Maybe Levin And Bowen Should Throw Shoes
I know it's a lot more interesting to talk about two shoes getting thrown at President Bush in Iraq, but two more important stories are getting ignored as a result. These are two metaphorical "shoes" thrown at Bush, by the Senate and by Bush's own Inspector General in Iraq. And they're going to have a much more lasting impact on how history sees our Iraq adventure than one video clip of a guy hucking his footwear at President Bush. Because they deal with torture, and the failure of the Iraq reconstruction effort.
Last Thursday, Carl Levin's Senate Armed Services Committee released a report which basically called Bush and his entire National Security Council war criminals. Of note was the fact that the Senate committee voted for the report unanimously. Every single Republican (led by John McCain), along with all the Democrats, voted for this report. And the language the report uses is not the usual vague "mistakes were made" sort (which is often a necessity forced upon the such committees as a whole, by one party or another).
The report is titled "Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry Into The Treatment Of Detainees In U.S. Custody" [download PDF version]. From the opening paragraphs:
Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists are taught to expect Americans to abuse them. They are recruited based on false propaganda that says the United States is out to destroy Islam. Treating detainees harshly only reinforces that distorted view, increases resistance to cooperation, and creates new enemies. In fact, the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States" cited "pervasive anti U.S. sentiment among most Muslims" as an underlying factor fueling the spread of the global jihadist movement. Former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that "there are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq -- as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat -- are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo."
The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.
The report goes on for 29 pages in great detail about what happened, and who authorized it. It does not mince words. It names names. It traces not only the orders for such treatment of prisoners from the very top of the chain of command, it also traces the legal opinions which were produced to provide cover for what is described as techniques "based on illegal exploitation (under the rules listed in the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War) of prisoners over the last 50 years." In other words, war crimes. The first three of nineteen conclusions read:
Senate Armed Services Committee Conclusions
Conclusion 1: On February 7, 2002, President George W. Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. Following the President's determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions, used in SERE [Survival Evasion Resistance Escape] training to simulate tactics used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions, were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody.
Conclusion 2: Members of the President's Cabinet and other senior officials participated in meetings inside the White House in 2002 and 2003 where specific interrogation techniques were discussed. National Security Council Principals reviewed the CIA's interrogation program during that period.
Conclusions on SERE Training Techniques and Interrogations
Conclusion 3: The use of techniques similar to those used in SERE resistance training -- such as stripping students of their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, and treating them like animals -- was at odds with the commitment to humane treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. Using those techniques for interrogating detainees was also inconsistent with the goal of collecting accurate intelligence information, as the purpose of SERE resistance training is to increase the ability of U.S. personnel to resist abusive interrogations and the techniques used were based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to elicit false confessions.
So, a bipartisan committee of the United States Senate has publicly released a summary of a report (the full report is still classified, although Committee Chairman Carl Levin has called for it to be declassified) unanimously, that details war crimes by the highest government officials in the land.
You'd think this would be news, in other words.
The second metaphorical "shoe" tossed at Bush came from his own Inspector General in Iraq, Stuart W. Bowen, Jr. The report is titled: "Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience." The story was broken by the New York Times, and the entire lengthy article is worth reading.
An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.
The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag -- particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army -- the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.
In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department "kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces -- the number would jump 20,000 a week! 'We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.' "
Mr. Powell's assertion that the Pentagon inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004.
Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.
This report is scheduled to be given to Congress in February, and is still in draft form. But, as the article pointed out, the ramifications for the future are huge, considering that we're going to be in Afghanistan for a while.
Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the history concludes, "the government as a whole has never developed a legislatively sanctioned doctrine or framework for planning, preparing and executing contingency operations in which diplomacy, development and military action all figure."
Few remember it, but a Democratic candidate for president campaigned on creating just such a framework for rebuilding countries. Instead of always reinventing the wheel and eternally performing nation-building as an ad hoc exercise, why not create a department that could provide the needed planning and expertise, by professionals who had done this sort of thing before? His name was Dennis Kucinich, and he was roundly ridiculed for his "Department of Peace" proposal. It's not looking so ridiculous now, is it?
Imagine, if you will, these two stories breaking under President Clinton's watch. Would either one of them be greeting with a collective yawn by the mainstream media? This weekend's Sunday morning talk shows, for instance, barely mentioned either story (most of the shows didn't mention either story at all). I saw a lot of "Bush ducking shoes" headlines, but I must have missed all the "White House Accused Of War Crimes By Senate" or "Iraq Reconstruction An Enormous Failure" headlines. Outside of a few intrepid newspapers, neither story is getting much attention at all.
Maybe it's just Bush fatigue. Some might say my insistence on the importance of these stories is nothing more than one last round of Bush-bashing. I disagree. Because these things were done in my name, and in every other Americans' name. To be sure they never happen again, we must examine exactly what did happen. Those who don't remember history are famously condemned to repeat it, and those who prefer not to even read such history in the first place are surely condemned to repeat it a whole lot faster.
Bush entered office trying to force a quick start to a recession, and he leaves office with the American economy in the worst shape it's been in since the Great Depression. Bush entered the war in Iraq and we all watched Iraqis beating a fallen statue of Saddam Hussein with their shoes, and now Bush leaves office with Iraqi journalists throwing shoes at him. Bush took over Baghdad while ignoring looting and rampant destruction of the Iraq infrastructure, and then squandered billions of dollars on "reconstruction" that was largely ineffective. Bush ran on a platform of "compassionate conservatism" and then watched an American city drown, and personally approved of torturing prisoners held by America. Bush ran on a standard Republican platform of "getting government out of people's lives" and then presided over trying to wiretap every phone call and email in America. Bush also ran on "restoring the honor and dignity of the Oval Office," and he exits still lying about how we went to war with Iraq (he's been quoted more than once in the past few weeks -- unchallenged by the interviewers -- saying that Saddam Hussein was refusing to let weapons inspectors in, which is just flat-out lying).
I know that America is ready to move on. I know that everyone is much more interested in the future Obama administration than looking back at the Bush administration. But it is important to take one last look back at Bush's legacy, to make sure these things are never again allowed to happen. Even the Senate all but accusing the White House of war crimes and the Inspector General in Iraq accusing the White House of massive incompetence don't make the front pages, which I think is just wrong.
Perhaps Carl Levin or Stuart Bowen, Jr. should toss a shoe at the president. Because maybe then these stories would get the attention they deserve.
Cross-posted at The Huffington Post
-- Chris Weigant
Chris,
Just between you and me and the four walls, so to speak, your post was better!
Lots more to say but no time now...later!
Bravo. Succinct and to the point. And Merry Christmas to all Weigantnauts.
What we have to understand is that we're going to spend the next eight years reversing history.
We'll be reversing deregulation and the financial crisis. We'll be changing tax policy. We'll be undoing Gitmo and disentangling from Iraq. We'll be overturning midnight regulations. But the last eight years won't un-happen, and they won't be checked in the first hundred days.
Given that reality, the sooner we get to the bottom of what went wrong -- on every level -- the sooner we can get started undoing the Bush years. That's why Senate reports and blue-ribbon commissions will be so important: we can leave George Bush, Cheney, and the neocons in the dustbin of history -- and let the historians deal with him as they may.
Let them crack jokes about the other shoe (and I will); we have to move on to repairing the damage.
The idea that we should treat terrorists nicely so that OUR citizens will receive equal treatment is ludicrous... There is absolutely ZERO evidence to support such a contention.
To put it in it's proper context, if you have a rabid dog bearing down on a group of innocent little children, are you going to compassionately intercede and calm the rabid dog with kindness?
Of course not. You are going to put the dog down as quickly as possible.
What is the public policy in dealing with animals that have attacked humans? That same policy should be applied to terrorists..
As far as Colin Powell, he has flip-flopped on so many different issues, he is not much of a reliable source.. As much as I used to respect the man, he seems to be a political animal these days.
Michale.....
Crossposted to huffingtonpost.com
Michale, no one is saying that terrorists should be treated to tea and crumpets. That's a straw man and you can stop stabbing it.
Torture simply does not produce reliable information; if it did, every police department in the country would be using it. Instead, torture produces the information that will stop the torture -- if I torture YOU, Michale, you will actually look for the subtle clues to figure out what you're supposed to confess. You will make a ***FALSE*** confession.
By torturing you, I will blow a big hole in my credibility and the credibility of any information I produce. I will cease to be the Good Guy in The Situation.
But real interrogation is hard. It requires knowledge, training, and insight -- three things sorely lacking in the US intelligence community as of 2001, for a host of reasons I won't go into here. Interrogation is hard, but torture is easy. When the Bush team made their sociopathic choice, it was the easy way out.
@Ink
Michale, no one is saying that terrorists should be treated to tea and crumpets. That's a straw man and you can stop stabbing it.
By putting the comfort of terrorists BEFORE saving innocent lives, you might as well be treating them to tea and crumpets.
Torture simply does not produce reliable information; if it did, every police department in the country would be using it. Instead, torture produces the information that will stop the torture — if I torture YOU, Michale, you will actually look for the subtle clues to figure out what you're supposed to confess. You will make a ***FALSE*** confession.
Torture CAN produce reliable and actionable intel. This is a bona fide fact.
Even if it's only effective 1% of the time and only 1 innocent life is saved, that makes it worth it..
By torturing you, I will blow a big hole in my credibility and the credibility of any information I produce. I will cease to be the Good Guy in The Situation.
Yes, that's the politically correct attitude to have. It is also completely false and has NO basis in reality... There were many MANY terrorist attacks against innocent Americans before Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a documented fact.
The idea that, if we DON'T torture terrorists, there will cease to be any terrorism is ludicrous and completely unsubstantiated by ANY facts whatsoever.
But real interrogation is hard. It requires knowledge, training, and insight — three things sorely lacking in the US intelligence community as of 2001, for a host of reasons
And you know this... how exactly??
The fact is, our intelligence community is made up of dedicated men and women who are highly successful at what they do. This is supported by the FACT that there has not been a terrorist attack on US proper in 7 years...
I realize it's easy for people to sit in their cushy chairs and cushy offices and drive their cushy SUVs and castigate the intelligence community for their actions.
But keep in mind. They do not have the luxury of living in your cushy world.
"People can sleep peacefully at night only because there are rough men who stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
-George Orwell
Perhaps you should just say, "Thank you"...
Michale......
Michale: Stop stabbing the scarecrow -- his heart's not bleeding.
To answer your question, I was one of those "dedicated men and women who are highly successful at what they do."
Yeah, that's right, Michale. You're having a debate with someone who actually did interrogations.
YOU can thank ME.
To be specific, I was a US Army 98G Arabic translator. I worked with classified Top Secret/SCI SIGINT (SIGnals INTelligence) for five years. During that time I deployed to the Middle East and supported counterintelligence operations with real-time translation services. During that deployment I observed several disappointing shortfalls in our training.
First and foremost, we had virtually zero cultural training to go with the language skills. Language is a barrier all on its own, but within the words there is the symbolic and intellectual language of ideas. The armed forces never, ever bothered to teach us those ideas. My own private studies were invaluable to the commander in trying to interpret data because he didn't have the first clue what 'Hajj' really meant, or why the Shi'ites in Jahara wouldn't cooperate with Salafis in Kuwait City.
The Army didn't teach me these things because it had much more important things for me to do while at Fort Hood: cut the grass, change the oil in trucks, destroy several tons of documentation about Soviet units that no longer existed, and play with Cold War-era tactical SIGINT equipment.
When Rumsfeld downplayed the significance of the shortfall in Army translators, he sneered and cited this lack of cultural training as a reason for using contractors instead of training new linguists. This was the first time I have ever actually thrown an object at my television.
But don't take my word for how important this is -- take Matthew Alexander's word for it. He's the US Army interrogator who nailed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by sitting down to talk (yes, TALK) to a detainee for a few hours:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/12/hbc-90004036
There's a long, long history behind the US Army Field Manual for interrogations, Michale. Decades and decades of experience in many theaters of war has taught the Army that you gain the most valuable information most quickly by offering food and liquid ("tea and crumpets") and having a conversation.
The "ticking time bomb" is a red herring. Alexander dealt with the ticking time bomb every friggin' day in Iraq, and produced actionable intelligence in a timely fashion without ever once resorting to torture.
Real interrogation is NOT just some namby-pamby coddling of evil men; it's smart, rational policy. But it takes trained, specialized people who are in chronically short supply in a country that has never valued foreign language skills or cultural awareness. An Arabic linguist takes 63 weeks just to learn the language. Waterboarding is quite easy and cheap by comparison -- an easy resort for sociopaths like Cheney and Bush.
As for your Cheney talking point, "the FACT that there has not been a terrorist attack on US proper in 7 years" -- how many jihadis have been drawn to the cause over this? The number one reason cited by foreign fighters in Iraq for their joining the fight is GUANTANAMO and ABU GHRAIB. That's right. Thousands of "rough men who stand ready to do violence on (our) behalf," who "do not have the luxury of living in (my) cushy world," have been killed because of Gitmo and Pvt. England. They were both disasters for America, and not just in some mythical court of opinion but in the form of IEDs and sniper fire.
Finally: What about you, Michale? While YOU are driving in your Prius, enjoying the benefits of the freedom I bought for you with my blood, sweat, and tears (including the freedom to swallow whatever bullshit Dick Cheney says), what do YOU know about interrogation techniques and the psychology of torture? What studies have you made of the 'effectiveness' of so-called 'enhanced interrogation'?
Anything?
Episodes of "24" don't count...
I have read that link about the Army interrogator and I have conceded that, in the situation he (and apparently you) were in, yes. Torture was not appropriate or effective..
However, that situation is a far cry from what I am referring to.
Finally: What about you, Michale? While YOU are driving in your Prius, enjoying the benefits of the freedom I bought for you with my blood, sweat, and tears (including the freedom to swallow whatever bullshit Dick Cheney says), what do YOU know about interrogation techniques and the psychology of torture? What studies have you made of the 'effectiveness' of so-called 'enhanced interrogation'?
I have to admit, this part gave me a huge laugh. I find it amusing that you would mistake me for a Prius driving, latte slurping liberal.. :D
I am a veteran of the USAF and the US Army. I was an MI Ell Tee during Desert Storm and had served as an LEO and an FSO for the better part of a quarter century. I have also served as a military and intelligence liaison to about a half dozen different countries, spanning the globe..
CT operations is a far cry from milops and what doesn't work for military applications is quite effective in the field.
I am not saying that we should torture people to see if they are terrorists. I am not saying we should torture terrorist just because they are terrorists, although I would not have much of a problem with that..
I am saying that, in the unlikely event that we have a known and proven terrorist and there is an imminent threat of loss of innocent life or lives and it's proven that said terrorist has actionable intel, then I don't see a problem with torturing the scumbag to save lives.
And, frankly, I am surprised that anyone WOULD have a problem with that, under the circumstances that I have outlined.
It comes down to a question of priorities. What's more important.
Saving innocent lives??
Or the comfort of a terrorist??
To me, it's a no brainer.
Michale.....
Michale,
You continue to make the error of thinking this is about tea and crumpets versus torture. You insist the 'ticking time bomb' scenario changes everything. Clearly, neither of your assumptions is true. You're just plain WRONG about this -- now demonstrate the intestinal fortitude of the officer class and just admit it.
NO ONE says we should coddle terrorists and ask them to pretty please tell us where the bomb is hidden. Torture WILL NOT HELP in these circumstances -- in fact, it can only HURT, because it makes the detainee LESS likely to cooperate. Any cooperation, any information gleaned from torture is IMMEDIATELY suspect -- not because torture is wrong, but because it DOES NOT PRODUCE RELIABLE INFORMATION or a cooperative prisoner.
I'm not particularly concerned about making terrorists "comfortable." I am very, VERY much concerned about getting reliable, useful information from them in a timely fashion. There is too much at stake to let our atavistic impulses take over. So, Lt. Michale, shall I torture the prisoner -- or INTERVIEW him??