Iraq war logs: secret files show how US ignored torture

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/iraq-war-logs-military-leaks

A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.

Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.

The new logs detail how:

• US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

• A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.

• More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.

The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death.

Efforts to Prosecute Blackwater Are Collapsing

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/world/21contractors.html

WASHINGTON — Nearly four years after the federal government began a string of investigations and criminal prosecutions against Blackwater Worldwide personnel accused of murder and other violent crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cases are beginning to fall apart, burdened by a legal obstacle of the government’s own making.

In the most recent and closely watched case, the Justice Department on Monday said that it would not seek murder charges against Andrew J. Moonen, a Blackwater armorer accused of killing a guard assigned to an Iraqi vice president on Dec. 24, 2006. Justice officials said that they were abandoning the case after an investigation that began in early 2007, and included trips to Baghdad by federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents to interview Iraqi witnesses.

The government’s decision to drop the Moonen case follows a series of failures by prosecutors around the country in cases aimed at former personnel of Blackwater, which is now known as Xe Services. In September, a Virginia jury was unable to reach a verdict in the murder trial of two former Blackwater guards accused of killing two Afghan civilians. Late last year, charges were dismissed against five former Blackwater guards who had been indicted on manslaughter and related weapons charges in a September 2007 shooting incident in Nisour Square in Baghdad, in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed.



U.S. Had Warnings on Plotter of Mumbai Attack

New York Times 

By JANE PERLEZ, ERIC SCHMITT and GINGER THOMPSON

Less than a year before terrorists killed at least 163 people in Mumbai, India, a young Moroccan woman went to American authorities in Pakistan to warn them that she believed her husband, David C. Headley, was plotting an attack.

It was not the first time American law enforcement authorities were warned about Mr. Headley, a longtime informer in Pakistan for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration whose roots in Pakistan and the United States allowed him to move easily in both worlds.

Two years earlier, in 2005, an American woman who was also married to the 50-year-old Mr. Headley told federal investigators in New York that she believed he was a member of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba created and sponsored by Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency.

Despite those warnings by two of his three wives, Mr. Headley roamed far and wide on Lashkar’s behalf between 2002 and 2009, receiving training in small-caliber weapons and countersurveillance, scouting targets for attacks, and building a network of connections that extended from Chicago to Pakistan’s lawless northwestern frontier.

‘Wearable Robots’ Could Solve Soldiers’ Hauling Woes

Communications equipment, weapons, extra ammo, dinner for the next two nights — the stuff troops have to lug around just keeps getting heavier. The Army brass recognizes that it’s getting ridiculous, but isn’t so sure how to lighten the load. Defense contractors say not to bother: just strap on a robotic exoskeleton and it’ll bear the burden better than even the toughest human backs.

Soldiers need to stay in touch with each other when they’re on dismounted patrols in dangerous places. But their portable computers and radios — and all the batteries that power them — can quickly get cumbersome. “It makes you a slower, heavier target,” one sergeant wearing the Army’s gadget-heavy Land Warrior ensemble told Noah a while back.

Then there’s all of the specialized gear that troops take on missions — night vision attachments, medical supplies — which can bring the weight of their kits over 100 pounds. “I tell people in my office, ‘Stop hanging stuff on the kids like they’re Christmas trees,’” Brigadier General Peter Fuller, the Army’s top officer for buying the stuff soldiers wear, said at a Washington conference Tuesday, Defense News reports.
Continue Reading “‘Wearable Robots’ Could Solve Soldiers’ Hauling Woes” »

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/#ixzz12KtBcQ9G

Mystery Merc Group Is Blackwater’s 34th Front Company

From WIRED

If International Development Solutions, a mysterious firm partially owned by Blackwater, has its own independent office, it’s hard to find. A business records search co-locates one of the jackpot winners of a State Department contract worth up to $10 million with Kaseman LLC, the well-connected private security security firm that partnered with Blackwater arm U.S. Training Center to win the contract.

That would suggest International Development Solutions — a company few industry experts have heard of, sporting a generic, Google-resistant name — is yet another front group the company set up to win government contracts while concealing its tainted brand. More of a mystery is why the State Department let the company get away with it. Again.

Afghan security firms 'hand in glove' with Taliban

By Jude Sheerin BBC News 

A Senate report has found evidence that many Afghan security personnel paid with US taxpayers' money to guard American bases are hand in glove with the Taliban insurgents hell-bent on killing coalition troops.

One disturbing case uncovered by the Armed Services Committee in the western Afghan province of Herat illustrates the deadly double game played by some of these hired guns.

Two Afghan warlords involved were nicknamed by their British employers as Mr White and Mr Pink, after gangsters in the gory Hollywood movie Reservoir Dogs.

The two contractors were appointed in June 2007 by the defence contractor ArmorGroup to provide security at Shindand airbase.

Mafia-style hit

The Senate report links the pair, and their successors, to "murder, kidnapping, bribery and anti-coalition activities" during their 18 months on the payroll.

Mystery Merc Group Is Blackwater’s 34th Front Company

This tasteful, quaint red-brick house on a tree-lined street in northwest Washington doesn’t appear to be the headquarters for a private security company that stands to make millions in a war zone. But the online trail for a mysterious firm, partially owned by Blackwater, leads here. And that company not only just won part of security contract with the State Department worth up to $10 billion last week. It’s also the latest in a series of cutouts used by the notorious mercenary firm to hide its work from public scrutiny. The business that’s listed at this house? Blackwater’s 34th front company, if you’re counting.

Maybe I wouldn’t have driven over to the wealthy Tenleytown neighborhood in D.C. had International Development Solutions LLC answered its listed number, but it was out of service on Friday. Had my calls been returned by the two security companies that make up the “joint venture,” Virginia-based Kaseman and Blackwater arm U.S. Training Center, I would perhaps have gotten some clarity on whether this was definitely the right “International Development Solutions.” But not only did no one return my calls, but the joint venture’s generic name is as Google-resistant as they come, so when I found a business listing for International Development Systems in Washington D.C., I drove on out.

Two rings of a doorbell and ten minutes of waiting didn’t yield a response from anyone who might have been inside what was clearly someone’s three-story residence. No one was around to explain how a company supposedly located here ended up with a chunk of a five-year State Department contract. Blackwater has pulled this sort of thing before, setting up dozens of front groups to get government cash while concealing its tainted brand. More of a mystery is why the State Department let the company get away with it. Again.

A months-long investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this year found that the Army and Raytheon awarded a multi-million dollar sub-contract to a firm called Paravant for the training of Afghan troops. Paravant claimed to have “years” of experience performing such work. As it turned out, Paravant didn’t really exist. “Paravant had never performed any services and was simply a shell company established to avoid what one former Blackwater executive called the ‘baggage’ associated with the Blackwater name as the company pursued government business,” committee chairman Carl Levin said in March.

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/blackwaters-34th-front-company-wins-big-diplo-jackpot/#ixzz11OsmxadR



Pentagon Plans $4.2bn Arms Sales to Iraq

Pentagon Plans $4.2bn Arms Sales to Iraq

The Pentagon issued a proposal on Monday to sell weapons worth $4.2bn to Iraq, including 18 F-16 fighter aircraft, Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, laser-guided bombs and reconnaissance equipment, according to a report from the Financial Times.

The Pentagon said the proposed arms sales would make Baghdad “a more valuable partner in an important area of the world as well as supporting Iraq’s legitimate [self-defence] needs”.