Politics: J'accuse!

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
And people who are too stupid to follow the details may think there's something to it.

Okay, I've just discerned your main thesis. Glad that's cleared up. I can rest easy now. G'night.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Check on the Sacred Terror book

I don't know about you, but I am thinking that one would be mighty tasty when grilled on the Weber slathered in Bar-B-Q sauce. Yum.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
So do I. I wish it had been sworn, and I wish she wasn't sitting on the commission. I think there is much more that she could and should be speaking of, along with Reno. And, no, not so that we can point fingers at Reno, or Clinton, or anyone - because this is the stuff that really gets to the heart of why our intelligence functions failed so badly for so many years. We need to understand where our attempts at balancing rights and security could be fine-tuned to plug holes.

OK. So why don't they treat her like Zelikow. He gave a statement under oath, right?

I would like the chance to have the full testimony on this. I would like the testimony, and the questioning, to be free of the "fellow commision member" taint.

That testimony will come from the FBI, not from her. It's a question of why the FBI failed to investigate the leads it had, not a question of why she wrote that memo.

Wrong again. I think that, naturally because of the subject and the timing, the more rabid Dems were just about pre-orgasmic at the chance to run these public hearings so soon before the elections, thinking they were going to be a huge coup. I don't think they've worked out that way so far - they have been surprisingly mellow and purposeful, in spite of the sporadic rabid attempts from both sides. I've been more impressed with that than I thought I would have been. But, the people who thought these hearings were going to be one long demolition of Bush are disappointed, and what they do NOT want is a set of conclusions that call for someone defense-oriented, vigilant, and . . . well, certainly not Kerry. That's what's going to happen, though, and so the next best outcome is to fight this Gorelick thing tooth and nail, and leave the whole set of conclusions tainted with the "THEY ruined it" brush (for both sides.) Honestly, that's the only reason I can see that anyone with half a lick of legal training would not recognize that she should not be sitting on the commission. (To be fair, there are a few others who should be gone, too.)

You have a lot of words here, but they don't explain why Kean, a Republican, wanted public hearings and wants Gorelick not to recuse. These unnamed Democrats you conjure up who are out to use the hearings to tar the White House are not the folks on the commission. So, try again.

I did to begin, but, as I said above, I have been more impressed that I expected to be with the direction this was taking.

You and me both.

Everyone is criticizing everyone, fairly equally, which is, I think, the right summary conclusion. I would like for the more specific conclusions to be a bit more in-depth, though, and I think the important witnesses should not be sitting there deciding things.

OK. But there's still no reason to think that Gorelick's piece of this is important.

You know, I read your line here, and I misread it at first, but the misreading was the most proper reading, I think. You are fighting the war on terror. Sort of like fighting forest fires. Anything to help your side. What you accuse me of constantly, but what I see as your constant focus.

Explain again why Kean and Gorton, to name two Republican commissioners, want her there. It must be because they want to slam the President, right?

I don't think anyone is going to come out of this process damaged. I think that the public conclusion is going to be, the system didn't protect us, because the system was protecting other things that, pre-9/11, were more on our minds.

They are going to slam Ashcroft and Freeh, to name two. Because it's hard to make them look good. Hopefully they will come up with something better to do than say "the system didn't protect us."

Why do you want her on there so badly? Is it the balance? Would it make a difference if she was replaced by a pro-Clintonite?

Did you notice that the stink about her came towards the end of the process, and was instigated by Ashcroft? If this was a principled effort, it would have been a big deal sooner, when there was still good time to replace her with another commissioner who could do the work, hear the witnesses, etc. The fact that this was raised so late in the game, and by Ashcroft, who was picking a fight in order to divert attention from his own problems. There is a reason why the commission didn't rise to the bait with him, and I think it's because they didn't need to argue with him -- they already know what they know, and will ream him in their report.

I don't give a rat's ass whether Gorelick is on the commission or not. But Kean and Gorton have made it clear that they support her, and I read this to mean that she's staying. And therefore the attacks on her are really an effort to discredit the commission, not an effort to get her to resign. Maybe Not Me is well meaning and doesn't realize she's been used in this way. But the effect is the same. To attack Gorelick at this point is to make an effort to sabotage the credibility and weight of the commission -- all of the commission -- for partisan ends. It's appalling.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Not Me
I don't know about you, but I am thinking that one would be mighty tasty when grilled on the Weber slathered in Bar-B-Q sauce. Yum.

Do you leave the skin on? Adds extra fat, y'know.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
Okay, I've just discerned your main thesis. Glad that's cleared up. I can rest easy now. G'night.

Y'know, if you lived on the West Coast you could stay up two hours later every night.

Originally posted by Not Me
I don't know about you, but I am thinking that one would be mighty tasty when grilled on the Weber slathered in Bar-B-Q sauce. Yum.

And it'll keep you regular.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
They are going to slam Ashcroft and Freeh, to name two.

Wasn't Freeh under Clinton, too? Why wasn't he fired?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
And it'll keep you regular.

Well that explains why you are so cranky. Too much grilled meat will do that to you.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
Wasn't Freeh under Clinton, too? Why wasn't he fired?

Why hasn't Tenet been fired, that is the real question.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Not Me
Why hasn't Tenet been fired, that is the real question.

Dunno. 'Cause he's loyal?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
OK. So why don't they treat her like Zelikow. He gave a statement under oath, right?

Kick Zeilikow off the Commission for all I care if that is what is necessary to get Gorelick off.

If they kicked Zeilikow off, would you be for kicking Gorelick off, too, and if not, why not?

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
I don't give a rat's ass whether Gorelick is on the commission or not. But Kean and Gorton have made it clear that they support her, and I read this to mean that she's staying.

Well I sure the fuck hope you are wrong on that one. I'll be toast for a week on this board if that is true. Good thing my sock bilmore will still be able to post.

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
To attack Gorelick at this point is to make an effort to sabotage the credibility and weight of the commission -- all of the commission -- for partisan ends. It's appalling.

Having that has-been Ben-Veniste on the Commission ensured it was going to be a partisan joke from the beginning.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
Wasn't Freeh under Clinton, too? Why wasn't he fired?

In the 1990s, an additional factor contributed to the overall problem of dealing with the Bureau: Louis Freeh's animus toward the White House. Throughout Freeh's tenure, White House officials found that the FBI director did not feel that the same rules applied to him as to other top government officials: he refused, for example, to come to meetings on the weekend and, to demonstrate his independence of the nation's political leaders, he turned in his White House pass, saying that he would go there only as a visitor. (The gesture was a strange and hollow one; the Secret Service Uniform Division personnel who guard the White House identify all senior officials by sight and do not require badges.) The relationship between the director and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue took on the hue of personal antipathy early on. Most within the White House dated the hostility to Clinton's first term, when the special investigation into Whitewater began expanding to include Filegate, Travelgate, and the billing practices at Hillary Clinton's Little Rock law firm.

* * * * *

The White House was by no means alone in feeling the sting of FBI obstinacy. The State Department, the CIA, and others all had running battles with the Bureau at one time or another. Worst of all, Janet Reno, who as attorney general was Louis Freeh's boss, eventually confessed to the White House that she simply had not control over the director: he was entirely unresponsive to her requests. Undoubtedly, matters were made worse by the Bureau's string of embarrassments. From the attack on the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, that left seventy-five cult members dead to the mishandled investigation of Richard Jewell in the Atlanta Olympics bombing, and from the cover-up of inadequacies at the FBI crime lab to the scandalous investigation of Wen Ho Lee, the withholding from defense lawyers of investigative material regarding Timothy McVeigh, and the Robert Hanssen spying case, the FBI was careening from one debacle to another. The FBI director's term was ten years. The one remedy available to the President by law, dismissing Freeh, was a political impossibility. A chief executive who is being investigated by the FBI could not fire the FBI director: it would be another Saturday Night Massacre, the second coming of Richard Nixon. Freeh could not be removed; the Bureau could not be held accountable.

Sacred Terror at 300-03.

Interestingly enough, the book continues to observe that "the FBI was at its most difficult in its refusal to share investigative material that had a critical bearing on U.S. foreign policy; as far as the Bureau was concerned, it was not their problem." Rule 6(e) is identified as the FBI's pretext, not "the wall."

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
Why hasn't Tenet been fired, that is the real question.

Excellent question. Why hasn't Bush fired him? I suggested the answer here.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
Kick Zeilikow off the Commission for all I care if that is what is necessary to get Gorelick off.

If they kicked Zeilikow off, would you be for kicking Gorelick off, too, and if not, why not?

If the commissioners all agree, let them both stay. They seem to have found some consensus, which leads me to believe that they are doing something useful.

Having that has-been Ben-Veniste on the Commission ensured it was going to be a partisan joke from the beginning.

Why? The fact that the commissioners seem to be working together would seem to refute you.

[bilmore]

A fairly modern Saudi's weblog:

http://muttawa.blogspot.com/

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Niall Ferguson, in last Sunday's NYT, suggests that comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam are facile. But he also suggests that adhering to the June 30 deadline is a mistake. (I'm posting this here in its entirety because I'm not sure how much longer the link will be good.)

The Last Iraqi Insurgency
By NIALL FERGUSON

Published: April 18, 2004

LONDON

From Ted Kennedy to the cover of Newsweek, we are being warned that Iraq has turned into a quagmire, George W. Bush's Vietnam. Learning from history is well and good, but such talk illustrates the dangers of learning from the wrong history. To understand what is going on in Iraq today, Americans need to go back to 1920, not 1970. And they need to get over the American inhibition about learning from non-American history.

President Bush, too, seems to miss the point. "We're not an imperial power," he insisted in his press conference on Tuesday. Trouble is, what he is trying to do in Iraq — and what is going wrong — look uncannily familiar to anyone who knows some British imperial history. Iraq had the distinction of being one of our last and shortest-lived colonies. This isn't 'Nam II — it's a rerun of the British experience of compromised colonization. When Mr. Bush met Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain on Friday, the uninvited guest at the press conference — which touched not only on Iraq but also on Palestine, Cyprus and even Northern Ireland — was the ghost of empire past.

First, let's dispense with Vietnam. In South Vietnam, the United States was propping up an existing government, whereas in Iraq it has attempted outright "regime change," just as Britain did at the end of World War I by driving the Ottoman Turks out of the country. "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators," declared Gen. Frederick Stanley Maude — a line that could equally well have come from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld this time last year. By the summer of 1920, however, the self-styled liberators faced a full-blown revolt.

A revolt against colonial rule is not the same as a war. Vietnam was a war. Although the American presence grew gradually, it reached a peak of nearly half a million troops by the end of the 1960's; altogether 3.4 million service personnel served in the Southeast Asian theater. By comparison, there are just 134,000 American troops in Iraq today — almost as many men as the British had in Iraq in 1920. Then as now, the enemy consisted of undisciplined militias. There were no regular army forces helping them the way the North Vietnamese supported the Vietcong.

What lessons can Americans learn from the revolt of 1920? The first is that this crisis was almost inevitable. The anti-British revolt began in May, six months after a referendum — in practice, a round of consultation with tribal leaders — on the country's future and just after the announcement that Iraq would become a League of Nations "mandate" under British trusteeship rather than continue under colonial rule. In other words, neither consultation with Iraqis nor the promise of internationalization sufficed to avert an uprising — a fact that should give pause to those, like Senator John Kerry, who push for a handover to the United Nations.

Then as now, the insurrection had religious origins and leaders, but it soon transcended the country's ancient ethnic and sectarian divisions. The first anti-British demonstrations were in the mosques of Baghdad. But the violence quickly spread to the Shiite holy city of Karbala, where British rule was denounced by Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi al-Shirazi — perhaps the historical counterpart of today's Shiite firebrand, Moktada al-Sadr. The revolt stretched as far north as the Kurdish city of Kirkuk and as far south as Samawah, where British forces were trapped (and where Japanese troops, facing a hostage crisis, were holed up last week).

Then, as now, the rebels systematically sought to disrupt the occupiers' communications — then by attacking railways and telegraph lines, today by ambushing convoys. British troops and civilians were besieged, just as hostages are being held today. Then as now, much of the violence was more symbolic than strategically significant — British bodies were mutilated, much as American bodies were at Falluja. By August of 1920 the situation was so desperate that the general in charge appealed to London not only for reinforcements but also for chemical weapons (mustard gas bombs or shells), though these turned out to be unavailable.

And this brings us to the second lesson the United States needs to learn from the British experience. Putting this rebellion down will require severity. In 1920, the British eventually ended the rebellion through a combination of aerial bombardment and punitive village-burning expeditions. It was not pretty. Even Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible for the air force, was shocked by the actions of some trigger-happy pilots and vengeful ground troops. And despite their overwhelming technological superiority, British forces still suffered more than 2,000 dead and wounded.

Is the United States willing or able to strike back with comparable ruthlessness? Unlikely — if last week's gambit of unconditional cease-fires is any indication. Washington seems intent on reining in the Marines and pinning all hope on the handover of power scheduled — apparently irrevocably — for June 30.

This could prove a grave error. For the third lesson of 1920 is that only by quelling disorder firmly and immediately will America be able to achieve its objective of an orderly handover of sovereignty. After all, a similar handover had always been implicit in the mandate system, but only after the revolt had been crushed did the British hasten to install the Hashemite prince Faisal as king.

In fact, this was imperial sleight of hand — Iraq did not become formally independent until 1932, and British troops remained there until 1955. Such an outcome is, of course, precisely what Washington should be aiming for today — American troops will have to keep order well after the nominal turnover of power, and they'll need the support of a friendly yet effective Iraqi government. Right now, this outcome seems far from likely. What legitimacy will any Iraqi government have if the current unrest continues?

There is much, then, to learn from the events of 1920. Yet I'm pessimistic that any senior military commander in Iraq today knows much about it. Late last year, a top American commander in Europe assured me that United States forces would soon be reinforced by Turkish troops; he seemed puzzled when I pointed out that this was unlikely to play well in Baghdad, where there is little nostalgia for the days of Ottoman rule.

Maybe, just maybe, some younger Americans are realizing that the United States has lessons to learn from something other than its own supposedly exceptional history. The best discussion of the 1920 revolt that I have come across this year was in a paper presented at a Harvard University conference by Daniel Barnard, an Army officer who is about to begin teaching at West Point. Tellingly, Mr. Barnard pointed out that the British at first tried to place disproportionate blame for their troubles on outside agitators. Phantom Bolsheviks then; Al Qaeda interlopers today.

But for the most part we get only facile references to Vietnam. People seem to forget how long it took — and how many casualties had to pile up — before public support for that war began to erode in any significant way. When approval fell below 40 percent for the first time in 1968, the total American body count was already past the 20,000 mark. By comparison, a year ago 85 percent of Americans thought the situation in Iraq was going well; that figure is now down to 35 percent and half of Americans want some or all troops withdrawn — though fewer than 700 Americans have died. These polls are chilling. A quick withdrawal would doom Iraq to civil war or theocracy — probably both, in that order.

The lessons of empire are not the kind of lessons Americans like to learn. It's more comforting to go on denying that America is in the empire business. But the time has come to get real. Iraqis themselves will be the biggest losers if the United States cuts and runs. Fear of the wrong quagmire could consign them to a terrible hell.

Niall Ferguson, a professor of history at New York University and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is the author of the forthcoming "Colossus: The Price of America's Empire."