11/2/2005

how Idema got the ball rolling

By: Cao, Filed under: General , Task Force Sabre 7 @ 2:43 am

If you’re looking for pieces on Jack Idema and his team, please click on this link.

Contrary to news reports, the Red Cross reports showed absolutely no evidence of injury to the men who Jack and his team brought to his house and according to news reports “tortured”. The problem with the men he captured was that they weren’t just “low level terrorists”, and that’s what kicked all of this off. mheh. Makes you wonder whether or not the American government REALLY WANTS THEM TO CATCH THESE F&&&&ers. I mean…take a look at what happened to these guys when they were carrying on a legitimate operation that everyone knew about. I don’t know how you can come up with any conclusion other than that, based on the interviews up at Democracy now and the many articles that are out there. Most of the bullcrap ones you can smell a mile away, anyway…but in case you’re unsure, take a look at the page at the SuperPatriots.us where it talks about the lying journalists and names the top 10.

Also, I just want to pull a little quote (or two)from the Peter Bergen interview at NPR:

Yeah. I mean, the larger picture here is there are now more American civilian contractors in Iraq than there are British troops. Kind of an astonishing statement if you think about it. Britain is our biggest ally in Iraq, yet there are more American civilian military contractors.

The reason for that is–during the Clinton Administration the military was slashed by some incredible figure like 40%. We are still seeing the residuals of that disastrous policy with the military base closings which are still going on.

So this is a new phenomenon. We’re increasingly privitizing things that the Armed forces would have done, whether that’s interrogating Al Qaeda members, or guarding senior figures like Karzai the president of Afghanistan, and, you know, Idema operated in this kind of shadow world between the civilian and the military. He was in contact with the Pentagon, he did have senior level contacts in the Afghan government.

In fact, he had so much equipment at his house, that the guys who went to take pictures put up a sign referring to a James Bond movie that one journalist made sound as though Jack had put it there…naturally, the press took it from the INSIDE and put it on the OUTSIDE to fan the flames of outrage. These guys had all kinds of equipment–and that’s why the FBI had to go in with a “cleaner” to get rid of the evidence.

The claims that he didn’t have any connections to the US Government or the Afghan government based on my investigation seems to be (completely) seems to be false. He did have some dealings with the US Government, people in the Pentagon were generally aware of what he was doing, Afghan officials were also aware of what he was doing.

Does this make any sense at all when you put it all together???

The International Security Assistance force which is the main security force in Kabul, came in on three occasions to arrest people with Jack, brought heliocopters on one occasion, brought in bomb sniffing dogs and all of this. They say they were duped by Jack. Jack seemed to have duped a lot of people. If you look at it one way. Or, alternatively, if you look at it another way, a lot of people kind of knew what he was doing.

uh…if you look at all the reports and stack that all together, along with a lot of the legal briefs and read their content, I think it’s the latter of the two. Unquestionably, even without the legal briefs, something is terribly amiss here.

This article describes a little bit of the kind of character that Jack Idema is. Read this.

A few excerpts with some observations:

With Caraballo’s camera rolling, TFS-7 raced through Kabul to meet the bus. Outside the city’s eastern gate, they pulled over on a desolate stretch of road and waited. When the bus approached, they waved it over, rifles in hand, and ordered everyone off. Idema singled out the young men dressed in gray and blue, then worked his way down a line, putting his forefinger on each man’s radial artery. He paused in front of a nervous Afghan in his late 20s who fit his informant’s description.

“He has a pulse rate of 160, shaking so bad he’s…Look at him,” Idema told his crew.

The man’s name was Ghulam Sakhi.

Interesting…no mention of the fact that when he was nabbed getting off of that bus, he had a letter from the Red Cross in his pocket from his brother at GITMO. This is the incident that started the ball rolling. This is the informant who was singing like a canary at Idema’s house. I’m not going to call it Idema’s “prison” because although they were being held, Idema previously signed an agreement under some very interesting and secret circumstances–that he would not engage in any extreme methods of torture. Torture, as Jim Morris has pointed out, is not the way to get your guys to squeal…or give up information. Torture and beatings are just to make someone say what you want them to say, regardless as to the truth. The method that Jack was using is–making the terrorist believe he’s your friend. Give him a drink and a smoke, and just shoot the shit…and eventually, he gives it all up. This is the method that works. Now what they did at Gitmo was put underwear on a man’s head and make him listen to Christina Aguilara music. Isn’t that too bad. Any way you look at it, no pictures, no proof has ever been produced that the allegations of torture of the detainees are true. As a matter of fact, later on, the allegations completely evaporated as they ADMITTED these allegations weren’t true, and the men have been exhonerated.

Except for one thing. The American government will not approve their release.

Thinking that within 72 hours Sakhi’s contacts would hear their explosives man was killed—or worse, captured and talking—Idema said he ordered his men to take Sakhi back to the house, where they placed him in the second-story bathroom and bound him to a chair with flexi-cuffs.

The only injury to this guy was that one of his flexi-cuffs was on too tight. well boohoo.

Most of the Afghan soldiers waited outside the door while a translator, a guard, and Idema interrogated him. Caraballo taped the exchange.

“What’s the target? What’s the target?” Idema yelled, pressing down on Sakhi’s back with his right hand. “Is it Fahim?” referring to Afghan defense minister general Mohammad Fahim.

“Fahim, Qanuni…Jamiat people,” Sakhi said.

“Who else?” Idema yelled.

Idema said Sakhi then told him about the plan to attack Bagram Air Base.

“When my Afghan soldiers found out that their plan was to kill Minister Qanuni and General Fahim and blow up Bagram base…my guys started. Wham! One of them hit him,” Idema said. “I took my soldier and punched him in front of Sakhi. I said, ‘Don’t hit the guy! I got him talking. What’s wrong with you?’ Sakhi was never hit.”

Idema admitted to me he used “aggressive” interrogation techniques, not unlike a few of the 20 some-odd sanctioned in the past by the Pentagon. These can include sleep deprivation, heavy doses of rock’n’roll, and “water boarding”—dunking a subject long enough so he believes he will drown. According to Idema, his methods worked. Sakhi gave up the identity and address of his Kabul contact, a 30-year-old taxi driver named Sher Jan.

What I want to interject here is that Sher Jan was driving a car that tested positive for explosives according to the bomb dogs. RDX, correct me if I’m wrong here. Plus, Qanuni is the brand new prime minister of Afghanistan and was a friend and follower of Massoud. They were plotting to kill Qanuni….in very much the same way they’d done away with Massoud, and Massoud’s murder was at the order of Osama bin Laden himself. These guys don’t want the Northern Alliance in power, (and they are because now they’ve assumed the majority of the seats in the new parliament). The leftists call the Ministry of Defense aka Northern Alliance “warlords”…which is a joke.

The scenario so far sounds quite a bit different from what he said in court–that they used boiling water on them, hung them from the basement for 18 days, tortured and burned them with cigarettes. It amazes me that the lies weren’t even believable, and yet people took them at face value. There was no basement in the house, so how could anyone have been hung from the ceiling in it? For another, the pictures of their “injuries” didn’t show any, and the red cross reports didn’t document any injuries.

Within hours TFS-7 was in Sher Jan’s house, where Idema was videotaped ripping open a rice bag and finding a detonator. They brought Sher Jan back to Idema’s house and drove his taxi to the desert, where an ISAF bomb-sniffing dog found traces of explosives in the vehicle.

Idema said he worked 18 to 20 hours a day interrogating his two prisoners and attending meetings with Afghan security officers and government officials. One of the alleged targets, then minister of education Younis Qanuni, congratulated the American terrorist-hunter for foiling the plot, and even sent his own security detachment to assist Idema in unraveling it more.

This is where things turned for the worse, IMO. The man Sidiq was the man who drew the attention, as he was a taliban judge.

Within a few days, the prisoner population inside Idema’s house grew to eight, when his group arrested Maulavi Mohammad Siddiq, a mullah who happened to be a supreme court judge, along with his two brothers, also mullahs, and three other men. Inside the mullahs’ house, Idema said, ISAF bomb experts found explosives and detonating devices as well as color posters of terrorist leader Gulbadin Hekmatyar.

Gulbadin Hekmatyar was part of the Hezb-e Islami faction, closely related to Hezbellah who had spent some time in Iran. He is the TALIBAN, people! Up until…I don’t know when…he was on the FBI Most Wanted (Terrorist) List. Suddenly…oh I don’t know, since all of this has come to the fore, I would bet…both Hekmatyar and Mullah Omar have been removed from that list.

Peter Bergen, one of the world’s foremost authorities on terrorists, and author of HOLY WAR, INC based on his meeting with Osama bin Laden, Hekmatyar is an “ultra-Islamic Taliban” who once “slaughtered 36 men under the Command of Ahmad Shah Massoud… in July 1989,” and later killed “thousands of civilians in Kabul…” from 1992 onward (quoted from page 76, Holy War, Inc., courtesy of Peter Bergen).

As the interrogations went on, Idema said, TFS-7 started gathering a wealth of information about planned bombings and operations and was on the verge of penetrating other cells. The only thing that prevented that from occurring was his arrest. He still didn’t know who had ordered it, given that many in the Afghan government and U.S. military seemed to know about his operation. He suspected it was the FBI.

Wanted posters with mug shots of Idema appeared in the streets of Kabul a week before his arrest. Realizing that somebody had cut him loose, Idema panicked. He called Lieutenant General Boykin’s office at the Pentagon, threatened to tell the press, and was told a mistake had been made. They asked him not to talk to the media. He also claimed that he called the Kabul police himself, as well as the military at Bagram.

“We were just getting ready to bring everybody to Bagram,” Idema said. “I tried calling Baba Jan because I wanted him to give us an escort.”

Baba Jan indeed showed up with men, on July 5, but the last thing Idema expected was that they would arrest him and his team.

Then there’s the interview with the supposed “victim” of the torture at the hands of Jack and his team, although none of it sounds extreme to me like I’ve heard in other reports such as hanging people upside down for 18 days. Has anyone thought about that one for a minute? Nobody can survive hanging upside down for 18 days…it’s simply absurd.

Fact is, by the time you get to the end of the article, it’s relatively obvious that the American government helped distribute some flyers to arrest Idema because he had detained some high profile targets at that house.

Aren’t they interested in making progress as far as capturing members of the taliban…or were they embarrassed at their keystone cops action which has produced very little results?

Clearly this was happening at about the time of the Abu Ghraib scandal, but where is our confidence in the training and integrity of our men when we allow them to take a fall for something that they didn’t do?

Terrorists- in their own training manuals -are told to complain about the treatment they receive from their captors. This is why we heard all the whining and crying when they were at Club Gitmo with their fancy halal meals, halal meat, the signs in their cells to point toward mecca, their prayer rugs, prayer beads, prayer caps and new Korans all provided compliments of the American government when they came in as half-starved dirty heathens without any of these things. In addition, their meals are planned by a nutritionist and they get special holiday meals during their holy days, like during Ramadan. I mean we bend over ass backwards for these people and all they do is complain.

And the American Red Cross and Amnesty International jumps right on and speaks on their behalf, even when the allegations are wild and untrue, like at Gitmo.

What I’d like to know is…where was the American Red Cross when they saw Jack’s condition when he was being transported from that hell hole Saderat to Pulacharke Prison?

The ‘innocent’ Afghans arrested by TASK FORCE SABER 7 were captured with explosives, detonators, fuses, bomb plans, maps of failed bomb attempt routes, terrorist recruitment paraphernalia, terrorist documents, weapons, ammunition, maps of ISAF compounds, Bagram Airbase, a Red Cross note from an al-Qaida leader in GITMO Cuba, a letter from Mullah Omar, and even newspapers with their previous attacks and killings circled and highlighted.

Yeah. What do you suppose the chances are of grabbing some dumb schlub who steps off a bus and he just happens to have a Red Cross note from an Al Qaeda leader in Gitmo Cuba in his pocket…and–oh, by the way– this leader just happens to turns out to be the guy’s brother?

For the sake of brevity (I tend to be an old windbag), I’m ending this here. But there’s more to come on this.

I thought I’d include a little bit of this so it comes up alongside Floggin in a google search. Bye-bye for now.

Here’s my virtual salute to RDX:

GuuattaD!



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One Response to “how Idema got the ball rolling”

  1. Penny A. Says:

    Finially!!!! Someone who reports this nightmare accurately & fairly. These men need to be released as soon as possible. I’m so sick of hearing how we are abusing the Guantanomo Bay morons. Yet our 3 Americans are left rotting away in a decrepit hellhole. Where is their justice?????????

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