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With Iraq plan, Obama embraces US militarism

March 2, 2009
Patrick Martin |  WSWS, 2 March 2009

In extending the full-scale US occupation of Iraq for another 18 months, and acceding to the timetable already adopted by the Bush administration for a tentative pullout by the end of 2011, President Barack Obama has done more than betray the hopes of the millions of antiwar voters who supported his candidacy in 2008.

He has fully identified the incoming Democratic Party administration with the fraudulent arguments employed by the Bush White House to justify the ongoing war in Iraq, after its initial claims about “weapons of mass destruction” and ties between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorist attacks had been proven to be lies.

Obama’s speech to thousands of Marines at Camp Lejeune was an effort to legitimize the US conquest and occupation of Iraq and present the American military as an instrument of liberation rather than imperialist war and oppression.

While candidate Obama described the Iraq war as one that “should never have been authorized and never been waged,” President Obama gave a much different reading. “You have fought against tyranny and disorder,” he told the assembled troops. “You have bled for your best friends and for unknown Iraqis. And you have borne an enormous burden for your fellow citizens, while extending a precious opportunity to the people of Iraq.”

No one would know from this effusive description that the US intervention’s main effect upon “unknown Iraqis” was to kill, maim and displace them. Some 1 million people have died since the US invasion in March 2003, including hundreds of thousands killed by US bombs, missiles and shells fired at civilian neighborhoods. Countless Iraqi civilians have been murdered at US checkpoints for the crime of not slowing down quickly enough.

As for the “precious opportunity” allegedly extended to the people of Iraq, it is the right to vote for parties and politicians sponsored by the US occupation regime to preside over a society that has been virtually destroyed.

Nearly six years after the US conquest, Iraq still does not have running water, electricity, adequate sewage and other necessities of modern life; unemployment is estimated at 50 percent of the adult population; there are some 4 million refugees in internal or external exile; and most Iraqi cities are divided into ethnic and religion-based neighborhoods separated by blast walls and checkpoints.

Obama did not acknowledge, let alone disavow, the real motive for the US military onslaught—Iraq’s vast oil wealth and strategic position at the center of the Middle East. That silence only demonstrates that the new president shares the fundamental goal of his predecessor, to strengthen the grip of American imperialism over the Middle East and Central Asia, source of the bulk of the world’s oil and gas supplies.

This fact was immediately recognized by the most fervent defenders of the Bush administration’s aggression, including Senator John McCain, Obama’s Republican opponent in the presidential election, other congressional Republicans, and the right-wing press. The Wall Street Journal, for instance editorialized in praise of Obama’s Camp Lejeune speech, calling it “Obama’s Bush Vindication.”

The Journal gushed: “Mr. Obama delivered a sober speech, offering a policy worthy of the Commander in Chief he now is.” It singled out “Mr. Obama’s implicit repudiation of his own positions as a candidate” by agreeing to keep a large US military presence in Iraq, as many as 50,000 troops, after the nominal August 2010 withdrawal date, an action that seeks to maintain “the strategic advantage” of a US puppet regime in the Persian Gulf.

As Obama explained in his speech, a major reason for the redeployment of some US forces out of Iraq is to have sufficient military power available to confront both “the challenge of refocusing on Afghanistan and Pakistan,” and “comprehensive American engagement across the region.”

Millions of Americans voted for Obama, not because they believed that the war in Iraq was a distraction from the pursuit of broader imperialist goals, but because they regarded the unprovoked invasion and conquest of a sovereign nation as a crime, and opposed the predatory character of American foreign policy as a whole.

Their voices have not the slightest impact on the formulation of policy in the Obama White House. As the events of last week demonstrate, it is the military-intelligence apparatus that calls the shots here. Obama did not make an independent decision as commander-in-chief, but rubber-stamped the course backed by one faction of the military establishment against the other.

According to press accounts that followed Obama’s speech at Camp Lejeune, the 19-month “withdrawal” plan selected by Obama was the preferred option of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gates confirmed, in an interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, that the Iraq field commanders, headed by Gen. Raymond Odierno, preferred a 23-month schedule for withdrawal, while the Pentagon brass, concerned about the need for troops in Afghanistan and being stretched too thin to engage in other potential conflicts, opted for the shorter timeframe.

Obama did not replace any of the Bush administration’s principal military decision makers when he took office. Instead, he retained Gates, Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Odierno and General David Petraeus, head of the US Central Command and architect of the “surge” in Iraq.

His embrace of militarism was demonstrated in the very fact that Obama chose to give the speech at a Marine base to an audience of uniformed troops, not in a civilian setting or through a televised White House address. The effect was to suggest that in the America of 2009, decisions on war and peace are of concern primarily to the military, with the American people relegated to the role of bystanders.

The whole process demonstrates the erosion of American democracy. The American people cannot, through voting in election after election, effect any change in the foreign and military policy of the government. The war in Iraq goes on, and the war in Afghanistan is being escalated, regardless of popular sentiments.

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Leading article: Obama, tell us the whole truth

February 22, 2009

The Independent, UK, Sunday, Feb 22. 2009

‘Having considered the matter, the government adheres to its previously articulated position.” With these words, Acting Assistant Attorney General Michael Hertz ended a dream. The dream that Barack Obama’s presidency would inaugurate a transcendent world order on a new moral plane.

Related articles

Late on Friday Mr Hertz told the Washington district court that the Obama administration maintained President Bush’s view that prisoners held at Bagram air base in Afghanistan could not challenge their detention in US courts. For the cynics, this is “a previously articulated position you can believe in”.

This newspaper was not so naive as to imagine that President Obama would immediately conform to the most scrupulous interpretation of US and international law. We are pleased that he has ordered the closure within a year of Guantanamo Bay, halted military trials and restricted CIA interrogators to Army Field Manual techniques. But the refusal to grant legal rights to detainees at Bagram is disappointing.

The US Supreme Court ruling in 2004 that prisoners in Guantanamo had the right to take their cases to US courts ended the anomalous status of the prison camp in Cuba. President Bush’s attempt to create a legal limbo outside the American and international legal systems had failed. But he continued to try to deny legal rights to prisoners not just in Guantanamo but in Iraq and Bagram, too.

Mr Obama’s closure of Guantanamo therefore smacks more of fulfilling a symbolic pledge than following it through. The Bush administration’s legal case was transparently unconvincing. It argued that detainees were “enemy combatants” being held until hostilities ceased. If so, they should have been entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions on the rights of prisoners of war. Yet President Bush resisted even that, and now President Obama represents continuity with that policy.

Indeed, Elena Kagan, Mr Obama’s nominee for Solicitor General, said during her confirmation hearing that someone suspected of helping to finance al-Qa’ida should be subject to battlefield law – indefinite detention without trial – even if captured in the Philippines, say, rather than a battle zone.

Nor is this the first disappointment of Obama’s presidency. Earlier this month, a government lawyer stuck to the Bush line in a case brought by Binyam Mohamed, the British resident expected home from Guantanamo tomorrow – about whom Clive Stafford Smith writes today. Mohamed and others are suing a subsidiary of Boeing for arranging “extraordinary rendition” flights, by which they were taken secretly to other countries where they say they were tortured.

The Bush administration had argued that the case should be dismissed because discussing it in court could threaten national security and relations with other nations. When the case resumed after President Obama’s inauguration, the judge asked the Justice Department’s lawyer if “anything material” had happened to change that view. “No, your Honour,” came the reply. The position he continued to take, he said, had been “thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration”.

What is more, Leon Panetta, Mr Obama’s nominee as CIA director, charged with ending the use of torture techniques such as waterboarding by US agents, said that the agency is likely to continue to transfer detainees to third countries. It would rely on the same assurances of good treatment on which the Bush administration depended.

The Independent on Sunday supports the military action to defend the people of Afghanistan. We accept that there are some difficult practical issues, not least caused by the impossibility of fair legal proceedings against existing detainees on account of their past mistreatment. And we recognise that, since Mr Obama’s inauguration, the glass of justice is fuller than it was.

But the case for respecting human rights remains unanswerable. Brutality, torture and long detention without trial are all not just morally repugnant but counterproductive. That is an argument President Obama himself made when he was running for office. Yet he has said nothing about the disappointing retreats from those high principles made on his behalf by subordinates in the past three weeks.

Gregory Craig, the White House counsel, said last week that the new President intended to avoid “bumper sticker slogans” in deciding what to do with the counterterrorism policies he inherited. Human rights and the rule of law are not bumper sticker slogans. For the sake of the struggle against extremism, Mr Obama needs urgently to deploy his thoughtfulness and great eloquence in explaining just where he stands.

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Obama and the Counterinsurgency Era

February 21, 2009

By Anthony Fenton | Asia Times Online, February  21, 2009

Early signals indicate that United States President Barack Obama will continue driving the “counter-insurgency era” that began under his predecessor George W Bush.

Less than one month into his administration, the most significant indicators that Obama will continue implementing a foreign policy transformation that began under the Bush administration may be found in and around his National Security appointments. Strikingly, the very rhetoric that is being used to signify change is representative of this continuity.

The first key signal came on December 1, when Obama confirmed that he would continue with Robert M Gates as secretary of defense. That day, Obama also announced that (retired) marine general James L Jones would become his national security advisor, and that Hillary Clinton would be secretary of state.

Subsequent appointments, including (retired) navy admiral Dennis Blair to director of national intelligence, and Michele Flournoy as under secretary of defense for policy, along with keeping Michael Vickers on at under secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, are all linked to Obama’s assurances that “irregular warfare” will remain at the forefront of US policy, strategy and operations for the foreseeable future.

To help solidify matters, on December 1, Gates quietly signed Department of Defense

Directive (DoDD) 3000.07, establishing the policy that “irregular warfare is as strategically important as traditional warfare”. [1]

According to the directive, irregular warfare (IW) encompasses “Counter-terrorism operations, foreign internal defense, unconventional warfare, counter-insurgency, and stability operations”.

Under 3000.07, Vickers, a former special forces and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative who is considered one of the key architects behind the CIA’s covert war with the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, becomes Gates’ “principal advisor” on irregular warfare and the person who will provide “overall policy oversight” to ensure the US military establishment is transformed to be “as effective in IW as it is in traditional warfare”.

Directive 3000.07 builds on a post-9/11 foreign policy establishment transformation that began with the Bush Administration’s National Security Strategy of 2002. According to counter-insurgency theorist (retired) colonel Thomas Baltazar and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Elisabeth Kvitashvili, the NSS of 2002 “emphasized a ‘whole-of-government’ approach to the war on terrorism”. [2]

“Whole of government” is a key term that has stuck, and is increasingly being used by the Pentagon and the counter-insurgency community.

The Quadrennial Roles and Missions Review Report, released by the Department of Defense in January 2009, calls for “a better balance between our Nation’s hard and soft power”, a shift which “requires exploring whole-of-government approaches for meeting complex security challenges”. [3]

Directive 3000.07 also built on former president George W Bush’s National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 44 and secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld’s DoDD 3000.05, both issued in late 2005. These directives had already placed Stability Operations on par with traditional operations. Likewise, the Quadrennial Defense Review of 2006, and the publication and mass promotion of the US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3-24) also demonstrated an increasing emphasis on IW. [4] [5]

Counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen (at the time, a key State Department advisor) said in a speech at the US Government Counter-insurgency Conference in September 2006, “True enough, the words ‘insurgency’, ‘insurgent’ or ‘counterinsurgency’ do not appear in NSPD 44, but it clearly envisages the need to deploy integrated whole-of-government capabilities in hostile environments.”

Other key, IW-related developments during the Bush administration included former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice’s “transformational diplomacy” initiative. Announced in January 2006, it called for “a more cooperative working relationship between American diplomats and the US military”. [6] An equally seminal moment took place in November of 2007, when Gates delivered the Landon Lecture, during which he made the “case for strengthening our capacity to use ‘soft’ power and for better integrating it with ‘hard’ power.” [7]

The integration of “soft” and “hard” power is known as “smart power”, a concept that is generally credited to Joseph Nye, a member of the US foreign policy elite, and former official under presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. But it is the 2006 CSIS Commission on Smart Power report, which Nye co-chaired, that is more likely the source for the shift in rhetoric that would be introduced by Gates and then used by the Obama administration. [8]

The fundamental argument of the report was that “the most important mandate” for the next administration would be to re-brand the US image in order that the dwindling Empire might “move from eliciting fear and anger to inspiring optimism and hope”.

Optimism and hope, under the overarching if nebulous theme of “change” were key messages of Obama’s presidential campaign. Among the major goals laid out by the report is “to prolong and preserve American pre-eminence as an agent for good”.

The report asserts that the US “cannot abandon” its military, but that it needs to strengthen the tools of soft power, which include diplomacy and development aid. The report acknowledges that the shift to “smart power” had already begun under Bush, writing: “Some elements of this approach are already occurring in the conduct of ongoing counter-insurgency, nation building, and counter-terrorism operations – tasks that depend critically but only partially on hard power.”

As with many soul-searching debates into the strategic countenance of the US over the years, this one hinges on questions of legitimacy and “credibility”. For the authors, it is not the formulation of the war on terror itself that is problematic in so much as “strik[ing] a balance between the use of force against irreconcilable extremists … and other means of countering terrorism.”

While the “war on terror” is seen as “likely to be with us for decades”, the next administration needed to find “a new central premise for US foreign policy to replace the war on terror”.

The new “central premise” appears to have already emerged. On February 6, the Pakistani press reported that Senator John Kerry, the new chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, bristled at the “the use of the term ‘war on terror'”. Rather, according to Kerry, “What we are doing is conducting global counter-insurgency.” [9]

One of the key “guiding principles” that the CSIS commission suggested to the incoming administration was to “elevate and integrate … development, diplomacy and public diplomacy into unified whole”.

The shift to an emphasis on “whole of government” capabilities (sometimes referred to as “inter-agency”, or “three-D” capabilities) is highlighted in other emerging policies and key reports.

In July 2008, the USAID released its “Civilian-Military Cooperation Policy”. Therein, USAID describes itself as being “designed to facilitate a whole-of-government approach in which US government agencies work … to provide a coordinated, consistent response in pursuit of shared policy goals.” USAID also notes in the policy how its efforts are “a key element of any successful … counter-insurgency effort”. [10]

Likewise, the touchstone US Government Counter-insurgency Guide had its signing ceremony on January 13. The three signatories were USAID administrator Henrietta Fore, Secretary of Defense Gates, and outgoing secretary of state

Rice. In the Guide’s preface, State Department Counselor, and Project for a New American Century signatory Eliot A Cohen asserts that “insurgency will be a large and growing element of the security challenges faced by the Unites States in the 21st century”. The COIN Guide is to prepare key government agencies for the “near certainty” that the US will be engaged in COIN [counter-insurgency] operations “during the decades to come”. [11]

Other key responsibilities under DoDD 3000.07 were given to the undersecretary for defense policy (USD-P), a position that is now held by Michele A Flournoy, the former president of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) think-tank. When it was announced that Flournoy would become USD-P, the Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman referred to her appointment as “a victory for the coterie of counter-insurgency thinkers that the think-tank employs and champions”. [12]

In addition to heading CNAS, Flournoy was, together with Jones, Blair, and Nye, a member of the “Guiding Coalition” of another key think-tank close to the Obama administration, the Project for National Security Reform (PNSR).

At the December 1 event announcing his appointment, Jones stressed how “National Security in the 21st century comprises a portfolio which includes all elements of national power and influence working in coordination and harmony towards the desired goal of keeping our nation safe.”

This statement echoed recommendations that would be made only two days later by the PNSR in its bi-partisan report, “Forging a New Shield”. The report’s main recommendation is that “a new national security system in which agencies work together on joint assignments and policy implementation in responding to crises and managing day-to-day national security affairs”.

Modeled on and led by one of key architects of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, which restructured the US military bringing all of the forces under one umbrella for the first time, the PNSR seeks to similarly alter the national security apparatus of the US in order that the “whole of government” can more cohesively wage global counter-insurgency.

The PNSR grew out of the Center for the Study of the Presidency, the same agency that coordinated the Iraq Study Group and the lower-profile Afghanistan Study Group. The latter was headed by Jones. One of its key recommendations, that the US increase the number of troops in Afghanistan, began to be adopted by the Bush administration and was a key foreign policy plank of Obama’s electoral campaign. Upon taking office, Obama quickly implemented another ASG recommendation by naming Richard Holbrooke as his special advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan. [13]

On January 13, 2009, PNSR announced that they had received $4 million from Congress via the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Department of Defense. Both ODNI, led by former PNSR co-chair Dennis Blair, and the DoD “will oversee execution of the agreement”. [14]

The close proximity of the PNSR to the new administration is instructive for another important reason.

In 2006, army General David Petraeus and Marine Lieutenant General James Mattis established the Counter-insurgency (COIN) Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, “to facilitate the development of a culture that enables us to more effectively adapt as a whole government when called upon to deal with future COIN or COIN-like threats”. [15]

According to the COIN Center’s official pamphlet, its purpose is “to better educate and train all US ground forces on the principles and practices of counter-insurgency, and to better integrate COIN efforts among the services”.

Among members of the COIN Center’s “community of interest” listed on its website, is the PNSR. Additionally, in its pamphlet, the COIN Center lists both a current program and a “near term initiative” that it is collaborating on with the PNSR. It remains to be seen what role exactly the PNSR will play with the COIN Center. One clue is found in the COIN Center pamphlet which states:

The analytical construct the COIN Center uses for continued analysis of distributed responsibility for issues in a COIN environment is the acronym “DDD” or the “3Ds”: Diplomacy (State); Development (USAID); and Defense (DoD).” [16] That PNSR has a shared emphasis on the interagency, or 3D, process, which may be an indication of collaborative efforts to watch for.

One reason to be wary of the commitment to “irregular warfare” is that it reflects a warning issued recently by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen, that US foreign policy is “too militarized”. Although the lip service paid to “smart power” might be seen to indicate a balancing effect toward civilian influence over foreign policy, the appointment of retired military

and intelligence figures to key civilian posts calls this into question. [17]

Since the Obama administration campaigned on the continuity of counter-insurgency and irregular war as key elements of US power projection under his administration, it is likely that these policies will attain a level of popular support not experienced by the Bush administration, and will see little critical scrutiny by the media. The challenge will be to shed light on and critically examine these policies as they manifest in any number of settings around the world in the days to come.

Notes

1. Department of Defense directive number 3000.07, December 1, 2008.

2 . Baltazar, Colonel Thomas and Elisabeth Kvitashvili, “The Role of USAID and Development Assistance in Combatting Terrorism,” Military Review, March-April 2007, pp. 38-40.

3. Pentagon Recommends ‘Whole-of-Government’ National Security Plans by Walter Pincus, The Washington Post, Monday, February 2, 2009.

4. National Security Presidential directive NSPD-44 December 7, 2005.

5. DoD directive 3000.05 November 28, 2005.

6. Better Jointness Needed Between Military and Diplomats , Rice Says By Steven Donald Smith. American Forces Press Service, January 18, 2006.

7. Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M Gates, Manhattan , Kansas, Monday, November 26, 2007.

8. CSIS Commission on Smart Power.

9. Kerry says Pakistan aid bill to be passed shortly, APP Feb 6.

10. Civilian-military cooperation policy July 2008.

11. US government counterinsurgency guide

12.Obama’s Pentagon Subcabinet Officials: Lynn, Flournoy by Spencer Ackerman, The Washington Independent, 1/8/09.

13. Afghanistan Study Group report

14.PNSR Hails Appointment of Guiding Coalition Members to Obama Administration

15.COIN Center Community Of Interest

16.US Army/US Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center.

17. Foreign Policy Beyond the Pentagon by Walter Pincus The Washington Post, February 9, 2009.

Anthony Fenton is an independent researcher and journalist based near Vancouver, Canada. He is currently co-writing a book on Canadian-US post-9/11 foreign policy integration and transformation, and can be reached at fenton@shaw.ca.

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Investigating Bush’s Crimes

February 21, 2009

by Scott Horton | The Nation,  Feb 21, 2009

When the Obama transition team opened a questions referendum on its popular change.gov website in December, one issue quickly soared to the top. “Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor (ideally Patrick Fitzgerald) to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?” And when Obama stepped to the microphone at his first presidential press conference, the question came again, this time with reference to a Congressional call for a truth commission. Obama’s response: “My view is also that nobody is above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen; but that generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.” The answer was a slight variation on the theme he has struck consistently since the final days of his campaign. But what does it mean with respect to the criminal accountability of Bush-era policy-makers? Many are inclined to hear confirmation of their hopes–Republicans eager to see the disastrous Bush years passed over without more fuss will stress the intention not to “look back,” while Obama supporters who embraced his strong criticism of Bush’s torture and surveillance policies will emphasize his observation that “nobody is above the law.” Others are displeased with the ambiguity and press for a conclusive decision on the question.

But these exchanges give us the essence of the “no drama Obama” style: he builds support with lofty rhetoric, giving some sense of his policy objectives, but he consciously avoids committing himself to any particular resolution. Obama is not being coy, I think. He means precisely what he says. Accountability is not a part of his affirmative agenda, least of all for his first hundred days, on which the long-term success or failure of his presidential term may hang. An economic stimulus package, healthcare initiatives and a series of foreign policy challenges occupy center stage. Even in the Justice Department, Obama’s first objectives involve restoring the institution’s self-confidence and resurrecting its historical role in civil rights and voting rights enforcement. It’s not that Obama and his senior advisers see the accountability issue as inherently unimportant–on the contrary, they readily admit that it may be the key to long-term resolution of a series of questions surrounding the abusive extension of presidential power. But it is clearly a back-burner issue for them, something better addressed near the end of his first term or, better still, during a second term.

Obama’s problem is that a growing number of Americans are concerned about what the Bush administration did and are eager to press the issue. The extent of public concern has been reflected in several recent public opinion polls, including one in February by USA Today showing that nearly two-thirds of Americans support investigations of the Bush administration’s use of torture and warrantless wiretapping; roughly 40 percent support criminal investigations.

And the shift in public opinion is not the only thing transforming the environment in Washington on this issue. Susan Crawford, a Cheney protégée and the senior Bush administration official responsible for the military commissions in Guantánamo, told the Washington Post‘s Bob Woodward that she refused to approve the charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani because he had been tortured. Torture is, of course, a felony under US law, and if multiple figures are involved, it might well be “conspiracy to torture,” a separate crime. As ABC News reported and President Bush later confirmed, the full book of proposed techniques to which Qahtani was subjected had been approved by the National Security Council, headed by Bush. A senior Obama Justice figure remarked after reading the Crawford interview that it would be “impossible to sweep the matter under the carpet.” That’s a view that seems to be shared by US allies and United Nations officials, who, pointing to Crawford’s admissions, are asking why the United States has failed to introduce a criminal inquiry into how torture came to be practiced as a matter of US policy. Articles 4 and 5 of the Convention Against Torture require the United States to prohibit torture under domestic criminal law and to investigate and prosecute incidents in which it is practiced. The failure even to begin criminal investigations has placed the United States in breach of its obligations under the treaty, a point that even torture apologists like University of Chicago Law School professor Eric Posner freely concede.

President Bush was widely expected to issue blanket pardons to those involved in his interrogations and surveillance programs, but he did not do so. Moreover, the Bush administration’s tenuous claim to legality for its torture programs was ended immediately after Obama assumed office, when he directed a reassessment of interrogation policies and revoked all of the relevant Bush-era Justice Department opinions with the stroke of a pen.

Obama has been careful to avoid any suggestion that he or his senior officers are directing a criminal investigation or prosecution of the Bush-era torture enablers. He is right to do so. The criminal justice system of a democratic state should not operate like a well-oiled military machine taking its cue from the commander in chief. It requires professional prosecutors who operate with critical detachment from political officials when they pursue criminal investigations. Moreover, the painful circumstances of the torture and surveillance programs, particularly the fact that senior Justice Department officials were complicit in their implementation at almost every step, make it an ethically doubtful proposition for the Justice Department even to take up the matter.

Up to this point, political influence has been used to block accountability. Investigations are still under way at the Justice Department and other agencies that touch on important aspects of the Bush administration’s detainee policy. One probe is looking into the mysterious destruction of evidence of interrogations using highly coercive techniques that was sought in pending criminal cases. Another probe, nearly complete, is examining the circumstances behind the crafting of the notorious torture memos in the black hole of the Bush Justice Department, the Office of Legal Counsel. Under the Bush administration, these and other investigations were often bottled up, as senior officials refused to cooperate and the White House–which functioned as the nerve center for Justice Department political operations–refused to turn over documents. On occasion, they were shut down directly by order of President Bush. One criminal investigation launched by FBI agents at Guantánamo was ordered closed by the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Alice Fisher, who may herself emerge as a target of a criminal investigation. Under the transparency policies Obama announced during his first week, and under the detainee policies he is busily putting in place, the administration will unblock internal probes and mandate that federal employees, including White House employees, cooperate with them. Realization that this was in the works may have given rise to President Bush’s January 16 “gag letters” issued to Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten, instructing them to keep quiet in the face of a Congressional probe about their dealings with the Justice Department.

Leading Congressional Democrats are proposing a way forward. In January House Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers announced a blue-ribbon panel to be appointed to conduct an investigation. He is also proposing that the statute of limitations be modified to take the time pressure off potential criminal investigators. Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy put forth a proposal of his own a few weeks later in a presentation at Georgetown University. Leahy pressed the idea of a “truth commission,” similar to the approach used in South Africa after the fall of the apartheid regime. Bush administration officials who come forward and offer a full accounting of their deeds could get immunity for their testimony; those who keep silent or give false statements could face prosecution. The Leahy and Conyers approaches share a number of elements, including the notion that the commission would consist of eminent people who are “above the political fray,” would get subpoena power and would be fully staffed and resourced. Both Conyers and Leahy cite the 9/11 Commission as a model–a Congressionally authorized commission backed by presidential authority, a hybrid model that would eliminate some of the potential legal challenges that a purely Congressional commission might face. Conyers is, however, far more concerned about building a solid record that can form the basis of prosecutions, whereas Leahy offers immunity as a reward for candor.

There are unmistakable signs of momentum in support of a commission approach in Washington. Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic Congressional leaders who once sang in the “let’s forgive and forget” choir are now signaling their support for a commission. But what about the Obama White House? Following a meeting between Leahy and Greg Craig, Obama’s White House counsel, the White House was committed only to an ongoing discussion.

But the commission approach may, depending on some critical details, offer the best solution to the impasse. Moreover, it may well suit Obama’s needs for the commission to be the creation and initiative of Congress rather than of his administration. It would allow a comprehensive investigation without embroiling the White House in the process. A commission would be in a position to put to rest some persistent questions, particularly regarding how torture came to be embraced as a matter of policy and whether the administration ever got actionable intelligence from tortured suspects that could conceivably offset the immense damage that torture has done to the moral authority of the United States around the world. Most significant, if a commission recommended a criminal investigation to the Attorney General, and if it recommended appointment of a special prosecutor, that would deflect suggestions that the process was “political.”

On the other hand, investigative commissions do not actually do justice. They cannot bring charges, and in the process of granting immunity for testimony they can muddy the waters for a later prosecutor. Any commission would need the advice and guidance of professional prosecutors, who could help to assure that it would prudently exercise the right to grant immunity and would avoid damaging future prosecutions.

Criminal investigations and prosecutions might be avoided under the Leahy approach and might be delayed under the Conyers approach. But whatever approach is finally settled upon, it seems increasingly clear that there will be multiple investigations: a commission of some sort, Congressional hearings (which are promised in any event) and internal probes within the government, which will likely be pursued delicately and quietly.

Though the wheels of justice grind slowly, they grind exceeding small. One year from today, it is likely that a large number of the secret documents that form the backbone of Bush detention policy will be public and many of their authors will have been publicly interrogated about them. We will have a better sense of how torture crept into the American interrogations system and whose authority was invoked to ram it through in the face of legal hurdles once thought insurmountable. And one year from today, we will probably still be asking whether any of the authors of this national tragedy will or should be prosecuted. That outcome is not likely to satisfy either side of the debate. But it may well be consistent with the interests of justice, which demands a complete exploration of the facts before anyone is held to account. That outcome fully reflects the Obama style.

© 2009 The Nation

Scott Horton, a senior fellow at The Nation Institute, lectures at Columbia Law School.

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Gitmo Detainee’s ‘Genitals Were Sliced With A Scalpel,’ Waterboarding ‘Far Down The List Of Things They Did’

February 12, 2009
Ben Armbuster | Think Progress, Feb 9, 2009

binyamweb2.jpgLast week, two British High Court judges ruled against releasing documents describing the treatment of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who is currently being held at Guantanamo Bay. The judges said the Bush administration “had threatened to withhold intelligence cooperation with Britain if the information were made public.”

But The Daily Telegraph reported over the weekend that the documents actually “contained details of how British intelligence officers supplied information to [Mohamed’s] captors and contributed questions while he was brutally tortured.” In fact, it was British officials, not the Americans, who pressured Foreign Secretary David Miliband “to do nothing that would leave serving MI6 officers open to prosecution.” According to the Telegraph’s sources, the documents describe particularly gruesome interrogation tactics:

The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, “is very far down the list of things they did,” the official said.

Another source familiar with the case said: “British intelligence officers knew about the torture and didn’t do anything about it.”

“It is very clear who stands to be embarrassed by this and who is being protected by this secrecy. It is not the Americans, it is Labour ministers,” former shadow home secretary David Davis said. But one unnamed U.S. House Judiciary Committee member told the Telegraph that if President Obama “doesn’t act we could hold a hearing or write to subpoena the documents. We need to know what’s in those documents.”

Mohamed remains at Guantanamo Bay and “is currently on hunger strike.” “All terror charges against him were dropped last year,” the Telegraph reported.

UpdateToday in San Francisco, “a little-publicised court case into the treatment of Mohamed will open” in federal court. Andrew Sullivan notes that “we’ll find out if the Obama administration intends to keep the evidence as secret as the Bush administration did.”

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A Call to End All Renditions

February 11, 2009

JURIST –  Forum

JURIST Contributing Editor Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson School of Law says that instead of leaving the door open for the CIA to continue to engage in the rendition of terrorism suspects to other countries so long as the process is somehow handled “humanely”, the Obama administration should end renditions altogether and prosecute those who have ordered renditions since 2001…

Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian residing in Britain, said he was tortured after being sent to Morocco and Afghanistan in 2002 by the U.S. government. Mohamed was transferred to Guantánamo in 2004 and all terrorism charges against him were dismissed last year. Mohamed was a victim of extraordinary rendition, in which a person is abducted without any legal proceedings and transferred to a foreign country for detention and interrogation, often tortured.

Mohamed and four other plaintiffs are accusing Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. of flying them to other countries and secret CIA camps where they were tortured. In Mohamed’s case, two British justices accused the Bush administration of pressuring the British government to block the release of evidence that was “relevant to allegations of torture” of Mohamed.

Twenty-five lines edited out of the court documents included details about how Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel as well as other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding “is very far down the list of things they did,” according to a British official quoted by the Telegraph (UK).

The plaintiffs’ complaint quotes a former Jeppesen employee as saying, “We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights – you know, the torture flights.” A senior company official also apparently admitted the company transported people to countries where they would be tortured.

Obama’s Justice Department appeared before a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Monday in the Jeppesen lawsuit. But instead of making a clean break with the dark policies of the Bush years, the Obama administration claimed the same “state secrets” privilege that Bush used to block inquiry into his policies of torture and illegal surveillance. Claiming that the extraordinary rendition program is a state secret is disingenuous since it is has been extensively documented in the media.

“This was an opportunity for the new administration to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay the course,” said the ACLU’s Ben Wizner, counsel for the five men.

If the judges accept Obama’s state secrets claim, these men will be denied their day in court and precluded from any recovery for the damages they suffered as a result of extraordinary rendition.

Two and a half weeks before Obama’s representative appeared in the Jeppesen case, the new President had signed Executive Order 13491. It established a special task force “to study and evaluate the practices of transferring individuals to other nations in order to ensure that such practices comply with the domestic laws, international obligations, and policies of the United States and do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture or otherwise for the purpose, or with the effect, of undermining or circumventing the commitments or obligations of the United States to ensure the humane treatment of individuals in its custody or control.”

This order prohibits extraordinary rendition. It also ensures humane treatment of persons in U.S. custody or control. But it doesn’t specifically guarantee that prisoners the United States renders to other countries will be free from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment that doesn’t amount to torture. It does, however, aim to ensure that our government’s practices of transferring people to other countries complies with U.S. laws and policies, including our obligations under international law.

One of those laws is the International Covenant on Civil Political Rights (ICCPR), a treaty the United States ratified in 1992. Article 7 of the ICCPR prohibits the States Parties from subjecting persons “to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” The UN Human Rights Committee, which is the body that monitors the ICCPR, has interpreted that prohibition to forbid States Parties from exposing “individuals to the danger of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment upon return to another country by way of their extradition, expulsion or refoulement.”

Order 13491 also mandates, “The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future.” The order does not define “expeditiously” and the definitional section of the order says that the terms ‘detention facilities’ and ‘detention facility’ “do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.” Once again, “short term” and “transitory” are not defined.

In his confirmation hearing, Attorney General Eric Holder categorically stated that the United States should not turn over an individual to a country where we have reason to believe he will be tortured. Leon Panetta, nominee for CIA director, went further last week and interpreted Order 13491 as forbidding “that kind of extraordinary rendition, where we send someone for the purposes of torture or for actions by another country that violate our human values.”

But alarmingly, Panetta appeared to champion the same standard used by the Bush administration, which reportedly engaged in extraordinary rendition 100 to 150 times as of March 2005. After September 11, 2001, President Bush issued a classified directive that expanded the CIA’s authority to render terrorist suspects to other States. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the CIA and the State Department received assurances that prisoners will be treated humanely. “I will seek the same kinds of assurances that they will not be treated inhumanely,” Panetta told the senators.

Gonzales had admitted, however, “We can’t fully control what that country might do. We obviously expect a country to whom we have rendered a detainee to comply with their representations to us . . . If you’re asking me, ‘Does a country always comply?’ I don’t have an answer to that.”

The answer is no. Binyam Mohamed’s case is apparently the tip of the iceberg. Maher Arar, a Canadian born in Syria, was apprehended by U.S. authorities in New York on September 26, 2002, and transported to Syria, where he was brutally tortured for months. Arar used an Arabic expression to describe the pain he experienced: “you forget the milk that you have been fed from the breast of your mother.” The Canadian government later exonerated Arar of any terrorist ties. In another instance, thirteen CIA operatives were arrested in Italy for kidnapping an Egyptian, Abu Omar, in Milan and transporting him to Cairo where he was tortured.

Panetta made clear that the CIA will continue to engage in rendition to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects and transfer them to other countries. “If we capture a high-value prisoner,” he said, “I believe we have the right to hold that individual temporarily to be able to debrief that individual and make sure that individual is properly incarcerated.” No clarification of how long is “temporarily” or what “debrief” would mean.

When Sen. Christopher Bond (R-Mo.) asked about the Clinton administration’s use of the CIA to transfer prisoners to countries where they were later executed, Panetta replied, “I think that is an appropriate use of rendition.” Jane Mayer, columnist for the New Yorker, has documented numerous instances of extraordinary rendition during the Clinton administration, including cases in which suspects were executed in the country to which the United States had rendered them. Once when Richard Clarke, President Clinton’s chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council, “proposed a snatch,” Vice-President Al Gore said, “That’s a no-brainer. Of course it’s a violation of international law, that’s why it’s a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.”

There is a slippery slope between ordinary rendition and extraordinary rendition. “Rendition has to end,” Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, recently told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!: “Rendition is a violation of sovereignty. It’s a kidnapping. It’s force and violence.” Ratner queried whether Cuba could enter the United States and take Luis Posada, the man responsible for blowing up a commercial Cuban airline in 1976 and killing 73 people. Or whether the United States could go down to Cuba and kidnap Assata Shakur, who escaped a murder charge in New Jersey.

Moreover, “renditions for the most part weren’t very productive,” a former CIA official told the Los Angeles Times. After a prisoner was turned over to authorities in Egypt, Jordan or another country, the CIA had very little influence over how prisoners were treated and whether they were ultimately released.

The U.S. government should disclose the identities, fate, and current whereabouts of all persons detained by the CIA or rendered to foreign custody by the CIA since 2001. Those who ordered renditions should be prosecuted. And the special task force should recommend, and Obama should agree to, an end to all renditions.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law. Her new book, Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd), will be published in April 2009. Her articles are archived at http://www.marjoriecohn.com.

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US Senator Leahy Seeks Bush-Era ‘Truth Commission’

February 10, 2009

Published on Monday, February 9, 2009 by Reuters

by Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON – A U.S. “truth commission” should investigate Bush administration policies including the promotion of war in Iraq, detainee treatment and wiretapping without a warrant, an influential senator proposed on Monday.

[US President Barack Obama gave a cool welcome to a proposal from Democratic Senator Pat Leahy, seen here at the US Capitol, for a "truth commission" to probe alleged abuses under George W. Bush -- but did not rule out possible prosecutions for wrongdoing. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Alex Wong)]US President Barack Obama gave a cool welcome to a proposal from Democratic Senator Pat Leahy, seen here at the US Capitol, for a “truth commission” to probe alleged abuses under George W. Bush — but did not rule out possible prosecutions for wrongdoing. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Alex Wong)

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, urged a commission as a way to heal what he called sharp political divides under former President George W. Bush and to prevent future abuses.He compared it to other truth commissions, such as one in South Africa that investigated the apartheid era.

“We need to come to a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past,” Leahy said in a speech at Georgetown University.

“Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened,” he said. “And we do that to make sure it never happens again.”

Some Republicans and intelligence officials have resisted any suggestion of broad inquiries into accusations against the Bush administration, saying it would be a distraction or weaken morale in the fight against terrorism.

“If every administration started to reexamine what every prior administration did, there would be no end to it. This is not Latin America,” the Judiciary committee’s top-ranking Republican, Senator Arlen Specter, told reporters last month.

President Barack Obama suggested shortly before he took office in January that he did not favor prosecuting Bush administration officials over their counterterrorism policies, but said he would look into “past practices.”

“What we have to focus on is getting things right in the future as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past,” he said.

Leahy said he had not begun to promote the truth commission idea with the Obama administration or with the Democratically controlled Congress. But he suggested it could be formed by both Congress and the White House, and said the panel must have credibility across the political spectrum.

Issues to investigate would include the Justice Department’s firings of several U.S. attorneys, which Leahy said may have been motivated by a White House aim to influence elections, policies on the treatment of terrorism suspects and other areas “where (congressional) committees were lied to.”

This included the war in Iraq, he said. “There were lies told to the American people all the way through.”

Bush has acknowledged that intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was wrong, but said he never lied to the public about the war.

Leahy said he wanted the Defense Department investigated for filming Iraq-war protesters, which he said came “shockingly close” to the FBI’s Vietnam War-era Cointelpro operation to investigate domestic war protesters. “We fought a revolution in this country so we could protest the actions of our government,” he said.

(Editing by David Storey)

© 2009 Reuters

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Britain: Foreign Office colludes with US to cover-up torture of Binyam Mohamed

February 8, 2009
By Robert Stevens | WSWS, 7 February 2009

A High Court ruling by two British judges regarding the torture of a Guantánamo detainee has unleashed a major political crisis.

The judges have stated that they have been pressured by the United States into concealing evidence that should be made available in any country governed by the rule of law. This took the form of threats to withdraw security cooperation, instigated under the Bush administration and continued under Barak Obama’s presidency.

Binyam Mohamed, 30, is currently in Guantánamo Bay but is reportedly being prepared for a return to the UK. He states that he was tortured by US agents in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan between 2002 and 2004, and that Britain’s security agencies were complicit.

The High Court judgment on February 4 refused to order the disclosure of the CIA dossier said to contain evidence of his abuse. The document is a report by the US government to the British security services. The ruling followed a submission by the UK Foreign Office.

While calling for the document to be made public, the judges stated that it was not presently in the public interest to publish it, as the US government could “inflict on the citizens of the United Kingdom a very considerable increase in the dangers they face at a time when a serious terrorist threat still pertains”.

The joint judgment by Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones registered its concern that the document remained secret. “In the light of the long history of the common law and democracy which we share with the United States it was in our view difficult to conceive that a democratically elected and accountable government could possibly have any rational objection to placing into the public domain such a summary of what its own officials reported, as to how a detainee was treated by them and which made no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters”.

The judgment continued, “Indeed we did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials…relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be”.

Continued  >>

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How Bush Threatened Britain

February 8, 2009

Andrew Sullivan | The Atlantic, February 6, 2009

In order to prevent any details of its torture record being publicly disseminated, the Bush administration threatened the British government with withdrawal of intelligence sharing if they allowed a court to publish the redacted evidence. Foreign secretary David Miliband denied this on Wednesday, but the letters from the US have been released by Channel 4 News. And their message is unmistakable. The first letter:

“I write with respect to proceedings … regarding Mr Binyam Mohamed,” the letter said. “We note the classified documents identified in your letters of June 16 and August 1, 2008, to the acting general counsel of the Department of Defence … the public disclosure of these documents or of the information contained therein is likely to result in serious damage to US national security and could harm … intelligence information sharing arrangements between our two governments.”

The second:

“Ordering the disclosure of the US intelligence information now would have only the marginal effects of serious and lasting damage to the US-UK intelligence sharing relationship, and thus the national security of the UK …”

That is a threat to hurt the security of a very close ally unless the British government intervenes into a court process to suppress evidence of US torture. In a critical test of the Obama administration, the demand that such evidence be suppressed was reiterated. (I don’t know by whom. Panetta isn’t in place yet. Brennan? Clinton?) And that’s how illegal torture spreads throughout a legal and military system to undermine alliances as well as the rule of law. The poison of Cheney is still in the system. And it will be for a long time. That was the point: the crimes and blunders they committed were such that their successors find themselves, willy nilly, implicated in them.

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Iraq’s Shocking Human Toll: About 1 Million Killed, 4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans

February 2, 2009

By John Tirman, The Nation. Posted February 2, 2009.

Now that Bush is gone, perhaps we can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it.

We are now able to estimate the number of Iraqis who have died in the war instigated by the Bush administration. Looking at the empirical evidence of Bush’s war legacy will put his claims of victory in perspective. Of course, even by his standards — “stability” — the jury is out. Most independent analysts would say it’s too soon to judge the political outcome. Nearly six years after the invasion, the country remains riven by sectarian politics and major unresolved issues, like the status of Kirkuk.

We have a better grasp of the human costs of the war. For example, the United Nations estimates that there are about 4.5 million displaced Iraqis — more than half of them refugees — or about one in every six citizens. Only 5 percent have chosen to return to their homes over the past year, a period of reduced violence from the high levels of 2005-07. The availability of healthcare, clean water, functioning schools, jobs and so forth remains elusive. According to Unicef, many provinces report that less than 40 percent of households have access to clean water. More than 40 percent of children in Basra, and more than 70 percent in Baghdad, cannot attend school.

The mortality caused by the war is also high. Several household surveys were conducted between 2004 and 2007. While there are differences among them, the range suggests a congruence of estimates. But none have been conducted for eighteen months, and the two most reliable surveys were completed in mid-2006. The higher of those found 650,000 “excess deaths” (mortality attributable to war); the other yielded 400,000. The war remained ferocious for twelve to fifteen months after those surveys were finished and then began to subside. Iraq Body Count, a London NGO that uses English-language press reports from Iraq to count civilian deaths, provides a means to update the 2006 estimates. While it is known to be an undercount, because press reports are incomplete and Baghdad-centric, IBC nonetheless provides useful trends, which are striking. Its estimates are nearing 100,000, more than double its June 2006 figure of 45,000. (It does not count nonviolent excess deaths — from health emergencies, for example — or insurgent deaths.) If this is an acceptable marker, a plausible estimate of total deaths can be calculated by doubling the totals of the 2006 household surveys, which used a much more reliable and sophisticated method for estimates that draws on long experience in epidemiology. So we have, at present, between 800,000 and 1.3 million “excess deaths” as we approach the six-year anniversary of this war.

This gruesome figure makes sense when reading of claims by Iraqi officials that there are 1-2 million war widows and 5 million orphans. This constitutes direct empirical evidence of total excess mortality and indirect, though confirming, evidence of the displaced and the bereaved and of general insecurity. The overall figures are stunning: 4.5 million displaced, 1-2 million widows, 5 million orphans, about 1 million dead — in one way or another, affecting nearly one in two Iraqis.

By any sensible measure, it would be difficult to describe this as a victory of any kind. It speaks volumes about the repair work we must do for Iraqis, and it should caution us against the savage wars we are prone to. Now that Bush is gone, perhaps the United States can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it.

John Tirman is Executive Director of MIT’s Center for International Studies.

Link: http://www.alternet.org/story/123818/

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