I don’t really know what to say about this other than wow. Michael Scheuer, who is best known for Imperial Hubris (which originally was written listed as written by “anonymous,” since Scheuer had not yet left the CIA, where he was a member of the bin Laden Unit), talks to Glenn Beck (h/t):
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When I read Marc Ambinder’s report of Obama’s meeting today with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, the following passage stuck out:
At a briefing with reporters this morning, senior administration officials seemed to go out of their way to define the content of the developing Obama-Medvevev relationship as being workmanlike, rather than personal. ”Out strategy was not to make the goal of the meetings to establish some buddy relationship,” an SAO said. “The goal is to advance our interests. Having dialogue is a means…. but the goal is not to have a personal relationship.”
Now take a look at what Obama said in his joint appearance with Gordon Brown at the White House last month:
Well, first of all, the special relationship between the United States and Great Britain is one that is not just important to me, it’s important to the American people. And it is sustained by a common language, a common culture; our legal system is directly inherited from the English system; our system of government reflects many of these same values. So — and by the way, that’s also where my mother’s side of my family came from.
So I think this notion that somehow there is any lessening of that special relationship is misguided. Great Britain is one of our closest, strongest allies and there is a link, a bond there that will not break. And I think that’s true not only on the economic front, but also on issues of common security.
At the time, much of the British press — and a not inconsiderable portion of the MSM in the States — hyperventilated over what Obama’s supposed “snub” of the Brits. No State Dinner! He returned the Churchill statue! He gave the PM DVDs as a gift! OMG the Special Relationship is no longer special! In contrast, Obama’s meeting with Brown this morning was low-key, restrained and focused on the the challenges facing the G-20 — as it should be.
Next, take a look at part of the President’s statement on his Administration’s strategy for Afghanistan-Pakistan:
The future of Afghanistan is inextricably linked to the future of its neighbor, Pakistan. In the nearly eight years since 9/11, al Qaeda and its extremist allies have moved across the border to the remote areas of the Pakistani frontier. This almost certainly includes al Qaeda’s leadership: Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. They have used this mountainous terrain as a safe haven to hide, to train terrorists, to communicate with followers, to plot attacks, and to send fighters to support the insurgency in Afghanistan. For the American people, this border region has become the most dangerous place in the world.
The object is to defeat al Qaeda, not get bin Laden. Similarly, the Administration has made it clear (albeit informally) that it no longer will refer to the conflict with al Qaeda as the “Global War on Terror.”
So what do these stories and statements have in common? For Obama, foreign policy is not a frat party. Brown is not his “staunch friend.” Medvedev is neither a “soul” mate or “troublesome and unhelpful.” ; and Osama bin Laden is not an “evil-doer.”
Unlike his predecessor, who personalized everything, Obama is keeping his distance, regardless of whether he is dealing with a friend, competitor, or enemy. He is pursing a businesslike approach to foreign policy, focusing on country-to-country relations, not private relationships.
That is pretty much a textbook example of realism. He views relationships as a function of American interests, and acts accordingly. The downside of this approach is that some issues, such as human rights, are less likely to impress the President as priorities simple because it’s the right thing to do. He still may (or may not) champion human rights, but he’ll do so because it is in America’s best interest.
Obama has to walk a pretty fine line on his current trip. He must demonstrate leadership without looking like the United States still has the ability — or the credibility — to define the agenda. He must demonstrate to other world leaders that he can push his ideas forcefully without trying to cram them down their throat. He must demonstrate a willingness to compromise without looking weak.
If he pulls all of that off, it might be because he didn’t try to treat everyone as his pal. It’s a pretty sensible approach, and it mirrors his “no drama” persona.
It’s going to be a fascinating few days.
| posted in American foreign policy, global economy, war & rumors of war | 1 Comment
I’ve been holding off commenting on this story until I could hear about the results of the conference call the McCain campaign held this morning in response to this Washington Post article:
[S]ome of [Al-Qaeda's] supporters think Sen. John McCain is the presidential candidate best suited to [their goals]. “Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the “failing march of his predecessor,” President Bush. . . .
In language that was by turns mocking and ominous, the newest posting. . .suggested that a terrorist strike might swing the election to McCain and guarantee an expansion of U.S. military commitments in the Islamic world. “It will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaeda,” said the posting, attributed to Muhammad Haafid, a longtime contributor to the password-protected site. “Al-Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America.”
In response, the McCain campaign got foreign policy spokesman Randy Scheunemann and raving right-wingnut ex-CIA director James Woolsey on a call with reporters and bloggers. Of course, the very fact they were holding a call probably indicates that there’s a problem. Dave Weigel reports on the results:
Schneuemann and Woolsey attacked the paper for selectiveness and unfairness, listing supportive things said by American enemies like Ghadaffi about Obama that the Post never covered. Plus, according to Woolsey, there’s no way a serious Al-Qaeda blogger could support McCain.
This individual knows that an endorsement by him is a kiss of death, figuratively. He is not trying to help John McCain.
The first question: If this was a bad faith comment meant to hurt McCain, how do we know comments from Ahmedinijad about Obama aren’t meant to hurt the Democrat? Woolsey:
Any major organization, itself, will not take the risk to depart from the party line.
Okay, let’s dissect this a bit. If you are to believe the Wingnut Twins, the the Post’s alleged failure to cover past favorable comments by Ghadaffi and Chavez somehow makes their coverage of Al-Qaeda’s commentary on McCain somehow illegitimate. This defies logic for several reasons.
To begin with, other outlets, including the Associate Press, reported the story as well.
Second, the Post, like every other media outlet, has reported on stories where the McCain campaign (and others) suggested that foreign leaders’ preference for Obama made him unfit for office. Post columnists like Charles Krauthammer have hammered this home again and again. And that doesn’t even touch on the mini-controversy caused by the fact that a Hamas spokesman at one point said he would favor Obama.
Third, the standard isn’t whether the Post covered it, but whether the McCain campaign itself thought similar stories were newsworthy. McCain and his surrogates have hammered Obama on both his “no preconditions” speech and the Hamas story, among others. The campaign and its stalking horses in the blogosphere have even brought up favorable comments by Obama’s supporters, trying to use his followers’ statement to link him to Chavez, the Castros, Ahmadinejad, and even Che Guevara. Only now, when the tables are turned, is this somehow off limits.
Fourth, what do you think whould have happened if the press reported that al Qaeda actually preferred Obama? Woolsey and Scheunemann would be frothing at the mouth, and Schmidt and company would have a new ad up saying Osama hearts Obama.
Fifth, John McCain has repeatedly criticized Obama for expressing a willingness to violate Pakistan’s sovereignty to “take out” Osama bin Laden. It is Obama, not McCain, who has promised to redirect resources currently used in Iraq to win the war in Afghanistan. It is Obama, not McCain who poses the greater threat to al Qaeda. So to suggest that this was designed to hurt McCain because he is the bigger threat is to ignore the facts.
Last but not least, the CIA, among others, has noted that Osama bin Laden’s 2004 video, released four days before the Presidential election, played a significant role in pushing a number of undecideds toward Bush — which was exactly the result bin Laden wanted. If, as Scheunemann and Woolsey would have you believe, al Qaeda fears McCain more than Obama, wouldn’t it make sense that they would avoid taking an action that would tilt the election toward McCain?
The McCain campaign can’t have it both ways. They can’t argue that other foreign nutjobs’ apparent support for Obama proves he is unworthy to be President and then claim that these nutjobs’ support for McCain proves that he is the bigger threat to terrorism. You also can’t suggest that al Qaeda’s support for you is fake and that Ahmedinejad, Chavez and others’ support for Obama is sincere.
Oh. Wait. It’s the McCain campaign.
Inconsistency and double standards are their preferred tools.
Never mind.
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Those of you who have read my blog since its origins know that I’m a gamer (if you don’t know what that means, you might as well stop reading now). Lately, I’ve been trying out Spore (meh), but I’m sure that I’ll soon return to my first love, World of Warcrack Warcraft, especially now that Blizzard is putting out the new expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, right after the election.
Little did I know, however, that playing WoW actually makes me a potential terrorist:
The American military and intelligence communities are increasingly worried that would-be bin Ladens might gather in a virtual world, to plan a real-life attack. But the spies haven’t given many details, about how it might be done. Now, a Pentagon researcher has laid out how such a terror plot might unfold. The planning ground is World of Warcraft. The main target of this possibly nuclear strike: the White House.
There’s been no public proof to date of terrorists hatching plots in virtual worlds. But online spaces like World of Warcraft are making some spooks, generals and Congressmen extremely nervous. They imagine terrorists rehearsing attacks in these worlds, just like the U.S. military trains with commercial shoot-em-up games. They worry that the massively multiplayer games make it incredibly easy to gather plotters from around the world. But, mostly, virtual worlds are nerve-wracking to spies because they’re so hard to monitor. The accounts are pseudonymous. The access is global. The jargon is thick. And most of the spy agencies’ employees aren’t exactly level-70 shamans.
In a presentation late last week at the Director of National Intelligence Open Source Conference in Washington, Dr. Dwight Toavs, a professor at the Pentagon-funded National Defense University, gave a bit of a primer on virtual worlds to an audience largely ignorant about what happens in these online spaces. Then he launched into a scenario, to demonstrate how a meatspace plot might be hidden by in-game chatter.
If you play WoW, you’re gonna love the scenario, complete with graphics, that the Pentagon researcher put together.
Two World of Warcraft players discuss a raid on the “White Keep” inside the “Stonetalon Mountains.” The major objective is to set off a “Dragon Fire spell” inside, and make off with “110 Gold and 234 Silver” in treasure. “No one will dance there for a hundred years after this spell is cast,” one player, “war_monger,” crows.
Except, in this case, the White Keep is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. “Dragon Fire” is an unconventional weapon. And “110 Gold and 234 Silver” tells the plotters how to align the game’s map with one of Washington, D.C.
Here’s a set a maps he put together. For those who don’t know the game, the terrain is a part of WoW’s virtual world and the discussion to the right is supposed to be two players chatting in-game:
Okay, looks perfectly normal. But wait — it’s actually Washington, DC:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh man, Pentagon, you’re killing me. I want to work at a think tank that lets me play WoW all day.
Three observations.
1. I think the Pentagon just might have better things to do. For example, they might want to think about trying to raid that real-world StoneTalon Keep known as Osama Bin Laden’s freaking cave.
2. Warning: Geeky WoW insider stuff follows.
If you’re going to create a scenario where terrorists are using WoW, you might want to know something about WoW. I just checked Thottbot (the WoW geek version of Google), and there is no such thing as a White Keep. Same with the Dragon Fire spell. Nobody in the game talks about gold and silver numbers because the game is randomized in such a way that you don’t know how much gold and silver the mobs drop.
Furthermore, since Stonetalon is a fairly low-level zone, there is no freaking way there’d be that much cash there. If they wanted to use numbers like that, they’d just use map coordinates. Oh, and there’s no freaking way that Blizzard wouldn’t notice a guild trying this kind of stuff.
While Stonetalon is fairly low-level, it’s not level 1. The terrorists would have to play for about three weeks before they could go into Stonetalon without getting pwned (and you can’t even see the map in Stonetalon without having explored it).
Oh, and nobody talks in real time — they talk in server time. Don’t ask.
What a n00b.
End Geeky WoW insider stuff.
3. WoW players can be divided into three categories: fourteen-year-olds, twenty-something punk/thrash/hardcore/metal fans, and ex-Dungeon and Dragon geeks (like me), most over thirty years old (with apologies to Ta-Nehisi Coates). These people hate n00bs and would just waste these guys, metaphorically speaking.
I may have to eat these words someday, but I seriously doubt that terrorists would have either the patience or the knowledge of pop culture to survive long enough to pull this off. The Chuck Norris jokes in Barrens chat alone would be enough to drive them away.
And as I noted earlier, the Pentagon should a hell of a lot less time wandering around Outland and a whole hell of a lot more time trying to take down that real-life level 70 warlock living in a cave somewhere in Waziristan.
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Twenty questions I would like to see asked at the debate tonight:
1. Are we at war with Pakistan? Senator Obama, given your pledge to go into Pakistan, if necessary, to take out Osama bin Laden, do you support President Bush’s current counter-insurgency efforts along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border? And Senator McCain, when Senator Obama made those comments, you accused him of being reckless. Do you now think President Bush is being reckless?
2. Numerous reports have indicated that the State Department is woefully underfunded and understaffed. Secretary Gates, among others, has urged Congress and the President to take steps to address these concerns. Congress has largely been unsympathetic. What would you do, as President to make the State Department more effective, and to give it the resources it needs to succeed?
3. Do you support making USAID a cabinet-level agency? Given the current financial crisis, can the United States afford to continue its foreign assistance programs? Do you support reestablishing the US Information Agency or a similar construct to coordinate and strengthen our public diplomacy?
4. Is the United States more or less safe and secure than it was on September 12, 2001? Why or why not?
5. Senator McCain, can you please tell me what the difference is between Russian incursions into Georgia and American incursions into Pakistan? Don’t both involve a large power moving into territory controlled by a democratic ally of the United States?
6. Some have argued that the American century is over and that China will soon be the world’s dominant economic and political power. Do you think that is accurate? Why or why not? Would it matter if the United States wasn’t the biggest dog in the yard anymore?
7. Senator McCain, five former Secretaries of State, including two who have endorsed you, have called for dialogue with Iran without preconditions. You have stated your opposition, and your candidate for Vice President has suggested that such views are naive. Yet when it came time for you to choose someone to brief Sarah Palin on foreign policy, you asked Henry Kissinger, one of those five, to do it. Do you still believe that it is not possible for the United States not to talk to Iran?
8. Senator Obama, are there any situations where you think it would be necessary to set conditions before meeting with a foreign leader? In other words, is there anything that any leader can do that would make it impossible for you to meet with him or her?
9. Senator McCain, your running mate has suggested that the United States should not second-guess Israel should it decide to attack Iran. Is that your view as well? Senator Obama, do you agree or disagree?
10. Both of you have called on the Bush Administration to close Guantanamo and to end the practice of torture. There is growing evidence that Bush Administration officials may have violated U.S. law as well as treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory. Would you favor the investigation of such allegations and the prosecution of those, up to an including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, found to have broken American laws including statutes against war crimes?
11. What can the United States do to strenghten the United Nations?
12. Should the United States ratify the International Criminal Court treaty?
13. What can the United States do to prevent genocide? Would you favor military intervention by U.S. forces if it could help prevent a genocide? Would you have intervened in Rwanda? What are you going to do in Sudan?
14. What is the one foreign policy issue that you think is currently under the radar but will have an impact on your administration?
15. Most of the world has come to regard the United States as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. What steps would you take to reverse that?
16. Have we “lost” Latin America? What steps would you take to reverse growing anti-Americanism in the region?
17. When this campaign started, no issue was bigger than Iraq. Now it appears to be an almost forgotten issue. Senator McCain, given Prime Minister Maliki’s outspoken desire to see American troops leave, why do you continue to oppose a phased withdrawal from Iraq? Senator Obama, is there any situation where you can see American troops remaining in Iraq beyond the timetable you outlined?
18. Is the war in Afghanistan lost? Would you favor a surge there along the lines of what happened in Iraq?
19. Senator McCain, how can we afford to stay in Iraq and deal with the financial crisis at home? Senator Obama, you have suggested moving troops in Iraq to deal with the growing crisis in Afghanistan. Can we afford to do that as well?
20. Given the fact that Russo-American relations have cooled considerably since Russia’s invasion of Georgia, what steps would you take to ensure continued Russian-American cooperation on anti-proliferation measures, including not only implementation of Nunn-Lugar, but also the situations in Iran and North Korea?
Add your own questions in the comments below.
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Don’t feel bad — I was too. But meanwhile, the Administration continues its sightseeing tour of Pakistan’s NWFP.
The US military conducted another airstrike inside Pakistan’s lawless tribal agencies. The target of the strike was an al Qaeda-linked group called Al Badar, which is run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
Unmanned Predator aircraft launched several missiles in the early morning at a target in the village of Tol Khel on the outskirts of Miramshah, the administrative seat of North Waziristan. Twelve members of Al Badar (or Al Badr) were reported killed and 14 were reported wounded in the attack, according to AFP. . . .
Hekmatyar runs the Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin, a radical Taliban-linked faction fighting US forces in Afghanistan. He has close links to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, as well as the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s military intelligence agency.
The US targeted a Hekmatyar compound in South Waziristan on Aug. 13. Taliban commanders Abdul Rehman and Islam Wazir, three Turkmen, and “several Arab fighters” were reported in the strike. Reports indicated up to 25 terrorists were killed in the attack.
The US has conducted eight airstrikes and raids in North and neighboring South Waziristan since Aug. 31. Five of the strikes have been aimed at compounds in North Waziristan. Four of them were operated by the Haqqani Network. . . .
The Haqqanis are closely allied with the Taliban and al Qaeda, and have close links with the Inter-Services Intelligence. The Haqqanis run a parallel government in North Waziristan and conduct military and suicide operations in eastern Afghanistan. Siraj Haqqani, Jalaluddin’s son, has close ties to Osama bin Laden and is one of the most wanted terrorist commanders in Afghanistan.
Holy Bush Doctrine, Batman!
Looks like Bush is taking Obama’s advice. Too bad it’s seven freaking years after he first should have done it.
Call me a cynic, but I can’t help believe that the Bush Administration (and the McCain campaign, for that matter) and trying as hard as they can to find and kill Osama before the election.
| posted in American foreign policy, politics, war & rumors of war | 0 Comments
Given everything going on around the election — lipstick, pigs, sex, wolves, seals and all sorts of other so very important matters — you might have missed this little gem, from yesterday’s White House press briefing:
Perino’s claim that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, not Osama bin Laden, was the “mastermind” of the 9/11 attacks is so staggeringly and blatantly a lie that it’s hard to know where to start. For the Administration to cover up its failure to capture bin Laden by arguing the detention of KSM somehow matters more, is akin to suggesting that Radovan Karadzic’s arrest absovled Soblodan Milosevic of any responsibility for what happened in Bosnia.
Whenever any leader makes a decision, there are two levels of responsibility: strategic and tactical. The person who identifies the direction that an organization or country or business is going to take determines the strategy. The person who designs and implements the actions necesssary to implement the strategy determines the tactics.
In this case, Osama bin Laden chose the strategy — attacking the United States. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed decided the tactics — how and where to make the attack a reality. It is just mind-boggling that the Bush Administration doesn’t understand — or is pretending not to understand — the difference.
Just in case it’s the former, permit me to remind Ms. Perino and her boss what Osama bin Laden said in his first interview (with Taysir Alluni, al-Jazeera’s Afghanistan bureau chief) after the September 11 attacks. The transcript is from Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden:
As far as concerns [America's] description of these attacks as terrorist acts, that description is wrong. These young men, for whom God has created a path, have shifted the battle to the heart of the United States, and they have destroyed its most oustanding landmarks, its economic and military landmarks, by the grace of God. And they have done this because of our words — and we have previously incited and roused them to action. . . . And if inciting for these reasons is terrorism, and if killing those that kill our sons is terrorism, then let history witness that we are terrorists. . . .
Making connections is easy. If this implies that we have incited these attacks, then yes, we’ve been inciting for years, and we have released decrees and documents concerning this issue, and other incitements which were published and broadcast in the media. So if they mean, or if you mean, that there is a connection as a result of our incitement, then that is true. So we incite, and incitement is a duty. . . .
I say that the events that happened on Tuesday September 11 in New York and Washington are truly great events by any measure, and their repercussions are not yet over. . . .These repercussions cannot be calculated by anyone due to their very large — and increasing — scale, multitude and complexity, so watch as the amount reaches no less than $1 trillion by the lowest estimate, due to thise successful and blessed attacks. We implore God to accept those brothers within the ranks of the martyrs and to admit them to the highest levels of Paradise.
Now I know that Ms. Perino is not a lawyer, neither is President Bush. I’m not either. But unlike me, they’re surrounded by some of the top legal minds in the country. One of them just might want to explain to Bush and Perino the concepts of conspiracy and incitement. It just might clarify things a little.
Then again, those are the same lawyers who told Bush that torture was okay. So maybe not.
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I was struck by similarities in the following two descriptions of individuals subjected to information overload.
First, a description from Jane Meyer’s The Dark Side of the Bush Administration trying to cope with a deluge of raw intelligence after 9/11:
[Bush] and Cheney demanded to see all available raw intelligence reports concerning additional possible threats to America on a daily basis. . . . Others who saw the same intelligence reports found the experience mind-altering. . . .Readers suffered “sensory overload” and became “paranoid.” . . .[T]he cumulative effect turned national security concerns into “an obsession.”
Now take a look at this report from Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald about the trial of Salim Hamdin, Osama bin Laden’s driver and, subsequent to this report, convicted war criminal:
In the al Qaeda world of driver Salim Hamdan, exhortations to martyrdom and railing at the infidels [became] mind-numbing. Or so claimed several FBI agents who testified last week at the trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver, the Yemeni with a fourth-grade education. ”Mr. Hamdan pretty much got tired of hearing the same thing over and over again,” said FBI Agent George Crouch Jr. And so, he “tuned out.”
Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting some sort of moral equivalence here. But the fact that both Bush Administration staffers and al Qaeda camp followers had similar sensory overload experiences is quite striking. There’s a reason that interrogators, torturers, and cults all use sensory overload — it softens up targets and makes them much more willing to cooperate.
The jury in Hamdan’s case apparently concluded that sensory overload was an inadequate defense (I say apparently because the court’s decision to keep the jurors’ identities secret means we’ll never really know what was behind their deliberations).
Yet the almost exact same conditions existed inside the Bush Administration in the days after 9/11. And it was the fear and panic of those early days, as Meyer notes, that led Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and others to conclude that they needed to use any and all means necessary to protect the United States.
Perhaps the time has come to stop thinking of the Bush Administration as evil and start thinking of them as untreated survivors of post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD certainly can significantly alter an individual’s behavior, and historians have documented numerous instances where a national trauma has generated what some have called collective psychosis.
That said, I don’t think we can excuse what someone has done just because they were traumatized. Permit that argument, and almost anything — say, for example, torturing suspects or flying planes into buildings — can be justified. And that way lies true madness.
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If you haven’t heard, the kangaroo court military tribunal in Guantanamo has found Salim Ahmed Hamdan guilty of providing material support for terrorism. Because he was Osama’s driver. From The New York Times:
A panel of six military officers convicted a former driver for Osama bin Laden of a war crime Tuesday, completing the first military commission trial here and the first conducted by the United States since the end of World War II. . . . The conviction of Mr. Hamdan, a Yemeni who was part of a select group of drivers and bodyguards for Mr. bin Laden until 2001, was a long-sought, if somewhat qualified, victory for the Bush administration, which has been working to begin military commission trials at the isolated naval base here for nearly seven years.
This is just nuts. According to the theory of justice used in this trial, anybody who ever served under anybody committing war crimes or crimes against humanity is subject to prosecution, even if they never had anything to do with the crimes itself.
To put it another way, if the Bush Administration had run things at the end of the Second World War, Pope Benedict and the first three postwar Chancellors of West Germany all would have been convicted as war criminals. That is a perversion of the Nuremberg principle, not its extension.
I’ve already blogged about how absurd this is. But I’d like to revisit the question of why the Bushies chose Hamdan as its first case rather than, oh, I don’t know, Kalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind behind 9/11.
I think there are two possible explanations.
First, the Bush Administration had so little confidence in this process, that it felt it had to get a win — any win — under its belt. This means that they were so afraid of what might happen during the first trial, they felt a practice round was necessary before they got around to the serious prosecutions.
Second, this may be revenge. After all, it was in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that the Supremes ruled that the Administration’s original military commissions plan was utterly unconstitutional. So in response, they’re taking their anger out on this poor schlub. What a despicably Nixonian approach to justice.
There is both irony and tragedy in this verdict. The irony is that they didn’t entirely succeed. Hamdan was found guilty of material support for terrorism, but also found innocent of the more serious charge of conspiracy. So despite the fact that the Administration used every trick in the book to secure Hamdan’s conviction, they were not able to convince a jury of six officers — people whose future careers will in part be determined by their actions in this trial — that Hamdan was part of bin Laden’s inner circle. Of course, that’s not much consolation to Hamdan or his family.
The tragedy, of course is that Hamdan, who by all accounts has a fourth-grade education and was never anything more than one of several drivers and errand boys for bin Laden, will now spend the rest of his life in jail.
I have no sympathy for al Qaeda; I want our government to throw the book thrown at bin Laden, Zawahiri, Mohammed, and the rest of these thugs. But to suggest that this guy is anything other than a tiny cog in that machine is ridiculous. Whoever wins the next election should give serious thought to commuting Hamdan’s sentence to time served.
| posted in American foreign policy, war & rumors of war | 0 Comments
No, I’m not talking about The Joker.
I’m not a big fan of what Rebecca McKinnon calls “parachute journalists” — reporters who spend a very limited time in a country and then write stories describing “ancient ethnic hatreds” and “the profound despair of local villagers,” as if they had spent the last thirty years living there. It’s the war correspondent ethos run amok.
The latest is from Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald, who spent two whole days in Guantanamo covering the war crimes trial of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver.
That said, I did find one item in Rosenberg’s story interesting:
In the al Qaeda world of driver Salim Hamdan, exhortations to martyrdom and railing at the infidels can become mind-numbing. Or so claimed several FBI agents who testified last week at the trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver, the Yemeni with a fourth-grade education. ”Mr. Hamdan pretty much got tired of hearing the same thing over and over again,” said FBI Agent George Crouch Jr. And so, he “tuned out.”
I haven’t seen this reported anywhere else, and it certainly makes sense. If you’ve ever been in a car with a bunch of metalheads listening to Motörhead at maximum volume, sooner or later you’re going to start tuning out Lemmy, no matter how awesome a rock god he may be.
What isn’t clear from Rosenberg’s account is whether the FBI agents were testifying for the prosecution or the defense. You’d think that would be an important detail, one worthy of putting in the freaking story.
But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Rosenberg’s story is its sheer banality. She makes it sound no different from a visit to District Court — if a District Court sold “Got Freedom?” t-shirts** and kept bottled water in a portable mortuary.
This is the best the Bush Administration could do? Set aside, just for a moment, the due process violations and the allegations of torture. Assume, just for a moment, that the Bush Administration is right — that these guys deserve to have the book thrown at them. I know that it’s hard to do without causing your brain to explode, but just for argument’s sake, go along with me for a minute.
So the trials start. And who’s the first defendant? Osama’s driver. A guy with a fourth-grade education. Do they think he’s Alfred to Osama’s Batman or something? Or that he’s the criminal mastermind? Seriously? Maybe it would help if The Wall Street Murdoch Journal ran an op-ed called “What Hamdin and The Joker Have in Common.”
If the Allies had used the Bush Administration’s approach after World War II, they would have started with, I don’t know, Ezra Pound before they got around to prosecuting Goebbels, Speer, et. al. That is if Pound was a retarded 19-year-old from West Virginia.
It just doesn’t make any sense. But then again, you’d think I would have learned by now not to expect sanity, logic, or even consistency from the gang of thugs we call the Bush Administration.
**Shouldn’t the t-shirts read “Don’t Got Freedom”?? It is Guantanamo, after all.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia, used under a GNU Free Documentation License.
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