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As Gore Vidal said once, “we are the United States of Amnesia.” We are. We don’t read. We don’t know other languages. We don’t study our own history. Our history is the history of an idea – an imperfect idea.

Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines hosted a fantastic debate of various experts discussing the Bush legacy of torture.

The panel includes:

Michael Scheuer – Former CIA Analyst
Jumana Musa – Human Rights Lawyer
Larry Wilkerson – former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell
Jim Moran – US Congressman

While the discussion does cover many of the things covered in the media, some of comments made by the panelists are fantastic, including Wilkerson’s explanation in response to an audience question about the implications of not doing anything:

They’re serious in terms of diminishment of our real power in the world, because our real power is as much wrapped around an idea as it is around the military, nuclear weapons or whatever. We’re unique in that  respect in the world and so many Americans seem not realize that, because they don’t know our history.

As Gore Vidal said once, “we are the United States of Amnesia.” We are. We don’t read. We don’t know other languages. We don’t study our own history. Our history is the history of an idea – an imperfect idea. Our constitution made people like you slaves, made them three fifths of a person. Our constitution has changed.

We’ve grown. We’ve moved towards that more perfect union. We ain’t there yet. We never will be there. But that idea is our most powerful weapon in the world and we have done consequential damage to that idea in the world. Our power has been diminished by doing that.

Or Michael Scheuer: Read the rest of this entry »

With Anti-American sentiment high in Pakistan from the continued drone strikes and the war on terror, a recent news report disclosed that the United States is planning a massive expansion of its diplomatic missions in Pakistan. While the State Department continues to claim that the expansion is to replace an already overcrowded, dilapidated and unsafe facilities and to support the “surge” of diplomatic officials in line with President Obama and Secretary Clinton’s strategy for South Asia, you have to wonder whether there is a deeper plan.

According to the report, the White House has asked Congress for $736 million for a new embassy in Islamabad, along with permanent housing and office space for US government civilians. The project is on the same scale as the US embassy in Baghdad at a cost of $740 million.

Additional expansions are planned for Peshawar, Lahore and Kabul. The plan for Peshawar includes the purchase of the Pearl Continental Hotel, Peshawar’s only 5 star hotel. Oddly, the Pearl Continental Hotel is owned by Sadruddin Hashwani – the same person that owns the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which was the target of a massive terrorist attack. Read the rest of this entry »

First, it was Christopher Hitchens that took the challenge to prove that waterboarding was not torture. His view changed after 15 seconds being waterboarded.

Then, Sean Hannity said on his show that he would be waterboarded for charity taking the debate about torture to a sick level – as if it was a comedy.

Now, Eric Mancow has taken the challenge and learned in 6 seconds that it is definately torture.

Read the rest of this entry »

The mounting tensions in Pakistan were brought home to me personally when I learned that the United States Central Command has rejected on security grounds the visit of Patrick Cronin to Pakistan today.To be clear, although Cronin had received clearance for the Pakistan visit from those in command in Pakistan, his visit was yesterday rejected because “facts on the ground had changed” and CENTCOM refused to override. The fact is that it easier today to visit Baghdad than Pakistan.

Cronin is Director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University and Senior Adviser and former Director of Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and also served as Director of Studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Cronin’s visit to Pakistan was important not only for his own assessment of what is taking place in Pakistan — but his relations with key parts of the Pakistan military and intelligence establishment and his ability to speak with the lesser known parts of these security bureaucracies as a policy intellectual and to some degree an American national security bureaucrat. Cronin is respected by both Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. and is known to be a useful source of counsel to the operations run by Robert Gates, Dennis Blair, Mike Mullen, Richard Holbrooke, and David Petraeus.

So, while President Obama is correct to say that the nuclear stockpile is secure for now, any one wanting to give Taliban insurgents a helping move could trigger another Mumbai-like terrorist attack, or create other sorts of high casualty incidents to goad the military alert level to move up.

And then what was secure no longer will be — as a matter of deeply embedded security doctrine.

One other interesting tidbit here in Qatar is that many Arabs who have moved in and around Pakistan believe that President Zardari is no longer “Mr 10%.”

They call him “Mr. 20%.”

Read the whole story at The Huffington Post.

I saw this movie today and have to recommend it to anyone who wants to see the consequences of torture. Taxi to the Dark Side is a 2007 documentary film directed by American filmmaker Alex Gibney, and produced by Eva Orner and Susannah Shipman, which won the 2007 Academy Award for Documentary Feature.

The film focuses on the murder in custody of an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar. Dilawar was beaten to death by American soldiers while being held in extrajudicial detention at the Bagram Air Base.

Taxi to the Dark Side also goes on to examine America’s policy on torture and interrogation in general, specifically the CIA’s use of torture and their research into sensory deprivation. There is description of the opposition to the use of torture from its political and military opponents, as well as the defense of such methods; the attempts by Congress to uphold the standards of the Geneva Convention forbidding torture; and the popularization of the use of torture techniques in shows such as 24.

The film is part of the Why Democracy? series, which consists of ten documentary films from around the world questioning and examining contemporary democracy. As part of the series Taxi to the Dark Side was broadcast over 30 different countries around the world between the 8th and 18th of October 2007.

Description: wikipedia

You can’t script something better than what has happened to Rep. Jane Harman of California. Last month, Rep. Harman tabled a bill in the United States House of Representatives to sanction and limit any foreign aid to Pakistan based on “access to AQ Khan.” Rep. Harman called AQ Khan “Mr. Khan is again a loose nuke scientist with proven ability to sell the worst weapons to the worst people.”

Well, Rep. Harman, what should we call someone who attempts to sell out their own country to save a couple of spies? The Congressional Quarterly yesterday published a damaging story about the NSA recording Rep. Harman “was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.”

She was picked up during a court approved NSA wiretap directed at an alleged Israeli covert action in Washington, DC.

Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

But in reading the story, the tale that unfolds in fantastic. In 2006, the FBI had launched an investigation into “pro-Israeli lobbyists trying to get her on the Intelligence committee,” but were dropped for “lack of evidence.” Rep. Harman was appointed the head of the Intelligence committee in the House of Representatives after the 2006 elections.

As for there being “no evidence” to support the FBI probe, a source with first-hand knowledge of the wiretaps called that “bull****.”

“I read those transcripts,” said the source, who like other former national security officials familiar with the transcript discussed it only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of domestic NSA eavesdropping.

“It’s true,” added another former national security official who was briefed on the NSA intercepts involving Harman. “She was on there.”

Such accounts go a long way toward explaining not only why Harman was denied the gavel of the House Intelligence Committee, but failed to land a top job at the CIA or Homeland Security Department in the Obama administration.

The identity of the “suspected Israeli agent” could not be determined with certainty, and officials were extremely skittish about going beyond Harman’s involvement to discuss other aspects of the NSA eavesdropping operation against Israeli targets, which remain highly classified.

But according to the former officials familiar with the transcripts, the alleged Israeli agent asked Harman if she could use any influence she had with Gonzales, who became attorney general in 2005, to get the charges against the AIPAC officials reduced to lesser felonies.

AIPAC official Steve Rosen had been charged with two counts of conspiring to communicate, and communicating national defense information to people not entitled to receive it. Weissman was charged with conspiracy.

AIPAC dismissed the two in May 2005, about five months before the events here unfolded.

Harman responded that Gonzales would be a difficult task, because he “just follows White House orders,” but that she might be able to influence lesser officials, according to an official who read the transcript.

As you read the article, you start to think one thing… coverup at the highest levels… apparently everyone from the FBI Director to the Attorney General helped to make sure that this Representative was not admonished for her behavior.

But here is my question, if you call AQ Khan a loose scientist for trying to build a weapon to defend his home country – what do you call someone who conspires with foreigners to help people escape espionage charges against their home country?

Should it matter if they are Israeli?