Eric Umansky

A snippet from Iraq

An Iraqi LAT reporter describes life in his neighborhood, which was quiet until 2005:

BAGHDAD — On a recent Sunday, I was buying groceries in my beloved Amariya neighborhood in western Baghdad when I heard the sound of an AK-47 for about three seconds. It was close but not very close, so I continued shopping.

As I took a right turn on Munadhama Street, I saw a man lying on the ground in a small pool of blood. He wasn't dead.

The idea of stopping to help or to take him to a hospital crossed my mind, but I didn't dare. Cars passed without stopping. Pedestrians and shop owners kept doing what they were doing, pretending nothing had happened.

I was still looking at the wounded man and blaming myself for not stopping to help. Other shoppers peered at him from a distance, sorrowful and compassionate, but did nothing.

I went on to another grocery store, staying for about five minutes while shopping for tomatoes, onions and other vegetables. During that time, the man managed to sit up and wave to passing cars. No one stopped. Then, a white Volkswagen pulled up. A passenger stepped out with a gun, walked steadily to the wounded man and shot him three times. The car took off down a side road and vanished.

No one did anything. No one lifted a finger. The only reaction came from a woman in the grocery store. In a low voice, she said, "My God, bless his soul."

Another Q&A

This one I did with BlogCcritics. A snippet:

What do you think it is about the issue of torture that makes it so difficult for journalists to cover? Well, it’s so fraught and so politicized that I think some reporters would prefer not to step on toes. Of course that’s the reality with other issues as well — abortion, for example. But covering torture has other impediments, none more so than the administration’s obfuscation. When President Bush says the White House has never approved abusive interrogations or torture, reporters for one thing need to have to the gumption to write clearly that the facts suggest otherwise. They also need to know the facts that counter the administration’s contentions. Given how successful the White House has been in keeping details of its policies on the dark side if you will — that’s hard work. It’s also why I think intel reporters — who steeped in this stuff — have done a better job covering torture than have political reporters.

Get the rest of your Q&A goodness here.

Hear and Now

I'll be on the Boston NPR show Hear and Now this afternoon talking about my CJR piece. It's broadcast around the Northeast but you can also listen to it on the Web.

Also, just a reminder: I've put my blog to sleep for the next few months. I got lots to read.

On On The Media

Here's my interview with NPR's On the Media.  You can listen via that link or check out air times.

Chalk Up Another One for Torture

From the Senate Intel Committee's just-released report concluding that the administration's allegations of links between AQ and Saddam were (as was reasonably clear back then anyway) bunk:

After his transfer to a foreign government [REDACTED], [Iban al-Shaykh] al-Libi claimed that during his initial debriefings "he lied to the [foreign government service] [REDACTED] about future operations to avoid torture." Al-Libi told the CIA that the foreign government service [REDACTED] explained to him that a "long list of methods could be used against him which were extreme" and that "he would confess because three thousand individuals had been in the chair before him and that each had confessed."

([REDACTED]) According to al-Libi, the foreign government service [REDACTED] "stated that the next topic was al-Qa'ida's connections with Iraq...This was a subject about which he knew nothing and had difficulty even coming up with a story." Al-Libi indicated that his interrogators did not like his responses and then "placed him in a small box approximately 50 cm x 50 cm."

He claimed he was held in the box for approximately 17 hours. When he was let out of the box, al-Libi claims that he was given a last opportunity to "tell the truth." When al-Libi did not satisfy the interrogator, al-Libi claimed that "he was knocked over with an arm thrust across his chest and he fell on his back." Al-Libi told CIA debriefers that he then "was punched for 15 minutes."

(U) Al-Libi told debriefers that "after the beating," he was again asked about the connection with Iraq and this time he came up with a story that three al-Qa'ida members went to Iraq to learn about nuclear weapons.

From a piece a few years ago in the Washington Post, "Al-Libi's statement formed the basis for the Bush administration's prewar claim that Osama bin Laden collaborated with Iraq, according to several U.S. officials."

Intellectual dishonesty mixed with brutality and a dash of incompetence. A fine combination. 

For New Yorkers

Did you know that the Dept. of Health now puts restaurant inspections online? You can even browse by neighborhood, or search by ZIP, and then sort by violation. And yes, one of my neighborhood standbys does, tragically, have issues.

Q&A

I just did a Q&A with CJR Daily about my piece.  An excerpt:

CJR Daily: Do you see some reluctance on behalf of reporters and editors to really push the story and follow the chain of causality up the ladder to military officers, or possibly even Bush administration officials?

EU: I think that following the chain is one of the things that I struggled most with. I didn't want to overstate it. On the other hand, you get the feeling it kind of turned into almost a stale story without ever becoming a big story. I think that part of the story receives significantly less attention. Is it because it's an uncomfortable thing to suggest that the administration is doing things that are illegal under the Geneva Conventions, or according to the Supreme Court, is engaging in things that would violate the War Crimes Act? What if the facts are hard to delineate but there is a whole lot of data pointing in that direction? I think it's easier to kind of downplay it. If you look at the news today, the only paper that has a front-page piece about the fact that the administration has said that evidence obtained through coercion should be allowed is the Los Angeles Times.

Here's the whole thing. Also, I'll be on NPR's On the Media this weekend. (Check your local listings--or listen via the Web come tomorrow.) And I'll be doing a Q&A thing on the Washingtonpost.com next week. I'll put up a URL when it's available.

Meet

The bizarro world Umanskys--they even go to church!

Favorite Anonymous Quote of the Day

From the NYT:

Although the C.I.A. has faced criticism over the use of harsh techniques, one senior intelligence official said detainees had not been mistreated. They were given dental and vision care as well as the Koran, prayer rugs and clocks to schedule prayers, the official said. They were also given reading material, DVD’s and access to exercise equipment.

The senior intelligence also explained that the prisoners inevitably responded  to abusive interrogations by saying, "Thank you sir, may I have another!"

Deconstructing Bush

What Bush is trying to do is tread a fine line between complying with Hamdan and looking like a good law-abiding guy on the one hand (hence the transfer of detainees from CIA custody) while at the same time trying to wiggle out of Hamdan and continue with abusive interrogation methods.

Hence, the bill he's just introduced and previewed in his speech is, as  Marty Lederman--the ubersource on this stuff--puts it, "an attempt to authorize the CIA to engage in the sorts of 'enhanced' interrogation techniques e.g., hypothermia, threats of violence to the detainee and his family, prolonged sleep deprivation, 'stress positions' and waterboarding."

How can that be if the CIA just transfered its terror suspects to the military in Gitmo?  Well note this part of Bush's speech:

The current transfers mean that there are now no terrorists in the CIA program.  But as more high-ranking terrorists are captured, the need to obtain intelligence from them will remain critical -- and having a CIA program for questioning terrorists will continue to be crucial to getting life-saving information.

So those are the ugly details. Let's see if the papers pick 'em up....

P.S. As Josh Marshall notes, there's also a political angle to all this.