Category: Politics

The last week has seen a couple of interesting developments in the Tenet/Bush conflict. My predictions and thoughts about these will no doubt be as accurate as my predictions and thoughts about the Iraq war. Which is to say “semi.”

Most recently, the Pentagon broke the news that Tenet asked Rumsfeld to illegally hide a prisoner from the Red Cross. It is no accident that the Pentagon made this statement right now; it’s the first salvo in an attempt to reduce Tenet’s standing in the court of public opinion.

Second, earlier this week, the 9/11 commission put the Bush administration into a clever fork by releasing their report on Saddam/Al Qaeda links. The commission stated clearly that there were no such links, only a few days after Cheney reasserted that links existed.

This in and of itself is not really a big deal; the Bush administration can and will claim that the 9/11 commission is simply wrong. However, this puts them in a bind. After criticizing the commission’s reporting on links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, it’s going to be difficult to turn around and embrace the commission when it reports that Tenet was partially at fault for 9/11. While it’s possible to say that the commission got it right in the one instance but wrong in the other, it’s not easy, and I don’t think Bush can pull off that balancing trick right now. Tenet’s utility as a fall guy is thus reduced.

I don’t think this was deliberate on the part of the commission, by the by. It’s just a coincidence that the timing puts Bush in a fork with regard to the Tenet matter.

My personal favorite Reagan tribute is Rob’s. Whose party I will be at soon if this damned file transfer will just finish up.

So the whole thing where Bush says “I’m going to say it one more time. In fact, maybe I can be more clear. The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law.”

That would be so much more comforting if the infamous memo didn’t argue that it’s not illegal to torture certain classes of people.

Juan Cole has an excellent essay on Sistani’s view of the ideal Iraqi government. Since Sistani more or less got his way with yesterday’s UN resolution, it’s worth reading.

Eric Muller may have somehow gotten his hands on the first 56 pages of the March 6th, 2003 memo on torture. I haven’t read it yet. Note that there’s no pedigree attached, so it should be considered suspect until and unless more evidence rolls in.

Update: MSNBC has the same thing. Except not exactly the same; it’s a different scan. The PDF MSNBC has looks like a photocopy of the version that was scanned to create Eric Muller’s PDF. Someone’s leaking those 56 pages all over the place.

The working-group report elaborated the Bush administration’s view that the president has virtually unlimited power to wage war as he sees fit, and neither Congress, the courts nor international law can interfere. It concluded that neither the president nor anyone following his instructions was bound by the federal Torture Statute, which makes it a crime for Americans working for the government overseas to commit or attempt torture, defined as any act intended to “inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” Punishment is up to 20 years imprisonment, or a death sentence or life imprisonment if the victim dies.

This from the Wall Street Journal, on Monday. The full text of the article has been reproduced elsewhere.

It really makes those articles about our reluctance to employ torture seem naive, doesn’t it? “We don’t sanction torture, but there are psychological and other ways that we can get most of what we need.” Except right around the time Rockefeller said that, Bush’s administration decided that it was OK to sanction torture. Egg on his face.

Phil Carter discusses the difference between advice on how to stay within the law and advice on how to avoid prosecution for breaking the law. Bitter fruit.

George Tenet resigned yesterday. This is kind of odd for a number of reasons.

First, some background: George Tenet is not exactly a friend of Bush. The split has been fairly clear since Tenet left Bush out in the cold on the “imminent threat” question. There’s also been plenty of speculation that the CIA is not pleased with the Bush administration about the Valerie Plame issue. The popular conception among Washington-watchers is that CIA and State are more or less aligned in an effort to blunt the impact of neocon foreign policy. Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans was a successful attempt to create an alternative channel by which intelligence on Iraq could reach the President.

This should in no way be interpreted as putting the CIA in a good light. The OSP could have been the best, most honest intelligence group in the world and the CIA wouldn’t have been pleased to have another competitor. Turf wars are a terrible thing. All we can say at this point, assuming the speculation is accurate, is that the CIA is not a friend of the various neocons in Bush’s administration.

So: the first question is whether Tenet quit or was fired. If he was fired, why? If he quit, why?

If he was fired it seems likely that he’s going to be the scapegoat for Iraq failures. This is darned risky, given that he’ll have little reason not to fight back since he’s out of a job. You also have to wonder how much the CIA likes Tenet; does Bush want to piss off the CIA more than it already is? Maybe he thought about it and decided it was worth it. But it seems like an odd choice, particularly when you’ve got Doug Feith as a more direct scapegoat with less ability to fight back. Maybe Feith knows where too many bodies are buried.

If he quit, is he just fed up? Does he have an agenda? Will he be writing a book? Will it come out before the elections?

It’s unusual for news like this to be announced on a Thursday; you want to announce big personnel changes on a Friday so that there’s no weekday news cycle chewing over the ramifications. Did Tenet force Bush’s hand with a threat to leak the news himself? Did Bush just blurt it out accidentally?

And I’m not even going to get into the conspiracy theories that link this and the Valerie Plame affair — but man, it’s bad timing for Bush to announce this the day after the news comes out that he’s consulting a lawyer.

You can see what I mean. This raises about a million questions, few of which will ever get answered.

Bush is ready to hire a lawyer in case he has to testify in the Valerie Plame case. This is quite right; you should be ready to hire a lawyer if you suspect you may be the target of a grand jury investigation. Clinton hired a lawyer, Charles Ruff, during the Whitewater investigation.

Mind you, that came after Ken Starr began his investigation. But if there’s a chance you’re being investigated, it makes sense to be prepared.

Someday I want to read a book on what exactly happened in Iraq last week.

The Iraqi Governing Council chose a Prime Minister, ignoring the UN envoy and the US. Or maybe the US pushed the IGC into doing its bidding. But then the IGC forced the issue and chose a President over the objections of the US and the UN. Adnan Pachachi was offered the Presidency, but turned it down. And now the IGC has dissolved itself a month early.

I think I’m glad in the abstract that Iraqis are asserting themselves, but I don’t know enough about the people involved to have an opinion on whether the decisions they’ve made will lead to greater freedom in Iraq.

If the Chalabi story is true, it’s an incredible intelligence coup for Iran. The short form is that Ahmad Chalabi may have been an Iranian agent for the past several years. If this turns out to be the case, then the information he passed the US — information which helped Bush make the case for war — was generated and shaped by Iranian intelligence needs. That’s an astoundingly impressive piece of work, which may in the end be ranked up there with Eli Cohen.