Hillary Clinton and Her Hawks
Exclusive: Focusing on domestic issues, Hillary Clinton’s acceptance
speech sidestepped the deep concerns anti-war Democrats have about her hawkish
foreign policy, which is already taking shape in the shadows, reports Gareth
Porter.
By Gareth Porter
As Hillary Clinton begins her final charge for the White House, her advisers are
already recommending air strikes and other new military measures against the
Assad regime in Syria.
The clear signals of Clinton’s readiness to go to war appears to be aimed at
influencing the course of the war in Syria as well as U.S. policy over the
remaining six months of the Obama administration. (She also may be hoping to
corral the votes of Republican neoconservatives concerned about Donald Trump’s
“America First” foreign policy.)
Last month, the think tank run by Michele Flournoy, the former Defense
Department official considered to be most likely to be Clinton’s choice to be
Secretary of Defense, explicitly called for “limited military strikes” against
the Assad regime.
And earlier this month Leon Panetta, former Defense Secretary and CIA Director,
who has been advising candidate Clinton, declared in an interview that the next
president would have to increase the number of Special Forces and carry out air
strikes to help “moderate” groups against President Bashal al-Assad. (When
Panetta gave a belligerent speech at the Democratic National Convention on
Wednesday night, he was interrupted by chants from the delegates on the floor of
“no more war!”
Flournoy co-founded the Center for New American Security (CNAS) in 2007 to
promote support for U.S. war policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then became
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Obama administration in 2009.
Flournoy left her Pentagon position in 2012 and returned to CNAS as Chief
Executive Officer.
She has been described by ultimate insider journalist David
Ignatius of the Washington Post, as being on a “short, short list” for the job
Secretary of Defense in a Clinton administration.
Last month, CNAS published a report of a “Study Group” on military policy in
Syria on the eve of the organization’s annual conference.
Ostensibly focused on
how to defeat the Islamic State, the report recommends new U.S. military actions
against the Assad regime.
Flournoy chaired the task force, along with CNAS president Richard Fontaine, and
publicly embraced its main policy recommendation in remarks at the conference.
She called for “using limited military coercion” to help support the forces
seeking to force President Assad from power, in part by creating a “no bombing”
zone over those areas in which the opposition groups backed by the United States
could operate safely.
In an interview with Defense One, Flournoy described the no-bomb zone as saying
to the Russian and Syrian governments, “If you bomb the folks we support, we
will retaliate using standoff means to destroy [Russian] proxy forces, or, in
this case, Syrian assets.”
That would “stop the bombing of certain civilian
populations,” Flournoy said.
In a letter to the editor of Defense One, Flournoy denied having advocated
“putting U.S. combat troops on the ground to take territory from Assad’s forces
or remove Assad from power,” which she said the title and content of the article
had suggested.
But she confirmed that she had argued that “the U.S. should under some
circumstances consider using limited military coercion – primarily trikes using
standoff weapons – to retaliate against Syrian military targets” for attacks on
civilian or opposition groups “and to set more favorable conditions on the
ground for a negotiated political settlement.”
Renaming a ‘No-Fly’ Zone
The proposal for a “no bombing zone” has clearly replaced the “no fly zone,”
which Clinton has repeatedly supported in the past as the slogan to cover a much
broader U.S. military role in Syria.
Panetta served as Defense Secretary and CIA Director in the Obama administration
when Clinton was Secretary of State, and was Clinton’s ally on Syria policy. On
July 17, he gave an interview to CBS News in which he called for steps that
partly complemented and partly paralleled the recommendations in the CNAS paper.
“I think the likelihood is that the next president is gonna have to consider
adding additional special forces on the ground,” Panetta said, “to try to assist
those moderate forces that are taking on ISIS and that are taking on Assad’s
forces.”
Panetta was deliberately conflating two different issues in supporting more U.S.
Special Forces in Syria. The existing military mission for those forces is to
support the anti-ISIS forces made up overwhelmingly of the Kurdish YPG and a few
opposition groups.
Neither the Kurds nor the opposition groups the Special Forces are supporting
are fighting against the Assad regime.
What Panetta presented as a need only
for additional personnel is in fact a completely new U.S. mission for Special
Forces of putting military pressure on the Assad regime.
He also called for increasing “strikes” in order to “put increasing pressure on
ISIS but also on Assad.” That wording, which jibes with the Flournoy-CNAS
recommendation, again conflates two entirely different strategic programs as a
single program.
The Panetta ploys in confusing two separate policy issues reflects the reality
that the majority of the American public strongly supports doing more militarily
to defeat ISIS but has been opposed to U.S. war against the government in Syria.
A poll taken last spring showed 57 percent in favor of a more aggressive U.S.
military force against ISIS. The last time public opinion was surveyed on the
issue of war against the Assad regime, however, was in September 2013, just as
Congress was about to vote on authorizing such a strike.
At that time, 55 percent to 77 percent of those surveyed opposed the use of
military force against the Syrian regime, depending on whether Congress voted to
authorize such a strike or to oppose it.
Shaping the Debate
It is highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for figures known to be close to a
presidential candidate to make public recommendations for new and broader war
abroad. The fact that such explicit plans for military strikes against the Assad
regime were aired so openly soon after Clinton had clinched the Democratic
nomination suggests that Clinton had encouraged Flournoy and Panetta to do so.
The rationale for doing so is evidently not to strengthen her public support at
home but to shape the policy decisions made by the Obama administration and the
coalition of external supporters of the armed opposition to Assad.
Obama’s refusal to threaten to use military force on behalf of the anti-Assad
forces or to step up military assistance to them has provoked a series of leaks
to the news media by unnamed officials – primarily from the Defense Department –
criticizing Obama’s willingness to cooperate with Russia in seeking a Syrian
ceasefire and political settlement as “naïve.”
The news of Clinton’s advisers calling openly for military measures signals to
those critics in the administration to continue to push for a more aggressive
policy on the premise that she will do just that as president.
Even more important to Clinton and close associates, however, is the hope of
encouraging Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have been supporting the armed
opposition to Assad, to persist in and even intensify their efforts in the face
of the prospect of U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria.
Even before the recommendations were revealed, specialists on Syria in
Washington think tanks were already observing signs that Saudi and Qatari
policymakers were waiting for the Obama administration to end in the hope that
Clinton would be elected and take a more activist role in the war against Assad.
The new Prime Minister of Turkey, Binali Yildirim, however, made a statement on
July 13 suggesting that Turkish President Recep Yayyip Erdogan may be
considering a deal with Russia and the Assad regime at the expense of both
Syrian Kurds and the anti-Assad opposition.
That certainly would have alarmed Clinton’s advisers, and four days later,
Panetta made his comments on network television about what “the next president”
would have to do in Syria.
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012
Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly
published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.
The Shortsighted History of ‘Argo’
Exclusive: The Oscar for Best Picture went to Ben Affleck’s Argo, an escapethriller set in post-revolutionary Iran. It hyped the drama and edged into
propaganda. But Americans would have learned a lot more if Affleck had chosen
the CIA coup in 1953 or the Republican chicanery in 1980, says Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
In some ways it was encouraging that several Best Picture nominees had
historical themes, whether they tried to stick fairly close to facts as in
Lincoln on passage of the Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery or they just used
history as a vivid backdrop for an imaginative story about slavery as in Django
Unchained.
It’s less encouraging that the Motion Picture Academy selected as Best Picture
Argo, which while based on real events underscored Hollywood’s timidity about
taking on more significant and more controversial events on either side of Ben
Affleck’s film about the CIA-engineered escape of six staffers from the U.S.
Embassy in Iran in 1979.
On one end of that storyline was the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Iranian Prime
Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, a tale involving legendary and colorful
American spies led by Kermit Roosevelt. On the other side of the Argo events was
the mystery of Republican interference in President Jimmy Carter’s desperate
efforts to free 52 embassy employees who were captured in 1979 and held for 444
days.
True, both bookend stories remain more shrouded in uncertainty than the much
smaller Argo tale, but enough is known about them to justify a dramatic
treatment. Participants in the 1953 coup and in the 1979-81 hostage crisis have
described the events in sufficient detail to support a compelling movie script.
Indeed, Miles Copeland, a CIA officer who worked on the 1953 coup even reemerged
for a cameo appearance in Republican activities around Carter’s frustrated
hostage negotiations in 1980. [See Robert Parry’s America’s Stolen Narrative.]
I realize that Hollywood is not primarily interested in increasing understanding
among adversarial nations. But either a movie about the 1953 coup or one going
behind-the-scenes of the 1979-81 hostage crisis could help inform the American
people about the complex relationship that has existed between the United States
and Iran. It’s not just good guy vs. bad guy.
Of course, that might be the key reason why Hollywood found the little-known
Argo story compelling and the other bigger stories to be non-starters. Argo did
largely draw its narrative in black and white, with strong propaganda overtones,
feeding into the current hostility between the United States and Iran over its
nuclear program.
Despite a brief documentary-style opening referencing the 1953 coup and the
dictatorial rule of the Shah of Iran until 1979, Argo quickly descended into a
formulaic tale of sympathetic CIA officers trying to outwit nasty Iranian
revolutionaries, complete with a totally made-up thriller escape at the end.
Misreporting Afghanistan
In that sense, Argo recalls Charlie Wilson’s War, which presented a dangerously
misleading account of the Soviets’ war in Afghanistan. Though “just a movie,”
Charlie Wilson’s War’s storyline has become something of a baseline for
America’s understanding of the historic challenges in Afghanistan.
Charlie Wilson’s War portrayed the CIA-backed Afghan jihadists (or mujahedeen)
as noble freedom-fighters and the Soviet pilots and soldiers trying to protect a
communist government in Kabul as unmitigated war criminals and monsters. The
nuances were all lost.
For instance, the communist regime for all its faults brought some measure of
modernity to Afghanistan. Women’s rights were respected. Girls were allowed to
attend school, and strict rules demanding segregation by sex were relaxed.
Indeed, in the real history, the CIA-backed jihadists were motivated in large
part by their fury over these reforms in women’s rights.
In other words, the CIA-backed jihadists were not the noble “freedom-fighters”
as they were portrayed in the movie. They were fighting for the cruel
subjugation of Afghan women. And the jihadists were notoriously brutal,
torturing and executing captured Soviet and Afghan government soldiers.
However, that cruelty was not depicted in Charlie Wilson’s War, nor was it
presented as the chief policy failure of U.S. war effort. According to the
movie, the big U.S. mistake was a supposed failure to see the Afghan project
through to the end, the alleged abandonment of Afghanistan as soon as the Soviet
troops left in early 1989.
In the movie, Rep. Charlie Wilson, D-Texas, who is credited with organizing U.S.
support for the Afghan “freedom-fighters,” is shown begging unsuccessfully for
more money after the Soviets depart.
The real history is dramatically different. In late 1988 and early 1989, deputy
CIA director Robert Gates and other key officials for the incoming
administration of President George H.W. Bush rebuffed peace initiatives from
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev who wanted a unity government that would
bring the civil war to an end and prevent a wholesale return of Afghanistan to
the Dark Ages.
Instead, the Bush-41 administration sought a triumphal victory for the jihadists
and the CIA. So, contrary to the movie’s depiction of a cut-off of funds once
the Soviets departed, the United States actually continued covert war funding
for several more years in hopes of taking Kabul.
That rejection of Gorbachev’s initiative opened Afghanistan to the complete
chaos that followed and finally the rise of the Pakistani-backed Taliban in the
mid-1990s. The Taliban then hosted fellow Islamist extremist Osama bin Laden and
his al-Qaeda terrorists.
Though Charlie Wilson’s War starring Tom Hanks was “just a movie,” it cemented
in the American mind a false narrative which has been repeatedly cited by
policymakers, including Defense Secretaries Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, as
justification for continuing a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.
Similarly, Argo confirms to many average Americans the unreasonableness of
Iranians, who are portrayed as both evil and inept. If negotiations over Iran’s
nuclear program collapse, this propaganda image of the Iranians could help tilt
the balance of U.S. public opinion toward war.
By contrast, movies on the CIA’s 1953 coup or the Republican interference in
Carter’s hostage negotiations in 1980 would demonstrate that there are two or
more sides to every story. Granted, such movies would encounter powerful forces
of resistance. The moviemakers might be accused of “blaming America first” and
the Academy might shy away from handing out Oscars in the face of controversy.
But either of the bookend stories around Argo would get to more important truths
than did this year’s Best Picture. The two stories would show how America has
manipulated politics abroad and how that practice has come home to roost.
[For a limited time, you can purchase Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush family,
which includes detailed accounts of these false narratives, for only $34. For
details, click here.]
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new
book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book
(from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
The Moral Torment of Leon Panetta
Exclusive: Leon Panetta returned to government in 2009 amid hopes he could
cleanse the CIA where torture and politicized intelligence had brought the U.S.
to new lows in world respect. Yet, after four years at CIA and Defense, it is
Panetta who departs morally compromised, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, a practicing Catholic, sought a blessing on
Wednesday from Pope Benedict XVI. Afterward Panetta reported that the Pope said,
“Thank you for helping to keep the world safe” to which Panetta replied, “Pray
for me.”
In seeking those prayers, Panetta knows better than the Pope what moral
compromises have surrounded him during his four years inside the Obama
administration, as CIA director overseeing the covert war against al-Qaeda and
as Defense Secretary deploying the largest military on earth.
For me and others who initially had high hopes for Panetta, his performance in
both jobs has been a bitter disappointment. Before accepting the CIA post,
Panetta had criticized the moral and constitutional violations in George W.
Bush’s “war on terror,” especially the use of torture.
Taking note of Panetta’s outspoken comments, I hailed Panetta’s selection on
Jan. 8, 2009, writing: “At long last. Change we can believe in. In choosing Leon
Panetta to take charge of the CIA, President-elect Barack Obama has shown he is
determined to put an abrupt end to the lawlessness and deceit with which the
administration of George W. Bush has corrupted intelligence operations and
analysis.
“Character counts. And so does integrity. With those qualities, and the backing
of a new President, Panetta is equipped to lead the CIA out of the wilderness
into which it was taken by sycophantic directors with very flexible attitudes
toward truth, honesty and the law, directors who deemed it their duty to do the
President’s bidding, legal or illegal; honest or dishonest.
“In a city in which lapel-flags have been seen as adequate substitutes for the
Constitution, Panetta will bring a rigid adherence to the rule of law. For
Panetta this is no battlefield conversion. On torture, for example, this is what
he wrote a year ago:
“‘We cannot simply suspend [American ideals of human rights] in the name of
national security. Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse
captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But
that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual,
the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we
don’t. There is no middle ground. We cannot and we must not use torture under
any circumstances. We are better than that.’”
While it may be true that Panetta did end the CIA’s torture of detainees, he
didn’t exactly live up to his broader commitment to observe higher standards of
human rights. At the CIA, Panetta presided over an expansion of a lethal drone
program that targeted al-Qaeda operatives (and whoever happened to be near them
at the time) with sudden, violent death.
Even some neocons from the Bush administration their own hands stained with
blood from Bush’s unprovoked invasion of Iraq and their consciences untouched by
their rationalizations for waterboarding and other forms of torture chided the
Obama administration for replacing “enhanced interrogation techniques” with
expanded drone strikes.
Panetta’s Defense
Of course, we may not know for many years exactly what Panetta’s private counsel
to Obama was in connection with the drones and other counterterrorism
strategies. He may have been in the classic predicament of a person who has
accepted a position of extraordinary power and then faced the need to compromise
on moral principles for what he might justify as the greater good.
None of us who have been in or close to such situations take those choices
lightly. As easy as it is to be cynical, I have known many dedicated public
servants who have tried to steer policies toward less destructive ends,
something they only could do by working inside the government. Others have
struggled over balancing the choice of resigning in protest against staying and
continuing to fight the good fight.
Some Panetta defenders say that he saw his role as ratcheting down the levels of
violence from the indiscriminate slaughter associated with Bush’s invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq and has tried to steer the United States away from a new
possibly even more destructive war with Iran. As CIA director, he did stand by
the brave analysts regarding their assessment that Iran had discarded its
nuclear weapons program.
According to this favorable view of Panetta, his tradeoff to avoid the mass
killings from general warfare has been to support targeted killings of suspected
terrorists. In other words, Panetta has been in the camp generally associated
with Vice President Joe Biden, urging narrower counterterrorism operations
rather than broader counterinsurgency war.
Yet, this idea of tallying up possible large-scale civilian deaths like the
hundreds of thousands who died in Bush’s Iraq War versus the smaller but still
significant deaths from drone strikes makes for a difficult moral equation. It
may explain why Leon Panetta was so eager to have Pope Benedict “pray for me.”
So, while it’s possible that historians will discover in decades to come that
Panetta gave President Obama sage advice and tried to bend the arc of U.S.
military violence downward, I, for one, remain deeply disappointed with Panetta
and regretful of my earlier optimism.
I had the preconceived and, it turns out, misguided notion that Panetta, who a
year earlier had denounced torture, and who brought with him a wealth of
experience and innumerable contacts on Capitol Hill and in the federal
bureaucracy, would be not only determined but also able clean up the mess at the
CIA.
Moreover, I persuaded myself that I could expect from Panetta, a contemporary
with the same education I received at the hands of the Jesuits including moral
theology/ethics, might wear some insulation from power that corrupts.
I have learned, though, that no one is immune from the sirens of power, which is
an alternative way to explain Panetta’s actions over the past four years. As for
Jesuits, there are justice Jesuits like Dan Berrigan and others like the ones
that now run my alma mater Fordham.
The latter brand either knowingly, or out of what Church theologians call
“invincible ignorance” seem to be happy riding shotgun for the system, including
aggressive war, kidnapping, torture, the whole nine yards.
(For a recent,
insightful essay on this issue, see “Sticks and Drones, and Company Men: The
Selective Outrage of the Liberal Caste,” by Jim Kavanagh.)
To me, it was painful to watch Panetta make the decision to become the CIA’s
defense lawyer, rather than take charge as its director. He left in place
virtually all those responsible for the “dark-side” abuses of the Cheney/Bush
administration, and bent flexibly with the prevailing wind toward holding no one
accountable.
Long forgotten is the fact that Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder initially
gave some lip service to the concept of no one being above the law. Rhetoric is
one thing, though; action another.
Counterattack on Torture
When Obama’s timid Attorney General, Eric Holder, gathered the courage to begin
an investigation of torture and other war crimes implicating CIA officials past
and present, he ran into a buzz saw operated by those inside the CIA and in key
media outlets, like the neocon-dominated Washington Post. Those forces pulled
out all the stops to quash the Department of Justice’s preliminary
investigation.
This effort reached bizarre proportions when seven previous CIA directors,
including three who were themselves implicated in planning and conducting
torture and other abuses, wrote to the President in September 2009, asking him
to call off Holder. The letter and the motivation behind it could not have been
more transparent or inappropriate.
Obama and Holder caved. By all accounts, Panetta supported the former directors
who, in my view, deserve the sobriquet “the seven moral dwarfs.”
Leon Panetta, like me, was commissioned in the U.S. Army when he graduated from
college he from the University of Santa Clara (I from Fordham). Entering the
Army may have been the first time each of us swore a solemn oath to “support and
defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and
domestic,” but it was hardly the last time.
Panetta, however, has displayed a willingness to disrespect the Constitution
when it encumbers what the Obama administration wishes to do. Article 1, Section
8 of the Constitution reserves to Congress the power to declare or authorize
war.
Granted, an unprecedentedly craven Congress has shown itself all too willing to
abnegate that responsibility in recent years. Only a few members of the House
and Senate seem to care very much when presidents act like kings and send off
troops drawn largely from a poverty draft to wars not authorized (or simply
rubber-stamped) by Congress. This sad state of affairs, however, does not
absolve the Executive Branch from its duty to abide by Article 1, Section 8.
This matters and matters very much. At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services
Committee on March 7, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, pursued this issue with
Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey. Chafing belatedly over
the unauthorized nature of the war in Libya, Sessions asked repeatedly what
“legal basis” would the Obama administration rely on to do in Syria what it did
in Libya.
Watching that part of the testimony it seemed to me that Sessions, a
conservative Southern lawyer, was not at all faking it when he pronounced
himself “almost breathless” as Panetta stonewalled time after time. Panetta made
it explicitly clear that the administration does not believe it needs to seek
congressional approval for wars like the one in Libya in which the United States
contributed air power and intelligence support, though not ground troops.
Sessions: “I am really baffled. The only legal authority that’s required to
deploy the U.S. military [in combat] is the Congress and the President and the
law and the Constitution.”
Panetta: “Let me just for the record be clear again, Senator, so there is no
misunderstanding. When it comes to national defense, the President has the
authority under the Constitution to act to defend this country, and we will,
Sir.” (Here is the entire 7-minute video clip.)
Panetta was also the first senior Obama official to assert that American
citizens who are branded “terrorists” and are suspected of “trying to kill our
people” can be targeted for death on Executive power alone.
In an interview with CBS 60 Minutes‘ Scott Pelley, Panetta was asked about the
secret process the Obama administration uses to kill American citizens suspected
of terrorism. He explained that the President himself approves the decision
based on recommendations from top national security officials.
Panetta said, “if someone is a citizen of the United States, and is a terrorist,
who wants to attack our people and kill Americans, in my book that person is a
terrorist. And the reality is that under our laws, that person is a terrorist.
And we’re required under a process of law, to be able to justify, that despite
the fact that person may be a citizen, he is first and foremost a terrorist who
threatens our people, and for that reason, we can establish a legal basis on
which we oughta go after that individual, just as we go after bin Laden, just as
we go after other terrorists. Why? Because their goal is to kill our people, and
for that reason we have to defend ourselves.”
Now, after four years in this swamp of moral and legal relativism, Panetta has
turned to Pope Benedict for prayers and blessings, an ironic choice since
Benedict himself has shown a high tolerance for sloshing around in this muck.
In April 2008, Benedict visited the United States amid sordid disclosures about
the Bush administration’s practices of torture and worldwide recognition that
Bush had ordered the invasion and occupation of Iraq based on false claims about
WMD and ties to al-Qaeda.
On torture, reporting by ABC depicted George W. Bush’s most senior aides
(Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice and Tenet) meeting multiple times in
the White House during 2002-03 to sort out complete with practical
demonstrations the most efficient mix of torture techniques for captured
“terrorists.” When initially ABC attempted to insulate the President from this
sordid activity, Bush responded that he knew all about it and had approved.
But Benedict maintained a discreet silence, placing feel-good scenes of happy
Catholics cheering his presence over a moral obligation to condemn wrongdoing, a
pattern that has recurred far too frequently in the history of the Vatican.
When I visited Yad VaShem, the Holocaust museum in West Jerusalem a few years
ago, I experienced painful reminders of what happens when the Church allows
itself to be captured by Empire. An acquiescent church loses whatever residual
moral authority it may have had.
At the entrance to the museum, a quotation by German essayist Kurt Tucholsky set
a universally applicable tone: “A country is not just what it does it is also
what it tolerates.”
Still more compelling words came from Imre Bathory, a Hungarian who put his own
life at grave risk by helping to save Jews from the concentration camps: “I know
that when I stand before God on Judgment Day, I shall not be asked the question
posed to Cain: ‘Where were you when your brother’s blood was crying out to
God?’”
It is a question that Leon Panetta may want to ask himself as he retires from
government service at age 74 and retreats to his walnut farm in California. For
Panetta’s sake, let’s hope papal prayer will help him sort it all out.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church
of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as an Army
Infantry/Intelligence officer in the early 60s, and then for 27 years as a CIA
analyst. He serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity (VIPS).
The Real Blame for Deaths in Libya
Exclusive: Rep. Darrell Issa and the Republicans are making political hay from
last month’s killings in Libya of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other
Americans. But the real blame traces back to Official Washington’s endless
interventions in the Middle East, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern
If you prefer charade to reality, inquisition to investigation, trees over
forest the House Government Oversight Committee hearing last Tuesday on
“Security Failures of Benghazi” was the thing for you.
The hearing was the latest example of the myopic negligence and misfeasance of
elected representatives too personally self-absorbed and politically selfaggrandizing to head off misbegotten wars and then too quick to blame everyone
but themselves for the inevitable blowback.
“So what’s the problem?” a friend asked, as I bemoaned the narrowly focused,
thoroughly politicized charges and countercharges at the hearing. “It’s just a
few weeks before the election; it’s high political season; I found the whole
farce entertaining.”
The problem? One is that the partisan one-upmanship of committee chair Rep.
Darrell Issa, R-California, and others soft-pedaled the virtual certainty that
the murder of four American officials in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012, was a
harbinger of more such killings to come. Worse still, few of the committee
members seemed to care.
As I listened to the inane discussion, I wanted to shout: “It’s the policy,
stupid!” The tightest security measures reinforced by squads of Marines cannot
compensate for the fallout from a stupid policy of bombing and violent “regime
change” in Libya and elsewhere in the Muslim world.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, one of Issa’s top lieutenants, stated his “personal
belief” that “with more assets, more resources, just meeting the minimum
standards,” the lives of the Americans could have been saved. Unfortunately for
Chaffetz and Issa, their star witness, State Department Regional Security
Officer Eric Nordstrom, shot a wide hole, so to speak, into Chaffetz’s professed
personal belief.
While joining with others in bemoaning State’s repeated refusal to honor pleas
from the field for additional security in Libya, Nordstrom admitted that, even
with additional security forces, the attack would not have been
prevented. Nordstrom, a 14-year veteran of State’s Diplomatic Security Service,
was quite specific:
“Having an extra foot of wall, or an extra half-dozen guards or agents would not
have enabled us to respond to that kind of assault,” Nordstrom said. “The
ferocity and intensity of the attack was nothing that we had seen in Libya, or
that I had seen in my time in the Diplomatic Security Service.”
For any but the most partisan listener this key observation punctured the
festive, Issa/Chaffetz carnival balloon that had assigned most of the blame for
the Benghazi murders to bureaucratic indifference of State Department
functionaries in Washington.
Also falling rather flat were partisan attempts to exploit understandable
inconsistencies in earlier depictions of the Benghazi attack and twist them into
a soft pretzel showing that the Obama administration is soft on terrorism or
conducting a “cover-up.”
There is also the reality that diplomatic service in hostile parts of the world
is never safe, especially after U.S. policy has stirred up or infuriated many of
“the locals.” For decades, as populations have chafed under what they regard as
U.S. military and political interference, U.S. embassies and other outposts have
become targets for attacks, some far more lethal than the one in Benghazi.
To recall just a few such incidents: Iranian resentment at longtime U.S. support
for the Shah led to the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran under President
Jimmy Carter; anger at U.S. involvement in Lebanon led to bombings of the U.S.
Embassy and a U.S. Marine barracks killing more than 300 under President Ronald
Reagan; U.S. embassies in Africa were bombed under President Bill Clinton; and
the violence was brought to the U.S. mainland on 9/11 and also against numerous
U.S. facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq under George W. Bush.
John Brennan, the Avenger
However, in this political season, the Republicans want to gain some political
advantage by stirring up doubts about President Barack Obama’s toughness on
terrorism and the Obama administration is looking for ways to blunt those
rhetorical attacks by launching retaliatory strikes in Libya or elsewhere.
Thus, it was small comfort to learn that Teflon-coated John Brennan, Obama’s
counterterrorism adviser, had flown to Tripoli, hoping to unearth some interim
Libyan government officials to consult with on the Benghazi attack. With the
embassy’s help, he no doubt identified Libyan officials with some claim to
purview over “terrorism.”
But Brennan is not about investigation. Retribution is his bag. It is likely
that some Libyan interlocutor was brought forth who would give him carte blanche
to retaliate against any and all those “suspected” of having had some role in
the Benghazi murders.
So, look for “surgical” drone strike or Abbottabad-style special forces attack
possibly before the Nov. 6 election on whomever is labeled a “suspect.” Sound
wild?
It is.
However, considering Brennan’s penchant for acting-first-
thinking-later, plus the entrée and extraordinary influence he enjoys with
President Obama, drone and/or special forces attacks are, in my opinion, more
likely than not. (This is the same Brennan, after all, who compiles for Obama
lists of nominees for assassination by drone.)
If in Tuesday’s debate with ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Obama is pressed,
as expected on his supposed weakness in handling Benghazi, attacks on
“terrorists,” real or “suspect,” become still more likely. Brennan and other
White House functionaries might succeed in persuading the President that such
attacks would be just what the doctor ordered for his wheezing poll numbers.
But what about tit-for-tat terrorist retaliation for those kinds of attacks? Not
to worry.
With some luck, the inevitable terrorist response might not be
possible until after the voting. Obama’s advisers would hardly have to remind
him of the big but brief bounce after killing al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Mindless vengeance has been a popular political sell since 9/11. And so have
drones. Both dovetail neatly with Brennan’s simplistic approach to terrorism;
namely, just kill the “bad guys” the comic-book moniker so often used for
“suspected” militants, terrorists, insurgents and still other folks with an
enduring hatred for America.
Where is Helen Thomas when we need her! She was the only journalist not to
genuflect before Brennan’s inanities, and had the temerity to ask him directly
to explain what motivates terrorists.
At an awkward press conference on Jan. 7, 2010, two weeks after Umar Farouk
Abdulmuttalab (the so-called “underwear bomber”) slipped through Brennan’s
counter-terrorism net and nearly brought down an airliner over Detroit, Helen
Thomas tried to move the discussion beyond preventive gimmicks like improved
body-imaging scanners and “behavior detection officers” at airports. She asked
Brennan about motivation; why did Abdulmuttalab do what he did.
Thomas: “And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why.”
Brennan: “Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton
slaughter of innocents. They attract individuals like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use
them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort
of drive. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the
concept of Islam, so that he’s (sic) able to attract these individuals. But al
Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death.”
Thomas: “And you’re saying it’s because of religion?”
Brennan: “I’m saying it’s because of an al-Qaeda organization that used the
banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way.”
Thomas: “Why?”
Brennan: “I think this is a long issue, but al-Qaeda is just determined to carry
out attacks here against the homeland.”
Thomas: “But you haven’t explained why.”
Seldom does anyone have the guts to explain why. There is virtually no adult
discussion in our mass media about the underlying causes of terrorism. We are
generally asked to take it on faith that many Muslims are hardwired at birth or
through appeals to their Islamic faith to “hate America.” And, as Brennan would
have us believe, that’s why they resort to violence.
Chickens Home to Roost
It was no surprise, then, that almost completely absent from the discussion at
last Tuesday’s hearing was any attempt to figure out why a well-armed, wellorganized group of terrorists wanted to inflict maximum damage on the U.S.
consulate in Benghazi and kill the diplomats there.
Were it not for Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, impressionable listeners would
have been left with the idea that the attack had nothing to do with Washington’s
hare-brained, bomb-heavy policies, from which al-Qaeda and similar terrorist
groups are more beneficiary than victim, as in Libya.
Not for the first time, Kucinich rose to the occasion at Tuesday’s hearing:
“You’d think that after ten years in Iraq and after eleven years in Afghanistan
that the U.S. would have learned the consequences and the limits of
interventionism. … Today we’re engaging in a discussion about the security
failures of Benghazi. The security situation did not happen overnight because of
a decision made by someone at the State Department. …
“We owe it to the diplomatic corps, who serves our nation, to start at the
beginning and that’s what I shall do. Security threats in Libya, including the
unchecked extremist groups who are armed to the teeth, exist because our nation
spurred on a civil war destroying the security and stability of Libya. … We
bombed Libya. We destroyed their army. We obliterated their police stations …
Al Qaeda expanded its presence.
“Weapons are everywhere. Thousands of shoulder-to-air missiles are on the loose.
Our military intervention led to greater instability in Libya. … It’s not
surprising that the State Department was not able to adequately protect our
diplomats from this predictable threat. It’s not surprising and it’s also not
acceptable. …
“We want to stop attacks on our embassies? Let’s stop trying to overthrow
governments. This should not be a partisan issue. Let’s avoid the hype. Let’s
look at the real situation here. Interventions do not make us safer. They do not
protect our nation. They are themselves a threat to America.”
Congressman Kucinich went on to ask the witnesses if they knew how many
shoulder-to-air missiles were on the loose in Libya. Nordstrom: “Ten to twenty
thousand.”
And were the witnesses aware of al-Qaeda’s growing presence in Libya, Kucinich
asked. One of the witnesses, Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, an Army Green Beret who led a
16-member Special Forces security team to protect Americans in Libya from
February to August, replied that al-Qaeda’s “presence grows every day. They are
certainly more established than we are.”
Bottom line: Americans are not safer; virtually no one is safer because of what
the United States did to Libya to remove the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Q.E.D.
I was able to listen to most of the hearing on my car radio, and found it
difficult to contain my reaction to the farce. So I was glad to get a call from
RT TV, asking me to come at once to the studio and comment on the RT news
program at 5:00 p.m. I cannot say I enjoyed trying to draw out the dreary
implications. But, in this case, they were clear enough to enable “instant
analysis.” And those ten minutes on camera were, for me, like lancing a boil.
Dead Consciences
We are told we should not speak ill of the dead. Dead consciences, though,
should be fair game. In my view, the U.S. Secretary of State did herself no
credit the morning after the killing of four of her employees, when she said:
“I asked myself how could this happen? How could this happen in a country we
helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction? This question
reflects just how complicated and, at times, how confounding the world can
be. But we have to be clear-eyed, even in our grief.”
But some things are confounding only to those suppressing their own
responsibility for untold death and misery abroad. Secretary Clinton continues
to preen about the U.S. role in the attack on Libya. And, of Gaddafi’s gory
death, she exclaimed on camera with a joyous cackle, “We came; we saw; he died.”
Can it come as a surprise to Clinton that this kind of attitude and behavior can
set a tone, spawning still more violence?
The Secretary of State may, arguably, be brighter than some of her immediate
predecessors, but her public remarks since the tragedy at Benghazi show her to
be at least as equally bereft of conscience as Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell,
and yes-we-think-the-price-of-a-half-million-Iraqi-children-dead-because-of-oursanctions-is-worth-it Madeleine Albright.
Like Albright, Clinton appears to suffer from Compassion Deficit Disorder (CDD),
especially when it comes to people who do not look like most Americans. (She
does make occasional exceptions for annoying people like me who also merit her
disdain).
Given that she is plagued with CDD, it would have been too much to expect, I
suppose, for Clinton to have taken some responsibility for the murder of four of
her employees much less the killing, maiming and destruction caused by the
illegal attack on Libya. But if she really wants to get “clear-eyed,” holding
herself accountable would be a good start.
Was it dereliction of duty for Clinton to have failed to ensure that people
working for her would honor urgent requests for security reinforcement in places
like Benghazi? I believe it was. The buck, after all, has to stop somewhere.
In my view, counterterrorism guru Brennan shares the blame for this and other
failures. But he has a strong allergy to acknowledging such responsibility. And
he enjoys more Teflon protection from his perch closer to the President in the
White House.
The back-and-forth bickering over the tragedy in Benghazi has focused on so many
trees that the forest never came into view. Not only did the hearing fall far
short in establishing genuine accountability, it was bereft of vision. Without
vision, the old proverb says, the people perish and that includes American
diplomats.
The killings in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, validate that wisdom. If the U.S.
does not change the way it relates to the rest of the world, and especially to
the Muslim world, more and more people will perish.
If we persist on the aggressive path we are on, Americans will in no way be
safer. As for our diplomats, in my view it is just a matter of time before our
next embassy, consulate or residence is attacked.
Role of Congress
It is a lot easier, of course, to attack a defenseless Muslim country, like
Libya, when a supine House of Representatives forfeits the prerogative reserved
to Congress by the Constitution to authorize and fund wars or to refuse to
authorize and fund them.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Kucinich noted that in Libya “we intervened, absent
constitutional authority.” Most of his colleagues reacted with the equivalent of
a deep yawn, as though Kucinich had said something “quaint” and “obsolete.” Like
most of their colleagues in the House, most Oversight Committee members continue
to duck this key issue, which directly involves one of the most important
powers/duties given the Congress in Article I of the Constitution.
Such was their behavior last Tuesday, with most members preferring to indulge in
hypocritical posturing aimed at scoring cheap political points. Palpable in that
hearing room was one of the dangers our country’s Founders feared the most that,
for reasons of power, position and money, legislators might eventually be
seduced into the kind of cowardice and expediency that would lead them to
forfeit their power and their duty to prevent a president from making war at
will.
Many of those now doing their best to make political hay out of the Benghazi
“scandal” are the same legislators who appealed strongly for the U.S. to bomb
Libya and remove Gaddafi. This, despite it having been clear from the start that
eastern Libya had become a new beachhead for al-Qaeda and other terrorists. From
the start, it was highly uncertain who would fill the power vacuums in the east
and in Tripoli.
In short, Oversight Committee members were among those in Congress who thought
war on Libya was a great idea, with many criticizing Obama for not doing more,
sooner, for “leading from behind” rather than “leading from the front.” Now,
they’re making cheap political points from the consequences of a war for which
they strongly pushed.
War? What War?
As Congress failed to exercise its constitutional duties to debate and vote on
wars Obama, along with his Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton,
took a page out of the Bush/Cheney book and jumped into a new war. Just don’t
call it war, said the White House. It’s merely a “kinetic humanitarian action.”
You see, our friends in Europe covet that pure Libyan oil and Gaddafi had been a
problem to the West for a long time. So, it was assumed that there would be
enough anti-Gaddafi Libyans that a new “democratic” government could be created
and talented diplomats, like Ambassador Christopher Stevens, could explain to
“the locals” how missiles and bombs were in the long-term interest of Libyans.
On Libya, the Obama administration dissed Congress even more blatantly than
Cheney and Bush did on Iraq, where there was at least the charade of a public
debate, albeit perverted by false claims about Iraq’s WMD and Saddam Hussein’s
ties to al-Qaeda.
And so Defense Secretary Panetta and Secretary of State Clinton stepped off
cheerily to strike Libya with the same kind of post-war plan that Cheney, Bush,
and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had for Iraq none.
Small wonder chaos reigns in Benghazi and other parts of the country. Can it be
that privileged politicians like Clinton and Panetta and the many “onepercenters” in Congress and elsewhere really do not understand that, when the
U.S. does what it did to Libya, there will be folks who don’t like it; that they
will be armed; that there will be blowback; that U.S. diplomats, given an
impossible task, will die?
Libya: Precedent for Syria
Constitutionally, the craven Congress is a huge part of the problem. Only a few
members of the House and Senate seem to care very much when presidents act like
kings and send off troops drawn largely by a poverty draft to wars not
authorized (or simply rubber-stamped) by Congress.
Last Tuesday, Kucinich’s voice was alone crying in the wilderness, so to
speak. (And, because of redistricting and his loss in a primary that pitted two
incumbent Democrats against each other, he will not be a member of the new
Congress in January.)
This matters and matters very much. At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services
Committee on March 7, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, pursued this key issue with
Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey.
Chafing ex post facto at the unauthorized nature of the war in Libya, Sessions
asked repeatedly what “legal basis” would the Obama administration rely on to do
in Syria what it did in Libya.
Watching that part of the testimony it seemed to me that Sessions, a
conservative Southern lawyer, was not at all faking when he pronounced himself
“almost breathless,” as Panetta stonewalled time after time. Panetta made it
explicitly clear that the administration does not believe it needs to seek
congressional approval for wars like Libya. At times he seemed to be quoting
verses from the Book of Cheney.
Sessions: “I am really baffled … The only legal authority that’s required to
deploy the U.S. military [in combat] is the Congress and the President and the
law and the Constitution.”
Panetta: “Let me just for the record be clear again, Senator, so there is no
misunderstanding. When it comes to national defense, the President has the
authority under the Constitution to act to defend this country, and we will,
Sir.”
(If you care about the Constitution and the rule of law, I strongly recommend
that you view the entire 7-minute video clip.)
Lawyers all: Sessions, Panetta, Hillary Clinton, Obama. In my view, the latter
three need to be called out on this. If they see ambiguity in Article I, Section
8 of the Constitution, they should explain the reasoning behind their flexible
interpretation.
Cannot the legal profession give us some clarity on this key point before
legally trained leaders with a penchant for abiding by the Constitution only
when it suits them take our country to war in Syria without the authorization of
our elected representatives?
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church
of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as an Army
infantry/intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for a total of 30 years,
and now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity (VIPS).
America’s Crimes of War
A decade into the Afghan War, the atrocities by U.S. forces whether accidental
or intentional keep piling up along with assurances from American leaders that
“this is not who we are.” But the unwillingness to impose serious penalties and
the failure to adopt less violent strategies say something else to many Afghans,
writes John LaForge.
By John LaForge
A U.S. Army Staff Sergeant walked through two villages in Kandahar Province,
Afghanistan, around 3 a.m. March 11, methodically shooting 16 people that he’d
dragged from their beds with single shots to the head. Then he dragged corpses
outside and set some on fire. Eleven were reportedly from one family. Nine were
children.
The Taliban has promised revenge against “sick-minded American savages.”
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta appeared to confirm this characterization when
he callously told the press later the same day, “War is hell. These kinds of
events and incidents are going to take place. They’ve taken place in any war.
They’re terrible events. This is not the first of those events, and they
probably won’t be the last.”
“Events” and “incidents” aren’t the pronouns that come to mind when
contemplating premeditated multiple murders of sleeping women and children.
Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai called the massacre an assassination and
“an intentional killing of innocent civilians and cannot be forgiven.”
Seth Jones of the Rand Corporation, a former Special Forces Command officer in
the Pentagon, tried to cement the blood-thirsty image of the U.S. at war when he
said March 12 on the PBS News Hour, “This is not as out of the norm as it’s
appearing in the media. Afghans are used to being killed.”
“Sick-minded American savages” clearly are not confined to the killing fields.
With the long record of U.S. massacres that have gone unpunished or been treated
lightly, Afghans can be forgiven for demanding that the latest Son of Uncle Sam
be turned over to Afghan authorities for trial.
In late November 2001, hundreds of captured Afghan fighters were packed into
sealed shipping containers and moved to the town of Mazar. Hundreds died of
asphyxiation en route, were executed when some of the bodies were dumped along
the way, or were killed when the containers were riddled with machine gun fire
in Mazar under the watchful eyes of 30 to 40 U.S. Special Forces soldiers. The
documentary, “Massacre at Mazar,” includes eyewitness accounts of the killings.
No soldier has ever even faced a U.S. inquiry.
No U.S. personnel have been prosecuted for jet fighter attacks gone astray, or
for bombing civilians targeted with unreliable “intel,” or for the pilotless
drone massacres directed from thousands of miles away that have left scores of
children dead. Eleven children ages 2 to 7 were killed last May 28; six kids
were killed Nov. 24; eight more were killed Feb. 15. No charges were brought
against two Marines in charge of a unit that killed 19 people and wounded 50 by
firing indiscriminately at cars and bystanders in Afghanistan in 2008.
When U.S. crimes of war have been prosecuted the official trivialization of the
atrocities and the lack of severe consequences have been appalling. The literate
population of Afghanistan may be more attuned to the pattern than U.S. readers.
Pvt. Charles Graner, a leader of the Abu Ghraib torture cell in Iraq was
released after 6 ½ years of a 10-year sentence. In 2009, charges were dropped
against four U.S. military contractors from Blackwater Inc. who massacred 17
civilians in the square in Baghdad.
This year, Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich was allowed to plead guilty to
“dereliction of duty,” after having overseen the cold-blooded murders of 24
sleeping civilians in Haditha, Iraq in 2005. He had told his men, “Shoot first,
ask questions later.” Six of them had their charges dropped and one was
acquitted. Sgt. Wuterich walked free without any jail time.
A May 31, 2011, warning from President Karzai should now be reread by the
Pentagon’s generals: “If they continue their attacks on our houses, then their
presence will change from a force that is fighting terrorism to a force that is
fighting against the people of Afghanistan. And in that case, history shows what
Afghans do with trespassers and with occupiers.”
John LaForge is on the staff of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog and anti-war group
in Wisconsin, and edits its quarterly newsletter.
America’s ‘Core Values’ in Afghan War?
U.S. officials are expressing outrage and regret over the slaughter of 16 Afghan
civilians, including nine children, allegedly by a deranged U.S. staff sergeant.
But the terrible rampage was not an isolated atrocity in the decade-long war in
Afghanistan, as Nat Parry notes.
By Nat Parry
In reaction to the latest atrocity of the U.S. war in Afghanistan the methodical
murder of 16 Afghan civilians over the weekend
Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton asserted that “this is not who we are, and the United States is
committed to seeing those responsible held accountable.”
President Barack Obama added in a statement, “This incident is tragic and
shocking, and does not represent the exceptional character of our military and
the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan,”
Speaking
at the White House on Tuesday, Obama called the incident “heartbreaking” and
said it does not reflect American values or represent the U.S. military.
It is a now familiar refrain, a slight variation on previous U.S. apologies,
such as those issued over the January incident in which U.S. Marines were
captured on video urinating on the corpses of suspected Taliban fighters.
In response to that episode, Clinton said that the “deplorable behavior” of the
Marines “is absolutely inconsistent with American values.” A Pentagon spokesman
further emphasized that “the actions portrayed are not consistent with our core
values and are not indicative of the character of the Marines in our Corps.”
So what are the core values that these officials keep alluding to? President
Obama explained these values, fittingly, during his 2009 speech in which he
announced the surge of 30,000 additional troops he was sending to Afghanistan.
To prevail in the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, he said:
“We must draw on the strength of our values for the challenges that we face may
have changed, but the things that we believe in must not. That is why we must
promote our values by living them at home which is why I have prohibited torture
and will close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
“And we must make it clear to every man, woman and child around the world who
lives under the dark cloud of tyranny that America will speak out on behalf of
their human rights, and tend to the light of freedom, and justice, and
opportunity, and respect for the dignity of all peoples. That is who we are.
That is the moral source of America’s authority.”
Since that time, faced with strong opposition in Congress to closing Guantanamo,
President Obama has kept the prison open. The U.S. also has failed to speak out
strongly on behalf of the human rights of those living under tyranny in
countries allied with Washington, such as Bahrain and Uzbekistan. Indeed, the
U.S. government continues supplying weapons to those unsavory regimes.
Punishing the Truth-Teller
Intense international criticism also has been directed at the Obama
administration for its treatment of alleged whistleblower Pvt. Bradley Manning,
treatment which some say has amounted to torture.
The U.S. has also expanded the scope of its wars in the Middle East and Central
Asia through the use of unmanned aerial drones, which have been strongly
criticized by the international community as undermining the prohibition on the
use of force in the UN Charter.
And, over the past few days, even as the U.S. has scrambled to explain and
apologize for the weekend massacre of 16 Afghans, U.S. drone strikes have killed
at least 64 people in Yemen, an operation that has drawn scant press attention.
Ironically, as Clinton and Obama were proclaiming America’s “core values” of
human rights in an effort at damage control following the massacre in
Afghanistan, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez was slamming the
United States for its mistreatment of Manning, which he noted violated
international law, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights and the Convention against Torture.
As Mendez told the Guardian newspaper: “I conclude that the 11 months under
conditions of solitary confinement (regardless of the name given to his regime
by the prison authorities) constitutes at a minimum cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment in violation of article 16 of the convention against torture. If the
effects in regards to pain and suffering inflicted on Manning were more severe,
they could constitute torture.”
Following a 14-month investigation of Manning’s treatment, Mendez noted in a
formal report issued on Feb. 29:
“According to the information received, Mr. Manning was held in solitary
confinement for twenty-three hours a day following his arrest in May 2010 in
Iraq, and continuing through his transfer to the brig at Marine Corps Base
Quantico.
His solitary confinement
lasting about eleven months
was terminated
upon his transfer from Quantico to the Joint Regional Correctional Facility at
Fort Leavenworth on 20 April 2011.
“In his report, the Special Rapporteur stressed that ‘solitary confinement is a
harsh measure which may cause serious psychological and physiological adverse
effects on individuals
regardless of their specific conditions.’ Moreover, ‘[d]epending on the specific
reason for its application, conditions, length, effects and other circumstances,
solitary confinement can amount to a breach of article 7 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and to an act defined in article 1 or
article 16 of the Convention against Torture.’”
Manning, a 24-year-old Iraq veteran, was arrested on May 29, 2010, outside
Baghdad, where he was working as an intelligence analyst. The U.S. military has
been charged him with 22 counts, including aiding the enemy, relating to the
leaking a massive trove of state secrets to the whistleblowing website
WikiLeaks.
The secrets that Manning is alleged to have shared with WikiLeaks include
powerful evidence of U.S. war crimes, including the “Collateral Murder” video
documenting the callous killing of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of
New Baghdad in 2007 including two Reuters news staff. To date, Manning is the
only individual who has been arrested in relation to that tragic incident for
the alleged crime of exposing it.
The Afghan War Logs
Other secrets allegedly leaked by Manning include “the Afghan War Logs,” a huge
cache of secret U.S. military files providing a devastating portrayal of the
deteriorating war in Afghanistan. The war logs, made public in July 2010,
revealed how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported
incidents and how a secret “black” unit of special forces has hunted down
suspected Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial.
As the Guardian reported, “The logs detail, in sometimes harrowing vignettes,
the toll on civilians exacted by coalition forces: events termed “blue on white”
in military jargon. The logs reveal 144 such incidents.
“Some of these casualties come from the controversial air strikes that have led
to Afghan government protests, but a large number of previously unknown
incidents also appear to be the result of troops shooting unarmed drivers or
motorcyclists out of a determination to protect themselves from suicide bombers.
“At least 195 civilians are admitted to have been killed and 174 wounded in
total, but this is likely to be an underestimate as many disputed incidents are
omitted from the daily snapshots reported by troops on the ground and then
collated, sometimes erratically, by military intelligence analysts.”
Since the release of the Afghan War Logs, evidence has continued to surface
regarding atrocities being committed with chilling regularity in Afghanistan,
including the activities of the 5th Stryker Brigade’s “kill team,” which made
headlines last year with the publication of grisly war photos by Rolling Stone.
The kill team had staged three separate murders of Afghan civilians in Kandahar
province and had attacked a whistleblowing private who had alerted military
police of the kill team’s activities. The investigation into those responsible
for the kill team’s crimes led to “a letter of admonition” of Col. Harry D.
Tunnell IV, the commander in charge of the 5th Stryker Brigade.
A secret U.S. Army report revealed by Der Spiegel last year confirmed that at
least part of the blame for the culture of permissibility that enabled the kill
team’s activities fell on Tunnell. As Der Spiegel reported:
“The report suggests that Tunnell helped to create, at least in part, conditions
that made the cruel actions of the kill team soldiers possible. ‘Tunnell’s
inattentiveness to administrative matters may have helped create an environment
in which misconduct could occur,’ the report reads.
“The US Army spent one month investigating the circumstances surrounding the
kill team incidents. The report was compiled by General Stephen Twitty, who
interviewed 80 Army personnel of various ranks. The 532-page report paints a
damning picture of the military culture in the Stryker Brigade Combat Team
(SBCT), which was under Tunnell’s command and which the ‘kill team’ soldiers
belonged to.”
According to one witness quoted in the Army’s report, Tunnell himself had spoken
about “small kill teams,” which he wanted to ruthlessly hunt down the Taliban.
He outlined his preferred “counterguerrilla” strategy in speeches to soldiers
under his command, which amounted to “search and destroy” missions to ferret out
Taliban fighters.
One soldier quoted in the report summed it up by saying: “If I were to
paraphrase the speech and my impressions about the speech in a single sentence,
the phrase would be: ‘Let’s kill those motherfuckers.’”
While Tunnell got off with a reprimand, the soldier who led the kill team was
convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison, eligible for
parole in nine years.
The 38-year-old Army staff sergeant who allegedly murdered 16 Afghan civilians
over the weekend including nine children and three women may face the death
penalty, according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
If executing the soldier is intended to demonstrate America’s core values,
however, the U.S. may want to reconsider this approach. The United States’
infatuation with the death penalty has long been a source of alienation with
U.S. allies, particularly in Europe. Following last year’s controversial
execution of Troy Davis, for example, European allies expressed shock and
dismay.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said, “The EU opposes the use of
capital punishment in all circumstances and calls for a universal moratorium.
The abolition of that penalty is essential to protect human dignity.”
Rather than responding to the weekend’s war crimes in Afghanistan with even more
bloodlust, the United States might do well to consider a new strategy, perhaps
starting by ending its wars and prosecuting all war crimes in Iraq and
Afghanistan all the way up the chain of command.
Releasing alleged whistleblower Bradley Manning from prison and compensating him
for his months of “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” would also be a
welcome step toward demonstrating America’s commitment to its “core values.”
Nat Parry is the co-author of Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W.
Bush. [This story appeared previously
at http://compliancecampaign.wordpress.com/]
New Weasel Word on Iran Nukes
Exclusive: The U.S. news media has consistently created the impression that Iran
is building a nuclear bomb and that its denials shouldn’t be taken seriously.
However, U.S. and Israeli intelligence assessments may finally be eroding that
smug certainty, Robert Parry reports.
By Robert Parry
What can one say when the Washington Post’s neoconservative editorial writers
more correctly describe the U.S. and Israeli assessments on Iran’s nuclear
program than does a news story in the New York Times? In a Wednesday morning
surprise, a Washington Post editorial got the nuances, more or less, right in
stating: “U.S. and Israeli officials share an assessment that, though Iran is
building up nuclear capability, it has not taken decisive steps toward building
a bomb.”
You could still say the Post is hyping things a bit, skewing the wording in an
anti-Iranian direction, but the sentence is essentially correct on where U.S.
and Israeli intelligence judgments stand, that Iran has NOT made a decision to
build a nuclear bomb.
But then there’s the New York Times. It continues to mislead its readers, albeit
with a new weasel word inserted to avoid being accused of completely misstating
the facts. In a news article on Wednesday, the Times reported that “the United
States, Europe and Israel have all called [Iran’s nuclear] program a cover for
Iranian efforts to develop nuclear weapons capability, an accusation that Iran
denies.”
The key weasel word now is “capability,” which is a very elastic concept since
any work on nuclear research for peaceful purposes, such as low-level enrichment
of uranium, could theoretically be used toward a weapons “capability.” (The word
also appeared in the Post editorial.)
There’s a parallel here to President George W. Bush’s statements about the Iraq
War: Remember, after his promised Iraqi stockpiles of WMD didn’t materialize,
Bush retreated to claims about WMD “programs,” i.e. the possibility that
something might have occurred down the road, not that it actually had happened,
was happening or was likely to happen. “Capability” is now filling a similar
role.
So, instead of stating that U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies concur that
Iran’s leadership has NOT made a decision to go forward with a nuclear bomb, the
Times creates a false impression that they have done so by suggesting Iran is
making progress toward a “nuclear weapons capability.”
If that wording leaves you with the notion that Iranian leaders have decided to
press ahead in building a nuclear bomb (but are lying about their intent), you
can be forgiven because that seems to be the misimpression the Times wants you
to have. Indeed, even well-informed Americans have come away with precisely that
misimpression.
And there’s another parallel to Bush’s case for war with Iraq, when he falsely
implied that pre-invasion Iraq was allied with al-Qaeda, without actually saying
precisely that. Any casual listener to Bush’s speeches would have made the
implicit connection, which was what Bush clearly intended with his juxtaposition
of words, but his defenders could still argue that he hadn’t exactly made the
link explicit.
Now this sleight of hand is being done mostly by the U.S. news media, including
the New York Times in its influential news columns. To state the obvious,
employing misleading word constructions to confuse readers is an inappropriate
technique for a responsible news organization.
Intelligence Assessments
The Times and most other major U.S. news outlets have refused to alter their
boilerplate on Iran’s nuclear ambitions (beyond slipping in the word
“capability”), even as a consensus has emerged among the intelligence agencies
of the United States and Israel that Iran has NOT made a decision to build a
nuclear weapon.
As ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern has noted, this intelligence judgment has even
been expressed recently by high-profile figures in the defense establishments of
the two countries U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Israel’s Defense
Minister Ehud Barak.
In an article entitled “US/Israel: Iran NOT Building Nukes,” McGovern wrote:
“You might think that you would have heard more about that, wouldn’t you? U.S.
and Israel agree that Iran is NOT building a nuclear bomb. However, this joint
assessment that Iran has NOT decided to build a nuclear bomb apparently
represented too big a change in the accepted narrative for the Times and the
rest of the FCM [Fawning Corporate Media] to process.”
McGovern cited an interview by Barak on Jan. 18 in which the Defense Minister
was asked:
Question: Is it Israel’s judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its
nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?
Barak: confusion stems from the fact that people ask whether Iran is determined
to break out from the control [inspection] regime right now in an attempt to
obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as
possible. Apparently that is not the case.
Question: How long will it take from the moment Iran decides to turn it into
effective weapons until it has nuclear warheads?
Barak: I don’t know; one has to estimate. Some say a year, others say 18
months. It doesn’t really matter. To do that, Iran would have to announce it is
leaving the [UN International Atomic Energy Agency] inspection regime and stop
responding to IAEA’s criticism, etc.
Why haven’t they [the Iranians] done that? Because they realize that when it
became clear to everyone that Iran was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, this
would constitute definite proof that time is actually running out. This could
generate either harsher sanctions or other action against them. They do not want
that.
Question: Has the United States asked or demanded that the government inform the
Americans in advance, should it decide on military action?
Barak: I don’t want to get into that. We have not made a decision to opt for
that, we have not decided on a decision-making date. The whole thing is very far
off.
Question: You said the whole thing is “very far off.” Do you mean weeks, months,
years?
Barak: I wouldn’t want to provide any estimates. It’s certainly not urgent. I
don’t want to relate to it as though tomorrow it will happen.
Less Alarming Consensus
In a Jan. 19 article on Barak’s interview, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz summed
up the Israeli view as follows: “The intelligence assessment indicates that Iran
has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb.
“The Israeli view is that while Iran continues to improve its nuclear
capabilities, it has not yet decided whether to translate these capabilities
into a nuclear weapon or, more specifically, a nuclear warhead mounted atop a
missile. Nor is it clear when Iran might make such a decision.”
McGovern noted that Barak in the interview appeared to be identifying himself
with the consistent assessment of the U.S. intelligence community since late
2007 that Iran has not made a decision to go forward with a nuclear bomb. The
formal National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007 a consensus of all 16
U.S. intelligence agencies stated:
“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear
weapons program; Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests
it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since
2005.”
Despite complaints about the NIE from some American and Israeli war hawks,
senior U.S. officials have continued to stand by it. Defense Secretary
Panetta raised the topic himself in an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on
Jan. 8.
Panetta said “the responsible thing to do right now is to keep putting
diplomatic and economic pressure on them [the Iranians] and to make sure that
they do not make the decision to proceed with the development of a nuclear
weapon.”
Panetta was making the implicit point that the Iranians had not made that
decision, but just in case someone might miss his meaning, Panetta posed the
direct question to himself: “Are they [the Iranians] trying to develop a nuclear
weapon? No.”
Today, it appears that even the neocon editors of the Washington Post have been
forced to accept this important distinction, grudging as that acknowledgement
may have been. The New York Times, however, has simply inserted the new weasel
word, “capability,” which could mean almost anything and which still misleads
readers.
To its credit, perhaps, the Times did include another relevant fact near the end
of its Wednesday article, noting that Israel is “a nuclear weapons state.”
That’s a key fact in understanding why Iran might want a nuclear deterrent
but is rarely cited by the Times in its background on the current crisis.
For further context, the Times also might want to add that Israel’s nuclear
arsenal remains undeclared and that Israel unlike Iran has refused to sign the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or to allow international inspectors into
Israeli nuclear facilities. But such balance may be simply too much to expect
from the Times.
[For more on related topics, see Robert Parry’s Lost History, Secrecy &
Privilege and Neck Deep, now available in a three-book set for the discount
price of only $29. For details, click here.]
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the
Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous
Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and
can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege:
The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras,
Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’ are also available there.
A Dangerous Game on Iran
The Obama administration is engaged in complex diplomacy over Israel’s possible
attack on Iran, trying simultaneously to restrain Israel and use its military
threat to pressure Iran on its nuclear program. But some maneuvers may work at
cross purposes, Gareth Porter writes for Inter Press Service.
By Gareth Porter
When Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Washington Post columnist David
Ignatius this week that he believes Israel was likely to attack Iran between
April and June, it was ostensibly yet another expression of alarm at the Israeli
government’s threats of military action.
But even though the administration is undoubtedly concerned about that Israeli
threat, the Panetta leak had a different objective. The White House was taking
advantage of the current crisis atmosphere over that Israeli threat and even
seeking to make it more urgent in order to put pressure on Iran to make
diplomatic concessions to the United States and its allies on its nuclear
program in the coming months.
The real aim of the leak brings into sharper focus a contradiction in the Barack
Obama administration’s Iran policy between its effort to reduce the likelihood
of being drawn into a war with Iran and its desire to exploit the Israeli threat
of war to gain diplomatic leverage on Iran.
The Panetta leak makes it less likely that either Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu or Iranian strategists will take seriously Obama’s effort to
keep the United States out of a war initiated by an Israeli attack. It seriously
undercut the message carried to the Israelis by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, last month that the United States would not come to
Israel’s defense if it launched a unilateral attack on Iran, as IPS reported on
Feb. 1.
A tell-tale indication of Panetta’s real intention was his very specific mention
of the period from April through June as the likely time frame for an Israeli
attack. Panetta suggested that the reason was that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud
Barak had identified this as the crucial period in which Iran would have entered
a so-called “zone of immunity” the successful movement of some unknown
proportion of Iran’s uranium enrichment assets to the highly protected Fordow
enrichment plant.
But Barak had actually said in an interview last November that he “couldn’t
predict” whether that point would be reached in “two quarters or three quarters
or a year”.
Why, then, would Panetta deliberately specify the second quarter as the time
frame for an Israeli attack? The one explicit connection between the April-June
period and the dynamics of the U.S.-Israel-Iran triangle is the expiration of
the six-month period delay in the application of the European Union’s apparently
harsh sanctions against the Iranian oil sector.
That six-month delay in the termination of all existing EU oil contracts with
Iran was announced by the EU on Jan. 23, but it was reported as early as Jan. 14
that the six-month delay had already been adopted informally as a compromise
between the three-month delay favored by Britain, France and Germany and the
one-year delay being demanded by other member countries.
The Obama administration had also delayed its own sanctions on Iranian oil for
six months, after having been forced to accept such sanctions by the U.S.
Congress at the urging of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
The administration recognized that six-month period before U.S. and EU sanctions
take effect as a window for negotiations with Iran aimed at defusing the crisis
over its nuclear program. So it was determined to use that same time frame to
put pressure on Iran to accommodate U.S. and European demands.
By the time the news of the postponement of the U.S.-Israeli military exercise
broke on Jan. 15, Panetta was already prepared to take advantage of that
development to gain diplomatic leverage on Iran.
Laura Rozen of Yahoo News reported that U.S. Defense Department officials and
former officials, speaking anonymously, said Barak had requested the
postponement and that they were “privately concerned” the request “could be one
potential warning signal Israel is trying to leave its options open for
conducting a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the spring.”
The Israelis were not on board with that Obama administration tactic. In fact,
Netanyahu seemed more interested in portraying the Obama administration as
favoring a soft approach on Iran in an election year.
Instead of reinforcing the effort by Panetta to use the six-month window to
bring diplomatic pressure, Defense Minister Barak, speaking on Army Radio on
Jan. 18, said the government had “no date for making decisions” on a possible
attack on Iran and, adding “The whole thing is very far off.”
Another indication that the Ignatius column was not intended to increase
pressure on Israel but rather to impress Iran is that it did not reinforce the
message taken by Gen. Dempsey to Israel last month that the United States would
not join any war with Iran that Israel had initiated on its own without
consulting with Washington.
Ignatius wrote that the administration “appears to favor staying out of the
conflict unless Iran hits U.S. assets which would trigger a strong U.S.
response.” But then he added what was clearly the main point: “Administration
officials caution that Tehran shouldn’t misunderstand: the United States has a
60-year commitment to Israeli security, and if Israeli population centers were
hit, the United States could feel obligated to come to Israel’s defense.”
Ignatius, who is known for reflecting only the views of the top U.S. defense and
intelligence officials, was clearly reporting what he had been told by Panetta
in Brussels.
Further underlining the real intention behind Panetta leak, Ignatius went out of
his way to present Netanyahu’s assumptions about a war as credible, if not
perfectly reasonable, hinting that this was the view he was getting from
Panetta.
The Israelis, he wrote “are said to believe that a military strike could be
limited and constrained.” Emphasizing the Israeli doubt that Iran would dare to
retaliate heavily against Israeli population centers, Ignatius cited “(o)ne
Israeli estimate” that a war against Iran would only entail “about 500 civilian
casualties.”
Ignatius chose not to point out that the estimate of less than 500 deaths had
been given by Barak last November in response to a statement by former Mossad
director Meir Dagan that an attack on Iran would precipitate a “regional war
that would endanger the (Israeli) state’s existence”.
After that Barak claim, Dagan said in an interview with Haaretz newspaper that
he assumes that “the level of destruction and paralysis of everyday life, and
Israeli death toll would be high.” But Ignatius ignored the assessment of the
former Mossad director.
The Panetta leak appears to confirm the fears of analysts following the
administration’s Iran strategy closely that its effort to distance the United
States from an Israeli attack would be ineffective because of competing
interests.
Reza Marashi, research director at the National Iranian-American Council who
worked in the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs from 2006 to 2010,
doubts the administration can avoid being drawn into an Israeli war with Iran
without a very public and unequivocal statement that it will not tolerate a
unilateral and unprovoked Israeli attack.
“Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. And sometimes the only way to ensure
that a friend doesn’t endanger you or themselves is to take the away the car
keys,” Marashi said.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S.
national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of
Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in
2006. [This story originally appeared at Inter Press Service.]
What Israel Really Fears about Iran
Israel does not really see Iran as an “existential threat,” at least not in the
sense that Iran would fire a hypothetical nuclear bomb at Israel. Rather, Israel
fears that an Iranian bomb would tilt the strategic balance, since Israel now
holds a nuclear monopoly in the region, as William Blum explains.
By William Blum
As we all know only too well, the United States and Israel would hate to see
Iran possessing nuclear weapons. Being “the only nuclear power in the Middle
East” is a great card for Israel to have in its hand. But, in the real, nonpropaganda world, is US/Israel actually fearful of an attack from a nucleararmed Iran? In case you’ve forgotten …
In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that
in her opinion “Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to
Israel.” She “also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is
attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.”
[Haaretz.com (Israel), Oct. 25, 2007; print edition Oct. 26]
2009: “A senior Israeli official in Washington” asserted that “Iran would be
unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the
certainty of retaliation.” [Washington Post, March 5, 2009]
In 2010, the Sunday Times of London (Jan. 10) reported that Brigadier-General
Uzi Eilam, war hero, pillar of the Israeli defense establishment, and former
director-general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, “believes it will
probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons.”
Early last month, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a television
audience: “Are they [Iran] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No, but we know
that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability.” [“Face the Nation”, CBS,
Jan. 8, 2012; see video]
A week later we could read in the New York Times (Jan. 15) that “three leading
Israeli security experts, the Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, a former Mossad chief,
Efraim Halevy, and a former military chief of staff, Dan Halutz, all recently
declared that a nuclear Iran would not pose an existential threat to Israel.”
Then, a few days afterward, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview
with Israeli Army Radio (Jan. 18), had this exchange:
Question: Is it Israel’s judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its
nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?
Barak: People ask whether Iran is determined to break out from the control
[inspection] regime right now … in an attempt to obtain nuclear weapons or an
operable installation as quickly as possible. Apparently that is not the case.
Lastly, we have the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, in a
report to Congress: “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to
build nuclear weapons. … There are “certain things [the Iranians] have not done”
that would be necessary to build a warhead. [The Guardian (London), Jan. 31,
2012]
Admissions like the above, and there are others, are never put into headlines by
the American mass media; indeed, only very lightly reported at all; and
sometimes distorted, On the Public Broadcasting System (PBS News Hour, Jan. 9),
the non-commercial network much beloved by American liberals, the Panetta quote
above was reported as: “But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear
capability, and that’s what concerns us.”
Flagrantly omitted were the preceding words: “Are they trying to develop a
nuclear weapon? No …” [“PBS’s Dishonest Iran Edit”, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy
in Reporting), Jan. 10, 2012]
One of Israel’s leading military historians, Martin van Creveld, was interviewed
by Playboy magazine in June 2007:
Playboy: Can the World live with a nuclear Iran?
Van Creveld: The U.S. has lived with a nuclear Soviet Union and a nuclear China,
so why not a nuclear Iran? I’ve researched how the U.S. opposed nuclear
proliferation in the past, and each time a country was about to proliferate, the
U.S. expressed its opposition in terms of why this other country was very
dangerous and didn’t deserve to have nuclear weapons.
“Americans believe they’re the only people who deserve to have nuclear weapons,
because they are good and democratic and they like Mother and apple pie and the
flag. But Americans are the only ones who have used them. …
“We are in no danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us.
We cannot say so too openly, however, because we have a history of using any
threat in order to get weapons … thanks to the Iranian threat, we are getting
weapons from the U.S. and Germany.”
And throughout these years, regularly, Israeli and American officials have been
assuring us that Iran is World Nuclear Threat Number One, that we can’t relax
our guard against them, that there should be no limit to the ultra-tough
sanctions we impose upon the Iranian people and their government.
Repeated murder and attempted murder of Iranian nuclear scientists, sabotage of
Iranian nuclear equipment with computer viruses, the sale of faulty parts and
raw materials, unexplained plane crashes, explosions at Iranian facilities … Who
can be behind this but US/Israel? How do we know? It’s called “plain common
sense.” Or do you think it was Costa Rica? Or perhaps South Africa? Or maybe
Thailand?
Defense Secretary Panetta recently commented on one of the assassinations of an
Iranian scientist. He put it succinctly: “That’s not what the United States
does.” [Reuters, Jan. 12, 2012]
Does anyone know Leon Panetta’s e-mail address? I’d like to send him my list of
United States assassination plots. More than 50 foreign leaders were targeted
over the years, many successfully. [See http://killinghope.org/bblum6/assass.htm
]
Not long ago, Iraq and Iran were regarded by US/Israel as the most significant
threats to Israeli Middle-East hegemony. Thus was born the myth of Iraqi Weapons
of Mass Destruction, and the United States proceeded to turn Iraq into a basket
case.
That left Iran, and thus was born the myth of the Iranian Nuclear Threat. As it
began to sink in that Iran was not really that much of a nuclear threat, or that
this “threat” was becoming too difficult to sell to the rest of the world,
US/Israel decided that, at a minimum, it wanted regime change. The next step may
be to block Iran’s lifeline, oil sales using the Strait of Hormuz.
Ergo, the recent US and EU naval buildup near the Persian Gulf, an act of war
trying to goad Iran into firing the first shot. If Iran tries to counter this
blockade, it could be the signal for another US Basket Case, the fourth in a
decade, with the devastated people of Libya and Afghanistan, along with Iraq,
currently enjoying America’s unique gift of freedom and democracy.
On Jan. 11, the Washington Post reported: “In addition to influencing Iranian
leaders directly, [a US intelligence official] says another option here is that
[sanctions] will create hate and discontent at the street level so that the
Iranian leaders realize that they need to change their ways.”
How utterly charming, these tactics and goals for the 21st Century by the leader
of “The Free World”. (Is that expression still used?)
The neo-conservative thinking (and Barack Obama can be regarded as often being a
fellow traveler of such) is even more charming than that. Listen to Danielle
Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at America’s most
prominent neo-con think tank, American Enterprise Institute:
“The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon
and testing it, it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the
second that they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers
are going to come back and say, ‘See, we told you Iran is a responsible power.
We told you Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them
immediately.’ … And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not
a problem.” [Video of Pletka making these remarks]
What are we to make of that and all the other quotations above? I think it gets
back to my opening statement: Being “the only nuclear power in the Middle East”
is a great card for Israel to have in its hand. Is US/Israel willing to go to
war to hold on to that card?
William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions
Since World War 2; Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower; WestBloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir; Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the
American Empire. Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased,
at www.killinghope.org. This article was originally published in Blum’s AntiEmpire Report.
US/Israel: Iran NOT Building Nukes
Exclusive: Recent comments by U.S and Israeli military leaders indicate that the
intelligence services of the two countries agree that Iran has not decided to
build a nuclear bomb, a crack in the Western narrative that the U.S. press corps
won’t accept, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern explains.
By Ray McGovern
Has Iran decided to build a nuclear bomb? That would seem to be the central
question in the current bellicose debate over whether the world should simply
cripple Iran’s economy and inflict severe pain on its civilian population or
launch a preemptive war to destroy its nuclear capability while possibly
achieving “regime change.”
And if you’ve been reading the New York Times or following the rest of the
Fawning Corporate Media, you’d likely assume that everyone who matters agrees
that the answer to the question is yes, although the FCM adds the caveat that
Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. The line is
included with an almost perceptible wink and an “oh, yeah.”
However, a consensus seems to be emerging among the intelligence and military
agencies of the United States and Israel that Iran has NOT made a decision to
build a nuclear weapon. In recent days, that judgment has been expressed by
high-profile figures in the defense establishments of the two countries U.S.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
You might think that you would have heard more about that, wouldn’t you? U.S.
and Israel agree that Iran is NOT building a nuclear bomb. However, this joint
assessment that Iran has NOT decided to build a nuclear bomb apparently
represented too big a change in the accepted narrative for the Times and the
rest of the FCM to process.
Yet, on Jan. 18, the day before U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey
arrived for talks in Israel, Israeli Defense Minister Barak gave an interview to
Israeli Army radio in which he addressed with striking candor how he assesses
Iran’s nuclear program. It was not the normal pabulum.
Question: Is it Israel’s judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its
nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?
Barak: confusion stems from the fact that people ask whether Iran is determined
to break out from the control [inspection] regime right now in an attempt to
obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as possible.
Apparently that is not the case.
Question: How long will it take from the moment Iran decides to turn it into
effective weapons until it has nuclear warheads?
Barak: I don’t know; one has to estimate. Some say a year, others say 18
months. It doesn’t really matter. To do that, Iran would have to announce it is
leaving the [UN International Atomic Energy Agency] inspection regime and stop
responding to IAEA’s criticism, etc.
Why haven’t they [the Iranians] done that? Because they realize that when it
became clear to everyone that Iran was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, this
would constitute definite proof that time is actually running out. This could
generate either harsher sanctions or other action against them. They do not want
that.
Question: Has the United States asked or demanded that the government inform the
Americans in advance, should it decide on military action?
Barak: I don’t want to get into that. We have not made a decision to opt for
that, we have not decided on a decision-making date. The whole thing is very far
off.
Question: You said the whole thing is “very far off.” Do you mean weeks, months,
years?
Barak: I wouldn’t want to provide any estimates. It’s certainly not urgent. I
don’t want to relate to it as though tomorrow it will happen.
As noted in my Jan. 19 article, “Israel Tamps Down Iran War Threats,” which was
based mostly on reports from the Israeli press before I had access to the
complete transcript of the interview, I noted that Barak appeared to be
identifying himself with the consistent assessment of U.S. intelligence
community since late 2007 that Iran has not made a decision to go forward with a
nuclear bomb.
A Momentous NIE
A formal National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007 a consensus of all 16
U.S. intelligence agencies contradicted the encrusted conventional wisdom that
“of course” Iran’s nuclear development program must be aimed at producing
nuclear weapons. The NIE stated:
“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear
weapons program; Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests
it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since
2005.”
The Key Judgments of that Estimate elicited a vituperative reaction from some
Israeli officials and in neoconservative circles in the United States. It also
angered then-President George W. Bush, who joined the Israelis in expressing
disagreement with the judgments. In January 2008, Bush flew to Israel to
commiserate with Israeli officials who he said should have been “furious with
the United States over the NIE.”
While Bush’s memoir, Decision Points, is replete with bizarre candor, nothing
beats his admission that “the NIE tied my hands on the military side,”
preventing him from ordering a preemptive war against Iran, an action favored by
hawkish Vice President Dick Cheney.
For me personally it was heartening to discover that my former colleagues in the
CIA’s analytical division had restored the old ethos of telling difficult truths
to power, after the disgraceful years under CIA leaders like George Tenet and
John McLaughlin when the CIA followed the politically safer route of telling the
powerful what they wanted to hear.
It had been three decades since I chaired a couple of National Intelligence
Estimates, but fate never gave me the chance to manage one that played such a
key role in preventing an unnecessary and disastrous war, as the November 2007
NIE did.
In such pressure-cooker situations, the Estimates job is not for the malleable
or the faint-hearted. The ethos was to speak with courage, and without fear or
favor, but that is often easier said than done. In my days, however, we analysts
enjoyed career protection for telling it like we saw it. It was an incredible
boost to morale to see that happening again in 2007.
Ever since the NIE was published, however, powerful politicians and media
pundits have sought to chip away at its conclusions, suggesting that the
analysts were hopelessly naive or politically motivated or vengeful, out to
punish Bush and Cheney for the heavy-handed tactics used to push false and
dubious claims about Iraq’s WMD in 2002 and 2003.
A New Conventional Wisdom
There emerged in Official Washington a new conventional wisdom that the NIE was
erroneous and wasn’t worth mentioning anymore. Though the Obama administration
has stood by it, the New York Times and other FCM outlets routinely would state
that the United States and Israel agreed that Iran was developing a nuclear bomb
and then add the wink-wink denial by Iran.
However, on Jan. 8, Defense Secretary Panetta told Bob Schieffer on “Face the
Nation” that “the responsible thing to do right now is to keep putting
diplomatic and economic pressure on them [the Iranians] and to make sure that
they do not make the decision to proceed with the development of a nuclear
weapon.”
Panetta was making the implicit point that the Iranians had not made that
decision, but just in case someone might miss his meaning, Panetta posed the
direct question to himself: “Are they [the Iranians] trying to develop a nuclear
weapon? No.”
Barak’s Jan. 18 statement to Israeli Army radio indicated that his views
dovetail with those of Panetta and their comments apparently are backed up by
the assessments of each nation’s intelligence analysts. In its report on Defense
Minister Barak’s remarks, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Jan. 19 summed up the
change in the position of Israeli leaders as follows:
“The intelligence assessment Israeli officials will present to Dempsey indicates
that Iran has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb. The Israeli view
is that while Iran continues to improve its nuclear capabilities, it has not yet
decided whether to translate these capabilities into a nuclear weapon or, more
specifically, a nuclear warhead mounted atop a missile. Nor is it clear when
Iran might make such a decision.”
At the New York Times, the initial coverage of Barak’s interview focused on
another element. An article by Isabel Kershner and Rick Gladstone appeared on
Jan. 19 on page A5 under the headline “Decision on Whether to Attack Iran is
‘Far Off,’ Israeli Defense Minister Says.”
To their credit, the Times’ Kershner and Gladstone did not shrink from offering
an accurate translation of what Barak said on the key point of IAEA inspections:
“The Iranians have not ended the oversight exercised by the International Atomic
Energy Agency They have not done that because they know that that would
constitute proof of the military nature of their nuclear program and that would
provoke stronger international sanctions or other types of action against their
country.”
But missing from the Times’ article was Barak’s more direct assessment that Iran
apparently had not made a decision to press ahead toward construction of a
nuclear bomb. That would have undercut the boilerplate in almost every Times
story saying that U.S. and Israeli officials believe Iran is working on a
nuclear bomb.
But That’s Not the Right Line!
So, what to do? Not surprisingly, the next day (Jan. 20), the Times ran an
article by its Middle East bureau chief Ethan Bronner in which he stated
categorically: “Israel and the United States both say that Iran is pursuing the
building of nuclear weapons, an assertion denied by Iran, …”
By Jan. 21, the Times had time to prepare an entire page (A8) of articles
setting the record “straight,” so to speak, on Iran’s nuclear capabilities and
intentions: Here are the most telling excerpts, by article (emphasis mine):
1- “European Union Moves Closer to Imposing Tough Sanctions on Iran,” by Steven
Erlanger, Paris:
“Senior French officials are concerned that these measures [sanctions] will not
be strong enough to push the Iranian government into serious, substantive
negotiations on its nuclear program which the West says is aimed at producing
weapons.”
“In his annual speech on French diplomacy on Friday, President Nicolas Sarkozy
accused Iran of lying, and he denounced what he called its ‘senseless race for a
nuclear bomb.’”
“Iran says it is enriching uranium solely for peaceful uses and denies a
military intent.
But few in the West believe Tehran, which has not cooperated
fully with inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and has been
pursuing some technologies that have only a military use.”
(Pardon me, please. I’m having a bad flashback. Anyone remember the Times’
peerless reporting on those infamous “aluminum tubes” that supposedly were
destined for nuclear centrifuges, until some folks did a Google search and found
they were for the artillery then used by Iraq?)
2- “China Leader Warns Iran Not to Make Nuclear Arms,” by Michael Wines, Beijing
“Prime Minister Wen Jiabao wrapped up a six-day Middle East tour this week with
stronger-than-usual criticism of Iran’s defiance on its nuclear program.”
“Mr. Wen’s comments on Iran were unusually pointed for Chinese diplomacy. In
Doha, Qatar’s capital, he said China ‘adamantly opposes Iran developing and
possessing nuclear weapons.’”
“Western nations suspect that Iran is working toward building a nuclear weapon,
while Iran insists its program is peaceful.”
3- “U.S. General Urges Closer Ties With Israel.” by Isabel Kershner, Jerusalem
“Though Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program is only for civilian
purposes, Israel, the United Stated, and much of the West are convinced that
Iran is working to develop a weapons program. ”
Never (Let Up) on Sunday
Next it was time for the Times to trot out David Sanger from the Washington
bullpen. Many will remember him as one of the Times’ stenographers/cheerleaders
for the Bush/Cheney attack on Iraq in March 2003. An effusive hawk also on Iran,
Sanger was promoted to a position as chief Washington correspondent, apparently
for services rendered.
In his Jan. 22 article, “Confronting Iran in a Year of Elections,” Sanger pulls
out all the stops, even resurrecting Condoleezza Rice’s “mushroom cloud” to
scare all of us, and, not least, the Iranians. He wrote:
“‘From the perception of the Iranians, life may look better on the other side of
the mushroom cloud,’ said Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations. He may be right: while the Obama administration has vowed that it
will never tolerate Iran as a nuclear weapons state, a few officials admit that
they may have to settle for a ‘nuclear capable’ Iran that has the technology,
the nuclear fuel and the expertise to become a nuclear power in a matter of
weeks or months.”
Were that not enough, enter the national champion of the Times cheerleading
squad that prepared the American people in 2002 and early 2003 for the attack on
Iraq, former Executive Editor Bill Keller. He graced us the next day (Jan. 23)
with an op-ed entitled “Bomb-Bomb-Bomb, Bomb-Bomb-Iran?”
though he wasn’t
favoring a military strike, at least not right now. Here’s Keller:
“The actual state of the [nuclear] program is not entirely clear, but the best
open-source estimates are that if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered full-speedahead, which there is no sign he has done, they could have an actual weapon in a
year or so. In practice, Obama’s policy promises to be tougher than Bush’s.
Because Obama started out with an offer of direct talks, which the Iranians
foolishly spurned, world opinion has shifted in our direction.”
Wow. With Iraqi egg still all over his face, the disgraced Keller gets to
“spurn” history itself , to rewrite the facts. Sorry, Bill, it was not Iran, but
rather Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other neocons in the U.S.
Department of State and White House (with you and neocon allies in the press
cheering them on), who “foolishly spurned” an offer by Iran in 2010 to trade
about half its low-enriched uranium for medical isotopes. It was a deal
negotiated by Turkey and Brazil, but it was viewed by the neocons as an obstacle
to ratcheting up the sanctions.
In his Jan. 23 column, with more sophomoric glibness, Keller wrote this:
“We may now have sufficient global support to enact the one measure that would
be genuinely crippling, a boycott of Iranian oil. The Iranians take this threat
to their economic livelihood seriously enough that people who follow the subject
no longer minimize the chance of a naval confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz.
It’s not impossible that we will get war with Iran even without bombing its
nuclear facilities.”
How neat! War without even trying!
The Paper of (Checkered Record)
Guidance To All NYT Hands: Are you getting the picture? After all, what does
Defense Minister Barak know? Or Defense Secretary Panetta? Or the 16 agencies of
the U.S. intelligence community? Or apparently even Israeli intelligence?
The marching orders from the Times’ management appear to be that you should pay
no heed to those sources of information. Just repeat the mantra: Everyone knows
Iran is hard at work on the Bomb.
As is well known, other newspapers and media outlets take their cue from the
Times.
Small wonder, then, that USA Today seemed to be following the same
guidance on Jan. 23, as can be seen in its major editorial on military action
against Iran:
“The U.S. and Iran will keep steaming toward confrontation, Iran intent on
acquiring the bomb to establish itself as a regional power, and the U.S. intent
on preventing it to protect allies and avoid a nuclear arms race in the world’s
most volatile region.
“One day, the U.S. is likely to face a wrenching choice: bomb Iran, with the
nation fully united and prepared for the consequences, or let Iran have the
weapons, along with a Cold War-like doctrine ensuring Iran’s nuclear
annihilation if it ever uses them. In that context, sanctions remain the last
best hope for a satisfactory solution.”
And, of course, the U.S. press corps almost never adds the context that Israel
already possesses an undeclared arsenal of hundreds of nuclear weapons, or that
Iran is essentially surrounded by nuclear weapons states, including India,
Pakistan, Russia, China and at sea the United States.
PBS Equally Guilty
PBS’s behavior adhered to its customary don’t-offend-the-politicians-who-mightotherwise-cut-our-budget attitude on the Jan. 18 “NewsHour” about 12 hours after
Ehud Barak’s interview started making the rounds. Host Margaret Warner set the
stage for an interview with neocon Dennis Ross and Vali Nasr (a professor at
Tufts) by using a thoroughly misleading clip from former Sen. Rick Santorum’s
Jan. 1 appearance on “Meet the Press.”
Warner started by saying: “Back in the U.S. many Republican presidential
candidates have been vowing they’d be even tougher with Tehran. Former Senator
Rick Santorum spoke on NBC’s Meet the Press: ‘I would be saying to the Iranians,
you open up those facilities, you begin to dismantle them and make them
available to inspectors, or we will degrade those facilities through air strikes
and make it very public that we are doing so.’”
Santorum seemed totally unaware that there are U.N. inspectors in Iran, and host
David Gregory did nothing to correct him, leaving Santorum’s remark
unchallenged. The blogosphere immediately lit up with requests for NBC to tell
their viewers that there are already U.N. inspectors in Iran, which unlike
Israel is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and allows IAEA
inspections.
During the Warner interview, Dennis Ross performed true to form, projecting
supreme confidence that he knows more about Iran’s nuclear program than the
Israeli Defense Minister and the U.S. intelligence community combined:
Margaret Warner:
If you hamstring their [Iran’s] Central Bank, and the U.S.
persuades all these other big customers not to buy Iranian oil, that could be
thought of as an act of war on the part of the Iranians. Is that a danger?
Ross: I think there’s a context here. The context is that the Iranians continue
to pursue a nuclear program. And unmistakably to many, that is a nuclear program
whose purpose is to achieve nuclear weapons. That has a very high danger, a very
high consequence. So the idea that they could continue with that and not realize
that at some point they have to make a choice, and if they don’t make the
choice, the price they’re going to pay is a very high one, that’s the logic of
increasing the pressure.
Never mind that the Israeli Defense Minister had told the press something quite
different some 12 hours before.
Still, it is interesting that Barak’s comments on how Israeli intelligence views
Iran’s nuclear program now mesh so closely with the NIE in 2007. This is the new
and significant story here, as I believe any objective journalist would agree.
However, the FCM, led by the New York Times, cannot countenance admitting that
they have been hyping the threat from Iran as they did with Iraq’s non-existent
WMDs just nine years ago. So they keep repeating the line that Israel and the
U.S. agree that Iran is building a nuclear weapon.
In this up-is-down world, America’s newspaper of record won’t even report
accurately what Israel (or the CIA) thinks on this important issue, if that goes
against the alarmist conventional wisdom that the neocons favor. Thus, we have
this divergence between what the U.S. media is reporting as flat fact, i.e.,
that Israel and the United States believe Iran is building a bomb (though Iran
denies it) and the statements from senior Israeli and U.S. officials that Iran
has NOT decided to build a bomb.
While this might strike some as splitting hairs since peaceful nuclear expertise
can have potential military use this hair is a very important one. If Iran is
not working on building a nuclear bomb, then the threats of preemptive war are
not only unjustified, they could be exactly the motivation for Iran to decide
that it does need a nuclear bomb to protect itself and its people.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church
of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27-year career as a CIA
analyst, he prepared, and briefed, the President’s Daily Brief, and chaired
National Intelligence Estimates. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).