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American Commando Torture Teams
Former CIA Director General David Petraeus, former head of U.S. torture commando teams – all grateful to Barack Obama for their freedom to roam with impunity (File photo)
On the heels of the Department of Defense claims this week that aimed to ensure the Leahy Amendment is not adopted, and on the heels of war hero Bradley Manning being found guilty for exposing American war crimes, the Guardian revealed Wednesday that U.S. commando torture teams under General David Patreus performed some of the worst human acts known to mankind.
‘The most horrible kind of torture’
Hundreds of tortured victims were paraded in front of cameras on a television program dedicated to showing how tough the Shia were on “Sunni fighters.” It was “an open secret,” said a high-ranking U.S. official in Baghdad, that torture was going on in detention centers and that the United States was complicit, that is, Americans were complicit.
For the first time, human rights abuses committed by commandos have been alleged by American and Iraqi witnesses in a new Guardian/BBC documentary implicate U.S. advisers.
For the first time, CIA Director General David Petraeus, forced to resign last Nov. as director of the CIA after a sex scandal, has been linked through an adviser to the most heinous human rights abuses.
The new report coincides with Navy Adm. William H. McRaven lying to the Congressional House Armed Services Committee how the military is upholding human rights. (See: Special Ops Commander responds to ending aid to human rights-abusing nations)
In the Guardian‘s first example, it says the Pentagon sent a U.S. veteran of the “dirty wars” in Central America to oversee police commando units in Iraq that established secret detention and torture centres to “get information from insurgents.”
It is widely recognized, even by military officials, such as Intel Lt. Col. Douglas Pryer, that torture does not produce credible information, that torture produces lies (told for the torture to end), and that torture is immoral.
It is also widely recognized that, what is dubbed the American School of Assassins, the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia is training soldiers to kidnap, torture and assassinate.
Aside from Obama’s martial law NDAA 2013, his signing Exeucitve Order 13524 just after Christmas authorizing foreign agents’ power over U.S. law enforecement, the Guardian revelations are an even greater reason for every American to take heed.
School of the America-trained commandos ‘worst acts’ of torture in Iraq
The former Central America commando units conducted “some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and accelerated the country’s descent into full-scale civil war,” according to the Guardian.
Thousands of Central Americans units have been trained at the School of the Americas (SOA). That training is transferable, meaning SOA trainees, attendees and graduates, can recruit and train others to perform the same abuses – anywhere, including in the U.S..
Although probable, it is unknown whether the commandos in Iraq trained at the School of the Americas. The Pentagon has refused to provide a list of all of the attendees and graduates.
In School of the Americas Watch vs. U.S. Department of Defense, hHuman rights activists petitioned the court to have DOD release names of students of infamous U.S. military training school. A Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief for Violation of Freedom of Information Act was filed Feb. 6, 2012.
The Pentagon’s dirty secrets shows the strength of the Guardian and BBC success in their investigation and reporting.
The Guardian says that after the Pentagon stopped banning Shia militias from joining the security forces, special police commandos (SPC) were increasingly drawn from violent Shia groups, such as Badr brigades.
Colonel James Steele was a 58-year-old retired special forces veteran when Donald Rumsfeld nominated him to help organise paramilitaries “to quell a Sunni insurgency,” the investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic shows.
A second special adviser, retired Colonel James H Coffman, who worked alongside Steele in detention centres established with millions of dollars of US funding, reported directly to Petraeus.
Coffman was deployed to Iraq in June 2004 to organise and train new Iraqi security forces.
Steele, in Iraq from 2003 to 2005, and returned to the country in 2006, reported directly to Rumsfeld, according to the Guardian. Coffman reported directly to Petraeus and described himself, according to the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes as Petraeus’s “eyes and ears out on the ground” in Iraq.
“They worked hand in hand,” said General Muntadher al-Samari, who worked with Steele and Coffman for a year while the commandos were being set up. “I never saw them apart in the 40 or 50 times I saw them inside the detention centres. They knew everything that was going on there … the torture, the most horrible kinds of torture.” (The Guardian)
High-ranking Iraqis working with the U.S. after it invaded Iraq warned Petraeus of consequences of appointing the violent Jabr al-Solagh Solagh as new Minister of Interior. Patraeus ignored their pleas, the Guardian learned.
“The long-term impact of funding and arming this paramilitary force was to unleash a deadly sectarian militia that terrorised the Sunni community and helped germinate a civil war that claimed tens of thousands of lives. At the height of that sectarian conflict, 3,000 bodies a month were strewn on the streets of Iraq.”
Over one million Iraqis were killed as the result of the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of the country, according to California-based investigative organization Project Censored.
Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Defense report on Navy Adm. William H. McRaven telling the House Armed Services Committee meeting on the Leahy Amdendment that the “‘poison person, poison unit’ policy mandates human rights vetting and applies to all U.S. military and law enforcement assistance worldwide.”
The new report also coincides with the U.S. military tribunal finding Pfc. Bradley Manning guilty on all charges against him for exposing American human rights abuses to the world. Manning is being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Coming closer to a town near you faster than most people can imagine.
But,but,but, It was all done for a “GOOD CAUSE”!
The reptiles win every time.