Psyche, Science, and Society

A creative proposal for Bush accountability

In this time of discussing administration legacies, Joe Klein in Time discusses Bush’s true legacy and has a couple of interesting and creative proposals to dealing with the likely lack of criminal indictments for our torturer- and vice-torturer-in-chief:

If Barack Obama really wanted to be cagey, he could pardon Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for the possible commission of war crimes. Then they’d have to live with official acknowledgment of their ignominy in perpetuity. More likely, Obama will simply make sure — through his excellent team of legal appointees — that no such behavior happens again. Still, there should be some official acknowledgment by the U.S. government that the Bush Administration’s policies were reprehensible, and quite possibly illegal, and that the U.S. is no longer in the torture business. If Obama doesn’t want to make that statement, perhaps we could do it in the form of a Bush Memorial in Washington: a statue of the hooded Abu Ghraib prisoner in cruciform stress position — the real Bush legacy.

Add comment January 9th, 2009

OLC, other Justice appointees, anti-torture

There is good news in Obama’s choices for several key positions in the Justice Department, especially for the key position 0f head of the Office of Legal Counsel. The OLC — infamously associated with torture apologists John Yoo and James Bybee –  interprets the law for the gocvernment. Obama’s appointee, Dawn Johnsen, is likely to overturn the infamous torture memos and the authorization of warantless wiretapping. She will also likely reign in the Unitary Executive theory that says the President can do virtually anything in a time of war.

The McClachy headline tells all, we hope:  Obama’s Justice nominees signal end of Bush terror tactics. From the article:

In filling four senior Justice Department positions Monday, President-elect Barack Obama signaled that he intends to roll back Bush administration counterterrorism policies authorizing harsh interrogation techniques, warrantless spying and indefinite detentions of terrorism suspects.

The most startling shift was Obama’s pick of Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen to take charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, the unit that’s churned out the legal opinions that provided a foundation for expanding President George W. Bush’s national security powers.

Johnsen, who spent five years in the Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton administration and served as its acting chief, has publicly assailed “Bush’s corruption of our American ideals.” Upon the release last spring of a secret Office of Legal Counsel memo that backed tactics approaching torture for interrogations of terrorism suspects, she excoriated the unit’s lawyers for encouraging “horrific acts” and for advising Bush “that in fighting the war on terror, he is not bound by the laws Congress has enacted.”

“One of the refreshing things about Dawn Johnsen’s appointment is that she’s almost a 180-degree shift from John Yoo and David Addington and (Vice President) Dick Cheney,” said Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe, referring to the main legal architects of the administration’s approval of harsh interrogation tactics.

Walter Dellinger, a Duke University law professor, said that Johnsen’s appointment “sends a very strong message that the administration intends to make sure that its power is exercised in conformity with constitutional rights and respect for civil liberties.”

Add comment January 6th, 2009

Intell Senators object to Panetta for CIA; Intel professional hails choice

Senior Senators on the Intelligence Committee, incoming Chair Dianne Feinstein and outgoing chair John D. Rockefeller, are criticizing the selection of Leon Panetta as CIA chief. It appears that they, like many in the CIA, don’t want any changes in the system. After all, these Senators closed their eyes to horrible abuses for years, and never dared stand up to Richard Cheney.

At TPM, Josh quotes a career intelligence professional on why these distinguished Senators object and why the Panetta choice is a good one:

I have 29 years of experience in the intel business both in government and as a consultant / contractor to the government. I recently retired after those 29 years as a Navy Captain (Intel). I have served with many in the “national intel community” and served on the WMD commission in 2004-05. This is my cred, now for my comment.

I think there is a lot more here than is being said. I believe that Feinstein did not want someone like Panetta who has a large and independent power base and network. If you get a career guy they are a lot easier to isolate and move around. Panetta has been around for a long time and has his own network. I actually think that it is a good choice. He knows how intelligence needs to be presented to the President - that is the critical issue here.

I do not discount the notion that many in the CIA feel slighted by the creation of the DNI and not being the “premier” agency anymore, at least when one looks at the totem pole. But if you look at the PDB more than 80% of the product still originates from the DI. It is the gold standard of intelligence agencies, both here and abroad. As a old colleague once said to me: there are a lot of jewels in the crown of the United States government but there are only a few large critical ones: CIA DI, NASA, NIH, State; that is where the intellectual might of the government is.

The issue is not intell guy or non-intell guy. The big issue for Blair and Panetta is strategic or tactical orientation. We are fighting two wars and the warfighter always screams they don’t have enough intel or enough of anything for that matter. The dice are so loaded for support to the warfighter that critical strategic intelligence for the President and other senior leaders goes wanting due to time constraints on collection assets.

We need a significant re-orientation away from tactical support by CIA and other National agencies and back to their primary mission - direct intelligence support to the President. The last 15 years have seen an explosion of tactical intelligence capability with the advent of UAVs (which DoD fought against for so long due to the fighter pilot mentality). National systems need to be re-oriented to national priorities and away from tactical or operational desires of the warfighter.

I think the Panetta selection is another indication of the change coming. I was concerned that the selection of Jones as National Security Advisor and Blair as DNI underscored the great concern that I have about the militarization of intelligence. The selection of Panetta, with a much wider and deeper power base than either of them, makes me hopeful in this regard. Panetta is a skilled operator, he knows how to get things done. He knows how to get a budget approved and to make the wheels of government work. He will be a force - both in the Administration and on the Hill — much larger than any career guy could be. This is good. It gives the CIA the opportunity to re-create itself within the current structure.

Add comment January 6th, 2009

Accountability for torture, yes. But what about for aggressive war?

Peter Dyer challenges us anti-torture activists to not loose site of the forest for the trees. While torture is a terrible crime, the original sin, he argues, is launching a war of aggression. The movement for accountability must not stop with torture, he argues.

At one level, I agree. But it is also important to realize the importance that the struggle against torture has brought together many, including many from the military, who agree on little else. I consider it one of the most meaningful results of our protracted struggle against torture that I have had the opportunity to come to know and respect so many brave and honorable people with whom I may disagree on much, but whom we agree that torture must be opposed with our souls. Some, but not all of these people disagree with the Iraq invasion. I am honored to work with them as we disagree on other matters.

How this all figures into Dyer’s argument, I do not know. But It cannot be forgotten.

Torture & the Crime of Aggressive War

By Peter Dyer

The U.S. government’s torture of detainees in the “war on terror” can be traced directly to a Feb. 7, 2002, memo signed by President George W. Bush.

This was conclusion #1 of the recently released final report of the Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody.

Thanks primarily to this document, debate concerning one of the most shameful aspects of the “war on terror” has entered the mainstream debate after years on the edges of public discourse. [For more on the report, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Torture Trail Seen Starting with Bush.”]

Torture, however, is only one of the crimes associated with the “war on terror.” A few prominent examples of other crimes waiting to be “sourced” are:

Extraordinary rendition, illegal detention, loss of habeas corpus, abuse and murder of civilians in Iraq and elsewhere, and the creation of millions of impoverished refugees.

With these crimes, the need to find the origin is every bit as imperative as with torture. But we don’t need to ask the Senate Armed Services Committee to initiate 18-month investigations for each of these as well.

The question of responsibility for these and all other war crimes, including torture, was answered over 60 years ago at Nuremberg when high-ranking Nazis were brought to account for their atrocities in World War II.

On Sept. 30, 1946, Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, president of the International Military Tribunal, read the judgment of the first Nuremberg trial, which included these memorable words:

“To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Torture, rendition, loss of liberties, unnecessary death and destruction are just some of the trees. Aggression is the forest.

And there can be no doubt that President George W. Bush and members of his inner circle have committed “the supreme international crime.”

The invasion of Iraq is the clearest example of American aggression associated with the “war on terror.” The invasion – launched on March 19, 2003 – violated the Nuremberg Charter (Article VI(a)), as well as the United Nations Charter (Article 2, Sec. 4 and Article 39) and U.N. Security Council Resolution #1441.

In addition, since “Operation Iraqi Freedom” violated both the Nuremberg Charter and the U.N. Charter – treaties signed and ratified by the U.S. government – the invasion also violated Article VI, Clause 2 (the Supremacy Clause) of the U.S. Constitution.

To many Americans — and to the great majority of the rest of humanity — it couldn’t be more clear: starting an unprovoked war is an outrage, both legally and morally.

It is nothing short of mass murder. It cries out for prosecution, for justice, for accountability — no matter how powerful the aggressors are.

With the Senate Armed Services Committee report, we have taken the first steps towards assigning responsibility for torture.

However if we ignore or marginalize the more fundamental crime of aggression, we risk accepting the unfortunate contemporary American assumption that aggressive war is a legitimate and useful tool of foreign policy – when employed by the U.S. President.

Until this assumption is unequivocally banished, it is likely that future U.S. administrations will repeat this “supreme” crime, further ensuring that torture and other war crimes which flow from aggression will be repeated as well.

It’s good that the debate on accountability for torture finally has entered the mainstream. But the principles of accountability and rule of law do not end with a Senate committee report.

We should be discussing the possibility of arresting and prosecuting George W. Bush and all others responsible for the unprovoked invasion of Iraq.

The search for the source of war crimes should be followed to its logical conclusion. It’s time we saw the forest as well as the trees.

*********

Peter Dyer is a freelance journalist who moved with his wife from California to New Zealand in 2004. He can be reached at p.dyer@inspire.net.nz .

Add comment January 3rd, 2009

Avnery: Gaza attack, an election-time disaster for all

Long-time Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery, of Gush Shalom,has a trenchant analysis, the best I’ve seen, of the current Israeli Gaza attack. He shows how it is not in Israel’s interest or the Palestinians’. By extension, the attack will have far-reaching negative effects on the US as well:

Molten Lead

by Uri Avnery
(Thursday, January 1, 2009)

Millions are seeing these terrible images, picture after picture, day after day. These images are imprinted on their minds forever: horrible Israel, abominable Israel, inhuman Israel. A whole generation of haters. That is a terrible price, which we will be compelled to pay long after the other results of the war itself have been forgotten in Israel.”

JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, Aljazeera’s Arabic channel was reporting on events in Gaza. Suddenly the camera was pointing upwards towards the dark sky. The screen was pitch black. Nothing could be seen, but there was a sound to be heard: the noise of airplanes, a frightening, a terrifying droning.

It was impossible not to think about the tens of thousands of Gazan children who were hearing that sound at that moment, cringing with fright, paralyzed by fear, waiting for the bombs to fall.

“ISRAEL MUST defend itself against the rockets that are terrorizing our Southern towns,” the Israeli spokesmen explained. “Palestinians must respond to the killing of their fighters inside the Gaza Strip,” the Hamas spokesmen declared.

As a matter of fact, the cease-fire did not collapse, because there was no real cease-fire to start with. The main requirement for any cease-fire in the Gaza Strip must be the opening of the border crossings. There can be no life in Gaza without a steady flow of supplies. But the crossings were not opened, except for a few hours now and again. The blockade on land, on sea and in the air against a million and a half human beings is an act of war, as much as any dropping of bombs or launching of rockets. It paralyzes life in the Gaza Strip: eliminating most sources of employment, pushing hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation, stopping most hospitals from functioning, disrupting the supply of electricity and water.

Those who decided to close the crossings – under whatever pretext – knew that there is no real cease-fire under these conditions.

That is the main thing. Then there came the small provocations which were designed to get Hamas to react. After several months, in which hardly any Qassam rockets were launched, an army unit was sent into the Strip “in order to destroy a tunnel that came close to the border fence”. From a purely military point of view, it would have made more sense to lay an ambush on our side of the fence. But the aim was to find a pretext for the termination of the cease-fire, in a way that made it plausible to put the blame on the Palestinians. And indeed, after several such small actions, in which Hamas fighters were killed, Hamas retaliated with a massive launch of rockets, and – lo and behold – the cease-fire was at an end. Everybody blamed Hamas.

WHAT WAS THE AIM? Tzipi Livni announced it openly: to liquidate Hamas rule in Gaza. The Qassams served only as a pretext.

Liquidate Hamas rule? That sounds like a chapter out of “The March of Folly”. After all, it is no secret that it was the Israeli government which set up Hamas to start with. When I once asked a former Shin-Bet chief, Yaakov Peri, about it, he answered enigmatically: “We did not create it, but we did not hinder its creation.”

For years, the occupation authorities favored the Islamic movement in the occupied territories. All other political activities were rigorously suppressed, but their activities in the mosques were permitted. The calculation was simple and naive: at the time, the PLO was considered the main enemy, Yasser Arafat was the current Satan. The Islamic movement was preaching against the PLO and Arafat, and was therefore viewed as an ally.

With the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987, the Islamic movement officially renamed itself Hamas (Arabic initials of “Islamic Resistance Movement”) and joined the fight. Even then, the Shin-Bet took no action against them for almost a year, while Fatah members were executed or imprisoned in large numbers. Only after a year, were Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his colleagues also arrested.

Since then the wheel has turned. Hamas has now become the current Satan, and the PLO is considered by many in Israel almost as a branch of the Zionist organization. The logical conclusion for an Israeli government seeking peace would have been to make wide-ranging concessions to the Fatah leadership: ending of the occupation, signing of a peace treaty, foundation of the State of Palestine, withdrawal to the 1967 borders, a reasonable solution of the refugee problem, release of all Palestinian prisoners. That would have arrested the rise of Hamas for sure.

But logic has little influence on politics. Nothing of this sort happened. On the contrary, after the murder of Arafat, Ariel Sharon declared that Mahmoud Abbas, who took his place, was a “plucked chicken”. Abbas was not allowed the slightest political achievement. The negotiations, under American auspices, became a joke. The most authentic Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, was sent to prison for life. Instead of a massive prisoner release, there were petty and insulting “gestures”.

Abbas was systematically humiliated, Fatah looked like an empty shell and Hamas won a resounding victory in the Palestinian election – the most democratic election ever held in the Arab world. Israel boycotted the elected government. In the ensuing internal struggle, Hamas assumed direct control over the Gaza Strip.

And now, after all this, the government of Israel decided to “liquidate Hamas rule in Gaza” – with blood, fire and columns of smoke.

THE OFFICIAL NAME of the war is “Cast Lead”, two words from a children’s song about a Hanukkah toy.

It would be more accurate to call it “the the Election War”.

In the past, too, military action has been taken during election campaigns. Menachem Begin bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor during the 1981 campaign. When Shimon Peres claimed that this was an election gimmick, Begin cried out at his next rally: “Jews, do you believe that I would send our brave boys to their death or, worse, to be taken prisoner by human animals, in order to win an election?” Begin won.

Peres is no Begin. When, during the 1996 election campaign, he ordered the invasion of Lebanon (operation “Grapes of Wrath”), everybody was convinced that he had done it for electoral gain. The war was a failure and Peres lost the elections and Binyamin Netanyahu came to power.

Barak and Tzipi Livni are now resorting to the same old trick. According to the polls, Barak’s predicted election result rose within 48 hours by five Knesset seats. About 80 dead Palestinians for each seat. But it is difficult to walk on a pile of dead bodies. The success may evaporate in a minute if the war comes to be considered by the Israeli public as a failure. For example, if the rockets continue to hit Beersheba, or if the ground attack leads to heavy Israeli casualties.

The timing was chosen meticulously from another angle too. The attack started two days after Christmas, when American and European leaders are on holiday until after New Year. The calculation: even if somebody wanted to try and stop the war, no one would give up his holiday. That ensured several days free from outside pressures.

Another reason for the timing: these are George Bush’s last days in the White House. This blood-soaked moron could be expected to support the war enthusiastically, as indeed he did. Barack Obama has not yet entered office and had a ready made pretext for keeping silent: “there is only one President”. The silence does not bode well for the term of president Obama.

THE MAIN LINE was: not to repeat the mistakes of Lebanon War II. This was endlessly repeated on all the news programs and talk shows.

This does not change the fact: the Gaza War is an almost exact replica of the second Lebanon war.

The strategic concept is the same: to terrorize the civilian population by unremitting attacks from the air, sowing death and destruction. This poses no danger to the pilots, since the Palestinians have no anti-aircraft weapons at all. The calculation: if the entire life-supporting infrastructure in the Strip is utterly destroyed and total anarchy ensues, the population will rise up and overthrow the Hamas regime. Mahmoud Abbas will then ride back into Gaza on the back of Israeli tanks.

In Lebanon, this calculation did not work out. The bombed population, including the Christians, rallied behind Hizbullah, and Hassan Nasrallah became the hero of the Arab world. Something similar will probably happen this time, too. Generals are experts on using weapons and moving troops, not on mass psychology.

Some time ago I wrote that the Gaza blockade was a scientific experiment designed to find out how much one can starve a population and turn its life into hell before they break. This experiment was conducted with the generous help of Europe and the US. Up to now, it did not succeed. Hamas became stronger and the range of the Qassams became longer. The present war is a continuation of the experiment by other means.

It may be that the army will “have no alternative” but to re-conquer the Gaza Strip because there is no other way to stop the Qassams – except coming to an agreement with Hamas, which is contrary to government policy. When the ground invasion starts, everything will depend on the motivation and capabilities of the Hamas fighters vis-à-vis the Israeli soldiers. Nobody can know what will happen.

DAY AFTER DAY, night after night, Aljazeera’s Arabic channel broadcasts the atrocious pictures: heaps of mutilated bodies, tearful relatives looking for their dear ones among the dozens of corpses spread out on the ground, a woman pulling her young daughter from under the rubble, doctors without medicines trying to save the lives of the wounded. (The English-language Aljazeera, unlike its Arab-language sister-station, has undergone an amazing about face, broadcasting only a sanitized picture and freely distributing Israeli government propaganda. It would be interesting to know what happened there.)

Millions are seeing these terrible images, picture after picture, day after day. These images are imprinted on their minds forever: horrible Israel, abominable Israel, inhuman Israel. A whole generation of haters. That is a terrible price, which we will be compelled to pay long after the other results of the war itself have been forgotten in Israel.

But there is another thing that is being imprinted on the minds of these millions: the picture of the miserable, corrupt, passive Arab regimes.

As seen by Arabs, one fact stands out above all others: the wall of shame.

For the million and a half Arabs in Gaza, who are suffering so terribly, the only opening to the world that is not dominated by Israel is the border with Egypt. Only from there can food arrive to sustain life and medicaments to save the injured. This border remains closed at the height of the horror. The Egyptian army has blocked the only way for food and medicines to enter, while surgeons operate on the wounded without anesthetics.

Throughout the Arab world, from end to end, there echoed the words of Hassan Nasrallah: The leaders of Egypt are accomplices to the crime, they are collaborating with the “Zionist enemy” in trying to break the Palestinian people. It can be assumed that he did not mean only Mubarak, but also all the other leaders, from the king of Saudi Arabia to the Palestinian President. Seeing the demonstrations throughout the Arab world and listening to the slogans, one gets the impression that their leaders seem to many Arabs pathetic at best, and miserable collaborators at worst.

This will have historic consequences. A whole generation of Arab leaders, a generation imbued with the ideology of secular Arab nationalism, the successors of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, Hafez al-Assad and Yasser Arafat, may be swept from the stage. In the Arab space, the only viable alternative is the ideology of Islamic fundamentalism.

This war is a writing on the wall: Israel is missing the historic chance of making peace with secular Arab nationalism. Tomorrow, It may be faced with a uniformly fundamentalist Arab world, Hamas multiplied by a thousand.

MY TAXI DRIVER in Tel-Aviv the other day was thinking aloud: Why not call up the sons of the ministers and members of the Knesset, form them into a combat unit and send them off to head the coming ground attack on Gaza?

Add comment January 2nd, 2009

US torturers to those from other countries: Punish as I say, not what I do

It’s hard to identify the point at which tragedy + hypocrisy becomes farce, but I suspect we’re way past that point in dealing with the US torturers. The US officials who have a full-time job protecting US torturers and other human rights abusers from any accountability, are running around denouncing and insisting on prosecution for torturers from other countries.

Faced with this level of hypocrisy, it is almost impossible to come up with meaningful words. One wants to cry “Shame!” but those involved have no shame. One wants to laugh, but laughter about getting away with torture quickly grows stale. Are there no limits for the purveyors of American Exceptionalism?  How to express revulsion that goes to the core of one’s being? Glenn Greenwald makes an attempt:

Torture prosecutions finally begin in the US

By Glenn Greenwald

While fiercely loyal establishment spokespeople such as The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus continue to insist that prosecutions are only appropriate for common criminals (”someone breaking into your house”) but not our glorious political leaders when they break the law (by, say, systematically torturing people), the Bush administration has righteously decided that torture is such a grotesque and intolerable crime that political leaders who order it simply must be punished in American courts to the fullest extent of the law . . . . if they’re from Liberia:

MIAMI (AP) — U.S. prosecutors want a Miami judge to sentence the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor to 147 years in prison for torturing people when he was chief of a brutal paramilitary unit during his father’s reign.

Charles McArthur Emmanuel, also known as Charles “Chuckie” Taylor Jr. is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 9 by U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga. His conviction was the first use of a 1994 law allowing prosecution in the U.S. for acts of torture committed overseas.

Even in the U.S., it’s hard to believe that federal prosecutors who work for the Bush DOJ were able to convey the following words with a straight face:

A recent Justice Department court filing describes torture - which the U.S. has been accused of in the war on terror - as a “flagrant and pernicious abuse of power and authority” that warrants severe punishment of Taylor.

“It undermines respect for and trust in authority, government and a rule of law,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Caroline Heck Miller in last week’s filing. “The gravity of the offense of torture is beyond dispute.”

The AP article which reported on these proceedings, by Curt Anderson, is almost as illustrative an exhibit of how our country operates as the trial itself is.  Marvel at this passage:

Emmanuel had argued in previous court papers that he was being unfairly prosecuted for acts similar to those committed by U.S. personnel in Iraq and elsewhere.

The administration of President George W. Bush has been criticized by some around the world and in Congress for using aggressive interrogation techniques. Justice Department memos were seen as providing legal underpinnings for some of the techniques.

However, administration officials have blamed abuses at places such as Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison on a small number of soldiers or agents and insisted there has been no systematic mistreatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan or the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Acts which, when ordered by Liberians, are “criminal torture” meriting life imprisonment magically become, when ordered by Americans, mere ”aggressive interrogation techniques.”   And while not all of the “techniques” used by the Liberians were authorized by Bush officials (”hot clothes irons” and “biting ants shoveled onto people’s bodies”), many of the authorized American techniques are classic torture tactics and resulted in the deaths of many detainees and the total insanity of many more.

Worse, AP — with canine-like subservience — mindlessly recites the Bush administration’s excuses (Abu Ghraib was due to low-level rogue bad apples and “there has been no systematic mistreatment of detainees”) without even mentioning the ample evidence proving how false those government claims are.  That’s standard American “journalism” for you:  ”Our Government says X, and even if it’s false and even if it’s intensely disputed, we’ll just leave it at that.”  Doing anything more — as NBC News’ David Gregory pointed out — is “not their role.”

There’s something beautifully illustrative about this torture prosecution.  Apparently, it’s not just appropriate, but necessary and urgent, for American courts to be used to prosecute the leaders of small African nations who order torture exclusively in their own land.  Doing that is necessary to uphold what the Bush DOJ calls ”respect for and trust in authority, government and a rule of law.”

But — say Bush loyalists and our pliant political class in unison — the one thing that we cannot tolerate is for American courts to be used to impose accountability on American leaders who authorized illegal torture.  And, of course, the only thing worse than doing that would be to subject them to prosecution by another country or, creepier still, an international tribunal.  That would be an intolerable infringement of our sovereignty, we say as we prosecute the son of Liberia’s President for acts he undertook exclusively inside Liberia.

In Liberia, the Taylor regime, for many years, was genuinely threatened by numerous rebels and revolutionary factions — ones supported by other countries — seeking to overthrow the Liberian government.  The torture which Taylor, Jr. was accused of ordering occurred during a brutal civil war.

Liberia undoubtedly has its own Jack Goldsmiths and Stuart Taylors who insist that the torture which the Taylors ordered — though perhaps “crossing a line or two” — was done for the Good and Safety of the Liberian People and to defend the Government against these foreign and domestic threats.  The Taylors undoubtedly have their loyalists who echo our own Cass Sunsteins and Ruth Marcuses, urging that it would be so much better for the country if everyone just let bygones be bygones and looked to the pretty future and the challenges Liberians face and not get distracted by litigating the unpleasant and partisan fights of the past.

But, like most of the alleged principles to which our political elite professes allegiance, America and its leaders are entitled to a different set of standards and better treatment.  Thus, Charles Taylor belongs at the Hague, being prosecuted as a war criminal.  His son belongs in an American criminal court being prosecuted by the Bush DOJ for torture.  And George Bush and Dick Cheney belong on their “ranches,” enjoying full-scale immunity for the crimes they committed and a rich and comfortable retirement, treated as the esteemed and well-intentioned (even if sometimes misguided) dignitaries that they are.  Virtually the only people in the world who fail to recognize this self-evident, ludicrous and disgusting hypocrisy are America’s political and media elites and those who are misled by them.

UPDATE:  Michael Mukasey, who refuses even to say whether waterboarding is torture and has repeatedly acted to protect Bush officials from prosecution, appeared two weeks ago at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and actually spoke these words (h/t sysprog):

It serves as a daily reminder to the leaders of the free world, and to the many visitors to our nation’s capital, that law without conscience is no guarantee of freedom; that even the seemingly most advanced of nations can be led down the path of evil; and that we must confront horror with action and vigilance, not lethargy and cowardice. . . .

Just as the Museum has focused on present-day mass killings such as those in Rwanda or Darfur, we at the Department are doing what we can to ensure that those responsible for such atrocities are brought to justice. We have provided support to the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia; to the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and to the Iraqi High Tribunal. And where we can, we are bringing our own cases. Both the Office of Special Investigations and the Domestic Security Section – parts of the Department’s Criminal Division – are pursuing cases against perpetrators of those international atrocities who find their way into our country.

The most prominent example of those efforts is the recent conviction of Chuckie Taylor Jr., the son of the former President of Liberia, who was convicted of torturing his countrymen. His conviction – the first in history under our criminal anti-torture statute – provides a measure of justice to those who were victimized by his reprehensible acts, and it sends a powerful message to human rights violators around the world that, when we can, we will hold them accountable for their crimes.

Mukasey actually had the audacity to approvingly quote from Robert Jackson’s addresses to the Nuremberg Trials, at which this central proposition of Western justice — now explicitly renounced by America’s political and media establishment — was ostensibly established:

The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power . . . .

Unsurprisingly, Mukasey neglected to mention that Jackson, in his opening remarks to the tribunal, called ”aggressive war” the “greatest menace of our times,” and in his summation, Jackson observed that “the plot for aggressive wars” is “the central crime in this pattern of crimes, the kingpin which holds them all together.”

The glaring contradictions in Mukasey’s words are too self-evident to warrant explanation.  Ponder, instead, the opinion which Mukasey — by uttering such brazen statements in public and knowing he can do with impunity — is implicitly expressing about how broken is our establishment media and how distorted is our political discourse.

UPDATE II:  Alberto Gonzales gave a painfully self-pitying interview to The Wall St. Journal this week and announced that the real victims aren’t the detainees who were tortured in our secret and not-so-secret prison camps, nor the millions of dead or displaced Iraqis, nor the Americans whose communications were illegally spied upon without warrants.  No, the Real Victims of the last eight years are Bush officials like him who face criticism for what they did:

I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.

Here we find the predominant — virtually unanimous — Beltway mentality:  when high American officials break our laws, it’s nothing more than “formulating policies that people disagree with.”  Gonzales cried out:  ”What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?”  The answers are obvious to anyone paying even minimal attention.  Steve Benen points out just some of them here.

UPDATE III:  I have a year-end piece for Salon up today — here — reviewing 2008 from the perspective of the Constitution and civil liberties.

Add comment January 1st, 2009

John Brennan’s role in the CIA chain of command

Blogger Back To Our Senses explores the role of John Brennan in the CIA’s chain of command and suggests that his placement itself raises enough questions, without Brennan’s public statements, on which our Open Letter and other criticism was based. His reasoning seems sober and very interesting. He concludes by joining those supporting a Truth Commission to find out what really happened in detainee abse, and who was behind it:

The broader CIA critique

By Back To Our Senses

In Glenn Greenwald’s recent Salon article, “Some observations after being involved in a Fox News report,” he discusses his attempt to set the record straight when it comes to the left blogs’ John Brennan critique. I believe he is mostly right when he says:

“Specifically, the case against John Brennan as CIA Director - from the beginning - was based almost exclusively on comments he made on television, after he left the CIA, in which he supported rendition and what he called ‘enhanced interrogation tactics.’” [bolding Greenwald's]

That was indeed the basis for the Brennan critique. John Brennan, basically, did this to himself - he was the one who stood up and acted as a mouthpiece for the Bush administration’s tactics. The mass media doesn’t understand this for some reason. Despite the fact that Brennan’s statements are out there for the world to see, the MSM did little to present them to their viewers/readers. But even if Brennan hadn’t put his foot in his mouth, I believe he would’ve been, by virtue of his former place in the chain of command, disqualifed for the CIA Director position.

No blogger I’ve read is demanding a massive purge of CIA staff. But I personally think it is important to both make and accept as legitimate a broader critique of Obama’s CIA candidates based on chain of command.

Mel Goodman did this a little bit regarding John Brennan in his Democracy Now! appearance. From the transcript:

“MEL GOODMAN: OK. John Brennan was deputy executive secretary to George Tenet during the worst violations during the CIA period in the run-up to the Iraq war, so he sat there at Tenet’s knee when they passed judgment on torture and abuse, on extraordinary renditions, on black sites, on secret prisons. He was part of all of that decision making.”

Goodman is right to hold Brennan accountable for decisions made in and by the CIA. Brennan was one of the leaders - as were Steve Kappes and John McLaughlin, both of whom have been floated for the CIA Director position. I don’t think we should punish the lower-level officers in the CIA who carried out specific operations - the Kirakous of the intelligence world. But we do need to ensure that the honchos of the Bush administration’s CIA are held accountable for the decisions they made and that they will not now lead Obama’s CIA.

To construct this critique, we need to understand the chain of command in the CIA (esp. before the 9/11 commission report and the establishment of the DNI position). According to espionageinfo.com :

The “director of Central Intelligence (DCI) oversees the four directorates (Administration, Intelligence, Science and Technology, and Operations), as well as numerous other offices.”

“Under DCI is the deputy director of Central Intelligence (DDCI), who assists DCI as head of the CIA and of the Intelligence Community. DDCI also exercises the powers of the DCI when the holder of that position is absent or disabled. Within the CIA and the Intelligence Community as a whole, the offices of the DCI and the DDCI are intended to function virtually as a single unit.”

The very top. The buck stops with the DCI and the DDCI. In other words, these two guys, both floated as Obama administration CIA Directors, DCI Hayden and DDCI Steve Kappes, are literally in this together.

Continuing from espionageinfo.com:

“By far the largest chain of command within the CIA, however is the one that runs through the offices of the Executive Director (EXDIR) and Deputy Executive Director (D/EXDIR).

The EXDIR oversees five centers that collectively enable the CIA to carry out its mission: the Chief Financial Officer, Chief Information Officer, Global Support, Human Resources, and Security, each of which have numerous subordinate offices and bureaus. Also under the EXDIR aegis are several independent functions,  including the Center for the Study of Intelligence, Office of Equal Employment Opportunity, Ombudsman/Alternative Dispute Resolution, and the Executive Secretary. Finally, the Executive Director’s office is in the line of authority between DCI/DDCI and the four directorates.”

The Wall Street Journal also has a chart that lays out these relationships nicely. Note this chart is not the same as the current CIA chart which takes into account the various reforms made in 2004 and onward.

The EXDIR’s office has authority over Operations. You know, that directorate where particular rendition and interrogation plans are hatched and carried out. And those in charge of Operations are the Deputy Director of Operations and the Associate Deputy Director of Operations. Pertinently, from June 2002 on Kappes was the Associate Deputy Director of Operations (for more on Kappes, please see here).

Considering that John Brennan served as the Deputy Executive Director, his line about not being “involved in the decisionmaking process for any of these controversial policies and actions” is a little weak. Until March 2003 (when he left) he had authority and oversight over Operations. Based on the job description alone he was involved in the implementation of these controversial policies. And I think that is fair game.

Why is it fair game? Because we hold our leaders accountable for their actions. If people are kidnapped, if people are held in black site cells without a clue as to why, if someone is tortured, we look to those leaders for an explanation as to why - and why these things continued.

Based on their positions of authority alone, I find Kappes and McLaughlin unfit to serve in the CIA - and Brennan too. I would find Jim Pavitt, former Deputy Director of Operations until June 2004, unfit as well.

Why is all this important? How about this - a point of Tim Shorrock’s and Frank Naif’s. Their point is in response to the bundles of international legal trouble the CIA’s rendition and interrogation policies have gotten the agency into. To quote Shorrock and Naif:

“Ignoring allied complaints about heavy-handed renditions is not an option–senior career and appointed officials who greenlighted these operations should step forward for the inevitable reckoning on behalf of their country, and on behalf of the brave men and women whose intelligence careers and personal lives have been turned inside out by foreign indictments.”

By virtue of their place in the chain of command, the Brennans and Kappes of the intelligence world need to offer an explanation for how these renditions happened, how they went so wrong, and why they were allowed to happen at all. They will be able to offer either useful testimony or they will themselves be targets of these international investigations. Because whether we think it’s legal or not, other countries have discovered our operations in their territory, and have found them illegal.

In the domestic arena, the logic is similar. As Senator Levin said on the Rachel Maddow Show on Dec 17, 2008:

LEVIN: “What I think is our role to do is to bring out the facts which we have to state our conclusions, which we have, which is where the origin of these techniques began. And then to turn over to the Justice Department of the next administration - because clearly this Justice Department is not willing to take an objective look - to turn over to the next Justice Department all the facts that we can, and we have put together, and get our report, the rest of it declassified.

But then it seems to me it is appropriate that there be an outside commission appointed to take this out of politics, that it would have the clear subpoena authority to get to the parts of this which are not yet clear, and that is the role of the CIA.

We looked at the role of the Department of Defense, but the role of the CIA has not yet been looked at, and let an outside commission reach the kind of conclusions which then may or may not lead to indictments or to civil action. But it is not our role, it’s not appropriate for us to make those kinds of - reach those kinds of conclusions.” [bolding my own]

By virture of their positions alone, we know who had responsibility. Now is the time to find out what happened, from them. Keeping these officials in the CIA is not an option. We need them to take responsibility for the decisions they made, and the policies that we as a nation need to leave behind.

1 comment December 26th, 2008

Defense Secretary Gates may be guilty of perjury, GTMO attorney states

Guantanamo defense attorney, Clive Stafford Smith, says Defense Secretary Gates may have committed perjury December 12. Here is an article by Andy Worthington:

Guantanamo lawyer says Gates may have committed perjury

By Andy Worthington

LONDON — The announcement Dec. 1 that Barack Obama had retained Bush Defense Secretary Robert Gates was intended to demonstrate the President-elect’s desire for a “big-tent” administration that transcended partisan politics. Gates had voiced his desire to close the Pentagon’s notorious Guantánamo Bay prison almost as soon as he took over from Donald Rumsfeld in December 2006, and this and his subsequent stewardship of the Iraq War earned him a place as a trustworthy figure who might bridge the Bush and Obama divide.

However, a declaration the defense secretary made in a Washington, D.C. District Court filing Dec. 12 during the habeas review of Guantánamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed might make some rethink the trustworthy label. Mohamed’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, says that unless Gates retracts his statement, he could find himself accused of perjury.

Mohamed has said that after being seized in Pakistan in April 2002 and held for three months, he was rendered by the CIA to Morocco, where he was tortured for 18 months.

His claims of torture were upheld by the British High Court in a review this summer (PDF), which took place after Mohamed’s lawyers sued the British government for alleged complicity in their client’s rendition and torture. Both the British government and the British High Court accepted that Mohamed “has put forward a prima facie case of torture,” Stafford Smith said.

The court established that Mohamed was “unlawfully rendered from Pakistan to Morocco by the United States authorities,” his lawyers said, and was ”subject to unlawful incommunicado detention and torture during his interrogation there by or on behalf of the United States authorities.” The court also established that Mr. Mohamed was “unlawfully rendered by the United States authorities from Morocco to Afghanistan,” where he was “detained unlawfully and incommunicado” and was “tortured or subject to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by or on behalf of the United States authorities in the ‘Dark Prison.’” — a secret CIA facility near Kabul.

At the end of this ordeal, Mohamed said he made a number of false confessions about his involvement with al-Qaeda and a plot to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in New York as a direct result of his torture in Morocco and at the hands of CIA agents in Afghanistan.

The Bush administration has never provided any explanation for Mohamed’s whereabouts from July 2002 to May 2004. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Guantánamo prisoners habeas corpus rights. Mohamed’s case was reviewed by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington D.C. District Court.

Sullivan set a deadline of Oct. 6 for the government to produce exculpatory evidence relating to the case (in other words, any evidence that tended to disprove the government’s claims). When the time arrived, however, the Justice Department dropped the claim about the “dirty bomb” plot.

At a Oct. 30 hearing, Sullivan said, “That raises a question as to whether or not the allegations were ever true.”

Sullivan continued to press the government for exculpatory evidence. Although the “dirty bomb” plot claim had been dropped, he ordered the Justice Department to disclose any exculpatory evidence relating to the charge. In order to determine the reliability of Mohamed’s statements, he said he wanted to know how the interrogation sessions were conducted.

Sullivan also ordered the Justice Department to secure an affidavit from Gates. The defense secretary swore under penalty of perjury that all exculpatory evidence in Mohamed’s case — including evidence relating to the alleged “dirty bomb” plot — had been provided to Mohamed’s lawyers.

“It is the practice of the United States Government, in preparing factual returns in the Guantánamo Bay detainee habeas cases, to provide petitioners all evidence encountered in the development of the factual return that tends to materially undermine information presented in the return to support the petitioner’s classification as an enemy combatant,” Gates said in his declaration.

“Consistent with this practice, on August 12, 2008, the attorneys preparing the factual return in this case provided Petitioner with evidence encountered in the development of his return that meets this standard,” Gates added.

He also explained that following Sullivan’s ruling, “all exculpatory evidence reasonably available to the government” relating to the “withdrawn allegations” about the “dirty bomb” plot had been provided “on a rolling basis.” He added that 42 documents provided by the British government had also been handed over. “As a result,” he wrote, “the United States Government has turned over all reasonably available evidence that suggests Binyam Mohamed should not be designated as an enemy combatant.”

In a letter sent to the Justice Department on Monday Dec. 15 (which has been seen by The Raw Story), Stafford Smith said he was trying to evaluate whether the defense secretary had deliberately perjured himself, or had been misled.

“I will say that I am extremely disappointed in the declaration that was filed on behalf of Secretary Gates on Friday,” Stafford Smith wrote, adding, “There is no question but that it is false.” He said he couldn’t conclude “whether I would categorize Mr. Gates’ statement as outright perjury, or as a misguided consequence of his reliance on an erroneous definition of the legal terms.”

“The vast majority of material (almost the entirety of the substantive evidence) submitted against Mr. Mohamed consists of statements attributed to him,” and therefore “would qualify as ‘exculpatory’ under Sullivan’s order,” he said.

Stafford Smith says it’s apparent that a wealth of material has not yet been turned over.

“Without going into anything that is classified, the Government has at no point in this case even acknowledged that Mr. Mohamed was rendered by the U.S. to Morocco on July 21, 2002, or that he was held there for 18 months, or that he was abused there,” he wrote. “Nor has the government breathed a word about the five months he subsequently spent being abused and tortured in the Dark Prison in Kabul.”

Stafford Smith said his only interest was to secure justice for his client.

“Both my interest, and that of my co-counsel in the habeas and the military commissions litigation, is to represent our client in the best traditions of US justice,” he wrote. “It pains me to have to say that the government continues to ignore its own obligations, and is risking sanctions.”

“Nothing has changed,” Stafford Smith told RAW STORY last week. “Unless Robert Gates revises his opinions, his declaration will demonstrate that he has been drawn into the defense not of the nation, but of some of the worst excesses of the current administration, involving ‘extraordinary rendition’ and torture, and shameless attempts to cover up all evidence of wrongdoing.”

Gates could not be reached for comment.

————-

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press).

Add comment December 23rd, 2008

Biden doesn’t rule out Bush admin prosecutions

On “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos, Joe Biden was asked about prosecution of Bush administration officials for torture. He did not rule it out, but said it is up to the Justice Department to decide. On the negative, several times he said “I think we should be looking forward, not backwards.”

Biden Not Ruling Out Prosecuting Bush Officials For Prisoner Abuse

By George Stephanopoulos, December 21, 2008

The Senate Armed Services Committee last week released a unanimous report that said that the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, at Guantanamo, at prisons around the world, is a direct and indirect result of decisions made by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other high-level Bush administration officials.

So I asked the future vice president: Should they be prosecuted for that?

“That’s a judgment, remember, four years ago on your program I made, so I haven’t changed my mind. And this confirms,” Biden told me.

“But the questions of whether or not a criminal act has been committed or a very, very, very bad judgment has been engaged in is — is something the Justice Department decides.Barack Obama and I are — President-elect Obama and I are not sitting thinking about the past. We’re focusing on the future,” he said.

Biden argued it’s up to the Justice Department, under Attorney General-designate Eric Holder, to determine whether the case should be reviewed.

“I’m not ruling it in and not ruling it out. I just think we should look forward. I think we should be looking forward, not backwards,” Biden said.

Add comment December 21st, 2008

NYT never saw a US torture official it coudn’t ignore

Charles Kaiser in the Columbia Journalism Review again takes the New York Times to task for its gross dereliction in reporting Bush administration torture. He quotes Scott Horton for an explanation:

Scott Horton explained the problem to FCP this way: “The consistent theme is trust of governments—they couldn’t possibly be doing the nasty things their critics say. And of course for the correspondents involved, it is and was so much more comfortable doing their reportage while maintaining friendly contacts with the governments. That’s the key failure—failure of critical detachment.” [emphasis added]

Of course, this trust of officials also helps explain the terrible reporting on Iraq which has characterized the times from Judith Miller’s front-page propaganda fictions, through seriously reporting the nonsensical official explanations of US failures as due to “foreign” Iranian interference, to the  to the recent explanations of US “success” while ignoring the hundreds of thousands killed.

The problem I have with this explanation by itself is that I can’t believe the Times reporters are really stupid enough to believe the official nonsense they regularly spout. I assume that the Times reporters and editors must, at least sometimes know in their hearts that the stories they spout are implausible to ridiculous.

Kaiser, again quoting Horton, goes on to praise the recent Times editorial, which had to cover the details which the Times news section had neglected to report.

Here is the complete article:

Above the Fold: Times Tongue Tied on Torture

Cheney’s waterboarding admission gets no play from NYT

By Charles Kaiser

There are times when news judgment is so bad that it seems to come close to criminal negligence. That is the case with the recent coverage of torture by the news department of The New York Times.

This week, Vice President Richard Cheney said, on the record and on camera to Jonathan Karl of ABC News, that he had personally encouraged and authorized waterboarding and other forms of torture—acts which every American administration since the dawn of the twentieth century has defined as war crimes. Every administration, except the present one.

Here are the key passages of that interview:

KARL: Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?CHENEY: I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn’t do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.

KARL: In hindsight, do you think any of those tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others went too far?

CHENEY: I don’t…

KARL: And on KSM, one of those tactics, of course, widely reported was waterboarding. And that seems to be a tactic we no longer use. Even that you think was appropriate?

CHENEY: I do.

The New York Times did not deem any of the vice president’s remarks worthy of mention in its newspaper or on its Web site.

According to Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union, more than 160 prisoners have died in U.S. custody during the Bush administration, of which “more than 70 were linked to gross recklessness, abuse, or torture”—in other words, as a direct result of the torture techniques which Cheney has now admitted were personally authorized by him.

As the indispensable Scott Horton of Harper’s explained after the Cheney interview:

[Waterboarding] has been defined as torture by the United States since at least 1903, the first military court-martial. The United States views waterboarding conducted for intelligence purposes during wartime as a war crime, and it has prosecuted both civilian and military figures involved in the chain of approval of its use. Penalties applied have ranged up to the death penalty. The crime is chargeable under the War Crimes Act and under the Anti-Torture Statute. There is no ambiguity or disagreement among serious lawyers on this part, and Cheney’s suggestion that what he did was lawful and vetted is the delusional elevation of political hackery over law.

As FCP has pointed out many times before, waterboarding was also the favorite torture technique of the Nazi Gestapo during World War II.

Former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean said on Keith Olbermann’s show that Cheney should be prosecuted—especially since he now boasts publicly of his crimes.

I queried New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet, and torture reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti as to why none of them thought that the vice president’s comments deserved a story—or whether, perhaps, I had missed the story in the Times. I received no reply. I followed up with this message: “I take it from your collective silence that there was no coverage of Cheney’s interview with ABC in the paper or on the website, and, therefore, that you are all in agreement that there was nothing newsworthy about it.” So far no answer to that one, either. (Back in June, retired major general Anthony Taguba wrote “there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes.” The Times also ignored that one.)

A couple of days before Cheney’s interview on ABC News, the Senate Armed Services Committee released a bi-partisan report accusing the president of acts which clearly qualify as war crimes. Among the report’s key findings:

The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ‘a few bad apples’ acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority….”The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own. Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions, and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at [Guantanamo]. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002 authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody. What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely.

Any reasonably sentient editor would have led with a story on that report, with at least a two-column, two-deck headline in the upper right hand corner of the front page. Messrs. Shane and Mazzetti kissed it off instead with 800 words, buried on page A14.

Scott Horton explained the problem to FCP this way: “The consistent theme is trust of governments—they couldn’t possibly be doing the nasty things their critics say. And of course for the correspondents involved, it is and was so much more comfortable doing their reportage while maintaining friendly contacts with the governments. That’s the key failure—failure of critical detachment.”

The only thing that saved the paper’s honor on this subject was a superb editorial by Andrew Rosenthal, which appeared in the Times yesterday. The paper called for the appointment of a prosecutor, because the “Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his legal counsel, William J. Haynes; and potentially other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.

The report shows how actions by these men “led directly” to what happened at Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in secret C.I.A. prisons.”

Horton summarized the contrast between the Times’s news department and editorial page this way:

This lengthy editorial highlights another sore spot: the paper’s news coverage. Why did the Times need to take 1237 words to present their editorial? Because, scrambling through the paper’s news pages for the last weeks, you will strain to find a glimpse of the essential facts upon which the editorial rests. Neither have the news pages contained any meaningful analysis of the Levin-McCain report and its broader significance. Much of the reporting has been pedestrian, and some of it has been infantile and unprofessional. For instance, the issue crept onto the front page just over a week ago with a report about Senator Diane Feinstein’s wavering from an anti-torture position in a piece that explained, relying on shadowy intelligence community sources with an unmistakable agenda, what a difficult time Obama would have implementing his anti-torture pledge. The only problem–in addition to the fact that the central premise of the article was fake news–was that Senator Feinstein didn’t waver, her remarks were misquoted, and the Times had to run a correction (though it failed to muster the honesty to note that this was what it was doing).

The problem with most reporters is that they have very little sense of history, beyond the week before last. In Paris, during the Nazi occupation, there were many “respectable people” who remained silent–or strongly defended the Nazis, and, by implication, the techniques they used to contain “ insurgents,” including waterboarding and other forms of torture.

Many of those French apologists were journalists. Their reputations declined rather sharply after Paris was liberated by the Allies.

Add comment December 19th, 2008