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As Glenn Greenwald points out today, a despicable piece of legislation was tacked onto the Supplemental Appropriations bill by Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman on May 21. As Graham describes in his press release:
The amendment authorizes the Secretary of Defense, after consultation with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to certify that the disclosure of photographs like the ones at issue in the ACLU lawsuit would endanger the lives of our citizens or members of the Armed Forces or civilian employees of the United States government deployed abroad.
There is a big problem with Lindsey Graham sponsoring this legislation. In April of 2007, Graham spent ten days on active duty in the Air Force as a Judge Advocate. Here is a photograph of him during this time:
Lindsey Graham plays dress-up–Was it to cover up prisoner abuse?
Here is a description of Graham’s time time on active duty as described on an Air Force website:
A South Carolina senator toured Iraq for two days, and then put on an Air Force desert camouflage uniform for a week and worked as a judge advocate for the Multinational Forces, Iraq.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, also a Reserve colonel, visited the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing April 9 after getting a firsthand look at the 586th and 886th Expeditionary Security Forces in action at Camp Bucca with Sen. John McCain April 1 and 2.
"The security detail at Camp Bucca is the most joint operation I’ve seen," Senator Graham said. "The challenges the Airmen at Camp Bucca are dealing with are challenges they haven’t seen before, and they are dealing with it in a way that makes the military proud. The Air Force security forces there are indispensable."
It’s very interesting that Graham would be at Camp Bucca. It has a very bad history for abuse, as detailed here and here.
The timing for the visit is also very informative. As Walter Pincus pointed out, the population at Camp Bucca was reaching a high of 13,800 prisoners at this time.
Given the checkered past of Camp Bucca and the extreme strain it had to have been under in April of 2007 as its population soared, the question must be asked whether Graham’s time as a Judge Advocate in Iraq involved cases of prisoner abuse at Camp Bucca or elsewhere in Iraq where photos subject to the ACLU FOIA lawsuit may be involved. Graham needs to clear the record and provide more information on the cases in which he was involved during the time he served in Iraq.
How did the Senator enjoy his trip to one of the worst prisons ever under US command? Here are his own words, again from the Air Force article:
"I’m having the time of my life," Senator Graham said. "I wouldn’t trade it for the world."
Yes, Senator, many of the prisoners at Camp Bucca had the times of their lives there, too. That is, the final times of their lives, since it is one of the places where many murders occurred at the hands of US personnel. How on earth could anyone of good conscience be happy about visiting such a place?
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Conflict of interest? Possibly. Cognitive dissonance? Definitely. Graham condemns torture and then does everything he can to protect torturers and suppress evidence of torture.
Graham has long covered up prisoner abuse. Here he is in 2005 tacking on an amendment to deny prisoners their rights.
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” Human rights campaigners are calling it the ‘November surprise’ – a last-minute amendment smuggled into a Pentagon finance bill in the US Senate last Thursday.
Its effects are likely to be devastating: the permanent removal of almost all legal rights from ‘war on terror’ detainees at Guantanamo Bay and every other similar US facility on foreign or American soil.
‘What the British law lord Lord Steyn once called a legal black hole had begun to be filled in,’ said the British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, speaking from Guantanamo, where he represents more than 40 detainees. ‘It looks as if it is back, and deeper than before.’
If the amendment passes the House of Representatives unmodified, one of its immediate effects is that Stafford Smith and all the other lawyers who act for Guantanamo prisoners will again be denied access, as they were for more than two years after Camp X-Ray opened in 2002.
The amendment was tabled by Lindsay Graham, a South Carolina Republican, and passed by 49 votes to 42. It reverses the Supreme Court’s decision in June last year which affirmed the right of detainees to bring habeas corpus petitions in American federal courts. “
http://www.informationclearing…..e10975.htm
From the good senator’s own website
Minimal ass-in-the-line-of-fire for maximum PR. I think he’s quite comfortable with his decisions and any perceived conflicts of interest.
February 2008. Taxpayers are paying for him to travel to Iraq to drum up business for American companies almost five years after the invasion? Is he making extra money by being a go between for American businesses? Would like to know what a mix of Senate and Air Force means. He likely is another torture apologist who has been involved in it since day one and is busy playing the CYA game.
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” U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham returned from his 10th trip to Iraq last week brimming with optimism over the nation’s security, economic and political advances during the past year.
“There’s a long way to go yet. We’re not there, but Iraq today is much closer to being a stable government than it was a year ago,” he said. “Troops are coming home. They will be coming home this spring and this summer, but I told General Petraeus and Ambassador (Ryan) Crocker, ‘Make sure that no one comes home because of politics.’ “
Graham, whose trip was a mix of Senate business and his service in the Air Force Reserve, said he will try to find a U.S. power company interested in working to help restore the nation’s electrical grid. “
http://www.postandcourier.com/…..ress31808/
July 2008. Invading Iraq was a great idea he said. Bush made him a colonel..got to wonder why he did that. A payoff for something?
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” Lindsey Graham is a very slick and smarmy operator. I wanted to scream at the TV and ask him if that with over 4000 troops killed—thousands with serious injuries and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi people dead and still suffering, how could he possibly act so smug and say it was all worth it to get rid of Saddam? The cost of this insane war against a country that did not attack us is unfathomable to me and nothing these warmongering apologists can say will ever change the truth of the situation. Al qaeda wasn’t there and these are a people that would never let Iran control their country. “
http://crooksandliars.com/2008…..reat-idea/
Recommended. Thanks, Jim. IMO Graham is coming unraveled; the conflict between who he really is and whom he presents himself to be is becoming unsustainable. With the exception of a rare few, the senate has become an object of ridicule.
Hmmmm. Even DADT doesn’t apply to political elites. Big surprise. I’m glad Graham had such a good time, though. He probably doesn’t get to have so much fun at home.
That he could claim to have such a wonderful time at prison with such a poor reputation says everything. At least, I thought it did, until I read some of these comments. COI Dissonance.
Graham and McCain went to Guantanamo in Dec 2003 as members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. They must have known what was happening and obviously approved. Did they tell other members what was going on? Graham and McCain were on the Senate Armed Services Committee whose report that was completed in Nov 2008 identified many of the people involved in approving torture techniques. He still wants to protect the torture enablers because he is one of them? McCain was against torture before he wasn’t. He, too, must have known what was going on at Guantanamo in 2003. Graham might be worried that he appears in some photos taken while he was observing torture.
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” McCain will accompany Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on a one-day visit on Wednesday. Both are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Graham, a lawyer and Air Force reservist, has been a member of the Judge Advocate General staff since serving on active duty in the 1980s.
McCain said Friday in Phoenix that he and Graham “want to assess the general situation” in view of planned releases and military tribunals. The trip has long been in their plans and was scheduled now because the Senate is in recess, he said. “
http://www.aiipowmia.com/inter…..ccain.html
I was curious about that too…like the photos you see of hunters with their trophies. disgusting.
I thought I left a comment, but it isn’t here. Server issue most likely. Access is spotty today.
Graham’s sentence about what a great time he was having visiting a prison with a terrible reputation should be enough to condemn him. But then I read the rest of these comments about other conflicts of interest in his roles as senator, citizen, business promoter. COI dissonance.
That apparently was what most of the pictures we have seen were…trophies. I think the worst one was of the woman giving the thumbs up sign over a man who had been beaten and tortured to death. Was it a real smile or a for the photographer smile? Either one is horrid.
You did leave a comment. Hit the refresh button when you think a comment is gone and then it returns from the server. I don’t understand it, I just do it..’g’.
I think you are correct in your assessment of Graham. Compare this from 2006 to his attitude now. He judges at Court Martial hearings so that likely explains his service in Iraq that Jim focused on and as he stated, are very likely in relation to torture cases. This is the same guy who added an amendment to deny prisoners all rights in 2005. Flip flop is an understatement when it comes to him. He must get confused when he tries to remember if he is for or against torture and military commissions on any given day.
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” Sen. Graham, who holds the rank of colonel in the Air Force Reserve, is one of just 13 judges on the court, which hears appeals of court-martial rulings from the Air Force. The job is his latest in a 24-year military career; he is the only member of the Senate serving in the military.
“We need to not only adhere to treaties that we’ve been a part of for 60 years for the protection of our own troops, we need to let people know that we can win this war without becoming our enemy,” Graham said in an interview.
The court wants Congress to approve a new system for prosecuting detainees. Administration officials have made it clear that they want Congress to approve the system of military commissions the White House designed.
Graham has said no.
“I would suggest to the administration that the best way to work with Congress to solve this problem is to take the [military justice code] as your basic guide,” Graham said at a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday. “If you fight that approach, it’s going to be a long, hot summer.”
http://articles.latimes.com/20…..a-graham13
could this not be a conflict of interest to serve in both the legislative branch and the executive branch (military), at the SAME time, esp. during a “time of war” as everyone likes to remind us??
Cheney defends torture one more time, and as usual, he only mentions the ‘legal’ water boarding. I’d like to see Cheney well done.
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” Asked about the relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, Cheney said this: “The prime source of information on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda was George Tenet,” former CIA director. “There was a relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq that stretched back 10 years. That’s not something I made up… That’s something the director of the CIA was telling us.
“I think it’s going to be very difficult to close Guantanamo,” Cheney said. “The New York Times again, one of my favorite publications… referred to the prisoners at Guantanamo as abductees… These are bad actors…. The ones that are left, these are the worst of the worst… There is not a lot of great demand out around the country to have those folks shipped to the nearest facility.”
“We need Guantanamo… If we didn’t have it, we’d need to (invent) it… If you don’t have a place to hold these people, the only other option is to kill them… We don’t operate that way.”
On the harshest interrogation tactics that the Bush administration employed against detained terrorists: “I don’t believe we tortured,” Cheney said today, insisting that authorities followed the guidance of Justice Department lawyers and did not cross a “red line” into illegal conduct. “There were three people who were water-boarded…. It was well-done.” “
http://www.swamppolitics.com/n…..he_sa.html
oops, I guess that was the point of this post…some times I just get so….
you know, one argument that I had only just heard recently was that terrorists have been tried in the US and are currently being held in US facilities…I think that makes Cheney’s argument pretty phony and obtuse.
What about the label terrorist so scares people? What is a terrorist besides a human without supernatural powers? Jails hold murderers, arsonists, bombers, serial killers, etc. WTF is so difficult about jailing a terrorist? Nobody has ever escaped from a maximum security prison so these whimps who are afraid of terrorists are afraid of what exactly?
Hardin Montana wants them all. They are not afraid.
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” On Capitol Hill, politicians are dead-set against transferring some of the world’s most feared terrorists from Guantanamo to prisons on U.S. soil. But at City Hall in this impoverished town on the Northern Plains, the attitude is: Bring ‘em on.
Hardin, a dusty town of 3,400 people so desperate that it built a $27 million jail a couple of years ago in the vain hope it would be a moneymaker, is offering to house hundreds of Gitmo detainees at the empty, never-used institution.
The medium-security jail was conceived as a holding facility for drunks and other scofflaws, but town leaders said it could be fortified with a couple of guard towers and some more concertina wire. Apart from that, it is a turnkey operation, fully outfitted with everything from cafeteria trays and sweatsocks to 88 surveillance cameras.
“Holy smokes – the amount of soldiers and attorneys it would bring here would be unbelievable,” Clint Carleton said as he surveyed his mostly empty restaurant, Three Brothers Pizza. “I’m a lot more worried about some sex offender walking my streets than a guy that’s a world-class terrorist. He’s not going to escape, pop into the IGA (supermarket), grab a six-pack and go sit in the park.” ”
http://www.bellinghamherald.co…..28922.html
” Judge rules against service as a military judge
On September 22, 2006, a military court ruled that it is unconstitutional for Graham to serve simultaneously as a military judge. The court never passed on the question of whether Sen. Graham could continue to serve as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve.
In a statement, the U.S. Court of Appeals said, “One of the purposes served by the separation of powers is that a military accused will not be judged by a member of Congress.” The Air Force announced that it would consider appealing the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Air Force also noted that Graham has been reassigned to a position in the Air Force Administrative Law Division of the Pentagon. “
http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind…..sey_Graham
Wow, that’s a good find, thanks. I wonder just what his position was in his service in 2007. The article I linked said he served as a Judge Advocate. From the definition here, that could mean advice to a commanding officer or as prosecution, defense or judge in a court martial. Graham definitely needs to fill us in on just what he did.