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ContactMay 22, 2008
Kremlinologists Reactivated for Release of McCain Medical Records
Link: McCain Set to Release Health Data on Friday - New York Times.
On Friday, the campaign will allow a small pool of reporters access to the records from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Pacific time in a conference room at the Copper Wind Resort in Phoenix, near the Mayo Clinic Scottsdale. The reporters will be allowed to take notes but not remove or photocopy the records. Campaign officials said they were imposing the restrictions to prevent the actual records from wide dissemination.
McCain--a model of transparency.
Posted by Anupam Chander on May 22, 2008 at 03:19 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 20, 2008
Inaugural Poem 1992
Link: Inaugural Poem.
... Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.
Maya Angelou
Posted by Anupam Chander on May 20, 2008 at 06:39 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 22, 2008
Were All Gitmo Interrogations Videotaped?
Link: How we got hoodwinked into tolerating abusive interrogations. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine.
between
Last week, a team of faculty and students from Seton Hall Law School—the folks who've worked tirelessly for years to document the government's best evidence (PDF) against the Guantanamo prisoners—released a new report suggesting that the government has recorded all of the interrogations at Guantanamo. Using documents prepared by the government and obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, the team established that all of the 24,000 interrogations conducted at the camp since 2002 were taped. This jibes with reports from the detainees themselves, who came forward to dispute CIA Director Michael Hayden's claim last winter that the videotaping had been halted in 2002.It also makes perfect sense. If the government was making tapes to protect interrogators in the event of future legal action, there was no reason to stop. Hayden's claim last December that officials "determined that its documentary reporting was full and exacting, removing any need for tapes" defies logic. No matter how good reporting is, video would have been better. That's why the Army Field Manual for Human Intelligence Collection states a preference for videotaping interrogations: "[V]ideo recording is possibly the most accurate method of recording a questioning session since it records not only the voices but also can be examined for details of body language and source and collector interaction."
Posted by Anupam Chander on February 22, 2008 at 07:14 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 19, 2008
La Bamba Obama (by Billy SooHoo)
Posted by Anupam Chander on February 19, 2008 at 08:52 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 06, 2007
851 U.S. Soldiers Died Thus Far in Iraq in 2007; 25 More Iraqi Corpses Discovered
Link: 2007 Deadliest Year for U.S. Troops in Iraq - New York Times.
Six American soldiers were killed in three separate attacks Monday, the military said today, taking the number of deaths this year to 851 and making 2007 the deadliest year of the war for American troops....Meanwhile, violence against Iraqis continued. The mass grave was found Saturday during a joint American-Iraqi operation in the Lake Tharthar area, a desolate rural area near the site of another grave, holding 25 bodies, that was found less than a month ago.
Local police officials said the bodies were dumped in and around an abandoned building.
“Some were buried in wells and some were left in rooms used as prisons,” said a police officer who helped clear the grave. “These corpses are part of what we expect to find more of in the future.”
A tragedy for everyone.
Posted by Anupam Chander on November 6, 2007 at 09:39 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 03, 2007
"Things Have Never Been Worse. Stay the Course."
Link: George Bush's presidency | A sceptic tackles a true believer | Economist.com.
The Economist cites Robert Draper's new book, Dead Certain, for uncovering a remarkable set of pithy phrases that captured the baffling results of 2000 and 2004:
In 2000 he beat an incumbent vice-president after eight years of peace and prosperity: the wry slogan among his inner circle was: “Things have never been better. Vote for change.”
Four years later, with the economy stalled and Iraq in flames, he won again. This time, the backstage slogan was: “Things have never been worse. Stay the course.”
Posted by Anupam Chander on November 3, 2007 at 10:37 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 27, 2007
CBS News Iraq translator killed
Link: CBS News Iraq translator killed.
Anwar Abbas Lafta, who had worked for CBS for about 10 months, was seized Aug. 20 by eight to 10 armed men, some of whom wore body armor, the network said in a statement issued in New York. It said the attackers beat up the translator’s brother and shot his sister in the arm, and that the family later received two calls demanding ransom.On Aug. 25, the family was notified by police that Abbas’ body had been found on the north side of Sadr City...
CBS said Abbas was in his early 50s and was not married. He had worked as a translator for the U.S. military in Iraq for about three years before joining CBS News.
... Last year, CBS News cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan were killed and correspondent Kimberly Dozier was seriously wounded when a car bomb exploded as they were working on a story about American troops in Iraq. A U.S. soldier and an Iraqi interpreter were killed in the same blast.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 112 journalists and 40 media support workers — translators, drivers, fixers and guards — have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003 — not counting Abbas. Most of the victims were Iraqis, and many of them were believed targeted because they worked for foreigners.
Five Associated Press employees have died violently in the Iraq war, including three killed since December.
Yet another tragedy. Has Iraq become the world's most dangerous place--for our troops, for contractors, for reporters, and for Iraqis themselves?
Posted by Anupam Chander on August 27, 2007 at 11:17 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 29, 2007
When Can Prisoners Communicate with Public?
Link: Free our Talib - Los Angeles Times.
And to deepen the inequity, Lindh's sentence also gags him, preventing him from protesting his confinement or discussing his interrogation and treatment.
(assuming the LA Times editorial is accurate on this point...) When can a gag order be part of a criminal sentence? What First Amendment rights do prisoners have?
Posted by Anupam Chander on July 29, 2007 at 02:50 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 25, 2007
Freed Medics Claim Torture to Draw Confession
Link: Freed medics describe Libyan captivity - International Herald Tribune.
In an official handwritten 2003 declaration to the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry, Snezhana Dimitrova, who was not at the news conference, detailed her two months of physical torture in a Tripoli police station after her arrest in Benghazi in February 1999.
Dimitrova recounted having her arms tied together behind her back, and being hung from a door by her arms.
"Even when I wasn't on the door anymore but on the floor, I thought I had no arms," her statement said. "Tens of men's legs kicked me, then they made me stand up and started to slap me. Everything hurt. I had no strength. I was beaten like a dog, my hair had fallen over my eyes, my blindfold had fallen off and my nose was bleeding."
...Dimitrova wrote that the translator was shouting, "Confess or you will die here."
Posted by Anupam Chander on July 25, 2007 at 03:55 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
West Point Study Concludes that Most Gitmo Detainees Posed Threat
Link: Study Paints a Threatening Portrait of Detainees - New York Times.
Accelerating the public relations battle over Guantánamo, a new study requested by the Pentagon argues that large numbers of detainees were a direct threat to United States forces, including al Qaeda fighters, terrorism-training camp veterans and men who had experience with explosives, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
The report, by a terrorism study center at West Point, is essentially a rebuttal by the military of growing assertions by advocates for detainees that the naval station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is filled with hapless innocents and low-level cooks and other support personnel who pose no real threat.
It paints a chilling portrait of the Guantánamo detainees. Publicly available information, the report says, indicates that 73 percent of them were a “demonstrated threat” to American or coalition forces. It says that 95 percent were at the least a “potential threat,” including detainees who had played a supporting role in terrorist groups or had expressed a commitment to pursuing jihadist violence.
...The report is an analysis of previously released military summaries of the unclassified evidence used in 516 of the military hearings that determine whether detainees are properly held as enemy combatants. It was written at the request of the Pentagon by the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point, a teaching and research center that describes itself as “actively involved in supporting the global war on terror.”
The report says it is an analysis of the same data that was used for a February 2006 report that has become a major irritation to military officials. That report has become the foundation for assertions that Guantánamo imprisons harmless men under extreme conditions.
The 2006 report was prepared by the Seton Hall University School of Law and by two lawyers who represent detainees — Mark P. Denbeaux, a law professor there, and his son and law partner, Joshua W. Denbeaux.
The Seton Hall report concluded that only 8 percent of the detainees had been characterized by the military as Al Qaeda fighters, while 55 percent had not been determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States.
Both reports are based on partial descriptions of the military’s evidence against detainees, found in the summaries given to the detainees at the start of their military hearings. Classified evidence is not included in the summaries.
Most of the hearings, known as combatant status review tribunals, were conducted in a six-month period beginning in the fall of 2004.
If even 5% of those incarcerated at Gitmo were not a "potential threat," then why are they being held?
Posted by Anupam Chander on July 25, 2007 at 03:13 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 24, 2007
Understanding American Politics: A Glimpse Inside the White House
The Washington Post helpfully posts here a Powerpoint presentation offered by White House political strategists. It offers a revealing glimpse inside a political operation.
Posted by Anupam Chander on July 24, 2007 at 01:01 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 11, 2007
Goldsmith and Katyal Propose National Security Court
Link here. Two important points:
(1) The title--The Terrorists' Court--(presumably written by the NYT, not Goldsmith/Katyal) omits "alleged." Many of the supposed "worst of the worst" have been quietly told to go home--presumably after we determined that they were not in fact terrorists. (The body of the piece itself carefully uses "alleged" before "terrorist.")
(2) The following sentence is quite misleading:
A terrorist captured in Afghanistan should not be able to seek release because he was not read his Miranda rights.
Miranda does not, as far as I know, require that a defendant be freed upon the discovery that he was not read his legal rights. It simply prevents statements made by the defendant prior to his learning of his rights to be suppressed from the evidence against him. There may be the possibility that suppressing such evidence might result in the release of a defendant--if there is no substantial evidence against the defendant other than the defendant's pre-Miranda statements. But the sentence omits this important caveat. (One presumes that this is simply an editing error by the NYT.)
Posted by Anupam Chander on July 11, 2007 at 04:30 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 10, 2007
Balkinization Collects the "Anti-Torture Memos"
Link: Balkinization.
The folks at Balkinization--the country's leading legal blog against torture--have "grouped together our posts on the complex of issues raised by torture, interrogation, detention, war powers, Executive authority, the Department of Justice, and the Office of Legal Counsel."
This collection helps demonstrate that it was possible to discern our carelessness with the rule of law early on, not just in retrospect.
My own contributions in this area--focused largely on the lawless zone we erected in Guantanamo--can be found here:
GUANTANAMO AND THE RULE OF LAW:
Why We Should Not Use Guantanamo Bay To Avoid The Constitution
March 7, 2002, Findlaw.com
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020307_chander.html
LIBERATING AFGHANISTAN BUT YIELDING FREEDOMS AT HOME:
Reflections On The Year Since September 11
Wed., Sep. 11, 2002
http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/commentary/20020911_chander.html
Posted by Anupam Chander on July 10, 2007 at 04:42 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 26, 2007
Iraqi Youth Face Lasting Scars of War - washingtonpost.com
Link: Iraqi Youth Face Lasting Scars of War - washingtonpost.com.
Marwa Hussein watched as gunmen stormed into her home and executed her parents. Afterward, her uncle brought her to the Alwiya Orphanage, a high-walled compound nestled in central Baghdad with a concrete yard for a playground. That was more than two years ago, and for 13-year-old Marwa, shy and thin with walnut-colored eyes and long brown hair, the memory of her parents' last moments is always with her."They were killed," she said, her voice trailing away as she sat on her narrow bed with pink sheets. Tears started to slide down her face. As social worker Maysoon Tahsin comforted her, other orphans in the room, where 12 girls sleep, watched solemnly.
..."With our limited resources, the societal impact is going to be very bad," said Haider Abdul Muhsin, one of the country's few child psychiatrists. "This generation will become a very violent generation, much worse than during Saddam Hussein's regime."
Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes, half of them children, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. Many are being killed inside their sanctuaries -- at playgrounds, on soccer fields and in schools. Criminals are routinely kidnapping children for ransom as lawlessness goes unchecked. Violence has orphaned tens of thousands.
Marwa copes by taking care of her sisters Aliyah, 9, and Sura, 7, Tahsin said. Marwa helps them with their homework and bathes them. On the playground, she keeps careful watch.
"She's trying to substitute for the role of their mother," said Tahsin, who has been a social worker for 15 years. "But even as she tries to fill this gap, she is in deep need for emotional support as well."
Posted by Anupam Chander on June 26, 2007 at 07:29 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 17, 2007
Why Torture Harms Us
Link: Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar - It's Our Cage, Too - washingtonpost.com.
After witnessing the sad spectacle of the Republican candidates (save for McCain) tripping over themselves to support "enhanced interrogation techniques" like waterboarding, it's useful to review a simple argument against torture by two former military men.
Fear can be a strong motivator. It led Franklin Roosevelt to intern tens of thousands of innocent U.S. citizens during World War II; it led to Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt, which ruined the lives of hundreds of Americans. And it led the United States to adopt a policy at the highest levels that condoned and even authorized torture of prisoners in our custody.Fear is the justification offered for this policy by former CIA director George Tenet as he promotes his new book. Tenet oversaw the secret CIA interrogation program in which torture techniques euphemistically called "waterboarding," "sensory deprivation," "sleep deprivation" and "stress positions" -- conduct we used to call war crimes -- were used. In defending these abuses, Tenet revealed: "Everybody forgets one central context of what we lived through: the palpable fear that we felt on the basis of the fact that there was so much we did not know."
.... The American people are understandably fearful about another attack like the one we sustained on Sept. 11, 2001. But it is the duty of the commander in chief to lead the country away from the grip of fear, not into its grasp. Regrettably, at Tuesday night's presidential debate in South Carolina, several Republican candidates revealed a stunning failure to understand this most basic obligation. Indeed, among the candidates, only John McCain demonstrated that he understands the close connection between our security and our values as a nation.
Posted by Anupam Chander on May 17, 2007 at 10:56 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 26, 2007
Slave Labor Helped Build UVA; UVA Apologizes
Link: University apologizes for using slaves to build school - CNN.com.
The University of Virginia's board marked founder Thomas Jefferson's birthday with an apology for the school's use of slave labor between 1819 and 1865.The board of visitors unanimously passed an apology resolution on April 13, the 264th anniversary of Jefferson's birth, but did not announce the action until Tuesday.
...Slaves in Virginia helped build some of the first buildings at University of Virginia, which opened in 1825, and the university continued to use slave labor for four decades after that.
"The board expresses its particular regret for the employment of enslaved persons in these years," the resolution reads. It says "the notion of involuntary servitude is repugnant and incompatible with the ideals upon which this university was founded."
...Nine percent of the university's undergraduate students are black, according to university spokeswoman Carol Wood.
Posted by Anupam Chander on April 26, 2007 at 09:17 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 16, 2007
What Can Bush Do About Darfur?
Link: Driving Up the Price of Blood - New York Times.
Suggestions from Nicholas Kristof:
What is harder to fathom is President Bush’s refusal to stand up to the genocide for four years. Why not impose a no-fly zone, why not hold an international conference on Darfur, why not invite survivors to the White House for a photo-op, why not give a prime-time speech about Darfur?Perhaps the explanation for Mr. Bush’s passivity is the same as the explanation for Mr. Bashir’s brutality. Maybe Mr. Bush has made his calculations, looked at the number of calls and letters he gets about Darfur, weighed the pros and cons, and decided that Americans really don’t care enough about genocide to make him pay a major price for allowing it to continue.
Posted by Anupam Chander on April 16, 2007 at 09:50 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 13, 2007
US Attorneys--For Federalists Only?
Link: Attorney Replacements Picked Prior to Firings - washingtonpost.com.
Among other documents released today was a chart of U.S. attorneys distributed in February that notes whether each sitting prosecutor is a member of the Federalist Society, a coalition of conservative lawyers and legal scholars with close ties to the Bush administration.
Posted by Anupam Chander on April 13, 2007 at 12:14 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
New York Times Suggests that Executives Owe Investors Losses in Tech Stocks Since 2000 Highs
Link: Former CA executive to pay $800 million in restitution | CNET News.com.
By this measure, there may be quite a few executives who need to cough up.Even so, the fund will be able to repay only a small part of what shareholders in the company--including many employees--lost in the fraud. The company's stock trades at one-third of its peak in 2000. CA shares on Thursday closed at $26.36, up 40 cents.
Posted by Anupam Chander on April 13, 2007 at 09:28 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 08, 2007
A Department of Politically Motivated Prosecutions?
Link: Department of Injustice - New York Times.
Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny.How can this have been happening without a national uproar? The authors explain: “We believe that this tremendous disparity is politically motivated and it occurs because the local (non-statewide and non-Congressional) investigations occur under the radar of a diligent national press. Each instance is treated by a local beat reporter as an isolated case that is only of local interest.”
Posted by Anupam Chander on March 8, 2007 at 09:14 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 02, 2007
Maureen Dowd on Al Gore
Letter to the Editor of the New York Times:
Link: The Boomlet for Al Gore (4 Letters) - New York Times.
To the Editor:
It is surprising to read Maureen Dowd’s glowing endorsement of Al Gore’s qualifications to be president.
As I recall, when Mr. Gore was actually working hard for that job, many of Ms. Dowd’s columns lingered on such crucial items as his likability, his appearance and the fact that his handlers had persuaded him to wear — horrors — brown!
While now promoting Mr. Gore, Ms. Dowd seems to have shifted her focus to belittling Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, two candidates who are actually running.
Marcia Amsterdam New York, Feb. 28, 2007
Posted by Anupam Chander on March 2, 2007 at 05:11 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 06, 2007
A Threat to American Justice: Administration Removes 7 U.S. Attorneys
Link: Playing Politics With Justice - New York Times.
The Bush administration has pushed out at least seven United States attorneys recently for what appear to be purely political reasons. Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, has opened an investigation, and not a moment too soon. The American justice system would be seriously damaged if United States attorneys were stripped of their independence.... The Bush administration has broken with that tradition in a way that reeks of politics. One of the dismissed United States attorneys, H. E. Cummins III of Arkansas, has been replaced by a former Republican National Committee opposition researcher who worked for Karl Rove. Another, Carol Lam of San Diego, is in the middle of a sensitive public corruption inquiry that has already brought down one Republican congressman, Randy Cunningham, and is looking at other possible wrongdoers. The White House is taking advantage of a little-noticed provision in the Patriot Act that allows the president to appoint interim United States attorneys without Senate approval.
At a Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday on the dismissals, the deputy attorney general who represented the Bush administration failed to explain convincingly why the United States attorneys had been removed, or to dispel the suspicion that politics was the driving force.
Posted by Anupam Chander on February 6, 2007 at 09:50 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 13, 2007
Tony Snow Claims to be Better Feminist than Barbara Boxer
Link: Passing Exchange Becomes Political Flashpoint - New York Times.
During the Thursday hearing, Senator Boxer told Ms. Rice: “Who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families. And I just want to bring us back to that fact.”In an interview on Friday, Senator Boxer said her comments had been misunderstood and were now being turned against her by the White House and by Republicans. “What I was trying to do in this exchange was to find common ground with Condi Rice,” she said. “My whole point was to focus on the military families who pay the price.”
Senator Boxer added: “I’m saying, she’s like me, we do not have families who are in the military."...
“I don’t know if she was intentionally tacky,” Mr. Snow said in an interview on Fox News. “It’s a great leap backward for feminism.”
Rush Limbaugh also got into the act. “Here you have a rich white chick with a huge, big mouth, trying to lynch this, an African-American woman, right before Martin Luther King Day, hitting below the ovaries here,” Mr. Limbaugh said on his radio show.
Snow claims to be worried about harms to feminism; Limbaugh claims to be worried about "lynching" of an African American woman.
Snow and Limbaugh are hardly in a position to lecture Senator Boxer on feminism or racism. One would have thought that they would instead have thought that any slights perceived by Secretary Rice reflected too thin a skin--a political correctness that barred necessary speech. (That, at least, is what they would have said if someone on their side of the isle had made the same remark.)
But the strategy here is to exploit the tiniest of gaffes--even if it requires twisting the statement far beyond its original intention. Attacking their critics on this basis allows them to avoid honest debate on the issues.
Posted by Anupam Chander on January 13, 2007 at 12:12 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
How Republicans win if we lose in Iraq - Los Angeles Times
Link: How Republicans win if we lose in Iraq - Los Angeles Times.
Rosa Brooks in the LA Times:
Writing on this page Thursday, Jonah Goldberg praised President Bush for telling Americans that "he will settle for nothing less than winning" in Iraq. Sure, Goldberg acknowledged, Bush "may be deluding himself," but at least he's "trying to win." No, he's not.It's clear that Bush knows perfectly well there's no possibility of "winning" anymore, so apparently he's seeking in Iraq exactly what Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger sought in Vietnam before the 1972 election: a face-saving "decent interval" before the virtually inevitable collapse of the U.S.-backed government.
By 1971, Nixon and Kissinger understood that "winning" in Vietnam was no longer in the cards — so they shifted from trying to win the war to trying to win the next election. As Nixon put it in March 1971: "We can't have [the South Vietnamese] knocked over brutally … " Kissinger finished the thought " … before the election." So Nixon and Kissinger pushed the South Vietnamese to "stand on their own," promising we'd support them if necessary. But at the same time, Kissinger assured the North Vietnamese — through China — that the U.S. wouldn't intervene to prevent a North Vietnamese victory — as long as that victory didn't come with embarrassing speed.
As historian Jeffrey Kimball has documented, Kissinger's talking points for his first meeting with Chinese Premier Chou En-lai on the topic of Vietnam included a promise that the U.S. would withdraw all troops and "leave the political evolution of Vietnam to the Vietnamese." The U.S. would "let objective realities" — North Vietnamese military superiority — "shape the political future." In the margins of his briefing book, Kissinger scrawled a handwritten elaboration for Chou: "We want a decent interval. You have our assurance."
The "decent interval" strategy worked. By declaring that "peace was at hand," Kissinger took the wind out of antiwar Democrat George McGovern's sails, and Nixon won reelection. And though Nixon himself later fell to the Watergate scandal, the Republican Party successfully used the "decent interval" to cast the Democratic Party in the role of spoiler.
In December 1974, tired of hemorrhaging funds to prop up the failing South Vietnamese government, the Democrat-controlled Congress finally pulled the plug on further U.S. financial support. The following April, Saigon fell, just as Kissinger and Nixon had privately predicted. But enough time had elapsed for Republicans to pin the blame on South Vietnamese missteps and, most important, on the perfidy of the Democratic Party.
In the end, the Vietnam War was a terrible tragedy for the both the U.S. and the Vietnamese — but it was a great success for the Republican Party. Nixon and Kissinger's "decent interval" created the myth of the Democratic Party as weak and anti-military and helped keep the White House in Republican hands for all but 12 of the last 30 years.
Bush's "surge" is the "decent interval" redux. It's too little, too late, and it relies on the Iraqis to do what we know full well they can't do. There is no realistic likelihood that it will lead to an enduring solution in Iraq. But it may well provide the decent interval the GOP needs if it is to survive beyond the 2008 elections.
The surge makes Bush look, as Goldberg suggests, like he really wants to win, even as he refuses to take the necessary and honest steps to mitigate the terrible damage we've already done. The surge buys time — and meanwhile, the Democratic Party is placed in the same untenable position it was in during the last stages of the Vietnam War.
If it backs Bush's feckless plan, it loses credibility with the voters, who hate the war. But if it opposes the escalation, it will be attacked for undermining the military. Ann Coulter offered a preview last week: "Democrats want to cut and run as fast as possible from Iraq, betraying the Iraqis who supported us and rewarding our enemies — exactly as they did to the South Vietnamese."
The Democrats need to break out of the script the White House has written for them and remind Americans that the war in Iraq is a dangerous distraction from other pressing threats to U.S. security, such as nuclear proliferation and the rise of militant Islam worldwide. They need to emphasize that withdrawal from Iraq isn't about "defeat" — it's about shifting our troops, our money and our energy to the real challenges that the Bush administration is ignoring or exacerbating.
Posted by Anupam Chander on January 13, 2007 at 12:05 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 20, 2006
Our Jails in Iraq
Link: Only the Jailers Are Safe - New York Times.
Ever since the world learned of the lawless state of American military prisons in Iraq, the administration has hidden behind the claim that only a few bad apples were brutalizing prisoners. President Bush also has dodged the full force of public outrage because the victims were foreigners, mostly Muslims, captured in what he has painted as a war against Islamic terrorists bent on destroying America.This week, The Times published two articles that reminded us again that the American military prisons are profoundly and systemically broken and that no one is safe from the summary judgment and harsh treatment institutionalized by the White House and the Pentagon after 9/11.
On Monday, Michael Moss wrote about a U.S. contractor who was swept up in a military raid and dumped into a system where everyone is presumed guilty and denied any chance to prove otherwise.
Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago, was a whistle-blower who prompted the raid by tipping off the F.B.I. to suspicious activity at the company where he worked, including possible weapons trafficking. He was arrested and held for 97 days — shackled and blindfolded, prevented from sleeping by blaring music and round-the-clock lights. In other words, he was subjected to the same mistreatment that thousands of non-Americans have been subjected to since the 2003 invasion.
Even after the military learned who Mr. Vance was, they continued to hold him in these abusive conditions for weeks more. He was not allowed to defend himself at the Potemkin hearing held to justify his detention. And that was special treatment. As an American citizen, he was at least allowed to attend his hearing. An Iraqi, or an Afghani, or any other foreigner, would have been barred from the room.
This is not the handiwork of a few out-of-control sadists at Abu Ghraib. This is a system that was created and operated outside American law and American standards of decency. Except for the few low-ranking soldiers periodically punished for abusing prisoners, it is a system without any accountability.
Yesterday, David Johnston reported that nearly 20 cases in which civilian contractors were accused of abusing detainees have been sent to the Justice Department. So far, the record is perfect: not a single indictment.
Administration officials said that prosecutors were hobbled by a lack of evidence and witnesses, or that the military’s cases were simply shoddy. This sounds like another excuse from an administration that has papered over prisoner abuse and denied there is any connection between Mr. Bush’s decision to flout the Geneva Conventions and the repeated cases of abuse and torture. We hope the new Congress will be more aggressive on this issue than the last one, which was more bent on preserving the Republican majority than preserving American values and rights. The lawless nature of Mr. Bush’s war on terror has already cost the nation dearly in terms of global prestige, while increasing the risks facing every American serving in the military.
The following is worth reiterating: "He was arrested and held for 97 days — shackled and blindfolded, prevented from sleeping by blaring music and round-the-clock lights. In other words, he was subjected to the same mistreatment that thousands of non-Americans have been subjected to since the 2003 invasion."
The Bush Administration does not believe that this constitutes torture. This is an important question that deserves further reflection from all of us, including especially doctors, psychologists, and historians.
Posted by Anupam Chander on December 20, 2006 at 12:20 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 18, 2006
Government Plans $100 Million Courthouse in Guantanamo for 60 Defendants
(CBS) The U.S. government already has a courthouse at Guantanamo Bay, but the Pentagon isn't satisfied, CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports. It plans to spend $100 million of your tax dollars to build a huge new facility just down the hill.
"This is very expensive for the number of cases, 60, which they anticipate trying," says Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
That's right, a $100 million courthouse to try about 60 cases. That's $1.6 million per defendant ... just for the building. The trials will cost many millions more.
Of course, these aren't run-of-the-mill defendants. They're terror suspects including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad. Still, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are balking at the idea — and the cost — in private meetings with Defense Department officials.
"I asked them if they had looked at alternatives in the United States, looked at them, and the answer was no," Feinstein says. "I was surprised that they hadn't looked at Fort Leavenworth, at other places to build a courthouse, to bring these people over, to keep them in secure custody, to try them."
Posted by Anupam Chander on December 18, 2006 at 06:23 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 29, 2006
The United States Apologizes to American Lawyer
Link: Apology Note - washingtonpost.com.
The United States of America apologizes to Mr. Brandon Mayfield and his family for the suffering caused by the FBI's misidentification of Mr. Mayfield's fingerprint and the resulting investigation of Mr. Mayfield, including his arrest as a material witness in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings and the execution of search warrants and other court orders in the Mayfield family home and in Mr. Mayfield's law office.The United States acknowledges that the investigation and arrest were deeply upsetting to Mr. Mayfield, to Mrs. Mayfield, and to their three young children, and the United States regrets that it mistakenly linked Mr. Mayfield to this terrorist attack. The FBI has implemented a number of measures in an effort to ensure that what happened to Mr. Mayfield and the Mayfield family does not happen again.
This Administration needs to sign many more apology notes. Wrongly accusing Mr. Mayfield is hardly the worst of this Administration's errors--but the only one for which I've seen them apologize.
But perhaps President Bush should declare that he is commander in chief--that the buck stops with him--and that he apologizes for his grievous errors.
Posted by Anupam Chander on November 29, 2006 at 10:31 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 23, 2006
Plantation Where Frederick Douglass Was to Be Broken, Now Home to Donald Rumsfeld
Link: Misery, Thy Name is Rumsfeld's Vacation Home (News) Elizabeth Oliver.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld owns a vacation home named Mount Misery, an infamous 19th century manor where unruly slaves were sent to be broken by owner Edward Covey. The most famous of these slaves was a rebellious, teenage Frederick Douglass, who describes his brutal and formative experience there in his 1855 book, My Bondage and My Freedom.Writes Douglass, "I shall never be able to narrate the mental experience through which it was my lot to pass during my stay at Covey's. I was completely wrecked, changed, and bewildered; goaded almost to madness at one time, and at another reconciling myself to my wretched condition."
Of course, the sins of a prior occupant do not descend automatically onto the current occupant. (More on the story here.) But perhaps, at least, the current occupant, especially one occupying one of the highest political positions in the country, might directly honor the victims of this home's sad history. Perhaps Sec'y Rumsfeld has already done so and I'm simply unaware of his efforts.
Posted by Anupam Chander on November 23, 2006 at 10:20 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 26, 2006
Vice President of Torture Cheney: Complaints Over Waterboarding "Silly"
Link: Cheney endorses simulated drowning - Financial Times - MSNBC.com.
Cheney was responding to a radio interviewer from North Dakota station WDAY who asked whether water boarding, which involves simulated drowning, was a "no-brainer" if the information it yielded would save American lives. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney replied.
Asked in the radio interview whether he would agree that the debate over terrorist interrogations and water boarding was "a little silly", Cheney responded: "I do agree".
"I think the terrorist threat, for example, with respect to our ability to interrogate high-value detainees like Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, that's been a very important tool that we've had to be able to secure the nation," he said.
The article also notes:
"[It's] a direct affront to the primary authors of the Military Commission Act in the Senate — John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner — all of whom have publicly stated that the legislation signed by the president last week makes water boarding a war crime," said Jennifer Daskal, advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "This is Cheney ignoring the consensus of his own Pentagon," she said, referring to comments by senior officials that harsh interrogation techniques do not produce reliable intelligence.
Posted by Anupam Chander on October 26, 2006 at 03:41 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 10, 2006
Iraqi Death Toll More than Half-Million, Study Says
Link: Iraqi Death Toll Exceeds 600,000, Study Estimates - WSJ.com.
A new study asserts that roughly 600,000 Iraqis have died from violence since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, a figure many times higher than any previous estimate.The study, to be published Saturday in the British medical journal the Lancet, was conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health by sending teams of Iraqi doctors across Iraq from May through July. The findings are sure to draw fire from skeptics and could color the debate over the war ahead of congressional elections next month.
The Defense Department until 2004 eschewed any effort to compute the number of Iraqi dead but this summer released a study putting the civilian casualty rate between May and August at 117 people a day. Other tabulations using different methodologies put the range of total civilian fatalities so far from about 50,000 to more than 150,000. President Bush in December said "30,000, more or less" had died in Iraq during the invasion and in the violence since.
The Johns Hopkins team conducted its study using a methodology known as "cluster sampling." That involved randomly picking 47 clusters of households for a total 1,849 households, scattered across Iraq. Team members interviewed each household about any deaths in the family during the 40 months since the invasion, as well as in the year before the invasion. The team says it reviewed death certificates for 92% of all deaths reported. Based on those figures, it tabulated national mortality rates for various periods before and after the start of the war. The mortality rate last year was nearly four times the preinvasion rate, the study found.
"Since March 2003, an additional 2.5% of Iraq's population has died above what would have occurred without conflict," the report said. The country's population is roughly 24 million people.
Human Rights Watch has estimated Saddam Hussein's regime killed 250,000 to 290,000 people over 20 years.
The Lancet study, funded largely by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies, said while the percentage of deaths attributed to the U.S.-led coalition has decreased over the past year, coalition forces were involved in 31% of all violent deaths since March 2003. Most of the deaths in Iraq, particularly in the past two years, have been caused by insurgent, terrorist and sectarian violence.
Overall, the study found 55% of deaths since March 2003 were due to violence. Of that subset, 56% resulted from gunshots; car bombs and other explosives accounted for 27%, and airstrikes caused 13%. The rest were due to other factors.
Posted by Anupam Chander on October 10, 2006 at 09:35 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 06, 2006
4,000 Iraqi Police Killed in 2 Years
Link: U.S. Puts Toll of Iraqi Police at 4,000 in 2 Years - New York Times.
About 4,000 Iraqi policemen have been killed and more than 8,000 others wounded in the last two years, the American general in charge of training the country’s troubled police forces said today."They have paid a great price,” said Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson. “Yet Iraqis are signing up as recruits every day.”
General Peterson said the figures covered casualties from September 2004 to the present. Earlier this year, a spokesman for the general told Congressional researchers that 1,497 Iraqi police officers were killed and 3,256 wounded in 2005.
For much of this year, police forces have replaced American troops as the prime focus of insurgent attacks, perhaps accounting for what appears to be an increasing rate of casualties.
Posted by Anupam Chander on October 6, 2006 at 01:34 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 29, 2006
Congress Crowns King George
Link: Detainee Bill Shifts Power to President - New York Times.
The bill, which cleared a final procedural hurdle in the House on Friday and is likely to be signed into law next week by Mr. Bush, does not just allow the president to determine the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions; it also strips the courts of jurisdiction to hear challenges to his interpretation.
Posted by Anupam Chander on September 29, 2006 at 08:59 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 25, 2006
Grim Mark: U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq Exceed 2,700
Link: Salon.com | News Wires.
As of Sunday, Sept. 24, 2006, at least 2,701 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,150 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
Posted by Anupam Chander on September 25, 2006 at 09:26 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 13, 2006
Graphic Account of Hussein's 1988 Anfal Attack
Link: Hussein Trial Continues With Graphic Accounts - New York Times.
In a graphic account that he said was difficult to put into words, a Kurdish man testified today during the genocide trial of Saddam Hussein that when he and other Kurds came under attack in the mountains of northern Iraq in 1988, he was splashed with a liquid that burst from falling rockets, searing his eyes and skin.
The account, given by Omer Othman Mohammed, was the latest in what is likely to be a lengthy series of descriptions by Kurds offered in evidence during the trial, Mr. Hussein’s second since his overthrow.
At another point during the court session in Baghdad today, the lead prosecutor, Munqith al-Faroon, demanded that the chief judge resign for being too soft on Mr. Hussein, who has threatened to "crush the heads" of his accusers, Reuters reported.
Mr. Mohammed’s testimony was detailed in pool reports by journalists inside the courtroom in Baghdad.
“I am sitting here in this court, with the blind eyes and the burned body, to provide it with scientific and medical evidence,” said Mr. Mohammed, who added that he was a peshmerga guerrilla fighting the Iraqi army when his group retreated to the mountains in April 1988.
“It was so fast, we were shocked,” he said of the attack that burned him. “The rockets did not explode, they just broke. One hit close to me. When it broke, the chemical inside it covered me. It was a liquid, not a gas.
”I was in pain. There was severe pain, as if there was a high pressure on me, or as if I was touching an electric current, or as if boiling water was being poured on my body. There are feelings you cannot describe to the people around you, even your loved ones.”
Mr. Hussein and six other former high-ranking officials in his government are charged with ordering chemical-weapons attacks in the 1988 military campaign to eliminate the Kurds from the mountainous regions in Iraq’s northeast. He and his co-defendants maintain that Iraqi troops were trying to suppress Iranian-backed rebel militias in the area, not to exterminate Kurds.
Prosecutors have charged that the campaign, which Mr. Hussein’s government code-named Anfal, after a Koranic phrase that refers to “the spoils of war,” killed at least 50,000 Kurds and destroyed some 2,000 villages between February and September 1988. Many Iraqi Kurds, though, believe the attacks actually killed more than 150,000 people.
Posted by Anupam Chander on September 13, 2006 at 10:01 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 20, 2006
Military Verified Seven Massacres of Vietnamese and Cambodian Civilians
Link: Verified Civilian Slayings - Los Angeles Times.
Sept. 29, 1969E Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry, 196th Light Infantry Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division
Members of a reconnaissance platoon swept through the Que Son Valley, burning homes, slaughtering animals and clearing civilians. They killed an unarmed boy standing outside a cluster of huts and fired into one of the dwellings, killing three women and three or four children, according to an investigative report. The soldiers then executed an elderly woman and a baby.
The unit reported the victims as enemy killed in action.
In the next few days, members of the platoon raped a woman and a young girl and executed civilian detainees, investigators determined.
Posted by Anupam Chander on August 20, 2006 at 12:37 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
In Vietnam, Civilian Killings Went Unpunished - L.A. Times
Link: Civilian Killings Went Unpunished - Los Angeles Times.
The men of B Company were in a dangerous state of mind. They had lost five men in a firefight the day before. The morning of Feb. 8, 1968, brought unwelcome orders to resume their sweep of the countryside, a green patchwork of rice paddies along Vietnam's central coast.
They met no resistance as they entered a nondescript settlement in Quang Nam province. So Jamie Henry, a 20-year-old medic, set his rifle down in a hut, unfastened his bandoliers and lighted a cigarette.
Just then, the voice of a lieutenant crackled across the radio. He reported that he had rounded up 19 civilians, and wanted to know what to do with them. Henry later recalled the company commander's response:
Kill anything that moves.
Henry stepped outside the hut and saw a small crowd of women and children. Then the shooting began.
Moments later, the 19 villagers lay dead or dying.
Back home in California, Henry published an account of the slaughter and held a news conference to air his allegations. Yet he and other Vietnam veterans who spoke out about war crimes were branded traitors and fabricators. No one was ever prosecuted for the massacre.
Now, nearly 40 years later, declassified Army files show that Henry was telling the truth — about the Feb. 8 killings and a series of other atrocities by the men of B Company.
Posted by Anupam Chander on August 20, 2006 at 12:35 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Lasting Pain, Minimal Punishment - Los Angeles Times
Link: Lasting Pain, Minimal Punishment - Los Angeles Times.
BINH DINH PROVINCE, Vietnam — On the morning of Feb. 25, 1969, Platoon Sgt. Roy E. Bumgarner Jr. led a five-man team on a reconnaissance patrol that took them into a rolling landscape of rice fields.The soldiers crossed paths with an irrigation worker and two teenage boys tending ducklings. The boys carried only bamboo cages and herding sticks, the irrigation worker a hoe.
Bumgarner detained the three Vietnamese and marched them to a secluded spot, where he and one of his men opened fire. Then they searched the bodies, removing identification papers, a watch and a wedding ring.
Next, Bumgarner dragged the bodies close together and told the other soldier to detonate a grenade near the heads.
Afterward, Bumgarner reported that three enemy fighters had been killed in action and led his team back to their base.
The incident, and others detailed in declassified Army records, show how a violent minority within the 173rd Airborne Brigade abused Vietnamese citizens with little or no fear of punishment.
A military court convicted Bumgarner of manslaughter, reduced his rank and cut his pay. But he served no prison time for the killings. He remained in Vietnam and, approximately six months later, reenlisted for another tour.
...The news reached Huynh Thi Nay as she walked home from market that morning. A neighbor told her to hurry — that U.S. soldiers had detained two duck-herders and an irrigation worker outside the hamlet.
"I dropped my carrying basket," Huynh said in a recent interview in Giao Hoi 2 Hamlet. Speaking through an interpreter, she said she raced down a footpath through the paddies to where she knew her 17-year-old son, Pham Tho, would be.
"When I reached there, I found a pair of bamboo cages … with a flock of young ducks on one side," she said. "I called out 'Tho, Tho,' about three times, but no one replied."
She ran on until she reached a jackfruit tree, where she spotted the teenager's conical hat perched in a branch. His stick and a hoe lay nearby.
The bodies of her son and his two companions were laid out like spokes of a wheel with the feet pointed outward, the bodies riddled with bullets and the heads blown off, according to Army records.
"It became as dark as night. My tears overflowed in both eyes," said Huynh, now 77. "I rushed back and informed the community here. I was running back, crying all the way. My eyes were full of tears, so I could not see my way."
... On March 31, 1972, Peter Berenbak opened the New York Times to find a photo of Bumgarner, his arm around a Vietnamese child, accompanying a feature article about Americans who considered Vietnam their home.
Posted by Anupam Chander on August 20, 2006 at 12:33 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Vietnam and Abu Ghraib
Link: A Tortured Past - Los Angeles Times.
The war crimes records were declassified in 1994 and moved to the National Archives in College Park, Md., where they went largely unnoticed.The Times examined most of the files before officials removed them from the public shelves, saying they contained personal information that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
Other records were taken by Tufts in the 1970s and donated after his death to the University of Michigan.
...Retired Brig. Gen. John H. Johns, a Vietnam veteran who served on the task force, said the files provided important lessons for dealing with the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.
"If we rationalize it as isolated acts, as we did in Vietnam and as we're doing with Abu Ghraib and similar atrocities, we'll never correct the problem," said Johns, 78.
... Herbert recounted a series of atrocities.
He said South Vietnamese troops had executed detainees in the presence of an American military advisor in February 1969. One of the victims had her throat slit as her child clung to her pant leg, Herbert said. (Investigators later concluded that about eight detainees had been slain.)
The following month, U.S. and Vietnamese interrogators tortured a teenager or young woman by electric shock and subjected a male detainee to water torture, Herbert said. He said he also saw interrogators beat two Vietnamese women held in metal storage containers.
...Unknown to the public, Army investigators probing Herbert's charges had learned that abuse of detainees by soldiers of the 173rd Airborne was much more extensive than he had alleged.
When contacted recently at his home in Colorado, Herbert declined to be quoted about the Army investigation, except to say: "If they'd really taken action about the bad apples and been honest about it … then they wouldn't be arguing about Abu Ghraib and different places today."
Posted by Anupam Chander on August 20, 2006 at 12:26 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 18, 2006
Were All Iraqis in Haditha Insurgents, In U.S. Commanders' Eyes?
Link: Marines May Have Excised Evidence on 24 Iraqi Deaths - New York Times.
In addition to faulting officers in the Second Marine Division for not aggressively investigating the Haditha killings, the Bargewell report said the commanders had created a climate that minimized the importance of Iraqi lives, particularly in Haditha, where insurgent attacks were rampant, the officials said.
“In their eyes, they didn’t believe anyone was innocent,” said one of the officials, describing the attitude of the marines in the unit toward Iraqis. “Either you were an active participant, or you were complicit.”
Posted by Anupam Chander on August 18, 2006 at 07:16 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 15, 2006
Iraq, Where Someone Peeking Might Be Carrying A Weapon
Link: A Suspect Iraqi: Do You Fire? - Los Angeles Times.
"You can tell a good person from a bad person," said Lance Cpl. Michael Nichols, a 21-year-old member of Kilo Company from Martinsville, Va. "If they are innocent they will cross the alleyway and not look at us."The toughest calls are the peekers. In Ramadi, soldiers and Marines will see Iraqis peek from behind a building. Are they nervous because they're afraid they could be shot mistakenly? Or are they up to no good? If a Marine waits too long before deciding, the next time the man peeks out from behind the building a rocket may be flying at his guard post.
...So what choice did Pfc. Busenlehner make when he saw the man looking at the guard post?
"We had two people standing on post," Busenlehner recalled. "He fired the first time and I fired the second time. Both shots hit. And yes, we got him."
... Busenlehner never found out whether the man he shot was an insurgent. Officers in Ramadi think retrieving the bodies of people killed from the outposts is not worth risking the lives of Marines.
Posted by Anupam Chander on August 15, 2006 at 07:13 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack