This is what the GWOT is really all about: war crimes and hatred

Check out this video posted on Live Leak:

On Live Leak this video is entitled "High Value Target (HVT) gets taken out".

What do you see?

I see an unarmed civilian running away.  Maybe it is indeed a terrorist, or some insurgency leader, but he is not dressed in any battle fatigue, nor does he appear to be armed.  In fact, let's assume that he is some kind of "High Value Target".  What do we see next?  The guy is clearly shot, which is confirmed by the voice of the soldiers recording it all on camera.  At this point, what we see is 

1) an unarmed person who is also

2) wounded and obviously unable to flee or resist

In other words, this person is considered as "hors de combat" which the Geneva Conventions define as:

A person is 'hors de combat' if:

(a) he is in the power of an adverse Party;

(b) he clearly expresses an intention to surrender; or

(c) he has been rendered unconscious or is otherwise incapacitated by wounds or sickness, and therefore is incapable of defending himself;

provided that in any of these cases he abstains from any hostile act and does not attempt to escape.

Not only can this man not run anymore, we can even hear the voice of the US solider saying "not moving now, stationary".

We then see several shots missing him until one hits the man in the head and kills him.

The deliberate execution of a person hors de combat is a war crime regardless of the actual identity of the murdered person.

What makes this all even more disgusting are the reactions in the comments section of Live Leak.  Here I just show a sampling which happened to be at the top of the comments section:

Clearly, the patriotic Neanderthals at Live Leak are absolutely delighted with this video.  And in spite of the obligatory and doubleplusgoodthinking sign at the top of the page opposing racial slurs, no such restrictions are placed on religious slurs.

What we see here is the very socio-psychological core of all the Imperial wars the USA has been waging for decades and, really, centuries: on one hand, murderous thugs who don't give a damn about any moral or legal principles of civilized mankind, and on the other, ignorant racist and bigoted brutes who engage in some kind of warped narcissistic projection and literally feel empowered by what "their" side can inflict on the "other" side.  The comment of "Armsdealer" is particularly revealing of the amazing "density of hate" (and ignorance) which can be packed into two short lines.

Wars of choice, wars of aggression, are fundamentally different from wars of liberation or defensive wars in that unlike the latter the former lack a moral or ethical basis.  This is hugely important: when a man fights for this country, nation, family or religion he does not need to demonize or dehumanize the enemy, nor does he need to come up with some convoluted logic to justify to himself and others why he is fighting. This is why for centuries man have come back from wars without turning into dysfunctional brutes.  But when is the last time the USA actually had to fight a war to defend itself against an enemy?  Even the American Revolutionary War does not qualify simply because it was fought by both sides over stolen land.  Hence the always present racist nomenclature used to dehumanize the enemy: spics, niggers, coons, injuns, gooks, ragheads, sand niggers, hajis, etc.

This is what this grotesque "Global War on Terror" does to people, on the battlefield and at home: its fills them with hatred and turns them into psychologically dysfunctional individuals.

20 years ago the last Soviet soldiers left Afghanistan

On February 15th, 1989 the last Soviet soldier crossed the (then) Soviet-Afghan border leaving behind over one million dead Afghans, several millions more wounded and displaced. This war cost the Soviet Union just under 14 thousand lives. This is, for sure, a disastrous tally and nobody in his right mind would attempt to qualify the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan as a "success".

Still, while unequivocally a failure and a tragedy, looking back at the Soviet presence in Afghanistan a number of thoughts occur to me which now, twenty years later, make me reassess some of the things I previously had believed.

First, who were the good guys and who were the bad guys in this war? Remember how at the time the Western propaganda had it nice and simple: The Soviet Union was the "Evil Empire" while the Afghans were "Freedom Fighters"? The Soviet system was evil alright, but does that make the Afghan resistance "good"? In hindsight I am inclined to believe that this war was not a war between good and evil but between bad and much, much *worse*?

There can be no doubt at all that the Afghans were defending their own country, that they were fundamentally in their right to oppose the Soviet occupation of their land. But beyond that, what kind of Afghanistan did most - thought not all - of the Afghan resistance fight for? A grotesque medieval Islamic nightmare I would say, the same type of society which Wahabis have always - and still are - trying to establish. Does that sound like typical US propaganda? Sure it does! But whoever said that the US propaganda cannot, at times, say the truth? Why should the US propaganda use only falsehoods when the truth is even more appalling?

Of course, as always, the real picture of what was going on in Afghanistan in these days was more complex than "resistance vs Soviets". The truth is that Afghanistan already had a strong secular left-leaning movement, that a lot of Afghan intellectuals supported the various secular regimes which preceded the Amin government and that even within the Afghan communist parties several distinct factions were fighting for power. The opposition to the Kabul government was also split into various factions, often along ethnic lines. Finally, Afghanistan has a long history of shifting alliances, of local warlords being bought-off by various forces, of endless infighting between clans, groups and local leaders. Very roughly, at least three main parties fought during the Soviet occupation: the Soviet backed communists, the forces under Ahmad Shah Massud in northern Afghanistan and the various Pashtun forces in the rest of the country. At the time, all of the resistance forces called itself "Islamic", but in reality ethnicity played a huge role in their composition.

Ahmad Shah was a very interesting figure. He was arguably the single most effective Afghan commander, but at the same time he was also willing to negotiate with the Soviets. The Russian military had a great deal of respect for him and the Russian military intelligence service GRU secretly negotiated a ceasefire with Masud without the Kremlin being briefed about these talks. Later, the ceasfire was eventually broken under the joint pressure of Nadjibullah and (the then Soviet Foreign Minister) Eduard Shevarnadze. What the ideologues on both failed to see, did not want to see, is what soldiers on both sides understood very well: Masud and the Soviets did not have any other fundamental disagreement besides the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Even more importantly, they had a common enemy: the Wahabi Pashtun extremists which would later become the Taliban.

Following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Soviet and, later, the Russians provided huge military and technical assistance to Massud and his movement which would eventually be re-branded as the "Northern Alliance". Once the Soviets left Afghanistan they became natural allies of Massud and forces.

In contrast, the Soviets truly despised the Pashtun Islamists. They saw them as illiterate barbarians with plenty of courage, but very little tactical or strategic skills. They saw them as either very corrupt or wholly fanaticized. Sadly, they were essentially correct.

The Soviets also tried their utmost to bring Afghanistan into the modern world: they built schools, promoted equal rights for women, assisted in agricultural project and infrastructure development. They provided much needed health care for thousands of destitute people and they pushed literacy programs. None of that was enough to create a moderate or secular middle class.

On the down side, when their forces were attacked, the Soviet also mercilessly destroyed Afghan villages and killed a huge amount of innocent civilians.

The basic Soviet counter-insurgency tactics was composed of the following elements:

1) occupy mountain tops using helicopter-dropped forces, often Airborne troops.
2) organize raiding counterinsurgency "operational maneuver groups" typically staffed by Border Guard troops lead by KGB Spetsnaz officers
3) maintain an intelligence/recon force supported by a network of local agents. Both the KGB and the GRU used such networks
4) prepare major raids by covertly introducing Spetsnaz GRU operators deep inside enemy territory and then follow up with DShB (air-assault) forces inserted by helicopters.
5) maintain regular military forces in all the large cities and use them to maintain the main roads under Soviet control.

All in all, these were very effective tactics which mostly confined the Afghan resistances to remote mountain valleys. The Soviet 40th Army's military performance in Afghanistan is vastly superior to the abject failure of the US/NATO force. Amazingly, but an under-financed, often under-equipped and under-staffed army of Soviet conscripts managed to achieve much more than the professional US/NATO forces. This is particularly true when one considers the fact that the Soviet had to fight both the Pashtuns and the Tadjiks and Uzbeks of Masud, whereas the US/NATO is only fighting the Pashtuns, clearly the inferior military force.

In many ways, the Soviet policies in Afghanistan were contradictory, and my point is not to make the Soviets look good, but to acknowledge one basic things: the Soviet were trying to prevent Afghanistan to become a base for the worst kind of Wahabi extremism. In contrast, the USA blinded by its hatred for the Soviet Union only succeeded in creating a monster which eventually - and inevitably - would turn against its former patron.

Almost the same situation was repeated in Chechnia. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the quasi total collapse of the state in Russia, the West threw its full support behind the Chechen separatists which were, I think, even worse than the Talibans. If the latter at least were sincere in their religious beliefs, the Chechens were first and foremost maniacal thugs, bloodthirsty butchers of the worst kind which only used Islam as a pious cover for their utterly amoral and perverted goals. I strongly suspect that some circles in Russia were actually interested in allowing the situation in Chechnya to degenerate into such a nightmarish chaos that nobody in his/her right mind would oppose the re-establishment of a powerful state. Once Putin came to power the Russian public essentially gave him 'carte blanche' to crush the Chechens, which he did very effectively by a combination of excellent military tactics and by simply buying off a good part of the Chechen leaders.

Though the "Chechen operation" eventually collapsed and, in many ways, made Russia not weaker but much stronger, there is no doubt that the West fully supported the Chechens, at least until 9/11. Only with the Twin Towers collapsing in flames did the Western elites suddenly loose their fancy for bearded gunman shooting at all sorts of "infidels" and "kafirs".

But has anything really changed?

The US and Europe are still automatically supporting anybody and everybody who is perceived as "anti-Russian" (Georgia, Ukraine, Latvia, etc. etc. etc.), they are still bitter foes of Iran (a country which borders Afghanistan and which is more aware than any other of the Wahabi threat for the region and the world) and they are still calling Hezbollah "terrorist" even though any logical analysis can only lead to the conclusion that Hezbollah is a national liberation movement and the strongest force to oppose the various Al-Qaeda franchises in Lebanon and the rest of the Middle-East. Instead of reaching out to its natural allies in its war against Islamic extremism, the West is trying to fight everybody at the same time abroad while giving up every civil right one by one at home.

That amazing Western blindness, arrogance and crass ignorance is really the most powerful weapon the Wahabis have in their "arsenal": as long as the West will continue to pursue imaginary enemies its real enemies will have all they need to strike at it, again and again.

As the so-called "redirection" has shown the so-called Global War on Terror (GWOT) is nothing but a planetary wide exercise in fostering Wahabi terrorism. 20 years ago the Soviet withdrew from Afghanistan and the idiots in the CIA reported "we won".

I wonder what they thought on 9/11 or if they even managed to connect the dots.

Probably not.

Yet another botched US raid?

Take a look at this al-Jazeera report about the US raid in Syria:

From the information slowly trickling in it appears that the US SNAFUed this time again. The fact that any footage at all is coming from this village shows that there was nothing of any kind of value there, be it people or infrastructure. Then the accounts by the civilian victims also points to some rather pathetically inept actions by the Americans (shooting at a woman reaching out to her kid? shooting a fishing dude?!). Then the size of the striking force - 2 or 4 helicopters and 8+ men - is really too small for any serious kind of operation in a foreign (and mostly hostile) country. The latter even makes me doubt whether this was truly an American action and, if yes, what forces were involved. Lastly, it took a while for the US to "verify" that information. That makes no sense at all. Any operation deliberately aimed at a target inside Syria would have had the direct supervision of the Pentagon brass and White House.

So here is my guess: yes, the Americans did it, but they probably did not realize that they had entered Syrian territory (GPS malfunction?). Sending such a small force into Syria just does not sound credible to me. Unless we hear a dramatically different account of what actually took place I think we can safely dismiss this latest raid as yet another US screw-up in the GWOT.

Finally, you can just imagine how that kind of imperial hubris and arrogance will be received in Iraq which is already up in arms about the SOFA the US is trying to impose. It is just basic common sense to see that if the US does not give a damn about international law, national borders of sovereign countries or the UN Charter (all of which have been grievously violated in the latest raid), it would be naive to the extreme to expect Uncle Shmuel to abide by any SOFA.

I can just about hear the laughter in Tehran...

Somalia: the forgotten front in the US GWOT

Somalia is a mostly forgotten front of the US Global War on Terror. True, only a limited number of US personnel is deployed there or directly involved in the fighting; this is a war by proxy, courtesy of the US backed regime in Ethiopia who invaded Somalia under orders from Washington.

After many years of chaos and violence Somalia had finally found a modicum of stability under the Islamic Courts Union, an umbrella organization bringing together various Islamist groups. Obviously, to have Somalia return to some stability under the leadership of an Islamist group was just not something the Empire could tolerate and it ordered Ethiopia, a faithful ally of the Empire in the GWOT, to (illegally) invade Somalia and oust the Islamic Courts Union (for more details about this war, see here).

Needless to say, just like in Afghanistan or Iraq, this intervention plunged the country in total chaos, violence is everywhere, the Somalis are fighting the Ethiopian invaders in endless and brutal clashes which resulted in over half of the population of the capital city, Mogadishu, leaving their homes and becoming 'internally displaced persons'.

In a bizarre and ironic twist of fate, some are now floating the idea of sending a UN peacekeeping force to Somalia ('Black Hawk Down' anyone?) instead of overlooking the self-evident first step to resolve this unfolding nightmare: demand an Ethiopian withdrawal. The other solution, which is what I predict will eventually happen, is for the Somalis themselves to expel the Ethiopians and liberate their country.

In the meantime, here is a good Al-Jazerra report on the humanitarian consequences of the GWOT in Somalia:

Are the Taliban "The Enemy" or Not?

By Jeffrey Imm

Once again, another national leader of an American "ally" in the "war on terror" has offered to help the Taliban regain political power. AP has reported that Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai offered "to meet personally with Taliban leader Mullah Omar for peace talks and give the militants a high position in a government ministry as a way to end the rising insurgency in Afghanistan." AP reports that Karzai stated: "If a group of Taliban or a number of Taliban come to me and say, 'President, we want a department in this or in that ministry or we want a position as deputy minister ... and we don't want to fight anymore ... If there will be a demand and a request like that to me, I will accept it because I want conflicts and fighting to end in Afghanistan." This echoes comments this week by the UK Defense Minister that "the Taliban will need to be involved in the peace process".

In February 2007, the Afghanistan parliament granted immunity to the Taliban's Mullah Omar and other Mujahideen for 25 years worth of activities. Now Afghan President Karzai wants to meet personally with Taliban leader Mullah Omar for peace talks to allow the Taliban to join the Afghanistan government. (There is no word if the U.S. State Department would continue to offer $10 million for the whereabouts of Mullah Omar, although he is no longer on their main page of wanted terrorists.) Taliban leader Mullah Omar was reputed to have signed last year's Taliban peace truce with Pakistan.

But isn't the Taliban "the enemy" of the United States of America?

If not, what exactly does the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) call for? The AUMF called for war against "those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations", which surely included the Taliban. Furthermore, there are 171 clustered references to the Taliban in the Final Report of the 9/11 Commission. What more exactly does the United States need to view the Taliban as "the enemy"? Based on the AUMF, how can the Taliban be any less of an enemy to the United States, than Al Qaeda itself?

And if the Taliban are "the enemy", how can Americans accept the Taliban or the Taliban ideology in any political organization of an "ally" nation, let alone ones that American taxpayers provide millions of dollars to? Where is the outrage from American political leadership on this? Why is there no outrage among American political leaders at offers to "legitimize" the same Taliban that helped Al Qaeda in its Jihadist camps to kill 3,000 Americans? As previously discussed, the lack of clarity in identifying the enemy in this war is precisely what allows such disturbing realpolitik considerations.

What do such "peace at any cost" negotiations with an enemy of the United States mean to Jihadists in justifying the use of political terrorism? If the Taliban regain political power in Afghanistan, does American leadership agree that we should lose the Afghanistan war to end the fighting? Isn't that what, in other words, we call "surrender"? Or has our ambiguity about the identity of the enemy gotten so dense that American leadership can now rationalize the Taliban itself?

Earlier this month, Karzai called for peace talks with the Taliban, but the Taliban rejected such talks until "foreign troops" leave Afghanistan. This is a demand that Karzai has rejected on the basis: "[i]t should be very clear until all our roads are paved, until we have good electricity and good water, and also until we have a better Afghan national army and national police, I don't want any foreigners to leave Afghanistan". Is Karzai saying that he just doesn't want western aid to stop, as it did for Hamas?

Karzai's offer for political empowerment to the Taliban in Afghanistan comes as UPI and the Daily Telegraph report that the Taliban has publicly released its "Constitution of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan", which provides insight into what the Taliban would do if indeed such political empowerment was realized. The Daily Telegraph reports that the "23-page document envisages a country where women would remain veiled and uneducated, 'un-Islamic thought' would be banned and human rights would be ignored if 'contrary with the teachings of Islam' ", where "violators will be punished according to sharia", and that stipulates that all other constitutions are void. Furthermore, the Taliban constitution has called for "good relations" with those countries supporting Afghanistan "during jihad". I think we can make an educated guess that the Taliban would not consider such countries to include the United States.

Is this the legal system with "its roots in Islamic law" that the UK Defense Minister was stating this week would be a solution to fighting in Afghanistan?

This follows the August offer by Pakistan President Musharraf to help the Taliban become a mainstream political organization. At the August 12 jirga meeting, President Musharraf reflected that as "Taliban are a part of Afghan society", and "all of them are not diehard militants and fanatics", that reaching the Taliban and pro-Taliban population required "a more comprehensive political and development approach". President Bush was reported to have congratulated Pakistan President Musharraf on his efforts at the jirga.

Realpolitik negotiators may believe that there is a "bad Taliban" and a "good Taliban". In Presidents Karzai and Musharraf's views, the "bad Taliban" is violent, and the "good Taliban" is well, just simply "fundamentalist" in their Islamist view of the world. Does America agree with that assessment? Because that is the direction that war in Afghanistan is going based on these outreach efforts to bring the Taliban into the political mainstream. Realpolitik negotiators may believe that bringing the Taliban into a "democratic" political process will end the conflict and fighting in Afghanistan.

Did bringing Hezbollah into the Lebanon government end fighting in Lebanon?
Did Hamas' election to the Palestinian government bring peace to the Palestinian territories?
Did the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic government in Iran bring peace to Iran and its relations with the world?
Has the growing influence of Islamist political and other groups in Pakistan brought stability and peace to Pakistan?

Yet NATO, UN, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the US are all tolerating the idea of peace talks with the Taliban to bring them back into political power in the Afghanistan government. Americans don't even have to compare this to Islamist Iran as an analogy. We have already seen what the Taliban did when they held political power in Afghanistan. Our national homeland was physically attacked and thousands of Americans died as a result. On this near anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, how could we forget that? What next - will we be negotiating a political "mainstream" party for Al Qaeda?

Moreover, with their latest constitution, the Taliban has told us specifically what they plan to do, if they do get back into power. We know who and what the Taliban are and what they plan to do if they regain power. Yet still, American leadership is not denouncing talks to allow the Taliban to return to Afghanistan government power.

If so, this begs the obvious question, what are we fighting for?

How Jose Padilla was treated while in the Empire's custody

US citizen Jose Padilla has been found guilty of plotting to kill people overseas and supporting terrorism. His two co-defendants, Lebanese-born Palestinian Adham Amin Hassoun and Jordanian-born Kifah Wael Jayyousi, were convicted on the same counts.

Below is a detailed report from Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! news show describing what has been done to him:

In a Democracy Now! national broadcast exclusive, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty speaks for the first time about her experience interviewing Jose Padilla for 22 hours to determine the state of his mental health.

Padilla is the U.S. citizen who was classified by President Bush as an enemy combatant and held in extreme isolation at a naval brig in South Carolina for over three-and-a-half years. His case is now before a Florida jury. "What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being's mind," said Dr. Hegarty. "[Padilla's] personality was deconstructed and reformed." She said the effects of the extreme isolation on Padilla are consistent with brain damage. "I don't know if he's guilty or not of the charges that they brought against him," said Dr. Hegarty. "But, already - before he was ever found guilty - he's paid a tremendous price for his trip to the Middle East." [includes rush transcript] A jury began deliberations on Wednesday in Miami in the case of Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born man once accused by the Bush administration of plotting to set off a dirty bomb inside the United States.

The FBI initially arrested him in Chicago in 2002 after he got off a plane from Europe. For a month he was held as a material witness. Then Attorney General John Ashcroft made a dramatic announcement - the U.S. government had disrupted an al-Qaeda plot to set off nuclear dirty bombs inside the United States. At the center of the plot, Ashcroft alleged, was Padilla.

President Bush then classified Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant, stripping him of all his rights. He was transferred to a Navy brig in South Carolina where he was held in extreme isolation for forty three months.

The Christian Science Monitor reported: "Padilla's cell measured nine feet by seven feet. The windows were covered over... He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla's lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years."

According to his attorneys, Padilla was routinely tortured in ways designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and ultimately the loss of will to live.

His lawyers have claimed that Padilla was forced to take LSD and PCP to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.

Up until last year the Bush administration maintained it had the legal right to hold Padilla without charge forever. But when faced with a Supreme Court challenge, President Bush transferred Padila out of military custody to face criminal conspiracy charges.

On January 3, 2006 the government charged him and two others with criminal conspiracy. The government claims Padilla, along with his mentor, Adham Amin Hassoun, and Hassoun's colleague, Kifah Wael Jayyousi, conspired to commit murder abroad and to provide material support toward that goal.

Since May the men have been on trial in Miami. According to the Miami Herald, the overall case against Padilla is riddled with circumstantial evidence. Much of the case is built around an alleged form Padilla filled out to attend an al-Qaeda training camp.

Prosecutors have no introduced no evidence of personal involvement by Padilla in planning or carrying out any violent acts. There is no mention of Padilla - plotting to set off a dirty bomb. Despite this, prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for Padilla.

Questions have also been raised about whether Padilla was mentally fit to stand trial. His lawyers and family say he has become clearly mentally ill after being held in isolation.

Today, we are joined by one of the few medical experts who has spent time with Padilla since his arrest five years ago. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty spent 22 hours interviewing Padilla last year to determine the state of his mental health. She concluded that Padilla lacked the capacity to assist in his own defense. Dr. Angela Hegarty is assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University.

* Dr. Angela Hegarty, forensic psychiatrist who spent 22 hours interviewing Jose Padilla last year. She is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University.

TRANSCRIPT:

JUAN GONZALEZ: A jury began deliberations on Wednesday in Miami in the case of Jose Padilla, a Brooklyn-born man accused by the Bush administration of plotting to set off a dirty bomb inside the United States. The FBI initially arrested him secretly in Chicago in 2002, after he got off a plane from Europe. For a month he was held as a material witness. Then Attorney General John Ashcroft made a dramatic announcement: the US government had disrupted an al-Qaeda plot to set off nuclear dirty bombs inside the United States. At the center of the plot, Ashcroft alleged, was Padilla.

AMY GOODMAN: President Bush then classified Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant, stripping him of all his rights. He was transferred to a Navy brig in South Carolina, where he was held in extreme isolation for forty-three months. The Christian Science Monitor reported: "Padilla's cell measured nine feet by seven feet. The windows were covered over... He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla's lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years."

JUAN GONZALEZ: According to his attorneys, Padilla was routinely tortured in ways designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and ultimately the loss of will to live. His lawyers have claimed that Padilla was forced to take LSD and PCP to act as sort of truth serums during his interrogations.

Up until last year, the Bush administration maintained that it had the legal right to hold Padilla without charge forever, but when faced with a Supreme Court challenge, President Bush transferred Padilla out of military custody to face criminal charges.

AMY GOODMAN: On January 3, 2006, the government charged him and two others with criminal conspiracy. The government claims Padilla, along with his mentor Adham Amin Hassoun and Hassoun’s colleague Kifah Wael Jayyousi, conspired to commit murder abroad and to provide material support toward that goal. Since May, the men have been on trial in Miami.

According to the Miami Herald, the overall case against Padilla is riddled with circumstantial evidence. Much of the case is built around an alleged form Padilla filled out to attend an al-Qaeda training camp. Prosecutors have introduced no evidence of personal involvement by Padilla in planning or carrying out any violent acts. There is no mention of Padilla plotting to set off a dirty bomb. Despite this, prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for Padilla.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Questions have also been raised about whether Padilla was mentally fit to stand trial. His lawyers and family say he’s become clearly mentally ill after being held in isolation for so long.

Today, we’re joined by one of the few medical experts who has spent time with Padilla since his arrest five years ago. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty spent twenty-two hours interviewing Padilla last year to determine the state of his mental health. She concluded that he lacked the capacity to assist in his own defense. Dr. Angela Hegarty is assistant profession of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. She joins us today in our firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: And thank you for joining us for this first national interview, broadcast interview, that you are doing. How did you get involved in Jose Padilla's case?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, his attorneys called me up. For many years, I have worked -- I had an interest in working with religious fundamentalists of all stripes, actually. And over the years, I had worked with lawyers in Miami, as well as elsewhere in the country, and I guess they heard about me that way. And they called me up, because essentially he wasn't really talking to them, and it was clear to them that something was very wrong, but they didn't know quite what it was at this point. And the initial goal was for me to come down and see if I could help build a rapport with him, help him really begin to act, you know, with his lawyers to advocate for himself to help them defend his case. He wasn't doing that. And so, I came down to spend some time with him.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did you find? Where did you first meet Jose Padilla?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, I first met Mr. Padilla in the Miami detention center, where he is held under special conditions in a conference room with a double mirror. And we spent twenty-two hours in that room together.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And how did he react to you initially, because obviously after being in isolation and then with -- he has not had a good relationship with his lawyers, as I understand, for quite a while, but how did he react to you?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, he really didn't want to talk to a psychiatrist at all. He didn’t want to be evaluated at all. He was incredibly anxious. I remember the first day, after about the first hour, he smiled for a moment and said, you know, this really isn't as bad as he thought it would be. He obviously was very, very anxious.

And in the course of the interview, he revealed to me that he essentially had been told that if he relayed any of what had happened to him, his experiences, people would quote/unquote “know he was crazy.” And he was very upset by this and very disturbed by it, and it’s just that his level of being so disturbed suggested to me that there was something more, but, you know, asking further questions, he wouldn't reveal it to me.

He was resentful of his lawyers. He had left the brig thinking he was about to be released. He told me that he had been given regular clothing and was actually surprised to find himself incarcerated. He was very angry at his lawyers that they hadn’t gotten him out and that, in fact, his conditions in the Miami detention center under the special conditions in which he was held were actually somewhat more restrictive and more isolating than they had been in the later stages of his detention at the brig. So he was angry with them. He also felt that everything had been established, you know, that the government knew everything and that essentially they would -- there was no need for him to be revealing things to his lawyers. And he was very uncomfortable.

AMY GOODMAN: What was the effect of over three-and-a-half years of isolation on Jose Padilla?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: I think there’s two things, really. Number one, his family, more than anything, and his friends, who had a chance to see him by the time I spoke with them, said he was changed. There was something wrong. There was something very “weird” -- was the word one of his siblings used -- something weird about him. There was something not right. He was a different man. And the second thing was his absolute state of terror, terror alternating with numbness, largely. It was as though the interrogators were in the room with us. He was like -- perhaps like a trauma victim who knew that they were going to be sent back to the person who hurt them and that he would, as I said earlier, he would subsequently pay a price if he revealed what happened. So I think those would be the two main things.

Also he had developed, actually, a third thing. He had developed really a tremendous identification with the goals and interests of the government. I really considered a diagnosis of Stockholm syndrome. For example, at one point in the proceedings, his attorneys had, you know, done well at cross-examining an FBI agent, and instead of feeling happy about it like all the other defendants I’ve seen over the years, he was actually very angry with them. He was very angry that the civil proceedings were “unfair to the commander-in-chief,” quote/unquote. And in fact, one of the things that happened that disturbed me particularly was when he saw his mother. He wanted her to contact President Bush to help him, help him out of his dilemma. He expected that the government might help him, if he was “good,” quote/unquote.

JUAN GONZALEZ: In the affidavit you submitted to the court summarizing your examination of him, you also talk about the things he did say that happened to him, the sleeping on a steel bed with no mattress for all that time that he was isolated?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes. In the darkness or in the light -- in the cells, the light would be all dark for a long time or all light for a long time. And for a very long part of his detention he had no mattress at all. And sometimes he would try to sleep on the pallet, if you will, the hard steel pallet, or other times he would be in essentially stress positions where he's got shackles and a belt and is in an awkward and uncomfortable position for long periods at a time.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What other things did he say, tell you, were done to him?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, I think one of the things you have to realize is he was adamant that he would not reveal any quote/unquote “classified information.” He in fact refused to provide a narrative of his account. He essentially -- on the second day, after spending four hours on the Monday and we developed some rapport, on the second day I brought him in a list of materials and interrogation tactics that had been already -- you know, they were in the public record. And I asked him just merely to say yes or no to some of these things. And this included slapping, exposure to heat or cold for long periods of time, forcible showering. He was terrified, actually, about being taken to a thing called the “cage.” This was supposedly “recreation” -- I’d like to put that in quotes. He spoke about the lack of sleep, the relentless clicking and then banging of the doors of other cells that would wake him up.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that. Wasn't he alone in the Naval brig?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes, he was. In this very small cell, he was monitored twenty-four hours a day, and the doors were managed electronically. And between what Mr. Padilla told us and other sources, essentially it’s possible to open and close these doors electronically. And he would hear the click of the door opening, which is a loud click that sort of echoed, and then a very loud bang over and over and over again for hours at a time, possibly days. He had no way of knowing the time. The light was always artificial. The windows were blackened. He had no calendar or time, as you mentioned earlier. He really didn't see people, especially in the beginning. He only had contact with his interrogators.

AMY GOODMAN: Did he recognize you when you returned the next day?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Oh, yes. Yes, he did. But he did have some memory problems, in that by about the fourth day, I asked him, “Can you just give me” -- he had been very clear that there was a particularly bad time, and then there was a somewhat better time, and then after he had access to counsel things improved somewhat. And he really was unable to give me any kind of -- beyond the most broadest brush strokes, he was unable to put anything in any kind of a chronological narrative at all. He was very, what we would call it in psychiatry, “concrete.” You would ask him, you know, how did you feel about something, or what have you, and he would generally resort to cliches. He seemed to have a great deal of difficulty recalling precise personal details about the interrogations or the experiences or particular incidents. He wouldn't know when they happened or how long they lasted, and so forth.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you conclude he had been tortured?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, “torture,” of course, is a legal term. However, as a clinician, I have worked with torture victims and, of course, abuse victims for a few decades now, actually. I think, from a clinical point of view, he was tortured.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, and then we’re going to come back. We’re talking to Dr. Angela Hegarty, a forensic psychiatrist, spent twenty-two hours interviewing Jose Padilla last year, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. This is the first time she is speaking out on a national broadcast about her assessment of Jose Padilla. His case is now before a jury in Florida. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Dr. Angela Hegarty, forensic psychiatrist who spent more than twenty-two hours interviewing Jose Padilla last year. She’s an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. Jose Padilla's case is before a Florida jury right now. Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah, I’d like to ask you about some of the assessments by folks other than you in his case. I understand there was a Bureau of Prisons medical person who interviewed him and also concluded that he had mental problems, but that they really were not severe. And I think the judge, as well, in the case at one point acknowledged that he had some mental problems, but said that they should not be considered, the causes of them, as part of the process of the trial. Your sense of some of these other assessments?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Certainly. Well, first of all, there’s a big distinction between the diagnosis of a psychiatric or mental illness, on the one hand, and finding of legal incapacity to proceed with trial. That’s a legal term, and there are legal standards based on case law. And, of course, the judge relied on the legal standards and concluded that the defense had not met its burden in proving that he lacked capacity.

Now, of course, each interview that different people have is incredibly sensitive to a number of factors: the context, who the person is, their style, their interviewing techniques, their experience, and also, most importantly, who they are to the interviewee or the defendant, in this case. And, of course, from reading Dr. Buigas's report it’s clear that --

JUAN GONZALEZ: He’s from the Bureau of Prisons.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: That's right. It was clear that he saw perhaps a different side of the defendant. Perhaps the defendant, Mr. Padilla, reacted somewhat differently to him. He was a government doctor. Dr. Buigas actually interviewed him in his own office, whereas defense experts had to use this conference room with the double mirror. So the whole interview occurred in a very different context. And that’s why we have adversarial hearings, where one group of experts will go and put their case and then the other group of experts, and then the finder of fact or the judge, in this case, decides.

But, yes, he agreed that he did have some psychiatric or psychological problems, but that they weren't as severe as those the defense had seen. Part of the problem, though, with that -- and I want to add this -- is that Mr. Padilla was really very reluctant to cooperate. In fact, he refused to finish the psychological testing that I was administering and also what Dr. Zapf administered, because -- so essentially he wasn't exactly the easiest person to elicit the kind of clinical information we need.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the findings that he was, well, the equivalent, after his experience of three-and-a-half years in severe isolation and what happened to him during that period, of brain-damaged?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, during my time with him, some of his reasoning seemed somewhat impaired, some of his thinking seemed impaired, his memory certainly, his ability to pay attention seemed very impaired. I developed a differential diagnosis from this: severe anxiety. Post-traumatic stress disorder can do that. But also, we know from really basic neuroscience studies that extreme isolation for prolonged periods of time -- and I’m talking, you know, the studies are on maybe days or weeks, and he had extreme isolation for years -- really do, in fact, impair higher brain function. And I recommended that we get some neuropsychological testing. And, unfortunately, he wasn't able to fully cooperate with that. However, the testing we did do was consistent with brain damage, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Brain damage.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And have you dealt with someone who had been in isolation for such a long period of time before?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: No. This was the first time I ever met anybody who had been isolated for such an extraordinarily long period of time. I mean, the sensory deprivation studies, for example, tell us that without sleep, especially, people will develop psychotic symptoms, hallucinations, panic attacks, depression, suicidality within days. And here we had a man who had been in this situation, utterly dependent on his interrogators, who didn't treat him all that nicely, for years. And apart from -- the only people I ever met who had such a protracted experience were people who were in detention camps overseas, that would come close, but even then they weren't subjected to the sensory deprivation. So, yes, he was somewhat of a unique case in that regard.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’m thinking -- at one point in your affidavit, you talk about how he said that he felt at one point that a huge weight was crushing down on his chest. Did he --

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Explain that a little bit.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, he thought he was having a heart attack, and he’s a young, healthy man. Now, one possibility is, yes, he was having a heart attack. Certainly with the kind of adrenaline that would be surging through his body, whether from what we call internal stimuli -- hallucinations, panic, paranoia, and so forth -- or as a result of what else was going on, it’s not unreasonable. However, more likely, he also felt his life was slipping away, he was going to die, and this actually is almost a textbook description of a major panic attack, which, if anybody has had one, the word “panic” doesn't quite capture how terrible it is. You really feel like you’re dying.

And so, his perceptions of what was happening to him and himself, which is one of the most terrifying aspects, was really difficult to assess. For example, he reported very clearly that he had been given mind-altering drugs. And again, that is realistically, unfortunately, one serious hypothesis. However, another serious hypothesis --

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean? Given by who?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: By the government.

AMY GOODMAN: Drugged.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Drugged, yes. And clearly he had some terrible frightening experience to which he attributed these drugs. However, again, his -- given what sensory deprivation and isolation of this scale does, it’s also entirely possible that he wasn't given drugs, and it’s just the psychiatric effects of the isolation and the sensory deprivation, because the hallucinations can be incredibly vivid. People feel like they’re losing their minds, that they’re coming apart. It’s absolutely terrifying.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re interviewing Dr. Angela Hegarty, who is a forensic psychiatrist who saw Jose Padilla for more than twenty-two hours. The new Army Field Manual bars the use of isolation to achieve psychological disorientation through sensory deprivation. The manual states, “Sensory deprivation may result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, as well as bizarre thoughts, depression, anti-social behavior. Detainees will not be subject to sensory deprivation.” But you say he was.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Without question.

AMY GOODMAN: How afraid was Jose Padilla?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: How to capture that in an apt metaphor? He was terrified. For him, the government was all-powerful. The government knew everything. The government knew everything that he was doing. His interrogators would find out every little detail that he revealed. And he would be punished for it.

He was convinced that -- I mean, I think in words he endorsed -- even if he won his case, he lost, because he was going back to the brig if he managed to prevail at trial. And essentially, if hypothetically one were to offer him a really long prison sentence versus -- with a guarantee that he wouldn't go back to the brig -- versus risking going back to the brig, the chance that he might go back to the brig, he would take the prison sentence for a very long period of time. I think he would take almost anything rather than go back to that brig.

AMY GOODMAN: What happened in the brig?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being's mind. That’s what happened at the brig. His personality was deconstructed and reformed.

And essentially, like many abuse victims, whether it’s torture survivors or battered women or even children who are abused by parents, as long as the parents or the abuser is in control in their minds, essentially they identify with the primary aims of the abuser. And all abusers, whoever they are, have one absolute requirement, and that is that you keep their secret. I mean, it’s common knowledge that people who abuse children or women will say, “Look at what you made me do,” putting the blame on the victim, trying to instill guilt. “People will judge you. People will think you’re crazy if you tell them about this. You will be an enemy. You will be seen as an enemy. You will be seen as a bad person if this comes out. There will be dire and terrible consequences, not only for you.” Jose was very, very concerned that if torture allegations were made on his behalf, that somehow it would it interfere with the government's ability to detain people at Guantanamo, and this was something he couldn't sign onto. He was very identified with the goals of the government.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Did he talk at all with you about his family and his concerns about what might happen to his family?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes. Essentially, when Mr. Padilla would talk about emotionally meaningful events or feelings, it would always be almost by accident. And he worried that his mother would be -- her life would be somehow derailed by this. He told people that his family had been threatened. His family was terrified. So, again, always the tip of the iceberg with Mr. Padilla. He was very afraid for his family.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the Jacoby statement, declaration, and why the Bush administration did not want him to see attorneys?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, there was a quote in the Jacoby declaration that caught my attention as a forensic psychiatrist. And that -- essentially it says that the purpose of keeping Mr. Padilla isolated was to foster a sense of dependence on his interrogators and to essentially foreclose in his mind utterly any hope of rescue. And it makes reference to the fact that, given that people who have had contact with the criminal justice system will expect to see an attorney and be rescued by an attorney, they want to essentially disabuse him of the notion that he will ever be rescued. They want him to believe that he is in their power forever. And I believe, in a sense, they succeeded.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What does all of this do to our notions or expectation of how the criminal justice system is supposed to operate in this country?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, essentially, based on the Jacoby memorandum, it’s -- you know, almost it’s a cultural cliche. You know, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to an attorney. Essentially, what happened to Mr. Padilla was designed to reassure him that this was not in fact the case. The things we take for granted as American citizens, that we will not get off a plane and be spirited away for years at the hands of harsh interrogators, that that can happen in America.

And as a citizen myself, I find it very disturbing, especially in the light of the mistakes that have been made over the years. I recall a case of an attorney who was misidentified from the West Coast, and he had had a very tough experience as a result. And so, the possibility that an innocent -- that this could happen to an innocent person, a person perhaps who is merely known to somebody who themselves perhaps are being tortured -- you know, their name might come up in such a circumstance -- could actually be spirited away and entirely deprived of their human rights, their rights as human beings, their ordinary dignity, is disturbing.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Angela Hegarty, we are headed to San Francisco today. Today, tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday, Monday is the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. You’re a psychiatrist. But that’s the group of 150,000 psychologists. And they are having a showdown right now. A vote will happen on Sunday, whether the APA will take a position against the involvement of its members, of psychologists, in coercive interrogations, in, what many psychologists are saying, torture. There is a massive protest taking place tomorrow at 4:00 outside the Moscone Center. There will be a track of debates inside the conference. Unfortunately, we wanted to record these debates, and the APA is now saying that there will be no video recording of discussions between the psychologists, public discussions, where military psychologists debate others around the issue of whether psychologists should be involved in these interrogations. What are your thoughts? And what position has your organization, the American Psychiatric Association, taken?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, the American Psychiatric Association principles of ethics essentially follow the AMA’s, which is --

AMY GOODMAN: American Medical Association.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: American Medical Association, yes -- is, no psychiatrist is involved in torture ever under any circumstances. Period. Torture -- there is no caveat that opens up the possibility by mentioning the Bush administration's qualifications on the definition of “torture.”

That the psychologists are protesting and debating this is great news. Clinicians -- our entire professional identity is clinicians. And if psychologists -- psychologists certainly see themselves as clinicians, people who care for people. Our entire professional identity as people who help people is obviated by such involvement. And I entirely disagree with any caveat that would allow a clinician to be involved in torture at any time.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the argument that those who don't want the moratorium are making, and especially high-level staff of the American Psychological Association, that for psychologists to be there is to bring ethics to the situation, to explain what is going too far?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, you know, I asked Mr. Padilla about that. He’d said that there were some decent people that he had come in contact with, you know, over the -- especially in the latter part of his stay at the brig. And I asked him, I said, “You know, if I were in a situation like this as a clinician and I abhor what’s being done to you, would you want me to stay, knowing that there’s somebody who cares about you, who’s ideally, hopefully, ethical? Or would you -- albeit powerless -- or would you want me to leave?” And he actually gave me one of the first and only immediate and straightforward and direct answers: he would want me to leave. He would not want me there, because for him my presence endorses what’s going on, even though, as I said, in my scenario I would be powerless to do anything to change it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And did he talk about having interactions with medical people, either doctors, psychiatrists or psychologists, while in custody?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: No, he just mentioned staff, in general. He had some interactions with some kind of clinical staff around medication and evaluations, but it’s unclear to me what their credentials were.

AMY GOODMAN: So you don't know if psychiatrists or psychologists were involved.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Oh, I know that some mental health professionals were involved, but -- by the way this was designed -- the sensory deprivation, especially, the leaving and taking of stimuli from his environment. For example, there was a mirror that was there, and then that was taken away abruptly, or he’d have a pillow or a sheet or something that made him a little more comfortable, and that would be taken away. One of the things that came out in the course of my evaluation was, he was required to sign his name John Doe. This kind of thing and the whole notion of dependency and the cultivation of dependency, the impact of sleep deprivation, stress positions, all of that was so coordinated it’s impossible for me to imagine that at least at some phase there wasn't some mental health professionals involved.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And what was the reason for wanting to have him sign his name John Doe?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: He’s no longer a person. He’s no longer an individual. There will be no record that he was ever there, that the interrogators -- this is from my knowledge of torture around the world -- that the interrogators essentially will be absolutely immune to any accountability.

AMY GOODMAN: After having met with him for twenty-two hours, as we wrap up, Dr. Hegarty, your conclusions about his case, Jose Padilla’s case, as it stands now before a jury in a Florida court?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: You know, I don't know if he’s guilty or not of the charges that they brought against him, but he has certainly paid -- already, before he was ever found guilty, he has already paid a tremendous price for his trip to the Middle East.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Dr. Angela Hegarty, forensic psychiatrist, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, one of the forensic psychiatrists who met Jose Padilla, one of the very few, speaking out now for the first time. Twenty-two hours she interviewed him.


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1 Main Document 10 pages Mr. Padilla's Reply to the Government's Response to the Motion to Dismiss for Outrageous Government Conduct

2 Exhibit A 1 page Affidavit of Jose Padilla

3 Exhibit B 5 pages Affidavit of Angela Hegarty, MD

4 Exhibit C 4 pages Stuart Grassian, MD, Overview: Neuropsychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement

5 Exhibit D 7 pages Declaration of Andrew G. Patel, Attorney

Original court filing: http://cryptome.org/padilla/padilla-695-6.pdf

Can't Find Osama? Attack Iran Instead

by Philip Giraldi

The July 17 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) "On the Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland" [.pdf] warns that al-Qaeda has reconstituted itself in the tribal areas of U.S. ally Pakistan, that it has resumed training of cadres intending to carry out "high impact plots" against the United States, and that the terrorist threat for the next three years continues worldwide and is even growing in places like North Africa and Britain. As always there is a bland euphemism to define the emerging situation, in this case that the United States will be experiencing a "heightened threat environment." And to make sure that the conflation of terrorism with Iraq is not lost on the reader, the "central front" in Iraq makes an appearance among the report's "Key Findings."

In a tour-de-force of misinformation disguised as fact, the report states, erroneously, that al-Qaeda in Iraq represents the principal threat for an attack on the U.S. homeland "because it has expressed a desire to attack us here." The "attack us here" theme has been around for several years, and it has lately been reinforced by the White House's incessant linkage of Iraq to al-Qaeda, culminating in a July 10 speech in Cleveland in which President Bush named the terrorist organization 30 times during comments that were ostensibly on the war in Iraq. Anyone who follows terrorism even in a pedestrian fashion might politely suggest that the administration's position on the terrorism problem is nonsense. The main threat to the U.S. comes from the real original unadulterated al-Qaeda in Pakistan. Iraq, though a magnet and training ground for terrorist aspirants, is neither interested in nor capable of exporting its own particular brand of anarchy to America's shores.

Given the prominence of Iraq, the NIE is clearly more a political document than an objective assessment. It goes on to state that the U.S. has been on the offensive against terrorism, that it has "built new institutions" and "developed new tools." It is "constantly evaluating the threat" in hundreds if not thousands of meetings in Washington. Lots of meetings. Lots of reviews. Lots of worker bees working. The irrepressible Karen Hughes at State Department has summoned her Myrmidons, "countering al-Qaeda's violent message," challenging terrorists to cyber duels over the Internet. It's Star Wars all over again. "We remain vigilant." It's all there in the NIE.

But one might be forgiven for thinking, perhaps, that all is not well, that the terrorism problem is somehow worse now than it was in 2001. Such reflection, which would be appropriate for anyone who truly cares about the United States and its people, leads to the inescapable conclusion that the past six years of misdirection and mismanagement have made the world a much more dangerous place. In that light, one might conclude that the NIE is more a chronicle of failure than success, an admission that the White House and Congress have, in fact, been unable to protect the American people. It might also be observed that one doesn't get as much bang for the buck as used to be the case. The expenditure of half a trillion dollars in a "global war on terrorism" (GWOT) that has led to the deployment of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, intelligence officers, and law enforcement personnel against no more than a couple of thousand terrorists concentrated in one of the world's most backward regions has not radically shifted the playing field in America's favor. Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda carried out 9/11. Osama has been hanging around in Pakistan since late 2001, and he is still there, training new terrorists and planning.

And, if something is wrong in the GWOT, as usual no one is to blame, as-finger pointing would reflect badly on the political leadership. Retired Gen. Tommy Franks, the architect of the administration's failure to finish off a cornered Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan's Tora Bora Mountains in December 2001, received his Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004. He now sits on the boards of the Bank of America and Outback Steakhouse, and it is assumed that he will soon be named president of Oklahoma State University. Ex-CIA Director George Tenet, who claims he warned Condoleezza Rice about an impending terrorist attack but, inexplicably, failed to tell the president, just received a $4 million book advance. Paul Wolfowitz, whose lack of judgment guaranteed that the U.S. occupation of Iraq would not succeed, is now comfortably back at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute after his failure at the World Bank.

The blundering of the past six years in which America's friends overseas have been turned into enemies by arrogance and bullying, in which Washington's standing among nations has plummeted, has not resulted in any serious change of course. No one is responsible. The neoconservative architects of the Pentagon assault on Iraq that has turned that country into a failed state and a magnet for terrorism have left for greener pastures, but not a one has admitted to error or been publicly admonished. Several, including Vice President Dick Cheney and the National Security Council's Elliot Abrams, are still in positions of power, advocating a new war as part of a larger conflict that will go on indefinitely, everywhere.

And it's always convenient to blame it on the bad guys. Per the NIE, terrorism is not a problem because America's politicians, bureaucrats, and pundits stacked a hundred high in every office lining the Potomac have failed to understand the nature of the threat. It is rather because the terrorists have "evolved" and "adapted," hardly playing fair.

The NIE is not pleasant reading, even though it tries to make the essentially political point that everything possible is being done to protect "the Homeland." What it really is arguing is that everything that is being done should continue to be done, and more. That means more of the bloated bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland Security and the world's mightiest military budget. Another White House tactical response to the very real terrorist threat, which it doesn't want anyone to think about too much, is, predictably, to look for a diversion in the form of someone else to kick. With Iraq and Afghanistan in shambles, there just happen to be a couple of neighbors who can be credibly accused of "interference" with the U.S. military's civilizing mission. In the intelligence business it is sometimes necessary to use "disinformation" to establish a false factual basis or to create a straw man that can be used to divert attention from an unpleasant reality. If it is too hard to catch Osama bin Laden, it might be more convenient to talk about Iran instead. As Syria and Iran have both long been in the crosshair of the neoconservatives because of those countries' antipathy to Israel, it is reassuring to know that they have not been forgotten by the White House. It is possibly no coincidence that there has been a significant increase in the anti-Iran rhetoric emanating from both the Bush administration and Congress over the past few weeks, mostly seeking to establish a casus belli by contending that Iran is masterminding lethal attacks directed against U.S. troops in Iraq and NATO forces in Afghanistan. A tidy little war against Iran would be a useful diversion that would make everyone forget about the NIE and the inability to do anything about Osama bin Laden.

509,000 names on the FBI's "terror watch list"

ABC News report: FBI Terror Watch List 'Out of Control'

June 13, 2007 8:55 AM

A terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than half a million names.

Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror. The bureau says the number of names on its terrorist watch list is classified.

A portion of the FBI's unclassified 2008 budget request posted to the Department of Justice Web site, however, refers to "the entire watch list of 509,000 names," which is utilized by its Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force. A spokesman for the interagency National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which maintains the government's list of all suspected terrorists with links to international organizations, said they had 465,000 names covering 350,000 individuals. Many names are different versions of the same identity -- "Usama bin Laden" and "Osama bin Laden" for the al Qaeda chief, for example.

In addition to the NCTC list, the FBI keeps a list of U.S. persons who are believed to be domestic terrorists -- abortion clinic bombers, for example, or firebombing environmental extremists, who have no known tie to an international terrorist group. Combined, the NCTC and FBI compendia comprise the watch list used by federal security screening personnel on the lookout for terrorists.

While the NCTC has made no secret of its terrorist tally, the FBI has consistently declined to tell the public how many names are on its list. Because the number is classified, an FBI spokesman told the Blotter on ABCNews.com, he was unable to comment for this story. "It grows seemingly without control or limitation," said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani of the terrorism watch list. Sparapani called the 509,000 figure "stunning."

"If we have 509,000 names on that list, the watch list is virtually useless," he told ABC News. "You'll be capturing innocent individuals with no connection to crime or terror." U.S. lawmakers and their spouses have been detained because their names were on the watch list. Reporters who have reviewed versions of the list found it included the names of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, at the time he was alive but in custody in Iraq; imprisoned al Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui; and 14 of the 19 Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers, all of whom perished in the attacks.

"There's a reason the FBI has a '10 Most Wanted' list, right? We need to focus the government's efforts on the greatest threats. When the watch list grows to this level, it's useless as an anti-terror tool," Sparapani said.