The head of US Central Command, General David Petraeus, appeared on NBC Television’s Meet the Press, first to walk viewers through the US interventions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq and then to take a tour around other issues from Iran to Guantanamo Bay to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays and lesbians in the military.
In contrast to previous appearances, when Petraeus was fighting his own President to get his version of US foreign and military policy, this was a stay-the-course interview behind agreed approaches. The message on Afghanistan was long-haul effort to win. On Pakistan, it was supporting Pakistani forces to vanquish the Taliban. He spoke in generalities about maintaining pressure on Iran, and beyond his main agenda, on the tricky issues like Guantanamo Bay and “enhanced interrogation” (torture), he evaded any definitive statements.
MR. DAVID GREGORY: General David Petraeus joins us live from U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida.
General, welcome to MEET THE PRESS.
GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS: Thanks, David. Good to be with you.
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.
2355 GMT: Just checking in to say we have posted a video of a Tehran University academic defending Thursday’s executions of Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour.
1910 GMT: We’re taking an evening break. We may be back for a late-night wrap-up. If not, all the latest news will open our Sunday updates.
1900 GMT: Pressure on Ahmadinejad. The “conservative” campaign against the President’s advisors has not ceased. The high-profile member of Parliament Ahmad Tavakoli has attacked the controversial Deputy Minister of Culture, Mo-Amin Ramin, and Ahmadinejad aide Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai. Read the rest of this entry »
In February 2005, I decided to try my hand at a blog, Rebel Yell: “Better to offer alternative perspectives, not with the certainty of being right but with the hope of unsettling and challenging those who claim a universal perspective and an eternal “right” in the advance of their causes.”
Two weeks later, on 28 February 2005, I wrote about the US, Tony Blair, and Iraq. Almost five years later, and a day after Blair’s testimony to an enquiry into the 2003 Iraq, I stand by every word:
The Independent on Sunday reveals that Comrade Tony and Her Majesty’s Government decided in April 2002 to follow the Bush Administration’s lead for War in Iraq, almost a year before the formal opening of hostilities.
Credit to the Indy for publishing but this isn’t really news to Rebel Yell. The line here has long been that Dick Cheney came to London in March 2002 to tell Comrade Tony that Afghanistan was now out of fashion and today’s look was regime change in Baghdad. Never mind that Osama might still be skipping around the mountains of eastern Afghanistan — in early March, eight American troops (then considered, before 1500 US deaths in Iraq, a massive toll) were killed by an ambush in the botched Operation Anaconda. With the face that democracy had been brought to Kabul, Al Qa’eda was now little more than a diversion from the Bush Administration’s priority since January 2001: Saddam Must Go.
Officially the position was “the US does not target states on a day-to-day basis” but the tip-off was in the British announcement that a dossier on Iraq’s WMDs would be published by the end of March. Ah yes, that dossier. It didn’t beat the March deadline because the intelligence on Saddam’s arsenals of death wasn’t there. Indeed, it would take six more months — after Cheney had proclaimed that Iraq was about to unveil nuclear weapons — for MI6/Alistair Campbell [Blair's influential press advisor]/Comrade Tony to provide the fig leaf of “Saddam Able to Strike in 45 Minutes”.
So while we’re waiting for the unabridged version of the March 2003 legal opinion, which may or may not have been written by the British Attorney General, that told Parliament that the bombing of Baghdad was legit, how about adding a second request: what was the document in March 2002 that persuaded Comrade Tony that Saddam was an “imminent threat” who must be overthrown? Or was it simply Dick Cheney’s charm and winning smile?
This interview is not as useful as that on ABC News, which we posted and analysed earlier. There’s very little beyond the Administration spin. (The duo were also interviewed on CBS News, but frankly I can’t be bothered to post the same rhetoric thrice over.)
It’s what is missing that is most interesting. How many words in this transcript concern non-military measures?
Apparently a former Vice President spoke last night and said he kept the world safe and the current President doesn’t. Sort of like my Dad saying each time we meet, “You know in my day 1) there was no crime 2) kids knew their place 3) music was much better.”
Yesterday I noticed an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times by John Hannah, a former assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney. Hannah — notable in the Bush years for being Cheney’s fixer, running over other Government agencies to ensure the Vice President’s will was done on issues from “enhanced interrogation” to rendition to Iraq — is now declaring his concern for the Iranian people, who will accept “additional hardships” to remove their regime. Fortunately, whereas his boss Cheney pressed in 2007 for the “additional hardship” of bombing Iran, Hannah is now merely talking about a range of damaging economic sanctions.
Once my temperature cooled, I could not bring myself to acknowledging Hannah’s piece by responding to it. Fortunately, Maryam from Keeping the Change can, in this effective decimation of the rhetoric and reality of Hannah’s proposal. Hannah’s original words follow her comment:
John Hannah Want to “Cripple Iran to Save It”
We have to admit: John Hannah’s op-ed in the Los Angeles Times (below) takes a clever approach to the old-line heard from most U.S. neo-conservatives on the need to confront Iran with “harsh sanctions” and/or “military action”. Citing to an anonymous group of Iranian activists with which he purportedly met while in Europe, Hannah argues in his article that the Iranian Opposition movement wants, but cannot openly call for, “crippling sanctions” against Iran. A provocative point — should we believe him?
JOHN KING: Mr. Secretary, thank you for joining us.
We learned as the week came to an end about a new underground secret Iranian nuclear bunker, and the president described it this way. “The size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program.”
Tell us more about what we know, and do you have any doubt Iran was using this facility or planned to use this facility to develop nuclear weapons?
GATES: We’ve been watching the construction of this facility for quite some time, and one of the reasons that we waited to make it public was to ensure that our conclusions about its purpose were right. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday I noticed 
Robert Gates on CNN’s “State of the Union”
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