On the Siberian Railroad

No, I'm not actually taking the Trans-Siberian Railway (maybe someday), but I am going to take a few days off from blogging. It's hard to break away, especially when it seems so much is going on.

There's John Conyer's continued refusal to support any attempt of impeachment of Bush, even as he allows Kucinich a committee hearing to "discuss" it.

There's Jane Mayer's interview at NPR's Fresh Air, where she repeats the "false confessions" mythology about the creation of U.S. torture that I addressed last week in my review of a Scott Shane story at the New York Times. Despite that, the rest of the interview is quite interesting.

There was my exchange with Sen. Levin over at firedoglake, where he addressed my insistence that the timeline on the SERE torture issue be moved back to Dec. 2001. The relevant documents were still "classified", and he seemed lackadaisical about getting them unclassified. But you read the exchange (they are in the comments section of the "liveblog") and see what you think. He certainly saw the issue I raised important enough to respond to.

For those looking for the latest in the fight against torture, you can go and check out the good folks at NeverInOurNames.com, who have started up blogging again after an absence of some months.

See you soon.

A Guide to Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment

Elizabeth de la Vega is producing a handy three-part summary and guidebook to Dennis Kucinich's articles of impeachment against George W. Bush, introduced to much public acclaim and studied media silence on June 9. The pdf's of de la Vega's work are available for downloading courtesy of Jason Leopold's The Public Record.

De la Vega, who is a former U.S. Attorney, describes her project:

Part I is a chart that itemizes the Articles of Impeachment with a subheading and a longer description. Part II is also a chart which itemizes U.S. and international laws that are implicated by the charges in the Articles of Impeachment. (Quite properly, not every impeachable offense is based on a specific legal violation.) In Part III, to come early next week, I will present an opening statement setting forth - just as a prosecutor would do before a trial -what the evidence would show with regard to these allegations.

With Kucinich promising to reintroduce his impeachment resolution within 30 days if the House Judiciary Committee fails to act on its referral (the Democratic leadership having sent it there in hopes of burying it), I'd say this will be a damn handy reference source.

Supreme Court Slaps Bush, Congress on Habeas Corpus

By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional the provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that suspended the use of habeas corpus by detainees in Bush's "war on terror." The MCA was pushed by Bush, and overwhelmingly approved by Congress, including both supposed anti-torture politician John McCain and many Democrats.

From Justice Kennedy's majority opinion:

Security depends upon a sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our Armed Forces to act and to interdict. There are further considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom’s first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers. It is from these principles that the judicial authority to consider petitions for habeas corpus relief derives....

The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law....

Congress has enacted a statute, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (DTA), 119 Stat. 2739, that provides certain procedures for review of the detainees’ status. We hold that those procedures are not an adequate and effective substitute for habeas corpus. Therefore §7 of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA), 28 U. S. C. A. §2241(e) (Supp. 2007), operates as an unconstitutional suspension of the writ. [Thanks to Phil at Daily Kos for the quotes]

The decision was a defeat for the attack on civil liberties championed by the Bush administration, which has led to years of indefinite detention and torture of prisoners at Guantanamo and other prisons in the U.S. gulag established in the wake of 9/11 and Bush's invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. While championed by Bush, Cheney, et al., this tyrannical program of rights suspension and abuse has been backed by the Democratic Party, or at least a significant section of the party, which voted for MCA, the Patriot Act, and other anti-democratic legislation, and has also failed to hold the Bush Administration to account for any of their crimes.

The latest example of the failure of the Democratic Party leadership was the shameful suppression of Congressman Dennis Kucinich's resolution to impeach George W. Bush. Despite a throrough vetting of the crimes of the Bush administration in a speech that lasted over four hours on the House floor, the Democrats voted practically unanimously to send the bill to an ignominious fate: a referral to committee, where the bill could languish unheard and ignored for eternity, if need be. Democratic Party chair Howard Dean explained, "The American people sent us there [to Congress] to get things done... They didn't send us there to impeach the President." The failure to get anything of note done in this current Congress belies Dean's statement, and stands as mute testimony to the impotence of the mainstream Democratic Party's opposition policies.

To remind us of the Democrats role in the habeas controversy, let's refer back to an excellent article Glenn Greenwald wrote in May 2007:

It is worthwhile to review briefly the history of how this legislative atrocity came to be. When the White House proposed this bill, Democrats were as meek and as silent as could be. They literally disappeared from the debate, allowing the illusion of "negotiations" between the White House on the one hand, and a handful of allegedly principled and independent Republican Senators (McCain, Warner and Graham) on the other.

When -- as was both painfully predictable and predicted -- those Republican Senators capitulated almost in full to the White House, "winning" only the most meaninglessly symbolic linguistic changes to the bill while acquiescing to its most Draconian provisions, the fate of the bill was sealed because Democrats had ceded their authority to those "rebel" GOP Senators....

It is true that most Democrats in both the House and Senate ultimately voted against this law (though 12 Democratic Senators out of 44 voted in favor). But even among the Senate Democrats who did vote against its enactment, many of them did not even reveal how they would vote until -- literally -- the very day before the vote occurred, and many such Democratic Senators announced their opposition only once it became clear that it would pass....

Far worse, many Democrats -- led by Harry Reid (who at the last minute announced his opposition) -- even spoke favorably of the MCA in the days immediately preceding the vote.

In all the disgust and even hatred that Bush's bellicose and autocratic and illegal policies have engendered, it becomes easy to forget that the Democrats acted way too often as a handmaiden to Bush, beginning with the Patriot Act, and further to the Iraq War. Even today, the supplemental funding bills for the continuation of U.S. military adventures and occupation policies in Iraq and Afghanistan are seen by the Democrats as opportunities to bargain for concessions on other issues, e.g., unemployment insurance, rather than as opportunities to secure principled opposition to a failed war policy. Along these lines, Speaker Pelosi now promises she'll deliver Bush's $170 billion war funding bill by July 4 (how patriotic of her).

The euphoria in certain circles over Obama's candidacy masks some very important political realities that cannot be ignored. The recent Supreme Court decision in the consolidated cases of Boumediene v. Bush and Al-Odah v. Bush is very welcome news. But in very important ways, it also points out how very, very far off the track politics in America has gone.

New Report Warns "Afghanistan on the Brink"

Reuters has just posted a story that should make Americans stand up and take notice -- assuming they can bestir their self-interested torpor -- as the Senlis Council, a well-respected international think-tank, has released a report, "Stumbling into Chaos: Afghanistan on the Brink", which argues the situation in Afghanistan has reached "crisis proportions". This follows the revelations last month from a top British politician and former UN representative in the Balkans that the war in Afghanistan is "lost".

Canadian Television summed up the conclusions in the Senlis report this way (all emphases in quotes throughout are mine):

*** The Taliban are winning hearts and minds in southern Afghanistan; the international community is not. NATO-ISAF troops are forced to fight in an increasingly hostile environment because of the international community’s blunt political errors.
*** The absence of comprehensive development aid plans has given a strategic advantage to the Taliban.
*** Time for a well-planned village by village hearts and minds campaign to re-engage the Afghan population and make NATO’s mission a successful one.

What's that? A "hearts and minds" campaign to "re-engage" the population against the native opposition? Where have I heard that kind of language before?

Meanwhile, the Reuters article elaborates:

If NATO, the lead force operating in Afghanistan, is to have any impact against the insurgency, troop numbers will have to be doubled to at least 80,000, the report said.

Despite the alarms and the suggestions, the Taliban is likely to retake Kabul next year.

Senlis said its research had established that the Taliban, driven out of Afghanistan by the U.S. invasion in late 2001, had rebuilt a permanent presence in 54 percent of the country and was finding it easy to recruit new followers.

It was also increasingly using Iraq-style tactics, such as roadside and suicide bombs, to powerful effect, and had built a stable network of financial support, funding its operations with the proceeds from Afghanistan's booming opium trade.

"It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when," the report said.

Putting it all together, we can see that like its neighbor to the east, Pakistan, Afghanistan is headed for greater turbulence and a higher amount of Western intervention -- although perhaps we should drop the polite language and call "intervention" by its real name: invasion.

The "hearts and minds" language, when combined with the call to double troop presence, points to plans for a large-scale military counterinsurgency campaign, as in Vietnam... or in Iraq. Such a campaign cannot really win popular support in the target country, as a prominent international humanitarian representative explains:

David Curtis, head of mission for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Somalia, explains: “When military and humanitarian groups are doing similar work it is hard for people… to differentiate between them. Yet the objectives of the two are utterly dissimilar; humanitarian agencies aid the population without taking sides and based on need, while the US military serve their own political and military objectives alone. The two are incompatible.”

Why U.S./NATO Troops Must Withdraw from Afghanistan

The U.S. "war on terror" has always been a cover for imperialist maneuvering between Western nations, the drive to secure capital markets and natural resources, like gas and oil, and to beat out your opponents while doing it. For instance, despite their putative "alliance," the U.S., France, Germany, and the U.K. all have strong reasons to see the other nations of the group as competitors, particularly the U.S. and Germany.

The one thing that keeps them together is a lingering fear of Russia, and the political decision that the time has not yet come to split the alliance (as France almost did five years ago over Iraq). Well, I suppose there's also the profits, as a Daily Kos diarist noted the other day:

More than $20 billion in U.S. Government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan has gone to "... foreign companies whose identities – at least so far – are impossible to determine, according to a new study from the Center for Public Integrity.

The sufferings of the Afghan people has been immense. The Taliban are a truly awful political organization, one which will enslave much of the population in barbaric medieval religious laws and institutions. But the U.S. and its allies are incapable of "liberating" this country, as the predatory Iraq War has made clear to all Muslims in the region.

Only the complete defeat of the political leadership in the U.S. and Europe, and the institution of a new one, dedicated to punishing the militarists, politicians and businessmen, particularly those responsible for the illegal intervention into Iraq and the use of torture throughout the region, will begin the massive repair job needed to truly win the "hearts and minds" of impoverished and oppressed people around the globe. Such an overturn in leadership and political policy will not be without its reflection within the countries undergoing such change, and there will be both pain and sacrifice, and a feeling of liberation and a future free of fear.

For now, 2008 looks to be a year of further defeats on the battlefield for Bush and the neo-cons, followed by strained attempts to ratchet up the military machinery in the most explosive corner of the world. It is not too late to throw out this rancid bunch, but I fear the current political opposition is too subservient, too inured to a sterile electoralist platform, and too afraid, frankly, of necessary change, because too indebted to the large corporations that feed off the military machine, to lead as it should.

The conclusion will be messy, but as always in history, unforgiving, especially for those candidates and politicians that cannot embrace impeachment and immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan -- Withdrawal from Afghanistan?? you cry. Yes. NATO cannot save the anti-fundamentalist opposition in Afghanistan. They are ensuring a Taliban victory. They are irrevocably tainted by war crimes and torture. If a truly domestic opposition is to form and beat the Taliban and the warlords -- and I strongly oppose both Taliban and the vicious warlords and obscurantist mullahs -- then the U.S. and its allies must pull out.

Inside Secret CIA Interrogation Program

Also posted at Daily Kos

The August 8 interview Amy Goodman of Demcracy Now! conducts with New Yorker writer Jane Mayer and Jameel Jaffner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Program, makes for more impeachment fodder. Mayer reveals that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) labelled the CIA's detention and interrogation methods "tantamount to torture". The ICRC warned that "U.S. officials responsible for the abusive treatment may have committed 'grave breaches' of the Geneva Conventions, and may have violated the U.S. Torture Act". Mayer reported on much of this in her recent New Yorker article on the "black sites".

Even more disturbing, if that's possible, the ICRC, which keeps its reports to the government confidential, the better to maintain access to prisoners, reported on all this to the Bush Administration last year, but access to the report was limited to only a trusted few. Following Jaffner's analysis quoted below, I'll bet Gonzales was one of them.

Jaffner is involved in a Freedom of Information Act request for records regarding oncerning treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. He is also author of an upcoming book about torture: Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond. He began his comments with an indictment of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his role in the Bush Administration's use of torture.

Well, it's actually, I think, a little frustrating that senior officials, including Alberto Gonzales, have not been held accountable for the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, but also elsewhere. We now know that prisoners were abused in US custody all over the world -- Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay. We know that they were abused because of policies that were adopted at the highest levels. Alberto Gonzales is one of the people who participated in constructing the policies that led to the abuse and, in many cases, the torture of prisoners, and yet neither Mr. Gonzales nor any of the other senior officials who were involved in creating those policies have been held to account. I think that, you know, actually, most of the senior officials who should have been held to account have been rewarded instead.

Jaffner also spoke about the linkage between CIA and the military on interrogations:

But one of the things that struck me in reading the article is the numerous similarities between what happened in CIA custody and what happened in military custody. And if you look at how the military developed its techniques, its techniques that led to the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo, for example, they were developed in exactly the same way: by reverse-engineering, these SERE methods, the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. These are methods that the military used ultimately against prisoners in its custody, and they are apparently the same methods that the CIA used against prisoners in its custody....

Later in the joint interview, Jane Mayer discusses "the use of psychologists in interrogations as "a way by the CIA to skirt the Convention Against Torture, among other international treaties":

Well, if you take a look at the so-called torture memos, the forty pages or so of memos that were written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo way back right after 9/11, and you take a look at how they -- they're busy looking at the Convention Against Torture, basically, it seems, trying to figure a way around it. One of the things they argued, these lawyers from the Justice Department, is that if you don't intend to torture someone, if your intention is not just to inflict terrible pain on them but to get information, then you really can't be necessarily convicted of torture.

So how do you prove that your intent is pure? Well, one of the things they suggest is if you consult with experts who will say that what you're doing is just interrogation, then that might also be a good legal defense. And so, one of the roles that these SERE psychologists played was a legal role. They were the experts who were consulted in order to argue that the program was not a program of torture. They are to say, “We've got PhDs, and this is standard psychology, and this is a legitimate way to question people.”

And now the government is trying to continue their campaign, taking it right into the convention of the American Psychological Association, where military psychologists stand ready to introduce a "substitute" resolution on psychologist participation in interrogations, the aim of which is to torpedo an earlier resolution calling for a moratorium on psychologists operating at foreign detention prisons! Jane Mayer hit the nail on the head, asked about the fate of the protest within APA on psychologists invovled in military/CIA interrogations:

And some of the psychologists who were key players in this actually are officials at the APA who have set the policy here. So there's a bit of a sort of a sense of the foxes guarding the chicken house.

So we await the next stage of the fight against the government and its insistence on maintaining the instruments of coercion, of abuse, of torture.

Baghdad Fallen: Diplomats Ordered into Flak Jackets

Crossposted at Daily Kos

No. Bagdad has not fallen to the "insurgents". Not yet. But it's only a matter of time before the headline of this diary appears upon the front pages of U.S. newspapers.

Today, the Green Zone of Baghdad -- the so-called safety zone that is the hub of U.S. operations, a 3.5 square mile area in the heart of the city -- was hit by mortar fire for the second day in a row. According to an AP report, two people were killed and at least 10 wounded. The State Department minimized the attack, but U.S. Embassy officials "ordered diplomats to wear flak jackets and helmets while outdoors or in unprotected buildings."

It's the anti-surge. Instead of making Baghdad safer, the various groups that make up the Iraqi insurgency are stepping up their attacks in the very heart of the U.S. war and occupation regime.

Both the intensity and skill of the attack were noteworthy. The shells, believed to be 122mm, exploded in rapid succession over about a three-minute period.

The blasts were relatively close to one another, suggesting an experienced mortar crew using more than one launcher.

On May 3, four Asian contractors were killed by a rocket attack in the Green Zone. Yesterday, nine were wounded. Over and over, in the AP article, Americans are voicing their fears:

Nevertheless, the recent increase in attacks has raised alarm among American staffers living and working in what had been considered an oasis of safety in the turbulent Iraqi capital....

Later this year, the United States plans to open a massive new embassy inside the Green Zone despite the ongoing security threat. Embassy staffers have expressed concern that the new facility lacks enough space to house the estimated 1,000 employees in safety.

It was only a little over a month ago that a suicide bomber got into and blew up the cafeteria in the Iraqi Parliamentary Building. Meanwhile, as most news articles covering this story point out, such as this one from the Chicago Tribune, thousands of U.S. soldiers are searching for three soldiers reportedly captured in a surprise raid on a U.S. Humvee patrol. (Today, the Washington Post reports the names of the seven who were slain in the attack.)

The images are building up to an overwhelming sense of conclusion: events in Iraq are spiralling out of control, even from a strictly military point of view. One wonders if the sudden censorship of soldier-bloggers and the military shut down of sites like MySpace aren't related to efforts to stem the tide of information.

Even the British, who saw the departure of Bush ally, Blair, recently, have reversed course and saved the royal body of Prince Harry, announcing he will not be sent to Iraq, citing unacceptable risks and "specific threats".

No one is safe in Iraq today, least of all its ordinary citizens, who have died in the hundreds of thousands. Americans and their allies who felt safe in the Green Zone are beginning to bear the psychic and bloody cost of American imperial policy, and Bush's megalomania.

Today, the Senate failed to cut off war funds, though the vote was larger than ever to do so (67-29). But the entire affair in D.C. has a hallucinatory quality, as does the political analyses that surround it.

U.S. diplomatic staff cannot walk around even the Green Zone without wearing helmets and flak jackets. Rocket and mortar attacks are becoming a daily affair.

The U.S. must be forced to withdraw from Iraq now. Articles of impeachment are likely a necessity to remove the increasingly remote and Nero-esque Bush and his Rasputin-like cohort Cheney (if you can excuse the mixed historical metaphor).

As events related herein make clear: time is short. Tomorrow, Baghdad will be fallen.

[Updated: around 8:00 PM PDT, 5/16]

I wanted to add some links, as there are some sources that deserve credit on reporting a few days back on the fear growing in the Green Zone, and on the precautions ordered for diplomatic personnel.

ABC News: "U.S. Embassy: Wear Flak Jackets, Helmets"

Daily Kos diary by Olds88, 5/14/07, No Warning Sirens During Cheney Visit

McClatchy's story, 5/14/07, U.S. Embassy employees fearful over Green Zone attacks

BBC: War-torn Iraq 'facing collapse'

The latter is an important story, detailing a new British Chatham House think tank report:

Iraq faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation, British foreign policy think tank Chatham House has warned.

The report says the Iraqi government is now largely powerless and irrelevant in many parts of the country.

Is Establishment Turning Against Bush Detainee Torture?

Daily Kos has an article by bejammin075 that quotes former Colin Powell Chief of Staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, as calling for impeachment investigations against Bush and Cheney. This may be remarkable in itself, but I found his rationale, as stated by Wilkerson in an interview with CNN, to be just as important. The man who part of the administration that built a phony case to go to war against Iraq, now says:

I would start my investigation into the detainee abuse issue, which constitutes, I think, a defilement of everything America stands for, and has done irreparable damage to our reputation, and thus to our power around the world. If that doesn't rate a 'high crime' definition, I don't know what does.

And I would also look closely at how we got into this war, particularly the cooking of the books in intelligence. [Emphasis is mine]

Wilkerson has been saying some pretty critical things about the Bush administration since he left some time ago, but the emphasis on detainee abuse, i.e., torture, is welcomed in any case. I wonder how many individuals within the administration or the establishment in general oppose Bush on this. What they don't tell us is how extended and expansive is the organizational reach of the agencies that research and implement this torture. Will they say the "C" word?