New, more comfortable leg shackles, used to restrain detainees are shown in a room where detainees meet their lawyers in the maximum security Camp Six at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba September 4, 2007. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

Lawfare Blog has a roundup of some of the latest news regarding the “GWoT”:

The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson interviews Ali Soufan, the author of The Black Banners, on former CIA official Jose Rodriguez. And Jane Sutton of Reuters reports that defense counsel for the alleged 9/11 co-conspirators have requested that Rodriguez be called to testify in the military commission case.

Attorney for Abu Zubaydah Joseph Margulies has this op-ed in the LA Times urging the U.S. to charge his client with a crime. And CBS News interviewed Margulies as well.

In a Senate Judiciary Hearing, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said that the FBI is investigating how details about the Al Qaeda plot that was thwarted was leaked to the Associated Press. Michael Schmidt at the New York Times reports. And Corey Flintoff at NPR attempts to answer the question of why terrorists target planes, collecting responses from a number of analysts and scholars.

I’ve been going through The Black Banners, Courting Disaster, Hard Measures, The Interrogator (by Glen Carle), John Kiriakou’s The Reluctant Spy, The Hunt for KSM, and other related material to try and make sense of the discrepancies, alternate perspectives and accounts. So I’ve looked forward to Ali Soufan’s interview by Amy Davidson in wake of Rodriguez’s book.

Will Rodriguez answer back with a rebuttal?

Recent article co-authored by Glenn Carle. Unfortunately, all this opinion piece seems to do is launch into is the same broad-brushed hyperbole that sees no difference or distinction between the CTC’s EIT program and the Spanish Inquisition’s torture program. Danielle Celermajer and Glenn Carle want to talk in excess about the subject of torture. So…what exactly does their favorite pet peeve topic have to do with enhanced interrogation techniques? It’s like they’re piggybacking the controversy over the CIA’s CTC program to plug Carle’s book and the tortured topic of torture.

On a side note, check out Hank Crumpton’s new book, The Art of Intelligence:

At the heart of Mr. Crumpton’s memoir, “The Art of Intelligence,” is an engrossing tale of how a seasoned CIA officer spearheaded the first campaign in America’s war on terror. Under his direction, in the fall of 2001, small teams of CIA operatives and U.S. Special Forces, together with Afghan allies, came to kill thousands of al Qaeda and Taliban combatants and to break their hold on Afghanistan in less than three months. Even though Osama bin Laden slipped away, and the Taliban eventually returned to foment a new insurgency in Afghanistan, this ground-breaking campaign was a success beyond all reasonable expectations.

Daily Beast has an excerpt, recounting “the full story of the first American to die in combat in Afghanistan—and how his wife responded.”

It’s worth the read…and the remembrance.

The date of the terrorist attack is frozen on a calendar covered in ash at a bank on Broadway, about a block from the World Trade Center. The bank has not reopened. (By David Karp, AP)

Click here to view the embedded video.

During the arraignment hearings, this comment was drowned out by white noise when the court security officer thought classified information might be mentioned. However, upon review, The Pentagon office in charge of the military commission tribunals decided nothing compromising was revealed and released a transcript on Wednesday.

Schwartz’ “big boy pants” was a snide reference to Jose Rodriguez (who proudly linked it onto his book’s Facebook wall) and his 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl in which Rodriguez said,

Jose Rodriguez: We needed to get everybody in government to put their big boy pants on and provide the authorities that we needed.

Lesley Stahl: Their big boy pants on–

Jose Rodriguez: Big boy pants. Let me tell you, I had had a lot of experience in the agency where we had been left to hold the bag. And I was not about to let that happen for the people that work for me.

Lesley Stahl: There wasn’t gonna be any deniability on this one?

Jose Rodriguez: There was not gonna be any deniability. And I tell you something. In August of 2002, I felt I had all the authorities that I needed, all the approvals that I needed. The atmosphere in the country was different. Everybody wanted us to save American lives.

I believe that the mention of torture and the apparent religious observations are merely ploys.

Debra Saunders alludes to the following passage on page 82-83 of Hard Measures:

Also found at the site was a spare prosthetic leg belonging to AQ operative Walid bin Attash. Sadly, bin Attash wasn’t connected to it at the time. Some of our people discovered that bin Attash had frequented online dating websites and described himself as someone who “Loves to travel- sometimes at a moment’s notice.” It took us six more months, but finally we captured him in Karachi in April 2003 and put a serious dent in his social life.

Debra Saunders writes:

On Saturday, Attash was one of five defendants charged with 2,976 counts of murder for their role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It would seem that Attash has grown very devout at Guantanamo Bay. His civilian attorney Cheryl Bormann wore a hijab and abaya at the military pre-trial hearing. She even suggested that female prosecutors dress in more “appropriate” fashion in deference to the defendants’ “fear of committing a sin under their faith.” According to news reports, distaff prosecutors wore military uniforms with knee-length skirts.

Is the Attash in your book the same guy whose attorney feels she must cover her entire body? I asked Rodriguez. Yes, he answered. “These people are pretty hypocritical; one thing is their religious beliefs, the other thing is what they do.”

I’m sure a number of FA readers will disagree with me here, but al Qaeda theology is not the same religion as the Islam practiced by 1.5 billion. And a number of al Qaeda fighters aren’t even particularly pious, let alone religiously observant, except when it serves their agenda and interest to be so. The allure of violent jihad attracts a certain kind of personality; and some of those involved in the business of jihadism merely are in it for the adventurism of violence and not religion. Islam is and also isn’t the problem.

While Bormann may try to shame female prosecutors to take the veil, Rodriguez found that KSM preferred dealing with female CIA officers who wore work attire. At the end of one debriefing, Rodriguez writes, KSM called a female officer back and said, “There’s something else you should know.” KSM then described how “he had personally decapitated Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.” KSM was not remorseful.

At the end of the chapter on KSM in Rodriguez’s book, is this account (the most detailed one I’ve read) of where he threatens to murder one of his CIA debriefers:

One of our senior CTC officers spent some time at the black site and established what seemed to have been a good relationship with KSM, getting some very valuable information from him. His contact with KSM came long after the “difficult period” (as the detainees called it) when EITs were employed. When it was time for this officer to return to headquarters, he dropped by KSM’s cell to say good-bye. Mohammed surprised him by saying: “Have a safe trip.” Sensing that what he had just said might be taken as a sign of humanity, KSM quickly added: “It is not that I wish you well. But if I ever get out of here, I want to personally be the one to kill you.”

-
“Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives, by Jose Rodriguez with Bill Harlow, Pg 96-97

Jose Rodriguez writes a piece today for CNN, covering the media carnival around the court circus:

While the antics of these al Qaeda terrorists were certainly colorful, I would like to take a moment to focus on the performance of an entirely different group, the journalists who covered the proceedings.

While most reporters have been careful to write that those who were arraigned are “alleged” to have committed terrorism (an allegation Mohammed has previously gleefully accepted), they are less careful when discussing the treatment these top terrorists received at the hands of the CIA.

~~~

The biggest myth is that the detainees were “tortured.” Some of the stories coming out of Gitmo this past weekend simply state that as a fact. There is no “allegedly” attached to the allegation in these stories. About 30 out of the 100 or so detainees that the CIA held were subjected to some harsh treatment.

But the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice assured us in writing that the treatment was specifically not torture.

From Hard Measures, pg 63:

Any interrogation program we developed had to be effective and legal. Assuring ourselves of the latter proved time-consuming. But as critically important as we felt it to be to get information that might help us thwart impending attacks, I insisted that we take no action unless and until we were assured, in writing, by the seniormost legal authorities, that we were not crossing legal red lines. Some of my most senior leaders in CTC argued that we couldn’t afford to wait for approval from policymakers. They felt the pressure of a possible second wave of attacks that might happen at any moment and knew that Abu Zubaydah had in his head information that could help us thwart them. But I said, no, we will not go ahead until we know we have the backing of our political leaders and a binding legal opinion from the Department of Justice.

And of course some political leaders, like they did in regards to previous statements they made on the question of Iraq and WMD including voting on AUMF, wish to rewrite history and absolve their hands, abandoning the soldiers out on the battlefield to take the heat and blame.

Rodriguez continues…

Many of the techniques were essentially bluffs — designed to get the attention of a detainee and perhaps scare him — but to cause no physical harm.

Some of the stories this weekend talked of “years” of abusive treatment these detainees endured. In fact, the enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) that CIA used were applied at most for only 30 days. On average, it was much less.

Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee subjected to EITs, received them for less than three weeks. Mohammed’s period of harsh — but legal and necessary — treatment was even less.

The public impression, aided and abetted by the media, is that the practice of waterboarding was rampant.

In fact, only three detainees: Mohammed, Zubaydah and one other were ever waterboarded, the last one more than nine years ago. Many of the stories this weekend repeated the assertion that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. But 183 is a count of the number of pours of water from a plastic water bottle. Mohammed told the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2007 that he had been waterboarded five times.

If his story has now changed, it is only to match the media narrative.

In the end, it wasn’t even waterboarding that did him in. It was sleep deprivation.

(Senator Bill Nelson, btw, asked to be waterboarded and was denied).

Ali Soufan’s Black Banners is a very good read, with detailed accounts of his experience in investigating the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and his interrogation of HVDs, including Abu Zubaydah. He writes a very persuasive argument, speaking from a position of authority and not just from expertise in his field (I mention this because I’ve seen interrogators and former SERE instructors criticize the CIA program, only to succeed in revealing their ignorance of the actual program in so doing).

When I picked up Rodriguez’ book on the day of release (April 30th), upon first glance it seemed less impressive than Soufan’s. The latter is in smaller print and lots of pages; the former had larger printing and less pages (neither has any appendices, notes, or index at the end; although Black Banners does list some sources cited). My fear became that it might be a partisan read rather than a serious work of contribution to the ongoing debate. But once I delved in, I was reassured by the contents. Mr. Rodriguez writes very convincing arguments that challenges the narrative painted by Soufan’s account. What fascinates me is trying to reconcile both accounts, because I don’t think either person is intentionally lying or deceiving; in some cases, it’s a matter of differing perspectives; in others, it will require some sleuthing on the part of the reader to reconcile dates, fill in missing pieces, and determine for himself where the truth lies (*snicker*…see what I did? “Truth” and “lies”, side x side?…okay, nevermind).

There are a number of details in Rodriguez’ book regarding the capture and interrogation of AZ and KSM, as well as the CIA program that I’ve not seen revealed anywhere else. It definitely is a book that enriches the debate.

What is great about this book and Thiessen’s is that they directly challenge the narrative woven by the FBI and Soufan. And they extract the hysteria, hyperbole, and distorted mystique that has surrounded the nature and purpose of the EIT program and how it was implemented briefly upon 30 of the 100 HVTs who made it into the CIA program.

I believe that the mention of torture at the arraignment hearings is for the most part a ploy on the part of the HVDs about to be put on trial.

On a lighter note…

Until Marc Thiessen’s book, Courting Disaster, came out in 2010, the critics of Bush-era enhanced interrogations (waterboarding specifically) of al-Qaeda high-value detainees have had most of the field to themselves in the media. Former VP Dick Cheney could not restrain himself from making public comments in response to the current president’s political attacks against the EIT program and those who supported it. Those involved directly within the CIA interrogation program itself were not at liberty to defend themselves against the attacks, distortions, smears, and misconceptions. They basically had to bite their lips and weather the storm of slander.

President Obama’s 2009 decision to release the “how-not-to-torture” OLC memos made details of Thiessen’s book possible. Courting Disaster challenged the mainstream narrative that the CIA method of waterboarding (just 3 HVDs) rose to the level of definition for torture and that it was ineffective.

In Dick Cheney’s memoir, In My Time pg 521-2, the former VP writes:

The president decided to declassify a different set of documents. These were the memos produced by the Bush administration Justice Department that explained the legal rationale supporting enhanced interrogation and also detailed the particular methods involved. At about the same time, President Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, signaled the possibility that the lawyers who prepared these memos and the intellgience officers who conducted enhanced interrogations might face professional sanction or even criminal prosecution.

I was appalled that the new administration would even consider punishing honorable public servants who had carried out the Bush administration’s lawful policies and kept the country safe. I was also deeply concerned about the selective fashion in which sensitive information was being declassified and made public. The administration had just revealed to the world, including our enemies, methods used to question detainees thought to have information about future attacks. Yet the information in the memos I had requested- detailing all we had learned, and the attacks we had stopped through the enhanced interrogation program- was being kept secret. A few weeks after President Obama released the legal memos, I heard from CIA Director Leon Panetta, a colleague and friend from my days in the House. He wrote to tell me that my request was being denied.

The memos Cheney wanted to have released eventually were made available. And still the debate over waterboarding and “torture” remain unsettled.

Early this month, we have the indictment of John Kiriakou and the State Department’s release of the Zelikow memo.

The former Bush vice president and the former Bush speech writer aren’t the only ones appalled by President Obama’s branding with the “torture” label libel. And they aren’t the only ones coming forth to give the other side of the story.

Next week will bring us the release of Jose Rodriguez‘s new book, Hard Measures. And it begins with an extensive 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl tomorrow night.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rodriguez is the ex-CIA chief of the Counterterrorism Center who ordered the destruction of 92 interrogation tapes. Absolved of criminal wrong-doing, why were they destroyed? Rodriguez explains:

The tapes, filmed in a secret CIA prison in Thailand, showed the waterboarding of terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri.

Especially after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, Rodriguez writes, if the CIA’s videos were to leak out, officers worldwide would be in danger.

“I wasn’t going to sit around another three years waiting for people to get up the courage,” to do what CIA lawyers said he had the authority to do himself, Rodriguez writes. He describes sending the order in November 2005 as “just getting rid of some ugly visuals.”

Dana Priest:

A blunt explanation

It became clear immediately that Rodriguez never even got the talking points, which was refreshing and surprising. Right away he began divulging awkward truths that other senior officers had tried to obfuscate in our conversations about the secret prisons: “In many cases they are violating their own laws by helping us,” he offered, according to notes I took at the time.

Why not bring the detainees to trial?

“Because they would get lawyered up, and our job, first and foremost, is to obtain information.”

Concerned that the location of one of the prisons was about to be revealed, Rodriguez writes that he ordered the facility closed immediately and the detainees moved to a new site. While dismantling the site, the base chief asked Rodriguez if she could throw a pile of old videotapes, made during the early days of terrorist Abu Zubaida’s interrogation and waterboarding, and now a couple of years old, onto a nearby bonfire that was set to destroy papers and other evidence of the agency’s presence.

Just at that moment, according to his account, a cable from headquarters came in saying: “Hold up on the tapes. We think they should be retained for a little while longer.”

“Had that message been delayed by even a few minutes,” Rodriguez writes, “my life in the years following would have been considerably easier.”

Those actions led to a lengthy and still ongoing investigation of the agency that produced no charges. Rodriguez retired in January 2008 and now works in the private sector.

~~~

Shredding the tapes

Rodriguez writes that he ordered the tapes’ destruction because he got tired of waiting for his superiors to make a decision. They had at least twice given him the go-ahead, then backed off. In the meantime, a senior agency attorney cited “grave national security reasons” for destroying the material and said the tapes presented ‘“grave risk” to the personal safety of our officers” whose identities could be seen on the recordings.

In late April 2004, another event forced his hand, he writes. Photos of the abuse of prisoners by Army soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq ignited the Arab world and risked being confused with the CIA’s program, which was run very differently.

“We knew that if the photos of CIA officers conducting authorized EIT [enhanced interrogation techniques] ever got out, the difference between a legal, authorized, necessary, and safe program and the mindless actions of some MPs [military police] would be buried by the impact of the images.

“The propaganda damage to the image of America would be immense. But the main concern then, and always, was for the safety of my officers.”

Readers may disagree with much of what Rodriguez writes and with the importance of some of the facts he omits from his book, but the above sentence speaks volumes about why this book is important. In this case, a loyal civil servant — and the decision-makers above him who blessed these programs — were not thinking about the larger, longer-lasting damage to the core values of the United States that disclosure of these secrets might cause. They were thinking about the near term. About efficiency. About the safety of friends and colleagues. In their minds, they were thinking, too, about the safety of the country.

And after some back-and-forth with agency lawyers for what seemed to him the umpteenth time, he writes, Rodriguez scrutinized a cable to the field drafted by his chief of staff, ordering that the tapes be shredded in an industrial-strength machine. The tapes had already been reviewed, and copious written notes on their content had been taken.

“I was not depriving anyone of information about what was done or what was said,” he writes. “I was just getting rid of some ugly visuals that could put the lives of my people at risk.

“I took a deep breath of weary satisfaction and hit Send.”

I have no doubt that had these videos of Zubaydah and al-Nashiri’s interrogation sessions been made public, the only ones who stand to benefit would be Code Pink anti-war groups, bleeding heart human rights groups, the Taliban in Afghanistan, anti-Americanists around the world, and al Qaeda’s propaganda bureau. Not because there’s anything in the video that probably should alarm; but because by nature, those who live in modern civilized society are squeamish…and thus, would be alarmed and horrified. The EITs themselves were designed to make the HVD feel like the situation he was placed in is worse than the actual reality of it- a case of the bark being worse than the bite.

I’d say executions of mass murderers and serial killers is highly justified. But should they be witnessed by the public at large? Killing the enemy is necessary in wafare; but should all the sheep of society bear witness to what wolves and sheepdog do to one another? Maybe…but this isn’t the philosophical argument I’m wanting to have. My point is that watching the most sensationalized selective scenes that the media may find from these videos (devalued and devoid of relevant context) had they not been destroyed, would only be bad for our CIA…bad for our soldiers still in this fight on the frontlines…and ultimately bad for America.

“I don’t know what kind of man it takes to cut the throat of someone in front of a camera like that, but I can tell you this is probably someone who didn’t give a rat’s ass about having water poured on his face.”

~~~

“We made some al-Qaida terrorists with American blood on their hands uncomfortable for a few days. I am very secure in what we did and am very confident that what we did saved American lives.”

-Jose Rodriguez, former chief of the CIA’s clandestine service

Rodriguez’s book probably won’t quell the debate anytime soon (A 3-year probe by Senate Democrats is scheduled to be released sometime soon, discounting the value of the EIT program) but it will most certainly enrich the debate to be had on both sides.

What is the 99% Doctrine? I’m confident, man, that anything Ron Suskind writes should be held suspect of being made up of about 99% Bull****. Yes, this includes his new book, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President.

If he wrote bs during the Bush years, what makes anyone believe he’s written anything honest just because it’s now a Democrat he is crapping on?

As Jacob Weisberg reminds us:

If you wrote about the Bush Administration, as I did, you soon learned to avoid relying on Suskind’s reporting absent strong independent corroboration. What his three books had in common was the way they grabbed onto some interesting nugget and hyped it into something that, while bait for the news cycle and the bestseller lists, was fundamentally untrue. The first of these, The Price of Loyalty (2004), focused on Paul O’Neill’s unhappy experience as Bush’s first treasury secretary. Like all of Suskind’s work, the story is told in purple prose littered with passages of such blurriness that it’s hard to imagine a professional editor letting them past. But the real problem was the conceit at the heart of the book, that the inept, self-regarding O’Neill was a skilled and brilliant hero victimized at every turn by the political hacks across the street. Where Woodward favors his sources, Suskind flatters them histrionically. His version of the Bush White House was its own distorted reality.

Suskind’s next two books—The One Percent Doctrine (2006) and The Way of the World (2008)—were much worse. The first advanced a series of dubious theories about counterterrorism, including the claim that al-Qaida would have carried out a cyanide gas attack on the New York City subway in 2003 if Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaida leader, hadn’t called it off at the last minute because it wasn’t going to be as spectacular as Sept. 11. Suffice it to say that government officials and terrorism experts scoffed at the claim, regarding the intelligence as uncorroborated and the idea of such a plot being pulled off by al-Qaida sleeper agents as implausible. The second book leveled the charge that the Bush White House had asked the CIA to fabricate evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks. Suskind’s major sources contradicted the book’s assertions, and the CIA itself was moved to issue a rare —and persuasive—official denial.

The most famous thing Suskind wrote about the Bush administration was a passage in an article he published in the New York Times Magazine, quoting an anonymous Bush “aide”:

“The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’ “

This became one of the most quoted lines about the Bush years, repeated thousands of times as evidence of his administration’s willful dishonestly about everything from Iraq’s WMD to the budget. “Reality-based” turned into a liberal slogan of the era, printed on T-shirts and bumper stickers. How could it not, given the deliciousness of the quote? But did anyone in the Bush administration ever say these words to Ron Suskind? He has never given us any reason to believe that anyone did. And given the unacceptable liberties he takes with quotes from named sources—see below—I have my doubts.

Weisberg goes on to attack Suskind for his slipshod critique of the Obama White House.

If you’re like me, who believes Suskind spun much of his criticism about the Bush Administration, then it only stands to reason that his current work showing President Obama’s team in a less than favorable light should also be held suspect.

Don’t fall for the bait of buying his book just because he sings a siren song that appeals to your anti-Obama instincts. Just because it’s critical of the Obama Administration, doesn’t mean it’s based on honesty and truth. Suskind seems to take a lot of liberty with reality in order to spin a good, juicy story.

Does President Obama’s economic team suck? Yes. But don’t trust Suskind’s “insider’s scoop” on the matter.

Politico:

It’s not the first time that Suskind’s talent for narrative has raised questions among other reporters.

Over the weekend, Jesse Eisinger, a colleague of Suskind’s at the Wall Street Journal, now at Pro Publica, tweeted, “I’ve always thought the ‘reality-based’ line was piped. At the WSJ, Suskind was brilliant but his stuff was a little too perfect.”

He was referring to Suskind’s reporting that a Bush aide had told him that guys like him were “in what we call the reality-based community,” later adding, “That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” That quote has since been widely attributed to Karl Rove.

On Fox News on Saturday, Rove said, “I’m not certain how much of this book is true and accurate. My personal experience with him is that he tends to exaggerate” – a quote that was later tweeted, in a slightly surreal moment of bipartisan White House alumni solidarity, by Pfeiffer.

Karl Rove:

On Saturday, Rove said on “Fox and Friends” that he does not trust Suskind’s reporting in the new book on the Obama administration based on his “personal experience.”

“I’m not certain how much of this book is true and accurate,” Rove said on Saturday. “My personal experience with him is that he tends to exaggerate. I had an interview once in the West Wing with him where literally he was transcribing my comments and sort of repeating them back and he couldn’t get what I had just said accurate.”

Think 60 Minutes will have Suskind on again? After all, he has a new book to sell. Or have they not been featuring anti-Obama authors?

And I’m not talking about Dick Cheney…

…Well, okay I sorta am. But he’s not the one I deem to be spinning lies.

The Plames are once again outting themselves as a couple of partisan spinsters (or flatout liars) and they have the release of former VP Darth Cheney’s new autobiography to thank for bringing the two back into the spotlight of liberal celebritihood:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This interview was from the end of last month. Nothing quite like a Lawrence O’Donnell interview of a pair of anti-Bush heroes.

Anyone care to defend anything these three had to say?

Darth Cheney has been making the rounds. Here are a few more of his recent appearances:

Dateline:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

More NBC stuff, with Matt Lauer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the Lauer interview, in response to his hypothetical regarding an American captive in Iran, one thing I wish Cheney had made note of is that KSM & Co. are non-uniformed combatants not eligible for POW status & protections under Geneva. Did KSM abide by the rules of civilized warfare as set out by the Geneva Conventions when he masterminded the killing of 3,000 innocent civilians on 9/11?

Did Pakistan ever lodge a protest regarding our treatment of KSM? Nope. The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence just handed him over to us. Would he have fared better under Pakistan’s humane interrogation practices? *Snicker*

KSM was not tortured. The lives lost and those affected by the loss on 9/11 are the true victims of torture.

The cackling hens at The View were surprising subdued and respectful.

Here’s one from Laura Ingraham:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I am still reading Cheney’s book. I am also in the middle of Ali Soufan’s book and Glenn Carle’s.

He acts like he is America. But America didn’t like Dick Cheney. - Maureen Dowd

Ready to promote the release of his new autobiography, former Vice President Darth Cheney is deeply unapologetic over his time spent in serving in the Bush White House and can still give a rat’s ass about popularity over making the hard, adult decisions and doing the right thing:

“It’s important to have people at the helm who are prepared to be unpopular, to take the criticism and the hits that go with implementing policies.” “

Tuesday, I went down to Barnes & Noble to pick up former Vice President Dick Cheney’s just released autobiography, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir. The cashier who checked me out said she and her coworkers were just talking about the book, wondering how well it would sell.

I’ve read a number of the reviews out- pretty much hostile and scathingly bitter, along with statements by Powell and Rice, reacting to Cheney’s criticism of them in the book. Even some Bush supporters are wincing.

This at HuffPo sums up MSMs reaction as well as any:

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Salon’s Glenn Greenwald recently criticized Cheney’s publicity tour on an episode of “The Last Word,” saying that the American public was wrong to welcome Cheney back into the spotlight so easily.

Hayes — filling in for Lawrence O’Donnell as host of the MSNBC show — said he found the book to be offensive and expressed disgust over Cheney’s “no regrets” stance on waterboarding terror suspects in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

“What’s so troubling is the fact that he has managed to escape not only legal sanction for advocating and overseeing the implementation of the war crime that is torture, but that he has appeared to manage to escape social sanction as well,” Hayes said.

Greenwald, a blogger, also expressed anger, claiming that Cheney was guilty of “among the most serious and egregious crimes committed over the last decade.”

My own opinion? I am an unapologetic admirer of Dick Cheney.

About the first 250 pages encompasses his time before serving as George W. Bush’s vice president. Photos of him hanging out with his grandchildren might be a bit too disarming and uncomfortable to those who wish to perceive and portray him as a Dark Lord of the Sith. For someone supposedly so inhuman and inhumane, he and his wife Lynne certainly have contributed enormously to charities.

What do you suppose your run-of-the-mill Hollywood limousine-learjet liberal would think about the photos? Judging by this:

Alec Baldwin tweeted, “Cover of Cheney’s book looks like he’s manning the velvet rope at the gates of Hell.” And then, “Cover of Cheney’s book looks like he’s maitre’d at the lounge in Hell. Table for how many?”

Probably would “make his head explode”. But as Cheney might shrug: “… the last thing on my mind is whether or not I am irritating Alec…who?”

Although I am getting a certain amount of sneerful satisfaction from liberal heads exploding over the release of Darth Cheney’s memoir.

Incidentally, as a side note, prior to Cheney’s memoir, another recent purchase I made was Glenn Carle’s The Interrogator, mentioned about in a previous post. You can read Ali Soufan’s review here, in the WSJ; Soufan is also set to release a book, I think 9/12. They, of course, are critics of the CIA EIT program, from an informed perspective.

Soufan’s book release is apparently being heavily redacted by the CIA and apparently for reasons beyond national security concerns.

In addition to Marc Thiessen’s book, Courting Disaster, in defense of the EIT program, next May will bring an additional voice to the ongoing debate:

A book scheduled for publication next May by José A. Rodriguez Jr., a former senior C.I.A. official, is expected to give a far more laudatory account of the agency’s harsh interrogations than that of Mr. Soufan, as is evident from its tentative title: “Hard Measures: How Aggressive C.I.A. Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives.”

Superman was never one of my absolute favorites; but growing up, he was definitely one of the first- if not THE first- superheroes I became aware of. It began with watching after school reruns of “The Adventures of Superman”:

And one of the things that made a lasting impression was the following statement and image:

"...fights a neverending battle for Truth, Justice, and the American Way!"

Like Captain America (my previous blogpost here), an iconic American hero has become a symbol for something other than the embodiment of American exceptionalism:

He’s still a firm believer in truth and justice, but the world’s foremost superhero is no longer sure he can carry on proudly endorsing the American way. As he approaches his 80th birthday, Superman has made a shock decision: he intends to renounce his US citizenship.

The move, to be announced next week in the 900th edition of Action Comics, comes after a peculiarly topical plot twist: the Man of Steel finds himself being criticised by the White House for joining young Muslims at a rally against the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran.

“I’m tired of having my actions construed as instruments of US policy,” he wearily tells the President’s National Security Advisor. “Truth, justice and the American way… It’s not enough anymore. The world’s too small. Too connected. I intend to speak before the United Nations tomorrow and inform them that I am renouncing my US citizenship.”

Liberal messages in arts and entertainment, including comics, is nothing new; I believe it’s been a long-standing tradition. I grew up on Sesame Street and Spiderman comics and it is only in reflection as an adult that I can see where liberal messages were sewn into the fabric of the stories and characters.

The last Superman movie, “Superman Returns”, also did away with “the American Way”. But is this anti-Americanism? Or something else? Are we on the right being too super-sensitive and (mis)reading more into this than is warranted:

Aaaand cue the faux outrage, especially on the right of American politics.

I don’t mean to pick on Fox News, but they were braying the loudest. The story, titled “The Incident,” was condemned on “The O’Reilly Factor,” “Fox & Friends” and on “Fox Nation,” where potential presidential candidate Mike Huckabee called it “disturbing.” GOP activist Angie Meyer ranted on Fox that it showed a “blatant lack of patriotism,” that it “belittled” the United States and that it was an “eerie metaphor” for America’s apparently low (in her view) standing in the world.

Meanwhile, other media got into the act. Most major newspapers, news broadcasts and online news sites carried a news story, commentary or both. A piece by The Associated Press appeared in many small and mid-size newspapers, including my home base, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn.

While I’m glad the Man of Steel is still important enough to get that kind of coverage, I’m deflated that this non-story is the reason.

He's still a firm believer in truth and justice, but the world's foremost superhero is no longer sure he can carry on proudly endorsing the American way. As he approaches his 80th birthday, Superman has made a shock decision: In the 900th edition of Action Comics, Superman declares he is to renounce his American citizenship

the publishers of DC Comics, Jim Lee and Dan DiDio, appear to be concerned at the level of hostility their new edition has generated. They released a statement yesterday arguing that, despite his commitment to an increasingly international outlook, Superman will continue to embody the best of America.

“Superman is a visitor from a distant planet who has long embraced American values. As a character and an icon, he embodies the best of the American Way,” it read. “In a short story in Action Comics 900, Superman announces his intention to put a global focus on his never-ending battle, but he remains, as always, committed to his adopted home and his roots as a Kansas farm boy from Smallville.”

The intent of the writing direction seems to be to make Superman, already acting in a sense as “a citizen of the world” defending the whole of humanity, by shedding his association to American nationalism in a time when some people see it as a liability. President Obama, when he came into office, seemed to think he could accomplish more on the foreign policy front by playing down “American exceptionalism” and apologize to the world for our sins (and more specifically, the sins of the previous 8 years).

Ben Moore of Screen Rant suggests the story may be more complicated (and less significant) than the mere surface act of Superman renouncing his citizenship and a lot of knee-jerk hoopla made over nothing:

Superman, not Clark Kent, stated his plans to renounce his American citizenship

Superman, not Clark Kent, stated his plans to renounce his citizenship because he doesn’t want his world-saving/interfering ways to be used against America anymore.

This was a back-up story written by David S. Goyer – not a typical comic book writer.

This will probably never again be referenced, by Paul Cornell or anyone else at DC.

This back-up story might not even be in continuity.

~~~

Now, in my opinion, Superman is unequivocally an American icon. It doesn’t make you conservative or right-wing to believe this, because I’m about as liberal as they come and I believe it. By the same token, I don’t believe this was some leftwing conspiracy for Superman to reject America and all of its values; it would be hard for you to thoroughly examine the issue, the story, what was said by Superman, and come to that conclusion.

So perhaps, to get past anti-American prejudices, Superman felt he had to shed his “Americanism”/iconic image in order to peddle American values abroad? Being American and perceived as an agent of not only American values but of American governmental policy? A liability? So then…. “Stealth Americanism”?!

Shortly after receiving the negative attention and backlash publicity, DC back-pedaled away from the idea that their meal-ticket superhero is in fact renouncing U.S. citizenship:

DC has stated due to the backlash that nothing has changed but the story itself was simply a look at what could be and not what is.

~~~

“This short story is just that, it will not be followed up upon. Superman will remain as American as Apple pie.”

I wonder if caving in to negative publicity rather than defending (and clarifying) the intent of the original story is also as “American as apple pie”?

Some of the best sci-fi stories are said to be those which serve as vehicles of social commentary. But I think Ben Moore also brings up a useful point when he writes the following:

After reading this story, my primary thought is this: Comic books creators just need to stop shoehorning real events into their comic books in an effort to make them more “important” like the “real world.” It’s rarely, if ever, done in any interesting or satisfying way and it almost always trivializes the events themselves.

After all, not all writers are profound enough or knowledgeable enough to make astute points of social commentary; especially ones that can be universally regarded as brilliant by those on both sides of the political aisle.

It’s a silly notion to suggest that Superman would go to Tehran and involve himself in the protests in any way whatsoever. Superman is smarter than that. Hell, he’s got an advanced Kryptonian brain – he would know better than to wade into such a delicate situation without a second thought. In the end, the Iranian government doesn’t give-in to the protestors’ demands – an ending we already knew because it happened in real life. Regardless, as Superman’s flying away from Tehran, he spots a protestor reaching out with a flower in hand toward the soldier in front of him. The soldier takes the flower (oh, symbolism!), and Superman takes credit for this small but amazing development – he even brags about it to the National Security Advisor, which is, again, something Superman would never do in a million years.

Superman can only be as brilliant as those who script his lines and his actions.

So why does any of this matter? Why do comic books matter? Well, for one, comics are often introduced to us as children; and so as a medium, they have the potential to indoctrinate/influence/shape impressionable young minds.

For another, comic books are a serious medium of artistic literary expression with a large number of adults who also read them. Like pop culture, like Hollywood entertainment, we are to an extent influenced by what we read and what we expose ourselves to.

Iconic superheroes that have been around for decades like Superman, are also recognized and followed throughout the world. Superman, as a fighter against “evil-doers”, is a hero to people all across the world and not just here in America.

I could be wrong and mistaken, but I see so much of our leftward tilt as a nation as being the product of influence from American pop culture (which I see as dominated by liberal thinking and values).

To this day, the character of Supermancontinues to evolve, reflecting as well as influencing the (liberal) values and beliefs of the times we live in:

While the character has always been a source of fantasy and escapism, he’s also had his red boots securely planted in the politics and social undercurrents of the United States and, since his creation in 1938, continually reflected the concerns, worries and aspirations of US society, as well as its position on the global stage.

“The whole idea of Superman is that he is super-immigrant,” explains Dr Chris Murray, lecturer in comic studies at Dundee University. “He is a representation of the immigrant who comes to America and is seen as part of the American dream. In many ways he is part of the way that the American dream is sold to the world. It is stretching things to say Superman has a one-to-one relationship with US foreign policy. But he is certainly an ambassador for American values.” In the 1930s this saw Superman tackle corrupt politicians and slum landlords in the guise of an avenging New Deal protector for the downtrodden masses. During the Second World War and the Cold War he metamorphosed into the alien wing of the US armed services, striding the globe as an arbiter of ultimate moral authority and self-belief who simply could not be challenged.

By the 1980s Superman had evolved once again, growing his hair into a mullet and marrying the ultimate shoulder-padded career woman, Lois Lane, while tackling Islamic terrorists, supernatural beings and his arch-enemy Lex Luthor.

Then things dramatically changed for the last son of Krypton: the Berlin Wall fell and with it Superman’s position of global policeman and cheerleader for America. Things went from bad to worse as the US and the UN became humbled in Bosnia, ending any public belief that international power could be so openly exercised. It was only through the horrors of 9/11 that Superman rediscovered himself as the saviour of American values, yet even this was not to last, thanks to Iraq, extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo Bay.

All of which leaves Superman – the character who embodies the American Dream like no other – in a tricky situation: just how do you stand for the ‘American Way’ when that ideal has been tarnished and is itself being vehemently fought over by a polarised US public?

Tellingly, the answer may lie in a recent edition of the comic, which saw Superman travel to Tehran to take part in a non-violently demonstration against the Iranian regime. Shortly afterwards he renounced his US citizenship because he felt ‘truth, justice and the American way [is] not enough any more’.

“The first thing that popped into my mind when I saw this was that the idea of everyone loving Americans or wanting to be American is no longer there – it has changed dramatically in as little as 10 years,” explains New York-based Superman expert Vincent Zurzolo.

“I still think there is a tremendous love for the whole ideal of the American Dream, but because of our policies, many citizens of foreign countries now view us differently.

“In the last Superman movie they also took out ‘the American way’, so it was just ‘truth and justice’. I was tremendously upset by that, both as an American and a comic book fan. Superman is about truth, justice and the American Way. Why is that a dirty word now?”

Whether or not this is a theme that will be continued by Grant Morrison is, as Donald Rumsfeld put it: “a known unknown”. But given the rise of China, the stumbling US economy and the recent death of Osama Bin Laden, it’s inevitable that Superman will tackle an array of unfamiliar and previously unseen foes, whether in the guise of a US citizen or someone with a uniquely global passport.

It may even be the case that Superman embraces this universal status to tackle the one dilemma that faces us all and which even he may be powerless to prevent: global warming.

Yes, because the issue of global warming is not a right-left political issue but a unifying rallying call to which we can all answer to, as one big collective, global family of human citizens….[/sarcasm]

….only in the minds of liberal comics writers.

In 1949 George Orwell wrote 1984, a political prophecy that portrayed a Progressive Party’s ultimate achievement of its totalitarian goals in a Utopian State of complete oligarchy. This chilling account of a Utopian Dream that evolved into a Dystopia was titled, 1984. So frightening was the premise of the novel that the number 1984 became a part of our language, along with the nebulous figure of “Big Brother.”

Many who read the book breathed a sigh of relief when the year 1984 came and passed without the realization of the dreaded situations described in the book. Perhaps Orwell’s only flaw with 1984 was to predict the Progressive political ascendancy a few decades prematurely. The Chinese and Russian oligarchies were in full bloom by the late 1940s; it was within reason to assume the Totalitarian Progressive control of the United States and England in 35 years.

To accomplish this type of Oligarchy, it is necessary to have control over a certain segment of society, a segment that swears allegiance to a common cause and is willing to die for that cause, presumably for the benefit of the society as a whole. This has actually been happening for thousands of years; for the ancient Hebrew, it was only necessary to know that all other nations worshiped false Gods. This was reason enough to put other nations to the sword and to obliterate any trace of their existence.

Mao and Stalin became charismatic leaders of Totalitarian Oligarchies and obtained a celebrity status that approximated that of the Hebrew Jahweh and promptly killed over a hundred million of their own people in order to achieve a Progressive Utopia or a perfect Socialist Society.

In the novel 1984 there were many tactics revealed that were necessary to achieve the perfect Socialist State in the Western World during the second half of the twentieth century. Although Castro succeeded in Cuba, there was never a serious threat to the United States despite the federal government being riddled with Soviet spies. The presence of Soviet spies during the 1940s was proven by the release of the Verona Cables, the declassification of KGB files and the confession of former spy, Whittaker Chambers.

In the novel, 1984, Big Brother was known only to exist on posters and by the presence of his melodic and soothing voice. No one saw Big Brother, but doubting his omnipotence was reason enough for arrest by the Thought Police. It was essential to be enthusiastic about every broadcast by Big Brother and the ongoing war against either Eurasia or Eastasia, or risk being picked up by the dreaded Thought Police.

In Orwell’s world of 1984 there were two catalysts within Oceania, an area that theoretically combined England and the United States. These catalysts were Big Brother with his troubling reports of overproduction in a land of shortages, and the unending wars of attrition waged in far off lands. All conscious thought, away from work, was to be directed toward these situations. The eyes of Big Brother were always observing your behavior, as were all children, for they were all members of the Young Spies.

The wars of 1984 kept the lower party members and the non-party members, the Proles of Oceania focused toward a universal direction, in much the same way as the fanaticism of Global Warming keeps a huge segment of contemporary society focused in a collective tunnel vision. Within the Democratic Party and on the university campus there is no deviance allowed; grants are withdrawn and promotions withheld. Dubious computer models and questionable scientific data are considered sacrosanct. Conflicting data is considered contemptible and unworthy of consideration. To quote Al Gore, “The debate is over.”

Oceanic Society was designed in a pyramid structure; Big Brother was at the apex, he was credited with being all-powerful and infallible. Success, achievement, victory, scientific discovery, knowledge, wisdom, and virtue are all attributed to the leadership and inspiration of Big Brother.

Today’s Democratic Party has managed to elect their version of a Big Brother persona. Implementation of an Oligarchy has been an ongoing situation for the past seven months. Whether Barack Obama is actually in charge is a point of contention. He is flanked by several who could actually be pulling the strings. Just as Big Brother was a persona, our president may be controlled by George Soros, Bill Ayers, or David Axelrod, or a combination of the three.

Big Brother relied on the telescreen, a two-way communication screen to communicate with each citizen individually. No one was sure who was really speaking, but it was against the law to wonder. Obama uses the teleprompter to simulate actual speech delivery, and no knows who writes the message. In effect, the new president is a message deliverer, not unlike the poster image of Big Brother delivering his daily messages.

In Orwell’s 1984 there existed three political groups: The Aristocracy, the Middle Group, and the Proles. Beneath Big Brother is the Inner Circle of the party, the Aristocracy, made up of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists, and professional politicians. These people, who were members of the salaried middle class and upper levels of the working class, were chosen and molded into an elite political class. Picked for being less tempted by luxury and driven more for the acquisition of power, they became the nucleus of a monopoly industry and a centralized government. Control of education, media, and health is paramount for the complete installation of an oligarchy; an aware citizenry is difficult to delude and manage. The education system must be degraded to the point that the citizens are barely literate and only vaguely aware of history and current events. The media machine programs the news so that it relates in a positive manner to the party line. The leader is always portrayed in a glorious light and there is never negative news from within the country, only from without. This inner core of loyal and fawning sycophants provide the means to accomplish these goals.

Obama is aggressively building this same elitist group (aristocracy) of loyalists, a “Big Brother” court of obedient followers who are more than ready to toe the party line and kow-tow to the leader for their share of power. The appointment of czars, or dictators as they were designated by FDR (positions not designated in the Constitution), is a tightening and consolidation of power by Obama.

The second group in Orwell’s political hierarchy is the Middle Group. These people are members of the party and perform various menial functions that are necessary in any society. Within our own society, these people include government workers, teachers, bureaucrats, police, Community Organizers and Acorn. These party members are on the periphery of power and have limited access to the perks of inner party membership. However, steadfast dedication to the party line and unwavering fanaticism in the role of a Useful Idiot can guarantee a position at the front of the line for party benefits and even entry into the Inner Party in the future. Thus, party loyalty is woven into the fabric of the Orwellian society.

Orwell’s third political group represents the non-party members, the Proles as Orwell designated them. Insignificant, inconsequential, and oppressed, the Proles are largely ignored by the party. They live, work, eat, breed, and die in squalor and poverty without the scrutiny or privilege of the party member. Their homes are the targets of the occasional but dubious “Bottle Rockets” supposedly launched by Oceana’s eternal enemies from thousands of miles away. If the Obama agenda is allowed to run its projected course, the Proles are now, us, the common man.

We know that Obama is a real person, although the definition of “real” in reference to a cult-like celebrity, like Obama, may be argued with authority. Consider the cult-like celebrity status of the un-convicted, but alleged criminal, Michael Jackson. The adoration and affection shown to this celebrity might have been enough to insure the election of Michael Jackson to the Office of President.

Reader, your first reaction to this scenario is to say, impossible, yet if we analyze the meteoric rise of a freshman senator from Illinois, a senator with the bare minimum of qualifications and a close association with the infamous Chicago Political Machine, a lifetime spent with radicals and domestic terrorists, it becomes clear that if enough of the educated and ill-educated, uncouth, and politically faithful become smitten with a celebrity, a stage persona can indeed be elected to the presidency of the United States. If that personality is surrounded by politically savvy power brokers hungering for control over the masses, it is conceivable that an Orwell 1984 scenario can, and will be played out in our near future.

We see the California power monopoly promoting its “Green” efforts towards combating Global Warming and thereby allegedly reducing the incidence of crop failures, water shortages, severe weather conditions, hurricanes, famine and disease. While Big Brother stands in the shadows, it’s hard not to admire a company that strives to alleviate these natural disasters. Is Big Brother in our immediate future? That’s the question I leave you with today.

Epilogue: This article was written soon after Obama was elected. I lost the article and never published it until now. It is useful to show how some of us recognized the potential for tyranny.

ARLINGTON, VA - DECEMBER 15: (L-R) US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, US President George W. Bush and US Vice President Dick Cheney attend the Armed Forces Farewell Tribute to Rumsfeld at the Pentagon December 15, 2006 in Arlington, Virginia. Praise was heaped on the outgoing secretary by Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld used his farewell speech to call for an increase in military spending. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“The history of the United States military is clear: Torture doesn’t work”- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

“We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in.”- Vice President Dick Cheney

“This country doesn’t torture, we’re not going to torture.”-President Bush

Agents searching Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s compound discovered what one official later called a “mother lode” of valuable intelligence. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was obviously planning more attacks. It didn’t sound like he was willing to give us any information about them. “I’ll talk to you,” he said, “after I get to New York and see my lawyer.”

George Tenet asked if he had permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I thought about my meeting with Danny Pearl’s widow, who was pregnant with his son when he was murdered. I thought about the 2,973 people stolen from their families by al Qaeda on 9/11. And I thought about my duty to protect the country from another act of terror.

“Damn right,” I said.

- Decision Points, pg 170, by George W. Bush

When asked about future plots, KSM’s reply was, “Soon you will know.” Like Abu Zubaydah before him, KSM was trained to resist standard interrogation techniques. After being waterboarded by his CIA interrogators, Zubaydah thanked them and told them, “You must do this for all the brothers.”

Around my last year of college, I picked up some work as a loss prevention specialist for a major retail clothing company. Aside from acting as an in-house detective on occasion, I also worked different stores in the district, training the sales staff in areas of loss prevention.

The person I answered to was the regional loss prevention manager who hired me. She was amazing! I had the privilege of sitting in on a couple of her interviews as she interrogated employees suspected of internal theft. After the interviews, she’d walk me through and point out the employee’s body language throughout key moments in the interview; the questions she asked, why she asked them at the moment she chose to ask them; she educated me on where the employee’s missteps were and when it became obvious to her that the employee was fabricating, hiding something, etc. By the end of the interrogation, the terminated employee would walk out of the room in a daze. Throughout the process, my boss basically got the thief to confess through a kind of relationship-building. It was so intense, that even after it was over, the employee left still feeling like my boss was somehow an understanding friend.

She confided in me that there was a time in her youth that she was approached by the Secret Service and the CIA to work for them. She was THAT good, apparently. I remember asking her why she didn’t take the job offer with the Secret Service and she simply told me she didn’t want to have to take a bullet.

What she taught me from the small amount of exposure I had been given, was just how much of an art it was to interrogate people. Watching her at work, then having her interpret for me later on what I failed to see, was like watching/listening and appreciating/analyzing good poetry.

There seems to be a misunderstanding about the nature of the CIA program under the Bush Administration that involved enhanced interrogation. So much so, that even experts in the field of interrogation have been misled into false assumptions about what the CIA interrogation program was all about. One such expert is Matthew Alexander (a pseudonym) whose book, Kill or Capture: How a Special Operations Task Force Took Down a Notorious al Qaeda Terrorist, I recently purchased.

Fortunately, early in 2010, an important book came out to try and set the record straight by defending those CIA interrogators who, up until then, could not openly speak out to defend themselves from all the slander, distortions, and assumptions about their work. The public should not have had knowledge of the details, let alone our enemies. But thanks to the leaks, media hysteria, hype, and distortions, partisan politics over patriotism, and finally the release of the OLC memos by the Obama administration, Marc Thiessen was able to shoot back with his book. As he puts it in his Author’s Note and has stated in interviews, “You should not be reading this book. I should not have been able to write it.”

The public discourse over the CIA program has in itself killed it. Its effectiveness was in the “not-knowing”; in the uncertainty. Waterboarding had already been discontinued (I think in 2003) long before President Obama’s first executive order, redundantly “banning” what was already banned. Revelations about its existence and details already effectively killed its value to CIA interrogators. Now, like those in our military who undergo waterboarding in SERE training, al Qaeda operatives can now add it to their list in interrogation resistance training. According to Thiessen, KSM, who is said to have received upward of 183 splashes during his waterboarding sessions, figured out just how long his interrogators could waterboard him for and would count down the seconds on one hand. Matthew Alexander and critics argue that this is proof of how ineffective waterboarding is. I’d say it bolsters the argument that the CIA method of waterboarding hardly constitutes the kind of waterboarding that does cross the line from the simulated feeling of drowning to one of actual drowning and torture.

The effectiveness of the CIA techniques was in the pretense of torture; of making the terrorist believe that things were worse than they actually were. As Marc Thiessen describes it:

The effect of the techniques is psychological, not physical. They trick the terrorists into thinking what they are enduring is worse than it really is.

It’s like the show Magic’s Biggest Secrets Revealed — once you know how the magician saws the woman in half, you’re not fooled. The same goes for enhanced interrogation.

In a strange twist of irony, the media falsehoods about torture at the hands of our CIA, as damaging as it’s been to our reputation in the world, may also have helped to perpetuate the “magic trick”-purpose of EITs:

The story of one senior al-Qaeda terrorist, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, illustrates the point. When Abd al-Hadi was brought to a CIA black site, agency officials told him, “We’re the CIA.” He replied, “I’ve heard of you guys. I’ll tell you anything you need to know.” And he did. Detainees like Abd al-Hadi cooperated without enhanced techniques because they feared enhanced techniques.

In wake of the “waterboarding” of Osama bin Laden’s carcass at the beginning of this month, new partisan questions have arisen regarding which administration should be credited the most with “having brought him to justice” (and his 72 urchins).

This has reignited the debate between defenders of the Bush-era CIA practice of enhanced interrogation and those attackers who choose to label it “torture” and “ineffective”, plain and simple.

Like Ali Soufan, Matthew Alexander is an expert in his field who has served his country honorably; both have played important roles in the fight against the al Qaeda network and affiliates. Both men have also been lionized by liberals (holding credibility for their expertise in the field of interrogation) on account of their scathing criticism of the CIA enhanced interrogation program; and in calling the Bush administration out with the torture charge. I, the non-expert, however, believe they themselves have been misled, just like these WWII vets and that the proof is in Thiessen’s research. I believe Thiessen’s work trumps their own assumptions regarding the CIA program as it functioned under President Bush.

In Alexander’s book, he stresses the importance of relationship-building as it relates to interrogating suspects and captures. By emphasizing this, critics of enhanced interrogations are setting up a strawman. What they don’t seem to get or acknowledge is that the CIA absolutely believes in and acknowledges the virtues of the relationship-building approach as well.

Pg. 91 from Ronald Kessler’s The Terrorist Watch:

The CIA interrogated captured terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and at secret locations throughout the world such as Bagram Air Force Base, an American installation in Afghanistan. While the CIA used coercive methods like depriving suspects of sleep and forcing them to kneel for hours, the CIA believed that actual torture involving infliction of pain produced bad information. Simply offering terrorists tea and sympathy was often enough to get al Qaeda members to talk. Often, the Stockholm Syndrome took over. Most al Qaeda members cooperated after a day or two. If not, they might be turned over to intelligence services in Egypt, Morocco, or Jordan where rough techniques could be used.

“You start by getting him talking to you,” David Manners, the former station chief in Jordan, says. “You start with items you already know about. That shows him you know a lot. His defenses diminish. Then you ask about items you don’t know about. Beating a guy up doesn’t work. He will tell you anything to stop the pain. We never used such tactics.”

Marc Thiessen would agree, based upon his research and interviews with those CIA interrogators who themselves were directly involved in the CIA program.

In the opening prologue to Kill or Capture, Alexander talks about how legendary WWII-era interrogators stuck to American values and principles, never resorting to torture. Well, guess what? The very best American interrogators- including Alexander, Soufan, and those directly involved in the CIA enhanced interrogation program- also uphold American values and principles; and also do not believe in the effectiveness of torture.

Incidentally, according to Eisenhower and the German POWs by Stephen Ambrose and Gunter Bishhof, as many as 56,000 German POWs- about 1% of the total numbers captured by war’s end- may have died while in U.S. custody. Contrast this with the .125% in today’s GWoT: Human Rights First reported in a 2006 study that since August of 2002, 100 detainees held by the CIA and the U.S. military had died while in captivity (According to military records, 34 of these are suspected or confirmed homicides). According to Department of Defense figures, by 2006, over 80,000 have been held under U.S. custody in the War on Terror.

So where lies the historical precedence that the Bush Administration behaved worse or that those under its leadership behaved worse than Americans of previous generations and of previous administrations? It doesn’t exist, other than in the fevered imaginings of media hype, sensationalizing and distorting the record.

Only about 100 terrorists were ever held in the CIA program that saw fit to subject only 30 of those 100 to enhanced interrogations (and of these only 3 were waterboarded; how many detainees both military and CIA were ever waterboarded at Guantanamo? Answer: Zero). The techniques used arguably do not rise to the level of definition for torture and were cleared by the legal counsel of the Justice Department and CIA lawyers. The European Court for Human Rights, which has a more restrictive definition of “inhuman and degrading treatment” than Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, also determined in Ireland vs. United Kingdom that the 5 techniques (wall-standing, hooding, noise, sleep deprivation, food and drink deprivation) used by British interrogators did not amount to the level of definition for torture.

When critics say, “people will tell you whatever you want them to say to make the torture stop”, what they are saying is that they completely do not have a grasp of the CIA program or the purpose for coercive techniques. Enhanced interrogations were not used to elicit confessions but to gain cooperation, after which normal relationship-building interrogation is established (de-briefing). Those 30 detainees who became candidates for enhanced interrogations were tough. A number of them most likely received extensive training in interrogation resistance for them to have entered the program.

As Thiessen wrote recently in WaPo:

Interrogators would never have asked about the names of couriers during waterboarding. As I explain in my book, “Courting Disaster,” enhanced techniques were not used to gain intelligence; they were used to elicit cooperation. According to former CIA director Mike Hayden, as enhanced techniques were applied, CIA interrogators would ask detainees questions to which the interrogators already know the answers — allowing them to judge whether the detainees had reached a level of compliance. “They are designed to create a state of cooperation, not to get specific truthful answers to a specific question,” Hayden said.

Once interrogators determined a terrorist had become cooperative, the techniques stopped and traditional, non-coercive methods of questioning were used. Moreover, the use of enhanced techniques wasn’t needed for two-thirds of the detainees in CIA custody . Just the experience of being brought into CIA custody — the “capture shock,” arrival at a sterile location, the isolation, the fact that they did not know where they were and that no one else knew they were there — was enough to persuade most of them to cooperate.

Alexander makes the argument in his article that there are negative consequences to torturing your captured enemies aside from the unreliability of confessed information:

Those consequences include the fact that torture handed al Qaeda its No. 1 recruiting tool, a fact confirmed by the U.S. Department of Defense’s interrogators in Iraq who questioned foreign fighters about why they had come there to fight. (I have first-hand knowledge of this information because I oversaw many of these interrogations and was briefed on the aggregate results.) In addition, future detainees will be unwilling to cooperate from the onset of an interrogation because they view all Americans as torturers. I heard this repeatedly in Iraq, where some detainees accused us of being the same as the guards at Abu Ghraib.

I have no doubt that many foreign fighters and Muslims embraced the jihad just as many Americans began enlisting after 9/11. A desire to protect your tribe is a natural, noble, universal instinct; a desire to defend your own. Abu Ghraib almost single-handedly cost us Iraq and gave al Qaeda new life. But more so than the actual abuses that happened there, more than any actual instances of abuses that happened at Guantanamo, Bagram, or anywhere under CIA and U.S. military supervision, was the media hyperventilation and overexaggeration of any actual let alone alleged abuses that occurred. Media distortions and misguided human rights watch groups, absent of real facts, did just as much to recruit jihadis as anything that actually happened in earnest. Jihadi propaganda could not have crafted a more self-serving narrative than the one world opinion shaped for them.

As Thiessen writes, “It is this myth, not the CIA’s actions, that has harmed America’s reputation across the globe” (Courting Disaster, pg 172)

Americans do not condone torture. Neither President Bush, VP Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, nor Marc Thiessen endorse torture. They are not “torture apologists”, nor am I. (“Torture deniers”, maybe…might be a label I’d be willing to wear )

Yes, abuses happened. But these were the exceptions, outside the norm; never part of military or CIA policy. Those abusers were prosecuted and punished.

Honest debate can be made regarding where the line in the sand should have been drawn. But it is dishonest and wrong to compare “the belly slap”, “walling” and SERE-inspired waterboarding to actual water torture by Japanese soldiers or waterboarding during the Inquisition. It is so much hyperbolic nonsense and slander. And it fuels enemy propaganda for recruitment and support.

As Thiessen writes on pg 193 of Courting Disaster,

It speaks well of our country that many Americans are uncomfortable with enhanced interrogation. We should be uncomfortable with these techniques, just as we should be uncomfortable with the decision to go to war. Americans always go to war reluctantly, recongizing that war is a tragedy, even when it is necessary and just. The same is true for coercive interrogations. It is tragic that coercive interrogations were needed, and it speaks well of our country that we placed so many liimits on them. But the CIA’s actions were not only necessary and effective- they were also moral and just.

Former President Bush:

Our intelligence officers carried out their orders with skill and courage, and they deserve our gratitude for protecting our nation. Legal officials in my administration did their best to resolve complex issues in a time of extraordinary danger to our country. Their successors are entitled to disagree with their conclusions. But criminalizing differences of legal opinion would set a terrible precedent for our democracy.

From the beginning, I knew the public reaction to my decisions would be colored by whether there was another attack. If none happened, whatever I did would probably look like an overreaction. If we were attacked again, people would demand to know why I hadn’t done more.

That is the nature of the presidency. Perceptions are shaped by the clarity of hindsight. In the moment of decision, you don’t have that advantage. On 9/11 I vowed that I would do what it took to protect America, within the Constitution and laws of our nation. History can debate the decisions I made, the policies I chose, and the tools I left behind. But there can be no debate about one fact: After the nightmare of September 11, America went seven and a half years without another successful terrorist attack on our soil. If I had to summarize my most meaningful accomplishment as president in one sentence, that would be it.
-Decision Points, pg 180-181

Photo by Jim Young, Reuters

Over half of what the CIA learned about al Qaeda can be traced back directly to the CIA enhanced interrogation program. Terror plots were derailed. al Qaeda operatives killed or captured. And it now appears the killing of Osama bin Laden can be traced back to information gleaned from the CIA program.

American lives have been saved thanks to the CIA interrogators, who did not compromise American principles and values in the handling of our enemies- those who wish us grave harm. Many have been treated with compassion and decency; some received tough treatment, for sure. And deservedly so where American lives are at stake.

What on earth do we have to apologize to the world for? Instead, we should be thanked, just as Abu Zubaydah thanked his CIA interrogators. The world is made safer by what we do; it is not made safer by the spin that distorts what we do.

Thank the CIA, the military, and our elected officials who have to make tough decisions everyday to keep America and the rest of the world safe.

I apologize for the downtime, site should be up now except for the pictures….having issues there but should be fixed soon.

UPDATE

More troubles and working them out as we go. Moving the site to a dedicated server to speed everything up and prevent the “error connecting to database” errors the site has been plagued with for sometime. As suspected, the move has been a pain. If you can get a comment up please let me know any errors you come across.