of Blackwater are, what sort of murderers and terrorists they hire, and why a company like that has no place in a democracy.

This was a sad day for America and a sad day for democracy. The poor itty bitty multi-billion dollar death squad terrorist mercenary corporation told a federal judge that they felt discriminated against, and the judge bought it. Actually, it seemed like the judge had made up her mind before hand, as she was arguing on behalf of Blackwater, handing them citations, and belittling the city and the relevant laws. On the question of jurisdiction, the right of the federal courts to preempt a city’s discretion, she did say that she didn’t think that an ordinary citizen could run to federal court if a city denied a building or business permit, but she obviously doesn’t consider Bush cronies like Blackwater to be ordinary citizens. Fascists get special treatment and favors in fascist courts.

And so, having witnessed it, I am already in a state of shock. But this shock may not reach the average San Diegan or the average American until another catastrophe like 9/11 or hurricane Katrina hits, and that will be much too late as Blackwater mercenaries will be in our streets and in helicopters overhead with automatic weapons to prevent us from getting food or medical help or escaping death. If we had a voice in the matter, we might say no. But we have no voice. Our elections aren’t about giving us a voice, they’re about legitimizing elite rule and depriving us of any voice. Instead we are told that our vote is our voice, and then our votes aren’t counted. Too bad, nothing to see here, move along.

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LONDON: The former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, and one of the most controversial figures in the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, was accused of war crimes and booed when he appeared at a British literary event on Wednesday.

A leading rights activist attempted to make a “citizen’s arrest” of Mr. Bolton, but the latter was escorted out of the venue. The incident happened when, speaking at The Guardian Hay Festival in Wales, Mr. Bolton justified the invasion and made threatening noises over Iran, claiming that the U.S. has the right to attack Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. As Mr. Bolton wound up his lecture, he was heckled by a section of the audience. George Monbiot, a rights and environmental campaigner, reportedly rushed towards him with a “chargesheet,” accusing him of being a “war criminal.”

A group of anti-war activists waved placards and shouted “war criminal” as security personnel escorted Mr. Bolton out. “I’m disappointed I couldn’t reach him, but I made what I believe to be the first attempt ever to arrest one of the perpetrators of the Iraq War,” Mr. Monbiot later told The Guardian.

In a report, the newspaper said: “When challenged by Monbiot during the debate to say why — in planning, preparing and waging war against Saddam Hussein — he was any different from Nazi war criminals condemned at Nuremberg, Bolton cited Iraq’s defiance of the U.N. resolutions 687 and 678, which underpinned the 1991 Iraq War and ceasefire. That released other parties from the obligation to the ceasefire, he told Monbiot.” Mr. Bolton refused to answer questions about the legality of the Iraq invasion.

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by Philippe Sands

Over the past five years the name Mohammed Al-Qahtani - Detainee 063 at Guantanamo - has been indelibly associated with the Bush Administration’s efforts to justify extreme measures in the ‘war on terror.’ This Saudi national was apprehended in Afghanistan in late 2001 and taken to Guantanamo in early 2002, included in a group labelled as the “worst of the worst.” His identity got a full airing in June 2004, as the Administration struggled to contain the fallout from the Abu Ghraib pictures. Alleged to be the 20th hijacker, the Administration pinned on this man its justification for the abandonment of a longstanding prohibition on the use of cruelty by the military.

On June 22nd 2004, two of the Administration’s most senior lawyers - White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Defense Department General Counsel Jim Haynes - stood before the world’s media and laid out the official story to explain the move to aggressive interrogation: it occurred as a result of a bottom-up request from an aggressive combatant commander at Guantanamo; it was implemented within the law and on the basis of careful legal advice; and it produced useful and important results. Al Qahtani was living proof that coercion worked. Gonzales and Haynes stood alongside Daniel Dell’Orto (who has recently been appointed as Acting General Counsel at DoD, following Haynes’ move to Chevron, where he now works as lawyer) as he introduced Al Qahtani as the man who explained the move to abuse: a person in whom the Pentagon had “a considerable interest,” who had “been trained to resist our interrogation techniques” and, most significantly, who gave up important information when subjected to new techniques authorised by Rumsfeld on December 2nd 2002. This included information on Jose Padilla (the alleged “dirty bomber”) and Richard Reid (the shoe bomber). The message was unambiguous: Al Qahtani was a bad man, aggressive interrogation works.

A few weeks later, the 9/11 Commission Report described Al Qahtani as a “candidate hijacker,” explaining the circumstances in which he was denied entry to the US in August 2001. The narrative persisted, and Al Qahtani’s name was frequently wheeled out in defence of the Administration’s actions. In his efforts to secure appointment to the federal bench, in July 2006 Jim Haynes relied on him to fend off attacks - unsuccessfully, as it turned out - to justify his role in recommending to Secretary Rumsfeld techniques of interrogation that violated Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. He was “the 20th hijacker,” Haynes told the Senate Judiciary Committee and a man who had shown “considerable skill in resisting established techniques”. Further, he had provided “significant additional information” as a result of the abusive interrogation. No ambiguity there.

A few weeks ago, on February 11th 2008, the Department of Defense announced that Al Qahtani would join five others in facing a military commission on various criminal charges, including murder, attacking civilians and terrorism. The death penalty would be sought. The allegations were thin on detail and - strikingly - made no reference to any information obtained after the new techniques were used. The announcement was consistent with what, by then, I had already been told: the abusive interrogation of Al Qahtani produced nothing of value.

The Administration raised the stakes on Al Qahtani. He was presented as the kind of uniquely dangerous person for whom the programme of detention and interrogation was designed, proof that the established rules were quaint and obsolete, that new rules and techniques were needed, and that they worked.

Then, earlier this week, the Administration dropped a jaw-dropping bombshell: the charges against Al Qahtani were dropped. Proceedings against five other would continue, but the Pentagon official in charge of war crimes cases declined to authorise charges against Al Qahtani. What happened?

No explanation was given for the abrupt change of direction. That in itself is telling. There is no plausible reason that can be sold or spun. For the truth is that Al Qahtani was subject to abuse that most likely rises to the level of torture, in circumstances that are notoriously public around the world. From November 23rd, 2002, over a period of fifty four days, Al Qahtani was subject to aggressive interrogation at the instance of the highest echelons of the Administration. I describe the circumstances in TORTURE TEAM, and in an article published in VANITY FAIR last month, explaining how Donald Rumsfeld and his team came to be involved. On December 2nd 2002 Rumsfeld signed a memo prepared for him by Jim Haynes, authorising the use of new techniques. It is a famous memo, the one in which Rumsfeld inquires, in his own hand, as to why standing during interrogation is limited to four hours since he stands for eight or more hours a day.

I journeyed around America, meeting many of the principal characters involved in the decision-making process. I describe the real reason why the Geneva Conventions were set aside, as Doug Feith confirmed, to allow aggressive interrogation; how Al Qahtani’s treatment amounted to a war crime (a point alluded to by Justice Anthony Kennedy in the Supreme Court’s seminal judgment of 2006 that overturned the Administration’s decision to set aside the Geneva Conventions); how the decision to move to aggressive interrogation came from the top down and not, as the Administration had claimed, from the ground up; how decision-making at the Joint Chiefs was short-circuited by Haynes; how those at the top may face war crimes investigations abroad, unless the US gets its house in order; and how Al Qahtani’s interrogation provided no meaningful information.

Against this background, the House Judiciary Committee has recently embarked on a series of hearings to examine the role of senior Administration lawyers in promoting aggressive interrogations. Last week I testified before a Sub-Committee, with three other witnesses, and the Sub-Committee has now invited senior lawyers to appear before it. Most have agreed to do so voluntarily (although not David Addington, who was Vice President Cheney’s counsel back in 2002 and now serves as his chief of staff: he has been issued with a subpoena to force him to appear). The next hearing is scheduled for June 26, and more are expected to follow in efforts to get to the truth. The treatment of Al Qahtani lies at the heart of the Committee’s inquiry.

It is a grim story, of decision-making driven by fear and ideology and incompetence, a story of crime and of cover-up. It seems likely that the charges against him were dropped because proceedings before a military commission would have turned the spotlight on his treatment and - even more dangerously - on those most senior individuals - politicians and political appointees - with whom responsibility lies. The abuse of Al Qahtani has backfired, as many down at Guantanamo predicted it would. The truth as to his involvement, if any, in the events of September 11th will not be established. He will no doubt linger in a limbo of legal uncertainty in the bowels of Guantanamo or whatever other place may be found for him, a totemic figure whose treatment will be invoked by those who seek to harm the United States.

This unhappy story has brought America’s fine tradition of military valour into disrepute. It has provided no added protection to this country, or any other, or any other advantages. To the contrary, it w