McCain And Torture, Part Two

This is the second post in what hopefully will not become a series on John McCain and the politics of torture. You can read the first post here, if you like.

SEC. 327. LIMITATION ON INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES.
(a) LIMITATION.—No individual in the custody or under the
effective control of an element of the intelligence community or
instrumentality thereof, regardless of nationality or physical location,
shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation
not authorized by the United States Army Field Manual on Human
Intelligence Collector Operations.

That's the section of HR-2082 that John McCain had an issue with. It's one clause in a military appropriations bill, but it was enough to cause McCain to vote against it. The bill passed, but was vetoed by The Decider. The vote to override the veto fell short--there are simply too many torture-loving Republicans in the House.

Of course, there could be any number of reasons that McCain voted against the bill. He is marketed as a fiscal conservative, after all. Maybe he wanted to reduce the budget for the military. Yeah, right. McCain was actually crystal clear on his reasons for voting against this bill. His statement on the floor of the Senate starts with this:

Mr. President, I oppose passage of the intelligence authorization conference report in its current form.

During conference proceedings, conferees voted by a narrow margin to include a provision that would apply the Army Field Manual to the interrogation activities of the Central Intelligence Agency.

And in fact, his entire statement is about how the Army field manual is insufficient for non-military intelligence agencies, specifically the CIA. The problem with the Army field manual is that it makes clear and plentiful references to the Geneva Conventions for treatment of prisoners of war. For example, in section 5-73, the manual quotes Article 17:

No physical or mental torture or any other form of coercion may be inflicted on EPWs to secure from them information of any kind whatever. PWs who refuse to answer may not be threatened,insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.

The field manual not only makes extensive reference to the Geneva Conventions, it also explains why we want to adhere to them. However, this flies directly in the face of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA), which states:

GENEVA CONVENTIONS NOT ESTABLISHING SOURCE OF RIGHTS.
—No alien unlawful enemy combatant subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights.

§ 948c. Persons subject to military commissions
Any alien unlawful enemy combatant is subject to trial by military commission under this chapter.

The MCA also states that information obtained through the use of torture (or "in which the degree of coercion is disputed") may be admissible in a tribunal so long as a military judge determines:

(1) the totality of the circumstances renders the statement reliable and possessing sufficient probative value;
(2) the interests of justice would best be served by admission of the statement into evidence; and
(3) the interrogation methods used to obtain the statement do not amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment prohibited by section 1003 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.

Wow. That's a grey area big enough to drive a truck through. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which McCain holds up as an example of the laws that protect Illegal Enemy Combatants, states:

No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

The DTA subsequently gets its definition of "creul, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" from the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984. That document states:

the United States considers itself bound by the obligation under Article 16 to prevent "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," only insofar as the term "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" means the cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and/or Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

Wouldn't it fall to the Supreme Court, then, to determine the legality of various interrogation methods, since they are the final arbiter of what is or isn't constitutional? I don't believe that the SC has declared waterboarding to be unconstitutional. In fact, according to the Washington Post:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin M. Scalia echoed the administration's view when he said in a BBC Radio interview yesterday that some physical interrogation techniques could be used on a suspect in the event of an imminent threat, such as a hidden bomb about to blow up. "It would be absurd to say you couldn't do that," Scalia said. "And once you acknowledge that, we're into a different game: How close does the threat have to be? And how severe can the infliction of pain be?"

So with the Bush administration, the Bush Justice Department, and at least one Supreme Court Justice lining up on the side of torture, the only way to protect anyone from the eager ghouls in the CIA is through the type of legislation that John McCain voted against--because he is in favor of torture.

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Iraqis Should Not Pay To Fix What We Broke

"Iraq's financial free ride may end."

That's the headline of an Associate Press article about the latest twist in the Iraq war debacle. The idea that is uniting Senate Democrats and Republicans, war supporters and war critics, is that since Iraq has money flowing in through their oil industry --with even more to come, thanks to record high oil prices-- they should be paying to fix their country. Sure, the US demolished it, but does that mean that we should pay to fix it?

Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska doesn't think so.

"I think the American people are growing weary not only of the war, but they are looking at why Baghdad can't pay more of these costs. And the answer is they can."

Neither does Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

he wants to add a provision to a defense policy bill that would force the Iraqi government to spend its own surplus in oil revenues to rebuild the country before U.S. dollars are spent.

Also supporting this are Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Evan Bayh of Indiana, along with Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. There may be others as well.

I get it. They know that Americans are getting tired of seeing the enormous piles of debt that the Iraq war is creating. They want to find a way to stem the red tide that future generations of Americans will have to deal with. Fine.

But this idea is ludicrous.

We destroyed their country. We shocked and awed them, we covered them with depleted uranium, we ruined their infrastructure, decimated their hospitals and schools, stood idly by with our thumbs up our asses while looters ran wild after the fall of Baghdad. We walled off sections of their cities and fenced in entire towns. We brought with us a plague of sectarian violence, civil war, and ethnic cleansing. 40% of the population still doesn't have access to clean water. 4 million Iraqis are still displaced from their homes.

And we don't want to pay to fix it?

This is a new level of selfishness, from a group that makes its living being selfish. Having tired of burdening Americans with debt while funneling money into the hands of contractors (aka Bush's base), the Senate is going to take Iraq's money and funnel it into the hands of contractors, who last I checked, were allowed by the US-drafted Iraqi constitution to send 100% of their revenues out of the country. It looks like the Senate Democrats have found a way to stop giving Bush blank checks for his war without having to actually stand up against it. Every time I think that the Senate Democrats can't get any more pathetic, spineless, worthless, or contemptuous, they manage to prove me wrong. Looks like they've done it again.

Hazaa! Let the true looting of Iraq begin!

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General Petraeus Confirms The Surge Has Failed

The greatest lie foisted by the Bush administration upon the American public since the start of the Iraq war is that the surge is a success. During his testimony before Congress this week, General Petraeus confirmed the failure that the compliant conservative media has refused to admit.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Crocker, the top U.S. diplomat, described progress as fragile and reversible. They asked for patience and a suspension of troop withdrawals that will leave 10,000 more American soldiers in Iraq through the end of the Bush presidency than before the surge of 30,000 was announced more than a year ago.

They will not be removing all of the additional troops by this summer, but will be leaving one third of them in country. Apparently the surge has not produced the stability that the administration wants us to think it has.

Perhaps the most appalling comment General Petraeus made was not specifically about the surge, but about the overall disaster that the war has been.

Warner of Virginia pressed Petraeus to answer whether the war has made the United States more secure.

"I've thought more than a bit about that, senator, since September," Petraeus replied, referring to the last time he testified before the congressional committees. The question is "perhaps best answered by folks with a broader view and ultimately will have to be answered by history."

The top commander of the war in Iraq can't tell us that it has made us more secure. Instead, he has decided to follow Bush down the path of dubious waffling and declare that only "history" will determine if the hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives have been well spent. Perhaps the follow-up question should have been, "Then what the hell are we doing there?"

Petraeus also said, as quoted in the Daily News:

We haven't turned any corners, we haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel. The champagne bottle has been pushed to the back of the refrigerator. And the progress, while real, is fragile and is reversible.

Five years. Five long years since the toppling of Saddam's regime. How close are we to any sort of end to the occupation? We can't even see the light at the end of the tunnel. The surge has been declared a success by the conservative media and yet "we haven't turned any corners."

So what now? Staying the course has failed. Surging the troops has failed. It's time to come up with a concrete plan for withdrawal.

The Failure Of The Surge

[Editor's Note: Though this post is dated April 1, it was actually posted on April 5. Blogger is using the date that I saved the first draft. Sorry for any inconvenience that may cause.]

Over the past couple of months, the Bush administration and pundits in the conservative media have been beating us all over the head with the insistence that Bush's "surge" strategy has succeeded. John McCain has predictably taken the opportunity to point out that he supported the surge strategy, and therefore he's the best qualified to be president. Amid this fanfare, we should all take a moment to think about something that is going unmentioned, namely that the surge is not a success.

Bush's surge strategy has four elements:

1. Escalate troop levels in Baghdad.
2. Decrease sectarian violence.
3. Enable political reconciliation of warring factions.
4. Reduce troop deployments to pre-surge levels.

Point 1 has been accomplished. Point 2 has arguably been, as well, though I'm not sure that the causal link between 1 and 2 is as cut and dry as people in the conservative media and the Bush administration would have us think.

Point 3? Umm... No. Point 4? Also negative.

Therefore, at best, it is premature to declare the surge a success. The overall strategy will only be a success once all 4 elements have been a success. Calling the strategy victorious at this point is only going to set Bush up for another "mission accomplished" moment, once things fall to pieces again.

Speaking of that, the recent fighting between the Mahdi Army and the Iraqi security forces have shown us that not only has Bush's surge not succeeded, but it has, in fact, failed.

From the BBC:

The monthly figure of people killed in Iraq rose by 50% in March compared with the previous month, according to official government counts.

A total of 1,082 Iraqis, including 925 non-combatant civilians, were killed, up from 721 in February.

The Mahdi Army decided to ignore Muqtada al Sadr's cease-fire order and resist the assault of the Iraqi army to take control of Basra, resulting in a burst of violence from Sadr City in Baghdad to the southern tip of the country. The Iraqi army was unable to gain any ground against al Sadr's forces and had to resort to calling in US air strikes. After a long week, several members of Iraq's government traveled to Iran and met with al Sadr, a meeting mediated by the Iranians, and brokered a cease-fire.

From The Huffington Post:

The Iraqi government sent a three-member delegation that was headed by a prominent Shiite lawmaker close to al-Maliki, Ali Adeeb, and also included two of his Shiite colleagues, Hadi al-Amri and Qassem Sahlani, said the Iraqi official based in Tehran. The meetings in Qom also included representatives from Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, he said.

If you recall, the Revolutionary Guard is the group that Congress last fall declared to be a terrorist organization.

Once al Sadr asserted his authority and instructed his followers to stand down, the level of violence fell back to the atrocious level it had been previous to the week's events.

I don't wish to diminish the role of the US troops who have been surged into the country, but it seems like the reduction in violence has a lot more to do with al Sadr's cease fire and the Sunni insurgent cease-fire (aka the "Awakening") than with the troop surge. If al Sadr were to declare an end to his cease-fire, there would be an explosion of violence across the southern half of Iraq, which, incidentally, is what people are preparing for.

The real question about part 3 of the surge strategy is what will happen after this fall's provincial elections. As Robert Dreyfuss at The Nation puts it:

Sadr's movement is positioned to register a massive win at the polls in Basra and throughout southern Iraq in provincial elections scheduled for October, an electoral defeat that would portend the end of the Dawa-ISCI regime.

So even if the Bush administration is able to successfully enact step 4 of the surge strategy and bring troops back to pre-surge levels, his strategy has failed.

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