Jeffrey Goldberg initially responded to my Amalek post in what I thought was a pretty gracious and thoughtful manner, but the sheer volume of later commentators weighing in to challenge Goldberg’s interpretation seems to have gotten to him, because this is pretty ridiculous:

In any case, this whole debate is a perversion, and not only because genocide is the specialty of other religions, and not Judaism. Iran has called for the elimination of the Jewish state, and seems to be building nuclear weapons that could make that a reality; Israel simply seeks to protect itself from a country that wants to exterminate it. If Israel does strike Iran, it would bomb military targets while trying to minimize civilian casualties. Iran, through its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas, already has a long and distinguished record of murdering Jewish children. There’s simply no equivalence here. Yes, Israel does various idiotic and immoral things. But it isn’t, even on its worst day, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Of which religions, exactly, is genocide the “specialty”? I’d argue that it’s more of a “specialty” of human beings to seek and find justification for all kinds of cruelty in their religious texts — as Goldberg himself is surely aware from his reporting on the settler movement. It’s offensive and wrong to suggest that mass murder is the special province of any particular religion.

No one that I’m aware of is asserting an equivalence between Iran’s actions and Israel’s. The issue here, at least as I see it, has to do with the invocation by an Israeli government official of a deeply resonant religious-historical symbol with disturbingly violent and malevolent connotations — precisely the sort of thing that we tend to freak about when it comes from the other side, but downplay or apologize for when it happens in our own political cultures. I think Andrew Sullivan nailed it when he wrote “you cannot avoid a religious war by invoking a religious genocide to explain your intentions.”

I’ve actually found the whole extended discussion on Amalek to be very interesting and informative — Gershom Gorenberg’s extended treatment of the subject is particularly good. Goldberg’s attempt to short circuit the debate, however, by calling it “a perversion” seems rather un-bloggerly.

Regarding Goldberg’s claim that Iran “seems to be building nuclear weapons,” the current view of the U.S. intelligence community, as reaffirmed by DNI Dennis Blair on February 12, is that Iran has not restarted nuclear weapons design and weaponization work that it halted in late 2003. This isn’t to say that Iran’s nuclear work gives no reason for concern, it clearly does, but given Goldberg’s own significant past role in over-hyping threats emanating from the Persian Gulf region, he should probably be more careful about this.

The Obama administration filed a petition with the Supreme Court on Friday asking the Court to block the 17 Chinese Uighurs detained at Guantanamo from entering the United States — this, despite a court ruling last year ordering their release. The petition argues that the Uighurs “have already obtained relief” and that the government had no legal obligation to settle them in the U.S.:

Petitioners have already obtained relief. They are no longer being detained as enemy combatants, they are free to leave Guantanamo Bay to go to any country that is willing to accept them, and in the meantime, they are housed in facilities separate from those for enemy combatants under the least restrictive conditions practicable. Moreover, the government is actively seeking to resettle petitioners, and the President has ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility by January 22, 2010. [...]

Petitioners’ continued presence at Guantanamo Bay is not unlawful detention, but rather the consequence of their lawful exclusion from the United States, under the constitutional exercise of authority by the political Branches, coupled with the unavailability of another country willing to accept them. Because the bar to petitioners’ entry into the United States is constitutionally valid, their resulting harborage at Guantanamo Bay is constitutional as well.

Somewhat shockingly, as ABC’s Jake Tapper notes, the Obama administration’s petition suggests that the Uighurs’ imprisonment “isn’t so bad,” and trumpets their comfy quarters at Guantanamo:

“In contrast to individuals currently detained as enemies under the laws of war, petitioners are being housed under relatively unrestrictive conditions, given the status of Guantanamo Bay as a United States military base,” Kagan writes, saying they are “in special communal housing with access to all areas of their camp, including an outdoor recreation space and picnic area.” They “sleep in an air-conditioned bunk house and have the use of an activity room equipped with various recreational items, including a television with VCR and DVD players, a stereo system, and sports equipment.”

Furthermore, the petition cites the Senate’s recent vote to block Guantanamo detainees from entering the U.S. as further reason to deny their release — despite the fact the vote was in defiance of a White House request. The petition comes just a week after President Obama, in a speech defending his plan to close Guantanamo, declared that “the wrong answer is to pretend like this problem will go away if we maintain an unsustainable status quo.”

Scott Carpenter, director of WINEP’s Project Fikra, on the president’s choice of Cairo for his address next week:

Led by an octogenarian who has been in power since Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981, Egypt persists as an authoritarian regime lacking any truly democratic institutions, making this speech Obama’s first delivered in a nondemocracy.This latter fact perhaps explains why White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs emphasized that the speech’s scope was “bigger than where the speech was going to be given or who is the leadership of the country,” during the press briefing announcing it.

This attempt at evasion, however, fails to fully address the downside of the choice of venue. There is no way for the president to travel to Egypt without providing implicit support for the Mubarak regime.

Marc Lynch, who voiced similar concerns about the venue, yesterday zeroed in on “the key question for Obama’s trip the region, his speech, and his strategic approach both to Iran and the Israeli-Arab tracks: Will he reinforce or challenge the ‘moderates vs resistance’ frame which he inherited from the Bush administration?”

The Arab leaders he has been meeting, like the Israelis, are perfectly comfortable with that approach, dividing the region between Israel and Arab “moderates” vs Iran and Arab “resistance” groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. That’s the easy path. If followed it is likely to fail badly, destroy the hopes for change which his engagement policy has raised, and leave the region right back where Bush left it. But I think — and hope — that Obama will not fall into that trap.

He has an opportunity over the next few weeks — with the unveiling of his approach to Israel and the Palestinians, the response to the Lebanese and Iranian elections, and his Cairo speech — to break down those tired, dangerous, and unpopular lines of division. And if he chooses to do that, to really challenge the unsustainable status quo, then Riyadh and Cairo are the right place to start.

Underlying all of these concerns, of course, is the disrepute into which the idea of democracy promotion has fallen in the region, in the wake of Bush’s failed freedom agenda — understandable, considering that the central showpiece for that agenda was the Iraq war.

In February, my colleague Brian Katulis published a paper encouraging the Obama administration to reclaim the mantle of democracy promotion, and laid out a strategy for doing that. Read it here (pdf).

Last week, Gen. David Petraeus told Radio Free Europe that he supports President Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and that he opposes the use of so-called “enhance interrogation techniques.” “I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention,” Petraeus said.

Today in an interview with Fox News, Petraeus reiterated his support for a “responsible closure” of Gitmo but went a bit further, noting that the prison has been harmful to the U.S.:

PETRAEUS: Gitmo has caused us problems, there’s no question about it. I oversee a region in which the existence of Gitmo has indeed been used by the enemy against us. We have not been without missteps or mistakes in our activities since 9/11. And again, Gitmo is a lingering reminder for the use of some in that regard.

As Fox host Martha MacCallum went through most of the right-wing talking points on Gitmo and torture (Gitmo terrorists will “go free” in the U.S, torture works and should be used for the “ticking-time bomb” scenario) Petraeus knocked them down one-by-one. “I don’t think we should be afraid to live our values,” Petraeus repeatedly said.

Seemingly referring to Obama’s decision to release the Bush-era memos documenting President Bush’s torture program, MacCallum asked, “So is sending this signal that we’re not going to use the techniques anymore, what impact will that have on those who do us harm in the field that you operate in?” Again, Petraeus noted that such policies and techniques harm the U.S.

PETRAEUS: What I would ask is, does that not take away from our enemies a tool, which again they have beaten us around the head and shoulders in the court of public opinion? When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Convention, we rightly have been criticized. And so as we move forward, I think it is important to again live our values to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those.

Watch it:

Transcript: Read more

Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, Research Associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Yesterday, President Obama met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House, where they discussed all the distressingly typical topics relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President Obama reiterated the necessity for the Israeli government to halt settlement activity, which Abbas seconded. While news coverage focused on the growing rift between the United States and Israel over new settlement construction, both leaders referenced the work Gen. Keith Dayton, the United States Security Coordinator, has done in building effective and professional Palestinian security forces.

While Gen. Dayton’s security work is critical for the success of any future Palestinian state, professional Palestinian security services alone cannot guarantee the success of a either a two-state solution or a viable Palestinian state. A more comprehensive effort to build Palestinian state institutions across the board and deliver basic services to the Palestinian population needs to be undertaken under the aegis of the Palestinian Authority. President Obama recognizes this on a basic level, stating yesterday that “a two-state solution is in the interests of the Israeli people as well as the Palestinians.”

And certainly that’s how the United States views our long-term strategic interests — a situation in which the Palestinians can prosper, they can start businesses, they can educate their children, they can send them to college, they can prosper economically.

Despite this general recognition that a successful two-state solution requires broad-based Palestinian economic development, the United States has not yet engaged in an effort to build economic institutions in the West Bank comparable to its effort to build security institutions.

Instead, U.S. concerns have focused on short-term issues that would have a more immediate impact on the Palestinian population. Easing freedom of movement for Palestinians by removing checkpoints, for example, is a step that falls under President Obama’s statement yesterday “to alleviate some of the pressures that the Palestinian people are under in terms of travel and commerce” along the way to broader economic development.

There is nothing inherently objectionable to this building block approach to Palestinian economic development. Checkpoints and freedom of movement are critical issues to both near-term and long-term economic development. But the United States hasn’t made the same commitment to economic institution building in the Palestinian Authority as it has to developing the PA’s security forces and institutions. Since both the economic situation of average Palestinians and the ability of a potential Palestinian state to deliver basic services will be critical to a successful two-state solution, the United States doesn’t have much time to waste.

Nathan Guttman reports that “for the first time in America’s decades of jousting with Israel over West Bank settlements, an American president seems to have succeeded in isolating the settlements issue and disconnecting it from other elements of support for Israel.”

It is a disentanglement now seen most clearly in Congress, which in the past served as Israel’s stronghold against administration pressure on the issue. But when Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu came to Capitol Hill for a May 18 meeting after being pressed by President Obama to freeze the expansion of West Bank settlements, he was “stunned,” Netanyahu aides said, to hear what seemed like a well-coordinated attack against his stand on settlements. The criticism came from congressional leaders, key lawmakers dealing with foreign relations and even from a group of Jewish members.

This is a great example of how having a president who is committed to holding Israel to its commitments can move things in a positive direction, but that’s not the only difference here. The last president who tried to apply real pressure on settlements — George H. W. Bush — eventually wilted in the face of a sustained lobbying effort by AIPAC and other conservative-leaning groups. Today, in addition to a president who seems personally far better educated on both the actual history of the conflict and the daily realities of Palestinian life under occupation, we have the influence of progressive pro-Israel, pro-peace groups like J Street who don’t define “supporting Israel” as “supporting Israeli conservatives.” Though J Street is far less well-financed than conservative pro-Israel groups, its impact on lawmakers is amplified by the fact that its policy agenda and its general perception of the situation comports pretty closely with the president’s own.

The administration has made its stance clear –- no more settlement growth for any reason. This was underlined yesterday by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a press conference with the Egyptian foreign minister, in which she said that the president “wants to see a stop to settlements –- not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions.”

We think it is in the best interests of the effort that we are engaged in that settlement expansion cease. That is our position. That is what we have communicated very clearly, not only to the Israelis but to the Palestinians and others. And we intend to press that point.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports on the pressure that Bibi Netanyahu is facing from Israeli pro-settler groups and other elements of his right-wing coalition. This statement from settler representative Harel Cohen pretty clearly reveals a key element of the strategy of Israel’s settlement policy:

Cohen said the loss of the outposts would be a blow to the settler movement, which maintains that the occupied land belongs to Israel and should not be used to form a Palestinian state.

“They want to throw 2,000 Jews into the street,” Cohen said, referring to the small clusters of mobile homes marked for evacuation. “You have to fight for the outposts in order to distance the battles from the larger settlements.”

Exactly. The purpose of the outposts is to push out the boundaries of nearby settlements, but also to draw political attention away from them. The occasional dismantling of a few outposts now and then — many of which are quickly rebuilt — allows the Israeli government to say that they are trying to deal with the problem, while at the same time construction and expansion continue apace in the main settlement blocs that Israeli conservatives hope to keep.

In my experience, many if not most Israelis — including Israeli leaders — understand that the settlement enterprise is unsustainable. It complicates security, incites violence and drives extremism (both Palestinian and Israeli), and is hugely expensive. Israeli politicians are, however, understandably reticent to confront a powerful, deeply entrenched and highly motivated constituency like the settler movement. American pressure is necessary, then, to create the political space for Israeli leaders to confront that constituency. It’s very encouraging that we seem now to have a U.S. administration willing to apply that pressure, and create that space. The question remains, however, whether Bibi Netanyahu is a peace partner willing or able to take advantage of it.

Peter Juul contributed research and writing to this post.

Haaretz’s reports that Dennis Ross, Secretary of State Clinton’s special adviser on Iran, has written a new book in which he and co-author David Makovsky challenge a key component of the policy which Ross is ostensibly now working to implement:

Contrary to the position of the president and other advisers, Ross writes that efforts to advance dialogue with Iran should not be connected to the renewal of talks between Israel and the Palestinians. [...]

In the second chapter, entitled “Linkage: The Mother of All Myths,” Ross writes: “Of all the policy myths that have kept us from making real progress in the Middle East, one stands out for its impact and longevity: the idea that if only the Palestinian conflict were solved, all other Middle East conflicts would melt away. This is the argument of ‘linkage.’”

I think it would be great if we lived in a world where people regarded as authorities on the Middle East could make arguments about the region without having to erect towering, tottering strawmen, but unfortunately we don’t. There is, of course, no one who has ever claimed that “if only the Palestinian conflict were solved, all other Middle East conflicts would melt away.” What has been claimed, and what is acknowledged by a pretty overwhelming consensus of Middle East scholars and analysts, is that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is a source of anger and tension across the region, a radicalizing driver of violence, and a convenient propaganda tool for any demagogue with access to a mic.

The idea of linkage was put forward by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, whose 2006 report stated that “all key issues in the Middle East — the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iraq, Iran, the need for political and economic reforms, and extremism and terrorism — are inextricably linked…The United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

It’s quite true that hostility toward Israel in the Middle East will not simply dissipate upon the end of Israel’s occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state. Nor will anti-Americanism disappear even if the U.S. is seen as having played a major role in producing such an outcome. There are problems in the Middle East that have nothing to do with Israelis or Palestinians. Securing a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will, however, make addressing those problems easier, by sealing up one well of resentment from which authoritarian rulers and violent extremists have for decades drawn freely and profitably. This is the actual argument of “linkage”.

Which brings us to the main point: If Dennis Ross doesn’t subscribe to that argument, why has he agreed to serve a president who does? And why employ someone who has placed himself so far out on the margins of this debate?

I suppose there’s a good case to be made for having an influential like Ross inside the tent, questioning assumptions, rather than outside, writing op-eds attacking them. Interestingly, an Iran analyst I spoke to recently made the somewhat counter-intuitive point that Obama’s bringing Ross on showed Iranians that Obama is serious about changing the relationship — assuming that Ross has been brought on to reassure the Israel-hawk community. But I think there’s still a real question as to what mischief Ross might get up to, given that he apparently doesn’t think that one of the administration’s key arguments for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is even worth treating honestly.

As Richard Silverstein and Eric Fingerhut have reported, opponents of a two-state solution have a big concert scheduled on May 31 in New York’s Central Park.

According to the poster, (pdf) the concert is “dedicated to…the release of Jonathan Pollard,” an American convicted of treason for handing over U.S. secrets to Israel; “the 30th Anniversary of the Jerusalem Reclamation Project/Ateret Cohanim,” an extremist settler organization dedicated to reclaiming all of Jerusalem from non-Jews; “the more than 3,000 victims of Oslo since September 12, 1993″; “the heroic front line families and communities of Greater Jerusalem“; “the heroic pioneer families and communities” of the West Bank settlements and Golan Heights.

The poster also includes these “three no’s”:

No! to the division of Jerusalem ever.

No! to the surrender of any part of Israel.

No! to the expulsion of Jews from Judea and Samaria. (The West Bank)

Among the event’s co-sponsors is the Hebron Fund, an organization that raises money — tax exempt — for settlers in the West Bank. Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem have documented the ongoing violence by these settlers against Palestinians, as well as the refusal of Israeli occupation forces to enforce the law against the settlers.

This B’Tselem video gives a sense of what life is like for Palestinians in Hebron:

On Sunday, the Washington Post reported on the Obama administration’s difficulties reigning in Israel’s ongoing settlement expansion, made harder as a result of a “secret agreement” between the Bush and Sharon governments in 2004, in which Bush reversed forty years of U.S. policy and indicated that Israel would be able both to retain and continue expanding its larger settlements. George W. Bush is often seen as a very “pro-Israel” president, but here we see how his “support” for Sharon led to an even more untenable and deteriorating situation for Israel in the occupied territories.

Obviously, Americans who support the continued caging of Palestinians have a right to express their views, no matter how odious or counter to U.S. (or Israeli) national security interests. But we shouldn’t have any illusions about the violence and misery perpetuated by the organizations sponsoring the May 31 concert.

I also tend to think that if Arab-American opponents of a two-state solution had scheduled a rally in Central Park, we would have heard a lot more about it.

On this Memorial Day, the nation celebrates the sacrifice of veterans who gave their lives in service to our country. A “by-the-numbers” analysis by the Center for American Progress notes that veterans “are still in need of services to improve their quality of life—before, during, and after deployments. This year, the need is even more urgent than ever as the economic crisis hits many veterans and their families hard and these Americans struggle to find jobs, pay their mortgages, and get back on their feet.” Some key stats:

– 338,000 or almost one in five Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are experiencing symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, or major depression as of January 2009.

– Yet only 53 percent suffering from PTSD or major depression have seen a physician or mental health provider.

– 154,000 veterans were homeless on any given night in 2007, and 300,000 were homeless at some point during that year.

– One-third of homeless Americans are veterans, even though only one-tenth of all adults are veterans.

– Foreclosure rates in military towns were increasing at four times the national average in last year.

In his weekly address, President Obama said, “Our fighting men and women – and the military families who love them – embody what is best in America. And we have a responsibility to serve all of them as well as they serve all of us. And yet, all too often in recent years and decades, we, as a nation, have failed to live up to that responsibility. We have failed to give them the support they need or pay them the respect they deserve.”

“That is a betrayal of the sacred trust that America has with all who wear – and all who have worn – the proud uniform of our country,” Obama added. “And that is a sacred trust I am committed to keeping as President of the United States.” Watch it:

Last week, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich called on Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to resign her current position as Speaker. He said that she “disqualified herself” over her comments that the CIA was “misleading” Congress.

As ThinkProgress pointed out, Gingrich himself has accused the CIA, among other U.S. intelligence agencies, of misleading Congress and undermining the president. In response to the release of the 2007 Iran National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) — which concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program — Gingrich said that he believed the NIE and its authors were “damaging to our own national security.” He said that the document was “a deliberate attempt to undermine the policies of President Bush by members of his own government by suggesting that Iran no longer poses a serious threat to U.S. national security.”

Today on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) brought up this point. He said that if Gingrich is so offended by Pelosi’s comments, then he should also apologize for what he said in 2007:

DURBIN: I’d just say that I’m afraid Mr. Gingrich is suffering from a little political amnesia here. He’s forgotten that in year 2007, he criticized the National Intelligence estimate in regard to the capability of Iran to develop nuclear weapons and said that — if I remember the quote correctly, I’m looking down here — that what they did damaged our national security and misled the American people. Mr. Gingrich, would you like to make an apology to our intelligence agency for what you said in 2007?

GINGRICH: I said that particular report was intellectually dishonest. It was a public, non-classified report, and we were debating it. I said it was intellectually dishonest. I never said the CIA lied to the Congress, which would be illegal. It would be a felony.

Watch it:

During the exchange, Durbin also brought up Rep. Pete Hoekstra’s (R-MI) criticisms of the CIA, including his 2008 statement that the CIA “may have been lying or concealing part of the truth” in testimony to Congress regarding a 2001 incident in which the CIA mistakenly killed an American citizen in Peru. “We cannot have an intelligence community that covers up what it does and then lies to Congress,” Hoekstra said of the incident. “Should he apologize?” asked Durbin. Gingrich, of course, responded that there was nothing wrong with what Hoekstra said.

Transcript: Read more

This morning, Fox News Sunday hosted a debate on national security between Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), but it turned out that the two senators agreed on most issues. Nelson declared that trials of Guantanamo detainees should not take place in the United States and detainees should not be imprisoned here. He distinguished between terrorists like the Blind Sheikh — who “committed violations of American law” — and those at Guantanamo to say the latter should be kept out of the U.S.:

NELSON: I think the tribunals can occur anywhere, and I prefer not to see them occur in America, within the continental United States. Once they’re convicted, I’m assuming they will be, then I think we need to work out with their countries an arrangement where they’re incarcerated there. [...]

But for those detainees who have violated the rules of war, we don’t have to worry about bringing them here. I think they need to be kept elsewhere, wherever that is. I don’t want to see them come on American soil.

Nelson also seemed to suggest that torture — or “enhanced techniques,” as he called it — could be used in the future:

NELSON: What we need to do is make sure that the intelligence information that’s gathered is accurate, that we do everything within our power to get good intelligence, and it may or may not consist of coming from enhanced techniques.

Watch it:

As ThinkProgress and others have pointed out, the United States is fully capable of housing terrorist suspects in American prisons. Indeed, this morning on ABC, Adm. Mike Mullen mentioned the dozens of terrorists in U.S. prisons and declared, “They don’t pose a threat.”

And if Nelson is truly concerned with getting “accurate” information and “good intelligence,” he should support President Obama’s unequivocal ban on so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. As military and intelligence experts have stated, over and over, Bush’s enhanced program derived unreliable and inaccurate information. It was the use of “enhanced techniques” that provided the “intelligence” of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda — intelligence that proved to be entirely false.

Read ThinkProgress’ report on why Bush’s enhanced interrogation program failed here.

In his national security speech Thursday, President Obama addressed the controversy being stirred by conservatives over his decision to close Guantanamo. Obama forcefully said that he inherited a legal “mess” that has consumed his administration’s time and energy:

There are 240 people there who have now spent years in legal limbo. In dealing with this situation, we do not have the luxury of starting from scratch. We are cleaning up something that is – quite simply – a mess; a misguided experiment that has left in its wake a flood of legal challenges that my Administration is forced to deal with on a constant basis, and that consumes the time of government officials whose time should be spent on better protecting our country.

Yesterday, on the Brian and the Judge radio show, Karl Rove was angered by Obama’s critiques of the Bush administration, and he disputed the fact that the Bush administration had left a “mess” at Guantanamo. When conservative judge Andrew Napolitano noted that Obama “does have a constitutional mess on his hands,” Rove responded by saying that the “mess” is being caused by litigation from Attorney General Eric Holder — who is apparently “arguing against the government”:

ROVE: What’s ironic to me is that yesterday he said “this is a mess that was left to me by my predecessors.” No. This is a mess, to the extent that it is a mess, left to him by his friends and allies like Attorney General Eric Holder. Remember, there are DOJ appointees of this president who are in court arguing against the government’s position on these kind of things. I mean, it is his friends and allies and in some instances, his appointees who are in court arguing for an expansion of the rights of the terrorists and arguing for an end to the military commissions.

Listen here:

It’s unclear what cases Rove is referring to. There has been no litigation on the military commissions since Obama took office in January.

The lingering legal mess at Guantanamo, of course, was created by Bush. Obama now must determine “where to imprison and/or try the remaining approximately 250 Guantanamo detainees, many of whom have already been declared eligible for release.” This is complicated by the fact that multiple detainees have not been able to go to trial because of inadmissible evidence obtained through torture or hearsay. The international community is also encountering similar problems in repatriating Guantanamo detainees. Perhaps worst of all, Bush’s kangaroo courts have produced only three convictions.

As Obama noted Thursday, “the problem of what to do with Guantanamo detainees was not caused by my decision to close the facility; the problem exists because of the decision to open Guantanamo in the first place.”

Our guest blogger is Samuel Charap, a fellow for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

This week marked the end of the first round of negotiations between the U.S. and Russia for a new agreement on nuclear weapons limitations to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). Since the treaty — a backbone of the arms control regime — expires in December, this is the most important agenda item for the two countries in the short term, and will be a main topic of discussion at the July summit in Moscow between Presidents Obama and Medvedev.

Cooperation on arms control has long been a key element of U.S.-Russia relations, and these negotiations are an appropriate and welcome sign that both nations have committed to concluding a legally binding agreement.

However, to have a truly substantive bilateral relationship, US Russia policy must be about more than arms control — and we will need a long-term strategy to define the agenda.

The Center for American Progress proposes six strategic goals for the administration to consider as it prepares for this critical summit in the coming weeks:

- Making Russia a part of the solution to significant international problems.

- Preparing to confront the challenges presented by both an assertive Russia and a declining Russia.

- Bolstering our energy security and that of our allies.

- Creating a secure environment in the post-Soviet region.

- Encouraging the emergence of a full-fledged democracy in Russia.

- Integrating Russia into the international community and global economy.

Russia plays a key role in many of the most difficult and important issues facing the United States, and also presents us with a number of challenges that cannot be ignored. With goals to guide day-to-day decisions, U.S. policy will be more coherent and will better serve the national interest.

Read more about these strategic goals here.

As TPM’s Justin Miller reports, the New York Times yesterday implicitly walked back its sensationalist Pentagon stenography, noting that the NYT “changed the lead and headline of the Web version of the story to reflect the uncertainty.”

The new headline reads: “Later Terror Link Cited for 1 in 7 Freed Detainees.” And the lead: “An unreleased Pentagon report concludes that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are engaged in terrorism or militant activity, according to administration officials.”

Compare that to the original version: “An unreleased Pentagon report provides new details concluding that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has returned to terrorism or militant activity, according to administration officials.”

The change is welcome — NYT Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet’s bizarre denial notwithstanding — but as a correction it’s incomplete. The article still contains references to “recidivism,” which still presumes that detainees were involved in terrorism before being detained, and, as we know from previous Pentagon reports, a “terror link” can be anything from planting bombs in markets to publishing anti-American op-eds. As Ken Gude noted yesterday, it’s not until the 17th paragraph of the article that we find out that:

The Pentagon has provided no way of authenticating its 45 unnamed recidivists, and only a few of the 29 people identified by name can be independently verified as having engaged in terrorism since their release. Many of the 29 are simply described as associating with terrorists or training with terrorists, with almost no other details provided.

Which is a rather enormous caveat.

Frankly, I think any policy which results in Islamic extremists expressing their hatred of America through angry op-eds rather than through bombing marketplaces must be judged a success — it makes little sense to treat both as equally representative of a “terror link.” But, on the other hand, if your goal is not to actually gauge the effectiveness of a policy but rather to wage a policy battle through media leaks, then it makes sense to conflate the two.

Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow first reported on the case of Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, a decorated U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who received notice last September that he was being discharged from the Air Force under the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

Watch it:

As Maddow reported, Lt. Col. Fehrenbach defended America’s skies in the days after 9/11, and flew combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, for which he won the Air Medal for heroism. He has logged over 2,000 hours in the air, over 1,400 of those in fighters, and over 400 of those in combat. Fehrenbach has eighteen years’ worth of experience flying fighter jets.

To put the rank stupidity of the military’s anti-gay policy in dollars and cents terms, the amount of taxpayer investment represented by Lt. Col. Fehrenbach is enormous. In firing him, not only do the U.S. taxpayers lose the money that was spent training him, we lose the money we have to spend training someone else to replace him, as well as the hundreds of other pilots he could have trained. It’s like flushing tens of millions of dollars down the toilet.

In March, CAPAF’s Lawrence Korb wrote about the costs of DADT:

Since 1994, the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy has resulted in the discharge of more than 13,000 military personnel across the services, including approximately 800 with skills deemed “mission critical,” such as pilots, combat engineers, and linguists. These are the very specialties for which the military has faced personnel shortfalls in recent years.

In 2005, the Government Accountability Office found that the cost of discharging and replacing service members fired because of their sexual orientation during the policy’s first 10 years totaled at least $190.5 million. This amounts to roughly $20,000 per discharged service member.

Analysis of GAO’s methodology, however, shows that the $190 million figure may be wildly off the mark. A recent study by the Palm Center, a think tank at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that GAO’s analysis total left out several important factors, such as the high cost of training officers — commissioned soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, and Coast Guardsmen with several years of service experience — who were discharged due to their sexual orientation. When these costs were factored in, the cost to the American taxpayer jumped to $363.8 million — $173.3 million, or 91 percent, more than originally reported by GAO.

Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong in any era, but in a financial climate like today’s, it’s just staggeringly irresponsible.

Conservatives have criticized many of the choices Secretary Gates has made in regard to key defense programs and expenditures — yet here we have a way to save the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in defense costs, by repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It’s interesting that when offered a choice between service to fiscal responsibility and service to their own discomfort with homosexuality, some choose the latter.

Our guest blogger is Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

The Senate Democratic Policy Committee held the 19th in its series of hearings on waste, fraud and corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday. What we heard was really stunning.

We learned that the Army’s biggest contractor in Iraq, KBR, received bonuses totaling $83.4 million for work done during 2007 under LOGCAP III Task Order 139, which included electrical wiring work throughout Iraq. According to the Army’s own criteria for performance bonuses, in order to properly receive such a bonus, the firm’s work was to have been “excellent.”

Witnesses told our committee KBR’s work was far from excellent. As they described it, it sounds more like a disaster:

– One witness was Eric Peters, a former KBR Master Electrician who worked in Iraq for KBR as recently as this year. He said he quit the company after determining that KBR was incapable of doing the electrical wiring work properly, did not care about the safety of its own employees, and sought to intimidate those who spoke up. Peters also noted that KBR hires third country nationals who are not electricians to do wiring work. Often, workers and supervisors don’t even speak the same language.

– Another witness was Jim Childs, also a Master Electrician. The Army hired him to inspect KBR’s wiring work in Iraq after I asked the Army to take a closer look at what KBR was doing. He told us KBR’s electrical wiring work in Iraq was the “most hazardous, worst quality work I have ever inspected. During my theatre-wide inspections, I concluded that roughly 90 percent of the new construction building work by KBR was not properly wired. This means that over 70,000 buildings in Iraq were not up to code.”

– Our third witness was the former Army contract manager who previously managed KBR’s LOGCAP III contract. He told us the $83.4 million bonus received by KBR was “highly inappropriate” and if he had not been forced out of his position managing that contract – after he refused to rubber stamp nearly a billion dollars in questionable KBR charges – he would have objected to awarding the bonus.

The sad story of Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, a Green Beret, really tells it all. He was electrocuted as he showered in a shower stall on a U.S. military base. His mother was told he was electrocuted because he carried an electrical appliance into the shower. She refused to accept that explanation and forced an investigation which determined that the real cause of Sgt. Maseth’s electrocution was faulty electrical wiring.

Did KBR move quickly to correct the wiring? Not according to Jim Childs, who told us that a full 10 months after Sgt. Maseth’s electrocution death, KBR still had not fixed the wiring problems to make the shower safe.

I intend to continue to pursue this issue. I want to know why KBR got these bonuses and who approved them. I also want to know what the Pentagon is doing to hold KBR accountable for its work in Iraq. Tens of millions of dollars in bonuses for slipshod, deadly wiring work sure isn’t holding anybody accountable for anything.

I intend to keep asking these questions, and more, until I get satisfactory answers. American taxpayers and American soldiers, who put their lives on the line, deserve no less.

Our guest blogger is Ken Gude, Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The New York Times is at it again. Reaching back into an old bag of tricks, Bush administration holdovers in the Pentagon have used the paper of record to spread false propaganda at a critical juncture in a key national security debate, this time about released Guantanamo detainees supposedly returning to terrorism. This article has just one purpose: to mislead readers about the true nature of the threat posed by released Guantanamo detainees.

Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller discards any semblance of journalism and merely serves as a conduit for unnamed Pentagon officials to claim without any supporting evidence that 74 released Guantanamo detainees are “engaged in terrorism.” The headline screams “1 in 7 Freed Detainees Rejoins Fight, Report Finds,” and the entire opening of the story presents the Pentagon figures as conclusions of fact that are being withheld for political purposes.

Not until the 17th paragraph does this key passage appear:

The Pentagon has provided no way of authenticating its 45 unnamed recidivists, and only a few of the 29 people identified by name can be independently verified as having engaged in terrorism since their release. Many of the 29 are simply described as associating with terrorists or training with terrorists, with almost no other details provided.

Got that? Bumiller admits that “only a few” can be independently verified, more than half aren’t even identified, and no details are provided about the specific accusations but not until almost the end of the story.

We know previous Pentagon efforts to link released detainees with terrorism have included those who have written op-eds or participated in films about their experience at Guantanamo as “returning to the fight.” What kind of journalism allows a reporter to write a story so clearly slanted in one direction without even a minimal effort to verify the information that forms its basis?

An accurate story using this same information would report that some Guantanamo detainees have engaged in terrorism upon release, but that most of the allegations of such activity remain unconfirmed and that previous Pentagon reports have included activity that is not normally associated with terrorism. It wouldn’t make for such a sensational headline, but it would be much more representative of the truth.

Clear away all of Dick Cheney’s tired 9/11 fearmongering, the discredited arguments about Saddam’s terrorist ties, the canned outrage at the release of information that was already public, and the unfalsifiable claim that, because of the Bush administration’s policies, the terrorists only managed to hit us once, and what you’ve got left is Cheney’s claim that information exists that proves that the Bush administration’s use of waterboard torture produced specific intelligence that prevented another successful terrorist attack in the United States. Even if this is true — and as I’ve written before, there’s probably no single American less deserving of the benefit of the doubt in this respect than Dick Cheney — according to DNI Blair, “the damage [these techniques] have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.” But we shall see.

One interesting aspect is Cheney’s schizophrenic attitude toward America’s image management, something he shares with a lot of conservatives. After praising President Obama’s “wise decision” in “reversing his plan to release incendiary photos” of Iraqis being abused by U.S. soldiers, Cheney went on dismiss “the notion that American interrogation practices were a ‘recruitment tool’ for the enemy,” calling it “another version of that same old refrain from the Left, ‘We brought it on ourselves.’”

Cheney is arguing against Gen. Petraeus, Sen. John McCain, and military interrogators who have acknowledged that abusive interrogation practices have incited hatred against the U.S. and served as a recruiting tool for our enemies. Cheney implicitly admits as much with his comments about the “incendiary photos” — if bad publicity has nothing to do with national security, what’s the problem? Why should we care who they incite?

As for the notion that criticizing national security policies as counterproductive is the same as saying “We brought it on ourselves,” well, Dick contradicts himself here, too, as he is quite happy to cast blame on the Clinton administration’s anti-terrorism policies for an attack that happened on the Bush administration’s watch. Why can’t Dick Cheney stop blaming America?

President Obama has repeatedly discussed the need to “look forward” when it comes to examining the Bush administration’s torture program. But in March, he did not rule out prosecutions of the Bush lawyers who authorized enhanced interrogations, saying he would leave prosecutions up to the discretion of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Today, during his much-anticipated speech on national security policy at the National Archives, Obama addressed lingering questions about his views on a truth commission and torture accountability. Obama said that instead of a 9/11-style commission, he favors an investigation of “abuses of our values” done through Congress. Most notably, the President reiterated his view that the DOJ “and our courts can work through and punish any violations of our laws”:

That is what I mean when I say that we need to focus on the future. I recognize that many still have a strong desire to focus on the past. When it comes to the actions of the last eight years, some Americans are angry; others want to re-fight debates that have been settled, most clearly at the ballot box in November. And I know that these debates lead directly to a call for a fuller accounting, perhaps through an Independent Commission.

I have opposed the creation of such a Commission because I believe that our existing democratic institutions are strong enough to deliver accountability. The Congress can review abuses of our values, and there are ongoing inquiries by the Congress into matters like enhanced interrogation techniques. The Department of Justice and our courts can work through and punish any violations of our laws.

Watch it:

In his confirmation hearings, Holder flatly said that “no one is above the law. … There are obligations that we have as a result of treaties that we have signed — obligations, obviously, in the Constitution.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee is already pursuing an investigation into interrogation of detainees, having examined the treatment of two “high value” detainees. “We have adopted a scope of work; we have hired independent staff. They are intelligence professionals and we will be doing this look back, which will probably take 6, 8 months,” Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said.

Speaking in front of the original U.S. Constitution at the National Archives this morning, President Obama delivered a lengthy, detailed speech outlining his approach to national security. Obama criticized Bush’s legal system at that convicted only three terrorists in seven years. He said it was “clear” that, “rather than keep us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security.”

Discussing the problem of what to do with the detainees currently imprisoned at Guantanamo, Obama reminded the audience that the problem was caused by the erroneous decision to open the extra-legal prison camp in the first place:

Indeed, the legal challenges that have sparked so much debate in recent weeks in Washington would be taking place whether or not I decided to close Guantanamo. For example, the court order to release seventeen Uighur detainees took place last fall — when George Bush was President. The Supreme Court that invalidated the system of prosecution at Guantanamo in 2006 was overwhelmingly appointed by Republican Presidents. In other words, the problem of what to do with Guantanamo detainees was not caused by my decision to close the facility; the problem exists because of the decision to open Guantanamo in the first place.

He also seemed to mildly rebuke Congress — which yesterday barred the use of any funds to transfer detainees to the United States — for making “decisions within a climate of fear.” He challenged them to remember their oath:

As our efforts to close Guantanamo move forward, I know that the politics in Congress will be difficult. These issues are fodder for 30-second commercials and direct mail pieces that are designed to frighten. I get it. But if we continue to make decisions from within a climate of fear, we will make more mistakes. … I have confidence that the American people are more interested in doing what is right to protect this country than in political posturing. I am not the only person in this city who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution — so did each and every member of Congress. Together we have a responsibility to enlist our values in the effort to secure our people, and to leave behind the legacy that makes it easier for future Presidents to keep this country safe.

Watch it:

Obama said that his administration “will seek to transfer some detainees to the same type of facilities in which we hold all manner of dangerous and violent criminals within our borders.” He disputed conservatives’ claims that U.S. prisons could never accommodate terror detainees as “not rational.”

Transcript: Read more