From an interesting piece about substituting pop-Christianity for clinical treatment of war-induced psychological disorders (via Sully):

In 2008 the RAND Corporation put a number on the problem, reporting that one in five veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has suffered some form of mental illness, mostly PTSD and depression.

“God doesn’t like ugly,” one political appointee told Paul Sullivan, an analyst in the VA’s Veterans Benefits Administration, in a clumsy attempt to reduce the cost of caring for psychologically traumatized veterans. “You need to make the numbers lower.”

The whole article is well-worth reading. The passage Sully quotes is good too, particularly this disturbing bit from VA Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Michael McLendon:

The claims, he said, are “costing us too much money,” and if the veterans “believed in God and country . . . they would not come home with PTSD.”

I’m glad William Jefferson will go to jail, but I wish Peter W. Galbraith (ambassador to Croatia under Clinton) were in there too. Greenwald:

Galbraith was one of the most vocal Democratic supporters of the attack on Iraq, having signed a March 19, 2003 public letter (.pdf)—along with the standard cast of neocon war-lovers such as Bill Kristol, Max Boot, Danielle Pletka, and Robert Kagan—stating that “we all join in supporting the military intervention in Iraq” and “it is now time to act to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime from power.” As intended, that letter was then praised by outlets such as The Washington Post Editorial Page, gushing that “it is both significant and encouraging that a bipartisan group of influential foreign policy thinkers, veterans of both Democratic and Republican administrations, has signed on to a statement of policy on Iraq that makes sense on the war.” Throughout 2002 and 2003, Galbraith appeared in numerous outlets—including repeatedly on Fox News and with Bill O’Reilly—presenting himself as a loyal Democrat firmly behind the invasion of Iraq. In 2002, he was an adviser to Paul Wolfowitz on Kurdistan.

After playing a key role in enabling the invasion of Iraq, Galbraith first became one of a handful of U.S. officials who worked on writing the Iraqi Constitution, and after he resigned from the government, he then continuously posed as an independent expert on the region and, specifically, an “unpaid” adviser to the Kurds on the Constitution. Galbraith was an ardent and vocal advocate for Kurdish autonomy, arguing tirelessly in numerous venues for such proposals—including in multiple Op-Eds for The New York Times— and insisting that Kurds must have the right to control oil resources located in Northern Iraq.

The Times (in an excellent piece of reporting) yesterday:

Now Mr. Galbraith, 58, son of the renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith, stands to earn perhaps a hundred million or more dollars as a result of his closeness to the Kurds, his relations with a Norwegian oil company and constitutional provisions he helped the Kurds extract.

If the Norwegian oil execs had dressed as pimps and hos when they signed the contract or if Galbraith was delivered the $100 million via a freezer, this would be a bigger story, obviously. As it is, he’ll probably soon be writing editorials in the Post and Times about how we should invade another oil rich nation!

You can already see it coming.

The Obama administration is considering outbidding the Taliban to persuade Afghan villagers to lay down arms as it struggles to find a new approach to a war that is fast losing public and congressional support.

This, of course, is precisely how the Bush administration fostered the Anbar Awakening. If we had an adopt-a-moron program going, I would volunteer to watch Ace of Spades for the most historically ignorant shit-losing, but obviously the field is wide open.

Being quite naive, I believed that Red Dawn would teach conservatives why violently occupying a foreign country would be a stupid idea. Wikipedia.

Initially, the occupiers had tried terror tactics, executing groups of civilians following every Wolverine attack, to intimidate the local population and the Wolverines into halting their attacks. However, this tactic backfires, and civilians lend increasing support to the resistance movement.

This brings to mind the time worn question: if you simplify a message to comic book form, and if you cast a magic spell over the comic book that makes every war-hungry conservative memorize it line by line, can they still miss the point? Let’s consult the same Wikipedia article.

Ironically, the operation to capture former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was named after the movie (Operation Red Dawn), as well as its targets, which were dubbed Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2. The Army captain who named the mission said that: “Operation Red Dawn was so fitting because it was a patriotic, pro-American movie.”

All signs point to yes.

I agree with many of you that Sullivan has been a great source for collected Iranian election coverage, but yesterday he published, without comment, this “reader” email:

Drum is both shrewd and correct. A bare Ahmadinejad win would have hidden the fraud. A bare Mousavi win would have been much better for the regime’s atomic bomb program, however. But they may have fatally overreached, like the Shah.

Remember when the Shah sent the Imperial Guard (“the Immortals”) into the streets, and they broke before the masses? We may be on the cusp of another legitimacy crisis here. Mousavi WAS the smarter choice for the regime: a smoother talker, talk of reform, while the centrifuges spin away and the bomb is built in secret. Meanwhle, the IAF’s Squadron 69 is kept on a tight leash by Obama lest the “moderate” President be undermined.

But no, apparently Khameinei is undermined by his own inner demons and past disagreements with Mousavi from the Revolutionary Days and the War Years. So, the urge to humiliate the Upstart overwhelmed Khameini.

Unless there is a popular uprising in favor of Mousavi and democratic legitimacy, the fascist coup will succeed. In that case, matters will be far worse. Bear this in mind: Hewitt and Krauthammer are correct.

If the coup d’etat is successful, the Israeli Defense Forces will have no choice but to act in the defense of the survival of the Jewish people and act to reduce the mortal danger to the State of Israel. Ali-Khameini and his stooge, Ahmadhi-Nejad and the Revolutionary Guards Corps clique are Islamic fascists, who will do anything to hang on to power. The Israeli Government cannot countenance such a group of people with deliverable Atomic Weapons. There will be war. Bet on this and take that bet to that bank.

As a general rule, I’d be wary of anything that includes the assertion that Hugh Hewitt is right about anything. Who was that reader? Marty Peretz? Michael Goldfarb? Frank Gaffney? Bill Kristol?

For those of you who are slow on the uptake, the message from that reader is clear- if Mousavi wins, the IDF needs to bomb Iran because they will stealthily be creating nukes, and if Ahmadalphabet wins, well then the IDF just has to bomb for the survival of mankind. Anyone who moves is a VC, anyone who stands still is a well-trained VC, etc., ad nauseum.

During the campaign, the wingnuts tried to smear Obama as hating the troops for some very sensible remarks he made about our situation in Afghanistan:

And that requires us to have enough troops that we’re not just air raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.

That was a sensible point, and it was met with howls of outrage from the usual suspects who broke out their GI Joe action figures and pretended that this was some sort of grievous insult to the honor and dignity of our troops. When, in actuality, not having enough troops on the ground and having to rely on bombing runs in which innocents are killed is wholly unproductive, and not only that, immoral.

So where are we now? Well, candidate Obama is now President Obama, and we have elevated the number of troops on the ground and are allegedly pursuing a new strategery in Afghanisatan. Change and all that, you could say. Unfortunately for those on the ground in Afghanistan, it is just the same shit different day:

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Wednesday he had dispatched a joint U.S.-Afghan team to investigate U.S. airstrikes that killed more than two dozen people in the western part of the country and prompted an outcry from Afghan officials.

Although the International Committee of the Red Cross said that women and children were killed in the U.S. strikes, Gen. David McKiernan told reporters in the capital that it was too early to know exactly what had happened. “We’re hopeful in the next couple of days we can have at least the initial truth,” he said.

According to the Red Cross, these numbers are not wildly exaggerated:

Red Cross officials are backing local reports that U.S.-led airstrikes in western Afghanistan earlier this week killed dozens of civilians. The U.S. military is sending investigators to the scene and President Hamid Karzai has pledged to take up the issue in meetings with President Obama.

Local Afghan officials say the incident occurred during a battle Monday and Tuesday in Farah province, when Afghan troops aided by U.S. soldiers were battling Taliban insurgents.

Local officials said bombing raids on the suspected Taliban positions killed as many as 100 civilians and residents are still digging through rubble looking for more bodies. A Red Cross team sent to the region backed up the claims of dozens of civilian deaths, including women and children.

I’m no pacifist. I understand there will be civilian casualties from time to time and that we will breezily call them “collateral damage,” but this has to stop. What is this accomplishing? What is the purpose in this? And why is the man who identified this as a problem a year and a half ago sitting by and letting this happen? A total damned disgrace, Obama.

Via two posts from Sullivan, I have learned that the two most successful interrogators and spybusters from WWII, one German and one British, never harmed an inmate.

No German won as many intelligence coups as Hanns Scharff. Scharff worked for the Luftwaffe interrogating allied pilots and bomber crews, so successfully that the U.S. military taught his methods decades later.

Colonel Robin “tin eye” Stephens was a “bristling, xenophobic martinet” who ran a famously successful counterinelligence operation for MI5 out of a basement in London.

In the course of the war, some 500 enemy spies from 44 countries passed through Camp 020; most were interrogated, at some point, by Stephens; all but a tiny handful crumbled.

[...] Many became double agents, secretly working for the British and sending false information back to Germany.

Scharff and Stevens broke more prisoners than anyone else in the war on either side. Interestingly, neither one ever so much as raised their voice against a prisoner.

The terrifying commandant of Camp 020 refined psychological intimidation to an art form. Suspects often left the interrogation cells legless with fear after an all-night grilling. An inspired amateur psychologist, Stephens used every trick, lie and bullying tactic to get what he needed; he deployed threats, drugs, drink and deceit. But he never once resorted to violence. “

...

Scharff was opposed to physically abusing prisoners with the intent to obtain information. Taught on the job, Scharff instead relied upon the Luftwaffe’s approved list of techniques which mostly involved making the interrogator seem as if he is his prisoner’s greatest advocate while in captivity.

[...] After a prisoner’s fear had calmed, Scharff continued to act as a good friend to the prisoner, including sharing jokes, homemade food items, and occasionally alcoholic beverages. Scharff was fluent in English and knowledgeable about British customs and some American, which helped him to gain the trust and friendship of many of his prisoners.

...

Stephens cared not for morality but for results, and these were extraordinary. Once a prisoner in Camp 020 realised he was safe from physical violence, he tended to sing all the louder.

...

Some high profile prisoners were treated to outings to German airfields (one POW was allowed to take a German aircraft for a trial run), tea with German fighter aces, swimming pool excursions, and luncheons among other things. Prisoners were treated well medically at the nearby Hone Mark Hospital, and some POWs were occasionally taken from captivity to visit their comrades at this hospital for company’s sake as well as the better meals provided there. Scharff was best known for taking his prisoners on strolls through nearby woods, first having them swear an oath of honor that they would not attempt an escape during their walk. Scharff chose not to use these nature walks as a time to directly ask his prisoners obvious military-related questions, but instead relied on the POWs’ desire to speak to anyone outside of isolated captivity about informal, generalized topics. Prisoners often volunteered information the Luftwaffe had instructed Scharff to acquire, frequently without realizing they had done so.

...

Stephens did not eschew torture out of mercy. This was no squishy liberal: the eye was made of tin, and the rest of him out of tungsten. (Indeed, he was disappointed that only 16 spies were executed during the war.) His motives were strictly practical. “Never strike a man. It is unintelligent, for the spy will give an answer to please, an answer to escape punishment. And having given a false answer, all else depends upon the false premise.”

Confessions extracted by inflicting pain are most likely to be whatever the victim believes the torturer desires to hear, whatever is necessary to stop the agony.

...

So why do people torture? The answer is simple; when reality doesn’t suit your needs, torture lets you make your own reality. That, of course, was the goal all along.

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend—but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ‘’in what we call the reality-based community,’’ which he defined as people who ‘’believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘’That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’’ he continued. ‘’We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’’

None of our prisoners would validate the idea that Iraq worked with al Qaeda. Then we tortured them, and they did. Amazing.

The salient point that I take home from today’s lesson is that interrogating prisoners takes patience and skill. Stephens and Schiff had the right stuff. Sadly for everyone, the GOP cult of impatient boobs needed a plan B.

***Update***

Also see: the still anonymous interrogator who found abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Sherwood Moran, a Marine interrogator who ‘broke’ supposedly fanatical Japanese soldiers with patience and cultural awareness.

The Senate Armed Service Committee just released its full report on detainee abuse by the US Armed Forces. Needless to say familiar faces like Rumsfeld, Ricardo Sanchez and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller come out looking bad.

Find the executive summary below the fold (rush job; all errors are mine), or follow the link here to get the full (15 mb) .PDF .

Another $700 mil pissed down a hole in Iraq because nobody thought to write oversight into the contract. We’re all Bill Murray now.

This is a cool use of neurobiological common sense. It does, however, run the risk of swamping the VA with veterans suffering a different kind of stubborn memory. There were weeks of my youth when I considered prying the Korobeiniki song out of my head with a sharpened spoon.

If you’re desperate, try the Eurythmics.

News from Gaza:

Israel on Thursday killed a senior Hamas political leader in an air strike in the Gaza Strip, the first such attack in its six-day-old offensive.

The air strike killed Nizar Rayyan along with nine other people, including his wife and three children, Hamas said. Another 25 people were wounded. Security sources told Ynet that the house was also used as an arms cache, a communications headquarters and concealed a tunnel’s opening.

Israeli military sources confirmed that Rayyan, who was considered the Hamas leadership’s liaison with the group’s military wing, was killed in an attack on his north Gaza home.

Prior to striking Rayyan’s house the IDF tried to warn his family about the imminent attack and urged them to evacuate the place, but they refused to do so.

Now, it goes without saying (assuming these reports are accurate) that Rayyan, as a man who advocated further suicide bombings against Israel, was a murderous cretin, and, as suspected, the usual suspects are thrilled. A few years ago, I probably would have joined them.

Now, however, my only thought is I wonder what the name of the guy they will kill in a few years will be, because it goes without saying Rayyan will be replaced, and probably with someone just as angry and just as hateful and radicalized by the death of his friends/family/lover, killed in this week’s raids (folks who we here in the States and in Israel will only obliquely reference as “collateral damage”).

Number Nine. Number Nine. Number Nine.

Often simply naming something makes it easier to see and understand the next time. Take the argument that pressing crisis X demands some sort of immediate response is sufficient by itself to endorse reaction Y. This is plainly ridiculous. The ways that a stupid or thoughtless person can make a given crisis worse almost defy counting, at least compared with the relatively few honestly good ideas. Further, people never have every possible tool in their hands all the time. I see this all the time, yet I only understood why the tactic irritates me so much when I gave it a name. I find it useful to call the flawed construct we have to do something, ergo we should do X the kinetic fallacy.

Iraq and the 2001 terrorist attacks make a useful contrast. When terrorists attacked America it was fairly clear that both that the status quo was untenable. It was also clear that we had the tools to do something useful. Conversely Saddam’s Iraq failed both tests. Compared to where we are today the status quo seems perfectly tenable for any number of reasons. (1) We shake hands every day with regimes bloodier than Saddam. (2) Sanctions kept Iraq’s army in a crippled state that threatened almost nobody. (3) Iran predictably became the dominant mideast power when a Shiite government replaced Saddam. (4) Inspectors who concluded that Iraq had nothing like a WMD program proved accurate and Judith Miller hystericism proved fucking wrong. (5) Save for planted stories about a meeting in Prague nobody would think to link Iraq with al Qaeda.

Iraq failed the imminent threat test, but it also failed the means test. Even if Saddam constituted a crisis we had little in the way of useful tools to improve the situation. Some people thought that we did, but those people were incredibly stupid. Neocons thought that Iraqis would welcome Ahmad Chalabi as some sort of pro-America/pro-Israel Saddam 2.0. Donald Rumsfeld thought he could win the occupation with a special forces skeleton crew. Iraq might be the ultimate example of the kinetic fallacy at work since we neither had to act nor had the tools to act usefully.

Almost nothing brings out kinetic arguments today like fights involving Israel. Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic, for example, wrote a post today that distilled the flawed argument almost perfectly. He states the pressing need to act (emphasis mine).

No country in the world could afford to ignore such attacks. And no country would. An elected government, such as Israel’s, has a basic, overriding responsibility—to protect its citizens from the organized violence of their enemies. Of course, it can do this in part by negotiating with its enemies (assuming its enemies recognize Israel’s right to life) but its immediate mission must be to stop the violence, which is what Israel is now trying to do.

He makes the second point so clearly that Goldberg’s post might as well be the kinetic fallacy index case.

Whether it succeeds or not is an open question (It is Hamas’ indifference to Palestinian life, not Jewish life, that makes it a formidable foe, in the manner of Hezbollah) , but Israel must try to use all of the tools of national power to stop attacks on its citizens. Otherwise it is simply not a serious nation, one that does not deserve sovereignty.

Notice Goldberg’s vague reference to “all the tools of national power.” Israel has a military designed to handle the regular armies of the rest of the region, plus the unconditional support of America, so the country has a lot of tools. Israel has nuclear weapons. It could commit genocide. Goldberg’s ambiguous statement commits him to supporting essentially any response that Israel makes, no matter how extreme or counterproductive. Like many Americans Goldberg apparently thinks a friend of Israel must support every decision by Israel’s government (to be fair, Goldberg’s blanket support may only cover violence). In my home country of Pittsburgh we call people like that enablers. If Israel’s decisions come from short term political need rather than the country’s own long-term best interests, as Ezra Klein suggests is happening today, then supporters of Israel would best serve her interests best by pushing policy in a more productive direction.

In another post Ezra makes one of the more effective counters to kinetic arguments about Israel. The idea that Israel should always answer violence with violence is a pernicious mistake because it effectively puts any small group of radicals in charge of Israel’s foreign policy. The problem is even worse than that. Israeli counterattacks mostly hit civilians, and the more civilians that Israel kills the more support the violent radicals will enjoy among the Palestinian population. Israeli violence and draconian sanctions do little for Israel, nor do they benefit Palestinians general. However, such ugliness is oxygen and water for radical groups that attack Israel. Goldbergian kineticism puts Israel’s policy in charge of groups that have the perverse incentive of keeping Israel as violent as possible.

Do these particular attacks demand a reaction? Compared with the relentless barrages from Hezbollah the answer here is much less clear. Hamas sent relatively few rockets, several misfired and nobody was killed. Unlike Hezbollah, Hamas has almost no ability to aim. A proportional response would have used something more like a catapult. So no, there was no absolute need to react here.

Regarding whether Israel had to respond with violence, the answer again is no. Israel would save far more lives if it closed down the remaining settlements. Unfortunately that is not an option, and the reason is telling. The political pain for taking on thousands of Israel’s most violent extremists at once would strain any Israeli government, especially a weak leader like Ehud Olmert. As Israel’s most important friend it is America’s job to provide political cover, via unbearable pressure, for Israel to do things that it cannot do under its own power. It is a convenient bonus that doing so would not only serve Israel but also help restore America’s reputation as an honest international broker.

An American airstrike recently hit another wedding party in Afghanistan with dozens of casualties.

The U.S. military said today it was investigating a report that an American airstrike hit a wedding party, killing dozens of civilians and prompting new pleas from President Hamid Karzai that foreign forces try harder to avoid hurting and killing noncombatants.

I have lost count how many wedding parties we have destroyed in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is a large number. Having fighter patrols scouring the ground for armed insurgents to kill doesn’t mix with a region where every wedding ends with half the male guests firing in the air to celebrate. Our policy of fighting an insurgency with airpower makes tragic accidents like this inevitable, which is why fighting insurgents from the air is and has always been a stupid policy.

We do it because we lack the forces to patrol the old fashioned way. Granted that boot leather harly worked for the Soviet empire or the British one before that; fighting guerillas is a losing prospect any way you try it. However, the few times it has worked (e.g., Philipines) the strategy more resembled Jack Petraeus than Jack D. Ripper of the Strategic Air Command. We do it because the president wants a body count but he doesn’t want the political cost of American casualties, but by fighting guerillas from the air we accomplish little but to increase the number of Afghans who have had a relative killed by American carelessness.

If we want to fight in the mideast and central asia then we should follow strategies that are not transparently counterprodictive, because they inevitably lead to tragedies like this.

A deadly attack on a U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan in July was executed with the support of some local police and government leaders, as well as villagers, according to an internal U.S. military report.

Story B is the reason why I oppose the policy behind story A.

Exporting American-style capitalism to Iraq:

A former Iraqi official estimated yesterday that more than $13 billion meant for reconstruction projects in Iraq was wasted or stolen through elaborate fraud schemes.

Salam Adhoob, a former chief investigator for Iraq’s Commission on Public Integrity, told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, an arm of the Democratic caucus, that an Iraqi auditing bureau “could not properly account for” the money.

While many of the projects audited “were not needed—and many were never built,” he said, “this very real fact remains: Billions of American dollars that paid for these projects are now gone.”

He said a report that went to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top Iraqi officials was never published because “nobody cares” about investigating such cases. Many investigators, he said, feared for their safety because 32 of his co-workers have been murdered.

No problem. Just tell Hank Paulson that if you don’t get 20 billion right now, you will wreck the economy. Then you will be ready to open up shop in Manhattan.

The media is playing up the Palin/Clinton angle of this story, but seem to be missing the real story:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has canceled an appearance at a New York rally next week after organizers blindsided her by inviting Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, aides to the senator said Tuesday.

Several American Jewish groups plan a major rally outside the United Nations on Sept. 22 to protest against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Organizers said Tuesday that both Clinton, who nearly won the Democratic nomination for president, and Palin, Republican candidate John McCain’s running mate, are expected to attend.

I guess two wars just isn’t enough for these guys. Can anyone imagine how breathless Atlas Juggs and the rest of the 101st Chairborne would be if pro-Iranian groups decided to rally, and an American congressmen attended?