Author: Helena

In case we needed a reminder of why the Geneva Conventions (which are part of the “laws of war”) are important, the most recent (of many now emerging) revelations about the misdeeds of US soldiers in Iraq can provide one.
On June 16, two US servicemen were captured during what looked like a fairly well-planned ambush of their patrol. Three days later, their mutilated bodies were found.
The Bushites pointed to the treatment of those two as revealing the inhumane nature of the insurgents in Iraq…
Now, AP’s Ryan Lenz has revealed that the two captured GIs belonged to the very same army platoon as five other soldiers who are now accused of having deliberately plotted and then committed the rape of an Iraqi woman and the subsequent murder of her along with three members of her family, back in March.
This is a grisly, tragic sequence of events all round. In no way do I argue that the gruesome earlier behavior of their platoon-mates in any way “justified” the way the two captured GIs were treated. All these abuses of the laws of war are quite unjustifiable.
I do, however, hold that it is quite likely that if members of this platoon had behaved all along towards the Iraqis whom they encountered in a way consistent with the Geneva Conventions, then those two murdered and mutilated GIs might now still be alive… That’s the thing about the Geneva Conventions: they provide a single unified code of conduct for how everyone should behave in a war zone.
Yes, of course if the soldiers in the US occupation forces all kept impeccably to the standards of the Gevena Conventions, it is quite possible that the insurgents would still commit some atrocities– though in far, far smaller numbers than the ones they’ve committed to date.
But the many messages the Bush administration’s high officials have put out about the idea that the Geneva Conventions are somehow “outdated” and don’t apply to Americans have certainly trickled down to the troops and affected the judgment of many of them regarding what they think is acceptable and what unacceptable in a war zone.
The piece by Lenz, by the way, is interesting in a number of ways. It seems he has been able to “break” the story about the March rape and murders in the US MSM in good part because, as the tagline at the end of the story informs us, he was previously embedded with the 502nd Infantry Regiment, the same regiment of which the accused delinquents were part. So I assume he must have had some fairly good sources at the regimental level there who helped give him some of the background to the story.
He writes:

Up to five soldiers are being investigated in the March killings, the fifth pending case involving alleged slayings of Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops.
The Americans entered the Sunni Arab’s family home, separated three males from the woman, raped her and burned her body using a flammable liquid in a cover-up attempt, a military official close to the investigation said. The three males were also slain.
The soldiers had studied their victims for about a week and the attack was “totally premeditated,” the [US military] official said on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.
… The official said the rape and killings appeared to have been a “crime of opportunity,” noting that the soldiers had not been attacked by insurgents but had noticed the woman on previous patrols.
One of the family members they allegedly killed was a child, said a senior Army official who also requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

But here is another interesting aspect of the case: Lenz writes that “Mahmoudiya police Capt. Ihsan Abdul-Rahman said Iraqi officials received a report on March 13 alleging that American soldiers had killed the family in the Khasir Abyad area, about 6 miles north of Mahmoudiya.” He doesn’t say whether Abdul-Rahman informed the US military of this allegation at the time. He does write that, “U.S. officials said they knew of the deaths but thought the victims were killed in sectarian violence.”
Oh, what a handy explanation, eh?
But the way the details of the crime started to emerge up at the officer level wasapparently through the participation of soldiers from the platoon in question in what are described as “counseling sessions” that were– according to an earlier filing from Lenz– organized among platoon members after the deaths of their two comrades, in an attempt to help them deal with their feelings, etc etc.
From what Lenz writes, the rape-and-murder action undertaken by the five had been known of prior to that by a number of their comrades. He writes, “A second soldier, who also was not involved, said he overhead soldiers conspiring to commit the crimes and then later saw bloodstains on their clothes, the official said.”
But it wasn’t till the “counseling sessions” that any of these other, non-involved platoon members shared their suspicions or concerns with their superiors. Omerta ruled…
Anyway, all branches of the US military that have members on active duty inside Iraq are now becoming stained by the revelation of earlier acts of atrocity and mistreatment of Iraqi civilians. Military discipline seems to be coming under exactly the same kinds of pressure there that it came under in Vietnam.
Yes, to a large degree I do hold these individual sodliers responsible for their misdeeds. Burt I hold their commanders even more responsible for their training and discipline… and the higher up the chain of command you go, the more responsible these commanders should be held.
So let’s see, that goes up through the level of their regimental commanders up to the all-Iraq command to Centcom to the Joint Chiefs of Staff to– Donald Rumsfeld, to President Bush. We US citizens should demand that the nation’s higherst commanders of all be held directly responsible for upholding the rule of law– whether in the midst of combat (the circumstance that is addressed directly by the internationally agreed “laws of war”) or in any other circumstance. They also need also to take robust action to ensure compliance with the laws of war by soldiers and officers at all levels.
If they don’t do that, then as citizens of a nation built upon the rule of law we need to do the “holding responsible” for them– at the ballot box!
Meanwhile, until the US reverts to being a nation that abides by and upholds laws, the risks to individual US soldiers (and civilians) will continue to mount.
Note, too, that a call that the US military start complying with the laws of war in no way contradicts my equally strong call that the US military be withdrawn from Iraq at the earliest possible time, and the US military as a whole be radically downsized. Of course, if there were no US occupation of Iraq back in March, then that poor Iraqi woman and her family would never have met the grisly fate that was inflicted on them. (And nor would the two slain soldiers or the other 500 or so US soldiers killed this year in Iraq have been sent home in body bags, either.)
But whether the troops are in Iraq or not, they need to uphold the laws of war. It’s as simple as that.

I  know I’m late in commenting on the US Supreme Court’s decision,
announced June 19, that ruled
illegal the Bushites’ project of establishing special “military
commissions” to ptorcess the cases of the 500-some men still held at
the Guantanamo Naval Base.

The decision is important at a number of levels.  Firstly,
regarding the fate of the Gitmo detainees, the Supremes told the
administration it has to either try them according to the existing
rules and procedures used by courts martial (which operate under the
Uniform Code of Military Justice)– or, it should go to Congress and
ask Congress to legislate new rules for dealing with these detainees.

(I’m assuming this also applies to detainees held by the US military or
“other government agencies” at Bagram Airforce Base in Afghanistan, or
elsewhere, as well?  I’m not sure, though.)

Secondly, the June 29 decision informs the President quite clearly that
even though 9/11 might have changed many things for Americans– a
proposition worthy of considerable further discussion– still, it did
nothing to alter the concept of the US as a political system that
operates under duly legislated laws rather than through
imperial fiat or the undisclosed and unregulated workings of secret
government agencies.  This will have huge effects, I hope, on the
Bushites’ ability to continue with other illegal projects like the
widespread use of warrantless wiretapping of everyone’s communications
and illegal scrutinization of people’s financial dealings…

Good for the Supremes!  (Or at least, for the five of them who
voted for this ruling, as opposed to the three who opposed it.)

Regarding the fate of the Gitmo detainees– many of whom have now
languished under the sometimes brutal and always demeaning control of
their captors for more than four years now– the administration (and
Congress) will find themselves dealing with some rather tough dilemmas:

Continue reading “Bush’s Gitmo woes”

Is the “Khalilzad Cable“, the full text of which was published by the WaPo today, the present war’s equivalent of the Vietnam War’s “Pentagon Papers“?
Back in 1971, when Pentagon employee Daniel Ellsberg leaked huge portions of the 47-volume report on US-Vietnam relations commissioned by SecDef Robert McNamara to the NYT and the WaPo, their publication by the two papers sparked a storm of controversy in the US and helped to swing elite opinion massively against the war.
The “Khalilzad cable”, which was sent from Viceroy Khalilzad to Secretary of State Condi Rice just “hours” before the surprise trip that Bush made to Baghdad on June 12, reveals how stunningly unsuccessful all the US’s efforts to stabilize Iraq and build effective, pro-US new security forces there have been. Equally significantly, it also reveals the degree to which Zal Khalilzad, the US Viceroy in Baghdad, is aware of this situation– despite all of Bush’s earnest public avowals that things are going ahead very well in Iraq.
That’s why it deserves to have the same impact within the US policy elite that the Pentagon Papers had in their day.
The text of the cable– marked “Sensitive”, but also “Unclassified”– was given by a person or persons unnamed to brilliant WaPo columnist Al Kamen. The title that Khalilzad put in the “subject” line was this: Snapshots from the Office: Public Affairs Staff Show Strains of Social Discord.
Okay, the content of what was in the cable was pretty interesting– though not much in it comes as any huge surprise to anyone who’s been following the good Iraqi blogs and good journalism from Iraq over the past few months. But what intrigued me just as much was the context within which Khalilzad was writing it… It seems to be a detailed study of the behavior and attitudes of just nine employees in (I assume from the title) the Public Affairs Office at the “embassy”.
Why did the ambassador spend so much time and effort producing this particular piece of work, I wonder?
I have two suppositions: (1) It’s possible that the “Social Discord” within the PAO had grown to the degree that the office’s work had become noticeably fault-ridden… in which case Condi might well have asked her man there: “Zal, so what the heck is going on in the PAO, anyway?” Or, (2), Zal, last weekend, for whatever reason, might have thought it would be instructive to try to provide Condi with the most firsthand description he could of “How Iraqis Live”… Well, he’s not going to get that from talking to the Iraqi political leaders… and he’s not about to exit from the Green Zone in a disguise like some latter-day Haroun al-Rashid and go out ‘n’ about in downtown Baghdad to see how his subjects are really living there… so the “subjects” of the planned enquiry who are closest to hand seem to be the three Iraqi women and six Iraqi men who work in his own PAO.
(Or, of course, both motivating factors might have been at work.)
Para 4 of the cable is interesting. He writes that the women from the PAO, “also tell us that some ministries, notably the Sadrist controlled Ministry of Transportation, have been forcing females to wear the hijab at work.” This is recounted with the air of being ‘news’– and it indicates that Khalilzad’s best way of learning what’s going on in Iraqi government ministries is to listen to hearsay from the handful of women who work in his PAO?
Similarly, in para 6, Khalilzad once again shows us how reliant he is on indirect hearsay to learn things about life in Iraq that are common knowledge to bloggers, good journos, and human-rights workers within the country:

An Arab newspaper editor told us he is preparing an extensive survey of ethnic cleansing, which he said is taking place in almost every Iraqi province… ”

Para 11 gives a little snapshot of how terrifying life has become for the Iraqi employees in the US Embassy. It deals with the strong suspicions these employees have about the hostile attitudes of the Iraqi forces personnel controlling the access checkpoints around the Green Zone:

They seemed to be more militia-like and in some cases seemingly taunting. One employee [told us that] guards had held her embassy badge up and proclaimed loudly to nearby passers-by “Embassy” as she entered. Such information is a death sentence if overheard by the wrong people.

Paras 12-15 seem particularly revealing:

12… [O]f nine employees in March, only four had family members who knew they worked at the embassy. That makes it difficult for them, and for us…
13. We cannot call employees in on weekends or holidays without blowing their “cover”…
14. Some of our staff do not take home their American cellphones, as this makes them a target. Planning for their own possible abduction, they use code names for friends and colleaguyes and contacts entered into Iraqi cellphones. For at least six months, we have not been able to use any local staff members at on-camera press events.
15. More recently, we have begun shredding documents printed out that show local staff surnames. In March, a few staff members approached us to ask what provisions we would make for them if we evacuate.

Then, there are some paras where Zal tells Condi what he has learned about general security conditins in the area around Baghdad from these PAO staff people:

20. Since Samarra [i.e. the late-February bombing of the mosque in Samarra]… [o]ur staff– and our contacts– have become adept in modifying behavior to avoid “Alasas,” informants who keep an eye out for “outsiders” in neighborhoods. The Alasa mentality is becoming entrenched as Iraqi security forces fail to gain public confidence.
21. Our staff report that security and services are being rerouted through “local providers” whose affiliations are vague. [Or perhaps your staff know but don’t want to tell you, Zal? Had you thought of that?]… Personal safety depends on good relations with the “neighborhood” governments, who barricade streets and ward off outsiders. The central government, our staff says, is not relevant; even local mukhtars have been displaced or coopted by the militias. People no longer trust most neighbors.

And finally, in para 23, Zal does reveal that he’s not quite sure how much he can trust even these staff people: “Employees are apprehensive enough that we fear they may exaggerate developments or steer us towards news that comports with their own worldview. Objectivity, civility, and logic that make for a functional workplace may falter if social pressures outside the Green Zone don’t abate.”
So okay, at the next press briefing at the White House or the State Department, let’s hear some of those reporters asking the Prez, or Condi, or their flaks: “So really, how are things going in Baghdad? And do you judge that Ambassador Khalilzad is an experienced and well-informed judge of the situation there?”
My judgment from all the above– assuming the cable as leaked and published is genuine (and I assume the WaPo would have done much to authenticate it before they published it)– is that things are even more precarious for the US position in Iraq than I had previously thought… It seems to me that Khalilzad and his staff there are hanging on by a hair. And what’s more, he seems to understand this– and to be eager to warn Condi about just how bad things are… And this, apparently even after he’d gotten the good news about the killing of Zarqawi and Maliki’s completion of forming his government…
(We have also, earlier, seen Khalilzad or his staff people telling the NYT’s John Burns that of course it was the US Viceroys in Baghdad before him who made all the big mistakes… not him, at all.)