Pressure at Iraqi prison detailed - "pressure" from the White House

[seemslikeadream]

Posted 6/17/2004 11:37 PM Updated 6/18/2004 7:35 AM

Pressure at Iraqi prison detailed
WASHINGTON — The officer who oversaw interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad testified that he was under intense "pressure" from the White House, Pentagon and CIA last fall to get better information from detainees, pressure that he said included a visit to the prison by an aide to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Army Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, in a sworn statement to Army investigators obtained by USA TODAY, said he was told last September that White House staffers wanted to "pull the intelligence out" of the interrogations being conducted at Abu Ghraib. The pressure stemmed from growing concern about the increasingly violent Iraqi insurgency that was claiming American lives daily. It came before and during a string of abuses of Iraqi prisoners in October, November and December of 2003.

Jordan, the top military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, described "instances where I feel that there was additional pressure" to get information from detainees, including a visit to the prison last fall by an aide to Rice that was "purely on detainee operations and reporting." And he said he was reminded of the need to improve the intelligence output of the prison "many, many, many times."

Rice staffer Fran Townsend said Thursday that she spent about two hours at Abu Ghraib last November and recalls that Jordan was her guide. Townsend, then deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, said she did not discuss interrogation techniques or the need to obtain more information from detainees, and neither witnessed nor heard about abuse of detainees.

more
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-06-17-prison-cover_x.htm


*
Examination of Jordan's statement and other internal Army documents provides new insights into the intensity of the demands on commanders at Abu Ghraib to deliver useful intelligence, and the relative lack of emphasis on treating prisoners in accord with international standards. While the documents obtained by USA TODAY do not answer questions about how high approval of the abuses went, they show there was intense interest in the Abu Ghraib operations at the highest levels of the Pentagon and the White House staff.

[SpiralHawk]

1. One of Rice's stafers - WTF?

Lady Torquemada. She really is twisted.

How many ways can you fail America, or fail to live up to American ideals, or even live up to a basic level of competence?

[seemslikeadream]

2. Let America be America Again

WATCH THIS VIDEO


EVERY DEATH CREATES NEW ENEMIES
MORE TERRORISTS
MORE DANGER
MORE DEATH
AND REMEMBER...
HE IS JUST GETTING STARTED...
BUSH'S PLAN FOR PEACE
IS THE PEACE OF THE COMMON GRAVE


http://www.bushflash.com/pax.html


Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!


Langston Hughes

[xchrom]

3. gasp! quelle surprise!

if one motherfucker in washington dc acts shocked i'm gonna puke in their shoes.

[riverwalker]

4. wait just a minute

This is is huge. Fran Townsend is sent to Abu Ghraib to turn up the heat on intelligence? WTF?
A prissy designer suited White House aide is sent to a filthy dungeon prison, and she denies they discussed interogation techniques? Why else WOULD she be there? Why else would an aide to the US Security Advisor be there? Fran Townsend, remember that name. She KNEW damn well what was going on, and encouraged it. I hope to see this snake headed medusa at the Hague along with her bosses.

"including a visit to the prison last fall by an aide to Rice that was "purely on detainee operations and reporting." And he said he was reminded of the need to improve the intelligence output of the prison "many, many, many times."

[seemslikeadream]

5. I know riverwalker!

It's right up there with the other 10 huge stories of the day. I'm just shakin the tree


Shaking The Tree

Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon, We are shakin' the tree
Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon, We are shakin' the tree

Waiting your time, dreaming of a better life
Waiting your time, you're more than just a wife
You don't want to do what your mother has done
She has done
This is your life, this new life has begun
It's your day - a woman's day
It's your day - a woman's day

Turning the tide, you are on the incoming wave
Turning the tide, you know you are nobody's slave

Who can hear all the truth in what you say
They can support you when you're on your way
It's your day - a woman's day
It's your day - a woman's day

Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon, We are shakin' the tree
Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon, We are shakin' the tree
Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon, We are shakin' the tree


There's nothing to gain when there's nothing to be lost
There's nothing to gain if you stay behind and count the cost
Make the decision that you can be who you can be
You can be
Tasting the fruit come to the Liberty Tree
It's your day - a woman's day
It's your day - a woman's day



Changing your ways, changing those surrounding you
Changing your ways, more than any man can do
Open your heart, show him the anger and pain, so you heal
Maybe he's looking for his womanly side, let him feel

You had to be so strong
And you do nothing wrong
Nothing wrong at all
We're gonna to break it down
We have to shake it down
Shake it all around

Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon, We are shakin' the tree
Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon, We are shakin' the tree

Gabriel

[JoFerret]

7. Good point

.

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

13. I agree, this should be big.

Direct link to the WH.

Pretty amazing, actually.

[struggle4progress]

6. kick

:kick:

[seemslikeadream]

8. Don cha no

Friday afternoon news dump

[struggle4progress]

16. Well, then, I should kick it.

:kick:

[Judi Lynn]

9. We should be ashamed of ourselves for what we were thinking, I guess

Gee, it looks pretty innocent to me after reading this:

Jordan's statement said he was reminded of the need to improve intelligence "many, many, many times" and the pressure included a visit to the prison by an aide to White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, the paper reported.

To rebut Jordan's account, the White House arranged an interview with White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend before, but in anticipation of, the newspaper's publication.

Townsend, who last fall was Rice's deputy for combating terrorism, told The Associated Press she visited Abu Ghraib and even walked through a cellblock but "we never discussed interrogation. We never discussed interrogation techniques. That wasn't the focus."

"I did not go there to pressure them to do anything they weren't doing," Townsend added. "I really wanted to understand how they were taking the information they had and what they were doing with it so that I could ^=… think through how we could make that dissemination of information most effective."
(snip)

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/30/iraq/main614905.shtml

[struggle4progress]

22. I for one am gravely embarrassed by my own thoughts,

Just because my government has been smothering prisoners, beating prisoners to death with flashlights, shoving lit cigarettes into prisoners's ears, siccing dogs on naked prisoners, and so on, is absolutely no excuse for my unkind ideas about Saint George.

[Judi Lynn]

10. What IS Robert Novak trying to say about her?

Defector Rand Beers's post as senior director for Combating Terrorism remains vacant. However, on May 27, Frances Fragos Townsend was named deputy national security adviser for Combating Terrorism. The announcement obscured the fact that she had been a Democratic political appointment who was partially blamed by erstwhile Justice colleagues for failure to investigate alleged Sept. 11 terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. A White House official told me Townsend considers herself a career government employee and a "lifelong Republican," with no responsibility for the Moussaoui fiasco.
(snip)http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20030710.shtml

What is he, drunk? Surely he could take the time to be clearer. Which is it, Democrat or Republican? What a jerk.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On edit:

Found a little more about Fran Townsend's background, and it's from a Fox link, so don't click it unless you'd really want to hear more, as Fox surely sucks:

From Mafia prosecutor to White House counterterrorism chief


WASHINGTON (AP) - Fourteen years ago, Fran Townsend strode into a New York courtroom armed with tapes, photos and other government evidence to prosecute mobsters affiliated with the Gambino crime family. The men seated at the defendants' table dismissed the petite woman behind the huge cart of exhibits as nothing more than a paralegal.
(snip)

By 1988, she had persuaded then-U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani to hire her as a federal prosecutor. She eventually got her dream assignment, a move into the organized crime unit. She began working spinoff investigations from the famous "Pizza Connection" case, in which Giuliani's office had taken down a Sicily-based drug smuggling ring run by the U.S. mob.

About the same time, Townsend caught the eye of Jo Ann Harris, who had been defense counsel on a labor racketeering case Townsend tried.

When Harris was tapped to become the assistant attorney general running the Justice Department's criminal division under Reno, she asked Townsend to come to Washington as chief of staff.

Several promotions gradually exposed Townsend to national security matters. In 1998 came the offer to lead the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, which reviews FBI requests for super-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants that - with the permission of a special U.S. spy court - allow wiretaps and other surveillance on suspected spies and terrorists.
(snip/...)

http://www.fox23news.com/news/national/story.aspx?content_id=D12A97ED-D391-4B16-BA41-A920EAAA2D99

[seemslikeadream]

12. Drunk or somethin'

[Judi Lynn]

20. I've heard he seems to be into the sauce a lot during the day

on Crossfire.

It's good to know he's the one was chosen to rip away the protection from the CIA agent out of pure spite, isn't it?

Unbelievable.

[seemslikeadream]

21. Somebody should tell him it's dangerous to drink

when you're on the "meds". He's probably takin' a pill or two for depression.

[disinfo_guy]

11. they used torture to get info about the insurgency, right?

I hope that's the case. I know it's small comfort, but if they were torturing random Iraqis to find out "where the WMD were" these people are far more stupid and insane then I ever thought possible, not to mention the whole monsterous evil thing. Look at what we're reduced to hoping for. :(

[grasswire]

14. anybody got a pic of Fran Townsend?

I'd like to see this woman's face.

[seemslikeadream]

15. The FBI code name for the case was VAPCON.

She served as deputy to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno from 1995 to 1998 and headed the Justice Department's office of intelligence policy and review from 1998 to 2002. In this interview she describes the FBI infighting over the 1998 embassy bombings investigation and the conflict between O'Neill and the U.S. ambassador to Yemen during the probe of the USS Cole attack. Townsend also recounts how high the fear was of a terrorist attack at the millennium following the arrest of Ahmed Ressam at the Canadian border. This interview was conducted on May 30, 2002.




http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/interviews/townsend.html

Is this who we're talkin' about?

[daleo]

17. If that's her, she looks perky

She looks like she would have been right at home with Lyndie and Sabrina, swapping beauty and torture tips.

[Judi Lynn]

19. Oh, yeah! That's the one.

Good old Frances Townsend. What a winner.

[Judi Lynn]

18. Me, too. I've been looking. No luck, yet. n/t