Abuses of power

It seems that the fascists have yet to curtail the media in the U.K.. In The Guardian, Julian Borger reports:

Last October, the army's criminal investigation com mand found probable cause to charge 27 officers and enlisted soldiers with offences ranging from dereliction of duty to maiming and involuntary manslaughter in the Dilawar case. Charges were also recommended against 15 of them for the Habibullah case.

Only seven soldiers have been charged, all junior ranks.

[...]

Sergeant James Leahy told investigators that after February 2002 directive from Mr Bush that the Geneva convention did not apply to al-Qaida or Taliban fighters, interrogators believed they "could deviate slightly from the rules".

The Pentagon denied that the Abu Ghraib scandal could have been prevented if the Bagram abuses had been investigated faster. Carrying out an inquiry in Afghanistan was bound to take longer. But John Sifton, an Afghanistan expert at Human Rights Watch, said this was "a convenient excuse".

"The White House always put forward, that Abu Ghraib was an exception, just some rotten apples," he said. "But US personnel in Afghanistan were involved in killings and torture of prisoners well before the Iraq war even started.

"The story begins in Afghanistan."

Also found in today's Guardian (emphasis mine):

These findings are a reminder of the need for combative media in wartime - and an antidote to high-minded outrage from the administration over Newsweek magazine's story, later retracted, about the desecration of a Qur'an at Guantanamo. Universal justice and American values require that the perpetrators - and those who authorised their acts - are held to account. As so often with Iraq and the 'war on terror', some will retort that however regrettable, such abuses are overshadowed by the mass, random brutality of terrorists and the murderous Ba'athist regime. That is utterly irrelevant to these cases

One would hope that the American media are paying attention. It's time for the press to awaken from its slumber. With the war criminals holding power in two of the three branches of government, the fourth estate is all we have left to prevent the fascists from destroying our democracy.