perfidy

Know what would be funny? If, in the whole debate over whether Indian programmers are as good as American programmers, and whether Chinese steelworkers are stealing good American jobs, we ended up outsourcing our torturers!

Long-departed and much-missed Obsidian Wings coblogger Elizabeth checks back in with a notice that this may be about to happen. In the bill generated by the 9/11 Commission Report, and sponsored by Dennis Hastert is a provision that would legalize "extraordinary rendition." This is a process by which terror suspects-- suspects, not convicts (not that such would be better)-- would be eligible for extradition to nations where the laws and mores against torture are, shall we say, decidedly more sanguine.

The Republican leadership of Congress is attempting to legalize extraordinary rendition. "Extraordinary rendition" is the euphemism we use for sending terrorism suspects to countries that practice torture for interrogation. As one intelligence official described it in the Washington Post, "We don't kick the sh*t out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the sh*t out of them.”

The best known example of this is the case of Maher Arar. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was deported to Syria from JFK airport. In Syria he was beaten with electrical cables for two weeks, and then imprisoned in an underground cell for the better part of a year. Arar is probably innocent of any connection to terrorism.

As it stands now, "extraordinary rendition" is a clear violation of international law--specifically, the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Degrading and Inhuman Treatment. U.S. law is less clear. We signed and ratified the Convention Against Torture, but we ratified it with some reservations. They might create a loophole that allows us to send a prisoner to Egypt or Syria or Jordan if we get "assurances" that they will not torture a prisoner--even if these assurances are false and we know they are false.

Here's a bit of a press release from Cong. Ed Markey's (D-MA) office, who is sponsoring a counter-bill (H.R. 1674): :

The provision Rep. Markey referred to is contained in Section 3032 and 3033 of H.R. 10, the "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act of 2004," introduced by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL). The provision would require the Secretary of Homeland Security to issue new regulations to exclude from the protection of the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, any suspected terrorist - thereby allowing them to be deported or transferred to a country that may engage in torture. The provision would put the burden of proof on the person being deported or rendered to establish "by clear and convincing evidence that he or she would be tortured," would bar the courts from having jurisdiction to review the Secretary's regulations, and would free the Secretary to deport or remove terrorist suspects to any country in the world at will - even countries other than the person's home country or the country in which they were born. The provision would also apply retroactively.

Says Elizabeth, and rightly:

There is no possible way for a suspect being detained in secret to prove by "clear and convincing evidence" that he will be tortured if he is deported--especially when he may be deported to a country where has never been, and when the officials who want to deport him serve as judge, jury and executioner, and when there is never any judicial review. This bill will make what happened to Maher Arar perfectly legal, and guarantee that it will happen again.

I don't like to post "Go Read!" items, but this is one of those. Go read, then write your Congressman.

Alternatively, make a game of trying to convince me that this whole thing is a good idea. It won't work, but if it makes you feel good, what the heck.

One year ago this week, the news was all, "Mission Accomplished!" w00t! Iraq: 0WNZ0R3D!!!

And yet. Car bomb at Baghdad police station kills 47. That was one of seven car bombs detonated yesterday in Baghdad, leaving more than 100 dead. The thugs who did this don't seem to be getting the message that we won already like a year ago.

Not that good things don't happen (I say, to forestall a linkalanche of good news tidbits from Buckethead), but holy hell. The lights aren't even on all the time yet in Baghdad, the country's capital where all the infrastructure is, and that was supposed to have been all taken care of last April (which is now seventeen months ago, if you're counting).

Between Afghanistan's slow decline into a Colombia-like conglomerate of warlords in which opium derivates are the legal tender, and the aforementioned ugliness in Iraq, I'm not sure that W ought to be campaigning on his foreign policy record (not that Kerry should either. Is there a third choice I can trust not to confiscate my land, regulate my sex life, or turn road repair duties over to Gomer and his dumptruck?). Perhaps that's why all this focus on typewriters, purple hearts, and how a slow economy actually looks fast if you ignore the prevailing indicators.

Murdoc has a fantastic video that gives us some great insight into the situation in Northern Iraq.

Again via Rocket Jones, a link to the Winds of Change roundup of all the good news from Iraq. It's a long, long list.

BBC is running a "this day in history" thingy.

Today is the anniversary of the German invasion of Poland, and the outbreak of World War the Second. If you are a victim of a public school, or under the age of 65, that's the one with the Nazis.

According to the Associated Press, The US Department of Justice has dropped the charges against a suspected Al Qaeda cell in Detroit. Karim Koubriti, Ahmed Hannan and Farouk Ali-Haimoud were arrested on September 17, 2001 (alleged ringleader Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi was arrested in November) in was trumpeted as the first clear victory in the newly minted "War On Terror."

In a dramatic reversal on the eve of President Bush's nomination acceptance [zing!], the Justice Department acknowledged its original prosecution of a suspected terror cell in Detroit was filled with a ''pattern of mistakes and oversights'' that warrant the dismissal of the convictions.

In a 60-page memo that harshly criticizes its own prosecutors' work, the department told U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen on Tuesday night it supports the Detroit defendants' request for a new trial and would no longer pursue terrorism charges against them. The defendants at most would only face fraud charges at a new trial.

The Justice Department had to spike its own case, citing instances of prosecutorial misconduct serious enough that the government had "no reasonable prospect of winning" the case. ''In its best light, the record would show that the prosecution committed a pattern of mistakes and oversights that deprived the defendants of discoverable evidence (including impeachment material) and created a record filled with misleading inferences that such material did not exist. . . ."

All of which is what I feared would happen. Not to come over all negative-nellie, but I haven't exactly been confident of the current administration's abilities in any arena, before or after 2001. (Man, thanx to those tax cuts, the economy's really crankin'! Iraq sure cut the heart out of international terror! And Afghanistan? I plan to vacation there next year!) The War on Terror tastes to me exactly like the War on Drugs (can you still get drugs for cheap?) and the War on Poverty (been panhandled recently?), which is a shame. So far, the public failures of the WoT look like unserious responses to serious problems that leave everyone with egg on their face and just makes it harder to fight the actual, important battles that come up. These four guys were very probably terrorists, but now we'll never frickin' know.

Nice work, guys. Tommy Chong rots in prison while murderous fanatics walk free. Good to see we all have our priorities straightened out.

[wik] Days like today just underscore the importance of winning this thing. In the space of 24 hours, a suicide bomber killed ten and wounded 50 outside a Moscow subway station, Iraqi goons beheaded twelve Nepalese citizens for no good reason outside of murderous pique, Palestinian suicide bombers blew up two buses in Jerusalem, killing 16 and wounding at least 80, and, in the most twisted variation yet on the suicide-hostage riff, Chechen rebels wearing bombs have invaded a Russian grade school, taking 200 schoolchildren and their teachers hostage on the first day of school.

Rather than waste your time adopting a local highway, adopt a sniper and help him waste our enemies. Snipers are a small part of a big army, and often do not get the equipment that they need. This is especially true now that the war on terror is forcing the army to force more and more expert riflemen into the sniper role.

So Brian Sain, a police SWAT member, has done something to ameliorate the problem. The website has a long list of gear you can buy for the snipers, including relatively inexpensive items like AA batteries and handy wipes. Or you can by mini binoculars, range finders or body armor. Or, you can make a direct donation online and let adopt a sniper buy gear for you, and pay for shipping costs. Thanks to the fabulous Michelle Malkin for pointing this out.

From the Adopt-A-Sniper FAQ:

Q: Why isn't the government buying these things?

A: The commitment in OEF/OIF is huge. Snipers need different and expensive gear than is required by many other troops. This can cause problems when the military tries to maintain a perfectly uniform dress code and the snipers end up doing without. The logistics of running the US military are staggering and snipers are just one small spoke in a very big wheel. We just try and relieve some of the burden from the snipers themselves and also from their families.

Q: How did this organization begin?

A: A group of SWAT snipers in the US were all too aware that they (the police snipers) often have to make do without the things they need to get their jobs done. Often misused and misunderstood, the police snipers correctly figured that the military snipers were operating under the same circumstances. The police snipers established contact with the various military sniper school cadre and began sending items they could spare right out of their own gear bags and also making personal purchases. An article on the organization later appeared in Stars and Stripes overseas. The military snipers began networking with the police snipers more and more and the rest is as they say ... history.

Q: I thought snipers, being specialized operators, would have everything they need. Why don't they?

A: In every war it seems that the military must re-learn the lessons of the past. The war on terror is ideally suited for the tactics of the sniper. With the convoy escorts and house to house fighting, the US military is using snipers in numbers not seen in modern history. It seems like a no-brainer but a man with a rifle that knows how to use it, is in much
demand in a war. Soldiers and Marines that have not been to a formal sniper school but who shot "Expert" on the range are being issued special rifles and basically doing the same job as the school trained snipers in some cases. Adoptasniper makes no distinction between these two types of operators and offers assistance equally. We currently support snipers on each end of the spectrum; from the very well trained and equipped who normally request smaller, specialized items to the marksman soldier with little to no support that needs "everything" to do the job asked of him ... and every variant in between.

Q: How do we know that the snipers higher ups will allow them to use the items we send or purchase?

A: Fortunately, many of the military higher ups have relaxed some of the operational needs stipulations. They realize too, that their men need things to get the job done and we have even had some officers contact us for assistance for their troops.

Q: Who is involved in this organization?

A: ALL persons directly involved are either current or former police or military snipers or both. ALL are either currently operational themselves or are directly involved in training police and military operators in the US and abroad.

Q: Can I send a monetary donation?

A: YES. We request that monetary donations be sent to Keith Deneys of Snipersonline. Snipersonline is a 5013C non-profit organization and we would prefer that all monies received be received through that entity.
The address is located on the contact page. You can also send a donation online.

One Marine in Afghanistan wrote back:

Sir,

Your package arrived at Forward Operating Base XXXXX today and was meet with great fan fair by my Marines. We are tremendously grateful for the equipment that you sent us. It is wonderful to see the support that the community enjoys from our fellow Snipers. The cleaning gear came in quite handing after our 25 straight day field operation. The mini binos will help lighten our load as we continue to spend most of our time chasing the Taliban between 7,000 - 10,000 feet. We head back out on our next field operation tomorrow after 4 days of rearming and refitting here at the FOB. The arrival of your gifts was perfectly timed.

If you are able to support the platoon further we would be more than happy to receive it. We are sitting pretty well with equipment, but I had the Marines compile a list of personal use items that they could use. Of course good stateside, Copenhagen was right at the top. Any type of Protein Bars ( We have each lost about 10-20 lbs so far), Gatorade and Poweraid Drink Mix, Dry Weapons Lubricants like Graphite ( the sand is a constant battle), Canned air, and anything else that you have access too. If you send it we will make good use of it...

Again, thanks for your support and please stay in touch.

I will keep you posted as to the status of the platoon and our operation here in Afghanistan.

Semper Fi,

XXXXXXXX
S/S Plt Cmdr
USMC
FOB XXXXXX, Afghanistan

Patton over at Opinion8 grudgingly links to an essay by Stephen Green, the VodkaPundit. But it's well worth the pain, my friend, because this one is really good.

Green discusses the future for the war on terror, and makes some really good points.

If you think war has become complex, peace is messier still – and always has been.

Nobody ever knows what the peace will look like. Let's use our examples from earlier. Even as late as Appomattox, who could have predicted the KKK, Jim Crow, or Radical Reconstruction? No statesmen in 1914 knew that the war they were about to unleash would result in 20 million deaths, Russian Communism, or Nazi Germany. World War II? If you can find me the words of some prophet detailing, in 1940, the UN, the Cold War, or even the complete assimilation of western Germany into Western Europe. . . then I'll print this essay on some very heavy paper, and eat it. With aluminum foil as a garnish.

NOTE: That's what gets me about all the complaints that President Bush "didn't have a plan" to "win the peace" in Iraq. Oh, blow me. Nobody ever has a plan for the peace. Or if they do, it will prove useless. "No peace plan survives the last battle" is the VodkaPundit corollary to Clausewitz's dictum that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.

By now, you probably know where I'm going with this little history lesson: How do we define victory in the Terror War, and what will the peace look like.

Let's get the second part out of the way first.

What will the peace look like? I don't have a damn clue. And neither do you. And if you meet anyone who claims to know, feel free to laugh at them really hard. So hard, you get a little spit on their face. Sometimes, justice can be small and spiteful – ask a meter maid. Anyway.

This is spot on. Ditto.

What we're fighting is an ideology.

First off, let's brush aside the Loser Notion that if we kill terrorists, we'll only breed more terrorists. So what? Every dead terrorist is, well, dead. And we can always build more bombs and make more bullets. For 30 years now, the US Army has trained to fight in a "target-rich environment." Bring'em on.

Now that we have defeatism out of the way, let's get on with defeating the enemy. "But the enemy is an ideology," you've been told, "and you can't fight thoughts with bullets."

Yes and no.

Some people forget (because they backed/worshipped/served-as-useful-idiots-to the other side) that we have fought an ideology before, and – we won. The Cold War was, above all else, an ideological conflict. It was the Great Civil War of Western Civilization. On the one side, you had Western Capitalism, and on the other, International Communism. Obviously, things weren't that cut and dried. The US certainly doesn't (to my constant dismay) enjoy a laissez-faire economy, and the European NATO countries even less so. And despite a totalitarian regime, even the Soviet Union tolerated a little samizdat capitalism. Nevertheless, with the exception of France, countries took sides and stayed there.

Which socio-political system was left standing after 45 years of conflict? Oh yeah, baby – despite what you hear on American campuses, the West won. We won completely. We knocked their dicks in the dirt. The bad guys gave up, in the end, without even firing a shot – like Saddam Hussein in his hidey-hole.

Go read the whole thing, it's worth your while.

It was not too long ago when Francis Fukuyama made some waves with his prediction that, with capitalism's apparent defeat over communism, "history" was at an end. Assuming capitalist democracy is the best way to organize your society, and that populations naturally strive toward it, the collapse of the Soviet Union removed the greatest ideoological and physical barrier to democratic institutions both in Europe and to the wider world. Fukuyama's history means big-p Progress toward a better future of plenty, self satisfaction, representative government, and a global environment more closely resembling order than otherwise exists today. Once that state is reached, history would be at an end, and Dr Fukuyama would write a book about it.

Whether you agree with him or not, Fukuyama missed the point. History didn't end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. A history, arguably, ended. A far more fundamental and significant history had already come to an end many years before. That history ended 90 years ago this month, with the opening moves of the War to End All Wars.

That was quite a few wars ago of course. It was also the last Great War. Although there have been some real corkers since, none has been Great. I don't know of another period where, in so short a time, the world that came after was so utterly different than the one that had been. The general effects of the conflict are widely agreed upon, in terms of endings (secret alliance structures [so far as we know!], monarchic direction of imperial foreign policies, the impossibility of protracted European conflict) and beginnings (birth of a viable communist state, ubiquity of automated weaponry, United Nations v.1.0).

Although the changes in military thought are perhaps most thoroughly studied, the war's significance on other historical forces ranged far beyond the battlefields, as the sheer volume of material the conflict generated would indicate. To describe the Great War as "well documented" would be a grotesque understatement; it may be the most widely-studied era in the western world. Many smart people have considered its lessons: Eksteins, Fussell, Gilbert, Keegan, Tuchman, Ferguson, Fisher, to name a few, and new work just keeps on a'coming.

With the amount of material available, and a broadly understood concept of the scheme and scope of the conflict, the war is widely accessible to the general (ie, non-smarty pants historian) public. And with so many people thinking about it, I bet there are some very original and imaginative counterfactual scenarios out there. From the general questions, such as "What if the US had remained neutral?"; to more specific ones, a la "What if young Corporal Hitler had been killed on the Western Front?"; to kooky ones indicating a dearth of human interaction on the part of the questioner, like "What if at the Battle of Quiggledorf, Oberleutnant Schmidt's platoon had broken through the French blockhouses and opened the crossroads, yadda yadda yadda, singlehandedly won the war for Germany?"

What are other interesting counterfactuals that can come from reflecting on this anniversary? What might other repurcussions have been on the arts, literature, culture, diplomacy, society, if the war had turned out differently? What about beyond the western world- Imperial Japan, say, or the nascent USSR?

In a recent Pentagon press conference, Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker discussed the new challenges faced by the modern Army and some of the steps being taken to overcome them.

Here's the short version: 30,000 more soldiers and some new org charts.

I've been out of the Army for a long time and never served in combat. While I do take an interest in Army issues, my opinions are those of a grabastic civilian and colored by the sepia tones of old memories and forgotten hardship. But as best as I can tell, I see alot of problems with the modern force.

For starters, the Army spends too much time playing with org charts, and producing paper, and encouraging Powerpoint Rangers, than on ugly gritty reality of combat as reflected through training. This was true even in my time, and the proliferation of powerful computers and software has magnified the problem. A friend once joked that if we really wanted to be rid of the Iraqi army, just drop them some laptops with Powerpoint and let nature take its course- they'd be crippled with busywork in a matter of weeks.

I know that the Army is serious, in theory, about training as we fight. And I know that the NTC, CMTC, Grafenwoehr, Wildflecken, etc etc are truly ugly gritty places. I mean, it literally doesn't get grittier than having to shit in a hole scratched out of the desert floor, and it doesn't get uglier than training so hard that real people get really killed (Businessweek, 28OCT02 reported 2,487 deaths from accidents, across all service branches, from 1990-92). The Army goes to great expense to make its training areas and scenarios as realistic as possible.

I think the bigger problem is at the basic training level, when recruits are first taught the fundamentals of soldiering. When I took basic training my unit spent about 3 weeks out of 8 on basic rifle marksmanship, or BRM. So even though we were taught about Bastogne, and told that every soldier is an infantryman first, we spent less than half our training time learning marksmanship, the fundamental skill of the infantryman. Since then, there is less effort to demonstrate the mental challenges that come from being under duress, ie by screaming and yelling at trainees. Training units are co-ed. New soldiers take diversity and sensitivity training. All told, there should be alot more emphasis on the shooty bits, and a lot less on soldiers' feelings about it.

And that all feeds into General Schoomaker's plans for Army restructuring. He wants to oversee turning a relative few heavy Army divisions into a few dozen independent brigades, and there's something to be said for that. He wants more soldiers across the board, to better staff those units and make deployments easier all around, and that makes sense.

But until the Army goes back into the business of training warriors, drawing out new soldiers' nascent martial instincts from day one, the good General's reorganization is simply a logistics exercise.

[wik] This bit from Stars and Stripes explains a little more clearly what General Schoomaker has in mind. He doesn't want to break up divisions into beefier component brigades, but create 15 or so entirely new units, manned with his 30,000 more troops.

But then came this quote, and I see what the problem may be in attempting communication with the general. I'm totally lost in the haze of pronouns:

“This war, as unfortunate as war always is, provides momentum and focus and resources to transform that you might not have outside of this,” Schoomaker said. “And what we are able to do, as we rotate forces, as we reset them, is this momentum and focus allows us to reset them for the future, not reset them as they were in the past. And so this has given us a great forcing function to allow us to do it.”

Clear as an azure sky!

Press release:

"U.S. troops returning from duty will be encouraged to write about their wartime experiences through a new National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) program, called Operation Homecoming. NEA Chairman Dana Gioia announced the initiative in a news conference today [20APR04] at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial in Arlington, Va.

"The program will provide writing workshops led by distinguished authors such as Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down; Tom Clancy, author of The Hunt for Red October; Bobbie Ann Mason, author of In Country; and James McBride, author of The Color of Water. Operation Homecoming will also include a CD containing interviews and readings by military writers, an online writing tutorial, and an anthology of new wartime writing contributed by the military and their families."

A brief synopsis of the program in the Spring '04 issue of On Point notes that "reflections in a variety of forms--fiction, letters, essays, memoirs, and personal journals" will be accepted. And of course, members of all ranks from all service branches are welcome.

Submissions accepted through 31DEC04; full story here.

You can read the entire text of the 2003 State of the Union speech, at the White House's site. The "16 words" have been a real political football. How well does the rest of the Iraq portion of the speech hold up?

Read on to find out!

Our nation and the world must learn the lessons of the Korean Peninsula and not allow an even greater threat to rise up in Iraq. A brutal dictator, with a history of reckless aggression, with ties to terrorism, with great potential wealth, will not be permitted to dominate a vital region and threaten the United States. (Applause.)

Documented ties to terrorism are few and far between. Hussein's support of Palestinian suicide bombers certainly counts. Beyond that, though...not much out there.

Twelve years ago, Saddam Hussein faced the prospect of being the last casualty in a war he had started and lost. To spare himself, he agreed to disarm of all weapons of mass destruction. For the next 12 years, he systematically violated that agreement. He pursued chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, even while inspectors were in his country. Nothing to date has restrained him from his pursuit of these weapons -- not economic sanctions, not isolation from the civilized world, not even cruise missile strikes on his military facilities.

It is clear in hindsight that the sanctions regime was very effective, and that Iraq was simply unable to pursue anything beyond pen and paper, once the sanctions regime had firmly taken hold. "Nothing has restrained him" implies that there is current WMD activity, contemporaneous with the speech. We know now that there was no firm evidence of this, because it wasn't happening.

Almost three months ago, the United Nations Security Council gave Saddam Hussein his final chance to disarm. He has shown instead utter contempt for the United Nations, and for the opinion of the world. The 108 U.N. inspectors were sent to conduct -- were not sent to conduct a scavenger hunt for hidden materials across a country the size of California. The job of the inspectors is to verify that Iraq's regime is disarming. It is up to Iraq to show exactly where it is hiding its banned weapons, lay those weapons out for the world to see, and destroy them as directed. Nothing like this has happened.

There were no weapons for the inspectors to find, of course. Iraq could not have complied with the standard Bush was holding it to; the weapons he was demanding did not exist. I do not doubt that Bush felt Iraq probably had WMD. The language used here does not reflect that doubt.

The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax -- enough doses to kill several million people. He hasn't accounted for that material. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed it.

No anthrax has been found in Iraq. UN inspectors had been over Iraq, searching. What was their current estimate of Iraq's capability? Bush doesn't tell us that. Instead, he gives us an old estimate.

The United Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin -- enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He hadn't accounted for that material. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed it.

"Materials sufficient to produce" means "he doesn't have any, but listen to my scary word botulinum".

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands. He's not accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

500 tons isn't going to be the easiest thing to hide. None of these materials or actual WMD has been found.

U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them -- despite Iraq's recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

None of these munitions has been found. The "30,000" number is pulled out of the air -- we don't know its sourcing or how accurate it is. We do know that Iraq had these kinds of shells at one time, and used them in its war with Iran. It is therefore unsuprising that some of them are still lying around. Is the factual basis underlying "30,000 munitions" still applicable?

From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

No such labs have been found, and Powell's UN speech support for them has been withdrawn by the administration.

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.

There's some pretty major implications that Iraq's nuclear research is dangerous and ongoing. The IAEA's conclusions, in 1998: "This is compounded by Iraq's lack of full transparency in the provision of information, which has resulted in uncertainties about the extent of external assistance to Iraq's clandestine nuclear programme and some aspects of the programme's actual achievements. However, the IAEA has found no indications that Iraq has retained the physical capability -- in terms of hardware and facilities -- to produce weapon-usable nuclear material. Nor are there any indications of Iraq having achieved its programme goal of producing nuclear weapons. The IAEA has indicated nevertheless that it cannot provide absolute assurance of the absence of readily concealable items such as components of centrifuge machines. It is also clear that Iraq had made significant progress in weaponisation technologies prior to April 1991 and that there remains in Iraq a cadre of experienced personnel who were employed in the clandestine nuclear programme.". The last known serious weapons programme in Iraq was 1991 and earlier. The juxtaposition of "advanced weapons program" and "sought uranium" is intended to convey danger, pure and simple.

The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary; he is deceiving. From intelligence sources we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the U.N. inspectors, sanitizing inspection sites and monitoring the inspectors themselves. Iraqi officials accompany the inspectors in order to intimidate witnesses.

Iraq is blocking U-2 surveillance flights requested by the United Nations. Iraqi intelligence officers are posing as the scientists inspectors are supposed to interview. Real scientists have been coached by Iraqi officials on what to say. Intelligence sources indicate that Saddam Hussein has ordered that scientists who cooperate with U.N. inspectors in disarming Iraq will be killed, along with their families.

It's a little hard to see how Iraq could have stopped surveillance flights from happening, given US control over the airspace.

Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction. But why? The only possible explanation, the only possible use he could have for those weapons, is to dominate, intimidate, or attack.

Really? In which years did Saddam Hussein spend "enormous sums", and "build" WMD? What is the factual basis for this assertion?

With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region. And this Congress and the America people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.

No public details of contact between Iraq and al Qaeda have been disclosed, other than a brief, decades-old meeting that may or may not have taken place. Bush also asserts, here, that weapons exist and are hidden, without any factual basis to do so.

Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that that day never comes. (Applause.)

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option. (Applause.)

It's really all about finding the right balance, isn't it? We don't want the threat to "emerge fully", and yet, we can't simply go around invading countries and killing people just because we think we're in danger. Proof needs to exist. The President himself questioned the WMD evidence when it was first presented to him; what was shown was nowhere near the quality or confidence level that had been implied to him.

The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages -- leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind, or disfigured. Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained -- by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning. (Applause.)

"Is assembling" needs justification.

And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country -- your enemy is ruling your country. (Applause.) And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation. (Applause.)

The world has waited 12 years for Iraq to disarm. America will not accept a serious and mounting threat to our country, and our friends and our allies. The United States will ask the U.N. Security Council to convene on February the 5th to consider the facts of Iraq's ongoing defiance of the world. Secretary of State Powell will present information and intelligence about Iraqi's legal -- Iraq's illegal weapons programs, its attempt to hide those weapons from inspectors, and its links to terrorist groups.

All significant areas of Powell's speech have since been recanted, as the evidence supporting them collapsed. I distinctly remember thinking, after Powell's speech, that there probably were WMD in Iraq. The evidence presented in the speech wasn't convincing, but I strongly felt that there simply had to be more to it -- that the Administration must have secret information, and because they had seen what I could not, they were much more certain about this. It turns out they did not have anything more; the war in Iraq was essentially a gamble that we would find what we claimed we knew was there.

We will consult. But let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him. (Applause.)

There you have it. Draw your own conclusions! And when you do so, I hope they're more accurate than the ones Bush's war team drew from the evidence they were given...

Fred Kaplan writes in Slate about the logistical issues that coulda-- but did'na-- derailed the US military's Iraq invasion you may have heard something about last year. Kaplan details problems with spare parts, medical supplies, soldiers going hungry for want of MREs, motor pools scavenging oil and gas from Iraqi military vehicles, and more. His information is drawn from a 500-page report commissioned by the Pentagon and subsequently buried for fertilizer. (Not really... it's just that it's hard to find, not available for print or filesave, and rather discursive).

A Kaplan highlight:

"Literally every" commander in the 3rd Infantry Division—the Army unit that swept up the desert to Baghdad—told the study group that, without more spare parts, "he could not have continued offensive operations for another two weeks."

And another from the report itself, in the section discussing the 507 Maintenence Company (remember Jessica Lynch?)

None of this is a problem if the 507th is a singular example of a poorly equipped, poorly trained and poorly led unit. Nor is it a problem if the Army expects to operate with clear demarcation between "front" and "rear." If, however, the 507th is indicative of an Armywide problem in training, equipping, and manning CS and CSS units, and if the Army expects to operate in a nonlinear, noncontiguous operational environment, Army leaders may need to examine everything from culture to equipment in CS and CSS units. Equally important, the Army should examine any concept that envisions operations in nonlinear and noncontiguous battlespace to determine how forces should be manned and equipped to operate in the so-called white spaces and on LOCs. Assuming that technical means of surveillance will protect those units may not be justified. The culture and expectation in the Army should be, to borrow a phrase from the Marines, that every soldier is a rifleman first, and every unit fights.

The part that really frosts my biscuits is this quote, pulled by Kaplan:

The A10s were absolutely fantastic. It's my favorite airplane. … You can move, and when that A10 starts his strafing run, you can do anything you want to do … because the bad guy's head is not coming off the hard deck."

That's an infantry commander talking about the A10 warthog, the only plane in the US arsenal intended for ground support. But what about the Army's fancy AH-64 Apache attack copter? Well...the report sez

The day closed with the 11th Attack Helicopter Regiment's unsuccessful deep attack against the Medina Division near Karbala. There, the regiment lost two aircraft (one to hostile fire), had two aviators captured, and saw literally every AH-64 Apache helicopter come back riddled with holes. Worse, the targeted Medina units remained relatively unscathed from the attack. The Army's vaunted deep-strike attack helicopters appeared to have been neutralized by the Iraqi air defense tactics.

Of course, the A10 is still the redheaded stepchild of our Air Defense, because the Air Force doesn't care to get down where handheld fire can hit their planes. Kaplan notes about the Apache and Warthog,

These two points are remarkable, in two ways. First, here we have a team of Army officers criticizing the attack helicopter—the Army's own weapon of air support—while gushing over the Air Force's weapon. Second, the A-10 scarcely exists anymore. The Air Force, which never wanted to build it in the first place, stopped production in the mid-1980s and would have melted them down to scrap metal had they not performed so well in the 1991 Gulf War.

For all the vaunted technology and great toys our military has, many institutional problems remain that keep us from being, erm, all we can be.

[wik] Goodwyfe Johno saw a report last week on the Patriot Missile system, which apparently sucks all ass. SOP for Patriot operators was to run to mash the "abort" button every time a Patriot wound up to launch automatically, because almost every time the Patriot was either targeting an F-16 or nothing at all. In the end, they became worse than useless because the fully automated system doesn't really allow time for manual vetting of targets. A CBS news report argues that in Gulf I, only 2 out of 44 Patriots actually hit an incoming missile. Most of the others just exploded in the sky, missing their targets (when they actually were targeting a real object). According to Ed Bradley, in Gulf II, "The Patriot had 12 engagements in this war, three of them with our own planes." Yeesh.

Thank God. SCOTUSBlog has details, but the gist is that the Supreme Court has decided that the Executive Branch may not arbitrarily imprison citizens without trial or recourse. It sounds like a no-brainer, and in my opinion it is. What the hell were they thinking?

Under the government's theory, George Bush could declare John Kerry to be an enemy combatant and imprison him, without recourse or trial. Would they do that? Of course not. But they would have the right. I can't think of anything more anti-democratic, or anti-freedom. It is inexplicable to me that they would even have attempted to assert this power.

The most powerful voice on the opinion is that of Scalia, who thinks that the majority didn't go far enough in slapping down the government. His dissent goes right to the first principles of democracy, and is required reading.

"Afghans Behead Taliban in Revenge for Beheadings".

This is not the way. Not at all.

With everyone's enemies in the Middle East doing the human butchery thing over and over again these days as if there's anything in the Koran about how Allah smiles on the headless corpse of a Yankee infidel-- especially the third or fourth time you do it-- Giblets of fafblog offers some analysis that I think is right on.

George Bush thinks they're doing this to "shake our will." Giblets doesn't know about that. I think this is what they do to do anything. This is what they do to get attention. This is what they do to distract people from things they don't want them to see. If they had enough innocent victims on hand, this is how they'd ask each other to pass the jelly. For a while Giblets thought it was just a serious communications-oriented neurological disorder like Tourette's, only instead of swearing a lot you kill people. But I think these guys just like killing people.

This stopped being about Allah or whatever a long time ago for these dudes, and started being some wierd-ass "Lord of the Flies" trip, except this time the fat kid is America, and our fat ass fights back.

[wik] I would have used "Bride of Chucky" instead of "Lord of the Flies" in the above, except then I would have had to think of someone to compare to Jennifer Tilly. There are some depths to which even I shall not stoop.

[alsø wik] Hijinks like these make it easy to believe that on some level we are in a clash of civilizations, especially since most people in what used to be called "The West" before Political Correctness made that unsavory would agree that one thing civilized people do is not behead people. That was tried with some enthusiasm in France and was eventually soundly rejected.

[alsø alsø wik] Not that "The West" is anything but a semifunctional shorthand for an increasingly diverse set of traditions that started, ironically, in Iraq and continue through the Enlightment and Industrial Revolution, not all of which took place in any locale that could be even generously geographically described as being to the west of anything. We do, after all, live on a slightly squashed spheroid. But still. Regardless of what you call it, for us, beheadings are soooo right out. For them, beheadings are soooo right now.

A SCENE FROM SOMEWHERE IN IRAQ

"Soldier, where is the super-secret dangerous prisoner with high-grade intelligence in his cranium that Secretary Rumsfeld told us to hide from the Red Cross? It's question time again."

"Erm... We've lost him, sir."

"Lost him?"

"That's right. We're sure he's around here somewhere since he can't run with his hands and feet tied to a broomstick, but we can't find him just now. He'll turn up."

"Are you certain?"

"Uhh.. sure. What the hell. Certain enough, sir."

...and scene. Seems like Rummy has a lot to answer for. See, we (we meaning the USA, its people, military, and film heroes) don't pull hijinks like this for two reasons: because it's shitty and wrong; and because we don't want other people to do it to our guys when the time comes around.

It's the old schoolyard rule about not going nuclear. If you try a nut-shot and miss (or if the other guy doesn't go down) you better know you just escalated the fight, mister. It's all pipes and pointed sticks from there on out, and someone's not getting up off the ground when it's over.

Cincinnatti resident and Somalia native Nuradin Abdi has been nabbed while trying to lay down some P-Funk, uncut funk, The Bomb, namely trying to tear the roof off a mall in the Columbus, Ohio area.

A resident of the hometown of prime funkateer and latter-day crackhead George Clinton, Suspected terrorist Abdi appears to be an adherent of a sect whose members are the greatest threat to peace and mass funkatization facing the world today. Led by noted killjoys such as Osama bin Ladin and known to the Clone Funk Army as followers of the Heresy of a Groove World Order, Abdi and his brothers-in-arms break with the Funkadelphian orthodoxy of One Nation Under A Groove, misinterpreting that message of Hardcore Jollies to mean One World under ONE Groove, a decidedy unfunky situation where noses grow, motor booty goes unshaken, and the whole world must bend to the will of the cobwebbed minds and tightly wound spines of the Groove World Order.

The GWO has done a number on such formerly funky places as Afghanistan, Syria, Ethiopia, and Sudan, laid low the twin towers of the Wizard of Finance, and have even made inroads in Egypt, where the secrets of Clone Funk lie hidden beneath the pyramids until such time as humanity is ready to have the cobwebs blown out its collective mind by that most ancient of wisdoms. Their music must be stopped before the funk is fully faked and we all march as one to the pi-sided rhythm of the Groove World Order's dead-minded dance.

It is a shame that in the war to keep the Flashlight lit and the Aquaboogie wet, we must partner with such unfunky freaks as John Ashcroft, but for the time being he is doing funk's work and funk must recognize that.

Stank you very much, John Ashcroft, for keeping Ohio funky.

Andrew Sullivan is leaning increasingly on the administration, particularly on the issue of torture. Being a right-wing writer, he describes being "inundated" with emails that are pro-torture. That is disturbing in and of itself, but I don't think we should come down too hard on his readers just yet. The question has not been correctly framed for them.

Most justifications for torture read something like this: If, by torturing an Al Qaeda member, we can gain information that will save hundreds or thousands of lives that might be lost in a terrorist attack, do we not have an obligation to do so?

This is not the correct question. The correct question is this:

Should we torture hundreds or thousands of people, not knowing with certainty if they are Al Qaeda, in order to gain information that might prevent hundreds or thousands of deaths in a terrorist attack?

The use of power is rarely confined to a single incident. Once torture is an deemed acceptable in certain circumstances, those circumstances have a way of enlarging and changing. Should torture only be used against known terrorists? Who makes that determination? And what is a "known terrorist" anyway? The government is vigorously pursuing prosecution of persons it deems to have supported terrorism. I have no problem with the legitimate prosecution of real supporters, but a recent case comes to mind.

In that case, a Saudi named Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, 34 years old, studying for his doctorate in Computer Science here in the US on a student visa, was prosecuted for "supporting terrorism", when he created a web site and discussion forum for Islam. On this forum, speech was engaged in and comments for and against terrorism flowed back and forth. My knowledge of this case is limited, but I do know that he was acquitted of the charge of supporting terrorism.

"There was a lack of hard evidence," said John Steger, a retired U.S. Forest Service employee who was the only juror to discuss the case publicly. "There was no clear-cut evidence that said he was a terrorist, so it was all on inference."
Steger called the First Amendment aspects of the case important to the verdict, citing Lodge's instruction that the Constitution protects speech even if it advocates the use of force or violation of the law unless imminent lawlessness occurs.

"What the First Amendment actually meant was more extensive than I thought," Steger said. "I was surprised that people could say whatever they wanted."

Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C., declined comment on the acquittal. But U.S. Attorney Tom Moss in Idaho said it would not deter future attempts to bring people supporting terrorists into court.

"We'll continue to go after people who support terrorist activities," Moss said. "You don't just need people who will strap on bombs and walk into crowds. You need people to support them. For terrorism to flourish, they have to have a communications network. . . . This was a case as prosecutors we're expected to pursue."

The government prosecuted him for supporting terrorism. Setting aside issues of free speech, should that same government also have a ability to torture him to gain more information? Is this man a terrorist or not? The government thought so; it prosecuted him for supporting terrorism.

Under the Bush torture doctrine, this man could have been tortured. This torture would have been performed away from the watchful eye of any court, or any check and balance.

A court found him not guilty. It is sobering to juxtapose the horror of torture, the willingness and desire of an administration to use it, the declarations and decisions of an administration that it is above the law and that it retains executive privilege to do what it deems necessary without review or consequence, and the decision of a jury of peers that a man is not a supporter of terrorism.

It seems that our court system serves a purpose after all. The founding fathers were correct to provide checks and balances between the branches of government.

Bad things happen to good people. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. Would you torture one terrorist? The lazy comfort of black and white is held before us, a temptation...

This slippery slope is the one that matters.

Sami Omar Al-Hussayen is still being prosecuted by the government on immigration charges intended to deport him, based on the theory that his student visa entitled him only to study while in the US; as a foreigner, he did not have the right to speak his mind, create a web site, or engage in discussion.

What right to free speech do I have?

Tacitus has this story down so I won't add anything. The short version is this; some DoD lawyers wrote up a brief arguing that the President can do anything he wants, including order torture and indemnify subordinates from swinging if caught allowing torture. One part reads, "In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign ... (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in chief authority." In other words, if we aren't getting good information playing by the rules, well... the President can say there are no rules!

The NY Times has more.

The memo, prepared for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, also said that any executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons.

"One reason, the lawyers said, would be if military personnel believed that they were acting on orders from superiors "except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful. "[my emphasis]

Didn't work sixty years ago. Won't work now. But rest easy! "'The April document was about interrogation techniques and procedures,' said Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon's chief spokesman. 'It was not a legal analysis.'"

"Not a legal analysis," my shiny metal ass.

I'm not saying the President has sanctioned torture. But some pointyheaded wonks somewhere in the Pentagon were told to start with the assumption that "authority to set aside the laws is 'inherent in the president'" and work backward from there.

Take it tacitus:

Two possibilities present themselves: either the finest legal minds in the Department of Defense are terrible scholars (hardly an impossibility), or they were presented with a conclusion and told to construct reasoning from which it derives. My guess is the latter. You don't typically see this sort of thing emanating from the American legal profession absent strong compulsion to produce it..

Yeesh.