The chief author of the Bush administration’s “torture memo” told Justice Department investigators that the president’s war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional power to order a village to be “massacred,” according to a report by released Friday night by the Office of Professional Responsibility.
The views of former Justice lawyer John Yoo were deemed to be so extreme and out of step with legal precedents that they prompted the Justice Department’s internal watchdog office to conclude last year that he committed “intentional professional misconduct” when he advised the CIA it could proceed with waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques against Al Qaeda suspects.
Sharmine Narwani, writing for The Huffington Post, takes a long look under her bed, and at the US and the world, to advise how to deal with the fear of Al Qa’eda:
I looked under my bed last night. Just in case. And don’t tell me you haven’t either. With Al Qaeda popping up in new countries every day, it seemed prudent to make sure a spanking new Salafi jihadist cell wasn’t being formed under my California Kingsize mattress.
Known Al Qaeda host nations: Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan, Jordan – purportedly even Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Turkey, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Syria, Xinjiang in China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Mindanao in the Philippines, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Libya, Nigeria, Tunisia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Dagestan, Jammu and Kashmir, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Azerbaijan, Eritrea, Uganda, Ethiopia, and – drum roll – the United States.
Actually, with Al Qaeda’s strong internet recruitment abilities, let’s just scratch that last paragraph and grandly state that this entrepreneurial Salafi franchise is in potentially as many nations as McDonald’s.
Staff and readers of EA have had a full and frank discussion in recent weeks on the Green Movement and how it is viewed by the US. It’s helpful to get a timely reminder today that, while that discussion might have been heated at points, at least it has been amongst people who have had a long-standing interest in reform in Iran, rather than a Johnny-come-lately, ill-informed claim of friendship for the movement.
Step up, Mr Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for George W Bush, current colunnist for The Washington Post. On the surface, one might think that Gerson’s claim, “President Obama has seemed to view Iran’s ongoing democratic uprising as a pesky obstacle to engagement”, might be a genuine expression of concern that the US Government is not doing enough to back calls for rights, justice, and political fairness.
One of the immediate headline issues in yesterday’s bombings in Iran, which killed at least 42 people including six senior Revolutionary Guard commanders, was US involvement. For years, the Iranian Government has asserted American support of the Sunni-Baluch group Jundallah, who were the likely attackers. The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps made the allegation within hours of the bombings, and the claim was repeated by Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani. Interestingly, President Ahmadinejad and his Cabinet later distanced themselves from the US-first thesis, shifting to Pakistan, probably to maintain the engagement process with Washington.
Before the latest news from the Iranian Cabinet, EA’s Mr Smith and Chris Emery went over the evidence of American links to Jundullah:
SMITH: We would normally dismiss the Iranian claims of foreign interference as the usual anti-West yarn from Tehran, but the claims against [Jundallah leader Abdolmalek] Rigi warrant extra attention. He is an extremely shadowy figure who appears to be well-protected, to the extent that his own brother has been caught and sentenced to death by the Iranian authorities but he himself is still at large. Also, he appeared several times on Voice of America Persian, identified as leader of the “Popular Resistance Movement of Iran”, which is of course something VOA made up – it’s not quite the Persian translation of Jundullah.
Exactly how the VOA got hold of him for a live interview, via satellite phone, is quite unexplained, as is the prominence and deference accorded to him. This interview caused a serious backlash in the Iranian blogosphere and discredited VOA Persian heavily.
EMERY: I think that the claims are much harder to dismiss when [investigative journalist] Seymour Hersh and [former CIA operative] Robert Baer have stated that Jundullah receives US support. I think it was very much a tit-for-tat policy after alleged Iranian support for Iraqi Shia groups in attacks on US troops. It has been reported that Obama ended these operations.
Apologies for not mincing words, but the US in the midst of a sustained public-relations effort to whitewash the torture stain of the Bush Administration by 1) arguing that it wasn’t torture and 2) if it was, it helped win the War on Terror. After the release this week of the damning 2004 CIA internal report on the Administration’s authorisation of torture and its ineffectiveness, Dick Cheney has been at the front of the campaign to save his legacy, if not America’s standing in the world. Fox News set him with the softball questions this morning.
(An important side note for Iran-watchers. Check out the passage late in the transcript where Cheney comes out as a strong supporter of an airstrike on Iran in 2007-8):
CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: Mr. Vice President, welcome back to “FOX News Sunday.”
RICHARD CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It’s good to be back, Chris.
WALLACE: This is your first interview since Attorney General Holder named a prosecutor to investigate possible CIA abuses of terror detainees.
What do you think of that decision?
CHENEY: I think it’s a terrible decision. President Obama made the announcement some weeks ago that this would not happen, that his administration would not go back and look at or try to prosecute CIA personnel. And the effort now is based upon the inspector general’s report that was sent to the Justice Department five years ago, was completely reviewed by the Justice Department in years past. Read the rest of this entry »
On July 31st, a politically diverse group of 31 academics, students, and anti-war protestors published an open letter in The Guardian of London, criticising what they viewed as the western media’s one-sided coverage of the post-election developments in Iran. Foremost amongst the fallacies they perceived was the portrayal of the election results as “the start of a ‘velvet’ revolution against the Islamic Republic”. At the same time, the letter alleged that the US State Department has used the crisis to “justify its continuation of Bush-era policies of financing anti-Iranian government organisations”. Not only was this an act of political opportunism on the part of advocates of regime change, this interference and propaganda campaign aided the Iranian Government’s crackdown on the opposition and slowed the pace of democratic progress.
The authors contend that is only without foreign threats and interference that “the Iranian people [can] reach their aspirations of freedom and establish their unity in a framework of independence and national sovereignty.” For the reformist and Green Movement to affect real change in Iran, there must be a reversal of the West’s opposition to Tehran’s nuclear program and an “end [to] all their illegitimate economic, political and military pressures aimed at the internal destabilization of Iran”.
Beyond this critique of Western policy towards Iran, the authors issued suggestions for finding a “reasonable solution for the conflict”. They demanded of the Government an end to attacks upon activists and the immediate release of political detainees. The letter also calls for a spirit of national conciliation facilitated by the establishment of an “independent truth and national reconciliation commission with representation from all candidates, such that it can gain the trust of the people of Iran”. Addressing the leaders of the reformists and the Green movement, the authors suggest that “in order to prevent exploitation of the current crisis by western propaganda and opportunist groups, they unambiguously oppose all sanctions and condemn regime change. operations and any foreign support for the anti-Islamic Republic opposition”.
The publication of this letter provoked a spirited debate within academic circles, so Enduring America invited interested parties to participate in a roundtable discussion. The exchanges touched upon all the issues raised in the letter but also spread to a wider debate on how the academic and media approach critical analysis of Iran. Participants included: Siavush Randjbar-Daemi, a Doctoral Candidate in Contemporary Iranian History at Royal Holloway, University of London. Holding dual Iranian citizenship, he has reported extensively on Iranian affairs for national Italian newspapers; Dr Farideh Farhi, a leading US-based scholar of Iran and co-author of the letter; Chris Emery, a British-based Doctoral Candidate who has written on Iranian affairs for The Guardian and contributes regularly to Enduring America; and Nathan Coombs, a Doctoral Candidate in London who specialises in revolutionary politics and is co-editor of the Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies.
SIAVUSH RANDJBAR-DAEMI: The authors introduce themselves as “anti-war activists” and proudly highlight their recent efforts against the “the pervasive deception created by western and Israeli-influenced media”. The group further attempts to remember that it does not wish to see a particular faction in Iran advance its goals, rather they wish to see the country’s “national rights” to be respected and be borne to fruition. Read the rest of this entry »
John Yoo is (in)famous for writing the legal rationalisations for the Bush Administration’s by-passing of law and, for some, morality to pursue surveillance, rendition, and “enhanced interrogation”. Still, he didn’t suffer too badly for his service, winding up as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The Australian television show The Chaser’s War on Everything decided to put Yoo’s Bush-era legal theories into practice in his classroom:
OK, this song by Paranoid Larry is from 2006, when the Other Guy was President. However, since the Obama Administration has not revoked any of the Bush Administration’s executive orders, apart from the promise not to torture, and since it is trying to prevent any judicial decision on surveillance, rendition, or “enhanced interrogation”, the sentiments in the music might retain some relevance.
From Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball at Newsweek:
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Staff and readers of EA have had a full and frank discussion in recent weeks on the Green Movement and how it is viewed by the US. It’s helpful to get a timely reminder today that, while that discussion might have been heated at points, at least it has been amongst people who have had a long-standing interest in reform in Iran, rather than a Johnny-come-lately, ill-informed claim of friendship for the movement.
One of the immediate headline issues in yesterday’s bombings in Iran, which killed at least 42 people including six senior Revolutionary Guard commanders, was US involvement. For years, the Iranian Government has asserted American support of the Sunni-Baluch group Jundallah, who were the likely attackers. The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps made the allegation within hours of the bombings, and 
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