For What?

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As my favorite professional journalist turned DFH blogger noted, today’s hearings are descending into restatements of questions already asked yesterday. One notable exception, though, was Robert Wexler. I’m not usually a fan of Wexler’s emotional displays. But Wexler boiled down the question everyone is and has been asking.

General Petraeus, last week in anticipation of this hearing, I sent an urgent email asking my constituents and other Americans if they were serving on this committee, what is the one question they would pose to you. There was an extraordinary response, with more than 5000 questions submitted. These emails and phone calls expressed deeply held frustrations about the War in Iraq and reflect the feelings of millions of Americans who feel that their opinions and concerns are cast aside by the Bush Administration. I want to thank everyone who responded and submitted a question for today’s hearing. While many of the respondents rightfully highlighted the bravery of our troops, a majority of the emails expressed a strong desire to see a withdrawal of American soldiers from Iraq and an end to this five-year war that has cost our nation so dearly.

Most of the questions boiled down to this: General, we often see President Bush and Senator McCain say we must win in Iraq. What is the definition of winning? What would a military victory look like that was sufficient enough to allow us to begin leaving?

Then, in a horrific turn of events, two of my constituents, Esther and Len Wolfer of Boca Raton, Florida, learned that this past Sunday their son had been killed for this war. Major Stuart Wolfer was a 36-year old Reservist on his second tour. He was married with three young children, ages 5, 3, and 20 months. His family was relieved that he was in the Green Zone, for they hoped he would be safe there. He was not. I spoke to Mr. Wolfer yesterday–last night–who asked me to ask you simply, "For what? For what had he lost his son?"

So allow me to combine if you will the questions of the people that responded to me and Mr. Wolfer. What has all this been for. And please, respectfully, don’t tell us as you told Senator Warner yesterday, "to remove a brutal dictator." That’s not good enough. There are many dictators in the world. Read more →

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The Banality of Enhanced Interrogation

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A number of people have pointed out the auspicious timing of Philippe Sands’ Green Light article, appearing as it did at the same time as the Torture Memo. I’m just as struck, though, by its appearance shortly after the publication of profiles of two of the women convicted for abuse at Abu Ghraib: a long Stern interview with Lynndie England and a New Yorker profile of Sabrina Harman. Within short order, then, we have profiles of three of the women who enabled torture.

Lynndie England

The England interview describes how England, who had joined the army to get out of her bleak West Virginia town, is stuck back there, unable to get a job and therefore a house of her own for her and her son (via Charles Graner).

I’m just trying to get by. Trying to find a job, trying to find a house. It’s been harder than I expected. I went to a couple of interviews, and I thought they went great. I wrote dozens of applications. Nothing came of it. I put in at Wal-Mart, at Staples. I’d do any job. But I never heard from them.

[snip]

I am starting to wonder if they realize who I am and they don’t want the publicity. I don’t want to lie. On my resume I have a brief little paragraph about what I did in the army and about being in prison and that I’m still on parole. I want to be totally honest. I have to find a job by September, that’s part of the parole regulations. If you break the rules, then they can bring you back. That would be a big deal because I don’t want to leave my son.

England stays in her home town, she explains, because only there do people support her, some agreeing they would have done as she did, follow orders.

They don’t treat me any different. I haven’t met a person yet that’s been negative to me. Not since I got home. Most of them back me up one hundred percent. They say, "What happened to you was wrong." And some even say they would have done the same thing.

[snip]

That they would have followed orders, just as I did in Abu Ghraib.

She stays in her home town, too, out of fear that elsewhere a stranger will come after her and her son.

I know more people support me here than are against me. It’s that one crazy one that you don’t know that finds out where you live and comes after you.

Read more →

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Entangling Alliances

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When I read Peter Baker’s description of Bush bailing on a NATO meeting early, I guessed that his stated reason for Bush’s departure–he was bored–was wrong. After all, Baker notes that Bush was only the third NATO leader to leave the meeting.

Bush was not the first leader to leave while the conversation dragged on. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper were seen leaving before Bush did.

Two leaders with whom Bush should get along splendidly (well, except for the whole tradition of DeGaulle in France), Sarkozy and Harper, bailing before he did. I suspected then that our NATO allies were fed up with the US and close affiliates blaming the French, especially, but also the Canadians and Germans, for not providing enough troops in Afghanistan. After all, I can imagine the Canadians and French thinking, if the US had just heeded allies’ warnings about the Iraq War–or even simply abided by international law–the US would have plenty of troops to contribute to the Afghan cause. Why should NATO allies have to pay because the US has degraded its own military so badly?

So I was not surprised to hear Bob Gates announce the US is going to raise our troop levels in Afghanistan (on President Obama’s or President Clinton’s watch, mind you).

The United States intends to send many more combat forces to Afghanistan next year, regardless of whether troop levels in Iraq are cut further this year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday.

It is the first time the Bush administration has made such a commitment for 2009.

[snip]

Gates said he advised Bush to make the pledge to allied leaders in Bucharest even though the movement of the unspecified additional troops would ultimately be a decision for the next president, who will take office in January.

And, just as surely, TP reports that our NATO allies were no more interested in helping Bush out with his plans to allow Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance.

Even though Bush was putting “his personal prestige on the line” in supporting membership for the former Soviet Republics, he was forced to check his legacy at the door. NATO rebuffed, a “remarkable rejection of American policy in an alliance normally dominated by Washington.” Read more →

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McCain Fails Test to Be Legislator, Much Less President

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You guys already know about McCain’s seemingly intentional conflation of Iran and Al Qaeda disguised as a serial gaffe (and if you don’t then go read Blue Texan on it, because he’s much funnier than I am).

Since I’m late to the party, all I can add is a link to that Quiz for Lawmakers I devised last year after Silvestre Reyes made the same gaffe. Reyes has gotten much sharper in the interim period–unlike McCain, Reyes can even distinguish an illegal wiretapping program from a legal one.

McCain, however, still fails from the first question of the quiz.

1. The terrorist group Al Qaeda is overwhelmingly made up of what kind of Muslims?

    a. Shiite
    b. Sunni
    c. Kurds
    d. Nation of Islam

 I’m guessing he would flunk most of the rest of the questions, as well.

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Phase II: Four Years Later

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It has taken the SSCI four years, but it is about to release the long-awaited second-to-last installment of Phase II of its investigation into Iraqi intelligence claims (the last one, which examines Dougie Feith’s little intelligence shop, may be finished around the time his book comes out). This report catalogs Administration claims about Iraq’s WMD and ties to Al Qaeda and analyzes whether the intelligence supported those claims. Greg Miller writes that the report will have mixed conclusions.

The long-delayed document catalogs dozens of prewar assertions by President Bush and other administration officials that proved to be wildly inaccurate about Iraq’s alleged stockpiles of banned weapons and pursuit of nuclear arms.

But officials say the report reaches a mixed verdict on the key question of whether the White House misused intelligence to make the case for war.

The document criticizes White House officials for making assertions that failed to reflect disagreements or uncertainties in the underlying intelligence on Iraq, officials said. But the report acknowledges that many claims were consistent with intelligence assessments in circulation at the time.

Many of the conclusions will be predictable. The BW and CW claims were largely backed up by intelligence (though I’m anxious to see where Colin Powell got the catalog of amounts he cited in his UN speech–at least some of that information came from one of Judy’s informants). But with nuclear claims, the Administration simply provided the most inflammatory judgment, ignoring the caveats. And finally, the report Scooter and Shooter’s claims that Iraq and Al Qaeda were in cahoots was made up out of thin air.

Prewar assertions about Iraq’s nuclear program were more problematic because they were supported by some intelligence assessments but not others.

"They were substantiated," a congressional official said, "but didn’t convey the disagreements within the intelligence community."

In August 2002, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech that "Saddam [Hussein] has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." But by that time, the State Department’s intelligence bureau was challenging the assumption that Iraq’s nuclear program had been reactivated.

White House suggestions that Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda were at odds with intelligence assessments that voiced skepticism about such a relationship.

Read more →

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Dougie’s Rant

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I’m less interested in the news that Dougie Feith is publishing a 900-page rant against his detractors in the Bush Administration and more interested in how a copy of that manuscript got liberated and delivered into the hands of Karen DeYoung, biographer of Feith detractor Colin Powell, and Thomas Ricks, all-around skeptic of Dougie’s disastrous war. The book appears to be primarily a long whining complaint that Colin Powell has retained moderately more of his credibility than Dougie and his allies in the Pentagon.

Powell, Feith argues, allowed himself to be publicly portrayed as a dove, but while Powell "downplayed" the degree and urgency of Iraq’s threat, he never expressed opposition to the invasion. Bremer, meanwhile, is said to have done more harm than good in Iraq. Feith also accuses Franks of being uninterested in postwar planning, and writes that Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser during most of Feith’s time in office, failed in her primary task of coordinating policy on the war.

He describes Bush as having wrestled seriously with difficult problems but as being ill-served by subordinates including Powell and Rice. Feith depicts former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld with almost complete admiration, questioning only his rough handling of subordinates.

How remarkable that two credible journalists with superb ties to Powell and Franks (and Bremer, whom Dougie also attacks) happened to obtain a copy of the manuscript in plenty of time to do interviews with all those Dougie attacks in the book, huh? DeYoung and Ricks seem barely able to contain their disdain for "the stupidest fucking guy on the planet."

Despite its bulk, the book does not address some of the basic facts of the war, such as the widespread skepticism inside the top of the U.S. military about invading Iraq, with some generals arguing that doing so would distract attention from the war against global terrorists. Nor does Feith touch on the assertion of his fellow war architect, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, that Iraq would be able to pay for its reconstruction with oil revenue.

Feith says surprisingly little new about the conduct of the war on the ground, instead focusing on the policy battles in Washington and asserting that most accounts thus far have been written from the point of view of the State Department and the CIA. He attacks those criticisms as "fear-mongering" that serves the interests of Read more →

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KBR’s Cayman Island Scam

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I recommend you read the whole article detailing KBR’s Cayman Island scam. A lot of people have linked to the lede, explaining how KBR created a shell company in Cayman Islands so it didn’t have to pay social security and unemployment benefits for workers hired through the shell company. But there are several details of note that appear further down in the story.

For example, KBR would like you to believe that it set up this shell company to help you, Mr. and Ms. American Taxpayer. It saves you money, it claims, by making these workers pay their own social security and go without unemployment insurance.

It’s bogus on its face. But deep in the article, an anonymous former KBR exec reveals that it’s actually using the shell company so it can compete against its rivals Fluor and Bechtel.

A former Halliburton executive who was in a senior position at the company in the early 1990s said construction companies that avoid taxes by setting up foreign subsidiaries have obvious advantages in bidding for military contracts.

Payroll taxes can be a significant cost, he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "If you are bidding against [rival construction firms] Fluor and Bechtel, it might give you a competitive advantage."

So you, Mr. and Ms. American Taxpayer, can pay one fee to Fluor for drivers in Iraq who will will have some safety net when they return to the US. Or you can pay a slightly smaller fee–not enough to make a difference on the cost of the war, but enough such that KBR can beat out Fluor on pricing–and have that same driver return from Iraq with no unemployment benefits.

And KBR nets the difference.

Read more →

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A $40 Million “Comedic Gold” Pissing Contest with the Chinese

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Yesterday, Danger Room reported that the Administration’s rationale for shooting down the rogue spy satellite is laughingly bogus.

The Pentagon says it has to shoot down a malfunctioning spy satellite because of the threat of a toxic gas cloud. Space security experts are calling the rationale highly unlikely. "Having the US government spend millions of dollars to destroy a billion-dollar failure to save zero lives is comedic gold," one tells DANGER ROOM.

[snip]

So what could that other reason be?

Our veteran space security specialist believes there are several. To him, the satellite shot is a chance for the military to try out its missile defense capabilities; a way to keep secret material out of the wrong hands; and a warning to the Chinese, after they destroyed a satellite about a year ago. He shared some educated guesses:

My first thought is that MDA [Missile Defense Agency] is always looking for ways to pimp their systems and provide further justification that they work. The upcoming change in Administration is almost guaranteed to result in missile defense losing the top-level advocacy that it has enjoyed for the last several years. Any additional missions and justifications that the missile defense community can provide would increase the likelihood of their systems (and budgetary power) surviving.

An additional reason could be that destroying the satellite would prevent any chance of another nation getting access to any of the potentially sensitive technology on board. However, I have heard from other sources that supposedly the NRO [National Reconnaissance Office – the country’s spy satellite shop] is actually against the "shootdown" (and I hate that term – the satellite is not flying and is coming down regardless of whether or not it gets hit by a missile). Their absence at the press briefing could lend some weight to this rumor, although it could also be explained by the nature of the satellite and its still classified link to the NRO.

My real concern is that this is simply a knee-jerk reaction made by the Administration in response to the purported threat by the Chinese. Since the April 2007 ASAT [anti-satellite] test, there have been rumors and whispers going around that the Administration and like-minded individuals are looking for more sticks (instead of carrots) to use against China. Read more →

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Condi Ignores Doubts on the 16 Words

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Given that Henry Waxman has been threatening to subpoena Condi to answer precisely the same question that Robert Wexler asked today yesterday, I would guess that Condi has practiced her answer. And, unfortunately, the ability to filibuster is one of Condi’s greatest skills–Condi frankly got the best of Wexler here (and sadly, Wexler didn’t ask her the doozy question–why she approved the 16 words in the SOTU after Tenet had warned her strongly against the Niger claim in October 2002).

If you look at this whole exchange, Condi gets away with defending her integrity in several ways:

  • By eliding the difference between consensus judgments and challenges to it (in other words, Condi successfully ducked Wexler’s question about burying those challenges)
  • By shifting from the decisions she made about intelligence to the decisions others did
  • By ignoring the whole question of leaks to the press (Scooter Libby testified that Condi was the chief leaker in the A1 Cut-Out strategy, for example, which suggests Condi repeatedly leaked insta-declassified information to people like Judy Miller so it would become the dominant story)

But I’m particularly interested in Condi’s successful efforts to still–almost five years after the Valerie Wilson leak–pawn the blame off on the CIA:

RICE: Congressman, I am sorry, I sat through the briefings for the Congress and for the Senate, done by the intelligence community. We were there to provide policy advice, but either George Tenet or John McLaughlin or others gave those briefings.

And, Congressman, the American people were told what their intelligence community as a whole believed to be the assessment concerning Iraq’s programs.

Condi suggests that if Congress and the American people got bad information, it’s George Tenet’s and John McLaughlin’s fault.

Which is why–in addition to asking Condi why she approved the 16 words in the SOTU–Wexler didn’t bring up this briefing:

On October 2, 2002, the Deputy DCI testified before the SSCI. Senator Jon Kyl asked the Deputy DCI whether he had read the British white paper and whether he disagreed with anything in the report. The Deputy DCI testified that "the one thing where I think they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations. We’ve looked at those reports and we don’t think they are very credible. Read more →

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More Cable News

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We’ve been watching much of the Middle East lose chunks of their telecommunications traffic over the past week–without knowing what to make of it. I wanted to point to this post from John Robb, an expert on asymmetric warfare, with some meta thoughts on the possibilities of such disruptions.

  • Vulnerability. All of the same network vulnerabilities we see other infrastructures are in force with the Internet’s long haul systems (the network analysis of systempunkts applies). If this was a real attack rather than a series of accidents (the geographical concentration is interesting in this regard), then this was likely a capabilities test that yielded data on response times, impact, and duration.
  • Means. Attacks on undersea cables are within the capacity of small groups to accomplish. With precise mapping (these cables take very circuitous routes), a cable could be cut with as little as an anchor. However, nation-states are the most capable in this sphere (including, a growing number of micropowers). Why would a nation-state do this? Deterrence. Disconnection from the global communications grid is very likely become a form of economic/social coercion in the future (for standard national security reasons all the way down to an inability/unwillingness to crack down on rampant Internet crime, which is growing into a HUGE global problem).
  • Precision. It’s very hard to precisely target an attack’s damage. Regional impacts are unavoidable (collective punishment for everyone that connects to the target country?). Here’s a final point to consider: closed systems like China’s that route traffic through firewall choke-points, or other closely held infrastructure, are likely very vulnerable to an attack of this type. [my emphasis]

I’ve highlighted two points: this kind of attack could be feasibly launched by a small group. And the intent of such an attack might be political coercion. 

If you tie the notion of coercion to the two countries that lost the most service–Egypt and Pakistan–it has interesting implications. 

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