England Hearing Begins Amid NY Terror Alert

A hearing that will determine whether Lynndie England will stand trial for her actions at Abu Ghraib, and be court martialed began August 3, 2004. The hearing began as President Bush, and Homeland Security Director Ridge
raised the terrorism alert level in New York.

England has been charged with 13 counts of abusing detainees, and six of the counts revolve around sexually explicit photos with other solders at the prison.
England faces up to 38 years in prison for her crimes at Abu Ghraib.

England’s attorney contends that England was following orders, and that the six counts are irrelevant to the investigation. England is expecting a child from
her relationship to Spec Charles Graner Jr. who has also been charged in the Abu Ghraib scandal, and is also charged with adultery.

The Hearing, and potential trial have raised serious questions about how high up the chain of command the abuses went. The US military currently has 94 cases of alleged prisoner abuses pending in regard to the Iraq War.

The case of the torture Amjed Isail Waleed at Abu Ghraib is sadistic, and disturbing. According to Osha Gray Davidson: Finally, after several beatings so severe that he lost consciousness, Waleed was forced to lay on the ground. "One of the police was pissing on me and laughing at me," the prisoner said. He was placed in a dark room and beaten with a broom. "And one of the police, he put a part of his stick that he always carries inside my ass, and I felt it going inside me about two centimeters, approximately. And I started screaming, and he pulled it out and he washed it with water inside the room. And the two American girls that were there when they were beating me, they were hitting me with a ball made of sponge on my dick. And when I was tied up in my room, one of the girls, with blond hair, she is white, she was playing with my dick. I saw inside this facility a lot of punishment just like what they did to me and more. And they were taking pictures of me during all these instances."

Another interesting twist in the tangled web of another White House conspiracy is that Brig General Janis Karpinski has indicated that she was purposely not told about the
torture at Abu Ghraib, because of a White House cover up. According to the San Francisco Chronicle Karpinski was asked if the conspiracy led to the White House, and
the Pentagon. General Karpinski said that: "The indication is that it may have."

To make matters worse for President Bush’s reelection campaign Howard Dean has charged that the recent terror alert in New York may be a response to Bush’s
falling popularity, to Kerry, in recent polls following the Democratic convention. Dean noted that: “It's hard to know what to make. None of us outside the administration have access to the intelligence, which led to this determination. I am concerned that every time something happens that's not good for President Bush he plays this trump card, which is terrorism. His whole campaign is based on the notion that "I can keep you safe, therefore at times of difficulty for America stick with me," and then out comes Tom Ridge. It's just impossible to know how much of this is real and how much of this is politics, and I suspect there's some of both in it.”

What is known is that Ridge’s most recent crusade in New York is based upon old plans, and sketchy sources. The intelligence information was so vague that Mayor Bloomberg went ahead with the reopening of the Statue of Liberty to tourists.

It would seem rather obvious that most protesters, and terrorists will probably wait until the Republican convention in New York to strike—in order to maximize media coverage.
What is not clear is just how far Bush is involved in recent allegations of a cover up in Abu Ghraib, and the alleged fabrication of a terror alert in New York City.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/08/03/international0428EDT0444.DTL