Obama to United Nations Committee Against Torture: "We tortured some folks. We'll keep our options open to do that again and again."

The Obama administration, after an internal debate that has drawn global scrutiny, is taking the view that the cruelty ban applies wherever the United States exercises governmental authority, according to officials familiar with the deliberations. That definition, they said, includes the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and American-flagged ships and aircraft in international waters and airspace.

But the administration’s definition still appears to exclude places like the former “black site” prisons where the C.I.A. tortured terrorism suspects during the Bush years, as well as American military detention camps in Afghanistan and Iraq during the wars there. Those prisons were on the sovereign territory of other governments; the government of Cuba exercises no control over Guantánamo.

Obama says that the convention against torture does doesn't apply where torture by U.S. goons is most likely.

Is there anything which tells us that the Obama administration is not using this self-defined exclusion?

Taking a break from stuck talks with the Iranian delegation Secretary of State Kerry visited the bazar of Muscat, Oman to enlist a new spirited member for his policy team. "Sometimes one has to resort to unusual measures to solve all these difficult problems," Kerry explained. "This genie lamp will magically enlighten the world about your wisdom," market vendor Ali Baba assured the secretary.

Jundallah is a radical Sunni group based in Baluchistan near the Pakistani-Iranian border. It has attacked Iranian soldiers as well as civilians. There were many rumors in the media that some U.S. operation was utilizing the group for terror attacks against Iran. But a 2012 story claimed that it was not the U.S. but Israel which sponsored the group's attacks. A story published yesterday refutes this and admits U.S. involvement though it tries, unconvincingly, to blame this on one "bad apple" rogue actor.

In January 2012 Mark Perry wrote an impressive story about the Jundallah group:

A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran.

Several bloggers, including me, expressed doubt about the story:

Why is this whitewash of the CIA coming out right now, just two days after the assassination of another Iranian engineer?

Why is there no mention at all of JSOC, the U.S. military Joint Special Operations Command forces who are, according to Sy Hersh, operating in Iran? What is their relation to the Israelis?

Why is the U.S. now doing so much to say it has nothing to do with the assassination? Notice that this changed. State Department spokesperson Nuland when asked on January 11 immediately after the event issued no denial at all.

As Marc Wheeler pointed out:

Israelis and Americans have long hidden behind each other when working with Iranians, going back at least to the Iran-Contra ops that Dick Cheney had a fondness for. Hiding behind Israelis lets American officials pretend we’re not doing the taboo things we’re doing. Hiding behind Americans lets Iranian partners working with Israelis pretend they aren’t working with the Zionist enemy. That false flag business works in many different directions, after all.

I concluded:

The Mark Perry story may well be right in the detail. I doubt its value in telling something of the bigger picture though. It it does not tell us anything of what the U.S. agencies and military are currently doing in Iran and it certainly should not be used to exculpate the U.S. from the killing of the Iranian scientists.

Nearly three years after the Mark Perry story blamed Israel for cooperation with Jundallah a new story by James Risen and Matt Apuzzo now admits intense U.S. involvement with the group. The guy allegedly culpable for running Jundallah is claimed to be a New York Port Authority officer:

Cont. reading: (Not) U.S. (Not) Israel Utilized Anti-Iranian Terror Group Jundallah

One Missy Ryan at the Washington Post wants her readers to swallow this nonsense:

While the Obama administration is expanding its effort against the Islamic State, it has resisted calls from some of its Middle Eastern allies to more directly pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose long civil conflict has created the conditions that gave birth to the Islamic State and other extremist groups.

The conflict in Syria, started by the U.S. and other international supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, had nothing to do with the "birth" of the "Islamic State and other extremist groups".

Academic accounts of the genesis of the Islamic State, Jabhad al-Nusra and others point to a much earlier creation of these groups:

A popular narrative holds that the surprising recent events in Iraq can be attributed mainly to the unraveling of Syria.
…
[This] is just part of a picture, one constructed by connecting the dots from events that we can observe, rather than from a careful analysis of the group known as the Islamic State. Consider another possibility: the Islamic State’s resurgence since 2010 in both Iraq and Syria is the result of a carefully crafted plan. The Islamic State counteroffensive in Iraq, conducted under the noses of a waning U.S. presence in the country, created conditions for the Islamic State to establish a new political coalition that remains intact to date. The high-level of military excellence achieved by the Islamic State in their campaign as much as any political factor, has influenced their return and creates a host of challenges for the military, intelligence, and diplomatic professionals tasked with their defeat.

The Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra were both part of AlQaida in Iraq (AQI). The were created in reaction to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. After having been temporarily defeated during the "surge" of U.S. troops AQI revived and fought an intense war against the Iraqi government. When the conflict in Syria started the war in iraq was again raging. A part of AQI transferred to Syria under the name of Jabhat al Nusra. It used the eastern part of Syria primarily as a retreat and training space. AQI split in two when the Iraqi part detached itself from AlQaida central in Pakistan as well as from Jabhat al-Nusra and transformed itself into the independent Islamic State.

The conflict in Iraq ignited by the United States is the creation point of these extremists group. The conflict in Syria allowed the growth of these groups into the geographically near eastern parts of Syria but the Syria conflict had no relation to those groups founding. Ahrar al-Shams and the Islamic Front, other extremist group in Syria, were also founded and led by senior AlQaeda members mostly from Iraq. Like the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra these groups do not originate in the Syrian conflict but in a wider and older context.

The origin of these groups lies in the the U.S. war on Iraq. To accuse the Syrian government for their creation is propagandistic nonsense.

I once had a bit of respect for the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dempsey. That is gone:

The highest-ranking U.S. military officer said on Thursday that Israel went to “extraordinary lengths” to limit civilian casualties in the recent war in Gaza and that the Pentagon had sent a team to see what lessons could be learned from the operation.

Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged recent reports criticizing civilian deaths during the 50-day Gaza war this year but told an audience in New York he thought the Israel Defense Forces “did what they could” to avoid civilian casualties.

Amnesty International as well as Human Rights Watch are usually reluctant to criticize Israel. Some of their big donors are Zionists and they also receive money form “western” governments which support Israel. Still: HRW:

Human Rights Watch investigated four Israeli strikes during the July military offensive in Gaza that resulted in civilian casualties and either did not attack a legitimate military target or attacked despite the likelihood of civilian casualties being disproportionate to the military gain. Such attacks committed deliberately or recklessly constitute war crimes under the laws of war applicable to all parties.

Amnesty (pdf):

Amnesty International examines targeted Israeli attacks carried out on inhabited civilian homes in the light of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law, specifically the rules on the conduct of hostilities. It does so by focusing on eight cases, in which targeted Israeli attacks resulted in the deaths of at least 111 people, of whom at least 104 were civilians, including entire families, and destroyed civilian homes.
…
In all the cases documented in this report, there was a failure to take necessary precautions to avoid excessive harm to civilians and civilian property, as required by international humanitarian law. In all cases, no prior warning was given to the civilian residents to allow them to escape.

Someone should ask Dempsey why he believes that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are wrong in their assessments. And does the Pentagon really need to send a team to Israel to learn how to commit war crimes? Is there too little experience of bombing this or that wedding?

A few days ago there was a preparatory meeting for a nuclear security summit, a global meeting initiated by the U.S. to control access to nuclear resources. Russia, which believes that the IAEA is the agency that should take care of the issue, did not take part. The State Department pretended to be surprised by Russia’s no-show:

Russia has failed to show up at a meeting planning the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit, U.S and European officials said Monday, in a potentially serious blow to efforts by President Barack Obama to cement his legacy as leaving the world safer from nuclear terrorism than when he took office.

The officials said it was not immediately clear whether Moscow intended to boycott the summit itself or was just temporarily showing displeasure over Washington’s harsh condemnation of Moscow’s role in Ukraine unrest and the U.S. lead in orchestrating Western sanctions and other punitive measures in response.

The State Department now admits, after Russia pushed back, that these “officials” lied:

Russia has told the United States that it will not attend a 2016 nuclear security summit, the State Department said on Wednesday, in the latest sign of frosty ties between Washington and Moscow.

Explaining why it would stay away, Moscow said it doubted the value of the summit, which is to be held in Chicago in 2016, and believed the views of states which disagreed with the event’s organizers would be ignored.
…
“Russia delivered a demarche to the United States in advance of last week’s preparatory meetings informing us that it no longer planned to participate in the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

There was no explanation for why the “U.S and European officials” lied about the issue. Who was stupid enough to believe that such lies would be helpful for anything? By lying these “officials” achieved two points:

1. No one can trust any news based on “U.S and European officials” claims. These “officials” may well be or are even likely lying as the above case shows and anything those “officials” say, even on trivialities, may be the opposite of what they will say tomorrow.
2. Russia is pissed off even more and any future cooperation with it will become more difficult.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said it had informed Washington in mid-October about its decision. “We regard the recent leaks about (the decision) in the American media as an unsuccessful attempt to put pressure on the Russian side in order to change our position,” the ministry said. “We consider such efforts counterproductive.”

I for one do not understand what the people at Foggy Bottom are thinking. Kindergarten behavior like this will achieve what?

“Training” foreign troops seems to be some magic solution for various foreign policy problems. “Training” a new Iraqi army against the Islamic State is the latest of such a hoped for miracles. But all recent “western training” has been more problematic than successful.

The various foreign troops trained at the infamous U.S. Army School of the Americas, turned out to be capable, but only as torturers and death squads:

Observers point out that School alumni include: 48 out of 69 Salvadoran military members cited in the U.N. Truth Commission’s report on El Salvador for involvement in human rights violations (including 19 of 27 military members implicated in the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests), and more than 100 Colombian military officers alleged to be responsible for human rights violations by a 1992 report issued by several human rights organizations. Press reports have also alleged that school graduates have included several Peruvian military officers linked to the July 1992 killings of nine students and a professor from La Cantuta University, and included several Honduran officers linked to a clandestine military force known as Battalion 316 responsible for disappearances in the early 1980s. Critics of the School maintain that soldiers who are chosen to attend are not properly screened, with the result that some students and instructors have attended the School after being implicated in human rights violations.

Foreign officers trained over the last decade in various military “anti-terrorism” programs seem somewhat prone to coup against their government:

The army officer who has seized power in Burkina Faso amid popular protests in the West African country was twice selected to attend counterterrorism training programs sponsored by the U.S. government, U.S. military officials said.
…
Although the training he received was relatively brief, Zida’s experience carries echoes of other African military officers who went on to topple their governments after being selected by the U.S. government for professional military education courses.

In March 2012, an army captain in Mali who had attended a half-dozen military training courses in the United States led a coup that deposed his democratically-elected government.

The United Kingdom offered to train 2,000 Libyan “soldiers” to clean up the anarchy its attack on Libya created. In a first tranche 325 were recently selected, “vetted” and flown to the UK for some basic infantry training. Some 90 of them decided they did not want to be soldiers and asked to be flown home. Additionally some 20 claimed asylum. The rest tried to have some fun. Two stole bicycles, rode to Cambridge and sexually assaulted several women. Some others raped a male person. The training program has been abandoned and the rest of these “vetted” and “trained” gang was send home to presumably reenforce the anarchy there.

The U.S. trained the Iraqi army over several years and at a cost of billions of dollars. As soon as that army was assaulted it fell apart. Four divisions fled when attacked by rather minor forces of the Islamic State.

But do not despair. The U.S. has found the perfect way to solve the Islamic State problem in Iraq. It will now simply train a few new divisions and those freshly trained folks will then surely be able to defeat and destroy the Islamic State.

Iraqi security forces, backed by American-led air power and hundreds of advisers, are planning to mount a major spring offensive against Islamic State fighters who have poured into the country from Syria, a campaign that is likely to face an array of logistical and political challenges.
…
United States officials say that the initial force they are planning to advise consists of only nine Iraqi brigades and three similar Kurdish pesh merga units — roughly 24,000 troops.

The counterattack plan calls for at least doubling that force by adding three divisions, each of which could range from 8,000 to 12,000 troops.

The United States is relying on allies to augment American trainers. Australia, Canada and Norway have committed several hundred special forces to one or more of the training or advisory missions, a senior United States military official said.

For the expected quality of that farce and its training just see above.

The Islamic State is currently ruling over some 4 to 6 million people. It is recruiting and drafting among these to increase the size of its own army. How many able young men of fighting age can be generated from a millions strong, traditionally child rich population? 100,000? 300,000? The Islamic State has capable trainers from the old Baathist Iraqi army and it uses a fighting style that mixes guerrilla tactics and conventional warfare. It has captured enough weapons and ammunition to fit out several tens of thousands soldiers.

Even with air support the few forces the U.S. plans to train will be mince meat as soon as they will try to enter areas the Islamic State wants to hold.

The “western” military model is simply not fitting to the kind of conflicts encountered in other parts of the world. The mentalities, traditions, ideological incentives and education levels are much different.

“The west” still feels superior to “the rest” because it has, in the past, won so many colonial wars. But as Samuel Huntington once remarked:

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.

It was an advantage in technology that allowed “western” forces to win in colonial wars. But at least in ground wars both sides now basically use the same technology and similar weapons. There is no longer a technical advantage and some basic “training” does not help much to escape from an incoming stream of hot machine gun bullets. The U.S. war of independence is a good example for this. While the British army still could win in other colonial wars a colonial fight against an enemy at a similar technical level but with higher motivation ended in defeat.

Any force that is supposed to grind down the Islamic State and its army needs an ideological motivation and will to fight that is at least equal to the one of the Islamic State fighters. As an attacking force it will also needs superior numbers. The U.S. and other “western” armies are unable to create such a force in Iraq. The only entities which can do such on short notice are the Iranian revolutionary guard and Hizbullah. Any efforts of “training” a new force against the Islamic State that does not involve those will be in vane.

The recent history of “western training” of foreign forces is a history of failures and defeat. It is stupid to assume that this time will be different. If the U.S. wants to defeat the Islamic State it will have to make nice with its other “enemies” and it will have to let them lead the training and the fighting. Anything else will likely fail and end up in a few decades with the embarrassing acceptance of a new state in the former territories of Iraq, Syria and whatever other country the Islamic State decides to slice apart.

More news & views …

(Sorry for light, boring posting while I am busy with some urgent personal issues.)

As predicted the consolidation of insurgent groups in Syria is continuing with the more radicals ever winning:

The Obama administration’s Syria strategy suffered a major setback Sunday after fighters linked to al-Qaeda routed U.S.-backed rebels from their main northern strongholds, capturing significant quantities of weaponry, triggering widespread defections and ending hopes that Washington will readily find Syrian partners in its war against the Islamic State.

The ousted groups were supported by the CIA and had U.S. weapons including tank-killing TOWs. Those are now in the hands of al-Nusra which already prepares to take more ground.

The Obama administration will have difficulties to further deny the obvious. The idea of training some "new FSA" gangs and to supply them with U.S. weapons is nuts. The only force on the ground in Syria that can take on the Islamic State is the Syrian army. Two days ago I smelled some turn in the media towards a more benign presentation of the Syrian government. It earlier was nearly always depicted as sectarian and as solidly run by minority Alawi. That was always wrong but it was the leitmotif of all "western" Syria reports. Here is now another Associated Press piece about Sunni refugees within Syria that challenges that view:

Sunnis, who form the country's majority faith group, form Assad's chief power base, even as the rebellion is dominated by Sunnis. Minorities, like the Alawites, Shiites and Christians, mostly support the government or have remained neutral.

It also shows that the Syrian administration is still able to govern decently:

Government services, while scrappy, still exist. Workers receive salaries, even if the local currency is falling. There is still power, though cuts are routine. Health care is still free, although residents say waits are long as doctors leave their posts.

So what is really not to like with the Syrian president Assad the readers of those AP pieces will ask themselves. Isn't he better than all alternatives?

Here are some remarkable media mentions of Syria.

From RAND, the Pentagon think tank, on Alternative Futures for Syria.

Among the Key Findings:

Regime collapse, while not considered a likely outcome, was perceived to be the worst possible outcome for U.S. strategic interests.
…
It is regime victory that now appears to be most likely in the near to mid-term, due to the confluence of military and political factors favoring pro-Assad forces.

An Associated Press reporter visits the Latakia area and talks to the people who are all staunch supporter of the Syrian government: Syria's Alawites pay heavy price as they bury sons.

The piece includes this fact that has been true since the fighting in Syria started:

Syria's army represents the sectarian makeup of the country: it is largely Sunni Muslim, fighting mostly Sunni Muslim rebels.

This was so far hardly ever mentioned in "western" media" which was thereby propagandizing sectarianism and further war.

Another remark that does not fit the usual picture. Some people protest against President Assad not because he is fighting against the insurgents but because he is not waging enough war:

"If anything, their critique of Bashar is that he is too weak, so they would rather have a hard-line guy in power," said the aid worker, who requested anonymity because he wasn't meant to speak to reporters.

Also remarkable. Who does the U.S. trust to have the best intelligence to fight the Islamic State? Syria of course. But as official collaboration is not (yet) allowed, the arrangement is covered up as espionage: U.S. Spying on Syria Yields Bonus: Intelligence on Islamic State:

U.S. Spies Have Been Tapping the Communications of President Bashar al-Assad’s Regime for Information on Islamic State Militants

I am sure that the U.S. could not listen to Syria government communication about IS, and would not make the fact that it can public, if the Syrian (and Russian) government would not want them to.

The U.S. plan was to let some of its "enemies", the Syrians, Iranians, Russians, fight it out with some of its other "enemies", the radical Islamists and by proxy the Saudis and Qataris. All would be weakened and the relative U.S. role in the Middle East would be strengthened. But with the Islamic State blowback in Iraq, in Lebanon and in future likely in further places, the plan to let the enemies destroy each other is increasingly risky.

What we are seeing now, and the Associated Press report above is in my view not just a coincidence, is a slow change in the U.S. position. It is starting to lean towards a more appreciating view towards the Syrian government. How far that change will go is not yet knowable.

My take on the letter Secretary of Defense Hagel sent to the White House is that his demand for a clearer strategy on Syria is not, as Reuters assumes, a request for more help to the insurgents but a request to let go of the animosity towards the Syrian government and to further cooperate with it in the fight against the Islamic State. That is the essence of the RAND study quoted above which Hagel's house paid for. If my reading of it is correct the White House would be wise to follow Hagel's view.