The report published today by the US Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Dianne Feinstein, makes horrifying, even disgusting, reading. The tactics used against prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay or foreign CIA black sites (i.e. torture chambers) included water-boarding (simulated drowning), ‘rectal rehydration’ (leading to anal fissures and rectal prolapse), sleep deprivation for a week […]
Posts Tagged ‘War on Terror’
Rushing into new anti-extremist powers has a troublesome history
Aug 30th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Here we go again. The undoubted threat represented by ISIS and the return of its recruits to the UK is leading to calls for new banning orders for extremist groups, new civil powers to target extremists, and measures to target persons even when they have actually not broken the law. It has also led to […]
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Will we adapt to a multipolar world, or face endless war?
Feb 22nd, 2013 by Jenny Clegg.Ten years ago this week, 100,000 American troops were assembled in Kuwait as the US and UK were poised to strike, the neocons driving them on to “seize the unipolar moment”; the UN Security Council was split; and at London’s biggest demonstration ever, the crowds had heard Tony Benn’s call: “Another world is possible”. Ten […]
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The US: a declining military and economic power
Aug 31st, 2012 by Michael Meacher.The news today that 3 more NATO troops have been killed by Afghan soldiers – bringing the number of such murders to 15 in this month alone and 45 this year so far – is serious enough, but it hides a much more disturbing background. It has been dismissed as a series of random killings, not […]
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Hiding government’s sins and misdemeanours
Apr 5th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.The nature of the British state and the government’s contempt for personal freedom come to a head with new laws proposed for the Queen’s Speech next month. It was already known that the government intended to bring forward a law to allow the police and MI5/6, without a warrant, to access data from every phone […]
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The end of the biggest military disaster since Vietnam
Dec 15th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.The final pull-out of US troops from Iraq marks the end, or perhaps just one stage of the end, of the biggest military disaster since Vietnam. Every US-UK goal behind the invasion has been lost, in some cases humiliatingly. Iran, the target for revenge after the sacking of the US embassy in 1979, emerges as […]
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Iraq and the Arab Spring: a thought experiment
Dec 15th, 2011 by David Osler.Very few things about the political state of Iraq can accurately be described as clear. But now that the flag has been cased and the last 4,000 US troops are on the way home, some sort of preliminary balance sheet is finally possible. As president Obama told the troops at the military base in Fort […]
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The meaning of 9/11
Sep 12th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.9/11 remains one of the most misunderstood events in modern history. The first myth is that it came out of the blue on an unsuspecting America. In fact it is known that 11 countries provided advance warnings to the US about the 9/11 attacks, including Russia and Israel which sent 2 senior Mossad experts to […]
