Doug Feith on Jon Stewart

Doug Feith was on The Daily Show on May 12 talking about his new book War and Decision.

He summed up one of the strongest arguments for the war very succinctly:

There was a sense that Saddam was breaking out of the containment strategy that the U.N. had put in place, and we were going to have a fight with him. We didn’t want it to be at the time and place of his choosing.

Video 2 of the interview is the most substantive:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=168544&title=douglas-feith-uncut-pt.-2

1. Apply Cloth 2. Apply Water 3. Listen As Terrorist Confesses

Here is the AP story about Michael Hayden’s admission that waterboarding was used by the CIA in 2002 and 2003.

I especially appreciate this excerpt:

Waterboarding involves strapping a suspect down and pouring water over his cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning. It has been traced back hundreds of years, to the Spanish Inquisition, and is condemned by nations around the world.

The Spanish Inquisition! Oh, no. But the most concerning thing is that it’s been “condemned by nations around the world.” Quite a few nations around the world have also condemned the mere existence of the United States, so what are we to think of that?

The people that were waterboarded were Khalid Sheik Mohammed (the mastermind of 9/11 by), Abu Zubayda, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. How many Americans are actually upset that these three men had to endure about 30 seconds of discomfort? If the American public knew that CIA interrogators are waterboarded as part of their training would it even be possible to convince anyone this is torture?

Dick Durbin–always a winner–is leading a crusade to determine if anyone involved in CIA waterboarding ”violated the law”.  His intent is to make the Bush administration look bad. The result will be that patriotic CIA officers will, at best, have to endure an unpleasant investigation, or, at worst, have their careers ended.

Durbin’s right, there should be an investigation. But I want answers to why we only used waterboarding three times. Three times. How much more successful could we have been in uncovering Al Qaeda’s network and plots if our interrogators were allowed to do something more than ask them nicely.

As the article points out, the U.N. Convention Against Torture bans anything resulting in long-term physical or mental damage. What do they mean by mental damage? Imprisonment–not necessarily even solitary confinement–can cause mental changes in people. So can being yelled at and intimidated by an interrogator. Is it a war crime to raise your voice at a terrorist?

Americans still have enough moral clarity to know when something crosses the line and becomes torture and barbarism. They aren’t going to fall for Durbin’s silly political tactics. We need to back our Attorney General, back our intelligence agencies, and say shame on you to Durbin and his ilk who stand in the way of the people keeping us safe.

An Online Warfare Agency?

On Jan. 23 former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld delivered a speech at an information warfare forum in which he called for the creation of a government agency that could counter Islamic extremists online.

Rumsfeld said the U.S. is “sitting on the sidelines in a global battle of ideas.” He said we need to create a “21st century agency for global communications.”

The full story by William Matthews is posted on Air Force Times here.

The U.S. should not only be taking more steps to counter online Islamist propagana and recruiting, it should also be actively launching its own all-out information offensive. 

One of the largest mistakes we’ve made since 9/11 is allowing more and more anti-American rhetoric to spew out from mosques, websites, TV stations, and other media outlets all over the Muslim world. It’s time we to start making serious efforts to reach the Arab street with our own propaganda.

An agency in charge of online thought warfare is a good start, but it’s still only a start.

Saddam’s FBI Interrogator

60 Minutes just aired Scott Pelley’s interview with George Piro, the FBI special agent who spent seven months interrogating Saddam Hussein. View the entire transcript here.

Aside from learning about Saddam’s little idiosyncracies and the personal dynamic that developed between him and Piro, there were three really interesting bits of information in the 60 minutes interview.

First is that, according to Piro, Saddam made his final decision to invade Kuwait in 1990 when Kuwait’s emir insulted the honor of Iraqi women. Saddam wanted to teach him a lesson, so he started a war.

Piro and Pelly also discussed why Saddam had allowed Iraq to be invaded by the U.S. in 2003. Did he think he could win? Was he simply in denial? Piro said Saddam  expected merely the type of limited air assault the world was used to seeing during the Clinton years. By the time he realized George W. Bush was serious, it was too late.

But the most important part of the interview was the discussion about Iraq’s WMD progams. Piro said Saddam told him Iraq’s weapons were all destroyed either by U.N. weapons inspectors or voluntarily. Saddam claimed he did not announce this to the world because he saw the threat of having these weapons as instrumental to keeping himself in power. But, according to Piro’s account, he was ready to reinitiate his weapons programs as soon as the international scrutiny eased up:

In fact, Piro says Saddam intended to produce weapons of mass destruction again, some day. “The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there,” Piro says.“And that was his intention?” Pelley asks.“Yes,” Piro says.“What weapons of mass destruction did he intend to pursue again once he had the opportunity?” Pelley asks.“He wanted to pursue all of WMD. So he wanted to reconstitute his entire WMD program,” says Piro.

“Chemical, biological, even nuclear,” Pelley asks.

“Yes,” Piro says.

Pelley quickly changed the subject, but Piro had already made a profound statement. Saddam admitted to him he wanted to get on with developing nukes, and biological and chemical weapons. Is this a justification for the Iraq War? It may very well be. Arguments can be made either way but it’s certainly something 60 Minutes should have given more than ten seconds of screen time.

Hopefully some other news outlet will be able to spend more time with Piro and do a more in depth interview about this particulat topic.

Oh, and way to go FBI. Fantastic job.