As the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, and a prized Guantánamo detainee wouldn’t talk, the Bush administration’s highest-ranking lawyers argued for extreme interrogation techniques, circumventing international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the army’s own Field Manual. The attorneys would even fly to Guantánamo to ratchet up the pressure—then blame abuses on the military. Philippe Sands follows the torture trail, and holds out the possibility of war crimes charges.
By Phillippe Sands
06/04/08 "Vanity Fair" --- - The abuse, rising to the level of torture, of those captured and detained in the war on terror is a defining feature of the presidency of George W. Bush. Its military beginnings, however, lie not in Abu Ghraib, as is commonly thought, or in the “rendition” of prisoners to other countries for questioning, but in the treatment of the very first prisoners at Guantánamo. Starting in late 2002 a detainee bearing the number 063 was tortured over a period of more than seven weeks. In his story lies the answer to a crucial question: How was the decision made to let the U.S. military start using coercive interrogations at Guantánamo?
The Bush administration has always taken refuge behind a “trickle up” explanation: that is, the decision was generated by military commanders and interrogators on the ground. This explanation is false. The origins lie in actions taken at the very highest levels of the administration—by some of the most senior personal advisers to the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense. At the heart of the matter stand several political appointees—lawyers—who, it can be argued, broke their ethical codes of conduct and took themselves into a zone of international criminality, where formal investigation is now a very real option. This is the story of how the torture at Guantánamo began, and how it spread.
“Crying. Angry. Yelled for Allah.”
One day last summer I sat in a garden in London with Dr. Abigail Seltzer, a psychiatrist who specializes in trauma victims. She divides her time between Great Britain’s National Health Service, where she works extensively with asylum seekers and other refugees, and the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. It was uncharacteristically warm, and we took refuge in the shade of some birches. On a table before us were three documents. The first was a November 2002 “action memo” written by William J. (Jim) Haynes II, the general counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense, to his boss, Donald Rumsfeld; the document is sometimes referred to as the Haynes Memo. Haynes recommended that Rumsfeld give “blanket approval” to 15 out of 18 proposed techniques of aggressive interrogation. Rumsfeld duly did so, on December 2, 2002, signing his name firmly next to the word “Approved.” Under his signature he also scrawled a few words that refer to the length of time a detainee can be forced to stand during interrogation: “I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?”
The second document on the table listed the 18 proposed techniques of interrogation, all of which went against long-standing U.S. military practice as presented in the Army Field Manual. The 15 approved techniques included certain forms of physical contact and also techniques intended to humiliate and to impose sensory deprivation. They permitted the use of stress positions, isolation, hooding, 20-hour interrogations, and nudity. Haynes and Rumsfeld explicitly did not rule out the future use of three other techniques, one of which was waterboarding, the application of a wet towel and water to induce the perception of drowning.
The third document was an internal log that detailed the interrogation at Guantánamo of a man identified only as Detainee 063, whom we now know to be Mohammed al-Qahtani, allegedly a member of the 9/11 conspiracy and the so-called 20th hijacker. According to this log, the interrogation commenced on November 23, 2002, and continued until well into January. The techniques described by the log as having been used in the interrogation of Detainee 063 include all 15 approved by Rumsfeld.
“Was the detainee abused? Was he tortured?,” I asked Seltzer. Cruelty, humiliation, and the use of torture on detainees have long been prohibited by international law, including the Geneva Conventions and their Common Article 3. This total ban was reinforced in 1984 with the adoption of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which criminalizes torture and complicity in torture.
A careful and fastidious practitioner, Seltzer declined to give a straight yes or no answer. In her view the definition of torture is essentially a legal matter, which will turn on a particular set of facts. She explained that there is no such thing as a medical definition of torture, and that a doctor must look for pathology, the abnormal functioning of the body or the mind. We reviewed the definition of torture, as set out in the 1984 Convention, which is binding on 145 countries, including the United States. Torture includes “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person.”
Seltzer had gone through the interrogation log, making notations. She used four different colors to highlight moments that struck her as noteworthy, and the grim document now looked bizarrely festive. Yellow indicated episodes of abusive treatment. Pink showed where the detainee’s rights were respected—where he was fed or given a break, or allowed to sleep. Green indicated the many instances of medical involvement, where al-Qahtani was given an enema or was hospitalized suffering from hypothermia. Finally, blue identified what Seltzer termed “expressions of distress.”
We talked about the methods of interrogation. “In terms of their effects,” she said, “I suspect that the individual techniques are less important than the fact that they were used over an extended period of time, and that several appear to be used together: in other words, the cumulative effect.” Detainee 063 was subjected to systematic sleep deprivation. He was shackled and cuffed; at times, head restraints were used. He was compelled to listen to threats to his family. The interrogation leveraged his sensitivities as a Muslim: he was shown pictures of scantily clad models, was touched by a female interrogator, was made to stand naked, and was forcibly shaved. He was denied the right to pray. A psychiatrist who witnessed the interrogation of Detainee 063 reported the use of dogs, intended to intimidate “by getting the dogs close to him and then having the dogs bark or act aggressively on command.” The temperature was changed, and 063 was subjected to extreme cold. Intravenous tubes were forced into his body, to provide nourishment when he would not eat or drink.
We went through the marked-up document slowly, pausing at each blue mark. Detainee 063’s reactions were recorded with regularity. I’ll string some of them together to convey the impression:
Detainee began to cry. Visibly shaken. Very emotional. Detainee cried. Disturbed. Detainee began to cry. Detainee bit the IV tube completely in two. Started moaning. Uncomfortable. Moaning. Began crying hard spontaneously. Crying and praying. Very agitated. Yelled. Agitated and violent. Detainee spat. Detainee proclaimed his innocence. Whining. Dizzy. Forgetting things. Angry. Upset. Yelled for Allah.
The blue highlights went on and on.
Urinated on himself. Began to cry. Asked God for forgiveness. Cried. Cried. Became violent. Began to cry. Broke down and cried. Began to pray and openly cried. Cried out to Allah several times. Trembled uncontrollably.
Was Detainee 063 subjected to severe mental pain or suffering? Torture is not a medical concept, Seltzer reminded me. “That said,” she went on, “over the period of 54 days there is enough evidence of distress to indicate that it would be very surprising indeed if it had not reached the threshold of severe mental pain.” She thought about the matter a little more and then presented it a different way: “If you put 12 clinicians in a room and asked them about this interrogation log, you might get different views about the effect and long-term consequences of these interrogation techniques. But I doubt that any one of them would claim that this individual had not suffered severe mental distress at the time of his interrogation, and possibly also severe physical distress.”
The Authorized Version
The story of the Bush administration’s descent down this path began to emerge on June 22, 2004. The administration was struggling to respond to the Abu Ghraib scandal, which had broken a couple of months earlier with the broadcast of photographs that revealed sickening abuse at the prison outside Baghdad. The big legal guns were wheeled out. Alberto Gonzales and Jim Haynes stepped into a conference room at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House. Gonzales was President Bush’s White House counsel and would eventually become attorney general. Haynes, as Rumsfeld’s general counsel, was the most senior lawyer in the Pentagon, a position he would retain until a month ago, when he resigned—“returning to private life,” as a press release stated. Gonzales and Haynes were joined by a third lawyer, Daniel Dell’Orto, a career official at the Pentagon. Their task was to steady the beat and make it clear that the events at Abu Ghraib were the actions of a few bad eggs and had nothing to do with the broader policies of the administration.
Gonzales and Haynes spoke from a carefully prepared script. They released a thick folder of documents, segmented by lawyerly tabs. These documents were being made public for the first time, a clear indication of the gravity of the political crisis. Among the documents were the Haynes Memo and the list of 18 techniques that Seltzer and I would later review. The log detailing the interrogation of Detainee 063 was not released; it would be leaked to the press two years later.
For two hours Gonzales and Haynes laid out the administration’s narrative. Al-Qaeda was a different kind of enemy, deadly and shadowy. It targeted civilians and didn’t follow the Geneva Conventions or any other international rules. Nevertheless, the officials explained, the administration had acted judiciously, even as it moved away from a purely law-enforcement strategy to one that marshaled “all elements of national power.” The authorized version had four basic parts.
First, the administration had moved reasonably—with care and deliberation, and always within the limits of the law. In February 2002 the president had determined, in accordance with established legal principles, that none of the detainees at Guantánamo could rely on any of the protections granted by Geneva, even Common Article 3. This presidential order was the lead document, at Tab A. The administration’s point was this: agree with it or not, the decision on Geneva concealed no hidden agenda; rather, it simply reflected a clear-eyed reading of the actual provisions. The administration, in other words, was doing nothing more than trying to proceed by the book. The law was the law.
Relating to this was a second document, one that had been the subject of media speculation for some weeks. The authors of this document, a legal opinion dated August 1, 2002, were two lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel: Jay Bybee, who is now a federal judge, and John Yoo, who now teaches law at Berkeley. Later it would become known that they were assisted in the drafting by David Addington, then the vice president’s lawyer and now his chief of staff. The Yoo-Bybee Memo declared that physical torture occurred only when the pain was “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death,” and that mental torture required “suffering not just at the moment of infliction but … lasting psychological harm.” Interrogations that did not reach these thresholds—far less stringent than those set by international law—were allowed. Although findings that issue from the Office of Legal Counsel at Justice typically carry great weight, at the press conference Gonzales went out of his way to decouple the Yoo-Bybee Memo from anything that might have taken place at Guantánamo. The two lawyers had been asked, in effect, to stargaze, he said. Their memo simply explored “the limits of the legal landscape.” It included “irrelevant and unnecessary” discussion and never made it into the hands of the president or of soldiers in the field. The memo did not, said Gonzales, “reflect the policies that the administration ultimately adopted.”
The second element of the administration’s narrative dealt with the specific source of the new interrogation techniques. Where had the initiative come from? The administration pointed to the military commander at Guantánamo, Major General Michael E. Dunlavey. Haynes would later describe him to the Senate Judiciary Committee, during his failed confirmation hearings for a judgeship in 2006, as “an aggressive major general.” The techniques were not imposed or encouraged by Washington, which had merely reacted to a request from below. They came as a result of the identification locally of “key people” at Guantánamo, including “a guy named al-Qahtani.” This man, Detainee 063, had proved able to resist the traditional non-coercive techniques of interrogation spelled out in the Army Field Manual, and as the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, an intelligence spike pointed to the possibility of new attacks. “And so it is concluded at Guantánamo,” Dell’Orto emphasized, reconstructing the event, “that it may be time to inquire as to whether there may be more flexibility in the type of techniques we use on him.” A request was sent from Guantánamo on October 11, 2002, to the head of the U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom), General James T. Hill. Hill in turn forwarded Dunlavey’s request to General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ultimately, Rumsfeld approved “all but three of the requested techniques.” The official version was clear: Haynes and Rumsfeld were just processing a request coming up the chain from Guantánamo.
The third element of the administration’s account concerned the legal justification for the new interrogation techniques. This, too, the administration said, had originated in Guantánamo. It was not the result of legal positions taken by politically appointed lawyers in the upper echelons of the administration, and certainly not the Justice Department. The relevant document, also dated October 11, was in the bundle released by Gonzales, a legal memo prepared by Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver, the staff judge advocate at Guantánamo. That document—described pointedly by Dell’Orto as a “multi-page, single-spaced legal review”—sought to provide legal authority for all the interrogation techniques. No other legal memo was cited as bearing on aggressive interrogations. The finger of responsibility was intended to point at Diane Beaver.
The fourth and final element of the administration’s official narrative was to make clear that decisions relating to Guantánamo had no bearing on events at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Gonzales wanted to “set the record straight” about this. The administration’s actions were inconsistent with torture. The abuses at Abu Ghraib were unauthorized and unconnected to the administration’s policies.
Gonzales and Haynes laid out their case with considerable care. The only flaw was that every element of the argument contained untruths.
The real story, pieced together from many hours of interviews with most of the people involved in the decisions about interrogation, goes something like this: The Geneva decision was not a case of following the logic of the law but rather was designed to give effect to a prior decision to take the gloves off and allow coercive interrogation; it deliberately created a legal black hole into which the detainees were meant to fall. The new interrogation techniques did not arise spontaneously from the field but came about as a direct result of intense pressure and input from Rumsfeld’s office. The Yoo-Bybee Memo was not simply some theoretical document, an academic exercise in blue-sky hypothesizing, but rather played a crucial role in giving those at the top the confidence to put pressure on those at the bottom. And the practices employed at Guantánamo led to abuses at Abu Ghraib.
The fingerprints of the most senior lawyers in the administration were all over the design and implementation of the abusive interrogation policies. Addington, Bybee, Gonzales, Haynes, and Yoo became, in effect, a torture team of lawyers, freeing the administration from the constraints of all international rules prohibiting abuse.
Killing Geneva
In the early days of 2002, as the number of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan began to swell, the No. 3 official at the Pentagon was Douglas J. Feith. As undersecretary of defense for policy, he stood directly below Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld. Feith’s job was to provide advice across a wide range of issues, and the issues came to include advice on the Geneva Conventions and the conduct of military interrogations.
I sat down with Feith not long after he left the government. He was teaching at the school of foreign service at Georgetown University, occupying a small, eighth-floor office lined with books on international law. He greeted me with a smile, his impish face supporting a mop of graying hair that seemed somehow at odds with his 54 years. Over the course of his career Feith has elicited a range of reactions. General Tommy Franks, who led the invasion of Iraq, once called Feith “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.” Rumsfeld, in contrast, saw him as an “intellectual engine.” In manner he is the Energizer Bunny, making it hard to get a word in edgewise. After many false starts Feith provided an account of the president’s decision on Geneva, including his own contribution as one of its principal architects.
“This was something I played a major role in,” he began, in a tone of evident pride. With the war in Afghanistan under way, lawyers in Washington understood that they needed a uniform view on the constraints, if any, imposed by Geneva. Addington, Haynes, and Gonzales all objected to Geneva. Indeed, Haynes in December 2001 told the CentCom admiral in charge of detainees in Afghanistan “to ‘take the gloves off’ and ask whatever he wanted” in the questioning of John Walker Lindh. (Lindh, a young American who had become a Muslim and had recently been captured in northern Afghanistan, bore the designation Detainee 001.)
A month later, the administration was struggling to adopt a position. On January 9, John Yoo and Robert Delahunty, at the Justice Department, prepared an opinion for Haynes. They concluded that the president wasn’t bound by traditional international-law prohibitions. This encountered strong opposition from Colin Powell and his counsel, William H. Taft IV, at the State Department, as well as from the Tjags—the military lawyers in the office of the judge advocate general—who wanted to maintain a strong U.S. commitment to Geneva and the rules that were part of customary law. On January 25, Alberto Gonzales put his name to a memo to the president supporting Haynes and Rumsfeld over Powell and Taft. This memo, which is believed to have been written by Addington, presented a “new paradigm” and described Geneva’s “strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners” as “obsolete.” Addington was particularly distrustful of the military lawyers. “Don’t bring the Tjags into the process—they aren’t reliable,” he was once overheard to say.
Feith took up the story. He had gone to see Rumsfeld about the issue, accompanied by Myers. As they reached Rumsfeld’s office, Myers turned to Feith and said, “We have to support the Geneva Conventions If Rumsfeld doesn’t go along with this, I’m going to contradict them in front of the president.” Feith was surprised by this uncharacteristically robust statement, and by the way Myers referred to the secretary bluntly as “Rumsfeld.”
Douglas Feith had a long-standing intellectual interest in Geneva, and for many years had opposed legal protections for terrorists under international law. He referred me to an article he had written in 1985, in The National Interest, setting out his basic view. Geneva provided incentives to play by the rules; those who chose not to follow the rules, he argued, shouldn’t be allowed to rely on them, or else the whole Geneva structure would collapse. The only way to protect Geneva, in other words, was sometimes to limit its scope. To uphold Geneva’s protections, you might have to cast them aside.
But that way of thinking didn’t square with the Geneva system itself, which was based on two principles: combatants who behaved according to its standards received P.O.W. status and special protections, and everyone else received the more limited but still significant protections of Common Article 3. Feith described how, as he and Myers spoke with Rumsfeld, he jumped protectively in front of the general. He reprised his “little speech” for me. “There is no country in the world that has a larger interest in promoting respect for the Geneva Conventions as law than the United States,” he told Rumsfeld, according to his own account, “and there is no institution in the U.S. government that has a stronger interest than the Pentagon.” So Geneva had to be followed? “Obeying the Geneva Conventions is not optional,” Feith replied. “The Geneva Convention is a treaty in force. It is as much part of the supreme law of the United States as a statute.” Myers jumped in. “I agree completely with what Doug said and furthermore it is our military culture It’s not even a matter of whether it is reciprocated—it’s a matter of who we are.”
Feith was animated as he relived this moment. I remained puzzled. How had the administration gone from a commitment to Geneva, as suggested by the meeting with Rumsfeld, to the president’s declaration that none of the detainees had any rights under Geneva? It all turns on what you mean by “promoting respect” for Geneva, Feith explained. Geneva didn’t apply at all to al-Qaeda fighters, because they weren’t part of a state and therefore couldn’t claim rights under a treaty that was binding only on states. Geneva did apply to the Taliban, but by Geneva’s own terms Taliban fighters weren’t entitled to P.O.W. status, because they hadn’t worn uniforms or insignia. That would still leave the safety net provided by the rules reflected in Common Article 3— but detainees could not rely on this either, on the theory that its provisions applied only to “armed conflict not of an international character,” which the administration interpreted to mean civil war. This was new. In reaching this conclusion, the Bush administration simply abandoned all legal and customary precedent that regards Common Article 3 as a minimal bill of rights for everyone.
In the administration’s account there was no connection between the decision on Geneva and the new interrogation rules later approved by Rumsfeld for Detainee 063; its position on Geneva was dictated purely by the law itself. I asked Feith, just to be clear: Didn’t the administration’s approach mean that Geneva’s constraints on interrogation couldn’t be invoked by anyone at Guantánamo? “Oh yes, sure,” he shot back. Was that the intended result?, I asked. “Absolutely,” he replied. I asked again: Under the Geneva Conventions, no one at Guantánamo was entitled to any protection? “That’s the point,” Feith reiterated. As he saw it, either you were a detainee to whom Geneva didn’t apply or you were a detainee to whom Geneva applied but whose rights you couldn’t invoke. What was the difference for the purpose of interrogation?, I asked. Feith answered with a certain satisfaction, “It turns out, none. But that’s the point.”
That indeed was the point. The principled legal arguments were a fig leaf. The real reason for the Geneva decision, as Feith now made explicit, was the desire to interrogate these detainees with as few constraints as possible. Feith thought he’d found a clever way to do this, which on the one hand upheld Geneva as a matter of law—the speech he made to Myers and Rumsfeld—and on the other pulled the rug out from under it as a matter of reality. Feith’s argument was so clever that Myers continued to believe Geneva’s protections remained in force—he was “well and truly hoodwinked,” one seasoned observer of military affairs later told me.
Feith’s argument prevailed. On February 7, 2002, President Bush signed a memorandum that turned Guantánamo into a Geneva-free zone. As a matter of policy, the detainees would be handled humanely, but only to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity. “The president said ‘humane treatment,’ ” Feith told me, inflecting the term sourly, “and I thought that was O.K. Perfectly fine phrase that needs to be fleshed out, but it’s a fine phrase—‘humane treatment.’ ” The Common Article 3 restrictions on torture or “outrages upon personal dignity” were gone.
“This year I was really a player,” Feith said, thinking back on 2002 and relishing the memory. I asked him whether, in the end, he was at all concerned that the Geneva decision might have diminished America’s moral authority. He was not. “The problem with moral authority,” he said, was “people who should know better, like yourself, siding with the assholes, to put it crudely.”
“I Was on a Timeline”
As the traditional constraints on aggressive interrogation were removed, Rumsfeld wanted the right man to take charge of Joint Task Force 170, which oversaw military interrogations at Guantánamo. Two weeks after the decision on Geneva he found that man in Michael Dunlavey. Dunlavey was a judge in the Court of Common Pleas in Erie, Pennsylvania, a Vietnam veteran, and a major general in the reserves with a strong background in intelligence.
Dunlavey met one-on-one with Rumsfeld at the end of February. They both liked what they saw. When I met Dunlavey, now back at his office in Erie, he described that initial meeting: “He evaluated me. He wanted to know who I was. He was very focused on the need to get intelligence. He wanted to make sure that the moment was not lost.” Dunlavey was a strong and abrasive personality (“a tyrant,” one former jag told me), but he was also a cautious man, alert to the nuances of instruction from above. Succinctly, Dunlavey described the mission Rumsfeld had given him. “He wanted me to ‘maximize the intelligence production.’ No one ever said to me, ‘The gloves are off.’ But I didn’t need to talk about the Geneva Conventions. It was clear that they didn’t apply.” Rumsfeld told Dunlavey to report directly to him. To the suggestion that Dunlavey report to SouthCom, Dunlavey heard Rumsfeld say, “I don’t care who he is under. He works for me.”
He arrived at Guantánamo at the beginning of March. Planeloads of detainees were being delivered on a daily basis, though Dunlavey soon concluded that half of them had no intelligence value. He reported this to Rumsfeld, who referred the matter to Feith. Feith, Dunlavey said, resisted the idea of repatriating any detainees whatsoever. (Feith says he made a series of interagency proposals to repatriate detainees.)
Dunlavey described Feith to me as one of his main points of contact. Feith, for his part, had told me that he knew nothing about any specific interrogation issues until the Haynes Memo suddenly landed on his desk. But that couldn’t be right—in the memo itself Haynes had written, “I have discussed this with the Deputy, Doug Feith and General Myers.” I read the sentence aloud. Feith looked at me. His only response was to tell me that I had mispronounced his name. “It’s Fythe,” he said. “Not Faith.”
In June, the focus settled on Detainee 063, Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi national who had been refused entry to the United States just before 9/11 and was captured a few months later in Afghanistan. Dunlavey described to me the enormous pressure he came under—from Washington, from the top—to find out what al-Qahtani knew. The message, he said, was: “Are you doing everything humanly possible to get this information?” He received a famous Rumsfeld “snowflake,” a memo designed to prod the recipient into action. “I’ve got a short fuse on this to get it up the chain,” Dunlavey told me, “I was on a timeline.” Dunlavey held eye contact for more than a comfortable moment. He said, “This guy may have been the key to the survival of the U.S.”
The interrogation of al-Qahtani relied at first on long-established F.B.I. and military techniques, procedures sanctioned by the Field Manual and based largely on building rapport. This yielded nothing. On August 8, al-Qahtani was placed in an isolation facility to separate him from the general detainee population. Pressure from Washington continued to mount. How high up did it go?, I asked Dunlavey. “It must have been all the way to the White House,” he replied.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Dunlavey and the others at Guantánamo, interrogation issues had arisen in other quarters. In March 2002 a man named Abu Zubaydah, a high-ranking al-Qaeda official, was captured in Pakistan. C.I.A. director George Tenet wanted to interrogate him aggressively but worried about the risk of criminal prosecution. He had to await the completion of legal opinions by the Justice Department, a task that had been entrusted by Alberto Gonzales to Jay Bybee and John Yoo. “It took until August to get clear guidance on what Agency officers could legally do,” Tenet later wrote. The “clear guidance” came on August 1, 2002, in memos written by Bybee and Yoo, with input from Addington. The first memo was addressed to Gonzales, redefining torture and abandoning the definition set by the 1984 torture convention. This was the Yoo-Bybee Memo made public by Gonzales nearly two years later, in the wake of Abu Ghraib. Nothing in the memo suggested that its use was limited to the C.I.A.; it referred broadly to “the conduct of interrogations outside of the United States.” Gonzales would later contend that this policy memo did “not reflect the policies the administration ultimately adopted,” but in fact it gave carte blanche to all the interrogation techniques later recommended by Haynes and approved by Rumsfeld. The second memo, requested by John Rizzo, a senior lawyer at the C.I.A., has never been made public. It spells out the specific techniques in detail. Dunlavey and his subordinates at Guantánamo never saw these memos and were not aware of their contents.
The lawyers in Washington were playing a double game. They wanted maximum pressure applied during interrogations, but didn’t want to be seen as the ones applying it—they wanted distance and deniability. They also wanted legal cover for themselves. A key question is whether Haynes and Rumsfeld had knowledge of the content of these memos before they approved the new interrogation techniques for al-Qahtani. If they did, then the administration’s official narrative—that the pressure for new techniques, and the legal support for them, originated on the ground at Guantánamo, from the “aggressive major general” and his staff lawyer—becomes difficult to sustain. More crucially, that knowledge is a link in the causal chain that connects the keyboards of Feith and Yoo to the interrogations of Guantánamo.
When did Haynes learn that the Justice Department had signed off on aggressive interrogation? All indications are that well before Haynes wrote his memo he knew what the Justice Department had advised the C.I.A. on interrogations and believed that he had legal cover to do what he wanted. Everyone in the upper echelons of the chain of decision-making that I spoke with, including Feith, General Myers, and General Tom Hill (the commander of SouthCom), confirmed to me that they believed at the time that Haynes had consulted Justice Department lawyers. Moreover, Haynes was a close friend of Bybee’s. “Jim was tied at the hip with Jay Bybee,” Thomas Romig, the army’s former judge advocate general, told me. “He would quote him the whole time.” Later, when asked during Senate hearings about his knowledge of the Yoo-Bybee Memo, Haynes would variously testify that he had not sought the memo, had not shaped its content, and did not possess a copy of it—but he carefully refrained from saying that he was unaware of its contents. Haynes, with whom I met on two occasions, will not speak on the record about this subject.
The Glassy-Eyed Men
As the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, Joint Task Force 170 was on notice to deliver results. But the task force was not the only actor at Guantánamo. The C.I.A. had people there looking for recruits among the detainees. The Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.) was interrogating detainees through its humint (human intelligence) Augmentation Teams. The F.B.I. was carrying out its own traditional non-aggressive interrogations.
The source of the various new techniques has been the stuff of speculation. In the administration’s official account, as noted, everything trickled up from the ground at Guantánamo. When I suggested to Mike Dunlavey that the administration’s trickle-up line was counter-intuitive, he didn’t disabuse me. “It’s possible,” he said, in a tone at once mischievous and unforthcoming, “that someone was sent to my task force and came up with these great ideas.” One F.B.I. special agent remembers an occasion, before any new techniques had been officially sanctioned, when military interrogators set out to question al-Qahtani for 24 hours straight—employing a variation on a method that would later appear in the Haynes Memo. When the agent objected, he said he was told that the plan had been approved by “the secretary,” meaning Rumsfeld.
Diane Beaver, Dunlavey’s staff judge advocate, was the lawyer who would later be asked to sign off on the new interrogation techniques. When the administration made public the list, it was Beaver’s legal advice the administration invoked. Diane Beaver gave me the fullest account of the process by which the new interrogation techniques emerged. In our lengthy conversations, which began in the autumn of 2006, she seemed coiled up—mistreated, hung out to dry. Before becoming a military lawyer Beaver had been a military police officer; once, while stationed in Germany, she had visited the courtroom where the Nuremberg trials took place. She was working as a lawyer for the Pentagon when the hijacked airplane hit on 9/11, and decided to remain in the army to help as she could. That decision landed her in Guantánamo.
It was clear to me that Beaver believed Washington was directly involved in the interrogations. Her account confirmed what Dunlavey had intimated, and what others have told me—that Washington’s views were being fed into the process by people physically present at Guantánamo. D.I.A. personnel were among them. Later allegations would suggest a role for three C.I.A. psychologists.
During September a series of brainstorming meetings were held at Guantánamo to discuss new techniques. Some of the meetings were led by Beaver. “I kept minutes. I got everyone together. I invited. I facilitated,” she told me. The sessions included representatives of the D.I.A. and the C.I.A. Ideas came from all over. Some derived from personal training experiences, including a military program known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape), designed to help soldiers persevere in the event of capture. Had sere been, in effect, reverse-engineered to provide some of the 18 techniques? Both Dunlavey and Beaver told me that sere provided inspiration, contradicting the administration’s denials that it had. Indeed, several Guantánamo personnel, including a psychologist and a psychiatrist, traveled to Fort Bragg, sere’s home, for a briefing.
Ideas arose from other sources. The first year of Fox TV’s dramatic series 24 came to a conclusion in spring 2002, and the second year of the series began that fall. An inescapable message of the program is that torture works. “We saw it on cable,” Beaver recalled. “People had already seen the first series. It was hugely popular.” Jack Bauer had many friends at Guantánamo, Beaver added. “He gave people lots of ideas.”
The brainstorming meetings inspired animated discussion. “Who has the glassy eyes?,” Beaver asked herself as she surveyed the men around the room, 30 or more of them. She was invariably the only woman present—as she saw it, keeping control of the boys. The younger men would get particularly agitated, excited even. “You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas,” Beaver recalled, a wan smile flickering on her face. “And I said to myself, You know what? I don’t have a dick to get hard—I can stay detached.”
Not everyone at Guantánamo was enthusiastic. The F.B.I. and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service refused to be associated with aggressive interrogation. They opposed the techniques. One of the N.C.I.S. psychologists, Mike Gelles, knew about the brainstorming sessions but stayed away. He was dismissive of the administration’s contention that the techniques trickled up on their own from Guantánamo. “That’s not accurate,” he said flatly. “This was not done by a bunch of people down in Gitmo—no way.”
That view is buttressed by a key event that has received virtually no attention. On September 25, as the process of elaborating new interrogation techniques reached a critical point, a delegation of the administration’s most senior lawyers arrived at Guantánamo. The group included the president’s lawyer, Alberto Gonzales, who had by then received the Yoo-Bybee Memo; Vice President Cheney’s lawyer, David Addington, who had contributed to the writing of that memo; the C.I.A.’s John Rizzo, who had asked for a Justice Department sign-off on individual techniques, including waterboarding, and received the second (and still secret) Yoo-Bybee Memo; and Jim Haynes, Rumsfeld’s counsel. They were all well aware of al-Qahtani. “They wanted to know what we were doing to get to this guy,” Dunlavey told me, “and Addington was interested in how we were managing it.” I asked what they had to say. “They brought ideas with them which had been given from sources in D.C.,” Dunlavey said. “They came down to observe and talk.” Throughout this whole period, Dunlavey went on, Rumsfeld was “directly and regularly involved.”
Beaver confirmed the account of the visit. Addington talked a great deal, and it was obvious to her that he was a “very powerful man” and “definitely the guy in charge,” with a booming voice and confident style. Gonzales was quiet. Haynes, a friend and protégé of Addington’s, seemed especially interested in the military commissions, which were to decide the fate of individual detainees. They met with the intelligence people and talked about new interrogation methods. They also witnessed some interrogations. Beaver spent time with the group. Talking about the episode even long afterward made her visibly anxious. Her hand tapped and she moved restlessly in her chair. She recalled the message they had received from the visitors: Do “whatever needed to be done.” That was a green light from the very top—the lawyers for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the C.I.A. The administration’s version of events—that it became involved in the Guantánamo interrogations only in November, after receiving a list of techniques out of the blue from the “aggressive major general”—was demonstrably false.
“A Dunk in the Water”
Two weeks after this unpublicized visit the process of compiling the list of new techniques was completed. The list was set out in a three-page memorandum from Lieutenant Colonel Jerald Phifer, dated October 11 and addressed to Dunlavey.
The Phifer Memo identified the problem: “current guidelines” prohibited the use of “physical or mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to inhumane treatment as a means of or aid to interrogation.” The prohibition dated back to 1863 and a general order issued by Abraham Lincoln.
The list of new interrogation techniques turned its back on this tradition. The 18 techniques were divided into three categories and came with only rudimentary guidance. No limits were placed on how many methods could be used at once, or for how many days in succession. The detainee was to be provided with a chair. The environment should be generally comfortable. If the detainee was uncooperative, you went to Category I. This comprised two techniques, yelling and deception.
If Category I produced no results, then the military interrogator could move to Category II. Category II included 12 techniques aimed at humiliation and sensory deprivation: for instance, the use of stress positions, such as standing; isolation for up to 30 days; deprivation of light and sound; 20-hour interrogations; removal of religious items; removal of clothing; forcible grooming, such as the shaving of facial hair; and the use of individual phobias, such as the fear of dogs, to induce stress
Finally came Category III, for the most exceptionally resistant. Category III included four techniques: the use of “mild, non-injurious physical contact,” such as grabbing, poking, and light pushing; the use of scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death or severely painful consequences were imminent for him or his family; exposure to cold weather or water; and waterboarding. This last technique, which powerfully mimics the experience of drowning, was later described by Vice President Cheney as a “dunk in the water.”
By the time the memo was completed al-Qahtani had already been separated from all other detainees for 64 days, in a cell that was “always flooded with light.” An F.B.I. agent described his condition the following month, just as the new interrogation techniques were first being directed against him: the detainee, a 2004 memo stated, “was talking to non-existent people, reporting hearing voices, [and] crouching in a corner of the cell covered with a sheet for hours on end.”
Ends and Means
Diane Beaver was insistent that the decision to implement new interrogation techniques had to be properly written up and that it needed a paper trail leading to authorization from the top, not from “the dirt on the ground,” as she self-deprecatingly described herself. “I just wasn’t comfortable giving oral advice,” she explained, as she had been requested to do. “I wanted to get something in writing. That was my game plan. I had four days. Dunlavey gave me just four days.” She says she believed that senior lawyers in Washington would review her written advice and override it if necessary. It never occurred to her that on so important an issue she would be the one to provide the legal assessment on which the entire matter would appear to rest—that her word would be the last word. As far as she was concerned, getting the proposal “up the command” was victory enough. She didn’t know that people much higher up had already made their decisions, had the security of secret legal cover from the Justice Department, and, although confident of their own legal protection, had no intention of soiling their hands by weighing in on the unpleasant details of interrogation.
Marooned in Guantánamo, Beaver had limited access to books and other documents, although there was Internet access to certain legal materials. She tried getting help from more experienced lawyers—at SouthCom, the Joint Chiefs, the D.I.A., the jag School—but to no avail.
In the end she worked on her own, completing the task just before the Columbus Day weekend. Her memo was entitled “Legal Review of Aggressive Interrogation Techniques.” The key fact was that none of the detainees were protected by Geneva, owing to Douglas Feith’s handiwork and the president’s decision in February. She also concluded that the torture convention and other international laws did not apply, conclusions that a person more fully schooled in the relevant law might well have questioned: “It was not my job to second-guess the president,” she told me. Beaver ignored customary international law altogether. All that was left was American law, which is what she turned to.
Given the circumstances in which she found herself, the memo has a certain desperate, heroic quality. She proceeded methodically through the 18 techniques, testing each against the standards set by U.S. law, including the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution (which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment”), the federal torture statute, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The common theme was that the techniques were fine “so long as the force used could plausibly have been thought necessary in a particular situation to achieve a legitimate government objective, and it was applied in a good faith effort and not maliciously or sadistically for the very purpose of causing harm.” That is to say, the techniques are legal if the motivation is pure. National security justifies anything.
Beaver did enter some important caveats. The interrogators had to be properly trained. Since the law required “examination of all facts under a totality of circumstances test,” all proposed interrogations involving Category II and III methods had to “undergo a legal, medical, behavioral science, and intelligence review prior to their commencement.” This suggested concerns about these new techniques, including whether they would be effective. But in the end she concluded, I “agree that the proposed strategies do not violate applicable federal law.” The word “agree” stands out—she seems to be confirming a policy decision that she knows has already been made.
Time and distance do not improve the quality of the advice. I thought it was awful when I first read it, and awful when I reread it. Nevertheless, I was now aware of the circumstances in which Beaver had been asked to provide her advice. Refusal would have caused difficulty. It was also reasonable to expect a more senior review of her draft. Beaver struck me as honest, loyal, and decent. Personally, she was prepared to take a hard line on many detainees. She once described them to me as “psychopaths. Skinny, runty, dangerous, lying psychopaths.” But there was a basic integrity to her approach. She could not have anticipated that there would be no other piece of written legal advice bearing on the Guantánamo interrogations. She could not have anticipated that she would be made the scapegoat.
Once, after returning to a job at the Pentagon, Beaver passed David Addington in a hallway—the first time she had seen him since his visit to Guantánamo. He recognized her immediately, smiled, and said, “Great minds think alike.”
The “voco”
On October 11, Dunlavey sent his request for approval of new techniques, together with Diane Beaver’s legal memo, to General Tom Hill, the commander of SouthCom. Two weeks later, on October 25, Hill forwarded everything to General Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in Washington. Hill’s cover letter contains a sentence—“Our respective staffs, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and Joint Task Force 170 have been trying to identify counter-resistant techniques that we can lawfully employ”—which again makes it clear that the list of techniques was no surprise to Rumsfeld’s office, whatever its later claims. Hill also expressed serious reservations. He wanted Pentagon lawyers to weigh in, and he explicitly requested that “Department of Justice lawyers review the third category of techniques.”
At the level of the Joint Chiefs the memo should have been subject to a detailed review, including close legal scrutiny by Myers’s own counsel, Jane Dalton, but that never happened. It seems that Jim Haynes short-circuited the approval process. Alberto Mora, the general counsel of the navy, says he remembers Dalton telling him, “Jim pulled this away. We never had a chance to complete the assessment.”
When we spoke, Myers confessed to being troubled that normal procedures had been circumvented. He held the Haynes Memo in his hands, looking carefully at the sheet of paper as if seeing it clearly for the first time. He pointed: “You don’t see my initials on this.” Normally he would have initialed a memo to indicate approval, but there was no confirmation that Myers had seen the memo or formally signed off on it before it went to Rumsfeld. “You just see I’ve ‘discussed’ it,” he said, noting a sentence to that effect in the memo itself. “This was not the way this should have come about.” Thinking back, he recalled the “intrigue” that was going on, intrigue “that I wasn’t aware of, and Jane wasn’t aware of, that was probably occurring between Jim Haynes, White House general counsel, and Justice.”
Further confirmation that the Haynes Memo got special handling comes from a former Pentagon official, who told me that Lieutenant General Bantz Craddock, Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant, noticed that it was missing a buck slip, an essential component that shows a document’s circulation path, and which everyone was supposed to initial. The Haynes Memo had no “legal chop,” or signature, from the general counsel’s office. It went back to Haynes, who later signed off with a note that said simply, “Good to go.”
Events moved fast as the process was cut short. On November 4, Dunlavey was replaced as commander at Guantánamo by Major General Geoffrey Miller. On November 12 a detailed interrogation plan was approved for al-Qahtani, based on the new interrogation techniques. The plan was sent to Rumsfeld for his personal approval, General Hill told me.
Ten days later an alternative plan, prepared by Mike Gelles and others at the N.C.I.S. and elsewhere, using traditional non-aggressive techniques, was rejected. By then the F.B.I. had communicated its concerns to Haynes’s office about developments at Guantánamo. On November 23, well before Rumsfeld gave formal written approval to the Haynes Memo, General Miller received a “voco“—a vocal command—authorizing an immediate start to the aggressive interrogation of al-Qahtani. No one I spoke with, including Beaver, Hill, and Myers, could recall who had initiated the voco, but an army investigation would state that it was likely Rumsfeld, and he would not have acted without Haynes’s endorsement.
Al-Qahtani’s interrogation log for Saturday, November 23, registers the immediate consequence of the decision to move ahead. “The detainee arrives at the interrogation booth His hood is removed and he is bolted to the floor.”
Reversal
Four days after the voco, Haynes formally signed off on his memo. He recommended, as a matter of policy, approval of 15 of the 18 techniques. Of the four techniques listed in Category III, however, Haynes proposed blanket approval of just one: mild non-injurious physical contact. He would later tell the Senate that he had “recommended against the proposed use of a wet towel”—that is, against waterboarding—but to the contrary, in his memo he stated that “all Category III techniques may be legally available.” Rumsfeld placed his name next to the word “Approved” and wrote the jocular comment that may well expose him to difficulties in the witness stand at some future time.
As the memo was being approved, the F.B.I. communicated serious concerns directly to Haynes’s office. Then, on December 17, Dave Brant, of the N.C.I.S., paid a surprise visit to Alberto Mora, the general counsel of the navy. Brant told him that N.C.I.S. agents had information that abusive actions at Guantánamo had been authorized at a “high level” in Washington. The following day Mora met again with Brant. Mike Gelles joined them and told Mora that the interrogators were under extraordinary pressure to achieve results. Gelles described the phenomenon of “force drift,” where interrogators using coercion come to believe that if some force is good, then more must be better. As recounted in his official “Memorandum for Inspector General, Department of the Navy,” Mora visited Steve Morello, the army’s general counsel, and Tom Taylor, his deputy, who showed him a copy of the Haynes Memo with its attachments. The memorandum describes them as demonstrating “great concern.” In the course of a long interview Mora recalled Morello “with a furtive air” saying, “Look at this. Don’t tell anyone where you got it.” Mora was horrified by what he read. “I was astounded that the secretary of defense would get within 100 miles of this issue,” he said. (Notwithstanding the report to the inspector general, Morello denies showing Mora a copy of the Haynes Memo.)
On December 20, Mora met with Haynes, who listened attentively and said he would consider Mora’s concerns. Mora went away on vacation, expecting everything to be sorted out. It wasn’t: Brant soon called to say the detainee mistreatment hadn’t stopped. On January 9, 2003, Mora met Haynes for a second time, expressing surprise that the techniques hadn’t been stopped. Haynes said little in response, and Mora felt he had made no headway. The following day, however, Haynes called to say that he had briefed Rumsfeld and that changes were in the offing. But over the next several days no news came.
On the morning of Wednesday, January 15, Mora awoke determined to act. He would put his concerns in writing in a draft memorandum for Haynes and Dalton. He made three simple points. One: the majority of the Category II and III techniques violated domestic and international law and constituted, at a minimum, cruel and unusual treatment and, at worst, torture. Two: the legal analysis by Diane Beaver had to be rejected. Three: he “strongly non-concurred” with these interrogation techniques. He delivered the draft memo to Haynes’s office. Two hours later, at about five p.m. on January 15, Haynes called Mora. “I’m pleased to tell you the secretary has rescinded the authorization,” he said.
The abusive interrogation of al-Qahtani lasted a total of 54 days. It ended not on January 12, as the press was told in June 2004, but three days later, on January 15. In those final three days, knowing that the anything-goes legal regime might disappear at any moment, the interrogators made one last desperate push to get something useful out of al-Qahtani. They never did. By the end of the interrogation al-Qahtani, according to an army investigator, had “black coals for eyes.”
The Great Migration
Mike Gelles, of the N.C.I.S., had shared with me his fear that the al-Qahtani techniques would not simply fade into history—that they would turn out to have been horribly contagious. This “migration” theory was controversial, because it potentially extended the responsibility of those who authorized the Guantánamo techniques to abusive practices elsewhere. John Yoo has described the migration theory as “an exercise in hyperbole and partisan smear.”
But is it? In August 2003, Major General Miller traveled from Guantánamo to Baghdad, accompanied by Diane Beaver. They visited Abu Ghraib and found shocking conditions of near lawlessness. Miller made recommendations to Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq. On September 14, General Sanchez authorized an array of new interrogation techniques. These were vetted by his staff judge advocate, who later told the Senate Armed Services Committee that operating procedures and policies “in use in Guantánamo Bay” had been taken into account. Despite the fact that Geneva applied in Iraq, General Sanchez authorized several techniques that were not sanctioned by the Field Manual—but were listed in the Haynes Memo. The abuses for which Abu Ghraib became infamous began one month later.
Three different official investigations in the space of three years have confirmed the migration theory. The August 2006 report of the Pentagon’s inspector general concluded unequivocally that techniques from Guantánamo had indeed found their way to Iraq. An investigation overseen by former secretary of defense James R. Schlesinger determined that “augmented techniques for Guantanamo migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq where they were neither limited nor safeguarded.”
Jim Haynes and Donald Rumsfeld may have reversed themselves about al-Qahtani in January 2003, but the death blow to the administration’s outlook did not occur for three more years. It came on June 29, 2006, with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, holding that Guantánamo detainees were entitled to the protections provided under Geneva’s Common Article 3. The Court invoked the legal precedents that had been sidestepped by Douglas Feith and John Yoo, and laid bare the blatant illegality of al-Qahtani’s interrogation. A colleague having lunch with Haynes that day described him as looking “shocked” when the news arrived, adding, “He just went pale.” Justice Anthony Kennedy, joining the majority, pointedly observed that “violations of Common Article 3 are considered ‘war crimes.’ ”
Jim Haynes appears to remain a die-hard supporter of aggressive interrogation. Shortly after the Supreme Court decision, when he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy reminded him that in 2003 Haynes had said there was “no way” that Geneva could apply to the Afghan conflict and the war on terror. “Do you now accept that you were mistaken in your legal and policy determinations?,” Leahy asked. Haynes would say only that he was bound by the Supreme Court’s decision.
As the consequences of Hamdan sank in, the instinct for self-preservation asserted itself. The lawyers got busy. Within four months President Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act. This created a new legal defense against lawsuits for misconduct arising from the “detention and interrogation of aliens” between September 11, 2001, and December 30, 2005. That covered the interrogation of al-Qahtani, and no doubt much else. Signing the bill on October 17, 2006, President Bush explained that it provided “legal protections that ensure our military and intelligence personnel will not have to fear lawsuits filed by terrorists simply for doing their jobs.”
In a word, the interrogators and their superiors were granted immunity from prosecution. Some of the lawyers who contributed to this legislation were immunizing themselves. The hitch, and it is a big one, is that the immunity is good only within the borders of the United States.
A Tap on the Shoulder
The table in the conference room held five stacks of files and papers, neatly arranged and yellow and crisp with age. Behind them sat an elderly gentleman named Ludwig Altstötter, rosy-cheeked and cherubic. Ludwig is the son of Josef Altstötter, the lead defendant in the 1947 case United States of America v. Josef Altstoetter et al., which was tried in Germany before a U.S. military tribunal. The case is famous because it appears to be the only one in which lawyers have ever been charged and convicted for committing international crimes through the performance of their legal functions. It served as the inspiration for the Oscar-winning 1961 movie Judgment at Nuremberg, whose themes are alluded to in Marcel Ophuls’s classic 1976 film on wartime atrocities, The Memory of Justice, which should be required viewing but has been lost to a broader audience. Nuremberg was, in fact, where Ludwig and I were meeting.
The Altstötter case had been prosecuted by the Allies to establish the principle that lawyers and judges in the Nazi regime bore a particular responsibility for the regime’s crimes. Sixteen lawyers appeared as defendants. The scale of the Nazi atrocities makes any factual comparison with Guantánamo absurd, a point made to me by Douglas Feith, and with which I agree. But I wasn’t interested in drawing a facile comparison between historical episodes. I wanted to know more about the underlying principle.
Josef Altstötter had the misfortune, because of his name, to be the first defendant listed among the 16. He was not the most important or the worst, although he was one of the 10 who were in fact convicted (4 were acquitted, one committed suicide, and there was one mistrial). He was a well-regarded member of society and a high-ranking lawyer. In 1943 he joined the Reich Ministry of Justice in Berlin, where he served as a Ministerialdirektor, the chief of the civil-law-and-procedure division. He became a member of the SS in 1937. The U.S. Military Tribunal found him guilty of membership in that criminal organization—with knowledge of its criminal acts—and sentenced him to five years in prison, which he served in full. He returned to legal practice in Nuremberg and died in 1979. Ludwig Altstötter had all the relevant documents, and he generously invited me to go over them with him in Nuremberg.
I took Ludwig to the most striking passage in the tribunal’s judgment. “He gave his name as a soldier and a jurist of note and so helped to cloak the shameful deeds of that organisation from the eyes of the German people.” The tribunal convicted Altstötter largely on the basis of two letters. Ludwig went to the piles on the table and pulled out fading copies of the originals. The first, dated May 3, 1944, was from the chief of the SS intelligence service to Ludwig’s father, asking him to intervene with the regional court of Vienna and stop it from ordering the transfer of Jews from the concentration camp at Theresienstadt back to Vienna to appear as witnesses in court hearings. The second letter was Altstötter’s response, a month later, to the president of the court in Vienna. “For security reasons,” he wrote, “these requests cannot be granted.” The U.S. Military Tribunal proceeded on the basis that Altstötter would have known what the concentration camps were for.
The words “security reasons” reminded me of remarks by Jim Haynes at the press conference with Gonzales: “Military necessity can sometimes allow … warfare to be conducted in ways that might infringe on the otherwise applicable articles of the Convention.” Haynes provided no legal authority for that proposition, and none exists. The minimum rights of detainees guaranteed by Geneva and the torture convention can never be overridden by claims of security or other military necessity. That is their whole purpose.
Mohammed al-Qahtani is among the first six detainees scheduled to go on trial for complicity in the 9/11 attacks; the Bush administration has announced that it will seek the death penalty. Last month, President Bush vetoed a bill that would have outlawed the use by the C.I.A. of the techniques set out in the Haynes Memo and used on al-Qahtani. Whatever he may have done, Mohammed al-Qahtani was entitled to the protections afforded by international law, including Geneva and the torture convention. His interrogation violated those conventions. There can be no doubt that he was treated cruelly and degraded, that the standards of Common Article 3 were violated, and that his treatment amounts to a war crime. If he suffered the degree of severe mental distress prohibited by the torture convention, then his treatment crosses the line into outright torture. These acts resulted from a policy decision made right at the top, not simply from ground-level requests in Guantánamo, and they were supported by legal advice from the president’s own circle.
Those responsible for the interrogation of Detainee 063 face a real risk of investigation if they set foot outside the United States. Article 4 of the torture convention criminalizes “complicity” or “participation” in torture, and the same principle governs violations of Common Article 3.
It would be wrong to consider the prospect of legal jeopardy unlikely. I remember sitting in the House of Lords during the landmark Pinochet case, back in 1999—in which a prosecutor was seeking the extradition to Spain of the former Chilean head of state for torture and other international crimes—and being told by one of his key advisers that they had never expected the torture convention to lead to the former president of Chile’s loss of legal immunity. In my efforts to get to the heart of this story, and its possible consequences, I visited a judge and a prosecutor in a major European city, and guided them through all the materials pertaining to the Guantánamo case. The judge and prosecutor were particularly struck by the immunity from prosecution provided by the Military Commissions Act. “That is very stupid,” said the prosecutor, explaining that it would make it much easier for investigators outside the United States to argue that possible war crimes would never be addressed by the justice system in the home country—one of the trip wires enabling foreign courts to intervene. For some of those involved in the Guantánamo decisions, prudence may well dictate a more cautious approach to international travel. And for some the future may hold a tap on the shoulder.
“It’s a matter of time,” the judge observed. “These things take time.” As I gathered my papers, he looked up and said, “And then something unexpected happens, when one of these lawyers travels to the wrong place.”
Philippe Sands is an international lawyer at the firm Matrix Chambers and a professor at University College London
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Sunday, April 6, 2008
Petraeus Testimony Next Week Will Signal Iran Attack
By Paul Craig Roberts
06/04/08 "ICH' -- - April 5, 2008. Today the London Telegraph reported that “British officials gave warning yesterday that America’s commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed Baghdad government. A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran’s intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian militiary facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment.”
The neocon lacky Petraeus has had his script written for him by Cheney, and Petraeus together with neocon warmonger Ryan Crocker, the US governor of the Green Zone in Baghdad, will present Congress next Tuesday and Wednesday with the lies, for which the road has been well paved by neocon propagandists such as Kimberly Kagan, that “the US must recognize that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq.”
Don’t expect Congress to do anything except to egg on the attack. On April 3 the International Herald Tribune reported that senators and representatives have made millions of dollars from their investments in defense companies totaling $196 million. Rep. Ike Skelton, the Democrat chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is already on board with the attack on Iran. The London Telegraph quotes Skelton: “Iran is the bull in the china shop. In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the Shi’ite groups, whether they be political or military.”
All Skelton knows is what the war criminal Bush regime tells him. If Iran really does have all these connections, then it behooves Washington to cease threatening Iran and to make nice with Iran in order to stabilize Iraq and extract the US from the nightmare.
Reporting from Tehran on April 4, Reuters quotes Mohsen Hakim, whose father, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, an ally of the Maliki US puppetgovernment in Iraq: “Tehran, by using its positive influence on the Iraqi nation, paved the way for the return of peace to Iraq and the new situation is the result of Iran’s efforts.”
Instead of thanking Iran and working with Iran diplomatically to restore stability to Iraq, the Bush regime intends to expand the nightmare with a military attack on Iran. Ryan Crocker was quick to dispute Hakim’s report that Iran had used its influence to end the fighting in Basra. Crocker alleged that Iran had started the fighting. The absurdity of Crocker’s claim is obvious as even the neocon US media reported that the fighting in Basra was started by the US and Maliki in an effort to clear out the Shi’ite al-Sadr militias. Most experts saw the attack on al-Sadr for what it was: an effort to remove a potential threat to the US supply line from Kuwait in the event of a US attack on Iran.
Crocker alleges that the rockets dropping on the Green Zone during the Basra fighting were made in 2007 in Iran. As should be obvious even to disengaged Americans, if Iran were to arm the Iraqi insurgency, the insurgents would have modern weapons to counter US helicopter gunships and heavy tanks. The insurgents have no such weapons. The neocon lie that Iran is the cause of the Iraqi insurgency is just another Bush regime lie like the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and connections to al Qaeda and the lie that the Taliban in Afghanistan attacked the US.
The Bush regime will tell any lie and orchestrate any event in order to “finish the job” in the Middle East.
“Finishing the job” means to destroy the ability of Iraq, Iran, and Syria to provide support for the Palestinians and for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon against Israeli aggression. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Syria might simply give up and become another American client state. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Israel can steal the rest of the West Bank along with the water resources in southern Lebanon. That is what “the war on terror” is really about.
The entire world knows this. Consequently, the US and Israel are essentially isolated. The US can only count on the support that it can bribe and pay for.
At the NATO-Russian summit in Bucharest, Romania, on April 4, Russian President Putin said: “No one can seriously think that Iran would dare attack the U.S. Instead of pushing Iran into a corner, it would be far more sensible to think together how to help Iran become more predictable and transparent.”
Of course it would, but that is not what the warmonger Bush regime wants.
Perhaps the British government has derailed the plot to attack Iran by leaking in advance to the London Telegraph the disinformation Cheney has prepared for Petraeus and Crocker to deliver to the complicit US Congress next Tuesday and Wednesday. On the other hand, the US puppet media is likely to bury the real story and to trumpet Petraeus claims that Iran has, in effect, already declared war on the US by sending weapons to kill US troops in Iraq.
By next Thursday we will know from how the Petraeus-Crocker dog and pony show plays in the US Congress and media whether the Bush Regime will commit yet another war crime by attacking Iran.
Paul Craig Roberts a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, is forthcoming from Random House in March, 2008.
06/04/08 "ICH' -- - April 5, 2008. Today the London Telegraph reported that “British officials gave warning yesterday that America’s commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed Baghdad government. A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran’s intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian militiary facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment.”
The neocon lacky Petraeus has had his script written for him by Cheney, and Petraeus together with neocon warmonger Ryan Crocker, the US governor of the Green Zone in Baghdad, will present Congress next Tuesday and Wednesday with the lies, for which the road has been well paved by neocon propagandists such as Kimberly Kagan, that “the US must recognize that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq.”
Don’t expect Congress to do anything except to egg on the attack. On April 3 the International Herald Tribune reported that senators and representatives have made millions of dollars from their investments in defense companies totaling $196 million. Rep. Ike Skelton, the Democrat chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is already on board with the attack on Iran. The London Telegraph quotes Skelton: “Iran is the bull in the china shop. In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the Shi’ite groups, whether they be political or military.”
All Skelton knows is what the war criminal Bush regime tells him. If Iran really does have all these connections, then it behooves Washington to cease threatening Iran and to make nice with Iran in order to stabilize Iraq and extract the US from the nightmare.
Reporting from Tehran on April 4, Reuters quotes Mohsen Hakim, whose father, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, an ally of the Maliki US puppetgovernment in Iraq: “Tehran, by using its positive influence on the Iraqi nation, paved the way for the return of peace to Iraq and the new situation is the result of Iran’s efforts.”
Instead of thanking Iran and working with Iran diplomatically to restore stability to Iraq, the Bush regime intends to expand the nightmare with a military attack on Iran. Ryan Crocker was quick to dispute Hakim’s report that Iran had used its influence to end the fighting in Basra. Crocker alleged that Iran had started the fighting. The absurdity of Crocker’s claim is obvious as even the neocon US media reported that the fighting in Basra was started by the US and Maliki in an effort to clear out the Shi’ite al-Sadr militias. Most experts saw the attack on al-Sadr for what it was: an effort to remove a potential threat to the US supply line from Kuwait in the event of a US attack on Iran.
Crocker alleges that the rockets dropping on the Green Zone during the Basra fighting were made in 2007 in Iran. As should be obvious even to disengaged Americans, if Iran were to arm the Iraqi insurgency, the insurgents would have modern weapons to counter US helicopter gunships and heavy tanks. The insurgents have no such weapons. The neocon lie that Iran is the cause of the Iraqi insurgency is just another Bush regime lie like the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and connections to al Qaeda and the lie that the Taliban in Afghanistan attacked the US.
The Bush regime will tell any lie and orchestrate any event in order to “finish the job” in the Middle East.
“Finishing the job” means to destroy the ability of Iraq, Iran, and Syria to provide support for the Palestinians and for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon against Israeli aggression. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Syria might simply give up and become another American client state. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Israel can steal the rest of the West Bank along with the water resources in southern Lebanon. That is what “the war on terror” is really about.
The entire world knows this. Consequently, the US and Israel are essentially isolated. The US can only count on the support that it can bribe and pay for.
At the NATO-Russian summit in Bucharest, Romania, on April 4, Russian President Putin said: “No one can seriously think that Iran would dare attack the U.S. Instead of pushing Iran into a corner, it would be far more sensible to think together how to help Iran become more predictable and transparent.”
Of course it would, but that is not what the warmonger Bush regime wants.
Perhaps the British government has derailed the plot to attack Iran by leaking in advance to the London Telegraph the disinformation Cheney has prepared for Petraeus and Crocker to deliver to the complicit US Congress next Tuesday and Wednesday. On the other hand, the US puppet media is likely to bury the real story and to trumpet Petraeus claims that Iran has, in effect, already declared war on the US by sending weapons to kill US troops in Iraq.
By next Thursday we will know from how the Petraeus-Crocker dog and pony show plays in the US Congress and media whether the Bush Regime will commit yet another war crime by attacking Iran.
Paul Craig Roberts a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, is forthcoming from Random House in March, 2008.
$3 Trillion May Be Too Low
Our original estimate of the cost of the Iraq war was too conservative: in reality the cost for the US will be much higher
by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes
President Bush has tried to give the impression that the $3 trillion dollar estimate of the total cost of the war that we provide in our new book may be exaggerated.
We believe that it is in fact conservative. Even the president would have to admit that the $50 to $60 billion estimate given by the administration before the war was wildly off the mark; there is little reason to have confidence in their arithmetic. They admit to a cost so far of $600 billion.
Our numbers differ from theirs for three reasons: first, we are estimating the total cost of the war, under alternative conservative scenarios, derived from the defence department and congressional budget office. We are not looking at McCain’s 100-year scenario - we assume that we are there, in diminished strength, only through to 2017. But neither are we looking at a scenario that sees our troops pulled out within six months. With operational spending going on at $12 billion a month, and with every year costing more than the last, it is easy to come to a total operational cost that is double the $600 billon already spent.
Second, we include war expenditures hidden elsewhere in the budget, and budgetary expenditures that we would have to incur in the future even if we left tomorrow. Most important of these are future costs of caring for the 40% of returning veterans that are likely to suffer from disabilities (in excess of $600 billion; second world war veterans’ costs didn’t peak until 1993), and restoring the military to its prewar strength. If you include interest, and interest on the interest - with all of the war debt financed - the budgetary costs quickly mount.
Finally, our $3 trillion dollars estimate also includes costs to the economy that go beyond the budget, for instance the cost of caring for the huge number of returning disabled veterans that go beyond the costs borne by the federal government - in one out of five families with a serious disability, someone has to give up a job. The macro-economic costs are even larger. Almost every expert we have talked to agrees that the war has had something to do with the rise in the price of oil; it was not just an accident that oil prices began to soar at the same time as the war began.
We have been criticised, but for being excessively conservative, for including only $5 to $10 of the $75 to $85 increase in the price of oil since then. Money spent on the war - on a Nepalese contractor working in Iraq - does not stimulate the economy as much as money spent on hospitals or research or schools at home. These contractionary effects were temporarily covered up, hidden, by the flood of liquidity and lax regulations that led to a housing bubble and a consumption boom - with household savings plummeting to zero. But this simply postponed paying these costs - and increased them.
With the exception of a few lonely surviving supply-siders, most economists believe that deficits matter, and the huge deficits to finance the war will have their toll in the long run. Deficits matter in both the short run and the long. They help crowd out private investment that would have stimulated the economy far more than the war expenditures; and the reduced investments reduce long-run productivity. With 40% of the funds borrowed from abroad, Americans will be sending interest payments abroad - lowering living standards at home. Finally, even Fed Chair Bernanke (formerly the president’s economic adviser) admits that the deficits have reduced the room to manoeuvre - the ability of the government to respond to the looming economic crisis.
Spending so much on the war has economic consequences, even if you don’t think there is any connection between the war and the economy’s current woes.
In adding up the quantifiable costs of the war, it is hard not to come up with a number in excess of $3 trillion. In putting a $3 trillion price tag on the war, we believe we have been excessively conservative - a $4 or $5 trillion tag would be more reasonable. And remember - this is just the cost for America.
Joseph E. Stiglitz is university professor at Columbia University and was the recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics. Linda Bilmes teaches at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. They are the co-authors of the recently published book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes
President Bush has tried to give the impression that the $3 trillion dollar estimate of the total cost of the war that we provide in our new book may be exaggerated.
We believe that it is in fact conservative. Even the president would have to admit that the $50 to $60 billion estimate given by the administration before the war was wildly off the mark; there is little reason to have confidence in their arithmetic. They admit to a cost so far of $600 billion.
Our numbers differ from theirs for three reasons: first, we are estimating the total cost of the war, under alternative conservative scenarios, derived from the defence department and congressional budget office. We are not looking at McCain’s 100-year scenario - we assume that we are there, in diminished strength, only through to 2017. But neither are we looking at a scenario that sees our troops pulled out within six months. With operational spending going on at $12 billion a month, and with every year costing more than the last, it is easy to come to a total operational cost that is double the $600 billon already spent.
Second, we include war expenditures hidden elsewhere in the budget, and budgetary expenditures that we would have to incur in the future even if we left tomorrow. Most important of these are future costs of caring for the 40% of returning veterans that are likely to suffer from disabilities (in excess of $600 billion; second world war veterans’ costs didn’t peak until 1993), and restoring the military to its prewar strength. If you include interest, and interest on the interest - with all of the war debt financed - the budgetary costs quickly mount.
Finally, our $3 trillion dollars estimate also includes costs to the economy that go beyond the budget, for instance the cost of caring for the huge number of returning disabled veterans that go beyond the costs borne by the federal government - in one out of five families with a serious disability, someone has to give up a job. The macro-economic costs are even larger. Almost every expert we have talked to agrees that the war has had something to do with the rise in the price of oil; it was not just an accident that oil prices began to soar at the same time as the war began.
We have been criticised, but for being excessively conservative, for including only $5 to $10 of the $75 to $85 increase in the price of oil since then. Money spent on the war - on a Nepalese contractor working in Iraq - does not stimulate the economy as much as money spent on hospitals or research or schools at home. These contractionary effects were temporarily covered up, hidden, by the flood of liquidity and lax regulations that led to a housing bubble and a consumption boom - with household savings plummeting to zero. But this simply postponed paying these costs - and increased them.
With the exception of a few lonely surviving supply-siders, most economists believe that deficits matter, and the huge deficits to finance the war will have their toll in the long run. Deficits matter in both the short run and the long. They help crowd out private investment that would have stimulated the economy far more than the war expenditures; and the reduced investments reduce long-run productivity. With 40% of the funds borrowed from abroad, Americans will be sending interest payments abroad - lowering living standards at home. Finally, even Fed Chair Bernanke (formerly the president’s economic adviser) admits that the deficits have reduced the room to manoeuvre - the ability of the government to respond to the looming economic crisis.
Spending so much on the war has economic consequences, even if you don’t think there is any connection between the war and the economy’s current woes.
In adding up the quantifiable costs of the war, it is hard not to come up with a number in excess of $3 trillion. In putting a $3 trillion price tag on the war, we believe we have been excessively conservative - a $4 or $5 trillion tag would be more reasonable. And remember - this is just the cost for America.
Joseph E. Stiglitz is university professor at Columbia University and was the recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics. Linda Bilmes teaches at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. They are the co-authors of the recently published book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
Listen to the General (No Not Petraeus!)
by Dave Lindorff
In a couple days, Americans will be deluged with effusive, praise-filled stories in what passes for news organizations, print and electronic, in the US, quoting Gen. David Petraeus on the glories of his and President Bush’s brilliant so-called “surge” strategy in Iraq.
There will be little critical comment on his report, which will claim that the surge is working but that Iraqi’s “need to do more” to take advantage of the surge in stability to create a stable government in Baghdad.
He will claim, and the media will help him here, that the collapse of President Nouri al-Maliki’s “defining moment” attack on the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr in Basra, with 1000 of his crack troops and two leading officers defecting to the other side, and Maliki himself having to be rescued by American troops, was a minor event. He will claim that the rise in violence in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq back to pre-surge levels is of no significance-a statistical aberration.
And President Bush will ask for another $102 billion from Congress to continue funding his catastrophic war in Iraq.
Just to keep our sanity and clarity, it would be good to listen to another general, Lt. General (ret.) William E. Odom, who on April 2 testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Gen. Odom told the committee that the last time he had testified about Iraq was in January of 2007. He had been asked about the “surge”. He said, “Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success. I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.”
Gen. Odom said, “Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant in several other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province. More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.
Odom went on to say, “No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.”
As for the Bush claim that Sunni Muslims in western Iraq and Fallujah were now siding with the US (the government never mentions that they are being handsomely paid to do so), Odom said,
“Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime.”
Then Odom let fly a real bomb. “As an aside,” he told the committee, in a statement that you won’t read in your daily paper or hear on the TV news, “it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran.”
Odom said America was buying Sunni backing in just one region for $250,000 a day, and he warned, “we don’t own these people, we rent them.”
Saying the Bush administration’s argument that it could build a stable democratic government by working with local strongmen in Iraq, he challenged the senators to “Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. ”
The general’s conclusion: “We face a deteriorating political situation with an over extended army. When the administration’s witnesses appear before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and marines can sustain this band-aid strategy.”
Odom instead called for immediate withdrawal, “rapidly but in good order.” He said, “Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq.”
He said if Bush and Cheney would simply stop threatening “regime change” by force as a policy, and in specific if it stopped threatening Iran, it would lead Iran to reduce its support of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and to change its policy toward Iraq, too. The US “needs to make Iran feel more secure,” he said.
Odom took the occasion to debunk arguments against early and rapid withdrawal. To those who say the US needs to continue to train Iraqi forces, he said, “Training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.
To those who warn of chaos following a US withdrawal, he recalled the warnings of a “domino” effect if the US left Vietnam, he said, “the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not.” He added, “The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume.”
Finally he said those opposed to withdrawal warn it would create regional instability, but countered, ” This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and our threat to change Iran’s regime are making the region unstable. Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly backwards.
Odom concluded, “I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.”
Congress, and the two candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, both of whom are hedging their way towards a continued military presence for years in Iraq, should listen to this general, and not the one whom the recently resigned Central Commander, Admiral William Fallon, called an “ass-licking little chickenshit,” Gen. Petraeus.
Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback. His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
In a couple days, Americans will be deluged with effusive, praise-filled stories in what passes for news organizations, print and electronic, in the US, quoting Gen. David Petraeus on the glories of his and President Bush’s brilliant so-called “surge” strategy in Iraq.
There will be little critical comment on his report, which will claim that the surge is working but that Iraqi’s “need to do more” to take advantage of the surge in stability to create a stable government in Baghdad.
He will claim, and the media will help him here, that the collapse of President Nouri al-Maliki’s “defining moment” attack on the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr in Basra, with 1000 of his crack troops and two leading officers defecting to the other side, and Maliki himself having to be rescued by American troops, was a minor event. He will claim that the rise in violence in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq back to pre-surge levels is of no significance-a statistical aberration.
And President Bush will ask for another $102 billion from Congress to continue funding his catastrophic war in Iraq.
Just to keep our sanity and clarity, it would be good to listen to another general, Lt. General (ret.) William E. Odom, who on April 2 testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Gen. Odom told the committee that the last time he had testified about Iraq was in January of 2007. He had been asked about the “surge”. He said, “Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success. I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.”
Gen. Odom said, “Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant in several other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province. More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.
Odom went on to say, “No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.”
As for the Bush claim that Sunni Muslims in western Iraq and Fallujah were now siding with the US (the government never mentions that they are being handsomely paid to do so), Odom said,
“Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime.”
Then Odom let fly a real bomb. “As an aside,” he told the committee, in a statement that you won’t read in your daily paper or hear on the TV news, “it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran.”
Odom said America was buying Sunni backing in just one region for $250,000 a day, and he warned, “we don’t own these people, we rent them.”
Saying the Bush administration’s argument that it could build a stable democratic government by working with local strongmen in Iraq, he challenged the senators to “Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. ”
The general’s conclusion: “We face a deteriorating political situation with an over extended army. When the administration’s witnesses appear before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and marines can sustain this band-aid strategy.”
Odom instead called for immediate withdrawal, “rapidly but in good order.” He said, “Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq.”
He said if Bush and Cheney would simply stop threatening “regime change” by force as a policy, and in specific if it stopped threatening Iran, it would lead Iran to reduce its support of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and to change its policy toward Iraq, too. The US “needs to make Iran feel more secure,” he said.
Odom took the occasion to debunk arguments against early and rapid withdrawal. To those who say the US needs to continue to train Iraqi forces, he said, “Training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.
To those who warn of chaos following a US withdrawal, he recalled the warnings of a “domino” effect if the US left Vietnam, he said, “the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not.” He added, “The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume.”
Finally he said those opposed to withdrawal warn it would create regional instability, but countered, ” This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and our threat to change Iran’s regime are making the region unstable. Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly backwards.
Odom concluded, “I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.”
Congress, and the two candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, both of whom are hedging their way towards a continued military presence for years in Iraq, should listen to this general, and not the one whom the recently resigned Central Commander, Admiral William Fallon, called an “ass-licking little chickenshit,” Gen. Petraeus.
Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback. His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Sadr calls mass anti-US protest in Baghdad
April 4, 2008
NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) — Moqtada al-Sadr Friday called a mass rally for April 9 in Baghdad against US forces in Iraq, as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered his troops to halt raids on the Shiite cleric's militiamen.
The venue for the protest had earlier been set as the central shrine city of Najaf but a Sadr spokesman said it would be more effective in the Iraqi capital and allow more people to take part.
April 9 marks the fifth anniversary of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime following the US-led invasion of March 20, 2003.
"The Sadr movement has decided to change the venue of the huge demonstration that had been announced for Najaf on April 9," said Salah al-Obeidi, spokesman for Sadr's office in Najaf.
"A protest in Baghdad will be more effective because it is in the capital, and secondly, a protest there will allow people of other sects to participate," Obeidi told AFP.
"This demonstration is not limited to the Sadr movement. We want all Iraqis to take part. The target of the protest is the (US) occupation," he added.
The announcement came after crowds of people spilled on to the streets of Shiite areas of east Baghdad following the main weekly Muslim prayers to denounce Maliki and demand that US troops quit their areas.
"No! No! to occupation. Yes! Yes! to Islam," chanted the crowd in Sadr City, the cleric's main Baghdad bastion, many of them carrying posters showing a caricature of the premier bearing the words "Maliki is a puppet of Hakim."
Sadr's supporters accuse Maliki of siding with rival Shiite politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim in the battle for control of Basra -- Iraq's main oil hub -- ahead of provincial elections in October.
Maliki meanwhile tried to calm tensions by ordering his troops to stop random raids across the country.
He said in a statement he was allowing time to those wanting to surrender their weapons after fierce clashes between his security forces and Shiite militiamen last week which killed at least 700 people, according to the United Nations.
"To give a chance to those who wish to lay down their arms, all raids and search operations will be stopped in all areas," Maliki said.
The prime minister had earlier given residents of the second city of Basra an April 8 deadline to hand over heavy and medium weapons in return for cash in a bid to cut the supply of weapons to militiamen.
Reiterating a similar order issued earlier this week, Maliki, however, ordered his forces to "chase those who have returned to arms."
His statement came as aides of Sadr accused the security forces of continuing to arrest members of the Mahdi Army, the radical Shiite cleric's militia, in Basra and other Shiite areas of Iraq.
Protestors in Sadr City Friday also demanded the withdrawal of US forces from the sprawling shanty town of some two million people, which is still under curfew.
Residents charged that American troops had launched random raids and had deployed snipers on rooftops who were shooting at residents.
US commanders acknowledged operations were under way in Sadr City but said these were linked to creating conditions for the distribution of humanitarian relief and denied emphatically that civilians were being targeted.
"We protect the Iraqi people and aggressively pursue armed criminals, Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Iranian-supported Special Groups who are committing violent acts or are planning to," a military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Steven Stover, told AFP.
"We have been in operating in the southern portion of Sadr City around the main thoroughfare in order to protect the Iraqi people," he added.
US commanders use the expression Special Groups to refer to what they say are renegade units of Sadr's Mahdi Army who failed to heed his order to stand down last August.
In his latest order, Maliki told the security forces to "guarantee the safety of those who have surrendered their arms from the perpetrators of violence."
He also urged troops to help families displaced during the violence and promised compensation.
Meanwhile, a US air strike in Basra killed three people -- a man and two children, AFP pictures showed.
British military spokesman Tom Holloway confirmed the strike but not the casualties.
He said the strike was carried out to support Iraqi forces who were fighting militants in the city's Al-Haiyaniyah neighbourhood.
NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) — Moqtada al-Sadr Friday called a mass rally for April 9 in Baghdad against US forces in Iraq, as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered his troops to halt raids on the Shiite cleric's militiamen.
The venue for the protest had earlier been set as the central shrine city of Najaf but a Sadr spokesman said it would be more effective in the Iraqi capital and allow more people to take part.
April 9 marks the fifth anniversary of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime following the US-led invasion of March 20, 2003.
"The Sadr movement has decided to change the venue of the huge demonstration that had been announced for Najaf on April 9," said Salah al-Obeidi, spokesman for Sadr's office in Najaf.
"A protest in Baghdad will be more effective because it is in the capital, and secondly, a protest there will allow people of other sects to participate," Obeidi told AFP.
"This demonstration is not limited to the Sadr movement. We want all Iraqis to take part. The target of the protest is the (US) occupation," he added.
The announcement came after crowds of people spilled on to the streets of Shiite areas of east Baghdad following the main weekly Muslim prayers to denounce Maliki and demand that US troops quit their areas.
"No! No! to occupation. Yes! Yes! to Islam," chanted the crowd in Sadr City, the cleric's main Baghdad bastion, many of them carrying posters showing a caricature of the premier bearing the words "Maliki is a puppet of Hakim."
Sadr's supporters accuse Maliki of siding with rival Shiite politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim in the battle for control of Basra -- Iraq's main oil hub -- ahead of provincial elections in October.
Maliki meanwhile tried to calm tensions by ordering his troops to stop random raids across the country.
He said in a statement he was allowing time to those wanting to surrender their weapons after fierce clashes between his security forces and Shiite militiamen last week which killed at least 700 people, according to the United Nations.
"To give a chance to those who wish to lay down their arms, all raids and search operations will be stopped in all areas," Maliki said.
The prime minister had earlier given residents of the second city of Basra an April 8 deadline to hand over heavy and medium weapons in return for cash in a bid to cut the supply of weapons to militiamen.
Reiterating a similar order issued earlier this week, Maliki, however, ordered his forces to "chase those who have returned to arms."
His statement came as aides of Sadr accused the security forces of continuing to arrest members of the Mahdi Army, the radical Shiite cleric's militia, in Basra and other Shiite areas of Iraq.
Protestors in Sadr City Friday also demanded the withdrawal of US forces from the sprawling shanty town of some two million people, which is still under curfew.
Residents charged that American troops had launched random raids and had deployed snipers on rooftops who were shooting at residents.
US commanders acknowledged operations were under way in Sadr City but said these were linked to creating conditions for the distribution of humanitarian relief and denied emphatically that civilians were being targeted.
"We protect the Iraqi people and aggressively pursue armed criminals, Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Iranian-supported Special Groups who are committing violent acts or are planning to," a military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Steven Stover, told AFP.
"We have been in operating in the southern portion of Sadr City around the main thoroughfare in order to protect the Iraqi people," he added.
US commanders use the expression Special Groups to refer to what they say are renegade units of Sadr's Mahdi Army who failed to heed his order to stand down last August.
In his latest order, Maliki told the security forces to "guarantee the safety of those who have surrendered their arms from the perpetrators of violence."
He also urged troops to help families displaced during the violence and promised compensation.
Meanwhile, a US air strike in Basra killed three people -- a man and two children, AFP pictures showed.
British military spokesman Tom Holloway confirmed the strike but not the casualties.
He said the strike was carried out to support Iraqi forces who were fighting militants in the city's Al-Haiyaniyah neighbourhood.
Iraqi official: Blackwater staying on 'is bad news'
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. State Department's renewal of Blackwater's contract to provide security in Iraq "is bad news," an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said.
Blackwater guards shot and killed 17 people, including women and children, last September, prompting an outcry and protest from Iraqi officials.
"This is bad news," al-Maliki adviser Sami al-Askari said. "I personally am not happy with this, especially because they have committed acts of aggression, killed Iraqis, and this has not been resolved yet positively for families of victims."
About 25,000 private contractors from three companies protect diplomats, reconstruction workers and government officials in Iraq. Under a provision put into place in the early days of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, security contractors have immunity from Iraqi law.
Al-Askari said he would push for the Iraqi government to contest the contract renewal.
"The U.S. government has the right to choose what contractors it chooses, but Iraq should also have the right to allow or ban certain contractors from operating on its territory," he said. VideoWatch Blackwater contractors conduct simulated raid »
Al-Askari said there is a general mood of displeasure within the Iraqi government because of the contract renewal.
Another al-Maliki adviser, Sadeq al-Rikabi, said the contract would be temporary since the U.N. mandate under which the United States operates in Iraq will expire at the end of the year, to be replaced by a bilateral agreement under negotiation.
"No doubt, the role of the U.S. military and contractors will be agreed on" in the new arrangement, al-Rikabi said.
Blackwater is one of three contractors working under a "task order" to provide security services in Iraq. The other two are Triple Canopy and DynCorp.
The State Department contract must be renewed every year and is up for renewal next month. In effect, Blackwater's contract will roll over for another year, said Greg Starr, who heads the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service.
Starr said new rules and an agreement between the State Department and U.S. military have improved coordination and the supervision of contractors.
Blackwater must work under the rules of the Iraqi government, he said.
The FBI is in charge of the U.S. investigation of the September incident, in which survivors and victims' family members contend Blackwater guards started shooting without provocation.
Blackwater says its employees were returning fire after coming under attack from armed insurgents, but an Iraqi investigation called the killings "premeditated murder."
Starr said the U.S. government, in particular U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, will take a close look at the FBI's investigation report, "and then we decide whether it is consistent with U.S. goals and policies to continue the contract."
It will be important to see whether the FBI finds Blackwater itself criminally responsible, or merely a few of its employees, Starr said.
"We can terminate contracts for the convenience of the government if we have to," he said. "I am not going to prejudge what the FBI is going find in its investigation. It's complex. I think the U.S. government needs protective services."
Starr said only three additional "escalation of forces" incidents have happened since the new rules of engagement were set up.
"I am up to this point very satisfied with the changes we have seen," he said. "Essentially, I think they do a very good job. The September 16 incident was a tragedy; it needs to be investigated carefully. The results of that will come out eventually and we will decide how we will proceed."
Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell declined to comment, referring all questions to the State Department.
Blackwater guards shot and killed 17 people, including women and children, last September, prompting an outcry and protest from Iraqi officials.
"This is bad news," al-Maliki adviser Sami al-Askari said. "I personally am not happy with this, especially because they have committed acts of aggression, killed Iraqis, and this has not been resolved yet positively for families of victims."
About 25,000 private contractors from three companies protect diplomats, reconstruction workers and government officials in Iraq. Under a provision put into place in the early days of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, security contractors have immunity from Iraqi law.
Al-Askari said he would push for the Iraqi government to contest the contract renewal.
"The U.S. government has the right to choose what contractors it chooses, but Iraq should also have the right to allow or ban certain contractors from operating on its territory," he said. VideoWatch Blackwater contractors conduct simulated raid »
Al-Askari said there is a general mood of displeasure within the Iraqi government because of the contract renewal.
Another al-Maliki adviser, Sadeq al-Rikabi, said the contract would be temporary since the U.N. mandate under which the United States operates in Iraq will expire at the end of the year, to be replaced by a bilateral agreement under negotiation.
"No doubt, the role of the U.S. military and contractors will be agreed on" in the new arrangement, al-Rikabi said.
Blackwater is one of three contractors working under a "task order" to provide security services in Iraq. The other two are Triple Canopy and DynCorp.
The State Department contract must be renewed every year and is up for renewal next month. In effect, Blackwater's contract will roll over for another year, said Greg Starr, who heads the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service.
Starr said new rules and an agreement between the State Department and U.S. military have improved coordination and the supervision of contractors.
Blackwater must work under the rules of the Iraqi government, he said.
The FBI is in charge of the U.S. investigation of the September incident, in which survivors and victims' family members contend Blackwater guards started shooting without provocation.
Blackwater says its employees were returning fire after coming under attack from armed insurgents, but an Iraqi investigation called the killings "premeditated murder."
Starr said the U.S. government, in particular U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, will take a close look at the FBI's investigation report, "and then we decide whether it is consistent with U.S. goals and policies to continue the contract."
It will be important to see whether the FBI finds Blackwater itself criminally responsible, or merely a few of its employees, Starr said.
"We can terminate contracts for the convenience of the government if we have to," he said. "I am not going to prejudge what the FBI is going find in its investigation. It's complex. I think the U.S. government needs protective services."
Starr said only three additional "escalation of forces" incidents have happened since the new rules of engagement were set up.
"I am up to this point very satisfied with the changes we have seen," he said. "Essentially, I think they do a very good job. The September 16 incident was a tragedy; it needs to be investigated carefully. The results of that will come out eventually and we will decide how we will proceed."
Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell declined to comment, referring all questions to the State Department.
General William Odom Tells Senate
Rapid Withdrawal Is Only Solution
TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON IRAQ
By William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret.
2 April 2008
Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It is an honor to appear before you again. The last occasion was in January 2007, when the topic was the troop surge. Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success.
I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.
Last year, General Petraeus wisely declined to promise a military solution to this political problem, saying that he could lower the level of violence, allowing a limited time for the Iraqi leaders to strike a political deal. Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant inseveral other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province.
More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.
No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.
Also disturbing is Turkey’s military incursion to destroy Kurdish PKK groups in the border region. That confronted the US government with a choice: either to support its NATO ally, or to make good on its commitment to Kurdish leaders to insure their security. It chose the former, and that makes it clear to the Kurds that the United States will sacrifice their security to its larger interests in Turkey.
Turning to the apparent success in Anbar province and a few other Sunni areas, this is not the positive situation it is purported to be. Certainly violence has declined as local Sunni shieks have begun to cooperate with US forces. But the surge tactic cannot be given full credit. The decline started earlier on Sunni initiative. What are their motives? First, anger at al Qaeda operatives and second, their financial plight.
Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime. As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran.
Let me emphasize that our new Sunni friends insist on being paid for their loyalty. I have heard, for example, a rough estimate that the cost in one area of about 100 square kilometers is $250,000 per day. And periodically they threaten to defect unless their fees are increased. You might want to find out the total costs for these deals forecasted for the next several years, because they are not small and they do not promise to end. Remember, we do not own these people. We merely rent them. And they can break the lease at any moment. At the same time, this deal protects them to some degree from the government’s troops and police, hardly a sign of political reconciliation.
Now let us consider the implications of the proliferating deals with the Sunni strongmen. They are far from unified among themselves. Some remain with al Qaeda. Many who break and join our forces are beholden to no one. Thus the decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local strong men who distrust the government and occasionally fight among themselves. Thus the basic military situation is far worse because of the proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.
This can hardly be called greater military stability, much less progress toward political consolidation, and to call it fragility that needs more time to become success is to ignore its implications. At the same time, Prime Minister Maliki’s military actions in Basra and Baghdad, indicate even wider political and military fragmentation. We are witnessing is more accurately described as the road to the Balkanization of Iraq, that is, political fragmentation. We are being asked by the president to believe that this shift of so much power and finance to so many local chieftains is the road to political centralization. He describes the process as building the state from the bottom up.
I challenge you to press the administration’s witnesses this week to explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of
feudal Europe’s transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War. It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on what is now the English-Scottish border. And it is the source of violence in Bosnia and Kosovo.
How can our leaders celebrate this diffusion of power as effective state building? More accurately described, it has placed the United States astride several civil wars. And it allows all sides to consolidate, rearm, and refill their financial coffers at the US expense.
To sum up, we face a deteriorating political situation with an over extended army. When the administration’s witnesses appear before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and marines can sustain this band-aid strategy.
The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq. And progress toward that goal requires revising our policy toward Iran. If the president merely renounced his threat of regime change by force, that could prompt Iran to lessen its support to Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Iran detests the Taliban and supports them only because they will kill more Americans in Afghanistan as retaliation in event of a US attack on Iran. Iran’s policy toward Iraq would also have to change radically as we withdraw. It cannot want instability there. Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, and they know that Persians look down on them. Cooperation between them has its limits.
No quick reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely, but US steps to make Iran feel more secure make it far more conceivable than a policy calculated to increase its insecurity. The president’s policy has reinforced Iran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons, the very thing he purports to be trying to prevent.
Withdrawal from Iraq does not mean withdrawal from the region. It must include a realignment and reassertion of US forces and diplomacy that give us a better chance to achieve our aim.
A number of reasons are given for not withdrawing soon and completely. I have refuted them repeatedly before but they have more lives than a cat. Let try again me explain why they don’t make
sense.
First, it is insisted that we must leave behind military training element with no combat forces to secure them. This makes no sense at all. The idea that US military trainers left alone in Iraq can be safe and effective is flatly rejected by several NCOs and junior officers I have heard describe their personal experiences. Moreover, training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.
Second, it is insisted that chaos will follow our withdrawal. We heard that argument as the “domino theory” in Vietnam. Even so, the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not. The idea that the United States has a moral responsibility to prevent this ignores that reality. We are certainly to blame for it, but we do not have the physical means to prevent it. American leaders who insist that it is in our power to do so are misleading both the public and themselves if they believe it. The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume.
Third, nay sayers insist that our withdrawal will create regional instability. This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and our threat to change Iran’s regime are making the region unstable. Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly backwards. Our ostrich strategy of keeping our heads buried in the sands of Iraq has done nothing but advance our enemies’ interest.
I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.
Thanks for this opportunity to testify today.
TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON IRAQ
By William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret.
2 April 2008
Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It is an honor to appear before you again. The last occasion was in January 2007, when the topic was the troop surge. Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success.
I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.
Last year, General Petraeus wisely declined to promise a military solution to this political problem, saying that he could lower the level of violence, allowing a limited time for the Iraqi leaders to strike a political deal. Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant inseveral other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province.
More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.
No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.
Also disturbing is Turkey’s military incursion to destroy Kurdish PKK groups in the border region. That confronted the US government with a choice: either to support its NATO ally, or to make good on its commitment to Kurdish leaders to insure their security. It chose the former, and that makes it clear to the Kurds that the United States will sacrifice their security to its larger interests in Turkey.
Turning to the apparent success in Anbar province and a few other Sunni areas, this is not the positive situation it is purported to be. Certainly violence has declined as local Sunni shieks have begun to cooperate with US forces. But the surge tactic cannot be given full credit. The decline started earlier on Sunni initiative. What are their motives? First, anger at al Qaeda operatives and second, their financial plight.
Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime. As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran.
Let me emphasize that our new Sunni friends insist on being paid for their loyalty. I have heard, for example, a rough estimate that the cost in one area of about 100 square kilometers is $250,000 per day. And periodically they threaten to defect unless their fees are increased. You might want to find out the total costs for these deals forecasted for the next several years, because they are not small and they do not promise to end. Remember, we do not own these people. We merely rent them. And they can break the lease at any moment. At the same time, this deal protects them to some degree from the government’s troops and police, hardly a sign of political reconciliation.
Now let us consider the implications of the proliferating deals with the Sunni strongmen. They are far from unified among themselves. Some remain with al Qaeda. Many who break and join our forces are beholden to no one. Thus the decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local strong men who distrust the government and occasionally fight among themselves. Thus the basic military situation is far worse because of the proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.
This can hardly be called greater military stability, much less progress toward political consolidation, and to call it fragility that needs more time to become success is to ignore its implications. At the same time, Prime Minister Maliki’s military actions in Basra and Baghdad, indicate even wider political and military fragmentation. We are witnessing is more accurately described as the road to the Balkanization of Iraq, that is, political fragmentation. We are being asked by the president to believe that this shift of so much power and finance to so many local chieftains is the road to political centralization. He describes the process as building the state from the bottom up.
I challenge you to press the administration’s witnesses this week to explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of
feudal Europe’s transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War. It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on what is now the English-Scottish border. And it is the source of violence in Bosnia and Kosovo.
How can our leaders celebrate this diffusion of power as effective state building? More accurately described, it has placed the United States astride several civil wars. And it allows all sides to consolidate, rearm, and refill their financial coffers at the US expense.
To sum up, we face a deteriorating political situation with an over extended army. When the administration’s witnesses appear before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and marines can sustain this band-aid strategy.
The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq. And progress toward that goal requires revising our policy toward Iran. If the president merely renounced his threat of regime change by force, that could prompt Iran to lessen its support to Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Iran detests the Taliban and supports them only because they will kill more Americans in Afghanistan as retaliation in event of a US attack on Iran. Iran’s policy toward Iraq would also have to change radically as we withdraw. It cannot want instability there. Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, and they know that Persians look down on them. Cooperation between them has its limits.
No quick reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely, but US steps to make Iran feel more secure make it far more conceivable than a policy calculated to increase its insecurity. The president’s policy has reinforced Iran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons, the very thing he purports to be trying to prevent.
Withdrawal from Iraq does not mean withdrawal from the region. It must include a realignment and reassertion of US forces and diplomacy that give us a better chance to achieve our aim.
A number of reasons are given for not withdrawing soon and completely. I have refuted them repeatedly before but they have more lives than a cat. Let try again me explain why they don’t make
sense.
First, it is insisted that we must leave behind military training element with no combat forces to secure them. This makes no sense at all. The idea that US military trainers left alone in Iraq can be safe and effective is flatly rejected by several NCOs and junior officers I have heard describe their personal experiences. Moreover, training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.
Second, it is insisted that chaos will follow our withdrawal. We heard that argument as the “domino theory” in Vietnam. Even so, the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not. The idea that the United States has a moral responsibility to prevent this ignores that reality. We are certainly to blame for it, but we do not have the physical means to prevent it. American leaders who insist that it is in our power to do so are misleading both the public and themselves if they believe it. The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume.
Third, nay sayers insist that our withdrawal will create regional instability. This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and our threat to change Iran’s regime are making the region unstable. Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly backwards. Our ostrich strategy of keeping our heads buried in the sands of Iraq has done nothing but advance our enemies’ interest.
I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.
Thanks for this opportunity to testify today.
Friday, April 4, 2008
My Opinion
I copy and paste most of my posts from other places I visit often. Today I offer my own opinion based on facts.
The invasion of Iraq was based upon false pretenses (lies).
We remain in Iraq (occupying Iraq) under false pretenses (lies).
The plan of the current administration is to reinforce the permanent military bases we have constructed. Unless we change direction, our government is committing US to occupy Iraq indefinitely.
Bush lied and lies about our occupation of Iraq.
Cheney lied and lies about our occupation of Iraq.
Cheney/Bush minions lied and lie about our occupation of Iraq.
My mission in life is to dissuade young people from participating in our military until we leave Iraq.
Semper Fidelis. Smedley Butler was right: War is a racket.
The invasion of Iraq was based upon false pretenses (lies).
We remain in Iraq (occupying Iraq) under false pretenses (lies).
The plan of the current administration is to reinforce the permanent military bases we have constructed. Unless we change direction, our government is committing US to occupy Iraq indefinitely.
Bush lied and lies about our occupation of Iraq.
Cheney lied and lies about our occupation of Iraq.
Cheney/Bush minions lied and lie about our occupation of Iraq.
My mission in life is to dissuade young people from participating in our military until we leave Iraq.
Semper Fidelis. Smedley Butler was right: War is a racket.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
American Grand Delusions
Why the Testimony of General Petraeus Will Be Delusional
By Tom Engelhardt
Yes, their defensive zone is the planet and they patrol it regularly. As ever, their planes and drones have been in the skies these last weeks. They struck a village in Somalia, tribal areas in Pakistan, rural areas in Afghanistan, and urban neighborhoods in Iraq. Their troops are training and advising the Iraqi army and police as well as the new Afghan army, while their Special Operations forces are planning to train Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps in that country's wild, mountainous borderlands.
Their Vice President arrived in Baghdad not long before the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched its recent (failed) offensive against cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia in the southern oil city of Basra. To "discuss" their needs in their President's eternal War on Terror, two of their top diplomats, a deputy secretary of state and an assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, arrived in Pakistan -- to the helpless outrage of the local press -- on the very day newly elected Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani was being given the oath of office. ("I don't think it is a good idea for them to be here on this particular day… right here in Islamabad, meeting with senior politicians in the new government, trying to dictate terms..." was the way Zaffar Abbas, editor of the newspaper Dawn, put it.)
At home, their politicians have nationally televised debates in which they fervently discuss just how quickly they would launch air assaults against Pakistan's tribal areas, without permission from the Pakistani government but based on "actionable intelligence" on terrorists. Their drones cruise the skies of the world looking for terrorist suspects to -- in the phrase of the hour -- "take out." Agents from their intelligence services have, these last years, roamed the planet, kidnapping terrorist suspects directly off the streets of major cities and transporting them to their own secret prisons, or those of other countries willing to employ torture methods. Their spy satellites circle the globe listening in on conversations wherever they please, while their military has divided the whole planet into "commands," the last of which, Africom, was just formed.
As far as they are concerned, nowhere do their interests not come into play; nowhere, in fact, are they not paramount. As their President put it recently, "If [our] strategic interests are not in Iraq -- the convergence point for the twin threats of al Qaeda and Iran, the nation Osama bin Laden's deputy has called 'the place for the greatest battle,' the country at the heart of the most volatile region on Earth -- then where are they?" (And you could easily substitute the names of other countries for Iraq.)
Their President makes a habit of regularly telling other countries what they "must" do. "At the same time," he said recently, "the regimes in Iran and Syria must stop supporting violence and terror in Iraq." It's especially important to him and his officials that other nations not "interfere" in situations where, as in Iraq, they are so obviously "foreigners" and have no business; no fingers, that is, are to be caught in other people's cookie jars. Their Vice President made this point strikingly in an exchange with a TV interviewer:
"Q: So what message are you sending to Iran, and how tough are you prepared to get?
"Vice President: I think the message that the president sent clearly is that we do not want them doing what they can to try to destabilize the situation inside Iraq. We think it's very important that they keep their folks at home."
A range of other countries, all with a natural bent for "interference" or "meddling," must regularly be warned or threatened. After all, what needs to be prevented, according to a typical formulation of their President, is "foreign interference in the internal affairs of Iraq."
None of this advice do they apply to themselves for reasons far too obvious to explain. Wherever they go -- sometimes in huge numbers, usually well-armed, and, after a while, deeply entrenched in bases the size of small towns that they love to build -- they feel comfortable. They are, after all, defending their liberties by defending those of others elsewhere. Though there are natives of one brand or another everywhere, they consider themselves the planet's only true natives. Their motto might be: Wherever we hang our hats (or helmets) is home.
Others, who choose to fight them, automatically become aliens, intent as they are on destroying the stability of that planetary "home." So, for years, their military spokespeople referred to the Sunni insurgents they were battling in Iraq as "anti-Iraqi forces." It mattered little that almost all of them were, in fact, Iraqis; for the enemy is, by nature, so beyond the pale as to be a stranger to his or her own country or, just as likely, a cat's-paw of foreign forces and powers. Only when the very same "anti-Iraqi forces" suddenly decided to become allies were they suddenly granted the title, "concerned citizens," or even, more gloriously, "Sons of Iraq."
When off duty, their luckier soldiers have the option of taking "rest and recreation" in "the homeland" at places like the Hale Koa ("House of the Warrior") Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii, or in the extended homeland at, say, the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort in the Bavarian Alps or the Dragon Hill Lodge near thrilling downtown Seoul, South Korea -- all part of their global system of Armed Forces Recreation Centers.
This is their world -- and welcome to it.
It's not exactly a mystery what country I'm talking about. You knew from the beginning. Since the Soviet Union vanished in 1991, only one nation has made itself at home everywhere on Earth; only one nation has felt that the planet's interests and its own interests were essentially one; only one nation's military garrisons and patrols our world from Greenland to the tropics, from the sea bed to the edge of space; only one nation's military talks about its vast array of bases as its "footprint" on the planet; only one nation judges its essential and exceptional goodness, in motivation if nothing else, as justification for any act it may take.
Putting an Iraqi Face on Iraq
Soon, U.S. surge commander General David Petraeus will return to Washington to report to Congress on our "progress" in Iraq -- and he'll do so with the worst crisis in that country in almost a year still unresolved. He'll do so, in fact, shrouded in yet another strategic disaster for the Bush administration. With that in mind, let's take a moment to look back at just how, militarily at least, the Bush administration first made itself at home in Iraq.
In the U.S., the administration's lack of planning for the occupation of Iraq -- starting with the wholesale looting of Baghdad after American troops had taken the capital -- has been the subject of much debate and discussion in Congress and the media. While it's usually noted in passing that, amid the chaos, orders had in fact been issued to American troops to guard the Oil Ministry, little is made of that. In fact, orders for U.S. troops to guard that ministry and the Interior Ministry, and nothing else, were indeed given, which simply indicates that administration planning was extremely focused -- on oil and the secret police (and perhaps Saddam Hussein's secret archives).
In addition, we know that the administration ignored the 13-volume "Future of Iraq" project put together by the State Department to guide an occupation -- largely because its neocon officials were so intent on sidelining the State Department more generally. On the other hand, the Pentagon did plan for what it thought would matter. Specifically, from a front-page April 19, 2003 New York Times article, we know that, by the time the invasion began, the Pentagon already had on the drawing boards plans for building four permanent mega-bases in Iraq. (They were meant to replace our bases in Saudi Arabia.) And these were indeed built (along with others and the largest embassy on the planet) in more or less the locations originally described. From the beginning, whatever planning it didn't do, the Bush administration was certainly planning to make itself at home in Iraq in a big way for a long, long time.
Much has also been made of the disastrous, seat-of-the-pants decision by the administration, in the person of L. Paul Bremer III, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) then ruling Baghdad, to disband the Iraqi army. But few now recall what the administration, the CPA, and the Pentagon had in mind (and leaked to the press soon after the invasion) for a future Iraqi military of their dreams.
They had, in fact, reconceived the Iraqi army as a force of perhaps 40,000 lightly armed, largely border-guarding troops. Keep in mind that Saddam Hussein had a military of 400,000 heavily armed troops and -- until the First Gulf War in 1990 -- a powerful air force (as well as copious supplies of chemical weapons). In the Middle East, for a country to have only a 40,000 man military without tanks, artillery, or an air force to call on meant but one thing: that the U.S. military and the U.S. Air Force, from bases in Iraq and in the region, were to be Iraq's real fighting force in any crisis. This was the true planning message of the Bush administration and it indicated just how "at home" its officials thought they would be in occupied Iraq.
By the time it became obvious that such thinking was fantastical and George Bush was starting to repeat the mantra, "As Iraqis stand up, Americans will stand down," the idea of a 40,000-man force had been long forgotten. By then, the U.S. military was at work creating a large Iraqi army and national police force. But the effects of such planning remain debilitatingly present, even today.
After all, the "crack" Iraqi units sent into Basra by Prime Minister Maliki were still relatively lightly armed. (Hence, their complaints that the Sadrist militia they came up against were often better armed than they were.) They still had no significant Iraqi air force to call on, because as yet it hardly exists. When they got desperate, they had to call on U.S. and British air support as well as U.S. Special Forces units. And, of course, in the fighting in Basra, as in Baghdad where American units quickly entered the fray, they showed no particular flair for "standing up." In fact, according to the Associated Press's fine reporter Charles J. Hanley, the chief American trainer of Iraqi forces, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, now estimates that Iraq's military will not be able to guard the country's borders effectively until, at the earliest, 2018.
There was a period, back in 2004-05, when the Bush administration regularly wielded a telling image. They talked often about the importance of putting "an Iraqi face" on various aspects of the situation in that country. Here's a typical passage from the New York Times from that period: "By insisting that they not be identified, the three officers based in Baghdad were following a Pentagon policy requiring American commanders in Baghdad to put 'an Iraqi face' on the war, meaning that Iraqi commanders should be the ones talking to reporters, not Americans." This caught something of the strangeness of that moment, a strangeness that has yet to disappear. After all, as an image, to put a "face" on anything actually means to put a mask over an already present face, which was (and, even today, in military terms largely remains) American power in Iraq.
The presentation of the recent Maliki government offensive, launched on the eve of Petraeus's return, also represented, in part, an attempt to put an Iraqi face on American at-homeness in that country. The fictional story put out as the "Iraqi" offensive was launched -- printed up quite seriously in our media -- was that Maliki had only informed the American high command (and the British in Basra) of his prospective move in the hours just before it was launched. This was, on the face of it, ludicrous. The "Iraqi" army has been stood up -- trained, that is -- by U.S. advisors; some of its units have U.S. advisors embedded in them; it is almost totally reliant on the logistical support of the U.S. military. It could not move far offensively without the significant prior knowledge of U.S. commanders (and this was later admitted by the President's National Security Council Advisor Stephen J. Hadley).
While Maliki had his own reasons for launching his forces (and allied militias) against Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Basra, the Americans certainly imagined a triumphant moment for Petraeus in his upcoming hearings, thanks to new evidence that the Iraqi government was finally, in George Bush's words, "in the lead" and its military shaping up well. As Leila Fadel of the McClatchy Newspapers reported, "Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the Iraqi operation was a 'byproduct of the success' of the year-old U.S. troop surge." This was a fantasy, of course. And the result was the success of Sadr's forces from Basra to Baghdad -- and ongoing American attempts to disavow any real involvement in the planning of the offensive.
Grand Delusions
The United States is hardly the first empire whose representatives have felt at home anywhere in its world (if not, in past times, in the world). When you are at the peak of your imperial powers, you can ignore the problems and contradictions that such a feeling, such an attitude, naturally calls up. This is no longer the situation for the United States and so the contradictions ripen, the problems only grow, and the plunge into delusional thinking deepens.
Take just the seeming conundrum of the recent battle in Basra. On one side, you have an Iraqi army, trained for years by the Americans, to the tune of approximately $22 billion in U.S. funds. On the other side, you have an (at best) partially trained "militia" -- an "army" in name only. It may be that the Iranians have put some effort or money into equipping the Mahdi Army -- though the evidence for this is slim indeed -- but, if so, this would be minor by comparison.
When the two forces clashed, what was the result? Some Iraqi soldiers and policemen simply put down their weapons and, in certain cases, surrendered or went over to the other side, or deserted, or fought half-heartedly; while the Mahdis fought fiercely, cleverly, and, in the end, successfully, until called off in triumph by their leader. They "stood up" (just as they had against the full might of the American military in the southern holy city of Najaf back in 2004). Could there, then, be two different races of Iraqis, one set willing to fight with or without training or outside help, the other unwilling, no matter the support?
The American military faced a similar situation four decades ago in Vietnam, where American advisors training the South Vietnamese military regularly swore that they would turn in their brigades of Vietnamese troops for just a few platoons of Vietcong, who would stand and fight as if their lives depended on it.
Of course, the answer here is anything but mysterious. On the one hand, you have a foreign-trained, foreign-advised, foreign-supplied force with confused and divided loyalties that is only partially an "Iraqi" army; on the other, you have a local force, fighting in a community, for the safety and wellbeing of its own sons and wives, friends and relatives. The Mahdi Army members know why they fight and who they fight for. They have "faith," and not just in the religious sense. They are, in a word, at home.
The history of the last 200 years has regularly piled up evidence that this matters far more than firepower. Human beings, that is, regularly "stand up" for something other than shiny weapons or the interests of a foreign power, no matter how at home its leaders may think they are in your country. The inability to see this obvious point -- repeatedly and over decades -- represents delusional thinking stemming, at least in part, from an inability of Americans to imagine their own foreignness in the world.
In such cases, you misperceive who is on your side, why they are there, and what, exactly, they are capable of. You misunderstand what the actual natives of a place think of you. You don't grasp that, whatever the brute force and finances at your command, you, as a foreigner, may never understand the situation you believe you should control. Even the Maliki government itself, after all, is only "on our side" thanks to its abysmal weakness. (Otherwise, it would be far more closely allied with that other foreign power, Iran.) Sooner or later -- usually sooner -- you simply delude yourself. You mistake your trained army for an "Iraqi" or a "Vietnamese" one and so come to believe that, if only you adjust your counterinsurgency tactics correctly, it will fight like one. Then you act accordingly, which is, of course, disastrous.
Whatever General Petraeus says before Congress next week, however sane and pragmatic he sounds, however impressive looking his charts and graphs, it's worth keeping in mind that his testimony cannot help but be delusional, because it stems from delusional premises and it can lead only to further disaster for Americans and Iraqis.
Yes, of course, American planes and drones will continue to cruise the skies of the globe "taking out" enemies (or missing them and taking out citizens elsewhere whom we could care less about); American diplomats and high military officials will continue to travel the planet in packs, indicating, however politely, what politicians, military men, and diplomats elsewhere "must" do; and American military men will continue to train the Iraqi army in the hopes that, in 2018 if not sooner, it will stand up.
And yet, as long as we mistake ourselves for "the natives," as long as we are convinced that our interests are paramount everywhere, and feel that we must be part of the solution to every problem, our problems -- and the world's -- will only multiply.
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has been updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.
[Tomdispatch Recommendation: A recent Noam Chomsky piece, "We Own the World," took up an allied set of topics to those in this essay. It's a fascinating read and I urge you to check it out.]
Copyright 2008 Tom Engelhardt
By Tom Engelhardt
Yes, their defensive zone is the planet and they patrol it regularly. As ever, their planes and drones have been in the skies these last weeks. They struck a village in Somalia, tribal areas in Pakistan, rural areas in Afghanistan, and urban neighborhoods in Iraq. Their troops are training and advising the Iraqi army and police as well as the new Afghan army, while their Special Operations forces are planning to train Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps in that country's wild, mountainous borderlands.
Their Vice President arrived in Baghdad not long before the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched its recent (failed) offensive against cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia in the southern oil city of Basra. To "discuss" their needs in their President's eternal War on Terror, two of their top diplomats, a deputy secretary of state and an assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, arrived in Pakistan -- to the helpless outrage of the local press -- on the very day newly elected Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani was being given the oath of office. ("I don't think it is a good idea for them to be here on this particular day… right here in Islamabad, meeting with senior politicians in the new government, trying to dictate terms..." was the way Zaffar Abbas, editor of the newspaper Dawn, put it.)
At home, their politicians have nationally televised debates in which they fervently discuss just how quickly they would launch air assaults against Pakistan's tribal areas, without permission from the Pakistani government but based on "actionable intelligence" on terrorists. Their drones cruise the skies of the world looking for terrorist suspects to -- in the phrase of the hour -- "take out." Agents from their intelligence services have, these last years, roamed the planet, kidnapping terrorist suspects directly off the streets of major cities and transporting them to their own secret prisons, or those of other countries willing to employ torture methods. Their spy satellites circle the globe listening in on conversations wherever they please, while their military has divided the whole planet into "commands," the last of which, Africom, was just formed.
As far as they are concerned, nowhere do their interests not come into play; nowhere, in fact, are they not paramount. As their President put it recently, "If [our] strategic interests are not in Iraq -- the convergence point for the twin threats of al Qaeda and Iran, the nation Osama bin Laden's deputy has called 'the place for the greatest battle,' the country at the heart of the most volatile region on Earth -- then where are they?" (And you could easily substitute the names of other countries for Iraq.)
Their President makes a habit of regularly telling other countries what they "must" do. "At the same time," he said recently, "the regimes in Iran and Syria must stop supporting violence and terror in Iraq." It's especially important to him and his officials that other nations not "interfere" in situations where, as in Iraq, they are so obviously "foreigners" and have no business; no fingers, that is, are to be caught in other people's cookie jars. Their Vice President made this point strikingly in an exchange with a TV interviewer:
"Q: So what message are you sending to Iran, and how tough are you prepared to get?
"Vice President: I think the message that the president sent clearly is that we do not want them doing what they can to try to destabilize the situation inside Iraq. We think it's very important that they keep their folks at home."
A range of other countries, all with a natural bent for "interference" or "meddling," must regularly be warned or threatened. After all, what needs to be prevented, according to a typical formulation of their President, is "foreign interference in the internal affairs of Iraq."
None of this advice do they apply to themselves for reasons far too obvious to explain. Wherever they go -- sometimes in huge numbers, usually well-armed, and, after a while, deeply entrenched in bases the size of small towns that they love to build -- they feel comfortable. They are, after all, defending their liberties by defending those of others elsewhere. Though there are natives of one brand or another everywhere, they consider themselves the planet's only true natives. Their motto might be: Wherever we hang our hats (or helmets) is home.
Others, who choose to fight them, automatically become aliens, intent as they are on destroying the stability of that planetary "home." So, for years, their military spokespeople referred to the Sunni insurgents they were battling in Iraq as "anti-Iraqi forces." It mattered little that almost all of them were, in fact, Iraqis; for the enemy is, by nature, so beyond the pale as to be a stranger to his or her own country or, just as likely, a cat's-paw of foreign forces and powers. Only when the very same "anti-Iraqi forces" suddenly decided to become allies were they suddenly granted the title, "concerned citizens," or even, more gloriously, "Sons of Iraq."
When off duty, their luckier soldiers have the option of taking "rest and recreation" in "the homeland" at places like the Hale Koa ("House of the Warrior") Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii, or in the extended homeland at, say, the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort in the Bavarian Alps or the Dragon Hill Lodge near thrilling downtown Seoul, South Korea -- all part of their global system of Armed Forces Recreation Centers.
This is their world -- and welcome to it.
It's not exactly a mystery what country I'm talking about. You knew from the beginning. Since the Soviet Union vanished in 1991, only one nation has made itself at home everywhere on Earth; only one nation has felt that the planet's interests and its own interests were essentially one; only one nation's military garrisons and patrols our world from Greenland to the tropics, from the sea bed to the edge of space; only one nation's military talks about its vast array of bases as its "footprint" on the planet; only one nation judges its essential and exceptional goodness, in motivation if nothing else, as justification for any act it may take.
Putting an Iraqi Face on Iraq
Soon, U.S. surge commander General David Petraeus will return to Washington to report to Congress on our "progress" in Iraq -- and he'll do so with the worst crisis in that country in almost a year still unresolved. He'll do so, in fact, shrouded in yet another strategic disaster for the Bush administration. With that in mind, let's take a moment to look back at just how, militarily at least, the Bush administration first made itself at home in Iraq.
In the U.S., the administration's lack of planning for the occupation of Iraq -- starting with the wholesale looting of Baghdad after American troops had taken the capital -- has been the subject of much debate and discussion in Congress and the media. While it's usually noted in passing that, amid the chaos, orders had in fact been issued to American troops to guard the Oil Ministry, little is made of that. In fact, orders for U.S. troops to guard that ministry and the Interior Ministry, and nothing else, were indeed given, which simply indicates that administration planning was extremely focused -- on oil and the secret police (and perhaps Saddam Hussein's secret archives).
In addition, we know that the administration ignored the 13-volume "Future of Iraq" project put together by the State Department to guide an occupation -- largely because its neocon officials were so intent on sidelining the State Department more generally. On the other hand, the Pentagon did plan for what it thought would matter. Specifically, from a front-page April 19, 2003 New York Times article, we know that, by the time the invasion began, the Pentagon already had on the drawing boards plans for building four permanent mega-bases in Iraq. (They were meant to replace our bases in Saudi Arabia.) And these were indeed built (along with others and the largest embassy on the planet) in more or less the locations originally described. From the beginning, whatever planning it didn't do, the Bush administration was certainly planning to make itself at home in Iraq in a big way for a long, long time.
Much has also been made of the disastrous, seat-of-the-pants decision by the administration, in the person of L. Paul Bremer III, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) then ruling Baghdad, to disband the Iraqi army. But few now recall what the administration, the CPA, and the Pentagon had in mind (and leaked to the press soon after the invasion) for a future Iraqi military of their dreams.
They had, in fact, reconceived the Iraqi army as a force of perhaps 40,000 lightly armed, largely border-guarding troops. Keep in mind that Saddam Hussein had a military of 400,000 heavily armed troops and -- until the First Gulf War in 1990 -- a powerful air force (as well as copious supplies of chemical weapons). In the Middle East, for a country to have only a 40,000 man military without tanks, artillery, or an air force to call on meant but one thing: that the U.S. military and the U.S. Air Force, from bases in Iraq and in the region, were to be Iraq's real fighting force in any crisis. This was the true planning message of the Bush administration and it indicated just how "at home" its officials thought they would be in occupied Iraq.
By the time it became obvious that such thinking was fantastical and George Bush was starting to repeat the mantra, "As Iraqis stand up, Americans will stand down," the idea of a 40,000-man force had been long forgotten. By then, the U.S. military was at work creating a large Iraqi army and national police force. But the effects of such planning remain debilitatingly present, even today.
After all, the "crack" Iraqi units sent into Basra by Prime Minister Maliki were still relatively lightly armed. (Hence, their complaints that the Sadrist militia they came up against were often better armed than they were.) They still had no significant Iraqi air force to call on, because as yet it hardly exists. When they got desperate, they had to call on U.S. and British air support as well as U.S. Special Forces units. And, of course, in the fighting in Basra, as in Baghdad where American units quickly entered the fray, they showed no particular flair for "standing up." In fact, according to the Associated Press's fine reporter Charles J. Hanley, the chief American trainer of Iraqi forces, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, now estimates that Iraq's military will not be able to guard the country's borders effectively until, at the earliest, 2018.
There was a period, back in 2004-05, when the Bush administration regularly wielded a telling image. They talked often about the importance of putting "an Iraqi face" on various aspects of the situation in that country. Here's a typical passage from the New York Times from that period: "By insisting that they not be identified, the three officers based in Baghdad were following a Pentagon policy requiring American commanders in Baghdad to put 'an Iraqi face' on the war, meaning that Iraqi commanders should be the ones talking to reporters, not Americans." This caught something of the strangeness of that moment, a strangeness that has yet to disappear. After all, as an image, to put a "face" on anything actually means to put a mask over an already present face, which was (and, even today, in military terms largely remains) American power in Iraq.
The presentation of the recent Maliki government offensive, launched on the eve of Petraeus's return, also represented, in part, an attempt to put an Iraqi face on American at-homeness in that country. The fictional story put out as the "Iraqi" offensive was launched -- printed up quite seriously in our media -- was that Maliki had only informed the American high command (and the British in Basra) of his prospective move in the hours just before it was launched. This was, on the face of it, ludicrous. The "Iraqi" army has been stood up -- trained, that is -- by U.S. advisors; some of its units have U.S. advisors embedded in them; it is almost totally reliant on the logistical support of the U.S. military. It could not move far offensively without the significant prior knowledge of U.S. commanders (and this was later admitted by the President's National Security Council Advisor Stephen J. Hadley).
While Maliki had his own reasons for launching his forces (and allied militias) against Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Basra, the Americans certainly imagined a triumphant moment for Petraeus in his upcoming hearings, thanks to new evidence that the Iraqi government was finally, in George Bush's words, "in the lead" and its military shaping up well. As Leila Fadel of the McClatchy Newspapers reported, "Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the Iraqi operation was a 'byproduct of the success' of the year-old U.S. troop surge." This was a fantasy, of course. And the result was the success of Sadr's forces from Basra to Baghdad -- and ongoing American attempts to disavow any real involvement in the planning of the offensive.
Grand Delusions
The United States is hardly the first empire whose representatives have felt at home anywhere in its world (if not, in past times, in the world). When you are at the peak of your imperial powers, you can ignore the problems and contradictions that such a feeling, such an attitude, naturally calls up. This is no longer the situation for the United States and so the contradictions ripen, the problems only grow, and the plunge into delusional thinking deepens.
Take just the seeming conundrum of the recent battle in Basra. On one side, you have an Iraqi army, trained for years by the Americans, to the tune of approximately $22 billion in U.S. funds. On the other side, you have an (at best) partially trained "militia" -- an "army" in name only. It may be that the Iranians have put some effort or money into equipping the Mahdi Army -- though the evidence for this is slim indeed -- but, if so, this would be minor by comparison.
When the two forces clashed, what was the result? Some Iraqi soldiers and policemen simply put down their weapons and, in certain cases, surrendered or went over to the other side, or deserted, or fought half-heartedly; while the Mahdis fought fiercely, cleverly, and, in the end, successfully, until called off in triumph by their leader. They "stood up" (just as they had against the full might of the American military in the southern holy city of Najaf back in 2004). Could there, then, be two different races of Iraqis, one set willing to fight with or without training or outside help, the other unwilling, no matter the support?
The American military faced a similar situation four decades ago in Vietnam, where American advisors training the South Vietnamese military regularly swore that they would turn in their brigades of Vietnamese troops for just a few platoons of Vietcong, who would stand and fight as if their lives depended on it.
Of course, the answer here is anything but mysterious. On the one hand, you have a foreign-trained, foreign-advised, foreign-supplied force with confused and divided loyalties that is only partially an "Iraqi" army; on the other, you have a local force, fighting in a community, for the safety and wellbeing of its own sons and wives, friends and relatives. The Mahdi Army members know why they fight and who they fight for. They have "faith," and not just in the religious sense. They are, in a word, at home.
The history of the last 200 years has regularly piled up evidence that this matters far more than firepower. Human beings, that is, regularly "stand up" for something other than shiny weapons or the interests of a foreign power, no matter how at home its leaders may think they are in your country. The inability to see this obvious point -- repeatedly and over decades -- represents delusional thinking stemming, at least in part, from an inability of Americans to imagine their own foreignness in the world.
In such cases, you misperceive who is on your side, why they are there, and what, exactly, they are capable of. You misunderstand what the actual natives of a place think of you. You don't grasp that, whatever the brute force and finances at your command, you, as a foreigner, may never understand the situation you believe you should control. Even the Maliki government itself, after all, is only "on our side" thanks to its abysmal weakness. (Otherwise, it would be far more closely allied with that other foreign power, Iran.) Sooner or later -- usually sooner -- you simply delude yourself. You mistake your trained army for an "Iraqi" or a "Vietnamese" one and so come to believe that, if only you adjust your counterinsurgency tactics correctly, it will fight like one. Then you act accordingly, which is, of course, disastrous.
Whatever General Petraeus says before Congress next week, however sane and pragmatic he sounds, however impressive looking his charts and graphs, it's worth keeping in mind that his testimony cannot help but be delusional, because it stems from delusional premises and it can lead only to further disaster for Americans and Iraqis.
Yes, of course, American planes and drones will continue to cruise the skies of the globe "taking out" enemies (or missing them and taking out citizens elsewhere whom we could care less about); American diplomats and high military officials will continue to travel the planet in packs, indicating, however politely, what politicians, military men, and diplomats elsewhere "must" do; and American military men will continue to train the Iraqi army in the hopes that, in 2018 if not sooner, it will stand up.
And yet, as long as we mistake ourselves for "the natives," as long as we are convinced that our interests are paramount everywhere, and feel that we must be part of the solution to every problem, our problems -- and the world's -- will only multiply.
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has been updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.
[Tomdispatch Recommendation: A recent Noam Chomsky piece, "We Own the World," took up an allied set of topics to those in this essay. It's a fascinating read and I urge you to check it out.]
Copyright 2008 Tom Engelhardt
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
The fraud named Hillary Rodham Clinton
By DOUG THOMPSON
Hillary Clinton is a fraud, a liar, a cheat and a disgrace to the Senate, her party and the United States of America.
There's no other way to put it. The woman who would be President inflated her resume, lied outright about being "under fire" in an attempt to bolster her national security credentials, plotted to overturn the will of pledged delegates at the Democratic National Convention in August and lobbied to change the rules after she signed a pledge to honor her party's decision on voting in Michigan and Florida.
She does not deserve to be President of the United States. She does not deserve to be a United States Senator. She deserves a unmarked grave in the dustbin of political history.
If any other candidate had pulled the disgraceful stunts that Clinton and her campaign have engineered in her faltering, debt-ridden run for President, they would be driven from their party of disgrace. But this is Hillary, wife of Bill -- the President of a thousand affairs and countless other political skeletons. Some claim she and her philandering, shoot-from-the-lip husband are Democratic royalty. If she is the best the Democrats have to offer the party of the jackass deserves to get its butt kicked in November.
On Tuesday, Howard Wolfson, one of Clinton's chief gutter politics political operatives, revealed the campaign plans to do everything it can to destroy frontrunner Barack Obama in the eyes of superdelegates to the Democratic National Covention. They plan to use the words of Jeremiah Wright, Obama's fiery former minister, to discredit the Illinois Senator and try and convince the superdelegates to overturn the will of those who voted in the party's primaries.
Hillary admits she will push for a credentials fight to try and seat the delegations from Florida and Michigan even though she signed a pledge along with other candidates to follow the decision of the Democratic National Committee to not recognize voting results from either state because they pushed their primary dates up against the will of the party.
Pledges mean nothing to Hillary Clinton. Neither does honesty. Her bald-faced lie about being "under fire" in Bosnia shows that she has little regard for the truth or honesty and her ludicrous attempt to explain she "misspoke" not once but three times or that she was "sleep-deprived" show just how pathetic her claims to greatness have become.
Also ironic is her campaign's coining of the "Tanya Harding Strategy" to describe their plans to "kneecap" Barack Obama and destroy his credibility before the convention. Harding, a third-tier Olympic skating hopeful, hatched a plan to injure rival Nancy Kerrigan by busting her knee with a baseball bat so she couldn't compete on the ice.
Harding was, and probably still is, a cold, calculating, scheming blond bitch. Is that really the comparison the Clinton campaign wants?
For the past seven years I have taken George W. Bush to task for being a liar, a cheat and a fraud. If Barack Obama had pulled the same stunts I would be calling him the same. I have reservations about Obama's qualifications and his ties to shady political dealmakers and the angry words of Rev. Wright. He has also played fast and loose with his resume.
But Clinton's crimes go far beyond the normal hyperbole of politics. Her methods demand denunciation and her schemes cry out for exposure and ridicule.
She is a liar and a fraud and we've already had too many of them in the White House.
Hillary Clinton is a fraud, a liar, a cheat and a disgrace to the Senate, her party and the United States of America.
There's no other way to put it. The woman who would be President inflated her resume, lied outright about being "under fire" in an attempt to bolster her national security credentials, plotted to overturn the will of pledged delegates at the Democratic National Convention in August and lobbied to change the rules after she signed a pledge to honor her party's decision on voting in Michigan and Florida.
She does not deserve to be President of the United States. She does not deserve to be a United States Senator. She deserves a unmarked grave in the dustbin of political history.
If any other candidate had pulled the disgraceful stunts that Clinton and her campaign have engineered in her faltering, debt-ridden run for President, they would be driven from their party of disgrace. But this is Hillary, wife of Bill -- the President of a thousand affairs and countless other political skeletons. Some claim she and her philandering, shoot-from-the-lip husband are Democratic royalty. If she is the best the Democrats have to offer the party of the jackass deserves to get its butt kicked in November.
On Tuesday, Howard Wolfson, one of Clinton's chief gutter politics political operatives, revealed the campaign plans to do everything it can to destroy frontrunner Barack Obama in the eyes of superdelegates to the Democratic National Covention. They plan to use the words of Jeremiah Wright, Obama's fiery former minister, to discredit the Illinois Senator and try and convince the superdelegates to overturn the will of those who voted in the party's primaries.
Hillary admits she will push for a credentials fight to try and seat the delegations from Florida and Michigan even though she signed a pledge along with other candidates to follow the decision of the Democratic National Committee to not recognize voting results from either state because they pushed their primary dates up against the will of the party.
Pledges mean nothing to Hillary Clinton. Neither does honesty. Her bald-faced lie about being "under fire" in Bosnia shows that she has little regard for the truth or honesty and her ludicrous attempt to explain she "misspoke" not once but three times or that she was "sleep-deprived" show just how pathetic her claims to greatness have become.
Also ironic is her campaign's coining of the "Tanya Harding Strategy" to describe their plans to "kneecap" Barack Obama and destroy his credibility before the convention. Harding, a third-tier Olympic skating hopeful, hatched a plan to injure rival Nancy Kerrigan by busting her knee with a baseball bat so she couldn't compete on the ice.
Harding was, and probably still is, a cold, calculating, scheming blond bitch. Is that really the comparison the Clinton campaign wants?
For the past seven years I have taken George W. Bush to task for being a liar, a cheat and a fraud. If Barack Obama had pulled the same stunts I would be calling him the same. I have reservations about Obama's qualifications and his ties to shady political dealmakers and the angry words of Rev. Wright. He has also played fast and loose with his resume.
But Clinton's crimes go far beyond the normal hyperbole of politics. Her methods demand denunciation and her schemes cry out for exposure and ridicule.
She is a liar and a fraud and we've already had too many of them in the White House.
Tomgram: Howard Zinn, The End of Empire?
In Iraq, in Afghanistan, and at home, the position of the globe's "sole superpower" is visibly fraying. The country that was once proclaimed an "empire lite" has proven increasingly light-headed. The country once hailed as a power greater than that of imperial Rome or imperial Britain, a dominating force beyond anything ever seen on the planet, now can't seem to make a move in its own interest that isn't a disaster. The Iraq government's recent offensive in Basra is but the latest example with -- we can be sure -- more to come.
In the meantime, the fate of that empire, lite or otherwise, is the subject of Howard Zinn today at Tomdispatch, and of a new addition to his famed People's History of the United States. The new book represents a surprise breakthrough into cartoon format. It's a rollicking graphic history, illustrated by cartoonist Mike Konopacki, that takes us from the Indian Wars to the Iraqi "frontier" (with some striking autobiographical asides from Zinn's own life). It's called A People's History of American Empire. It's a gem and it's being published today.
In honor of publication day, Tomdispatch offers the equivalent of a little online extravaganza. Below, you can read Zinn's essay on how he first learned about the American Empire; and you can also click here for two special treats. You can view an animated video, using some of the book's art, with voiceover by none other than Viggo Mortensen. (Think of it as Lord of the Rings, Part IV: The American Mordor Chronicles.) Finally, if you look below the video on that same page, you'll see an autobiographical section of the new book, focusing on Zinn's early years. (Click on each illustration to view a single page of text.) Have fun. Tom
Empire or Humanity?
What the Classroom Didn't Teach Me About the American Empire
By Howard Zinn
With an occupying army waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with military bases and corporate bullying in every part of the world, there is hardly a question any more of the existence of an American Empire. Indeed, the once fervent denials have turned into a boastful, unashamed embrace of the idea.
However, the very idea that the United States was an empire did not occur to me until after I finished my work as a bombardier with the Eighth Air Force in the Second World War, and came home. Even as I began to have second thoughts about the purity of the "Good War," even after being horrified by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even after rethinking my own bombing of towns in Europe, I still did not put all that together in the context of an American "Empire."
I was conscious, like everyone, of the British Empire and the other imperial powers of Europe, but the United States was not seen in the same way. When, after the war, I went to college under the G.I. Bill of Rights and took courses in U.S. history, I usually found a chapter in the history texts called "The Age of Imperialism." It invariably referred to the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the conquest of the Philippines that followed. It seemed that American imperialism lasted only a relatively few years. There was no overarching view of U.S. expansion that might lead to the idea of a more far-ranging empire -- or period of "imperialism."
I recall the classroom map (labeled "Western Expansion") which presented the march across the continent as a natural, almost biological phenomenon. That huge acquisition of land called "The Louisiana Purchase" hinted at nothing but vacant land acquired. There was no sense that this territory had been occupied by hundreds of Indian tribes which would have to be annihilated or forced from their homes -- what we now call "ethnic cleansing" -- so that whites could settle the land, and later railroads could crisscross it, presaging "civilization" and its brutal discontents.
Neither the discussions of "Jacksonian democracy" in history courses, nor the popular book by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Jackson, told me about the "Trail of Tears," the deadly forced march of "the five civilized tribes" westward from Georgia and Alabama across the Mississippi, leaving 4,000 dead in their wake. No treatment of the Civil War mentioned the Sand Creek massacre of hundreds of Indian villagers in Colorado just as "emancipation" was proclaimed for black people by Lincoln's administration.
That classroom map also had a section to the south and west labeled "Mexican Cession." This was a handy euphemism for the aggressive war against Mexico in 1846 in which the United States seized half of that country's land, giving us California and the great Southwest. The term "Manifest Destiny," used at that time, soon of course became more universal. On the eve of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Washington Post saw beyond Cuba: "We are face to face with a strange destiny. The taste of Empire is in the mouth of the people even as the taste of blood in the jungle."
The violent march across the continent, and even the invasion of Cuba, appeared to be within a natural sphere of U.S. interest. After all, hadn't the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 declared the Western Hemisphere to be under our protection? But with hardly a pause after Cuba came the invasion of the Philippines, halfway around the world. The word "imperialism" now seemed a fitting one for U.S. actions. Indeed, that long, cruel war -- treated quickly and superficially in the history books -- gave rise to an Anti-Imperialist League, in which William James and Mark Twain were leading figures. But this was not something I learned in university either.
The "Sole Superpower" Comes into View
Reading outside the classroom, however, I began to fit the pieces of history into a larger mosaic. What at first had seemed like a purely passive foreign policy in the decade leading up to the First World War now appeared as a succession of violent interventions: the seizure of the Panama Canal zone from Colombia, a naval bombardment of the Mexican coast, the dispatch of the Marines to almost every country in Central America, occupying armies sent to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. As the much-decorated General Smedley Butler, who participated in many of those interventions, wrote later: "I was an errand boy for Wall Street."
At the very time I was learning this history -- the years after World War II -- the United States was becoming not just another imperial power, but the world's leading superpower. Determined to maintain and expand its monopoly on nuclear weapons, it was taking over remote islands in the Pacific, forcing the inhabitants to leave, and turning the islands into deadly playgrounds for more atomic tests.
In his memoir, No Place to Hide, Dr. David Bradley, who monitored radiation in those tests, described what was left behind as the testing teams went home: "[R]adioactivity, contamination, the wrecked island of Bikini and its sad-eyed patient exiles." The tests in the Pacific were followed, over the years, by more tests in the deserts of Utah and Nevada, more than a thousand tests in all.
When the war in Korea began in 1950, I was still studying history as a graduate student at Columbia University. Nothing in my classes prepared me to understand American policy in Asia. But I was reading I. F. Stone's Weekly. Stone was among the very few journalists who questioned the official justification for sending an army to Korea. It seemed clear to me then that it was not the invasion of South Korea by the North that prompted U.S. intervention, but the desire of the United States to have a firm foothold on the continent of Asia, especially now that the Communists were in power in China.
Years later, as the covert intervention in Vietnam grew into a massive and brutal military operation, the imperial designs of the United States became yet clearer to me. In 1967, I wrote a little book called Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal. By that time I was heavily involved in the movement against the war.
When I read the hundreds of pages of the Pentagon Papers entrusted to me by Daniel Ellsberg, what jumped out at me were the secret memos from the National Security Council. Explaining the U.S. interest in Southeast Asia, they spoke bluntly of the country's motives as a quest for "tin, rubber, oil."
Neither the desertions of soldiers in the Mexican War, nor the draft riots of the Civil War, not the anti-imperialist groups at the turn of the century, nor the strong opposition to World War I -- indeed no antiwar movement in the history of the nation reached the scale of the opposition to the war in Vietnam. At least part of that opposition rested on an understanding that more than Vietnam was at stake, that the brutal war in that tiny country was part of a grander imperial design.
Various interventions following the U.S. defeat in Vietnam seemed to reflect the desperate need of the still-reigning superpower -- even after the fall of its powerful rival, the Soviet Union -- to establish its dominance everywhere. Hence the invasion of Grenada in 1982, the bombing assault on Panama in 1989, the first Gulf war of 1991. Was George Bush Sr. heartsick over Saddam Hussein's seizure of Kuwait, or was he using that event as an opportunity to move U.S. power firmly into the coveted oil region of the Middle East? Given the history of the United States, given its obsession with Middle Eastern oil dating from Franklin Roosevelt's 1945 deal with King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, and the CIA's overthrow of the democratic Mossadeq government in Iran in 1953, it is not hard to decide that question.
Justifying Empire
The ruthless attacks of September 11th (as the official 9/11 Commission acknowledged) derived from fierce hatred of U.S. expansion in the Middle East and elsewhere. Even before that event, the Defense Department acknowledged, according to Chalmers Johnson's book The Sorrows of Empire, the existence of more than 700 American military bases outside of the United States.
Since that date, with the initiation of a "war on terrorism," many more bases have been established or expanded: in Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, the desert of Qatar, the Gulf of Oman, the Horn of Africa, and wherever else a compliant nation could be bribed or coerced.
When I was bombing cities in Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and France in the Second World War, the moral justification was so simple and clear as to be beyond discussion: We were saving the world from the evil of fascism. I was therefore startled to hear from a gunner on another crew -- what we had in common was that we both read books -- that he considered this "an imperialist war." Both sides, he said, were motivated by ambitions of control and conquest. We argued without resolving the issue. Ironically, tragically, not long after our discussion, this fellow was shot down and killed on a mission.
In wars, there is always a difference between the motives of the soldiers and the motives of the political leaders who send them into battle. My motive, like that of so many, was innocent of imperial ambition. It was to help defeat fascism and create a more decent world, free of aggression, militarism, and racism.
The motive of the U.S. establishment, understood by the aerial gunner I knew, was of a different nature. It was described early in 1941 by Henry Luce, multi-millionaire owner of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, as the coming of "The American Century." The time had arrived, he said, for the United States "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit, and by such means as we see fit."
We can hardly ask for a more candid, blunter declaration of imperial design. It has been echoed in recent years by the intellectual handmaidens of the Bush administration, but with assurances that the motive of this "influence" is benign, that the "purposes" -- whether in Luce's formulation or more recent ones -- are noble, that this is an "imperialism lite." As George Bush said in his second inaugural address: "Spreading liberty around the world… is the calling of our time." The New York Times called that speech "striking for its idealism."
The American Empire has always been a bipartisan project -- Democrats and Republicans have taken turns extending it, extolling it, justifying it. President Woodrow Wilson told graduates of the Naval Academy in 1914 (the year he bombarded Mexico) that the U.S. used "her navy and her army... as the instruments of civilization, not as the instruments of aggression." And Bill Clinton, in 1992, told West Point graduates: "The values you learned here… will be able to spread throughout the country and throughout the world."
For the people of the United States, and indeed for people all over the world, those claims sooner or later are revealed to be false. The rhetoric, often persuasive on first hearing, soon becomes overwhelmed by horrors that can no longer be concealed: the bloody corpses of Iraq, the torn limbs of American GIs, the millions of families driven from their homes -- in the Middle East and in the Mississippi Delta.
Have not the justifications for empire, embedded in our culture, assaulting our good sense -- that war is necessary for security, that expansion is fundamental to civilization -- begun to lose their hold on our minds? Have we reached a point in history where we are ready to embrace a new way of living in the world, expanding not our military power, but our humanity?
Howard Zinn is the author of A People's History of the United States and Voices of a People's History of the United States, now being filmed for a major television documentary. His newest book is A People's History of American Empire, the story of America in the world, told in comics form, with Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle in the American Empire Project book series. An animated video adapted from this essay with visuals from the comic book and voiceover by Viggo Mortensen, as well as a section of the book on Zinn's early life, can be viewed by clicking here. Zinn's website is HowardZinn.org.
Copyright 2008 Howard Zinn
In the meantime, the fate of that empire, lite or otherwise, is the subject of Howard Zinn today at Tomdispatch, and of a new addition to his famed People's History of the United States. The new book represents a surprise breakthrough into cartoon format. It's a rollicking graphic history, illustrated by cartoonist Mike Konopacki, that takes us from the Indian Wars to the Iraqi "frontier" (with some striking autobiographical asides from Zinn's own life). It's called A People's History of American Empire. It's a gem and it's being published today.
In honor of publication day, Tomdispatch offers the equivalent of a little online extravaganza. Below, you can read Zinn's essay on how he first learned about the American Empire; and you can also click here for two special treats. You can view an animated video, using some of the book's art, with voiceover by none other than Viggo Mortensen. (Think of it as Lord of the Rings, Part IV: The American Mordor Chronicles.) Finally, if you look below the video on that same page, you'll see an autobiographical section of the new book, focusing on Zinn's early years. (Click on each illustration to view a single page of text.) Have fun. Tom
Empire or Humanity?
What the Classroom Didn't Teach Me About the American Empire
By Howard Zinn
With an occupying army waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with military bases and corporate bullying in every part of the world, there is hardly a question any more of the existence of an American Empire. Indeed, the once fervent denials have turned into a boastful, unashamed embrace of the idea.
However, the very idea that the United States was an empire did not occur to me until after I finished my work as a bombardier with the Eighth Air Force in the Second World War, and came home. Even as I began to have second thoughts about the purity of the "Good War," even after being horrified by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even after rethinking my own bombing of towns in Europe, I still did not put all that together in the context of an American "Empire."
I was conscious, like everyone, of the British Empire and the other imperial powers of Europe, but the United States was not seen in the same way. When, after the war, I went to college under the G.I. Bill of Rights and took courses in U.S. history, I usually found a chapter in the history texts called "The Age of Imperialism." It invariably referred to the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the conquest of the Philippines that followed. It seemed that American imperialism lasted only a relatively few years. There was no overarching view of U.S. expansion that might lead to the idea of a more far-ranging empire -- or period of "imperialism."
I recall the classroom map (labeled "Western Expansion") which presented the march across the continent as a natural, almost biological phenomenon. That huge acquisition of land called "The Louisiana Purchase" hinted at nothing but vacant land acquired. There was no sense that this territory had been occupied by hundreds of Indian tribes which would have to be annihilated or forced from their homes -- what we now call "ethnic cleansing" -- so that whites could settle the land, and later railroads could crisscross it, presaging "civilization" and its brutal discontents.
Neither the discussions of "Jacksonian democracy" in history courses, nor the popular book by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Jackson, told me about the "Trail of Tears," the deadly forced march of "the five civilized tribes" westward from Georgia and Alabama across the Mississippi, leaving 4,000 dead in their wake. No treatment of the Civil War mentioned the Sand Creek massacre of hundreds of Indian villagers in Colorado just as "emancipation" was proclaimed for black people by Lincoln's administration.
That classroom map also had a section to the south and west labeled "Mexican Cession." This was a handy euphemism for the aggressive war against Mexico in 1846 in which the United States seized half of that country's land, giving us California and the great Southwest. The term "Manifest Destiny," used at that time, soon of course became more universal. On the eve of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Washington Post saw beyond Cuba: "We are face to face with a strange destiny. The taste of Empire is in the mouth of the people even as the taste of blood in the jungle."
The violent march across the continent, and even the invasion of Cuba, appeared to be within a natural sphere of U.S. interest. After all, hadn't the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 declared the Western Hemisphere to be under our protection? But with hardly a pause after Cuba came the invasion of the Philippines, halfway around the world. The word "imperialism" now seemed a fitting one for U.S. actions. Indeed, that long, cruel war -- treated quickly and superficially in the history books -- gave rise to an Anti-Imperialist League, in which William James and Mark Twain were leading figures. But this was not something I learned in university either.
The "Sole Superpower" Comes into View
Reading outside the classroom, however, I began to fit the pieces of history into a larger mosaic. What at first had seemed like a purely passive foreign policy in the decade leading up to the First World War now appeared as a succession of violent interventions: the seizure of the Panama Canal zone from Colombia, a naval bombardment of the Mexican coast, the dispatch of the Marines to almost every country in Central America, occupying armies sent to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. As the much-decorated General Smedley Butler, who participated in many of those interventions, wrote later: "I was an errand boy for Wall Street."
At the very time I was learning this history -- the years after World War II -- the United States was becoming not just another imperial power, but the world's leading superpower. Determined to maintain and expand its monopoly on nuclear weapons, it was taking over remote islands in the Pacific, forcing the inhabitants to leave, and turning the islands into deadly playgrounds for more atomic tests.
In his memoir, No Place to Hide, Dr. David Bradley, who monitored radiation in those tests, described what was left behind as the testing teams went home: "[R]adioactivity, contamination, the wrecked island of Bikini and its sad-eyed patient exiles." The tests in the Pacific were followed, over the years, by more tests in the deserts of Utah and Nevada, more than a thousand tests in all.
When the war in Korea began in 1950, I was still studying history as a graduate student at Columbia University. Nothing in my classes prepared me to understand American policy in Asia. But I was reading I. F. Stone's Weekly. Stone was among the very few journalists who questioned the official justification for sending an army to Korea. It seemed clear to me then that it was not the invasion of South Korea by the North that prompted U.S. intervention, but the desire of the United States to have a firm foothold on the continent of Asia, especially now that the Communists were in power in China.
Years later, as the covert intervention in Vietnam grew into a massive and brutal military operation, the imperial designs of the United States became yet clearer to me. In 1967, I wrote a little book called Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal. By that time I was heavily involved in the movement against the war.
When I read the hundreds of pages of the Pentagon Papers entrusted to me by Daniel Ellsberg, what jumped out at me were the secret memos from the National Security Council. Explaining the U.S. interest in Southeast Asia, they spoke bluntly of the country's motives as a quest for "tin, rubber, oil."
Neither the desertions of soldiers in the Mexican War, nor the draft riots of the Civil War, not the anti-imperialist groups at the turn of the century, nor the strong opposition to World War I -- indeed no antiwar movement in the history of the nation reached the scale of the opposition to the war in Vietnam. At least part of that opposition rested on an understanding that more than Vietnam was at stake, that the brutal war in that tiny country was part of a grander imperial design.
Various interventions following the U.S. defeat in Vietnam seemed to reflect the desperate need of the still-reigning superpower -- even after the fall of its powerful rival, the Soviet Union -- to establish its dominance everywhere. Hence the invasion of Grenada in 1982, the bombing assault on Panama in 1989, the first Gulf war of 1991. Was George Bush Sr. heartsick over Saddam Hussein's seizure of Kuwait, or was he using that event as an opportunity to move U.S. power firmly into the coveted oil region of the Middle East? Given the history of the United States, given its obsession with Middle Eastern oil dating from Franklin Roosevelt's 1945 deal with King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, and the CIA's overthrow of the democratic Mossadeq government in Iran in 1953, it is not hard to decide that question.
Justifying Empire
The ruthless attacks of September 11th (as the official 9/11 Commission acknowledged) derived from fierce hatred of U.S. expansion in the Middle East and elsewhere. Even before that event, the Defense Department acknowledged, according to Chalmers Johnson's book The Sorrows of Empire, the existence of more than 700 American military bases outside of the United States.
Since that date, with the initiation of a "war on terrorism," many more bases have been established or expanded: in Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, the desert of Qatar, the Gulf of Oman, the Horn of Africa, and wherever else a compliant nation could be bribed or coerced.
When I was bombing cities in Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and France in the Second World War, the moral justification was so simple and clear as to be beyond discussion: We were saving the world from the evil of fascism. I was therefore startled to hear from a gunner on another crew -- what we had in common was that we both read books -- that he considered this "an imperialist war." Both sides, he said, were motivated by ambitions of control and conquest. We argued without resolving the issue. Ironically, tragically, not long after our discussion, this fellow was shot down and killed on a mission.
In wars, there is always a difference between the motives of the soldiers and the motives of the political leaders who send them into battle. My motive, like that of so many, was innocent of imperial ambition. It was to help defeat fascism and create a more decent world, free of aggression, militarism, and racism.
The motive of the U.S. establishment, understood by the aerial gunner I knew, was of a different nature. It was described early in 1941 by Henry Luce, multi-millionaire owner of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, as the coming of "The American Century." The time had arrived, he said, for the United States "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit, and by such means as we see fit."
We can hardly ask for a more candid, blunter declaration of imperial design. It has been echoed in recent years by the intellectual handmaidens of the Bush administration, but with assurances that the motive of this "influence" is benign, that the "purposes" -- whether in Luce's formulation or more recent ones -- are noble, that this is an "imperialism lite." As George Bush said in his second inaugural address: "Spreading liberty around the world… is the calling of our time." The New York Times called that speech "striking for its idealism."
The American Empire has always been a bipartisan project -- Democrats and Republicans have taken turns extending it, extolling it, justifying it. President Woodrow Wilson told graduates of the Naval Academy in 1914 (the year he bombarded Mexico) that the U.S. used "her navy and her army... as the instruments of civilization, not as the instruments of aggression." And Bill Clinton, in 1992, told West Point graduates: "The values you learned here… will be able to spread throughout the country and throughout the world."
For the people of the United States, and indeed for people all over the world, those claims sooner or later are revealed to be false. The rhetoric, often persuasive on first hearing, soon becomes overwhelmed by horrors that can no longer be concealed: the bloody corpses of Iraq, the torn limbs of American GIs, the millions of families driven from their homes -- in the Middle East and in the Mississippi Delta.
Have not the justifications for empire, embedded in our culture, assaulting our good sense -- that war is necessary for security, that expansion is fundamental to civilization -- begun to lose their hold on our minds? Have we reached a point in history where we are ready to embrace a new way of living in the world, expanding not our military power, but our humanity?
Howard Zinn is the author of A People's History of the United States and Voices of a People's History of the United States, now being filmed for a major television documentary. His newest book is A People's History of American Empire, the story of America in the world, told in comics form, with Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle in the American Empire Project book series. An animated video adapted from this essay with visuals from the comic book and voiceover by Viggo Mortensen, as well as a section of the book on Zinn's early life, can be viewed by clicking here. Zinn's website is HowardZinn.org.
Copyright 2008 Howard Zinn
The Toys of War
The Militarization of America
By Col. DAN SMITH
A necessary aspect of armies--or even of a military style police force--is that they carry weapons. Even in Great Britain, except for the local "Bobbie" on the beat, it seems as if more and more special police armed units are being created to fight criminal enterprises. Meeting the need for compact, powerful pistols and other small arms is a vast industry, one that, in the United States, started in the three decades prior to the U.S. Civil War.
So it was no great surprise, seven years after the U.S. defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan and five years after Saddam Hussein's army dissolved in Iraq, to find in the Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act (Public Law 110-181) some congressional action to procure small arms to help rebuild the armies of these countries. The relevant Section is 892 of P.L. 110-181 titled "Competition for Procurement of Small Arms Supplied to Iraq and Afghanistan." This section specifies that the procurement of small arms of less than .50 caliber cannot be sole source. Specifically, it enjoins the Secretary of Defense to ensure that the competition is "full and open," that no U.S. manufacturer is excluded, and that no "product" manufactured in the United States is excluded even if the parent company is incorporated or has its base of operations in another country.
What was surprising was Section 882 of the same public law. This section is titled "Authority to License Certain Military Designations and Likenesses of Weapons Systems to Toy and Hobby Manufacturers."
That's right: the Secretary of the Army, Navy, or Air Force, under a new subsection, is empowered to "license trademarks, service marks, certification marks, and collective marks owned or controlled by the Secretary relating to military designations and likenesses of military weapons systems to any qualifying company upon receipt of a request from the company."
For the real small arms mentioned in Section 892, the Secretary of the Army (who oversees the procurement of all small arms for the entire U.S. military) is obliged only to ensure that the competitive process is observed--i.e., that no company is excluded arbitrarily. When it comes to toys and hobbies, however, the Service Secretaries are enjoined to make sure that each company "qualifies." Specifically, each company must be a "United States company," be a toy or hobby manufacturer, and meet other criteria set by the Secretary of Defense. Unfortunately, nowhere is there a clue as to what these other criteria might be, which leaves open the possibility that one toy or hobby company might end up being unduly favored--just like in the real world.
Had the section ended there, one could envision the Defense Department making some money for the treasury from the licensing process, which would have been a turn-about from its usual multi-billion dollar annual appropriation. Alas, it is not fated to be.
Subsection (3) provides that "the fee for a license under this subsection shall not exceed by more than a nominal amount the amount needed to recover all costs of the Department of Defense in processing the request for the license and supplying the license." (Of course, if your annual appropriation is more than half a trillion dollars and with "nominal" a relative term, the possibilities are legion--one or more of which would involve Senator Everett Dirksen's definition of "real money.)
Also strange is the last subsection of Section 882. It gives the Secretary of Defense a deadline of 180 days from the date the legislation becomes law to implement Section 882. It suggests that someone is going to leave government service and go into a new line of figures and toy weapons, perhaps based on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars,
Consider also the following: toys are for children; real weapons are for real soldiers and real armies and real wars; and hobbies are often taken up when work no longer absorbs most of a person's time.
Sections 882 and 892 of P. L. 110-181 address the three stages of life in terms of a military context of weaponry--infant, adult, old age. These three stages also constitute the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx. And when Oedipus provided the correct answer, the sphinx destroyed itself--an apt metaphor for the fate that awaits all militarized societies, no matter how powerful.
Col. Dan Smith is a retired U.S. Army colonel and a senior fellow on military affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Email at dan@fcnl.org.
By Col. DAN SMITH
A necessary aspect of armies--or even of a military style police force--is that they carry weapons. Even in Great Britain, except for the local "Bobbie" on the beat, it seems as if more and more special police armed units are being created to fight criminal enterprises. Meeting the need for compact, powerful pistols and other small arms is a vast industry, one that, in the United States, started in the three decades prior to the U.S. Civil War.
So it was no great surprise, seven years after the U.S. defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan and five years after Saddam Hussein's army dissolved in Iraq, to find in the Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act (Public Law 110-181) some congressional action to procure small arms to help rebuild the armies of these countries. The relevant Section is 892 of P.L. 110-181 titled "Competition for Procurement of Small Arms Supplied to Iraq and Afghanistan." This section specifies that the procurement of small arms of less than .50 caliber cannot be sole source. Specifically, it enjoins the Secretary of Defense to ensure that the competition is "full and open," that no U.S. manufacturer is excluded, and that no "product" manufactured in the United States is excluded even if the parent company is incorporated or has its base of operations in another country.
What was surprising was Section 882 of the same public law. This section is titled "Authority to License Certain Military Designations and Likenesses of Weapons Systems to Toy and Hobby Manufacturers."
That's right: the Secretary of the Army, Navy, or Air Force, under a new subsection, is empowered to "license trademarks, service marks, certification marks, and collective marks owned or controlled by the Secretary relating to military designations and likenesses of military weapons systems to any qualifying company upon receipt of a request from the company."
For the real small arms mentioned in Section 892, the Secretary of the Army (who oversees the procurement of all small arms for the entire U.S. military) is obliged only to ensure that the competitive process is observed--i.e., that no company is excluded arbitrarily. When it comes to toys and hobbies, however, the Service Secretaries are enjoined to make sure that each company "qualifies." Specifically, each company must be a "United States company," be a toy or hobby manufacturer, and meet other criteria set by the Secretary of Defense. Unfortunately, nowhere is there a clue as to what these other criteria might be, which leaves open the possibility that one toy or hobby company might end up being unduly favored--just like in the real world.
Had the section ended there, one could envision the Defense Department making some money for the treasury from the licensing process, which would have been a turn-about from its usual multi-billion dollar annual appropriation. Alas, it is not fated to be.
Subsection (3) provides that "the fee for a license under this subsection shall not exceed by more than a nominal amount the amount needed to recover all costs of the Department of Defense in processing the request for the license and supplying the license." (Of course, if your annual appropriation is more than half a trillion dollars and with "nominal" a relative term, the possibilities are legion--one or more of which would involve Senator Everett Dirksen's definition of "real money.)
Also strange is the last subsection of Section 882. It gives the Secretary of Defense a deadline of 180 days from the date the legislation becomes law to implement Section 882. It suggests that someone is going to leave government service and go into a new line of figures and toy weapons, perhaps based on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars,
Consider also the following: toys are for children; real weapons are for real soldiers and real armies and real wars; and hobbies are often taken up when work no longer absorbs most of a person's time.
Sections 882 and 892 of P. L. 110-181 address the three stages of life in terms of a military context of weaponry--infant, adult, old age. These three stages also constitute the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx. And when Oedipus provided the correct answer, the sphinx destroyed itself--an apt metaphor for the fate that awaits all militarized societies, no matter how powerful.
Col. Dan Smith is a retired U.S. Army colonel and a senior fellow on military affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Email at dan@fcnl.org.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
War Math
by Bud McClure
A study just released by The Center for Personal Integrity now allows us, on one important measure, to calculate the cost of each of the 4000 American soldiers that have been sacrificed in Bush’s War. The study shows that Bush and seven members of his administration made 935 false statements about the national security threats posed by Saddam Hussein in the two years following September 11, 2001. A quick calculation shows that each life was worth a tad over 4 lies. The Center’s study overwhelmingly suggests a White House campaign of distortion and propaganda, aimed at convincing a gullible and vulnerable public, to support an invasion of Iraq. The two-pronged approach, asserting Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and links with Al-Qaeda, was built on a foundation of 535 lies, Bush in 250 statements and his chief enabler, Secretary of State Colin Powell, with 244. The White House used Goebbel’s first principle of propaganda to promote this war; “repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it.” This technique is so effective that even with the countervailing weight of five years of factual evidence, these two myths remain essentially intact.
Recent Harris polls show the blissful ignorance of the American Public continues with 50% believing the myth of weapons of mass destruction and 64% believing that pre-war Iraq had ties with Al-Qaeda. These facts are not surprising given that lying by Bush and his administration continues. Even so, a majority of Americans now recognize that the invasion of Iraq was wrong, and what is indisputable is that without those 955 initial lies these 4000 young men and women would be alive today!
However, continuing the propaganda campaign is now being promoted as official military policy. Recently, Lt. Col. John Nagl began advocating for the establishment of a new information agency on the editorial pages of The Washington Post (We Can’t Win These Wars on Our Own, 3/9/08). Nagl was on the team, along with Petreaus, that authored the new and much touted Army Counter Insurgency Field Manual. His call for a new agency of information (i.e. Ministry of Truth) suggests that the current propaganda apparatus at the White House isn’t working.
In addition, Nagl trumpets the current Iraq strategy, more money, more troops, and more patience. Nagl also supports the long war strategy that is the military’s antedote to the failure of the short war strategy. He conflates the war in Iraq with the war on terrorism in Afghanistan and around the world and, from that false premise, now argues for essentially more of the same.
Furthermore, his argument that the surge has been successful is shortsighted. He makes only a passing reference to the flawed strategy of hiring and arming the Sunni insurgents to help quell the violence. To hide their participation we renamed them “Awakening (like ‘born again’) Councils.” But their floating loyalties will be short-lived. Already we see that this ‘finger in the dyke’ public relations strategy employed by Bush and General Petraeus, to run out the clock for this administration, is cracking around the edges as the violence in Basra and elsewhere swings upward. Ironically, it appears that the surge strategy won’t even last until Petraeus’s next scheduled appearance before Congress in April where he will be begging, like Nagl, for more time, more money, and promoting some new- fangled plan smothered in half truths. In the editorial Nagl greases the way for his General by arguing that “the most important single step the United States could take toward victory” is to establish a new information agency charged with the task of creating a new narrative (translated propaganda) to “amplify our ideas.” No kidding! Twelve hundred words later and Nagl concludes we just need some more, new and improved, lies to ‘prop’ up the 935 false statements that helped start this war.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi people continue to suffer horrific consequences as a result of our occupation. Four million people have been displaced from their homes, 600,000 or more killed, and 5 years later they still lack the basic necessities of life, like food, water, electricity, and security. No new narrative (propaganda) can compete with this reality. To them and most of the world we are the terrorists now, and only a complete withdrawal of all of our troops and the commencement of a regional, war-ending council of Middle Eastern countries, to include Syria and Iran, has any chance of bringing this disaster to some kind of conclusion.
However, in the spirit of fair play, I’ve got a proposition for Nagl. If he wants civilian support for continuation of this war, let’s vote on it. First, I suggest he start with some basic honesty, in his own words, “with clear eyes and no illusions.” Let him tell the truth about Iraq by acknowledging the lies and propaganda that fuel the war. Second, once he has come clean, let him make an honest pitch to the American people that we need to raise taxes to pay for the war noting that trillions of dollars will be needed, and more importantly that the long war strategy is going to require a draft of our sons and daughters to provide the bodies needed to fight on. Not only will I stand by the result of that vote, I’ll advocate for it. Will he?
The idea that we own the world and can do what we want with it may soon be ending. A financial tsunami is coming ashore. The initial waves of this fiscal chaos are upon us in the form of rapidly rising costs of everything, a plunging devaluation of the dollar, and most notably the, soon to be, realization that what we own is worth a lot less than we think it is. The silver lining in all of this pain will be the dawning reality that the world owns us and that we cannot afford to waste another cent on these failed foreign adventures, like Iraq, that have done nothing to make the world safer and, in fact, have made it less safe. By the nature of this economic reality, the next president may be forced to end our involvement in this foreign adventure because the Chinese, Japanese and others will no longer be loaning us money and, moreover, will be looking to collect the debts we incurred from the spending binge that has fueled our economy for the last 20 years. Sadly, it will be too late for these 4000 young Americans, but maybe their deaths can serve to remind us, once again, that lies made in the service of war always have deadly consequences.
Bud McClure is a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota Duluth and Coordinator of UMD Faculty Against War.
A study just released by The Center for Personal Integrity now allows us, on one important measure, to calculate the cost of each of the 4000 American soldiers that have been sacrificed in Bush’s War. The study shows that Bush and seven members of his administration made 935 false statements about the national security threats posed by Saddam Hussein in the two years following September 11, 2001. A quick calculation shows that each life was worth a tad over 4 lies. The Center’s study overwhelmingly suggests a White House campaign of distortion and propaganda, aimed at convincing a gullible and vulnerable public, to support an invasion of Iraq. The two-pronged approach, asserting Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and links with Al-Qaeda, was built on a foundation of 535 lies, Bush in 250 statements and his chief enabler, Secretary of State Colin Powell, with 244. The White House used Goebbel’s first principle of propaganda to promote this war; “repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it.” This technique is so effective that even with the countervailing weight of five years of factual evidence, these two myths remain essentially intact.
Recent Harris polls show the blissful ignorance of the American Public continues with 50% believing the myth of weapons of mass destruction and 64% believing that pre-war Iraq had ties with Al-Qaeda. These facts are not surprising given that lying by Bush and his administration continues. Even so, a majority of Americans now recognize that the invasion of Iraq was wrong, and what is indisputable is that without those 955 initial lies these 4000 young men and women would be alive today!
However, continuing the propaganda campaign is now being promoted as official military policy. Recently, Lt. Col. John Nagl began advocating for the establishment of a new information agency on the editorial pages of The Washington Post (We Can’t Win These Wars on Our Own, 3/9/08). Nagl was on the team, along with Petreaus, that authored the new and much touted Army Counter Insurgency Field Manual. His call for a new agency of information (i.e. Ministry of Truth) suggests that the current propaganda apparatus at the White House isn’t working.
In addition, Nagl trumpets the current Iraq strategy, more money, more troops, and more patience. Nagl also supports the long war strategy that is the military’s antedote to the failure of the short war strategy. He conflates the war in Iraq with the war on terrorism in Afghanistan and around the world and, from that false premise, now argues for essentially more of the same.
Furthermore, his argument that the surge has been successful is shortsighted. He makes only a passing reference to the flawed strategy of hiring and arming the Sunni insurgents to help quell the violence. To hide their participation we renamed them “Awakening (like ‘born again’) Councils.” But their floating loyalties will be short-lived. Already we see that this ‘finger in the dyke’ public relations strategy employed by Bush and General Petraeus, to run out the clock for this administration, is cracking around the edges as the violence in Basra and elsewhere swings upward. Ironically, it appears that the surge strategy won’t even last until Petraeus’s next scheduled appearance before Congress in April where he will be begging, like Nagl, for more time, more money, and promoting some new- fangled plan smothered in half truths. In the editorial Nagl greases the way for his General by arguing that “the most important single step the United States could take toward victory” is to establish a new information agency charged with the task of creating a new narrative (translated propaganda) to “amplify our ideas.” No kidding! Twelve hundred words later and Nagl concludes we just need some more, new and improved, lies to ‘prop’ up the 935 false statements that helped start this war.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi people continue to suffer horrific consequences as a result of our occupation. Four million people have been displaced from their homes, 600,000 or more killed, and 5 years later they still lack the basic necessities of life, like food, water, electricity, and security. No new narrative (propaganda) can compete with this reality. To them and most of the world we are the terrorists now, and only a complete withdrawal of all of our troops and the commencement of a regional, war-ending council of Middle Eastern countries, to include Syria and Iran, has any chance of bringing this disaster to some kind of conclusion.
However, in the spirit of fair play, I’ve got a proposition for Nagl. If he wants civilian support for continuation of this war, let’s vote on it. First, I suggest he start with some basic honesty, in his own words, “with clear eyes and no illusions.” Let him tell the truth about Iraq by acknowledging the lies and propaganda that fuel the war. Second, once he has come clean, let him make an honest pitch to the American people that we need to raise taxes to pay for the war noting that trillions of dollars will be needed, and more importantly that the long war strategy is going to require a draft of our sons and daughters to provide the bodies needed to fight on. Not only will I stand by the result of that vote, I’ll advocate for it. Will he?
The idea that we own the world and can do what we want with it may soon be ending. A financial tsunami is coming ashore. The initial waves of this fiscal chaos are upon us in the form of rapidly rising costs of everything, a plunging devaluation of the dollar, and most notably the, soon to be, realization that what we own is worth a lot less than we think it is. The silver lining in all of this pain will be the dawning reality that the world owns us and that we cannot afford to waste another cent on these failed foreign adventures, like Iraq, that have done nothing to make the world safer and, in fact, have made it less safe. By the nature of this economic reality, the next president may be forced to end our involvement in this foreign adventure because the Chinese, Japanese and others will no longer be loaning us money and, moreover, will be looking to collect the debts we incurred from the spending binge that has fueled our economy for the last 20 years. Sadly, it will be too late for these 4000 young Americans, but maybe their deaths can serve to remind us, once again, that lies made in the service of war always have deadly consequences.
Bud McClure is a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota Duluth and Coordinator of UMD Faculty Against War.
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