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http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/diplomatic/foreign.htm
March 28, 2006 --

SPECIAL TO WMR from ROME AND WASHINGTON, DC

Play the Neo-cons’ Treasure Hunting!

By Burt Scully

Deploying the Right, Penetrating the Left, How the "Discrediting Committee" 
Works:

Salon, NYT, and Ledeen, The Real Scandal of the Abu Ghraib Picture

One of the most bizarre media tricks  over the last weeks was the little 
psychological warfare drama organized around the issue of torture in Abu 
Ghraib, The 
New York Times published an interview with one of the many prisoners tortured 
in Abu 
Ghraib, Ali Shalal Qaissi, now living in Jordan. Qaissi is the leader of an 
association of the former prisoners of Abu Ghraib and he is trying to have at 
least 
a little part of the truth about the torture of prisoners in Iraq come out.  
Susan 
Burke, The Philadelphia lawyer who is representing Mr. Qaissi and other former 
prisoners in a lawsuit against civilian interrogators and translators, has 
explained 
in great and compelling details how this interview really worked  ( 
http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ ran24/ inchieste/ video_abughraib/ 
abughraib_itvburque_eng.wmv) . And, of course there are official documents 
confirming the paper work used to set up the tortures, here, here, and here. 
[1] 

And for a background including documents, pictures and films go here and here.

This initial timid attempt to claim the right to speak for those who were 
tortured 
and degraded by the whitened sepulchers that had claimed to the world they were 
invading Iraq to stop torture and to bring democracy did not go unpunished. 
Indeed, 
in a situation of generalized lies supported by an enormous media apparatus 
which 
has sold out or been intimidated by the dictatorial power of the US government 
and 
elite, the simple affirmation of basic truths is, rightly, considered dangerous 
and 
intolerable.

Such a power is so arrogant and overwhelming that it has established that the 
truth 
is what it says is the truth. This is not an exaggeration, it is a the 
statement of 
a fact. And in order to enforce this official truth, the dictatorial power has 
created an enormous, unprecedented,  apparatus of propaganda, intimidation, and 
distortion that has been progressively taking over even the servile news of 
just a 
few years ago.  By implementing what fascism had only tried, this arrogant 
power has 
organized a large network of mignons which is capable of being deployed  in a 
swarming (SWARMING) fashion against those who threaten to break the wall of the 
big 
lie. 

And so, we have today Fox news et similia in the US; and we have  the creation 
of 
similar operations in many countries. Media that fill their mouths with the 
words 
democracy, freedom, and truth while being their paid executioner. A population 
that 
is obviously against the war, against torture, against dictatorship, and 
against 
invasions has been intimidated and has lost the most fundamental  precondition 
for 
democracy and freedom: the ability to express  in a meaningful and  concrete 
way 
what they think. This population has been, intentionally, persuaded that what 
they 
think is of no consequence and that what they want has no effect.  As in any 
fascist 
system, the purpose is to break the resistance of the population and to force 
them 
to go to whoever seems the strongest for protection.  And the strongest appears 
to 
be, for the moment, the likes of O’Reilly and other demagogical liars with the 
license to intimidate. 

This, however, is only a part of the story. The fact is that no Fascism has 
magic 
power to control a victim population forever. A spontaneous and, in fact, 
insuppressible resistance has emerged. It has emerged  without, and actually 
despite, what is presented officially as the institutions of the “opposition.” 
But 
the Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Roves of this country have, of course, also, shall we 
say, 
a left hand. We saw how the New York Times was used by the psychological 
warfare and 
propaganda offices of the Pentagon with Judith Miller’s “revelations” of the 
non-
existing weapons of mass destruction. We saw how the “liberal” New York Times 
supplied the best cover to spread that line while being attacked with all the 
expected vulgarity by the likes of Fox News. It is a perfect system of weight 
and 
counterweight that, in the best ying-yang tradition, allows the powers- that-be 
to 
control both, its side and the “other side.”  Nothing is really new in fact, 
any 
unlawful elite that is determined to govern against the will and the welfare of 
its 
population knows that, for example, its control would be more secure if it can 
use – 
in a coordinated fashion -- both police and organized crime. I.e. if that elite 
can 
pull the strings of  the law enforcers and the law breakers, the terrorists and 
the 
antiterrorists… Everyone has his role  in the greater scheme, but only if they 
respond to the puppet master. 

So, it wouldn’t be surprising to find that this power has been interested in 
placing 
his controlled assets deep inside what is officially perceived as the opposite 
camp. 
It does not mean that they can totally control any opposition. The opposition 
to 
dictatorship and  brutality (torture, for example) is something normal in every 
human being. No, the trick consists in trying to penetrate, with operatives or 
controlled useful idiots, any organized form of opposition and to try to 
subvert it 
from the inside. It does not always work, of course, but the attempt to do so 
is 
what one should expect from such unlawful power. So, when the most conscious 
elements of a population, deprived of viable institutions and denied a  free 
media 
and a voice, turn towards new creative solutions like the online blogs, make no 
mistake that the powers-that-be will try to get inside. They have a huge 
apparatus, 
maybe even militarily organized, that is familiar with the Internet (is anybody 
surprised?) and trained in provocations and “Chaos & Confusion.” 

There are certain special moments, however, in which this apparatus runs the 
risk of 
being exposed and unmasked. Some informer observers believe that the present 
situation  -- characterized by a large majority of the population being 
disgusted 
with the war in Iraq and the  criminal insanity of the elite, and rapidly 
becoming 
immune to the stimula of fascist propagandists à la O’Reilly – is potentially 
one of 
those moments. When the situation is ripe, as it appears to be now, a 
relatively 
small event is enough to produce a chain reaction. 

Such a “relatively small event” could very well be the mobilization organized 
by the 
secret apparatus of provocation and distortion directed at stopping the truth 
on the 
torture in Iraq.   What we are doing with this short report is an experiment, 
and we 
invite everybody who cares for their country and their own future to do the 
same, 
the results could be positively surprising. It could be a first example on how 
to 
unmask the “apparatus.” 

These are the elements that we have:

1) The tortures that took place, and apparently continue to take place, in Abu 
Ghraib, Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and many other locations in Iraq and elsewhere 
– 
these tortures have popped up in such a way that they are undeniable.

2) The US military -- either because there is an internal resistance in the 
military 
itself, or in order to maintain its cover by throwing a small bone to the 
general 
outrage – have themselves opened an investigation and admitted that cases of 
torture 
took place.

3) A cover up operation developed with show trials in which the “few rotten 
apples” 
were cut loose, but, on the other side, it was determined that the “accepted 
and 
unchallengeable  truth” was that there was no complicity aside from the “lone 
torturers.” 

4) In particular, despite the evidence, it was determined that the “acceptable 
truth” holds that the higher level of the Pentagon had nothing to do with 
ordering 
torture, despite the evidence available. 

5) If the “acceptable truth” is to be pushed down the throat of the majority of 
the 
people, then no political institution or major media should be able to oppose 
such 
an “acceptable truth.” 

6) In order to do that  it is necessary to activate an operation of 
blackmailing, 
discrediting, confusion, and intimidation.

7) Such an operation must be activated whenever the holy lie of the “acceptable 
truth” is jeopardized.

8) Thus, if one could discover one of the trigger points that necessarily leads 
to 
an activation of the “apparatus,” if one is able to identify clearly which 
action 
leads to a reaction by that apparatus, then one would see precisely how the 
apparatus works; who is part of that apparatus (both in the pro-war camp and 
otherwise); who is susceptible of being mobilized by that apparatus (by 
conscious 
decision or by indirect influence); which media organs , which organs, groups, 
blogs 
etc are part of the “rapid reaction response” of the apparatus.

9) In the case of the revelations on the torture in Abu Ghraib, we have a 
manual-
like example. As said before, Ali Shalal Qaissi, one of the tortured prisoners, 
took 
the first steps to organize the survivors of the torture camp. The organization 
does 
not scream, does not accept provocations, does not use violent words; it just 
pushes 
for the truth – the truth impressed in their skin – to come out. 

10) The potential consequences of such a rupture of the “accepted truth” is 
huge. 
The apparatus has a few options. It can try to engineer a provocation in order 
to 
extremize  or fundamentalize the organization of the survivors, and then 
denounce it 
as extremist, fundamentalist and violent. It is obvious that the apparatus 
prefers 
always and in any case to deal with  an adversary that can be presented as anti-
democratic and brutal. When the adversary is not, measures must be taken to 
reshape 
it into that particular format through penetration and/or escalating 
confrontation 
leading to a reaction. In this case that tactic did not seem to work. 

11) Another option is to discredit, i.e. the activation of the so-called 
Discrediting Committee.  For example, the image of Qaissi as a sort of fascist 
high 
level leader of the close circles of Saddam Hussein can be created, although he 
was 
just one of the  representatives of a neighborhood. People do not know that. It 
is 
enough to associate the survivor of the torture camp with the now hated 
(yesterday 
allied to the Reagan Administration) Hussein and the trick is ready for the 
public. 

12) The “association with Hussein” seems, in fact, to have been spread. 
Question: 
Who reported it? People can keep their eyes open and find out. We can say that 
one 
of the first to report the handout from the apparatus was an Italian daily, il 
Foglio, led by Giuliano Ferrara, the scion of a top communist family then 
passed to 
the service of the Neoconservatives. In particular, Ferrara is known as a 
docile 
instrument of  Michael Ledeen, Karl Rove's foreign policy advisor who has been 
involved in all of the major operations of destabilization -- from the 
Propaganda 
Due Lodge to the fake documents of the Niger Uranium. The revelation of the 
Niger 
Uranium fakery led to a previous mobilization of the apparatus: the victims of 
that 
deployment were Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, his wife Valerie Plame, and the 
whole 
intelligence group inside the CIA which is not in sympathy with the Rove-Cheney 
gang.  Ledeen is the advocate of what he calls Universal Fascism, a fascist 
system 
similar to that of Mussolini but without the nationalist undertones. It seems 
that 
he hopes Rove and Co. would help him to realize his nightmare.

13)  However, the initiative of the survivors of Abu Ghraib began to gain 
ground. 
The Australian TV news program, Dateline, interviewed Qaissi and, after that, 
it was 
the Italian Rainews 24 that aired a factual but powerful scoop that found an 
Italian 
and international public ready and eager to finally see fragments of a truth 
which a 
majority were already convinced for a long time. The picture of the “crucified” 
prisoner with electrodes in his hands had finally a face for the public. See 
original story here.[2]  

Rainews 24 represents a relatively small part of the Italian media that has 
escaped 
the regimentation. Among other scoops, the TV station has broadcast an 
interview 
with a former National Security Agency analyst who has openly said that  one of 
the 
top leaders of the Italian intelligence, Nicola Calipari had been killed by 
American 
bullets in Baghdad. After Rainews 24, Qaissi was interviewed by PBS's "Now," 
Vanity 
Fair, Der Spiegel…

14)  The dam of the “accepted truth” had been broken. The truth denied  for so 
long 
was finally reported in major media. Besides the monstrosity of the facts, what 
worried the “apparatus” was that the large majority of the population was in 
the 
process of overcoming the sense of isolation, intimidation, and confusion; it 
had 
found the first institutional reference point that was saying: yes, it is true, 
what 
you always thought is the reality.  Thus, the Qaissi affairs was becoming 
dangerous 
for the protectors of lies. Something had to be done, something effective and 
creative.

15) It was at this point, on March 11th, that the New York Times published its 
interview with Qaissi accompanied with a picture of another of the tortured 
prisoners, this one nicknamed by the torturers, Gilligan. Qaissi had been 
nicknamed 
by the creative sadists, the Claw, because of a malformation of his hand 
following 
an accident.

16) At that point the Discrediting Committee had put together all its pieces.

17) As precise as a chronometer, the online magazine Salon, announces on March 
14th 
that they had been given by anonymous sources material from the archives of the 
 
Army's Criminal Investigation Command (CID) concerning Abu Ghraib.  Most 
observers 
asked themselves why CID material would be delivered to Salon, after it had 
been 
denied to the New York Times with the official rationale that it would infringe 
on 
the privacy of the prisoners. But this is not the main point. The point is that 
Salon, sitting tall on the huge material so miraculously gained, launches not a 
campaign against the torture, but a campaign of discredit against… Qaissi!

18 ) Salon’s point – the point then taken up by the large Court of Miracles 
that 
works as mass dissemination for the line of the apparatus – is “The New York 
Times 
tried to tell the story of the man behind the infamous Abu Ghraib photo. But 
the 
paper may have had the wrong prisoner.” And this is the point that will be 
circulated all over the world. The unbelievable statement by the CID that the 
prisoner nicknamed Gilligan “was the only one to the tortured with electrodes” 
in 
Abu Ghraib is swallowed without comment.

19) In rapid succession, the scandal of the torture is forgotten in favor of 
the 
“scandal” of the name in the New York Times.  Nota Bene: there are pictures of 
Qaissi hooded, with electrodes and “crucified,” his image is easily 
identifiable by 
his malformed hand, but this is not news or worthy to be mentioned. The 
“acceptable 
truth” has been reconstituted  and pictures and documentation that are not 
coherent 
with the official lie are not given the right of existence by the media. 

20) On the 14th already Salon announces triumphantly that “The New York Times 
announced Monday night that it would review the accuracy of a recent Page One 
story.” On the 19th, incredibly, the New York Times fully apologized. Its 
source? 
The military  and the CID, i.e. the group that was being investigated. “Cited 
as 
Symbol of Abu Ghraib, Man Admits He Is Not in Photo” titles the Times. “The 
trouble 
was, the man in the photograph was not Qaissi. [Editors' note]  Military 
investigators had identified the man on the box as a different detainee who had 
described the episode in a sworn statement immediately after the photographs 
were 
discovered in January 2004, but then the man seemed to go silent.”

21) Thus, the New York Times, takes on faith a statement made by a 
“disappeared”  
prisoner while its gall is reserved for Qaissi guilty of not having disappeared 
but 
having created an organization of survivors which is threatening the whole 
cover-up 
by the Pentagon. In a new low, after the Judith Miller saga, the New York Tomes 
wrote: “Qaissi had energetically filled the void, traveling abroad with slide 
shows 
to argue that abuse in Iraq continued, as head of a group he called the 
Association 
of Victims of American Occupation Prisons.”

22) However, the various statements of this or that is not what decides the 
line 
that will be believed in this world of deformed mirrors. What decides the day 
is the 
control over the media and the ability to impose exactly the opposite of 
freedom of 
the press. Who controls the media controls the truth.  Nobody wants to report  
the 
picture of Qaissi with his revealing hand. Nobody wants to draw the obvious 
conclusion that Qaissi was tortured and thus the spokesman who says that only 
one 
prisoner was tortured in that way, is lying.

23) Once established as the “precedent” and the “record” (the apology of the 
New 
York Times), such an apology will be used all over the world. Newspapers who 
spent 
their editorials in vilifying the hated “liberals” discover the  divine 
authoritativeness of the New York Times. Semi-unknown blogs on the internet who 
have 
repeatedly declared their faith in the neoconservative supreme being, are now 
praising the “leftist” Salon and the “liberal” New York Times.

24) The most repulsive example was that of the Italian il Foglio mentioned 
early. On 
the 15th of March, the little (or not so little) poodle of Michael Ledeen, 
dedicated 
his first editorial to the spreading of the “velina” from Washington. 
“Yesterday, a 
very leftist magazine called Salon revealed another egregious falsification by 
the 
Italian TV (Rainews24) that is a servant of the fascists of Tikrit [sic]: the 
famous 
hooded prisoner interviewed days before by the New York Times and previously, 
for 
the first time worldwide, by Raibufale 24 [an insulting nickname for Rainews 24 
ed] 
is not the man portrait in the [New York Times] picture.” 

            Qaissi, screams il Foglio “is not the man portrayed in those 
terrible 
photos that a brave soldier of the American army had given to his superiors.” 
“One 
cannot exclude that Qaissi was also tortured,” the newspaper has to admit “but 
it is 
difficult that this is the case and certainly he was not the hooded man in the 
pictures.” The fact that Rainews published the actual picture of Qaissi does 
not 
affect the servile obedience of il Foglio towards the “apparatus.” So, the line 
from 
the top is reported perfectly and completely. The revelations of the torture 
show 
how good and courageous is the US Army and how fair, democratic, and ready to 
admit 
their mistake are the US media, all of them; contrary to the provincial, 
primitive 
and anti-democratic Italian media such as Rainews 24. Il Foglio deserves an A+ 
as 
chain of transmission for the discrediting committee.

25) There are other clues that lead easily to the puppet masters. Il Foglio 
labels 
Qaissi as “gerarca baathista” [Baathist  fascist leader] even if any 
semi-functional 
journalist  could easily find out that he, Qaissi, was just a representative of 
neighborhood.  But the implication here is that the tortured prisoners deserves 
indeed to be tortured or worse, because he is a “gerarca bahatista”. Second, Il 
Foglio expresses its “admiration” for the New York Times that, contrary to the 
“most 
Bolshevik TV in the Western world” recognized “immediately its mistake by 
publishing 
two articles and has immediately opened an inquiry like the one on Jayson 
Blair.”  
Il Foglio forgets of course Judith Miller.

26) In the wake of il Foglio, the “line” began to emerged in a few Italian 
blogs and 
the dissemination of the talking points from the Discrediting Committee began. 
[For 
one of the most transparent example of useful idiocy go here  [3]].  Now lets 
see 
where else the line emerges. It will be an instructive exercise in identifying 
the 
network used by the discrediting apparatus. 

[1] http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ ran24/ inchieste/ documenti/ grandi/ 001.jpg
http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ ran24/ inchieste/ documenti/ grandi/ 002.jpg
http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ ran24/ inchieste/ documenti/ grandi/ 003.jpg

[2] http://www.rainews24.it/ran24/inchieste/ABU_GHRAIB.asp

 [3] http://wellington.ilcannocchiale.it/?id_blogdoc=903918
- - - - - -
Fields are spoiled by weeds; people, by delusion. So what's 
given to those free of delusion bears great fruit.  Fields are spoiled 
by weeds; people by longing.  So what's given to those free of longing
bears great fruit.  Dhammapada, 24
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.Section 107, this material 
is provided for those who have expressed a desire in receiving 
the information for research or educational purposes.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Alamaine; Grand  Forks, North Dakota. US of A


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