Month: February 2007

By Rudy’s Fruits, Ye Shall Know Him

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by publius In case you didn’t see it, Rudy went on Sean Hannity’s show yesterday to show that he’s, as Holly Hunter might say, bona fide. Hannity pressed him though on abortion: HANNITY: Where does Rudy Giuliani stand on abortion? And do you think Roe v. Wade is a good law, a bad law? GIULIANI: … Read more

Filibuster!

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by hilzoy It seems like only yesterday that Republicans in the Senate were lecturing everyone on the evils of filibusters, and saying plaintively that all they really wanted was an up or down vote. Well, that was then, and this is now: “A long-awaited Senate showdown on the war in Iraq was shut down before … Read more

What Part Of “Innocent Until Proven Guilty” Don’t They Understand?

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by hilzoy

From today’s NYT:

“The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering that will include hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, by far the largest group affected.

The new forensic DNA sampling was authorized by Congress in a little-noticed amendment to a January 2006 renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, which provides protections and assistance for victims of sexual crimes. The amendment permits DNA collecting from anyone under criminal arrest by federal authorities, and also from illegal immigrants detained by federal agents.

Over the last year, the Justice Department has been conducting an internal review and consulting with other agencies to prepare regulations to carry out the law.

The goal, justice officials said, is to make the practice of DNA sampling as routine as fingerprinting for anyone detained by federal agents, including illegal immigrants. Until now, federal authorities have taken DNA samples only from convicted felons.”

(For those of you who like looking the laws up for yourselves as much as I do: the VAWA reauthorization is here (pdf); check out sec. 1003 (p. 126.) The statute it amends is here.)

There are a lot of problems with this. Let’s get the simplest one out of the way first: it will cost a lot of money, and put a huge strain on the FBI, which might have more important things to worry about. From the NYT:

“Many groups warned that the measure would compound already severe backlogs in the F.B.I.’s DNA processing. Mr. Fram of the F.B.I. said there had been an enormous increase in the samples coming to the databank since it started to operate in 1998, but no new resources for the bureau’s laboratory. Currently about 150,000 DNA samples from convicted criminals are waiting to be processed and loaded into the national database, Mr. Fram said.

He said the laboratory had added robot technology to speed the processing. But in the “worst case scenario,” where the laboratory receives one million new samples a year, Mr. Fram said, “there is going to be a bottleneck.””

That could, of course, be solved by providing more funding. Other problems, which I’ll discuss below the fold, are more interesting and less tractable.

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Or Maybe ….

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by von Cliff May: Until a few days ago, Charles "Cully" Stimson, a former JAG officer and prosecutor, served as assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs. I met him recently when I visited the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the most dangerous of America’s enemy combatants are held. Many of those who … Read more

Noooo!!

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by hilzoy Whooping Cranes are some of the most beautiful birds on earth: In 1941, there were only 21 wild Whooping Cranes in existence. Now there are nearly 400. There are two main flocks: a migratory flock that winters in Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, and a nonmigratory flock in Florida. Recently, scientists have … Read more

Those Who Ignore The Past

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by publius

I spent a lot of the week on the Amtrak east coast line, so I picked up John Gaddis’ The Cold War:  A New History at one of the stations.  For those of you who, like me, know less about the Cold War than they should, it’s a good quick summary.  The book teeters on the edge of becoming a morality play at times, and I half-expected the world to break out in chants of "Rocky! Rocky!" by the end.  But as an intro, it’s a good place to start.

What really stood out as a reader in 2007 is the contrast the book provides between the Cold War and our new whatever-we-call-it-now war.  And the contrast shows just how dangerous it would have been if the Bush-Cheney-Kristol n’er-do-rights (and their working assumptions) had been in charge from 1946-1964.  Specifically, in a number of ways, the choices America made in the Cold War (and the consequences of those choices) discredits practically the entire Bush/Cheney approach to foreign policy.

Before I get into specific examples, what really stands out about the immediate aftermath of World War II is how fluid history became during this brief window of time.  The years 1946-1950 in particular was one of those rare historical periods in which the world was basically born anew.  Everything was in flux and therefore the choices made in that period had a disproportionate and lasting effect upon the shape of the world to come — just like the strikes to glowing-hot metal forever shape the sword as the metal cools.  For that reason, it was particularly important to have people making correct choices in this critical, formative period.  And for the most part, with notable exceptions, we did.  The world didn’t blow itself up after all.

Although it’s not on the scale of the postwar era, Bush did for good or bad create a new Middle East.  And like postwar Europe, Iraq and the larger Middle East are going to be forever shaped by the choices of the actors currently in charge.  Indeed, many of these irreversible choices have already been made, mostly for the worst.  Unfortunately, the world-historical importance of the moment is matched only by the utter incompetence of the people currently making decisions.  And with war with Iran looming and the brilliant new plan to align the Middle East along sectarian lines, the real question is whether the Bush administration will run out of time before or after it has to chance to engulf the entire region in war.

To get a sense of how different the current Deciders are from the Cold War Deciders, consider the following examples:

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Task Force 16

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by Katherine

A week ago the Washington Post reported that the Bush administration had authorized the military to "kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran’s influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program." Excerpts:

In Iraq, U.S. troops now have the authority to target any member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, as well as officers of its intelligence services believed to be working with Iraqi militias. The policy does not extend to Iranian civilians or diplomats. Though U.S. forces are not known to have used lethal force against any Iranian to date, Bush administration officials have been urging top military commanders to exercise the authority….

In interviews, two senior administration officials separately compared the Tehran government to the Nazis and the Guard to the "SS." They also referred to Guard members as "terrorists." Such a formal designation could turn Iran’s military into a target of what Bush calls a "war on terror," with its members potentially held as enemy combatants or in secret CIA detention.

I found this worrisome, for obvious reasons. Today, via Spencer Ackerman, I saw an article that made me worry even more. It was actually published two weeks ago, in U.S. News and World Report:

The U.S. military has launched a special operations task force to break up Iranian influence in Iraq, according to U.S. News sources. The special operations mission, known as Task Force 16, was created late last year to target Iranians trafficking arms and training Shiite militia forces. The operation is modeled on Task Force 15, a clandestine cadre of Navy SEALs, Army Delta Force soldiers, and CIA operatives with a mission to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives and Baathist insurgents in Iraq.

Task Force 15 killed al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi, last June.

I don’t recognize Task Force 15’s unit #, but I recognize the description of "a clandestine cadre of Navy SEALs, Army Delta Force soldiers, and CIA operatives with a mission to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives and Baathist insurgents in Iraq," including Zarqawi.  It used to be called Task Force 145, Task Force 6-26, Task Force 121, and Task Force 20. The number keeps changing, but if you follow the news about human rights abuses in Iraq, closely, it comes up again and again and again and again.

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Justice Prevails

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by hilzoy AP: “A senior Pentagon official resigned Friday over controversial remarks in which he criticized lawyers who represent terrorism suspects, the Defense Department said. Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Charles “Cully” Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, told him on Friday that he had made his own decision to resign and … Read more

Iraq: National Intelligence Estimate

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by hilzoy It’s here (pdf), and as Spencer Ackerman says, it’s grim. Spencer adds: “. If past NIEs are any prologue, what remains classified is much, much grimmer than what we see here. More likely than not, this is the most optimistic presentation of the NIE possible.” He would know more about that than I … Read more

Obama

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by hilzoy Various Obama-related notes. First, there’s his Iraq bill. (The text hasn’t been posted, but you can read a pretty specific account of its provisions here. Obama’s floor statement is here.) It caps troops in Iraq at their Jan. 10 levels, requires the redeployment of combat troops out of Iraq starting on May 1 … Read more