george bush | ukwatch.net

PR push for Iraq war preceeded intelligence

tim — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 15:59:32 +0000

Washington D.C., August 22, 2008 – The U.S. intelligence community buckled sooner in 2002 than previously reported to Bush administration pressure for data justifying an invasion of Iraq, according to a documents posting on the Web today by National Security Archive senior fellow John Prados.

The documents suggest that the public relations push for war came before the intelligence analysis, which then conformed to public positions taken by Pentagon and White House officials. For example, a July 2002 draft of the “White Paper” ultimately issued by the CIA in October 2002 actually pre-dated the National Intelligence Estimate that the paper purportedly summarized, but which Congress did not insist on until September 2002.

A similar comparison between a declassified draft and the final version of the British government’s “White Paper” on Iraq weapons of mass destruction adds to evidence that the two nations colluded in the effort to build public support for the invasion of Iraq. Dr. Prados concludes that the new evidence tends to support charges raised by former White House press secretary Scott McClellan and by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in its long-delayed June 2008 “Phase II” report on politicization of intelligence.

More troops for Afghanistan, no Iraq withdrawal

Ellie Keen — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

At a joint press conference with US President George Bush yesterday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that more troops would be sent to Afghanistan, taking the UK’s contingent in the country to its “highest level.”

After speculation in the media of a rift between London and Washington over troop deployments in Iraq, he added that there was no “timetable” for a withdrawal from the country. Britain has 4,200 troops remaining in Iraq on the outskirts of Basra and took part in the US-Iraqi offensive in late March against Shiite militiamen in the city. He also supported Bush in pledging that tougher sanctions will be imposed on Iran for failing to stop its nuclear energy programme.

Defence Secretary Des Browne later told parliament that a further 230 soldiers will be sent to Afghanistan, taking the total to around 8,030 by early 2009.

Sunday’s Observer newspaper had claimed that Bush had delivered a “stern message” to Brown last week, warning about further reductions of British forces in Iraq. The White House moved to defuse the issue by saying, “What the president said is what the president has been saying and Prime Minister Brown has been saying from the very beginning.” Downing Street declared that it was not British policy to set “arbitrary timetables” on troop withdrawal.

At their press conference Bush said, “I have no problem with how Gordon Brown is dealing with Iraq. He’s been a good partner.”

He continued, “I just want to remind you that [Brown] has left more troops in Iraq than he initially anticipated. Like me, he will be making his decisions based on the conditions on the ground without an artificial timetable based on politics.”

He warmly welcomed Brown’s pledge to send more troops to Afghanistan and to step up sanctions against Iran, praising him for being “tough on terror.”

In relation to Iraq and Afghanistan, Brown said, “There is still work to be done and Britain plays, and will continue to play, its part.” He praised Bush as a “true friend of Britain” and for the “steadfast resolution that he has shown in rooting out terrorism in all parts of the world.”

On Iran, Brown stated, “I will repeat that we will take any necessary action so that Iran is aware of the choice it has to make—to start to play its part as a full and respected member of the international community, or face further isolation.”

Britain would urge Europe to impose “further sanctions” on Iran, he said, by freezing the assets of the country’s biggest bank and imposing new sanctions on oil and gas.

Bush thanked Brown for his “strong statement,” and added, “The Iranians must understand that when we come together and speak with one voice we are serious.” Pressure was necessary to “solve this problem diplomatically,” but “Iranians must understand, however, that all options are on the table,” he threatened.

Brown’s pronouncements gave Bush everything he wanted. They were a kick in the teeth to those in the ruling elite and sections of the press who hoped that Brown’s elevation to prime minister would signal an end to Tony Blair’s “mistake” of aligning Britain too closely with the US.

Brown’s craven support for Bush reveals that far more was involved than a policy error on Blair’s part. Both men represent the dominant financial elite, whose central aim is utilise relations with Washington to project a global military and economic presence for British imperialism, while strengthening its hand against its major European rivals, Germany and France. And even though things have gone badly, there is little sign that anyone has an alternative perspective to offer within ruling circles, least of all Brown himself.

Brown’s pronouncements only highlighted the impotence of the perspective promulgated by the Stop the War Coalition (StWC), which helped organise an anti-Bush demonstration on Sunday in tandem with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the British Muslim Initiative. Originally banned from assembling in Parliament at midday, the police finally allowed it to take place in the early evening but continued to refuse it permission to march the few hundred yards to Downing Street where Brown was entertaining Bush.

The StWC was the main beneficiary of the mass movement against the Iraq war and the widespread sentiment it provoked amongst working people for a political alternative to Labour. A key role was played by the Socialist Workers Party, which insisted that there was no possibility of the struggle against war being conducted on the basis of socialism. It had to formulate demands that could be supported by everyone, including a handful of Labour rebels and trade union functionaries, Liberal Democrats, nationalist parties, dissident Conservatives and the coalition’s other major affiliates, CND and the Muslim Association of Britain—a small group of Arab Islamists that portrayed the Iraq war in religious terms.

As Blair’s hold on power became increasingly untenable the StWC sold the idea that Brown, then his chancellor, would break from policies that he had fully supported. A letter was drafted by Communist Party of Britain leader Andrew Murray and StWC convenor and SWP leader Lindsey German that whilst acknowledging that “Brown has been at the Prime Minister’s right hand throughout the decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan” claimed, “Nevertheless, it is our conviction that mass pressure, combined with electoral self-interest, can force the British government to break from George Bush’s wars.”

The interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan were described as “Bush’s wars” in order to provide a retroactive amnesty for all those Labourites who had voted in favour of war alongside Blair and Brown.

The Sunday demonstration also saw the antiwar MP George Galloway using his opportunity to sow dangerous illusions in Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama. He repeated statements he made earlier in the month on Arab TV when he said, “I pray for the safety of Barack Obama, and I pray that he can shift the United States’ attitude. So as we come towards the November elections, and the real prospect of a significant victory for Obama, everyone will have to re-find their footing, and these puppet presidents and corrupt kings [in the Middle East] may discover that the ground has moved under their feet, Allah willing.”

Earlier this year Galloway declared, “My guess is America is looking for real change, and only Barack Obama represents that.”

Obama seeks to portray himself as an opponent of the Iraq war, but has repeatedly rejected what he describes as a “precipitous withdrawal” of troops—Bush’s “artificial timetable”—stating that he “has always believed that our troops need to be withdrawn responsibly” and that troops involved in “counterterrorism” operations would stay. In practice this means maintaining the occupation indefinitely.

In his June 4 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, while repeating his support for diplomatic engagement with Iran, he said, “I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel.”

Obama represents a section of the American ruling elite that has concluded that a significant change in stance and personnel is required to salvage the interests of US imperialism in the Middle East and internationally. These layers do not oppose military action as such, but regard the Bush administration’s single-minded focus on winning a military victory in Iraq as unwise and ultimately disastrous. An Obama presidency would not represent a fundamental break with the politics of American imperialism, but rather its continuation in a new form.

The attempt to prevent and curtail a peaceful antiwar protest is made necessary by the absence of any democratic mandate for the policies pursued by Brown and Blair before him. It led to open conflict between a massive number of police and some protesters, resulting in 25 arrests and some serious injuries. Two rows of barriers were erected to prevent access to Whitehall, together with rows of police officers and riot vans.

Demonstration Attacked by Police

Ellie Keen — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

More than 2,500 anti-war protesters descended on parliament yesterday Sunday for an angry protest at the visit of warmongering mass murderer, US president George Bush.

Bush praised British prime minister Gordon Brown for being “tough on terror” and said that the invasion of Iraq – estimated to have killed over a million Iraqi civilians – was “the right thing to do”. The real aim of Bush’s visit became clear on Monday, when Brown announced more British troops for Afghanistan and “further sanctions” on Iran.

No surprise then that so many people were angry that Bush was invited to visit Britain in the first place and were determined to make their voices heard.

Many were shocked at the excessive policing operation that was put in place to stop people from exercising their democratic right to protest. The operation was rumoured to have cost over £1 million.

Police blocked off Whitehall with metal barriers, rows of police vans, horses and lines of riot police, preventing demonstrators from marching to Downing Street. They attacked protesters with batons, causing many injuries and hospitalising some people.

23-year old Peter Simpson was one of the protesters injured by police at the demonstration. “Police were hitting our hands with their truncheons,” he said. “They were standing over us like bullies with their weapons. I was hit on my arm, shoulder and head. Blood was steaming down my face.”

Several demonstrators were arrested after police attacked the protest. Carole Vincent, an anti-war activist from Walthamstow was one of them. She told Socialist Worker, “I was at the front of the protest against the railing and was being pushed forward. A bit of the barrier fell and some people tried to get through to go to Downing Street.

“Once the first barrier had been pushed over I was pushed forward again and had to put my hands out or I would have fallen down. I had to put my hands on the next barrier – and as soon as I did the batons started flying.

“I was hit on my arms and hands. The police were hitting people indiscriminately.

“I heard two senior officers were getting descriptions of people in their earpieces. There were loads of descriptions – they were obviously targeting people to grab and arrest later.

“I was arrested for violent disorder. The police said that I picked up a barrier and threw it at them. I told them that I just chanted with others and then left, but the police grabbed me very tightly and dragged me away.

“I was kept in a cell overnight and had to be given painkillers for the injuries I’d received. My arms and hands are covered in bruises. So many people were injured after being whacked by the police.”

Despite the disgraceful behaviour of the police, the protest had a big impact, with lots of support from passers by and media coverage. The protest was angry and young, with many people demonstrating for the first time.

Nimco Ismail is a health care assistant in London. “This is my first anti-war demonstration,” she told Socialist Worker. “I came after watching a documentary about US involvement in Somalia. We have to make our voices heard – the world has to know what Bush is doing.”

Pau from Watford was another first-time protester. “I believe that war is not the way to get peace,” he said. “It’s important that we’re here as people will be watching around the world.”

People were angry that their right to protest had been squashed at the behest of George Bush. “It’s ironic that our march had been banned on the anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta,” said Jyotrmishra, an anti-war musician from Derby.

“The US is interfering with our civil liberties. Yet if a demonstration was banned in China there would be an outcry.”

“It’s still important to demonstrate against Bush because he needs to be held accountable for what he’s done,” said Sarah from Stanmore. Andrew from Bristol Stop the War Coalition agreed. “I’m completely opposed to everything that Bush stands for,” he told Socialist Worker. “He’s not only unwelcome in Britain – he’s unwelcome on this earth.”

Many pointed out the hypocrisy of the “war on terror”. Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, was cheered when she said from the platform, “What right does Bush have to preach about democracy when the US is leaving permanent bases in Iraq? What right does Brown have to talk about freedom when he passes laws to detail people without charge for 42 days?”

Protesters were also clear that the campaign against the war would continue until all troops are brought out of Iraq and Afghanistan – and that the movement would fight any attack on Iran.

As Tony Benn, president of the Stop the War Coalition, said, “This is about more than just Bush, Blair and Brown. We will not stop until all the troops are out and Palestine is free.”

Torture Team

Ellie Keen — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:30:07 +0000

The US House Judiciary Committee is preparing to hold a series of hearings examining the Bush administration’s role in authorizing the illegal torture of prisoners in US custody at Guantanamo and elsewhere. We speak to British attorney and author, Philippe Sands, author of the new book Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. On Tuesday, Sands testified before the House Judiciary Sub-Committee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

AMY GOODMAN: The House Judiciary Committee is preparing to hold a series of hearings examining the Bush administration’s role in authorizing the illegal torture of prisoners in US custody at Guantanamo and elsewhere. On Tuesday, Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers subpoenaed Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington, to testify at a hearing scheduled for June 26th.

Three other former Bush administration officials have already agreed to testify: former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Justice Department attorney John Yoo and former Pentagon official Douglas Feith. Over the past month, more evidence has emerged tying high-ranking Bush administration officials to the use of torture.

In April, ABC News reported Vice President Cheney, former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft all discussed and approved how top al-Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the CIA.

President Bush has also confirmed he was aware of these meetings. In an interview with ABC News, Bush said, “We started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people. And yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.”

Today, we’re joined by British attorney and author, Philippe Sands. He is the author of the new book Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. On Tuesday, Philippe Sands testified before the House Judiciary Sub-Committee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

PHILIPPE SANDS: It’s great to be back, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Talk about the Conyers subpoena of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington.

PHILIPPE SANDS: Sure. Well, if you remember, we talked about a month ago, after a piece I had written for Vanity Fair came out. That piece, I’m told by Congressman Conyers, catalyzed his committee into focusing on the role of the lawyers, and they began the process of setting up hearings. Yesterday was the first hearing. They’ve issued letters of invitation to all of the lawyers that I’ve written about and several other individuals. All, I understand, have agreed to come voluntarily, with one exception, and that’s Mr. Addington, who was the Vice President’s lawyer at the time, now his chief of staff. He has indicated, however, in a letter of the 1st of May, that if subpoenaed, he would attend, and it is likely that he will now attend next month.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did you raise in your testimony before the congressional subcommittee?

PHILIPPE SANDS: Well, I think—I raised a number of issues, but the heart of this story is that the administration has spun a narrative that this was a bottom-up thing, they were simply reacting to requests from people on the ground. And what I’ve discovered, and what was the center of the gravity of what I said to the subcommittee, is that’s a false narrative. It came from the top down. A crime was committed in relation to the detainee that I’m looking at. The Geneva Conventions were violated. He was abused. He was probably, almost certainly, tortured in violation of international law. But the biggest story may well be the cover-up, the spin, that this came from the bottom up, when in fact it was top-down. And that seemed to have resonated with the committee.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about this ABC News revelation about this Principals Committee, all the names that I just gave—you know, Condoleezza Rice, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet, Attorney General John Ashcroft—first time senior White House officials linked to an explicit group authorizing the CIA interrogation program, one top official recounting Ashcroft was the lone cabinet member to raise doubts? The official quoted Ashcroft as saying, “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”

PHILIPPE SANDS: I think it’s a very important revelation. Of course, it deals not with the military interrogations that I focused on, but with the CIA interrogations, but they went hand-in-hand, and it’s plain that they were all part and parcel of a decision taken at the top. It confirms my investigation, as a consequence; it’s namely that this came straight from the top.

The significance, of course, of this is that there seems to be a question as to whether the people immediately below the principals knew about this. I was in conversation, for example, a couple of days ago with Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, who expressed—

AMY GOODMAN: Lawrence Wilkerson?

PHILIPPE SANDS: Larry Wilkerson, who—I asked him, “Were you aware of this?” He said, “Absolutely not.” I asked him, “Did you have any inkling that this was going on? Do you think it could have happened?” And he expressed some considerable surprise. But if the President of the United States says a meeting happened, he knew about it, he approved it, it becomes, I think, a very, very big story, because you’ve got confirmation from the main man, so to speak.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the missing records of Mohammed al-Qahtani.

PHILIPPE SANDS: Well, I discovered in the course of meeting—I went around America, was treated with great hospitality and friendship. I spoke to everyone in the decision-making process, from the lawyers down at the bottom, Major General Dunlavey, who was the combatant commander at Guantanamo at the time, and his lawyer Diane Beaver, right up to Jim Haynes, who wrote the memorandum, the famous memorandum in which Mr. Rumsfeld scrolled, “Why is standing limited to four hours? I stand for eight to ten hours a day.”

AMY GOODMAN: Wait, explain that memo. It’s also the cover of your book.

PHILIPPE SANDS: It is the cover.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve got the handwritten note of Donald Rumsfeld. First you see his signature, and then you see this note, “I stand for eight to ten hours a day. Why four hours?”

PHILIPPE SANDS: It’s become iconic. What Mr. Rumsfeld did was he authorized fifteen techniques of interrogation, but he wrote at the bottom of the document, “I stand for eight to ten hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?”

That’s been interpreted a number of ways. Was he signaling to the interrogators that the Secretary of Defense was willing for them to go further? Or was it just a jocular comment? I discussed that with a lot of people.

One of the people I met with on a couple of occasions, lengthy conversations, was Mike Dunlavey, the head of interrogations. And right at the end of one of the conversations, he mentioned to me that he had made efforts to go back to get hold of all the documentation to check the computers, to check the record of what had happened, and that there had been, he discovered, what he called a SNAFU, and everything had been lost.

And I think it will be for others now to follow up as to whether the interrogation materials relating to al-Qahtani have suffered the same fate as the interrogation materials of the CIA that, as we now know, were destroyed.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers?

PHILIPPE SANDS: I had one lengthy and fascinating conversation with General Myers. I thought he was a decent man of integrity, but out of his depth. And on two issues, I was staggered, so staggered, in fact, that when I came home to London from my trip to the United States, I told my wife what I discovered in conversation with him, which I’m about to share with you, and she was disbelieving—she listened to the tapes—and said absolutely.

There were two points. Firstly, as everyone knows, the President took a decision that none of the detainees at Guantanamo would have any rights under the Geneva Conventions. It seems that General Myers was unaware of that. He was under the impression they had decided that Geneva would apply. So that was a fairly staggering discovery. But it was as nothing compared to the discovery, as we went through the techniques of interrogation one by one, that he had thought that these came out of the US Field Manual guide for interrogations. They were all prohibited. And as we went down the list, his jaw literally dropped. So I got the sense that the most powerful military man in the United States, indeed probably in the world, was blissfully unaware of what had been decided.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Philippe Sands. His book is Torture Team—it is just out this week—Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values.

I want to ask you about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s recent statement that the torture of prisoners does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Scalia’s comment came during an interview with Lesley Stahl on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: I don’t like torture. I’m—although defining it is going to be a nice trick. But, I mean, who’s in favor of it? Nobody. And we have a law against torture. But if the—everything that is hateful and odious is not covered by some provision of the Constitution.

LESLEY STAHL: If someone’s in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized by a law enforcement person, if you listen to the expression, “cruel and unusual punishment,” doesn’t that apply?

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: No, no.

LESLEY STAHL: Cruel and unusual punishment?

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: To the contrary. You think—you think that you would—has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don’t think so.

LESLEY STAHL: Well, I think if you’re in custody and you have a policeman who’s taken you into custody—

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: And you say he’s punishing you?

LESLEY STAHL: Sure.

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: What’s he punishing you for? You punish somebody—

LESLEY STAHL: Well, because he assumes you, one, either committed a crime—

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: No, no.

LESLEY STAHL: —or that you know something that he wants to know.

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: Ah, it’s the latter. And when he’s—when he’s—when he’s hurting you in order to get information from you—

LESLEY STAHL: Yeah?

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: —you don’t say he’s punishing you. What’s he punishing you for? He’s trying to extract—

LESLEY STAHL: Because he thinks you’re a terrorist, and he’s going to beat the you-know-what out of you.

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: Anyway, that’s my view. And it happens to be correct.

AMY GOODMAN: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, being questioned by 60 Minutes’s Lesley Stahl. Philippe Sands?

PHILIPPE SANDS: I’m not an expert on US constitutional law. I’ll talk about what I know, which is international law. The US is a party to all of those conventions that prohibit torture. That is a shocking statement by a serving justice, who I know is very partial to the television program 24, along with his colleague Clarence Thomas. It’s—

AMY GOODMAN: Explain 24.

PHILIPPE SANDS: 24 is a television program in which the use of torture is essentially rejoiced in as a technique for producing meaningful information. It had an effect down at Guantanamo. One of the things I discovered in my conversations was that people watched it, people were influenced by it, probably apparently as Antonin Scalia is.

But that is a shocking statement. And I put it in these terms. If he’s going to express that view, that the United States president is free to authorize torture, then why isn’t the Iranian president free to authorize torture against American nationals? Why isn’t the Egyptian president free to organize—authorize torture? The logic of the argument is really surprising and, frankly, outrageous.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Philippe Sands, about the possibility of US officials being charged with war crimes. You were quoted in a New York Times piece on Tuesday: “Mr. Sands, a British law professor, said two foreign prosecutors, whom he did not name, asked him for the materials on which his book Torture Team was based. ‘If the US doesn’t address this,’ he said, ‘other countries will.’"

PHILIPPE SANDS: That’s an accurate account, and I describe, in one of the concluding chapters of the book, conversations I had with a European prosecutor and a European judge. And the committee was very interested in that, in relation to a question they asked me and the other witnesses giving testimony: “What should this committee do?” And the answer that I gave was, “Look, it’s not for me to make recommendations on precisely what you do and don’t do, but what needs to happen is the United States needs to get involved in an accounting process. The committee needs to establish the facts. And if the United States doesn’t, others will do it.” And I have no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that investigations will take place, if they’re not already taking place, and that some of these individuals, if they travel outside the United States, will face a very real threat of investigation.

AMY GOODMAN: And the legality of what President Bush said, or the implications of it, when he said to ABC News, “We started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people. Yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue, and I approved”?

PHILIPPE SANDS: Well, it appears to be an admission that the President of the United States authorized torture, that he authorized waterboarding. The convention prohibiting torture, the Geneva Conventions are absolutely clear: there are no circumstances in which torture is permitted. And if the account is accurate, the President is, in effect, owning up to the fact that he has committed a war crime. And under the torture convention, there is an obligation to investigate any person who has committed a war crime. So it was a very surprising admission. I wonder if it was fully thought through. If it’s accurate, it is deeply disturbing.

AMY GOODMAN: Philippe Sands, you talked in your testimony before Congress about torture and what Britain learned in its fight with the IRA, with the Irish Republican Army.

PHILIPPE SANDS: In many ways, that was actually the most interesting exchange that I had, because I had it with some seemingly very sensible Republican congressmen, who were very interested and came up and talked to me about that afterwards. What I shared was that the experience of Brits across the political spectrum—it’s not a left-right issue, as I explained—derives from the experience we had in the early 1970s, in which the United Kingdom moved to aggressive interrogation. And they used pretty much the same techniques of interrogation: hooding, stress, humiliation. And it backfired terribly. On all military accounts, it extended the conflict by between fifteen and twenty years, because it creates such resentment in the community that is associated with the people who are being abused that it served to generate further opposition and people moving to violence. So basically the message is: it doesn’t work. And no one in the United Kingdom, literally no one from any of the main political parties or across the political spectrum will in any circumstances support what has been apparently authorized by the President in this country.

AMY GOODMAN: Philippe Sands, I wanted to ask you about a report out of Associated Press. A Kuwaiti freed from Guantanamo Bay carried out a suicide car bombing recently in Iraq—the US military said this on Wednesday, confirming what’s believed to be the first such attack by a former detainee at Guantanamo. Tom Wilner, al-Ajmi’s American lawyer, said incarceration at Guantanamo may have turned the Kuwaiti into a terrorist. Wilner said, quote, “I don’t know whether the experience of being kept down there in isolation radicalized him.”

PHILIPPE SANDS: I read that report, and I was—this morning—and I was disturbed by that report. I mean, I find that the whole system that has been created at Guantanamo is abhorrent. It doesn’t meet minimum international standards. It sends out a terrible signal to the rest of the world. Most of the people, I think, being held at Guantanamo are really not seriously problematic people. But undoubtedly, there are some problematic people, and steps do need to be taken in order to protect countries like the United States and the United Kingdom.

<P.That said, I immediately, reading the article, asked myself the question: is this individual someone who fell into that small category of persons who was, as Donald Rumsfeld put it, a seriously bad person? We don’t know that. And there is the possibility that the treatment that he was subjected to gave rise to an IRA type of situation, that it so enraged him, that it so enraged his community, that it essentially politicized him and energized him. Of course, we don’t know the facts, and I think we need to find out a lot more about the facts before expressing a final view.

AMY GOODMAN: You live in Britain. Your book is Torture Team, though, about the United States and international law. The people involved that you’re talking about go across the gamut, now a number out of office. You have John Yoo, for example, who’s a law professor at University of California, Berkeley. You have Douglas Feith, who’s now teaching at Georgetown. What are your thoughts about this?

PHILIPPE SANDS: John Yoo’s dean at Berkeley has been subject to intense criticism for not firing him, and indeed there was even an op-ed, an opinion, an editorial, in the New York Times, saying he basically shouldn’t be teaching there anymore. Dean Edley wrote an interesting letter, in which he said, look, there’s freedom of expression, that includes freedom of views, and under the rules at Berkeley, you can only fire someone if they’ve been convicted in a court of law of committing a criminal offense. And John Yoo has not been convicted of committing a criminal offense. And in our system, you are innocent until proven guilty.

I’ve laid out the reasons why I believe John Yoo has participated in authorizing torture, and that exposes him to investigation. But I entirely accept that until he is actually condemned by a court of law, he is perfectly entitled to carry on peddling views, even if I violently and fundamentally disagree with those views.

As regards Doug Feith, I spent time with him. He’s an entertaining character, but he’s a scary character. I’ve read his book, 900 pages on war and decision, five pages devoted to the issue of interrogations. And you read that book, and you have no idea that this man was deeply involved in the decisions that I write about. It’s spin. It’s whitewash. There’s a failure to accept responsibility. And that, I think, is what is going to cause them in difficulty, because it’s essentially a cover-up.

AMY GOODMAN: We invited Douglas Feith on the show, but we didn’t get a response. Can you talk about the significance of the 1947 case, United States of America v. Josef Altstoetter?

PHILIPPE SANDS: It ‘s a delicate case. It’s one of the cases known as the Justice Cases, the only time that lawyers have ever been convicted of international crimes for carrying out their professional activities.

AMY GOODMAN: Lawyers?

PHILIPPE SANDS: Lawyers. The focus was on lawyers. I included reference to that case in my book, because I found it ironic that the theory that lawyers could cross a line and be investigated, prosecuted, and convicted for committing international crimes was a theory that was drawn up by the United States military itself, and then we come full-circle sixty years on, and we find that, with Mr. Rumsfeld’s hand, abuse is authorized and permitted by the US military in plain violation of international rules, but also in plain violation of President Lincoln’s disposition, going back to 1863, that the US doesn’t do cruelty.

But the case is an important one. It’s not a bang-on point, and I’m absolutely not drawing analogies. I’m not saying that these lawyers are equivalent to those lawyers or this regime is equivalent to that regime. What I’m interested in is the circumstance, in when does a lawyer cross a line into criminality?

And coming back to an earlier question that you raised, the European judge and the European prosecutor that I met, when I laid out all the materials for them, they came back with a most startling conclusion. They said, “Philippe, the bottom line of it is, there is no distinction between the man or woman who interrogates and the man or woman who authorizes by law an abusive interrogation. They are both subject to investigation. They are both subject to prosecution.” And I think that’s the way the law has gone, and it’s a law that is right, and it is a law that the United States has helped put in place.

AMY GOODMAN: What were you most surprised by in your research for Torture Team?

PHILIPPE SANDS: I was most surprised by the total failure of the upper echelons to accept responsibility for the errors that they have made. If I had met these people, if I had met Doug Feith and Jim Haynes, and they had said to me, “Look, we faced in September 2002 a situation in which we felt another attack was coming. We had someone who we felt had information. We authorized techniques of interrogation that were aggressive. They may or may not have crossed the line into torture. With the benefit of hindsight, we realize we fell into error. We made a mistake. We accept responsibility for that, and we need to learn not to do that again”—that shocked me, and it equally shocked me that they then sought to push the blame of responsibility onto people like Mike Dunlavey and Diane Beaver, people who were doing decent service for the US military and who were unfairly scapegoated. So at the end of the day, it’s not only the crime; it’s the abject failure of individual responsibility to take full account for what they have done. I find that really shocking.

AMY GOODMAN: Philippe Sands, I want to thank you for being with us. His book is Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values.

Is War With Iran Imminent? This time, it's more than a rumour…

tim — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:09:26 +0000

The shooting has already started in the Persian Gulf – and chances are we’ll be at war with Iran before President Bush’s term is up. An American ship under contract with the U.S. Navy – the Western Venture – claims it was in international waters when Iranian speedboats approached and failed to answer radio calls. Shots were fired on the American side. Iran denies the whole thing. Yet you’ll recall that in the last incident, involving the capture of British sailors, the story about being in international waters was the same – except, it turns out, they weren’t in international waters, but in disputed waters, just as we speculated in this space. There’s no reason to expect anything different this time. Clearly, the U.S. and Britain are trying to trigger a new conflict with the most brazen provocations, and they don’t really care how it happens – only that it does.

The indications of an imminent attack – the latest incident, the steady stream of accusations coming from the U.S. regarding Iranian influence in Iraq, the nuclear charade, etc. – have suddenly taken a more ominous turn with the recent statement of America’s top military officer that the U.S. is weighing military action against Iran. The Washington Post reports:

“The nation’s top military officer said yesterday that the Pentagon is planning for ‘potential military courses of action’ as one of several options against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government’s ‘increasingly lethal and malign influence’ in Iraq. Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be ‘extremely stressing’ but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force.”

Speaking of malign influences: since when does an American military officer make foreign policy pronouncements, as if he were the president? It’s an indication of the advances militarism has made in what used to be a republic that no one has so much as blinked at the brazenness of such blatant Caesarism. The reasons for the uptick in the rhetorical and physical assault on Iran by the Americans are entirely due to domestic politics, not anything occurring on the ground in the region.

Hillary Clinton’s demagogic threat to “obliterate” Iran, uttered on national television just before the Pennsylvania primary, was meant to buttress her newfound image as a shot-swilling macho up against the effete, Adlai Stevenson-esque Barack “Arugula” Obama. It’s the Old Politics, trying to revive the red state-blue state dichotomy, and it’s driving us down the road to war with Tehran. McCain, too, is helped by the ratcheting up of tensions in the Persian Gulf: think what the outbreak of war with Iran would do for his underdog candidacy.

Standing behind this developing pro-war Popular Front, the central factor in turning the U.S. toward a policy of confrontation rather than constructive engagement with Iran has been the Israel lobby. Since 1993, the Lobby has been demanding that the U.S. take a more aggressive approach to the mullahs of Tehran, and, with few exceptions, has been largely successful.

The policy of “dual containment,” conceived by the Clinton administration during the early 1990s, meant that the U.S. was committed to hostile relations with both Iraq and Iran. The policy, as John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt point out, “was essentially a copy of an Israeli proposal.” It meant stationing troops in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to offset an alleged threat to American interests. Yet there was no reason to assume Tehran had hostile intentions toward the U.S. At the time, Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was eager to establish friendly relations with the U.S. As pressure built to abandon “dual containment” and initiate a more workable policy that would give the U.S. more flexibility, the Lobby went on the offensive with a relentless campaign to impose economic sanctions on Iran.

The Iranians, determined to signal their willingness to be reasonable, chose an American oil company, Conoco, to develop the Sirri oil fields. As Trita Parsi points out in Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States:

“For AIPAC, the Conoco deal ‘was a coincidence and a convenient target.’ The organization went into high gear to use the Iranian offer not only to scuttle the Conoco deal, but also to put an end to all U.S.-Iran trade. In a report that it released on April 2, 1995, titled ‘Comprehensive U.S. Sanctions Against Iran: A Plan for Action,’ AIPAC argued that Iran must be punished for its actions against Israel. ‘Iran’s leaders reject the existence of Israel. Moreover, Iran views the peace process as an American attempt to legalize Israel’s occupation of Palestinian, Muslim lands,’ it said. Pressured by Congress, AIPAC, and the Israelis, President Clinton swiftly scrapped the deal by issuing two executive orders that effectively prohibited all trade with Iran. The decision was announced on April 30 by Clinton in a speech before the World Jewish Congress.”

This wasn’t enough for the Lobby, which brought pressure on Sen. Alphonse D’Amato to introduce a bill that imposed sanctions on any countries doing business with either Libya or Iran. The Iran-Libya Sanctions Act passed the House with not a single dissenting vote, and the same scenario went down in the Senate. The Lobby made sure the Iranian peace offering was rudely rebuffed – and the president reminded of just who was in charge of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. The White House meekly went along with the Lobby’s wishes: after all, the presidential election was but three months away.

The Conoco affair should dispel any myths about the supposedly supreme power of the “oil lobby” as the decisive factor in shaping U.S. policy in the region: the Israel lobby beat them hands down. As James Schlesinger put it, “It is scarcely possible to overstate the influence of Israel’s supporters on our politics in the Middle East.” The harder the Iranians tried to approach the Americans, the more rudely they were repulsed.

The election of the even more pro-American Mohammad Khatami as Iran’s president in 1997 did not break the back of “dual containment” – dubbed “a nutty idea” by Brent Scowcroft, albeit one with plenty of domestic political traction. The U.S. had every reason to pursue a policy of engagement, while that was possible, giving Iranian moderates the political breathing space they needed to ensure the growth of pro-American forces in the country. The benefits of opening up Iran to American investment are similarly obvious, yet our leaders chose to do otherwise due solely to the power of the Lobby. As Ephraim Sneh, a prominent figure on the Israeli Right, acknowledged: “We were against it … because the interest of the U.S. did not coincide with ours.”

In short: Washington policymakers weighed the interests of both the U.S. and Israel, and made their decision accordingly…

From dual containment to regional transformation and “regime change” was not a long road to travel. After 9/11, Washington embarked on a campaign to topple the governments of both Iraq and Iran, as well as Syria, and rid Lebanon of Hezbollah while they were at it. As soon as “mission accomplished” was declared in Iraq, the Israelis and their American amen corner began demanding action against Iran.

In an interview with the Times of London, Ariel Sharon declared that Washington had better start threatening to march on Tehran “the day after” Baghdad was secured. By late April 2003, the Israeli ambassador to Washington was complaining that the demise of Saddam’s regime was “not enough.” Those indolent Americans must be made to “follow through” by taking action against “great threats of that magnitude coming from Syria, coming from Iran.”

Shimon Peres rallied the faithful with an op-ed in the War Street Journal titled “We Must Unite to Prevent an Ayatollah Nuke.” The neoconservatives convened a special all-day conference devoted to inciting war hysteria aimed at Tehran, with all the usual suspects – Michael Ledeen, Bernard Lewis, Reuel Marc Gerecht – in attendance. The cry went up: “Regime change!” The only question was which exile faction we were going to support: the royalists, or the cult-like neo-Marxist Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) and its numerous well-connected front groups in the U.S. and Europe.

The leaders of the latter have energetically vied for the role of the Iranian Chalabi, coming up with reams of “intelligence” detailing Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. Their “revelations,” however, have been definitively debunked by the latest national intelligence estimate, which says Tehran abandoned its nuclear program some time ago. All those diagrams and documents coming from MEK by the truckload were evidence of a nuclear program that no longer existed.

If any of this sounds familiar, then it should.

The efforts of the Lobby aren’t limited to war propaganda. The AIPAC spy trial – in which two top officials of the powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization have been indicted for passing top-secret classified information to Israeli embassy officials – is all about Israel’s attempt to penetrate U.S. governmental discussions about what stance to take regarding Iran, with the goal of exerting maximum influence on American policymaking circles.

Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran an “existential threat” to the Jewish state, a contention that amounts to little more than absolute nonsense. Their argument goes something like this: Iran is not a normal state, it is run by ideologues who are profoundly invested in apocalyptic religious visions that can only end in war. Deterrence means nothing to them. They want to be incinerated in a nuclear exchange involving Israel, themselves, and quite possibly the U.S., because it fulfills the ancient prophecies and means the return of the Mahdi, or something along those lines.

This makes no more sense than the inverse version of the religion-determines-all theory, which would have the “born again” George W. Bush intent on provoking a nuclear war in the Middle East in order to bring about the Second Coming and the Kingdom of God on Earth – as the Christian dispensationalists who make up so much of the GOP’s base fervently believe is entirely possible and certainly desirable.

These latter, of course, are the foot-soldiers of the Israel Lobby in America, a group that GOP presidential candidate John McCain has actively courted in the person of the Rev. John Hagee. Rev. Hagee is a vicious Catholic-hater and all-around nut-job who looks forward to a nuclear war in the Middle East as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. Hagee has lately taken up with AIPAC, appearing at their last national confab in a starring role.

This administration, which has been in thrall to the Israel lobby more than any other, has been increasing the volume in its war of words with Tehran since January of this year, and, as Bush’s reign comes to an inglorious end, there apparently remains one last act of perfidy the neocons will leave as their legacy. Bush’s going away gift to the American people looks more than likely to be another war – one that truly does make the Iraq war seem like a “cakewalk” in comparison. It took a few years for the impact of the war in Iraq to be felt by the American people, and its full impact has yet to hit. Not so with the next war. The firing of a few shots at those speedboats sent the price of oil up three bucks. Think of what a full-scale all-out war would do to the price of nearly everything. And for what?

Iran, a signatory to the Nonproliferation Treaty, says it is not seeking to build nuclear weapons, and that the production of nuclear energy for peaceful uses is the one and only goal of its activities on this front. This is more than Israel can say, far more. Everyone knows the Israelis have nukes – the technology for which they probably stole from us – and they are one of the few civilized countries who haven’t signed the NPT and refuse to even discuss doing so.

If ever there was a nuclear rogue nation, then surely it is Israel. As Henry Kissinger said of them in a 1969 memo to Richard Nixon: “The Israelis, who are one of the few peoples whose survival is genuinely threatened, are probably more likely than almost any other country to actually use their nuclear weapons.” Although the Iranians claim their nuclear program is geared exclusively toward peaceful purposes, that they have the option to act otherwise, should the need arise, is a challenge to Israel’s nuclear hegemony. The Iranians, by American and Israeli lights, have no right to a deterrent.

In a world where “benevolent global hegemony” is the goal of U.S. foreign policy, there is no right to self-defense; that, along with national sovereignty, has been abolished. Defiance is met with an implacable campaign for regime-change in the offending nation. By all indications, Iran is the next victim to be made an example of, sometime in mid-summer, or so the rumor goes.

We know where the presidential candidates stand on this issue. Hillary looks forward to the “obliteration” of Iran and takes up Charles Krauthammer’s demand that we extend our nuclear shield over Tel Aviv just as we would do the same for, say, Toledo. Indeed, there are not a few who would argue that we would be fully justified in sacrificing the latter in order to save the former, and not all of them are to be found among Rev. Hagee’s deluded flock. In any case, we know what the McCain-Hagee position is without even having to ask.

We also know where Obama stands on all or most of this: he advocates a policy of engagement with the Iranians, just as he has endorsed talking with South American caudillo Hugo Chavez, and for the same very sound reasons: because it’s talk or fight. He clearly realizes waging perpetual war is hardly in our interests, even if we had the financial and military capacity to carry out such a crazed policy. Yet, if he’s speaking out about this, at this crucial moment – when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is practically declaring war on the Iranians – then I just can’t hear him: he must not be speaking very loudly, or perhaps this gets lost amid all the soaring rhetoric about Change and Hope and A Better Tomorrow.

Hillary voted for the Kyl-Lieberman resolution, which designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guards – an official part of the Iranian armed forces – as a “terrorist organization,” and now Gen. Petraeus is telling us Tehran is funding, arming, and succoring those who are killing American soldiers and bombing the Green Zone. The main threat against us in Iraq is no longer the Sunni “dead-enders,” as Don Rumsfeld liked to call them, it’s the Mahdi Army – Iraqi Shi’ites – and the Iranians, who have very close ties to the government our troops are dying to defend. If Bush seeks to obliterate Iranian hopes for regional preeminence by launching an attack before he leaves office, one can hardly see how the Clintons could possibly object: perhaps they’ll declare that, this time, we have to send enough troops to “do the job.” This, you’ll recall, was Hillary’s McCain-like critique of the Iraq invasion long before being antiwar was required of all Democratic presidential aspirants. No doubt she’ll revert to that when the time comes, but what about Obama?

He could skewer Hillary the hawk with one well-placed arrow, aimed straight at her vulnerability on the Iran issue. With the first shots of a new war already fired, apparently, and rumors of an imminent American strike at Iran flying thick and fast, Obama could denounce her as a warmonger, a McCain in drag, whose short-term political opportunism is helping to embroil us in a quagmire far worse than the one in Iraq, where she played a similar role in 2003. Yet I hear nothing like this coming from Obama’s camp. Maureen Dowd nails it, with her typically acerbic take:

“Despite all his incandescent gifts, Obama has missed several opportunities to smash the ball over the net and end the game. Again and again, he has seemed stuck at deuce. He complains about the politics of scoring points, but to win, you’ve got to score points.”

The American people oppose war with Iran, perhaps more than they want out of Iraq: the economic consequences alone will infuriate them far more than any other foreign policy decision of this administration. What the War Party is hoping is that their fury will be directed overseas, at our alleged “enemies” in Tehran, and not at home, in the direction of Washington, where proper blame belongs.

Americans await the advent of a real leader, the sort who could and would focus that anger on the right target. Whether Obama has the gumption – and the strategic sense – to make this fight about policy, not personalities, race, and gender, remains to be seen. He’s promised us a new politics, but that doesn’t have to mean blandness and an inability to fight. It can and must mean sharp attacks on wrong ideas – and one looks in vain for an idea as wrongheaded as war with Iran.