Will The Iraqi Army Please Stand Up?

By Cernig

As Maliki's offensively political offensive bogs down in Basra, the Associated press looks at the long tale of the Iraqi Army's failure to stand up so that US forces can stand down - mostly due to dribbling and pissing resources against the wall on the part of the Bush administration.

Iraq's new army is "developing steadily," with "strong Iraqi leaders out front," the chief U.S. trainer assured the American people. That was three-plus years ago, the U.S. Army general was David H. Petraeus, and some of those Iraqi officials at the time were busy embezzling more than $1 billion allotted for the new army's weapons, according to investigators.

The 2004-05 Defense Ministry scandal was just one in an unending series of setbacks in the five-year struggle to "stand up" an Iraqi military and allow hard-pressed U.S. forces to "stand down" from Iraq.

The latest discouraging episode was unfolding this weekend in bloody Basra, the southern city where Iraqi government forces - in their toughest test yet - were still struggling to gain the upper hand in a five-day-old battle with Shiite Muslim militias.

Year by year, the goal of deploying a capable, freestanding Iraqi army has seemed always to slip further into the future. In the latest shift, with Petraeus now U.S. commander in Iraq, the Pentagon's new quarterly status report quietly drops any prediction of when homegrown units will take over security responsibility nationwide, after last year's reports had forecast a transition in 2008.

Earlier, in January last year, President Bush said Iraqi forces would take charge in all 18 Iraqi provinces by November 2007. Four months past that deadline, they control only half the 18.

Responsibility for these ever-unfulfilled goals lies in Washington, contends retired Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who preceded Petraeus as chief trainer in Iraq.

"We continue to fail to properly resource and build the very force that will enable a responsible drawdown of our forces," Eaton told The Associated Press.

Retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, a West Point professor and frequent Iraq visitor, also sees insufficient "energy" in the U.S. effort. "Even now, there is no Iraqi air force; there's no national military medical system; there's no maintenance system," he told a New York audience on March 13.

That failure is partly incompetence, part deliberate failure to provide Iraqi forces with the equipment they need to act independently of an American logistic and heavy firepower tail. Thus, in all major operations, the tail has been able to wag the dog.

By late 2005, the U.S. command had to acknowledge that only one of 86 Iraqi army battalions was ready to fight on its own.

The Iraqis still were not given artillery, big mortars or other heavy weapons. Iraq's political unpredictability and dangerous sectarian-political divides clearly made the Americans wary that heavy weapons might be turned against them, concludes Arab military analyst Nizar Adul Kader.

"This could have been one of the fears that Americans had to take into consideration," said Kader, a retired Lebanese major general.

...The Iraqi military's list of unmet needs remains long: artillery and modern armor; advanced communications and intelligence systems; a logistics network able to supply everything from food and fuel to transport and ammunition; combat hospitals; airpower.

"This is not a balanced fighting force," said al-Qassab, the retired Iraqi general. "It's only people armed with assault rifles and pickup trucks and they go and raid like a militia."

The Iraqis and Americans are working to make Iraqi logistics self-sufficient by mid-2009. But as for "fire support," training command spokesman Lt. Col. Dan Williams said, "heavier artillery is still a ways down the road."

Regarding Iraq's tiny air force, a handful of helicopters, old transports and light planes, "in my opinion, we were late to start on this," Air Force Maj. Gen. Robert R. Allardice told the AP last June, as he took over aviation training in Baghdad.

Today, as he leaves the command, Allardice confirms there are still no plans for modern jet fighters for the Iraqis, only small, propeller-driven attack planes.

Iraq has been thus rendered unsovereign, a mere Satrapy, unable to conduct its own defense against other nations. Now, we're seeing that it's unable to conduct it's own internal security - still - as well.

The 14th Division, the main formation in Maliki's attack on the Sadrists of Basra, was recruited from the Basra area itself and is mainly composed of Badr Brigade militia inducted wholesale into the Army. It has been preening itself in Diwaniyah, Kerbala and Najaf ever since, given the prestigious but job of guarding the main Basra-Baghdad rail corridor and the Holy Cities. It's being commanded by Maliki's own brother-in-law. But this Praetorian Guard has only the very lightest of Eastern European armored trucks as it's main personnel carriers, few tanks, and no heavy artillery.

This comparatively crack division, probably the only one Maliki could be so sure of mainly staying loyal, has proven utterly inadequate to the task given it. That's partly a problem of "balance of forces", as Fester so ably pointed out the other day, but it is also a legacy of American failures and deliberate policies which have left the Iraqi Army emasculated and little more than a well-equipped militia itself.

Unless the Bush administration and the Maliki government were deep in denial, believing their own PR on how wonderful the Iraqi Army now was, then they had to be at least somewhat aware of all this. So they must have known from the very first that Maliki's offensive would need American rescuing. That means, since it went ahead anyway, that they considered that rescuing a feature, not a bug.

The trial of Osama's driver

By Libby

I suppose the law of averages would dictate that a tiny handful of the Gitmo detainees really are high value inmates, worthy of prosecution, but judging from the outcomes of the previous miltary hearings that pose as judicial review, I'd say not many of them really are players that deserved the draconian punishment they now suffer. Not that this will deter the administration from trying to make them so. Take for example, Osama's driver.

The Navy lawyer for Osama bin Laden's driver argues in a Guantánamo military commissions motion that senior Pentagon officials are orchestrating war crimes prosecutions for the 2008 campaign.

Notably, it describes a Sept. 29, 2006, meeting at the Pentagon in which Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, a veteran White House appointee, asked lawyers to consider Sept. 11, 2001, prosecutions in light of the campaign.

''We need to think about charging some of the high-value detainees because there could be strategic political value to charging some of these detainees before the election,'' England is quoted as saying.

You'll remember it was this particular political interference that led to the resignation of Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who served as former chief Pentagon prosecutor. But even leaving aside the untoward political machinations for a moment, it defies logic to cast the driver as a mastermind in any AQ plots. In any criminal enterprise, isn't the driver usually the one who's too out of the loop to be trusted with any part of the operation except driving the car? One doubts he was privy to any high level meetings. More likely he would be left waiting in the car.

I mean think about it. Isn't that like holding Hilter's limo driver responsible for the Holocaust? Maybe Hamdan was even a loyal and willing soldier in the AQ organization but the only thing high value about him is likely to be his political value to the GOP in timing his prosecution to influence the election cycle.

A small serving of justice for Siegelman

By Libby

The attorney purge scandal largely dropped out of the media narrative once "Fredo" Gonzales finally resigned, and nobody has been indicted for the gross politicalization of our Justice system yet, but at least one small step towards justice was finally taken in Alabama.

MONTGOMERY -- A federal appellate court today ordered former Gov. Don Siegelman released from prison while he appeals his 2006 conviction, saying there are "substantial questions" about his case.

That's putting it mildly. The court effectively said the prosecution didn't make its case. As Steve Benen put it in an excellent overview post, "Of course he shouldn’t have been imprisoned; the charges against him have always been a bad joke." The entire justice system has become a criminally bad joke if you ask me.

It's not like Siegelman is the only victim. One can't fail to remember the unfortunate case of Georgia Thompson in Wisconsin. She was wrongly convicted by the same group of politically beholden thugs simply to provide oppo for a failed attempt by the GOP to defeat Gov. Jim Doyle. She also spent many months wrongfully incarcerated and suffered the ruination of her personal life.

I hope I live to see the day when the true criminality of this administration is finally fully exposed and every single perp is convicted and imprisoned for the grievous damage they have done to the rule of law of this land.

Iran's Shrinking Chemical Weapons Stockpile

By Cernig

Or rather, the shrinking assessments of the size of Iran's chemical weapons stockpile.

It appears the last NIE on Iran's nuclear program isn't the only intelligence community assessment to have dialed down the hype and rhetoric over Iran's Weapons of Mass Destruction ability. Successive assessments on Iran's chemical weapons have done the same.

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, the Arms Control Wonk explains.

What next - the possibility that the U.S. intelligence community will admit that the "EFP's from Iran" narrative is flimsier than a Colin Powell presentation to the UN?

And if so would the Bush administration's Weapons of Mass Distraction - the mainstream media - even notice?

Update Meanwhile...

Last Friday, Dick Cheney was in Saudi Arabia for high-level meetings with the Saudi king and his ministers. On Saturday, it was revealed that the Saudi Shura Council -- the elite group that implements the decisions of the autocratic inner circle -- is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts' warnings of possible attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors," one of the kingdom's leading newspapers, Okaz, reports. The German-based dpa news service relayed the paper's story.

Simple prudence -- or ominous timing?

The Fallujah success story

By Libby

The Pentagon often points to Fallujah as a sign of the success of a long term occupation and a justification to remain there for the foreseeable future. We're told we can't jeopardize these sort of gains after we spent all that blood and treasure -- twice -- with major assaults to 'secure' the city. So just what does a secure Fallujah look like?

Fallujah today is sealed off with blast walls and checkpoints. Residents are given permits to enter the city. All visitors and their weapons are registered. Police check every car. The U.S. military has divided the city into nine gated communities.

Sounds charming doesn't it? Maybe we could use this model of success to bring security to some of our own troubled inner cities. Heck, we even have a head start. The administration's new national ID scheme, which is about to go into effect, is tailor made for entry by permit only. But let's not forget, we're doing this to nuture the young democracy in Iraq. Just ask Fallujah's police chief, Col. Faisal Ismail al-Zobaie, a former member of Hussein's elite Republican Guard, who is our strongman in the city.

What al-Zobaie wants is for the U.S. military to hand over full control of Fallujah. He believes Iraq's current leaders aren't strong enough. Asked whether democracy could ever bloom here, he replied: "No democracy in Iraq. Ever."

Well, that's certainly worth 4,000 reported dead, tens of thousand permanently injured troops and $3 trillion tax dollars, isn't it? [via BuzzFlash]

Air Force Mistakenly Sent Nuke Triggers To Taiwan

By Cernig

Back in 2006 the Air Force mistakenly shipped "four electrical fuses for nose cone assemblies for ICBMs" intended for Minuteman missiles to Taiwan thinking they were helicopter batteries. They had originally been mis-labelled in 2005 during a transfer between two USAF bases, then sent on to Taiwan the following year. The items have now been returned to the U.S. but the breach of nuclear security and threat to non-proliferation was deemed serious enough that SecDef Gate's number two - Ryan Henry - described it as "intolerable" and said Bush had been personally briefed. The Pentagon are stressing that no nuclear materials were involved rather than that top-secret technology was sent to another nation and that the U.S. still wouldn't have known if the Taiwanese hadn't sent the damn things back!

"Pale Rider" and Blue Girl" at the Blue Girl, Red State blog have done a great job tracking down this story and have all the details. Blue Girl writes:

Without saying anything that I shouldn't - my husband spent his career working on electronics systems of ICBMs, so please believe me when I tell you this...it isn't about the nuclear material, and stressing that fissibles were not compromised, move along, nothing to see here...is a headfake.

These fuses are not what civilians think of when they hear the word "fuse." They are top-secret components in the electrical systems of ICBMs. The warhead is the easy part of a missile system. The hard part is the delivery vehicle - you don't deliver a nuclear payload by oxcart, you know. Compromising the electronics is possibly providing the final piece of information to a rogue state like North Korea that is openly developing missile technology to allow them to finally have a weapon that will reach the west coast. This is a big god-damned deal, and careers need to end over it.

So which careers are ending? None, so far, although the Pentagon are investigating. Congress might be too, after Blue Girl spoke to Senator Levin's staff on the Armed Services committee and got them to understand the seriousness of this security breach - especially after revelations a few months back about the Air Force blithely flying nuclear weapons around the country without knowing it. The SASC staffer said "I can assure you something will come of this."

A Special Relationship

By Cernig

Quote of the day via the UK's Channel Four News:

Mr Cheney, speaking to reporters after arriving in Jerusalem for a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said: "America's commitment to Israel's security is enduring and unshakeable.

"The United States will never pressure Israel to take steps that threaten its security.".

What, not ever, over anything no matter how small or how remote the threat?

The tail wags the dog, and the prospect of Middle East compromise gets shaken off like an unwanted flea.

Update The BBC and Associated Press follow up. Both think Cheney's more interested in bolstering Israel's campaign to have it's proxy superpower attack Iran on its behalf. The AP has some expert thoughts on ramifications for the peace process.

Edward Abbington, a former U.S. consul general in Jerusalem and now an adviser to Abbas, said the mood among the Palestinians in Ramallah was grim. Neither the Israelis or Palestinians are convinced that Cheney is an integral player in the peace process, he said.

"They told me when I was in Ramallah they had no idea why Cheney was even coming to see them," Abbington said. "The Israelis are more interested in what Cheney has to say about Iran and blessing their continued strikes against Gaza than anything he has to say about the peace process."

There are three other diplomatic initiatives aimed at achieving a peace deal that the United States has been tightlipped about. Russia has floated the idea of a Moscow conference as a follow-up to Annapolis. The Egyptians are playing middleman in a pair of negotiations between Israel and Hamas and between Hamas and Abbas' moderate Fatah party. Yemen also is working to mediate talks between Hamas and Fatah.

"I would not expect Cheney to have a lot to say about any of these, simply because while the U.S. attitude ranges between sharp suspicion and quiet acquiescence to these initiatives, they appear to be dying on their own," said Nathan Brown, an expert on Arab politics at George Washington University in Washington.

Oh btw, we accidentally tossed those hard drives into the ocean

By Libby

It's not exactly suprising news, but it's now confirmed that the White House will not be turning over any of those thousands of damning emails. Why? Oh, just a twist on the classic excuse, the dog ate my homework.

WASHINGTON - Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005.

The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed.

"When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired ... the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction," the White House said in a sworn declaration filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola.

I read this and immediately remembered the day I discovered the true meaning of the word punkd. It was over an alleged April Fool joke, except that it was pulled in March and wasn't disclosed until April 4th, but perhaps some of you remember the photoshopped graphic of Rove holding a Coptix folder in Chatanooga.

As I said in comments to that post at the time, I saw an item in a local newspaper about it and the photo was real. Rove was in Chatanooga and so apparently was Bush. What were they doing there? It's hardly a customary whistle stop on a PR tour but it is coincidentally the home of the company that housed the offsite servers that stored the disputed emails. I noted at the time that Congress should have subpoenaed the hard drives before they were destroyed. Too bad they didn't take my advice.

The real truth about Gitmo

By Libby

With a deceitful administration and and a dysfunctional media, it's sometimes difficult to know who or what to believe about Guantanamo but I just ran across this article from my old hometown paper that laid to rest any doubt about the conditions there. It's subscription only, so I won't even bother to give you the link to the article itself, but here's the material quotes.

There is torture at Guantanamo Bay, said Eisenberg. He claims to have seen the results - a crippled hand, men walking with permanent limps, others with physical disfigurements and mental scars. There is little access to doctors for detainees, said Eisenberg.

One of his clients has a skin disease. Eisenberg suspects it is pellagra, a disease often associated with a lack of niacin or protein in a person's diet. The man's skin flakes off into small piles on the desk as Eisenberg talks with him.

There is no human contact for detainees beyond orders from soldiers, said Eisenberg. Detainees are kept in isolated cells almost 24 hours a day. Captives' cells are staggered so men are not within speaking distance of someone who would understand their language.

There is no rest at Guantanamo, said Eisenberg. The buzzing bulbs that light detainee cells and prison halls are never turned off.

This is hell's waiting room, as Eisenberg sees it, and he wants it shut down for good.

I've known Buz Eisenberg for over 20 years. He's a relentless civil libertarian, a great lawyer who has donated countless hours of free time to civil rights cases and a thoroughly honest man. If he says the inmates at Gitmo are being tortured, then they are being tortured. I surely hope our next president will make shutting down that hellhole a priority.

Pentagon Won't Let Fallon Testify

By Cernig

Despite requests from several members of Congress, the Pentagon has decided not to send retiring CentCom commander Admiral Fallon to the Hill to testify alongside Petraeus and Crocker in April.

Asked if the Pentagon was concerned that lawmakers would use Fallon's appearance to ask questions about Iran, [Pentagon Press Secretary] Morrell said, no.

And if you believe that, I've a bridge to sell you.

Glad we live here and not some banana republic....

Otherwise I would have to be concerned that government collected information and resources could be used for political purposes. But since we live here, I don't care if the President can authorize on his say so wiretaps, or have investigators look at my e-mail, or low level contractors take a look at my passport files (how uninteresting that one is, except for the picture as it was taken during my Amish beard look-alike period). Nahhh... no need to worry, we can just trust them.

So I'll accept it as an honest mistake and imprudent personal curiousity when Barack Obama's passport files were repeatedly opened by unauthorized indviduals just as the campaign season was heating up.

Two State Department employees were fired and a third has been disciplined for improperly accessing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's passport file, the State Department announced Thursday night.

Senior Department officials said they learned of the incidents only when a reporter made an inquiry Thursday afternoon. They said an initial investigation indicated the employees - all of whom worked on contract - were motivated by "imprudent curiosity."....

After seven years of being a paradigm of ethics and virtue, I trust everything that comes out of a Federal official's mouth. When have they failed to utter the complete truth in a comprehensive context... never... and when I see that passport records have been opened by unauthorized personnel in the past, it must have been an honest mistake...

The computer monitoring system, which focuses on politicians and celebrities, was put in place in recent years after the State Department became embroiled in a scandal involving the access of the passport records of Bill Clinton in 1992, when he was the Democratic presidential candidate.

Can't be a pattern here as that would require me to believe that government power is used politically, and we know that the Bush Administration never does that. It is just random luck that two charismatic, young, successful Democratic politicians have seen the State Department screw up on their own internal security procedures by having unauthorized individuals access their files in the midst of their presidential bids... just blind luck....

The "Absence Of Evidence" Logic Trap

By Cernig

Did Dick Cheney ever do Logic 101 in college? He keeps banging the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" drum over Iran's nuclear program.

Vice President Dick Cheney retained his tough stance against Iran on Wednesday and said the U.S. is uncertain if Tehran has restarted the nuclear weaponization program that a U.S. intelligence report says it halted in 2003.

..."What it (the NIE) says is that they have definitely had in the past a program to develop a nuclear warhead; that it would appear that they stopped that weaponization process in 2003. We don't know whether or not they've restarted," he said.

"What we do know is that they had then, and have now, a process by which they're trying to enrich uranium, which is the key obstacle they've got to overcome in order to have a nuclear weapon," he added. "They've been working at it for years."

It's also a key obstacle to having an indeginous nuclear power industry that the great powers can't turn off or on at will by controlling fuel supplies, Dick. Sometime a cigar is just a cigar.

Cheney must surely know by now - if he was paying any attention at all in the last five years of Iraqi invasion and occupation - that one cannot prove a negative. One can show it to be highly likely, sure, but there are still wingnuts who insist that Saddam sent all his WMD by FedEx to a postal box in Damascus and it's this little logical law that lets them do so. Cheney's probably one of them. And so he continues his push to waste yet more hundreds of thousands of lives, along with another $3 trillion and more, on yet another idiotic snark hunt.

Let's be clear - the "Cheney 1% Doctrine" is not logical or good foreign policy - it is paranoid sociopathy at its worse. In personal terms it's as if I decided to wade into my neighbour's house with gun blazing because he can't prove he has no anthrax and I've seen him using white powder (to make bread). My insanity plea in defense of murder charges would probably be accepted by the court.

The terrorism of watchlists

By Libby

Nobody would deny that terrorism is a real and dangerous problem. That's been true for decades but we didn't worry about that here in the USA because we never saw any really huge displays nor did we suffer through the daily grind of small attacks. It was easy to be brave about it. Then 9/11 changed everything and it became all too easy to be afraid. Now, as we look at what has happened to us in the last seven years it's clear we've allowed ourselves to become terrorized by the thought of terror. The quality of our life has been severely diminished without the terrorists having to lift a finger. No where is that more apparent than in the meek acceptance of database surveillance and watchlists.

One man went into a Glen Burnie, Md., Toyota dealership to buy a car, only to be told that a name check revealed he was on a U.S. Treasury Department watchlist of suspected terrorists and drug dealers. He had to be "checked for tattoos," he said, to make sure he wasn't the suspect.

An 18-year-old found he could not open an account to accept credit card payments for his fledgling technology consulting business because his name was similar to that of a Libyan official on the watchlist.

A former U.S. Navy officer who served in the Persian Gulf and whose father was killed in the Korean War when he was a child, found himself locked out of his PayPal account because his name was similar to one on the watchlist.

The guy who couldn't buy a car was a former police officer. I'm certain there's probably hundreds of similar stories and that's just this list. We've all read about dissenters who are clearly not terrorists having been denied entry to the country and young children who can't board planes because of nofly lists, yet people are willing to buy into the idea that these lists are somehow making us safer. The crazy part is a real terrorist would no doubt find a way to avoid being flagged.

It's a dangerous world and no one can protect us from sudden death. We can't outsource our safety to a piece of paper. Ask any family whose loved one was murdered by an ex-spouse, while holding a restraining order in their hand. All these lists do is endanger us more by fostering complacency in the face of the growing infringement of the government in our private lives, ironically leaving us in a position where we're destroying our freedoms to protect them from being destroyed by phantom terrorists.

More Interrogation Tapes Still To Be Found

By Cernig

Senator Ted Kennedy wrote to SecDef Bob Gates on the 14th asking him for details of all interrogation tapes in their possession - and details of any and all tapes destroyed. His letter says, in part:

recently learned that the Department of Defense has been conducting a review of the videotaping of interrogations at military facilities from Iraq to Guantánamo Bay, and the Department reportedly has identified some 50 tapes. I’m disappointed, however, to learn that the Defense Intelligence Agency claims to have routinely destroyed tapes of interrogations conducted in the past seven years.

A recent study, "Captured on Tape: Interrogation and Videotaping of Detainees in Guantánamo," by Professor Mark Denbeaux and his colleagues, used publicly available documents to show that more than 24,000 interrogations have been conducted at Guantánamo since 2002 and that every one of these interrogations was videotaped by the government. Meticulous logs were kept of information related to interrogations at Guantánamo, so it should be possible to identify how many videotapes still exist and how many have been destroyed.

I hope you agree that no further tapes should be destroyed, and I request that you take appropriate steps to guarantee the preservation of all interrogation tapes in the Department’s effective control, as well as any transcripts or documents related to the interrogations that may exist. These tapes and documents will likely be relevant both to the adjudication of the status of detainees and to congressional oversight of the treatment of detainees.

I ask that you inform me of the number of tapes in the possession of the Department of Defense and your plans for preserving them. I also ask that you preserve any transcripts of interrogations and any records relevant to tapes that may have been destroyed. Please inform me of the existence of such transcripts and records and of the specific steps you will take to preserve them. I also ask that you provide a report on all interrogation tapes the Department is aware of that have been destroyed or are no longer accessible.

I’m sure you recognize the special importance of the questions raised by the interrogation videotapes and the need for Congress to obtain complete information, so that it can perform its constitutional oversight and legislative responsibilities.

It's nice to see someone on the Hill is keeping an eye on this issue, especially when there's been a great deal of official evasion on the issue and a massive disconnect between public statements by DoD officials and military officers on how many tapes were made. The Surgeon General has stated in an official report that "all interrogations are videotaped" while the Pentagon press secretary has told journalists that "this is not a widespread practice” and that it was up to individual commanders whether to tape interrogations. Recently, the DoD "found" fifty interrogation tapes it seemingly didn't know it had but Seton Hall Law experts estimate that at least 24,000 tapes were made in total.

But one of the authors of the Seton Hall report tells me that another official source points positively to far more widespread taping than evasive stetements recently have suggested. Asked for comment, Michael Ricciardelli writes that "As I understand it, all fifty tapes the Pentagon has admitted to having found come from the brig in Charleston. The data indicates that an inventory of other military installations would prove fruitful."

there is another high level Governmental report which confirms the use of video recording of interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because our report focuses rather exclusively upon video recordings in Guantanamo, and we found this other report very late in the process, the information appears only as a footnote therein used to support the use of video recording of interrogations as an overall Govermental Policy.

On July 21, 2004 the Inspector General of The Army issued a wide ranging report on Detainee Operations titled "Detainee Operations Inspection."

Regarding interrogation in Afghanistan and Iraq the Inspector General of the Army stated the following in Chapter 4, "Interrogation Operations," Finding 6, (P.35-36 of Report; Adobe pagination of the document as found on the Pentagon web site, P.48-49.)

"The DAIG Team [Department of the Army Inspector General] observed 2 detainee facilities using digital recording devices, 1 in Afghanistan and 1 in Iraq. Because interrogations are confrontational, a monitored video recording of the process can be an effective check against breaches of the laws of land warfare and Army policy. It further protects the interrogator against allegations of mistreatment by detainees and provides a permanent record of the encounter that can be reviewed to improve the accuracy of intelligence collection. All facilities conducting interrogations would benefit from routine use of video recording equipment."

I would submit that the above Finding of the Department of the Army Inspector General substantiates two important points: 1) It expressly states that in Iraq and Afghanistan, as of July 21, 2004, video recording of interrogations occurred in at least "2 detainee facilities," "1 in Afghanistan and 1 in Iraq;" and 2) After July 21, 2004, interrogations which were not videotaped, were not videotaped contrary to the express and offical recommendation of the Inspector General of the Army and the Secretary of the Army who expressly approved such findings.

Importantly, as the Inspector General found, video recording of Interrogations "provides a permanent record of the encounter that can be reviewed to improve the accuracy of intelligence collection." [Emphasis mine - C]

Perhaps Senator Kennedy could call Gates, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morell and senior officers before an investigative hearing and ask them why exactly their statements show that the Inspector General of the Army and the Secretary of the Army's advice was ignored, if indeed it was, and more importantly....who had the authority to order that their advice be ignored?

Bush Says White House In Control Of Financial Rout

By Cernig

It's becoming a competition between Bush and Cheney to see which can appear more disconnected from reality these days. Cheney is in Iraq today, and more on that later, but Bush saying that the administration was "on top of the situation" in respect to the financial meltdown occasioned by the Bear Stearns firesale simply takes the biscuit.

The banking giant sold at a paltry $2 per share, a 93 per cent discount on the Friday closing price, despite the Fed taking a $30 billion share of its bailout.

Rather than being on top of the situation, the administration is seen by analysts as swan-like...trying to appear calm on the surface while everything under the surface is flapping about wildly. They're trying to head off a bank run.

Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research...said he sensed a whiff of panic at the Fed and in the Treasury Department.

"The main thing is that they [Fed and Treasury] are really really scared. Telling us that everything is great is an insult to intelligence. They should own up to it and talk seriously to people," Baker said.

And as a consequence there's a serious flight away from the dollar into other currencies and commodities, with gold and oil both trading at record values.

But Bush says he's on top of the situation - so he's taking ownership of it, win or fail. Remember that when the inevitable 'no one could have anticipated" excuses get trotted out later.

Crime And Cover-Up

By Cernig

You really should read the NY Times' editorial today. Both Tristero and BooMan have the same take on it - that it's about time the NYT and others in the mainstream woke up, smelled the coffee, and got as angry about Bush's impact on the underlying fabric of American civil liberty as leftie bloggers have been for years.

Here's a taste:

For more than two years now, Congress, the news media, current and former national security officials, think tanks and academic institutions have been engaged in a profound debate over how to modernize the law governing electronic spying to keep pace with technology. We keep hoping President Bush will join in.

Instead, the president offers propaganda intended to scare Americans, expand his powers, and erode civil liberties — and to ensure that no one is held to account for the illegal wiretapping he ordered after 9/11.

...The president will continue to claim the country is in grave danger over this issue, but it is not. The real danger is for Mr. Bush. A good law — like the House bill — would allow Americans to finally see the breathtaking extent of his lawless behavior.

The mainstream media gave Bush a pass on all his soft-totalitarian tricks for most of his presidency - the best part of eight long years - before finally deciding to speak up. Let's hope that they've already figured out that John McCain is just more of the McSame and won't give him the benefit of any doubt at all on his scaremongering tactics in the run-up to November.

We're winning on FISA

By Libby

Well blow me over with the wind of a butterfly's wing. The House passed a FISA bill today that did NOT include telecom immunity. As my friend Dax would say, just damn. Now it's far from over but it's just a little short of miraculous in my mind that we've come so far and so long in this fight.

I don't pretend to understand the procedural manuevers myself, but this diary at The Great Orange Satan explains how the House effectively forced the immunity supporters into a corner. Considering the long, sorry history of capitulation, I'm trying not to get my hopes up too far, but for the moment, it's fun to watch the White House sputter over the setback anyway.

Don't let anyone tell you that point and click activism doesn't make a difference. If we hadn't kept the pressure on, I doubt I would have been posting this today. Thanks to everyone who took the time to raise a ruckus and didn't give up even when it looked like all was lost.

And special props to the team led by FireDogLake and Glenn Greenwald, for pressuring the Bush Dogs into doing the right thing. Jane Hamsher has the details.

Bear Stearns Gets Fed Bail-Out

By Cernig

Fester certainly called it earlier this morning when he wrote: "we could have a situation where a really nasty private sector debt crisis transforms itself into a really nasty public-private debt crisis".

He means like this:

JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Friday agreed to provide emergency financing to Bear Stearns (BSC.N) after the investment bank said its cash position had deteriorated sharply, sending its shares into freefall.

Stock of the fifth-largest U.S. investment bank dropped as much as 50 percent in morning trading after the news, the latest in the Fed's efforts to soothe financial markets in response to a widening credit crisis spurred by rising mortgage defaults.

"Our liquidity position in the last 24 hours had significantly deteriorated. We took this important step to restore confidence in us in the marketplace, strengthen our liquidity and allow us to continue normal operations," said Bear Stearns Chief Executive Alan Schwartz, in a statement.

...Bear Stearns has more exposure to the U.S. bond markets than its competitors, and has a large mortgage-backed securities business. It was among the first to disclose the impact of the subprime mortgage market meltdown when two of its leveraged hedge funds collapsed last summer, losing $1.6 billion.

"With the market's reaction, I'd say stick a fork in them, they're done," said James Ellman, portfolio manager at Seacliff Capital, a San Francisco-based hedge fund. "The company clearly has to choose from a set of unpalatable choices: sell a large amount of equity, sell the company outright or sell assets and try to hold on and hope for the best."

..."The situation is very much that Bear Stearns was very close to the edge and it was much worse than we all thought," said Michael Klawitter, currency strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort, Frankfurt.

"It raises severe concerns over other banks. (Bear Stearns) wasn't a small bank, it was the second largest underwriter of mortgages last year. For the situation to deteriorate in that way is not good news and it will add further to jitters," he added.

Now I'm not an economist, I don't even play one on the internet, but it seems to me that Bear Stearns has just been helped to a hefty chunk of corporate welfare on the taxpayer's dollar (that's you) as reward for a whole slew of bad investments. Bad investments that were, according to Nobel winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, encouraged by the Bush administration in a vain attempt to keep the U.S. economy afloat on deficit spending while three trillion bucks was poured into the Iraqi sandpit. Where's the "credit card act" for these people?

And since the Federal piggy-bank (that's you again) is empty, the only place the Fed can get the money for bail-outs like this is overseas (more deficit) - which Fester points out will only come with strings attached. I've written before that George Bush has the soul of an assett-stripper. This is the endgame, after all the good bits have been sold out from under the shareholders and employees (guess what, you again) to Dubya's own backers and just before the remaining shell of what was USA Inc. is declared non-viable and sold to some foreign buyer.

White House exempts contractor fraud in Iraq

By Libby

While what sometimes seems to be the bulk of Leftopia was obsessed with deciding which Democrat is more electable, the White House has been making good use of the cover to pull another fast move in the interests of corporate corruption.

Last year, a proposed budget rule came down the pike that requires U.S. contractors to report all fraud and abuse that they come upon during their work for the government. Little did people realize, only until recently, that the published rule which came out late last year contained an interesting exemption:


But in a twist that has evolved into a Capitol Hill mystery, the proposed rule that the White House's Office of Management and Budget published late last year includes language that would exempt from such reporting all U.S. contractors who do work overseas.

Even the Justice Dept. is appalled and nobody seems to know exactly when this canny little exemption skulked into the rule or who managed to slip it in. Meanwhile, the administration response is -- to put it into technical terms -- nyah, nyah.

A spokeswoman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, which reviews contracts policy, said comments about any part of the proposed crackdown "will be taken into full consideration." She would not specifically discuss the overseas exemption or the investigation it prompted.

Didn't the guy who was doing the only real oversight of the fraud in Iraq just resign recently? And is anybody else thinking, this might have been why?

"Doing A Schultz" On Torture

By Cernig

Andrew Alexander, political editor of the UK's very conservative Daily Mail newspaper, today has a leader regarding Bush's veto of the bill banning torture and accuses Britain of looking the other way.

We were told that Saddam Hussein was an enemy of mankind because he used torture.

Now we witness the gruesome spectacle of President Bush endorsing torture by vetoing the Bill from Congress outlawing "waterboarding" and other equivalently barbaric forms of interrogation.

This must be the first time in modern history that a head of state has openly and officially endorsed torture.

Alongside that, there is reason to believe that the U.S. continues with its secret "extraordinary rendition" flights to take suspects - remember that is all they are - to countries where they apply even more savage torture.

This is an American President who prides himself on his moral sense, a born again Christian who starts the day with prayers and has forsworn alcohol following a very boozy youth. The humbug makes one gasp.

What does he say in his prayers? "Oh Lord, make me a decent human being, but not yet"?

So we have the free world, as we call it, the Western Alliance, the proclaimed centre of civilised values, led by a man endorsing methods applied by Hitler and Stalin. What do we do about it?

The British Government insists it is opposed to all torture and refuses the use of our air space for planes on rendition flights - a rule the CIA has not always obeyed. But our indignation stops there.

We continue to heap fulsome praise on the value of the Anglo-American special relationship which must never be upset.

The Foreign Office will say only that Washington knows our attitude to torture. There has been no protest about Bush's latest move.

Just imagine what our Government would say if Russia, China or India were officially and openly to say they sanctioned torture. Our noisy indignation about human rights would know no bounds.

But in the American case, we do nothing.

Alexander is an old friend of Enoch Powell, an old-style demagogue of the "fear of a brown planet" anti-immigration polemic so beloved of Steyn and others. When even such a fellow extremist won't stand beside the American Right, they should take the hint. But Alexander is correct on this much - if Bush were the president of some tiny African or Asian nation - or some Eastern European balkanised remnant - the talk would be of UN resolutions, of sanctions and perhaps even of humanitarian military intervention. That it isn't is more a testament to American economic and military power than to Bush's moral high ground - and the U.S. Right shouldn't mistake the former for the latter.