Obsidian Wings

Looking Forward

by hilzoy

I didn't have a problem with President Obama's announcement that he wasn't going to prosecute CIA officers who relied on the guidance they got from the OLC. I'm uneasy about prosecuting people who rely on the OLC, which they ought to be able to rely on. (I think that relying on legal interpretations offered by the people charged with interpreting the law for the executive branch is very different from "just following orders.") And I feel much, much more strongly about holding the people who devised this policy accountable than about the people who implemented it (if they did so according to what they took to be the law.)

That's why I found today's White House briefing so infuriating:

"Q So I understand, you're saying that people in the CIA who followed through in what they were told was legal, they should not be prosecuted. But why not the Bush administration lawyers who, in the eyes of a lot of your supporters on the left, twisted the law -- why are they not being held accountable?

MR. GIBBS: The President is focused on looking forward, that's why."

You know what? I'm focused on looking forward too. And as I gaze into my crystal ball, I see a world in which members of the executive branch take it for granted that they can do whatever they want with impunity. Why not break the law? Why not eavesdrop on Americans? Why not torture people? Why not detain citizens indefinitely without charges? Heck, why not impose martial law and make yourself dictator for life? There is nothing to stop the people who make these decisions. They have nothing to fear. Because once they've made them, their actions are back there, in the past that no one ever wants to look at.

I also see a world in which everyone takes it for granted that there are two kinds of people, as far as the law is concerned. If most people tried to make the case that prosecuting their criminal acts was just "looking backwards", or a sign that the prosecutor was motivated by a desire for retribution, they'd be laughed out of court. Imagine the likely reaction if your average crack dealer were to urge the judge not to dwell on the past, or if someone who used accounting fraud to flip houses told offered a prosecutor the chance to be "very Mandelalike in the sense [of] saying let the past be the past and let us move into the future", or if I were pulled over for speeding and, when asked if I knew how fast I was going, replied that "Some things in life need to be mysterious ... Sometimes you need to just keep walking." I don't think any of us would get very far.

And yet, somehow, when people say these things about members of the Bush administration, no one bats an eye. Of course it would be going too far to actually prosecute them if they broke the law. That's just not done.

I do not want a world in which members of my government can break the law with impunity. I do not want a world in which some people are above the law. In a perfect world, we would not need to prosecute people to achieve these results. But the past eight years have shown us that we don't live in that world. 

As I said, I don't care about the prosecutions of the CIA officers. But I care immensely about prosecuting Cheney, Addington, Yoo, Bybee, Bradbury, and people like them. And I care precisely because I am looking to the future. We can choose to be a nation of laws in which criminals of any station are held accountable, or we can just hope that no one like George W. Bush is ever elected again. 

I know which option I choose.

In the meantime, though, impeaching Jay Bybee would be a start. There's a petition here.

***

UPDATE: This, from the NYT, is a bit better:

"Mr. Obama said it was time to admit "mistakes" and "move forward." But there were signs that he might not be able to avoid a protracted inquiry into the use of interrogation techniques that the president’s top aides and many critics say crossed the line into torture.

And while Mr. Obama vowed not to prosecute C.I.A. officers for acting on legal advice, on Monday aides did not rule out legal sanctions for the Bush lawyers who developed the legal basis for the use of the techniques. (...)

On Sunday, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said on the ABC News program “This Week” that "those who devised policy" also "should not be prosecuted." But administration officials said Monday that Mr. Emanuel had meant the officials who ordered the policies carried out, not the lawyers who provided the legal rationale."

Mr. DeMille, They're Ready For Their Closeups!

by hilzoy

New York Magazine has what Felix Salmon calls "an astonishing concatenation of moans and whines from New York’s monied classes". It's truly surreal. For example:

""Without exception, Wall Street guys have gotten accustomed to not being stuck in the city in August. So it becomes a right to have a summer home within an hour or two commute from Manhattan," says the Goldman vet. "There’s a cost structure of going with your family on summer vacation that's not optional. There's a cost structure of spending $40,000 to send your kids to private school that is not optional. There's a sense of entitlement, that you need that amount of money just to live, that's not optional."

"You can't live in New York and have kids and send them to school on $75,000," he continues. "And you have the Obama administration suggesting that. That was a very populist thing that Obama said. He’s being disingenuous. He knows that you can't live in New York on $75,000.""

And yet, strange to say, in 2007 the median family income in New York City was $52,871.  Maybe New York takes in floods of new residents every year, and so many of them die of starvation that the median income is actually below the level needed to survive. Maybe over half of the families in New York are zombies. Or maybe -- just maybe -- over half the families in New York live well below the level this "Goldman vet" thinks you just can't live on. 

Likewise (this is a different speaker): 

"That said, he continues, "We’re in a hypercapitalistic society. No one complains when Julia Roberts pulls down $25 million per movie or A-Rod has a $300 million guarantee. We have ex-presidents who cash in on their presidencies. Our whole moral compass has shifted about what's acceptable or not acceptable. Honestly, you can pick on Wall Street all you want, I don’t think it's fair. It's fair to say you ran your companies into the ground, your risk management is flawed -- that is perfectly legitimate. You can lay criticism on GM or others. But I don’t think it's fair to say Wall Street is paid too much.""

Wrong. People at firms that would not have survived without government assistance might have been Julia Roberts a couple of years ago. Now, they're Norma Desmond. 

If you want to say that whatever the free market in its wisdom dictates that people are paid is fair, then the fair wage for people at AIG, Citi, and any other firm that would not have survived without government assistance is zero. If you want to use some other metric, then Julia Roberts et al are irrelevant. But you do not get to appeal to the marvels of the market to justify your exorbitant salary when times are good without accepting its conclusions when it implies that the fair value for your work is nothing. 

And I don't even know what to say about this:

"There is rage at Obama for pushing to raise taxes ("The government wants me to be a slave!" says one hedge-fund analyst)"

If raising the marginal tax rate to 39.6% counts as "slavery", then I suppose that the fact that top marginal tax rates during the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations were over 90% is a Holocaust. Or, you know, maybe not.

Seriously: I recognize that it's tough when the world you've known disappears. It's less tough when that means that you have to figure out how to survive on a six-figure salary than it is when your house gets foreclosed on, but still. That said, the degree of self-delusion on display in this article is just astonishing.

They don't get the fact that it is abnormal when people right out of college or business school can command more money than most people will ever see in their lifetimes. They don't get the fact that the firms for which they worked produced an economic catastrophe that has reduced people all over the world to genuine poverty (as opposed to living on $75,000 in New York.) They don't get the fact that the compensation at those firms had a lot to do with that catastrophe. They don't get the fact that because of their greed and stupidity, we had to rescue those firms -- which means that their lifestyles are being supported by truckdrivers and pharmacists and primary school teachers across the country, many of whom would love to try to scrape by on $75,000 a year. 

And they really don't seem to get what's wrong with this:

""I'm not giving to charity this year!" one hedge-fund analyst shouts into the phone, when I ask about Obama’s planned tax increases. "When people ask me for money, I tell them, 'If you want me to give you money, send a letter to my senator asking for my taxes to be lowered.' I feel so much less generous right now. If I have to adopt twenty poor families, I want a thank-you note and an update on their lives. At least Sally Struthers gives you an update.""

How fortunate for that analyst that most of us don't feel the same way. Writing three hundred million thank you notes would take an awfully long time.

Onward to Sodom and Gomorrah

by Eric Matin

I'm off to San Francisco today [insert obvious liberal joke here].  I'll up that joke one: I used to live in Berkely when I was a wee lad.  Yeah, I was doomed from the get go.

Mostly in SF on business, but if any ObWingers in the hood want to meet up either Tuesday or Wednesday night to get blindingly drunk get a drink or two, shoot me an email.  I'll be staying at the InterContinental on Howard Street.  Let's trash it like rockstars...

Since I won't be contributing anything of substance for the next week, consider this my open thread offering.  San Francisco themed.

Prof. James Horne On The Memos

by hilzoy

When discussing sleep deprivation, the memos released last Thursday cite the work of Dr. James Horne in support of the claim that sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours is not torture. (See here, pp. 35-40.) I wrote to Dr. Horne and asked him whether he would like to respond to this use of his work. (He had given a statement to Zachary Roth at TPMMuckraker, but I thought he might like the opportunity to respond at greater length.) What follows is his response.

***

Re: Bradbury (US Dept of Justice) memo of May 10th 2005, to the Central Intelligence Agency, concerning ‘coercive techniques’ 

Comment by Professor Jim Horne on the citation of selected extracts of his book ‘Why We Sleep’, in apparently justifying sleep deprivation as a ‘safe coercive technique’

My book ‘Why We Sleep’ was written without any thought of ‘coercive techniques’ in mind. Nevertheless I made it very clear that pure sleep deprivation in otherwise happy healthy volunteers, as in laboratory settings without additional stresses, is not very eventful for the body, while it is much more so for our brain and behaviour. Whereas sleep helps people withstand stress, sleep loss makes us more vulnerable to other stresses, especially as the inherent sleepiness and other adverse effects on the brain confuse the mind’s ability to figure out how to deal with and avoid these stresses.  Thus I emphasise that my book’s conclusions were based on ‘pure sleep deprivation’ without additional stresses. Such findings were derived from otherwise undemanding and benign laboratory studies that do not typify the real world, whereas people are usually sleep deprived because of other stresses such as long and arduous working hours, family crises, etc. Healthy people who have volunteered for sleep deprivation experiments are usually well cosseted by their experimenters, perhaps too much so, and might have been inadvertently protected from the full effects of sleep loss.  Apart from the sleep deprivation, volunteers typically lead a tranquil existence, are fed very well and, except for having periodically to undergo various harmless tests, have plenty of time for relaxation, reading and watching TV. There have been many of these experiments with human volunteers, with the longest lasting 8-11 days.  Volunteers can pull out any time and there is full medical cover. The purpose of these studies has been to explore what sleep does for the body and brain, by removing sleep and see what happens. Under these circumstances, the ‘body’ copes well, whereas the brain and behaviour are obviously affected – not only by sleepiness but by more subtle changes whereby individuals can no longer think for themselves and become more like automatons.  

With additional stresses as in ‘coercive techniques’, the situation for the sleep deprived victim becomes deplorable, as the mind and brain under these circumstances trigger the body’s defences to create a physiological ‘alarm reaction’ whereby, for example, various stress coping hormones are mobilised and prepare the body for possible trauma, even blood loss. I emphasise that this alarm reaction is not present under ‘pure sleep loss’ as I have just described.  Prolonged stress with sleep deprivation will lead to a physiological exhaustion of the body’s defence mechanisms, physical collapse, and with the potential for various ensuing illnesses.  We don’t know at what point this latter phase would be reached with ‘coercive techniques’, but to claim that 180 hours is safe in these respects, is nonsense.  Moreover, whereas physical pain may not be particularly apparent even at this stage, the mental pain would be all too evident, and arguably worse than physical pain.

Even if one was to be pragmatic and claim that this form of sleep deprivation produced ‘desired results’, I would doubt whether the state of mind would be able to produce credible information, unaffected by delusion, fantasy or suggestibility.

Whilst Bradbury’s memo acknowledges (p36) that, “We note that there are important differences between interrogation technique used by the CIA and the controlled experiments documented in the literature” – i.e. what I wrote might not be wholly applicable to ‘coercive techniques’, this key point was understated. I had no knowledge of this memo or its contents until a few days ago, and am both saddened and appalled that my book has been used in this way.  

Jim Horne

Sleep Research Centre, Loughborough University, UK

20th April 2009

Why We Need Universal Health Insurance

by hilzoy

Kate Michelman tells a horrible story in The Nation. In 2001, a horse fell backwards onto her daughter, paralyzing her for life. Then her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's. Michelman and her husband had health insurance and long-term care insurance; her daughter did not. Between her daughter's expenses and what her husband's health insurance did not cover, they had "all but exhausted our savings." Then her husband's balance began to deteriorate. They scheduled an appointment, and then:

"We pulled up to the main entrance of the hospital after the two-hour drive from our home near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. My husband opened his door, grabbed the roof of the car and began to pull himself out as I walked around to help him. I was too late. In an instant--time slowed enough for me to see the danger but raced ahead too fast for me to reach him--he lost his grip and fell to the concrete, shattering his hip, breaking his femur and causing internal bleeding that kept him in the hospital for months.

My husband is a retired college professor, and what the teaching profession lacks in salary it often makes up for with generous benefits. His health insurance would cover most of the emergency costs related to the fall--the surgeries, the hospitalization, the drugs. But in the astronomical sums the cost of medical care often entails, "most" is not a reassuring word. Months later, as his discharge from the hospital drew near, I sat in my living room looking at the bills piling up on the table. The co-pays, uncovered care and other costs had already reached $8,000, and we had virtually nothing left. (...)

The fraying financial thread by which we were already hanging was now certain to snap. When I heard the awful sound of my husband's body hitting the concrete outside the hospital, I knew the modicum of independence to which he had clung for so long was gone. He was discharged into an assisted-living facility, where most of the cost was excluded from both his private long-term-care insurance and Medicare. At $9,000 a month, the bills accumulated quickly.

Recently, we decided to bring him home, although the doctors would have preferred that he stay at a facility with full-time supervision. But this was a mathematical decision, not a medical one: we do not have the money it costs to keep him there. I had already stopped working, to care for him; our savings are nearly depleted; and his pension is not nearly large enough to pay the bills.

Today he needs nearly round-the-clock professional help at home--less than the cost of the assisted-living facility but still far more than we have. I have spent recent weeks looking for a job that can add at least enough to my husband's pension and our Social Security benefits to cover the cost of his care. It is a dilemma familiar to so many women--finding work that can pay for care but also leave time for providing it.

The time is drawing near when, job or no job, the expenses will simply be more than we have."

Read the whole thing. 

I have never understood why Republicans are not behind universal health insurance. Though I don't agree with them, I can see the argument for not providing help for problems that are in some way people's own fault, or that might lead to big problems with moral hazard. But health care isn't like that. While some illnesses are due to people's choices, many are not. When you get sick, you can be ruined financially, whether  or not you have been prudent. When acts of God ruin like hurricanes or earthquakes ruin people's lives, we step in to help. I have never understood why health care should be different.

Bracketology

by Eric Martin

Matt Yglesias does a good job beating back a recent example of the now familiar marginal tax rate mendacity (the disingenuous argument that a family earning slightly more than $250,000 is facing a sharp tax increase if and when Obama raises the marginal rates on dollars earned above $250,000 and begins phasing out deductions).  In the process, Matt brings up an argument that I'm surprised doesn't get more play:

That said, I wouldn’t have a problem with launching a new, slightly higher rate, starting at $500,000 and a higher one starting at $1 million and another at $2 million another at $4 million another at $8 million and another at $16 million. I don’t see any reason to think that the progressivity of the scale should max out at $250,000 when obviously there’s a huge difference between someone earning that much money and someone earning ten times that amount.

Absolutely.  Especially with respect to phasing out deductions and other breaks: it would make a lot more sense to start that at a higher bracket.  But as of now, there is only one higher bracket ($372,950 and above for 2009).

On a side note, the chart below shows a comparison of recent marginal rates for various brackets.  Clearly, the socialist Barack Obama plans on soaking the rich as never before.  I mean, you'd have to go all the way back to the Clinton administration to find marginal rates on the upper brackets that high! I know this point has been made before, but then, we just had a series of demonstrations across the nation sparked, in large part, by the perception that Obama is hiking taxes to unbearable levels.

1992   1993 - 2000   2001   2002   2003 - 2009   2010 ? 15% 15% 15% 10% 10% 10% 15% 15% 15% 28% 28% 27.5% 27% 25% 25% 31% 31% 30.5% 30% 28% 28% 36% 35.5% 35% 33% 36% 39.6% 39.1% 38.6% 35% 39.6%

via

More Things That Are Missing

by hilzoy

A couple of other things that are missing from the torture memos:

First, the memos cite various legal precedents for the definition of torture. They are particularly fond of Mehinovic v. Vuckovic, which involved "a course of conduct that included severe beatings to the genitals, head, and other parts of the body with metal pipes and various other items; removal of teeth with pliers; kicking in the face and ribs; breaking of bones and ribs and dislocation of fingers; cutting a figure into the victim's forehead; hanging the victim and beating him; extreme limitations of food and water; and subjection to games of 'Russian Roulette'." (p. 24; the details of this case are repeated on four separate occasions in this memo alone, like an incantation.)

Isn't it strange, then, that not a single one of the cases in which the United States has prosecuted people for waterboarding turns up in these memos? You'd think they might be apposite. Oddly enough, though, Steven Bradbury didn't think to include them.

Second: As I noted last night, under the US Code, an important issue in determining whether something counts as producing "severe mental pain or suffering" is whether it produces "prolonged mental harm". In discussing this question, especially with regard to sleep deprivation and waterboarding, Steven Bradbury spends a lot of time discussing the scientific literature on these topics. 

And yet, once you think about it, he had a much better source of information available to him. These memos were written in May, 2005. The CIA had been using these "methods of interrogation" for nearly three years. Moreover, the memos fall all over themselves describing the repeated psychiatric evaluations that detainees are given: 

"Prior to interrogation, each detainee is evaluated by medical and psychological professionals from the CIA's Office of Medical Services ("OMS") to ensure that he is not likely to suffer any severe physical or mental pain or suffering as a result of interrogation." (p. 4)

Bradbury then quotes the OMS' guidelines:

"[T]echnique-specific advance approval is required for all "enhanced" measures, and is 'conditional on on-site medical and psychological personnel confirming from direct detainee examination that the enhanced technique(s) is not expected to produce "physical or mental pain or suffering"'. As a practical matter, the detainee's physical condition must be such that these interventions will not have lasting effect, and his psychological state strong enough that no severe psychological harm will result." (p. 4)

Moreover:

"Medical and psychological personnel are on-scene throughout (and, as detailed below, physically present or otherwise observing during the application of many techniques, including all techniques involving physical contact with detainees), and "[d]aily physical and psychological evaluations are continued throughout the period of [enhanced interrogation technique] use." (p. 5; square brackets in the original.)

With all those psychological workups having been conducted on CIA detainees over a period of nearly three years, one might think that the CIA, and specifically its Office of Medical Services, would have lots of information on whether or not the techniques under discussion actually did produce any "prolonged mental harm." And yet, strange to say, the memos don't mention any evidence at all about the effects of these techniques on CIA detainees*.

It's pretty strange that the CIA had all that data about the psychiatric effects of its interrogation techniques ready to hand, and yet no one mentions it.

Or then again, maybe not.

Torture: The Bureaucracy In Action

by hilzoy

I will have a lot more to say about the torture memos later tonight. For now, though, I just want to echo this point by Andrew Sullivan, which is very, very important. He's contrasting the Bradbury memos from 2005 to the Bybee memo from 2002:

"What is far more important and far graver is the decision after the 2004 re-election, after the original period of panic, to set up a torture program, replete with every professional and bureaucratic nicety. This is why the Bradbury memo of 2005 is so much more chilling in its way. This was long after Abu Ghraib, long after the initial panic, and a pre-meditated attempt to turn the US into a secret torture state. These legal memos construct a form of torture, through various classic torture techniques, used separately and in combination, that were to be used systematically, by a professional torture team along the lines proposed by Charles Krauthammer, and buttressed by a small army of lawyers, psychologists and doctors - especially doctors - to turn the US into a torture state. The legal limits were designed to maximize the torture while minimizing excessive physical damage, to take prisoners to the edge while making sure, by the use of medical professionals, that they did not die and would not have permanent injuries. (...)

This was done by the professional classes in this society. It was not done by Lynndie England or some night-shift sadists at Abu Ghraib. (...)

If you want to know how democracies die, read these memos. Read how gifted professionals in the CIA were able to convince experienced doctors that what they were doing was ethical and legal. Read how American psychologists were able to find justifications for the imposition of psychological torture, and were able to analyze its effects without ever stopping and asking: what on earth are we doing?"

By the time the Bradbury memos were written, the bureaucracy had evidently swung into full gear behind the administration's policies of torture. There are references to various background papers on the techniques used, guidelines (apparently quite elaborate) on their proper use, etc. There is a proliferation of detailed requirements -- when administering an abdominal slap, "the interrogator must have no rings or other jewelry on his hand" (pp. 8-9), though oddly this prohibition is absent from the section on facial slaps. There are specific requirements about how cold the water with which a detainee is doused can be, in what ambient temperature, and for how long (it's different for different water temperatures.) 

Moreover, there seem to be a lot of people involved. Besides the interrogators, "medical and psychological personnel are on-scene throughout (and, as detailed below, physically present or otherwise observing during the application of many techniques, including all techniques involving physical contact with detainees)" (p. 7.) Batteries of physical and psychological exams are given. Elaborate interrogation plans are submitted for approval, and detailed records are kept.

Suppose, for instance, a detainee who has been deprived of sleep (but not for more than 180 hours!), and is now being subjected to "walling", dousing with water, and nudity. There is a mass of detail about how this should be done: the water must be no colder than 41 degrees farenheit; when slamming the detainee into the wall, he will wear a collar to protect against whiplash; when the detainee is deprived of sleep by chaining his hands to the ceiling to prevent him from lying down, medical personnel shall check at all times to ensure that he is not developing edema in his feet; if he does, they will switch him to a special horizontal no-sleep position. And yet, somehow, the obvious question never arises, namely: what on earth are we doing repeatedly slamming this naked and sleep-deprived guy into a wall and then dousing him with cold water? How can this possibly be OK? 

As Andrew says: this is how democracies die. 

The Sugar-Free Daddy

by Eric Martin

John Mueller makes an important pointabout the nature of the Taliban/al-Qaeda relationship that rarely gets the attention it deserves:

President Barack Obama insists that the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is about "making sure that al Qaeda cannot attack the U.S. homeland and U.S. interests and our allies" or "project violence against" American citizens. The reasoning is that if the Taliban win in Afghanistan, al Qaeda will once again be able to set up shop there to carry out its dirty work. As the president puts it, Afghanistan would "again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can." This argument is constantly repeated but rarely examined; given the costs and risks associated with the Obama administration’s plans for the region, it is time such statements be given the scrutiny they deserve.

Multiple sources, including Lawrence Wright's book The Looming Tower, make clear that the Taliban was a reluctant host to al Qaeda in the 1990s and felt betrayed when the terrorist group repeatedly violated agreements to refrain from issuing inflammatory statements and fomenting violence abroad. Then the al Qaeda-sponsored 9/11 attacks -- which the Taliban had nothing to do with -- led to the toppling of the Taliban’s regime. Given the Taliban’s limited interest in issues outside the "AfPak" region, if they came to power again now, they would be highly unlikely to host provocative terrorist groups whose actions could lead to another outside intervention. And even if al Qaeda were able to relocate to Afghanistan after a Taliban victory there, it would still have to operate under the same siege situation it presently enjoys in what Obama calls its "safe haven" in Pakistan.

The very notion that al Qaeda needs a secure geographic base to carry out its terrorist operations, moreover, is questionable. After all, the operational base for 9/11 was in Hamburg, Germany. Conspiracies involving small numbers of people require communication, money, and planning -- but not a major protected base camp. [emphasis added]

In addition to Lawrence Wright, Steve Coll makes the same argument in The Bin Ladens: namely, that the Taliban and al-Qaeda were not natural allies, willing to support each primarily out of a religious or ideological affinity.  On the contrary, Osama bin Laden had to lavish enormous amounts of money on Taliban leaders in order to stay in their good graces.  In addition to other tributes, Osama employed his construction know-how to build palaces, homes and other facilities for Taliban leaders.  Without those sweeteners, it is unlikely that the Taliban would have long tolerated what was, essentially, a band of problematic interlopers with an agenda that was irrelevant to the inwardly directed Afghans.

Now that the Taliban has been made aware of the sizable costs that they could and would incur should they decide to reprise their previous landlord/tenant relationship with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, it is less likely that they would be so inclined.  And now that the US and other nations have are taking the task of disrupting al-Qaeda's financing networks seriously (with time, money and other resources dedicated to the cause), it would be harder for Osama and others to generate the funds needed to buy their way in.

And, again, even if al-Qaeda succeeded in finding a foothold in Afghanistan despite these obstacles, such bases aren't the sine qua non of successful terrorist attacks.  Not by a long shot.

A Man With Very Little Skill and Knowledge

by Eric Martin

Below is an excerpted Al-Hayat interview with Ahmed Chalabi, the man who the neoconservative braintrust (oxymoron?) promoted, during the run-up to the invasion, as the next leader of Iraq.  The same man whose word was bond in the Bush administration, and whose organization was funded with a monthly six-figure stipend in order to produce useful, if almost always spectacularly erroneous, intelligence. 

It is likely the case that there were some neocons and/or Bush administration officials that were using Chalabi, cynically, to further their own ends.  But it is also likely the case that some were sincerely duped by the Iraqi snake oil salesman.  Here's the thing, though: regardless of the underlying credulity, they were all being taken for a ride.  From Matt Duss:

[Al-Hayat]: If you want to describe George Bush, then how would you describe him?

[Chalabi]: A man with very little skill and knowledge.

[Al-Hayat]: He did Iran a great service by toppling Saddam?

[Chalabi]: Iran benefited from toppling Saddam. Bush didn’t mean to do it a favor but it was clear that Iran would benefit from Saddam’s fall. I am convinced that Saddam would not have fallen except for an implicit agreement between America and Iran.

[Al-Hayat]: This happened?

[Chalabi]: Yes, of course it did.

[Al-Hayat]: Through whom?

[Chalabi]: We worked on this and so did the Supreme Council and Jalal Talbani.

The idea that Iran has been the main beneficiary of the Iraq war isn’t particularly controversial any more — except, of course, among the war’s neoconservative advocates, who continue to insist that removing Iran’s greatest enemy and empowering Iraqi factions with longstanding close ties to Iran was a huge defeat for Iran. Incidentally, many of these people — Sen. John McCain and his adviser Randy Scheunemann among them — were also Chalabi’s biggest boosters.

Like Ricks, I’d be very interested to hear more about the “implicit agreement” that Chalabi asserts between the U.S. and Iran. Given what’s known now about Chalabi’s cooperation with Iran’s intelligence services, though, it’s pretty chilling to consider how close some of Chalabi’s marks came to taking the White House last November. Unfortunately, as shown by the continuing prominence of McCain, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan and other neocon fantasists, inadvertently aiding America’s enemies is no barrier to influence in American foreign policy, as long as one is always careful to err on the side of war, and meticulous in dressing one’s belligerent strategic stupidity in patriotic drag.

From Tehran's perspective, with enemies like us, who needs ultra-powerful military proxies to do their bidding?  The ruling regime was no doubt crestfallen when Obama was elected, as opposed to McCain.  Now Obama's gone and made life harder for them. 

For a change.