Reality and Its Perceptions

Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned.

The officials also took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the meetings described them Thursday to the AP to confirm details first reported by ABC News on Wednesday. The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue.

Between 2002 and 2003, the Justice Department issued several memos from its Office of Legal Counsel that justified using the interrogation tactics, including ones that critics call torture.

“If you looked at the timing of the meetings and the memos you’d see a correlation,” the former intelligence official said. Those who attended the dozens of meetings agreed that “there’d need to be a legal opinion on the legality of these tactics” before using them on al-Qaida detainees, the former official said.

The meetings were held in the White House Situation Room in the years immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks. Attending the sessions were Cheney, then-Bush aides Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

(ABC News link added by this writer.)

The Washington Post reports on telecom-FBI data sharing, and a government report which found that "U.S. intelligence agencies have contradictory rules that govern classification of information, including inconsistencies over what would constitute harm if the information were disclosed".

In other news, the Army Times reports that the U.S. military seems to be getting desperate when it comes to recruiting more high-grade cannon fodder:

The Defense Department has announced a new get-tough policy with colleges and universities that interfere with the work of military recruiters and Reserve Officer Training Corps programs.

Under rules that will take effect April 28, defense officials said they want the exact same access to student directories that is provided to all other prospective employers.

Students can opt out of having their information turned over to the military only if they opt out of having their information provided to all other recruiters, but schools cannot have policies that exclude only the military, defense officials said in a March 28 notice of the new policy in the Federal Register.

The Pentagon, according to the Christian Science Monitor,

has gone hundreds of billions of dollars over budget in recent years on key weapons systems, including aircraft, ships, and satellite, said a government audit. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said for the sixth year in a row that the Pentagon had significantly gone over budget, but according to a report presented to Congress this week, the problem is getting worse.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

New Poll of Iranians Released; The Upcoming Parliamentary Elections; Dealing with the Nuclear Program

The Washington Post reports on a new poll of Iranians, with interesting results:

Almost 90 percent of those polled want the supreme leader--who "can veto legislation, presidential actions, judicial decisions and candidates for office"--to be popularly elected and accountable.

1/3 of voters support neither the conservative nor the reformist camp; 8 percent back the former, 22 percent the latter.

42 percent are optimistic on the economy (the figure was 27 percent last June).

Over 3/4 desire good relations and trade with the United States.

A majority support their nation's acquisition of nuclear weapons, but 70 percent--down from 80 percent last year--would forego such weapons and permit inspections for aid and investment.

About 60 percent are in favour of their government's support for Hezbollah, Shi'a militias in Iraq, and Palestinian militants.

45 percent--down from 55 percent--would support recognizing Israel if this were one component of a wider U.S.-Iran bargain.

The prospects for reformists in Iran's upcoming parliamentary elections don't inspire much optimism, Newsweek informs us. The obstacles faced by journalist Kasra Noori, 38, in being allowed to run for Parliament are instructive:

But when he tried to register last year as a moderate candidate for the March 14 ballot, he found his path blocked by the Council of Guardians of the Revolution. The conservative group of clerics and lawyers, which supervises Iran's elections, was on a mission to exclude almost any reformist who dared to register as a candidate.

A few days after Noori submitted his name, the inspectors from Council of Guardians' Supervision Committees started asking about him around his neighborhood. "They went to my local grocer and asked him about my personal life," says Noori. "They asked him questions like if I look at women lustfully, if I go to the local mosque to pray, if my wife dresses modestly, what I buy from the grocer. Questions that had nothing to do with my qualifications as a candidate." Still, Noori considers himself relatively fortunate that the questions were so mild. In some cases the inspectors have asked candidates if they have had illegitimate relationships with women and whether they were addicted to drugs. There are no reports that conservative candidates have come under similar scrutiny. Indeed, in some cases the inspectors are conservative candidates themselves.

Like most disqualified moderates, Noori was expelled on three main charges: lack of real commitment to the teachings of Islam; lack of belief in velayate faghih, Iran's system of governance, in which a religious scholar is the supreme leader of the country; and "notoriety," a catchall phrase that is essentially meaningless. A devout Muslim from a religious family in Tehran, Noori objected to all charges. "As far as I know I'm a good Muslim, and it seems that I'm also enjoying a relatively good reputation in public," he says. Noori challenged the claims and was finally cleared of being "notorious," but he was still disqualified on the basis of the first two charges.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as reformists concede, continues to enjoy widespread support among residents of villages and small towns who have benefited from government handouts.

So for now the moderates are pursuing a two-tier approach. They want to have some presence in the parliament in order to keep their political presence alive. "If we didn't take part in the elections, the hardliners would have totally dominated the parliament, closed our offices, and that would be the end of us as reformist activists," says Shariati. Surviving, even with the tiny number of seats they're expected to win, will also allow the reformists to prepare themselves for the presidential elections in June 2009. But first the reformists have to deal with divisions within their ranks. The likely reformist candidates for the presidency are former president Mohammad Khatami and former speaker of the parliament Mehdi Karrubi—perhaps the only contenders with enough stature to prevent the Council of Guardians from disqualifying them from the race. The factions, however, have presented different lists of parliamentary candidates and display little inclination to mend fences.

Scott Ritter has written an excellent and concise article for Antiwar.com on the issue of Iran's nuclear program. He explains:

With the IAEA now able to ascertain that the Iranian explanations about both the origin and use of its enrichment program are consistent with the information available to the IAEA, there no longer remains a technical justification for demanding the suspension of Iran's ongoing uranium enrichment activities. The IAEA has declared that it can account for all declared nuclear material in Iran and that it has adequate inspection and verification controls in place for the totality of Iran's declared enrichment program. The IAEA notes that it does not have conclusive evidence of any proscribed activities taking place inside Iran (documents made available to the IAEA by the United States, derived from sources of questionable origin, have been rejected by the Iranians as fabrications.)

Ritter calls upon the U.N. and U.S. government to lift all sanctions against Iran. The U.S. aim of ousting the Iranian regime must also be abandoned. These steps would help to begin a new chapter in the relations between the two countries, Ritter concludes.

Now is a good time to recall Iran's offer of 2003--thoughtlessly tossed aside by the warmongering Bush administration--whereby the regime would give the U.S. everything it wanted in exchange for the lifting of "sanctions, full access to peaceful nuclear technology and a recognition of its 'legitimate security interests.'" This offer shows a willingness on Iran's part to negotiate and to make serious concessions, as does the recent success the IAEA has had in learning more about the country's nuclear program. Talking to Iran isn't appeasement; it can produce the desired results without the needless expenditure of massive amounts of American blood and treasure.

Reality and Its Perceptions

Friday, October 31, 2008

Illegal, Questionable, and Absurd U.S./British Government Policies Links

War and Intervention Links

Uncategorized Links

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Cheney and Other High U.S. Govt Officials Explicitly Supported Torture of Prisoners

Sunday, March 9, 2008

New Poll of Iranians Released; The Upcoming Parliamentary Elections; Dealing with the Nuclear Program

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