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.)

Comments

[Zach]

There isn't enough criticism of Yoo's superiors here. There's no excuse for not knowing what their deputy was doing -- at the very least they should have demanded a record of all analysis he was working on (and especially what he completed) that they could point to as knowingly fraudulent. Absent that, his superiors are as responsible as he is. Of course, the White House is more culpable for presumably demanding the end around, but the focus on vilifying Yoo alone at the OLC is a bit shortsighted.

[Zach]

By "here" I don't mean on this site really, but in general. Bybee shouldn't be let off the hook on this.

[Joe]

Glenn Greenwald also suggests how others enabled them.

It comes out that they broke and stretched and etc. the law. Dems take control of Congress. They then further empower the Bush Administration, Obama signing on, using a (woefully imperfect) IG option as one fig leaf.

The war is not much different really. This includes the Military Commission Act and continual funding without any strings. And, since we knew enough (including Abu Ghaib) in 2004, one should toss in the simple act of re-electing them.

The people helped too.

[opit]

After innumerable hashes,rehashes and re-rehashes one starts to feel that anything worth discussing/noting should have been covered somewhere already.
Have you seen this ?
http://www.leadingtowar.com/?gclid=CJal0bj67JkCFR0Sagodg1tzRw

[Nell]

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.

Thomas Nephew made an excellent point about this pattern more than a year ago:

In each case, the deception was needed in order to grease the skids for an immoral and criminal policy, by either sidestepping persons or offices with inconvenient integrity, or by pretending to agree with them even as the diametrically opposite decision was taken. In each case above the deception itself answers the question, "was the torture policy advocate acting in good faith?"

That, in turn, arguably speaks to a so-called "consciousness of guilt", which can be proven by showing such deceptions and which is admissible circumstantial evidence in criminal trials.

[Note: for 'torture' above can be substituted 'warrantless surveillance' or 'wars of aggression' or 'assassination' or 'whatever the hell the recently-semi-revealed CIA program was'.]

So, yes, this kind of behavior indicates bad faith, intention to deceive, and consciousness of guilt. And it worked its way into almost every policy area imaginable.

They lied the country into an unnecessary, illegal, wrong, and calamitous war. And at a trillion dollars down the hole and hundreds of thousands if not a million deaths and millions of refugees, it might be the most destructive and far-reaching in its consequences.