US forces placed on high alert

Patrick Martin Correspondent
The Pentagon put tens of thousands of US soldiers on high alert, including Marines and special operations forces, ahead of Tuesday’s expected release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the torture of prisoners at CIA “black site” prisons around the world.

The Obama White House and the Pentagon confirmed on Monday that the higher alert status had been declared in anticipation that the report would provoke popular outrage, particularly in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Africa, as well as in countries that provided facilities for the CIA torture program, including Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Thailand.

The heightened security measures come amid a frenzied campaign by former CIA and Bush administration officials to attack the report’s publication, denouncing it preemptively as a virtual act of treason.

Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden set the tone with an appearance on the CBS interview program “Face the Nation” Sunday, where he said the report “will be used by our enemies to motivate people to attack Americans and American facilities overseas.”

He added that the report would undermine Washington’s global influence.

“There are countries out there who have cooperated with us on the war on terror at some political risk that are relying on American discretion,” he said.

“I can’t imagine anyone out there going forward in the future who would be willing to do anything that even smacks of political danger.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers issued an even more apocalyptic warning, declaring flatly that the report “is a terrible idea,” adding, “Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths.”

Islamic fundamentalist groups would seize on the report’s revelations, he claimed, although an ample supply of grisly accounts of US torture is already available on the Internet.

“They’ll use it for their propaganda machine,” he told Bloomberg News. “Why are we going to risk the lives of some diplomat, for what? We’re going to risk the lives of some intelligence official who had nothing to do with this, for what?”

Both the US Central Command, which includes the Middle East and Afghanistan, and the US Africa Command, which covers the entire African continent, have ordered higher alerts. Nearly 5 000 Marines are likely first responders in the event of attacks on US embassies, consulates or bases.

These include crisis-response teams based in Sigonella, Italy, Morón, Spain, and Kuwait, as well as the 2,000-strong Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group, currently on board ships in the Gulf of Aden.

The USS Makin Island, the helicopter and troop carrier that is the flagship of the amphibious group, was the launching pad for Friday’s failed raid by Navy SEALs on an alleged Al Qaeda compound in Yemen, in which a US journalist and a South African teacher, both held hostage, were killed.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest revealed Monday that the administration had been informed the Senate report on CIA torture would be released Tuesday. The release of the report “could lead to a greater risk… to US facilities and individuals all around the world,” Earnest said. “The administration has taken the prudent steps to ensure that the proper security precautions are in place.”

The Senate report is only a partial exposure of the crimes committed by the US intelligence agency. It is limited to the period 2002-2006, during the Bush administration, and is heavily censored by the CIA itself, with pseudonyms substituted for the names of all CIA officers except the top decision-makers, and the pseudonyms themselves blacked out.

The document being released is not the full 6 700-page report compiled by the committee, based on 6 million pages of material examined as part of a three-year probe, but only an executive summary of 500 pages.

The report is limited to what the CIA did. It does not review the actions of officials at the Bush White House and Justice Department who gave the green light to torture and concocted pseudo-legal justifications for it.

Nonetheless, advance comments by Senate Committee members suggest that the report contains new and grisly details of the torture campaign, including extensive water-boarding, physical violence, death threats and other methods characterised by one senator as “medieval.”— WSWS.