THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

Written and Compiled by Black Max

2006: September: Week Four

Page Five

 

"An intelligence service free to torture soon "degenerates into a playground for sadists." -- Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, quoted by Molly Ivins

• September 28: In an editorial aptly titled "Rushing Off a Cliff," the New York Times calls the newly passed detainee and antiterrorism bill "irresponsible" and a product of the "mindless politics of a midterm election." The Times characterizes the thinking behind the bill: "The Bush administration uses Republicans' fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws -- while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser."
• While Bush and his officials and supporters say that Congress must act immediately to create procedures for charging and trying the terrorists already in detention, this is a lie. They could have been tried, and likely convicted, years ago, but Bush refused to send them in front of a court. Instead he had them held in illegal detention, questioned in ways that will make it tougher for prosecutors to gain a conviction, and, in the Times's words, "invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them." The urgency only came after the Supreme Court struck down the Bush "kangaroo courts." And the politics are, if anything, even more cynical and un-American: as the Times observes, "Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism."
• The editorial, written before the Senate voted to pass the bill, lists the some of following flaws in the legislation, which I have excerpted wholesale.
  • Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of "illegal enemy combatant" in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.
  • The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret -- there's no requirement that this list be published.
  • Habeas Corpus: Detainees in US military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.
  • Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.
  • Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable -- already a contradiction in terms -- and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.
  • Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.
  • Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.
  The Times writes, "There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it. We don't blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they'll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won't remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration. They'll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation's version of the Alien and Sedition Acts." (New York Times)

Book by Bob Woodward shows Bush administration lied about Iraq from outset, situation in Iraq far worse than acknowledged

• September 28: In an upcoming 60 Minutes interview with Bob Woodward on CBS News, Woodward will tell interviewer Mike Wallace that the Bush administration has not told the truth regarding the level of violence, especially against US troops, in Iraq. He also reveals key intelligence that predicts the insurgency will grow worse next year. Woodward's interview is drawn from his new book, State of Denial. According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a fact the administration has kept secret. "It's getting to the point now where there are eight, 900 attacks a week. That's more than a hundred a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces," he says. Despite what the White House continues to assert, according to Woodward, the situation in Iraq is degenerating fast. "The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], 'Oh, no, things are going to get better,'" he says. "Now there's public, and then there's private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know. The insurgents know what they are doing. They know the level of violence and how effective they are. Who doesn't know? The American public." Woodward reveals that former Nixon Secretary of State Henry Kissinger meets regularly with top-level Bush officials to consult about Iraq. "Now what's Kissinger's advice?" Woodward asks. "In Iraq, he declared very simply, 'Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.' This is so fascinating. Kissinger's fighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will." Woodward says that Bush is so committed to staying in Iraq, he says that when he had key Republicans to the White House to discuss Iraq, he told them, "I will not withdraw, even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me."
• As a side note, Woodward is interviewed by the 88-year old Mike Wallace. Wallace's son Chris, who attempted to slag former president Bill Clinton in a Fox News interview on September 24, and said over a year ago that his father was nearing incompetence to the point where the family was considering having him committed. Interesting that CBS would give such a banner-headline interview to someone who is described by his son as nearing senility. (See the item above for more details on the Wallaces.) (CBS News/Talking Points Memo, CBS News)
• September 28: The cost of the Iraq occupation to US taxpayers is nearly $2 billion a week, according to a new congressional analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. That figure is almost twice as much as the cost during the first year of the conflict, and 20% more than in 2005, as the Pentagon establishes a raft of new regional bases to support the long-term occupation, and attempts to fix or replace equipment damaged or destroyed in combat. The Afghanistan operation costs US taxpayers around $370 million a week, even though troop levels in both countries remain relatively stable. The total cost of military operations at home and abroad since 2001 tops $500 billion. The added cost comes from, in part, a higher level of fighting in both countries, along with what the report calls "the building of more extensive infrastructure to support troops and equipment in and around Iraq and Afghanistan." Based on Defense Department data, the report suggests that the construction of so-called semi-permanent support bases has picked up in recent months, making it increasingly clear that the US military will have a presence in both countries for years to come. The United States maintains it is not building permanent military bases in Iraq or Afghanistan, where the local population distrusts America's long-term intentions. House Democrat Martin Meehan, a member of the House Armed Service Committee, says, "While we are spending billions in Iraq to build and maintain massive bases, we cannot [effectively] repair our abused equipment or replace it." The Pentagon has not released up-to-date war costs. "You would expect [operating costs] to level off if you have the same level of people," says the report's principal author, Amy Belasco, a national defense specialist at the Congressional Research Service. "You shouldn't have as much cost to fix buildings that were presumably repaired when you got there. It's a bit mysterious." The report reads, "In congressional hearings, the Department of Defense has typically provided estimates of the current or average monthly costs over a period of time for military operations, referred to as the 'burn rate. While this figure covers some of the costs of war, it excludes the cost of upgrading or replacing military equipment and improving or building facilities overseas, and it does not cover all funds appropriated." (Boston Globe)

British Ministry of Defense report calls Iraq a "recruiting sergeant" for al-Qaeda

• September 28: A report prepared for the British Ministry of Defense says that the Iraq war has acted as a "recruiting sergeant" for Muslim extremists around the world. It also says the British government sent troops into Afghanistan "with its eyes closed." The report calls the West "in a fix" and harshly criticizes Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, for supporting terrorism. It was written by an officer attached to the Defense Academy, and who has links to British intelligence. The Defense Ministry has moved to downplay the report, but the report says little that the Ministry, military commanders, and the Foreign Office have already said. The report reads, in part, "The war in Iraq...has acted as a recruiting sergeant for extremists across the Muslim world. ...Iraq has served to radicalize an already disillusioned youth and al-Qaeda has given them the will, intent, purpose and ideology to act." On Afghanistan, the paper says that Britain went in "with its eyes closed. " It claims that a secret deal to extricate UK troops from Iraq so they could focus on Afghanistan failed when British military leaders were overruled.
• The paper accuses the Pakistan army of indirectly supporting the Taliban by backing Pakistan's religious parties, accusations that, along with the report's accusations of Taliban and al-Qaeda support by the ISI, are strongly disputed by Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf. He says, "I totally, 200%, reject it. I reject it from anybody -- MoD or anyone who tells me to dismantle ISI. ISI is a disciplined force, breaking the back of al-Qaeda. Getting [arresting] 680 people would not have been possible if our ISI was not doing an excellent job."
• A Defense spokeswoman says of the report, "The academic research notes quoted in no way represent the views of the MoD or the government. To represent it as such is deeply irresponsible and the author is furious that his notes have been wilfully misrepresented in this manner. He suspects they have been released to the BBC precisely in the hope they would cause damage to our relations with Pakistan. Pakistan is a key ally in our efforts to combat international terrorism and her security forces have made considerable sacrifices in tackling al-Qaeda and the Taliban. We are working closely with Pakistan to tackle the root causes of terrorism and extremism." (Guardian)

"Carnage incarnate" in Iraq

• September 28: Some terrible facts surrounding the Iraqi occupation are detailed by Tom Engelhardt of the Nation Institute. He details them:
  • At least 23 freelance militias are operating in Baghdad alone, mostly Shi'ite, but some Sunni, a staggering number for a single city.
  • The death totals of Iraqis in Baghdad is equally staggering: 5,106 in July and August, according to a UN report. The number is likely to actually be far higher; the bodies of tortured and murdered Iraqis are being found every day. While there is no way to estimate how many Iraqis are being tortured every day in Baghdad, the stories surrounding the bodies are horrific, with bodies displaying, according to the New York Times, "gouged-out eyeballs...wounds...in the head and genitals, broken bones of legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns...acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin...missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails." The UN's chief anti-torture expert, Manfred Nowak, believes that torture in Iraq is now not only "totally out of hand," but "worse" than under Saddam Hussein.
  • Countrywide, the UN counts 1,493 dead Iraqis outside of Baghdad in July and August, but this number is tremendously underreported. The Times points out that officials in al-Anbar province, the center of the Sunni insurgency "and one of the deadliest regions in Iraq, reported no deaths in July." Deaths in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, seem to be far higher than reported; Diyala is largely under the control of Sunni insurgents who, according to British journalist Patrick Cockburn, are "close to establishing a 'Taliban republic' in the region." The head of Diyala's Provincial Council (who has so far escaped two assassination attempts) told Cockburn that he believed "on average, 100 people are being killed in Diyala every week." Many of those murdered are buried in date palm groves and fruit orchards, or thrown into the Diyala River. The UN estimates 40,000 Iraqi deaths a year; the number is certainly far higher.
  • 15,000 US troops, 9,000 Iraqi army soldiers, 12,000 Iraqi national police, and 22,000 local police are trying to stem the violence in Baghdad, and having little success. At least six battalions of Iraqi troops, totaling 3,000 troops, have gone missing, most to join the Shi'ite insurgency or deserted to go home. US soldiers are deeply disappointed in their Iraqi colleagues, with the AP reporting, "Some US soldiers say the Iraqis serving alongside them are among the worst they've ever seen -- seeming more loyal to militias than the government."
  • 75% of the Sunni Arabs in Iraq support the insurgency. In 2003, when the Pentagon first began surveying Iraqi public opinion, only 14% supported the insurgents.
  • Strong majorities of Iraqis in every section of the country except the Kurdish-controlled northern region want the US to withdraw its forces immediately, according to a midsummer poll conducted by the State Department. 75% of Baghdad residents say they would feel safer if the US left, and 65% favor immediate withdrawal. Overall, 71% of all Iraqis want the US out within a year. They have little hope of such withdrawal; 77% of Iraqis think that the US is intent on keeping permanent bases inside their country. Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, recently called for the US to keep at least two bases permanently inside Iraq.
  • The number of terrorists killed in Iraq, and elsewhere, as part of Bush's war on terror is far less than the number being generated by the war in Iraq, according to the just-leaked NIE discussed above. Recruitment for al-Qaeda dropped to record lows before the 2003 invasion, and have increased dramatically since then.
  • 5,000 Islamic extremist Web sites have sprung up on the Internet to aid in acts of terror, according to that same NIE.
  • 300,000 Iraqis have fled their homes this year alone, due to the fomenting civil war and ethnic cleansing of their neighborhoods.
  • Only 2% of Iraq is accessible to Western journalists, according to New York Times journalist Dexter Filkins, a veteran of covering Baghdad. Filkins claims that "98 percent of Iraq, and even most of Baghdad, has now become 'off-limits' for Western journalists." There are, he says, many situations in Iraq "even too dangerous for Iraqi reporters to report on." Such journalists, working for Western news outlets, "live in constant fear of their association with the newspaper being exposed, which could cost them their lives. 'Most of the Iraqis who work for us don't even tell their families that they work for us,' said Filkins." So far, 20 journalists and 6 media support workers have died in 2006, at least one, a Baghdad TV correspondant, killed in a US air strike. In all, 80 journalists and 28 media support workers have died since the invasion of 2003. Compare these figures to journalistic deaths in other American wars: World War II (68), Korea (17), Vietnam (71).
  • Around 147,000 US troops are in Iraq today, according to CENTCOM commander General John Abizaid, significantly more than were in Iraq just after the April 2003 fall of Baghdad. Abizaid says even more troop deployments inside Iraq is a likelihood. The Pentagon is keeping units on duty for months after their scheduled departure dates, and units are being sent to Iraq ahead of schedule. The Army policy of keeping units home for two years until redeployment has shrunk to 14 months, and continues to fall. Lynn Davis of the Rand Corporation observes, "soldiers in today's armored, mechanized and Stryker brigades, which are most in demand, can expect to be away from home for 'a little over 45 percent of their career.'" The Army Reserves and National Guard are being used far more heavily than ever anticipated, and involuntary deployment of members of the Individual Ready Reserve is increasing. A new, large deployment of even more National Guard and Reserve troops is on the books, but is unlikely to be announced until after the November elections. The Times reports that as of now, "so many [U.S. troops] are deployed or only recently returned from combat duty that only two or three combat brigades -- perhaps 7,000 to 10,000 troops -- are fully ready to respond in case of unexpected crises, according to a senior Army general." Approximately 400,000 troops out of an active-duty force of 504,000 have already served one tour of duty in Iraq. More than a third of these have already been deployed twice. By the spring of 2005, 40% of the Army's equipment had already been rotated through Iraq and Afghanistan. 40% of the Marine Corps' ground equipment, and 20% of its air assets, are currently in use. Iraq's harsh climate and heavy fighting have taken a tremendous toll on military equipment. Analyst Carl Conetta estimates that when, or even if, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars end, the post-war repair bill for Army and Marine equipment will be in the range of $25-40 billion. The Army needs at least $25 billion above budgetary limits set by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and claims to need a 41% increase over its current share of the Pentagon budget just to "tread water."
  • Iraqi reconstruction plans are failing throughout the country. The country's electrical grid delivers power through less than 25% of an average day. Its oil production, projected hopefully to be up to 3 million barrels a day by the end of December, is nowhere near that capacity. Inflation in Iraq is at almost 53%, with a Times estimate at closer to 70%. A Pentagon study shows that almost 26% of Iraqi children are suffering from stunted growth due to chronic malnutrition, with those numbers expected to increase.
  • George W. Bush has given 6 speeches in the last month alone extolling his war on terror and calling Iraq the "central front" in that war. This does not include press conferences, comments made while greeting foreign leaders, and the like.
  Engelhardt concludes, "This week, the count of American war dead in Iraq passed 2,700. The Iraqi dead are literally uncountable. Iraq is the tragedy of our times, an event that has brought out, and will continue to bring out, the worst in us all. It is carnage incarnate. Every time the President mentions 'victory' these days, the word 'loss' should come to our minds. A few more victories like this one and the world will be an unimaginable place. Back in 2004, the head of the Arab League, Amr Mussa, warned, 'The gates of hell are open in Iraq.' Then it was just an image. Remarkably enough, it has taken barely two more years for us to arrive at those gates on which, it is said, is inscribed the phrase, 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.'" (TomDispatch)
• September 28: In yet another challenge to anyone daring to criticize Bush's grab for executive power, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, defending Bush's anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, says that federal judges do not have the right to supersede Bush's judgments with their own legal interpretations. Gonzalez's argument, if adopted wholesale, gives a single person -- in this case Bush -- dominance and legal superiority over the entire judiciary. The Constitution provides for the equality of the three branches, executive, legislative, and judicial, with neither branch having domination over either of the other two. Gonzalez, however, sees it differently. He says that the Constitution makes the president commander-in-chief and the Supreme Court has long recognized the president's pre-eminent role in foreign affairs. "The Constitution, by contrast, provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime," he says during a conference on the judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center. According to Gonzalez, "judges must resist the temptation to supplement those tools based on their own personal views about the wisdom of the policies under review. ...A proper sense of judicial humility requires judges to keep in mind the institutional limitations of the judiciary and the duties expressly assigned by the Constitution to the more politically accountable branches." Gonzalez's audience includes a number of legal scholars and judges, and one Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas. (AP/Los Angeles Times)

Contacts between Rove, Mehlman, other top White House officials with Jack Abramoff far more extensive than previously admitted; Bush officials repeatedly intervened on behalf of Abramoff clients

• September 28: A newly released report by the House Government Reform Committee proves that the ties between the White House and former lobbyist and convicted felon Jack Abramoff were far stronger than previously acknowledged by the Bush administration. The report documents 485 contacts between White House officials between January 2001 and March 2004. 82 of those were with officials in Karl Rove's office, and 10 were with Rove himself. Other frequent contacts between Abramoff and Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman have also been proven. Mehlman was the Bush-Cheney campaign director during the 2004 presidential elections. The report, not yet formally released by the committee, says that the contacts "raise serious questions about the legality and actions" of Rove, Mehlman, and other officials. Both were offered expensive meals and exclusive tickets to premier sporting events and concerts by Abramoff and his associates. Abramoff also billed his clients nearly $25,000 for meals and drinks with these officials during that period.
• During the period under investigation, Bush officials repeatedly intervened on behalf of Abramoff's clients, including helping a Mississippi Indian tribe obtain $16 million in federal funds for a jail the tribe wanted to build. Abramoff was able to block the nomination of one Interior Department official using Christian conservative Ralph Reed as a go-between with Rove, according to e-mails between Abramoff and Reed. Abramoff also tried to oust a State Department employee who interfered with their efforts on behalf of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, one of Abramoff's most lucrative clients. The White House says that the billing records used as one of the sources of the report are "fraudulent" and "misrepresented the activities and influence of Abramoff," according to White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. "There's no reason those records should be suddenly viewed as credible." She says she is unaware of any link between Abramoff's lobbying and White House interventions on the behalf of any of Abramoff's clients.
• Despite the White House's denials, evidence is mounting that Abramoff wielded undue, and likely illegal, influence within the highest levels of the Bush administration and the Republican Party. In particular, RNC chairman Ken Mehlman was particularly active in working on Abramoff's behalf. According to one exchange of e-mails cited in the report, former Abramoff lobbying team member Tony Rudy succeeded in getting Mehlman to press reluctant Justice Department appointees to release millions of dollars in congressionally earmarked funds for a new jail for the Mississippi Choctaw tribe, an Abramoff client. Rudy wrote Abramoff in November 2001 e-mails that Mehlman said he would "take care of" the funding holdup at Justice after learning from Rudy that the tribe made large donations to the GOP. Paul Kiel of TPM Muckraker writes, "so in exchange for political contributions, Mehlman made sure the Choctaw got their $16 million contract. I believe that's called a quid pro quo." In 2001, Mehlman ensured that a longtime foe of Abramoff's, Allen Stayman, wasn't re-nominated for his post at the State Department. And a report from the Justice Department's Inspector General says that Mehlman ordered one of his suboordinates at the White House to keep Abramoff updated on issues related to Guam; Abramoff was keen to see the US Attorney there replaced. Mehlman told an interviewer with Vanity Fair in March 2006 that he and other White House officials hardly knew who Abramoff was: "Abramoff is someone who we don't know a lot about. We know what we read in the paper."
• Rove, Bush's deputy chief of staff and his longtime political guru, was also heavily involved in helping Abramoff. According to a raft of e-mails released by the House Government Reform Committee, Rove helped scuttle the appointment of an Interior Department nominee, Angela Williams, who would have authority over decisions affecting the Northern Mariana Islands, an Abramoff client. In an e-mail exchange with the subject line, "Were you able to whack McCain's wife yet?", Abramoff and his colleage Ralph Reed discuss derailing Williams's nomination. Williams is married to former FTC commissioner Orson Swindle, who was a Vietnam POW with Republican senator John McCain. According to the exchange, Reed e-mailed Abramoff, saying that he "talked to Rove about this and I think I killed it."
• Rove aide Susan Ralston passed along inside White House information to Abramoff, while simultaneously accepting tickets to nine sporting and entertainment events, according to e-mails released by the government report. Ralston, who had worked for Abramoff before joining Rove's staff, also discussed possible business ventures with Abramoff. "A disgraced lobbyist traded perks and campaign contributions for special access to the Bush White House," says Democrat House leader Nancy Pelosi, but White House press secretary Tony Snow retorts, "Jack Abramoff was an exuberant practitioner of sleaze to the point that it's very difficult within the report itself to figure out how many actual contacts there are." Actually, the report is quite clear: Abramoff contacted White House officials 66 times, more than half of those with Ralston. Other members of Abramoff's lobbying team at Greenberg Traurig LLP contacted Ralston 69 times. The report indicates that Abramoff did not get all that he requested, particularly in securing appointments of friends and colleagues to positions in the Bush administration. On October 21, 2001, Ralston e-mailed Abramoff that Rove had read an Abramoff memo about a political endorsement in an obscure race in the Mariana Islands. Ralston reported back to Abramoff that Rove had agreed, writing in an e-mail the next day: "You win :)" On February 21, 2001, Ralston e-mailed Abramoff lobbyist Todd Boulanger: "Thanks for breakfast. I showed KR the binder.... He gave the binder to Mehlman to read cover to cover and to be prepared." Ken Mehlman was then the White House political director. Mehlman says all of his contacts with Abramoff and his associates were "aboveboard." Ralston also helped Rove get tickets from Abramoff for a game in the NCAA basketball tournament, but Rove paid for the tickets, according to the White House. Ralston did not pay for tickets she accepted to MCI Center events, including two concerts, three NHL games, an NBA game, and seats at a Baltimore Orioles game. When Ralston requested tickets, Abramoff would reply, "You got 'em." Abramoff gave Ralston tickets to NBA games costing $1,300; when in 2004 she told him she was willing to pay for NHL tickets, Abramoff replied, "No problem, and you don't have to pay!" Perino says the White House is investigating whether the gifts violated ethics regulations. Rules prohibit the acceptance of gifts worth more than $20 from anyone doing business with the government.
• Ralston and Abramoff also discussed future business plans at least twice, the report says. In February 2002, Ralston, Abramoff and Ben Waldman, an Abramoff business partner in his fraudulent purchase of a casino cruise line in Florida, exchanged e-mails about an aircraft leasing venture. In November 2002, Ralston and Abramoff exchanged e-mails about an idea to form a defense or homeland security contracting company. Ralston expressed interest but said she thought it would take a lot of research to get the company off the ground. She was committed to the White House, she said. "It would take a serious amount of money for me to be lured away so unless you're really serious and can make it worth my while, let's wait until 2005." Abramoff agreed, writing, "I am not in a position to offer you serious money for this right now." (Roll Call/TPM Muckraker, Roll Call/TPM Muckraker, Washington Post/TPM Muckraker, House Government Reform Committee/TPM Muckraker, Washington Post)
• September 28: An unorganized yet powerful group of retired Army and Marine generals are coming out in staunch, principled opposition to the Iraq occupation, to the point where some observers are calling it "a revolt." The article by former senior Time editor and former Nixon advisor Richard Whalen cites their rationale: "This rebellion -- quiet and nonconfrontational, but remarkable nonetheless -- comes not because their beloved forces are bearing the brunt of ground combat in Iraq but because the retirees see the US adventure in Mesopotamia as another Vietnam-like, strategically failed war, and they blame the errant, arrogant civilian leadership at the Pentagon." Whalen focuses on two of the group, Major General Charles Swannack, who formerly commanded the 82nd Airborne, and Major General John Batiste, the former commander of the 1st Infantry (the "Big Red One"). Batiste made headlines in late September, when he and two other senior retired officers spoke out at a Democratic policy hearing (see above item). Batiste said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is "not a competent wartime leader," makes "dismal strategic decisions" that result "in the unnecessary deaths of American servicemen and women, our allies and the good people of Iraq," "dismiss[es] honest dissent," and "did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war." This public opposition by such a large and influential group of senior military retirees is unprecedented in American history.
• Whalen notes that while it may be shocking for so many retired generals and senior officers to be publicly opposing this administration's war policies, it is not surprising: "After more than sixty-five years of increasingly centralized and secret presidential warmaking, we have concentrated ultimate civilian authority in fewer and fewer hands. Some of these leaders have been proved by events to be incompetent." Whalen says that, after speaking to a plethora of retired generals, former intelligence officers and former Pentagon officials and aides, he is told by them that "whatever the original US objective was in Iraq, our understrength forces and flawed strategy have failed, and that we cannot repair this failure by remaining there indefinitely. Fundamental changes are needed, and senior officers are prepared to make them. According to my sources, some active-duty officers are working behind the scenes to end the war and are preparing for the inevitable US withdrawal. 'The only question is whether a war serves the national interest,' declares a retired three-star general. 'Iraq does not.'" Traditionally, this kind of debate is kept publicly quiet, taking place only within ranks and within the officers' corps itself. But no longer.
• Even public statements by the highest-ranking commanders on the field show the doubts about the Bush administration's strategy. General George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, drafted a highly classified plan, leaked in June 2006, that called for a sharp reduction in US forces in Iraq by late December 2007, a plan already rendered obsolete. Now Casey says that Iraqi security forces might be ready to take over security of their country by mid-2008, but no longer discusses troop withdrawals. Casey, like many high-level officers, believe that the US cannot even plan to leave Iraq until the chaos of violence that grips Baghdad is gotten under control. On August 3, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, John Abizaid, implied to the Senate Armed Services Committee that Baghdad, at least, is already in the midst of civil war; privately, senior officers acknowledge that the entire country, if not already in a civil war, is on the brink, and in that case, the Army would pull out of the worst-affected areas, particularly Baghdad, to avoid being caught in the middle of the sectarian slaughter.
• Many of the officers now speaking out draw grim parallels to the last failed war in US history, Vietnam. Retired Lieutenant General William Odom calls Iraq "the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States" and says, like Vietnam, the US strategy in Iraq serves nothing but the interests of our enemies. Whalen writes that Odom "says that our objectives in Vietnam passed through three phases leading to defeat. These were: (1) 1961-65, 'containing' China; (2) 1965-68, obsession with US tactics, leading to 'Americanization' of the war; and (3) 1968-75, phony diplomacy and self-deluding 'Vietnamization.' Iraq has now completed two similar phases and is entering the third...." In March, Odom wrote, "Will Phase Three in Iraq end with US helicopters flying out of Baghdad's Green Zone? It all sounds so familiar. The difference lies in the consequences. Vietnam did not have the devastating effects on US power that Iraq is already having. On this point, those who deny the Vietnam-Iraq analogy are probably right. They are wrong, however, in believing that staying the course will have any result other than making the damage to US power far greater than would changing course and making an orderly withdrawal.... But even in its differences, Vietnam can be instructive about Iraq. Once the US position in Vietnam collapsed, Washington was free to reverse the negative trends it faced in NATO and US-Soviet military balance, in the world economy, in its international image, and in other areas. Only by getting out of Iraq can the United States possibly gain sufficient international support to design a new strategy for limiting the burgeoning growth of anti-Western forces it has unleashed...."
• There will be no open revolt. "We're not the French generals in Algeria," says Major General Paul Eaton. "But we damned well know that the Iraq War we've won militarily is being lost politically." Marine Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold wrote in a Time magazine essay: "I retired from the military four months before the March 2003 invasion, in part because of my opposition to those who had used 9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy." Newbold calls the Iraq War "unnecessary" and says the civilians who launched the war acted with "a casualness and swagger" that are "the special province" of those who have never fought in combat. Many of these generals are determined not to see the same thing happen as happened in Vietnam -- civilian Pentagon officials systematically bungling the long, miserable last years of the war while disciplined senior soldiers held their tongues, then floods of critical accounts and analyses of the war appearing in print. Today, a retired major general privately asserts: "For our generation, Iraq will be Vietnam with the volume turned way up. Three decades ago, the retired generals who are now speaking out against the Iraq War were junior officers in Vietnam. The seniors who trained and mentored us, and who became generals but who kept silent, did not speak out after retirement against Vietnam." Whalen writes, "Now, even before the Iraq War has ended, generals have shed their uniforms and begun publicly to fight back against Rumsfeld's bullying and a new generation of Pentagon civilians' bloodstained mistakes. These former generals despise Rumsfeld, with several, like Batiste, describing him as totally dismissive of their views. They recall repeatedly trying to warn Rumsfeld before the Iraq invasion that the US forces he was planning to deploy were barely half the 400,000 they said were needed. Rumsfeld publicly humiliated all who dissented, beginning with Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki, who was virtually dismissed the day he honestly gave his views to Congress. Rumsfeld's deputy, neoconservative ideologue Paul Wolfowitz, listened respectfully before rejecting the generals' advice. As the Iraqi insurgency grew, the generals found Rumsfeld 'completely unable and unwilling to understand the collapse of security in Iraq,' says Maj. Gen. Eaton. The severely understrength US forces have never been able to provide adequate security. Once Iraqi civilians lost their trust and confidence in America's protection, the war was lost politically. As General Newbold says: 'Our opposition to Rumsfeld is all about his accountability for getting Iraq wrong from day one.'"
• In his recently published book Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Thomas Ricks, the Washington Post's senior Pentagon correspondent, gave a devastating, heavily documented indictment of almost incredible civilian and military shortsightedness and incompetence, such as the foolish decisions that encouraged the Iraqi insurgency. "When we disbanded the Iraqi Army, we created a significant part of the Iraqi insurgency," Ricks quotes Colonel Paul Hughes, whose advice to retain the army was rejected. Before Hughes retired he told Ricks, "Unless we ensure that we have coherency in our policy, we will lose strategically." The most critical political-strategic decisions about post-Saddam Iraq's future were made by deeply mistaken civilian officials in Washington and in the Green Zone by CPA administrator Paul Bremer, whom Whalen contemptuously labels "our 'viceroy.'"
• Whalen believes that if the Democrats gain control of either chamber of Congress, the country will be given a round of hearings featuring one military officer after another speaking of "betrayal" and "tragically wasted sacrifices." Whalen writes, "The retired generals believe nothing would be gained, and much would be lost, by keeping the truth about Iraq from the families of America's dead and wounded." Eaton says, "The repeated rotations of Army Reservists and National Guardsmen are hollowing out the US ground forces. This whole thing in Iraq is going to fall off a cliff.... Yet we have a moral obligation to see this thing [the Iraqi occupation] through. If we fail, it will cause America grave problems for several decades to come." Whalen notes, "These earnest, if contradictory, sentiments echo what some conflicted US military officers told me thirty-five years ago, as Vietnam was being abandoned. After President Nixon's Watergate disgrace and resignation, a fed-up American public and a heavily Democratic-controlled Congress finally pulled the plug on our Saigon ally, allowing South Vietnam to fall."
• No one believes that the Iraqi army, police, and security forces will be ready to take over any aspect of Iraqi security any time soon. Eaton, who was in charge of training those forces from 2003-04, says the US will need five more years to train the Iraqi army, and another ten to train and equip an effective Iraqi police force. General Barry McCaffrey writes in an unpublished report, "We need to better equip the Iraqi Army with a capability to deter foreign attack and to have a leveraged advantage over the Shia militias and the insurgents they must continue to confront. The resources we are now planning to provide are inadequate by an order of magnitude or more. The cost of a coherent development of the Iraqi security forces is the ticket out of Iraq -- and the avoidance of the constant drain of huge US resources on a monthly basis." The process of "Iraqification," like "Vietnamization" thirty-odd years before, is at the moment little more than self-deception, Whalen observes.
• The retired generals are also alarmed over a wider Middle East conflict spreading into Iran, according to former Pentagon planner Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and a PhD. She writes that the generals are trying to get rid of Rumsfeld now to head off a conflict with Iran. The Bush Administration reportedly has contingency plans to bomb Iran's UN-disapproved nuclear sites. Some underemployed Navy and Air Force officers are lobbying to strike Iran, writes Kwiatkowski, but the overstretched ground combat forces overwhelmingly oppose it as the worst of all possible wars. She writes: "If Rumsfeld retires, we will not 'do' Iran under Bush 43." Both Kwiatkowski and retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner warn that US Special Forces troops are already secretly deployed within Iran, identifying potential targets for future air strikes. The Iranians are of course aware of their uninvited visitors. Whalen writes, "The obvious diplomatic recourse is for the Bush Administration to talk to Tehran about our pending exit from Iraq, but the White House refused to do so until late September, when the Bush family's longtime political fixer, former Secretary of State James Baker, entered the picture as a deal-maker. Baker is co-chair, with retired Indiana Democratic Representative Lee Hamilton, of the Congressionally created Iraq Study Group (ISG), which is due to issue a comprehensive report on US options in Iraq after the November elections. After a four-day visit to Iraq, Baker, Hamilton and the eight other members of the bipartisan task force returned to Washington with an obvious recommendation: Start talking to Tehran. After receiving President Bush's immediate approval, Baker invited an unidentified 'high representative' of the Iranian government, as well as Syria's foreign minister, to meet with the ISG. Baker realizes the leverage is largely on Iran's side of the table. An expert on Shiite Islam, Professor Vali Nasr of the Naval Postgraduate School, sees a glaring missed opportunity the ISG could help seize. He suggested in the July-August Foreign Affairs that 'Iran will actively seek stability in Iraq only when it no longer benefits from controlled chaos there, that is, when it no longer feels threatened by the United States' presence. Iran's long-term interests are not inherently at odds with those of the United States; it is current US policy toward Iran that has set the countries' respective Iraq policies on a collision course.'"
• McCaffrey warns that "US public diplomacy and rhetoric about confronting Iranian nuclear weapons development is scaring neighbors in the Gulf. Our Mideast allies believe correctly that they are ill equipped to deal with Iranian strikes to close the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. They do not think they can handle politically or militarily a terrorist threat nested in their domestic Shia populations." The recent failure of Israel to defeat Hezbollah forces inside Lebanon is a sober reminder of how unlikely the US is to carve a victory out of a war with Iran. Says former Deputy Secretary of State and retired Navy SEAL Richard Armitage, "When the Israel Defense Forces, the most dominant military force in the region, can't pacify little Lebanon [population: 4 million], you should think twice about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of 70 million." McCaffrey believes that the US would need Iranian cooperation even to withdraw out of Iraq without suffering heavy losses: "A US military confrontation with Iran could result in [the radical Islamic Mahdi Army's] attacking our forces in Baghdad or along our 400-mile line of communications out of Iraq to the sea." With Iranian support, the US should be able to withdraw peacefully through Kuwait.
• Whalen writes, "A key argument in the ex-generals' indictment is this undeniable fact: Our armed forces are too small to police and reorder the world and intervene almost blindly, as we have in Iraq. That invasion acted out the world-changing daydreams of pro-Israel neoconservative policy intellectuals like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and others who gained warmaking power and influence atop the Pentagon but who evidently never asked themselves, Suppose we're wrong? What happens then? Sober, realistic Israelis privately fear the neocons' 'friendship,' and where it has led America, more than any Arab enemies. In the inevitable post-Iraq War tsunami of US political recrimination, such Israelis foresee Christian Zionist evangelicals, whose lobbying muscle in Congress was decisive in the run-up to the Iraq War, attempting to scapegoat the high-profile neocons and endangering Israel's all-important security ties to the United States. Growing public disgust and frustration with the Iraq War has begun to arouse a self-defeating desire to retreat into isolationism. Rather, the United States should revive the traditional but recently neglected realistic approach to foreign policy, as the ISG is starting to do, and it should begin with a renewed multilateral approach to peacemaking in the Middle East." (The Nation)
• September 28: Democratic senator Patrick Leahy continues to speak out against the detainee rights bill recently passed by the Senate. On the floor of the Senate, Leahy says, "It grieves me to think that three decades in this body that I stand here in the Senate, knowing that we're thinking of doing this. It is so wrong. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American. It is designed to ensure the Bush-Cheney administration will never again be embarrassed by a United States Supreme Court decision reviewing its unlawful abuses of power. The Supreme Court said, 'You abused your power.' He said, 'Ha, we'll fix that. We have a rubber stamp, a rubber stamp, Congress, that will just set that aside and give us power that nobody, no king or anybody else set foot in this land, ever thought of having.'" Two days later, in an interview with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, he expands on his statement, saying, "...[I]t's a terrible bill. It removes as many checks and balances as possible so that any president can basically set the law, determine what laws they'll follow and what laws they'll break and not have anybody be able to question them on it. In this case, the particular section I was speaking about at that point was the so-called habeas protection. Now, habeas corpus was first brought in the Magna Carta in the 1200s. It's been a tenet of our rights as Americans. And what they're saying is that if you're an alien, even if you're in the United States legally, a legal alien, may have been here ten years, fifteen years, twenty years legally, if a determination is made by anybody in the executive that you may be a threat, they can hold you indefinitely, they could put you in Guantanamo, not bring any charges, not allow you to have a lawyer, not allow you to ever question what they've done, even in cases, as they now acknowledge, where they have large numbers of people in Guantanamo who are there by mistake, that they put you -- say you're a college professor who has written on Islam or for whatever reason, and they lock you up. You're not even allowed to question it. You're not allowed to have a lawyer, not allowed to say, 'Wait a minute, you've got the wrong person. Or you've got -- the one you're looking for, their name is spelled similar to mine, but it's not me.' It makes no difference. You have no recourse whatsoever. This goes so much against everything we've ever done. Now, we've had some on the other side say, 'Well, they're trying to give rights to terrorists.' No, we're just saying that the United States will follow the rules it has before and will protect rights of people. We're not giving any new rights. We're just saying that if, for example, if you picked up the wrong person, you at least have a chance to get somebody independent to make that judgment."
• Leahy continues, "[T]he fact is this allows the Bush administration to act totally arbitrarily with no court or anybody else to raise any questions about it. It allows them to cover up any mistakes they make. And this goes beyond just marking everything 'secret,' as they do now. Every mistake they make, they just mark it 'secret.' But this is even worse. This means somebody could be locked up for five years, ten years, fifteen years, twenty years. They have the wrong person, and they have no rights to be able to say, 'Hey guys, you've got the wrong person.' It goes against everything that we've done as Americans. You know, when things like this were done during the Cold War in some of the Iron Curtain countries, I remember all the speeches on the Senate floor, Democrats and Republicans alike saying, 'How horrible this is! Thank God we don't do things like this in America.' I wish they'd go back and listen to some of their speeches at that time."
• During the same interview, Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights adds, "Let me tell you, this bill will be struck down and struck down badly. But meanwhile, for two more years or whatever it's going to take us to litigate it, we're going to be litigating what was a basic right, as the senator said, since the Magna Carta of 1215, the right of any human being to test their detention in court. It's one of the saddest days I've seen. You've called it 'groundbreaking,' Amy. It's really Constitution-breaking. It's Constitution-shattering. It shatters really basic rights that we've had for a very long time. ...It's an incredible thing, and any senator who voted for this, in my view, is essentially guilty, guilty, guilty of undermining basic fundamental rights and may well be guilty of war crimes, as well." (Democracy Now/Marc Parent)
• September 28: A local Pennsylvania newspaper, the Scranton Times-Tribune, gives an excellent example of the current tack being taken by many Republicans currently running for election, or re-election, in light of Bush's plummeting popularity ratings. The Times-Tribune highlights Pennsylvania Republican Rick Santorum, running for re-election to the Senate against conservative Democrat Bob Casey. Santorum, struggling in the polls, has tried desperately to distance himself from Bush in recent weeks, though Santorum spent the entirety of his first term supporting Bush wholeheartedly and loudly -- the average annual rate of Santorum's support for Bush's policies in congressional votes since 2001 is 98%. Casey, of course, is reminding voters of Santorum's former close association with Bush at every turn. Santorum is refusing to attend fundraisers with Bush, and tries to distance himself from Bush, and highlight his own policy differences, whenever possible. Casey's strategy to link Santorum to an unpopular president is clear, but whether the connection can carry him to victory is uncertain. "That's a key question," says political science professor Steven Peterson. "The evidence suggests that to some extent elections at the state level can be a reflection of presidential popularity." Michael Young, an expert on Pennsylvania politics, says Santorum's voting record makes it strategically impossible to separate him entirely from Bush. So the Santorum campaign seems to have decided to portray Santorum's continued support of the president as a sign of his "character and strength." Young says, "I give him credit for that, but it's making a virtue out of necessity." Dozens of Republican candidates around the country are aping Santorum's distancing strategy. (Scranton Times-Tribune)
• September 28: The House Administration Committee witnesses a terrifying demonstration of just how easy it is to commit fraud upon a voting machine. Edward Felton, a Princeton professor of computer science, shows the committee how easily he could put a virus on an electronic voting machine, in this case the popular Diebold AccuVote TS, so that it would wrongly record votes. Felton says he purchased keys to the unit on the Internet. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
• September 28: Experts in computer security and election technology say that US soldiers stationed overseas are ripe to have their votes in November targeted for fraud. The Pentagon's system for handling the votes of soldiers overseas is antiquated and far too easy to tamper with. During the next six weeks, thousands of soldiers are expected to fax or e-mail their ballots over international communications networks that are susceptible to interception and tampering, putting those votes at risk. "I can't for the life of me figure out how the Defense Department decided this is the right thing to do," says Doug Jones, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Iowa. Flaws in the system include the failure of the Pentagon to warn soldiers about risks to their personal information and voting choices when they fax or e-mail their ballots; soldiers who fax or e-mail their ballots must waive their right to a secret ballot; and soldiers are not informed that ballots they e-mail directly to the Department of Defense will be processed by an outside contractor, whose executives have made contributions to Republican organizations. Last month, an internal Defense Department review of its ballot system "found significant concerns surrounding the e-mailing of voting materials." The review stated, "E-mail traffic can flow through equipment owned and operated by various governments, companies and individuals in many different countries. It is easily monitored, blocked and subject to tampering." Security experts say similar concerns apply to faxes, which do not travel over the Internet but can also be easily intercepted. In 2004, the Pentagon attempted to implement a secure online voting system that it canceled because of its inability to prevent electronic ballots from being altered or erased.
• Until recently, soldiers have been forced to rely on ballots mailed through the US and military postal services, a time-consuming and unreliable methodology that has proven troublesome in recent elections, including becoming an issue during the 2000 presidential elections in Florida and elsewhere. A recent survey shows that 25% of military ballots sent from overseas are not counted. Many states still do not accept faxed or e-mailed ballots. The votes sent to the Pentagon will be forwarded to a private contractor, Ecompex, whose top executives have made political contributions to Republican Party organizations.
• A new, supposedly secure online voting system is available at the following Web site: https://ivas.dod.mil, but few counties or election boards are equipped to handle the ballots cast over this site, and the Defense Department is not widely promoting the site for military use. "If I didn't know better I would say that their intention is to fail," says Bob Carey, a senior fellow at the National Defense Committee, a military advocacy group. (San Jose Mercury News)
• September 28: Halliburton is the target of "multiple" government investigations both within and outside Nigeria, according to company filings. Halliburton is already under investigation for its bribery scheme involving a Nigerian natural gas plant, but now investigators are looking into whether a Halliburton subsidiary, M.W. Kellogg Company, planned to bribe government officials in other countries to land projects in those nations. The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a number of subpoenas as part of the investigations. The latest inquiries stem from a long-running investigation into the construction of a $5.5 billion natural gas liquefaction complex at Bonny Island in Nigeria's Rivers State. The SEC and Justice Department, as well as authorities in France, Nigeria, Switzerland and Britain have all been investigating. Halliburton officials said they do not expect those probes to be wrapped anytime soon. (Houston Chronicle)
• September 28: The House suspends a multimillion-dollar telecom license awarded to MobileAccess, formerly known as Foxcom Wireless, because it was given to the firm by Republican representative Bob Ney in return for gifts and cash given to Ney by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The award of the license was one of a series of acts that Ney said he performed for Abramoff in exchange for campaign contributions, expensive meals, luxury travel and sports tickets. Ney has agreed to plead guilty to an array of charges stemming from his relationship with Abramoff. The license to install antennas for cellular and wireless telephones in House office buildings was awarded in 2002 to MobileAccess, then based in Israel. The company, now based in Vienna, Virginia, later paid Abramoff $280,000 in lobbying fees and donated $50,000 to a charity operated by Abramoff that paid for a golf junket to Scotland for Ney. Democratic representative Zoe Lofgren, a member of the House Administration Committee, says, "I think a company should not profit from corrupt actions. Obviously, what happened in awarding the contract was wrong, illegal, corrupt. The question is what role did the company have? Was the company a knowing participant?" The committee is reviewing the deal. Both Abramoff and Neil Volz, who went to work for Abramoff as a lobbyist after serving as Ney's top aide, admitted in plea agreements this year that the wireless license was a favor for Abramoff in exchange for gifts. Prosecutors said in charging papers that Ney took a variety of official actions for Foxcom, "including meeting with representatives of the client on or about May 10, 2001, leaking to Abramoff a copy of a letter from the client's competitor complaining about the selection process in or about September 2002, and issuing a license to Abramoff's client." (Washington Post)
• September 28: Republican senator Trent Lott mocks journalists' "obsess[ion]" with Iraq and makes an ethnically inflammatory remark about the various Muslim sects fighting for dominance in Iraq. Lott confirms that Bush barely mentioned the war in Iraq during a meeting with Lott and his fellow Republican senators. "No, none of that," Lott says to reporters after being asked whether Iraq was discussed. "You're the only ones who obsess on that. We don't and the real people out in the real world don't for the most part." To top off his mockery of those concerned about Iraq, he explained why he doesn't understand the motivations behind the violence in Iraq, saying, "It's hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what's wrong with these people, Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me." (CNN)
• September 28: Republican senator Mike DeWine says he has had access to the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate for months, but hasn't bothered to read it until recently, when its existence became public knowledge. "This was not considered any kind of seminal or groundbreaking National Intelligence Estimate," he says, and adds that, contrary to everything the NIE concludes, success in stabilizing and democratizing Iraq will counter the jihadist resentment. DeWine says that, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he was briefed on the report in April. DeWine's Democratic colleagues, along with many experts and observers, disagree with him. Charles Schumer, the Democratic senator from New York, says that the report "shows that Iraq, if anything, has made the war on terror worse rather than better." Of DeWine's apparent attempt to downplay the NIE in order to further Republican political ambitions, Schumer says, "In ad after ad we see people like Mike DeWine and [Republican senator] Jim Talent saying they're independent. Well, it's time to step up to the plate, fellows, and show it. Are you going to stand by the nonpartisan, nonpolitical intelligence estimates that came out of 16 agencies or are you gonna be a rubber stamp for George Bush and when he says black is white, you go, 'Indeed it is.'" DeWine says that the entire NIE should not be declassified because, in apparent defiance of logic, the "essential facts" of the report are already known. Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Democratic senatorial committee, says that for an Intelligence Committee member, DeWine had little interest in oversight. "It seems like a pretty important report to shuffle to the side for a few months," Singer says. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
• September 28: Four-term Republican representative Don Sherwood is facing a serious allegation of abusing his former mistress, an allegation that may cost Sherwood his bid for re-election. In 2000 and 2002, Democrats didn't bother to even field a candidate to run against Sherwood; this year, Sherwood may lose. Last year Sherwood, 65, admitted to having a five-year affair with a woman 35 years his junior; he also settled a lawsuit from the woman, who claimed he physically abused and choked her. Sherwood barely scraped through the GOP primary against a novice who only spent $5,000 on her campaign. He faces a tougher challenge this year. "I made a mistake that hurt my family and has disappointed some of my constituents," he recently said. "Their disappointment is understandable and I've apologized, and I'm working hard to win them back." But he won't win all of his voters back; one example is 81-year old retire Frances Pohonche, who says though she always voted for Sherwood before, she won't again. "I just don't like the man," she says. "He cheated on his wife."
• Sherwood battled during his first two successful runs, in 1998 and 2000, against Democrat Patrick Casey, until a Republican-led legislative effort successfully gerrymandered Pennsylvania's districts to, among other things, secure Sherwood's seat. In 2002 and 2004, Democrats didn't even field a candidate. But in May 2005, media outlets began reporting that police had investigated an altercation between Sherwood and his mistress, Cynthia Ore, in September 2004. No criminal charges were filed, but Ore filed a lawsuit against Sherwood, claiming he had choked her while giving her a back rub at his Capitol Hill apartment. Sherwood denied the abuse claims, but admitted to the affair, and settled the lawsuit with Ore in a confidential agreement. Democratic opponent Chris Carney is not backing away from the issue. "Don Sherwood is not representing the values of this district," he says in a commercial. "Mr. Sherwood went to Washington and he didn't remember the values he took with him. ...Send me to Congress and I'll make you proud." In another spot, Carney says, "What we have in Washington are people who don't accept responsibility for their actions." Carney says Sherwood is ripe for defeat, given voters' pessimism about the direction of the nation, Bush's sagging poll numbers, and [after the Carney interview], the Mark Foley revelations. "It's a perfect storm of issues," says Carney, "not just Sherwood's personal issues." (AP/iWon News)
• September 28: Former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, considered by some to be the "hero of 9/11" and a likely Republican candidate for president in 2008, says that the criticism of Bill Clinton over his administration's handling of the terrorist threat is unfair. "The idea of trying to cast blame on President Clinton is just wrong for many, many reasons, not the least of which is I don't think he deserves it," Giuliani says. "I don't think President Bush deserves it. The people who deserve blame for Sept. 11, I think we should remind ourselves, are the terrorists -- the Islamic fanatics -- who came here and killed us and want to come here again and do it." Giuliani says he believes Clinton, like Bush, did everything he could with the information he was provided. "Every American president I've known would have given his life to prevent an attack like that," he says. "That includes President Clinton, President Bush. They did the best they could with the information they had at the time." (AP/Yahoo! News)
• September 28: Veteran foreign affairs commentator Robert Parry writes that the only way to avoid a potential third World War is to get rid of the Republican leadership in Congress. So far, the Bush administration, which will be in office until January 2009, and their colleagues in Congress are hell-bent on bringing more discord and unrest into the Middle East and Central Asia, under the rubric of "the war on terror." If they were truly interested in defeating terror, Parry says, they would be focusing on al-Qaeda strongholds along the Afghan-Pakistani border until the group's leadership was captured or killed. Instead, that area is being left virtually alone, and Bush has expanded the "war" far past the largely Sunni fundamentalists to include the secular dictatorship of Iraq, the Shi'ite government of Iran, Syria's Assad family dynasty, Lebanese Shi'ite militants of Hezbollah, Palestinian Sunni militants of Hamas, and an array of other Islamic radicals around the globe. "So, instead of finishing a winnable war against al-Qaeda, Bush veered off into a diffused struggle against a diverse grouping of Muslim leaders, nations and organizations lumped under a terrorism umbrella," Parry writes. Bush has never given any coherent strategy for winning what, in Parry's words, "amounts to a global counterinsurgency war against Islamic militants." The only strategy ever discussed is "stay the course" in Iraq and elsewhere, and imposing "democracy" on the various nations, Islamic sectarianism will somehow be destroyed. The fact is that Muslim hatred of Bush's policies (and Bush personally) is so hardened that whenever citizens get to vote, they vote according to narrow sectarian interests such as in Iraq, or leaders who gained popularity by standing up to the US, as in Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon. The only "reliable" US allies are the Arab tyrants such as the Sauds, the Jordanian monarchy, and the dictators of Egypt and Pakistan, who hold power against the will of their peoples. Bush's plan to win this "war on terror," says Parry, is little more than "waging a bloodbath against large segments of the world's one billion Muslims, a global version of the carnage on display in Iraq since 2003 and in Lebanon during the Israeli war against Hezbollah last summer." But even that strategy will almost certainly fail.
• The Bush neocons refuse to learn any lessons, but continue to advocate for long-term, broad-ranging wars, sometimes bluntly using the term "World War III." They want aggressive military invasions in Iran, Syria, and anywhere else that hosts or suffers militant Islamists. In August, Bush urged Israel to expand its offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon into Syria as well. Such offensives will certainly provoke more attacks on Western targets and then even more retaliatory strikes by the US against an ever-multiplying Islamic enemy. In the process, Constitutional rights in America will continue to be slashed and destroyed. "As the terrorist threat continues to grow," he writes, "so will the pressure to transform America into a modern-day police state, with arbitrary detention of terrorism suspects and high-technology spying on citizens and non-citizens alike."
• Is there an alternative? Certainly. "There are still routes available that might lead to a more peaceful world that isolates, marginalizes and eventually eradicates terrorist ideologues," Parry writes. "But these strategies would require extraordinary bravery, wisdom, patience, humility and tolerance. Most importantly, Israel and the West would need to reach out to the Muslim world with generosity and understanding, despite continuing terrorist outrages that would cry out for revenge. Jesus's age-old teachings about 'turning the other cheek' would be tested. This alternative strategy would seek to reduce -- not escalate -- tensions with Muslims. It would address their legitimate grievances. It might include apologies for past Western wrongdoing. It would try to build positive economic, commercial and political bonds. It would seek to reduce Western dependency on Middle Eastern oil." Other nations would have to step up to fill the void caused by Bush's failure to lead, perhaps from the European Union or Russia. Israel's leadership, whether it be Ehud Olmert's Kadima or another, less intransigent regime, would need to reverse its crackdown in Gaza and its continuing bombardment of Lebanon, and begin working towards a real peace. And, of course, the US would need to implement a phased withdrawal from Iraq.
• One of the biggest worries of the al-Qaeda leadership is that a rapid US military withdrawal from Iraq would cause non-Iraqi jihadists to stop battling in Iraq and go home. Though Bush's rhetoric paints Osama bin Laden as the enemy, in reality, Bush's policies often serve al-Qaeda's interests. His decision to divert US military resources from Afghanistan to Iraq enabled al-Qaeda's top leaders to survive and it gave them an issue to exploit in their rebuilding effort. Many CIA analysts even believe that bin Laden released a videotape only days before the November 2004 elections in order to help Bush win a second term. Bush will never admit making any mistake by invading Iraq, nor will he ever order a withdrawal from Iraq. Nor will he cooperate with any peace initiatives from other nations that would involve any real compromise. Parry concludes, "[A] Republican defeat in the November 7 elections could at least limit Bush's ability to interfere with initiatives by other international players who might want to step back from the brink of World War III. Conversely, another Republican victory might well lock in a future of near-endless war abroad and ever-increasing political repression at home." (Consortium News)
• September 28: Former intelligence officer and DIA analyst Fred Seamon, with experience in helping prepare NIEs, says that the April 2006 NIE about global terrorism whose contents have just now been been leaked and then partially declassified is extremely valid, in spite of the attacks on its credibility mounted by Bush supporters. Seamon writes that upon reviewing the declassified material from the April NIE and comparing it to the 2002 NIE on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, he finds the 2006 NIE valid and the 2002 NIE "soft [and] incorrect," and says "any comparison of the two documents [is] ludicrous."
• Seamon writes that the 2006 NIE "represents the combined consensus of every US intelligence organization. There are no caveats or qualifiers to the conclusion that the Iraq war is detrimental to our efforts to defeat global terrorism. Although the leak does not state what data was used to reach this conclusion, it is safe to say that the conclusion is based on the analysis of a vast amount of information obtained since the war began over 3 years ago, on the battlefield, from prisoners, via communications intercepts and every means of collection available to the US intelligence community."by major governmental organizations, Seamon writes, "Not one of the intelligence organizations which participated in the preparation of the NIE has come forward to express its dissent, and you can be absolutely certain that if there was any dissent at all, Bush administration critics would be using it to discredit the NIE. The Bush Administration has never shown any compunction about disclosing classified information if it furthers its political agenda." In comparison, "[t]he 2002 WMD NIE presents a conclusion based on much less and much 'softer' information (as opposed to facts), with a significant dissent from a major player, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR)." Those doubts have been documented elsewhere in this site, and confirmed not only by the INR response, but from the former deputy director of the CIA, John McLaughlin, who acknowledged that "there were serious flaws in some of our prewar intelligence on Iraq." A Senate report on the 2002 WMD NIE made the same points. Seamon writes, "Analysts who wrote the NIE relied more on an assumption that Iraq had WMD than on an objective evaluation of the information they were reviewing. This 'group think' dynamic, the report states, led analysts, intelligence collectors, and managers to 'interpret ambiguous evidence as conclusively indicative of a WMD program' and led them to 'ignore or minimize evidence that Iraq did not have an active and expanding program.' The problem was exacerbated by the lack of human intelligence from inside Iraq, the inability to discern factual intelligence from falsehoods and deliberate deceptions, and the pressure put on the intelligence agencies from Dick Cheney and other White House officials to produce an NIE that they could use to justify their planned invasion.
• Seamon asks, "Why didn't the Bush Administration publish unclassified findings of the April 2006 NIE? Because it refutes their claim that the war in Iraq is going well, and provides no grounds for rebuttal. We are fortunate that someone of conscience within the intelligence community risked his or her career and leaked this vital information. Had this not occurred, you can be sure that the information would never have seen the light of day." (Fighting Dems News Service)
• September 28: Former intelligence officer Randy Risener writes that the Bush administration has deliberately attempted to manipulate the American people into believing that his invasion of Iraq has been a success instead of the dismal failure it demonstrably is. Bush, along with his press secretary and Republican officials and commentators, have tried, and failed, to spin the core theme of the recently released NIE on Iraq and global terrorism, with Bush saying, "because of our successes against the leadership of al-Qaeda, the enemy is becoming more diffuse and independent." This is not true, but there is more to the story than just the current raft of lies from Bush and his officials and supporters.
• For five months this NIE, completed in April, has been hidden from both Congress, who has the Constitutionally guaranteed right to review such materials as part of its oversight responsibilities, and the American people. Risener writes, "[F]or nearly five months the administration has been making statements that it full well knew none of the intelligence agencies agreed with." The report also says that "the global jihadist movement -- which includes al-Qaeda, affiliated and independent terrorist groups, and emerging networks and cells -- is spreading and adapting to counterterrorism efforts." As for reasons, they are far more complex than the ridiculous "They hate our freedom" explanations advanced by Bush and his sycophants. The report states, "Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness" along with social, political and economic reforms among governments the US supports, all leading to a "pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims.all of which jihadists exploit." (Many of these grievances, both real and imagined from a Western viewpoint, can be found discussed on the They Said It page of this site, particular in items drawn from Michael Scheuer's book Imperial Hubris.
• Because of the fear that the uproar over the NIE might be enough to cost Republicans the control of Congress in November, Bush and his allies have reacted with a near-desperate vituperation and scorn to both the NIE and the Democrats who are demanding explanations of the NIE's central concerns. But many intelligence and military experts are closing ranks in support of the NIE's conclusions (see other items on this site for additional details). Retired Army Major General John Batiste recently said that the administration's mismanagement of the Iraq war had made "America arguably less safe now than it was on September 11, 2001." He continued, "If we had seriously laid out and considered the full range of requirements for the war in Iraq, we would likely have taken a different course of action that would have maintained a clear focus on our main effort in Afghanistan, not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents." And Ray Close, the former head of the CIA mission in Saudi Arabia, says, "No reasonable person can deny that our intervention in Iraq has been an enormous stimulus to terrorist activities worldwide." (Fighting Dems News Service, Fighting Dems News Service)
• September 28: Brent Budowsky, a national security expert and former legislative assistant, writes a powerful, emotional "Open Letter to Military Families" that asks servicemen and women, and their families, to review their support for the war in Iraq and the people who sent them to that country, in time for the November elections. The letter is quite long, and accessible through the link at the bottom of this item, but Budowsky says in part, how horrified he was to learn that the 9/11 tragedy was being used as an excuse for a far different agenda: "Within days, I learned that the plan was not to go after those who killed our neighbors on that September, but to use that event, to begin a war in Iraq. Those of you with high level military contacts knew, as I knew, that this was not what our commanders wanted. And those of you with high-level contacts in the intelligence community knew, as I knew, that that is not what our intelligence professionals recommended." Budowsky does not give blind support to Democrats as a reaction to the deliberate failures and lies of the Bush administration: "Lord knows, you will not hear from me, that Democrats or their leaders are perfect. Since 9/11 I have personally communicated with many of them, at the highest levels, as recently as 48 hours ago. More often than not, they have not taken my advice, and they bear some significant responsibility for the dangers we face today. Having said that, there is an enormous and potentially catastrophic difference between continuing an all Republican government, as we have today, which will mean more of the status quo and possibly worse, versus electing Democrats to Congress, in which case our government will step back and begin to come together as a nation, again."
• Budowsky says, as so many others have, that the problem with the Bush administration and its military policies are twofold: "First it is run by hardcore ideologues who every day appear trigger happy for new wars, having failed to properly run the existing wars. And second, it is run by ideologues who have no military service records and, therefore, no understanding of military policies, military needs, military life, and military traditions. I do not question the lack of service of the president, the vice president, and virtually every other senior member of his adminstration and virtually every leading neoconservative who has dangerous dominated our policy from the beginning, until now, except for this: The disrespect shown to our former Army Chief of Staff, General [Eric] Shinseki, who tried to warn them, is only an ugly public show of a dangerously wrong attitude that harms our country, our troops and our security every day, since this conflict in Iraq began. They do not understand military expertise, and they disrespect those who have it. They do not understand military requirements, so they ignore commander advice and go to war with too few troops. They do not understand military life, so they turn troop rotations into practices that become involuntary servitude and border on a backdoor draft. The problem is not a moral judgment on their lack of military service, it is a dangerous lack of experience combined with a dangerous lack of respect, for those who have it. They do not understand the proper role of our Guard and Reserves, so they abuse those vital services, and disrupt the lives of those who serve and their families, which are far outside their life experience. They do not understand the moral and military duties of civilian leaders to those who wear the uniform, because they have never been there, or done that, so they send troops to war without adequate armor, bandages and helmets among many other things. They are so far removed from military culture, military life, and the responsibilities and duties of civilians who control our forces, that even when they read stories about Moms and Dads asked by sons and daughters in combat, to buy from home supplies that were not provided from Washington, they are not moved to action, they are moved to write talking points of excuse or call our troops complainers."
• Budowsky continues, "Because of their lack of military experience, and their lack of respect for those who have it, they do things that we know are unthinkable. When commanders and special forces plead for reinforcements to kill bin Laden at Tora Bora, they so no, because their obsession to war in Iraq exceeded their commitment to kill bin Laden. When commanders plead again and again for troop support, or armor, or better protected vehicles, they say no, or delay, because they have never been there, and do not understand. Because of their lack of military experience, and their lack of respect for those who have it, they ignore and mock the unanimous view of every commander in every service to honor the Geneva Convention. Never having been there, or done that, they do not understand, as every commander and every enlisted man and woman understands, that the Geneva Convention was not created to protect our enemies, but to protect our own troops. Because of their lack of military experience, and their lack of respect for those who have it, they listen to those who want meager and inadequate pay for those who serve, claiming lack of money, while they excuse stealing and corruption that may total $10 billion of money for Iraq, because it helps their friends, and campaign contributors. They listen to voices calling for cuts in help for brain injury treatment for wounded troops. They tolerate for years our active duty troops being ripped off on loans with rates higher than the Mafia charges its loan sharking victims. They stand idly by, when debt collectors make harrassing calls to wives and husbands of heroes who serve, threatening to repossess their homes and cars, because this is not part of their lives, this is not part their world, when they send troops to harm, from the safety of their citadels of power. They listen to voices calling for closure of military hospitals, citing budget pressures, while they cut taxes, which cost hundreds of billions of dollars, to buy political support at home, while they impose sacrifice on those who serve abroad. Lacking military experience themselves, and lacking respect for those who have it, they do not believe intelligence is meant to make informed decisions about whether to go to war, or how to manage a war, as every military commander knows and believes. Rather, they believe intelligence is just another political weapon in their obsessions of ideology, to be twisted and distorted when the truth may contradict their obsessions, to be ignored when the facts call for changes in policy, at great cost to those who serve. Lacking military experience themselves, and lacking respect for those who have it, they never understood that one of the great rules for success in war, is unity at home. Rather than unite the nation behind the policy, they divide the nation, deliberately, to support their partisanship, at great cost to those who serve."
• Budowsky brings up the recently publicized NIE that reveals how much the Iraq occupation has worsened the problem of global terror. Since the release of that assessment to senior Bush officials five months ago, Johnson asks, "Did they make any change to the policy? No. Did they tell the truth to the people? No. Did they honorably represent the views of commanders? No. With even our combined intelligence agencies warning of danger, did they do anything al all differently? No."
• Budowsky says that the core of the problem is that Bush, Cheney, their neoconservative allies, and far too many Congressional Republicans "are political ideologues, who treat war as theory, because they lack experience in practice. They are hard core political partisans, who show contempt for commanders when the voice of experience contradicts the ambitions of their politics. They play to win elections, not knowing how to win a war, which the combined intelligence agencies of the American government, now warn they are in danger of losing." Budowsky writes that by electing enough Democrats to retake Congress, leaders in both parties will be forced to "sit down, with each other, with our commanders, with respect and goodwill, and begin to plan a way out of this mess. Together." He writes, "The choice this November is not between a Republican policy versus a Democratic policy. The choice this November is whether we have two more years of one party government and continuation of the status quo, or whether we have two party government, three branches of government, and a renewed spirit of national unity, and national purpose." (Fighting Dems News Service)
• September 28: George Allen, the Virginia senator whose bid for re-election is reeling under a barrage of revelations about his overt and unrepentant racism, attempts to smear his Democratic opponent, Jim Webb, with allegations of Webb's own supposedly racist past, an attempt which fizzles due to a complete lack of evidence. Vietnam veteran Dan Cragg, who interviewed Webb in 1983, says Webb regaled him with tales of college pranks he had taken part in 20 years before which involved calling African-Americans racial epithets and pointing guns at them, all in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Cragg's story is hindered, however, by the fact that he can't find the pertinent sections of the tape recording that he made of Webb during that interview, as is the section of the transcript with the tale. Cragg says he can't remember if he erased that part of the tape or merely failed to record it. Webb spokeswoman Kristian Denny Todd calls Cragg's account "a lie," adding, "the Allen campaign, in their desperation, has chosen to find someone to manufacture a lie." If so, the choice of Cragg is interesting; Webb is quite popular with Virginia's veterans. Cragg says he chose to make his allegations public after Webb refused to repudiate racism charges against Allen, in order to "level the playing field." Although Cragg admits to discussing the charge with Allen's campaign staff before going public, he says the decision to make the baseless charge was his own.
• Dave Johnson of the Patriot Project writes, "This is about what we have come to expect from a smear these days -- a completely unsubstantiated claim from a right-wing partisan regarding something from 23 years ago, not reported at the time, no tape, no notes and no surprise." Johnson is dismayed that the Washington Post, among other media outlets, repeated the smear without any independent verification. The Post also fails to report that Cragg has written over 100 book reviews and op-eds for the Washington Times, the right-wing, Moonie-owned newspaper, and is either a current or former Bush administration official. Of course, right-wing news outlets and blogs have had a field day with the accusations, even though most of them have loudly decried the far more substantiated Allen accusations. (WUSA-TV, WUSA-TV/Not Larry Sabato, Patriot Project/Huffington Post)

---

• September 29: The Senate approves another $70 billion in spending for the Iraqi and Afghanistan occupations. The bill passes the Senate on a unanimous vote, and is expected to be signed into law by Bush very shortly. The $70 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan is a down payment on war costs the White House has estimated will hit $110 billion for the budget year beginning October 1. Congress has now approved $507 billion for Iraq, Afghanistan and heightened security at overseas military bases since the 9/11, attacks, according to the Congressional Research Service. The war in Iraq has cost $379 billion and the conflict in Afghanistan now totals $97 billion. (AP/Yahoo! News)

 

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