US Army Investigator Accuses National Security Adviser McMaster of War Crimes in Iraq

Former commander in charge of US Army Military Police in Iraq says President Trump’s new National Security Adviser, Gen. H.R. McMaster, ‘ordered’ criminal abuse of hundreds of Iraqi detainees in 2005

“Detainees were abused at Tal Afar under orders and command and control of H.R. McMaster,” said Col. Arnaldo Claudio, a retired senior U.S. Military Police officer who served as 18th Airborne Corps Provost Marshal and Chief of Police of the Multinational Coalition Forces in Iraq in 2005.

During his conversation with Scott Horton, managing director of the Libertarian Institute and host of the Scott Horton Show, Claudio elaborated on his recent interview with Univision News, where he first publicly revealed his accusations against Gen. McMaster. Claudio explained how in his capacity as chief of all Military Police in Iraq he was ordered by Gen. J.R. Vines to investigate complaints regarding the treatment of detainees made against the U.S. Army command fighting in Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq in 2005, led by President Trump’s current National Security Adviser, then-U.S. Army Col., H.R. McMaster.

Claudio and his team reported back to Gen. Vines, providing information and recommendations to the commanding general, dedicating a portion of their report to details of then-U.S. Army Col. McMaster’s violations of the Geneva Conventions and the Detainee Operations Standard Operating Procedures found at Tal Afar.

Presently, Claudio is the Technical Compliance Adviser (TCA), selected by the Department of Justice and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, to oversee reform of their police forces, a position he has held since June 2014.

The Investigation Begins

Col. Claudio was stationed in Iraq from March 16, 2005 through late January 2006. He was tasked to ensure that all detainee operations were being conducted in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and Standard Operating Procedures in compliance with U.S. laws and military regulations.

Claudio told Horton that the number of admissions and releases of detainees from the small detention facility in Tal Afar didn’t seem to add up. It appeared the admitted number of detainees exceeded the maximum capacity. Claudio and his investigative team traveled to Tal Afar to investigate further, where they discovered detainees were held in conditions that were both shocking and illegal. Detainees were being deprived of food and water for days while bound together with plastic handcuffs. Hundreds were also being held without shelter. All of this was in violation of military law, according to Col. Claudio.

Claudio and his investigative team were given very specific orders by Vines. “If this guy is doing anything wrong, you need to report back,” Claudio was told. “And if he gets out of hand, just bring him back with you.”

Claudio did not mince words about his orders. “They were pretty simple. And remember, we just had gotten out of…the scandal of Abu Ghraib.”

The Abu Gharib prisoner abuse scandal of 2004 was a prime recruiting tool for Iraqi insurgents and other militant groups taking up arms against U.S. forces there. Claudio said that another similar scandal breaking so close to the significant Abu Gharib torture revelations “would have been devastating for our national security and it would be devastating for the Army, and to our nation as a whole.”

The Investigation in Tal Afar: “My God, what is this?”

Claudio’s interactions with McMaster were brief. “It was a very short conversation. He basically didn’t want me there. And he says, ‘Get on with your duty and get out of here.’”

But Claudio responded, “Not so fast. I’m here, I have orders, and if you are in fact violating the standards of how to take care of detainees, you’re going back with me. Period.”

In a detention camp designed to hold 250 detainees, Col. McMaster held over 900 people in brutal conditions, left outdoors without food, water, or shelter from the sun in their own feces and urine.

Claudio told Horton, “As I was approaching the area where the detainees were, I already knew something was really wrong.”

“There was about three to four hundred of them outside…As soon as I got outside of the vehicle, I mean, you could smell the urine and defecation in the atmosphere. It was like, ‘my God, what is this?’”

Alongside one of his medics, Claudio inspected the conditions of the hundreds of detainees before finding even more detainees kept in similarly poor circumstances in other tents being used as temporary detention facilities.

Through interviews with detainees and interpreters, Claudio and his team were told that detainees “had been beaten with sticks in order to take them to the latrine.”

Gerardo Reyes, in the story he first broke for Univision, reported that Claudio’s allegations were confirmed by another military officer who participated in the investigation, although he asked to remain anonymous.

“They weren’t only tied by the hands to each other, when they took them to the latrines they beat them with a stick,” the second source told Univision.

According to the commander of that operation, McMaster had ordered the “good detainee behavior program,” which meant that unless a detainee gave actionable intelligence to be used by the U.S. military, they were to be held indefinitely. Therefore, ironically, the so-called “good detainee behavior program” was in effect an indefinite program in violation of the law. Detainees were supposed to be released after fourteen days at the facility, either transferred to other authorities or set free, but McMaster was holding men for months in horrendous conditions.

According to Col. Claudio, there is no question that then-Col. McMaster himself gave the orders for the treatment of detainees at Tal Afar. “He knew because the orders of the ‘good behavior program’ were instituted by him,” Claudio told Horton.

About 120 detainees were released soon after Claudio’s team began restructuring the facility and taking care of the detainees’ basic needs, with hundreds more following over the next week.

Col. Claudio was unable to find Col. McMaster after he and his team surveyed the facilities. When pressed by Horton as to whether or not he would have arrested McMaster if he had been found, Claudio responded, “I would have asked him nicely to come with me. Because it never happened, I’m not going to speculate, but I’m pretty sure I would have done that.”

The Investigation Disappears

Claudio and his team reported back to Gen. Vines, providing information and recommendations and dedicating a portion of the report to detailing the violations of the Geneva Conventions and the Detainee Operations Standard Operating Procedures.

Apparently, the report was not investigated further. Claudio would not be involved again until he saw McMaster’s name on the list to be promoted to brigadier general in July 2008. Claudio then contacted the Inspector General of the Department of the Army. He resubmitted his report, and the Inspector General’s office conducted follow up interviews with Claudio and other eyewitnesses, including a U.S. Army Sergeant named John Savo. “I write and I tell him the story I’m telling you today. They did contact me. They contacted other eyewitnesses to that,” Claudio told Horton.

To the best of Claudio’s knowledge, nothing ever became of the Inspector General’s investigation.

Col. McMaster was promoted to brigadier general in August 2009, by his friend, Gen. David Petraeus.

President Donald Trump appointed Gen. McMaster as his National Security Advisor in February 2017.

https://www.libertarianinstitute.or...al-security-adviser-mcmaster-war-crimes-iraq/

 

*not_secure_link*comicincorrect.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Crime-Scene-600-LI.jpg

 

A good example of spin.
Find a way to put Trump's name in the headline.
Bury the fact that the alleged wrongdoing happened in 2005, was reviewed then without action, and that the wrong doer was promoted after the investigation was concluded, and oh, yes, that the investigation was brought up AGAIN before the promotion was approved.

But the key is, get Trump's name in there somewhere with terms like "war crimes" or "cover up" or "scandal" or whatever will help the low information unsupporters arrive at the conclusion desired without any independent thought or action.

 

@Trev1

Funny and very timely you should mention this and I am surprised there isn't a thread on it all ready. But Steve Bannon was removed from the National Security Council today. And as usual Trump and his administration are coming up with a whole bunch of contradictory bullshit excuses for it that don't really make any sense. But personally I suspect its because another Bannon scandal is about to break and Trump is trying to get our ahead of it. But we will see.

Top Trump adviser Steve Bannon booted off the National Security Council: report

 

Oh SNAP!
Busted!
Bannon was put on there to keep an eye on Flynn.
Bannon was put on there to help reorganize the council, to streamline it after Trump determined that under Obama it had gotten unwieldy and bureaucratic and not able to do it's job.
Bannon attended one (yes, 1) meeting.
He wasn't "kicked off', his work was done (Flynn fired and the council is reorganized) so he's off to cause trouble elsewhere.

But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your rants. Cause, you know, you can't possibly hurt your credibility any more than it already is.

 

Hey shootersa here's another couple questions you will not answer.

If this is the case why was Flynn named National Security Advisor in the first place?

And if this was the case why was Flynn only fired three weeks after if was revealed to Trump that Flynn had lied about his contacts with the Russian ambassador and then only after that became public?

Lets see you just step outside your own little plastic bubble to answer those very simple two questions. Or prove you can't.

 

CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency refusing to cooperate with the House and Senate Intelligence Committee.
Holdovers, from the Obama administration, Comey and Rogers declined to appear at the meeting with the House Intelligence Committee.
The hold overs had declined to answer over 100 questions asked of them in the public meeting.
Comey has been completely unavailable since then.

Wonder why they are hiding out and refusing to cooperate?

 

Dumbass.
Flynn was named because Trump wanted him.
Flynn was fired because he lost Trump's confidence. He lied by omission to Trump and Pence. Trump didn't fire him for doing his job, he was fired because Trump felt he couldn't trust him. Every transition team, and every administration talks to foreign governments, but you already know all that. The whole meeting thing with the Russians was blown up by the pundits for political reasons.
Maybe you could ask Rice what the conversations were about. Maybe that would enlighten us.

And Bannon was on the security council to oversee it's reorganization. To do oversight on Flynn's reorganization. You know, to fix the mess Obama made of it.

Now, let me ask you a question;
Russia was a "friend" of the US right up until Obama's second term. But before the hacking of the DNC, before Trump announced his candidacy, suddenly Russia is our enemy.
Why is that?

And I won't even ask you to step out of your bubble. You don't want to. You get off posting meaningless bullshit and talking points from unsupporters. Trump could donate every dime he ever had to planned parenthood and shoot rainbows out of his ass and you'd still find bullshit about him to post.
Your credibility is zero around here.

But you already know that.

 

I appreciate all the time and effort you have put in here shootersa but the two things you have not answered is if Trump felt he could not trust Flynn and put in Bannon in to watch over him why would he even put Flynn in that position in the first place? Why would you ever consider putting someone you couldn't trust in as NSA?

And even after Trump did why did you say it was three weeks after Trump was told Flynn was lying and he could t trust him and only after that became public to fire him?

I really do appreciate time and effort here but you just don't seem to be answering the basic questions.

 

Trump Casually Accuses Susan Rice Of Committing A Crime, Offers No Evidence

The president didn’t specify what crime he thinks Rice might have committed.

On Tuesday, Rice denied reports that she’d asked intelligence officials to reveal the names of Trump associates who were being subject to surveillance. There is no indication that Rice actually did anything wrong, but many conservatives have seized on her supposed misconduct as evidence that former President Barack Obama ordered wiretapping on Trump’s presidential campaign. In reality, there is no indication Obama ever did any such thing.

*not_secure_link*m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58e51fdae4b0fe4ce0874c3e?

 

Susan Rice’s White House Unmasking: A Watergate-style Scandal
by Andrew C. McCarthy April 4, 2017 12:08 PM
@AndrewCMcCarthy

Her interest was not in national security but to advance the political interests of the Democratic party.

The thing to bear in mind is that the White House does not do investigations. Not criminal investigations, not intelligence investigations.

Remember that.

Why is that so important in the context of explosive revelations that Susan Rice, President Obama’s national-security adviser, confidant, and chief dissembler, called for the “unmasking” of Trump campaign and transition officials whose identities and communications were captured in the collection of U.S. intelligence on foreign targets?

Because we’ve been told for weeks that any unmasking of people in Trump’s circle that may have occurred had two innocent explanations: (1) the FBI’s investigation of Russian meddling in the election and (2) the need to know, for purposes of understanding the communications of foreign intelligence targets, the identities of Americans incidentally intercepted or mentioned. The unmasking, Obama apologists insist, had nothing to do with targeting Trump or his people.

That won’t wash.

In general, it is the FBI that conducts investigations that bear on American citizens suspected of committing crimes or of acting as agents of foreign powers. In the matter of alleged Russian meddling, the investigative camp also includes the CIA and the NSA. All three agencies conducted a probe and issued a joint report in January. That was after Obama, despite having previously acknowledged that the Russian activity was inconsequential, suddenly made a great show of ordering an inquiry and issuing sanctions.

Consequently, if unmasking was relevant to the Russia investigation, it would have been done by those three agencies. And if it had been critical to know the identities of Americans caught up in other foreign intelligence efforts, the agencies that collect the information and conduct investigations would have unmasked it. Because they are the agencies that collect and refine intelligence “products” for the rest of the “intelligence community,” they are responsible for any unmasking; and they do it under “minimization” standards that FBI Director James Comey, in recent congressional testimony, described as “obsessive” in their determination to protect the identities and privacy of Americans.

Understand: There would have been no intelligence need for Susan Rice to ask for identities to be unmasked. If there had been a real need to reveal the identities — an intelligence need based on American interests — the unmasking would have been done by the investigating agencies.

The national-security adviser is not an investigator. She is a White House staffer. The president’s staff is a consumer of intelligence, not a generator or collector of it. If Susan Rice was unmasking Americans, it was not to fulfill an intelligence need based on American interests; it was to fulfill a political desire based on Democratic-party interests.

The FBI, CIA, and NSA generate or collect the intelligence in, essentially, three ways: conducting surveillance on suspected agents of foreign powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and carrying out more-sweeping collections under two other authorities — a different provision of FISA, and a Reagan-era executive order that has been amended several times over the ensuing decades, EO 12,333.

As Director Comey explained, in answering questions posed by Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), those three agencies do collection, investigation, and analysis. In general, they handle any necessary unmasking — which, due to the aforementioned privacy obsessiveness, is extremely rare. Unlike Democratic-party operatives whose obsession is vanquishing Republicans, the three agencies have to be concerned about the privacy rights of Americans. If they’re not, their legal authority to collect the intelligence — a vital national-security power — could be severely curtailed when it periodically comes up for review by Congress, as it will later this year.

Those three collecting agencies — FBI, CIA, and NSA — must be distinguished from other components of the government, such as the White House. Those other components, Comey elaborated, “are consumers of our products.” That is, they do not collect raw intelligence and refine it into useful reports — i.e., reports that balance informational value and required privacy protections. They read those reports and make policy recommendations based on them. White House staffers are not supposed to be in the business of controlling the content of the reports; they merely act on the reports.

Thus, Comey added, these consumers “can ask the collectors to unmask.” But the unmasking authority “resides with those who collected the information.”

Of course, the consumer doing the asking in this case was not just any government official. We’re talking about Susan Rice. This was Obama’s right hand doing the asking. If she made an unmasking “request,” do you suppose anyone at the FBI, CIA, or NSA was going to say no?

That brings us to three interesting points.

The first involves political intrusion into law enforcement — something that the White House is supposed to avoid. (You may remember that Democrats ran Bush attorney general Alberto Gonzales out of town over suspicions about it.) As I have noted repeatedly, in publishing the illegally leaked classified information about former national-security adviser Michael Flynn’s communications with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the New York Times informs us that “Obama advisers” and “Obama officials” were up to their eyeballs in the investigation:

Obama advisers heard separately from the F.B.I. about Mr. Flynn’s conversation with Mr. Kislyak, whose calls were routinely monitored by American intelligence agencies that track Russian diplomats. The Obama advisers grew suspicious that perhaps there had been a secret deal between the incoming team and Moscow, which could violate the rarely enforced, two-century-old Logan Act barring private citizens from negotiating with foreign powers in disputes with the United States.

The Obama officials asked the F.B.I. if a quid pro quo had been discussed on the call, and the answer came back no, according to one of the officials, who like others asked not to be named discussing delicate communications. [Translation: “asked not to be named committing felony unauthorized disclosure of classified information.”] The topic of sanctions came up, they were told, but there was no deal. [Emphasis added.]

It appears very likely that Susan Rice was involved in the unmasking of Michael Flynn. Was she also monitoring the FBI’s investigation? Was she involved in the administration’s consideration of (bogus) criminal charges against Flynn? With the subsequent decision to have the FBI interrogate Flynn (or “grill” him, as the Times put it)?

The second point is that, while not a pillar of rectitude, Ms. Rice is not an idiot. Besides being shrewd, she was a highly involved, highly informed consumer of intelligence, and a key Obama political collaborator. Unlike the casual reader, she would have known who the Trump-team players were without needing to have their identities unmasked. Do you really think her purpose in demanding that names be revealed was to enhance her understanding of intelligence about the activities and intentions of foreign targets? Seriously? I’m betting it was so that others down the dissemination chain could see the names of Trump associates — names the investigating agencies that originally collected the information had determined not to unmask.

Third, and finally, let’s consider the dissemination chain Rice had in mind.

The most telling remark that former Obama deputy defense secretary Evelyn Farkas made in her now-infamous MSNBC interview was the throw-away line at the end: “That’s why you have all the leaking.”

Put this in context: Farkas had left the Obama administration in 2015, subsequently joining the presidential campaign of, yes, Hillary Clinton — Trump’s opponent. She told MSNBC that she had been encouraging her former Obama-administration colleagues and members of Congress to seek “as much information as you can” from the intelligence community.

“That’s why you have the leaking.”

To summarize: At a high level, officials like Susan Rice had names unmasked that would not ordinarily be unmasked. That information was then being pushed widely throughout the intelligence community in unmasked form . . . particularly after Obama, toward the end of his presidency, suddenly — and seemingly apropos of nothing — changed the rules so that all of the intelligence agencies (not just the collecting agencies) could have access to raw intelligence information.

As we know, the community of intelligence agencies leaks like a sieve, and the more access there is to juicy information, the more leaks there are. Meanwhile, former Obama officials and Clinton-campaign advisers, like Farkas, were pushing to get the information transferred from the intelligence community to members of Congress, geometrically increasing the likelihood of intelligence leaks.

By the way, have you noticed that there have been lots of intelligence leaks in the press?

There’s an old saying in the criminal law: The best evidence of a conspiracy is success.

The criminal law also has another good rule of thumb: Consciousness of guilt is best proved by false exculpatory statements. That’s a genre in which Susan Rice has rich experience.

Two weeks ago, she was asked in an interview about allegations by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) that the Obama administration had unmasked Trump-team members.

“I know nothing about this,” Rice replied. “I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today.”

Well, at least she didn’t blame it on a video.

— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior policy fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

Read more at: *not_secure_link*www.nationalreview.com/articl...on-fbi-cia-nsa

 

And, where's the evidence that Russia hacked and colluded with Trump to win an election?, where is that evidence at again?

 

The genius's are at it again, proposing a new and improved method of bringing ''prescription'' drug costs to a more manageable cost.

Yeppers, introducing a bill to literally bring drugs across the Mexican border.

They’re calling it a “landmark proposal” and a “milestone effort” to bring down the cost of prescription drugs. That claim should be your first red flag. When has the all-star cast of Warren, Franken, and Sanders brought down the price of anything? Never.

The real name of this monstrosity is the Improving Access to Affordable Prescription Drugs Act. It is difficult to adequately name a drug-running scheme. At least, the gun-running scheme, Fast and Furious sounded rather cutting edge or ominous.

This group of drug-loving Democrats should have kept it simple. Something like, the Fauxcahontas Cartel, to honor the leader of the movement, Warren, a fake Native American.

As Opioid addiction in America is skyrocketing, leave it to the Democrats to come up with a scheme to make it easier to bring unregulated prescription drugs into our country.

It is the Democrats who have caused the prices of American-made drugs to go through the proverbial roof.

The EPA and FDA and others have forced the cost of research and development of new drugs to increase astronomically.

In many cases, it is cost prohibitive not to move the company operations overseas and out from under the controls of our bureaucracy.

 

So Nunes has recused himself. If you say you did nothing wrong, why remove yourself?

 

Good, no great cut and paste job.

 

The article has a couple of flaws.

The FBI, CIA, and NSA have to approve unmasking. So, if Rice did not need the information, why did those agencies approve?

Also, Trump has not removed the Obama directive for intelligence sharing. Why?

 

Devin Nunes stepping aside in Russia probe — at least for now

 

This just gets more fun all the time.

House Ethics Committee now investigating Devin Nunes over his White House stunt: report

 

Investigate all you want.... The Democrats are powerless when it comes to doing anything about it....

Karma...