Antiwar.com Blog

Here’s a bizarre post by a person named Clayton Cramer that I wandered across. It’s titled “The Sheer Injustice Of It!” and he has linked an article about some lawyer who claims to be representing Saddam Hussein making allegations that the US has tortured Saddam while he has been in detention. Clayton, who describes himself as “a conservative with libertarian sympathies” isn’t disputing the allegations. He seems rather more gleeful at the idea that they might be true because there would be “a certain justice to it.” He goes on to recount some old stories about Saddam, like the discredited people shredder story, to demonstrate why it would be just to torture Saddam.

This is a common argument among the type of “conservatives” who would make an old rightist shudder and they’re pretty much the Bush base, which is one of the reasons the US ended up in the Abu Ghraib mess in the first place. As an example, get a good look at Mary L. Walker, the born-again lead lawyer on the DoD torture-justification memo.

By this logic, Bush should have a Tomahawk missile fly up his butt, shouldn’t he? After all he did it to Ali first, right? Anyone who wished to dispense “justice” could unleash Shock and Awe on the White House. (That might not be such a bad idea, but I wouldn’t call it just.) I wonder how far “conservatives” would be willing to go with this argument? If they ever have Islam Karimov in custody are they going to start boiling people?

So, to return to Mr. Cramer, what can we say about a person who expresses humanitarian outrage about human rights abuses and then abuses the person they were so outraged about? What makes atrocities just if someone else does them first? The conservatives – or is it the Republicans? – should consider making “Saddam did it first!” their slogan.

Jim Henley has said it best:

But the big thing is this: President Bush is absolutely responsible for everything that happens in his administration, and to the extent that the Pentagon memo conditioned policy, he is first in line for blame. HOWEVER. President Bush is no one’s idea of a legal mind. He may have initiated the project that became the memo, but he didn’t draft the thing. High-level government lawyers, most of them undoubtedly political appointees, did that. What that means is that there is systemic corruption in the Republican Party as an institution – “Bush’s Willing Torturers” we might call them. These are people that came up with the idea that the Constitutional phrase “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” meant

authority to set aside the laws is “inherent in the president.”

They represent a deadly danger to the American system and they are multiple. It’s not one guy somewhere, it’s a movement. Until the Republican Party roots them out, that Party is the enemy, not just of libertarians, but of anyone who values individual freedom and republican government. From the standpoint of liberty, there can no longer be any justification for preferring the Republicans to the Democrats.

UPDATE: To clarify, this isn’t just another Unqualified Offerings anti-torture item. The issue now goes beyond torture to the very structure of American government. Torture is the symptom. The concept that the President is not just himself above the law, but a supralegal authority, is the malady.

[emphasis mine]

On Sunday, AP reported that the US military is "lowering its profile" in order "to avoid alienating its Iraqi allies who take power at the end of the month." The military has been criticised for it "heavy-handed tactics," hence the softening of once-rigid demands.

Unfortunately, that report came on heels of one a few hours earlier from Karma, described as a suburb of Falluja. An Iraqi interpreter has been kidnapped. Marines cordon off the crime scene, a "house-to-house search" fails to find him. Lt. Col. Brennan Bryne "demands" that the Iraqi be released and announces he is "’indefinitely suspending’ all assistance and construction projects." Of course, house-to-house searches have been known to be conducted with a bit of "heavy-handedness."

That was Sunday in Karma. On Tuesday, eleven Iraqis, including women and children, were killed when heavy fighting broke out there. It appears as if the tactics and demands were hard enough to provoke more resistance.

On Wednesday (today), it appears the violence spread to Fallujah itself, "Rebels kill 12 Iraqi soldiers." Al-Jazeera reports "Occupation tanks poised to enter."

I find it funny that the Bush campaign has chosen to highlight the same Reagan speech I alluded to in my column today; I find it downright hilarious that they titled the speech “Empire of Ideals.” What did Reagan say about empire in the speech?

There was a time when empires were defined by landmass, subjugated peoples, and military might. But the United States is unique because we are an empire of ideals.

Hardly a ringing endorsement of the neocons’ “Invade the World” project, especially given that Reagan was explicitly contrasting this “empire of ideals” with the military/political aggression of the Soviet Union. They wanted to “liberate” Afghanistan and the rest of the Third World, too.

Mark at Rafah Kid Rambles:

The Guardian today has a story about Sharon losing his majority after two ministers quit in protest at his plan to pull Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip. Sharon looks as if he is battling heroically with the far right to withdraw from Gaza while there is not even talk of plans for withdrawal from (parts of) the West bank. The unilateral peace process is stalled because of a lack of agreement between parties on the same side. So, now that we know Israel can’t even be it’s own ‘partner for peace’, do you think they will stop blaming the Palestinians? Heh heh.

This whole Israeli drama about the so-called Gaza withdrawal is a sham, a performance choreographed to fool the ignorant (like Duhbya, for example.) As Eli posted a couple of days ago,

And despite all the headlines and sound bites on the TV that “Israel votes to pull out of Gaza,” that isn’t even true aside from the “next year” part. Here’s the fine print you won’t read in most articles or hear on most coverage:

“The compromise endorsed by the ministers allows Israel to prepare logistically for the removal of settlements but does not commit Israel to evacuating any of them.

“‘After completing the preparations, the Cabinet will reconvene to decide whether to evacuate settlements, how many and at what pace, based on the circumstances on the ground,’ the statement said.” [Emphasis added]

The Wall Street Journal has just uploaded the 2003 torture memo.

Beware, it’s a PDF file.

April 2003 Defense Department memo

Link via Phil Carter.

UPDATE: The WSJ posting of the DoD memo has of course been censored. A poster at Billmon’s Whiskey bar has counted up the missing pages. This post is in the comments of this thread, by poster Jackmormon at June 9, 2004 11:43 AM

Censored Torture [M]emo

Missing pages 1-3, and of course, most importantly, the table of contents.

Page 4 of document, blacking-out of footnotes 2 and 3, explaining points made in-text about how the Geneva and Hague conventions do not apply to Al Qaida and Taliban combatants.

Page 25 of document, blank space in middle of argument about the defense strategy of pleading necessity. The context of the missing paragraph are exceptions and limitations to and special qualities of the necessity defense. The argument skips over the blank spot from weighing the relative harm of the threat and the defense to the exemption to the necessity defense represented by specific Congressional “determination of values.”

Missing pages 29-30. Bottom of page 28 is wrapping up some arguments about the self-defense defense. The last paragraph of page 28 is addressing the idea of proportional response. The top of page 31 has a few stray paragraphs before a new section about the declaration of war (or rather “authorization of force against”) Al Qaida, and introduces the idea that the nation’s right to self-defense could be used as a defending argument for an individual agent of the government accused of “harming an enemy combatant during an interrogation.” The missing pages presumably follow the steps of this argument, perhaps with information about executive directives.

Missing page 34. Bottom of 33 has the argument still in the section of defense arguments dealing with the “superior orders” defense. The last paragraph before the break closes with: “In sum, the defense of superior orders will generally be available for U.S. Armed Forces personnel engaged in exceptional interrogations except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful.” Top of 35 has a cryptic partial paragraph before a major section break, concluding with: “It thus appears that the TVPA does not apply to the conduct of U.S. agents acting under the color of law.” TVPA is probably the Torture Victims Protection Act, rather than the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Here the missing page would seem to address questions of financial reimbursement for torture victims.

Missing page 41. Bottom of 40 starts with the applicability of constitutional law as regards the fifth, eighth, and fourteenth amendments to GTMO prisoners, suggesting that “even if a Court were mistakenly to find that unlawful combatants at GTMO did have constitutional rights, it is unlikely that due process would impose any standards beyond those required by the eighth amendment.” The top of 42 starts a new paragraph with: “On the other hand, some conduct is so egregious that there is no justification.”

Page 46 of document, blank space in section dealing with questions of jurisdiction, and the specific applicability of military law to crimes committed in a combat situation. Last paragraph before censorship began to address problem of “war crimes.”

Missing page 48. Bottom of 47 starts with the Military Code’s definitions of assault, and the top of 49 starts with “statutes and treaties that have become the law of the land may create duties for the purposes of this article” and continues to discuss the Military Code’s definitions of maiming.

Page 53 of document is almost entirely blank, with only the section heading “Legal doctrines could render specific doctrine, otherwise criminal, not unlawful. See discussion of Commander-in-Chief Authority, supra.” The section referred to is the one that made the headlines, the one with the passage that reads “In light of the President’s complete authority over the conduct of war, without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes are not to be read as infringing on the President’s ultimate authority in these areas.” It sounds like this elided paragraph referred to Presidential directives either issued or recommended

And of course the memo breaks off entirely at the beginning of the section on “Presidential and Secretary of Defense Directives.”

So many incidents have happened in Iraq in the past day that I thought I’d do a summary.

Fallujah rebels killed 12 and wounded 10 Fallujah Brigade soliers in a mortar attack today. The Fallujah Brigade is encamped outside Fallujah, which is ruled by the rebels. Middle East Online is reporting US tanks massing east of Fallujah, but their purpose is unclear. Apparently some Fallujah Iraqis are saying that they’ve asked for “safe passage” through Fallujah.

Saboteurs struck two oil pipelines and a US convoy was attacked in Baghdad:

Elsewhere, Iraqi fighters ambushed a US military convoy in Baghdad and blew up another fuel line. The ambush took place on a road in the northwestern Baghdad neighborhood of Al-Khadra.

Meanwhile, saboteurs ruptured overnight an oil pipeline linking Iraq’s largest fuel refinery at Baiji, 200 kilometres north of Baghdad, to a power station, the electricity ministry said, according to AFP.

The attack shut down the400 -megawatt power station in Baiji and caused a huge blackout in the town, the ministry said in a statement.

In a related development, a portion of the Kirkuk-Turkey oil pipeline was blown up, an Iraqi security chief in northern Iraq told AFP. The pipeline was still on fire Wednesday afternoon, said the fire chief for the Northern Oil Company, Jumaa Ahmad.

Six Polish soldiers were killed when they were attacked with mortars while defusing munitions.

An explosion that killed six soldiers serving with Polish-led forces in Iraq on Tuesday was probably caused by a mortar attack, Polish Deputy Defence Minister Janusz Zemke said on Wednesday.

“Everything leads us to believe that it was a mortar attack,” Zemke told Poland’s Trojka radio.

“Probably three mortar shells exploded near the place where the soldiers were,” he said. “And that’s what caused the explosion.”

Meanwhile, Ayatollah Sistani’s faction of Shi`ites won big in the Iraqi Power Game when their demands for the wording of the UN resolution passed yesterday were satisfied while the Kurdish demands were denied. The Kurdish leaders are furious and have threatened to pull out of the Game entirely.