Iraq Prisoner Torture Shows Face
of Cheney's Beast-Men
by Edward SpannausLyndon LaRouche warned you about the "Beast-Men," and now you are seeing them. In fact, no one who has read the LaRouche campaign's second report on the Straussian "Children of Satan"—the "The Beast-Men" report—should be taken by surprise, at the horrifying images and reports coming out of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. And the worst is still to come.
It is absolutely clear, based on the information already in the public domain, that the responsibility for the bestial actions at Abu Ghraib goes right to the top, to the top "Beast-Men" in the Cheney-Bush Administration: the Vice President himself, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Rumsfeld's top civilian deputies in the Department of Defense. The direct line from the MPs at Abu Ghraib, to the top levels in the Pentagon, runs up the ladder through military intelligence to those in the Pentagon who were making increasing demands for information to be obtained through interrogations, more politely known as setting intelligence "requirements"—including the Straussian Stephen Cambone and his deputy, the holy-warrior Lt. Gen. William Boykin.
The "Taguba Report," the leaked report on prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, proves indisputably that Military Intelligence (MI) officers and others involved in interrogations, such as private contractors, "actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses." General Taguba found specifically that MPs of the 372nd MP Company "were directed to change facility procedures to 'set the conditions' for MI interrogations."
The units of Abu Ghraib (wings 1A & 1B) on which the Taguba Report is focussed, are described as "MI holds," and as one witness stated, "the wing belongs to MI and it appears MI personnel approved of the abuse." The witness, a sergeant, also said that the MPs were ordered by MI to "Loosen this guy up for us. Make sure he has a bad night. Make sure he gets the treatment."
One of the MPs was complimented by MI with statements regarding the prisoners being interrogated, such as: "Good job, they're breaking down real fast. They answer every question. They're giving out good information.... Keep up the good work."
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the reserve general who was in charge of the prison, said on May 1 that the special high-security cellblock 1A, where her MPs guarded prisoners in-between interrogations, was under the control of military intelligence, and was off limits to most of the personnel there, including herself.
Families of some of the MPs interviewed by the news media, have stated that there was intense pressure coming from the Pentagon for more information from interrogations, and that one focus of the interrogations was information that would assist the search for so-called weapons of mass destruction. This was the period in which Cheney & Co. were becoming increasingly desperate to come up with some evidence of WMD, their principal justification for the invasion of Iraq.
From Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib
"The road to Abu Ghraib began, in some ways, in 2002 at Guantanamo Bay," said the New York Times in a May 7 editorial, pointing out that it was then, that the Bush Administration began building up a world-wide military detention system, hidden from public view and from any judicial review, in which detainees were denied normal legal protections. Other commentators have pointed out that the Bush Administration, while declaring other nations as outlaws and rogue nations if they fail to abide by the rule of law, nevertheless declared itself above the law; the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, etc. were disregarded as relics of a bygone era.
No one has been more vociferous in this regard than Dick Cheney. And as we have previously documented, the groundwork for the current policy of pre-emptive war and for the U.S. to conduct its affairs as the sole superpower that permits no challengers, was established in the 1991-92 Defense Policy Guidance drafted in Cheney's office while he was Secretary of Defense; the draft was ultimately rejected by the George H.W. Bush Administration.
Less well known is Cheney's role in establishing the Guantanamo system of "enemy combatants" who are denied the most elementary legal protections under international and U.S. law. Apart from the fact that Cheney is widely and accurately seen as the real power behind the foreign and national-security policies of the Administration, his General Counsel, David Addington, was one of the key architects of the "enemy combatant" construct, and another, DOD General Counsel William Haynes, had worked in the General Counsel office when Cheney headed the DOD.
One of the most explosive elements of the Taguba Report, one which has received relatively little attention, is that the commander of the Guantanamo detention center, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, was sent to Abu Ghraib in late August 2003 with "a team of personnel experienced in strategic interrogation" to meet with officials there, including the WMD-hunting Iraq Survey Group. Their purpose was to review "the current Iraq Theatre ability to rapidly exploit internees for actionable intelligence"—in other words, how to get more information out of prisoners faster. It was Miller, according to Taguba, who recommended training the prison guards "to be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees."
The Miller assessment was conducted from Aug. 31 to Sept. 9. General Taguba found that the worst abuses occurred between October and December of 2003—immediately after Miller recommendrf changes in interrogation procedures and the use of guards to create the conditions for such interrogation.
In addition to beatings, which sometimes resulted in the deaths of prisoners, the methods used by the guards, at the direction of intelligence officers, were intended to inflict maximum humilation and degradation upon the subjects. Being forced to appear naked in front of other men—and women—is particularly humilating among Arabs, and forcing prisoners into simulated or actual sodomic sexual acts is worse. These are reminiscent of the methods of breaking down an individual's sense of identity, which were studied intensively by the British Tavistock Institute.
As the lawyer for one of the MPs put it to New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh: "Do you really think a group of kids from rural Virginia decided to do this on their own? Decided the best way to embarrass Arabs and make them talk was to have them walk around nude?"
Rumsfeld's Torquemada
Intelligence sources have advised EIR that the damage-control operation being run by Rumsfeld is particularly intended to keep one crucial individual out of the spotlight. That protectee is Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, a long-time Special Forces officer whose anti-Muslim comments caused a firestorm when they were disclosed last Fall, shortly after Rumsfeld named him to this position. Boykin also serves as military assistant to the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, trained at the (Straussian) Claremont College.
Within Cambone's office, Boykin heads the office of intelligence and war-fighting support, according to Cambone, to make sure that actionable intelligence is provided quickly to operational units. He is also, by some accounts, in charge of Rumsfeld's effort to create Israeli-style Special Forces hit-teams to kill "high value targets."
Last October, a blockbuster article exposing Boykin's bizarre religious beliefs was published by William Arkin, military columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Arkin revealed that Boykin had repeatedly expressed the view that the U.S. Army is a "Christian Army" fighting against the forces of Satan in the war on terrorism.
In June 2002, Boykin displayed a set of photographs he had taken of Mogadishu, Somalia he had taken when he commanded U.S. forces there in 1993. He had noticed, in the photographs, a dark mark over the city. "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your enemy," Boykin told a Baptist congregation in Oklahoma as he flashed the photos on a screen. "It is the principalities of darkness. It is a demonic presence in that city that God revealed to me as the enemy." In his mind, Boykin is waging a new Crusade against the Infidel.
Boykin is perhaps best known for his reported comments to a Somali warlord who had claimed the protection of Allah. Declared Boykin: "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."
Not only does holy-warrior Boykin contend that the United States is in a war with Satan, but he maintains that God put George Bush in the Presidency to lead that battle. "George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters of the United States," Boykin once informed an Oregon congregation. "He was appointed by God."
At the contentious Senate Armed Services Committee hearing with Rumsfeld and others on May 7, Boykin's boss Stephen Cambone acknowledged his role in sending Guantanamo's General Miller to Iraq. During an exchange concerning the deployment, Cambone stated: "We had, then, in Iraq a large body of people who had been captured on the battlefield that we had to gain intelligence from for force protection purposes. And he [Miller] was asked to go over, at my encouragement, to take a look at the situation as it existed there. And he made his recommendations." And the world is now seeing the results.
As of this writing, the calls for Rumsfeld's ouster were rapidly multiplying. And if Rumsfeld goes, Cheney will not be far behind.
