Damascus Matters: Syria, the US, and the New Middle East

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Much has changed in US foreign policy since the Bush Administration pulled its ambassador from Damascus in 2005 to protest Syria's suspected involvement in the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Since the advent of the Obama Administration, not only the hopes of change in US-Syrian relations but the quest to unblock the Palestinian-Israeli peace process has brought the prospect of dialogue.

The latest signal came on Thursday when two Democratic Congressmen, Senator Edward E. Kaufman of Delaware and Representative Tim Waltz of Minnesota visited Syrian President Assad. According to Syria's official Arab News Agency, talks focused on "the necessity to remove obstacles that hinder relations and to promote stability in the Middle East". Specifically, the exchange points to a visit to Damascus by President Obama's envoy George Mitchell in June.

The Kaufman-Waltz visit is the fourth by US officials or legislators since January. Three days after the hard-line statement of the new Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, “Peace will only be in exchange for peace.”, Democratic Representative Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts and Republican Bob Inglis of South Carolina, met Assad.

Assad's comment after this meeting that he wanted to meet Obama personally was matched by the US Embassy's statement that the talks were constructive on Syrian-Lebanese relations, security on the Syria-Iraq border, and the situation in Gaza. On 5 May, two senior US officials, Jeffrey Feltman and Daniel Shapiro, made their second journey to Damascus in two months and found some “common ground” with the Syrians.

The 2nd Feltman-Shapiro visit was particularly significant as it came on the
same day that Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met to re-confirm their ‘strategic alliance.’ Contrary to the claim of many that this was a declaration of Syria's "strategic needs" being met by Tehran; Assad's manoevure was more a temporary alignment with no advance on the "road map" of the Palestinian-Israeli and Syrian-Israeli peace processes. In the absence of tangible steps, Damascus is covering itself against any unilateral concessions.

Hence, the second visit of Feltman and Shapiro was needed to maintain close contact between Washington and Damascus until the peace process could be restarted. Other regional leaders have also contributed. On May 11, the Jordanian King Abdullah visited Damascus, as he and Assad affirmed the need for a comprehensive solution on the basis of Israeli and Palestinian states in a regional context. The newly-appointed Syrian ambassador to Ankara said on 12 May that Damascus was ready to resume Turkish-mediated indirect talks with Israel, despite Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statement that he would not cede the Golan Heights.

In contrast to the Bush Administration's attempt to get the "right" Middle East through exclusion of those whom it did not like or trust, the Obama Administration in four months has rebuilt relationships with key leaders. Still, the outcome of those initial breakthroughs awaits an even bigger signal: the US President's speech in Cairo next Thursday.

Mr President, Torture Still Matters: Obama Puts Away The Abuse Photographs

Related Post: Video - Obama Decides Not to Release Photographs of Detainee Abuse
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This may be one of the most difficult articles I have ever written. For when I heard last night that President Obama had decided to withdraw White House consent for the release of photographs of the abuse of detainees, my reaction was dismay and, yes, revulsion. Having declared in his Inaugural Speech that the US would never again separate security from values, having signed an Executive Order "banning" torture, having promised to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, here was Obama --- faced with the recognition of the past --- refusing to allow that acknowledgement.

And he was doing so, ironically, horribly, with the same rationale that the Bush Administration used for eight years whenever it did not want the political inconvenience of knowledge, let alone debate, of its actions: because "national security" demanded that we did not hear or see.

But first, to keep this post on an analytic rather than emotional level and to provide essential context, this is not a case of the White House volunteering the photographs and then retracting. The release of the pictures has been ordered by a United States District Court hearing a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

So there is an Alice-in-Wonderland quality about Obama's opening words, "These photos are associated with closed investigations of alleged abuse of detainees". The President invokes the legal process to say that his Administration has to defy...the legal process.

(What's more, Obama's assertion is either a lie or a misstatement. Later, he indicated that the photographs related to an investigation, started "long before" he took office, which has always been completed by the Pentagon with "appropriate actions taken". So there is no "ongoing" legal investigation within the military.

Obama did refer to the "chilling effect" that these photographs might have on future investigations of detainee abuse. Even if such investigations are being contemplated, and there is no indication that this is case, this is a red herring. The photographs in question pertain to past enquiries and would have no standing in any prosecution of unrelated incidents.)

The second Obama rationalisation was that "these photos are not particularly sensational. especially when compared to the painful images we remember from Abu Ghraib". If this was an issue of whether the release of the photos is to satisfy voyeurs of torture, this might be relevant --- nothing to see here, folks, move along.

But that is not the issue. Abuse is abuse, irrespective of its "sensational" appearance (indeed abuse such as extended sleep deprivation is quite banal). A person does not have to be hooded and standing on a box in a crucifix position for the act to qualify as torture.

But Obama was saving his headline rationale for last: releasing the photographs would "inflame anti-American opinion and put our troops in danger". No need for subtle readings here: if you make me accept the court decision, our boys will be killed.

I'll give the President the benefit of the doubt, as Juan Cole does, that he has been persuaded of this by the US military and that this isn't an emotional fig leaf. But let's be clear: any insurgent or "extremist" who wants to shoot at or blow up American troops already has more than enough pretext from the last eight years: he/she can invoke what is already known or suspected about the torture and abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and secret CIA "black sites" around the world.

So instead you have to presume that Obama believes that others who are not currently fighting US forces will be prompted to do so by these photographs. Yet, if the pictures in question are not "sensational", if they do not match up to the horrors of Abu Ghraib, why would they provoke such a decision?

That logic leads to one of two conclusions: either the photographs are innocuous, and Obama is blowing smoke about "anti-American" reaction, or they are so horrific that they will provoke previously non-violent individuals to a murderous response. (For the sake of humanity, I hope it is the former.)

To be blunt, if not yet emotional, Obama's reasons are flimsy and at times illogical. So, since the President is normally quite intelligent and logical, the statement is more of a cover-up than the actual reason behind his decision.

So what did happen? Obama gave in to pressure.

In part, the pressure came from the public bubble of Washington politics. The Dick Cheney roadshow may be a distortion, even a fabrication, of what actually happened in the Bush years, but his banging away --- assisted by an array of broadcasters and newspapers --- at the risk to "national security" of the torture investigations finally put a dent in the White House. It is no coincidence that, 24 hours before Obama's statement, the former Vice President's first attack in an interview with Fox was on the release of the photos.

That, however, is only one pressure --- and probably a less important pressure --- that buckled Obama.

The ultimate "winners" in this sordid battle are US military commanders, supported by top officials at the Central Intelligence Agency. CIA Director Leon Panetta had already let it be known that he objected to any more disclosure of photographs, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates fired his own volley on Wednesday. While generals kept their mutterings private, the gist of their opposition came out in suitably-placed media pieces.

While those commanders did put out the word that their troops would be endangered by the publicity over the photos, they had other considerations. The US military is still detaining insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. The CIA and military are still working with allied countries, such as Pakistan, who have their own methods of interrogation.

Public exposure of what occurred in the past could conceivably limit, apart from Obama's necessary reference at the end of his statement that "the abuse of detainees...will not be tolerated", what measures could be taken in future. Inquiry and investigation raises that the prospect that military and intelligence officials are, in theory at least, legally accountable.

In this continuing War on Terror, that's still not an acceptable risk. Instead, the story has to be maintained that torture was only, in Obama's words, "carried out in the past by a small number of individuals". The "chain of command", both political and military, has to be put beyond scrutiny.

This is not to say, of course, that the "enhanced interrogation" goes on, at least not in the form sanctioned by the Bush Administration from 2002 to 2005. It is to say that the risk of a system of oversight, prompted by a full recognition of what occurred in those years, must not be taken.

A Little Torture: New Revelations of CIA Sleep Deprivation Programme

Despite the best efforts of Bushmen/Bushwomen to explain away torture --- 1) it wasn't torture because the President ordered it 2) it wasn't torture because bouncing off walls isn't that bad and, most recently, 3) OK, if it was torture, Democratic senators knew about it --- the story hasn't quite gone away. The Senate Intelligence Committee is persisting with an investigation of CIA methods, and Greg Miller of the Los Angeles Times today offers the latest revelation, from Justice Department memoranda, of the extent of "enhanced interrogation":

More than 25 of the CIA's prisoners were subjected to sleep deprivation. At one point, the agency was allowed to keep prisoners awake for as long as 11 days; the limit was later reduced to just over a week.

Anticipating the response that a bit of forced insomnia wasn't that bad (in the spirit of Donald Rumsfeld's note when he approved the "enhanced" methods, ""I stand for 8-10 hours a day"), let's add this:

The prisoners had their feet shackled to the floor and their hands cuffed close to their chins....Detainees were clad only in diapers and not allowed to feed themselves. A prisoner who started to drift off to sleep would tilt over and be caught by his chains....
When detainees could no longer stand, they could be laid on the prison floor with their limbs "anchored to a far point on the floor in such a manner that the arms cannot be bent or used for balance or comfort".

Despite the extent of these measures and their uninterrupted duration, they were considered "less severe" than other "corrective" or "coercive" methods.

As for the safety and effectiveness of sleep deprivation, James Horne, the scientist whose work was mis-used by the Justice Department and CIA to give legitimacy to the programme, writes:

To claim that 180 hours is safe in these respects is nonsense. [And] even if sleep deprivation succeeded in getting prisoners to talk, I would doubt whether the state of mind would be able to produce credible information, unaffected by delusion, fantasy or suggestibility.

Torture: A Captain Kangaroo Court for the Bush Administration

With the latest entry in the "It Wasn't Torture, but If It Was, That's A-OK", submitted by a Ms Condoleezza Rice, I think it's high time we gave the Bushmen and Bushwomen the hearing they deserve:

"President Raccoon had a magic letter, so it was not a violation of Common Article III of the Geneva Conventions"

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