Tag: Antiwar movement

JAG lawyers are blaming Bush administration political appointees, specifically Douglas Feith, for blocking them from the Iraqi prison system because they insisted on humane treatment and Geneva Convention protections for detainees, setting the stage for the torture chambers that developed in the military detention facilities in Iraq.

As the military’s uniformed lawyers, JAG officers are in charge of instructing military commanders on how to adhere to domestic and international rules regarding the treatment of detainees.

“If we — ‘we’ being the uniformed lawyers — had been listened to, and what we said put into practice, then these abuses would not have occurred,” said Rear Admiral Don Guter (ret.), the Navy Judge Advocate General from 2000 to 2002.

Specifically, JAG officers say they have been marginalized by Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, and William Haynes II, the Pentagon’s general counsel, whom President Bush has nominated for a judgeship on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Feith, predictably, denies it. However, a group of JAG officers consulted the New York City Bar Association twice in 2003, a measure of their extreme concern.

Matters got so frustrating that in May and October 2003, eight senior JAG officers took the rare step of going outside the chain of command to meet secretly with the New York City Bar Association, warning of a “disaster waiting to happen”.

“They felt that there had been a conscious effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity surrounding these detention facilities, and that it had been done to give interrogators the broadest possible latitude in their conduct of operations,” Scott Horton, former chair of the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on International Human Rights, told ABCNEWS. Horton’s meeting with the JAG officers was first reported by Salon.com.

This “atmosphere of legal ambiguity,” JAG officials told ABCNEWS, began in early 2002, when the Bush administration decided the Geneva Conventions’ rules for humane treatment of prisoners did not apply to the war on terror, and to the suspects seized in Afghanistan and held at Guantanamo. For the war in Iraq, the Geneva Conventions were supposed to apply … but JAG sources say there was little to no clarification of that.

“When you say something down the chain of command like, ‘The Geneva Conventions don’t apply,’ that sets the stage for the kind of chaos that we’ve seen,” said Rear Admiral John Hutson (ret.), who was the Navy Judge Advocate General from 1997 to 2000.

Feith responds with this joke: “There has not been, ever, any ambiguity about the strong support that the leadership of this department gives to the Geneva Conventions.” They “strongly support” the Geneva Conventions, they just don’t think they apply to anyone they capture or detain.

Rep. Steve Buyer, (R-Ind.), a JAG in the Army Reserves, wanted to offer his services in Iraq. But even though the Army wanted him there, Pentagon political appointees vetoed him going. Buyer told ABCNEWS’ John Cochran that he tried to convey to his Pentagon civilian contact how important it was to ensure against the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and detainees, telling him: “You have to get somebody that’s qualified in international law and the Geneva Conventions to serve in that brigade … I’m pretty shocked that this never happened.”

Buyer was referring to the 800th Military Police Brigade, seven of whose reservists are now facing charges in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal.

Buyer isn’t the only one to question why there didn’t seem to be a significant JAG presence for interrogations at detention centers like Abu Ghraib. Horton says the JAGs who reached out to the New York City Bar Association complained about a new “practice” of keeping JAGs away. And Admiral Guter says when he was Navy JAG from 2000 until 2002, “JAGs were clamoring for assignments of this kind of importance, so I know they were available. And if they’re available and you don’t send them, then I have to say you don’t send them on purpose.”

Funny post of the DaY:

Click the flag

We all owe Laurie Mylroie and Osama bin Laden an apology.

Bush says U.S troops will stay in Iraq until the Iraqis can defend against “external aggression and internal subversion.” Apparently that means the Iraqis will have to drive the Americans out themselves.

Iraqi Shi’ite youths throw stones at a U.S. military
convoy in the center of the most
populated Shi’ite district of Al-Sadr city,
in Baghdad, May 15, 2004.

The other day the NRO ran this piece about the Junior RNC Neocons that they have staffing the CPA headquarters in the Green Zone. As Washington Monthly describes them:

When we last checked in with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, “Who’s Who” noted that many key jobs there had been filled with folks with little to no experience in such areas as post-conflict reconstruction, transitional economies, and the like–a consequence of the Bush administration’s disdain for anyone with roots in the NGO community, the State Department, or the various Clinton-era nation-building projects, and its preference for loyal Republican operatives who could be trusted to toe the White House party line. Thus, Simone Ledeen, the 29-year-old daughter of Michael Ledeen of Iran-Contra eminence, now helps set economic policy for northern Iraq, while Dan Senor, a recently-minted MBA who spent a few months working for White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan, is in charge of rebuilding Iraq’s media. Joining them recently was Jay Hallen, a fresh-faced, 24-year-old Yale graduate who, reports The Wall Street Journal’s Yochi J. Dreazen, “majored in political science, rarely watched financial news stations and didn’t follow the stock market.” His job at the CPA? Relaunching the now-shuttered Iraqi stock market.

Josh Marshall also writes about the neocon playpen in the Green Zone,concluding:

MCPA officials say that the older GOP functionaries do a reasonable job keeping their partisanship publicly under wraps. But the younger Republicans in Iraq spend much of their time plotting against the Democrats. “Everything is seen in the context of the election, and how they will screw the Democrats,” said one CPA official. “It was really pretty shocking to hear them talk.”

“They are all on the campaign trail,” said another official. “They see this as a stepping stone to a better job in the next Bush administration.” “I don’t always know if they are Republicans,” said yet another senior CPAer. “But what is clear is that they know nothing about development, and nothing about transitional economies.” They’re trying to do the right thing, this official adds, “but they do what they do without any knowledge of how the post-war world works in reality. They come up with hare-brained schemes that cause so many problems they take more time to fix than to create.”

It’s also driven journalists on the ground, watching these operatives move in and out of Saddam’s marble Republican Palace, which CPA commandeered as its headquarters, to joke: “They don’t call it the Republican Palace for nothing.”

Anyway Neocon Review Online had this puff-piece about “Gen-X” in Baghdad and they ran this picture of a Green Zone Neocon Public Housing Project.

So, that’s the visual for this bit of news:

A rocket landed in the compound housing coalition headquarters — wounding one soldier and one civilian. But officials say both people returned to duty later in the day.

I hope the laundry is working overtime.

ArkhAngel rebuts “an email from SPC Joe Roche, who’s currently serving with the 16th Engineer Battalion, part of the 1st Armored Division. Yes, that’s the division whose tour was extended by three months. They’re located in the Baghdad area, and they’ve seen some of the heaviest fighting during the insurgency.” The rebuttal is well done, my only point of disagreement is ArkhAngel’s overly optimistic opinion that the war can still be won. I tend to agree more with the Freeway Blogger:

A good post on the subject of Muqtada Al Sadr’s popularity in Iraq is by Nikolai at Lenin’s Tomb. “…..the bearded chubster is winning hearts and minds faster than a speeding bullet because, and only because, he has resisted both Saddam and the Americans. ”

Brian Hunter takes off on a Kevin Drum clanker in Rumsfeld, Military Budgets, Kevin Drum and Baseball.

Max Sawicky is running an exciting contest: “Submit your entries here for the most vicious thing posted by someone on the Instapundit blogroll.” While you’re at Max’s place, read his post on the FReepers’ “Enemies List” which includes Michael Berg, father of recent Al Qeada victim, Nicolas Berg.

The Angry Arab on Saudi hypocrisy: “And this Al-Jubayr was telling the American audience today about the civilized methods of interrogation in Saudi Arabia, where beheading of lovers still takes place, and where women are still stoned, and where people who enjoy their drugs are executed, and where the prisons of Prince Nayif are run like medieval dungeons with routine torture, and urination over the heads of inmates. And the propagandists of the House of Saudi are now allowed to preach tolerance and humane treatment on US TV?”

The Libertarian Jackass tries to explain to warfloggers why breaking things does not create wealth. He evens drags in Bastiat, though I doubt his intended audience will read a French economist when they won’t even eat French fries.

The Medium Lobster on Bulldozers of Peace and Giblets does horrorblogging.

The Decadent West explains why Al Qaeda’s lack of a bureaucracy makes them more efficient than the West. “You know what makes Al Qaeda so Ford tough? Their total lack of bureaucracy.“