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Saturday, May 01, 2004 |
 Seymour Hersh has the full round-up on Abu Ghraib in the New Yorker. This wasn't just some rogue and ill trained MPs (guards) acting badly. It was a systematic program of torture and humilation, under the direction of Intelligence Agents (MI, CIA, and CACI a private firm), in the pursuit of confessions.
There was evidence dating back to the Afghanistan war, the Ryder report said, that M.P.s had worked with intelligence operatives to “set favorable conditions for subsequent interviews”—a euphemism for breaking the will of prisoners. “Such actions generally run counter to the smooth operation of a detention facility, attempting to maintain its population in a compliant and docile state....” Army intelligence officers, C.I.A. agents, and private contractors “actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses.”
General Taguba saved his harshest words for the military-intelligence officers and private contractors. He recommended that Colonel Thomas Pappas, the commander of one of the M.I. brigades, be reprimanded and receive non-judicial punishment, and that Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan, the former director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, be relieved of duty and reprimanded. He further urged that a civilian contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI International, be fired from his Army job, reprimanded, and denied his security clearances for lying to the investigating team and allowing or ordering military policemen “who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations by ‘setting conditions’ which were neither authorized” nor in accordance with Army regulations. “He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse,” Taguba wrote. He also recommended disciplinary action against a second CACI employee, John Israel. The mistreatment at Abu Ghraib may have done little to further American intelligence, however. Willie J. Rowell, who served for thirty-six years as a C.I.D. agent, told me that the use of force or humiliation with prisoners is invariably counterproductive. “They’ll tell you what you want to hear, truth or no truth,” Rowell said. “‘You can flog me until I tell you what I know you want me to say.’ You don’t get righteous information."
10:18:50 PM 
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Scott Rosenberg dives into Singularity issues and is not impressed. Denise Caruso's Hybrid Vigor Institute looks very interesting. She does need a focus area on post nation-state war and peace issues (a problem area that threatens to overwhelm all the others and one likely to generate funding).
4:51:34 PM
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Side note: the two private contractors that ran into problems in Iraq's prison fiasco, also supply interogration services to Gauntanamo. Also: the UK is dealing with its own prisoner scandal.
2:42:38 PM
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Weak, Failed, and Collapsed States. We have all heard the term "failed state." However, this term doesn't describe the full range of nation-state decline. Here is an attempt to formalize the discussion.
2:36:25 PM
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Reuters. Attacks on oil infrastructure start in Saudi Arabia. In this attack, western oil contractors were targeted in multiple attacks. Seven were killed. There are ~35,000 Americans working in Saudi Arabia.
In the Yanbu attack, Saudi Arabia said militants stormed a Saudi contractor's building in the city, killing foreigners and Saudis. It said security forces killed three of the attackers and wounded a fourth.
The intent of this attack, and those that follow, will be to drive out foreign contractors working in the oil industry (it is working in Iraq). This comes at a crucial time in the oil industry. Rapidly increasing demand requires that Saudi Arabia double its production over the next decade. This is impossible (regardless of whether they are willing or able to do it), if western help isn't available.
This is a classic statement:
"The kingdom will eliminate terrorism no matter how long it takes," Crown Prince Abdullah said in comments broadcast Saturday night on Saudi television. SPA later quoted Abdullah telling a gathering of princes in Jidda: "Zionism is behind terrorist actions in the kingdom. I can say that I am 95 per cent sure of that."
12:30:56 PM
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SFC. Dillusioned Stanford specialist in nation-building leaves Iraq. What he found, and this mirrors my own study of the subject, is that security is a fundamental necessity for any nation-building. All other issues are secondary and dependent.
8:01:43 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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