Iraq and Terrorism

Al Qaeda Claims Credit for Madrid Blasts

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If true, we can at least take comfort in the fact that the ETA has not dramatically escalated its activities. My money, however, is on an Al Qaeda-ETA collaboration. An “enemy of my enemy” alliance. It’s the theory that seems to best fit the known facts. But, then, blog analysis is not going to be … Read more

WASPs and Daggers

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More evidence of just how skilled an operator George Tenet can be. (As if the fact that Tenet still has a job — despite being a Clinton holdover, the tragedy of 9-11, and faulty intelligence on Iraqi WMDs — wasn’t evidence enough.)

George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told a Senate committee on Tuesday that he had privately intervened on several occasions to correct what he regarded as public misstatements on intelligence by Vice President Dick Cheney and others, and that he would do so again.

. . . .

[Tenet said:] “You have the confidence to know that when I believed that somebody was misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it. I don’t stand up in public and do it. I do my job the way I did it in two administrations.

“And policy makers — you know, this is a tough road. Policy makers take data. They interpret threat. They assess risk. They put urgency behind it, and sometimes it doesn’t uniquely comport with every word of an intelligence estimate.”

Behold the WASP dagger, skillfully employed. The soft takedown of Cheney is masterful, of course, but that’s not what grabbed me. Taking down Cheney is almost too easy: Cheney repeatedly puts himself so far in front of the Administration that he’s not so much scouting the road ahead as exploring the undiscovered country. (Undoubtably, Cheney intends to draw some flack from Bush by presenting himself as an easier target.)

No, what got me was Tenet’s statement that the “policy makers” — not him, not the CIA — determine the “ugency” of a particular threat. I provide data, he says. Others interpret it. They weigh it against other priorities. Whether one priority is more “urgent” than another is not my call. It is a pure question of policy.

The main intelligence failing, of course, was in assessing the urgency of the Iraqi WMD threat. But Tenet takes himself completely out of “urgency analysis”. The central intelligence failing on WMD is not even “intelligence” matter, according to Tenet. I didn’t fail.

* * * * *

There’s going to be a high profile scapegoat for the Iraqi WMD debacle. (The Bush Administration may not want one, but vengance and politics demand it.) It’s not going to be Cheney, for this would be a virtual admission of error. Cheney’s controversiality also makes him useful as a contrast to Bush.

After yesterday’s performance, I’m now convinced that the scapegoat will not be Tenet either. You cannot engage in a he-said-she-said with the scapegoat for the scapegoating to be effective. It looks petty. It looks political. It looks wrong. Tenet’s testimony provided the “he said.” That’s why it’s so masterful.

There are probably two more candidates for the scapegoat: Rice and Wolfowitz. I’m betting that it will be Wolfowitz — in contrast to Rice, he’s a relative outsider to Bush’s Texas team. But I don’t think he deserves it. Despite my disagreements with Wolfowitz on several foreign policy matters,* the man’s good at his job.

I’m frankly not so sure about Rice.

Let the betting commence.

von

Update: Minor changes to improve flow.

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Duh…they HAD to lie to you, ’cause you’re stupid!

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Hans Blix has a book coming out in which he claims it’s probable that Bush and Blair “were conscious that they were exaggerating the risks they saw in order to get the political support they would not otherwise have had.”

Choice quote:

It is understood and accepted that governments must simplify complex international matters in explaining them to the public in democratic states.

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Definitions of “War”

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There are several definitions for “war” in my dictionary. The one that seems most appropriate with regard to the “War on Terror” is A concerted effort or campaign to combat or put an end to something considered injurious: e.g., the war against acid rain. One definition that does not seem appropriate, but is actually a … Read more

What am I doing in another world…

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A Moe Lane’s Impressed point for anybody who can recognize the title and author of the referenced song, btw. At any rate, thanks to Amygdala I’ve been made aware of this Prospect Magazine article (which, fair warning and all that, comes from a New Republic editor) that postulates that the result of a Gore Presidency … Read more

Baghdad Journal

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Steve Mumford, an artist I know, has now made at least three trips to Iraq to document the war. He’s very good at mixing with our troops, and more and more he’s getting up close to some serious conflict. He’s also very good at getting Iraqi’s to share their experiences with him. The last time … Read more

Fixing some environmental damage.

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Interesting NYT article about some of the issues involved in fixing the appalling ecological damage done by the Hussein regime as part of his attacks on the Marsh Arabs. Apparently, the marshes will never fully recover, but there are things that can be done and people are finally getting a chance to do them; the … Read more

Gore Jumps the Shark*.

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…unless, of course, there’s been one hell of a taking-out-of-context: Gore Says Bush Betrayed the U.S. by Using 9/11 as a Reason for War in Iraq:

NASHVILLE, Feb. 8 — In a withering critique of the Bush administration, former Vice President Al Gore on Sunday accused the president of betraying the country by using the Sept. 11 attacks as a justification for the invasion of Iraq.

“He betrayed this country!” Mr. Gore shouted into the microphone at a rally of Tennessee Democrats here in a stuffy hotel ballroom. “He played on our fears. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place.”

Now, I know that we hear stuff like this all the time on the Internet, so we’re all desensitized, but Gore didn’t say this on the Internet. He said it live, and on the record, and apparently happily ignorant of the fact that politicians who accuse sitting Presidents of the next thing to treason had better damned well have some evidence to back them up. He can’t pull a Michael Moore and claim that it was entertainment; he’ll need to give proof of his allegations… or be raw meat for the media. I’m betting on raw meat, myself.

The only question is, who wound him up and set him off? Was this one of our ops or one of theirs? – because God doesn’t love George Bush that much, false rumors of His Republicanism to the contrary…

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Apocalypse Not Called Off For Context…

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A while back I posted some commentary about a speech Clinton made at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum. Nathan Hamm came across a copy of the speech. Nathan’s commentary is favorable: he called it a good speech (I suspect that he would call it a ‘damn good speech’ if asked), and after reading it, I agree. … Read more

Bush Names Intelligence Panel

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Bush has named the members of the commission to investigate the intelligence failings in Iraq: Mr. [Charles] Robb, 64, . . . a Democrat; Judge Silberman, 68, was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President Ronald Reagan in 1985. . .; Senator John S. McCain, Republican … Read more

Perspective.

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I had logged online to ask the universe just why Kid Rock was given permission to cover “Feel Like Making Love” (it takes a while before I get this sort of news these days), but I saw this instead, which pretty much puts my original plan into its proper (in)significance: Suicide Bombers Kill at Least … Read more

Geras hears some thumping noises…

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I assume that by now everybody here has read Paul Berman’s Dissent piece. Norm Geras (who is a Marxist himself, and one who agrees with Berman) decided to discuss the article past a simple me-too: after summarizing Berman’s six thumped reasons and adding a seventh, non-thumped one, he asks: “Does any of these reasons have … Read more

The point, here. You, over there.

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There’s been an immense amount of hand wringing over whether Bush said that Iraq was an “imminent” threat, or merely a “threat.” (For recent examples, see Trickster‘s entry at Tacitus or Kos over at The Daily Him.) It’s not worth your time. Whether the threat was “imminent” or “not-imminent” — and who said what about … Read more

What an odd story.

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Well, the new Iraqi paper al-Mada (whose editor, one Fakhri Karim, comes from a Marxist background and was pro-liberation of Iraq. A year ago I would have said that was a contradiction in terms, but then a year ago I wasn’t really aware of SIAW or Norm Geras)… right, the paper in question has apparently … Read more

Forget Everything But This:

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Last year, David Kay (search) had confidently predicted weapons would be found. But after nine months of searching, he said Sunday: “I don’t think they exist.” . . . . . . Asked whether President Bush (search) owed the nation an explanation for the discrepancies between his warnings and Kay’s findings, Kay said: “I actually … Read more

I wonder.

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There were rumors floating around* today to the effect that Osama bin Laden had been captured: think that it might have been based on this story?

Captured Insurgent Said Linked to al-Qaida
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON – U.S. forces in Iraq (news – web sites) captured a leader of the insurgency who is believed to be a close associate of Abu Musab Zarqawi, described by some as a key link between the al-Qaida terrorist network and toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news – web sites), a senior American official said Friday.

U.S. troops captured Husam al-Yemeni last Thursday, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He is described by U.S. officials as the leader of an insurgency cell in Fallujah, west of Baghdad.

The official said al-Yemeni is the highest-level member of Ansar al-Islam captured so far. That is a group comprising mainly ethnic Kurds from northern Iraq with alleged al-Qaida ties.

Alas, there’s no confirmation, and I just tossed off a mini-lecture in comments about not taking seriously anonymous sources, so take the elements of this particular story with heavy grains of salt – but even if false you can see how this might have morphed further into a OBL capture rumor, so there you go.

Moe

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SNAFU

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From today’s Washington Post, a mixed bag: Commanders are heartened by a sharp reduction in the number of attacks on U.S. forces and say that an overhaul of intelligence operations has produced a series of successes that have weakened the anti-occupation insurgency. . . . That’s the good news. Then, five paragraphs in, a buried … Read more

Showstoppers

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I just finished reading this particular Weekly Standard article (“Showstoppers”, by Richard H. Shultz Jr.) on why Special Forces were not used before 9/11, and it’s an eye-opener. How much of one? Let me put it this way: I’m going to be surprised if the official 9/11 report ends up being half as useful.

The central thesis of this article is simple: the Clinton administration was repeatedly stymied by attitudes and policies from both bureaucracies (civilian and military) that made it impossible for any meaningful counterterrrorism activities to take place in the realm of Special Forces. Shultz breaks down the problems into 9 basic categories:

(UPDATE: On behalf of all of us here at Obsidian Wings I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome all those visiting from Instapundit. I hope that you’ll find the site interesting, entertaining and informative. Canape?)

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Faint Damnation

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Matthew Yglesias wonders why the Bush administration doesn’t mention our cooperation with Kosovo Muslims during NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in order to “ dispel [the] ‘war on Islam’ talk.” Tacitus sends a “Note to Yglesias: It’s possible that we didn’t highlight our close relationships with Muslim leaders in Bosnia and Kosovo after 9/11 in part … Read more

Arar #10

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(10th in a series on a Canadian citizen who was deported by the United States to Syria and apparently tortured there. Previous posts in the series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.)

When I first heard about the Maher Arar case, sometime in November, I assumed it was a low level screw-up with tragic consequences, that went something like this: This guy is on a terrorism watch list for some reason, we don’t have enough evidence to arrest him, there is some miscommunication or spat with Canada, and he has dual citizenship. An immigration or homeland security official sends him to Syria because he can, and because it’s the easiest way to “fix” the problem (perhaps there’s an element of racism in this, too). And the administration goes into its customary “we are infallible so therefore we didn’t do anything wrong” mode.

This is not what happened. For reasons I cannot understand (I’ll take my best guess in the next post) the United States government seems to have gone to a great deal of trouble to deport Arar to Syria, and the decision was made by high ranking officials at the Department of Justice, the INS, and possibly the intelligence services. Evidence of this:

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Not Blister Gas.

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In an update to this post, Reuters is reporting that the Danish army has checked out the mortar rounds foundl initial tests have determined them to be not chemical gas rounds. We’ll get them next for followup tests, but I doubt that this finding will be reversed. End result, updated? Again, nothing much in regards … Read more

What exactly is “Islamofascism”?

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Could someone define “Islamofascism” for me? The words gets used a lot, especially on pro-war blogs. Here’s what I don’t understand. Is it supposed to be: 1) a unified ideology or movement to some degree, in the way that Communism and Naziism and Fascism were? Or 2) Arab/Muslim + violent atrocities + enemy of the … Read more

Arar #8: Guilt and Innocence, part A

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Preliminary question: does it even matter whether Arar was guilty or innocent? If his allegations are true, what the government did was illegal and immoral regardless of guilt or innocence. But I think if he’s innocent it’s that much worse, and that much more likely that this has happened before and will happen again.

So, let me summarize the evidence as best I can. I’m listing the claims and counter-claims in the order they appeared in press accounts, since that may be relevant in determining sources’ credibility.

This is a very very long post, so I’m going to leave my conclusions about Arar’s guilt/innocence and about why he might have been suspected even if innocent for a separate post. And if you don’t have time to read the whole thing I recommend items #3, #7, #8, and 9.

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Arar interlude

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Pretending I’m a reporter again was too fun, so I did one more Google News search. There’s an article about Jean Chretien in the National Review that mentions the Arar case. I was interested in what a right wing magazine’s take on it would be, wondering if they’d give a plausible defense of the administration … Read more

Arar #4

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1. From another Washington Post story on the Arar case, from November 5, 2003: Officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the Arar case fits the profile of a covert CIA “extraordinary rendition” — the practice of turning over low-level, suspected terrorists to foreign intelligence services, some of which are known to torture prisoners…. … Read more

Arar #3

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Here’s a useful timeline of the case from CBC News.

And here’s a Washington Post article from November 19, 2002, with more information on who approved Arar’s removal to Syria. (Thanks to reader Slartibartifast for the link.):

Then-Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson, in his capacity as acting attorney general, signed the highly unusual order, citing national security and declaring that to send the man, Maher Arar, home to Canada would be “prejudicial to the interests of the United States,” according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity…..

A couple of questions/comments:

1) Based on these two DOJ web pages, the Deputy Attorney General is the second highest ranking person in the entire Justice Department.

(From the DOJ job description:“The Deputy Attorney General is authorized to exercise all the power and authority of the Attorney General….In the absence of the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General acts as the Attorney General.”)

So this was approved at a very high level. This cuts both ways. On the one hand, it is very upsetting to know that the second most important person in the Justice Department, acting as the Attorney General, would do this. On the other hand, it suggests that this power is reserved for unusual cases, not something that happens to everyone who is on the watch list and can be easily deported to a suitably nasty country. It also makes me wonder why they suspected Arar, and whether it was more than the unimpressive connections that Pyle cites.

(The article says “One U.S. official said yesterday that when apprehended at the airport, Arar had the names of “a large number of known al Qaeda operatives, affiliates or associates” in his wallet or pockets.” If that’s true it could have been a routine watch-list stop that became something more. I don’t think this would be acceptable even if Arar was guilty of something, or if he wasn’t guilty but they had good reason to believe it was. But it would be less flagrantly unacceptable.)

I do not know how unusual/routine it is for the Deputy Attorney General to act as the Attorney General. The thought immediately crossed my mind “why wasn’t Ashcroft acting as the Attorney General?” but for all I know the Deputy has the night shift, or Ashcroft was sick that week.

2) “then-Deputy Attorney General.” Larry D. Thompson is no longer Deputy Attorney General. He stepped down on August 11, 2003, and is now a visiting professor* at the University of Georgia law school.

His departure appears to have been voluntary–there’s a very complimentary press release here, including ‘quotations’ from Ashcroft:

“Larry was more than a Deputy Attorney General to me. He was my partner. He worked shoulder to shoulder with me at a time when history necessitated dramatic changes in the way the Justice Department did its job.”

(etc.)

Of course it’s possible that he was privately asked to resign over this case. (If so I wouldn’t have included that quotation in the press release, which really made me cringe. But that may be my bias showing through.) August 11 is before the story really broke. But it’s shortly after a human rights group reported that Arar was being tortured, and Arar’s wife asked Canada to recall its ambassador from Syria. (August 6th and 7th).

(There’s plenty of other good stuff in the Post story, which I may get to in a later post. Very much worth a read.)

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Class-blogging

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My “Terror in the 21st Century” class makes blogging both very difficult and very easy. Very difficult because there are 3 hours of class and 150 pages of reading every weekday. Very easy because I can write whole posts by excerpting the most interesting parts of my notes. For instance:

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Arar #2

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Here you go, the fruits of my first googling. I do an awful lot of quoting–to make it clear what are my words and what are not, I have tried to italicize the text of all quotations.

1. The transcript of Arar’s November 4 statement to the media is probably the best place to start. Not surprisingly, it is graphic.

2. The SF Chronicle editorial on the government’s basis for suspecting Arar is disputed. Anonymous U.S. and Canadian intelligence officials told The Canadian Post in December that they were “100% sure” that Arar had been at an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Here is a CTV summary of the allegations.

Excerpts: “The officials allege Arar travelled to Pakistan in the early 1990’s, then entered Afghanistan to train at the al Qaeda base known as the Khaldun camp.” (“Graduates” of that camp were involved in the 1993 WTC bombing and the 1998 embassy bombings.) “Arar, 33, says he confessed to travelling to Afghanistan only after being tortured in Syria. He now insists he’s never been to that country and that he’s not a member of al Qaeda.”

“He now insists” might imply that Arar has changed his story–but in his initial statement he denies connection with Al Qaeda, denies ever going to Afghanistan, and says that they tortured a confession out of him. I believe this was before the allegations by the anonymous intelligence officers; here is is the relevant quotation.

Then on the third day, the interrogation lasted about 18 hours. They beat me from time to time and make me wait in the waiting room for one to two hours before resuming the interrogation.

While in the waiting room I heard a lot of people screaming. They wanted me to say I went to Afghanistan. This was a surprise to me.

They had not asked about this in the United States. They kept beating me so I had to falsely confess and told them I did go to Afghanistan. I was ready to confess to anything if it would stop the torture. They wanted me to say I went to a training camp.

Pyle (the author of the SF Chronicle editorial) does not give sources for the explanation for Arar’s presence on the watch list. My guess is that they come from these passages in Arar’s statement:

They said they wanted to know why I did not want to go back to Syria. I told them I would be tortured there. I told them I had not done my military service; I am a Sunni Muslim; my mother’s cousin had been accused of being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and was put in prison for nine years.

and

They asked me about Abdullah Almalki, and I told them I worked with his brother at high-tech firms in Ottawa, and that the Almalki family had come from Syria about the same time as mine. I told them I did not know Abdullah well, but had seen him a few times and I described the times I could remember.

I told them I had a casual relationship with him.

They were so rude with me, yelling at me that I had a selective memory. Then they pulled out a copy of my rental lease from 1997. I could not believe they had this.

I was completely shocked. They pointed out that Abdullah had signed the lease as a witness. I had completely forgotten that he had signed it for me — when we moved to Ottawa in 1997, we needed someone to witness our lease, and I phoned Abdullah’s brother, and he could not come, so he sent Abdullah.

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Maher Arar

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This article (via Brad DeLong, via Crooked Timber) is about the Maher Arar case. It outlines the basic story, which many of you will be familiar with: a Canadian citizen, changing planes at JFK, is deported to Syria where he is tortured for months and then released. (Arar is a joint Canadian-Syrian citizen but had not been to Syria for 16 years. I vaguely remember reading, though I do not have a cite for this, that the reason he’s a joint citizen is that Syria did not allow him to renounce his citizenship there.)

The article, an editorial by a Con. Law professor at Mount Holyoke, contains some new details, about exactly what happened to Arar,

So, they put Arar on a private plane and flew him to Washington, D.C. There, a new team, presumably from the CIA, took over and delivered him, by way of Jordan, to Syrian interrogators. This covert operation was legal, our Justice Department later claimed, because Arar is also a citizen of Syria by birth….

The Syrians locked Arar in an underground cell the size of a grave: 3 feet wide, 6 feet long, 7 feet high. Then they questioned him, under torture, repeatedly, for 10 months. Finally, when it was obvious that their prisoner had no terrorist ties, they let him go, 40 pounds lighter, with a pronounced limp and chronic nightmares.

and about what the government’s basis for suspicion was.

The Syrians believed that Arar might be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Why? Because a cousin of his mother’s had been, nine years earlier, long after Arar moved to Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported that the lease on Arar’s apartment had been witnessed by a Syrian- born Canadian who was believed to know an Egyptian Canadian whose brother was allegedly mentioned in an al Qaeda document.

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Not all one thing. Never all one thing.

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OxBlog brings to our attention a Thomas Friedman Op-Ed about Turkey that should be read by anybody who walks around assuming that Islam itself is the enemy of the West, rather than fanatical elements inside of it. A significant portion of the text: I happened to be in Istanbul when the street outside one of … Read more

Well, they found something…

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AP and Reuters are both reporting the discovery of mortar shells that may – repeat, may – contain blister gas. They’re being tested now to determine whether or not that they are, in point of fact, chemical weapons; the shells appear to have been buried for at least a decade, and are probably left over … Read more