Carolina Peace - Learning from Others' Sacrifice

Learning from Others' Sacrifice

Written by Administrator

Monday, 06 June 2005

Remarks by Tom Turnipseed

A New York Times editorial on May 23 accused the president of the United States, and other members of his administration, of facilitating prisoner abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

"Patterns of Abuse" takes note of a comment by George W. Bush that the American government's handling of the brutality at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq would be a model of transparency and accountability and that those responsible would be punished. This made for a fine photo opportunity, commented the Times editors, "Unfortunately, none of it is true." The editorial -- published in conjunction with a two-part series detailing the horrifying murder of two Afghans at the Bagram prison by US military personnel -- accuses the administration of withholding reports and stonewalling inquiries. It said, "The administration has prevented any serious investigation of policy makers at the White House, the Justice Department and the Pentagon by orchestrating official probes so that none could come even close to the central question of how the prison policies were formulated and how they led to the abuses.

"The Times said "what happened at Abu Ghraib was no aberration, but part of a widespread pattern. It showed the tragic impact of the initial decision by Mr. Bush and his top advisers that they were not going to follow the Geneva Conventions, or indeed American law, for prisoners taken in antiterrorist operations.

"A policy that officially mandated humane treatment, but only when it suited "military necessity," leading interrogators to believe that they "could deviate slightly from the rules," created a situation in which the US military's "slight deviations included killing prisoners, and then covering up the reason they died.

"The murders and abuse at Bagram and Abu Ghraib could be the tip of the iceberg. We demand more exposure of such atrocities, and are outraged at their commission. The episodes at Bagram provide an appropriate basis for evaluating the character of US policy. The aim of the American project in Afghanistan and Iraq appears to be terrorizing and humiliating local peoples. The lies are unraveling, as monstrous lies seem to do. The horrors at the Bagram Collection Point and Abu Ghraib confront the American people with a moral choice.

Our first responsibility is demanding the truth about the present state of affairs.The New York Times account of torturing prisoners to death at Bagram made me sick at the stomach. Repetitiously, we are encountering the same porno-sadism syndrome in the exploits of our military all over the world!

The argument that barbaric methods are needed to combat terrorism and extract information that could save lives is the time-honored claim of authoritarian regimes and is both spurious and illegal. Torture is never about specific pieces of information, it is meant to break the will of a resisting movement or population.

As a rationale for subjugation and dehumanization of "uncivilized" peoples, much of the media seems to portray life as cheap in Baghdad or the West Bank or the mountains of Afghanistan. Can life anywhere be cheaper than it is in American pop/media culture? Killing, torture and other forms of mayhem are simply not taken seriously -- they are no big deal. They are prevalent on our television and at the cinema.

Meanwhile, the family of former NFL player Pat Tillman is speaking out against the Army. His parents say the military's investigations into Tillman's friendly-fire death in Afghanistan last year were a sham and that Army efforts to cover up the truth have made it harder for them to deal with their loss.

More than a year after their son was shot several times by his fellow Army Rangers on a craggy hillside near the Pakistani border, Tillman's mother and father said in interviews that they believe the military and the government created a heroic tale about how their son died to foster a patriotic response across the country.

They say the Army's ''lies" about what happened have made them suspicious, and they are certain they will never get the full story.

''Pat had high ideals about the country; that's why he did what he did," Mary Tillman said about her son's death. ''The military let him down. The administration let him down. It was a sign of disrespect. The fact that he was the ultimate team player and he watched his own men kill him is absolutely heartbreaking and tragic. The fact that they lied about it afterward is disgusting."

Tillman, a popular player for the Arizona Cardinals, gave up stardom in the National Football League after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to join the Army Rangers with his brother. After a tour in Iraq, their unit was sent to Afghanistan in spring 2004, where they were to hunt for the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. Shortly after arriving in the mountains to fight, Tillman was killed in a barrage of gunfire from his own men.

Immediately, the Army kept the soldiers on the ground quiet and told Tillman's family and the public that he was killed by enemy fire while storming a hill, barking orders to his fellow Rangers. After a public memorial service, at which Tillman received the Silver Star, the Army told Tillman's family what had really happened, that he had been killed by his own men.

Military investigations have offered differing accounts of Tillman's death. The most recent report revealed the confusion and disarray surrounding the mission he was on, and more clearly showed that the family had been kept in the dark about details of his death.

The latest investigation showed that soldiers in Afghanistan knew almost immediately that they had killed Tillman by mistake in what they believed was a firefight with enemies on a tight canyon road. The investigation also revealed soldiers later burned Tillman's uniform and body armor.

Patrick Tillman Sr., a San Jose lawyer, said he is furious about what he found in the volumes of witness statements and investigative documents the Army has given to the family. He calls it a ''botched homicide investigation" and blames high-ranking Army officers for presenting ''outright lies" to the family and to the public.

''After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this," Patrick Tillman said. ''They purposely interfered with the investigation, they covered it up. I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out. They blew up their poster boy."

Mary Tillman questions how an elite Army unit could gun down its most recognizable member at such close range. ''It makes you feel like you're losing your mind in a way," she said. ''You imagine things. . . . You start to contrive all these scenarios that could have taken place because they just kept lying. If you feel you're being lied to, you can never put it to rest."

Patrick Tillman Sr. believes he will never get the truth, and he says he is resigned to that now. But he wants everyone in the chain of command, from Tillman's direct supervisors to the one-star general who conducted the latest investigation, to face discipline for ''dishonorable acts".

The world now knows that the Bush Administration and its minions were wrong in alleging Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and were connected to the 9/11 attacks to justify the invasion of Iraq. The recent elections in Britain revealed a "smoking gun" memo stating that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy."

Our policy toward Iraq has been devastating to its people. A new study issued by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reveals what the Iraqi Minister of Planning Barham Salih describes as "a rather tragic situation of the quality of life in Iraq." This disaster for the Iraqi people is overwhelmingly due to US policy toward Iraq over the past 15 years and more.The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the Gulf War of 1991; more than a decade of sanctions; and the US invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq have resulted in the death of untold numbers in that country, laid waste its infrastructure, health and education system and generally brought about a regression in the lives of millions.

Oil-rich Iraq now suffers from some of the region's highest rates of unemployment and child malnutrition and debilitating problems with electric power, sewage systems and other public services.

Among the indices of social misery in the report are:

Nearly a quarter of Iraq's children suffer from chronic malnutrition.
The probability of dying before 40 for Iraqi children born between 2000 and 2004 is approximately three times the level in neighboring countries.
Three out of four Iraqi families report an unstable supply of electricity.
40 percent of families in urban areas live in neighborhoods where sewage can be seen in the streets.
More than 722,000 Iraqi families have no access to either safe or stable drinking water
The jobless rate for young men with secondary or higher education stands at 37 percent.

The study, entitled Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004, was organized by the UN development agency. It drew its conclusions from interviews carried out in April-August 2004 with members of 21,688 households in Iraq's 18 provinces.

Besides, the lowest ratings in history of global public opinion about U.S. policy and the sorrow and disillusionment of parents like Pat Tillman's, what is else is the never-ending War on Terror costing us?

Since we launched the War on Terror the tab is now up to $191 Billion and climbing. War spending is taking needed resources away from our citizens who are struggling to survive.

As part of ongoing budget negotiations with Congress, states are developing proposals for deep cuts in Medicaid, the health care program that serves over 50 million low-income Americans, including children, the disabled and the elderly. The attack on Medicaid, Social Security and other vital social safety net programs for poor, middle and working class Americans are being led by the likes of Tom Delay in Congress.

Joe Wilson, our Congressman, has taken $15,000 from Tom DeLay's political action committee and Wilson voted with Tom DeLay 95 percent of the time between Jan. 1, 2004 and March 31, 2005. Tom DeLay has been admonished three times for his unethical behavior by the ethics committee, but Joe Wilson still gave DeLay's legal fund $5,000 to help defend him.

The attack on Medicaid will drive hundreds of thousands of people off Medicaid rolls and force even the poorest recipients to pay premiums on essential services such as emergency room care.

We demand that Congress set budget priorities based on our citizen's basic human needs to provide the assistance necessary to build self-reliant, purposeful lives.

Does the budget provide adequately for all of God's children, including the poor and sick, the old and very young?

Does the budget strengthen the foundations of our country in order to make us safer and more secure?Does the budget protect God's creation, the environment?

Does the budget spread its burdens and rewards fairly, or are some groups given special unearned privilege, while others are excluded from America's bounty and opportunity?

Does the budget promote justice and equality by providing for basic human needs in health care, education, housing and other areas?

We support the right to life of our own citizens who are without job opportunities, who go to bed hungry and suffer without adequate health care.

We support the right to life of the people of Iraq, and Afghanistan.

We support our troops' right to life like Pat Tillman. That is why we want to bring them home from the out-of-control killing and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, as soon and as safely as possible.

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