WP, excellent idea! Strange as it may be we once again we find ourselves aligned with the same point of view.

They are criminals.

You named a number of folks who had nothing to do with detainee abuse. (Advocating the invasion of Iraq and then screwing it up may well be wrong, but it is not a crime.)

Secretary Rumsfeld reviewed and approved both the techniques and use of torture. He most certainly was involved and since he does not believe the techniques that he approved were torture, he has admitted it in interviews. Cheney had his chief of staff, who fancied himself a constitutional lawyer pursue the concept of the "singular executive. The essence of the Bush conception was a “New Paradigm” of executive power, a “strategy [that] rests on a reading of the Constitution that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, is not constrained by any boundaries to include torture. Isn't that odd? They say they didn't torture anyone.

So bringing these office-holders into the conversation is more than appropriate as they are the cause for these practices. The "Decider" just went along because he was what, dumb, a shallow thinker, gullible?

Is falsifying intelligence (remember Curveball) and predicating a war on it a crime? Maybe getting a lot of people killed under false pretenses murder? Manslaughter? Bad? Naughty?

Iraq was a violation of both jus ad bellum principles and the international laws of war.

But not to worry, all we have to do is call it "preemption" to confuse the issue for those with a shallow undertsanding of the tradition (JWT) and then get a stooge lawyer to offer an "opinion" that anything is lawful, and then cook the narative by stirring in more abuse of common language and a few outright lies.

Yes they are criminals by any sense of the word, legalistic, philosophical, ethical, logical. But they have power--still do for that matter, otherwise they would have been indicted. Criminals for the torture, for the unwarranted agression, and for what the Carthaginians used to crucify their generals for: incompetence. Criminal incompetence and criminally negligent epistemological irresponsibility--willful obtuseness in the face of knowing their own ignorance and lying about it.

Funny, I was overseas when that administartion came into power. You know that overseas military pretty much have to watch Armed Forces Netwrok where commercials are replaced with what amounts to infomertials for the government and propaganda. Once all this stuff started going radical in late 2002, AFN started to air commercials as a threat down telling military folks not to bad mouth the folks in the administration. Never saw that when Clinton was in the White House. Those neo-con guys knew they were doing wrong, and it was pretty obvious they did not want anyone talking about it.

I said "some of those names" not "all of them"

The Iraq invasion was authorized by the 2003 AUMF and retroactively authorized by the UNSC.

Just because something is dumb does not make it a crime.

Forgot about all the agitprop. Sorry it was a crime, by any definition except those in the realm of self-deception.

2003 AUMF stated:

"...the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States...."
This is an authority to invade Iraq? The AUMF was by design against the perpetrators on 9/11/01 terrorism. Please explain how this equates to justification for an invasion of Iraq.

"UNSC...retroactively authorized.."
Please explain.

Youre confusing the 2001 AUMF with the 2003 Iraq AUMF. The Iraq Aumf was passed by congress and under the "latest in time rule" overrides any prior contradicting legislation (including treaties). Further, the UN Security Council retroactively authorized the invasion with a resolution recognizing the US as an the occupying power and not directing the US to leave but rather to take responsibility for establishing the new Iraqi government.
This interpretation is the general consensus (with obviously some who disagree) among American international law folks and some Europeans.

Further, the US position is that UNSC 1441 (2002) authorized the invasion. This interpretation is controversial. Nevertheless, it is the UNSC which determines if the crime of aggressive war has been committed and the UNSC has not done so. Ergo, the invasion was legal. The argument that the invasion was illegal anyway is really an argument "that there ought to be a law" that something or other is illegal when there isn't one. Maybe telling a woman in a bar that you're a millionaire so she'll sleep with you should be a crime. But it generally isn't. Same basic issue.

Spoken like a true details man. I did say prima facie, and if it had happened without the maufactured narrative, we all know it would have been a specious interpretation of law. Nevertheless, by the standards of tradition, it was an illegal act. Primarily because it was done under false pretenses. I find it amazing that the law man's law somehow wiggles its way, slouching toward Washington, as something that unctuous trumps the moral law.

RVN,

You reminded me of how much I hate the neo-con practice of turning to some lawyer from a high quality law school, with a very low quality character and sense of objectivity. This whole nonsense about the powers of the President essentially being the power of a King, simply because the Constitution refers to the President as "commander in chief" has got to stop. Given the rest of the Constitution and the powers delegated, it is beyond insane to make the claims the executive has made in recent history in regards to the authority of the executive due to those three little words.

Yeah, you're the commander in chief. Now command and chief as we in Congress tell you to. That's the proper understanding of executive military power.

if every act of Congress that was based on false pretenses was illegal, we wouldn't have many left.

anyway, now we have an appeal to "moral law" instead. I'd prefer to actually stick with known law personally, when the right appeals to "moral law" it's to tell me what to do in my bedroom, when it's the left it's usually to make a run-around some vote they lost. either way, a pox on both your houses.

No one is talking about religion here, or cultrual mores. Still I get your point. But if the law does not refer to morality, then what is it after all? Yes there is a moral solidarity in the world, so don't go under cutting your own foundation. You know its a stretch, don't you?

all law is based on someone's form of morality, usually because they won enough votes over time. true enough.
and law when it comes to war does evolve. but you can never make a change in the law of war without the great powers coming along (and none of them wanted to do that with Iraq..binds their hands too much)....notice that every treaty which bans certain weapons (landmines, cluster munitions) is usually signed only by the countries which don't have any to begin with...so, yes, I'm cynical.

war sucks, the Iraq invasion sucks, etc. got it. but we also have a lot of 20-20 hindsight going on. and in an ideal world we'd ban all this stuff and be able to enforce it. but we're nowhere near that. and where others see villains, I mainly see people trying to make decisions (usually the wrong ones) among multiple bad choices (no that doesn't include people who shoot kids in their beds...no justification for that).

anyway, I guess I'm violating the don't post when you're drinking rule so I should call it quits for the weekend...

Violating that rule myself...

but I've got to head to NM tomorrow for Bataan. anyway, if we're ever in the same area I'd be happy to buy you a beer and hear about how I'm spending my morally deficient life protecting war criminals or some-such.

No such thing!

but if a witness could conceivably incriminate him or herself in their testimony than of course they should invoke their Art. 31 rights. The only way then to compel their testimony would be to grant them immunity. Of course that grant of immunity then becomes a powerful argument for the defense (as we saw with Haditha).

On a more meta note, I'd suggest that it is very difficult to find someone criminally culpable beyond a reasonable doubt for general policy direction or command climate type concerns. Much easier to end their careers or have them retire in disgrace. Criminal liability requires specifics and I think you'll find that in most instances it's very very difficult to prove that a certain specific high-level individual specifically ordered the specific abuse of a specific detainee.

I kind of agree with your general thrust but I'm afraid that's the answer as unsatisfactory as it may seem. No one wants to waste their time on a certain acquittal.

I think you're right that Taguba was not sufficiently high-ranking to have been the appropriate IO.

http://tortureaccountability.org/geoffrey_miller

"...but in May 2006, Miller was asked to testify at the trial of soldiers who had worked handling dogs at Abu Ghraib. Miller refused to testify, claiming his right against self-incrimination, under Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice."

As I recall from news reports, one of the Navy dog handlers refused to let his MWD be abused thru participation in doing the 'Abu Grab'. Some of junior service handlers weren't as well grounded, in morals and military doctrine, as we saw from the pics. Score one for Ducky.

Thanks for the informed view, Lieber.

I think he should have been prosecuted (Gen. Miller that is)...but then I'm not really privy to the evidence....maybe they didn't have enough or maybe it was the politics of it.

The goal in prosecuting henchmen (imo) is to roll back the veil and omerta that protects the enabling authority. Fear of prosecution as a moral force is subverted when no one is prosecuted.

Our host TR has spoken in favor of an Iraq war truth commission. Justice lies in setting the record straight, and let that be punishment enough. I'm more than willing to forgive, but don't let that crowd hide behind national security, and thereby go on rewriting the facts to fit their next lethal scheme.

I'm reminded that Director for Life Hoover, whose name still adorns the FBI HQ building, maintained for most of his tenure that there was no such thing as a mafia or Cosa nostra in the US. And then we wonder how the FBI he still inspires, how could they suppress multiple internal alarms about radical emigrant Saudis learning to fly without landing, in 2000?

Like military justice, Hoovers Bureau system was built to shelter the select from accountability, and easily accommodates willful strategic blindness.

The amateur Jack Bauer style detention ops that Gen Taguba investigated in Iraq were initially enabled for AfPak, deliberately encouraged by tough guy executives who never believed My Lai held a lesson for them.

Had the predictable and documented excesses (and blowback onto untrained troops) been honestly evaluated and adjusted for as it was happening, thousands of American mine casualties, and untold Iraqi deaths could have been reduced and avoided. And we might not have been stuck with our paws in the Gitmo tarbaby for a generation.

If you think Karpinski did not know what was going on I have a bridge to sell you.

in additon to the bridge, I have some Enron stock you may be be interested in...Karpinski comes out of this as one of the worst generals of the war, and I think she made Tom's top 10...if you are the CG of a detention facility, you can go anywhere in it you want to see what is going on, as a GO, listening to her say there were places in the prison she was not authorized access to is just out there...then to go on the Today show and claim that she did everything right and her soldiers were wrong, then to write a book about how great she is...the best way to honor her is to have her tought as an example of toxic leadership at every level from WLC to the War College.

But knowing what's going on and having any control over it are not the same thing. She had no authority over the civilian contractors, CIA personnel, military intelligence or JSOC. She could in theory have ordered her troops to not co-operate but remember that the people who set all this up had a little more juice than a female reservist. Using 20/20 hindsight it would have better for her if she had and just been quickly and quietly relieved of duty but with her personal reputation intact. Also the MPs seemed to have been a bunch of small town hicks who were most likely really impressed by all the "high speed, low drag" bad asses who were really running the show. She might have had a mutiny on top of everything else.

She had access, knowledge and then lied about it afterwards but of course was portrayed as a scapegoat by the media. Joke.

Tom is correct that she was a really weak and ineffective officer. It's almost as if she were put in charge of Abu Ghraib by design.

"She had no authority over the civilian contractors, CIA personnel, military intelligence or JSOC. She could in theory have ordered her troops to not co-operate but remember that the people who set all this up had a little more juice than a female reservist."-

She actually does have the ability to kick them out of the facility, if she is the CO of the facility and you work there you are in effect under her control as far as how and when the use of that facility is made. She would not have need to know what information they got during interrogations, she would not have the ability to directly order those JSOC, CIA and Contractors in how they do their business but she would have the authority to stop them from coming, reporting their techniques and certainly the things the troops were doing. Don't think for a second that those kids had "other orders" or did what they did under direction, they did it because it was the norm, power corrupts and under the tacit if not open approval of their boss.

but how does that set her apart. Again it all sounds very well and fine in theory to say stand up to the Vice-President, Secretary of Defense, your Commander and just do what's right. In practice that rarely happens and it's even rarer that it works out very well for the whistle blower.

She was not going to blow the whistle because she would be blowing it on herself and she knew and approved of what was going on. She just lied about it afterwards.

I saw Karpinski speak once. They brought her to USMA to give a lecture sometime around 2008-2009, and I'd like to think that the powers-that-be expected her to talk about, well, something semi-related to the debacle that she is now famous (read: infamous) for.

She got up there and talked about her year in Iraq and described her assigned duties, then showed us pictures of her visiting prisons and with Iraqi officials. Like we were business people who didn't know what had happened or that these prisons existed to house EPWs. She never so much as mentioned the Abu Ghraib situation, though she did mention the prison a few times. You could just see everyone looking at her in this totally aghast manner, as if collectively saying "this would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic."

The fact that she pretended like this never happened (not to mention wasted an hour plus of everyone's time) to a group of semi-intelligent people give me no doubts as to her emptiness on an intellectual and moral level. She's garbage and deserves to go down in infamy.

(other than Graner, a couple interrogators and an Iraqi translator (who I'm told on very good authority was responsible for the worst stuff). She had the complete authority to conduct inspections (or order them) at any time...and should have. A complete failure of command responsibility.

she was the landowner. Just because she didn't have command over some folks doesn't mean that she couldn't order them out of her AO.

over and over again there are accounts of military officers in Iraq and Afghanistan who express frustration at having no real control over civilian contractors or SOF who are operating in their AO but still have to clean up the mess.. I would like to think if I were in charge of Abu Ghraib that I would told Cheney, Rumsfeld and Sanchez to go to hell but i have to be honest, if I thought it would cause me to lose everything I'd think very hard about it.

That's why it's service, and not Enron. She could have done more, she chose not to, for herself over the nation.

Here is the calculus. Remove [how can I avoid personal discomfort] from the [serving my country] equation, and it becomes much simpler.

SOF guys and a lot of the contractors just drop off the prisoners, as for the "no control", the only problems that popped up were that SOF units would often want to operate in an area and in the early days would not tell the AO Commander and do a deconfliction. That type of stuff does not happen anymore. She as the CO could have closed the facility off, could have controlled what in the facility was used and I promise you she was 100% aware of what was going on with her own troops who were acting on their own. The whistle blowing thing is crap, a kid in the facility blew the whistle, gave up pictures and information to the CID, he did what was right and that was the only reason it got out in the first place. Not the press, not the GOs, a junior enlisted man.

If you really believe that given all the available evidence then I really have a bridge I want to sell You

But you usually don't get punished for doing the right thing.

He could have punted. Instead, he turned over all the rocks, even after being warned it was going to cause trouble for him.

I think honoring him might give a hint to other general officers, at the very least.

Best,
Tom