PM handover to Costello worries voters

The leadership issue is set to hurt the Federal Government in the coming election, with a new Herald Poll finding almost half of all voters believe John Howard will not serve his full term if re-elected and have not yet warmed to Peter Costello.

The poll reveals that 47 per cent of voters believe the Prime Minister will retire during the next term and that 41 per cent would be less likely to vote for the Coalition at the election late this year if they thought that Mr Costello, as is widely expected, would be his successor.

This 'anti-Costello' effect includes more than one in five current Coalition supporters - although 36 per cent of Greens supporters say they would be more inclined to vote for the Coalition if Mr Costello was certain to take over after the election.

These figures are terrible news for both Costello and Howard. Costello is probably not, contrary to my prediction, organising a challenge to the Man of Steel. Even if he was, these figures would be deeply unhelpful to any challenge. In the same way, these figures mean Howard will face more and more questions about whether he will (or can) serve another term that would have him turn 69 before the 2007 election.

At the same time, Paul Keating had similar negatives in 1992 and went on to win the 1993 general election.

IISS annual survey

The IISS has released its annual survey. The full document is not available. The director's introduction is disturbing.

To summarise roughly:

• The Iraq intervention increased the terrorist threat
  
• North Korea took advantage of the Iraq intervention to advance its nuclear program
  
• The Libya success (achieved by British diplomacy) is a welcome success.
  
• The Iraq intervention and the war on terror have 'has sapped the US of much of its diplomatic energies with the result that there has been underinvestment in the Middle East peace process'.

The director ends by saying:

Let me add this thought by way of general conclusion. The British diplomat Harold Nicolson once noted that �although you cannot acquire prestige without power, yet you cannot retain prestige without reputation.� This is why reputation is so central to power. He went on to say that �a prestige which contains a high percentage of reputation is able to withstand a loss of power - whereas even a temporary decline in power will destroy a prestige that is devoid of reputation.�

The US today is finding it difficult to balance the exercise of its power with the retention of its prestige. Achieving that balance is essential to maintaining its capacity both to do good in the world, and create international security. The present US administration is becoming acutely aware of the fact that reputation, prestige and power can easily be squandered through mismanaged interventions and peacekeeping operations. The US is realising the awful truth that the first law of peacekeeping is the same as the first law of forensics: �every contact leaves a trace.� Unfortunately, too many bad traces have been left recently, and many good ones will be needed for the US to recover its reputation, its prestige and therefore effective power.

The grimmest part of this picture is that the US seems unaware of how much reputation it is losing in the Muslim world. Yesterday's speech by George Bush does little to address Muslim concerns and indeed does nothing but repeat details of a plan that was already known without detailing whether the transition is still to be governed by the TAL. In particular there are problems with Article 59, which mandates US command over Iraq's own forces and Articles 48 and 49 which continue CPA appointments, agencies and policies until such time as the Transitional National Assembly is elected and even then any assembly action is subject to an absolute veto by any of the three members of the presidency council. It's notable the both the UN and the Shi'a hierarchy are resisting endorsing the TAL .

The Bush administration has prduced a drastic failure in security and legitimacy in Iraq. It is hard to see how more of the same will change that.

Man of Steel to meet Terminator

MAN of steel John Howard is to come face to face with the Terminator in Los Angeles to lobby support for an Australian gas deal.

The prime minister today said he would meet the Governor of California, movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, as part of his trip to the United States, Britain and France.

Mr Howard will have talks with US President George W Bush at the White House, as well as meetings with key congressional leaders, to seek support for the Australia-US free trade agreement.

Mr Bush, who described the prime minister as a man of steel for his support for the war on Iraq, is set to talk to Mr Howard about the handover of power in Iraq on June 30.

Some headlines just have to be blogged.

attending to ADHD

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Medication for ADHD contains amphetamines which are on the banned list for footballers.

And today's letters page in Sydney Morning Heraldincludes:

If what is being said about Willie Mason is true and not just a poor attempt to excuse his behaviour, then as a young adult suffering from ADHD, I can sympathise.

While I can regulate my behaviour fairly well on a day-to-day basis, if alcohol is thrown into the mix, all bets are off. While an average person may do a few silly things after a few too many drinks, it is almost guaranteed that a ADHD sufferer will do something he/she regrets.

The simple answer would be to avoid alcohol, but at an age where practically all socialisation includes a few drinks, this is much easier said than done.

It's frankly insane that the guy is not on medication when he was diagnosed in February. I sympathise with the letter-writer because my experience is almost the same.

Latham winning the war

Labor would win in a landslide if an election were held now, as more Australians than ever regard the Iraq war as unjustified, a new Herald Poll has found.

A week before John Howard heads to the US for meetings with President George Bush and the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, on Iraq, the poll showed a strong majority - 63 per cent - thought the war was not justified, compared with 51 per cent in September last year.

Only 31 per cent now think the war was justified, compared with 43 per cent last year.

The poll also revealed a big gap in electoral support opening up between the Government and Labor, which now leads the Coalition by 56 per cent (up three points) to 44 per cent (down three) in two party preferred terms.

This suggests that Labor would have won an election held last Saturday with a swing of about 7 per cent.

The poll shows that although voters were impressed by the budget they are deserting the Coalition, with Mr Howard's approval rating falling to its lowest level since August 2001, immediately before the Tampa crisis.

By contrast, the Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, is enjoying record support, according to the poll, conducted last weekend by ACNielsen.

The Man of Steel may be starting to rust. 7 August must be off the table as an election date, but I suspect Howard intends to go to the country before the presidential election on 2 November. He will not want to fight a difficult election on the back of a possible Bush defeat because his foreign policy is essentially built on his personal relationship with the Great and Powerful Dubya. I'd say some time towards the end of the period between 7 August and 30 October.

Howard has a history of putting off the unpalatable and this election is not going to be easy at all. National security is now the only issue he controls, so we can expect a lot of antiterrorist legislation designed to be as difficult as possible for the opposition to accept. The collapse in support for the Iraq war must be very, very bad news, almost as bad as the budget going phut.

It's going to be an interesting 5 months, especially if Latham follows Whitlam in 1972 and starts to make the date an issue in itself.

The Defense of 'Command Influence'

Secretary Rumsfeld has hinted that some form of compensation may be paid to those who suffered the abuses. But money will not redeem either the ethical lapses or the systemic failures that precluded appreciation of the seriousness of what had occurred among the most senior elected and appointed officials and uniformed officers.

In his 1963 encyclical �Pacem in Terris� (Peace on Earth), Pope John XIII sic wrote that �every fundamental human right draws its indestructible moral force from the natural law, which in granting it imposes a corresponding obligation. Those, therefore, who claim their own rights, yet altogether forget or neglect to carry out their respective duties, are people who build with one hand and destroy with the other.�

That this is how countries in the Muslim world and beyond regard the U.S. is not surprising. One can only hope that the White House and the Pentagon have taken the message to heart.

If the White House and the Pentagon understood Pacem in terris they would not have invaded Iraq.

NB Pacem in terris was issued by John XXIII not John XIII. Just for the record there was an antipope who reigned as John XXIII in the fifteenth century and the name was not used again until Cardinal Roncalli's election in 1958.

From Friend to Foe

Asked by Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan whether the U.S. was 'duped by a con man' into going to war, Air Force General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded, 'I think that remains to be seen. Probably. But I just don't know.'

Some things run beyond comment. I might argue about who the conman was, though.

Chalabi Said to Deceive the West

Ahmad Chalabi, the onetime White House favorite who has been implicated in an alleged Iranian spy operation, sent Iraqi defectors to at least eight Western spy services before the war in an apparent effort to dupe them about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's illicit weapons programs, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said.

U.S. investigators are seeking to determine whether the effort -- which one U.S. official likened to an attempt to 'game the system' -- was secretly supported by Iran's intelligence service to help persuade the Bush administration to oust the regime in Baghdad, Tehran's longtime enemy.

Officials said other evidence indicated that Chalabi's intelligence chief had furnished Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security with highly classified information on U.S. troop movements, top-secret communications, plans of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority and other closely guarded material on U.S. operations in Iraq.

The U.S. investigation into the suspected spy operation was a key reason behind Thursday's raids on Chalabi's Baghdad house and the offices of his Iraqi National Congress. Several INC members were accused of kidnapping, robbery and corruption.

It's an open question if Chalabi really was acting on behalf of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security. It's not an open question that the Chalabi material has proved grossly inadequate. Shopping untrue stuff to agency after agency until you found a set of bozos stupid enough, or ingenuous enough, to take you on face value must have been frustrating. That the said bozos sat in the Pentagon and the White House with an intelligence doctrine making uninformed preconception equal to factual data must have felt like a fairy tale.

How to hand over sovereignty without handing over sovereignty

The Observer is reporting that Iraqis lose right to sue troops over war crimes:

British and American troops are to be granted immunity from prosecution in Iraq after the crucial 30 June handover, undermining claims that the new Iraqi government will have 'full sovereignty' over the state.

Despite widespread ill-feeling about the abuse of prisoners by American forces and allegations of mistreatment by British troops, coalition forces will be protected from any legal action.

They will only be subject to the domestic law of their home countries. Military sources have told The Observer that the question of immunity was central to obtaining military agreement on a new United Nations resolution on Iraq to be published by the middle of next month.

The new resolution will lift the arms embargo against Iraq, allowing the country to rearm its 80,000-strong army in readiness for taking over the nation's security once coalition forces finally leave.

'The legal situation in Iraq will be very difficult after 30 June, with some confusion over where jurisdiction lies,' said one Whitehall official. 'We wanted to ensure that British troops maintained the immunity they already have under Order 17.'

Human Rights Watch has a good analysis of this legal legerdemain. The Bush administration has always been a staunch advocate of tort reform. Who knew tort reform includes torture reform?

One of the more pathetic sights of recent times has been US senators asking if the ITG will command coalition forces. Don't they read anything anymore? The Transitional Administrative Law's Article 59 makes quite clear they do not.

The not-sovereignty the Iraqi transitional government will exercise does not include military command, finances or apparently the civil rights of Iraqis. The bill of rights Bush makes such a song and dance about will not apply to forces under Bush's command and control. After all, we can hardly have Iraqi judges ordering the release of prisoners from Abu Ghraib can we?

the Man of Steel and the Great Chain of Being

The Great Chain of Being is an ancient myth that survived well into the renaissance. In these rational and scientific times, it is of course long abandoned. No-one now believes that the ritual actions of a king have any effect in the real world.

Except the Man of Steel:

If we lose heart, if we abandon our friends, if we choose to give the wrong signal to the terrorists, that will not only make the world a less safe place but also damage the reputation of this country around the world.

We must remember it is in times of adversity that the value of friendship is most keenly felt and it is in times of adversity and challenge that that friendship is tested.

Our presence in Iraq is read as an important and valued demonstration of Australia�s support for her allies � and in this regard not only the United States and the United Kingdom, who continue to carry the major share of the burden. It is often forgotten that close friends and partners of Australia in the Asia Pacific region, such as Japan, Korea and the Philippines, are valued members of the coalition.

Our alliance with the United States was, unapologetically, a factor in the decision to join the coalition. And it should be a factor in any consideration of our continued participation in the coalition.

For Australia, there is nothing comparable to be found in any other relationship � nothing more relevant indeed to the challenges of the contemporary world.

The issue in Iraq is not whether we lose heart. It is whether the war and the occupation have been so badly managed that neither can now be rescued. We do not need to send signals in Iraq. We need to start addressing reality. No amount of keeping heart or sending signals is going to create security or legitimacy in Iraq. At least Britain is slowly beginning to think about what is happening on the ground in Iraq instead of what music the courtiers are playing in Washington.

The Scotsman reports:

The first cracks in Britain's coalition with the United States over the occupation of Iraq were exposed last night by a leaked government memo which revealed deep misgivings about America's 'heavy-handed' tactics in the war-torn country.

The damning document, produced by a team working for Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, disclosed private reservations within Tony Blair's administration about Washington's approach to the post-war occupation.

The detailed memo, sent to senior ministers and top officials last week as a 'progress report' on the occupation, stressed the need for the UK government to press the Americans to soften their approach and avoid aggressive responses 'which would jeopardise our objectives'.

It also talked of 'the need to redouble our efforts to ensure a sensitive and sensible US approach to military operations'.

The revelations shatter the government's long-held insistence that there are no differences between Downing Street and the White House over Iraq.

The six-page memo suggests that the US tactics have particularly damaged support among ordinary Iraqis and stirred up much of the unrest which has exploded into violence in recent months.

And, in a startling admission, it also declares that the 'scandal' over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Coalition-run jails has damaged the 'moral authority' of Britain and the US as they struggle to justify their decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein's dictatorial regime.

'We should not underestimate the present difficulties,' the document states, in a section headed 'Problems'. 'Heavy-handed US military tactics in Fallujah and Najaf some weeks ago have fuelled both Sunni and Shi'ite opposition to the Coalition and lost us much public support inside Iraq.'

The memo, reported in the Sunday Times, adds: 'The scandal of the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib [prison] has sapped the moral authority of the Coalition, inside Iraq and internationally.'

The Bush administration is getting beyond the usual criticisms of government. It is getting silly. No matter what happens we get told that everything in Iraq is wonderful except for some minor problems and that as time passes it gets even more wonderful. We are told that everything in the Bushlag archipelago is wonderful except for a few bad apples.

The worst recent example was the bizarre speech by the Man of Steel. There are others. General Sanchez signed a memo on 12 October 2003 authorising something like the same abuses at Abu Ghraib that have destroyed any shreds of legitimacy left to coalition rule in Iraq. According to the Washington Post:

The Oct. 12, 2003, memorandum signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez called for intelligence officials at the prison to work more closely with the military police guarding the detainees to "manipulate an internee's emotions and weaknesses."

This memo and the deliberations that preceded it were completely shrouded from public view at the time, but now lie at the heart of the scandal that erupted last month over the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Under congressional prodding, the administration has provided a fuller chronology of the events leading up to its approval.

Congressional critics have alleged that language in the memo helped set the stage for the abuses and were part of a Washington-inspired effort to squeeze more information from Iraqis rounded up by the U.S. military and sent to interrogation sessions at the high-security wing of the Abu Ghraib prison, using methods that some consider illegal.

The actual text has not surfaced yet, but it surely will. Two things we need to know. Was the memo restricted to Abu Ghraib? If it wasn't then why should we believe that Abu Ghraib is the only place these absues ahve happened. Was the memo approved by the Pentagon itself? If it was then Rumsfeld's testimony before Congress becomes (I think the phrase was Nixon's) inoperative. Sanchez has already testified that he did no authorise the abuses. He told Congress on 19 May 2004.

SANCHEZ:�In this regard, I must be very circumspect in what I say.�We must let our military justice process work.�It is a process in which the American people can and should have confidence, and one in which I take great pride.

I cannot say anything that might compromise the fairness or integrity of the process or in any way suggest a result in a particular case.�I have taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and that includes ensuring that all persons receive a fair trial and, if found guilty, appropriate punishment.

This respect for the rule of law has been a guiding principle for my command.�There is no doubt that the law of war, including the Geneva Conventions, apply to our operations in Iraq.�This includes interrogations.�

I have reinforced this point by way of orders and command policies.�In September and October of 2003, and in May of 2004, I issued interrogation policies that reiterated the application of the Geneva Conventions and required that all interrogations be conducted in a lawful and humane manner, with command oversight.

In October 2003, I issued a memorandum for all coalition forces personnel that was entitled "Proper Treatment of Iraqi People During Combat Operations."�I reissued this memorandum on the 16th of January after learning about the events that had taken place at Abu Ghraib.�

On the 4th of March of 2004, I issued my policy memorandum number 18, entitled "Proper Conduct During Combat Operations."�This document, which I also reissued in April, emphasized the need to treat all Iraqis with dignity and respect.�This policy memorandum also contained a summary for distribution down to the individual soldier level that provided clear guidance and mandated training on the following points.

Follow the law of war and the rules of engagement.

Treat all persons with humanity, dignity and respect.

Use judgment and discretion in detaining civilians.

Respect private property.

And treat journalists with dignity and respect.

With regards to Abu Ghraib, as soon as I learned of the reported abuses, I ensured that a criminal investigation had been initiated and requested my superior appoint an investigating officer to conduct a separate administration investigation under Army Regulation 15-6 into this matter.

I guess that's 'inoperative' testimony as well. All we're really seeing is a mountain of bullshit about language. We have generals arguing that they did not issue orders that they issued, or that orders they issued did not mean what they mean. We have defence secretaries arguing that rape, stress positions, nudity, threats, dogs are only abuse and not torture as if that made everything all right. We have presidents and prime ministers muttering idiocy about sending signals and losing hearts when they should actually be dealing with what's happening on the ground rather than with that they'd like to believe.

Has a single empirical proposition advanced by the war party proved accurate from the cakewalk to the few bad apples? When are they going to join the rest of us in the real world?

'None of this happened and even if it did we didn't get the memo' is fast becoming as ritual an answer as anything a medieval king ever said.

moral clarity, intellectual obscurity

According to Newsday:

The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources.

It would somewhat weaken the concept of the axis of evil if Iran was manipulating the Bush adminsitration to get rid of Saddam. Perhaps. Somewhat. Maybe.

Tip via Talking Points Memo. And to think that using Chalabi was a brilliant step in the ever more brilliant career of strategic intelligence.

The New Yorker reports :

They call themselves, self-mockingly, the Cabal -- a small cluster of policy advisers and analysts now based in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. In the past year, according to former and present Bush Administration officials, their operation, which was conceived by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, has brought about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community. These advisers and analysts, who began their work in the days after September 11, 2001, have produced a skein of intelligence reviews that have helped to shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq. They relied on data gathered by other intelligence agencies and also on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, or I.N.C., the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi. By last fall, the operation rivalled both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon's own Defense Intelligence Agency, the D.I.A., as President Bush's main source of intelligence regarding Iraq's possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al Qaeda. As of last week, no such weapons had been found. And although many people, within the Administration and outside it, profess confidence that something will turn up, the integrity of much of that intelligence is now in question.

Perhaps these genius intellectuals should go back to the boring art of fact-checking. Perhaps, if one member of the axis of evil could use the Cabal's intellectual prejudices to get them to attack another member of the axis of evil then the whole axis was not all that, well, axial.

New Details of Prison Abuse Emerge

"On the third day, after five o'clock, Mr. Graner came and took me to room Number 37, which is the shower room, and he started punishing me," said Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh, detainee No. 18170. "Then he brought a box of food and he made me stand on it with no clothing, except a blanket. Then a tall black soldier came and put electrical wires on my fingers and toes and on my penis, and I had a bag over my head."

Al-Sheik said he was arrested on Oct. 7, and brought to Abu Ghraib, where he was put in a tent for one night. The next day, he was transferred to the "hard site," the two-story building that held about 200 prisoners and contained Tiers 1A and 1B.

He said a bag was put over his head and he was made to strip. He said American soldiers started to taunt him.

"Do you pray to Allah?" one asked. "I said yes. They said, '[Expletive] you. And [expletive] him.' One of them said, 'You are not getting out of here health[y], you are getting out of here handicapped. And he said to me, 'Are you married?' I said, 'Yes.' They said, 'If your wife saw you like this, she will be disappointed.' One of them said, 'But if I saw her now she would not be disappointed now because I would rape her.' "

He said the soldiers told him that if he cooperated with interrogators they would release him in time for Ramadan. He said he did, but still was not released. He said one soldier continued to abuse him by striking his broken leg and ordered him to curse Islam. "Because they started to hit my broken leg, I cursed my religion," he said. "They ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive."

The detainee said the soldiers handcuffed him to a bed.

"Do you believe in anything?" he said the soldier asked. "I said to him, 'I believe in Allah.' So he said, "But I believe in torture and I will torture you.' "

And remember, we are allegedly fighting terror, fighting evil.

Iraq Hand-over Plans 'A Shambles', Says Tory MP

A Conservative MP who has just returned from Iraq delivered a scathing broadside on US policy in the country today, saying preparations for the hand-over of sovereignty on July 1 were a 'complete shambles'.

Crispin Blunt, a former Army officer, said the Americans had failed to prepare for the aftermath of last year's war and said their approach to occupation appeared little more than a 'Ccampaign to intimidate the Iraqi people'.

'We are seeing the collapse of American policy,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

'The conduct of the occupation by America is almost a campaign to intimidate the Iraqi people. It is extraordinary how they have carried on and their general attitude and now we are seeing a complete shambles in the run-up to the hand-over of apparently full sovereignty on July 1.'

Mr Blunt's comments come a day after party leader Michael Howard called on Prime Minister Tony Blair to speak out publicly when he disagreed with US President George Bush's actions on Iraq.

Mr Blunt said that British forces in Iraq did not yet know what their status would be following the transfer of authority to a home-grown interim administration in less than six weeks' time.

The Iraq situation is bizarre, but the situation in Washington is worse than bizarre. I've now read the transcripts of appearances before various congressional committees of

• Rumsfeld
  
• Myers
  
• Wolfowitz
  
• Armitage
  
• Cambone
  
• Taguba
  

With the exception of Taguba all they're saying is that everything in Iraq is wonderful except for the bad apples of Abu Ghraib. The vaunted congressional hearing seems to be restricted to 5-minute and 10-minute bursts of questioning by individual members, many of whom begin by congratulating the witness on being wonderful. The witness then avoids the questions as hard as possible until the time runs out and the next legislator goes on to tell the witness how wonderful they are.

Question time has its limitations in Canberra and London but it's better than this nonsense. Rumsfeld, the world's most notorious micromanager, managed to forget to take a copy of the chain of command and his only explanation was: 'Oh my!' Rumsfeld did not get the ICRC memo about Abu Ghraib, or the Taguba report, or the photos. That speaks for a level of bureaucratic incompetence we have not seen from him before. The Henry Ford of defence secretaries is fast morphing into Alfred E Neumann. 'What, me worry?'

The chain of command is really quite simple. Rumsfeld is in charge of what the US Army does in Iraq. He's taken 'full responsibility'. He should act on that by resigning.

Broken Engagement

What the West supplied to the people of the East was, as former Solidarity leader and Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek told me, very simple: hope. They knew there was a countervailing force to the occupying Soviet power which had repressed them and subjugated their political systems. Democracy could reemerge in Central and Eastern Europe because of a several decades-long dance between popular resistance and cautious Western leaders who moved ever so carefully to provide support and encouragement without provoking the use of repressive force by the Communist governments in reaction or generating actual armed conflict between East and West.

So, when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an 'Evil Empire,' or stood before crowds in Berlin and proclaimed 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,' he was reaching a receptive audience on the other side of the wall. The neoconservatives persist in seeing a vast difference between Reagan's policy of confronting the Soviets and previous American administrations' tack of containing it. In fact, it was precisely those decades of containment and cultural engagement that made Reagan's challenge effective.

Bush, of course, has accompanied his invasion of Iraq with similarly bold and eloquent rhetoric about the prospect of peace and democracy throughout the Arab world. But it is hard to exaggerate how differently his words and deeds have been received in the Middle East, compared to Reagan's behind the Iron Curtain. While heartening some advocates of democracy, Bush's approach has provoked perhaps the fiercest and most alarming anti-American backlash in history. To take but one example, a March poll conducted by the Pew Center found that the percentage of people in Muslim countries who think suicide bombings are justified has grown by roughly 40 percent since the American occupation of Iraq. Even the most Western-friendly, pro-democratic media outlets in countries such as Jordan and Lebanon now openly question whether the Americans are anti-Islamic crusaders bent on assisting the Israeli occupiers of Palestine. This is a long way from Prague, circa 1989.

The reaction of the Middle East to America's invasion of Iraq should hardly have been surprising. Only willful blindness could obscure the obvious fact that the political and cultural conditions in the Middle East are profoundly different than those in the states of the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. To one degree or another, the values and forms of democracy were part of the historic culture of the states of Central and Eastern Europe: There were constitutions and parliaments, in one form or another, in the Baltic States, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere before World War II. In some cases, these precedent experiences with democracy dated back into the 19th century.

This is evidently not the case in the Middle East. The Enlightenment never much penetrated the Ottoman frontiers, and so the great conflicts of faith versus reason and the value of each individual and his conscience which defined Western civilization were largely screened out there. Modern states in the Middle East emerged after the Ottoman Empire crumbled, and except in the cases of Turkey and Lebanon, there was nothing comparable to a Western democracy. Instead, 'state socialism' was eventually imposed upon tribal and colonial heritages in many Arab states--replacing the Ottoman Empire with Western-drawn boundaries, authoritarian rulers, and, at best, pseudo-democratic institutions. Through it all, Islam--with its commingling of secular and religious authorities, and the power of its mullahs and its more fundamentalist, anti-Western sects--remained a significant force. As the example of Iran shows, elections and parliaments can be subverted by other means of control.

Even the Reagan administration never tried to anoint an exile as leader of the Soviet Union or anywhere else in the Soviet bloc. You cannot impose a democracy in the absence of a civil society. You cannot create a civil society by ignoring the traditional liberties that make the West different. You cannot hold thousands of people in prison because you've decided habeas corpus is all too difficult. Abu Ghraib has around 8000 prisoners. Releasing 300 is a public relations exercise. Both the Red Cross and General Taguba say that 70 to 90% of them should not be in prison because they are only victims of random sweeps and checkpoints. There is no effective system of habeas corpus. Why? And why is that, long a matter of public record, not a controversy?

Ahmed Chalabi's failed coup

Why did the Bush administration turn against its former favorite Iraqi? Almost certainly because it realized that Chalabi, maddened by the realization that he was being excluded from the post-June 30 hand-over arrangements, was putting together a sectarian Shiite faction to destabilize and destroy the new Iraqi government. 'This all started since [U.N. envoy Lakhdar] Brahimi announced that Chalabi would be kept out of the new arrangement,' says an Iraqi political observer who is not only long familiar with Chalabi himself but also in close touch with key actors, including U.S. officials at the CPA and Iraqi politicians.'

Ahmed is gathering groups to bring this new government down even before July 1. He is in a very destructive phase, mobilizing forces to make sure the U.N. initiative -- due to be announced in 10 days -- fails.' Chalabi has reportedly been inflaming his recruits with reports that veteran Algerian diplomat Brahimi is part of a Sunni conspiracy bent on undermining the rights of Iraqi Shiites to hold power in Iraq.

Much of this article is speculative, but is not an unreasonable line of speculation. Chalabi is not going to have a seat at the table after the handover of not-sovereignty so he needs to get away with what he can now. There are also reports Chalabi made a lot of money out of the shift from Saddam dinars to new dinars, and that he is too close to Iran.

In fact, if the war party had not been so carefully hearing only what they wanted to hear before the war, this behaviour could easily have been predicted from Chalabi's past. Perhaps the war party could ape their puppet by declaring themselves heroes in error.

On small question. Newphew Salem Chalabi is head of the Iraqi Special Tribunal. This is the court to try Saddam and is exempted from the TAL charter of rights. If the CPA has decided Ahmed is no longer a good Iraqi what does that say about Salem?

Corruption stench as company loses Iraq contract

Morris Corporation won the catering contract last June in partnership with a Kuwaiti company, KCPC, soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The deal was praised by the Howard Government as a signal that Australian companies would get fair treatment over postwar contracts in Iraq.

The contract was to feed 18,000 troops at three camp sites in northern Iraq. But the US company quietly cancelled the deal six weeks later, saying that Morris and its Kuwaiti partner had not met their obligations.

Now an insider involved in the deal alleges that the Australian-Kuwaiti joint venture was approached by a Halliburton employee seeking kickbacks worth up to $3 million during the contract negotiations. "We're not talking about a paper bag. This guy was after a percentage of your sales every month."

The allegations surfaced during a messy legal brawl between Halliburton and its former contractors Morris and KCPC, who are seeking a settlement over the termination of the contract.

The head of Morris Corporation, Robert McVicker, was in Washington this week for legal talks over the settlement.

Questioned at his Washington hotel, Mr McVicker told said he could not comment on the allegations surrounding the collapse of the deal because of the legal negotiations.

But he did say: "While we are disheartened about what's happened in Iraq, we stand to be accountable by whoever. At the very least we have our integrity in tact. We still believe there's an opportunity in Iraq. At this time it would be foolhardy to make comments that could prohibit us from gaining more work.

The smell of corruption in Iraq is getting hard to avoid. In other news, apparently Ahmed Chalabi is now under criminal investigation for his dealings with the CPA. These things happen when you abandon traditional checks and balances. I suppose it's understandable for the Bush administration to feel threatened by the Geneva Conventions. Only the Bush administration could see double-entry book-keeping as a threat to civilisation.

There's a lesson for the Man of Steel as well. The Bush administration is not much interested in his concerns, especially when his government eagerly abandons its citizens to the Bushlag archipelago.

Australia rapped over East Timor oil

Oxfam is urging Australia to "play fair" with its smaller neighbour East Timor is at risk of becoming a failed state, just two years after winning independence, Oxfam has warned.

It claims Australia is hampering East Timor's finances by laying claim to the lion's share of Timor Sea oil fields.

While Australia has been a "generous donor" it has actually reaped 10 times more in revenues from East Timor than it has given since 1999, Oxfam added.

Australia makes £1m (AU$2.6m) a day from a temporary deal granting access to two thirds of the oil fields, Oxfam said.

But, the charity argued, if a maritime boundary were set up between the two countries according to international law it would deliver "most, if not all" of these resources to East Timor.

I blogged about this a few days ago.

The Foreign Minister of Kleenexjustifies Australia's record as follows:

I think they've made a very big mistake thinking that the best way to handle this negotiation is trying to shame Australia, is mounting abuse on our country, accusing us of being bullying and rich and so on when you consider all we've done for East Timor...

We were the major contributor to Interfet. On the other hand, we were alone in recognising the Indonesian annexation and supporting Indonesia at the Un throughout the 24 year history of Indonesian rule. During that time between 100 000 and 250 000 East Timorese died out of a total population of three quarters of a million.

The Oxfam analysis of the Timor Sea Treaty has links where you can lobby federal MPs and ministers.

RSS horrors

Somewhere deep in a days-old post there lurked a curly quote. Thanks to the extremely helpful people at Blogger I found it and excised it. The Atom feed and the RSS feed immediately below it now work.

You can subscribe with any of these buttons:

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They work, I promise.

Wiranto complains of smear campaign

Wiranto also alleged action by UN-funded prosecutors in East Timor was intended to smear his reputation.

'It's true, everything is by design. I know who visited Dili before the issuance of the arrest warrant,' he said, without elaborating on which Indonesian officials allegedly made the trip.

While the arrest warrant was issued on May 10, Wiranto has been indicted in East Timor since February 2003, before he became a presidential candidate.

Indonesia has said it does not recognise the East Timor warrant which says Wiranto bears command responsibility for murder and other crimes carried out by Indonesian forces in East Timor in 1999.

At least 1,400 people were murdered before and after East Timorese voted in August of that year for independence.

Wiranto has insisted he did his best to prevent the violence.

No doubt it was just a few of TNI's bad apples...

Sadly for that theory Wiranto consistently denied that any violence was happening in East Timor at all until the UN temporary administration reported the overwhelming evidence of genocide.

Just as another military chief, in recent days, denied any evidence of prisoner abuse until certain images were published and then shifted gear to denying any command responsibility.

3 Witnesses at Iraq Abuse Hearing Refused to Testify

Three key witnesses, including a senior officer in charge of interrogations, refused to testify during a secret hearing against an alleged ringleader of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal on the grounds that they might incriminate themselves.

The witnesses appeared April 26 at a preliminary hearing behind closed doors for Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr., who has been identified in court-martial documents as the leader of a band of military police guards who humiliated and abused Iraqi detainees and compiled a bizarre photographic record of their activities. The prospective witnesses' refusal to testify is described in court-martial documents obtained by The Times on Tuesday.

How lucky for them the US military courts do not employ the same interrogation techniques as Abu Ghraib.

Troy

Picture the scene. You are in the offices of Warner Brothers in Los Angeles, pitching a movie about the siege of Troy to various sharp-suited executives. Perhaps Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt are present also, representing their company, Plan B Films. 'OK,' you say, 'it's a rip-roaring sand-and-sandal, thigh-and-pectoral epic.' Approving nods all round. 'I see Brad as very much the hero, as Achilles, the glorious warrior who defeats everyone in battle. But it's not just about war; it's about love!' More nods. 'The passionate love that goes to the centre of the ancient Greek world, the love that sparks his greatest contest. The love of Achilles - for his friend Patroclus! And I've got a great casting idea: Orlando Bloom is Patroclus. He's Achilles's companion, his comrade, his brother-in-arms, and also let's face it his - acgh.' At this moment, at a discreet signal from Mr Pitt, a security guard has entered to grasp you by the throat. Cut to: Warner Brothers exterior. You are flung bodily out into the street to a shout of: 'And stay out.'

Look, I liked the movie, but I have a weakness for costume sagas. Apparently the bloodshed and savagery is just fine, but the mere suggestion that Achilles might be sinking the sausage into a guy has to be cut out ASAP.

Which Homeric hero are you?

Okay, I got sucked into another quiz:

Achilles. You're a good person to have around on the rare occasions you're ready to do some work, but you have volatility issues. Your willingness to enlist the help of your mum won't win you any friends, either.

It's completely untrue and if anyone says otherwise I'll throw a huge strop and call my mum.

Florida on the Murrumbidgee

The government's put up a bill to amend the Electoral Act. It's main provisions are to close the roll the day an election is announced, exclude all prisoners serving a jail sentence, and to make enrolment itself a lot more complicated. The joint committee on electoral matters recommended unanimously against the ideas in the bill.

Bob McMullan told the House:

One wonders why the government would bother proposing such measures as raising the threshold for disclosure of donations or closing the electoral roll when the election is called. On their face, both measures are patently undemocratic and serve no real purpose other than perhaps to throw a few bones to the minister's very small conservative cheer squad. Disappointingly, the federal government's only substantive response to the small number of electoral fraud cases in 2000 and 2001 has been to establish a complex and discriminatory enrolment witnessing regime and to reintroduce its longstanding proposals for early closure of the rolls. There can be no doubt that closure of the roll as soon as an election is called would be to the detriment of the franchise. In fact, it is my view that that is exactly what it is intended to do. When Malcolm Fraser closed the roll without notice in 1983, it was estimated that over 150,000 people were disenfranchised or had to vote in the wrong electorate.

The bill will not pass the Senate and really only reflects the level of silliness and fatigue that marks the Man of Steel and his government.

life imitating art

From A Few Good Men

JESSEP
I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it. I'd prefer you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to.

KAFFEE
(quietly)
Did you order the code red?

JESSEP
(beat)
I did the job you sent me to do.

KAFFEE
Did you order the code red?

JESSEP
(pause)
You're goddamn right I did.

From Rumsfeld�s appearance before the House Armed Services Committee

I don't believe that it would be right for me to run around looking for scapegoats, so you can toss someone over the side.�And I'll be damned if I'm going to look at that list and pretend that I think it was badly done.�I don't.�I think they did a darn good job. Perfect?�No.�But a good job.

�not badly done' evidently has a whole new meaning not yet shared with the rest of us. It is perhaps, a known unknown.

From today�s Reuters:

Iraqis held by U.S. forces have been subjected to systematic degrading treatment, sometimes close to torture, that may have been officially condoned, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Friday.

Breaking with its usual vow of silence, the Geneva-based humanitarian agency (ICRC) said visits to detention centers in Iraq between March and November 2003 had turned up violations of international treaties on prisoners of war.

"What we have observed are situations from a human point of view that are degrading in treatment and in some incidents tantamount to torture," Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of ICRC operations, told journalists.

"Our findings do not allow us to conclude that what we were dealing with ... were isolated acts of individual members of coalition forces. What we have described is a pattern and a broad system," he said.

The ICRC, whose reports on prison visits are confidential, went public with some of its findings after parts of the 24-page document were carried by the Wall Street Journal.

The scandal over detainee abuse broke last week with the release of photographs showing the sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, a U.S.-run jail outside Baghdad.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Friday took responsibility for the incidents, which have caused outrage in the Middle East, and apologized to the victims, the Iraqi people and Americans.

Creating a culture has consequences, and those consequences are not unknowns, known, denied or otherwise. The consequences were best defined by Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter:

Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.

Yudhoyono Still In Front In Indonesia

Golkar claimed victory in last month's parliamentary election, winning at least 117 seats in the House of People's Representatives, followed by the PDIP with 104 lawmakers.

All three candidates have picked running mates for the election. Yudhoyono chose welfare minister Jusuf Kalla, while Sukarnoputri will run alongside Hasyim Muzadi of moderate Muslim group Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). Wiranto settled on deputy chairman of the National Commission on Human Rights Solahuddin Wahid as his vice-presidential nominee.

If no candidate gets more than 50 per cent of all cast ballots in the Jul. 5 presidential contest, a run-off will take place on Sept. 20.

Polling Data
What candidate would you vote for in the presidential election?

• Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (PDI) 40.6%
  
• Megawati Sukarnoputri (PDIP) 14.7%
  
• Wiranto (Golkar) 5.9%
  

The full list of candidates for president and vice-president is now finalised. The only remaining surprise is whether Gus Dur will beat the medical requirements. His brother, Gus Solah, is already Wiranto's runningmate. Gus Dur's announced the PKB will back Wiranto if Gus Dur is excuded.

On these figures Yudhoyono has extended his lead and is only 9.4% short of winning on the first round. The Golkar legislative vote is not flowing through to Wiranto.

A Wiranto victory would have to be seen as a victory for impunity. Although Yudhoyono is also a former general he's moved a lot further and faster than Wiranto in separating himself from the Shuharto era.

As chief security minister Yudhoyono supervised Polri (Polis Republik Indonesia), the newly independent national police. Polri was only separated from the armed forces, TNI, after the fall of Suharto. Polri/TNI tensions go back a long way.

Yudhoyono had to deal with the aftermath of the Bali bombing and probably has a better grasp of human rights than Wiranto, who continues to deny any role in the massacres after the East Timor independence vote.

and the wheels on the bus keep falling off

Via Talking Points Memo comes a report from the Baltimore Sun that Powell says Bush was 'informed' of Red Cross concerns:

"We kept the president informed of the concerns that were raised by the ICRC and other international organizations as part of my regular briefings of the president, and advised him that we had to follow these issues, and when we got notes sent to us or reports sent to us ... we had to respond to them, and the president certainly made it clear that that's what he expected us to do," Powell said.

Powell said that he, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld kept Bush "fully informed of the concerns that were being expressed, not in specific details, but in general terms."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said last week that the president was first informed about the abuse of detainees in Iraq by Rumsfeld, who "let the president know that there were allegations of prisoner abuse in Iraq and that the military was taking action to address it."

There seems to be considerable confusion, I suspect deliberate, about where the responsibility lies. Taguba says that military intelligence ran Abu Ghraib. Cambone says that military police had operational control and military intelligence only had tactical control. Rumsfeld says that whoever had control it certainly wasn't him. Bush says that whoever had control it certainly wasn't him and he didn't know about whatever it was that Rumsfeld hadn't told him. But Powell says he had told Bush.

A couple of weeks ago Secrecy News posted a CRS Report that found no-one actually knows the source of authority for the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Is this a government or the deckchair shift on the Titanic?

axis of abuse

Go read Boykin, Schoomaker and Cambone: A Bushian trifecta for the roles of various actors in the matter of Abu Ghraib.

US Under-secretary of Defence for Intelligence Cambone appeared with General Taguba before the Senate yesterday. The transcript is instructive.

CAMBONE: The order placing the military police at Abu Ghraib under the tactical control of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade -- and here, for more of the detail, I can defer to General Smith -- but on November 19th of 2003, General Sanchez issued an order effectively placing Abu Ghraib under the tactical control of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade.

This order was within the authority of General Sanchez to give. And, as I say, Lieutenant General Smith might elaborate on the reasons that the order was given.

But what it did is it gave a senior officer responsibility for the facility -- for the facility. We needed someone to take care of such matters as security, force protection, the internal security, living conditions for the troops and other things. It did not give, as far as I understand it, the military intelligence brigade commander authority over military police operations.

And as I might note, if you look at General Karpinski's CNN interview last night, she makes comments to that effect.

Let me stress that the promulgation of the order in no way changed the rules governing the conduct of military police and military personnel in Iraq with respect to the laws of war, the Geneva Convention, CENTCOM directions or CJTF directions and instructions.

and:

TAGUBA: Sir, the -- I did not question the order that was given to Colonel Pappas on the fragmentary order that he received on the 19th of November. It was not under my purview. I did ask him to elaborate on what his responsibilities were.

LEVIN: Your report states that that change in command, quote, "effectively made a military intelligence officer rather than an M.P. officer responsible for the M.P. units conducting detainee operations at that facility."

LEVIN: Is that your conclusion?

TAGUBA: Yes, sir. Because the order gave him tactical control of all units that were residing at Abu Ghraib.

LEVIN: All right.

Secretary Cambone, you disagree with that?

CAMBONE: Tactical control is the question here.

LEVIN: Do you disagree with what the general just said?

CAMBONE: Yes, sir.

LEVIN: Pardon?

CAMBONE: I do. I do not believe that the order placing Colonel Pappas in charge gave him the authority to direct the M.P.s' activities in direct OPCON (ph) conditions.

Is that true, General?

It's frankly unbelievable that a general of Taguba's rank and an under-secretary to Rumsfeld are unable to agree on who had control of the Abu Ghraib prison. It almost sounds like the kind of administrative cock-up bound to lead, under a less superb defence secretary, to the abuse and torture of prisoners.

Failing To Recognize Failure

In the course of committing this strategic error, Rumsfeld made many tactical misjudgments. He willfully alienated allies whose assistance, many warned him, would be necessary for a successful occupation. He arrogantly excluded officials from other federal departments -- especially State and USAID -- who knew much more than he did about reconstruction in general and Iraqi society in particular. He ordered (or at least accepted the order -- we don't yet know who made the decision) the dismantling of the Iraqi army, a move that created a massive power vacuum and put tens of thousands of armed, angry, unemployed citizens on the streets. He believed that Ahmad Chalabi, an exile who had no political base in Iraq, would readily be accepted as the country's new leader -- and, on that basis, didn't think that much "postwar" planning would be necessary. Far more unforgivable (after all, everybody's wrong sometimes), Rumsfeld devised no backup plan in case his belief proved mistaken (as it did).

All these mistakes have been recited many times before. The odd thing about the long list, viewed in the context of Abu Ghraib, is that Bush gave Rummy a pass for the whole lot. One of the president's jobs is to relieve the nation of Cabinet officers who make consistently bad decisions, especially bad decisions that swell the ranks of our casualties and diminish our standing in the world. The responsibility, to use a much-tarnished word, lies not with Rumsfeld but with Bush.

I while ago I blogged that 'unthinkable' is not a policy. Rumsfeld stands at the head of a chain of command that bears responsibility for Abu Ghraib. That does not make him a 'superb' secretary of defence. Refusing to think about what that means in terms of the US' standing in the world is bad policy but about par for the course.

We now know that the ICRC, the State Department and the CPA itself all drew Rumsfeld's attention to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Rumsfeld then appeared before the Senate and announced he had forgotten to bring a copy of the chain of command for Abu Ghraib with him. More later.

Censored words unmasked: US intelligence exposed as student decodes Iraq memo

Armed with little more than an electronic dictionary and text-analysis software, Claire Whelan, a graduate student in computer science at Dublin City University in Ireland, has managed to decrypt words that had been blotted out from declassified documents to protect intelligence sources.

She and one of her PhD supervisors, David Naccache, a cryptographer with Gemplus, which manufactures banking and security cards, tackled two high-profile documents. One was a memo to US President George Bush that had been declassified in April for an inquiry into the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. The other was a US Department of Defense memo about who helped Iraq to 'militarize' civilian Hughes helicopters.

It all started when Naccache saw the Bush memo on television over Easter. "I was bored, and I was looking for challenges for Claire to solve. She's a wild problem solver, so I thought that with this one I'd get peace for a week," Naccache says. Whelan produced a solution in slightly less than that.

Demasking blotted out words was easy, Naccache told Nature. "Optical recognition easily identified the font type - in this case Arial - and its size," he says. "Knowing this, you can estimate the size of the word behind the blot. Then you just take every word in the dictionary and calculate whether or not, in that font, it is the right size to fit in the space, plus or minus 3 pixels.

About 16 ways round this technique spring to mind immediately. All the same, we'll hear the usual chorus that this technique justifies ever greater sececy in the War on Terror. The WoT is fast becoming a war on checks and balances as anything else.

Great Wall Of China Seen From Space

ESA's Proba satellite here shows a winding segment of the 7240-km long Great Wall of China situated just northeast of Beijing. The Great Wall's relative visibility or otherwise from orbit has inspired much recent debate.

Well there's one urban myth that just turned into an urban fact. Now if we could just get rid of the myth that the wall predates the Ming dynasty.

US Senator Patrick Leahy on Abu Ghraib

The mistreatment of prisoners by the U.S. military in Iraq was not limited to the crimes that have come to light at the Abu Ghraib prison. Rather, there was, in the words of the U.S. Army�s own inquiry, a �systemic and illegal abuse of detainees.� It is revealing, and particularly disturbing, that the U.S. personnel involved conducted themselves so openly, even posing with the victims of their sadistic acts. They obviously felt they had no reason to believe that their superiors would be upset with their conduct. The brazenness of these acts, the reported role of U.S. intelligence officers in encouraging such treatment to �soften up� detainees for interrogations, combined with earlier reports of similar abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan, suggests a much larger failure.

And let�s be clear. We are not talking only about the individuals who engaged in these abusive acts. We are talking about a failure of leadership by an Administration that, well before this latest scandal, had already severely damaged this Nation�s reputation and effectiveness in a war against terrorism that is increasingly perceived by Muslims around the world as a war against Islam itself. The growing anger and hostility toward our troops has been exploited by Saddam loyalists and extremists who answer to Iran�s ayatollahs. They have committed despicable acts of violence against Americans, including the desecration of corpses.

I am working on a longish post on Rumsfeld's appearace before the two congressional committees, but frankly I'm overwhelmed by the sheer wrongness of what's reported each day.

where the bodies are buried

Reuters quotes Bush's remarks at the Pentagon:

Mr. Secretary, thank you for your hospitality, and thank you for your leadership. You are courageously leading our nation in the war against terror. You're doing a superb job. You are a strong Secretary of Defense, and our nation owes you a debt of gratitude.

I have not seen anyone comment yet that one motive for Bush retaining Rumsfeld is fear of how Rumsfeld may react to being dismissed. I do not think Rumsfeld would take it kindly. Bush has been burned by one Cabinet officer, former Treasury Secretary O'Neill. Rumsfeld would certainly have access to much more damaging information and I cannot think Bush would want to face what he'd see as a second revenge memoir.

The Bush remarks also make nonsense of his apology for Abu Ghraib. You cannot claim to be sorry for a series of events and then give this warm and uncritical endorsement to the author of the events.

systemic abuse or just part of the process?

Today Reuters reports:

The Red Cross saw U.S. troops keeping Iraqi prisoners naked for days in darkness at the Abu Ghraib jail last October and was told by an intelligence officer in charge it was "part of the process," a report leaked on Monday said.

The 24-page report added to the pressure on U.S. officials by revealing that commanders were alerted to apparent abuses at Abu Ghraib months before they opened a criminal investigation.

The Red Cross, which has special access to war zone prisons under international treaties, said mistreatment of prisoners "went beyond exceptional cases and might be considered as a practice tolerated by the CF (Coalition Forces)."

Abuse was "in some cases tantamount to torture."

Although most of the Red Cross's observations concerned U.S. forces, it also piled pressure on Washington's closest ally, describing British troops forcing Iraqi detainees to kneel and stomping on their necks in an incident in which one died.

The International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva confirmed that the confidential February 4 report, initially leaked on the Web site of The Wall Street Journal, was genuine.

Calling this anything but systemic is a really tortured argument. If the Pentagon had been on notice for months why are they only now acting?

Timor arrest warrant for Wiranto

A United Nations-backed tribunal in East Timor has issued an arrest warrant against Indonesia's former military chief and current presidential candidate General Wiranto.

The warrant cites human rights abuses during the territory's bloody separation from Jakarta in 1999.

'The issuance of the Wiranto warrant is an important step in our continuing efforts to bring to justice those responsible for the violence against the civilian population of East Timor in 1999,' said UN prosecutor Nicholas Koumjian in a statement.

Wiranto, resigned from the military in 2000, was Indonesia's armed forces chief when army-backed militia waged a bloody campaign against independence supporters in the then Jakarta-controlled territory of East Timor.

The actual warrant may not figure in Wiranto's quest for the Indonesian presidency, but it would make it almost impossible for him to function as president. I notice it is at least getting a mention in the Indonesian media.

bordering on dishonest

From: Australia threatening East Timor's existence

East Timor's existence is under threat because of Australia's claims over the poor nation's natural resources, President Xanana Gusmao claims.

In a Four Corners report to be aired tonight, Mr Gusmao said Australia was defying international law with its claims over oil and natural gas deposits in the Timor Sea.

Australia and East Timor are at loggerheads over the boundary that separates the two nations.

At stake are key energy deposits which, when developed, will be worth billions in tax revenues to the respective countries.

East Timor believes the border should be drawn in the middle of the 600km of sea separating the countries.

That would place 90 per cent of the oil and gas reserves on East Timor's side. Australia wants its continental shelf to be the border. In some places that is just 150km from East Timor's coastline.

Under the current agreement, East Timor gets 20 per cent of the Greater Sunrise gas field, the richest in the area. Australia takes 80 per cent.

Australia has a clear choice between fairness and unfairness. There are competing rules of international law for drawing a maritime boundary. The mid-line between Australia and East Timor gives the Timorese a much greater share of the oil and natural gas. The line of the continental shelf gives Australia the lion's share.

Article 15 of the International Convention on the Law of the Sea provides:

Where the coasts of two States are opposite or adjacent to each other, neither of the two States is entitled, failing agreement between them to the contrary, to extend its territorial sea beyond the median line every point of which is equidistant from the nearest points on the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial seas of each of the two States is measured. The above provision does not apply, however, where it is necessary by reason of historic title or other special circumstances to delimit the territorial seas of the two States in a way which is at variance therewith.

The Howard government's belief in its own position cannot be all that strong, because they excised maritime border disputes from the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and the International Law of the Sea Tribunal. I am not sure 'It's ours because we wants it, don't we, precious' is all that ringing a claim to sound in the halls of justice.

Australia's only contested maritime boundary is with East Timor.

The chances of East Timor becoming a failed state, or a client state entirely dependent on Australian help. are greatly increased by claiming the continental shelf line. Excising the dispute from the ICJ's jurisdiction is just rigging the rules in favour of the government. The article also contains the usual bluster from the Foreign Minister of Kleenex.

A little longterm thought is in order.

the judicial activist in the closet

Some stories just have to blogged. According to Richard Ackland Australia's premier judicial activist, His Eminence David Flint likes doing it in the dark:

One story doing the rounds is of him conducting a hearing in Bathurst, NSW, to do with a licence. The only available place that could suitably be used as a quasi-judicial venue was a space in one of the local motels. Flint wanted just the right touch of authority and, like a judge, to emerge into the hearing room from behind a door after three knocks, bow and take his seat at a bench at the front of the room. Unfortunately, the only door from which he could enter with the appropriate flourish was the door of a small cupboard and so it was that he stayed in the cupboard until the moment to emerge in all his splendour arrived.

There are just too many puns available. Nothing I can say could possibly make this any funnier.

telling the world

Fred Kaplan quotes the entire text of the Baghdad press conference where the US armed forces 'told the world' about Abu Ghraib:

DETAINEE TREATMENT INVESTIGATION

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- An investigation has been initiated into reported incidents of detainee abuse at a Coalition Forces detention facility. The release of specific information concerning the incidents could hinder the investigation, which is in its early stages. The investigation will be conducted in a thorough and professional manner. The Coalition is committed to treating all persons under its control with dignity, respect and humanity. Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the Commanding General, has reiterated this requirement to all members of CJTF-7.

This is what Rumsfeld calls 'telling the world'...

That cursed word again

Powell was a peripheral party to the My Lai concealment, although more by omission than intent. Asked to make a preliminary investigation into rumours that civilians had been murdered, he wrote a report for his army superiors conceding there had been 'isolated instances' of abuse but added that 'relations between Americal soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent'.

This time around, older and presumably wiser, he appeared entirely genuine in his revulsion for the horrors of the Abu Ghraib prison and its US military police guards. His chief of staff hinted strongly that Powell will not stick around if George Bush is re-elected in November.

It's worth making the point Abu Ghraib is not an isolated instance of the isolated instance line.

Iraqi abuse 'known in February'

Downing Street has confirmed it received a Red Cross report on alleged abuses by UK troops on Iraqi prisoners in February.

I'm waiting with bated breath for the speech where Tony Blair flashes his eyes and purses his lips about this one.

slippery slopes and Abu Ghraib

The Toronto Globe abd Mail today editorialises thatAbu Ghraib's abuses require a wider focus:

From the 'extraordinary rendition' of foreigners in foreign lands to stealing out at midnight with a prisoner in New York proved not to be a large step. Similarly, it seems a natural progression to move from the degradations visited by Syrians on Mr. Arar to the depravities endured by Iraqi prisoners at the hands of Americans.

The Vince Lombardi approach to the war against terrorism -- winning is the only thing that matters -- is a legitimate one. But democracies do not win by allowing the rule of law to become corrupted. That road leads straight to the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

Perhaps Attorney-General John Ashcroft should have been answering questions beside Mr. Rumsfeld yesterday. On his watch, the U.S. government has created a legal black hole at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for 'enemy combatants.' It has created a similar legal void on U.S. soil for two of its citizens, Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla; they have been held without charge and virtually without counsel for two years. For an Iraqi prison to be treated as a pit in which the basest behaviour became possible seems one more natural progression.

It may be that the wanton cruelty at Abu Ghraib was actively promoted by military intelligence to extract information, a possibility raised yesterday by Democratic Senator Carl Levin. Or it may have arisen because of the military command's failure to maintain discipline in the lower ranks. Either way, Abu Ghraib was fostered by a climate in which anything goes.

The war on terrorism and the liberation of Iraq are just causes. When just causes sink to atrocities, and in doing so head down self-destructive paths, the only answer is to return to first principles: the rule of law, and unflinching openness. A full, honest and public examination of Abu Ghraib is only just beginning.

Sadly, no-one has a picture of what Arar endured at the hands of Syrian interrogators.

The further poetry of Donald Rumsfeld

Noted US poet Donald Rumsfeld recited some of his oeuvre before the US Senate yesterday.

And you say you don't like surprises.

My Lord, who likes surprises?

Nobody in the world likes surprises.�

But the world's not perfect.

Facts change on the ground.

And when facts change on the ground, commanders tell us.

And when commanders tell us, they get the troops they need.

Just extraordinary lyric insights...

He saved the elephant. But can he save the Great Apes?

CHIMPANZEE

Approximately 180,000 chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are thought to be left in a long belt of forest stretching from Uganda to the Atlantic from an original population of perhaps 2m. The four races of the animal are all threatened by hunting and habitat destruction.

BONOBO

Our closest animal relative, sharing 98.4 per cent of our DNA, the bonobo or pygmy chimpanzee may the great ape species we lose first. Numbers are thought to be down to around 10,000 in its forest home in the Congo, recently ravaged by war.

LOWLAND GORILLA

There are three races or sub-species of lowland gorilla; their total numbers are probably now less than 110,000.

The most numerous is the western lowland gorilla,(Gorilla gorilla gorilla) found in Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Congo, and Gabon. It may number about 95,000.

The cross river gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli), found in Nigeria and Cameroon, is critically endangered: with numbers of only 150 to 200 it has the lowest population of any of Africa's great apes.

Grauer's gorilla (Gorilla berengei graueri) is found on the eastern side of the Democratic Republic of Congo: there are thought to be about 16,000 left.

MOUNTAIN GORILLA

Only a few hundred of the mountain gorillas (Gorilla berengei berengei) of the forests of the Virunga volcano region of Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo are now left, making them one of the world's rarest animals.

ORANG-UTAN
Numbers of Asia's only great ape are now thought to be down to between 15,000 and 20,000, with the Bornean orang-utan (Pongo pygmaeus) numbering 12,000 to 15,000, and the Sumatran orang-utan (Pongo abelli) thought to be between 3,000 and 5,000.

Leakey's idea is to substitute the great apes for the panda as the symbol of conservation. I think it would work. I think an earth where only one great ape (the sapient one) proliferated in increasing numbers without the other four would be a poor place.

King Kong

The advantage of reading screenplay reviews is that you get to publish extracts from the new Peter Jackson effort like:

The SURVIVING NATIVES scatter! KONG rampages after them, STOMPING ON THEM and BITING THEIR HEADS OFF ... in a scene that not only gets a PG 13, but is PRAISED by the MPAA for it's sensitivity!

Um...

deplanning from Iraq

Richard Woolcott, who is about as heavy a retired diplomat s Australia can produce, writes in todays Sydney Morning herald:

First, US and British occupying forces should be withdrawn and replaced by a UN peacekeeping force composed mainly of Arab and other countries not tarnished by the invasion of Iraq and its subsequent occupation. The high cost of such an operation should be born mostly by the architects of the present situation, the US and Britain.

Such a UN force should maintain the peace while a genuine democratic election, supervised by the UN, is organised, to produce a new government for Iraq.

The Interim Governing Council, hand-picked by the US, has no credibility and even the alternative appointment with the help of the UN of a technocrat administration can only be an interim arrangement.

It may be too late now but it would also seem preferable to look to an Iraqi federation of three states, rather than the unitary nation originally planned by the US.

The reality is that, despite continuing US Administration spin, invented 'facts' and wishful thinking, the creation of a functioning democracy in a reconstructed Iraq will take years if, in fact, it can be fully achieved. If Australia does 'stay the course' for political reasons, some Australian forces could remain in Iraq for many years.

The so-called transfer of sovereignty on June 30 will not be a transfer of sovereignty to an elected government responsible for Iraq's defence and security. It is no more than an American political device.

George Bush may want to 'change the world' but ultimately the future of the people of Iraq must be determined in Iraq and with the assistance of the UN, not in Washington or London.

I'd go a lot further. Westerners (especially those in the coalition countries) should stop making plans for Iraq's future. We never really had the ability to see into Iraq's future and Abu Ghraib certainly excludes us from any moral claim to do so. What will work in Iraq is what Iraqis decide. While I hope they do it in an open and transparent process the West does not have the capacity or the right to force that cause of action.

The neocon dream was always silly. Let us not now play variations on a theme gone bad by producing neo-progressive plans or neo-whatever plans. Let's just find a dignified way to go away.

Macam-Macam | Indonesia's 2004 DPR Elections: Final Result

The KPU has finished their counting and Golkar tops the tally. PDI-P ran second and PKB a distant third. Only 7 political parties gained more than 5% of the popular vote thereby permitting them to nominate candidates for the Presidential and Vice-Presidential election on 5 July.

I suspect support for Golkar is overstated and I expect their standing to fall in the presidential election. When an authoritarian regime collapses, the party of power often survives into the transition. In South Africa the New National Party's trajectory was:

• 1994 20.3%
  
• 1999 6.87%
  
• 2004 1.65%
  

The Russian Communist Party's record is:

• 1999 24.3%
  
• 2003 12.6%
  
• 2004 13.7%
  

Obviously this is not an exhaustive list. I think it does show there's often a lag time in an authoritarian party's collapse as people look back with nostalgia to the authoritarian period. At this election Golkar recorded its lowest vote ever, although PDI-P's spectacular collapse eclipsed Golkar's. The PDI-P does not have Golkar's level of institutionalisation and is essentially a personal vehicle for Megawati, whose own standings have crashed faster than her party's.

Presidential polling shows Yudhoyono far in front of Megawati with Wiranto a distant third. I doubt that will change between now and 5 June.

BAD ATTITUDES | Timeline of detainee abuse allegations and responses

I've never crosslinked to a comment before, but this one deserves it. Like a close reading of the Taguba report, the timeline just does not support the Rumsfeld claim that this abuse is not systemic. Nor can I really see Rumsfeld's distinction between 'abuse' and torture'.

It seems to me that treatment ending in death or forcible sodomy amounts to torture in most books. Evidently this true of the Pentagon. Certainly they're putting a lot of effort into covering their collective arse.

Read the timeline.

reading the Taguba report

Let's start with the isolated abuses issue. Major-General Taguba writes under the heading Assessment of DoD Counter-Terrorism Interrogation and Detention Operations Iraq (MG Miller's Assessment)

2.With respect to interrogation, MG Miller's Team recommended that CJTF-7 dedicate and train a detention guard force subordinate to the Joint Interrogation Debriefing Center (JIDC) Commander that 'sets the conditions for the successful interrogation and exploitation of internees/detainees.' Regarding Detention Operations, MG Miller's team stated that the function of Detention Operations is to provide a safe, secure, and humane environment that supports the expeditious collection of intelligence. However, it also stated
'it is essential that the guard force be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees.' (ANNEX 20)

According to US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Myers:

MYERS: Well, it's like I say, it's working its way up the chain to me. I have not seen the report. Although, I take a very direct � I'm very directly involved in making sure that there is not a systemic issue here. That is something that we try to push. And Secretary Wolfowitz, Secretary Rumsfeld, we've all pushed this to make sure we don't have a systemic problem.

In Myers' defence, he had not read Taguba at the time of the interview.

According to US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld:

It's, I guess the way to put it is that the department has been aware of it since it was first noticed, and up the chain of command we're told that there were investigations into alleged abuses as long ago as last Jan. 16. It takes time for reports to be finished -- correction: to be gathered. This is a very comprehensive report. I mean, the fact of the matter is that this is a serious problem. And it's something that the department is addressing.

The system works. The system works. There were some allegations of abuse in a detention facility in Iraq. It was reported in the chain of command. Immediately it was announced to the public. Immediately an investigation was initiated. Six separate investigations have been undertaken over a period of months since January.

In Rumsfeld's defence he had only read Taguba's executive summary at the time of the interview.

But why had neither of them read the report? How slow can a decisional loop be?

So, we had a US Army recommendation to encourage guards to soften up prisoners. Prisoners were softened up. Some died. One was raped. But of course the Miller recommendation was never put into action.

There's a bridge in Sydney I want to sell these people. Plus Tasmania. But I digress. The real question is what action, part from waiting for the memo, did Myers and Rumsfeld take to ensure the abuse stopped on 16 January when they learnt of it? More later.

spying a rat

The Bulletin's article Threats, spies and audiotape alleges:

The most explosive of the new allegations is that for six weeks no action was taken after Collins passed on details of an alleged spy. Collins says in his taped interview: 'Shortly before I was deployed to East Timor I had a junior officer of the corps came up to me and made an allegation about a mid-ranking army officer being involved in espionage on behalf of a foreign government. I thought on it for some time and decided I had no option but to report it, so I reported back to the Director of Army Security ... I didn't hear back from him, so I rang him some six weeks after that and asked whether there'd been any follow up, and he claimed not to know about it.'

Frustrated that nothing was being done about an allegation as serious as espionage, Collins wrote to Cosgrove, then head of the army. Cosgrove arranged for Collins to go higher and Collins ended up meeting Jason Brown, then with defence security, and now an assistant secretary in the Defence Department.

'In the course of that interview,' Collins alleges, 'I was reluctant to name my source to them, for a range of reasons, and in attempting to give an opening into doing so, Jason Brown indicated that he possessed such power - such coercive power - that things he set in train could even force people to commit suicide, which was a reference to the Merv Jenkins case.'

Jenkins hanged himself in 1999. He was DIO's senior officer in the Australian embassy in Washington, DC, and committed suicide after officials in Canberra decided to investigate him for passing Australian intelligence on East Timor to his US counterparts. Defence sources say Jenkins felt sharing intelligence with his American colleagues was acceptable but that after he was interviewed by the officials who had flown from Canberra, he became convinced he was going to be charged and killed himself.

The Bulletin also thoughtfully provides transcripts of evidence by:

• DIO Director-General Lewincamp
  
• Blick
  
• then Chief of Army General Cosgrove
  

These are chilling documents that suggest the Canberra bureaucracy does not recognise any limits to its power. It is a pity their prediction of events in Southeast Asia and elsewhere is so much less effective than their skill in corridor catfights.

tortured disclosure

The full text of the Taguba report on prisoner abuse in Iraq is now online.

reversing fantasies

In Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology Lee Harris wrote about Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia:

Why invade, then? The answer is quite simple. Ethiopia was a prop -- a prop in the fantasy pageant of the new Italian Empire -- that and nothing else. And the war waged in order to win Ethiopia as a colony was not a war in the Clausewitzian sense -- that is to say, it was not an instrument of political policy designed to induce concessions from Ethiopia, or to get Ethiopia to alter its policies, or even to get Ethiopia to surrender. Ethiopia had to be conquered not because it was worth conquering, but because the fascist fantasy ideology required Italy to conquer something -- and Ethiopia fit the bill. The conquest was not the means to an end, as in Clausewitzian war; it was an end in itself. Or, more correctly, its true purpose was to bolster the fascist collective fantasy that insisted on casting the Italians as a conquering race, the heirs of Imperial Rome.

The enterprise of Iraq does not have a high factual content. The number of thinkers who regard it as a diversion and distraction from the War on Terror grows each day. Richard Clarke told Lateline last night:

If you look at the years of Al Qaeda propaganda, spread throughout the world by its various affiliate organisations, what they said over and over again was the United States should be viewed as the crusaders coming from a afar to the Islamic lands to occupy them, install their governments and steal their oil.

And that they would do this even though the Islamic governments were not threatening them in any way.

So, now what we see is that the United States has indeed done what bin Laden said we would do and most of the Islamic world watches television every night and sees a far different story than they see here on ABC or on ABC in Australia.

What they see on Al Jazeera and Al Arabia are bodies of civilians in Fallujah having being killed as collateral damage.

They see, when there are house to house searches, film of women being dragged out of their houses by American soldiers.

Although the United States is doing many great things in Iraq, that's not what is seen in the Islamic world and now they see pictures of American soldiers torturing Islamic prisoners.

All of this provides enormous propaganda to bin Laden and the Jihadist movement.

It's convincing millions of people around the world that the United States is, in fact, the enemy and if you look at the public opinion polls, the reliable ones taken in Morocco, in Egypt, in Jordan, in Turkey, in Pakistan and even in Indonesia, the United States is now an object of hatred by 70, 80, 90 per cent of the people in some of these polls.

This is exactly the kind of propaganda that Al Qaeda wanted and George W Bush handed it to them on a silver platter.

Why, with all those disadvantages, would any US president invade Iraq? Or is the Bush administration just running a fantasy ideology? I always thought the Harris idea was massively overstated. His examples are the conquest of Mexico and Italian fascism. He misreads the Mexican example. Several of Moctezuma II's ministers (chiefly Cuat�moc and Cuitlauac) thought their leader was insane, repeatedly urged him to take measures for the defence of his empire and were ignored. By the time Cuitlauac replaced Moctezuma it was too late. Smallpox, the real conqueror of the Aztecs, had struck with full force.

Harris' prescription is equally bizarre -- that the War on Terror be recast as a campaign against disease. Evidently he is unaware that is precisely how the German Nazis described their war against the Jews. Maybe the notion that everybody else's wars are symbolic dramas and ours are rational needs more examination.

Perhaps the jihadis feel their grievances are real. Perhaps we should do something about that. Something other than Abu Ghraib.