KABUL—The war in Afghanistan reached a wrenching milestone this summer: For the second month in a row, U.S. and coalition troop deaths in the country surpassed casualties in Iraq. This is driven in large part, U.S. officials point out, by simple cause and effect. Marines flowed into southern Afghanistan earlier this year to rout firmly entrenched Taliban fighters, prompting a spike in combat in territory where NATO forces previously didn’t have the manpower to send troops. “We’re doing something we haven’t done in seven years, which is go after the Taliban where they’re living,” says a U.S. official.
But amid a well-coordinated assassination attempt on Afghan President Hamid Karzai and large-scale bombings last week in the capitals of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, U.S. forces are keenly aware that they are facing an increasingly complex enemy here—what U.S. military officials now call a syndicate—composed not only of Taliban fighters but also powerful warlords who were once on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency. “You could almost describe the insurgency as having two branches,” says a senior U.S. military official here. “It’s the Taliban in the south and a ‘rainbow coalition’ in the east.”
Indeed, along with a smattering of Afghan tribal groups, Pakistani extremists, and drug kingpins, two of the most dangerous players are violent Afghan Islamists named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, according to U.S. officials. In recent weeks, Hekmatyar has called upon Pakistani militants to attack U.S. targets, while the Haqqani network is blamed for three large vehicle bombings, along with the attempted assassination of Karzai in April.
Ironically, these two warlords—currently at the top of America’s list of most wanted men in Afghanistan—were once among America’s most valued allies. In the 1980s, the CIA funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and ammunition to help them battle the Soviet Army during its occupation of Afghanistan. Hekmatyar, then widely considered by Washington to be a reliable anti-Soviet rebel, was even flown to the United States by the CIA in 1985.
“He was the most radical of the radicals,” recalls former Rep. Charlie Wilson, immortalized in the recent film Charlie Wilson’s War for his role in directing U.S. military aid to anti-Soviet Afghan warlords. “He didn’t hate us as much as he hated the Soviets,” he adds, “but he sure didn’t like us much.” In his early years, the warlord distinguished himself by throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women. Today, a senior defense official says Hekmatyar is “as vicious as they come.” In 2002, the CIA shot a Hellfire missile from an unmanned drone in an effort to kill him.
U.S. officials had an even higher opinion of Haqqani, who was considered the most effective rebel warlord. “I adored Haqqani. When I was in Afghanistan, Haqqani was the guy who made sure I would get out,” says Wilson. “He was a marvelous leader and very beloved in his territory.”
Haqqani was also one of the leading advocates of the so-called Arab Afghans, deftly organizing Arab volunteer fighters who came to wage jihad against the Soviet Union and helping to protect future al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Today, U.S. military officials are not certain that Haqqani is alive, though he was featured in an undated video that recently surfaced. “Either way, the Haqqani we’re fighting now is the son”—34-year-old Sirajuddin Haqqani—says the senior U.S. military official. “He gets a lot of benefit from his father’s prestige.”
Today, the Haqqani network is driving the recent rise in violence in eastern Afghanistan, according to U.S. military officials. Haqqani “is definitely the strongest” enemy in the border provinces of Paktia, Paktika, and Khost, known among military officials as p2k. The senior U.S. military official notes that Haqqani is increasingly moving to more-asymmetric means of attack to avoid straight-on shootouts with better-armed U.S. forces, a general tactical guidance that came from Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar last year. To that end, U.S. military officials estimate that they have seen a 10 percent rise in use of roadside bombs, which now account for one third of the attacks against coalition forces in the country.
At the highest levels, Hekmatyar and the Haqqani network cooperate and find sanctuary in Pakistan, where the country’s political turmoil and suspension of operations in the lawless tribal areas have facilitated increased attacks in Afghanistan. Of the two warlords, Hekmatyar, by U.S. military estimates, “has a wider geographic coverage” and greater political credibility. A recent press release issued by Hekmatyar’s spokesman thanked the Pakistani “mujahideen” for their support in the Afghan war against American and other “occupation forces.” It noted, however, that the efforts allow the international community to blame Pakistan for meddling in Afghan affairs and requested that fighters restrict their activities for now to “U.S. installations and interests within Pakistan.”
A former politician, Hekmatyar founded the Hizb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (known as hig), an offshoot of which remains a popular party in the Afghan parliament. “There’s blue—or ‘good’—hig and red—or ‘bad’—hig,” says the senior U.S. military official. “About half of his group sides with the government; the more recalcitrant are still joining the insurgency.”
But though the Hekmatyar and Haqqani networks have loose alliances and similar goals, each has its own turf. “They are swimming in the same stream, but they are not unified. There is no Ho Chi Minh,” says the U.S. military official. “They have the same broad generic approaches, and it works. The bottom line is that if your only mission is to wreak havoc in Afghanistan, you don’t have to be coordinated—and what they’re doing is plenty good enough to stir up problems in this country.”
In the course of conducting these operations, insurgents have benefited greatly from the shortage of U.S. and allied troops here, say U.S. officials. Earlier this month, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that he is “deeply troubled” by the increasing violence in Afghanistan but emphasized that troop levels in Iraq precluded a further increase in forces. “We need more troops there,” he said in Washington. “But I don’t have the troops I can reach for.”
There are signs, however, that the Pentagon’s priorities are shifting as conditions improve in Iraq. The Defense Department last week moved an aircraft carrier from Iraq war duty in the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, shortening the distance that strike planes must fly to provide air support in Afghanistan. And the Pentagon recently announced that it is extending by one month the seven-month deployment of 2,200 of the 3,200 marines sent to Afghanistan in March.
Still, U.S. officials are in widespread agreement that there aren’t enough forces in the country. There are currently 32,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan backed by some 25,000 allied troops under NATO command, in total roughly 37 percent of force levels in Iraq. “There should be another 20,000 marines” in Afghanistan, says the U.S. official. “We’re advancing, but we’re doing it with troop levels that are unacceptably low.” Mullen, too, has raised questions about the consequences of what he calls an “economy of force” campaign. “What we’re going through right now is an ability to, in almost every single case, win from the combat standpoint,” said Mullen. He added, however, that “we don’t have enough troops there to hold. And that is key, clearly, to the future of being able to succeed in Afghanistan.” l
With Kevin Whitelaw in Washington and Aamir Latif in Pakistan
In a secret report last year, the Red Cross found evidence of the CIA using torture on prisoners that would make the Bush administration guilty of war crimes, The New York Times reported Friday.
The Red Cross determined the culpability of the Bush administration after interviewing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, according to the article.
Prisoner Abu Zubaydahwho said he had been waterboarded, “slammed against the walls” and confined in boxes “so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position.”
The information comes from a new book written by Jane Meyer, who has frequently published articles concerning counter-terrorism in The New Yorker.
The book is titled “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” and will be released next week.
Mayer cited “sources familiar with the report” to explain the confidential document as a warning “that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted.”
The report was submitted to CIA last year and concluded that American interrogation methods are “categorically” torture that violates both domestic and international law, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported Friday.
Although the CIA had already admitted to the use of waterboarding, Meyer says in the book that several CIA officers confirm the findings of the Red Cross, including the other forms of torture mentioned.
Maddow called George W. Bush a “torture-approver-in-chief who has yet to be held to account for anything” and said that congressman Dennis Kucinich had reintroduced his articles of impeachment against the president.
Maddow questioned constitutional law expert Johnathan Turley about the development.
“The problem for the bush admin is that they perfected plausible deniability techniques,” Turley said. “They bring out one or two people that are willing to debate on cable shows whether waterboarding is torture and it leaves the impression that its a closed question.
“It’s not. It’s just like the domestic surveillance program that the federal court said just a week ago was also not just a closed question.”
When asked by Maddow if the chances are now greater that Bush will be prosecuted now or after leaving office by the international community, Turley compared the situation to Serbia in the early 90s.
“I’d never thought I would say this, but I think it might in fact be time for the United States to be held internationally to a tribunal. I never thought in my lifetime I would say that.”
One gets the impression that there are some people in Washington who believe that Israel or the U.S. can bomb Iran’s nuclear reactors, fly home, and it will be mission complete.
It makes you wonder if perhaps there is a virus going around that is gradually making people stupid. If we or Israel attack Iran, we will have a new war on our hands. The Iranians are not going to shrug off an attack and say, “You naughty boys, you.”
Consider how much trouble Iraq has given us. Some 4,000 dead and 29,000 wounded, a half a trillion dollars in cost and still climbing, and five years later, we cannot say that the country is pacified.
Iraq is a small country compared with Iran. Iran has about 70 million people. Its western mountains border the Persian Gulf. In other words, its missiles and guns look down on the U.S. ships below it. And it has lots of missiles, from short-range to intermediate-range (around 2,200 kilometers).
More to the point, it has been equipped by Russia with the fastest anti-ship missile on the planet. The SS-N-22 Sunburn can travel at Mach 3 at high altitude and at Mach 2.2 at low altitude. That is faster than anything in our arsenal.
Iran’s conventional forces include an army of 540,000 men and 300,000 reserves, including 120,000 Iranian Guards especially trained in unconventional warfare. It has more than 1,600 main battle tanks and 21,000 other armored combat vehicles. It has 3,200 artillery pieces, three submarines, 59 surface warships and 10 amphibious ships.
It’s been receiving help in arming itself from China, North Korea and Russia. Unlike Iraq, Iran’s forces have not been worn down with bombing, wars and sanctions. It also has a new anti-aircraft defense system from Russia that I’ve heard is pretty snazzy.
So, if you think we or Israel can attack Iran and not expect retaliation, I’d have to say with regret that you are a moron. If you think we could easily handle Iran in an all-out war, I’d have to promote you to idiot.
Attacking Iran would be folly, but we seem to be living in the Age of Folly. Morons and idiots took us into an unjustified war against Iraq before we had finished the job in Afghanistan. Now we have troops tied down in both countries.
For some years now, I’ve worried that we seem to be more and more like Colonial England – arrogant, racist, overestimating our own capacity and underestimating that of our enemies. As the fate of the British Empire demonstrates, that is a fatal flaw.
The British never dreamed that the “little yellow people” could come ashore by land and take Singapore from the rear or that they would sink the pride of the British fleet, but they did both.
I suppose no one in Washington can imagine the Iranians sinking one of our carriers in the Persian Gulf. How’d you like to be the president who has to tell the American people that we’ve lost a carrier for the first time since World War II?
Exactly how the Iranians will respond to an attack, I don’t know, but they will respond. In keeping with our present policy, our attack on Iran would be illegal, since under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.
Who would have thought that we would become the rogue nation committing acts of aggression around the globe?
She had probably done this a dozen times before. Modern digital technology had made clandestine communications with overseas agents seem routine. Back in the cold war, contacting a secret agent in Moscow or Beijing was a dangerous, labour-intensive process that could take days or even weeks. But by 2004, it was possible to send high-speed, encrypted messages directly and instantaneously from CIA headquarters to agents in the field who were equipped with small, covert personal communications devices. So the officer at CIA headquarters assigned to handle communications with the agency’s spies in Iran probably didn’t think twice when she began her latest download. With a few simple commands, she sent a secret data flow to one of the Iranian agents in the CIA’s spy network. Just as she had done so many times before.
But this time, the ease and speed of the technology betrayed her. The CIA officer had made a disastrous mistake. She had sent information to one Iranian agent that exposed an entire spy network; the data could be used to identify virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran.
Mistake piled on mistake. As the CIA later learned, the Iranian who received the download was a double agent. The agent quickly turned the data over to Iranian security officials, and it enabled them to “roll up” the CIA’s network throughout Iran. CIA sources say that several of the Iranian agents were arrested and jailed, while the fates of some of the others is still unknown.
This espionage disaster, of course, was not reported. It left the CIA virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence on one of the most critical issues facing the US - whether Tehran was about to go nuclear.
In fact, just as President Bush and his aides were making the case in 2004 and 2005 that Iran was moving rapidly to develop nuclear weapons, the American intelligence community found itself unable to provide the evidence to back up the administration’s public arguments. On the heels of the CIA’s failure to provide accurate pre-war intelligence on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, the agency was once again clueless in the Middle East. In the spring of 2005, in the wake of the CIA’s Iranian disaster, Porter Goss, its new director, told President Bush in a White House briefing that the CIA really didn’t know how close Iran was to becoming a nuclear power.
But it’s worse than that. Deep in the bowels of the CIA, someone must be nervously, but very privately, wondering: “Whatever happened to those nuclear blueprints we gave to the Iranians?”
The story dates back to the Clinton administration and February 2000, when one frightened Russian scientist walked Vienna’s winter streets. The Russian had good reason to be afraid. He was walking around Vienna with blueprints for a nuclear bomb.
To be precise, he was carrying technical designs for a TBA 480 high-voltage block, otherwise known as a “firing set”, for a Russian-designed nuclear weapon. He held in his hands the knowledge needed to create a perfect implosion that could trigger a nuclear chain reaction inside a small spherical core. It was one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short.
The Russian, who had defected to the US years earlier, still couldn’t believe the orders he had received from CIA headquarters. The CIA had given him the nuclear blueprints and then sent him to Vienna to sell them - or simply give them - to the Iranian representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). With the Russian doing its bidding, the CIA appeared to be about to help Iran leapfrog one of the last remaining engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear weapon. The dangerous irony was not lost on the Russian - the IAEA was an international organisation created to restrict the spread of nuclear technology.
The Russian was a nuclear engineer in the pay of the CIA, which had arranged for him to become an American citizen and funded him to the tune of $5,000 a month. It seemed like easy money, with few strings attached.
Until now. The CIA was placing him on the front line of a plan that seemed to be completely at odds with the interests of the US, and it had taken a lot of persuading by his CIA case officer to convince him to go through with what appeared to be a rogue operation.
The case officer worked hard to convince him - even though he had doubts about the plan as well. As he was sweet-talking the Russian into flying to Vienna, the case officer wondered whether he was involved in an illegal covert action. Should he expect to be hauled before a congressional committee and grilled because he was the officer who helped give nuclear blueprints to Iran? The code name for this operation was Merlin; to the officer, that seemed like a wry tip-off that nothing about this programme was what it appeared to be. He did his best to hide his concerns from his Russian agent.
The Russian’s assignment from the CIA was to pose as an unemployed and greedy scientist who was willing to sell his soul - and the secrets of the atomic bomb - to the highest bidder. By hook or by crook, the CIA told him, he was to get the nuclear blueprints to the Iranians. They would quickly recognise their value and rush them back to their superiors in Tehran.
The plan had been laid out for the defector during a CIA-financed trip to San Francisco, where he had meetings with CIA officers and nuclear experts mixed in with leisurely wine-tasting trips to Sonoma County. In a luxurious San Francisco hotel room, a senior CIA official involved in the operation talked the Russian through the details of the plan. He brought in experts from one of the national laboratories to go over the blueprints that he was supposed to give the Iranians.
The senior CIA officer could see that the Russian was nervous, and so he tried to downplay the significance of what they were asking him to do. He said the CIA was mounting the operation simply to find out where the Iranians were with their nuclear programme. This was just an intelligence-gathering effort, the CIA officer said, not an illegal attempt to give Iran the bomb. He suggested that the Iranians already had the technology he was going to hand over to them. It was all a game. Nothing too serious.
On paper, Merlin was supposed to stunt the development of Tehran’s nuclear programme by sending Iran’s weapons experts down the wrong technical path. The CIA believed that once the Iranians had the blueprints and studied them, they would believe the designs were usable and so would start to build an atom bomb based on the flawed designs. But Tehran would get a big surprise when its scientists tried to explode their new bomb. Instead of a mushroom cloud, the Iranian scientists would witness a disappointing fizzle. The Iranian nuclear programme would suffer a humiliating setback, and Tehran’s goal of becoming a nuclear power would have been delayed by several years. In the meantime, the CIA, by watching Iran’s reaction to the blueprints, would have gained a wealth of information about the status of Iran’s weapons programme, which has been shrouded in secrecy.
The Russian studied the blueprints the CIA had given him. Within minutes of being handed the designs, he had identified a flaw. “This isn’t right,” he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. “There is something wrong.” His comments prompted stony looks, but no straight answers from the CIA men. No one in the meeting seemed surprised by the Russian’s assertion that the blueprints didn’t look quite right, but no one wanted to enlighten him further on the matter, either.
In fact, the CIA case officer who was the Russian’s personal handler had been stunned by his statement. During a break, he took the senior CIA officer aside. “He wasn’t supposed to know that,” the CIA case officer told his superior. “He wasn’t supposed to find a flaw.”
“Don’t worry,” the senior CIA officer calmly replied. “It doesn’t matter.”
The CIA case officer couldn’t believe the senior CIA officer’s answer, but he managed to keep his fears from the Russian, and continued to train him for his mission.
After their trip to San Francisco, the case officer handed the Russian a sealed envelope with the nuclear blueprints inside. He was told not to open the envelope under any circumstances. He was to follow the CIA’s instructions to find the Iranians and give them the envelope with the documents inside. Keep it simple, and get out of Vienna safe and alive, the Russian was told. But the defector had his own ideas about how he might play that game.
The CIA had discovered that a high-ranking Iranian official would be travelling to Vienna and visiting the Iranian mission to the IAEA, and so the agency decided to send the Russian to Vienna at the same time. It was hoped that he could make contact with either the Iranian representative to the IAEA or the visitor from Tehran.
In Vienna, however, the Russian unsealed the envelope with the nuclear blueprints and included a personal letter of his own to the Iranians. No matter what the CIA told him, he was going to hedge his bets. There was obviously something wrong with the blueprints - so he decided to mention that fact to the Iranians in his letter. They would certainly find flaws for themselves, and if he didn’t tell them first, they would never want to deal with him again.
The Russian was thus warning the Iranians as carefully as he could that there was a flaw somewhere in the nuclear blueprints, and he could help them find it. At the same time, he was still going through with the CIA’s operation in the only way he thought would work.
The Russian soon found 19 Heinstrasse, a five-storey office and apartment building with a flat, pale green and beige facade in a quiet, slightly down-at-heel neighbourhood in Vienna’s north end. Amid the list of Austrian tenants, there was one simple line: “PM/Iran.” The Iranians clearly didn’t want publicity. An Austrian postman helped him. As the Russian stood by, the postman opened the building door and dropped off the mail. The Russian followed suit; he realised that he could leave his package without actually having to talk to anyone. He slipped through the front door, and hurriedly shoved his envelope through the inner-door slot at the Iranian office.
The Russian fled the mission without being seen. He was deeply relieved that he had made the hand-off without having to come face to face with a real live Iranian. He flew back to the US without being detected by either Austrian security or, more importantly, Iranian intelligence.
Just days after the Russian dropped off his package at the Iranian mission, the National Security Agency reported that an Iranian official in Vienna abruptly changed his schedule, making airline reservations to fly home to Iran. The odds were that the nuclear blueprints were now in Tehran.
The Russian scientist’s fears about the operation seemed well founded. He was the front man for what may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA, one that may have helped put nuclear weapons in the hands of a charter member of what President George W Bush has called the “axis of evil”.
Operation Merlin has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in the Clinton and Bush administrations. It’s not clear who originally came up with the idea, but the plan was first approved by Clinton. After the Russian scientist’s fateful trip to Vienna, however, the Merlin operation was endorsed by the Bush administration, possibly with an eye toward repeating it against North Korea or other dangerous states.
Several former CIA officials say that the theory behind Merlin - handing over tainted weapon designs to confound one of America’s adversaries - is a trick that has been used many times in past operations, stretching back to the cold war. But in previous cases, such Trojan horse operations involved conventional weapons; none of the former officials had ever heard of the CIA attempting to conduct this kind of high-risk operation with designs for a nuclear bomb. The former officials also said these kind of programmes must be closely monitored by senior CIA managers in order to control the flow of information to the adversary. If mishandled, they could easily help an enemy accelerate its weapons development. That may be what happened with Merlin.
Iran has spent nearly 20 years trying to develop nuclear weapons, and in the process has created a strong base of sophisticated scientists knowledgeable enough to spot flaws in nuclear blueprints. Tehran also obtained nuclear blueprints from the network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, and so already had workable blueprints against which to compare the designs obtained from the CIA. Nuclear experts say that they would thus be able to extract valuable information from the blueprints while ignoring the flaws.
“If [the flaw] is bad enough,” warned a nuclear weapons expert with the IAEA, “they will find it quite quickly. That would be my fear”
WASHINGTON, Jun 2 (IPS) - For many months, the propaganda line that explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) that could penetrate U.S. armoured vehicles were coming straight from Iran has been embraced publicly by the entire George W. Bush administration. But when that argument was proposed internally by military officials in January 2007, it was attacked by key administration officials as unsupported by the facts.
Vice President Dick Cheney was able to get around those objections and get his Iranian EFP line accepted only because of arrangements he and Bush made with Gen. David Petraeus before he took command of U.S. forces in Iraq.
The initial draft of the proposed military briefing on the issue of EFPs, which asserted flatly that EFPs were being manufactured and smuggled to Iraqi Shiite groups directly by the Iranian regime, was met with unanimous objection from the State Department, Defence Department and National Security Council staff, as administration officials themselves stated publicly.
Defence Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley tried to push back against Cheney’s proposed line because they recognised it as an effort to go well beyond the compromise policy toward Iran that had been worked out in December and early January. The compromise policy had been to focus on networks working on procuring EFPs within Iraq and not to target Iran as directly responsible.
At his regular press briefing on Jan. 24, 2007, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Department spokesman Sean McCormack revealed the primary basis for the State, Defence and NSC opposition to the Cheney line on EFPs.
Asked whether the U.S. government had any evidence that EFPs were manufactured in Iran, McCormack did not answer directly but said, “You don’t necessarily have to construct something in Iran in order for it to be a threat to the U.S. or British troops from the Iranian regime. There are lots of different ways you can do that. You can bring the know-how. You can train other people in Iraq to do that.”
McCormack thus revealed that the State Department wasn’t buying the accusation that Iran was manufacturing EFPs and sending them to the Shiite forces of Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army fighting against U.S. forces.
On Feb. 2, while briefing the news media on the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, Hadley asserted bluntly that the draft military briefing that had been circulated in Washington had not been based on evidence.
“The truth is, quite frankly, we thought the briefing was overstated,” said Hadley. “We sent it back to get it narrowed and focused on the facts.”
Hadley did not tell reporters which points in the draft briefing paper had not been based on the evidence, but the remarks by McCormack and Gates were clear indications that the briefing had made claims of Iranian manufacturing of weapons and smuggling them into Iraq that could not be supported.
Hadley further revealed that he, Gates and Rice had tried to use the imminence of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq to force the issue of the briefing’s exaggerated claims. The briefing, he said was “an attempt to…address some of the issues in the NIE in a briefing on intelligence of Iranian activity in Iraq. And we thought, hey, why are we doing this?”
He said he and his associates wanted a briefing that “we’re confident everyone can stand behind”. The national security adviser was implying that the proposed briefing was not supported by the NIE on Iraq, and that the drafters would therefore have to redraft it so that the intelligence community could support it.
Hadley didn’t say who he meant by “we”, but Gates told reporters the same day that he and Rice had joined Hadley in ensuring that the planned briefing “is dominated by facts”.
The declassified version of the NIE’s main conclusions indicated that it did not support the claim that Iran was exporting EFPs to the Mahdi Army. The only sentence that related to the issue was, “Iranian lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants clearly intensifies the conflict in Iraq.” But in the absence of any language alleging Iranian EFP manufacture and export to Iraq, that phrase appears to be a reference to training of Mahdi Army officers.
Hadley, Rice and Gates thus appeared to believe that the briefing would have to reflect the NIE, and that they would be able to review the revised version before it was presented to the press. On Feb. 9, State Department spokesman McCormack said, “[W]hen the working-level folks at the deputies level…produce a presentation that they are comfortable with, I am sure that they’ll share it with Secretary Rice, Secretary Gates and Steve Hadley over at the NSC just for review.”
But Cheney had a surprise for the opponents of his hard line on Iran. When White House spokeswoman Dana Perino was asked on Feb. 9 about when the briefing would be held, she replied, “Decisions on that are being made out in Baghdad.”
That announcement came just as Gen. George W. Casey was to be replaced by Gen. Petraeus as the new commander. Petraeus had only arrived in Iraq the day before and the changeover ceremony came on Feb. 10.
The day after the ceremony, three military officers presented a briefing to the press which not only asserted that the EFPs could only have been manufactured in Iran but that Iran’s Qods Force was behind the smuggling of those weapons into Iraq. They strongly suggested, moreover, that the Iranian government knew about the smuggling.
Cheney had used the compliant Petraeus to do an end-run around the national security bureaucracy. Petraeus had already reached agreement with the White House to take Cheney’s line on the EFPs issue and to present the briefing immediately without consulting State or Defence.
State and Defence tried to counter this manoeuvre. McCormack argued, rather lamely, that the briefing had really been about “a threat to our troops from these devices and from the networks that supply them”. And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, responded by saying that he could not “from his own knowledge” confirm the assertion that the Qods Force was providing bomb-making kits to Shiite insurgents.
The U.S. command in Baghdad temporarily backed away from the briefers’ charge against Iran. The command spokesman, Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, who had been one of the three military briefers, was forced to tell reporters on Feb. 14 that the purpose of the briefing had been to talk only about the threat to U.S. troops, implying that briefers had gone beyond their brief in making statements about Iranian complicity.
But the hardline position on EFP was the one that dominated press coverage. Instead of the more cautious line focusing on the EFP networks inside Iraq, which was what State, Defence and NSC and agreed to in January, Cheney now had a potential casus belli against Iran.
And Cheney would continue to use his alliance with Petraeus to advance his proposal for an attack on Qods Force bases in Iran. The very first episode in the Cheney-Petraeus alliance sheds additional light on the nomination of Petraeus to become the new CENTCOM commander later this year.
*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.
Today, Friday, May 30, 2008, I sat in Courtroom 13 on the 5th floor of the federal courthouse in San Diego and watched in horror as a white male former Marine general, acting as attorney for Blackwater International, a private Christian evangelical mercenary (death squad) corporation, told a sweet-looking blonde female federal judge, Marilyn Huff, that they were being discriminated against, and the judge not only agreed with their argument and confronted the city attorney with it, but also added a charge of diversity. Diversity? San Diego has too few murderers and killers to meet federal diversity standards?
The story behind this is that Blackwater intends to have a large presence in San Diego, and everywhere else in the U.S. possible, so that it will be in a position to quell any civil unrest that may happen after the next stolen Presidential election in November. In the meantime it will compete for work training U.S. military troops and guarding the border against Mexican invaders. Blackwater tried to open a training facility in Potrero, but seeing that they were likely to be unsuccessful due to public outrage, they quietly began seeking permits for another facility in Otay Mesa under the names of front companies like Raven (raven means black). But their purpose in Otay Mesa was also disguised. They said at different times that it would be a law enforcement training facility, a vocational school, or just a warehouse. Once all the permits had been granted, it became clear to the city that this was to be a mercenary training facility and the city exercised its discretion to stop them from opening before there was further review. Blackwater then went to federal court seeking a temporary restraining order on the grounds of irreparable injury, and the judge will grant their order on Monday.
Obviously Judge Huff does not understand what discrimination is. If people disliked Blackwater because of a historically suspect category, such as age, race, sex, disability, etc., that would be discrimination. But to dislike a company because they are known for shooting civilians indiscriminately and with impunity is not discrimination, it is fear.
In order to get a temporary restraining order in federal court, Blackwater had to show that otherwise they would suffer irreparable injury. The San Diego attorney cited rulings stating that loss of income is not an irreparable injury and the judge asked the Blackwater attorney to state what the injury was. Instead he began talking about our brave fighting men and women defending our country. Believe me, you’ve never seen a Marine speak so respectfully of the Navy before, because it is a contract with the Navy that begins on Monday that Blackwater stood to lose, at least temporarily, if the order was not granted. Since a temporary loss of income is not irreparable, he never did answer the judge’s question, but sought shelter behind false patriotism and phony national security. Mexico is not invading the U.S. and has no intentions of doing so, and our efforts to deport undocumented workers have been so successful that several U.S. farms and factories have had to move to Mexico in order to be able to rehire their deported workers when they could find no adequate replacements for them here. We are not only not under attack, we are waging wars of aggression, so self-defense is not an argument. To hear this mouthpiece say it, you’d think that if the restraining order was not granted, Osama bin Laden and five million crazed terrorists would cross the Mexican border and conquer the United States.
This remarkable proceeding is the final proof, if any more were needed, that the fascist takeover of America is complete. A federal court has no business intervening in a city’s business, not even if the company’s owner is a friend of Bush and Cheney. This means that we no longer have any local or states’ rights whatsoever, as the federal counts, stacked with judges appointed by the fascist regime in Washington, will always intervene on behalf of facism whenever states or municipalities attempt to assert their rights.
The city may appeal the ruling, but the Blackwater presence in San Diego is now a fait accompli and cannot be undone. Even if the city were to win on appeal, which it should because the laws are definitely on the side of the city, the case would just be appealed by Blackwater until it reached the Supreme Court, where the partisan thugs who installed Bush against the will of the people, including some who were appointed by that unelected President, would rule for Blackwater. No matter how illegal or unconstitutional a Supreme Court ruling, there is no possible appeal from that unelected body. A democracy is a form of government in which the ultimate power belongs to the people, not to unelected fascist thugs and their cronies.
An hour before the court hearing began, we held a protest in front of the courthouse. We had “Stop Blackwater” t-shirts, signs, and banners. A woman standing near me was talking about the election, so I asked what has become my standard question these days, “Would you still vote if the only federally approved voting mechanism was a flush toilet?” She said that she would. She is one of millions of people concerned about their right to vote, but who don’t actually care whether or not their vote is really counted or if it gives them a voice in government. As long as they can vote, they’re happy. The man standing next to her said, “Well, if a lot of people didn’t vote, maybe it would make a difference.” I said, “How’s fifty percent?” He said, “But they’re apathetic.” I said, “You don’t care if your vote is counted or not, and you call them apathetic?”
One of the protest organizers asked afterwards if anything like this had happened in Nazi Germany. I explained that it had. That many people had trusted the courts to uphold what laws remained, but the courts were just as fascist as the Nazis. Judges who weren’t, were forced off the bench. Fascist dictators appoint judges on the basis of blind loyalty, and their lapdog legislators confirm them to show their collegial support for and complicity in fascism.
Blackwater has been getting a lot of publicity. As private contractors they consider themselves exempt from all laws, domestic, foreign, and international. But they went running to the law for help when they feared a possible temporary setback to their plans. In truth the city of San Diego might be able to delay their operations, but probably couldn’t keep them out. We have a “strong mayor” system, so the mayor, who only became mayor after not one, not two, but three rigged elections, is the decider, and he said on the radio the night before the hearing that he believed that Blackwater’s permits were in order. We the people don’t get to actually vote on issues of concern to us, we can only vote for “representatives” but our votes are counted secretly by easily and undetectably hackable central tabulators and our elections officials in San Diego are a former voting machine salesperson and a guy who stated publicly that he didn’t think that manipulating a recount so that the ballots would match a fraudulent machine count was wrong. So good luck with those elections.
Author Jeremy Scahill, who has written extensively about Blackwater, will be in San Diego on June 10th. Although they didn’t say so, it is his scheduled book signing at the Unitarian/Universalist church that Blackwater feared might cause them irreparable injury, as Scahill has documented who the owners of Blackwater are, what sort of murderers and terrorists they hire, and why a company like that has no place in a democracy.
This was a sad day for America and a sad day for democracy. The poor itty bitty multi-billion dollar death squad terrorist mercenary corporation told a federal judge that they felt discriminated against, and the judge bought it. Actually, it seemed like the judge had made up her mind before hand, as she was arguing on behalf of Blackwater, handing them citations, and belittling the city and the relevant laws. On the question of jurisdiction, the right of the federal courts to preempt a city’s discretion, she did say that she didn’t think that an ordinary citizen could run to federal court if a city denied a building or business permit, but she obviously doesn’t consider Bush cronies like Blackwater to be ordinary citizens. Fascists get special treatment and favors in fascist courts.
And so, having witnessed it, I am already in a state of shock. But this shock may not reach the average San Diegan or the average American until another catastrophe like 9/11 or hurricane Katrina hits, and that will be much too late as Blackwater mercenaries will be in our streets and in helicopters overhead with automatic weapons to prevent us from getting food or medical help or escaping death. If we had a voice in the matter, we might say no. But we have no voice. Our elections aren’t about giving us a voice, they’re about legitimizing elite rule and depriving us of any voice. Instead we are told that our vote is our voice, and then our votes aren’t counted. Too bad, nothing to see here, move along.
Over the past five years the name Mohammed Al-Qahtani - Detainee 063 at Guantanamo - has been indelibly associated with the Bush Administration’s efforts to justify extreme measures in the ‘war on terror.’ This Saudi national was apprehended in Afghanistan in late 2001 and taken to Guantanamo in early 2002, included in a group labelled as the “worst of the worst.” His identity got a full airing in June 2004, as the Administration struggled to contain the fallout from the Abu Ghraib pictures. Alleged to be the 20th hijacker, the Administration pinned on this man its justification for the abandonment of a longstanding prohibition on the use of cruelty by the military.
On June 22nd 2004, two of the Administration’s most senior lawyers - White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Defense Department General Counsel Jim Haynes - stood before the world’s media and laid out the official story to explain the move to aggressive interrogation: it occurred as a result of a bottom-up request from an aggressive combatant commander at Guantanamo; it was implemented within the law and on the basis of careful legal advice; and it produced useful and important results. Al Qahtani was living proof that coercion worked. Gonzales and Haynes stood alongside Daniel Dell’Orto (who has recently been appointed as Acting General Counsel at DoD, following Haynes’ move to Chevron, where he now works as lawyer) as he introduced Al Qahtani as the man who explained the move to abuse: a person in whom the Pentagon had “a considerable interest,” who had “been trained to resist our interrogation techniques” and, most significantly, who gave up important information when subjected to new techniques authorised by Rumsfeld on December 2nd 2002. This included information on Jose Padilla (the alleged “dirty bomber”) and Richard Reid (the shoe bomber). The message was unambiguous: Al Qahtani was a bad man, aggressive interrogation works.
A few weeks later, the 9/11 Commission Report described Al Qahtani as a “candidate hijacker,” explaining the circumstances in which he was denied entry to the US in August 2001. The narrative persisted, and Al Qahtani’s name was frequently wheeled out in defence of the Administration’s actions. In his efforts to secure appointment to the federal bench, in July 2006 Jim Haynes relied on him to fend off attacks - unsuccessfully, as it turned out - to justify his role in recommending to Secretary Rumsfeld techniques of interrogation that violated Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. He was “the 20th hijacker,” Haynes told the Senate Judiciary Committee and a man who had shown “considerable skill in resisting established techniques”. Further, he had provided “significant additional information” as a result of the abusive interrogation. No ambiguity there.
A few weeks ago, on February 11th 2008, the Department of Defense announced that Al Qahtani would join five others in facing a military commission on various criminal charges, including murder, attacking civilians and terrorism. The death penalty would be sought. The allegations were thin on detail and - strikingly - made no reference to any information obtained after the new techniques were used. The announcement was consistent with what, by then, I had already been told: the abusive interrogation of Al Qahtani produced nothing of value.
The Administration raised the stakes on Al Qahtani. He was presented as the kind of uniquely dangerous person for whom the programme of detention and interrogation was designed, proof that the established rules were quaint and obsolete, that new rules and techniques were needed, and that they worked.
Then, earlier this week, the Administration dropped a jaw-dropping bombshell: the charges against Al Qahtani were dropped. Proceedings against five other would continue, but the Pentagon official in charge of war crimes cases declined to authorise charges against Al Qahtani. What happened?
No explanation was given for the abrupt change of direction. That in itself is telling. There is no plausible reason that can be sold or spun. For the truth is that Al Qahtani was subject to abuse that most likely rises to the level of torture, in circumstances that are notoriously public around the world. From November 23rd, 2002, over a period of fifty four days, Al Qahtani was subject to aggressive interrogation at the instance of the highest echelons of the Administration. I describe the circumstances in TORTURE TEAM, and in an article published in VANITY FAIR last month, explaining how Donald Rumsfeld and his team came to be involved. On December 2nd 2002 Rumsfeld signed a memo prepared for him by Jim Haynes, authorising the use of new techniques. It is a famous memo, the one in which Rumsfeld inquires, in his own hand, as to why standing during interrogation is limited to four hours since he stands for eight or more hours a day.
I journeyed around America, meeting many of the principal characters involved in the decision-making process. I describe the real reason why the Geneva Conventions were set aside, as Doug Feith confirmed, to allow aggressive interrogation; how Al Qahtani’s treatment amounted to a war crime (a point alluded to by Justice Anthony Kennedy in the Supreme Court’s seminal judgment of 2006 that overturned the Administration’s decision to set aside the Geneva Conventions); how the decision to move to aggressive interrogation came from the top down and not, as the Administration had claimed, from the ground up; how decision-making at the Joint Chiefs was short-circuited by Haynes; how those at the top may face war crimes investigations abroad, unless the US gets its house in order; and how Al Qahtani’s interrogation provided no meaningful information.
Against this background, the House Judiciary Committee has recently embarked on a series of hearings to examine the role of senior Administration lawyers in promoting aggressive interrogations. Last week I testified before a Sub-Committee, with three other witnesses, and the Sub-Committee has now invited senior lawyers to appear before it. Most have agreed to do so voluntarily (although not David Addington, who was Vice President Cheney’s counsel back in 2002 and now serves as his chief of staff: he has been issued with a subpoena to force him to appear). The next hearing is scheduled for June 26, and more are expected to follow in efforts to get to the truth. The treatment of Al Qahtani lies at the heart of the Committee’s inquiry.
It is a grim story, of decision-making driven by fear and ideology and incompetence, a story of crime and of cover-up. It seems likely that the charges against him were dropped because proceedings before a military commission would have turned the spotlight on his treatment and - even more dangerously - on those most senior individuals - politicians and political appointees - with whom responsibility lies. The abuse of Al Qahtani has backfired, as many down at Guantanamo predicted it would. The truth as to his involvement, if any, in the events of September 11th will not be established. He will no doubt linger in a limbo of legal uncertainty in the bowels of Guantanamo or whatever other place may be found for him, a totemic figure whose treatment will be invoked by those who seek to harm the United States.
This unhappy story has brought America’s fine tradition of military valour into disrepute. It has provided no added protection to this country, or any other, or any other advantages. To the contrary, it will serve to inflame public opinion abroad, and undermine the very objective of national security that was sought, making it more difficult to respond to the real threat of international terrorism. If the House Judiciary Committee does nothing else, it must move to establish the facts, to identify those who are responsible for this mess, to make sure lessons are learnt so it doesn’t happen again. The lesson of torture is clear. It does not work.
Philippe Sands is a barrister and professor of law at University College London. He is author of TORTURE TEAM: THE RUMSFELD MEMO AND THE BETRAYAL OF AMERICAN VALUES (Palgrave Macmillan), www.tortureteam.com
You’d think that an Iraqi anti-corruption crusader who testified before Congress about his travails would find no great difficulty in obtaining asylum in the United States. You’d think the U.S. would be grateful for the news that $18 billion worth of corruption had virtually “stopped” reconstruction in Iraq. But not so much.
Former State Department officials told Congress earlier this week that, though Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, the former head of the Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity, was able to get access into the U.S., he is not allowed to work and is living hand to mouth. Why has he fallen through the cracks?
It’s always a toss-up between negligence/incompetence and malfeasance with this administration. On the negligence side of things, you have the disastrously impenetrable immigration system, which has allowed so few Iraqis to come to the U.S. As The New York Times reports today, U.S. soldiers have actually set up organizations to help their interpreters gain asylum, since the Iraqis, even though they face certain threat of death for collaborating with American forces, cannot navigate the system on their own. As one Army captain tells it, interpreters are required to produce a letter from a general, which he said was “like a junior associate at a Fortune 500 company asking the chief executive for a letter of recommendation.”
But then there’s the malfeasance side of things. One of the former officials testified that “a senior State Department official had ordered agency employees not to give al Radhi references or contact him” for help with his asylum.
That might have a lot to do with the trouble that Radhi gave Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the administration. Like pointing out that corruption ran rampant under Maliki and that he’d jiggered the system so that corruption judges could not bring charges against any of his senior officials without his approval — that was a decree on which Secretary of State Rice refused to pass judgment when she testified late last year. Rice also refused to comment on Radhi’s many accusations.
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) declared at the hearing early this week that he is “going to ask the State Department what in the hell are they thinking.” Somehow I don’t think Rice will be any more forthcoming this time around
“My friends, I will have an energy policy which will eliminate our dependence on oil from Middle East that will then prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.”
Is this a staged protest or military conditioning?
Possible Military Training
1. The Pentagon conditioning people to get use to military presence.
2. Possible Training exercise but what do you think they are training for? Martial Law? Terrorist Attack?
3. Why are cops standing there when this ‘protest’ is occurring?
Possible Protest
1. Theres no visible officers or elder soldiers.
2. Low budget video equipment.
3. Most effective protest are off the wall ideas like throwing blood.
You’d think that an Iraqi anti-corruption crusader who testified before Congress about his travails would find no great difficulty in obtaining asylum in the United States. You’d think the U.S. would be grateful for the news that $18 billion worth of corruption had virtually “stopped” reconstruction in Iraq. But not so much.
