War Handwavium

Pakistan’s conventional military numbers around 500,000 troops.

The Taliban numbers around 20,000 fighters.

Normally, the Taliban fight with guerrilla war tactics. Pakistan’s military uses counter-insurgency tactics. But for the Taliban to actually take control of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, they would have to switch from guerilla tactics to state-warfare tactics. They would have to switch from attacking from hidden positions and sneaking away immediately to the kind of land warfare that allows an army to invade, conquer, and occupy a city of 300 square miles with a population of a million.

A guerrilla force of 20,000 can harass an army of 500,000, inflict damage, and cause the army to over-react, kill civilians, and lose local support. But a guerrilla force of 20,000 can not engage in a land war against 500,000 and survive.

So stop with the “Pakistan is about to fall to the Taliban” headlines already.

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090508/REVIEW/705079996/1008

This is a list of statistics relating to people being tortured at Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other sites as of May 2009.

Date started: October 2001, after 9/11, after invasion of Afghanistan

total detainees ever in custody: at least 775
detainees released without charge: 420
current number of detainees: 245
predicted to be put on trial: 60 to 80
predicted to be released: 170

attempted suicides: hundreds
successful suicides: at least 4

Number of cases of abuse: at least 330
Number of detainees involved in abuse case: at least 460
Number of US personnel involved in abuse cases: at least 600
Number of US personnel convicted of abuse: 54
Number of US personnel serving prison time for abuse: 40

Number of detainees who have died while in US custody: at least 100
Number of detainees deaths ruled a homicide: at least 30
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/18/ex-state-dept-official-hundreds-of-detainees-died-in-us-custody-at-least-25-murdered/

Number of tapes made by CIA showing torture of detainees: at least 92
Number of tapes destroyed by CIA: At least 92
Number of hours of video footage of CIA torture: hundreds of hours

American lives saved from torture-induced confessions: Zero

Number of detainees convicted of terrorist activities as of 21 May 2009: three

http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2006/04/25/numbers-0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagram_torture_and_prisoner_abuse

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/washington/03web-intel.html?_r=1

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama_analysis

A list of documents obtained by the ACLU using the Freedom of Information Act are listed here:

http://www.aclu.org/accountability/released.html

A list of autopsy reports of prisoners in US custody is here:

http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/102405/

Senate report on torture of prisoners in US custody:

http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=305735

Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004. In his report, he stated “The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture.”

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/41514.html

In 2008, Taguba wrote a preface a Physicians for Human Rights report accusing the Bush White House of war crimes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/06/18/BL2008061801546.html

Dasht-i-Leili_massacre: between 250 and 3,000 (depending on sources) Taliban prisoners were shot and/or suffocated to death in metal truck containers, while being transferred by U.S. and Northern Alliance soldiers from Kunduz to Sheberghan prison in Afghanistan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasht-i-Leili_massacre

Obama administration officials said that there were no grounds for a war crimes investigation around the Dasht-i-Leili_massacre, not because they said no crime occurred, but because they claim the prisoners were not killed by American forces. Rather, they claim the prisoners were killed by Afghan forces who were working with American military and the CIA.

Dostum, was the Northern Alliance general who is accused of overseeing the atrocities. A former U.S. ambassador for war crimes issues, Pierre Prosper, told the Times that the Bush administration was reluctant to investigate the deaths, even though Dostum was on the payroll of the CIA and his soldiers worked with U.S. special forces in 2001.

Dostum was suspended from his military post last year on suspicion of threatening a political rival, but Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently rehired him.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090711/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_afghan_war_crimes

RE: Torture tapes. “The existence and destruction of the tapes was first revealed on Thursday by CIA Director Michael Hayden in a letter to CIA employees. … Hayden made the improbable claim that the tapes were destroyed to protect CIA interrogators from retaliation by Al Qaeda. He wrote in his letter that the CIA halted the practice of taping interrogations in 2002, after only a few recordings had been made.”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7579