| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"stoney" |
| Date: |
14 May 2004 08:09:51 PM |
| Object: |
Stop blaming your henchmen, Mr. President. |
http://slate.msn.com/id/2100549/
The Buck Stops … Where?
Stop blaming your henchmen, Mr. President.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, May 14, 2004, at 2:41 PM PT
And so it seems I, too, have misunderestimated the president. This past
Wednesday, I wrote a column holding George W. Bush responsible for our
recent disasters—the torture at Abu Ghraib and the whole plethora of
strategic errors in Iraq. My main argument was that Bush has placed too
much trust, for far too long, in the judgment of Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld, despite his ceaseless string of bad judgments.
However, two news stories that have since come to my attention—one that
appeared on the same day, the other more than two months ago—suggest not
merely that Bush is guilty of "failing to recognize failure" (as my
headline put it) but that he is directly culpable for the sins in
question, no less so than his properly beleaguered defense chief.
The first story, written by Mark Matthews in the May 12 Baltimore Sun,
quotes Secretary of State Colin Powell—on the record—as saying Bush knew
about the International Committee of the Red Cross reports that were
filed many months ago about the savagery at the prison. Powell is quoted
as saying:
We kept the president informed of the concerns that were raised by
the ICRC and other international organizations as part of my regular
briefings of the president, and advised him that we had to follow these
issues, and when we got notes sent to us or reports sent to us … we had
to respond to them.
Powell adds that he, Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice kept Bush "fully
informed of the concerns that were being expressed, not in specific
details but in general terms." (Thanks to Joshua Micah Marshall, whose
blog alerted me to the Sun story.)
So much for Rumsfeld's protective claim, at last week's hearing before
the Senate Armed Services Committee, that he had failed to bring the
matter to the president's attention. No wonder Bush, in turn, rode out
to the Pentagon and praised his servant-secretary for doing a "superb"
job.
It's amazing, by the way, how Colin Powell seems to have scuttled his
good-soldier routine altogether, criticizing his president at first
quasi-anonymously (through Bob Woodward's new book), then through close
aides (Wil Hylton's GQ article), and now straight up in the Baltimore
Sun. One wonders when he'll go all the way and start making campaign
appearances for John Kerry.
The second news story that heaves more burdens on the president comes
from an NBC News broadcast by Jim Miklaszewski on March 2. Apparently,
Bush had three opportunities, long before the war, to destroy a
terrorist camp in northern Iraq run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al-Qaida
associate who recently cut off the head of Nicholas Berg. But the White
House decided not to carry out the attack because, as the story puts it:
[T]he administration feared [that] destroying the terrorist camp in
Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.
The implications of this are more shocking, in their way, than the news
from Abu Ghraib. Bush promoted the invasion of Iraq as a vital battle in
the war on terrorism, a continuation of our response to 9/11. Here was a
chance to wipe out a high-ranking terrorist. And Bush didn't take
advantage of it because doing so might also wipe out a rationale for
invasion.
The story gets worse in its details. As far back as June 2002, U.S.
intelligence reported that Zarqawi had set up a weapons lab at Kirma in
northern Iraq that was capable of producing ricin and cyanide. The
Pentagon drew up an attack plan involving cruise missiles and smart
bombs. The White House turned it down. In October 2002, intelligence
reported that Zarqawi was preparing to use his bio-weapons in Europe.
The Pentagon drew up another attack plan. The White House again
demurred. In January 2003, police in London arrested terrorist suspects
connected to the camp. The Pentagon devised another attack plan. Again,
the White House killed the plan, not Zarqawi.
When the war finally started in March, the camp was attacked early on.
But by that time, Zarqawi and his followers had departed.
This camp was in the Kurdish enclave of Iraq. The U.S. military had been
mounting airstrikes against various targets throughout Iraq—mainly
air-defense sites—for the previous few years. It would not have been a
major escalation to destroy this camp, especially after the war against
al-Qaida in Afghanistan. The Kurds, whose autonomy had been shielded by
U.S. air power since the end of the 1991 war, wouldn't have minded and
could even have helped.
But the problem, from Bush's perspective, was that this was the only
tangible evidence of terrorists in Iraq. Colin Powell even showed the
location of the camp on a map during his famous Feb. 5 briefing at the
U.N. Security Council. The camp was in an area of Iraq that Saddam
didn't control. But never mind, it was something. To wipe it out ahead
of time might lead some people—in Congress, the United Nations, and the
American public—to conclude that Saddam's links to terrorists were
finished, that maybe the war wasn't necessary. So Bush let it be.
In the two years since the Pentagon's first attack plan, Zarqawi has
been linked not just to Berg's execution but, according to NBC, 700
other killings in Iraq. If Bush had carried out that attack back in June
2002, the killings might not have happened. More: The case for war (as
the White House feared) might not have seemed so compelling. Indeed, the
war itself might not have happened.
One ambiguity does remain. The NBC story reported that "the White House"
declined to carry out the airstrikes. Who was "the White House"? If it
wasn't George W. Bush—if it was, say, ***** Cheney—then we crash into a
very different conclusion: not that Bush was directly culpable, but that
he was more out of touch than his most cynical critics have imagined.
It's a tossup which is more disturbing: a president who passes up the
chance to kill a top-level enemy in the war on terrorism for the sake of
pursuing a reckless diversion in Iraq—or a president who leaves a
government's most profound decision, the choice of war or peace, to his
aides.
Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate.
The word misunderstood in the first sentence links to:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2100064/
The Misunderestimated Man
How Bush chose stupidity.
By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Friday, May 7, 2004, at 6:54 AM PT
Adapted from the introduction to The Deluxe Election-Edition Bushisms,
published by Fireside Books/Simon & Schuster. Reprinted with permission;
© 2004 Jacob Weisberg.
The question I am most frequently asked about Bushisms is, "Do you
really think the president of the United States is dumb?"
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is yes and no.
Quotations collected over the years in Slate may leave the impression
that George W. Bush is a dimwit. Let's face it: A man who cannot talk
about education without making a humiliating grammatical mistake ("The
illiteracy level of our children are appalling"); who cannot keep
straight the three branches of government ("It's the executive branch's
job to interpret law"); who coins ridiculous words ("Hispanos,"
"arbolist," "subliminable," "resignate," "transformationed"); who
habitually says the opposite of what he intends ("the death tax is good
for people from all walks of life!") sounds like a grade-A imbecile.
And if you don't care to pursue the matter any further, that view will
suffice. George W. Bush has governed, for the most part, the way any
airhead might, undermining the fiscal condition of the nation,
squandering the goodwill of the world after Sept. 11, and allowing huge
problems (global warming, entitlement spending, AIDS) to metastasize
toward catastrophe through a combination of ideology, incomprehension,
and indifference. If Bush isn't exactly the moron he sounds, his
synaptic misfirings offer a plausible proxy for the idiocy of his
presidency.
In reality, however, there's more to it. Bush's assorted malapropisms,
solecisms, gaffes, spoonerisms, and truisms tend to imply that his lack
of fluency in English is tantamount to an absence of intelligence. But
as we all know, the inarticulate can be shrewd, the fluent fatuous. In
Bush's case, the symptoms point to a specific malady—some kind of
linguistic deficit akin to dyslexia—that does not indicate a lack of
mental capacity per se.
Bush also compensates with his non-verbal acumen. As he notes, "Smart
comes in all kinds of different ways." The president's way is an
aptitude for connecting to people through banter and physicality. He has
a powerful memory for names, details, and figures that truly matter to
him, such as batting averages from the 1950s. Bush also has a keen
political sense, sharpened under the tutelage of Karl Rove.
What's more, calling the president a cretin absolves him of
responsibility. Like Reagan, Bush avoids blame for all manner of
contradictions, implausible assertions, and outright lies by appearing
an amiable dunce. If he knows not what he does, blame goes to the three
puppeteers, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld. It also breeds sympathy. We
wouldn't laugh at FDR because he couldn't walk. Is it less cruel to
laugh at GWB because he can't talk? The soft bigotry of low expectations
means Bush is seen to outperform by merely getting by. Finally, elitist
condescension, however merited, helps cement Bush's bond to the masses.
But if "numskull" is an imprecise description of the president, it is
not altogether inaccurate. Bush may not have been born stupid, but he
has achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. What
makes mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or
at least once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know
he has discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing
his time for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of
his life, on name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital
afforded by family connections.
The most obvious expression of Bush's choice of ignorance is that, at
the age of 57, he knows nothing about policy or history. After years of
working as his dad's spear-chucker in Washington, he didn't understand
the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, the second- and
third-largest federal programs. Well into his plans for invading Iraq,
Bush still couldn't get down the distinction between Sunni and Shiite
Muslims, the key religious divide in a country he was about to occupy.
Though he sometimes carries books for show, he either does not read them
or doesn't absorb anything from them. Bush's ignorance is so transparent
that many of his intimates do not bother to dispute it even in public.
Consider the testimony of several who know him well.
Richard Perle, foreign policy adviser: "The first time I met Bush 43 …
two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The other was
that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know
very much."
David Frum, former speechwriter: "Bush had a poor memory for facts and
figures. … Fire a question at him about the specifics of his
administration's policies, and he often appeared uncertain. Nobody would
ever enroll him in a quiz show."
Laura Bush, spouse: "George is not an overly introspective person. He
has good instincts, and he goes with them. He doesn't need to evaluate
and reevaluate a decision. He doesn't try to overthink. He likes
action."
Paul O'Neill, former treasury secretary: "The only way I can describe it
is that, well, the President is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf
people. There is no discernible connection."
A second, more damning aspect of Bush's mind-set is that he doesn't want
to know anything in detail, however important. Since college, he has
spilled with contempt for knowledge, equating learning with snobbery and
making a joke of his own anti-intellectualism. ("[William F. Buckley]
wrote a book at Yale; I read one," he quipped at a black-tie event.) By
O'Neill's account, Bush could sit through an hourlong presentation about
the state of the economy without asking a single question. ("I was bored
as hell," the president shot back, ostensibly in jest.)
Closely related to this aggressive ignorance is a third feature of
Bush's mentality: laziness. Again, this is a lifelong trait. Bush's
college grades were mostly Cs (including a 73 in Introduction to the
American Political System). At the start of one term, the star of the
Yale football team spotted him in the back row during the shopping
period for courses. "Hey! George Bush is in this class!" Calvin Hill
shouted to his teammates. "This is the one for us!" As governor of
Texas, Bush would take a long break in the middle of his short workday
for a run followed by a stretch of video golf or computer solitaire.
A fourth and final quality of Bush's mind is that it does not think. The
president can't tolerate debate about issues. Offered an option, he
makes up his mind quickly and never reconsiders. At an elementary
school, a child once asked him whether it was hard to make decisions as
president. "Most of the decisions come pretty easily for me, to be frank
with you." By leaping to conclusions based on what he "believes," Bush
avoids contemplating even the most obvious basic contradictions: between
his policy of tax cuts and reducing the deficit; between his call for a
humble foreign policy based on alliances and his unilateral assertion of
American power; between his support for in-vitro fertilization (which
destroys embryos) and his opposition to fetal stem-cell research
(because it destroys embryos).
Why would someone capable of being smart choose to be stupid? To
understand, you have to look at W.'s relationship with father. This
filial bond involves more tension than meets the eye. Dad was away for
much of his oldest son's childhood. Little George grew up closer to his
acid-tongued mother and acted out against the absent parent—through
adolescent misbehavior, academic failure, dissipation, and basically not
accomplishing anything at all until well into his 40s.
Dubya's youthful screw-ups and smart-aleck attitude reflect some
combination of protest, plea for attention, and flailing attempt to
compete. Until a decade ago, his résumé read like a send-up of his
dad's. Bush senior was a star student at Andover and Phi Beta Kappa at
Yale, where he was also captain of the baseball team; Junior struggled
through with gentleman's C's and, though he loved baseball, couldn't
make the college lineup. Père was a bomber pilot in the Pacific; fils
sat out 'Nam in the Texas Air National Guard, where he lost flying
privileges by not showing up. Dad drove to Texas in 1947 to get rich in
the oil business and actually did; Son tried the same in 1975 and
drilled dry holes for a decade. Bush the elder got elected to Congress
in 1966; Shrub ran in 1978, didn't know what he was talking about, and
got clobbered.
Through all this incompetent emulation runs an undercurrent of
hostility. In an oft-told anecdote circa 1973, GWB—after getting wasted
at a party and driving over a neighbor's trash can in Houston—challenged
his dad. "I hear you're lookin' for me," W. told the chairman of the
Republican National Committee. "You want to go mano a mano right here?"
Some years later at a state dinner, he told the Queen of England he was
being seated far away because he was the black sheep of the family.
After half a lifetime of this kind of frustration, Bush decided to
straighten up. Nursing a hangover at a 40th-birthday weekend, he gave up
Wild Turkey, cold turkey. With the help of Billy Graham, he put himself
in the hands of a higher power and began going to church. He became
obsessed with punctuality and developed a rigid routine. Thus did Prince
Hal molt into an evangelical King Henry. And it worked! Putting together
a deal to buy the Texas Rangers, the ne'er-do-well finally tasted
success. With success, he grew closer to his father, taking on the role
of family avenger. This culminated in his 1994 challenge to Texas Gov.
Ann Richards, who had twitted dad at the 1988 Democratic convention*.
Curiously, this late arrival at adulthood did not involve Bush becoming
in any way thoughtful. Having chosen stupidity as rebellion, he stuck
with it out of conformity. The promise-keeper, reformed-alkie path he
chose not only drastically curtailed personal choices he no longer
wanted, it also supplied an all-encompassing order, offered guidance on
policy, and prevented the need for much actual information. Bush's old
answer to hard questions was, "I don't know and, who cares." His new
answer was, "Wait a second while I check with Jesus."
A remaining bit of poignancy was his unresolved struggle with his
father. "All I ask," he implored a reporter while running for governor
in 1994, "is that for once you guys stop seeing me as the son of George
Bush." In his campaigns, W. has kept his dad offstage. (In an
exceptional appearance on the eve of the 2000 New Hampshire primary, 41
came onstage and called his son "this boy.") While some describe the
second Bush presidency as a restoration, it is in at least equal measure
a repudiation. The son's harder-edged conservatism explicitly rejects
the old man's approach to such issues as abortion, taxes, and relations
with Israel.
This Oedipally induced ignorance expresses itself most dangerously in
Bush's handling of the war in Iraq. Dubya polished off his old man's
greatest enemy, Saddam, but only by lampooning 41's accomplishment of
coalition-building in the first Gulf War. Bush led the country to war on
false pretenses and neglected to plan the occupation that would
inevitably follow. A more knowledgeable and engaged president might have
questioned the quality of the evidence about Iraq's supposed weapons
programs. One who preferred to be intelligent might have asked about the
possibility of an unfriendly reception. Instead, Bush rolled the dice.
His budget-busting tax cuts exemplify a similar phenomenon, driven by an
alternate set of ideologues.
As the president says, we misunderestimate him. He was not born stupid.
He chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On
consideration, he's something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool.
Correction, May 7, 2004: This article originally misstated the date of
the Democratic convention where Ann Richards twitted President George
H.W. Bush. It was 1988 not 1992. Return to the corrected sentence.
Column in the second sentence links to:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2100410/
Failing To Recognize Failure
Why does the president still trust Rumsfeld's judgment?
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, May 12, 2004, at 1:50 PM PT
On Dec. 15, 1993, not quite a year into President Bill Clinton's first
term, his secretary of defense, Les Aspin, announced that he would
resign. Two months earlier, 18 U.S. Rangers had died, some of them
brutally, in the disastrous "Black Hawk Down" raid on Mogadishu. A month
before that, the Rangers' commander in Somalia had asked the Pentagon
for armored vehicles. Aspin rejected the request. In the raid's
aftermath, many blamed Aspin's denial for the Americans' deaths.
Some controversy remains over whether Aspin—who died a year and a half
later from heart problems at age 56—deserved to be the fall guy; but
it's an irrelevant debate. The key point is that Aspin lost the
president's confidence. Once that happens, for whatever reason, the
Cabinet officer in question needs to be replaced.
The key question about the much-discussed survival of Donald Rumsfeld,
the current secretary of defense, is not so much whether he should stay
or go, but rather why President George W. Bush still has confidence in
his judgment.
In this light, the pertinent issue about the prison tortures at Abu
Ghraib is not Rumsfeld's place in the chain of command; it's the fact
that he knew, or should have known, about the tortures and the
photographs—not just from Gen. Taguba's report but much earlier from the
briefings by the International Committee of the Red Cross—and,
apparently, didn't tell the president. In short, he failed at one of his
primary duties—to cull the thousands of scraps of information that come
into the Pentagon every day for the nuggets of data that the president
needs to know. His failure to alert Bush of this nugget has meant a huge
cost in U.S. credibility just at the moment—less than two months before
the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq—when our credibility is most vital.
Yet Bush continues to trust that Rumsfeld will keep him properly
apprised in the future, even tells him in public that he's doing a
"superb" job.
The puzzle goes well beyond Abu Ghraib. In fact, one could imagine some
presidents using the current crisis as an opportunity to can Rumsfeld
for the many transgressions he's committed over the past couple of
years—errors of judgment that have caused far more deaths than occurred
in Mogadishu.
Chief among these errors, of course, was his decision to overrule the
generals' recommendations on how many troops to send to Iraq. Rumsfeld
took a creative gamble on this one. Creativity isn't a bad quality for a
secretary of defense, especially when dealing with a calcified
bureaucracy like the U.S. Army's. Rumsfeld had a vision of warfare that
clashed with the Army's most closely vested interests—a vision of
"military transformation," which relied on speed over mass, "smart
bombs" over artillery, joint operations over interservice rivalry. In
the battlefield phase of this war and of the war in Afghanistan,
Rumsfeld turned out to be right. But in the next, decisive
phase—actually winning the war, accomplishing its broad objectives—his
vision proved terribly inadequate. His commanders didn't have enough
troops to occupy, secure, and stabilize either country. Secretaries of
defense have the right to reject their generals' advice; that's what
civilian leadership is about; as Eliot Cohen notes in his book Supreme
Command, the practice has an honorable history. But when it leads to
military disaster, the civilian secretary who has taken the reins must
also take real responsibility. More to the point here, presidents who
rely on such a secretary—and who come to bear the cost of his
choices—usually conclude that he's no longer trustworthy and that he
needs to go before he inspires further disasters.
In the course of committing this strategic error, Rumsfeld made many
tactical misjudgments. He willfully alienated allies whose assistance,
many warned him, would be necessary for a successful occupation. He
arrogantly excluded officials from other federal departments—especially
State and USAID—who knew much more than he did about reconstruction in
general and Iraqi society in particular. He ordered (or at least
accepted the order—we don't yet know who made the decision) the
dismantling of the Iraqi army, a move that created a massive power
vacuum and put tens of thousands of armed, angry, unemployed citizens on
the streets. He believed that Ahmad Chalabi, an exile who had no
political base in Iraq, would readily be accepted as the country's new
leader—and, on that basis, didn't think that much "postwar" planning
would be necessary. Far more unforgivable (after all, everybody's wrong
sometimes), Rumsfeld devised no backup plan in case his belief proved
mistaken (as it did).
All these mistakes have been recited many times before. The odd thing
about the long list, viewed in the context of Abu Ghraib, is that Bush
gave Rummy a pass for the whole lot. One of the president's jobs is to
relieve the nation of Cabinet officers who make consistently bad
decisions, especially bad decisions that swell the ranks of our
casualties and diminish our standing in the world. The responsibility,
to use a much-tarnished word, lies not with Rumsfeld but with Bush.
Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate.
"The first story, written by Mark Matthews in the May 12 Baltimore Sun,
quotes..." links to:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.powell12may12,0,2804533.story?coll=bal-news-nation
Powell says Bush was 'informed' of Red Cross concerns
Officials advised president 'in general terms' about reports of abuse,
he says
By Mark Matthews
Sun National Staff
May 12, 2004
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that he
and other top officials kept President Bush "fully informed ... in
general terms" about complaints made by the Red Cross and others over
ill-treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.
Powell's statement suggests Bush may have known earlier than the White
House has acknowledged about complaints raised by the International
Committee of the Red Cross and human rights groups regarding abuse of
detainees in Iraq.
"We kept the president informed of the concerns that were raised by the
ICRC and other international organizations as part of my regular
briefings of the president, and advised him that we had to follow these
issues, and when we got notes sent to us or reports sent to us ... we
had to respond to them, and the president certainly made it clear that
that's what he expected us to do," Powell said.
Powell said that he, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld kept Bush "fully informed of the
concerns that were being expressed, not in specific details, but in
general terms."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said last week that the president
was first informed about the abuse of detainees in Iraq by Rumsfeld, who
"let the president know that there were allegations of prisoner abuse in
Iraq and that the military was taking action to address it."
McClellan did not give a precise date, but Rumsfeld, testifying before
Congress, said he told the president in late January or early February
about an investigation being conducted by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
into alleged abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, the main U.S. detention
facility in Iraq.
Bush has said he did not see the graphic pictures of the abuse until
they were broadcast on television.
Powell, in his comments yesterday, appeared to be trying to show that he
and his department did not ignore or minimize early reports of the abuse
when they began to surface last year.
Red Cross officials have said that they began complaining about the
condition of Iraqi prisoners more than a year ago, before major combat
ended, and that they raised concerns about Abu Ghraib in October, more
than two months before Taguba launched his investigation on orders from
Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior U.S. military commander in Iraq.
A Powell aide said he couldn't pinpoint when the secretary first spoke
with Bush about detainees in Iraq but said Powell told the president of
receiving complaints about detainees generally - in Iraq, Afghanistan
and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "at various times throughout this period - the
last year or more."
Powell met with Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International
Committee of the Red Cross, in January 2003 before the Iraq war; on May
27, 2003, after Bush declared the end of major combat in Iraq; and in
mid-January this year.
Speaking to reporters outside the State Department yesterday, Powell
said that at each of his meetings with Kellenberger, "I expressed our
support for the work of the ICRC, and he reported to me on his work with
respect to our detention facilities, and we talked about our detention
facilities in Guantanamo, some of our detention facilities in
Afghanistan and our detention facilities in Iraq."
"He reported to me on the findings of the various inspections," Powell
said, adding: "The information that I received from the ICRC is the same
information that the Pentagon received from the ICRC, or Ambassador
Bremer and the command in Baghdad received from the ICRC. In fact, they
got it before we did." L. Paul Bremer III is the top U.S. administrator
in Iraq.
At the Jan. 15 meeting, Kellenberger told Powell, "We have serious
concerns about detainees in Iraq," although he did not detail them, a
senior State Department official said. The next month, the Red Cross
summarized its previous findings in a harsh 24-page confidential
critique of abuses against Iraqi detainees between March and November
2003, calling some of them "tantamount to torture."
The report described an inspection of the Abu Ghraib prison in
mid-October in which Red Cross officials witnessed detainees who were
undergoing interrogation being kept "completely naked in totally empty
cells and in total darkness." A military intelligence officer said this
practice was "part of the process."
The Red Cross reported that as punishment, detainees were made to walk
in the corridors naked or with women's underwear on their heads. It also
complained of "brutality" against detainees, "sometimes causing death or
serious injury."
During his January visit to Washington, Kellenberger met not only with
Powell but also with Rice and, reportedly, with Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz. A White House spokesman, Sean McCormack, said that "Iraq
was not mentioned" in Kellenberger's meeting with Rice. The bulk of the
meeting, he said, involved Guantanamo Bay, the U.S.-run detention
facility in Cuba. Attempts to reach a spokesman for Wolfowitz were
unsuccessful.
McCormack said Rice was informed about the same time as Bush of the
abuses at Abu Ghraib that have caused a worldwide furor and prompted
apologies from the president and other top officials. He said he did not
know when Rice was told more generally about complaints involving the
treatment of detainees in Iraq.
Powell has made no secret of the problems the prison-abuse scandal has
caused for U.S. foreign policy. In an interview on National Public Radio
yesterday, he said the scandal had given the United States a "black
eye."
"It's a disaster for us to be seen conducting these kinds of terrible
acts against people who we were responsible for," he said.
In addition to complaints from the Red Cross, Amnesty International
complained to U.S. occupation authorities last summer about alleged
ill-treatment of prisoners.
Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun
Reed Irvine-in-Chief?
This is a passage from Tuesday's Washington Times, which is itself an
excerpt from Bill Sammon's new insider account of the Bush presidency,
Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry and the
Bush Haters. (emphasis added)
"I get the newspapers — the New York Times, The Washington Times,
The Washington Post and USA Today — those are the four papers
delivered," he said. "I can scan a front page, and if there is a
particular story of interest, I'll skim it."
The president prides himself on his ability to detect bias in
ostensibly objective news stories.
"My antennae are finely attuned," he said. "I can figure out what
so-called 'news' pieces are going to be full of opinion, as opposed to
news. So I'm keenly aware of what's in the papers, kind of the issue du
jour. But I'm also aware of the facts."
Those facts are extracted from news stories each day and presented
to the president by a half-dozen aides, Mr. Card among them.
"Since I'm the first one to see him in the morning, I usually give
him a quick overview and get a little reaction from him," Mr. Card
explained. "Frequently, I find that his reaction kind of reflects [first
lady] Laura Bush's take."
Indeed, the president often cites articles that Mrs. Bush flags for
greater scrutiny, even when he has not personally slogged through those
stories. Mrs. Bush routinely delves more deeply into the news pages than
her husband, who prefers other sections.
"He does not dwell on the newspaper, but he reads the sports page
every day," Mr. Card said with a chuckle.
'A clear outlook'
Mr. Bush thinks that immersing himself in voluminous, mostly
liberal-leaning news coverage might cloud his thinking and even hinder
his efforts to remain an optimistic leader.
"I like to have a clear outlook," he said. "It can be a frustrating
experience to pay attention to somebody's false opinion or somebody's
characterization, which simply isn't true."
What strikes me about this isn't the stuff about the First Lady or the
skimming of articles. It's that, at least from his self-presentation,
the president seems to see his news reading largely, if not entirely, as
an exercise in detecting liberal media bias. That, and he seems to see
shielding himself from opposing viewpoints as a key to maintaining what
he calls a "clear outlook" and what Sammon refers to as being an
"optimistic leader".
I guess we can all relate to this, can't we?
How 'frustrating' it is to have to listen to "somebody's false opinion
or somebody's characterization, which simply isn't true" (i.e.,
information that contradicts our assumptions and viewpoints)?
It (i.e., critical thinking) really gets in the way of having a "clear
outlook", right?
Now, certainly no one is perfect when it comes to subjecting and then
resubjecting their viewpoints to fresh facts or challenging their
assumptions with intelligently stated contrary views. I can't claim to
be. But it's one thing to fall short of the mark and another to work out
a system of self-rationalization and denial to ensure you come nowhere
near the mark. And this is it in spades.
He doesn't even need the yes-men who "extract" the "facts" from the news
articles. He's his own built-in yes-man.
How could we have ignored so many warnings, so much expert advice, so
many facts staring us in the face? The president just gave you the
answer.
-- Josh Marshall
(May 13, 2004 -- 02:34 PM EDT // link // print)
You know Marc Racicot's reputation as a liar is getting pretty
widespread when the Post walks its readers through something like this
....
The Bush campaign has repeatedly accused the senator of
"politicizing" Iraq. Bush-Cheney chairman Marc Racicot told reporters
Wednesday that Kerry is relentlessly "playing politics" and exploiting
tragedy for political gain.
Racicot, for instance, told reporters that Kerry suggested that
150,000 or so U.S. troops are "somehow universally responsible" for the
misdeeds of a small number of American soldiers and contractors. Racicot
made several variations of this charge. But Kerry never said this, or
anything like it.
As evidence, Racicot pointed to the following quote Kerry made at a
fundraiser on Tuesday: "What has happened is not just something that a
few a privates or corporals or sergeants engaged in. This is something
that comes out of an attitude about the rights of prisoners of war, it's
an attitude that comes out of America's overall arrogance in its policy
that is alienating countries all around the world."
What Racicot did not mention was that Kerry preceded this remark by
saying, "I know that what happened over there is not the behavior of
99.9 percent of our troops."
Hats off to Jim VandeHei, the author of the piece, though Racicot has
been at this for months.
-- Josh Marshall
(May 12, 2004 -- 10:44 PM EDT // link // print)
An exchange with a reader...
Josh-- I've been reading your blog now for some time, and while I'm
in school and have no money now, I was fully intending on donating as
soon as I could. The past few days though I've realized that I won't be
donating and I won't be reading your site anymore. I am very
disappointed that you've written nothing on the execution of an American
citizen in Iraq by what looks to be al quada. I didn't expect much, but
the fact that you've gone on a rant over Sen. Inhofe's comments (which
is probably appropriate) and continued your assault on the the president
and have neglected to give even one line to this guy who was brutally
slain for being one of us just sickens me. I didn't always agree with
you, but I respected what you wrote and enjoyed reading what you had to
say, but not anymore. I know this is hardly a 'blow' to your site as I'm
sure readers come and go all the time, but I just thought maybe you'd
appreciate some respectful feedback.
Anyway, good luck with your site, I'm sure you will do very well in
the coming years.
Ellis D.
Ellis,
You've just misjudged how I run the site and why I do so. I don't
write about everything I think. I don't write just to say that X is good
or Y is bad. I write when I feel I have something I can add to a
discussion, and only then. I could write a post saying that I thought
Berg's execution was horrifying and awful and that I couldn't get to
sleep last night because the ugliness of the images wouldn't leave my
mind. But what would that tell you? That al Qaida is awful and that I
think they're awful too? Perhaps I simply have nothing to add. The
online world has lots of vociferous me-too-ism, going on record saying
in fist-clenched tones things I think we all know we all feel. That's
fine; I just don't like doing that. Once, when I wrote nothing about a
rapid series of court decisions touching on gay rights issues, one
reader wrote in and attacked me mercilessly for being homophobic since
clearly, he reasoned, I had judged these to be of no importance. He was
wrong; and you've made the same misjudgment. This isn't a publication of
record. And you're not in a position to judge what I think based on my
silence.
Josh
-- Josh Marshall
(May 12, 2004 -- 07:33 PM EDT // link // print)
Where's the floor?
The new CBS poll has President Bush coming in at 44% job approval.
Can he break through into the thirties? I doubt it. But we're getting
down to the margin of error, aren't we?
-- Josh Marshall
(May 12, 2004 -- 05:35 PM EDT // link // print)
East wing or west wing?
This from Reuters ...
New images of Iraqi prisoner abuse contain awful scenes of violence
and sexual humiliation, members of Congress said after a viewing on
Wednesday that one lawmaker likened to a descent into "the wings of
hell."
...
"There were some awful scenes. It felt like you were descending into
one of the wings of hell and sadly it was our own creation," said Sen.
Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. "And when you think of the sadism,
the violence, the sexual humiliation, after a while you just turn away,
you just can't take it any more."
That's gotta be 'rings of hell'. Right?
Like in Dante?
I suspect it's the reporter's goof. But who knows?
Late Dante Studies Update: I'm told by a reporter on the scene that
Durbin did indeed say 'rings' of hell, as one might have expected. The
Reuters correspondent seems to have misheard. Where are E.D. Hirsch and
Allan Bloom when we need them!?!?!
-- Josh Marshall
(May 12, 2004 -- 12:50 PM EDT // link // print)
Okay, I think the wheels are now officially off this car. The Baltimore
Sun quotes Colin Powell as saying that "we kept the president
informed of the concerns that were raised by the ICRC and other
international organizations as part of my regular briefings of the
president, and advised him that we had to follow these issues, and when
we got notes sent to us or reports sent to us ... we had to respond to
them, and the president certainly made it clear that that’s what he
expected us to do."
Powell further said that he, Rice and Rumsfeld kept Bush “fully informed
of the concerns that were being expressed, not in specific details, but
in general terms.”
Not only does that contradict what the White House and the president
have said. It contradicts the testimony of one of Don Rumsfeld's
principal deputies from only yesterday.
When asked by Sen. John Warner whether the ICRC's concerns had made
their way to the Secretary's level, Stephen Cambone replied: "No, sir,
they did not. Those reports -- those working papers, again, as far as I
understand it, were delivered at the command level. They are designed --
the process is designed so that the ICRC can engage with the local
commanders and make those kinds of improvements that are necessary in a
more collaborative environment than in an adversarial one."
I've been hearing for days that the State Department at the highest
levels (i.e., not a few lefty FSOs in the bureaucracy, but authorized at
the highest levels) has been leaking like crazy against the civilian
leadership of the Pentagon on this story.
And here we have it right out in the open. Powell isn't exactly saying
the White House or the president is lying. What he's doing might fairly
be described as walking up to the black board, writing out "2+2=" and
then letting us draw our own conclusions.
Now, Powell's critics will argue that this is his standard operating
procedure: distancing himself from bad news with a shrewd campaign of
leaks and carefully phrased attacks, which give the targets of the
attacks no clear place to grab on to. And they'd be right. That is
classic Colin Powell, a master Washington insider.
But that doesn't mean it's not true. And at a certain point -- though
you'd imagine we'd already reached that point -- having the Secretary of
State openly contradicting the Secretary of Defense and the president on
a matter of such grave concern to the country is a situation that simply
cannot last.
-- Josh Marshall
(May 12, 2004 -- 02:53 AM EDT // link // print)
The first sentence in the Post's lead editorial for Wednesday: "The Bush
administration still seeks to mislead Congress and the public about the
policies that contributed to the criminal abuse of prisoners in Iraq."
-- Josh Marshall
(May 12, 2004 -- 12:46 AM EDT // link // print)
As I said earlier today, I don't think I can remember a more shameful
spectacle in the United States Congress, in my living memory, than the
comments today of James Inhofe, the junior senator from Oklahoma.
Clearly, it is part of the RNC talking points now to shift the brunt of
the media storm from the abuses themselves to the political storm
they've created. But no one that I saw at least rose more naturally to
the effort than this man. No one else's heart seemed so matched to the
deed, with his snarls at "humanitarian do-gooders" (i.e., the Red Cross)
trying to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions.
America's greatest moments in the last century came when she tempered
power with right and toughened, or sharpened, the edges of right with
power -- World War II, then the post-war settlement that framed the Cold
War are the clearest, though certainly not the only, examples.
But here you have Jim Inhofe lumbering out of his cave and on to the
stage, arguing that we can do whatever we want because we're America.
Inhofe's America is one that is glutted on pretension, cut free from all
its moral ballast, and hungry to sit atop a world run only by violence.
Lady Liberty gets left with fifty bucks, a sneer, a black eye, and the
room to herself for the couple hours left before check out.
Yet there was a much brighter side to these hearings on Tuesday. For all
the dishonor Inhofe brought on them, I was struck by how much of this is
being carried by Republicans -- in particular, John McCain, John Warner
and, perhaps most strikingly, Lindsey Graham.
Graham has become some mix of the star and the conscience of these
proceedings because of his specialized knowledge as an Air Force JAG and
his ability to see that this goes beyond partisan politics, threatening
as it does not only America's honor, but (in a way someone like Inhofe
could probably never understand) also her power.
Graham got it exactly right today when he said: "When you are the good
guys, you've got to act like the good guys."
Another way to put this might be to say that being the good guys is
about what you do, not who you are. That's a truth that the architects
of this war, in subtler but I suspect more damaging ways, frequently
failed to understand.
-- Josh Marshall
(May 11, 2004 -- 12:51 PM EDT // link // print)
Clothing himself in shame, Sen. Inhofe on Abu Ghraib: "I'm probably not
the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than
we are by the treatment ... These prisoners, you know they're not
there for traffic violations. If they're in cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these
prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents.
Many of them probably have American blood on their hands and here we're
so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."
Of course, according to American military intelligence officers who
spoke with the ICRC, 70% to 90% of the detainees in Iraq were there by
mistake.
Another example of how liberal democracy can't be spread by the most
illiberal elements in American society.
According to CNN, McCain walked out during Inhofe's statement.
-- Josh Marshall
(May 11, 2004 -- 02:30 AM EDT // link // print)
I took some time this evening to read the newly-released International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report on prison conditions in Iraq.
The report is dated February of this year and covers visits to various
prisons and detention centers from March to November of last year.
What does it show?
Over recent days we've gotten accustomed, I think, to an escalating rate
of shame and outrage each day. It just keeps getting worse and worse.
With such heightened, or as the case may be, lowered expectations, I
think it's possible to read the report and conclude it's not quite as
bad as one might have expected. But in the process of not being quite as
bad as one might expect, it actually deals a pretty devastating blow to
any claim that the infamous pictures are examples of low-level jailers
run amok.
In brief, the report argues that many innocents were arrested in dragnet
type operations. Initial arrests were often rough and frightening to the
people whose houses were broken into. And the military had no good
system of notification for the families of detainees. This resulted, as
the report terms it, "in the de facto 'disappearance' of the arrestee
for weeks or even months until contact was finally made." (p.8)
The sense I got from the report was that this was as much as anything a
matter of disorganization and poor planning. Still, the net effect was
to have people's family members simply disappear with no idea of what
had happened to them for weeks or even months.
Descriptions of initial arrest and detention are often harrowing and
brutal. But, for better or worse, many of them don't seem that different
from what you might see on an episode of Cops. That's not meant to make
light of it -- just to give a sense of what we're talking about.
Once you were arrested, and after you went through a period of
interrogation, you were usually placed in a standard detention facility
run by military police that was reasonably well run and complied with
standard Geneva Convention standards. To the extent there were problems
they were due to personality conflicts between particular prisoners and
guards or individual bad apples. And those problems were usually cleared
up pretty quickly by higher-ups in those jails. That's the conclusion of
the report.
The key is what happened during interrogation to high-value detainees.
The key passages come early on. For instance, on page 7, "In most cases,
the allegations of ill-treatment referred to acts that occurred prior to
the internment of persons deprived of their liberty in regular
internment facilities, while they were in the custody of arresting
authorities or military and civilian intelligence personnel." Once
prisoners were transferred to "regular internment facilities, such as
those administered by the military police, where the behavior of guards
was strictly supervised, ill-treatment of the type described in this
report usually ceased."
Even more to point, on pages 3 and 11, the report states that
"ill-treatment during interrogation was not systematic, except with
regard to persons arrested in connection with suspected security
offences or deemed to have an 'intelligence' value." (itals added)
Look further into the report and you see that the kind of
"ill-treatment" they're talking about is pretty much like the stuff
we've been seeing in those pictures. The fact that this only seemed to
happen while most prisoners were in the interrogation phase, and then
generally to the ones who Military Intelligence thought might have
really choice information, tells you that this wasn't a matter of a
breakdown of authority or rogue sadists (though those were probably in
the mix too) but rather a matter of organized policy.
I don't think there's any other way to make sense of what the report
contains. Why else would the pattern of 'ill-treatment' be so focused
and consistent?
In the crudest terms, it makes sense. What the ICRC termed "threats and
humiliations [and] both physical and psychological coercion, which in
some cases was tantamount to torture" (pp. 3-4, 11) was reserved for use
as an aide in interrogations, and mainly for the interrogations of
detainees thought to have particularly valuable information.
The key passage is probably on page 11 where it states that "methods of
physical and psychological coercion used by the interrogators appeared
to be part of the standard operating procedures by military intelligence
personnel to obtain confessions and extract information. Several
military intelligence officers confirmed to ICRC that it was part of the
military intelligence process to hold a person deprived of his liberty
naked in a completely dark and empty cell for a prolonged period [,] to
use inhumane and degrading treatment, including physical and
psychological coercion, against persons deprived of their liberty to
secure their cooperation." (itals added)
The list of frequently used methods of 'ill-treatment' is on page 12 and
among other things includes beatings of various sorts, threats of
various sorts -- including further 'ill-treatment', "reprisals against
family members, imminent execution or transfer to Guantanamo" -- being
paraded around naked, being photographed in humiliating positions, etc.
On page 13 and 14 there is again the use of threats of execution, mock
execution, threats of reprisals against family members, etc. Through the
report, we hear again and again the threat of being sent to Gitmo.
(As bad as all this was, the one thing you really wanted to avoid was
falling into the hands of the Iraqi police where the sort of treatment
described above was seemingly more intense and boundless and mixed with
corruption. So, for instance, you might undergo mock execution and
threats to have your wife and daughters raped. And then if you didn't
pay the bribe, they'd turn you over to the Americans with claims that
you were some sort of hardened terrorist who surely had prized
information, etc., perhaps bin Laden's valet or videographer or
something.)
In short, the ICRC report doesn't state in specifics the sort of stuff
we've seen so far in pictures. But it does describe this sort of stuff
in general terms and argues that this was standard procedure used to
extract information from the sort of people we'd most want to get
information from -- people suspected of being insurgents and others
deemed to have 'intelligence value.'
As much as the low-level folks who did the humiliating and the
'softening up' should be held to account, you can certainly see why they
and their families would be outraged beyond imagining that all of this
was being blamed on them.
The president's stylized expressions of outrage and disgust are further
revealed, I believe, as play-acting, like his feigned outrage over the
outing of Valerie Plame by one of his top advisors and his pretended
efforts to discover the culprits.
More echoes of the search for the 'real killers'.
-- Josh Marshall
(May 10, 2004 -- 07:16 PM EDT // link // print)
President George W. Bush at the Pentagon: "Mr. Secretary, thank you for
your hospitality, and thank you for your leadership. You are
courageously leading our nation in the war against terror. You're doing
a superb job. You are a strong Secretary of Defense, and our nation owes
you a debt of gratitude."
Sy Hersh, in The New Yorker: "Secrecy and wishful thinking, the Pentagon
official said, are defining characteristics of Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, and
shaped its response to the reports from Abu Ghraib. “They always want to
delay the release of bad news—in the hope that something good will
break,” he said. The habit of procrastination in the face of bad news
led to disconnects between Rumsfeld and the Army staff officers who were
assigned to planning for troop requirements in Iraq. A year ago, the
Pentagon official told me, when it became clear that the Army would have
to call up more reserve units to deal with the insurgency, “we had
call-up orders that languished for thirty or forty days in the office of
the Secretary of Defense.” Rumsfeld’s staff always seemed to be waiting
for something to turn up—for the problem to take care of itself, without
any additional troops. The official explained, “They were hoping that
they wouldn’t have to make a decision.” The delay meant that soldiers in
some units about to be deployed had only a few days to prepare wills and
deal with other family and financial issues."
-- Josh Marshall
(May 10, 2004 -- 05:24 PM EDT // link // print)
When President Bush says Don Rumsfeld is doing a "superb job" you really
have to shudder to think what we'd have in store for us if the guy came
off his winning streak.
Clearly, the president's political advisors have told him that his
political fate is tied to Rumsfeld's. And on that judgment I think
they're right. But certainly there are ways to keep someone on the job
without submitting the English language to this sort of brutality, this
.... abuse, shall we say.
Then there is the increasingly precious two-step -- perhaps
fetishization -- of the photos. This from the Associated Press ...
The president was shown a "representative sample" of photos,
including pictures not yet seen by the public, a senior defense official
said, adding that some showed humiliation of prisoners and "improper
behavior of a sexual nature," the official said.
Citing ongoing investigations and privacy concerns, McClellan
refused to describe the still images, including some that were taken
from videotape. And McClellan repeatedly sidestepped questions about
whether the president thinks they should be publicly released.
...
The Pentagon agreed to send as-yet unreleased photos and at least
one videotape to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. But
senators had not determined when or under what circumstances they would
be viewed by lawmakers.
Larry DiRita, spokesman for Rumsfeld, told reporters that the
Pentagon was discussing arrangements with the committee staff for
showing the additional photos and video "in a restricted environment."
I cringe to see these photos come out. But clearly they will come out.
And really they should come out.
With all this mumbojumbo about representative samples, and giving some
pictures to congress and not others, and bizarre locutions like
"improper behavior of a sexual nature" (that remind you of Clinton's
"inappropriate sexual banter", only this time it's not a ridiculous
joke), you get the feeling that you're dealing with an addict or a
scammer who can't give up BSing even after everyone else can see that
the jig is up.
You expect -- or perhaps better to say, you hope -- soon to see the
sober, serious grown-up come along, put his hand on the guy's shoulder
and say, "It's over" -- perhaps saying it a few more times, with
arresting finality, until he understands.
Perhaps a better metaphor is a user at the ugly outset of his own
intervention -- the increasingly desperate lies, the bargaining, the
lickety-split oscillations between apologies, self-pity and impulsive
anger.
-- Josh Marshall
(May 10, 2004 -- 04:44 PM EDT // link // print)
An interesting connection. A report on NPR suggests the possibility that
Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba's scathing report on the abuses at Abu Ghraib
prison may have been affected in some way by the fact that his father,
Sergeant Tomas Taguba, was himself a POW in WWII.
In fact, as a prisoner of war, he was part of the notorious 'Bataan
Death March'.
Who knows what played into this one man's role in this story now
unfolding. But it's hard to imagine this memory of his father's time as
a POW didn't play upon his mind at some point in his investigation.
[ed. note: thanks to this blog for calling this to my attention.]
-- Josh Marshall
(May 10, 2004 -- 11:32 AM EDT // link // print)
On whether everything will be released at once ...
QUESTION: Scott, given that there are these other pictures out
there, it's been acknowledged by the Secretary and you just mentioned,
why not just release all of the pictures and all of the video clips that
exist, just all at once, and stop the dribble, dribble that's, you know,
one-by-one --
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we are in close contact with the Pentagon on
those issues, and I think the Pentagon is working to address those
issues.
QUESTION: Is there discussion that, perhaps, it might be better to
just release it all to the public?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, the Pentagon is looking at all those issues. I
mean, they have to take into account other considerations, as well.
There are ongoing investigations, and the Pentagon has to look at those
issues and take those issues into account.
QUESTION: Do you think it will be discussed this morning at this
meeting? Has the President expressed his view as to whether it should
all be released?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, again, I think that those are issues the
Pentagon is working to address. And we remain in close contact with the
Pentagon on those issues.
QUESTION: Can you give us a sense of -- I mean, obviously you said
the President is -- hasn't necessarily seen them, but he knows what's in
the pictures. What is his feeling, at this point, about releasing the
pictures? Or is there just still an active discussion going on about
whether or not --
MR. McCLELLAN: I think the President has made his views known, in
terms of when it comes to the investigations that are ongoing. I think
he's stated that. But, again, I think the Pentagon is the one who is
working to address these matters. We're going to continue to stay in
close contact with them on these issues. But as I said, the Pentagon has
to look at other factors, as well, when they're considering these
issues.
QUESTION: But it will be his decision whether or not to release
them, right?
MR. McCLELLAN: These are issues the Pentagon is working to address,
and they have to take into account other considerations. I think that's
the way I would describe it.
More soon.
-- Josh Marshall
(May 10, 2004 -- 09:43 AM EDT // link // print)
A telling foreshadowing?
This from George Will's columnof August 12th, 1999 ...
[Tucker] Carlson reports asking Bush whether he met with any persons
who came to Texas to protest the execution of the murderer Karla Faye
Tucker. Bush said no, adding: "I watched (Larry King's) interview with
(Tucker), though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What
would you say to Governor Bush?' " Carlson asked, "What was her answer?"
and writes:
" 'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation,
'don't kill me.' "
Hughes, who says Bush's decision not to commute Tucker's sentence
was "very difficult and very emotional," says Carlson's report is "a
total misread" of Bush. Carlson, who describes Bush as "smirking," says:
"I took it down as he said it."
Gary Bauer, then running against Bush for the 2000 nomination, called
the Bush's comments "inappropriate, disgusting and profoundly
disturbing."
Consider this along with the fact that, as many have noted, the
now-President's ire has oddly turned on the photos -- that is to say,
the evidence -- seemingly more than the underlying facts.
-- Josh Marshall
(May 10, 2004 -- 09:23 AM EDT // link // print)
Just to pass on some added information, about which we'll be saying
more. There is chatter in Pakistani intelligence circles that the US has
let the Pakistanis know that the optimal time for bagging 'high value'
al Qaida suspects in the untamed Afghan-Pakistani border lands is the
last ten days of July, 2004.
-- Josh Marshall
(May 10, 2004 -- 12:16 AM EDT // link // print)
Andrew Sullivan has a series of damning posts up tonight about the Abu
Ghraib scandal. The section that particularly caught my eye was this ...
To have humiliated the United States by presenting false and
misleading intelligence and then to have allowed something like Abu
Ghraib to happen - after a year of other, compounded errors - is
unforgivable. By refusing to hold anyone accountable, the president has
also shown he is not really in control. We are at war; and our war
leaders have given the enemy their biggest propaganda coup imaginable,
while refusing to acknowledge their own palpable errors and
misjudgments. They have, alas, scant credibility left and must be called
to account.
In fairness, this is a long stream of thoughts that should be read in
toto in order to get his full meaning. He does reaffirm his belief that
the decision to go to war was the right one, but only just barely. But I
don't think these excerpted words in any way overstate the scope and
intensity of his condemnation of the administration.
I haven't been able to read much news in the last thirty-six hours, or
at least not as much as usual. So I'm still catching up with the details
of today. But when I try to write about this, I have to confess that the
words, metaphorically at least, get stuck in my throat.
For myself, it's not so much the horror of what we're seeing itself.
Certainly, history is littered with far greater outrages. But how
exactly did we find ourselves on the doling out end of this stuff?
Morally, how did it happen? And in simply pragmatic terms, since this
was a grand gambit for hearts and minds in a region awash in
anti-Americanism and autocracy, how exactly did we get here? More than
anything, a self-inflicted wound of this magnitude just leaves you
speechless.
For someone who considers himself in many ways a hawk and who did and
does believe in American power as a force for good in the world (most
recently in the Balkans) it is difficult to describe the depth of the
chagrin over watching the unfolding of a story which reads in many ways
like a parody of Chomskian screeds against American villainy.
As I think is already becoming clear, the responsibility for all of this
goes right to the very top -- to the President, the Secretary of
Defense, the Vice President and many others. The point isn't that the
president ordered or knew specifically that soldiers in Iraq were
setting attack dogs on to naked prisoners or all the other outrages
we're about to hear of. But going back almost three years these men made
very conscious and specific decisions to disregard or opt out of the
various international conventions, rules and traditions governing the
treatment of prisoners of war and enemy combatants that are intended to
prevent such things from happening.
It may be true that in this one MP Unit things got particularly out of
hand. But even the instructions from above they and other unit appear to
have been getting from superiors were quite bad enough.
Now there are reports of something close to open warfare between the
cabinet departments in the administraiton over this. We'll cover all
this in greater depth in succeeding posts but the embrace of
lawlessness, systematic deception and an almost boundless incompetence
have all made this possible. These guys created the climate in which
this could happen. And then they were either too disorganized or too
indifferent to stop it when things got out of hand.
In the case of the president, it's hard to know what to think. As Jake
Weisberg explains here, the president of the United States is just so
cocksure, incurious and lazy that I think it's half possible he's never
gotten past the gleaming phrases his advisors have given him to make
sense of what's happening on his watch. Nor, I think, can we discount
the possibility that the president's advisors and the president himself
knew enough of what was probably happening -- how their orders were
being executed in practice -- not to want to know the details.
-- Josh Marshall
(May 09, 2004 -- 09:25 AM EDT // link // print)
Zakaria sums it all up in a few short sentences: "Leave process aside:
the results are plain. On almost every issue involving postwar
Iraq—troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles,
de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani—Washington's
assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been
reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination
of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new
Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States
into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world."
-- Josh Marshall
Joshua Micah Marshall is a writer living in Washington, DC.
Copyright 2004 Joshua Micah Marshall
Stoney
"Designated Rascal and Rapscallion
and
SCAMPERMEISTER!"
When in doubt, SCAMPER about!
When things are fair, SCAMPER everywhere!
When things are rough, can't SCAMPER enough!
/end humour alert
alt.atheism military veteran #11
{so much for the 'no atheists in foxholes' rubbish}
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Purity ring -- a stop-sign that's worn on your finger
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