Month: June 2004

Spicy Mercenary

Controversial Commando Wins Iraq Contract

Occupation authorities in Iraq have awarded a $293 million contract effectively creating the world’s largest private army to a company headed by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer, a former officer with the SAS, an elite regiment of British commandos, who has been investigated for illegally smuggling arms and planning military offensives to support mining, oil, and gas operations around the world. On May 25, the Army Transportation command awarded Spicer’s company, Aegis Defense Services, the contract to coordinate all the security for Iraqi reconstruction projects.

[…]

Major Gary Tallman, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army, explained that the contract was to create an “integrator” or coordination hub for the security operation for every single reconstruction contractor and sub-contractor. “Their job is to disseminate information and provide guidance and coordination throughout the four regions of Iraq.”

I sure hope that doesn’t mean that they’ll be doing any “gathering and analysis of tactical intelligence” because that would be against Army regulations, as this article in today’s NY Times discusses:

The use of private contractors as interrogators at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq violates an Army policy that requires such jobs to be filled by government employees because of the “risk to national security,” among other concerns, the Army acknowledged Friday.

An Army policy directive published in 2000 and still in effect today, the military said, classifies any job that involves “the gathering and analysis” of tactical intelligence as “an inherently governmental function barred from private sector performance.”

Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, an Army public affairs officer, acknowledged after consulting with senior Army officials that the service was in violation of that rule, but added that military commanders in Iraq, “retain the right to make exceptions.” Another senior Army officer, in Baghdad, explained that using contract interrogators was a solution to shortages of suitable Army personnel.

The rule does not authorize exceptions for jobs involving the collection or analysis of tactical intelligence, which is perishable information the military can use for planning operations. A related White House policy directive insists that agencies “perform inherently governmental activities with government personnel.”

Well gosh, it’s getting a little bit hard to know where those lines are drawn, isn’t it, what with private contractors being the second biggest providers (after the US military) of manpower in the coalition of the willing?

Private security companies have been asking the military for help in coordinating work for several months. In April, following the killing of several private security contractors in Baghdad, Falluja, and Kut, the companies started to pool information on an ad-hoc basis. At the time, Nick Edmunds, Iraq coordinator for the Hart Group, which provides security to media and engineering groups in Iraq, told The Washington Post, “There is absolutely a growing cooperation along unofficial lines. We try to give each other warnings about things we hear are about to happen.”

This particular contract is interesting not only because it is run by a war criminal (which in this administration is a selling point) but it is also a big fat payoff to the UK, for huge money:

Under the “cost-plus” contract, the military will cover all of the company’s expenses, plus a pre-determined percentage of whatever they spend, which critics say is a license to over-bill. The company has also been asked to provide 75 close protection teams–comprised of eight men each–for the high-level staff of companies that are running the oil and gas fields, electricity, and water services in Iraq

[…]

Industry insiders speculate that Aegis won the contract because of growing anger in Britain that UK-based companies have not been awarded large contracts in the reconstruction of Iraq, despite the leading role that the Tony Blair’s government has played in the “coalition of the willing.” The only other British bid for the contract, the Control Risks joint venture, was disqualified because one of the partners was under investigation for undisclosed reasons at the time the bids were evaluated.

Because of the politics in the decision, some groups are questioning the contracting process. “It’s not evident why they they would run a rent-a-cop contract through an Army transportation division in Virginia except that maybe the staff there are more experienced and can write a professional contract that can withstand a bid protest better than the Heritage foundation interns that run contracting in Baghdad,” said John Pike, a spokesman for the military watchdog group Globalsecurity.org. For the first 12 months, all contracts in Iraq were evaluated by a group of six men and women in their 20s who were hired on the basis of job resumes they posted at the right-wing foundation’s website.

Maybe. More likely they are just hiding the paper trail.

If you want to read about the super-hero owner of this company, here’s a good run down. He’s quite a glamorous war criminal as war criminals go. Now he’s going to be filthy rich on our dime. Ain’t freedom and democracy great?

Last Chance

When U.S. officials pushed for war in Iraq claiming that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat, Berka believed them. Like many who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, he was inspired by President Bush’s call to liberate the Iraqi people from a brutal dictatorship.

Not anymore.

“In the last few months I have seen that I was wrong to support the war,” Berka, 36, said, sipping beer after work.

A tour guide from Prague, Berka is part of what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once called new Europe — the former Soviet satellite countries that have come to be regarded as America’s staunchest allies on the continent. The Czech, Polish and Hungarian governments not only sided diplomatically with Washington as part of Bush’s “coalition of the willing,” they committed troops to the cause.

But support for the United States, already damaged by the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and a seemingly ever-growing insurgency, has taken a particularly heavy blow from the photos and other revelations of abuse against Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison.

“The photos were the last straw,” said Berka. “When I saw those pictures, it was a signal to admit that I was wrong.”

Similar sentiments are being heard throughout this pro-American part of the world.

In Prague, Warsaw and Budapest, many say they were dismayed to see the United States — a beacon of freedom and democracy during their dark decades under Soviet domination — employing methods reminiscent of communist dictatorships.

[…]

“Abu Ghraib dented my belief in the perfection of America’s Army, but not in its democracy,” said Blazej Roguz, a 25-year-old resident of Katowice in southern Poland who still supports the war.

Describing the abuse scandal as “poisonous” for America’s image, Roguz said he was nevertheless impressed that the photos were made public and the matter is being investigated.

“They published them,” he said. “I liked that they didn’t try to whitewash the whole issue.”

Opponents of the war, like Berka in Prague, expressed similar hope in the United States’ ability to rectify the damage that has been done.

“My trust in America is still there,” he said. “The thing I always believed is that America has a good immune system — that it can correct and clean itself. This is a big test for the American democratic system.”

Yes it is.

These guys know that the one thing we have left is a free press and the ability to rise up as citizens and change the course of our policies. Whether we will have the wisdom to understand what is at stake is another thing. These people certainly do.

Match me, Sidney

A Republican front group has been created to smear Fahrenheit 911. If this becomes a “controversy” it’s important that we all send letters to the press so that they will know this group is not grassroots.

I imagine that this is why Moore has hired a war room staff:

Parachuting into France for the documentary’s Cannes Film Festival launch, a Miramax rep told us, were Howard Wolfson, ex-campaign press secretary for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Michael Feldman, a top adviser on Al Gore’s 2000 presidential race. (Feldman founded the Glover Park Group, a D.C. communications outfit, with ex-Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart.) Also providing PR expertise on the anti-Bush movie: former Clinton White House advisers Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane.

“We knew the film would obviously draw a lot of political attention and attacks, and we try to do what’s best for our movie,” Miramax spokesman MatthewHiltzik said from the film festival. “We felt that having the political expertise to withstand the political attacks would require hiring the people who have the most experience on that terrain.”

I know that everybody hates Lehane with a fervor only matched by their hatred for Bush. But, this is what he’s good at. He’d “sell out his own girl if he could stand up there … and suck in the sweet smell of success.” Politics and Hollywood have always had guys like him. They serve a useful purpose.

And one rather significant thing is that Moore and the Weinsteins aren’t hiding anything. The GOP frontgroup is pretending to be a bunch of Nascar Moms and Waitress Dads. The press will have to be reminded of this when they start interviewing Ethel and Gomer about how offended they are by the movie.

Dim Justice

Can somebody explain to me why everyone is assuming that Bush is going to be defeated in the Supreme Court on the Guantanamo and Padilla cases? The Guardian had this similar story.

Common sense would tell you that the court would reject the administration in light of all the information that’s come out in the press regarding torture, assertions of presidential infallibility and the like. (One would think that the court would want to guard it’s own turf at the very least.)

But common sense also would have said that the court would stay out of electoral matters to preserve its own reputation and they didn’t. On that day, I lost all faith that the court could be relied upon to behave in a rational, consistent or even self-serving way.

I suspect that this has more to do with Sandra Day O’Connor than anyone else who seems to make things up as she goes along. She may very well vote against Bush on thses cases. But since she has no intellectual consistency, she may just as easily vote against him. Which is why I ask why anyone makes any assumptions about this court? The swing vote is completely incomprehensible.

Update: Lawyers, Guns and Money weighs in.

Any other lawyers, court watchers or dilettantes care to?

And Bob Jones Says Hello

Bush Asked for Vatican’s Help on Political Issues, Report Says

This is the reason for the separation of church and state in a pluralistic democracy. It’s not that you don’t want politicians to be religious people or that you don’t want religious people to be political. It’s that when you get politics enmeshed in religion you screw up religion and politics to the detriment of both. Hundreds of years of bloody religious wars in Europe taught the founders of this country that religion can be a dangerous political weapon and they decided that the government should remain neutral on the subject in order to prevent both religious persecution and undue influence. It’s worked out pretty well for us up to now, at least better than most.

But that’s not the only reason why government and religion are a bad combination, and nowadays it’s not necessarily even the most important reason:

In the last six months, a handful of Catholic bishops in the United States have already weighed in on the presidential race by threatening to withhold communion from Catholic politicians who disagree with the church’s stance on abortion, a group that includes Senator Kerry.

Other bishops, however, have said that threatening to withhold communion goes too far, and the pope has warned of “the formation of factions within the church” in the United States. The bishops are expected to take up the matter at a closed-door conference this week in Colorado.

I realize that the american catholic church has a number of internal issues that are not related to politics, but surely this is not helping. And catholics aren’t the only churches dividing up into political factions. You can see it happening in the episcopal church with gay priests; the methodists and the baptists both have issues with women’s rights. Jews are fighting over the country’s stand on Iraq. Much of this stuff is purely doctrinal and hasn’t got much to do with government. But, our president and his braintrust’s obsession with the religion vote as a single constituency, is making these issues more and more explicitly political. It’s not only dividing the country, it’s dividing the religions themselves.

If you are a religious person you should be very worried about this development. It is not in the American tradition to treat “religion” as a political constituency and govern explicitly from a religious standpoint. This is new. But as much as that might be uncomfortable to despised atheists like me, it should be doubly uncomfortable to believers who care about their religious institutions. Priests and Pastors are as susceptible to vanity and power as anybody else — perhaps more. These are among the things that caused the schisms in Europe and led to reformations and huge changes. It hardly seems worth it in order to gain temporary influence over some politician whose time in office is short and whose loyalties are necessarily divided.

It’s not only that religion is corrupting the government. It’s that government is corrupting religion. That’s always been the problem.

Thanks to Tristero for the link.

Update: Julia points out that Henry Hyde is making veiled threats to the Catholic church.

She reminds us:

Mr. Hyde is, of course, the gentleman who took the lead in investigating Clinton’s blowjob, as well as the gentleman who was discovered while that investigation was going on to have committed a “youthful indiscretion” from the ages of 41 to 46 and precipitated the dissolution of the marriage of a woman with three children.

[…]

…I suspect that the bishops are not all that terribly likely to be led by Mr. Hyde’s non-traditional view of Catholic doctrine and the public responsibilities of a moral person in this matter.

Or, for that matter, to lift a finger to help someone who is attempting to blackmail them stay in power.

For the sake of all my Catholic friends, I hope not.

Bad Books For Stupid People

This business of using dogs to torture Iraqi prisoners actually is more depraved than is obvious, if you can believe that.

Islam has a prohibition against keeping dogs in the house or touching them. They are considered impure. I would guess that the braintrust who is putting together this new torture regime thought they were being very clever by doing something that “the ayrabs” would find particularly unpleasant.

We know that big tough American guys like Trent Lott wouldn’t piss all over themselves if they were tied up naked while a 150 lb snarling German Shepard was allowed to back them into a corner and take a piece out of their flesh. They don’t have a problem with dogs like those arabs do.

This is but another example of the crude, stereotypical approach we seem to have taken toward the Iraqis (and undoubtedly the Afghans, as well.) And it is likely because the “intellectuals” who planned and implemented the war don’t have a clue.

Sy Hersh mentioned in his May 24th article in the New Yorker one of the many possible reasons why:

“The notion that Arabs are particularly vulnerable to sexual humiliation became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March, 2003, invasion of Iraq. One book that was frequently cited was ‘The Arab Mind,’ a study of Arab culture and psychology, first published in 1973, by Raphael Patai … The book includes a 25-page chapter on Arabs and sex, depicting sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression … The Patai book, an academic told me, was ‘the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior.'”

You might as well read a ZOG comic on mudpeople as read this for any true understanding. The passages on sex could have been written during Queen Victoria’s reign which is, indeed, the period from which many silly, crude stereotypes about arabs and sex really got off the ground. (The funny thing is that Patai’s book portrays arabs as being rigidly sexually repressed when during Victoria’s time they were reviled for being scandalously oversexed. It seems that no matter what, westerners believe that arabs are all fucked up when it comes to sex. Unlike we Americans, of course, who define healthy sexuality.)

So, a bunch of second rate minds read a third rate book about people they know nothing about except what they’ve seen at parties where Ahmad Chalabi is holding court, and they fashion a torture regime based upon a ridiculous thesis that arabs (unlike Western he-men apparently, which is interesting in itself) are particularly uncomfortable with being herded around naked, forced to pretend to masturbate in front of women and piling themselves up in naked pyramids, among other sexually charged, homoerotic acts.

It’s always interesting to see people’s innermost fears and insecurities projected on to another isn’t it? These neocons have some serious issues.

War Criminal Factoid

I wonder if everyone is aware of the fact that the man who put the “Git Mo Info” into Camp Delta and then took his sophisticated naked men and rabid dogs interrogation techniques to Iraq has no backround in intelligence, prisons or law enforcement?

That’s right, General Ripper, the Theodore Eicke of America’s gulag is actually an artillery officer. And, he doesn’t know fuck-all about interrogation.

From a January article in Vanity Fair by David Rose:

Reporters are not allowed to speak with interrogators or anyone else who deals with intelligence at Gitmo. The only testimony I hear is from General Geoffrey Miller, the task-force commander. “We are developing information of enormous value to the nation,” says Miller, a slight, pugnacious man said to be a strict disciplinarian. “We have an enormously thorough process that has very high resolution and clarity. We think we’re fighting not only to save and protect our families, but your families also. I think of Gitmo as the counterterrorism-interrogation battle lab.”

But Miller’s background is in artillery, not intelligence, and senior intelligence officials with long experience in counterterrorism, who spoke to Vanity Fair on condition of anonymity, question his assessment.

[…]

General Miller makes it clear that he does not have access to staff of this [high] caliber. Seven out of 10 of the interrogators working in his “joint interrogation group” are reservists, and they come to Camp Delta straight from a 25-day course at Fort Huachuca. “They’re all young people, but they’re really committed to winning the mission,” Miller says. “Intelligence is a young person’s game-you’ve got to be flexible.”

Some seasoned intelligence officials disagree. “Generally, the new hires apprentice in the booths with more experienced guys,” says one. “I certainly know of no one at Gitmo having the opportunity or the luxury to be able to prepare an interview for three months.” Another had met some of Miller’s interrogators. “They were rookies, and none were too keen on the process down there,” he says. They knew that any seemingly insignificant tidbit might later turn out to be important, but in general “they just didn’t feel that the process was going anywhere fast.”

According to General Miller, Gitmo’s importance is growing with amazing rapidity: “Last month we gained six times as much intelligence as we did in January 2003. I’m talking about high-value intelligence here, distributed round the world.”

Yeah, that “flow of information” is what it’s all about.

Gisli Gudjonsson, a professor at London’s Institute of Psychiatry, is arguably the world’s leading authority in this field. “The longer people are detained, the harsher the conditions, and the worse the lack of a support system, the greater the risk that what they say will be unreliable,” he explains. Sometimes one suspect will supply the names of others, who will then in turn confess. Each will appear to corroborate the others’ statements, when in fact all are false. This is what happened in the case of the Guildford Four, the subject of Jim Sheridan’s movie In the Name of the Father. They were wrongly jailed in 1974 for blowing up two pubs in England and spent 15 years in prison before the British authorities admitted their mistake. “The first thing an interrogator should acknowledge is that you may get false information from someone who is vulnerable.”

General Miller, however, sees no cause for concern. “I believe we understand what the truth is. We are very, very good at interrogation… As many of our detainees have realized that what they did was wrong, they have begun to give us information that helps us win the global war on terror.”

Spies and psychiatrists may have their doubts, but Donald Rumsfeld is convinced that even the mere foot soldiers imprisoned at Gitmo are “among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.” All, he has said, “were involved in an effort to kill thousands of Americans.”

Yet since 2002, when these claims were made, 64 of these “vicious killers” have been released, all after many months’ detention. John Sifton, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, has traced and interviewed some of them in Afghanistan. They are all, he says, “the most extreme cases of mistaken identity, simply the wrong guys: a farmer, a taxi driver and all his passengers-people with absolutely no connection with the Taliban or terrorism.” Several were victims of bounty hunters, who were paid in dollars after abducting “terrorists” and denouncing them to the U.S. military.

Well, I suppose if a failed businessman, ex-drunk, fratrat mama’s boy could be considered a strong leader, why not send in an artilleryman to gain “intelligence” from a bunch of small time nobodys. He kept that flow of information up and that’s what Mr. Cambone and Ms Rice — the worst and the dimmest — wanted.

Update:

BRIGADIER GENERAL MARK KIMMITT, DEPUTY DIRECTOR COALITION OPERATIONS, IRAQ: It was apparent that many of the units that had not been defeated in the war were starting to act up. We started seeing some problems out around the town of Falluja and we were getting a number of security internees into the detention facilities. Large numbers. There was not an expectation during the war that we would have this large number of internees and when it became apparent that this was a process that we would have to start up, and there were some challenges at that time, we called in the expert. The expert was Major General Geoff Miller.

Miller, the artillery officer, was the expert.

Rogue State Chronicles

Speaking of warcrimes, I just remembered another action premptively absolving Americans of war crimes — the dramatic “unsigning” of the International Criminal Court Treaty and the subsequent signing of the “American Servicemembers’ Protection Act” handily tucked into the “vote for it or you’re a traitor” Supplemental Defense Appropriations Act of 2002.

The first action, a highly unusual unilateral repudiation of a signed treaty, was taken in May of 2002:

“Dear Mr. Secretary-General:

This is to inform you, in connection with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court adopted on July 17, 1998, that the United States does not intend to become a party to the treaty. Accordingly, the United States has no legal obligations arising from its signature on December 31, 2000. The United States requests that its intention not to become a party, as expressed in this letter, be reflected in the depositary’s status lists relating to this treaty.

Sincerely,

S/John R. Bolton”

Easy as pie. No muss no fuss. We don’t like it we just unsign it. Now that’s some tort reform.

It must be noted that the Republicans had long opposed the ICC on the grounds that the jack booted, blue helmeted thugs of the UN were coming to kill Americans because we’re so strong and so good. It was not surprising that they would do this when they got the chance, although “unsigning” treaties was a bit of a shock. (How innocent we all were in those days.)

However, in May of 2002, we also now know that the US government was actively looking for ways to legalize war crimes under all international treaties and US Law. That puts a little different spin on the unsigning, doesn’t it?

And it also makes you wonder about the administration’s strong arming for the ASPA, aka the Hague Invasion Act:

The Washington Working Group on the ICC described it this way:

President Bush signed the Supplemental Defense Appropriations Act of 2002 (HR 4775) into law on August 2, 2002. Contained in the measure was a version of the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act (ASPA) that is heavily modified from the first version introduced over two years ago (for more information on past versions of ASPA, see the WICC Archives). The ASPA limits US cooperation with the International Criminal Court, restricts US participation in UN peacekeeping, prohibits military assistance to most countries that ratify the ICC Statute, and authorizes the President to use “all means necessary and appropriate” to free from captivity any US or allied personnel held by or on behalf of the ICC — a provision that has led European leaders to call it “The Hague Invasion Act.” However, the final version includes broad waiver authority for the President, strengthened by a stipulation that no part of the bill may interfere with the President’s constitutional authority to make foreign policy.

This last part is interesting in that the original versions of the bill, originating during Clinton’s term (sponsored by none other than Monsieur Tom DeLay) put huge restrictions on the president’s ability to conduct any kind of foreign policy with signators of the ICC treaty. Since then we have learned that the president answers to no one and can set aside any law he chooses. Tom didn’t seem bothered by this.

I am not suggesting that there was specific coordination between the congress and the administration to loosen the definition of war crimes so that George W. Bush could assert that he has followed the law when he orders torture (or whatever else his puerile little imagination believes is necessary to defeat Satan.) However, it does reveal the underlying mindset that allowed these budding war criminals to seize the day without any obvious conscience.

The Republicans believe that world leadership is defined by the aggressive use of American power against others and holding itself unaccountable for it, apparantly guided by the absurd fantasy of the mythic, invincible American cowboy. Evidently, nobody told them that the cowboy myth was created by a bunch of pansy-assed, effete dime novelists from New York City.

Shallow hubris has always been their downfall and will be again.

Maybe if some of these tough guys had spent more time actually reading the Canon of Great Dead White Guys instead of complaining that liberal mush-headedness was ruining education they might have learned a thing or two. Even the good old Bullfinch’s Mythology would have sufficed to warn them about the fate of nations whose leaders foprget they are not Gods:

The story of Niobe has furnished Byron with a fine illustration of the fallen condition of modern Rome:

“The Niobe of nations! There she stands,

Childless and crownless in her voiceless woe;

An empty urn within her withered hands,

Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;

The Scipios’ tomb contains no ashes now;

The very sepulchres lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers; dost thou flow,

Old Tiber! Through a marble wilderness?

Rise with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress.”

Catchup

Ronald Reagan is still dead. In other news America is now officially a Rogue State.

For the full compendium of news stories, opinion and blogorama on the subject:

Sisyphus Shrugged – torture link dump

In the president’s beautiful mind, he didn’t order torture because he told the lawyers to make a legal finding that torture was ok and so they found that what we call torture is legal now but it isn’t called torture anymore because torture is still illegal. So the president followed the law.

And lots of people pitched in to make it all possible.

Ignominious Nothing

Aladdin Sane wrote:

Okay, did anyone see how insignificant Dubya seemed at today’s memorial? He’s probably the only man ever to be upstaged by Brian Mulroney.

Lou-seur.

The stench of defeat is starting to rise off of him. I watched it happen to Carter and Senior. People keep a little distance. They don’t look him in the eye. The winner’s gloss is replaced by a sheen of desperation. He’s got trouble. You can smell it.