Majikthise

Why would Cheney hide proposed Al Qaeda hit squads from congress?

2009-07-14T02:36:14-04:00

The New York Times is reporting that the super-secret program Dick Cheney ordered the CIA to conceal from Congress involved a plan to send teams of hit men to hunt down suspected al Qaeda operatives.

We're told that job was ultimately left to killer drones because death squads proved impractical.

But if that was it, why would Dick Cheney order the CIA deny the program? The U.S. declared war on AQ after 9/11. The CIA has been operating against AQ ever since. You don't have to be a high-ranking intel committee member to know about the drone strikes, you just have to read a newspaper once in a while. Of course, Cheney is notoriously paranoid and secretive. But the administration even sends out press releases about its shiny killer drones.

A former CIA counterterrorism official told TPM Muckraker that there's no legal difference between killing with a drone and shooting or stabbing the victim.

It seems safe to assume that the program involved something more than a vague plan to send CIA agents to hunt down suspected terrorists.

Torture is a Moral Issue

2009-07-10T16:16:51-04:00

This is, of course, a truism. Not the least less true for that, but it still falls in the realm of, "D'uh".

Torture, and the repudiation of it, is part of how I come to be here. It's, actually, how I came to be lots of places on the web. I was an interrogator, and interrogation instructor for the US Army for 16 years. I was enlisted from 1993, to 2009. Half my service was before, "That Tuesday," in Sept. '01, and half after.

I was in the invasion force in April 2003. A couple of my friends were on the third vehicle to cross the berm, with the armored column of the 3ID (one of them said, "it was all sand in front of us, and when I turned around, there were all the tanks lined up behind me).

Torture is more than a moral issue to me. It's personal.

Funny. I had a "quiet war" (if you have to have one, try for a quiet one, trust me on this). That is, perhaps, funny sad, more than funny ha-ha, but it's still funny. Then I was home. Away from the hustle and strife. I didn't have the sound of semi-distant gunfire in the mornings. I wasn't sleeping with a rifle in arm's reach. I didn't have to put on armor to go to supper.

But the war wasn't over. My war, to be clicéd, didn't really start until April, 2004. Just about the time I was released from Active Duty back to the Calif. Army National Guard, when Abu Ghraib hit the news.

It clobbered me.

Imagine that you are priest. A good priest. You know there are some bad apples. You know there are priests who take advantage of their parishioners. Not just the usual foibles of being human, and committed to a difficult way of life, but those who take advantage of the peculiar relationship they have to those who are in their care. But you don't think it's endemic. You trust that in the egregious cases the Church will step in to stop things.

Then the scandal breaks.

That's a crisis of faith. So too for me was Abu Ghraib.

I was lucky. Because I was in the Guard, I could speak pretty freely. I'd been blogging about the war, and politics; while I was in hospitals recovering, but once I was back in the Reserve Component I wasn't worried about AR 600-200, quite so much. When I wasn't on orders, I was a private citizen.

Torture doesn't work. As a means of systematically collecting information it fails. As means of collecting it, "just this once" it might get valid information, but you will never know, and the odds are so highly stacked against you that it's better not to try.

So I went "to and fro" around the web, making the arguments. It has gotten to the point I can script the response pattern. I wish it were boring. I wish I could stop. I pray it doesn't become an obsession. A couple of months ago I was in one of the routine pissing matches, and I stumbled on an article which seemed relevant. It was a journal article, and I didn't have a subscription, nor yet a handy library in which to go and read it.

So I did what one does in such situations... I sent an e-mail to the author, asking if I could get a copy. What I got, in addition, was in invitation to speak at a conference. Dr. Arrigo refuses to participate in them without an interrogator present; because, she says, there is no way to get it right, without one. I jumped at the chance.

Why? Because torture is a moral issue? If not me, who? If not now, when?

You can see me speaking here:

If you want to see some of the rest of the conference go here

The torture apologists, and the torture mongers are arguing that torture is, at the very least, the lesser evil. They are, at the upper bound arguing it's a moral good; even a moral imperative. They are wrong. I am in the position of being able to speak to their error. So I will. Here, there and everywhere.

It sounds self-aggrandizing, even melodramatic. What it is, is sort of tedious, and boring. The same arguments, the same responses, the same foolish stupidity, cupidity, and duplicity. Evil is banal. All it takes to flourish is the silence of assent.

Well, the war radicalized me, and I brought it home with me. Someday I hope it's over. Someday I want the "debate" to be closed. Until that day... I'll just have to keep on keeping on.

Thank you for your support.

So much for the surge in Juarez

2009-07-09T18:31:34-04:00

It shouldn't come as any great surprise that the de facto military occupation of Juarez isn't helping:

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - A massive army surge has failed to calm raging drug gang violence in Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city on the U.S. border that is at the heart of President Felipe Calderon's drug war.

An influx of 10,000 troops and federal police in March brought temporary calm, but three months later drug murders have resumed and are overtaking 2008 levels, according to police and media tallies. [Reuters]

Of course, the drug warriors will say that the apocalyptic violence is proof that Calderon's brilliant ant-violence plan is working. The cartels are feeling the pressure and turning on each other and the state. That's certainly happening, but few wars are won by attrition. How do we get from tactics that systematically exacerbate the violence to a strategy for bringing the violence under control? The war is costing the cartels money, but they've still got billions upon billions of dollars to spend on weapons and bribes.

We read a lot about the military's participation in the Mexican drug war, but U.S. media seldom explain the overall strategy. According to a Mexican military historian I interviewed for a forthcoming article, the plan is to split the half-dozen or so large cartels into many smaller factions by capturing their leaders.

A recent analysis by Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution suggests that this is exactly the wrong way to prevent violence.

The Mexican drug trade is unusually violent even by the standards of illegal markets. Felbab-Brown argues that this is partly because the market is getting younger and younger. Today's managers are in their late twenties or early thirties and their foot soldiers are in their late teens or early twenties. That's because the authorities have been steadily picking off cartel leaders. Which sounds like a smart idea in the abstract, until you consider that multi-billion dollar businesses with large private armies are falling into the hands of much younger and less experienced narcos.

Felbab-Brown argues that the older generation of drug dealers survived and prospered because they were more interested in making money than proving how tough they were. They kept the violence in check because bloodbaths were bad for business. A few large cartels divided up the country and focused on trafficking rather than turf battles. Nowadays, every inch of turf is hotly contested, often by multiple parties.

The authorities are betting that messy succession battles will fragment the cartels, which does appear to be happening. They hope that smaller organizations will be easier to mop up, one by one. However, two or three small cartels fighting each other are more violent than one big cartel at peace with itself.

Lest you think the narcos have a monopoly on violence, note that the Washington Post has finally had the guts to acknowledge what human rights organizations and even the U.S. State Department have been saying for years: The Mexican military routinely kidnaps, tortures, rapes, and murders. As Human Rights Watch noted in a recent report, the Mexican armed forces enjoy virtual impunity because the military is almost solely responsible for investigating crimes committed by soldiers.

The higher-ups are doing damage control. Charles Bowden reports in Mother Jones: "Reporters were also issued a common explanation by Mexico's defense department: Yes, there would almost certainly be a spate of robberies and rapes committed by men in uniform but these were to be explained as the deeds of drug traffickers disguising themselves as soldiers to embarrass the Army. Any questions?"

Mexico's human rights record disqualifies the country for much of the U.S. aid it would otherwise recieve under the $1.4 billion training and equipment package known as the Merida Iniative. Is that ironic, or what?

Lindsay Beyerstein on CNN: "Stimulus II, The Reckonning" [Video]

2009-07-09T14:32:24-04:00

Here's the link to my CNN appearance.

Decorated surgical masks in Mexico

2009-07-09T13:38:45-04:00

When swine flu struck in May, Mexicans tried to protect themselves with surgical masks. Some people turned their masks into canvasses. Designs ranged from the whimsical to the ghoulish to the political.

Morning Coffee - 9 July 2009

2009-07-09T11:58:19-04:00

Coffee's on at UN Dispatch.

Reader Victor Manfredi contributed the photo, which he took on his recent trip to Brazil.

Links for 2007-03-10 [del.icio.us]

2007-03-11T00:00:00-08:00

The face of war | Salon Life
My second Salon cover story, an interview with photojournalist Nina Berman about her prizewinning portrait of a horribly burned Marine and his bride on their wedding day in small-town Illinois.

Links for 2007-03-03 [del.icio.us]

2007-03-04T00:00:00-08:00

"Goring the Former Veep" By Howard Kurtz
At last, a common-sense blogger! In Salon, Lindsay Beyerstein describes how she turned down an offer to blog for John Edwards--from a staffer she calls "Bob"--before the hiring of Amanda Marcotte ended in a meltdown: " 'I'm probably not . . . the perso

Links for 2007-02-19 [del.icio.us]

2007-02-20T00:00:00-08:00

"The Hotel Aftermath: Inside Mologne House, the Survivors of War Wrestle With Military Bureaucracy and Personal Demons" By Anne Hull and Dana Priest
The guests of Mologne House have been blown up, shot, crushed and shaken, and now their convalescence takes place among the chandeliers and wingback chairs of the 200-room hotel on the grounds of Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Links for 2007-02-08 [del.icio.us]

2007-02-09T00:00:00-08:00

Melissa and Amanda have not been fired!

Links for 2007-02-07 [del.icio.us]

2007-02-08T00:00:00-08:00

Will cancer vaccine get to all women? - sex - 18 April 2005 - New Scientist

Links for 2007-02-05 [del.icio.us]

2007-02-06T00:00:00-08:00

"3 Women Charged With Sexually Abusing Teen" By Steve Vogel
A Montgomery County substitute teacher and two counselors at a group home for neglected youths have been arrested on charges of having sex with a 16-year-old boy living at the home, police said yesterday.

Links for 2007-02-03 [del.icio.us]

2007-02-04T00:00:00-08:00

"Missing Md. Teens' Car Found With 2 Bodies: Loudoun Discovery Points to Suicide" By Candace Rondeaux and Steve Vogel
The bodies of two girls were discovered yesterday in Loudoun County in a car that belongs to the family of one of two Montgomery County teenagers missing for two weeks, law enforcement authorities said. Some officials said the victims apparently committed
"Brazilians' Arrest Focuses Scrutiny on Evangelical Groups" By Monte Reel
SAO PAULO, Brazil -- Before a service at Reborn in Christ Church this week, a man hawked gospel CDs outside the front door. In the cavernous nave, volunteers placed envelopes soliciting cash donations on each of about 1,000 chairs, while cameramen working