Who's to blame that Maliki can't govern?

The secret November 8 memo by National Security advisor Stephen Hadley, just published by the NY Times, tries to identify a plan under which the Bush administration can work with Nouri al-Maliki to establish some kind of order in Iraq. Hadley identifies three basic problems from which all the others arise: (a) We can't fully trust Maliki's intentions; (b) Maliki favors Shia power and is distrusted by Sunnis; (c) Maliki's own base of political support is so small that he is a hostage to Sadr's coalition of Shia radicals.

Dating from the day after the election, the memo reveals a welcome new seriousness of purpose and relative candor about the scope of the problems we face in Iraq. But it begs some obvious questions:

Why weren't these problems addressed long ago? And who's to blame that such an inappropriate candidate became Prime Minister in the first place?

The answer to both questions, of course, is George Bush.

It was abundantly clear the moment that Maliki's name was floated as the favored "compromise" candidate that he was likely to turn out a disaster. I had never heard of the man, which seemed a little odd in itself, so that evening of April 21st I did perhaps two hours of research on the man's career and on that basis posted a commentary predicting Maliki would be disastrous ("Abrasive and inflexible" is better than nothing). It was really that easy to see, from what little information that was publicly available, that Maliki was a terrible choice to lead Iraq out of the chaos.

Unmitigated good news. Except that there are one or two small doubts nagging at me. There is the odd fact that until quite recently the Sunnis and Kurds both regarded al-Maliki (his real name is Nouri Kamel) as an extremist Shiite.

Just one day ago, Sunni Arab leaders and Kurdish officials had expressed a preference for the other Shiite politician who had been considered a strong candidate for nomination as prime minister, Ali al-Adeeb. They had described Mr. Maliki as too sectarian and inflexible to win wide support among other political groups.

Another description of al-Maliki caught my eye as well, in the NYT sidebar: "Some rival coalitions see him as abrasive and inflexible." Those qualities must be a great advantage in certain government positions, I have no doubt. Yet I do have to wonder whether they are quite the right qualifications for a prime minister. Given that the country is riven by sectarian divisions, his selection may have been a tad too hasty.

There's also the fact that al-Maliki was an exile for 23 years, who returned only after the invasion. That almost guarantees that personally he does not have a broad base of support in Iraq. In fact, until today he was also virtually unknown outside Iraq as well.

I went on to explain that the reason a "compromise" candidate had been sought for so long was that the Bush administration objected to allowing the current Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, to continue in that position. Jaafari had given indications that he might just renew his call for the U.S. to withdraw its troops from Iraq, which Bush was intent on blocking.

You see, the identity of the new Prime Minister was our choice to make, or at least to exercise a veto over.

So who was fool enough to settle upon a man such as Maliki, an obscure operative who had so little political support in Iraq that he would almost inevitably turn out to be a puppet of whomever he owed his selection to?

The collapse of Iraq under Maliki is the predictable consequence of his appointment, and George Bush bears primary responsibility for it. Here is how Hadley assesses the core problem:

The above approach may prove difficult to execute even if Maliki has the right intentions. He may simply not have the political or security capabilities to take such steps, which risk alienating his narrow Sadrist political base and require a greater number of more reliable forces. Pushing Maliki to take these steps without augmenting his capabilities could force him to failure — if the Parliament removes him from office with a majority vote or if action against the Mahdi militia (JAM) causes elements of the Iraqi Security Forces to fracture and leads to major Shia disturbances in southern Iraq. We must also be mindful of Maliki’s personal history as a figure in the Dawa Party — an underground conspiratorial movement — during Saddam’s rule. Maliki and those around him are naturally inclined to distrust new actors, and it may take strong assurances from the United States ultimately to convince him to expand his circle of advisers or take action against the interests of his own Shia coalition and for the benefit of Iraq as a whole.

If it is Maliki’s assessment that he does not have the capability — politically or militarily — to take the steps outlined above, we will need to work with him to augment his capabilities. We could do so in two ways. First, we could help him form a new political base among moderate politicians from Sunni, Shia, Kurdish and other communities. Ideally, this base would constitute a new parliamentary bloc that would free Maliki from his current narrow reliance on Shia actors. (This bloc would not require a new election, but would rather involve a realignment of political actors within the Parliament). In its creation, Maliki would need to be willing to risk alienating some of his Shia political base and may need to get the approval of Ayatollah Sistani for actions that could split the Shia politically. Second, we need to provide Maliki with additional forces of some kind.

Well if pie was going to meet sky at all in Iraq, why were the two of them not introduced to each other back in April before Maliki was hand-picked to replace Jaafari? Why did it require a disastrous defeat in the Nov. 7 election for this administration to consider the problems inherent in imposing a political outsider—even worse, a recently returned exile—upon a badly fractured country?

Already by April, when this foolish choice was made, the emerging Iraqi government had become a patchwork of fiefdoms centered upon dozens of ministries, each with its own "defense" forces, handed out to powerful, warring political factions as the spoils of victory in the election. In such circumstances, a prime minister without his own substantial base of support would barely be able to hang onto his office much less bring the entire country under his sway. He would be a titular head of state, much like the early medieval kings of Europe who clung to their own domains mainly by staying in the good graces of their own barons, each having his own powerful army.

But George Bush did not have to understand anything about how feudal societies function in order to see that Maliki was going to become increasingly marginalized. All he needed to do was look at our recent past. In Vietnam in the 1960s, too, we interfered repeatedly by helping to remove or install presidents, seeking a reliable puppet. In the end, after the American-backed coup against President Diem in 1963—because he appeared to be willing to compromise with North Vietnam—we ended up being stuck with the notorious President Nguyen Van Thieu. His corruption was legendary, but what is often forgotten is that he was also very much the outsider. He had been trained and sided with the French against his countrymen during the first phase of the war in Vietnam. Thieu was in many ways a hostage to his own position; just as Maliki, he was loathed and resented as a puppet of the U.S., unable to exercise much authority even if he had wanted to do so.

All of this George Bush ought to have known. A shame he never served in Vietnam, because he could not have failed to have seen how a puppet-regime collapses from within. And Bush would not have needed to travel to Amman to discover that, in the end, despite all the the interference, his plans easily turn to dust.

Find some good news and report it!

Consistently some of the best reporting from Iraq has been done by Patrick Cockburn for the Independent. Tomorrow he has a stunner. As always, Cockburn sheds light on the true situation through details you won't find in most journalism (apart from the blogs that still occasionally post in Iraq).

Iraq may be getting close to what Americans call "the Saigon moment", the time when it becomes evident to all that the government is expiring....

The Iraqi army and police are not loyal to the state. If the US army decides to confront the Shia militias it could well find Shia military units from the Iraqi army cutting the main American supply route between Kuwait and Baghdad. One convoy was recently stopped at a supposedly fake police checkpoint near the Kuwait border and four American security men and an Austrian taken away.

The US and British position in Iraq is far more of a house built on sand than is realised in Washington or London, despite the disasters of the past three-and-a-half years. George Bush and Tony Blair show a unique inability to learn from their mistakes, largely because they do not want to admit having committed any errors in the first place....

Iraqi friends used to reassure me that there would be no civil war because so many Shia and Sunni were married to each other. These mixed couples are now being compelled to divorce by their families. "I love my husband but my family has forced me to divorce him because we are Shia and he is Sunni," said Hiba Sami, a mother, to a UN official. "My family say they [the husband's family] are insurgents ... and that living with him is an offence to God." Members of mixed marriages had set up an association to protect each other called the Union for Peace in Iraq but they were soon compelled to dissolve it when several founding members were murdered....

A few hours before somebody tried to assassinate him, Governor Kashmula claimed to me that "security in Mosul is the best in Iraq outside the Kurdish provinces". It is a measure of the violence in Iraq that it is an arguable point....

In much of Iraq, we long ago slipped down the rapids leading from crisis to catastrophe though it is only in the past six months that these dire facts have begun to be accepted abroad. For the first three years of the war, Republicans in the US regularly claimed the liberal media was ignoring signs of peace and progress. Some right-wingers even set up websites devoted to spreading the news of American achievements in this ruined land.

I remember a team from a US network news channel staying in my hotel in Baghdad complaining to me, as they buckled on their body armour and helmets, that they had been once again told by their bosses in New York, themselves under pressure from the White House, to "go and find some good news and report it."

That game was getting so tiresome that I seriously considered creating a fake news site, The Good News from Iraq, to promote obvious nonsense of the sort that apologists for Bush & Co. would have liked to have believed. Yet I couldn't bring myself to do it. The occupation of Iraq is an ongoing catastrophe and I could not see my way clear to write satire about it day in and day out.

Cockburn is particularly good in dismantling the quackery of Tony Blair--who, remarkably enough, is viewed on this side of the Atlantic as the wise statesman in the coalition.

These days, it is in Britain alone, or more specifically in Downing Street, that policies bloodily discredited in Iraq in the years since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein still get a hearing. I returned from Mosul to London just in time to hear Tony Blair speaking at the Lord Mayor's banquet. It was a far more extraordinary performance tha[n] his audience appreciated.

As the Prime Minister spoke with his usual Hugh Grant charm, it became clear he had learned nothing and forgotten nothing in three-and-a-half years of war. Misconception after misconception poured from his lips.

Contrary to views of his own generals and every opinion poll assessing Iraqi opinion, he discounted the idea that armed resistance in Iraq is fueled by hostility to foreign occupation. Instead he sees dark forces rising in the east, dedicated, like Sauron in Lord of the Rings, to principles of pure evil. The enemy, in this case, is "based on a thoroughly warped misinterpretation of Islam, which is fanatical and deadly."

Even by the standard of Middle Eastern conspiracy theories, it was puerile stuff....

The picture Mr Blair paints of Iraq seldom touches reality at any point. For instance, he says Iraqis "voted for an explicitly non-sectarian government," but every Iraqi knows the vote in two parliamentary elections in 2005 went wholly along sectarian and ethnic lines. The polls were the starting pistol for the start of the civil war.

And many of us said exactly that in our blog posts at the time. But the cheerleading pundits for war/occupation (we remember who you are, no matter how much you try to efface your own role in this debacle) assured us that the elections were the penultimate step toward a new dawn for Iraq.

The pundit-cheerleaders mistook the color of blood in the streets for rosy-fingered Dawn.

America's slaves

Something essential is wrong about the way we discuss the detainees in George Bush's prison-network abroad. It's troubled me for a long time. Published descriptions of this program, no matter how critical, have always seemed just a bit hollow. But why, what is missing?

This week the answer to that puzzle became blindingly clear as I read the testimony of Murat Kurnaz, a German resident who endured years of captivity at Guantanamo:

"They [the Pakistani police] caught me and sold me to the Americans for 3000 or 5000 dollars."

The obvious fact, little remarked, is that he and many other victims of Bush's gulags were sold into slavery to the U.S. government.

You'll say, "That can't be." But it is exactly what has been happening. The federal government-or, arguably, George Bush himself-has become a slave-holder.

While critics of the program have devoted considerable energy to uncovering and cataloguing the abusive treatment meted out to the "prisoners", we've overlooked the equally basic problem of identifying what fundamentally is going on. We've concentrated on the epi-phenomena of this system of detention, the indefinite captivity, cruelty, torture, secrecy and so forth, while forgetting that there is also the phenomenon itself that needs to be understood.

There isn't any way around the unpleasant fact that the phenomenon of a world-wide network which exists in order to capture, sell, transport, hold, and abuse without remit large numbers of innocent men cannot be described as a 'prison' system. It is instead a classic system of slavery. That is an observation so basic that most of us, certainly I, have failed to note it at all.

~~~~

So why is it that America has not been discussing during these last few years the restoration of a flagrant form of slavery by our government?

For one thing, we've been seduced into accepting the administration's terminology of "prisoners". As a consequence, critics of the program have sought to identify the ways in which their "imprisonment" does not accord with the laws on imprisonment and trial. But these are not "prisoners" in any of the senses that the word is normally used in the modern U.S.

They are not prisoners of war. Many, perhaps most, were not captured on a battlefield (despite the frequent false assertions of Bush administration officials that they are all captives of war). They have not been treated according to the Geneva Conventions. They were not rounded up in the U.S., the citizens of a nation we are at war with. There is no war going on, the conclusion of which will result in the release of these "prisoners".

Nor are they prisoners in criminal cases. They have not been convicted of anything. Nor have they confessed to crimes, nor are they awaiting sentencing. Nor have they been awaiting trial all these years. They have not been denied bail. They have not been charged. They have not been given due process in the courts. Until very recently, none had been made aware of what charges, if any, might be leveled against them. They were being held, quite simply.

They were not being held as material witnesses. Nor were they being held as suspects awaiting interrogation. Many have not been interrogated in years, though they continued to be held. No, they were simply being held against their will.

~~~~

And here we return to this fundamental fact, underlined recently by Murat Kurnaz: Many of these "prisoners" are being held because they were bought by agents of the American government. The U.S. purchased not just possession of their bodies but also the right to treat them any way it wishes.

Of course it is not news that the Bush administration has paid out huge sums to gain possession of these men. In May 2005 Michelle Faul of the Associated Press published an important report, based upon FOIA requests, about the purchase of detainees in the "war on terror".

Bounties ranged from $3,000 to $25,000, the detainees testified during military tribunals, according to transcripts the U.S. government gave The Associated Press to comply with a Freedom of Information lawsuit….

There have been reports of Arabs being sold to the Americans after the U.S.-led offensive in Afghanistan, but the testimonies offer the most detail from prisoners themselves….

Khalid al-Odha, who started a group fighting to free 12 Kuwaiti detainees, said his imprisoned son, Fawzi, wrote him a letter from Guantanamo Bay about Kuwaitis being sold to the Americans in Afghanistan.

One Kuwaiti who was released, 26-year-old Nasser al-Mutairi, told al-Odha that interrogators said Dostum's forces sold them to the Pakistanis for $5,000 each, and the Pakistanis in turn sold them to the Americans.

"I also heard that Saudis were sold to the Saudi government by the Pakistanis," al-Odha said. "If I had known that, I would have gone and bought my son back."

Leaflet offering "bounties"

So let's not pretend any longer as a nation that it is anything other than what it appears to be-slavery.

The price that Kurnaz estimates he was sold for in Pakistan, approximately $5000, resembles the sum the U.S. was offering per person in Afghanistan to the Northern Alliance in 2001/2002. And it is well within line with the sale prices for more traditional slaves in the current global human trafficking network. A current article in Foreign Affairs (available here) points out that the U.N. estimates that the average price of a slave worldwide is now about $12,500.

~~~~

The U.S. of course prefers to call the sums paid for the transfer of human beings "bounties", but that too is a misnomer in most cases. A bounty-system can only function in places where civil jurisdiction is sufficiently settled as to identify criminals who need to be captured. That doesn't describe the almost lawless conditions in which many of these "bounties" were paid out.

Besides, a "bounty" is a payment for the capture of a named criminal. American officials are aware that the fantasy of law-and-order cloaked under the term "bounty" is subject to challenge, witness their blanket denials of wrongdoing and claims of ignorance recorded by Michelle Faul:

The U.S. departments of Defense, Justice and State and the Central Intelligence Agency also said they were unaware of bounty payments being made for random prisoners.

The U.S. Rewards for Justice program pays only for information that leads to the capture of suspected terrorists identified by name, said Steve Pike, a State Department spokesman….

But a wide variety of detainees at the U.S. lockup at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, alleged they were sold into capture.

In fact many of the people who ended up at Guantanamo were not being sought by the U.S. by name. They were just whoever happened to be turned in for the "bounty":

In March 2002, the AP reported that Afghan intelligence offered rewards for the capture of al-Qaida fighters — the day after a five-hour meeting with U.S. Special Forces. Intelligence officers refused to say if the two events were linked and if the United States was paying the offered reward of 150 million Afghanis, then equivalent to $4,000 a head.

That day, leaflets and loudspeaker announcements promised "the big prize" to those who turned in al-Qaida fighters.

Said one leaflet: "You can receive millions of dollars. ... This is enough to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life — pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people."

Helicopters broadcast similar announcements over the Afghan mountains, enticing people to "Hand over the Arabs and feed your families for a lifetime," said Najeeb al-Nauimi, a former Qatar justice minister and leader of a group of Arab lawyers representing nearly 100 detainees.

Even though there were a few individuals identified by name, in separate posters, never the less the U.S. was in effect offering to buy anyone and everyone who might be turned over to them. Many of these payments, then, can't reasonably be termed "bounties".

Instead, the sums are the sale price for slaves.

~~~~

So far, I've presented two reasons for accepting the conclusion that what George W. Bush has created is actually a system of state-owned slaves. The first reason is that the government has not treated the men held captive as it would if they really were "prisoners" in any normal sense of the word. The second is that the sum paid out for such men resembles nothing so much as the sale price for slaves.

Now let's consider what we know about the conditions of traditional chattel slavery, from the perspective of both the slave and the slave-holder. Here, I draw upon my knowledge of ancient slavery in the Mediterranean world. Most or all of these generalizations also apply to plantation-style slavery in 18th and 19th century America.

Parenthetically, it's worth noting that in antiquity it was common for the state to own some slaves for various purposes. Also, it was a truism in ancient Greek and Roman society that any testimony derived from slaves had to be extracted under torture, without which their statements could not be considered trustworthy. I don't believe for a moment, however, that George Bush knows either of those things.

~~~~

What does it mean to be or become a slave? Virtually all the conditions faced by the long-suffering human beings held captive in secret CIA prisons or at Guantanamo, beginning with their capture, are paralleled by the conditions of the chattel slave.

* They generally are enslaved without having been convicted of any crimes.

* They are seized unaware, typically with collusion from locally powerful and corrupt figures, who receive payment for them.

* They disappear without being given an opportunity to regain their freedom or contact their families.

* They are spirited away, usually in the dark or under cover, by professionals who specialize in transporting slaves.

* Upon arrival at their place of confinement, they are taught that they are helpless.

* They are subject to every form of capricious treatment, and may hope to escape harsh and humiliating treatment only by total submission to the will of their owner.

* They are are routinely raped, tortured and brutalized.

* They are treated as less than fully human.

* Their guards have been trained in forms of humiliation, and are encouraged to mistreat slaves.

* Their living conditions are degrading.

* They have no legal rights, and no protection except what their owner is willing to grant.

* They have no documents and little personal property.

* They have no past or hope of a better future except what their owner is willing to grant.

* They may be freed only if their owner volunteers to free them.

* No outside entity has any authority to rescue them from their captivity or interfere in how the owner treats them.

In other words, the conditions experienced by the man handed over to American forces by Pakistani policemen, or by Northern Alliance militiamen, or by anybody eager for the $5000 bounty, is parallel in many basic ways to the conditions that a chattel slave experiences.

~~~~

What does it mean to be a master of slaves? Virtually all the powers and privileges that the federal government-or, arguably, George Bush himself-exercises over the long-suffering human beings held captive in secret CIA prisons or at Guantanamo are the powers and privileges of the slave-holder. Above all, this is the power or privilege:

* to have the slave abused, degraded, tortured, raped, or killed without being held accountable

* to do what you will with the slave, without having to render any account of his activities, treatment, upkeep, care, or housing

* to place brutal overseers in charge of the slave, without needing to justify it to society

* to inflict a regime of psychological domination over the slave

* to control information about the identity, origin, and name of the slave

* to move the slave around wherever you wish

* to release the slave or give the slave over to others for any reason, or for no reason, without explanation

* to be the final and sole arbiter in issues involving the slave, without these being subject to appeal

* to be beyond the reach of the slave's family or society

There are other conditions of slave-holding besides the powers and privileges it brings. The slave-holder gains status by the mere fact of owning slaves, but also lives in fear of a conspiracy by the slaves, and with the suspicion always that the slaves share secret information that can be damaging or dangerous. The slave-holder feels a constant need to hound slaves to get the most out of them, as well as the need to keep them off-balance. The slave-holder must also present a public face that masks the brutality of the control exercised over the slaves, and limit the flow of information about their actual conditions. The slave-holder feels obligated to promulgate an ideological framework in which the slavery is necessary, justified, and beneficial to society.

~~~~

In short, when you consider what captivity in George Bush's "war on terror" actually means for the man seized, or for those who hold absolute control over him, the conditions are extremely close to those of chattel slavery.

In a second post, I'll expand this commentary into areas that I've only touched upon so far. I'd like to say a little more about what we learned last week from Murat Kurnaz. Also, I'll add some information about the wider relationship between the Bush administration and the global human trafficking network.

Finally, I'll discuss how it makes sense to talk about the "prisoners" in the "war-on-terror" as slaves. The world trade today in slaves, as in the past, is mostly connected to a brutal economic system that thrives by exploiting slave-workers. George Bush is not buying and holding these slaves for productive purposes. So how, some might ask, can it really be regarded as slavery?

I'll have some thoughts on the topic next time. Meanwhile, I'd be happy to hear what you think.

This is an expanded version of a post from Unbossed and Never in Our Names

Thankful for forgiving readers

Because everything I write has a substantial proportion of error, I give thanks today for forgiving readers. Call them what you will—inaccuracies, implausibilities, glaring omissions of fact, flights of fancy, fabrications—the sheer number of times I've supplied misleading information during the last year might have turned off a less tolerant bunch than you. And yet apart from a few stern letters sent in by obvious soreheads, you've been quite incredibly forgiving of the falsehoods I've disseminated.

For instance just last week I wrote that the North Carolina Baptist Convention had taken a firm stand against usury ("The only sin that has its own advocacy group"). I may have been a little precipitous in posting that story, though. Baptist ministers responded by insisting, in multiple emails, that they'd done no such thing—yet. They were concentrating for the moment on expelling gays rather than usurers, they explained.

I think we'll just have to see whether my report on the Baptists turns out to have been premature, then.

That was a story sent to me by my friend Milo, and perhaps I haven't always been sufficiently critical of his scoops. He was responsible, in mid-October, for another report that I've come slightly to regret: Baltimore Orioles' GM promises to "stay the course". Though I kept my doubts to myself at the time, I was never really convinced by Milo's claim that the White House expected the team to win the World Series easily, with only modest changes in strategy. As it turns out, the Orioles had already been eliminated from the playoffs. I regret that I neglected to look into that aspect of the story at the time I wrote up Milo's report.

Come to think of it, the overheard conversations he's reported contain some exaggerated elements that readers are right to complain about. Also, some of the people he meets have made dubious claims, to say the least. Milo's story this summer about a bitter conflict among neighbors (The Deer War), for example, has some credibility problems. He admitted under cross-examination that he'd written it as a parable. At that stage I was nearly done formatting his story, which is the only reason why I posted it at all. That one I think I'd say is "no longer operative", in retrospect, given his admission that it's fictitious.

Not all mistakes are Milo's fault, however. Other bloggers whom I take material from are to blame as well. (And this, incidentally, is the best reason for making a big point of acknowledging where you're swiping your stuff from.)

Last fall I got into hot water by trusting in a blog report that claimed a revolt was taking shape in Congress against Democratic Party activists and bloggers (BREAKING: Congressional Dems to split with Party?). Since then I've been assured that one or more of those meetings did not occur, and that Party leaders have never complained about the influence of bloggers. In my defense, I can only say that the report seemed to be worth discussing, whether or not it was credible.

All in all, I feel very fortunate that my readers have an unusually high toleration for inaccuracy. I promise that in the coming year I'll continue to provide you with the most interesting and unusual news available anywhere on the internet, of the level of quality you've come to expect.

And just to re-assure my more critical readers that I view their complaints very seriously, I also want to take this occasion to retract in advance several further errors I plan on making in the coming months.

Tony Blair: Iraq invasion "pretty much of a disaster"

Just the other day the White House Domestic Propaganda Bureau (more of that later) insisted vehemently that there's no difference between the views of Tony Blair and George Bush on Iraq. They might want to rethink that.

Today on al-Jazeera TV, Blair agreed with interviewer David Frost that the invasion of Iraq had "so far been pretty much of a disaster". A somewhat tactless admission, given all the lies he's told to Parliament, the public--to pretty much everybody who would listen. Yet this statement has a verisimilitude that will be hard to dismiss, like Cheney's evil chortling that "dunking" prisoners is a "no-brainer".

And just for added fun, Blair's cabinet minister for Trade and Industry gave a private speech in which she slammed him for his dishonesty and "moral imperialism" in Iraq, which she called a "big mistake". She added, "I hope this isn't being reported."

The British newspapers are having a field day with these stories. Here is The Guardian, and The Independent, and The Times. From the Guardian:

Tony Blair conceded last night that western intervention in Iraq had been a disaster. In an interview with Al-Jazeera, the Arabic TV station, the prime minister agreed with the veteran broadcaster Sir David Frost when he suggested that intervention had "so far been pretty much of a disaster".

Mr Blair said: "It has, but you see, what I say to people is, 'why is it difficult in Iraq?' It's not difficult because of some accident in planning, it's difficult because there's a deliberate strategy - al-Qaida with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other - to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war."

We knew that the strain of keeping up appearances would grow too much for Mr Blair. Sooner or later, like Cheney and Bush before him, Blair would make the mistake of blurting out the truth. Nice job at recovering...'we planned for this out the wazoo, so this "disaster" thingee is the fault of the natives who didn't play along.'

Downing Street tried to downplay the apparent slip. "I think that's just the way in which he answers questions," said a spokesman. "His views on Iraq are documented in hundreds of places, and that is not one of them."

Won't do much good trying to distract attention, I think; Blair admitted it's "pretty much a disaster", that's what everybody has been waiting to hear him admit, and journalists are now going to run with it. So will his political rivals.

John McDonnell, the leftwing MP who has pledged to challenge for Labour's leadership, said the prime minister's concession was "staggering" and urged him to bring forward Britain's exit strategy.

And here's more from the Independent:

[Blair's] admission was seized on by opponents of the war last night and will revive demands for the Government to call an independent inquiry into what went wrong in Iraq since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: "At long last the enormity of the decision to take military action against Iraq is being accepted by the Prime Minister. It could hardly be otherwise as the failure of strategy becomes so clear."

He added: "If the Prime Minister accepts that it is a 'disaster' then surely Parliament and the British people, who were given a flawed prospectus, are entitled to an apology."

You think we could get one of those apologies over here in the U.S., too? It will be interesting to see if this story turns into a media swarm in Britain. The Lib Dems are ideally positioned to keep the heat turned up, as the main anti-war party. And they don't call Campbell 'Ming the merciless' for nothing. He relishes every opportunity to embarrass the Blair government.

Anyway, Blair's government is doing a pretty tidy job of embarrassing itself today. Here's a parallel story about the statements of the Trade and Industry Minister tearing Blair apart for his Iraq policy. From The Independent:

Margaret Hodge has become the first serving minister openly to attack the Iraq war after describing it as Tony Blair's "big mistake in foreign affairs", adding that he was a man who was driven by "moral imperialism".

It is the first time that a minister has been directly quoted as attacking the Iraq war, although others are known to believe privately that it was a serious mistake....

Mrs Hodge, the Industry minister, told members of the Islington Fabian Society, a pressure group within the Islington Labour Party, that she had had doubts about Tony Blair's foreign policies since 1998 [because of his belief in imposing British values and ideas on other countries]. Challenged by one of the dinner guests about why, in that case, she had voted in favour of sending British troops into Iraq, she replied that she had accepted Mr Blair's claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction because "he was our leader and I trusted him".

Aware of the implications of what she was saying, Mrs Hodge added: "I hope this isn't going to be reported."

Yesterday, the minister denied making the comments attributed, which appeared on the front page of the Islington Tribune, a free newspaper. The story was unsigned, but was written by the newspaper's editor/proprietor Eric Gordon, who was described by a fellow journalist as "a hack of some repute, who knows a story and knows what is reportable".

Nice, that last bit. Gordon, you see, happened to be at the dinner, so yes as it turns out, it was going to be reported.

Anyway, the implication is clear: a minister within Blair's government thinks he lied about the grounds for invading Iraq. It doesn't help Blair that he and Mrs. Hodge are old friends.

What is the White House's view about Tony Blair? At the top of their slow-moving propaganda apparatus is a churlish rant against the American news media for having suggested that Blair's views on Iraq were diverging from those of George Bush. Here is the point that we're supposed to take away:

Prime Minister Blair's Policy Is Not New And Is Similar To President Bush's Policy

It's actually underlined in the original. Problem is, the WH makes its point by contrasting the coverage of Blair's comments earlier this week with the coverage given to them by British newspapers. The implication: That the British media gets things right, while American journalists merely give vent to their own biases and parade their stupidity.

So, here's a hint all you biased, stupid American reporters: Take this British story and run with it. It's been vetted by the best in the business, and according to the White House, your job is to transcribe what the Brits are saying.

Oh, and here's another assignment for you. Check out the White House's domestic propaganda website in all its glory. What the heck is this all about, anyhow?

What kinds of investigations will we get into the run-up to the Iraq war?

What committees will be investigating the run-up to the Iraq war; the misuse of intelligence; the collusion between the US and UK governments? What will their goals be? What writ will they have from the new leadership? The Democrats are slowly figuring this out.

It's pretty clear that Sen. Rockefeller will push to complete the "Phase Two" investigation in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In the House, however, it remains unclear whether such hearings will proceed at all. For in the House, findings by a committee that the President and Vice President engaged in wrongdoing could well lead to articles of impeachment being introduced before the Judiciary Committee. If hearings are held, then, the way is open at least in theory to making a real show of holding these men accountable for their actions. And everybody knows that it would be difficult to hold hearings and avoid the conclusion that the administration deceived Congress and the nation (to say the least) in the run-up to war.

One of the big questions is whether Rep. Conyers will actually press for hearings in the House. For about a year, after the appearance of the Downing Street memo in May 2005, Conyers very publicly pushed for hearings. He held his own meeting in the Capitol in June 2005, and in December he produced a lengthy report on the matter. On his website, he said he'd welcome evidence that might show that the President had committed impeachable offenses.

But then, as the election approached, Democrats tried to downplay any suggestion that they were 'out to get' (i.e. hold accountable) Mr. Bush. Rep. Conyers followed suit, walking back from his earlier and clearer positions. In May, he penned this op-ed evidently to soothe concerns. And subsequently, he's become less aggressive, and more vague, on the issue.

On Thursday he issued a statement through a staffer saying that impeachment hearings are "off the table". The statement is not available at his website and Rep. Conyers didn't make himself available to reporters to discuss it. So it's far from clear what this means to the question of whether he will press for hearings.

But a report in the Sunday Independent quotes one of Conyers' senior staffers saying that a full inquiry is still needed. I find that intriguing, at least. Meanwhile, a report in the same paper suggests that Tony Blair's political position is deteriorating. Pressure is mounting on him from several fronts, including demands for answers about planning for the Iraq war. I thought I might treat these issues together, because they both affect the question of how thoroughly Congress and Parliament will investigate the background to the war, and how eager they will be to uncover new information.

The one thing we know about the situation in the US, is that nobody yet knows what will happen with any of this. I'm just assembling some evidence about where things stand on the question of whether and how to investigate. I'll sidestep the question of whether Bush and Cheney will or should be impeached as the result of such investigations.

In a May op-ed (WaPo), Rep. Conyers' position on holding hearings on the run-up to the Iraq war was as follows (see also this dKos post from August):

[Republicans alleged that] I, as the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, would immediately begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush.

I will not do that....The allegations I have raised are grave, serious, well known, and based on reliable media reports and the accounts of former administration officials.

But none of these allegations can be proved or disproved until the administration answers questions. For example, to know whether intelligence was mistaken or manipulated in the run-up to the Iraq war, we need to know what information was made available to -- and actually read by -- decision makers and how views contradicting the case for war were treated. ...

The administration's stonewalling, and the lack of oversight by Congress, have left us to guess whether we are dealing with isolated wrongdoing, or mistakes, or something worse. In my view, the American people deserve answers, not guesses. I have proposed that we obtain these answers in a responsible and bipartisan manner.

...partisan vendettas ultimately provoke a public backlash and are never viewed as legitimate.

So, rather than seeking impeachment, I have chosen to propose comprehensive oversight of these alleged abuses. The oversight I have suggested would be performed by a select committee made up equally of Democrats and Republicans and chosen by the House speaker and the minority leader.

The committee's job would be to obtain answers -- finally. At the end of the process, if -- and only if -- the select committee, acting on a bipartisan basis, finds evidence of potentially impeachable offenses, it would forward that information to the Judiciary Committee.

I really do not know how to square his subsequent statement that impeachment is "off the table" with this op-ed. It does raise the question, though, what the goal of any House hearings into the background of the Iraq war might be. If hearings produce credible evidence of high crimes, then doesn't impeachment have to be (back) "on the table"?

Yesterday, the day after Rep. Conyers issued his press release, the Boston Globe had this story about Democratic plans for investigations:

Despite the conciliatory language this week between the White House and the new leaders of Congress, Democrats expect to launch probes into the administration's use of prewar intelligence on Iraq and its domestic wiretapping program and into Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, current and former aides said. The goal, they said, will be to force changes by shedding light on problems with the existing policies....

James Manley, spokesman for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, said yesterday that the senator intended to "push to finalize" the investigation of whether the Pentagon under Donald H. Rumsfeld misused prewar intelligence about Iraq's arms programs....

Meanwhile, an aide to Representative John Conyers Jr., the Michigan Democrat slated to head the House Judiciary Committee, said the senator intends to hold hearings on the president's domestic wiretapping program, the subject of a bill Bush has yet to get passed. Conyers drew fire earlier this year from conservatives for issuing a report that concluded that Bush violated civil liberties and that could constitute an "impeachable offense."

But in a press release this week, he dismissed the idea that he would pursue impeachment, calling it a "right-wing effort to distort" his position. "The incoming speaker has said that impeachment is off the table," he said of Representative Nancy Pelosi of California . "I am in total agreement with her on this issue."

I'd seen few signs, recently, that the House still was planning to hold its own hearings into the run-up to the war. That's why I was particularly interested in this article in the Independent

Tony Blair, who narrowly defeated a recent parliamentary attempt to call an inquiry into the Iraq war, is facing a new threat from Washington, where victorious Democrats are expected to call British witnesses as they launch congressional investigations into the war.

"Now we are the majority party and we can hold hearings," said a senior member of the staff of John Conyers, who in January will become chair of the House Judiciary Committee. "We can hold any number of hearings."

Democratic Senators are also expected to seek hearings aimed at throwing light on how Downing Street and the White House co-ordinated efforts to claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. All the claims that led to war, from allegations that Saddam was reconstituting a nuclear weapons programme to his alleged links with al-Qa'ida, could come under examination. Unlike their counterparts in Britain, congressional committees have the crucial power to subpoena witnesses and documents.

...the Congressman's aide said full details about the decision to go to war had still not emerged. He added: "We are not in a position to say we know what happened or what came to be. We know what some whistle-blowers said, and some people who left the government, but there has never been a [full inquiry]."

No there hasn't, and one lively question is whether there will be one in the House of Representatives next year.

Another question, which I discussed recently here and here, is whether the British House of Commons is getting more aggressive (again, or perhaps finally) about conducting an honest and thorough investigation of the issue. The nearly two-year old Butler Inquiry, the closest thing to a full investigation, has never looked shabbier. It's increasingly clear that Butler ignored, falsified, or downplayed crucial evidence he was given of the Blair government's wrongdoing.

At this stage the British people really want some answers, as the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan get ever worse. The Commons may finally be getting serious, too. As tomorrow's Independent reports:

Pressure for an inquiry in the UK will be renewed this week when MPs launch a fresh attempt to make the Government reveal its exit plan from Iraq. Leading backbenchers from all sides are preparing to table an amendment to the Queen's speech, a device that, if successful, would require ministers to explain in public what they are telling the US administration in private.

Kenneth Clarke, the former chancellor and leading Conservative war critic, and John McDonnell, the left-wing Labour MP challenging for the party's leadership, are among those backing the move.

During the second half of the 20th century, the Conservatives tabled only a single amendment to a Queen's speech (the annual address to the Commons summarizing the government's plans for the following year). So the very fact that Clarke is putting his name behind the proposal is a significant sign that war critics intend to step up their demands for answers.

Blair has shrugged off such demands for years, just as he's escaped more or less intact from many political scrapes that ought to have ended his career. I've lost count of the number of times I thought he was nearly finished. Blair is like a vampire; many in Labour are afraid to take him on, so they shelter him and let him go to ground when things get unpleasant.

So take any notion of Blair's imminent demise with a grain of salt. Still, I'm cautiously optimistic that Blair's political standing is beginning to deteriorate. A long-running scandal is beginning to ripen. Labour accepted large loans in 2004 from a few wealthy donors, and shortly thereafter Blair granted these men peerages. Nobody has quite pinned a charge of corruption on him, though, until now.

It turns out that Labour submitted false balance sheets for 2004 that neglected to mention the loans. That could be too bad for Blair, really really too bad, because his allies may now be ready to leave him in the lurch as his career is already winding down. From the Independent:

The widening of the investigation to look at accounting irregularities will significantly increase the pressure on Mr Blair, who is now considered by the police as the pivotal figure in the inquiry....

Senior Labour Party figures have told The Independent on Sunday that the party did not inform its own auditors that it had received the loans until the spring of 2006 - a year after the money arrived in the party's coffers....

The Scotland Yard team, led by Assistant Commissioner John Yates, is expected to interview Mr Blair in the next few weeks, with questions about the accounts....

They are considering whether there was a breach of the terms of the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which includes an offence of concealment or disguise...

Meanwhile, cabinet ministers have turned up the heat on Mr Blair by telling detectives they cannot explain why he nominated secret donors for peerages. They believe "the net is closing in" on Mr Blair after Mr Yates wrote to every member of the Cabinet last week....

One minister described Mr Yates's letter as a "fishing expedition", but also said that it was clear evidence that the net was now closing in on the PM.

It's my hope that the rats are beginning to desert Mr. Blair, as this corruption scandal finally begins to entrap him. And perhaps, with fewer Labour MPs shielding him, the Commons can force a serious inquiry into the biggest scandal of all, how Tony Blair conspired with George Bush to gin up the war against Iraq.

I won't express any confidence about progress this time. But the truth has to come out some day. Why not now? You get the sense that war critics in Britain were emboldened by the Democrats' victory last week. Maybe, just maybe, we'll begin to get some answers from Britain that Democrats in the Senate--or even in the House--can put to good use.

Saint Donald

The hagiographies of Donald Rumsfeld are already being written.

                             

In the burgeoning category of editorials you can't believe made it into print, the publisher of the (Tribune-Company) LA Times, David Hiller, explains that he used to play squash with Rumsfeld. From which he learned that Rumsfeld is not a quitter. We're deeply indebted to Mr. Hiller for that information, chiz chiz.

I think what struck me most was that Don never gave up on a point. His view was that every shot could be made, every game could be won, and he never surrendered until the last volley was played out. With me he was usually right.

Were these the qualities he brought to his job as secretary of Defense? I'm not sure, but I suspect that the rules he lived by were the same ones he played by, and I thought of them again as I watched the president announce Don's resignation.

I wonder if David Hiller has ever pondered the number of people Rumsfeld has gotten killed with his monomania over Iraq?

In any case, just for fun, contrast that with the picture of Rumsfeld from another old friend, Kenneth Adelman, in the New Yorker.

At the [Defense Policy] board’s meeting this summer, Adelman said, he argued that the American military needed a new strategy.

“I suggested that we were losing the war,” Adelman said. “What was astonishing to me was the number of Iraqi professional people who were leaving the country. People were voting with their feet, and I said that it looked like we needed a Plan B. I said, ‘What’s the alternative? Because what we’re doing now is just losing.’ ”

Adelman said that Rumsfeld didn’t take to the message well. “He was in deep denial—deep, deep denial. And then he did a strange thing. He did fifteen or twenty minutes of posing questions to himself, and then answering them. He made the statement that we can only lose the war in America, that we can’t lose it in Iraq. And I tried to interrupt this interrogatory soliloquy to say, ‘Yes, we are actually losing the war in Iraq.’ He got upset and cut me off. He said, ‘Excuse me,’ and went right on with it.”

It's noteworthy that Adelman was another one of the war mongers back in 2003. The neo-cons have been using the pages of New York's tonier magazines recently to distance themselves from their own disaster by pinning all the blame on the few who remain in the bunker. So take a grain a salt, as well, with Adelman's dishing.

In any case, the Tribune Company, on whose board Rumsfeld used to sit, is also busy worrying about Rumsfeld's job prospects.

Work shouldn't be hard to find for Rumsfeld

Defense chief is likely to be in demand:

`This guy could do anything'

Indeed, I would not have thought that the situation in Iraq could have been thoroughly screwed up as quickly as all that, but Mr. Rumsfeld made believers of us all.

Let's give the last word on the Great Man to another snake in the grass, Douglas Feith:

Rumsfeld had to resign, I suppose, because our bitter and noxious political debate of recent years has turned him into a symbol.

Armistice Day, 2006

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,

I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,

And speed glum heroes up the line to death.

You'd see me with my puffy, petulant face,

Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,

Reading the Roll of Honour. 'Poor young chap,

'I'd say --- 'I used to know his father well;

Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap.'

And when the war is done and youth stone dead,

I'd toddle safely home and die --- in bed.

-Seigfreid Sassoon, WWI vet

Armistice Day, Veterans Day, Remembrance Day: Name changes can't efface memory; November 11 marks the armistice in World War One. Both my grandfathers served in the war; I pay tribute to them. Yet I'm sure they were painfully aware that many of their fellows did not return from it, and those men will have no descendents to pay tribute to them, ever. I want to do right by them by telling the truth about the past. It's the very least we can do.

The November 11 anniversary always calls to mind for me the politicians who criminally sent millions to a horrific death and blighted a generation of men. With few exceptions, they were callous, calculating, deceitful, and cowardly men. Many were megalomaniacs, who saw war as a stage upon which to act out fantasies of their own brilliance.

Among the worst was Woodrow Wilson, who lied to Americans about the grounds for going to war; about his motives; about his intentions in it; about its human and financial costs; about the ease with which victory would be attained; about the need for a draft; about virtually every aspect of it. And he ruthlessly crushed dissent against his war. He labeled dissenters traitors, sending plenty of them to jail and trampling civil liberties in ways that the nation had never before seen. Further, the management of the war could be termed a fiasco. All of this, ultimately, to wage war against a country that presented no clear threat to the United States.

The parallels to the present day are striking. That is how the governments of callous, calculating, deceitful, and cowardly men wage wars. The deeper they get mired in their bloody quagmires, the more determined they become not to lose face, not to change course, not to admit to mistakes. The greater the disaster they create, the more other people must be made to suffer the consequences for their self-image.

And therefore the arrival of peace in Iraq, if ever there be peace, will be a slow, sorry mess. Pettiness and petulance will long delay it. Any negotiations will stink of personal self-aggrandizement. Any agreements will be kitted out in false trappings to disguise the brutal fact that a decent regard for mankind would have caused the politicians to make peace years earlier.

They make a devastation, and call it peace.

On Remembrance Day, I remember not the politicians' success in reaching a ceasefire, but their callous indifference to suffering for years on end.

I remember their deceitfulness in announcing a "False Armistice" on Nov. 7, 1918, just to gauge whether people would blame them for cutting and running without ever defeating the enemy.

Above all, I remember their calculating that they could mask the humiliation of admitting that millions of men had died in order to attain an armistice, by delaying its announcement until the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

This is the heritage from World War One: Propaganda. It was a scheme dreamed up by Wilson, childish in intent, murderous in effect.

I refuse to be distracted by propaganda. I remember the men whose lives were thrown away in the final hours of that war, as Wilson and the other politicians waited to announce the armistice. For men went on dying until the numerals 11 could become perfectly aligned.

Consider for example the American marines who fought their way across the flooded Meuse River on the night of November 10, 1918, in the face of withering German fire. People like Oscar Swan died before the numerals could become perfectly aligned.



They died in vain. Worst of all, they died no more in vain than millions before them. They died because the politicians could not be seen to cut and run from their own fiasco.

On this anniversary of Armistice Day, the question presses in upon us again: Why cannot our leaders have a decent regard for mankind?

From Never In Our Names

More explosive charges from former British UN diplomat

On Wednesday the former First Secretary of the British delegation to the U.N., Carne Ross, made to a Committee of Parliament some pretty stiff allegations against Tony Blair and George Bush regarding their plans to drag the U.K. and U.S. to war in Iraq. Ross resigned his position in protest over the Iraq war nearly two years ago.

Though he has made certain charges in the past about the rush to war, and Blair's eager embrace of Bush's war mongering, until now Ross has cooperated with the British government in keeping the documentary evidence from the public. He's had to, since he could be charged under the Official Secrets Act if he reveals it.

But now Ross says he's decided the public has to see the evidence. It is evidence, he implies, that the Butler Inquiry ignored when it reported that the Blair government did not manipulate the pre-war intelligence on WMD.

Briefly, some background on Ross:

In June 2005, he alleged that he and all his diplomatic colleagues at the British mission to the U.N. had known in 2002 that the Blair government was mischaracterizing the intelligence on Iraq in order to make a case for war. Even earlier, in March of 2005, he appeared in a BBC Panorama program on the run-up to the war, giving a scathing critique of Blair's deceptions.

Now for the new developments:

On Wednesday, he gave testimony to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee in which he said he has finally decided to release to the Committee documents he posseses, particulary relating to the testimony that he gave to the Butler Inquiry, which have been kept secret until now. He thinks that it is long past time for them to be made public.

The best reports about his testimony are in the Independent and at the BBC.

From the BBC:

Carne Ross told MPs the intelligence presented to the public about weapons of mass destruction was "manipulated".

He also added that "the proper legal advice from the Foreign office on the legality of the war was ignored".

Mr Blair has always defended the war's legality and the Butler inquiry said there was no evidence of "deliberate distortion" of intelligence on WMD....

His [i.e. Ross'] Butler testimony concluded that the invasion had been unlawful, he told the MPs in a separate, written submission. It also accused the government of misleading the public over the threat posed by Saddam, and of failing to consider alternatives to military action.

Ross also claimed that along with other British diplomats, he met repeatedly with Bush administration officials, whom the British delegation warned over and over again that "regime change" would likely lead to chaos in Iraq. Then suddenly in mid-2002 the British diplomats stopped telling their American counterparts the unwelcome truth, because of pressure from the Blair government to fall in line with what the Bush administration wanted to hear. Ross says that he gave Foreign Office documents to the Butler Commission that prove the claim.

From the Independent:

Speaking in public for the first time since he left the diplomatic service two years ago, Mr Ross also confirmed suspicions that the Prime Minister made up his mind months before the Iraq invasion in March 2003 that the war was going to happen and British troops would take part. Mr Ross said when he was serving in the embassy in Afghanistan, as early as April 2002, British officials there knew troops were being held back in readiness for the Iraq invasion.

He claimed that when official documents from the Foreign Office are made public, they will prove that the view of British officials, repeatedly conveyed to the Americans, was that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would cause chaos.

He told MPs: "I took part in the bilateral discussion between the State Department and the Foreign Office for four years. One of the items repeatedly on the agenda was regime change. Whenever that item came up, the leader of our delegation would say, with emphasis: 'We do not believe regime change is a good idea in Iraq. The reason we do not believe that is because we believe Iraq will break up and there will be chaos if you do that'. That view will have been recorded in the telegrams that have remained secret, and will do for years. That was emphatically the unified view of the Foreign Office.

"That view changed in mid-2002. There was no basis for changing the view from what was going on inside Iraq. What changed was our view of what the future policy would be."

The Parliamentary Committee also heard testimony from other senior ex-diplomats, such as Jeremy Greenstock (who gave an interview recently that was highly critical of British and American policy in Iraq, as I reported at the time here).

So it may very well turn out that inconvenient information about the pre-war conspiracy of Bush and Blair will begin to trickle out again, as pressure mounts once again for a serious inquiry into how Britain got dragged into this war.

That could be a boon to any inquiries in Congress into the same subject.

Accountability at the Pentagon, Part III

In the second installment of this series, I described why the Senate Armed Services Committee ought to be very concerned about the nomination of a new Inspector General of the Defense Department—entirely apart from the worrying facts about David Laufman's career and qualifications. Both of the IGs elevated thus far by George Bush have established a record of obstructing investigations into criminal activity by government officials. In addition, an extremely sensitive investigation of the administration's manipulation of pre-war intelligence ("Phase Two"), pushed strongly by Sen. Carl Levin, has been in the hands of the Office of the IG. Republican operatives have been trying for years to strangle this investigation, and David Laufman appears to be the very man to do the deed.

Fortunately, Sen. Levin was well positioned as the Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to scrutinize closely David Laufman's nomination at the July 18 hearing. To judge by Laufman's answers to the Committee's advance questions (PDF), it's possible to surmise that this hearing did not go smoothly.

It may be, then, that Laufman's nomination really can be derailed permanently.

:: :: :: :: :: ::

Let's take a short tour of Laufman's responses to the Senate Armed Service Committee's advance questions. There's plenty of grist here, so I'll concentrate on just a few of things that struck me (not in a good way) about his answers:

(i) Many of his responses are vague or elusive. Repeatedly, he states that as a nominee he doesn't yet have any basis for offering ideas about how to manage or improve the Office of IG. He admits that he has no first-hand knowledge of pretty much anything.

He sounds like a child. He's out of his element. He has no point of reference.

Even when asked a political question, he fumbles.

7. The previous DOD IG has been accused of slowing investigations of senior government officials, improperly appropriated funds on pet projects, and accepting gifts violated ethics guidelines.

7.A. Do you believe that these accusations have undermined in the integrity of the Office of Inspector General?

7.B. What steps would you take, if confirmed, to restore confidence in the integrity of the Office of Inspector General?

Laufman's answer: Gee, I don't know if it has undermined confidence in integrity, but I'll do everything possible to ensure everybody in the Office upholds the highest standards. That answer must have wowed the Committee.

(ii) From my perspective, Laufman's nomination falls apart completely at question number eight:

8. Section 3 of the Inspector General Act of 1978 provides that IG's shall be appointed on the basis of their "demonstrated ability in accounting, auditing, financial analysis, law, management analysis, public administration, or investigations."

8.A. What background and experience do you possess that you believe qualifies you to perform the duties of the DOD IG?

Laufman's response is to summarize his CV, which demonstrates no ability in accounting, auditing, financial analysis, management analysis, or public administration. And the primary evidence of investigative skill he cites are the two notorious cover-ups, the October Surprise and Passportgate investigations.

This is supposed to have prepared him to blow the lid off corruption and incompetence in the younger Bush's Defense Department? Michael Browne's background in Arabian horses springs to mind, somehow or other.

Then things get really goofy:

8.B. Do you believe that there are any steps that you need to take to enhance your expertise to perform these duties?

ANSWER: If confirmed, I plan to become more familiar with statutes and regulations applicable to government contracting in general and defense procurement in particular. I also plan to meet with a broad cross-section of officials and personnel within the Department of Defense, including members of the armed forces overseas, to listen to their concerns and identify issues that might merit action by the Office of the Inspector General.

In other words: Confirm me and I'll figure out how contracting and procurement is done. Oh, and I'm a good listener too.

I can't even muster the appropriate level of sarcasm here. Dear reader, please fill in for me with a few choice words, while I pull myself together.

(iii) Anyhow, Laufman made exactly the right kind of enemies with his answers regarding the independence of the Inspector General's Office.

The DOD Directive (PDF) on the the IG's responsibilities is reasonably clear in stating that the Office is to be "an independent and objective unit" within DOD. The IG is under the "general supervision" of the SecDef and Deputy SecDef, whom the IG keeps apprised of investigations along with the President and Congress, but they have virtually no power to interfere in IG investigations or withhold necessary clearances. The IG of DOD is also required to ensure that the independence of other, subordinate Inspectors General (such as the Office of IG at NSA) are not compromised or threatened. In other words, the Directive stresses the independence of this unit, which is to act as a watch-dog over the DOD even though the IG is nominally supervised by the SecDef.

Laufman, however, showed a rather disturbing amount of deference to the SecDef in his answers to the Committee. There is this, for example:

7.E. Under what circumstances, if any, do you believe that it is appropriate for the DOD IG to consult with officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (or other DOD officials outside the Office of the Inspector General) before issuing a report, regarding the findings and recommendations in the report?

ANSWER: It is essential to maintain not only the actual independence of the Inspector General in accordance with the Act’s mandate, but the appearance of independence as well.

With respect to audits and inspections, I believe it is appropriate to provide officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (and other appropriate officials outside the Office of the Inspector General) with an opportunity to review a draft report to ensure that the report is factually accurate and to identify any areas of disagreement concerning conclusions, findings, and recommendations. Whether any changes are made to a report as a result of such a review remains within the sole discretion of the Inspector General.

With respect to non-criminal investigations such as senior official investigations and reprisal investigations, prior consultations generally should occur only if such consultations would not compromise the Inspector General’s independence or the integrity of the ongoing investigation. In this regard, it should be noted that in Section 8(b)(1) of the Act, Congress expressly provided that “the Inspector General shall be under the authority, direction, and control of the Secretary of Defense with respect to audits or investigations, or the issuance of subpoenas, concerning (A) sensitive operational plans; (B) intelligence matters; (C) counterintelligence matters; (D) ongoing criminal investigations by other administrative units of the Department of Defense related to national security; or (E) other matters the disclosure of which would constitute a serious threat to national security.” Given this congressional directive, I believe that the Inspector General has a statutory obligation to consult with the Secretary of Defense regarding the findings and recommendations of investigations of matters specified in Section 8(b)(1) prior to issuing a report concerning such matters.

You can just hear the alarm bells that answer would have set off. It's one thing to be under the authority, direction, and control of the SecDef. It's quite another to assert that (a) you're obligated to allow the SecDef to have a shot at blunting or reshaping your office's draft reports; and (b) you're required by law to consult in advance with the SecDef about every investigation the Office might undertake in a broad range of areas.

(iv) On this point, there is further information in the only news account I've found about the actual Committee hearing, an NBC report dated Sept. 29:

Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has publicly questioned Laufman's independence. And Levin's staff director confirms that the senator has helped stall any action on the nomination at least until November, when the lame-duck congressional session begins.

"We met with him and we still have concerns," says Richard DeBobes, the Democratic Staff Director of the Senate Armed Services Committee. DeBobes says the senator is concerned that Laufman could "cozy up to" the secretary of defense and consult with him before issuing an investigation or report that deals with national security matters.

"I don't believe it's been the practice of the IG's to consult with the Department of Defense or to feel obligated to consult with the Department of Defense relative to those findings," Levin said at Laufman's confirmation hearing in July. "To do so would be a real impingement on the independence of the inspector general... so that's why I'm very, very surprised by your answer."

Laufman protested, and said that the IG statute requires the inspector general to consult with the defense secretary on certain sensitive national security issues. He insisted, however, that he would never "trim the sails" of any Pentagon investigation. "I do not anticipate taking any course of action that infringes on the actual independence of the IG," Laufman testified.

Well, as long as he doesn't anticipate taking…Wait a minute—"anticipate"? Where did that verb come from?

DeBobes also tells NBC News that the Acting Inspector General for the Pentagon, Thomas Gimble, has played a role in derailing Laufman's nomination. The acting IG — whose job Laufman would replace — wrote to Congress and criticized Laufman's belief that sitting IGs must in some way consult with the defense secretary before issuing reports that deal with national security matters.

"They're [the acting IG and his staff] the ones who have provided information to us that is very unsettling," DeBobes says.

So it looks like Gimble wants to keep his job and is willing to throw Laufman under a bus. Although I don't think that Gimble is trustworthy or his motives pure, on the whole it would be advisable to leave him in place a little longer while Bush is made to identify a better-qualified and more independent nominee.

:: :: :: :: :: ::

Today it became even more urgent to block Laufman's nomination, with the sacking of Donald Rumsfeld. A shakeup in DOD will mean some tumult; the Office of the IG might drift undetected for a long time if an unqualified nominee is confirmed now. Besides, an unscrupulous IG such as Laufman appears to be would have plenty of opportunity to undermine necessary investigations.

In any case Robert Gates, the nominee to replace Rumsfeld, is another of the unsavory hacks from an earlier era whom the Bush administration has excavated and dusted off.

Independent Counsel found insufficient evidence to warrant charging Robert Gates with a crime for his role in the Iran/contra affair. Like those of many other Iran/contra figures, the statements of Gates often seemed scripted and less than candid. Nevertheless, given the complex nature of the activities and Gates's apparent lack of direct participation, a jury could find the evidence left a reasonable doubt that Gates either obstructed official inquiries or that his two demonstrably incorrect statements were deliberate lies.

Reasonable doubt about obstruction of justice and perjury. A ringing endorsement, then, of Mr. Gates. Oddly, this gushing tribute to the man's integrity has not figured in the media reports today on Gates' nomination.

What you will hear is that Gates is "a Bush-family friend". The chattering classes prefer to avoid the term 'crony'. Indeed, Gates allegedly took part in the 1980 October Surprise by accompanying Wm. Casey and George H. W. Bush to Paris to negotiate with the Iranians behind Jimmy Carter's back. My hunch is that the chattering classes won't mention that.

As I discussed in the first installment, David Laufman served on the congressional investigation of the October Surprise, which he helped to turn into a whitewash. Therefore it is doubly unacceptable that Laufman would be confirmed to serve under the direction of another Bush-family crony, the presumptive SecDef Robert Gates.

:: :: :: :: :: ::

This has been a long and pretty lonely vigil, warning against the danger that this nominee presents to accountability in government. Relatively few other bloggers have shown an interest in Laufman (most notably Cernig), and so far no journalists whatever. In the NBC article quoted above, senior producer Jim Popkin actually complains about the delay in Laufman's confirmation.

The nominee is well-connected, then. But as we saw today, George Bush will pitch anybody overboard to preserve his own viability. Can the blogosphere help to stiffen the opposition that Democrats have already shown to this travesty of an appointment?

British were scrambling to find evidence linking Hussein & bin Laden in Feb. 2002

In recent weeks, Henry Porter has published two excellent commentaries at the Observer that seek to refocus attention on the British government documents from 2002 that show that Tony Blair was conspiring with George Bush to gin up a war in Iraq. The first asked why Blair has remained in office given all the evidence of wrongdoing and deception that has emerged, particularly the Downing Street memo, "which is still significantly undervalued as evidence of the Prime Minister's drive to war and of the innate negligence of American planning for the period after the invasion."

The more that is published, the more the issues blur.

But the memo is the goods. It establishes Bush's resolve to find a pretext for war, regardless of the facts on WMD and Saddam's links to terrorism. It further makes plain that there was little or no thinking about the postwar period, an error that now must be regarded as equal to or greater than the invasion. No surprise is expressed in Rycroft's account of the meeting about what was going on in America, which leads one to assume that among a very small group, the idea of invasion was a fully fledged possibility, even though Blair was assuring the public and cabinet colleagues outside the inner circle that nothing had been decided.

There was much more in the original Sunday Times report on the meeting. Jack Straw and Lord Goldsmith had doubts about the legal case for war, while Blair was committed from the outset to supporting US plans for regime change. At the time, no one seems to have remembered what Tony Blair had said in his evidence to Lord Butler's report into the intelligence on WMD, published eight months before the memo came to light. Blair said: 'I remember that during the course of July and August, I was increasingly getting messages saying, "Are you about to go to war?" and I was thinking, "This is ridiculous" and so I remember towards the end of the holiday actually phoning Bush and saying we have got to put this right straight away... we've not decided on military action.'

If not a direct lie, it is hardly the truth.

Well, it is a lie by any normal standard. Blair would not enjoy being asked how he could square his testimony to the Butler inquiry with what he had been saying in private on July 23, 2002.

Anyway, in that commentary Porter invited government officials in the know to step forward with further information about how Britain really went down the path to war. Some did, as he reported in a second commentary two days ago. In it, Porter takes the majority of Labour MPs to task for their refusal to back a Parliamentary call for a further investigation into the run-up to war.

Blair's allies claim that there have been multiple inquiries already, but as Porter points out, these have looked at the issues so narrowly as to be virtually useless in uncovering answers to the larger questions about whether the Blair government acted with integrity. He singles out the Butler inquiry for blame, pointing out that Butler knew about the July 23rd (Downing Street memo) meeting yet did virtually nothing with the information!

A report of that meeting appears in Butler, but nowhere is the memo mentioned, even though I now understand that Lord Butler's committee of four privy councillors saw the memo and understood its significance. How was such damning evidence put to one side? The answer seems to be that the head of MI6's report on the thinking in Washington was not regarded as relevant to a review of British intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.

That is worth underlining: Although Butler was investigating the pre-war WMD intelligence, and we now learn Butler had a copy of the DSM, he could not be bothered to mention that Sir Richard Dearlove had denigrated the quality and manipulation of intelligence in Washington.

What is most newsworthy about Porter's latest piece, in any event, is this:

New information passed to this paper suggests that the construction of the intelligence case for war may be pushed right back to the winter of 2002, when, in February, members of the Joint Intelligence Committee were tasked to find out if there was evidence of a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam's regime in Iraq. No one can dispute that in the months following 9/11, this was an entirely proper area of inquiry for the new head of the JIC, John Scarlett. However, even though no evidence had been found, the JIC instructed the intelligence services to go back and find some. This is crucial because it defied what has been described to me as the article of faith in the JIC: that policy should be driven by analysis, not the other way round.

Again, to underline the point, intelligence officials were asked in February 2002 to reopen the search for a link between Hussein and Osama bin Laden. This is precisely what American intelligence officials were asked to do, repeatedly, after they reported to the White House that no such link existed.

Porter continues:

So in Britain, it appears that at a very early stage - 14 months before the war - we were trying to fit intelligence and facts around the policy, just as they were in America. This will not be news to people working with the JIC that year. In the spring of 2002, one individual I have interviewed recalls that he was asked about WMD and Iraq. His interlocutor said: 'There's not much intelligence on that, is there?' He replied that no, there wasn't. 'Oh, they're not going to like that,' said the man at the JIC.

Though one always thinks of Lord Butler as being honest and diligent, the exclusion of the information concerning Saddam and al-Qaeda is very difficult to understand. His report covers assessments by the JIC from before 2002. The possibility that the JIC was tasking agencies to find intelligence to fit policy is surely relevant, even central, to the purpose of his inquiry.

"They're not going to like that." Because it was considered bad news that no real evidence existed of Iraqi WMD...in the parallel universe of Bush and Blair, that is to say.

Porter goes on to demonstrate that Butler also omitted from his report similarly incriminating information from another highly important document, the Iraq Options Paper of March 8, 2002. Among other things, Butler did not mention that the document shows that the JIC had by that stage emphatically concluded that Hussein had no connection to international terrorism.

Porter is right, the British investigations to date of Blair's manipulation of the British public and Parliament have been grossly inadequate. They deserve better.

And so do we in the U.S. Here's hoping, on Election Day, that we'll get some serious investigations very soon.

Honey, the GOP is on the line…

Another election, and once again Republicans are trying their darndest to suppress the vote of Democrats and Independents. This Congress has virtually nothing to its credit that it could run upon, many House Republicans are staring into the abyss of unemployment, and accordingly the voter-suppression tactics have an unprecedented fierceness.

Rebarbative voter-ID laws; intimidating letters and calls that threaten registered voters with prosecution if they show up at the polls; secretive purges of voters in heavily Democratic districts; flyers that spread false information about the election and voters' rights. All of that is quite apart from the blasted Diebold machines that malfunction when a voter punches the button for a non-Republican.

But the nastiest stunt this time around from Dick Nixon's Party-of-Dirty-Tricks are the phone calls. These may back-fire in New Hampshire, but much of the rest of the country remains ignorant of what is transpiring in dozens of closely contested Congressional districts. Isn't that always the way with these dirty-tricks campaigns?

What is going on, first and foremost, is the pernicious last-minute robo-call. Many are funded by the Republican National Congressional Campaign, and they clearly are coordinated nationally. Most or all the dirty work is being done by Conquest Communications Group (PHONE 804-358-0560, FAX 804-213-0797).

The pre-recorded calls target Democrats and Independents in closely contested districts (these for example: CA-04, CA-50, CT-04, CT-05, FL-13, GA-12, ID-01, IL-06, IL-08, KS-02, NC-11, NH-02, NY-19, PA-06, WA-05). The opening part of the message gives the distinct impression that the call is being made on behalf of the Democratic candidate ("Democratic Candidate X has a message for you…"). Since most people don't listen to this garbage through to the end, they will not hear the admission at the end of the tape that a Republican group has paid for the robo-call.

What makes these particularly pernicious, though, is that the calling machines have been programmed to call a number back multiple times, often immediately, when a caller hangs up. Inevitably, voters around the country have been getting the false impression that Democratic campaigns are harassing them at home. Indeed many of these calls are being made after midnight or before dawn.

Chiz.

On top of that, Republicans are dragging out once again a truly vile stunt they seem to relish—sending non-Republican voters to the wrong polling places. Some believe the evidence is still too thin to call this a deliberate policy of the GOP, but I disagree. I've seen this before.

There was an epidemic of this in 2004, as the new voting law (HAVA) required poll officials to allow people to cast provisional ballots even if their names do not appear on the roll of voters. Getting (non-Republican) voters to cast provisional ballots in the wrong precincts is (in many states) tantamount to nullifying their votes entirely.

My wife and I received such a call on Election Day 2004 from the Pennsylvania Bush campaign. I had been reading reports for weeks about dirty-tricks perpetrated by the GOP, but it was still rather shocking to find yourself at the receiving end.

The call itself was laughably transparent. It advised me that my polling place is miles away from my actual polling place…in another town, in fact. Never had been, never would be there. Even more ridiculously, the fraudulent call came days after the Bush campaign had called to gauge whether I would vote for the Great Man (the answer they got included the phrase "when hell freezes over").

I called the Lehigh County (PA) Clerk of Elections that evening to complain about the call. The Clerk told me that she had received lots of similar complaints that day. Yes, lots, all of them for calls coming from the Bush campaign.

It convinced me finally that I must never, ever vote again for a Republican. Any party that countenances voter suppression is not one I can support. If that seems harsh, so be it. It's also fair.

So what will happen, this time around? In 2004, I asked the Clerk of Elections to investigate, telling her I had a tape of the call and would like to file a formal complaint. I never heard back from her, though she promised to pursue it.

This time, it's a matter for the news media to expose before the election. Will they do it? If not, I fear it will have a significant impact tomorrow upon the elections in close races. And that will only serve to reinforce the Republican imperative toward voter suppression in the future.

Accountability at the Pentagon, Part II

In the first installment, I explained several reasons to be suspicious of the President's nomination of David H. Laufman to be the next Inspector General of the Defense Department. There are gaping holes in his qualifications to run such an office. Furthermore, Laufman looks to be a Bush family loyalist and Republican partisan. He has participated in two high profile investigations of Bush pere, which turned into whitewashes.

Besides all that, Congress has plenty of reason to be concerned about the nominee, or any nominee, to the post of IG of the Defense Department. It is a huge and hugely complicated job, with vast implications for national defense as well as for the federal budget.

In any case, Bush's two earlier appointments to this post have behaved in a manipulative and deceptive manner (to say the least). That's where I'll begin this installment.



The current Acting Inspector General, Thomas Gimble, most notoriously has rebuffed requests for an investigation of the NSA's warrantless wiretapping by pretending that the matter was already under investigation by the IG at NSA. That investigation was a crock, however, as Zoe Lofgren remarked:

The Department of Defense’s Acting Inspector General, Mr. Thomas F. Gimble, has refused requests by members of Congress that he investigate this program. Mr. Gimble referred those requests to the Inspector General of the NSA, who he claimed was already actively reviewing this program.

Yet, in subsequent news reports, it was revealed that the NSA review to which Mr. Gimble so swiftly deferred was not a new review but a long-standing audit, which would not review the legality of NSA’s activities.

Gimble's predecessor, Joseph Schmitz, was to all appearances an out and out crook:

The Pentagon's top investigator has resigned amid accusations that he stonewalled inquiries into senior Bush administration officials suspected of wrongdoing.

Defense Department Inspector General Joseph E. Schmitz told staffers this week that he intended to resign as of Sept. 9 to take a job with the parent company of Blackwater USA, a defense contractor.

The resignation comes after Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) sent Schmitz several letters this summer informing him that he was the focus of a congressional inquiry into whether he had blocked two criminal investigations last year.

Who in their right mind would NOT worry, then, that Bush's third nominee to this post will also try to cover up rather than expose wrongdoing?

:: :: :: :: :: ::

That has particular urgency now that the most sensitive part of the "Phase Two" investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has been delegated to the Defense Department Office of Inspector General. Sen. Pat Roberts insisted on handing the investigation of this explosive issue over to the IG's Office, no doubt in the hopes that the Pentagon would somehow quash the whole thing.

It is the part of "Phase Two" that looks into whether the Office of Special Plans (in the Pentagon) stove-piped bad intelligence directly to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, bypassing normal intelligence analysts. That was of course one of the purposes for creating the Office of Special Plans in the first place. The charge that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence before declaring war on Iraq is the very thing that Pat Roberts has been so very keen to bury since demands for a Senate investigation began three years ago.

Here is what we learned in June about the status of this part of the "Phase Two" investigation.

This area is virtually the sole project of Sen. Levin, who has been acutely interested in the work of the office's former chief, Douglas Feith. Levin has accused Feith of distorting, exaggerating, inventing, or manipulating intelligence about the connections between Iraq and al Qaeda and about Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities -- and then deceiving Congress about it. Committee chairman Pat Roberts has said his panel found no credible evidence to support Levin's charges and referred the matter to the Pentagon's inspector general for review. Now, nothing will be done in this area until the Pentagon gives its findings to the committee -- which could take months.

So the bitter partisan divide on the Intelligence Committee was hanging in mid-air this summer, when Laufman's nomination made its way in July before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Unfortunately for Mr. Laufman, Carl Levin is the Ranking Member of this Committee.

In the advance questions (PDF) that the Armed Services Committee sent to Laufman, he was asked pointedly whether he'd cooperate with the "Phase Two" investigation:

29. The Office of the Inspector General is currently conducting an investigation into the activities of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy related to pre-war intelligence on Iraq and the purported links between Iraq and al Qaeda. This investigation is being conducted in response to requests from the Senate.

If confirmed, will you ensure that this investigation has the resources it needs, proceeds without hindrance, is conducted in an independent and unbiased manner, and that the results of the investigation are provided promptly to Congress?

ANSWER: I have been advised that this evaluation is being performed within the Office of the Deputy Inspector General for Intelligence, and that the draft report is expected in November 2006.

If confirmed, I will review the status of this matter and determine whether it is receiving the necessary resources and is proceeding in an independent manner without hindrance. When the matter is concluded and a report has been completed, I will ensure that the report is provided to Congress.

Rather curiously, Mr. Laufman does not quite say he would ensure the results "are provided promptly to Congress". He assures the Committee only that they would be provided to Congress. Since it was Congress that had requested the investigation, I would put that response down in the column "Things not to say".

It was joined in that column by several more of Laufman's responses to the questionnaire, as I will discuss in the next installment tomorrow.