Increasingly, President Bush is becoming more isolated in his view that the Iraq war is stemming the progress of global terror. Three separate intelligence reports — the British intelligence agency, a Saudi intelligence analysis, and an Israeli report — contradict Bush’s view that we have to “defeat them abroad before they attack us at home.” The emerging consensus is that the occupation of Iraq is inspiring people around the world to join the ranks of the terrorists:

“A team of MI5 analysts concludes: ‘Though [terrorists] have a range of aspirations and ’causes’, Iraq is a dominant issue for a range of extremist groups and individuals in the UK and Europe.‘” [Sunday Times (London), 7/28/05]

“The findings of an investigation, to be published soon, into 300 young Saudis, caught and interrogated by Saudi intelligence on their way to Iraq to fight or blow themselves up, shows that very few had any previous contact with al-Qa’ida or any other terrorist organisation previous to 2003. It was the invasion of Iraq which prompted their decision to die.” [The Independent, 7/24/05]

“The Israeli Global Research in International Affairs Center reported earlier this year that Iraq ‘has turned into a magnet for jihadi volunteers.’ But not established terrorists. Rather, explains report author Reuven Paz, ‘the vast majority of Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq.’” [Copley News Service, 7/26/05]

Today, at approximately 12:45PM, State Department spokesperson Scott McCormack said this about John Bolton:

Mr. Bolton, as part of the nomination process, supplied answers, supplied an answer to the question. They’d asked whether or not the nominee has been interviewed or asked to supply any information in connection with any administrative, including an Inspector General, congressional or grand jury investigation within the past five years, except routine Congressional testimony. Mr. Bolton, in his response on the written paperwork, was to say no. And that answer was truthful then and it remains the case now.

Josh Marshall points to an AP story that just hit the wire. Apparently, before the day was out, the State Department has completely changed it’s story:

John Bolton, the nominee for U.N. ambassador, inaccurately told Congress he had not been interviewed or testified in any investigation over the past five years, the State Department said Thursday When Bolton filled out a Senate questionnaire in connection with his nomination, “he didn’t recall being interviewed by the State Department’s inspector general. Therefore, his form, as submitted, was inaccurate,” [State Department spokesperson Noel] Clay said. “He will correct it.”

What a difference a few hours makes.

The following letter was sent today from Sen. Biden to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

Original in PDF

July 28, 2005

The Honorable Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of State
Washington, DC 20520

Dear Madam Secretary:

It has just come to my attention that then-Undersecretary of State John Bolton was interviewed on July 18, 2003 by the State Department Office of the Inspector General in connection with a joint State Department/CIA IG investigation related to the alleged Iraqi attempts to procure uranium from Niger. This information would appear to be inconsistent with information that Mr. Bolton provided to the Committee on Foreign Relations during the Committee’s consideration of his pending nomination to be Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

The Committee on Foreign Relations expects all nominees to provide to it accurate and timely information. Indeed, in submitting the Committee’s questionnaire, all nominees are required to swear out an affidavit stating that the information provided is “true and accurate.” It now appears that Mr. Bolton’s answers may not meet that standard. I write, therefore, to request that you review this matter to determine whether incomplete or inaccurate information was provided by Mr. Bolton.

Thank you for your assistance.

Sincerely,

Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
Ranking Minority Member

If you were ever in need of stronger evidence linking Donald Rumsfeld to Abu Ghraib, look no further than yesterday’s court testimony provided by two Army dog handlers who stand accused of prisoner abuse at the detention center. At the hearing Maj. David DiNenna, the top military official at Abu Ghraib in 2003, testified that the former commander of Guantanamo Bay Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller came to Iraq to encourage new interrogation techniques.

As the Washington Post reports:

“We understood he was sent over by the secretary of defense,” DiNenna testified by telephone. DiNenna said Miller and his team were at Abu Ghraib “to take their interrogation techniques they used at Guantanamo Bay and incorporate them into Iraq.”

And when you remember that Rumsfeld approved the tactics at Guantanamo, the argument that he bears responsibility for the abuse at Abu Ghraib becomes more compelling. Just to review, we now know that:

1. Donald Rumsfeld approved the use of dogs for interrogations at Guantanamo.
2. Guantanamo commanders traveled to Abu Ghraib in 2003 and encouraged officers there to use dogs.
3. Officers at Abu Ghraib understood — and have now testified under oath — that the Guantanamo commanders’ visit was at the behest of Donald Rumsfeld.

And Rumsfeld persists in claiming that Abu Ghraib was the work of just a few bad apples. Huh… wonder why?

– Conor Clarke

GEORGE H.W. BUSH: “I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.” [Speech at CIA, 4/26/99]

UPDATE: Link fixed for Firefox users.

A few additional thoughts about the lack of attention and respect given to the Karen Hughes hearing yesterday

A number of Democratic members on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had previously indicated their interest in pursuing the leak investigation and holding the leakers accountable. But while the Democratic Policy Committee held a public relations hearing to publicize the importance of the matter, members of the Foreign Relations committee missed a huge opportunity to get a senior Bush adviser who was intimately involved in the events surrounding the leak to speak on-the-record, under oath.

Even if senators were not interested in probing the leak or examining Hughes’ involvement in the manipulation of pre-war Iraq intelligence, they at least had an obligation to show up and question the next Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy about an issue extremely vital to our long-term national security: building friends and allies around the world, particularly the Muslim world.

Read more

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked yesterday about a new report indicating that more than half (54 percent) of U.S. soldiers in Iraq reported morale problems in their units.

The Army report indicates that troop morale is suffering due to lengthy deployments. One would expect the Secretary of Defense who sent the soldiers into war to now step up and take accountability, right?

“I’ve tried to get the Army to look at the length of the tours and I think at some point down the road they will,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a briefing.

It’s the Army’s fault. Rumsfeld’s trying to cut the length of tours, but the Army keeps getting in the way. Rumsfeld was alerted to the negative effect his stop-loss orders (which keep troops on the battlefield beyond their expected term of deployment) were having on troop morale when he visited Iraq-bound soldiers in Kuwait last year. Here’s what one soldier said:

“My husband and myself both joined a volunteer Army,” said the woman, who identified herself as a staff sergeant in a logistics unit from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. “Currently, I’m serving under the stop-loss. I would like to know how much longer you foresee the military using this program.”

Rumsfeld said the policy “is something you prefer not to have to use in a perfect world.”

(snip)

“It’s basically a sound principle. It’s nothing new; it’s been well understood” by soldiers, Rumsfeld said. “My guess is it will continue to be used as little as possible, but that it will continue to be used.”

So in December 2004, he says extended deployments are a sound principle and will continue to be used. Then, troop morale goes down, and Rumsfeld suddenly hides behind the Army. We shouldn’t expect any less from the man who said, “you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want.”

To better understand the O’Connor versus Roberts approach to the President’s waging of the war on terror, here’s a little more background as to how it all got to this point.

After September 11th, President Bush claimed the “authority to seize and hold suspected terrorists or their protectors and indefinitely deny them access to courts or lawyers while interrogating them.” In the case of Hamdi v Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court accepted that Congress had authorized President Bush to seize and hold U.S. citizens under the so-called “enemy combatant” title but that Hamdi had the right to challenge his detention. However, the Court did not grant the detainee “the full panoply of rights that are afforded criminal defendants in civilian courts. Only Justices Scalia and Stevens were willing to go that far.”

Similar to the Hamdi case, in Rasul v Bush, the Bush administration argued that “enemy combatants” could be held indefinitely but this time at Guantanamo Bay. The administration’s argument was that Guanatanamo Bay was under Cuban sovereignty and so not under the jurisdiction of the American legal system. However, the Supreme Court again rebuffed the administration and forced it to create “procedures that would provide appropriate legal process” to enemy combatants. However, the Court chose to remain silent on “the substantive legal test the government must meet to hold someone there.”

Now back to Roberts.

Last week, Roberts joined a three-judge panel that overturned an earlier ruling on the case of Hamdan v Rumsfeld. The previous ruling had put “an abrupt halt” to the tribunals by determining that the administration had wrongfully “declared that those captured in Afghanistan were not entitled to prisoner-of-war protections.” The most recent ruling on the case serves as a “significant legal victory for the administration” but comes in direct opposition to “many retired senior officers” who continue to warn that “the way detainees at Guantanamo had been treated imperiled American troops who might themselves be captured on the battlefield.”

Unfortunately, Roberts may have been looking out for his future instead of the long term safety of our soldiers.

Judge John Roberts needs to be asked about his position on the amount of deference that should be given to the President in conducting the war on terror.

Just last Friday, Judge Roberts ruled with two of his colleagues on the D.C. Circuit that the Bush administration’s plan to convene military tribunals to try terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay was constitutional. Roberts overruled a lower court’s opinion that the tribunals violated the Geneva Convention. In the opinion, Roberts asserted the position of the Bush administration that the Geneva Convention does not apply to the Guantanamo detainees because they belonged to no government entity.

But the opinion, as Columbia law professor Michael Dorf has noted, simply assumes one of the facts that needs to be determined by a court — that is, whether the detainee is in fact an “unlawful combatant.” That’s the role of a judge — to ensure due process. This is a vital question, particularly given that Roberts would replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the high court. Here’s their key difference on the issue:

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor:

“A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens.”

VERSUS

Judge John Roberts, joining opinion of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld:

“Under the Constitution, the President ‘has a degree of independent authority to act’ in foreign affairs, and for this reason and others, his construction and application of treaty provisions is entitled to ‘great weight.’”

Compare two recent speeches of Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush on fighting terrorism following the London bombings on July 7. Despite being the closest of allies, they portray the battle against terrorism in starkly different terms.

President Bush continues to misconstrue his “war on terror” for his own political purposes, providing vague and superficial strategies for addressing terrorism and diverting all attention to Iraq. In a speech on July 11, 2005 at the FBI Academy, President Bush states:

In the war on terror, Iraq is now the central front. The terrorists fight in Iraq because they know that the survival of their hateful ideology is at stake. They know that as freedom takes root in Iraq, it will inspire millions across the Middle East to claim their liberty as well.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, on the other hand, never uses the terminology the “war on terror” and recognizes that fighting terrorism requires more than force and superficial actions, but a deeper confrontation of causes and symptoms. In a speech on July 16, 2005, Prime Minister Tony Blair had a different take than President Bush: Read more

How did Bill Frist commemorate the one-week anniversary of the London terrorist attacks? By cutting transit security funds.

On the way to passing a $31.8-billion Homeland Security spending bill Thursday, Senate Republican leaders beat back a series of attempts — pressed by senators from states with large urban centers — to increase money for mass transit protection by as much as $1.4 billion. …

In the Senate’s spending bill, rail and transit safety measures were allotted $100 million, a drop of $50 million from last year.

One week.

And the Senate did the very same thing after last year’s metro attacks in Madrid, blocking two bills to beef up transit security. Keep in mind that a recent study by the American Public Transportation Association estimated that rail systems need some $6 billion for security improvements. This year’s amount, $100 million, is about eight hours of typical spending in Iraq. It’s just beyond belief.

President Clinton is about to address Campus Progress’s national student conference. (It’ll be airing on C-SPAN soon, we’ll let you know when. You’ll want to tune in — we hear he may have something to say about Karl Rove and Plamegate.)

But perhaps the biggest story about Clinton’s speech is the person he chose to introduce him — Stephanie Nyombayire, a student at Swarthmore University, who came to the U.S. four years ago from Rwanda. Stephanie lost nearly a hundred family members and friends during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Now she’s the Outreach Director for the student-led Genocide Intervention Fund.

GIF and American Progress just launched a major campaign, Be a Witness, to get our television networks to start covering the ongoing genocide in Darfur — add your voice if you haven’t already.

It says a lot that President Clinton is willing to face up to his administration’s record on genocide, and give a boost to those working to stop the current one.

UPDATE: Just returned from the conference. President Clinton spoke for over an hour — a really fantastic speech, though no mention of Karl Rove.

Two weeks ago, David Broder pointed out that the Bush administration would soon face a congressionally mandated make-or-break moment regarding its Iraq policy:

Under a little-noticed provision of the defense spending bill passed by Congress in May, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld has until July 11 to send Capitol Hill a “comprehensive set of performance indicators and measures of stability and security” two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein [...]

The information required is specific and detailed. It includes measures of the security environment, including the number of engagements per day, the count of trained Iraqi forces and more. It orders up indicators of economic activity. It directs Rumsfeld to provide — either in public or in classified annexes — an estimate of U.S. military forces needed in Iraq through the end of calendar 2006 and the criteria the administration will use to determine when it is safe to begin withdrawing forces.

The deadline came and went yesterday without a peep from DoD. Today, a Pentagon spokesperson told me that those Iraq indicators have indeed been “delayed” and that there is currently no specific date set for their release. Apparently the administration is willing to do just about anything — including violate the law — to avoid giving Americans a detailed assessment of our progress (or lack thereof) in Iraq.

How is it that in a country where “support our troops” ribbons and bumper stickers abound, the military is suffering from serious recruitment woes? Why has the Pentagon had to resort to questionable (at best) recruiting tactics, like creating a database of students’ personal information, possibly in violation of the Privacy Act?

A new Campus Progress article by Daniel Savickas offers a compelling answer. Savickas, who tagged along with several Army recruiters while they worked, found the “general consensus of the recruiters was that most people joining the Army today are either doing it to help pay off college debt, or to pay their way through college.” Savickas writes of recruiters who have to “sell” military service in cold calls, and quotes one saying, “A lot of the time you’ll ask for someone and they’ll tell you they’re there until they find out who you are, then they tell you the person left.” Savickas’ own conclusion gets to the heart of military recruitment problems: “I know a lot of people joining the army are trying to earn money for college or pay off college loans. I know that an education can provide a better life. But I just don’t know if it’s worth dying for.”

It doesn’t have to be this way. Answering the call to military service should mean loving our country’s principles so much that one is willing to sacrifice one’s life to protect them. If our government would stop deceiving us about matters of war, if it would adopt a foreign policy that embraces this nation’s historic values, we would have Americans enlisting because they wanted to, not because they had to.

– Michael Thompson, Campus Progress

As President Bush continued to spin developments in Iraq over the holiday weekend, few people noticed an important development in Baghdad, reported by Al-Hayat newspaper — 83 members of Iraq’s transitional parliament supported a demand for a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq.

This represents nearly one-third of Iraq’s democratically elected leaders in the 275-seat assembly.

Though President Bush and many leading Democrats oppose timetables, Iraqi leaders who represent their people are starting to raise the need for timetables for withdrawing U.S. forces.

At the same time, there are signs that the transitional government in Iraq is looking for new sources of outside support — like Iran. Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi visit to Tehran this week unveiled plans for Iran to help with training troops and increasing security in Iraq.

These developments are bound to complicate U.S. efforts in Iraq. They also raise questions about the narrow debate over Iraq we currently have in the United States, a debate that rarely questions President Bush’s assumptions.

(Click here for Part I)

– Brian Katulis, Director of Democracy and Public Diplomacy

Condoleezza Rice was interviewed today by the BBC and she was asked a very good question:

BEALE: Do you think that Britain and America in Iraq are perhaps fighting the wrong war? They went to war to remove physical weapons of mass destruction but partly Saddam Hussein as well, but that hasn’t stopped the terrorist attacks in Western cities like Madrid, in London today. It seems to have fueled those attacks.

RICE: Oh, I don’t think that anything is being fueled here except the fact that the terrorists are finally being confronted. Again, they were — they’ve been doing this now for a couple of decades and for a while the world, going all the way back to Beirut and going back to the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 or the attacks on American Embassies in 1998, this has been going on for a while.

Rice’s response underscores the fundamental problem with the Bush’s attitude and approach to the war on terror. The president and his closest advisors refuse to acknowledge — no matter what happens — that the Iraq war has precipitated more terrorist attacks and more terrorists. This has been confirmed by the CIA and the State Department.

The decision to make the Iraq war the central component of the war on terror was a mistake. Rice should spend less time spinning past mistakes and more time creating a new strategy.

Britain and Spain are two countries with as much experience in combating terrorism, by the IRA and ETA respectively, as anyone in the world. The fact that neither has been able to stop attacks during periods of heightened alert is a clear sign that a strike on a U.S. transit or rail system is a very real security threat. The bombings in London today should serve as a wake-up call that the U.S. desperately needs a stronger, progressive approach to rail security. Consider:

JUDGE FINDS ‘NO CONSISTENT, COMPREHENSIVE’ RAIL SECURITY POLICY: Just three months ago, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled on a rail security case involving CSX Transportation. In his decision, Sullivan criticized the Bush administration for having no “consistent and comprehensive federal policy addressing the risks of terrorism on our interstate rail system,” despite the fact that “the federal government has the lead role in regulating the rails and that a community can intervene only when a subject cannot be addressed by national standards or rules.”

2005: JUST $115 MILLION IN RAIL SECURITY FUNDING: Bush’s 2005 budget allocation for train security was just $115 million, equal to what the U.S. spends on eight typical hours in Iraq. (The White House spent $15 billion on airline security, “though as many as 16 times more people ride rail lines than airplanes.”)

SINCE 9/11, BUSH HAS RELIED ON “VOLUNTARY” RAIL SECURITY STRATEGY: Some 85 percent of the critical infrastructure in the United States is privately owned. Yet, in the vast majority of cases, the Bush administration has not worked to compel the private sector to raise their safety standards since 9/11. Instead, the administration and transit companies have agreed on “voluntary measures by the companies to address terrorism-vulnerability concerns.” The obvious problem: stricter security measures also cost more, so transit companies have, by and large, ignored them.

For a progressive approach to rail security, check out “Putting Rail Security on the Right Track,” a component of our Critical Infrastructure Security Series.

With debate over what to do in Iraq heating up inside the Beltway, it’s important to ask: what do the Iraqi people think about our troops?

Getting a straight answer to these questions is next to impossible in war-torn Iraq, but some groups have taken the pulse of the Iraqi public regularly. According to one recent poll sponsored by the U.S. government, 45 percent of Iraqis support the insurgent attacks against coalition troops and a majority of Iraqis oppose having the U.S.-led multinational force in the country, and feel less safe with foreign troop patrols in their neighborhood.

If democracy means giving people a voice in issues that affect their lives, then maybe the Bush administration should organize a public referendum on this key question, as suggested by others.

– Brian Katulis, Director of Democracy and Public Diplomacy

Last week in a White House press briefing, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley was asked just how much of the aid package President Bush was committing as “new” money to Africa was in fact “new.” Hadley did the typical White House spin job:

U.S. bilateral assistance and assistance through multinational institutions that end up — that goes to Africa is about $4.3 billion. And the President’s programs — both a continuation and an expansion of some of those programs, that he’s announced in the past in this increased commitment to Africa, and the three additional programs that he talked about today, which will result in additional funds — should bring the United States in 2010 to in excess of $8.6 billion, which would be a doubling, or doubling-plus.

What the White House wants you to believe is that they’ve embarked on a new program to double aid to Africa by the end of the decade. Today, ActionAid, an international development agency group, released a report showing that over 90 percent of the African aid Bush announced was in fact old, committed money:

ActionAid International USA has determined that $4.1 billion of the $4.5 billion increase, in actuality, heralds from existing commitments that have already been announced earlier and approved.

Said Rick Rowden, policy analyst at ActionAid International USA, “The stinginess of the world’s richest country towards the world’s poorest region is not lost on the eyes of the world. President Bush still has an opportunity to rectify this position by offering significantly increased proposals at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.”