The ongoing tragedy that is Afghanistan

brave new films via information clearing house...



and the reason that this is news you won't see on traditional news media is because it's truth that those who think they are in the best position to decide what we should and should not know have decided that we SHOULDN'T know about it...

glenn greenwald in salon, again via information clearing house...

The Bush-defending Right continues to insist, and huge numbers of Americans continue to believe, that the brutal abuses of Abu Ghraib were isolated and aberrational, the rogue crimes of a few low-level soldiers who were punished. These photos would prove that to be a lie. But no matter. For exactly that reason -- because they would expose the horrible truth of what we actually did -- these photos must be suppressed in the name of containing anti-American anger. Why should that reasoning be confined to suppression of the photos? Shouldn't it extend to information that is far more likely to inflame anti-American hatred, such as what we are really doing in Afghanistan? Isn't it best if the truth is just kept from us and the government suppresses it all so that we don't look bad in the eyes of the world? Isn't that obviously where this mentality leads -- and is already leading?

oh, and btw, evidently the worst revelations are yet to come...

raw story, AGAIN via information clearing house...

A crucial CIA Inspector General’s report from May 2004 is expected to reveal some long-hidden truths about the Bush administration’s use of torture.

[...]

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow [interviewed] Newsweek's Michael Isikoff . . .

[...]

“There are three key questions to look for,” Isikoff explained. “Were there harsh interrogations that began before the … legal authorizations? … Did they go beyond what was authorized? … Did it go beyond just finding out about possible plots against the United States to provide other information, such as supplying possible evidence that could be used to justify the war in Iraq?”

Isikoff noted that there are footnotes in the torture memos already released which “quote from the Inspector General’s report that what was actually done went beyond what was authorized — that how waterboarding was conducted, the frequency with which it was conducted, and the manner in which it was conducted was beyond what the CIA told the Justice Department it was going to do when the Justice Department authorized the technique.”

Isikoff emphasized, however, that almost none of this information is being released voluntarily. It’s being slowly pried out through Freedom of Information Act requests, most of them filed by the ACLU, and “it’s become trench warfare — document by document.”

“The CIA and the intelligence community has pushed back hard,” Isikoff stressed. “People in the intelligence community never wanted this stuff out to begin with.”

can't we get going on war crimes trials for the criminals who perpetrated this mess...? oh, i forgot... we now have NEW criminals continuing to perpetrate the same goddam mess...

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