saddam hussein Posts

Reports are in that link up the US torture program and the hunt for the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Jonathan S Landay in McClatchy News quotes a "former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue":

"The main [reason for the torture] 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."

"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.

All this is not really a surprise; I covered it in real time over on Nonviolence.org. There were numerous reports that the Vice President and Secretary of Defense were pushing the intelligence agencies to come up with evidence that would back their flawed theories.

The United States is supposed to be the champion of freedom but we resorted to the most brutal of communist-era torture techniques because our highest officials were more interested in their cartoon view of the world than the complex reality (and not so complex: anyone who's taken an "Intro to Islam" class would know that an alliance between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden would be have been very unlikely). When facts and ideological theories don't match up, it's time to dig for more facts and revisit the ideologies. 

Fascinating details coming out about the new U.S intelligence estimate on Iran. It was released two days after a major meeting of world powers in Paris, a meeting where sanctions and Iran were discussed. So what's with the timing? Did Condoleeza just not get it back from Kinkos in time? If you're about to release a major report that will reshape half a decade of U.S.-Iranian relations, maybe you whip up a quick power point presentation for the weekend powwow in Paris?

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is touting this as a victory for his country: "This is a declaration of victory for the Iranian nation against the world powers over the nuclear issue." I'm not sure it's exactly a victory but it is a confirmation of what he's been claiming for years: Iran is not building a bomb. The victory is in the Bush Administration implicit acknowledgment that it's not always right. Of course Bush is not the kind of guy who can really ever admit he's wrong and he's still throwing snipes out: Condi "told reporters in the Ethiopian capital Wednesday that the U.S. intelligence report's public release showed the Bush administration was committed to transparent democracy while Iran was not."

Now I actually agree that we can't downplay Iran. The country doesn't have the kind of openness and democracy that should be a basic human right. If it could get the bomb, I'm sure it would. What major regional power wouldn't want it? With all the internationally bullying going around it's not a bad thing to have in your back pocket.  President Bush declared a de facto Cold War against Iraq in his 2002 State of Union "Axis of Evil" speech.

But one thing about Iran is that it's Iraq twenty years later. If Iran's civic structure is broken, then the West is largely to blame. The British and Soviets invaded Iran in 1941 to secure oil supplies and it was they who put in power Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Shah of Iran. When Pahlavi lost power in the early 1950s, the U.S. Central Intelligence agency led a covert operation called Operation Ajax to put him back in power (the project was led by Kermit Roosevelt Jr., Teddy's grandson). In 1969 the so-called Nixon Doctrine formalized the Shah's Iran as a key American ally. The Iranian Revolution changed all this and along with the brutal Iran-Iraq War created the Iran we know today.

It's easy to forget that we've long supported dictators who promised us a steady supply of oil. Saddam Hussein was our buddy until he threatened Kuwaiti oil fields. If the United States had spent the last thirty years working on building strong democracies in the Middle East then both Iraq and Iran would most likely be peaceful, strong nations without any great strong incentive to put in the massive investment needed to develop weapons of mass destruction. Might oil cost a few dollars more a barrel? Sure. But isn't that worth the thousands of American, Iraqi and Iranian lives that have been destroyed in twenty years of near-constant warfare? 

In a stunning turnaround, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran has not been trying to build atomic weapons since 2003:

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.

First thoughts: what would the world be like if we had seen a statement like this regarding Iraq in early 2003? We know now that Saddam Hussein had long since abandoned nuclear aspirations and that his military infrastructure was so weakened by years of embargoes that it was a threat to no one. A number of us challenged the Bush Administration's experts, pointing to the weaknesses in the evidence publicly presented. It's hard to hide a major weapons program or a major alliance like the Saddam-Al Qaeda partnership. If these had been real we would have had more convincing evidence.

Sanctions and international pressure successfully stopped Saddam Hussein's ambitions against Iraq's neighbors. If the world had just waited him out, he might have eventually been deposed or even come around--who would have thought that Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi would still be around in 2007 and that the U.S. would have full diplomatic relations with him!

Second thoughts: we've been rattling the sabers of war for four years? What if Bush had actually started a war with Iran?

Third thoughts: all indications were that the U.S. intelligence agencies have been under intense pressures to deliver assessments that fit with Administration policy: Bush wants to fight Saddam and the CIA gives him lame reasons that Congress is too weak to challenge. Does today's turnaround signal the waning of the Bush powers in these last years of his Presidency so that the National Intelligence Estimate is finally credible? Or has the White House decided it doesn't want to continue threatening war? The conspiracy-minded will note that the Iowa Caucus is exactly a month away and will ask which Republican candidate stands to gain from a stand-down with Iran.

Finally, for now, the fourth thought: Iran has had a vested interest in looking tough. What will happen there now? Fortunately this latest report paints an Iranian leadership that's rational, saying that its "decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs." Iran is still a dangerous country (as is the U.S.) so what happens now?

What are the Iraqis and the American administrators thinking? Another botched execution in Baghdad, this time of Saddam Hussein's half brother. Why are the executioners dressed like terrorists, their faces covered with hoods? The videos of Saddam's execution looks like it took place deep in some hidden-away warehouse.

I'm not a big believer in capital punishment. It's primitive and barbaric and it reeks heavily of vigilante justice and the terrorist code. But if you're going to do it, you have to imbue the moment with all the solemnity of the state. The symbolism has to make clear that this is culmination of a long, considered process, that this is a necessary part of a nation's duty to provide law and order to its people.

But the new round of videos coming out of Baghdad look too much like the execution videos made by insurgents kidnapping Western workers and activists. Is the new Iraqi government simply insurgents in suits? Why doesn't Washington even care about the symbolic appearance of these high-profile executions?

World headlines for the hanging of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. He was executed for the mass killing of civilians in the small village of Dujail in 1982. An assassination attempt had been made as his motorcade went through town; he wanted revenge against the Shiite militia behind the attack. All accounts point to his crackdown as being particularly horrific and brutal.

Yet the next year, President Ronald Reagan sent aid Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad to talk with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz about ways that the United States and Iraq could work together. As Z Magazine reported recently, the Reagan Administration went on provide billions of dollars of credit to Saddam's regime, along with US military intelligence to help it in its war against Iran. The US knew about Saddam's cruelty and despotism but didn't care until Hussein invaded Kuwait and threatened US oil interests in the Persian Gulf.

This is such old news. I've been talking about the hypocrisies of the 1980s Baghdad/Washington alliance for the entire eleven year history of Nonviolence.org. But yet... Hussein was tried and convicted for this kind of old news. If Ronald Reagan didn't mind his despotism back in the 1980s, then why all the self-righteousness now? Reagan's aid Rumsfeld just stepped down from the Bush Administration as the long-serving Secretary of Defense this country has ever seen: the history and the actors who cozied up to Saddam then are still in Washington.

What has the world gained by the killing? President Bush thought the hanging so trivial that he told his aids that they shouldn't even bother to wake him up with the news. The reality is that Saddam has been a footnote since the fall of Baghdad in 2003. While his death may serve as some sort of catharsis for Iraqis, it hardly matters. Hanging him is merely political theater. It does nothing to stem the bloodletting of the civil war that now rages in Iraq.

We now know that while Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein didn't conspire together, they did have one thing in common: their power was funded by our dependence on their oil. But even as Saddam's show trial begins, televisions are watching America's new national security enemies: Katrina and Wilma. Al Qaida's 9/11 attacks and the Saddam Hussein's dictatorship were "powered by" oil industry fortunes and short-sighted global energy policies, the same policies now bringing us global warming and monster storms.

Before making landfall in Mexico's Yucatan and pounding Florida, Hurricane Wilma was declared the most powerful Atlantic hurricane in history. That we got to a W-name itself is cause for concern: the first tropical storm of the year gets a name starting with "A" and so forth through the alphabet. This summer has been the most active hurricane season since record-keeping started 150 years ago. We've seen so many storms that weather officials have now run through the alphabet: meteorologists are now having to track Tropical Storm (now Depression) Alpha 350 miles north of the Bahamas. In 2004, five devastating hurricanes ripped across Florida, each one coming so fast on the heels of the last that few of us could even name them a year later. As I write, Wilma is pounding Western Florida, one of the fast-growing regions in the country. And of course Katrina devasted New Orleans and the Gulf Coast just two months ago.

Global climate change is here. After decades of political hemming and hawing, only the most slimy of oil industry apologists (and Presidents) could argue that global warming hasn't arrived. We've built a national culture built on inefficient burning of fossil fuels. Developers put more and more people on unprotected sandbars built, maintained and insured by tax dollars. Someday is here and our weather is only going to be getting worse. We could be preparing for the inevitable adjustments. We could be investing in conservation, in renewable energies. We could change our tax codes to encourage sustainable housing: not just getting new development off beaches but also building urban and semi-urban communities that reduce automobile dependence.

Instead we spend billions of dollars on our oil addictions. We're now waiting for the announcement of the 2,000th U.S. military casualty in iraq. Administration officials used Katrina to rollback environmental protection regulations in Louisiana. The arctic ice cap is rapidly melting away (the North Pole is now ice-free for part of the year) but oil industry officials point to the good news that we will soon be able to put year-round oil rigs in the ice-free seas there.

How many Katrina bin Laden's and Saddam Wilma's does it take before we get the news.

Rove posing as a patriot

There's evidence that one of President Bush's key aids was involved with the leak that revealed a CIA agent's identity. Republican political hack Karl Rove is being named as someone who told Time Magazine that a whistleblower against the Bush's weapons of mass destructions lies was a CIA agent. More background of the story from two years ago, White House treasonable dirty tricks against whistleblower's wife.

The first question: are we surprised? Of course the smear campaign was orchestrated out of the White House. The whole war has everything to do with politics. Facts were inconveniences when it came to building a case against iraq. We now know that the decade of sanctions against Saddam Hussein worked. His military was a shambles and he had no money to engage in researching or building weapons of mass destruction. The war was a political ploy by the White House. It propped up the President and kept terrorism in the spotlight. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the London bombings were carried out by iraqi insurgents, people who might not be terrorists if we hadn't gone and invaded iraq (yes, there were terrorist before but every act of violence inspires acts of counter-violence).

Karl Rove's job has been to get George W. Bush elected and then re-elected. The role of political consultants is supposed to stop there. The job of governance and statemanship should be left to the President himself. This Administration is more overtly political than any in recent history. Why was Karl Rove selling the war against iraq?