“Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.”

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Warning: Very disturbing video.

Wikileaks has now posted the video that–they have suggested–is one of the reasons the US government has been surveilling them. Here’s part of Wikileaks’ description:

The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

While there were armed men among those shot at, they were not engaging the Americans at all. At the moment the Americans started shooting, a number of the targeted men had their back to the helicopter flying overhead. And after they wound the Iraqi photo-journalist, they fly around a while waiting for an excuse to re-engage; they seem to admit he was unarmed when they hit him, and therefore can’t shoot further unless he shows a weapon.

When ground troops arrive at the site and discover two children among the wounded, they blame the Iraqis for the kids’ injuries (this is after 15:30 on the video).

“Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.”

“That’s right.”

Of course, this wasn’t a battle at all. It was unprovoked killing, including the killing of two journalists.

The release of this video, of course, comes on the same day that the NYT details how Special Forces killed three women in Afghanistan and then tried to cover up their actions.

After initially denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths of three Afghan women during a badly bungled American Special Operations assault in February, the American-led military command in Kabul admitted late on Sunday that its forces had, in fact, killed the women during the nighttime raid.

The admission immediately raised questions about what really happened during the Feb. 12 operation — and what falsehoods followed — including a new report that Special Operations forces dug bullets out of the bodies of the women to hide the nature of their deaths.

A NATO official also said Sunday that an Afghan-led team of investigators had found signs of evidence tampering at the scene, including the removal of bullets from walls near where the women were killed. On Monday, however, a senior NATO official denied that any tampering had occurred.

I expect we’ll be hearing a lot more about civilian killings in the days ahead.

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What Glenn Greenwald Said On American Terrorism Cowardice

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Just go read it. Because every word Glenn Greenwald wrote in his post today, entitled Nostalgia for Bush/Cheney Radicalism, is the gospel truth. It is rare that you will see a post here just pointing you somewhere else because the other source says it all. This is one of those times. Here is a taste:

How much clearer evidence can there be of how warped and extremist we’ve become on these matters? The express policies of the right-wing Ronald Reagan — “applying the rule of law to terrorists”; delegitimizing Terrorists by treating them as “criminals”; and compelling the criminal prosecution of those who authorize torture — are now considered on the Leftist fringe. Merely advocating what Reagan explicitly adopted as his policy — “to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law against” Terrorists — is now the exclusive province of civil liberties extremists. In those rare cases when Obama does what Reagan’s policy demanded in all instances and what even Bush did at times — namely, trials and due process for accused Terrorists — he is attacked as being “Soft on Terror” by Democrats and Republicans alike. And the mere notion that we should prosecute torturers (as Reagan bound the U.S. to do) — or even hold them accountable in ways short of criminal proceedings — is now the hallmark of a Far Leftist Purist. That’s how far we’ve fallen, how extremist our political consensus has become.

Now go read the rest and weep for your country.

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The Poodle's Prevarications

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Tony Blair testified today at the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, and while it sounds like he didn’t admit any huge lies, his answers were riddled with inconsistencies. As the Times points out, for example, Blair told Parliament Saddam’s WMD programs were growing.

His weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing. The policy of containment is not working. The weapons of mass destruction programme is not shut down; it is up and running now.

But today he used the same excuse Bush has since used–that the alleged WMD programs hadn’t changed, but rather the significance of them in light of 9/11.

But as part of that analysis Mr Blair conceded that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s purported programme to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had not actually grown – only the understanding of that threat.

“It wasn’t that objectively he had done more,” he said of the Iraqi leader. “It was that our perception of the risk had shifted.”

Here’s how Blair tried to explain away his assertion that he would have taken Saddam out even if he had known he didn’t have WMD.

Mr Blair sought to play down his comments in a BBC interview with Fern Britton in which he said he would have thought it right to remove Saddam, even if he had known that he did not have WMD.

“Even with all my experience in dealing with interviews, it still indicates that I have got something to learn about it,” he said.

“I didn’t use the words ’regime change’ in that interview and I didn’t mean in any sense to change the basis. Obviously, all I was saying was you cannot describe the nature of the threat in the same way if we knew then what we know now.

“It was in no sense a change of position. The position was that it was the approach of UN resolutions on WMD. That was the case. It was then and it remains.”

As to the question of whether Blair agreed to go to war in April 2002? He claimed, at least, not to have gotten into specifics.

Mr Blair confirmed that he had discussed the issue of Iraq when he met Mr Bush for private, one-to-one talks at his Texas ranch at Crawford in April 2002, 11 months before the invasion, but he insisted that they did not get into “specifics”.

Of course, none of it has any credibility. But Blair might have skated through the most obvious risks of perjury at the inquiry.

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Peace on Earth Air Strike in Yemen

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What Siun dubbed our Fourth War continues to heat up, this time with air strikes that reportedly kill Anwar al-Awlaki, the cleric who communicated with Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan via email in the months leading up to the Fort Hood killings.

Backed by U.S. intelligence, Yemeni forces struck a series of suspected al-Qaida hideouts Thursday, killing more than 30 militants in its stepped-up campaign against the terror network, the government said. A radical Muslim preacher linked by U.S. intelligence to a gunman who killed 13 people at a U.S. Army base is believed to have been killed in the airstrike, a security official said on Thursday.

“Anwar al Awlaki is suspected to be dead (in the air raid),” said the Yemeni official, who asked not to be identified.

[snip]

Yemen’s Supreme Security Committee said airstrikes in the eastern Shabwa province targeted an al-Qaida leadership meeting that was organizing attacks. It said top al-Qaida officials were at the meeting, though it was unclear whether they were harmed.

Don’t get me wrong. I suspect there are far more dangerous members of al Qaeda in Yemen right now than in Afghanistan. If so, we’re at least targeting the guys we’re supposedly at war with.

Still, the convenience of killing al-Awlaki now, at  a time when we’re investigating his communication with Hasan, after we’ve been tracking him closely for seven years, along with the way this strike fits into the “30 casualties” formula, makes me a wee bit suspicious.

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Tony Blair: We Invaded Iraq to Change the Region

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The Guardian reports on the contents of an upcoming Beeb interview with Tony Blair, in which he suggests he would have invaded Iraq even if he had to offer a different reason for it, other than WMD. (h/t Steve)

Tony Blair has said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of weapons of mass destruction and would have found a way to justify the war to parliament and the public.

The former prime minister made the confession during an interview with Fern Britton, to be broadcast on Sunday on BBC1, in which he said he would still have thought it right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

“If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?” Blair was asked. He replied: “I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]”.
Significantly, Blair added: “I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat.”

What I find really interesting from this story, though, is his further admission–that he supported the invasion because without removing Saddam, it would have been hard to change the region.

“This was obviously the thing that was uppermost in my mind. The threat to the region. Also the fact of how that region was going to change and how in the end it was going to evolve as a region and whilst he was there, I thought and actually still think, it would have been very difficult to have changed it in the right way.”

I really really really hope Fern Britton went on to ask him whether he thinks the catastrophic war against Iraq has, in the end, “changed [the region] in the right way.”

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Conyers v. Obama: The “Demeaning Team”

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I wasn’t going to post on this–I was going to let John Conyers and Barack Obama to have their public spat in peace.

According to [John Conyers], the president picked up the phone several weeks ago to  find out why  Conyers was “demeaning” him.
Obama’s decision to challenge Conyers highlights a sensitivity to criticism the president has taken on the left.

Conyers’s critical remarks, many of which have been reported on the liberal-leaning Huffington Post, appear to have irritated the president, known for his calm demeanor.

Conyers, the second-longest-serving member of the House, said, “[Obama] called me and told me that he heard that I was demeaning him and I had to explain to him that it wasn’t anything personal, it was an honest difference on the issues. And he said, ‘Well, let’s talk about it.’”

[snip]

“I’ve been saying I don’t agree with him on Afghanistan, I think he screwed up on healthcare reform, on Guantánamo and kicking Greg off,” Conyers said, referring to the departure of former White House counsel Greg Craig.

[snip]

The liberal Conyers has been an outspoken proponent of a single-payer healthcare system and a critic of U.S. involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He has also been at odds with White House policy on extending expiring  provisions of the Patriot Act, crafting legislation that is to the left of the Senate’s version.

But I thought it worthwhile to elaborate on what the Hill said about Conyers’ support for Obama–which reminds that Conyers was the first CBC member to endorse Obama.

Conyers played a pretty important role in the way Michigan’s Clusterfuck of a primary worked out. Read more →

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Why Not Send 30,000 Troops to Somalia?

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Spencer focused on a really important part of the Afghanistan debate today–the struggle the Administration is having to claim that al Qaeda and its affiliates in Af-Pak pose a direct threat to the US.

“Syndicate of terror” was how Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described the relationship between al-Qaeda and the various insurgent and terrorist networks across the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a position eagerly endorsed by her colleagues Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen. Anticipating the argument that the syndicate does not substantially threaten the United States at home, Clinton said that “at the head of the table,” like a “Mafia family,” sat al-Qaeda. And that means, she continued during her testimony today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that al-Qaeda retains a capability to export terrorism to “Yemen, Somalia or, indeed, Denver” that is “unmatched” — a reference to the recently arrested Najibullah Zazi. Zazi’s case, which has yet to go to trial, shows a plot that traces “back to al-Qaeda-originated training camps and [a] training program” in Pakistan.

This is going to be one of the most controversial and disputed elements of the Obama administration’s strategy: the scope of the threat and the directness of the links between al-Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal areas; its strategic depth through the “syndicate” on each side of the Afghanistan and Pakistan border; and that syndicate’s capabilities to export destruction.

[snip]

I am told by senior administration officials that the autumn Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy was informed by 30 intelligence products, many of which were directly produced for the review, and several of which focused on the question of al-Qaeda’s global reach from the Pakistani tribal areas. I’m also told that the military is increasingly looking at the nexus between al-Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, the Haqqani network in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and a rising extremist ally, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. But the link between that nexus and its present capability to reach the United States at home, to put it as neutrally as I can, has not been publicly demonstrated, and requires much further and deeper exposition — and, frankly, proof — than the administration has provided.

Now, Spencer is focusing on whether Najibullah Zazi will end up having been directly tied to Afghanistan or Pakistan. That’s the case Hillary was making. But it’s not clear the case is as strong as she suggested.

But I think there’s another way to make the same point–the argument Russ Feingold has been making. Rather than focusing on whether Afghanistan is the headquarters of al Qaeda, Feingold focuses on all the other places where al Qaeda is active where we’re not sending 30,000 troops (Feingold admits that Pakistan is important to al Qaeda right now, which raises the question of whether we’re sending these 30,000 for Afghanistan or Pakistan).

BLITZER: OK.

Let’s talk a little bit about why you oppose what the president is doing. What’s wrong with his logic?

FEINGOLD: Well, it just doesn’t add up for me.

The president says, we’re doing this. We’re adding 30,000, 35,000 troops to finish the job. And I ask the question, “What job?” because the president has been so eloquent in pointing out our issue is fighting al Qaeda.

The argument falls apart when you realize that al Qaeda does not have its headquarters in Afghanistan anymore. It is headquartered in Pakistan. It is active in Somalia, and Yemen, North Africa, affiliates of it in Southeast Asia.

Why does it make sense to have a huge ground presence in Afghanistan to deal with a small al Qaeda contingent, when we don’t do that in so many other countries where we’re actually having some success without invading the country and attacking those that are part of al Qaeda? It doesn’t make sense.

Read more →

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Politico’s VandeHei and Allen Join the “Judy Miller Club for Cheney Stenographers”

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graphic: ImageChef.com

graphic: ImageChef.com

Suppose you had a 90-minute interview with Dick Cheney just after a Senate report came out concluding–among other things–that,

After bin Laden’s escape, some military and intelligence analysts and the press criticized the Pentagon’s failure to mount a full-scale attack despite the tough rhetoric by President Bush. Franks, Vice President Dick Cheney and others defended the decision, arguing that the intelligence was inconclusive about the Al Qaeda leader’s location. But the review of existing literature, unclassified government records and interviews with central participants underlying this report removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora.

Don’t you think you’d ask him, explicitly, why he had defended the decision not to send US troops after Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora when it was clear that the decision had allowed bin Laden to escape? “Mr. Cheney,” you might ask, “it has been shown pretty irrefutably that you let OBL get away. Why’d you defend your decision allowing him to escape when you knew it had led to his escape? Why did you ignore Henry Crumpton’s warning–briefed to you and President Bush personally at the end of November 2001–that an escape route to Pakistan was wide open and Afghan troops wouldn’t prevent OBL form escaping through it?”

But this is as close as Jim “Pool Boy” VandeHei and Mike Allen got in an interview with Cheney:

But Cheney rejected any suggestion that Obama had to decide on a new strategy for Afghanistan because the one employed by the previous administration failed.

Cheney was asked if he thinks the Bush administration bears any responsibility for the disintegration of Afghanistan because of the attention and resources that were diverted to Iraq. “I basically don’t,” he replied without elaborating.

I guess a follow-up question would have been too much to ask for from Pool Boy and his sidekick?

After apparently not asking such an obvious question, after getting stiffed on their more general question about Cheney and Bush’s diversion of resources to the Iraq War (I don’t suppose Pool Boy and friend have been watching the Iraq Inquiry in the UK, either, and I’m quite certain it’d be too much for them to ask about Cheney’s personal role fucking up our Pakistan policy in more recent years), they then serve as stenographers for yet another Cheney attack on Obama.

Somehow, VandeHei and Allen managed amazing feats of hunting mastery last week, but they couldn’t manage to ask glaringly obvious questions before then turning around and writing down every little thing Cheney told them to say.

And here’s another question.

It is just a remarkable coincidence that the day after John Harris invented this complaint,

Politicians of both parties have embraced the idea that this country — because of its power and/or the hand of Providence — should be a singular force in the world. It would be hugely unwelcome for Obama if the perception took root that he is comfortable with a relative decline in U.S. influence or position in the world.

On this score, the reviews of Obama’s recent Asia trip were harsh.

His peculiar bow to the emperor of Japan was symbolic. But his lots-of-velvet, not-much-iron approach to China had substantive implications.

On the left, the budding storyline is that Obama has retreated from human rights in the name of cynical realism. On the right, it is that he is more interested in being President of the World than President of the United States, a critique that will be heard more in December as he stops in Oslo to pick up his Nobel Prize and then in Copenhagen for an international summit on curbing greenhouse gases.

Cheney voiced precisely that complaint?

During the campaign, Cheney recalled, he saw Obama as “sort of a mainline, traditional Democrat — liberal, from the liberal wing of the party.” But Cheney said he is increasingly persuaded by the notion that Obama “doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism — the idea that the United States is a special nation, that we are the greatest, freest nation mankind has ever known.”

“When I see the way he operates, I am increasingly convinced that he’s not as committed to or as wedded to that concept as most of the presidents I’ve known, Republican or Democrat,” he said. “I am worried. And I find as I get out around the country, a lot of other people are worried, too.”

What a remarkable coinkydink, that the Pool Boy’s editor is the only other person in the country worried about Obama and exceptionalism.

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The Irony of Tora Bora

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Picture 160Understand that–for better or worse–the new report released by John Kerry on how Osama bin Laden escaped at Tora Bora is a designed to be a political document. It offers the following “irony” to the chattering classes the weekend before Obama announces his new Afghanistan strategy,

Ironically, one of the guiding principles of the Afghan model was to avoid immersing the United States in a protracted insurgency by sending in too many troops and stirring up anti-American sentiment. In the end, the unwillingness to bend the operational plan to deploy the troops required to take advantage of solid intelligence and unique circumstances to kill or capture bin Laden paved the way for exactly what we had hoped to avoid—a protracted insurgency that has cost more lives than anyone estimates would have been lost in a full-blown assault on Tora Bora. Further, the dangerous contagion of rising violence and instability in Afghanistan has spread to Pakistan, a nuclear-armed ally of the United States which is now wracked by deadly terrorist bombings as it conducts its own costly military campaign against a domestic, Taliban-related insurgency.

The report relies on just a few interviews, but mostly on existing histories (including a Special Ops Command history included as an appendix) and even an extended column from Michael O’Hanlon (also included as an appendix)–not exactly the kind of guy I’m thrilled to see at the center of a taxpayer funded report. I view the report as the logical endpoint of Kerry’s decision to hire journalist Douglas Frantz (whose biography of AQ Khan is cited once) to head investigations.

Which is not to say the research isn’t valid. Rather, that the timing and format of the report seems designed to emphasize the irony, noted above, and other little ironies such as the way our desire to get the corrupt Hamid Karzai installed as leader of Afghanistan affected our willingness to commit troops at Tora Bora.

[Franks’ second-in-command during the war, General Michael DeLong] amplified the reasons for not sending American troops after bin Laden. ‘‘The real reason we didn’t go in with U.S. troops was that we hadn’t had the election yet,’’ he said in the staff interview, a reference to the installation of Hamid Karzai as the interim leader of Afghanistan. ‘‘We didn’t want to have U.S. forces fighting before Karzai was in power. We wanted to create a stable country and that was more important than going after bin Laden at the time.’’

And the conclusion (less well supported by the facts presented in the report) that the same unwillingness to commit troops to Afghanistan in 2001 led to Mullah Omar’s escape.

The same shortage of U.S. troops allowed Mullah Mohammed Omar and other Taliban leaders to escape. A semi-literate leader who fled Kandahar on a motorbike, Mullah Omar has re-emerged at the helm of the Taliban-led insurgency, which has grown more sophisticated and lethal in recent years and now controls swaths of Afghanistan. The Taliban, which is aligned with a loose network of other militant groups and maintains ties to Al Qaeda, has established shadow governments in many of Afghanistan’s provinces and is capable of mounting increasingly complex attacks on American and NATO forces. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who helped develop the Obama administration’s Afghan policy, recently referred to the mullah’s return to power ‘‘one of the most remarkable military comebacks in modern history.’’

All these ironies, delivered just in time to play into the debate that will intensify next week.

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The Iraq War Files

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A number of people have been linking to the Guardian and now the AP story on the British Iraq War files that show that preparation of British forces was “appalling,” largely because Tony Blair kept the decision to go into Iraq–which he made as early as February 2002–on such a close hold.

But I wanted to point to the Telegraph version of this story for two reasons.

On the eve of the Chilcot inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the 2003 invasion and its aftermath, The Sunday Telegraph has obtained hundreds of pages of secret Government reports on “lessons learnt” which shed new light on “significant shortcomings” at all levels.

[snip]

The reports disclose that:

Tony Blair, the former prime minister, misled MPs and the public throughout 2002 when he claimed that Britain’s objective was “disarmament, not regime change” and that there had been no planning for military action. In fact, British military planning for a full invasion and regime change began in February 2002.

The need to conceal this from Parliament and all but “very small numbers” of officials “constrained” the planning process. The result was a “rushed”operation “lacking in coherence and resources” which caused “significant risk” to troops and “critical failure” in the post-war period.

Operations were so under-resourced that some troops went into action with only five bullets each. Others had to deploy to war on civilian airlines, taking their equipment as hand luggage. Some troops had weapons confiscated by airport security.

Commanders reported that the Army’s main radio system “tended to drop out at around noon each day because of the heat”. One described the supply chain as “absolutely appalling”, saying: “I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert.”

First, note the reporter: Andrew Gilligan. He’s the guy who reported that the case for war against Iraq had been “sexed up” to justify war when no real cause existed. In other words, there is some continuity between that story and this one.

Also, the Telegraph posted many of these documents on its website, including the full report.

Gilligan seems poised to get some well-earned vindication as the Iraq War inquiry begins this week. So it probably pays to keep an eye on the Telegraph’s coverage.

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