Obsidian Wings

The IG Report and Iraq

by publius

Yesterday's IG Report isn't about Iraq -- it covers surveillance programs that started soon after 9/11.  But I do think the report casts an ugly shadow on the Bush administration's marketing of the war.

One theme that comes through in the IG Report is a total disregard for process and evidence.  The conclusion came first, and the evidence was then twisted and cherry-picked to support that conclusion. 

The Addington/Cheney crew decided that they wanted to do Activity X, and then they had John Yoo secretly approve the program in the bathroom stalls of OLC.  To approve it, Yoo had to ignore law, distort facts, and hide the actual decision-making process from the proper procedural channels -- channels designed to prevent these very errors.

It's hard to believe that a group of people willing to act in this manner would suddenly turn around and view evidence carefully and objectively when it came to Iraq.  The IG Report shows that the administration was willing to distort and ignore evidence to get what they wanted.  That was their MO.  There's no reason to think that this same MO didn't apply in the run-up to war.

(On an aside, Glenn Greenwald has an informative and critical take on the IG Report's inadequacies.)

Shooting

by hilzoy

The victim:

"Colleagues called Stephen T. Johns "Big John," for he was well over 6 feet tall. But mostly friends recalled the security guard's constant courtesy and friendliness.

"A soft-spoken, gentle giant," said Milton Talley, a former employee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where Johns was killed yesterday in the line of duty -- shot, authorities said, by an avowed white supremacist who entered the museum with a rifle. (...)

"There are no words to express our grief and shock over these events," the museum said in a statement, describing Johns as "an outstanding colleague who greeted us every day with a smile."

Johns, a 1988 graduate of Crosslands High School in Temple Hills, lived in an apartment in the Temple Hills area. Friends said he had a son."

My thoughts are with his family. May he rest in peace.

The shooter:

"When his ex-wife met him in the mid-1960s, he was a wine swiller consumed by hatred.

"[It] ate him alive like a cancer," said the 69-year-old woman, who did not want her name used. "It's all he would talk about. When I questioned him, he would get angry and abusive.

"He would talk about what the world would become in 20 or 30 years, that most of the country would be governed by black governors and that the Jewish people owned the media."

TPM has a profile and some of his postings, if you have the stomach for them. And this article makes me wonder why he wasn't under surveillance: he wrote a post saying his readers should not expect to hear from him again, gave away his computer, and wrote: "It's time to kill all the Jews." 

For the life of me, I cannot understand people like this. It's not just the completely insane beliefs, and the willingness to kill people, but letting your entire self become warped into pure hatred. As his ex-wife says: this sort of thing eats you alive. And he let it.

As a result, a good man was killed, and a child will grow up without a father. 

The most surreal comment I've read, from a white supremacist who knew von Brunn:

"De Nugent called von Brunn a genius but described the shooting as the act of "a loner and a hothead."

"The responsible white separatist community condemns this," he said. "It makes us look bad.""

Words fail.

In Which I Disagree With Megan McArdle Some More

by hilzoy

Megan McCardle has a rather peculiar response to my last post:

"Listening to the debates about abortion, it seems to me that really broad swathes of the pro-choice movement seem to genuinely not understand that this is a debate about personhood, which is why you get moronic statements like "If you think abortions are wrong, don't have one!"  If you think a fetus is a person, it is not useful to be told that you, personally, are not required to commit murder, as long as you leave the neighbors alone while they do it.

Conversely, if Africans are not people, then slavery is not wrong.  Or at least it's arguably not wrong--if Africans occupy some intermediate status between persons and animals**, then there is at least a legitimate argument for treating them like animals, rather than people."

"The debates about abortion" contain multitudes. I, however, understand perfectly well that the debate about abortion (at its best) is a debate about personhood. That's why I used the example of Iraq to make the point that Megan seems to be responding to:

"I opposed the war in Iraq, but I did not conclude that it would be OK for me to kill soldiers who were shipping out, policy makers with blood on their hands, and so forth. In that case, many more innocent lives were at stake than could possibly have been at stake in Tiller's."

I might be confused about a lot of things, but whether or not our soldiers and the inhabitants of Iraq are persons is not one of them, nor does my thought that killing Donald Rumsfeld would be wrong depend on any such idea. My point, basically, was this:

(a) We have a system for resolving political disputes in this country. We elect people, and those people make laws. When those laws are within the limits set by the Constitution, they are binding. When not, a court can strike them down. When we want to, we can change the Constitution, though it is (rightly) rather difficult.

(b) One inconvenient thing about democracies is that it is very, very unlikely that your own side will prevail all the time. You get a voice, but so does everyone else, and barring stupendous coincidences, this means that things won't always turn out the way you think they should.

(c) It would be naive to think that you will lose only on unimportant questions. Governments make hugely consequential decisions all the time. Sometimes, these decisions lead to the killing of innocent people, in ways that you think are deeply wrong.

(d) If anyone who believes the government had adopted a policy that would lead to the killing of innocent people is justified in killing people to stop this, then we might as well just decide not to have a government at all. During the Bush administration, half the country would have been justified in trying to assassinate the President and members of his administration. Any corporate executive who works for a company that does not adequately protect its workforce from poisoning or injury would have to watch her back. Etc., etc., etc.

(e) If you are committed to our form of government, you must leave some room between (1) the claim that some policy it adopts is wrong, even very wrong, and (2) the claim that you can kill people to prevent this wrong thing from happening. 

***

Steve Waldman writes:

"In a way, conservatives now face a choice similar to what liberals in the late 1960s and early 1970s faced during the hayday of the Weather Underground. Some on the New Left defended them as legitimate-albeit-excitable members of their broad coalition, while other more traditional liberals attacked them as extremists who violated liberal ideals. My sense of the history is that enough on the New Left defended extremists to tar all of liberalism. Will that happen for conservatives now?"

I don't want to engage with his claims about how many people condemned extremism and how many did not. But I absolutely agree that on the most charitable reading of the anti-abortion side, this is the choice they face. And be clear about what that choice was. Opposing the war in Vietnam was not a minor matter, like wearing love beads. The war in Vietnam produced massive casualties , many of whom were innocent civilians. A whole lot of lives were at stake. Despite that, I think the Weather Underground was wrong. Because the fact that lives are at stake is not enough to justify giving up on democracy. And be clear: when you think that when you lose out in a political debate in which lives are at stake, that makes it OK to kill people to get your way, you have given up on democracy.

Megan claims to find "the certainty of the pro-choice side so disturbing". But that's not what is at issue in my post, or publius', or in the comments. What bothered me about Megan's post wasn't anything to do with which side is right in the abortion debate; it was her claim that whenever someone thinks that our government, through its lawful decision procedures, has done something that will result in the deaths of innocents, that person is justified in using lethal force to get her way. 

If someone has a problem with excessive certainty here, it's not those of us who think that when we lose politically, and the stakes are non-negligible, we are not justified in resorting to political violence.

***

And one other thing: it's a bit rich to hear this coming from the right. Here I'll just quote Athenae (with my asterisks):

"For eight f*cking years anybody to the left of Pinochet had to kick back and watch while sensible centrists and the Coalition of the Involuntarily Committable got together and raped the country and f*cked up the whole world. For eight f*cking years we were told that marching in the streets with giant puppets was the most horrific form of treason imaginable, was demoralizing our troops and hurting the debate and making the baby Pope Benedict cry. Not once did I ever in that time hear Megan McArdle or any of her other sensible friends discuss how maybe, just maybe, President Bush and his administration had PUSHED us to the edge, where we HAD to make those puppets because we felt the political process was closed to us.

No, back then it was "elections have consequences" and "you lost" and "look upon my works, ye mighty, and f*ck off," and anytime anybody had the temerity to say, "erm, dude, if you don't mind I'll be over here with this sign on a stick" they might as well have been plotting to shoe-bomb Air Force One the way the whiners in the nuttersphere howled and shrieked. There was none of this, "you just don't know how hard it is to be on the losing end of everything including your soul" back then. Just them, partying with Free Republic on the White House lawn, waving their big foam fingers in our faces going "nyah nyah nyah."

Now that they're out of power, natch, what choice do they have but to go shoot up church lobbies in the hopes of bagging abortion doctors for their trophy wall of American apostates? Really, what else could they do? It's not like they could vote, or convince other people to listen to them, or organize, or do any of the damn things I feel like we've been doing since before there was dirt in order to get a not-entirely-crazy in-another-life-he'd-be-a-moderate-Republican dude finally elected so a third of the country could act like Satan just put his feet up on their mother's white-clothed dinner table."

That is, in fact, the way I felt for much of those eight years. And I had a lot more excuse for feeling that the political process had been closed to me: after all, my candidate for President actually won the election in 2000, for all the good it did him. And yet, somehow, I managed not to kill anyone. Funny thing, that.

In Which I Disagree With Megan McArdle

by hilzoy

Earlier, I argued that we ought to take steps to assure that late-term abortions are available to people who need them, and that one reason to do so was to make it clear that terrorism does not pay. In response, Megan McArdle writes:

"Still, I am shocked to see so many liberals today saying that the correct response is, essentially, doubling down.  Make the law more friendly to abortion!  Show the fundies who's boss!  You know what fixes terrorism?  Bitch slap those bastards until they understand that we'll never compromise!

Well, it sure worked in Iraq.  I think Afghanistan's going pretty well, too, right?

Using the political system to stomp on radicalized fringes does not seem to be very effective in getting them to eschew violence.  In fact, it seems to be a very good way of getting more violence.  Possibly because those fringes have often turned to violence precisely because they feel that the political process has been closed off to them."

I did not advocate "using the political system to stomp on radicalized fringes". There are things I could have advocated that would have met that description: criminalizing certain forms of anti-abortion advocacy, for instance, or loosening the standards that RICO prosecutions of them must meet. Or I could have advocated stomping on them more directly: for instance, by deploying on them the tactics they use on abortion providers and their staff: large trucks parked in front of their houses with pictures of the bodies of murdered doctors; repeating tape loops of women describing what it's like to try to find a doctor to remove their stillborn fetuses from their bodies; asking neighborhood children how they feel about the fact that their neighbors try to keep mommies from seeing a doctor when they're sick...

Any of those things might be described as "stomping on radicalized fringes". (I don't want to get into "bitch-slapping": as an ex-domestic violence worker, I loathe that term.) Trying to ensure that they do not succeed in achieving their goal of depriving women of a right to which they are entitled under our Constitution, as presently interpreted, is not. If, say, a group of anti-immunization fanatics had succeeded in terrorizing doctors to such a degree that almost no one offered children immunization, would trying to ensure that kids had access to their measles vaccines count as "stomping on" anti-immunization groups? Or precluding some "compromise" that one ought to pursue -- like maybe allowing vaccination for measles, but not for mumps or rubella?

I don't think so. I'm surprised that Megan does.

***

I also deeply disagree with this:

"We accept that when the law is powerless, people are entitled to kill in order to prevent other murders--had Tiller whipped out a gun at an elementary school, we would now be applauding his murderer's actions.  In this case, the law was powerless because the law supported late-term abortions.  Moreover, that law had been ruled outside the normal political process by the Supreme Court.  If you think that someone is committing hundreds of gruesome murders a year, and that the law cannot touch him, what is the moral action?  To shrug?  Is that what you think of ordinary Germans who ignored Nazi crimes?  Is it really much of an excuse to say that, well, most of your neighbors didn't seem to mind, so you concluded it must be all right?  We are not morally required to obey an unjust law.  In fact, when the death of innocents is involved, we are required to defy it."

The law is not "powerless" in this case. It is not trying and failing to prevent abortion. On the contrary: our Constitution, as presently interpreted, grants women the right to seek an abortion. In order to conclude that killing people is justified in these circumstances, you need to think not just that the lives of innocents are at stake, but that this is the kind of situation in which you should take the law into your own hands, and thereby undermine our system of law and government.

I do not think that it would be OK for people who oppose the death penalty to kill the people who carry it out. I opposed the war in Iraq, but I did not conclude that it would be OK for me to kill soldiers who were shipping out, policy makers with blood on their hands, and so forth. In that case, many more innocent lives were at stake than could possibly have been at stake in Tiller's.

Deciding to start killing people who are doing things that are legal is deciding to go into full-scale revolt against one's government. There are surely times when it is right to do that, the Nazis being one obvious example. But the question when one ought to do so is a lot more difficult than McArdle makes it out to be, since a basically workable system of laws is a very great good, and it's a lot easier to destroy than it is to create. 

Terror Should Not Pay

by hilzoy

Ezra Klein, about the murder of George Tiller:

"As The American Prospect's Ann Friedman writes, this has to be understood in context. It is the final, decisive act in "an ongoing campaign of intimidation and harassment against someone who was providing completely legal health-care services." That campaign stretched over decades of protests, lawsuits, violence, and, finally, murder. The different elements were not always orchestrated. But the intent remained constant: To counter the absence of a statute that would make Tiller's work illegal with enough intimidation to render it impossible.

This was, in other words, a political act. Tiller was murdered so that those in his line of work would be intimidated. In conversations with folks yesterday, I heard well-meaning variants on the idea that it would be unseemly to push legislation in the emotional aftermath of Tiller's execution. I disagree. Roeder was acting in direct competition with the United States Congress. And it's quite likely that he changed the status quo. Legislative language and judicial rulings had made abortive procedures legal and thus accessible. Yesterday's killing was meant to render abortive procedures unsafe for doctors to conduct and thus inaccessible.

If a woman cannot get an abortion because no nearby providers are willing to assume the risk of performing it, the actual outcome is precisely the same as if the procedure were illegal. Roeder has, in all likelihood, made abortion less accessible. It would be, in my view, a perfectly appropriate response for the Congress to decisively prove his action not only ineffectual, but, in a broad sense, counterproductive."

I agree completely. I would recommend the following:

(a) Repeal the ban on dilation and extraction. The Congress should not get into the specifics of what procedures can be used when. If it must, it should broaden the set of cases in which dilation and extraction can be used to include not only cases in which the life of the mother is in danger, but cases in which her health is in danger, or in which the child has a serious and incurable medical condition that would make its life short and miserable. It ought to be possible to draft this in such a way that Down Syndrome did not count, but the cases I wrote about earlier would: "a brief and painful life filled with surgery and organ transplants"; "her babies developed with no faces, with no way to eat or breathe." 

(b) Require training in late-term abortion techniques for Ob/Gyn certification. Note that these techniques are also used when the fetus has already died. Read this article to see why this matters.

(c) Require that any hospital provide any woman whose fetus has died, whose life is in danger, or whose fetus has developed the kind of medical problem described in (a), with appropriate treatment to remove that fetus, and that that treatment be fully reimbursable by the federal government. If they have no one on staff who can provide that treatment, they should get someone. See (b) above. There should be religious exemptions, but they should not extend to the treatment of women whose fetus has already died.

One way to stop terrorism is by enforcing our laws. We should absolutely do that. But another is to make it clear that terrorism doesn't work. We should do that too. And the best way I can think of is to change our present situation, in which only a handful of doctors perform late-term abortions. We can keep whatever strictures we want* on the cases in which we think abortions should be permissible after viability while also ensuring that no one person has to take on him- or herself the risks that militant anti-abortionists want to subject them to.

Memorial Day

by hilzoy

To all those who died in combat operations -- the 4300 reported dead in Iraq, the 687 reported dead in Afghanistan, those who killed themselves during or because of their service, or whose deaths are in some other way attributable to their service in combat: we honor you, and we will not forget.

Every Memorial Day (and not only then), I try to remind myself of what it means that people who serve in the military are willing to fight and die when our civilian leaders ask them to, whether they agree with those leaders or not. That's a stunning act of faith in American democracy. In return, we owe everyone who serves the effort to be the best citizens we can be, and to elect the people who are most likely to exercise good judgment about whether and when to ask them to risk their lives. 

(We also owe that to the citizens of other countries whom someone might think of invading, and to ourselves, but those are obligations to recall on a different day.)

Why We Fight

by hilzoy

I'm late getting to this, from McClatchy:

"The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist. (...)

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly -- Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 -- according to a newly released Justice Department document.

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."

Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said."

If I were Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, the idea that there might be a just God would make my bones freeze with terror.

"We Will Bring Our Troops Home"

by hilzoy

I find it hard to express how happy this makes me:

"Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.

As we carry out this drawdown, my highest priority will be the safety and security of our troops and civilians in Iraq. We will proceed carefully, and I will consult closely with my military commanders on the ground and with the Iraqi government. There will surely be difficult periods and tactical adjustments. But our enemies should be left with no doubt: this plan gives our military the forces and the flexibility they need to support our Iraqi partners, and to succeed.

After we remove our combat brigades, our mission will change from combat to supporting the Iraqi government and its Security Forces as they take the absolute lead in securing their country. As I have long said, we will retain a transitional force to carry out three distinct functions: training, equipping, and advising Iraqi Security Forces as long as they remain non-sectarian; conducting targeted counter-terrorism missions; and protecting our ongoing civilian and military efforts within Iraq. Initially, this force will likely be made up of 35-50,000 U.S. troops.

Through this period of transition, we will carry out further redeployments. And under the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. We will complete this transition to Iraqi responsibility, and we will bring our troops home with the honor that they have earned."

It's worth reading the speech in its entirety, because there are other very good things in it. President Obama addressed the people of Iraq directly, and I thought that both what he said and the fact that he spoke to them were very good. I was moved by his words to the men and women who have served in Iraq, and by this promise: "You and your families have done your duty - now a grateful nation must do ours." I was also very glad that he mentioned the nearly five million Iraqi refugees:

"Diplomacy and assistance is also required to help the millions of displaced Iraqis. These men, women and children are a living consequence of this war and a challenge to stability in the region, and they must become a part of Iraq’s reconciliation and recovery. America has a strategic interest – and a moral responsibility – to act."

But the announcement of a date certain for the withdrawal both of combat troops and of all troops means more to me than anything. This horrible mistake of a war has cost so many people so much. It should never have been started. It will not be over for the Iraqis in 2011. But it will, at last, be over for us.

Suicide In The Army

by hilzoy

I don't know what to say about this, other than that it's just awful:

"Stressed by war and long overseas tours, U.S. soldiers killed themselves last year at the highest rate on record, the toll rising for a fourth straight year and even surpassing the suicide rate among comparable civilians. Army leaders said they were doing everything they could think of to curb the deaths and appealed for more mental health professionals to join and help out.

At least 128 soldiers committed suicide in 2008, the Army said Thursday. And the final count is likely to be even higher because 15 more suspicious deaths are still being investigated.
"Why do the numbers keep going up? We cannot tell you," said Army Secretary Pete Geren. "We can tell you that across the Army we're committed to doing everything we can to address the problem." (...)

The new suicide figure compares with 115 in 2007 and 102 in 2006 and is the highest since current record-keeping began in 1980. Officials expect the deaths to amount to a rate of 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers, which is higher than the civilian rate -- when adjusted to reflect the Army's younger and male-heavy demographics -- for the first time in the same period of record-keeping."

It's not the most important detail, but for some reason what really gets to me, just now, is the thought of these soldiers' friends and family members, who have been hoping against hope that their loved ones don't get shot or blown up, having to come to terms with the idea that even though they managed to escape enemy fire and IEDs, they killed themselves. Having been through the plain vanilla version of grieving, I cannot imagine what that extra twist must do. Nor, frankly, do I want to. My heart goes out to them.

Purple Hearts And PTSD

by hilzoy

Via Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal, the NYT:

"The Pentagon has decided that it will not award the Purple Heart, the hallowed medal given to those wounded or killed by enemy action, to war veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder because it is not a physical wound.

The decision, made public on Tuesday, for now ends the hope of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have the condition and believed that the Purple Hearts could honor their sacrifice and help remove some of the stigma associated with the condition.

The disorder, which may go unrecognized for months or years, can include recurring nightmares, uncontrolled rage and, sometimes, severe depression and suicide. Soldiers grappling with PTSD are often unable to hold down jobs.

In May, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said awarding Purple Hearts to such service members was "clearly something that needs to be looked at," after he toured a mental health center at Fort Bliss, Tex.

But a Pentagon advisory group decided against the award because, it said, the condition had not been intentionally caused by enemy action, like a bomb or bullet, and because it remained difficult to diagnose and quantify."

Let's parse this. You can only get a Purple Heart for something that is "intentionally caused by enemy action, like a bomb or bullet". How specifically does an enemy have to intend the consequences of his or her action in order for those consequences to warrant giving someone a Purple Heart? One might say that if the enemy intends something very broad, like "harm", then any soldier who suffers harm (or: harm of sufficient magnitude) as a result of what the enemy does is eligible for a Purple Heart. In that case, someone who got PTSD as a result of enemy actions aimed at causing harm would qualify.

Alternately, you could say that the harm someone suffers has to match the enemy's intentions more narrowly. For instance, it seems unlikely that people who plant IEDs want (in particular) to blow a soldier's arm or leg off, or to cause PTSD. More likely, the enemy wants to kill soldiers. Suppose that's right: then a soldier who got PTSD as a result of an IED would not be eligible for a Purple Heart, since s/he did not suffer a harm that was "intentionally caused by enemy action" (on this construction). But a soldier whose arm or leg was blown off by an IED would not count as suffering a such a harm either, nor would s/he be eligible for a Purple Heart. 

I don't see any way to argue that when an enemy intends to kill a soldier and that soldier is not killed but wounded, the enemy has "intentionally" caused the soldier's harm, but that if that same soldier got PTSD, that would not count as a harm the enemy "intentionally" caused.

The idea that PTSD is more "difficult to diagnose or quantify" than other things for which purple hearts are awarded is wrong as well. As Cohen points out, PTSD has clear criteria. I'm not sure what it means to "quantify" PTSD, but then I'm not sure what it means to quantify serious back pain or recurring headaches either.

Later in the story, someone tries a different rationale:

"There have been recent changes in awarding Purple Hearts. The criteria was expanded in 2008 to include all prisoners of war who died in captivity, including those who were tortured. "There were wounds there," Mr. Bircher said.

"You have to had shed blood by an instrument of war at the hands of the enemy of the United States,” he said. "Shedding blood is the objective.""

But shedding blood is not a condition of eligibility for a Purple Heart: "A physical lesion is not required". That's a good thing: if shedding blood were a necessary condition for being eligible for a Purple Heart, then soldiers would not be eligible if their bones were broken in combat, or if they suffered internal organ damage, or if their lungs were destroyed by chemical weapons, so long as they did not actually bleed. And that would be insane. I really can't see any reason for this decision other than the idea that mental illness somehow isn't real, or isn't a real consequence of enemy action, or wouldn't have happened if only the soldier who got it had been tough enough. That's wrong, and it's needlessly cruel. Moreover, holding onto these false ideas about mental illness will not help the military to deal more effectively with the psychiatric problems of its members. And that harms everyone.