PURITAN NEWS WEEKLY

www.puritans.net/news/

05/10/04

 

 

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

 

 

By J. Parnell McCarter

 

 

The US military and intelligence services are being asked to conduct a MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.  On the one hand, they are asked to stop and prevent Islamic terrorism.  On the other hand, they are asked to conduct their operations in a manner that respects civil rights, YET not defined by the Ten Commandments **as a whole**.  They must operate under the secularist error that all religions should be legally permissible, including Islam.  So they must promote the myth that "Islam is a religion of peace", and not a religion which should be outlawed by the state.  Thus, it is not sufficient to prove someone is a Muslim, and punish them for adhering to and promoting this wicked and dangerous religion.  Rather, it must be proved that they have engaged in some specific act of terrorism.  Of course, that is no way to **prevent** Islamic terrorism, because the terrorist act will have already happened.  Hence, the theory by which the Guantanamo Bay prison system and others like it operate (including the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq), is to hold people in prison and punish them (to varying degrees), even though there is insufficient evidence that they have committed a crime according to the published civil law. 

 

Significant evidence is now surfacing as to the nature of the consequent abuse.  Here are excerpts from an article at http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0510/dailyUpdate.html by Tom Regan summarizing what we have learned about the abuse:

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

A 'clear ... system failure'

New photos, videos, and Red Cross report show Iraqi prisoner abuse was widespread.


The United States military has told Congress it will see other graphic photos and videos of violent abuse of Iraqi prisoners this week, as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal spreads into its third week of constant media coverage. And a previously confidential Red Cross report published by the Wall Street Journal Monday shows that the abuse in the prison system spread far beyond six individuals and cites abuses -- – "tantamount to torture" – including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of "imminent execution." The report also shows that 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake.

Also an investigation by Newsweek shows how widespread that abuse is across the US military prison system – and not just in Iraq – and that many in the US military are trying to pass the buck when it comes to who was responsible for the abuse…

Senator Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina also said that the abuse in Iraq was not limited to the actions of a few. Sen. Graham, a former chief prosecutor for the Air Force, said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that "it's clear to me that we had system failure" within the military and that "we just don't want a bunch of privates and sergeants to be the scapegoats here."

The prison scandal also threatens to engulf the US General Geoffrey Miller, who has just been appointed the head of prisons in Iraq. Britain's Mail on Sunday, and Newsweek, both carry reports that much of the abuse at the Iraqi prisons started after a visit there late last summer by Gen. Miller, then in charge at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay.

The Washington Post reports that as the insurgency grew in Iraq last summer and fall, the need for intelligence also grew. Miller was brought in by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the Coalition commander in Iraq, and his top intel officer, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fastto, to find ways to improve the flow of intelligence from detainees.

"He came up there and told me he was going to 'Gitmoize' the detention operation," turning it into a hub of interrogation, said Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, then commander of the military prison system in Iraq. "But the difference is, in Guantanamo Bay there isn't a war going on outside the wall."

The Mail on Sunday reports that the orders to "soften up" Iraqi detainees Abu Ghraib jail came from the highest level of the US defense administration, right up to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Miller defended his tactics at the prison and denied that his suggestions might have contributed to mistreatment of prisoners by overzealous military police. "I stand by those recommendations," General Miller said on Saturday. "Those recommendations were based on a system that provided humane detention, excellent interrogation, all within the bounds of the . . . Geneva Conventions."

But as the Los Angeles Times reported over the weekend, an internal army investigation of the abuse compiled by Major-General Antonio Taguba has challenged Miller's approach, particularly the use of military police to "soften" up prisoners for interrogation. Military law forbids the use of military police for this role. The Sydney Morning Herald reports, however, that for the reservist military police units at Abu Ghraib abusing prisoners seemed almost routine, "a fact of army life the soldiers felt no need to hide." One of the reservists charged with abuse claimed last week that it was her job to "make it hell" for the prisoners and that she didn't read a copy of the Geneva conventions until two weeks after she was charged.

The Guardian also reported last week that US military police moved unregistered Iraqi prisoners, known as "ghost detainees", around an army-run jail at Abu Ghraib, in order to hide them from the Red Cross.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that the abuse scandal means the US "faces the prospect of a severe and enduring backlash not just in the Middle East but also among strategic allies."

 

The White House is so gloomy about the repercussions that senior adviser Karl Rove suggested this week that the consequences of the graphic photographs documenting the US abuse of Iraqi detainees are so enormous that it will take decades for the United States to recover, according to a Bush adviser.

Martin Schram of the Naples (Florida) Daily Times writes that the abuse scandal has handed Osama bin Laden his greatest victory ever over the US military. International Affairs columnist Fareed Zakaria, writing in Newsweek, says that while people like Rumsfeld have said that they "accept responsibility" for what happened, it never seems to go beyond just saying the words – no one ever does seem to take responsibility.

After the greatest terrorist attack against America, no one was asked to resign, and the White House didn't even want to launch a serious investigation into it. The 9/11 Commission was created after months of refusals because some of the victims' families pursued it aggressively and simply didn't give up. After the fiasco over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, not one person was even reassigned. The only people who have been fired or cashiered in this administration are men like Gen. Eric Shinseki, Paul O'Neill and Larry Lindsey, who spoke inconvenient truths.

As bad as the situation may seem right now, Rumsfeld signaled Friday in his testimony to Congress that even more damaging new photos and videos would be released soon. Miltary officials say that the new photos include US soldiers beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death; having sex with a female Iraqi prisoner; "acting inappropriately with a dead body"; and a video allegedly showing Iraqi guards raping young boys. Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker also released photos that showed a naked, handcuffed prisoner about to be attacked by military dogs.

Mr. Hersh said the magazine also has photos of after the attack that show the man with a large wound caused by the dogs, and that the US soldiers in the pictures are a completely different group than the seven reservists already charged with mistreating prisoners. Columnist Jenny McCartney of The Telegraph of London says the new photos prove that the problem wasn't "an interrogation centre with a couple of rogue soldiers in it: it was a sadistic free-for-all of the basest kind."

On Monday, the White House restated its support for Rumsfeld, as the president visited the Pentagon. ABS-CBNNews of the Philippines reports that "hushed whispering" out of the Pentagon indicate that Mjr. Gen. Taguba did such a through job in his 53-page report, and so upset the Pentagon, that he may have "written a death warrant to his career."

And as one of the first reservists charged in the abuse scandal is about to be tried in a court martial, Newsday reports that Specialist Joe Darby, the man who first brought the photos of prisoner abuse to the military's attention in January of 2004, is now so hated in the town in Maryland where he and other reservists in one of the military police unit came from, that people there are saying his life may be in danger. "Darby's going to be shunned," said Tanya Vargas, a former weekend reservist with the 372nd. "He's going to be blackballed. His life is in jeopardy, because he's a snitch. I hope they have protection for him."


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Another article on this topic of prison abuse entitled “Chain of Command” is at http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040517fa_fact2 . 

 

There is here a clear violation of civil rights, for it is immoral to indefinitely detain and punish people when they have not first been tried and found guilty of some crime based upon the evidence and in accordance with the published civil law.

 

America's war against terrorism displays the lie of the whole American secularist model of government.  America cannot liberate any other nation, for itself is enslaved in its sin and in rebellion against God's moral law as summarized in the Ten Commandments within its own borders.  It refuses to comply with Biblical norms of justice.  And it has since its founding promoted a system which is inconsistent with true righteousness.  As a result, it can be expected to continue on with its  MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.  

 

But what should happen instead to fight Islamic terrorism?  First and foremost, America must confess its past sins and errors, repent, and become a professedly reformed Christian nation, governed according to the principles of the Ten Commandments as a whole.  That means false and dangerous religions like Islam can and should be outlawed by the US within its own borders.  Second, it should cease and desist supporting wicked foreign governments, be they Islamic like Saudi Arabia or Judaistic like Israel, via military and economic aid.  Third, it should enact a law prohibiting Islam within US borders.  Those Muslims currently residing in the US should be fully compensated for their property in the US, and escorted out of the US to the nation of their choice, unless they repent of their wicked Islamic religion.  Fourth, no one should be indefinitely detained and punished by the US government unless they have first been tried and found guilty of the published civil law beyond a reasonable doubt based upon the evidence and in accordance with the published civil law.   Fifth, as a general rule, all military action should be defensive in nature, and not offensive.   The US should renounce preemptive use of force, unless there is clear evidence force is imminently going to be used against the US by a hostile foreign power.  Sixth, the US should cease and desist supporting revolutionary movements which seek by force to change present governments.  Rather, it should encourage people to respect their current ruler, and obey him insofar as he does not command that which is contrary to the Word of God.  Seventh, Islamic nations should be told that if they are protecting Islamic terrorists, and if those terrorists attack the US, then the US will have to respond by force against the nation, conquering it, and establishing there a reformed Christian nation where Islam is illegal.  In other words, all Muslims in the nation would be forced to flee their nation, should the US find it necessary to defend itself against the nation’s foreign aggression by a war with that foreign nation.   We must move away from MISSION IMPOSSIBLE to address Islamic terrorism, to a policy based in sound scriptural reason.