Sic Semper Tyrannis 2008

Guantanamo and the SERE schools

"In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that “every American would be shocked” by the origin of the training document.

“What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,” Mr. Levin said. “People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.”

A Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Col Patrick Ryder, said he could not comment on the Guantánamo training chart. “I can’t speculate on previous decisions that may have been made prior to current D.O.D. policy on interrogations,” Colonel Ryder said. “I can tell you that current D.O.D. policy is clear — we treat all detainees humanely.”

Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article described “one form of torture” used by the Chinese as forcing American prisoners to stand “for exceedingly long periods,” sometimes in conditions of “extreme cold.” Such passive methods, he wrote, were more common than outright physical violence. Prolonged standing and exposure to cold have both been used by American military and C.I.A. interrogators against terrorist suspects. "  NY Times

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I wrote some years ago in these pages that I thought the methods in use at Gitmo and other places sounded a lot like the resistance to interrogation training that had been done in the '60s in the US armed forces.  The supposedly sophisticated methods of psychological manipulation then said to have been used against French POWs in Indochina and Americans in Korea had inspired a lot of that kind of that training.

SERE training was intended to prepare people for the illegal bestialities that it was expected would be inflected on American prisoners if they fell into the hands of the communist enemy.  The armed forces had been horrified at the number of "collaborators" who had emerged among American prisoners in Korea.  This kind of training and the adoption of the "Code of Conduct"  were seen as specifics against a recurrence.  An exagerated fear of the "Manchurian Candidate" phenomenon was widespread.

It was clearly understood that such methods were to be expected of an enemy devoid of decency.  I experienced such training and it was no fun at all.

The methods of interrogation authorized and thought productive by US forces were very different from that.  They stressed what was essentially a process of seduction similar to that used in recruiting foreign agents.

The US armed forces have no peacetime mission to interrogate prisoners.  Discussion of methods in the context of peacetime military life is a completely abstract subject.

The national intelligence agencies debrief defectors from foreign countries of interest but this is not a hostile process.  The defectors want asylum and for that reason are normally eager to tell what they know.

Clearly, some sadist or group of sadists with a vivid imagination took advantage of the national trauma of 9/11 to use the old communist enemies' methods as a model.

Whoever did that inflicted a grave injury and disgrace on the United States.  The culprits should be punished as an example to future generations of sadists.  pl

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=world

The Republican "Brand" as metaphor.

"Complaints about vacuous official rhetoric and the "dumbing-down" of presidential speeches, news conferences and interviews are standard fare. Lim found strong evidence to support those complaints, not just in his interviews with retired speechwriters but in the presidential texts themselves.

In what must have been a heroic effort, he applied standard techniques of content analysis to state papers of every president from Washington to the second Bush. His tool is something called the Flesch readability score -- a measure of the average number of words per sentence and the average number of syllables per word. The higher the Flesch score, the simpler to get the meaning.

Applied to the annual State of the Union addresses, the average score has doubled from the first few presidents to the last few. Those "messages were pitched at a college level through most of the 18th and 19th centuries," Lim says. "They have now come down to an eighth-grade reading level." The same trend, but more pronounced, is found in inaugural addresses. Their average sentence length has dropped from 60 words to 20.

Simplification has its advantages, if it serves to increase public comprehension. But it comes with a huge risk: The complexity of real-world choices can be, and often is, lost."  Broder

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"Levelling" has become the Zeitgeist.  Actually it has been the goal of many for a long, long time.  The numbers in the study mentioned above illustrate that trend over centuries.  "Elitist" has become a term of absolute condemnation.   The downward drift in general education is now undeniable.  College audiences are now so poorly informed about general culture that even the simplest references to popular literature, film, etc. are greeted by blank stares.  Many audiences at college lectures are difficult to talk to because everything one says is "news to them."

A classics professor once told his class in my presence that there no longer existed the possibility of the creation of an American national epic poem, something like the Iliad, Aeneid, the "Divine Comedy," "John Brown's Body," etc., because the declining cultural level and the lack of common values among the "American people" had destroyed the basis of wide comprehension and acceptance that would be needed for such an effort.  That was fifty years ago.  What would he think now?

Today, outside the elites of a few universities, we have little in the way of intellectual life in this country.  We also have little in the way of political life.  NBC's Political Director just referred on MTP to the "Republican Brand."  My.  My.  Marketing rules.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/27/AR2008062702770.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_poetry

The Oil Meeting at Jeddah

"Saudi Arabia will press consumer nations at an oil meeting in Jeddah this week to take action to curtail the speculation it sees as a major factor behind high oil prices, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

"Governments have a role in organising (oil) markets and structuring them in a way that prevents speculators behaving in a manner that has led oil prices to reach their current levels," Deputy Oil Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman was quoted as saying in the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat daily.

The prince was discussing a paper Saudi Arabia will present to an unprecedented meeting of consumer and producer countries in Jeddah on Sunday. He said the Saudi paper had been prepared in coordination with the oil producer cartel OPEC. "  Reuters

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We are about to enter a period in which a major lesson will be taught to the world regarding the fact that market prices are more a product of mass perception and a form of hysteria than they are of "hard data."

Greed feeds greed.  Prices in oil have been rising because there was money to be made in the atmosphere of "casino" gambling fostered by the impatience of the young and ruthless adventurers who dominate the derivatives markets.

In the "make or break" games that are played in those markets perception is more important than reality.  The impressions made on each other by "players" at lunch in restaurants where the amount of the check would feed families for weeks or months in the developing world are more important than any statistics on supply and demand.

The US government has now focused on the men in mega suits from Italy.  Some have been indicted, others will walk the "perp" walk in a process of reduction of the the risk of unrest that has been the unintended effect of the functioning of unrestrained commodity futures markets.

The Saudis are going to lend a hand in that process this weekend.  The amount of the increase in their production is not significant as an incremental rise in the world's oil supply.  Its significance lies in their stated intent to cripple the process of parasitic speculation in a vital commodity.  pl

http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKL2132604120080621

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aMTWS1Pzs0Jc&refer=home

Overflight Clearance for an Israeli strike at Natanz

"The exercise involved Israeli helicopters that could be used to rescue downed pilots, the newspaper reported.

The helicopters and refuelling tankers flew more than 1,400km (870 miles), roughly the distance between Israel and Iran's main uranium enrichment plant at Natanz.

The New York Times reported that Israeli officials declined to discuss the details of the exercise.

A spokesman for the Israeli military said the air force "regularly trains for various missions in order to confront and meet the challenges posed by the threats facing Israel". "  BBC

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We went over this once before in a study of what Israeli routes would likely be in an attack on Natanz.  Rick Francona has looked at this on his blog.  He is a skilled and experienced air force officer and I trust his judgment as I always did.

My thoughts on the overflight clearance issue:

"Overflight Clearance" is the granting of permission for one country's military or civilian aircraft to fly over and through the air space of another sovereign political entity.  For one country to overfly the territory of another without permission is a clear violation of international law which invites engagement by air defense forces of the country overflown or any country that has effective authority to grant or deny overflight permission.

"could be used to rescue downed pilots"  Really?  Where?  Routes to and from Natanz would have to cross some combination of the territories of Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia or Turkey.

Jordan and Saudi Arabia are extremely unlikely to grant overflight clearance for this purpose.  Presumably this would include Search-Air Rescue (SAR) missions over their territory as well as the strike itself.  Egress from Iran after a strike might well involve Israeli aircraft with combat damage or mechanical problems.  Downed aviators in Jordan, Iraq or Saudi Arabia would be a distinct possibility.  Are the Israelis envisioning fighting their way into and out of these countries on SAR missions?  Would the United States, Jordan, Saudi Arabia or Iraq allow damaged Israeli aircraft to land on airfields in Iraq or these other countries?

Is Turkey going to grant Israel overflight clearance for a routing of the strike or SAR that would enter Turkey at its Mediterranean coast near Iskendurun, turn east to reach Iranian kurdistan, then south to Natnz and return by same route?  Opinions?

Is a Syrian route a realistic possibility?  Certainly the Syrians are not going to grant such overflight permission.  Was the "celebrated" Israeli mission in Syria a while back a test to see how difficult it would be to use Syrian airspace?

Finally, there is the issue of whether or not the Israelis would have overflight clearance for Iraqi airspace at all.  At present, the US exercizes airspace control for Iraqi airspace under the authority it has from the UN for the coalition's operations.  This authority from the UN is to expire soon.  Because of this (and other reasons), the US is seeking acceptance from the Iraqi government for two agreements. One is a SOFA agreement and the other amounts to a mutual defense and cooperation pact.  Among the things the US wants under these agreements is a continuation of its authority over Iraqi airspace.  The Iraqis are reluctant to concede this as well as a number of other points.

I wonder why.  pl

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7465170.stm

Who are the Target Audience?

"US military officials on Wednesday accused a Shiite militant group of carrying out a truck bombing in northwestern Baghdad on Tuesday evening that killed at least 65 people, the deadliest attack in the capital since March.

The accusation was startling because the bombing in the Hurriyah neighborhood had the hallmarks of earlier large-scale attacks in predominantly Shiite areas that had been attributed to Sunni insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

A U.S. military spokesman said intelligence reports indicate that Haydar Mehdi Khadum al-Fawadi, the leader of a Shiite "special group," planned the bombing in an effort to fuel animosity toward Sunnis in the largely Shiite district. The U.S. military uses the term special groups to describe what it says are smaller Iranian-backed militias.

The bombing followed aggressive U.S. and Iraqi military operations against Shiite militias and the so-called special groups in Baghdad. If residents could be convinced that Sunni extremists are still killing Shiites indiscriminately, they might also be convinced of the ongoing need for protection by militiamen."  Washpost

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In recent years the idea of lying to gain a propaganda advantage has become a popular concept among some people in the US armed forces.  That is a bad idea for many reasons.  To begin with lying is, in itself, a bad idea.  Abandonment of the truth is a corrupting and corrosive concept, a step on a path that leads to an inability to believe the statements of one's own people even within the armed forces.  Armies operate on a belief in the integrity of comrades.  Without that, only a fool will accept the risks involved in trusting the guidance given by one's superiors.  There are other reasons.  In the end the truth will normally become evident and when it does, the trust necessary to maintain the support of one's own public for a war effort is destroyed.  How foolish it is to risk that. 

Nevertheless, our neocon Jacobin "friends" love the idea of deception and manipulation and their influence on the armed forces expressed through the civilian government has corrupted the basic belief in truthfulness as the best policy.   Unfortunately, it is now plausible that the claim of Iranian responsibility for this attack on a predominately Shia market place in Baghdad may be a crude lie intended to support a propaganda campaign.  Is the claim of Iranian responsibility true?  Unfortunately, the "coin" of credibility has been spent to such an extent that the claim itself can not be believed without real proof.

Has the US government ever sought to manipulate opinion by deliberately using half truths or whole untruths?  Yes, it has, but the targets have by law been limited to foreign populations.  The danger inherent in doing such a thing has always been reflected in US public law.  We need to return to this policy.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/18/AR2008061800344.html

Hudna? - At Last

"Tuesday the two sides agreed to a six-month deal. He voiced confidence the latest violence would not hold up the start of the agreement to end constant bloodshed. "Implementation of the truce will begin at 6 a.m. (4 a.m. British time) on Thursday," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to announce an accord. A ceasefire would aim to end rocket and mortar bomb attacks on Israel from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and Israeli raids in the territory. Israel has said it would continue preparations for broad military action should a truce fall apart. A senior Egyptian official was quoted by Egypt's Middle East News Agency as confirming the Palestinian official's information. A Hamas source had said announcement of a deal would be made by Egypt. Israel stopped short of confirming the timing of what it said would be an informal arrangement to halt fighting." Reuters

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The picture is of Omar Suleiman, the senior Egyptian official who negotiated the truce.

As I have written and said many times a truce of this kind is the only way to begin a process of gradual confidence building while moving forward in what may be very long negotiations.  Such a truce can be extended any number of times.

Let us hope that both sides have the good sense to observe this terms of this opportunity for actual progress.  pl

http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKL1760197120080617?ageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

King Abdullah and the speculators

"Saudi Arabia, Opec's largest oil producer, moved to take some of the heat out of rising fuel prices yesterday with plans to increase production next month.

The Saudi move followed a weekend of talks between the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon; the Saudi ruler, King Abdullah, and the country's oil minister Ali al-Naimi.

The news is expected to help depress the crude oil price, which hit a record high of $139 a barrel last week, ahead of an unprecedented meeting of oil producers and importers to be held in the Red Sea port of Jeddah on Sunday."  Guardian

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Sooo, the Saudi king is going to increase production at the margin on crude oil going into the spot market and this is expected to lower the market price on deliveries of crude to refiners.  That, in turn, is expected to cause a failure in confidence in the whole nasty complex of capitalist hedge fund managers, index fund managers, bankers, advisers to same, and individual mega-investors.  It is hoped/believed that this failure in confidence will cause the players to lose faith in their ability to pass the risk along to the greater fools waiting somewhere in speculator limbo.  After that set of developments the price per barrel is supposed to fall, a lot.  I believe this to be true.  We will assemble here afterwords to gloat, or not. 

A couple of things... 

- This declaration by the Saudis means that the Saudi gremlins (something like the gnomes of Zurich but more colorful and with bigger boats at Nice) believe that they can affect the price by doing this.  It is intuitively obvious that they thought that all through the time that they assured the cretins in the Bush Administration that they could not possibly increase oil production since they were already at the top of their production limit.  I seem to remember that some of you believed that.

- Believing that, they still did not choose to increase production enough to take the steam out of the commodity/financial market upward spiral in price.  That spiral gained speed as marginal scarcity fed the greed and confidence of the players.

- Now they are going to boost production because the accelerating rate of destruction of the world economy threatens everyone, including them.   Even 300 foot yachts can be threatened by instability.

-  Why did they play this game?  The Saudis are angry with us and have been for some time.  They are tired of being treated like poor relatives at the family reunion.  They are tired of being ignored in the matter of policy with regard to Shia triumphalism, Iran and the Palestinian question.  The Saudis don't care about that last one?  Only a neocon or a State Department hack toadying his way towards promotion would even try to believe it to be true that the Saudis do not care about Palestine or Jerusalem.  Ask the Saudis.

Foreign policy doesn't matter to the "little people?"  Ask yourself if that is true next time you fill up mama's Explorer. pl

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jun/16/oil.saudiarabia

The Iraq Agreements - 2

"On Iraq, Bush brushed off criticism that a long-term security deal between the United States and Iraq was faltering.

"If I were a betting man, we'll reach an agreement with the Iraqis," Bush said. "Of course, we're there at their invitation. It's a sovereign nation ... We're going to work hard to accommodate their desires. It's their country."

The deal would provide a legal basis for the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq after a U.N. mandate expires. Bush said the agreement would not commit future U.S. presidents to any troop levels in Iraq and would not establish permanent U.S. bases.

Bush's upbeat assessment came as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared Friday that talks with the U.S. on the deal were deadlocked, as Sunni and Shiite preachers spoke out against a plan that would enable American troops to remain in Iraq after year's end.

Al-Maliki said negotiations will continue, but his tough talk reflects Iraqi determination to win greater control of U.S. military operations after the U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year. Failure to strike a deal would be a major setback for Bush ahead of the November presidential election."  AP

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No.  Failure to strike a deal would be a major setback for McCain.

A policy wonkista asked me at a meeting last week (I know.  I know.  I was there too.  So what does that make me?) if the Iraqis could not simply say no and set a date at which they want the US to have its forces out of the country.

The answer is - yes.  They could do that.  They could do it if they could muster up the courage and unity to do it in spite of their massive internal devisions and the blandishments of people like Petraeus, Crocker and Satterfield.  You can be sure that a myriad of seductions is being served up for the purpose of getting an agreement before the end of the summer.

At the same time voices from across the region and the Islamic World are whispering in silence that to agree to long term "partnership" with the Americans is treason to Islam and to the Arab People.  The implied long term price for such "treason" will be perceived as high.

I would bet on the effectiveness of the blandishments, rather than the whisperings.  pl

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080614/ap_on_re_eu/bush_europe

The proposed security agreements with Iraq.

"The Bush administration is also negotiating a so-called strategic framework agreement with Baghdad, though details of this accord remain unclear. Iraq experts disagree on what is likely to be included in the framework, and administration officials have been vague. The Congressional Research Service's Katzman says he believes the agreement may incorporate some of the more contentious security proposals, such as authorization for the use of force, contractor immunity, and perhaps approval for the United States to continue detaining prisoners. Patrick Cockburn, the Independent newspaper's veteran Iraq correspondent, writes that the agreement being pushed by the United States would give Americans "long-term use of more than fifty bases in Iraq," an assertion Ambassador Crocker calls "flatly untrue." The framework, if signed, would also give U.S. troops "a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government," Cockburn reports. Yale's Hathaway, meanwhile, says public statements by administration officials have led her to believe contentious security details will remain part of the negotiated SOFA. The strategic framework "basically appears to be everything else" outlined in the November 2007 declaration of principles, she says."  CFR Paper

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If rumors are correct, the approaching SOFA and "strategic framework agreement" are documents which essentially would establish an American protectorate (muhamia) over Iraq for an indeterminate period of time.  The language of the agreements would be "gussied up" to look post-colonial but as the old American "saw" goes, lipstick on a pig does not change the nature of the pig.

As in the "good old days," there are ethnic and religious minorities conveniently to hand who will support the agreements for their own reasons.   The Kurds want American protection to continue and the majority of Sunni Arabs have come to understand that at least for a time, the Americans are preferable to Shia Arab rule limited only by the extent of their real coercive power.

The CFR article suggests that the US has already created a similar regime in Afghanistan.  I do not know about that.  Someone will comment on that thought I am sure.

Can such agreements be made by executive agreement without the consent of the senate?  This is a lawyer's question.  Please comment.  pl

http://www.cfr.org/publication/16448/us_security_agreements_and_iraq.html?breadcrumb=%2F

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectorate

"Not with a bang..."

"Then-Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith sent two Pentagon employees to the Rome meetings with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian dissident already dismissed by the CIA as untrustworthy, and several Iranians who were former and current members of the security service. It also involved an unspecified foreign government's intelligence service.

Ghorbanifar used one of those meetings to press for regime change in Iran, and outlined a plan for it on a napkin, according to the report, saying it would cost about $5 million to start.

The report said then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley failed to inform then-CIA Director George Tenet and then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage fully about the meeting, either before or after it occurred. It said, however, that Hadley and the Pentagon did not exceed their authority in conducting the meeting.

It also said that Defense Department officials refused to allow "potentially useful and actionable intelligence" to be shared with intelligence agencies, even the Pentagon's own Defense Intelligence Agency.

Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans strongly dissented from the report, calling it a "disappointment" to those looking for evidence that anything "unlawful" occurred."  AP

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If you can remember back that far, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,  the SSCI, began an investigation several years ago into both the quality of the intelligence information that was the supposed basis of the US decision to go to war against Iraq and the use that the Bush Administration made of it in obtaining national agreement for that decision.

At the time the Republicans controlled the senate, and they managed (with the help of a few collaborators) to push through a report that essentially blamed the intelligence agencies for poor work and which carefully made a case (by bullying people in the IC) that no one in the intelligence community had been bullied into doing such poor work.  It was a "put up job."    That was "phase one."

At the same time it had been agreed among the members of the SSCI that there would be a second phase of the investigation which was to examine the use that the Bush Administration made of all that ersatz information.  The Republican chairman of the SSCI stonewalled the work of the second phase until the Republicans lost control of Congress in '06.  With the Democrats in charge the work went forward, and today we have the report.

The Republicans have won.  Nobody cares.  pl 

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jTtPj7wRc_KyOh7m89q1DrCQmkNgD913VMS88

http://intelligence.senate.gov/080605/phase2a.pdf