Iraq Anniversary Passes With Little Attention

With all of the attention that has been given to the health care debate and the potential passage of the current legislation, there wasn't much coverage of yesterday's important anniversary.

Yesterday marked the seventh anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by the United States military.

The folks over at Brave New Films made a video that highlights the numerous costs of the war and urging President Obama to heed the lessons of Iraq in his decision-making in Afghanistan. Here is the video:

Cheney Delcares His Support for Waterboarding

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was on ABC's This Week yesterday morning spouting most of the same talking points that he has become known for ever since leaving office last year. He slammed the Obama Administration as being weak on terrorism and criticized their handling of almost every aspect of their Foreign Policy.

While much of what Cheney had to say is not surprising there was this exchange between Cheney and guest host Jonathan Karl:

KARL: Did you more often win or lose those battles, especially as you got to the second term?

CHENEY: Well, I suppose it depends on which battle you're talking about. I won some; I lost some. I can't...

(CROSSTALK)

KARL: ... waterboarding, clearly, what was your...

CHENEY: I was a big supporter of waterboarding. I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques that...

KARL: And you opposed the administration's actions of doing away with waterboarding?

CHENEY: Yes.

Cheney's open admission to being a "big supporter" of waterboarding has led some like Andrew Sullivan to claim that this is an open admission to a war crime by the former Vice President:

In fact, the attorney general of the United States is legally obliged to prosecute someone who has openly admitted such a war crime or be in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention on Torture. For Eric Holder to ignore this duty subjects him too to prosecution. If the US government fails to enforce the provision against torture, the UN or a foreign court can initiate an investigation and prosecution.

These are not my opinions and they are not hyperbole. They are legal facts. Either this country is governed by the rule of law or it isn't. Cheney's clear admission of his central role in authorizing waterboarding and the clear evidence that such waterboarding did indeed take place means that prosecution must proceed.

Cheney himself just set in motion a chain of events that the civilized world must see to its conclusion or cease to be the civilized world. For such a high official to escape the clear letter of these treaties and conventions, and to openly brag of it, renders such treaties and conventions meaningless.

In addition to pretty much confessing it only solidifies Cheney's sadistic tendencies each time he appears on one of these programs. When the former Vice President goes on national television and declares that he is a big fan and supporter of torture, one would hope that in a country that prides itself on being a nation of laws, some action would be taken. Still though, the Obama Administration and the Holder Justice Department continue to take no action on an issue that so clearly needs further investigation and civilized society suffers. After all, if there is no punishment for crimes as serious as these, then there will be no deterrent when history repeats itself in the future. These are grave and serious matters and it is on this Administration to stand up for the rule of law no matter how politically difficult.

For those interested, here is the full ABC interview in two parts:

Revising Hell's History: Col. Larry James, Interrogation Policies, and Calls for Accountability

If ever the collective mindset surrounding a single word has changed over the last decade, it can be argued that the word “torture” must be high on that list. Prior to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, one may have used the word in passing to describe sitting through a boring lecture in college or their feelings about their grueling nine to five work week. Torture. Nearly a decade later, when one utters the word, their mind probably flashes to images that came out of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the many reports that have been released detailing how this word, how torture, became official governmental policy of the United States. The 2000’s took the concept of torture from that of something unlawful that was only put into practice by brutal dictators, to accepted policy that was put into place by a democracy. Torture had been rebranded and even had a snappy new euphemism: “enhanced interrogation techniques”. Cleaner, professional, sanitized.

Debates on the topic of interrogation policy lit up our television and computer screens. Were we really condoning torture…is the United States justified in using these techniques on detainees…do these policies break laws and should we investigate? We saw a Vice President insist that we (as a country) needed to go to the “dark side” to get information and we saw some defenders of these policies line up in support of what they would have been the first to condemn if done to a U.S. Marine. These were extraordinary times.

In the midst of it all, time continued its relentless march toward the future. America chose a new President who, amidst all of the questions that still surrounded this issue, insisted that we “look to the future” and not get caught up in the past. This new President boldly declared that the old era was over while still continuing to advance policies like extraordinary rendition and indefinite detention without charge. Now, in 2010 we no longer are witnessing intellectual arguments over policies surrounding torture on the evening news and the eight years under the previous Administration seem like an old memory. While there may no longer be a robust collective debate on this issue, there are moments when we are reminded of the continued ramifications that remain unresolved.

Most recently Scott Horton, a reporter for Harper’s, wrote a lengthy piece in which he blew the cover off of the official story of three deaths of detainees that were being held at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba in 2006. At the time, the deaths were reported as suicides, but new witnesses have come forward to strongly suggest that an investigation needs to take place about the potential that these detainees were killed at a separate “black site” just outside of the official prison grounds. The soldiers who came forward in Horton’s piece did so after they had approached the Obama Justice Department with their story:

The Justice Department thus faced a dilemma; it could do the politically convenient thing, which was to find no justification for a thorough investigation, leave the NCIS conclusions in place, and hope that the public and the news media would obey the Obama Administration’s dictum to “look forward, not backward”; or it could pursue a course of action that would implicate the Bush Justice Department in a cover-up of possible homicides.

The Obama Justice Department did the politically convenient thing and told the soldiers that there was no justification for any such investigation into a cover-up of the deaths of these detainees. This behavior, that of refusing to look into potential criminal behavior by the Bush Administration, is nothing new. Though there is continued insistence that the United States is a land where the rule of law reigns supreme, the actions that can be observed in cases like this one tell a different story. These actions tell a story of concealed truths and a dark history that is eagerly being swept under the rug. While it is evident that some wish to keep that history hidden from sight, others have decided to take an active role in crafting a new, revisionist history. This is a history where those in power in 2002 did not advocate for torturous policies, but instead recognized the evil of the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” taking place in Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq. This revisionist history consists of a narrative where those in leadership positions not only saw abuse, but actively took steps to correct its spread.

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Col. (Ret.) Larry James is the author of Fixing Hell: An Army Psychologist Confronts Abu Ghraib. James spent 22 years in the Army as a Colonel and was the Chair of the Department of Psychology at Walter Reed Medical Center. Currently, James is the Dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. In Fixing Hell, James tells the story of how he was sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in January, 2003 and to Abu Ghraib in the summer of 2004 in lieu of the discovery of abusive interrogation tactics. James claims that he was sent to both locations because the leadership wanted these abuses stopped and wanted his services as a psychologist in order to design humane methods of interrogation. Here is a passage from right before he was sent to Cuba:

“I would have to deploy to Cuba and replace Major Leso myself. Colonel Cooper and Colonel Banks agreed that this was the right course of action, particularly because things were getting worse down there. Gitmo needed an experienced senior Army psychologist with a significant background in correctional and forensic psychology.”

In his book, James immediately establishes the narrative that the problems at Guantanamo Bay were structural. James doesn’t claim that the command structure at the prison was partly to blame, but insists that “all problems” at the prison could be attributed to this flaw. He also makes it known that once he arrived at the prison in January 2003, there was some inappropriate behavior taking place. He even describes witnessing one such interrogation, but instead of interfering or reporting the abuse, he lets it play out (emphasis mine):

“I heard lots of yelling, screaming, and furniture being thrown around. I saw Luther and three MPs wrestling with a detainee on the floor. It was an awful sight. I wanted to run back to my room and wash my eyes out with bleach. The detainee was naked except for the pink panties I had seen hanging on the door earlier. He also had lipstick and a wig on. The four men were holding the prisoner down and trying to outfit him with the matching pink nightgown, but he was fighting hard. My first instinct was to rush in and start barking orders at the men, demanding they stop this ridiculous and abusive wrestling match. But I managed to quell that urge and wait. I opened my thermos, poured a cup of coffee, and watched the episode play out, hoping it would take a better turn and not wanting to interfere without good reason, even if this was a terrible scene. I waited several minutes, but with no good end in sight I had to act.”

This is the only instance in the entire book where James describes witnessing inappropriate conduct in detail during interrogations and despite the initial reaction of wanting to “wash his eyes out with bleach”, his response to this instance is to pour himself some coffee and not “interfere without good reason”. After James does decide to act, he simply speaks with the interrogator, suggests that he instead give the detainee a McDonald’s fish sandwich and the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated, and claims that this new “humane” and trust-building tactic began to spread like wildfire throughout the prison.

During the five months that James spends at Guantanamo Bay, he states that he had free reign to put policies in place to stop the abuses and that psychologists only accessed the medical records of detainees to protect them, not use the information in coordination with interrogators to maximize the effects of the torture. Then, when it was time for Col. James to leave Guantanamo in May of 2003, he says that he was proud to know that he has instituted polices that fixed all of the problems stating that there have been “…no incidents of abuse at Guantanamo Bay by either an interrogator or psychologist reported since my arrival in Cuba in January 2003”.

The accuracy of James’ statement is contradicted by mountains of reports and articles that have been written not only since he left Cuba in 2003, but since his book was published in 2008.

Still, after James left Cuba in 2003, he was summoned to Abu Ghraib in June 2004 to, as he states, clean up the practices at that prison as he did in Guantanamo Bay. In his book he often claims that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were the result of bad leadership and how this led a handful of troubled soldiers to cross the line and commit these abuses. James tells the stories of how sexual frustrations played a role in the chaos at the prison and uses his “psychological expertise” to tell the reader how he knew one of the soldiers at the prison was a lesbian:

“I didn’t have to ask her if she was a lesbian, but as a highly trained psychologist I spotted all the signals that made that a pretty safe conclusion. At the very least, this was one tough gal, no matter her sexual orientation. Her voice was deeper than mine, and if I had any tattoos I’m sure that I would have chosen more feminine ones than hers.”

James tells the same kind of story in Abu Ghraib as he told in Guantanamo and how he became the leader that the prison needed to get turned around. He even makes the claim that there were “no more incidents of abuse reported by an interrogator or a psychologist” after he arrived in June 2004.

Even though James is a psychologist and represents himself as a medical professional, he describes an internal struggle that he has surrounding his role as both a soldier and a healer. Despite this conflict, James picks a side:

“It was clear to me that I was no longer a doctor but rather a combatant with the sole purpose of helping the Army kill or capture the enemy.”

It is this conclusion that leads to questions about whether James felt that he was a combatant when he was interacting with detainees at Guantanamo Bay and when he expresses disdain for groups and individuals that have been critical of United States policy. Here is how James describes the International Committee of the Red Cross in his book:

“Like most other soldiers, I saw the ICRC representatives as a bunch of radical left do-gooders, mostly from Europe, who were as interested in giving America a black eye as they were in truly helping the innocent. Every ICRC rep I met had long, disheveled ‘60s and ‘70s hairstyles as well as Birkenstock sandals—the consummate hippie motif. They thought all of the detainees were completely innocent and only needed to be hugged more.”

James denies that he ever did anything inappropriate or criminal while he was at Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib and claims that his critics have no evidence to back up their charges. In fact, James claims that he was never at either location when abuses were occurring. This is a puzzling claim considering many publicly available documents that shed more light on the time period when James was stationed at Guantanamo Bay.

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Col. Larry James, PH.D. arrived at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility in January 2003 as the Chief Psychologist of the Joint Intelligence Group and a senior member of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT). James’ stint at the prison facility lasted until May 5, 2003. According to what James wrote in Fixing Hell he was responsible for improving interrogation methods and his boss, Major General Geoffrey D. Miller, was also on board with implementing humane and respectful tactics:

“General Miller had discussed how I would be replacing Major Leso, and that it would be my job to teach the interrogators how to get intel without yelling, slapping, sleep deprivation, humiliation, or food deprivation.”

[…]

“While working with them [juvenile prisoners], I was still expected to oversee the rest of the interrogation process at Gitmo and to fix what had gone so wrong in the past.”

Through the words of James, it is quite clear that his role was to oversee the interrogation process and while he claims that he did, that abusive techniques were addressed, and that all the problems were fixed during his tenure, officially released documents tell another story.

In November 2008, the Senate Armed Services Committee concluded an investigation into the treatment of detainees that were held in U.S. custody. The bipartisan report was released on April 21, 2009 and covered military interrogations. Some of the conclusions that the report reached were as follows:

- Once President Bush made a written declaration on February 7, 2002 that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, it opened the door for techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, stress positions, and others to be used.
- High level Bush Administration officials and Cabinet members held meetings in 2002-2003 that specifically discussed interrogation techniques.
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s authorization of “aggressive interrogation techniques” on December 2, 2002 was a direct cause of abuse at Guantanamo Bay.
- When Major General Geoffrey Miller visited Iraq in August and September 2003, he encouraged interrogators to be more aggressive during interrogations.
- The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not the result of a few soldiers acting alone, but the techniques depicted in the infamous photos were the result of their approval in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

The 232 page report also details some of the behavior that transpired at Guantanamo Bay in the Spring of 2003, the same time period that Col. James was present and working to (in his words) “fix what had gone so wrong in the past”. Contrary to the statements made by James in his book regarding Maj. Gen. Miller, on Page 129 of the Senate Armed Services Report it states:

“General Hill’s March 21, 2003 memo stated that both he and MG Miller felt that approval of all of the previously authorized techniques (in Categories I, II and III) was “essential”. General Hill stated that ‘both Geoff Miller and I believe that we need as many appropriate tools as possible’ and called Category II and the one previously authorized Category III technique ‘critical to maximizing our ability to accomplish the mission, now and in the future.” The ‘critical’ techniques referred to by General Hill included stress positions, deprivation of light and auditory stimuli, removal of clothing, use of detainee phobias such as dogs, and the one Category III technique the Secretary had authorized, which included grabbing, poking and light pushing.

This was during a time period when Generals and a Working Group were looking into techniques that should be used and which techniques were appropriate at Guantanamo.

Also during this time period, the SASC Report states that a “Commander’s Inquiry” was launched to investigate claims that military personnel and military police were forcing detainees to participate in “physical training”. According to page 133 of the report, an interrogator, two analysts, and a member of the GTMO Behavior Science Consultation Team (the same BSCT team of which Col. James was a senior member) were interviewed for this inquiry. The report states that all of these figures “believed that the technique was appropriate, approved, applied properly, and was common practice…”

The report goes on to say that a subsequent memo (entitled a “Historic Look at Inappropriate Techniques used at GTMO”) was later filed and was very critical of the Commander’s Inquiry saying that it did not adequately review multiple claims of inappropriate behavior nor follow through with appropriate discipline. One of the incidents that was not reviewed, was one in which a female military interrogator wiped (what she told the detainee was) menstrual blood on his face and forehead. Furthermore according to the SASC Report, this “Historic Look” document concluded that:

"…the incidents occurring during the Spring of 2003 signif[ied] a consistent problem at GTMO.” It stated that it was “clear” that interrogators “may use several if not all of the techniques that require SECDEF notification.” The memo also concluded that the “interpretation of the SECDEF approved techniques has resulted in variations on how techniques are applied (i.e., is yelling, loud music and strobe lights environmental manipulation?)” and “[d]espite these revelations by interrogators, the supervisory chain of command reports that these techniques are not used.”

Not only does the SASC Report refute the claim made by Col. James that “…no incidents of abuse at Guantanamo Bay by either an interrogator or psychologist reported since my arrival in Cuba in January 2003”, but it also shows that these same patterns continued after James left GTMO in May 2003 after he claimed to have instituted policies “intended to prevent prisoner abuse at all military prisons.”

The SASC Report discusses the interrogation of Mohamadou Walid Slahi that began in July 2003 and went on through the end of that summer. Slahi was subjected to “variable light patterns” and “rock music to the tune of Drowning Pool’s ‘Let the Bodies Hit the Floor’”. Slahi was also shown a fake letter which contained information that Slahi’s mother had been captured and would soon be brought to GTMO. The fake letter also made sure to point out that she would be the first female prisoner at the “previously all-male prison environment.”

As the summer wore on, Slahi was reported to have been cooperative with interrogators yet his level of interrogation did not change. In an October 17, 2003 email that is highlighted in the SASC Report, that was sent from a GTMO interrogator to a member of the BSCT, it was discussed how Slahi was now hearing voices and knew that this was not normal. The member of the BSCT, LTC Diane Zierhoffer replied, “sensory deprivation can cause hallucinations, usually visual rather than auditory, but you never know…In the dark you create things out of what little you have…”

This is the same BSCT team that Col. James had been a senior member of only months earlier and where he claims he left in place policies that would prevent the abuse of future detainees.

It is clear through the SASC Report as well as through supplemental documents, that torture at Guantanamo Bay was instituted from the top down. It started with President Bush’s declaration that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the detainees at the prison, continued with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s authorizations, and percolated right down into the individual cells of detainees. As much as Col. James wants his readers to believe that the abuse stopped upon his arrival, it is overwhelmingly clear that it did not. Abuses happened during James’ 5 month tenure at the prison facility and it is clear that health care professionals were involved with interrogations. It is also clear that these problems were not “fixed” once James left GTMO and the Scott Horton piece that I reference in the introduction is further proof that suspicious deaths even occurred 3 years after James supposedly installed measures to protect against abuse.

Major General Miller, who Col. James mentions was on board with treating detainees humanely, made a trip up to Iraq in June 2003. This was one month after Col. James departure from GTMO. The SASC Report mentions that Miller thought they were running a “country club” in Iraq and that they were not “getting the maximum” out of the prisoners. When Miller was asked by another Major General what he meant, Miller replied, “you haven’t broken [the detainees] psychologically” and that he would get back to him on “some techniques you can use” to break them. The Abu Ghraib scandal broke in late 2003 and Miller was put in charge of the prison in March 2004.

General Miller’s conduct both during and after the tenure of Col. James in GTMO, should raise serious questions about the claims that Miller was trying to implement policies that would allow for the humane treatment of detainees. What should also be cause for concern is the amount of fundamentally misleading and false statements that can be found in Col. James’ book. From the characterization of Gen. Miller, to the statement about the absence of abuse at the prison post-2002, and to his statements about the role that he played during his tenure at the prison. When there are so many statements that seem to contradict various reports and official documents, one would think that it would only be appropriate to further examine the actual role that Col. James did play when so many documented abuses were ongoing. No in-depth investigations have been conducted and James is still a licensed psychologist in Louisiana, Ohio and Guam.

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Currently, Col. Larry James is retired from the military and is the Dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Though retired from the military, James is still very much involved in issues of terrorism and the psychology of terrorists. This week, on February 3-4, James is leading a “Psychology of Terrorism Executive Workshop” at Wright State University. The stated goals of the Workshop are to:

- Define Psychological Terrorism
- Identify Types of Psychological Terrorism
- Discuss the role of the media in counterterrorism efforts
- Identify how demographics are used to recruit teenage terrorists
- Understand the psychological make-up of the suicide bomber
- Discuss strategies to prevent psychological terrorism

The website indicates that the intended audiences for this Executive Workshop are law enforcement officials, members of the Department of Homeland Security, DOD, and the Border Patrol. According to the agenda, there will be a total of four presenters at this Workshop (including James) and the program fee is $2,000 (lodging and transportation are not included).

The Campus Anti-War Network is planning to protest this event and there are continued calls from the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Canadian Center for International Justice, and Physicians for Human Rights to investigate James and his potential involvement in the abuses that took place in Cuba and Iraq. These organizations feel that it is important for those who were responsible for carrying out and implementing policies of torture, to be held accountable for their actions. It is also important to recognize the difference between actual accounts of what took place in GTMO, Afghanistan and Iraq and the revisionist history that is found in books like Col. James’ “Fixing Hell”.


This piece is cross posted here.

Obama Retains Authority to Assassinate U.S. Citizens

From Dana Priest's piece in the Washington Post today (emphasis mine):

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. The evidence has to meet a certain, defined threshold. The person, for instance, has to pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests," said one former intelligence official.

The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, "it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them," a senior administration official said. "They are then part of the enemy."

Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called "High Value Targets" and "High Value Individuals," whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes three Americans, including Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi's name has now been added.

This quote was toward the end of a larger article that discusses the growing military involvement of the United States in Yemen and is quite alarming.

The article claims that the Obama Administration has adopted the same view as the Bush Administration in their authority to target and kill U.S. citizens that they suspect of being terrorists. No formal charges, no trial, just authority to strike and kill those U.S. Citizens who the Government unilaterally labels as terrorists.

As Priest mentions, there is apparently a short-list with American names on it, that allows for zero evidence to be presented in order to verify the claims of the Government. Similar to why it is troubling to imprison detainees indefinitely without charge, it is just as troubling to learn that the President has determined that he has the authority kill U.S. citizens without any process of proving guilt.

From where does the Presidential authority for this kind of legal discretion derive? All those who had a problem with the Bush Administration for these kinds of abuses of power should have equal qualms with the Obama Administration for continuing these same actions.

Grand Old Hypocrisy

There is a lot of Republican hypocrisy to be had in response to the failed Christmas Day terror bombing of an inbound flight to Detroit.

Many Republicans have been criticizing President Obama for trying the suspect in Federal Court. These are the same Republicans (Dick Cheney and Tom Ridge namely) who not only advocated for the Federal prosecution of so-called "shoe bomber" Richard Reed in 2001, but boasted about the conviction after the fact. Here is Cheney's hypocrisy from Politico:

As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.

Republicans are even complaining about the timeliness of Obama's response to this event even though President Bush took the same amount of time and received no objections from these same figures. Watch what happens when an MSNBC anchor calls out Rep. Mike Conway (R-TX) on this hypocrisy (h/t TPM):



Lord he was born a ramblin' man!

Obama's Escalation Speech Sings the Same Old Tune

President Obama gave his much anticipated speech this evening in front of a large crowd in West Point New York.

As was leaked ahead of time, Obama announced that he would be sending an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan over the next several months, escalating the conflict and with an end goal in bringing the War to an end.

Obama began his speech by telling the American public that the United States did not choose this war, but that the conflict started on 9/11/01 when the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked by Al Qaeda terrorists. Obama recounted how the country was united in the decision to launch attacks against Afghanistan but blamed the invasion of Iraq, which Obama has often called "a war of choice", for taking the necessary resources and attention away from the War in Afghanistan.

The President outlined that he would be sending an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to the region with the continued goals to "disrupt, dismantle, and defeat" Al Qaeda, but also to create a "civilian surge" and build a partnership with Pakistan. He stated that the military will work toward training Afghan forces so that when the time comes for withdrawal (beginning in 18 months), they will be ready to take over providing security for their country.

Obama denounced critics who have said that Afghanistan is another Vietnam as well as those who do not wish to see any kind of time-table set for an end to the fighting. Obama claimed that those who claim that Afghanistan is another Vietnam have a "false reading of history" since the United States now has considerable allies and is not facing an uprising from the general population of Afghanistan.

In other words, the President's speech tonight played like a bad sequel to the speech that President Bush gave in December of 2007 prior to his decision to escalate the troop levels in Iraq. Many of the same themes were covered and even the timetable for withdrawal of forces is not set in stone.

There were a couple of passages in Obama's speech that struck me as I was watching and that I would like to highlight in this posting. Here is the first:

We're in Afghanistan to prevent a cancer from once again spreading through that country. But this same cancer has also taken root in the border region of Pakistan. That's why we need a strategy that works on both sides of the border.

In the past, there have been those in Pakistan who've argued that the struggle against extremism is not their fight, and that Pakistan is better off doing little or seeking accommodation with those who use violence. But in recent years, as innocents have been killed from Karachi to Islamabad, it has become clear that it is the Pakistani people who are the most endangered by extremism. Public opinion has turned. The Pakistani army has waged an offensive in Swat and South Waziristan. And there is no doubt that the United States and Pakistan share a common enemy.

Obama does an interesting word dance around the topic of the "border regions in Pakistan", almost to the point where one tends to ignore the fact that these border regions are actually IN Pakistan. Obama mainly focuses on pressuring the Pakistani Government to continue to do more to fight Al Qaeda in their country and glosses over the U.S. role by using certain code words like the emphasis that Pakistan and the U.S. "share a common enemy".

What must not be lost in this conversation is that the CIA has been fighting a covert war inside the Pakistan border for quite some time now including launching drone attacks that have been known to kill innocent civilians. From a TIME Magazine piece back in June:

The White House routinely dodges questions on the subject, and neither the CIA nor the State Department would talk about the program on the record. But officials familiar with the CIA's operations say at least nine of the top 20 high-value al-Qaeda targets identified last fall have been killed by drone strikes, along with dozens of lesser figures. Many bases and safe houses have been destroyed. On the other hand, Pakistani officials say the majority of strikes have either missed their targets or, worse, killed innocent civilians.

[...]

But in the long term, the Pakistani frontier can be safe only when the tribes are more favorably disposed toward the U.S. and the Pakistani government than toward the militants. The U.S. hopes that can be achieved by supplementing the drones with development aid, much of it earmarked for the tribal areas. But can that money start working its magic before the resentments roused by the drone campaign metastasize into an irreversible jihad? On that question of timing may hinge the success or failure of a modern war fought in an ancient environment.

The second part of Obama's speech that I want to highlight is this passage:

In Afghanistan, we and our allies prevented the Taliban from stopping a presidential election, and -- although it was marred by fraud -- that election produced a government that is consistent with Afghanistan's laws and constitution.

The contradictory nature of this statement is so clear that it barely need mention. In short, the Taliban tried to prevent an election, the election happened but lots of fraud was involved, but since the election produced a government and didn't violate the laws of Afghanistan all is well.

One need only to recount that since the election was marred by fraud, a runoff election was planned and it was only after Hamid Karzai's opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, dropped out of the runoff (citing additional fraud) that Karzai was declared the winner by default. Even though the Obama Administration has accepted Karzai as a legitimate leader, it doesn't rule out the very complicated political situation that still exists in Afghanistan.

Obama also stated:

And we have forged a new beginning between America and the Muslim world -- one that recognizes our mutual interest in breaking a cycle of conflict, and that promises a future in which those who kill innocents are isolated by those who stand up for peace and prosperity and human dignity.

How this statement can even be squared with reality is beyond me. It is no secret that U.S. drone attacks over the past year have killed a large number of civilians. An escalation in U.S. and allied forces and an increase in fighting in the region is all but assured to create more civilian deaths. What happens when "those who kill innocents" are the ones claiming to be "standing up for peace"? It makes you scratch your head almost as much as when a President wins a Nobel Peace Prize while escalating his country's participation in a War.

The final part of Obama's speech that I wanted to touch on was where he stated that he would begin to bring troops home in 18 months:

And as Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.

My first inclination was to ask what exactly it means that "our troops will begin to come home". Luckily, Chris Bowers at Open Left followed up on this point:

I just had a chance to talk with three senior Obama administration officials. In regards to President Obama's statement that "after 18 months, our troops will begin to come home," I asked for clarification on how many troops would be coming home in eighteen months, and at what rate would they be coming home.

The answers made it clear that there is no actual timeline for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan:

* There is no defined rate for, or number of troops involved in, the 2011 withdrawal.

* They will be "taking conditions on the ground into account" in determining the withdrawal.

* The withdrawal is "a goal."

That is not a timeline. At best, it is a message to the Karzai government that the Obama administration doesn't want to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. However, there was plenty of room open in the response that they could stay there indefinitely, given the vagaries of the timeline.

Does this sound familiar to you? Open-ended commitments that could change depending on how things go on the ground all while sending more troops and money and spilling more and more blood? Sounds much like the last eight years to me and to emphasize that point (h/t Glenn Greenwald) I am going to end this post with several quotes. I wonder if you can tell me which quotes came from President Obama's speech on Afghanistan and which came from President Bush's escalation speech on Iraq from 2007.


1. "A successful strategy [...] goes beyond military operations. Ordinary [...] citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the [...] government to the benchmarks it has announced."

2. "I have made it clear to the [...] leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the [...] government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the [...] people. Now is the time to act."

3. "This effort must be based on performance. The days of providing a blank check are over....going forward, we will be clear about what we expect from those who receive our assistance. We'll support...leaders that combat corruption and deliver for the people. We expect those who are ineffective or corrupt to be held accountable."

4. "Our troops will have a well-defined mission: To help...clear and secure neighborhoods, to help...protect the local population, and to help ensure that the...forces left behind are capable of providing the security..."

5. "They'll increase our ability to train competent...security forces, and to partner with them so that more...can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility...to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul."


This piece is cross posted here.

Bill O'Reilly isn't the Biggest Fan of Journalism

Check this out:



Ben Armbruster at ThinkProgress pointed this out:

Fox News and O’Reilly may not “break stories” that directly “hurt anybody,” but they certainly haven’t made great efforts to take targets off anyone’s back either. In fact, O’Reilly producer Jesse Waters regularly stalks and ambushes anyone O’Reilly and his goons disagree with (like TP’s own Amanda Terkel), even if it means following them home and confronting them in places such as their garages.

Fair enough, but I think the more revealing angle of O'Reilly's statement is that he admitted that his network doesn't hold journalism in very high regard. O'Reilly said the following (emphasis mine):

And I think you raise a very interesting point in what you said. And you said — I’m glad you mentioned me because that got attention And then people to think about this. We don’t break stories that are going to interfere with President Obama or President Bush or whoever’s in office if we feel that the story is going to hurt anybody, our military, our policymakers. We’ll hold it back. Okay? We’re not The New York Times. We’re not trying to do that.

I would be interested to hear what O'Reilly means by this. What is meant by the word "interfere" when O'Reilly says that he doesn't break stories that are going to interfere with policymakers, the President, or the military? Would breaking a story like that of Pat Tillman "interfere" with the goals of the military? Would bringing on dissenting voices about war "interfere" with the goals of President Bush and President Obama? Would exposing an affair like that of Mark Sanford, "interfere" with his career or "hurt" him personally?

Sounds like O'Reilly is looking out for everyone but the "folks".

Michelle Malkin: Obama "Doesn't like this country very much"

I saw a clip of Conservative author and commentator Michelle Malkin on Hannity last night and wondered if this kind of rhetoric is doing anything besides stirring up the base that already believes this nonsense:



Ah, the good old days of American Exceptionalism, when we forced our views on the rest of the world by invading countries that did not pose a threat to us. I can remember now how well that has worked out for us. Shame on Obama for asking the world for mutual cooperation to combat nuclear proliferation.

Sarcasm aside, Malkin is upset that Obama didn't mention our brave troops who have fought for freedom and upset that Obama didn't mention Neda (the woman who was shot on camera in Iran) when he was talking about innocent people rising up in Iran. She rambles on about how Obama is rejecting American Exceptionalism, how this is predictable because the people he associates with are sympathetic to dictators and how our enemies will think we are weaker because of this. In fact, she states that Obama is the "weakest of the weak leaders" in modern American history.

The kind of anger and hatred that Malkin likes to exude about anything and everything Obama is pretty amazing, even when it is hyperbolic or absent of fact. Especially considering that during the last eight years, Malkin supported many of the lawless policies of the Bush Administration. If you ask her about the last eight years, she will claim that she was "right there, leading the charge to blow the whistle on corruption and cronyism".

I tend to think that Malkin's motives fall more in line with what she said in a recent piece that discussed her book, over at the Daily Beast:

"To me that’s what makes this a compelling book,” Malkin says. “A sincere commitment to good government makes for some strange bedfellows. But I’ve been in bed with strange fellows – I shouldn't say that, ha ha ha—for my entire professional career.” She adds: “I like a good story. I think one of the misunderstandings about who I am and what I do is that somehow I do it because I just want to get on TV or it’s about the fame, or it’s about the ‘bomb-throwing.’…I’ve always thrived on digging up stories and shedding light on information that’s not getting out there.”

And if she’s getting rich in the bargain, so much the better. “I think that every good conservative capitalist pursues the profit motive.”

Katie Couric Interviews Glenn Beck

The other day, I posted a preview clip of Katie Couric's upcoming interview with Glenn Beck. Here is the full interview:


Watch CBS Videos Online

The interview is very interesting and some of the highlights include:

- Beck connecting his former alcoholism with believing in "socially liberal" ideas.
- Beck's continued insistence that he was yelling just as loud about President Bush as he is about President Obama.
- Beck stating that he was angry about the passage of the Patriot Act.
- His statement that "If you are not afraid of your government...the government can become a nightmare."
- and his attempts to justify his calling Obama a racist because Obama views the society through the "prism" of a historical pattern of racism.

After watching this interview, it is still puzzling as to what Glenn Beck believes. Frankly, I don't think that he knows what he believes. Many of his answers went off on tangents and he often accused Katie Couric of trying to set him up. Paranoid is a good word to use in describing Beck's demeanor during this interview.

One of the most interesting moments comes at about the 23 minute mark in the interview when Couric relays a question from a Twitter user. The question asks what Beck meant by "White Culture" when he infamously said that President Obama has a "deep-seated hatred for White Culture". Beck initially says that he doesn't know and then proceeds to dance around the question. When Couric presses him, he then claims that she is attempting to trap into giving her a "sound byte". He even has a Sarah Palin moment when he claims that Couric is playing a "gotcha" game. Couric asks Beck if he should be able to defend the controversial statements that he makes and Beck continues to stay mum.

This exchange is important because it demonstrates that Beck has no clue what he meant by that statement. This response is a microcosm of Glenn Beck and shows him to be a man that is confused as to what he believes, paranoid, and someone who strings loosley connected questions and statements that only scratch the surface, but are presented as providing answers to deep and complex questions.

Schizophrenic Conservatism

One of the more interesting topics that I find myself coming back to is the continuation of various protest movements that have sprung up around the country in opposition to the Obama Administration. I wrote about the paradox in these protests here, discussed how Glenn Beck's crazy hypocritical antics are fueling them here, and highlighted a video that shows the kaleidoscope of issues that are being protested here. Just when you think that all of this can't get any more confusing, it does.

Glenn Beck is going to be interviewed on CBSNews.com this evening by Katie Couric. A short clip has been released to promote this interview. Watch how Glenn Beck says that he doesn't like John McCain because he is some "progressive like Theodore Roosevelt" and how he thinks that McCain would have been a worse President than Obama or Hillary Clinton:


Watch CBS Videos Online

Astounding coming from the same guy who has devoted his show on Fox News to claiming that Obama is a Marxist and a racist. Couple that with the continued exposure of Beck as an outright hypocrite and you can't help but ask where on Earth he stand politically. For example (h/t dday), here is Beck (back when he was on CNN) talking about how Ron Paul supporters are terrorists:




Also note that in that video clip Beck says (of Ron Paul):

"It's really not the way I would go, tying in my movement with a historical terrorist attack, especially in post-9/11 America."

Beck is the same guy who started the 9/12 Project.

Here is another video (made by a Ron Paul supporter) that contains a video clip of Beck stating that he supports the $700 billion bailout that President Bush proposed as well as Beck's endorsement of the Patriot Act:




and in this clip from the other day, (can you guess what is coming?) Beck states that he was critical of Bush and "hated him" for the bailouts:




This is the guy who has been a driving force behind the tea-party and 9/12 Project protest movements that we have seen explode since President Obama took office back in January. He is a personality that literally cries on-air while delivering passionate speeches about how this country is falling apart, yet it is quite clear that what Glenn Beck believes (at least politically) shifts when he needs to attract ratings.

What Beck is promoting a brand of Schizophrenic Conservatism that has resulted in people showing up at large rallies claiming that they are against everything from health care reform to socialism to spending to illegal immigration to a "Muslim" taking over the country, etc.

Glenn Greewald weighs in on this confusion:

Increasingly, there is great difficulty in understanding not only Beck's political orientation but, even more so, the movement that has sprung up around him. Within that confusion lies several important observations about our political culture, particularly the inability to process anything that does not fall comfortably into the conventional "left-right" dichotomy through which everything is understood.

[...]

Ultimately, Beck himself is just a histrionic intellectual mess: willing to latch onto any hysterical accusations and conspiracy theories that provide some momentary benefit, no matter how contradictory they might be from one moment to the next. His fears, resentments and religious principles seem fixed, but not his political beliefs. Like the establishment leadership of both political parties, he has no core political principles or fixed, identifiable ideology. His description of himself as a "rodeo clown" might be the most perceptive thing he's ever said. Attempts to classify him on the conventional political spectrum are destined to fail, and attempts to demonize him as some sort of standard Republican bogeyman will inevitably be so over-simplified as to be false. Such efforts assume far more coherence than he possesses.

Far more interesting than Beck himself is the increasingly futile effort to classify the protest movement to which he has connected himself. Here, too, confusion reigns. In part, this is due to the fact that these "tea party" and "9/12" protests are composed of factions with wildly divergent views about most everything. From paleoconservatives to Ron-Paul-libertarians to LaRouchians to Confederacy-loving, race-driven Southerners to Christianist social conservatives to single-issue fanatics (abortion, guns, gays) to standard Limbaugh-following, Bush-loving Republicans, these protests are an incoherent mishmash without any cohesive view other than: "Barack Obama is bad." There are unquestionably some highly noxious elements in these groups, but they are far from homogeneous. Many of these people despised the Bush-led GOP and many of them loved it.

Add to all of that the fact that this anti-Obama sentiment is being exploited by run-of-the-mill GOP operatives who have no objective other than to undermine Democrats and return the Republicans to power -- manifestly not the goal of many of the protesters -- and it's impossible to define what this movement is or what is driving it.

This is exactly what we have seen in several of the videos that I have shot outside the health care protests that have taken place over the Summer. My video interview with Jim was a prime example of a protester who made several points that were loosely connected together under the umbrella of "we are being taken over by socialists."

This is not to say that some of the issues that are being voiced by protesters are not genuine. In fact, many of the issues transcend the mentality of left versus right. Many people, myself included, care about Wall Street's influence on the government, care about rampant government spending, and care about the erosion of our civil liberties. Greenwald is right to point out through these protests, the curtain has being pulled back on the countries inability to collectively analyze issues outside of the Beltway's typical "left vs. right" mentality. This mentality has certainly trickled down to the populous and end up making issues even more complicated in the long-run.

This kind of complication manifests itself when you mix legitimate concerns of citizens with interests that work hard to maintain the status quo. These interests include national media figures like Beck, the influence of party interests who are working toward the political goal of defeating Obama, and those who perpetuate so-called "facts" that end up being completely wrong. What results is more than a complete mess. What results is a movement that does not know whether they are coming or going, let alone where they stand.


This piece is crossposted here.

Making Sense of the Paradox in the Protests

There have been a couple of good posts that I have read recently on the topic of the opposition to President Obama and all of the protests that have popped up since his election to the Presidency. It can be difficult to make sense of some of the mixed messages that we have seen out of these protests and when you take into consideration the support of national figures like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc. it really is a pretty weird scenario.

While there are some who are claiming that this rage and adamant opposition to Obama is unprecedented, Glenn Greenwald points out that this is merely standard operation procedure:

To see that, just look at what that movement's leading figures said and did during the Clinton years. In 1994, Jesse Helms, then-Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, claimed that "just about every military man" believes Clinton is unqualified to be Commander-in-Chief and then warned/threatened him not to venture onto military bases in the South: "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He better have a bodyguard."

The Wall St. Journal called for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the possible "murder" of Vince Foster. Clinton was relentlessly accused by leading right-wing voices of being a murderer, a serial rapist, and a drug trafficker. Tens of millions of dollars and barrels of media ink were expended investigating "Whitewater," a "scandal" which, to this day, virtually nobody can even define. When Clinton tried to kill Osama bin Laden, they accused him of "wagging the dog" -- trying to distract the country from the truly important matters at hand (his sex scandal).

And, of course, the GOP ultimately impeached him over that sex scandal -- in the process issuing a lengthy legal brief with footnotes detailing his sex acts (cigars and sex talk), publicly speculating about (and demanding examinations of) the unique "distinguishing" spots on his penis, and using leading right-wing organs to disseminate innuendo that he had an abandoned, out-of-wedlock child. More intense and constant attacks on a President's "legitimacy" are difficult to imagine.

[...]

Nothing that the GOP is doing to Obama should be the slightest bit surprising because this is the true face of the American Right -- and that's been true for a very long time now. It didn't just become true in the last few months or in the last two years. Recent months is just the time period when the media began noticing and acknowledging what they are: a pack of crazed, primitive radicals who don't really believe in the country's core founding values and don't merely disagree with, but contest the legitimacy of, any elected political officials who aren't part of their movement. Before the last year or so, the media pretended that this was a serious, adult, substantive political movement, but it wasn't any truer then than it is now.

Frankly, it is hard to argue with these points. I think one of the main differences that we are seeing today is how much this strategy is being amplified by certain figures within the media. I am talking about the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs of the world who have embraced the opposition to Obama and to government in general. What was once political opposition driven by political figures of the 90's, has now morphed into that same opposition being embraced by national media figures as well as their viewers/listeners thus these views are presented as a genuine populist uprising. What happened between the terms of President Clinton and Obama that allowed for the evolution of these tactics? 9/11 happened and the Bush Administration's strategy to politicize 9/11 happened. driftglass over at Crooks and Liars tries to offer some insight:

By selling 9/11 for a mess of wingnut pottage, the Right bought itself an anti-Liberal free-fire zone and two Presidential terms-worth of blank checks. Two terms of an alternately supportive and supine media. Two terms of catastrophe, corruption and treason protected from scrutiny by an ablative shield made out of solid "Why do you hate America?", and a promise that they could go on barebacking diseased monsters in the alley all night long, every night, forever and wake up each morning miraculously clean, virginal and still beloved in the eyes of God.

But they forgot that tempus just keeps fugiting along. And as time passed, the Right got so accustomed to butt-scooting their depravity all over the public square and never being called on it they simply stopped noticing that they were amassing a whole new post-9/11 public record so despicable and overflowing with Conservative atrocities that it positively dwarfed their antics during the Clinton Years.

[...]

In the few, short months since they lost, they have emptied out their entire store of raving invective and delusion.

Losing has left them insisting that that the legally elected President of the United States somehow isn't really the President. That he is a secret enemy. A Communist. A Hitler. A Muslim sleeper cell. A Chicago gangster.

Has left them swearing that "their country" has been stolen and that somewhere hidden in secret code in a 1,000 health care bill is a plan to murder senior citizens.

To understand how deep and relentless their addiction goes, you need only consider the recent example of Mrs. Katy Abram, who leaped into microcelebrity and the wingnut pantheon a month ago with her Clown Hall rant of “I don’t want my county to become Russia!” speech.

Mrs. Katy Abram wants the world to believe that, like a wingnut Sleeping Beauty, she somehow slept through 9/11.

Slept through two wars and the two trillion dollar bill they racked up.

Slept through tax cuts for the wealthy that added another few trillion to our debt.

Slept through Katrina.

Slept through Terri Schiavo.

Slept through the screams of the Constitution as Bush Administration fed it an inch at a time through the wood chipper (the same Constitution she is now so deeply concerned about that she has somehow become, virtually overnight, an “original intent” quote-spewing expert) only to be awakened in a sudden, patriotic fury by the sound of a Black Democrat taking the oath of office.

One of the points that driftglass is getting at is a question that I have often found myself muttering allowed as I watch these town hall meetings and protests. Where were all of these people during the last eight years? This is precisely what makes this situation so odd and so puzzling when you look at this issue from the surface. We now have a group within the population who are suddenly concerned about the expansion of federal power, concerned about the Constitution, and concerned about spending. There were not any tea-parties over the last eight years and those who did raise questions about the actions of the Bush Administration were laughed at and viewed as traitors. 9/11 was used as a rationale for supporting the government then, just as Glenn Beck is using 9/11 as a rationale for opposing the government now.

Glenn Greenwald breaks down this seemingly odd behavior (emphasis mine):

Just as was true for the 1994 crime bill, the right-wing fury over health care reform is motivated by the fear that middle-class Americans will have their money taken away by Obama while -- all together now, euphemistically -- "having someone else benefit." And this "someone else" are, as always, the poor minorities and other undeserving deadbeats who, in right-wing lore, somehow (despite their sorry state) exert immensely powerful influence over the U.S. Government and are thus the beneficiaries of endless, undeserved largesse: people too lazy to work, illegal immigrants, those living below the poverty line. That's why Joe Wilson's outburst resonated so forcefully among the Right and why he became an immediate folk hero: he was voicing the core right-wing fear that their money was being stolen from them by Obama in order to lavish the Undeserving and the Others -- in this case illegal immigrants -- with ill-gotten gains.

This is the paradox of the tea-party movement and other right-wing protests fueled by genuine citizen anger and fear. It is true that the federal government embraces redistributive policies and that middle-class income is seized in order that "someone else benefits." But so obviously, that "someone else" who is benefiting is not the poor and lower classes -- who continue to get poorer as the numbers living below the poverty line expand and the rich-poor gap grows in the U.S. to unprecedented proportions. The "someone else" that is benefiting from Washington policies are -- as usual -- the super-rich, the tiny number of huge corporations which literally own and control the Government. The premise of these citizen protests is not wrong: Washington politicians are in thrall to special interests and are, in essence, corruptly stealing the country's economic security in order to provide increasing benefits to a small and undeserving minority. But the "minority" here isn't what Fox News means by that term, but is the tiny sliver of corporate power which literally writes our laws and, in every case, ends up benefiting.

[...]

This is what is so strange and remarkable about these tea-party protests. The people who win when government acts aren't the poor, minorities or illegal immigrants -- the prime targets of these protesters' resentment. Their plight only worsens by the day. In Washington, members of those groups are even more powerless than "middle-income Americans." That's so obvious. The people who win whenever the federal government expands its power are the ones who, through their massive resources and lobbyists armies, control what the government does: the richest and most powerful corporations. And yet -- in an extreme paradox -- those are the people who are venerated by the Right: they simultaneously spew rage at what's happening in Washington while revering and defending the interests of the oligarchs who are most responsible.

What's really happening with these protests is that the genuine rage and not unreasonable economic insecurity of these citizens is being stoked, exploited, distorted and manipulated by movement leaders for entirely different ends. The people who are leading them -- Rush Limbaugh, the Murdoch-owned Fox News, Glenn Beck, business-dominated organizations of the type led by Dick Armey -- are cultural warriors above everything else. They're all in a far different socioeconomic position than the "middle-income Americans" whose anger they're ostensibly representing. Their principal preoccupation is their cultural contempt for various groups (illegal immigrants, the "undeserving" poor, liberals) and their desire to preserve the status quo whereby the prime beneficiaries of government policies remain themselves: the super rich and the interests that control Washington. It's certainly true that many of these protesters are driven by the standard right-wing cultural issues which have long shaped that movement -- social issues, religious fears, cultural and racial divisions, and hatred for "liberals" as Communist-Muslim-Terrorist-lovers. For many, all of that is intensified by the humiliation of being completely thrown out of power, at the hands of the first black President. But much of it is fueled by the pillaging of the corporations and Wall St. interests which own their government.

That's what accounts for the gaping paradox of these protests movements: genuine anger (over the core corruption of Washington and the eroding economic security for virtually everyone other than a tiny minority) is being bizarrely directed at those who never benefit (the poorest and most downtrodden), while those who are most responsible (the wealthiest and largest corporations) are depicted as the victims who need defending (they want to seize Wall St. bonuses and soak the rich!!).

The paradox that we are seeing is exactly as Greenwald describes and it helps to explain why everything seems like it is flipped on its head.

9/11/09 - Remembering our Collective Humanity

I don't really have much to say on this eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. So much has happened since that day, that day when the whole country was glued to their televisions and computers unsure of what to make of the tragic events. When I find myself watching footage from 9/11/01, I am almost overwhelmed in thinking about all of the historical steps that the United States would take beginning on 9/12. Wars, torture, lawsuits, the Patriot Act, wiretaps...connecting how we travelled from then to now is a confusing, frustrating, and often enraging task.

People were very afraid after the attacks and who wouldn't be afraid? Normalcy was abruptly interrupted by the horrific images that the entire world got to see in real time on television. The whole world seemed to be spinning as all kinds of information flowed into our heads and as all of us tried to make sense of every last detail. Some of us turned to our peers to comfort our fears, some of us turned to our families, and some of us turned to the leaders of this country for direction and guidance. Our leaders fed on this fear. Our leaders took this fear, mixed it with rage, and began to march this country into a war that is still going on to this day. All of a sudden we were bombarded with color-coded warning systems, enemies that seemed to take on mythological characteristics, and a version of Patriotism that was more interested in gathering support for "payback" as opposed to discussing a rational way forward.

The next thing you know, we were being led into a war that was based on false claims, our phones were being tapped to "protect us", and our leaders were justifying torturing prisoners and their supposed authority to hold them without charge for an indefinite amount of time. We had spiraled out of control and were a nation that was divided. "With us or against us", black and white, good versus evil. No middle ground and no questioning. Our leaders told us that they knew best and anyone that objected to torture or to launching an unprovoked war were labeled anti-American and accused of living in a "pre-9/11" mentality.

This was quite amazing considering that the real story on 9/11/01 centered around the heroism of the ordinary. In New York City, boundaries that once separated, were broken and stereotypes seemed irrelevant to those who were caught in the chaos of the falling towers in Lower Manhattan. Heroism was not defined in a singular figure that was a Hollywood creation, heroism was defined in the collective. The coworkers who helped others to safety, passersby who lent a helping hand to those fleeing the smoke and debris, and those who ran back into the danger to bring the helpless out. Simply put, we were human that day. Our labels didn't matter, our colors didn't matter, and our beliefs didn't matter...our humanity mattered.

Rebecca Solnit has a good piece posted today at TomDispatch.com on this very point and it is worth your time to read. These moments that allowed for the magnification our collective humanity were the real stories of 9/11 and I think that point needs to be stressed and remembered. This was all but forgotten as this country raced off into the so-called "War on Terror" and began eroding the very characteristics of humanity that were magnified on 9/11.

I will close with a portion of Solnit's piece:

Every city that has had, or will have, a disaster should have such a carnival of remembrance and preparation. For one thing, it commemorates all the ways that San Franciscans were not defeated and are not helpless; for another, it reminds us that, in disaster, we are often at our best, however briefly, that in those hours and days many have their best taste of community, purposefulness, and power. (Reason enough for many of those who are supposed to be in charge to shudder.) For the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleanians were invited to ring bells, lay wreaths, pray, encircle the Superdome, that miserable shelter of last resort for those stranded in the hurricane and flood, and of course listen to music and dance in the streets to second-line parades, but also to keep volunteering and rebuilding. (Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of that disaster is the vast army of citizen-volunteers who came to the city's aid, when the government didn't, and are still doing so.)

New York has its pillars of light and readings of names for the anniversary of 9/11, but it seems to lack any invitation to the citizenry to feel its own power and prepare for the next calamity. For there will be next times for San Francisco, New York, New Orleans, and possibly -- in this era of extreme and turbulent weather, and economic upheaval -- a great many other cities and towns in this country and elsewhere.

That hydrant on a quiet residential corner of San Francisco is about the only monument to the 1906 earthquake and fire. The rebuilt city, the eventual rise of disaster preparedness, the people who go on with their everyday lives -- these are the monument San Francisco needed and every city needs to transcend its calamities. New Yorkers could gather in Union Square and elsewhere to remember what happened, really remember, remember that the heroes weren't necessarily men, or in uniform, but were almost everyone everywhere that day.

They could open their hearts and minds to discuss mourning, joy, death, violence, power, weakness, truth and lies, as they did that week. They could consider what constitutes safety and security, what else this country could be, and what its foreign and energy policies have to do with these things. They could walk the streets together to demonstrate that New York is still a great city, whose people were not frightened into going into hiding or flight from public and urban life. They could more consciously and ceremoniously do what New Yorkers, perhaps best of all Americans, do every day: coexist boldly and openly in a great mixture of colors, nationalities, classes, and opinions, daring to speak to strangers and to live in public.

The dead must be remembered, but the living are the monument, the living who coexist in peace in ordinary times and who save one another in extraordinary times. Civil society triumphed that morning in full glory. Look at it: remember that this is who we were and can be.

This piece is crossposed here.

Rachel Maddow Interviews Tom Ridge

Rachel Maddow interviewed former Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, earlier this week on The Rachel Maddow Show. The interview covered Ridge's recent book release, in which he seems to claim that he was pressured to raise the color-coded terror alert system in order to give President Bush's approval ratings a boost prior to the 2004 election. In this three part interview with Maddow, Ridge backtracks on these claims as he tries to "clarify" what he meant.

Ridge and Maddow also discuss the impact that the Department of Homeland Security had on the government's lack of response to the citizens of New Orleans during the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina back in 2005 and how Ridge was very vocal in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2002 and 2003. As you will see, Ridge is still very adamant that invading Iraq was the correct thing to do and that the failure was one of faulty intelligence. Maddow presses him on the Iraq War being a war of choice in which the evidence was fixed around a political policy, but Ridge is adamant that this was not the case. The interview concludes with one of the more interesting exchanges of all three segments.

It is also worthy to note that Maddow's style and temperament are top-notch and, as Ridge even states, this turns out to be a very good discussion that allows for an open exchange of views. Maddow does a good job in pressing Ridge on various points and while there is much more that I would have liked to have seen covered, she does a good job given the time constraints. Below are all three segments:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Inspector General's Report Released - Detainees Threatened with Death and Rape

Yesterday the Justice Department released the long-awaited 2004 Inspector Generals Report on the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. This is the largest single release of information that gives insight into the implementation of policies that were crafted by the Bush Administration and carried out by the CIA.

Some of the new revelations that have come to light in the release of this report are the following tactics:

- Threats of execution using guns and threats of the use of a power drill
- Threats to kill a detainees children
- Pressure points that were used to restrict blood flow via the carotid artery until the detainee faints, then shaking the detainee awake and repeating.
- Threats to rape the female members of the detainees family in front of the detainee.
- Striking a detainee in the chest with the butt of a rifle and kneeing a detainee in the chest.
- Blowing smoke into a detainees face for five minutes.
- Using waterboarding techniques with large quantities of water

Some conclusions that were issued in the IG Report:

250. The Agency's detention and interrogation of terrorists has provided intelligence that has enabled the identification and apprehension of other terrorists and warned of terrorist plots planned for the United States and around the world. The eTC Detention and Interrogation Program has resulted in the
issuance of thousands of individual intelligence reports and analytic
products supporting the counterterrorism efforts of U.S. policymakers and military commanders. The effectiveness of particular interrogation techniques in eliciting information that might not otherwise have been obtained cannot be so easily measured,
however.

[...]

253.~The Dol legal opinion upon which the Agency relies is based upon technical definitions of t1severell treatment and the "intent" of the interrogators, and consists of finely detailed analysis to buttress the conclusion that Agency officers properly carrying out Errs would not violate the Torture Convention's
prohibition of torture, nor would they be subject to criminal prosecution under the u.s. torture statute. The opinion does not address the separate question of whether the application of standard or enhanced techniques by Agency officers is consistent with the undertaking, accepted conditionally by the United States regarcling
Article 16 of the Torture Convention, to prevent "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

Another interesting note:

232. ~'One officer expressed concern that one day, Agency officers will wind up on some '~wanted list to appear before the World Court for war crimes stemming from activities [redacted] Another said, "Ten years from now we're going to be 'sorry
we're doing this ... [but] it has to be done." He expressed concern that the eTC Program will be exposed in the news media and cited particular concern about the possibility of being named in a leak.

The IG apparently had some recommendations, but they were all redacted in the report that was released.

Glenn Greenwald:

To those blithely dismissing all of this as things that don't seem particularly bothersome, I'd say two things:

(1) The fact that we are not really bothered any more by taking helpless detainees in our custody and (a) threatening to blow their brains out, torture them with drills, rape their mothers, and murder their children; (b) choking them until they pass out; (c) pouring water down their throats to drown them; (d) hanging them by their arms until their shoulders are dislocated; (e) blowing smoke in their face until they vomit; (f) putting them in diapers, dousing them with cold water, and leaving them on a concrete floor to induce hypothermia; and (g) beating them with the butt of a rifle -- all things that we have always condemend as "torture" and which our laws explicitly criminalize as felonies ("torture means. . . the threat of imminent death; or the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering . . .") -- reveals better than all the words in the world could how degraded, barbaric and depraved a society becomes when it lifts the taboo on torturing captives.

(2) As I wrote rather clearly, numerous detainees died in U.S. custody, often as a direct result of our "interrogation methods." Those who doubt that can read the details here and here. Those claiming there was no physical harm are simply lying -- death qualifies as "physical harm" -- and those who oppose prosecutions are advocating that the people responsible literally be allowed to get away with murder.

It simply can not become any clearer than this. If the United States expects to be a moral leader and a just leader in the global community there is simply no excuse for not investigating and prosecuting all those involved in the previous administration. A narrow investigation that focuses on the lower-level personnel who carried out these brutal acts of torture is meaningless unless there are also investigations that go straight to the top. As I have stated time and time again, if the United States wishes to never go down this road again, then the only deterrent is to hold those who are responsible for implementing these techniques to account. Anything less is criminal.

Holder Appoints Special Prosecutor to Invesigate Torture...Sort Of

Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that he is going to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether members of the CIA went too far while interrogating detainees in U.S. custody. Holder is going to name John Durham to lead this investigation, the scope of which will be quite narrow. From the Washington Post article that I linked to above (emphasis mine):

Durham's mandate, the sources added, will be relatively narrow: to look at whether there is enough evidence to launch a full-scale criminal investigation of current and former CIA personnel who may have broken the law in their dealings with detainees. Many of the harshest CIA interrogation techniques have not been employed against terrorism suspects for four years or more.

The attorney general selected Durham in part because the longtime prosecutor is familiar with the CIA and its past interrogation regime. For nearly two years, Durham has been probing whether laws against obstruction or false statements were violated in connection with the 2005 destruction of CIA videotapes. The tapes allegedly depicted brutal scenes including waterboarding of some of the agency's high value detainees. That inquiry is proceeding before a grand jury in Alexandria, although lawyers following the investigation have cast doubt on whether it will result in any criminal charges.

[...]

With Monday's looming public announcement, however, the attorney general and his national security team appear to be staking out a middle ground -- rejecting a broad inquiry that could result in possible prosecutions of Justice Department lawyers in the Bush years as well as cabinet officers who developed counterterrorism policy; but giving civil liberties advocates at least part of what they wanted without supporting a full, independent truth commission to examine a host of Bush national security practices.

In other words, this is a sham. Holder is opting to appoint a prosecutor (who is already involved in another investigation) to see if anyone in the CIA acted outside of the "legal" framework that was set up by the Bush Administration (and the OLC lawyers like John Yoo) but the investigation will not have a broad enough scope to examine the legality of the interrogation program itself. Remember when U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison were prosecuted and labeled a "few bad apples"? This may turn out similarly. The argument for prosecutions is not that officials went beyond what the Bush Administration claimed was legal, but that the Bush Administration's (in this case) interrogation policies need to be examined for criminal wrong-doing. The Attorney General apparently has no interest in doing the latter.

Also, take note of the final paragraph of the Washington Post piece that I quoted above. Notice the framing of the issue, that Eric Holder is "staking out a middle ground" on this issue as if the rule of law is some kind of political debate. While there very well could be potential political implications for appointing a special prosecutor with a broader mandate, this is not the same thing as taking a middle ground on whether to investigate potential violations of the law. After all, how does one take a centrist role and compromise on enforcing the rule of law?

Continued Revelations About the Past

It is being reported that in the soon-to-be-released book by former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, he is states that he was pressured to raise the warning level on the color-coded terrorism scale prior to the 2004 election for political reasons. Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic:

The news this morning that former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge believed that President Bush and his top advisers manipulated the terror threat alert system for their political gain is really -- and it ought to be -- a major story. Ridge was in a position to know, for certain, whether this was the case. And though he's hinted at it before, he now says, in his soon-to-be-released book, that he was pressured into raising the alert level before the 2004 election. Let's see what Ridge actually writes before making too many conclusions.

Ben Smith at Politico adds:

An abuse so gross -- if Ridge is right -- shows, among other things, what a powerful influence on the all-important tracking polls terror alerts must have had. And it suggests that Obama's efforts to keep terror arrests out of the national news are good politics too.

I am sure this is not surprising news to many people, especially those who were claiming that this was happening at the time, but it is still worthy of note.

Another interesting piece of information that has come out, is that the CIA apparently hired the private mercenary firm Blackwater (now Xe) to help carry out political assassinations. From Democracy Now:

The New York Times is reporting the CIA hired the private military firm Blackwater as part of a secret program to assassinate top operatives of al-Qaeda. Executives from Blackwater helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The CIA spent several million dollars on the program, which the Times claims did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects.

I, for one, am hoping that Jeremy Scahill can get some more details on Blackwater's involvement in this program.