Marc Thiessen, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a columnist at The Washington Post, can always be depended on not to tell the truth when a simple lie will do.
Recently, he exhibited his underscored his offensive blend of tone-deafness and historical ignorance when he.wrote: President George W. Bush “inherited a world where terrorists had been permitted safe haven in terrorist states and were engaged in a virtually unimpeded offensive.” (My italics and a blatant lie.) “Under his predecessor, they had launched a string of attacks against the United States: the first effort to bring down the World Trade Center in 1993; the murder of 19 American airmen at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later; the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, which caused the deaths of 17 American sailors. In none of these cases was there a forceful U.S. response.” (Another blatant lie.) “As a result, al-Qaeda was convinced that the United States was soft and that if they hit us hard enough, we could be forced to retreat and withdraw as we had in Beirut and Somalia.” 195
All this is rock-headed --, it’s as stupid as a stone. The last paragraph is especially dishonest. Thiessen belongs to the Bush neocons whose members include Bill Kristol, Elliott Abrams, James Woolsey, Fred Hiatt, Max Boot, et al. Said Steve Walt, “No, the real problem is that the neoconservative worldview — one that still informs the thinking of many of the groups and individuals who are most vocal in opposing the Iran deal — is fundamentally flawed. Getting Iraq wrong wasn’t just an unfortunate miscalculation, it happened because their theories of world politics were dubious and their understanding of how the world works was goofy…Once again we see put on display the neocons’ stubborn and morally dubious refusal to admit they were wrong and take responsibility for the lives and money they squandered.”
President Clinton’s Impotence
President Clinton was a tough, remorseless leader when it came to foreign policy. It was Clinton who spearheaded the fight against Slobodan Milosevic, bombed Saddam Hussein, outing a coup against him; and Clinton tried to kill Osama bin Laden, and prevented al-Qaeda from establishing a stronghold in the incendiary Balkans region. Ultimately, Clinton emerged as a tough-as-nails commander in chief in the same vein as Ronald Reagan.
The Emergence of Mass Casualty Terrorism
Up until 1996, the U.S. government mainspring worked only spasmodically when it came to the subject of terrorism. Part of this was due to President Clinton’s management style that seemed to thrive on disarray. When Clinton came to power, Osama bin Laden was a dim figure for many Americans. A certain fuzziness came to cloud people’s minds when they first heard his name. I first heard about him from Israeli intelligence. In 1999, I began to study him, and even in early 2000, when I wrote a story for UPI saying that the NSA was reading his communications, few seemed concerned. Instead, when I spoke to some U.S. intelligence officials about the threat he posed, some dismissed the danger as trifling. One former senior State Department official said that the Israelis were using bin Laden as the next threat to world security, and that such a threat was bogus. This official had formerly headed a group of 20 antiterrorist agencies.
At the beginning of Clinton’s second term, a new figure began to loom and gain traction in the White House. Richard A. Clarke. He was a man of ruthless drive that liked to work outside of the chain of command and relied on back channels to obtain his aims. He was expert at getting money from the federal budget that was used to finance causes that he championed. Among his major talents was his ability to sense when a topic was about to be transformed into a major issue. From the first, he took bin Laden seriously.
Clinton soon initiated the Counterterrorism Security Group which included members of the CIA, FBI, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the State Department, among others, led by the unbridled Clarke. He quickly became a “Principal,” a cabinet position with unprecedented authority.
The U.S. war against bin Laden had begun with a grave mistake. In 1995, the U.S. strategy against al-Queda had allowed bin Laden to move from Khartoum to Afghanistan to obtain a secure base of operations. Two years later, the government of Pakistan alerted the White House that bin Laden had ordered the assassination of a U.S. Senator, Mark Brown. In 1998, U.S. government apathy had ended and U.S. intelligence on bin Laden was at flood tide, with reports of all kinds pouring in. by 1996, an enduring anxiety about terrorism had sunk deep roots in the U.S. intelligence communistyh and the White House. A total of $5.7 billion was allocated to fgtht terrorism and that total would soon arch up like a rocket. The CIA had a program of “rendition” under whose terms terrorists wre arrested and sent to Egypt for interrogation. By Christmas of 1997, the “Small Group” of White House counterterrists said that clear effective measures to counter bin Laden had to be put in place. Conscious of American vulnerability began to increase. Iran was still the number one threat to the U.S. but bin Laden was going notice.
The Fateful Fatwa.
In February of 1998, terrorist Osama bin Laden had declared war on the United States. He published his proclamation, “Jihad against Jews and Crusaders,” a document that basically declared war on America. The CIA saw this as a clear escalation and issued “a memo of alert,” but when it came to the subject of terrorism, the State Department was consumed by apathy. Bin Laden’s fatwa never penetrated the narrow, hard horizon of the State Department which was focused on such things as the nuclear competition between India and Pakistan and the poverty of Bangladesh. When it came to terrorism the department snoozed away like so many fetuses.
But by early 1998, President Clinton approved a plan to use tribal proxies to capture the Arab by going to his house and yanking him from his bed. The plan was pursued until June of 1998 when tensions erupted between the CIA and Richard Clarke. The CIA hedged, claiming that innocent civilians might be killed, and some called the plan “reckless.” The scheme fell apart like wet blotting paper.
On August 7, 1998, everything changed.
Two teams of bin Laden operatives blew up the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; 213 people were killed, only 12 of them Americans. Some staffers were found dead sitting at their desks. Clinton’s advisors became aware of the event when all their beepers went off at once. Immediately, in the Situation Room, members of the military and intelligence communities who route cables, monitor communications and intelligence reports to the White House, met to deal with countermeasures, rescue coordination and intelligence review. The CIA had seized faxes and satellite phone calls between Africa and Afghanistan, and its specialists, mainly women, began assessing the evidence. It took only one week before CIA Director George Tenet delivered the verdict to Clinton that bin Laden was responsible for the embassy atrocities.
The meaning of the attacks was chilling and unhittable except to the blind. Steve Simon, a member of Clarke’s staff said, “No previous terrorist operation had shown the kind of skill that was evident in the destruction, within minutes of two embassy buildings separated by hundreds of miles.”
The FBI also felt a momentous new phase in the war on terror had begun. (875)Within eight hours, FBI investigators arrived at the scene. Acting on a tip, they went to a hotel where they encountered a wounded, slender Arab whose name was Rasheed. His pants were spotless, but his face leaked blood from cuts. The FBI agents had flown for many hours, and their clothes were wrinkled, but the Arab was immaculate. This bothered one agent who was alert for the illogical. The agent pointed down to his own shoes which were scuffed and worn. The Arab’s shoes were clean, new and his pants had no blood stains.
The Arab jeered, “Arab men are cleaner than American men.”
“I'll give you that,” the agent said, adding “Maybe you have a magic soap that gets blood out of your clothes.” The agent then stood up and put his hand on his belt which was old and worn. The agent told the Arab that there were two things that a man never washed, his belt and his shoes. He ordered the Arab to take off his belt and shoes. Both were pristine.
Another agent came in and ordered the Arab to write down the first telephone number he called after the bombing.
The Arab, stunned by surprise, gave the number which proved to be a priceless intelligence. It was the number of a huge villa from which a call had been made a half hour before the bombings took place.
Under more questions, the slender Arab lost his cool. Rasheed began screaming that he was not Rasheed but Mohammed al Owhali. He was a Saudi and if he had any regrets it was that the attacks had not taken place in the United States. Then he warned, “The big attack is coming. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
After the East Africa attacks, hesitation was swept away, and Clinton began to direct a campaign of increasing scope and lethality that only ended when he left office. Under the provisions of the 1974 Hughes-Ryan Act, Clinton authorized the intelligence agencies to fund covert activities against bin Laden. In addition, he also signed three highly classified Memoranda of Notification designated as compartmented intelligence, Top Secret/Codeword.
The first MON authorized bin Laden’s arrest, capture and rendition for trial, using whatever force was required. The last MON authorized the shooting down of any aircraft carrying bin Laden. Capture was the first priority but the U.S. government would kill the Arab if it had do. And a new plan was approved,
At a Principal’s meeting on Aug. 19, Clinton asked if the group should decide to attack bin Laden the next day. The NSA had been listening in on bin Laden’s phone calls. Clinton decided to attack bin Laden by launching ship-based tomahawk missiles in an operation called “Infinite Reach.” Sixty-six missiles costing $750 million each were launched but a leak from Pakistani intelligence warned bin Laden off, so instead of going to Khost, he headed for Kabul. Soon, the missiles exploded, killing six jihadis at a cost of a half a billion dollars while bin Laden exulted, “By the grace of God, I am alive.” Operation Infinite reach was a flat fizzle, and its failure distressed many of Clinton’s anti-terrorist officials. Clinton said publicly that bin Laden had launched a terrorist war against the United States, but his critics said the strike was his biggest foreign policy blunder.
In spite of Thiessen’s misleading propaganda, the Clinton distraction inflicted a huge defeat in Bosnia. Thiessen ignores this. Bin Laden saw Bosnia the perfect location for various terrorist groups to congregate and grow, and his followers were training inside the U.S. The Dayton Accords destroyed the effort, but that is another story.
Bush Downgrades the Threat
Clarke said in his memoir: “Within a week of the inauguration, I wrote to Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s National Security Advisor, and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, asking ‘urgently’ for a Principals, or Cabinet-level, meeting to review the imminent al-Qaeda threat. Rice told me that the Principals Committee, which had been the first venue for terrorism policy discussions in the Clinton administration, would not address the issue until it had been ‘framed’ by her Deputies.”
Of particular significance, the memo also suggested strategies for combating al-Queda that might be adopted by the new Bush administration.
In his memoir, “Against All Enemies,” Clarke wrote that Rice made a decision that the position of National Coordinator for Counterterrorism should be downgraded. By demoting the office, the Bush Administration sent a signal through the national security bureaucracy about the urgent and looming threat of terrorism. No longer would Clarke's memos go directly to the President; instead they had to pass through a chain of command of Rice and Hadley who “bounced every one of them back.”
At the first Deputies Committee meeting on Terrorism held in April 2001, Clarke strongly suggested that the U.S. put pressure on both the Taliban and al-Qaeda by arming the Northern Alliance and other Afghani groups to keep bin Laden from roaming free. Simultaneously, he suggested that they target bin Laden and his leadership by reinitiating flights of the MQ-1 Predators.
The response from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who would in a few years become a visiting follow at Thiessen’s outfit, the American Enterprise Institute, was astounding. “Well, I just don't understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden.” Clarke replied that he was talking about bin Laden and his network because it posed “an immediate and serious threat to the United States.” According to Clarke, Wolfowitz turned to him and said, “You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because the FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don't exist.” No matter, and never mind.
From that ignorant misconception, sprang another: the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein must have strong ties with bin Laden and possessed weapons of mass destruction. 704
Clarke wrote in “Against All Enemies” that in the summer of 2001, the intelligence community was convinced of an imminent attack by al-Qaeda, but could not get the attention of the highest levels of the Bush administration; most famously writing that Director of the CIA Tenet was running around with his “hair on fire.” At a July 5, 2001, White House gathering of the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS, Clarke stated that “something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon.”
On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified briefing pertaining to the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network. That morning’s “presidential daily brief,” the top-secret document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies, featured the now-infamous heading: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”
On April 10, 2004, the Bush White House declassified that daily brief, and only that daily brief, in response to pressure from the 9/11 Commission, which was investigating the events leading to the attack. Administration officials dismissed the document’s significance, saying that, despite the jaw-dropping headline, it was only an assessment of al-Qaeda’s history, not a warning of the impending attack. Historians considered that claim absurd. Further, an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.
Enter Wolfie
Wolfowitz was the first senior Bush official to bring up Iraq after the 9/11 attacks during a meeting at the presidential retreat at Camp David, when U.S. military assets were already being diverted from Afghanistan to the coming invasion of Iraq. Clarke charged that before and during the 9/11 crisis, many in the Administration were distracted from efforts against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization by a pre-occupation with toppling Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq. Clarke had written that on September 12, 2001, President Bush pulled him and a couple of aides aside and "testily" asked him to try to find evidence that Saddam was connected to the terrorist attacks. In response he wrote a report stating there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement and got it signed by all relevant agencies, including the FBI and the CIA. The paper was quickly returned by a deputy with a note saying "Please update and resubmit."
After initially denying that such a meeting between the President and Clarke took place, the White House later reversed its denial when others present backed Clarke's version of the events
In the end, Wolfie would be employed by the World Bank and would resign in scandal over a woman he had employed.
Richard Sale
A great read. But two inaccuracies I noticed. One the CSG did not start in the Clinton administration. The CSG started in the REAGAN admin. Clarke started chairing it in the final months of the first bush admin. Second is your statement that Wolfie was the first to bring up Iraq after 9/11. Clarke revealed that on 9/12, while the smoke still hung over Manhattan before we had even gone through the rubble and recovered our dead that Bush tried to intimidate him into finding an Iraq link to the attack.
Posted by: Ron | 01 November 2015 at 12:55 PM
750 million seems way too much for a cruise missile. 7.5 million seems much more likely (plus it pegs the total cost at the above mentioned half billion dollars)
Posted by: AEL | 01 November 2015 at 01:26 PM
Brilliant post, Richard. Totally agree.
Theissen, a former Bush speeechwriter, is now in employ as legacy maker and silver tongue to glory over Bush 43 and Cheney and give the fool and the knave the veneer of decency, at least in hindsight.
He's scum who distinguishes himself by defending Bush's torture program as something necessary and useful, and besides, not really torture - stances IMO pretty much on par with holocaust denial.
His assertion that illegal combatants exist legally falls in the same category. Under Geneva rules, when you fight, you're either a privileged combatant (protected) or a (criminal) civilian (still protected) - more spefically: none of whom are allowed to be tortured. There was until the Bushmen thought it up no third category to whom all of that conveniently doesn't apply. The reasoning betrays the purpose - it was obviously intended to create a new, unprotected category, which could be treated in ways otherwise prohibited i.e. tortured.
Particularly galling, Theissen refers in his defence of torture to catholic teachings.
"It would be illegal for a foreign adversary to waterboard a U.S. soldier, even if the technique did not amount to torture. American troops are lawful combatants. They wear uniforms or distinctive insignia, follow a clear chain of command, do not hide among innocent civilians, and do not target innocent men, women and children. Because they follow the laws of war, when captured they receive full privileges as Prisoners of War under the Geneva Conventions — which means it would be illegal for their captors to coerce them in any way, much less waterboard them.
Terrorists, by contrast, are unlawful combatants. They do not wear uniforms or distinctive insignia, or follow a clear chain of command. Not only do they hide among innocent civilians, their primary means of attacking us is to target innocent men, women and children for death. Because they violate the laws of war, they do not receive the privileges that a lawful combatant receives as a POW under Geneva. As a result of their own choices, the United States may lawfully coerce them to provide information about imminent terrorist attacks.
Indeed, it is precisely because they target the innocent that we must coerce them. When an American soldier is captured and taken off the battlefield, he has been effectively disarmed and rendered unable to cause harm to the enemy. But when a terrorist like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is captured, and he has set in motion a series of terrorist plots, he has not been disarmed. Even in captivity, he still holds the power to kill thousands simply by withholding information. We have a moral obligation to stop him."
http://tinyurl.com/q5luzkh
He later made his theology based reasoning more explicit in his very un-recommendable book, 'Courting Disaster' (p.186):
"In fact the catechism states that there are times when war making is not only permissible, but morally required ... the defence of the common good requires that an unjust agressor be rendered unable to cause harm ... If this principle applies to taking human life, it must certainly apply to coercive interrogation as well. A captured terrorist is an unjust aggressor who retains the power to kill many thousands by withholding information about planned attacks ..."
He continues, spitting at Thomas Aquinas:
“The intent of the interrogator is not to cause harm to the detainee; rather, it is to render the aggressor unable to cause harm to society. The act of coercive interrogation can have a double effect (to protect society and to cause harm to the terrorist), but one is intended, the other is not”
http://tinyurl.com/nvjlvcw
Well, the catechism takes issue with his sophistry at #2297: "Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity."
What is so hard to understand about this that Theissen doesn't get it? Point is, he does, he is an intelligent man. He simply lacks integrity and has chosen employ where it is not his job to be truthful.
In light of his screeds on torture his eulogy for the virtuous late Bush administration comes as no surprise to me and his screeds, ever reliably, cause an impulse to retch in me.
Matthew Alexander on Theissen:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2010/03/courting_fear.html
Jane Mayer on Theissen:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/03/29/counterfactual
Posted by: confusedponderer | 01 November 2015 at 01:33 PM
Ron,
Sale stated that Wolfowitz was the first "Senior Bush Official" to bring up Iraq subsequent to 9/11, not "the first" which would include the President. Sale covers Bush's request to Clarke, that was close to a directive, to implicate Iraq.
Posted by: doug | 01 November 2015 at 01:35 PM
You probably have seen this already but for anyone who hasn't, it looks like the neocon group is rebranding itself again, or reconstituting itself with some different elements. I'm not sure which. But they've got a new organization (John Hays Initiative), an ebook and a website. I've seen some people refer to this as the PNAC manifesto rebranded.
http://www.choosingtolead.net/
Posted by: gemini33 | 01 November 2015 at 02:52 PM
I was appalled back when I read about John Yoo's defining torture down. When you determine torture must rise to the level of "organ failure" and the like it is defining torture in much the way it was in Guy Fawkes' day. At the time torture to acquire information was illegal and required a royal waiver which was obtained. That kind of torture was similar to Yoo's and was presumed necessary to get information. The goal was to not do unnecessary harm as a dead man will communicate little. Have to give the English credit though. They didn't pretend it wasn't torture.
OTOH, the English did exact a public torture on Fawkes after a short trial. This type of torture was legal and expected as punishment for attempted regicide. The purpose was "organ failure" as well as example to others.
Posted by: doug | 01 November 2015 at 02:58 PM
A useful post and thread. Thanks Richard. IMO Jeb's use of language of brother keeping the nation safe has directly led to his decline. History did not start on 9/11/01.
For those of US interested in domestic anti-terrorism and counter-terrorism and consequences management please don't overlook the May 8th, 2001, WH Press Conference wherein the VP charged with reorganization of the effort. Not accomplished by 9/10/01!
When Bush selected Cheney as his VP candidate based on Cheney's representations he showed even at that point not up to the job of President.
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 01 November 2015 at 03:05 PM
Per the Navy's fact sheet, Block IV Tomahawks (probably the ones that were used) cost $569,000 each in 1999 dollars.
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=2200&tid=1300&ct=2
Posted by: PeterHug | 01 November 2015 at 03:44 PM
The neocons are scrambling in the face of a nationalist like Trump, who has pointed out that the Emperor has no clothes are now freaking out to try and reclaim the Narrative by engaging in nanny shaming language along with blowhard FREEDOM ISN'T FREE rhetoric.
Problem is the former doesn't work on Trump, and as far as the latter... Well you're not going to our rhetoric him, especially when he has the facts on his side.
The one thing I take issue with is your description of the bombing in Serbia as tough foreign policy cred. This was probably one of the earliest neocon actions, with us bombing the Christian Serbs in favor of supporting Bosnian Muslims in order to bring "democracy at bayonet point" as it were.
Posted by: Tyler | 01 November 2015 at 04:53 PM
>"Iran was still the number one threat to the U.S"
Does any one here believe that Iran was ever the number one threat to the US? If so based on what? I'm not talking threat to Israel or Saudi Arabia I am talking about the US.
Posted by: J Villain | 01 November 2015 at 05:02 PM
Yeah. The math is not relevant to the main thrust of the posting, which is excellent, but the numbers stated need to be revisited. You can find costs per Tomahawk that range between about $600 k and $1.5 M, depending on time and model, but 66 of any of those, while expensive, come in at $100 M at most.
Posted by: Allen Thomson | 01 November 2015 at 05:58 PM
Per The Guardian, in t he Turkey elections AKP achieved a majority of the Parliamentary seats but not a super majority. This is based on about 97% of the votes reporting.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/01/turkish-election-akp-set-for-majority-with-90-of-vote-counted
Thankyou, Richard, for setting the Bush 43's appalling record straight.
Posted by: ex-PFC Chuck | 01 November 2015 at 06:02 PM
The basic requirement in both the Hague Regulations and Geneva Convention III is that a combatant must:
a) be commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates
b) carry a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance
c) carry arms openly
d) operate in accordance with the laws and customs of war
Theissen argues that if those conditions aren't met then any belligerent power that takes that sucker captive is at liberty to torture him.
I guess the retort to that would be to ask what would he expect of, say, a Green Beret who is caught inside Afghanistan while sporting a bushy beard and wearing full Afghan dress.
Surely according to Theissen-logic the rules of war say that whoever takes that guy captive is legally entitled to pull his fingernails out with a pair of pliers.
I certainly wouldn't agree, but I'd be very curious to know what Theissen would say.
Posted by: Yeah, Right | 01 November 2015 at 11:25 PM
Neocon Marc Thiessen is one of Megyn Kelly's go to Trump-bashing guests. Neocons hate Trump. And on your other point, re: Serbia, neoconservatism is fundamentally hostile to Christian society and culture. And hostile to the idea of borders (except for one country). As expressed succinctly by Bethany Mandel in "The Forward":
"Worse than Trump’s willful blindness is the rhetoric he uses to stoke racial unrest with a slogan—“Make America Great Again”—reminiscent of the Nazi Party of the 1930s."
http://forward.com/opinion/321871/why-wont-trump-stand-up-to-his-fans-the-anti-semites/#ixzz3oYmAocnd
See, if you are a proud American and seek the interests of your country first, you're like Hitler. Go that?
Posted by: BostonB | 02 November 2015 at 12:05 AM
It speaks for itself that Yoo deliberately brought up 'organ failure' as an unspecified term, a vague legal concept.
For one it gives the administration a great deal of leeway. It also blows fog on the matter: How does organ failure feel like?
It is entirely subjective and that is the very point in Yoo's reasoning:
Nobody can speficy or quantify the pain of the level of organ failure. One has to assume that it hurts pretty bad, but beyond that? Is the sort of abuse in question suitable to cause such pain? Does waterboarding rise up to that? It makes evaluation of the point basically a he-said-she-said affair, inviting everybody to agree to disagree.
The phraseology Yoo used was deliberately designed to obfuscate and created ambuguity, artificially, to make room for practices that (a) either had already been used and had to retroactively be justified, or (b) that someone planned to use. It was probably both (a) and (b).
The drift of the argument betrays the fact that Yoo must have precisely known that the practices in question were illegal and constituted criminal acts.
He was doing creative lawyerying in the manner of a corporate attorney who makes the case for his client. It wasn't, as legal ethics would demand in public service, a sober and objective assessment of what the law allows and doesn't.
Well, attorneys who advise their clients to how to best cheat on taxes or how to get away with other crimes routinely end up in jail for facilitation and conspiracy. On the political end of the criminal food chain the perps enjoy political protection.
At the moment, the US is the one and only western country that affords itself a peculiar, idle debate whether torture is a-ok and where it is not punished by shaming when one does promote torture in public, and where lunatics like Dershowitz use the opportunity to defend Israel by promoting (the Israeli practice of) torture warrants. And amongst Republican politicians it is still being considered a winning issue and good politicking, if the ever inane 'debates' amongst the contenders are any indication.
None of these foks cares about the fact that the US is a signatory to the CAT and that torture constitutes a crime in the US under threat of severe punishment. Legal trifles, I know.
None of the perps has been taken to account. None has been disbarred. 'Organ failure' Yoo and 'I cannot recall' Gonzales enjoy a comfy life as tenured professors and must be busy corrupting the youth. Bybee is a federal judge. Cheney enjoys his retirement. Because the R's have made torture (and Guantanamo) a partisan issue and threatened to open the gates of hell if he tried to prosecute (or close Guantanamo), Obama chose, advised by Rahm Emanuel, to 'not look back' on the matter, advising the justice department to follow suit.
For shame.
But then, the sharks who looted investors at Wall Street before and during the last financial crisis got away with impunity also, so there is consistency.
Posted by: confusedponderer | 02 November 2015 at 07:21 AM
Mr Sale,
"In the end, Wolfie would be employed by the World Bank and would resign in scandal over a woman he had employed."
FWIW: Shaha Riza was (may still be) his girlfriend and was the instigator, well before 9/11, to go after Saddam Hussein. She joined the WB in 1997 but before that, she worked at NED and at the Iraq Foundation, whose aim was to overthrow of Saddam Hussein and was backed by Ahmed Chalabi.
Surprisingly, when the US invaded Iraq in 2003 , the WB had already put all the projects on hold (sanctions and for travel security reasons). What would be the Iraqi Kurdish autonomous group, they were dealing for funds with the WB MENA group in Amman. Against bank directives', she took a month's leave in Spring 2003 to go and work with Iraqi women in Baghdad on forming a new government. All this arranged by Wolfie through the State Dept .
Posted by: The Beaver | 02 November 2015 at 08:58 AM
Yeah, right
USSF (Green Berets) have never expected to be treated if captured in accordance with the niceties of international law with regard to prisoners of war. That was inherent in the business, so your question with regard to SF soldiers is simply irrelevant. Actually, the danger implicit in operating outside the Geneva Convention model is one of the reasons that higher command eventually forbade Green Berets dressing and living as Afghans. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 02 November 2015 at 08:59 AM
Theissen's Right Web profile:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/thiessen_marc
Posted by: confusedponderer | 02 November 2015 at 09:00 AM
As if things these days weren't interesting enough a post at Russia Insider, quoting a Financial Times piece, asserts that Merkel may be on her way out the door in Germany. Perhaps CP and others have something to add on this.
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/merkel-crumbles-berlin-opens-talks-moscow/ri10853
Posted by: ex-PFC Chuck | 02 November 2015 at 09:06 AM
I appreciate the corrections.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Sale | 02 November 2015 at 09:19 AM
President Bush was already drawing down assets from afghaninstn for the Iraq war at the time bin Laden escaped.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Sale | 02 November 2015 at 09:22 AM
BB,
Its always the Nuremberg Rallies with these people, no matter the issue foreign or domestic.
When Orban "named the Jew" as it were in regards to George Soros being behind sending masses of refugees to Europe, the media had a collective seizure but ignored that Soros admitted that was exactly what he was doing.
I worry for the ones who have not swallowed the Tikka Olam horse crap as an excuse to do whatever -they- think is best for everyone.
Posted by: Tyler | 02 November 2015 at 11:10 AM
A nice reminder of the lunacy of the Bush years. Fortunately, we have the Boy Wonder keeping us just as safe now.
Regarding Wolfie's comments about the necessity for state sponsorship, I think it should be said that OBL had significant help Saudi Arabia and from some traitors within our borders. So Wolfie was right.
Posted by: LJ | 02 November 2015 at 11:19 AM
" guess the retort to that would be to ask what would he expect of, say, a Green Beret who is caught inside Afghanistan while sporting a bushy beard and wearing full Afghan dress."
Special Forces were in fatigues with insignia marking rank and service, just covered with head scarves, etc. so that from a distance they looked like Afghanis.
Theissen would have anyone he says is the enemy tortured because that is the kind of human he is.
Posted by: Thomas | 02 November 2015 at 03:43 PM
"Special Forces were in fatigues with insignia marking rank and service, just covered with head scarves, etc. so that from a distance they looked like Afghanis. "
Not according to a comment that Pat Lang made in the article that preceded this one, no, they weren't and, yes, they had to be ordered to put their uniform back on.
Posted by: Yeah, Right | 02 November 2015 at 08:51 PM