[Sosfbay-discuss] Daniel Ellsberg, Brigadier General Janice Karpinsky, & Ambassador Craig Murray

[Tian Harter]

Last evening in the Valley Life Sciences Building in Berkeley
there was a series of speakers talking about the way things are
being done by the US Government right now. The first speaker
was Larry Everest, who played a news clip that was broadcast
on Channel 4 in England showing a crowd of people running
down a street being bombed by a US fighter under orders
from his superiors in April of '04. The story made it very clear that
the soldiers doing the killing were obeying orders from above.

The next speaker was former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, who
was in charge of their Embassy in Uzbekistan from '02 to '04.
He told of being shown pictures of a guy that had been tortured
and then boiled to death by the Uzbek authorities. Then he
explained how he found out that it wasn't an isolated case,
and that these interrogations were paid for by CIA sources.
Murray said these people were being asked to sign confessions
written by the authorities, which were then forwarded to Uncle
Sam as good intelligence. He explained that the names of the
torture victims were removed from the reports so that people
like Condoleeza Rice could read them without knowing how
the information was being gathered. The Ambassador was
convinced that the US is spending so much money in Uzbekistan
because oil and gas have recently been discovered there.

Former Brigadier General Janis Karpinski said that she had
gone to Iraq at about the time Bush had declared "Mission
Accomplished." She had been put in charge of 18 prison
facilities in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib. Because they wanted
to look different from Saddam's regime they had begun by
changing the name to "Baghdad Central Correctional Facility",
which the soldiers then called BCCF. This had changed when
a General Miller came along, who was put in charge of the
place to "Gitmoize it" by higher ups. She said General Miller
had $125 Million to spend, and very good connections to
Donald Rumsfeld. The guy had brought in interrogation
specialists from Guantanimo and other places to get information
out of people as quickly as possible. She was convinced that
contractors were brought in to do the dirty work because it
placed them outside the uniform code of military justice, and
apparently every other kind of legal controlling authority.
She explained that those famous Abu Ghraib photos were taken
to show prisoners, so interrogators could say "If you don't give
us information, this will be happening to you."

Karpinski found out about the contractors work two weeks
into the investigation of it. She told of being called into
General Sanchez's office to talk about it. She was
expecting to be bawled out and told to clean up the mess,
but instead she was ordered to remain silent about it.
Karpinski is convinced that she was made a scapegoat along
with the "seven bad apples on the night shift" to make it
look like the problem had been solved. Her attitude is
"those prisoners need a lot more company behind bars."

The final speaker was Daniel Ellsberg, of Pentagon Papers fame.
He said just about every US Administration had threatened to
use nuclear weapons, but the current administration is MUCH
more public about it. He said that yes, nuclear weapons are bad,
but much something much worse was done with conventional
fire bombing by the US during WW II. He told of the firebombing
of Tokyo during March 8th and 9th of 1945, when many more
people died than during Hiroshima or Nagasaki. He advised
Government employees who have knowledge of war crimes
and the like not to resign, but rather to leak documents and
other information "to get the story out". He also said "It's
disgraceful that current administration Architects like
John Yu at Bolt Hall School of Law aren't challenged on what
they say by other faculty members and protested by students."

The Ambassador and General Karpinski are doing a road show.
You can see them this evening at Stanford (7:30 PM at the
William Hewlett Teaching Center, Rm. 200), and later at other
venues. For more information please visit:

http://www.bushcommission.org/

--
Tian Harter
http://tianharter.org
I gave Ambassador Craig Murray a Nevada quarter after the event.
Tian Harter for Senate, P. O. Box 391854, Mountain View CA 94039-1854