http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2012/01/our-take-on-marines-urinating-on-taliban/

http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2011/03/thoughts-on-the-american-kill-squad-photographs/

But what the heck. Let’s start with a link:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/08/31/122789/wikileaks-iraqi-children-in-us.html

The incident occurred in Iraq in 2006. A UN investigator found that autopsies showed that all the victims had been handcuffed and shot in the head. The dead included four women, five children under the age of six years old.

This information was in part revealed by the wikileaks leak. And it is one of the reasons that the Iraqi government refuses to extend the US occupation of their country.

Can’t imagine why.

Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen and British resident, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and then “rendered” by the U.S. to multiple countries (such as Morocco); held incommunicado (no access to lawyers, the International Red Cross or anyone else) and interrogated by U.S. agents until 2004; and then shipped off to Guantanamo, where he has remained ever since.

In May, 2008, Mohamed was accused in a Guantanamo military commission with various acts of Terrorism that carry the death penalty if he’s convicted. The key evidence against him are the confessions the U.S. obtained during that 2002-2004 time period. After charging him, the U.S. Government refused to provide his lawyers with documents and other evidence that would enable Mohamed to prove that those confessions were obtained via torture.

Both the Bush administration and the Obama administration leaned on the British government to stop the publication of documents that showed the US tortured Mohamed. Right wingers claimed that releasing this information would result in fire and brimstone falling from the sky, cats and dogs sleeping together, the end of the world as we know it.

But on 10 February 2010, the British courts ruled the documents must be released, that the fact that the US tortured Mohamed must be made public.

Now, I grant you that it’s only been a week, but it would appear that the world hasn’t come to an end. Though, my cat and my dog have been getting along better than usual.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/19/exceptionalism/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/10/law-binyam-mohamed-case

Sami al-Hajj, … Al Jazeera cameraman … was abducted by the U.S. in late 2001, tortured at Bagram, sent to Guantanamo for seven years — where he was never charged with any crime and was interrogated overwhelmingly about Al Jazeera’s operations, not about Terrorism — and then suddenly released without explanation last year

And then he mentions this little nugget:

a Nexis search of media outlets finds that “Roxana Saberi” — the American journalist detained for three months by Iran and then quickly given a trial and appeal — was mentioned 2,201 times during the first two months of her ordeal alone; by contrast “Sami al-Haj” was mentioned a grand total of 101 times during the first six years of his lawless detention at Guantanamo.

So, an American journalist imprisoned by big, bad Iranian government for three months gets the American news whipped up in a furor over human rights abuses, but a Sudanese cameraman is imprisoned by the United States government for years, and the American news can barely be bothered to report it.

This is nothing but tribalism, the notion that right and wrong is not determined by what you do, but by what tribe you belong to.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/12/23/objectivity/index.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/principles-by-digby-what-is-lesson-here.html

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/11/20091115114337109563.html

Turns out, Blackwater executives authorized a million dollars in bribes to Iraqi officials to silence their criticism

Classy.

No wonder they changed their name to Xe.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/shocker-by-digby-who-could-ever-have.html

Apparently, this is the only way Americans who committed torture and broke various international laws will be held accountable: by other countries. Because America itself is not interested in accountability of its own actions.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/05/renditions/index.html