Photos of US soldiers’ alleged rape, sexual abuse in Iraq
May 31, 2009 News & Events
This Post contains Sexual Contents Viewers Discretion is Advised Jalaybi Team could not independently confirm the authenticity of the images.
Photos obtained by Press TV reveal alleged sexual harassment and rape of Iraqi prisoners at US-run Abu Ghraib detention center by American soldiers.
The alleged pictures illustrate American soldiers raping and sexually harassing Iraqi detainees.
Wayne Madsen, an investigative journalist from Washington, told Press TV that there was a lot to explain with respect to the photos.
“That is exactly what was taking place in Abu Ghraib and that information came to me from many many different sources some of whom actually stationed in Abu Ghraib at the time,” Madsen said.
The allegations that these photos are fake were made by neoconservative media, He added.
To clarify the issue, Madsen said when some of the disputed photos were randomly published by the Boston Globe in 2004; the paper came under attack as part of neoconservative propaganda.
He also ruled out the reports claiming that the photos were taken from pornographic movies.This is while the Pentagon has rejected that the photographs even existed.
On Thursday, Antonio Taguba, a retired US general who conducted an inquiry into the abuses at the US-run prison in Iraq, sent shockwaves around the world by explaining about the heinous pictures in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.
“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” the British newspaper quoted Taguba as saying without releasing any of the images.
The daily added that one of the pictures depicted a male American soldier apparently raping a female detainee, while another showed a male translator raping a male prisoner. Another photo showed how a female detainee was forced to disrobe and expose her breasts.
There were also photos showing US soldiers sexually assaulting the prisoners with objects like truncheons, wires and phosphorescent tubes.
US President Barack Obama had promised to release some 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan; however, later on he backtracked on his pledge and blocked the release of the photographs.
Taguba said that the gruesome nature of the photos was to such extent that he could understand why Obama is reluctant to authorize their release.
For more photos please check http://www.aztlan.net/iraqi_women_raped.htm
Tags: Iraq, sexual abuse, US soldiers, war on terror
The Destabilization of Pakistan
May 31, 2009 Pakistan, pakistan politics
Gary Leupp
Counterpunch
May 30, 2009
So far the principle result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
following the events of 9-11 has been the destabilization of Pakistan.
That breakdown is peaking with the events in what AP calls the “Swat
town” of Mingora—actually a city of 375,000 from which all but 20,000
have fled as government forces moved in, strafing it with gunships.
We’re talking urban guerrilla warfare, house-to-house fighting, not on
the Afghan border but 50 miles away in the Swat Valley. We’re talking
about Pakistani troops fighting to reclaim the nearby Malam Jabba ski
resort from the Tehreek-e-Taliban, who since last year have been using
it as a training center and logistics base. We’re talking about two
million people fleeing the fighting in the valley and 160,000 in
government refugee camps.
And of course, “collateral damage”: As was reported in The News in Pakistan May 19:
Several persons, including women and children, were killed and a
number of others sustained injuries when families fleeing the military
operation in Swat’s Matta town were shelled while crossing a
mountainous path to reach Karo Darra in Dir Upper on Monday,
eyewitnesses and official sources said. Eyewitnesses, who escaped the
attack or were able to reach Wari town of Dir Upper in injured
condition, said they were targeted by gunship helicopters. However,
police officials said they might have been hit by a stray shell. Local
people said they saw some 12 to 14 bodies on a mountain on the Swat
side but could not go near to retrieve them or help the injured for
fear of another aerial attack.
What a nightmare scenario for Pakistan.
We’re talking about the Pakistani Army sometimes fighting over the
last year to retake towns from Taliban forces in the Buner region of
the North-West Frontier Province that are closer to the capital of
Islamabad than the Afghan border. And while the Talibs apparently lack
popular support, even among the Pashtuns (who are 15 % of the Pakistani
population—26 million and 42% of the Afghan population—14 million) they
have been able to inflict embarrassing defeats on the army.
Tehreek-i-Taliban leader Baitullah Mahsud, head of the militant
forces in South Waziristan, established his credentials when his forces
captured 300 Pakistani soldiers and traded them for about 30 imprisoned
militants in the fall of 2007. Time and again the several (sometimes
rival) “Taliban” forces, which did not exist before the U.S. invasion
of Afghanistan created them, have forced the government to negotiate
terms. Most recently in February Islamabad agreed to the implementation
of the Sharia in the Swat Valley in exchange for peace. The Taliban
broke the agreement in April, or so the story goes, and the army claims
it’s killed 1,100 militants since.
But curiously as of Sunday it claimed to have killed only 10
Taliban, while boasting of seizing (according to AP) “a spot nicknamed
‘bloody intersection’ because militants routinely dumped the mutilated
bodies of their victims there.” On Monday I read of another four dead
militants but the Taliban announced through a spokesman that they would
maintain “aides” in place in the city, cease fire, and advise civilians
to return. It appears most have retreated to other towns, including
Buner and Daggar where fighting goes on now. This they can do under
cover of the masses of refugees of course.
Now think of what has happened here. Whether or not this was Osama
bin Laden’s conscious plan, the local, ethnically-based, ideological
movement most receptive to his own (i.e., the Taliban, or more
precisely, multiple talibans on the Pakistan side of the border) has
flourished since the U.S. attack upon Afghanistan in response to the
9-11 attacks. The imperialist response to 9-11 inflamed Pashtunistan.
The toppling of the Taliban itself aroused indignation among many
Pakistani as well as Afghan Pashtuns. Some militants fleeing east met
with the traditional Pasthtunwali welcome, as they would under less
stressful circumstances, and beyond that political sympathy.
The drone missile attacks, the civilian deaths, the contemptuous
official denials, the repeated insults to national sovereignty, the
connivance of the regime in power, have angered many, perhaps most,
Pakistanis. While the Taliban has undergone a quiet resurgence in
southern Afghanistan, leading U.S. generals to conclude that a military
solution to the war is impossible, bands of religious “students”
gathering around tribal leaders and warlords in Pakistan forming the
umbrella “Movement of the Taliban” or Tehreek-e-Taliban under Mahsud
have been able to generate this kind of chaos.
The Army had been deployed before against Indian and Chinese forces.
But the disproportionately Pashtun force had never confronted or been
trained to confront fanatical Pashtun jihadis—particularly when the
issue was the implementation of the Sharia. Not surprisingly it
performed badly and Islamabad wound up cutting a deal in February to
implement Islamic law in the Swat Valley. U.S. Defense Secretary Gates
can criticize that judgment in stating, “We want to support [the
Pakistanis]. We want to help them in any way we can. But it is
important that they recognize the real threats to their country.” And
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can tell Congress, “I think the
Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and the
extremists [by making a peace deal in Swat]. Changing paradigms and
mindsets is not easy, but I do believe there is an increasing awareness
of not just the Pakistani government but the Pakistani people that this
insurgency coming closer and closer to major cities does pose such a
threat.”
It’s easy to lecture about such things, to judge the actions of
another government facing a crisis. But isn’t it obvious that what
Clinton has since at least April been calling Pakistan’s “existential
threat” wouldn’t be closing in on the cities of that country had the
U.S. not responded to 9-11 with the knee-jerk bombing of Afghanistan
and the toppling of the Taliban? President Pervez Musharraf has
recalled that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told him soon
after 9-11 to “prepare to go back to the Stone Age” if he didn’t
cooperate with the U.S. in the war on terrorism. The existential threat
to Pakistan was the Bush administration!
The Bush administration pressured Musharraf to deploy the Pakistan
Army in border provinces where it had never been deployed and where its
very presence was perceived as a provocation. The result was the
September 2005 “peace agreement” in which the government agreed to halt
military operations along the border and dismantle checkpoints in
return for tribal leaders’ commitment to end support for militancy and
prevent cross-border incursions into Afghanistan. It was a face-saving
defeat for the regime that drew U.S. criticism, as have all subsequent
deals with the militants, which have in any case broken down, like the
February deal in Swat.
The 2005 agreement followed the notorious Lal Masjid episode in
Islamabad when the security forces stormed an important seminary and
hotbed of Islamist activism. The khatib (prayer-leader) had been
dismissed for issuing a fatwa stating no Pakistani Army officer could
be given an Islamic burial if died fighting the Taliban, and then the
mosque had risen up in general rebellion, sparking solidarity attacks
on government forces by militants in North Waziristan and the North
West Frontier Province (NWFP). The government was forced to back down.
That’s been the pattern ever sense. Get tough on the “insurgents,”
with U.S. prodding, and funding, and threats of funding reduction and
direct intervention. Then negotiate with tribal and religious leaders,
recognizing locals’ mistrust of outsiders, the Pakistani state, and its
international backers which the mullahs may identify as U.S.
imperialism and Zionism. And watch both carrot and stick policies fail
as Pakistan’s own homegrown Taliban insurgency swells alongside the
recrudescent original next door.
Now, while the Pakistani Army is still struggling to take control of
Mingora and the Taliban is regrouping, the insurgents have pulled off a
brazen attack on the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) office compound
in Lahore, in eastern Pakistan, on the border with India, killing about
30 and injuring 250. The irony here of course is that the Taliban was
nurtured by the ISI in the 1990s and the attackers may well have known
the location of ISI offices for that very reason.
Such terror has Bush’s war on terror visited on Pakistan, with no
end in sight. And Obama’s war in “Af-Pak,” reliant on a troop surge,
more Predator drone attacks, and maybe some “divide and conquer”
tactics, hold out little promise for relief. U.S. officials screw up
their faces as if genuinely puzzled about while the Pakistanis aren’t
doing more—as if puzzled about why they don’t understand that their
existence is at stake. The fact is that they are the ones on the
outside looking in, who do not understand that the interests of U.S.
imperialism do not cause religious and national and ethnic
sensibilities to disappear or make it possible for local leaders, even
those on the imperialist payroll, to snap their fingers, crush local
resistance and produce social peace. The interests of U.S. imperialism
in this case, in the form of regime change in Afghanistan, and the way
it was done, have antagonized much of the Pakistani population.
This is Washington’s unwanted gift to Islamabad, for which Islamabad keeps getting paid and keeps paying.
Tags: Pakistan, Swat, Swat Operation, war on terror
Martyrs of Swat Operation (Rah-e-Rast)
May 31, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan
Officers Of Pakistan Army Who Laid Down Their Lives In Operation Rah-E-Rast .
Maj Abid SHAHEED (19th Punjab)
Maj Azhar SHAHEED
Capt Bilal Zafar SHAHEED (BALOCH\SSG) 108 PMA L\c
Capt Najam Riaz SHAHEED (SSG) 108 PMA L\c
Capt Asim SHAHEED
Lt Saifulla SHAHEED 117 PMA L\c
Lt Zia
Maj Abid Majeed shaheed Swat operation
HIS Last moments story before Shahdut and gaurd of honour
He was my dear friend since child hood …we were in GARRISON BOYS HIGH SCHOOL LAHORE CANTT,then he got admission in FG college and comission in Pak Army in 1997.
He was an excellent player of foot ball and very tough guy , never during his life he accepted any defeat either it was a game or till he Embraced Shahdut. He was very loving and social person always found of get together of friends, i never saw him depressed, he was always smiling and fun loving .
He was smiling even in his coffin ….
Tags: Capt Bilal Zafar SHAHEED, Lt Zia, Maj Abid Majeed shaheed, Maj Azhar SHAHEED, Pakistan, Swat, Swat Operation, war on terror
Imran Khan – Swat Analysis
May 31, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan, pakistan politics
Tags: Aaj Tv, Imran Khan, Pakistan, pakistan politics, Swat, war on terror
Life as Refugies
May 31, 2009 Pakistan, pakistan politics
For the thousands of displaced civilians who have escaped the fighting in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, the coming summer months are unlikely to ease their suffering.
Tags: Idp's, mingora, Pakistan, Swat, taliban, war on terror
Taliban Channel
May 30, 2009 Funny Videos
Taliban Channel (Hum Sub Umeed Say Hain )17 May 2009
Tags: taliban, Taliban Channel
Pakistan enhances second strike N-capability: US report
May 30, 2009 Articles, Pakistan, pakistan politics
Dawn
Saturday, 30 May, 2009
WASHINGTON: Pakistan has addressed issues of survivability in a possible nuclear conflict through second strike capability, says a US congressional report.
The first part of the report, published on Friday, deals with Islamabad’s efforts to develop new weapons, while the second part studies its strategy for surviving a nuclear war.
According to the report, Pakistan has built hard and deeply buried storage and launch facilities to retain a second strike capability in a nuclear war.
It also has built road-mobile missiles, air defences around strategic sites, and concealment measures.
The report prepared by the Congressional Research Service recalls that as the United States prepared to launch an attack on the Afghan Taliban after September 11, 2001, former military dictator Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf ordered that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal be redeployed to ‘at least six secret new locations.’ This action came at a time of uncertainly about the future of the region, including the direction of US-Pakistan relations. Islamabad’s leadership was uncertain whether the US would decide to conduct military strikes against Pakistan’s nuclear assets if Islamabad did not assist the United States against the Taliban. Indeed, Musharraf cited protection of Pakistan’s nuclear and missile assets as one of the reasons for Islamabad’s dramatic policy shift.
The CRS points out that these events, in combination with the 1999 Kargil crisis, the 2002 conflict with India at the Line of Control, and revelations about the A.Q. Khan proliferation network, inspired a variety of reforms to secure the nuclear complex. Risk of nuclear war in South Asia ran high in the 1999 Kargil crisis, when the Pakistani military is believed to have begun preparing nuclear-tipped missiles.
The report, however, notes that even at the high alert levels of 2001 and 2002, there were no reports of Pakistan mating the warheads with delivery systems.
The CRS refers to a Nov 5, 2007 statement by former prime minister Benazir Bhutto who said that while Musharraf claimed he had firm control of the nuclear arsenal, she was afraid this control could weaken due to instability in the country.
The report then quotes Michael Krepon of the Henry L. Stimson Centre, Washington, as arguing that ‘a prolonged period of turbulence and infighting among the country’s president, prime minister, and army chief’ could jeopardise the army’s unity of command, which ‘is essential for nuclear security.’
During that period between late 2007 and early 2008, US military officials also expressed concern about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei also said he feared that a radical regime could take power in Pakistan, and thereby acquire nuclear weapons.
Experts also worried that while nuclear weapons were currently under firm control, with warheads disassembled, technology could be sold off by insiders during a worsened crisis.
Since then, however, US intelligence officials have expressed greater confidence regarding the security of Islamabad’s nuclear weapons.
The Pakistani military’s control of the country’s nuclear weapons is ‘a good thing because that’s an institution in Pakistan that has, in fact, withstood many of the political changes over the years,’ says Donald Kerr, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence.
Washington has ‘no reason at this point to have any concern with regard to the security’ of Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal, argues a Pentagon spokesperson.
Tags: Pakistan, pakistan politics
Abu Ghraib abuse photos
May 30, 2009 News & Events
Telegraph UK
Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.
Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.
Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.
“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.
“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”
In April, Mr Obama’s administration said the photographs would be released and it would be “pointless to appeal” against a court judgment in favour of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.
Earlier this month, he said: “The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”
It was thought the images were similar to those leaked five years ago, which showed naked and bloody prisoners being intimidated by dogs, dragged around on a leash, piled into a human pyramid and hooded and attached to wires.
Mr Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: “I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.”
The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Mr Obama said the individuals involved had been “identified, and appropriate actions” taken.
Maj Gen Taguba’s internal inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, included sworn statements by 13 detainees, which, he said in the report, he found “credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses.”
Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”
The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US.
Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed.
Tags: Abu Ghraib, Abuse Photos, obama, US
Indian Mad Man Eletrocuted video
May 29, 2009 Videos
Please do not view if you have weak heart
Tags: Eletrocuted video, India, indian railway station, railway
