Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

In the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, on July 8, 1982, members of the Dawa Party, at the behest of Iran, tried to unsuccessfully assassinate Saddam Hussein in the town of Dujail. On December 30, 2006 the Dawa Party finally got their man.

Saddam Hussein’s hanging after a deeply flawed trial is not likely to increase the violence in Iraq. However, the hanging is likely to make the already remote possibility of political reconciliation that much more distant. The death of Saddam at the hands of Iranian-backed Shia will also rehabilitate Saddam Hussein’s legacy in the Arab world. The erstwhile Butcher of Baghdad will become a martyr of sorts - an Arab nationalist who resisted Western forces and died at the hands of an unholy alliance between Iranian and Western powers. Saddam will be remembered as a bloodier version of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Saddam Hussein will represent to Iraqi nationalists what Mohammed Mossadeqh represents to Iranians - a nationalist leader who was overthrown by Western powers for a few more barrels of oil.

There is simply no way around this fact - the United States of America allowed Saddam Hussein to be killed by the very pro-Iranian Shia party that is responsible for killing hundreds of Americans in terrorist bombings. The United States allowed Saddam to be killed for a crime he committed while he was an agent of America against Iran. These are the ironies of the American involvement in Iraq today. The occupying power has served up the head of Saddam to one of the warring parties engaged in a civil war. If the goal is to push Iraq further into civil war, today’s hanging will help achieve it.

While Mr. Maliki of the Dawa Party and Mr. Jabr, the death squad leader of SCIRI, were cooling their heels in Damascus in the Spring of 2003, they probably could not have imagined that just over 3 years later America would hand over Iraq and the head of Saddam Hussein to them and their Iranian backers. After all, they had fled to Syria and Iran because of their attacks against Saddam Hussein and American interests in Kuwait and Lebanon. After trying to assassinate Saddam Hussein in Dujail, the Dawa Party, on Iranian orders, exploded truck bombs at the American and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983:

The driver of the truck that exploded in an attack on the United States Embassy in Kuwait on Monday has reportedly been identified by Kuwaiti investigators as a pro-Iranian Moslem fundamentalist from Iraq.

According to diplomats in Kuwait and press reports there, the driver, who was killed, was 25-year-old Raad Mouchbil.

An Iraqi Embassy spokesman said in a statement issued in Kuwait that Mr. Mouchbil had already been condemned to death in Baghdad for what the statement said were ‘’criminal activities.'’

The Iraqi spokesman said Mr. Mouchbil was a member of the banned Moslem fundamentalist pro-Iranian Al Dawa group in Baghdad. He described Mr. Mouchbil as having been a strong supporter of Iran’s policies.

The United States stepped up support for Saddam Hussein after the attacks by the Dawa Party. Iran and the Dawa Party terrorists were the enemy. And of course Saddam Hussein had oil and there was money to be made:

Another key element in the growing American involvement here is the planned construction of a $1 billion oil pipeline from Iraq’s Kirkuk refinery through Jordan to the Gulf of Aqaba. The project, now under negotiation, would include a $570 million contract for the Bechtel Corporation.

From the American point of view, the pipeline, along with a second planned line through Saudi Arabia, would help tie Iraq to what are regarded as moderate pro-Western countries in the region. The Iraqi perspective is that having an American equity in the project - particularly that of Bechtel, whose former officers are prominent in the Reagan Administration - will guarantee its protection from Israel.

Iraq is now pumping about 700 million barrels of oil a day through its Turkish pipeline. A second pipeline through Syria, which supports Iran, was shut off by Damascus.

The United States has also granted Iraq about $2 billion in commodity credits to buy food over the last two years. Donald Rumsfeld, the former Middle East special envoy, held two private meetings with the Iraqi President here.

While Donald Rumsfeld, as the representative of the American President,  was negotiating for Bechtel and giving out map coordinates for chemical weapons attacks, there was no mention of the killings in Dujail or the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iran.

So, now 14 years after Dujail, Saddam has been hanged for his response to an assassination attempt by the Dawa Party. Saddam’s response at the time was to kill over a hundred Shia of Dujail as retribution - and the United States turned a blind eye. Fourteen years after the fact the Butcher of Baghdad has himself been butchered by terrorists who themselves have American blood on their hands. Today’s killing does not look like justice to me - it looks like an assassination.

Bob Woodward is wrong. Colin Powell is wrong. The National Intelligence Estimate is wrong. Brent Scowcroft is wrong. The retired generals are wrong. Richard Clarke is wrong. The International Atomic Energy Agency is wrong. The United Nations is wrong. Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and all the Democrats are wrong. Your common sense and all the news you read are wrong.

George W Bush and his dog Barney are right. The last time a man listened to his dog, people got killed. This time is no different.

Bob Woodward’s new book is all over the news these days. CBS just gave him the royal treatment and the Washington Post drooled on its front page. However, judging from Woodward’s 60 Minutes interview and the excerpts that he so graciously shared with us, there is nothing new in it other than the gossip.

The main theme of the book seems to be this: Iraq is going badly and the Bush Administration is pretending otherwise. This is perhaps news only to the ostriches who still hold out hope of finding WMD in Iraq or finding Saddam’s DNA on the 9/11 attack plans. The rest of us have been reading the news, and the news from Iraq speaks of more than 3000 deaths a month in what has been a raging civil war since last spring.

There is also another more slightly less obvious theme to Woodward’s book. That is: George W Bush has been let down by the people who served him, most notably, Donald Rumsfeld. In Woodward’s excerpts, Andy Card does his best to protect his boss:

Card put it on the generals in the Pentagon and Iraq. If they had come forward and said to the president, "It’s not worth it," or, "The mission can’t be accomplished," Card was certain, the president would have said "I’m not going to ask another kid to sacrifice for it."

Card was enough of a realist to see that there were two negative aspects to Bush’s public persona that had come to define his presidency: incompetence and arrogance. Card did not believe that Bush was incompetent, and so he had to face the possibility that, as Bush’s chief of staff, he might have been the incompetent one. In addition, he did not think the president was arrogant.

But the marketing of Bush had come across as arrogant. Maybe it was unfair in Card’s opinion, but there it was.

He was leaving. And the man he considered most responsible for the postwar troubles, the one who should have gone, Rumsfeld, was staying.

So, you see. Mr. Bush was let down. If only Rummy and the generals had told him the facts, he would have steered clear of Iraq.

I would like to step back from the Rummy bashing for a minute and review the facts. In 2000, the American public sort of elected George Walker Bush as the 43rd President of the United States. In 2004, the very same American public, after seeing Bush in action in Afghanistan and Iraq, decided to return George Walker Bush to the White House. The events of 2000 and 2004 lay to rest any doubt that the President of the United States and the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces is George W Bush. Not Donald Rumsfeld, not Dick Cheney, not John Abizaid - but, George W Bush.

George W Bush alone is responsible for the carnage in Iraq and the fiasco in Afghanistan. Mr. Bush has made his policy on Iraq quite clear to the American people and the world:

The strategy is to help the Iraqi people achieve their objectives and their dreams, which is a democratic society. That’s the strategy. The tactics — now, either you say, yes, its important we stay there and get it done, or we leave. We’re not leaving, so long as I’m the President. That would be a huge mistake. It would send an unbelievably terrible signal to reformers across the region. It would say we’ve abandoned our desire to change the conditions that create terror. It would give the terrorists a safe haven from which to launch attacks. It would embolden Iran. It would embolden extremists.

No, we’re not leaving. The strategic objective is to help this government succeed. That’s the strategic — and not only to help the government — the reformers in Iraq succeed, but to help the reformers across the region succeed to fight off the elements of extremism. The tactics are which change. Now, if you say, are you going to change your strategic objective, it means you’re leaving before the mission is complete. And we’re not going to leave before the mission is complete. I agree with General Abizaid: We leave before the mission is done, the terrorists will follow us here. [Emphasis added by me.]

Mr. Bush intends to stay because he does not want to send a "signal" to the "reformers" and the terrorists. But, just what kind of signal is he sending by staying? What does it say about the power of the United States that as an occupying power in Iraq it cannot contain unchecked violence that is claiming thousands of lives each month? What does it say about the power of the United States that five years after 9/11 Osama bin Laden is still at large and the Taliban are back in business in Afghanistan? What does it say about the power of the United States that Mr. Bush’s favorite general is surrendering to al Qaeda and the Taliban?

The signal Mr. Bush’s warmongering in Iraq and his neglect of Afghanistan is sending to the world is that the United States is weak and the American military can be stalemated with rudimentary battle tactics. That is a far more dangerous legacy than the withdrawal from Somalia in 1993.

Mr. Bush nonetheless has decided to stay in Iraq because to him perception is more important than reality. It is more important to Mr. Bush to be perceived as steadfast than to actually succeed in Iraq. American soldiers and Iraqi civilians are paying with their lives to maintain what Mr. Bush perceives as manhood. However, what Mr. Bush perceives as "staying the course" is really foolishness. Mr. Bush claims that he will not leave Iraq even if his only two supporters are his wife and his dog. Well, that is just stupid - if not dictatorial. I doubt that the next President will continue to stay in Iraq without any public support. Mr. Bush then has effectively set the deadline for an American pullout from Iraq to 2008. So, has Mr. Bush really served the interests of the United States by "staying the course" only to be reversed by his successor? By staying in Iraq, Mr. Bush is putting his ego above the national interest of the United States - that is simply disgraceful.

Iraq is George W Bush’s war. Donald Rumsfeld may end up taking the fall for Mr. Bush’s folly in the near term, but there is no mistaking who it was that sent our men and women into battle on March 19, 2003. With the following words spoken from the Oval Office, it was Mr. Bush who spilled American and Iraqi blood:

My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.

On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein’s ability to wage war. These are opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign.

…

We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.

…

Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly — yet, our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.

…

Now that conflict has come, the only way to limit its duration is to apply decisive force. And I assure you, this will not be a campaign of half measures, and we will accept no outcome but victory. [Emphasis added by me.]

We are where we are because of Mr. Bush’s "order".We are living today in the chaos of Mr. Bush’s war.

"Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels." - Albert Einstein

In Salt Lake City yesterday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned against moral confusion in George Bush’s crusade against reason. Mr. Rumsfeld asked his fellow citizens to avoid confusion:

Every war involves mistakes, setbacks and casualties, Rumsfeld acknowledged, and every army has members who do not live up to high standards. However, those negative factors cannot overshadow the hundreds of thousands of honorable men and women who serve with humanity and decency in the face of constant provocation, he said.

“That is important in any long struggle or any kind of long war, where any kind of moral and intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can severely weaken the ability of free societies to persevere,” he said.

The Secretary went on to counsel resolve in combating what he called "a new type of fascism." This new "fascism", or "Islamofascism" as the Bush Administration likes to call it, is apparently similar to the old fascism of quainter times (as Alberto Gonzales likes to refer to most of human history). Mr. Rumsfeld urged all of us to keep our inner Neville Chamberlains in check in these trying times:

Drawing parallels to efforts by some nations to appease Adolf Hitler before World War II, Rumsfeld said it would be "folly" for the United States to ignore the rising dangers posed by a new enemy that he called "serious, lethal and relentless."

I completely agree with Donald Rumsfeld. We should not ignore dangers posed by new enemies, nor should we be morally or intellectually confused about the rightness of our cause. Because I agree with Mr. Rumsfeld, I urge Mr. Rumsfeld and his boss, George W Bush, to abide by this advice or step aside and let those who can meet these challenges carry the burden.

Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush have ignored the real enemy in this war, a certain bearded man named bin Laden, in favor of pursuing their neo-con fantasy of making the Middle East safe for oil exploitation. While we wallow in the quagmire of Iraq, Osama bin Laden and his cohorts enjoy the benefits of a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. By any standard, allowing the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks to roam free 5 years after that horrible day is a dereliction of duty on the part of our leaders. It is also a symptom of intellectual confusion, if not intellectual dishonesty, that in response to the 9/11 attacks the Bush Administration attacked a country, which by Mr. Bush’s own admission, had nothing to do with those attacks:

Q What did Iraq have to do with that?

THE PRESIDENT: What did Iraq have to do with what?

Q The attack on the World Trade Center?

THE PRESIDENT: Nothing, except for it’s part of — and nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — the lesson of September the 11th is, take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq. I have suggested, however, that resentment and the lack of hope create the breeding grounds for terrorists who are willing to use suiciders to kill to achieve an objective. I have made that case.

There you have it: al Qaeda attacks us and we attack Saddam Hussein. It is the superpower equivalent of a toddler’s temper tantrum.

Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush led us into the war in Iraq with images of mushroom clouds in our cities and flowers at our soldiers’ feet as they liberate Iraq. Either they were intellectually and morally confused when they sold us this quagmire or they were lying. Since the invasion, the Administration’s moral confusion has grown by leaps and bounds. After their initial casus belli of WMD fell apart, the Administration trotted out the "freedom is on the march" argument. To this day they claim that invading Iraq was the right thing to do even when the very rationale for the invasion has been so thoroughly discredited.

Mr. Rumsfeld has been morally deficient in his handling of the Iraq invasion. He was morally obtuse when looting broke out after the invasion due to lack of security (a fundamental moral and legal duty of the occupier); he was morally obtuse when the abuses took place in Abu Ghraib; he has been morally obtuse as Iraqi civilians are being butchered at alarming rates; he has been morally obtuse while massacres like Haditha and rapes of little girls occur on his watch; and, he has been morally obtuse as he signed death letters of fallen American GIs using an autopen. Mr. Rumsfeld and the boss who continues to employ him have demonstrated ample moral confusion in the past 5 years.

We as citizens have a right, and indeed an obligation, to question our leaders’ actions when they do not appear to serve the interest of the people. If we abdicate our duty as citizens to hold our leaders accountable, even in a time of war, especially in a time of war, we will have aided in the descent of our society into fascism. When our leaders have marched us into a quagmire as a result of a war of choice, we are entitled to moral and intellectual clarity from those very leaders. We must demand of our leaders the truth at all times - "trust me" does not work in a democracy. A demand by a leader of blind loyalty from the citizenry is the primary ingredient in the soup of fascism.

Now is the time for a leader and statesman to lead us out of the dangers of our time and into a more peaceful world. Now is the time for intellectual and moral honesty. Now is the time for great ideals buttressed by sound execution. A generation ago, John F. Kennedy called upon the world to shoulder the burden of his time:

Now the trumpet summons us again — not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need — not as a call to battle, though embattled we are — but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation," a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.

Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it. And the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

His call to America and to the world remains as urgent today as it was in his time. This country and this world is yearning for a leader of vision and intellect who can rise above the talking points and the politics of division to lead us out of the moral confusion that this Administration has thrust us into. Sadly, George W Bush is not that leader.

[Cross posted at Taylor Marsh]

The "central front" on the War on Terror (more commonly known as the fiasco in Iraq) has been going badly. So, Mr. Bush claimed this week to have opened another front in the War on Terror: Lebanon. Rumor has it that the new front in the War on Terror is not going well either.

Earlier this week after meetings at the Pentagon and State Department, Mr. Bush took out his "War on Terror" brush and once again painted broadly. In his remarks to reporters, he added a new front to his ever-widening war:

We discussed the global war on terror. We discussed the situation on the ground in three fronts of the global war on terror: in Lebanon and Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is probably a matter of time until Mr. Bush adds Syria and Iran to his list of fronts. As long as new fronts continue to be added, he can reasonably argue that the War on Terror is not lost. Perhaps the hope is that Iraq will get lost in an ocean of fronts and utter failure there will not be seen as humiliation.

While the definitions are fiddled with in Washington, the civil war in Iraq rages without pause. While we were away watching the collapse of Ehud Olmert’s political career at the cost of Lebanese and Israeli lives, the cadence of death in Iraq has accelerated. According to the Iraqi Health Ministry, July was the deadliest month in Iraq since George W Bush decided to do a photo op on a tax-payer financed aircraft carrier:

An average of more than 110 Iraqis were killed each day in July, according to the figures. The total number of civilian deaths last month — 3,438 — is a 9 percent increase over the tally in June, and nearly double the toll of January.

The rising numbers suggest that sectarian violence is spiraling out of control, and they seemed to bolster an assertion many senior Iraqi officials and U.S. military analysts have been making in recent months — that the country is already embroiled in a civil war, not just slipping into one, and that the U.S.-led forces are caught between Sunni Arab guerrillas and Shiite militias

The pace of killing is staggering and is on par with or exceeds the pace of death in other modern civil wars: notably the Lebanese Civil War and the Algerian Civil War. It has now become fashionable in Washington to use the "C" word when talking about Iraq. The shift in rhetoric and direction began in June after the Maliki government began to voice sentiment about an American pullout. It was a sure sign of a parting of the ways between the Iraqis and the Americans. Since that time, U.S. officials have started to edge the rhetoric toward "civil war" - a civil war that arguably began in March of this year. At that time, I wrote these words to mark what I saw as the beginning of the civil war in Iraq:

This week marks the beginning of the Iraqi Civil War. The American mission in Iraq is over. We can either stay and fight everyone, pick sides, or leave. No choice open to America now will improve the situation on the ground.

The events kicked off by the Samarra bombing have now been book-ended by the attack on the mosque in Baghdad. We have entered the fray in a big way with the attack on the mosque. Images of the dead lying in a prayer room in the mosque and reports that the 80-year-old imam of the mosque has also been killed are being beamed continuously to everyone with a TV and electricity in Iraq. The American military’s protestations that the mosque was not entered will fall on deaf ears. We have no credibility there - not only because we are not trusted, but also because we have been unable or unwilling to stop the bloodletting there.

The ingredient missing from Iraq’s slide into civil war was mainstream outrage and anger and an embracing of the sectarian militias as the only guarantors of security. We have, perhaps unwittingly, provided the last piece of the puzzle and now the civil war picture is complete.

In tandem with an admission that Iraq is either sliding into civil war or is in a civil war, there has been a shifting of the blame to the Iraqis for the failure of the Bush Administration’s mission in Iraq. There was always an element of this in the mantra: "We will stand down when the Iraqis stand up." After all if the Iraqis don’t "stand up", can it possibly be the fault of the Bush Administration? Lately, however, the blame potential has been cashed in for large helpings of blame. Last week our man in Baghdad mouthed the "blame the Iraqis" talking points:

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said in an interview last week that Iraq’s political leaders have failed to fully use their influence to rein in the soaring violence, and that people associated with the government are stoking the flames of sectarian hatred.

"I think the time has come for these leaders to take responsibility with regards to sectarian violence, to the security of Baghdad at the present time," Khalilzad said.  

Of course the Iraqi leaders should be able to "rein in" sectarian violence with their ill-equipped and ill-trained military forces where 130,000 American soldiers have failed. Even the President let it be known this week that he was disappointed with the Iraqis for failing to join his freedom parade:

“I sensed a frustration with the lack of progress on the bigger picture of Iraq generally — that we continue to lose a lot of lives, it continues to sap our budget,” said one person who attended the meeting. “The president wants the people in Iraq to get more on board to bring success.”

…

More generally, the participants said, the president expressed frustration that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq, and was puzzled as to how a recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd. “I do think he was frustrated about why 10,000 Shiites would go into the streets and demonstrate against the United States,” said another person who attended.

The President’s spokesman later denied that Mr. Bush had misgivings. Nonetheless, the rumor of Presidential disappointment was already laid and a rationale for washing our hands of Iraq had already been articulated.

Although it is politically convenient to blame the Iraqis for this Administration’s failures, it is also demonstrably false. The current sectarian violence is a direct result of the Bush Administration’s failure to secure Iraq after the initial invasion in 2003. Securing Iraq was not an optional part of the war plan - it was a required duty of the United States as the occupying power according to the Law of Occupation as codified by the Hague Regulations, the Fourth Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare.  Article 43 of the Hague Regulations state:

The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.

The United States failed to provide basic security to the civilians in Iraq. No amount of finger pointing will whitewash that fact. The Bush Administration not only failed to protect the Iraqi civilians, it also showed a callous disregard for their plight. As Iraq started to descend into chaos after the American invasion, that bumbling buffoon of a Defense Secretary had this to say:

Declaring that freedom is "untidy," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday the looting in Iraq was a result of "pent-up feelings" of oppression and that it would subside as Iraqis adjusted to life without Saddam Hussein.

He also asserted the looting was not as bad as some television and newspaper reports have indicated and said there was no major crisis in Baghdad, the capital city, which lacks a central governing authority. The looting, he suggested, was "part of the price" for what the United States and Britain have called the liberation of Iraq.

"Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things," Rumsfeld said. "They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that’s what’s going to happen here."

Looting, he added, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. "Stuff happens," Rumsfeld said.

Civil wars apparently happen too. Especially when those responsible for the protection of the civilian population fail to provide the necessary security.

I would venture that any major American city would descend into chaos if law enforcement decided to take a 3-year holiday and leave the citizens to fend for themselves. I would guess that rather quickly neighborhoods would start taking steps to protect themselves from thieves and other intruders, militias would form and start offering protection at a price to helpless civilians, tribalism would start to take hold, a steady disintegration of civil society would occur.

It may seem easy and convenient to blame the Iraqis for sectarian violence, but this violence became inevitable when this neo-con fantasy of an invasion was set in motion. Ever since this fiasco began, Mr. Bush has been blaming everyone but himself. Earlier this year, he famously and laughably blamed Saddam Hussein for the current violence. Now Mr. Bush’s finger of blame has moved on to the Iraqi leadership and the people. Perhaps it is time to place a mirror in front of Mr. Bush.

"Even assuming that Hamden is a dangerous individual who would cause great harm or death to innocent civilians given the opportunity, the Executive nevertheless must comply with the prevailing rule of law in undertaking to try him and subject him to criminal punishment. " - Justice John Paul Stevens writing the majority opinion of the United States Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, et. al.

The United States Supreme Court today rejected the Bush Administration’s contention that it could ignore the United States Constitution and laws and set up kangaroo courts in which to try detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The Court rejected the argument that the Congress had stripped its jurisdiction by enacting the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. The Court also held that the Executive Branch must obey the law of war, the Geneva Conventions (including Common Article 3), and the UCMJ. In short, the Court held that the President is not above the law, even in a time of war.

By holding that the President must obey the laws, Justice Stevens took a giant bite out of the Unitary Executive theory that the Bush Administration loves and cherishes so much.  In rather short order, the legal arguments put forth by John Yoo justifying torture now begin to crumble. The Court’s holding that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions binds the actions of the Executive nullifies the argument used by this Administration to exclude parts of Article 3 from the latest Army Field Manual on interrogation. A house of cards built on the fantasy of an unchecked ruler has crumbled today upon colliding with the United States Constitution.

The Bush Administration’s arguments for Executive overreach have never had firm legal grounding. Their grounding has been based on fear and fanaticism. The debate has always been between fanaticism and reason. Today reason won a temporary reprieve. But the fanatics are still in charge of the Ship of State. The Administration’s principal premise, whether it is to justify torture or to justify indefinite detention, has been that the people we are holding are bad, evil, horrible. Therefore, anything we do to them is justified. Every overreaching act of the Bush Administration has been predicated on that fundamental premise.

The Bush Administration tortures a prisoner because it assumes a priori that the prisoner is a terrorist. Therefore, to extract valuable intelligence that might save lives the Administration must torture the terrorist. The bush Administration detains a prisoner indefinitely because it assumes a priori that the prisoner is a terrorist. Therefore, to protect the safety of all Americans the Administration must detain the terrorist indefinitely.

This underlying premise that all we hold are terrorists has emotional appeal to supporters of the Bush Administration and many Americans who are terrified of an unseen and unpredictable enemy. The Administration knows this and never misses an opportunity to perpetuate this notion:

“The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantanamo are bad people.”

“I mean, these are terrorists for the most part. These are people that were captured in the battlefield of Afghanistan or rounded up as part of the al Qaeda network."

”We’ve already screened the detainees there and released a number, sent them back to their home countries. But what’s left is hard core.”  - Vice President Dick Cheney, June 2005

The Administration’s supporters duly follow this line that everyone at Guantanamo Bay and everyone the United States tortures is a terrorist. However, there is plenty of evidence that this is not the case. Many prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were sold to the Americans by enterprising Pakistanis and Afghanis for hefty fees. A large number of these detainees were later found to be innocent and some have been released. There are others at Guantanamo, like Abdur Sayed Rahman and Muhibullah, who are being held there for reasons that defy sanity:

But there are many more, it seems, who sound like Abdur Sayed Rahman, a self-described Pakistani villager who says he was arrested at his modest home in January 2002, flown off to Afghanistan and later accused of being the deputy foreign minister of that country’s deposed Taliban regime.

"I am only a chicken farmer in Pakistan," he protested to American military officers at Guantánamo. "My name is Abdur Sayed Rahman. Abdur Zahid Rahman was the deputy foreign minister of the Taliban."

…

At one review hearing last year, an Afghan referred to by the single name Muhibullah denied accusations that he was either the former Taliban governor of Shibarghan Province or had worked for the governor. The solution to his case should have been simple, Mr. Muhibullah suggested to the three American officers reviewing his case: They should contact the Shibarghan governor and ask him.

But the presiding Marine Corps colonel said it was really up to the detainee to try to contact the governor. Assuming that the annual review board denied his petition for freedom, noted the officer, whose name was censored from the document, Mr. Muhibullah would have a year to do so.

"How do I find the governor of Shibarghan or anybody?" the detainee asked.

"Write to them," the presiding officer responded. "We know that it is difficult but you need to do your best."

"I appreciate your suggestion, but it is not that easy," Mr. Muhibullah said.

The Bush Administration not only detains people without charge who are not terrorists they have also kidnapped and tortured people who are not terrorists. By not following the laws or international Conventions, the Bush Administration has denied itself the tools to determine who is truly a terrorist and who is being unjustly held and tortured. But, based on their principal premise, the distinction between guilt and innocence need not be made.

Having lost the legal fight it remains to be seen if the Bush Administration will be able to stoke the flames of fear enough to convince the American people to look the other way as it continues to torture and detain "terrorists". The Supreme Court has spoken; will the President listen?

Charles Krauthammer can’t help himself. He is a desperate man. Like Pavlov’s dog he cannot help lapping at Hitler’s corpse when presented with the opportunity. Krauthammer, like a good neo-conservative soldier, throws everything including the kitchen sink at Iran. Krauthammer wants to attack Iran like he wanted to attack Iraq. He wants the United States Government to feed his bloodlust by attacking Iran. He wants the citizens to fall in line by exploiting the memory of the Holocaust and using it as an emotional hammer to bludgeon us into submission.

Charles Krauthammer is a deeply cynical dangerous warmonger. He paints the picture of Jewish suffering and the attempted annihilation of Jews by Hitler:

For 2,000 years, Jews found protection in dispersion — protection not for individual communities, which were routinely persecuted and massacred, but protection for the Jewish people as a whole. Decimated here, they could survive there. They could be persecuted in Spain and find refuge in Constantinople. They could be massacred in the Rhineland during the Crusades or in the Ukraine during the Khmelnytsky Insurrection of 1648-49 and yet survive in the rest of Europe.

Hitler put an end to that illusion. He demonstrated that modern anti-Semitism married to modern technology — railroads, disciplined bureaucracies, gas chambers that kill with industrial efficiency — could take a scattered people and "concentrate" them for annihilation.

Then he applies the emotional coup de grâce:

His successors now reside in Tehran. The world has paid ample attention to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s declaration that Israel must be destroyed. Less attention has been paid to Iranian leaders’ pronouncements on exactly how Israel would be "eliminated by one storm," as Ahmadinejad has promised.

He wants us to dispense with reason and follow him down his cynical journey:

As it races to acquire nuclear weapons, Iran makes clear that if there is any trouble, the Jews will be the first to suffer. "We have announced that wherever [in Iran] America does make any mischief, the first place we target will be Israel," said Gen. Mohammad Ebrahim Dehghani, a top Revolutionary Guards commander. Hitler was only slightly more direct when he announced seven months before invading Poland that, if there was another war, "the result will be . . . the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe."

Until finally we are in a box of his making and overcome with emotion we shout to the world, "Never again!":

When Iran’s mullahs acquire their coveted nukes in the next few years, the number of Jews in Israel will just be reaching 6 million. Never again?

I would have some empathy for Krauthammer and may have been duped into believing that his argument might be heartfelt save some inconvenient history. Krauthammer and his cohorts have dragged around the corpse of Hitler whenever it suited them. They are always tilting at the corpse of Hitler whenever they want to aim the immense military might of the United States at their chosen foe.

So it was with Saddam before we were misled into attacking Iraq:

Former CIA Director James Woolsey warns that Saddam Hussein "poses the same kind of threat to the United States that Hitler posed in Germany in the mid 1930s when the British and the French kept postponing dealing with him in the way that some people are advocating dealing with Saddam how."

The corpse of Hitler also comes to the rescue whenever we need to bash Hugo Chavez:

"I mean, we’ve got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money," Rumsfeld added. "He’s a person who was elected legally _ just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally _ and then consolidated power and now is, of course, working closely with Fidel Castro and Mr. Morales and others."

And now this nation’s tired guns are being pointed at Iran. Krauthammer tag teams with William Kristol and others in pulling the corpse of Hitler through the American town square. They scream, "Never again! Never again!" and they want us to join in on the chant.

The trotting out of Hitler to justify another first strike by the United States is so without merit that it really does not warrant a substantive rebuttal. It merits only ridicule. That and the obvious observation that if Israel so chooses it could wipe Iran off the map with a massive nuclear strike.

Krauthammer and his cohorts are desperate to go for the trifecta before their time in power runs out. With Iraq dispatched they have their sights on Iran and Syria. I hope the American people will not be fooled again. We should meet these baseless and cynical attempts at fear mongering and collectively shout at Krauthammer and the neo-conservative fanatics that we will not be fooled again. We should collectively shout: "Never Again!"

I find it surprising that Charles Krauthammer’s music library includes Wham! However, I do not find it surprising that Krauthammer’s latest column in The Washington Post would add to the orchestrated defense of Donald Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy. His column comes on the heels of an opinion piece in the Post by Melvin Laird and Robert Pursley that makes the same argument. [Aside: Melvin Laird is the architect of "Vietnamization" so the Administration mantra "We will stand down when the Iraqis stand up" should give him Goosebumps since Vietnamization worked out so well]

You cannot blame Krauthammer (and Laird) for shooting the messenger, after all, the message is hard to discount. Krauthammer sees a danger to our Republic. He sees a collapse of civilian control over the military. He sees a military takeover of the United States.

I-know-better generals are back. Six of them, retired, are denouncing the Bush administration and calling for Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation as secretary of defense. The antiwar types think this is just swell.

…

We’ve always had discontented officers in every war and in every period of our history. But they rarely coalesce into factions. That happens in places such as Hussein’s Iraq, Pinochet’s Chile or your run-of-the-mill banana republic. And when it does, outsiders (including the United States) do their best to exploit it, seeking out the dissident factions to either stage a coup or force the government to change policy.

….

It is precisely this kind of division that our tradition of military deference to democratically elected civilian superiors was meant to prevent. Today it suits the antiwar left to applaud the rupture of that tradition. But it is a disturbing and very dangerous precedent that even the left will one day regret.

Charles, Charles, Charles. Calm down and breathe into the brown paper bag. I would share your alarm but I have not been able to find a good way to detach my brain from my skull and still function as a human being. But fear not you have many who will carry the water with you.

Let me take it from the top:

1. Not withstanding the last holdout, American policy in Iraq has been a disaster.
2. We were lied or bumbled (no practical difference) into this preemptive war by this Administration.
3. We failed to take any steps to plan for a post-conflict peace. We have reigned over chaos since 2003.
4. We have handed Iraq on a silver platter to Iran.
5. We have put in power in Iraq the same group of people that killed 241 marines in Beirut in 1983.
6. We have no exit strategy in Iraq other than to say, "Stay the course" or "We will stand down when the Iraqis stand up".
7. We have lost over 2000 American lives and at least 30,000 Iraqi lives.
8. Civil war rages in Iraq with ethnic cleansing at its core.
9. We have been taken to war on the backs of two ideologies. That of the neo-cons like Mr. Krauthammer who argue for Pax Americana at the barrel of a gun; and that of Mr. Rumsfeld that is bent on proving his concept of a light and agile military is superior, facts or circumstances be damned.

According to the latest Fox News poll only 33% of Americans approve of how President Bush is handling his job. Of those who disapprove, the most frequently cited reason is the debacle in Iraq. In this environment, does this surprise you, Charles, that retired generals would also disapprove of our Iraq policy. The public is well ahead of the military on this one - as they should be. Krauthammer argues rather disingenuously that the generals should have spoken out while on active duty:

Some of the complainers were on active duty when these decisions were made. If they felt so strongly about Rumsfeld’s disregard of their advice, why didn’t they resign at the time? Why did they wait to do so from the safety of retirement, with their pensions secured?

Nice one Charles, but by your own thesis, didn’t the generals do what they should have done. While on active duty, they accepted the civilian control of the military, registered their complaints, saluted and followed orders. I applaud them for that - as should you, Charles. I think our Republic is safe from a military takeover precisely because our men and women in the military are a disciplined group of people who understand and respect the Constitution of the United States.

Of course, when all other arguments fail the fallback argument is always that dissent aids the enemy. Laird and Pursley conclude with this:

In speaking out now, they may think they are doing a service by adding to the reasoned debate. But the enemy does not understand or appreciate reasoned public debate. It is perceived as a sign of weakness and lack of resolve.

The real enemy is sitting in some cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan laughing at us for our fiasco in Iraq. When the majority of the public think the country is being mismanaged and when retired generals speak out, it is time to take heed. Attempting to dismiss legitimate criticism by suggesting that it is aiding and abetting the enemy is the same mindset and groupthink that got us embroiled in this mess in Iraq in the first place.

On December 20, 1983 President Reagan’s special envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, met with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to foster closer ties between the two nations. On the agenda was how best to counter Iran and how to find alternate routes for Iraqi oil since the Iranians had cut off Iraq’s ability to ship oil through the Persian Gulf. The meeting with Saddam Hussein went swimmingly with the Dictator pleased by the support he was receiving from Washington in his war against Iran. The troubling topic of Saddam Hussein’s recent and continuing use of chemical weapons against Iran did not come up during the 90-minute meeting.

The United States had decided to lend its support to Iraq in its war against Iran. Although Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against Iran and Kurdish insurgents was an unfortunate distraction, it nonetheless was decided that Saddam would be a bulwark against Islamist Iran and must be supported.

The war between Iran and Iraq followed the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the rise to prominence of Islamist opposition in Iraq as a result. The most prominent opposition Islamist opposition party in Iraq was the Iranian funded al Dawa party. The current Prime Minister of Iraq, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, is a long time member of the al Dawa party. As tensions between Iraq and Iran escalated after the Iranian Revolution over the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway, the attempted assassination of Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz by al Dawa became a major precipitating factor that culminated in the Iraqi attack on Iran.

Iraq retaliated against al Dawa by systematically assassinating its members. Most remaining members of al Dawa fled to Iran. Under Iranian protection, the al Dawa party began to engage in ever-greater acts of terrorism against Iraq and Western interests. These acts included multiple attempts at assassinating Saddam Hussein and other leaders of the Iraqi Government and the car bombing of the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut on December 15, 1981. The Iraqi Embassy bombing in Beirut was the beginning of the modern era of suicide car bombing. The al Dawa party is also responsible for the bombing of the U.S. Embassy and French Embassies in Kuwait on December 12, 1983 in which six people were killed. 

While based in Tehran the al Dawa party formed a terrorist wing called the Islamic Jihad. Islamic Jihad and al Dawa were responsible for acts of terrorism against Americans in Kuwait and Lebanon. Islamic Jihad was the germ of what would later become the Iranian backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The 1983 car bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 marines while they slept was carried out by these precursor groups to Hezbollah. That attack on the Marine barracks has been tied directly to Iran through its surrogates such as al Dawa.

Our brief jaunt through the history of the al Dawa party and our support for Saddam Hussein at the time raises the question, "Why is Donald Rumsfeld Smiling?" Who are our real enemies? Is the world really divided into "us" and "them"? And does membership in the "us" and "them" clubs shift over time due to political expediency?

The United States has a long history of supporting some very bad actors without regard for human rights, terrorism, murders, use of weapons of mass destruction, democracy, human rights or any of the other high ideals that the Bush Administration preaches and the evil acts the Bush Administration so righteously abhors. History shows that we have chosen to throw our lot in with any actor in a conflict without regard for any ideals simply because it supported some grand notion of realpolitik.

We have through our practice of nurturing hateful regimes and groups reaped the rewards that invariably come with such support. All our protégés have come back to harm us. These include, in no particular order, Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. As history has taught us nothing we have now elevated the al Dawa party and Ibrahim al-Jaafari to power in Iraq. Of all people Donald Rumsfeld should know the history of al Dawa well.

Now we are making noises to try to replace al-Jaafari as Prime Minister in Iraq. The likely replacements for al-Jaafari now are another al Dawa member or a member of the SCIRI (The Supreme Council for Islamic Resistance in Iraq). None of those prospects offer any hope of a better regime in Iraq.

The Bush Administration rhetoric rings hollow. It has never been about "evildoers". Who we consider evildoers changes with the political winds. This kind of pragmatic foreign policy might be appealing if not for the fact that in almost every instance the United States has been repaid by our protégés of the day with death and destruction and in most cases with American blood.

We should keep this in mind as we embark on another misadventure in Iran with the support of your newest terrorist allies: Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK).

So I ask again, "Why is this man smiling?"

In the latest article entitled "Anatomy of a Revolt" from Newsweek, Evan Thomas and John Barry attribute a quote incorrectly to General Zinni:

The old generals can be quite biting about Rumsfeld; retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni wrote an op-ed calling the secretary of Defense "incompetent strategically, operationally, and tactically."

In fact, it was General Paul Eaton who wrote those words in his New York Times op-ed:

In sum, he has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down.

Given that the Newsweek article breaks very little ground in the reporting other than repeating the obvious deduction that some of this is payback for the war in Iraq, I am left to wonder how much research went into this article.

I am hoping the error in the article is a copy-editing error and not an error caused by faulty reporting. However, the lack of original reporting in the remainder of the article does not give me great confidence.