Eric Umansky

Let Freedom Reign (Saudi Arabia edition)

Geez, I wonder if--between pleas for more oil pumping--the prez will feel  like he as the leverage (or interest) to bring this up:

HRW Press Release
(Washington D.C., April 24, 2005) - U.S. President George W. Bush
should call on Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah to immediately
release three dissidents imprisoned for more than a year for petitioning
for a constitutional monarchy, Human Rights Watch said today on the
eve of the de facto Saudi ruler's visit.

In March 2004, Saudi authorities arrested 13 people in several cities
for circulating a petition calling for a constitutional monarchy with an
elected parliament, and signaling their intent to form an independent
human rights organization. The government released 10 of them after
compelling them to sign an agreement that they would cease their
public petitioning.   

Three of the men - Matruk al-Falih, Ali al-Domaini, and Abdullah al-
Hamid - refused to sign the statement, and remain in prison facing
charges of "issuing statements" and "using Western terminology" in
calling for reform. Their lead lawyer, 'Abd al-Rahman al-Lahim, one
of the 10 released in March, has been detained since early November
for statements he made to the press about the case.

Another bet: What are the chances any of the papers raise this question?

Command Cover-up

Slate buddy Phil Carter is one of the few who's flagged the Army report released, ahem, Friday afternoon that somehow cleared top officers of any responsibility in the prisoner torture/abuse scandal. As Phil points out, the issue isn't whether commanders ordered  the abuse:

In the Army's leadership schools for officers and sergeants, the doctrinal manual preaches quite a different result from the outcome of this investigation. Bottom line: commanders (and NCOs) are responsible for everything their unit(s) do or fail to do, period. A commander, especially a general officer, is not just responsible for those things he/she ordered, but for those things that he/she knew about — or should have known about.

Phil then goes on to quote from the Fay report, which  pegged top officers (but  didn't have any power beyond simple naming-and-shaming):

I find that LTG Sanchez, and his DCG, MG Wojdakowski, failed to ensure proper staff oversight of detention and interrogation operations.

That's  Sanchez, as in Ricardo Sanchez known for such roles as the  top commander in Iraq. To put in simpler terms, let's turn to USAT from back in August:  "PANEL: TOP OFFICIALS PLAYED ROLE IN ABUSE." That's actually a reference to another report--the independent panel headed by former Defense secretary James Schlesinger-- which didn't limit its finger pointing to commanders Iraq. From USAT

Schlesinger, who was named by Rumsfeld to head the panel, said commanders in Iraq bore responsibility for failing to enforce discipline. The responsibility goes up the chain of command "all the way to Washington," he said at a Pentagon news conference.

"These failures of leadership helped to set the conditions which allowed for the abusive practices to take place," said Tillie Fowler, a former Republican congresswoman from Florida who was on the commission.

Back to Phil's insight: 

Despite these [the reports']  findings, none of the officers responsible for facilitating these abuses will face criminal charges. Or, put another way, the Army IG has wholly disregarded the record evidence before him to arrive at an arbitrary and capricious decision that the senior Army leaders involved should face no legal consequences for their actions. What kind of message does that send to our junior military leaders? What kind of message does that send to the world?

That strikes me as absolutely right--and important. And call me naive (or strident, or boring), but I'm surprised this hasn't been flagged much elsewhere--certainly not in the papers. This report is just another in a stream; it's the Army's official investigation official investigation. And means Sanchez and others are home free.

So the largest military-based scandal of at least of the year and perhaps  the decade--one that generated reams and reams of coverage--has now been swept under the rug. It's yesterday's news as is the empty promise  to hold officers accountable. Which reminds me:

"We will find the truth; we will fully investigate. The world will see the investigation and justice will be served." - President Bush, May 5, 2004.

el-Masri, cont'd

A few readers have written in to say that contrary to my whining, the CIA's mistaken abduction of Khaled el-Masri has gotten some attention. So let me clarify:

Yes, el-Masri's travails have been written about. What's new--or at least what I hadn't seen before--is NBC News' contention that  within a week after his capture,  the CIA appears to have been confident they had the wrong man and yet continued holding on to him anyway. *

*There is an odd silver-lining to the story: Condoleezza Rice and Tenet  both apparently heard about el-Masri being the wrong guy and both apparently insisted on his release. Now it turns out the agency ignored them for six weeks. That ain't great. But, honestly, it is comforting to know that the case reached to the upper echelons and that they were pissed. Plus,  el-Masri was eventually released.

Keeping civilian casualties on the DL: a moral and strategic failure

Turns out that just before she died Marla Ruzicka wrote a op-ed for USAT detailing what she found:

Here in Baghdad, a brigadier general commander explained to me that it is standard operating procedure for U.S. troops to file a spot report when they shoot a non-combatant.

Recently, I obtained statistics on civilian casualties from a high-ranking U.S. military official. The numbers were for Baghdad only, for a short period, during a relatively quiet time. Other hot spots, such as the Ramadi and Mosul areas, could prove worse. The statistics showed that 29 civilians were killed by small-arms fire during firefights between U.S. troops and insurgents between Feb. 28 and April 5 — four times the number of Iraqi police killed in the same period. It is not clear whether the bullets that killed these civilians were fired by U.S. troops or insurgents.

All things being equal, it shouldn't be a surprise that GIs have to radio in whenever  they believe they've killed a civilian. But that's not the line hate military has been offering.  As Steven Aftergood notes, "it's remarkable assertion that, contrary to some official claims, the U.S. military has compiled statistics on the number of Iraqi civilians killed in the course of the war there."

The military is being short-sighted. It should want to compile and release this info. As Ruzicka wrote:

Troops on the ground keep these records because they recognize they have a responsibility to review each action taken and that it is in their interest to minimize mistakes, especially since winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a key component of their strategy. The military should also want to release this information for the purposes of comparison with reports such as the Lancet study published late last year.

Releasing the info would put pressure on the military, I imagine much of it internal, to learn lessons on how to minimize civilian casualties. Consider what a former Marine captain wrote in a NYT op-ed after that Italian journalist was wounded a checkpoint:

The fact is, checkpoint techniques can be taught. My platoon had to learn them on the fly, but that was two years ago. The lessons we and other troops learned should have been institutionalized long ago.

For example, we tried and discarded the three tactics that were used to warn the Italians as they approached the checkpoint: hand and arm signals, warning shots and shooting into the vehicle's engine block. We found that hand and arm signals were tough to decipher, and subject to different cultural interpretations. Warning shots are hard to hear or see, and frequently only panic the driver they're intended to warn. Shooting into engine blocks to avoid injuring passengers is Hollywood fantasy. Even my Marine snipers - some of the best marksmen in the world - couldn't do it consistently.

That is a tragedy, both in a moral sense and a strategic one. By not caring enough about civilian casualties, by not working in an institutionalized way to reduce them is a sure-fire way to build resentment,  and fuel the insurgency.

One of the first steps towards minimizing civilian casualties is pretty simple: acknowledge them. 

Pentagon *does* keep stats of civilian casualties?

Marla Ruzicka, the human-rights activist who was recently killed by a suicide bomber near Baghdad's airport, had been researching civilian casualties in Iraq. NYU's Global Beat mentions one of the things she found:

Despite claims to the contrary, the Pentagon has apparently been keeping secret statistics on the number of civilians  accidentally killed by U.S. when she was killed. She had managed to obtain information from the  military about the number of civilians killed during hostilities after the end of major combat operations. The information she received related only to a brief period in the  Baghdad area, but was important in establishing that the U.S. did in fact record civilian injuries. She was trying to get the U.S. government to publicly release these statistics about all areas of Iraq

This  is news, right? Has anything been writen about the stats Ruzicka seems to have come across? Has the military acknowleged their existence? Do other areas in Iraq have the same stats?

Maybe NYU is misinformed;  maybe Ruzicka was. But it's gotta be worth follow-up.

Our friends, the Saudis

From Al-Jazeera:

A Saudi academic has been sentenced to 200 lashes and time in jail for insulting a colleague, a Saudi-owned newspaper reported.

According to the London-based Al-Hayat reported on Sunday, Hamza al-Muzaini - a lecturer in linguistics at King Saud University - was accused by Islamic culture lecturer Abd Allah al-Barak of defamation and insult.

Al-Barak accused Muzaini of "mocking long beards" and questioning his knowledge in an article published a few months ago, other reports said.

Al-Muzaini was sentenced to 200 lashes, four months in prison and banned from publishing, a verdict he immediately appealed, Al-Hayat said.

E.U. Pee-ew

I'm generally a fan of the E.U. But I'm with Vaclav on this one:

I vividly remember the slightly ludicrous, slightly risqué and somewhat distressing predicament in which Western diplomats in Prague found themselves during the Cold War. They regularly needed to resolve the delicate issue of whether to invite to their embassy celebrations various Charter 77 signatories, human-rights activists, critics of the communist regime, displaced politicians, or even banned writers, scholars and journalists -- people with whom the diplomats were generally friends.

Sometimes we dissidents were not invited, but received an apology, and sometimes we were invited, but did not accept the invitation so as not to complicate the lives of our courageous diplomat friends.

[But] I cannot recall any occasion at that time when the West or any of its organizations (NATO, the European Community, etc.) issued some public appeal, recommendation or edict stating that some specific group of independently minded people -- however defined -- were not to be invited to diplomatic parties, celebrations or receptions.

But today this is happening. One of the strongest and most powerful democratic institutions in the world -- the European Union -- has no qualms in making a public promise to the Cuban dictatorship that it will re-institute diplomatic Apartheid. The EU's embassies in Havana will now craft their guest lists in accordance with the Cuban government's wishes. The shortsightedness of socialist Prime Minister José Zapatero of Spain has prevailed.

Try to imagine what will happen: At each European embassy, someone will be appointed to screen the list, name by name, and assess whether and to what extent the persons in question behave freely or speak out freely in public, to what extent they criticize the regime, or even whether they are former political prisoners. Lists will be shortened and deletions made, and this will frequently entail eliminating even good personal friends of the diplomats in charge of the screening, people whom they have given various forms of intellectual, political or material assistance. It will be even worse if the EU countries try to mask their screening activities by inviting only diplomats to embassy celebrations in Cuba.

I can hardly think of a better way for the EU to dishonor the noble ideals of freedom, equality and human rights that the Union espouses -- indeed, principles that it reiterates in its constitutional agreement. To protect European corporations' profits from their Havana hotels, the Union will cease inviting open-minded people to EU embassies, and we will deduce who they are from the expression on the face of the dictator and his associates. It is hard to imagine a more shameful deal.

[Via boz via David Holiday.]