Random Thoughts On September 11 2011

Ten years. It is an curious number. For most citizens of the US, something that happened ten years ago is “history;” that is, it happened so long ago as to be irrelevant. But for someone who lives and breaths the historical narrative, ten years past is current events.

So what to make of the ten years since September 11, 2001 and now? Anniversaries are always fraught.  Anniversaries that fall on a Sunday, when there is little else to divert our attention, are even more drenched with melodrama. There are important considerations that should be reviewed a decade after 9/11/01; unfortunately they are getting drowned out by maudlin overacting by the usual suspects. It will be an extended wallow in schlock journalism, long on sloppy heart tugging, short on substance.  This is a shame because we really do need to look how 9/11/01 allowed bad actors to change our nation for the worse. By exploiting September 11, 2001, these bad actors were able to pass a slew of laws that stripped away many civil rights. For years the Police State enthusiasts were proposing changes in statues that shredded the protections of the 4th , 5th , 6th, 7th, and 8th Amendments of the constitution.  By using fear, Dead Eye Dick Cheney and incurious George set up a new Union, conceived in authoritarianism, and dedicated to proposition that the President of the US is an elected king; a king with more power and less accountability than Louis XIV, the Sun King.

With these new powers, Dick And George  went on a not-so excellent adventure of breaking and entry (sneak and peek, warrantless wiretapping, FISA,) perjury (the case for the Iraq War), kidnapping (extraordinary rendition), assault and battery (enhanced interrogation / torture), and murder (the Iraq War.)  What is even more galling is that not only were the duo of Bush and Cheney never held accountable for their rampant lawlessness; their policies were continued and “normalized” by the next President.

I wonder if any of the numerous remembrances of 9/11/01 will ever get around to mentioning how the tragedy was used to pervert the very essence of what the US stands for?

Before our nation was even a nation, George Washington made it clear that torture was not acceptable. This was a huge statement of moral and ethical substance. The nation that was not born yet, that was, in fact, desperately fighting for its very existence, refused to accept the standards of the day. Washington was going to show not only the British, but the whole of Europe, that a higher standard of ethics was not only possible, but was going to be part of the warp and woof of the nation he and others proposed to create. For over 200 hundred years the US stood by the standard that Washington set. Even in the Hobbesian struggle that was WWII, the US refused to allow torture to become standard military policy.

That record was tossed away like rotten garbage after 9/11/2001. What was once done on an ad hoc basis, and only in dire need, became set policy. Persons with only the most tangental connections to the hijackers were whisked away to foreign lands to be abused, beaten, tortured, and broken. Sometimes these peoples only connection was to be in wrong place at the wrong time. Often, they were just ratted out by people holding a grudge against them. Time after time, interrogators found out that supposed “high value targets,” were just poor shlubs, who had no connections what-so-ever with any terrorist organization. Sometimes these people died in captivity because no jailor wanted to admit that they had made a grievous error.

Some may try to excuse the Cheney-Bush-Obama torture regime by claiming that 9/11 changed everything. In way they are correct. 9/11/01 changed the level of degradation, corruption, perversion, and degeneration ordinary US citizens permitted in their government. We drank deep from the waters of fear, brutishness, ignorance, and folly.  We allowed our Democracy to degrade further into an unaccountable authoritarianism. We covered ourselves with shame. How do we reverse this? How do we find our democratic soul again? How do we do follow Washington again, instead of mau-mauing him?

There are no easy answers. In point of fact,we got in this mess by accepting facile answers to difficult problems. Far too many tried to cover their fear by the pretense of being “hard boiled,” “tough,” and “unsentimental.” Cowards torture; fools torture; knaves defend torture; bullies revel in the vicarious thrill of knowing we torture. But even worse are the human jellyfish that allow torture to continue because they don’t want to deal with the political blow-back that returning to our former humane standards would incur. Nothing points out the deterioration of our political class than when a Constitutional scholar and law professor continues the barbaric policy of his predecessor out of political convenience and cowardice.

For Barack Obama, the Constitution is an intellectual play thing. It is debating tool and utterly plastic in its meaning. By seeing all sides of a Constitutional issue, Obama accepts none. Obama’s brilliant mind can alway find a justification for the most heinous and unconstitutional of acts. Thus, the Constitutional Law Professor is shipping out “high value targets” to the tender mercies of Somali guards at black site gulags in Mogadishu. Not to worry, it is all out-sourced by the CIA, so it really doesn’t count. Besides, Barack is much more careful about the people who get sucked into these prisons to be horrifically abused, honest injun.

That is the depressing state of affairs ten years after 9/11/2001. I again wonder if anyone will bother to mention how deep we have drifted into the rabbit hole. It is possible that when Freedom Tower is finally completed, it will be a ironic marker in how much freedom we have lost. OBL may be resting with the fishes, but his dark legacy lives on.

Tortured Logic

It is truly perverse how the present Fox News inspired Republican Party behaves. It only took twenty-four hours for the push-back against the Administration’s success in Abbottabad to begin.  The very first flowering of the new meme was seen in the Murdock operated Wall Street Journal. It was there in plain sight, a tiny bit of worthless opinion wedged in the story as fact.  You had to go deep into the story, the lead was buried, but it was there none the less : enhanced interrogation had provided at least some of the leads that lead to OBL’s hideout.   What began as a whisper has become a thing shouted from the rooftops : torture works.

To have to go over this particular bit of ground is painful. It is not just that this meme is demonstrably false, that it is a big fat lie. It is that even if true, even if torture provides actionable intelligence, the means still do not justify the ends.

There is something profoundly icky about how much the Right Wing gets its torture groove on. There is a foul reek of sexual needs denied. The whole structure oozes of repressed homoerotic sadomasochistic urges mixed with toxic authoritarianism. The pleasure, the shear joy, that Conservative commentators project when discussing torture is off-putting; you feel an overwhelming desire to take very long shower.

These commentators will not be deterred, they will not even pause in delivering their message of mayhem. They most certainly will not let facts get in the way. They are going for the lizard brain; no detours. To be a true warrior in the battle against terror one must surrender any notions of decency. It seems that the only way to defeat the evil bastards of terrorism is to become an even bigger, even more evil, bastard yourself.

These right-wing warriors accept no limits. Black Site Prisons, extraordinary rendition, Gitmo, indefinite detention, and “enhanced interrogation” are all acceptable. As a matter of fact these methods are more than acceptable, they are the only way to deal with the bad guys. If you are unwilling to become an utter savage, you are obviously a lily-livered coward.

How acting like a perfect Visigoth became the acme of policy is no real mystery. There is a reason that Republicans are attempting to legitimize the methods of the Mongol hordes. It is to set up the old trope that Democrats are weak on defense. In this brave new world only utter depravity towards our adversaries is acceptable. Anything less than wholesale barbarism is weakness. Is your head hurting yet? It should be.

We are a very long way from the thoughts of our first President. We are a very long way from first principle. How is it that when Washington had his back up against a wall, he was able to treat the despised Hessians fairly, but we are unable to do the same against Al Qaeda? Washington was in an existential struggle against the greatest military power of the  age; we are dealing with a rag-tag bunch of nihilists one step above a street gang. Washington was dead set against torture; we have babbling fools who extol the virtues of torture every chance they get.

These fools should be marginal characters. They should be on a soap box on some street corner yelling their obscenities to the pigeons. Instead they occupy positions of trust. They are T.V. personalities, politicians, academics, commentators, Congressmen and Senators. In short they are people who are supposed to know better.

So how did these people loose their grip on reality? Why are they peddling this tripe? It is more than just justifying the programs of the Bush-Cheney Administration. That is only the very top layer of this effort. Those who interpret this push for torture as just a desperate attempt to latch the failed efforts of Bush-Cheney to the successful efforts of Team Obama are only looking at the surface. Republicans have to “prove” torture works. They have to then carry that premise forward so they can beat up Obama for his reluctance to use torture. That way they reset the meme that Democrats are weak because they are unwilling to use this “proven” method of getting to the bad guys. Welcome to crass political considerations.

You expected decency from this lot? The ends justify the means for these people. And the ends is the permanent Republican ascendancy. The end is the permanent delegitimizing of the Democratic party by any means necessary. Only the Republican Party represents “Real America” (tm) And because this is the “Real America” it can do no wrong; no quarter asked or given, no holds bared, might makes right, just win baby.

Now some would say this is a good thing; that the Republicans have gone so far off the reservation that they will “loose the middle,”  hogwash.  The middle is whatever the political elites say it is. It is a flexible, mutable thing, it is totally plastic. The middle can be moved, and it has been moved. The middle in the 21st Century is much more tilted to the right than it was in the middle of the 20th Century.  As long as Neo-Liberals and “Moderate” Democrats keep playing defense the nation will continue its rightward march.

Instead of passively waiting for the Republicans to step on a rake, Democrats should be blasting the Elephants 24/7 on torture. People should not be just loosing elections for their support of torture, they should be loosing their livelihoods. Supporting torture should brand you as a tin-foil hatted crazy, not fit for any job requiring a scintilla of responsibility. Supporting torture should brand you a pervert, as one who perverts the very essence of our nation. It should brand you as a moral reprobate, as worse than a child molester. People who support torture should not be seen as tough, as being hard edged, as leaders or doers, they should be seen as pond scum.  Torture is wrong, end of discussion, end of drill. Anyone who says different is being willfully ignorant, a troll, or overcompensating for their own cowardice.

The TEA Party faithful are more than willing to beat their breast about taking back the country and how much they love the Constitution. It is an odd type of love they show for that document. There are some gaping holes in their infatuation with our founding document; not much love for the the Forth nor Fifth Amendments and the thrill is gone for the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments too. I haven’t seen the TEA Party set wave their muskets nor stage a tricornered hat protest against Gitmo, FISA , sneak and peak nor any other parts of the police state set up by W and Obama. They were more than happy to have any random brown person harassed by TSA, but did draw the line when those same government workers wanted to scan their junk. I guess it is a very situational love they have of the Constitution, with lots of cut-outs and exceptions.

This is a rather simple argument. It is that common decency should be exactly that: common. It should be our default. It should be our rock; that we treat even our worst opponents decently. We are supposed to be the civilized ones, our opponents are supposed to be the barbarians. There should be a wide and noticeable difference in the two behaviors. Our opponents want to drag our nation down to their level. They want us thinking with out lizard brains. They want us living in fear. Why, in God’s name, should we accommodate them?

Caught Between Scylla and Charybdis

The news about President Obama's Guantanamo decision is not at all surprising. Yet again we see the price of dawdling and delay. Obama's cool, calm, and measured response to, well damn near everything, is a two-edged sword. Sometimes it is a good thing; it prevents the type of "leadership" that a John McCain or a George W. Bush indulges in. When your default is to think from the gut and/or run around like your hair is on fire, bad decisions will happen. McCain campaign was fatally damaged by the gut decisions of Sarah Palin as V.P. and the attempt by the McCain campaign to postpone the first debate. It looked less than an example of deliberate leadership than an example of a poorly run Chinese Fire Drill.

The reverse side of the coin is that sometimes, actually quite often, Obama has a deer-in-the-headlights moment. While he ponders the possibilities and muses about the best possible outcomes, the opposition runs over him like a big rig rolling over a hapless armadillo on a Texas highway. Gitmo is just one example.

Obama was handed an epic mess on Gitmo. It was a shop of horrors. It was illegal on various different fronts. It was a violation of our obligations as laid down by the Geneva Accords. It was a possible violation of the Fourth Amendment and other portions of the Constitution of the United States. The word "possible" is only used because the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to fully weigh in on Gitmo. The Court has had a few chances to step into the breach but has so far has artfully dodged the invitation. As a violation of common sense and morals Gitmo has few equals.

Gitmo was the Bush-Cheney hair-on-fire response to 9/11. Having been caught napping by Osama Bin Laden's not-so-happy campers, W and friends went on epic hunt for Al Qaeda types in the badlands of Afghanistan. The Bushies vacuumed up any male that vaguely resembled a terrorist. The operating parameters where imprison/snatch first, ask questions later.

The second problem with the operation was that the questions were asked much later. Not only was there a problem with the timing, there was a problem with the method. Charming methods like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, vicious dogs, temperature extremes, and others were used. The intelligence gathered by these methods was less than fabulous.

Even worse, the tactics looked very much like torture; this despite a get-out-of-jail memo written by a hack lawyer in the government's employ. The legal reasoning of John Yoo was straight out of opposite land. http://www.justice.gov/olc/warpowers925.htm . Yoo's memo was an argument that owed more the philosophy of the Divine Right of Kings, than to anything based in the constitution. It was a bad faith document designed to cover epic lawlessness, and set up a legal limbo on the island of Cuba.

That legal limbo was incredibly effective. For almost eight years many detainees rotted in prison, with absolutely no legal recourse to speak of. Bush was able to run out the legal clock, and hand over Gitmo, as is, with no warranty, to Barack Obama. Candidate Obama thought he had the solution to the clunker he was given; President Obama soon discovered that there was no such easy solution.

The major problem for the new President was that some of the detainees were honest-to-goodness bad guys. They were men whose whole reason for being was to harm the government of the United States of America, and its citizens. They could not just be set loose to cause grave harm. Thanks to Bush and Cheney, they could not be tried either. No self-respecting court in the land would hear the case. Unlike John Yoo, real lawyers know what constitutes torture; they know what constituted a perversion of justice. They would have no choice to dismiss the charges, with extreme prejudice. They would have no choice but to release the detainees due to governmental misconduct.

Such a result would be a disaster. It would release some seriously bad actors into the wild. Who knows what death and mayhem they would be able to commit before we could capture them again? Who knows if they could be captured again? There a lot of lawless places in the world where they could go to ground. So there is a legitimate concern for not letting them go—the protection of lives.

The legitimate concern of protection of lives also neatly dove-tails with the political protection of Obama's backside. Cynics may claim that this was the primary consideration of the Administration. If it was a consideration, it could not have been played any worse. Obama managed to enrage his left-wing base, and give the right-wing a treasure-trove of brickbats to toss at his head. His cautious and considered deliberations about the prisoners left the door wide open for Republican fear mongering. Gitmo was held up as the only facility that could possibly hold these nefarious, death-dealing, Islamic terrorists (be afraid, be very, very afraid.) Never mind that the Government has plenty of facilities that could securely hold these men. Never mind that it would be rather hard for these men to just blend in with the local populous, even if they managed to escape. Never mind that they would have an even harder time of getting out of the U.S. to join up with their fellows. No, the only place that could hold them was the P.R. disaster and legal black-hole of Gitmo.

Sad to say, but after a year of cautious plodding by the Obama Administration, and their utter failure to provide any pushback to the Right-Wing noise machine, almost 60% of the electorate now believes that Gitmo should remain open. Thus, once more, is the plodding Armadillo of Obama overtaken and crushed, by the tractor-trailer of the Republican Party. Caution and deliberation where overmatched by nimbyism and fear mongering. It only gets worse from here.

It gets worse because the Obama Administration has come up with an epically awful solution to the Gordian Knot that is the detainee issue. The solution that was worked out was to gather some more line, and add some half-hitches, a passel of tug-boat hitches, a Yosemite bowline or two, and nice hang man's noose to the mass. Such is the legal legerdemain that is the Obama proposal. Some detainees will be "tried" in New York City. It will be a wonderful bit of spectacle, worthy of Joe Stalin's efforts during the purges. It will be quite the gathering of Kangaroos. Other detainees will be delivered into the tender mercies of the Military Justice system, as further amended by a railroading construction known as the Military Tribunals. It is a form of justice so suspect, that Military Prosecutors have deserted the process in protest. No small feat that. But the lowest level of this legal hell will be occupied by forty some detainees. They will continue to be held without charge, without possibility of release, without any recourse whatsoever. So much for habeas corpus, so much for the Fifth, Fourth and Eighth Amendments, so much for the rule of law for these men; and so long to our legal protections as well.

This is the ultimate result of not understanding the difference between pragmatism and prudence. It is the result of not understanding the difference between what can be done, and what should be done. It is what happens when you let a convenient compromise cloud an inconvenient truth. Sometimes there is no "third way;" sometimes there is only the devil and the deep blue sea. The strictures of the exclusionary rule of the U.S. Constitution, and the precedent set by the Geneva Accords lead to only one correct solution to the issue of the detainees—release on their own recognacense. But what the law demands, neither domestic security nor political reality can abide. Thus the creation of a totally bogus process that gives the lie to the words "legal proceedings." As it is now constructed, it is a process that only a small coterie of Washington insiders see any value in. Everyone else holds the process in contempt. The right sees no need for the process in the first place. The accused are utterly evil, and should be left to fester in the hole they now find themselves. The guilt of these people is self evident, no trail is needed. The left sees the process as both pointless and evil. The rest of the unwashed middle wonder why the Administration is making such a fetish of a legal procedure that is obviously designed for the sole purpose of convicting the accused. They sympathize with the right wing mostly, if the end result is going to be conviction. "Why bother?" is the question they ask. It is a good question; what exactly is the point of Obama's fastidious procedure? What is the need for this thin white-wash of legal mumbo-jumbo, if the results are preordained? Is this just some pointless bureaucratic exercise so that some nameless Government drones can place a tick mark on some obscure check list? Are we doing this to provide cover for few functionaries deep in the bowels of the National Security Apparatus? Sure looks like it. Sure looks like a typical D.C. exercise in covering posteriors. It sure looks like a pointless, grubby, amoral and ultimately degrading farce.

Obama to allow the kangaroos to put on a show in the Big Apple

There are times a bleeding heart defender of rule of the law can only weep. This is one of them. Team Obama is going to follow the script laid down by Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in their numerous movies: they are going to put on a show!

Granted this little bit of theater won’t be as hideous as the ones put up by Joe Stalin but any resemblance to legitimate and fair trial is purely accidental. Exactly where in the Big Apple will they managed to find twelve unbiased jurors?

Oh and let us not forget in times past no self-respecting judge would have allowed this trail to take place at all. The government’s case is poisoned by the massive misconduct of the Bush-Cheney administration. Talk all you please about “aggressive interrogation techniques” the accused were tortured and abused.

That core bit of prosecutorial misconduct can not be ignored. The massive violations of the norms of law have contaminated any and all evidence the government may have gathered. There is no fact that has escaped the taint of the corruption. Any courtroom following the long established norms of our legal system would have no choice but to dismiss the government’s case with extreme prejudice.

Thus the Administration will be forced to create some new “court” that can conveniently ignore the massive violations of basic human rights that were inflicted on the suspects. Call it a tribunal or a court of special purpose or whatever what makes one happy, it is the spiritual heir of the Court of the Star Chamber that our founders despised.

The only reason for this little charade is that Obama and his Administration can not release the defendants on their own recognacense. Not in a month of Sundays can that happen because adhering to the demands of the rule of law would doom Obama’s Presidency. Plus there is also the unfortunate likelihood that the defendants are every inch the evil bastards the government claims to them to be.

But that used to be one of the more impressive bits of our legal system: even evil bastards were accorded the full protection of our Constitution. They were shielded by the Forth and Fifth Amendments. They were guaranteed a speedy trial by a jury of their peers. But 9/11 changed all that didn’t it? Bush-Cheney was blind-sided by OBL’s box-cutter wielding nihilists and went into CYA overdrive. In the rush to prevent another oops-awe-shit failure of the “Bin Laden determined to hit the United States” variety they trampled the protections of the Constitution. In their flop-sweat determination to gather “intelligence” on Al Qaeda they not only violated both Federal and international norms and laws but also common sense and decency.

Thanks to the epic incompetence of Bush-Cheney there is no good end result to this affair. It is a pity that we could not find some shark infested atoll to dump these lads on and be done with it. As it stands there is no way to put this put this legal Humpty Dumpty back together again. Obama and his team are attempting to find the least distasteful end to this situation but that brings little cheer. Let’s be real, there is no way this trail does not do further damage to our standing.

File Under "No Duh!"

Mancow Waterboarded, Admits It's Torture "It is way worse than I thought it would be"

RYAN POLLYEAUpdated 12:11 PM CDT, Fri, May 22, 20009

And so it went Friday morning when WLS radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller decided to subject himself to the controversial practice of waterboarding live on his show.

Mancow decided to tackle the divisive issue head on -- actually it was head down, while restrained and reclining.

"I want to find out if it's torture," Mancow told his listeners Friday morning, adding that he hoped his on-air test would help prove that waterboarding did not, in fact, constitute torture.

The debate over whether waterboarding constitutes torture reached a fever pitch this week as re-ignited claims that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) knew as early as 2002 about waterboarding techniques being used, and former Vice President Dick Cheney and President Barack Obama gave "dueling speeches" Thursday.

Listeners had the chance to decide whether Mancow himself or his co-host, Chicago radio personality Pat Cassidy, would undergo the interrogation method during the broadcast. The voters ultimately decided Mancow would be the one donning the soaked towel and shackles, and at about 8:40 a.m., he entered a small storage room next to his studio that was compared to a "dungeon" by Cassidy.

"The average person can take this for 14 seconds," Marine Sergeant Clay South answered, adding, "He's going to wiggle, he's going to scream, he's going to wish he never did this."

With a Chicago Fire Department paramedic on hand, Mancow was placed on a 7-foot long table, his legs were elevated, and his feet were tied up.

Turns out the stunt wasn't so funny. Witnesses said Muller thrashed on the table, and even instantly threw the toy cow he was holding as his emergency tool to signify when he wanted the experiment to stop. He only lasted 6 or 7 seconds.

Snip

Very typical results, a manly man gets all Rambo on the air talking about things he has no clue about and writes a a check with his mouth that his body can cash. A trash-talking tough guy gets humbled by the liberal bias of reality. So it goes. Waterboarding is torture people only a fool or a liar would say differently.

Forget Gitmo Focus on Bagram

Bush's living legacy at Bagram prison
By Karen J Greenberg

Just when you think you've woken up from a bad dream …

When it comes to offshore injustice and secret prisons, especially our notorious but little known prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, let's hope the Barack Obama years mean never having to complete that sentence.

In the George W Bush era, those of us who followed his administration's torture, detention and interrogation policies often felt like we were unwilling participants in a perverse game of hide-and-seek. Whenever one of us stumbled upon a startling new document, a horrific new practice, a dismal new prison environment or yet another individual implicated in torture policy, the feeling of revelation would soon be superseded by a sneaking suspicion that we were once again looking in the wrong direction, that the Bush administration was playing a Machiavellian game of distraction with us.

Okay, call it paranoia - a state of mind well suited to the Age of Cheney - but when Abu Ghraib finally came to light, it turned out that our real focus should have been on the administration's program of "extraordinary rendition" and the CIA secret flights to the foreign countries that were serving as proxy torturers for the United States. And when one case of torture by proxy, that of Maher Arar, achieved some prominence, we began looking at proxy torturers for the United States, when we should have been looking at legalized policies of torture by the US.

Several years ago, British human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith placed that jewel in the Bush administration's offshore crown of injustice, Guantanamo, in the category of distraction as well - distraction, that is, from the far grimmer and more important American detention facility at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

Snip

Read the rest at Asia Times Online

Yet Another Bush Scandal- Torture Edition

The US justice department told the CIA in 2002 that its agents would not be prosecuted for carrying out harsh interrogations if they believed they would not cause "prolonged mental harm", according to a memo written by a senior official.

The memo, released on Thursday by a civil rights group, approved the CIA's harsh interrogation techniques method by method.

The August 1, 2002 legal opinion, signed by Jay Bybee, the then assistant attorney-general, was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union along with other documents.

The heavily censored document specifically approved proposed interrogation techniques that were devised for use against al-Qaeda suspects who were resistant to other questioning methods.

However, it also warned that if circumstances changed, interrogators could be prosecuted under anti-torture laws.

The standards used to judge how physically rough an interrogation was were censored.

"The healthier the individual, the less likely that the use of any one procedure or set of procedures will result in prolonged mental harm." Jay Bybee, assistant attorney-general who wrote memo

But interrogations that stressed a detainee psychologically or emotionally were not allowed to cause "prolonged mental harm".

The memo suggested psychiatrists or psychologists should be consulted prior to interrogations to assess the likely mental health effect on the prisoner.

"The healthier the individual, the less likely that the use of any one procedure or set of procedures will result in prolonged mental harm," the memo stated.

Bybee wrote the memo the same day he wrote one for Alberto Gonzales, the then-White House counsel, that defined torture as only those "extreme acts" that cause pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure.

The Bybee legal opinion defining torture was withdrawn more than two years later.

Snip

More at the news organization that Republicans love to hate Al Jazeera.

McCain and Torture

“‘Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands,-- George Washington at the battle of Trenton.

On that cold December day in New Jersey the future president of the United States set a standard that lasted through the long Revolutionary struggle and to well beyond. The policy saved lives in many wars. For over 200 years the official policy that forbade torture stood as a guiding American principle. While there were exceptions to this rule; official policy was to punish people who tortured. All that changed with the presidency of George W Bush. Thanks to freedom of information releases we now know that torture was routinely used and routinely authorized at the highest levels of the Bush White House. Of course no one actually called it torture; it was called aggressive interrogation techniques.

Of all the people in American Politics no one has a more intimate knowledge of how those techniques work than John McCain. His Vietnamese prison wardens very aggressively interrogated him. They were so aggressive that they broke his legs. They were so aggressive that McCain cracked and signed a false confession. This was before the John Yu memo gave legal cover to such actions.

Earlier in the Republican campaign John McCain did not see the wisdom of the Yu memo and flatly equated waterboarding as torture. He took a contrarian stand against the Republican herd and stood against Gitmo. There was the much ballyhooed McCain-Graham-Warner bill that “forbade torture.” The bill was very weak tea to begin with and President Bush’s signing statement negated any attempt to limit his ability to torture whenever, wherever he liked. McCain did not utter a peep when the signing statement was released. John McCain talked a good game; he even “forced” the president to “compromise” in a made for T.V. event. However, in the end he rolled over and gave Bush everything he wanted. George W Bush got his own private Gulag. In Gitmo and other places Bush reigns like oriental despot. His writ is law and his power is untrammeled.

The final degradation of McCain happened just recently. The CIA was just given carte blanche by legislators to be as bad as they want to be. The proposal that they follow rules, the proposal that they should be held accountable to the standers set by George Washington, was killed by John McCain’s vote. It was an amendment requiring that the CIA adhere to the Army Field Manual when they questioned suspects. McCain marched in lock step with his fellow Republicans and voted against that amendment. McCain voted to let the CIA continue to use torture and abuse on suspects that it detains.

From being a victim of torture John McCain has now become an enabler. He has given his seal of approval to Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, electric shock, and physical pain up to that experienced in organ failure. The CIA and its contractors can continue to repeat the methods exposed at Abu Ghraib. It is full speed ahead on sending suspects to Syria and Egypt for a little “softening up.” After 231 years we are now the just like the Revolutionary war British. We even have our own Hessians: Blackwater USA., KBR, and others. John McCain is just fine with this.

We are a long way from the man who spoke out against these excesses in February. There has been a long, slow, slide away from the core values that McCain once swore to uphold and defend. We are a long, long way removed from the man who stood in solidarity with his fellow detainees in the “Hanoi Hilton.” That John McCain served bravely and honorably. That John McCain was an exemplar of a 200 year military tradition of honor, valor, courage, and country. That John McCain understood the gross violation of torture. He knew in his bones how torture soiled everything it touched. He understood how torture degraded every one involved in it. He could hold his head up high and know that his nation was better than his captors; that his country stood for higher principles. McCain knew that the USA objected to torture, that it prosecuted people for the type of behavior his Vietnamese guards indulged themselves in. That John McCain is long gone; he has been replaced by a smarmy politician who will pander to the worst instincts of the Wing-nut right. Just like Mitt Romney he has”doubled down” on Gitmo. In doing so he has disgraced the uniform he once wore. In doing so he has besmirched the high ideals set by George Washington and dishonored the outstanding record of military service his family has provided. More to the point, McCain has proved himself unworthy of the highest executive office of the land.

“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.” - George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775

Prison Ships?

The Guardian UK reports of the possibility that the U.S. has used it ships to detain prisoners. Reading the report is just so sad, sickening and frustrating. The frustration is with the Bush Administration’s mania for secrecy. No where is the meme that “we can’t talk about tactics” more hurtful than in this example. Conspiracy theories sprout like mushrooms when there is a dearth of facts. It is the darkness and the fertilizer that helps both grow.

To really talk sense about the reality on the ground demands a shift into the first person and to personal knowledge about US Navy assets and specifically the facts about Diego Garcia. Please indulge me.

Let us begin with the U.S. Naval ships in question. I know quite a bit about these beasts because I rode them. I will start with the smallest of the ships in question and work my way up the food chain. Presently the smallest ship in the Amphibious fleet is the LSD. For reasons unknown to me all Amphibious ships are known as Gators and the Amphibious fleet is referred to as the “Gator Navy.” LSDs, Landing Ship Docks are the baby gators in the surface fleet. They are modest size ships with berthing for about 300 sailors and an extra 300 odd Marines. The Navy uses most of the available space on the ship not for the crew but for equipment. One wit once described the LSD as a “fast attack dump truck” not a martial vision but essentially true. The ship drops a tailgate of sort, sinks its butt in the water, and disgorges the Marines and their gear. Because of this design there is no room to put “cages” on to the ship. The ships may have a tiny brig that can hold perhaps three prisoners for a brief stay. On the ship I was on the Brig was used as a storage space.

Going up the ladder the next ship would be an LPD. LPDs are LSDs that have gone to the gym and buffed out a little. They have better Helicopter support than the LSDs. They can carry and support a small Marine detachment of aviators. Still the holding capacity for prisoners is quite limited. Every cage one puts into the LPDs is a hit on the real mission of the ship. That cage would suck up space for Humvees, trucks etc. LPDs probably have either tiny brigs or no brigs at all.

Last is the LHA/LHD. These are baby bird-farms. A bird farm is an Aircraft Carrier. The newest LHA/LHD is the size of a WWII Essex class carrier. This is the only ship were it is plausible to hold any number of prisoners. Maybe those ships were used as temporary holding facilities. The chance that suspects were detained there for any length of time though is not realistic. The ship’s design did not envision the brig being used for anything else other than temporary use. Brigs are not designed for prolonged stays; the most likely scenario considered for use was an “award” of three days bread and water plus confinement. Any confinement beyond three days becomes very problematic from a management perspective. It is a question of feeding the prisoners. The dining facilities on the ship, the "Mess Decks," are no where near the brig. Truth be told the mess decks are not even conveniently located for the crew or the embarked Marines. The prisoners would have to be escorted to their meals thrice daily, fed, and then brought back to their confinement or box lunches would have to be provided. This is just not workable for any length of time over a week.

Talking about ships design brings me to the vessels sitting in the lagoon of Diego Garcia. I know these ships, I’ve visited them. They are roll-on, roll-off ships: Ro-Ro’s. The idea behind them is add soldiers (or Marines) and mix. They are packed with equipment but short of staff. The ships are run by civilian crews- merchant mariners. Some are contracted out, others –the Military Sealift Command ships- have a tiny US Navy contingent and are operated by the Navy. None of these people have the time to be babysitting detainees. None of the ships I visited had any provision to detain even a drunken sailor – never mind captured “bad guys.” Can I prove that no one was held on those ships? No ,I can not. But I can tell you the logistics of even attempting to hold prisoners on those ships are damn near impossible even for the MSC ships- never mind the contract vessels. I can also tell you that such an attempt would escape Diego Garcia’s confines very quickly. The Merchant Marines would squeal or the contract workers on Diego Garcia would blab to their relatives in the Philippines. The info would first be plastered all over Filipino web sites and then on to the rest of the world. Small island, bored people, everybody knows everybody else’s deepest darkest secret. Diego Garcia is the absolute worst place in the world to have a secret prison.

So how did we get here, how did these allegations of ghost ships packed with unfortunate detainees riding the ocean blue get started? Probably it started from a very small kernel of truth. Maybe a flight with a detainee passed through Diego, it landed, it refueled, and it left. Maybe some lower level detainees rounded up in Afghanistan were temporarily placed in the brig of a LHA or LHD until room could be found elsewhere. Anyone detained in a ship’s brig would come out displeased with the experience. The brig is designed as punishment. From these small acorns mighty oaks have grown. This is the price we pay for Bush and Cheney’s obsession with secrecy. This is the price we pay for Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. This is the price we pay for extraordinary rendition and black-site gulags in foreign lands. People will now believe just about any wild tale about detainees that gets released. We have only ourselves to blame; we allowed Bush and Cheney to get away with this. This is what happens when Congresscritters put impeachment off the table.

China Outsources Abuse to U.S.

Report: U.S. Soldiers Did 'Dirty Work' for Chinese Interrogators

By JUSTIN ROOD of ABC News
May 20, 2008

U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men -- or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.

Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.

According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI agent reported a detainee belonging to China's ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators.

Susan Manning, a lawyer who represents several Uighurs still held at Guantanamo, said Tuesday the allegations are all too familiar.

U.S. personnel "are engaging in abusive tactics on behalf of the Chinese," she said Tuesday. When Uighur detainees refused to talk to Chinese interrogators in 2002, U.S. military personnel put them in solitary confinement as punishment, she said.

cf to firedoglake

cf to talkleft

cf to Sadly No!

Snip

Our country is being buried in a mountain of offal and "fertilizer" and we still ignore the smell.

The Tragedy of Colin Powell

ABC news revealed that top Bush Administration officials not only signed on to torturing “high value suspects” but were micro-managing the details of the “enhanced interrogation.” The usual Bush subjects were all in on the decision Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft, and George Tenant. One other name was on the list; Colin Powell. As Secretary of State he was part of the “National Security Council's Principals Committee” where the decision to violate over 200 years of national practice was made. Some time in the spring of 2002 Colin Powell went over to the dark side.

Many people think that Powell’s performance at the United Nations is where he lost his soul. We now know that her acquiesced to evil long before that awful day. Of all the people in George W Bush’s administration, Powell was the one who knew about the evil and stupidity of torture. As a military man he knew that torture gave rotten intelligence and put American service members in harms way. He also knew that torture was corrosive to good order and discipline and violated core military values. Despite this he signed on to the “findings” of the committee.

Apologists for Colin Powell have stressed have stressed two things in his defense; that he was a good soldier following orders and he believed that he could change the direction of the administration from the inside. They made the plausible argument that Powell thought he could still do good by remaining in the administration. They claim that Powell just did not understand how hard line Cheney and Rumsfeld were and what a rear-guard an loosing battle he was fighting. The news release puts that argument to rest.

Powell as a member of the committee was given a cornucopia of facts about what “enhanced interrogation” was. Such details as hitting, slapping, hot and cold abuse, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding were not only covered but the actual amount in minutes were discussed. Maybe Powell objected to the treatment, maybe he did not. It is only said that he was worried about the impact on our reputation abroad. What he did not do was resign when this program was first floated.

We talk about how Powell could have, should of resigned when Bush and Cheney launched their ill conceived war in Iraq. If only the good general had threatened to resign, the whole Iraq mess might have been avoided. We fault him for his speech in the UN. We call it a blot on his sterling record. How much more of a deep stain is the revelation that Colin Powell might just be a war criminal?

We know of Powell’s history, his rise from the hard-scrabble poverty in New York City to become the very first black Joint Chief of Staff. For many his was the All-American story. So many Americans both black and white took pride in his accomplishments. He even had a Military doctrine named after him. That doctrine was the result of all the things he learned in his military career, mostly it came from the hard lessons of his tours in Vietnam. Before his contact with the Bush Administration Powell was role model, an exemplar of American Dream. Through hard work and dedication he had come from humble roots to the very pinnacle of power. His can do attitude and ambition became his undoing. Powell just was not prepared to cope with the evil that is Bush/Cheney.

Powell knew the score; he understood the Geneva conventions and the need to put some limits on the horrors of war. He had witnessed what happens to an Army when it looses all track of decency and honor. Where did he loose those core commitments? How did he rationalize away the stark depravity of what Cheney was favoring? He better than most people should have understood that Osama Bin Laden’s organization was not an existential threat to then nation like the old Soviet Union was.

He better than most people should have understood how tactics like torture were counter-productive. He had actually fought in COIN operations, he knew how important winning (and loosing) hearts and minds was. He spent decades in the military. He did not hide out in the National Guard nor did he get deferments from Vietnam. He was there on the ground in Southeast Asia. Why did he not put his foot down? Even after graphic details of the abuse the CIA was dishing out was given to Colin Powell he did not speak out in public. By not speaking out he acquiesced to torture. By acquiescing to torture he violated the Geneva accords- laws that the US mostly recently approved in 1992. In short Colin Powell should be in jeopardy of legal prosecution for War Crimes.

Powell stayed a loyal soldier to Bush. Even after Abu Ghraib he stayed on. Even after he knew that the secret program was no longer secret. At what point does loyalty become a fault? Where does loyalty to the man or office end and loyalty the founding ideals of the nation begin? We now know that the UN speech was mere coda to Powell’s failure of conscience. Sometime after 9/11 Powell crossed the line; he stayed loyal to George W Bush and the Republican Party but betrayed the nation. What an awful state of affairs. Powell sold his soul for a few cheep trinkets offered up by Cheney. He massively compromised the core principles of a soldier to stay in a fixed game, a game that he kept loosing. He was like gambler who kept tossing in chips in a crooked poker game. The house of Cheney took him for everything he had. The house of Cheney was playing with a marked deck; they stripped Powell of his good name. They morally bankrupted Powell.

There is no rehabilitation for Colin Powell now; he is wedded to Condi Rice and to Cheney and to all the rotten Bush crew. He has fallen down in to the mire and muck of the worst presidency ever. Like Cheney and Bush and the others he will become a cautionary tale. He will be held up as an example of what not to do, of what not to become. He, most of all .will be held up as an example of how good men fail to oppose what is evil and wrong. He, most of all, will be held up as an example of a singularly moral failure. His is a great American tragedy.

Bush Pays Off His "Torture is Cool" Base

Bush vetoes interrogation limits

US President George Bush says he has vetoed legislation that would stop the CIA using interrogation methods such as simulated drowning or "water-boarding".

He said he rejected the intelligence bill, passed by Senate and Congress, as it took "away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror".

The president said the CIA needed "specialised interrogation procedures" that the military did not.

Water-boarding is condemned as torture by rights groups and many governments.

It is an interrogation method that puts the detainee in fear of drowning.

Track record

Speaking in his weekly radio address, Mr Bush did not mention water-boarding specifically.

"The bill Congress sent me would not simply ban one particular interrogation method, as some have implied," he said.

CIA 'ENHANCED INTERROGATION' TECHNIQUES Water-boarding: prisoner bound to a board with feet raised, and cellophane wrapped round his head. Water is poured onto his face and is said to produce a fear of drowning Cold cell: prisoner made to stand naked in a cold, though not freezing, cell and doused with water Standing: Prisoners stand for 40 hours and more, shackled to the floor Belly slap: a hard slap to the stomach with an open hand. This is designed to be painful but not to cause injury Source: Described to ABC News by un-named CIA agents in 2005

"Instead, it would eliminate all the alternative procedures we've developed to question the world's most dangerous and violent terrorists."

He added: "This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe."

Correspondents say the slim margin by which the bill was passed means it is unlikely that the Democratic-controlled Congress could gather enough votes to overturn Mr Bush's veto.

The bill would have restricted Central Intelligence Agency officials to using the 19 interrogation techniques outlined by the US army field manual.

It would ban the CIA from using not only water-boarding, but sensory deprivation and other harsh coercive methods on prisoners.

The CIA recently publicly admitted using water-boarding on three people, including high-profile al-Qaeda detainee Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but not for the past five years.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7285290.stm

Published: 2008/03/08 15:39:56 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

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All Hail The Glorious Comrade Bush's Most Wondrous Justice!

Former Prosecutor to Testify for Guantanamo Detainee
By William Glaberson
The New York Times

Thursday 28 February 2008

Until four months ago, Col. Morris D. Davis was the chief prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay and the most colorful champion of the Bush administration's military commission system. He once said sympathy for detainees was nauseating and compared putting them on trial to dragging "Dracula out into the sunlight."

Then in October he had a dispute with his boss, a general. Ever since, he has been one of those critics who will not go away: a former top insider, with broad shoulders and a well-pressed uniform, willing to turn on the system he helped run.

Still in the military, he has irritated the administration, saying in articles and interviews that Pentagon officials interfered with prosecutors, exerted political pressure and approved the use of evidence obtained by torture.

Now, Colonel Davis has taken his most provocative step, completing his transformation from Guantánamo's chief prosecutor to its new chief critic. He has agreed to testify at Guantánamo on behalf of one of the detainees, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a driver for Osama bin Laden.

Colonel Davis, a career military lawyer nearing retirement at 49, said that he would never argue that Mr. Hamdan was innocent, but that he was ready to try to put the commission system itself on trial by questioning its fairness. He said that there "is a potential for rigged outcomes" and that he had "significant doubts about whether it will deliver full, fair and open hearings."

"I'm in a unique position where I can raise the flag and aggravate the Pentagon and try to get this fixed," he said, acknowledging that he is enjoying some aspects of his new role. He was replaced as chief Guantánamo prosecutor after he stepped down but is still a senior legal official for the Air Force.

Among detainees' advocates, there has been something of a gasp since it was announced last week that Colonel Davis would be taking the witness stand in April.

Mr. Hamdan's chief military lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. Brian L. Mizer, said he would offer Colonel Davis to argue that charges against Mr. Hamdan should be dismissed because of improper influence by Pentagon officials over the commission process. Prosecutors may object, and it is unclear how military judges may rule.

But whatever happens, some advocates for detainees say, officials are likely to have difficulty erasing the image of a uniformed former Guantánamo champion challenging them so directly.

Particularly, some of them said, one who was known for scorched-earth attacks on adversaries, be they terror suspects or lawyers. "He was the attack dog for the military commission system," said Zachary Katznelson, a lawyer for Guantánamo detainees.

Last year as chief prosecutor, Colonel Davis publicly suggested that a Marine defense lawyer for a detainee might be guilty of a crime for using "contemptuous words" about the president when the marine questioned the fairness of the Guantánamo system.

At the time, critics ridiculed Colonel Moe as an administration apologist. But in recent weeks, some of them have described him in nearly heroic terms.

Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch called Colonel Davis the most significant insider to tell what he knew about Guantánamo. "He has put his career on the line," Ms. Daskal said.

Pentagon officials have steamed about the extraordinary role Colonel Davis has staked out. Some people with Pentagon ties say the unusual story started as a power struggle between Colonel Davis and a Pentagon official who has broad powers over the Guantánamo legal system, Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, who has declined to comment.

Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hemingway, a retired military official who once supervised Colonel Davis at the Office of Military Commissions, said this week that he was surprised Colonel Davis was attacking the system he had once championed.

"That's not whistle-blowing you hear," General Hemingway said. "It's a whine."

In his contentious days at Guantánamo, lawyers who battled him said, Colonel Davis was known for a you're-with-us-or-you're-against-us style of news-conference warfare, delivered in an amiable North Carolina twang.

He is an experienced military lawyer, with years of work both in the prosecution and the defense. He is the son of a disabled veteran of World War II, and he is married with one daughter.

In interviews this week he was in his combative mode, challenging Pentagon officials to take lie-detector tests and asserting that commanders had praised him in the past.

He portrayed himself as battling political appointees. But he said he still believed that a military commission system could work. "It's gotten so tarnished that if we're going to convince the world that this isn't some rigged process we have to bend over backwards," he said. He said the solutions were simple - giving control to military officials. But he suggested darkly that there are "people at key points in the process, that I just don't know what their allegiance is."

There is little question that Colonel Davis's unusual path began with some angry exchanges with General Hartmann last summer. When the colonel resigned as chief military prosecutor, officials disclosed that he had filed a formal complaint asserting that General Hartmann improperly pressed for more war crimes cases and demanded "sexy" cases that would excite the public. An internal report sided with General Hartmann but suggested that he should avoid too much influence over the military prosecutors.

From there, after being reassigned by the Air Force, Colonel Davis found an audience for his accusations.

He told one newspaper that top defense officials discussed the "strategic political value" of putting prominent detainees on trial before the 2008 presidential election. He told another that he had been pressed to hold hearings in closed courtrooms. He wrote op-ed pieces saying General Hartmann had reversed his policy of refusing to use evidence derived through torture.

He told The Nation that the general counsel of the Pentagon, William J. Haynes II, informed him "we can't have acquittals" at Guantánamo.

In a statement Wednesday a Pentagon official would say only, "We disagree with the assertions made by Colonel Davis."

Some detainees' lawyers say they recognize a pattern in Colonel Davis's approach. He once wrote an article in an Air Force journal offering advice to military leaders on how to handle the media. "Take the offensive," it said.

Muneer I. Ahmad, a law professor at American University who fought Colonel Davis in a detainee's case at Guantánamo, said he recognized the strategy in the attacks on Pentagon officials. "It's his way of trying to reshape what the story is," Professor Ahmad said.

If it is, Colonel Davis hinted he is not satisfied yet. "I'm hoping at some point to retire, so I can say what I really think," he said.

It's Official

UK admits to rendition flights

David Miliband, the British foreign minister, has admitted two planes from the United States carrying terrorism suspects refuelled on the British island of Diego Garcia in 2002, contradicting earlier denials by the government.

Previously the government had insisted it was unaware of any British territory being used to transfer terrorism suspects outside normal extradition procedures prior to George Bush, the US president, taking office.

Washington has already admitted to using the practice known as "rendition".

More at the NeoCons most favorite news site Al Jazeera

This is still a long way from claims that prisoners are being held on the Island. The claims are beloved of the tin-foil-hatters and CT fanboys and fangirls. Any one who has actually served on Diego Garcia will tell you that those claims are ridiculous. The bit about holding prisoners on ships in the lagoon is especially cuckoo-for-cocoa puffs. Check out the webpage also check this out and look at the ships in question (called ro-ros) these are contracted civilian and US Navy Sealift command ships who's main function is to carry equipment, they have no facilities for even holding drunken mariners / sailors, never mind terrorist prisoners. There are no floating brigs in the US Navy inventory not even as auxiliaries or as contracted civilian ships. There is a local Navy Brig / jail on Diego but it mainly houses ill-behaved mariners and contract workers. As such most detainees do not stay long in the jail. Diego does have a British Magistrate and he is responsible to his superiors who run the legal entity known as the British Indian Ocean Territory. There is no way the Magistrate is going to violate the laws and traditions of Great Brittan by having people tortured on his island.

It's Official, USA waterboards

CIA admits waterboarding inmates
The CIA has for the first time publicly admitted using the controversial method of "waterboarding" on terror suspects.

CIA director Michael Hayden told Congress however that it had only been used on three people, and not at all for the past five years.

He said the technique had been used on high-profile al-Qaeda detainees including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Waterboarding is an interrogation technique in which the detainee is put in fear of drowning.

Mr Hayden was speaking as National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell presented his annual threat assessment.

We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time
Michael Hayden
CIA director

Some critics describe the procedure as torture and Congress has been debating banning its use by the CIA.

President Bush has threatened to veto such a bill.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is accused of masterminding the 11 September attacks on the United States.

The two other men Mr Hayden said the CIA had also used waterboarding against are also top al-Qaeda suspects, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

Catastrophe fears

He told Congress: "We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time.

"There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaeda and its workings.

"Those two realities have changed."

In his report, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell focussed attention on al-Qaeda and its leadership based in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"Al-Qaeda remains the pre-eminent threat against the United States, both here at home and abroad," he said.

His report said al-Qaeda enjoyed many of the same benefits from its bases in the border areas as it had when it was in Afghanistan proper, and was able to:

* use the region as a staging area for attacks outside
* maintain a group of skilled operators able to direct operations around the world
* pass on morale-boosting messages from Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri
* improve its ability to attack the US itself.

Despite this, Mr McConnell praised the Pakistani authorities, saying they had done more to "neutralise" terrorists than any of the US's other partners - despite more than 860 members of their security forces being killed by bombs in 2007.

And although al-Qaeda had suffered some reverses, he said, it remained active and dangerous in Iraq, in North Africa, in the Arabian peninsula, Lebanon, East Africa, Pakistan and South- East Asia.

Other worries outlined by Mr McConnell included:

* Russia, China and oil producers using their wealth to advance political goals
* nuclear proliferation, especially Iran and North Korea
* computer system vulnerabilities.

"The threats we face are global, complex and dangerous," he wrote.

"We must have the tools to enable the detection and disruption of terrorist plots and other threats."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7229169.stm

Published: 2008/02/05 22:15:43 GMT

© BBC MMVIII