Pruning Shears

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

The London Daily Telegraph reported that the Abu Ghraib photos the administration doesn’t want released are far more inflammatory than the ones already seen. Deputy assistant secretary of Defense Bryan Whitman attacked the report, and on Friday Scott Horton confirmed the story. He also added some context on Whitman, who led the propaganda campaign to get Newsweek to apologize for reporting that jailers at Guantánamo Bay had flushed a Koran down a toilet - which as it turned out was at least credible and certainly not worthy of a groveling retraction. Horton also reports how Whitman tried to torpedo the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, but since politicization of the military is now kosher that is merely a footnote.

Horton uses anonymous sourcing in his story. I don’t have a problem with it because the sources are acting in as whistleblowers. They are going against the institution they work for and are risking damage to or even the destruction of their careers. Plus, Scott Horton has credibility. If his stories start blowing up then it’s worth taking a second look at his stories.

Some interesting twists in the torture story. It seems that largely out of the media spotlight doctors and psychologists are working through the implications of how their members participated in it. It’s possible that a disciplinary investigation could be the source of bombshell revelations with profound impact for the political class. Not guaranteed, obviously, but it’s certainly possible for an academic or professional organization to produce news that shakes the ground far beyond its relatively obscure patch of it.

David Petraeus admitted the US has violated the Geneva Conventions and that torture created a recruiting tool for terrorists (more than a tool, by the way). This does not strike me as politicization because unlike Whitman he was speaking on the record about an issue he has extensive experience on and giving his professional opinion based on it, as opposed to facelessly whispering lies to reporters. That said, I don’t know how good an idea it is to have active commanders giving interviews on topics that could so directly relate to policy - even if they are experts. It might be better for active military to decline such interview requests, or at least defer on questions when they start going too close to that area. And I’d like to note with some amusement that Fox News may have gotten more than it bargained for on this one.

I haven’t seen anything about Sonia Sotomayor’s approach to executive power so I don’t have anything to say about her nomination. Charlie Savage noted she “has never worked in the federal executive branch and sits on a court that hears few executive power cases,” so any attempts to get a read in this area is probably more tea-leaf reading than anything else.

There were bad apples at Bagram too. At this point can’t we just stipulate that any bad apples were not sitting in barrel but rather the fruit of a poisonous tree whose branches extended many different places and was rooted in the White House?

There are real people affected by our policies. Boumediene’s first name is Lakhdar, not “Bush v.” It may sound obvious or even trite to say that but I think much of political thought has reduced these people to symbols or names on dockets. It’s not the only human face of our actions that we are averting our gaze from, either.

Post of the Week is from bmaz. The Speech and Debate Clause protected anyone in Congress who wanted to make use of it. United States v. Gravel is the precedent. It wasn’t legal jeopardy but a failure of courage on the part of our leaders. It is unforgivable and history will judge them harshly. Not as harshly as the architects, but that still leaves plenty of room for an execrable reputation.

Obama administration: We’re still going to keep using the State Secrets Privilege, and force it (via) on our allies too. Because it’s been so effective domestically and won us such a deep reservoir of good will abroad.

I certainly hope our former president keeps talking. By all means, keep advancing the story. Even your allies are starting to catch on.

I wrote on Thursday about Obama’s new friends on the right. He made some more on Friday. Conor Friedersdorf and hilzoy have already given proper responses so I’ll just leave it at that. UPDATE: No I won’t. I’ll also add this from Brad at Sadly, No! It turns out center right politicians in the UK aren’t committed to defending depravity and cruelty but actually investigating it. Here in America they are still torture enthusiasts. And Brad, Britain probably wouldn’t do a David Cameron for Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney trade without several year’s worth of high level draft picks, us agreeing to take on most of the salaries and maybe the cricket equivalent of an iron mike pitching machine.

The CIA has mislead people in the past, manufactured outrage from Gingrich and company notwithstanding. I feel kind of dumb for even bothering to point this out, but the message is out there so it’s better to address it instead of ignoring it.

I’d love to know more about this. And one amusing coda to my post about the DTCC. I mentioned suspicions about Gradient Analytics in passing, and a couple days later an EVP from Gradient contacted me offering to answer any questions I might have. I thanked him, sent some questions along and advised him that all our communications were presumptively on the record. I haven’t heard back since.

UNPACKING JANE: From page 251, more on how abuse at Abu Ghraib was the result of the official directive to ‘Gitmoize’ its treatment of detainees and not the product of a few low level freelancers:

By the time that Jamadi arrived at Abu Ghraib, it was clear that the CIA was playing outside everybody else’s rules. The August 2004 report by Major General George Fay concluded that “CIA detention and interrogation practices led to a loss of accountability, abuse, reduced interagency cooperation and an unhealthy mystique that further poisoned the atmosphere at Abu Ghraib.”

[snip]

Walter Diaz, a military policeman, was on guard duty at Abu Ghraib the morning that Jamadi was delivered to the prison. He said, “The OGA” - “other government agencies,” initials commonly used to protect the identity of the CIA - would bring in people all the time to interview them. We had one wing, Tier One Alpha, reserved for the OGA. They’d have maybe twenty people there at a time.” He went on, “They were their prisoners. They’d get into a room and lock it up. We, as soldiers, didn’t get involved. We’d lock the door for them and leave. We didn’t know what they were doing.” But, he recalled, “We heard a lot of screaming.”