{SNORT}

Isn’t that the same thing as a timetable? Doesn’t timetable = treason & surrender according to White House propaganda?

Enforced nudity. This technique is adopted for purposes of degrading and humiliating the prisoner, heightening his senses of vulnerability, weakness and shame. Enforced nudity also enhances other techniques, particularly hypothermia.

Starvation. As Davis notes, when the prisoner is entitled to an MRE, he would be given one component only of the MRE. The entire MRE constitutes a reasonable food ration which is properly balanced. Giving only one part of it reflects a decision to starve the prisoner.

Stress Positions. Perhaps the oldest and best established torture technique, widely used by the Inquisition in Europe, was the strapado. Hands would be fastened behind the back and the victim would be hoisted, causing severe stress to joints, frequent dislocation, and severe and sustained pain. The strapado would invariably get its victim to confess to anything, very quickly. During World War II, this same technique was widely adopted and used by the Germans, who called it Pfahlbinden. In the English of the Bush Administration, this technique is called a “stress position,” and it was widely used at Abu Ghraib.

Hypothermia. Shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet secret police pioneered a very simple technique that had the advantage of leaving the victim’s body unbruised or bloodied, but whose physiological effects were equally if not more effective than direct beatings. In its mildest form, the victim was left with thin clothing in a cell with temperatures hovering just above freezing. A day of such treatment was generally enough to produce physical collapse. The Bush Administration, of course, not having the benefits of a Siberian winter, turns to far cruder and more brutal techniques, which Davis describes. The prisoner is stripped naked, dunked in a bath of ice water, and a window is left open to insure exposure.

For President Bush, these techniques are a part of the “Program.” More generally in the American media, you’ll hear these things referred to as “highly coercive techniques.” But they have a proper name, which is “torture.”

This … is … VILE. There is no excuse for this. There is no justification for this. This is a black mark on the honor of our nation that will take decades to erase … if ever.

I don’t think Bush, Cheney or their inner cadre are going to be doing much international travel once Dubya is no longer president. More than likely some country would ship them to The Hague in shackles. Of course that’s exactly what they deserve.

Hat Tip: Andrew Sullivan.

The U.S. military suffers its 4000th death.

In the long run, the war costs American taxpayers as much as $3,000,000,000,000 … that’s three trillion dollars, folks.

The “Surge” has turned into a perpetual deployment.

And now the Shi’a cease fire unravels.

Even Petraeus admits that the Iraqi politicians have not used the lull provided by the Surge and the Shi’a cease fire to come to political solutions over the division of power and oil wealth. The current escalation in casualties proves that except for limited improvements in Baghdad and Anbar, the “success” of the Surge is a complete illusion.

Now, unless this bloody genie gets put back in the bottle quickly, the Shi’a gangs (calling themselves political parties) are going to duke it out to determine who will be Capo of Iraq.

Meanwhile, McCain and most of the Republican Party want to keep this going for 100 years or more??? That’s insanity.

If McCain is going to give us straight talk – one thing the Bush administration has been completely unable to do – and believes that Iraq should remain a permanently integrated part of a new, expanding American protectorate in the Middle East, then he needs to say so. He needs to be honest about what his goal of turning Iraq into a stable, non-despotic, unified country, permanently occupied by US troops, requires. It will require trillions of dollars, a bare minimum of another decade of occupation, over 100,000 troops (probably more) committed indefinitely, and no lee-way to tackle any major security threats anywhere else on the planet including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, without a draft. Oh, and then there’s a need to maintain US public support for the Sisyphean task of nation-building a place where there is no nation, in a place a long way away, where our reward for such an effort will be fathomless contempt and hatred.

Troops are getting burned out after multiple extended combat tours. Suicide rates among military personnel are on the rise. Our enlistment standards continue to erode. Valuable officers are being alienated out of service for many reasons, including the fact that newly enlisted privates are now getting bigger bonuses than experienced re-enlisting captains. Meanwhile, world opinion of the U.S. is abysmally low while China and a resurgent Russia flex their foreign policy muscles, unrestrained.

Yet conservative pundits continue to maintain that our occupation of Iraq makes us stronger, and a carefully planned & staged withdrawal would make us weak. That logic escapes me. I think the overwhelming evidence tells us that just the opposite is true.

Senator McCain is going to have a hard time selling his vision of perpetual war.

It remains unclear what the Republicans will consider sufficient success to warrant bringing the troops home.  Beyond tough-sounding talk about refusing to surrender, no Republican has ever defined victory in Iraq or given the slightest idea of how to achieve it.

Heh.  Ain’t that the truth!

The drop in violence has been considerable and is a fantastic achievement by the U.S. but it’s worth reminding ourselves that this “victory” still means 600 civilian deaths a month. That’s roughly two 9/11s a month, when adjusting for population size – but more terrifying because more random. It reduces violence to the levels of 2005 – a period when almost every observer saw the war as a catastrophe. There has been no oil law, no provincial agreement, no deal on Kirkuk, and Baghdad is a myriad different Berlins in the Cold War.  Anyone who can call this precarious situation “victory” rules himself out as a serious commentator. He’s a propagandist. And he does no service to the troops or the American people by lying to them for cheap and temporary partisan gain.

Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, responding to Hugh Hewitt’s declaration of victory in Iraq. The bold highlights are my own.

“Mission Accomplished” redux, Mr. Hewitt?

Well, now I know. I do not wish another good person dead, but I do regret that the above two could not have better company in death.

Saddam Hussein, the petty thug from Tikrit who became a brutal tyrant and mass murderer, was executed by hanging for crimes against the people of Iraq just before dawn, Saturday, December 30, 2006.

In most cases I oppose the death penalty … but I will not weep for this man.

Ethiopian forces intend to intervene to aid the interim government, and the U.S. is supporting their efforts. Ethiopia has a large minority of Somali ethnicity in the southeastern part of their country. Fear of spreading Islamist influence in this region is likely the underlying reason for Ethiopian interference.

These quotes from Somalis in response to the looming Ethiopian threat relate to the specific matter at hand, but I think they have much broader implications. Here is the first quote that I find interesting (emphasis mine):

“I’ll be honest,� said Sheik Muktar Robow Abu Monsur, the deputy security chief for the Islamists. “America is the best friend of Islam. It wakes up the sleeping Muslim.�

America’s efforts to support hated warlords in Somalia simply because they opposed Islamist forces actually worked AGAINST us by encouraging more Somalis to support the Islamists.

Americans don’t like it when foreigners tell them what to do. Well, guess what? People in other countries don’t like it either! It pisses them off and encourages the exact OPPOSITE of what we want them to do.

These next quotes are telling as well. First this (emphasis mine):

Three months ago, Ibrahim Hassan Addou, the foreign minister for the Islamists and an American citizen of Somali descent, talked of sharing power and holding elections.

Now, like the others, he is talking war, in terms nearly indistinguishable from the most militant Islamic leaders. Moderates, he said, were backed into a corner by an American-led campaign to discredit and isolate the Islamic administration.

“Everybody was against us from the beginning, and now we have no choice but to fight,� he said. “What I don’t understand is why the whole world is trying to throw its weight behind a government that has been totally rejected by its own people.�

And then this (emphasis mine):

Not long ago Somalia was a place where women wore skirts and men drank beer, and even today a large chunk of the population is quietly concerned about the absolutist direction the Islamists are heading in.

But the prospects of war with Ethiopia seem to have pushed many of these people solidly into the Islamic camp.

“I’m not into thought control,� said Dahir Abdullahi Hirsi, a pharmacist in Mogadishu. “But I hate Ethiopians even more.�

So … a foreign invader moving into the home territory of radical Islamic forces actually spurs moderate opponents of that ideology to support the Islamists as a matter of tribal pride. Insert “Iraqi” in place of “Somali” and “American” in place of “Ethiopian” and you have the situation in Iraq. Foreign intervention provides radical groups with great PR and motivation for recruitment. Americans killing Islamist radicals in Iraq is like cutting a head off of the Lernaean hydra without applying a torch – two more venomous heads grow in its place!

Perhaps the “bestâ€? example of this phenomenon is the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, where the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) CREATED HEZBOLLAH. You heard me right … Hezbollah is the illegitimate hate-child of the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. The Israelis turned a small, marginalized Islamic radical group into the “saviors of Lebanon.” They turned them into FREEDOM FIGHTERS in the eyes of the Lebanese people. Not only Shiite but Sunni, Druze and even the majority of Christian Lebanese supported Hezbollah’s recent defiance of Israel. Why? Not because of their radical Islamist ideology, but because they were fighting a “foreign oppressor.”

At one point, we might have had a chance in Iraq. Saddam was a hated dictator, and the majority of Iraqis truly did celebrate his fall. However, due to the colossal incompetence of the Bush administration in general and “Mr. Minimalist” Donald Rumsfeld in particular, we failed to provide safety and security in the aftermath of Saddam’s fall. If we ever had a chance (and that’s certainly debatable), we’ve undeniably lost it. Now, to the majority of Iraqis, we’re the hated occupiers.

What do we do? We keep going in Afghanistan – in fact we redouble our efforts there. The Taliban were also truly hated, and the current problems in southeastern Afghanistan are still seen by many Afghanis as Pakistani meddling. We still have a chance to make things right there, although we need to remember that the warlords who came before the Taliban were just as hated as the Talibs.  They’re drug-running thugs, and they should not be tolerated (although supporting an Afghan effort to dislodge them would be much wiser than trying to do it ourselves).

What else? What about Al Qaeda and the rest?  We fortify the homeland and MAKE THEM COME TO US. Make them fight on OUR TERMS. It’s one of the most basic military strategies in the book.

Let these Islamic radicals try to rule in their own lands, and watch them make a bungle of it like they have in Iran, where the Ayatollahs are now hated and ridiculed by a large portion of their population. Only the imminent threat of a unilaterally interventionist America at their eastern AND western borders turned the Iranian people away from the path of reform, just like Israel’s recent muck up in Lebanon likely destroyed chances for democracy there.

If you want to wrap your mind around the idea behind this post in blogospheric terms, think about this phrase:

Don’t feed the troll!

Like blog trolls, terrorists THRIVE on being attacked.  Lets fortify our defenses to keep them at bay as best we can, and then let them rot in their own bile.

I believe the president is now doing what he can to help the Iraqis get to the point where we can honorably leave. We are on the right path.

Others quoted in the piece lament the early publication right before the election (they were told it would run in January), but they pretty much stick by the content of what was said.

Well, honestly … if I had been guaranteed that my comments wouldn’t be used before the election, I’d be pretty hacked off, too. But I do love this bit from Andrew Sullivan in reference to Perle’s National Review Online about-face regarding his Vanity Fair about-face (get’s confusing, doesn’t it?):

He says he now believes that the Great Leader is essential to the next Glorious Five Year Plan for Iraq. He sounds like that dude shot in the face by Cheney, who subsequently apologized for getting in the way. [...]

Perle is supposed to be a thinker, and a patriot. Why on earth would an intellectually honest person not make sure that their real views are aired on a critical matter before an election? Isn’t that the point? They were more disciplined in 2004. Almost all neocons I knew conceded privately that Iraq was FUBAR. But most decided to attack Kerry rather than tell the truth.

An intellectual movement that has become this intellectually dishonest deserves to die.

Intellectual honesty from the “cakewalk” crowd? Not likely.

First the editors of the Military Times papers call for Rumsfeld’s resignation. Now the neo-con pundits who were the driving force behind the decision to invade Iraq, the architects of unilateralism, preemptive attack, regime change and the “axis of evil” … they’re all jumping from the burning Bush ship of state. A recent Vanity Fair article by David Rose quotes Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney, David Frum, Michael Rubin and Eliot Cohen saying what a total disaster the Iraq War has become and firmly placing the blame on President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. Perle & Adelman specifically state that if they had it to do over again, they wouldn’t recommend invading Iraq.

The troops want Rumsfeld gone, and even the neocons now question our Iraq policy. What the hell are we doing there? What mission do we hope to accomplish?

Hat Tip: Andrew Sullivan. 

Obviously we had enough troops to deal with the invasion and toppling of Saddam Hussein. His armed forces had been weakened by 12 years of sanctions and frequent air strikes by U.S. & British planes patrolling the no-fly zones that covered 2/3 of Iraq. But when the Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki stated that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to occupy Iraq, he was demeaned, insulted and hounded out of service by Cheney, Rumsfeld & the neocon crowd. Who was right? The highly decorated general who served in the Army for 38 years including two tours of duty in Vietnam where he had a foot blown in half by a landmine (Shinseki) vs. the political hack who never served in combat (Rumsfeld). Now even the Army Times editorial board is calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation, but good ol’ Bush just wants to “stay the course” with Rumsfeld at the helm. Bush will probably give him a medal before his term is up, just like the FEMA director. I ask again … who is insulting the American people and our troops???

Then this morning I’m scrolling through the New York Times and I run across Tom Friedman’s editorial column (you need a TimesSelect subscription to read the whole thing). Mr. Friedman is extremely knowledgeable about the Middle East (read his account of his years in Lebanon & Israel in From Beirut to Jerusalem), although recently he’s taken on the topic of globalization (more great reads – Lexus and the Olive Tree and The World is Flat). He was initially a supporter of the war, but like many others was convinced by the OVERWHELMING evidence that this administration was completely botching it. Well his column today pretty much echoes the theme of this post – it’s entitled “Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence” and is one of the most impassioned columns I’ve ever seen from Friedman.

Money Quote:

Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, “They must think I’m stupid.� Because they surely do.

They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team’s real and deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerry’s mangled gibe at the president.

Finally … lets endanger the American people in a lame attempt to score political points. Let’s help our enemies acquire nuclear weapons technology. Let’s publish nuclear weapon schematics on the web, just to prove that Saddam Hussein was up to no good … 15 years ago!

That’s right, nuclear weapons plans confiscated from Iraq after the Gulf War in 1991 were published on the web for anyone to see by Republican congressmen with the help of the Bush administration (articles here and here). Iran, North Korea, Al Qaeda or whoever could just cruise over on the web and copy it down. Yes, Saddam had a nuclear weapons program before the Gulf War, but it was completely dismantled in the aftermath. Posting this information proved nothing regarding the justification for the invasion of Iraq. It only served to endanger our country. So … who is providing aid and comfort to the terrorists???

This administration MUST have a check to its monopoly on power. We can’t get rid of Bush and his cronies directly, but we do have the power to end Republican control of Congress and take away the rubber stamp for all his dysfunctional policies. Vote them out!

Money quote:

The future of Samarra, and Iraq as a whole, ultimately lies in the hands of her people–their sympathies are the ultimate prize in this war.

Sympathies … hearts & minds … however you want to phrase it, it’s the same idea. If we’re really dedicated to making things right in Iraq, we need to massively increase the number of troops there in order to provide zones of safety and security so that the Iraqis can start rebuilding their lives. Into these zones would flow money for reconstruction. Providing the necessary troops would likely require a draft since our active duty, reserve & National Guard forces are already stretched to the limit. We should be honest with the American people and tell them that this will require AT LEAST a ten year commitment. It would also require that the Bush administration admit (the truth) that they’ve been f#$king around with the lives of our soldiers for the last 4 years. That’s not likely to happen.

Barring that, we should just get out – redeploy to the Gulf and Afghanistan. In Texas Hold’em terminology, we should go all in or fold – at least as far as Iraq is concerned. Whatever we do, we need to make a choice. The current half-assed commitment is costing American & Iraqi lives every day.

Not what you were expecting? My problem with the Iraq War is that we never should have gone there in the first place – that our attention should have remained focused on Afghanistan and finishing the job there. Now we’re under China Shop Rules. We broke it, so we bought it. Now we have to fix it – Iraq & Afghanistan both.

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

For those of you not familiar with the medical term “metastasis”, I’ll explain. Metastasis is the process whereby a primary cancer mutates and evolves to have the ability to spread from its site of origin to disparate sites. For example, prostate cancer often spreads to the bone and breast cancer to the lung & brain. Most of the time, the presence of metastasis can be easily translated into the following prognosis – you’re fucked.

Let’s continue, shall we?

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,� cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,� said one American intelligence official.

Hmmmmm. Wow. Never would have expected that. I’m glad that our national intelligence agencies can come up with an idea that’s glaringly obvious to a large portion of the general public. Of course, as usual, the administration tried to smother the facts:

Analysts began working on the estimate in 2004, but it was not finalized until this year. Part of the reason was that some government officials were unhappy with the structure and focus of earlier versions of the document, according to officials involved in the discussion.

Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and some policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more focused on specific steps to mitigate the terror threat. It is unclear whether the final draft of the intelligence estimate criticizes individual policies of the United States, but intelligence officials involved in preparing the document said its conclusions were not softened or massaged for political purposes.

Reading between the lines of the first two statements that I emphasized, I give a hearty “Feh!” to the last line that I highlighted. But wait, there’s more … it just keeps getting “better”:

In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists, and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake Al Qaeda’s current leadership in the constellation of the global jihad leadership.

And this …

More recently, the Council on Global Terrorism, an independent research group of respected terrorism experts, assigned a grade of “D+� to United States efforts over the past five years to combat Islamic extremism. The council concluded that “there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking.�

Thank you, President Bush & company, for taking the unity inspired by the attacks of 9/11 and squandering it in an Iraqi hellhole, making the world a much more dangerous place for my children.