Michael Smith (the author of the Sunday Times article on the Downing Street Memo):
It is highly damning and some of the self-serving nonsense from people who should know better in some, and it is now only some, of the US media is frankly depressing.
This is from a live chat on the Washington Post. Lot’s of good stuff, so go have a look.
If you consider torture legal and acceptable (even if innocent people are tortured), then Dear Leader’s main post-hoc justification of the Iraq invasion it itself illegal, because Saddam Hussein would have been doing something that was legal (in your eyes - for he was only torturing “his enemies”). So, if you have a problem with torture being highlighted and publicized, then maybe it’s time for you to become Saddam Hussein’s lawyer. That is a more appropriate role for those who seek to condone, ignore, minimize or support torture.
I wonder if there will be any takers?
“Well, there’s nothing vague about that at all, and it’s not at all intriguing. It’s highly depressing.”
- Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern on the Downing Street Memos.
Anyone who follows the news will not be surprised. A long list of whistleblowers, including former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill and former National Security Council official Richard Clarke, have reported that the Bush administration was obsessed with regime change in Iraq from Day One and regarded 9/11 as an opportunity to put its plans into action. Removing Mr. Hussein was in the 2000 Republican Party platform. Bush administration misuse of intelligence has been well documented.
But the Downing Street minutes and other recently leaked documents illustrate that the intelligence was wrong by design. The documents show officials at the apex of the government of our closest ally confirming among themselves what were the darkest suspicions about the Iraq war among ordinary Americans.
The evidence suggests that Mr. Bush has lied to Congress and to the American people about the justifications for war. It includes a formal letter and report that he submitted to Congress within 48 hours of launching the invasion in which he explained the need for the war in terms that appear to have been intentionally falsified, not mistaken.
Lying to Congress is a felony. Either lying to Congress about the need to go to war is a high crime, or nothing is.
Wow. (Via Susie)
Six new classified British memos have been leaked. Liberal Avenger has the links and Shakespeare’s Sister has some early analysis from After Downing Street. The Raw Story has a nice timeline which ties together some of the details from the memos and has an extensive set of links.
This is getting ugly. From the Times Online:
The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.
The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions� which would make it legal.
This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.
You can read the newly leaked memo here. Via Shakespeare’s Sister.
“Nothing more evocative of this war for me than the officially-anonymous living honoring the anonymous dead.”
-Mithras. Go have a look.
Okay, so for a brief moment pretend that for some reason the war in Iraq might have been a good idea. ‘Kay?
Now, pretend we’re supposed to win said war. Well, we’re not. Every time we find a cache of bodies and the New York Times reports on it, we lose another battle.
Every time the terrorists/freedom fighters (depending on where you stand) attack anyone, be it with a car bomb, roadside bomb, or whatever, we lose another battle.
And most important — every time we screw up and violate the Geneva Convention and word gets out to the Washington Post, we lose another battle. Memo to the bush administration: Al-Jazeera has reporters here in the U.S. reading American newspapers, and it’s not like they aren’t reporting this stuff back in the Middle East. What was that remarkable quote from Control Room about how any Bedouin can hook up a TV with a satellite in the dessert and get the latest news?
Today’s main headline on Al-Jazeera’s web site: Al-Sadr supporters launch anti-U.S. protests in Baghdad.
Who was it that said that the invasion of Iraq transformed Al Qaeda from an organization into a movement?
Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid
…I’ve increasingly been wondering– what with Neroponte first of all preparing to leave Iraq, and then leaving for his big new intel-management job in Washington… And what with the continued failure of the Iraqi parties to reach agreement on forming a government…
So I’ve been wondering: who the heck, on the US side, has been responsible for shepherding along the political process there?
Look, we might not like the fact, but under the international law of military occupation the US does have overall responsibility for the good governance (hah!) of Iraq, pending conclusion of a final peace agreement between Washington and a representative Iraqi government.
And hey, it’s not just that Neroponte was up and leaving the place, but don’t you remember, some time back, we were all assured that National Security Advisor Condi Rice was going to be “in charge of running Iraqi affairs from Washington”?? But since then she too has been given new responsibilities and now she’s off tooling around various parts of the world in her dominatrix jackboots…
So who is in charge of the Iraq “file”? Maybe just Rumsfeld? Maybe purely the military?
Or how about…nobody?
If you haven’t read these comments by Seymour Hersh, you should take a few minutes and do so.
It’s hard to predict the future. And it’s sort of silly to, but the question is: How do you go to him? How do you get at him? What can you do to maybe move him off the course that he sees as virtuous and he sees as absolutely appropriate? All of us — you have to — I can’t begin to exaggerate how frightening the position is — we’re in right now, because most of you don’t understand, because the press has not done a very good job. The Senate Intelligence Committee, the new bill that was just passed, provoked by the 9/11 committee actually, is a little bit of a kabuki dance, I guess is what I want to say, in that what it really does is it consolidates an awful lot of power in the Pentagon — by statute now. It gives Rumsfeld the right to do an awful lot of things he has been wanting to do, and that is basically manhunting and killing them before they kill us, as Peter said. “They did it to us. We’ve got to do it to them.” That is the attitude that — at the very top of our government exists. And so, I’ll just tell you a couple of things that drive me nuts. We can — you know, there’s not much more to go on with.
I think there’s a way out of it, maybe. I can tell you one thing. Let’s all forget this word “insurgency”. It’s one of the most misleading words of all. Insurgency assumes that we had gone to Iraq and won the war and a group of disgruntled people began to operate against us and we then had to do counter-action against them. That would be an insurgency. We are fighting the people we started the war against. We are fighting the Ba’athists plus nationalists. We are fighting the very people that started — they only choose to fight in different time spans than we want them to, in different places. We took Baghdad easily. It wasn’t because be won. We took Baghdad because they pulled back and let us take it and decided to fight a war that had been pre-planned that they’re very actively fighting. The frightening thing about it is, we have no intelligence. Maybe it’s — it’s — it is frightening, we have no intelligence about what they’re doing. A year-and-a-half ago, we’re up against two and three-man teams. We estimated the cells operating against us were two and three people, that we could not penetrate. As of now, we still don’t know what’s coming next. There are 10, 15-man groups. They have terrific communications. Somebody told me, it’s — somebody in the system, an officer — and by the way, the good part of it is, more and more people are available to somebody like me.
Some of us never believed. Perhaps that’s a weakness on our part. A crisis of faith, as it were. Anyway, no big surprise in the revelation (does that even make sense?), most were well aware long ago.
I do find myself puzzling, however, about what the possible justification for our war in Iraq could have been. Actually, justification may be too strong a word — reason will have to do, I suppose. Try as I might, I’ve never managed to wrap my head around that one.
Oil is a popular theory, even receiving some attention if Fahrenheit 911, but I’ve never bought into that myself. I recall discussing the invasion of Iraq with a friend of mine shortly before the Senate voted to authorize force in October of 2002. Both of us had considerable disdain for the idea that Iraq posed anything like a threat to the United States of America and spent the evening discussing what we thought was “really” behind the push for war. Naturally, being classic anti-corporate liberals we discussed the possibility that it was all about oil. We both had a problem with that though.
Invading a foreign country to secure a needed and domestically scarce source of energy, however despicable or evil that may be, requires some degree of foresight and some concern for a nation’s needs. Foresight is something I refused then, and refuse now, to credit President Bush with. At the time I assumed the “real” rational was instead a crude political calculation, designed to shore up popular support which was finally and naturally waning, one year after September of 2001. I won’t stand by that assumption, because, obviously, I really don’t know.
I couldn’t imagine, in my most gruesome of dreams, the insanity that overtook our country in those months, if I hadn’t experienced it personally. I still can’t fathom how our elected leaders can bear the prospect of remaining in positions of power and decision when they have so clearly failed. They are failures and should do themselves, and us, the only dignity they have left, by resigning, en mass.
The post-war justifications for the war have proven themselves just as laughable as the pre-war justification. If there is, or ever was, an interest in bringing democracy to Iraq, or bringing stability to Iraq, or brining basic human rights to Iraq, or ending cruelty, or halting brutality or whatever, then, quite clearly, this was not the way to do it.
I’ve pretty much given up on ever producing anything approaching pithy analysis on this site, so today I’ll drill down my feelings on Iraq to two words — We’re Fucked.
…I should really add “utterly” to the mix.
From the BBC:
The head of Iraq’s intelligence service Gen Muhammad Shahwani now puts the number of insurgents at 200,000, of which 40,000 are said to be the hard core and the rest active supporters.
These figures do not represent an insurgency. They represent a war.
…
Until recently, the US military has talked of there being about 25,000 fighters in Iraq.
Gen Shahwani has not just upped the estimate, but has put it into the wider context of the active guerrilla support which perhaps gives a truer picture. There are 150,000 US troops.
Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington commented: “The Iraqi figures do… recognise the reality that the insurgency in Iraq has broad support in Sunni areas, while the US figures downplay this to the point of denial.”
Mr Cordesman has for months pointed out the weakness of the local Iraq forces, saying recently that they were basically unprepared and “sent out to die.”
The level of attacks is now so intense and sophisticated that it is not surprising that the former British representative to the former Coalition Authority, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, said recently that the insurgency was “irremediable” and “ineradicable” by US and other foreign troops alone.
“It depends on the Iraqis. We have lost the primary control,” he said.
Recent events indicate that Iraqis have lost the primary control as well.
Why do you think the insurgents/rebels/terrorists/fanatics/whoever it is that is that we are fighting in Iraq continue to fight us in Iraq?
Make a list.
Your own list.
Then cross off everything that you wouldn’t die for. For example, if your list says “The insurgents are fighting because they hate democracy” and your aren’t fanatical enough to prevent the spread of democracy by laying your life on the line, cross that item off.
On the other hand, if you think it might have to do with the insurgents being a bit upset over the lack of basic necessities and the continued presence of an occupying force, and this would upset you enough to bless the lord for the second amendment and come out shooting, put a check by that.
Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson (and the guy who kept us in Viet Nam) said we should empathize with our enemy, and figure out why they are fighting us. Only then can we beat them — or make peace with them.
Bush doesn’t seem to be willing to do that, so we will only continue to fight without progress.
I nominate Robert McNamara for Secretary of Defense.
He’s had the job before, and he knows how to deal with an unpopular war (or not deal with it.)
He’s learned a few lessons about war and human nature that would be helpful to the folks running the Bush White House.
He wouldn’t be worried about his legacy so much as doing it right this time.
Y’know, Gulf War One showed us that Viet Nam was finally over. This whole Iraq Part II nonsense has brought it back from the dead. Let Robert McNamara have a shot at laying the ghosts to rest for the last time.
While there isn’t as much of Fallujah as there once was, it appears that what’s left is full of rotting corpses and sewage. What was gained? The insurgents continue to fight from their burned out city and those who don’t, have moved on to other cities. They too, will continue to fight and to train new insurgents. Now 200,000 former Fallujah residents are homeless and angry and have little left to lose – a bad combination if ever there was one. There are no words.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Yasser Abbas Atiya swore he’d sooner sleep on the streets of his beloved hometown of Fallouja than spend another night in the squalid Baghdad shelter where his family had been squatting.
Thirty minutes after he returned home this week, however, Atiya had seen enough. He left in disgust and had no plans to go back.
“I couldn’t stand it,” the grocer said. “I was born in that town. I know every inch of it. But when I got there, I didn’t recognize it.”
Lakes of sewage in the streets. The smell of corpses inside charred buildings. No water or electricity. Long waits and thorough searches by U.S. troops at checkpoints. Warnings to watch out for land mines and booby traps. Occasional gunfire between troops and insurgents.
From the BBC:
American military officials have acknowledged that returning residents will be shocked by the state of their city.
Seventy percent of Fallujah destroyed, 250,000 people displaced and what has it accomplished? Has the insurgency been broken? No it hasn’t - Not even in Fallujah.
U.S. Marines clashed with insurgents in the battered city of Fallujah on Thursday with warplanes dropping bombs and tanks shelling suspected guerrilla positions on a day when a first group of residents displaced by fighting were scheduled to return.
To lay blame for prisoner abuse in Iraq and Cuba on anybody other than Mr. Bush is a mistake. Naturally, those who committed the acts and their commanding officers and so forth should not go without punishment, but the ultimate responsibility must always be placed at the top. These latest revelations, if proven, make the question of responsibility something more than academic:
A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as “torture” and a June 2004 “Urgent Report” to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.
“These documents raise grave questions about where the blame for widespread detainee abuse ultimately rests,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers.”
Even without these revelations, I’m quite confident where the blame lies. More from the New York Times:
The documents, released Monday in connection with a lawsuit accusing the government of being complicit in torture, also include accounts by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who said they had seen detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, being chained in uncomfortable positions for up to 24 hours and left to urinate and defecate on themselves. An agent wrote that in one case a detainee who was nearly unconscious had pulled out much of his hair during the night.
One of the memorandums released Monday was addressed to Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, and other senior bureau officials, and it provided the account of someone “who observed serious physical abuses of civilian detainees” in Iraq. The memorandum, dated June 24 this year, was an “Urgent Report,” meaning that the sender regarded it as a priority. It said the witness “described that such abuses included strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees’ ear openings and unauthorized interrogations.”
Herbert takes on the psychiatric toll of the war in his latest piece. Here’s a little:
Through the end of September, nearly 900 troops had been evacuated from Iraq by the Army for psychiatric reasons, included attempts or threatened attempts at suicide. Dr. Stephen C. Joseph, an assistant secretary of defense for health affairs from 1994 to 1997, said, “I have a very strong sense that the mental health consequences are going to be the medical story of this war.”
When the war in Afghanistan as well as Iraq is considered, some experts believe that the number of American troops needing mental health treatment could exceed 100,000.
From the earliest planning stages until now, the war in Iraq has been a tragic exercise in official incompetence. The original rationale for the war was wrong. The intelligence was wrong. The estimates of required troop strength were wrong. The war hawks’ guesses about the response of the Iraqi people were wrong. The cost estimates were wrong, and on and on.
“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”
The Art of War, Chapter II, Verse 6
Okay. I’m gonna make a confession.
I used to think that maybe this little Iraqi excursion wasn’t a bad idea.
Now, before you flay me in a flame war, hear me out.
I’m not a big fan of extended police actions, no-fly zones, and long-term troop commitments.
When I heard that we were going back to Iraq, I thought it might be a step in the right direction. After all, we were doing this embargo/sanctions/no-fly zone crap that wasn’t working, and Saddam is a bad dude, yadda yadda yadda and truth be told, we should have taken him out the first time. Don’t tell me about some coalition that woulda gotten spooked — they would have gotten over it.
Problem is, we did it wrong. And that’s wrong as in the past tense. And now, it doesn’t look as though we will get the chance to get it right.
We didn’t get world opinion on our side this time. We didn’t give the inspectors time to report back (and who knows what they might have found.) And now we’re in a good ol’ fashioned Texas-sized boondoggle.
Our political capitol is spent. Our military is overextended. And all indications show that we’re going to be doing this for awhile. Truth be told, if we had gotten in and won the peace, Bush and co. would look like geniuses, and we’d be celebrating.
If nothing else, our generals should know better than to allow themselves to get involved in protracted, prolonged warfare. They should tell the politicians (including the commander in chief) that this kind of exercise is a bad idea — by resigning if necessary, instead of carrying out policies that are doomed to failure.
Because of this, we are overextended and vulnerable. At the risk of giving aid to our enemies, please allow me to state the obvious:
This is a great time for North Korea (or any other country, like Iran) to kick-start it’s nuclear program. Maybe they could even mass troops on the border of the demilitarized zone. I imagine that they would be willing to back down if we shipped them boatloads of USDA overstock that should be feeding starving kids in America.
If I were India and Pakistan, I would be going at it toe-to-toe in Kashmir. Who’s going to stop them?
If I were Iran or Syria, I would be stirring up all sorts of anti-American rhetoric (and worse) and would be willing to stop only for all sorts of concessions.
What could we do? Send the marines? Which marines? The ones that aren’t in Iraq? Not many of those left.
Meanwhile, Europe is hanging us out to dry while the neo-cons are renaming French Fries in protest (my, how effective!)
Maybe we should start a draft. I hear that our commander-in-chief has two daughters of draft age. If they are willing to be the first two to go, I’m all for it. They can drive some of our non-up-armored Humvees up and down the road to the Baghdad airport.
History is always written by the victors, and at the moment, it looks as though the history of the Iraq conflict is going to be written by a bunch of rag-tag Islamic militants who are currently planting roadside bombs and beheading international aid workers on satellite TV.
From the New York Times -
An Army study shows that about one in six soldiers in Iraq report symptoms of major depression, serious anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, a proportion that some experts believe could eventually climb to one in three, the rate ultimately found in Vietnam veterans. Because about one million American troops have served so far in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Pentagon figures, some experts predict that the number eventually requiring mental health treatment could exceed 100,000.
After the death, after the physical mutilation, after the destruction and after the utter brutality of war, there is this - the long-term aftermath on the psychological state of those who served.
If you live, as I do, in one of America’s large cities, you know, first hand, that our country has failed miserably in terms of caring for those we sent to war. We see it daily on our streets, in the form of broken, shattered people who served, willingly or not, in prior wars. Our mental health system, already stretched, is being introduced to a whole new wave of combat veterans. That system is not capable of dealing with its current workload, let alone what it is about to face, and it’s about to face an onslaught.
As bad as our mental health system is, our system for caring for the homeless is far, far worse. The homeless you pass on the by street a decade from now will, as likely as not, be some of the same men and woman who are serving in Iraq now. Cheap yellow ribbon magnets on the back of our cars and grand proclamations of our support won’t help them. Not one bit.
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