The Obfuscation Report

Six years after the September 11 attacks in the United States, the "war on terror" is failing and instead fueling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements, a British think-tank said on Monday.

A report by the Oxford Research Group (ORG) said a "fundamental re-think is required" if the global terrorist network is to be rendered ineffective.

"If the al Qaeda movement is to be countered, then the roots of its support must be understood and systematically undercut," said Paul Rogers, the report's author and professor of global peace studies at Bradford University in northern England.

"Combined with conventional policing and security measures, al Qaeda can be contained and minimized but this will require a change in policy at every level."

He described the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as a "disastrous mistake" which had helped establish a "most valued jihadist combat training zone" for al Qaeda supporters.

The report -- Alternatives to the War on Terror -- recommended the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq coupled with intensive diplomatic engagement in the region, including with Iran and Syria.

In Afghanistan, Rogers also called for an immediate scaling down of military activities, an injection of more civil aid and negotiations with militia groups aimed at bringing them into the political process.

If such measures were adopted it would still take "at least 10 years to make up for the mistakes made since 9/11."

"Failure to make the necessary changes could result in the war on terror lasting decades," the report added.

Rogers also warned of a drift toward conflict with Iran.

"Going to war with Iran," he said, "will make matters far worse, playing directly into the hands of extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence across the region. Whatever the problems with Iran, war should be avoided at all costs."

Labels: failures, George W. Bush, War on Terror

WASHINGTON, June 18 — In the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, at a time when the Central Intelligence Agency had long been out of the interrogation business, senior C.I.A. officers scrambled to build a program to question terror suspects in secret jails abroad.

To check on the legality of the harsh interrogation techniques they proposed, they turned to John A. Rizzo, who was then acting as the agency’s top lawyer.

On Tuesday, Mr. Rizzo will go before the Senate Intelligence Committee for a confirmation hearing to become the C.I.A.’s general counsel, giving the new Democratic majority its first chance at a public airing of agency practices that drew condemnation abroad and set off a prolonged debate at home.

Mr. Rizzo has been acting general counsel off and on for most of the last six years, serving without Senate confirmation. He was first nominated to the position last year, but a confirmation hearing was delayed.

In a report last month, the committee questioned whether the C.I.A. program was “necessary, lawful and in the best interests of the United States,” particularly in view of “the damage the program does to the image of the United States abroad.”

Mr. Rizzo, an agency lawyer for three decades who is known for his dapper dress and his discretion, will probably be questioned in open and closed sessions about the most contentious policies: holding terror suspects in secret; subjecting them to tough physical treatment, including the simulated drowning technique called waterboarding; and delivering some to countries that routinely practice torture.

“He’ll be the piñata,” said A. B. Krongard, executive director of the C.I.A. from 2001 to 2004, who remains a strong defender of the detention and interrogation program.

Mr. Krongard said Mr. Rizzo worked hard to see that the program was lawful, insisting on written legal opinions from the Justice Department.

“He did everything possible to get it right,” Mr. Krongard said. For any legal faults, he added, “Rizzo can be held accountable, I guess, but nowhere near as much as the Justice Department.”

Committee Democrats said they planned tough questioning for Mr. Rizzo, who was a crucial link between the interrogators and the Justice Department lawyers who gave their approval.

“I have serious concerns about this nomination,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who said she wanted to gauge Mr. Rizzo’s precise role in what she believed were deeply flawed legal justifications.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, C.I.A. director since May 2006, strongly defended the program and Mr. Rizzo’s role in shaping it.

Paul Gimigliano, an agency spokesman, said, “Mr. Rizzo knows better than anyone the full range of complex legal issues that influence intelligence operations in a democracy.”

Mr. Rizzo has earned a reputation for helping overseas operatives find a legal way to do what they feel is necessary. But officials said he did reject some proposed interrogation methods as excessive and illegal.

John Radsan, who worked as a C.I.A. lawyer from 2002 to 2004 but is critical of the detention program, said Mr. Rizzo “bears a share of responsibility” for the program and perhaps should have counseled against actions that were “technically legal but wrongheaded.”

But Mr. Radsan said top Bush administration officials deserved greater blame “for asking to push things right to the point of illegality.”

Mr. Rizzo, who is not granting interviews before his confirmation hearing, is no stranger to the agency’s legal controversies. A graduate of Brown University and the George Washington University Law School, he joined the agency in 1976, when the Church Committee of the Senate had just unearthed the agency’s involvement in assassination plots.

In the 1980s, he worked for the C.I.A.’s inspector general, investigating accusations of wrongdoing at agency stations abroad. He later became the agency’s point man for outside investigations into the Iran-contra affair, in which three agency officers were charged with crimes.

Since 1995, as senior deputy general counsel, Mr. Rizzo has often filled in as acting general counsel for months at a time. That was the case from November 2001 to October 2002, when top C.I.A. officials were negotiating the placement of secret jails abroad.

Interrogation was uncharted territory for most serving C.I.A. officers. A 1963 agency interrogation manual described the infliction of pain, including the use of electrical shock, but such techniques were banned by the 1980s, and by 2001, few C.I.A. officers had any experience in questioning suspects.

Mr. Krongard said deciding the limits of interrogation for Al Qaeda’s top operatives was not easy. “Can you slap someone in the face? Maybe,” he said. “But can you hit them as hard as you can? Maybe not.”

The approved options were first applied after the capture in March 2002 of Abu Zubaydah, a senior Qaeda figure. Mr. Rizzo was responsible for the legal advice to the officers holding him in Thailand as they escalated physical and mental pressure.

But colleagues said Mr. Rizzo insisted on Justice Department approval for actions they knew might be second-guessed.

“We were always conscious in the agency that we are judged not by the standards of today, but by the standards of tomorrow,” said Robert Richer, who retired in 2005 as second in command of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service.

The intelligence officers’ conviction that the political and legal winds would shift has proved accurate. A Justice Department memorandum in 2002 declared that nothing short of the pain associated with organ failure constituted illegal torture; the department later withdrew it and Congress set new limits on interrogation last year with the Military Commissions Act.

Since then, the C.I.A. has awaited White House approval for a new set of interrogation methods. It will again be up to Mr. Rizzo, if he is confirmed, to tell the agency what is and is not permitted.

Labels: CIA, interrogation, John A Rizzo, torture, War on Terror, waterboarding

New York Times Editorial

If Gen. Pervez Musharraf were the democratic leader he indignantly insists he is, he would not be so busy threatening independent news outlets, arresting hundreds of opposition politicians and berating parliamentary leaders and ministers from his own party for insufficient loyalty to his arbitrary and widely unpopular policies.

But nobody takes General Musharraf’s democratic claims seriously anymore, except for the Bush administration, which has put itself in the embarrassing position of propping up the Muslim world’s most powerful military dictator as an essential ally in its half-baked campaign to promote democracy throughout the Muslim world. Washington needs to disentangle America, quickly, from the general’s damaging embrace.

Ever since his high-handed dismissal of the country’s independent-minded chief justice in March, the general has been busily digging himself into an ever deeper political hole.

Last week, he issued a decree giving himself increased powers to shut down independent television channels, but under mounting pressure he withdrew it over the weekend. More than 300 local political leaders in Punjab were arrested in an effort to head off protests against the decree. Still, thousands of lawyers, journalists and political activists gathered to protest the firing, the censorship and the general’s continued rule. Pakistan seems to be rapidly approaching a critical turning point, with a choice between intensified repression and instability or an orderly transition back to democratic rule.

Were Washington now to begin distancing itself from the general, it would greatly encourage civic-minded Pakistanis to step up the pressure for free national elections. That’s a process the chief justice was trying to make possible when he was fired. And that is what Pakistan’s last two democratically elected leaders — Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif — are both campaigning for from abroad. The United States should be supporting these efforts, not continuing to make excuses for General Musharraf.

Pakistan has its share of violent Islamic extremists, military and civilian. But they are clearly in the minority. The best hope for diluting their political, and geopolitical, influence lies not in heating the pressure cooker of repression, but in promoting the earliest possible democratic elections.

Labels: General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan, War on Terror

Council of Europe Investigator: CIA Ran Secret Prisons in Poland, Romania From 2003 to 2005

The Associated Press

PARIS

The CIA ran secret prisons in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2005 to interrogate high-level detainees in its war on terror, European investigator Dick Marty said in a report released Friday.

He accused Germany and Italy of obstructing his probe into alleged secret detentions by the CIA. Marty's report, citing unnamed CIA sources, also said top terror suspects Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were secretly held and interrogated in Poland. He said "highest state authorities" in countries involved knew of the alleged detention centers.

This is a breaking news update. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

PARIS (AP) The CIA ran secret prisons in Europe, including in Poland, said the head of a European investigation who was to present new findings Friday on what he has called a "spider's web" of human rights abuses during the war on terror.

"We have proof, on the basis of information collected, of the existence of illegal prisons in countries closely collaborating with the United States, such as Poland," the French daily Le Figaro quoted Swiss senator Dick Marty as saying.

Marty, leading an inquiry on behalf of the Council of Europe, has spoken to former CIA agents to corroborate his earlier accusations against Poland and Romania, where he suggested CIA planes landed to drop off detainees, a person familiar with the investigation said.

Marty was to release his latest findings Friday. In Romania, a senator who headed a panel investigating the allegations on behalf of the Romanian parliament rejected Marty's conclusions.

"The report is totally unfounded," Norica Nicolai said on news television Realitatea TV. "There are very serious allegations and I would not have expected a European lawmaker to make such serious accusations without evidence."

President Traian Basescu's former security adviser Sergiu Medar also denied allegations Romania's military intelligence department was involved in the CIA prison scandal.

"The military intelligence categorically did not participate in any kind of activities of this kind." He added that authorities cooperated with the investigation by the Council of Europe panel.

Last year, Marty accused 14 European nations spanning a swath from Dublin to Berlin to Bucharest of colluding with U.S. intelligence in a web of rights abuses to help the CIA spirit terror suspects to illegal detention facilities.

Marty said evidence suggested that CIA-linked planes carrying terror suspects had landed at airports in Timisoara, Romania, and Szymany, Poland, and likely dropped off detainees there. His findings backed up earlier news reports that identified the two countries as possible sites of clandestine detention centers.

His report also said European governments "did not seem particularly eager to establish" the facts.

Both the Polish and the Romanian government have vehemently denied the allegation that CIA secret detention centers were in their countries.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said that "Europe has been the source of grossly inaccurate allegations about the CIA and counterterrorism. And people should remember that Europeans have benefited from the agency's bold, lawful work to disrupt terrorist plots."

The European Parliament completed its own investigation in February, also accusing several European countries of colluding with the CIA to transport terror suspects to clandestine prisons in third countries.

President Bush acknowledged the existence of secret detention centers in September 2006, but did not specify any locations.

On Thursday, a coalition of human rights groups published a list of 39 terror suspects it believes are being secretly imprisoned by U.S. authorities.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and four other groups said information about the so-called "ghost detainees," a list of which was published Thursday, was gleaned from interviews with former prisoners and officials in the United States, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.

Information on the purported missing detainees was, in some cases, incomplete, the report acknowledged. Some detainees had been added to the list because Marwan Jabour, an Islamic militant who claims to have spent two years in CIA custody, remembered being shown photos of them during interrogations, it said.

Others were identified only by their first or last names, like "al-Rubaia," who was added to the list after a fellow inmate reported seeing the name scribbled onto the wall of his cell.

But information for at least 21 of the detainees had been confirmed by two or more independent sources, said Anne Fitzgerald, a senior adviser for Amnesty International.

Detainees on the list include Hassan Ghul and Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Faqasi al-Ghamdi, who were both named in the 9-11 Commission report as al-Qaida operatives. Another is Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, a jihadist ideologue named as one of the FBI's "Most Wanted Terrorists."

In Milan Friday, the trial was opening of 26 Americans all but one of them believed to be CIA agents accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terror suspect in Italy in 2003 and taking him to U.S. bases in Italy and Germany before he was transferred to Egypt, where he was imprisoned for four years and claims he was tortured.

Associated Press Writer Jan Sliva contributed to this report.

Labels: CIA, Secret Prisons, War on Terror

Last week, the State Department released its 2006 terrorism report, which included this judgment about Sudan: “The Sudanese government was a strong partner in the War on Terror and aggressively pursued terrorist operations directly involving threats to U.S. interests and personnel in Sudan.”

But Sudan remains on the State Department’s list as a state sponsor of terror. And as a result of state-sponsored genocide, hundreds of thousands of people have died in Darfur and 2.5 million more have been forced to flee their homes. On April 18 in a speech at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, President Bush criticized the Sudanese government:

Sudan’s government has moved arms to Darfur, conducted bombing raids on villages, they’ve used military vehicles and aircraft that are painted white — which makes them look like those deployed by humanitarian agencies and peacekeeping forces.

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Olympia Snow (R-ME), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) wrote a letter today to National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell questioning the basis for the administration’s claim that Sudan “is a strong partner in the war on terror.” Feingold issued the following statement:

The Administration needs to explain why its recent terrorism report described the government of Sudan, a state sponsor of terrorism which has been behind the genocide in Darfur, as a “strong partner in the War on Terror.” As we seek to stop the genocide, it is critical that Congress have all necessary information related to this administration’s policies and priorities in Sudan.

In November 2001, Bush said partners in the war against terror networks would be put to a simple test: “You’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror.” But today, when asked about the discrepancy in its Sudan policy, White House spokesman Tony Fratto replied: “Look, the situation in Sudan is complicated.”

Doesn't Sudan have some natural resources we might be interested in? Oh yeah....Oil. ~Uncle Salty

Labels: Bush Administration, Darfur, genocide, oil, Sudan, War on Terror

How a Three-Word Mantra Has Undermined America

By Zbigniew Brzezinski
Sunday, March 25, 2007; B01

The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.

The damage these three words have done -- a classic self-inflicted wound -- is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare -- political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants.

But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that "a nation at war" does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being "at war."

To justify the "war on terror," the administration has lately crafted a false historical narrative that could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By claiming that its war is similar to earlier U.S. struggles against Nazism and then Stalinism (while ignoring the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were first-rate military powers, a status al-Qaeda neither has nor can achieve), the administration could be preparing the case for war with Iran. Such war would then plunge America into a protracted conflict spanning Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and perhaps also Pakistan.

The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its bottle. It acquires a life of its own -- and can become demoralizing. America today is not the self-confident and determined nation that responded to Pearl Harbor; nor is it the America that heard from its leader, at another moment of crisis, the powerful words "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; nor is it the calm America that waged the Cold War with quiet persistence despite the knowledge that a real war could be initiated abruptly within minutes and prompt the death of 100 million Americans within just a few hours. We are now divided, uncertain and potentially very susceptible to panic in the event of another terrorist act in the United States itself.

That is the result of five years of almost continuous national brainwashing on the subject of terror, quite unlike the more muted reactions of several other nations (Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, to mention just a few) that also have suffered painful terrorist acts. In his latest justification for his war in Iraq, President Bush even claims absurdly that he has to continue waging it lest al-Qaeda cross the Atlantic to launch a war of terror here in the United States.

Such fear-mongering, reinforced by security entrepreneurs, the mass media and the entertainment industry, generates its own momentum. The terror entrepreneurs, usually described as experts on terrorism, are necessarily engaged in competition to justify their existence. Hence their task is to convince the public that it faces new threats. That puts a premium on the presentation of credible scenarios of ever-more-horrifying acts of violence, sometimes even with blueprints for their implementation.

That America has become insecure and more paranoid is hardly debatable. A recent study reported that in 2003, Congress identified 160 sites as potentially important national targets for would-be terrorists. With lobbyists weighing in, by the end of that year the list had grown to 1,849; by the end of 2004, to 28,360; by 2005, to 77,769. The national database of possible targets now has some 300,000 items in it, including the Sears Tower in Chicago and an Illinois Apple and Pork Festival.

Just last week, here in Washington, on my way to visit a journalistic office, I had to pass through one of the absurd "security checks" that have proliferated in almost all the privately owned office buildings in this capital -- and in New York City. A uniformed guard required me to fill out a form, show an I.D. and in this case explain in writing the purpose of my visit. Would a visiting terrorist indicate in writing that the purpose is "to blow up the building"? Would the guard be able to arrest such a self-confessing, would-be suicide bomber? To make matters more absurd, large department stores, with their crowds of shoppers, do not have any comparable procedures. Nor do concert halls or movie theaters. Yet such "security" procedures have become routine, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and further contributing to a siege mentality.

Government at every level has stimulated the paranoia. Consider, for example, the electronic billboards over interstate highways urging motorists to "Report Suspicious Activity" (drivers in turbans?). Some mass media have made their own contribution. The cable channels and some print media have found that horror scenarios attract audiences, while terror "experts" as "consultants" provide authenticity for the apocalyptic visions fed to the American public. Hence the proliferation of programs with bearded "terrorists" as the central villains. Their general effect is to reinforce the sense of the unknown but lurking danger that is said to increasingly threaten the lives of all Americans.

The entertainment industry has also jumped into the act. Hence the TV serials and films in which the evil characters have recognizable Arab features, sometimes highlighted by religious gestures, that exploit public anxiety and stimulate Islamophobia. Arab facial stereotypes, particularly in newspaper cartoons, have at times been rendered in a manner sadly reminiscent of the Nazi anti-Semitic campaigns. Lately, even some college student organizations have become involved in such propagation, apparently oblivious to the menacing connection between the stimulation of racial and religious hatreds and the unleashing of the unprecedented crimes of the Holocaust.

The atmosphere generated by the "war on terror" has encouraged legal and political harassment of Arab Americans (generally loyal Americans) for conduct that has not been unique to them. A case in point is the reported harassment of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for its attempts to emulate, not very successfully, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Some House Republicans recently described CAIR members as "terrorist apologists" who should not be allowed to use a Capitol meeting room for a panel discussion.

Social discrimination, for example toward Muslim air travelers, has also been its unintended byproduct. Not surprisingly, animus toward the United States even among Muslims otherwise not particularly concerned with the Middle East has intensified, while America's reputation as a leader in fostering constructive interracial and interreligious relations has suffered egregiously.

The record is even more troubling in the general area of civil rights. The culture of fear has bred intolerance, suspicion of foreigners and the adoption of legal procedures that undermine fundamental notions of justice. Innocent until proven guilty has been diluted if not undone, with some -- even U.S. citizens -- incarcerated for lengthy periods of time without effective and prompt access to due process. There is no known, hard evidence that such excess has prevented significant acts of terrorism, and convictions for would-be terrorists of any kind have been few and far between. Someday Americans will be as ashamed of this record as they now have become of the earlier instances in U.S. history of panic by the many prompting intolerance against the few.

In the meantime, the "war on terror" has gravely damaged the United States internationally. For Muslims, the similarity between the rough treatment of Iraqi civilians by the U.S. military and of the Palestinians by the Israelis has prompted a widespread sense of hostility toward the United States in general. It's not the "war on terror" that angers Muslims watching the news on television, it's the victimization of Arab civilians. And the resentment is not limited to Muslims. A recent BBC poll of 28,000 people in 27 countries that sought respondents' assessments of the role of states in international affairs resulted in Israel, Iran and the United States being rated (in that order) as the states with "the most negative influence on the world." Alas, for some that is the new axis of evil!

The events of 9/11 could have resulted in a truly global solidarity against extremism and terrorism. A global alliance of moderates, including Muslim ones, engaged in a deliberate campaign both to extirpate the specific terrorist networks and to terminate the political conflicts that spawn terrorism would have been more productive than a demagogically proclaimed and largely solitary U.S. "war on terror" against "Islamo-fascism." Only a confidently determined and reasonable America can promote genuine international security which then leaves no political space for terrorism.

Where is the U.S. leader ready to say, "Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia"? Even in the face of future terrorist attacks, the likelihood of which cannot be denied, let us show some sense. Let us be true to our traditions.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, is the author most recently of "Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower" (Basic Books).

Labels: bullshit, War on Terror