Hasan and War Crimes and Congressional Briefings

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At first, I didn’t make too much over this report that Nidal Hasan may have gone on a killing spree because his requests that his patients be investigated for war crimes was denied.

Fort Hood massacre suspect Nidal Malik Hasan sought to have some of his patients prosecuted for war crimes based on statements they made during psychiatric sessions with him, a captain who served on the base said Monday.

Other psychiatrists complained to superiors that Hasan’s actions violated doctor-patient confidentiality, Capt. Shannon Meehan told The Dallas Morning News.

[snip]

It wasn’t clear Monday what information Hasan received from patients and what became of his requests for prosecution. ABC News, citing anonymous sources, reported that his superiors rejected the requests, and that investigators suspect this triggered the shootings.

But then I got interested that the same article reported that the Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on the killing was postponed yesterday.

That’s because the House Intelligence Committee has just given Chair Silvestre Reyes’ explanation for the postponement.

Due to the high visibility of the issues surrounding the tragic event at Fort Hood, the President has instructed the National Security Council to assume control of all informational briefings. The NSC has directed that the leadership, as well as the chairmen and ranking minority members of the relevant congressional committees receive briefings first.

I have been told that the Director of National Intelligence is still committed to providing the full membership a briefing on the activities within the jurisdiction of this Committee. I believe that this will occur, and I will push to schedule a briefing before the end of this week. [my emphasis]

As Spencer reported last week, John Brennan got put in charge of reviewing what the IC knew of Hasan last week.

On November 6, 2009, I directed that an immediate inventory be conducted of all intelligence in U.S. Government files that existed prior to November 6, 2009, relevant to the tragic shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, especially anything having to do with the alleged shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, U.S. Army. In addition, I directed an immediate review be initiated to determine how any such intelligence was handled, shared, and acted upon within individual departments and agencies and what intelligence was shared with others. This inventory and review shall be conducted in a manner that does not interfere with the ongoing criminal investigations of the Fort Hood shooting.

The results of this inventory and review, as well as any recommendations for improvements to procedures and practices, shall be provided to John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, who will serve as the principal point of contact on this matter for the White House. Preliminary results of this review shall be provided by November 30, 2009.

But back when Obama made that decision, it did not object to the many briefings scheduled. Only now it’s NSC–presumably Brennan–dictating what briefings the various committees will get, and making the decision to postpone the general committee briefings.

The NSC has just basically made this a Gang of Eight type of briefing (though they seem to be including other Chairs besides Intelligence)–if only for the moment. It may be they’re hiding more extensive known ties to al Qaeda than has been reported (by everyone except Crazy Pete Hoekstra). Or it may be they’re trying to keep something else quiet.

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The Cyber-Surge

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Shane Harris has a long article detailing the state of the US cyberwarfare capability. The hook for the story, though, is a claim that cyberwarfare championed by Michael McConnell and David Petraeus in Iraq in 2007 was as critical to turning the war around as the conventional surge.

In May 2007, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency, based at Fort Meade, Md., to launch a sophisticated attack on an enemy thousands of miles away without firing a bullet or dropping a bomb.

At the request of his national intelligence director, Bush ordered an NSA cyberattack on the cellular phones and computers that insurgents in Iraq were using to plan roadside bombings. The devices allowed the fighters to coordinate their strikes and, later, post videos of the attacks on the Internet to recruit followers. According to a former senior administration official who was present at an Oval Office meeting when the president authorized the attack, the operation helped U.S. forces to commandeer the Iraqi fighters communications system. With this capability, the Americans could deceive their adversaries with false information, including messages to lead unwitting insurgents into the fire of waiting U.S. soldiers.

Now, I hope the tech wonks read the whole article and let us know what they think of the overall article (Harris is well-sourced in the vicinity of Ft. Meade).

But for the moment I’d like to focus on the timing and the personalities: It was Petraeus and McConnell, with cyberwarfare, in Iraq, in 2007. That is, David Petraeus, currently in charge of both our wars. And McConnell, who in 2007 was busy pushing for expanded electronic surveillance authority, and has long been a champion of outsourcing intelligence, precisely this kind of thing (he’s currently back at Booz Allen).

No wonder there has been so much concern about putting NSA in charge of the nation’s cyber-defense.

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Priming the Pump

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Picture 142Some years ago when Paul Wolfowitz was asked why we went to war in Iraq but not North Korea, he noted that Iraq “swims on a sea of oil.” [Update: Note worldwidehappieness‘ comment that the Guardian’s reporting on this–and therefore this syntax–took Wolfowitz’ quote out of context.]  And while less obviously a war for oil, our presence in Afghanistan promises to keep the US in the “Great Game” in central asia fighting for oil. More recently, former US officials Zal Khalilzad and Jay Garner are cashing in on their Iraq experience to win oil contracts there.

Yet, as a Deloitte report lays out, our giant war machine requires more and more oil every year to go to war to control these oil resources. (h/t Danger Room)

Deloitte conducted a study of energy use in wartime from World War II (WWII) through the current Middle East wars, and found that there has been a 175% increase in gallons of fuel consumed per U.S. soldier per day since the Vietnam conflict. In today’s conflicts, fuel consumption is 22 gallons used, per soldier, per day, for an average annual increase of 2.6% in the last 40 years, with an expected 1.5% annual growth rate through 2017. This has been driven by several factors: the increasing mechanization of technologies used in wartime, the expeditionary nature of conflict requiring mobility over long distances, and the rugged terrain and the irregular warfare nature of operations.

The increase has occurred despite the significant increase in fuel efficiency in internal combustion and jet engines used with armored vehicles, tanks, ships and jet aircraft, and the use of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines. However, these significant improvements in efficiency are vastly overshadowed by the higher number of vehicles and increasing rate of use. Furthermore, the increasing number of convoys required to transport an every increasing requirement for fossil fuels is itself a root cause of casualties, both wounded and killed in action.

There is, hopefully, an ironic teleology here: the military is being forced to use more and more alternative fuels. But the use of those alternative fuels will, to a large degree, make this giant oil-sucking war machine less critical.

Anyway, perhaps we can use this stat to put more federal money into alternative fuels.

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More Insane Rantings from the Crazy Man in the Attic

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Someone let Dick “PapaDick” Cheney out of his undisclosed location last night–they even gave him an award for being a “keeper of the flame.” In spite of the fact that the press is covering it as another serious attack from Cheney, I find it pretty laughable.

How else to treat a speech, for example, in which PapaDick boasts that Rummy got this “flame-keeper” award before him?

I’m told that among those you’ve recognized before me was my friend Don Rumsfeld. I don’t mind that a bit. It fits something of a pattern. In a career that includes being chief of staff, congressman, and secretary of defense, I haven’t had much that Don didn’t get first. But truth be told, any award once conferred on Donald Rumsfeld carries extra luster, and I am very proud to see my name added to such a distinguished list.

From that auspicious start, Cheney launches into a screed against Obama for shutting down missile defense in Czech Republic and Poland–he complains that Obama did not stand by the agreements that Cheney and Bush made.

Most anyone who is given responsibility in matters of national security quickly comes to appreciate the commitments and structures put in place by others who came before. You deploy a military force that was planned and funded by your predecessors. You inherit relationships with partners and obligations to allies that were first undertaken years and even generations earlier. With the authority you hold for a little while, you have great freedom of action. And whatever course you follow, the essential thing is always to keep commitments, and to leave no doubts about the credibility of your country’s word.So among my other concerns about the drift of events under the present administration, I consider the abandonment of missile defense in Eastern Europe to be a strategic blunder and a breach of good faith.

It is certainly not a model of diplomacy when the leaders of Poland and the Czech Republic are informed of such a decision at the last minute in midnight phone calls. It took a long time and lot of political courage in those countries to arrange for our interceptor system in Poland and the radar system in the Czech Republic. Our Polish and Czech friends are entitled to wonder how strategic plans and promises years in the making could be dissolved, just like that – with apparently little, if any, consultation.

But he moves directly from that complaint to complaining that Obama is honoring the commitment Bush made to withdraw our troops from Iraq.

Next door in Iraq, it is vitally important that President Obama, in his rush to withdraw troops, not undermine the progress we’ve made in recent years. Read more →

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The Sexing-Up Sickness

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One of the British flacks who helped us lie our way through the Iraq war is now trying to claim disability from the stress of telling those lies. (h/t Tom Ricks)

A Ministry of Defence press officer has claimed that being forced to tell lies about the war in Iraq has left him with post-traumatic stress disorder.

John Salisbury-Baker, 62, who spoke for the Armed Forces in the North East, said that he had struggled to cope with a stress-related condition for the past two years. He is based at the Imphal Barracks in York.

He is pursuing a claim for disability discrimination on the grounds that the stress of the job has effectively left him physically disabled.

Mr Salisbury-Baker is expected to tell a tribunal panel later this year that he had to defend the “morally indefensible” when telling the media that army vehicles such as Snatch Land Rovers were capable of withstanding roadside bombs.

I’m sure this guy feels terrible. He should. But he has a really bizarre sense of obligation. I’m sure he was ordered to lie. But that’s slightly different from "having to." It’s just a pretty way of saying "choosing to avoid the repercussions of a moral act." 

A moral act that would have left him far healthier, mentally, I’m guessing.

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Honoring Service Rather than Trumping Up War

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Seven years ago, Dick Cheney addressed the Veterans of Foreign War national convention (George Bush was otherwise occupied in Crawford, clearing brush). In a speech he did not have vetted by the Intelligence Community (as was normal), Cheney made the claims about Iraq having nukes that served as a foundation for the Iraq War campaign rolled out just a few weeks later (remember, you don’t introduce a new product in August).

The case of Saddam Hussein, a sworn enemy of our country, requires a candid appraisal of the facts. After his defeat in the Gulf War in 1991, Saddam agreed under to U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 to cease all development of weapons of mass destruction. He agreed to end his nuclear weapons program. He agreed to destroy his chemical and his biological weapons. He further agreed to admit U.N. inspection teams into his country to ensure that he was in fact complying with these terms.

In the past decade, Saddam has systematically broken each of these agreements. The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents. And they continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago. These are not weapons for the purpose of defending Iraq; these are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam can hold the threat over the head of anyone he chooses, in his own region or beyond.

On the nuclear question, many of you will recall that Saddam’s nuclear ambitions suffered a severe setback in 1981 when the Israelis bombed the Osirak reactor. They suffered another major blow in Desert Storm and its aftermath.

But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we’ve gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors — including Saddam’s own son-in-law, who was subsequently murdered at Saddam’s direction. Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.

Today, Obama is the one addressing the VFW. While he’s describing his stance in Iraq and Afghanistan, he is, at the same time, repeating his promise to America’s service men and women.

That is why I have made this pledge to our armed forces: I will only send you into harm’s way when it is absolutely necessary. Read more →

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Suspension of Posse Comitatus for 9/11 Anniversary?

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Remember the OLC memo eviscerating the Fourth Amendment–the one they claimed was only ever hypothetical? Well, Cheney was itching to try it out to arrest the Lackawanna Six.

Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.

Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.

Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force.

[snip]

The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity.

In the discussions, Mr. Cheney and others cited an Oct. 23, 2001, memorandum from the Justice Department that, using a broad interpretation of presidential authority, argued that the domestic use of the military against Al Qaeda would be legal because it served a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose.

Unless I missed it, NYT didn’t tell you when Dick Cheney was proposing to suspend posse comitatus. But as it happens, most of the Lackawanna Six got arrested on September 14, 2002.

Which to me is just as interesting as the news that Cheney was pushing to do this: Imagine how well it would work to impose military rule just in time for the first anniversary of 9/11, and just as you’re rolling out the case for the Iraq War?

Update: scout prime reminds us that when it came to saving brown people, BushCo hesitated, citing the Constitution.

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Is DOD So Sure They Weren’t Involved in the Rashid Dostum Massacre?

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Last Monday, I noted two particular details of the Obama Administration’s response to news of spiked investigations into General Rashid Dostum’s massacre of up to thousands of prisoners in 2001. First, DOD said it didn’t need to investigate because there was no evidence American personnel were involved.

There’s DOD, which bases its opposition to an investigation on the claim that there’s no evidence US forces were involved in the massacre.

Asked about the report, Marine Corps Col. David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said that since U.S. military forces were not involved in the killings, there is nothing the Defense Department could investigate.

"There is no indication that U.S. military forces were there, or involved, or had any knowledge of this," Lapan said. "So there was not a full investigation conducted because there was no evidence that there was anything from a DoD (Department of Defense) perspective to investigate."

And, President Obama offered up the suggestion that we might have been involved.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I think that, you know, there are responsibilities that all nations have even in war. And if it appears that our conduct in some way supported violations of the laws of war, then I think that, you know, we have to know about that.

Which is why Mark Benjamin’s addition to this story is so key. He reports that American forces may have observed the men packed into trucks.

Earlier this month, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter James Risen advanced the story, revealing that the United States had resisted any war crimes investigation into the massacre, despite learning from Dell Spry, the lead FBI agent at Guantánamo Bay following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, that many Afghan detainees were telling similar stories of a mass killing. Spry directed interviews of detainees by FBI agents at Guantánamo Bay, and compiled allegations made by the detainees.

[snip]

What the Times did not say was that these Guantánamo prisoners also said that U.S. personnel were present during the massacre. "The allegation was that U.S. forces were present while Dostum’s troops were herding these people into these containers," Spry, now retired from the FBI and working as an FBI consultant, told Salon. "They were out rounding up alleged Taliban and insurgent folks."

Spry said that at the time of the interviews not long after the invasion of Afghanistan he found the detainees’ claims of a massacre "plausible," since the detainees separately told similar stories. Spry thought an investigation Read more →

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Obama on the Afghan Massacre

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Given President Obama’s apparent order that his national security team look into the Afghan massacre, I wanted to look at the various statements about the Administration response to the massacre and disaster, because I think it speaks to the same internal tensions as described in the Klaidman story on Holder.

Risen’s original story on Afghan massacre lacked any statement from the White House. But it did have several comments from the State Department suggesting the Obama Administration was laying the groundwork to marginalize Dostum. 

But in recent weeks, State Department officials have quietly tried to thwart General Dostum’s reappointment as military chief of staff to the president, according to several senior officials, and suggested that the administration might not be hostile to an inquiry.

[snip]

While President Obama has deepened the United States’ commitment to Afghanistan, sending 21,000 more American troops there to combat the growing Taliban insurgency, his administration has also tried to distance itself from Mr. Karzai, whose government is deeply unpopular and widely viewed as corrupt.

A senior State Department official said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan, had told Mr. Karzai of their objections to reinstating General Dostum. The American officials have also pressed his sponsors in Turkey to delay his return to Afghanistan while talks continue with Mr. Karzai over the general’s role, said an official briefed on the matter. Asked about looking into the prisoner deaths, the official said, “We believe that anyone suspected of war crimes should be thoroughly investigated.”

While I’m not entirely sure how much the statement, "and suggested that the administration might not be hostile to an inquiry" is Risen’s or is his State Department source, it does suggest that the Obama Administration was laying the groundwork to marginalize Dostum, making it easier to conduct an investigation into his actions.

Within hours of the publication of Risen’s article, Laura Jakes had a seeming response–attributed to the Obama Administration generally–disavowing any intent or jurisdiction to conduct an investigation. The article starts by stating the opposition to an investigation generally.

Obama administration officials said Friday they had no grounds to investigate the 2001 deaths of Taliban prisoners of war who human rights groups allege were killed by U.S.-backed forces

[snip]

U.S. officials said Friday they did not have legal grounds to investigate the deaths because only foreigners were involved and the alleged killings occurred in a foreign country.

Read more →

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US Government Covered Up War Crimes Committed by CIA’s Warlord

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The NYT, in its infinite wisdom, has seen fit to dump this James Risen story into the Saturday news black hole, as if they were trying to hide it in a deep dark hole.

Sickeningly, that’s what the story reports: that after Afghan warlord, Rashid Dostum, let perhaps 1,500 men die in a shipping container, he dumped them all in a big hole, and the US government continued to hide his crime in a deep hole of indifference and bureaucracy.

While the deaths have been previously reported, the back story of the frustrated efforts to investigate them has not been fully told. The killings occurred in late November 2001, just days after the American-led invasion forced the ouster of the Taliban government in Kabul. Thousands of Taliban fighters surrendered to General Dostum’s forces, which were part of the American-backed Northern Alliance, in the city of Kunduz. They were then transported to a prison run by the general’s forces near the town of Shibarghan.

Survivors and witnesses told The New York Times and Newsweek in 2002 that, over a three-day period, Taliban prisoners were stuffed into closed metal shipping containers and given no food or water; many suffocated while being trucked to the prison. Other prisoners were killed when guards shot into the containers. The bodies were said to have been buried in a mass grave in Dasht-i-Laili, a stretch of desert just outside Shibarghan.

[snip]

A military commander in the United States-led coalition rejected a request by a Red Cross official for an inquiry in late 2001, according to the official, who, in keeping with his organization’s policy, would speak only on condition of anonymity and declined to identify the commander.

A few months later, Dell Spry, the F.B.I.’s senior representative at the detainee prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, heard accounts of the deaths from agents he supervised there. Separately, 10 or so prisoners brought from Afghanistan reported that they had been “stacked like cordwood” in shipping containers and had to lick the perspiration off one another to survive, Mr. Spry recalled. They told similar accounts of suffocations and shootings, he said. A declassified F.B.I. report, dated January 2003, confirms that the detainees provided such accounts.

Mr. Spry, who is now an F.B.I. consultant, said he did not believe the stories because he knew that Al Qaeda trained members to fabricate tales about mistreatment. Read more →

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