Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 111

Cenk Uygur and the ethos of corporate-owned media

(updated below)

Before being named six months ago as interim host of MSNBC's 6:00 p.m. program, Cenk Uygur blogged at liberal sites, hosted a popular Internet and radio show aimed at a young audience (The Young Turks), and had a regular segment on Dylan Ratigan's MSNBC show called "The Daily Rant."  As one might expect, his style was combative, irreverent, and even at times angry, and he was often highly critical of both political parties and President Obama (though his anger at Democrats was typically due to what he perceived as excessive capitulation to the GOP).  Last night, despite what The New York Times called "solid" (but not "stand-out") ratings, it was announced that MSNBC was replacing Uygur with Rev. Al Sharpton; Uygur -- in a 17-minute YouTube segment on his Young Turks show (posted below) -- then announced that he had rejected MSNBC's apparently lucrative offer to stay on in various other roles and explained what happened and why.

Although the NYT somewhat sensationalistically hyped the innuendo that the White House had complained about Uygur to MSNBC, there's no evidence that that's true; for multiple reasons, I seriously doubt that's true and I don't think Uygur is claiming there is evidence for it (though it's hardly unheard of for White Houses in general, and this one in particular, to complain to networks about criticisms of the President).   Moreover, there are obvious factors that would cause MSNBC to make this move that have nothing to do with Uygur, including the growing criticisms the network faced over its blatant lack of diversity in its prime-time line-up and the fact that Sharpton is a highly recognizable celebrity -- a "star" in TV parlance -- who can single-handedly generate substantial media attention (unlike Uygur, Sharpton has also been a vocal and steadfast defender of President Obama from critics such as Cornel West).  Nonetheless, there are revealing aspects to Uygur's removal worth examining.

As The New York Times notes, "MSNBC is home to many hosts who criticize President Obama and other Democrats from a progressive point of view, but at times Mr. Uygur could be especially harsh."  Uygur added:  "I am by far the hardest on the Obama administration" at the network (though, as Uygur subsequently noted, MSNBC's afternoon host Ratigan is likely as hard on Obama, but prime-time shows are more visible).  But it isn't the quantity or even intensity of his criticism that distinguished him, but rather the style in which he expressed it. 

Uygur often refused to treat members of the political and media establishment with deference and respect.  He didn't politely imply with disguised subtleties when he thought a politician or media figure was lying or corrupt, but instead said it outright.  In interviews, he was sometimes unusually aggressive with leading Washington figures, subjecting them to civil though hostile treatment to which they were plainly unaccustomed.  As Uygur put it in explaining last night why he rejected MSNBC's offer to stay on:

I said on the air that most politicians are corrupt.  And I remember, my guest was like:  "What - how can you say that?  These are honorable gentlemen" [laughter] I am not going to do a show where I pretend that most of the politicians in Washington are honorable gentlemen.  Hell no.

Uygur explained that, several months ago, he was summoned to a meeting with MSNBC boss Phil Griffin and told that while it is fun and enjoyable to be an "outsider," that is not what MSNBC is for.  Instead, Griffin told him, MSNBC is "part of the establishment," and Uygur must conduct himself in accordance with that reality.  It's perfectly fine in establishment discourse to express contempt for one of the two political parties.  It's equally fine to periodically criticize your own.  But what is most assuredly not fine -- particularly in a high-profile nighttime spot and without having a real power base that comes from mammoth ratings -- is to be aggressively adversarial to the political establishment itself and the financial interests that fund, own and control that political system.  That is what Uygur was, and while there's no evidence that this was the primary cause of his removal, it was clearly a serious source of dissatisfaction with the station's executives, including MSNBC's chief.

Last week, Rachel Maddow interviewed Bill Moyers, who for years -- based on experience -- has been explaining that the corporate climate that preveails at large media companies significantly restricts and constrains what can be said.  In response, Maddow said:

I mean, I work at a big corporate conglomerate controlled media outlet. And I feel like the way to handle this as an individual journalist for me is that I have carved out a sphere here of editorial independence.

And on MSNBC, my deal with the company is I will do shows on MSNBC, and you will not tell me what to say. And they are very comfortable with that. And I think a lot of individual journalists find ways to do that.

I have zero doubt that what Maddow said there is 100% accurate.  I am quite sure that no executives at MSNBC ever told her what to say or what she could not say; given her status as MSNBC's top-rated host, I doubt any executives would do so or that she would tolerate such dictates (indeed, Ugyur himself said he never received any such express decrees).  Outside of Fox News -- which, unlike MSNBC (which, after all, puts Joe Scarborough on the air for three hours a day), is an overt partisan propaganda outlet where such content dictates are common -- that sort of direct censorship order is not how content is restricted at these corporations (though there are documented cases, including at the Bush-era MSNBC, were such explicit political censorship absolutely occurred; see here for examples).  Rather, as Moyers explained in the Maddow interview, a form of self-censorship arises based on knowledge of what the corporate culture will and will not tolerate:

MOYERS: I served time at CBS News, enjoyed it, seven years in all. I was here at MSNBC for the launch of it 15 years ago. I worked at NBC.

But I saw in every one of those environments the growth of the shadow of self censorship when -- I mean, I happen to know that when I was here, Newt Gingrich and Henry Kissinger did their best to mute my influence on "The Nightly News" because of the freedom and independence Andy Lack, who was then the president of NBC News, had given me. It's up there all the time, like gathering storm clouds.

You do a terrific job of maintaining your independence. And I must say out of the Murdoch scandal has come a reminder of the importance of a free and independent press.

The journalists who have been dogging this story for the last six years worked for "The Guardian," which is one of the great newspapers in the western world. "The Guardian" is run by a trust --

MADDOW: Public trust.

MOYERS: -- a public trust, set up by the founding family to make sure that "The Guardian" would always be commercially and editorially independent.

Wouldn't you have liked to have been in the editorial room at "The Guardian," when they decide -- they knew what they had -- they had the evidence, they would not have gone this way if they had not had the evidence. And they knew they were taking on the most powerful media baron in the world, the Berlusconi of England and the United States, but they did it because they were independent.

We have been reminded that in the end, democracy depends upon maybe even just a few independent voices, free of any party or commercial allegiance.

Nobody succeeds at a large corporation without understanding and accommodating the prevailing ethos and the interests of that corporation as perceived by one's bosses.  As Uygur explains, the more important someone becomes to the success of a corporation (as Maddow has), the more flexibility they have to depart from, even violate, some of the unstated rules, but no corporate employee -- including media stars -- will last long if they step too far out (News Corp. even rid itself of Glenn Beck despite declining-though-still-impressive-for-his-time-slot ratings; there were multiple factors, including a successful advertiser boycott, but clearly one factor was that he had departed so far from the standard two-party-system discourse, and had become so adversarial to the establishment itself, that, despite those ratings, it was no longer consistent with News Corp.'s interests to keep him on the air).  

This isn't to say that every journalist working for a large media corporation engages in self-censorship.  Some are able to construct real editorial independence, while others -- soul-less careerists and the like -- just don't have much of an inclination to be truly adversarial to the political and financial establishment.  But as Uygur's stories make clear, MSNBC very much considers itself "part of the establishment" and demands that its on-air personalities reflect that status.  With some exceptions, MSNBC largely fits comfortably in the standard, daily Republicans v. Democrats theatrical conflicts, usually from the perspective that the former is bad and the latter are good.  It's liberal -- certainly more liberal than other establishment media outlets have been in the past -- but it's establishment liberalism, and that's allowed.  It's wandering too far afield from that framework, being too hostile to the system of political and financial power itself, that is frowned upon.  

Uygur's explanation for what happened and why he turned down MSNBC's offer -- including the means used to lure people into that system -- is well worth watching (see the video below).  It sheds substantial light on the subtle though clear pressures applied at these media outlets.

* * * * *

On an unrelated note, I have an Op-Ed in the Guardian today on Obama, his efforts to cut Social Security, and the American left.

 

UPDATE:  I should also note that while explicit content censorship is not the typical means of constraining what can be said at these media outlets, it does sometimes occur.  In addition to the link to the multiple examples I supplied above, recall how GE and MSNBC executives forced Keith Olbermann to cease criticizing Fox News personalities as part of a pact GE and News Corp. entered into in order to safeguard their non-media interests.

New study proves falsity of John Brennan's drone claims

(updated below w/transcript)

In late June, President Obama's chief Terrorism adviser, John Brennan, made an extraordinary claim about drone attacks in Pakistan: "in the last year, 'there hasn't been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we've been able to develop."  He added: "if there are terrorists who are within an area where there are women and children or others, you know, we do not take such action that might put those innocent men, women and children in danger."  The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism had heard similar claims from Obama officials over the past several months, and thus set out to examine the relevant evidence to determine if those claims are true.

 

Last night, they issued the findings of their study which, simply put, definitively establish that the administration's claim about civilian deaths is patently false.  Contrary to Brennan's public assertions, "a detailed examination by the Bureau of 116 CIA 'secret' drone strikes in Pakistan since August 2010 has uncovered at least 10 individual attacks in which 45 or more civilians appear to have died."  That count -- which includes numerous children -- covers only the civilian deaths which the Bureau could definitively establish by identifying the victims by name.  Given how conservative their methodology was, these findings almost certainly under-count, probably dramatically, the number of civilian deaths at U.S. hands during the period about which Brennan made his claim: "at least 15 additional strikes warrant urgent investigation, with many more civilian deaths possible."

Other data similarly establish how false and misleading are Brennan's claims.  A British photojournalist providing on-the-scene reporting of the aftermath of drone strikes in Waziristan documented this week that "far more civilians are being injured or dying than the Americans and Pakistanis admit" and "for every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant."  To describe Brennan's claims as merely "inaccurate" or "untrue" is to be unduly generous.

My guest on Salon Radio today is Chris Woods, who led the Bureau's investigation into Brennan's claims.  The 15-minute discussion can be heard by clicking PLAY on the player below.  Woods explains why it is so pernicious to allow false claims about drone attacks like the one Brennan issued to go unchallenged.  Most remarkably, he explains that even once the Bureau presented the evidence they compiled to the Obama administration, Obama officials continued to insist that Brennan's claims were true, telling the Bureau: "the most accurate information on counter-terror operations resides with the United States."  

But as the ACLU today notes regarding the Bureau's study, the Most Transparent Administration Ever™ refuses to honor the ACLU's FOIA requests for information about drone attacks:

The trouble is that United States refuses to share its information -- even basic information -- with the public.

Indeed, it is absurd that senior government officials would claim that there have been no civilian casualties in drone strikes in Pakistan, and at the same time refuse to confirm or deny the existence of civilian casualty data in response to the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act request. This kind of selective disclosure not only deprives the public of basic information about the human cost of the government's actions, but it also undermines the credibility of the government's statements. . . .

The public debate on drone strikes is severely hobbled by the government's failure to provide basic information not just about the number of innocent civilians killed, but also about the legal criteria that its uses in conducting targeted drone killings, and the internal accountability measures that are in place to ensure that strikes -- especially those conducted by the CIA -- comply with the law.

In light of this new finding, it's not hard to see what accounts for this refusal to engage in basic disclosure.  Secrecy is not only the linchpin for abuses of power, but it also enables the government to issue misleading propaganda in an unchallenged manner.  As drone attacks become an increasingly prominent tool in the American war arsenal, it's more vital than ever that government deceit about these attacks not be tolerated.  The discussion with Woods can be heard here:

* * * * * 

To his credit, Joe Scarborough interviewed Jeremy Scahill this morning on Morning Joe regarding Obama's use of a secret prison in Somalia, his escalating drone attacks, and the reaction of Democrats to all of this.  It's well worth watching:

 

UPDATE:  The transcript of the interview with Chris Woods is available here.

DOJ casts serious doubt on its own claims about the anthrax attack

Ever since the FBI claimed (for a second time) that it had discovered in 2008 the identity of the anthrax attacker -- the recently-deceased-by-suicide Army researcher Bruce Ivins -- it was glaringly obvious, as I documented many times, that the case against him was exceedingly weak, unpersuasive and full of gaping logical, scientific, and evidentiary holes.  So dubious are the FBI's claims that serious doubt has been raised and independent investigations demanded not by marginalized websites devoted to questioning all government claims, but rather, by the nation's most mainstream, establishment venues, ones that instinctively believe and defend such claims -- including the editorial pages of the nation's largest newspapers, leading scientific journals, the nation's preeminent science officials, and key politicians from both parties (led by those whose districts, or offices, were most affected by the attacks).  To get a sense for the breadth and depth of the establishment skepticism about Ivins' guilt, just click on some of those links.

Since that initial wave of doubt, the FBI's case against Ivins has continuously deteriorated even further.  In February of this year, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences released its findings solely regarding the bureau's alleged scientific evidence (independent investigations of the full case against Ivins have been successfully blocked by the Obama administration), and found -- as The New York Times put it -- that "the bureau overstated the strength of genetic analysis linking the mailed anthrax to a supply kept by" Ivins; the Washington Post headline summarized the impact of those findings: "Anthrax report casts doubt on scientific evidence in FBI case against Bruce Ivins." 

But the biggest blow yet to the FBI's case has just occurred as the result of an amazing discovery by PBS' Frontline, which is working on a documentary about the case with McClatchy and ProPublica:

The Justice Department has called into question a key pillar of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins. . . . On July 15 [], Justice Department lawyers acknowledged in court papers that the sealed area in Ivins' lab -- the so-called hot suite -- did not contain the equipment needed to turn liquid anthrax into the refined powder that floated through congressional buildings and post offices in the fall of 2001.

The government said it continues to believe that Ivins was "more likely than not" the killer. But the filing in a Florida court did not explain where or how Ivins could have made the powder, saying only that the lab "did not have the specialized equipment'" in Ivins' secure lab "that would be required to prepare the dried spore preparations that were used in the letters."

The government's statements deepen the questions about the case against Ivins, who killed himself before he was charged with a crime. Searches of his car and home in 2007 found no anthrax spores, and the FBI's eight-year, $100 million investigation never proved he mailed the letters or identified another location where he might have secretly dried the anthrax into an easily inhaled powder. . . .

In excerpts from one of more than a dozen depositions made public in the case last week, the current chief of of the Bacteriology Division at the Army laboratory, Patricia Worsham, said it lacked the facilities in 2001 to make the kind of spores in the letters.

Two of the five letters, those sent to Democratic U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Thomas Daschle of South Dakota, were especially deadly, because they were so buoyant as to float with the slightest wisp of air.

Worsham said that the lab's equipment for drying the spores, a machine the size of a refrigerator, was not in containment.

"If someone had used that to dry down that preparation, I would have expected that area to be very, very contaminated, and we had non-immunized personnel in that area, and I would have expected some of them to become ill," she said.

In its statement of facts, the government lawyers also said that producing the volume of anthrax in the letters would have required 2.8 to 53 liters of the solution used to grow the spores or 463 to 1,250 Petri dishes. Colleagues of Ivins at the lab have asserted that he couldn't have grown all that anthrax without their noticing it.

That Ivins lacked the means, ability and equipment to produce the sophisticated strain of anthrax used in the attacks -- especially to do so without detection and leaving ample traces -- has long been one of the many arguments as to why it is so unlikely that he was the culprit (or at least the sole culprit).  That the DOJ itself -- in order to defend against a lawsuit brought by an anthrax victim alleging that Fort Detrick was negligent -- would admit that Ivins lacked the means to commit this crime in his lab, particularly without detection, is extraordinary.  Just like the NAS findings that cast doubt on the FBI's genetic analysis (once deemed to be the strongest part of the case even by skeptics), this admission further guts the government's claim to have solved this case.

It should be unnecessary to explain why the anthrax attack was so significant, and why discovering the perpetrators with confidence is so vital.  As I've argued before, the anthrax attack was at least as important as (if not more important than) the 9/11 attack in creating a climate of fear in the U.S. that spawned the next decade's War on Civil Liberties and Terror and posture of Endless War; multiple government officials used ABC News' Brian Ross to convince the nation that Saddam was likely behind those attacks (as but one example, The Washington Post's Richard Cohen, in 2008, cited the anthrax attacks as his primary reason for supporting the attack on Iraq; in October, 2001, John McCain said on David Letterman's program that there is evidence linking Iraq to the anthrax attack).  Even if one believes the FBI's case, it means that one of the most significant Terrorist attacks in American history was launched from within the U.S. military.  As Alan Pearson -- Director of the Biological and Chemical Weapons Control Program at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation -- put it:  

If Ivins was indeed responsible for the attacks, did he have any assistance? Did anyone else at the Army lab or elsewhere have any knowledge of his activities prior to, during, or shortly after the anthrax attacks? . . . It appears increasingly likely that the only significant bioterrorism attack in history may have originated from right within the biodefense program of our own country.  The implications for our understanding of the bioterrorism threat and for our entire biodefense strategy and enterprise are potentially profound.

Indeed, Cohen claimed that "a high government official" told him shortly after the 9/11 attack to carry cipro as an antidote against anthrax.  The Editors of Nature added: "This case is too important to be brushed under the carpet. The anthrax attacks killed five people, infected several others, paralysed the United States with fear and shaped the nation's bioterrorism policy." 

But, of course, in the U.S., the nation's most powerful political and financial factions -- especially those who control the National Security State -- are immune from meaningful scrutiny and investigation.  As a result, President Obama -- in what I think is one his most indefensible acts -- actually threatened to veto the entire intelligence authorization bill if it included a proposed bipartisan amendment (passed by the House) that would have mandated an independent inquiry into the FBI's anthrax investigation.  Democratic Rep. Rush Holt, whose New Jersey district was the site where the letters were allegedly mailed and one of the bill's sponsors, said at the time he was appalled that "an Administration that has pledged to be transparent and accountable would seek to block any review of the investigation in this matter."

Indeed, the veto threat issued by the Obama White House was refreshingly (albeit unintentionally) candid about why it was so eager to block any independent inquiry: "The commencement of a fresh investigation would undermine public confidence in the criminal investigation and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions."  That would happen only if the FBI's claims could not withstanding independent, critical scrutiny.  But -- as is even more apparent now than ever -- the White House is fully aware that it cannot.  In a rational, non-corrupt environment, that would be a reason to insist upon -- not take extraordinary steps to block -- an independent investigation into one of the most consequential crimes ever committed on U.S. soil.  But that, manifestly, is not the world in which we live, and thus -- despite continuously mounting evidence that we do not know anywhere close to the full story of who perpetrated this attack -- the country's political leadership continues to stonewall any efforts to find out.

The War on Terror, now starring Yemen and Somalia

There is a concerted campaign underway to ensure that the War on Terror bonanza continues unimpeded in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, and even despite Leon Panetta's acknowledgment that Al Qaeda has a grand total of "fewer than two dozen key operatives" on the entire planet.  That effort relies primarily on touting a growing villainous alliance -- the scariest since Marvel Comic's Masters of Evil -- between Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (mostly in Yemen) and the al Shabab group in Somalia.  To accomplish this, all the standard fear-mongering propaganda is being trotted out, and the War on Terror apparatus is simply being re-directed to those nations.  Most notably, the establishment media is being used to disseminate these messages, using its familiar journalistically bankrupt practices to serve this agenda.

In recent months, government officials have been insisting that the greatest Terrorist threat now resides in Yemen.  Almost before the Al Qaeda leader's body hit the ocean floor, U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki, in Yemen, assumed his (fabricated) role in American government and media depictions as The Next Osama bin Laden.  The Obama administration has escalated the existing drone program and begun a new CIA drone campaign in Yemen (one that just killed numerous people over the weekend); it also, contrary to public denials, provided the arms to Saudi Arabia to attack a rebel group in Northern Yemen.  Yemen is also the justification for Obama's attempt to institutionalize a due-process-free assassination program aimed at U.S. citizens.  The administration just commenced a separate drone campaign in Somalia.  And, as Jeremy Scahill revealed last week, the U.S. is relying upon interrogations conducted in a secret prison in Mogadishu, filled with people from that country and those rendered at the behest of the U.S. from other African nations.  Just like The Communist was seamlessly replaced by the Terrorist when a new enemy was needed, the death of Osama bin Laden and the virtual non-existence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan means that Yemen and Somalia are the New War on Terror Battlegrounds.

Typifying the subservient role played by the establishment media in propagating this narrative is this new article in The Los Angeles Times by Brian Bennett.  Headlined "Al Qaeda's Yemen branch has aided Somalia militants, U.S. says," the article grants anonymity to "U.S. counter-terrorism officials" to do nothing more than echo the official administration line:  that we now face "a widening alliance of terrorist groups."  These anonymous officials claim that "leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen [] have urged members of the hard-line Shabab militia to attack targets outside Africa for the first time" and that bin Laden "had sought to strengthen operational ties between Al Qaeda and the Shabab."  In other words, anonymous, unaccountable intelligence officials went to the L.A. Times to depict desires and aspirations of a scary Terrorist alliance as fact, and that paper uncritically headlined these scary developments.

While there's nothing notable about this corrupt journalistic practice -- granting anonymity to government officials to spout the official line and uncritically printing it is the heart and soul of Real National Security Journalism -- there are a couple of particularly egregious passages in this article worth noting.  To underscore how mindlessly devoted Bennett is to promoting the government line, consider this passage:

In a sign of the expanding front, U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles at suspected militants in Yemen in May, and in Somalia in June. They were the first known U.S. military attacks in Yemen since 2002 and in Somalia since 2009. 

That claim is factually false, in a very significant way.  In December, 2009, U.S. cruise missile carrying cluster bombs were dropped in Yemen, killing 41 people, including 14 women and 21 children.  Cables released by WikiLeaks subsequently revealed that the Obama administration perpetrated that attack, as well as a second air strike that same month (which targeted Awlaki).  In May, 2010, the Obama administration launched another attack in that country, one that "killed the province's deputy governor, a respected local leader who Yemeni officials said had been trying to talk Qaeda members into giving up their fight," which was "at least the fourth such assault" in Yemen since December, 2009.  Not only was there no public discussion by American officials of this escalated bombing campaign, but the U.S. allowed its close ally, Yemeni dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, to falsely and publicly claim sole responsibility.

Yet here we have the LA Times' Bennett, serving his government directors, telling his readers that the drone attacks in May of this year "were the first known U.S. military attacks in Yemen since 2002."  What makes that so inexcusable -- aside from how factually false it is, and how bizarre it is that a reporter writing about Yemen wouldn't know that -- is that those 2009 and 2010 attacks, which Bennett concealed from his readers, are playing a very significant role in why there is a Terrorism problem in Yemen in the first place.  As The Christian Science Monitor explained when reporting on the 2009 American cluster bomb attack in Yemen:

Just as high civilian casualties in US attacks on militants have fed extremism in Iraq and Afghanistan, the same phenomenon is now playing out in Yemen, says Yemen specialist Gregory Johnsen.

"It is incredibly dangerous what the US is trying to do in Yemen at the moment because it really fits into AQAP's broader strategy, in which it says Yemen is not different from Iraq and Afghanistan," says Mr. Johnsen of Princeton University in New Jersey, who adds that AQAP can recruit militants from outside Yemen as well. "They are able to make the argument that Yemen is a legitimate front for jihad… They've been making that argument since 2007, but incidents like this are all sort of fodder for their argument."

If you drop cluster bombs in a country and slaughter dozens of women and children with drones and then kill a popular governor, you're going to spawn pervasive amounts of anger and hostility towards the responsible foreign country and also embolden the message of extremists that they are under attack from the U.S and jihad is thus warranted: a shocking observation, I know -- but readers of the LA Times, or at least this article on the supposed emerging threat, would have no idea that the U.S. has even been doing that in Yemen. 

That the U.S. is creating the very Terrorism problem it claims to be combating is one of the most crucial points in discussions of American Terrorism policy -- it was one explicitly recognized even by a Rumsfeld-created Terrorism task force back in 2004 -- but it barely is heard in American political discourse.  Further bolstering that fact is the work of Noor Berham, who has spent three years systematically documenting the results of American drone attacks in Pakistan with on-the-scene photojournalism:

Noor Behram says his painstaking work has uncovered an important -- and unreported -- truth about the US drone campaign in Pakistan's tribal region: that far more civilians are being injured or dying than the Americans and Pakistanis admit. . . .

"For every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant," he said. "I don't go to count how many Taliban are killed. I go to count how many children, women, innocent people, are killed" . . .

According to Noor Behram, the strikes not only kill the innocent but injure untold numbers and radicalise the population. "There are just pieces of flesh lying around after a strike. You can't find bodies. So the locals pick up the flesh and curse America. They say that America is killing us inside our own country, inside our own homes, and only because we are Muslims.

"The youth in the area surrounding a strike gets crazed. Hatred builds up inside those who have seen a drone attack. The Americans think it is working, but the damage they're doing is far greater."

Even when the drones hit the right compound, the force of the blast is such that neighbours' houses, often made of baked mud, are also demolished, crushing those inside, said Noor Behram. One of the photographs shows a tangle of debris he said were the remains of five houses blitzed together.

Because this kind of reporting is so dangerous, most media outlets rely on the claims of American and Pakistani officials and thus dutifully print their allegations about the number of "militants" killed by the strike.  Berham, however, insists that those claims are deceitful in what they omit, and that the U.S. is doing far more harm than good with these drone attacks in terms of its stated goal (eliminating Terrorism).  Further evidence for that fact is supplied by Harper's Index for May, 2011, which notes:

Minimum number of people killed by CIA drone attacks in Pakistan last year : 607

Number of those who appeared on a U.S. list of most-wanted terrorists : 2

American media reports such as the one appearing this weekend in the LA Times reflexively depict escalating American military attacks as a response to the growing Terrorist threat rather than as what they are: a leading cause of that threat.  One might also take cognizance of the obvious connection between these escalating attacks under Obama and the plummeting of U.S. public standing in the Arab and Muslim world. 

Independently, note this amazing passage from that LA Times article, regarding how these anonymous officials learned of what they are claiming concerning an AQAP/Shabab grand alliance:

The CIA gained other information when Somali authorities allowed them to interview Shabab militants imprisoned in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, U.S. officials said. The CIA asked about the militants' ability to launch attacks outside Somalia as well as the group's command structure.

That claim presumably refers to the secret Mogadishu prison Scahill revealed, the one the CIA pays Somali agents to guard and at which they're constantly present.  The notion that Somali authorities generously "allowed" the CIA to "interview" prisoners there mindlessly disseminates CIA propaganda and ignores the facts Scahill revealed: that this is effectively a U.S.-maintained-and-engineered prison.  And, of course, there is no discussion of the legal and human rights repercussions of interrogating prisoners in secret facilities beyond the reach of human rights monitoring agencies, nor any discussion of the role such practices play in further spawning anti-American sentiment.

Just behold how little has changed in political and media circles when it comes to the War on Terror.  The propaganda and policy tactics are virtually identical; only the names and places change.  So we have anonymous officials continuously hyping the New Terrorist threat and the New Terrorist Masterminds, reporters who do nothing but uncritically pass it all along, civilian slaughter and secret prisons and interrogations simply transferred to the new Battlegrounds, and all new pretexts for not only continuing, but escalating, the War on Terror under a new brand name.  The War on Terror is the ultimate self-perpetuating industry: it endlessly spawns its own justification.

How the U.S. government uses its media servants to attack real journalism

(updated below)

"The US has stopped running its global network of secret prisons, CIA director Leon Panetta has announced. 'CIA no longer operates detention facilities or black sites,' Mr Panetta said in a letter to staff" - BBC, April 9, 2009

____________

Earlier this week, the truly intrepid investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill published in The Nation one of the most significant political exposés of the year.  Entitled "the CIA's Secret Sites in Somalia," the article documented that the CIA uses and effectively controls a secret prison in Mogadishu, where foreign nationals who are rendered off the streets of their countries (at the direction of the U.S.) are taken (along with Somali nationals) to be imprisoned with no due process and interrogated (by U.S. agents).  Although Somali government agents technically operate the facility, that is an obvious ruse: "US intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners" and are "there full-time," Scahill reported.  On Democracy Now on Wednesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed it has no knowledge of this secret prison.  

This arrangement, as Scahill told me yesterday, is consistent with standard Obama administration practice: "they continue even the most controversial Bush terrorism policies by having some other government technically operate it so they can keep their fingerprints off it."  Indeed, the administration has even resorted to this playbook by using "torture by proxy" -- as we saw when the Kuwait government, with at least the complicity if not direction of the U.S., detained and beat American teenager Gulet Mohamed during interrogation sessions.  Just yesterday, a federal judge "reacted skeptically" to the Obama DOJ's demands for dismissal of a lawsuit (on secrecy grounds) brought by an American citizen imprisoned for four months in Africa, where "U.S. officials threatened him with torture, forced disappearance and other serious harm unless he confessed to ties with al-Qaida in Somalia." 

Scahill's discovery of this secret prison in Mogadishu -- this black site -- calls into serious doubt the Obama administration's claims to have ended such practices and establishes a serious human rights violation on its own.  As Harper's Scott Horton put it, the Nation article underscores how the CIA is "maintaining a series of 'special relationships' under which cooperating governments maintain[] proxy prisons for the CIA," and "raises important questions" about "whether the CIA is using a proxy regime there to skirt Obama's executive order" banning black sites and torture.

Despite the significance of this revelation -- or, more accurately, because of it -- the U.S. establishment media has almost entirely ignored this story.  Scahill thus far has given a grand total of two television interviews: on Democracy Now and Al Jazeera.  No major television news network -- including MSNBC -- has even mentioned his story.  Generally speaking, Republicans don't care that the worst abuses of the Bush era are continuing, and Democrats (who widely celebrated Dana Priest's 2006 Pulitzer Prize winning story about Bush's CIA black cites) don't want to hear that it's true. 

Meanwhile, the CIA has been insisting that discussion of this Mogadishu site could jeopardize its operations in Somalia, and while that typical, manipulative tactic didn't stop Scahill from informing the citizenry about this illicit behavior, it has (as usual) led government-subservient American media stars to refrain from discussing it.  Indeed, Scahill said that this site is such common knowledge in Mogadishu (where even ordinary residents call it "that CIA building") that he'd be "very surprised" if international reporters who cover Somalia were unaware of it; he has confirmed with certainty that at least one correspondent covering East Africa for one of the world's leading media outlets was aware of, but never reported, the CIA's role at this secret prison.

While the establishment media has been largely ignoring Scahill's revelations, a few particularly government-pleasing journalists have been dutifully following the CIA's script in order to undermine the credibility of Scahill's story.  CNN's long-time Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr -- one of the most reliable DoD stenographers in the nation (she actually announced that the real Abu Ghraib scandal was the unauthorized release of the photographs, not the abuse they depicted) -- has been predictably tapped by the CIA to take the lead in this effort.  Earlier this week, Starr filed a truly incredible report -- based exclusively on a "U.S. official" to whom she naturally granted anonymity -- that had no purpose other than to refute Scahill's report even though Starr never once mentioned that report:

CIA operatives have secretly traveled to Mogadishu, Somalia, to help interrogate terrorism suspects about operations in East Africa and Yemen, a senior U.S. official told CNN Tuesday.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, stressed any suspects were under the control of Somali forces and the CIA was present only in "support" of interrogations in recent months. He described the number of times the CIA was present as "very small," adding that he would only say it was "one or two times."

"Only on very rare occasion does the CIA support debriefings of suspected terrorists who are in TFG (Transitional Federal Government) custody," the official told CNN.

Starr pretended that this was a headline-making scoop for CNN -- that a CIA official had bravely revealed some sort of unauthorized secret to her: that the CIA "helps" interrogate a "very small" number of Terrorism suspects in Somalia in a "support" role -- when it was plainly nothing more than an effort to undermine Scahill's report by claiming that the CIA's role was extremely limited (nothing more than a little help given to the Somalis) and that it was Somalia that controlled, ran and maintained responsibility for the prison.  Not only did Starr never mention the key facts -- that this prison is kept secret from the ICRC and imprisons detainees without due process who are rendered from other nations at the behest of the U.S. and that the CIA pays the agents there -- but she also helpfully wrote down that "the CIA gets assurances from the [Somali government] that detainees will not be mistreated," and then added that the real significance of the story is that it "underscores the growing U.S. concern about the rise of terrorist networks in the region."

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In sum, Starr was handed a CIA press release that falsely denied the key elements of Scahill's story, which she then disguised as an anonymous unauthorized leak that she uncovered.  She slothfully and obediently disseminated CIA claims designed to minimize its role in this prison without lifting a finger to resolve the differences between those denials and the numerous facts Scahill uncovered which proved how extensive the CIA's control of the prison (and the rendition program that fills it) actually is.  

It's not just lazy but deceitful: uncritically printing anonymous government denials while dressing it up as her own discovery (once Nation representatives complained to CNN, she tacked on this sentence at the end: "Parts of the story initially appeared in the magazine The Nation on Tuesday").  Whether it was Starr who contacted the CIA to obtain this "story" (unlikely) or the CIA which tapped Starr on the head and directed her to print this and she then dutifully complied (far more likely), this was a joint effort by the U.S. Government and its CNN servant to undermine Scahill and his story while appearing not to do so.

Serving the same purpose was this ABC News report by Luis Martinez, which at least has the virtue of being more honest than Starr's report:  ABC doesn't pretend to do anything other than serve as obedient stenographer to the CIA by uncritically writing down and passing on the statements of an anonymous Government official in denying Scahill's report.  Leaving aside the slovenly practice of granting anonymity to government officials to do nothing other than issue official government claims -- so common a tactic of journalistic malpractice as to not merit comment at this point -- the article does nothing other than print the same CIA claims without expending a molecule of energy to determine if the claims are true. 

Worse, ABC allows the CIA to depict Scahill's report as false by uncritically printing the blatant strawmen against which the CIA rails ("CIA Doesn't Run Secret Prison in Somalia" . . . CIA "refutes a report that the agency runs a secret prison in that unstable country" . . . "A story published in The Nation said that the CIA was running a secret prison to house and interrogate terror suspects").  The whole point of Scahill's article is that while the Somalis exercise nominal control over the prison, that's merely a "plausible deniability" ruse to allow the U.S. to use it at will, as evidenced by the fact that the CIA pays those agents and is continuously present.  The "denials" uncritically printed by ABC confirm and bolster Scahill's story, not "refute" it.  

Worse still, the ABC report justifies the CIA program by quoting the anonymous CIA official as describing the program as "the logical and prudent thing to do."  ABC then helpfully adds that "senior U.S. officials have expressed concern that al Shabab may be trying to expand its terror operations beyond Somalia" and that " U.S. government officials worry that those lawless regions might become a safe haven for al Shabab and other terror groups."  There is no discussion -- zero -- of the illegal aspects of maintaining a secret prison, the dangers of allowing unchecked renditions of prisoners to Somalia hidden from international human rights monitoring, or the likely violations of Obama's highly-touted Executive Orders.  Like Starr's CNN report, this article is nothing more than a CIA Press Release masquerading as an ABC News "news article," the by-product of a joint effort by the CIA and another establishment news outlet to make Scahill's report look erroneous, sloppy and irrelevant.

Just consider what happened here.  Scahill uncovered this secret prison because he went to Mogadishu -- dangerously unembedded, as very few journalists are willing to do -- and spent 9 days there aggressively digging around.  By contrast, Starr published her report by being handed a CIA script which she blindly read from without any other work, and ABC's Martinez then did the same.  But it's CNN and ABC that are considered -- by themselves and establishment D.C. mavens -- to be the Serious Journalists, while Scahill's report is heard only on Democracy Now and Al Jazeera.  That's because "Serious Journalism" in Washington means writing down what government officials tell you to say, and granting them anonymity to ensure they have no accountability.  

Through this method, the U.S. Government need not directly attack real journalists.  They simply activate their journalistic servants to do it for them, and those servants then dutifully comply, this ensuring that they will continue to be chosen as vessels for future official messages. 

 

UPDATE:  Last night, Scahill also appeared on RT's The Alyona Show to discuss his report, bringing his total number of TV interviews to 3 (like Democracy Now and Al Jazeera, RT also covers vital stories that the establishment media steadfastly ignores, which is why it's despised and mocked by DC media stars).

Wired publishes the full Manning-Lamo chat logs

(updated below)

Yesterday -- more than a full year after it first released selected portions of purported chat logs between Bradley Manning and government informant Adrian Lamo (representing roughly 25% of the logs) -- Wired finally published the full logs (with a few redactions).  From the start, Wired had the full chat logs and was under no constraints from its source (Lamo) about what it could publish; it was free to publish all of it but chose on its own to withhold most of what it received. 

Last June -- roughly a week after Wired's publication of the handpicked portions -- I reviewed the long and complex history between Lamo and Wired Editor Kevin Poulsen, documented the multiple, serious inconsistencies in Lamo's public claims (including ones in a lengthy interview with me), and argued that Wired should "either publish all of the chat logs, or be far more diligent about withholding only those parts which truly pertain only to Manning's private and personal matters and/or which would reveal national security secrets."  Six months later, in December, I documented that numerous media reports about Manning and WikiLeaks were based on Lamo's claims about what Manning told him in these chats -- claims that could not be verified or disputed because Wired continued to conceal the relevant parts of the chat logs -- and again called for "as much pressure as possible be applied to Wired to release those chat logs or, at the very least, to release the portions about which Lamo is making public claims or, in the alternative, confirm that they do not exist."

Now that Wired has released the full chats, I just want to highlight a few passages that they concealed, and dispassionately lay out several key facts, so that everyone can decide for themselves if Wired told the truth about their conduct and assess the journalistic propriety of it. Before I first wrote about Manning's arrest and the conduct of Wired's reporting of it, I interviewed Poulsen by email and published the full exchange.  Just look at what he told me about the material Wired was withholding:

GG: Last question: you published what were clearly excerpts of the chats between Lamo and Manning - did he provide you with the whole unedited version and if, so, do you intend to publish it? Or is what you published everything he gave you?

KP: He did, but I don't think we'll be publishing more any time soon. The remainder is either Manning discussing personal matters that aren't clearly related to his arrest, or apparently sensitive government information that I'm not throwing up without vetting first.

So Poulsen claimed that the concealed portions were either (1) personal matters or (2) sensitive government information that needed vetting (Wired made a similar claim when releasing the log excerpts, claiming that what was withheld was either "portions of the chats that discuss deeply personal information about Manning or that reveal apparently sensitive military information").  As it turns out, while some of what Wired withheld was certainly personal information about Manning of no newsworthy relevance (and nobody, including me, ever objected to that material being withheld), substantial portions of what they withheld do not even arguably fall within those categories, but instead provide vital context and information about what actually happened here.  To say that Poulsen's claims about what Wired withheld were factually false is to put it generously.

Just consider some of what Wired concealed.  First we have this, from very early on in the first Manning-Lamo conversation (emphasis added):

MANNING:  uhm, trying to keep a low profile for now though, just a warning

LAMO: I'm a journalist and a minister. You can pick either, and treat this as a confession or an interview (never to be published) & enjoy a modicum of legal protection.

In a subsequent conversation, Lamo again promised him: "i told you, none of this is for print." 

So Lamo lied to and manipulated Manning by promising him the legal protections of a journalist-source and priest-penitent relationship, and independently assured him that their discussions were "never to be published" and were not "for print."  Knowing this, Wired hid from the public this part of their exchange, published the chat in violation of Lamo's clear not-for-publication pledges, allowed Lamo to be quoted repeatedly in the media over the next year as some sort of credible and trustworthy source driving reporting on the Manning case, all while publicly (and falsely) insisting that the only chat log portions it was withholding were -- to use Poulsen's words -- "either Manning discussing personal matters . . .  or apparently sensitive government information."  As BoingBoing's Rob Beschizza put it in rejecting Wired's claims: this passage "reads like a deliberated attempt to manipulate or even entrap Manning, on Lamo's part, and seems quite important to understanding what Manning thought he was doing by talking to him."  There are multiple passages for which that's true.

While concealing information that would cast Lamo in a negative light, Wired also concealed portions that cast doubt on the DOJ's efforts to prosecute WikiLeaks and Julian Assange:

LAMO: in all seriousness, would you shoot if MP's showed up? ;>

MANNING: why would i need to?

LAMO: suicide by MP. . . .

MANNING: do i seem unhinged?

LAMO: i mean, showed up -- for you -- if Julian were to slip up.

MANNING: he knows very little about me

MANNING: he takes source protection uber-seriously

MANNING: "lie to me" he says

LAMO: Really. Interesting.

MANNING: he wont work with you if you reveal too much about yourself

So here's Manning making clear that Assange has virtually no idea who Manning even is, that Assange purposely goes out of his way not to know the identity of WikiLeaks sources, and -- to use Manning's words -- Assange "takes source protection uber-seriously."  Does anyone need to explain how relevant that is to public discussions of WikiLeaks generally or the specific suggestions that Assange could or should be prosecuted as Manning's co-conspirator?  Independently, that Assange is fanatical about source protection is crucial to know. 

Whatever else is true, in light of these fascinating, relevant passages, can anyone argue that Poulsen told the truth when claiming that the only material that Wired withheld was either Manning's personal information or national security secrets?  Isn't it clear that Poulsen and Wired were hand-picking which passages to release and conceal in order to shield Lamo's conduct and claims from scrutiny and make WikiLeaks look as bad as possible: the concern that those of us had in the first place in allowing Poulsen of all people to arbitrate what gets released and what gets disclosed?  

Then there are the lies that Lamo was permitted to tell for a full year -- lies that Wired's concealment of the logs enabled.  To explain how Manning was able to send huge volumes of material to WikiLeaks, Lamo told The New York Times last December that Manning "did an actual physical drop-off when he was back in the United States in January of this year" -- something we now know Manning never even alluded to, let alone told Lamo.  Lamo's claim in his interview with me about one of the great mysteries here -- namely, how and why Manning chose him of all people to contact and confess to (Manning "was searching for 'Wikileaks' on Twitter") -- is also not in the chat logs, certainly not with that specificity.  Nor is Lamo's contradictory claims to both CNET and The Washingtonian -- that Manning found Lamo as a result of reading Poulsen's account in Wired of Lamo's involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital -- referenced in these logs either.  The full chat logs also prove Lamo lied to Yahoo! News when he told them "that [Lamo] spelled out very clearly in his chats with Manning that he wasn't affiliated with WikiLeaks or acting as a journalist," nor is there any mention in the logs of this story Lamo told to the BBC:

I did tell [Manning] that I worked as a journalist. I would have been happy to write about him myself, but we just decided that it would be too unethical."

And Lamo's statement in my interview with him -- that Manning's "intention was to cripple the United States' foreign relations for the foreseeable future" -- also appears to be a complete fabrication; Manning talked endlessly about his desire to trigger worldwide reforms, not to cripple American foreign relations.

In sum, the full chat logs -- in particular the parts Wired concealed for over a year -- prove that Adrian Lamo is a serial liar whose claims are inherently unreliable.  But Wired's selective editing prevented this from being proven -- served to shield from critical scrutiny the person the BBC accurately described as Poulsen's "long-time associate" -- and thus enabled Lamo to run around for a full year masquerading as a reliable source, making claims that were fabrications and driving much of the reporting about the Manning and WikiLeaks investigations.  Enabling false claims to be disseminated to the public on a vital news story -- by withholding plainly relevant information that proves those claims false -- is the opposite of the purpose of journalism, as is needlessly withholding key context to the events one is purporting to describe; yet that's exactly what Wired did here, and continued to do despite growing calls for the release of this information.

Then there's the fact that Manning -- far from being some anonymous, low-level, invisible grunt -- had, or at least claimed to have, some very high-level connections; as Jane Hamsher details, that includes Shin Inouye, a White House spokesman and long-time Obama aide, whom Manning claimed to Lamo was one of his "sources," along with numerous other politically connected figures whose names Wired redacted.  Manning's claimed repeated contacts with a White House aide and other key political officials constitutes neither personal information nor national security secrets -- it certainly seems to be in the public interest to know -- yet was actively concealed by Wired.

Then we arrive at Wired's explanation yesterday for why they suddenly decided to release the full logs.  To justify the decision to disclose the full logs, Wired.com Editor-in-Chief Evan Hansen writes that "by all evidence, Manning is a figure of historic importance."  Is that something that just dawned on Hansen?  That was the crux of my argument more than a year ago: that Wired should release the relevant chat excerpts it was concealing or at least confirm or deny public claims Lamo made about those chats "in light of the magnitude of this story on several levels."  This has always been the heart and soul of the criticism of Wired: that they were not withholding relevant material in some ancillary, insignificant case, but rather one of the most important political events of the last decade.  It's nice that Hansen finally realized this, albeit a year late.

Then there's the national security secrets Poulsen claimed to be valiantly safeguarding until he could "vet" them.  What happened to those?  Did Wired vet them (such as Manning's statement, concealed by Wired until yesterday, that "approximately 85-90% of global transmissions are sifted through by NSA" or that " 85% of [U.S. aid to Pakistan] is for F-16 fighters and munitions to aid in the Afghanistan effort, so the US can call in Pakistanis to do aerial bombing instead of americans potentially killing civilians and creating a PR crisis")?  As it turns out, there are very few passages in these logs that could arguably qualify as national security secrets.  And amazingly, Hansen admits:  "We have been satisfied for some time that there is nothing of military importance in the unpublished logs."  Then what justified Wired's refusal to release those parts until now?

Ironically, I find Hansen's explanation about why Wired now published the portions of the chat logs dealing with deeply personal matters -- such as Manning's gender identity struggles and desire to transition to female -- to be less than persuasive.  He argues, not unreasonably, that New York Magazine's recent discussion of Manning's personal issues dilutes the privacy concerns.  That's true, though I'm not sure it's necessary for people to read about Manning's detailed discussions of his gender struggles.  But that's a close call about which I don't have any strong opinion. 

The key point is that -- contrary to Hansen's blatant strawman back in December when he addressed my criticism -- nobody, and certainly not me, ever called for the indiscriminate publication of the portions of the chat logs dealing exclusively with Manning's personal, non-relevant matters.  To the contrary -- as the quotes above demonstrate -- I repeatedly argued that such purely personal material was properly withheld.  Rather, the controversy was over Wired's obvious concealment of matters outside of the scope of Manning's personal issues, ones that were plainly relevant to newsworthy matters and, in particular, to Lamo's claims about what Manning told him.  The concern was that Wired was concealing material to glorify and shield its source, Poulsen's long-time associate Adrian Lamo, in a way that distorted the truth and, independently, denied the public important context for what happened here.  Wired's release of the full chat logs leaves no doubt that those concerns were justified, and that Wired was less than honest about what it was concealing. 

UPDATE:  Last December, in the wake of the controversy created by my re-raising of this issue and Wired's response, BoingBoing noted that Hansen, Wired.com's Editor-in-Chief (as well as Poulsen), finally began responding to some inquiries about what the concealed portions contain and do not contain (which is what I had been requesting all along).  Among other things, Hansen said this:

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BoingBoing understood that claim the way I did, the only way it reasonably could have been: as Hansen's confirmation that "no further discussion about the relationship between Manning and Assange" is contained in the concealed portions -- a vital matter in light of the DOJ's efforts to tie Assange to Manning as his co-conspirator.  But how can Hansen's claim possibly be reconciled with the significant passage -- previously withheld and now quoted above -- in which Manning explains that Assange purposely remained ignorant of his identity?  Isn't that rather obviously a "discussion about the relationship between Manning and Assange" which, contrary to Hansen's assurances, Wired was indeed concealing?  And again, whatever one's views are on the significance of that passage -- and I think it's highly significant -- it squarely contradicts Poulsen's claims about the two categories of information Wired withheld (personal information and sensitive government secrets).

US more unpopular in the Arab world than under Bush

I've written numerous times over the last year about rapidly worsening perceptions of the U.S. in the Muslim world, including a Pew poll from April finding that Egyptians view the U.S. more unfavorably now than they did during the Bush presidency.  A new poll released today of six Arab nations -- Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco -- contains even worse news on this front:

The hope that the Arab world had not long ago put in the United States and President Obama has all but evaporated.

Two and a half years after Obama came to office, raising expectations for change among many in the Arab world, favorable ratings of the United States have plummeted in the Middle East, according to a new poll conducted by Zogby International for the Arab American Institute Foundation.

In most countries surveyed, favorable attitudes toward the United States dropped to levels lower than they were during the last year of the Bush administration . . . Pollsters began their work shortly after a major speech Obama gave on the Middle East . . . Fewer than 10 percent of respondents described themselves as having a favorable view of Obama.

What's striking is that none of these is among the growing list of countries we're occupying and bombing.  Indeed, several are considered among the more moderate and U.S.-friendly nations in that region, at least relatively speaking.  Yet even in this group of nations, anti-U.S. sentiment is at dangerously (even unprecedentedly) high levels.

In one sense, this is hardly surprising, given the escalating violence and bombing the U.S. is bringing to that region, its ongoing fealty to Israel, and the dead-ender support the American government gave to that region's besieged dictators.  Though unsurprising, it's still remarkable.  After all, one of the central promises of an Obama presidency was a re-making of America in the eyes of that part of the world, but the opposite is taking place.  

More significantly, as democracy slowly but inexorably takes hold, consider the type of leaders that will be elected in light of this pervasive anti-American hostility.  When the U.S. propped up dictators to suppress those populations, public opinion was irrelevant; now that that scheme is collapsing, public opinion will become far more consequential, and it does not bode well either for U.S. interests (as defined by the American government) or the U.S.'s ability to extract itself from its posture of Endless War in that region.  Given that it is anti-American sentiment that, more than anything else, fuels Terrorism (as the Pentagon itself has long acknowledged), we yet again find the obvious truth: the very policies justified in the name of combating Terrorism are the same ones that do the most to sustain and perpetuate it.

* * * * * 

3 somewhat related items:

(1) I recorded a BloggingheadsTV session yesterday with Law Professor Ilya Somin, discussing the illegality of the war in Libya, the debt ceiling drama, and the Drug War.  That can be viewed on the recorder below (specific segments can be selected here):

 

(2) I was recently given a copy of a book of essays by the playwright and actor Wallace Shawn which I can't recommend highly enough (given to me, coincidentally, by Shawn himself).  The first half of the book examines multiple political topics, while the second half contains more personal reflections, but it all has an amazing thematic coherence.  It's short and easy to read, but incredibly thought-provoking and novel in its own subtle, idiosyncratic way.  It can be purchased from Amazon at a discounted price, or a more noble means of acquring it is directly from the independent publisher at a slightly increased price.  I don't often recommend books, but this one is definitely worth your time and attention.

 

(3) Col. Lawrence Wilkerson -- the former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell and one of the most vocal critics of Bush/Cheney Terrorism and foreign policy (who supported Obama in 2008) -- was on Keith Olbermann's program last night discussing Obama's foreign policy as well as the treatment of Bradley Manning; it's highly worth watching, as Wilkerson discusses why these actions have caused him to re-consider his support for the President:

America's creditor identifies its budget problem

As the GOP and a Democratic President plot to cut the safety net for Americans based on an alleged debt crisis, it's extraordinary how little attention this problem receives:

The United States is spending too much on its military in light of its recent economic troubles, China's top general said Monday while playing down his country's own military capabilities.

The chief of the General Staff of the People's Liberation Army, Chen Bingde, told reporters he thought the U.S. should cut back on defense spending for the sake of its taxpayers. He was speaking during a joint news conference in which he traded barbs with visiting U.S. counterpart Adm. Mike Mullen.

"I know the U.S. is still recovering from the financial crisis," Chen said. "Under such circumstances, it is still spending a lot of money on its military and isn't that placing too much pressure on the taxpayers?

"If the U.S. could reduce its military spending a bit and spend more on improving the livelihood of the American people ... wouldn't that be a better scenario?" he said. . . .

China's military budget of $95 billion this year is the world's second-highest after Washington's planned $650 billion in defense spending.

Since America's political and media class steadfastly ignore this glaringly obvious point, it's nice (albeit self-interested) of the Chinese to point it out for us.  As we endlessly hear about a massive debt crisis, the current President has started one optional war that has already exceeded its estimated costs, plans to continue (if not escalate) two more, is drone-attacking a new country on a seemingly weekly basis, expands sprawling covert military actions in still other countries, builds new overseas detention facilities, all while offering only the most modest, symbolic and illusory "cuts" in military spending.  The alleged need to slash the financial security of American citizens -- and the notion that America faces a severe debt crisis -- would be more persuasive if the country didn't continue its posture of Endless War and feeding the insatiable, bloated National Security State (to say nothing of the equally insatible and wasteful Drug War and its evil spawn, the , which the Obama administration is expanding as aggressively as the War on Terror).

While it's true that reducing American military spending to a level in line with the rest of the world would not erase American debt levels, it would be a meaningful contributor.  More important, it would indicate that American elites are willing to do more than blithely impose pain on, and demand sacrifice from, ordinary Americans, already suffering economically in so many ways and victimized by third-world levels of rapidly growing wealth inequality.  That America's war-making industry is largely shielded from this "austerity" reveals how pretextual are these claims of crisis.  It's nice of the Chinese to point this out, but doing so only reveals how incomplete and distorted our own political discourse has become.

* * * * *

Even as he vowed to veto temporary increases in the debt ceiling, President Obama today threatened that Social Security checks may not be able to be sent after August 2, prompting this email from a reader -- who relies on disability checks -- expressing severe fears that I am certain are pervasive across the nation:

Intellectually, I know this is all kabuki and that I ought to ignore the whole contrived issue. Yet, it would harm me so severely if checks really did not go out, and moreover, I am increasingly certain that "they" will be coming after my disability and Medicare/Medicaid soon regardless of what happens in August; they've already taken away my optical coverage and much of dental. (And as I age, I need both more and more.) These issues make it hard for me to stay politically aware because they are so personally threatening, and yet, I still care so much about those things that matter that I can't stay offline.

As is always true, the ones who bear the brunt of American political "sacrifice" and posturing are the ones who can least afford to do so.

UN torture official accuses US of rule violations

In response to the growing controversy over the inhumane detention conditions of Bradley Manning, the U.N.'s top official on torture, Juan Mendez, announced last December that his office would formally investigate whether those conditions amounted to torture.  Since then, the Obama administration has steadfastly rejected Mendez's repeated requests to interview Manning in private: something even Bush officials allowed for "high-level" Guantanamo detainees accused of being top Al Qaeda operatives (see p. 3).  Now, Mendez is publicly accusing the Obama administration of violating U.N. rules by refusing him private access to Manning:

The United Nations' torture investigator on Tuesday accused the United States of violating U.N. rules by refusing him unfettered access to the Army private accused of passing classified documents to WikiLeaks.

Juan Mendez, the U.N.'s special rapporteur for torture, said he can't do his job unless he has unmonitored access to detainees. He said the U.S. military's insistence on monitoring conversations with Bradley Manning "violates long-standing rules" the U.N. follows for visits to inmates. . .

Mendez said the U.S. government assured him Manning is better treated now than he was in Quantico, but the government must allow the U.N. investigator to check that for himself.

Mendez said he needs to assess whether the conditions Manning experienced amounted to "torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" while at Quantico.

"For that, it is imperative that I talk to Mr. Manning under conditions where I can be assured that he is being absolutely candid," Mendez said.

During the Bush years, the pronouncements of the U.N.'s rapporteur for torture were widely hailed in progressive circles, but caring about what the U.N. thinks -- like concerns over detainee abuse -- is so very 2006.  After all, look over there: it's Michele Bachmann [speaking of things that are very 2006, Human Rights Watch (remember them?) has issued a report detailing that the Obama administration is in flagrant breach of its treaty obligations (remember those?) by continuing to shield Bush torture crimes from all forms of accountability].  As for the Obama administration's strange refusal to allow a private U.N. interview with Manning -- something even Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was allowed by the Bush Pentagon in 2006 with the ICRC -- hasn't the Government taught us that you have nothing to hide if you've done nothing wrong?

* * * * * 

In response to the front-page stories earlier this week in both The Washington Post and The New York Times reporting that President Obama was advocating cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, some insisted that these stories should not be believed because they relied upon (multiple) anonymous sources.  Yesterday, Obama himself made as plain as he could that these stories were entirely accurate, as he said in his Press Conference:

And it is possible for us to construct a package that would be balanced, would share sacrifice, would involve both parties taking on their sacred cows, would involved some meaningful changes to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid that would preserve the integrity of the programs and keep our sacred trust with our seniors, but make sure those programs were there for not just this generation but for the next generation. . . . I mean, it's not an option for us to just sit by and do nothing. And if you're a progressive who cares about the integrity of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, and believes that it is part of what makes our country great that we look after our seniors and we look after the most vulnerable, then we have an obligation to make sure that we make those changes that are required to make it sustainable over the long term. . . . With respect to Social Security, as I indicated earlier, making changes to these programs is so difficult that this may be an opportunity for us to go ahead and do something smart that strengthens Social Security and gives not just this generation but future generations the opportunity to say this thing is going to be in there for the long haul.

For all but the most hardened and irrational apologists, that should settle this matter permanently: Obama is a full-scale advocate for cutting the crown jewels of the New Deal.  Yesterday, The Huffington Post reported -- based on "five separate sources with knowledge of negotiations -- including both Republicans and Democrats" -- that Obama had also offered to raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67.  When Joe Lieberman proposed something similar a short time ago, he was viciously denounced in Democratic circles as "needlessly cruel," among other things; indeed, when Lieberman merely blocked a lowering of the Medicare eligibility age during the health care debate, he was denounced with equal vigor.  Will there be any similar resistance from those circles now that it is Barack Obama doing this? 

Iraq War veteran on Manning, the media and the military

(updated below)

Last week, New York Magazine published a somewhat tabloidy profile of Bradley Manning by Steven Fishman, focusing on the purported personal and psychological aspects of his life as a means of understanding his alleged leaking, and I responded to it the following day.  Now there is another response that I hope as many people as possible read; with permission, I'm publishing it in its entirety below.  It's by former Army Specialist Ethan McCord, who served in Bravo Company 2-16, the ground troops involved in the "Collateral Murder" video released by Wikileaks in April of last year and allegedly leaked by Manning (McCord can be seen in the video carrying the wounded children from the bullet riddled van).  Just consider what Spc. McCord says about Manning ("a hero of mine"), the media coverage of these leaks, and what all of this reveals about American wars and how we're propagandized about them:

Serving with my unit 2nd battalion 16th infantry in New Baghdad Iraq, I vividly remember the moment in 2007, when our Battalion Commander walked into the room and announced our new rules of engagement:

"Listen up, new battalion SOP (standing operating procedure) from now on: Anytime your convoy gets hit by an IED, I want 360 degree rotational fire. You kill every [expletive] in the street!"

We weren't trained extensively to recognize an unlawful order, or how to report one. But many of us could not believe what we had just been told to do. Those of us who knew it was morally wrong struggled to figure out a way to avoid shooting innocent civilians, while also dodging repercussions from the non-commissioned officers who enforced the policy. In such situations, we determined to fire our weapons, but into rooftops or abandoned vehicles, giving the impression that we were following procedure.

On April 5, 2010 American citizens and people around the world got a taste of the fruits of this standing operating procedure when WikiLeaks released the now-famous Collateral Murder video. This video showed the horrific and wholly unnecessary killing of unarmed Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists.

I was part of the unit that was responsible for this atrocity. In the video, I can be seen attempting to carry wounded children to safety in the aftermath.

The video released by WikiLeaks belongs in the public record. Covering up this incident is a matter deserving of criminal inquiry. Whoever revealed it is an American hero in my book.

Private First Class Bradley Manning has been confined for over a year on the government's accusation that he released this video and volumes of other classified documents to WikiLeaks -- an organization that has been selectively publishing portions of this information in collaboration with other news outlets.

If PFC Bradley Manning did what he is accused of doing, then it is clear -- from chat logs that have been attributed to him -- that his decision was motivated by conscience and political agency. These chat logs allegedly describe how PFC Manning hopes these revelations will result in "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms."

Unfortunately, Steve Fishman's article Bradley Manning's Army of One in New York Magazine (July 3, 2011) erases Manning's political agency. By focusing so heavily on Manning's personal life, Fishman removes politics from a story that has everything to do with politics. The important public issues wrapped up with PFC Manning's case include: transparency in government; the Obama Administration's unprecedented pursuit of whistle-blowers; accountability of government and military in shaping and carrying out foreign policy; war crimes revealed in the WikiLeaks documents; the catalyzing role these revelations played in democratic movements across the Middle East; and more.

The contents of the WikiLeaks revelations have pulled back the curtain on the degradation of our democratic system. It has become completely normal for decision-makers to promulgate foreign policies, diplomatic strategies, and military operating procedures that are hostile to the democratic ideals our country was founded upon. The incident I was part of -- shown in the Collateral Murder video -- becomes even more horrific when we grasp that it was not exceptional. PFC Manning himself is alleged to describe (in the chat logs) an incident where he was ordered to turn over innocent Iraqi academics to notorious police interrogators, for the offense of publishing a political critique of government corruption titled, "Where did the money go?" These issues deserve "discussion, debates, and reforms" -- and attention from journalists.

Fishman's article was also ignorant of the realities of military service. Those of us who serve in the military are often lauded as heroes. Civilians need to understand that we may be heroes, but we are not saints. We are young people under a tremendous amount of stress. We face moral dilemmas that many civilians have never even contemplated hypothetically.

Civil society honors military service partly because of the sacrifice it entails. Lengthy and repeated deployments stress our closest relationships with family and friends. The realities, traumas, and stresses of military life take an emotional toll. This emotional battle is part of the sacrifice that we honor. That any young soldier might wrestle with his or her experiences in the military, or with his or her identity beyond military life, should never be wielded as a weapon against them.

If PFC Bradley Manning did what he is accused of, he is a hero of mine; not because he's perfect or because he never struggled with personal or family relationships -- most of us do -- but because in the midst of it all he had the courage to act on his conscience.

Shortly after the Collateral Murder video was released, I interviewed McCord's fellow Specialist in that company, Josh Stieber, who said much the same about what this video revealed: as he put it, what was depicted in that video "is a very common occurrence" (that interview with Stieber took place just days after a Democratic Party loyalist-warcheerleading-chickenhawk invoked trite Rovian demonizing rhetoric to accuse me of hating The Troops for pointing out the same fact; beyond Stieber and McCord, I have lots of strange company when it comes to making this observation about American wars). 

This view of Manning as heroic by a fellow Iraq War veteran is hardly surprising; after all, some who witness first-hand both the pervasive wrongful conduct in which soldiers are ordered to engage, combined with the passive acquiescence of most who witness and participate in it, will understandably view the leaker of these materials as heroic for taking action to stop it even upon substantial risk to their own liberty and possibly life.  As I wrote last week about Fishman's article:

The notion that [Manning's] reactions to wholly unjustified, massive blood-spilling is psychologically warped is itself warped. The reactions described there are psychologically healthy; it's far more psychologically disturbed not to have the reactions Manning had. There are countless people who knew from the start, or who ultimately concluded, that the Iraq War was an act of supreme barbarism. Many who so concluded -- especially among our political and media elite -- did nothing to stop it or bring accountability for those who caused it; Manning, by stark and commendable contrast, took action. Which is the psychologically suspect behavior? Manning was clearly motivated by the principle attributed by the New York article to Julian Assange, but espoused by countless heroic activists and philosophers throughout history: "Every time we witness an act that we feel to be unjust and do not act, we become a party to injustice."

The morality at play in the Manning persecution is mangled beyond belief. It's perfectly conventional wisdom that the war in Iraq was an act of profoundly unjust destruction, yet normal, psychologically healthy people are expected to passively accept that there should be no consequences for those responsible (a well-intentioned policy mistake), while one of the very few people to risk his life and liberty to stop it and similar acts is demonized as a mentally ill criminal. Similarly, the numerous acts of corruption, deceit and criminality Manning allegedly exposed are ignored or even sanctioned, while the only punished criminal is -- as usual -- the one who courageously brought those acts to light. Meanwhile, Americans love to cheer for the Arab Spring rebellions -- look at those inspiring people standing up to their evil dictators and demanding freedom -- yet the American government officials who propped up those dictators for decades and helped suppress those revolts, including the ones currently in power, are treated as dignified statesmen, while a person who actually exposed those tyrants and played at least some role in triggering those inspiring revolts (Manning) rots in a prison after enduring 10 months of deeply inhumane treatment.

The same can be said of our other ongoing and escalating wars.  McCord's letter was submitted to New York, and that magazine will apparently publish portions of it as a Letter to the Editor; we'll see which portions find the light of day.  Either way, the world needs far more of McCord's experience-based observations -- that the U.S. Government routinely engages in pervasive corruption, deceit, and illegality in secret, and those who shed light on it are heroic -- than we do more meandering speculation about Bradley Manning's relationship with his father and struggles with sexuality as a means of degrading this highly political and commendable act into some sort of symptom of emotional instability and mental illness.  Those latter afflictions are demonstrated far more by acquiescence to (and support for) these acts and the leaders who perpetrate them than they are by meaningful dissent from and opposition to these policies.  Anyone who doubts that should read Ethan McCord's letter.

UPDATE:  In the wake of the Pentagon Papers leak, the Nixon White House engineered a break-in of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist because depicting him as mentally ill was the strategy of political leaders to discredit him and distract from the substance of his leaks.  Now, political leaders need not do that because they have the exceedingly subservient establishment media to do it for them -- hence the front-page publication by The New York Times on the day WikiLeaks released the Iraq War documents of the sleazy hit piece by John Burns depicting Julian Assange as a paranoid, mentally unstable loser, followed by the current media fixation on doing the same to Bradley Manning. The hallmark of political and media establishments is to depict meaningful dissent from its orthodoxies as a form of mental illness, and conversely, acceptance of (or at least acquiescence to) its orthodoxies as a requirement for mental health (even when, as is true now, its orthodoxies are themselves warped and ill).

That tactic is as old as establishments themselves, though it's now most aggressively enforced by the "watchdog" media.  It's the media, rather than political leaders, which take the lead in serving most of the interests of the political establishment -- not just by depicting opponents of the political order as mentally ill but also uncritically disseminating its fear-mongering campaigns:

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Who needs White House fear-mongers, propagandists, plumbers and character assassins when so many in the establishment press compete so vigorously to perform those functions instead?