Category Archives: Bush Administration

ANALYSIS: Talking to the enemy

Look who talks to the enemy
By Helene Cooper, New York Times, December 16, 2007

Seven years of President Bush’s Don’t-Talk-to-Evil policy are over, even under the helm of the administration that crafted it.

Now administration officials are openly making nice with Syria, holding round after round of talks with Iran over the fate of Iraq, and making preliminary plans for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to visit Libya.

And President Bush himself has gotten in on the act — writing a personal (“cordial,” the White House says) letter to the secretive and enigmatic North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il that held out the possibility of normalizing diplomatic relations.

The morphing of the White House from imperial protector of American presidential exclusivity to sending Christmastime greetings to North Korean dictators will leave the next president, whoever he or she is, with a lot more legroom to decide whether to talk to America’s foes, foreign policy experts say. These experts include Republicans and Democrats, current and former officials from all administrations since 1977. [complete article]

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NEWS: “Afghanistan has been the forgotten war”

Afghan mission is reviewed as concerns rise
By Thom Shanker and Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, December 16, 2007

Deeply concerned about the prospect of failure in Afghanistan, the Bush administration and NATO have begun three top-to-bottom reviews of the entire mission, from security and counterterrorism to political consolidation and economic development, according to American and alliance officials.

The reviews are an acknowledgment of the need for greater coordination in fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, halting the rising opium production and trafficking that finances the insurgency and helping the Kabul government extend its legitimacy and control.

Taken together, these efforts reflect a growing apprehension that one of the administration’s most important legacies — the routing of Taliban and Qaeda forces in Afghanistan after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — may slip away, according to senior administration officials.

Unlike the administration’s sweeping review of Iraq policy a year ago, which was announced with great fanfare and ultimately resulted in a large increase in troops, the American reviews of the Afghan strategy have not been announced and are not expected to result in a similar infusion of combat forces, mostly because there are no American troops readily available. [complete article]

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ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The imprint of torture

CIA agents sense shifting support for methods
By Scott Shane, New York Times, December 13, 2007

For six years, Central Intelligence Agency officers have worried that someday the tide of post-Sept. 11 opinion would turn, and their harsh treatment of prisoners from Al Qaeda would be subjected to hostile scrutiny and possible criminal prosecution.

Now that day may have arrived, after years of shifting legal advice, searing criticism from rights groups — and no new terrorist attacks on American soil. [complete article]

See also, CIA chief cites agency lapse on tapes (NYT) and From a critic of tribunals to top judge (NYT).

Editor’s Comment — Suppose that soon after 9/11, at a time when many Americans were fixated on the question, why do they hate us?, we had been presented with part of an answer to that question:

because we let our allies torture them.

If 9/11 itself had widely been seen as, in part, an act of revenge for torture, would we now be having a debate about the wisdom, morality, or effectiveness of the use of torture?

*

On December 4, 1982, at the opening of the trial of three hundred Egyptian Islamists who had been implicated in the plot to assassinate President Anwar Sadat, the Islamists’ spokesman, Ayman Zawahiri (later to become Osama bin Laden’s deputy), said, “Now we want to speak to the world.”

Clips from his statement have often been televised. The image they portray is of a revolutionary Islamist, intent on toppling governments and imposing Sharia law. But the part of Zawahiri’s message to the world that received less attention than it should — especially in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 — related to torture.

In The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright writes:

[As spokesman for the defendants] Zawahiri calls out the names of several prisoners who, he says, died as a result of torture. “So where is democracy?” he shouts. “Where is freedom? Where is human rights? Where is justice? Where is justice? We will never forget! We will never forget!”

Zawahiri’s allegations of torture were later substantiated by forensic medical reports, which noted six injuries in various places on his body resulting from assaults with “a solid instrument.” Zawahiri later testified in a case brought against Intelligence Unit 75, which had conducted the prison interrogations. He was supported by testimony of one the intelligence officers, who confessed that he witnessed Zawahiri in the prison, “his head shaved, his dignity completely humiliated, undergoing all sorts of torture.” The officer went on to say that he had been in the interrogation room when another prisoner was brought into the chamber, chained hand and foot. The interrogators were trying to get Zawahiri to confess his involvement in the Sadat assassination. When the other prisoner said, “How would you expect him to confess when he knows the penalty is death?” Zawahiri replied, “The death penalty is more merciful than torture.” (pp.64-65)

In the name of supporting Egypt’s “stability” and its peace treaty with Israel, the United States has for decades provided billions of dollars in military and economic aid while most of the time choosing to ignore the violent repression for which Egypt is infamous and that U.S. tax dollars continue to enable. The intimate relationship between the U.S. government and the Egyptian torturers has never been lost on the tortured.

Shouldn’t one of the many lessons of 9/11 have been that torture can produce profound hatred and that those who have been tortured do truly never forget? Only a nation intent on making itself impervious to the past could continue to create so many inerasable memories.

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OPINION: Welcome to the post-American world

The fearful superpower
By Fareed Zacharia, Newsweek, December 12, 2007

For the past few years, America has been alienated from the world. We have all read the yearly polls with the same damning numbers. But on one issue, the United States and the world agree: majorities everywhere expect things to improve markedly after George W. Bush. Whether it’s in Europe or Asia, the refrain from politicians, businessmen and intellectuals is the same. “We don’t hate America,” one of them told me recently. “We hate Bush. When he’s gone, it will be a new day.”

But will it? The question will be put to the test in a year, when a new president enters the White House.

There’s little doubt that the style and substance of U.S. foreign policy over the past seven years has provoked enormous international opposition. What is less clear is that the style and substance were unique products of the Bush administration. Some part of the global response was surely the product of longstanding unease with U.S. dominance. After all, France’s foreign minister coined the term “hyperpuissance” to describe America under Bill Clinton, not George W. Bush.

Then came 9/11. Ever since the attacks, the United States has felt threatened and under siege and determined to carve out maximum room to maneuver. But where Americans have seen defensive behavior, the rest of the world has looked on and seen the most powerful nation in human history acting like a caged animal, lashing out at any and every constraint on its actions. [complete article]

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NEWS: Israeli official: U.S. is not doing enough on Iran nukes

Israeli official: U.S. is not doing enough on Iran nukes
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz, December 13, 2007

A senior Israeli official has fiercely criticized U.S. President George Bush’s administration for the way it has dealt with the Iranian nuclear issue.

The official said that the administration was not doing what was required of it to create an international coalition and wide agreement to pressure Iran over its nuclear program.

Criticism from senior members of Israel’s political echelon with regard to U.S. policy on the matter is rare. The official mainly spoke out against Bush’s failure to enlist support from China, Russia and, to a certain extent, India, for increasing pressure on Iran and North Korea. [complete article]

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NEWS & ANALYSIS: The Persian process

The myth of a bargain with Iran
By Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, December 10, 2007

Unless Iran does something really stupid, Mr Bush will not be able to bomb. Much tougher sanctions are also out. So that leaves talking.

That could be a very good thing. For years, those who have opposed the drive to war have urged America to strike a “grand bargain” with Iran. This would involve Iran forswearing nuclear weapons in a convincing and verifiable way and generally promising to behave better in the region. In return Iran would get full diplomatic recognition from the US, the lifting of sanctions (such as they are) and all manner of economic and technological benefits.

But there are two obvious snags. First, America’s intelligence re-assessment will probably be a boon to hardliners in Tehran. President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad will be able to say that Iran has stood firm and faced down the world. In such a climate, why should the Iranians make concessions?

Second, there may be no “grand bargain” to be had. Most of the evidence suggests that the determination to get a nuclear bomb is a national project in Iran – uniting different political factions. The Iranians are not necessarily in a hurry. They might be deterred for a while. But the nuclear programme has become a symbol of national machismo – and is also widely regarded as a strategic necessity, given that Iran is surrounded by hostile powers.

Iran also has ambitions in the region. It is the biggest country in the Gulf area – or, as the Iranians insist on calling it, the Persian Gulf area – and it wants its “natural role” to be recognised. If Iran is to be the regional hegemon, then the US military presence must be greatly diminished. The US army is in Iraq, the navy is in Bahrain, the air force is in Qatar. There are US bases in Saudi Arabia. There is no way that the Americans are going to cede the dominant security role in the Gulf – a region that sits on top of 60 per cent of the world’s known oil reserves and 40 per cent of its natural gas.

That is the basic reason why a grand bargain will be so hard to achieve. The US and the Iranians are strategic rivals in the Gulf region. They are not going to become friends. The best that can be hoped for is an uneasy modus vivendi.

As for the Iranian nuclear programme: the message that the American public risks being left with is that it would be impossible to live with an Iranian bomb – but fortunately Iran is no longer pursuing nuclear weapons. The reality is the complete opposite. Iran probably will get nuclear weapons. And the west will probably have to learn to live with it. [complete article]

Khatami publicly assails Ahmadinejad
By Nazila Fathi, New York Times, December 12, 2007

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policies were attacked Tuesday at Tehran’s major university in an unusual speech by his predecessor, who warned that political suppression, questionable economic policies and defiance on the nuclear issue were leading Iranians in the wrong direction.

The speech, by Mohammad Khatami, attracted more than 1,000 students at Tehran University, which has been a center of vocal protest against Mr. Ahmadinejad, who was elected in 2005.

Mr. Khatami’s criticism of Mr. Ahmadinejad has long been known. But his public denunciation of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s policies was unusual because of its high visibility at a site of youthful dissent. [complete article]

Report on Iran may scupper future sanctions
By Tom Baldwin, The Times, December 12, 2007

Britain and France, President Bush’s chief European allies, fear that last week’s US intelligence report stating that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons programme will be “counter-productive” in securing tighter UN sanctions against the Tehran regime.

A draft Security Council resolution being discussed yesterday by officials from the US, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany would extend punitive measures – including travel bans and the seizure of assets – to the 15,000-strong Quds force, as well as dozens of named individuals.

Although the document does not go as far as the US Administration – which recently imposed sweeping sanctions against the entire 125,000-member Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Quds Force, and three banks – it would represent a significant escalation in the diplomatic pressure being exerted on Iran. [complete article]

See also, Olmert: Iran still dangerous, we must continue int’l pressure (Haaretz) and Bush demands Iran explain nuke program (AP).

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The torture cover-up

CIA efforts to prosecute “whistle-blower” spy stopped
By Brian Ross and Richard Esposito, ABC, December 11, 2007

The former CIA intelligence official who went public on ABC News about the agency’s use of waterboarding in interrogations, John Kiriakou, apparently will not be the subject of a Justice Department investigation, even though some CIA officials believe he revealed classified information about the use of waterboarding.

“They were furious at the CIA this morning, but cooler heads have apparently prevailed for the time being,” a senior Justice Department official told the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

Gen. Michael Hayden, the CIA director, did sent out a classified memo this morning warning all employees “of the importance of protecting classified information,” a CIA spokesperson told ABCNews.com. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — John Kirakou… whistleblower? Give me a break.

Sometimes the best imagery is unavoidably crude and thus I present the dear reader with an image that captures both the sturdiness and frailty of the Bush administration:

It is a pyramid of assholes with the largest one at the top.

Whistleblowers there could have been many; instead, the larger assholes have been protected by the smaller ones since each was possessed by the same preoccupation — covering his own.

Who authorized the CIA to destroy interrogation videos?
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, December 11, 2007

The CIA repeatedly asked White House lawyer Harriet Miers over a two-year period for instructions regarding what to do with “very clinical” videotapes depicting the use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques on two top Al Qaeda captives, according to former and current intelligence officials familiar with the communications (who requested anonymity when discussing the controversial issue). The tapes are believed to have included evidence of waterboarding and other interrogation methods that Bush administration critics have described as torture.

Senior officials of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service finally decided on their own authority in late 2005 to destroy the tapes—which were kept at a secret location overseas—after failing to elicit clear instructions from the White House or other senior officials on what to do with them, according to one of the former intelligence officials with direct knowledge of the events in question. An extensive paper—or e-mail—trail exists documenting the contacts between Clandestine Service officials and top agency managers and between the CIA and the White House regarding what to do about the tapes, according to two former intelligence officials. [complete article]

Death squads, disappearances, and torture — from Latin America to Iraq
By Greg Grandin, TomDispatch, December 11, 2007

The world is made up, as Captain Segura in Graham Greene’s 1958 novel Our Man in Havana put it, of two classes: the torturable and the untorturable. “There are people,” Segura explained, “who expect to be tortured and others who would be outraged by the idea.”

Then — so Greene thought — Catholics, particularly Latin American Catholics, were more torturable than Protestants. Now, of course, Muslims hold that distinction, victims of a globalized network of offshore and outsourced imprisonment coordinated by Washington and knitted together by secret flights, concentration camps, and black-site detention centers. The CIA’s deployment of Orwellian “Special Removal Units” to kidnap terror suspects in Europe, Canada, the Middle East, and elsewhere and the whisking of these “ghost prisoners” off to Third World countries to be tortured goes, today, by the term “extraordinary rendition,” a hauntingly apt phrase. “To render” means not just to hand over, but to extract the essence of a thing, as well as to hand out a verdict and “give in return or retribution” — good descriptions of what happens during torture sessions. [complete article]

If the CIA hadn’t destroyed those tapes, what would be different?
By Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, December 10, 2007

In the uproar over the destruction by the CIA of taped interrogations of suspected al-Qaida operatives in the aftermath of Sept. 11, we are discovering creative new ways to speculate about past events. The pastime has begun with what should have been done differently—finger-pointing at congressional Democrats who’d been briefed about the tapes and remained silent, or distress over the failure to inform superiors at the CIA or the Bush administration. But here’s a different thought experiment: How would the national debate over torture have changed if we’d known about the CIA tapes all along? How would our big terror trials and Supreme Court cases have played out?

Yes, this is also a speculative enterprise, but it’s critical to understanding the extent of the CIA’s wrongdoing here. And we have a benchmark. When the photos from Abu Ghraib were leaked in 2004, a national uproar ensued. Video of hours of repetitive torture could have had a similarly significant impact—the truism about the power of images holds. If we are right about that—and we think we are—this evidence that has been destroyed would have fundamentally changed the legal and policy backdrop for the war on terror in ways we’ve only begun to figure out. [complete article]

CIA director speaks to Senate committee
By Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston, New York Times, December 12, 2007

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, distanced himself on Tuesday from the decision to record and subsequently destroy hundreds of hours of video taken during the interrogations of senior Qaeda captives.

Speaking in public after delivering classified testimony before a Senate committee, General Hayden said that the decision to record the interrogations in 2002 was made under George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, and that the destruction of those tapes in 2005 came under the watch of Porter J. Goss, who succeeded Mr. Tenet.

“There are other people at the agency who know about this far better than I,” he said after he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He had become the agency director in May 2006, six months after intelligence officials have said the tapes were destroyed. [complete article]

Evidence from waterboarding could be used in military trials
By Josh White, Washington Post, December 12, 2007

The top legal adviser for the military trials of Guantanamo Bay detainees told Congress yesterday that he cannot rule out the use of evidence derived from the CIA’s aggressive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, a tactic that simulates drowning.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, who oversees the prosecutors who will try the detainees at military commissions, said that while “torture” is illegal, he cannot say whether waterboarding violates the law. Nor would he say that such evidence would be barred at trial. [complete article]

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NEWS: Dragging the world into hell

‘Crunch time’ for climate change
BBC, December 12, 2007

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has opened high-level talks at the climate change conference in Bali with a call to action.

He said that if no action were taken, the world would face impacts such as drought, famine and rising sea levels.

Delegates are hoping to agree a “Bali roadmap” leading to further cuts in greenhouse gas emissions when the Kyoto Protocol targets expire in 2012. [complete article]

Hard choices on climate can wait for next president, aides indicate
By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, December 12, 2007

U.S. officials at U.N. climate negotiations here said Tuesday that they would not embrace any overall binding goals for cutting global greenhouse gas emissions before President Bush leaves office, essentially putting off specific U.S. commitments until a new administration assumes power in 2009, according to several participants.

In closed-door meetings, senior U.S. climate negotiator Harlan L. Watson said the administration considers several aspects of a draft resolution circulated by U.N. officials unacceptable, according to an administration official and other negotiators. Watson specifically objected to language calling for a halt in the growth of worldwide emissions within 10 to 15 years, to be followed by measures that by 2050 would drive emissions down to less than half the 2000 levels. [complete article]

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Moral clarity on torture

CIA spy calls waterboarding necessary but torture
By Richard Esposito and Brian Ross, ABC News, December 10, 2007

A leader of the CIA team that captured the first major al Qaeda figure, Abu Zubaydah, says subjecting him to waterboarding was torture but necessary.

In the first public comment by any CIA officer involved in handling high-value al Qaeda targets, John Kiriakou, now retired, said the technique broke Zubaydah in less than 35 seconds.

“The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate,” said Kiriakou in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC News’ “World News With Charles Gibson” and “Nightline.”

“From that day on, he answered every question,” Kiriakou said. “The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — “Because we’re Americans, and we’re better than that” — it’s a popular line, a curious quasi-ethical principal, and it’s John Kiriakou’s reason for no longer supporting the use of torture.

American ideals might be better than that, but Americans and their ideals are not the same. The American government sanctioned torture and American CIA officers have engaged in torture. Therein lies one of the many gaps between America and its ideals.

But to debate the issue of torture in terms of whether it is or is not un-American is to obscure a moral question that is not as complex as it is being made to appear. The issue should not hinge on whether we accept an idealized conception of what it means to be American. It has nothing to do with national identity. It hinges quite simply on whether we accept or reject the principle that the ends justifies the means.

Any time the phrase “saving American lives” enters the torture debate an ends-justifies-the-means argument is being employed. At the same time, no one actually wants to positively assert this line of reasoning. If the ends really do justifies the means then it shouldn’t make any difference what those means are — pulling out finger nails, raping relatives — why would anything be off limits if it could be shown to be effective in saving American lives?

On the other side is a pragmatic (and seemingly safe) argument: torture shouldn’t be used because it doesn’t work. It yields false confessions and there are much better non-violent means to tease out valuable information. This is also a means-ends argument that merely challenges the assumption that the means will accomplish the aims. (And not only is it a means-ends argument; it’s also rather easy to counter. All you have to do is present a case — as the CIA has just done — where it appears that torture “worked.”)

And then there’s the question of who gets tortured. To cite evidence that Abu Zubaydah may not have been a high-level al Qaeda operative is to imply that the legitimacy of torture is affected by the potential for the victim to cough up some valuable information. In other words, it implies that torture might be justifiable if it can be demonstrated that this particular person is really “worth” torturing. (Again, the CIA — on behalf of Bush-Cheney — presses the case that it has been extremely selective in who gets tortured.)

Ultimately, the only unambiguous moral position to take is to say that a calculated effort to make a human being suffer is immoral – it doesn’t make any difference who that person is or how well-intentioned the torturer might be. That’s moral clarity and that’s the principle that law and policy should embody.

The torture of Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi
By Leonard Fein, The Forward, December 10, 2007

On December 7, 2006, he was among several hundred detainees randomly selected and moved to the newest detention camp at Guantanamo, Camp 6, which was designed to hold the majority of the detainees. According to Amnesty International, and in contravention of international standards, all detainees in Camp 6 are held under conditions of “extreme isolation and sensory deprivation for a minimum of 22 hours a day in individual steel cells with no windows to the outside.”

Their cells reportedly are extremely small. The only source of light is fluorescent lighting that is on 24 hours a day and the only air is air-conditioning, both of which are controlled by the prison guards. The detainees reportedly are allowed two hours of “recreation time” a day to be spent in a metal cage measuring four feet by four feet. (That’s 1/3 the size of a ping-pong table.)

Al-Ghizzawi’s lawyer says that his guards frequently give him his “rec time” in the middle of the night or, sometimes, in the middle of the day when the cage is in the hot sun. Detainees in Camp 6 have no access to radio, television or newspapers. They are given one book a week.

According to his lawyer, Al-Ghizzawi’s eyesight has deteriorated so significantly that he is now unable to read. Thus he now spends his time pacing in his cell. All of the detainees at Guantanamo reportedly are forbidden telephone calls and family visits, and most are not allowed to touch another human being. The detainees are not given any blankets. Their only cover is a plastic sheet.

There is no reason to believe that Al-Ghizzawi’s treatment is exceptional. If his is at all an exceptional case, it is exceptional because he has twice been unanimously declared not to be an enemy combatant. [complete article]

Watching torture
By John Barry, Newsweek, December 10, 2007

The footage was blurry, shot with a handheld 8mm camera in the poor light filtering through the shack’s small windows. There was no sound—which lent merciful distance to what it showed: the interrogation of some unidentified middle-aged man, undergoing falanga, mostly (beatings to pulp the feet), though the session culminated in anal rape with a stick. What remains as a true horror in the memory is less those activities than the demeanor of the inquisitors. A couple of men in shirts were administering the torture. But a pair of interrogators stood off to one side, mostly out of the frame. They came to the victim before and after each bout, evidently asking questions. Then they’d go back out of frame, to let the next round of beatings commence. Two men in neat dark suits, professionals, just doing a job—unpleasant, perhaps, but necessary, as they saw it, for the safety of the state.

That no doubt is the true horror of the tapes the CIA destroyed—worse, even, than the sight of the torture procedures themselves. We assume it shows waterboarding, the near-drowning of someone strapped to a cruciform plank. Memories of that Savak instructional film tell me, indelibly, what the videos would have looked like: the torturers calmly pouring water over the cloth covering the victims’ faces, the frenzied chest-heavings as the bodies went into shock, the gasping and retching as each session ended. More horrifying still would have been the actions, or inactions, of all those standing around. There must have been interrogators, and an interpreter. Certainly a doctor, watching the victims’ vital signs on a monitor to gauge how long each session could last. This being America, there may have even been a lawyer on hand. All professionals, doing something unpleasant, but—you understand—necessary for the safety of the state. And at the end of the day, one assumes, they drove home to their families.

This is where 9/11 has brought us. No wonder Rodriguez destroyed those tapes. [complete article]

Lawyers cleared destroying tapes
By Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, December 11, 2007

Lawyers within the clandestine branch of the Central Intelligence Agency gave written approval in advance to the destruction in 2005 of hundreds of hours of videotapes documenting interrogations of two lieutenants from Al Qaeda, according to a former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the episode.

The involvement of agency lawyers in the decision making would widen the scope of the inquiries into the matter that have now begun in Congress and within the Justice Department. Any written documents are certain to be a focus of government investigators as they try to reconstruct the events leading up to the tapes’ destruction.

The former intelligence official acknowledged that there had been nearly two years of debate among government agencies about what to do with the tapes, and that lawyers within the White House and the Justice Department had in 2003 advised against a plan to destroy them. But the official said that C.I.A. officials had continued to press the White House for a firm decision, and that the C.I.A. was never given a direct order not to destroy the tapes.

“They never told us, ‘Hell, no,’” he said. “If somebody had said, ‘You cannot destroy them,’ we would not have destroyed them.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Any decent mafia boss knows how to avoid implicating himself in a crime.

See also, Gitmo inmate’s lawyer urges U.S. on photos (AP).

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NEWS: Report describes systematic White House effort to manipulate climate change science

“The Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming”
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, December 10, 2007

For the past 16 months, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been investigating allegations of political interference with government climate change science under the Bush Administration. During the course of this investigation, the Committee obtained over 27,000 pages of documents from the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Commerce Department, held two investigative hearings, and deposed or interviewed key officials. Much of the information made available to the Committee has never been publicly disclosed.

This report presents the findings of the Committee’s investigation. The evidence before the Committee leads to one inescapable conclusion: the Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming.

In 1998, the American Petroleum Institute developed an internal “Communications Action Plan” that stated: “Victory will be achieved when … average citizens ‘understand’ uncertainties in climate science … [and] recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.’” The Bush Administration has acted as if the oil industry’s communications plan were its mission statement. White House officials and political appointees in the agencies censored congressional testimony on the causes and impacts of global warming, controlled media access to government climate scientists, and edited federal scientific reports to inject unwarranted uncertainty into discussions of climate change and to minimize the threat to the environment and the economy. [complete article]

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NEWS & OPINION: How to engage Iran; Iraq seeks Gulf security pact including Iran

How to defuse Iran
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, New York Times, December 11, 2007

Iran has tried tactical cooperation with the United States several times over the past two decades — including helping to secure the release of hostages from Lebanon in the late 1980s and sending shipments of arms to Bosnian Muslims when the United States was forbidden to do so.

Yet each time, Tehran’s expectations of reciprocal good will have been dashed by American condemnation of perceived provocations in other arenas, as when Iranian support for objectives in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks was rewarded by President Bush’s inclusion of Iran in the “axis of evil.” Today, incremental engagement cannot overcome deep distrust between Washington and Tehran — certainly not rapidly enough to address America’s security concerns.

From an Iranian perspective, serious engagement would start with American willingness to recognize Tehran’s legitimate security and regional interests as part of an overall settlement of our differences. But neither Republicans nor Democrats have been willing to consider such an approach, because of the pursuit of a nuclear weapons option and support for terrorist organizations that Iran employs to defend what it sees as its fundamental security interests. Successful United States-Iran engagement requires cutting through this Gordian knot by undertaking comprehensive diplomacy encompassing the core concerns of both sides.

From the American side, any new approach must address Iran’s security by clarifying that Washington is not seeking regime change in Tehran, but rather changes in the Iranian government’s behavior. (While Secretary Rice has said recently that overthrowing the mullahs is not United States policy, President Bush has pointedly refused to affirm her statements.) To that end, the United States should be prepared to put a few assurances on the table. [complete article]

Iraq wants Iran in Gulf security pact
AFP, December 10, 2007

Iraq’s national security adviser yesterday called on Gulf states to form a regional security pact, which would include Iran, while he reassured the area’s US allies that Baghdad is “heading West” in its foreign policies. But Mouaffak al-Rubaie also criticised Saudi Arabia and Iran for what he called settling scores on Iraqi soil and called for regional reconciliation that put sectarian differences aside.

“It is extremely important to have a regional reconciliation rather than having this heightened sectarian tension in the region,” he told delegates at a security conference held in the Bahraini capital.

“That is why Iraq is looking seriously to call for a regional security pact like the good old (1954 anti-Soviet alliance) Baghdad Pact or a Nato-style pact, with a set agenda: counter terrorism, counter narcotics, counter religious extremism and counter sectarianism,” he said. [complete article]

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ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The Iranian strategic threat – shattered or just fractured?

They stole the threat from us
By Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz, December 10, 2007

Iran is indeed deceptive, but it is not crazy. It operates according to a systematic political and diplomatic rationale. But since 1979 this political rationale has been swallowed up in international rhetoric, mainly American and Israeli, which has portrayed Iran as the ultimate global enemy. This is why the American report is such a great blow to Israel. The report does not dismiss the Iranian threat – though it does not substantiate it – but it snatches an important strategic asset from Israel. No longer can Israel play the regional power that charts the map of global strategic threats; the state that mobilized the world against Iran will now assume the role of nudnik.

But Israel’s real problem is that Iran is also losing its status as a strategic threat because of the report, and Israel will find it difficult to “enlist” Iran to promote its regional policy. For example, what justification will Israel have for demanding that Syria sever its relations with Iran as a condition for conducting negotiations once American intelligence has certified Iran as being somewhat acceptable? What good can come from emphasizing the ties between Iran and Hamas or Hezbollah when Iran is now portrayed as a state that no longer threatens the region? And why should the Annapolis conference be described as designed to stymie Iran?

Israel is not the only one with this problem. Its Arab counterparts, who are stuck in the same anti-Iran pit, are also panicking. When Iran’s nuclear threat is not recognized, two fronts collapse: the Iranian-Shi’ite front, which brought Israel closer to some of the Arab states, and the Israeli front against radical organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas, or against Syria. In each of these fronts, Iran serves as a connecting axis, an enemy against which coalitions of interests were built and agreements between rivals were generated.

Thus, for example, most Arab countries perceive Iran’s involvement in Lebanon as not just an intervention by a foreign state in Arab affairs, but as a penetration by a hostile state. And Israel intensifies Hezbollah’s tactical threat into a strategic threat because of the Iran connection. Hamas is also accorded the status of a super-threat because of Israel’s efforts to link it with Iran, the mother of all threats, so that we almost forget that the Hamas threat is based only on Qassam rockets.

These enemies will revert to being only “local enemies,” not part of an axis of evil (which also collapses because of the American report). They will no longer be emissaries of a nuclear monster. Israel will have to go back to routine, boring enemies whom it can fight using checkpoints and electricity cuts. Back to Annapolis. Back to the grind.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, some people said the U.S. would have to manufacture a new strategic threat. It will be interesting to see what Israel does after the American report shattered its strategic threat. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The NIE, if viewed as a precision attack aimed at preventing military strikes on Iran in 2008, almost certainly hit its target. But if viewed as a strategic weapon designed to re-shape America and Israel’s approach to the Middle East, it remains to be seen whether an intelligence report alone is capable of bringing about such a sweeping effect.

Consider the difference between American views of Iran and North Korea. It is widely recognized that the North Korean people suffer a depth of oppression from their own government far greater than do the Iranians. The Islamic Republic of Iran, having become distanced from its revolutionary roots, is in many ways the most modern and Westernized of Middle Eastern countries. North Korea on the other hand is for good reason often referred to as the Hermit Kingdom. Iran put its nuclear weapons program on hold while North Korea forged ahead and put its own nuclear weapons to the test. North Korean power is concentrated in the hands of a mercurial leader, while Iranian power is more diffused through a complex power structure.

Why then should the NIE’s most significant “revelation” be the following claim?

Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005. Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.

To say that Iran may be more vulnerable to influence than previously judged actually says more about that previous judgment than it says about Iran. And that judgment reveals the critical difference between the views of Iran and those of North Korea.

Iran is the nation state upon which American and Israeli Islamophobia is most sharply focused. Even though there are fewer reasons to regard North Korea as a rational actor, fear of North Korea’s sometimes unpredictable leadership is not matched with an image of some amorphous, demonic Korean threat.

North Korea’s inclusion in the “axis of evil” always looked like a feeble attempt to deflect the charge that the administration was waging a war on Islam. Yet in spite of its inclusion there was no matching and full-blooded demonization. As a result we are now witness to a spectacular turnaround in the Bush administration’s approach to a pariah state, known to be involved in nuclear proliferation. President Bush has just written to “Dear Chairman” Kim Jong Il, and the New York Philarmonic orchestra will soon land in Pyongyang in an effort to serenade the hermit out of its shell.

What hope is there that we might witness such conciliatory gestures aimed at Tehran?

The challenge for Iran is not merely that it nurture a budding understanding in Washington that the United States is actually dealing with a rational actor. The greater challenge lies in the undoing of a pervasive fear that has long been merchandised by people who have no interest in now either owning up to a purposeful deceit or abandoning a deep-seated prejudice.

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OPINION: Bush’s real lie about Iran

Bush’s real lie about Iran
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, Salon, December 7, 2007

The latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program raises questions once again about the Bush administration’s veracity in describing a nuclear threat. But President Bush’s worst misrepresentations about the Iranian nuclear issue do not focus on whether Tehran is currently pursuing a nuclear weapons program or when Bush knew the U.S. intelligence community was revising its previous assessments. Rather, the real lie is the president’s claim that his administration has made a serious offer to negotiate with the Islamic Republic, and that Iranian intransigence is the only thing preventing a diplomatic resolution. [complete article]

See also, Intel report spurs calls for Iran talks (AP).

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OPINION: Torture is inevitably and inextricably bound to tyranny

The president-tyrant
By Scott Horton, Harper’s, December 9, 2007

It is common for people today to question how any leader can be a tyrant who achieves office through popular election, and, indeed, who remains popular. But such talk is foolish and betrays an ignorance of the origins of the term and the historical context of its use. Throughout history, tyrants came to power through means of control and manipulation of popular opinion. This was so familiar a feature to the thinkers of antiquity, that Aristotle charts it as a characteristic of the tyrant. And in the history of the dark, past century, how many little men in search of a balcony came to power on the back of a jubilant and cheering mob? And indeed, no less a man that Thomas Jefferson was quick to remind his fellow citizens of this principle. And it was Jefferson who raised the cry of “tyrant” against the president, when he proceeded in disregard of the constraints of Constitution and law, setting into play a plan of persecution targeting his political opponents and the poor, downtrodden and defenseless immigrants. Jefferson spoke sharply and loudly because the republic was under siege by a popularly elected (and popular) government. He was right to have done so, and he is vindicated by history for it.

The question was whether the president has put himself above the law and assumed powers far beyond those the Constitution measured to him.

And today, America faces precisely this question. We have a president who acts in shameless disregard of the Constitution’s restraints upon his office, and who feels himself above the law, and who constantly seeks to manipulate and mislead the public. How many times just in the last week have we witnessed this? [complete article]

See also, Democratic complicity in Bush’s torture regimen (Glenn Greenwald) and The Democrats and torture (Andrew Sullivan).

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NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION: Engaging Iran

Make Iran an offer it might refuse
By Fareed Zacharia, Newsweek, December 17, 2007

The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran has upended the Bush administration’s policy toward that country. This could be a good thing, if it leads to some creative rethinking. Over the past two years the administration has made several intelligent moves in its effort to isolate Iran—keeping the Europeans onboard, rallying the Arab states—but it’s been unwilling to make a simple choice. Do we want policy change in Iran or regime change?

Imagine, for a moment, what the world looks like to Iran. The country is surrounded by powerful states with nuclear weapons—Israel, India, Pakistan, China and Russia. Across one of its borders stand some 170,000 American troops (in Iraq), across another are more than 50,000 NATO troops (in Afghanistan). The United States has been bitterly opposed to the Iranian regime for three decades. The current American president has made clear time and again that he regards the Tehran government as evil and wishes that it would fall, and Congress set aside $75 million last year to “promote democracy” in Iran. Now, if you were in Tehran, wouldn’t you buy some insurance? And in the world of international politics, a nuclear program is the ultimate insurance policy.

For Washington to threaten a regime with extinction and simultaneously expect it to disarm is a policy doomed to failure. Were we to be clear that what we seek from Tehran is only a change in behavior, a policy of sticks and carrots might actually produce results. [complete article]

CIA has recruited Iranians to defect
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, December 9, 2007

The CIA launched a secret program in 2005 designed to degrade Iran’s nuclear weapons program by persuading key officials to defect, an effort that has prompted a “handful” of significant departures, current and former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation say.

The previously undisclosed program, which CIA officials dubbed “the Brain Drain,” is part of a major intelligence push against Iran ordered by the White House two years ago.

Intelligence gathered as part of that campaign provided much of the basis for a U.S. report released last week that concluded the Islamic Republic had halted its nuclear weapons work in 2003. Officials declined to say how much of that intelligence could be attributed to the CIA program to recruit defectors. [complete article]

Meet ‘the decider’ of Tehran. He’s not the hothead you expect
By Vali Nasr, Washington Post, December 9, 2007

In the past, [Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not been averse to talking to Washington. He gave tacit support to an ill-fated memo offering direct U.S.-Iranian talks in 2003, and a year later, he publicly endorsed discussions over Iraq. But times changed after Iran dug in its heels over the nuclear issue and found itself looking down the barrels of U.S. guns. The threat of war has abated after this dramatic week, but for the man who rules Iran, two overriding concerns linger: ensuring that his regime survives and ensuring that he remains at the head of it. As the National Intelligence Estimate itself put it, “Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs.” But Tehran’s decisions are also guided by one man, and anyone serious about understanding the sources of Iranian conduct needs to keep an eye on him. [complete article]

Iran snub of atomic pacts is denied
New York Times, December 9, 2007

A former nuclear negotiator for Iran dismissed reports that the country’s current negotiator had brushed off previous agreements with Europe over the Iranian nuclear program.

Ali Larijani, the former nuclear negotiator, who is now the representative of the supreme religious leader at the Supreme National Security Council, said Thursday that Western news media had fabricated the comments, the news agency ISNA reported. [complete article]

See also, A smart side to US intelligence (Kaveh L Afrasiabi), Just 18% believe Iran has stopped nuclear weapons development program (Rasmussen Reprots), Bolton calls report on Iran ‘quasi-putsch’ (Reuters), and What we didn’t learn from the hunt for Iraq’s phantom arsenal (veteran CIA case officer, Arthur Keller).

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ANALYSIS: Foreign policy shift

Bush engages foreign foes as policy shift accelerates
By Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2007

The White House said that President Bush sent a letter directly to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il seeking cooperation in implementing a pact to dismantle its nuclear arms in exchange for full normalized relations.

The move is the latest example of the White House accelerating its reversal on numerous foreign-policy fronts.

Earlier in his presidency, Mr. Bush designated Pyongyang a member of an “axis of evil” and expressed loathing for the communist state’s dictator. In recent months, however, contacts have picked up amid an accord on dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

On other fronts — particularly Iran, Syria and Lebanon — the Bush administration is also shifting tactics in ways that could affect American interests long-term, say U.S. officials and foreign policy analysts. President Bush is generally receiving praise for engaging Pyongyang and Damascus, but he is also risking alienating the Republican Party’s conservative wing, which believes the U-turns will undermine U.S. standing around the world.

“Our foreign policy is in free-fall at the moment,” said John Bolton, Mr. Bush’s former ambassador to the United Nations and an ally of Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Bolton argues that engaging dictators will only “diminish our prestige and influence.” [complete article]

At least he didn’t call him ‘Dear Leader’
By Donald Kirk, Asia Times, December 8, 2007

Don’t call him “North Korea’s leader”. Call him “Chairman” – or “Dear Chairman”.

That seems to be the first lesson in etiquette that President George W Bush was persuaded to follow when he acquiesced to suggestions that he personally sign a letter to Kim Jong-il appealing to him to come clean on all he’s got going in nuclear weapons program by the end of the year.

Kim comes by the “chairman” title as chairman of North Korea’s National Defense Commission, the wellspring of his “military first” policy that leaves no doubt the armed forces, under his control, hold ultimate power over the Workers’ Party, of which Kim is general secretary.

The decision for Bush to address him as “Chairman” rather than “Excellency” or the simple “Mr” alone symbolizes the climb-down from the hard line that Bush had made the hallmark of his policy on North Korea for the first two or three years of his presidency. [complete article]

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FEATURE: Intelligence reform

Nine little words in the NIE
By Thomas Powers, Los Angeles Times, December 9, 2007

Intelligence stories rarely get more complicated than this one. But this much is clear: Bush is the nation’s chief classification officer; he can make and unmake secrets at will. The White House says the president was briefed on the findings in the nearly 140-page report on Nov. 29, but the chief subject of that meeting was probably the question of declassification — whether to send the secret National Intelligence Estimate with its explosive first sentence to Congress and let it emerge in a slow agony of leaks over a matter of days or weeks, or to cauterize the wound and declassify the key judgments at the outset, hoping the argument would quickly burn itself out?

One of the basic laws of intelligence is that no big secret can be kept that can be written on the back of an envelope. No matter who first suggested declassification, it was the president who ultimately decided to release the nine words that reversed the conclusion of a previous intelligence assessment on Iran’s bomb program in 2005, and he did it because it was going to come out anyway.

One thing we know, from the document and from the fact of its declassification, is that reform of the intelligence community has apparently worked. The creation of Mike McConnell’s job as director of national intelligence has successfully insulated the CIA from pressure by the White House of the sort that played such a big role in the Iraq WMD fiasco. To call the new NIE “inconvenient” is simply another way of saying that it is not politicized. It is free from influence by policymakers. It represents the honest conclusion of the analysts given the job of deciding whether Tehran was trying to build a bomb. The fact that the NIE says what it says, and its release, both show that the White House has lost control over American intelligence. This good news probably needs a lot of hedging and qualification, but it is good all the same. [complete article]

Revisiting intelligence reform
By Tim Shorrock, FPIF, December 6, 2007

As the Bush administration winds up nearly seven years of intelligence fiascos, a quiet revolution has been going on at the Pentagon, which controls more than 80% of America’s $60 billion intelligence budget. Since taking over from Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense in winter 2006, Robert Gates has greatly scaled down the Pentagon’s footprint on national security policy and intelligence. Working closely with Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Michael McConnell, he has slowly begun to assert civilian control over the key spy agencies funded by the defense budget and halted the Pentagon’s efforts to create its own intelligence apparatus independent of the CIA. The recent intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, in contradicting early administration assertions, is perhaps the most significant sign of this newly won independence.

Those are significant actions. Under Rumsfeld, the Pentagon had become the dominant force in U.S. intelligence, with vast new powers in human intelligence and counterterrorism, both at home and abroad. By 2005, it was deploying secret commando units on clandestine missions in countries as far afield as the Philippines and Ecuador, sometimes without consulting with the local U.S. ambassadors and CIA station chiefs. At some point, President George W. Bush and his national security team apparently decided that the genie had to be put in the bottle, and sent Gates – a former CIA director who had worked closely with Vice President Dick Cheney during the first Bush administration – to put the kibosh on Rumsfeld’s private intelligence army.

But these efforts by Gates and McConnell to demilitarize U.S. Intelligence will never succeed until Congress, with the support of the next administration, removes the three national collection agencies – the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) – from the Pentagon’s command-and-control system and places them directly, like the CIA, under the control of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). [complete article]

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NEWS & OPINION: CIA torture cover-up

The scapegoat
By Scott Horton, Harper’s, December 8, 2007
scapegoat.gif
As the story concerning the CIA’s decision to destroy vital evidence of its program of detainee abuse unfolds, the Bush Administration’s posture on the matter is shifting decisively. This is called “damage control.” The Administration’s initial posture was to have CIA Director Hayden put the best face on the situation and argue that everything that was done was perfectly legal and correct.

So now we come to phase two: the fall-back position. In phase two, we learn that the president and other senior figures in the Administration know nothing about it. Instead, this was all a rogue operation by a second tier leadership figure at the CIA. And indeed, by midday yesterday, White House off-the-record explainers were extremely busy pointing fingers at one man, the designated scapegoat. [complete article]

Inquiry begins into tapes’ destruction
By Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston, New York Times, December 9, 2007

The Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency’s internal watchdog on Saturday began a joint preliminary inquiry into the spy agency’s destruction of hundreds of hours of videotapes showing interrogations of top operatives of Al Qaeda.

The announcement comes amid new questions about which officials inside the C.I.A. were involved in the decision to destroy the videotapes, which showed severe interrogation methods used on two Qaeda suspects, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

The agency operative who ordered the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the chief of the C.I.A.’s national clandestine service, known as the Directorate of Operations until 2005. On Saturday, a government official who had spoken recently with Mr. Rodriguez on the matter said that Mr. Rodriguez told him that he had received approval from lawyers inside the clandestine service to destroy the tapes. [complete article]

Hill briefed on waterboarding in 2002
By Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen, Washington Post, December 9, 2007

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange. [complete article]

Man held by CIA says he was tortured
By William Glaberson, New York Times, December 9, 2007

The first of the so-called high-value Guantánamo detainees to have seen a lawyer claims he was subjected to “state-sanctioned torture” while in secret C.I.A. prisons, and he has asked for a court order barring the government from destroying evidence of his treatment.

The request, in a filing by his lawyers, was made on Nov. 29, before officials from the Central Intelligence Agency acknowledged that the agency had destroyed videotapes of interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda that current and former officials said included the use of harsh techniques.

Lawyers for the detainee, Majid Khan, a former Baltimore resident, released documents in his case on Friday. They claim he “was subjected to an aggressive C.I.A. detention and interrogation program notable for its elaborate planning and ruthless application of torture” to numerous detainees. [complete article]

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