Guantánamo Career Suicide

Guantánamo Career Suicide

 Guantánamo Policy Chief Pulls Plug on Career:
Spills Government Beans in Radio Interview

 

 

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Guantánamo Policy, Charles “Cully” Stimson, resigned following uproar over a 12 January interview on Federal Newsradio, a propaganda front for the Bush administration. In the interview Stimson stated,

“I think the news story that you’re really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request through a major news organization, somebody asked, ‘Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there? And you know what, it’s shocking.”

When the interviewer asked who was paying for the legal representation, Stimson replied,

“It’s not clear, is it? Some will maintain that they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, that they’re doing it pro bono, and I suspect they are; others are receiving moneys from who knows where, and I’d be curious to have them explain that.”

And then:

“I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.”

This was enough not only to offend everyone who believes in and supports western democratic values, justice and the rule of law but also to incense large numbers of professional legal practitioners across the USA.

However, it’s not the first time US military officials have criticized Guantánamo defense lawyers.

In March of last year, Col. Moe Davis, chief prosecutor for the Guantánamo tribunals, told journalists that several major law firms that have defense contractors as paying clients are providing pro bono lawyers to defend Guantánamo detainees in habeas petitions.

“It’s somewhat ironic that the weaponry that we use in the war on terrorism is helping fund the defense of the alleged terrorists,” Davis said at the time.

This is the same Col. Moe Davis who is the Prosecutor in David Hicks’s case, who has lately been in the news in Australia, insisting that Hicks is the world’s blackest murderer since Hitler, and on Insight1 with Jenny Brockie on SBS2.

The Administration and the Pentagon effected to be embarrassed by Stimson’s loyal fervour.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Brian Maka, said Stimson was not speaking for the Bush administration.

Stimson’s comments “do not represent the views of the Department of Defense or the thinking of its leadership,” Maka said.

Stimson apologised within days claiming that

“those comments do not reflect my core beliefs”

Of course what he said does clearly express his core beliefs.

He was comfortable, relaxed and confident in the radical right wing atmosphere of the radio station with its right wing propagandist presenters. He was comfortable, relaxed and confident that he was expressing administration policy, thinking and attitudes.

It was no slip of the tongue, no moment of passion, no mad aberration. He was under no duress, and was very definitely not being flustered by tough questioning. He offered the information quite unprompted. He arrived at the interview intending to say what he said. He came prepared with a list of at least 12 of the 14 the law firms who had been disclosed as representing Guantánamo inmates.

There can be no doubt that he planned to say what he said and that what he said expressed his core beliefs. He is a practised, experienced propagandist who was repeating the company message which he had delivered almost word for word elsewhere and more than once:

GENE ROBINSON, Washington Post columnist (from audiotape): “…calls into question, really, the United States’ commitment to the values and ideals that we said we want to spread throughout the world, such as due process and rule of law. And Guantánamo seems to mock those values.”

 

KUR: How do you answer that?

 

MR. STIMSON: He’s wrong. That doesn’t mock those values at all. Indeed, we’re giving more rights to these terrorists than our own soldiers got during any conflict when they were detained or the Nazis got when they were detained during World War II. During war, you’re not entitled to a trial. You’re not entitled to criminal charges.

Stimson has consistently over time reinforced his message about the treatment of prisoners in Guantánamo:

  • It is transparent and humane
  • Prisoners are not entitled to a trial
  • They get more than they deserve or have a right to
  • There is minimal opposition to the holding of these prisoners
  • They release a lot of people
  • The media are irresponsible in their reporting
  • The inmates are unquestionably guilty

In fact…

  • These are “the very terrorists” who are personally responsible for the financial losses incurred by American companies after 9/11.

Stimson claims that over 2000 journalists, 500 media outlets have been there to see what goes on to the point that Guantánamo is

“probably the most transparent and open location in the world”.

However, the Washington Post has reported that

“Journalists could not talk to detainees, they had to be accompanied by a military escort and their photos were censored. Now, the Pentagon has shut down access entirely _ at least temporarily.”

Stimson claimed that media organisations are “irresponsible” for not showing the new prison at Guantánamo but continue to show Camp X-ray footage. After all, they have access to “B-roll” footage of the new facility but they don’t show it. “Ask yourself why?” he said, “Are they fair and balanced, or do they have an agenda?”

It is a reasonably safe bet that news organisations are not permitted to originate their own footage and that what Stimson describes as the “B-roll footage” is shot by the Defense Department and is entirely sanitised, showing only what Defense wants outsiders to see and nothing that they would not want outsiders to see.

Meanwhile, FBI agents have documented more than two dozen incidents of possible mistreatment at Guantánamo. In one, a detainee’s head was wrapped in duct tape because he chanted the Quran; in a second, a detainee pulled out his hair after hours in a sweltering room.

In a December 2006 court ruling, a federal judge in Washington decried the plight of “some of the unfortunate petitioners who have been detained for many years in the terrible conditions at Guantánamo Bay.”

Stimson characterises local and international public opposition to the Guantánamo detentions as

“…small little protests around the world – really quite minor – drummed up by Amnesty International trying to get their loyal, ardent followers to show up – these are a couple dozen here, a couple dozen folks there…”

Can detainees be released without trial?

CAUSEY: You have about 395 detainees there and I believe something like 340 others have previously been released to their home countries.?

 

STIMSON: 377 detainees, Mike, have been transferred or released from Guantánamo. Just in 2006 alone we transferred 114. We’re on track to transfer or release, you know, 70, 80, 90, 100 in the coming year. Now those numbers are hard to guess because of the diplomatic negotiations. What’s important to know is that those 395 that are there on the island now, roughly 70 to 80 have already been approved for transfer or release. So we’re just waiting for those countries to step up and accept responsibility and mitigate the threat that these guys pose.

Obviously detainees can be, and are, released without trial. It’s just a matter of “diplomacy”. As far as the American Administration is concerned they, but particularly those concerned with Guantánamo, are constrained by no laws. They can hold or release inmates on a whim. Even the politically careful Australian Prime Minister John Howard has said as much, insisting that if David Hicks is not brought to trial before the end of the year he will have him repatriated. He will not ask. He will require.

(This is directly contrary to Mr Cheney’s claims in Sydney (24 February) that “he cannot speed up the process”. One of them is a liar or both of them are liars. Place your vote here.)

And here is what has become of the presumption of innocence in the American justice system as expressed by Cuddly Stimson:

NORRIS: Is there a possibility that there are some folks on Guantánamo that don’t belong there?
STIMSON: Not now.

Referring to Stimson’s lame apology before his ultimate (forced) resignation, the Ethics Scoreboard says:

Stimson’s apology is a lie, and obviously so. What he calls his “core beliefs” are nothing of the kind. They are his official beliefs, the principles that he is required to support officially (that is, give lip service to) as a member of the bar and a high-ranking official in a democracy. True core beliefs are what you reveal when your guard is down, not what you contradict.

The reaction to Stimson’s vilification of Guantánamo defenders was swift and strident. Just a few of these will give the flavour.

The National Lawyers Guild

The undersigned organizations call for the censure of Mr. Charles “Cully” Stimson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, for statements attacking the lawyers who are defending the Guantánamo detainees. Mr. Stimson’s remarks are aimed at chilling the willingness of lawyers to represent those persons imprisoned at Guantánamo, and are contrary to bedrock principles of the right to counsel and the presumption of innocence.

The threats by Mr. Stimson are not subtle. They imply these pro bono lawyers are terrorists. They exhort corporations to pull business from the firms where these lawyers are employed. These remarks are slanderous, and violate the free association rights of these lawyers and their firms.

The Society of American Law Teachers (representing over 800 members at 165 law schools):

Mr. Stimson – who, as a lawyer, should know better – has violated the highest standards of our profession by challenging the lawyers engaged in pro bono representation of Guantánamo detainees and calling on the clients of their law firms to withhold their business from those firms. Lawyers are essential to upholding the rule of law in our country, and the rule of law is precisely what the President claims the United States is defending in the “war on terror.”

And from the American Bar Association:

Lawyers represent people in criminal cases to fulfill a core American value: the treatment of all people equally before the law. To impugn those who are doing this critical work — and doing it on a volunteer basis — is deeply offensive to members of the legal profession, and we hope to all Americans.” She is right. Stimson should be immediately fired for what he said last week and, furthermore, he should be investigated for breaching the code of professional ethics. Not only were the remarks nasty, they were politically and diplomatically unwise.

 

What Stimson said, and why, and how, constitutes conduct unbecoming a member of government and a member of the bar. One hand may be acting aggressively, if not mercifully and justly, toward prosecuting suspected terrorists. But the other hand, Stimson’s hand, is undercutting the very principles we fight for. This is how our government waged the legal war on terror in our name last week.

 

As Thomas Paine wrote of the United States years ago, “This is a government of laws, and not men” – the unchecked power of even the President is not part of democracy or our system of justice.

Shortly after his apology, which was not accepted by any but the most hardline in the Bush Administration, Stimson resigned.

Some see the direct hand of John Yoo in the authorship of the letter of “apology”.
John Yoo’s position can be described as “justice in the service of politics”, rather than what we would normally expect, “politics in the service of justice”.
John Yoo’s judicial politics can be traced to Dick Cheney.

Salon reported an interview with Yoo regarding torture. The interviewer asked:

“If the president deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?”

 

“No treaty,” replied John Yoo, the former Justice Department official who wrote the crucial memos justifying President Bush’s policies on torture, “war on terror” detainees and domestic surveillance without warrants. Yoo made these assertions at a public debate in December [2005] in Chicago, where he also espoused the radical notion of the “unitary executive” — the idea that the president as commander in chief is the sole judge of the law, unbound by hindrances such as the Geneva Conventions, and possesses inherent authority to subordinate independent government agencies to his fiat. This concept is the cornerstone of the Bush legal doctrine.

Salon also says

Yoo, who left the Justice Department two years ago and is now a law professor at Boalt Hall at the University of California at Berkeley, was the prolific writer. But he was not the author of the process…Then, as now, the driving force was Vice President Cheney.
Cheney’s idea of the head of state invested with absolute power is a venerable one. Bush’s presidency is the latest experiment to achieve it…

 

The original commentary on it appeared in a pamphlet published in 1776, “Common Sense,” written by Tom Paine:

 

“But where say some is the King of America? I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve as monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.”

So what does Stimson believe to be “Truth, Justice and the American way”?

“DoD official says some Guantánamo detainees may be imprisoned for life”. More than 300 prisoners now held by the US at Guantanamo Bay could remain there under US military detention for the rest of their lives, DoD Deputy Assistant Secretary for Detainee Affairs Charles “Cully” Stimson told Reuters during a routine visit to the base last week.

Ethics Scoreboard has named Charles “Cully” Stimson Liar of the Month for January 2007

 

1 The Insight webpage has a poll which asks “Should David Hicks be brought home?”
Voting is 93% in favour of Hicks’s immediate return.

 

Did Dick? Dick Did!

Did Dick? Dick Did!

 

My Dick dick is bigger than your dikdik

 

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has arrived in Australia. Dick is visiting to offer John Howard a reach-around for the upcoming federal erection.

Values Australia staff report that Howard welcomed Dick personally with the greeting,

“Is that a gun in your pocket or is it your huge erect Dick?”

Overseas Affairs Minister Robin Boywonder was overheard to add,

“I like Dick!”

Dick was dining at the restaurant.
Dick was?
Was Dick ever! It was on the tax-payer!
Clever Dick.
Slick Dick!

How tall was Dick?
Oh, Dick’s about six foot seven.
Big Dick!

Dick went to the doctor’s the other day
Did Dick?
Dick Did!
Poorly Dick?
Sick Dick!

Dick walked into the bedroom last night. His wife ripped off all her clothes, threw herself on the bed and said: “Do what you want.” Dick said “Really?” She said: “Yes! YES!! Do exactly what you want!”
So Dick put his jacket on and went out and bombed Iran.
Thick Dick!

“Thanks to that dick joke, my kids will have new shoes this Christmas!”

Thanks to that joke Dick, Iraq will have no Shias this Christmas.

Where Do They Get These Ideas?

Where Do They Get These Ideas?

Dang Me If Its Not From Richard Perle!

 

Values Australia provides the following information to help Australians understand some of their Australian values, especially to understand where our values come from in relation to Middle East policy (yes, we know they come from America, but where did they get them from?)

In 1996 a group calling themselves the Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000, and led by Richard Perle (well known for his work for the Likud at the Project for the New American Century), produced a paper for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then-Prime Minister of Israel.

Perle, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, and known as “The Prince of Darkness” was also at the time an advisor to the Administration on Defense matters and remains a director of the Jerusalem Post. Amongst many other things.

David Wurmser is the Middle East Adviser to US Vice President Dick Cheney.

Douglas Feith was George W Bush’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. He was one of the signatories of the 1998 letter to President Clinton advocating the removal of Saddam Hussein. Feith led the controversial Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon which was set up to second-guess the CIA and other intelligence agencies and, some say, preemptively conclude that Iraq had WMD and “stove-pipe” this conclusion to the White House..

Other contributors were James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Robert Loewenberg and Meyrav Wurmser.

The paper was called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm“.

Amongst its conclusions:

“Israel has the opportunity to make a clean break; it can forge a peace process and strategy based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism

[…]

“Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon”

[…]

“Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right – as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.”

[…]

“Israel’s new agenda can signal a clean break by abandoning a policy which assumed exhaustion and allowed strategic retreat by reestablishing the principle of preemption, rather than retaliation alone and by ceasing to absorb blows to the nation without response.”

[All emphasis added]

Anything ring a bell?

UK’s ‘Morale Muscular’ Withdrawal

UK’s ‘Morale Muscular’ Withdrawal

“…under no circumstances should we allow ourselves to lose morale muscular and to step back from this…”  [Brendan Nelson]

 

Values Australia, in partnership with the Ministry of Mateship, notes the recent declaration by the British Government that it will shortly begin withdrawing its forces from Iraq. We understand that a lot of people will criticise the British for this and claim that they are “Cutting and Running”, not “Staying the Course” and not staying till “The Job is Done”. They will say that they are not “Standing By Their Mates”, and that their withdrawal will “Give the Terrorists Heart” and “Unleash Terrorism” on a scale unimagineable until now. They will say that withdrawal will mean utter defeat which will terminally damage the prestige and influence of the West and create instability in the Middle East.

The Australian Govermint wishes Australians, by which it means the Voting Public, to know that it will never make such accusations, and has never – and it has always been absolutely consistent in this – never made any such accusations in the past. The Australian Government has never suggested that anyone who advocates withdrawal from Iraq is on the side of the terrorists, or is playing into their hands.

On the other hand, Australia will never leave Iraq because to do so would be to cut and run, not stay the course, not stand by their mates, give the terrorists heart and unleash terrorism on a scale unimagineable until now.

For Australia (by which we mean the Labor Party) to withdraw from Iraq would be to side with the terrorists and play into their hands. An Australian withdrawal would mean utter defeat which would terminally damage the prestige and influence of the West and create instability in the Middle East.

Is that crystal clear?

Then let us make it clear. CRYSTAL!

JOHN HOWARD: Kerry I do know this, that if we are out in a year’s time it will be in circumstances of defeat. When I say we, I mean all the Coalition forces and obviously if the Americans go, then other forces will go as well. Now that would be circumstances of defeat and I know that the consequences of that for the West, its prestige, American prestige and influence in the Middle East, to spur that would give the terrorism in the Middle East, the implications it would have for the stability of other countries in the Middle East and also in our part of the world, the spur to terrorism, I think the consequences of that for Australia would be very great indeed.

[…]

I think we owe it to our greatest and strongest ally to stick by them in their hour of trial and pressure and need.

 

BRENDAN NELSON: Well, in fact what the Prime Minister is saying, that if Senator Obama or anybody else for that matter were to unilaterally and prematurely withdraw American and coalition forces from Iraq before the Iraqis can look after their own affairs, you are of course handing victory to the terrorists.

[…]

…our generation is engaged in a struggle which is going to last a long time against disparate groups of Islamic extremists throughout the world, principal amongst them being al Qaeda, and if anybody in any position of credibility were to say a particular date – in this case March and 2008 – coalition and US troops would be withdrawn, of course those terrorists are going to say, “Let us hope that that’s the policy outcome”, because that’s what these people are doing day to day in the bloodiest, cruelest, inhumane way in Iraq and it’s absolutely essential that all of us and the United States in particular prevail over that kind of outrageous and heinous behaviour.

[…]

BRENDAN NELSON: Well whatever the motives of those who are demanding that the coalition withdraw from Iraq, that is precisely what al Qaeda and the terrorists want us to do as well, Tony. And the reason why Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, formerly al-Zarqawi, and a whole variety of terrorists are so determined to see that we leave Iraq and leave so prematurely before democracy can take hold, before an Iraqi security force is trained and Iraqis have the same democratic rights and freedoms enjoyed by Americans and Australians, is because they are determined to see defeat for the United States.

 

ALEXANDER DOWNER: I don’t think it would be right for us as an ally and a friend of America’s and of Britain’s, for us just to say to them well, you can do the dirty work, you can do the tough job, we’re not going to bother, but we’d like you to help us in South East Asia with the difficult things we’re doing1.

[…]

TONY JONES: Mr Downer, here’s what the American colonel who’s in charge of training said. He said, “Another advantage is that if it’s staffed by foreign officers they don’t have to come into Iraq and become targets in order to teach.”

 

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Yeah, but most training look, to be frank with you, you can find an American colonel – not a very senior officer in America – you can find an American colonel who would say almost anything. But to be honest with you -there are thousands of American colonels…

 

And just to make it even clearer if it could possibly be, the Australian voting public needs to understand exactly what is at stake. Iraq’s democracy is at stake in this and our credibility as a result because WE elected it.

 

BRENDAN NELSON: There is most certainly a coincidence of interest, if you want to call it Tony, between the United States, Britain, Australia and almost 30 other countries that democratically elected the Iraqi Government…

Got that?

 

1Mr Downer has not made it clear exactly what help the United States and Britain have been giving us up to now in South East Asia with “the difficult things we’re doing”.

Hypocrite, Sociopath or Fool?

Hypocrite, Sociopath or Fool?

Almost Human?

In her column explaining ‘the key to understanding the Prime Minister,’ Anne Summers offers an explanation for the Groveller General’s attitude towards Iraq, terrorisim and Barack Obama. But it is just not good enough, says our investigative journalist.

“On the morning when the planes hit the twin towers and the Pentagon, the smoke from which Howard had a view from his hotel, he had an epiphany; perhaps for the first, and only, time in his life he experienced compassion for fellow humans.”

“I couldn’t get out of my mind the desperation of the people who were trapped in those buildings and the sense of loss and despair of those families.”

This could make him seem, well, almost human. Until you consider what he did then: he eagerly agreed to, barracked for and participated in – and continues to agree to, barrack for and participate in, without apology or admission of error – a visitation upon the people of Iraq (a country not associated with the events that had so upset him) a retributive storm of violence and destruction that has produced the very same “desperation of the people who were trapped in those buildings and the sense of loss and despair of those families”, except that at this stage the horror he has sanctioned and helped unleash has affected at least a hundred times as many people, almost all of them innocent civilians.

A person who becomes emotional about three thousand Americans but is sanguine about the suffering and death of how many hundred thousand Iraqis and their families and communities, suffering and death which he personally was a party to, is unbalanced at best.

A person who can happily allow these two things to co-exist peacefully in their mind is a hypocrite, a sociopath, or a fool. Or all of the above.”

 

 

Blackberry Massage Parlours

ABC reports “Relief at hand for NYC text addicts”
Apparently American hotels are offering hand massages for texters.

“Mobile phone addicts who spend hours on end sending text messages, emails or talking on their phone can now seek a ‘BlackBerry Thumb’ massage for their sore hands”

But we always knew that any decent concierge could arrange a massage with manual relief.

 

 

I am definitely unhappy about this

ABC also reported:

“Man critical after stabbing in Sydney suburb”

And so you would be!

The headline was changed later in the morning to “Man stabbed in chest during Sydney brawl”.

Oddly enough, ABC had four years earlier (19/12/2002) reported, almost identically,

“Sydney man critical after stabbing”.

The Undertaker’s Tally

The Undertaker’s Tally

 

Son of Leo Strauss

 

In his extraordinary article, The Undertaker’s Tally, Roger Morris1 chillingly, and deeply disturbingly, lifts the veil on the life, times and evil mind of the real Donald Rumsfeld.

Morris begins with Rumsfeld’s early years, his early political ambitions, his run for Congress with the aid of the subsequently infamous Jeb Magruder secretly smearing his opponent. Speaking of the later, dashed but not extinguished Presidential hopes of Rumsfeld and Cheney, Morris says

Historians will only guess at the rancor building in these two deeply ambitious, deeply disappointed figures at the president they had, George W. Bush, whom they no doubt saw as manifestly, maddeningly inferior. The Rumsfeld-Cheney recompense, at vast cost to the nation and world, would be their fierce seizure of power after September 11, 2001.

It sounds like what it looks like in hindsight; a right-wing coup which wrested effective control of the country from an incompetent, “pathologically unfit” president in order to put into effect a policy which had been brewing for years, as shown in the letter from the Project For The New American Century to President Clinton2 in 1998.

Central to understanding the duplicity of Rumsfeld is his notorious relationship with Saddam Hussein, whom Rumsfeld was secretively funding, arming and supporting in his war with Iran.

There could have been little doubt that Saddam would use the considerable aid Rumsfeld was sliding under the table, and any larger gain from a better-armed war with Iran, to further the regime’s most aggressive weapons development, and to move from a U.S.-strengthened position to tyrannize all the more savagely Iraqi Shiites and Kurds. In the event, as Washington watched, he did it all – and no one could or should have known more than Rumsfeld.
….
Rumsfeld would be faulted for his pandering 1984 diplomacy in Baghdad to appease the tyranny (the gassing of the Kurds had already begun) after a timorous, hypocritical Washington statement denouncing use of chemical weapons. The toll of the policy would be much more. Iraqi chemical weapons plants bombed in the 1991 Gulf War and releasing agents to which some 100,000 American troops were exposed, the pandemic of the infamous Gulf War Syndrome, would trace in large measure to the materiel and technology afforded by Rumsfeld’s knowing acts seven years before.

He discusses the people who were around Rumsfeld, including the Zionists and their agendas.

He opened government as never before to men who habitually, automatically assumed that U.S. and Israeli interests were identical, with no objectivity about American policy in a Middle East they scarcely understood to begin with. Their ignorance and presumption were matched only by their zeal to cluster in decisive quarters of the new Bush regime where decisions of grand strategy, of war and peace, were now shaped and predetermined.

Historians will debate, too, the obvious blurred allegiance of what some call these American “Likudniks” with their utter conformity to the belligerent ultra-Zionist mentality of the Israeli right.

And he looks at the inevitabilities of Rumsfeld’s reign.

In blindly striking out after 9/11 — a reflexive, grandly opportunistic, richly self-satisfying political act in America — without seriously understanding the politics or history of either country, he plunged the Pentagon into blundering, plundering occupations that made the nightmares of 2007 and beyond nearly inevitable.

It is an astonishing piece of investigative writing which only a Washington insider could bring off this convincingly and which is essential reading for anyone struggling to understand how the US could have got itself into the mess it is in.

Naturally the Groveller General and his bureaucrats could have had no idea of any of this. If they did they could not have gone along with it so cheerfully.

 

 

1Roger Morris served in the State Department and on the Senior Staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon and resigned in protest at the invasion of Cambodia. He then worked as a legislative advisor in the U.S. Senate and a director of policy studies at the Carnegie Endowment, and writes this Rumsfeldian history from intimate firsthand knowledge as well as extensive research. A Visiting Honors professor at the University of Washington and Research Fellow of the Green Institute, he is an award-winning historian and investigative journalist, including a National Book Award Silver Medal winner, and the author of books on Nixon, Kissinger, Haig, and the Clintons. More recently, he co-authored with Sally Denton The Money and the Power, a history of Las Vegas as the paradigm of national corruption. His latest work, Shadows of the Eagle, a history of U.S. covert interventions and policy in the Middle East and South Asia over the past half-century, will be published in 2007 by Knopf.

2Project For A New American Century letter to Clinton
The letter from the PNAC to President Clinton is still proudly displayed on their website.

It is dated January 26, 1998 (Australia Day, appropriately enough)
It was signed by Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider, Jr., Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey and Robert B. Zoellick.

Khalilzad is an Afghan native, a Muslim, current US Ambassador to Iraq and probable next Ambassador to the UN. Bolton was Ambassador to the UN but was not confirmed. Look up the rest. Many or most of them are in the Administration, were in it, or advise it.

Some excerpts from the letter:

The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration’s attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

What the letter makes clear is that the Republican right was obsessed with attacking Iraq. All that was needed was a pretext. It is hard to interpret “our vital interests in the Gulf” as anything other than “oil”. No mention here of democracy, or freeing the enslaved Iraqi masses from tyranny.

Given the limited range of any of Iraq’s missile systems, who must the writers be suggesting could be endangered by Iraq? Well, Israel. So it appears that the writers wrongly assume that Israel is an “ally” of the USA. But this is not true. Nevertheless it is telling that those who have signed the letter assume it, or at least hope others will believe it. From their point of view it probably seems obvious.

If only they had not so arrogantly dismissed as misguided the “insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council”. They might not be in the quagmire they created.

And remember, these people are still in power and influencing – actually, dominating – world affairs. But, you know, they come across as not that bright and not that clever.