Deep Blade Journal

US Administration sets limits on how much Central Asian people can yearn in the era of Bush-inspired democratic movements

Via Atrios, I see the Washington Post is reporting today that

Defense officials from Russia and the United States last week helped block a new demand for an international probe into the Uzbekistan government’s shooting of hundreds of protesters last month, according to U.S. and diplomatic officials.

This is an utterly amazing news story. Here is another snip from it:

One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the matter, said Rumsfeld caused great surprise by saying — after being told in this discussion that the British language was consistent with stated U.S. policy and should be embraced — that he was unaware of the policy, had not participated in meetings about it and did not want to press for its inclusion in the communique.

The communique nixed by Rumsfeld would have endorsed a “independent, transparent” international investigation into the Andijan massacre carried out by Uzbek forces one month ago. Evidently, the Pentagon has gone to war and prevailed over the State Department over US policy. Terror War basing in Uzbekistan has come out more important than human beings and their political rights.

How Myers kept the aid flowing last year
Here’s yet another good one from the same story:

A senior State Department official, who called The Washington Post at the Defense Department’s request, denied any “split of views.” But other government officials depicted this week’s spat over the communique as a continuation of frictions that erupted last summer, when then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell would not certify that Uzbekistan had met its human rights obligations. The decision led to a cutoff of $18 million for U.S. training for Uzbekistan’s military forces.

Weeks later, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, and criticized that decision as “very shortsighted”; he also announced that the United States would give $21 million for another purpose — bioterrorism defense.

Myers and Rumsfeld deserve to be brought up on charges for courting the criminal Karimov regime in contravention of all decency.

HRW lays it out
Meanwhile, a new report on Uzbekistan has been issued by Human Rights Watch. HRW’s report “details the Uzbek government’s indiscriminate use of lethal force against unarmed people, describes government efforts to silence witnesses, and places the events against the background of Uzbekistan’s worsening human rights record.”

PRESIDENT BUSH: “All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.” (January 20, 2005)

Dick Cheney calls Gitmo torture a “myth”. Deep Blade Journal responds with this guest post from Mike Walls. Thanks, Mike.

GUEST POST: Libyan Man from Sussex, England tortured at Guantánamo
I read in my local evening newspaper (The Evening Argus, Brighton, England) about a 35-year-old Libyan man who has been detained at Guantánamo Bay since 2002. Omar Deghayes has as yet not been charged with any crime, but in the Orwellian nether region of the Bush Administration where international law does not apply, where the Geneva Convention does not apply and where rules and regulations can be dispensed with, we are, to quote one David Rivkin, “releasing people because we’re humanitarian, we’re compassionate”. For Omar Deghayes, however, this outpouring of “humantarianism”, when in reference to its true correlate, namely torture, is described as follows in the Evening Argus, a Brighton newspaper:

The prisoner [Omar] complained of having a hose stuck up his nose until he was drowning, electric shock torture and being placed in a room painted with black and white stripes, containing a glass wall, behind which were snakes.

Mr Stafford Smith added his client had been told his wife would be
sold into prostitution when he was first taken into custody.

This is all further proof that Amnesty’s usage of the term “Gulag” to describe the US prison archipelago across the Middle East and elsewhere, was correct. And even if the head of Amnesty may be accused of a degree of hyperbole, no doubt engendered by the horrors described by former Gitmo inmates, he can in no shape or form be accused of downright mendacity, the likes of which we have been exposed from Rivkin and his neocon coalition in recent years.

It is vitally important that more and more of these tragic accounts are reported, so that the body of evidence may one day overwhelm lackeys of the Bush war and mould public opinion and, who knows, shape future policy decisions. Fortunately for Omar, MP George Galloway’s Respect Party are to bring this issue up in Parliament at the next parliamentary meeting and pressure is being put on Brighton’s local New Labour MP to act quickly on this. Let us keep our fingers crossed for Omar and others like him in the hope that true humanitarianism may come their way.
–Mike Walls

Deep Blade returns after an incredible week+ away at our local film and television school in Rockport, Maine. There is a lot to post, so let’s get on with it…