Antiwar.com Blog

when he says,

“I wish Iraq well, but I as a foreign policy analyst from the United States am not willing to take responsibility for what takes place in Iraq.”

It is your responsibility, not simply for being an American, but because you pushed it.

when he says,

“The only way to drive U.S. influence out of the Muslim world, bin Laden has long maintained, is to tie it down in a series of small wars that bleed it financially. The nearly $10-billion-a-month wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are doing just that. Iraq, as even Bush admits, has become an incubator, magnet, and call to arms for anti-American jihadists across the Muslim world.”

Of course, it would be easier (and cheaper) if we just learned from the mistakes of the past, or at least heard advice from those who learned.

Via Scott Horton, the human rights attorney (no relation):

Eric Haney, the former command sergeant major of Delta Force, and a key advisor to CBS’s program “The Unit” gives an interview to the LA Daily News and puts it straight.

“Q: What do you make of the torture debate? Cheney …

A: (Interrupting) That’s Cheney’s pursuit. The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It’s about vengeance, it’s about revenge, or it’s about cover-up. You don’t gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the world knows that. It’s worse than small-minded, and look what it does.

I’ve argued this on Bill O’Reilly and other Fox News shows. I ask, who would you want to pay to be a torturer? Do you want someone that the American public pays to torture? He’s an employee of yours. It’s worse than ridiculous. It’s criminal; it’s utterly criminal. This administration has been masters of diverting attention away from real issues and debating the silly. Debating what constitutes torture: Mistreatment of helpless people in your power is torture, period. And (I’m saying this as) a man who has been involved in the most pointed of our activities. I know it, and all of my mates know it. You don’t do it. It’s an act of cowardice. I hear apologists for torture say, “Well, they do it to us.” Which is a ludicrous argument. … The Saddam Husseins of the world are not our teachers. Christ almighty, we wrote a Constitution saying what’s legal and what we believed in. Now we’re going to throw it away.”

Read the rest.

Update: I have received several emails saying that Haney was not a founding member of Delta, nor was he ever CSM of it.

Now I get this message from his wife, Dianna Edwards:

“Please correct CSM Haney’s title for the record. ( trust me – there is at least one former delta officer who would swift boat Haney for such a mistake ). He was not the CSM of Delta and has never claimed to be. He retired as CSM of the Batt in Panama following Just Cause.
Thanks.”

Haney’s apparently brand new website where he’s claiming less credentials than the Los Angeles Daily News gave him is here.

Tuesday afternoon I talked with investigative reporter Robert Dreyfuss about America’s switching sides in the Iraq civil war and the likelihood of conflict with Iran.

Click here to download the mp3. (about 40 minutes)

In a brief on the Hamdan case before the Supreme Court, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) argue that a a bill passed last December invalidates Hamdan’s suit. They cite their own remarks in the Congressional Record during the debate on the Detainee Treatment Act as “legislative history” that must be considered when interpreting the bill.

The problem? They made no such remarks at the time, and inserted them only after the debate had concluded. Moreover, they insinuate in their brief that the comments must have been live, as there is no indication to the contrary in the Congressional Record. And if that’s not enough deceit for you, then take this from Emily Bazelon:

The colloquy is even scripted to sound live. “Mr. President, I see that we are nearing the end of our allotted time,” Kyl says at one point. At another, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., appears to interject a question. “If I might interrupt,” he begins.

I called Brownback’s office to ask if he’d given this testimony live on the Senate floor. “Yes, it was live,” an aide told me. I said that I’d been told otherwise by Senate staffers and mentioned the C-SPAN tape. “Let me call you back,” the aide said. She never did. Nor did Kyl or Graham’s press reps.

Would you buy a used car from these people? How about entrust them with your liberty and security?

Perhaps you already thought of it, and perhaps I should have thought of it, but one of my readers (who wishes to remain anonymous) recently gave me something simple yet profound about Iraq’s WMD:

The thought that occurred to me from the first mention of WMD’s and continued through the entire push to get the war started was — if Iraq has WMD’s, why in the world aren’t the Iraqis using them to repel the U.S. invaders? Weapons of mass destruction would certainly be a potent defense against an invading army. And the following thought always was — there can’t be any WMD’s or surely Saddam would use them.